When the Heat Is On — Part 3

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. I'm so glad that you found us today. And whether you're at home or in your car, we're so glad that you're here. And we pray that God will give you hope in times of difficulty. Rick is taking us through the Book of Daniel, and that's so we'll be equipped to handle whatever curveball life throws at us, even the most difficult trials. So let's listen to Rick with part three of a message called when the Heat is On.

Now, these guys have given a direct challenge to Nebuchadnezzar, his claim to be God. Everybody's gonna worship me. I'm number one. I'm the best. You're all to honor me. And they said, no, we're not. And so Nebuchadnezzar, of course, gets angry up here on the screen. Verse 19. Nebuchadnezzar became so furious that his face distorted with rage. You've probably seen this in your household. Just guessing, just guessing. Nebuchadnezzar became so furious that his face distorted with rage, and he commanded that the furnace. Notice this is almost laughable. Be heated seven times hotter than usual. Now, why does he need to do that? I mean, human beings are gonna fry at normal fire. Okay? It doesn't need to be seven times hotter. Okay? This is what you call overkill. It's redundant, it's unnecessary. He doesn't need that thing to be seven times hotter. Just normal fire will kill a person if you throw them in it. So why is he doing this? I thought about this a lot, and I actually suspect that Nebuchadnezzar was secretly worried that the Hebrew guy's God might actually help him out and say, let's just make this thing Sure. I don't wanna look bad here. So heat that puppy up seven times more. We're going up to 11. Okay?

Okay.

And so that's what's happened here. Now, when somebody reacts like that, this is just a little side note for you. When you're at work, when somebody obviously overreacts to your faith, they just, like, come unglued when they hear you're a Christian. You need to realize that the more extreme your attacker, the more insecure they are. The more insecure a person is, the more over the top they become. People who are secure in what they believe aren't insecure about what you believe. I know what I believe. It doesn't matter. I don't get blown away when an atheist or an agnostic or somebody of other Faith sits next to me, and I just engage them. It doesn't threaten me, doesn't bother me. Why? Cause I'm secure in what I believe. When people have though interior doubts and they're fighting with their own guilt, or they're fighting with their own conscience, or they're fighting with their own past, they often take it out on you. So you just need to understand it. It's not about you. All of that vile stuff that's coming out, that the person who's over the top angry about your faith, it's not really about your faith. It's about what's going on inside of them. So let's see what the king does, and then let's look at what God does. Verse 20, it says this. Then the king ordered some of his strongest soldiers to bind their hands. This is of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Bind their hands and feet with ropes, which, again, that's unnecessary if you're gonna throw a guy in a fiery pit. Okay, really, we're like overkilling this thing. Bind their hands and feet with ropes and throw them into the blazing furnace. So they tied them up and they threw them into the furnace fully clothed. But because the king, in his anger, had demanded such a hot fire. Remember, turn it up to seven. The flames leapt out and killed the soldiers as they threw the three men in. Oops. But securely tied up, they. These three men fell down into the blazing flames of the furnace. Okay, now what happened next is six things. And when you know these six things, you're gonna take a deep breath. When you're going through the fire, when the heat's on in your life, when you feel like you're going under, when you feel like everything's coming at you, you're under enormous pressure. What happens when I trust God in the furnace? On the back of your outline, this story shows the six benefits. When you trust God, when you have faith, in the middle of the furnace, the fiery furnace. And if you feel like right now you're going through hell, you better pay attention. Because you need to know what God has promised to do if you'll trust Him. Write these down. Number one, when I'm going through the fire, if I trust Him, God will walk through the fire with me. That's a big relief right there. You won't be alone. God's presence will be with you. Over and over and over again, God has promised his presence. No matter what you go through, if you will trust him, he says, I will be with you. I will be with you. And so In Daniel, chapter 3, verse 24, 25, they throw him in this fiery furnace. And here's what happens. Suddenly, Nebuchadnezzar, this is the biggest emperor in the world at the time, Nebuchadnezzar, jumps up in amazement. And he asks his advisor, didn't we tie up three men and throw them in the furnace?

Yes, we did.

His advisor said, yeah, we did. Well, look. Look now. He shouted, you can see four men now in the furnace. They're walking in the furnace unbound. That means the ropes are burned off, walking around freely in the fire, walking around unharmed. And this fourth man, this fourth guy that you can see in there, look at him. He's right there. He looks like a son of the gods. Now, this phrase, son of the gods is just a euphemism. He said, he looks like. He looks like he's not human. He looks like he's divine, of kind of sort. So he's saying, that guy. There's the three guys we tied up, and there's that fourth guy walking with him through the fire. And that guy doesn't look like your normal human being. He looks divine. It wasn't a son of the gods. It was the son of God. It was Jesus. Jesus was walking through the fire with them, walking through the fire with him. And he's promised to walk through the fire with you, too. Jesus said, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.

Is God a liar?

No. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Almost the last words that Jesus said when he gave the Great Commission before he goes back to heaven were these on the wall. Matthew 28:20. Jesus said, I will always be with you. To the very end of the age, I'll always be with you. Let's go back to that verse we looked at in Isaiah, that promise again. Let's put that one back up on the screen. In Isaiah 43, it says this again. We read it earlier, and it says this. When you go through deep waters in great trouble, I will be with you. That's God's presence. I'm gonna be with you. When you go through the river's difficulty, you're not gonna drown. When you walk through the fires of oppression, you're not gonna be burned up. Flames will not consume you, for I am the Lord. Did you notice on that verse, by the way? I don't mind interrupting myself. I can hear that guy anytime. Did you notice on that verse, he says, when, not if. When you go through the fire. When you go through the storm, when you go through the flood, this is a certainty in your life. You're gonna go through the fire many times in your life, Count on it. So you just need to know what to do when the heat's on. Those four things that they did. And now the six things God says he'll do if you trust him. If I trust him. First, he'll walk through the fire with me. Okay. Second, write this down. Second benefit. If I have faith in the furnace, God will burn off everything tying me down. I love this. God will burn off everything tying me down. Do you notice that in this fire, they didn't get burned? Their clothes aren't singed. They're not even, you know, they don't even smell of the fire. The only thing that got burned off were the man made ropes they'd been tied up with. Question. What's got you tied up? What's holding you back? What's limiting you from being all you're meant to be? What are the limitations in your life that God wants to burn off in your life? You see, God may take you through the fire, you're gonna come out on the other side unhinged, unhinged, untouched, unburnt. But the things that will be burned off, the stuff that's tied you down, the stuff that was holding you back, the limitations in your life. You see, pain never leaves you where it finds you when you're going through life, you're walking through life. Pain picks you up over here, but it doesn't drop you off there when it finishes. It drops you off over here. And you're not the same woman, you're not the same man. Because your character has been tested, refined, and grown in the fire. And all of a sudden, over here, before the fire, you're immature. Now, you come out of the fire, mature. Over here, you didn't trust God at all. You're full of doubts over here. Now pain leaves you, you trust God, you're full of confidence, and God has burned off the stuff in your life that was holding you back. Now, really hot fire actually can cauterize a wound. You've seen this in movies. Somebody's shot in a battle and they're bleeding to death, and they'll take a hot poker and they'll push it against the skin, and that heat will cauterize the wound and stop the bleeding. In olden days, they would take gunpowder, literally put it in the wound, light it. It's excruciatingly painful, but. But it stops the bleeding and Sometimes in your life, God has to stop the bleeding in your life with a little fire, with a little heat, or you're just gonna bleed out and you're not gonna make it. And so he cauterizes it and he burns off everything, tying you down. This is called what the Bible calls a refining fire. Look at this next verse in your outline. Isaiah 48:10. I have refined you, but not in the way that silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering. You're not gonna go through a fiery furnace literally in your life, but you are gonna go through the furnace of suffering many, many times. And God is refining you in that fire. Now, silver and gold, you, you know, they heat it up. The way they get rid of the impurities, they put it at a very high temperature, and it burns off all the impurities. So then you have 100% pure gold, 100% pure silver. And if you ask a silversmith, how do you know when the silver is pure? He says, when I look into the cauldron, the pot, and it's pure, I can see my reflection in it. And when God knows you have been purified by the fire, he can see his reflection in you. You, you look like Jesus. You're more Christ. Like you're a godly man, you're a godly woman, and it is the fire that produced that burning off the stuff that was holding you back. All right, number three. Here's the third one. This is a big one. If I trust God, when the heat is on, God will give me a new freedom. A new freedom. You're gonna come out on the backside of that fiery furnace with a new liberty, a new freedom. You're not so bound up now. The Bible is full of examples and testimonies to this, that what people in the world mean to use to enslave you, or what people mean to use to entrap you or to destroy you, God wants to use that very problem in your life to liberate you, to set you free from the expectations of other people, to set you free from the opinions of other people. To. To set you free from a lot of other things that are holding you back and tying you down. One example, Psalm 66, verse 12, they say, There you let the captors set foot on our neck. This is actually talking about when the Jews were slaves in Egypt. They said, God, you allowed that. You allowed us to be slaves and set the captors foot on our neck. But he says, but he says, then we went through fire and water and you led Us out to freedom. Circle that word, freedom. God wants you to be free. You know the truth, and the truth.

