Transcription
We all want meaning. As I sit here, I want meaning. I need meaning because I'm created by God to have meaning. But the question is how?
How many were not here last night? Well, that's a great pity because I'm not going to repeat anything [laughter] except two things. We're looking at a very ancient book, the book of Daniel, which is written against the context of the culture of Babylon. And last night I sketched briefly how similar in many ways the culture of Babylon is to our naturalistic culture in the academy today. And what I want to encourage you to do is to develop the courage, fight against the fear, overcome the shame so that you will be confident to talk about God in the public space in Norway.
So what are the big issues? I read at the beginning of Daniel's book how it starts with a conquest of Judea by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. And how Daniel describes that he really believed God was behind this experience that cost him his family and cost him his transportation to Babylonia. He had a sense of God behind history. And I spent some time last night saying this is the first thing we've got to understand that there is a God who's interested in our history even when it seems to be going wrong. And if we're going to stand in society for God, we must have eyes to see God behind our history.
But we're going to follow the students to the university. It was painful at first, I suspect. But there's this man called Ashbanaz and he's the dean of students and what we're told is that he was asked to bring some of the conquered nobles and they were to have a three-year university course. All expenses paid marvelous food coming directly from the king's kitchen. And at the end of that time, they were to be personally examined by the king himself. That happens in very few countries I know of. And Daniel, Haniah, Michel, Aariah of the tribe of Judah were four of them.
Now, just let's imagine them coming perhaps for the first dinner into the university dining hall. They're all sitting together very nervous and a Babylonian student notices them and comes over in a friendly fashion and says to him, "Who are you guys? I haven't seen you here before." "Well, I'm Daniel. I'm Haniah. And this is Aariah." And so on.
"Just a minute. Go over those names again. Never heard them before. You said you're Danny. Danielle. Well, that isn't Babylonian, is it?" "No, it isn't." "What is it?" "Well, actually, um, it's Hebrew." "Oh, I see. Oh, well, I'm sorry for you guys. You're you're part of that little nation we beat up last month and, uh, it's okay because you've landed here and this is top university. Don't worry, you'll get over it. I know it's a bit embarrassing and painful, but look, my name is Naboo and I'd love to get to know you people because you see, we're all here together in the course. So, so let's start with this. I'm named after the moon god. What God are you named after?"
"Well, it's not quite like that," says Daniel. "Well, what is it like?" "Well, my name means God is my judge." "Oh, dear me. What a dreadful name. God is your judge. No wonder you lost in the battle against our emperor. Imagine believing that God is your judge. Oh, Daniel, I do feel sorry for you. Listen, some of us boys are going up to the temple tonight and the girls are free. We'll teach you something about the fun we can have here. God is your judge. Absurd. No wonder we beat your gods."
Now I can see Daniel saying, "Naboo, by the way, you said you were in the same course as us tomorrow." "That's right." "Well, lecture one is on the code of Hammurabi in law. Are you going to that?" "Sure am. Because I want to be a lawyer. Oh, do you really? And maybe even to be a judge. Oh, so you do believe in judgment, do you? How very interesting. Tell me, Naboo, what is the base of judgment if there's nothing transcendent? If there is no God, how can judgment be anything but an arbitrary decision?"
And you can just see the argument starting, can't you? You see, Dan Eel, my name means God is my judge. I've got a vertical reference point for my morality and therefore by extrapolation for my concept of morality. Have you? And have you? Because one of the biggest questions today is what is the base for morality? I got so interested in this that I went rather foolishly I suppose in my old age and did a degree on it on ethics bioethics and do you know what I found? It's fascinating looking at the big areas of morality the law medicine business and so on. I discovered there's one question nobody wants to answer in any western country. Who said so? What is the authority behind morality? And you're going to be challenged on that because you're going to be told that all morality is relative. This is so up to date, you know.
And I can imagine as the argument went on that Aariah comes in and says, "Just a minute. you too. I need to tell him what my name means. And so Haniah says, "Well, my name means the Lord shows grace." "Oh, I save this Naboo. You believe in the judgment God, Daniel, and you believe in the grace God, Haniah." "No," says Mishael. "My name means who is like God. There is only one God. There's no grace God and judge God. There's only one God." "Well, that's a bit complex, isn't it? Tell me what is grace." So, Haniah explains. And then Aariah in the end says to them, "You need to know what my name means. It means God has helped."
