F4F | Jason Howard's Unmet Expectations and the Fiery Furnace

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Now, if you've heard, well, the

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Bible being used in such a way like bad circumstances are an allegory of difficulties that you're having in your life.

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Yeah, that's a common thing. Go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below. Don't forget to like the video, ring the bell.

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Listen, the Bible is so much better than that, and as a result of this bad preaching, this allegorizing of biblical texts in order to kind of deal with, like, you know, annoyances and difficulties in your life, even like the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic and the stay -at -home orders and the meltdown of the economy and everything that's gone along with that, yeah, the

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Bible is so much better than that. And so what we're gonna do today, we're going to head over to Amplify Church.

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In fact, let me go ahead and get my desktop up, and we're gonna be listening to Jason Howard.

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Now, like all the seeker -driven vision -casting leaders, Jason Howard is now locked up in his house, at least he was for this particular sermon, and we're gonna watch what he's gonna do.

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He's gonna take one of the most iconic and well -known accounts in the

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Bible, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and he's going to twist this in such a way that he's gonna talk about disappointments and setbacks and things like this, and it's such a terrible handling of the biblical text, and what

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I instead want to do is spend some time looking at the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the appearance of Jesus Christ in the account, oh and yeah, he does show up, and also then how the exile is used in the

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New Testament. The Old Testament exile is a type and shadow of our life as Christians right now.

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So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego has everything to do with being a

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Christian currently today, and us being able to head back to the Promised Land, you know, actually not head back, head there for the first time in our lives.

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We've been born in exile, and we'll look at the comfort that that brings us in the midst of all circumstances, in the midst of all circumstances, because in reality

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God loves us, cares for us, and even if we were to meet our demise in the middle of the global pandemic, or even if you didn't die as a result of COVID -19, but you know, we're outside, you know, practicing social distancing while walking your dog, and you get hit by a bus.

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Listen, that's not the worst thing that can happen to you. And so we'll take a look at this text with a

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Christ -centered approach, and we'll kind of work out from there. So let's do this.

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We got it all whirled up. Let's listen to Jason Howard in this really cringy moment where he's got his church's praise band in his living room.

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It looks like his living room or something like that, and you know, it's poor Seeker Driven guys, man.

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Without the ability to manipulate with smoke machine and laser disco balls and things like that, it just gets cringy.

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But let's tune in. Here we go. Awesome. It's okay. I'm allowed to kiss her, because we are married and we live in the same house.

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So he just kissed his wife prior to the video beginning. Hope you guys are all doing great.

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Happy Sunday, everybody. Feeling good? We're here for you. Listen, let us know. Tell us what's going on.

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Tell us where you're at. Tell us what you're dealing with in the chats below, because we've got team there ready to help you and encourage you and just connect with you.

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I know that we're distant from each other physically, but we do not have to be distant from each other relationally.

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We are here together. We're in this together, and we're with you. So you ready? Yeah, I guess

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I am. Yeah, sure. I'm ready. We're gonna bring the band back up in a few minutes.

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I am so glad that I do not have to have a band in order to conduct our church services online.

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And worship together, but I'm going to encourage you for a few minutes from God's Word. And let me tell you, there's so much power in the

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Word of God. Now, I agree. And I understand that your goal is to encourage.

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That's not necessarily the goal of preaching a passage. The goal of preaching the passage is rightly proclaiming what the text says, using proper exegesis, and then proclaiming law, gospel, sin, grace, and proclaiming

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Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of our sins, for the purpose of building faith.

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Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ. So somebody who has a strong faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, then

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God the Holy Spirit, working through the Word, continues the process of sanctifying, making us holy, producing within us the fruit of the

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Spirit, and bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self -control, and love for neighbor and others, and doing the good works prepared in advance for us to do.

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This is important stuff. But in order for that to happen, you have to have strong faith in Christ that's anchored in real promises.

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It will do unimaginable, miraculous things in your own soul. Last week,

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I started talking about disappointment. How do we handle disappointment? How do we walk through moments in life where we're experiencing pain and loss and just where things go wrong?

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All right. Not all pain and loss is disappointment, and I'll just answer off the top of my head.

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Sometimes disappointment is caused by completely unrealistic, narcissistic, selfish expectations.

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The reason why you're suffering disappointment is because the only person you're thinking about is you.

