Through The Eyes Of Fire - Pastor Tommy Torres

Welcome to our podcast.

We hope this powerful word from City Center Church transforms your mind and grows your relationship with Jesus Christ.

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Thank you for joining us, and let's get into the word of today.

God bless you, City Center Church.

Amen.

Amen.

Don't stay quiet on me now.

Man, I I my my wife just uh shared a little bit of what's happening this month.

So um just want to take a moment to recognize September 15th through October 15th, it is Hispanic Heritage Month.

Um Hispanic culture carries uh so many stories.

We're in a series on stories, and it carries so many stories about faith, about family, about resiliency, perseverance, people who have walked uh through difficult seasons, who have started over, held families together, and through that process have continued trusting God through it all.

And I love that right here at City Center Church, um, and especially in City Center and Espanol, that story, if you didn't know, is represented by more than 20 different countries and cultures under one roof.

Uh Lanexa Christian Center, City Center Church has always been a diverse congregation.

But I love that even when we launched our Spanish campus, that diversity continued to flow.

Um and we have over 20 countries there.

So today we're celebrating that beautiful diversity.

In our Spanish service, in the lobby in 180, and throughout our service, we'll we'll have uh tables representing many of those countries with information about each one of those countries and hear me, samples of food.

And then all aside from that, we're gonna have street tacos for everyone that's there.

Okay, so so um normally if you worship on this side of the building, I want to personally invite you to come to the south side and experience uh worship with us in Spanish.

If if you have the time and the capacity and are able and willing, we'd love to have you back there and worship with us in Spanish and then stay after word and celebrate with us.

Or you can simply stop by right after service.

We usually are set up there around 12 o'clock when the doors open.

Um and I'm preaching today, so we're probably perfect.

You guys can get out and walk over there at 12, see some of the tables, and then and then leave and go have lunch, or the third option, come back.

Come back around 2:30.

That's usually when we're finishing service back there.

Come back, that's when the celebration is starting, meet some people, try some good food, learn something about another culture, and just celebrate with us what God is doing here at City Center Church as He brings nations together in one house.

Amen.

Amen.

So, with that being said, we're we're in week three of our series, built through it.

And over the last couple of weeks, we we've we've been seeing, looking at what God can build in us through us, through the things that we have walked through.

And that's what this series is about.

You you're you're being built through it.

Your history, as we said the first week, your history should point to his story.

Your history should point to his story.

As a matter of fact, before we jump in today, let me give you an action step right here, right now.

We've been doing this throughout the series.

We want to know your story.

Uh, you have two ways to do that.

You can email your story to my story at citycenterchurch.com.

Just write out, send it to us.

Or, number two, after service today in the lobby, there's a little video station set up there where you can record a short two to three minute version of your story.

Um, so I encourage you to do that today.

Somebody needs to hear your story.

Um, so I encourage you to take one of those steps and do it today.

Today I'm gonna preach a very basic sermon on a very well-known story.

And I hope that it encourages you as it did me.

Um, if anything, it may it be a reminder that God has never left your side and is always with you.

I love that we just sang that last song, that there's another in the fire, and then my wife came up here and basically just preached my sermon uh for me.

So I like we could just pray and leave right now.

She just said everything.

Um that God is always with you.

Uh so today we're gonna take a field trip to Daniel chapter 3.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

Right?

This is after, by the way, the last two weeks we've been in, we've been in Joshua.

Um, this is after Joshua crossed the Jordan River, um, after the memorial was set up.

Um, this is after Jericho.

Um last week we talked about Jericho and and and hundreds of years later, in fact, by this point, now some context of Daniel chapter 3, Jerusalem has fallen.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

It's fallen.

Many of God's people have been carried into exile, the Babylonian exile has happened.

And we're about to meet three young Hebrew men named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who are living in Babylon now under King Nebuchadnezzar.

Right, and there and they've been appointed to be overseers over that region.

And and where we're gonna start reading, Nebuchadnezzar has built an enormous golden image, and he has commanded everyone that when the music begins to play, that everyone has to bow down and worship this idol that he created.

And he says, and if anyone disobeys and does not bow down, that they will be immediately thrown into a blazing furnace.

That's the the command of the decree that the king set, and that's where I want us to end to the story today.

