Let's talk about Daniel.
Maybe you know a little about him. Maybe you know a lot. Maybe you'll learn something new right now.
This is Daniel. Daniel was a man with good habits.
He had a daily habit of praying to God.
He had a daily habit of obeying God.
And he had a daily habit of trusting God.
No matter what happened to Daniel, he prayed to God, he obeyed God and he trusted God.
When Daniel was a young man,
enemy armies surrounded Daniel's city and he was taken prisoner.
Daniel trusted that God would take care of him, and he did.
When kings had dreams and visions and didn't know what they meant,
Daniel prayed to God and God showed Daniel exactly what the kings' dreams meant.
This made Daniel so valuable that he was put in charge of many people and places/
When Daniel was told to pray to someone other than God, he still prayed to God every day.
And when he was thrown into a den of lions, Daniel trusted that God would protect him.
And he did.
Daniel's habits of praying to God,
obeying God and trusting God helped him through lots and lots of difficulty.
God protected Daniel and provided for him
his whole life, and that's just a little bit about Daniel.
Daniel was a guy who was given a lot of power, but what set him apart
was that no matter how much power he had, he worshiped God.
No matter what,
Nothing could stop him from worshiping God
even when it meant spending a night in the dark with hungry lions.
What would that have been like?
Let's find out.
My name's Wendy Rice. I'm one of the many keepers here at the Cincinnati Zoo,
and I'm lucky enough to be the primary caregiver on our lions here.
What does that mean - to be a caregiver for lions?
Mostly it means making sure they get fed enough. That's priority number one.
Um and then cleaning up after them. Just like all animals, anything that eats makes a mess and
somebody's lucky enough to clean up after them and that's me.
So give me your first reaction to the punishment of spending a night with a lion or multiple ones.
It's absolutely terrifying. Um, as much as I love these animals and I understand
them and respect them, I can't think of too many things scarier than that.
We are incredibly vulnerable,
especially if you didn't have any kind of a weapon or anything to defend yourself with.
Lions are just massive, powerful animals.
Every instinct in them tells them to attack and kill and eat anything around them that may move.
So that that sounds like a death sentence to me.
I would never want to share space with him.
I always tell people I can't walk past a buffet of free food without grabbing something,
and I am certainly free food to a big, dangerous predator like John.
So we just never put ourselves in that situation.
There's always a protective barrier between them and us
because they are extremely dangerous so I never share space with them.
My understanding is that these were lions that were hungry and so that probably means they were
being mistreated, right? They weren't being given food. They were being made to be extra ferocious.
Right. So yeah, back in the day, they they were probably doing
everything wrong in terms of caring for these animals, and the end result was an
animal that was fighting for its life every single day, fighting for every meal it had
and would be a very formidable and terrifying animal to encounter,
especially for a human who would be perceived as the reason for all of that bad treatment.
Right.
Yeah.
What would happen if I walked out that door and just put down a sleeping bag and laid down?
I I don't think you would survive to nighttime.
I don't think you would survive very long at all.
Even if he'd already eaten?
Right, even if they'd eaten.
They're programmed and wired to never pass up food.
It doesn't matter how full your belly is.
I mean if food is available, at the very least,
we'll catch it and kill it and hold on to it until we are hungry again.
Um, so yeah, so if you were to walk in there today and try to have any kind of
interaction with those cats, even if you just tried to like not be on their radar at all,
they would seek you out, they would find you and they would definitely hurt you and kill you.
Very, very likely kill you, unless someone intervenes.
So then in the story that we read, Daniel the next day
is alive and well, and it says that the lions' mouths were shut.
So what does that, just tell me what your thoughts are on that.
Um, the lions' mouths being shut is is a very clear indication to me that that's an animal
that's at peace, that all of their needs are met, they're calm, they're in a relaxed state,
they feel comforted, and they feel like they have trust with the other animals around them.
