Daniel Series Week 2 - September 20, 2026

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry at Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Alright, here we are in Daniel chapter 3, and we're going to meet these three guys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

Now, this is a part of the stir story or the theme we started last week.

So you're reading chronologically and you're going to move on past me.

But I'm taking last week, this week, and next week, and we're talking about from the example of Daniel how to navigate as a Christian in a secular culture.

Because when we do that, we find ourselves swimming upstream, or we find ourselves in a temptation or a struggle that's created by our culture that's difficult.

Or we find ourselves in a situation where can I make the decision of integrity to be faithful as a believer in the midst of this?

Last week we saw it begins with the necessity of determination.

And so, just as, and then we'll see today the necessity of faith.

Because you can be determined, but what we have is far more than just grit your teeth and hang on in there and be tough and all that.

We actually have a determination that we are making to be a person called and saved by Jesus through faith.

And that means we have a faith in him that fuels us beyond just, I'm going to grit my teeth and be faithful.

Now, last week we saw what that determination was very quickly.

Four decisions that help us make a decision that we're going to determine ahead of time.

And you saw last week Daniel and also the three men with him were introduced in that same story: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And they all made a determination.

They're in this secular culture.

The king is trying to co-opt them and make them Babylonians and turn them into that.

And they say, no, we're children of God.

We're not going to do that.

And they determined.

Why?

Because of their identity.

You're not going to change our identity as the people of God.

We saw how they developed a discipline to put in practice their identity.

In chapter one, it was about their food.

We're going to eat kosher, we're going to remain to our dietary laws, and we're going to stick with that discipline because that affirms and builds our identity, who God's called us to be.

In chapter two, if you as you read through that last week, we had the same thing.

That was the whole deal about the dream.

And the king called him in and said, Y'all got to interpret the dream, and you got to tell me what the dream was, so I know you're not just making it up.

And the Bible says that Daniel went and found Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and he called them to a prayer meeting, and they prayed for God to work in that moment.

We saw there Daniel's a man of prayer.

He built the discipline of prayer in his life, put it in practice.

And then we saw servant leadership.

They're not being obnoxious, they're not beating on people, they're not arguing with stuff.

In chapter one, Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they listened to the guard who was responsible for them.

And he says, You got to eat this food, because if you don't, and you're not as healthy as the other guys, they're going to chop off my head for letting you eat something different.

And they were understanding to his position.

They created that.

Let's test it out for 10 days and see if it works.

In chapter 2, the king was going to kill all those wise men who couldn't tell him what the dream was and interpret it.

And Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they stepped into that moment and he said, Don't kill those guys.

It's not fair.

God's the only one that has that.

And so they are leading in a way to impact the people around them.

We saw that discipline.

Now we're going to see what happens when you add faith to that, when it is built on a foundation of faith.

Now, what is faith?

Let's get a biblical definition of it so that when we read this story, we see what's really happening.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6.

Hebrews 11:6

If you've been in church a long time, you know this chapter.

Sometimes they used to call it the Heat the Jewish Hall of Fame or the Bible Hall of Faith Hall of Fame.

These are all these examples of people who place their faith in the Lord and He defines what faith is.

Now, without faith, it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists.

There are two aspects of faith.

You believe that God exists, and you believe that he rewards those who seek him.

And so faith is actually a verb.

It is not a noun.

Now we end up treating it as a noun and we inadvertently misunderstand what faith is.

We talk about placing a verb, your faith, a noun, in Jesus.

But that's not really what it means.

Faith is trusting.

Faith is believing.

It is an action word.

It is a verb.

I am believing that God is God and that he's there and he's who he says he is.

And I am believing that he rewards me when I come to him seeking him.

Faith.

It is a verb.

Sometimes people will say this to the pastor, and everybody's had a moment like this experience at some point in their life.

Pastor, I don't have enough faith.

Well, we've just turned it into a noun.

Faith is not a thing.

A thing can be measured qualitatively and quantitatively.

