St John the Beloved
Sermon and teaching audio from St John Church in Cincinnati Ohio.
St John the Beloved
Winning Friends and Influencing People
Ever feel powerless in a system you can’t shape? We walk through Daniel 1:8–21 and trace how a young exile with no authority became a trusted voice in a foreign court. The shift is jarring and hopeful: control isn’t the gateway to impact. Faithfulness is. From Daniel’s quiet refusal of royal comforts to his respectful request for a ten‑day test, we unpack how conviction and tact can live in the same heart—and why that combination still changes rooms today.
We dig into four pillars that carry real influence: faithfulness that resists compromise, reasonableness that de‑escalates tension, excellence that earns a hearing, and divine favor that opens doors no résumé can. Along the way, we challenge the assumptions of seeker‑styled influence and explore why sincerity, depth, and robust worship often resonate more than slick production. You’ll hear practical frames for hard conversations, from listening to constraints to proposing small experiments, and a fresh case for doing fewer things with higher quality so your work speaks before you do.
At the center is a deeper promise: favor isn’t a formula you unlock; it’s a gift you receive in Christ. Because Jesus is the truly favored Son, we can pray boldly for open doors—at home, in classrooms, and at work—without clutching outcomes. If you’ve been weary of chasing control, this conversation offers a better ambition and a tested path forward. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review with one place you’ll practice faithfulness, reasonableness, or excellence this week.
Let us stand for the reading of God's Word, our scripture reading this morning. We're picking up again in Daniel chapter 1, beginning in verse 8, the word of God reads this way. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food in your drink, for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah, Test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see. So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables. As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar, and the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found, like Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king. 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. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus. This is God's word. Thanks be God. You may be seated. May God bless this. Reading and preaching of his word. We are all very interested in control, having control over our lives, control over our families, over our finances, control in the workplace, control of Greenland, all kinds of control. But what if control is not all that it's cracked up to be? Look at Daniel. Daniel was not a king. He did not lead an army. He did not rule a nation. He was not even a religious leader. He was not in any kind of position of authority. Daniel was a captive. And as a captive, he had almost no control over his life. And yet, Daniel had more influence than almost anyone else in the Old Testament. And he used that influence for God's glory and for the good of his own people. He didn't have a lot of control, but he did have a great amount of influence. This is kind of a trick that can help you read passages of scripture that you might not be sure what they're about. But if you look at this passage, look at where it begins, and then look at where it ends and ask what changed between where it begins and where it ends. And this passage begins with Daniel's resolution to be faithful to God. It says Daniel resolved to be, that he would not defile himself. And it ends with Daniel in a position of lasting influence, not just serving the Babylonian kings, but also the Persian king Cyrus. So the passage really is about Daniel's rise to influence. And one lesson that we learn here is that even when we have very little control, we can still have great influence. And that's really what not necessarily what we should be aiming for, but that that is a peripheral hope that we can have. Even when we have very little control, we can still have great influence. And this is important because we often feel very powerless over our own lives. We feel like we're captives, who have no decision-making power sometimes. But this does not mean that we cannot have great influence, even in those places. For example, the stay-at-home mom who might feel like a captive to her family's needs, that she's stuck in a situation that she chose, but she doesn't have a lot of options. But she may still, even though she doesn't have a lot of control, she may still have profound influence over her husband, over her children, over the people closest to her. The student who has no leverage may still have profound influence in the classroom. The employee who has no agency, who has no strings that they can pull, may still have profound influence in their workplace and in their company. And God can use this influence for his kingdom. So how did Daniel come to a position of such great influence? Well, in this passage, we see four things, not just three. Here are the four things that we see we see Daniel's faithfulness, Daniel's reasonableness, Daniel's excellence, and Daniel's favor. Faithfulness, reasonableness, excellence, and favor. So first, Daniel's faithfulness. It is faithfulness to God and not compromise that leads to lasting influence. Faithfulness and not compromise. Last week we ended with verse 8, where we're starting this week, so let's look at that again. It says that Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. So Daniel resolved that even in a foreign land, he would be faithful to God. Many issues could have been at stake here. Daniel could