Sermon Transcript Tone Analysis

jumping into a new sermon series, and You know it so yeah gauge is going to take kids out for junior church.

So anyone who would like to go with Gage and Haley can head out for that.

You don't have to be a little young kids.

You can be older kids, I guess, too.

If you want to go with them, you know.

So up Brian yet.

You got to stay in sing later but I'm starting a new series and I'm actually it's kind of the messages are all going to be based off of some of the different things we hear mentioned in the song, another, in the fire in Bryan and Jamie will sing that forces are closing song today.

but you know, of the first one that talks about is Daniel and the fiery furnace And I'm going to kind of summarize that passage for the sake of time, cuz it's kind of a long one.

But, you know, the gist of the whole story is that King Nebuchadnezzar comes up with this.

Great idea to build this 40 ft tall gold statue.

And every time you hear the music, you got a bow down to it.

Well, some astrologers decide to come in and rat out, Shadrach Meshach in a Bendigo.

Now, these are the three top guys for the Jews and Babylon.

They are the ones who are in charge of everything there.

And these astrologers come in and said, hey, you know, King Nebuchadnezzar.

These guys that you really liked this will call him Rack Shack and Benny to make it easier.

So I don't have to pronounce it at it.

They don't bow down, everytime the music plays just ignore it.

Well the thing is Nebuchadnezzar, really like those guys, so he gives him a chance, even though he's mad.

He calls them in and he says, hey, Is it true that every time you guys hear the music, you don't bow?

They say, yep.

We don't and we're not going to And that makes him really mad.

So he says, well, I'm going to have you thrown in the fiery furnace cuz you know that's the rule and then we'll see what your God will do.

and I love verse 16 here where it says, Shadrach Meshach in a Bendigo replied to him, King Nebuchadnezzar, We do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.

If we are thrown into the Blazing furnace, the God, we serve is able to Deliver Us from it and he will Deliver Us from your Majesty's hand.

But even if he does not, we want you to know your majesty that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up.

That really made Nebuchadnezzar mad.

He did not like that.

So he ordered that the furnace be heated to seven times hotter than it's ever been heated to do and it got so hot that the soldiers who bound them and took them to throw them into the furnace.

Actually died from the heat as they were throwing them in.

but then, after they're in there, King Nebuchadnezzar notices.

Wait a minute.

I had to throw three guys in their right.

Monkey prices for in the furnace.

It says that he said the other one looks like a son of the Gods.

So that Nebuchadnezzar was like hey why don't you guys come back out?

When they came back out of the fiery furnace, he noticed that they weren't even burn their clothes.

Weren't even Scorch not a hair on their head was singed and they didn't even smell like, fire.

So God had delivered them.

You know, if we think about it, most of the time, we like to try to live our life in obscurity, right?

Because of security is better than standing out from the crowd.

When you stand out from the crowd you get noticed and you know what made me think about the TV show Survivor, right?

You know if you ever watch that.

Who are the people that get taken out first in that game?

The people who make all the waves, the people who stand out the people who try to do everything their way.

So it's better to blend in.

Those are usually the people that make it to the end.

I also remembered a friend of ours, one time when I was in Bosnia, he had been a sniper during the whole war and one of the missionaries was showing him his new Chrome hiking stick that he had gotten as a gift.

But he says I would have loved that as a sniper during the war.

He's like what he goes.

Bright shiny things, make you a great Target.

And you know what I thought about that.

That's what happens when we're in the middle of a battle.

You know, anything that sticks out, stands out becomes a Target, However, the problem is, you know, standing out is what God has called us to do.

There is no such thing as an incognito Christian even though unfortunately a lot of us try to live life that way.

You know, another passage that talks about not conforming.

Is Romans 12:2 that says, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you'll be able to test and approve.

What God's will is his good pleasing and perfect will You know, is Christians.

We all know that there's a lot of pressure for us to conform and go along with the way the rest of the World Views things and Shadrach Meshach in a Bendigo there.

Lives were no different.

You know, even though they had a high position, they still were being pressured to conform and do what they were being told by the king.

So they had a choice to make.

you know, they could choose to bow down and blend in like the others and skate along without any problems.

Or they could stand up for what they believed in.

And face the consequences which the King has made it pretty clear what the consequences were.

And, you know, for all of us, Believers, that's a choice.

We have to make each and every day.

Are we going to go with the flow and be unnoticed?

Or we going to stand up for what we believe in?

And become a target for persecution.

You know, going against the flow and having to face the furnace that definitely is something.

I think that we all would agree, takes a lot of faith.

And I think there's four things that I want to quickly go over that we can learn from their demonstration of faith.

The first one is that faith is rooted in God's word.

You know, these three men said that.

We don't need to defend ourselves to your king Nebuchadnezzar.

We don't need to apologize or try to come up with some way to justify what we're doing.

We're doing this because we have faith in God.

And the reason that they were willing to stand up and do that was because they knew that the word of God was absolute truth.

They knew that they could trust it.

You know, they didn't need to debate the matter with someone.

They just knew that bowing down to anything other than God was wrong.

And they weren't going to do it.

They knew that there was only one God and like I said, they knew this because it was written in the Bible.

So their faith was based upon God's word.

Not the opinion of the king.

If you think about it, one of the first songs that we teach our kids is also a Bedrock of our faith.

You know, Jesus loves me this.

I know why?

Because the Bible tells me so,

Sometimes I think we sing that is kids and don't realize the profound truth.

That's in that we believe it because the Bible says it, We've talked about that a lot that our faith is rooted in that truth and we don't need to apologize for it.

We don't need to, you know, apologize for what is said in the word of God.

Your Jesus understood this and he was tempted.

you know, and Luke Chapter 4, verses 1 through 4, you know,

When Jesus is tempted by the devil, he doesn't try to debate theology with him.

He just tells him what the word of God says.

Matthew Chapter 4, verses 1 through forces.

Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil.