Daniel 6 - Resolved faith

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I'll add my welcome to that of Doug's. It's good that you're here with us this morning. Great to have you with us, especially if you are first time here today. We have morning tea out through the double doors there after the service and you're welcome to stay and join us. Get to know us a little bit over tea and coffee if you have the time. If you got your Bible there, you'll need that. We're going to be in Daniel chapter six as lindle mentioned. We're continuing this look through the book of Daniel, looking at this idea, this concept, this reality of resolved faith. If you're here for the first time this morning, that's the definition on the screen that we're talking about there. It's a faith that's firm in purpose or intent, a faith that is determined and unwavering. We saw some weeks back in Daniel chapter three, the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar gave us this great example of what resolved faith looks like in practice as he talks about Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Nebuchadnezzar said they were servants who trust in God and yield up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. That's resolved faith. That's what we're talking about this morning. Let's pray and ask God to help us as we open his word. Lord God, we thank you for your word today and Lord for the way in which you've made yourself known to us in the scriptures. Prepare our hearts Lord by the power of your Holy Spirit that we might receive your word and hear with joy what it is that you want to say to us today. Silence Lord, every voice in us but your own so that we might hear your word clearly and then obey it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Daniel six is one of those Bible stories many of us have known for a long time. Maybe you heard it first at Sunday school. You might have seen it on a children's Bible in a picture story book. Daniel sitting peacefully among the lions like your little tame house cats not wild animals. Maybe you're saying songs about it in Sunday school or if you're a parent you had songs about Daniel playing for your kids as they were growing up. I bet many of us in the room could tell us the story of Daniel in the lion's den without even opening the chapter. We know it don't we? Daniel prays he gets caught. He's thrown into the lion's den. God shuts the mouths of the lions and Daniel miraculously survives. Because we know the ending of the story. We're so familiar with it. I think we can sometimes forget just how real and how frightening this actually was. It's not a tame story. It's not a cute story. It's not a story about some guy having a sleepover with a bunch of friendly cats. Now this was a real den of hungry lions. You can read in the chapter that the folk who kind of set Daniel up with this trap and caused him to end up in the lion's den. They eventually got thrown in by the king and they were eaten by the lions before they even hit the ground. It was wild. It's a frightful story. It's a story of a faithful servant of God who's targeted by powerful men who's trapped by an unjust law who's abandoned to certain deaths, sealed in that pit and then is miraculously rescued. Because the living God intervened. Now I think Daniel 6 poses this serious question being a serious story and the question is what happens to faithfulness to God when it becomes costly? What happens to your faithfulness to God when it becomes costly? It's one thing to trust God when faith is respected. It's one thing to follow Jesus when there's no real cost to say that Jesus is my Lord when that confession doesn't challenge our comfort. It doesn't challenge our security, our reputation, our future or our relationships. It can be easy to say that. But what happens when our obedience to God is put under pressure. When doing the right thing in life makes it harder. What happens when people around us say you can keep your faith but just keep it private. Don't let it shape your actions or your decisions. Don't let it interfere with what everyone else expects. I think this is the serious question that Daniel chapter 6 helps us to face. As we come to this passage I think we need to be quite clear upfront what it is and is not teaching. Daniel chapter 6 is not a promise that God will always rescue his people from danger in the way that Daniel was rescued. It's not saying that if we just have enough faith then God will make sure that no harm comes to us. And it's certainly not saying that in every difficult situation it's going to end with this visible triumph in this life. The Bible doesn't allow us to say those things. Many faithful servants of God have suffered. Many have been persecuted. Many have died. Many are suffering today in parts and places around the world. Even in the book of Daniel, Daniel's friends said to Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 3 that God was able to deliver them from the furnace when they were thrown into that fiery furnace back in chapter 3. But what did they say? They said even if he's not we won't bow down to the idol. That's resolve faith. Resolve faith doesn't say God's got to give me the outcome that I want. Resolve faith says God is worthy of my trust no matter the outcome. And I think that's what we'll see in Daniel chapter 6. By the time we reach this chapter time has gone on. Pastor Dylan mentioned that last week as we looked at chapter 5. This is real people in real places at a real time in history. And some time has gone on by now. Daniel's no longer a young man. He's lived through decades of exile. Way back in Daniel chapter 1 we saw he was taken as a young man, brought into Babylon as an exile. He and his three friends were trained in the culture and ways of Babylon. And then they're forced to serve under these foreign rulers in that culture that didn't honor the Lord. Daniel's been here now for probably 60 years. And he's watched earthly power parade itself as if it's permanent. Kings have risen and kings have fallen. And yet Daniel remains faithful to God. And I reckon this is probably the most striking thing about Daniel. We often remember Daniel for these big dramatic moments. As he refused the kings food, as he interpreted dreams, as he told hard truths to those kings. We remember Daniel for being thrown in the lion's den. And yet I reckon we miss the significance that behind all of these dramatic moments is years and years of consistency and obedience. It's a lifetime of resolved faith. Daniel's been living as an exile in this foreign land for 60 years. While we've got a highlight, a big dramatic moment in Daniel chapter 6, it's the decades of prayer and personal integrity that go behind that that I think are significant. It's Daniel over the decades trusting God, even when the headlines of history seem to belong to Babylon, to Persia, and to the human kings. Daniel 6 is going to, if you're taking notes, it's going to tell us what resolved faith looks like when the cost becomes clear. There's three things we learned this morning. Resolved faith remembers that God is sovereign. It stands firm when we're threatened and it trusts the God who saves. So let's look at the first one of those in verses 1 to 5 of Daniel chapter 6. So it begins chapter 6 with a change of government. We saw it at the end of chapter 5 last week. The great Babylon has fallen. King Belshazzar was slain. Darius the mead is now on the throne. And he's organising this new empire. He's restructuring the upper management and the officials. And in the first five verses there, we can see that he appoints new officials, new power arrangements. Look at verses 1 to 3 of chapter 6. It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. I'll just pause there for a second. Darius appoints these 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom. A satraps just a provincial governor in ancient Medan and Persian empires. And over these 120 satraps he appoints three administrators, one of which is Daniel. Daniel does such a good job and distinguishes himself so greatly that King Darius plans to set him over the whole kingdom. Stop and think about that for a moment. Striking. Daniel is an exile. He's not at home in Jerusalem. He's not living in the kingdom as it was meant to be. He's serving the machinery of a foreign empire. And yet he serves with such wisdom, faithfulness and reliability that even this pagan king recognizes something exceptional in him. And that's been the story of Daniel's journey for this past 60 years. Every pagan king has seen something exceptional in Daniel. His character, his conduct was above reproach. Even though he's forced to live and serve in this foreign culture surrounded by foreign gods, Daniel resolves to live faithfully where God had placed him. And I think that's a key point. Daniel doesn't withdraw into bitterness or despair. I've been pulled away. I'm not in Jerusalem anymore. This is rubbish. He doesn't fall into bitterness or despair. He doesn't become careless in that situation, thinking, why even bother? It's not my true home anyway. Why should I do a good job here in Babylon? No, he doesn't do that. He doesn't say, well, I'm not going to do a good job because these rulers don't even honor the living God. I'm not going to work hard for them. No, he doesn't do that either. Daniel faithfully serves because he knows that behind every earthly position, every earthly post that he's given, every earthly responsibility, every earthly change of government, over all of these things, there is a sovereign God who rules over all. This has been one of the great themes of the book of Daniel. As we've seen these human rulers come and go. Nebuchadnezzar in chapter one, he looked untouchable. Turned out he wasn't. Belshazzar, his great-great-grandson, he looked secure even as the mead surrounded Babylon. He's throwing a party with his officials and nobles we saw last week, but he wasn't secure. Babylon looked permanent. It looked too big to fail, but it wasn't. Friends, we need to know that the kingdoms of this world may at times appear impressive, but the reality is none of them are ultimate. Only our God is. Daniel's faith is anchored in that reality that God is sovereign. That's why he can serve an earthly king without worshiping that earthly king because he knows that there's a heavenly king above him. It's why Daniel can work hard in a foreign empire without giving his heart to the empire because he knows that God's kingdom is the one that endures. It's why Daniel can remain steady in the midst of all this political unrest and changing of circumstances because his hope is not built on what happens through the one that's sitting on the throne in Sousa, in Babylon, or in our case in Canberra, Washington, Beijing, London, wherever it