SANCTIFICATION

Andrew Burr

Daniel 1: 3-9, 17-21; 6: 4, 5, 10, 25-28; 12: 8-13

It has struck me that there is a parallel lesson in the history of Daniel to the one that we have been speaking about in the reading; and there is a parallel between this prophecy and John’s writings because they both look on to the completion of the mystery of God and of His ways in relation to the world. I do not profess to be an expert on the book of Daniel, or indeed on prophecy generally, but before I come to what I have in mind about Daniel I would like just to say a word or two about the way that God raised up prophets, not just to speak to His people, but to prophecy in a way that has entered into the canon of scripture for us. I would be out of my depth if I attempted to go into some of the minor prophets, but there are some simple things that might be said about the first four prophets whose works we have and they bear on the way that God worked out in the life of the prophets the truths that He was giving them to teach in their prophecies.

The prophet Isaiah is, I think, distinctive. The Lord Himself says that, “he saw his glory and spoke of him”, John 12: 41. The focus of the prophet Isaiah is very much, therefore, on the personal glory of Christ so that there is less in that prophet about the life experiences of Isaiah; we do not know much about him and what he himself passed through. He prophesied before the captivity, and was given the task of drawing attention especially to the idolatry of the people of Israel and the certainty that that idolatry would lead to captivity. No doubt he suffered for prophesying like that but we do not get the detail of what he himself passed through. What we do get, especially in the latter part of his prophecy, is a wonderful display, prophetically, of the glory of Christ and the wonderful message which the nation of Israel has still to grasp, that their Messiah would suffer and be rejected in reproach and would enter thus into His glory. We have chapters like chapter 53 of Isaiah in which the remnant acknowledge that the nation had taken the position that Jesus was suffering on His own account, and that His sufferings were inflicted on Him by God; “we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted”. But, they say, “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isa 53: 4,5): they come to it that God had presented to them a suffering Saviour who would enter into His glory through sufferings.

Jeremiah lived in the days in which the city of Jerusalem fell to the enemy and to him fell the painful task of telling the people that resistance to this enemy would be futile. In God’s ways their blessing lay in submitting to the judgment of which Isaiah had spoken. It was too late to avert God’s judgment on the city and their salvation would lie, not in seeking help from Egypt or in their own strength, but in submitting themselves to the government of God. What a very painful lesson it was and Jeremiah suffered terribly for giving it. For a large part of his prophecy he was kept in prison, and there was a time when he was dropped into a dungeon which was full of muck up to his waist. There were one or two people who were prepared to help him and there were occasions when things appeared to get a little bit better, but he suffered terribly. On top of all his sufferings there was no sympathy with what he had to say in the nation, and he had the painful experience of seeing his prophecy come to pass; the city of Jerusalem, which no doubt he loved according to God, burned before his eyes.

Ezekiel was one of the captives and he describes the way in which God’s glory had had to be withdrawn from the nation of Israel, so that the captivity was a righteous thing on God’s part. But he looks forward to the day when that glory would return. What a wonderful message Ezekiel has, the Man he saw at the beginning is coming back in his glory. Ezekiel suffered terribly too, he went through deep personal experiences, such as the food he was given to eat and so on. His wife died suddenly and various other things he passed through were intended to portray the intensity of what he had to say. These are things that the brethren can look into.

I come to the prophet Daniel from whom we have read. I trust that we agree that there was help in the reading to see that God has been able, and the Lord has been able, to prove in advance the characteristics and the principles upon which things will endure to the end. As we saw, the experience that the household in Bethany passed through is of that character. Daniel shows us the same lesson. The book is in two parts: one is very easy to understand and the other is beyond me to understand, but the children are familiar with the early part of the book of Daniel, and it contains some of the best-known Bible stories. There is the story of the three men who were thrown into the fire and the story of Daniel and the lion’s den. The history in the first part of the prophecy is quite straightforward. The second part of the book which is taken up with the history of the successive empires that have been established or allowed to succeed one another by God in the history, and that will continue in a way until the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Himself is established, is quite difficult to understand. But what I would like to draw out is that the first part of the book shows to us that there are principles that should mark us that God has been pleased to put to the test in extreme circumstances in the history of Daniel and his friends, and that have been shown to endure. We might see that those principles apply to the history in Daniel’s prophecy which continues right down past the day in which we are to complete themselves in a day still to come. They convey the lesson that we have already looked at that those principles will preserve the people of God through all that history. So, God has shown, before the history started, and He has been pleased to work out in the lives of His servants, the principles that would carry the people of God through until that history is completed.

