Daniel 3 Fired Up

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Hi everybody, my name is

Dan DeVries, one of the elders here. I just want to welcome you all here, especially if you're visiting. Just a couple quick things you'll want to know.

There's donuts here in the back, so please help yourself to that coffee right whenever you want to.

Really, whenever you want to. It's just there. Bathrooms are out this back door.

Just really hope that you feel welcome today and just glad you're here. So hey, let me just get you caught up real quick.

Last week we did a little talk out of Daniel chapter one. We're going to continue our study in Daniel this morning.

We're going to go to chapter three. We'll talk a little bit about why I skipped a chapter, but we're going to go to Daniel chapter three, which is a famous story about three boys who get tossed in a fire.

Hopefully that didn't happen to you this week, at least not actually happen. So let me just give you a quick review if you happen to miss the intro to the book.

It's just really important whenever you study scripture to understand context. It's so important to understand context.

So last week I mentioned to you that the theme of the book is the sovereignty of God.

So to kind of get you rolling this morning, we're going to say that on three together, the sovereignty of God. One, two, three.

This is not a story primarily about Daniel. Okay? And it's not a story primarily about the three boys that we're going to look at today.

You know, they play key roles in it, but it's God that we need to see behind all of that.

Does that make sense? And so what we learned last week was that these boys found themselves in a very difficult situation.

The nation of Judah was just destroyed. They find themselves in a new place having to follow new rules under the leadership of a horrible king, right?

And we suggested that maybe somewhere along the road on the walk from Judah to now where they are in Babylon, they resolved together, we're going to hang in there strong with God through this trial, right?

That was their plan. And I want to just suggest that maybe that's all of our plan in the

Christian faith to a certain degree. I hope so, right? We come to God and we say,

I want to walk with you. My intention is to have resolve, to stay strong.

The famous theologian Mike Tyson, you familiar with that guy? You know what he said?

He says, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right?

That's what Mike Tyson said. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Then what's going to happen, right?

And so kind of what happens here in chapter three is, yeah, they made the resolve in one, but they're going to get punched in a whole new way right here.

What's going to happen? So let's read this chapter real quick. So if you've got a Bible, I want to just, it's a, again, it's a bit of a long chapter, but this is going to be fun because it's historical literature.

Remember we talked about chapters one through six, our history. And so this is going to read pretty easy.

And some of you may be familiar with the story. If not, this is a good one. All right,

Daniel chapter three, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its breadth was six cubits.

This is the only time I'll stop in the reading. Okay. A cubit, right? Wait, what the heck? So just think 18 inches.

Okay. Cubit is 18 inches. So if it's 60 cubits high, how high is it? Come on math class.

It's 90 feet tall, right? And it is six cubits thick or wide, which is then good.

Your minds are going. It's not, did I hear one answer? All of you, six times 1 .5. Good. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent together 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 this image, the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Skip a little bit. Verse four, and the herald proclaimed aloud, you are commanded, O people, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, probably, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.

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

All right, picture yourself there. Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the

Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, O King, live forever. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, there they are. These men, O King, pay no attention to you.

They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought.

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

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

Now, if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn and that whole list again, fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good.

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

And notice this, who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, We have no need to answer you in this matter.

If this be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, 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.

And then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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

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

Because the king's order was urgent, and the flames overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire?

They answered and said to the king, true, O king. He answered and said, but I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.

And then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning, fiery furnace. He declared Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the

Most High God, come out and come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire, and the

Satraps, Prefects, and that whole list of people, the king's counselors, gathered together and saw that the fire had not any power over the bodies of those men.

The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them.

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 their own.

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, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.

You kind of get the idea that Nebuchadnezzar still doesn't quite get it, right? And then the king promoted

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for this story.

And God, we know you have given us stories in scripture to teach us.

And we're asking, Lord, again today that through your word and through your spirit, we would be ready learners, open to hearing what you may have for us in this.

And so, as we come to worship now, God, I ask that you help us just to slow our hearts down and come to you and open up ourselves to your spirit and to your leading.

Because I just believe you have us here to do a work in us. It is your desire.

Whenever we gather together as a church, every person in the room, God, they're here on purpose. You are sovereign.

And so, Father, we'll do our best. We commit it to you right now. We'll do our best to hear what you have for us today, because we do want to walk in your way.

We know life will punch us in the mouth. Help us to stay strong with you. In Christ's name we pray.

Everybody said? Amen. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to jump into our talk about fiery trials that some families are facing this morning that they probably didn't expect to face.

So, let's pray. God, we want to be so sensitive to your spirit and what's going on in our midst here today.

You are a good God, and you are sovereign, and you're in control. And we just sang a song that talked about when it doesn't seem like you come through the way that we would want you to come through, how it can be a challenge.

God, we've all experienced it. We've all been hit, so to speak.

And so, I pray that as we go through Daniel chapter 3 this morning, you would just speak to us.

And we're going to trust you to do that in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I've got a friend who says

God's word is there for us for two reasons. It's there to slow us down, and it's there to make us think.

So, that's what I want to have happen this morning as best we can. We're going to look at God's word. I want to encourage you to keep your

Bibles open to Daniel chapter 3. Those verses aren't going to come up on the screen. You've got a Bible in front of you.

But I want to remind you this morning, and I want to remind you throughout the course of this week and in the months to come as we continue to study

Scripture, the Bible is there to slow you down and make you think.

All right, so we're going to try to do that this morning. We're going to slow down a bit, and we're going to think about what this might mean for us today.

And so, what I have put up on the side here for you is just a really basic outline of this passage.

I'm just going to say a couple little things about each section, a very simple way to think about when you get into your

Bible and you start reading and studying for yourself. There's three things always that we're trying to do with the text of Scripture.

You probably have heard this before. The first thing is to observe, right? You look at it, you slow down, and you observe what's there.

Why is it written this way? Who are the key characters? Is there a command to follow? What in the text?

That's number one. Second thing that you always do when you slow down and grab some Scripture to spend some time on is you interpret.

What is it trying to say to me? And then finally, you apply to your life.

How does this hit me right now? God's Word is living and active, and so it's intended to speak to us and give us something to apply to our lives.

There may be a course correction. There may be a new insight that you go, I'm going to start doing that.

You may see something in a different way, right? And so this morning, we're going to do that.

I'm going to just share a few observations out of this longer text, so we're not going to hit everything, and then we're going to stop and really hone in on one section, and then

I want to have some application for us at the end. Fair enough? All right, so here we go. So the first section here, these first six verses,

I called the king's command, right? And we just studied what the king is commanding.

You remember he's putting up this big image, and he's telling everybody, you worship that or die.

Okay, that's what he's saying. You might go, what happened all of a sudden? Didn't last week we talk about in Daniel chapter one how

Nebuchadnezzar had an assimilation plan, and he seemed very patient over time to kind of get people to think his way, and he stripped those boys of some of their, you know, a sense of nationality and gave them new names.

And little by little, the assimilation plan was tempting, and the encouragement for the boys was to resolve not to defile themselves.

You remember we looked at this last week, chapter one, verse seven. Well, this seems different. This is like something's changed.

This isn't an assimilation plan. This is a destruction plan, right? Things just got ramped up huge, and you might go, well, why?

Well, I have to just touch very briefly on chapter two. We didn't talk about chapter two, but again, context is critical, right?

So it helps explain maybe a little bit about what's going on here with Nebi. I'm just going to call him

Nebi. I don't mean disrespect. I've been so sick and tired of saying Nebuchadnezzar and trying to spell it all week.

We're going with Nebi for sure, okay? So what has happened in chapter two is that the king had a dream, and it rocked him.

He was scared by it because the dream foretold the downfall of his kingdom, and another kingdom would replace it, and one after that, and then

God's kingdom was to come, right? So you can think here, Nebuchadnezzar got scared, and so now he is feeling out of control, and he makes this attempt to get back in control by forcing people his way, and isn't this just how it works in life sometimes?

It isn't always just the subtle stuff that gets us, right? Sometimes we get faced with very direct, very scary opposition, and that's what's going on here.

So notice in verse one and verse two, this is all about the king. This is not really about the

God he's setting up. This is about the king, okay? Did you catch the five things here? Nebi made the image, verse one.

He set it up, also in verse one. He then sends for the leaders, verse two, and then he commands everyone through another leader, right, to fall down and worship.

That's verse four, and then he threatens death for non -compliance. This isn't about his

God so much. This is about him. He's scared, he's out of control, and he's trying to get back to a feeling of,

I've got this, and I'm in control. Hey, this is a temptation for all of us, isn't it, in life?

Things get out of control, we take matters into our own hands, and maybe go down a path that isn't real constructive, right?

And I want to suggest that religion is really that, right?

We are not so interested in religion at all. The Bible doesn't teach be religious.

The Bible talks about relationship with Christ. Religion is something we can control. I'll get up,

I'll do this, it's all about what I do. Does that make sense? That's what religion is. It's doing, but that's not what a relationship with God is about.

And so one of the things that can be a real danger for us is if we get caught up in all the doing, and Nebuchadnezzar's doing all this stuff to appease his gods and to put himself back in a position of power, and you just see he's kind of frantic about it as this passage progresses, you're going to see that that's really what's going on.

He is a frantic, scared, kind of a wreck of a man who is out of control.

And we're going to contrast that just a minute with the boys and see how different they are.

So the king makes this command in those first few verses. The next thing that happens here in verses 7 through 12 is you see these

Chaldeans getting fired up. And do you remember the verse that I read from earlier? It said they maliciously accused

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So in the first section, the king makes this command, and now here we already got the furnaces fired up, but these

Chaldeans are the ones who bring the accusation. First of all, who are they?

Well, Chaldeans were just the native Babylonian people. But in the

These were the wise men. These were the counselors. These were the folks who gave

Nebuchadnezzar counsel. Interestingly, if you look back at chapter 2, this is also not

Chaldeans, but Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in positions of counsel. So that's who these

Chaldeans are. In no doubt, when the boys from chapter 2 were put into positions of leadership that rivaled their own, they became jealous.

And so in their jealousy, they maliciously accused and brought to the king's attention the unwillingness of these boys to worship this image that's being set up in the plane, right?

And it just strikes me that this, too, is a lot of what happens. It isn't sometimes that you just get punched in the mouth with life.

It's that people then just, on top of it, sucker punch you. Or, you know, like we talked earlier about Mike Tyson, you know, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.

But if you remember his story, he went on to bite people's ears off, right, in the ring and spit those little pieces.

But then they zero in on the piece that was on the mat, and there was a little nubby, nebby, little nub of ear, right, down there on the mat.

And doesn't it just feel like that sometimes? As if the situation isn't bad enough, fall down and worship this

God. Somebody else comes along and points out that you're not doing it to get you in trouble, right? It's a sucker punch.

People can maliciously malign you. I want to suggest to you that whenever you take a stand for Jesus Christ, this is going to happen in your life, right?

It's going to come your way. There will be people who spread rumors, feed gossip, want to see you fail.

These Chaldeans were those sorts of people. They weren't happy, right? They wanted the positions of power, and they were rivaled by these guys, and so they did whatever was possible to get them in trouble.

Verses 13 to 15 here, the king once again gets fired up. First he commands,

Chaldeans get fired up. We already got a fired up furnace, and now the king goes ballistic. Did you notice verse 13 when

I read it? Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, right, he's riled up now, right, because he is trying to stay in control of everything.

And here's three men who have the gall to go against what he says is true, and he's not happy.

And so in a furious rage, he commands them, notice, giving them a second chance, right, because these were leaders in the kingdom, giving them a second chance to do the right thing, but of course they're not going to do it.

So again, here's what we see in Nebuchadnezzar. Now let's contrast this for a second with the boys. Nebuchadnezzar, stubborn, right, he has already seen incredible evidence of the existence of a real capital

G God. He's seen the evidence. Dreams have been interpreted.

He feigns worship to this God, but he is in nowhere, no way close to surrendering, right.

He is stubborn. He is prideful, and he is an angry man, okay, because he is not in control.

As hard as he's trying to be and wants to be, he finds it's not really working. Contrast that with these boys here in just a second who are surrendered as opposed to stubborn.

They're peaceful, and they're calm, right, they're calm. Notice in verse 14 in this section, it's again all about Nebuchadnezzar, right, my gods that I have set up, verse 14.

It's about him, and this is interesting. There's all kinds of gods in Babylon, and none of them apparently are working.

They're not satisfying, and because now he's making a 90 -foot version. Why? Well, maybe hoping that somehow that's going to satisfy him, and this is the plight of everyone who tries to fill their life with anything that ultimately isn't

Jesus Christ at the center. You try this, you try that, now I'll try the next thing. How about a 90 -footer, you know, control, maybe some anger's going to get me what

I want, and all these things we pursue, none of it satisfies, and that's the picture of the king, the highest person in control of everything, and he's miserable.

