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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from Daniel chapter
three.
King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold
whose height
was 60 cubits and its breadth six cubits.
He set it up on the plain of dura
in the province of Babylon.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent together
the satraps,
the prefects, and the governors,
the counselors, the treasurers,
the justices, the magistrates,
and all the officials of the provinces
to come to the dedication of the image
that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
Then the satraps, the prefects,
and the governors, the counselors,
the treasurers,
the justices, the magistrates,
and all the officials of the provinces
gathered for the dedication of the image
that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
And they stood before the image
that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
And the herald proclaimed aloud.
You are commanded, O peoples,
nations, and languages,
that when you hear the sound of the horn,
pipe, lyre, trigon,
harp, bagpipe,
and every kind of music, you are
to fall down and worship the golden image
that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.
And whoever does not fall down
and worship shall immediately
be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
Therefore, as soon as all the people heard
the sound of the horn, pipe,
lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe,
and every kind of music,
all the people, nations, and languages
fell down
and worshiped the golden image
that came Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
Therefore, at that time, certain
Chaldeans came forward and miraculously
accused the Jews.
They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar
Oken, live forever.
You, a king, have made a decree
that every man who hears
the sound of the horn,
pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe,
and every kind of music shall fall down
and worship the golden image.
And whoever does not fall down
and worship shall be cast into a burning
fiery furnace.
There are certain Jews
whom you have appointed over the affairs
of the province of Babylon.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
These men. Okay, pay no attention to you.
They do not serve your gods or worship
the golden image that you have set up.
Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage,
commanded that Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego be brought.
So they brought these men before the king.
Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them,
is it true, O Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego,
that you do not serve my gods or worship
the golden image that I have set up?
Now, if you are ready,
when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe,
lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe,
and every kind of music
to fall down and worship,
the image that I have made well and good.
But if you do not worship,
you shall immediately
be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
And who is the God who will deliver you
out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered
and said to the king,
O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need
to answer you in this matter.
If this be so, our God, whom we serve
is able to deliver us from the burning
fiery furnace, and he will deliver us
out of your hand of King.
But if not, be
it known to you, O King, that
we will not serve your gods or worship
the golden image you have set up.
Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury,
and the expression of his face was changed
against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
He ordered the furnace heated seven times
more than it was usually heated,
and he ordered some of the mighty men
of his army to bind Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego and
cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
Then these men were bound in their cloaks,
their tunics, their hats,
and their other garments, and they were
thrown into the burning fiery furnace,
because the king's order was urgent
and the furnace overheated.
The flame of the fire killed
those men who took up Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego.
And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego fell down into the burning
fiery furnace.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar
was astonished and rose up in haste.
He declared to his counselors, did
we not cast three men down into the fire?
They answered and said to the king, true.
Okay.
He answered and said, but I see four men
unbound, walking in the midst of fire,
and they are not hurt in the appearance of
the fourth is like a son of the gods.
Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door
of the burning fiery furnace.
He declared, Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, servants of the Most High God.
Come out and come here.
Then Shadrach, Meshach,
and a Bendigo came out from the fire,
and the satraps, the prefects,
the governors, and the king's counselors
gathered together and saw that the fire
had not had any power over the bodies
of those men.
The hair of their heads was not,
since their cloaks
were not harmed,
and no smell of fire had come upon them.
Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, blessed
be the God of Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, who has sent his angel
and delivered his servants who trusted
in him, and set aside the king's command,
and yielded up their bodies.
Rather than serve and worship
any God except their own God.
Therefore I make a decree
any people, nation, or language
that speaks anything against the God
of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
shall be torn limb from limb
and their houses laid in ruins.
For there is no other God
who is able to rescue in this way.
Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego in the province of Babylon.
Well, good morning and
welcome to the weekly gathering of Christ
Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm
so glad that you're here with us
this weekend
as we continue our sermon series.
Looking at the first few chapters
of the Book of Daniel,
we're talking about having courage.
In the fire did want to give a special
shout out the 10:00 service.
Our fifth grade club is here.
Fifth grade club.
We're glad you're with us.
You know, we're in the midst
of an Every Minute Matters theme.