In Daniel chapter 3, verse 7, it says, After that decree, so now at the sound of the musical instruments, now it's actually happening, all the people, whatever their race or nation or language, bowed to the ground and worshiped the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Daniel 3:7

But some of the astrologers went to the king and informed on the Jews.

What Jews?

Let's jump to verse 12.

Daniel chapter 3, verse 12.

Daniel 3:12

He says, But there are some Jews, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego, whom you have put in charge of the province of Babylon.

They pay no attention to you, your majesty.

They refuse to serve your gods and do not worship the gold statue you have set up.

Can you imagine the scene?

When the music played, an entire nation of every tongue, it says, bowed down to the ground before uh but somewhere in that crowd where everybody bowed down, there were three young men who were still standing.

Hear me, because this is a uh a very important biblical principle here.

These three men weren't just refusing to kneel because they didn't agree with the political stance of a king.

It wasn't that they didn't kneel simply because they had their own political view, but rather they didn't kneel because the king's command was violating God's command.

So that's a message for the church today.

Stop leaning on your emotions and your political views and ideologies, stop leaning to the left, stop leaning to the right, and start standing like these men on the word of God.

We need to stand on the word of the everlasting King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Let our emotions and all the other stuff cloud our judgment.

The word of God is clear.

That's where we need to stand.

Verse 13.

Then Nebuchadnezzar flew into a rage and ordered that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought before him.

When they were brought in, Nebuchadnezzar said to them, Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you refuse to serve my gods or to worship the gold statue I have set up?

I will give you one more chance to bow down and worship the statue I have made when you hear the sound of the musical instruments.

But if you refuse, you will be thrown immediately into the blazing furnace.

And then what God will be able to rescue you from my power?

I love verse 16.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Nebegnagel replied, and I can just picture them how they replied.

They said, Oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you.

If we were thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us.

He will rescue us from your power, your majesty.

I love that sarcastic, your majesty.

But even if he doesn't, we want to make it clear to you, your majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.

That's three men that were standing firm that knew where they stood.

They knew God was able, but they had absolutely no idea what was about to happen next.

You see, all they know is that whatever happened next, they weren't gonna bow.

And we know this story, and we know how this story ends.

We know it, right?

So it's easy for us to read those words from the safety of the other side of their story today.

But but today I want us to walk through this story with them, and I want us to pay attention to what happens because what if the fire changes what you see?

What if what looks like the end in the middle of the fire becomes the place where you finally see what God sees?

So today I want to preach from this thought through the eyes of fire.

Through the eyes of fire, Father, speak through your word according to your perfect will to every heart in this place.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

I this is a very well-known story, basic sermon, but I I feel just God uh completely surrounding this through the worship today.

As a matter of fact, Pastor Kirk called me late last night and he mentioned to me, hey, there was a new movie that just came out.

Have you watched it?

It's called Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.

I said, I have not, I didn't have any idea.

I have not seen it, but guess what?

I'm preaching on Sunday.

That that's that's God's either He had a good sense of humor or he has something to speak to us today.

Amen.

Amen.

There's something about fire that completely changes our reaction depending on when that fire is happening.

If the fire is in a fireplace, we we move closer.

If it's in a fire pit, right, we pull up a chair, we pull out a guitar, we start singing, we pull out our marshmallows, right?

If if the fire is underneath a grill, suddenly, come on, all the men out there, everybody thinks they're a professional grill master, right?

But if you see fire coming from somewhere that fire is not supposed to be, nobody stops and says, Oh, look at that beautiful fire.

Right?

Well, when when fire is unexpected, it has a way of making people crazy.

A few years ago, I tend to cook for Thanksgiving dinner.

I try to cook for Thanksgiving dinner, and the rest of my family helps.

They just help.

I'm I'm the I'm the chef at Thanksgiving.

And and and I there was just uh something happened if you and I have a video of it.

My daughter recorded this.

Go ahead and play that video.

When fire appears, when you don't expect it, things go crazy.

I I don't know if if if if if if if if there's there's a sound that can create more instant chaos in a house than a smoke detector going off while somebody's cooking, and that's what happened after that video.

Smoke detector starts going off, dogs are barking, and it's loud.

The family, my entire family is running around the house like crazy while the alarm is going off.

Josie and Anna Marie, I remember they went on this particular occasion, they went into the bathroom, they went to go uh just looking for things, and David is running with towels in his hand, and I'm running around trying to find which fire alarm is it, which smoke detector is it.

And I get there, and we all kind of get into the living room with the towels, and we see Janet, my my four foot one inch wife.

Four foot three inches, sorry, honey, five inches, four foot five inches.

She was standing while all this chaos was going on.

She's standing in the middle and she's doing this, like the ceiling's all the way up there.

She's like, While everybody is running around her, it created chaos.

We're supposed to like do this, but she's jumping up and with all her energy trying to blow the smoke detector to turn off.

Chaos.

It's one of our core memories, but it was it was a crazy moment.

Everybody starts doing something different, and the person cooking, by the way, is still yelling, it's not even burning.

While the entire house is filling with smoke.

Fire is comfortable when we believe we're controlling it.

We can light it, right?

We can put it out.

We can get closer when we want to get warmth, we can step back when it gets too hot.

But when the fire moves outside of our control, our relationship with it changes completely.

And that's what's happening in Daniel chapter 3.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

Most of us already know the story, and you know that they get out, but for a few minutes, I want us to forget that we know the ending because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego did not have the rest of Daniel chapter 3 in their hands while they were living it.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

They were living in the middle of their story.

So step in with me into the psychological sandals of these three men for a second.

That they had just looked at the most powerful man in Babylon and told him, Our God is able to deliver us, but even if he doesn't, we still will not bow.

And look at what happens right after they say that.

Verse 19, Daniel chapter 3.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

Nebuchadnezzar was so furious with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that his face became distorted with rage.

Nezar's face, I'm just gonna stop saying Nebuchadnezzar because I'm gonna mess it up eventually.

We're gonna call Nezar from now on, okay?

Nezur.

Just Nezar.

His face distorted because he was so angry.

And you've seen that before.

I know you've seen somebody's face distort when they were so angry.

Don't look at the person next to you, right?

It says that he commanded that the furnace be heated seven times hotter than usual.

That was his response.

Then he ordered some of the strongest men of his army to bind, to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace.

So he ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter.

I want you to notice what just happened.

They made the right decision.

They stood faithful to God.

They said exactly what faith required them to say, and the situation got worse.

You see, the furnace was already burning.

But after the declaration of faith, the temperature actually went up seven times hotter.

That might be one of the most confusing parts of walking with God is discovering that obedience doesn't always produce an immediate change in your circumstance.

Sometimes you pray and pray, but the situation seems to get worse and worse.

Daniel chapter 3 gives us three men who did exactly the right thing, and instead of the fire cooling down, it got seven times hotter.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

But can I tell you that sometimes prayer won't change the circumstance?

But you know what it will do?

Prayer will change you.

It'll change your perspective as you pray and stand up for what God calls holy.

The furnace getting hotter didn't mean that God had disappeared from their story.

Watch what happens next because Daniel starts giving us details that at first seem uh almost necessary.

Verse 21 it says, so they tied them up and threw them into the furnace, fully dressed in their pants, turbans, ropes, and other garments.

The Bible doesn't waste words.

Obviously, these men weren't naked.

So why even describe what they were wearing?

Verse 22, and because the king, in his anger, had demanded such a hot fire in the furnace, check this out, the flames killed the soldiers as they threw the men in.

Those guys didn't even get to go inside the furnace, but were killed because even the outside was so hot.

So Sadrak, Meshach, and Abednego, notice this, they fell into the roaring flames, still securely tied.

Notice that Daniel mentions that they were wearing clothes and that they were securely tied.

Why?

I believe Daniel wants us to take note of exactly how they went into the furnace.

They were bound, and then they were thrown in.

Daniel makes sure that before we move any further in the story, that we remember one detail about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnago.

They went into the fire tied up.

They went in there bound.

Sometimes what makes seasons of seasons so difficult is not only the fire around you, it's discovering what's carrying you into the fire and what you're carrying into it.

You see, pressure has a way of revealing things that comfort can hide.

You can go a long time thinking you're fine.

You can go a long time thinking that you've dealt with something, thinking you've grown past it, and then all of a sudden, bam, life gets hot, and suddenly you realize there's still some things that are tied to me.

Maybe it's fear, maybe it's control, I don't know.

Maybe it's it's a need for approval, maybe it's something nobody else can see, but you've learned to live with it.

And the fire didn't necessarily create it, but the fire exposed it.

Some of us keep praying, God, change what's happening around me.

God, what what are you putting your your your your finger on that I'm not seeing?

And something that's holding you for a long time, God wants to remove from you something that has had you bound.

Notice that just because Nezar had started the fire doesn't mean that Nezar gets to decide what the fire is gonna do.

He can heat it up seven times, a thousand times, he can tie them up, he can throw them in, but he doesn't get the final word over what happens to them once they're inside the fire.

The devil is a liar, amen.

He thought he had you over the fire, he thought he had me over the fire, but I keep getting this mental image of a piggy, a piggy, go with me.

You know those pigs that you tie up to a rope?

I don't know if you've ever done that, but they're they're like they're they're tied up and they're being cooked over a fire, and and you're just they're just turning around and they're turning around, and I get this mental image of this piggy, and I put myself into this piggy, and I that's that's me, that's me rolling around, rolling around in the fire, in the fire.

You see, if you had bit into me before I got into that fire, it would have been nasty.

But how many know that when you put bacon on a fire, that smell in the room wakes people up?

And I see this because Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says that you are the salt of the earth.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Salt gives food flavor, and sometimes the fire can bring out the flavor in the things.

So when I'm there in the fire, spinning around like a piggy, I'm just starting to get flavor coming out of me.

What am I trying to say?

When you go into the fire, maybe God's trying to pull some flavor out of you.

Don't lose the flavor.

Don't lose the flavor that you have, church.

Slap your neighbor, wake them up and tell them, don't lose the flavor.

The enemy tried to throw you in the fire to kill you, but God, the creator, is the one that even fire has to bow down to.

The Bible tells us that they were thrown in bound, they were securely tied.

Watch what happens next.

Verse 24.

But suddenly Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in amazement and exclaimed to his advisors, Didn't we tie up three men and throw them into the furnace?

Yes, your majesty.

We certainly did, they replied.

He didn't begin by asking, Didn't we throw three men into the furnace?

Notice the details.

He didn't say, Didn't we throw three men into the furnace?

He asked, Didn't we tie up three men and throw them into the furnace?

Because something inside that furnace doesn't make sense.

Look at verse 25.

Look, Nebuchadnezzar shouted, I see four men.

I see four men unbound, walking around the fire unharmed.

Did you catch all that?

They went in bound, but now they're walking around unbound.

Some of us have spent an entire season asking God, why did you let me go through this?

I don't have an answer for every fire that you've been to, but but I can tell you what I see in the story.

What was meant to destroy them didn't have the authority to destroy them.

In fact, when the king looked again, the men were freer inside the furnace than they had been before they entered it.

That'll mess up your theology a little bit because sometimes we define freedom as God changing everything around us, and like God removed the God, stop this.

God, get me out of this.

But there are absolutely times when God does that.

But Daniel chapter 3 shows us another kind of deliverance.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

The fire is still burning, and they're still inside the fire.

Nebuchadnezzar is still the king, but something that had them bound no longer has them bound.

And I have to give praise to God for that.

Amen.

Let me share something with you that you won't find in scripture.

But it's believed as part of historical context.

So try it with me.

If you're taking notes, this would be a good time so you can do your own research later.

There's an ancient Greek version of Daniel that explicitly portrays these three men praising God while they're inside the furnace.

In the Greek editions to Daniel, they're inserted between Daniel 3.23 and what our Bibles call Daniel 3.24.

There's a section traditionally known as the prayer of Azariah.

Azariah, if you didn't know, is the Hebrew name of Abednego.

That's Abednego, the prayer of Azariah, the prayer of Abednego, and the song of the three holy children.

That's what it's called.

It's not present in the Hebrew or Aramaic text in our Bibles today, which is why you don't see that in our versions, in a New Living Translation, New International Version, New King James Version, etc.

But in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, it's incorporated into Daniel 3.

Now let me be clear.

I believe Scripture to be the perfect, infallible word of God.

And so by sharing this, I'm not adding to Scripture.

I just want to put that disclaimer there.

I just want you to see that there are ancient Jewish writings outside of our Protestant canon that help us understand how Jewish communities told and interpreted these stories.

So when the section added as the song of the three holy children, it introduces the section by saying they walked in the midst of the flame, praising God and blessing the Lord.

Then, after describing the angel coming into the furnace and the fire not harming them, the Greek text says, Then the three, as with one mouth, praised and glorified and blessed God in the furnace.

I love this.

Notice the irony.

At the beginning of Daniel 3, King Nizer uses music to command worship of his image.

When the music plays, everybody bows down and worships this idol.

But inside the furnace, these three men are now offering worship to the true God.

The chapter starts with the king who says, When you hear the music, you must bow down.

But inside the fire there was no music, other than the praises coming from the inside of them as they worship the only true living God.

That reminds me of another situation where true worship in the middle of the story changed the atmosphere.

Y'all remember Paul and Silas, right?

In prison, in the darkest part of the dungeon, chained up, hands up were chained, and their feet and their bodies were changed to the wall.

And something came out of that place before they ever left that place.

A sound of worship to the king came out in the middle of what they were going through.

Church, sometimes a worship needs to come out of you when you're in the middle of the fire.

Sometimes when you're in the middle, tied up, bound up, and you feel like you have nowhere to go or nowhere to release you, nobody to set you free.

You have to have a worship that comes out genuinely.

Don't tell me that you can't worship God because of what you're going through.

Maybe what you're going through should produce a worship and a shout to the Lord your God.

Maybe you've been asking God to change the temperature, and God's been doing something deeper in you while you've been walking through it.

Maybe what you've gone through exposed some things that you would have carried to another 20 years of if life had always stayed comfortable.

There are things that you thought you needed until you went through the fire.

There were people whose approval you thought you couldn't live without until you went through the fire.

There were versions of you that needed to control every outcome until it went through something you couldn't control.

And somehow you came out realizing that what you thought was holding you together was actually the thing holding you back.

That's what has me staring at this text.

They went into the fire bound.

And somehow they found freedom in the very place that was supposed to be their grave.

Beside them going in bound and now worshiping unbound, King Nisher, seeing something else that must have had him going bananas because he knew how many men he threw in the furnace.

He counted them.

Three went in.

And now the king is looking into his furnace and saying, I see four.

I see four.

Daniel chapter 3, verse 25.

Daniel 3:25

Look, he answered, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt.

And the form of the fourth is like the son of God.

Hallelujah.

Daniel doesn't tell us that anybody opened the door and snuck into the back.

The strongest soldiers in the king's army couldn't even survive standing close enough to throw them in, they died.

And yet there is somebody else in the fire with them.

They said, Our God is able.

Then they said, even if he doesn't, and what we're seeing is that the God that they refused to abandon outside the furnace, the God that they stood up for outside the furnace, did not abandon them while they were inside the furnace.

Church, you're never alone.

It doesn't matter if it seems like you're alone, he's always there.

Maybe that's a word for somebody today.

You've been interpreting the presence of the fire that has been trying to burn you as the absence of God.

But those are not the same thing.

The fire is real, yes, but so is the presence of God.

That's real also.

And I love that Nizer is the one who sees him.

Verse 26.

Then Nebuchadnezzar came as close as he could to the door of the flaming furnace and shouted, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God.

Come out.

Come here.

So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnagel stepped out of the fire.

Then the high officers, officials, governors, and advisors crowded around them and saw that the fire had not touched them, not a hair on their heads was singed, and their clothing was not scorched.

Hear me, they didn't even smell like smoke.

And listen to how Nizer is talking now.

The same king is standing outside the furnace saying, Servants of the Most High God come out.

What happened?

What happened?

He saw something in the fire that changed the way that he was talking about God.

He watched three men go through something that should have destroyed them.

And when he saw how their God met them in it, he saw it and his language began to change.

Then Daniel gives us more details.

Their bodies weren't burned, their hair wasn't singed, not even their clothes were burned, they didn't smell like smoke.

Daniel already made sure that we knew exactly what they were wearing when they went into the furnace.

They were wearing pants, robes, turbans, other garments, and now he tells us all of it survived.

You know what didn't survive?

The ropes.

The ropes.

They were gone.

When God stepped into the story, the fire somehow touched the ropes without consuming the men.

Sometimes you just can't explain why you're going through what you're going through.

But I wonder how many of us can look back and say, I never would have chosen that fire again.

But I thank God for it because there are things that didn't come out of me when I went into that fire.

The miracle isn't only that you survived the fire, the miracle is that you came out freer than when you went into the fire.

Amen.

Then verse 28 says, Then Nebuchadnezzar said, Praise to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego.

He sent his angel to rescue his servants who trusted in him.

They defied the king's command and were willing to die rather than serve or worship any God except their own God.

Wow, it's powerful.

That's a complete reversal from where this chapter began.

This is the king who built the image, demanded the worship and challenge where any God could rescue them from his power.

But by the time three men walk out of the furnace, the king who demanded worship for himself is now praising their God.

City Center Church, this is why your story matters.

This is why your story matters.

There are people who may never listen to everything you believe about God.

They won't know your theology.

You won't be able to preach a sermon to them, but they're watching how you walk through what you're walking through.

Their eyes are on you.

They're watching how you respond when the pressure goes up.

They're watching what comes out of you when life gets hot around you.

And sometimes the evidence of God in your life becomes the thing that forces somebody else to reconsider what they thought they knew about him.

You see, that the fire, the fire in the furnace in the story we just walked through should have consumed anything they got close to it.

It did when it killed the men that threw them in.

But the three men and their clothes and their hair survived.

It seems like Daniel 3 could end right there.

We just close out this service.

But I kept staring at this chapter, reading it again and again, because something about this picture felt familiar.

Something surrounded by fire that should have been consumed, but somehow it wasn't consumed.

I've seen this before in scripture, so I went all the way back to Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

Moses is tending sheep.

When he sees something that catches his attention, Exodus 3 2 says that there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in what?

In flames of fire.

From within a bush.

Moses saw that through the bush, though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up.

The fire is present, but the bush is not being consumed.

And when Moses moves closer, he discovers that the presence of God is in the middle of that fire.

Like wait, wait a minute.

So in Exodus, the bush is on fire and isn't consumed.

In Daniel, three men are in the fire and aren't consumed.

And in both places, the presence of God is in the middle of it.

So I started flipping backward and forward through scripture, and suddenly I started seeing fire everywhere.

Go back to Genesis 15.

God establishes covenant with Abraham, and flaming torch passes between the sacrifice.

Israel leaves Egypt in Exodus 13.

God leads them at night.

How?

By a pillar of fire.

They arrived at Sinai.

The Exodus 19 says that the Lord descended on the mountain in fire.

In Leviticus chapter 9, the sacrifice goes on the altar, and fire comes down from heaven in the presence of God, and the people shouted and fell on their faces.

Leviticus 9 · chapter mention

Then later, Elijah on the Mount Carmel prays, says, Answer me, Lord, so so these people will know that you are God.

And heaven answers with fire.

Genesis, fire, Exodus, fire, Leviticus, fire, Elijah, fire.

Daniel, we see fire, different moments, different purposes, different reasons.

But again and again, when God is revealing his covenant, when he's revealing his holiness and his power and his presence, fire keeps showing up in the story.

And then we get to Daniel.

He could build the temperature up seven times hotter, but he couldn't turn God's presence down.

The furnace was still a furnace, the fire was still a fire, but the presence of God was greater than the power of what should have consumed them.

And then you turn the page into the New Testament, and something begins to change.

Jesus tells his disciples in Acts 1:8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.

Acts 1:8

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Jesus, here look at this.

He's already describing what the wildfire is gonna look like.

Then in Acts chapter 2, it happens, they're all together, and a sound like a mighty rushing wind fills the house.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Tongues of fire rest on each one of them.

Somebody has to see this.

In the wilderness, they followed the fire.

At Sinai, they saw the fire.

At Carmel, they watched the fire fall.

In Daniel, they stood inside the fire.

But at Pentecost, the fire is now resting on them.

The fire is now filling them from the inside out.

The presence they have been walking throughout their history was now filling his people.

And what happens next?

They start talking.

People start start hearing.

Peter starts preaching.

Thousands start responding to Jesus because the fire of the Holy Spirit was never given just to give us a better church service.

I love the altar.

I love the shouts.

I love the tears.

I love when people are filled with the Holy Spirit.

I love to see people healed and delivered on Pentecostal all the way.

But but Jesus did not say, You will receive power and you will have an incredible church service.

He said, You will receive power and you will be my witnesses, you will be my storytellers.

The fire was always supposed to leave the room, and that's exactly what happens by Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Persecution hits the church and believers start scattering everywhere.

I can almost hear hell celebrating.

We broke them up, we divided them, we got them out of Jerusalem, we stopped the revival, we stopped the spread of the fire.

But Acts says the believers who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.

The devil made a terrible mistake.

He thought he was scattering the church, but he was actually scattering the fire.

He scattered witnesses, he scattered storytellers, he scattered people who had encountered Jesus and wouldn't keep quiet about it because they had seen something for themselves.

One went this direction carrying the gospel, another went that direction carrying the gospel.

And everywhere in Ember landed, another fire started.

And that's the story of the church.

What looked like an attempt to extinguish the movement became the very thing that carried the message into places that it would never reach before.

At City Center, this is what I want for us.

I don't want us to just be a church that remembers fires from the past.

I don't want to just tell stories forever about what God did in some revival somewhere else in a different year or what he did through another generation.

I'm grateful for every testimony, every move of God, every altar that has been filled.

But the prayer of our generation has to be Holy Spirit, do it in us, fill us and send us.

Set something on fire inside of us that doesn't stay in this building.

Because what happens if hundreds of people are filled and leave this room carrying the presence of Jesus into hundreds of different places.

Can you imagine what that's gonna look like?

You go back to your home, somebody else goes back to school, somebody else goes to a hospital, somebody goes into a boardroom, a construction site, a restaurant, a hair salon, a neighborhood, a locker room, a college campus.

We leave the same building, but we scatter into completely different parts of the city.

And if every one of us is carrying the story of what Jesus had done in us, the fire starts showing up everywhere.

The story God has built through your life was never meant to terminate with you.

You're being built through it.

Somebody needs to hear what he brought you through.

Somebody needs to see what he did in your moment in the furnace.

The enemy would love for you to come through the fire and never tell anybody what happened there.

But the early church shows us what happens when people have encountered Jesus and they refuse to keep quiet.

The fire spreads.

We could preach a whole sermon about the fire spreading through the church, but but there's one more place I need you to go with me because I don't want you to leave here thinking that the point of the Bible and the point of this sermon is fire.

The point of the Bible is Jesus.

Amen.

The Bible is the story of Jesus.

Just when I thought I was done, I flipped over to Revelation chapter 1.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

And John says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.

And I heard a loud voice like a trumpet saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega.

What does that mean?

I am the beginning and I am the end.

I am the first and I am the last.

He said, John's writing this, he said, Everything you see, John, write it to the seven churches and send it, send it out.

Write it and send it out.

Then I turned around, he says, to see this voice that was talking to me.

I saw one, he says, like the son of man.

His head and hair were white like wool and white as snow.

His feet, he says, were like brass, as if refined in a furnace.

His voice as the sound of many waters and his eyes, check this out.

John writes this in Revelation chapter 1.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

His eyes, his eyes, look at his eyes.

They were like a flame of fire.

His story is being watched over through the eyes of fire.

In Genesis, he was fire.

In Daniel, he was in the fire.

In Revelation, the fire is in his eyes.

And you know what the Bible says about us, the church?

It says that we are the apple of his eye.

Oh, that's that's some good word right there.

If you see Jesus, if you're looking at Jesus like John was, he was looking at Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the beginning and the end, the one who was and is and is to come.

El Shaddai, the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the Lamb of God.

He's looking at him and he sees his semblance and how he's dressed and what he looks like.

And he ends with his eyes were like a flame of fire.

And then I just see that.

And we are the physical representation of Jesus.

We are the body of Christ.

And we are the apple of his eye.

That means that when I look at Jesus and I see that flame of fire, is he looking at the church?

Is he looking at who we are today?

Is he seeing a fire that's spreading?

Because the last words that he said to his apostles before he ascended was go and be witnesses, baptizing people in the name of the Jesus, the Lord, the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, making disciples wherever you go.

