Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] To what we're doing. We are continuing this short series we're doing on biblical identity. And, guys, you know, I said this last week, but this is a short series, and I'm going to remind us of this a little bit each week. I really think this is an incredibly important idea to talk about right now.
[00:00:18] We live in a cultural moment where there is an immense pressure for folk to create their own unique and fulfilling identity.
[00:00:28] And I think if we're just being completely honest, if we look soberly, the overarching cultural momentum seems to be saying that that endeavor is not going well, that people are really bad at that, and it actually makes it really hard for humans to flourish.
[00:00:47] Most of you guys know this, but my family got to finalize our adoption a few weeks ago. It was. Thank you.
[00:00:53] It was one of, and I'm not exaggerating, the most significant moments of my entire life. It was one of the most significant things I've ever been a part of. Adoption is simultaneously beautiful and tragic, and that's how it always is, right? It's beautiful because a new family is being made, right? Security and safety and inclusion and all those things, they come together in this way that is strikingly similar to how we experience Jesus in salvation, Right? Like, it's incredibly powerful, and it shows and teaches and has helped me experience Christ in new and beautiful ways. I am beyond grateful to the Lord for the amazing beauty of our adoption. But the reality is, it's also always sorrowful.
[00:01:43] Adoption is always sorrowful because it only exists because of sin and brokenness.
[00:01:50] Like, if you look at an adoption, in spite of all the beauty, there's something in you that inherently knows this was never supposed to happen.
[00:01:59] Right?
[00:02:00] And I, in all the gratitude I have and all the excitement we got to experience over the last couple weeks, I got to see that play out in real time.
[00:02:08] My son has deeply struggled with coming to terms with his own story. And one of the ways that surfaced for him is in the idea of his last name changing. You know, he lived with his biological family for literally just a couple months.
[00:02:24] He has no real connection to that name in the way we think of last names. Right?
[00:02:30] But the thing that's important to remember is that his former last name has been with him the whole time.
[00:02:37] He's lived in tons of different homes with tons of different families and tons of different parents, but he's always had that piece, right? And so having that change was actually really painful for him. It really ripped at his sense of who he is in the world and how he belongs and what it means for him to be him. That's a big weight for a six year old boy to carry, you know what I'm saying? And so as much as it is beautiful, it's intense, I share that. Not to like just air my son's dirty laundry to the whole church. That's not what I'm trying to do, but because it's speaks to this deep truth of the human experience.
[00:03:15] Guys, we are all of us designed at our core and looking for a life that has definition, a life that has purpose, that has meaning, that creates fulfillment. And when that gets messed up, it dramatically dysregulates us, right?
[00:03:37] We don't like to have our sense of self understanding broken up.
[00:03:42] That is what we mean when we use the word identity. That's what we're talking about. Strangely, even though like we're doing this as a series in a church and we're looking at Scripture, this is a modern word and really in a lot of ways a modern idea. It was not in wide use before it was picked up by psychologists and sociologists in the 1950s and it was really brought up following World War II and all the societal and mental breakdowns it caused. And as veterans were processing the brokenness and the intensity and the horrors they experienced in World War II, it really broke up a lot of people's self assumed self and societal understandings. The thing about that is though, the horror, the personal destruction of World War II like that didn't cause psychologists to invent a new idea or a new term out of air, but rather it was a crisis that caused them to put concrete language to something that human beings have existed within and experienced forever. Right?
[00:04:43] Something that had existed up until that point as an often subtle and often unspoken bedrock of human experience was suddenly, dramatically, globally undermined. And we need to think about it, we need to put language to it. I would argue that our current cultural moment, with the advent and advancement of the Internet, of smartphones, of social media, of constant digital connection, of constant digital accessibility, has actually caused a similar enough social disruption that it makes it important for us to stop and consider this question again.
[00:05:19] Who are we and where and how do we exist in this world? What is our place in this world? And here's the thing, beloved, the Bible speaks to your identity.
[00:05:32] Jesus speaks to who you are. His design for you is the very place that we can find shelter in the storms of the this cultural climate.
[00:05:41] We can rest secure in who we are, in what our place is, and how to live a fulfilled life. In this world. Last week, we talked about how we understand our identity through our physical beings. Right? The fact. The idea that you. You are a body made by God in his image for good and for his kingdom. And that body, though affected by the curse, is precious and worth caring for. Right.
[00:06:04] Well, today we're going to transition and we're going to talk about your mind.
[00:06:08] We're going to do that, by the way, by Looking at Daniel 1. If you want to go ahead and turn there in your Bible, we're going to be in Daniel chapter one today. So you don't have a Bible with you. Look underneath the chairs there, around.
[00:06:17] We really believe in the importance of access to God's Word here at Emmanuel Fellowship Church. And if you don't own a physical copy of God's Word, I would strongly encourage you to just take one of our pew Bibles. We'd love for you to have it or talk to a pastor. We'll get you a nicer one.
[00:06:31] We're going to be in Daniel chapter one today. And I think, guys, one of the weightiest pushes of this current cultural narrative regarding identity is this idea that your mind is the primary seat of yourself. And I'm sorry that some of this stuff we're speaking kind of these abstracts, but I really think it's just kind of necessary to the discussion. I think a lot of what our cultural discussion around identity right now has to do with this idea that your mind is the primary seat of yourself. It's the primary way by which you know who you are. I think, therefore I am, right? That. That. That's kind of built into the bedrock of our culture, and that can actually make a lot of sense, as we'll see from the scripture today. Your mind is the seat of your will in this world. Your reason, your emotions, your morality, your imagination. A lot of our lives are lived wound up around our minds, right?
[00:07:28] And so it can be really natural to just kind of assume that's who I am.
[00:07:33] But I actually think we put dramatically too much emphasis on our minds in modern Western society. And here's what I mean by that. Don't get me wrong, your mind is wonderful. Like, it's. It's a gift from the Lord. It's the word we use to describe the marriage of your physical and your spiritual self.
[00:07:56] It's bound up in your brain and biochemical reactions, but it also contains your spark, your creativity, your morality, your understanding. It's this wonderful marriage of the spiritual and physical complexity that is a human being. Like, your mind is beautiful. And I'm not downplaying that part of you, but we can easily, in our moment, so over emphasize the mind that we ignore our body and our spirit and what those two things actually plainly tell us about ourselves and our place in the world.
[00:08:33] So that's my main point today. My main point today is going to be this. Your mind serves the kingdom of God.
[00:08:40] That's the real thing we're going to see today. Your mind is wonderful. It's a gift. But it's made by God to serve the kingdom of God. Now, I am confident that already, in what is already a difficult discussion, like many of us already don't like what I'm saying. Like, this is just scratchy for some of us as we're hearing it. Many of us here, myself included, by the way, struggle in our relationship with our mind.
[00:09:05] And the idea that this is this good, wonderful thing made by God for his kingdom can actually be painful to engage. There's this phrase, it's become really popular. It originated with the author Anne Lamont. It's worked its way a lot into, like, the culture around addiction recovery and mental health awareness, in part because the singer of Linkin Park, Chester Bennington, quoted it in an interview, like a few months before his death by suicide. And he quoted as a description of his own relationship to his mental health. The quote essentially says. You'll hear it in different versions, but it essentially says, you know, my mind is like a dangerous neighborhood. I shouldn't be there alone or at night.
[00:09:41] That's kind of the quote.
[00:09:43] And first off, who thought they were getting a Linkin park reference in the ceremony today?
[00:09:47] I just have to say, your pastor is a millennial. I apologize.
[00:09:51] It's just part of what you signed up for. There's no getting away from that. But seriously, I think a lot of us resonate with this idea. Being alone with our own thoughts and our own mind can feel scary, feels dark, feels. Feels trapping. It reminds me of the song car radio by 21 pilots, where the singer laments having his car radio stolen because now he has to drive around alone with his thoughts. See, I can be multi generational. That was for the Gen Z in the room.
[00:10:21] Goes together. It goes together.
[00:10:24] I don't know any Gen X bands. I don't know 80s hair bands. Are they sad and mopey? Someone help me.
[00:10:31] Is that even the right. I don't know if that's the right one, guys, I'm sorry. Anyway, the point is this. The point is this.
[00:10:38] The biblical claim that your mind is a beautiful gift from God that that serves you and serves God's kingdom. That can feel like just a fever dream to many of us, right?
[00:10:50] A lot of us think about our minds, especially those of us who struggle with our mental health. And the last thing we think of is a beautiful tool to serve me and serve the kingdom of God. We think of darkness, sorrow, being trapped, fear, anxiety.
[00:11:09] If that's you today, please hear me when I say I understand what you're talking about.
[00:11:14] I've struggled on and off in my life with anxiety and depression, and there are times when all I want in the world is to numb out my thoughts with noise and distraction.
[00:11:24] As we'll see in our text today. Even those of us who have minds that have been deeply and dramatically affected by the curse. To ignore our minds, to push away, to numb our minds, guys. It is to ignore one of God's greatest gifts to you and one of your greatest resources for the sake of the kingdom. Praise be to God. Praise be to God that no matter how scary a neighborhood your mind may feel like, you need never approach it alone because of the gospel. Christ is with us.
[00:11:57] He steps into that part of us with us, and he can bring about redemption even to the darkest parts of our person. So pray with me, and let's look at this famous Sunday school text. Jesus, we need you this morning.
[00:12:11] We ask Holy Spirit that you would be our discipler. We ask that you would be the one who calms us, who quiets us, Lord, even right now, for anxieties and fears and emotions that are bubbling up in this room. I pray that you would just allow your presence to be the defining factor of our engagement with your Word today.
