The Book of Daniel: Courage to Quietly Resist
Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 3 about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing up to King Nebuchadnezzar. Discussion points: Religion can be coopted and twisted to support political agendas, the three men would not submit to the king’s order even though they didn’t know that God would save them, Jesus has received our sin which allows us to receive God’s approval.
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Scripture reader: [Daniel 3:19-25] Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats and their other garments and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedego fell bound into the fiery furnace.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, "Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?" They answered and said to the king, "True, O king." He answered and said, "But I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods."
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: Well, this was I did not grow up going to church very often as a, as a kid. But this was my favorite story that I ever learned as a child. In fact, it is the only story that I remember learning as a child. Anybody with me did was this anybody else's favorite when you were growing up? No. OK. Maybe one. Wow. Well, if you didn't grow up in church, you're in for a treat. This is a really great story, but it's not just a children's story. There is just so much value to what's going in and what's going on in this story. This passage is way more than a children's story.
This passage is about the way that people use power, use the way that people use religion to gain power for themselves. And it's about what it means as Christians and as people who are faithful to God, to stand firm and not to allow our religion and our faith to be co opted by those looking for power or to be compromised by the culture around us. Does that sound fitting at all to what's going on? You know, when we first planned the, the series on Daniel, we said, let's do it around election season. That would be great. And I was like very applicable, lots of themes that are gonna go great. And then now we're in it and I'm like, I wish we didn't.
Yeah, I'm having second thoughts because now it just feels like I'm talking politics every week. it's kind of like when your family plans a, a, vacation to Florida and, then you're, you're looking forward to it, you're planning it the whole time and then you're ready to go and there's a hurricane coming and it's like, oh, yeah. I knew that was possible but I wasn't actually counting on it happening and it's like, can we, can we go somewhere else? Can we rebook the tickets? No, you can't. Well, kids, I hope you like wind. We're going to Florida. So here we are, we're in Florida and we're going to continue to go through this series on, on Daniel.
Let's just dive in. OK. Verse one, I'm just going to walk through the passage and then I'll apply it at, at the end. OK? Verse one, King Nebuchadnezzar. We only read six verses in the very middle and I'm not gonna have most of the verses on the screen for you today. So you had to turn in your Bibles if you have them. But we are, I'm gonna tell you the whole story and leading up to the part that we just read and you'll see it's a really great story.
Verse one. King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. OK. So we pick up the story right after Daniel chapter two. And if you remember Daniel chapter two, the king has a dream and he has this dream of a large statue. And the whole point of the dream is that earthly kingdoms are going to fall and that we need to invest our time into the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom of God is going to come with power and it's going to fill the entire earth. That's what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar when he had the dream.
And Nebuchadnezzar said, oh good. I'm good for a little while. It's not, I'm not gonna fall. It's going to be one of the Kingdoms that comes after me that falls. And so what does he do? He goes and makes a giant statue. Now, the passage doesn't tell us what the statue actually looks like. It could have been a statue of Nebuchadnezzar himself. which seems likely it could have just been like an oblique like like the Bunker Hill monument or something like that. It was just a statue, but the statue was 60 cubits tall. Now, a cubit is like 1.5 ft. So it's 90 ft tall. I don't know if you have a perception of how tall 90 ft is. It's really tall like it is way taller than this church building. It is, it is probably double this height. If not more 90 ft tall would be equal to like one of the tallest buildings in all of Somerville. It is at least eight stories tall. Just imagine a tall, not one of those.
You know, you, when you go look at light houses, you got like the little wimpy ones you're like, that's cute. And then you got like the real lighthouses, you know, imagine like a tall lighthouse in the middle of a corn field because this is in the plains of Dura. That is what this thing looks like. You're gonna be able to see this from miles and miles away. And that is what he set up.
So he set up this huge statue and really what he's trying to do, the statue is an embodiment, embodiment of the natural of the national identity of Babylon. The statue is an embodiment of the national identity of Babylon. So what Nebuchadnezzar is trying to do? He is an emperor. He has gone and conquered many other lands and he has people of many different religions. And what does religion do well, but it unites people well.
