Obedience to God

We come back from the feast and we have a lot to catch up on. We get back into our routines. When we return home, sometimes it's a hard landing coming back from the feast. I mentioned in my last Great Day sermon that when I was a kid coming home from the feast to Tabernacles with my mother and my sister, my dad would never attend with us, but he'd always make sure we had ample means to attend. Money, the car was all ready to go, the camper was all set, and we'd take off to Texas and be back in about 10-11 days. But the drive back from Texas to North Missouri for a few years during that period of time never knew, as we got closer and closer to the front door of our home, we just never knew. We kind of tensed up and got tight because we didn't know what to expect because my dad would always send us off with good cheer. But anybody eating on his own and coming home to an empty house for 10-11 days gets a little cranky, especially when they don't fully understand the need to go off and do this thing every year. So we didn't always know what to expect when we would walk through our front door. Most times it was pretty good, but sometimes we'd get a cold shoulder for a day or two or three and tell things kind of thought out. That was just what we came to expect. So, I don't know what you come home to, a job, school, a house, a yard to mow, situations that we have to pick up where we left off before we went to the feast. Sometimes it's a hard landing and we come back all excited from the experience that we have had. Certainly, we hope everyone has been encouraged by the instruction, the fellowship, and the whole experience of observing the Feast of Tabernacles, which we should be and always are to one degree or the other, depending on our year and what has happened and what is going on. But the reality is we have to come home.

We don't have all this extra money to spend. We're not eating out like we do. We come home. We have to get back into our world. Whatever your world is like, it is your world. Sometimes it can hit us right hard. We have to just hit it and meet it and get right back into the swing of things.

All of that can give us challenges because as we move further and further away from the Feast, some of that enthusiasm and some of that aura that we generate during that time begins to fade a little bit. I'd like to take us briefly through a story we are all familiar with this afternoon to help us to understand a principle or two that I think is important to coming back into our world after the Feast of Tabernacles and maintaining a firm grip on the spiritual realities that we come to learn during the Feast of Tabernacles. If you will, please turn over to the book of Daniel and the third chapter. I'd like to take us through a section here in the story of three young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who could just as well be named Tom, Dick, and Harry, to bring it up to a more relevant picture for us today. But we know the story of these three men who were friends with the fourth Daniel, who found themselves in Babylon and as a result of the experiences that we read in the first chapter of Daniel.

They were bright young men that got singled out by a combination of perhaps just plain luck and intelligence and ability, coupled with the favor of God and found themselves in some very high positions within the government of Babylon at a unique period in time of their people and of the Bible story.

In chapter 2 of Daniel, we find where Nebuchadnezzar has this dream, and Daniel interprets the dream for him. You'll recall that in that dream Nebuchadnezzar saw this image. Daniel tells him that this image, which had a head of gold and a body of silver, legs of brass and feet of iron and clay, was a symbol and a story of not only the Babylonian Empire but the future world empires to come from him. But he told Nebuchadnezzar, you're that head of gold. You are that head of gold. And so in the process of thinking about that for some weeks, perhaps a few months, it doesn't tell us, Nebuchadnezzar comes up with an idea. He says, basically, if I'm the head of gold, I think I can do a little bit better than that.

I think I want to be the whole process. I want to be all gold. And so in chapter 3 of Daniel, we read in verse 1, where the king Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its width 6 cubits, and he set it up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon, a 90-foot tall statue.

I don't think it was solid gold, probably overlaying with gold, but gold from head all the way through the body to the legs, all the way to the feet. All gold. And it doesn't take too much of an imagination for us to realize that this guy is really on an ego trip. And working off of the message Daniel gave to him, where he said, Nebuchadnezzar, you're the head of gold of this dream that you had. But there's going to be others that come after you, which means what you do and all this glory of Babylon is going to fade and be taken over by other kingdoms.

