Exalted in Exile

Sermon Transcript

I recently asked ChatGPT what the best way is for the average employee to get a promotion at their job. It listed mastering your current role first, making your manager’s life easier, developing skills for the next level, communicating your ambitions, building relationships beyond your boss, keeping a record of wins, and seeking the opportune time. If you’re furiously trying to write those down, please don’t. I can assure you that neither this passage nor this sermon are about how to get a promotion at work, and yet, as we begin a series of sermons through the book of Daniel, we do come across a story that ends with Daniel and his three companions getting a promotion, all the way to the highest position among the great king Nebuchadnezzar’s advisors. How’d they get there, though? The narrative of this chapter doesn’t read like the answer ChatGPT gave. Instead, in this chapter we’ll see that their promotion is more something God gave than something they earned, and their part was more what they refused to do than what they proactively did. What they refused to do was to be defiled in the sinful world in which they found themselves, and the same God who exalted them is our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our God will exalt those who refuse to be defiled in the world. To get at that from this story, we’ll look at what it shows us about the pressure we face in the world, the purity we must pursue in the world, and then the promotion of those who refuse to be defiled in the world.

 

The pressure we face in the world

 

Verse 1 of the book of Daniel tells us that the book begins in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, when Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came and besieged the city. By our dating, that’s the year 605 BC. This attack by Nebuchadnezzar was no random one, either—verse 2 tells us that it was the Lord, in fact, who gave Jehoiakim into his hand, along with some of the vessels from the house of God. At that time there was a building in Jerusalem called the temple, through which God promised to meet with his people, which included precious materials devoted to God and used for his worship. And what does Nebuchadnezzar do with them? He brings them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and places the vessels in the treasury of his god.

 

Shinar is not a common word in the Old Testament, and one of the most prominent places it appears is in the story of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel was a tower humans built to “reach the heavens” and “make a name for themselves”; you can read about it in Genesis 11. The nation “Babylon” takes its name from there, and indeed, Shinar is the location of ancient Babylon. Referring to it specifically as Shinar here though, alludes to the Tower of Babel, and paints a picture of Babylon as a proud nation setting itself up in opposition to God. Indeed, here we see them taking God’s stuff and devoting it to their gods.

 

And yet, it was God himself who gave that stuff to them, according to verse 2! Why would God do that? Well, when God first entered into a covenant with the nation of Israel, he promised them blessing if they obeyed, but he also promised to curse them if they disobeyed, and chief among those curses was exile, being defeated by a foreign nation, and deportation from their land to the land of that nation. More specific to this part of that curse was what God said to a former Israelite king, Hezekiah, when Hezekiah tried to please the Babylon of his day rather than trusting in the Lord for provision: “Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. 18 And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon” (2 Kings 20:17-18). Such explains God giving some of the vessels from his house to the king of Babylon, and look at what happens next in verse 3.

 

Nebuchadnezzar sends his chief royal official to take off some of Hezekiah’s sons, some he specifically says in verse 3 are “of the royal family and of the nobility.” Of course, Nebuchadnezzar isn’t thinking to himself, “I better fulfill God’s prophesied judgment,” but right from the jump of this book, Daniel is showing us who really reigns: Our God. Even his enemies unwittingly accomplish his purposes. That doesn’t make his enemies any less wicked—Nebuchadnezzar is still guilty for the intention of his heart, which is to rise up in pride against our God. But God is still sovereign in that his good and wise will is always accomplished in the end.

 

Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t just want members of the royal family, though. He wants the best and the brightest of the royal family. He describes them in verse 4 as youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, who they would then teach the literature and language of the Chaldeans, which is another name for the Babylonians. The goal is for them eventually to stand in the king’s palace, to serve as advisors and aids to the king of Babylon, who is setting himself up in opposition to our God. So he wants young people who are still impressionable, and who can render a nice long term of service. He wants the most attractive, the most intelligent, and the most physically unblemished. As he took the treasures from God’s house and devoted them to his god, so he wants to take the “treasure” of Israel’s children and devote them to his service.

 

We are then introduced to four of these who were taken, four of Israel’s best and brightest: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah, the royal tribe of Israel. There’s no indication in the book that they were being judged for their particular sins; if anything, they serve as a model of faithfulness throughout the book. Nonetheless, they go into exile, an exile that in some sense they inherited from the sins of their fathers, and especially of their kings.