And so what he's trying to do is he's trying to create a state sponsored religion to unite his empire. That is what's happening. He wants everyone to bow down to the same God so that they can all believe in the same way. And have a state sponsored U Union with one another. It's a celebration of all things. Babylon is, this is the religion basically. Then verse two, then Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects and the governors, the councilors, the treasurers, the justices, the Magistrates and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. That's a long list of officials, isn't it? And they really seem overlapping. What it's basically saying is like everyone was there, everyone from every country that he, every nation that he's conquered is required to go to this thing and they all have to bow down to the statue that he has created. The who's who of Ancient Babylonian society.
Verse four. And the Herald proclaimed aloud. You are commanded o peoples nations and languages. I don't, that's how the Herald talks. That when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, lyre, trigon. Well, I don't know what that is. A harp, a bagpipe. I doubt it's the Scottish bagpipe, but I like to imagine it's just like someone in a kilt with a bagpipe out there. The bagpipe and every kind of music you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up and whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
Nebuchadnezzar is a bloodthirsty dude. He likes death. As we'll see as we go through this story and this, this furnace, basically, he has a whole orchestra. That's what we're supposed to see when it lists all these instruments. It's not just saying random instruments. It's like all the instruments were there and they were playing in unison. It was an orchestra to celebrate and to worship the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up for himself. And he's trying to unite all of these people into one polytheistic religion, a pluralism religion.
He's basically saying you can keep your gods, but you're going to bow down to the God of Babylon also. And who is the God of Babylon. But it's me, Nebuchadnezzar, you're going to bow down to who we are so you can keep your gods as long as you acknowledge ours as well. This is a strategy used by many totalitarian regimes think, OK, just the most obvious one, think Hitler, OK. The German people were united in common religion and they co opted that religion to support Nazism. There's this guy, his name is Baldur von Schirach. I don't speak German, Balder von I-don't-speak-German. And he's the leader of the Hitler youth at the time.
If you're not familiar with the Hitler youth, crazy. It's basically like Nazi boy scouts. OK? And they had every, they did all these boy scout type of things. Step four, they had to give all their allegiance to Hitler and Hitler was their God and Hitler drove them to do everything. There's been lots of stuff put out about the, Hitler youth in recent days, Jojo Rabbit, a movie about the Hitler youth. There's also All the Light We Cannot See, a book that I read recently. I think I got the title right, about the Hitler Youth.
And the leader of the Hitler youth says this about state sponsored religion. He says one cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God, but an arousal of faith in the eternal German is at the same time an arousal of faith in the eternal God. If we as true Germans, we act according to the law of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer serves Germany and whoever serves Germany serves God.
Do you see that move that he's making? He's saying you can have your religion as long as your religion endorses our state sponsored leader, he's taking their religion and co-opting it to support their totalitarian emperor slash dictator. And we know where that led them to the horror most horror filled part of the past 100 years. And it's, it's true of totalitarian regimes that they co opt religion this way. It's also true of pluralistic societies in, in many of the same ways that you can privately believe whatever you want to believe. As long as you publicly show tolerance and acceptance for everyone, as long as you get in line but don't dare claim an exclusivity of your religion over anyone else's.
Pluralism wants to privatize your faith and publicize your tolerance. And there's some aspects of that that are great. I love living in a pluralistic society where we can decide what we believe for ourselves. That is a good thing is a good thing that we have freedom of religion in our country where you're free to practice Islam, if you'd like free to practice Judaism, if you'd like free to practice Christianity, the only problem is when it becomes a religion in and of itself that says, you have to accept all Gods and the God of our nation and you cannot have a thoughtful conversation about if one is exclusive over the other, if one is true and others aren't. You see, we pluralism becomes the God.
