The Only King That Will Never Be Destroyed | Pastor Will Hawk | 17 May, 2026

We walk through Daniel 3 and watch Nebuchadnezzar move from “Who is the god who can deliver you?” to blessing the Most High God. We wrestle with where we run when pressure hits and why real faith stays steady even when the outcome is unknown. 

• Nebuchadnezzar’s gold statue as a picture of self-worship 
• The shift from lowercase g gods to the one true God 
• A personal gut-check on where we seek deliverance 
• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s resolved refusal to bow 
• Faith as assurance plus conviction even if God says no 
• The furnace heated sevenfold and the cost of obedience 
• The fourth man in the fire and Jesus as the door 
• Why they have to be told to come out 
• The fire burning only the restraints 

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Transcript

Announcements And Reading Setup

Will Hawk 0:46

Amen. Thanks, Stella. I gave Stella a longer passage to read than we usually do. That goes part in parcel with Old Testament narratives. Stella, thank you. Hey, I wanted to tell you something awesome that's happening right now. Thomas is leaving. And I know all of us, I'm just kidding. No, he really is. He's going across town to preach at another church. And so you can't, I mean, you can clap, he's not gonna hear you. He's gone. But as we're like celebrating young people last week, babies and praying for them, and this week, seniors, guys. Midry is a place where we want you to grow, stretch in your gifts and go and use them. And so it's just a really cool Sunday to me that Thomas pops up here and encourages us. And then next thing we know, he's bebopping across town to serve another church and preach for them. And so if you see him next week, ask him how it went, give him some feedback. You can make it up. He won't know if you listen or not. All right. So here we are in Daniel chapter three. Stella just read for us. And I immediately have a couple of questions. If you guys uh want to grab the notes, I think you can. Uh, do you guys have my slides popped up over there? If you guys want to grab the notes from today, there we go. Uh while you're doing that, I'm showing you a picture from a previous text that we walked through. Because as Stella's reading, there are a couple of things that immediately stand out. And uh one of them is bagpipes in the Old Testament? I didn't see that coming. Did anybody like have a William Wallace moment this morning while you're reading? And you're like, bagpipes making it in the OT? That's pretty great. The other thing that immediately stands out to me is here is Nebuchadnezzar making an image of give me the metal.

unknown 2:32

Gold.

Nebuchadnezzar Builds A Gold Idol

Lowercase Gods And Real Deliverance

A Faith Decision Made Early

Assurance And Conviction Defined

The Furnace Heats Up Sevenfold

The Fourth Man In Fire

Come Out Come Here Invitation

The Fire Burns Only Restraints

Will Hawk 2:32

Gold. But didn't he just have a dream about this? Now, we don't know how much time has passed from Daniel 1 and 2 to chapter 3. Could be months, could be up to 10 years. We we know from some data that it couldn't be longer than that, but somewhere in the range from a handful of months to 10 years, Nebuchadnezzar goes from this dream, where you can see him in his bed. There's this massive statue. If you weren't here, I'll get you caught up in 10 seconds. You've got uh all of these different metals. The head was made out of gold. He realizes God, uh Daniel tells him, You, O king, are the head of gold. Then this stone comes and the whole thing comes crumbling down. Well, however much time has passed, Nebuchadnezzar now goes and says, Well, if I'm the gold, then we're gonna make an entire statue of gold, 90 feet tall, and people are gonna come and worship it. So whatever it was that happened in this dream that sort of got his head straight and his heart straight, it's begun to dissipate. And now he builds this entire statue of himself to himself for his own worship. And even though we don't know exactly how long that dream held sway, at some point a lot changed. Now, this is the entirety of Daniel chapter three. It's not much you can do with that unless you have better vision than I do. I'm so close to buying readers. Every time, like let me just have a moment with some of y'all. Every time I pull out my phone, this is what happens now. I go, huh. That little, that little just, huh? I'm getting older. I can still read that from here, at least partially. I can read it from here. This is all of Daniel chapter 3. I show you this because inside of it, something really incredible happens in this verse. I want you to tell me when you notice it. So I'm pulling two verses out of the entire chapter, verse 15 and verse 28. You need to know this. This is a really fun text. This is a really fun sermon. I'm gonna need you to be fun with me today, okay? So, what I want you to do, look at verse 15, look at verse 28. Something happens. There's a different do y'all remember the highlights, kids' magazine, where you had to find the differences in picture one? Okay, that's what I'm giving you. I'm giving it to you in text. Tell me when you see the difference in verse 15 and 25, and it's okay if you get it wrong, but I actually want somebody to talk to me. What difference do you see in 15 and 28? My girl, let's go. Amber, okay, so everybody play close attention. Here's where Stella finished. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands? Now, what is the Holy Spirit going to walk us through as we read through this story? We're gonna end up getting to verse 28, where that same person who says, What God's gonna deliver you from me is going to say, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And in that moment, something magical, something spiritual and magnificent changes, and it is this lowercase, uppercase. From this moment to what we're gonna read in just a handful of minutes, Nebuchadnezzar goes from looking at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and all the people. And he has a question for them that is a question for you. What God do you run to when trouble comes? Lowercase G. You don't have to grow up in an animalistic culture or a spiritualistic culture or the Old Testament for me to tell you you are tempted to serve a plethora of lowercase G gods. Success, comfort, peace, prominence, all of these things, wealth, all of them are lowercase G gods. Things for worship, for admiration, to attach your heart, your motivation, your desire to. But somehow, from verse 15 to 28, everything changes in the heart and the mind of Nebuchadnezzar. He looks and he says, Who's the God who's gonna deliver you? And then all of a sudden he says, Blessed be the God. He all of a sudden moves from his perspective of this sort of pantheon of the gods to one that reigns above them all. The question this chapter begins with is this where do you run for deliverance? Now refuse to move from this point until I give you five to ten seconds to at least answer the question in your own heart and mind. I want you to pick a difficulty in your life right now. It doesn't matter to me if it's big or if it's small, if the account's red and you wish it was black, if there's a kid who mouled off and you just hadn't fixed it yet, if something's sideways with your spouse from the drive over here, or if it's something absolutely massive, cancer, prayer for loss of life, a loved one overseas, whatever it is, I want you to take five seconds. Where would you be tempted to run? When that happens, what is your knee-jerk reaction? Is it distraction? Is it to numb the thought or the pain? Is it to just bare your teeth and grit it? There's a million different ways you can do those things. If not capital G God, what would be the lowercase g God that you would run to? Because if you really want to engage with God's word today, you're going to see God miraculously answer this question. But he answers it to set up the next one. The next question, which I think is much bigger. Today you might not be looking into a fiery furnace, and I'd be willing to bet the barn on the fact that none of you are about to be thrown into a pit of lions. I feel pretty confident you couldn't pull that off if you wanted to. I'd be willing to bet that none of you are about to try to figure out how to cross a Red Sea or look up a hill where a cross awaits and wonder if you are going to say, Your will, not mine be done. But every one of us are going to be given difficulties. And the question is, where do you turn for deliverance? Where do you specifically go for answers? Where do you go when you need courage? How do you do that? Specifically, how do you do that? Do you think you do it well? Because our troubles can be very different from theirs, but this question's not new. And they believe, and we've seen this in the previous chapters, they believe they weren't just stolen from their home and brought to Babylon. They believe God sent them. So everything you're about to see, they have a theology and a perspective. Whatever God brings, whatever God allows, I'm supposed to be here. Who does he want me to be in the midst of it? And it's no different for you. All right, let's get back to the action here. If you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into, I love all the adjectives. You're not gonna get cast into a furnace. No, you're gonna get cast into not a fiery furnace, a burning, fiery furnace. The Bible is having a good time with this. This is hot. You don't put a pizza in and not pull it out, burn. This thing is uh a cataclysmic type of chaotic consequence. Who's the God who will deliver you out of my hands? I am the king of the greatest nation in the world, Nebuchadnezzar would say. I speak, things happen. Who's gonna save you from me? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Look at this, look at the screen. There's no pause. This is one of the best and worst realities of young people. Okay? They're not even thinking it through. All right, like appreciate this. It could be headstrong youth. I don't think that's what's going on here. I think there is a resolve of faith that pre-exists before the difficulty arrives. Their lives are on the line, painfully on the line. When I was in uh high school, one of my classmates, freshman year, freshman year in high school is always an interesting thing because you see things you'd never seen before in school. It's just bigger. The the range of people is wider. It's not the same 23 folks that you've been doing class with, you know what I mean, since you were four years old. And when I was uh when I when I went to Hartaway High School, my freshman year, I met a guy, I'm not gonna share his name, but I met a guy who had tragically been caught in a house fire when he was a child. Disfigured him, changed the way he looked, changed his hair pattern. Just I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to be him as a kid growing up. Marred as a result of a consequence that was not his own. So when we read these words, for those of you who know how this thing's gonna play out, don't fast forward. Step into this moment with them. They know what fire is, they know what fire does, they know how it feels. And here they are standing before the judge and the jury and the executioner, and all he's asking them to do for a moment is that. And it will save them from a world of hurt and pain and loss. And immediately, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they answer, standing before judge, jury, and executioner. There is no pause. I want to play a quick game with y'all. All right, you ready? I've played this game before. We're gonna see how many of you have learned. I'm always, if it's your first time here, don't worry about it. Like, you don't know if you can trust me yet. I'm just some weird guy who's real excited about the Bible. All right, for the rest of you, you don't have to answer anything. I'm not gonna embarrass you, probably. All right, I just want you to hold up one finger. That's it. I just want you to hold up one finger. You can do it. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait for some of y'all to get courageous. All right, good. I'm gonna put a question or a direction on the screen. Then I'm gonna say one, two, three, go, and I want you to do it. You ready? And one, two, three, go. All right. Uh-oh, Peter, wrong way, bro. Wrong way, Peter. Bring it back. Bring it back. All right, all right, hands down. See, that wasn't terribly embarrassing. Thomas pointed north that way, sent one of our seniors completely in the wrong direction. I love that that happened. He didn't even know it was coming. By the way, I've done this before. Uh, in the event that you're curious, our building is built oriented off of a compass. If you stand under that chandelier, north is directly through the cracks of those doors. East this way, west this way. If you're ever building a house, it makes for beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets. You put your windows here. You'll actually save on the energy if you put deciduous trees, but we can talk about that later. The reason I wanted you to do that is because I wanted you to feel the moment of pause where you're like, I can figure this thing out. Hang on. Now, some of you are quick, all right? Some of you are pretty quick. I'm gonna do one more. You don't have to put a hand up. You're gonna answer this one out loud. You ready? One, two, three. All right. That shadrach, Meshach, and Divin the guy. I want you to feel the difference in this. They are standing before the guy who is going to potentially take their lives. They don't pause a minute. They do not stop to think. The answer for them is predetermined. Here is what we are going to do. They don't even have a moment of consensus between the three. They don't have to look at each other. Are we gonna bow or are we not going to bow? Their response was a reaction. Because while I may be asking you, where do you run for deliverance? They had already decided where to run for deliverance. It doesn't matter what comes. When I'm stolen from my family, I go to God. When I'm put in a place where I don't know the language, I go to God. When I stand before a fiery furnace, I go to God. It's two times two, people. It isn't hard. I don't have to think about this. They answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, if this is how you want to play the game of our lives, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning 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 or worship the golden image that you have set up. I don't know which one of them spoke. I give credit to Shadrach because we always start with a guy. I doubt they said it in unison. That would have been creepy. If it if I was Nebuchadnezzar and they did that, I'd been like, you're good. All right. But I have no clue. Here's what I know: these three young men stand in front of a king with death and torment standing in front of them, and their response did not require prayer. Their response did not require Bible study, did not require a counseling session. Bow to you or serve the God who has cared for me my whole life. I mean, give me a hard one. That's how they treat it. Their stance is absolutely certain, even when the outcome isn't. I didn't make that a whole slide, but some of you should. Their stance is certain even when the outcome isn't. They don't know how this thing's gonna play out. In fact, they give both options in their response. But they make the book in Hebrews. When the writer of Hebrews, likely Luke, is remembering the great