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Things aren't going the way that we want them to go. Things aren't doing what we expected them to do. And the truth is that we're all dealing with disappointment on one level or another right now because of the pandemic that we're walking through.

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Disappointment. Okay, that seems like, well, an insufficient way to describe what people are going through.

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But disappointment, it's a part of life. We might be in a season of disappointment, maybe with your job, or maybe with just high hopes that you had for the end of the school year for what this part of your life was going to look like, and it's not being realized right now.

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Yeah, you're going to have to get on with it. You're going to have to adapt. You're going to have to adjust. The Apostle Paul talks about being content in all circumstances, either in plenty or in want.

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But even regardless of the pandemic and the quarantine, we all have to face disappointments, times where life didn't go the way we wanted it to go.

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And so I want to equip you today with some things that you need in order to go through disappointments, but not let disappointments crush you.

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And I believe that God has a plan to move you forward, even through disappointments. God has a plan to move me through disappointments.

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And you're going to read out the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego with this as the frame?

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You can be stronger on the other end. And so we talked last week about Daniel, and the whole nation at this point, the whole nation of Israel, was going through some pretty massive disappointments because—

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Massive disappointments there in Babylonian exile. Okay, can we put this in like some kind of historical context here?

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Israel, you know, with the death of David and then Solomon, and the tearing apart of Israel into the northern and southern kingdoms, the northern kingdom from its inception steering into gross and egregious idolatry.

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And despite the fact that God in His mercy and kindness sent prophets to call them to repent, they did not repent and persisted in their idolatry, and eventually there was no other solution.

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God scraped them out of Israel and dispersed them, flung them into the nations.

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You familiar with the idea of the Diaspora? And then Judah, the southern kingdom, they were that far behind.

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They went—steered clearly into idolatry, forsake the

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God who had mercy on them, brought them out of slavery, gave them an inheritance, and they worshiped gods that didn't exist.

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So God sends prophet after prophet, culminating in not

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Isaiah, but Jeremiah the prophet, and they do not turn away. And as the prophets prophesied then, and as Moses laid out what the consequences for breaching the details, what they had promised in the

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Mosaic Covenant, all the curses of the Mosaic Covenant came on them with increasing magnitude, so much that they were also scraped out of the land.

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And God sent Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar sacked the southern kingdom, killed 90 % of the people living in the southern kingdom in that campaign and in the siege of Jerusalem.

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Only a remnant survived, 10%, and that remnant then was taken out of their homeland into captivity as exiles in Babylon, and this is about disappointment.

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Okay. Many years earlier, they had been given a promise from God that they would go forward and be representatives of God's goodness on the earth, and God was going to establish them in a promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, but at this point in history, all of that has been lost.

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See, they moved into the land, and at this point in history, after hundreds of years, some invading armies ended up coming and just taking them out, and God, because of their sin, taking them out as God's punishment for their rebellion and idolatry.

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They had walked away from God, and so they had... Yeah, they had walked away from God. That's an understatement.

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...strayed away from God's promise, and they had lost who they were and what they were meant to be, and so all of these...

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Is it me, or does it sound like Jason Howard here is sugarcoating idolatry?

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When you read the Old Testament, by the way, idolatry is likened to adultery.

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So adultery is physical cheating on your wife or on your husband, and idolatry is cheating on your

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God, and so over and again, one of the really graphic ways in which the

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Old Testament describes idolatry as whoring after false gods, whoring, and they walked away from God's goodness, and they forsook

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God's perfect plan for their life and stuff, and yeah, I feel like Jason Howard here is shaving off the hard edges of the account of what went wrong here in order to make this about disappointment.

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Let me back that up. God, they had walked away from God, and so they had strayed away from God's promise, and they had lost...

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Strayed away from His promise. Yeah, like a cat, you know. Who they were and what they were meant to be, and so...

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Yeah, they didn't know who they were meant to be anymore. All of these people had lost their homeland, and the

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Babylonians came in and took over part of their territory, but instead of...

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All of their territory. ...dominating them, the Babylonians actually came and took all of the Jewish people and displaced them.

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No, 90 % of them were killed. They died in that campaign. 10 % were displaced.

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The remnant that survived. They moved them out of their promised land and into Babylon so that they would lose their cultural identity, and that's where we pick up the story today.

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So that they would lose their cultural identity. Oh yeah, you're not reading current -day concepts back into the

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Old Testament. People who had a promise, but they're looking at God saying, where are you?

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And this isn't at all what we thought, and this isn't at all what we expected for you to do.

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And so the king... Can you find that in the story of Daniel? Any of the chapters of the book of Daniel, can you show me that?

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...King Nebuchadnezzar, and the king was smart. He took the smartest guys from the

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Jewish race, and he elevated them into positions of authority and leadership. And so three of those guys were named

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And I dare you to name your kid that, because what awesome names, right?

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And so part of what King Nebuchadnezzar did is he tried to unify all of his conquered people through religion.

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And he set up a big golden statue, and he said, everybody is going to worship this statue.

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But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were faithful to God, they refused.

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And they wouldn't bow down, they wouldn't worship. And so King Nebuchadnezzar... Yeah, it was idolatry that sent them into exile to begin with.

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King Nebuchadnezzar, he's furious. He's so angry. And so he calls them in, because these are members of his own government.

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These are people who he's supposed to be relying on to help lead the nation, but they're not obeying him.

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So he calls in these guys into the throne room, and he's freaking out. He's furiously mad.

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And he says, don't you understand that if you don't do what I tell you, I'm going to kill you.

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The penalty is execution. Read the account.

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It's so much better than this. Nebuchadnezzar liked to execute people by throwing them into fiery furnaces.

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He liked to do that. Favorite way to barbecue people.

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Kind of a brutal way to kill people, right? Where in the book of Daniel does it say that that was his favorite way of cooking people?

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And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are standing before the king, and in Daniel chapter three, verse 16, it says they reply to the king.

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We do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. So he starts reading it at verse 16.

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Verse 16. Jason, you're not going anywhere. You're stuck at home.

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No one can go nowhere. Why didn't you read the account? All right.

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So what we're going to do here, I think I would probably be good to do a little work here because it's frustrating me.

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So let's read the account. Famous story. Y 'all have heard it. And let's pay attention to what's really going on here.

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If you've heard me teach on this before, you know, one of the ways in which I really enjoy teaching this is pointing out that this was the biblical text, and as I was teaching it to my children after dinner one night, that my daughter pointed out that Jesus showed up in the story.

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And so I always like to tell the story with that in mind, that the Bible is about Jesus. The Bible is about Christ.

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It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about Him. And in fact, just, you know, was it not this

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Sunday, but the Sunday previous, preached a sermon on the account of the road to Emmaus, where Jesus appears and holds the eyes of two of His disciples, and then shows them from the

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Scriptures all the things concerning Himself. And so what we'll do is we'll put a link down to that sermon in the description because I think that will be helpful for you as a follow -up to this concept.

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The idea here is that Jesus has given us the definitive guide to understanding the

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Scriptures. He's opened the Scriptures to us and helped us to understand the

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Bible is about Him, and you would be shocked at how many different times

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Jesus shows up in the Old Testament. He's all over the place, and as far as appearances are concerned,

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He's all over the place. As far as types and shadow pictures pointing to Him, it's like the whole

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Old Testament is doing that, and so we'll kind of note this. So years and years and years ago, when my kids were small, they're not.

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They're all grown up. They're all adults now, and I'm a grandpa. Yeah, I know. I hardly look like a grandpa.

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Okay, I know. Some of you said, no, you look like a grandpa. All right, so yeah, I'm a grandpa. Okay, so when my kids were little, the place

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I learned to teach the Scriptures was at the dinner table. So our family tradition was that when we were finished with dinner, before we took the dishes off the table,

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I pulled out the family Bible, and I would read the biblical stories to my kids.

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And so we worked our way through all of the Scriptures at the dinner table several times, and so when my youngest daughter

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Faith was five -ish, maybe four, four and a half, five, somewhere in that age range, we had come up to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and I gotta say, she hung on every single word.

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I mean, she was absolutely into this story, and so I always like to read this account in that setting, or at least that frame, because it helps for us to point out how

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Jesus is there. So Daniel chapter 3, King Nebuchadnezzar, he made an image of gold.

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And if you read chapter 2, I think the two are related, but you'll have to read chapter 2 and you'll see what's going on, because it was a dream that Nebuchadnezzar had that Daniel interpreted, and how he got to interpret it is a whole other story in and of itself.

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But I think the two chapters are definitely related. Nebuchadnezzar is a little full of himself as a result of that dream, unfortunately.

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So King Nebuchadnezzar, he made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, its breadth six cubits.

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He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

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So you're going to note that this is kind of standard practice in the ancient East, Near East, including the

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Fertile Crescent. You guys remember taking sixth grade, seventh grade, was it? World Civ, and learning about the

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Fertile Crescent, one of the primary features of monarchs of the ancient world, and the Fertile Crescent is they were considered to be gods on earth.

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Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar, no different, okay? So he gathered all of these people, the justices, the magistrates, all the officials, they gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up in his honor.

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Who are they worshiping? Him, okay? And so they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

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So the herald proclaimed aloud, you are commanded, O peoples, nations, languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, every kind of music, you're to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

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This is the praise band from hell, by the way. So whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnaces.

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You can either worship me or die, you know, you get the idea, with the praise band from hell. Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, the nations, the languages, they fell down and they worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

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Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the

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Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, O King, may you live forever, you,

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O King, have made this decree that every man who hears the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, every kind of music shall fall down and worship the golden image.

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Whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning, fiery furnace.

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Now, there are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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These men, O King, they pay no attention to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

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So Nebuchadnezzar, in a furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought.

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So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, is it true,

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O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?

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Now, if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good.

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But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace.

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And here it comes. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?

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Yeah, so now he has cast aspersions on the one true god.

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And who is it that saves us from the fiery furnace of hell? It's Christ.

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So anyway, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, now we're up to verse 16. This is where Jason Howard starts reading the text.

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But you can see, you need all this, you need the beginning part. You don't want to gloss over this. This is important.

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So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.

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None. So notice, they don't seem to be suffering from disappointment. If this be so, our

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God whom we serve, he is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace.

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And he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

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So note here, these men are willing to lay down their lives. They know that God is able.

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Indeed, he is. God is able to deliver them, but God has not promised to deliver them.

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And so they know God is able to deliver us. He will deliver us, but whether in this lifetime, in the next, it doesn't matter.

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We will not serve your gods or bow down to this image, O king.

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It was idolatry that got them into exile, and engaging in idolatry, compulsory idolatry, is not in the cards for these fellows.

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Because now they are, you know, the remnant that God has caused to survive, many of them are devout.

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And the ones who listen, how do I know this? Because the ones who listen to the words of God in the mouth of the prophet

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Jeremiah, many of those are the ones who survived. Whereas those who despise the word of God in the mouth of the prophet

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Jeremiah and listen to false prophets, many of them, they did not survive the campaign of Nebuchadnezzar.

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So these fellows are basically, nope, first commandment says, you shall have no other gods, none whatsoever.

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You shall worship the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You shall not worship any false gods.

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So they're not going, under compulsion of losing their life, they're still not willing to bend the knee.

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So then Nebuchadnezzar, he was filled with fury. The expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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He ordered the furnace heated seven times, more than it was usually heated. He ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, cast them into the burning, fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning, fiery furnace.

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Now, as I was reading this to my youngest daughter when she was five, she at this point was just,

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Dad, are they going to die? Did they die? She's freaking out, and she was intensely hanging on every word all the way up to this point too, and we were interacting all along the way, and I'd have to ask her, do you want me to keep reading?

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And she'd say, uh -huh. So when they threw them into the fiery furnace, she goes, Dad, did they die?

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So I had to say to her, do you want me to keep reading? And she said, now, the story continues.

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So it should read at this point, thus perished Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But because the king's order was urgent, the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they fell bound into the burning, fiery furnace.

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And here's the best part. I mean, for real, this is the best part. So then King Nebuchadnezzar, he was astonished, and he rose in haste.

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And he declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men, three men bound into the fire?

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And they answered and said to the king, true, O king. And he answered and said, but I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire, and they're not hurt.

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And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Now, at this point, as I was reading this to my children, my five -year -old daughter, she jumps up out of her seat and just starts cheering.

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Daddy, Jesus came to save them. Jesus came to save them.

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Now, at the time, I was still wrestling with learning how to read the

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Bible and not to read myself into it. And I, of course, I affirmed her and said, yes, yes.