The sections I read in Daniel are those that speak of his continuing. The last one is the promise to Daniel, “and stand in thy lot at the end of the days”; he would have his inheritance when all that history was completed. God is free to make Daniel a promise in the certainty that Daniel would endure so that when the day came for that promise to be honoured by God, Daniel would be fit and there to receive it. That is a wonderful way to present the work of God. I am very changeable and I feel more in the good of things sometimes than others, but what God would say to us, as he says to Daniel, is that He is doing a work in us, and our experiences will test the value of that work. Since it is God’s work, He is free to promise before the work is done that the outcome for us is assured. He says, go your way Daniel, and in the end you will have what I have promised, I will give it to you. These things are a matter of present experience without setting aside the blessedness of what is before us in the day still to come.

I would like to speak in relation to Daniel about the preserving power of sanctification. I suggest that that was what came to light in Daniel’s exercise, and it was in the power of that principle that he was able to go through. I only go over the history simply, because the history in itself is quite simple. Daniel was among the captives. He belonged to the royal family of Israel and they were taken into captivity, the king himself was taken away and apparently so were the members of the court, including Daniel and his friends. He was found in the court of Nebuchadnezzar who was proposing to make him a worthy member of his court. So he offered Daniel a place in this world’s system which would have provided some relief from the burden of the captivity. The first principle we have established with Daniel is that he is going to be separate from that system. Separation is essential but it is not a complete thought in itself; it does not encompass all that the idea of sanctification presents. The thing Daniel resolved was that he must do what is right. I remember when I was young and I began to read in the ministry, being stuck by a suggestion that, God will always help you if you do what is right. I might calculate and think, well that is going to have certain consequences. I do not have to think about consequences, I simply identify what is right and do it. That is what Daniel proposed to do. He said, I cannot pollute myself with things that would make me a Babylonian. I cannot do it, so I am not going to do it. It was not exactly that he asked for the strength to stand, he simply did the right thing to do. The favour that preserved him in the working out of that exercise followed his resolution. We are not simply talking about abstractions but principles that have a substantial expression among the people of God. There was royalty with Daniel; one of the prophets says, “But the noble deviseth noble things; and to noble things doth he stand”, Isa 32: 8. That is Daniel, he was going to be royal according to God, so he made a stand. God blessed him in a spiritual way. The king had a certain list of things that he wanted these young men to learn; he wanted to discover if they had certain abilities that are still admired in the world – skill in wisdom and good countenance and understanding science. Science is the study of things that can be observed. That is not a principle of faith as we read in Hebrews, “so that that which is seen should not take its origin from things which appear”, Heb 11: 3. That truth confounds the whole scientific principle; for example if you take a scientific discussion of the way the world was made, it is based on how things appear and conclusions are drawn from that about how they began. Scripture says quite clearly that you will not work out how things began from how they appear. It confounds science that the worlds were framed by the word of God (see Heb 11: 3), that is not a scientific idea. But the world values science and that is what was looked for in these men, an ability to reason things out in the way that the world reasons things out. Verse 17 shows that the qualities that God gave to Daniel were different from those that Nebuchadnezzar was looking for and even Nebuchadnezzar had to admit that they were better than the qualities that he was looking for. The particular gift that Daniel was given was in the understanding of visions and dreams. He was not given the gift to make deductions from how things appeared, but he was divinely given the spiritual insight to see and understand things that did not even appear at all. So when the kings had dreams, the king put his scientists to the test; he says, you tell me what my dream was, and I will not believe you know the answer until you can tell me the dream. They said, that is impossible, it is extraordinary to talk like that, how can anybody possibly know what your dream was? But Daniel had the spiritual insight, by faith, to see what could not be seen, and he had the insight to explain what science had no purchase on, because there was nothing that could be seen. If the others had been given an account of the dream then they might have been able to work out some conclusions, although the dream would have confounded them even so. The king says they would simply have predicted that all this was going to happen so far in the future he would never find out if they were wrong, but Daniel is given insight, by the Spirit to see. It is not the kind of natural gift that the king was looking for. Daniel was given that simply because he sought and stood for a resolution that he would do what is right. Immediately one commits oneself to what is right, it is to be separate from this system which has these values and this approach to the things of God.