I knew a king once. His name was Davy. He was homecoming king, okay.

He had everything. I mean it. He had the prettiest girl on his arm.

This guy was an athlete beyond proportion. I remember playing basketball with him, and I wanted to show off, and I dunked one, and he's 6 '2",

I'm 6 '5", right. He goes, oh yeah, well watch this, and he's he grabs the ball from the bottom.

He's standing, there's the, you know, and he just, I mean, I got to get like a huge run and start, you know what

I'm saying? I'm not, you know. He just jumps up 6 '2", and just dunks from the bottom of the rim.

I'm like, do that again. It was amazing. All the athletic gifting in the world.

Starting middle linebacker on the college football team. Homecoming king.

He had it all, right. He was a king, but just like this king, he was miserable, and on one of the favorite days of my life, he comes to me, and he goes,

Danny, he called me Danny. He goes, I can't sleep at night. I'm like, what?

First thought, the guy's got everything. I can't sleep at night. What do you mean? And he goes on to tell me that he just, he's so unsettled and unpeace, it lacks peace in his life, and he doesn't know what's going on, and despite every outside indication that he had it together, had the gifting, had the people, had everything that he needed that we would think from a world's perspective would bring peace, didn't have it.

I can't sleep at night. I said, well, let's talk about that, right. And we talked about it, and I talked about Christ with him, of course, right.

The prince of peace, right. The one who helps us sleep at night, because no matter what's going on around us, it's possible to have this solid relationship, not about religion, but with a relationship with the living

God who goes through stuff with us, so that no matter what is unresolved at the end of the day,

I can sleep at night, because God has this, right. And it was just beautiful, and it just made sense to him, and he goes, that's what

I'm missing. I don't have it. And so, long story short, he gave his life to Christ. He was just the neatest guy.

He stood up in our wedding, and was a good friend. I've lost touch with him through the years. There's so many places, blah, blah, blah, no excuse, but just reality.

I don't know what's going on with him lately, but I've got a feeling it's probably pretty good, because he was a changed man.

The king doesn't have this peace. The boys have it. So, let's look at this next section, because I called it the boys, the king's kids here in 16 to 18, and you might say that the boys got fired up a little bit too, but in a very different way.

Their sense of being fired up here is a sense of absolute calm in the face of incredible circumstance.

That's what you see here in verses 16 through 18. Surrendered, peaceful, calm, in no way drawing back from the reality of the situation.

They know exactly what it is they're facing. This isn't a match. This isn't a candle. This isn't a lantern.

This is a fiery furnace in their face. They're calling it what it is.

They said, you can throw us in the fiery furnace. They know exactly what's going on in these few verses, but they're not going to be dissuaded from the relationship that they have with Christ.

Now, this is the part I want to slow down just a little bit. I want you to zero in on verse 17, and I want you to see their response.

I want to break this down phrase by phrase for us. Here's the response.

Let me read it for you first. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, 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 had set up.

The boy's resolve is set. They know that commandment number one is don't worship any other gods that are set before you.

They know this. He's known this from their youth, but look at this. Verse 17, our

God, our God, personal.

They're owning it. It's our God. It's personal.

It's my God. It's not just the God of Israel somewhere way out there. No, it's our God. Do you see that word there?

Critical. It's personal for them. How about for you? Is it our

God? Is it my God? Is it personal with you in him?

The God, next phrase, whom we serve. See, this is the telling point, isn't it? We can say our

God, my God, I love God, I'm all about God, God, God, God. We can say all that, but if our life isn't whom we serve, it's just words, isn't it?

This is the test. Our God whom we serve. These boys served him, and because of their service for him, they were in proximity with him, and because they served him, they knew him, and because they served him and had relationship with him, they couldn't think in this trial to abandon him.

Does that follow? Does that make sense? Right? So our God whom we serve, faith without works is dead, scripture says.

You can't say you're a Christian and do nothing. That's a dead faith.

That's not saving faith. These boys had it. Our God whom we serve, in this phrase, is able.

Isn't that great? He is able. They absolutely believe there is nothing that their

God couldn't do, right? We're just saying all about it in worship time.

