Into the Fire | Week 6 | Sermon

amen. I was thinking about it this week just to kind of set up where we're going. My wife is you know one of those people that's just like she's afraid of everything. You know what I mean? Like she's constantly convinced that somebody's breaking into our house and I'm just like, do you think people like think we have money or something? Like why is our house always the place that we're under attack? Like it's like five nights a week somebody's breaking in. And I'm like, the statistical probability of that is so low, it's impossible. Know? But what used to happen is like almost every night my wife would wake me up like it's happening and I heard something. I'm like, we have like 12,000 animals in this place. Like it's probably one of the animals or one of our children that acts like animals, you know, like it's something else. And so what I eventually did is I kinda set my house up like Fort Knox. I've got cameras everywhere. I've got you know, like the really cheap alarm system. So I'm not gonna buy like the nice ones, but it's not really for security. It's just so that in the middle of the night, my wife doesn't have to wake me up and she can look at the cameras and realize there's nothing there and I can go back to bed. So it's let me sleep a lot better. But there's been a few of these moments where in the middle of the night, one of like the sensors that we have on the windows,

would just fall off. Right? And so in the middle of the night in a dead sleep,

the alarm starts going off and it's triggering it. And my wife has to obviously wake me up because that doesn't wake me up. She's like, all right, it's happening, right? And so I like jump out of bed and I'm like screaming like a girl. I don't do anything effective at all. My And wife's looking at me like, what is happening right now? I'm like, I don't know. Like what did you expect to happen? You know, like I don't have any training. And for some reason I thought because I had watched like John Wick shows and you know, Navy Seal movies that I just would be part

story. Oh,

I sorry,

And here's what's funny as I think sorry, about it, I don't know why I would think that when the moment would come, would just like rise to the occasion.

Like I don't have any military background. I don't really have any training. I don't practice to do it. But for some reason I had convinced myself when the moment comes, you better believe your boy's about to become a Navy SEAL, right?

But here's the irony. You know the Navy SEALs actually have a saying that says that when the pressure is on, when the moment is there, Navy SEALs belief system is that you will not rise to the occasion. You will actually fail to your level of training. And I go, that makes sense because that's exactly what I do.

But I don't think that it's just when somebody breaks into our home or when we get into a difficult situation out there that that is the truth. I think the reality friends is it's true about our spiritual lives as well. We think that we will just be Daniel in the moment where the lion's dens comes. But the truth is,

if you wait until the moment that you're in the lion's den to have developed courage, I promise you, you will fail. You will fall to your level of training. So the question has to be asked, what are you training? How are you training? What is your daily life look like? Friends, the Bible is explicitly clear.

We live in a world that is in a progressive gradual decline heading further and further away from the things of God. We shouldn't be shocked that it's happening. And what is going to happen is a time is coming where the people of God will have to make a choice.

And we will have to stand for righteousness in a world that is doing the opposite. And the story in Daniel six begins to show us. It shows us the breadcrumbs

to follow that we can begin to figure out how to be people of courage. And I promise you, it is not just waiting until the point where courage is needed. If you're waiting until then, you're gonna fall. But here's where I wanna try to convince you. If here's the big idea I wanna work to for the next few moments together. Friends, what we're gonna see in Daniel six is that courage is a path that we need to be on daily. It is not just a point in time.

Okay? Courage is a path filled with multiple small daily decisions. It is not just a moment in time. The lion's den for Daniel was not the moment where courage was developed. It is the moment where courage was displayed,

but courage was developed years and years and years before this moment. Let me catch you up if you're just joining us. Okay? We're we're in Daniel chapter six. This is a story about the people of God, the nation of Israel. God's chosen people

who had been living rebelliously.

They weren't listening to God. And so God allowed his people to be taken captive by the Babylonian government. An incredibly pagan people that did not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they worshiped all these polytheistic gods. A lot of the kings thought they were gods and God allowed the Babylonians to take them. And Daniel, the Bible tells us was one of the smartest, one of the brightest,

which makes sense because everybody named Daniel is pretty amazing, right? He allowed Daniel to be taken captive and he got brought into the royal home of the king. And in Daniel six, we see a man who has served three different kings. He's been in captivity for over seventy years.

