Gooding, David: 7 - Is There an Absolute Law?

We come now to the chapter six of the book of Daniel. And let us just spend a few moments again getting ourselves orientated to where exactly we are in the book. As I have suggested on the outline of the contents of Daniel that I've given to you, Daniel six begins the second half of the book. And we notice now that, whereas chapters one to five have talked to us about values, chapters six to the end of the book are going to talk to us very much about laws, and therefore about books and official writings. It is useful from a practical point of view in studying Holy Scripture, not only to see each particular chapter and what it is specially saying, but to see the context on which it is threaded, and then we shall more easily see the point of each individual part. Just like a lovely diamond looks beautiful in itself, but threaded with other gems to become a necklace, it is the relation of the diamond to the other gems in the necklace that goes to make up the pattern and therefore the beauty of the thing. So let me point out to you now that chapter six has as one of its central features in the story, the law of the Medes and the Persians that changes not. And the civil servants call upon Darius to sign the writing, which cannot be changed. In fact, the whole drama of the story turns eventually on that fact that they get to s- the king to sign a writing, an interdict, and having passed this law and signed the writing, much as he would like to, he is not free to change the writing. The law of the Medes and Persians, that changes not. Yes, but when we come to the last part of the book, chapters ten to eleven, we are to hear of another writing. As the exalted figure sends his messenger to Daniel and says, you know why I have come forth. I have come to make you know what is written in the writing of truth. And the contrast between the one writing and the other is significant, isn't it? The Persians had a system of law, eh, such that when a decree was written and signed, they said it could not be altered. Ah, but by the end of the book, we are to be introduced to God's writing, not so much now Holy Scripture, but the writing of truth on the tablets of the divine purpose. What God has there written, God will perform, Medes and Persians notwithstanding, his writing will be done. And then, of course, in the intervening chapters, you will notice how the theme recurs. In chapter seven, not only does the Ancient of Days come and his throne is set up, but they get out the books, the books that have been written, and judgment is given according to the things written in the book. In chapter, uh, uh, nine of the prophecy, Daniel begins by telling us that he had been much exercised by the things that he found written in the books, namely the prophecies through Jeremiah the prophet about the desolations of Jerusalem and how long those desolations was last, because God had committed himself now in writing in sacred scripture, as well as the writings of truth in the heavenly court. There were the sacred writings, even in Daniel's day, of Holy Scripture, and Daniel is in no doubt whatsoever that those writings are inspired and that the prophecies therein will be fulfilled to the very letter. And he seeks himself in prayer, therefore, to cooperate with the government of the universe, that the will of God be done. What high office and privilege it is for God's redeemed people to take his writing, his laws, his published intentions, and to cooperate with the Almighty through prayer and exercise of heart in seeing that the will of God be done on earth, even as it is in heaven. We are very much, therefore, in the second half of the book, concerned with God's law, human law, the writings that cannot be changed, and so forth and so on. Now let us notice another thing. That when we come to chapter six, there comes another kind of change over the contents of the book. Things become decidedly more ominous. And I mean it in this respect. Hitherto, both Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar have acted unworthily of the God of heaven. Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels out of the house of the Lord and put them in the house of his gods. He meant it reverently, but even to do that was an insult to Almighty God, who is the unique, transcendent Lord, the Creator, whose glory will not be given to another. And Nebuchadnezzar, with his benighted, idolatrous mind, thought he was re- reverencing God, when in fact he was really insulting him by putting the vessels of Jehovah alongside the vessels of Marduk and Astarte and all the rest of his pagan pantheon of gods. Belshazzar went worse. He took the golden vessels there for the service of God and used them for himself, as though he himself had a right to such, to the service of such golden vessels. Nebuchadnezzar went further still. He made an image of the state and called upon the Jews to worship the state along with all the other officers and civil servants. That was bad enough. But neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Belshazzar, according to chapters one to five, ever went so far as to ban the worship of Jehovah. Surely in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the temple, but as I say, with all reverence, he brought his vessels and put them in the house of his God in Babylon. Never did he ban the worship of Jehovah. He demanded them that they give worship to his golden image, but they were still free to worship Jehovah as well. Now a change comes, and for the first time