Well, hey, if we haven't met, haven't had the chance to meet,
my name is Josh. I, I have the the great joy of
serving as pastor here at the Garden Church.
And I'm glad to be with you today.
It's good to see you. What a what a fun weekend in
Boston. Christina, Phil, excited for you
guys tomorrow as you guys take over the Boston Marathon.
Best of luck. We'll be rooting for you.
It's Celtic's got a playoff game going on, man.
There's a lot of fun things happening this weekend, right?
And, and and you're here with us and I hope that that this, this
moment and this space this morning will be a gift to you as
well. If if you're just checking out
the garden or newer here, come grab me or anybody with a
lanyard afterwards, love to meet you, get to know you, answer any
questions you have. Just help get you connected to
to this, this beautiful community that is really bound
together across all of our differences by a a a shared
commitment to be shaped by and share the love of Jesus with
others. So well, I, I am I'm stoked to
be diving into our sermon this morning.
Our sermon we're, we're picking up where Mandy left off last
week with Part 2 of the series Faithful in Babylon.
And this, this series, as we know most of us are, you know,
we're familiar with Daniel in the Lion's Dead.
Maybe you heard about that story.
But as we discovered last week, Daniel isn't just a story with
safari animals and miracles. OK?
Daniel is a story about how God's people live faithfully in
exile. Now, exile probably is not
something that you think about deeply.
Maybe you do, I don't know. It's not a an idea or a concept
that for me is been something that I've I've considered or
wrestled or sat with, but but it is a huge theme throughout
Scripture. Exile was a defining feature of
the experience of the people of God.
This experience that we talked about last week of being
displaced, of being carried into captivity and the
disorientation, the disillusionment, even even the
deconstruction that comes with that as you see your your home
and your culture and, and so many of these things that have
shaped your identity recede into the distance, waking up in a
foreign place. I hope you haven't had that
specific experience. If you have, I'm sorry.
That's terrible. That shouldn't happen to anyone.
But there is another piece to exile, which I think is easier
to miss because it's a little bit more subtle.
And I think many of us may relate to and benefit from a bit
more deeply. And that is this.
It's, it's that there's not only a, an experience of, of
displacement that's part of exile, but there's also this
experience of living in a cultural system with values that
are at best foreign and at worst actively hostile to your faith,
to your identity, to your way of life.
And, and, and this is precisely where Daniel found himself here
in Daniel chapter one in verse four of our text this morning,
we meet this guy with a difficult to pronounce name,
Ashpinaz. He's described here as the chief
of the court officials and the king gives him a, a task
essentially of indoctrination and assimilation.
Aspinaz's job is to take these new captives, these these people
that Babylon has decided are good raw material, right?
They're young, they're they're they're of high status or
they're highly educated. They seem smart, they seem
valuable, but they're, they're still maybe not too set in their
way. So we can take them, we can mold
them, we can refashion them according to our purposes.
And that's exactly what Ashkenaz sets out to do in, in Babylon.
There we find to learn a new language, they're to learn a new
literature. They're assigned this daily
amount of food, this specific diet of, of, of bread and wine
from the King's table. Most of the people in the land
have been discarded or killed. But these few, they're the, the
lucky ones who get to be repurposed, redeveloped into
something else in Babylon. They'll serve the king after
they complete their indoctrination process over the
course of this three years. And, and this process we find
begins with new names. In verse 7, we see that Ashpinaz
renames Daniel as Beltashazzar, Hananiah as Shadrach, Meshach as
Meshach, and Azariah as Abednego.
Now, here's the thing about exile that I want you to notice
this morning. See, exile is not just a problem
of of seizing bodies. It's also a process of deforming
souls. This is exile, an indoctrination
process to help you become like Babylon.
Now, let me be careful and clear here because I I think anytime
we talk, start talking about conversations around cultural
hostility, some people get really excited and other people
bristle like crazy, right? Because we live in the world of
culture wars. And so I want to be clear about
what I'm talking about. And in fact, I'll, I'll name
which side of the spectrum I'm on when I hear Christians
complaining about persecution often I'm like, but really like
the fact that the Coles lady said happy holidays to you
instead of Merry Christmas is not exactly a salt on your soul,
right? Like Starbucks doesn't have to
like have the right kind of cups.
It's, it's not all a plot to destroy us.
OK, but as much as we can see a name and, and, and resist these
kinds of things, we, we recognize at some level that
that this kind of, of cultural persecution narrative that is
out there can in fact, like minimize the very real threats
and challenges faced by many people globally.
I, I know people this morning who are on their way to church
and, and, and doing so at risk of imprisonment, right?
Because of the culture and the policies and the politics of the
place where they live. They're meeting in, in, in homes
secretly, privately. And meanwhile, we've got flags
and banners outside to help you navigate the parking lot, right?
This is not our experience and I, I hope that it never will be
our experience. In many ways, we live in a place
with incredible freedom. And yet, and this is the
important part, everything in our culture is not designed to
move you towards the Kingdom of God, right?
We are, we are swimming in a river with a swift current that
is pulling and and moving in a different direction.
And, and this is significant because at at times it's easy to
to notice that the, the ways in which we imagine.
Like if I, I remember growing up and thinking about, you know, if
I were to ever to, to experience that moment, like the marderers
and heroes, heroes of the faith who had to came to this point
where somebody said, will you deny your faith or will you, you
know, be at the stake or something horrible?
And they stood steadfast for their faith.
Like it's, it's easy to see when the, the cultural attention is
so extreme, so overt, so direct, right.
And I believe that many of us, if we were faced with that kind
of a confrontation, we would have the courage to say, no, I,
I stand on my faith. I believe I will not renounce
it. But the problem with Babylon is
that the temptation is often not quite so overt.
It's actually much more subtle, right?
It comes in sideways. It doesn't ask us for this one
moment of renunciation or courage.
Instead, it asks us in 1000 small ways to accommodate, to
assimilate, to just take a small step here, to take a small step
there, right to to to be a little bit more like the people
around us, for status, for significance.
Everybody else is doing it. It's not like defy, deny your
faith and abandoned Jesus. It's just go along to get along.
And day after day we're we're confronted with these small ways
where the current is moving in a particular direction towards a
kind of formation. And and if we go along to get
along, 1 seemingly small choice so often can lead to another
patterns become habits which form character over time.
Our identity is reshaped by Babylon in the by Babylon in
these small and simple ways. And this is much of what Daniel
was actually up against. Yes, he had the radical
displacement, but he also had the food, the diet, the daily
routines, the exposure to a different kind of literature.
And and so Daniel is a case study for us in some ways about
what it means to resist, what it means to push back on the
deforming currents that seek to alter our souls and reshape our
identities. Philosopher James KA Smith, in
his book Desiring the Kingdom, makes an interesting claim.
He says that, that everything has a liturgy.
Now some of you know this word liturgy because we use it around
the garden quite a bit, but it's a it's a weird churchy term.
No, no, no shade if you are not familiar, but you were probably
given a document. You have a paper that says
liturgy at the top of it, at least I think it does, right.
And, and, and liturgy is this churchy word.
It, it technically means work of the people, but it, it might be
easy to think of it just kind of almost like an agenda, right?
It's kind of what happens. It's like you come in and
somebody's up here and they do a call to worship, and then
there's some songs and we say hey to each other.
And then there's this guy up here talking, right?
We have this. We know what to expect, right?
There's this, there's this order and this liturgy.
We're familiar with this idea in the context at least of of a
Sunday worship gathering. But Smith makes an interesting
claim. He says liturgies don't just
happen on Sunday mornings. They're actually everywhere,
everywhere. He says that these counter
liturgies happen even in places where you wouldn't expect it.
One of the places that Smith goes on to explore is the
shopping mall. The shopping mall.
Now, you might not think of a shopping mall as a place of
worship, right? But he actually describes it as
a a cathedral of desire, a cathedral of desire.
And here's basically the argument that he makes.
He says liturgies are are rituals.
They're rites. They're things that we do to
move us from a diagnosis of a problem to a preferred future,
right? To from from from a problem like
a sin to a gospel of good news, a vision for the future.
