Living in Exile: Face Your Furnace

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, welcome to our worship service. Thank you for joining us on this Sanctity of Life Sunday.

I have a couple of announcements to mention as we begin today, and the first one is regarding Sanctity of Life. You’ll see our baby bottles up here on the table. Please take one and fill it with your spare change to support Comfort Care and their ministry. You can return that by February 19. You’ll find more information in your bulletin.

The men’s group will not be meeting tonight due to the forecasted weather.

We’ll be having our next deacon meeting tomorrow night instead of our regularly scheduled Tuesday night.

And I have one more last call for your pictures to be included in the new church directory. Please email those to the church office by first thing tomorrow morning. Those should be printed and ready to be handed out by the end of the month.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father, we are gathered here today as your people to offer you our sacrifice of prayer and worship. We come from different walks of life; some have walked with you for many years, others are just starting their journey; some are strong, others weak; some are full of joy, others burdened by care. Yet You love each of us in equal measure. You pour your blessings on us in equal measure. And we are so thankful that we are gathered here, now, in service to You. Lift up our hearts and minds to Your word, for we ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Sanctity of Life

As part of this Sunday honoring the sanctity of life, we’re going to pause for a moment to recognize those of our church family who passed in 2022. At the reading of each name, we will ring the church bell, and I’ll ask any family members or loved ones of those whose name I call to please stand:

Milford Hartman saw the face of Christ on January 23.

George Allen saw the face of Christ on March 13.

June Kelly saw the face of Christ on September 18.

Charles “Buck” Harris saw the face of Christ on September 29.

John Cooper saw the face of Christ on October 19.

Roger Sparks saw the face of Christ on November 13.

And Betty Steele saw the face of Christ on November 27.

We miss them and cherish their memories, knowing we will see them again, and that this world’s loss of them is heaven’s gain.

Amen.

Sermon

One of the great things about the freedom our nation offers is the luxury of choices we have every day. Just think of the all the choices you made this morning.

You chose to get out of bed, chose to eat breakfast or not, chose to have coffee or tea or neither, chose what you would wear, chose whether or not to come to church and the route you took to get here. You chose where you sat and which people you talked to, chose whether to sing or just move your lips. Right now you’re choosing whether you’re going to listen to me or not. That’s a whole lot of choices.

Still, even with all those choices you’re blessed with every day, you really only have two. You have two choices in life, two paths to choose from — you either live for the world, or you live for God. There’s no middle ground. You can’t have one foot on one path and one foot on the other. You either say, “I’m going to live for God,” or you say, “I’m going to live for something else.”

All those other choices you make in life are important, but they’re nowhere near as important as which of those two paths you choose. Because the path you choose determines what you worship, and what you worship determines where you’re going to spend eternity.

As a Christian, you raise your hand and say, “I’m going to live for God.” And that’s fantastic, that’s the best choice you’ll ever make. But a lot of us make that choice without understanding what that choice means. We make that choice without realizing the sacrifices we’ll have to make and the trouble it can lead to in this world, because living for God means turning aside from most of what the world teaches you.

But God’s always there for you. Always. And what does God want from you? What does God want from you? He wants your salvation, absolutely. He wants your soul safe with Him. But the way to get there is a relationship. God wants a relationship with you, He wants you to know Him, and the most important part of a relationship is trust.

Bottom line, God wants you to trust Him. Over and over in your life, that’s what He’s saying — “Trust me. Trust me and see what I will do.”

That’s why He’s always calling you to do things you know you can’t do. God says, “Hey, I’d really like you to do this.” And you tell Him, “Well, there’s no way I can do that.” And He answers, “That’s the point. You can’t do it on your own, but you can do it with Me. So trust me. Choose Me.”

But again, with that choice comes consequences in this life. We’re going to see a great example of that this morning when Daniel’s three friends have to choose between bowing to a false god or facing a fiery furnace. Turn with me to Daniel chapter 3. We’re going to begin with verse 1:

King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

And now verses 3-6:

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.”

And last skip down to verses 14-29:

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, O king. 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.”

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 to 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 bound 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 bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” 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.”

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 Abednego 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 singed, 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.”

And this is God’s word.

About nine years have passed between Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2, which we talked about last week, and the events here in chapter 3. And it looks like the king hasn’t learned much from that nightmare. That dream’s affected Nebuchadnezzar in the same way that hard times and trials affect a lot of people — it scared him, but it didn’t really change him.

It seems like the only thing Nebuchadnezzar remembered was Daniel telling him that the golden head of that idol in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was Nebuchadnezzar himself, because now the king makes a golden image that’s 90 feet high.

He has it built in a very public place, and then he surrounds the idol with orchestras. And Nebuchadnezzar commands that whenever that orchestra starts playing, everyone who can hear the music has to stop whatever they’re doing, bow down, and worship it.

Now, a couple questions we need to sort out here before we can move on. First, where’s Daniel in all of this? He’s never mentioned here, is he? It’s just his three best friends. Scripture doesn’t say, but at the end of chapter 2 we find that Daniel has been made ruler over the whole province in Babylon and in charge of all the wise men. So more likely than not, Daniel’s away away on business when all of this happens.

More importantly, though, is the question of what this huge golden idol represents. Don’t skip over this. It’s easy to think this idol represents one of the Babylonian gods, but it doesn’t. We know this for two reasons: first, nowhere in chapter 3 is the idol ever given a name. Second, there’s what Nebuchadnezzar asks in verse 14. The king asks Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, “Is it true that you do not serve my GODS ... OR worship the golden image?”

See that? The gods and the image are separate. They’re not the same thing. So what does this idol represent? Most scholars agree that this image that Nebuchadnezzar sets up and demands that everyone worship doesn’t represent the Babylonian gods, it represents Babylon itself. It’s an idol to the entire nation’s beliefs and values. It’s the Babylonian culture that the people were supposed to worship.

And almost everyone does. Whenever that orchestra starts playing, the people all do what they’re supposed to — they stop their business or their conversations, bow down, and worship the idol.

Some of the people bow because the king demands it. Others probably bow to everything Babylon stands for because they completely believe their culture and values deserve worship. Some of them bow just because they see everybody else bowing. And then there were those who bow because they don’t want to get in trouble. They say, “I’m going to bow because I don’t want to get thrown into that furnace.”

But there are three men who refuse. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego absolutely will not bow down and worship that idol. All those other people of Babylon choose to worship the world. These three choose to worship God and God alone.

And that gets them into a mess, because some of the wise men go to Nebuchadnezzar and say, “O King, we’re all bowing down to that idol just as you commanded. But there are three Jews who won’t do it, and they’re some of the Jews that you said were so wise and insightful. They’re the Jews that you appointed over the affairs of the entire kingdom. They’re ignoring your orders.”

So Nebuchadnezzar flies into a rage. We already know about Nebuchadnezzar’s anger issues, don’t we? Last week he wanted to kill all the wise men. Now he demands Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought before him, and it’s so interesting what happens in verses 14 and 15. You have to read a little between the lines here and you have to understand what the Babylonian culture was like, which isn’t hard because their culture was and is like every other great culture all through history.

Egypt. Babylon. Persia. Greece. Rome. The United States. Culture’s the same for all of them. At that time, Babylon was the most important city in the world. And remember what they did to the Jews after conquering Judah. Nebuchadnezzar brought all the skilled and talented Jewish people to Babylon. He did that with every nation he conquered. So you had hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world in one city, and all those people brought their own religions and values with them.

And it’s Nebuchadnezzar’s responsibility to see that all those different people get along. Babylonian society has to function in an orderly way. That means for the kingdom to prosper, everyone has to have a common culture and a common set of beliefs.

I have no doubt that Nebuchadnezzar reminded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego of that when they were brought in to see him. Because here’s the thing — Nebuchadnezzar likes these three men. He’s promoted them. They have important jobs. They’re smart, and they’re loyal to the kingdom. Plus they’re all friends of Daniel, and Daniel is basically the number two guy in the kingdom. The only one above him is Nebuchadnezzar himself.

Nebuchadnezzar does not want to throw these three men into the fiery furnace. So he tries to reason with them, and the way he tries to reason with them is the exact same way modern culture tries to reason with you.

Here is what Nebuchadnezzar is saying in verses 14 and 15: “Look, guys, nobody is asking you to stop worshipping this God of yours. I’m not asking you to worship my gods instead of your God. What I’m asking is that you worship my gods in addition to your God. You can’t say your God is the only god. You have to say our gods are just as real.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In private, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could worship however they wanted. But on the street, out in Babylon, they had to act like everyone else. They had to bow down to the image.

And those three men have every reason in the world to go along with what Nebuchadnezzar’s saying, don’t they? How hard would it be for any of the three of them to think, “Everyone else is bowing down to that image, so why don’t we just go along to get along? Haven’t we been kind of doing that all these years with having our names changed, with getting a new Babylonian education, with having these positions in the government? It’s not like anyone’s going to notice us bowing down.

“And hasn’t Nebuchadnezzar been good to us? He’s given us a job, given us money, given us nice places to live and a secure future. And isn’t our purpose here to be useful to God? Sure it is. But how useful can we be to God if we’re dead? So why not bow down? We know this idol doesn’t have any power. We know who God is. He’ll forgive us, and we can just get on with living in peace.”

But they say no. They’re not going to bow down, because they’ve chosen their path. They’ve chosen God, and so it’s God first, everything else second. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will not obey the king regardless of the consequences, because to obey the king would mean disobeying God. And obeying what God says is the most important thing in their lives.

The consequences for us probably won’t be that bad, but they can still be crippling sometimes. The pressure you have to conform, to be like everyone else and think like everyone else, is immense. Because you have to go along to get along, don’t you? If you don’t, life can get pretty tough.

We live in the age of cancel culture, when you can lose your job just by saying what the majority don’t agree with. You have to toe the line. If you stand out, if you disagree, if you go against the flow, then you’re asking for trouble.

The problem you face is that if you’re a Christian and you decide to fit in and be like everyone else, what are you really doing? You’re bowing to the idol, aren’t you? If you’re a Christian privately but not one publicly, then you have a big problem. Because you can’t be both.

That’s what non-Christians — and maybe more than a few Christians — don’t understand. We can’t leave our faith at our front door every morning. We can’t keep what we believe private. Because who are you, really? Who are you deep down in your core? To use the modern word, what’s your identity?

Nowadays people will identify with their race, or their sex, or their gender. But your identity isn’t in your race or sex or gender, your identity is in Christ. First and foremost, you are a Christian. That’s your core, and that’s not something you can just set aside. You can’t stop being you.

It’s the same with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They’re not going to stop being themselves. They love their city and pray for their city and they work for the prosperity of the empire, but when they’re made to choose between Babylon and God, they choose God. They draw that line, and we’ve talked about how important it is to draw your lines and refuse to cross them. They draw that line even if it means saying no to the most powerful man on earth.

Of all the brave things you’re called to do as a Christian, that one’s the bravest. To say no to the pressures of society, to swim against the culture’s current, to say no regardless of what will happen. That takes a huge amount of courage.

But if you aren’t fighting that battle, if you aren’t struggling against compromising your faith every day, then you have to ask yourself the hard question of what you’re doing wrong. Because if you’re not fighting that pressure in some way, that means you’ve already surrendered to it.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego aren’t going to surrender to that pressure, and so Nebuchadnezzar is incensed. These three men aren’t going to listen. They’re going to be out there and they’re going to hear the orchestra start up and they’re not going to stop what they’re doing to bow down and worship, and people are going to see that. People are going to see that to these men, that idol is nothing special.

And the king gets even angrier when the three men give their defense. That defense runs from verse 16 through verse 18, and it’s one of the most powerful statements of faith in the entire Bible.

“Sorry, O king,” they say, “but we just can’t do it. Won’t do it. Everyone in Babylon is equal, as it should be. But that doesn’t mean everybody’s also equal in what their idea of truth is. We worship the one true God. So go on and put us in the furnace,” they say in verse 16, “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand. 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.”

Pay attention to that. Look at everything that happens here. First, these three men say they don’t have to give a defense to the king at all. They don’t have to give the king their reasons, because they answer to a higher King. And then they say something extraordinary: “God is able to save us. We believe God will save us. But even if He doesn’t, we still won’t bow to your idol.”

These three people know that God can rescue them, but they don’t know if He will. And they still obey. That’s faith. And that sort of faith goes right back to what I said earlier about a relationship with God. It’s built on trust. It’s built on believing that God will keep His word. Faith is nothing but trust. Secular people love to say that faith is believing in spite of the evidence. That’s not true. Faith is believing in spite of the consequences.

Now, honestly — what are you thinking in a situation like that? Do you know that God is able to save you? Sure you do. Do you know that God wants to save you? Sure you do. But honestly, do you know that God will save you? That one’s a little tougher, isn’t it? And do you know that even if He doesn’t save you, if these are your last moments of life, you still wouldn’t deny your faith?

Or let me put it another way. How many people say something like this: I trusted God once. I loved Him. I put my faith in Him. And all I ever asked in return was one thing, just one good, important thing. But He never gave it to me, and so all of my faith is gone.

Happens a lot, doesn’t it? Maybe it even happened to you once, or almost did. And why is that faith lost? It’s not because God didn’t give you what you wanted — it might seem like that, but that’s not the reason you lose their faith. It’s because you said you served God and loved God, but that love was never really for Him, it was for what you thought you could get out of Him.

A faith like that is never going to last. It’ll crumble. But a faith that says, “I’m going to obey what God wants for the simple reason that God wants it, and I’m going to serve Him and love Him for Himself and not for anything I can get out of it” — that’s a faith that will never break. And that’s the faith we see in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They trust in God because He’s God, and so they can handle anything. That’s how they can say, “We know that God will rescue us, but if He doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.”

And why doesn’t it matter? Listen to me: It doesn’t matter because with faith like that, you can never lose. Ever. If you have God, you have it all. You’re always safe. What’s the worst that could ever happen to you? What’s the worst thing that this life can do to you? It can kill you, right? But if you have God, He uses that worst thing that will ever happen to you to bring about the best thing that will ever happen to you, which is to enter into heaven.

No matter what, you’re always safe. That’s what allows Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to answer the king the way they do. But now Nebuchadnezzar’s had it. He’s done. Nobody talks to him like that, even these three men he likes and values. And nobody refuses one of his commands. He’s raging so badly now that he wants the furnace turned up as fiery as his anger is, so he has his servants heat the furnace to seven times hotter than it was.

The three men are bound and tossed in. Nebuchadnezzar, being the king, doesn’t get close to the furnace at all. He goes some distance away to a place where he can see these three men die. But he doesn’t see that at all, does he? Instead, he sees two shocking things: one is that they’re all walking around inside the fire. The other is that there aren’t three of them in the furnace. There’s four. God had saved them after all.

Now, what can we learn from this?

All through the Bible, fire is used as a metaphor for trials and suffering. And the Bible tells us three big truths about that suffering, three truths that we need to know without doubt in order to survive our hard times.

First, suffering is inevitable. We’re all going to have our hard times. We can’t help it. We’re born into it and surrounded by it. Remember what Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:12 — “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” There will be furnaces in your life. There will be times when you’re going to feel afraid and grieving and down.

But second, if you believe in Christ and rest in him, your times of suffering won’t ruin you. They’ll refine you in the same way that fire refines gold. You’re going to screw up sometimes, sometimes badly. And sometimes the devil will just have his way with you. And sometimes you’ll find out that life is just flat-out hard. But if you hang on to Christ, you’re going to find that sometimes he’ll let you get broken down just so he can put you back together in a way that’s stronger and better than you were before.

And third, and most importantly, you won’t be in your furnace alone. Have you ever noticed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are always together? You never see them by themselves. That’s what church is for, all those people who will support you and be there for you when you need them the most. It wasn’t just one of them in that furnace. It was all three of them together.

But there was a fourth too, wasn’t there? It’s the angel of the Lord. And we know who the angel of the Lord is whenever he shows up in the Old Testament, don’t we? It’s Jesus.

Was Jesus watching out for these three men all this while? Of course he was. But when did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego see him? When did they experience him? Only when they found themselves in that fiery furnace.

And look, we’re almost done so pay attention, this is the most important thing I’ll tell you today: You’ll feel Jesus walking with you in your furnace only to the degree that you know he suffered the ultimate furnace for you.

You and I deserve to lose God forever when we die. That’s the ultimate furnace, isn’t it? That’s hell.

But Christ came to earth and experienced the ultimate furnace so you won’t have to. And the more you understand that, the easier it’s going to be for you to get through your tough times.

How does that work? Look at the end of this passage in verse 29. What does Nebuchadnezzar say? “There is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”

And he’s exactly right, because every other religion has a way to be saved, but they say that to be saved you have to do something. You have to live a good life or be a good person.

But if that’s your thinking, what happens when you get thrown into a furnace? When suffering hits? You’re either going to hate God because you think you don’t deserve that furnace, or you’re going to get down on yourself because you haven’t measured up to what God says you should be doing.

You see? Every other religion says salvation depends on the good works you do. But when you get thrown into that furnace, all those good works are melted away. But if you say to yourself that whatever furnace you’re in is nothing compared to the ultimate furnace that Jesus entered into just for you, your perspective changes. That’s when you say, “If Jesus faced the furnace for me, then I can face this furnace for him.”

That’s when you can trust him to save you, and be right in there with you. That’s when you can have the faith that the furnace you’re in will only make you better.

Christ didn’t suffer on the cross so that you wouldn’t suffer in this world. He suffered on the cross so that through your suffering, you can be more like him.

Where would you be today without your trials? Think about that. Would you be sitting here? Would you have the heart you do, or the love for God that you have? The furnace did that because God was with you there, and He will be with you always. It’s just as Nebuchadnezzar said — no other god is able to rescue in that way.

Let’s pray:

Father we’re so thankful for the example of these three men. We’re thankful for the example of their faith, thankful for the example of their courage, and we’re thankful, Father, for a divine love and protection that kept them safe in the fiery furnace — the same divine love and protection that will keep us safe in our own furnaces as well. There will be times when You will deliver us from the furnace and times you will deliver us through the furnace, but all times and every time You will be with us in the furnace. With you, Father, we are always safe. With You we will be kept well. So give us the courage to say No when No is the best answer. Give us the faith to obey Your word first, and all else second. For it’s in Christ’s name we ask it, Amen.