Which it did, which did happen, but Nebuchadnezzar, like most other despots and dictators, they don't get the message. They think they can live forever, or they think they can perpetuate their system and their ideals and their ideology forever. We've got a guy right off here at the coast of Florida in Cuba named Castro, who's been there all of our adult lives, and he thinks he's going to live forever. He's got this iron grip on this poor little Caribbean island that is basically locked in about 1958 in many ways.

They have an advantage. You see in modern pictures of Cuba, they're still driving 58 Chevys. Those are the taxis and 57 Chevys because of the embargoes and what has happened. It's kind of locked in time. Dictators don't give up. Nebuchadnezzar was like that. He thought, well, I can go one better to what Daniel's God has given to him in terms of knowledge. He creates this image of gold. The purpose of this was more than just his own ego. It seems that his intent was to use this as a unifying feature for his kingdom and all the peoples that they had conquered. Because you read on in the next few verses that he sent word out, this decree, to gather together all of the administrators, the governors, the councilmen, the officials of his government, to bring them together at the dedication when this image would be set up.

So there was going to be a great outdoor ceremony, probably a special stadium and seating built especially for this particular episode. Music, food, big festival occasion is what happens here. They all do come together because they have to follow through with what has been told to them. Verse 3 tells them that they all come in. They gather together for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. They stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

And then over the PA system, a herald cries out aloud, To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages. So again, you sense that this was kind of a pan-Caldean effort to unite all of the different peoples of the Babylonian Empire under this one image through this particular ceremony.

They were ordered basically then when they heard the music, when the band would strike up with all these instruments of verse 5, That you will fall down and worship the gold image that Nebuchadnezzar has set up. And if you don't fall down and worship this image, you will be cast immediately, without trial, without hope of appeal, into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. So at that time, when the people heard the sound of the orchestra, and all the people, nations, and languages, they fell down and worshipped the gold image which King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

So his statement was very strong, dramatic. He was trying to make an impression that his kingdom was going to last forever and try to unify everyone in this particular way. So going on in the story, there were at that time certain Caudians, certain Babylonians within the system, within the structure of the government, who came forward and accused the Jews.

You see, the Jews are always being accused, even as far back as the Babylonian Empire. And the reality that Daniel and his three friends had been elevated to the positions that they had was something that all of the top officials in Babylon knew about and many chafed at it.

And resented the fact that these aliens and sojourners, these young men, these Jews who were not native-born, had risen so high so quickly and taken jobs that should have gone to others who had been groomed within the system. You know how that goes. Offices or businesses bring in someone from the outside to begin to manage and that can create problems.

They were set up, and they were ready, in this case, to jump on the first mistake that was made. And in this case, they had it, and they came to Nebuchadnezzar, and they said in verse 10, O king, you've made a decree that everyone who hears all of the sound of the orchestra, I don't go through all these instruments here, are going to fall down and worship the gold image, and whoever doesn't will be cast into a burning fiery furnace. There are certain Jews. You can almost imagine their voice dropping a little bit and kind of leaning forward. But we want you to know. We have some concerns. There are some among us, some of your people, who have not fallen down and worshipped this image as you have commanded. There are certain Jews set over the affairs of the province of Babylon. They're named. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, have not paid due regard to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the gold image which you have set up. These men, as we would already remember from the story, had determined not to defile themselves. And that went as far as foods, but it also included the matter of, in this case, the religious worship, the idolatry that was an integral part of the Gentile world. They were not going to bow down to idols. They were not going to cast off their belief and their ideas at all during this time or at any time. And so, verse 13, Nebuchadnezzar flew into a fury and a rage, gave a command to bring them before him, and they were brought, and he spoke to them, verse 14, and he said, Is this true, that you do not serve my gods or worship the gold image that I have set up? And, of course, they answered that it was true. They would not bow down. Now, let's stop for a moment and think about a few things and kind of extend this thought a little bit further, just to understand again the decision not to bow down to an idol, the decision to hold fast to their belief, in this case, God's Word and the law of God, and not to bow down to an idol of any sort in this very expression of idolatry in the form of a golden image. Nebuchadnezzar, we should understand, is a type of the Babylon and the beast image that we talk about when we come to the Book of Revelation, when we talk about the beast and a system called Babylon that is going to arise in time of the end. Babylon stretches throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation as a system that stands in defiance of the will and the way and the kingdom of God. Babylon beginning at Babel, as we remember that story where a man determined to build a system that would defy God, and God came down and scattered the languages. That's where we first hear of Babel, and it stretches throughout the Scriptures here through this period with Daniel and the Jews and Nebuchadnezzar. Eventually Babylon does fall. But when we come to the Book of Revelation, we also read about an end-time revival of a religious and political system called Babylon, a spiritual Babylon that is going to dominate the world at the time of the end prior to Christ's return. There are two figures, the beast and the false prophet, who played prominently in that. Nebuchadnezzar stands as a type of that beast figure to come. He in a sense personifies that beast that the Bible talks about, a very strong political leader that will arise in that time.

