2The Lion's Roar — Daniel 6

THE BOOK OF DANIEL

A Sermon Series by Pastor Rod Meyers

 

BEYOND THE SERMON

Message Two — The Lion’s Roar (Daniel 6)

1. How to Use This Guide

This guide goes past what Sunday's message could cover, into the language, history, and theology behind Daniel's night in the lions' den. Use it on your own this week or with a small group. All Scripture is quoted from the New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted.

2. The Sermon in Brief

Decades after the events of chapter 1, Daniel is an old man serving under Darius the Mede, one of three administrators over the empire's 120 satraps. He so distinguished himself that Darius planned to set him over the whole kingdom — and that excellence became the very thing his rivals used against him. Unable to find any corruption or negligence in his record, they targeted the one thing they knew he would never abandon: his devotion to God.

The trap was a thirty-day decree making it illegal to pray to any god or person except the king, with the penalty being the lions' den. Daniel's response wasn't defiance for its own sake — he simply kept doing what he'd “continued to do before” (6:10): three times a day, windows open toward Jerusalem, on his knees. He was caught, the king was manipulated into enforcing his own irrevocable law, and Daniel was thrown to the lions. God shut their mouths. In the morning, Darius found Daniel unharmed, and the men who had plotted against him — along with their families — were thrown in and destroyed before they even reached the floor.

 

Darius's response closes the chapter: a decree that everyone in his kingdom “must fear and reverence the God of Daniel” (6:26) — the second pagan king in the book to make such a declaration after Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4.

3. Word Studies

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Historical Background — Who Was Darius the Mede?

Daniel 6 opens one of the book's genuine historical puzzles. No ruler named “Darius the Mede” appears in surviving Persian king lists for this exact period — the famous “Darius” of history (Darius I, “Darius the Great”) reigned decades later. Conservative scholarship has offered several proposals, and the sermon doesn't need to resolve the debate to make its point, but it's worth knowing the leading options:

 

 

Daniel would have been roughly 80 years old by this point — taken captive as a teenager in 605 BC, he is now serving his fourth foreign monarch across nearly seven decades, a living testimony to the “until the first year of King Cyrus” note that closed chapter 1.

5. Daniel's Den and the Empty Tomb

Generations of readers have noticed how closely Daniel 6 anticipates the Gospel resurrection accounts — not as a coded prophecy, but as a pattern of God's faithfulness that repeats at the center of the Christian story.

 

 

 

6. Reflection Questions

Daniel's enemies couldn't find any corruption in his work — only his devotion to God. Is there anything about your own life that critics could only attack by attacking your faith?

 

 

Daniel kept his prayer habit exactly as he always had (6:10), rather than escalating or hiding. What does “keep doing what you were already doing” look like as an act of courage in your own life?

 

 

Darius wanted to save Daniel but had trapped himself with his own decree (6:14). Where have you seen good intentions undone by decisions made too quickly?

 

 

The king who couldn't sleep and fasted all night (6:18) sounds a lot like a man discovering, too late, what he actually believed. What would it take for someone watching your life to reach the same conclusion Darius did?

 

 

7. Further Study

Passages that widen the picture beyond Daniel 6, for study on your own this week: