I Was Wrong to Close Our Church During Covid

A blunt exposition of Daniel 6, and thoughts arising

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.” He prayed to the God of Israel, who had made his dwelling in the Temple of Jerusalem: “I will bow down towards your holy temple and will praise your name for your unfailing love and your faithfulness” (Psalm 138:2).

Mathew Henry’s commentary is as poignant as ever:

Though Daniel was a great man, he did not think it below him to be thrice a day upon his knees before his Maker. . . . Though he was an old man, he did not think himself past it. . . . Though he was a man of business, vast business, for the service of the public, he did not think that would excuse him from the daily exercises of devotion. How inexcusable then are those who have but little to do in the world, and yet will not do this much for God and their souls!

God had never legislated that his people pray at the times and in the way that Daniel prayed. But every part of Daniel’s fixed habit – praying thrice daily on his knees in his chamber before a window opened toward the ruins of Jerusalem – expressed his total devotion to, dependence upon, and thankfulness to the living God of Israel.

Daniel knew Darius’s decree and knew the cost of disobedience, but he would not break his scheduled times of worship. Lucas notes that “since his piety was common knowledge, that would have been to compromise.” And Driver comments that “it is not a question of a positive sin that he will commit, but of a positive duty which he will not omit.”

Daniel was fifteen in chapter 1 and is eighty-five in chapter 6 but he is the same man. Henry again: “Daniel preferred God’s favour, and his duty to him, before life itself.”

I am convinced, along with C. F. Keil and other commentators, that for Daniel to have omitted his scheduled prayers, for fear of the king’s law, would not have been merely detrimental to himself and others, but sinful.

By persevering Daniel was not “making a protest”, he was doing what he believed he had to do in order to faithfully serve God and love his neighbour.

Daniel 6:11–15

The trap had been laid, the victim is snared, the fox-like satraps inform Darius. The king is greatly distressed; he had been about to make Daniel his prime minister and manifests real affection for him. He explores every legal possibility to free him.

The satraps demand summary execution: “Remember, Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed” (6:15). Soon Daniel will be dead and they can put their snouts back into the trough of government largesse and corruption.

Daniel 6:16–18

As they lower Daniel into the lions’ den – probably through the same hatch by which their food was given – the king prays: “May your God, whom you serve continually (תדירא, tedirā, ‘enduringly,’ ‘constantly’) rescue you!” Darius knew that Daniel had served God by praying to God.

The den was double-sealed with royal seals and a large stone – this was to be Daniel’s tomb. Darius can neither eat nor sleep and prays that his friend, somehow, will be delivered.

Daniel in the Lions' Den, by Briton Rivière (1872).

Daniel 6:19–22

At the break of day, (foreshadowing what would happen some six centuries later at a certain tomb at Jerusalem), the king rushes to the lions’ den and cries out anxiously:

Daniel 6:20–21 “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?”

²¹Daniel answered, “May the king live for ever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.”

Daniel had only ever respected the king and prayed for his wellbeing (1 Tim. 2:1–2). God vindicates Daniel and sends “his angel” to deliver him.

Yet again we see this mysterious figure who appears over and again in different ways and forms throughout this book. He is:

2:34 “The rock cut out but not by human hands”;

3:25 The fourth figure in the furnace, one “like a son of the gods”;

5:5 The One whose hand wrote judgment on Belshazzar’s wall;

6:21 The protecting angel in the lions’ den;

7:13 “One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven”;

10:5–6 The man of topaz with a face like lightning and the voice of a multitude.

These are Christ-types, or even Christophanies – from Christos (χριστος) and phanein (φανειν) “to show” – pre-incarnate manifestations of Christ on earth. They foreshadow that moment in the fullness of time when “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14).

Daniel 6:23–24

The king’s rage falls upon the satraps: they and their families will suffer the terrible fate of traitors in the Medo-Persian empire. The mouths of the lions that had been shut for Daniel now open to crush them. All attacks upon God are self-destructive.

Daniel 6:25–28 Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth: “May you prosper greatly! ²⁶“I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel.

“For he is the living God and he endures for ever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end.

²⁷He rescues (שׁזב, shezab, ‘delivers,’ ‘frees’) and he saves (נצל, netsal, ‘delivers,’ ‘extricates’); he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.”

²⁸So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

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In Scripture, the lion sometimes represents the good and powerful reign of Judah (Gen. 49:9; Rev. 5:5). At other times it represents the bestial power of this godless world (Ps. 22:13; 35:17; 57:4, etc.) and Satan himself, who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).

What happened to Daniel was a kind of living apocalypse, an unveiling of the truth that God’s people always have and always will be “in the lions’ den”, living among powerful enemies: whether the devil, a godless world, or indeed our own sinful desires, “which wage war against our souls” (1 Pet. 2:11).

Yet what is just as true is that the LORD stands with us in the lions’ den. Jesus himself “was with the wild animals” in the desert for forty days and nights (Mark 1:13), and Immanuel stands with us still.

As the LORD shut the mouths of the lions for Daniel, “He rescues and he saves” his people from every destructive power.

A secondary lesson is this: 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.” Daniel “did not pretend to be forgetful of piety when he saw his faith put to the test”, to see whether “he would persevere in his constancy.”

Thomas Myers writes similarly that Daniel is “an example of perseverance in religious duty when our conscience justifies us in maintaining God’s truth before men.”

Dale Ralph Davis, writing in 2013, could have been writing about Covid restrictions seven years later:

Daniel was not facing a minor religious inconvenience (just wait thirty days until the current prayer ban is lifted). It was actually a matter of whether he would keep the first commandment.

God’s people must expect to routinely face the choice been thoughtless, cowardly, and sinful dereliction of one’s religious duty, or courageous and faithful constancy and obedience.

If the civil authorities unreasonably forbid us to engage in our stated public worship, and threaten us with penalties, Daniel teaches us to firmly and calmly persevere in our Christian duty.

God forgive me, us, for our past failures. Make us to be obedient through the trials ahead.