 

In this room today I imagine few of us are descendants of Hezekiah, but we are all descendants of the first king, the first man: Adam. He was created and placed in a garden, in which God walked with man (Gen 3:8). But like Hezekiah and the other kings of Israel, Adam disobeyed God, Adam was exiled from the garden of Eden, and we all have inherited that exile. We all were born outside the garden of Eden, and you don’t have to live long in the world to realize it. The world is not the way it is supposed to be, and God often feels distant from us—this is why. We too are in exile in this world, a world still proudly setting itself up against the true God.

 

And therefore, we too face the same kinds of pressures to conform to this world that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were subject to in their exile to Babylon. The first and overarching pressure we can see the world applying here and in our lives is the pressure to use whatever gifts God has given us against God, rather than in service of him. This was the original objective of the Tower of Babel, after all—to use God’s gifts of language, creativity, and industry to make a name for ourselves, and to make God unnecessary. Now Nebuchadnezzar wants to use the gifts of Israel’s best and brightest to make a name for himself, and to further the interests of his kingdom, in opposition to God’s.

 

Consider technology in 2025. On the one hand, it reveals incredible gifts from God given to some of our best and brightest. In theologian Vern Poythress’ article on AI, he writes of how “uncommon chemical elements are used in trace amounts to construct the integrated circuits that make up the computers. Chemistry itself, and a supply on earth of these special elements, must be there already. Consider also the complex technology of the miniaturization process, allowing the circuits to be small enough so that millions can be crammed on a single chip,” among other things. No doubt the ability we have to develop AI is owing to the good gifts God has given to some of our best and brightest. But, Poythress also writes of the immense temptation technology, and AI in particular, presents toward pride, which is just one biblical word to describe the attitude of Babel and of Nebuchadnezzar in this passage. To quote him again:

“Human beings desire to use AI to become superhuman—virtually divine—in their powers. And, if they can, they will use those powers to control and manipulate other human beings—all the time telling themselves that they have only the best intentions. AI enhances the surveillance technology of totalitarian governments. It is already happening. Or, in the free world, it can be used more gently to remove unacceptable opinions from social media. Some people will use AI to produce pornography, to spread lies, or to help them build terrorist bombs. The underlying root problem is idolatry. Human pride is a form of idolatry in which a person worships himself.”

 

One movie, based on a novel, that explored this tendency to use God’s good gifts in service of human pride, is Jurassic Park. After observing the park, Jeff Goldblum’s character, Dr. Malcolm, responds to the proud boast of John Hammond, the park’s founder, that “Our scientists have done things which nobody’s ever done before” by saying, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” That ended poorly for the scientists at Jurassic Park, the Tower of Babel ended poorly for those who tried to build it, we’re going to see later in Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar’s pride ends poorly for him, and so will a proud use of our gifts in service of ourselves end poorly for us, but that’s the pressure the world will put on us. Don’t use your ability to read to read the Bible—read something that will help you make more money. Don’t give your money away—use it to build a bigger and better life for yourself here. Don’t use your gifts to serve your church—use them to serve your company’s infinite ambitions.

 

So we could say that’s the meta pressure—use whatever gifts God has given you in service of human pride rather than in service of him. But then how does the world get you to do that? In verse 4 we see that it does so through its literature and language. With more media, now we can say that the world will do so through not only its literature, but its movies, songs, tv shows, plays, podcasts, and so on. What these media do is tell us a story, and what do these stories do to us? They work into our imagination a vision of what is good, what is admirable, what is normal, and what is detestable. In America today two of the big stories our world is promoting are the stories of American greatness and the story of expressive individualism. If you want to win people to the project of American greatness, you educate children on the story of how America was essentially a Christian nation, without getting too caught up in inconvenient questions about what exactly it means to be a Christian, and that its founders were doing the good work of spreading the fruits of a great tradition of western civilization to a new land, with the implication that your job now is to promote those ideals and fight anyone who threatens them. If you want to win people to the story of expressive individualism, you educate children on how the American founders covered up their truly oppressive aims with fine-sounding rhetoric about freedom, and how today rich white men are still trying to oppress everyone else, with the implication that your job now is to promote your own identity, and fight anyone who threatens it. The people telling the latter story tend to be the ones doing most of the cultural production in America, and so that’s the story more commonly told in movies, television, and children’s books. Whichever of those stories you find to be closer to the truth, my point is simply that neither are the biblical story, and both are ways the world pressures us to conform to it and use our gifts to serve its aims rather than God’s. The world pressures us to conform through its literature, and it pressures us to conform by teaching us its language. Think of how our world today teaches us to call adultery an affair, sin a disorder, a man a woman, cowardice love, greed wisdom, and pride patriotism.

