G'day and welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Dave here, a big shout out to Teddy, who is the first person to sign up to the Kids Club.

If you haven't signed up yet, don't miss out.

The second episode is already out.

It's heaps of fun and you'll learn great things about living for Jesus.

Start your free seven day trial by following the link in the show notes.

Something else that's out now is the new resource an arrival to celebrate Advent

devotions for the whole family.

There's one for every day in December leading

up to Christmas.

My wife Janice first wrote these 18 years ago.

They take you through God's big plans from the start of the world to the end of the world and

show you how Christmas fits into that.

Our family have used them for years and years

and now we want other people to enjoy them.

It's a digital resource so you can buy it from

anywhere.

And again, there's a link in the show notes.

Now on with the show.

There are so many good things in the world,

aren't there? Fun things, exciting things.

Do you know that everything that's good comes from God?

So all the good, fun things in the world are a kind gift from God.

Isn't it strange then that lots of people want to enjoy the good things of this world without

God? They want to act like he's not there, or he's

not in charge, or he's not good.

In fact, sometimes they'll want you to enjoy

the world without God.

They'll want to use the good things that God's

given to make you forget about God.

And it can be easy to do.

Today we're starting a new series in the Book of Daniel.

It tells the story of Daniel and his three friends.

They've been taken from their own land, the land of Judah, to another land.

A land where people don't believe in the one true God.

A land where they want to make Daniel and his friends believe in gods that aren't even real.

Where they want to make them think that life is better without their God.

Thankfully, Daniel and his friends don't fall for it.

And as we hear their amazing, exciting story, we can learn how not to fall for the world's

tricks too.

Get ready for our next episode of stories of a

Faithful God for Kids.

Picture it.

You're standing on the wall of Jerusalem in the land of Judah.

It's about 600 years before Jesus arrives.

The other half of the country, Israel, has

been destroyed ages ago by the Assyrians.

Judah, where you are is really weak.

So weak, in fact, that the Egyptian king came along and forced Judah to change its king.

Now, the king in Judah is a guy named Jehoiakim.

He does lots of evil things.

In fact, God said that because of all the evil

that Judah's done, God's going to send the people out of the land.

As you're standing on the wall in Jerusalem, you start to hear a sound.

The marching of feet, the blowing of trumpets, the neighing of horses.

You look into the distance in the north and you see the sunlight glinting of thousands and

thousands and thousands of spearheads.

The Babylonians have arrived.

More than a hundred years before this, God had said through the prophet Isaiah that Jerusalem

would be handed over to the Babylonians.

The Babylonian army is huge.

So huge that when it arrives, it completely surrounds the city.

And while we don't know everything that happens next, we know that Babylon wins.

The important question, though, is why does Babylon win?

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar thinks it's because his gods are more powerful than

Judah's God, but that's not true.

His gods aren't even real.

In fact, the reason he wins is because of the God of Judah, the one true God who gives him

the victory.

Daniel chapter one starts like this.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and surrounded it with his army.

This happened during the third year that Jehoiakim was king of Judah.

The Lord allowed Nebuchadnezzar to capture Jehoiakim, king of Judah.

Nebuchadnezzar also took some of the things from the temple of God.

And you know what he does with those things from God's temple?

He takes them home and puts them in the temples of his gods.

It's his way of saying thanks to his gods for giving him the victory.

He's got completely the wrong idea.

In the next few chapters, he's going to learn

some pretty big lessons about who the real God is.

For now, he gives an order to one of his chief officers, a man named Ashpenaz.

As well as bringing back Jehoiakim and some things from God's temple, he's also brought

back a bunch of people from Judah to Babylon.

And Nebuchadnezzar says to Ashpenaz, I want

you to get some of the young men from the important families from Judah.

They have to be young, healthy and good looking.

They have to be clever and able to learn things quickly.

Hmm.

Young, healthy, clever and good looking.

Everything I'm not.

Oh, is the microphone still on.

Oh. Anyway, why is he selecting all these guys?

It's because Ashpenez is going to train them to serve the Babylonian king.

Even though they've come from Judah and some other countries, they're going to learn how to

be Babylonian.

They're going to learn how to work in the

Babylonian government and in the Babylonian palace.

Ashpenaz has to teach them the Babylonian language and all the Babylonian writings.

It's going to take three years.

Now, that might not sound too bad.

In fact, it sounds like they're going to be trained to be very important people.

But just think about what's happening.

The only parts of the Bible they have written

at that time, it's all in the language they used back in Judah, the Hebrew language.

But now they're not going to be able to study that.

They won't be able to carefully study Genesis and find out how God made the world or read

Exodus and learn about how God rescued them from Egypt.

They're going to have to learn Babylonian writings.

Some of those will be fine, but some of them will be about the Babylonian gods.

Untrue stories about how those gods made the world lies about how to treat those gods and

learn from those gods and obey those gods.

This is not good.

The king is going to make their three years of learning pretty sweet.

They won't have to eat the ordinary food of the ordinary people.

No, they're going to get to eat the king's food, the same fancy food that gets served to

the king every day.

They're going to eat like kings.

They're going to work for the king and they're going to be trained to help the king rule his

really, really big empire.