When we turn forward to Revelation 14, we read of a time when there is going to be an image and a worship of what is called the mark of the beast. In Revelation 13, I want to jump into Revelation 14, where at a time in the scenario of these events, we find a proclamation of three angels beginning in verse 6. One of them flies through the heaven having the everlasting gospel at this time and proclaiming a message. And in verse 8, another angel, a second angel mentioned here, follows again flying through the heavens saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city because she's made all nations drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. It says here that Babylon was fallen twice. One of them likely refers to the fall of ancient Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar's successors. And then the future fall of Babylon that Revelation later will talk about. And so it talks about the nations being drunk of the wine of her fornication.

And then a third angel follows saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast in his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand. This is a continuation of what chapter 13 talks about in the so-called image or mark of the beast. Forget trying to figure out what that is. It's not important for our message here this afternoon. But this third angel has this message that if anyone drinks of that, he's going to be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Then going on in verse 11 it says, The smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast in his image and whoever receives the mark of his name. So, in the future, taking part in the worship of this beast and his image and its mark that one receives is the same problem that the three young men back in Babylon sought to avoid at risk of their life. That was getting involved in idolatry.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would not bow down to this golden image, would not even compromise and take the first step. And here in Revelation 14 we find a deeper meaning and application of this and warning of what is to come. What I want you to focus on is that phrase in verse 11 where it says, They have no rest. Those who fall down and worship the beast in the future partake of the image of the beast that says, They have no rest day or night, who worship the beast. No rest. What does that mean?

You would think, bowing down to an idol, engaging in the worship of the system, and being involved in a system that was the dominant political, economic, and religious system would bring rest. And the rest that is being spoken of here is an inner peace, an inner rest. An assurance, a peace of mind that comes from knowing God, knowing your relationship with God. Eternal security, forgiveness of sins, that type of an inner rest that comes as a whole, as a part of a relationship with God. And Revelation here says that those who take part in that, there is no rest for them day or night. There's still turmoil. So, bowing down to the idol that is prophesied here doesn't and will not give rest. Now, we can, as I've said many times before, I'll say it again, today when we talk of idolatry, we're not being tempted by a 90-foot high gold statue. How many of you have been tempted in your life to bow down before a 90-foot high statue? Nobody? How about a 9-foot high concrete statue? How about a 2-foot wooden idol? Have you been tempted to bow down to any of those? No. We don't do those things today. That doesn't mean idolatry is not a part of our modern life. The idols that we, you and I bow down to today and are tempted to bow down to are different types of idols, but it's idolatry nonetheless. It's the idolatry of money, status, power, celebrity.

Those are the idols of our world today that we covet, that are important. All of those can be summed up with one word, bling. How many of you like bling? How many of you wear bling? Bling is kind of flashy, gaudy, cheap, not real, excessive, and a lot of nothing.

That's the idolatry that we have to deal with today. Those are the elements that tend to dominate our life directly and indirectly. The things that are the coin of the realm today. The point is that none of those give rest.