 

Next we can see that world pressures us into conformity by offering us pleasures. Notice in verse 5 that the king plans to feed the exiles, but he doesn’t plan to feed them just anything. He doesn’t feed them peasant food. Instead, he assigns them a portion of the food he himself ate, and of the wine that he drank. This was the best of the best, and so also the world today tempts us with the best of its pleasures. In addition to fine foods, sex and luxury are among the most common pleasures the world holds out to us to get us to conform to it. Your company, your clients, or your government is the source of your income, and you need that income to enjoy the pleasures the world has to offer, so who now gets to determine your behavior? Who do you feel bound to ultimately obey? Your company, your clients, or your government. Your wealthy friends give you access to the pleasures the world has to offer, and so whose norms and expectations set your norms and expectations for behavior? Theirs.

 

And finally, we see the world puts pressure on us to conform to it by assigning us an identity. In verse 7 we see that chief of the eunuchs gave them new names. While their original names all bore some relationship to our God, their new names either bear some relationship to the gods of Babylon or shame the Israelite youth in some way. Daniel meant, “God is my judge,” Hanahaniah meant, “Yahweh has been gracious,” Mishael meant, “Who is what God is?” and Azariah meant, “Yahweh has helped.” The Babylonian names are harder to penetrate, but Abednego seems to mean, “servant of Nabu [son of the Babylonian god Marduk],” Belteshezzar seems to mean, “May the lady [goddess Isthar] protect the king,” Shadrach appears to mean, “I am very much afraid,” and Meschach appears to mean, “I am insignificant.” Now today the world doesn’t tend to give us new names, but the world does assign us an identity which it pressures us to conform to rather than the identity we have in Christ. It may be a shameful identity—the world may tell you that you are stupid, ugly, or hopelessly disordered, or the world may tell you that you are smart, talented, and perfect just the way you are. In either case, the pressure is to play that role and give your allegiance to it over our God.

 

So the pressure we face in the world is to conform to it, to use whatever gifts and resources God has given us to further its proud aims in opposition to our God, and the methods it uses are literature, language, pleasure, and identity. It’s a bit much to consider, isn’t it? Perhaps some part of you even is tempted to say, “Oh come on; it’s not that big of a deal.” No doubt, it often doesn’t feel to us like this is what is happening, and to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, you can imagine the subtlety of all this: Sure, they’re being removed from their land, but they’re getting access to the best education, they’re being honored by the great king Nebuchadnezzar, he’s offering them fine food and wine, but make no mistake about it: The pressure is on them, and it is on you. What then are we to do? Let’s look next at the purity we must pursue in the world.

 

The purity we must pursue in the world

 

In verse 8, for the first time in the book thus far, one of God’s people is the subject of an active verb: “But Daniel resolved.” Though he was being taken away from his home by a foreign power who certainly appeared more powerful than Daniel’s God, in verse 8 Daniel acts. And his action is a resolution not to defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. Why would eating the king’s food have defiled him? The best explanation seems to be that Daniel felt accepting the king’s food and drink would have aligned him too closely with the king. Consider the prayer of David in Psalm 141:4 – “Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies!” Why did David pray that God would keep him from even eating of the delicacies of those who work iniquity? Because David knew that eating of their delicacies was an act of association, and one step closer to not only joining them in their delicacies, but joining them in their wickedness.

