Standing Up in a Bow-Down World

And grab your message notes out of your bulletins. They look like this. They have this logo on the top. Stand Strong is our series in the book of Daniel. We're in Daniel chapter 3 this morning. And as you're getting those notes out, I kind of want to ask an audience participation question here. Show of hands, how many of you would you say would say that you are definitely sports fans? You are into sports. Wow. I love that commercial when the world is watching, when the game is on the line, who will come through? It pumps me up. Why? I think it taps into something that honestly, sports fan or not, lies deep in the heart of every single one of us. I think God puts it deep inside our hearts and that is the desire to rise above the pack, to rise above mediocrity, to step across the line, to make a difference, to stand for something, to be a true hero in the biblical sense. And I think that's why we're all here on Sunday mornings. I mean, why else are we here? Because we want to make a difference with our lives. We want to stand up for God. And if you're interested in living your life like that, I think you'll be intrigued with the story that we study in Daniel 3 today.

Let's talk about standing up in a bow down world. Standing up, being a hero in a bow down world. And as we get into this, here's a question that's going to help you identify the motivations behind the people that we will meet in this story. How are real heroes motivated to do what they do? What is the key factor? In fact, why do any people live like they live? Why does anyone make the choices they make? Why do people make the mistakes they make? Why do people do what they do in life? Well, everybody has what my friend Ray Johnston calls one of the four dominant life principles or DLP's. Everybody operates by a dominant life principle and we put these in the box on page one at the top of your notes. This is the single most important thing about you. This is the single most important thing about the person sitting next to you. And there are really only four choices. Let's go through these really quickly.

Some people, their dominant life principle is circumstances, right? It's all about what's happening around me. If things are up, I'm up. If things are down, I'm down. Is that you? Now, the vast majority of Americans fall into this next one, convenience. What's easiest? What's convenient? But like they say, even a dead fish can float downstream, right? That doesn't take any effort. Some Christians go to church, but they have never changed their dominant life principle away from convenience. And so they only go to church when it's what? They only help others when it's what? That's right. Now, a lot of younger people get stuck in this next one, criticism. Always wondering what will others think of me? And this becomes the gauge for every decision. What kind of clothes you buy? What kind of car you buy? How you decorate your house? The sad part is you then get to spend the rest of your life worrying about what other people think. In other words, you get stuck in junior high school for the rest of your life, right?

But if you want to stand strong, if you want to make an impact, when the chips are down, if you want to be a hero, your dominant life principle has to move to the next quadrant, which is convictions, right? What matters most? In fact, I was thinking about heroes, and I would say there are no heroes, if you define hero as a high impact life, that ever existed without having this as their dominant life principle. Let me give you an example. A guy named Kurt Harlow made a list, and I want to run down some of the names on this list. I want you to guess what all these people have in common. Let's start with this one. His name is William. William is 26 years old when a close friend witnesses to him. He becomes a Christian and almost immediately gets this conviction. I wasn't born into wealth and a well-connected family for nothing. I have been called to Christ out of this wealthy family for one reason. I'm going to stand up against slavery. The rest of the world told him to bow down, but he stood up, and William Wilberforce becomes the main force behind the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, and he impacts the entire rest of the world and starts a movement that spreads all over the globe.

Or what about Amy? Now, Amy is an interesting case because she's only 17 years old when she announces to her wealthy Scottish family, "Mom, Dad, I am moving to India, where I am going to start an orphanage, and I'm going to help orphans from the Dalits, that is the untouchable caste in India." Now, if you were a parent of a 17-year-old girl who announced this to you, what would you say? Well, that's exactly what they said to her. "Honey, you're crazy, and don't go to India. It's not safe. You're going to a part that's very hostile to Christians, and you're going to stand out like a sore thumb. Don't do it." And Amy said, "No, I'm called to it." And she literally, I kid you not, she spent months dyeing her skin with tea and coffee so that her skin would be dark so that she wouldn't stand out so much, and she could go and help the untouchables in India, and for the next 55 years of her life, Amy Carmichael reached out to those people on that subcontinent.

Or you could talk about Joe. Joe was also a brilliant student, just like William and Amy, but unlike them, he did not come from a wealthy family. He made it by scholarship after scholarship. He was brilliant. At age 20, he had already completed two different college degrees. Twenty years old. He was in the top seminary of his land, training for the ministry. But halfway through, he quit the seminary. He said, "This isn't for me." And he went and started an underground newspaper. He started a political party, and that grew to become what you and I know as the Communist Party. And Joseph Stalin sent millions of people to labor camps, starved millions of others in a forced famine, and his convictions literally changed the lives of five generations of people on our planet. I didn't say convictions were always for the good. I said that convictions really do make you stand tall in your world.

Or what about caffeine? At age 14, she began to tell anybody who would listen that alcoholics are people too. In an age when alcoholics were left to wander around in the Bowery district or sent to mental asylums, if you were from a richer background, she said no. And she even went around and preached about this. And this was in an age when women were never allowed to preach. And they tried to stop her. Except for one guy who said, "Man, I love your vision. Let's get married and let's start this ministry together." And they started an army that is still changing the world today. This is Catherine Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. And this next one's my favorite. When this man was three, he realized he had a ridiculous first name, which I totally relate to. His first name was Clive. And at three years old, he said, "This is ridiculous." And he renamed himself after his dead dog, Jack. He said, "Call me Jack." And that's what his close friends called him for the rest of his life. At age 14, he was already a brilliant student studying in one of the top schools in England when he announced he was an atheist. That God didn't make any sense at all. But then at age 38, as a full professor at Oxford, he announced, "I was wrong about that whole atheist thing." And there is a God after all. And even though he was under a lot of pressure, the other professors around him told him, "Sit down and shut up. Your faith is an embarrassment to us." He would not. You know him as C.S. Lewis. Isn't that cool?

Now let me ask you, what do these people all have in common? Good or bad? They made all their decisions based on their conviction, not circumstance or convenience or criticism. And you're about to meet three more like them in Daniel chapter 3. Let me give you the setting for our story today. The first verse says, "King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold and he set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon." Now, for most of us, that just sounds like blah blah, a lot of extra words I don't understand. But these words are all in the Bible for a reason, to help you set the stage in your mind, right? Only problem for us in our culture, our time, how many of you have ever been to the plain of Dura in Babylon? Can I see a show of hands? Nobody. There hasn't been anybody in any of the four services this weekend, assuming that in venue there's nobody either. So for us, this is just like, I don't know why all these details are in there, but this is here to help you paint the picture. It's very fascinating. I want you to check this out, this map. The plain of Dura is right between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, just to the north of the city of Babylon. It's right in the middle of the empire of Babylon. It is a huge, wide valley with this little hill that looks like a stage, looks like a platform. They found archaeologists, they found remnants of fortifications up there on this platform, the only high part of the whole plain of Dura. This would be a great place for, like, Burning Man or some other rock festival, right? Well, guess what? That's what happens in Daniel chapter 3.

You look down from the stage and you can just imagine seeing hundreds of thousands of people there to listen to the music. Only what happens in Daniel 3 isn't Burning Man, it's Golden Man. It turns out that the king builds the statue that's 90 feet high. It was immense. And he gathers all the government officials in the government, the huge, world-encompassing government of Babylon at the time, or at least much of the known world. And these are his ambassadors and his governors and his mayors and everybody else, and these are people from all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds. And he gathers great musicians to have a concert. And the Bible describes the instruments, almost every instrument known to the known world, and they probably compose special music for this. And it's going to be great. He's going to really give these guys a good time. But there's this one little thing that they've got to do before it starts. Kind of like you have maybe the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance or something before a baseball game. Well, he says we're going to have a little Pledge of Allegiance here, only with some teeth. Verse 6, he sends out his emcee and it says, "The herald proclaimed," and it's something like this. He says, "Good evening Babylon! How y'all doing? Welcome!" The crowd just goes, "Wah!" And he says, "Are you ready for some music? Wah!" And he says, "Just a couple of things that you guys need to know before we start. We've got this band here. They're going to crank it up in just a second. But you've got to know this. Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace. Thanks a lot! Let's hear the music!"