Every Minute Matters
campaign for the next couple of years,
because we are a church that is serious
about investing in the next generation,
including and especially right now.
And you guys, hey, if you have a Bible,
would you open it to Daniel chapter three.
Daniel chapter three take out your phone,
your tablet.
How are you going to get to Daniel
chapter three if you're here this weekend
and you didn't bring a Bible, maybe
you're not super familiar with the Bible.
First
let me say so glad that you're here, that
that might have been a pretty big step
for you, and I'm glad that you took it.
And everything we have to say this morning
is as much for you as it is for anybody.
But we do make Bibles available to you
there in the pew, in front of you,
or in the back of the room in East Hall.
And if you want to hold a Bible and follow
along that way,
I preach from one of those Bibles,
so I can tell you that today's reading
is on 692 and 693.
But by the way, the verses I reference
are going to be on the screen behind me.
So if you want to follow along that way,
that's fine.
However you're getting to
Daniel chapter three,
three points I'm going to use
as an outline to guide our time together.
Three points. Very simple.
They go like this
I want to show you there will be moments
God is behind them
to change the world around you.
Okay?
There will be moments God is behind them.
Changing the world around you.
All right, let's start with the first one.
There will be moments.
We're almost to summer.
And if you're like me and your families,
like mine, summer
means vacation is on the horizon.
You're thinking about traveling now?
I've been married for 20 years. Almost.
My wife,
Amy, and I have completely different
philosophies
for what makes a good vacation.
When Amy travels somewhere, she sees it as
a cardiovascular or workout.
She wants to see
everything, do everything, experience
everything.
When I vacation, I want a pool
and a chair and a book, and that's it.
That's all I want.
I don't want to do anything, on vacation.
And what that means
is that usually when we travel,
we're pretty clear on whose trip it is
and who's the plus one.
I know you can say,
well, can't you do a little bit of both,
but then we're both just miserable. So.
No, somebody gets to plan the trip, and,
we have a 20th anniversary trip
coming up this summer.
And based
on, the planning, I know it is Amy's trip
and that it is going to be a whirlwind.
So I've already started
planning the post vacation.
Vacation for myself.
The thing is, we are two different people
with two different
philosophies on vacation.
Which means if I'm going on Amy's trip,
there's going to be some tension.
There's going to be some conflict
not between us, but between
what I want to do
and what we're actually doing now
in a marriage
that's not that big of a deal, right?
A little communication, sacrifice, other
centeredness, and you can figure that out.
But in culture, it's a much bigger deal.
Now, here's what I mean by that.
In the book of Daniel, God's
people are living in exile in Babylon.
They've been defeated.
The enemy has taken them over
and brought them to Babylon.
And Babylon is a country
with a very different set of values
than the values
that God talks about in the scriptures.
It's a polytheistic culture,
meaning they worship many gods,
not a monotheistic culture
like the God of the Bible.
Once they are a culture of oppression,
a culture of domination.
But God's vision for his people in the Old
Testament is that they would be a light
to the nations, that that they would win
the nations over, through, through
display, saying his glory in the way
they live, not through subjugation.
They're two very different cultures,
two very different worldviews,
two very different ways of living.
And that means conflict is inevitable.
Now, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
did not know
that morning when they got up
and went to work what was going to happen.
But what they understood
was that moments of conflict,
moments of controversy,
moments of tension were inevitable.
And Daniel won. It's over.
What they eat here, it's over.
How they worship next week it'll be over.
How they party.
In two weeks it will be over.
How they pray.
My point is,
when you're living in a culture
whose value system is
diametrically opposed
to the value system of the Bible,
when you're trying to follow God
over and against a dominant culture,
conflict is inescapable.
And the thing is, it's not just true
in Babylon.
It's true for us.
Our culture is not Babylonian,
but it is antithetical to the gospel.
And that means that if we desire to follow
Jesus, we're going to find ourselves
in similar moments.
Maybe not with a furnace, maybe not facing
death, but moments nonetheless.
We work at companies, for example,
that pursue profit, not principle.
We are in
families where unforgiveness
and bitterness
and grudge holding
are the norm over and against.
Jesus's teaching
about loving and forgiving
our kids go to school systems
which teach worldviews
very antithetical
to the one that God calls us to
in the Bible,
which means conflict is unavoidable.