 

Interestingly, Daniel did not adopt this approach with everything Babylon threw at him. He knew Babylon was an enemy of God, but he didn’t refuse to go into exile—he didn’t say, “You’ll have to kill me, because I’m not going.” He didn’t refuse to learn the literature or the language, for example, and he didn’t demand that he be called Daniel. In exile, we can’t expect the world to conform to heaven, or to us. So in the New Testament we read from the apostle Paul that, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Cor 5:9-10), the clear implication being that we should not try to go out of the world. When you realize just how much the world is pressuring you into conformity, if you love Christ, that’s an understandable impulse: We need to get out! We need to develop our own language, only read our own literature, go by our own names, and develop our own economy. But Daniel neither could nor should have withdrawn entirely from Babylon, and neither should you. So yes, you use your gifts in the employment of a company whose mission statement doesn’t include the glory of God, yes you familiarize yourself with literature that isn’t about our God, yes you generally learn the language of the nation into which God has sent you in your exile, yes you render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

 

But if you are truly living as a servant of our God, and not of the world, that will show itself at some point. Imagine two people sitting next to one another on the subway, each heading north from here. One is going to Yorktown to provide job training to people looking for work, the other is going to Temple to rob college student apartments while they’re at class. For a time, they share the subway car, and to the outside observer, it wouldn’t look like they’re doing anything different. But because they have different goals, at some point, their paths diverge. The one going to Yorktown to provide job training gets off at Girard, and parts company with the one going to Temple to rob apartments. So also, as long as Daniel is a servant of our God in Babylon, there are times where it looks to the outside observer like he’s just doing what they do—he’s reading their literature, learning their literature, and being called by the name they gave him. But at some point, his ultimate allegiance to our God shows itself. At some point, there’s a “but”: “But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank.”

 

And if your allegiance is truly to our God, though you may shop at the same grocery store, work at the same company, and speak the same language as those whose allegiance is only to this world, there will be times where you have to get off the subway and move in a different direction. The first and most obvious way to do that is to simply live within the lines God has clearly drawn in scripture. We’ll see Daniel and his companions doing that in chapters 3 and 6 when they are pressured to commit idolatry, something God has clearly forbade in his word. If the world’s literature, language, pleasures, or assigned identity tempts you to do something God forbids, or to give up doing something God requires, you must obey God and not men. But here, Daniel seems to go further than that. He seems to recognize that though technically he could eat the king’s food and drink his wine, that doesn’t mean that he should. He recognized that for him to do so would be to overidentify with Babylon and its kingdom, and to create a ripe temptation to forget who his real God was. It would have been wrong of him to require this of all the youths who were brought from Israel, and we don’t see him attempting to do that—only God can do that. But it was entirely legitimate and even necessary for him to consider what, for him, would have been a bridge too far.

 

I remember talking with a brother pastor here in the city once about a YouTube video he’d put out that got something like 10000 views. Afterwards, someone from an online Christian conglomerate of sorts contacted him and offered to use their resources to promote him and increase his platform. Could he have said yes? I can imagine good reasons to do so—he’s preaching the gospel after all; who wouldn’t want more people to hear it?! But he knew for him that was a bridge too far, and a too ripe temptation to use his gifts for the advancement of his own name, rather than Christ’s. So we can consider then, what kind of purity must we pursue in the world in the face of the pressures we’ve discussed?

 

We already mentioned technology; let’s just use that as an example. And again, going out of the world is hardly possible, let alone ideal. If you ride a bus, enter a building, or use air conditioning, you use it. Some of you may even work in the tech industry. But where do you get off the subway when the world is using technology to try to replace God, rather than in service of him? For me, I will not use AI to generate sermon titles, outlines, or any part of sermon manuscripts. In my house, we forbid cell phone usage at the dinner table. Some delete apps from their phone or put time limits on them if they realize it’s just sucking up too much of their attention and energy and distracting them from real rest and the good works God has prepared in advance for them to do. One of the great uses of technology is in medicine, in which it can be used to restore us to a state of healthy functioning. But what about when medical technology is used to give us supernatural abilities, like the ability to generate life? So most Christians draw a line and will not engage in in vitro fertilization, even if they desperately want children, some would go even further and refuse intrauterine insemination, because they sense these technologies delude us too far into thinking we can be god while diminishing our dependence on our God.