And it says, "Therefore, as soon as they heard the music, all of the nations and peoples of every language fell down and worshipped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up." Instantly. In fact, check this out. The words "fell down," the original language, literally means, "as soon as they were hearing, they were falling." So it's not just like they went, like you see kind of in movies, you know, like this, you know, some kind of like, "Yes, my liege." It means that they kind of went, "Here's the music." Just like this. They're immediately on their faces. Like, "Oh, I want to show I've got more allegiance in the King than anybody else!" So they're all flat on their faces. The first song is starting. But then people start pulling on three guys who, "Didn't you hear what the MC said? Maybe you guys didn't hear what he said. You guys have got to bow down." Because there's three guys in the whole plane of hundreds of thousands. There's three guys that are still standing. But those guys won't bow down. And now a murmur starts. "Look at those guys. Check those guys out. Didn't they hear them? What do those guys think they're doing?" And the murmur gets louder and it spreads throughout the plane and it turns into a roar and it is derailing the King's well-laid plans of a little pledge of allegiance to him before the concert starts. Because now nobody's looking at the King anymore. They're looking at these three guys. Then they look to the King like this. And they look at these three guys. And the confrontation is set. And what happens next in this story as it unwinds is amazing.

I mean, the suspense builds and out of this story come four important life questions for you and me. And these are all life questions that determine how really to gauge whether or not I will be a hero. Whether or not I will stand up in a bow down world when the chips are down. When the world is watching. When the need is great. And the first question that comes out of this story is this. What is my core identity? What is my core identity? I want to make something clear. The Bibles as Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, and Daniel, who apparently wasn't here at this point, these guys all had an identity that was very closely aligned now with the Babylonian government. They were governors of provinces. They worked for the King. They did excellent work for the King. They had a lot of connections. They had a lot of responsibility. But their core identity was not "I am a governor of a province." Their core identity was not "I serve the Babylonian King and I'm kind of a big deal." Their core identity was "I'm a worshipper of God." What's your core identity?

I want to ask you some questions that may make some of you uncomfortable. Is your core identity all about your talent? That's who I am. I'm gifted. Is your core identity your political party? Your Nebuchadnezzar figure. Is your core identity your ethnicity? Is your core identity your work? Is your core identity your net worth? Is your core identity all about your looks? Is your core identity all about "I'm a jock" or "I'm a straight A student" even though it's been 30 years since you've been in high school, but that's still your core identity. Is your core identity your sexual orientation? Is your core identity your gender? "I'm a macho guy." Or is your core identity in the deepest part of your soul? "I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I worship God and nothing else with my life." Nothing is who I am at my core. This is such a key question. These guys had clearly worked this out because look what happens in verse 12.

Three guys who have enemies and the enemies go to the king and say, "Oh king, there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego." They pay no attention to you, Your Majesty. Not true. They neither serve your gods true nor worship the image of gold you have set up true. What's interesting is three times in this chapter it uses the word worship. That was the key. These three guys were good workers for the king. Good workers for the province of Babylon. But this event conflicts with their core conviction. The trump card for them was their faith. That trumped everything else in their lives. And I want you to ask this question of yourself. What is the trump card in my life? You know the concept of trump cards? When you play a card game, what happens is you lay down cards and they're all worth points and the rules vary in different games. But many games have a trump card. And the trump card is the card that rules over all your other cards. Watch this. In your life you have cards too. Cards you're dealt and cards you pick up. And the cards might be something like this. You go to work. That's a card that's in your life. Your job. Maybe your kids have sports. That's another card in your life. Maybe you tend to be tempted in certain ways. Right? Everybody's got their weaknesses so you've got your own weaknesses. That's part of the deck that you've been dealt. But you also have a trump card. The one thing in your life that overrules everything else. I think everybody's got a trump card. You've got to ask yourself honestly what is it for you?