We're just saying all about it. Sovereignty of God, he absolutely can do what he says he's going to do.

Now I hope, right, I hope as we're going through this, you're thinking through. You're thinking through your life, your trial, what punched you in the mouth this week or has been punching you consistently over the past year.

Whatever is that thing, right, I hope you're thinking and applying what's going on with that stuff in your faith.

Does that make sense? This is where we're going, and I hope you're just doing that hard work on the inside there. Our God whom we serve is able, in this, the next phrase, to deliver us.

He is able to deliver us. They believe it to their core. You almost get a sense from the passage here that they wondered if God might do something miraculous here, but again, they go on to say it doesn't have to be like we're hoping it turns out, but we absolutely believe our

God whom we serve is able to deliver us. And notice the word us, personally, right?

Not just deliver people out there. They believed that God would personally deliver them.

That's different. Do you believe God sees and can come and deliver you?

They got that. That was the essence of their faith, okay?

They got that. It was God is able to do that. And then he goes, they go, from the burning fiery furnace, right?

I already commented on it. They know exactly what they were facing. And then they say this, He will deliver us out of your hand,

O King. But if not, this is one of the great, this verse here,

I think, is one of the greatest statements of faith in all of scripture. It made it, this story makes it into the famous Hebrews passages about, you know, who are all the great ones.

Not by name, but if you go back and read Hebrews, is it 11, the hall of faith passage, there's a phrase in there about fiery furnaces.

It's these guys, they made it, right? Their faith was that real. So here's the thing with them.

They didn't know if God was going to get them through the way they wanted to get through. How do you think they wanted to get through? Unburned, unscathed, and safe, right?

They didn't know that was going to happen. But they weren't going to change based on the outcome they hoped would happen.

They chose to stay strong in the midst of the trial, and God would deliver them.

It might not be delivered from the fire. They acknowledged they very well could have been toasted in the fire.

But what would God have done if that were the case? He would have delivered them right to his presence through death, which has no hold over a

Christ follower, right? Delivered them right to the presence of Jesus Christ.

And so one way or another, right, the Christ follower will be delivered in trial.

And believe me, with whatever you're going through, I hope it's an outcome that, you know, saves the marriage, that stops the abuse, that finds the lost kid, right?

I hope it's the trial that comes to a conclusion that you would hope for, finding new employment, right?

Getting over that cancer. I mean, just what are all these things? They're all fiery trials. I don't know how they're going to turn out.

The boys didn't know how theirs was going to turn out. But what they didn't let go of is that God delivers through it all on his terms.

And this is the piece, the nugget we have to hang on to, and they've just served it up so beautifully for us in this story.

You know, Mercy Me, somebody sent me a song this week in anticipation of going here, and I want to just read you a couple of the lyrics from the song.

You know, they say, here's the lyrics, they say, sometimes you win some and sometimes you lose some, and right now

I'm losing bad. This song's called Even If. It's easy to sing when there's nothing to bring me down, but what will

I say when I'm held to the flames like I am right now? And then this,

I know you're able and I know you can save through the fire with your mighty hand, but even if you don't, my hope is in you alone.

Isn't that beautiful? I love that. I know the sorrow and I know the hurt would all go away if you just said the word, but even if you don't, my hope is in you alone.

Well, verses 19 to 22, Nebuchadnezzar's fury even increases if it's possible. He's crazy mad now because he's not getting his way, and it's interesting when things go crazy mad, crazy stuff happens, and because he'd lost complete control with his anger, some of his own men died because of his lack of control.

Sometimes we're in hard stuff, not because of something you've done wrong, but because of out -of -control people in an out -of -control world filled with sin, and you're in a very difficult spot, not by any doing of your own,

God's still there. Sometimes we make our own messes, don't we, and we're in trials because of bad choices.

Hey, I don't know what yours is. The point this morning is it doesn't matter if it's the one or the other. Well, gosh, yes, it does matter.

If you're making messes, stop, right, because it's just going to get worse for you like it did for Nebuchadnezzar, right, so you surrender your life to Christ and say,

I don't want to go that way. It never goes right, right, without God. I'm just saying that from scripture.

That's what we've learned, but a lot of the stuff we get caught up in is not of our own doing.

Lots of people died here because Nebuchadnezzar was out of control. It wasn't any fault of their own, and sometimes those are the harder trials to deal with.