in the book of Daniel, and granted it only lasts a very little time, but there is a thing done in chapter six that is exceedingly significant, both in itself and what it foreshadows. For a month, a Gentile king banned the worship of Jehovah. As he was persuaded by his courtiers and civil servants that it would be in the interests of the state if a law were passed forbidding anybody and everybody everywhere, forbidding them to worship any god or offer prayer to any god at all for a whole month long, except to his majesty. He didn't simply ban all worship, merely, or the worship of the Jews merely, but in banning all the worship, of course, included was the worship of Jehovah, banned. When we come to chapter eight of this prophecy, we shall read of a, a, a, a, a, of prophecies that concentrate our attention on a fearful period of history, when a certain king of the Seleucid dynasty called Antiochus Epiphanes Antiochus IV came to Jerusalem and abandoned the worship of Jehovah. With great immeasurable distress, did Jews loyal to God, loyal to his holy word, see this foreign king come and put an altar of Baal Shamim on, put an image of Baal Shamim on the altar of the Lord in the temple at Jerusalem. Ban the offering of the daily sacrifice. In its place, institute pagan sacrifices, introduce cult prostitutes into the very house of the Lord, ban the reading of scripture, ban the possession of scripture, ban the right of circumcision and of the covenant with Jehovah. Over. Men Then were were very very dark deeds done. As faithful believers, women who'd had their children circumcised were taken their babes and thrown over the rocks to dash their brains out on the skulls, on their brains out on the rocks beneath. And were multitudes slain. And the people of God, in their terrible trial of tribulation, were pressed and pushed to cry, "O Lord, how long before you vindicate your name and your temple?" That is what's happened round about the years one hundred and sixty seven to one hundred and sixty BC. When we read the end of chapter eight and go further to read chapters ten, eleven, and twelve, God's spirit speaking through Daniel warns us that at the end time, men shall not only be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, that Belshazzar was, as we have seen. But there will come at the end time a state-imposed religion. It will ban the worship of the God of heaven and institute the deification of man, the worship of man. It will be done for the sake of state politics, for the sake of political unity and harmony, and for all sorts of reasons of coping with the vast problems that our modern world throws up. With the planet getting daily smaller, in the sense that you'll soon be able to take an interspatial aircraft and be in Australia for breakfast and back again to Britain for morning coffee. The pressures of mounting populations, the threat of war that could destroy the planet will in some sense drive men to try and invent something that will cause the nations of the world to cohere, to give them some object for their hearts, some ideal to live for. It will sound a sensible scheme. It will be Satan's most dire attempt to win this planet from God. It will ban the worship of a God of heaven. So the little thing that happens in chapter six, and it is just plain story in history, and carries all sorts of practical lessons with it, nevertheless becomes a straw in the wind, an ominous pointer to the way things will go down the centuries. So now we come to the story itself in chapter six, the story Daniel in the lion's den. Let us recur to this idea that it, uh, turns on this remarkable institution among the Persians. You don't read of it among the Babylonians. And when you first meet it, it sounds to be a remarkable piece of progress in political system. It's this institution that the, the Persians thought up, the Medes and the Persians. You can call it, if you like, the supremacy of the law, or phrase it the equality of every man under the law. You could pass a law, you see, in Persia, and if it were passed and received royal approval, then the law could not be changed for a specified time. Even the king himself was subject to the law, and if he labored all night long, like Darius did in the end, to try and change the law, he couldn't change it because of the Persian constitution. They had come to this concept of exalting law to be the supreme thing, so that for those moments, not even his Majesty was supreme. Of course, he wasn't sharing his palace with the beggar on the dunghill. But in one sense, he was in that, uh, uh, equal under the law. He had to submit to it as anybody else submitted. When we read about that in ancient Persia, of course, we are not, uh, uh, misled into thinking that they enjoyed a full-blown democracy, such as we enjoy or supposed to enjoy these days with equality under the law. Yet, on the other hand, we may be generous enough to observe, surely, that this was a great progress. Let me, for instance, uh, uh, uh, press the point by now calling your attention that this is one of those chapters in Daniel that talks about man and the animal, yes? We came across one of those chapters in chapter four, man and the animal. We shall come across another one in chapter seven. but here is man and the animal, all too patent. Daniel got cast in the den of lions, and so did the old civil servants in the end. They got cast in the den of lions as well, man and the animal. And this discovery of law is a thing we humans can be very proud of. And it has been a very large factor in the