Next time the governing authorities overreach and forbid us from doing what God has commanded may we show some Daniel-like courage, pray for our governing authorities and the good of our society, and continue in our stated and habitual worship. Calvin rejects those who say that Daniel unwisely pursued ostentatious and unnecessary prayers. He argues astutely that although Christians are not required to manifest their faith to all peoples at all times, we are in times of trouble required to maintain our worship of God in a way that precludes the appearance of “disaffection or apostasy.”

In 2020 Our Lives Were Upended by Covid

On the nightly news we watched thousands dying in America and Spain and elsewhere. We saw choked hospitals, mass graves, and refrigerated trucks for cadavers.

Our state premiers imposed stay-at-home orders and mask-wearing. Children were locked out of schools and families were barred from nursing homes. We missed our eldest daughter’s wedding in Sydney – millions missed out on all kinds of momentous life events.

I was pastoring a church in Tasmania when lockdowns began on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. We like every other church in our city cancelled our stated public worship for that Sunday. I pre-recorded a sermon and we broadcast some kind of service on YouTube.

I thought it would be for a week or two and that we could live with that. But they extended the lockdown week after week. It was not until July that we met again.

Under my leadership our congregation didn’t assemble for public worship for two months.

Soon everyone could see that the Covid mandates overreached what was reasonably necessary for the public good. Looking back at the wreckage of businesses, economies, education, and family life, the cure was obviously worse than the disease.

We have never made sick and infectious people come to public worship and we would not have then. But I believe now that we were wrong to abandon our scheduled weekly worship services for as long as we did. Wrong to abandon them at all.

A church service is not a leisure activity. The public worship of God is our highest duty and raison d’être.

The first church “continued steadfastly (προσκαρτερεω, proskartereō, ‘to devote oneself, to persist and persevere’) in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

We had stated times of public worship that we should have steadfastly maintained.

In Daniel 6 the Old Prophet Teaches Us to Do Exactly That

After the fall of Belshazzar and Babylon in October 539 BC, Darius the Mede – Darius is likely an enthronement name for Cyrus (see NIV footnote verse 28) – organised a new system of government for the largest empire the world had yet seen: from the Fertile Crescent it expanded west to Egypt and Libya, north to Asia Minor, and east to the Indus River and the Aral Sea.

Daniel 6:1–2 It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three chief ministers over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss.

Because the satraps – regional governors – were addicted to graft, Darius appointed chief ministers of steel-like integrity to police them.

Daniel 6:3 Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the chief ministers and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

The Aramaic original describes Daniel’s ruach yattira (רוח יתירא), his “extraordinary” or “excellent spirit.” In Genesis 12:3 God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be “a blessing to the nations” and Daniel, like Joseph in Egypt, becomes exactly that for the Medo-Persian empire. So much so that Darius intends to make Daniel – now in his mid-eighties – his prime minister.

Daniel 6:4–5 At this, the chief ministers and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. 5Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”

Though the satraps, either through jealousy or fear of losing their bribes, want to get rid of Daniel, they cannot fault him. As Peter would write six centuries later, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Pet. 2:12). The only way to get to Daniel is through “a decree (דת, dāt) of his God.”

Daniel 6:6–9

In the famous Cyrus Cylinder, held in the British Museum and dated to this time, the king had written:

I am Cyrus, King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Four Corners of the Earth (ANET, 316).

The satraps knew just how to appeal to such a man:

Daniel 6:7 The king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den.

“Prays” translates yibäh bāū (יבעה בעו), “petitions a petition.” For thirty days no one can ask anything from anyone concerning the government of the realm except Darius himself. This both deifies the king and confirms his absolute rule. For thirty days nothing – no god or human – will be above him.

The decree could not be undone. “The law of the Medes and the Persians” has since become proverbial for any inalterable decision.

Daniel 6:10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Daniel prayed, as David had taught Israel to pray in Psalm 55:17, at “evening, morning, and noon.”

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