Episode Transcript
The tile of the mess this morning is us four and no more.
Us four and no more.
Out of all the children of Judah that had been taken captive to serve the king of Babylon, only four men, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, would not eat the king's food that had been forbidden by God for them to eat.
While the rest of those Jews that were taken captive, all they were eating that fine food and wine which had been sacrificed to those false gods.
But while they're eating that fine food, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were eating only vegetables and water.
To the world, doing without the fine food probably seemed like a great sacrifice for these men to make.
But to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, it would have been a far greater loss to them to live in disobedience to God.
So they asked for Melzar, the chief of staff, to test them for 10 days to see if they would be better off for not eating the king's food and only eating what God allowed, than their countrymen would, who actually ate the king's food and violated God's law.
Let's look back where we left off last week in verse 15 and 16.
It says, "And at the end of 10 days, their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat.
Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat and the wine that they should drink, and gave them pulse," which means vegetables.
So at the end of 10 days, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were better off for having obeyed God than their brethren who didn't.
So Melzar took away the portion of their food and wine which was against God's law and gave them pulse.
Plain old vegetables to eat instead.
Because he also saw that it was better for them to obey God rather than man.
Now continuing into our next verse this morning, into verse 17 it says, "As for these four children," the Holy Spirit now is focusing our attention not upon Melzar, not upon Nebuchadnezzar, not upon the rest of the captives of Judah, but he's focusing our attention now on those four men who dared to obey God's Word.
Having their faithfulness to God's Word put to the test, these four children of Judah remained faithful to God when the rest followed suit with the unbelieving world.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for your precious Word.
We pray dear Lord God, you'll bless the Scriptures to our heart.
Thank you for those who came today to take time out of this day, Father, to dedicate it to being fed by your Word.
Lord, I pray you'll open hearts and eyes and may all attention be on you this morning.
We ask in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
Had God not told the stories of these four children here in the book of Daniel, allowing us to see how everything turned out for them for the better, then we may have assumed just looking on the outside that by not eating of the king's food, then they were simply making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves.
I believe that's the way the world thinks when they look at dedicated Christians.
And likewise, not knowing the inside story of the people that we live among today, again, it's easy for the world to just look, and for disobedient Christians also to look at the faithful children of God, and just think, well, they have more trouble, they have less enjoyment in life because of their faithfulness to the Scriptures.
I believe most of the people assume that's the case, but they assume wrong.
Outward obedience doesn't tell the inside story, but in the book of Daniel, we're getting the inside story, letting us have a first-hand experience of what I call the excellence of Christian obedience.
The excellence of Christian obedience, you see, life, peace, joy, purpose, eternal riches, they're known and they're experienced by the child of God through our obedience to the Scriptures, and the book of Daniel tells the story of these four children, once again, who dared to obey.
And now if you'll take your pen, and in verse 16, underscore the word "Melzar."
"Melzar."
Now go forward just a bit, and underscore "gave them pulse."
"Gave them pulse."
"Melzar gave them pulse."
Now draw a line in your Bible, and connect the words "gave them pulse" to these words "God gave them knowledge."
What was the outcome of their obedience to God?
"Melzar gave them pulse," and "God gave them knowledge."
"Pulse" was all the unbelieving world could offer them.
That's it.
That's the best they could come up with.
Why?
Because their meat and wine were sacrificed to idols, so they had nothing else to give but "pulse," vegetables.
And you know, when we're living in this world, the world, by its very nature of opposition to God, by its carnality and its fallen nature in Adam, the world cannot give the believer in Christ the best circumstances to be obedient in.
We're always swimming upstream in a downstream world.
The best the world can offer us is an environment of "pulse."
When I came home Friday night, my sweet wife had made me some homemade pizza.
And I don't get pizza very often, and it was so good.
And when I walked in and I saw that pizza, I got excited.
I did, man.
But these four children didn't have pizza.
They had "pulse."
And "pulse" was nothing to get excited about.
Man, if I would have come home and I would have seen squash and a salad, I would have been thankful.
But I wouldn't have been excited.
I can promise you that.
It wouldn't have made my sermon notes.
I can promise you that.
But their "pulse" is a picture of our obedience to God in a disobedient world.