I didn't deserve to be here. Why am I here in this situation, we would say to God, right? It's because of these things, and at the end of the day, all of it is not in our control, right, so I love that song, and I love what happens next in the story.

Jesus shows up in the fire. Verse 24, 25, Nebuchadnezzar was astonished. He rose up in haste.

He declared, didn't we cast three men bound, by the way, into the fire?

Interesting. The only thing that changed in the fire, right, the hair didn't burn. You remember all that?

I read it earlier. The hair didn't burn. The clothes didn't stink when they came out. There was no smell of smoke. There's only one thing different about the boys when they came out.

They weren't bound anymore. I think that's cool. You might need to think that through.

What does that mean for you? There is change that happens in the fire. These boys were unbound in the fire.

I wonder if they reflected on that later, it's amazing. What does that mean? What man -made stuff under God's heat needs to be torn away from our lives so there's a freedom, but the key part about this passage is it hits the bound part, but it also hits the

Jesus part, and isn't this cool? I think this is, commentators go both ways on this.

Some of them go, yep, it's an angel, and God sent one of his angels to be there with the boys. That could very well be, but we also know there's some

Jesus visits in the Old Testament. I don't know if you knew that, but a lot of those smart people about the

Bible call those pre -incarnate pictures of Christ in the Old Testament, right? This is one of them,

I believe. I think it's Jesus in the fire with these boys, and can you imagine what that must have been like?

Can you imagine? They got caught up in this drama and sure have up the fire, you know, they go, and people are dying all around them because the king was so crazy mad he made the fire as hot as possible.

They get tossed in eventually somehow, and then nothing happens, right?

They're in the fire, and Jesus is there. What did they say? What did they talk about? What must that have been like?

I can't imagine, but man, maybe one of the dramas we'll get to have played out in heaven someday. We'll see exactly how that went down, but what an amazing picture.

Was Jesus always with these boys, right? But now he shows up in a new way when it was needed most.

I mean, I just don't know how this all works, right? We're into some mystery here, but what we do know is this.

If you're a Christ follower, you have the Holy Spirit of Jesus living in you, right?

And my prayer is that you know that and feel it when you're going through it, that he is right there in that fire, and they walked around, and Nebuchadnezzar calls them out.

The last part here is this deliverance that happens in 26 to 30. Jesus doesn't come out, but the boys do, and they make all these observations.

Do you know what the net result was? The people of Israel got to worship their way again. Now, again,

I indicated when I read the scripture, Nebi didn't quite get it. He's threatening limb from limb if you don't worship

God, and off he goes again saying crazy stuff, but the end result was this command to worship the image went away, and all

God's people had the freedom to worship again their way in captivity.

That is the sovereignty of God, and that is unbelievable to me. I want to wrap up by giving us just four things to think about in terms of lessons from this passage.

Are you ready? I'm going to try to make it memorable for you, and we're going to build these using an acronym, and this is the first one, and it's faith in the fire.

Faith in the fire. When you go back and look at this passage, you're going to see the word over and over, in the fire.

God doesn't provide, well, he does, but the goal isn't to keep you out of the fire.

Does that make sense? It's faith in the fire.

God meets you there in that spot. It's not like his whole job is to keep you out of trouble and keep you out of trial.

I heard a pastor once say, good luck. All God's kids are getting it. All right, that's what he said, and if you're here this morning, you go,

I'm not God's kid. You're getting it too. Okay, you're made in his image. You're getting all

God's kids. We live in a broken world. There's trouble everywhere. Nothing goes the way that we want it to go, right?

All God's kids are getting it, so you're going to be in the fire. The question is, can we hang on to our faith in the fire?

You know, I love Oswald Chambers. I shared a quote from him last week.

Uncle Oswald, to me, communicates. I love reading this stuff because it just communicates to me, and maybe you've got someone that you really enjoy reading outside of scripture.

He says, the fiery furnaces are there by God's direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances.

We are developed because of them. Did you hear that? We are developed because of them.

All right, so I got to ask the question. There's a lot of men coming in. What's the story? Are we good? Praise the Lord. All right, that's a good clapper.

Yeah, whenever you see 20 men walking in unison and three -quarters of the way through a message, you know something good's going on, or something's bad, and they're fixing to haul away the speaker.

