Daniel chapter three

is there's a king named Nebuchadnezzar and

the the hubris, the pride, the arrogance of this man is something like

we've not seen, and no matter what your feelings for, like, say, I don't know, the president that's currently in power in the United States, or what you might think about his, you know, arrogance? Like, you might be a fan of his and be like, he's an arrogant man. Yeah, that's obvious. Like, I think you probably have to have some kind of arrogance to even say, like, I think I'll run for president. Most of us would be like, there is absolutely no way, right? So, granted, like we've seen some of that. That that's been like a sticking point for a lot of people. I'm just kind of like, who else are you going to vote for? That's not arrogant for like governor, president, anything. They're all going to have some of that. This guy puts any of them to shame. Okay, like the the insanity. I mean, just last week we looked at this dream that he had that that the man Daniel interprets for him. He's like, "You're the head of gold on this big statue that was in your vision. But like, he starts talking about all the other kingdoms that follow after that, and then he says, "Hey, you know, they're all going to get toppled. So the next thing we see is the guy's like, "I'm going to build a whole statue, and the whole thing will be gold. Whoa, hubris, Arrogance.

Well,

once oh goodness, probably 1314, years ago, we were over at a friend's house. This friend is actually a Nazarene pastor. They're in Panama City right now. My friend Adam and our friend Joseph was probably over at this time. They lived two doors down from where Amy and I lived, and and we both served as staff members at the Church of the Nazarene in Hendersonville, Tennessee. And so we would do you know sometimes meals and stuff with them. We had a swimming pool. They'd come over. We had a good time being neighbors with them, and we walked down one day. We're going to have a just fire up the grill and throw some meat on there. And I remember this grill. I remember it well because there's some things that literally get seared into your brain.

My wife knows this story, so she understands the hilarity of that. This was, I think, it was actually my old grill that I had given to Adam. I think I know why now. It was a charcoal grill, and of course, you got to put the charcoal and let it heat up. Well, I had never ever in my life heard of this happening. I opened the grill, and a fireball leapt out from a charcoal grill. Not like a propane one where we did it wrong. It was a charcoal grill. This fireball went like all over my head, so it seared into my brain. See, okay, it went all over my head, and I'm like, "Whoa, that was warm. And Adam points at me. He's like, "Dude, your hair is still on fire. So I start like patting it out.

Now, if you've ever singed parts of your body, you know it stinks. Like I'm like, "Man, oh, this is Adam. Take care of the grill. I'm walking home, two doors down. I'm walking home, and I'm gonna like snip some of this off. You know, like it was just that bad. I snipped it off. I tried to wash. I'm like,

by the way, if some of you are looking at me and are like, last time I saw you, your beard was a lot longer. You needed a haircut. I did not intend for it to be like this. That was bad communication with a barber, a cheap barber that I went to, and like, it wasn't a singeing situation where I had to trim it off. This was just not communicating well, right? Well, Daniel here writing this chapter. I'm going to read it in a moment, but I want you to understand. There's some parts of it you're going to be like, that's awfully repetitive. You're telling me I'm going to be the one that has to read all of that over and over, especially the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You're going to hear them like seven times, okay. But here's the thing.

Daniel wanted to be very clear. He wanted to make sure you understood what was happening, who was doing what, and who was where. That there's no like room, no margin for error. Nobody gets their beard half as long as they intended it to be. In other words.

Also, we went and played some door hangers yesterday. A few of us, Troy's been kind of leading that effort. Every Saturday at 7 a.m. we go out and we hang door hangers. And you know, I was thinking as we're going around, I have this thing where

I I I don't put them on the ones that say no soliciting on the on these houses. And now Troy, you know, he's been in the business of knocking on doors for decades now, and selling people things and working with them on stuff. He's like, I knock on those, and he told me a little secret that I'm not going to share. But some of those people, it's like they actually want you to show up. That's kind of the point of it. It's weird reverse psychology there. But I'm like, well, I'm going to respect that. And also, one person emailed the church, and they're like, Hey, I have a no soliciting sign. I didn't like that you hung a thing on my door.

