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Amen. Thank you, gentlemen. Take
your Bibles and join me in turning to Daniel chapter 3. If you turn to Deuteronomy, that
would be a mistake. I don't have a message prepared
from Deuteronomy today. Daniel chapter number three,
after the service today, the ensemble will head out to New
Testament Baptist Church in Kenston, North Carolina and have a youth
rally there. And then we'll head on to Elizabeth
City for services on Sunday and then head back and hopefully
be home late on Sunday night. So I hope you'll pray for the
ensemble as they help kids throw around rubber chickens and find
gummy worms in tubs of pudding. It'll be a fun time. And I'll
tell you, I go to youth meetings now and I say, thank the Lord
I am not a teenager anymore. I ate enough baby food during
my teenage years to just make me... I thought, how could I
stand that when I was a child, when I was an infant, much less?
It just tastes horrible. Except for maybe some of the
fruit items you could get down. I remember one particular youth
meeting I was in, my prayer was, Lord, help me to get the fruit
one. That was what I wanted. I didn't want the spinach or
the peas or any of that. But anyway, we'll have the youth
meeting tomorrow and be preparing for that tonight. When we come
to this time of the year to break, you always have mixed emotions.
Part of it is like, man, it'll be nice to get a break. Another
part of you says, well, we'll be ready for the students to
come back. And that's the way we feel. And I'm praying that
you'll have a great break and that God will use you. He used
you to be a blessing to people that you wouldn't otherwise be
able to being here on campus. As God puts you in different
places, God will have you to rub shoulders with various people,
to be witnesses. I pray that when you come back
that you'll have some memories, some memorable things of how
God has put you in a specific person's life at a specific time
to help them in a specific way. And so I hope that you'll be
soul conscious over the break. Daniel chapter 3 verse number
14 is where we begin reading this morning. Daniel chapter
3 verse number 14. The Bible says, Nebuchadnezzar
spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden
image which I have set up? Now some of you say, why did
you read it that way? Do you honestly think he said it flat
with no passion at all? I mean, at least I believe he
was upset at this. Verse 15, now if you be ready
that at what time you hear the sound of the cornet, fluke, harp,
sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall
down and worship the image which I have made. Well, but if you
worship not, You shall be cast the same hour into the midst
of a burning, fiery furnace. And who is that God that shall
deliver you out of my hands?" It's pretty arrogant, isn't it?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king,
O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
matter. If it be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver
us from the burning, fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of
thine hand, O King." Now, when you consider what the king just
said, that was a mouthful, wasn't it? That wasn't passive. It was standing their ground,
and they said, you know what? This God that you don't believe
in is the very God that's going to deliver us out of your hand. And so then in verse 18, but
if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve
thy gods nor worship the golden image which thou set up. Then
was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury. And the form of his visage was
changed against Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Therefore, he spake
and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times
more than it was want to be heated. And he commanded the most mighty
men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men
were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their
other garments, and were cast into the middle of the burning
fiery furnace. Therefore, because the king's
commandment was urgent and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame
of the fire slew those men which took up Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, fell down into the midst of the burning
fiery furnace." Have you noticed how many times we've read thus
far and you see those names repeated over and over again? Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego. If I kept talking to you and
telling you the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in every
other verse, I kept repeating them, you'd look at me and you'd
say, Brother Bill, I know who's in the story. But I think that's
God's way of emblazoning in your minds three men of conviction.