is. That's not where the hope lies. Daniel's hope is in the living God. He remembers that the Lord reigns, that God is sovereign over all. This is what makes Daniel faithful. I think sometimes we can misunderstand the sovereignty of God. We can think, well, if God's truly sovereign, if he's in charge over all things, then really what I do, my human agency, that doesn't really matter much in the light of the sovereignty of God. But I think that's the wrong way to understand sovereignty. Daniel's story shows us the opposite. Because God is sovereign, Daniel's life and integrity and his work matters. We'll come to see as we read more of the chapter, Daniel's prayers to God actually matter. Because God is sovereign, Daniel doesn't need to grasp or scheme or manipulate or panic or compromise in order to survive in this pressure. He can simply resolve to be faithful because God is sovereign. And that faithfulness creates a problem. Let's keep reading verse four of chapter six. At this, the administrators and satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs. But they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. These other administrators and satraps were trying to find grounds for charges against him in the scheme of government affairs. And they couldn't find anything. Their search for corruption found nothing. Their search for negligence came up clean. They searched for some sort of hidden scandal or some careless decision, some pattern of dishonesty or failure to use against Daniel. Nothing. It's quite a remarkable public testimony. It doesn't mean that Daniel was perfect or sinless. The Bible tells us that all of us have sinned and we fall short of the glory of God. So he's not because he was without sin. But as far as the duty is entrusted to him, Daniel is found to be trustworthy. He's not lazy. He's not incompetent. He's not greedy. And again, I think that challenges us because our faith is not tested in a lion's den. It's tested in the ordinary responsibilities of our everyday lives. It's in how we're honest with money, how we're diligent at work, how we speak truthfully and treat people fairly. It's whether we do what we say that we will do, whether we're the same person during the week as we are when we come to church on Sunday. It's whether our faith in Christ makes us more trustworthy, not less. It should challenge us to realize that there's a kind of Christian witness that happens even before we open our mouths. It says something about our hope in Jesus if we claim to have that hope. We can't reduce our Christian witness to simply good behavior. That's not what I'm saying. But our lives can either commend the message of the gospel or it can undermine it. This is where we need that consistent, resolved faith of Daniel. Daniel's enemies disagree with his faith and they resent his position and they come to this conclusion in verse five. We read, finally the men said, we'll never find any basis for the charges against Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God. His faithfulness was the only way that they could attack him because his allegiance wasn't to the king. His first allegiance was to God. And I think that's where resolved faith remembers, right? God is sovereign, God is supreme, God is ultimate and stands above every other authority in the world. If you think about it, we're all a bit like Daniel. We're all under authority at some point in our lives. Parents in authority over children and kids, your parents have a real authority from God, but they're not God. Those of us that are workers, we have bosses over us, employers who have an exercise authority over us. It's a real authority, but our boss is not God. The government has authority, but again, the government is not the Lord. Pastors and church leaders, we exercise an authority in the church, but we're not God. Our cultural expectations that speak to us and shout to us from all angles, that can be powerful, but our culture is not God. Even public opinion at times can be loud, but it's not God. Only God is God. And that sounds pretty obvious, right, until obedience becomes costly. That's where we need this resolved faith that knows that the Lord is sovereign. So that's our first point. Second point in verses six to 10. Resolved faith stands firm when threatened. Daniel's accusers, they recognize they can't bring him down through misconduct. And in verses six to eight, you can read that during the week, they set a trap. I'll just summarize it. They set a trap for Daniel. They come to Darius with flattery and manipulation, and they propose this decree. Oh, King Darius, for 30 days, let nobody pray to any other God except you. And if they do, chuck him into the den of lions. It's a clever trap because it appealed to Darius's pride. As the king. It's a clever trap because once it was signed into law by Darius, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, the law was set. It couldn't even be changed by the king. It's a clever trap. It's a clever trap because his enemies know that Daniel is still just going to pray to God because Daniel knows that God is sovereign. Daniel won't stop praying to the sovereign Lord. They knew that Daniel's enemies knew his habits well enough to weaponize them against him. They know that for Daniel prayer is not an emergency measure, but a daily discipline. His devotion to God wasn't a private hobby that he could put on