Transcription
[Music] And now today's message.
Uh, the series I started. My time is far gone. I don't think I'll finish what I have set myself to do. Don't give me 45 minutes. Give me less because we've already eaten part of the time. Otherwise, if I go 45 minutes, we'll close very late. Uh, so cut my time. Uh, and I'll do the best I can.
I'm doing the third part of "In the Corridors of Power." In the corridors of power. And this is part three. And my subtitle is "Gaining Access." Gaining access into the corridors of power. We've talked about the pillars that control the corridors of power. We've talked about whether we should participate or we should withdraw, to be or not to be. Today, we are talking about how to gain access and be in the center of power.
Proverbs chapter 22, verse 29. "Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men." Where it says man or men, you can include women. "Do you see a woman who excels in her work? She will stand before queens. She will not stand before unknown women."
Access to the corridors of power is controlled. You can't just walk into the corridors of power. There are passwords. There are codes to give you access to power. There are gatekeepers. There are power brokers who control access to power. You have to connect with the right people to get into the right places in life. And excellence in your work will open doors to the power centers of life. Your character and the quality of work brings you to the attention of kings.
Kings, they're talking about powerful, significant people. Kings do not have the same power. There are lower kings and there are higher kings. There are area kings, there are village kings, there are city kings, there are regional kings, there are national kings, and there are global kings. So you may start your life before a village king, but by excellence, you will rise to a global king. The king you may be standing before today may not be very powerful, but faithfulness will bring you to higher places of strategy and influence.
And in my teaching today, I'm going to focus on the book of Daniel, and I would focus on Daniel chapter one. And we're going to look at how Daniel had access to the corridors of power. So we start from Daniel chapter 1. Everything I'll be saying from now onwards will be from Daniel chapter 1.
Daniel chapter 1, verses 1 to 4. And it says, "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 with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his God. And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans."
Daniel, who is a subject of the book of Daniel, was a citizen of a conquered people. His nation is Judah. At this time, or prior to this, the kingdom of Israel had been separated between the northern and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom is called Israel. The southern kingdom is called Judah. So there are two kingdoms, and uh, they, uh, they have lived separately as two different nations for all this time. At the time of this battle, Jehoiakim is the king of Judah. They go into battle, and Nebuchadnezzar conquers him. And so Daniel, who is a citizen of Judah, becomes a citizen of a conquered people. His nation is a defeated nation. He himself is a prisoner of war, and he was moved from his nation to the new nation that had conquered them.
To all intents and purposes, you would say that Daniel was a loser. Yet in Babylon, Daniel rose to heights of power and significance that he could never have had in Judah. The reason being that Judah was a very small country, and Babylon was a superpower. And Daniel, in the, in, in Babylon, became very, very significant and powerful.
In Babylon, Daniel's life was profoundly influenced by two very important people. The first one is King Nebuchadnezzar. A very long name, but you have to learn to pronounce it because he's powerful. King Nebuchadnezzar. He is the monarch. He's the superpower of his day. He's strong. He's powerful. And he's expansionist. At the height of his power, Nebuchadnezzar controlled a lot of territory in present-day Iraq, in Iran, and right down to, uh, Syria, and to where we have Israel at this moment. Conquered a lot of territory. He was powerful. And Nebuchadnezzar's strategy was to expand his territory. So he was on an expansion or a growth path. He conquered other nations. He ruled over other nations. He had a very strong military. He had a very sophisticated system that the other nations couldn't stand. And when he came against you, you were gone. As a matter of fact, uh, Judah had survived for so long from being conquered because God gave them time and God was protecting them. But they continued disobeying God and walking in sin and, and idol worshiping. After some time, God says, "Enough is enough." Now you fight your own battles, and they lost to Nebuchadnezzar.
