BOM-BITES Episode 666 – Daniel 1 – powered by Happy Scribe
Hey, my friends, what is up?
Derek here from BOMsocks back with another week of BOMbites where we feast upon the words of Christ one bite at a time.
So I’m excited. We’re in the Book of Daniel this week. Daniel has at least some pretty well-known stories to us, and we’re going to get into those stories this week.
I love those stories, but let me give you a little context on where we are at right at this point in the Book of Daniel. One of the things that we don’t always recognize is, you know, we just covered the Book of Jeremiah, we covered the Book of Ezekiel, and now we are in Daniel. Now, these men are all to some extent contemporaries of one another. They are all individuals who are at Jerusalem at the same time at certain points, but they’ve all been taken captive in Babylon. But you’re getting different perspectives for Jeremiah.
He is a prophet that has been trying to preach to the people and he at this point has probably been taken off and captive. You’ve got Ezekiel, who this is Ezekiel, is later on. He is preaching among the captives out there, but you’ve got Daniel, who is now up into the king’s palace. In fact, they took a large group of children whom there is no blemish. Wellfavored skilful and all wisdom, cunning and knowledge, understanding science had the ability in them to stand in the king’s palace that they might teach the learning in the tongue of the Chaldeans.
Basically, they’re taking these young men who have been brought up strong in the city of Jerusalem and they are trying to indoctrinate them into the ways of Babylon. And verse five, what they’re doing is they’re trying to introduce them to the ways of the king, and they’re having all of the king’s delicacies and the king’s meat and the wine and everything. They just want to welcome to Babylon. Let’s get you guys into this culture. Now, we have four young men in verse number six.
Now. Their names are Daniel, Hannan, Michaelle and Azariah. Now verse number seven tells us Daniel is given the name of Beltachesar, Hannaniah is named Shadrach, michaelle is named Michael and Azariah is named Abednego. You’re like, wait, I’ve heard those names before, right? We’ll get more into them soon, however.
So you’ve got these guys who are brought in there, they’re given new names, they’re trying to be indoctrinated into the world, and they’re given the king’s meat. So here’s the problem. You’ve got all of these other guys that are just jumping in like, yeah, we’re going to go enjoy all these delicacies. Daniel and his three friends recognize that the king’s meat eating it would be against the law of Moses. There’s a lot of things there that are still tied very closely to that.
And the rest of them are just kind of like, hey, the Kingdom of Judah, it’s no more. We don’t need to worry about covenants anymore. We’re now in the world. And so what they do is they go after it. Daniel and his three friends are just like, no, we want to still stay true to the covenants that we have been raised with.
And so they’re like, no, we’re not going to eat the King’s meat at all. And so you’ve got the steward there, he’s just like, hey, look, if they see you for here and you guys seem like you just don’t have the same energy as everybody else, they’re going to get after me. And Daniel is like, hey, no disrespect to you pal, what we’re going to do here now it says, will you give us as it says in the Scriptures, verse twelve, prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, let them give us pulse to eat. Now the footnote says it’s foods made of seeds and grains, etc. It’s a healthy alternative to what everybody else is eating there.
So if you’ll just give us pulse and water, then let our countenances be looked on before thee and the countenance of the children that eat the portion of the King’s meat. And as thou seest, deal with thy servants. So he’s like, okay, we’re going to test you guys ten days on this little three that you have and we’re going to see if you look stronger than they do. Well, verse 15, at the end of ten days, their countenance has appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the King’s meat. So Melzar, who is the steward of all of them, took away the portion of the meat and the wine that they should drink and gave them all pulse.
As for these four children, god gave them knowledge and skill and all learning and all wisdom. Now with that said, oftentimes when we’re teaching this, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this at all, we go to the word of wisdom, okay? And in fact there are references to Dr. Covenant section 89 in the footnotes of this chapter. So nothing wrong with that.
These young men, because they decided to stay with what the Lord had asked them to eat and for take up, they were able to have knowledge. In fact there’s like I said, many references in the footnotes to Dr. Covenant section 89. I personally think there’s a little bit of a deeper message here. Now what it is, is these four young men would not partake of what the world was trying to offer them.
They wanted to stay true to their covenants in the midst of Babylon. Now one of the cool things in the Come follow me, it actually gives reference to a conference talk from a general authority by the name of David R. Stone and he gave a talk called Zion in the Midst of Babylon. I went through and looked through that talk and this was given in 2006 and there’s some cool stuff here, because the trick is for all of us, I think, to try to live a Zion type of life, to stay true to our covenants in the midst of the world that we live in. It’s a difficult daily navigational challenge.
One of the things that Elder Stone said, he said, wherever we are, whatever city we may live in, we can build our own Zion by the principles of the celestial kingdom and ever seek to become the pure heart. Zion is the beautiful, and the Lord holds it in his own hands. Our homes can be places which are a refuge and a protection, as Zion is. We do not need to become as puppets in the hands of the culture of the place and time, which is what they’re trying to do to Daniel and his three friends. They’re trying to indoctrinate them to the culture and they’re just like, we’re not going to have this.
We can be courageous and walk in the Lord’s paths and follow his footsteps. And if we do, we will be called Zion and we will be the people of the Lord. I pray that we will be strengthened to resist the onslaught of Babylon and that we can create Zion in our homes and our communities, indeed, that we may have Zion in the midst of Babylon. And so that, I think, is a great challenge for you and I, as members of the church, to be able to stay true to the things that we have been taught, to stay true to those covenants when the world is trying to indoctrinate us. And I am grateful for Daniel, and I am grateful for his friends that they were able to stay true to their covenants in the midst of the world, because it plays into the rest of the stories that you’re going to see in the book of Daniel.
Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing and thanks sharing these messages. We’re grateful that you do that. Please check out our amazingly comfortable gospel themed socks@bombstacks.com. And you guys have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow. God speed.
Bye.