4/22 Sermon on Daniel, Pt. 3

At the Family Church here in Gainesville, senior pastor Philip Griffin continued his series on the Old Testament book of Daniel, this message titled Standing When All Others Bow and focusing on Daniel Chapter 3, which you can click on and read through Bible Gateway. 

King Nebuchadnezzar has decided to build a ninety-foot tall, nine-foot wide golden idol...possibly of himself...and has commanded all of his officials to fall down and worship it...or else suffer death in a fiery furnace.  Daniel's faithful Jewish friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse, though, and when word of this reaches the prideful Babylonian king, he is enraged.  His anger further intensifies when he hears them say that their God would rescue them from the flames...but even if he didn't they still would not worship the idol.  As it turns out, God does rescue them while in the furnace and nothing of theirs...including their clothing...is burnt.  The king repents and appoints them to high posts of authority...

Pastor Philip used this story to discuss the idea of holding to one's faith in God and remaining standing when all others bow, listing three important elements: there is pressure to reform, faith has a price, and suffering contains a promise.  It is often easy to bend one's principles in small things and belittle their significance...everybody's doing it, no one will know, and so on goes the rationalizing.  Philip also brought up the point that Nebuchadnezzar was a pluralist in religious matters: you could worship your own God...but you'd better worship his as well.  We don't worship giant golden idols in our day, but we have our own idols we put beside the real God: money, power, pleasure, sex, to mention a few of them...so maybe we're not as different from the king of Babylon as we would like to imagine ourselves.  The price of faith is the willingness to suffer for it to the glory of God and the building of his kingdom...and that price has often been death...one estimate that our pastor revealed was that 70 million Christians since Jesus have paid that price for their faithfulness.  But as Philip pointed out, suffering by faith is not only inevitable, but it contains the promises that our character will be purified through it and that God joins us in our suffering.  And he concluded the message by stressing that we need to let God, not ourselves, be the one in charge of advancing our success while we refuse to bow down to our culture's idols...and that we are to make Christ first in our hearts, in our day, in our consideration, and in our finances.  Whew, that's a lot of wisdom to digest...thank you, Philip!

You can watch Pastor Philip's message online through YouTube...just click on the following link: [TFC Videos].  The Family Church, at 2022 SW 122nd Street, meets for its services Sunday mornings at 9 and 10:30.  They have the weekly message, praise and worship music, friendly people, prayer, learning...and free coffee and refreshments.  Daniel Part 4 will be the message this Sunday...