examples of Christian faith. Here's one of his lines. I'd love to tell you about people who through faith conquered kingdoms. Check yes, enforced justice, check yes, obtained promises, check yes, stopped the mouths of lions, give it a chapter or two. Quenched the power of fire. Escape the edge of the sword. Don't miss the last line. These people were made strong out of weakness. They weren't made strong out of strength, they weren't made strong out of education, they weren't made strong out of intellect, they were not made strong out of ability, they were made strong out of weakness. Their stance was certain even when the outcome wasn't. Because it wasn't just their stance, it's their faith. Now let me teach you something about faith that many of you have heard, but maybe not seen exampled well if you grew up in the church. Now, faith, you you may have heard Hebrews 11:1. Faith is the assurance of the things that you hope for, the conviction of things not seen. I've read it to you, but I wonder if you've ever seen how perfectly uh how perfect of an example Shadrach, Meshach, and Abinigo put this on display. They have assurance, and here it is. God will deliver us out of your hand, O King. Gonna happen. I am sure. Bank on it. Conviction. But even if he doesn't, be it known to you, O King, we will not serve your gods. This is faith on display. It's a willingness to say, I am confident that God is going to do what is good and holy and wise and beautiful, that he loves me and he cares for me. I am assured of that. But you need to know my conviction. If life, I'm gonna say this real slow for about 30% of you. If life doesn't pan out the way I thought it would, if the way I thought God was going to answer something is not the way he answers something, let it be known to you, O King, I'm still not serving anybody else. This is assurance, this is conviction brought together in this beautiful reality that Christians call faith. The assurance of the things that you hope for, the conviction of things that are not seen. And I'll tell you what I find really, really cool about this. There's a story in the Bible where Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac. And he goes through every step. They walk up a mountain together just as someone else walked up a mountain. They stand at the precipice and the wood is brought just as the wood was brought. The knife is lifted, and Abraham is about to bring it down and plunge it into the chest of his son. But what happens? Non-retorical, what happens? Yeah, an angel says, Whoa, hey, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. And Abraham stops. And God says, Abraham, now I know that you will serve me and not yourself. Now God knew it, He's putting it on display for Abraham. Don't miss this. Nobody stops them from going to the fire. All right, now there's a reason for that. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego look into eyes of Nebuchadnezzar that are red with fury, and they are, I'm about to show it to you. God is going to allow them. He is going to serve them. He is going to commune with them by not staying the hand of the king, allowing the hammer to fall. For these three young men is a gift, a service, and a communion with God. On the contrary, King Nebuchadnezzar gets pretty hot. Let me show you how hot the guy gets. Now Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, so much so that the expression of his face changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter. Seven times more. Seven in the Bible is a sign of completion. In other words, this thing is infinitely hot. They're getting close to the structural failure of the actual furnace. This is the greatest raging fire of punishment you will find outside of hell, inside of Scripture, my opinion. Seven times more than it was usually heated. He ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Aminigo and cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men, this is a funny detail to me. 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, remember this dude's hot. He's angry, and the furnace was overheated. The flame of the fire leaps out and kills the men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning, fiery furnace. I have some questions. What did these guys do to be the ones that had to carry Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Like, you do wonder, like, if it had been a day before or a day after, and those mighty men were off duty that day, they're hanging out with their families on Tuesday. But these guys that go to fulfill the order of the king are destroyed. Now that's an interesting question, but my bigger question is this. I'm not trying to be provocative. I'm just inviting you into my brain. Did they feel the heat as they got closer to the furnace? How many of you guys have been at a bonfire, like a legit bonfire? Uh then it used to build these things, all right? He would go and steal every pallet from Home Depot. I'm convinced I pay 10 cents more on the dollar for everything because of all the pallets they had to replace. I think statute of limitation. Is run out. Seven years, you're good. You're good. You get near a big fire, you can feel it from a hundred feet away. A lot of you know that. What I want to know is this. If I'm them and the furnace is there, did they feel the heat as they were being carried toward it? Was it warm, hot, blistering? Or did they begin looking at each other from 30 feet away? Hey man, I don't feel this thing. Ten feet away. You getting hot? I'm not hot. This soldier is struggling, bro. I don't know. Did they know before they were thrown in they'd already been saved? Or did the Lord allow them to feel the heat right until the precipice of the door? It'll be one of my questions when I get to talk to them. I don't know if they could feel the heat or not, but I will tell you this. I want to plunge into the fires of life the exact same way. I do. I want to be able to see the doorway of difficulty and know without having to think if God has brought this, if God has allowed this, I will walk through this. By the way, missionaries are doing this every day, still today. By the way, people are making decisions in their lives. They are debating whether or not to tell mom and dad that they have turned to the gospel of Christ, knowing they come up in a Muslim home. Right now, in our world, there are a thousand furnace doorways that people are walking toward. Do they feel the heat or not? I don't know. But in verse 24, we find out what happens. King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished. He rose up in haste. He declared, I want to underline a few things. 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. I've always read this. In studying this, Nebuchadnezzar, how many people are you burning up on the rag that you can't keep count? Like, was this not a unique thing? He's just sitting back, he, I don't know what he's doing, drinking some wine, eating some cheese, and all of a sudden he looks up and he's like, Hey, somebody do a count on this. How many did we just throw in? It was three, right? Wasn't it three young guys? Yeah, that's right. Okay, it was three. 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. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door. I want to show you one of the greatest gospel invitations I think you can find in this text. And I want to offer it to some of you. I want to offer it to those of you who know that you're not walking through the fire well. I want to offer it to those of you who are not sure if you are near to the Lord, if he is near to you. You don't know if your salvation is secure in him. Please just notice this three-step process that Nebuchadnezzar puts on display. Number one, he is astonished. What is he astonished at? Deliverance. Unexpected deliverance. He is astonished that these people who deserve the flames aren't getting them. He is blown away that there would be another way when it seemed like there was only one. You walk through the door and you die. These people do not. So he is astonished because of the deliverance. That astonishment causes something to happen, not just in his heart and in his head, his feet move, his hands go. He doesn't just say, Someone bring me back a report of this incredible thing. I don't know why he became British in that moment, but hey, he's a king. Whatever. I immediately started thinking Lord of the Rings and like the fall of it when I was here. So but my point is this: when you are astonished by the deliverance that God offers, do you move? Now, let me just, I don't have a lot of conviction in this. This is such an encouraging, uplifting test. Let me just turn one gear of conviction. We need to be a more responsive people. We do. I'm just letting you know. We need to be a kind of people who are willing to respond when an amazing God does an astonishing thing. And there's enough of you in the room where he's doing it all the time. Now, look, I don't know what your church tradition was. I don't know if you got in trouble if you raised your hand or prayed out loud or anything. You just need to know this. Um, I'm looking through the window of the door that we do the roots class in, and a question came up. Here is a question in the last Roots membership class. Hey, Will, are we like allowed to clap? I was like, define your terms. Like, what are you talking about? Like, in worship, can we clap? Like, I you you can. Most of y'all can't, but like Bennett, we gotta work on this. Like, I feel like whenever we get people clapping, we need like one on time. That's all we need. But the their question was, am I allowed to be responsive in this church? Can I just invite you and let you know the answer to that is yes. The goal is not to be distracting. We don't want to distract anyone from what God is doing. But Nebuchadnezzar, who has seen it all, sees something he's never seen before. And he gets up off of his rear end and he walks near. For some of you, it's singing because all you do is stand there and stare. For some of you, it may be lifting your hands or kneeling. For some of you, it may be coming back and praying with folks or coming to receive prayer. I don't care. So long as you're not distracting folks. What I do care about is that we not be so concerned about what other people think that you miss this moment because if you miss the second one, you're prone to miss the third. He's astonished, he gets up, and he comes near to the door. Nebuchadnezzar, where do you run for deliverance? He runs to the door between the fire of certain death and abundant life. And when he gets there, things are backwards. There is life where only death should be. Oh, you know what? I was supposed to build that. He got astonished, he rose up, and he came near. I did that. Jesus would say, I am the door. Now look, I'm not saying when Jesus when when Nebuchadnezzar walked up there, that the door was representative of his heart. But what I will tell you this is when he looked in, he saw a fourth. And that fourth was different. That fourth was unique. That fourth looked like a son of the gods. Some would say this is an angel, some would say this is Christ. I tend to believe this is Jesus. Jesus would say, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, great job, Christian, on our call to worship, wherever you are, he will be saved. There is no other door that saves you from every fire in this world and every fire that waits. He will be saved. What did they do? They go in, they come out, they find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, to kill, to destroy. But Jesus comes that they, that you may have life, and not just any life, an abundant life. He is a good shepherd, and the good shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep. What was Jesus' posture? There's a word. What was Jesus' posture in the fire? I see a fourth, and he is what? Starts with a W. Walking. You know what blows me away about this? Maybe I've watched too many cartoons. But if superhero movies, if Jesus is in the fire, what I would have imagined is he would at least be sweating a little bit. He'd be squirming, he'd be holding or summoning enough power to keep these three faithful young men from bursting into flames. It's not even a lift for him. It's just walking around, hanging out. Because for Christ to deal with the most difficult piece of you is a walk in a shady park. Not because your sins aren't messy, they are. You know they are more than anybody else. But so strong and secure is the cross of Christ that dealing with your mess for Jesus is a walk in the park. And that's exactly what he does. He walks around. And Nebuchadnezzar comes near to the door. And the very next word is one of my favorites in this passage. He came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace. He declared, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. Here you go. We made it. Servants of the Most High God, the one who can