Unshakable Faith
Intro:
What makes a gymnast good, or a professional athlete?
It’s the ones that endure to the end, no matter what mountain there is to face. They rise to the challenge. Noah, Moses, Abraham, Peter, and Paul were all great men who lived ordinary lives, who became extraordinary.
Why? They didn’t live for themselves, but for the purpose and will of their Father because of the trust they placed in God. They understood the cost to follow God. Do you understand the cost?
Do you live for yourself? Where does your trust lie? There may be a day when we may have to count that cost, and see where our faith and trust really lie’s.
Like in 1920 a 15 year old Chinese girl…..
She counted the cost, she knew where her trust lied, she knew where her faith lied, and this young lady had unshakable faith even when faced with her won death. Unshakable faith is a faith that has total trust and reliance on God no matter the situation or the cost.
It’s like when an earthquake strikes in your life, no matter what the magnitude of the quake is, you are left unmoved.
Perhaps shaken, but not moved or broken. This morning we are going to take a look at 3 men in the Bible who possessed this same unshakable faith.
We will be taking a look in Daniel 3 but first I want to set the stage.
Daniel and the 3 Hebrews, Meshual who was renamed Meshach, Hananiah who was renamed Shadrach, and Azariah who was renamed Aben-Dego, are in captivity with many others.
The Babylonians came in and conquered them and tried to get them to conform to their lifestyle. The Babylonians were polytheistic, which means they served more than one God.
Gods favor has been on Daniel and the 3 Hebrews who were in about their 20’s, from the beginning of chapter 1 because they purposed in their heart not to conform to the ways of the Babylonians but to God Almighty. So God exalted them into a position of authority and gave them favor with the king.
Now we will see in Chapter 3 of Daniel that about 7 years or more has passed and Daniel is now gone most likely traveling and while he is gone the King Nebuchadnezzar, out of pride and rebellion against Daniel’s God, the one and only God, makes a decree to all the heads of state, that every one shall bow down and worship this statue he had created when the trumpets are blown.
Can you image if you were one of these 3 and you were faced with this decree, where your life was truly at stake, would you bow down?
We will see that the courage of Daniel’s three friends to face the worst that men could do, because they knew their God was a sovereign God and a God of mercy and justice, is almost without parallel.
Their humbleness before God in acknowledging his ability, without being so arrogant as to claim a knowledge of His final will for their lives, serves as a model for all believers of all generations.
We will take a look at 3 different aspects of Shadrach, Meshach, and Aben-Dego’s unshakable faith.
Let’s begin in Daniel 3: 1-6 (give time for them to get there) Read.
We see here in this scripture that an idol was set before these three men and they were commanded to bow down.
As the trumpets blew they were still standing. They were an example to those who were bowing down.
#1. They made a notable stand.
Today this same thing is going on all the time, it looks different but it is the same pull to waiver in our faith. The world sets images before us.
Whether it’s the image of GET EXAMPLES and the world wants us to bow down and when we won’t, what happens? We see what happens in verse 6 (and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.}
You see when we won’t bow down, when we stand for Christ and live a life of righteousness, we are cast aside and the heat is turned up on our lives.
So the question is, Who are you going to Bow to?
Let’s continue in verses 8-12
#2. They were tested.
Shadrach, Meshach and Aben-Dego’s unshakable faith was tested by an accusation.
The Chaldeans bring an accusation before the king saying that these men won’t follow his orders.
What I find interesting here is that in verse 12 it says that these 3 men were set over the affairs of Babylon and these 3 men weren’t Babylonian they were Jews. I think this might have provoked a sort of jealousy in the Chaldeans and so they are looking for a way to accuse these men.
Just like sometimes in our lives people become jealous of us, maybe because we have favor with people, maybe because we poses a joy they don’t understand, or whatever it might be, so they begin to look for ways to accuse us and bring us down.
When we stand for the Lord people will undoubtedly go against us.
It says in John 15:18 of the Message:
"If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me.
If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own.
But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you.”
This is what Shadrach, Meshach and Aben-Dego were facing and it is what we still face today.
Do you rise or do you plummet in the midst of a test?
Verse 13-15
#3. They Endured
We see here that Shadrach, Meshach & Aben-Dego’s unshakable faith was given the opportunity to crumble. They were given another opportunity to bow down just as the world will come at us over and over to try and cause us to change our mind and bow down to the images it has set before us.
Sometimes it is easy to stand for Christ and not give into temptation the 1st time but when you’re continually given opportunity to give in, sometimes we cave under pressure. But what do these men do? Let’s see in verse 16-18.
They stand their ground and we see that they have an understanding that they are accountable to God and not to man. As we go through life this is an important thing to keep at the front of our thinking.
If we can continually remember that it is to God we are accountable, we can find strength to make it through all the difficult situations that will arise in our lives.
Matthew 10:28 says (28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.) More times than not we see that people are more afraid of what their friends or peers can do to them, because it is tangible, we can see it, feel it, and hear it so we discard the fact that we should be most concerned with what God thinks and no one else.
We should be more concerned with pleasing God verses our friends or anyone else.
We can tell where we’re at by the decisions that we make. Are they man-centered or God-centered.
We see that for Shadrach, Meshach and Aben-Dego their decision was God-centered. They had unshakable faith. Because of their faith and stand against Nebuchadnezzar’s order to worship an idol what happens to them?
I’d like to say the king simply praised them for their unwavering stance, but as we read on we see that Nebuchadnezzar had other plans. Let’s look in verses 19-22.
So the king decides to turn up the heat.
When we stand firm in our faith a lot of times the heat is turned up.
Some of us will buckle under the heat and some of us will stand unshaken in our faith, even if it means we will be “thrown into the fire” so to speak.
Can YOU endure through the fire?
CONCLUSION:
In wrapping this up if we were to read on in verses 23 – 26 we would see that through these 3 men’s stand for the Lord, God was give opportunity to be glorified.
When the King had them thrown into the fiery furnace and the soldiers were consumed because the furnace was so hot, he saw that they were not consumed by the fire and in fact there was a fourth man in the form of the Son of God. We see an example of Christ walking with us through every fiery trial of life.
And we see that God showed Himself real through preserving Shadrach, Meshach, and Aben-Dego and because of this, King Nebuchadnezzar now see’s that God is true and he then in verses 28-29 declares that God is blessed and that anyone who speaks against God will be put to death.
When we are a witness through our unwillingness to yield to the idols set before us, we give opportunity for the Lord to be glorified and ultimately draw others unto Himself.
Matthew 5:16 say’s Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
When we stand unshakable in our faith others will take notice.
Let’s bow our heads and pray!!!
