Daniel, Episode 1: Taken From Home

Hey Carpool Crew! I'm Pastor Justin, and today we're starting a brand-new five-episode journey with someone you've definitely heard of: Daniel. Now, I already know what some of you are thinking. Daniel. Lions. The lions' den. And yes, we are getting to the lions. I promise. That is coming. But here is something almost nobody tells you about Daniel. Before he was the brave old man standing in a den full of lions, he was a kid. A scared kid. A kid who got taken away from his home, marched hundreds of miles across the desert, and dropped into a city where he didn't know a single person and nothing felt like his. And I think that part of the story might be the part some of you need the most. So before we ever get near a lion, let's start where Daniel actually started. Far from home. Let me set the scene for you. We have to go way, way back. About six hundred years before Jesus was born. Daniel lived in a place called Judah, in a city you've heard of, Jerusalem. He was probably a teenager. Picture somebody around middle school or early high school age. From everything the Bible tells us, Daniel came from a good family. He was smart. He was healthy. He was the kind of kid who had a future in front of him. And then one day, the future he thought he had got ripped right out from under him. There was a king. A powerful, scary king named Nebuchadnezzar. He ruled an empire called Babylon, and Babylon was the biggest, strongest, most powerful place in the whole world at that time. Nebuchadnezzar wanted more land and more power, so he brought his army to Jerusalem and he took the city. The walls that were supposed to keep Daniel's people safe could not keep that army out. And then the king did something armies did back then. He looked through the city for the best young people he could find. The smartest ones. The strongest ones. The ones who looked like they could learn fast and serve in his palace someday. And Daniel was exactly that kind of kid. So Daniel got chosen. Not for something good. He got chosen to be taken. Imagine that for a second. You're a teenager. Soldiers from another country are in your city. And you find out you are leaving. Not for a trip. Not for a sleepover. You are leaving your mom and your dad. You are leaving your house, your bed, your street, your friends, the temple where your family worshiped God. And you are not coming back. Then comes the walk. Babylon was hundreds and hundreds of miles away. So Daniel and a group of other young people from Judah had to travel across a hot, dry, dusty land, day after day after day, getting farther and farther from everything they knew. Every step took him deeper into a place he never asked to go. I want you to really feel how heavy that must have been. He didn't run away. He didn't get lost. He got taken. None of this was his choice. And then, finally, after all those miles, Babylon itself came into view. And it was huge. Way bigger than Jerusalem. Towering walls so wide you could ride a chariot along the top of them. Giant buildings that climbed up toward the sky. Statues of gods Daniel had never heard of, staring down at him. And people everywhere, speaking a language he could not understand one word of. Everything was loud and strange and new. Imagine being a kid and walking into a place that big, where you don't know what anyone is saying, where nothing looks like home, and knowing this is where you live now. Daniel must have felt about two inches tall. Now listen to how the Bible introduces him. This is Daniel chapter 1, verse 6. It says, "Among them, from the Judahites, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah." That might sound like a boring list of hard-to-say names. But stay with me, because it is actually a beautiful thing. In the middle of an army's list of captured kids, God makes sure we know their names. Four boys from Judah. Daniel, and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They were in this together. Daniel was far from home, but he was not completely alone. God gave him three friends who knew where he came from and who he really was. I love that God did that. When everything else was being taken from Daniel, God left him with three friends who remembered the truth about him. So if you're ever the new kid, or the lonely kid, or the far-from-home kid, ask God for even one friend who knows the real you. Daniel had three of them, and they were going to need each other more than they could possibly know. And those names matter for another reason. Back then, names meant something. Daniel's name pointed to God. So did the names of his three friends. Their parents had given them names that carried God right inside them every time someone said them out loud. So here is one of the first things Babylon tried to do. The king's officials gave these four boys brand-new names. Daniel became Belteshazzar. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were renamed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You may have heard those last three names before, and we will come back to them later in this series. But catch what was happening. Babylon was trying to erase God out of their names. New city, new clothes, new food, new language, new names. It was like Babylon was saying, forget who you were. Forget where you came from. Forget your God. You belong to us now. And this is the moment in the story where Daniel had a choice to make in his heart. Not a choice about food or kings, that comes later. A quieter choice. A choice about what he believed when everything around him changed. Because here is the lie Daniel could have believed. He could have looked around at Babylon and thought, well, I guess God stayed back in Jerusalem. I guess God was only in the temple, only in my old house, only in my old life. I'm somewhere new now, somewhere scary, so I must be on my own. Have you ever felt that? Like God was back where things used to make sense, and you got moved somewhere He couldn't follow? I'm not going to airbrush this part of Daniel's story. The Bible doesn't tell us Daniel skipped happily into Babylon. He had real reasons to be sad. He had lost his home. He was grieving. He was probably scared at night in a strange place with strange sounds. That was all real. God never asks us to pretend we are fine when we are not. But here is the truth that holds the whole rest of this series up. God did not stay in Jerusalem. God went to Babylon too. God was already there, in that palace, in that strange city, with that homesick kid. The same God Daniel worshiped back home was right there with him in a place that did not know His name. Daniel had been taken from his home, but he had not been taken from his God. You cannot be carried anywhere that is outside of God. That's not just a nice thing to say to make you feel better. It is the most solid ground there is. The God who made the whole world, who made Jerusalem and Babylon and every single place in between, does not have a border. There is no town, no school, no house, no situation you can end up in where God isn't already there waiting for you. And Daniel was about to spend his entire long life proving that true, over and over again. That is the one thing I want you to carry out of this first episode. You can be dropped somewhere new and scary and still belong to God. He goes where you go. Now, maybe nobody has ever marched you across a desert. But a lot of you know exactly what it feels like to get dropped somewhere new and scary, even if you walked in on your own two feet. Maybe your family moved, and now you're in a new house, in a new town, and your old room belongs to somebody else now. Maybe you walked into a new school where you don't know one single person, and lunch is the scariest part of the day because you don't know where to sit. Maybe your parents live in two different houses now, and you go back and forth, and neither place feels all the way like home yet. Maybe you joined a new team or a new class and everybody already had their friends and you felt like the only new kid in the world. If that's you, I want you to hear Daniel's story like it was written for you. Because in a way, it was. When you walk into that new place, the scary place, the place you didn't choose and didn't want, God is not waiting back at your old house. He is already in the new place. He got there before you did. He is in the new school. He is in the new bedroom. He is in the back seat on the drive between two homes. He goes where you go, and He does not leave. Here is something small you can actually do this week. The next time you walk into somewhere that feels new and scary, before you go in, just say quietly, even if it's only in your head, "God, You are already in there. And You are with me." That's it. That's a real prayer. That is the exact thing Daniel had to learn as a teenager far from home, and it is the thing that held him steady for the rest of his very long life. Daniel didn't know it yet, standing there in Babylon with a new name he didn't want. But God had a plan for him in that scary place that was bigger than anything he could have imagined back home. And it all started with this. He belonged to God, and God went with him. Thanks for riding along today on Carpooling with Heroes of the Bible! Next time, we'll find out what Daniel did when Babylon tried to change not just his name, but the way he lived. There's a famous food test coming, and it's all about who you are when nobody from home is watching. You won't want to miss it. And remember, no matter where you are or how far from home you feel, God is right there with you, because He loves you. I'll see you next time, Carpool Crew. ================================================