The book of Daniel is all about a man who found himself in a culture that was totally opposed to everything he believed in. How did he survive? This sermon starts a seven week series on how Christians need to position themselves in a culture that is becoming more secular.

2. Say not, “Why were the former days
better than these?” For it is not from
wisdom that you ask this. (ESV)
Don’t long for “the good old days.” This
is not wise. (NLT)
– Ecc 7:10

3. How to Kill it in a World Gone Mad:

4. How to Kill it in a World Gone Mad:
1) Relax, God has been, and always will
be, in control.

5. “In the third year of the reign of
Jehoiakim king of Judah,
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came
to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the
Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into
his hand, with some of the vessels of the

6. “…house of God. And he brought them
to the land of Shinar, to the house of his
god, and placed the vessels in the
treasury of his god.”
- Daniel 1:1-2

7. How to Kill it in a World Gone Mad:
1) Relax, God has been, and always will
be, in control.

8. How to Kill it in a World Gone Mad:
1) Relax, God has been, and always will
be, in control.
2) Resolve to swim upstream

9. But Daniel resolved that he would not
defile himself with the king’s food, or
with the wine that he drank.
- v. 8

10. How to Kill it in a World Gone Mad:
1) Relax, God has been, and always will
be, in control.
2) Resolve to swim upstream
3) Reach people by creating value

11. “And in every matter of wisdom and
understanding about which the king
inquired of them, he found them ten
times better than all the magicians and
enchanters that were in all his kingdom.”
- v. 20

12. “Indeed, as late as the middle of the
eleventh century, the Muslim writer
Nasir-i Khrusau reported, ‘Truly, the
scribes here in Syria, as is the case of
Egypt, are all Christians…[and] it is most
usual for the physicians…to be Christians.’

13. In Palestine under Muslim rule, according
to the monumental history by Moshe Gil,
‘the Christians had immense influence
and positions of power, chiefly because
of the gifted administrators among them

14. who occupied government posts despite
the ban in Muslim law against employing
Christians [in such positions] or who were
part of the intelligentsia of the period
owing to the fact that they were

15. outstanding scientists, mathematicians,
physicians and so on.”
- Rodney Stark, God's
Battalions (p. 61).