And yet Daniel had developed a face that would put him in some really precarious moments and he wouldn't just bend the knee to culture and allow the pressure to crush him. He would take a stand and stand for God when nobody else would. And I promise you if you will lean in this morning,

there is gold available to you and I. My primary objective is not to help us figure out how to navigate politics, but Daniel is a politician in most of his life. And so there is some nugget in here on how we can navigate the political system that we find ourselves a part of today. Getting ready to head into an election cycle. There is some stuff that's there. But my hope primarily is to show you how to have a faith

that when the moments come, when the pressure builds, you will have a faith where you can stand courageously for God and not one where you would just work cower away. Okay. Daniel chapter six verse one, see how the story begins. It says, Darius the Meade decided to divide the kingdom into a 120 provinces. Okay. Darius is the new king and he appoints a high officer to rule over each province. The king also chose Daniel and two others as administrators to supervise the high officers and protect the king's interests.

Daniel soon proved himself more capable than all the other administrators and high officers. Because of Daniel's great ability, the king made plans to place him over the entire empire.

Okay. King Darius is the new king that's on the scene. This is the third king that Daniel has had to serve. Kings that don't vote like him, kings that don't behave like him, they don't go after the same things that he wants to. And somehow with every one of these kings, Daniel rises in influence.

And I'm telling you friends, this is the purpose of God for Christians in this world. Is we will grow in influence if we don't back down and cower away from culture. Daniel was living is what the Bible says God will do when you're faithful in the little things.

Eventually over time, God will make you faithful with much. Daniel had grown in influence both with God and with men. And so King Darius realizes that as I'm establishing my new kingdom, I want three guys to run the whole thing. Daniel's one of the three. But pretty quickly the king realizes that Daniel's even better than the other two. I want him to be my right hand person to oversee all of the kingdom.

And what is about to unfold is the most important assignment in Daniel's life. And it is not lost on me that it comes to Daniel at the age of 85 years old. Here's why I say that. Friends, we sometimes think that we get to retire from our calling.

There is no retirement in the kingdom of God. You can retire from your vocation, but you do not retire from being used by God. For all my seasoned saints that are in the house of God this morning, I came here to tell you that God is not done with you. Whether you're 13 or 93,

God has some important assignments for you to fulfill. We need the wisdom, the knowledge that has been applied, the life that has been lived of the older generation. And sometimes the church can push older people out and we need to create space for you to be the wisdom that we need. But you have to also realize

God is not done with you. Old is awesome. Amen? Yeah, you can cheer for that. Come on. All the old people are like, that's right.

King Darius realizes this guy Daniel, I can trust him with everything. And so he puts him in charge of all of the other administrators. Now imagine just for a moment that you're working with a bunch of people and your coworkers and all of you are getting along just really well. Well, then you get promoted and your coworkers thought they deserve the job that you just got.

And all of sudden your friends now become really jealous. And that is about to be what happens to Daniel. He gets promoted

and these guys are not happy. Okay. Look how the story continues verse four. It says, then the other administrators and the high offers began searching for some faults in the way Daniel was handling government affairs,

but they couldn't find anything to criticize or condemn. He was faithful. He was always responsible. He was completely trustworthy. So they concluded our only chance of finding grounds for accusing Daniel will be in connection with the rules of his religion. The guys that are mad that he got the promotion,

they do exactly what opposing parties do in politics. They go, we gotta dig up some dirt on the guy. And to their shock and their surprise, there are no dead bodies.

There are no women that have had affairs with him. There are no bribes that he has taken. Daniel for seventy years with three different kings has lived integrally. He has actually been who he claimed to be.

He was not one person on Sunday morning when his pastor was there then was a different person Sunday afternoon at the Super Bowl party when there weren't other Christians around. He was the same person for seventy years.

They try to find something to trip him up and there's nothing to be found. Friends, here's what this begins to show you and I. You wanna know how to have a faith, a faith that will stand courageous in the midst of seasons that will cause you to want to cave in and collapse. You better be a person of integrity.

You better be the same person who you claim to be here this morning that you will be Monday in the office. Because if not,

there will become a duality within you and you will either cower away from the opportunity afraid that people will find out the truth of who you really are or God in his infinite wisdom won't allow you to get to a position of influence because he can't trust you with much because you haven't been faithful with the little things.

Friends, here's what this tells me. Courage, the courage that I believe the church is going to need in the season that is coming. Courage, it is paved on a path that is called integrity. Here's why Daniel has so much influence with every king because he was one of the few guys that was actually who he claimed to be.

You know integrity, the root word of it, it's just integer. It means there's wholeness, there's oneness, there isn't a fraction of you somewhere else. Who you claim to be at church is who you are during the week. And my fear is that oftentimes the church,

we gather here, we say and talk one way in here and then we walk out of this door and the truth is most of our lives don't look any different than our non believing friends. And we wonder why the world looks at us and goes, they seem crazy.

