He, Not Me
Daniel in the Lion's Den • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Daniel 6:16-18 ESV
16 Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” 17 And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. 18 Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.
As a kid growing up in the nineties, there are certain things from that period of time which stick out in my memory. And among those things which stick out to me from that period were some of the TV shows that were on the air then.
One of my favorite shows as a kid was a sitcom that ran from 1989 to 1998, based on a middleclass African American family, the Winslow’s, who lived in Chicago. The name of the show was Family Matters.
And my favorite character on Family Matters, who I am sure is the favorite of many, many others who watched the show was Steve Urkel. Steve Urkel played the role of the nerdy next-door neighbor of the Winslow’s. And he played that role well with thick, red-framed glasses, pants that went halfway up his stomach, and bright red suspenders.
But the aspect of the Steve Urkel character that I liked most was that of a protagonist and nuisance to the Winslow’s. Steve Urkel, in almost every episode, would do something over at the Winslow household that would make a huge mess or tear something up, and when the dust settled, Urkel would be standing there with his mouth gaping wide open, then pointing at himself, he would ask, “Did I do that?!”. And so, I, being a product of that time period, will often find myself jokingly saying that very thing whenever I mess something up.
And I have a feeling that if King Darius would have, like me, grown up in the nineties, he would have, just like Steve Urkel, pointed at himself and asked that very same question after foolishly signing an ordinance and backing it up with an irrevocable injunction that served to send Daniel, his most trusted advisor and official to the den of lions.
Indeed, this most certainly was a sentence of death for Daniel which seemed to undoubtedly seal his fate. And Darius, backing himself into a corner, had no choice but to follow through on his own injunction.
We see Darius being forced to carry out his injunction as we look at the first part of verse sixteen in our reading, which reads:
Daniel 6:16a ESV
16a Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions.
“Then”; after Darius could find no way to reverse the injunction, he found that he was bound to the wording of the injunction, which stated that anyone who failed to adhere to the details of the ordinance would be executed in the den of lions.
And as we said in our message last week, this was not something that the king wanted to do. In fact, in our reading from last week we saw that after the king had discovered that his injunction would mean the execution of Daniel, he was distressed and sought to find some way to free him. But after spending the entire day trying to find a loophole of some sort, his other advisors and many of the satraps told him that there was no getting around this, that he had to follow through on his own injunction.
Therefore, because he had no other choice, the king commanded that Daniel be brought to the place of his execution and cast into the den of ravenous lions.
And in the process of all of this, we read something exceptionally remarkable at the end of this sixteenth verse, where we read that:
Daniel 6:16b ESV
16b The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!”
Now, you might hear that and ask, “What’s so remarkable about that?!” but it really is a remarkable statement in light of the context surrounding this narrative.
King Darius had been convinced that he was mighty, powerful, and worthy of worship. But what had he discovered throughout this process? He discovered that he wasn’t even powerful enough to reverse his own injunction. Indeed, if anything at all, throughout this process, what Darius had come to realize is how un-godlike he is.
Like all others who are not truly acquainted with the orthodox faith and who are not in a saving relationship with the God of the orthodox faith, Darius found himself being ignorant of the truth.
The God of the Bible is omnipotent, possessing all power. And while Darius indeed held much political power in his realm, still, when compared to the God of heaven and earth, Darius was impotent, without power.
And at this point, the king recognized that fact. He recognized that there was a spiritual force out there that was much, much more powerful than he. But like so many others, he didn’t know Who or what this omnipotent power was. The only thing that he knew was that he, the one who demanded worship, was in fact powerless and unable to free Daniel from this dire situation, though he tried very hard to do so, doing everything in his power to do so.
So, when Darius proclaimed to Daniel “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” essentially, what he was saying was, “I have found myself incapable of delivering you. Therefore, it is my desire that the God Whom you serve, the God Whom you serve continually, the God Whom you prayed to and worshipped in disobedience to my own foolish ordinance will work powerfully to deliver you from such an unjust judgment!” Indeed, he admits that he himself is not worthy of worship and sincerely hopes to be proved that the God of Daniel is.
After Darius had exhausted every last resource at his disposal, he was forced to recognizably depend on the God of heaven and earth.
