Daniel 9: Navigating the Furnace

As Trevor and I said earlier, welcome to Family Worship with the church body of Eastern Hills Baptist Church on this first Sunday of March. Can you believe that spring and Easter are just around the corner? Anyway, if you are visiting with us this morning, either here in the room or online, I’d just like to express my appreciation for your visit this morning, and to let you know that we’d like to send you a note of thanks for your being here today. If you’re in the room, you can fill out a welcome card that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Just fill that out at some point during my message, and you can either drop it in the offering boxes by the doors after service, or you can bring it down to me after the benediction, because I’d love to meet you, and I have a gift that I’d like to give you to thank you for being our guest today. If you’re joining us online this morning, you can let us know you’re here by going to ehbc.org and clicking on the I’m New tab. At the bottom of that page, you’ll find our online communication card. Just fill that out so we can get back in touch with you this coming week. Again, thanks for being here this morning.

I’d also like to take a moment to say “thanks” to our Safety and Security team. We have so many volunteers who serve the church family each week during Sunday morning and other events, walking the campus and ready to step up in a variety of ways. For example, a few weeks ago, one of our members took a tumble down the stairs, and the Safety and Security folks were a tremendous help. Thanks for what you do, Safety & Security teams.

Announcements

Don’t forget that we have a Special Called Business Meeting right after Family Worship this morning. We’re going to take a quick intermission after our benediction so that I can greet our visitors and guests, and so parents can pick up their kids from Kids Ministry and Nursery, and then we’ll have a short meeting on only the topic of whether to enter into the Church Consulting Authorization with Auxano. Only church members can vote at that meeting, but visitors and guests, you are welcome to stay if that’s of interest to you. You can get a glimpse of how EHBC makes major decisions together.

Opening

For the past two Sundays, we’ve considered the third chapter of Daniel, which is normally covered in a single sitting in books of children’s Bible stories. The king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, set up a gigantic idol statue (probably of himself) and demanded that everyone on the government payroll bow down and worship it. We saw that false gods are always tyrants, demanding worship and fealty that only belongs to God Almighty. Then we saw last week that facing difficulties in our lives provides an opportunity to trust the Lord, even if trusting Him might look irrational to the world. We also acknowledged the fact that truly trusting God means believing that God will do what He KNOWS is best, but that that doesn’t necessarily mean that He will do what we THINK is best. He is, after all, God. And our three Hebrew men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (the Babylonian names for Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), displayed this kind of trust when they told Nebuchadnezzar that the were absolutely certain that God could rescue them from the furnace and from the king, but that didn’t mean that He would do so. And either way, they declared to the king, “we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up.” They were willing to accept God’s decision by faith, and so should we.

So what happened next? How did the king respond to their pledge of allegiance to Yahweh? We see this in the remainder of the chapter, which will be our focal passage this morning. So turn in your Bibles or your Bible apps to Daniel 3:19-30, and please stand as you are able to do so in honor of God’s Word as we read this passage:

Daniel 3:19–30 CSB

19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and the expression on his face changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He gave orders to heat the furnace seven times more than was customary, 20 and he commanded some of the best soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the furnace of blazing fire. 21 So these men, in their trousers, robes, head coverings, and other clothes, were tied up and thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. 22 Since the king’s command was so urgent and the furnace extremely hot, the raging flames killed those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire. 24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in alarm. He said to his advisers, “Didn’t we throw three men, bound, into the fire?” “Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” they replied to the king. 25 He exclaimed, “Look! I see four men, not tied, walking around in the fire unharmed; and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” 26 Nebuchadnezzar then approached the door of the furnace of blazing fire and called, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you servants of the Most High God—come out!” So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire. 27 When the satraps, prefects, governors, and the king’s advisers gathered around, they saw that the fire had no effect on the bodies of these men: not a hair of their heads was singed, their robes were unaffected, and there was no smell of fire on them. 28 Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, “Praise to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! He sent his angel and rescued his servants who trusted in him. They violated the king’s command and risked their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. 29 Therefore I issue a decree that anyone of any people, nation, or language who says anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will be torn limb from limb and his house made a garbage dump. For there is no other god who is able to deliver like this.” 30 Then the king rewarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

PRAYER (School: 6th graders)

Each of us have decisions in our lives that change our trajectory in a major way. I mean, sure, the place where we are right now is the culmination of a zillion different such decisions, so I guess you could say that every decision has been a part of that trajectory. However, I mean that there are specific decisions that turn the course of your life and can never be undone, the course can never revert back to what it once was. Let me give you an example from my own life:

Probably most of you know that my father died just before I turned 15. We lived in Silver City at the time, and I was a sophomore at Silver High. My father struggled with clinical depression before they really understood it, and before there were particularly effective medications to combat issues with brain chemistry. My father took his own life in October of 1986, and shortly thereafter, my mother moved the rest of my family to Albuquerque because of a job opportunity. I wanted to stay behind in Silver and finish high school there. So some dear friends offered to let me live with them for at least the rest of the school year.

However, I didn’t have the motivation on my own at that point to do what was necessary to succeed in high school. A straight A student before my father’s death, I was failing every class but choir by Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving break, I went “home” to be with my family (to a “home” I’d never been to), and talked about what was going on with my mom. We decided that the best thing for me was to leave Silver and come to Albuquerque. I worked for the rest of the term to pull my grades out of the gutters (C’s and D’s), and over Christmas break, I moved up here.

That one decision completely changed my life’s course. I went from Silver City, a fairly small town of like maybe 15,000, to the largest city in the State with a population of about half a million. I went from Silver High, which only had about 400 students total at the time, to Manzano High School, with a student population of about 2400, into a sophomore class of probably around 700. I knew no one at Manzano except my younger sister.

And since I was having such a hard time in school, we decided to make it easier for me for the rest of the year, and put me in less demanding classes than the honors classes I was taking in Silver. Because of that, I landed on a different educational track at the school, and was not allowed to take chemistry or physics, algebra 2 or calculus. But aside from the negatives, that decision placed me where my future wife was, and through her ministry in my life, to Eastern Hills, and more importantly, to hearing the Gospel and surrendering my life to Jesus, which irreversibly changed my life’s course again.

But that one decision to leave Silver changed the direction of my entire life. It impacted my relationships. It impacted my prospects. But at the same time, it ultimately impacted the very reality of my life. Everything from that point forward was different.

And what we see in our focal passage today is the result of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s decision to stay true to the One True God instead of bowing down to Nebuchadnezzar’s false idol. The entire course of their lives changed in that moment of decision. It impacted their relationships. It impacted their prospects. It impacted their reality. And like them, church, when we decide that we are going to follow our Lord step-by-step in the Spirit, day-by-day trusting in Him, our lives are likely going to be impacted in some of the the same ways.

1: Following God might impact our relationships.

Much of what I’m going to say this morning is for the church. This is because, in the comparison, our three Hebrew men were already followers of God when they were captured, and maintained that faith in God throughout their time in captivity. So in that case, they are to be a lesson for the church, not necessarily for the world, which is how we’ve couched the whole book to this point: We are compared with Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and we find ourselves in our own modern version of Babylon today. So when I say “following God,” I’m not talking (at this moment) about salvation. I’m talking about discipleship—being someone who follows Jesus.

And when we really give ourselves to following Jesus, it’s almost certainly going to impact our relationships with those who don’t. When the guys told Nebuchadnezzar that they would neither bow to his idol nor serve his gods, something snapped in the king of Babylon:

Daniel 3:19–20 CSB

The Scripture tells us that the king was furious with these three managers of the province of Babylon, which he had already been once in this scenario, back in verse 13 when he heard that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had refused to bow down. But not only that, the Bible says that, “the expression on his face changed toward” them. This is a way of saying that he had previously looked on them with some favor, but that ship had sailed. The working relationship that he had with them (which had been before the dream of the statue), had been good, but now, he hated them. And so they are going to go into the furnace.

Let me take a moment to explain how Babylonian furnaces worked. They were built for mass-producing bricks. And they were gigantic (for furnaces). Generally, they were dug into the sides of hills, and looked something like a railroad tunnel, although not as long of course. They would have been open at one end, and then had a hole at the top dug through the hill for adding material to the fire while it was burning. These furnaces reached temperatures of perhaps 1,800 degrees F.

Now, Nebuchadnezzar was so angry with our three Hebrew friends that he gives an order that puts his fury on full display, which biblically shows him to be a fool, according to Proverbs:

Proverbs 29:11 CSB

11 A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise person holds it in check.

He orders that the furnace be superheated: seven times more than normal. They didn’t have thermometers to measure how hot the furnace really was, so this doesn’t mean “heated to 12,600 degrees F.” Using the number seven in this way often meant “completely or totally.” There are a few examples of this in Scripture, but I’ll just use one from Proverbs:

Proverbs 26:16 CSB

16 In his own eyes, a slacker is wiser than seven who can answer sensibly.

This is saying that the foolish man (here called “a slacker”) is wiser to himself than anyone who is sensible.

So Nebuchadnezzar’s command was really to make the furnace “as hot as possible.” And then he commanded his very best soldiers to tie up the guys and throw them into the furnace. He was taking no chances with them. No hope of just getting away with a few burns. No possibility of escape from their bonds. No way for them to overpower those putting them into the furnace.

And why was this happening to them? It was happening because they refused to worship any god other than the Lord. They would not bow down to idols. They would not obey the king if it meant disobeying God. Their decision to determinedly follow God had radically changed their relationships with the Chaldeans or the wise men of Babylon, with the others holding Babylonian governmental posts, and most severely with Nebuchadnezzar.

The same thing might happen to us. When we decide that we are going to follow God no matter what—living the life of faith—then that might mean that some of our relationships are going to be impacted.

If we are living the life of faith, the world is going to have a problem with us. We simply will not toe the lines that the world demands we respect, and there are a LOT of these lines. But ultimately what they all come down to is idolatry: we will not worship the “gods” of this world, and we refuse to serve them. Jesus spoke of this in John 15:

John 15:18–20 CSB

18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you. 20 Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

So if we follow Jesus, we should actually expect that Babylon is going to hate us. The “Babylon” at the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry, Rome, hated Him. And we should expect that the Babylon of our day will hate us as well. This is going to impact our relationships with those in the world, who share the world’s values, and who worship the world’s “gods.”

If you’re going to walk with Jesus, there might be people that decide that they don’t want anything to do with you. Also, you might have to shift the priority of certain relationships if those relationships lead you to compromise your allegiance to Christ:

2 Corinthians 6:14–18 CSB

14 Do not be yoked together with those who do not believe. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? 15 What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said: I will dwell and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. 17 Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord; do not touch any unclean thing, and I will welcome you. 18 And I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

Of course, we cannot leave the world. Being separate doesn’t mean that we never interact with the world. It doesn’t mean that we hate them. It doesn’t mean that we look down on them. We are all called to be available to God for His use in sharing the Gospel to the lost world, because God loves them. They are His special, precious, image-bearing creation just like we are. And they need to hear about Jesus and see Jesus in us. They just are not to be the people who have the deepest influence on our lives. We should strive to have the deepest influence on theirs.

Now, not only did these three Hebrew men have to face a change in their relationship to the king of Babylon, but their prospects had also been profoundly impacted by their dedication to God.

2: Following God might impact our prospects.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had been promoted to important positions in the Babylonian government. They were managers of the central province of the empire, and appeared to even have some measure authority over the wise men of the day, since the Chaldeans had accused them of wrongdoing out of what appears to be jealousy. And now, because of their determination to live the life of faith, all of their prospects appeared to literally be about to go up in smoke.

Daniel 3:21–23 CSB

21 So these men, in their trousers, robes, head coverings, and other clothes, were tied up and thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. 22 Since the king’s command was so urgent and the furnace extremely hot, the raging flames killed those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire.

This part of the passage is pretty straight-forward. The three Hebrew men were tied up and taken, fully clothed, to the opening in the top of the furnace. The Scriptures tell us that the king’s command was so urgent that the soldiers didn’t have time to put on any protection from the heat of the furnace, and when they dropped Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace, it was so hot at the opening that it killed the soldiers. Nebuchadnezzar’s foolish judgment on the guys had collateral victims. And it appeared that standing for Yahweh had caused Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to lose everything.

Brothers and sisters in the faith, as we saw last week, trusting God’s plans for our lives means that we trust Him to do what He KNOWS is best, rather than demanding that He do what we THINK is best. And it is entirely possible that putting your allegiance to Jesus above your allegiance to anything and everything else will impact your prospects as well, because we aren’t promised worldly wealth, fame, or popularity as a part of the blessings of walking with Christ.

In fact, as Alistair Begg writes, we probably should expect to face the opposite of these things as we walk by faith:

“The Christian life is sometimes going to look like resisting the attractiveness of an idol, refusing to meet the expectations of everyone else, and accepting the consequences of mockery, ostracization, unemployment, and worse.”

—Alistair Begg, Brave By Faith

As we said in the first message of this series, Babylon is going to try to press us into its mold. One of the ways that it does this is through tempting us to compromise the integrity of our faith in order to gain material wealth or worldly renown. But the world cannot be negotiated with or reasoned with. It demands complete allegiance. Therefore, holding fast to Jesus might cost us, and it might cost us dearly.

