(8.30.26) Sermon | The Story of Daniel, Week 3 | Patrick Hardy

Well, hey, I think he just gave you a sales pitch.

You gotta go volunteer now.

So he said it.

I didn't say it.

Um I do want to mention as well, if you came in this morning, you saw there was some hustle and bustle going back on in our gathering area.

Uh it's serve Sunday here, um, which means every one of our ministries here at Generations is they have a table and they have volunteers who are out there who just want to share with you what's going on here at Generations.

I know sometimes you can come to church on a Sunday morning and be like, where do I get plugged in?

What do I do?

I want to get involved, and this is an awesome chance for you to just see everything that goes on here.

There's so much that you can be a part of.

Um so after service, here's what I encourage you to do.

Would you go out there?

Would you just talk?

Would you just ask those who are volunteering their stories?

Uh, why is it that you serve?

Uh, what has Jesus done in your life through the ways that you've you serve on Sundays, on Tuesdays, on Fridays, on Saturdays, whatever it is that you do, how has Jesus impacted you?

And I guarantee that you will leave here encouraged and blessed about what God is doing in and through our church here in uh northern Kentucky.

But also, here's what we believe: we believe that your story matters.

Your story matters if it becomes a part of God's story.

That when you partner in God's redeeming work in this world, that your your story ends up having meaning and purpose.

That's where it's found.

So if you want meaning and purpose in your life, I'd encourage you, find a spot to serve, and you'll be blessed beyond measure by doing it.

So uh I'm just so thankful for all the work that Morgan Four she has put in to be able to make this happen, all of our ministry leaders, so take some time after service just to go spend time with one another.

You already hang out after church, so you're gonna do it anyways.

You don't need my encouragement, but it's a good day to be here together.

When I was uh at Indiana Wesleyan University as a college student, um, there was something that students like to do, especially in the fall when it was warm outside.

Um they like to do something that was dangerous and illegal.

Nothing better as a college student than doing something dangerous and illegal.

Um so what what students would do, not me of course, what students would do is they would go to the Mississippi River in Marion, Indiana, and they would drive and they park their cars and they'd walk through the woods.

And as you walk through the woods, you would get to the river, but it was a 25-foot cliff that you would find yourself at.

And what what students would like to do, not me of course, other students, is they like to jump from the cliff down into the water about 25 feet.

It was a big jump.

This is what they would do on weekends, they would do on weekends.

Um, there were many, many people who needed no convincing, who would go and they would just be crazy, they would do flips and whatever, jumping into the Mississippi River.

But there were so many people who would come with no intention of ever jumping off that cliff that as they sat there and they questioned and they pondered and then they were encouraged and they were given a little bit of a push, that eventually would find themselves jumping into the river that they never thought that they would before.

I mean, it's incredible what happens when you are surrounded by a group of people who all have the intention of doing something, even though you don't want to do it.

There's something about this group think that pulls you into doing whatever it is that they are doing as well.

Um, if if you're a parent out there, you've probably said to your kid before, well, if all of your friends went to jump off a bridge, would you do it too?

And if we replaced a bridge with a cliff, the answer would be yes.

They would all go do it.

If you go and you walk down past this cliff's edge and you continue to walk along the Mississippi River, you will find a rope that's tied to a tree.

And this rope is tied to this little skinny branch, and you can, I guess, grab onto this rope and swing out into the water.

But between you, where you get the rope and the water that you're gonna land in, there is a lot of rocks, right?

There's a little bit of danger involved.

So one time me and my friends were walking along this river, and uh we encouraged our friend Ryan, said, Ryan, you should really swing on the rope swing.

Notice how we didn't say we were gonna do it.

We were gonna say, Ryan, you should really do it.

Ryan's a sheepish guy, he's not really a risk taker, but after some persuading, we convinced him to grab on to the rope and to swing out over the Mississippi River and to drop in.

But when Ryan was swinging, he forgot to let go.

And he swung back and then he swung again and didn't let go.

And by the time he came back the third time, he was no longer getting out over the water.