Fine, I just won't do it. So then I'm walking around with this like conscience thing, and I'm like, I really hope you guys know Jesus. You know, this could have been your only opportunity, and you missed it because of that sign.

Anyway,

I've been saying a lot lately of like for people. I'm like, I hope you make.

To heaven.

Okay,

look at the setting here. Nebuchadnezzar goes out to this this plains, this wide open flat area. A lot of times, worship and other gods was like up on a mountain of some kind. Here, he goes to a plain, he sets it up, and he he wants this statue to be seen far and wide. I was trying to watch the sunset the other night. There was too many trees that got in the way. Now I like trees. I think it's great. But I was just like, man, it'd be nice if I was like in Kansas or at the beach or something where I could see wide open and just watch it because it was just so beautiful. The way the rays were kind of you could see like these orange rays still coming up as it was going down over the horizon.

He wanted the statue to be seen. He wanted it to be visible. He wanted to have a wide open place where he could call together all these people to come and to pay homage to it. What's the point, really? To be honest, it's insanity here. But he throws this real banger of a party. I mean, there's all these instruments. It's like I don't know. They didn't have rock concerts, but it was their version of it, you know, like it's just everything is going on. The music is loud. Everybody's there. They're getting pumped up. I don't know if he had like a warm-up act to get ready for the main thing, but somehow he's getting everybody ready. And for some reason, did you notice who's missing in this story?

Yeah, where's Daniel?

I don't know. You got to come to Sunday school. We'll talk about it there.

But his three friends, we heard their name a bunch of times: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They show up. They're they're required to be there, and they come in obedience to the king's command because it doesn't hurt for them to be present. But they refuse to worship the statue. They refuse to worship the king's gods, and they make no bones about it. They have already decided in their hearts beforehand that they are not going to cave in this manner. Now we saw this in chapter one a couple weeks ago when Daniel and his friends were first brought his exiles from from Jerusalem into Babylon,

and the king's servant puts this food before them, and they say, "We don't want to eat that. Now, whether it was because it was just unhealthy or because it would make them richly unclean, it's not 100% clear in the text. We can surmise some reasons for that. But they said, "Hey, can we just eat some vegetables and drink water? In other words, we want to do this vegan test and see if like being a vegan is actually healthier somehow. And somehow or another, I don't get it. I don't know, but somehow or another, these guys actually looked really healthy afterwards. And so they'd already shown that they were willing to to not put God to the test, but put their faith in a place where they were sure of it. And they said, "We are going to do this because we don't want the king's delicacies. We want to be simple. We want to live simply. We don't want to live in this gluttonous lifestyle that the king is trying to put on us. And we want to prove to you that God will be faithful in that test and make us appear more healthy than everyone else. So they appear before the king and look very healthy, and the king looks with favor upon them. So they've already. I'm not saying that was a test that they put God up to, but they've already kind of passed that test. And now here's this one. And so since they've already drawn these lines of holiness beforehand, they're able to to stand there before the king and say, "We're not bowing down to your statue. We're not worshiping your gods, whatever happens, that's where we draw the line. And so, when the when the this wild like demonic worship party happens, because when there's an idol set up, it's not just there's some metal thing there. There are there are going to be evil spirits and demons that are always accompanying that. When people are worshiping something other than the true God, they're going to always be Satan and his demons that are happy to show up, and they're happy to take those footholds that are opened up in people's lives and to claw into that and to hang on and go for a ride. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to try to steer them away from God. It didn't take far; these people were so far from God, but it just took three men to share witness of who God is and what God was doing.

But when the music starts and everybody bows down to this, there's three men standing out. It's obvious that they're standing when everybody else is bowing down, and some guys are kind of looking at them like,

and finally they're like, Oh, it's those three guys. We hate them already, and so they go and they snitch on them. They go rad them out to the king.

