To Daniel, chapter 3.
Daniel, chapter 3.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Nebuchadnezzar the king, this is verse 1, made
an image of gold whose height was sixty
cubits and its width six cubits.
He set it up in the plain of
Dura in the province of Babylon.
And King Nebuchadnezzar sent word to gather together
the satraps, the administrators, the governors, the counselors,
the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all
the officials of the provinces to come to
the dedication of the image which King Nebuchadnezzar
had set up.
Then the command went forward that when the
orchestra sounded forth, when all the trumpets blew
and all the bugles blew, the people were
to fall down and worship the gold image
that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
And whoever didn't fall down, verse 6, and
worship shall be cast immediately into the midst
of a burning, fiery furnace.
Verse 8.
Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward
and accused the Jews.
They spoke and said to King Nebuchadnezzar, O
King, live forever.
You have made this decree.
Verse 12.
There are certain Jews whom you have set
over the affairs of the province of Babylon,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
These men, O King, have not paid due
regard to you.
They do not serve your gods or worship
the gold image which you have set up.
And King Nebuchadnezzar was absolutely flabbergasted.
He couldn't believe it.
And he said in verse 14, Is it
true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do
not serve my gods or worship the gold
image which I have set up?
I'll give you one more chance.
If you don't do it, you'll be cast
into a burning, fiery furnace, heated seven times
hotter than usual.
Verse 16.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to
the King, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need
to answer you in this matter.
If that is the case, our God whom
we serve is able to deliver us from
the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver
us from your hand, O King.
But if not, let it be known to
you, O King, that we do not serve
your gods, nor will we worship the gold
image which you have set up.
I'm going to stop reading there.
Last week we were in chapter one, and
we read about Daniel and three of his
friends, and how the King of Babylon tried
to take them and make Babylonians out of
them, and he wanted them to eat the
food from the royal menu, and they absolutely
refused.
They would not do it, and God worked
it out for them in a wonderful way.
Then in chapter two, which we're skipping over,
the King has a dream, and he dreams
about this great image, and nobody can interpret
the dream for him.
Crisis.
Finally, somebody, a man who can interpret the
dream for you, his name is Daniel, and
Daniel came forward, and he said, no problem.
He said, no, don't thank me.
He said, it's not up to me, but
he said, I can tell you the interpretation,
and among other things, he said, Nebuchadnezzar, you
are the head of gold in that image,
and you know what?
I think the King got a giant case
of egotism over that.
He was the head of gold.
I mean, everything after that became very inferior
in value.
All the rest of the image, he was
the head of gold, and so I think
chapter three follows quite logically after that.
He just was too filled, as I said,
with vitamin I, all about himself, and so
it says at the beginning of chapter three,
he made an image of gold, whose height
was 60 cubits, its width 6 cubits.
He set it up on the plain of
Dura.
This seems to be the result of what
the King had learned in chapter two.
An image of gold.
What kind of an image was it?
Was it a human image?
I don't think so.
I think it was probably more like Washington
Monument, don't you?
I know it'd really be kind of a
weird human image to be 90 feet tall
and 9 feet wide.
Nobody's that thin.
But think of it as an obelisk like
the Washington Monument, and it's gold-plated.
You say, what do you mean gold-plated?
It's made of gold.
Well, I know, but there isn't enough gold
in all the world to fill the Washington
Monument.
If you took all the gold in the
world, it would only be a portion of
the Washington Monument, and I don't know how
tall the Washington Monument is.
Anyway, this image is set up.
Now, there's something very interesting here.
Notice the prominence of the number six in
his image.
Strange the way things happen.
60 cubits tall, six cubits wide.
A cubit, of course, is 18 inches, isn't
it?
Approximately 18 inches.
Then that makes you think, ah, it's time
for me to turn over in my Bible
to chapter 13 of Revelation, isn't it?
I don't think you want to get past
that verse before you turn over to Revelation
chapter 13 and begin verse 16.
And here we're reading about the Antichrist, who
still is to come.
Nebuchadnezzar, in this instance at least, might have
been a foregleam of the Antichrist.
And it says, verse 16, he causes all,
both small and great, rich and poor, free
and slave, to receive a mark on their
right hand or on their forehead, and that
no one may buy or sell except one
who has the mark or the name of
the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom, that him who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it's
the number of a man.
His number is six, six, six.
And six is the number of man in
the Bible, isn't it?
Uh, seven is the number of perfection.
Six is the number of man.
It's short of perfection, huh?
Makes us think of what verse?
All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God.
And so when the Antichrist comes, of course,
this is going to be the crucial number,
six, six, six.
I personally believe the Antichrist will have his
capital in Jerusalem, Israel.
And it's interesting, last time I was there,
all the buses in Jerusalem and all the
public vehicles, their license plate began with six,
six, six.
Upcoming events cast their shadows before them.
Chapter two, you have the dedication of this
great image.
And in verse two, I mean, in verses
two and three, the guests who came.
I'm telling you, this was a real occasion.
The prominent people from all the kingdom came
for the dedication of this great statue.
And then, of course, in verses four through
seven, you have the command to worship.
This king not only wanted a unified government,
he wanted a unified religion.
And you know, that's the trend in the
world today.
Everything is shaping up for a unified religion.
Pope had this great meeting in Assisi not
so long ago, and he had representatives of
Islam, representatives Hindus, Buddhists, animists, voodooists, all of
them, they were there for this meeting in
Assisi.
And they were all to embrace, embrace one,
they all were to believe the same thing.
But complications arise.
In that whole kingdom, there are three fellows
who refuse to bow down and worship that
image.
And Daniel isn't mentioned here, is he?
He may have been off on a trip,
but I think it's significant.
Daniel was the key man in chapter one,
and the other fellows were, well, they went
along with him, of course.
The other three fellows went along with him.
I think they learned a lesson from Daniel
in chapter one.
Here they are, putting it into practice in
chapter three.
We talked last week about the influence of
a life upon others.
Well, these three Jewish fellows, they watched Daniel,
they saw that his spine was made of
steel.
He was no jellyfish, he was no marshmallow.
Daniel, now they get the chance to put
it into action themselves, and they have it,
and they take their stand, and they're accused.
Notice verse eight.
Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward.
Chaldeans, that's Babylonians, they were citizens of the
kingdom, and accused the Jews.
They spoke and said to King Nebuchadnezzar, O
King, you, O King, have made a decree,
and so forth.
Verse 12.
There are certain Jews whom you have said,
what's this all about?
Well, I think you see the green-eyed
monster here, don't you?
These Chaldeans are jealous.
They're jealous of these three Jewish fellows.
You, O King, have made them, you know,
you've given them positions of prominence in your
kingdom.
Here, they won't bow down and worship your
image.
I don't think Daniel was there.
I think he was off on a business
trip.
Somebody said, happy is he who dares to
be in the right with two or three.
Great thing to be able to be with
two or three and stand up against the
whole kingdom, huh?
Or, in our case, stand up against the
whole world.
Well, there's something happier than to be in
the right with two or three, and that's
to be in the right when you're all
alone.
And that's what our young people have to
do in schools and colleges today.
They're all alone.
Just take a stand for the Lord.
Happier to be in the right, even if
the choice two or three shouldn't be there
with you.
Well, the king calls them in, and he
said, is it true?
I mean, this is the greatest shock he's
had in quite a few days, that three
fellows, three Jewish fellows, whom he had favored
as he had favored, should have the audacity,
should have the impudence to refuse to bow
down and worship.
He couldn't believe that any mortal upon the
earth could have the presumption to dispute his
will.
He can't conceive that one person employed under
his patronage would dare to resist his bidding.
And indignantly, he demands, is it true?
He won't believe it.
He must have been misinformed, I think, don't
you?
Can there exist a being in all the
kingdom, in all the dominions, who would have
the audacity to insinuate that it would be
wrong to bow down and worship his image?
In fact, it's quite condescending on his part
to say, is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, that you do not serve my God
to worship the gold image which I have
set up?
And he says, now, if you are ready
at the time you hear the sound of
the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and sorcery and
symphony with all kinds of music, you fall
down and worship the image which I have
made good.
But if you do not worship, you shall
be cast immediately into the midst of a
burning fiery fire.
