Serving God in Babylon

God is in control. Therefore, if you find yourself living in Babylon, you know it is God’s will. God has chosen this for you. God has chosen you for this. Now what will you do?

Jeremiah brought a message from the Lord:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer 29:4-7 ESV)

For our next Lesson from Babylon, let’s look at how Daniel and company lived that out.

Looking again at the familiar story of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, there are two things that should jump out at us. First, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah are on his payroll. They were selected for his service in chapter 1, and they are serving among the wise men of Babylon. They had mastered its pagan literature. They had learned their system for interpreting dreams and visions. Daniel and company stood among the king’s magicians and enchanters and were found to be ten times better at all of this hoo-doo than they were. And so they served. They didn’t blow the test. They didn’t escape and hide. They did what they were there to do. As Paul Helm put it, “the bulk of Daniel’s life (and ours) is orchestrated by God to be lived out in regulated and strikingly ordinary ways. If we are looking to be useful to him and his ever-expanding kingdom, we ought to be prepared to show up day after day, and decade after decade, simply playing our regular part in the melodic line he is orchestrating.”

So this is our next lesson: Serve God where he puts you.

Daniel and the other faithful Hebrews served God by serving their king. Then their lives were threatened by an irrational king for something they didn’t do. They not only solved Nebuchadnezzar’s problem for him, they rescued the rest of his wise men. Then they went back to work (2:48-49).

In chapter 3, after serving faithfully, they are thrown into the fiery furnace for simply failing to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s silly idol. Then they went back to work (3:30). In chapter 6, Daniel is thrown into the lion’s den for continuing to worship God the way he always had. Then he went back to work. When they suffered for their faith, they took it in stride and continued to serve the state. They lived out Peter’s instruction to us, “if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1Pet 2:20-21).

We’ve had it good for a long time, but we should not expect to avoid suffering for Christ forever. When we do, that does not excuse us from serving. As Alistair Begg says,

Our Western nations may be increasingly committed to a non-Christian worldview and ethical approach. They may be more and more antagonistic to those who wish to live out the law of God. But we are not further from “Jerusalem” than Babylon was. If Daniel could find a way to serve well in exile—to seek the common good, to obey the state wherever he could, to give his time and talents to seeing Babylon flourish—then we can serve well, too.

Last time we talked about the importance of being part of a believing community. Daniel and his friends benefitted from that, but they did not hide out there. There have always been those who have thought it best to withdraw from the world. It's easier, it’s safer, and it’s more comfortable. We can just stay with our kind while the rest of the world burns down. But that’s not what Jesus has called us to. Let’s serve God by seeking the welfare of Babylon, even when Babylon turns against us. When we do that, we show who he really is.


Image via Unslpash