We hope you will join us as we walk through the book of Daniel together and please feel free to share this content with anyone you think might be blessed by it!

Despite any delusions of optimism we may have once had, we woke up today in a thoroughly pagan culture. A culture at war with God, truth, and reality. A culture that is very acutely not our home and never will be. And while we could list out all of the evidences for this, we already know them. We all see them. But what we do not see, and what we struggle to know, is how to live in that kind of world. 

How do we live as Christians in a culture of compromise without falling into compromise? How do we honor God in a nation that not only hates Him but also hates us! These are truths we will explore over the next several weeks as we walk through the book of Daniel together. 

SURVIVING BABYLON PART 1

Un-eraseable

WELCOME TO BABYLON (Dn 1:1-7)

The book of Daniel opens with the hostile takeover of Jerusalem in 586 BC. After her decimation, we see the mass deportation of Judeans into Babylon, the great city of sin. The Davidic dynasty of kings had fallen at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. The temple of God was first plundered and then turned into a smoldering ash heap. The city lie in ruins and the people who survived were taken into captivity in order to lose their identity. 

As punishment for being on the wrong side of war, the Judans were locked in chains and forced to march nearly 1700 miles on foot from Jerusalem to Babylon. You can imagine the sores, blisters, and wounds such a journey would have caused them. Not to mention, the whip marks inflicted by brutish officers, punishing them on horseback for not walking fast enough. The scene is almost too sad to fully take in or imagine. 

If that were not heart breaking enough, Babylon employed a strict policy of assimilation by cultural erasure. That meant everything that was distinctive about you must die so that you could be remade into a Babylonian. You must go to their elite institutions, and read their pompous books, and you must learn how to speak their erudite overblown group speak so that you would fit in with their culture (under the threat of death of course). The goal was not to improve you, it was to erase you and everything that mattered to you so that they could remake you according to a Babylonian vision. 

Unfortunately, the same is quite true for us today. 

BABYLON IS HERE

In a very real sense, America has become the moral equivalent of Babylon. And while historians in future generations will debate when that sickness began, there is no denying that our society is well along in the disease and implementing the exact same strategy. Instead of killing us, they are actively trying to assimilate us into their secularism and working harder at converting us than we are of them. 

Like those wandering Judean vagabonds, we awaken into a culture that is systematically trying to erase what makes us Christian. Think about it. 

From the time we are of age to be educated, we are sent off into Babylonian training camps called public schools that no longer value education, but push secular indoctrination. The not so subtle hope is that children would think, speak, walk, and talk as propagandized loyalists. That is Babylon!

After graduation, the best children are shipped off to re-education centers posing as universities. While there they will be plunged into a culture of debauchery, brain washed with party thinking, and likely stripped of the final remnants of a Christian worldview. Of course, this makes it all the more easy for them to willingly bow down to any idols their government erects for them. 

For those who are unwilling to bow, social denigration, cancel mobs, and censure ultimately await. But, for those who are willing to forsake their Lord for harlotry in Babylon a promising career will be afforded. This may include jobs in “all important” woke industries that virtue signal allegiance to party. It could mean powerful positions in the halls of government making Babylonianesque policy. Or it could mean teaching positions aimed at producing more of this poisoned culture. To the degree that you forsake Christ and bow down to this system will be to the degree you advance in today’s secular America, which ironically is just a rebranded version of Babylon! 

They are trying to erase us, but we must not allow them! We must never bow down! We must cling to Christ, to His Word, and to our faith while attempting to survive in Babylon. 

Here is how we do this…  

NAVIGATING BABYLON

In the opening verses of Daniel’s book, two important truth’s rise to the surface that we must explore if we are to find hope in its pages. Those two truths are:

1. God sent His people to Babylon (Dn. 1:2)

2. God expects His people to be holy in Babylon. (Dn. 1:8)

GOD SENT US INTO BABYLON

An unavoidable historic fact is that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, presided over the destruction and deportation of Judah. But God tells us in the book of Daniel, that behind all of that, He was the one who actually handed them over. This means that Nebuchadnezzar had no real power to conquer them unless it is given to him by God. And, it also means that God’s people did not end up in Babylon without His perfect permission and intentional commission. God sent His people there, which can be a tough pill to swallow. 

And maybe you are wondering why God would do this? Why would He allow that sort of thing to happen to His people?

Well He tells us why in the book of Jeremiah, a book that was written concerning the destruction and deportation of Judah. In chapter 29 of Jeremiah, God tells His people that He did not destroy them, remove them, and place them in such a pagan nation for no purpose! He is not putting them there to be erased…

Yes it is true that He broke them, and wounded them, and deported them, and then placed them in the midst of a pagan nation! But He did this as a part of His good, holy, and redemptive plan to give them a bright future and a glorious hope! (Jer 29:11). The same is also true for us. The same good and sovereign God who allowed His people to be dismantled back then is the same sovereign God who placed us where we are today. We are not here by accident. We are here by the intentional sovereignty of God. 

But many will ask, how is that hopeful? Especially right now, as we are living in very similar days. Where can we find hope when we are feeling as disoriented as the people of Judah? 

And that is where I would remind you that you are not here by accident. God has a plan for your life. God is in control of every aspect of your life… Even the nation and time that you exist in. God is good in all things and is working out the good in all things. And His good plan does not always involve rescuing us from pain or pagan society, sometimes His very good plan for our life is to send us right into the thick of it! Not as people who are defeated, but people who know He is good, who know He has a plan, and who trust Him in all things! 

And for the Christian, this hope is not given in the abstract, but rest squarely on the crucified shoulders of Jesus Christ! He is the reason we can have hope in our sorrows! He is the one who secured for us a bright future and an eternal hope! That future is not defined by our circumstances but by the promise of God to return and welcome us into His perfect glorious Kingdom where we will be citizens forever!

No matter how awful the circumstances we face in Babylon right now may be, our afflictions are light and temporary in comparison to eternity (Rom. 8:18), and they are working in us an eternal weight of glory (2 Co. 4:17) when we meet our returning King. 

We can and must have hope in Babylon! Because our God sent us here, loves us here, and calls us to be faithful here even as we await His return. 

WE MUST BE HOLY HERE

This is important for us to understand. Daniel and His friends did not hope in hiding. They did not have deep Jewish convictions while cowering under the pressure. No! They were not erased by Babylon, and live on through their recorded testimony, precisely because they chose to live vibrantly, joyfully, and outwardly faithful to God even when the pressure mounted (Dn. 1:8)! 

God is honored by that and even commands that in Jeremiah 29!

You see, in a culture that wanted nothing more to erase their identity, God does not command them to hide or to pick up the sword and fight for their rights. He tells them to build houses, marry believers, raise up godly kids, to seek the peace of the city, and to work publicly as believers without compromise (Jer 29:1-10). That was their battle and faithfulness was their weapon. 

Far from blending in, God is calling His people to live out their faith with authenticity and conviction! The same is true for us today!

Like Daniel and his friends, we must refuse hiding. We must turn away the portion of the world (Dn 1:8) and live on the bread of God’s Word (Mt. 4:4). We are in this pagan world to shine the light of Christ, build houses, raise families, be salt and light, work in such a way that honors God, and joyfully receive whatever consequences this old world will throw at us. This kind of living not only hopes in God, it greatly honors God! 

In the weeks that follow, we will be looking at key texts in the book of Daniel. We will examine what was going on in his time period and we will also look at how we can live as faithful, joyful non-conformist, and uncompromising Christians in our world today. We cannot be erased!

Christians are un-erasable!