Lion-Proof Faith

Daniel 6:10-12,16-23

10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. 11 Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. 12 So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: “Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or human being except to you, Your Majesty, would be thrown into the lions’ den?”

The king answered, “The decree stands—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.”

16 So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!”

17 A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. 18 Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep.

19 At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. 20 When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?”

21 Daniel answered, “May the king live forever! 22 My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.”

23 The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

Lion-Proof Faith

As many of you know, we had a movie night here at church on Friday. We watched Luther, the 2003 biopic of the great reformer of Christianity and the namesake of our denomination. Just for kicks, I went back and watched the original theatrical trailer. I wasn’t disappointed. Along with dramatic closeups and quick hitting action sequences there were a couple phrases that flashed up on the screen that I couldn’t help but hear in the classic movie announcer voice:

500 years ago one man changed the world.

He dared speak his mind.

He would not be silenced.

Watching the trailer, you can tell it’s a 20-year-old movie. It’s kind of cringy. Honestly, if I hadn’t already seen it, I would have guessed it was another Hollywood hack job, romanticizing a historical figure and changing the whole story so that it would sell tickets at the box office. One man changing the world, escaped nuns, outraged emperors, book burning – it all seems a little fantastical.

Having watched it, though, I have to say that it was remarkably accurate, and one of the rare instances in which reality was probably even more dramatic than the Hollywood version. There really was a man named Martin Luther, and the things he did 500 years ago did change the world – and not just religiously, but politically and socially and linguistically too.

It’s a really amazing story, and worth your time. But even though it is Reformation Sunday, I don’t really want to talk about Luther; I’m going to talk about what Luther stood for – giving everyday people access to God’s Holy Word, where we hear even more fantastical stories that are just as true as Luther’s was.

In our first reading for today, we read a story about corruption and political intrigue and royal delusions of grandeur, inhuman forms of execution and equally incredible forms of divine intervention. Daniel would make a great Hollywood blockbuster, but the best part is that it’s all true. There really was a guy named Daniel and these things really did happen.

We picked up kind of in the middle of the story earlier. Let me give you some background. About 50 years before the events of Daniel 6, the Babylonian empire invaded what was left of the formerly United Kingdom of Israel and carried off its best and brightest people back to Babylon, including a very special teenaged boy named Daniel.

Daniel was quickly identified as an intelligent young man who could be a great asset in government. He rose through the ranks quickly and even as the kingship changed hands, Daniel was perennially chosen as one of the king’s – whichever one it was – most trusted advisors.

This didn’t sit well with the locals. They were jealous and wanted to get rid of Daniel. They tried to find some skeletons in his closet. They spied on him, but couldn’t find anything wrong. He was squeaky clean. So, that’s where they thought to attack. Daniel was well known as a believer in God. So his enemies convinced the king to sign into law a ban forbidding the worship of any other god or man in all the land except for King Darius.

If you were in Daniel’s shoes, what would you have done? Remember, Daniel was 60+ years old at the time. He had already witnessed the downfall and destruction of his homeland. He had been taken as a prisoner of war to a foreign land and forced to work for an immoral king. He was under constant threat and opposition by his rivals. And now the king outlawed him from worshiping his God. If you were in his shoes, what would you have done?

Maybe it’s not all that difficult to imagine having lived through a global pandemic where it sometimes felt like we were being prohibited from worshiping God. What did you do when you heard those mandates coming down? Did you grumble? Did you complain? Were you afraid? Were you so discouraged that you kind of gave up for a while? Maybe you still haven’t worked your way back to the full joy and trust and participation in God and in worship you had before.

Did you notice what Daniel did, though?

When Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.[1]

It’s like he wasn’t even fazed! Daniel didn’t stop praying to his God. He didn’t let his opponents disrupt his personal, spiritual life. He didn’t let this – rather significant, life-threatening – setback rob him of a single reason to thank his God in prayer.

Think about that. When Daniel found out about the decree, he hit his knees and thanked God. Daniel wasn’t ruled by fear. He wasn’t cowed into a form of obedience that would have gone against his conscience. He wasn’t swayed, even emotionally, by the evil actions of his enemies. He could still in that moment – after 60 years of disappointment – find plenty of reasons to thank and praise his God.

I wish I could be more like Daniel. Don’t you? To let go of that sinful, selfish sense of self-entitlement that is so quick to voice our complaints to God as if we don’t deserve to go through whatever it is it might be in the moment, as if we deserve better treatment from God for all the favours we’ve done for God. Don’t you wish you could be free of fear and worry about what other people might think of you or what the consequences could be? To be so strong in my faith that I’d willing face a den full of hungry lions rather than give up an inch of my love or life for my God.

Daniel is a hero of faith. And you’d almost be tempted to believe that the ending of this story is exactly how a hero of faith should be treated. After King Darius spent a sleepless night worrying over Daniels wellbeing, he ran to the den and called to Daniel, and beyond all hope, Daniel answered:

“May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.”[2]

Daniel is a hero of faith and the way his story ends is exactly what we would hope for. But I want you to consider this: the same God who shut the lions’ mouths in their lair, is the same one who opened Daniel’s mouth in prayer.

Daniel is absolutely a hero of faith, but not because he possessed an inner conviction that you and I do not, not because he reached a potential that you and I should. Daniel is a hero of faith because he trusted in a God who was able to rescue him from the lions… and the liars… and the king’s corrupt commands. Daniel is a hero of faith because his faith was founded in the right object. He trusted in the right person. And the fact is that whether those lions had feasted on his flesh or not, Daniel faith would have still been properly placed in a God who is able to rescue us from so much more.

In his final encouragements in his first letter, Peter wrote this to Christians like us:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.[3]

We may not be facing literal lions on a daily basis, but we are facing constant pressure to give up our faith, to give up on God, to give up on each other. And that doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the very real and very dangerous spiritual forces of evil in this world. The devil is hard at work among us, especially among believers, trying to drag us away from our God.

But we have a God who is able to rescue us from this lion too. Peter goes on to say:

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.[4]

Our God is a God of grace. He forgives you for when you slip into sins of self-entitlement and fear and despair and discouragement. He is a God of grace who sent his Son to shut the lying lion’s mouth once and for all – to silence the devil’s accusations that you are unworthy of God’s love and to demonstrate that love by being willing to give up his life for you on a cross, to pay for all of your sins, to call you to his eternal glory, i.e. to open the doors of heaven to sinners like you and me, who cannot claim the title of hero of faith like Daniel, but whose faith is nevertheless placed in the same God who is able – and who has – rescued us from sin and death and that roaring lion, the devil.

Your God of grace is the one who restores you when you fall, and who will make you strong, firm and steadfast – not because of the strength of your faith, but because of the strength of the one in whom you put that faith.

Your life story may never make it to the silver screen, like Luther’s did. You may not go down in history as a hero of faith, like Daniel did. But their God is your God. The same God who shut the mouths of the lions and – maybe even more miraculously – gave Daniel daily reasons to give thanks despite all the downturns and hardships of his life – that same God is the one who still has the power and the love to be with you, to give you reason to give thanks every day no matter what’s going on in your life, to spare you from every evil that threatens you and to promise you eternal life in heaven where you will have even more reason to do what Daniel did, i.e. to say your prayers of thanks and praise to your God, who loved you and set you free, who restores you and makes you strong, firm and steadfast, through faith in Christ Jesus your Lord. Amen.

[1] Daniel 3:10

[2] Daniel 3:21,22

[3] 1 Peter 5:8,9

[4] 1 Peter 5:10

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Let's Be Real

Matthew 21:23-32

23Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”

24 Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 25 John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”

27 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Let’s Be Real

Have you ever heard the concern – or maybe even the skepticism – about the Bible that the book we have in our hands today is a translation of a translation of a copy of a copy of an original that doesn’t exist anymore, and so we can’t be sure that what we’re reading now is what was written 2,000 years ago, i.e. that basically the Bible is the longest running game of Telephone in human history? You know that game, don’t you? I whisper in someone’s ear, “We love muddy puddles,” and then they whisper what they hear into someone else’s ear and so on and so forth until the last person in the line hears, “Olaf poodle puppies.” It’s a silly premise, but it’s a serious question. And the passage that we read a moment ago from Matthew 21 is a great example.

Jesus tells this parable about a father telling his two sons to go and work in the family vineyard. In the text that we read, the first son said, “No,” but then he changed his mind and did go and work in the vineyard; I’m going to call him the “no-yes” son. The second son said, “Yes,” but then he didn’t go; I’m going to call him the “yes-no” son. And when Jesus asked the chief priests which son was better, they picked the first son, i.e. the “no-yes” one.

Where Christians can feel squishy and where critics can feel saucy is understanding that there are actually other versions of this text, and the changes that those versions make seem to drastically change the whole story.

Maybe the most notable variant has the sons in the opposite order – the first son says, “Yes,” but doesn’t go; the second son says, “No,” but does go. And although the chief priests’ line stays exactly the same – “The first” – it completely changes their answer, because now instead of picking the son who eventually did do what his father wanted him to do, now they are picking the son who made a show of being good, but didn’t do anything that a good son should.

So, which one do you think is right? Which version of this passage is correct? Or, to ask you the same question that Jesus asked the chief priests: “Which of the two did what his father wanted”[1] – the son who said he’d work or the one who actually did?

How many of you think that the son who said, “No,” but did go is the one who did what his father wanted? And how many of you think that the son who said, “Yes,” but didn’t do anything is the one who did what his father wanted?

For the most part, we live in what some people would call a guilt-innocence culture – where your greatest virtue – the best thing you could do – is to accomplish something good, and your worst vice – the biggest sin you could commit – is failing to do something good. Whereas the ancient Jews of Jesus’ day lived in what some would call an honour-shame culture – where your greatest virtue is showing respect to someone – even if you don’t do anything worthwhile – and your greatest vice is showing disrespect to someone.  

So – even though it sounds incredibly foreign to us, here and now, 2,000 years later – I could easily see a scenario in which the real-life ancient chief priests could have chosen the son who lied, but didn’t disrespect his father, as the son who did what his father wanted.

It’s a thorny question, but it’s one that – by Jesus’ own design – directly touches your soul.

The question that Jesus asked is brilliant, whether you live in a guilt-innocence culture like ours or an honour-shame culture like his. Jesus’ question is brilliant because it’s a trap. Neither answer is correct. Both sons were wrong. Neither did what his father wanted. Both sinned. But with this question, Jesus holds a mirror up to your soul and reveals to you not only which virtues you value, but also which vices you are more willing to excuse.

For those of you who voted for the son who said, “No,” but did go and work in the vineyard, is it possible that you raised your hand because you see a little bit of yourself in him, because you know that you haven’t always started well, but you try to finish well? Maybe you strayed away from God and the church as a teenager or young adult – maybe you’re struggling with a certain sin right now – but you want to hold out hope that if you can just turn things around and end on the right note, then everything will be OK, i.e. then the sins of your past can stay in your past – or that the struggles of your present can someday be forgotten.

Well, I don’t want to dash all your hopes – because there is hope for everyone – but finishing your story well, doesn’t change how you started. Fixing your life now doesn’t fix what you’ve done in the past. Making good choices in the future, won’t delete your bad choices from the past. God does not sweep sins under the rug or wink at youthful indiscretions. He condemns sin and the sinners who commit them.

For those of you who voted for the son who said, “Yes,” but did not go and work in the vineyard, is it possible that you raised your hands because you see yourself in him? You have always tried to do things right from the very beginning. You wouldn’t dream of stooping so low as to dabble with drugs or lose yourself in alcohol. You make every effort to go to church as often as you possibly can. Your friends and neighbours would consider you a good man or woman. But you know what you do and what you don’t do when the light’s not shining on you. You know your secret sins. You know when you’re just giving lip service to your God and your church family, and you’d like to believe that saying the right thing will make up for you not doing the right thing.  

But this is the whole point of Jesus’ parable: both sons were wrong. And all of us are too. And so it doesn’t matter which version or variant reading is correct. It doesn’t matter how you answer the question. The meaning and purpose of Jesus’ question is the same either way.

Jesus asked this question of the chief priests knowing that whichever son they chose, their answer would be wrong, but not nearly as wrong as their own reality. Because the chief priests weren’t really like either of the sons. They were neither the “yes-no” nor the “no-yes” son. They were “no-no” sons. They disrespected God by rejecting his one and only Son and they never repented for it, which is why Jesus says to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.”[2]

With this parable, Jesus held up the mirror of the Law to their souls and revealed death and damnation to them. This is about as harsh as Jesus ever gets.

But the thing about Jesus is that even in his sternest condemnation, there is still a glimmer of grace. Did you notice that Jesus didn’t close the door to heaven on the noses of those Jewish leaders? The door was still open to them. There was still time for them to repent.

And think about the love that it takes for Jesus to say these words to them, especially when he does. Jesus told this parable on the Tuesday of Holy Week. These very chief priests were going to arrest Jesus, put him on trial and sentence him to death in three days, but Jesus still took the time on Tuesday to call them to repentance, so that they could still receive the forgiveness that he was going to win for them on Friday.

So, as much as Jesus tells this parable to hold up the mirror of God’s law to our hearts and reveal us as “yes-no,” “no-yes,” or “no-no” sons, there’s really a fourth son that this parable is all about and he’s the one telling it. This parable is all about Jesus, God’s one and only “yes-yes” son.

Jesus is the only one who has ever said, “I will, Lord,” and then done it without fail every time for you. It was his perfect life of obedience from day one that made his death on Good Friday mean something for you. When Jesus’ hung on the cross of these chief priests’ making, he did so as your perfect substitute, taking your place and your punishment for your sin. For the times that you strayed away from God, he remained faithful to you from first to last. For the times that you said the right things but failed to follow through, Jesus loved you to the point of death, giving his life so that you could live forgiven and free from your sin.

Jesus is the perfect “yes-yes” son for you. And he tells this parable to you so that you don’t make the same mistake that these chief priests did, i.e. so that you can hear the grace of God and respond with repentance, so that whether it’s on a Sunday morning at the start of a worship service or on a Tuesday afternoon after you’ve just caught yourself in a lie, you can hit your knees and confess your sin and know that God has forgiven you in Jesus. Jesus tells you this parable so that you can know that no matter how many bad things you’ve done – or how bad they were – there is grace for the greedy and the gross, like tax collectors and prostitutes, which means there’s grace for you too.

Just don’t be like those “no-no” chief priests. Don’t be complacent in your sin. Don’t hide behind the appearance of self-righteousness. Don’t imagine that you are better than anyone else. Don’t pretend that you don’t need God’s grace. Believe me, believer, you do! And you don’t want to wait for the Last Day to find out.

But that’s the good news. God gives you his grace in Jesus. So, whether you struggle with self-control or self-righteousness, whether your sin is insincerity or indifference, when you repent and believe in Jesus as your substitute and Savior, you receive his grace and forgiveness forever.

That’s the beauty of this passage – and the reliability of Scripture – regardless of which version you read, regardless of how you answer Jesus’ question, his answer to your sin is always the same – full and free forgiveness to everyone who believes in his name, including you. So repent and believe – be real, with yourself and with your God – and you will enter the kingdom of God with those tax collectors and prostitutes… and pastors and mechanics and teachers and car salesmen and refugees and retirees because of Jesus, God’s one and only “yes-yes” Son for you. Amen.

[1] Matthew 21:31

[2] Matthew 21:31

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