Faith Under Fire Sermon One Daniel 1:1-21 Exile: From Catastrophe to Calling
A summary of Sundayʼs sermon, opening our twelve-week series on the Book of Daniel.
Text: Daniel 1:1–21 • Supporting: 1 Peter 1:1–2; 2:9–12 • Conclusion: John 17:14–19
One of the most frequent - and sometimes challenging - conversations I have had with so many Christians over the past two decades has centered on our place in society. We know Jesus calls us to be salt and light, but many. especially those whose only experience of the Faith is living in a culture where that Faith is the majority view, are increasingly frustrated and sometimes even angry at what they see as a massive cultural shift in their own community. We find ourselves confronted by a new culture that tries to extinguish the light and spill the salt.
My conversation partners were raised in a society that, at least in some ways, showed a certain sympathy for their worldview and sometimes even promoted it. With the collapse of the mainline churches, the ascendency of an often mocking and hostile secularism, and the politicization of all things creating endless divisions fueled by social media algorithms, they are sure what to do. Withdraw? Fight? Assimilate? They feel like they are living in a foreign land.
The Bible has a word for that. The word is exile. And we need a refresher course on exile theology. We need to recover our missionary posture of principled kingdom-seeking, learning to live for Christ, and offering Christ to those around us who don’t believe what we believe, while never compromising on the truth we hold.
When the Roman Empire fell, St. Augustine wrote of the two cities that existed in the world - the City of God, rooted in selfless, sacrificial love, and the city of man, rooted in the love of self above all others. We must remember which city lays claim to our souls, the citizenship of the Kingdom of heaven that is ours, no matter what claims our current society may make on us. Often, being faithful to that citizenship has created tremendous pressure for God’s people. Exile pressure.
Peter uses “exile” as his word for pressured, scattered Christians across Asia Minor: “To the elect exiles of the Dispersion” (1 Peter 1:1). Not victims. Not failures. Exiles - people with an address in one world and a citizenship in another. A few chapters later, he gives them their identity: chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, a people for Godʼs own possession (1 Peter 2:9). Every one of those titles is given to people living under pressure. Identity precedes calling, and Godʼs gift of identity is not withdrawn when the culture grows hostile. And he goes on to say that as such, we must as “sojourners and exiles” to live godly lives in the world (2:11).
“Exile” - “resident aliens.” Toni and I were resident aliens in the UK for nearly a decade. We ate what our British neighbors and friends ate, celebrated Christmas with some great British traditions, learned to drive on the other side of the road, and learnt a different form of English (see what I did there? We did it right down to the spellings and often embarrassing vocabulary shifts). We paid taxes. We were just like everyone else…. except that we weren’t. We weren’t citizens. We’d always feel American down in our bones, and when we opened our mouths to speak, the difference was obvious.
If we are exiles, resident aliens here while being citizens of the heavenly city, then the most practical book in the Old Testament for this moment is the one we open in this series: the Book of Daniel.
The Catastrophe
Daniel begins in 605 BC with a theological earthquake. The armies of Babylon sweep into Jerusalem. The temple is plundered. A group of young men from Judah's finest families is taken from everything they know and transported to the world's most powerful city. For faithful Israelites, it felt like divine abandonment. Had God been defeated? Had he left his people?
Three words in the very first verse answer that question before it is fully formed: “the Lord gave.” Not Nebuchadnezzarʼs military genius. Not Israelʼs weakness. The Lord gave Jehoiakim into his hand. Babylon did not take. God gave. The catastrophe is not an accident of history; no, it is a sovereign act. The exile is not divine defeat. It is a divine appointment.
“In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.” - Daniel 1:1–2
This is the foundational conviction of the entire book, stated in its opening verse. The God of Daniel is not scrambling to recover from a setback. He is working a plan—and the plan begins precisely where it looks most like it has ended. The same is true of every season of displacement the people of God have ever lived through, including our own.
The Calling
Here is something worth noting about Daniel that most readers will understandably miss. In the Hebrew Bible, Daniel is not placed among the Prophets. He is placed in the Writings—alongside the Psalms, Ruth, and Esther. He is not a prophet sent to speak to the covenant community from within it. He is a statesman with prophetic gifts, sent to serve God among those who do not know God. He has no pulpit and no religious office. He is an executive, a civil servant, and a professional at the most powerful institution in his world. His three friends are provincial administrators, not priests. The furnace in chapter three is not a theological tribunal. It is a political loyalty ceremony. The lionsʼ den in chapter six is not a church dispute. It is the result of workplace jealousy among government officials.
