God’s Grace in Daniel’s Separation From the World (3): In the Life Daniel Led

If you could have asked Daniel what the secret was of his becoming nearly ninety years old while still walking a God-fearing life in the midst of a heathen country, he would have had a much better answer: “Grace. Free, sovereign grace.”

You can read this answer between the lines in Daniel 9. More than fifteen times in this chapter Daniel confesses his sins and unworthiness.

That Daniel continued a separate lifestyle was entirely due to grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor to unworthy sinners for Christ’s sake. Grace is:

God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense

Grace was Daniel’s secret from beginning to end. Preventing grace kept him from falling into temptations, accompanying grace brought him safely and profitably through trials, and following grace pursued him all the days of his life (Ps. 23:6). For more than seventy years Daniel experienced God’s comforting declaration: “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor. 12:9).

The gracious, eternal love of a triune God — that was everything for Daniel. He tasted the drawing love of the Father who chose him from eternity. This eternal love grounded in sovereign good pleasure enabled Jesus to say of His Father’s elected Daniels: “No one shall pluck them out of My Father’s hand.” But Daniel also experienced the sustaining love of the Son, who “ever liveth to make intercession for” His people (Heb. 7:25). And he was intimately acquainted with the applying love of the eternal Spirit, who enables God’s people to sing by faith:

Lord, though I walk ’mid troubles sore,
Thou wilt restore my faltering spirit;
Though angry foes my soul alarm,
Thy mighty arm will save and cheer it.
Yea, Thou wilt finish perfectly
What Thou for me hast undertaken;
May not Thy works, in mercy wrought,
E’er come to naught, or be forsaken.

“And Daniel continued”— solely because of the triune Jehovah. He is the great “I AM THAT I AM,” who abides eternally the same. Therefore the burning bush which Moses saw was burning with fire but not consumed. Eternally, the heart of the Father, the unchangeable Jehovah, has been aflame with love toward His “burning bush,” decreeing from a never-begun eternity in the Counsel of Peace the salvation and preservation of His burning bush. The Son fulfilled all the requirements of salvation for the hell-worthy in time by obeying the law perfectly and by enduring the agonies of a threefold death — all the while burning with love for His Father and His people. And the Holy Spirit sanctifies the whole, laboring with His saving operations in the elect, thereby guaranteeing that there shall be a living, burning, but not consumed church even until the end of the world.

No, it was not Daniel, not his free will or his good works, which enabled him to persevere in a God-fearing lifestyle. If God’s people, as branches of the living Vine, would have had to be the fuel upon which the continuance of the flame depended, the living church would have been consumed long ago. The tender branches would have withered and died from the heat of God’s wrath in a moment. But the Lord Jesus Christ took all the heat upon Himself — the heat of God’s wrath, of hellish powers, and of the sins of His people — so that His church could be in the fire and not have a hair of their head singed. Christ is the fourth One who is actually the first One, walking in the midst of the burning, fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

In a word, Daniel continued with God because God continued with Daniel. His name is Jehovah, the Unchangeable One: “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6).

Reverently speaking, God cannot but continue. His continuation with His people is inseparable from His Name, cause, and glory. God’s people, God’s Zion, God’s church are precisely that

— God’s. Oh, what a comfort lies in this for all God’s persecuted Daniels! No matter how stoked the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar may be, and no matter how deep and closed the den of lions may become, the Lord maintains His church and people. “Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion” (Ps. 2:6).

Do you think Daniel could always believe and see this King upon Zion’s holy hill? Do you think he was always confident that the Lord would continue with him and he with the Lord?

Dear young friends, I think there were many times and days when Daniel was crying to the Lord, “Shall I ever continue to the end with all these temptations surrounding me and within me? Oh Lord, I have forfeited everything

— also that Thou wouldest continue with me — but Thou canst do it for Thy own Name’s sake. Lord, continue with me, though I have made myself unworthy a thousand times.”

“And Daniel continued”— it could not be any different. Not one child of God shall be lost (Jn. 6:39; 10:28-29).

God was good to Daniel. He was spared to see better days when God’s promises were fulfilled. When King Cyrus conquered Babylon, he allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. God allowed Daniel to see Israel’s deliverance from captivity before he died.

Young people, there are many lessons to learn from Daniel 1 for all of us, but especially for you. Let me summarize a few of them:

(1) Ask for grace to live Daniel’s kind of life, a life of separation from the world and in the reverential fear of God. Perhaps you will respond: “But this would be so hard. My friends will despise me. I will be looked upon as old-fashioned and strange. I will be persecuted to no end.”

That can all be. But remember, friends who seek to lead you into the world and away from God, are no friends at all. Actually, they are your enemies. And remember too, that the loudest mockers often suppress their respect underneath. Often they will show you their respect later — privately. “When a man’s ways please the LORD, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16:7).

(2) Ask for grace to have a higher regard for what the Lord thinks about you than for what people think of you. Daniel continued in honor with those from whom he had separated himself and in honor with God’s remnant, but most importantly, he continued in God’s favor. “In His favour is life” (Ps. 30:5).

(3) Ask for grace to be faithful, also in little things. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10).

(4) Ask for grace to be courageous, to stand firm for biblical principles. Ask the Lord to give you what you need to dare to be a Daniel — to dare to stand alone. That is what the future of the church desperately needs also — Daniels who dare to say “no” to sin and “yes” to righteousness, rather than Reubens, who are as unstable as water and shall not excel (Gen. 49:3).

(5) Ask the Lord to grant you friends who also dare to say “no”— friends like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When looking for a mate for life, do not look for one who always says “yes.” Pray that God may guide you to a partner who has a deep respect for the truth, and yearns to know and walk in the fear of the Lord.

(6) Ask the Lord for a praying life. Bring all your needs to Him. You cannot come too often, nor stay too long at the throne of grace. The Lord says to you, “Acknowledge Me in all thy ways and I shall direct thy paths.” Pray above all for true conversion; do not rest short of a personal, saving acquaintance with the only Savior.

(7) Ask for grace to refrain from sin. Don’t think you can remain standing in your own strength. Bow your knees every morning and pray: “Lord, give me what I need to avoid temptation as much as possible, but also to remain firm when in the midst of it.”

(8) Like Daniel, try to avoid those people, places, and customs which place temptation in your pathway. Instead of the attitude, “How far may I go and still not sin?,” ask, “How may I stay as far as possible from sin?”

(9) Search the Word of God. Pray that the Lord might grant you David’s precious testimony: “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against Thee” (Ps. 119:11).

All of us, young or old, stand on one side or the other. We are ruled either by the childlike fear of God or by the slavish fear of man and self. Are you standing on Daniel’s side? Is your life an example like Joseph in the house of Potiphar, Moses in the courts of Pharaoh, Samuel in the presence of the wicked sons of Eli, and Obadiah in the palace of the wicked Ahab? Do you know what it is by grace “to fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12)? To “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 2:3)?

Or are you pursuing a lifestyle of compromise with sin — a life of “halting between two opinions” (1 Ki. 18:21), of trying to give God half a heart? Are you trying to live a somewhat religious life while simultaneously avoiding Christ’s command, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mat. 16:24)?

Perhaps matters are even worse. Perhaps you are siding totally with the Babylonians. Do you never pick persecution and worldly loss above God’s displeasure and a wounded conscience?

Do not forget: Both the compromisers and those who are altogether worldly are on the Babylonian side.

Dear young friend, there is no third side, as we are always looking for by nature — a half-and-half life is the devil’s side, too.

On which side are you standing — the side of Babylon or of Daniel?

Dr. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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