Daniel: Unshakable Trust in Uncertain Times — Daniel 1:1-21

Now, this last year, I did a Wednesday night course on reading the Older Testament as Christian scripture.

Of the 39 books that we studied in that whole session, Daniel really just stuck out to me.

Daniel became...

For me, it, it took on a life that I had never...

I've read it before.

I've studied it before, but it came alive to me like never before.

And here's why.

Because for Daniel, the world had changed.

I want you to hear me carefully on this.

Everything that had been written in the Older Testament up to this point was about God's people living in God's land under the rulership of God's king with the temple right there and the priests being able to offer sacrifices.

They were having a safe place.

They had a safe place in their home territory, but now everything had changed.

For these exiles to Babylon, they were not in Jerusalem anymore.

They did not have their own king.

Their king was now a pagan ruler.

They did not have their own priest able to offer sacrifices.

Everything had changed for them.

So how do they live their faith in this entirely new environment? So here's what the Book of Daniel is and why we're gonna spend the next seven weeks here.

The Book of Daniel is a survival guide on how to live a life of faith when at the very least, culture wants to distance your relationship with God.

At the very best, they want to disrupt your relationship with God or even at worst, destroy your relationship with God.

How do you, how do you be a faithful follower of God when everything in culture wants to dismiss, destroy, or discourage your relationship with God? How can you have an unshakable trust in uncertain times? And this applies to our lives today.

It's been 2600 years since Daniel.

Times have changed.

Culture's changed.

But people and situations are pretty much the very same.