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Jesus did come to save them. And she was so thrilled by that, so comforted by that.

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And we should be thrilled and comforted, too, because the hero of the story of Nebuchadnezzar and the golden image is

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Jesus. He saved them from the fiery furnace. So I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire.

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They're not hurt. The appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning, fiery furnace, and he declared,

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here.

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And you'll note here that Nebuchadnezzar, he's recognizing that the god of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he's calling him the

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Most High God. He's still a polytheist. He's believing in multiple gods at this point.

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But God is working on him. And Nebuchadnezzar is going to die in faith.

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That's the best part about all of this. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you come out.

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So the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the king's counselors, they gathered together and saw that the fire had not any power over the bodies of those men.

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The hair of their heads was not singed. Their cloaks were not harmed. No smell of fire had come upon them.

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Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the god of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except for their own god.

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Therefore, I make a decree. Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the god of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, their houses laid in ruins, and for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.

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And he's right, because there is no other god. Then he prompted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, promoted them.

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. Now I want to show you another thing. And there is a way in which you can take a look at the imagery of the fiery furnace.

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And let me look for fiery, hang on a second here. And we're going to note something.

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In Matthew 13, this is our text, Jesus uses that same phrase, fiery furnace, and we would do well to pay attention to how he uses that word.

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And, yeah, here it is. Let's see here. Yeah, all right.

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So it's down at 42. There we go. All right. Jesus left the crowds, he went into the house, and his disciples came to him and said,

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Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. So this is a parable then, let me back up and actually read to you the parable of the weeds of the field, and let

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Jesus explain to you what it's about. So Jesus put another parable before them, saying,

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The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

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So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him,

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Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?

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And he said to them, An enemy has done this. So the servant said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them?

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But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the harvest time

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I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

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And so then later, the disciples came to him and said, Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

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And Jesus answered, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world.

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The good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil.

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The harvest is the end of the age. The reapers are the angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age.

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The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into...

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And notice the imagery here, because this is the only other time that this really appears in the

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New Testament, this imagery. The image of a fiery furnace. So fiery furnace,

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Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, if Nebuchadnezzar is kind of a stand -in for the way the devil operates, you know, the ultimate narcissistic idolater, and that's kind of the picture going on there.

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The fiery furnace is hell, and Christ is the one who saves us from the fiery furnace, from the hell that we deserve.

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So at the end of time, the angels throw all the lawbreakers and causes of offense into the fiery furnace, which is hell.

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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and then the righteous, they will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their

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Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. So this is a parable that calls us to repent, because we're all born into the dominion of darkness.

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But there's another way, then, in which you can take the imagery, the biblical imagery, and find the proper cross -references in preaching the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and we'll kind of work on it in this way.

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When you take a look at the theme of the Babylonian captivity and the exiles, it's picked up, then, in the

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New Testament as a picture for us to embrace regarding our own circumstances.

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So think of it this way. You and I, we were all born in exile.

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We have never been to the promised land, and it was humanity's idolatry and rebellion of God that caused us to be scraped out of paradise.

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And so we are now sojourning in this life, and so a good way to think of your life as a

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Christian is, I am a sojourner and I am an exile, and there is a day when the decree of Christ will go out, and you will, for the first time, be permitted to enter the real promised land, which is the new earth.

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That's the promised land that we're all looking forward to. So you can see this in type and shadow and theme kind of developed in the book of Hebrews.

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Hebrews 11 says, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith is the conviction of things that are not seen.

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For by faith the people of old receive their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of the things that are visible.

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By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous,

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God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith

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Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him.

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Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God, and without faith it is impossible to please

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God. For whoever would draw near to him must believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him.

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By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear he constructed an ark for the saving of his household, and by this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

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Faith is trust in God. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and when he went out, not knowing where he was going, by faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land.

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Living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is

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God. So no, Abraham didn't reside in the real promised land. He was looking for the city whose builder is

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God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

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Therefore, from one man and him as good as dad were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand on the seashore.

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And now here's the part I want you to pay attention to. All of these, these patriarchs, they died in faith, not having received the thing's promise.

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They didn't. But having seen them and greeted them from afar, having acknowledged that they were strangers and they were exiles on the earth.