Three names that you ought not forget. In verse 24, the Nebuchadnezzar
The king was astonished and rose up in haste and spake and said
unto his counselors, Did not we cast three men bound into
the midst of the fire? And they answered and said unto
the king, True, O king. And he answered and said, Lo,
I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and
they have no hurt. And the form of the fourth is
like the son of God. I want to ask you a question
as you depart for break. Who or what do you fear? You have a phobia, something
that you're scared of. In modern day medicine, the word
phobia carries a largely negative connotation. It's defined as
this, a persistent fear of an object or situation in which
the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically
disproportional to the actual danger opposed, often being recognized
as irrational. Some of you this morning say,
that is me. I was looking through a list of phobias, and it was
a list as long as from Dan to Beersheba, so I won't give you
all the phobias. We're scared of everything. I
read about the fear of washing or bathing. Ablutophobia. Some of you say
my roommate has ablutophobia. We did have one in college my
freshman year that I think suffered from that. It's a shame. It took
me 20 years, though, to diagnose it. a blue to phobia, fear of
bathing and washing. You say, how foolish is that?
You know, another phobia that's described is one that's now get
this, a fear of flowers. Anthrophobia is what it's called. A fear of flowers. Imagine taking
your gal for a stroll through the nicest botanical garden and
she crumples in fear. How foolish is that? We would
say now, let me say if I list a fear of yours, it's here. I'm
really not trying to cast off. The truth is, all of us would
look at other fears and say those are ridiculous. You know, there's
some of you that are horribly scared of spiders. And you say
those things, I just do not like being around, and some people
play off of your fears, unfortunately, a fear of thunder and lightning.
Brontophobia is what it's called. I know of some dogs with brontophobia.
I've been in houses where lightning would flash and the thunder would
roar and dogs would immediately just crawl under the closest
piece of furniture and wince and moan just like they were
a little puppy. Another fear that I had somebody that I traveled
with that had a fear of hair. Shadophobia, it's a fear of hair.
Anytime we traveled and we went into a bathroom, he would scout
the bathroom out and he would make sure that it was devoid
of hair. I had a fear of hair. Another fear is a fear of dentists.
Some people have a fear of dentists. I can attest I have a little
bit of a fear of a dentist. A dentophobia it's called. You
know, another fear that is there is called pyrophobia. a fear
of fire. I'll never forget when one of
our children was very young, I thought to my wife, I said,
let's go out, let's go to a Japanese restaurant. I think that he would
really like to see this show. I always did. I enjoyed sitting
there, and the man would come out, and he would look with that
smile, and he would spray stuff all over the grill. He'd take
a match and light it, and all of a sudden, all this fire...
He would take an onion, he would cut it up a certain way, make
it into a volcano, and he would put his little whatever in there.
I hope it was healthy. I ate it anyway. And he would
light it, and this fire would come out, and we would all go,
ooh and ah. Well, listen, that's great when your children are
5 and 10 and 15 years old, but don't do it to a 2-year-old. I remember sitting there with
delight. I thought, man, I'm going to get to eat a lot. This
is going to be a little bit of a show. The man nods at us. He
puts everything on the grill. He lights it, and in that very
moment, my two-year-old son became superhuman. I mean, all of a
sudden, with massive amounts of strength, he is diving through
my legs. He is trying to push everything
aside and get away. I'll never forget that look in
his eyes. I didn't take any delight. It was as a parent. I said, I
have made a mistake. Now, since then, that fear of
fire, unfortunately, has disappeared and they no longer are fearful
of it. But I want to talk to you this
morning as you head out about a fear that's very healthy and
beneficial, it's called the fear of God. What is it that kept these men from a horrible mistake? What
is it that caused these men to suffer a consequence that the
world would say was very unfortunate, but yet they had a pure and a
clean conscience? What was it? It was the fear
of God. It was the fear of God that caused them to step into
the rejection of men and to step into harm's way. And I ask you
as you leave, who is it that you fear? The Bible is very,
very outspoken about the importance of the fear of God. Deuteronomy
10 and verse number 12, And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy
God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in
all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and with all thy soul? Now, there are some
people, they get smart when you get to the Old Testament, and
they say, well, it's like it doesn't apply to us. That was
written to Israel. And I believe it was written
to Israel, but I'm going to tell you, those things won't hurt
us to do them as well. Those are the very same people that
may take lightly the holiness of God as explained in Leviticus,
and yet they deny what 1 Peter says. As a New Testament reinforcement
of what the book of Leviticus says. I encourage you young people,
listen, I am a dispensationalist, and if I ever turn from being
one, Brother Childs would haunt me and he would beat me till
I was black and blue because he taught me better. But when
I read what God told the nation of Israel, about fearing Him
and walking in His ways and to love Him and to serve the Lord
thy God. Hey, it's okay for you to claim that verse and say,
that's the way I want to be. Psalm 111, verse 10, the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 1, 7, the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 8.13,
the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Proverbs 10.27, the fear
of the Lord prolongeth days. Proverbs 14.27, the fear of the
Lord is a fountain of life. Proverbs 23.17, let not thine
heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the
day long. Here, if you want to learn about
the fear of God, this book will tell you about it. It's one thing for us to hear
about the fear of God, but it's another thing for us to live
in it. And I want to show you this morning
that, listen, what you fear will determine what you do. What you fear will determine
what you do. You understand that if you fear
your friends more than God, you'll please the crowd rather than
your heavenly audience. You understand if you're living
for self-convenience and you're fearing maybe consequences rather
than fearing the God who controls those consequences, you're going
to make a grave mistake. There's some people that don't
get right with God because they fear the consequences more than
they fear God. And I can tell you from personal
experience, I've had to take some bumps on the head because
I've had to get right with God and those consequences were not
easy, but I'd whole lot rather endure those consequences with
a clean conscience than to have no bumps in the way in my conscience
be dirty before God. So what is it that motivated
these men to be great? It wasn't their charisma. It
wasn't their grade point average. Why do we know the names Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego today aside from the fact that it's written
in the book of Daniel over and over and over and over again?
It's because these three men displayed something that is very
badly needed in our day and time. It's called conviction. It's
because these men believed in their God and they were willing
to stand. And when they were tested, they
stood through it. Truth is, we're tested every
day of our lives, but there'll be some tests that will arrive
your way this next week. And what you really believe and
your convictions will be revealed. And so I want us to see some
simple things. I told the fellas this morning, I said, don't you
just sing one verse of that song because we're trying to get out
of chapel quickly, you know? And so they did sing three in
keeping with traditional custom. But the first thing I want you
to see this morning is the command. That's given by Nebuchadnezzar. He's very strong and he's already
been refuted in these people, these Oh, what do you call them? These people beforehand that
came to him, they ended up giving and telling. They were tattlers.
They came up and they said, Oh, King, oh, you wanted this to
happen, but these fellows, they didn't do it. And so now they
are called on the carpet before Nebuchadnezzar. And Nebuchadnezzar,
he applies a tremendous amount of pressure to these fellows. He asks them. He said, do you
not serve my gods or worship the golden image which I have
set up? And then in his next verse, he
really puts down the clamps. And if you don't do it, this
is going to happen to you. Can you imagine that kind of
pressure? I don't think there's a person in this room that we
have ever had the pressure to where somebody was going to take
our lives if we didn't do what was right. I don't know now if
that's you and you've stood the test. Listen to me, I'm very
happy that you've stood that test. But these guys were put
to the point of physical death. They had an immense amount of
pressure that was applied by this command. And young people,
understand this, the world will always challenge your beliefs
as a Christian. The world will always do what
the devil did back in the garden. Yea, hath God said. The devil
will always question and the devil will always push. And listen
to me, if we walk off this campus and we think that we're not going
to be pressed by the world, we're foolish. Some of you, as you go back to
circumstances that you lived in coming before you came to
school, places where you'll go and you'll have freedoms and
liberties that are not wrong in and of themselves, but you
mark it down, there's going to be pressure and the Nebuchadnezzars
of this world will command for you to bow. And I just say be
ready for it. But I want us to quickly move
off of that. I think we all know that there are pressures in life,
whether they're moral, whether they're mental, which the world
cries for us to bow. That's the message that Hollywood
preaches. The world preaches, hey, bow to the God of popularity,
bow to the God of riches, bow to the God of fame. But the people
that bow to those gods are not any more happier than anyone
else when it's all said and done. But I want us to move quickly.
I want us to see the conviction of these men. Conviction is a
bad word in politics and also, I'm afraid, in Christian circles. We live in a day and time when
convictions are minimalized. People say, well, you know, only
major doctrine is important. And I'll tell you what that mentality
has gotten us, young people. It has gotten the acceptance
of social drinking in Christian circles amongst some independent
Baptist churches. Now, I understand that even among
our faculty, there are things, as we read them, you ask certain
questions, and maybe we're not all necessarily on the same page.
And some of you students, you come, you say, what do you mean,
Brother Bill? And some of you know. You may ask somebody, when
did the church start? And of course, nobody says the
Old Testament. If they did, they wouldn't be teaching here. But
you know, sometimes there's a different nuance. Sometimes, well, what
do you think this passage means? What do you think this passage
means? There are certain situations that not everybody is identical.
And these faculty members, they have a maturity and they have
a godliness about it in which to handle it. But when you get
in your dorm discussions and you get there, you pull out the
swords and go at each other. I understand that there are things
that people argue and they bicker about and they say is not important. But we live in a day and time
where there are things that are important that people are explaining
away. One of them being the doctrine of separation. It was a battle that was fought
back in the 1940s and even earlier in the Northern Baptist Convention
in which people said, we're not going to yoke up with unbelievers. We're not going to have them
in our platforms and our services. And we're seeing history repeat
itself. We're seeing an influx of the world that is ushered
into our churches in which worldly means and worldly methodology,
which is declared neutral by some, is still the world regardless
of how they declare it. And my prayer is that God would
raise up a generation in this school that would formulate convictions
from the Bible and that you would stand on them There was an evangelist years
ago, many years ago, I think it was Mel Trotter, but I may
be wrong. He was saved out of a lifestyle of alcoholism and
debauchery, and whenever he would walk down the street, if there
was a bar on the side that he was walking down, he would cross
the road, walk on the other side until he passed it, and then
go back on the other side. Now, some people would laugh
at a man like that, and they would say, you know what, I'll
tell you, I just think that guy's a legalist. You know what I say
to the person that says that with a smirk on his face? I'll
say, you know what, when your life was ruined by alcohol, you
probably be careful too. Young people don't fall into
that trap. You take a man like that who maybe is very sensitive
about a situation, I'll tell you what, I believe he's a man
of conviction. I believe that he's a man that he understands
the propensity of his own flesh, and he says, nobody's going to
drag me that way. I'll take a man over conviction
any day of the week over somebody that just gives everything a
pass. I want to ask you this morning,
are you a young man, are you a young lady of conviction? There's
some of you young men here that are physically strong, but when
it comes to spiritually standing, you're weak. I want to encourage you to do
something. Be just as concerned about your spiritual fitness
as your physical fitness. There are some of you young ladies,
listen, while you are to be meek and mild, hey, there's nothing
wrong with a lady being a lady of conviction, learning to say
no and learning to say yes to the things that need to be said.
These men, it was undoubtedly true that they were men of conviction. I mean, in verse number 17, he
says, If it be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver
us from the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of
thine hand, O King. They had a firm belief and they
didn't hesitate. They said this is something that
we are not going to do. I want to ask you, do you have
convictions in your life? When I came to college, I didn't
have all my convictions down. Had a lot of things that I was
taught. I was taught by my church that I eventually, in time, came
to embrace as I studied the Scriptures, as I embraced them for myself.
And all of you ought to be going through that process. All of you ought to be going
through that process. But are you developing convictions or
are you just wasting time? I'm telling you, there's a world
that's challenging you right now, and it's going to only get
worse. But if you'll have that, you'll have the convictions of
a Shadrach and a Meshach and an Abednego. Listen, you'll have
no regret. But here's where I'd like to
dwell on the last bit of time that we have. I want you to see
the consequences of their conviction. Verse number 19, then was Nebuchadnezzar
full of fury. You ever had a roommate full
of fury? Listen, when you greet your neighbor
with a loud voice in the morning, you will see some full of fury. Here these men, they took a stand
and when they took a stand, guess what? They made somebody mad. There's some people, they enjoy
making people mad. They get a rise out of that.
But if you're here and your idea of the Christian life is to never
offend anyone, you'll never stand for God. There's some people, they just
offend everybody. I'm not talking about unnecessary offense. But
we're living in a day and time where, listen, your world view
has to be shaped by the Scriptures. And listen, the world is going
to come knocking on your door about everything from same-sex
marriage to you name it, as this world continues to drift. And
my question is, are you going to accommodate or are you going
to stand on the Bible? But I guarantee you this. When
you take a stand, I don't care how loving you take it. And you
say this type of behavior is wrong. You're going to make somebody
mad. Let me back up and say something
about the convictions that I mentioned, I believe convictions not only
pertain to doctrine, I believe convictions pertain to behavior. You know, we talk about immorality.
Listen, that's behavior. I understand that, you know,
we can say doctrine and behavior have their connections. And I'm
certainly not against that thesis. But when it's said and done,
there's some people, they talk about having convictions on doctrine
and they have no convictions whatsoever about behavior. Certain
behaviors that are forbidden in the Bible, certain behaviors
that are very clearly wrong. And I want to ask you, do you
have those convictions about your behavior? You have any convictions
about dating? courting. Finding him or her,
whatever you want to call it. You have any convictions about
that? Hey, you have any convictions about about the way that you
dress, do you have any convictions about the material that you view
in your entertainment? Listen, you better come to some
conclusions and you see the consequences. Hey, when you stand for right,
some people are going to be upset with you. That's why if we live
our lives as people pleasers, we won't be God pleasers. This interesting story is told
in Exodus chapter 1. Pharaoh looked around, he said,
there are way too many Israelite kids around here, so we're going
to fix that. We're going to kill all of the
Israelite men and children. So the Bible tells us in Exodus
1 verse 17, But the midwives feared God, and did not as the
king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men and children
alive. Now these are women. Hey, some of you women, you should
say, hey, that's pretty good. You know what, you can be a female
in this room and you can be a young lady of conviction and it wouldn't
hurt our guys a bit to be pressured by some young ladies. And when
I mean by being pressured, I don't mean by you nagging them, but
just being by example saying, you know what, I'm going to be
a young lady of conviction. I don't mind that kind of heat
being applied to these fellows at all. And these ladies stood
up and they said, we don't care if it means dying, we're not
going to kill these children. And by the way, I'm glad there
are people in the medical profession today that still have that conviction. So what happened to them? What's next? What's the next
chapter of the story? You say they were all beheaded.
Well, listen to what the Bible says in Exodus 121. And it came
to pass because the midwives feared God that He made them
houses. You know what God did? God rewarded
them for their staying. But you've got to face the anger
first. You've got to be willing to face the human consequences
before you experience that blessing from God. Somebody says, how
did He make them houses? I don't know. If He said, let
there be light, and there was light, He could say, two bedroom,
two bath, three chair at garage, right there, bam, and it happens. I don't know how He rewarded
them, but I know this, that He did. And young people, I'm telling
you, when you stand against temptation because of viable conviction,
God will reward you too. Now, it's very interesting that
here you see in the deliverance of these fellows, how they're
delivered. Let me tell you, they were delivered in two ways, and
I believe many people are not cognizant of the most important
way. We commonly think about the physical way. We understand
they were thrown into the fiery furnace, and Nebuchadnezzar looks
in and he says, wow, there's not three in there, there's four.
