Mission in Exile

Mission Conference 2008-10-18

Alex Tseng

Today’s message is the continuation of another one dating back all the way to the first week of May. If you remember, that was a very compact sermon covering Daniel 1 and 2, and I promised that I would cover Daniel 3-6 as I came back from Princeton two weeks later. But when I came back, I was called to preach in a joint worship upstairs on a short notice, so we never got a chance to complete the mini-series that we started in May. Now that many of you are back from vacation, I thought it’s a good time to finish what we started.

Daniel was an Exile. He made his dwelling in a foreign land. A lot of us have had a taste of that experience, haven’t we? We are all Asians here. We speak our own language and have our own culture, but we come here to North America and we try to make its language and culture our own, without losing our identity. Over the past year as I was studying in the United States, this sense of sojourning became even stronger. I always had a tough time telling my nationality to the international students there—Canadian, Chinese, Taiwanese. And am I Chinese-Taiwanese, or Taiwanese-Chinese? When I was studying in Germany back in June, this became even worse. When I told people that I was Canadian, I had to tell them that Canada was not a part of the United States, except in a certain ways. You know what? I’ve already given up on this nationality issue. Chinese, Taiwanese, Canadian—these are all secondary and temporary. One day all these nations will be gone, but we have inherited an unshakable Kingdom, and we belong to that Kingdom forever. Yet our identity with God’s Kingdom does not take away our identity and duties the moment we become Christians. We remain in the world to await the Kingdom of God, as we pray: “Thy Kingdom come.” Only then will our heavenly identity be fully identical to our earthly identity, as God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Until then, we are still what we are today, and that’s not without a purpose, because God does not do things without purpose. We are in this world as Exiles, but Exiles on a mission, the mission of the Ambassador of Christ, as Apostle Paul puts it.

We do not belong to this world. We are in but not of this world. We are in this world as Exiles on a mission. And this image of Exiles on a mission is precisely what Daniel portrays for us. The young Jewish man Daniel was captured to Babylon to serve in the king’s court, but he served whole-heartedly because he knew he was on a mission. Let’s turn to Daniel 3. Here in Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar the king built a golden idol, and he issued a law for his people to worship the idol, but the three friends of Daniel refused to comply. Before I go on, I want to explain some political concepts. Christianity has given rise to the concept of the separation of powers in a state. There are three kinds of powers—the power to govern, or administrative power; the power to make laws, or legislative power; and the power to enforce or execute laws, known as judicial power. Isaiah 33:22 describes God as King, Judge, and Lawmaker. When you have all three powers, you have absolute power, and only God is entitled to absolute power. In a human state, the three powers are to be separated. Apparently this was not the case for Babylon.

With judicial power, Nebuchadnezzar put the three Jews on trial. Verse 14, he said to the Jews, “Is it true... that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up?” The king then proceeded to give the Jews a second chance to clear their guilt by worshipping the idol and avoid the sentence of death in the blazing furnace.  

Nebuchadnezzar thought he was God! As king he assumed the legitimate power to rule. But in ordering people to worship the idol, he as king unduly claimed the power to make laws. And in putting the three Jews on trial, he unduly exercised judicial power. Worse yet, as such a dictator claiming absolute power, the law he made was against God's Law, and he put on trial people who obeyed God's Law instead of his law. 

When they were being tried, the three Jews refused to defend themselves. Verse 16: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.” By opposing God’s Law, the king lost his authority by default. The three friends of Daniel recognized that God as the King of Kings is also the highest Lawmaker and the ultimate Judge, that God is the only One entitled to exercise all three powers. So they defied Nebuchadnezzar's false authority. If you think about the New Testament, Jesus also refused to defend Himself before Pontius Pilate in the same way. In claiming autonomy or self-government, humanity has constructed a set of laws against God's Law, and with this false set of subjective laws they measure everything, and they judge God’s people. They judge even God Himself. They think they are “the measure of all things”! They think they are kings and judges and lawmakers! Yet, humanity is not in the place to put God on trial. Humanity is not even in the place to put on trial God's servants who obey His Law rather than human laws that are against His Law.

This relates to the way we debate against unbelievers in defense of our faith. Oftentimes Christians are concerned to “defend” God against non-Christians. There’s a book called Evidence that Awaits a Verdict, as if God were put on trial, and Christians as His attorneys had enough evidence to prove Him to be real. One of the most important Christian thinkers in the last century was Cornelius Van Til. Van Til rejected this evidentialist way of defending God, because humanity is in no place to put God on trial! If God is the highest Truth, then His Truth must be self-evident. God is the test of all truth-claims; God is the light in which all evidences are to be interpreted. No claimed truth has the authority to be a test for the Truth of God. If you’ve studied geometry, you would know about theorem and axioms. Axioms are self-evident truths that cannot be proven or disproved. They are the highest truths in geometry. No geometric theorem can be used to prove an axiom. The axiom is the test for the truth of a theorem. The theorem is deduced from the axiom, not vice versa. In the same way, God cannot be proven, because He is the highest Truth. God can only be presupposed by faith, because no truth is higher than God's Truth. Yet, faith in God is not blind, because God's Truth is self-evident. That’s what Paul says in Romans 1. God’s Truth is self-evident. God's Truth, instead of being proven by evidence, must be the standard according to which all evidences are weighed and interpreted. God cannot be put on trial. Human beings don’t get to say the verdict. God is not justified. God justifies.  