But Nebuchadnezzar is expanding territories, and as he expanded in territory, he had to find a way to employ people to build his territories. So he's expanding, and he's employing. Now, in the books world, if you got into the kingdom as Daniel got into, as a defeated people, you are either going to be a slave, which is where most of the people ended up as slaves, or you're going to rise up into prominence. Now, when Daniel came into the kingdom of Babylon, his destiny was either he's going to be a slave, or he's going to end up doing something differently. Most of his people were going to be slaves, but he was going to have a different outcome in his life.
Daniel in Babylon was exposed to a big country, a great nation, sophisticated systems, powerful people, and at the head of it is Nebuchadnezzar. That was the first influence, first significant person in Daniel's life. The second was a man who served under Nebuchadnezzar called Ashpenaz. Ashpenaz. Ashpenaz was a mentor and a mover. A mentor and a mover. He was the gatekeeper to the corridors of power. Ashpenaz is going to determine the future of Daniel.
So there is Nebuchadnezzar. He has the power. There is Ashpenaz, or Ashpenaz. He has the key to the power. Ashpenaz did three main things. Number one, he identified talent. He had to find the right kind of talent. Number two, he had to groom the talent. And number three, he had to open the doors for the talent. He determined who went up before the king and who went to hard labor. If you pleased him, you rose up. If you displeased him, you went down. And he was extremely loyal to Nebuchadnezzar.
So I want you to imagine Daniel, a stranger from Judah. He comes, and there are two important people in this new area where he is: Nebuchadnezzar and Ashpenaz. Both can determine whether he goes up or goes down. He is either going to amount to something, or he's going to amount to nothing. He's either going to be a slave, or he's going to be a significant person. The key to all of this is Ashpenaz, because Ashpenaz is given an assignment: "Go among the conquered people and look for talent." I like Nebuchadnezzar. He understood that talent can be found even among the conquered people. He understood that you can find talent even where people are at the lowest level of their lives. So Ashpenaz says, "Go look for talent." So he looks around all the people who have been conquered, because he's looking for talented people, and he picks the talented people and starts training them, and then opens doors for them.
Now, in the book of Nebuchadnezzar's world, he has set up a very interesting system. It is a system that still rules the world. The values of that system can still be seen in our world. It is a system that opens doors to people and shuts doors to other people. It is a system that determines who goes up and who goes down. It is a system, unfortunately, that does not favor those who worship God, because if you check through Daniel's life, he had to fight a lot of battles because of his faith in God. So it is a system that somehow is wired against the believer, and Daniel had to survive in a system that did not favor him as a believer in God, and he overcame. And I believe we can still beat the Babylonian system, and we can rise up still, as Daniel did.
Now, in the, in the, in the talent hunt of Nebuchadnezzar's system, there are three important areas, or three main areas that they look at. First, it has to do with physical form. Physical form is youthfulness, strength, and appearance. It is a system that favors youthfulness, strength, and appearance. They were looking for people who were young, without blemish, and good-looking. So if, unfortunately, you were not good-looking, this system will bypass you. The system placed emphasis on physical looks. That's how people enter the system. And I, I believe that in our world, it still works that way. Physical looks pays a lot of dividends. If you are average-looking, you have to pray very hard and work extra hard. People who enter into the entertainment industry, into the creative industry, into the sports industries, go there because of physical strength, because they look good. A lot of people make money simply because they look good. They look good on TV, and we pay money to watch them act for us. They become models. They wear clothes, and we wish we looked like them. And we're trying to, to diet and and thin ourselves just to look like them. It's a Babylonian system. Now, I'm not saying that don't be thin, but what I'm saying is that system was not set up today. That's how Nebuchadnezzar fixed his system. Looks will give you access to power. And for the majority of people who are, who don't have the looks, God help you. So that's the first thing, the physical attributes. Look at your world. Look at our world. The people who have so much influence: sportsmen, entertainers, artists, they are the people, actors, actresses. What qualifies them? Appearance, good looks, the physical Babylonian system. So I don't know how Daniel looked. Maybe he was handsome, maybe he was not, but he was going in a place where he has to compete based on physical looks.
