Burning Fiery Furnace

A 90‑foot idol, a blast of music, and a furnace roaring in the background—Daniel 3 reads like spectacle, but it’s really a mirror. We walk through Nebuchadnezzar’s ceremony to expose four marks of godless power: it demands ultimate allegiance, reaches into belief, prizes what works over what’s true, and leans on coercion to keep order. Along the way, we connect Babylon’s “simple test” to the fumi‑e in Japan and to modern public rituals that pressure us to signal the right loyalties in the right moments.

We also make a case for a different civic goal: not a state baptized in our image, but a limited government that respects the conscience because it knows it is not God. Like a river within its banks, authority serves life; when it floods, it destroys. History helps here—Pilate’s cynicism, Napoleon’s “useful” religion, and the way laws for silencing enemies are quickly turned on their makers. If power can compel behaviors, it must never be allowed to command worship.

Underneath the politics lies the heart. Pragmatism can draw us to faith for networking, calm, or crisis relief, but spiritual pragmatism will not walk into a furnace. Saving faith clings to Jesus because he is true, not merely helpful. And where Babylon threatens with fire, Christ conquers by love. He refused the shortcuts of coercion, bore the sword of the state, and rose to win allegiance the only way that lasts—by laying his life down. Join us as we explore how to resist small bows, keep our first love, and seek a public square where people can worship God in peace.

If this conversation helps you live with courage and clear allegiance, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find it.

Chapters

• 0:01 Reading Daniel 3:1–7
• 2:12 Fireworks, Power, And Getting Burned
• 3:44 Four Marks Of Godless Power
• 5:12 Demanding Ultimate Allegiance
• 9:40 The Fumi‑e And Public Tests
• 13:08 Modern Allegiance Pressures
• 15:49 When Government Controls Belief
• 18:30 Rivers, Banks, And Overreach
• 21:06 Limited Government As Christian Aim
• 24:05 Pragmatism Over Truth
• 27:05 Napoleon And Useful Religion
• 30:05 Spiritual Pragmatism Vs Saving Faith
• 33:01 Violence As A Tool Of Control
• 36:00 Inspiring Allegiance Versus Forcing It
• 39:00 Jesus’ Way: The Cross Not The Sword

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

I didn't even know it was a Super Bowl today. Good luck. I'm very happy to not be burdened by that, by such things. But at this time, I want to go ahead and dismiss kids age two through second grade to be part of kids' time downstairs. If you'd like to be part of kids' church, you're also welcome to stay and worship with us. We are happy to have you either way. And for the rest of us, I want to invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word, which this morning comes from Daniel chapter 3, verses 1 through 7. I had intended to make it do all of chapter 3, but we just made it through the first seven verses. So beginning in verse 1, the Word of God reads this way King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And the herald proclaimed aloud, You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, leer, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, leer, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. This is God's word. You may be seated. This is such a funny passage. It is, we're not really going to get into a lot of the humor of the passage, but it is intentionally, it's dripping with Hebrew humor. I once worked on a construction crew with a guy whose other job was manning fireworks for Rotsi, which is a major firework company here in Cincinnati. So he was a trained fireworks professional. He was responsible for some of the biggest shows in the tri-state when Rotzi does their big shows. And I think he even had a certification. I don't know how you get one of those, but he had one. He loved explosions. He loved fire. He later went into fire suppression, so he was on both ends of fire, starting them and also suppressing them. His name was Alex Crewe, so I took to calling him Crewe Kablooy because of his love for explosions. In the hands of a trained professional, fireworks are incredible. They're beautiful. They're amazing. I love seeing fireworks. But there is a reason that they don't sell the big ones to the public and they don't publish their recipes. Because in the hands of a child or in the hands of a fool or someone who's not, doesn't have a certification, like Cruy Kablui, people get burned. We have been studying the book of Daniel to learn it's a great book to study at any time, but especially at this time, to learn how Christians are to live in the real world, because we are both citizens of heaven, but at the same time citizens of earthly nations. Sometimes those nations are friendly toward Christian faith, and sometimes they're not. And so it's helpful to study how Daniel dealt with these things living in Babylon. The story we come to now is what happens, it's about what happens when human power becomes dangerous, or, if you prefer, when human government becomes a disaster. That's uh a lot of Daniel is about that, but this is this is one special example of that. Scripture teaches that both power and government are not evil things. They're things that come from God. All power comes from God, and government comes from God. And under God's authority, governments can accomplish much good, and power can accomplish much good. But when power is exercised apart from God, people get burned. That's the uh point that I want to draw out of our passage today. And