Resisting Conformity

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Transcript:

We live in a world that expects us to conform to the way that they do things. More and more, and every day it seems, that we are expected to conform to the way the world does things. And sometimes it seems like it would be easier just to go ahead and do that.

You know, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, those who were not Christians in this country, a lot of times just leave us alone. They wanted Christians to stop trying to force Christian values on them by force of law. Just leave us alone.

Okay, that’s fine. I can understand that. I can maybe even agree to some aspects of that because I understand that Christianity is a heart decision and me forcing someone to outwardly act like a Christian doesn’t benefit them in eternity and doesn’t do anything for me either.

I can agree with that. But 10 and 20 years ago is gone. Now Christians are being penalized for not agreeing with the things the world wants to do.

Again, 10 or 20 years ago, it was just leave us alone and let us do our own thing and don’t bother us. Okay, now we’re to the point, though, that we have to agree with what everybody wants to do, or we’re penalized for failing to do so. And sometimes it’s by force of law.

I read this week that the florist in the state of Washington, who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding service, lost her appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court, and that case is now being appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

And the woman, you know, who was willing to sell to same-sex couples, willing to sell flowers, simply refused to produce flowers for a religious ceremony that she didn’t agree with. The same with the bakers. They were willing to produce cakes.

They were willing to sell to anybody, didn’t care what your lifestyle was when you came through the door, but didn’t want to participate in a ceremony that went against their religious convictions. People have lost their homes and their livelihoods and have been hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, to say nothing of legal costs. On top of that, if you speak out in favor of traditional Christian values, whether we’re talking, this is not all about marriage, whether it be marriage, whether it be abortion, whether it be just, I think it’s a good idea to be faithful to your spouse, whether it’s, you know, we want to raise our children to know right, whatever it is, if you speak out in favor of traditional Christian values, you can lose your job.

you can lose your livelihood you can be drummed out of the public or private sector it’s the point now where you can even attend a church where those things are spout you don’t say anything yourself but your pastor does and people know you go to that church it can affect your livelihood I don’t know who they are, I’ve never seen the show but I understand there’s a couple that has some kind of home show that was in danger of losing their show because they went to a church whose pastor stood up for traditional marriage I hope it doesn’t cause any of you trouble at work. But I still believe in the Bible. And I still intend to preach the Bible and still intend to preach that what God says is the way that things are supposed to be.

And I don’t do that to be mean to anybody. I don’t do that to force anything on anybody. If anything, people, if anything is going to cause me trouble, it’s more likely that I’m going to get in trouble with people who say, No, no, we need to make laws against sin and pushing morality.

To an extent, that’s true. Murder is immoral, should be banned. Things like that.

But as far as making everybody act like a Christian, that does us no good, that does them no good. I don’t want to see the law forcing anybody to be a Christian. So I don’t say these things in the sense that we need to make everybody else be like us.

But folks, we live in a world that is increasingly wanting us to be like them. And many days it would be easier to go down that road. Even if we’re not, you may think, well, that doesn’t affect me.

I’m not a high profile person. Some of these people get in trouble for things they tweet. And I heard some of you before Brother Terry’s class saying you didn’t even know what tweeting was.

So you’re probably safe there. I have a Twitter and I only really use it in case of tornadoes. Because for some reason, it was easier to get a Twitter message out than it was to get a text message out.

Go ahead and explain that one to me. But you’re not in the public eye. You’re not on TV.

You don’t have millions of Twitter followers. You may think, what’s the cost to me? But the world sees us, and the world, in small ways, even not realizing they try to pressure us into being just like they are.

The world will feel better about itself if we would just be like them. And before I go too far in it, this is not an us versus them thing. We’re so much better than everybody else.

As I said this morning, and as I will continue to say, I am a sinner. I am a huge sinner. As a matter of fact, because I know my own heart more than I know yours, I don’t know all your sins unless there’s a big public one.

I look at myself, and I’m not saying this just for the purposes of preaching, I see myself as probably the biggest sinner in this room because I see the sin. I hear those thoughts. I’m in here with me.

Okay, I hear the things that I think. I know the attitudes that aren’t always verbalized. I am a huge sinner.

But I am a sinner who was saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And who because of that, out of gratefulness and as God enables me to by the Holy Spirit, I try to do the things that he tells me to. I do not always succeed in that. And you do not always succeed in that.

We as Christians, you know, we need to make the world understand this. We need to take off the mask that we’re perfect Christians and help people understand we do not think we’re better than anybody else. We are just sinners who are saved by the grace of a loving God and who out of gratefulness try to live up to his expectations and fail every single day.

But just because it’s easier to give into the world’s expectations and stop trying to live up to God’s expectations doesn’t mean that it’s the right way. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s the right way. I tell my children all the time, they’re too young to really understand, but I’m hoping if I start enforcing this idea now or reinforcing this idea now, that as they grow up, they’ll remember it, that if you’re faced with a choice, very often the easy choice is the wrong one.

And it’s unfortunate that the world works that way, because sometimes you just like it to be easy to do the right thing. But if you’re faced with an easy choice or a hard choice, usually the hard one is going to be the right choice, just because that’s the way the world works. Just because it’s easier to say, well, I messed up and I broke God’s law this time, doesn’t mean we get to just lie down and ignore it the next time.

No, we get up, we get up out of the mud, he cleans us off, and then we go on and with his power we try to serve him better the next time, realizing that we’ll never be perfect on this side of eternity. So this message, and as we’re going to look at Daniel over the next few weeks and talk about the world that he lived in, this Babylonian world, and this sort of Babylonian world that we live in too, that wants to conform us to its image, that it’s not us versus them. It’s not we Christians are better than them, and we need to act as we’re supposed to, and make them act like us, and we need to look down on them.

No, no, no. It is us versus the one who temporarily controls this world, battling over the souls of those who have not yet trusted in God through Jesus Christ. Folks, we live in a world that wants to conform us to itself. And not because we’re better, not because we’re somehow more special, but because we understand what God expects of us, and we love Him and we’re grateful to Him. We have to fight against that push to conform.

Just give in. Just do the easy thing. Just be like us.

Daniel, better than many other people, knew what that was like. He lived in Babylon. Babylon, it’s not by accident that Babylon is synonymous with the world system and with worldliness itself all throughout the Bible.

Now, there was a literal Babylon. Daniel was literally there. These things, I believe, literally did happen there, historical fact.

And yet Babylon is also, in that historical fact, it’s a picture. It’s a picture of the world that we live in, too. That’s why Revelation refers to Babylon so much.

Babylon was the example of worldliness that they looked to. And so if you haven’t yet, if you’ll join me in Daniel chapter 1, We start in verse 1, and it says, In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. Toward the end of the kingdom of Judah, there were several Babylonian invasions, Babylonian invasions, several sieges, several times that they overran the city and took people away and took some of the best and brightest away, took some of the wealth from the temple away, plundered the city, and oftentimes they would during this few years that this was going on, this fighting, they would come in and they would install a new Jewish king who would be their puppet.

Now one of the times that they came in and besieged it it says in verse 2, The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his God and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God. So God allowed Jerusalem to be captured this time. Why would God do that?

Because God had for hundreds of years been telling them, knock it off with the idols, get your hearts back with me, because you know that’s where your protection comes from. That’s how your country is sustained by your relationship with me. And so God, you know, I think part of it was punishment, but I think part of it was also just the disciplining hand of their father saying, okay, I’m going to let you experience for a little bit the pain of this captivity so that you will remember you will never forget.

And in some senses it worked because the Jewish nation never went back to idolatry after the captivity in the way that they did beforehand. And so God allowed Jehoiakim to be captured. He allowed Jerusalem to be captured, allowed Nebuchadnezzar’s forces to come in and take all this stuff out of the temple and take it back to the pagan temples in Shinar.

And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of the eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes, children in whom was no blemish, but well-favored and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, in whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.

So there was sort of a kidnapping situation going on, where King Nebuchadnezzar told Ashpenaz, the head of the eunuchs, to go in and find the best and the brightest of the Jewish people, those who were the smartest, those who were the strongest, the best looking, and bring them back to Babylon because they were going to be trained, not just to serve in the king’s court, but what we’re being told here is that they were being trained to be Babylonians who would serve in the Babylonian court. This tongue of the Chaldeans, they were going to be taught the Babylonian language, their philosophies, their religion, all these things. And verse 5 says, And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.

So he says for three years they’re going to be trained, this training program for royal officials, where they’re going to be remade into Babylonians. And the king is going to take care of all their expenses. He’s going to house them.

He’s going to provide them with all the food and wine from his own table. He’s going to give them a taste of what it means to be at the top of Babylonian society for three years. And then when that three years of training is over, they would stand before the king, and he would figure out where these new Babylonians could best be used in his government.

And it says in verse 6, Now among these were the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they were not the only ones, but he says, among these Jewish exiles, these Jewish captives, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names, for he gave unto Daniel the name Belteshazzar, and to Hananiah Shadrach, and to Mishael of Meshach, and to Azariah of Abednego.