Let me use another marriage illustration.
Something we try to teach
in the premarital class here
at Christ Community Chapel
is that healthy couples fight.
When you meet a couple who says to me,
for example, pastor, we never fight.
I just look at them and say, well, which
one of you gets their way all the time?
Because that must be what you mean.
Me? Your two different people
with two different views on something.
And if you're never fighting
about it, it's
because one of you is dominating
the other.
That's
not the sign of a healthy relationship.
That's the sign of an oppressive one.
Healthy couples fight
because two different people
from two different backgrounds
mean two different ways of living.
Conflict is, and the absence of conflict
is not the presence
of a healthy relationship.
The absence of conflict
is the presence of compromise.
It's the same for you and I.
If we live in a culture
that is antithetical
to what God teaches in the Bible
and we never experience conflict, it's not
because we're the one group of Christians
that somehow thread the needle.
It's because of compromise.
And the reason why I say that is because
it seems to me when modern Christians
find themselves in any situation
like this, we're so shocked.
But we shouldn't be.
The first Peter four tells us to not be
surprised when we experience fiery trials.
James chapter one says to count it
as joy when we experience trials.
John 16 Jesus himself says, in this world
you will have trouble.
But when we experience it,
we tend to be shocked
and we tend to say, God, where are you?
God, what are you doing?
But there will be moments.
It's okay though, to ask where God is.
That's actually my second point.
Not just that there will be moments,
but second
that the God is behind them.
There will be moments God is behind them.
Let me ask you a question.
Who drives the action in Daniel
chapter three?
Who moves the plot forward?
That's a really important question
for understanding this passage.
There are three possible answers
to that question.
Let's walk through them.
The first is you could say that
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
are the ones who drive the plot.
But is that true?
I mean, do they show up
looking for a fight?
I don't think so.
I think Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
just show up for work
and find themselves in a fight.
Have they any idea that Nebuchadnezzar
had spent the weekend building a statue,
or that he
was going to ask everyone
to worship the statue?
No. They showed up to work.
They didn't show up to rub their faith
and other people's noses.
They didn't show up to dominate, to argue.
Listen, if you are the kind of Christian
I want to say this
because I've been worried about
doing a sermon series
in the book of Daniel that for some
Christians, that would embolden you
to be antagonistic.
Listen, if controversy and conflict
follow you wherever you go, it's
not because you're being courageous
or you're being faithful.
It's because you're a jerk.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
are not causing this conflict.
They don't.
They don't come looking for a fight.
They're not the ones who drive the action.
The second possibility is the most obvious
one that it's Nebuchadnezzar.
That Nebuchadnezzar is the one driving
the action in Daniel chapter three.
After all, he's
the one that builds the statue.
He's the one who plays the music.
He's the one who wants to tell people
who to worship.
There's a couple of problems with that.
The first one is that
this is not Nebuchadnezzar's book.
It's not about Nebuchadnezzar.
The second problem is
there are a lot of Nebuchadnezzar
in this book.
If it's not Nebuchadnezzar, it's Pharaoh.
If it's not Pharaoh, it's Cyrus.
If it's not Cyrus, it's Darius.
If it's not Darius, it's Herod.
Not that Herod, the other Harriott Herod.
You get the point.
There's a lot of despotic, egotistical,
maniacal tyrants in the Bible.
They come and they go.
They're not the main character.
But here's the other reason
why Nebuchadnezzar
is not the one driving
the action in Daniel chapter three.
There were a lot of ways
to make him happy.
I mean, after all,
he just wants people to bow.
He doesn't care if you mean it.
Do you know what I mean?
This is a flex for him.
I mean, he woke up that morning
and said to his wife or wives
or concubines like, watch
how powerful I am.
I'm going to make everybody worship
a stupid statue that I made.
This is just a flex,
which means he doesn't
care what you're thinking or feeling
when you bow.
He just wants you to bow.
So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could
have said to each other, listen, just bow.
We don't mean it.
It doesn't mean anything. Just do it.
They could have said, hey, let's bow
and we'll ask for forgiveness later.
