Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Did you know that there are between 60 and 125 million Christians in China?

Of those Christians, only 10-12 million are Catholic, meaning that the vast majority are Protestants.

The church in China is exploding left and right and is expected to have the world’s the largest Christian population in 2030.

This is remarkable news, is it not?

A country that had no Christian presence several centuries ago could become the largest Christian population a decade from now.

That is the power of the Gospel at work.

The church in China is also one of the most persecuted churches in the world.

As you see on the screen, persecution in these Southeast Asian countries as actually gotten worse over the last 5 years!

In 2018, according to an article by the Guardian, the Chinese government has shut down hundreds of churches, locked hundreds of pastors in jail, removed crosses from buildings, banned the selling of Bibles online, and some cities/schools even banned the celebration of Christmas.

This is not stuff happening 40-50 years ago, this is happening right now!

It is estimated that 50 million Chinese Christians could face direct persecution in the next year.

By direct persecution we are not talking about being made fun of in school or being thought of as less intelligent by co-workers.

We are instead talking about economic sanctions, being denied work, not being allowed to worship or being jailed if you do worship.

This is the situation being faced by tens of millions of Christians in our world today, in 2019.

I think that we have to realize that before reading our text because it can be difficult for us to realize that persecution still happens in our world today.

Just as persecution exists in our world today, persecution certainly existed in the ancient world as we have been looking at the last couple of weeks in Daniel.

This theme of suffering, persecution and the sovereignty of God is found throughout Daniel and our message today is no exception.

This text is one of the most popular and exciting ones in all of Scripture and we see that God rescues one of His children while glorifying Himself among the nations.

Daniel 6:

Daniel 6:

Daniel 6:9-

Honor God (1-4)

In order to have a proper idea of the context of , we have to look back to in order to see what has transpired in the ancient world.

We see that the Babylonian king was slain and Darius the Mede received the kingdom.

With that in mind, we see that there is a new power in place: the Persians.

This transpired in 539-537 BC.

From our study of Nehemiah, we also know that some of the Jewish captives returned back to Jerusalem during this timeframe as well.

There has been some debate regarding who this figure is.

The consensus is that Darius is a title for Cyrus, the first ruler of the Persian empire.

This was a powerful man who was ruling over a new world power.

Daniel, as we see in chapter 6, maintains a position of authority in this new world order of sorts and he is an administrator in this new king’s government.

We saw the word “satrap” 2 weeks ago in and this word means “protector of the kingdom.”

These people are essentially lower governmental officials, perhaps like a modern representative in our modern governmental terminology.

This empire was ginormous!

The largest empire the world had known to this point.

It had to be divided into smaller portions in order to be governed appropriately.

We see that there were 3 administrators over the 120 satraps and Daniel was one of these 3.

The satraps would have told the administrators what was going on in their region in order to make sure the peace was kept and the tax money was coming in.

We know that Daniel was elevated in the Babylonian court, but we aren’t exactly told how Darius came to know of Daniel.

His understanding of dreams certainly would have made him famous among the people, so perhaps that is how he was introduced to this new king.

Whenever a company purchases another company, there are a couple of options: they can fire everyone or they can keep some of the best workers and hire new ones.

This is what we saw in as Nebuchadnezzar did not slaughter every Israelite but instead he brought over the best and the brightest to Babylon in order to indoctrinate them to the Babylonian worldview.

This is exactly what we see here in .

This new king and empire come into the picture and Daniel is assimilated into the government because he was the best at his job and was well known and well respected by the people.

Verse 3 shows us that Darius was impressed by Daniel and was set to appoint him over the whole kingdom.

We see the term “exceptional qualities” in this verse and we know that Daniel certainly had these qualities.

Perhaps it was an exceptional attitude or abilities, or it could have been that Daniel had been given a gift by God and Darius noticed this fact.

Have you ever had someone come up to you and say, “You’re really good at this, why is that?” or, “How did you handle this situation?”

In instances like this the answer, as a child of God, is that God has blessed us.

I listened to an interview a couple days ago from a baseball player (after a playoff game) in which the player explained that the reason that he got to where he was at was due to himself.

He got himself where he is by pushing himself and working hard.

Now, should Christians work hard?

You’d better believe it!

We are commanded to work hard and one of the ways that we honor the Lord is by working.

Whenever an opportunity comes to point others towards Christ, that is the avenue that we take rather than taking the credit for ourselves.

We honor God.

We give Him the credit.

We make His name known to others.

In practical terms, Christians look different than non-Christians in the workplace.

Have you ever experienced this?

Maybe there is an opportunity to cut corners in order to pass an observation or an interview, or perhaps there is limited supervision and you have the opportunity to lie about a sales report and make your total look really good.

For non-Christians maybe you could rationalize and justify doing something like this.

However, for a Christian, we know that we are called to honor God.

We are to live a set apart life.

That means that there are certain things that Christians cannot do, regardless of how easy it would be to get away with them.

Verse 4 shows that there were some men who were jealous of Daniel.

They knew that Daniel was trustworthy and he was not corrupt.

They could not find a flaw in his character.

Church, that should be our prayer as individuals and as a church!

That people would be unable to find a flaw in our character because we are so in tune with the Spirit that they are unable to do so.

You might think, there are people out there who always get on my nerves and never get along with me, they’d even make something up to get me in trouble!

Certainly.

That is similar to what we see in the coming verses, in fact.

There are enemies out there and whenever you are at the top it can seem like everyone wants to drag you down!

What these men found, though, was that they could not smear his name or corrupt him.

I hope that is our testimony and reputation in the community.

That we are a church and a group of Christians that are devoted to honoring the Lord and we are model workers, employees and trustworthy friends.

Be faithful, even when it might cost you (5-15)

Do you know anyone who is crisis-oriented?

They don’t contact you unless there is a problem or they need something?

I’ve met this type of person a time or two and I’m sure some of you have as well.

You know who has also experienced this type of person?

God.

There are many people out there who cry out to God only in times of crisis.

They have no relationship with the Lord, they only go to Him in order to receive blessing/prosperity or whenever something doesn’t look good in their life.

This is not the person that Daniel was.

This is not the type of Christian that we are called to be as well.

We are called to stand up for our faith in the good and bad times.

Verse 5 shows us that these men knew they could not get Daniel in trouble with the exception of his devotion for his God.

Daniel’s religious convictions were not hidden.

He was not a person who was privately religious nor was he a person who would compromise in the face of punishment/death - much like his 3 Hebrew friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego.

This should be our story as well.

Other people should not have to investigate the facts to see if we are a Christian or not, they should know that full and well.

There should be no doubt in the minds of people in our lives that we belong to Christ!

No such doubt existed in these men’s lives regarding Daniel - yet, even in times of difficulty, Daniel remained faithful, so should we.

These rivals of sorts came in and tried to entrap a godly man in Daniel.

As God’s people, we must expect evil people to try and tempt and convict us today as well.

Jesus warned about this in before He was crucified.

Paul writes in that: