Are You a Principle-Centered Person?

Have a question for you this afternoon. Are you a principle-centered person? I realize any time someone throws a question at you and just simply lays it out there bare, no padding and no lead-in, most people take the position of, well, let me wait until I hear the other shoe drop. And then that's fair. You've been baited enough times from the pulpit, I'm sure, that you say, okay, let me hear the rest of it.

Well, it's going to take me the whole sermon for you to hear the rest of it. But let me give you a modern illustration, a powerful modern illustration of principle-centeredness. It's an illustration that has become a part of the fabric of this generation, and it probably will remain a part of the fabric of this nation for some time into the future. All of us are keenly aware on September 11, 2001, when terror terrorists struck the World Trade Centers, that the alarms went out all over the New York City area for firemen to respond to the disaster.

They rushed to the scene and into those two buildings in an attempt to save as many lives as humanly possible. These New York City firemen demonstrated in the deepest physical sense what it meant to be principle-centered.

Because a fireman gave their lives saving human life from those two fire-ravaged buildings. And it was not just because it was their occupation, but because they were principle-centered. They didn't have to die. They deliberately chose to follow the principle of saving other lives knowing that it may cost them their lives in the effort. That's principle-centeredness. I don't know of a better social illustration, contemporary social illustration, than that of the New York City firemen on 9-11.

Often times in fleshing out what something is, it's equally important to know what something isn't. As we vector, as we reference, as we try to find a point of focus, sometimes hearing what something is gives us one facet of the view. And if we look at what it isn't, it gives us the other side of the view. Principle-centeredness is not the same as being centered on our church, or any church, or being simply church-centered. I remember going through the years of the ministry every so often a particular point is driven home in a way that it becomes a part of who you are.

And you never forget it. And as time goes along and circumstances arise, it rises to the front as an illustration. I'd been transferred from an area to a new church circuit, and the new church circuit I moved into had sufficient age and tenured that it was now three generations old. And so you could see people who had come into the church, their children were there as grown adults who had their own children.

And you got to see a three-generation layer. I watched one particular family with fascination over the time that I served as pastor because I saw them come into church on a regular basis. They were faithfully there, husband and wife and children. And yet, as I became familiar with the membership and that congregation, it was also keenly aware to me that there was really not a great deal of spiritual attachment to the church. You know, as a pastor, when you deal with people, what level of connection there is to God, the ways of God, respect and reverence for God, and all of the things that ought to be the connection points.

They weren't there. And it was the first time in my life that I stopped and pondered what for me was a strange reality. I said, I'm looking at a family that would never leave this church physically on their own volition, and yet they aren't in this church spiritually. It was a fascinating thing to watch, and I've seen it since that time, but that was the first time it really deeply made an impression on me.

They were church-centered. They weren't going anywhere. They had no desire to go anywhere else. If you had said, are you going somewhere else, they probably wouldn't have been offended by the question, but they weren't principle-centered. Over the years, we've come to understand that people have several reasons for loyalty to the church they attend.

Circle of Friends is a significant one. Family ties. My mom and dad are there. My grandparents are there. My brothers or sisters are there. Simple familiarity. These people I know and I'm comfortable, and I don't have to make new acquaintances. When I walk in the door, people smile, and they say hello. And I don't like being in strange situations. I don't like meeting new people. Acceptance. It's a place where people treat me decently, and they treat me with respect.

Spouse. No other place to go. And probably other reasons. As you answer the question, are you a principle-centered person? Omit being here as evidence. What are the identifiers of a principle-centered person? The remainder of the sermon, I will give you four ways to identify a principle-centered person. I'm sure there are more, and I'm sure in some ways you may be able to synthesize some of these. But today I'll give you four. Number one, at the core of principle-centered people is the belief in deep, fundamental truths. At the core of principle-centered people is the belief in deep, fundamental truths. You know what, brethren?

It is the belief in deep, fundamental truths that provide anchors for people. We're all buffeted. We're all pummeled at times. All of us are beset by life's problems. And you have to have something that serves as an anchor when those things happen to keep you from being blown away. Deep, fundamental truths are those anchors. I'd like you to turn back to Genesis chapter 22. Genesis 22 is going to serve as the front end of a statement that is very powerful on the back end. But we need to look at the front end before we look at the back.

Genesis 22 is an event that all of us are very familiar with. It is the point in time where after waiting for a quarter of a century to have a son, Abraham has allowed the delight and the joy of watching that son be born, watch him go through his toddler years, watch him become a young child, an adolescent, and God comes to him and says, Abraham, I want that son.

Verse 1 of Genesis 22, it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and get you into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell you of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, saddled his ass, took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and he claved the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up and went unto the place which God had told him. There was a man who is held up as the father of the faithful. Here's a man who is told in circumstances that I don't think any of us can really, totally grasp, because none of us have been to the magnitude that Abraham was in his circumstances. And God said, I want the son, I want you to sacrifice him, and I'll set the place. Go there. He didn't say, Can I have a week to get used to the thought? You know, I'll get up tomorrow, we'll have a big breakfast, and we'll spend some time, we'll talk for a while. He got up early in the morning, had his beasts of burden, had his staff, and he took off.

Why? I can think of a hundred reasons not to do it. I can rationalize through the entirety of waiting 25 years that this was the promise that God had given, and we could go on and on and on.

But I want you to understand how Abraham thought, because how any of us may think, or how we may hypothesize about Abraham, it tells us where he was in Hebrews 11.

See, the no-brainer as you're turning to Hebrews 11, the no-brainer is all of us in this room, every single solitary person here knows that Abraham didn't respond the way he responded, because it was the easy way. You know, that one's the duh statement. He didn't get up, take off, because that was the easy route. But there's much more to it than that. In Hebrews 11, in verse 7, let's try 17. Left the one off on that one. Verse 17, By faith Abraham, when he was tried, so we're back to Genesis 22, first two verses, by faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promise and Isaac was that promise. He walked side by side with a lad that he could look at and say, when I was 75, God came to me and I said, my wife can't have children. And in addition to that, she's not only been incapable, but she's now too old. And God says, we will fix both of those problems and you will have children. And Abraham waited a quarter of a century for that to actually happen. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that received the promises, and he's walking along with that promise for three solid days. You better believe there were a lot of minutes to think about the task in the journey. He offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And here was why he reasoned the way he did. Accounting, this is where Abraham's mind was, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure.

Abraham walked with that voice saying, God Almighty made a promise to me, and I waited 25 years to receive it. It defied every law of nature, and yet I have it.

I now am in a position where everything about that promise seems to be going right down the drain.

In other words, it appears that everything God promised is going to go away.

But if God was able to do the impossible the first time, I believe that God is able to do the impossible the second time. I don't know how. He hasn't confided in me the what's and the why's, but if he did the impossible the first time, he can do it the second time.

At the core of Abraham was a belief in deep, fundamental truths. This truth was, in Abraham's case, if you look at Hebrews 11, God made a promise to me, and though all the physical evidence says he's reneging on the promise at the most fundamental level, I know God doesn't.

I'm going to have to leave it up to him how he works this out, but he doesn't renege on his promises. That's what allowed Abraham to walk for three days, reach Mount Moriah, put Isaac on the altar, raise the knife. Without ever knowing there was going to be an angel to say, at the point where all it took was the thrust, stop right there. I found out all that I need to know.

Put the knife down.

The lesson in number one, to be principle centered, you must have internalized deep, fundamental beliefs clear down to the core of your being. You know what? Anything less than having internalized this cleared down, as we say, to the gut level, would not have allowed Abraham to do what he did. He would have talked, you know, the average man would have talked himself out of going before he got up the next morning. And a man who was halfway there would have talked himself out of it in the three-day walk to Mount Moriah. He would have been able to find a way to finesse, a way to rationalize, a way to say, this isn't really what God is telling me to do, and I'm satisfied that I don't have to do it.

Number two, principle-centered people believe these truths are unchangeable. I've been taking the time to go back and research in the fine sense of it, the point in time where a term entered the American vocabulary. I know simply because of my lifetime and just going back in my mind to the point where I became conscious of it that the probability is it would have been mid-century, last century. So somewhere around the middle of the last century, 50 years or so ago, roughly, a term entered the American vocabulary. The term is situation ethics.

And that particular term stood for a very corrosive belief. At its heart was the belief that there are no intrinsic truths. I won't take the time to deviate and go too far to the side, but this is one of those issues that has such a degree of subtlety that it traps the simple.

Because indeed, there are issues that require judgment. In fact, there's an entire class of law in the Old Testament referred to as the judgments. And all that means is you have cases that do not fit in a tailored fashion a law, and a judgment has to be made.

Now, people can go down that route, and it becomes a slippery slope if they go too far that way.

And before you know it, there are simply no intrinsic truths.

That particular belief, the belief in situation ethics, entered the university.

And of course, as every teacher and educator, first of all, goes through their university time before they enter as educators of those in secondary schools, it filtered from the university into the secondary school system. And we are now, depending on how you count time, a couple of generations or three generations down the line where this has been the standard, this has been the accepted norm in the minds of many who shape and mold the minds of younger individuals.

Today, many people simply do not believe that there are universal truths. They simply say, there are no such things as universal truths, never-changing truths.

I'll make a dogmatic statement. God disagrees.

If you understand God's teachings, you understand that God sees Himself and His principles as inseparable and interchangeable.

I'll give you an illustration. There's a three-letter phrase that is so banted about in religion that people simply let it roll off their heads. That statement is, God is love. It isn't a religious phrase. It is a statement that God and His principles are inseparable. God and His personality define love. Love cannot be defined except by God's conduct. The principle and the being are inseparable. This wasn't just a pleasant, politically correct saying. It was a statement about who I am and my inseparability with what I stand for. Malachi chapter 3.

We were just a chapter away from this earlier in the afternoon. We were in Malachi 4, Mr. Smith. Let's go to Malachi 3. I think most of you are aware that Malachi is a contention with the people of the physical, physically speaking, the people of God in this Old Testament period. And God said, I have a bone to pick with you. I'm not happy with you. And they contend back with them. Well, what's your problem? So God says, I'm not happy. And they say, what's the problem?

And they go back and forth on this chapter after chapter. And finally, God makes a statement in Malachi chapter 3 about Himself. He says in verse 6 of Matthew 3, for I am the Lord, I change not.

He says, you need to understand something about me. I don't change. Now, you know, for we human beings, that's a real liability. For God, that's His greatest asset. So, you know, one man's food is another man's poison, is the old saying. When God says, I change not, that's the greatest blessing you can have. But He attached something to that. He said, I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. What was He saying? He's saying here what He had said dozens and scores of times throughout the Old Testament. Based upon the contract that we had made as you came out of the land of the wilderness, you don't deserve to be my people, and you don't deserve for me to be your God.

But I made a promise to a man whose name was Abraham, and I don't renege on my promises.

And He said that promise included you and your care and your nurturing, the path that you would follow, and your destiny eventually. And because of that promise that I made to that man, despite the fact that you and I have been haggling all through this book, and we're going to continue to haggle through the rest of this book, you've been spared for one reason only. I don't change. You know, if God was a situation ethicist, He would have said to these people, based upon your conduct, you're unfit to be the recipients of my promises, end of contract, terminated, we're finished. Because situationally, that's where they were. But He said, I do not act on situations when there is already a principle embedded at the beginning.

You see, following the account with Isaac, God had said, I know you. This is the shorthand version, I know you. I really know you now. I know that you are committed to me in every way.

And the promises that I have been making to you periodically from Genesis 12 onward, they're irrevocable. They're set in stone. They can't be reversed.

These people were the beneficiaries of that blessing. Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13 contains a verse that is, in terms of its value, a freestanding verse. You know, there are times where you have to lead into a verse with context and have to lead out of it with context in order to really catch the substance of it. This is one that can stand all by itself. It is Hebrews 13 and verse 8 that says very simply, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. You ever read the account? I shouldn't say that. I know you've read the account. But when you read the account that the disciples said to Christ, show us the Father and we'll be happy. We'll be content. And he says, have I been with you so long that you don't know the Father? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. What was he saying? There are times where I watch a three, four-year-old child, or better yet, a five- or six-year-old works a little bit better. I've watched from the backside a five- or six-year-old boy walk down an aisle in church, and I've grinned and shaken my head and said, I don't have to have the child turn around. I know whose boy he is by the way he walks. He walks just like his dad. The same gate that his dad has is in the walk of this boy. And if he turned around, I'd say, that's so-and-so's boy. The embedding of characteristics, of qualities, of values, of the way you think, the way you do, we see it in human beings.

Should be no surprise that it existed between Jesus Christ and the Father. Christ said, I'm the same yesterday, today, and forever. If you had known me as the rock who was with Israel in the wilderness, you would know me as the Jesus Christ who walked the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem. And you will know me when I return as King of kings and Lord of lords. I will not, in what I stand for, who I am and how I think, I will not be a different person.

Charles Mollier was saying that he would be gone this weekend to go to a reunion, class reunion in Colorado. And I was thinking to myself, over the years, when you haven't seen people for 25, 30 years and you get together as a group, you find a very interesting range of experiences. There are some people you look at and you say you haven't changed at all.

And there are other people who say, if you hadn't told me your name, I wouldn't know who you are.

Christ says, I don't ever change. I'm the same yesterday, today, and forever. To me, the most beautiful scripture along this particular line is just a page over in most of your Bibles, at no more than two pages in the rest of your Bibles, and that's at the beginning of the book of James. James chapter 1, I love the way that it is written in the Old King James, James chapter 1 verse 17 says, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. He says, there is no variableness at all. There is no wobble.

There isn't even a shadow of turning. You know, as human beings, you can build a trust relationship with a fellow human being over a long period of time and be put in a very, very tense situation and have that thought in the back of the mind, is it stable? Is it steady? Or will this crack?

James said, with God, there is not even a shadow of turning. How much more stable can you be?

No variableness, neither shadow of turning.

What was this supposed to inspire?

Same quality in us. Steadfastness, invariableness, being anchored in belief, being anchored in the things that we've been taught.

I was fascinated when I watched the years of 1996, 1997, 1998, especially, watch them pass.

I saw certain phenomenon that I could predict, and that were not a mystery to me. I watched people say, in fact, my mother-in-law, who is now 96 years old, as she was reminiscing about where she was in 1996, 1997, in contrast to where she had been, she just simply, in her own words, made the statement that there's no need or reason or purpose or logic to vary.

I know what I believe. I know why I believe it. There is no reason for me ever to change that.

That predictability in the lives of many people was something that I found as no surprise. I didn't know who would feel that way and who wouldn't, but that some would feel that way did not come as a surprise to me. In the social movement within our church or within our circle of belief, there was one thing, though, that caught me flat-footed. I just simply didn't see it coming. What I didn't see coming down the road was among those people who, on the surface or on the outside, had the image of, I am holding firm to what I was originally called to and what I believe.

Among those, over the last decade, I have watched, for me, a mind-boggling situation occur.

I see it in the doctrinal committee and see it in the doctrinal review committee. I have found among those who ostensibly said, I am holding fast to the beliefs that I originally had, I have seen more strange, odd doctrinal deviations than I ever dreamed could come about.

We were talking about some of the committees of the council, and we said, you know, some of them have run their course, and they may have reached the place where there's no longer the need to have them. In fact, one of our topics of discussion will be whether or not certain committees are still needed. Mr. Leon Walker was sitting there, and we were laughing. He said, you know, we thought, when we finished going through all the fundamental beliefs, that the doctrine committee would have done its task, and it would be time to just simply disband it. And he says, the work never ends.

And it never ends because, and I don't want to paint it incorrectly, there are many, many legitimate issues and questions that arise, but there are also issues that come before the doctrine committee that all you can do is say, how did people move sideways so far away from the truths that they appeared to believe in, to now beliefs that are neither a disassembling of their old beliefs, nor a maintenance of their old beliefs. That one, that one I didn't anticipate.

As I try to understand it, I can only come to believe that the fruits indicate that there were some people who were, if I'm going to use a term connected with centeredness, that they were personality centered. They respected a leader, and when that leader died, they simply were left adrift.

You know, there were people who were principle centered, and there were people who were personality centered, and there's no brand or tag or label or stamp that identifies one from the other until the evidence is there. Number three, principles always have a natural consequence attached to them.

When I was a youth, one of the most popular radio programs in America was Art Link Letters' Truth or Consequences. It was a quiz show hosted by an individual who had a good gift for the Blarney, and he did a good job of hosting it. And the program, as I said, was named Truth or Consequences. If you understand principle centeredness, you come to understand that truth is a way of life, and if you ignore it, there are consequences. It's a case of truth and consequences. There are so many areas of life. If we separate the moral spiritual side of life from the physical side of life, and let's just leave the moral spiritual over here for a minute, and go over to the physical. Mr. Smith, as he was giving his sermon, brought up visual illustrations of certain things that are a part of the inexorable chain of physical law. They work, they continue to work, they don't vary, they don't change. A tree doesn't say one year, well, this year we're going to practice photosynthesis, and the next year we'll simply take a year off and do something else. It doesn't work that way. Every one of us understands that.

Every one of us understands with great respect that you don't go up on top of the building and jump off. We understand it not because somebody's going to be down here on the sidewalk saying, hey, get off the building, don't do that. But because the law will catch you whether anyone sees you or not. The law of gravity. To come to the council meeting, I had to leave my son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter at our place. He had come up to take some classes, and I chatted with him this morning, and he'd finished his classes. There are art-based classes, and Portland being a glass center, art glass center, he'd been taking some classes in the use of a kiln in working with glass. And he said, I said, well, what had you learned? And he said, well, when you use a kiln and you work with art glass, and he passed on a law that I thought was fascinating. He said, glass put in a kiln wants to be six millimeters thick. And you can respect that, or you can pay the consequences. He said, if you have designed exactly the size of the piece that you want, and a single sheet of art glass is three millimeters thick. He said, you design a piece, and you have adjust the shape you want, and you put it in the kiln and fire it, and it's only one layer, three millimeters. He says, it will creep. It will creep inward, trying to make itself six millimeters thick. And he said, when you bring it out of the kiln, it's not going to be what you put in there, because it's not going to put up with it. It says, you put me in three millimeters, I want to be six, and I will creep as far as I can creep, trying to get fatter.

He says, same as the other way around. He says, you put it in more than six millimeters thick, and it says, I'm going to spread out far enough that all of me is six millimeters thick.

He said, as an artist, you can, putting it in my own words, his message was simple. As an artist, you can ignore the principle and pay the consequence. The glass is not going to cooperate with you. You are going to have to obey the principle or reap the consequence.

You know, one of the greatest truth and consequence scriptures in all the Bible is in Genesis 4. It is probably one of the best examples of intelligent, sane, sound, balanced, child-rearing exercise, in this case with a man, but nonetheless child-rearing, that you'll find in the Bible. In Genesis 4, after the event where God did not accept Cain's offering and He accepted Abel's, and Cain was really bent out of shape, God came to this young man who was extremely unhappy, and He said these things to him. Verse 3, Genesis 4, in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground and offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering, and unto Cain and to his offering, he had not respect. And Cain was very wrath, and his countenance fell. So here's a man, and it's written all over him, I am furious.

I am furious. And God sat down with this young man, and He says, and this is, as I said, a beautiful example of the tremendous balance that is embedded in God's principles. He said, Cain, why are you so furious? Now God wasn't asking that for His sake.

He was asking it in a reflexive manner, hoping Cain would look at himself. God knew why he was angry. He wanted Cain to analyze the question. And he said, why do you look like death warmed over? Why has your countenance fallen? Cain, unfortunately, wasn't willing to be introspective.

But God was asking him, stop and consider Cain. Why are you where you are?

And he said, look, let me give you the truth and the consequences. If you do well, shall you not be accepted? You know, people have wondered and speculated till who knows what about why Cain's offering was unacceptable. Really, it's immaterial. What's important is to know that God said, if you do it right, I am happy to have a relationship with you as your God. In other words, you can have the relationship with me that Abel has if you're willing to do it the right way. If you do well, shall you not be accepted? It's a rhetorical question. If you do not do well, sin lies at the door and unto you shall be his desire, but you shall rule over it. What he said is, look, Cain, if you don't get your act together, there is a very natural pull that's going to take you inexorably the wrong direction. He said, don't let it. You're in a position right now, Cain, where you have a choice. Your attitude can rule you or you can rule your attitude.

He said, rule your attitude. Don't let it rule you.

A very simple case of truth and consequences. I don't need to take you there for you to know it, but when you get to the end of the book of Deuteronomy, as God is rehearsing with the children of the children of Israel, the second generation, and he reiterates all of the conditions and the promises and the agreements that have been made. If you look at Deuteronomy 30, that whole chapter is about truth and consequences. A summary statement that probably sums it up would be verses 19 and 20. We can take a look at those. We don't need to read the whole chapter by any means.

But verses 19 and 20, this is where God brings the whole issue of Deuteronomy to a close.

He says in verse 19, He said, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life that both you and your seed may live. You know, God's statement to Israel was the same as it was to Cain. You can choose either way. You can choose blessings, you can choose curses, you can choose life, you can choose death. I'm your cheerleader. There's nothing I want more than to see you choose life and blessings, but you do have to choose. It's a summation of the whole book of Deuteronomy. If you want a summation of what it's all about.

Principle-centered people do not live in fear or dread of consequences.

Do you sit and worry about falling off buildings? I don't go up on buildings and stand on the edge just to see if I can fear, because I can. I've been there. As a younger man, I enjoyed going to all the tall places, high places that I could in travel. So the top of the Empire State Building, the top of the Eiffel Tower, the top of this and the top of that. None of them bothered me until I stepped out onto the top floor of the Tower of Pisa. The marble was slick. There were no guard rails. I stepped out where the little winding stair came through the doorway. There, the surface was sloped downward, and it had that cupped wear of generations of foot on that marble.

And I just instinctively grabbed a hold of the door sill and instead said, this is far enough.

I'm on the down-tilting side, and I don't need to go any farther to see that I don't want to go where this could lead. Other than that one account, I've not lived in dread or fear of the consequences.

Principal people in life in general don't go around looking over their shoulder, wondering what's going to happen, what's going to catch me. They do accept, though, that there are natural consequences for ignoring deep, unchangeable truths. And they do what Cain wasn't willing to do.

They accept the responsibility that comes along without understanding. You know, Cain was simply told, Cain, you don't have to be miserable. You can have a good relationship with me, but you have to make a personal choice. You make the wrong choice. It's an unhappy one. Principle number four.

Number four. Principles are bigger than people or circumstances.

Earlier, I mentioned the term situation ethics. And as I said, it was popularized about half a century ago. People from the beginning of time have compromised deeply held principles. And so, the 1950s and the 1960s didn't invent situation ethics. It may have invented the term, and it may have refined the process. But people have been situational in their ethics as long as there have been people. What is interesting for us is that in the building of the scriptures, the role models that God put there are role models that respect principle above circumstance, even above people. I love Daniel 3 in that respect. I like reading the Bible in some cases at arm's length, meaning this. The biggest problem in reading the Bible is we get to see the end of the story.

In order to emotionally be in the Bible, you've got to somehow detach yourself from the fact that you know how the story ends. That blows it. All of us know what it's like to see the raves on a really outstanding movie, have a friend go to it and come and tell us the conclusion.

You look at them like, oh, you know, I didn't need that. Somebody recently was telling me about a movie that I needed to attend, and he was all excited about it. He just couldn't restrain himself. His wife was sitting there and said, don't tell him that. Don't tell him that. Stop! Don't tell him that. She was trying to save it. He was so excited about what he'd seen that he was ruining it. All right. In reading the stories of the Bible, if you can turn off the conclusion, you can appreciate the story more. We all know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And since we know how it ended, we can lose all the benefit of the story.

I don't need to give you the lead-in. We know about the image. We know about the refusal to bow. We know about Nebuchadnezzar doing the absolutely extraordinary, which was just not the Babylonian way of doing things, and that is giving somebody a second chance. But he gave them a second chance, which, as I said, literally was extraordinary. And he said, this time, get with it, fellows, or you're dead. And he gave them all the instructions. You know, I want to make sure. You can tell the king in this regard cared about these young men, because I'm sure he knew they were smart enough to have heard all the instructions. But he said, let me go through them. He's going to do instructions for bowing for dummies. At the sound of, you know, verse 15, verse 15 is bowing to images for dummies. That's what that verse is all about.

And he says, if you don't get the lesson, you need to understand something. And it's a rhetorical question that ends the verse, and that is, who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

He's saying, you listen to the instructions, because there isn't anybody who's going to get you out of my furnace. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, verse 16, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer you in this matter. Meaning, what they're saying is, we don't have to sit and say, time out, Nebuchadnezzar. We need to huddle. Okay, guys, where are we going with this? Let's talk it over. And let's, he said, we don't, we don't have to think this one over. We don't have to think this one over. You know, that talks about the embeddedness of principles. I said earlier, one of the attributes of principle-setteredness is they are embedded at the core. When this young man said, I don't have to be careful, I'm speaking for the three of us, but I don't have to be careful in answering this. I don't need time to think it over.

If it be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. You know what? We ruin it. We stop right there because we know that's exactly what He did.

You know what? They didn't know that. And they say so. And He will deliver us out of your hands, O King. Excuse me, O King. And verse 18 starts with the biggest three-letter word in the English language, but if not, be it known unto you, O King, that we will not serve your gods nor worship the golden image which you have set before us. They said to Him, We have a God. Our God is greater than you, our Nebuchadnezzar. Furnace are no furnace. He can spare our lives. But if He doesn't, He isn't going to change a thing. He isn't going to change a thing if He chooses not to, because our base is totally anchored and centered in the principle of obedience to God. And there is no situation that is going to change that. We know our God's power, and we believe that He will spare us. We hold out the option that He might not. But we want you to know that if He chooses that last option, we aren't going to cut and run. We're going to say, Well, it was all right all the way up to where we were 10 feet from the door of the furnace. Now it's time to bail. We're in it all the way to the end. Hebrews 11, it's the pantheon of the faithful. We all know that it starts out with a listing of individual names, and it eventually reaches the place where it says, I don't have time to give you all the names that deserve to be in this chapter.

If God someday puts up a memorial wall like the Vietnam Veterans Wall or some of the other walls, there will be a whole lot more names on there than appear in Hebrews 11. He said, I don't have time to memorialize all the men and women who deserve to be memorialized, but I can sum them up by what they were and who they were. And He summed it up in this manner beginning in verse 32, And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gedion, and of Beric, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, and of David also, of Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned the flight of armies of the aliens, women received their dead, raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection.