The really crazy thing about culture today is that the world’s positions are almost an all-or-nothing proposition. Agree with everything the world says, or you’re the enemy. The world has no problem turning on its own who don’t buy into every lie the world is selling. Author J.K. Rowling is an example. She isn’t a Christian. In fact, she’s very liberally progressive in her thinking. But when she insisted in 2020 that there is both a biological and lived experience difference between men and women, and that men who claim to be women are not actually women and vice-versa, she was labeled transphobic and has been in a battle ever since, with many people—even several whose careers were literally made by the Harry Potter films—trying to “cancel” her, calling for boycotts of her books, films, games, and shows. People want to destroy her prospects because she won’t bow down to the lies of their gods. I get the feeling she’s not particularly worried about it, though.

But regardless, it’s as if the world says, “buy the whole lie, or you’ll be in trouble.” And for those of us who are sold out to Jesus, we cannot buy any of it. We have to hold to the truth, even if it is costly. Look at how Jesus spoke about this to His disciples in the Gospel of Matthew:

Matthew 10:16–22 CSB

16 “Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. 17 Beware of them, because they will hand you over to local courts and flog you in their synagogues. 18 You will even be brought before governors and kings because of me, to bear witness to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they hand you over, don’t worry about how or what you are to speak. For you will be given what to say at that hour, 20 because it isn’t you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father is speaking through you. 21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. 22 You will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

As we follow Jesus, we very well might face attacks that will bring risk to our prospects. While it has always seemed to me that being handed over to “local courts…governors and kings” could only happen in other places, that possibility is becoming more and more likely in our great nation, and so we must be ready to face it when it comes.

But even though following God had such a dramatic impact on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s relationships and prospects, the fact that they walked with God also impacted their reality.

3: Following God will impact our reality.

We have already read and know what happened when these three Hebrew friends were tossed into the furnace. Nebuchadnezzar, who could see into the “tunnel” of the furnace from a distance, jumped up and verified that only the three men had been thrown bound into the furnace. They affirmed that that was the case.

At temperatures that were hot enough to kill the soldiers at the top opening, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should have been completely consumed nearly instantaneously upon falling into the furnace. But they weren’t. Instead, the king saw something he didn’t expect:

Daniel 3:25 CSB

25 He exclaimed, “Look! I see four men, not tied, walking around in the fire unharmed; and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s reality was impacted because they walked with God. In fact, some would say that they literally walked with God in the fire, because some hold to the idea that this was a theophany, or a physical manifestation of God Himself. Or that it was specifically a christophany, a pre-incarnate visitation of Jesus, God the Son. The fact that Nebuchadnezzar says that the fourth “looks like a son of the gods,” is evidence of that fact. Certainly the Babylonian king in the 6th century BC had no clue about trinitarian thinking. He was simply using terms that he understood. In verse 28, he actually says that this fourth must have been an “angel.” I would hold to the idea that this was an angel, perhaps even the angel of the Lord, a special angel who appears on behalf of God and through whom God speaks.

Regardless, our three Hebrew friends were walking around in the super-hot furnace with this figure. They had given the answer that God could deliver them, and God has proven it by modifying reality to do so. Our God is a God who delivers. He is the hero of the book of Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar called them out of the furnace (calling only the men, not the angel), and when they came out, they had no burns, no scorched clothes, no singed hair, and they didn’t even smell of smoke. He called them “servants of the Most High God,” acknowledging that the truly miraculous had occurred to them:

Daniel 3:28 CSB

28 Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, “Praise to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! He sent his angel and rescued his servants who trusted in him. They violated the king’s command and risked their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.

Nebuchadnezzar’s whole tune changed, and he declared praise to the God of the Hebrews, confessing his respect and admiration for the fact that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had held fast to their faith even in the face of (almost) certain death. This doesn’t mean that he was a surrendered believer, though. But his reality had changed, and as a result, he made a decree that changed the lived reality of all Jews throughout the Babylonian empire:

Daniel 3:29–30 CSB

29 Therefore I issue a decree that anyone of any people, nation, or language who says anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will be torn limb from limb and his house made a garbage dump. For there is no other god who is able to deliver like this.” 30 Then the king rewarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

The three friends has experienced something incredible, and as a result, they lived out a prophecy that had been written about one hundred years earlier in the book of Isaiah:

Isaiah 43:1–2 CSB

1 Now this is what the Lord says— the one who created you, Jacob, and the one who formed you, Israel— “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and the rivers will not overwhelm you, When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched and the flame will not burn you.

But I don’t want you to hear that God will always do such things. He had a purpose in this, something that He was doing in Nebuchadnezzar’s life (which we’ll start looking at next week), and this was a part of it. What we need to notice here is that while God could have chosen to save the guys FROM the ordeal of the furnace, He didn’t. Instead, He chose to refine them IN it, and deliver them THROUGH it.

In Psalm 66, the psalmist writes about this kind of deliverance through fire—the kind that refines us:

Psalm 66:10–12 CSB

10 For you, God, tested us; you refined us as silver is refined. 11 You lured us into a trap; you placed burdens on our backs. 12 You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us out to abundance.

We are not guaranteed miraculous intervention in our trials and struggles, but we can know that God wants to refine us as we face them, helping us to become more and more like Jesus. As I said last week, if we never face trials, we will never grow in that aspect of our spiritual reality. Peter promised in chapter 1 of his first epistle that God’s power “guards” us in the midst of our trials, so that we might be refined so that Jesus is praised, glorified, and honored through us:

1 Peter 1:5–7 CSB

5 You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials 7 so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

God wants to refine us, and He’s going to us fiery trials to do it. If we never face such trials, or if those trials do not have a refining impact on us, then we should be deeply concerned that perhaps we aren’t following Jesus, because:

4: Following God will impact our eternity.

I’m going to leave Daniel for just a moment for this last point, and I share this point specifically to those who have never trusted Jesus Christ, never believed the Gospel. There is another blazing furnace mentioned in the Scriptures, and it’s not the kind that refines. Fire also shows up in the Bible as a means of judgment. Certainly this is what Nebuchadnezzar thought he was doing when he threw the guys into the furnace, but it turns out that that was a refining fire in God’s hands. However, in explaining his parable of the wheat and the weeds, and the parable of the fishing net, Jesus revealed the blazing furnace of God’s judgment.

Matthew 13:41–42 CSB

41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom all who cause sin and those guilty of lawlessness. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:49–50 CSB

49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out, separate the evil people from the righteous, 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This is what all those who do not belong to Christ face: judgment by fire. In fact, the blazing furnace of God’s wrath is also called the lake of fire in the book of Revelation:

Revelation 20:15 CSB

15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

But how could this be? Why would God do this? Well, God created us to be in a relationship with Him, but we chose to rebel against Him instead of obeying Him. This rebellion is called sin, and we all sin. Because God is perfect in all His aspects and ways, He is perfectly just. We deserve to be judged because of our sin, separated from God for all eternity in a place we call hell—that place of judgment by fire. There is nothing that we can do to earn our way back to God. We can’t do enough good to cover the evil we’ve committed in our actions, our thoughts, and our words. But just as God is perfect in His justice and so we deserve this punishment, so God is also perfect in His love—He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life and die in our place so that he could pay the penalty for our sins and restore us to a right relationship with God through faith in Him. If we surrender to His call to believe the Gospel, believing that Jesus Christ is both our Savior and our Lord, then our name is written in the book of life, and we will never face God’s judgment by fire.

Don’t believe the lies the world would tell you that hell will be a fun place, because all of the killjoy Christians won’t be there. It will be beyond the deepest torment that you can conceive, because not only will it be a place of judgment by fire, but the presence of God, the presence of love itself, will never be there.

I call on you this morning to surrender to the Gospel, believing that it is only because of what Jesus has done that you can be saved, and trust Him for your salvation. Following Jesus will impact your eternity.

Closing

In closing, I want to bring one additional wrinkle that I didn’t have the time to write a full-fledged point for. And that is that our following God should impact others, and it might do so for a long time and in amazing ways. Nebuchadnezzar praised God, and proclaimed that speaking badly about Yahweh was illegal throughout the empire. The faith of these three Hebrew boys impacted an entire empire.

In my own story, I have no idea how God has worked in the lives of others through how He saved me and how He’s used me over the last 35 years since I came to faith. How does He want to use you to impact others for His kingdom through your faithful decision to follow Him every day?

Christian, you might be in the midst of a battle for your allegiance. The world is calling, but you belong to Jesus. Will you repent this morning of your desire for the things of the world, and commit to following Christ? Or perhaps you have experienced the call of Jesus on your life for special service to Him in ministry or as a missionary—this morning, will your respond by publicly declaring your decision to follow Christ in that way? You church family wants to celebrate that and help you strengthen your walk for that service.

If this morning, you’ve heard the message of the Gospel and believe that God is calling you to repentance and faith, believing that Jesus died for your sins so you could be forgiven, was buried, and rose again, defeating death, so that you could have eternal life, would you come and tell one of us that this morning as the band is playing in just a moment? We want to rejoice with you in that and help you as you start this journey of faith. If you’re online, send me an email at bill@ehbc.org

Giving

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Lev 8-9, Psalm 62)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting Wednesday, praying for North American Missionaries

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Matthew 5:10–12 CSB

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. 11 “You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. 12 Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Special called business meeting. Parents go get your kids. Folks who aren’t members, you’re welcome to stay if you’d like. Also need some to stay and help move pews after the meeting for our lighting upgrade.

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