civilizing process, certainly in Europe. You will see it, of course, particularly among the Greeks. The Greeks in the fifth century BC began to theorize in matters political, and they got the idea that, uh, human freedom would depend upon everybody being equal under the law. And some of their theorists and philosophers talk very enthusiastically. They say, you know what a long way we've come. In the old days, we were like animals in the jungle. The biggest animal won and gobbled up all the other animals. There was nothing else the little weak animals can do, and life was beastly and nasty and uncivilized and dangerous. It was the law of the jungle, the biggest animal won. And now, say the Greeks, we've come a long way since then. We've discovered the secret of civilization, living in a city together. And, uh, the peace of the city kept by everybody being equal under the law. So it doesn't matter who you are, the Prime Minister or the Minister of, uh, Defense or, uh, hmm, Trade and Industry. All are under the law, do you see? As well as the unemployed beggar wandering the streets, equal under the law. Haven't we come a long way? We ought to be thankful for God for it, and not despise human institutions. We ourselves can see, can't we, what dangerous states are produced when people begin to flaunt that law and become a law to themselves, and people are not equal any longer under the law. As I say, you don't see animals making laws like that, do you? They have their laws, it is true, and our zoologist friends tell us so many interesting things about animals, don't they? The old cattle, wild cattle, they have their laws of the herd, of course they do, their protocol, their pecking order, but they didn't invent it. It's just instinct with them. And the order generally is that the biggest lion rules the roost, the biggest bull, he rules the roost until some silly upstart of a young bull comes and contests it with him, and if he's able to to defeat the old bull, well then the young bull takes over and he rules the roost, and he has all the lovely cows. Of course he does. Woe betide any whippersnapper of a bull, a bullock that comes and tries to dispute with him while he's the reigning bull. It's no good coming along if you're a younger bull, coming to the big old bull who's the chief one in the herd and saying, now look here, I propose we be equal under the law, my boy. You have one cow, and I'll have one cow. Well, you can have two so long as I have one. You try it out. Oh no, not among the animals. There, you're not equal under the law. People say that's merely animal instinct. Men are different. Men don't work just by instinct. Indeed, one of the things that we have to try and control is instinct and curb our instincts. Because if we were to give way to our instincts, we would be back in the jungle overnight. The instinct to revenge, the instinct of oppressing the other fellow, acting like a lion in the jungle. No, you say, we humans, it is our glory that we suppress our instincts and we invent laws, and we are all equal under the law, and we agree to be controlled by the law. And I say again, what tremendous progress. You say, now tell me, seeing we've made such progress from living like savages and beasts in the jungle to being polished, civilized Irishmen, um, now is there not here a hope for mankind? Uh, granted some of our laws may be a little bit defective, nevertheless, if we work away at this, getting more just laws, more equitable laws, and getting everybody in the mind to obey the laws, man will in the end subdue the planet, and the whole planet will be filled with delightful, law-keeping, beautiful, civilized, happy people, and all our fears and troubles will be over, and the age of peace come. So many a humanist likes to think and pins his hope to that. And you as Christians don't agree. Why not? You insist that no, man will not find true peace that way. Peace will only come finally through the coming of Jesus the Messiah. Is it that you are rather nasty, narrow-minded, pessimistic sort of people? Well, no, you say, of course not. Let's visit the old Greeks again. You'll see, in Europe, they were the people, more than any, that began political theory, didn't they? So let's see what they find. Read their political philosophers, and you will see the great contests and arguments about the relation of nature to law. And in the early days, they're very happy and optimistic. Nature? Oh, they say, savage, beastly, uncivilized, nasty nature left to herself. It's the jungle, and that's how we used to live. And the Greeks who were evolutionists, because many were, they like to think that man became out of the slime of the mud, and he came through his jungle stage, and then gradually he became civilized as he invented the idea of law. And this was man becoming truly human and civilized and leading to the life not in the jungle, but city and community life and justice, freedom and peace. Then sheer experience taught a lot of them. It didn't always quite work. Because men who made the law, so experience proved, could twist the law and use it for their own nefarious and unjust ends. And so there were Greeks who came to think the very opposite, and they thought of law now as a thing that could be very easily twisted and perverted by tyrants, used to oppress the poor and the weak. Law used as an instrument of oppression by the strong over the weak, used by unscrupulous men, by selfish men to create bondage for their fellow human beings. And ladies and gentlemen, if you've read any history, you will know