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I had the privilege of speaking for the campus-wide chapel at Covenant College, in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, on November 5, 2004. Here's the complete text of my talk based on Daniel 1.

Are there any Daniels here today? Literally — anyone named "Daniel"? Raise your hands. Excellent. OK next: anyone named Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah? Oh wait wait wait: maybe also known as Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego? (Ah — nobody gives their kids good biblical names anymore.) At any rate, you Daniels have to listen up, because this whole book of the Bible is about you. Here's point number one: for the next ten days, you have to eat nothing but vegetables.

Obviously, I'm just kidding. That's not how we figure out whether Scripture applies to us. (If it were, I'd be in trouble. Because my name's Jonathan, so I'd have to find a revolutionary paramilitary leader to become best friends with.) No, indeed. Instead, by God's Spirit, we can perceive all kinds of connecting points between the Bible and our own lives. These are gateways that help us pass through from a mundane existence into the biblical world, a rich and wonderful parallel universe that's really, definitely worth checking out.

For instance, any college students here today? Literally — any of you going to college? Raise your hands. Ah! Excellent, excellent. I believe that, in fact, the book of Daniel really is especially for you: people pursuing higher education. But by "higher education," I mean two things. First of all, at the most obvious level, Daniel begins with a portrait of four young men attending college. It's not really "college" as we know it, if only because it takes them only three years to finish. In general, it would be anachronistic to say that the Babylonian court around 600 BC looked or functioned much like a modern college or university. But Daniel and his friends are brought there for the express purpose of being educated beyond the basic level of literacy and functional competency their peers had. That's the same idea behind our notion of higher education, behind colleges like Covenant and thousands of other institutions around the country, around the world.

But the book of Daniel also reveals another kind of "higher education," one you might call higher not because it's after grammar school but because it's connected with the purposes of God. In fact, that's one of the interesting things about the opening of the book of Daniel: On the one hand, we learn explicitly what King Nebuchadnezzar's purposes were in bringing Israelites to be educated in Babylon: he wanted them to be taught "the literature and language of the Chaldeans." He was looking for people "competent to stand in the king's palace," people he could turn to for wisdom and understanding — and he knew that they needed to be educated in order to serve him in that way.

In contrast, we may wonder what God's purposes were in bringing Daniel and the others to be educated in Babylon. The book is very clear that God is active in this story: right at the beginning, it says that it was "the Lord [who] gave Johoiakim king of Judah into [Nebuchadnezzar's] hand," leading to, among other things, the Babylonian education of Daniel and company. What were God's purposes in that education? And what, I might add, are his purposes in your education? That's what I want to think through with you this morning: what can we learn of God's purposes for Daniel? And, whether you're named Daniel or not, how might you wonder about God's purposes for your education?

Now it's true, I'm not saying we should take Daniel's story as a step-by-step template for our own. Not many of you are likely to become the second-in-command of a world empire. (Though it is possible.) And I definitely hope that none of you will ever be thrown to the lions. There are other differences worth noting, too:

• Obviously, you're not all men. (And how glad the men are of that!) But there's nothing about these accounts in Daniel that limits their application to men.

• You're not all studying public policy, being groomed for government office. Though Babylonian scribes probably studied language, literature, mathematics, and natural sciences as well — quite a bit like a well-rounded liberal education.

• Probably very few of you are living in exile. (Though many of you are international students, and some of you may live with uncertainty about whether you can or will ever return to your home country. You native-born Americans might use the book of Daniel to meditate on what your international-student colleagues are going through, and to help you build up empathy to listen to their present-day experiences.)

• Most significantly for you here at Covenant, you're not studying in a hostile, pagan setting where education necessarily means spiritual pollution. But many of you will go on to graduate or professional school in secular institutions, and there you may encounter conditions that remind you a bit of Daniel's.

At any rate, the point is not that you are Daniel — rather, that the book of Daniel is helpful for anyone thinking about the higher purposes of their higher education. And I hope you're one of those people.

So let's consider this book (or half of it at least), and see what we can learn of God's purposes for Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah's education. I think there are four things. God's purposes include for them:

• To pursue — and attain — excellence.

• To deliver and interpret all kinds of wisdom from God.

• To keep themselves spiritually pure.

• And to contribute to the salvation of King Nebuchadnezzar.

