Daniel 6:20 And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?
I finally got a new cell phone last month. The phone I had was ancient by today’s standards. One of the things my phone could not do was keep up battery charge. There were times I went to make a call and I couldn’t because my phone was dead. That happened quite frequently. Nothing is more disconcerting than trying to communicate with someone with whom you cannot communicate. The phone line is dead or maybe they cannot hear. All of us need a living God who is able to hear.
In Daniel 6, Daniel is famously thrown into the lion’s den primarily because of a naïve king and the jealousy of wicked princes. The king was tricked into signing a decree that no one was to worship any god, save they should worship the king. The king realized his fault, but Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den. The next day the king went to the den. Verse 20 says, “And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?”
He calls Daniel’s God “the living God.” Then he calls that God “thy God.” Daniel had a personal and living God. Only the living God can deliver, set free, and provide the way a living God can. Today, are you serving gods of money, recognition, and ambition, or are you serving the living God who does not age out?
What did this living God provide to and through Daniel? First, He provided an excellent spirit. What animates you? Is it God’s spirit or is it something else like earthly ambition? In Daniel’s story the princes who resented Daniel wanted to accuse him of something because he had an excellent spirit in him. In Daniel 4:8 and 5:11 Daniel’s testimony was that the spirit of the holy gods lived within him.
Now, there is no other God save Jehovah, so they were seeing the living God animating Daniel’s life. One testimony he had was that he had wisdom like the wisdom of the gods. That was found in him because God Jehovah, the one true and living God, animated Daniel’s life. Is there anything different about you than those you work with, serve with, and live around every day? Is there a living God within you that draws people to the God who loves them and provided salvation for them?
Daniel’s God also provided a transcendent law. A question in your life might be, “Who is right and how would I know?” When these princes wanted to accuse Daniel, they said, “We won’t find any occasion against Daniel except it is against him concerning the law of his God.” Daniel had such a spotless testimony the only way they were going to trap him was to make good bad, to make that which was lawful according to God illegal. That is what they did.
What law guides you? Are you guided by the law that changes, the law of popular opinion and culture? Or are you guided by a transcendent law? Daniel outlived and outlasted more than one world empire because he was animated by the living God and led by the transcendent law of God Jehovah. God provided an eternal kingdom.
Who will win? That is the question you should ask yourself. If you look around the world today and see evil triumph, you might be tempted to cave, to go along to get along, and forget there is an eternal kingdom that is above everything that you see. Several times in this account in Daniel 6 we see reference to “the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” Famously, the law of the Medes and Persians was a set of laws that could not change. That is why when the king was tricked into signing a law that condemned Daniel, he could not change it. Well, that law is contrasted over and again with the eternal nature of God’s kingdom.
Daniel 6:26 says again that Daniel had the living God, and then it says of this living God, “His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end.” You can only be as able as the God you serve. If that god is money, then you will be fine as long as you have money. If that god is youth, then you will be fine as long as you are young. If that god is personality, then you will be fine as long as you have a winsome personality. But if it is any of those things, it cannot last forever. Daniel was a man whose life exceeded the culture around him and the kingdoms over him because only the living God can deliver.