We don't measure our faith.

It is not a thing.

There is not too little or too much of a thing called faith.

No, it is a verb.

I place my faith in Jesus Christ.

It's his strength, not mine.

It's his power, not the level or quantity of something that I conjure up called faith.

When I come to him, it's not a matter of emotion.

It's not a matter of I feel it or I don't feel it.

It's none of that.

It is a choice that I make to believe in the person of Jesus because of who he is.

That he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him, that I am coming to him, and he is faithful to answer, bless, carry, protect the person who verb, trust, believes, faiths in him.

Now you see how it's played out in this story.

Daniel chapter 1.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

We're going to skip a couple of these sort of details, so just follow on the screen there.

King Nebuchadnezzar made a gold statue, 90 feet high and nine feet wide.

Like this is an arrogant pagan dude right here.

He's making a 90-foot statue to himself.

I told the Chaffee campus this morning, I am way more humble than King Nebuchadnezzar.

When we put one out in the front of the church, I'm only going to have it about 25 feet high.

You see, I'm like two-thirds more humble than King Nebuchadnezzar is.

He set it up on the plain of Dur in the province of Babylon.

And archaeologists tell us that they found a base that would be appropriate to this statue and actually could be the base.

Then he calls all these people together all around the statue, big family deal, big like the Fourth of July deal we had.

He calls everybody ever.

He says, a herald loudly proclaimed, people of every nation in language, you are commanded.

This is the law.

When you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, drum, and every kind of music, you are to fall face down and worship the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.

But whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.

Therefore, and they got everybody there, so they test it out.

Therefore, when all the people heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, and every kind of music, people of every nation and language fell down and worshiped the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Now I've tried to figure out a way to explain this and connect this to modern life.

It's a little bit hard because we just don't have a culture where you worship kings and that kind of stuff like this.

But this is like serious.

I mean, this is a big deal.

So when you modernize this, you put it in secular culture, I found a story that looks kind of like this.

It's where they take this application and they apply it in modern context.

There's a CEO of a company and they make certain things.

It's a confectioner company, and so they make candy and that kind of stuff.

And their biggest selling product is a chocolate bunny, like we would have at Easter time.

And the king calls these employees in.

The CEO calls them in.

He says, every time you hear the company theme song, you must begin to sing the theme song on your knees.

And but if you've had a job, you understand so many times you feel like the company owns you, the corporation owns you.

Or if you get in a cultural struggle, you feel like, man, this this is tough, and this kind of whatever.

And so here I want to just show you this song from this from this show because I think it illustrates it very well.

Fellas, if y'all will play the story of Mr.

Nezir.

How they do anything for the bunny.

And it goes something like this.

The bunny, the bunny, whoa, I love the bunny.

I don't love my mom or my dad.

Just how many of y'all love the bunnies already?

The bunny.

How many of y'all think that's a good one?

I love the bunny.

I gave everything that I had for the money.

I don't want no health food when it's time to feed.

A big bag of bunnies is all that I need.

I don't want no bunnies to come out and play.

I'll pick up my stuff, body bunnies okay.

I'll go to joke.

And I'll go to guru.

Let's do it, but it's both gonna be fellas.

Let him cut it off now.

How you like that?

That comes from veggie tails.

Uh the name of that is Rack Shack and Benny.

So in my house, we don't say shed, rack, me shack, and Benny.

We say Rack Shack and Benny.

And so we love that.

But if it's fun and it's silly, but it also grabs the picture.

Did you hear the line where he says, I'm not gonna go to church, I'm not gonna go to school, I'm gonna sit around and this the bunny is cool, I'm gonna sit around and read the bunny.

My favorite line is I'm not gonna eat health food, I'm gonna eat bunnies all day.

So, anyway, so you get the picture now, what he's demanded and required of them.

It's just like in our culture today, when you face things like you've placed work or there are demands at work that you have placed above your family and above Jesus and all of that.

It may be a cultural thing that happens like gambling on sports apps, which is now an epidemic problem, especially with young adults.

Billions of dollars.

People trapped in gambling with these sports apps.

Like, duh.

Who didn't think that was gonna be a problem?

And so there's all these kinds of things that grab us and they chain us and all of that, and they demand our attention, or we get involved in some hobby or some other thing that we love, and we get involved in that and we donate ourselves to that, we donate our times to that, we give ourselves to that, and then it becomes what we place above other things.

It becomes an idol out of our culture.

And then this demand from our culture happens.

And so here's what he says in verse 8, as we continue the story.

Some Chaldeans took this occasion to come forward and maliciously accuse the Jews.

They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, may the king live forever.

You as king have issued a decree that everyone who hears the music must fall down and worship the God.

Verse 11 Whoever does not fall down and worship will be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.

There are some Jews who have appointed to manage the province of Babylon, and then they call them out, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And these men have ignored you, king.

They do not serve your gods or worship the gold statue that you set up.

Anytime you get trapped into the culture, or you have given yourself to something, or you're facing someone who is demanding of you in this culture, and it is putting itself above Jesus, you find yourself in this conflict.

Then in a furious rage, Nebuchadnezzar gave orders to bring in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

So these men were brought before the king, and Nebuchadnezzar asked them, Rak, Shak, and Benny, is it true that you don't serve my gods or worship the gold statue I have set up?

So he gives them a personal invitation now to change their behavior.

Now, if you're ready, when you hear the music, fall down and worship the statue I made.

But if you don't worship it, you will immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.

And who is the God who can rescue you from my power?

And that is the question that we face in all of these cultural conflicts.

It is people around us who wonder if our God is true and if our faith is founded in the God that we sing about, or are we going to cave and give in to whatever's going on?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, we don't need to give you an answer to this question.

In other words, we don't have to have a big huddle over here and figure out what we're going to do and all that kind of thing.

They just immediately say, we're like, we're ready with an answer.

Why?

Because it says in chapter 1, they determined they would not defile themselves.

They have a determination in their heart to live out who they are and their identity before they ever find themselves in this spot.

So now there's not a decision to make because they've already made it.

Nebuchadnezzar, we don't need to give you an answer to this question.

If the God we serve exists, now this is a rhetorical question.

It's not doubt on their part.

Remember, he had asked, who is the God who can rescue you?

And they are answering that rhetorically back.

If the God we serve exists, then he can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he can rescue us from the power of you, the king.

But even if he does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you've set up.

Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and the expression on his face changed towards Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Now remember, these guys were elevated after the stories of chapter 1 and 2, and this is somebody that he thought fondly of.

But they looked at him and said, We are not going to cave into your deal.

And he goes berserk.

He gave orders to heat the furnace seven times more than customary.

And he commanded some of the best soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the furnace of blazing fire.

So these men in their robes, trousers, head coverings, and other clothes were tied up and thrown into the furnace of blazing fire.

Since the king's command was so urgent and the furnace extremely hot, the raging flames killed the men who carried them up into the fire.

Now, what kind of a plan is that?

He goes mad, he's furious, and he throw it all in and tie them up and throw them in there, and because they can't move, they got to carry them up to the fire, and it's so hot it catches these guys on fire and kills them.

Like that was a good plan from the king, right?

Verse 24.

King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in alarm.

He said to his advisors, Didn't we throw three men bound up into the fire?

And they said, Yes, of course, your majesty.

He exclaimed, Look, I see four men, not three.

They are not tied, and they are walking around in the fire unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.

Nebuchadnezzar then approached the door of the furnace, blazing fire, and called Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, You servants of the Most High God, come out.

He has changed his tune now, has he not?

So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire.

And when all those advisors and everybody else saw that the fire had no effect on the bodies of these men, listen to this detail.

Not a hair was singed, their robes were unaffected, and there was no smell of fire on them.

Man, don't you love when you go camping and you got the campfire and all that?

But like everything smells like smoke, right?

And these guys don't smell any of it.

Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, Praise the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

He sent his angel and rescued his servants who trusted in him.

They violated the king's command and risked their lives rather than serve or worship any God except their own God.

Therefore, I, Nebuchadnezzar, issue a decree that any one of any people, nation, or language who says anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will be torn limb from limb, and his house made a garbage dump.

Now I do think it's kind of funny.

He's done with the fiery furnace thing, because that didn't really work very well, right?

And then he says, For there is no other God who is able to deliver like this.

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

So what you see from this story and what it's written for is to teach us this big idea of what faith is, and how faith is the foundation and the fuel of our determinations to be holy and obedient to the Lord.

Here it is, faith in the person and power of God and his faithfulness to reward his faithful children is foundational to standing firm in a secular culture.

If you are just gritting your teeth and I'm gonna be holy and I'm gonna do this in my own strength, at some point something's gonna be too big.

But nothing is too big for Jesus.

And if you go into this with a faith in Jesus and trusting in him, then you will withstand any fire that you may find yourself in.

And the words of that song that we sang at the beginning of the service will take on a new meaning for you.

He's the fourth man in the fire.

Now listen, faith is a verb, not a noun.

Remember, faith is something that we do.

So how do I build that?

How does that grow in my life?

How do I connect to the person of Jesus in a way that I have that faith in him?

Well, there's four things I want you to see from this passage that are very simple, and they are actions, they are ways that we focus our belief, our trust, our faithing in Jesus.

So the first one is this it is a relationship with Jesus.

Faith is building a relationship that creates deep trust in Him.

You have to grow this relationship.

It's not a thing that you pull out and use.

You mess it up when you turn it into a noun.

It is a relationship with Jesus.

It is the person of Jesus that we are investing our trust in.

It begins when you make the decision to trust Christ as your Savior.

When you come to Jesus, you recognize that you are a sinner, that your sin must be punished.

Like I've got this guilt, and I can't do anything with this guilt.

I can't fix it.

I can't make it go away.

I can't be better at this.

And so you realize then at that point, somebody shares Jesus with you, and you realize nobody ever loved me as much as Jesus.

He stepped out of heaven, he stepped out of heaven, he went to the cross personally, he died there on that cross with no judgment attached to his death, so his death could be a substitute for me.

And then he rose again, conquering death and sin, and he offers to you salvation.

And when you come to Jesus, you make a choice to trust in the person of Jesus and what he's done for you on the cross.

You think about Hebrews 11, 6.

Believe that he is, and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.

You come to Jesus and you say, Jesus, I need you to save me.

I can't do this on my own.

I can't fix this.

This won't go away.

I need you, and you are trusting that he is faithful to his word and he will save you and cleanse you.

It doesn't have anything to do with you, with any amount of whatever emotion or thought process or logic that you come up with.

It is a faith journey that you put.

Place your faith in Jesus.

And then that just begins the journey of growing to be closer to Him.

And so listen: you come to church, you get up in the morning, you read your Bible, you pray to the Lord, you listen to what He tells you, you are obedient, and you watch Him speak into your life and teach you and be faithful and all those things.

And all of that draws you closer to the person of Jesus.

You don't go diving into this fire and let them throw you into this fire based on an idol or a belief philosophy or some other kind of thing.

You think about the difference between their trust in God and the gods of Babylon.

The gods of Babylon, they come and they do weird things and they sacrifice stuff and they have temple prostitutes and they sacrifice kids and they do all this nonsense to some statue or something and nothing happens.

The best thing that may happen for them is they create some philosophy in life that makes them feel better about what's going on, but nothing happens, and there's no saving from the fire.

But even more than that, that God never speaks to them, that God never communicates to them, not God never gives them a sense of presence.

But when you come and you give your life to Jesus, he comes into your life, and the Holy Spirit comes and indwells you and he begins to talk to you and he begins to guide you, and all of a sudden things are different in your life because something has happened inside, because the person of Jesus came in and connected with you and began a relationship with you.