Daniel 3 gives us a textbook example of what we might call godless power, or to use a more familiar term, totalitarian power, power that seeks total control, claiming authority over every part of life, accountable to no one but itself. When those in power refuse to acknowledge that there is a God in heaven above them, they begin to believe that they must control everything themselves. And that's one of the things that we see here. So as we look at Daniel 3, 1 through 7, uh, we see four clear hallmarks of godless power. This is the textbook uh godless power here, and there's four clear hallmarks. Godless power demands too much, godless power controls too much, godless power is pragmatic, and godless power is violent. It demands too much, it controls too much, it is pragmatic, and it is violent. So, first of all, godless power demands too much. Godless power demands conformity and ultimate allegiance. The whole point of what is the point of this image that Nebuchadnezzar has has set up? In chapter two, he had a dream about a statue with a golden head. Um it's not clear that this is that this is a a uh a response to that, but it does come after that. And why is this happening? Well, let's look at verse one. It says King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. So the image is set up in Babylon, which is the center of the empire, which spanned much of the ancient Near East, but it's set up at the capital. It's very large. It's, if you can't do the math yourself, it's 90 feet tall, which is it's about twice the size of the fountain that's in Fountain Square here in Cincinnati. Um it's set up on a plane. It would have been visible from many miles away, and it's very expensive. It's made of gold. It's highlighting the wealth and the uh the wealth of the empire. So it is set up on a plane, it's likely at a crossroads or a place of public assembly. It is a it's a publicly visible place for all to see. And the king sets this up, and that's that's repeated again and again and again, that this is something that Nebuchadnezzar set up. This is a god that he set up with his own hands. And after he does that, he calls for a dedication ceremony and calls for all the officials across the empire to attend. And this is where we dip into some of the Hebrew humor of all of these various different officials from uh the different parts of the empire. Look at verse two. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent together the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the king calls for all to worship the image. Verse 5, it says, When you hear the sound of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. So this is a big, expensive project. This is a big public works project. What is the point of all of this? Is it that Nebuchadnezzar is so pious and such a religious man that he wants to set up this image and he wants his people to worship? Probably not. Nebuchadnezzar, here's what's happening. Nebuchadnezzar knows that his empire is very diverse. I mean, they were in the business of conquering smaller nations and absorbing them, and so when you do that, you create a very uh very diverse global empire, and that's what he's done. It includes people, different peoples and cultures from all around the ancient Near East, different cultures, ethnicities, different religious traditions. He would not have viewed this diversity as a strength, but as a liability. In the imperial calculus, diversity like that inevitably, it not just that it can, but it inevitably does lead to factions and divisions and uprisings and rebellions and things, things like that. And they knew this. There was a long history of global empires before the Babylonians, so they're aware of these liabilities. So what Nebuchadnezzar is not trying to obliterate their religious traditions. He knows that this is impossible. No one has ever been able to do that. So what he's trying to do is to absorb them under one larger story, under a Babylonian story. He's trying to give them all a common narrative and a common God that will hopefully bind them together. They may continue to worship the gods of their fathers as they please, as long as they bow down to the image. As long as they recognize that their ultimate allegiance is not to their father's gods. They may still worship their fathers' gods, but their ultimate allegiance must be now to Babylon. Godless power does not recognize any other power above itself. It is not accountable to anything greater than itself, and so godless power demands conformity and ultimate allegiance. In 1549, Francis Xavier arrived in Japan as a missionary. The gospel began to spread, especially in the South, and it initially had a lot of success in southern Japan. But the Tokugawa shogunate, as they noticed this, grew concerned. To them, this faith, which came from the West, represented a foreign allegiance. It represented to them something un-Japanese, something outside the empire that could undermine its unity and undermine its control. So they they did everything that they could to stamp it out. They did this very successfully, but they devised a simple public test called the Fuma-e, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, and what they would do is officials would they would arrest a uh suspected Christian or or suspected group of Christians, and they would place an image of Christ on the ground, and the suspected Christians were required to step on it. Very simple act, but in the in the Japanese culture, a very uh a deliberate act of desecration. This test was similar to Nebuchadnezzar's