Daniel 1Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

Daniel’s Captivity in Babylon

1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar[a] king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. 2 The Lord handed Jehoiakim king of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from the house of God. Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Babylon,[b] to the house of his god,[c] and put the vessels in the treasury of his god.

When you think about it the Book of Daniel starts off as a real downer. The first two verses tells us about how the Lord just allowed the People of Israel to be taken and the holy items from the temple to be turned over to the gods of the people of Babylon.

This did a couple of things, it let the Israelite's know that God was not happy with what they were doing, and it showed that when He was not happy with them he would allow bad things to happen to them. He was still protecting them from extinction, but He would let them suffer.

One of the things that needs to be pointed out is that the items of worship were taken away, but this was still no excuses not to worship. However the people looked at it as they could not worship without the items. God is not just in the items that we see in the church, we are to worship Him every where.

Worship can not become a task to complete, or so set in stone that it becomes about what we do rather than why we do it. We have to worship Him in a way that tells Him there is nothing more important to us than Him. When the Lord is removed from the top of our list we will fall from His protection.