Many Christians struggle to understand how to live faithfully in a culture that clearly is at odds with their faith and increasingly hostile towards it.  It may come as a surprise to some that this is not unusual or unprecedented. Throughout history God’s people have often found themselves living in tension or conflict with the zeitgeist (the spirit of the age) or the culture, or the authorities, or all of them simultaneously. This struggle often leads us to extremes.  On the one hand it can lead to the extreme of surrender, where we just decide it’s easier to “go along to get along.”  When this happens, the church simply adopts the view of the dominant culture.  On the other hand, it can lead to the extreme of reactionism –anger, resentment, bitterness, and—inevitably –hopelessness.

Modern secularism is upending the culture in our own day.  There is a clear and growing hostility toward God, His Church, His teaching, and His followers. The various ideologies we see promoted within modern culture, have all the hallmarks of religions. Each of them has its preachers. They have their doctrine.  They have their zealots and fundamentalists.  And increasingly, Christians who disagree with these ideologies are regarded as the new heretics.

Allister Begg puts it this way, “Secularism pushes back again and again against what the Bible says about sexual ethics, about salvation, about education, abound the role and reach of the state, or about matters of public welfare.” (Begg, Allistair, Brave by Faith, The Good Book Company, 2021, 14)

The book of Daniel shows us there is another way—a way rooted in the sovereignty of God.  This is the unshakeable conviction that God is in control even when what is happening is not what we wanted.   The doctrine of the Sovereignty of God leads us to patient, consistent, steady living amid the chaos of the world around us.  My prayer is that Christians can come to a deeper place of faithful, steady obedience, and radical, unswerving trust, in the sovereign God we serve.  

Look at how it plays out in Daniel: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.” (Daniel 1:1-2, ESV)

First of all, you need to know that Jehoiakim was a terrible King.  We read about him in 2 Kings 23:36-37, “Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.” (2 Kings 23:36-37, ESV)

All the good reform that Jehoiakim’s father Josiah had done, was undone.  Under Jehoiakim’s leadership, the people of Judah turned again to idols and away from their God.  Jehoiakim did not seek the Lord, but tried to play the game of politics with Egypt and Babylon. After Babylon defeated Egypt they came and attacked Jerusalem.  

So, Jehoiakim failed to responsibly and faithfully lead the people of God.  Nebuchadnezzar succeeded in overtaking the Kingdom.  Not only did they defeat Judah and carry them off into exile, they also ransacked the temple. Why?  In the ancient near east, you always looked to your god or gods to help you win your battles. If you won, it meant that your god was greater than your opponent’s god.  So you desecrated the holy places of your enemy because their god was defeated.  That’s what’s happening here—except that’s not all of what’s happening is it?  It was not Nebuchadnezzar’s political or military strategy that gave him victory.  No, verse 2 says,“the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his [Nebuchadnezzar’s] hand.”   The Lord is sovereign over nations and leaders and people.  The Lord is in control.  We’re going to see this again and again in Daniel.  But this is an important and crucial lesson for you and me today.

All the Time?

Let’s see if you know the response to this: “God is good”  All the time.  “And all the time?” God is good.”  Really?  All the time?  Be careful here.  Be honest.  Do you really believe God is good all the time?  What if you were Judah?  What if you had seen your nation divided and conquered?  Your leader taken into exile.  Your homes and towns taken away?  The beauty of the Church desecrated by vile and vulgar people?  

What if tomorrow we were attacked by a foreign power?  What if we saw the destruction of our way of life and forced to live in a foreign land?  What if we were required to be educated in this new culture and new religion? 

The question you and I have to wrestle with is, “Is God good even when He doesn’t do what I want Him to do?”  And the second question is, “Is God sovereign and in control, even when things are going badly?”

What Daniel gives us is a behind the scenes look at history.  What the newspapers would report would be the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem, the exile of the King and the people, and the ransacking of the temple.  But the book of Daniel says these are not random or accidental.  “The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his [Nebuchadnezzar’s] hand.”  

Friends, here is the point.  Either God is good all the time, or he is not good at all.  Either God is Sovereign over all or he is not sovereign at all.  Daniel and his friends had settled this in their minds long before Babylon came to conquer.  We need to settle it in our minds as well.  Behind all that we see and observe in our own day, behind all that we experience and all that concerns us, is God’s unwavering goodness and his immutable sovereignty.  We need quit thinking that we can turn this ship around if we can just out maneuver people politically or forcefully.  It didn’t work for Jehoiakim and if won’t work for us.  

God was Sovereign over the Jewish exiles in Babylon. And He is sovereign over Christians today who are stressed out and despairing over the decline of our society. The goodness and sovereignty of God is highlighted here at the beginning of Daniel as a means of anchoring all that follows.  We may wonder,“How did Daniel and his friends remain faithful and steady in those days?”  The foundational answer is that they rooted themselves in a firm belief in the goodness and sovereignty of God.  No matter what.  

Pressure to Compromise

This is important because look at what happens next.  Look at verses 3-4.

“Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.” (Daniel 1:3-4, ESV)

Nebuchadnezzar now takes the best of the Judean young people and is going to reeducate them.  They have been educated in their own faith and learning, but the king who conquered them wants to re-educate them in the ways of the Chaldeans (the Babylonians).  This was designed to change their thinking.  This was designed to eradicate their commitment to their faith. 

According to verse 5, this program of re-education was to last three years. The Babylonians wanted their captivity of the Judeans to be complete. They wanted these Jewish young men to change their worldview, their concept of God, their concept of right and wrong, their morality, their understanding of life itself to match theirs.    That is also why in verse 7, the chief of their Eunuchs takes away their Hebrew names and gives them Babylonian names.  This was a thorough attempt to make Daniel and his friends forget their good and sovereign God.  

We are facing a similar situation today.  There is a concerted effort in our society to change the Biblical worldview of the Christian, to change our way of thinking, to compromise our commitment to the faith.  Modern society wants to redefine the concept of God, morality, what it means to be human, and our understanding of life itself.  I’m not trying to be an alarmist; I just think its time to face the truth about the times in which we live. We need to realize that this is what we are facing.  This is what our kids are facing every single day. 

We need to understand that the people of God are always a people in exile.  This world is not our home.  We are citizens of the Kingdom of God, members of the Covenant community of the Body of Christ, bound by the Word of God to the Glory of God.  And God is God here and now.  God is sovereign here and now.  God is good, here and now.  

God IS good, ALL the time. ALL the time, God is GOOD.