The other thing Daniel was shown, as part of this, was not simply the king’s dreams but a wonderful impression of the kingdom that God is going to establish in Christ. What are the rewards of separation? There seems to be just a long list of things I cannot do and cannot associate myself with, but look at the things that Daniel had out of that committal. One of the things was this wonderful impression of the kingdom that God is going to establish in Christ. He saw this stone cut out without hands: “And the days of these kings shall the God of the heavens set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the sovereignty thereof shall not be left to another people”, Dan 2: 44. Think of that! Daniel’s faith, the faith that had led him to commit himself to what was due to God, was rewarded with this wonderfully sustaining impression of what God is about to establish in Christ. It was established already for Daniel. The king had to acknowledge this, he had to acknowledge that this kingdom is coming and Daniel is already in the good of it.

So the king then attacks his friends. It is interesting that Daniel is not party to this particular experience; the king picks on his friends and they are cast into the fire. What they find in the fire is that the One whose kingdom is about to be established forever is with them in the pressure and extremity through which they pass. I suggest that these are lessons that we learn from committing ourselves to the claim that God makes that has led us into the path of separation. It is something one takes up because of a conviction of what is due to God and, as taking that path up, God would reward us with the impression over against the powers against which we have to stand, not only that there is a coming kingdom going to be established in Christ, but the power of that One in whom that kingdom is going to be established can be felt in the extremity through which the path of separation and faithfulness to God may lead us. Is that not wonderful! On the one hand we have Daniel’s vision of the stone cut out without hands and the kingdom that is going to be established in Christ, the sovereignty of which will never pass to another nation. You say, what a wonderful prospect, I hope I am there in that day. Daniel’s three friends would say, we have a different experience of the stone cut out without hands; we had a friend who walked with us in the fiery furnace. He is the same Person, the One whose kingdom is going to established, and He was pleased to walk in the intensity of reproach and suffering with those who have committed themselves to the path of God’s will. Where would a believer’s feet have to go that was more dangerous and exposed to more suffering than these three men who were bound hand and foot, and who walked in the fire? The fire itself, the fire that consumed the men who threw them in, was a bitter and extreme experience beyond what we could ever contemplate. I cannot imagine how these three men faced what they passed through, and yet there they were in the furnace walking with the Son of God. How wonderful that the One to whose kingdom we make a commitment in stepping in to the path of obedience to God’s will walks with us in the things we pass through in consequence of making that commitment.

