Faith In The Fire

Faith in the fire

During Vacation Bible School this week we studied about faith.. and one of the songs that the kids sang every day just before going home was Put your faith in action..

We are going to study tonight about three young men that we have all studied about before. This story is commonly used as a children’s story, but I feel like to often we overlook how important the message is that we are shown in this story.

I am going to start tonight by reading in the word of God from the third chapter of Daniel and starting in verse 13.

I am going to read all the way to verse 30.

Now most of you will recognize this story, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

We do not have time to read the entire history on these three men so let me first start off by giving you a little background on their lives.

King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon at this time, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. Basically he took over.

He took over Jerusalem and anything he wanted, gold, silver, people, anything he wanted he took back to Babylon with him.

And one of the things he took back to Babylon was some of Jerusalem’s best and brightest young men.

The Bible says that he took young men, without any physical defect.

Men that were handsome.

He took these men to train to be his servants.

And among these men, along with Daniel, there were three of Daniels friends.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Now, because God had intervened in these men’s lives and had allowed Daniel to interpret a dream for the king, all four men were put in prominent positions of power in the kingdom.

Then the king made a statue of gold and demanded that everyone in the kingdom bow down and worship the statue. Anyone that did not would be thrown into a fiery furnace. Well guess what, Shadrach, Meshach And Abednego would not worship the kings idol.

Now, lets go to the word of God.

Read Daniel 3:13-30

Notice how boldly these three young men stood even in the face of death.

If you will think back you will remember that when Moses was alive, God gave Israel some instructions.

We call these instructions “The 10 Commandments”.

And in the first one of these commandments God said, You shall have no other gods before me.

Now God was giving these commandments to Israel but you know that they were also meant for us today.

God said “ You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

Then God went on to say that if someone has made an idol, you are not to bow down to them or worship them.

Well I think that just about covers anything we could come up with doesn’t it.

We are not suppose to make an idol of anything.

Now Smiths Bible dictionary describes an idol as an image or anything used as an object of worship in place of the true God.

We can look back in ancient times and see that people made idols pretty much out of everything.

People made idols out of wood, iron, gold, clay.

People have worshiped the sun, the moon, the stars.

People have worshiped fish, cats, other animals.

People have worshiped supposed gods that they just made up.

Now people in our day and time would not do that would they?

Would they?

Well, they do and we do all the time.

The Philistines use to worship a fish god that they called dagon.

Now, We would not do anything like that because that is just plumb silly isn’t it.

Well, I know quite a lot of folks that have an idol called fishing.

Now, I am not condemning fishing, but we are not to put fishing or any other activity in front of God. Remember, an idol is anything that is used in place of our worship of the true God.

And how often is it now that we hear about people wanting to worship “mother earth”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think we should take care of the resources that God has given us but the Bible plainly says that we are not to worship these resources.

I’m sorry, I really don’t want the three toed spotted horned hoot nanny to become extinct either, but when we put peoples lives in peril and when we make people suffer to try to take care of an animal that we are not sure exists, we have missed something.

And when we have millions of people out there doing everything they can and putting laws on the books to save the dolphins while at the same time millions of American babies can legally be killed in their mothers womb, Something is wrong.