Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190001B
|
00:01 We left with the Chaldeans going to King Nebuchadnezzar
00:04 and telling him that there were certain Jews 00:07 that did not go along with his great image 00:12 that pictured that the world was going to last forever 00:16 and it would be a Babylonian world, 00:18 in contrast to Daniel's dream. 00:20 Daniel's dreams said no, there will be a succession of kingdoms 00:23 ending with God's kingdom, setting up His kingdom 00:26 that will last forever. 00:28 It's a fantastic dream; the great stone cut without hands 00:32 and fills the whole earth. 00:34 I can just image those three Hebrews there faithful to God. 00:37 We don't know where Daniel was. 00:38 He would have certainly stood with them. 00:40 But he must have been off on some journey or something. 00:43 We don't know. 00:45 But I can just image they're all standing there, 00:49 and when the music plays everybody 00:51 bows down to the image. 00:53 By the way, we're going to see that at the end of time again. 00:57 There's going to be a lot of peer pressure. 00:59 And there must have been peer pressure out there. 01:01 They may have had talks with each other before they went. 01:04 Maybe they talked to some of their other Jewish friends 01:07 and said, "We don't know, this is not going to be good, 01:10 but we're not going to stand up. 01:12 We don't know about you guys, but we're not going to bow down 01:14 to this image. 01:16 We worship the God of heaven and we serve Him." 01:21 And I can just see their friends saying, 01:24 "Well you know, that will get you in a lot of trouble. 01:26 Maybe not the kind of trouble you want." 01:29 In fact, Nebuchadnezzar wanted to make sure that everybody 01:31 went along and that they got the message 01:33 so he brought a fiery furnace out there and he declared that 01:37 anybody that didn't do it, that didn't bow down, 01:39 was going to get tossed into that fiery furnace. 01:44 So there they were, the music plays. 01:46 Everybody, all of these leaders from all over the world, 01:49 they bow down before the golden image. 01:53 Except for three. 01:56 Maybe somebody peaked. I don't know. 01:58 They must have. Somebody must have. 02:02 "Look." 02:03 Maybe they were whispering, but it wasn't long before 02:05 they had these three guys in front of Nebuchadnezzar. 02:10 Now Nebuchadnezzar wanted to be a nice guy here. 02:12 He usually sometimes could get pretty angry. 02:15 But he liked these young Jewish guys. 02:18 So he says to them in so many words, 02:22 "Look, guys, I'll give you another chance." 02:26 Now it seemed nice, but I love the response of these young men. 02:30 I'm putting this in my words. 02:32 Paraphrasing it. 02:34 Because they looked at the king and they said, 02:36 "We don't need another chance. 02:38 We don't need to go through this again. 02:40 We don't need another chance." 02:42 Because they were saying nothing is changing. 02:45 Let me tell you this. Their mind was made up. 02:50 Is your mind made up? 02:53 Is your mind changeable? 02:54 Do you blow back and forth in the wind 02:56 between your loyalty to the Lord Jesus and Scripture? 03:00 Or maybe you just haven't made up your mind. 03:01 Maybe you feel pulled by the world one way 03:04 and blown by the peer pressure another way. 03:07 And then you feel the longings of Christ, 03:09 or you say, "I know it's good. 03:10 I know I need to do this, but..." 03:16 They didn't have that. They made up their mind. 03:18 By the way, before Jesus comes, there's going to be 03:21 a whole generation of people that are going to 03:22 make up their mind. 03:25 They're going to make up their mind 03:27 that Jesus is everything to them. 03:30 And they're not going to change. 03:32 They're not going to be blown by the wind. 03:34 These young men looked at, they looked at King Nebuchadnezzar 03:37 and said, "We don't need another chance." 03:40 And then they said something that really defines faith. 03:43 They said, they looked at that fiery furnace. 03:45 It was sitting there and smoking. 