I go on to look at the tests that Daniel went through. His was not the fiery furnace, but the lions. I want to bring out now in chapter 6 that we see the other side of sanctification. Separation is not quite as wide a thought as sanctification. We had a brother in our meeting who had a gift for setting things out simply to us, and what he said as to sanctification was that it was setting aside from common use for a sacred purpose. You can see that that is further than separation; separation might be involved in the first part of that, the setting aside from common use, but it is setting aside for a sacred purpose. That is seen in the Lord Jesus Himself. He speaks of Himself in service here as “sanctified and sent into the world”, John 10: 36. He was in the world but apart from it: not just separate from it, but separated to a sacred purpose. John’s gospel especially shows what that sacred purpose was. The sacred purpose was the revelation of the Father and the declaration of His glory and of His will. In order to be able faithfully to fulfil that purpose He was separated from sinners and He was separated from common things. The Lord appeared to be fully involved in the circumstances in which He was, but at the same time He was apart from them, separated from sinners. There was a certain distance that He had to maintain because the things that were common to those among whom He mixed were not His things. He was concerned with His Father’s business and that separated Him from the common things for a sacred purpose. So we see the principle of it in the life of Jesus. We see it also in His present position, He says, “I sanctify myself for them” (John 17: 19), He separates Himself from the world, even physically: “I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16: 18), but He has gone for a sacred purpose, “I sanctify myself for them”. The Lord has made our interests and our inheritance His sacred purpose, and in order to fulfil that He has left the world and prepared a place for us in the world into which He has entered. So again, we can see the principle of it beautifully portrayed in the life of Jesus.

Here, Daniel seeks to work it out. He had faith in the issue of separation because that was the way in which the question first presented itself, but now he is promoted in Darius’s kingdom and people make a set against him and discuss how they are going to overthrow Daniel. They do not seek to compromise his separation, although the world will do that all the time, as we know; but they sense that there is something else about Daniel and they seek to undermine his sacred purpose. They say, we will not find any pretext against this Daniel unless we find it against him touching the law of his God. I love to see what they had taken account of in Daniel; here was a man who was not just separate for separation’s sake, who did not just take a path because he could appear self-righteous or better than others, or not mixed up with things that were rather excessive and self-indulgent. There was a purpose to Daniel, he had a purpose sure and he was not afraid to make it known, and his purpose was to set himself apart for God. He was fully aware of the circumstances in which he was, he was not in Jerusalem. He never saw Jerusalem again, as far as we know; he was not one of those who returned with Nehemiah or Ezra. He saw out his time in Babylon, but his heart was elsewhere. They knew this and, when he opened his window, everyone could see what Daniel was about, nothing came between him and his sacred purpose – even a pane of glass or a lattice in a window. He opened his window towards Jerusalem which lay in ruins burning with fire and, kneeling on his knees three times a day, he prayed towards it as the place where God had set his Name. God had withdrawn His glory from the city for the time being; nevertheless he honoured it as the place where he had last known the glory of God to be. We might say it was out of regard for God and His glory and he was prepared to put his life at risk to make the centre and purpose of his daily life the honour of the God against whom his people had sinned. That marks him out, and not just as a separate person. Separation by itself is always going to be a struggle, but sanctification gives it a sacred purpose which is the key to its endurance. It is the key to its abiding that it has God as its object. Daniel’s object was not himself, or the maintenance of his own self-righteousness or anything of that sort; his object was God himself, three times a days. It says he “gave thanks before his God”. That was his object and I believe that was the reason why he continued. He is then arrested and tried for failing to honour the king’s commandment and he makes no reply. Nothing is said in Daniel’s defence, Daniel does not seek to explain what he is doing, he does not hold himself accountable to this system although he had a place in it. He does not seek to defend the place he had in it, he does not explain that there was nothing amiss intended in what he was doing. He lets God be his judge. He can leave his circumstances to the God he serves and he will hold God and not himself as his object. He is preserved. At the end of chapter 6 the king has to acknowledge, “That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel”, that is a very fine expression. I love that expression in Hebrews, “God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God”, Heb 11: 16. You can make a list of such people. Think of Jacob – what an unreliable person Jacob appeared to be – and yet God says, “I am the God of … Jacob” (Matt 22: 32). This king owns the God of Daniel. The king cannot just say he is my God, there is a sense of God that Darius has to acknowledge, but he also acknowledges that here was a person whom God Himself would acknowledge and that in this wonderful way. There is a glorious panoply of God’s names – how many names there are of the God that we have to do with, the God of the heavens; but He is also the God of Daniel. God was God to Daniel, but God is also pleased to call Himself the God of Daniel. Then it says, “And this Daniel prospered”, it is not just a question of surviving, it is a question of prospering. His prosperity lay, not in his advancement in the kingdom about which nothing more is said, but in the sense he had of what God was to be to him. When the next king offers him further advancement he says that he is not interested. That kingdom is going to be overthrown and there is no value to Daniel in having its honours or any of its glory. He refuses it and attaches no value to it at all, but he is prospering. The world would not understand that. They would say, take the honour, if you want to prosper. But Daniel says, I will prosper without the honour, I have a God in whom my prosperity lies.