Learn the lesson from three men who wouldn't even take that first step and bow down as we find them back here in Daniel 3. Let's look a little closer into their story and see what we can learn for our own application into our life here today. As we move on here, Nebuchadnezzar goes on down in verse 15.

He talks to them and says, Look, I've heard that you won't bow down to this image. He says in verse 15, If you're ready at the time that you hear all the music strike up and you bow down, then it's going to be okay. But if you don't, you'll be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fire of furnace. Who's going to deliver you? What God is going to deliver you from my hand? Basically, guys, you've got to have a chance. Let's talk this over. Let's be reasonable. We're going to strike up the band one more time. They're waiting in the wings, and as soon as you hear it, go through this and we'll all be cool.

And here's their answer. O Nebuchadnezzar, verse 16, We have no need to answer you in this matter. In other words, there's no need for the band to strike up. We don't need to go any further. Our mind is made up. We have a quiet determination to not do this. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fire of furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O King. Now, there's a subtle distinction here in verse 17. Notice it. They say, we're not going to talk about this.

There's nothing to discuss. No negotiation. Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us. They didn't say that He will deliver. He said He's able, which they probably knew that He might not do it. That didn't mean He wasn't able. And they were prepared for that decision. You see, obedience to God offers nowhere grounds to turn back. There's no golden parachute in that sense, that we get an out or whatever. They said, and they knew, that God was able to deliver them, but if He doesn't, He says He will deliver us from your hand.

So even they knew either through death or through life, they would be delivered from Nebuchadnezzar. They would not, after the next few minutes, have to deal with Him again and have to go through this. That's where they were in their mind. They had gone so far ahead of the moment. And that's where obedience and this walk, this journey, this way of life that we're involved in, that's what it comes down to. You and I go so far ahead of the moment, and we should, where we have counted the cost, we know what we're going to do regardless.

We're going to obey God, regardless of the personal cost that it might be. We are all the way down to the time of the resurrection, the judgment, or the great white throne judgment. That's where we're thinking. That's where our mind is already gone at any given time in our life today when we are faced with a compromise, a choice, a decision that is going to test our faith.

That's where these three men were. That's what verse 17 is really saying. They knew there was no other alternative. So there was no discussion. He said in verse 18, But if not, let it be known that you, O King, to you, O King, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up. Some of you may have a copy of the Life Application Bible on your shelf, and if you use that, it's a very helpful study tool. On this particular verse, they have eight different excuses that these three young men might have come up with to justify bowing down and worshipping the system, and all have been going along with it.

Here's what the Life Application Bible says, that the eight excuses they could have used to bow down to the statue and save their lives. Number one, we will bow down, but will not actually worship the idol. Just go through the motion. Number two, we won't become idol worshippers, but we will do this one time. Then ask God for forgiveness. Number three, well, the King has absolute power, and we must obey him. God will understand. Number four, the King appointed us. We owe this to him, as if he had bought their loyalty, as if he had bought something from them by giving them that particular position.

Number five, this is a foreign land, so God will excuse us for following the customs of the land.

We don't want to stand out. Let's fill up our front yard with tombstones, cobwebs, pumpkins. We're living in a land like this. I say that because I walked through my neighborhood yesterday, and I couldn't believe the decorations that are out there today for Halloween. You've seen them, I'm sure, in your neighborhoods, but I had two cemeteries spring up in my yard this week. I didn't know they were cemeteries, but I walked through my neighbor's front yard, and they got tombstones out there. Customs of the strange land.

Number six, our ancestors set up idols in God's temple. This isn't half as bad. They probably thought about Molech and offering children to Molech, and they thought, this is a venal sin, as Catholics call it. Number seven, we're not hurting anyone. We're not hurting anybody. It's my life. Nobody's going to be hurt. Hey! Number eight, if we get ourselves killed and some heathens take our high positions, they won't help our people in exile. There could have been a whole lot more excuses, I suppose, but those are eight possibilities that they could have justified bowing down had they desired to. But what they did instead was just to give a very straightforward answer here in these verses, 16 through 18.

