Sermon Tone Analysis

CPT: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego obey God’s command against idolatry and are rescued from the king’s power.

Purpose: Growing in the Lord means resisting idolatry and focusing on our Savior.

CPS: Focus on the Lord who stands with you.

Introduction

We need to be Christians who remain focused on the Lord.

There are a lot of things in life that want to take our focus and attention away.

We need to be focused on the Lord.

As I’ve gotten older, my eyesight has gotten worse.

When you go to the eye doctor, they put you on this machine, and they have you look through these eye holes.

Now, they are flicking lenses in front of you, and asking, “Is this better?

How about this?”

And they flick one glass lens, to another glass lens, until you find something that makes things look clear.

It always feels like such a life-altering decision.

For me, I’m always flicking back and forth.

“Can I see the first one?

The second one?

The first one?

The second one?

I don’t know, maybe the second one?

They both look bad.

Okay, now there is a third one.

Lets go back to the first.”

Now, I’m supposed to wear glasses for reading, but I forget about them.

Now, I just put the words on the screen really big.

But I pick up a can to read or something, and I think letters got smaller.

I might pick up my glasses, and then its like, “Oh, there are words there!”

Keeping focused is an issue.

For us as Christians, we need to remember to keep our minds and hearts focused on the Lord.

But how can we do that?

How can we remain focused on the Lord?

We will look at remaining focused on the Lord in Daniel 3.

Scripture Reading: Daniel 3

Pray

This passage shows us three things about focusing on the Lord.

First,

Focusing on the Lord will help you resist idolatry.

State the point; Anchor the point; Validate the point; Explain the point

Text: Daniel 3:14-15; Ex. 20:4-6; Col. 3:5; Eph.

5:5; Phil.

4:8

King Nebuchadnezzar commanded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to worship the idol, but they refused.

Their focus on obedience to God helped them resist the lure of idolatry.

The world continues to tempt Christians towards idolatry.

We resist idolatry by focusing our minds and hearts on following Christ.

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Refusing the king’s command to worship the idol

King Nebuchadnezzar was king of the land.

What he said went.

People would die who disobeyed him.

He hears that three men who he has put in charge are not following his command.

This gets him into a rage.

Take a look at verse 14.

His mind is blown away.

He says, “Is it true that you are not doing what I told you and everyone to do?

Now, when the worship band starts playing, worship that statue I made!”

Then he lays out the consequences.

“If you don’t do what I say, if you don’t worship the idol I made, you will die.

You will be thrown into the fire.”

Look at this, “Who is the god that can rescue you from me?”

They had never known a God who was more powerful than a human being.

To them, the king, a human, was the ultimate power.

This was an admission from Nebuchadnezzar that the Babylonian gods were powerless.

They never knew a God who was powerful, who was life-transforming.

God’s command against idolatry

But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they knew a God stronger than a man.

The God of Israel was capable of great things.

And the God of Israel commanded his people not to worship anything or anyone else but him.

Take a look at Exodus 20, verse 4.

These men loved God and followed his command.

They would bow to no one else but God alone.

The nations all around Israel had gods that they made up and worshipped.

There were craftsmen who had ideas about God, had a picture of what they thought a god could look like, and they would carve that picture out, one stroke at a time, until they created a piece of art that would claim represented their god.

The gods of the world didn’t split the sea or give them commandments.

Instead, they were lifeless pieces of carved artwork from human minds, whom these three men knew were powerless and meaningless.

Modern-day idolatry

Do we have these kind of idols today?

While we think we’ve gotten past crafting images of gods and bowing to them, we are constantly crafting idols of gods in our minds.

We are just like those craftsmen.

Crafting an idol of God in your mind: Every time you hear someone say, “I don’t think God would act...” in a way that is clearly against what the Bible says about God, they are like the idol maker crafting an image of God that he is comfortable with.

They sit down with a chisel in their mind, and start crafting the image.

“I don’t like hell, so we’ll take that out, I don’t think God sends anyone to hell.

I don’t like a God that holds people responsible for what they do with their bodies, so we’ll take that out.

I don’t like a God that holds people accountable to what they say or think.

In fact, I like a God that I can pretty much ignore, but bring out whenever I’m feeling needy.

Yep, that’s good.”

They’ve got the image, and then they place that god somewhere in their mind.

It’s a god they feel comfortable with.

Well, that’s nice and all, but that is not how reality works.

You don’t look at grass or a mountain and say, “I don’t really like that color, or I don’t like where that’s at.”

You might believe with all of your heart that the grass is a different color, or the mountain is in a different place, but that doesn't change reality.

We need to deal with reality the way it is, and we need to deal with God according to his terms, not our own.

We need to get the idols of gods that we make up out of our minds, accept God according to his revelation, and follow him according to his terms, not ours.

Greed as idolatry

For most of the Bible, an idol refers to a piece of carved artwork or some statue or item that people bowed down to and worshipped.

But the New Testament also expands on this view of an idol to the concept of greed.

Take a look at Colossians 3, verse 5.

You also see this in Ephesians 5, verse 5.

Greed is this concept, this thing within the human that wants more and more.

It wants to fill some inner desire that’s never filled.

What does greed have to do with idolatry?

When you are greedy, you are putting your trust, hope, and desire into something or someone other than God.

You might say in your heart, “I need God plus something else.”