As we go, I'll sketch some of the incidents in Daniel 1 through 6, and we'll consider what God was doing in and with their education and what we can learn from all that.

First: To pursue — and attain — excellence.

In fact, these guys already were excellent. They were chosen for this program because they were gorgeous, charming, and witty. Just like you are. (Seriously, you know that's true, right? Just by getting into college, you're already part of a global elite.) But neither for Daniel nor for you does it stop there. This is probably the most obvious purpose of higher education: it's to make you smarter, wiser, to fill you with understanding, to make you great at what you do, to make you the cream of the crop.

And this really is one of God's purposes for higher education. The passage says it explicitly: "As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams." Did you notice the subject of that sentence — "God gave them learning and skill"?

This does not mean that God gave it the way he made the heavens and the earth, ex nihilo, out of nothing. I think it's safe to say that you'll have better results in class if you try not to be formless and void, just trusting to the Spirit hovering over you during finals. But despite whatever hard work Daniel and his cohort put into their studies — despite whatever care and wisdom their teachers put into them — the text says it was God who gave.

This is one place, at least, where Nebuchadnezzar and the Lord himself are in perfect agreement: the king ordered that they be taught, and God perfected it. In fact, remember this line from the reading? "In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than" everyone else. These four guys had oral exams before graduation — oral exams with the king — and they nailed 'em.

Now, as for y'all, let's be honest: you can't all be ten times better than everyone else in everything. Excellence will look different for each of you. But I think God wants you to ask him to make you excellent. He is able to do it, and he delights in giving this kind of gift. In what ways will you ask him for excellence? You should give this question some thought. Are there places in your life that you sense God would be honored by your getting better? Some area of study is an obvious example. But if you're going to ask him for academic excellence, be sure that you offer that excellence up to him. Don't hoard it for your own boasting, or just to please your parents, or just to get into law or med school.

And there are definitely other possibilities, too. Some of you may not be the best in your classes, but you may be the wisest friend. Or you may excel in generosity. You may be a leader, as Daniel was. God may be preparing you to be an outstanding parent someday. It may be your athletic skills where you see God's hand. For each of these, there are lots of ways to grow, lots of people to learn from, lots of experience to gather right now while you're here at Covenant. I give you two questions to ponder:

• Has God has given you a longing, a tug in your heart, to see his blessing upon some area of your life, some capacity you're working to develop? and

• Will you turn to him for that blessing, and ask him for guidance in how you should cultivate it?

This is one of God's purposes for higher education.

Now secondly, for just a minute, let me zero in on one particular way Daniel himself excelled: the revelation he receives from God and his wisdom to deliver it.

You may recall Daniel's r?sum? on this count: he has spiritual gifts from God to interpret dreams and mysteries, which he does in chapters 2, 4, and 5. (And then from chapter 7 onwards, the book contains Daniel's own visions of the future.) What's going on in these episodes is nothing less than revelation. What is hidden and mysterious, God shows to Daniel. And Daniel, with wisdom and tact, passes it along.

Part of the story of Daniel's higher education, in other words, has nothing to do with the subjects the Babylonians were teaching. He gets wisdom from God, and there's no way around it: when he interprets Nebuchadnezzar's two dreams, or when he reads the handwriting on the wall, this is one-of-a-kind, supernatural knowledge from a divine source.

You are privileged to be studying at a Christian college, and one of the ways you can make the most of that is by keeping your own attention trained both on your academic subjects and on God's revelation. Some of you may be gifted by the Spirit directly with visions like Daniel's, but for most of you this will mean attentiveness to the Bible, to school yourselves in divine revelation. Read it, study it, discuss it, memorize some of it.

Now, as for how God leverages his revelation in your life, that's a harder question. And I can't tell you how that will happen. Notice, for instance, that even though Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are also serious followers of God and highly educated Babylonian courtiers, it's only Daniel who understands the dreams.

My point is that, through your professional and spiritual education, God may put you in circumstances unique to you, where you can deliver a divine message to those around you: a message of grace or a warning or a promise. Daniel always did it with tact. He always did it with sympathy for the king. Notice, for instance, that Daniel's revelation is never an attack on the non-believers around him, but serves in fact to protect and save them! All the magicians and enchanters are set to be slaughtered because they can't interpret Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2 — and when summoned by the king, the first thing Daniel says is, "Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon"! Even though the revelation of the dream has come only to him, he grasps God's purpose of mercy in that revelation, and single-handedly saves uncounted lives.

