You can’t see his face. Briton Rivière painted Daniel with his back to you. Barefoot. Hands bound behind him. Standing at the bottom of a pit, in the dim light that falls from the opening above. And the lions are facing you. That’s the trick of the painting. You’re not watching Daniel. You’re standing where Daniel stands. Every lion in that den is looking in your direction. Some curious. Some restless. One rising. Bones on the floor from the last men who came down here. Rivière studied lions for hours at the London Zoo to get this right. The weight of the shoulders. The way a big cat watches before it moves. He wanted you to feel exactly how close they are. And Daniel’s hands are tied. He can’t fight. He can’t climb. He can’t even shield his face. So how did he survive? Not in the den. Go back a few verses. Daniel 6:10. Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. As he did aforetime. The king had just signed a law: anyone who prays to any god but the king for thirty days goes to the lions. Daniel heard about it. Went home. Opened the window. And prayed exactly the way he’d prayed the day before. He didn’t start praying because of the lions. He didn’t stop praying because of them either. He didn’t even close the window. Now here’s what almost nobody notices. Daniel was taken to Babylon as a young man, in the third year of Jehoiakim. Daniel 1:1. That’s around 605 BC. The lions’ den happens under Darius the Mede, after Babylon falls. Around 539 BC. Do the math. Sixty-six years. Every children’s Bible draws Daniel as a strong young man. He wasn’t. He was an old man, probably past eighty. Sixty-some years of praying three times a day toward a city he’d never see again. A temple that had been burned to the ground. That’s roughly seventy thousand prayers before the den. The hands in this painting are bound. But those hands had been folded every morning, noon, and evening for sixty-six years. The battle wasn’t won in the pit. It was won at the window. Look at how his enemies built the trap. Daniel 6:4. They sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find no occasion nor fault. Verse 5. We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. They audited his whole life and came up empty. The only crime they could find was his faithfulness. So they made it illegal. Now watch what happens next. It should sound familiar. Daniel 6:17. And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet. A stone over the opening. Sealed by the authority of the empire. The king can’t sleep. He doesn’t eat. And then Daniel 6:19. Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. Very early in the morning. In a hurry. To a sealed stone. Six hundred years later, Matthew 27:66. They made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. And then very early in the morning, someone came hurrying to that stone too. Daniel was a preview. A righteous man condemned by a law rigged against him, his only crime faithfulness to God, sealed under a stone overnight, and in the morning, he came up alive. Daniel 6:23. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. Hebrews 11 lists him among the faithful. Who through faith... stopped the mouths of lions. Now look at the painting one more time. Look at what Rivière didn’t paint. No angel. No light shining down. No miracle on display. Just an old man with his hands tied, facing everything that wants to eat him, standing still. That’s the part of the story most of us live in. Not the rescue. The night. Now you. The lions are real. 1 Peter 5:8. Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Some of you are in the den right now. Hands tied. You can’t fix it. You can’t fight it. You can’t climb out. The diagnosis, the lawsuit, the layoff, the thing someone said about you that isn’t true. They found nothing else against you, so they found something. And you’re standing in the dark with your back to everyone, waiting. Here’s what Daniel knew. You don’t build faith in the den. You build it at the window. Every ordinary morning you prayed when nothing was wrong, every boring evening you gave thanks when you didn’t feel like it that’s what holds you up when the lions are close enough to smell. If you haven’t built it yet, start tonight. Not when the law is signed. Now. And if you’re already in the pit the stone is not the end of the story. Someone is coming very early in the morning. He’s done it before. Open the window.