We have these liturgies that move us from one to the other.
And, and he goes on to explain that that these rituals, these
practices happen all over the place.
Every time we buy a new shoe, a new pair of shoes or a car,
right? Marketing is is pummeling us
with these messages over and over again.
You're not good enough, you're not beautiful enough, you're not
stylish enough, you're not enough.
But there's a fix. Fear not, we have the solution
right here. Look at this beautiful poster,
this beautiful clip. Those people, they're so happy,
right? They're, they're so awesome.
They seem connected, They seem joyful and, and those people
like, look at the product that they have the car that they
drive, the jacket that they're wearing, you know, the, the,
the, the necklace or the shoes. You could be just like them.
All you have to do is swipe your card.
And so we we look, we behold it cultivates a longing in US and
we we know what the what the ritual is, right?
Browse, consider, maybe find a discount, swipe our card, take
the new thing home so that we can, we can be that person of
worth and value. And and these kind of liturgies
are, are present throughout our culture.
Most of us don't even who goes to the mall anymore, right?
I think this book is a little bit dated, but there are so many
expressions of this. There's the gospel of
achievement, right? You are not valuable unless you
have status. So you can bootstrap your worth.
Good news, you can bootstrap your worth.
If you'll commit to the grind, just hustle, go for it, work
overtime, push. And so we overwork, we optimize,
we compare, we repeat, we measure our life in outputs and
tell ourselves that rest is for the weak.
This is the liturgy of achievement.
We've got the gospel of self-care out there.
I'm going to step on some toes here, right?
The diagnosis says the world is a grind.
Oh my gosh, isn't it overwhelming out there?
It's exhausting people. And the good news is you deserve
to be pampered. Oh my gosh, you deserve it.
So, so withdraw from anything uncomfortable, cut off anyone
who challenges you. Indulge right Spa, we can go for
it. This is the solution that you've
been longing for in order to deal with the grind that you
experience. We've got the gospel of
self-expression. Like the problem out there is
all these other people trying to define you, trying to put labels
on you. Your true identity is inside.
You just have to practice some self-awareness, look at look at,
discover who you are and then express that out in the world,
right? As long as you're being true to
yourself and and expressing what's true to you, that's a
win. The ritual is self-awareness,
vulnerability, treating every commitment as negotiable if it
doesn't feel authentic, right? Naming our stuff without
actually filtering or recognizing whether it's good,
as though all parts of us are equal, right?
We have so many false gospels that live in our lives and our
world. And the problem is, is that so
often we miss them because they're running under the
surface. See, they don't come out and
straight up tell you, will you believe this lie?
They just say, hey, here's a ritual to practice.
Swipe your card, work a little harder, hustle a little more.
And it's so easy to get sucked in because we look around and we
see everybody else doing it. This is Daniel's situation.
He's standing here before Ashkenaz and everybody else is
eating the food, trying on the new fits.
See, it's not just a a stick. It's not just like, don't do
this and you'll be punished or thrown away in the dungeon.
Daniel's from this backwater province, right?
That this place that has just gotten destroyed and wrecked
and, and torn down. And here he is in the center of
the world, the home of Imperial Splendor Hanging Gardens.
It's like Instagrammable out here.
He's got the best food in all the Kingdom, like 5 stars.
This is this is fantastic. There's a carrot that invites
him to just go along, to reshape his identity to become this new
person. And This is why Daniel is so
compelling to me, because he stands out and presumably a lot
of people don't like, I think a lot of people in this story seem
like they go with the prescription that's handed to
them. Daniel and his small group of
friends are different. They are a minority because they
choose not to accommodate and assimilate.
Presumably the formation regime of Ashkenaz worked on a whole
bunch of people. But Daniel in verse 8 chooses a
different path. He resolves, the text tells us
he resolves. And I think this is is so
interesting. If you look at the text here, it
says Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal
food and wine. And this verse that we see here
in verse 8 happens immediately after the renaming, which we see
in verse six and seven. See, Daniel was just given a new
name. He was just said, you're not
Daniel anymore. You're Belteshazzar.