The second thing that, that, that they were looking for was social class. Social class. So Nebuchadnezzar says, "We're looking for the sons of rulers, the king's descendants, and we are looking for sons of the rich." So if you didn't have social class, and you were not good-looking, and you were captured into the Babylonian system, you're going to be a slave. I mean, your future has already been determined by the way you looked and who bore you. So, and, and to a large extent, our world is like that. If you were born in the wrong place, by the wrong people, in the wrong family, life becomes very, very unfair to you. You don't look good, average-looking, life becomes very tough. Now, Daniel is in the system. I don't know how he qualified.
Then the third thing they were looking for, this is where maybe most people can help themselves: mental aptitude. Mental aptitude. He said he was looking for talented people, people gifted in all wisdom, people who possess knowledge, or people who were informed, people who were clever, quick to understand, people who were, uh, cultured, or had the ability to stand in king's palaces. I don't know how they judged all of those things. Maybe they gave them questions. Ask them questions, quick questions. Maybe like dictation when we're in primary school, and mental, where the teacher will ask you all quick-fire questions, and you had to answer very quickly, and if you didn't, slave. So you can see the system is, is not a friendly system. Not everybody will qualify. Not everybody will go through this system. And this is the world that Daniel was thrust into. He has to qualify on physical appearance. He had to qualify on social standing, and he had to qualify on mental aptitude.
So Ashpenaz is looking through the conquered people of Judah, and he's looking for people he can pick, and this is the criteria. That's why I said that access to the corridors of power is controlled, and if you don't consciously work yourself into that system, the system will bypass you. And there are many people in this world who are being bypassed. Many, many people, not because they are not created in God's image, not even because they are not good in something or the other, but they are being disqualified on these three levels. They don't look good. They don't come from great families. And they are not very clever.
But we know that God is no respecter of persons. But the Babylonian system is a respecter of persons. God looks to the heart. Man looks to the outward. Now, for many of us, God looks into our heart. He says, "You are okay." Man looks at us outward and he says, "You are not okay." Approved by God, disqualified by men. The challenge for every believer is not just to be approved by God and discarded by men, but approved by God and also approved by men. You have to have the two, because if you don't have the two, you can be spiritual, anointed, loved by God, but in this world, you may not reach your potential. And there are people who have the looks and are approved by men, but God rejects. It's not an either/or. It's a both/and. You must have the two. You must have the two. You must build yourself to enter the corridors of power.
And there are things you can do to circumvent the disadvantages. Now, connection to Nebuchadnezzar's system required training. It required training, and there were two components of the training that they were going to have. The first component, he says that he selected these people to train them in language. The first component of the training was mastery of communication. Mastery of communication. Our world has been profoundly influenced by the power of language. Language is like the train that carries goods and people from one location to the other. If you don't have the power of communication, you cannot move things from one place to the other. Language is like a train that moves goods from one place to the other. Communication is so powerful. God created the world with words. The Son of God is called the Word of God. The gospel is preached in words. Knowledge comes to us in words. Generals inspired their troops on the battlefield with words. Presidents lead their nations with words. In the corridors of power, words are powerful. And if you don't know how to use words, either in spoken form or written form, your power will be limited.
I think one of the reasons why Africans generally are not in the corridors of well, power, is because we are weak in the usage of words. Remember, Daniel was good as a Jew from Judah, and his language was Hebrew. In Hebrew, he was great. In Hebrew, he was a master, eloquent person. But Hebrew was a village language. It was only spoken in Judah and the Anointing Brothers who also in captivity, Israel. If you take the Israel, Judah out, nobody is speaking Hebrew. Chaldean was the lingua franca of the world at that time. That's what everybody is speaking, because that is Nebuchadnezzar's language, and he had colonized the world to speak his language. If you are going to succeed in the power structures, you have to learn Chaldean in addition to Hebrew. And Daniel was brought in to master Chaldean. No matter how much Chi you speak, G you speak, Fante, you speak, Twi, you speak, Ewe, you speak, Yoruba, you speak, if you don't speak an international language that is powerful and a means for communicating powerful ideas, you are lost in the corridors of power. You are lost. You say, "But this is my language." Yeah, it's your language. Nobody's disputing it. But who speaks it? You and your friends and your cousins.