I get it. Here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that you and I have to be perfect. We can't be. There's a level where your faith will not be perfected until you get to heaven. But I wonder how often we're fighting for holiness in our lives.

I wonder how often we're really wrestling through the sins that so easily entangle us versus just yelling at culture and telling them how bad they are and we're it's crazy what culture is doing. It's crazy what's happening out there. I agree that it is, but here's what you can practically do about it.

Deal with the two by four in your eye and then it'll give us a platform to be able to speak to the culture about the speck in their eye. But the church has just jumped up and down and gotten so mad about what's happening out there. We've forgotten the platform that we need. The currency of influence, if you will,

it's integrity, it's wholeness, it's oneness that what you see is what you get. And the world has watched even people in my position, pastors where we hear about the wild stuff that's happening behind the scenes. And we go, why would I ever look to that as a source of hope?

Friends, you better realize your life. The Bible says is a living epistle. It is a living, breathing version of the Bible that the world is looking at in how you live says so much about who your God is. So the question is, is are we fighting for holiness? Seventy years, Daniel had been walking with integrity. Integrity

combined with consistency over a duration of time. Friends, I'm telling you, that is what equals influence. You wanna know how God will trust you with much? Be integral with what he's already given you. Trust him with what he's already entrusted you with.

Remember that you are not an owner. You are a steward. No matter how big the business is that you've built, God is the one that breathed life into it for you. Your responsibility to him is to walk with integrity. The only modern day example that I can think of that comes to mind right away is Billy Graham,

a guy that was able to navigate multiple different political systems. You realize that Billy Graham from Truman to Trump, every single president that was alive during his lifetime

invited Billy Graham into the White House to pray with them, to give advice to them, to seek Billy Graham's counsel regardless of political affiliation. It's also not lost on me that the only president in recent years that never met with Billy Graham is Joe Biden, but that could just be a coincidence. Know?

That was a joke. I'm just kidding. I probably shouldn't have said that. But Billy Graham was able to walk the tightrope of standing for God, being firm in his convictions,

but also being known as a person of integrity that I can trust and bring in because his primary objective isn't to convince me of his way of thinking. His primary objective is to bring me closer to God, Understanding that it's God that changes the hearts of men, not me in my intellectual conversations.

Our primary place of influence friends in this world, in the school systems, in the political systems, our primary means of influence will be a being a person of integrity

that gives us a platform to stand for truth. Yes and amen. But to help people see friend, there's a God that loves you. And I promise you, as you begin to surrender your life to him, he'll work out all of the political stuff. He'll deal with these things.

But my job is to be faithful to what God has asked me to do regardless of the realm that I'm in. If I'm working for a boss I disagree with, I don't have to agree with them to faithfully serve them. That's what Daniel did brilliantly. For seventy years, there is no dirt for them to find. But they realized, hey, if we're gonna trap this guy, there's one thing he won't move on. It's his religious system.

This is how we will get him to stumble. This is how we will get Daniel to fall apart. It will be connected somehow to his religious system. Here's what verse six says. So the administrators and high officers, they go to the king and they say, hey, long live King Darius.

We are all in agreement. We administrators, officials, high officers, advisors and governors that the king should make a law that will be strictly enforced. Give orders up for the next thirty days. Any person who prays to anyone divine or human except to you, your majesty, they will be thrown into the den of lions.

And now your majesty issue and sign this law so that it cannot be changed. An official law of the Medes and the Persians that cannot be revoked. So King Darius makes a fatal leadership decision and he signs the law. The administrators go to King Darius and they tell him it's a lie. They say all of us, all the administrators,

we're all in agreement. We think you're pretty amazing. We're not saying that you should be God forever, but let's try a thirty day trial run and see how you do as God and everybody will just worship you. There's no way that all the administrators agreed to that. Why? Daniel's one of the administrators.

He never would have agreed to that. They're lying to the king and the king will do what you and I will do who are in positions of leadership if we're not careful. You will make a really poor decision with limited information. For those of us who have kids, this has happened to you multiple times.