[00:12:31] Allow each and every one of us in this room to experience you in the way we need to hear encouragement, to hear challenge, to hear reminder, to hear conviction. Or let us hear you in your Word and let us leave today having been encouraged by you in the way our hearts need.
[00:12:47] You're the only one who can do this, Jesus, so we pray it in your name. Amen.
[00:12:52] Daniel, Chapter one. We're going to start in verse one.
[00:12:55] And again, this will probably be familiar to our Sunday school brats in the room, but for those of you who didn't grow up with that, don't worry, we'll get into it. It's an interesting story beginning chapter one, starting in verse one, we read this in the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
[00:13:22] Can we call him King Chad?
[00:13:26] King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from the house of the God. Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Babylon, to the house of his God, and put the vessels, vessels in the treasury of his God. And the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility, young men without any physical defect, good looking, suitable for instruction and all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king's palace. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. And the king assigned them daily provisions from the royal food and from the wine that he drank. They were to be trained for three years, and at the end of that time, they were to attend the king. Among them from the Judites were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. And the chief eunuch gave them names. He gave the name Belteshazzar to Daniel, Shadrach to Hananiah, Meshach to Mishael, and Abednego to Azariah. And Daniel determined that he would not defile himself from the king's food or with the wine he drank.
[00:14:32] So he asked permission from the chief eunuch not to defile himself. Okay, so first off, a lot of names we got through them.
[00:14:41] To any of my recovering church brats, the story is familiar. Yeah.
[00:14:46] For the rest of us, let me take just a moment to kind of catch us up in the story. This is the opening of the Book of Daniel. And essentially it goes like this. The ancient kingdom of Israel was established by God himself after he became brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. And he made with them a covenant like, I will be your God, you will be my people. They made agreements of how they were going to interact and relate to one another. He made a covenant directly with Israel. Eventually, he made a direct covenant with their king. He was setting them up to be his representatives on earth. He would himself live among them in the holy place, in the temple. They would seek him and worship him and remain faithful to him. The problem is that Israel was really bad at this. They were consistently faithless. They broke the covenant over and over and over, generation by generation, from basically the moment they agreed to it. Like it never. They never really had a season of it going well for a long time. Generation after Generation, Israel would wobble between seeking the Lord and worshiping him and then worshiping false gods of the region. Those times of repentance and holiness, they. As Israel goes on, they become fewer, they become farther in between. And over that whole time, God sent prophets for guys, literally hundreds of years. He would send people to Israel, speaking his words, warning them, you made this covenant with me. You made this agreement with me. I love you. Remain faithful to me. If you don't, there will be consequences.
[00:16:24] For generations, God warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and delayed. And eventually he said, okay, this is what you want.
[00:16:37] And he allowed. He allowed his judgment upon his rebellious people to come to fruition.
[00:16:44] He sent God himself empowered and sent the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and they utterly destroyed the kingdom of Israel. The final blow to this was when Babylon's king Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem and finally broke it.
[00:17:01] That conquest happened in several stages, over several years as the Babylonians defeated and repeatedly raided and broke down the city of Jerusalem further and. And further into ruin. They ripped down the wall. They raided the temple and emptied it of its vessels and burned it to the ground. They knocked down the king's palace. And in the midst of all of this, our story picks up, and we're told that King Nebuchadnezzar kidnapped and enslaved a ton of Jerusalem's royalty.
[00:17:34] Now, that's an interesting take. It's an interesting detail in all this. This is the kind of detail that can sound strange to our modern minds. Like, it's familiar because we've heard these stories a million times. But if we stop and think about it, you kind of go, huh?
[00:17:50] Like, he just conquered them. Why would he. Why would he take some of them to his palace and, like, lavish gifts upon them? That kind of doesn't make sense for what we think of, like, an ancient brutal warlord king, right? But you have to remember something. These ancient Near Eastern warlords, like, they were building the concepts of empire in real time.
[00:18:11] Like, that's. That's the thing we easily miss. There had not been earthly empires as big as Assyria or Babylon in this region before. And these guys are literally out there trying to figure it out, trying to figure out how it works. One of the unique things that Nebuchadnezzar did that was new and was so incredibly effective that all the empires after him followed suit was this. It was to kidnap and enslaved the children of conquered royalty.
[00:18:40] The reason is for this, you have to remember, academic education was incredibly rare in this Day literacy, mathematical skill, reason and logic, those hardly existed anywhere. And yet they are incredibly necessary for running human societies, right?
[00:19:00] And so empires as strong as the Babylonians would conquer so much so fast that they outpaced their own academic structures and realize, we don't have anyone smart enough to run the city we just conquered, and we burned it all to the ground and killed everyone. So what do we do? And so cities would become abandoned.
[00:19:20] Nebuchadnezzar said, well, the better thing would be to just kidnap all their children because they've already paid to educate them. And then we'll just spend three or four years brainwashing their children and then just put them in charge of everything. And you know what's wild about that? It worked.
