When the Heat Is On — Part 1

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 excited to hear what Rick will share today. Here's part one of a message called when the Heat Is On.

Now take out your message notes. We're in this series on the life of Daniel. We're looking at the nine greatest tests of life. Every time Daniel passes a test, he gets a promotion. And I think I told you that before every blessing comes a testing. God tests you with stress before he trusts you with success. God wants to know, are you blessable? Do you have the character and the maturity and the integrity of to handle what he wants to do in your life? And so he tests you. And every time you pass the test, then you get the blessing in your life. And we've looked at a major change, and we've looked at five, four different tests. Today we're gonna look at the test of when the Heat is On. Do any of you remember the Eddie Murphy movie Beverly Hills Cop? Anybody remember that movie? Okay, you're a lot older than you look, and the producers wanted a theme song for that movie, and so they hired Glenn Frey of the Eagles. The Eagles were a band that were broken up at the time. And they paid him a flat $15,000 to record a song called the Heat Is On. Anybody remember this song? It became one of the biggest international hits of the decade. And it made millions and millions of dollars. They paid the guy who sang it 15,000 bucks. Cause it was just a throwaway song. The title of that or the words to that song go like this. The heat is on the heat is on the heat is on it's on the street inside your head, on every beat and the beat's so loud it's deep inside because the pressure's high Just to stay alive the heat is on. Ever felt like that? Yeah. You know, it's interesting, that expression. The heat is on is not that old of an expression. It's less than 100 years old. It comes from the 1930s in America during the gangster era. And it meant the cops are after you. You were being chased by the police. And then it later came to mean if you were being interrogated or grilled by by the police. Then the heat was on. And I think heat grill, that's like barbecue. I understand this. Now, today, that phrase, of course, is an international phrase. Heat is on. It simply means I'm under pressure. I'm feeling the pressure of a deadline, the pressure of expectation at work, at home, the pressure of peer pressure, things like that. Today, it just means any testing of your strength of your resources and an expectation you have to fulfill. And there are a lot of different kinds of heat. But today, in this story in Daniel, chapter three, if you have your Bibles, you might open there, we're gonna actually look at literal. The heat is on in a fiery furnace. Now, this story in the life of Daniel happens 15 years later than the one we looked at last week. So now Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are, are no longer teenagers. They're in their mid-30s. Now, King Nebuchadnezzar, remember, he's the emperor of the Babylonian empire, which is the largest empire in the world at that time. He's the most powerful man in the world. What often comes with that is an ego. And his entire life. We're gonna see more about this later in another week. Nebuchadnezzar dealt with the issue of pride and arrogance constantly. And this causes the next test. And it's a test that you're gonna have in your life when the heat is on in your life. Now, the Bible tells us this. Daniel, chapter three, up here on the screen, it says this King Nebuchadnezzar made a giant gold image of himself, 90ft tall and 9ft wide, and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Now, friends, this is what you call an ego trip. You build a 90 foot statue to yourself, all right, and set it up on the plain. Then he, King Nebuchadnezzar gave this order to all of his officials, to the princes and the prefects and the governors and the advisors and the treasurers and the judges and the magistrates and other officials. By the way, these are actually in the pecking order of that day. So the most powerful at the front, the princes were the most powerful, then the prefects, then the governors, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. All three of them are governors. They've been appointed. They've been serving for 15 years. They're Jewish, but they're serving as governors in Babylon. So these are all the power people of that day. And he says, I want all you guys to come to the official dedication of the statue that he had set up. Then it says, when they had all assembled, an announcer shouted out, people of all races and nations and languages, this is the king's command. Anytime you hear the royal orchestra start playing music, you are all to immediately drop everything, fall to your knees and bow and worship the image of King Nebuchadnezzar. Wow, that's inconvenient. But it's all drop everything. And Nebuchadnezzar is saying, it's not enough to be king. I want to be God. I want everybody to worship me. And this is the oldest temptation. God says that Adam and Eve were told by Satan, you will be