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So the Babylonian captivity, the time of exiles, you know, it's a picture of our time here on earth.

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We too are strangers. We are exiles now. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

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My homeland is not here. It's not here in the United States. And if you're watching around the world, your homeland is not where you grew up.

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It's not your country of origin. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your homeland is the new earth.

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We have yet to be there. We are exiles now. We are strangers now. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.

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But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their

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God, for he has prepared for them a city. Now in that same vein then of exiles, and note, watch what

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Peter does in the opening parts of 1 Peter. This is amazing stuff when you consider the idea here.

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Just watch the introduction. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and indeed he is, to those who are elect, exiles.

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There you are. This is a letter written to you. You are an exile. If you are a Christian, you are an exile.

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Exiles of the dispersion of Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.

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May grace and peace be multiplied to you. And Peter then says this, Blessed be God, the

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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy. I love that Christ's mercy is used with the word magos, great.

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God doesn't have chintzy mercy. He has great mercy. He has great mercy towards you and towards me.

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He then has caused us to be born again. God did. Not us. God caused us to be born again to a living hope, a real hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you right now, who by God's power you are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

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So in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, and it always seems to be necessary, right?

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You have been grieved by various trials. Now, this will be a good theme here, talking about what it means as Christians to be grieved by various trials.

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And you can say that losing your job as a result of the pandemic, losing your savings, losing your house, losing whatever, a relative, a loved one, a spouse, a child, your own health, this is a trial, okay?

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So no, we rejoice then in the salvation that will be revealed when Christ returns.

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We are sure that we have it because of his resurrection from the dead, but now it may be necessary for us to be grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, and you'll note then that various trials do test our faith.

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Do you trust Jesus or not, right? Our faith, which is more precious than gold, although it perishes, though it is tested by fire, that your faith may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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And he just says this, though you have not seen him, and you haven't, none of us have, you love him.

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Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, and you are obtaining the outcome of your faith.

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And what is the outcome of our faith? Discovering our purpose? Being the head and not the tail? No, the outcome of our faith is this, the salvation of our souls.

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So concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, they searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the

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Spirit of Christ in them was indicating. When he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the

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Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which the angels long to look. Therefore, preparing your minds for action, you exiles, being sober -minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Right. So then as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

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But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

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Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were exiles and they conducted themselves in the fear of God in their time of exile in order to tell you to do the same because you are in your time of exile.

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So conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing this, that you were ransomed, ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers.

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You were ransomed, not with perishable things such as gold or silver, but with the very precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

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He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, for your sake, who through him, because of him, you are now believers in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and your hope are now in God.

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And notice, this is written to exiles, and it's the second time he's mentioned it. He'll go on to mention it more, but I want to keep the context.

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So that having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, and what does it mean to obey the truth? To believe, to trust in Christ, to believe the gospel, that Jesus bled and died for the forgiveness of your sins.

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So having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for a sincere and brotherly love, now love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but you have been born again of imperishable.

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How? By the living and abiding word of God, for all flesh is like grass, my flesh, your flesh, it's all like grass, and all of its glory like the flower of grass.

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The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And so this word is the good news that was preached to you.

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Now, again, written to you exiles. So then put away all malice, put away all deceit, put away all hypocrisy, envy, and slander.

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Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the

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Lord is good. So as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ.

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For it stands in scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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You, me, even Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You see how the themes work.

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So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock and a fence.

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They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. But you, you are a chosen race.

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You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. We've all been grafted into real

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Israel, so note then that theme. You are a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

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So, beloved, I urge you then as sojourners and exiles, third time, abstain from the passions of the flesh.

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They wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

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God on the day of visitation. Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or as governors, is sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

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For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

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And you can see the themes of the exile accounts from the Old Testament just crackling to life here in this epistle of 1

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Peter. So really, that's really what this is all about. It's about conducting yourself as an exile in the fear of God, even in the face of suffering, persecution, trials, difficulties, as we, as we, like they, sojourn as exiles through this life into the real promised land that has been given to us as a promised inheritance by Jesus Christ.

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It's given as a gift. All is a gift. So repent of your evil. Be forgiven.

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And continue now as an exile, as you wait now, wait for the redemption of your souls and the appearance of Christ and the disappearing of all that you see now and the world to come.