the history of Europe. You needn't go any further. How sadly true that has often been. The highest and the best laws twisted by unscrupulous men for the oppression of their fellows. And so there were Greeks who came to think that the thing to do was to banish law and get back to nature. Nature is the ideal. Throw off law and get back to the way that men was meant to live. Freedom. Some of us remember the hippie cults and the flower people of America of a generation back. They had something, there was something in what they said, wasn't there? Uh, big nations and governments can use law for lining their own pockets as an instrument of oppression. And people try to run away from it then and get back to nature and live. And some of them stressed the idea of getting back to loving each other as distinct from law. We don't want law, we want love. Yes. And others went, of course, to the other logical thing, and they said the way to do nonsense law. The law of nature is to be followed, that is, the biggest man wins, and the biggest man has the right to win. And if you've got the muscle, why shouldn't you do it? And so you breed your dictators again. You can't be concerned about the law, something about the law. It's have you got the power to do it, and if you've got the power to do it, it's a natural thing, just as among the animals, that the most powerful man, he controls the lot. Far from it having proved to be the secret that leads to a millennium of peace and plenty, to this very present day, what seemed originally to hold such great promise has become a very ambiguous thing, hasn't it? I'm not telling you to go out and obey the law or live like hippies either. Merely outlining to you what remains a very big problem. And we are now to see it exemplified in this early, in some extent innocent story. Tell me, if ever we men and women are going to be civilized and stop living like beasties in the jungle, is there an absolute law that control- can control our selfish instincts and our animal nature and make us nice to live with? Or is it true that religion itself is only a cover and a front for the oppression of men? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, just think for a moment of the history of Christendom, and in many places where religion itself has just, uh, united with the rich and the powerful and ground the people down in misery and poverty and slavery. Is there a supreme law that contain- can tame the savage within me and cause me to rise up above the mere raw laws and impulses of nature, to live not only as civilized, but as a genuine saint of God. Well, now Daniel was appointed head of the civil service in Persia, a college of three to look over that vast civil service empire. And these were the cultured Persians with their concept of law. But you know, when the other civil servants saw Daniel and he a Jew at the head of the civil service, poof, lions weren't in it, no tigers either. All about claws in velvet. Sheer, raw, animal jealousy of the high polished levels of the Persian civil servants. And they're determined to destroy him to get his job. Talk about sc- is skulduggery the word now, I think? Of ministers of state, maneuvering for high office. Sheer animals, you know. And using the law to do it. What a perversion. Though, of course, when the scheme was first mooted, it sounded delightful. They weren't civil servants or nothing. Because they saw that they couldn't get Daniel except they got him in his religion. So one morning, uh, you know, at the cabinet meeting of the king, uh, with his ministers, um, they had a proposition to put before His Majesty. They were saying, you know, Your Majesty, we've been pondering the vast empire that God has set you over, you see, the gods have set you over, and how disparate they are, and how it'd be a good thing to express the unity of the empire, you see? Now we've got a lot of religions in this empire. Now religion is a very good thing, your majesty, But you know, there's a little thing about religion, it can divide people. There are some people about that would misuse religion and cause civil strife. Now, Your Majesty, the true aim of religion, wouldn't you agree with us, is to unite people. We suggest, Your Majesty, that, uh, there should be a religion year. Well, not perhaps a year, like there is the year of the youth. There would be a month of religion. And during that month, by order of the state, all prayers would have to be directed to Your majesty. I mean, you are appointed by the gods, aren't you, your majesty? Yes, this is majesty. Not I to, um, adopt such a high position. But your majesty, you'll see, you'll be just there a figurehead to unite the religious instinct of the people, and all their prayers would come to or through you to the gods. And religion would do its job in the state, you see, of uniting people. And your majesty, nobody could possibly object. You see, shouldn't be denying the gods, we'd just be coming through you, you see. And if there was somebody so outrageously antisocial, bigoted, with a perverse kind of religion that would object on doctrinal grounds and all that nonsense. You know, it's this doctrine thing that divides people. And if there should be here and there one of these bigoted people, well, then he would deserve to be punished. Can't allow religion to create all the terrible wars that in the past it has created. In the end, His Majesty, not a little flattered, thought on the whole, well, yes, that would be a good idea. And the decree was passed, and the writing was signed, and Daniel