Elite 8- Pray or Prey October 3 and 4, 2020 Carroll UMC

 Elite 8- Pray or Prey

October 3 and 4, 2020

Carroll UMC

A pastor looked in on the youth group and saw they were deep in prayer. There was one young man repeating the word “Tokyo. Tokyo, Tokyo.” After they were dismissed the pastor found the youth and told him how impressed he was, but he was just curious why he kept repeating the word “Tokyo.”

The young man replied, “Well, pastor, I took a geography test today, and I am praying for God to make Tokyo the capital of France before the teacher grades the test.”

People have funny ideas about prayer, don’t they? Today’s story is a story about a man who prayed like most of us have never prayed, and how that turned out. 

In 606 BC the Babylonians attacked the southern Jewish kingdom. Most of the inhabitants were sent to Babylon. Daniel was one of the early exiles taken to Babylon which was roughly where Iraq is today, about 550 miles from Jerusalem.

Daniel has been very successful in Babylon. This was at least 69 years after Daniel was deported, so Daniel was no spring chicken. With age comes wisdom and Daniel was wise enough to make the right friends so the king named Daniel one of three administrators ruing over Babylon. Kind of like governors. 

Daniel must have been quite a man. He was so good that the king was thinking about consolidating to have only one governor. The other governors were not about to let that happen. So being politicians, their planned to sling some mud at Daniel. Make him look bad so the king would change his mind. 

They went to work trying to find dirt on Daniel. They checked ever corner, every letter, every neighbor. They checked his High School & College records, his children’s friends, all of his internet activity, credit card activity, Phone calls, Financial records, vacations, TV usage including everything he ever rented, business deals, police records, old girlfriends, his vocabulary, and his jokes.

Could any of you stand up to that kind of scrutiny? I don’t think I could. It is as bad as the confirmation hearing for a supreme court candidate. 

To their surprise, they found nothing. Daniel was squeaky clean. 

That’s because Daniel chose RIGHTEOUSNESS OVER RELIGION. Religion is going through the motions. It might be for the right reason or not. That is what people mean when they say they are “religious but not spiritual.” Righteousness on the other hand is being in right relationship with God. When we live in right relationship with God the right belief and behavior flow naturally. The prophet Amos wrote “let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” (5:24) Daniel lived in an intimate, growing relationship with God. It would be akin to what I mean when I talk about looking more and more like Jesus every day.

The other governors decided to take the strength of Daniel’s faith and turn it into a weakness. They used Daniel’s loyalty to God and his prayer life to make it appear as though Daniel was not loyal to the king. 

His “friends” appealed to the King’s ego. They told him that “all of his administration” thought it would be good to make a law against praying to any God but Darrius for the next month.” How flattering! Right… and how untrue! They “forgot” to ask Daniel what he thought, but then again Daniel was the rat they were trying to catch. 

King Darius was convinced and made an irrevocable law. 

Now this is where the rubber meets the road. It is one thing to be righteous when it doesn’t cost you anything. It is entirely different when your life is on the line. Would Daniel cave into the political and very real personal danger?

No, because when the law was announced Daniel chose FAITHFULNESS OVER FEAR.

It is hard for us to imagine having to make the choice between death because we pray, and life without the power of prayer, but it is not impossible.

Those of you who reached out to folks and helped them while they were quarantining chose love over fear. The DesMoines pastors who talked to the protestors trying to hear the pain behind the political chanting, chose grace over fear. Those who so faithfully supported the church even when the building was locked chose generosity over fear. So maybe it isn’t as foreign as we might at first think to chose faithfulness over fear. 

Daniel did that by continuing to do the things that kept him close to God. Most notably in this story, he continued to pray even though it was against the law. 

The story is very clear. “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.” 

Now, he could have prayed quietly, behind closed doors, in the privacy of his room. If caught he could claim he was just resting his eyes. But Daniel did what he had always done. 

He could have left the windows closed and no one would know. 

He could have even stood to pray and have plausible deniability. 

But no. Daniel stuck with the practices that fed his faith. He kept doing the things that made him feel close to God. And, as you might expect in the blink of an eye, the other governors were tattling to the king. 

Darius was heartbroken. He obviously thought very highly of Daniel and his faith. And he was furious at the trickery of the other governors.

He tried everything to save his favorite Jewish friend. When sundown came, there was nothing more to be done. He ordered Daniel to be thrown into the lion’s den and the stone on the door to be sealed.

The king went back to his palace and didn’t sleep a wink worried about his friend.

We know the natural reaction to finding yourself staring down the toothy end of a full-grown lion is panic. 

No one knows exactly what happened in the lion’s den that night, it wasn’t panic. It was supernatural. The only picture we get is that there were angels and the lion’s mouth was shut. It reminds me of the old joke about the preacher encountering a bear and praying “make the bear Christian,” and the bear miraculously stops and asks God’s blessing on what he is about to eat. I get pictures of Daniel and the lion kneeling down in prayer together. Others see the lion allowing Daniel to use his soft warm belly as a pillow. 

Truthfully, we don’t know what happened, but you can bet that Daniel spent the night praying harder than ever that he would not become prey. HE TRUSTED IN GOD RATHER THAN TRUSTING IN HIMSELF. That is really what prayer is: turning to God’s power rather than our power. Turning to God’s plan rather than our plan. Turning to hope in God rather than hope in ourselves. 

If we choses right relationship with God over going through the motions… if we choses faithfulness in all things… we are much more prepared to trust in God when our life depends on it. I think we can safely say Daniel chose trust in God. He chose to pray rather than become prey. I am sure he skipped over all the niceties and fancy words and went right to asking for a miracle.  It might have even been one of those one-word prayers.  Heeeeeelp!!! And he got it. 

We know that a miraculous answer won’t come every time we pray… by definition a miracle is an exception to the rule. But there is one miracle we can count on every single time. Wherever there is true prayer, a normally self-sufficient, and self-absorbed human being stops trusting in their own powers and abilities and places all their trust in God. The true miracle that night for Daniel, and the miracle of every prayer is that we chose to turn to God rather than trust in ourselves.

In the end, the conspirators became the lion’s breakfast. But that only gets one verse. The author is not nearly as interested in the demise of the conspirators as he is interested in the miracle that gets 4 verses. Because Daniel chose RIGHTEOUSNESS OVR RELIGION, FAITHFULNESS OVR FEAR, AND TRUST GOD RATHER THAN TRUST IN SELF. King Darius was moved to belief in Daniel’s God. Darius came to faith!  The king wrote to the entire kingdom and to other kingdoms “throughout the world” to tell people to “tremble and fear before Daniel’s God, Yahweh.” Do you understand what that means? Because Daniel lived a Godly life: 

• Choosing righteousness over religion, 

• faithfulness over fear, and 

• trust in God over trust in self. 

The King … king Darius himself came to believe in God and ordered all his kingdom to tremble and fear God. 

Yes, spending the night in a lion’s den and surviving is amazing… but the best miracle of all is that Daniel’s faith spread the word of God throughout the kingdom, and beyond. To use King Darius words: 

For he is the living God,
  enduring forever.
His kingdom shall never be destroyed,
  and his dominion has no end.
27 He delivers and rescues,
  he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth;
for he has saved Daniel
  from the power of the lions.”

And he will do mighty things in your life too.