Um, an animal that's on alert might be walking around pacing, might have an open mouth
panting. So that that body language that you described is makes it very clear that whatever
happened between Daniel and those lions at night and the next morning, they were good.
Wow, I can't, I can't imagine that experience and coming out the other side of it
like that, surviving and having a positive experience with those animals.
What happens at the end? Does does the king let Daniel go, I imagine.
The king himself went to the to the den of lions and took the stone away and saw
that Daniel was alive, and he said everybody is going to worship this guy that Daniel worships.
I see, interesting.
We've talked a lot about what happened after Daniel decided to worship God no matter what.
But what about what happened before all this work stuff?
We need to talk about King Darius and Daniel.
King Darius was the king of Persia a long time ago.
And because Persia was so big, he needed help to lead his kingdom.
So he picked three guys to help him lead.
One of those men was Daniel.
Daniel was really good at his job.
Eventually, he did such a good job that King Darius put Daniel in charge of the whole kingdom.
Now, this made the other two leaders really jealous and really mad.
They wanted Daniel out of the way so that they could be important again.
Now, in Daniel's time, it was normal for powerful people to be corrupt,
to cheat those around them and look out only for themselves.
But Daniel was different.
The Bible says he was exceptional,
he told the truth and stood up for what was right even when it was dangerous for him.
Daniel was a really good guy
so even though Daniel's enemies tried to catch him doing something wrong, they couldn't.
But they could catch him doing something he did every single day.
Every day, three times a day, Daniel opened his windows wide and prayed to God, no matter what.
So Daniel's enemies had an idea.
They went to King Darius and said, "You know no one should be praying to anyone but you.
And if they do, they should be thrown in a den of lions.
Now give the order. Then it can't be changed."
And King Darius made the decree.
Now Daniel knew about this, he knew what would happen
if he continued to pray to God instead of the king.
So what did he do?
He did what he always did.
He went home, opened his windows, got on his knees and prayed.
But he didn't pray to Darius, he prayed to God.
Of course, his enemies were watching for him to do this, and as soon as he did,
they went to the king.
Then they said, "Ah, King Darius, didn't you make an order that no one could pray to anyone but you?
And if they did, they'd be thrown to the lions."
"I did. It's a law. It can't be changed by anyone."
Then they said, "Well, Daniel still prays to God three times a day."
King Darius was really upset.
He didn't want to punish Daniel.
They were friends.
He didn't want to throw Daniel in a den of lions.
He tried all day to find a way around it, but even the king couldn't rescue Daniel.
A king's decision was final.
It couldn't be changed.
So Daniel was put in a den with the lions, with a heavy stone sealing the entrance.
And the king said, "May your God, whom you serve so faithfully, rescue you."
Even King Darius wasn't able to change his decree,
because even a powerful king like Darius wasn't all powerful.
He was still a human king who could be tricked and he was.
Maybe this is why Daniel only wanted to pray to God.
God can't be tricked or messed with or undermined.
There is no limit to God's power.
That's the God that Daniel wanted to worship, and that's the God we worship today.
He hasn't changed.
He's still good and holy and worth our worship now because God is so good.
Even though Daniel spent a night with lions who could have torn him limb from limb,
the Bible says that God shut the mouths of the lions.
When the king came back in the morning, there wasn't a scratch on Daniel.
Now, those other two guys who tried to get Daniel in trouble, they didn't do so well with the lions.
The king ordered them to be arrested and thrown in with the lions.
And before they even hit the bottom of the den, the lions attacked them
and the lions crushed all their bones.
Yikes.
After this, King Darius gave another order. Everyone should worship Daniel's God.
He said, "He sets people free and saves them. He does miraculous signs and wonders.
He does them in the heavens and on the earth. He has saved Daniel from the power of the lions."
This wouldn't be the last time that someone who loved God took a punishment they didn't deserve,
and did it willingly.
And it wouldn't be the last time that a heavy stone was taken away to reveal
that someone who should have been dead was alive.
And I can't wait for you to hear that story.