All those things involved very intense experience. None of us has been cast to the lions, none of us has walked through the fire. God had taken these men who were captives under His government and demonstrated that people can prosper through extremity and now He shows Daniel what will happen next. God goes over the various kingdoms that are going to arise and how antagonistic they become to the people of God. The world goes on in a violent and corrupt way and the kingdoms exceed each other. I was interested to read in Mr Darby as to the iron mixed with clay, that it is the mixture of military power and popular power. You can see that: governments whip up popular feeling in support of military activity. That is a feature of the world and it is a dangerous principle. It is not of God. Government wields the sword under God, but now they say that they wield it in a popular cause. We have governments speaking about the value of fighting wars to establish democracy, and it is a dangerous principle. Ultimately, as this book shows, it will turn against the people of God and establish something anti-Christian in the place that Christ should have; and how difficult things will become for the people of God. Daniel is not describing the day in which we are but he looks forward to the day in which Israel is recovered and he speaks about the remnant and the trials they pass through when the religious system of that nation is given up to what is anti-Christian. He says that even some of those who appear to be right will fall. There will be tests and trials of every kind – what is called Jacob’s trial. As the Lord Himself says, there have never been days like them, nor will there be. But the people of God have already passed through days like that, they have walked through the fire, they have spent a night with the lions, and their God has shown how, out of intense experience of that kind, prosperity arises, and continuance and abiding.

So, at the end of this book he says, “Many shall be purified, and be made white and be refined”. God will bring out something pure from all this darkness, from all this suffering, from all this conflict, from the mystery of His ways in which evil is allowed to rise up. It appears for a whole era to have the ascendancy and it will intrude and seek to corrupt even what is sacred, as we have here, “from the time that the continual sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate”. How strong this language is in relation to what Satan will do to try and defile what is for God. What arises out of that is not tainted or something residual, something that just survives; it is not a few stragglers or refugees, “Many shall be purified … and be refined”. What a triumph God will secure out of all His way, and in all that Satan is trying to do; something will come out of that which can stand at the end of the days, and something that God loves. Daniel is very humble about the history as he reads in the books that the time that Jeremiah has spoken of is about to expire. Daniel does not say, that is good, all this is going to be over soon, things are going to start looking up, things are going to get better. The fact that that period of trial is about to be completed drives Daniel into the presence of God to own the rightness of it all and the sin that had caused it; and how everything now depended on God, on His mercy and on His goodness. What a spirit to express in the presence of God. God says, “for thou art one greatly beloved” (9: 23). These humble features that come out in the presence of all this history are things that God loves, things that He identifies Himself with, things that He will preserve and refine. He has made a wonderful commitment that when all this history is passed, when all is gone by, Daniel will stand in his lot. God has made him a promise and it will all come true.

I simply speak of these things because they seem to me to bring out the value of sanctification. The need is not only to be separate, but to have a sacred purpose, to have God before us, not just because it is a right thing to do, but because God has shown that in whatever adversity may arise and whatever the people of God may pass through it is those who commit themselves in that way who will prosper and who will be loved; to whom God will assure the promises that He has made. May we be encouraged by these things. They have been worked out in the lives of men of like passions to ourselves. These were not things in a vision, they were not things that were worked out by angels; no, these men’s feet actually stood on the coals and Daniel actually passed the night in the presence of the lions. These things are very real, and our experience is real too. It is intended to be refining. We can enter upon experience with the assurance that there are principles that will see us through it and bring us into the prosperity of its outcome. May He be glorified by us all, and may He bless the word.

 

DENTON

9 August, 2003