February 2024- ‘I need a Hero!’
I found a website this week called The World Superhero Registry. Here you can apply to be recognised an as official superhero. My favourite entry is Captain O-Zone. He goes into local schools and businesses seeking to educate people on how they can take care of the environment. His special power? He tirelessly champions for the use of renewable energy. Nice. Not the kind of person you’re hoping shows up to help you in an emergency though right?
Where do you run though in your toughest times? Who can save you from your biggest danger? Well that’s the message of Daniel 6. There’s a lovely little bit of symmetry going on in the book which gives us a clue to the meaning. Have a think…
Chapter 3 (The Fiery Furnace) Who can save you?
Chapter 4 (Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream) Who is the true King?
Chapter 5 (The Writing on the Wall) Who is the true King?
Chapter 6 (The Lion’s Den) Who can save you?
The message to the first readers? Don’t waste your time putting your hopes in anything or anyone else to save! Favour with man cannot save you! The Law cannot save you! The King cannot save you! You cannot save you! Only the Lord can.
A man innocent yet condemned…
At the end of Chapter 5 we learn that there’s a new sheriff and superpower in town. The Babylonian Kingdom has been replaced by that of the Medes & Persians. But despite all those changes King Darius has kept Daniel in a top job in his Kingdom.
Daniel’s no longer the spring chicken that we met chapter 1. He’s now likely in his 80’s and still going for it in his faith! King Darius is in lining him up for a promotion. That news has his colleagues green with envy. They are keen to find dirt on him. And yet all these men in places of influence, with their fingers in a lot of pies find nothing! Daniel’s private life is the same as his public life. The questionable conduct line is a dead end. But they know that Daniel prays to his God. That’s the best they can come up with. If prayer was a crime would there be enough evidence to convict me? Well hook line and sinker Darius, as he signs the law, sets the trap that’s going to catch Daniel right in its teeth.
A man helpless yet vindicated…
However, all Daniel needs to do is go 30 days without praying! Is that too much to ask Danny boy? Well he won’t budge. It’s incredible that in response to the news of the new law Daniel gets down on his knobbly knees and he prays just as he had done before (6:10). The crisis doesn’t drive him to his knees. Here is an old man who has made prayer a holy habit in his life. This is where Daniel wins the real battle. For the real miracle here is not that Daniel got out of the Lion’s den but that he was willing to get in to it in the first place. And he’s caught red handed! The King is trapped by the law and greatly distressed. And yet the law is the law and so into the lion’s den Daniel goes.
At first opportunity in the morning the King rushes to see if Daniel is there. Has God been able to rescue him? Well this is the only time in this chapter that Daniel speaks. Daniel tells the King how his God sent an angel to close up the mouths of the lions (v.22). As they haul Daniel out and examine his unharmed body see the centrepiece declaration that he was unharmed because he trusted in his God (v.23). And just incase we were tempted to think that the lions weren’t hungry in go the men who had conspired against Daniel and the lions absolutely devour them! The King of the Medes and the Persians, like the King of Babylon before him, issues the declaration concerning the greatness of Daniel’s God!
This is the end of the narrative section of the book of Daniel. Under King Cyrus God’s people would eventually be allowed to journey back to Jerusalem but as far as we know Daniel wasn’t one of them. Daniel’s entire life was spent in exile. He never got home. That tell us that there’s something bigger at stake here than simply getting back to the land of the temple. There’s a greater deliverance in mind. How will God’s people ultimately be saved from their greatest enemy?
The parallels between Daniel and Jesus are striking! Like Daniel, Jesus was truly blameless. Jesus too one was targeted by the mob. Jesus too prayed fervently in his time of crisis. At Jesus’s trial there was also an earthly King who was sympathetic yet unwilling to save. Jesus too was unjustly sentenced to his death. But unlike Daniel, Jesus wasn’t delivered from death but he tasted death. How was God going to save his people? By sending his Son who would willingly go into the Lions den and bear his people's punishment of death for their sins so that his people would not have to.
Why was Daniel delivered? Because he was declared innocent in God’s sight. How are we delivered? Because in Jesus, the one who took our death and gave us his life, we are declared innocent in God’s sight. And like Daniel, Jesus’ tomb was found not to have triumphed. And like Daniel, Jesus answered! And just as Jesus emerged victorious from the tomb and so will every person that trusts in him.
The story of Daniel here cannot mean that as Christians will never face death in this life. The long list of Christian martyrs both of yesterday and today who faced death because of their faith tells us the truth of that! So what it does mean? For all those who trust Jesus as their saviour they too will, ultimately, be delivered from death by being declared innocent whilst God’s enemies will be defeated and crushed. Jesus is the hero we need.
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known.
Now excuse me while I go and play that Bonnie Tyler song.