So Daniel had to choose to say, "I'm a proud Hebrew. I will just only speak Hebrew. I will only sing Hebrew. I only think Hebrew because I am a Hebrew." And Ashpenaz will say, "Thank you, sir, for sticking to your Hebrew with all pride. Go to the quarry and dig rocks." I don't want to denigrate African languages or Ghanaian languages. I love, I love my Fante. I thank God I'm a Fante. I like it when I hear people speak proper Fante. I like it. But I can't go to the United Nations and address in Fante. I can't go to a boardroom and negotiate a loan in Fante. Even the structure of the loan, my language is not competent to address the structure of the loan. It doesn't have enough nuance and diversity to understand and to address the issues on the world stage. That doesn't mean it's not a good language. It is good for intra-family communication, but on the world stage. So listen to me. Let me just nail it home, because when I'm speaking, I have to know my audience, and there are some of you who want to get into the power systems of the world, but until you master language, and by language, I don't mean your local language, I mean you have to master English. Not even French. I mean, if you add it, fine, but master it. You must be a master, a mistress, a lord, a lady in that language. Otherwise, the corridors of power will be shut to you. It doesn't mean you are not intelligent. It's just that you don't have the code, the password, because the system has been coded against you. It's been coded against all of us. But thank God for the colonialists. They gave us the code. So now we also can take the code and conquer their system. You have to master that.
The second thing they had to master was literature. They said they're going to teach them the literature, philosophy, ideas, concepts. Our world is run on ideas. Literature is a rail line that carries the train. Having language with no ideas is like having a train with no rail line. You have to have the philosophy, the ideas to carry yourself from one place to the other. There are people who talk, talk, talk, talk English, but there's nothing in what they are talking. So Daniel is going to be trained not just to think like a Hebrew. He was a master Hebrew speaker, but he has to think like a Babylonian, a Chaldean. He has to penetrate into Nebuchadnezzar's world. And Daniel has to learn the philosophy and master the ideas of Babylon. Otherwise, he's going to be shut out and be thrown to the farm to go and farm, or to be a miner. And by no means am I saying that farming is not good. But most farmers are not farmers by choice in Ghana. Most African farmers, they are not farmers by choice. They are farmers by force because there's nothing to do. I don't believe in the youth going into farming. I don't believe. I believe that a nation should not be encouraging everybody to be farmers. I don't think we need more than 5% of Ghanaians as farmers. All we need to do is to do it well so a few people can produce for more than all of us. Less than 3% of most developed nations are into agriculture. The whole agricultural industry, including those who produce, process, and market, and everything in the United States, is just about 6%. Here we have 70% not processing, but producing, and we can't feed ourselves. It's not the number of people in farming, it's the quality of the farming. And we shouldn't be pushing young bright people and say, "Go to the land, go to the land, go to the land." That's not the way, sir.
Daniel had to decide, "Am I just going to be on the farms of Babylon working for Nebuchadnezzar, or I'm going to step into the corridors of power?" And the key and the code that is given to him: master the language, master the philosophy. Now, there are some of you, nice people, your father didn't help you, didn't give you good education, or you didn't help yourself. You, you ran away from school. I don't know which is which. But the good thing is Daniel's training was for three years. So the book knew in three years, Daniel, a total foreigner, can master the language of Babylon and master all the philosophy of Babylon. In other words, in three years, you can also master all the keys required for you to be in the corridors of power. Some, maybe your father didn't give it to you, or maybe you didn't have it, but if you focus well, you can change it. I don't want to have people with talent reduced to farmers and miners and workers with their body. I want people to work with their brain, with their ideas.