[00:19:36] It worked really well. And you know why it worked? Because these kids, this is awful, but it's true. Just saw their family, their parents, their extended family, and everyone they know brutally and publicly tortured to death.
[00:19:50] And when the adults came in and said, hey, we can do that to you, or we can go put you in like a mine mining coal, or you can live a life of lavish luxury your entire life.
[00:20:03] Which one would you prefer?
[00:20:06] They chose that one, right?
[00:20:09] And so Nebuchadnezzar set up what amounts to an academy at his capital run by his servants. And they would bring in the children of these conquered royalty and they would brainwash them and educate them. You already know math. You already know how to read. Cool.
[00:20:23] Learn our math and our reading and get really good at it. And the best of the best of the best will be assigned as the vassals and advisors over the whole kingdom.
[00:20:34] You could have a life of horrific forced labor as a slave in a mine, or you could be a wealthy and well known and respected king's advisor for the rest of your life.
[00:20:46] And so these guys showed up and they fought really hard to get the good position because what else would you do in such a terrible situation, right?
[00:20:55] This is the situation that Daniel and his friends find themselves in. And by the way, when you think of Daniel and his three friends, you need to be thinking of like late middle school, early high school.
[00:21:09] Think of like 14, 15 year olds put in this situation, right? Like, this is, this is an immensely big situation for these young people to be stuck in.
[00:21:20] They're at the Royal Academy of Nebuchadnezzar. They're slaves of the king's property. Their Hebrew names and identities have been stripped away. They've been given slave names. And by the way, you can go and use your Bible dictionary and basically what the guy did is he said, what does your name mean in Hebrew? And it all meant something like, oh, we honor God, or God is God cool. We're going to swap that to just like a blasphemous God you don't believe in. And that's how all their names were changed from pretty much the same meaning to just swapping out the real God for some idol that they didn't believe in as a way of continuing their brainwashing.
[00:21:51] They're stuck.
[00:21:53] And if they don't want death or hard labor, their option is to impress King Nebuchadnezzar with their academic studies.
[00:22:01] From a purely human standpoint, we kind of have to stop and admire how, like, lucky Daniel and his friends are here because they weren't killed. They were given this opportunity, right? They. They could be dead in the streets in Jerusalem, but they have an opportunity to actually live out their life, have their needs met, and actually have honor and dignity. But it's still a problem, and it's a really big problem.
[00:22:26] It's a really complex problem. And all we're going to see here is that Daniel's problem is both physical and spiritual. You see, Nebuchadnezzar's care for him, for all the students, involves them receiving food from his royal portions. That presents two specific problems. First off, the Babylonians didn't follow God's food laws right as they ate unclean foods according to the Jewish people. But beyond this, Babylonian worship involved a lot of ritual sacrifice of wine and meat to their fake gods. These sacrificed foods were almost always universally collected as royal tax, meaning almost all of the meat and wine at the king's table would have been previously involved in pagan worship before getting there.
[00:23:16] So Daniel's looking at these two things going, I don't want to do either of those things. I don't want to break God's food law. I don't want to eat food defiled. But Daniel is a slave.
[00:23:28] His home is destroyed. His family is all either dead or far away. And yet what we see in this text is that Daniel determined not to defile himself in spite of the way the odds are stacked against him. Daniel determines, I will not defile myself. He knows. He knows here. His person, his body and his spirit, they're all bound up together, right? He has to eat if he's going to succeed in his training. But. But he sees his spiritual connection with God. He knows he has so few remaining avenues for connection with God. Like, I think it's one of the things it's Important to remember here, guys. Daniel's looking at this situation going, I may have been kidnapped.
[00:24:15] My whole society may have been destroyed. The temple is gone, the priests are gone, My family is gone. But I still have God.
[00:24:22] But I have so few avenues for connection with Him.
[00:24:26] Just a few years ago, if Daniel screwed up, if he ate defiled food, or if he broke law, you know what he would do?
[00:24:33] He would go to the temple and offer a sacrifice and be restored to God and move on.
[00:24:37] But now he's looking at this going, I don't have that avenue.
[00:24:41] If I defile myself with how I eat, I have no way of being restored.
[00:24:47] And I have no idea. This is probably the rest of my life. I have to figure out how to stay connected to God.
[00:24:54] He can't bring himself to eat the unclean food and defile himself, cutting off what he sees as his connection to God with no temple to which he can go and restore it. And so he uses his mind to come up with a solution.
[00:25:09] We see here already. His mind holds his reason, his morality, his will. He sees the problem and he understands the problem. He's actively thinking about the mismatch and the problem he's facing. His morality helps him work through the problem and the necessary solution. I can't allow myself to do this. I can't defile himself. I have to remain connected to God any way I can. And he wills that choice into reality. He makes a decision and he acts on it. He goes to the head servant and he straight up just asks, hey, can I not do that?