The only thing he was coming out over was all of the rocks.

So what happened is we then, as all of our friends, we were trying to grab him and to pull him back in in order to save him from dying on these rocks if he had let go.

There's something powerful that happens when we're surrounded by a group of people who are all thinking and acting a certain way.

Even if our convictions do not align with what it is that they are doing, there is a pressure and a pull to follow the crowd.

I mean, we live in a world that is constantly telling us to conform.

The world says everybody else is doing it, you should too.

Don't make this a big deal.

You don't have to take your faith so seriously.

Come on, lighten up a little bit, just go along with it.

Or just don't stand out.

Come on, just go with the crowd.

It's easier for us to fall in line than it is to stand firm in our convictions.

But it's not just the pressure of culture that's telling us to conform.

I think there's also an inner voice inside of all of us that's telling us that we want to fit in.

We want to belong.

We want to be liked, we want to be accepted, we want to belong.

We also want to avoid the conflict that may come with us going against the grain.

We don't want to have the confrontation or the consequences that come with standing for our convictions.

So not only do we succumb to peer pressure, we often fold on our convictions even before the pressure comes in order to avoid the conflict or the consequences.

There is a deeper issue that's going on here than simply having the willpower to resist peer pressure.

This is ultimately an issue of worship.

You see, in Exodus, we see Moses, he goes up to the Mount Sinai, and God gives him the ten commandments on these two tablets, and he brings them back down for the Israelites, God's chosen people, uh, for them to follow.

In the very first command in Exodus 23, we read that it's you shall have no other gods before me.

In order to follow God, our worship, our priorities, our loyalties must be aligned and directed towards God above everything else.

When God gives the Israelites the Ten Commandments and says, You shall have no other gods before me, he's telling them that in order to follow him, they must keep him first above all other things.

The problem is, the world is constantly putting other things in front of us to move our attention, to change our focus, in order to call us to worship the things that are not of God.

The world wants your worship.

Culture constantly presents us with things that compete for the place that only belongs to God.

Success, money, comfort, popularity, politics, relationships, career, reputation, pleasure, security.

I mean, we could go on and on about all the things that this world has to offer to take our attention away from God.

The pressure can be reject your God, but more often than not, the pressure that we face is to take a good thing and to make it a God thing.

We are pressured to elevate the things of this world up to the place where only Jesus should be.

And this morning we're gonna look at the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, and they're going to be put in the exact situation where they are going to be pressured to redirect their worship to the world in a way from the one true God that they serve.

So if you've got your Bible this morning, open it up to Daniel chapter three.

We're gonna be there in just a moment.

If you don't have your Bible, no worries.

All of our scripture texts will be up on the screen for you to follow along.

But we're in our series, Daniel Unshaken, where we're looking at the life and story of Daniel in order to learn how to have faith that's unshaken no matter the situations and circumstances that this life throws at us.

And Daniel shows us how to navigate a hostile culture to following God.

You see, in the book of Daniel, the Israelites, God's people, they're conquered by the evil Babylonians.

Because of Israel's persistent rebellion against God, God allowed Babylon to conquer Jerusalem and to carry his people into exile.

So now Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they are stripped away from their land, stripped away from their culture, and they are forced to live within a nation that is hostile towards the God that they serve.

And in Daniel 1, we see that they get selected for the king's service, and their values are immediately challenged from the beginning.

But Daniel and his three friends, they choose to stand firm and to not eat the king's food.

And God makes a way for Daniel and his three friends to not only eat another diet, but they perform better than everybody else who is trained.

And God makes a way for them to stand firm on their convictions and to thrive in a hostile world.

Then last week in Daniel 2, Pastor Gabe did an incredible job preaching his first sermon, didn't he?

Didn't he do an incredible job?

Yeah, come on.

But it shows us that Daniel is able to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar's dream without ever being told what the dream was.

What Daniel taught us is that it's not about knowing everything, it's about knowing the one who does.