So what’s going on here is I started out this message by talking to you about how the world wants us to conform to its idea and wants us to become like them, which, you know, honestly is fair in a way, because we want to help people become more like Jesus Christ, so they’re only doing the same thing we’re trying to do in reverse. But the world wants us to conform to its expectations, And they were brought out of God’s nation. They were brought out of God’s people.

And they were taken to this pagan country, this Babylon. And they were put there and they were essentially told, we are going to remake you, we are going to mold you and conform you, you young men, into Babylonians. And we brought the best and the brightest so that we could make the best Babylonians.

We’re going to build Babylonians from scratch. They were, in verse 4, it talks about, you know, You want people with understanding and knowledge and wisdom. You want cunning men with great abilities.

Because we’re going to teach them the language and the learning of the Chaldeans. We are going to teach them to talk the way Babylonians talk. And we are going to teach them to think the way Babylonians think.

They were going to completely change them from being Jews into Babylonians. We’re going to completely change their identity. Your way of thinking becomes ingrained in you and becomes a part of who you are.

I react to things certain ways, and I act in certain ways because of the things that I was brought up to think. I called my mother last week and told her about a meeting that I was in charge of last Monday night. And a guy who was not supposed to be there, he was not a part of this meeting, came in and kept wanting the floor.

kept trying to filibuster, as I’d say, and kept arguing over people who were supposed to be in the meeting and kept interrupting them. And I let this go on for a little bit. I let him talk, even though he wasn’t entitled to the floor.

I let him speak his mind because, you know, I thought he’s a guest. I was raised to be polite to guests. At a certain point, though, enough became enough, and I think everybody was relieved when I finally told him, you know, you’re a guest here, and you’re welcome here, but we need to hear from somebody else now. And if it continues, we’re going to have to have somebody escort you out.

And I told my mother that it took longer than anybody else in the room. You know, people were telling me, I kicked him out first time he opened his mouth. I understand, but I was raised a certain way.

I was, a certain way of dealing with people was ingrained in me to be polite and to give people a chance. And I said, Mom, for better or for worse, I told people, this is how you raised me. okay so I was raised with a certain way of thinking a certain way of looking at people and it’s part of who I am these men were raised with a certain way of looking at the world and it was a part of who they were this whole idea that there’s one God and that he makes the demands on how we’re supposed to behave that he makes the that he calls the shots this is at the very heart of who they would be as Jewish men but they were going to be taught some other language and some other way of thinking that was more in line with the Babylonians and their multitude of gods who had very different ideas about how mankind was to behave.

So they’re wanting to go in and undermine the things that they’ve been raised and taught. Think about the values that your parents taught you. Or if your parents weren’t around or they didn’t teach you the right things that you now believe.

Think about those people who were formative in your life that made you, for the better, who you are today. And imagine being taken thousands of miles away to a foreign land where they were going to completely undermine that and tear that down and rebuild you as something else. That’s what these men were facing.

And part of the way they were going to do this not only was teaching the way the Babylonians thought and the way the Babylonians taught, they were going to give them Babylonian names. You are no longer even who you were. You’re no longer Daniel.

You’re no longer Hananiah or Mishael or Azariah. If today you had to stop being Ralph, who would you be? They couldn’t even have the same names.

Imagine the confusion. And there’s something just a little more sinister here at work than just, we’re going to call you by a different name. When you look at names in the Bible, they always mean something.

And when you see the word, when you see the syllable El, El, in someone’s name in the Bible, it’s referring to God. It’s a shorthand for Elohim, which is one of the names of God. If you see Yah, usually I-A-H or sometimes Y-A-H in somebody’s name, it’s another reference to the Lord.

I talked this morning about the Hebrew name of God being Yahweh, as best we can approximate. Meaning, He’s the Lord, He’s the self-existent One, He’s the I Am. All of those things are tied up in there.

A shortened version of that is the word Yah. So when you see Yah in somebody’s name, either I-A-H or Y-A-H, it’s talking about the Lord. So in each of their names, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, these were all names that taught something about who God was.

These were all names that in some way dedicated them to the service of the Lord. Daniel means God is judge. Hananiah means the Lord is gracious.

Yahweh is gracious. Mishael means who is like God. I realize that’s a question, but the answer is nobody.

It’s getting us to understand like what Jeremiah talked about that we read this morning. That there is no one like you. It’s a rhetorical question.

There’s no one like God. And Azariah means the Lord is my helper. So they had these names that at the very essence of who they were, taught something about God and reminded them every time they heard their name about the faithfulness of God or his character.

And they were changed into something else. Daniel, God as judge, became Belteshazzar, meaning the treasurer or treasurer of Bel, who was one of the Babylonian gods. Oh, you no longer get to be dedicated to the God of the Israelites.

You have to be dedicated to one of our gods. Hananiah, who meant the Lord is gracious, became Shadrach, or the messenger of the sun. The sun god was one of the gods that they worshipped.

Mishael, who is like God, Belboni, became Meshach, which means he was dedicated to the god of Shach, which, as I understand it, is the moon goddess. And Azariah, the Lord is my helper, became Abednego, which is the servant of fire. And again, they worshipped the fire god.

So they were taken and said, you’re no longer, not only do you have to learn to think a different way and talk a different way, but you’ve been dedicated from the time that your parents birthed you, you’ve been dedicated to the God of Israel. Well, now you have a new owner. Their old names were taken away.

And all of this is part of the Babylonians’ attempt to erase the Jewish part of them. to erase the part of them that came from God’s chosen people and say, you’re going to be Babylonians now. In verse 5, though, we see the diet.

And this was sort of the final straw for them. The king allocated a portion of his food for the Jewish exiles. Now, part of the purpose of this was, yeah, you’ve got to feed them something.

You’ve got to keep them alive. People tell me all the time, your kids are getting so big. It’s because we keep feeding them.

If you don’t feed something, it stops growing and it dies. So thank goodness we feed our kids. He had to feed them something.

He had to feed his captives something if he wanted them to live. But it’s also here to entice them. He could have fed them anything, but he says here, I want to feed them the fancy things from my own table, from my own household.

They’re going to have the richest meats and desserts and oil and wine and all sorts of delicious things that are really awful for you. But he wanted to entice them and say, See, you work for me and you become a Babylonian and look what you get. he was trying to get them to fall in love with the Babylonian lifestyle.

And as much as we try to master it, and some people do a better job than others, our stomachs control a lot about us. Or at least mine does. Sometimes I can get so hungry that I get in a bad mood.

At my house we call it hangry. Hungry and angry. And you can say all day, I’m going to diet, I’m going to eat right, I’m going to exercise, I’m going to do all these things, and I’m going to get healthy, I’m going to get in shape.

And yet, we leave here on Wednesday nights after church, and think, I don’t want to go home and fix anything. It’s already late, we’re going to have to go get the kids in bed. They’ve already eaten, but we’re going to have to go get the kids in bed.

Let’s just stop and get something delicious and fattening on the way home. See, I can make all these plans in my mind, and then the belly starts to talk, and suddenly I fall in love with things that I didn’t even want an hour ago. They were trying with all this fancy food and wine to get them to fall in love with the Babylonian lifestyle.

They wanted to make them into Babylonians, to tear them down and build them up from the bottom up. He wanted them to leave, all of this goes to the idea that Nebuchadnezzar wanted them to leave their old ways, their old identity, their old language, their old lifestyle, their old God behind, and become like us, become Babylonians. So when it came time for the diet thing, there wasn’t much that Daniel could do about being in the training program.

I mean, you’re kidnapped at sword point, you’re there. And really, it doesn’t matter what somebody calls you. If you know in your heart, I’m Daniel, it doesn’t matter if somebody calls you Belteshazzar, whatever.

You know, I’ve gotten used to this over the years. People don’t listen, and people don’t hear real well. And so somebody asks me my name, and half the time they think I’m saying Jerry, Gerald, Eric, something like that.

And so I’ve learned, okay, that’s fine. I’m not going to correct you every time. Especially Chick-fil-A or a restaurant like that you go in.

It doesn’t matter if they know my name or not. They’re just trying to get the order out to the right person. If you want to call me Eric, that’s fine.

I’ll answer to it. I know who I am. So Daniel’s here dealing with people who have the swords.

If they want to call me Belteshazzar, it doesn’t matter. I know I’m still Daniel. But when it came time to the diet issue, Daniel said, no, we’re not doing that.

See, in verse 8 it says, Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. I’m going to just read the rest of this to you, and then we’ll come back and comment on it a little bit.

Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and drink, for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? Then shall ye make me endanger my head to the king?

Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had said over Daniel, Hananiah, Mushael, and Azariah, Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king’s meat, and as thou seest, deal with thy servants. And so he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days.

So Daniel comes in, and Daniel has already decided in himself, he’s already made a commitment, I follow the Lord, I can’t do this. I cannot go along with this diet program that they’ve instituted, all this fancy food. I can’t do this.

He’s already made the commitment, it’s that he purposed in himself. He is already committed. But he comes in, and he makes a request, and he says to Ashpenaz, the head of the eunuchs, listen, we can’t do this.

And he speaks, he doesn’t clearly speak, clearly he doesn’t speak for all the Jewish exiles there, but he speaks for himself and Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And he says, please don’t make us go, please don’t make us eat this stuff. This is going to be a problem.

And Ashpenaz says, wait a minute, if the king sees that y’all look, you know, just pale and sickly because you’re not eating as good. You’re not eating as well as these other guys. He said, it’s going to be my head.

Daniel, for some reason, God had given him a good relationship, a friendship with this guy, somebody who should have been his enemy, somebody who should have hated him. God gave him a good relationship. And he says, I can’t do this.

And what we see next is Daniel going to the guy under him, Melzar, and saying, listen, this diet is a problem for us. Could you help us not do this? Just give us 10 days.

And it doesn’t seem to be in Daniel’s character to be sneaky and say, well, I’ve gone to Ashpenaz, and he said no, so I’m going to go to Melzer and see what he says. This is just my thought. What I imagine happening is that Ashpenaz said, I’m not putting my head on the block for this.

Wink, wink. Go see what Melzer says. Throw somebody else under the bus if they’re willing to do this.

And so he goes to Melzer and he says, just give us 10 days. Just give us 10 days. For the 10 days, give us pulse and water.

That means basically anything that grows out of the ground, vegetables. Give us vegetables for 10 days, vegetables and water, and then check us out. And if we look worse for the wearer, then we’ll do things your way.

But if we look just every bit as healthy as everybody else, then you’ll let us continue. And the guy agrees to this. Now, we may think, what is the big deal?

So he’s eating fancy food. Why was this such a problem? Well, Daniel is trying to do things God’s way.

Daniel’s trying to do things God’s way. And in the Old Testament, which we’ve been freed from these laws, thank goodness, but in the Old Testament, God was very specific about what they could and could not eat, the Jews. Very specific about what they could and could not eat.

Some of this was health-inspired, I think. God designed us, and He knows how our bodies work. But also, God wanted the Jews to be just a little weird.

Just like God wants Christians today to be just a little weird in contrast to the world around us. God wanted the Jews to do things just a little bit differently. You can’t eat that.

You must eat that. You must worship at these times. Don’t wear clothes made of a certain kind of fabric.

You have to go through these rituals. He wanted people to see a visible difference between his people and the world around them. And so they had very strict rules.

The Babylonians didn’t have those rules. And so if they’re having to eat from the king’s table, a lot of that meat was going to be unclean stuff that God said, don’t eat that. The pork and the shellfish and all the delicious things that we, thank goodness we get to eat that he allows us to eat now.

All these things, they wouldn’t have been able to eat without violating God’s law. Daniel didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t worth even his survival for Daniel to say, fine, I’ll just violate God’s law.

He said, we’re going to be asked to eat unclean animals. We’re going to be asked to eat stuff that God had said no to. So for us, we would look at that and say, the dietary thing, what is the big deal?

But if you want to think about it in terms today, what are things that God has told us that we can’t do? And then imagine the world telling us we have to do it. And I don’t care whether it’s we have to allow people to come in and worship other deities in our church services.

No, we can’t do that. If the world says you have to recognize and solemnize, legitimize same-sex marriages, we can’t do that. I’m sorry.

We’re not doing it to be mean. God said no on that. There are all sorts of things that the world could try to tell us you have to do that.

That we would have to then make a decision. Are we going to abandon God’s principles to save our own necks? Or do we really believe the things that he told us to do and not to do?

So a lot of these were unclean animals. God also said that meat had to be prepared a certain way. It couldn’t be strangled.

The blood had to be drained. And they were going to be eating these rich meats with the fat and the blood still in them. God said don’t eat that.

and plus the meat was being offered to idols. Now, I found some things in the Old Testament this week that kind of talk around the edge of this issue. I couldn’t find anything that definitively in the Old Testament law said, don’t eat food, sacrifice to idols.

I found a lot of things in the New Testament about that where God said, as Christians, don’t eat food that was sacrificed to idols. Don’t knowingly eat food that was sacrificed to idols. primarily because you could cause your brothers who’ve just come out of idol worship and feasting to stumble.

If they see you and you think, that idol can’t do anything to me, but they’ve just come out of it, they’re going to see you eating that food and think, oh, he thinks idol worship is okay, so maybe you see you’re going to cause your brother to stumble. Couldn’t really find anything in the Old Testament about where it clearly says, don’t eat food that was offered to idols. And all I can think of is that they went through the principles that God had put there, You know, these are the things that pagan countries did, and God said, don’t do that.

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