[00:25:42] Can I not eat the defiled food? Is that cool? Can I do that? I love how this story opens. I love how this story opens. Because at the end of the day, beloved, this is all of us, right?
[00:25:52] Like, it's so easy to miss this, but your whole person, body and soul is wrapped up in every single problem you face in this life.
[00:26:03] Like, we don't get to separate out our physical self from our spiritual self or our mental experience. It's all mixed together because you are all one person, just like Daniel. It's all mixed together. I would encourage you, like, literally right now in this room, I would encourage you to think about literally any problem you are facing right now. Just something that is unfinished, unresolved in your mind. It can be huge. It can be little. Hold that in your mind right now. Like, actually think about that. A relational problem, an unmet goal, a big life decision. Okay? You thinking about it? You got it?
[00:26:40] So let me ask you this question.
[00:26:42] You a little cold Right now.
[00:26:44] A little warm right now.
[00:26:46] Are you a little hungry?
[00:26:48] Did you skip breakfast? Did you only have coffee? Do you have a little bit of jitters from maybe too much coffee? Are you tired? Are the allergies affecting your sleep? Do you have newborn children that perhaps keep you awake for long hours?
[00:27:02] How about this?
[00:27:03] Is your spiritual life vibrant?
[00:27:06] Where are you at with your connection to the Lord right now? What do your spiritual disciplines look like? What does your personal worship look like? I say that to say this, every single one of those things affects how you will engage that problem, every single one of them, and more affects how you will engage not just that problem, but every problem in your mind.
[00:27:29] You beloved, need.
[00:27:31] You need your mind to properly engage the challenges you face in this life. That's where you keep all these important things like your reason and your logic. That's where you keep your morality and your ethics. That's where you keep your resolve and your will. But here's the thing. Your mind is not abstractly separate from your physical and spiritual self, which means your mind can't and won't serve you well if either your body or your spirit is being neglected.
[00:28:03] Period.
[00:28:05] Period.
[00:28:07] We all face a big list of problems. We all have big and little ones we're working through day by day.
[00:28:13] And you can't abstract out your mind and just face them while ignoring your body and your spirit.
[00:28:20] Because you are your body and you are your spirit.
[00:28:24] They are you.
[00:28:25] It's all bound up together.
[00:28:29] One of the most important reasons we need to not ignore the physical and spiritual aspect of ourselves is that caring for the body and soul God has made it helps us to use the minds the way our minds, the way God has designed them to be used.
[00:28:44] Your mind is a gift from the Lord.
[00:28:47] It's a gift that can help you in this world, that can help you advance the kingdom of God in this world.
[00:28:53] Your mind will be hindered if your body and soul aren't cared for, because your mind is a piece of your body and soul.
[00:29:02] It's not separate from them.
[00:29:04] Read on with me and let's look at how God meets Daniel in this problem. Verse 9.
[00:29:09] God had granted Daniel kindness and compassion from the chief eunuch. Yet he said to Daniel, I fear the Lord, the king who assigned you your food and drink. What if he sees your faces looking thinner than the other young men your age? You would endanger my life with the king. So Daniel said to the guard whom the chief eunuch had assigned to Daniel, Hananiah, Michelle, and Azariah, please test your servants for 10 days. Let us be given vegetable to eat and water to drink. Then examine our appearance and the appearance of the young men who were eating the king's food and deal with your servants based on what you see. He agreed with them about this and tested them for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, they looked better and healthier than all the young men who were eating the king's food. So the guard continued to remove their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables.
[00:29:57] This part of the text shows just how bound up we are with our own selves. And I don't mean selfishness here.
[00:30:07] I mean that we can't separate our physical and spiritual selves from our experience of reality because God made you a unity.
[00:30:16] You are one creature.
[00:30:18] Daniel couldn't simply separate his mind out of this. You know what? I'll just eat the king's blasphemous food and I won't think about it.
[00:30:26] He couldn't separate his mind or his spirit. You know what? I'll submit to the king. I'll do what he says. But I don't really believe any of this stuff. So it doesn't really matter because I'll still stay connected to God because that's what I really believe.
[00:30:38] It all came together. His physicality, his spirituality, his person were all bound into one thing. And so he has to do something.
[00:30:47] And so he comes up with a plan. And I'm going to be honest with you, it's a really bad plan.
[00:30:52] It's a dumb plan. It's the best one he's got. He asked the steward, hey, hey, can me and my friends be allowed to just eat vegetables and drink water to avoid defiling ourselves?
[00:31:03] The reason, guys, the reason here, by the way, is that the wine and meat were generally the only things involved in sacrifice, right? So he's looking at it going, vegetables weren't offered in sacrifices and water is going to be fine. And listen, by the way, I'm not saying right now that it's a bad idea to eat more vegetables. I obviously could take that advice. I think most of us can. But the problem here is multi layered. You see, first, water, the water versus wine thing. Wine wasn't just a drink in the ancient Near East. It was part of the sanitation system.