So they said to Daniel, "We're going to teach you the language. We're going to teach you the literature." Somebody say, "I'm going to learn the language. I'm going to learn the literature." Literature is every information, philosophy, idea regarding what you're doing. If you're a great farmer, but you don't have understanding of farming, you just dig with the same hole for the rest of your life. Use the same cutlass for the rest of your life. It's an insult to go to the farms, modern farms in Ghana, and see people still using holes and cutlasses. It's an insult to, to the, to humanity, because machines are doing those things. Machines are doing them and doing them far better. I don't want to see a human being on the ground hitting the ground, hitting the ground, hitting the ground. I want a machine to hit the ground for him for him to now plan what to sow and how to market what to sow. That a machine will not do for him. That is where he must use his brain. Not hitting the ground, hitting the ground, hitting the ground. And we call them hardworking farmers. Though we have cheapened human beings, and we have reduced them and taken them out from the corridors of power. It's time to bring people back to the corridors of power. Teach them the language. Teach them the literature. And those of you young men, don't ever underestimate that because if you have the language and the literature, you will go far. The difference between Muhammad Ali and other boxers is not how he used his fist, it's how he used his words. Everybody quotes Muhammad Ali. Nobody quotes George Foreman. Nobody quotes Sonny Liston. Nobody quotes great boxers because they have no quotable quotes. That's true. You don't sell just your physical ability. You sell your ideas. If you look at the world's greatest, whether a scientist, Albert Einstein, who is praised as a scientist, it's not just because he was a great scientist. There were better people with great research abilities than him. It's because he had the power of words. He could communicate. He could sell ideas, and he made the world buy his ideas. It's not just how good you are, but whether you can communicate it. And in the corridors of power, words matter. The world may enjoy your talent, but never give you power if you don't know how to clearly communicate powerful ideas.
Now, although Daniel understood the Babylonian system, he never bowed to it. And that's the good thing about Daniel. I don't have too much time. I have to be ending somewhere here. But Daniel never bowed to the system. He understood it. He knew how to use it. He knew how to manipulate it, but he never made it his personal philosophy. So when Nebuchadnezzar erected an image for him to bow to, he never bowed to it. When they said nobody should pray, he still prayed because Daniel understood the system, but he never allowed the system to dictate his life and relationship with God. And that's one of the important things for those of you who want to be in the corridors of power. You learn the codes, you learn the keys, but don't bow to it. Because if you bow to it, you lose everything in you. The Babylonian system wants to control you. But we have to learn to get into that system and control it.
Let me just, how many minutes do I have? Oh, God help me. No, I can't just preach on because if I preach on, we won't leave here. I don't think I can go any further because it will get complicated. Uh, but the, the, the, I was going to talk about the two agendas, and I'll talk about that, uh, later. Nebuchadnezzar had an agenda. Daniel had an agenda. Don't let only Nebuchadnezzar have an agenda for you. You must also have an agenda for him. You have to know, "I want to go to the corridors of power. What do I want to do there? What do I want to do? If God gives me the power, what am I going to do with it? If God opens the door, what am I going to do with it? If God, God gives me access, what am I going to do with it?"
And Daniel, if you study the rest of his book, which we will do a bit, ended up controlling the entire system, interpreting dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, determining how Nebuchadnezzar behaves. And not only that, he outlived Nebuchadnezzar. And when the Babylonians were taken over by the Persians, he also controlled the Persian system. Daniel controlled the world system from Babylon to Persia, over four kings in 70 years of his life. He was an awesome world leader. He didn't have the title as a king, but he became the gatekeeper to Nebuchadnezzar, and to Darius, and to Cyrus, and to every other person who became a great person in those kingdoms. That is where God wants to take the modern-day believer. We may have come from Judah. We may just be from a small town. Our, our language may not be recognized. But we have to learn to play on the world stage. And we have to learn to control the world system and bring the world systems to our God. And I trust that God will raise Daniels and Danielles. Daniels and Danielles amongst us. Men and women who control the systems of our world. Men and women of language, of literature, of excellence. Men and women who are able to go into the world system, not as slaves, but have access to the corridors of power and control governments and nations for years to come. And I pray that you will be one of those. God bless you.
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