pause for a month. Now this was a relationship with the living God. These people who were coming against Daniel, they knew that even if the law of the king forbade prayer, Daniel would rather obey God than men. And so in verse nine of chapter six, you can read that Darius signs the law into effect and look at Daniel's response in verse 10. Let's just have a look there. When Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God just as he had done before. I reckon this is probably the most challenging verse of the chapter. Daniel knows the decree has been signed. He knows there are consequences. It's not a misunderstanding. The lion's den is real. The threat to his life is real. And yet Daniel's response is, he prays just as he had done before. Daniel's faith in the sovereignty of God allows him to stand firm when threatened. To pray, even though it wasn't safe or convenient or socially acceptable, Daniel prayed because God is God. That's how he stands firm. I think it's also important to note too that Daniel's standing firm in the face of this threat, the way that he stands firm is significant, I think. He doesn't kick his heels and kick up a stink and make a spectacle. He doesn't try and make himself look heroic. He doesn't organize a rebellion or a protest. He doesn't insult the king. He doesn't retaliate against his enemies. But he doesn't quietly surrender his obedience to God either. He continues in faithfulness. There's a steadiness and a consistency here that we need. I think sometimes we can be tempted to compromise whenever faithfulness becomes costly. Maybe we can be tempted to become combative as though the goal is to win a fight rather than to honor God. Daniel doesn't do either of those things. He's not cowardly. He's not quarrelsome. He's faithful. He resolves to stand firm in the face of the threat. And I think that's an important distinction. Christian courage is not the same as being loud. It's not the same as being argumentative or making every issue a battle. Christian courage is humble obedience when the pressure is on. Sometimes that obedience will be quiet. Sometimes it'll be visible. Sometimes it'll involve speaking or refusing. Sometimes it'll involve continuing to do the ordinary things that God has commanded, even when they're no longer easy or safe for us to do them. And that's what Daniel did. He got down on his knees three times a day and he prayed just as he's done before. Daniel's courage in verse 10 I think is connected to the daily disciplines of the past 60 years. All the life living up to this verse. It exposed what Daniel already believed and did in response to this trial. I think that's sometimes what difficult times in our lives does for us. Pressure reveals in us what's been forming in us over the previous years of our life. If we've been training our hearts to trust comfort, then pressure will feel like a loss of everything. If we've been training our hearts to trust in the approval of others, then rejection is going to control us. If we've been training our hearts to trust in success and then failure is going to crush us. But if by God's grace we've been learning to trust the Lord in everyday ordinary ways, then when those extraordinary days come, when the pressure builds, we'll have the courage to stand firm. I think these ordinary Christian habits and spiritual disciplines that we see Daniel had, they matter. Prayer matters, reading Scripture matters, regularly gathering together with God's people matters, confessing sin to God and to one another matters, encouraging and receiving correction matters, serving the Lord matters, remembering the Lord's supper. All of these Christian disciplines, they matter because God uses those daily disciplines to strengthen and steady us so that we can stand firm when the pressure builds. I think sadly sometimes we want that crisis level courage without the ordinary everyday dependence on the Lord. We want to stand firm in the lion's den, but we might neglect our daily diet of prayer and meditating on God's Word. We might want boldness when faith is costly, but that means we've got to trust and hold on to faith in God when it's ordinary. Daniel reminds us that a resolved faith is usually formed slowly, day by day, prayer by prayer, obedience by obedience, trust by trust. Probably most of us are unlikely to face a law like Daniel faced. We're unlikely to be threatened with death because we pray, at least not yet. It doesn't mean that there's no pressure in the culture in which we find ourselves in. I think there's a growing pressure that's building in our culture to keep our faith quiet, to keep it just for you and not let it impact or be displayed in the public sphere. There's pressure to let work define us or to let money rule us. There's pressure to let comfort and convenience direct us. There's an increasing pressure in our culture to treat sexual sin as normal or to soften hard truths in order to be liked. There's all sorts of pressures, pressure to follow the crowd because standing apart feels scary or lonely, pressure as parents to make our children's success more important than their discipleship. Maybe pressure to be silent about Jesus in the workplace because you don't want to be seen as that weird Christian guy. Sometimes the pressure comes from within our own hearts. We want an easier path. We want approval, control, comfort. We want to avoid awkward conversations