The three Jews understood that the king’s law could not trump God's Law. They not only refused to defend themselves; they refused to obey the king’s order. They defied the powers of Nebuchadnezzar, and subjected themselves to his power to execute them. Did they know that God was going to save them? Yes, somehow they did, according to verse 17, although we are not told how they knew this. But that’s not the important question. The important question is: Did they think that God was obligated in any way to rescue them? The answer is no. God did not have to justify Himself by saving His servants. Even if God left His servants to burn in the furnace, God would still be God, and the three Jews knew that, so they said to Nebuchadnezzar, verse 18, “Even if God does not [rescue us], we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” 

By faith these three people understood that even if God did not rescue them from the furnace, God would still be God, and God would still be their God, God-for-them. It’s because of this firm knowledge that they refused to worship other gods. This was how they proclaimed God’s universal sovereignty. This was how they evangelized. They didn’t appeal to the king’s favor. They defied the king in their act of evangelism, so that the king would know who really holds absolute power. Note three things in their evangelistic proclamation.

The first is the phrase “Even if He does not.” This is faith! No matter what happens, no matter how terrifying the reality of life might seem, God is still God, and He is still our God—God-for-us! God is not justified; God justifies, for He is just in all His ways.

The second is the phrase “We will not serve your gods!” This is obedience—evangelical obedience! This is faith in action! We will not serve your gods!

The third element is how the three Exilic missionaries were pushed into the furnace. The knowledge that God is God and is our God is not a faith "in spite of" circumstances. It is not a blind faith. It is a faith characterized by sight—the sight of the transience of present transience in light of God's eternity. Life is full of up and downs because nothing is permanent. Sometimes we just want to escape from life, don’t we? The word “transient” means not permanent. Yet, the transience of life itself becomes transient in light of God’s eternity. Transience is not permanent! By this faith, instead of escaping from life, we are empowered to live life and embrace life. By faith, the three friends of Daniel lived life in the furnace with praise and joy, because they knew that their transient lives as aliens and strangers on earth were transient, that they had an eternal home awaiting them.

Now, we live in a world where godless people have constructed a set of laws for us to obey. We are in Exile! There's a set of laws in the classroom, a set of laws in the academia; a set of laws in our biology or psychology or economics or even theology courses, a set of laws among our non-Christian relatives or friends. There’s a set of laws about how to be cool and how to be popular in school. There’s even a set of laws about how to receive affirmations from people in the church who have no regard for the cross of Jesus. People everywhere want us to adhere to these sets of laws, and they judge us by these sets of laws. They give us “chances” to justify ourselves according to these sets of laws, and if we forgo those chances, they will sanction us. We might get poor grades. We might lose our friends. We might become unpopular. People out there might think we are “uncool”; people in here might think we are “unspiritual.” We might end up in the blazing furnace! But so what! God is still God, and He is still our God! And because we know this truth so firmly, we will say to them, “We do not need to defend ourselves before you.” We will deny their false laws. We will say to them, “We will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Not the idol of today’s secularism, and not the idol of legalism in the church. So this is the point I want to arrive at for this chapter: Knowing that only God is God, and that He is our God in all circumstances, we live this Exilic life in defiance of all powers that oppose God. This is for Daniel 3. Now let’s turn to Daniel 4.

The account in Daniel 4 focuses on Nebuchadnezzar instead of Daniel. The king has shown his stupidity time and time again. When Daniel first interpreted the dream, the king knew that the God of Israel was the highest God. Yet, he still made an idol for people to worship, and threw Daniel's friends into the furnace without fearing that their God might punish him. Somehow he thought although there is a Most High God, he himself was not subject to His power.

Here in Daniel 4, the king receives a prophetic dream, and with his stupidity, he thought it would be a blessing. The dream turned out to be a prophecy against him in order to show him who the true King is. Daniel interpreted the dream for Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel advised the king that the curse might be lifted if he renounced his sins “by doing what is right” and his wickedness “by being kind to the oppressed.”

Somehow the king didn't take this warning seriously. He thought God couldn’t do anything to him. Finally, the plague came upon him, and he suffered for seven years to finally realize that he was not in control of his life.