So that's all good then. Okay, thanks, Don. Good. I'm going to reread my quote, right?

So the rest of you, I'm not going to get you caught up. You're just going to have to kind of figure it out. Oswald Chambers says this, the fiery furnaces are there by God's direct permission.

It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances. We are developed because of them.

Did you get that? It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, and I have struggled with this one.

I don't know about you, but day after day, I come to the Lord and go, I don't feel like I mastered that circumstance.

I don't feel like I mastered that trial, right? This is a work in progress for all of us, right?

We work out our salvation, right? God, Philippians 1 -6, He started a good work. He's going to be faithful to complete it.

This isn't about beating yourself up because you haven't handled every trial or circumstance perfectly, but it is very much about understanding that you are in hard stuff on purpose.

That is the sovereignty of God, and He is shaping you, and He is forming you in those hard places.

It isn't His job to necessarily have you avoid all of that.

What He wants to do is form you in it. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.

And then this last little piece about faith in the fire from Oswald, faith for my deliverance, catch this, faith for my deliverance is not faith in God.

Faith means whether I am visibly delivered or not, this is the key, I will stick to my belief that God is love.

There are some things only learned in a fiery furnace. All right, here's next one.

The eye is an invitation to intimacy. I want to camp out with no notes here just for a second because I don't know how else to do this.

But God wants you close. Maybe it's just men, I don't know women, but for men, this intimacy thing, seriously.

I had a buddy on the phone the other day, I was talking to him about this, he goes, Dan, I love you. I'm like, I feel a little, I love you too.

You know, I didn't do it that way, but somehow in there, I kind of felt with you. Why? Because sometimes guys and intimacy and getting close and hugging each other, it's just, you know, we're so used to have to put up this macho image, the world tempts us to that sort of assimilation.

It's garbage, by the way. But we do it with God. And the danger is that we keep him at a distance.

And I'm just going to suggest there is an invitation from God for you this morning that he is after intimacy.

You know, my daughter Emma is sitting right there. If I, sorry, baby, but if I was to go, hey,

Emma, let's have an intimate conversation real quick. And I just stayed here and you were all here and she was over there, how intimate would that be?

But we do this with the Lord, I suggest. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of time, God, but you know, intimacy is you come down and you get close.

Can I embarrass you? Right. And you just do this. And this is where, right, right.

This is intimacy. Hi, honey. Right. But do you get that? See, God is going,

I want proximity with you. I want closeness with you. Don't keep me at an arm's length.

And we're tempted to when things aren't going well. Because we don't get it. And we're confused.

And maybe we're tempted to blame him. But God is going, I want to come here. And we need to bump heads.

Okay, we need to bump heads. It's in this whole passage is an invitation to intimacy.

God shows up in the end, in the fire, right next to him. I don't know how you got punched in the face this week or year.

But what I do know is that whatever has happened, the danger is that God is become this distant thing.

How can we get back close again? What do you have to do to get the intimacy back?

Scripture is there, I said earlier, to start this message to slow you down and make you think. But we're not very good at slowing down.

And we don't often think through the deeper things of Scripture. But one of them is this, God came really close and wants to stay there.

Are you there with him? Are you experiencing intimacy in the fire? Do you see him walking with you through your hardest, hardest, hardest stuff that you fear will never be resolved?

And it's never going to get fixed? And how am I going to hang on? And all of this temptation comes your way to give up on the love of Christ.

Don't let it happen. I hope you hear the invitation to intimacy that God wants to walk with you in it, right?

That's number two. All right, third one is this, relationships that remind.

Okay, relationships that remind. We kind of touched on this already. Last week, we talked about the boys and their relationship and how critical it was.

But when you're in the fire, you need people, you need friends to remind you of the truth, right?

Not just any relationships, but relationships that remind. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood there, and they stood together.

And again, I don't know what it looked like, but somewhere in there, you just kind of sense they're locking arms, they're in lockstep with each other.

You know, Daniel's not in this picture. We don't know exactly why. Maybe he got a way to get out of that situation.

I don't know. Scripture doesn't tell us. But the point is, is these three boys were there, and they found strength together.

Are you in a group? Are you in a group, right? Are you sharing the deeper parts of your life with others who can take it and reflect back truth and remind you of those scriptures and help you walk through it?

Does that make sense? Do you have relationships that remind you? And when you're in those dark places, you got to have them.