test. Um it was a it was simple, it was physical, you know, you could see whether or not someone was doing it, and it was public. For Nebuchadnezzar, the command was when you hear the music, bow to the image. It's very simple. It's nothing, nothing that everybody can do that. Um for the Japanese Christians, the command was to step on the image of Christ. These are different cultures, different time periods, different symbols, but in many ways the same the same demand. The demand is that nothing stands above the empire. Nothing stands above the empire. So in Japan, some refused and they were executed. Others gave in to the pressure and continued to live as secret Christians in Japan. But either way, the state would not be satisfied until it knew that no one's ultimate allegiance belonged anywhere else than to the empire. That's what godless power always does. Godless power always demands conformity and always demands ultimate allegiance. It can allow for nothing to stand above it. And we still experience the same pressures today. Christians, uh, you just even think about in our political landscape on in on both sides of the aisle, Christians are often welcomed into either party as long as we pledge our allegiance to some larger ideological program. We're welcome to be Christians as long as we pledge our allegiance to a larger program. And there are still simple physical public tests that we are pressured to take. And maybe it's posting the right thing on social media at the right moment, and if you don't post that, then you fit you failed the test. Umbe it's signaling that we belong to the correct tribe or you know, displaying the correct flag. Um, maybe it's signing something, signing a petition, repeating certain slogans, maybe it's it's maybe it's participating in some kind of strike or closing down business, or going along with whatever the spirit of the age demands. For pastors, I just speaking as a pastor, it can be the pressure to speak on every controversy, to prove that we are aligned with the right side and to constantly declare where we stand. There's every time something happens in the news, somebody's gonna come out and say, hey, if your pastor didn't talk about this this Sunday or that this Sunday, then hey, it's time to find a new church. There's a there is a pressure for pastors to speak on every on every issue and to signal what side they're on and that the church is on. On every side, the world is asking for us to make these little bows, these little gestures of where our allegiance lies. Small acts of conformity that reveal where our ultimate allegiance lies. And as Christians, we must be careful to give it to none of them. Where does Jesus say our ultimate allegiance should lie? He says, seek, not that we can't have any other allegiances, but he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. As Christians, our ultimate allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ. And none of our other affiliations, however meaningful, should ever become ultimate or should ever become beyond criticism. Where are you being pressured to bow to the golden image? Godless power always demands our ultimate allegiance. We must be careful that our ultimate allegiance belongs to Jesus. Point two, godless power controls too much. Godless power is not satisfied to simply control behavior, but it seeks to control everything, including what we believe and what we worship. Look again at verses four through five. In verse four it says, In the herald proclaimed aloud, You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of all of the instruments, I won't I won't read them, in every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. In Romans 13, we learn that government is God's idea. God set up human government for good reasons. He set it up in order to punish evil and to promote good. And to this end, governments regulate behavior. It's tax season, they're gonna force us to pay taxes. I hope you all I hope many of you get a tax return. Some of you are probably gonna have to pay taxes. Unfortunately, God instituted governments and they're allowed to do that. They need some kind of tax money. They prevent us from stealing from our neighbors. That's a good thing. I don't want to be stolen from. The state of Ohio has no mutual combat laws, so I am not allowed to just fight people, sadly, even if we both agree to it. In some states, like Washington State, if we agree to a gentleman's fight, we can fight and none of us will go to jail. But I can't do that in the state of Ohio. It's illegal. Governments regulate behavior. But Nebuchadnezzar's government goes a step further than regulating behavior. Not only does he reserve the right to tell his people what they can and cannot do, but he also reserves the right to tell his people what they can and cannot think, and what they can and cannot believe, and how they must worship. They are commanded to bow down to the image. And this is what power looks like when God is removed, because godless power does not recognize a God in heaven who is in control and who is Lord of the conscience. It therefore must be in control of what people think and how people worship. I know that in these bitter winter months, many of you are longing and looking forward to a wonderful summer spent on the banks of the beautiful Ohio River. Water skiing and swimming and fishing. Believe it or not, at one time in history, the Ohio River was absolutely essential for our economy. And the Ohio River is good. This is the point I'm making. It's good as long as it stays within its banks. At one time, the Ohio River was essential for travel, it was essential for shipping goods up and down the Mississippi. It is still used for this, although it's not as important as it once was. As long as the river stays within its banks, it is necessary for our world to function. But when it overflows its banks, it can cause massive destruction. In 1937, our area, uh, some of you remember this, in 1937 our area experienced massive rains and the river flooded, and it reached 80 feet above its ordinary watermark. That's the record. And this is before global warming was invented. Um I'm sorry, that's a joke. That's a joke. Um most of downtown Cincinnati was submerged in water. People could row a boat across Crosley Field, which is where the Reds play. Roughly a hundred thousand people were driven from their homes, and millions of dollars of damages were incurred. And this is this is 37, so has America entered the war at this point? No, but the but they're on the verge of it. So you think we live in a rough and scary time? Think about the Ohio River being 80 feet above its watermark, and we're about to enter World War II. That's pretty crazy, too. So, anyway, that one that once happened. But when rivers overflow their banks, they change from a city's greatest asset to a city's greatest liability. And the same is true with government and power. As long as it stays within the confines that God has given it, and as long as it sees itself as accountable to a greater authority, to God, then it is essential for our world to function as much as I hate paying taxes. But it does have a tendency to flood and to reach far beyond the confines that God has given it. And this tendency is especially prominent for those who do not acknowledge God. And when it does that, it can become one of the most destructive forces in the world. Let's give just a social application here. This will be the rest of them will be personal, but I'll give a social application for this point. I want to entertain a question, and this is I will warn you that uh this is my opinion based on what I glean from the passage. So I'm not saying that this is certainly uh the only Christian position on this, but this is my opinion based on what we learn here. What is the goal? What is the Christian goal for government? And I know a lot of people are worried about this right now. People are worried about, you know, do Christians want to seize power in the United States? Do we intend, when we do, do we intend to legislate our morality and our religion? Do we want to force our worldview on others? Is there such a thing as Christian nationalism? And what should we think about it? Is it good or bad? Everyone's asking those questions. Let me just make this suggestion based on what we learn from Daniel here. The Christian goal for government. Is not necessarily that it would be Christian, but that it would be limited. And I want to say that one more time. The Christian goal for government is not necessarily that it would be Christian, but that it would be limited. What do I mean? Well, we know from the Bible that power is dangerous. It's good, but it's dangerous because it can easily be abused. And we know that any powers that we give to government will not be given back, and that eventually people who disagree with us will come into power and they will use the powers of government against us, whatever powers we give to it. Take censorship laws, for example. If we give the government power to censor speech that we don't like, let's take, for example, blasphemy. Christians don't like blasphemy. If we give governments power to censor that, inevitably, at some point in the future, our political opponents will come into power and they will use those same censorship laws to censor whatever they don't like, whatever they consider to be blasphemy. This is, you're saying, Billy, that's that's ridiculous. Well, this is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany. As the Nazi Party was rising in Germany, the Social Democrats passed laws to suppress them, to censor them, to forbid their publications and their assemblies. It didn't work. And when the Nazis came into power, they took those same laws that were on the books to censor them, and they used them to silence their political opponents. Wouldn't it be better if government was never given that power at all? So the Christian goal for government is not necessarily that it would be Christian, though that would be a nice bonus, but the primary goal is that it would be limited so that God's people may live and worship God in peace. All right, that was my opinion on what I think this passage is teaching, and to that end, but let's move on to point three. Godless power is pragmatic. Godless power cares more about what works than what's true. Pilate famously dismissed Jesus with the cynical question, What is truth? He said, What is truth? Pilate didn't care so much about truth. His concern was not whether Jesus was truly innocent, nor whether he was truly God. His concern was a little more pragmatic. His concern was what did he need to do in this situation in order to appease the crowd? It was a pragmatic concern. So too, Nebuchadnezzar is not concerned about which God is the true God. This is not an image devoted to one particular God, it's an image devoted to the spirit of Babylon. He doesn't care about which God is the true God. You may remember from chapter two that after Daniel successfully revealed Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the king acknowledged that Daniel's God is the God of gods, and