Right? My son will come running to me like, my sister hit me and I'm like, all right, let's go deal with this. Right? Like let's get in there. I walk in there. I'm like, Kenna, what happened? Why are you hitting your brother? This is not okay. And he's like, he was coming at me with a shovel. He was gonna hit me over the head with a shovel and so I kicked him to get him out of the room. And I'm like, well, that makes sense, right? Like that's self defense. You should hit him again. You know, like

the rest of the story gives you the context that allows you to make an informed decision as a leader. For those of you who have been entrusted to positions of leadership, be really slow to make decisions. Try to get as much wisdom as you can understanding that there's usually two sides to every story.

King Darius doesn't do that. They placate to his pride and they say, hey, you should be God for the next thirty days. And so King Darius, despite his better judgment, makes a decision that we'll see here in a second, he will come to regret.

King Darius says, okay, I'll sign it into law. This is now going to be the standard. I, for the next thirty days, will be God and anybody that prays to anybody other than me, they will be thrown into the lion's den. This is the moment for Daniel.

This is the moment that you and I have to be looking for that will come, I promise you, it will come in culture. Where there will be moments where there will be a complete contradiction between you and your ability to stand for the truth of God and what culture is telling you to do. Now hear me, Christian, we have to be really careful to not fabricate these things and make everything these things because sometimes it's like it isn't always the case, but there will be moments where Daniel right now has a decision to make.

You can either agree to the letter of the law and break your faith or you can stand in defiance. This is the moment where the walls are coming in. The floor is eroding. But look at how Daniel responds. It tells us right here

in verse 10, but when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he immediately started a Facebook group and built a protest team and he doesn't do that. Daniel went home and he knelt down as usual in his upstairs room. With the windows open towards Jerusalem,

he prayed three times a day. Don't miss this, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God. But what does Daniel do when the moment comes where you have to make a stance, choose who you're going to be?

Daniel does what a person of integrity does. He is the same when the pressure's on as he is when the pressure's off. Daniel goes, I pray every day. Not just when I want to, not when I feel like it, not when it's convenient, not when it's easy, but every day. I go to my room, the windows are open, I point towards Jerusalem

and I kneel down and I thank my God for keeping me here, keeping me alive in the middle of this kingdom that is crazy and falling apart and seems impossible to navigate. I pray and I reconnect with the God of the universe and he gives me power to endure this. Daniel does what he's always done.

Now, if you look at this, Daniel did have a couple choices as much as I joked about it. He could have rightfully gotten a group of people and said, look, this is unjust. This is crazy. This is wrong. He could have literally protested against it, but he doesn't do that.

Daniel also could have done literally probably what I would have done been like, look, I'm just gonna go on like a prayer sabbatical. It's gonna be like a desert season where I'm just gonna focus on reading. I'm not gonna pray for the next thirty days, right? He could have just taken thirty days off.

He didn't have to worship King Darius, he just couldn't pray to his God. He could have just for thirty days said it's not that big of a deal. It really isn't that huge of a compromise. But Daniel has learned over seventy years of following God, this isn't the first moment where he's had to take a stand for God.

He's learned friends, this life that I'm in, it's temporary. I am but an alien, I'm a stranger passing through here. I was not created for this world. I was created for the world to come. And when you know where you're going

and you truly understand what God is doing and you know where you're headed, I promise you what you're walking through currently becomes a lot less important to you.

Because Daniel knew if they throw me into the lion's den, I know who God is. He will either deliver me through it or he'll deliver me from it. But either way, to die is gain. I get to go to heaven. He understood none of this matters. And after seventy years, he had a faith that said, you know what?

I'm gonna do what I've always done. I'm just gonna pray. I don't know how to figure all this stuff out, but I know that God is in control. And what prayer does is it properly positions me under the authority of God.

And it reminds me that I am just a small part of something that God is writing in a story that takes decades and generations to unfold. And what God has asked me to do in the season that I've been entrusted with is to be faithful. Friends, the courage that Daniel will see in a second has in the lion's den,

it didn't come in the lion's den. It came from the prayer closet. It came from spending countless moments with God in prayer, in solitude, learning to hear his voice. That's where courage comes from. If you're taking notes, write this down. Courage, friends, I promise you, it is paved on the path of prayer. My hope

with where our culture is going and where the world is moving is that the people of God would rely on prayer again in a way that we never have before.