And so we have to be careful that we don't just fall into the culture and say everyone is right because the, the gods have truth, claims that in and of themselves aren't competing with one another. You cannot believe in a pluralism like that. Although living in a plural society is a good thing, you see, that's what Nebuchadnezzar wanted. He wanted privatized faith and public commitment to the national ethos of Babylon.
Well, you can see how this might be a problem for Daniel and his friends because they are people who are faithful to the one and true God. Yahweh. And if you believe in an exclusive, I believe this God, this God is real. I'm not going to believe in the other gods. It's going to become a problem and Daniel is not in this chapter as we see, this is all about his friends, Shadrach, Michach and Abednego. Those are their Babylonian names that they're called by throughout this chapter. And these three men, they follow the one true God. We don't really know where Daniel is. We assume he's like back in the Capitol somewhere. We're in the plains of Dura now. So Daniel's just not in this chapter. Ok?
But these guys, they kind of won't participate. They're at, they're in the plains of Dura, they're refusing to bow down and that's really not a big deal. There's so many people there, the king's never gonna notice, but they're snitches. All right. And the snitches are called the Chaldeans. They're astrologers and there are people that the king called to interpret his dream in the last chapter and they couldn't do it. They couldn't tell the king his dream and what it meant. And so now they're trying to get back in the good graces of the king and what better way to get into the good grace of someone then be a tattle tail, ok? They're brown, they brown noses here.
Listen, verse eight. Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came for, I like how Daniel writes this. Ok? Certain Chaldeans, there were certain people he came they came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar. O king live forever. Suck up. You O King have made a decree that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe and every other kind of music fall down and worship the golden image and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace. Well, we found some people that deserve the furnace king. Would you throw them in? There are certain Jews whom you've appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men o king pay no attention to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you've set up.
Now, just let's just step back for one moment and notice how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego quietly resist the command to worship Nebuchadnezzar and the statue that he set up. They're not putting together their picket line to go and protest in the plains of Dura. Ok? They're, they don't have all their signs. They're not out there, you know, no God but the real God, whatever it is. They're just quietly refusing to bow down. They're just kind of like, nah not for me. You know, I'm gonna sit this one out. You guys, you guys go bow down. They're quietly not participating in this aspect of culture, but the king is hot and he's ready to play with his easy bake oven.
And so he calls Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego before him and he says, bow or burn, that's you, bow or burn. And what will they do? Will they stand and die or will they bow and live? Those are their choices. Listen to how they respond.
Verse 16, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answer the king. Oh Nebuchadnezzar, we have, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand O king. But if not be it known to you O king that we will not serve your gods nor worship the golden image you have set up. Yeah. You know, that's like, that's like really, really bold. That's a great way of saying that he doesn't notice that they're not saying God will deliver us. They're saying he's able, God is able to deliver us even from this. But if he doesn't, I'm still not bowing down to your gods Nebuchadnezzar. Just bold, confident, cool headed, great. There's some things that are more important than life itself. There are some things that are more important.
Verse 19, this is what we read earlier. Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Every cartoon movie has that scene where the, where the there's a supposed good guy and then all of a sudden his face changes and becomes a bad guy. That's what's happening. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than usually heated. He's like, we're gonna go. All right, you guys are gonna be instant dust. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the fiery burning furnace. These men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats and their other garments.
So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're not some like, like lowly poor people. Ok. These are, these are aristocrats, they're nobility. They're dressed well. They're wearing nice things and they have their hats on their fancy hats. They, they would look silly in our day and age. They're dressed so up. And they're thrown into the furnace with all of their nice clothes on. And because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The soldiers couldn't even survive the furnace. They got close to the door and they died as they threw them into the furnace. And these three men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell down into the burning fiery furnace, and, but what's Nebuchadnezzar doing? He's peeking through the window. He's look, he's watching from a distance. What's happening and what he sees surprises him.
Verse 24. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up. He declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire? They answered him. Yes, O King. That's right. Yeah. May you live forever. He answered them and said, but I see four men all unbound walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. This, this word that's being used here. It's an Aramaic, this portion of Daniel's written in Aramaic and this word that's being used for like a son of the gods. It's really just the best word that we have for like a divine being. This, this guy's glowing, he's like a divine being. Later on, Nebuchadnezzar calls him an angel walking through the furnace.
With them, many Christian traditions had taken the fourth person in the fire to be the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ himself. Have you guys heard that one before it? I like that theory. I mean, it could very of very well be true. This is called a theophany. A theophany is when the incarnate, God becomes pre incarnate. So before he's in before the incarnation, when Jesus was born, we see Jesus or the second member of the Trinity show up multiple times throughout the Old Testament, usually through the person of the angel of the Lord. And when you see that phrase, the angel of the Lord usually we think about that as being the person of the Trinity is like the presence of God manifested on earth before the incarnation of Jesus in this passage that very well could be what is happening.
But we only see things from Nebuchadnezzar's point of view. We only see it described by Nebuchadnezzar and he doesn't know Jesus. He doesn't know Yahweh. He doesn't know who that fourth person is in the fire. So it could be Jesus himself. It could be an angel. I don't really know, I don't really care. The, the point is the same that God was with them in the fiery furnace, that God was with them in the fiery furnace that God delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He was present with them in that great moment of need.
So they let them out of the furnace and they were completely ok. Their clothes weren't even burned. They didn't even smell like smoke. Verse 28 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. Therefore, I make a decree any people nation or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses laid in ruins, for there's no other God who is able to rescue in this way. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.
What is with this guy and his fixation on, like pulling people apart limb from limb like a Wookie. He's just, he's just bloodthirsty. I mean, he gave them a promotion. That's cool, I guess. And he's saying like you can worship Yahweh. But then he's like, and if you speak ill of Yahweh, we're gonna pull you apart from your toes first. We're gonna start with your toes and pull you apart piece by piece. That sounds terrible. Still not good. Nebuchadnezzar. Look, we need to work. That's a baby Christian. If I, no, I don't, I don't think so. I, I don't, there's no reason to think that Nebuchadnezzar was actually converted. Ok? You could, you could, some people say that he was but like if he was converted, this is what I'd expect him to do. I'd expect him to be like tear down the statue. Yahweh is God. We're following the God of Yahweh now. But instead he just applies more tolerance for people who follow Yahweh here, which is good. It's a win. You gotta count your wins. Ok?
Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace may feel removed from our lives and his demand for public conformity might not be something that we feel in the same kind of way, but we all feel it in a way. Do we not whether it's political leaders, cultural pressures or workplace expectations. Christians are often asked to privatize our faith and to go along with the crowd. I'm gonna give you a few examples of what this looks like. But before I do this, I'm gonna talk about courage and how you can have courage to stand. When you feel the pressure to conform. The way that you can have courage is to have the same, the faith in the same God that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had faith in who is able to save. We have to rest on his approval and his presence.
Just as God was with them in the fiery furnace, Jesus promised to be with believers today. The last words of Jesus before he ascended to heaven in the gospel of Matthew are this. He says, and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age. And so even as new covenant believers, you know, I used to think, well, we don't experience the same type of stuff that they have in the Old Testament. They had God just so tangibly. It's really the opposite. The old Testament believers were longing for what we have, which is like the presence of God with us through the Holy Spirit that we have Jesus with us. Always until the end of the age in a much more real way, you can depend upon Jesus being with you, than even Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could.
And so we can stand firm that Jesus is with us and as his followers, he helps us in our moments of fear, which is really what happens when we're stood, when we're up against con con conformity. Most of us are afraid of rejection and the more significant the person in our lives to reject us, the more we're afraid of it. So if I'm rejected by someone, I'm walking down the street, they, they, if they yell at me, you know, which is kind of if I'm drive, if I'm like riding my bike and they yell at me, I don't care that much. Ok? It's like I'm never gonna see that person again. But if that happens to be one of you, it's gonna matter a little bit more to me. If you reject me, if it ends up being a member of my own family, and I feel rejection from them will that matter significantly more.