 

Consider literature or the other forms of story-telling available to us today. There are some clear lines God has drawn: Get rid of any books that are teaching you how to cast spells (Acts 19:19), don’t watch pornographic videos (Eph 5:3), for example. But what if an extramarital relationship is depicted in the show without too much sexually graphic scenes? It does still tend to normalize the relationship and blunt our moral sensibilities. What about a children’s movie with nothing overtly sexual in it, but one in which the main characters act of heroism is casting off the expectations of her parents and asserting her individuality? What about a song that gets you fired up to go kill American’s enemies? We’re not about to release a list of banned books, movies or songs, but discernment is needed here, especially if you are a parent of young children. We could add to the list of pressures already enumerated the pressure the world will put on us to offer our children to it so their minds can be shaped by it more than by our God; remember that Nebuchadnezzar wanted the youths of Israel. Generally the younger they are, the more you want to err on the side of drawing this line more tightly. On language, similar questions arise. On the one hand, we must speak a language others understand to communicate lovingly to them and even to present the gospel to them, but can a Christian call someone with XY chromosomes “she/her”? Most Christians understandably feel they cannot.

 

Consider the pressure of pleasure, which is the one Daniel seems to have been confronting most directly. He denied himself something that would have tasted better so as to avoid overidentifying with the world. A brother and I were recently reflecting together on whether we should take a shot of alcohol when unbelieving friends are doing so together. I don’t think I could argue that the Bible forbids ingesting alcohol in this way, but it did seem to us as we were talking that participating in an activity like that tends to overidentify a Christian with the world, who is using that alcohol for a different purpose than a Christian ought to use it for, if they are to use it at all. You are free in Christ to enjoy an expensive steak dinner, but if that became your regular diet, might you not begin to feel like this world was all you needed to satisfy your deepest longings?

 

Then finally we could consider not letting yourself be defiled by the world’s identities. Daniel did let himself be called by another name, and there are various titles the world will give us that we can accept without issue, like a job title for example, or having “doctor” before your name if you’ve earned a medical degree or a PhD. On the other end of the spectrum, there are titles the world will give us that we must reject. No one who struggles with same sex attraction, for example, should let our world tell them they’re “gay.” We all have family names, and how easy is it to a let a sense that “that’s not what Andersons do” or whatever your family name is stop you from doing something God wants you to do? You can keep the name, but you can’t let it pressure you into conforming more to the family name than to Christ. That’s true with most of the “names” or labels the world gives us: You don’t have to totally reject them, but you can’t let them be the truest thing about you. Most fundamentally, we are not our family name or our national citizenship, our ethnic group, or any other worldly label. Most fundamentally, we are images of God, sinners against him, and if redeemed through faith in Christ, we are saints and citizens of his kingdom. So even in the book of Daniel, when the narrative describes the interaction of Daniel with his companions, it continues to use their Jewish names, not their Babylonian ones. And one of the ways we can help one another pursue purity in the world is by not regarding one another from a worldly point of view, but treating one another according to our shared identity in Christ.

 

We could multiply examples, but the point is that the purity we must pursue in the world is not to go out of the world; it’s to not let ourselves be defiled by the pressures the world places on us, and that means there will be various points where we must get off the subway. Perhaps some of these examples seem extreme to you, especially if you are here and you are not a Christian. But I don’t want to deceive you: Our God calls for our exclusive allegiance, and that means the way we live as Christians will always differ from the majority culture in which we live while in exile, in ways that make that majority culture look at us and call us crazy. Even here when God gives Daniel favor with the chief eunuch, he’s still like, “Really Daniel? You’re going to starve, and if nothing else, that’s going to cost me my head with the king,” and if you really pursue this kind of purity in the world, people will say things to you like, “Really Christian? You’re going to lose your job if you do that. You’re going to lose your friends if you do that. Your parents aren’t going to speak to you again if you do that.” But God exalts those who refuse to be defiled in the world. So let’s look last at the promotion of those who refuse to be defiled in the world.

 

The promotion of those who refuse to be defiled in the world

 

Daniel feels the weight of the chief eunuch’s concern, and Daniel isn’t out to get him killed. Though the Babylonians are his enemies, he doesn’t hate them, and nor should we hate others in the world. Our battle is not ultimately against them, and there is still hope for their redemption. So he tries to find a way not to defile himself without creating unnecessary problems for the chief eunuch. If you can’t go along with something your company is doing because it’s a bridge too far for you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to try to get your company shut down. It may mean you explain to your supervisor why for the sake of Christ you can’t go along with this, but you still try to do that in such a way that it doesn’t blow things up for your supervisor.

 

So Daniel proposes an experiment. The king isn’t going to see them for another three years, when they finish their Babylonian university degree, so Daniel suggests they give it a shot for 10 days. If it flops, there’s still 2 years and 355 days left for them to fatten up again on the king’s food and wine. The officials overseeing Daniel and his companions agree, and look at what verse 15 tells us happened: At the end of the ten days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. Not only did God preserve them as they pursued purity—God promoted them, above their peers. God exalted them. And his point in doing so is not that we’d all become vegetarians or so that we could organize the occasional Daniel diet. His point in doing so was to show that he, our God, is better able to provide for his people than even the great King Nebuchadnezzar could do from his own supply of food and wine.

 

We see this further in verse 17. Though they were studying at the Babylonian university, who gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and who gave Daniel understanding in all visions and dreams? Our God did. And once again, when they appear before the king, not only did they show they were able to keep up with the others, but verse 19 tells us that none was found like them. Verse 20 goes further to tell us that in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. Babylon had plenty of its own native people, and we can safely assume that when they conquered other peoples, which they often did, that they did something similar to what they did with Jerusalem here: They took the best and brightest. And yet among all in their kingdom, the wisdom of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah was ten times greater than whoever wise man number five was, and why? Because their God, our God, is infinitely greater than all other gods. He is infinite in power to strengthen these four on a 3-year-diet of nothing but vegetables and water, above their contemporaries. He is infinite in wisdom to give them learning and skill above their contemporaries.

 

And our God is eternal. Look at where verse 21 leaves the story. Once Daniel was promoted to stand before the king as one of his chief advisors, we read that he stayed there until the first year of King Cyrus. You know who didn’t stay in that royal court until the first year of King Cyrus? King Nebuchadnezzar. You know who else didn’t stay? The whole Babylonian Empire. King Cyrus is the king of Persia, who defeated the mighty Babylon, and left it in the dust of history. Nebuchadnezzar and all his glorious kingdom faded away, but Daniel, the servant of our God, who refused to let himself be defiled in the world, remained.

 

He remained, that is, until the first year of King Cyrus. Eventually Daniel too would perish, because while Daniel served our God in his day, Daniel is not our God. While Daniel wasn’t the direct cause of his exile, he was as much of a sinner as his fathers who were, and so are we. If you try to get a dog to obey you by offering it a check for $10,000, it’s going to be totally ineffective. Why? Because that kind of offer is contrary to the dog’s nature. You know why the world’s pressure works so well on us, though? Because we have a sinful nature. We aren’t mere victims of the world’s Babylonian ambitions—those same ambitions have a home in our hearts. And so we have all already defiled ourselves in the world.

 

But our God is so great that instead of leaving us in the exile we deserved, he entered it himself. When God became man in Jesus Christ, he came to our cursed world as the truly unblemished youth. And though tempted in every way as we are, he remained completely undefiled in the world. He didn’t just go without meat and wine—in the wilderness he fasted forty days and still refused to eat the god of his world’s food. But instead of promoting him to a position of honor, the king of his day demoted him to the most shameful death imaginable: Death on a cross. There he wasn’t better in appearance or fatter than anyone else, but was described as one from whom men hid their faces. If the world ever appeared victorious over our God, it wasn’t in the conquest of Jerusalem. It was at the cross.

 

And yet even then, all the world was doing was accomplishing God’s purposes. We read in Acts 4:28 that those who crucified Jesus only did whatever God’s hand and planned had predestined to take place. As they were driving the nails into his hands, God was nailing our sins to the cross, and through his death Jesus made a full atonement for them. Then our God raised him up and exalted him not just above his contemporaries, but above all the kings of the earth, and he didn’t just remain there until the next empire came into power. He remains there still today. Jesus is our God, and all who turn from their sins and put their hopes for eternal life in him will one day be exalted with him when he comes again and calls our bodies out of the tombs, to reign with him forever in his kingdom.

 

What, then, can the world do to you if you are in him? Fire you? Sure. Insult you? Sure. Withhold its pleasures from you? Sure. Separate you from Jesus Christ? Never. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). And if we suffer with him, if we refuse to be defiled by this world, we will also be glorified with him (Rom 8:17). Make no mistake about it: The world will pressure you to use the gifts and resources God has given you in the service of its own exaltation. It will pressure you through its literature, language, pleasures, and assigned identities. But if you are in Christ today, you have a choice. You can either go along with it, or by faith in Christ, you can resolve not to defile yourself in this world, and our God will exalt you.