Sermon: Daniel 6, October 12, 2025

Scripture: Daniel 6

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Here we are again in our sermon series on the Old Testament book of Daniel. Now we’ve finally made our way into what might be the most famous episode in the whole book: The story of Daniel in the lion’s den.

The well-known story goes like this: The King of Persia passes a law saying that no one in the kingdom can pray to or worship anyone or anything other than him. In defiance, Daniel, the good Jew keeps praying to Yahweh three times a day. This is pointed out to the king, who has him thrown into a pit with lions, sealed inside under a massive stone. But he’s delivered by an angel, one who shuts the lion’s mouths, saving Daniel from his certain fate. And the king is so impressed by Daniel’s deliverance that he adds Daniel’s God to the list of the kingdom’s acceptable deities.  Daniel’s story is well-known, and rightly so, as a story of divine deliverance.

I’ve pointed this out a few times before that this is the reason why it’s been such a favourite for oppressed peoples. The great Mahatma Gandhi, for example, took this chapter in Daniel as an inspiration for his own movement of non-violence against British colonial rule, claiming that Daniel was “one of the greatest passive resisters who ever lived.” A story of divine deliverance. From oppressors.

As powerful and important as this element of the story is, we miss another. And that element is resentment. It’s resentment.

Because resentment is actually what puts Daniel’s failed death sentence into motion. Remember that Daniel’s proved himself over and over again as a possessor of holy wisdom and prophecy, not only earning him high esteem, but also plum positions in government. He’s so highly regarded that there’s been a government switchover–the Persians have overtaken the Babylonians–and he’s still given a top three post. Overseeing one hundred and twenty three satraps. Satraps being Lords over local regions throughout the empire. Daniel’s so good at his job, that the new King, Darius, plans to give him the top job. Think Prime Minister, over the whole empire.

Herre’s where the resentment comes in. All those other one hundred and twenty satraps, including the higher-ups, they see it as an outrage. Here we’ve been loyal to the king, working our fingers to the bone, and out of nowhere this upstart Jew just enters in and gets the prime promotion. It’s not only unfair. It’s unjust. So the satraps look for a way to get rid of him.

Problem is that the guy’s performance is spotless, there are no skeletons in his closet, his conduct is unimpeachable. But he does have one weakness: his religion. Knowing that Daniel’s faith precludes him from worshipping anything or anyone other than the God of Israel, they are the ones who hatch the whole “pray to the king only or die” law knowing that this is one thing Daniel simply can’t do. They’re the ones who play on the king’s ego and vanity to get the law passed. And they’re the ones who rat Daniel out in the end. No doubt practicing their own fake tears and trauma at the prospect.

Rather satisfyingly, though, they’re the one who end up getting it in the end. Because King Darius takes Daniel’s survival as a sign that he’s actually in the right. Proof that he’s been maligned. And so all one hundred and twenty satraps, along with their families, are tossed into the lion’s den in his place. Unlike Daniel, though, no angel arrives to arrest any appetites. None of them make it out alive.

They are consumed by the very beast they intended to consume their enemy. It’s the very definition of poetic justice. So not only is Daniel a story of divine deliverance. It’s also a story of deceit. A story of jealousy, underhanded politics. It’s a story of anger and vengeance. A story of resentment in its most savage form. And its brutal consequences. The lions just finish the job that was already bubbling within their hearts.

Which makes this story a warning for all of us, then, doesn’t it?

Who here hasn’t felt this kind of resentment before? I mean, some of us have been passed up for a promotion that belonged to us, by people who either didn’t deserve or did deserve it but maybe we deserved it more. No lion’s maybe, but it’s left us plotting that person’s demise. Or at least daydreaming about plotting that person’s demise. Our hearts filling with glee when they screw up.

And, of course it doesn’t just apply to the workplace, but everywhere in life. Just about every marriage that I’ve seen fall apart has to do with pent-up resentment, justified or unjustified. Every severed relationship with a parent or child has to do with some form of a nursed grudge. And that disturbing part where the families get thrown to the lions along with the satraps? That’s just true. Our resentments don’t just hurt us, they infect our marriages. They poison the relationships we have with our parents and our children. They wreck our friendships and even distort and destroy our relationships with the world as a whole. We pull ‘em all into the pit with us.

Not only that, but we have this technological communication apparatus that is a giant resentment feedback machine. A few weeks ago, Sarah Condon, an American Anglican priest wrote a piece for Mockingbird Ministries called “Grace in an Age of Vengeance.” Following the murder of the American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, she found herself in deep dismay at the resentful vitriol she was seeing unloaded by friends of all political stripes and all religious dispositions.

She said that many people were angry, and some with good reason. But, she writes, unfortunately, “anger leads to vengeance and vengeance feels like an unlimited natural resource. Vengeance is a beautiful feeling. We can make plans for retribution. We can hate people that we know and do not know in specific ways that just feel right. And that is the best part about vengeance. In a world of random violence vengeance can make us feel righteous in the face of so much wrong. But the beauty is fleeting, and vengeance is anything but endless. It does come to an end because it ultimately ends us. Anger and rage will be our undoing. It will kill us.” [i]

 
It’s been said that resentment “is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”[ii] That’s what this part of the scripture is all about, and it’s a warning to all of us. Because it says that the grudges we all nurse, the anger we fuel, the resentment that we continually cultivate, it’s our spiritual undoing, and there will be collateral damage in our lives. First Peter chapter five says “be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Resentment is one of those ways evil sinks its teeth into us. It’s the lion we let loose on our enemies, but end up mauled ourselves.

Now, unfortunately, in the story of Daniel there’s no happy ending for the satraps or their families. Resentment’s the end of their story. They are zoo food. That’s all.

But, thank God, the book of Daniel–it’s part of an even larger story. The story of the entire Bible. A story that finds its climax and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

I didn’t know this before I sat down to actually study this story, the deep parallels between Daniel’s story and the story of Jesus’ passion, the end of his life. Where the satraps conspire to have Daniel killed, the chief priests and elders conspire to kill Jesus. Where Darius can’t save Daniel, Pontius Pilate the Roman governor, can’t save Jesus. Where Daniel was thrown into the pit, Jesus was tossed into a tomb. Where Darius locked Daniel in with the royal seal over the stone, Jesus was sealed into death by the royal emblem of Rome. Where Daniel was lifted out of the den, Jesus was raised from the dead. And where Daniel prospered under the king of Persia, Jesus was highly exalted. Ascending to heaven to be seated in glory at the right hand of the Father. The stories are parallel–and it’s no accident.

But there is one crucial difference: The difference is found in Jesus’ words from the cross: “Father, forgive them,” he says. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus doesn’t just make a way out of the pit for himself, but he gets in the pit with us, in order to pull satraps like us out with him. So our story doesn’t end with resentment, because our story is part of the story of Jesus Christ. And in him, we’ve been given a way out.

And how he does that is by forgiveness. Forgiveness.

Maybe you’ve heard of Nate Bergatze.

He’s a southern American comedian known for being the butt of his own jokes. Last year he released a memoir titled Big Dumb Eyes: Stories of a Simpler Mind. More of that self-deprecating humour for you.

In the chapter titled “Raised by a Clown,” he tells the story of his father who was, yes, a clown, a magician and comedian. But a clown whose personal story wasn’t all comedy. His mother wasn’t great, to put it mildly. When her son was three years old she left him outside a bowling alley for hours while she bowled, where he was bit in the face by a dog. This led to numerous reconstructive surgeries, limits on his speech, and made him feel self-conscious and devalued for the rest of his life. Combine that with the fact that she was an alcoholic, and generally wanted him out of her life. His mother was extremely difficult, negligent, even abusive.

Things were so fraught that eventually his father found himself homeless in his teens. When one of his cousins took him in, however, he finally got the experience of what a good family was like. One of the things his cousin and his wife did was bring him to church with them. This was a turning point for his dad, Bergatze says, because it was “where he learned that God loved him no matter what.” He actually connects his Dad’s career as a clown and magician and comedian to his desire to let go of the anger and resentment from his early life. “Getting saved by Jesus was the beginning of [my dad’s] career in magic,” he writes. “You know, a tale old as time.”

Nonetheless, he still had so much trouble with his mom. He tried several times to change his disposition, even reaching out, but it never came together.

“So this time,” writes Bergatze. “This time he just said he was sorry. Sorry for not being a better son. Sorry for not trying harder to make her a part of his family. He said ‘I just need you to forgive me.’ And it melted her. For the first time in his life, he finally felt close to his mom. He said he’d see her in heaven, and they’d have a long time to straighten everything out. She died the next day.”[iii]

Now, unlike the satraps, Bergatze’s dad didn’t deserve his fate. In fact, Bergatze’s father had every reason to hate her, write her off, wish the worst on her. His mother was no Daniel! If anyone deserved getting tossed to the lions, it was her! If anyone had it, he had the right to be consumed by resentment, it was him. But he didn’t. Why?

Well, because Jesus was in the pit with him, the whole way. The lid on his life could have been sealed for good, his resentments could have torn him limb from limb. But the king of angels closed the mouth of the lion. And not only did the Lord lift him out of what would have otherwise been a certain death, he brought his mom, too, right out of the pit with him. By forgiveness, he has closed the mouth of the lions for good.

And the beauty is, he’s doing the same for you and me, too. It’s the way he breaks the back of the brutal beast circling every human heart. It's how he breaks the cycle of human misery. It’s how he rescues you and I even though we are headed to an early grave and the world heading straight to hell. And he does it by forgiveness.

Meaning that anger that’s consuming you. That rage that’s eating you up inside, that pride that’s waiting to pounce, that resentment that’s circling round your spirit, ready to strike. Hear the words of the Apostle Paul: “for freedom, Christ has set us free.” For freedom Christ has set YOU free. Because that vicious cycle of jealousy, and hatred. In Jesus Christ it’s all over. You can start letting it all go, and you can place it here instead at the foot of the cross. Because in the same way God closed the mouth of the lions, Christ has come to close the mouth of sin and death for ever. Meaning that today, here and now, you can get yourself out of the satrap trap. You can trade your failure for forgiveness. And your resentment for resurrection.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Sarah Condon, “Grace in an Age of Vengance,” Mockingbird Ministries, Sept 12, 2025, https://mbird.com/grace-in-practice/grace-in-an-age-of-vengance/

[ii] This is often attributed to Nelson Mandela, but it’s not clear who the original source it.

[iii] Quoted in Ken Ramstead, “Nate BergatzeL a Comedian with a ‘Big Dumb Heart.’” The Salvationist website October 3, 2025, https://salvationist.ca/articles/nate-bargatze-a-comedian-with-a-big-dumb-heart/