And if you don't start by just taking a step, maybe today you go back there and sign up for a group and pray that God would start helping you find relationships that can remind you of these unshakable truths of the sovereignty of God and his desire to be intimate with us and to strengthen our faith in the fire.

Last one, eternal perspective in extraordinary pressure, okay?

Eternal perspective in extraordinary pressure. Remember last week I told you about that picture Saturday in the park, and it was all a bunch of dots, and then you back up and you go, oh, there's a person, and then you back up a little further and go, oh, there's people in the park, right?

And then you back up further. It's this massive picture, and now it all makes sense. You need, we need a perspective, right?

And we don't just need a perspective like that. The perspective that's needed is eternal.

Does that make sense? We have to see the things that we're going through as somehow this is

God's master plan, and I'm not going to understand his sovereignty, and I might be very confused in what

I'm going through and heartbroken and angry and frustrated and permission granted for all of those feelings when you're in the fire, right?

One of the things that, for me, I help remind myself, and I think it's all through scripture, is that if we can get an eternal perspective on our circumstances, it will help us.

It will help us, especially when those pressures are extraordinary. I'm just going to close with this illustration.

There was a guy who was a band director. Actually, he was a symphony director, and he invited a friend of his to come hear the symphony, right?

So the friend wanders by unannounced, and, you know, I heard this from another friend of mine, and as he stopped by the practice unannounced, he just kept hearing the same three notes, right?

And then the bass, you know, instruments were doing, and then the, you know, the trumpet, and it was just like over and over the same, right?

Same three notes, and he's like, man, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to this stupid show, right?

For an hour, he listened in, because they had to, they're working on getting it right.

So just as he's leaving, the director sees him and steps away from the practice, saying, you're coming to the show, right?

He goes, you kidding me? That's the worst thing ever. That's all you do. I can't take it, right?

And the band director goes, no, listen, you come, you come, and of course he came, and he heard the most beautiful symphony and those three notes in the context of the bigger picture.

Does that make sense? And I'm sorry, it's a horrible, it's a horrible three notes, that thing you're facing, and all those things

I mentioned before that are the darkest trials of life, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a spouse, the loss of a child.

Do things get deeper and darker than that? No, they don't. Those are horrible notes, but somehow

God has the sovereign ability, and it's the whole theme of this book, to take those little notes and put it in the context of a symphony that one day we get to look on in heaven, and we're going to be amazed by it.

Boy, we need faith in the fire. We need faith in the fire, and we're going to pray in just a second, and I'm going to urge you to accept his invitation to intimacy, right, that Jesus would be close to you, and you'd feel it, and you'd know it, and you'd be relying on reliable friends who remind you of the truth, and that God would give you the grace to have an eternal perspective and extraordinary pressure.

We're going to go to communion. You all are invited to be a part of it if you claim faith in Jesus Christ. If you're visiting, we'd love for you to be a part of it.

We do this to remind, right, to remind ourselves. We do this to draw intimately to Christ, to have an eternal perspective, right?

We do this for all of those reasons, and so I'm inviting you to that when

I'm done praying, but for now, I'm going to ask you to bow your heads, and I'm just going to pray for a minute or two.

Oh God, here we are. In my prayer for our church, and I know the elders feel this, and Don feel this so deeply, we need you.

We don't want to shrink back. Father, maybe some here have lost intimacy with you, and we're praying maybe even these next moments of communion, there would be a new resolve to stay close, to stay there, to walk with you, and maybe a new resolve to surround ourselves with friends, and actually open up our hearts, and take the risk again, and open up our stories, and share our hurts with each other.

God, we're asking you to help us to somehow, in the pain that we're feeling, and facing, and the difficulties of life, give us an eternal perspective, and it starts with looking at you and the cross.

You went through Gethsemane. You asked really hard questions. If there's any way, no, there wasn't any other way except for you to go to that cross, and so God, we take our pain, we take our confusion, our anger, our frustration, all the difficulties we're facing in this moment, and we just are going to remind ourselves of what you endured, and ask for the faith to endure.

Help us. Meet us, Lord. This week, help us to walk out of here committed to stay focused on you, that nothing will change the belief that you love us deeply and forever.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but you've come that we might have life, and have it to the full.

Help us enjoy your presence with us this week, and as we head to communion, would you just speak to us through your spirit?