have been concerned about maybe eating food offered to idols and not wanting to partake in that. He could have been concerned about violating the Hebrew dietary restrictions that the Lord had set in place in the Old Testament. Or maybe he was just concerned about living in luxury and enjoying the finest things while his fellow countrymen lived in poverty, or maybe it was a mix of all of those things. Whatever the issue was, Daniel was willing to stand out, and he was willing to do something uncomfortable and to be a vegetarian, which is crazy. He was willing to do that in order to be faithful to God. This was not the case with all of the Israelites who were brought to Babylon. If you look at verses 12 and 13, it says that Daniel says to the steward, he says, Test your servant for ten days, let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you and deal with your servants according to what you see. The youths who eat the king's food, the other men of Daniel's age, they are likely other Israelites who were brought into captivity with Daniel and his friends. Daniel and his friends drew a line. They refused to compromise, whereas the other Israelites did compromise. And the results of this are surprising. It is Daniel and his friends who remain the ones who remain faithful and not the compromisers, they are the ones who end up having influence. The ones who remain faithful to God and who are distinct and different, they are actually the ones who in the end stand before the king and have a position of influence. Look at verse 15. It says, At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. If you ever want to give me a compliment, just say I'm looking fat in flesh. It comes from the book of Daniel. Um, right here. It was Daniel and his four friends who in the end are chosen to stand before the king. The surprising reality is that it is faithfulness to God and not compromise with the world that leads to lasting influence in the world. Counterintuitive and surprising, but we see it here. And it's important to note that in all of this, Daniel was not seeking to be influential. That wasn't his goal. He's not seeking influence. He was seeking to be faithful to God. And as a result, he became influential. We're living in the aftermath of the church growth movement and the seeker-sensitive movement. These are movements in the American church. And they're movements that were not all bad, but we're learning some lessons from our forefathers, I guess. One of the questions that they were trying to answer, or here are some of the questions they were trying to answer, how can the church gain more influence in modern culture? How can we get more people in the church? How can we grow our services? How can we grow into multiple services? How can we see more people come to faith in Christ? All of those are wonderful questions, even though I don't ever want to have multiple services, but those are those are great questions. We should all care about how can we be more influential? How can we see people come to faith in Christ? Those are, I care about those questions. But a lot of times in recent previous generations, how they were answered is by looking at things that non-Christians, the people outside of the church, looking at things that they like and that they don't like, and then adjusting the way that we do church, or perhaps compromising the way that we do church based on that information. So for example, non-Christians or people outside of the church don't like old hymns, at least we we thought. They don't like long scripture readings and long prayers and complicated liturgy. They also don't like some of the more difficult teachings of scripture, uh, teachings about sexual ethics or about marriage or about any number of difficult teachings and so on and so forth. But what they might like is that they do like uh highly produced music. That we know they like rock concerts, uh, we know that they like TED talks and practical lessons, and so those are good things. So maybe maybe if we do more of that, then we will be more influential. One of the largest churches in our cities, their slogan is a church for people who don't like church. I mean, they're unashamed about the fact that that's what they're aiming for. They want to reach, they want to reach people that do not like church, and that's their goal. The church growth movement at its worst compromised faithfulness to God in an effort, it's a good intention in an effort to gain influence in the world, but it is questionable whether or not they really accomplished this. And I think that what we're seeing now is that young people are actually more skeptical of those kinds of churches they feel very marketed to, and they're more desirous of something that's offering them a genuine alternative to what they see in the world. A genuine alternative to the to the multitude of concerts and TED talks that they've been to. Daniel's story teaches us something deeply counterintuitive. That faithfulness to God is not the obstacle to influence in the world. Compromise is the obstacle to influence in the world. The more you compromise faithfulness to God in order to be like the people that you are seeking to influence, the more that you become like them, the less influential you will be. It's really quite simple. And again, it's what we see here in Daniel. Daniel had more than faithfulness, but he began there. He began with a resolve to be faithful to God, even if it cost him. And that's where we should begin as well. So we see we see Daniel's faithfulness. Another thing that we see is Daniel's reasonableness. Reasonableness opens the door to lasting influence. Daniel was very bold, and we're going to continue to see this as we study his life and study