or thought to be thought well of. Friends, in all of these moments of pressure and any moment of pressure that you might find yourself in, when we feel threatened because of our faith, Daniel's example is not stand up and be oppressive, it's simply be faithful. Keep praying, keep obeying, keep trusting, keep your allegiance clear. Remember that Jesus is Lord, that God is sovereign. And if you fail, when you fail because we all do, don't despair. Come back to God in repentance and faith and know that he has forgiven us. Resolve faith stands firm with when we're threatened, not because we're strong in ourselves, but because God is sovereign and he's powerful to save. That's our last thing this morning. We'll look at that very quickly. Verses 11 to 28. Daniel's court praying, the report gets back to the king, he gets chucked into the lion's den. In verse 14 of chapter 6, you can read that the king is greatly distressed. He really thought well of Daniel. He liked the guy. And so he wanted to save him. And verse 14 of chapter 6 tells us that King Darius was determined to save him. He worked hard until sunset to try and figure out some way to save Daniel, but he couldn't. Darius was powerless to change the outcome and rescue Daniel from the lions. In verses 15 to 16, we see that he goes in. I think this is one of the great ironies of the chapter. Darius, the one who had accepted this decree that set himself up as the only one that anybody could make it appeal to for 30 days, is now powerless in the face of his own law to do anything to save Daniel. The king says in verse 16, have a look at that. Verse 16, may your God whom you serve continually rescue you. They sealed Daniel in the lion's den, the king's signet ring, and the rings of the noble seal him in. And Daniel's situation from a human point of view is final. I mean, that's it. You think he's lion food. No hope of an appeal, no escape route, no human rescue. Not even the king could save him. Verse 18, you can read that the king spends a sleepless night in the palace. He doesn't eat. He doesn't take of any entertainment. He's so worried for Daniel. And that's a contrast too when you think about it. Look at the contrast between Darius and Daniel. Daniel's in the lion's den. Darius is in the palace, but who is really at peace? Darius has the power, the wealth, the servants, the status, but he can't sleep. Daniel has lions and stones and a sentence of death. And yet the text in chapter six gives no hint of panic at all from Daniel. The king's anxiety shows the limits of earthly power. And Daniel's deliverance will show the power of the living God. Have a look at verses 19 to 20. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lion's den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguish voice, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to rescue you from the lions? It's a great question of the chapter. Is God able to save? Can the living God rescue his servant when every human door was shut? Daniel's answer in verses 21 to 22. May the king live forever. My God sent his angel and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in his sight, nor have I ever done any wrong before you, your majesty. Darius gives the order to lift Daniel out of the den and they find no wounds on him. Verse 23, why? Why are there no wounds on him? It says because he had trusted in his God. Darius had hoped that Daniel's God would save him, but Darius wasn't confident in that. That's why he had the sleepless night in the palace. Maybe Darius thought Daniel's God was absent or silent in the face of this suffering that Daniel was about to endure. But what we see in Daniel's miraculous deliverance is that God wasn't absent. He wasn't powerless. The same God who allowed Daniel to enter into the lion's den was also the very God who ruled over the lions inside of it. It's deeply important. We need to know friends that God's sovereignty doesn't mean that Daniel avoided the den. God's sovereignty meant that he wasn't alone in the den. Remember, there's no promise that chapter six is not telling us that if we follow God, we won't ever face suffering. We may face it, but we need to know that God will be with us in the midst of that as he was with Daniel. If we hope to have the resolved faith of Daniel, we need to trust in the living God who saves and rescues his people. God's power is not cancelled by the suffering he allows. His faithfulness is not measured only by whether he removes the trials before it hurts. God saves and rescues. We need to understand his saving in the right way. Here in chapter six, God miraculously saves Daniel from death. But in other places, we see God save people through death. The Bible doesn't give us a simplistic formula where faithfulness always leads to an immediate earthly rescue. Turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11 for a moment. Hebrews chapter 11, it's the great list of some of the heroes of our Christian faith. The author gives us this long list of men and women throughout history who've demonstrated the same type of resolved faith as Daniel. Look at verses 32 to 39. Verse 32 of Hebrews 11, What more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barack, Samson, and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle, and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Again, we see God's power to save, a whole list of people where God has supernaturally and miraculously and powerfully saved. But keep reading. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sought in two. They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goat skins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. See, just as there were many by God's power who were saved, there were many others who died and some of them in cruel and awful ways. And yet the author of Hebrews chapter 11, what does he say about all of these people? Look at verse 39. These were all commended for their faith. The difference is not that one group had faith and the other did not. The difference is that God in his wisdom, he works out his purposes and plans in different ways. Sometimes he delivers from the fire. Sometimes he sustains us in the fire. Sometimes he rescues from death. Sometimes he brings his people through death into resurrection life. In each and every case, salvation belongs to the Lord. Our Christian hope is bigger than just survival, friends. See, if we hope only that God will keep us safe in this life, then suffering is going to destroy us. It's going to destroy our confidence. If we hope that only God will fix every earthly problem, then unanswered questions are going to undo us. If we hope that our obedience will lead to comfort, then costly discipleship will feel like a bait and switch. If our hope is in the living God who raises the dead, then even death is not the end. That's where our hope should lie. And that's where Daniel 6 points us towards Jesus. There's a good contrast between Daniel and looking forward to Jesus. Daniel was a faithful servant. Jesus was the perfectly faithful son. Daniel was targeted by jealous enemies. Jesus was handed over by envious leaders. Daniel is condemned through no fault can be found in his public service. Jesus has declared innocent and yet sentenced to crucifixion. Daniel goes into that pit. He's sealed with a stone. Jesus was laid in a tomb with a stone rolled across the entrance. Daniel emerges alive at dawn. Jesus rose on the third day. Those women came to the tomb and found the death had been defeated. Daniel was spared from death. Jesus entered death. Daniel was rescued because he was innocent of the charges against him. Jesus was truly innocent and yet he died for the guilty. Daniel comes out of the den to continue his earthly life. Jesus comes out of the tomb as the risen Lord, never to die again. Daniel's rescue is a sign of God's power. Jesus' resurrection is the very center of God's salvation plan. Friends, that's the good news of the gospel. The cornerstone on which our resolved faith can stand. God has given us that Savior, that the Savior we need in the person and the work of Jesus. So what does this mean, just to finish up? If you're not a Christian here this morning, then Daniel's six is inviting you to more than admiration. Don't just admire Daniel's courage. Come to know Daniel's God. Come to the living God who rescues and saves. Come to Jesus, that risen and saving King. We don't become Christians by being brave enough for the lion's den. We become Christians by putting our faith in Jesus, the one who died to save us. And friends, if you are a Christian here this morning, then let this passage strengthen your confidence. Your employer may affect your work, but they don't hold your life. Politicians may shape the world around you, but they don't hold your future. Money might provide real needs, but it doesn't hold your security. Public opinion at times feels powerful, but it doesn't hold your worth. Health, success, comfort, circumstances, these all rise and fall, but they don't hold our hope. They shouldn't, because our life is hidden with Christ in God. Amen. The resolved faith of Daniel remembers that God is sovereign, stands firm when threatened, and trusts the God who saves. We're going to close our service in a word of prayer, and then we're going to go out to morning tea. I just encourage you to continue meditating on that. There's anything this morning that has raised questions for you that you want to talk more about. Feel free to have a chat to me after the service. I'd love to tell you more. Let's pray. Loving Heavenly Father, you are the living God. You endure forever. Your kingdom will not be destroyed. Your dominion will never end. Thank you for showing us your power and your faithfulness in Daniel chapter six. Thank you for Daniel's example of steady, prayerful, resolved faith. Thank you, Lord, that his rescue points us to the greater rescue that we have in Jesus Christ. Father, we confess that there are times when we're fearful, when we compromise too easily, when we neglect prayer, when we care too much about approval and comfort. Lord, for all these things, would you forgive us? We thank you that Jesus stood firm for us. That he died for our sins and rose again, and that in him we have a Savior who can bring us safely through to relationship with you and a place in your everlasting kingdom. Lord, would you strengthen us by your spirit? Help us to remember that you are sovereign. Help us to stand firm when threatened, when obedience is costly. Help us to trust you are the God who saves. And Father, I pray for those who are here today that may not yet know the salvation of Jesus. Lord, would you open their hearts to turn to him that they might receive life in his name? We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Savior.