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Behold, Christ is making all things new. I point that out here so we now know the right category.

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Trials, temptations, fearing God in the midst of all of this, you get the idea.

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This is really what's going on. And Daniel, Peter has taught us how to read these texts correctly, and you get the idea.

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So all of that being said, let's go back to Jason Howard and see what he's going to do with this account, because this is all about disappointments.

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It really isn't. Listen to this. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the

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God that we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand.

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I mean, what certainty, right? God is able to deliver us, and God will deliver us.

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But then in verse 18, they say, but even if God doesn't, we want you to know your majesty that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up.

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That's right. They were conducting themselves in the fear of the Lord, even in exile, and we are called to do the same.

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We won't do it. We're not going to serve your God, to which, of course, King Nebuchadnezzar, he exploded in anger.

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I mean, he's furious at this point. How dare these foreigners who I've given opportunity to defy me?

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And so out of his rage and anger, he tells them to turn up the furnace seven times hotter than it even normally is.

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And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are bound up, and the soldiers who throw them into the fire, the fire is so hot that the soldiers themselves die from throwing them into the fire.

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And I wonder what was going through these guys' minds as they're being carted away and thrown into the fire.

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Because here they are. They've had expectation for their nation that hasn't been realized.

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They had expectation for their nation that hasn't been realized. How are you getting that out of this text?

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Have expectation for their lives which haven't been realized because they had to be moved to a foreign land.

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They have expectation for how they could maybe thrive even in this new land as people with position and power.

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But yet all of that is lost in one instant. And not lost because they did anything wrong, it's lost simply because they were doing what was right.

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And as they're going to this fiery furnace, I wonder if they were thinking, I wonder if they were thinking,

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God, we just got up in front of the king and said that you would deliver us. But here we are being thrown into the fire.

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Yeah, they also said even if not, they're not going to worship this idol. Thrown into the fire.

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And you know, I think every single one of us have felt like that at one point or another. Where we've looked at our lives and it feels like God didn't answer our prayers.

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Feels like God didn't come. Yeah, there are trials that we go through. The tested genuineness of our faith which is more precious than gold.

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Our faith is oftentimes tested in the midst of trial. This is what scripture teaches.

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Through the way that we thought he was going to come through. Have you ever prayed a prayer that you feel like God didn't answer?

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Of course. God has the prerogative to say no to any of my requests.

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Well, you'd be in good company with these guys. Maybe you prayed a prayer for your career and it didn't get realized or prayed a prayer for...

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Praying a prayer for my career and God saying no to that has nothing to do with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to engage in idolatry.

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Education and the door didn't open or prayed a prayer about a relationship, but the relationship still didn't work out the way that you wanted it to work out.

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This is not about failed relationships either. What are you doing to this text?

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You look and you're like, God, why didn't you answer my prayers? You do know that God can say no, right?

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And here's what I know to be true. I know that there will be times where it feels like God doesn't answer our prayers, but God is always working on a bigger, better story.

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Define the bigger, better story that God is always working on. He's always writing a bigger, better story.

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And so in that moment, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I'm sure felt like God's not answering my prayers right now, but they could...

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The text doesn't say they felt like that at all. Now you're going to make your primary interpretive point based upon what they feel or could have been feeling, but you have no evidence as to what they were feeling.

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That makes no sense. ...wouldn't see that what God was doing was actually answering a much bigger prayer because he was writing a much bigger story.

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You see what he's doing here? So the way he's manipulating the story of Daniel here, and of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, see,

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God was making a bigger story. So are you experiencing setbacks in your life right now? And are your expectations not being met by God?

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Don't worry. Did you lose your job because of the pandemic? God's working on a bigger thing for you.

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That's not what the Bible promises, and what you're saying is not even remotely a sound point from the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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I look back on my life, and there were times where I had prayed prayers that God didn't answer, and I remember specifically,

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I was in this relationship right out of high school, and... Again, how is it that people have lost sight of the fact that God can say no?

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That's an answer to prayer. No! It was kind of a mess. I mean, you know, we didn't get along.

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We fought more than we talked, and, you know, it was rough.

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And I remember praying, God, I need you to fix this relationship. But God did not fix the relationship.

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But I look back many years later, and I'm like, thank God that he did not answer my prayers, because...

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He did. He said no. God was not trying to fix the relationship.