Now, when I say that, I’m not saying that King Darius was exclusivelydepending on God or that he was now in a saving relationship with God, but what he had come to find is that he could not fix this mess.
And when it came to the political pecking order, he was at the top of the chain, so, politically speaking, there was no higher official that he could resort to, therefore, he ceased trying and left it in the hands of a supernatural Being that he knew nothing about. The only thing that he knew about this God is that Daniel, his favorite and most trusted advisor depended exclusively upon this God so much so that he was willing to die for Him. And so now, Darius expressed his hope that this God would graciously deliver Daniel.
But having cast Daniel into the den of lions and leaving his fate to the God of Daniel, earnestly desiring that He would be pleased to deliver Daniel, we then look to verse seventeen to see what necessarily had to be done next, where we read:
Daniel 6:17 ESV
17 And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel.
After Daniel had been cast into the dark, lonely, fearful den of ferocious lions, a stone was laid on the mouth of the den and was sealed. A stone placed at the entrance of where a presumably dead man would lay… that stone being sealed by those in authority… sound familiar? Sounds a little bit like the days before Easter, doesn’t it?
Indeed, what is spoken of here is a type, a foreshadowing of what would be accomplished in and through Jesus centuries later.
And this particular seal which sealed the stone that covered the den of lions was a peculiar seal as our reading says that “the king sealed it with his own signet”. What a signet is, is a seal or ring used by an official much like a personal signature to give authority to a document. And what this signet ensured was that the execution of Daniel would be guaranteed to be carried out as the king himself has ordered and authorized it.
Another purpose of the king’s signet upon this stone was to ensure that if someone removed the stone and sought to rescue Daniel, it would be known. Indeed, it may even be said that the king’s signet was placed upon the stone and having it placed there, it ensured that not even the king himself could save Daniel from his enclosure in the den of lions.
Indeed, the most powerful man in that part of the world had quite literally found himself to be without power here as not even he could rescue the one whom he earnestly sought to spare from this injustice.
And this did not set well with the king. We see this when we observe how the king reacted to this dire situation in verse eighteen, where it says:
Daniel 6:18 ESV
18 Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.
After the king had failed in his attempt to free Daniel and rescue him from this unjust situation, surely, in great sadness and frustration, he returned to his palace. He knew that he had been outsmarted and manipulated to such an extent that his hands were tied and that he was likely going to lose his most trusted official.
We read that that night he fasted. This probably doesn’t mean that the king was pleading with a god for Daniel’s deliverance, but rather, it likely indicates that the king was so anxious over this situation that he quite literally had no desire to eat.
In addition to this, we read that no diversions were brought to the king. A diversion is an activity that diverts your mind from some kind of concern. In other words, a diversion is something that you do to get your mind off of a stressful situation. Diversions in this instance are likely in reference to food, music, dancers, even concubines.
These were the kind of things that the king would normally use for diversions, to take his mind off of the regular stresses that were involved with being king, but in this case, he was so distressed that he didn’t even want these to be brought before him. He didn’t want to be diverted from what was at hand.
Indeed, so great was the king’s anxiety over the situation that sleep escaped him that evening. We all know what that is like, to be so anxious about something that you can’t sleep or if you do manage to sleep you find yourself waking up over and over again all throughout the night and finding it hard to go back to sleep.
Such was the anxiety felt by the king to such an extent that he was wide awake, thinking about the situation the entire night.
The king had felt the situation to be bleak and without remedy, and understandably so. He had found that there was nothing else that he could do. And in the most powerful man in the kingdom finding himself so powerless in this situation, it cleared the way for the glory of God to be put on full display.
You see, the fact of the matter is that no matter what we think about ourselves or the situations that we find ourselves in, the reality is that we ourselves are always powerless. We never hold any measure of control whatsoever. And ultimately, in any and every situation, we find ourselves absolutely dependent on God, whether we recognize it or not.
And so, if we are ever dependent upon God, whether we recognize it or not, then what should we do in every situation? Recognize our total dependence on God, know that there is no power but He, and cease our attempt to run the show. And not only cease our attempts from running the show but be grateful that our infinitely good God is running the show, and not us.
Beloved, turn quickly to our great God this very day!
Amen?