deliver you out of my hand, the one who is above everything else. Come out. Come here. Don't you dare miss this. Then they walked out. Now, I'll just tell you that is a sermon in and of itself. They don't just survive this ordeal, they're happy to stay in it. So long as they're with Jesus. They have to be told to walk out of their difficulty. They have to be invited out of their brokenness. We step in and we're like, come on, Jesus, get me out of this thing. Not them. They're like, Jesus is in this. I don't want to go anywhere. Where would I rather be? Ames and I were driving through town. I've got uh a fixer upper, I've got a project truck. A lot of you guys know that. It's an 85 Dodge Ram charger. Love the thing. It's always parked in the bottom corner. It's always unlocked. The keys are always in it. Good luck. But right now, the project AC doesn't work. So we open the little windows, we drive around. Ames's didn't work. We're going through town yesterday, and every time we hit a red light, my kid's like, oh God, so hot. All he wants to do is for that red to turn green so we can just get a little bit of air. These guys just hang in the fire. They hang there because Jesus is there. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, Jesus says. And through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned. And the flames will not consume you. They would rather stand in the fire with Jesus than outside it without him. And I will tell you, that is a challenging sentence to make. They would rather stand in the fire with Jesus than outside it without him. This is the answer to the question of where you run for deliverance. There's a million little g gods that want your attention. You will not find what God offers you through his son. And whatever you go to for deliverance, it is going to be seen. The satraps, the prefects, the governors, the king's counselors, everybody gathers together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their head, not singed, their cloaks, not harmed. No smell of fire had come upon them, which would be the uh like the detail my wife would be most impressed with. She can smell smoke on me from saying, Don't get in the bed. Like, ah, I know you've been working. She doesn't like it. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo, who sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies, rather than serve any little G God except their own, big G God. And in this moment, the question changes. It's no longer where do you run for deliverance? The chapter ends with this who is this deliverer? Who does this kind of a thing? Who steps into the human realm into our brokenness? I'm giving you the signal. Who does that and delivers people? This is the God who does it. By the way, these are all Nebuchadnezzar's words. I'm not changing one of them. Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abinicah. Who is this deliverer? He's the one who deserves glory. I'm turning it from where do you run to? Who is the one you run to? When you stand up to sing or kneel or pray or talk or go, whatever it is, do you know he deserves glory? He sent his angel, he delivered his servants because he has the power to save. If the first one, him deserving glory, causes you to worship, the second one should build comfort inside of you. They trusted in him, setting aside the king's command, yielding up their bodies rather than serving or worshiping any other God, because this deliverer is the one who has authority over all things. What does that do? It should put in you faith, assurance, conviction. And it ends so well. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. And that's where the sermon ends. Sort of. Keep it going, Bennett. I have a question for you, and I want you to respond. On like early in the week, I grabbed three books, if anybody can answer this question. Because it's not an easy one, and you're gonna have to be a little bit bold. Here's your final question for the morning. What did the fire burn? Non-retorical. Think about it. Can anybody answer that? Okay, the guards. Okay, fair. Other than the guards, okay, Jan, you're the first I saw. He's putting his hands together. Alright, Yan, come here. You get to pick one. You gotta stand up in front of everybody. You either get delighting in the Trinity, uh, the practice of the presence of God, or what if I'm discouraged in my evangelism? Very bold choice, my friend. The whole church is gonna ask you how that goes in the next few weeks. I'll show you what the fire burned, but you had to be paying attention. Twice the Bible says this. He ordered some of the mighty men, this was a real fire, they were the strongest guys, they still burn up, to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were bound in their cloaks. When you get to 25, I see four men unbound, which means the only thing that burned were the restraints their enemy put on them. That's it. The only thing that burns when they have faith in God are the restraints that the enemy put on them. This is one of the great purposes of living a life of faith. Not having faith, living a life of faith. It is to burn up everything that would hold you back. So what are you bound up in? Are you bound up in anxiety because of an uncertain future? You got a spouse overseas? You got a final coming up in the next week? What would it look like for you to let faith burn it away knowing that Jesus is right beside you? You got resentment that's got you bound up? Family, spouse, business, friend that you're resenting? What would it look like for you to let faith burn that thing up, knowing that Jesus is right beside you? Sickness and pain, unforgiveness, lies, betrayal, what has you bound? What would it look like for you to let faith burn it away? Knowing that Jesus is walking right beside you. If you want the freedom that comes with trusting in Jesus and Jesus alone, you have to go to him and you have to go to him alone, and you have to let him burn up everything that is holding you back, creating you into something new. Where do you instinctively run for deliverance? Are you alone or is Jesus in the fire with you? If you are alone and you do not know Christ as your Savior, I am pleading with you not to leave until you have made that right. You can do it in your seat or you can come and talk with me or anybody else at the church. What still has you bound that needs to burn away? I'll give you a moment to think as the ushers come in, and then let's respond appropriately.