This book was written for ordinary believers navigating the ordinary structures of a world that does not share their convictions. It was written for the 99% of Godʼs people who serve him not vocationally in the church but incarnationally in the world.
The calling is not to dominate the culture or flee from it, not to fight or to take flight. It is to bear faithful witness in a hostile culture without being absorbed, to be excellent without being compromised, and to be genuinely engaged without being owned.
Three Convictions
How does a person actually live that way when Babylon is pressing in from every direction? Daniel 1 gives us three convictions.
A conviction about Purity. “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the kingʼs food” (v.8). The word resolved is everything. The decision was made before the pressure arrived. This is not in-the-moment heroism. It is a conviction formed and rooted in the knowledge of God. Daniel does not rage or issue ultimatums. He simply proposes a ten-day test and waits. Principled but not provocative. Firm but not aggressive. He is not trying to make a point. He is trying to remain himself. Faithfulness for the day of deep challenge is formed in the ordinary decisions of ordinary days, long before the crisis arrives.
A conviction about Identity. Babylonʼs first move is to rename them. Daniel becomes Belteshazzar. The Hebrew names carrying the memory of God are replaced with names invoking Babylonian deities. But the renaming does not work. The text never calls Daniel “Belteshazzar” without noting that Babylon calls him that. His real name is never in doubt. He knows who he is. He knows whose he is. Contemporary Babylon insists on naming us by our job title, our diagnosis, our failures, our net worth, our politics, our desires. The Daniel strategy is simple, even if it is not easy: know who you are in Christ. Live from that knowledge. We are baptized in the name of the Trinity. We belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. That is not a label. It is a belonging. And what God has joined together, Babylon cannot separate
A conviction about Theology. Daniel 1 has two “the Lord gave” moments, and they are the chapterʼs own architecture. The first is in verse 2—the Lord gave Jehoiakim into Nebuchadnezzarʼs hand. “God gave…” - God is sovereign over the catastrophe. The second is in verse 17 - “God gave Daniel and his friends learning, skill, wisdom, and understanding. Ten times better than everyone around them. God is faithful in equipping the called.” God is faithful to meet us in the place he calls us to fill us with his Spirit to do his will in the world.
These are the two pillars no Christian can live without: God is sovereign over where we are. God is faithful to meet us with his grace. The exile is within his purpose. The calling comes with provision. The same God who placed Daniel in Babylon gave Daniel everything he needed to serve there for the rest of his life.
Christ Is Praying for You
On the night of his betrayal, Jesus prayed for his disciples—and for every generation of disciples who would follow them. He did not pray for their removal from the world. He prayed for their keeping within it: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one… As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:15, 18).
He did not pray for our flight or our fight. He prayed for our faithful presence in the world - sanctified, sent, and kept. The Daniel calling is a Christ-shaped calling. We are sent as he was sent. And the ascended Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, continues to intercede for his exiled people right now (Hebrews 7:25).
Daniel had the promises and the presence of God, and those sustained him throughout his life in Babylon. We have everything Daniel had, and we have the one Daniel was shown from a distance: Jesus, crucified, risen, ascended, interceding for us, and gracing us with his Spirit to faithfully serve him. He has called us here - sent us here! - to bear faithful witness, with humble resolve rooted in truth and love.
We are in our Babylons to serve there excellently, love our neighbors genuinely, and pray for it faithfully, with our windows open toward home.
The series anthem says it in a single line: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” - ROMANS 8:31
We can affirm this because the ultimate Exile, sent by God the Father to a hostile world of sinners, Jesus the Lord, came in love to save us. He died under a foreign, occupying power, in exile, outside Jerusalem. He did all this to rescue us from our original exile from Eden and call us home to his eternal presence and life in the new heavens and new earth.
A closing prayer from Thomas Brooks:
O Lord, though sin rages, and Satan roars, and the world frowns, yet I am resolved to own thee as my only Lord.
My greatest fear is offending thee, and my chiefest care shall be to please thee.
O Lord, though I have many invincible weaknesses and infirmities that hang upon me, and though I am often worsted by my sins and overcome in an hour of temptation . . . yet it is the earnest desire of my soul, above all things else in this world, that Jesus Christ may still set up his laws in my heart. Amen.
Faith Under Fire: Living for Jesus in Beautiful Downtown Babylon — a twelve-week series on the Book of Daniel. | Next Sunday: Daniel 2 — The Dream That Terrified a King.