And these guys are not worshiping some fake God with some other deal.

That's what the test is.

They don't even believe in their gods.

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say, Our God can save us, they don't believe that.

Nebuchadnezzar doesn't believe that.

He asks the question, what God can rescue them from the power of the fire?

And he doesn't think there's any God that can do that because his gods have never done that for anybody.

And they say, listen, our God can do what he wants to do, and we trust him and we know him, and so whatever happens, throw us in.

We don't care.

We trust in our God.

Listen, if all you've got is showing up to church every now and then and you never read your Bible and you don't have any quiet time and you're not spending time with Jesus, you are not going to get it.

It ain't gonna make sense to you.

You can't build a relationship on your own, doing something else.

You have got to spend time with Jesus and connect with his person.

When you study the word of God, you have got to focus on the person of God in Scripture, not the story.

It is not about the fiery furnace or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

It is about the preincarnate person of Jesus Christ who stepped into that fire because he loved them and they knew him and he went in that with them.

The person of Jesus Christ.

And you've got to draw close to him or your faith, you're never gonna feel it or whatever.

You're gonna be stuck in this evaluating the noun thing, and you're gonna find yourself in a decision, in a conflict, and you're gonna go, I don't have enough faith because you turn it into a noun because you're not close to the person of Jesus.

You cannot replace doing the things that you need to do to grow your relationship with Jesus more closely.

That's how you live.

The fire.

Faith.

Next faith, next truth about it, is trusting Jesus is present with you, whatever happens, and not only when it's what you want to happen.

Listen, they go in this fire not knowing what's going to happen.

And they tell the king, look at what they say.

They're very clear about it.

When they're thrown in the fire, verse 17, if the God we serve exists, again, that's a rhetorical question, not a doubt in their part, then he can rescue us.

And he can rescue us from the power of you.

They believe that he can, but then they say, even if he does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the God, the gold statue you set up.

Because we know the person of God and we trust him.

It doesn't matter what he does in this moment.

He's doing something bigger than us, and we trust him.

And if we burn up fine, and if he saves us fine, we don't care.

We trust him.

And so many times we come and we have faith until things are not going the way we want them to go.

And then we begin to take our life back and we make our own decisions and we do our own thing because we can't trust God with the end result.

As we, it's all throughout Scripture, though, people who place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, regardless of what happens.

We read about Job in chapter 13 when he's under pressure from all his friends and all that, he looks at them and he says, Even if he slays me, I will trust in him.

Stephen, who we refer to sometimes as the first martyr, at least the first one we know about in the book of Acts.

He's preaching Jesus.

And Paul and other Pharisees, he was known as Saul at that time.

He had not met Jesus yet.

They are putting people in jail.

They are arresting people for heresy for preaching Jesus, and they're even killing some of them.

And they come and they take Stephen in custody and they take him to this place, and they're going to stone him for preaching the heresy of Jesus as Lord, because they didn't know Jesus.

And he preaches back at them and he shares Jesus with them while they're picking up the stones.

And the Bible says that Paul held the coats of the men and they stoned Jesus.

I mean, they stoned Stephen, and he didn't care.

He had preached Jesus, he believed in Jesus, and as he is dying, the Bible describes that he calls out and says he sees Jesus coming to take him home.

See, he didn't care.

It didn't matter.

He knew Jesus.

It's what Paul said in prison when he wrote the book of Philippians, and he says, For me to live it is Christ, and to die is gain.

It didn't really matter to him.

In fact, he said he was kind of hard-pressed between the two.

If he stayed around, he could help the church people, and if he went to heaven, he could go be with Jesus.

So he's like, fine, y'all chain me up.

I don't really care.

My next breath is with Jesus, whether it's here by faith or in person in heaven.

And we've got to get to that place where we trust Jesus so much we believe what the Bible says in Romans 8, that all things work together for good, even those that don't turn out the way we want them to.

And so I'm in this situation and this is not going the way I want to, and I'm getting fired and people aren't listening, and this happens.

It's not a failure.

Jesus is with you in the midst of that.

And if you're building that relationship, then you feel his presence.

Have you ever wondered why Christians will say a lot of times, I was going through the most difficult time in my life, but I was never closer to Jesus.

Why does that happen that way?

It's because their faith has grown in their relationship with him to the point where you realize he's with me regardless of what these crazy people around me choose to do or not.

He's there.

Number three, what faith is.

It is trusting that my obedience in this moment is in and of itself a valuable and holy event.

And it does not matter whether it turns out well or not, it just matters that I was faithful.

Give you a simple example to understand, and we'll build from that.

What do these guys do?

They say, if the God we serve exists, then he can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he can rescue us from the power of you.

But even if he does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship your golden statue because it's wrong.

And they didn't care if they died.

They made the choice that their faithful obedience to the God of heaven carried its own value in and of itself, regardless of what the result was.

Let me give you an example.

Here's a simple one.

God lays on your heart to go share Jesus with somebody at school or in your workplace or whatever.

And you're struggling over that.

Listen, you go share Jesus anyway.

You don't know if they're going to get saved.

The God of heaven knows that, and he's the Lord of the harvest.

You may think if I share my faith in this moment, people are gonna, this person I know, they're not gonna respond well, or they're gonna say no, or whatever it is.

It doesn't matter whether they say no or not, in one sense, it begins with you being obedient and trusting in the Lord and being faithful to share the gospel, and God is always honored when we share the gospel.

The honor to the Lord, the eternal value and significance of that moment does not depend on whether that person gets saved in that moment.

In fact, lots of people are not saved till the third or fourth person tells them about Jesus.

And we forget these things.

We forget that there is inherent value in just being obedient.

And they may need four people to tell them about Jesus.

And if you blow it as number three, you gotta wait around till somebody else gets it and they get the third one in and then get to the fourth one.

That's a simple way to understand that.

But listen, when you're in the workplace, kids, when you're in school, when you're in your family and this stuff is happening around you, there is incredible value in you standing for Jesus.

Not in an obnoxious way, not chewing on everybody else, but when you are faithful to who you are, there is a God-honoring fruit that happens regardless of whether the people around you get it or not.

And it's important that we begin to understand this again as first, as first world country, affluent American Christians.

They get this in places like Iran and Iraq and China and Saudi Arabia.

Because there, if you live for Jesus and you take a stand for Jesus, somebody's gonna cut your head off or put you in jail.

Why would there be that severe a response if the lost world out there didn't place huge significance on obeying Jesus in that moment?

Lost people will put far more significance on our obedience than sometimes we do as Christians.

We wimp out with the whole, well, God will show mercy and grace, and we struggle with this sin, or we repent, we do it anyway.

We repent, we do it anyway, we repent and do it anyway, because we don't have the investment that these guys have that standing for Jesus matters, period.

If you're Steven and die for it, it still was eternally successful, significant, and important.

If they fire you because you won't change that integrity thing, it does not matter.

You stood for Jesus, God was honored, and you never know what the ripple effect is.

And so there's a point where we've got to come back and grab an understanding that Jesus died for me on the cross.

And if I die for him in this moment, or I'm just persecuted in this moment, I still haven't given up as much as Jesus did.

He gave up his position as the Son of God, he gave up his position of holiness to take on our sin and die for us, and he deserves our best obedience without thought about what the consequences might be.

And it's time we reestablish as the collective modern-day church the value of being obedient, period, in and of itself.

I could do spend a lot of time there, but I'm not going to.

Number four.

Faith is trusting that we know the God who raises from the dead.

Don't ever make the mistake that the resurrection is only in the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, there was the promise of heaven.

They believed that when you die, you went to heaven.

They may not have described it the same way we do, but they are trusting in the redemption that God provides, that someday there's going to be a Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.

And we're placing our faith in that promise, and we're going to go to heaven because of it.