And then in verse 8, right at the beginning, it says, but
Daniel, not Beltashazzar. See, Daniel stays rooted because
Daniel knows who he is. He has an identity that precedes
empire. Even as a young man, even as the
whole world is pulling in a different direction, even as
he's offered this carrot, this vision of the good life, Daniel
is able to stay rooted and to resist because he knows, knows
whose he is and whom he belongs to.
I think this is beautiful that it starts with his name.
See, so much of the time we think about like, who, who we're
supposed to be in the world, Like following is something we
have to to create, to manufacture.
But your name is something you receive, right?
And Daniel's name is given to him as a marker of his identity,
a marker of his culture. And, and here he says, I'm going
to, I'm going to hold on to this identity which I have been
given. It would be so easy here for him
to abandon this, to go along, but he is able to resist.
And this is the gospel, friends, that that God names us before
empire can claim us, right? We don't manufacture resolve out
of nowhere. It comes from a rootedness, a
connection to our identity which we have received in Christ.
This is what Daniel is aware of. He holds onto not simply by
being stubborn or brave, but remembering A truer word.
See, culture is constantly trying to sell you identities to
latch onto, right? Senior product manager, tenured
professor, You're a mom or a veteran or an entrepreneur,
you're young or you're old. You're a licensed clinical
social worker. You fill in the blank.
There's a, a million of them. And, and look, I'm not saying
you're not those things. It, it's not bad to be those
things, although some of the scripts are more damaging,
aren't they? They're more painful.
Maybe the, the, the story that that you're being sold is that
you're a screw up or a failure, right?
That, that you're too much or not enough, that you're too
loud, too broken, too far gone, that you couldn't make it work
or keep it together, that you're unwanted or invisible.
We're constantly being told these stories and these
messages, and it's so easy, so tempting, particularly when much
of society around us is reinforcing them, to take them
on, to take them as our own. But Daniel understands that
before any other identities that he is a beloved child of God,
that who he is, is someone that he has received because of the
word that God has spoken over him.
Daniel's resolve is not the root.
It is a fruit that comes first from his belonging, A belonging
that had been practiced and cultivated even in his youth by
all of these traditions of his faith, including eating kosher
right. He knew that for him, this
wasn't just about gluten free or some kind of dietary preference.
It, it wasn't, it wasn't something that he was on some
kind of a diet fad or, or situation about.
It wasn't about an intolerance that he had.
This was a marker of his familial and ethnic identity, of
his spiritual identity as somebody who is part of this,
this family defined by the law of Moses, somebody who is a
follower of Jesus who had been called out and selected.
And so Daniel is aware of that. And and when the invitation
comes to to eat this plate of pork, right, the seafood diet
that's put in front of him, he says, hey, that is inconsistent
with my identity. I can't do it.
But I love how Daniel pushes back here because it's often
different than I think how we might imagine, right?
Because we talked a little bit about these two tracks earlier,
right? Culture warrior on the other
hand, or chameleon on the other, like we think to resist means to
to defy, to denounce, to flip over the table and say I'm not
eating this garbage. It smells bad.
That's not my thing. Daniel doesn't do that right.
He has a a a different way that he moves in this space.
Daniel recognizes that that there are options as he
negotiates a space that is not his.
He's not over here as some of the Christian nationalists are
fighting for control of the culture, trying to insist that
his diet is the way that all of the Babylonians must eat.
But he does come in and he he asks for an accommodation.
He says, hey, like for, for me, this doesn't work.
This, this would be a defilement.
This would mess with my identity.
Would you be willing to try something out?
Can we negotiate this? Can we find a middle ground?
Right There is a place for resistance.
We're going to see that, OK, there is a place for for a a
strong and firm defiance of what we're told.
But there's also a place to tactfully say, hey, can we find
a way through this? See, Daniel is interesting here
in the the sense that we see in the the following chapters that
the Babylonians actually are calling him Belthashazzar, his
given name. He's rising through the ranks of
Babylonian society. He's practicing what Jeremiah
talks about when it's speaking to the Exiles about being
willing to, to settle in, to, to, to grow vines, to take care
of the place, to, to live in it and steward it.