he he pays homage to Daniel's God. But now, just a few years later, he builds an idol and he commands all of Babylon to worship it. And this gives us a sober warning that it is possible to be confronted with the truth and to recognize and acknowledge the truth without actually being changed by the truth. And that is what that's what's happened with Nebuchadnezzar. That will continue to happen, and eventually he'll come to his senses after some severe discipline from the hand of God. And this is especially possible when truth is not the primary concern. What Nebuchadnezzar cares about more than truth is his agenda to solidify his control over the empire. And while the image that Nebuchadnezzar set up may not be true, it will be something that works. And it will be something that serves his agenda, and that's what matters to him. The image is not an act of piety or worship, but an act of political pragmatism. Godless power cares far more about what works than what's true. Or another way to put it is that godless power cares more about power than truth. Without God in heaven above, we don't live in a world of competing ideas, seeking to discern the truth, but in a world of power and power alone. In 1804, Napoleon was crowned the king of France. And during his coronation ceremony, he did not bow before the Pope in order to be crowned by the Pope, which would be the traditional method of coronation, symbolizing that the crown comes from God, or maybe more cynically, that it is bestowed by the church or something like that. Instead, Napoleon walked up to the Pope and he took the crown from his hand and he put it on his own head and he crowned himself. A profound statement that it was not any God or any church that made him king, but that he, by his conquest, made himself king. It is very questionable whether or not Napoleon actually believed in Christian faith, but it is unquestionable that he did find it useful. The French Revolution was an atheistic revolution that desecrated churches and killed clergy, but after it was finished, it had left France in chaos, and Napoleon restored order to France by restoring Catholicism in France, and he often spoke and wrote to the effect that religion was the best tool for keeping order, and religion is what keeps the poor from rising up against the rich. Whether or not Christianity was true wasn't so important to Napoleon. What mattered to him was that it worked for his purposes, and so he was happy to use it for as long as it served him. I would like to tell you this morning that spiritual pragmatism is not saving faith. There are many who are drawn to the teachings of Jesus or drawn to the church because it works for their purposes, because it helps them to network for business, because they see a need for the rituals or for the tight-knit community, because they want to add some peace to the busyness of modern life, or perhaps because they're struggling with a personal issue, a marriage issue, or an addiction issue, and they need some help overcoming it, it works for their purposes. Is it true? I don't know. But something about it works, at least for now. That is a spiritual pragmatism. It's not that that's all bad, but spiritual pragmatism is not a saving faith because it is not an enduring faith. It is certainly not a faith that will allow itself to be thrown into a burning fiery furnace, right? In fact, the moment that it stops working for my purposes, it can be quickly abandoned. It was just something that I needed for a moment. The truth is that real saving faith does not always work in the short term. Sometimes it is very unpragmatic. As John writes in Revelation, he says, if anyone is to be taken captive to captivity, he goes. If anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword he must be slain. That's like the opposite of your best life now. True saving faith is sometimes very unpragmatic, and following Jesus sometimes costs us everything or costs us dearly. Beware spiritual pragmatism. Be concerned first and foremost, not with what works, but with what's true. That should be our primary concern. And then finally, godless power is violent. Godless power must must resort to violence in order to accomplish its purposes. This is a strange worship service that we have here in Daniel 3. If you look at look at verses 6 and 7, it says, Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. I wonder why. Nebuchadnezzar's goal is to create conformity across his empire and to solidify his diverse peoples' allegiance to him. But he has no way to accomplish this other than the threat of violence. He has three words for whoever fails to comply: burning fiery furnace. The threat of violence can take many forms. Here it is a burning fiery furnace. The apostles in the book of Acts were beaten with rods and they were commanded not to preach, an unauthorized message. The beast of Revelation 13, which is another symbol of godless human government, the beast of Revelation 13 will control who can buy and who can sell, and so impose economic consequences, which is just another form of this. Or as governments get bigger and take on more social welfare programs, people can become more dependent on government programs and resources, and the threat of those benefits being taken away in order to control people is just another form of the burning fiery furnace. Any system that you cannot afford to disobey has become spiritually dangerous. I know that there are times, and that the purpose of a lot of these welfare programs initially is to help people that are really down on their