"What says, "Naboo. You're in this mess. You've been transported. You've been taken from home." Nevertheless, I tell you what, number watch us for the next few weeks and see if what we believe is real. Do you know I could preach the gospel from those four names. I've done it many times. Their names were a testimony to aspects of the nature of the God they believed in.
But now comes the problem. they weren't going to be allowed to use them. That conversation never happened because what happened was that the dean of students called them up one by one and said, "Your name is Daniel, is it?" "Well, from now on it's going to be Beltzar. And your name is Haniah. You're going to be Shadrach. Misha, you're going to be Mishak. And Azariah, you're going to be Abednego." And some of those names were profoundly insulting. Meshach, Mishael, it's a linguistic play. And Meshach means Mesh Aku. Who is like Aku? One of the other names of the moon god. Not who is like Jehovah. What is this? This is social engineering. getting everybody the same in terms of their identity.
If the first big issue of this book is history and the second one is the source of values as I discussed last night, the third one is identity and names. It's all in your name. [clears throat] Now, here is what happened to them. They were given these names and it was a deliberate attempt to make everybody look the same. Put them all in blue jeans. That kind of thing. Let Daniel warn us. But warn us of something very important, folks. This didn't happen in Oslo, London, or New York. It happened where? in Babylon. Babylon changes names. Does that resonate? Think.
You see, these cities in the Bible and these empires, they're all part of a big backstory. And if you do a bit of research, as I hope you will, and you look back in the book of Genesis, you're going to find a lot of information about Babel. That's Babylon, Babel. And do you remember the story how people used their human ingenuity and engineering skills and they said let's build a city and a tower that will reach to heaven and let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be scattered in the earth. Have you studied skyscrapers? I have. They're very interesting things. You know, have you noticed every nation under earth wants to have the tallest building? Why do you think that is? Well, because as someone put it, behind every tall building, there's an even bigger ego. Skyscrapers and there's all literature on them are an expression of ideology of a way of thinking about the world. And the origin of this empire's capital was in a drive to use human brain power to create a huge identity because our nations are interested in identity. So are we. And you say what's wrong in having identity? I want an identity. So do you. We all want an identity. But here's the question. How do we create identity? Well, you can create it by making up a word and putting it on your online address. That's not what I mean.
Babylon changes names. The very next chapter in Genesis after that story tells of a man called Abraham. You've heard of him, Abraham. And he lived in Ur of the Caldes. It wasn't too far from Babylon. It was in the same culture. And God appeared to him in all his glory. And it must have been a very powerful appearing because God said to him, I want you to come out of that culture. And then he said to him, "And I will make your name great." Step back from this. God changed his name, too. And several people in the New Testament got their names changed. You remember that? Peter being one.
There are essentially two ways of creating identity. And as you sit there and as I sit here, we're probably struggling between the two of them. The one is the Babylonian method that you create your own identity and you push up and push out against anybody that stands in your way. That method is highly approved of in many areas of politics and business and so on and the academy. get to the top and use whatever means you like because morality is totally irrelevant. Or there's the other way where God says to a man, "Trust me. Follow me and I will make your name great." That's a struggle for many of us, isn't it? Have you enough confidence in God to give you significance?
We all want meaning. As I sit here, I want meaning. I need meaning because I'm created by God to have meaning. But the question is how? It's a battle and it has to be a battle because there are forces involved that go way beyond us. Now, don't misunderstand this story. God called Abram out from that culture. We're in this culture. He doesn't call us out from it because there are two movements in scripture. God called Abraham out, taught him how to trust God, and then through him brought a movement into the world that went in the opposite direction. So Paul, who was a descendant of Abram, was sent back into the gentile culture. And God will do the two things with us. He call us out. He'll train us to trust him. And then he say, "Go back and be my witnesses to the very ends of the earth, but you'll never be effective unless you've learned to trust him." And getting to that place where we really trust God is a battle, a very real battle. And the trouble is the world is not neutral to you. It will try to change your name. It will try to force you into one box or two boxes or a thousand boxes so long as it disconnects you from God. And that's why I'm a Christian, folks, because these things are way beyond my capabilities. I need help. But thank God, I learned a long time ago that help available. And so when people build their huge towers into the sky and they try to build them into my sky, I can go back to God for my question of identity and it helps us to grow in confidence. If we realize that the major issues of our society are dealt with in the Bible.