Because this is where God has put you.
So Daniel doesn't see everything as an enemy to fight.
He's not throwing punches against shadows, right?
He's not set on an automatic of resistant culture war, but
neither is he a chameleon who falls into the trap where he
just goes along to get along, right?
He's able to discern which pieces of the prevailing mode of
functioning what, what scripts are at play, what pieces of what
is being handed to me by my family, by my culture, by my
job, right? Which pieces of this are are
holy and good or or maybe just fine, right?
I don't, I don't. And everything doesn't have to
have a Christian label for it to be OK for me to find value in
it, for me to understand and engage with it.
But I will have discernment. And so Daniel shows up here with
the discernment to to be attentive to, to be aware of the
ways in which the Babylonian regime would turn him into one
of them. And he walks in the opposite
direction. He's not a warrior.
He is not a chameleon. And friends, I think this is so
important for us. You know, I don't know where you
fall on this spectrum. I, I suspect that some of us
are, are more on the side of like reactivity and guardedness,
right? Some of us maybe are more on the
side of like, it's chill, what are you worried about?
But we need a great deal of discernment.
We need discernment to be able to understand where we engage
and where we need to chart a different course because these
scripts are in our culture, they're running.
If you are not experiencing tension right, then it's a
pretty good signal that you have slid too far this way, right?
If there's nothing in you that is like, I don't think I can go
along. I need to, I need to parent
different from my neighbors. I need to budget different from
my neighbors. I need to vacation different
from my neighbors. I need to to talk and to show up
to work different from my neighbors.
There should be distinction for a people that is set apart by
God and for others who are not followers of Jesus.
Not just for distinction's sake, but because the cultural
currents of our society will take us to a place that is very
different than the Kingdom of God.
If we want to be people who are shaped by Jesus love, who follow
faithfully in a regime that is attempting to form us, sometimes
intentionally, explicitly, sometimes implicitly, people
just don't care. They don't understand.
Like, why would you get up on Sunday morning and go to church?
You could be sleeping in right now.
You could be a brunch, you could be catching up on Netflix,
right? It doesn't make any sense to a
lot of people, right? Why?
Why would you parent in this way, right?
Why would you? Why would you not have sex with
this person? Right?
We're in these cultural conversations where very often
what it means to be a follower of Jesus is disorienting to
people. It doesn't make sense.
They may tell you you're an idiot, or they may just kind of
look at you like that's strange. But to be a follower of Jesus,
to be somebody who is formed in the current of Babylon, it means
intentionality and discernment to walk in a different way, a
process of counter formation. And this is what Daniel clings
to. He says, Hey, I'm going to stick
to my diet. It might be, you know, and it's
it's beautiful to see what happens here in the text, right?
He asks, he says, Hey, can I basically just have veggies and
water? And the guy's like, no way.
You're going to end up scrawny. You're going to be pale.
I'm going to get killed because like you don't look as good as
the other guys. I'm supposed to be at training
over here. And Daniel's like, hey, can we
run a, can we run a pilot? And he does.
And what happens at the end of the day, Daniel and his friends
who go against the grain stand out not for their weakness, not
for how bad they perform, but for what is actually good, what
is actually holy, what is beautiful about them.
Even the people who don't share their value system can look at
them and say, whoa, now, I don't know which part of that is like
the broccoli and the spinach. I don't know if this is like a
Popeye's diet and he's over here inventing keto or something like
that, or, or if this is more just like the favor and blessing
of God. But I want to say when, like
when we go against the grain, when we like practice a Sabbath,
even when things are crazy, when we get up and start our, our
mornings with a time of prayer instead of social media, right?
When we abstain from certain things or, or engage in certain
things, right? It it does form us in a way that
may be nonsensical to neighbors, But then they end up looking at
us and they're like, man, he doesn't seem as anxious.
She doesn't seem as overwhelmed. Like there's a joy, like their
life isn't necessarily easy, but there's a joy there.
What's going on, friends? This is the kind of anti
formation that Daniel practices and points us to rooted an
identity and then walking out a kind of liturgy that shapes his
soul towards the Kingdom. Friends, all of us need to do
this and and your liturgy probably should look different
from mine because different false gospels will hook you in
different ways than the ones hooked me.