Is it your sexual desires? Or maybe more generally your pleasures. Having fun. That trumps everything else. Or maybe it's your addiction. Honestly that trumps everything. Or maybe it's your job. I know I need to spend more time at home but well then that's your trump card. Or maybe your goals. You know in our culture what we're encouraged to have is our trump card. Your dreams. What's your dream? Live the dream. I cannot even tell you how many times that's come up in counseling when there's been a pending divorce. Where the husband or the wife says to me, "Well you know what? I really do love them. It's about me. I just need to follow my dreams. I love my kids but I need to follow my dreams." Then the dreams, that's the trump card. Because it's trumping everything else.

Maybe you have church or religion in your stack right? But sports is the thing that trumps everything else. Or making money is the thing that trumps everything else. I really believe that following God has got to be the trump card. The thing that trumps everything if you're going to be satisfied in life. You know you have a lot of choices in your life. You've got a lot of cards and this doesn't mean that you've got to give up all the cards in your life. Right? It doesn't mean that you've got to give up going to movies or going out or whatever. Having fun. It just means that your trump card when those things come into conflict with following God then the thing that trumps everything else is going to be your faith. These three guys, they have that down and they are persecuted for that stand. And I wish I could tell you that they are the last. But they are not.

Check out this stat. Did you know that in the past 100 years more Christians have been imprisoned or killed for their faith since 1911 to 2011 than in all the previous centuries since Christ's birth combined? This thing didn't just happen ages ago on the plains of Dura in Babylon. This kind of drama is unfolding all around us all the time. This is up to date information. I want to show you some pictures of real life modern Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego's. Like Pastor Yousaf Nardikani. This man is in prison in Iran awaiting a death sentence. The charge is apostasy. But his only crime, he is the pastor of what is probably the largest church in Tehran, Iran. His wife is also in prison serving a sense of life imprisonment right now. I mean this is a modern day. I will not bow down to your idle situation going on as I speak this morning.

Some more pictures. Let's move to China. This is one of the church members attacked a year ago when 400 local police attacked Fushan House Church in China, demolishing the new church building. Brutally beating church members with bricks and clubs. More than 30 of them had to be hospitalized in critical condition. Those left standing sustained brutal beatings. They were only in the building in the first place to protect it. They had been threatened. Again this didn't happen just 3000 years ago. This is going on right now. I want you to look at this. You know who these people are? These are people whose dominant life principle is conviction. For sure. These are people right there whose core identity is not the citizenship of their country. It's certainly not convenience or circumstance or criticism. It's conviction. You know what else? You know who else these people are? These people are your brothers and sisters. And I feel like we ought to do a better job of praying for them. In fact some of you have probably been going, "Okay, what can I do to help these people?" I put a box at the bottom of page 2 of your notes with some more information about stats and other things you can get about the persecuted church. These are all different organizations and kind of with different goals. But what I like about all of these websites is you can go, as my wife and I do, and you can sign up for daily emailed updates about the status of some of these different trials going on. And it's not all bad news in case you're going, "Well, that's a downer, right?" Well, first of all, that shouldn't matter because you should be praying for your persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. But secondly, there's also some good news that comes out every week. For example, this last week, 11 Christians who were on trial in Iran were set free by a judge who, in my opinion, miraculously said, "These charges are bogus." And threw the charges out, and the Christians who had been under sentence of death or life in prison walked. And I encourage you to pray for these people, too.

Now, my question, though, is how does a heart like that get forged? Right? I found this poem. It was written by a pastor in Zimbabwe literally a week before that country entered a period of severe persecution. That pastor was never heard from again. But what he wrote ended up being an encouragement to pastors throughout this period of persecution and then pastors around the globe. And it's stirring. He wrote, "I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit's power. The die has been cast. I've stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I no longer need preeminence, position, promotions, or popularity. My pace is set. My gate is fixed. My goal is heaven. My mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, deterred, lured away, turned back, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, or negotiate at the table of the enemy. I won't give up, back up, let up, or shut up. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ."

Wow, that's inspiring to me even more than that commercial, right? That guy's my hero. What about you though? Can you stand tall like he did, like the pastor in Iran, like those church members in China, like Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego in a bow-down world? Well, if you want to stand tall like that, a real key question to ask is number two. Why do I follow God? Do I follow God only when it's convenient? Why do I follow God? Here's where we pick up the story next. I honestly doubt that King Nebuchadnezzar thought he would actually have to throw anybody into the furnace. And why do I doubt that? Because he actually tries to talk Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego out of this at first, pretty gently. He says, "Guys, I don't think you understand what's going on here. You're calling my bluff. Everybody's watching. Just, you know, kind of like bend your knee a little bit toward the statue, and then we can move on and have the concert." And it's kind of like when you're driving as a parent, you know, you're on a long car trip, you can tell the kids after you're so frustrated, "If you don't stop fighting, I'm going to throw you out the window!" But you don't think you're going to actually have to do it. And I think that was kind of the same way with the king.

Then they refuse, and he says, "All right, we've got to throw you into the fire." Look at their refusal. They say in verse 17, "If we're thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from your majesty's hand." Now, I want you to stop there and circle the phrase, "The God we serve is able." He is able to save us from the—He is able to save us from your majesty's hand. Note, by the way, the gentle and courteous way, the polite way that they respond to the king. All through Daniel—you never see Meshach, Shadrach, Abednego, Daniel—you never see them kind of get this attitude, this self-righteous kind of what we would say is a Pharisee-like latitude of, "I'm right, you're wrong." They are always as courteous as they can be in every situation, "Your majesty." You know, you can have conviction without rudeness, and they're always very kind of courteous to the magic. But listen to this. This is a great sentence. They say, "The God we serve is able." You can shorten that to three words, "God is able." That's a powerful sentence. So say it with me, "God is able." Now say it like you mean it. "God is able." Say it one more time. "God is able." You know what that means? That means you don't have to live in fear. That means you don't have to cower. That means you don't have to wonder whether or not things are going to turn out. Because the God we serve is able.

Now, I really believe this to the core of my being. The God we serve is able to heal broken marriages. I have seen it in this church probably hundreds of times. I believe it. The God we serve is able to free people from addictions that have their claws into these people. I've seen the power of addictions broken again and again and again. The God we serve is able. The God we serve is able to forgive the darkest of sins and make people into new creations. I've seen it happen. I've experienced it in my own life. The God we serve is able. Now, I just want to point something out. If I were back at Sherwood Carthans Church, which I preached at this year, right about this point people would be going crazy right now. So I want you to at least just look pleased. Let's practice. Just kind of smile. Because that's good news. God is able. Do you believe that? All right. God is able. But look at this. Even if he does not, we want you to know your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. That is conviction. These guys are my heroes. But the question is, why do you follow God? Do you get to the second clause? Or do you say, God, if you do this and I know you're able, then I'll follow you. We're all tempted to do that, right?

God, if you answer my prayer, then I'm with you for life. My challenge to you this morning is, will you decide to have, even if he does not, kind of faith in your life, will you be able to say, my God is able to, fill in the blank, heal me of cancer, but even if he does not. My God is able to rescue my adult children from the destructive path that they've chosen. But even if he does not, my God is able to get me a job. But even if he does not, I will still serve him. That's conviction. That's not circumstance or convenience or criticism. That's conviction. You know what these guys had? These guys had an "I don't have to survive" attitude. And that's the key to being a hero. I don't have to, like Queen Esther, do you remember what she said? If I perish, I perish. I don't have to survive. If you're going to stand up for what's right, you're going to need that. And I don't have to survive attitude. Let me tell you a story. On a very minor scale, extremely minor compared to the people that we've been looking at so far this morning. I went through what felt like a major deal to me at the time. I mean, I was in danger of losing my job, so it was a major deal. In my 20s, I was working at the number one radio station in Oregon. It was a top 40 rock station. And that's only important to the story because there was a lot of money at stake. In the evenings when I was working there, we had an over 50 share. That means over half of the radios that were turned on in our region in Oregon were listening to our station. So that's just mammoth numbers, and I worked that night shift.