gods if you do what I tell you to do. And you're gonna be that. Now, anyone, he adds a little carrot and stick thing here, and he says, anyone who does not fall down and worship this idol, this image will immediately be thrown into a giant blazing furnace which he had made and put near the statue. No. As soon as they heard the music, everybody bowed down before the statue and worshiped the image of king nephew Nebuchadnezzar. Now, before we go any further on this, I just want to point out this story happened 2,500 years ago, but it is as relevant today because we have the same four things in our culture today. In Western culture, you might write these down. Today, this is just as true as it was then. The world, number one, the world creates larger than life images for me to worship today. All around the world, the world creates larger than life images for me to worship. Now, we don't make them out of gold anymore. We don't put up 90 foot statues. But the images that today the world wants us to idolize that are larger than life are on movie screens and you see actors, and we idolize these actors larger than life on movie screens. We see them in sports stadiums where athletes are treated like gods and they are idolized and they're larger than life. We see them in concerts. If you've ever been to a rock concert, they make that person look like they are God. And the lights and the smoke and all of the whiz bang stuff and people going, whoa, they're larger than life. We should worship this person. And then the Internet makes people larger than life. And by the way, do people still worship gold today? Oh, yeah, yeah, that one's still around too. But today, the idols we have are not statues. Here are the idols and the images that the world wants you to worship today. Physical beauty that is idolized in our culture. And if you're not good looking. You don't matter in this culture. That's what the world says. All, only the really sharp and sexy looking people matter. And we worship beauty. We worship physical beauty. We worship sex. That's an image. It's everywhere in Western culture and even in other cultures too. Now it's just penetrating and taking over. Wealth, success, these are things that people idolize. Pleasure. We idolize pleasure. Fame, power, influence, popularity. These are all images. They're just as real. They're not statues on a plane, but people are worshiping them like they are worthy of God. Okay, so that's the first thing that's in common. Second thing we have in common is me. And it's this. You might write this down. I am tempted to create a false image of myself to impress others. And you do this too. You are tempted every day of your life to build your image and to create a false impression of yourself to everybody around you. Cause you want to be loved, you want to be honored, you want to be well known. You really secretly would like to be worshiped. Now, anytime I spend any time building my own image, that's a potential trap. Because image building quickly becomes idle building. And the whole idea of our culture is it's all about me. That's why when I wrote Purpose Driven Life, the first line of the book was the most counterculture statement I could think of. It's not about you. That's a slap in the face. Because everything else in our culture says no, it's all about you. If there's any word that defines the 21st century, it's image. You can hire image consultants today to snazz up your image. You didn't even hear of these things 100 years ago. And character, what you really are, has been replaced by image, what you want everybody to think you are. And the number one way people do it today to show their image and to pretend they're something they're not is on social media. And it's like, hey, let me show you this picture of my perfect life. And you're not. You never show yourself without makeup or when you're having a bad hair day, or, you know, you're only showing all the great and you're creating this image of yourself. Cause everyone wants to be famous for 15 minutes. And now, I mean, it's so taken over. You can't sit down at a restaurant without taking a picture of your food and posting it. Really? Can I? Not just do I have to take a picture of it? I mean, really, I call it food porn. Whoa, look at that, what they're eating. I wish I could eat like that. It's just you're creating an image of yourself and this is a big, big deal today. And it's wrong. Now. Now I'm not talking about being the best person you can be or dressing as good as you can. No, no, you ought to do that. You ought to be as good as you can. You oughta dress, look as nice as you can. That can bring honor and glory to God. But when I'm talking about image building, I'm talking about trying to be somebody you're not or trying to be somebody else. That's a bad thing. And some people, they don't have an idol out there. They idolize themselves. Have you ever met anybody who idolizes themselves? Don't look at them. They may be sitting right next to you, but don't look at them. Be cool. How do you know when somebody idolizes themselves? They