Even though God's revelation often seems out of place and even unwelcome in our largely secular culture, it can be spoken as a blessing to others and not a curse. That's how Daniel spoke God's word, and I hope you will too.

So, in Daniel and his friends' higher education, God was (1) gifting them with excellence and (2) equipping them to receive and then deliver his revelation.

Third, God called Daniel and his friends to keep themselves spiritually pure.

This is a huge theme throughout the book of Daniel: the urgency of remaining faithful to God amidst pressure not to. Right off the bat, as we heard read here in chapter 1, these four fellows are confronted with a very practical problem: food and drink that would defile them spiritually.

You probably know about the dietary laws in the Old Testament: no shrimp cocktail, no blood pudding, and worst of all, no pulled pork sandwiches. For the ancient Israelites, food was a spiritual matter. (Actually, for modern Christians, it is, too, though we often compartmentalize things. We're to pray daily for our daily bread. It comes from God.) But you may also notice that it's not clear exactly why Daniel and company feel the king's food would defile them. The meat isn't identified, and wine is certainly not unkosher.

Is it that the food was "from the king's table," already prepared, and therefore surely violating Jewish procedures for ritual cleanliness? Perhaps. Or is the dinner table simply one of the few places that Daniel and friends felt they could keep themselves apart, remembering their own identities as sons of Abraham, to prevent being assimilated entirely by Babylonian culture? Undoubtedly that's true. We don't really know exactly why they took a stand. But they certainly stuck their necks out, devising a strict test by which their plan for purity could be evaluated by their supervisors. They smelled a rat, and they were willing to put themselves on the line against what they regarded as defilement.

Notice, by the way, that they didn't launch a campaign to have everyone eat vegetables. Nowhere in the book do Daniel and company do that. Not that there aren't times when we need to call others to purity as well — but this instance was one of their individual purity before God and their trust that he would honor their desire to remain true to him.

There are at least two more instances in Daniel where spiritual purity becomes an issue once again. In chapter 3, Nebuchadnezzar demands that everyone worship a huge golden statue. This is bad. You must not worship anything but the One True God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — Daniel's three friends, who upon graduation had been promoted to important government posts — realize they'll need to practice non-violent resistance, and they do. They refuse to obey, and they count on God to save them from a very nasty situation: Nebuchadnezzar orders them to be burned alive. And then they say a particularly awesome thing: "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But [even] if not..., we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." Spiritual purity has become a matter of life or death for them — and they trust the Lord.

A similar sort of thing happens to Daniel in chapter 6. It's years later, and in the meantime he's been extremely successful in his career helping to run the Babylonian empire, and he's in line to be made essentially prime minister. But some enemies of his, knowing about his practice of praying three times a day, trick the current king, Darius, to make it illegal for anyone to pray to anyone but the king for a month. Daniel pays it no mind. He continues to pray, even opening his windows so no one can claim he's doing it secretively. This gets him thrown to the lions. Have you watched the Nature Channel? Getting eaten by lions is not a fate to be envied. But here's what the text says when Daniel was taken up out of the lions' den the next day: "no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God."

And that's it, exactly. These incidents where Daniel and the other three keep themselves pure — they're not so much about the rules of purity themselves, as about the One whom they trust. And that sort of turns upside down the way we often think about moral purity, too often laden with notions of obligation, judgment, and failure. In each of these stories, notice, there's a test — just see if we can't live on vegetables; just see if we can't survive the furnace; just see if the lions won't lie down with the lamb — but these aren't tests piled on Daniel and company to see if they're trustworthy! They're tests where God shows that he is trustworthy. They are tests that force the Judean exiles to really trust in God, just where they might feel most vulnerable.

And that's a principle that can help you meditate on how these Scriptures apply to you. When you consider questions of spiritual purity, think about them not as rules you need to follow but as places you need to trust the Lord. Why would anyone ever cheat on a test or commit plagiarism in a term paper? It's only possible if you don't trust God to help you through a tough class, whether you're passing or failing. Why would you pirate software or digital music? It seems compelling when you think you can only trust yourself instead of the Lord to provide for your needs. Where else: foul language? gossip? Each of these can be a matter not of rules to follow but of learning better to trust in God.

Spend some time, this weekend perhaps, thinking about where it is that you do trust the Lord. I think you'll find that there are strange things you do in those areas — like Daniel keeping kosher in farthest Babylon, like his praying in front of the open window — ways that you go about proving that God is trustworthy. Do you get up early to read the Bible and pray? That's because you trust him to speak to you. Do you keep yourself sexually pure? You can do it, if you grow in trust that God will give you the joy of love and intimacy, in the best ways, at the best time. Keep doing those crazy, counter-cultural things. And ask him to guide you into new disciplines, new experiments of personal purity. He will help you to trust him more, and to trust him in places in your life where right now it might be hard to.

Fourth — and I think this is really cool — because of his higher education, Daniel gets to contribute to the conversion of King Nebuchadnezzar.

This happens in chapter 4, but it's been building up gradually for a while. In chapter 1, Nebuchadnezzar is pretty impersonal: basically just the plunderer of Jerusalem and the sponsor of Daniel and his friends' education. But in chapter 2, we get a more personal view of his fits of rage when he's irked that no one can tell him his dream. Then when Daniel comes through on the dream, here's what Nebuchadnezzar says: "Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries." Not exactly a full confession of "Jesus is Lord," but still: not too bad for an ancient pagan despot.

Ah, but then he backslides. In chapter 3, he's building golden idols and ordering everyone to bow down to them. That's bad. But then, after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse, are sentenced to death, and delivered from the fiery furnace, this is what Nebuchadnezzar says: "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God." He then issues a decree making it illegal to diss "the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego." Again, not bad. But do you see the pattern: Nebuchadnezzar always names "the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego" — who is not yet his own God.

Finally though, in chapter 4, he comes around all the way. This chapter is presented from Nebuchadnezzar's own perspective, almost as if it's a letter or proclamation directly from him. (It's very cool; you really ought to have a Bible-study discussion about it sometime.) To make a long story short, he has another dream, which Daniel interprets for him as a prediction of Nebuchadnezzar's humiliation — the loss of his authority, a nearly total mental breakdown, and some really long fingernails. But it's also a message of hope, because Daniel predicts that Nebuchadnezzar will eventually repent and be restored.

That's exactly what happens. "[Eventually] I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, / for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, / and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; / all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, / and he does according to his will among the host of heaven / and among the inhabitants of the earth; / and none can stay his hand / or say to him, 'What have you done?'" For an emperor, the king of the far reaches of the known world, that's quite a confession, and quite a conversion. And Daniel was privileged to be in on it.

How cool is that? Because of his higher education, Daniel was able to speak the language (literally!) of the Babylonian elite; and he was positioned to serve in the government. Because of his other higher education of spiritual gifts in wisdom — and his willingness to use them — he had become a valuable asset to the king. Because of his graciousness, he had become a trusted adviser. Through all this, God was able to deliver a message to Nebuchadnezzar: a call to repentance and a promise of mercy and a word of hope.

Where will this happen to you? What opportunities will God give you to speak a call to worship the Most High God, and to speak a word of comfort and hope? I believe that God certainly will give you such opportunities. While you're here, after you've gone on to work or to further study. Whether your arena will be the marketplace or the academy or the arts or the church or the home (or most likely some combination of all of those), if you are watching for God's opportunities, you will undoubtedly get to witness conversions no less wonderful than Nebuchadnezzar's. Just as Daniel's did, your education should fit you to that task of proclaiming God's kingdom.

Conclusion

Well. The word I've felt God had for me to convey to you today has been this: that he wants you to ask him what his purposes are for your higher education. Going to college is so freighted with expectations and promises in our culture that it can be easy to hear nothing but the voices of ambition or family pride — or frankly, of thoughtless habit. But God has an opinion about higher education: he likes it! He had special purposes and was able to work wonders in and through Daniel's education, and I believe the same is true for yours. But it doesn't just happen automatically. Remember that it says that Daniel and his three friends were only some among other Judean exiles taken into the Babylonian educational system. What happened to them? We don't know. Maybe they were just going through the motions. Maybe they allowed bitterness in their difficulties to distract them from the opportunities. Maybe they never asked God to guide them. Don't let this happen to you.

The message of the book of Daniel is a call to trust, to lifelong trust in God. To trust that God's purposes are very good and are worth finding out. It's good to long to know his purposes. Let's ask him to show us. May it be so.

first published Nov 8, 2004