03:48 And they said, "Our God can deliver us 03:50 from that fiery furnace." 03:52 That's faith. 03:53 Faith believes that God can do anything. 03:57 He can do the impossible. 04:02 But then they said something else that also defines faith. 04:05 "But if He doesn't..." 04:07 In other words, "If God doesn't deliver us, 04:10 we're still not going to worship your gods. 04:13 We know that God loves us even if He doesn't rescue us 04:18 from the burning fiery furnace." 04:22 Faith believes that God can do the impossible, 04:25 but faith also believes that God still loves me 04:29 even in the midst of difficulty and fiery furnaces. 04:33 Well in typical fashion, Nebuchadnezzar went into a rage. 04:36 Heated the thing seven times hotter. 04:39 And has these three young men tied up and thrown in. 04:44 It was so hot that even the men, the strong soldiers, 04:49 who threw them in died before they could get back fast enough. 04:54 So here they are, all looking at this fiery furnace. 05:01 And King Nebuchadnezzar and these Chaldeans 05:05 who reported to him these certain Jews, 05:10 all feeling quite self-satisfied. 05:12 They had taken care of the problem. 05:14 Sent a message to everybody. 05:18 And then they were stunned. 05:21 Shocked. 05:24 These men stood up 05:29 and were walking around in the burning fiery furnace. 05:36 They could hardly believe their eyes. 05:38 Nebuchadnezzar says, "Didn't we throw three men in there?" 05:42 And then here was the other stunning amazing thing. 05:48 "Didn't we throw three men in there? 05:52 Three? 05:54 But I see four. 05:59 And the fourth man looks like the Son of God." 06:08 When John sees Jesus, in the book of Revelation, 06:11 he says His face shines brighter than the sun. 06:15 And even though it doesn't say that in the book of Daniel, 06:17 I think that Jesus' face was shining brighter, 06:20 this fourth Man who is the incomparable Jesus, 06:25 the unchangeable Jesus, 06:28 the invincible Jesus. 06:31 He's standing there and His face is brighter 06:34 than the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter. 06:40 Listen, when you're in trouble, when you're in difficulty, 06:44 you need the fourth Man. 06:46 The fourth Man can do anything. 06:49 And those four men, those three men walked out 06:52 of that burning fiery furnace without even the smell of smoke. 06:59 But now I want to fast forward. 07:00 I want to fast forward to the time of Babylon 07:04 talked about in the book of Revelation. 07:06 In fact, John's Jesus, or Jesus through John, 07:10 uses Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon as a picture 07:15 in a symbol form of the Babylon that's coming. 07:20 There is another Babylon coming in the end of time. 07:26 In fact, it's going to have a fiery furnace. 07:29 And that fiery furnace is called, the mark of the beast. 07:34 In fact, in Revelation 13, using the picture of the 07:39 image to the beast, which is really another parallel to this 07:42 great symbolic Babylon, it says he brings 07:47 fire down from heaven. 07:49 This Babylon in Revelation, this Babylon is pictured in two ways. 07:55 It's pictured as an adulteress. 07:59 Meaning that she had not been faithful to the one that 08:03 she was suppose to be married to. 08:07 And she had made adulteries with a lot of 08:10 people she shouldn't have. 08:11 And I'm not going to get into that right now. 08:13 We'll get into that later. 08:15 And she's also pictured as a great city. 08:19 But she has something in mind. 08:21 And we're going to find that in the Scripture 08:23 in Revelation 18:7. 08:27 She says this testimony about herself. 08:30 This is her boast. 08:32 And it sounds like what Nebuchadnezzar was trying to do 08:37 with that great image of gold. 08:40 And here is what she says. 08:43 She says, "I sit as a queen. 08:47 I am no widow, and I will not see sorrow." 08:53 In other words, she's saying her Babylon, 08:56 like Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, is going to last forever. 09:02 It's going to last forever. 09:03 She's not going to see problems. 09:05 She's not going to see sorrow. 09:06 She's not going to have any problems. 09:08 Everything is going to go great for her. 09:11 But of course, when things go great for her, 09:14 it comes at a cost to God's certain people. 09:19 Just like it came to a cost to Daniel's three friends, 09:22 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. 09:24 They were thrown in that fiery furnace 09:26 in order to make way for the king's great vision 09:30 of a Babylon that would never end. 09:33 And this Babylon in the New Testament is no different. 09:38 If you get in her way, she has a fiery furnace for you. 09:43 It's called, the mark of the beast. 09:48 And she's not been faithful. 09:50 Now, you know, she's not been faithful to Jesus. 09:55 She's really a religious power. 09:59 But I want to come back to that point again. 10:01 The point is, it's not whose name you take. 10:05 I mean, you could take your husband's name all day 10:08 and say, "I am Mrs. So and so," all day long. 10:11 You can do that. 10:12 But if you're not faithful, if you're not faithful... 10:16 And that's what happens with this lady, this Babylon. 10:20 She is endeavoring to set up something, 10:25 but she's not doing it with Jesus. 10:27 She's not doing it with Jesus. 10:29 She's doing it on her own account. 10:33 She's got her own alliances, if you please. 10:38 And so that's why she says, "I've got this thing set up. 10:41 It's not going to end. 10:42 I'm not going to have any sorrow. 10:44 Everything is going to go." 10:45 She expects to reign forever. 10:48 But you know, there is an intervention. 10:51 An intervention by the God of heaven. 10:53 And the God of heaven sends seven terrible plagues 10:58 in the end of time that interrupts Babylon. 11:00 But that's another subject for another time. 11:03 I want to come back to this Babylon. 11:04 She's going to have great complete control, 11:07 complete information. 11:08 She's a control freak on steroids. 11:11 She wants to control the world. 11:15 Your life. Everybody's life. 11:19 She not only wants wealth, she wants power. 11:24 Power that does not belong to earthly beings. 11:27 Power that belongs only to the Lord Jesus. 11:31 But that fourth Man, that fourth Man that stood in that 11:34 fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, 11:37 He's going to show up again at the end of the world. 11:40 And let me tell you, we're headed for trouble. 11:43 And you're going to need that fourth Man. 11:46 You're going to really need Him. 11:48 And He's going to intervene to save His faithful children. 11:52 It doesn't matter what Babylon invokes, 11:55 no matter what she enforces, 11:57 she's going to have to contend with the fourth Man 12:00 just like Nebuchadnezzar of old Babylon had to contend with. 12:05 Don't you want the fourth Man on your side? 12:07 You know, there's a lot of peer pressure in the world. 12:09 And there's going to be a lot of peer pressure 12:11 to go along with Babylon. 12:12 There's going to be a lot of Christians that say, 12:13 "Well you know, we've got to think about life. 12:15 We've got to have life." And all those kind of things. 12:18 But I want to tell you that you better put your dependence 12:20 on that fourth Man who is none other than 12:23 the incomparable Jesus. 12:25 The incomparable Jesus. 12:27 The invincible Jesus. 12:29 The invincible Jesus that is unconquerable, unstoppable, 12:33 and unbeatable. 12:35 Jesus, the incomparable Jesus that's matchless, peerless, 12:40 unequaled, unmatched, unsurpassable. 12:44 This is the fourth Man. 12:46 This is the fourth Man that you need on your side 12:49 in the end of time. 12:50 This is the fourth Man that you need beside you 12:53 every day of your life. 12:55 This is the fourth Man who really, truly loves you, 12:59 because He gave His life for you on Calvary's cross. 13:02 This fourth Man that stood in that fiery furnace 13:05 is ready to stand in the middle of your fiery furnaces, 13:08 fiery furnaces that would consume you. 13:11 But because He's matchless, He's invincible, 13:15 He's incomparable, He can bring you through. |
Revised 2019-05-28