“Silent witness: the lions’ den”
Daniel 6:19
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
They say it’s not how old you are, but how old you feel.
Take Michelangelo, for example. At the ripe old age of eighty-eight, he was designing churches. Even better, two years later, he painted his Last Judgment, what’s become one of the most famous paintings in the world. Not bad for a man who was ninety!
Or think of Peter Roget. He was still updating his thesaurus when he was ninety. You know, Roget’s Thesaurus. Claude Monet didn’t even begin to paint his famous “Water Lily” series until he was seventy-six, and didn’t finish till he was eighty-five. Pianist Arthur Rubinstein was still performing professionally at the age of ninety and Pablo Casals, at the age of ninety-three, was still practicing his cello three hours a day. When a friend asked why he still bothered to practice, he answered, “Because I think I’m making progress!” When Grandma Moses turned one hundred, she was still painting pictures. And in August of 1987, former lumberjack Teiichi Igarashi, with the help of seven of his ten children and three of his thirty-six grandchildren, climbed to the top of Mount Fuji. Not bad for a man who was a hundred years old!
The book of Daniel tells the story about a man, an eighty-five year-old man. But this man wasn’t painting a picture, and neither was he playing a cello or climbing a mountain. He was sitting in the middle of a lion’s den.
Listen to the words of Daniel chapter 6: “It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the kingdom, and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one...Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, ‘We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God’” (Daniel 6:1-5).
The story of Daniel is one of the best-known and best-loved stories in all of the Bible. Children love to hear it and Sunday School teachers love to teach it. In the days of slavery, he even became the basis of many songs like, Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel, Daniel Saw the Stone, and Wonder Where is Good Ole Daniel.
Even more, this story is one that’s encouraged the people of God for thousands of years. And so it should, for it’s full of unexpected twists and turns and, at the end of the story, the good guy wins and the bad guys not only lose, they get eaten. And along the way, we learn the strength of faith and the power of prayer.
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
The chapter begins as a king named Darius is ruling over the kingdom of Persia. He had held that post since he was sixty-two, and as a result, had become very rich and very strong. He started countless building projects in a kingdom that stretched from Asia in the east, to Greece in the west, to Egypt in the south.
In fact, his kingdom became so vast and so powerful that he needed help to rule over it. So he appointed 120 governors, 120 “satraps,” to help him govern, and he appointed three administrators over them. And one of them was named Daniel.
By this time, he was an old man. He had lived in that kingdom ever since he was a teenager. And since he had been such a faithful, proven, and gifted man, as many as four different kings asked him to serve on their court.
But he was a Jew who believed not in a pagan god, but in the God of Israel. Sure he was an able, gifted administrator, the king’s right-hand man, but he was a foreigner living in a foreign land. And since he was so righteous and godly, his fellow administrators set out to find some way to get rid of him.
But how do you get rid of someone who hasn’t done anything wrong? Try as hard as they might, they couldn’t find any reason whatsoever to bring charges against him. He was faithful in duty and faultless in character. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t find anything wrong--no Watergates, no Irangates, no Travelgates--no “Gates” of any kind.
Let’s stop there for just a moment. Suppose your enemies came after you the way the satraps went after Daniel. Suppose they hired a private investigator to investigate every aspect of your life--public and private, past and present. Suppose they checked into your high school and college relationships and records, your phone calls and shopping habits, your financial records, your business records, as well as how you treat your children, how you treat your spouse, and how you act on the job.
Could you survive that kind of scrutiny? Daniel did. What better thing could be said of you than for even your enemies(!) to admit that they can’t find anything wrong.
But there was a way, an absolute sure-fire way, they knew they could get rid of him. Get old Darius to pass a law, an irrevocable law, one that could not, under any circumstance be revoked or repealed.
So those satraps and administrators came to Darius and said, “O King Darius, live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or man during the next thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the lions’ den.” And they added, “Now, O king, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered--in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be annulled.”
Now what would you do if you could be “god” not just for a day, but for a whole month? Well, just as soon as Darius looked at that decree, he thought, “Why not? The Egyptians believe the pharaohs are gods. The Romans believe the caesars are gods. Why can’t I, just for a month, be a god too?”
Now let me ask, if you were Daniel, if you just discovered that your enemies have passed a law aimed directly at you, what would you do?
He could have simply closed his windows and locked his doors so the satraps couldn’t see him pray. He could have said, “For the next month or so, I’ll just pray in my heart. Who would know?” Or he could have taken a month-long spiritual vacation. It was, after all, only thirty days.
But that’s not at all what he did. For Daniel, prayer was like breathing. He would not stop, he could not stop, just because there was a bullseye on his back, a clear, unmistakable threat on his life. Instead, he knew he had lived a good long life in the Lord’s service, and there was no way he was ever going to stop now.
Notice those words--”Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
“Just as he had done before,” the Bible says.
For the past eighty-five years, Daniel prayed, maybe at 7:00 in the morning, 12 in the afternoon, then again at 8:00 at night. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he stopped to pray morning, noon, and night. If he had a business trip to some remote province, if he had a few days of vacation, it was always the same--morning, noon, and night.
And think about it--if Daniel was eighty-five, and if he prayed three times a day for all of his eighty-five years, he would have knelt before his God more than 93,000 times.
So when those slick, conniving satraps issued their decree and caught him kneeling down in prayer, sure enough, they had him right where they wanted him. And faster than you can say, “What a bunch of dirty rats,” they arrested him, cuffed him, and threw him into the lion’s den.
Now you may not know this, but a lion’s tongue is made up of millions of little knife-like cells. Think of your little house cat as it cleans itself and laps up its dish of milk. Now think bigger--a lot bigger.
A lion’s tongue is so strong, it won't just lick the skin off its prey. It’ll lick the meat off your bones. Imagine being held down on the ground with a massive paw, while he filets you alive with his tongue. Clarence the cowardly lion he is not.
Even more, these lions were kept in a den, ravishing, prowling, roaring, for the express purpose to serve as executioners for the king.
And just as soon as they threw poor eighty-five year-old Daniel in with them, they slid a stone over the mouth of the den, sealed it with their signet rings, listened for the growls and roars, then waited for the obvious, the inevitable. And they knew full well there was no possible way anyone would ever make it out alive.
But one thing they didn’t know about Daniel was the power of prayer and the power of his God.
Now we don’t know for sure just what Daniel thought as they threw him into that den. Did he close his eyes and wait for what was sure to come? Even worse, just as soon as they flung him in, just a few feet away, he could hear the sound of lions breathing, growling.
But strangely, there were no roars, no stalking, no teeth tearing into bones. And as seconds turned to minutes that turned to hours, the lions refused to touch him. And instead of serving as his executioners, one became a pillow, while another blanketed him with his long, flowing mane.
And when morning came and Darius saw what the Lord had done, he was overjoyed. “Servant of the living God,” he cried. “Has your God rescued you from the lions?”
And Daniel replied, “My God shut the mouths of the lions, because I was found innocent in His sight.”
All around us, where we live and where we work, there are people who do not believe. And they’re watching. And as they watch, they learn something about our faith and our character before our God.
It’s easy to say that if you live for the Lord, sooner or later, trouble will come. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” The jealous satraps, it seems, are never far away.
But for every satrap that’s planning our downfall, there’s a King Darius keeping an eye on us, hoping our prayers are genuine and our faith is strong.
And how can we remain strong? Because of the Lord Jesus. Just like Daniel, He was falsely accused. Though He was innocent, He was hated and condemned to die. And when they arrested Him and crucified Him, they threw Him in a pit of death, rolled a stone across the entrance, and placed a seal to be sure He stayed inside.
But just as God sent an angel to Daniel, He sent angels to testify, “He is not here. He’s risen, just as He said.” And from that pit of death came forth the Prince of life.
He is Daniel’s God. And He is our God. He’s our Savior Jesus Christ. And as we believe, we’ll have life in His name.
Dear Father, the story of Daniel in the lions’ den reminds us of a man’s great faith and the power of our great God. And though our road may seldom be easy, give us the confidence to know that our lives are in Your hands, for Jesus’ sake. Amen