And that's an entire different story and sermon in and of itself. But the physical deliverance
of those boys was not the greatest thing. You know, besides their bodies
being delivered, let me tell you the most important thing,
their conscience was delivered. You say, how do you know that?
Well, look at their response. If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and
He will deliver us out of thine hand, O King. But then He says,
but if not, Be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not
serve thy gods." Their stand was not dependent on what God
was going to do. Their stand was dependent upon
principle and whether God let them be perishing in the fire
or God deliver them from the fire in a miraculous way. Either
way, they were going to be out of Nebuchadnezzar's hair, so
to speak. You see, when it comes to standing
on conviction, young people, we leave the results to God.
We just do right. And if you deliver your conscience,
that's the greatest deliverance. So many times we pray for the
physical deliverance. But a lot better for you to sit
in the midst of a fire with your conscience being delivered than
in a life of ease and have a dirty conscience. But you know how this happens?
How do you stand like a Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego? You
just get a weird Babylonian name and that transforms you, right? You know, being raised in public
school, I came to class and I learned, a brother child's taught me,
he said, you know, their real names were not Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego. He said, Hananiah, Azariah and
Mishael. I was like, what? That's why you need to sit in
the classroom and you need to read the book of Daniel and Revelation
over and over again, just like your teacher tells you, because
you don't know it all. But here they had a change in
name, but their character and their allegiance to God was the
same. How do you get character like
that? You get character like that when you prioritize and
you love God and his word more than anything else. That's how
it happens. It's not by a pill. It's not
by some 20 step spiritual growth process that you do these past
these tests and it's over with. Sometimes I look around and I
wonder, Lord, where the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego's of our
day. You see, these guys sought the deliverance of their consciences
over the deliverance of their bodies. But you know what else
they declared to the world in that act? They said, God is the
most important person in my life. Sometimes you don't need to say
anything, it's just obvious. You know, when you see a young
lady crying. It's probably not a good thing
to say, are you crying? It's pretty obvious. Something
is not right. And you know, guys cry too. They
just don't do it in public. You know, if you see a guy and
he is wincing in pain, it's pretty obvious. Well, when you look
at the acts of these guys that are being thrown into a fiery
furnace, it's an act that preaches to the entire world, God means
more to me than anything else. And our acts, what do they preach?
Our acts reveal our convictions. What is important to us? What
is a strongly held belief? I believe also that in these
fellows lives, they preached another sermon. It preached a
sermon that, hey, God ought to be the most important person
in your life too. When they see here Jehovah as
He undergirds His servants, how does that happen? It happens
by standing on conviction. Instead of fearing the wrath
of man, instead of fearing the consequences of man, realize
that you have one to please, whether it's a break, or a summer
break, or it's the rest of your college career. Later on, you see in verse 30
that the king promoted them. Now, if you'd have talked to
them back in verse 17, after they'd just gotten chewed out
by Nebuchadnezzar, you ever been chewed out by your parents? You
ever been chewed out by somebody and you're like, whoa, that's
not the time. You usually say, well, that's okay, you're going to
promote me. I remember one time, Dwight Smith
and I, we were in a mall, we were passing out gospel tracts,
and we were witnessing, and Dwight had come up with a very interesting
way of witnessing. He went up to the biker and he
said, hey, he said, sir, it was a guy who was a motorcyclist,
and he said, hey, he said, are you good with directions? And
the guy was like, yeah, I guess so. He said, try me. He said,
where would you like to go? And Dwight said, heaven. And the
guy said, if you don't leave me alone, I'm going to send you
there. I'll never forget that. And in wisdom, we walked away. Nebuchadnezzar, at that point,
you'd think Nebuchadnezzar would like to promote them to heaven.