heard about it. What do you think of Daniel? Bigoted? Came into office that day. They said, have you read the Times this morning, Daniel? In a decree, you know. It's for the good of all men. Having read it, Daniel went home as usual, and I love the man for it. He didn't just pay up- pray with his head under the pillow. Open the windows. Put his head out, pray towards Jerusalem. City of the Most High God. City of the coming Messiah. There was only one mediator, the great Messiah. And the other religions were as idolatrous as they could be. Only in the true God is salvation. Look unto me and be you saved, for I am God and there is none other, said the God through the prophet Isaiah. Only in the true God is there salvation. It's not a question of being bigoted. It's a question of being concerned for the salvation of men. There isn't salvation in any other, be it Marduk or Astarte or any one of them. Daniel will not compromise the gospel and the truth of the one God in whom alone there is salvation. Would you have taken his viewpoint? Or would you have said we should win more people to the gospel of Jehovah if we go in with this scheme. Daniel prayed. Do you know it's a curious thing? The civil servants, they hadn't attended a prayer meeting, I guarantee you, for months, but they happened to attend a prayer meeting that week. Do you know, they happened to, was that how it was, you know, how these things happen in life? They happened to be going down the street and they heard a noise. Where's that noise coming from? Sounds like prayer. Oh, would you know it, that was Daniel. Well, oh, what a shock. Of course, loyalty made them go and tell his majesty. You never would have believed it, that you know our colleague. We never knew he was such a bigoted man like that. You know we caught him praying not to the king. The king said, so okay, it's okay, it's all right. Yes, well, he's a Jew, see, he has a conscience, and uh... Oh no, they said, your majesty, the law. And you signed the writing. And the stability of the state depends on it. So Daniel was thrown to the lions. Not all religious persecution has been motivated by such plain evident envy, of course not. But here now in Daniel, the first example of persecution of the Jewish religion. And Daniel was thrown to the lions. Tell me, do you believe that story? Huh? And when he was thrown to the lions, an angel came and shut the mouth of the lions. Believe that? Oh, magnificent old lions. They weren't civil servants, you know, they were just animals. It was their nature to be jealous. I mean, if there were only one, uh, one gazelle to go after, you watch the lions at it, the biggest lion gets it, you see. So I believe it. Yes, let's believe it. Of course, it's the word of God. There is a power that can stop and overcome animal instinct, and it shut the mouth of the lions. Yes, I expect you're more interested in asking the question nowadays. We too have got the old animal within us, haven't we? It's not sometimes merely civil servants who get jealous, I've known preaching brethren like myself to get jealous. One man gives a marvelous good sermon, and the next man isn't much good, and when they go out, the people are all praising the one man and not the next man. Oof. Animal jealousy. How our animal passions do make a jungle sometimes, even of our homes, don't they? Tell me, is it true, or is religion just a facade, a lot of words, or is there really a power, a law that can lift us above mere animal instinct and animal behavior. The blessed Apostle Paul tells us, doesn't he, of such a law in Romans chapter eight. What the law of Moses could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his son. Condemn sin in the flesh. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. Ultimately, that is the only answer to the human predicament. The reality of salvation in Christ, the coming of God's Holy Spirit to indwell the life of every believer. The world waits still to see whether religion is merely another game of power, politics, and hypocrisy, or whether it is a real salvation that can lift a man in his office, in his home, in his workplace, above the level of the jungle, and turn him into a saint. So Daniel was delivered and made the point to His Majesty that it wasn't disloyal to his, disloyalty to His Majesty that had made him object. It was loyalty to God, and ultimately loyalty to man's salvation. For to see this issue and say that Jehovah and the idols are all the same thing, and there's no difference, they all go to the same end, and they're all really aiming at the same thing, is a lie. That is not true. Salvation is only in God, says Isaiah, and we who live in New Testament times have scriptures that tell us that even more emphatically. One God, one mediator between God and men. There is salvation in none other, no other name under heaven given amongst men, whereby you must be saved. For man's sake, we must never compromise the uniqueness of Christ, the uniqueness of God, and the uniqueness of his gospel of salvation. Well, Daniel got out of the pit, and uh, Darius, bit of an animal, for all he was king, decided to put the civil servants in the lion's den to see how they get on. They didn't believe that there was a law that could, um, subdue the savage and the beast. They were thrown to the lions, but the angel that had shut their mouths for Daniel had now gone back to heaven, and the result was that when the civil servants were thrown to the lions, the biggest animals won. And that was the end of a civil service. Let's go to our study time.