There were all sorts of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego-type miracles, but there were some who got the backside of Shadrach's statement. They got the butt side, the side where God did not choose to intervene for them, and they said it doesn't make any difference. I am not doing what I'm doing because of option A only. I would prefer option A. I mean, look at Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ preferred option A. He said, Lord, if there's any way you can take this cup away from me, please do. Nevertheless, nothing wrong with wanting option A. These people got option B, and they still didn't waver. The principles for which they stood were greater than the circumstances they faced. This is what I mean when I said principles are bigger than people or circumstances. To me, one of the most delightful ones, and it's because it contains multiples, at least three in one chapter, and that's in Daniel 6, where Daniel put himself in harm's way because of the connivance of jealous leaders in the kingdom. It was in Daniel chapter 6 that a group of conniving men conspired to play upon the king's vanity and to ask him to create a decree that no one could pray to anyone except him. And the king, not realizing where they were coming from, signed it. The news went out immediately all around. Extra, extra six o'clock news. King signs decree, no worship of anyone but the king on pain of death.

Verse 10, when Daniel heard the evening news, when he read the front page of the newspaper, when the news got to Daniel, verse 10 of Daniel chapter 6, he went to his house.

Boy, you talk about dumb. He didn't even keep his windows closed. His windows being opened into chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did before. The breaking news he heard. He wasn't ignorant. He couldn't plead. Okay, I didn't hear the news. He heard it. His principle was, I pray to my God, I pray to my God three times a day, and nothing changed.

The first of three incidences of principle-centeredness.

My principles don't change because I now am in harm's way. As you continue down through the story, it's a beautiful story in the sense that the king was also a principle-centered man, and his heart was totally on Daniel's side. When the king realized that he had been used.

It says in verse 14, the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him. And he labored till the going down of the sun to deliver him. And then these men assembled unto the king and said to him, No, O king, that the law of the Medes and the Persians is that no decree nor statute which the king establishes may be changed.

You know, to the king of the Medes and Persians' credit, he loved Daniel. He tried every possible way he could within that day's time to find a limitation, an exception, a clause, something that would allow him not to execute Daniel. And yet, at the end of the day, and here's a man after he stood on his principles, and that is, I can't break the law of the Medes and the Persians.

He fasted. He fasted all night long and prayed for Daniel's deliverance.

The king, not being converted as Daniel was, got up the next morning, verse 19. He got up very early in the morning and went in haste unto the den of the lions. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice. Now, you have to understand what's going on here. You don't cry with a lamentable voice because you think Daniel's going to answer you.

You ever watch somebody go to a graveyard and sit down near the headstone and talk to the person?

Not because they believe the person will hear. It is a way of pouring out personal grief that you need to vent. The king with a lamentable voice said unto Daniel, he said, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou serviced continually able to deliver you from the lions. And shock of shocks. Daniel answered. And Daniel said to the king, O king, live forever. I said earlier with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it's unfortunate we hear and know the end of the stories.

Because you know what? When you look later at what happened, when Daniel was freed, the king and his fury took everybody who had contrived against him, and he threw them into the lion's den, and it says none of them even hit the floor. Their bodies didn't even hit the floor of the den.

Daniel was no dummy. He'd been in high office of rulership for all of his life. He understood lions' dens, and he knew what happened to people thrown into them. He was not naive. So you must consider something about David.

David didn't know the lions weren't going to eat him until they didn't eat him.

He wasn't any different from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He didn't go waltzing into the den, saying, no problem, no sweat. Daniel didn't know he wasn't eaten until he wasn't eaten.

The point with Daniel was, I am not going to find a way to get out of that lion's den by compromising those principles that I know are unchangeable and immutable.

And he, just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, said, if this is the direction it goes, I know my God can deliver me, but I'm not going to have an escape clause.

I ask at the beginning of the sermon, are you a principle-centered person?

And I recognize and acknowledge the fact that I led you with a question and gave you no padding. I gave you no circumstances. I gave you no descriptions to work with. And I said, in fairness, I understood that you'd hold me as it were at arm's length and say, okay, let me hear the proposition. Well, now you've heard the proposition.

And now you can take that question, ponder it, and think about it. And I know that all of you are now better prepared to both ponder and hopefully to answer a very important question related to your Christian life.