luck and that they just need a little bit of help until they can become self-sustaining again. That's not always inappropriate. It is good that we have some of that in our society, but beware of becoming so dependent upon a system that you can no longer afford to disobey it. What Nebuchadnezzar fails to understand is that real lasting allegiance cannot be demanded. It can only be inspired. A real leader can inspire people to follow them and can inspire allegiance just by their character and by who they are. When the people see that their leader is the real deal, when the people see that their leader loves them and serves them and isn't in this for personal gain and might even be willing to suffer or even to lay down their life for the people whom they serve, that is a leader that people will willingly follow. Nebuchadnezzar doesn't have any of that, so he must resort to the furnace and to the threat of violence. And that's the thing about godless power. Having no other tools, it must resort to violence in order to accomplish its purposes. The empires of man simply cannot function without the burning fiery furnace. General George Washington is the only president in U.S. history who was elected unanimously. He received every single vote of the Electoral College. Wouldn't that be nice to have a country so united? He was the obvious choice of the people. Why? Because he personally suffered in order to ensure the birth of the nation. He lived with his soldiers during the war. He was on the battlefields. He froze in the trenches alongside them. He was on that boat, that important boat, he was at the helm pointing the way forward, whatever that's a picture of. And when the revolution was won, Washington's goal was humble. He just wanted to go back to being a farmer. But he was unanimously chosen as our first president because his suffering on behalf of the people inspired a profound allegiance. Leaders who are unable to inspire allegiance must demand it by threat of violence. But this isn't real leadership at all. This is not to say that the government's use of violence is always bad. It's a good thing that the government has a monopoly on violence so that they can stop evil men from carrying out evil plans. If someone's going to come and steal my Japanese key truck, I want police officers to come and to stop them. I don't want anybody to get hurt, but I mean it is good that governments can do what it takes to stop evil. Even Jesus, when he comes the second time, will come with fire and will come with a sword to put an end to all evildoers who have refused his grace. As Chance the Rapper recently put it, in the end, everybody gets what's coming for them. Either God got some lovin' or an oven for them. Only Chance could pull off a line like that. But the threat of violence and coercion is not the way that Jesus' kingdom advances in the meantime. And how do I know that? Well, we know that because of how he came the first time. Jesus came the first time, not with a sword and fire, not to bear the sword against evil, but in order to be pierced with the sword of a godless government, even, in order to bring salvation and grace to sinners. Jesus suffered God's judgment on behalf of his people, and so demonstrated God's great love for sinners. And this demonstration of love has inspired and continues to inspire countless millions to devote everything to Jesus and his kingdom. And his kingdom does not advance today through violence or coercion, but through the preaching of the cross and a demonstration of God's love. Godless power must resort to violence in order to accomplish its purposes, but the kingdom of God does not need violence to conquer the world. We have something better than the burning fiery furnace. We have the old rugged cross. And as we preach that message and hold up Jesus Christ, he will draw all men to himself. When power is exercised apart from God, people get burned. That's the message of the burning fiery furnace. Godless power demands too much. It controls too much. It doesn't care about the truth, and it can only function by violence. Christians are called to contend against godless power with wisdom and grace, and sometimes that means getting burned, as we will see next week, but also as we will learn next week, that our God is in the fire. And his promises are these: Isaiah 43, 2. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. To this end, let us pray. Our Father, we we thank you for this book of Daniel, which is so profound and has so many lessons and messages for us and insights for us and wisdom for us. And we acknowledge that we are we are simply scratching the surface here and just beginning to uncover some of the truths here. And we pray that you would help us, Lord, that these things would take root in our heart, in our mind, that they would that they would grow and that they would bear fruit, and that we would become people that are like Daniel, people that live in the midst of kingdoms that sometimes acknowledge you and sometimes do not, but uh we we seek to be to serve in those places and to gain influence in those places and to be a faithful witness to you in those places, even if that means that sometimes we must suffer for our witness. We we thank you for our Lord Jesus, who um endured the cross and did not, in despising its shame, but he did not uh he did not turn from it, but he embraced it in order that many would be saved. Lord, fill us with your spirit this morning as we continue in worship. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Let's stand and sing together.