Listen to this, and who is the God
who will deliver you from my hands?
What a challenge, huh?
Listen, there was somebody up in heaven who
heard that.
God looking down from heaven heard that creature,
creature, saying, who is the God that can
deliver you from my hands?
I tell you, the whole case was settled
right then.
When the king defies the God of heaven
and earth, what God is able to rescue
you?
And, you know, people still get into tough
situations, and the world still says that to
them.
God is able to rescue you.
A challenge to the most high God.
Well, it brings up, of course, our attitude
toward human government, doesn't it?
What should our attitude toward human government be?
Well, Jesus said it, render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, unto God the things
that are God's.
Obey the powers that be, Paul tells us
in Romans chapter 13.
Or, as we've said before, obey, pay, pray.
But the other side of that picture is
we ought to obey God and not men.
Once again, as it was in chapter one,
now a great time to rationalize.
I mean, just think of a furnace.
Just think, sitting here in the comfort of
this room this morning, of a furnace blazing,
and it's heated seven times hotter than normal,
and you're going to be thrown in.
How do you like that?
Are you comfortable?
Well, I mean, the wheels of your mind
could go along pretty well then, couldn't it?
You could say, well, okay, I will bow
down.
I'll just bow down once, and God knows
that although my body is in that prostrate
position, my heart's not in it.
I don't recognize this nebuchadnezzar as my gun.
You could have rationalized that way.
Or they could have said, well, he's been
pretty good to us.
He's advanced us to positions of prominence in
the kingdom, and if we don't bow down,
we won't get any further raises and pay.
So, why don't we just compromise in this
situation, just bow down and worship?
After all, it would just be a physical
thing.
It wouldn't be a spiritual thing with us,
you know.
It would just be the outward position of
our bodies, but not the inward position of
our souls and spirit.
We would still be true to Jehovah.
Or they could have said, well, we have
to live, don't we?
Can the dead praise God?
I like what Vance Havner said.
I'm going to quote some of this to
you.
It's really good.
Vance Havner said, Christians don't have to live.
They have only to be faithful to Jesus
Christ, not only until death, but unto death
if necessary.
When a man becomes a Christian, he loses
the right to his own life.
Boy, that's a shocker, isn't it?
Is that what you tell people when you
lead them to Christ?
When a man becomes a person, when a
person becomes a Christian, he loses the right
to his own life.
He's not his own.
He's bought with a price.
He's the personal property of Jesus Christ, bought
and paid for with the blood of Calvary.
Isn't that good?
So easy for us to forget that.
For him, living and dying are incidental.
I think that's beautiful.
He's here to glorify Jesus Christ, whether by
life or by death.
Whether he lives, he lives unto the Lord.
Whether he dies, he dies unto the Lord.
Whether he lives or dies, he is the
Lord's.
To live is Christ, and to die is
gain.
Anything that compromises that all-out devotion is
to be refused at any cost.
A pinch of incense to Caesar may seem
innocent enough to others, but to a Christian,
it's anathema.
For he knows but one God, and he
will not by life or by lip pay
even a gesture of allegiance to another.
If a pagan guild would compromise his vows,
he would lose his job first.
He doesn't have to eat.
He only has to be faithful to Jesus
Christ.
I like this.
He says, "'The desire of the spiritual man
is to die right rather than live wrong.'"
How do you like that?
"'The desire of the spiritual man is to
die right rather than live wrong.'" A sure
mark of the spiritual, mature man of God
is his nonchalance about living.
His nonchalance about living.
The earth-loving, body-conscious Christian looks upon
death with numb terror in his heart, but
as he goes on to live in the
spirit, he becomes increasingly careful of the kind
of life he lives while he's here.
He will not purchase a few extra days
of life at the cost of compromise or
failure.
Why, that's good.
He will not purchase a few extra days
of life at the cost of compromise or
failure.
He wants most of all to be right,
and he's happy for God to decide how
long he will live.
He knows that he can afford to die
now that he's in Christ, but he knows
that he cannot afford to do wrong, and
this knowledge becomes a gyroscope to stabilize his
thinking and his acting.