I'll tell you one of mine. Let's have a little pastor
confession time up here this morning, man, I'm I'm tempted by
the gospel of achievementism, right?
The the Gospel that that promises that like the the way
to significant status worth is on the other ends of
accomplishment, of being impressive, of being
credentialed, of being a leader, of posturing and positioning in
certain ways. It'll get a hook in my soul so
easily. And then I start, I start
practicing the liturgy, I speed up, I overwork.
I'm like immediately into the workflow.
My I can't be present. I'm thinking about it.
I'm pushing, I'm grinding, I'm hustling, I'm telling people how
busy I am so they think I'm really important, right?
I'm, I'm name dropping a little bit here and there to, to show
off to people like that. I know people.
And then I'm cool like that. I'm telling you so you can call
me on it. OK?
This is, this is a false gospel that seeks to distort my soul
that is everywhere in Boston, right?
And if I'm to resist it, I need to practice a counter formation.
That means Sabbath. It means sitting in the presence
of Jesus in silence. It means just fasting from the
need to to name drop or to perform in order to impress
somebody else, right? Not, not trying to be smarter
than everybody in the room or more accomplished than ever,
just being present with what is. And that that kind of
intentional formation is necessary for every one of us
here. Like your thing may be different
than mine. Your your false gospel may be
different than mine. But the current is pulling you
in a direction that will not bring your soul towards the
Kingdom of God. If you want to be like Jesus,
then we have to learn from Daniel what it means to resist,
what it means to practice a different way.
So as we close this morning, I want to invite you to consider
what does this look like for you this morning?
Where do you notice that the tug or the pull or the drift of the
current? Where does it show up for you?
Like where you find yourself on autopilot, on automatic?
Maybe you're just being compulsively helpful for your
status and significance. Maybe your move is to not allow
yourself to be seen right? So you just keep yourself
invulnerable or perform like maybe for you it's a, it's a
distraction, right? You're just constantly numbing
yourself in one way or another. These are all liturgies.
They promise you goodness, they promise you a good life.
They promise you an end. But they are false.
And the end thereof is destruction, a hollowness, an
emptiness. We experience it, but very often
we just keep running without awareness because we don't have
the discernment of Daniel. Friends, this morning, I want to
invite you to use this next, this next segment of our
gathering. There's going to be some worship
music. There'll be these rugs up here
at the front if you want to journal or reflect or pray.
I'll be up here if you want to talk to somebody.
But I want to just invite you to use this time as yours.
Like where do you notice the tug for you?
What does that, what does that look like in your life?
Where is maybe things a little too familiar and something in
your conscience, something from the Spirit of God says, hey,
that's not it, that's not it. How do you need to perhaps root
into your identity more deeply? Like this is what we do every
week at the garden. It's why I hope many of you are
here this morning, to be reminded of who you are, to be
reminded of whose you are to, to come back to that identity, to
reground in what Jesus has done and who we are because of him.
I need that. But I also want to tell you, the
90 minutes once a week isn't going to cut it.
The current is moving quickly, right?
We spend hours a day on our smartphones, 10s of hours every
week, consumed by culture and situations that are happening in
the office. The currents are everywhere and
you can be aware of it and still pulled by it.
Unless we choose to discern and then choose a different liturgy
which roots us in who we are and whose we are.
Jesus, I pray that you would meet us this morning, that your
spirit would be active in these next moments of our gathering,
that you would speak to people, that you would highlight the
specific areas that that you want people to attend to.
And, and God, we just also want to pray against shame.
God, the the point here is not for people to notice something
that's off and then be consumed with how bad they are.
God, we want to be more faithful to your Kingdom.
We want to be formed by you. We want to be people who know
our identity and worth and can show up freely and powerfully
and courageously from your love and for the sake of love.
Because even in the midst of Babylon, we know who we are.
So God, I pray that you would speak, that you would highlight,
that you invite, that we would be responsive to, and that you
would make us a people who are faithful in every season we pray
in Jesus name.