Lots of people would think that's a pretty

sweet deal.

Forget about that tiny, weak country you came

from.

You can be right in the middle of a huge

empire with fancy learning and fancy food and huge amounts of power.

This is awesome.

They might think.

Now, among the people that King Nebuchadnezzar brought back from all his wars are four men

from Judah.

Their names are Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and

Azariah.

We hear those names and don't think much about

it.

But in those days, hearing someone's name

usually tells you something really important.

And these guys names all link back to the one

true God.

Daniel's name means God is my judge.

Azariah means Yah, like Yahweh God's name.

Yah is my strength.

Hananiah means Yah or Yahweh has been gracious and mishael means who is what God is.

The man in charge of their education is like, no, no, no, that won't do it all.

We don't want you to think about your God.

We want you to think about Babylonian gods.

And so he gives them new Babylonian names.

Verse 7 says, Daniel's new name was

Belteshazzar.

Hananiah's was Shadrach.

Mishael's was Meshach.

And Azariah's new name was Abednego.

Now Daniel's watching all this go on.

Just imagine he's been ripped out of his

country and he's been told, forget about that old way of life and that old God you used to

serve.

We're gonna make you brand new people.

Babylonian people serving at the Babylonian court with Babylonian gods.

And Daniel's like, this is really bad.

I know I must only serve the one true God.

And I need to find some way to show that I don't belong to the Babylonians.

I only belong to my God.

But what can he do?

He can't escape.

He can't go back to Judah.

And so he comes up with an idea.

Sure, he can sit in the classroom and listen

to everything they teach him.

He won't agree with all of it, but there's

lots he can still learn.

And the Babylonians can call him whatever they

like.

He doesn't control what comes out of their

mouth, but maybe he can control what he puts in his own mouth.

So this is what he decides.

Verse 8 says, Daniel decided not to eat the

king's food and wine because that would make him unclean.

So he asked Ashpenaz for permission not to make himself unclean in this way.

It's not that the king's food was somehow worse than the other food.

It isn't even that Israelites aren't allowed to eat this type of food.

It's just that it's his way of saying, this king doesn't control me.

I belong to God.

When he asks Ashpenaz about it, though,

Ashpenaz freaks out.

He's terrified.

He thinks, I can't disobey the king.

He'll kill me.

In verse 10, he says, I'm afraid of my master, the king.

He ordered me to give you this food and drink.

If you don't eat this food, you'll begin to

look worse than the other young men your age.

The king will see this and he'll cut off my

head because of you.

You can kind of understand where Ashpenaz is

coming from.

I mean, I'm not a huge Fan of people cutting

off my head.

But that's where we start to see what's great

about Daniel.

He doesn't kick up a big stink.

He doesn't stop caring about Ashpenaz and his poor head.

He wants to make this work without getting anyone in trouble.

So he suggests to his guard that they try something.

Just for 10 days.

He says in verse 12, Please give us this test.

For 10 days, don't give us anything but vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Then after 10 days, compare us with the other young men who eat the king's food.

See for yourself who looks healthier.

Then you judge for yourself how you want to

treat us, your servants.

That's a pretty fair deal, isn't it?

Just ten days.

If Daniel and his friends are going to look

weaker after 10 days, he can just start feeding them the good stuff again.

No one has to be hurt, and no one has to lose their head.

So the guard agrees wonderfully.

Amazingly, after 10 days, Daniel and his

friends look better than all the other guys.

Better than everyone who's been eating the

best food from the king's table.

This is so cool.

It's not that you should only ever eat vegetables and only ever drink water.

It's just that God's looking after them.

He's making it so that they can do this thing

to show that they belong to Him.

It isn't the only way God looks after them.

He also makes them top of the class in their learning and understanding.

Verse 17 says God gave these four men wisdom and the ability to learn.

They learned many kinds of things people had written and studied.

Daniel could also understand all kinds of visions and dreams.

In fact, when the three years are up and Ashpenaz brings these guys to meet the king,

Nebuchadnezzar's blown away.

He's amazed at how bright these guys are.

In verse 19 we read, he found that none of the young men were as good as Daniel, Hananiah,

Mishael and Azariah.

So these four young men became the king's

servants.

Every time the king asked them about something

important, they showed much wisdom and understanding.

He found they were 10 times better than all the fortune tellers and magicians in the

kingdom.

Isn't it wonderful that they didn't have to

give in and become fully Babylonian? They didn't have to give up serving God.

In fact, by serving the one true God, they stuck with the one who could help them with

everything.

To the Babylonians, the God of Daniel,

Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah was a joke.

They thought he'd been defeated, that their

gods were better and that these guys should give up on him and enjoy everything Babylon

had to offer.

They didn't though and they were right to

stick with God.

Lots of people are going to say to you forget

about that whole Christianity thing forget about Jesus, life is much better without him.

When they say that remember the good decision of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah that

you don't belong to this world you belong to the God who made this world and it's always

best to live for him.

Back in Babylon King Nebuchadnezzar doesn't

know the one true God yet but God knows him and God's about to show him what's going to

happen in the future.

But that's a story for next time.

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It would be really cool to have you join.

Keep trusting Jesus.

Bye for now.