Listen, it is a very clear thing all throughout the Old Testament that they believe in the promise of heaven.

And if there's any confusion about that, the simplest way to show that is you go back to Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

In the verse that I read that gave you the definition of faith, it describes that moment when Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him on the mountain.

Remember that story?

And so he had promised Isaac he was a miracle baby, and God's testing Abraham's faith to trust in him.

And he says, Listen, I want you to trust me with what I've given you.

It's mine.

I want you to take your son upon that mountain.

I want you to sacrifice him for me.

That means kill him.

And they went up the hill and they got all this wood to put on an altar, and they were going to burn all that.

And the Bible says that Isaac laid down and Abraham took out his knife and he raised it above his son and he was about to kill him.

And then in Hebrews chapter 11, it says this because he believed in the resurrection, that God could raise him from the dead.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

He was about to sacrifice his son, and even if he plunged that knife in his heart and he died, he believed because he knew the person of God, he knew his faithfulness, he had determined to follow him, he knew that God could raise Isaac from the dead.

He had already seen God give them life when he and Sarah were too old to have children.

And he understood that God is the author of life.

And as the author of life, he is not just the author of this life, but is the author of eternal life.

Why would Stephen allow himself to be stoned?

Because he believed to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Man, heaven is real and heaven is awesome.

And if we believed that Jesus was not just some guy who was a teacher and told us what to do and how to live, but he was the Son of the living God who went to the cross and he died in our place and he conquered death and sin and he rose from the dead, our life and our faith would change if that's the Jesus that we serve.

I mean, we've got to grasp on to we serve the God who conquered death and hell.

How do you face a fire?

Because if I get burned up in that, I'm not going to feel it very long.

I'm going to heaven.

God has promised me heaven.

And so it changes everything when you get in that moment and you think, well, it doesn't really matter what happened because I'm going to heaven anyway.

It doesn't matter what they do to me, they can't take heaven away from me.

It doesn't matter what they do to me, it doesn't matter what they try.

The God I serve conquered death and hell.

This is not that big a deal for him.

And we need to attach ourselves to the fact that we serve a risen Savior.

We shouldn't just sing that.

We should believe it and we should make choices like we believe it.

God has conquered death.

He is the God who raises from the dead.

2 Corinthians chapter 1.

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Paul tells a story.

Church, y'all are supporting us in our mission, just like we're supporting Tom Hartness and his missionary journey where he's giving out Bibles and India and Burundi and all of that.

And Paul's out there planting churches and all that, and he said, We found ourselves in a circumstance and we knew we were going to die.

We literally gave up life.

We knew there was no way we were going to escape this.

We're in prison.

We're singing songs about heaven because we're believing and we're going there.

And then he says, But it is okay with us because we know we serve the God who raises from the dead.

Kill me if you want.

I just get to Jesus that much quicker.

When that is the person you're building a relationship with that changes life.

Do you believe in the God who raises from the dead?

Have you made a personal decision to place your faith in the person of Jesus Christ?

Listen, coming to church is not enough.

It's not enough.

You're doing it in your own power and gritting your teeth and trying to live it out is not enough.

You must come to the place where you choose to put your entire eternity in the hands of Jesus.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I hope I've shown you it is not a matter of quality or quantity.

It is not a question if you have enough faith.

It is you engaging in the verb activity of trusting in Jesus.

It's his strength, not yours.

It's his holiness, not yours.

It's his decision.

It's his power.

It's his strength, not yours.

The moment I'm going to pray, we're going to stand and sing.

And if you've never trusted Jesus, I want to invite you to come.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for who you are, the fourth man fire.

I pray it's an encouragement to our folks.

We prayed beforehand that you would speak to them.

And I pray, Father, as we sing this final time of worship, that you'll affirm to our hearts what we asked you to do.

And if there's someone who needs to trust Jesus this morning, Father, I pray that they have seen who you are and how to come and trust you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

And everybody said.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.