Well, Playboy or Penthouse, I can't remember which one, some pornographic magazine, bought 60 second commercials for us to play that were very crude, very lewd. They had what sounded like a very sultry, young, attractive woman talking in these 60 second commercials. Probably a 62 year old smoker, but she sounded sultry. They were horrible, so I didn't play them. I get a call, as I expected, not from my boss and not from my boss's boss, which told me that they were all talking about me. I got a call from my boss's boss's boss's secretary. "René, Mr. Nebecat-Neser would like to see you in his office today." And I get to the office and it seems everybody knows what's going on. And all the women in the office, intriguingly, admins, sales reps, account executives, are all whispering to me as I walk all the way through the building to get to the office of the owner, which was in the very back of this room in the building. And they're all whispering, "We support you, René. Thanks for standing up for women. I'm on your side. Let's grab some coffee." One of the account executives told me, "I want to tell you how much this means to me." I was single and some of these were very beautiful women, I have to admit, that helped my resolve a lot. Okay? It did. But I go in and sit down and he says, "You've got to play these spots." And I had rehearsed this, I thought about it a lot. You know, what am I going to say? And I was rehearsing into the car the whole way there. I said, "Look, I know these commercials bring you needed revenue and I sincerely don't want you to lose money, so I'm offering to pay you for the money you are losing due to my convictions, because I know they're not your convictions and I don't want to hurt you financially because of my convictions, right? That's only fair." But I said, "I just want to say quickly that I think this is derogatory to women and I actually think it's a short-term decision that's against the long-term good of the station, because it's a top 40 station that means lots of teenagers listen, and I think it could potentially create ill will when parents hear these lewd spots on the radio and complain." And he said, "Yeah, we have gotten a few calls from very angry parents." And he pauses and he looks down at his desk blotter. And he looks up at me, bushy eyebrows, looks down at his desk blotter, and it's just silent. And I hear the grandfather clock in his office. And I'm thinking, "What's going to happen?" And then he says, "Well, we'll just schedule those spots so they're not on your show." And they ended up dropping the whole account. And that was all. He says, "Thanks, you can go." And the point is not that that was some exceptional moment in my life. The point is that those kinds of moments happen in your life and my life all the time. If you're out there in the world, there will always be incidents where you are dared to cross the line. You're going to have your convictions and your core identity, your trump card challenged. And if you want to have convictions, you're going to have to have an "I don't have to survive" attitude that goes with the territory. Does that make sense?

And so Nebuchadnezzar, much like my boss, says, "Okay, boys, you convinced me. I proclaim religious liberty throughout the land." No, that's not what happens. What happens is he goes, "All right, you know what? You're calling my bluff. I have no choice. Everybody's watching. I want that furnace heated up seven times hotter." And in the original language, that phrase seven times, that's a euphemism for to be heated up as hot as it could go. It's kind of like in our culture. He turned it to 11, right? And the miracle that comes next leads to question three, and that's this. Do I believe that God is always with me? This is the third key question to living like a hero. Do I believe God's always with me? Because check out what happens next. The king heats up this furnace. They toss them in. Guards are dying because it's so hot. Verse 24, "Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, 'Weren't there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?' They replied, 'Certainly, Your Majesty.' And he said, 'Look, I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed. Now the fourth looks like a son of the gods.'" Now the Bible doesn't say, so this is conjecture, but let me ask you this. Who do you think that fourth man was? Who do we know who can walk through walls and appear suddenly, right, through locked doors? Who do we know who can cheat death? Who do we know who looks like a son of God? I think this is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ, a pre-incarnate appearance of the one who promised you, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' And something else, I think that fourth man was always with him, and I think that fourth man is always with you. It's just that in the fire he chose to make himself visible.