I guess they never heard that snitches get stitches. You know, I don't know if you guys are familiar with that adage from the streets.

Snitches get stitches. And so they snitched on them, and the king's like, "What? Bring them here. Now he's real cool about it at first. He's angry, but he's like patient. He's like guys, maybe you misunderstood. Maybe there was a language barrier. Maybe you couldn't hear because of all my awesome music. I don't know, but just so you know, when the music starts, you bow down. Like everyone else was doing it, thought you would come on board with that. Seemed pretty obvious. Like King, you don't have to give us.

A second chance at this. We already know the answer, and the answer is no. We're not gonna do it. They were resolved on that.

There's some things today

that the culture does

that the church, that Christians will not bow down to.

I want to tell you.

Some of you

used to live according to some of these things.

Some of you used to live according to these ways and patterns of the world.

I want to tell you that some of you still are living according to some of these patterns of the world,

and I want to tell you that I love you.

God loves you.

I want to read this verse to you from First Corinthians six, verse 11. The

apostle Paul says, "Some of you once lived in this way,

but you were washed, you were sanctified, and you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Remember that, because if at any place these things I'm about to say kind of step on your toes,

I don't mean that individually, but I believe the Spirit of God does.

I'm not the one convicting you,

but if you do feel conviction, it's from the Spirit of God. Okay,

let's look at this list. I've got it printed here. It's going to be on your screens if you can read

it. These are things that the world does, that the world produces as the norm,

that Christians refuse to accept. We refuse to conform to these things. We refuse to bow down to them. Are we ready? Let's go.

In the idea of sexuality and marriage, for instance, we've seen a slippery slope on this that has led to where we find ourselves today. For instance, premarital sex is, and and in the hookup culture, is viewed as normal by society, and the assumption is that sex is just recreational, not something that's to be kept within the covenantal bounds of marriage. Cohabitation before marriage is considered normal. In fact, it's expected. In fact, the culture says that it's prudent and wise to do this,

and it's the cultural default in most of the most of the West.

No fault divorce has been kind of accepted as like a first option, a standard go-to, rather than the last thing you would ever think of in cases of very extreme situations.

The redefinition of marriage beyond a lifelong one man, one woman for life. The the redefinition of marriage beyond that has permeated culture. But Christians stand firm and say no. That's not what we believe. That's not what the scripture teaches.

Pornography isn't just something behind the curtain anymore in that video store, those magazines that were you had to go to a special store to buy them. It's everywhere now. It has become a mainstream thing,

and and that just cannot happen. We can't we can't accept that as normalized.

LGBTQ has become this this

affirmation in society today. It's become this moral normative that that society pushes on us and says you have to accept this, you have to bow down to this, and we refuse to buy into the ideology. Instead, we steer people to be who God created them to be and to live the life that he has called them to live.

In in in the area of gender, we're not even done. That's not that's just the first section of our list. We're going to keep going here. In the idea of gender and the body, we believe that this gender identity theory that has become so popular in the last decade or two is something that the

culture believes you can separate gender from biological sex, and that you can just kind of self-determine your gender beyond.

I think we're on the next slide now. Actually,

there we go.

That you can separate your biological sex or self-determine it apart from what your your body actually was created to be, and so we reject that. We reject the idea that minors should have medical treatment to play into

something that they're going through, and people try to accuse or say that they are having a gender identity issue, and they try to treat them. We reject that because we believe that that is harmful, and that is not how God created them to be, and we want to stand on firm Christian biblical guidance that guides them in the right path in love, not in hatred towards their body. Because why? God didn't make a mistake when He made you, and we want to affirm that in people. And we refuse to go along with the culture and to bow down. The next one, the sanctity of life issues. You see, the first one, of course, we talk about abortion a lot in the church, and for good reason because it's so popular in the culture. Abortion has become so mainstream that if you say something about, well, I don't think that women should have abortions, and I don't think men should have their their babies killed without their their their say so by the mother of their child, when you start.