That we would be people who are desperate to spend time with God. But I think the sad truth is that oftentimes most of our prayer life is us just asking God to get us out of something, which isn't a bad thing. But when that's the totality of our prayer life, we're missing the power that prayer can unlock in our lives. We're

the potential of prayer. There's a story in the New Testament where the disciples had been walking with Jesus and he was teaching them about physical healing and how they could heal people because of who Jesus was in them. And there's a story where they famously,

they go to a guy and they're trying to heal him but they can't do it. And then they later go back to Jesus, they watch Jesus heal the same man and then they ask Jesus, why weren't we able to do that? You said we could, you said we had the ability to yet when we tried to, we couldn't. And Jesus tells them this type of healing can only be done by people who

pray. He says, weren't connected to the source of the power. You were trying to do this through your own ability. Prayer has to become again our default, our first reaction, not our last resort. I believe that every single one of us in this room, we run to something.

When the pressure sets in, when the walls start to feel like they're crashing and the finances feel like they're not going to rebound, the relationship is going to break,

that the job is not going to work out, the situation just seems too dark. All of us run to something and some of us, I wanna show you some of the things that I think we run to that aren't healthy. Some of us, we just start to panic.

We start to literally freak out. Everybody around us knows it. They see it. We just go into utter meltdown mode and we forget friends. The Bible is clear. It's why reading scripture is so important. It tells us you're gonna know trials on this side of heaven.

Understand you're gonna walk through difficulties with Jesus or without him. But here's the beauty for those of us who've given our life to Jesus. The scriptures tell us there will never be a situation

that will be so pressure fold, that will be so full of temptation that it will be beyond your ability to withstand it and that God won't leave you a way out. Here's what that tells us. You don't have to panic because this thing won't break you.

I know it feels like it's going to break you, but it will not. It is the good news of the gospel is that in Jesus, your best days are still ahead of you. That it might feel like you're going to break. It might feel like you need to freak out.

But these are the moments to lean in and trust and learn what God is teaching you in the season. For some of us, it's not panic that we run to. For some of us, our default is pride.

And this is one of those things that's hard to navigate because we don't just say, you know what, I'm gonna be really prideful. Right? But what we end up doing is we just try to figure it out on our own. We don't even really need God.

And my fear is a lot of us have built our lives in a way where the truth is is that God could show up or not and our lives wouldn't change.

I don't think a lot of us are living in a way of like, man, if God doesn't show up, I'm completely lost. And the danger is is you the slippery slope that you can fall into is just self sufficiency

where you are your own God. The danger of living in the culture that we live in where all of us have more money than we know what to do with is that you can slide into self sufficiency really easily. And here's where I think we have to begin to look and go, how do we know if we're sliding down that slope?

I think again prayer has to be a bit of the warning light of our soul. You know how your car has like the check engine light that comes on when something's going wrong? I think the check engine light that God has given us for our soul is a lack of prayer.

And I think that when we look at our last day, our last week, our last month and our last year, if the truth is we haven't spent much time in prayer and reconnecting with our father, repositioning ourselves under his authority, reminding ourselves that all of this is temporary,

then I think a lack of prayer should be a warning like telling your soul and your heart something is broken. You're doing this in your own power.

Don't allow the enemy to convince you that you don't need God because I'm telling you friends, you do. For some of us, what we do is we just go on the offensive. We have a preemptive strike. We just have the same position that we as a country have when it comes to nuclear weapons. Right? It's just mutually ensured destruction.

Right? If you're gonna fire at me, I'm gonna make sure I hurt you first. And it is not a healthy way to navigate difficulty. We have to figure out a different model. The different model, the default of our heart should be exactly what Daniel does here. Prayer should be the response to pressure that Christians default to.

Because friends, what prayer does is it reminds us of our calling. It reminds us of what God has asked us to do and also what he has asked us not to do. To not do this life on our own, that you are not just left to figure it out.

The Christian life, it is not one of just white knuckling and striving to get through and praying that somehow all this difficulty gets worked out. No, no, no. The life of Christianity when really truly understood is supposed to be a life of ease and not without trial, but one where we understand

what God is doing. Remember what Jesus told the disciples. Here's what he tells us. Matthew 11, here's what a life of following Jesus is supposed to be of living life with God in our right hand seat. It says, Jesus says, come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I'm gonna give you rest.

I will give you a break. Take my yoke upon you. It's a picture of two oxen that are going to carry a wagon, mutually carry out a task together. It says, do it with me and let me teach you because I'm humble and gentle at heart and you will find the thing that you can't get on your own. Rest for your soul.

It says this, for my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light. I think we often forget friends, the life of following Jesus is supposed to be one where the burden is easy and the yoke is light.