I think that's beautiful.
They could have said that, well, the dead
can't serve the Lord.
The dead do not praise the Lord, and
after all, we have to obey the King,
and we have to think of our families
as well, if they did have families.
What did they say?
Talk about nonchalance, about living or dying.
They said, okay, we don't have to answer
you.
I think they were respectful when they said
it.
They said, we don't have to answer you
in the matter.
Isn't that great?
Boy, I tell you, I'd like to have
been on the sidelines cheering them.
Better to burn than to play the coward.
Better to die than deny the truth.
He said, our God is able to deliver
us from the burning, fiery furnace.
The difference, I want to tell you, that
faith.
Imagine me standing in front of the mouth
of a blast furnace, and I'm about to
get cast into it.
Feel the heat already.
Imagine me to have the faith to say,
nothing, God can deliver me from that burning,
fiery furnace.
I think that's tremendous.
They didn't only say that, they said, He
will deliver us.
He will deliver us from your hand, O
King.
Spurgeon said, you may be in the midst
of the greatest trial of your life, but
never forget the God who allowed this trial
promises to deliver you.
The purpose of this experience is to display
the mighty power of God.
He will teach you lessons you will never
forget, and upon which you will reflect for
many years to come for strength and encouragement
to face ensuing trials.
But you must believe God, be able to
say from the depths of your heart, my
God, whom I serve, is able to deliver
me.
And then they added this word, but if
not, our God is able to deliver us.
Our God will deliver us, but if not,
did their faith take a tumble?
No, their faith didn't take a tumble.
Even if God were not to deliver us,
we still wouldn't bow down and worship that
idol.
We will not worship the gold image which
you have set up.
I tell you, why does God have this
in the Bible?
I'll tell you why.
Take a weak, frail flesh like me and
inspire me with confidence and faith in the
Lord, and excite in my mind firmness and
steadfastness in upholding the truth of God.
Our responsibility is to obey the Lord and
leave the consequences with him.
Well, we come to verse 19, and just
look at verses 19 through 23.
It's incredible here.
Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury.
The expression on his face changed toward Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego.
The expression on his face reflected his inward
seething, his inward fury, his inward anger at
these three young Jews.
Therefore he spoke and commanded that they heat
the furnace seven times more than it was
usually heated.
Well, frankly, it didn't make too much difference
anyway, did it?
I mean, when you have a furnace of
fire, what difference does seven times more make?
You're going to be gone quickly anyway.
Sure.
Seven times seven, of course, the number of
fulfillment, the number of perfection.
I guess that meant as hot as they
were able to do it in those days.
They were pretty good in those days.
Solomon had a blast furnace down at what
is now Eilat there.
He had devised a way where the wind
coming down a ravine just went right into
the mouth of his smelting furnaces, where they
had the copper.
So, don't think of them as backward people.
They weren't backwards.
They knew what they were doing.
And he commanded certain mighty men of valor
who were in his army to bind Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego and cast them into the
burning, fiery furnace.
That's why.
They cast them in.
I can just see them.
I can see them doing it with a
great deal of love.
They just love to get rid of these
disturbers of the peace.
Pretty ghastly, isn't it?
How could three young fellows ever face up
to this?
Well, frankly, they couldn't in their own strength.
And I think you've got to, when you
read something like this, and you sit there
in the meeting this morning, you think, man,
I could never have done it.
Of course you couldn't do it.
Neither could I, unless the Lord gave you
the grace to do it.
In other words, dying grace for dying days.
That's what it amounts to.
You don't get the grace for something like
this till you need it.
They didn't have it yesterday, but they had
it when the time came for it to
happen.
I think that's a good lesson to save
us from lives of worry and and discouragement
and all the rest.
Listen, if God wants me to do something,
God will give me the grace to do
it.
If God wants me to die for him,
God will give me the grace when it
comes time to do it.
Do you ever worry what it's going to
be like when it comes down to die,
if the Lord doesn't come?
Oh, I think about that all the time.
I think, that's nonsense to worry about that.
I could worry about better things than that.
Because I've proved the Lord enough in my
life already that when I need special grace,
the grace is there.
The grace is there.
So this is supernatural.
It's not natural for three fellows.
You know, I don't get the impression that
they were squirming or wiggling or trying to
break the bands that tied them or anything
else.
I think they were composed.
As many of the martyrs down through the
history of the church have been composed as,
well, really wonderful.
As your day, God says, so shall your
strength be.
As your day, not as your year, as
your day, so shall your strength be.
Deuteronomy 33, verse 5.
Dying grace to dying grace for our dying
days.
We experience that grace in the hard times
of life, when we face surgery, where the
doctor says it's cancer, or when a loved
one dies.
I want to tell you, humanly speaking, the
thought of being cast into that furnace would
give me cardiac arrest.
I wouldn't die from the flames.
I'd die from a heart failure.
But they didn't.
They didn't have cardiac arrest.
They were bound, and they were cast in,
and that thing was so hot that the
executioners were scalded, were burned to death.
Just in the process of casting the three
Jewish fellows in, the fellows that were casting
them in got burned.
Absolutely incredible.
And it says the three men fell down
in the midst of the furnace.
The king looks in.
He was a bit unnerved, didn't he?
After three of his men got burned to
death, he looked into the furnace.
I hope he had a glass window to
look through, or something like that.
He looked in, and he saw a fourth
there.
He saw a fourth man, like the Son
of God.
And, you know, this is one of the
crucial parts of the story.
The Son of God is always in the
of fire with his people.
I think back through the history of mankind,
there have been a lot of furnaces of
fire.
I don't mean literal fire, but I mean
God has been with his people.
The Lord Jesus has been with his people,
and a lot of them.
I think that's what Paul refers to.
He said, I may fill up that which
is left behind of the sufferings of Christ.
The Lord Jesus still suffers with his people.
He's been in many furnaces with believers down
through the ages, and he will be in
many more as well.
He says, I will never leave you, nor
forsake you.
It doesn't make any difference how hot the
fire is.
Christ is there with his own.
You know, I think it wouldn't be too
bad to be in a furnace of fire
with Christ.
I feel that.
I think I might have mentioned this before
about Stephen.
When Stephen was stoned to death, you know,
what a horrible way to die, being stoned
to death.
And he looked up, and he saw the
Lord Jesus standing at the right hand of
God.
I think just the sight of the Lord
Jesus is enough to remove any pain or
discomfort from the stones.
And I felt that when I thought this
about the furnace of fire.
Just to have his presence there is really
all that you need.
And Christ is always there with his own.
It's interesting here, what's behind all this?
Religion.
Religious hatred is always the worst form of
hatred, and it's thanks to the most fiendish
deeds.
The persecutions that have taken place as a
result of religion are some of the most
unsparing, cruel.
And we, as believers, can expect to be
thrown into furnaces of the fires of persecution.
It's coming, friends.
We see it increasingly all the time.
Gene Gibson shares his Time magazines with me.
I've noticed for the last month, there's a
section that's no longer in Time magazines called
Religion.
They don't have it in there anymore.
And you know how anything to do with
Christianity, with Christ, is banned.
It's not politically correct to talk about that.
And it's wrong for you to try to
win somebody else to Christ.
You can try to win them to the
Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
That's okay.
Don't try to win anybody to Christ.
It's known as proselytizing, and you must not
do that nowadays.
That's divisive.
We're trying to get all the people together,
they say, you know, into one great world
religion.
Jesus said, If you were of the world,
the world would love its own.
But because you're not of the world, but
I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.
What a picture!
The king looks in, he sees the Son
of God in there, and the men are
loose, and they're walking around in the furnace.
You say, it's impossible.
I know, with God, all things are possible.
Of course it's impossible.
But it happened.
It's history, and it's happening still.
So, the king summons them to come out.
Really, he can't help but get a thrill
out of this.
You see, that king, I think his knees
are knocking by now, don't you?
He was the big brave guy at the
beginning of the story, but now he's not
so brave.
And now I think he's scared.
Wonderful.
And the king, what's he going to do?
Notice verse 24.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished, and he rose
in haste and spoke, saying to his counsellors,
Did we not cast three men bound into
the furnace in the midst of the fire?
They answered and said, True, O king.
Look, he answered, I see four men loose,
walking in the midst of the fire, and
they are not hurt.
The form of the fourth is like the
Son of God.
His eyesight was never better than it was
at that moment, was it not?
Twenty-twenty vision, O Nebuchadnezzar.
Then Nebuchadnezzar went near the mouth of the
burning, fiery furnace and spoke, saying, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, servants of the Most High God,
come out and come here.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came from the midst
of the fire.
End of the story?
No, that part's still to come.
The satraps, administrators, governors, and the king's counsellors
gathered together, and they saw these men on
whose body the fire had no power.
You talk about asbestos.
The fire had no power.
The hair of the head was not singed.
That doesn't say it wasn't burned off.
It says it wasn't singed.
Nor were their garments affected.
What kind of garments were those?
Phew!
And the smell of fire was not on
them.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Man, a man only has to smoke a
cigarette nowadays, and the smell of fire is
on them.
The smell of cigarette is on them, you
know.
Even when you go in a bus or
an elevator or something, and you're not smoking,
you come out with the smell of cigarette
on you.
And here they're cast in the midst of
this furnace, and not even the smell of
fire upon them.
I tell you, that's glorious, isn't it?
It's great to be on the Lord's side,
is all I can say.
Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying, Blessed be the God of
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Phew!
He's turned into a worshipper!
Not completely yet, but anyway.
"...who sent his angel and deliberative servants, who
trusted in him, and they have frustrated the
king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they
should not serve nor worship any god except
their own god."
Dear friends, if these fellows had compromised these
words by Nebuchadnezzar, it would never have been
spoken.
We were thinking this last week with the
fellows about Samson, you know, and his long
hair was a symbol of his separation.
And if Delilah could get at that, his
separation, she could get at his power.
Our power as believers is in separation to
God, separation from the world.
These fellows are living proof of it as
well.
"...therefore I make a decree that any people,
nation, or language which speaks anything against the
God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be
cut in pieces."
Phew!
That's quite a butcher job to take a
whole nation into it, isn't it?
That's what it says.
"...and their houses shall be made an ash
heap, because there is no god who can
deliver like this.
Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
in the prophethood of God."
They could have rationalized it.
We don't bow down in worship, we won't
get promoted.
They didn't bow down in worship, and they
got promoted.
What do you think about that?
Well, I think it's really wonderful.
"...the ropes that bound them hadn't even confirmed
them."
The fire was a very discriminating fire.
Don't you love it?
The fire knew not to burn, not to
singe their hair.
It knew not to burn their clothes.
It knew not to even leave a smell
of fire on their clothes, and yet it
knew to burn the ropes that bound them.
That's wonderful, isn't it?
I call that a discriminating fire.
I love the hymn that says, "...when through
fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace
all-sufficient shall be thy supply.
The flame shall not hurt thee.
I only design thy dross to consume, and
thy gold to refine."
God can do anything.
There's nothing too hard for God.
Really, the whole story makes your head swim
in a way, and yet that same God
is still alive today, is still delivering people
from burning fiery furnaces.
And then the Jews are promoted.
Spurgeon says, "...if you stand up for Jesus,
and the right, and the true, and the
pure, and the temperate, and the good, not
only will you be delivered, you'll do great
good."
This Nebuchadnezzar, he says, was a poor piece
of goods.
"...yet he was compelled to acknowledge the power
of these three decided and holy men.
They were thrown into the furnace, and they
came out of it.
What said Nebuchadnezzar, just now it was, the
image that I have set up, now he
declares that no man shall speak a word
against the God of Israel on pain of
being cut in pieces."
What's the message for us in this wonderful
story?
Well, let me go back, first of all,
to the day when the Caesars were in
power, in Rome, you know.
And Caesar commanded that everybody walk up to
the altar and take a pinch of incense
and put it on the fire of the
altar.
And if you did that, you'd live.
If you didn't do it, you'd die.
Now, it was really quite easy.
You only had to do it once.
And you didn't have to, you could go
and do it and go and worship any
God you wanted to worship.
It was all part of it.
All you had to do was take that
pinch of incense and put it on the
fire.
The worship was no sense to test of
your orthodoxy.
It was a test of your political loyalty.
But the Christians wouldn't do it.
They had to say, as they put that
pinch on the altar, they had to say,
Caesar is Lord.
And they wouldn't say it.
They said, Jesus is Lord.
They refused to do it.
Many of them were terribly persecuted.
Many of them put to death.
I think I've told you before the story
of Bishop Cranmer, one of the bishops in
England, and I was reading again about him
this last week.
Hard to believe.
And he was under terrific pressure to renounce
his faith in Christ as the only way
of salvation.
And finally, under terrible duress and terrible pressure,
he signed a recantation.
He realized what he had done.
He had really denied the Lord when he
signed that recantation.
And he went to them and he told
them.
He took back that recantation.
They said, burn at the stake.
And he said, well, just go ahead.
He was led out to be burned.
And as he was led out there to
be burned and got to the fire, he
first held his right hand and put it
in the fire.
And he said, perish this unworthy hand, the
hand that had signed a recantation.
And he was burned to death for his
faith in Christ.
Perish this unworthy hand.
So what you read about Daniel has gone
on in other places in the history of
the world.
I've told you before, I think the story
of Ruskin and the girl with whom he
fell, the Christian girl with whom he fell
in love.
He was not a believer and she was.
And he proposed marriage to her.
And she said to him, do you love
me more than you love Jesus Christ?
He said, I'd have to say that I
do.
She said, I couldn't marry you.
It's the same kind of devotion that you
have here with these three men, just different
circumstances.
She was stricken with tuberculosis, went to bed,
proved to be terminal eventually.
But even after that, he was still in
love with her.
And he asked to have a meeting with
her.
And they said, Ruskin wants to see you.
And she said that word to him.
She said, do you still love me more
than you love Jesus Christ?
He said, I still do.
She said, it would be no good from
an interview.
She died.
Fiery furnace for her, no doubt.
You know what the emotions are like, what
love is like, what romance is like.
She loved Jesus more than she loved any
of that.
And she died in loyalty to the Lord
Jesus.
A lot of people today are going through
fiery furnaces.
Maybe they're saved and they have an unsafe
family.
And boy, an unsafe family can really make
it rough on you today.
It really can.
It's a fiery furnace.
But over and over again, I've seen, I've
said to them, just be patient.
God will work it out.
We have an intern and his wife from
Australia right now.
And what they have gone through, and what
they are still going through, is really something.
Unsafe family.
Everyone understands.
Family doesn't understand.
You know, this chapter has a prophetic significance
as well as a historical significance.
I used to get pictures of Israel being
miraculously preserved, though scattered, among the Gentiles, don't
you?
After all, the Old Testament is a Jewish
book, and here you have three Jewish fellows
miraculously preserved out of the fires, just as
Israel has been.
No nation in the world has ever suffered
as Israel has suffered.
And Israel should have been extinct long ago,
according to all human considerations.
But it's been miraculously preserved.
You know, the Bible speaks about another furnace
of fire, where there's weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth, grinding of teeth.
Even if these Hebrew fellows had been consumed,
their suffering would have been over in a
few seconds, wouldn't it?
It would have been over in a few
seconds.
In hell, it's never over.
It's never over.
Where the worm dieth not, and the fire
is not quenched.
In hell, men and women suffer eternally.
The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever
and ever.
What a wonderful thing it is to be
saved, to come to the Savior, put your
faith and trust in Him, and know that
the torment and the fire, your eyes will
never see.
Shall we pray?
Father, we thank you for this wonderful story,
true story, of three men who stood true
to you, even under the threat of a
furnace of fire, how you preserved them through
that fire, how you were glorified and magnified
as a result of their faithfulness and steadfastness
and endurance for you.
Oh, we pray that for those of us
who are believers, that we might have that
same willingness to stand for Christ, never to
be ashamed of Him or of His words
in our generation, that we might be true
to Him.
And for any who might not be saved,
who've never taken their stand for the Lord
Jesus, we think of that terrible furnace of
fire, hell, where people will suffer for eternity,
people who had the chance, but they never
took it.
We just pray today for a great ingathering
of souls.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.