Will set you free.

And it often comes at a very high cost and a lot of heat, you know, when my youngest son died, he struggled with mental health his entire life. My son was born with a very troubled mind. Tender heart, troubled mind. Your identity is not your illness. Your character is not your chemistry. And he was depressed. He struggled with mental illness his entire life. The most courageous young man I've ever met. And he made it 27 years. But one day, as you know, three years ago, he took his life. It was the worst day of my life, and I will never forget that. And I was going through the fire with that one. But to make it matters worse, Satan just tried to take advantage of it. I'm a pretty well known guy, and anybody who's well known has critics. And the critics, when my son died, came out of the woodwork in magazines and TVs and blogs, and they were saying all kinds of evil things, meaning there were people celebrating my son's death. There were people laughing at his death. It was all over the Internet. It was just the meanest thing you could imagine. And there were armchair psychologists saying, well, it's Rick's fault, the dad's fault, and on and on and saying all kinds of nonsensical, biased, illiterate, illegitimate, nonsensical stuff. And literally, not only did I have to deal with the grief of losing a son, but for about three months I had to deal with this barrage of critics. And it was incessant and it was insane, and it was intense and it was brutal and it was public and it was constant. And I was going through the fire. I was going through hell, but God was walking through it with me. And I didn't get singed. And I made it through the other time, and I came out and survived that great fire. And I remember telling you, I told my family first, somebody had asked me, said, rick, you know, after all that Satan has thrown at you in the last 90 days, how do you feel? And I said, honestly, I feel fearless. I feel fearless. Fearless. My attitude is okay. I said, I'm just not afraid. My attitude was, Satan, that's the best you got. That's all you can throw at me. And have these people say things that are untrue and unkind and all, that's the best you. And I'm still here. I am not afraid of anything anymore. I'm just not. I'm not afraid of people's opinions or disapproval. Some of you, if somebody looks at you sideways, you wilt. You can't stand the thought of somebody in your school or your business thinking you're a Christian and saying one word about you behind your back because you think, I've gotta have everybody love me. You don't. You don't need their approval to be happy. And you just wilt. And you're not courageous. You're cowardly because the opinions of other people matter so much to you. You'd rather deny Christ so you can be popular than do the right thing. And God may have to take you through a fire. I hope not like the one I went through. But I came out of that liberated feeling, really. I don't care what anybody else thinks. I'm living for an audience of one. If God likes me and I like me, you got a problem. It's just a freedom, a liberation that I would wish for you. That you would be weaned of the addiction to the approval of other people. You just don't need it to be happy. I hope it doesn't take that kind of fire in your case. But God will give me a new freedom. Wow.

Some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now. This is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast. This is letters from our listeners. And now here's Rick today.

I wanna tell you about Diana. Diana's a nurse and she helps people every single day when they're facing their most difficult times. Diana wrote me this. Listening to Daily Hope has not only helped me face challenges in my journey as a new nurse, but. But it's also provided me words of hope to impact the lives of all my patients and even their families. The toughest thing most of us deal with is the loss of a loved one. And learning more about God's love through Daily Hope has allowed me to share with many, many people about the hope and the trust and the love that we can find in our Savior, Jesus Christ. I'm thankful to God for using you as an instrument for bringing me and many others to a Daily Hope in Jesus. Well, Diana, I just can't thank you enough for writing me. I love receiving these testimonial letters. And so I'm glad that your patients and their families that you take care of have somebody like you to walk with them through the tough times they go through when they are ill. Thank you so much for sharing God's promises with the people as they face their difficulties and even death. I want you to know that the promises of God are the best news that we can receive ever during our times of illness. And Daily Hope is here to support you in your ministry to others. God bless you.

You know, a great way to share the good news of Jesus is to share the Daily Hope messages with people who need to hear them. Just go to pastorrick.com, click on the Listen tab. There you'll find buttons where you can share the message by email, social media, or WhatsApp. That's pastorrick.com Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's Word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.