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Drawing the line
Daniel 1:3-14
You know the situation. It’s the Christmas party or end of season
party. Everyone is getting drunk and the stripper is coming on. In
a few minutes it is off to the night club and goodness knows where
after that. What do you do? You want to be there as part of the team
but where do you draw the line?
In the sixth
century before Christ a group of young Jewish boys were taken to
Babylon and four of them were chosen for special treatment.
Then the
king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in
some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility -
young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude
for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and
qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the
language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them
a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to
be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the
king's service. Daniel 1:3-5
The boys had
been signed by a Premiership club and had three years to prove
themselves worthy of a contract. It was a great opportunity but it
was also a hostile work for 4 young Jewish boys. There would be
lines to draw.
But Daniel
resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he
asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this
way. Now God had caused the official to show favour and sympathy to
Daniel, but the official told Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the
king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you
looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then
have my head because of you."
Daniel then said to the guard whom
the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and
Azariah, "Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing
but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our
appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and
treat your servants in accordance with what you see." So he agreed
to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days
they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men
who ate the royal food. Daniel 1:8-14
If Daniel is
prepared to change his name to the name of a Babylonian god, why
won't he eat the food? Why does he draw the line here? What's the
principle behind it? The principle is this: 11:26 of Daniel teaches
us this, that if you were to eat food with the King you were to
enter into a contract with the King, the covenant with the King, you
would be loyal to that King, he would be your King - the sharing of
a meal brought the intimate relationship of loyalty in this culture.
The issues
for each of us in professional sport will be different. We all
have to decide where to draw the line. It is about living for Jesus
in a world where Me first is the order of the day, where
honesty and integrity are rare. It may mean leaving before the
stripper, not being part of an organized campaign to intimidate a
weak referee, not giving him a whack when the ref isn't
looking.
As we look at
more incidents from Daniel we will see that Daniel faced the same
issues many times in his career. I am sure he drew strength from
taking his stand for God the first time.
Stuart Weir and Graham Daniels Also in this series
on Daniel
Not getting carried away
Master yourself
Life's a rollercoaster
The long haul
Things that last
Making a
difference
An audience of one
He
could never become a Christian
Does it matter?
Being there for
Christ
Writing on the wall |
