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Good morning my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
Today marks about 60 days since the new American government administration has been installed. 60 days! Yet if you’ve watched the news, the flurry of activity and restructuring has been a frenetic pace impacting thousands of people and government offices, both in America and around the world.
Yesterday in Daniel 5:30,31 we witnessed a sudden, dramatic, unexpected change of government in the Babylonian empire as the great city of Babylon was conquered in one night! Historical records indicate it was a late-night secret invasion and much of the city was in party mode when the surprise attack happened, so it was accomplished quite quickly.
Daniel tells us the conqueror was named “Darius the Mede”. (Daniel 5:31) Now that’s interesting because the most powerful man in the world at that time was actually Cyrus the Great, the emperor of the Persian Kingdom. He and his army had defeated the Medes several years before, but Cyrus is described by some historians as a ‘benevolent dictator’.
Unlike the vicious Assyrians or the mighty Babylonians who devastated cities and slaughtered or hauled off as captives vast numbers of the inhabitants of the cities they conquered, King Cyrus allowed those he conquered to live in their homelands and even allowed some of their leaders to remain in leadership as long as they were loyal to Cyrus. It appears Darius may be a good example of this. So “Darius the Mede” at age 62, was evidently given the role of regional viceroy for Cyrus the Great responsible for conquering and assimilating Babylon into the Medo-Persian empire which became by far the largest world empire which had existed to that point in history.
Daniel’s record in chapter 6 gives us a glimpse into the governmental strategy Darius engaged to rapidly bring both the city of Babylon and the former Babylonian empire under the overall authority of King Cyrus and the Persian empire. Daniel writes: “It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so the king might not suffer loss.” (Daniel 6:1,2) Now let’s pause for a few seconds and wrap our minds around this amazing, remarkable statement!
Daniel, you will recall, had been taken as a teenage POW from his hometown Jerusalem, by King Nebuchadnezzar 66 years before this, and brought to Babylon. (605bc) Daniel and three of his fellows, young Jewish captives were immediately placed in a Babylonian re-education, leadership development program as described in Daniel 1.
Over the years Daniel and his friends had been blessed by God with unusual leadership abilities and promoted by Nebuchadnezzar to very important roles in the Babylonian government. But King Nebuchanezzar had finally died, almost 25 years before Darius conquered Babylon, and during those years Daniel and his friends had evidently been somewhat sidelined by the kings which followed Nebuchadnezzar.
It was only the memory of the ‘queen mother’ which had brought Daniel back again before the King Belshazzar, Babylonian king, on the night Babylon collapsed. (Daniel 5:10-12) We can presume old Daniel was perhaps 80 years old the night King Darius the Mede conquered Babylon and perhaps only a few days or weeks later when Darius met Daniel for the first time and elevated him to a high position, now in the Medo-Persian empire!
Pause a few seconds and let that sink into your mind. Do you see the strategic greatness of God and HIS plan to be sure HE had a wise, obedient spokesman, Daniel, available to the most powerful kings in the world, during a very important time in world history?
King Darius needed to quickly organize a new government structure and through some process Darius identified 120 men who were each assigned oversight of small regions of the former Babylonian kingdom. Somehow Daniel was chosen, by Darius the Mede, along with two other men, to give overall leadership and accountability to all these 120 satraps. How Darius selected Daniel we don’t know, but I presume it did not take long for several people to identity Daniel as the only man who had been able to read and interpret the words which may still have remained permanently, indelibly emblazoned on the palace wall, where the disembodied hand had written them, predicting the fall of Babylon. (Daniel 5:25-28)
Evidently as 62-year-old King Darius watched closely, 80-year-old Daniel adjusted into his new role quite well and Darius took notice of Daniel’s unusual integrity, maturity, leadership skills and wisdom. This one sentence summarizes it: “Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that King Darius planned to set him over the whole kingdom.” (Daniel 6:3)
What do you suppose that means, my friends? What did King Darius see in Daniel’s attitudes, his words, his decisions, his relationships? What exceptional qualities led King Darius to believe he could trust old Daniel who had lived here in Babylon for 64 years! What had given Daniel the ability to sustain such a high level of integrity and leadership even as a captive servant of several kings?
This is a great place for us to pause and reflect, isn’t it my friends? Daniel was an old man, and his reputation earned in Babylon over more than 60 years earned him a very special assignment. You and I each have a reputation. We have each built it ourselves with every day we’ve lived, every choice we’ve made, every word we’ve spoken.
What has your reputation earned you, my friends? Is there anything you’d like to change about your reputation between now and the time you end your earthly life? What would that require of you? Let’s ponder that with this amazing worship song and tomorrow we’ll see what both Darius and Daniel did next, which is quite amazing!
Today’s Scripture: Daniel 6:1-3.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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