They could have
said, hey, we should bow,
because if we don't, he's
going to kill us, and then he's
going to give our jobs to Babylonians.
And that's going to make life harder
on our fellow Jewish people.
So for their their sake, we should bow.
They could have looked at each other
and said, other people in the Bible
did worse than this.
The point is, it didn't matter what they
were thinking or what they're feeling.
He doesn't care if they bow, he is happy.
The action of this passage
is not about their unwillingness
to please Nebuchadnezzar.
Look at what they say.
By the way, just for proof of this
in verse 16, here's what it says.
Shall Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego answered
and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar,
we have no need to answer you
in this matter.
If this be so, our God
whom we serve is able to deliver us
from the burning fiery furnace,
and he will deliver us out of your hand.
Okay?
But if not, be it known to you, O King,
that we will not serve your gods
or worship
the golden image that you have set up.
Do you see what they're saying?
They're saying, look, Nebuchadnezzar,
you can give us one more try.
Three more tries, 100 more tries.
We don't care.
We are not going to bow
because God won't have it.
You see, they
they've read the Old Testament.
They know God said in the Ten Commandments
not to worship anyone other than him.
They know
God said not to make any graven images.
They've read
where God said he was a jealous God.
They they are saying to Nebuchadnezzar,
look, man, it's not about you.
Whatever we do to make your you happy,
he won't be okay with. No.
It's God who drives the action of Daniel
chapter three.
It's God who's not willing for compromise.
It's God who's not willing
to look the other way.
And you see, he never gets.
He never is.
God is never okay with moral compromise.
God is never okay with corners being cut.
God is never okay with looking
the other way.
God is behind the action.
Now let me show you that in one other way,
because the most
important verses of this passage
are verses 13 through 15.
If you want to know what is God doing,
it tells you here in verse 13, let's pick
it up is what it says.
Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage,
commanded that Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego be brought.
So they brought these men before the king.
And Nebuchadnezzar answered
and said to them, is it true,
O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
that you do not serve my gods or worship
the golden image that I have set up?
Now if you are ready,
when you hear the sound of the horn,
pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe,
and every kind of music
to fall down and worship,
the image that I have made well and good.
But if you do not worship,
you shall immediately
be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
Listen to this next line.
And who is the God who will deliver. You.
Out of my hands?
So you can't understand the story to you?
Understand? That's the point.
That's the point.
Nebuchadnezzar says,
who is the God who can save you from me?
And everything
that has happened up to that point
and everything that happens after that
point, is God answering that question.
You see, it isn't Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego being put to the test.
It's God.
God wants to be tested.
God wants to be displayed.
God is wanting Nebuchadnezzar
to ask that question
so that he can definitively answer it in
moments of testing,
in moments of conflict,
not the ones we went looking for.
Not the ones that we caused in our
ignorance, but in the ones that come for
us. God knows fundamentally,
it is not us who is being put to the test.
It's him. Will he show up?
Will he show out?
What will he do?
And God welcomes the test.
Why? Why?
Well, that's my third point.
Not just that there will be moments,
not just that God is behind them, but.
He's changing the world around us.
Listen, this whole story is about God's
pursuit of Nebuchadnezzar.
You can't read this story correctly
without understanding that this story
is about God's pursuit of one egomaniacal,
despotic,
tyrannical ruler,
one guy who's so convinced
of how big and bad he is that he says,
who is the God who can stop me?
God does everything he does
in this chapter to grab Nebuchadnezzar.
Don't believe me?
Look at the climax.
Pick it up in verse 24.
Look at the climax of the story.
Here it comes.
Verse 20.
Yeah. Verse 24.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished,
and he rose up in haste
and declared to his counselors, did
we not cast three men bound into the fire?
And they answered
and said to the king, true, O king.
And he answered and said,
but I see four men unbound,
walking in the midst of the fire,
and they are not hurt.
And the appearance of the fourth
is like a son of the gods.
Skip down to verse 28.
Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, blessed
be the God of Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, who has sent his angel
and delivered his servants who trusted
in him, and set aside the king's command,
and yielded up their bodies.
Rather than serve and worship
any god except their own God.
Therefore I make a decree
any people, nation, or language
that speaks anything
against the God of Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb
and their houses laid in ruins.