[00:31:32] Wine mixed with water allowed folk to drink water from different sources without getting sick. Has anyone ever gone on a mission trip or vacation and accidentally drank the tap water?
[00:31:42] Right, like that's not great.
[00:31:45] That's what Daniel is signing himself and his friends up for in Babylon. Beyond this, the work they're doing was largely intellectual work, but it was still strenuous.
[00:31:56] The hours were long, the expectations were high. Meat in someone's diet was a major boon in this day, right? Daniel is signing himself and his friends up for a literal major physical disadvantage in their competition.
[00:32:11] And by the way, the other piece of this is the steward has literally zero motivation to actually do any of this. Daniel and his friends are slaves. They don't have a choice in all this. And by the way, they're supposed to be in the process of being brainwashed. They're not. He's. They're not supposed to care if they're defiling their beliefs to their God from their homeland, because they're supposed to be rejecting all of those things. They're supposed to be becoming Babylonians. And if they fall behind and fail because he allowed them to hold onto their spiritual convictions, and his neck is going to be the one in the chopping block.
[00:32:44] But the text says that God has granted the special favor to Daniel and his friends. What's interesting is even that doesn't get them there.
[00:32:52] He's not willing to risk his life on behalf of Daniel's plan until Daniel's plan fully comes out.
[00:33:01] He says, I get that. So why don't you test us, try it for 10 days, let us try it, and if it goes bad, we'll do what you said, and it all comes together.
[00:33:12] It works. At the end of the 10 days, Daniel and his friends are doing so well that they're allowed to continue their restrictive diet. And guys, this isn't what any observers would have assumed.
[00:33:23] Less calories, less sanitation in the middle of a high stress environment.
[00:33:28] Daniel could have easily justified just eating the food from a purely physical standpoint, right? Turn your brain off, ignore your spirit, feed your body and survive. But Daniel knows he is more than his body.
[00:33:43] And we see in our text that his physicality actually genuinely affects both his spiritual life and his mental life. Do you see how the text goes on? This physical choice fed his spiritual vitality, right?
[00:33:57] It fed his spiritual vitality. And the result is that his body and his mind also flourish.
[00:34:05] You see the interplay between his whole person here. Daniel used his mind to help him engage the world in a way that honored his whole self, both physical and spiritual, and God blessed it and he flourished.
[00:34:17] This is what a clear mind given over to the work of the kingdom of God can actually do.
[00:34:23] Can engage things with wisdom in a way that God in God actually blesses and meets Us in one of the most famous passages in Scripture regarding the mind is found in Romans 12. And it perfectly encapsulates what we see play out in this narrative. Romans 12:1 2 says this. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God.
[00:34:57] See, in romans, Paul spent 11 chapters explaining how wonderful and gracious God's plan of redemption is actually going to be for human flourishing, right? And chapter 12 is the turning point of the letter. Because the gospel is so good, all the things, because this is so good, do this. And to do this is offer yourselves up as a sacrifice.
[00:35:18] And you catch what he says here. Specifically, he says, offer your body, your. Your physical self as a sacrifice to God. Give your physical self over to God's glory. This dedication is going to be used by God to renew our minds. And this renewed mind connects us to God's will. We know him, meaning our spiritual selves grow in vitality when we offer ourselves, our lives, our time, our money, our skills, our person up to God as a sacrifice. And that word is just a Bible way of saying we dedicate both our bodies and our spirits to God. When we do this, the result is a renewed mind.
[00:36:01] When your body and your spirit are given over to the Lord fully, your mind is renewed.
[00:36:08] So let's sit there for a second because that really brings this text back to where we started a whole A lot of us struggle with our relationship to our mind.
[00:36:22] We don't want to be alone with our own thoughts, so we numb our brain out with overindulgence. Whether it's eating or alcohol or sex or television or social media or exercising or shopping or hobbies or fill in the blank.
[00:36:37] So many of us have learned to seek our little escapes, our little dopamine hits so that we can feel okay and not have to sit alone with our own mind for a split, split second.
[00:36:49] Sound familiar to anyone?
[00:36:51] The need to fill every moment in our life with more and more stimulation of some sort.
[00:36:58] Because most of us don't like spending time with our minds.
[00:37:03] I'm gonna go on the limb. And I'm guess many of us in this room could do with some renewing of our minds. Amen.
[00:37:09] So how do you get there?
[00:37:12] To offer up your body as a sacrifice to the Lord means dedicating your physicality to God.
[00:37:19] It's easy to over spiritualize our faith, isn't it?
[00:37:22] Jesus saves my soul, so as long as my spirit is good with God, everything else is taken care of.
[00:37:27] But offering up your physicality to the Lord is this reminder that you are a unity, you are one person. And if you're going to be dedicated to the Lord, it's going to be spirit and body means your physical life is submitted to the heart of God. Think about that. I mean, honestly think about that.
[00:37:44] How do you set up your schedule right? What does your calendar look like? How do you prioritize time with God and worship in service and community? Do you look for every excuse to drop your spiritual disciplines, like prayer, like scripture, like worship attendance, like discipleship and community?
[00:38:02] Do you submit your actions and desires to the Lord?
[00:38:06] Guys, offering up your body the Lord means looking at your relationship with your sexuality and submitting it to the Lord. Offering up your body means looking at your relationship with vices like alcohol and marijuana and submitting them to God's glory. Offering of your body means your view of relationships and how you treat people. Submitted to the Lord's heart for the world, like I could keep going, but I think you get what I'm saying.
[00:38:30] Offering up your physicality to the Lord is really all encompassing because you are a physical creature.
[00:38:38] You are embodied, your life is embodied.
[00:38:42] And so a life given over to the Lord is a life filled with God's purposes, with alignment with the Lord, with fulfillment. This is what Paul is getting at.
[00:38:53] As we increasingly submit to God's design for our person, our physical self, we see our mind increasingly submitted to God's design as well. The more you give yourself to God's good design, the more you feel yourself change toward intimacy and connection with the Lord. And that is where life is found.
[00:39:12] And here's the thing.
[00:39:14] A life dedicated to the Lord, where our body and soul, and as a result minds are renewed and dedicated to the Lord. It's not just the most fulfilling life you can live. It is that, by the way. But it's not just that. God can also use that person, that renewed body, that renewed spirit, that renewed mind, to do his amazing kingdom work in this world.
[00:39:35] Look how our text ends out, how it lands out today. Verse 17.
[00:39:40] God gave these four young men knowledge and understanding and every kind of literature and wisdom. Daniel also understood visions and dreams of every kind. And at the end of the time the kings had said to present them, the chief eunuch presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king interviewed them and among all of them, no one was found equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. So they began to attend the king in every matter of wisdom and understanding. The king consulted them about. He found them 10 times better than all the magicians and mediums in his entire kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
[00:40:17] Because what we see in this text is that Daniel's plan works right.
[00:40:23] God does something in them through his this act of submission and trust. He doesn't just take care of their bodies and spirits, he blesses their minds. And they excel in this training and they rise above their peers. And this is not, by the way, a coincidence.
[00:40:39] This is exactly what Paul describes in Romans. They're in a desperate situation and they give themselves over to the Lord in faith in incredibly difficult circumstances. And their circumstances stay difficult.
[00:40:53] They don't get better. They're still slaves, they're still isolated. They still lost their families, they and their homes. But their minds are renewed and they excel where they've landed in this world.
[00:41:05] And so we end our story where we began. Beloved, your mind serves you and serves the kingdom of God.
[00:41:13] It is a gift.
[00:41:17] God blessed Daniel's mind with a creative solution to his problem. And God caused that plan to work out in his literal life. And this resulted in a context where Daniel's mind became a tool to help him live and act in the world in a way that glorified God and advanced the kingdom. Like that's basically the rest of the story of the book of Daniel and Daniel's life. Daniel and his friends become some of the most influential and long serving stewards in the Babylonian empire. So much so that they continue to serve as kings and even empires change hands. Daniel serves well into his 80s according to the text.
[00:41:56] This feels so foreign to us, to many of us at least.
[00:42:02] But beloved, this is the power of the gospel.
[00:42:05] Jesus redeems us, which means Jesus redeems our minds.
[00:42:12] Even in this broken world, full of problems, full of struggles, full of difficulties, full of illnesses, full of horrible circumstances. Even in all, all of this, Jesus works out our redemption. Amen.
[00:42:29] There's a real difficulty to navigate here.
[00:42:32] And the difficulty is this, you know, Jesus work of redemption in this life, it doesn't always mean complete and total healing right now, right?
[00:42:41] Sometimes God does this with all, with an illness. And we can boldly, by the way, pray and ask for healing that outcome like the scripture models that we should ask for, that we should desire to see the curse defeated. We shouldn't want ourselves or our friends or our loved ones to experience illness.
[00:42:59] But it doesn't always go away, even in prayers of faith. The reality is that in this world of cancers and depressions, sometimes Jesus gives immediate physical healing, but oftentimes what he gives is endurance and perseverance.
[00:43:18] We don't always get to know when and why, but one thing we can know with absolute confidence is that Jesus work in our suffering and our illness and in the suffering and illness of those we love because of the cross. And Jesus accomplished work on the cross.
[00:43:35] That work, even in our suffering, will always mean redemption.
[00:43:41] Even if it doesn't mean healing right now, it will mean redemption.
[00:43:46] Because Jesus steps into our mess.
[00:43:49] He steps into our brokenness and our weakness, and he brings about fulfillment and meaning out of it.
[00:43:57] So to those in this room who do like battle with your own minds, whether in mental illness or anything else, like those of us who resonate with the bad neighborhood imagery, please today.
[00:44:10] Hear, hear this. A couple things for me first off, and I, I, I hate that this has to be said, but in the world we live in, this has to be said. You know, medicine and therapy are gifts from the Lord, and they're a wonderful part of how you can grow in freedom in Christ as well. A part of your experience is submitting your whole self to the Lord, right? You should not reject those things.
[00:44:28] Medicine and therapy are oftentimes just wonderful.
[00:44:31] This is simply acknowledging truth. It's acknowledging that you are a physical being and your literal brain chemistry is a part of your spiritual and mental health. Because you are a unified person.
[00:44:41] Don't ignore that reality. But beyond that, beyond that first piece for right here and right now, I need you to hear this.
[00:44:48] If your mind feels like a bad neighborhood, know this. You do not exist alone in your mind.
[00:44:57] You are not alone there.
[00:44:59] I know it can feel like the darkest and most lonely place you've ever been in your life.
[00:45:05] But if you are in Christ, there is nowhere that you can go that is beyond his reach.
[00:45:11] There is no depth to your mind that Christ is not there with you.
[00:45:16] This is Psalm 139 that we read last week.
[00:45:19] There's nowhere you can go to escape Him. And for those of us who are redeemed by Christ, that is a comfort.
[00:45:26] Because there are dark parts of our minds, parts of our minds that feel dominating, that feel in control, that feel destructive, that feel evil that we want to pretend aren't there.
[00:45:38] We certainly don't want to hang out and that we certainly don't want others to know about. If you need to know something, beloved, Christ already knows.
[00:45:46] He built you. He designed you. He is with you. And you are never. You are never alone in your mind.
[00:45:55] If you are in Christ, Christ plumbs the depths of your darkness with you and offers you grace and patience.
[00:46:06] Even if your journey to find redemption and balance in your relationship with your mind is literally lifelong. Even if you never get to a place of complete and total freedom from that part of your suffering and your trials in this world before eternity, even if that is a companion with you until you enter into heaven, you need to know that it is a journey that your Jesus takes with you.
[00:46:31] And by the way, I want you to hear this. It is a journey your church takes with you, your family of faith takes with you. When you dedicate yourself to giving your mind, your body over to Christ, you will see it bear fruit in your heart for the kingdom.
[00:46:47] It may be slow, it may be messy. You may live 40 years of three steps forward and two steps back. But you need to know that is okay.
[00:46:58] Christ will be in that journey with you from beginning to end. And your brothers and sisters in Christ will be with you in that journey.
[00:47:05] That is some of the hope that God gives us in this battle band. If you want to come back up, all of us need to hear today that Jesus invites us to live a life that matters.
[00:47:15] All of us.
[00:47:17] That whatever challenges, whatever sufferings you endure, Jesus invites you to find meaning and purpose. Not just in his kingdom, in this life, but in yourself, in your own spirit. You are a creature that matters, that has meaning, that has purpose. You need to know something beautiful. Daniel lived long enough, served long enough to see the exile of Israel end.
[00:47:44] He didn't get to go back, but he served up until King Cyrus. You know what King Cyrus did?
[00:47:51] He sent them back to Jerusalem.
[00:47:55] Daniel, in all his hopelessness, in all his world being torn apart, in all his suffering and all his trials, he gave himself over to the Lord. The Lord renewed his mind and he lived to see a literal day of redemption for his people.
[00:48:11] How much more is that true for those of us in Christ who will see the Lord's return one way or the other, who will see everything broken in this world, restored to God's design, who will see every tear and every hurt and every wound turned into something beautiful and redeemed?
[00:48:29] Beloved, that is the promise of Christ.
[00:48:33] One of the greatest gifts we have as creatures of the mind is the gift of imagination.
[00:48:39] It's one of the things that sets us apart as human beings. We get to run scenarios and simulations in our head. We get to imagine what the future might look like. And for some of us who struggle with our mental health, that turns into a horrible way, right? And we ruminate and we get anxious. But you need to know your imagination is a gift from the Lord.
[00:48:57] It allows you to consider what God might do in this world.
[00:49:00] And so I would encourage us to land out like this.
[00:49:03] I would encourage you to take a few moments before we continue in response to get quiet and alone with the Lord. If you can do that in your seat, that's fine. If you want to get on your knees somewhere and pray, that's fine. If you need to grab a pastor or a friend to pray with you, that's fine.
[00:49:18] I want to encourage you to take a few minutes to be alone with the Lord in prayer, to consider your own story.
[00:49:25] Consider what it means that he made you and built you, that your body and soul can be dedicated to Him.
[00:49:31] But I want you to really do this.
[00:49:34] I want you to imagine what Jesus might do with you.
[00:49:42] I want you to take a minute and imagine a world where Jesus redeems your mind and sets it loose for the kingdom. In this world, can you imagine what your mind might feel like redeemed, healed, What God might do in this world through your living sacrifice?
[00:50:02] I'd encourage you to take a few moments and consider that.