And who could we fear rejection from more than God himself? He's the most significant person there is. And so we fear rejection from Him. But we also know that we have full approval because Jesus has received what we most fear. When Jesus was on the cross, he was removed from the approval of God and the presence of God and the full wrath of God was placed on Him on our behalf, all the sins of the world placed on Christ, bearing the full wrath of God. So that we can live our lives assured that we will not have to be removed from the presence of God.
That is the gospel, that Jesus received the re the, the separation from God that our sins deserve. He received the wrath of God that our sins deserve. And so we can live our lives with this confidence that He's never going to reject us, that he walks with us, that He's with us each and every moment. And so we have this confidence that Jesus was tossed into the fiery furnace of God's wrath. So we don't have to be separated from the loving presence of God.
And I have two applications for how we might apply this courage into our life. And the first is we will not allow our faith to be co opted for someone else's power. And the second is we will not allow our faith to be compromised by the culture around us. All right, this is where I get in a little trouble, ok. Whether you're right or left, you're probably gonna be angry with me by the end. And let's just hope that you're, that you're Jesus, ok? That you're, you're, you're going for that. We will not allow our faith to be co opted. We will not allow powerful people to use our faith to gain more power. Karl Marx, the famous communist once said that religion is the opiate of the people. I, I've heard another person say that religion is more like the cocaine of the people just revving them up to, to do whatever the politicians want them to do.
Our example of Hitler from before is, is fitting, is it not the leaders of Germany said that to hit serve Hitler is to serve God, they co opted the faith of millions to serve their power. But there was a quiet resistance. There was a quiet resistance even in Germany at that time, I want to share a picture with you. This picture is of a man named August Landmesser. I love this guy. You see him. He has like it took me. It was like where, where's Waldo the first picture until I put the circle on there. OK? Because I heard there's one guy that's not saluting when they say Hail Hitler and he's just, you know, he's just got his arms folded like nah bro, I'm good like he's no, I'm, I'm not gonna salute you. I'm not bowing down to your statue, Hitler. I am not doing that. Quiet resistance can look like that. Just say, count me out. I'm not doing it right now.
In America right now in America, both the left and the right want to co opt your sense of righteousness and justice to gain political power for themselves. There's many people in this country who see Christianity as just an excuse to moralize the platform of the Republican Party to those Christianity has lost their credibility. Christianity has to be more than that, or it becomes culturally irrelevant in a place like Somerville.
And I don't care if you're a Republican or you're democrat really. I do not care. Look, if it's like, if it's like, economic policy that makes you lean more conservative. I'm kind of like, cool, whatever. I don't, I'm not an economist. I don't know what will work. Like, I don't, I really don't know, like when Ron Paul was running, back in, like, 20 years ago or something at this point, I was kinda like, well, let's just throw him in there. See what happen, you know, like, I don't know, like, he's, he's like a libertarian. I was like, maybe like, something different would be good. I don't have a lot of thoughtful, I opinions on economic policy. And so if you are more conservative or more liberal in your economic policy, cool. That's fine with me.
But what I don't like is when we just moralize everything in religion. And so what happens is that Christianity gets co opted often times by the, by the Republican party. the Republicans are far more likely to try to co opt our faithfulness to Jesus for their political power. At the same time, though Democrats do the same trick. It's the same party trick. They, they just co opt a secular religion of morality and justice to say. And they're both saying this, if you're not with us you are not a good person. Do you feel that where it's just this, this separation where they both say if you're not with us, you are an evil person. That's, it doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to make religion have this and we don't have to make politics have this religious push to it.
We just have to stand firm and, and say that that's not us, that we will not allow our faith to define our politics. And I'm not gonna support you just because I'm a faithful person just because I'm a Christian. It doesn't mean that I'm gonna vote for someone who supposedly represents Christianity even though they might not be morally qualified to represent our country or so it, it doesn't mean that it, it doesn't mean that you are forced to vote a certain way when you're a Christian.
I love how Russell Moore, the, the editor in chief of Christianity today says this, he says that courage isn't just the dissident, refusing to deny Christ when tortured by a dictator, but the Christian in a free country who refuses to define his faith by loyalty to a politician of any sort.
Marilyn Robinson is a famous novelist. She wrote a Pulitzer Pulitzer Prize winning book a few years ago and she says it like this, a society is moving to a dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposed higher interest.
We will not allow our faith to be co opted. The message of the gospel is not a thing that you can hijack to gain political power because the second, you hijack the gospel to gain power for yourselves. You rob it of all of its power. The gospel is this message that says the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The gospel is this message that says that we must serve one another. It is not something you use to gain power. If you want to use the gospel, you will probably end up becoming less wealthy, more generous, less powerful, more humble servant of all. That is what it means to follow Jesus.
And if that's not appealing to you this morning, I'm going to pray and ask the Lord to make that appealing to you because it is the best way to live worldly. Power is temporary, but the Gospel is powerful for eternity. Amen. We must not allow our faith to be co opted for political gain, but we must not allow our faith to be compromised. At the same time. This is a major theme throughout all of Daniel. We've been talking about this lazy river of cultural con conformity to American culture for the past several weeks. And Daniel is the story of remaining faithful. When the culture around you is hostile to your faith, we have to quietly refuse to allow our faith to be compromised.
You don't have to make a big deal about it. But there's just some things that you can't participate in as Christians and you have to take a stand, a quiet stand of resistance. Look at them, they're, they're not making a big deal about it. They have tattle tales and they have to stand before the king and then they have to be bold once they get told on like that, but they are just quietly resisting as Christians.
Here's some examples. Everyone around us thinks that you're absolutely crazy. If you get married to someone that you've never had sex with, they also think you're absolutely crazy if you get married to someone that you've never lived with, never mind all the statistics that say that actually divorce is more likely for you live with someone before you get married to them. But they think you're absolutely crazy. If you pursue a biblical sexual ethic as Christians, we have to have courage to hold on to what might seem like an outdated sexual ethic because we trust that following God's design for sexuality is better than following the world's design. And so sometimes we just have to quietly say no, that's not for me.
When you're out with friends and they're having one drink after another. We have to know our limits as Christians. The Bible talks about drunkenness often. And so I don't know what it is for you and I don't know what that looks like. Exactly. Maybe it's like the second drink comes, you're like, no, I'm good. And you might have friends. They're like, hey, you sure what's up? Like, we're having a good time. You're like, no, you know, I had one. I feel good and I'm good. Maybe it's the third drink. I don't know where you're, some of this is the first drink. Ok? And, and you just have to know your limits. You have to know where you are and you don't have to, you have to know where the line is.
And the same goes for drugs that might cause you to have some mental effects as drunkenness. We have to look and say, you know, it doesn't glorify God if I'm out of my mind, if I can't control myself, I'm not glorifying God. So I'm not gonna go there. I'm just gonna say no thanks. I think we live in a culture that can respect that one usually, but sometimes you might feel pressure to conform when everyone I'm gonna keep going. Ok? There's like several here that are like this is the, these are hard areas for us as Christians to just quietly refuse you. We don't have to make a big deal about it.
When everyone's watching the new Raunchy HBO series. Sometimes you just have to say that's not for me, you know, like I can't, I can't have that conversation with you. Sorry, I missed it. You know, like it, you might feel left out and sometimes you, you might, you know, feel like that drain on a friendship, but sometimes you just have to know where your lines are. The other day. I sat down to watch an Academy Award winning movie. I made it 15 minutes and I said, no, this one's not for me. I turned it off. I had to, it wasn't, it wasn't gonna encourage my walk with Jesus at all. I could tell after 15 minutes. And so I just, I just stepped out. I said I don't, this is, this movie is gonna cause me to objectify people and other people's bodies are not for my objectification. They're, they're made in the image of God that I'm meant to honor them because of how they're created. I'm not, I can't do that. I can't allow my brain to go to those places and it just affects the way that I think about people. If I start to see people as objects, I start to treat them like objects. It's a really horrid thing. We have to control our thought life.
Maybe you're out shopping and you see, you see something you wanna buy, all your friends are buying stuff and there's a, a bag or a gadget or whatever it is. You're like, I want that. And sometimes you just have to say I got 17 bags at home. I don't need another one. I don't, I don't need one right now. Jesus calls me to live simply and to live generously. And as a Christian, I'm gonna just deny myself at the moment and say no, I'm good.
Quietly resist the cultural flow that tells you you can only be happy with more things. Maybe you feel pressure to cut corners to fudge numbers to take shortcuts at work, to get ahead. But the grace of God compels us to live with integrity. You have to be the same person all the way through. You can't live without integrity at work and with integrity in other places, you have to be an integral person all the way. And if you practice non participation like this, you're going to probably feel a little bit of resistance. You're gonna feel like ju like like you're gonna feel judged but not judged in the same way, you're gonna feel judged that you're being judgmental. That's what's gonna happen, right? Like, like why are you being such a stick in the mud? And it's like, no, I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud. I can't teach you how to make it to where people won't think that you're being judgmental. I can just teach you how not to be judgmental. OK?
And you have to let them have their own idea of who you are, you and you have to know that the presence of God is with you and that you're approved by Him and his approval matters more. His approval matters more. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were willing to go to the fiery furnace even though they didn't know if God would actually save them. I like to think though what had ha what would have happened if they had actually been burned? Ok. They were willing to go if they had been burned. If, if God wouldn't have showed up, the story probably would never have showed up in the Bible. Right. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we wouldn't know their names and be like and they were thrown into the furnace and they were no more next story. Daniel chapter four, but it still would have been the right decision. It still would have been the right decision.
Hebrews 11. It's called the Hall of Faith. When we go to Hebrews 11, it just list faithful person after faithful person. And it says that this person did this great thing. They shut the mouths of lions, they they did all these amazing things. And then you get to the end of the chapter Hebrews chapter 35 the second half of it through 38. Even though after it's explained this great faith of what these people have done. It says some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and others chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats. Destitute and afflicted, mistreated of whom the world was not worthy. Wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.
Even if they had been burned, their faith would have been worth it. It would not have been in vain. Similarly, I've asked myself, this is just something I've, I've been thinking about recently. Where were the, where were like the anti segregation, white pastors in the fifties? Ok. Like is a fiery time. Like you read about the civil rights movement and it's like, praise God for Doctor King and for those who led the civil rights movement. But where were the white pastors? Like, why wasn't anybody standing up in a moment when we needed someone to stand up?
And the more I thought about it is it probably wasn't that the white pastors just weren't saying anything. It's that they said something one week and then they were fired the next and then they lived their life in obscurity, maybe like mopping floors somewhere or something like that. And the world was not worthy of them. We have to have courage to stand, to not participate when our faith is being co opted or compromised and to live out faithfully. The calling to Jesus, there are some things more important than life itself.
Soren Kirkegaard says this, he says the majority of people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion as they are of holding an opinion alone. And friends. You are not alone, you're surrounded by. This is one reason why we have to be a solid community of faith. We need to be there for one another. We need to be in each other's lives to remind one another to see like we're, it's not just that we're standing alone against the lazy river of cultural conformity. We're linking arms and doing it together, holding one another in place, your brothers and your sisters, they got your back. We're all together.
But also you're not alone because Jesus has promised to be with you, though you may fear the fiery furnace of life. You're surrounded by his love and his approval and he's with you. So friends, let's have a quiet rebellion, shall we, against the status quo, against, against conformity and co-opting and being faithful to our God who has always been faithful to us. Amen.