Because when you know who's doing it with you, when you know where you're going, and you realize that courage is a path that we walk daily,

man, this life becomes totally different. We begin to see this world the way that God sees it. We begin to navigate it from a different vantage point. And we begin to go, God, would you allow me these opportunities

to go through difficult things because they produce something in me that I can't produce otherwise. Do you realize that every single disciple, every single one of them that goes on to write a letter to a church that is our New Testament Bible,

almost every one of them gets to a point in their life where they go, God, I thank you for trials. I praise you for the thorn in my flesh. Not because I like it, not because it's easy, but because of what it produces in me. The courage that we want, it is found through walking through difficulties,

but not walking through them alone. And understanding that Jesus is with you and with him, all things are possible.

So Daniel just goes back to praying and just goes, God, I'm gonna leave this up to you. And we'll see this is the straw that breaks the camel's back for Daniel. This is the thing that leads him into a place of getting thrown into the lion's den. Verse 11 says, and the officials went together

to Daniel's house and they found him praying and asking for God's help. So they went straight to the king and they reminded him about his law. Didn't you sign a law for the next thirty days that any person who prays to anyone divine or human except to you, your majesty will be thrown into the den of lions?

The king says, yep, that decision stands. It's an official law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be revoked. So they told the king that that man Daniel, one of the captives from Judah, he's ignoring your law. He still prays to his God three times a day. And hearing this, the king was deeply troubled and he tried to think of a way to save Daniel. He didn't want to kill Daniel. So he spent the rest of the day looking for a way to get him out of this predicament.

But in the evening, the men came together to the king and said, your majesty, you know that according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, no law to the king signs can be changed. So the king at last gave orders for Daniel to be arrested and thrown into the den of lions. But the king said to Daniel,

may your God whom you serve so faithfully rescue you. And a stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den. The king sealed the stone with his own royal seal and the seals of his nobles so that no one could rescue Daniel.

And then the king returned to his palace and spent the night fasting. This next line is just funny to me. He refused his usual entertainment and couldn't sleep at all that night. It's like what? He's like, guys, no Xbox and Netflix tonight. I am just too upset for bring it away, right? We are mourning right now.

And verse 19 says, The very early the next morning, the king got up and he hurried out to the lion's den. And when he got there, he called out in anguish, Daniel, servant of the living God, was your God whom you serve so faithfully able to rescue you from the lions?

Notice what happens. The king realizes that he's been trapped, that these guys tricked him and his hands are tied. And so he takes Daniel, he throws him into the lion's den and he begs and pleads that God would save him. And Daniel

now finds himself in the lion's den. It doesn't even say really what happens there except in the morning, they go running to the cave and they ask him, are you still alive? And this is what Daniel's response is to the king. This is what a life of integrity

filled with prayer that results in courage will afford you and I to do. Daniel now is going to address the person in charge. The man who just made a poor decision threw him into a possible death scenario unjustified

without having done anything wrong. Daniel is not just gonna placate him. He's not just gonna say nice things to him. He's going to speak truth to power because integrity will give you a platform to say those things. Because Daniel understands friend, even though our culture is saying that truth is your relative, truth

still matters. But truth without grace is mean. But grace without any truth, it's meaningless. So what we have to do is learn to navigate how to say hard things, how to stand for truth, but to do it graciously. Look at how Daniel responds to the king.

He says, Daniel answered, long live the king. He starts by praising him saying, I want you to live for long. He still is respecting the king in his position. But he says, my God sent his angel to shut the lion's mouth so that they would not hurt me for I have been found innocent in his sight. And now he says to the king, and I have not wronged you, your majesty.

I did nothing wrong. You made a mistake. This was wrong. And then he ends by telling him the king was overjoyed.

And he ordered that Daniel be lifted from the den. Not a scratch was found on him for he had trusted in his God. Now the king's gonna go a little bit overboard here but he says, then the king gave orders to arrest the men who had maliciously accused Daniel. He had them thrown into the lion's den along with their wives and children. The lions leaped on them and tore them apart before they even hit the floor of the den. You should have seen this part in the story at the 05:00 service on Saturday nights, we have an ASL interpreter watching her interpret this part. It was like,

was like, yes, that's the lion's den eating the women and children as they're thrown into before they hit the ground. Like that's a tough thing to do in sign language, right? And it's almost as really bizarre like, God, why would that be there? Like why

is this in the Bible? And you, first of all, you have to understand this is not God's instruction. God is explicitly clear that women and children should never be harmed. It is throughout scripture. This is a pagan king that is overreacting

and he takes these men and their wives and children and throws them into the lion's den. It shows us for sure that these lions were actually hungry. Some critics will say Daniel survived the lion's den because the lions just weren't hungry. They were clearly hungry.

And it also shows us something that we need to see and hear men. These men because of their ineffective leadership, because of the lack of integrity that they were living with, what ended up happening is it cost them their families. See, this is the danger for us men.

As we convince ourselves that our sin will only ever affect us. That my there's no way that my pornography addiction, that my alcoholism will affect my wife and my kids. But this is the truth friends, it will. At some point you have to realize that maybe the path you're walking on right now currently,

if you keep on this course without correcting, eventually you may lose the thing that you love the most. This thing costs these men, their wives and their children. Gentlemen, we have to realize the stakes that are here when we're walking without integrity.

God says that the king takes them, throws them into the pit and the lions just utterly devour them. The story ends real fast, the last couple of verses here. It says, then king Darius sent this message to the people of every race and nation and language throughout the world, peace and prosperity to you.

He says, I decree that everyone throughout my kingdom should tremble with fear before the God of Daniel for He is the living God and He will endure forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed and His rule will never end. He rescues and saves his people. He starts preaching the gospel. He performs miraculous

signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions. So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Congratulations friends, you just read an entire chapter of the Bible today. The

story begins, Daniel chapter six starts with a pagan king making a decree that says anybody that prays to anybody other than me is going to be thrown into the lion's den. And then through one act of courage from a man filled with integrity, empowered by prayer,

that same king makes a decree that says anybody that worships any other god than the God of Daniel will be put to death. He goes a little bit extreme onto the other side of the fence, but how is King Darius change? How does the person in the political office change? Through one person,

not just yelling at him about all the reasons they're wrong, but walking with integrity. When given the opportunity and the opportunity is presented, he does speak truth with grace, but he does it in love and it changes King Darius.

So here's the practical kind of so what? What do we do with all of this? How do we really live some of this stuff out? Here's what I don't wanna leave you with this morning. The danger of preaching these messages is we can go, okay, let's all stack hands and agree that we're gonna try to be like Daniel. And we're gonna go do our best to live like Daniel this week. But that's not the message of the book of Daniel. It is not the message of the entire Old Testament.

The Old Testament, what it really is is truly, it is a foreshadowing. It is like the preview of the one that is to come. What the story of Daniel is, what somehow Daniel does in Daniel chapter six is he pulls into his current reality

thousands of years before Jesus would ever live. Somehow through faith, he pulls that reality into his world and he begins to model and show us some of the attributes that Jesus would walk with. Look at this, I wanna show you some of the comparisons between Daniel and Jesus in just this story.

Okay, both of these are both these men are pictures of completely innocent people. Both Daniel and Jesus had jealous political leaders that were running after them. Both of them had a primary judge, the king or the judge for Jesus' case, declare their innocence that they didn't do anything wrong.

Both of them were thrown into a pit. Daniel's a literal one. Jesus is a prison that ultimately ends on Calvary's Cross. Both of them had loving friends run to the tomb early in the morning. Both of them walked out of the tomb alive. Both Daniel and Jesus were also raised up as second in command after walking

out of the tomb. What the story of Daniel is, it is a foreshadowing of the one that would come, the one that the people of God had been waiting for. The Messiah named Jesus who walked this earth, who lived the life that we could never live, who was perfect.

And he ultimately would be the one that would be thrown to the lions. And God, to satisfy his wrath, would allow the lions to tear him to pieces, to allow him to be torn apart so that you and I would have the opportunity

to be made right with God because what we can't do on our own, we can't work out our own righteousness. We we can't remedy the sin that we all walk with. That's where Jesus steps in. And what we have to learn to do, if we're really gonna be people who stand and thrive in Babylon,

if we're gonna be people who stand for Jesus when the world is moving further and further away from him, here's how we do it. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

Understand that the path of courage that I'm encouraging us to walk down, it's not one that we pave on our own. It's one that has been paved for us. The very image of a path is one that's been set. And your job, my job is to walk the path and keep our eyes fixed

on Jesus. Here's what the author of Hebrews says that I leave us with today. It says, therefore, since you and I are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the path,

the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus. He's the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, Jesus endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne.

Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people, then you won't become weary and give up. The author of Hebrews says, friends, that the solution is pretty simple. Jesus is the one that gets you in the door. He's the one that initiates your faith. He's also the one that perfects your faith.

Here's how we develop courage.