I've told you the amazing story of explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his famous ship, Endurance. They were on a mission of exploration to the South Pole when ice trapped and crushed his ship. They documented it all with photographs and even with some motion pictures. It was right when all of that technology was starting, so we have amazing shots of it all. Shackleton and two of his sailors leave the rest of the crew. Here you can see them setting out, and the three of them alone make their way through 800 miles of stormy Atlantic Ocean in an open lifeboat for days this goes on. And they finally find help and they go back and they rescue every single person they had left behind, not one perishes. But how did he do this heroic deed? Three men in freezing conditions. What I'm about to tell you, you are not going to find in any of the documentaries about Shackleton or in the book, The Endurance. But you could look it up, when he got back to London, Shackleton gives a speech to some kind of explorers club in the city, and he surprises everybody because he was not known as being a religious man, although this incident changed him for the rest of his life. And he gets up in front of this explorers club and he reads from Daniel chapter 3 and Psalm 139, and then he says these words, this is a direct quote from a longer speech, he said, "We all felt that there were not three, but four of us. One of the men said to me, 'Boss, I have a curious feeling that there's another person with us.' In fact, we always felt, he said, that there was something above." He even called that presence the fourth man. And there's a fourth man with you right now, no matter what you are going through, and if you believe that, you can find strength to stand tall in a bow down world.

Now I want to give you a heads up. In a few minutes we're going to close our service this morning with a time of prayer, because I've noticed in the last few weeks, there are a lot of people who are in the furnace right now. Joblessness and the strain that puts on marriages and the opportunities that that presents for all kinds of addictions and substance abuse, because people have their anxieties. And what we're going to offer is we're going to have Stephen ministers up here, people who've been trained at leading people through some of these things, and I'm going to give you a chance to come up in just a few minutes to be prayed for. And many of you, what you need more than anything is to have one or two human friends beside you and join you to pray to the Son of God, who is right there with you too. But before we do that, I just want to mention the fourth question to ask, if you want to really stand tall in a bow down world and live like a hero, and that's this. Do I have influence? This is important because the book of Daniel makes a lot out of the influence that Daniel and his three friends had on their culture. This is kind of a continuing theme in this book, and it continues here, verse 28. "Then Nebuchadnezzar said, 'Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has said his angel and rescued his servants.'" Now, check this out. This is the king talking. "They trusted in him and defied the king's command, and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own god. And in the end, he ends up promoting them." What you're seeing here is King Nebuchadnezzar talking himself into the truth, which is that he could use guys like that on his side. And he's going, "You know what? Men of conviction like that, I actually need those guys on my team. Get them out of that furnace right now and give them a promotion, because these guys are outstanding." It really impresses him. Why? They took a stand, and even though initially it was a stand against him, he really was able to kind of put two and two together. I mean, he wasn't an idiot. He's like, "These people were amazing as my governors, and yet they have this stand, this line that they will not cross. This isn't rebellion against me, but they're showing me where their convictions are, and I want those guys on my team too." And that can happen in the world around you as well.

Here's the influence equation. Proximity plus credibility equals influence. You see this all through the book of Daniel. You've got to have proximity. You've got to be right there in the world. There's a brand of Christianity that's out there right now that basically is holy huddle Christianity. We're going to sequester ourselves, we're going to be hermits and nuns, and we're going to point fingers and judge the world. But you don't see that in Scripture. You've got to have proximity, but you've also got to have credibility. I remember when Mother Teresa stood up in a bowdown world at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. The place was full of celebrities and the president and other foreign leaders and senators and the Supreme Court and the top reporters. And this little woman who stood about this tall gets up, and I looked up her speech actually this last week just to kind of make sure I wasn't remembering it wrong. She gets up. The first thing she says for the first two paragraphs is, "God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus Christ to down the cross for our sins, and he can forgive your sins and you need Jesus." And they all applaud. And then she talks about sexual immorality, and she says, "The Western culture is sexually immoral and we need to repent." And they all applaud. And then she talks about abortion, and they all applaud. And then she talks about prison reform, and they all applaud. And they keep applauding her until she has to say, "Please stop applauding me and listen to what I'm saying." But why in the world would all those people who clearly don't all agree with her have consistently have applauded her, I think with genuine admiration? One word, she had credibility, right? Major cred.