Standing up for these things, people start to think that you're somehow backwards and bigoted. But from the earliest time of Christianity, there were Romans that were taking their babies and they were leaving them on the rocks to die alone. And Christians would swoop out from the bushes where they had hidden, knowing, expecting this, and they would pick up those children and raise them as their own. The church has always been Pro-life.

On the other end of things, on the other end of that spectrum, we have people that are trying to promote. And I remember Dr. Kavorkian taking up these cases when I was a kid, and now you've got it in Canada with what they call MAID, medical assistance in death, trying to say you go out on your terms. Oh, your your mind is going away. Your body's fading. Let's just go ahead and end it right now,

folks. Satan wants to take God's children and destroy them. We promote life.

There's a big thing that's going on in the culture today. It was big in the last couple election cycles, and I'm not fully in the know on this, but here's one thing that I do believe: when people are trying to conceive and have a child, I understand that there's a lot of pain that goes on in that. But when culture tells us, "Well, it's okay, make as many test tube babies as you want, and then you, when you finally select one and you have that, then destroy the rest of them, that is trashing the the life of the inception. And the scripture tells us that God is there from the very moment that that baby is born. Even if we somehow artificially put it together in what we call a test tube scenario, we believe that that life becomes

sanctified and holy, and we believe in the sanctity of that life. No matter how

infinitesimally small it may be, we believe that God is there at that moment. In fact, they actually show at the moment that an egg is fertilized, they've been able to actually take footage of this at super high resolution, and there is a spark of life that begins in that moment, folks. For people to deny this is just simply to to to deny science, and they call us the science deniers. I don't think so.

When it comes to your self identity,

we have this

rugged individualism that we've embraced, especially in Western countries and in the United States. You know, one of the things that people say a lot these days is "You do you. In other words, do for yourself whatever feels best. You you don't worry as long as you're not actually hurting another person too much. You just go ahead and get whatever you can get and do whatever you want to do.

We've also started saying that well, there's such a thing as your truth, your truth, and your truth,

my truth.

Truth is something that's you can't objectively know. In other words, they they the reason that this has become so popular is because Satan has been trying so long and hard to fight the notion of truth. Because what did Jesus say when he's on trial before the man named Pilate? Pilate is starting to ask him. Jesus says, "My my followers understand truth, and they know to follow me. And Pilate says,

"What is truth?

This has started 1000s of years ago, folks. Jesus says of himself, "He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

See, Satan can't have that. So, what does he try to convince you? If he tries to convince you, you just do you. You pick your own truth. You you live your truth out. We even change our language to you know match that. And you know what? I even refuse to adjust my language to how these people want to live and the normatives that they want to make.

This idea that we can have some kind of autonomy as our highest good instead of this Christian anthropology that is built around saying that you belong to Christ and you belong to one another. That there's community. That there's an obligation to your fellow human being.

This idea that culture says makes says that that you just kind of have to live life on your own terms rather than in relation to anyone else, and that simply isn't biblical.

Culture's tendency also is to kind of therapeutically remove all instances of guilt from our lives. In other words, how dare anybody try to say anything that might make you feel guilty? Like I'm sure a few of you right now, some of the things that I brought up, you're like, oh, that's me.

I'm not pulling back from that, I don't do it out of hatred, anger, or judgmental, or looking down on you. Although I understand I'm two steps up and you're sitting, but I don't mean it from a posture of looking down. The posture is standing with Scripture and saying this is how we are called to live. And there are times where guilt is actually going to be part of the Christian life. Guilt is going to be part of something that God uses by His Holy Spirit and by His Word to put it in front of us and say, "You've been living in a way that I have told you not to live. Now it's time to stop, to repent of that, to turn away from it, and to follow Me.

When it comes to our our money and our ambition and and just the consumption that we.

We have relied in this society, the culture has relied on consumerism and just saying like you acquire for yourself as much as you want. Materialism wasn't just this thing that Charlie Brown railed against in the Christmas movie, right? Like it wasn't. It's so commercialized. That's our entire life right now.