Well, I think I live my life with the same kind of stupidity in many ways. For some weird reason I'm convinced that I’m exceptional, and that God won’t hold me responsible for my sinful, self-glorifying ways as He holds other people responsible. I think I’m in control of my own life, and God will bless me for that. And I hope I was the only one who is so sinful, but apparently I am not. We have to realize that God is in control, and that means I should surrender my life to Him. It’s so easy to say, but so hard to do. A key question that I ask myself is a phrase that I borrow from my friend whom I mentioned last night: “Why are you doing this?” I tell you, this girl has a lot of wisdom. It’s such a powerful question to ask myself: “Why are you doing this, Alex?” Am I doing something for God’s glory, or am I living my life with Nebuchadnezzar's kind of stupidity? Remember last night we said that we are on a mission in Exile. We have to examine ourselves all the time whether we are living according to that mission. So whenever we make a decision to do something, let’s ask ourselves this question: “Why am I doing this?”

Now let’s move on to Daniel 5. Before we proceed, let me introduce to you a literary device in Old Testament narratives that is sometimes called “parallel commentary,” where we would have two similar or parallel events or characters side-by-side in order to draw some important contrasts. In Daniel 4 and 5, we have two side-by-side accounts of Daniel prophesying against two pagan kings. 

In Chapter 4, Daniel prophesied against Nebuchadnezzar, and verse 19 says that Daniel was “perplexed for a time, and his thoughts terrified him.” Daniel was afraid of the power of the king! He spoke in an extremely servile and humble way to Nebuchadnezzar, almost compromising God’s authority over the pagan king. This is what Daniel says to the king in verse 19: “My lord [referring to the king], if only the dream applied to your enemies and its meaning to your adversaries!” Just back in Chapter 3, Daniel's three friends stood so courageously against the king’s evil power. And yet unlike his friends, Daniel was scared to present God’s message with Kingdom-authority! He didn’t understand that his mission was backed up by the power of the almighty God!

But now we come to Chapter 5. Here Daniel prophesied against Belshazzar, the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, and Daniel spoke with heavenly authority. This is what he says to the king, verse 17: “I don’t care about your gifts and rewards; I only care about telling you what God would have me tell you.” Then Daniel rebuked the king: “Your father was punished by God because he thought he was greater than God. You knew all of this, and yet you still have not humbled yourself! Now God is going to punish you!” ere we see the mark of a true prophet. Daniel was unafraid of the king’s power, because he knew that God “holds in his hand [the king's] life and all [his] ways.” (V. 23)

There are too many things that tempt us to compromise the gospel of God's Kingdom. For Daniel, he was threatened by Nebuchadnezzar's temporal and illusive powers, and he was also unmoved by Belshazzar's offer of illusive prosperity. Both were temptations. We don't know how Daniel’s faith grew over time, but we know that a prophet (which is a person called to proclaim God’s will) must somehow learn to courageously preach God’s message without compromise. And you know what? As believers, we are all prophets in the sense that our mission is to proclaim God’s will, God’s plan of the coming of His Kingdom inaugurated by the person and works of Jesus Christ. So this is my fifth point regarding Exilic mission, continuing from yesterday. The point is this: We must be unmoved by temptations or threats in our prophetic mission.

Let’s now turn to Daniel 6. In Daniel 6, Persia has taken over Babylon. Note it says here that Daniel was “trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent” in his conduct of government affairs, even though he was working for a pagan king. Because he was so faithful in his office, the pagan king loved Daniel to the point that when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, the king could not eat or sleep for the whole night. In fact, Daniel was just as faithful when he worked for Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. Daniel understood that he was appointed to his office not just by the will of the kings, but ultimately by the will of God, so he understood his governmental office as a form of ministry and Kingdom-mission.

In the same way, we have all sorts of obligations in the world, and we are to be faithful in these obligations, we are to do our best, not because we are loyal to the powers of this world, but because God put us in those positions, and as long as these positions don’t contradict God’s authority, we are to perform our duties faithfully as we are faithful to God.

Now, this is not to be confused with the false understanding of a “two-kingdoms theory,” where we would have two separate allegiances, one to God and the other to some earthly power. No, Daniel had only one allegiance. Daniel's loyalty to his governmental office was not loyalty to the king, but loyalty to God. That is why time and time again, Daniel defied the authority of the king when the king failed to honor God. In the particular case of Daniel 6, Daniel defied the imperial edict that banned any form of prayer except prayers to king Darius. Against the king's decree, Daniel prayed to God.