They gave a very straightforward answer, which is the essence of Christianity. The Christian life is not a complicated life to live. It gets complicated when we compromise, when we sin. It gets complicated when someone else's compromises or someone else's sins infringe in our life and complicate our life. And it gets complicated when Satan exerts his influence through others and puts pressure on us in some way in this world. And we have to deal with conflicts in family jobs, schools, or other people. Then it gets complicated, but all the way along that complication is the result of sin somewhere.

But the reality of God's way of life is that it is not complicated. If you go to the end of the book in Ecclesiastes, Solomon sums it all up. He says, in the whole duty of man, he says, Fear God and keep the commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Fear God, keep the commandments. When we compromise on any of those points of God's law, begin even to take that first step, to tell that first very small lie, to steal that very first small amount, or to compromise with some other aspect of God's law, when we do that, then it gets complicated, because then we have to do something else if we don't repent, change, and completely rid our life from it.

But the straightforward answer these three gave really sums up the life that we are called to live. The rest of the story, I think we should know, they got thrown into the fiery furnace, and they were spared. There was a fourth person that showed up. He could very well have been the one who became Jesus Christ.

It says that he was like the Son of God in verse 25 when Nebuchadnezzar peered into the furnace. They lived, they came out of it, and they lived to tell the tale, and to go on in their life. It's interesting, we don't really hear anything more about them in the remainder of the book, in the story of Daniel. This is where these three kind of give their last song, but it says in verse 30 that they were promoted in the province of Babylon.

We can imagine they lived out their lives, like Daniel probably survived into the Persian period, and were taken care of in a sense as God protected and blessed them during the period of time the Jews were in Babylon before they returned. Maybe they were their descendants returned. We don't know. There are still Jews in that part of the world, colonies of Jews, especially in Iran. Iran today has the largest concentration of Jewish population of any other Muslim country.

Despite the hatred that comes out of the mouth of the leaders of Iran toward the state of Israel, and Jews in particular, they still have a significant Jewish population in that part of the world that dates back to the exile of the Jews from Babylon. So not everyone went back to Babylon after the restoration. Some stayed on in those lands, and their descendants are still there to this day. But this is where we leave off the story of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego.

Three friends, three amigos, that teach all of us a value of choosing good people as friends, standing with those friends, standing for them, standing for the convictions that bind you together. The real strength of friendships within God's Church is the truth of God at the heart and core of any relationship.

When God is at the center of the relationship that you have, you have the basis for a very deep, lasting friendship and relationship. Nebuchadnezzar added their God, the true God, to his list of gods. When you look at this, he said, there's no God that can quite deliver like this. He didn't learn his lesson. He had to go through some other experiences, which chapter 4 we'll talk about in chapter 5. But Nebuchadnezzar had a newfound respect for the God of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

He kind of adds them to the list of the gods that he says. Some of these other gods might deliver in their own ways, but none quite as dramatic as this from a fiery furnace. So he has to acknowledge there's something there, but he just kind of adds them, puts the true God up on a shelf next to his other gods at this particular time. He hasn't yet fully learned the lesson. We have a demonstration of God's power at work here that should encourage us as we come back into our world in these days and pick up the life and move on.

It's four to six months now before we have another holy day, and we'll assemble in the spring holy days. And we still have one another. We still have God, but we also should look strongly to the power that God has given us. In Ephesians chapter 1, the same power that protected these three men is the power that resurrected Jesus Christ and is the power that is with us. In Ephesians 1 verse 18, it says, Paul is saying that that power is what is working within us in the hope of our calling.

It is the same power that was present in this episode back in Babylon and protected these three young men. It is the same power that resurrected Christ, and it is the same power that works in us to the riches of the glory and the opportunities that are before us. So let's keep that in mind. Let's learn a lesson from this story and make sure that we are drawing close to and using the power that God has given to us. And using that as we move back into our life and into our world after this Feast of Tabernacles.