Serving the Enemy

 

Today is Independence Day; the day we, as Americans, celebrate our national heritage and political independence. One of the many ingredients that went into the past of our nation was a desire for religious freedom and one of the solid triumphs of our nation has been that it has granted that freedom. As American Christians, we have been blessed to be able to live out our faith without the opposition of the government; and for most of our history, the Church has had the acceptance if not the allegiance of our society as a whole.

But the reality is that there is a growing alienation both between Christianity and our society and our government. I am not here to preach pessimism and still less to talk to politics. But the simple reality is that there is a growing friction between orthodox Christianity and our society as a whole. More and more, being a Christian, even in our country, means feeling like a stranger in a strange land. And in a sense, that is what it has always meant to be a Christian; even in a society that was friendly to the church; even in a society where many people read the Bible—the truth remains that we are strangers in a strange land. This world may be friendly or fierce, but this world is not our home.

And that is why, in this article, I want to look at the story of Daniel. Because Daniel really was a stranger in a strange land. This young man—probably in his teens—was carried away as a captive and taken to a foreign land. He would never see his home again; probably he never saw his family again. For all we know, his family had been killed by the Babylonians. Certainly, his home had been ravaged by them and he had been taken, against his will, across many miles to the heart of a foreign land, into the court of a foreign culture. He was a stranger in a strange land. He sojourned in the midst of his enemies.

And I think, as we look at his story, there are two lessons we can draw out which apply to us; to injunctions about how we should live in a world which, more and more, is becoming a strange and hostile world.

The first lesson is this: Never lose sight of where you belong.

If you turn to Daniel 1, you will see the first test of Daniel's life. He and his three friends had been taken captive by the Babylonians. But their position was somewhat odd. They were captives, but not slaves or, in the usual sense, prisoners. They were chosen for their skill and wisdom and were being trained to fill a role in the court of Babylon. And as such, they were treated well. 

Perhaps a little too well.

Because they were fed on the King's meat—and to eat of that meat would have been defilement for Daniel; either because the meat was from unclean animals forbidden to Jews by the Mosaic law or because the meat had been offered to idols and so, to partake of it would have been to participate in that idolatrous worship. The point is this: this young man, barely more than a boy, being held by his enemies with no one on his side but his three friends, made a determination that he would not do the same things that everyone else was doing. He remained true to the law of Moses even in a land far away from the promised land. He had been carried away from his home and his family, and yet he had not forgotten how he had been raised. He purposed not to eat the king's meat. He faced opposition for this; it was not an easy decision; it would have been far easier to live like everyone else. But Daniel never lost sight of his home.

That was near the beginning of his life when he was still quite young. The other, more famous story of Daniel comes from much, much later in his life. The king had passed a decree forbidding anyone from praying to anybody except him. And the cost of disobedience to this somewhat odd decree was to be fed to the lions. 

Seemingly, nobody else had any issues with this command. Seemingly, most people went along with it without question. But Daniel stayed true; he continued to pray to the one true God and not to the king; he did what he knew was right even when that mean risking the teeth and claws of hungry lions. He faced death in a savage and brutal form because he refused to live like the people around him.

Daniel 6:10 records exactly how Daniel acted in this case: “He went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God.” He prayed towards Jerusalem, towards the ruins of the temple, towards the physical heart of Jewish religion. This was many years after he had been carried away, but he still remembered where he came from and that was why he stood firm in the midst of the compromise of his surroundings.

And not only did he pray towards Jerusalem, but he specifically prayed for Jerusalem. In Daniel 9, we read of how he fasted and prayed for the deliverance of the Jews from their captivity and the restoration of the promised land. Even though he would never return, his heart was still with Israel.

He lived like a child of Abraham even in the midst of a foreign land. He lived in Babylon and under a succession of different governments, but he never lost sight of where he was from and that was why lived differently from those around him; he did not live as a Babylonian because his heart was still fixed in Israel.

And there is a parallel here to our position in this world. Like Daniel, the place in which we live is not our home. The Bible sometimes expresses it by saying that we are pilgrims. A pilgrim is someone who journeys and does not stay in one place; he is someone who doesn't belong. But it's important to remember that a pilgrim is not merely a wanderer, not a drifter. A pilgrim is someone who is going somewhere; he is a man on a journey with a destination; and, in this case, he is homeless only because he is still going home.

We sing: “This world is not my home.” But this world is only not our home because we do have a home elsewhere. Paul expressed it in Philippians by saying that our conversation—that is our lifestyle, our citizenship, our identity, who we are and how we act—is from Heaven. As Christians, we have a home and that home is not this world. And for that reason, we do not live the same way the people of this world do. We look at things in a different way; we use a different scale of values and look through different lenses. 

Obviously, the difference isn't absolute—many people in the world do, on some things, believe the same as Christians, especially in a place like America where Christianity has been assimilated into the general culture. We may not say a different thing from the world every time we speak, but we speak for a different reason. The garden of the church and the garden of the world may sometimes grow some of the same flowers, but they grow in radically different soils.

This world did not create us and the world cannot control us. And that is why Paul told the Romans: “Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” It is not merely that we do not belong in this world. There are other people who act as if they do not belong. There are outcasts and misfits in every society. But as I said before, we do have a true home. And because our true home is in God and because God's spirit is in us, then we can live in a way that is true to our home and is not merely a part of or reaction against this world.

There's a poem about a British soldier killed during one of the world wars and buried on the battlefield and it says that where he is buried there is a patch of foreign land which is forever England. And I say that wherever a Christian is, there is a patch of this world which is Heaven.

That is how we must live; we are strangers in a strange land, but we must never lose sight of our true home. Daniel never forgot where he came from. We must never forget where we're going. This world is not our home. And yet... yet we do live here. And that is the other side of this; that is the second lesson of Daniel: never lose sight of where you are.

That is what makes the story of Daniel so interesting. Daniel was taken by force away from his home, his friends, his family, from everything he knew and taken into a foreign land. And what do we find him doing there? He served. He was trained in the wisdom of Babylon and was made a member of the wise men and advisors to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which his wise men could not interpret and all of them would have been killed if Daniel had not prayed and received the dream and interpretation, thereby saving himself, his fellow wise men, and also helping the king.

After that, he was promoted to a very high position in the Babylonian government. Throughout the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel continued serving the king, including interpreting another of his dreams.

Later, under Nebuchadnezer's grandson Belshazzar, we find Daniel (now in his 80s) still serving in the government and once again called in to help interpret something mysterious and mystical. The Babylonian government was overthrown by the Persians and Darius was the man in charge of Babylon and we find Daniel serving him as well.

Daniel was always a good man to have around. We find three different kings from two different empires depending on the advice and service of Daniel. He was always useful and always could be depended on. Daniel was a stranger in a strange land, but in that strange land he served the people of that land; he spent the rest of his life serving his enemies.

I heard someone preach on Daniel some time ago and it really struck me how odd this position must have been for Daniel and how easy it would have been for him to give up; it would have been easy for Daniel to just sit back and do nothing rather than spend his life the way he did.

It would have been easy to give in to bitterness. Remember that the Babylonians had attacked Daniel's homeland; eventually, they would completely destroy it leaving it a virtual wasteland. They killed many of Daniel's countrymen—there is a strong possibility that Daniel's own family had been killed by the Babylonians. And Daniel himself had been carried away by force. He was virtually a slave even if he had more freedom and power than a slave. Obviously, we don't know how Daniel felt about any of this, but certainly many people, in the same place, would have been consumed by bitterness. A cliché of the world says: Only God Forgives. That is, if you do something to me, you can ask God to forgive you but don't expect ME to forgive you. Human nature does not naturally turn to forgiveness, especially not for someone in a situation like Daniel.

And bitterness nearly always goes along with self-pity, and certainly, it would have been easy for Daniel to give in to self-pity. He had never asked to be in the position that he was in and it wasn't his fault that he was in it. He could have said “it's not fair” and it would have been true. There was real wrong in his situation; if everyone involved had lived as they ought to have lived, the story of Daniel wouldn't have happened. But none of what happened was Daniel's fault. He was taken prisoner in a war that was none of his doing and involved in the judgment of other people's sins. If he had given in to self-pity, it would be hard to have blamed him.

Certainly, he had plenty of opportunities and that is the third thing that could have caused Daniel to give in—drudgery. There are several famous stories involving Daniel; stories of miraculous revelation and deliverance. He was involved with mysterious writing and hungry lions. But the book of Daniel is comparatively short and most of the stories we read there are only a day or two in length. In other words, all that we read in Daniel could have taken place in a couple of weeks. But there is something like sixty years from the opening of the book to its close.

Do you see why that matters? It means that when we read the book of Daniel, we are only reading a few of the highlights of his life. Between these moments—which, good or bad, were certainly dramatic—were days, months, years of his life, years of ordinary, perhaps mundane work. And perhaps with that the dull aching loneliness of an exile, living in the midst of strangers. The business of life can become a drudgery under the best of circumstances and Daniel, despite his rank and power, did not have the best of circumstances.

All things considered, if Daniel had just decided to curl up in a corner and cry, I don't think we could blame him. And perhaps there were moments when he did. But he never let the temptations of bitterness and self-pity or the weary drudgery of life rob him of his purpose. And Daniel's purpose was to serve.

He was a server. Daniel was always a useful man to have around and three different kings, at least, relied on his wisdom. There are, as I said, a lot of gaps in Daniel's life and we don't know what all he did during that time, but the implication is that his life was one of service. Of course, it was his job but the point is that he did fulfill it; instead of sulking, he was willing to fulfill his mission to serve even when that meant serving his enemy. 

And in his service, he was always faithful. So often, when people have been wronged, they get the attitude that the world owes them something, and often they have their own ways of extracting payment. For instance, an employee who (rightly or wrongly) thinks their employer is unfair in their treatment are often slack in their work or even willing to steal small things from their employer. Some citizens take the same attitude towards the government. But Daniel, though a captive against his will and forced to serve his own enemies was always faithful, always honest, always conscientious.

Daniel 6:4-5 describes the actions of the other officials of the empire who were jealous of Daniel. “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” Daniel was so faithful and honest in his work that even his enemies, after examining everything with a fine-tooth comb, couldn't find anything wrong and actually had to create a brand new law in order to corner him. Daniel served faithfully. 

And I think it was more than mere faithfulness. You can be faithful out of many different motives. But I think that Daniel served with compassion. In Daniel 4, we read the story of the dream which came to Nebuchadnezzar; a dream which was sent from God, warning the king that a judgment was coming on him for his pride. Nebuchadnezzar (and all of his wise men) could not make sense of the dream, and so he called in Daniel. When Daniel heard the dream, he immediately understood the meaning. Daniel 4:19 records: “Then Daniel... was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him.”

We don't know exactly what was troubling Daniel or why he was hesitant to speak of the interpretation. Obviously, bring a message of judgment to a despotic ruler is often a dangerous prospect. But I think it's possible that Daniel really had compassion for Nebuchadnezer and really was troubled at the thought of the terrible judgment which was to come upon him.

Why do I think that and what does any of this have to do with us? Because we have a higher example of all of this than Daniel. Daniel was carried, against his will, away from his home and into the home of his enemy. But Jesus voluntarily left His home to come into this world, the world of sin, the world of His enemies. And His life here was one of service, so much so that he could say: “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) Even in the last moments of his life, he prayed for forgiveness for the very ones who had caused His death.

We don't know the feelings of Daniel's heart, but we know the feelings of Jesus' heart; and all that He did was done out of love, love for the sinful and unworthy; love for the cruel and ungodly; love for his enemies. And that was why he could live a life of service among them; a life of faithful duty undeterred by bitterness, and self-pity, and undimmed by the weight of tedium. And he left us an example that we should follow in His steps.

Today is Independence Day which commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That declaration was a statement that the American colonies would no longer admit the authority of England; that they would no longer direct themselves as members of the British commonwealth or obey the laws of the British king. Not that they completely changed—American culture, even to this day, is very much based on what we received from Britain. The founders didn't reject everything about England, but they refused to be controlled by it.

And the attitude of Daniel can be called independence in this sense. He refused to be controlled by his circumstances. It would have been easy to drift along with the current; it would have been easy when in Babylon to do as Babylonians do. Just as, today, it would be easy to go with the flow of current events and popular culture. But Daniel stood firm, never forgetting where he came from; never turning his face away from God.

It would also have been easy to react to his circumstances; to become bitter or reactionary; to grow hard or self-contained. But Daniel was not controlled by his circumstances; he would not be molded by them or broken by them. He would go with the flow or go against the flow because his eyes were not on the flow but on God. He served his enemy without ever losing sight of his home; he was in the world without being of the world.

That is the challenge which gives to us today. We cannot allow this world to control us. And yet we must live and serve this world, without compromise and without complaint.

And that is, to say the least, a tall order. It is something difficult; perhaps it is impossible.

And that's why, in another sense, the attitude of Daniel—the attitude we must have—is the opposite of independence. Daniel was independent of his circumstances because he was dependent on God. Before, I mentioned the slogan: Only God forgives. And the truth is, this sort of attitude is only possible to God. Only God could love His enemies without compromising to His enemies; only God could serve the world without becoming worldly. Only God can walk on water without getting wet; only those in the presence of God can walk in the fire without being burned. But as God's people, we have that same power working in us; and so, just as Daniel, just as Jesus, we can live in this world as citizens of another world and serve the world without being controlled by it. We can be strangers in a strange land because we are filled with the spirit of the Stranger of Galilee.