So we pick up today in Daniel chapter 3 where King Nebuchadnezzar, he has come up with this brilliant idea to build a 90-foot-tall golden statue.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

And when the horns sound, everyone in all of Babylon, what they are supposed to do is they are supposed to stop what they're doing and they are supposed to bow and to worship this statue.

Here's the funny thing, though, although Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they had stood firm in their faith, and King Nebuchadnezzar had actually recognized their God in front of them, he doesn't change his evil ways at all.

He makes no exception for those who serve the other God and is requiring everyone to follow this command.

Anyone who does not bow before the statue will be killed.

So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they have a choice to make.

When the music comes and the horns begin to blow and everyone else bows, will they follow the world or will they stand firm on their faith?

These three men, they don't start a rebellion, they don't attack the king, they don't try to overthrow the government.

Instead, when everyone else goes to bow, they remained standing, refusing to worship.

This refusal, although quiet, was loud enough for word to get back to King Nebuchadnezzar.

And anybody with an ego big enough to build a 90-foot statue for everyone to worship has an ego soft enough to be furious about it.

And it's not merely about the worship that upset the king.

Really, what is upsetting King Nebuchadnezzar is he wants to have control over all of his people.

Sure, he wanted them to praise and worship this golden statue that he made, but more importantly, he wanted to make sure that everyone in Babylon knew who came first, and that was the king.

That was the nation of Babylon.

So he calls for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be brought to him, and he gives another opportunity in case they want to save their lives.

All they needed to do was they just needed to bow into worship, and he just forget about the whole thing.

If they didn't want to be thrown in the fiery furnace, they just had to bow.

So with all that being said, would you stand with me out of the respect of the reading of God's word?

We're going to read Daniel 3, verses 12 through 18 this morning.

Daniel 3:12–18

It says this but there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who pay no attention to you, your majesty.

They serve you they neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up.

Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

So these men were brought before the king.

And Nebuchadnezzar said to them, Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up?

Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zyre, lyre, harp, pipe, and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and to worship the image I made, very good.

But if you do not worship it, you'll be thrown immediately into the blazing furnace.

Then what God will be able to rescue you from my hand?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to him, King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.

If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand.

But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

You may be seated this morning.

I want you to imagine for a second that you're Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo.

You're being pulled into the king's palace, you are standing before the most powerful man in the world at that time.

He controls the government, he controls the armies, he controls the people, the punishment, and the fiery furnace.

And he looks at these three young men and says, Who's gonna save you from me?

King Nebuchadnezzar, he didn't just see himself as a king, but he almost saw himself as a god, that there was nobody out there who had any authority over him, and he was wielding his power with all of his might.

He was turning up the heat, metaphorically and literally.

In the face of pressure, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego they respond by saying, Even if you throw us into the blazing furnace, the God we serve will deliver us from it.

But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up.

With confidence and conviction, they stand firm in the face of pressure because they know that the God that they serve is able to deliver them from the king, the fire, and any other punishments that could be thrown their way.

But then they say, But even if he does not save us, he is still worthy of our praise.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they teach us that unshaken faith trusts who God is, not what God will do.

Their confidence was not tied to the outcome, but instead was tied to who God is, the God that they serve.

There is this young man, his name is uh Dylan Mandel.

Uh, Dylan is 22 years old, and he's been diagnosed with cancer four times in his life.

When he was 18 years old and a senior in high school, he was diagnosed with cancer for the very first time, and uh he went through a grueling process of chemotherapy and radiation.

24 rounds of chemo and 20 rounds of radiation.

He also had to have uh surgery to remove the cancer from his jaw area of his face.

So if you see Dylan to this day, you can tell that his face is disfigured from this surgery that he was forced to have.

And Dylan, he had grown up in a Christian home and had always heard that God is good, but says that he didn't really believe it until he went through the battles of cancer and suffering.

It was within his first battle with cancer that he discovered the goodness of God.

Then the cancer came back.

Not once, but four times.

And you might think Dylan's testimony is ruined.

After the first battle of king of cancer, his testimony was, I had cancer and God saved me.

But now he travels around the world and shares the gospel.

And he says that I had cancer, I suffered, I didn't understand it, but God met me there, and I discovered that Jesus was worth trusting even in the suffering.

What Dylan learned is that although God is able to heal, he is good even if he doesn't.

Unshaken faith begins when we stop measuring God's goodness by the outcomes of our circumstances and start by trusting his goodness because of who he is.

So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they don't give in to the king's offer to bow before him.

And the king, he has no other option other than to execute them by throwing them into the fiery furnace.

And the furnace at this time, this wasn't a normal uh way of executing people.

This is not what the furnace was really there for.

It was really used for baking food or firing pottery, bricks, or metalworking.

These were dome metal shaped structures with maybe some doors and some windows on the side of it.

But the king, he was so mad about what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had done that he orders them to turn up the furnace seven times hotter than it was before.

So the king's soldiers they go and they tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they go to throw them into this seven times hotter furnace.

And it is so hot that the king's men who throw them into the furnace are burned up and they die.

This heat should have disintegrated the men in a matter of moments.

And yet the king is standing looking at the furnace, and not only are the three men standing there not burned up, he sees a fourth man in the fire.

And it says this, then Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, Weren't there three men that were tied up and threw into the fire?

They replied, Certainly, your majesty.

He said, Look, I see four men walking around in the fire unbound and unharmed.

The fourth looks like a son of the gods.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar, he approached the fiery furnace and he shouted out to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and says, Hey, come on out.

Come on out of the furnace.

And not only are they alive, but they come out and their clothes aren't even singed.

They look completely unharmed.

You see, the king, he tried to kill these three men because their loyalties didn't lie with him.

And yet, the men the the king's most loyal men are the ones who end up dying.

God delivers in the midst of the fire as well as from it.

You see, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they chose to stand firm in their faith regardless of the consequences of being thrown into the fiery furnace.

But God meets them in it and delivers them through it.

Why do we fall into peer pressure?

It's oftentimes because we want to avoid the conflict.

We want to avoid the consequences all together.

The truth is, standing firm in your faith is going to bring conflict and it's going to cause some disruptions in your life.

And God, He may deliver you from all of the consequences altogether, or like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he may just meet you right in the middle of the fire that you've put yourself in.

And I think this is important for us to understand because sometimes we think that if we just have enough faith, if we just follow God well enough, then he will keep us from experiencing any trouble that this life is gonna throw at us.

If we live the Jesus way, well then everyone is gonna be happy and it's all gonna be sunshine and rainbows.

But that's not the promise that we find in Scripture.

You see, Jesus never promised a life without trouble.

In in John 16, 33, Jesus says, In this world you will have trouble, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

The promise isn't that you won't have trouble, the promise is that I will be with you in the trouble.

In Matthew 28, 20, Jesus says, And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

You see, God doesn't promise that we'll never walk through the fire.

He shows up in the middle of the fiery furnace alongside Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedigel.

So why do we give in?

Why do we compromise?

Why do we bow when we know we should stand?

It's often because we're trying to avoid the conflict.

We're trying to avoid the embarrassment.

We're trying to avoid the rejection.

We're trying to avoid the consequences of what it means to stand up for what we believe in.

But here's the truth following Jesus will sometimes bring conflict and have consequences.

Standing firm doesn't mean that you will never face the fire.

It means you trust God even when you do.

Sometimes God will deliver you from the consequences of standing firm in your faith.

Other times he will meet you in the middle of them and he will deliver you through them.

Either way, God's promise remains the same.

I will be with you.

So the question isn't how do I make sure I never go through fires in my life?

The question is, will I trust God when I do?

Because an unshaken faith doesn't mean a life without fire, it means a faith that remains Standing even when you're in the fire.

So King Nebuchadnezzar, he throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fire for their punishment for not bowing to his golden statue.

The fire should have killed them instantly, but God delivers them from the fire and they come out completely unscathed.

This divides all logic, all science.

It just doesn't make sense at all.

This is a supernatural event that has taken place.

And there can only be one response to it, and that's to give glory and honor to the power of the one true God, that these men are alive.

Look at what King Nebuchadnezzar says in response to this whole encounter.

He says, Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants.

They trusted in him and defied the king's command, and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any God except their own.

Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be cut into pieces, and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other God can save in this way.

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

The king, with an ego so big that he decided to build a 90-foot golden statue for everyone to worship, is now bowing himself to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Because they stood firm for their faith.

God was glorified by an evil, wicked king who opposes everything that threatens his power and authority.

When we go through seasons where our faith is tested, we have to remember your fire can become your witness.

If there was no statue, no command to bow, no threat of death, no fiery furnace, no fire, then there also would have never been the opportunity for the king of Babylon to witness God's power for himself.

Through these men's conviction to stand firm, God was glorified.

Paul in Romans 5, 3 through 4 affirms this truth when he says, We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

Perseverance, character, and character, hope.

When we experience struggles and trials in our lives that test our faith in God, it's not that God has abandoned us, leaving us to just be burnt to a crisp.

It's that when we go through seasons of trials, those seasons produce perseverance.

That produces character, that produces hope inside of each and every one of us.

The promise is that when you experience suffering, and you will experience suffering in this world, that the God of the universe meets you in the fire.

So that when you come out on the other side, you can give witness to the God that you serve so that other people can see of his power, his love, and his might.

Hear me when I say this.

Anybody can praise God when you get a promotion, when you win the game, when you have the baby, when you beat cancer.

But there is something powerful when you stand firm in your faith and trust God, even if he does not, I will trust him.

So as we get ready to close and the band comes on up, I want to remind you that like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we live in a world that is hostile towards our faith.

And let me be very clear before it's misunderstood what I'm saying here.

Regardless of who's in political office, we live in a world that is hostile towards our faith.

There is an enemy who is out there that wants nothing more than to steal, kill, and destroy.

And as believers, we must stand firm in our faith when confrontation comes.

Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

There will be struggle, but we can stand firm because Jesus has already won.

Amen, church?

Come on.

You may not understand why you're there.

You may not know how you're getting out of it.

You may not know what God is doing, but you do know who God is.

And sometimes the greatest testimony isn't, look, look what God has kept me from.

Sometimes it's look where God met me.

Because your fire may be the very place where someone else sees the faithfulness of God for the very first time.

You see, in the face of opposition, the threat of death, and the most powerful man on earth, these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they stood firm and they said, But even if he does not, 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.

They didn't know that they would walk out unharmed.

They didn't know that there would be a fourth man in the fire with them.

They didn't know that they were going to get a promotion out of this.

They had no clue what the ending was going to be, but they knew the God that they served.

And I don't know what fire you're facing in your life today, the decisions you're facing, the opposition that's in front of you.

You may have walked in here today completely battered and bruised because of the way that the world has put you through hell.

But today, you have the opportunity to trust the God who meets you in the fires of your life.

And here's the good news: here's the gospel for you.

God didn't tell us that there wouldn't be any fires.

In Jesus, God Himself stepped into our fire.

Jesus entered into our suffering, he took upon our death on and took upon our sin on the cross, and he defeated sin and death once and for all.

So our hope isn't in the fact that Jesus will keep us away from all the fires and troubles of this life.

Our hope is that nothing, not suffering, not death, not sin, not the grave, can separate us from him.

If you are in the middle of a fire, there is a man who is standing next to you, and his name is Jesus Christ.

If you want to experience victory in your life today, all you need to do is to accept his free gift of grace and to give your life to him.

The band they're gonna lead us in a in a closing song, I trust in God.

And for some of you, those are really hard words to say.

Because of what you're experiencing right now in your life.

And maybe right now you're like, I don't really trust him.

I'd encourage you to sing it anyways.

Because there's something that powerful that happens when you begin to speak truth over your life, that there is a God out there who loves you and cares about you and has a plan and purpose for your life, even if you're in a fire right now.

He can bring you through it if you trust him.

And if you've never given your life to Jesus, and today you want to put your faith in him and have unshaken faith in your life because of the one who has conquered it all.