his story. He was very bold. But at the same time, he wasn't just bold, he was also very reasonable. He was very respectful toward authority, he was very humble, he was very deferential, and we can see that even here. He does not just resolve not to defile himself. He doesn't just say, I'm not going to compromise, but he actually defers to his captors and he asks permission. Verse 8, it says, Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. Daniel could have been obnoxious, like an American Christian might have been. But he was deferential. And as he did that, the steward expressed his concerns. He said in verse 10, I fear my Lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink, for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths of your own age, so you would endanger my head with the king. So he explains the position that he's in. And Daniel understands the position that the steward is in. He's not trying to make life hard for him. He doesn't say, Well, I guess you're just going to have to kill me then. You know, he that that's Daniel is not like that. Look at how reasonable his response is. In verse 12, he says, Test your servants for ten days. For ten days, a short amount of time. Give us vegetables and water, and then let our appearance and the appearance of the others be observed by you, and then deal with us according to what you see. Just test us and see. Daniel proposes that he test them for ten days, and if it's not working out, then so be it. And this persuades the steward to go along with this plan. So Daniel did not just have strong convictions. He did have strong convictions, but he was also reasonable. We might even say strategic, or we might say pastorally aware, or we might even say political, like a smooth political operator. He knew how to negotiate. He knew how to find points of common ground. Daniel was able to be reasonable because he trusted the Lord with the outcome. Whatever the outcome would be, he trusted God so he could be reasonable and calm and cool and collected. The scriptures call all of us not only to be faithful, but also to be reasonable. Paul writes in Philippians 4, verse 5, he says, Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. And as John prayed earlier, we ought to be known by our love for one another, but we should also be known by our reasonableness. They're so reasonable. Not often said of Christians, but we ought to be. We have all uh seen viral videos this week of situations where uh very unnecessary escalation has occurred, uh tragic things happening that really did not need to happen. What do you think is the most important skill that you can learn in order to protect yourself in situations like that? It's not any kind of martial art, but it is the art of de-escalation. Hostage negotiators are masters of de-escalation. They're trained to enter into a very tense and a very delicate situation, and then to begin to build bridges, uh, to initiate a conversation, to build trust. They listen to the perpetrator, they begin to suggest small steps that can be taken. Uh, and make no mistake, the situation is going to end in an arrest in the best case scenario. You know, that's that's the goal. But the the goal is to de-escalate the situation. It is important that hostage negotiators are influential so that nobody gets hurt. But in order for them to be influential, they have to be very reasonable. They have to be able to have a conversation, they have to be able to listen, they have to be patient and be able to make suggestions and talk people down from tense situations. We should not expect to be influential if we are not reasonable. Reasonableness does not mean a willingness to compromise our convictions, but it does mean a willingness to listen. It means an ability to entertain alternative perspectives. It means realizing that we don't live in a perfect world and that you can't get everything that you want all the time. Even if everything that you want is good and maybe it's for the best, you just can't get everything that you want all the time because we live in an imperfect world. We live in a world of trade-offs and negotiation is required. Think about all of those sports movies where a capable coach comes to lead a losing team, and the coach immediately sees a hundred ways that the team needs to improve. But to demand that the team make a hundred adjustments immediately, right now, is unreasonable. The reasonable and the effective coach knows that positive change occurs incrementally, one step at a time. And so reasonableness often means patience and helping people take one step at a time to where they need to be. Let me challenge you to do this. Just ask the people closest to you. Tonight, after the kids are in bed, maybe after a glass of wine, sit back and say, sweetheart, scale from one to ten. Am I reasonable? What is it like to disagree with me? And then just listen. And if they feel safe enough to be honest, that should tell you all that you need to know. We will never be influential if we do not develop a spirit-empowered reasonableness. And we can afford to be reasonable because the Lord is at hand and we trust him with the outcome, we trust God with the outcome. The third thing that we see is Daniel's excellence. Striving for excellence in all that we undertake opens the door for influence. In verses 17 through 19, we learn that God gave Daniel and his friends success in their studies. He gave them understanding, he gave them learning. And in verse 20, we read the end result that says that 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. Daniel and his friends followed the wisdom that they knew from Solomon. Ecclesiastes 9 10. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. Do it with all your might. Proverbs 22 29. Do you see a man skilful in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men. Daniel and his friends applied themselves diligently to the task before them. Now that they were in captivity, they were to learn and to study. And they did that with all of their heart, working heartily as unto the Lord and not to men. Again, Daniel not only stayed faithful to God while he was in exile, but he also rose to a position of great influence in exile. And he was influential not only because he was faithful, but also because he was reasonable, and also because he was excellent in his work, in what was given him to do. When we take our work seriously, whatever it is that we do, other people take us seriously, and it opens the door for influence. I took, when I was in seminary, I took an apologetics course, and my final assignment for that course was to have and to record an apologetic conversation with a non-Christian. And that simply means apologetics means defense, a defense of the Christian faith. So I was supposed to have a conversation with a non-Christian friend discussing obstacles to faith. I immediately thought of one of my philosophy professors from my undergrad. He was one of my favorite professors. Every semester, whatever he was teaching, I took it. I didn't care what it was. I just enjoyed his teaching. He was not a Christian, but he knew that I was a Christian because of our many conversations and my contributions in class and the things that I put in my papers. But I had not spoken to him in about 15 years, graduated and moved on. And now that I had this assignment, I reached out to him, sent him an email, and I said, Dr. Wilson, you may not remember me, but here's who I am. I'm Billy. I was in your classes. Here's the assignment that I have. Would you be willing to help? To my surprise, Dr. Wilson responded by writing this back in an email. He said, Billy, of course I remember you, as you still remain the best student I have had the pleasure of having in my class during my career. Fifteen years later, he said that. I feel bad for him. He I I listen, I was not a great student. Like I I was engaged in class, and you know, I had a good relationship with him, but um I uh I did not spend all of my time studying. Okay, so but anyway, that's what he said. 15 years later, I was very touched by that response. But more than that, I was impressed by how important excellence is, by how important it is to be present where you are, to be engaged with the task at hand, to take your work seriously, whatever it is, even if it's sweeping a floor, um, to do that to the best of your ability, that you take these things seriously, people will remember that and will take you seriously, and God can use that to open doors for his purposes. We cannot expect to be influential if we are not willing to pursue excellence. And we cannot be excellent at everything. Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. It's one of my favorite quotes. Um we should be careful to commit ourselves to a few things, but then to do them with all of our might, with all of our strength. Whether that would be homeschooling children or the career that God has put us in, or the extracurricular that doesn't make us any money, but it's what it's a passion of ours that we pursue, or the volunteer roles that we choose to undertake, whatever it is. So this year I want to challenge you to do three things at once. I want to challenge you to do less, you know, cut down on the things in your life that you don't need to be doing, that you really can't give all of your attention to. You cannot do them with excellence. If you can't do them with excellence, don't do them unless you have to. Just try to trim down, do less. Do something, commit yourself to something, get out in the world and do something, and do it with excellence to the glory of God. Why? We do that not to gain an advantage over others or to boost our ego, not even to gain influence. That's not the goal, because influence is not guaranteed. You might do something excellent this year and not become influential at all. Don't be disappointed. That's not guaranteed. We do it for the glory of God, and we trust that God will use it for his purposes, whether it's now or ten years from now or even after we're gone, and we never knew the influence that we had, but we trust that God will use it. That's why we do it. Colossians 3 23, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. And then finally, we see Daniel's favor. We will never be influential or successful without God's gracious favor. Daniel was everything that we've said, he was faithful, he was reasonable, he was excellent in his work, but none of this would have been to any effect if not for God's merciful favor. Look again at verse 9, it says that at the very beginning of the passage, God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of his captors. There are many similar stories in the Bible of God giving favor. I wonder if you can think of any. Nehemiah made a bold request of Artaxerxes, the king that he was serving under, and he wanted to do a research expedition back to his homeland. He wanted resources to rebuild the wall there. Big ask. And he went to ask the king to do this, and he prayed that God would give him favor in the eyes of the king. God gave Joseph favor in the eyes of Potiphar in Egypt, and later in the eyes of Pharaoh in Egypt, and Joseph also rose to a position of great influence in a pagan land. What does this mean? Daniel had many admirable qualities, but there may be something here that is difficult to explain from a purely human perspective. It's not a math equation where these qualities add up and we get influence. At the end of the day, it depends on