think the world revolves around them. You should adopt to my schedule. You should, you should adjust to my needs. You should all be thinking about me, not you. And that kind of ego, prideful, arrogant narcissism is rampant in our culture today. So we don't have golden idols. We just make ourselves idol and post it on Facebook and want everybody to worship what we do. Third thing about our culture, it's still true today. If I reject the world's images and idols, people will try to burn me. Not physically burn you in a furnace, but they'll try to burn you in other ways. If I reject the world's idols and the world's images and the whole world says, oh, you should worship this, everybody is doing this. Everybody loves this, everybody thinks this is great. And if you don't particularly think it's great, there ever are gonna be people who wanna burn you. Now when all the leaders of Babylon all fall flat on their face, the orchestra starts playing. Everybody falls on their face to worship this big idol. Three guys stood standing tall. They're stand up guys. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Now these three guys are Jewish guys. They're the governors of the province of Babylon. Because of their appointment last time, they'd gotten promoted on the last test. Three guys stay standing. Everybody else in the nation is bowing. They're sticking out like a sore thumb. This made some people upset. They wanted to burn them. Daniel 3:8 up here on the screen. But some Babylonian officials used this opportunity to denounce the Jews. Now they told the king, now listen to what a kiss up this is What a. They're really flattering. The king. O great king, O great king. We hope you live forever. Yeah right. We hope you live forever. They're just looking for a promotion themselves. But they said those guys over there, the Jewish officials that you put in charge of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they have defied your decree. Now they have refused to serve your gods and they have refused to bow down and worship your image that you set up. It's a self installed image. So he says, we recommend that they should be burned in the blazing furnace. This is where the heat zone comes from. Now how's this for loyalty from your co workers. These are the other governors, these are the other officials. And we don't know why they did this. I mean we can speculate. It may have just been anti Semitism. You know, they go hey this is Babylon, we're Babylonians. You got some foreigners in charge here and it could have been racial bigotry. You got Jews leading us, we don't like that. Some of you have been the recipient of racism. I'm sorry, some of you have felt bigotry because of your country where you came from. Bigotry to foreigners, certainly you can experience religious intolerance. They're Jews. That could have been the reason or maybe it could have been more personal that they wanted these guys jobs. They're just competitive and they're jealous and they're competitive and they go we got three foreigners holding these jobs, I want that job. And so they wanna get rid of em. Or they may have just been used by Satan because these men honored God and Satan doesn't like anybody who honors God. But let me just say this. When you go to work, there are gonna be people at your work who want to burn you. You just need to realize it. They're gonna wanna burn you for whatever reason that they have. By the way, in this story, since this is the book of Daniel, where's Daniel? He's not in this story. It's about his friends. Well Daniel was one of the top advisors of the king by this time and he may have been sent off. He's clearly not here, so he obviously was wasn't even there. He might have even been out of the country representing King Nebuchadnezzar somewhere else. So he's not involved in this story. Now here's the point. If I reject the idols, people are going to try to burn me. One other thing, you might write this down. The fourth thing that's true today is this doing the right thing always makes some people angry. If you do the right thing, you do the honest thing, you have integrity, you show character or compassion or any other Christ like quality, it's gonna make some people angry around you. People think, well, if I were just perfect, everybody would love me. No, they wouldn't. Jesus was perfect and they killed him. They put him on the cross. So even if you were perfect, there are gonna be people who wanna crucify you. In this particular test, as I said, it doesn't involve Daniel, but his three best friends. And what upset everybody is they dared to challenge the King's narcissism. And they say to Nebuchadnezzar, okay, look, you're King. Granted, you may be the most powerful person in the world, granted. But you're not God. And we're not bowing to you and treating you like a God. That's a line in the sand. We will not cr.

Such a great message by Rick today and every day. I sure hope you were just as encouraged as I was. And now here's Rick with an important message.

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Sam.