There are several we should note about Daniel's prayer. First, we note that Daniel prayed 3 times a day, “just as he had done before,” verse 10. He prayed with a regular routine routine. In our postmodern culture, we don't like routines and formalities, and we bring this mindset into Christian living. We emphasize the content and disregard the form. We emphasize what’s in our heart, and we disregard our outward living. But the Bible prescribes all sorts of so-called “formalities” to Christian living. This includes: the institutional, visible, local, formal churches; various church offices, like pastors, teachers, deacons, elders; baptism and the Lord's Supper; weekly worship. Christianity is not just a religion of the heart. Christianity is a religion of consistency between heart and action, faith and life, thought and word, the inside and the outside, content and form. The content of our faith is to be expressed outwardly in the forms prescribed by the Bible. Of course, there are flexibilities with the forms, so that we don’t fall into legalism. Daniel’s principle of godly living included praying three times a day. For us, it might be more, it might be less, but a prayer routine is important, as is routine in any aspect of Christian living. John Calvin, the great theologian of the Reformation, says that we have to understand that we are sinners and we are by nature ignorant and lazy, and having a formal routine of spiritual discipline is necessary to the process of sanctification. I would extend this idea and say that because we are in Exile like Daniel, where every aspect of this world wants to snatch us away from God, it’s very important for us to stick to certain formalities, especially those prescribed in the New Testament, that are meant to be a means for us to remain in Christ. The Exilic experience is such that because the temptations of the world are so strong, there is never such thing as “overreaction” against cultural influences, as long as we don't become legalistic. 

The second point to note about Daniel’s prayer is that he prayed, “giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.” Verse 10. For Daniel, staying true to his religious principle meant defying the king and risking his life. If I were Daniel, I would still pray to God and defy the king, but my prayer would be something like: “God, I have chosen to stay faithful to you. If you will, please deliver me from the persecution I might face. Even if you do not, help me stay faithful to you.” I think that would be a decent prayer. But Daniel’s faith was so much stronger. He didn’t ask God to deliver him or give him faith! He simply gave thanks to God as he had always done! He gave thanks to God in times of prosperity and in times of hardship, because for him, neither prosperity nor hardship was of any ultimate worth. He was so completely engrossed by the vision of God’s Kingdom and universal sovereignty, that he gave thanks and rejoiced in everything that happened to him. What does it mean to “enjoy God”? This is it! We enjoy God in both prosperity and hardship, knowing that He who is Sovereign over all is our Father in heaven. (Pause)

Now, the third thing to note is that Daniel prayed with his windows “opened toward Jerusalem.” Daniel, with all the power and wealth that was given to him in the pagan courts, understood that this world was not his home. He understood that he was in Exile, no matter how materialistically enjoyable this Exile might be. The Exilic experience comprises not only of persecution, but also temptation. Sometimes the Exilic experience can seem to be very friendly and very enjoyable. But Daniel refused the temporary happiness that the Exile had promised. His heart remained in Jerusalem. For us, this means that our home is in the New Jerusalem, so our hearts should be there, instead of here in this world, in which we are only aliens and strangers.

Finally, we note that Daniel prayed with his “windows opened,” and everyone could see him pray. Now, did Jesus not teach us to pray in private and not let people see? Well, yeah, but the context of Jesus’ teaching was a Jewish community where praying in public would win the praise of people. Jesus’ point was that we shouldn’t pray to make people think we are godly and thus win their praise, but should pray for the sake of the Kingdom, hence we are taught to pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” Daniel prayed in a pagan context where public prayer would not result in winning praises but persecution. Daniel’s prayer was an act of witnessing to God's Kingdom! In a community of believers, our good works and piety should be low-profile, but to the unbelieving world, we are to be cities built on hills, lamps on the table, so that everybody can see the glory of Christ through us. A lot of the time, public witness for God's Kingdom would result in persecution. That was the case for Daniel, but he insisted on keeping his windows opened.

Now, this has been a very compact sermon. In these last three days I did not call upon any of you to go to places afar to preach the gospel. It’s not that I don’t believe in global mission. I have been to China a number of times myself. But I refrained from talking about mission in a conventional way, because I wanted to drive home the idea that all Christians are missionaries, and I wanted you to understand yourself as a missionary, right here right now, and wherever you might go. We have tried to cover a number of grounds, and it’s ok if you don’t remember every point that we’ve made. It’s ok, as long as you remember that you are in this world, you are where you are, with a mission.

Now, with the prayer of Daniel, I’d like us to ask ourselves four questions for a close: 1. Ask yourself, “Are my windows wide opened so the world can see that I am a Christian?” 2. Do I remember that I am in Exile, and therefore scorn the fame and riches that this world offers, and keep my heart in the New Jerusalem that is yet to come? 3. Do I enjoy God by being thankful to Him in all circumstances, knowing that He remains God and remains my God in all my Exilic experiences? 4. For the sake of personal piety and public witness, has my outward living been consistent with my inward faith? God be with us in Exile.