God giving favor. And at the end of the day, the chief of the eunuchs could not help but say, you know what, I kind of like that guy. And maybe he couldn't put his finger on why, but it was because God gave him favor. Daniel had favor from the Babylonians because he had divine favor. The favor of God graciously rested upon him. God favored Daniel not because of anything in Daniel, but because God is merciful and he has not abandoned his people who are in exile. It's kind of like the days of Noah. If you read Noah's story, read Genesis 6. Genesis 6 tells us that everybody was evil, that the inclination of every heart was only evil continually, and this is also true of Noah, that they're all evil, and God says, flood it. Says, I'm I'm I'm sick of it, just destroy them all. But then, later, just a few verses later, it tells us that Noah found favor in the sight of God. And it's not because of anything in Noah, it's because God is gracious and he graciously works his salvation to preserve a people for himself, even in spite of our sin. We will never achieve influence by our abilities alone, however admirable they are. Everything depends on the gracious and sovereign favor of God. We have two dogs that live in our house, and as much as I try to treat them the same and be fair, one of them has my favor. And I'm not going to say who in case they end up hearing this recording at some point in the future, but in my eyes, she is funnier, she's cuter, she's smaller, she's cuddlier. And my heart just lights up when I see her. I can't help myself. She has my favor. And because she has my favor, I don't care if she misbehaves. I will I'm sure I'm annoyed, but I will go to great lengths to protect her and to save her from harm because she she got me in the feeling. She has my favor. I don't know what to say. How is it that a fallen, selfish, sinful human being like you and me could gain the favor of the Almighty God, could capture the heart and the attention of the Almighty God. It's not from being very good. It's not from being like Daniel, it's not from being more faithful or more reasonable or more excellent, because Daniel too was a sinner, and all of our efforts they don't impress God, that we still fall short of the glory of God and we are still unworthy of his favor. It comes from being connected to the only one who is worthy. Jesus Christ is the favored one of God. More than Joseph, more than Daniel, more than Nehemiah, Jesus is the one of whom we can truly say God is with him. At Jesus' baptism, a voice came from heaven saying, Behold, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. If Jesus had such favor, then why did his faithfulness and his reasonableness and his excellence lead him to the cross? Jesus went to the cross, as we know, for us. He went to the cross to remove our sin and to clothe us instead with the favor that he has. On the cross, Jesus lost the favor of God, like we deserve to lose, so that we can have the favor of God, the favor that only the Son truly deserves. So if you belong to Jesus, when God looks at you, He sees the same thing. He says, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. He does not see us accord or treat us according to our sins, but according to the righteousness of Christ. And what this means is that even though we do not deserve favor and don't deserve influence, that we may and we should ask for it in Jesus' name. That when we're going to seek a promotion or when we're going to have an important conversation or whatever it might be, that we pray, God, would you give me favor in the eyes of this man? Would you give me favor in the eyes of this woman? God, would you open these doors, not for me, but for your glory and for your purposes. In Jesus' name, this is a prayer that God delights to answer for his people. Even when we have no power and no control, we can still have great influence for God's kingdom. So if you feel out of control this year, you're in good company, you don't need control. You can still have influence. If only we will commit ourselves to God in faithfulness and learn to be reasonable and to do all that we do with excellence, pleading with God in Jesus' name for his divine favor, apart from which we can accomplish nothing. To this end, let us pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have graciously bestowed your favor upon us in Jesus Christ, that you have put us into him, and that we are bound together with him, and that his righteousness belongs to us, and our sin belongs to him, and he suffers for our sins and gives us his righteousness and his right standing with God. And that we are even seated with him in the heavenly places. What greater favor could we have than that? That we are seated with him at the right hand of the Father, and that he is interceding for us. He's praying for us. And we give you thanks for such a great Savior. We pray, God, that you would help us to depend on this Savior and to learn to imitate Him and to walk with Him in obedience. Help us to be committed to You, to be faithful to You, even when it's hard. Help us to be reasonable people who are flexible and who are willing to listen and who are not obnoxious. Lord, help us to be, help us to be people who work with excellence in all that you give us to do. Whether it, what even if it's a humble task, even if it's stacking chairs or pushing a broom, whatever it is that you have given us to do, help us to do that with excellence, trusting you with the outcome. And above all else, Lord, we pray that you would uh give us your favor in Jesus Christ, not for our own gain, but for your glory and for our good and the good of your purposes and your kingdom on earth. To this end, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.