Listen to this, for there is no other God.
Who is able to rescue in.
This way. Friends, listen to me.
If you're here this weekend
and you are not yet a Christian,
you don't have a relationship with God.
Do you see the links
he will go to to rescue sinners?
You see, this entire
story is about God
putting himself to the test,
God putting himself on display
to answer the hard
question of one sinner.
So great is his mercy.
So great is his grace.
For you
now I know you're hard wired to push back
against that and go, no, no, no, God.
God wouldn't do that for me.
He doesn't love me that much.
You don't know what I've done.
You don't know.
You don't know how much shame and guilt
I carry.
Let me ask you a question this weekend.
Did you spend time
building a golden statue of yourself?
Did you bring out the stereo equipment
on your cul de sac
and command all your neighbors
that when the music played,
they should bow down and worship you?
Because if you
did anything less than that, actually,
even if you did that.
God's mercy and.
Grace are coming for you.
This story is not about the courage
of three young men.
This story is about the God.
Who leverages his power,
who puts himself to the test
in order to answer the heart cry.
Of sinners.
Let me put a pin in that.
I'll come back to it.
So if you're here
and you're a Christian, you.
I got to imagine right now
you're going to hold on a second.
This is the logic of the sermon, Zach.
If I'm listening to you,
God will put me in awful
testing situations
in order to reach other people.
God will put my job in jeopardy.
God will make it so that I'm
the black sheep of the family. God.
God will make it
so that I've got to go meet with the kids.
Principal
God will put me in the moment of testing
just so he can reach other people.
How is that fair?
Well, there are two answers to that.
The first
is, is it not true that you.
Desire to see God move in your life time?
People always say to me, pastor,
how come we don't see.
God do the things.
Today that he did in the Bible?
Well, I can answer that question for you.
God's power in the Bible and today.
Follows his mission.
Where is God in this story?
He's in the furnace.
If you want to be around
God, if you want to experience
God, if you want to live
a biblical kind of life,
not by following the rules,
but by experiencing the power of God,
you only get that in the furnace.
We hear stories
all the time of what God is doing
miraculously from the mission field.
Forget the mission field.
I hear stories all the time of amazing,
miraculous things God is doing
at this church in the lives of Christians
who want to join him in reaching people.
So you see,
Daniel three is really about this choice.
You want the sidelines, you get safety.
You just don't get to experience God.
Where do you want the furnace?
And you get God?
But here's the second thing.
And let me bring those of you
considering Christianity
back into the conversation.
This is exactly what God did to save us.
Don't you see that.
He put himself to the test?
The Son of God came to earth
and stepped into a much hotter furnace,
not a literal furnace
built by some guy named Nebuchadnezzar,
but the furnace of God's
anger and judgment and wrath.
Jesus put himself to the test for us.
Here's my life.
Here's my dad.
Don't you see?
We killed Jesus because he wouldn't bow.
We didn't
want to hear about neighbor love.
We didn't want to hear about forgiveness.
We didn't
want to hear about sexual purity.
So we killed him.
He stepped into the furnace of our anger
on our behalf
so that, like Nebuchadnezzar, three days
later, we might be on the edge of the seat
or our seats going, wait a minute,
wait a minute, wait a minute.
Didn't we kill that guy?
The resurrection of Jesus is
God saying to each one of us.
This is the answer
to the question
you're asking in your heart.
Do I love you?
Will I forgive you?
Is there a place for you in what I'm
doing?
And Christian, it's an invitation
to join him
in doing for others what he did
to rescue us.
There's only one main character of Daniel,
chapter three.
And it's not the king.
And it's not these three guys.
It's the God who puts himself to the test
to rescue centers.
Let me pray for us, father God.
Thank you for Daniel chapter three.
Thank you for this display of your power
and your glory.
Thank you even more that it points
us forward to a greater
display of your power and your grace
and your forgiveness.
An even more courageous young man,
your son, who stepped into the furnace
of our anger and of yours
and put you on display.
God, might
you speak to the heart right now
of every Nebuchadnezzar in this room?
Who is the God.
Who can save me?
His name is Jesus,
and in his name we pray.
Amen.