We we look at these

our careers and our status and our you know just where we're living in the life and and we try to build that up so much we ignore our families we ignore Sabbath rest we ignore community engagements around us

our lifestyle inflates but we do that not on income, but on debt.

Gluttony has become a daily life choice of many people in the culture, and sadly, it persists in the church so much. I've heard people say they've heard pastors preach more sermons on this thing or that thing, and they never hear one on gluttony. Well, I'm not doing a whole sermon on gluttony. Let me just hammer it home right now. There are times where we indulge so much in the things that I want, the cravings that I have, rather than saying, "Lord, I want to be satisfied with a little bit. What What does the Scripture say? What does Jesus teach us in His prayer? Lord, give us our daily bread. Boy, that ain't a feast. It ain't a famine, though, either. Amen.

There's something to be learned there.

Abusing alcohol,

street drugs, even prescription drugs can be used in a in a bad way-a way that you're using them to cope with a situation in life. I'm not saying like a medical thing where you're taking care of that, or or a high pain level that you're you're taking painkillers for. But I'm just saying there are times where you can be like, man, I'm going to use this drug in such a way that it fixes all of my problems. I'm going to use this alcohol to remove those problems. And anything you're doing, whether it's a substance like that or a habit, whatever it is that you are doing in order to mask something in your life is instead of relying on the healing power of Jesus Christ, that thing for you has become a crutch, a substance that you're using to escape something in your life, and you're you're you're drawing yourself into culture and away from God when you do that.

Speech, media, and coarseness-the the casual profanity usage in entertainment and movies and in you know just humor and all these things has gone through the roof. I mean, I remember like when I was younger, you know, you would hear like guys on a construction site with you know some foul vulgar language and jokes and stuff. Then you start hearing like some some of the some of the rougher ladies, you know, start using some some language like that. But then all of a sudden, it's like everyone, all the women you hear them, they're just as bad as the men, sometimes worse. Then you start hearing it in the kids, like first and second graders, saying all this stuff, and you're like, whoa,

that's crazy. Where is this coming from, folks? Culture has infiltrated it into everything, every bit of our our media that's out there, every movie, video game, music, all of it. It's everywhere you turn, and the culture has decided that this is how we're going to live, even though the scriptures tell us to to have cleanliness in our language and to not let any vulgarity come out of our mouths, folks. I step on my own toes with this one quite a bit at times. If you know me well, I'm sorry.

There's gratuitous violence and sexual content in in mainstream filming, TVs, and video games. The cancel culture is strong

on both sides. Any party, any group, any whatever you've got, everybody wants to cancel each other out, but the problem with that is not that voices are silenced, but that there's no chance for any type of growth, no chance for any type of

changing or repentance or any of that stuff. There's no grace, there's no humility in cancel culture, and we reject that.

When it comes to politics and tribal religion and whatnot. We have these many people that fall into this nationalism and partisan identities that

are substituting genuine faith commitments, and and in so doing, they are

you know taking the place of faith and moving it into politics, and they're counting on the maybe the next election or the next cycle to write things. We've also get with that we get this moral relativism.

Who's to say what's right for you,

rather than finding moral and objective truth?

Lastly, you guys are ready for it to be over. I know.

This is one that I wrestle with

a lot because I feel powerless to change

it. The abuses of

human dignity in life.

War has become status quo in this country and in the world. The Western world loves to go to war.

Some other parts of the world, that's just their own.

Way of life. They war in smaller factions. We just like to go to other places and shoot and bomb them.

War has become status quo.

I'm not 100% a pacifist that says we should never, ever, ever do this.

It's also above my pay grade. My job as a pastor is to echo what Christ said, and He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, not the ones who tolerate peace or who can handle it here and there, or maybe up little pockets of peace. Those who actively go into the world to create the peace of Christ are the ones that Jesus says are following after the Father's heart. Blessed are the peacemakers.