If we are to grow disciples that reflect Jesus and transform the world, we have to be like a wildfire spreading out to everywhere we go.

It's time to spread that fire.

That's what it hit me.

This sermon was never really about how many times fire shows up in the Bible, it's about who keeps showing up in the story.

The fire didn't outlast Jesus.

Babylon didn't outlast him, Rome didn't outlast him.

Not even death could outlast him.

And whatever chapter you're walking through right now, let me tell you, in the name of Jesus, that chapter in your life will not outlast him either.

Shadrach, Meshek, and Abegnego couldn't see the end of the story when they said, even if he doesn't, but when Nizer looked into the furnace, there was somebody in there he had not accounted for.

There was a fourth man in the fire.

And this is what your story points to.

Maybe yours has a river, maybe it has a wall, maybe it has a furnace.

But through every chapter, every season, every fire, your history keeps pointing to his story.

The one who called himself the first and the last is still faithful in every season in between.

And I love that Daniel doesn't let us leave the furnace without hearing from Nisher one last time.

Because the man who began this story challenging their God has now watched the whole thing unfold.

Listen to this is where we're closing, verse 29.

It says, Therefore I make this decree.

This is King Nisher.

If any people, whatever their race or nation or language, first thing it said, those people, any nation, any race, any language, have to bow down to worship an idol.

Now he says, if any of those people speak a word against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego, they will be torn from limb to limb, and their houses will be turned into heaps of rubble.

There is no other God who can rescue like this.

Come on, that's in Daniel.

That's how Daniel chapter 3 ends.

Daniel 3 · chapter mention

The king who asked, What God can rescue you from my power?

finishes the story declaring, There is no other God who can rescue like this.

I'm hoping that landed on someone's heart who's let the fire talk too loud for far too long.

You've listened to the diagnosis, you've listened to the fear, you you've listened to what they said about you, you've listened to the chapter that hurt you, and somewhere along the way, you started believing that the fire gets to tell you how your story ends.

The devil is a liar.

The fire does not get the final word over your life.

The thing that tried to break you does not get the final word.

Jesus gets the final word.

Amen.

All over this place.

If you're able and willing, I'm gonna ask you to stand with me, and we're not finishing yet.

Just give me a few more minutes.

If you're in a fire right now, I can't promise you that by tomorrow the furnace is gonna disappear.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnago had to walk through it.

They had to be in it.

But I can promise you this you don't have to walk through it alone.

If you're in the middle of something that has gotten hotter instead of better, if you've been praying and still don't understand why it hasn't changed, if you walked in here today saying, God, I know you're able, but but I don't know what you're gonna do.

I know you can do it, but even if you don't, if this word landed on your heart today, I'm opening up these altars one more time before we dismiss.

And I'm asking you to step out of your seat and come forward.

This is the moment that we get to respond to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us.

Amen.

Praise God.

Praise God.

I know this word doesn't land void.

There are things that the Holy Spirit is doing in the hearts tonight.

Maybe you're there today just thinking, should I go?

Should I not go?

I was there last week, I've never been up there.

Put all that aside.

Come, come.

This is a moment, it could be a moment between you and the Lord by yourself, but but we also have pastors in an altar team that can here be here to pray with you.

I would love to pray with you.

I believe that there's going to be people standing at this altar today who who walked in carrying something that is not leaving with them today, in the name of Jesus.

That there are ropes changed, things that you're holding that have been holding you now that the Lord wants to remove from your life today.

And I believe that there are going to be people who walked in feeling abandoned who are going to discover the fourth man is still in the fire with you.

You are not alone.

If you need God in your fire, if you need freedom while you're in the fire, if you need the Holy Spirit to set something alive in you again, I'm extending the invitation.

Get out of your seat and come as we as we worship the Lord, as we pray up here, the altar is still open.

Some of you, this is your story.

God is writing your story right now, and before you go out and tell it, He wants to refine it.

Sometimes the fire is not just judgment, sometimes the fire is to refine you.

Some of you are asking, how can I be a witness?

I have a story, but how can I share it?

Come here and let the Holy Spirit fill you and give you the words you need to use.

Amen.

Let's worship as we pray.

Thank you for joining us today.

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