That's what he's got on his mind. But these young men stood true
and they disregarded the consequences, the ridicule. Listen to me. Hey,
there are some of you, you're in an age bracket right now that
while we all have peers that discourage us otherwise, listen,
some of you have influences, you know, that will ridicule
you for the way that you're going. I talked to a young man who was
a student. He was telling me while he was here that he had
coaches that would constantly text him and they would say,
what in the world are you doing at a Bible college? They wanted
him on a football field, they wanted him on a basketball court.
You have those pulls, you have those draws. But instead of fearing
those things, you've got to fear God. You know, this isn't some great
profound truth that I've explained to you this morning where you
say, wow, I've never heard that before. But I'm telling you,
living is a lot better when you stand on conviction when and
when you don't. How is it that young people drop
out of school and fall into an immoral relationship when they
bow to the flesh rather than God? How is it? that people totally
miss God's calling in their lives and live miserably. It's because
they choose to bow to whatever God has distracted them rather
than the God of heaven. You know, what in the world,
what in the world would cause three decent men to be hurled
into some of the hottest flames ever created by man? Most time
when a guy wants to throw himself in the fire, you'd say he's foolish.
Well, here's the difference. These guys weren't want to throw
themselves in the fire, but this other man wanted to throw them
in the fire. And the reason they did it was not out of foolishness,
but out of faith. And I believe with all of my
heart that the devil wants to throw some of you in the fire.
But you're going to have to determine. Whether you're going to live
being controlled by conviction or convenience. You know, this
next week, I want you to look this way and I'm going to close
in prayer this next week. will not so much develop your
convictions as much as reveal them. I can't give you a last minute
injection. I can't say, T.J., come here
after service, let me give you a shot in the arm. Listen, I'm
talking about things that have to be developed in your life
over time and study and a walk with God. You can't just walk
loosely the first half of this semester and expect to be a man
of conviction at spring break. So keep these things in mind.
Beware of the enemy. And if you'll be a man and woman
of conviction. You too can be right beside of
people like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. While they would
not bow their knee to Nebuchadnezzar and his God, they bowed their
knee and their hearts to the God of heaven. And if you'll
do that, you'll have a good break. Once you join me in standing,
let's bow our heads together. In a moment, I want Brother Scoble
to lead us in, Oh, Jesus, I have promised. It's a little bit of
a different song, but I appreciate the words. Our heads are bowed,
our eyes are closed. In a moment, I'm going to pray. Some of you right now, you know
that there's going to be things that are very directly going
to test you. Are you going to be a man or
woman of conviction? Some of you right now, you say,
I know that I'm going to make other people mad. You're not
the first one and you won't be the last one. My prayer is that
you will be a man. And a woman of conviction of
Bible conviction. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
Lord. I thank you for these students.
What a blessing it's been to see how you've worked in their
lives. Lord, thank you for those that came with a chip on their
shoulder. And Lord, now they have a humility.
Lord, I thank you for those that came and just had no clue of
what to do. And Lord, maybe even a disposition
of not even wanting to do your will. And Lord, now their hearts
are tender. Lord, the work is not done. My
life or theirs. I pray that as we've just glanced
at the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I pray, Lord, that
you'll help our young people. Lord, our faculty and our staff,
help us all to be people of conviction. Help us to stand strong in doctrine. Lord, help us to stand strong
in holiness and that, Father, we would please you. Help us
to avoid the trap of fearing the wrath of man more than you. And Lord, help us to be more
concerned about pleasing you than the consequences that it
may bring by disobeying or Lord, by running from those influences
that are pressuring us like the world. You know the specific
needs in this room. God, I pray that you would give
safety. Lord, I pray that you would give spiritual reinforcement.
And that God, this would be a break of victory. in the lives of every
person in this room. We ask these things in Christ's
name.
Who Or What Do You Fear?
Series Spring Semester 2015
| Sermon ID | 81721533507444 |
| Duration | 38:24 |
| Date | |
| Category | Chapel Service |
| Bible Text | Daniel 3:12-25 |
| Language | English |
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