While we stand in the defense of our country against enemies that might come to harm us, we also

proclaim the need for peace, because ultimately Jesus Christ, when He was born, the angels said, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, in whom His favor rests.

Human bondage and slavery wasn't something that just ended in

the

1860s in America.

It's not something that that used to happen. Something that happens every day

in the United States,

in Florida,

in Pasco County,

in Zephyrhills,

and I'm not going to get into the gory details of that, but I know people who are fighting the battle against that,

and it's real.

It's adults, it's kids,

and it's disgusting. And the world seems to not really care.

I know it's popular to get on Facebook and say, "Will anybody get arrested? That's in the Jeffrey Epstein files, but nothing ever happens. And we finally quiet down when the news cycle changes, and we bomb another country, or or the diesel price hits six and a half dollars, and we forget about it for a while. And inevitably, we'll come back to it, and then we'll forget about it. But we haven't really gotten fired up enough against this that harms so many people. This is

the one that's difficult for me.

See, there's there's

abusive labor practices, and I don't mean like somebody had to work through their 15 minute morning break. Boo hoo!

Like go work on a construction site sometime, and you'll find out you don't get a break, son. You just keep going. I watch the guys that did our roof on the gym. They worked 13-hour days doing the roof. Okay, like that's hard work. That's tough work. I mean, yeah, they took a couple breaks, but they worked all day.

I'm talking about

the things that go into all the technology that we

base our lives on so much, the rare earth minerals that go into our our the batteries and the circuitry and all those things and all this stuff that we buy and and the reason I say I feel helpless is because like I I'd be happy enough not to use any of it you know kind of go like be a luddite you know and just kind of go back although I don't want to be like an Amish person so I don't know where the happy medium is on that, but like you know, you you want to fight against this, and yet you know that what's going on is is they're they're using children working 16 hour days in conditions that are totally inhuman that you wouldn't even care to see an animal treated in that way, even an animal you don't like,

like a cat.

That wasn't in the notes. It's just in my heart. I have so much hatred,

so much hatred for cats. Oh.

All right, I'm halfway done.

This part will go fast, though.

The king tells these guys,

"I give you a second chance.

Bow down to the culture that I've set up.

See, in my country, and I'm the king. I'm the big guy. We worship my gods, and we bow down to that big 90-foot statue. I'll give you one more chance to conform. And you know what they said? Nah, we've already decided we're not doing it. So he's enraged now. He he was first angry. Now he's hot, red hot angry. And and it's funny how vicious people will get when you refuse to bow down to their ideology. Have you noticed any of this, especially the last about six years or so?

There's there's something that I've been tracking over the last five to six years, and I've been watching people do this. They get so enraged when you won't agree with their their folly, their their satanic way of living.

So he orders that this furnace. Why was the furnace there? By the way, he he had this smelting operation to make metal for this statue, and so.

If he ordered it seven, I don't know if they could actually measure seven times hotter, but it's metaphorical to say like this is insanely hot. It was so hot that that that he's using this furnace that was made as a refinery for the metal to build his statue, and he has it pumped up so hot with the bellows and throwing whatever their fuel was in there that the flames are licking out, and as he has his strongest soldiers bind up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to shove them into the furnace, the soldiers die at the mouth of the furnace as these men are put in there. Now I want to point out two things.

One, two of them are simple, and then I want to point out a big one. The simple thing one is that they went in with ropes binding them,

but the ropes disappear.

Now that's simple. You're like, okay, I got that. That was easy. It says it right there. Yeah, their bodies and clothes are 100% fine. You know, the fireball didn't singe them. In other words,

here's the big thing:

Jesus shows up in their midst. Now,

I don't think Jesus just trailed them in there.

I think he was there waiting. They had already set forward and said, "This is what we draw the line at. We'll come to your little shindig, but we won't bow down. See, I can be in the presence of evil and it won't hurt me. I can show up in in in compliance with your command, but when you command me to do something that's against what God has called me to do. I won't cross that line. I'm firm. I'm resolute on that. So they said, King, you can throw us in the furnace, and our God can save us. But even if He doesn't,

you're not going to change our minds.

