God’s complete sovereignty is one of the reigning themes of the Bible. In few places is this life-changing fact more compelling and powerfully told than in the book of Daniel. As a child I grew to love the stories of Daniel in the lions’ den and Daniel’s three friends protected in the fiery furnace (see Daniel, chaps. 6 and 3). But studying the book of Daniel as a whole has revealed new insights unseen when reading the stories individually.
Sometimes these Bible stories can seem far removed from our lives. Yet many of us have experienced our own version of a “lions’ den”—a place of confinement that tries to cow us into believing we’re trapped, separated from God, whether in a difficult relationship, job, living situation, or health challenge. The Daniel stories are also about a minority people living in a different land—a state one can compare to those striving to see the world through a spiritual lens, but living in a social and cultural environment swimming in materialistic assumptions.
The word decree appears countless times throughout the book of Daniel, as the king and his successors made pronouncements that seemed to carry horrific consequences if defied. Yet these royal pronouncements, the ancient world’s equivalent of law, were consistently overturned by the higher spiritual law that Daniel and his friends understood was continuously working on their behalf—to protect, guide, and provide. Now, as then, these are the very opportunities to discover that such so-called “decrees” can be overturned by a deeper understanding of where real sovereignty or power reigns.