The reason that we spend so much time in prayer is because what our primary responsibility is, is to control the things that we can control. What you can control is whether you get up in the morning and spend time reading your bible, spending time with God, spending time in prayer. You can control whether you show up here and gather with the people of God. You can control whether you show up to community and spend time talking about these things. Our job is to figure out how to fall more in love with Jesus.

To be more in awe of his majesty and his goodness and his majesty. And I promise you as you do that, what will happen is is what the New Testament says is this continual filling of the Holy Spirit will be in us. And that Holy Spirit will begin to produce some things out of us like goodness and patience and mercy

control. And the things that we want, we do not white knuckle our way through it. We allow the Holy Spirit to produce it for us.

So here's what I wanna do right now. I'm gonna ask every single person that's in this room is to just stand to your feet. I want you to stand right where you are. The band is going to lead us through a song. And I wanna end with a moment. Right now for all of us, no matter where we are in our faith journey,

to go God right now we just sing about your goodness. We stand and we worship you because you're worthy. No matter what my current circumstances look like, whether the walls are caving in or right now life seems really easy, God, we're gonna together stand and worship you because you are a worthy king who died for us.

And I want you to just think about these words. I want you to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you. But I also believe that there's some people that are here who have never had the beginning part of the faith journey start where you said yes to Jesus. You've invited him in. You've moved from death to life.

And I want to in the middle of this song, I'm gonna come back out and I'm gonna pray with you. I'm gonna give you an opportunity to put your faith in Jesus for the very first time. And I believe that what God's gonna do is he's gonna change eternities in this room this morning. Amen? Let's worship.

I believe that this moment in time, God orchestrated before the foundations of the earth, before time God knew that some of you would be sitting in this room today.

All of the events that it took to coordinate for you to end up in this place. I believe this is a holy moment. Where right now in our midst heaven is touching earth. And for some of you this is going to be the moment where you say yes to Jesus and your identity is forever changed.

Where the sin that so easily ensnares us and trips us up. Yes, you can be forgiven from your sin, but the Bible also says the power of that sin can be broken over you. What the Bible tells us is that all of us have this thing called sin in us, and we can't fix it on our own. And so Jesus,

two thousand years ago, God put on humanity. He became one of us. He lived the perfect life. He died the death satisfying the wrath of God. And his invitation to us is one of faith. You can't work to earn it. You can't achieve it. But by faith, it can be given to you. It is an act of mercy, and it is an act of grace.

And I believe right now, the Holy Spirit is stirring in some of your hearts. Some of you feel like I'm speaking to you right now. That is God inside of you beginning to respond to the Holy Spirit that's here in this place. So I'm gonna ask everybody in this room right now just to bow your bow your heads, close your eyes.

All weekend, people have been saying yes to Jesus. And I believe there's people in this room right now that need to make a decision to plant a flag, put a stake in the ground and say, am saying yes to Jesus. I'm turning from my old ways.

I'm asking for him to come into my life to set me free, to break the bondage of sin over me. If that's you here right now, I'm gonna ask you in just a second to throw your hand up in the air. And don't allow the enemy to convince you that this isn't for you. I'm telling you right now, this is your moment. There's gonna be hands that go up all over this place. Do not feel ashamed.

If that's you in this place, I count to three, just throw your hand up right where you are. One, this is your moment. Two,

this is an act of grace of God for you. Three, right where you are, just throw your hand up. Friends, there's hands going up all over this place. Don't allow the enemy to tell you not you, he's talking to somebody else. You know that this is your moment. And I know it seems silly to throw your hand up, but something happens

internally and spiritually when we respond physically. So Father, we thank you for all the hands right now that are responding to you, the hearts that are saying yes to your call. If that's you, you can put your hands down and pray a prayer like this in the quietness of your heart. Say Jesus,

I believe that you are who you say that you are. I believe that you stepped into our mess. You lived perfectly and you died the death that I deserve. And Jesus, right now I invite you into my life. I make you Lord. I ask for you to be my savior. Right now would you come into my heart and set me free.

In the mighty name of Jesus, all God's people said, amen and amen. Hey, can we just give a huge round of applause to all the people who said yes to Jesus? Friends, this is why we do this. We gather under the banner of heaven to lift up his name knowing that he's the one who changes people.

The courage we need, I'm telling you friends, it's found in you. So together, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna sing the the biggest part of this song that says this, I sought the Lord. He heard me, and he answered because that's what God does. That's who our king is, and we worship him together now because he's worthy. Amen? Let's keep worshiping.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.