And I have to tell you, I have been able in the last couple years to have wonderful friendship-based conversations about the church, about faith, at events and with people, whether it's mayors or state representatives or even one or two local CEOs and judges. Why have I suddenly been able to talk with some of these people about what our church is doing? You know why? Food raised for second harvest. The church's involvement with Project Homeless Connect, with Serve the Bay. The credibility of our church in the eyes of our community is in direct relationship to how we stand up and live our faith in these ways. And by the way, that's one huge reason that we do these things with the community groups. And we don't just do these things through the church, because we're doing them for two reasons. We're doing them to feed the poor and to house the homeless and to clothe the naked and so on. But we're also doing these things for influence. And we want to gain proximity and credibility and not just live in a holy huddle. Meshach, Shadrach, Abednego, Daniel, they were all in the world, but not of the world.

Here's the bottom line of this story for me. Convictions lead to courage. You want to stand tall in a bowdown world. You want to live like a hero. Your convictions lead to courage. And that means, listen, the most important decision that you can make in your life after deciding to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is, what is my dominant life principle? Am I going to live like somebody who's concerned about circumstances or convenience or criticism? Or am I going to live according to my convictions? And this is not just about you trying harder. God wants you to live like that because He knows that you can be a blessing to others and to yourself when you live like that. And so the Holy Spirit is here now, I believe, ready to empower you to live like that. We've all fallen short. All of us, there's been times when we probably bowed down when we should have stood tall. But God forgives us, He pardons us, and then He empowers us to live in powerful ways.

And so since we've been talking about standing up in a bowdown world, here's what I'd like us to do. Let's all stand up, get to your feet so that you remember this. And I'd like us all to read this last verse out loud. This is from the New Testament, but to me this reads like a description of Daniel and his three friends. Let's read 1 Corinthians 16:13–14 together. Here we go. "Beyond your guard, stand firm in the faith. Be men of courage. Be strong. Do everything in love." Now, stay standing for a second. Some of you need help to be strong. You feel so weak today. Some of you need help to be courageous, to stand firm. So I want to move into that promised prayer time right now. I want to ask the Stephen ministers to come up to the front and just stand here. I'm going to ask the band to come back out on stage too, because maybe you are facing a furnace, or you find yourself in the furnace. There's been a problem. You've been worrying about it. You've been trying to handle it on your own, and God is just saying today, "Just let somebody else pray for you." Doesn't that sound good? I have a question for you. If you are hurting today, why would you leave unprayed for? That doesn't make any sense to me. If you're hurting, why would you leave unprayed for? Come expecting an answer because something happens in prayer. Now, others, you've been listening to this message feeling guilty, and I never want anybody to leave feeling guilty, you know? But you're thinking, "I don't live by my convictions. I don't want you to feel guilty. Just do something about it." Come forward and pray with somebody and say, "God, help me to follow you without compromise in the bow-down world that I live in, at school or at work or in my neighborhood or with my family." Others of you, this is the moment that you've been waiting for. You want to step across the line and say, "I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I want to switch my core identity, and that's going to be my core identity from this day forward. I follow Jesus." Here's your opportunity to pray with somebody about that, too. Let's pray.

Bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, only you know the situation, the fear, the challenge that every person in this room is facing right now. And I think of people who are our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world who are getting imprisoned or worse for just doing what we're doing right here in this moment, and I want to pray for them because we believe, God, you are able to deliver. But I also pray for them and for our church that we all have the "even if he does not" kind of faith from this story. And now, God, there are people here who are suffering. They just need to be with others in the furnace that they're facing and to sense you there as the fourth man. And so, Father, in these moments, would you move and heal and guide and forgive and strengthen and empower? We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.