It's not always pleasant to be obedient, but it's always essential.
And it's always profitable.
When God met with Abraham in the land of Ur, and He said, "Get thee out of thy land and out of thy country and from thy father's house into a land that I will show thee."
Do you know what God told Abraham?
God didn't tell Abraham to take Sarah on a vacation.
That would have been nice.
No.
When it all boiled down to it, God told Abraham to leave his home and wander around as a stranger in a land that wasn't his.
And He told Abraham that He would not give him that land until after he died.
How about that?
How do you tell your wife, "Honey, let's pull up stakes and move to a place that we will never call home until after we die?"
A command like that isn't pizza.
It's pulse.
That kind of command was neither exciting nor pleasant, but it was essential for Abraham's walk with God and for his maturity in the Christian faith.
It is the pulse of obedience that causes us to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
If we only obey when it's exciting, that's not true obedience.
The Promised Land couldn't welcome Abraham as the father of the Christian faith because the Promised Land didn't follow the one true God at that time.
For Abraham's obedience, all those unbelievers could offer him in that land during that time was pulse.
The entire time Abraham was there, he had to deal with infighting, backsliding, war, temporary housing, and very awkward circumstances.
The Promised Land gave Abraham pulse, but God gave Abraham exceeding great and precious promises in return for his obedience.
Likewise, Melzar gave these four children of Judah pulse, but God gave them knowledge in return.
Listen, obedience to God's Word, it does not appeal to our flesh, but by eating the pulse, we gain the knowledge of God.
Now, I want you to notice the connection here between the obedience of these men, the food they ate, and the knowledge they gained.
I'm going to repeat that again.
There is an undeniable connection here between the obedience of these men, the food they ate, and the knowledge they gained thereby.
Here's a kingdom truth for you this morning.
God's commandments are the believers' bread.
We eat His commandments by our obedience, and we are nourished by the wisdom they supply.
I'll repeat that again.
God's commandments are the believers' bread.
We eat His commandments by our obedience, and we are nourished by the wisdom they supply.
Speaking to the Jews in Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, the Bible says, "And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna."
That's the same as pulse.
Wasn't anything exciting about manna?
They got sick of it.
"He fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only."
Listen now.
"But by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live."
In other words, the commandments of God were the believers' bread.
And their obedience to it was eating that bread, the commandment, and then they were nourished by the word that they ate.
God's commandments are the believers' bread.
We eat His commandments by our obedience, and we are nourished by the wisdom they supply.
Knowing the word of God, therefore, will never be a substitute for obeying the word of God.
You can memorize and quote the Bible all you like, but memorizing the scripture without obeying the scripture is like memorizing the menu without eating the food that it describes.
Paul's here to interject something very important, because we're looking here at the excellence of obedience in the past few weeks.
And there is a...
There's a...
Thank you, Brother Doug.
He's "Amen"ing on there.
There's a tendency that some people have, because they believe salvation is by grace so strongly, there's a tendency that some people have to preach only grace, all grace, all the time.
And grace is wonderful.
We even obey by grace.
Everything's by grace.
We don't deny grace.
We thank God for His grace.
But again, knowing the scriptures is no substitute for obeying the scriptures.
If all we do is preach sermons about salvation by grace through faith, and it's not of yourselves and all that, and all we do is just praise God all day long, because we keep telling each other that salvation is by grace through faith.
Do you know where that's going to get us?
We won't be eating the bread and nourished by the commandments we feed on.
God's commandments are the believers bread.
Yes, salvation is by grace.
Yes, that grace is free, thank God.
But we have to learn the power of Christian obedience.
We have to.
We don't obey to be saved.
Of course not.
But we do not shy away from telling people, "You need to learn and obey everything in God's Word."
Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments."
We can't just get bogged down in a rut of becoming an echo chamber.
Of we're saved by grace, not by this.
Amen.
Praise the Lord.
We're saved by grace, not by this.
Amen.
Praise the Lord.
You just get stuck in a rut, and then you can't grow in that grace.
Don't be afraid to pick up the Bible and tell people, "You need to obey God's Word."
Because that's what God's Word tells us to do.
These Jews knew the menu, but only these four children ate the food.
So only these four were nourished by the Word of God that they obeyed.
Spiritually speaking, wisdom is given according to the food we eat.
Wisdom is giving according to the food we eat.
The first commandment is to eat the bread of life.
The bread of Jesus' broken body, and to drink the wine of the blood he shed.
Jesus said, "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you."
So the obedience of the gospel is the first knowledge that we get of God.
By believing the gospel, we know him as our Savior, we know God as our Father, and those who were once far away are drawn near through the blood of Christ.
But obedience doesn't need to stop there.
Don't let the devil keep you from thinking that, "Well, if I start focusing on obeying God's Word, then I'm going to have a work salvation."
That's not true.
You're going to work because you have salvation, because you want to increase in your obedience and your knowledge of God.
Again, spiritually speaking, wisdom is given according to the food we eat.
In Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, the Bible says, "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a tree to be desired to make one," what?
Wise.
How about that?
You see, fascinatingly, when he followed the devil's instructions and disobeyed God's instructions, she gained wisdom that that food supplied.
Disobedience to God's Word also supplies wisdom.
When you follow... there's two kings involved here, you see.
You have the king of Babylon, he gave his food.
You have the king of heaven, and he gave his food.
And so, those four men decided, "We're going to follow the king of heaven."
And so, they're supplied by their obedience.
They're nourished up in the knowledge of God.
The rest of the four, other than the four, excuse me, were not.
And so, when Eve followed the devil's instructions, she gained the wisdom that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil supplied.
She was eating the king's meat, so she gained the king's wisdom.
But unfortunately, she was eating food from the wrong king.
You see how that works?
Wisdom is given according to the food we eat.
We learn in our study of the book of the Revelation that the church is a city, and Jesus is our king.
As our king, Jesus feeds us with the king's meat.
Acts chapter 20, verse 28, tells pastors, "Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."
I am feeding you this morning with the word of God, and our obedience to God's word, choose on it.
And we are nourished by our obedience there too.
Oh, God's word nourishes us with wisdom, nourishes us with strength, nourishes us in the knowledge of God.
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Ezariah ate king Jesus' food, so they got king Jesus' wisdom.
Eve ate the serpent's corrupt food, so she got the serpent's corrupt wisdom.
Speaking to Satan, in Ezekiel chapter 28, verse 17a, God said, "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty.
Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness."
God's wisdom is given to the obedient, and it's withheld from the rebellious or the disobedient.
God gave his wisdom to these four and no more, because God puts a difference between those who obey him and those who don't.
There's a difference.
Satan's wisdom is corrupted.
It appears to be wisdom.
In fact, in a sense, it is wisdom, but it's corrupted wisdom.
You can't rely on it anymore.
When Tammy made me that pizza, she had some homemade pizza crust that had been in the freezer for a few decades probably.
I don't know.
It tasted like it.
And she nibbled on it, and she's like, "Oh, I don't know about this."
And so she used other crust instead, and she said, "Taste of that and see what you think."
And we both agreed it was good chicken food.
We'll give it to the chickens.
So food's good, but not if it's corrupted.
Not if it's going bad.
As for these four children, God gave them knowledge, look back in your text, and skill.
God not only gave them knowledge, but he also gave them skill.
And that means God gave them knowledge, and he also gave them the ability, the skill to put that knowledge to work.
Oh, I love this.
I absolutely love this.
Because of their obedience to God's Word, God gave these four men an extraordinary ability to get things done for his kingdom.
The skill and the know-how.
Why are some people used by God and others aren't?
Obedience.
Obedience.
Why would God give someone skill and know-how to serve him if they're not going to obey him?
Skill and knowledge comes through obedience.
And as we gain that skill and knowledge, what do we do with it?
We then apply it in greater obedience, which then yields greater skill and knowledge.
And so the Christian continues to grow in grace and the knowledge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But it must come through obedience to God's Word.
The obedient get the skill and know-how.
They eat the command by their obedience to it, and they are nourished up in the faith so they can serve in the kingdom of God.
In my years in the ministry, I have yet to see a believer that obeys the Lord that's unable to serve the Lord.
Never seen it.
Boy, if you would have known Doug Sexton, Brother Doug's watching right now.
If you would have known Doug Sexton when he first started coming to church here, I tell you what, you'd think there is no way that he could ever start teaching the Scriptures.
There's no way.
It looks like all he's good for is eating beans and cornbread.
He's about as country as it comes.
Just some old country bumpkin out there that all he knew how to do is ride a motorcycle and cause trouble.
But you know what?
I have yet to see a child of God obey the Lord who in turn was unable to serve the Lord.
Those who are willing to eat kingdom pulse will be equipped to do kingdom work.
Those who are willing to eat kingdom pulse will be equipped to do kingdom work.
If you want to serve God, listen now, if you want to serve God and His kingdom, and I believe most Christians have a desire for God to use them.
And a lot of times what the devil will do, in fact I'd say probably all the time, the devil will do one of two things.
He'll either get you to look at yourself and say, "I can do this," which then means you're going to start working in your flesh, or he'll get you to look at yourself and say, "Like Moses, I'm unable to do this."
But listen, if you want to serve God and His kingdom, don't focus on your qualification.
Focus on your dedication.
You take care of your dedication to God's Word, God will take care of the qualification.
It will come.
Because of their obedience, God gave them knowledge and skill.
Look back in your text, "In all learning and wisdom."
This is not knowledge, skill, learning, wisdom, four things.
This is knowledge and skill, learning and wisdom.
When we learn, we gain knowledge.
See how they're paired together?
When we learn, we gain what?
Knowledge.
Knowledge and skill, learning and wisdom.
Skill belongs to the word wisdom, and learning belongs to the word knowledge.
When we receive wisdom, we gain the skill to apply the knowledge that we receive.
See how they go hand in hand?
God has a great role for these four men to serve in while they're living in Babylon.
So He gave them great knowledge and skill for the task that He would soon call them to perform.
They all four had knowledge and skill.
Look back in your text, "And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams."
God knew what He was going to do with these four children of Judah.
And these godly gifts suited them for their future roles that God had for them.
But God had a very unique role for Daniel.
Because He gave Daniel understanding in all visions and dreams, and that's a peculiar gift.
He didn't give that to the others.
It's a very peculiar gift, and it's only given in peculiar times in the Bible.
So understand, when you're looking at visions and dreams in the scripture, it's peculiar times, and that gift is given to peculiar people.
So it's not commonplace, it's never been commonplace to have visions and dreams and people interpreting them and things like that.
And we have so-called modern-day prophets today, and it's sad, but it's almost funny.
A lot of times they'll have these dreams, and they'll start interpreting them and teaching them, and the dreams don't come to pass.
And you realize, no, that it's peculiar times and given to peculiar people.
It's not for our general use.
But God had a very unique role for Daniel, so He gave them understanding in all visions and dreams that God would soon put into the heart of certain men in Babylon.
And by this, God is letting us know that He will soon, in the book of Daniel, reveal great truths to us through visions and dreams.
And He gave Daniel to us as a prophet, by giving him the ability to understand those visions and dreams, and then record them and declare the meanings unto us.
It's exciting.
Whether it was God's covenant to us through Abraham...
I keep thinking of Abraham when he goes to offer up Isaac, his son, and that God says something very, very fascinating that should stop all of us in our tracks.
He says, "Now, because you obeyed my voice, in blessing I'm going to bless thee and multiply thee and make thy name great, and this and that and the other."
Why?
Because he obeyed God's voice.
He wasn't saved by his obedience, but by his obedience, God used him in the free grace covenant of the gospel.
You want to be used by God, then start obeying God.
Whether it was God's covenant to us through Abraham, God's law to us through Moses, or God's love to us through Christ, great revelation has never been given without great obedience.
The great revelation God reveals to us in this book came as a result of Daniel's great obedience to him.
If you want to understand God's Word, then learn to obey God's Word.
You can read the best commentaries, you can study at the best seminaries, but nothing will shed the light of God's Word better than your obedience to it.
Pulse and water beats meat and wine every time.
Father, thank you so much for your precious Word.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us the understanding of your scriptures.
Thank you for these four men who stood out from the rest of the crowd to show us, Father, the excellence of Christian obedience.
Lord, the devil tries his best to stunt Christian growth.
And I pray, dear Father, that in the name of the grace of Jesus Christ, we will serve in the obedience of Jesus Christ.
In his precious name we pray, amen.