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God was trying to fix me, so that I would be set up for the kind of marriage that he always had in mind for me.

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I see. So any setbacks you have in your life are a setup for the bigger thing coming. That's not what the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is about at all.

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And of course, he was keeping me on the shelf for a gorgeous girl named AJ to show up one day and take me off the shelf, which thank

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God she did. She's amazing, and she's in the room right now, and she's blushing, and I can tell. She's awesome.

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But how many of you, how many of you, you look at times in your life where God didn't answer your prayer, and actually, you're really grateful that there were times

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God didn't answer your prayers, right? Because he's always working on a bigger, better story. Where does it say that when

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God, quote, unquote, doesn't answer your prayers, he's working on a bigger, better story? No, no text says that, especially

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Daniel 3. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're walking through this massive disappointment, and in the moment...

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Oh, man, we're so disappointed. What is this?

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It feels like God is not coming through for them. They get thrown into the fire, and they watch the soldiers next to them get eviscerated.

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But they're in the fire, and they're fine. Their clothes aren't catching fire, their body, their hair, they're not catching fire at all.

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Yeah, Jesus showed up to save them. And so the king, he looks down into the furnace, and he realizes what had happened, and look at what happens in verse 27.

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They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair on their head singed, their robes were not scorched, and listen to this, there was no smell of fire on them.

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You skip the part where Jesus showed up and saved them. The whole part where Nebuchadnezzar says, did we not throw three men in?

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There's four, and the fourth one looks like a son of the gods. Why'd you skip that?

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So they went through the fire, but on the other end of the fire, they didn't smell like the fire.

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And I wanna tell you that there are times where we're gonna go through disappointments, but I wanna encourage you today that just because you go through pain and disappointment doesn't mean that you have to smell like pain and disappointment coming out on the other end.

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You ever have ice cream and get a cold headache and you just, and you're sitting there going, and it just hurts.

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What he just did there gave me a theological cold headache. Oh man, oh, this is painful.

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What on earth? You strip Jesus out of the account, and now you're gonna make a point, just because you go through disappointing moments doesn't mean we have to smell like it on the other side.

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Yeah, well, there's no way to save this sermon. It's a goner. This guy is not gonna point people to Jesus.

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He's completely sugarcoated anything regarding sin. And this is more like psychological group therapy, and this is not a right handling of this text at all.

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And Christ is not glorified in this, because this is not what this account is about at all.

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And so you get the idea, you get the idea. And so the

01:00:00

Bible is so much better, so much better than the way it's being preached in so many places nowadays.

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And that's one of the points I'd like to keep hammering on here and helping you with.

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When you see what the Bible is really about, how it is about Christ and his great love, his great mercy, and his tenacity, and the lengths at which he has gone through to save poor, miserable sinners like you and like me, not because of any worthiness on our part, but because of his great mercy and kindness and love, this changes everything.

01:00:39

And it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. And unfortunately, God's kindness got lost in the shuffle in that psychological blah that we just heard from Jason Howard.

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So hopefully you found this helpful. And I would remind you that the sermon that I preached just a couple

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Sundays ago on the Road to Emmaus account, showing that the Bible is about Jesus, Jesus teaching the lesson himself, it should be helpful to you.

01:01:06

But if you found this video helpful, all the information on how you can share it is down below in the description so that you can share with other people.

01:01:15

So if you or someone you know is attending a church where they're doing this to the Bible, and they're not hearing the great works of Christ done and the great mercy of Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, then please share this with them so that their eyes can be open and they can realize,

01:01:32

I've got to find a church where a pastor's going to really rightly handle these texts and point me back to Jesus, point me back to his salvation and his great mercy.

01:01:41

And if you don't already support us financially, all the information on how you can do so is down below in the description.

01:01:48

And in the month of May, this is a composition that I shot last week, and the name of it is

01:01:55

Alvarado Grain Elevator. And so I'm a fine art photographer also.

01:02:01

I use photography to keep me from losing my mind, find the beauty that exists in the world.

01:02:07

It's all around us. So any of you that join our crew at Gunner's Mate or above in the month of May, I will send you a copy of this particular composition.

01:02:17

It's autographed as my way of saying thank you for supporting us and joining our crew at Gunner's Mate or above.

01:02:23

So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.