But let me encourage you. Do you know the empire collapsed? The Babylonian Empire disappears in chapter 5. Daniel remained and his name changed back to Daniel. That's good, isn't it? And in the rest of the book, he's Daniel. He didn't lose his identity. And the message is clear. They can call you what they like. And indeed, you can call yourself what you like, but if you have an identity that's related to God, you'll never lose it. And that is the massively encouraging thing. So that's one little thing.
But now we have the final thing in this first chapter. Protest against the quality of the food in the refactory of the university. It says here, Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food. But just stop. He wouldn't defile himself. Whatever eating this food meant, Daniel regarded it as defiling him in his context. I don't need to tell you what defiles you. You know exactly what defiles you. We only need a few seconds of the internet before we have that sense of conscience that we're defiling ourselves. He wasn't going to defile himself.
Now, what did the defilement involve? There are various reasons and the scholars discuss them and I read their wisdom and I'm impressed with some of it but not with all of it. of there are various possibilities why this I wonder this is King's College Babylon perhaps it was like King's College Cambridge where at dinner at night as in my college at Cambridge a scholar would stand up and read a Latin prayer and acknowledge God but this is Babylon it's very difficult to imagine that an evening meal in this circumstance would not begin with a libation to the gods. I don't know. But I can tell you something. Daniel lived to see the king's banquet, Belshazzer's feast. And in chapter one of Daniel, you have two big issues. You first the vessels taken from the temple of Jerusalem and put in the museum in Babylon. Secondly, you have this protest in the university dining hall. In chapter five of Daniel, those two ideas come together because Belshazzer gets the vessels out of the temple, fills them with wine, and forces his top brass, his politicians, judges, and everybody else to drink and praise the gods of wood, silver, and stone. And the result of that was he lost his entire empire because God wrote on the wall, you are weighed in the balances and found wanting. I wonder did Daniel have the sense as a teenager to see that if he compromised by offering the libation among the students that it would end up at Belshazzer's feast. I don't know. But it did end up at Belshazzer's feast. And what was that all about? That was about how the Babylonians interpreted the universe. They were thoroughly idolatrous, the most idolatrous nation in the world. That is, they deified the fundamental forces of nature, which many scientists do today. In effect, they don't call them gods.
Now, you notice Daniel didn't start a revelation, a revolution, and neither did Paul. Paul was a Roman citizen, a Jew, perfectly positioned to get involved in stirring up violence. But he didn't. We got to do it in a Christian way. That's not easy. In other words, the question is, how do I witness in my university dining hall? Well, first of all, by talking to other people clearly, as no doubt Daniel did. Now the philosophy of these people was like it is today. They reduced everything to fundamental primeval soup of nature. The gods as I said last night even appeared from nature. And we didn't be worry too much about what was going on except to say that Daniel's worldview was that of Genesis. there is a creator. And above all, he wanted to stand up for the idea that the most sensible explanation of this world was that there's a creative mind behind it. Are you standing up for that or do you think it's not important? The doctrine of creation, it was never more important than today. We need to inject it into our society because it makes sense of everything. This is a wordbased universe and I know many of you have had this pressure. Just keep quiet about your Christianity. Just you'll be marked down. And I was talking to some brilliant students recently in another part of the world, senior people doing advanced research. And one of them said to me, "Look, we hear you're a Christian and you stand up in public. Listen, if we even mentioned," and they weren't Christians. If we even mentioned, we occasionally went to church to find out what goes on there, we'd be marked down. So, I sympathize with you folks enormously. But whatever you do, you've got to find ways of going against the flow here. And you've got to be sensitive. There's no point in sending verses on the internet to your professor every morning at 6:00. You've got to work at it. And you work with those younger than you first of all and your peers before you attempt those above you. We got to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.