There might be a prayer that you're praying right now for something in your life, for something in a a friend's life, for some type of healing or provision or whatever it might be.

Might be a prayer that you're praying right now,

and you're saying, "Lord, this is what I'd like you to do. You know, we tell God what to do all the time, don't we? I mean, we do it in the form of a request. Lord, could you please heal so and so? Could you please take care of this thing in my life?

Sometimes God doesn't answer that prayer the way you wanted

it. Sometimes that cancer

takes their life on this earth.

Sometimes that that heart condition is terminal.

Sometimes that prayer for safety ended on a slick road on a tight curve,

and you say, "Lord,

you didn't answer my prayer.

And then somebody else has the audacity to have a similar situation, and they pray a similar prayer, and God answers their prayer the way you wanted yours answered. You ever seen that happen?

What God you answered their prayer but not mine?

Daniel's three friends

had a "what if not"

mentality for their prayers. We trust that God can save us. We we are trusting in faith that He will do this.

If He doesn't, does not change our faith in God,

folks. God might not answer your prayer in the way you want it answered, because through all that, He might be trying to show you something and teach you something and call you to something in this life that you couldn't have heard without him getting your attention. I don't know. Like he's not just toying with you and playing with you, but there are times where we need to pray a faithful prayer, but one that also says, "Lord, but if not, if you don't answer this in the way that I prayed it, I still trust you. I still keep coming back to you. And you know what the beautiful thing was that happened with these guys when they are in that furnace? I don't think Jesus followed them in. I think He was already there, because they had already prayed that prayer. They had already made that statement of that declaration of faith, and I believe Jesus was there waiting for them. And in the place where the fire couldn't touch them, their ropes were removed not by the flames of that fire, but by Jesus Christ Himself. See, Jesus Christ comes and He He unties what is binding you in the midst of the darkest moment or the fieriest moment of your lives.

Nebuchadnezzar recognizes this guy that he calls the Son of Man. Now he recognizes that he's some kind of a deity that has showed up. He calls him an angel. He doesn't have a good theological understanding to recognize that this is what we would call the pre-incarnate Jesus, the the form that Jesus took before he was born on this earth.

And so, what he sees and he calls the Son of Man, Jesus will later take that title for himself. He takes it from Daniel. He wants to say, "Guys, I was the one that was in the furnace. I was there the whole time when you were standing firm in your faith, but you were being put to the trial and to the test. I was the one that was there with you. I've been there the whole time, and so often we we don't see the power of God in our lives, folks. We're looking for the power of God, and we're like, God, where are you?

You're not willing to go in.

To the refining furnace to allow Him to take from you the dross and the things that are making you impure. You're willing to side with the world and go with the ways of culture, and you're willing to bow down to the statues that the culture has erected in front of us, rather than to humble yourself and approach God and say, "Lord, I will maintain the holiness to which You have called me.

You'll bring me through this fire, but even if not,

I'll see you real soon, Lord.

The king calls them out. There's no singe on them, no char, nothing. They don't even have to trim the the smoky hair off of their beards or anything.

So he makes a proclamation that no one can say anything bad about their God. Okay,

he's not like there yet, you know. Like this isn't a confession of faith. This is just him recognizing there's somebody more powerful than anything he's ever come up against. He's like

not willing to submit to this guy yet because we'll see that next chapter, like next week. But what he does say is like this. God is pretty strong, and if anybody says anything bad about him, okay, those people I'll dismember them and drop their house on them. Like that's a weird threat, you know.

Christians, what is it in this world that is keeping you from boldly sharing your faith and standing on the things that God has called you to live for, what what is it that's keeping you from faithfulness to God?

What is it? Some decree, some law, a corporate policy, some overreaching governmental mandate of some kind,

some fear of rejection,

a love of money,

not knowing what to say,

a no soliciting sign in the yard.

He boldly shared God's truth that leads people to salvation.

Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai