From Fad to Fire Christianity
Lessons from Daniel 1 - 3, 1 Peter & Revelation 3
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good morning welcome if you're new here among us my name is gene and i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and you can just call me gene i've been called a lot worse so we're going to talk about hot and cold extremes today and it just got me thinking now i don't know if anyone else is like me and my wife if you're a married couple or you notice this just in general with men and women it seems that my wife can take the heat a lot better than i can literally she can sustain hot temperatures for a long period of time like if she goes in a sauna or something she can be in there for two hours me 10 minutes i die right so that's it right so i run a little hotter that bothers me but the cold is different so she comes into a cold room right it's like oh it's cold in here you know and i have like just a tank top on shorts and sandals i'm fine she doesn't like the cold i think it's an excuse to wear her lululemon jackets but that's you know if you guys don't know what that is check your credit card statement you'll find out so so anyway yeah she can sustain heat i cannot but cold i do fine cold pool something like that i usually just jump right in and i'm good to go so it got me thinking about a story yes there's always a story and this is like partially a true story maybe kind of mostly true based on real things that happen the lusitania where you're paying attention in school it's a ship 1915 got sunk think titanic i want to give you guys some context what was the problem did you see the movie with leo all right it wasn't named kate whatever so it's been a long time so ship sinks iceberg what happened so you either die from the initial water right whatever it is maybe the iceberg but then the rest of the people die the heroes of the story or characters they die from freezing or he dies from freezing spoiler alert but you've had 20 something years to catch up on that movie so i don't feel bad anyway anyway freezing freezing water so here's what happens there's this guy lord joseph duveen real guy and he's like an art dealer like an art collector and he's going back and forth lord joseph devine right from london to america back and forth collecting art he has like art galleries that kind of thing so transatlantic you know boats they're going back and forth real cold in the ocean in the middle there so he sends an assistant or he wants to send an assistant to go check out a piece of art but he gets word that the germans are looking for ships like this because they're saying that and we're not going to get tangential here but they're saying they're carrying a bunch of ammo so it's a fair target so we're going to sink it so he finds out and he says look i can't afford to lose you to this assistant you know they're going to sink this ship you're going to get torpedoed by a german yuba he says no no no i heard about it long before you did so i've been training training to get torpedoed that's interesting and he's like yeah yeah hear me out here's what happens right if i survive the torpedoing then the ship's going to sink and i'll be in the cold water i'll have to deal with it so i've been bathing in ice water at first i could stand two minutes no longer than that but i've got myself up to five or two hours so two hours okay go ahead so he goes on the trip and as history records lusitania gets sunk it takes the rescue boats five hours to get there but when they do he's perfectly healthy talk about discipline so that will lead to sustaining hot and cold things and you can look up the story it's said to be true interesting we find ourselves today nope no joke this morning normally there's like he's gonna nope not today it's not funny i'm just gonna leave you in the ice water treading water that's it you're just there we find ourselves in the rest of the story today this is where we're looking at the full counsel of god's word so even people have been in church a really long time they see some of these stories and they go i never even knew that was there so we're looking at all of it the full context so we're going to be here in the series for about another five years or so there's a lot of it there before i begin i want to thank tony johnson talked about selfless service serving the way jesus wants you to so i started with just the attitude he went to philippians 2 right make your own attitude that of christ jesus i started with the attitude tony got to the application service without the selfies right so don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so you did a great job if you didn't catch the message you can go back through our app you'll be told how to get that later and watch it there so a recap is in order i'll go a little further back so we were dealing with right first and second kings second chronicles the parallel chapters there and we saw that there was a civil war so if you've never really read a whole lot of that before think king david you probably know david and goliath his son solomon said to be wise and wealthy but he broke every single rule in deuteronomy 17 set forth for a king he wasn't actually a good guy but because of his father david he didn't really punish him fully in his lifetime but his son rehoboam gets it right so he doesn't get it actually because he doesn't listen to his advisors they have a split kingdom think civil war jeroboam in the north rehoboam in the south and so what you have is mostly bad kings in the north good king bad king good king bad king back and forth in judah none of the good kings are really all that good and so we get all the way to the time of josiah and he was said to be a really good king but we saw the importance there of finishing strong he made a big mistake so that pharaoh nico so there's different people attacking them pharaoh nico could kill him open the door so that he could feronico get his son jehoiah has take him away in chains he installs eliakim renames him jehoiakim we saw two sundays ago that that's where we were we're looking at the interaction between him and baruch jeremiah's assistant that nobody really talks about and we saw that jehoiakim had contempt for god's word he's literally cutting up god's word and throwing it in the fire so today we're going to continue with jehoiakim we're going to see some of the the results of that second kings 24 1 during jehoiachin's reign king nebuchadnezzar of babylon invaded the land of judah jehoiakim surrendered and paid him tribute for three years but then rebelled then the lord sent bands of babylonian aramian moabite and ammonite raiders against judah to destroy it just as the lord had promised those prophets these disasters happened to judah because of the lord's command he had decided to banish judah from his presence because of the many sins of manasseh we talked about that in the past i showed you this verse who had filled jerusalem with innocent blood the lord would not forgive this so now we get to the point where parallel accounts really important especially if you're here and you're going to preach on something you need to read all of them you need to read all the accounts because they give you certain details i've seen pastors get up and i can tell when they didn't read all of it because they'll make a definitive statement that just simply isn't true so here we go we're looking at second chronicles 36 6 as much the same thing in the beginning but then it says then king nebuchadnezzar of babylon came to jerusalem and captured it he bound jehoiakim in bronze chains and led him away to babylon nebuchadnezzar also took some of the treasures from the temple of the lord and he placed them in his palace in babylon so we see here you're going to see this kind of thing where different leaders does babylon not egypt now are taking these kings away and installing new ones right and they say all right you want that to happen to you no okay pay the tribute and so that's what happens and then they rebel they don't pay the church so the last three kings this is what's going to happen so you have jehoiakim zedekiah it falls so we're getting real close to that point so we talked about prophets weaving their way through these accounts we saw jeremiah it was not in order so that gets really confusing how does the bible work by book type glad you asked so you have the torah the first five books all right kind of in orderish but then you jump over history books joshua to esther right so it's a little funny you're like okay this is interesting but then it jumps to your poetic books job through song of songs or song of solomon if you will and then isaiah to malachi and what happens is you have to take a lot of those books and put them back into what we're reading here sometimes just inserting them okay can we bring a chart up sometimes just inserting them in between two lines of scripture we'll see that today so that we're not going to talk about that anymore because i've done the joke too many times bigger biceps let's move on that's what it needs i didn't draw it if i did it would have them so anyway tell the joke anyway really really fast so here we see in between two two verses from new york good at that so in between those two verses you see three chapters of daniel right so this is the way it works a lot of people don't know that daniel is going to span himself over a long period of time so if you're reading this daniel's all the way over there like you got to put him back in so i'm trying to unconfuse and probably failing miserably the bible for you but we're putting it in chronological ish order but here's the cool thing when we do it this way and for those who've been here for a long time they really love the word of god and so this is exciting because they're like oh that's why that's how so we're going to learn something really important in the very first verse just the opening of daniel the who what when where why for what's going on so you'll understand like the whole point here a lot of context if you're new to larger sections of scripture i'm not going to read it all to you i rely on you going home and reading it yourself i'll paraphrase quite a bit of it for you so that we can get through that's how we get through these larger sections so said this before do it really quick the way people read the bible is like like watching three seconds or five seconds of a movie and turning it off and watching that whole movie over the period of like a year or two you think you're gonna understand it no you'll probably forget the beginning by like the second year and that's how christians read their bible for the most part unfortunately verse of the day verse the day verse the day completely out of context so what do you do how do you remedy that you look at larger sections so you can get how the story works then you zoom in after you understand what happened the problem is you know you just zoom in and you have no idea what's happening so you just apply the verse to whatever you want to apply it to and so we talked about that gets annoying if you're a pastor so everything's always out of context so larger sections for you guys and here we are building a crew of people who understand who actually know what this is all about and what's going on here daniel so let's check it out i'll just read it to you and then we'll get into it daniel 1 1 during the third year of who king jehoiachim's reign in judah king nebuchadnezzar of babylon came to jerusalem and besieged it the lord gave him victory over king jehoiachim of judah and permitted him to take some of the sacred objects from the temple of god so nebuchadnezzar took them back to the land of babylonia and placed them in his tread in the treasure house of his god not a real god then the king ordered ashpanas the chief of staff to bring to the palace some of the young men of judah's royal family and other noble families who had been brought to babylon as captives select only strong healthy and good-looking young men he said make sure they are well-versed in every branch of learning and are gifted with knowledge and good judgment and are suited to serve in the royal palace train these young men in the language and literature of babylon the king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens they were to be trained pay attention three years and then they would enter the royal service so here is where i'm going to summarize so you notice now you get the who where why was daniel even there now you know right so it's it's king jehoiakims time he's taken away there are also three young men daniel is going to span all the way to king cyrus of persia long time through the 70-year exile and all of that so you have to imagine in this section like so we watched daniel just grow up into an old man through the book of daniel just 12 chapters here imagine him as a young man a very maybe he's a teenager right and he has three boys or young men with them and if you've been in church for a long time you had fun as a kid learning their names right shadrach meshach and abednego shadrach meshach and abednego right and all the kids say that and so they just rallied off it's fun to say right but kind of interesting just a little tidbit here hananiah michiel and azariah those are their hebrew names and we talk about daniel we we say his hebrew name but then we switch over to the new babylonian names and back and forth it's confusing we'll talk about other parts of the bible that don't do that that you may have never read kind of interesting but just a side note beltachazar is daniel's given name and they don't really use it very much in the book of daniel so here's the thing and i'm just going to summarize this as quickly as i can without talking too fast what happens is they're going to be put through this think of them like servants or slaves right they've been taken captive right and they're put into service they're going to train them up and they're going to be close to the king that's the point here so they get proximity to the king so you don't want anything embarrassing to happen or whatever so they got to be healthy they got to look good but there are these foods from his own kitchens and now if you're really familiar with the whole bible you'll know why they can't eat it so if you go back to the law of moses you even go back to noah they're not supposed to eat meat with the blood in it because the life contains the blood so this is with the covenant of noah and then it stretches all the way through the law of moses that's a problem think kosher got to dry it out so that's going to be a problem if they're serving them their meats stuff like that if you go into the new testament it gets translated for us meat sacrifice to idols right so they sacrifice this meat if it's been sacrificed to an idol no bueno it's not good you're not supposed to eat it so this is really the problem here right so it's not about actually like losing weight in fact that's the problem we don't want you looking pale and thin it says they actually want them looking you know sturdy right strong lots of protein in the meat so anyway that's the point here and daniel doesn't want to be defiled by this so he goes to the chief of staff and he says hey can we just eat vegetables that's all we want because then there's no chance of you eating any of this meat he says no because if you start looking pale and thin i'm going to get beheaded the king is going to kill me so daniel's like listen 10 days give it 10 days and if we look good then we can stay on the diet deal deal all right so says the chief of staff like admired him so they do it and they end up looking healthier and stronger than everybody else and when they finally get to the king it says that they're so three years three years goes by we'll get to that later they finally get to the king he's 10 they're 10 times smarter daniel and the three young men 10 times smarter than everybody else that's where it leads up we turn the page daniel 2 1. one night during the second year of his reign nebuchadnezzar had such disturbing dreams that he couldn't sleep he called his magicians enchanters sorcerers and astrologers and he demanded that they tell him what he had dreamed as they stood before the king he said i've had a dream that deeply troubles me and i must know what it means then the astrologer just answered the king switch the language in aramaic long live the king tell us the dream and he will and we will tell you what it means so here's the back and forth i'll just summarize this part the back and forth is that there think when you sit magicians think magi right so you hear about the magi or wise men you probably know that from like the new testament if you're reading this in the old greek the old testament and the old greek the ones that the the versions that the apostles are looking at it says the same word it's the same word it's like magi magicians so people get confused they're like why they have astrologers magicians wise men magician just summarize that right there so they say we can't do it nobody can do that like not even the gods and they don't they're not here among us nobody can do it nebuchadnezzar says you must so not only must you interpret the dream for me you must tell me what it was am i going to tell you so calling them out like prophets you got to be able to do this and it goes back and forth about three times we can't do it yes you can or i'll kill you we can't do it yes you can so finally he gets so enraged his face becomes distorted with rage that he says look i'm gonna have all of these magi these wise men killed everybody's dead here's the problem daniel the three young men they're they are like these wise men these magi so it means they're going to get killed so his guy the temple of the guard guy ariak goes to kill daniel daniel uses wisdom and discretion approaches the king and buys them some time with that time they do the most important thing that they could do pray they pray so he orders the boys he's like dan listen you guys got to get praying we're going to die so the lord reveals the dream to daniel daniel goes back to the king and he tells him the dream but he gives credit to god first he's like oh can you tell me that like nobody can tell the dream god who reveals secrets will tell me the dream that's that's what's going on here so he gives glory to god here in this instance the longer the short of it is kind of funny people will get stuck here we're going to keep moving don't do that just just keep going and then like a bible study or some other times they talk about the dream and then like this is where people stop so the dream just condensed is this he has a dream of a big statue it's a gigantic statue the head is gold then it goes down to silver the chest and the arms are silver then it's bronze the belly and the thighs then it's iron the legs and then like a mixture of clay and the iron for the feet what's going on here just simply put is that it symbolizes babylonia the gold and then the successive kingdoms i've read many commentaries on this and some are kind of funny actually because they get it wrong like they didn't study their elements in science because they're like each one gets stronger no and that's actually in a study bible is a scholar that's not true so it's a mix that's not what it's about it's a lesser value of each one and you're going to see the success of like destruction of each kingdom the most important part is that there's like this boulder rock from a mountain it hits the feet and then the whole thing gets destroyed blown away and then the rock that destroyed it all is the new everlasting kingdom so this is either the church because probably like the iron is rome represents rome problem people just stop and argue about this and then the clay rome how did rome like fall well they got beaten from the inside out right all the other different cultures mixed in but it didn't mix like iron and clay doesn't mix and that's what it says and so it's either the church takes over right in rome think about that or it's the kingdom of god the kingdom to come which will never be destroyed i kind of leaned that way but here's the thing it's really funny people will i've seen this in bible say they just get stuck there they'll spend like the whole night talking about that and like i think it's this and i think it's that it's like oh gosh you're totally you're gonna see today if you stop there you totally missed the point read one through three then when you have time go back and just don't argue about it just think about it and be open-minded about possibilities so in the same way we're going to move on daniel praises god after interpret and then he interprets the dream so here's what happens nebuchadnezzar it says he throws himself to the ground he starts worshiping daniel i always think that's kind of funny because in other places we see like men just go no no don't worship me it we don't know whether he stopped him or not it doesn't say anything right your orders everyone offers sacrifices to daniel right but the most important part the king says to daniel truly your god is the greatest of gods the lord over kings a revealer of mysteries for you have been able to reveal this in secret so he becomes a god worshiper right so he gets like converted but not really we'll see a nebuchadnezzar is not too great but he includes god into his like stable of gods that he has so then what happens is and this is very important as we go into the next and most famous section here story keep this in mind so here's what happens he gives daniel gifts and he appoints him ruler over the whole province of babylon so you got to keep this in mind and what he does is he requests that shadrach meshach and abednego that they get appointed rulers like him so they're in charge of the whole province of babylon daniel kind of prefers to hang out in the palace so remember that the three young men they're out and about in charge of all the people as former slaves and foreigners that gives you your context for three and what happens chapter three king nebuchadnezzar made a gold statue 90 feet tall and nine feet wide and set it up on the plane of dura in the province of babylon then he sent messages to the high officers officials governors advisors treasurer's judge's magistrates and all the provincial officials to come to the dedication of the statutes set up so all these officials came and stood before the statue king nebuchadnezzar had set up then harold shouted out people of all races and nations and languages listen to the king's command when you hear the sound of the horn flute zither liar harp pipes and other musical instruments bow down to the ground to worship king nebuchadnezzar's gold statue anyone who refuses to obey will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace so the sound of the musical instruments all the people whatever the race or nation or language bowed down to the ground and worship the gold statue that king nebuchadnezzar had set up so shadrach meshach and abednego and the three young men remember their devout the diet all that stuff they're not gonna do it so some of the other magi that's right the wise men they see this as an opportunity go back to chapter two if they're foreigners former slaves they're not one of them these outsiders become the rulers they don't like that the other wise men so here's a chance there and they even state it well there's some jews who aren't worshiping your statue really bring them in so king nebuchadnezzar he gets really mad he offers them one more chance no we serve a god who can save us they know the punishment is going on in the first we serve a god who can save us from that he can rescue us and he will but even if he doesn't we're not going to worship your statue it means death so what they do is he gets so mad distorted with rage turns up the furnace seven times hotter than it normally is he gets these big you know warrior guys to tie them up the three young men and throw them in the furnace but it's so hot that the people throwing it in the furnace they die they burn up they're in there in the fire but nebuchadnezzar notices look look at that i see the three men unbound they're safe and there's another one with him who looks like a god so nebuchadnezzar is freaked out he goes as close as he can to the furnace you know the picture i'm looking in the door these guys he's like shadrach meshach and abednego come out they come out and it says that their clothes are perfect they don't even smell like smoke unbelievable miracle happening there daniel 3 28 then nebuchadnezzar said praise to the god of shadrach meshach and abednego he sent his angel to rescue his servants who trusted in him they defied the king's command and were willing to die rather than serve or worship any god except their own therefore i make this decree if any people whatever the race or nation or language speak a word against the god of shadrach meshach and abednego they will be torn limb from limb and their houses will be turned into heaps of rubble there is no other god who can rescue like this so then what happens is the king appoints them to even higher positions than before and so here's a cool exercise uh if you really love the word of god go and read daniel one through three how am i getting it right okay you'd say something in the middle of this if i didn't we have fact checkers fact checkers important to enunciate because then it sounds like something else exactly like gene gained a little weight take a little note so anyway look at genesis 37 through 50. the account of joseph it's interesting a lot of this stuff is very very similar it's almost like a foreshadowing to joseph story to what happens with daniel it's really neat a lot of similarities so you can nerd out with me on that i do that all the time but here's the thing it all points to jesus jesus is the other one in the fire it's called like a christophany or like think of it like foreshadowing of jesus and appearance in the old testament of him that's important so traditionally the angel is jesus and there's another thing traditionally about this story and you got to deal with it when you get to daniel i've talked about this a lot throughout the series so if you're new and this is uh well it might actually throw you for a loop and it did that to me so i learned about this actually after pastor school and i started doing what's like textual criticism i started studying like uh the text of the bible and what you want to do right just think it's like this in anything any field you know related to your work the water's purest closest to the source so what you want to do is you want to get all the way back as far as you can i mean learning original languages understanding the cultures and getting back to the oldest stuff right so you want to try to get back when the ink was wet and you see something that scholars i will tell you this they tiptoe all around this you learn this you know this in pastor school scholars are very aware of it but they they don't know how to really explain it to people so it's a really interesting thing so if you want to know more about it you can go back to the beginning of the series i had to do a whole big introduction like an hour-long thing at bible study and teach on this so that you'd understand so we're going to stick with facts the oldest copies of the christian bible that we have facts like 350 a.d right i won't get into all the fancy names of the manuscripts but i've seen them the oldest ones right so closest to the source complete copies are all in greek the new and old testament because it's the language franco back then not hebrew they actually railed against jerome for going back to the hebrew the early church scholars like augustine didn't like it stay with the greek that's the inspired translation now in your bible if you open it up and you look in the old testament anytime you see lxx it's telling you we needed to go to the greek version to get that it has more prophecies about jesus in it and it's more consistent with the new testament right so that's why i prefer that there are versions of the bible the other fact we see 11 to 14 more books of the old testament that's what happens there and you can see all the way up until the 16th or 1800s these extra books were in there that is a 16 11 kjv for the king james only people so you'll see there's the prayer of the three young men that's not in my old testament well it was in your great great grandfather's old testament it was in there since like the 1800s we can get into why they were taken out there's no theological reason it's just they got taken out so even martin luther they're good to read he included these quote apocryphal books in his german translation they were all in there again until the mid-1800s so they're okay to read no debate about whether they're scripture or not i'm not going to get into that argument if you believe they are orthodox believers do i love you right so we're going to stick with the gospel if you don't protestant believers i love you too and that's what being a non-denominational church is all about we keep the gospel at the center and we deal with facts that's it these are facts i'm not you know coming up with this stuff on my own or making it up so that's a 1560 geneva i'm just showing off my bibles really cool it's in there too so the king james is not the first english translation not even close so if you're looking at what the apostles would have been looking at if you're looking at the old testament of that day or the old testament of just like about 150 years ago they parse it out there but the oldest copies will not begin daniel the way we begun daniel today again begun i don't know so anyway it doesn't begin like that it begins with a little novella susanna and so you would read that first all right it talks about daniel being righteous then you'd get into what we read in the middle chapter three you're going to have the prayer of the three young men azariah and the three young men i'll just briefly go over that with you and at the end there's another story that's missing from most bibles bell and the dragon and so i say because think about it if they're in there for eighteen hundred years of christianity the apostles are looking at them well if they're not there now they've been redacted that's just the truth so just interesting but it's really interesting because they keep remember i said the names get all mixed they keep it more congruent they use the hebrew names really really interesting also susanna her husband's name is joha kim kind of weird but the prayer of the three young men it's really similar to what we saw in baruch where there's like this confession there's a petition for mercy and then ultimately victory that's what they're praying for then the three young men bless the lord and so it's like this like a psalm where the refrain is blessed the lord all the things of the earth breast bless the lord the birds you know bless the lord the heavens and just very repetitive like that goes on and on and on just bless the lord they're praising the lord for this great miracle and so it's inserted right in chapter three so to our application today let's go back to chapter one fad diets fad diets chapter one so here's the thing uh if you know me and i'll keep this short you know that i was in the worship ministry first and i was a musician i haven't always been a pastor so that's why like there's a spider tattooed on my arm that i try to cover up in case people don't know the context i was a musician did a lot of crazy things i was also in the fitness and martial arts industry i spent a lot of time there about oh well maybe 20 years almost 20 years in that industry right so my job my job was to train fighters a lot of professional ones i've trained ufc fighters all kinds of things like that diet is really important and if you've ever been in the fitness industry you know i'm not lying when i say diet's like 80 percent right if you put sugar in the gas tank of a bentley don't do it's not going to be a good bentley anymore it's no good you need to put good things in there and fuel yourself with good stuff diet diet diet diet it's everything especially if you're a pro if you're a professional fighter if you don't make weight you don't make money that's it they don't allow you to fight i've had this happen i've had someone go to the world championships and be off by one pound i said a lot of things to him that i cannot say today in church so i may be thinking that anyway really bad okay so they don't make money and some of these fighters at this big level right you're losing tens of thousands of dollars and just train for three months so some of them are smart and listen to me others do not some of them do like the crunch diet or the fad type of diet they come to me about or they came to me about a week before the fight and they're like oh you know i'm like 15 pounds overweight what do i do well i put them on crazy diets right and they get there but as soon as they come off the diet they blow up and that's what fad diets are like right so here's the thing you need to do as a lifestyle i was talking a very famous fighter friend of mine last week we were having pizza for lunch and he was telling me how he needs to make diet a lifestyle finally after like 20 years of fighting he's realized i really hate it when i have to lose 30 pounds in two weeks and they literally need to iv him back to life before the fight fin takes this guy too many hits to the head takes this guy too much time to figure that out and he's like yeah gene man i'm just i discovered i'm just gonna stay on a pretty good diet so it's like five pounds you know i'm like wow when did you discover that so they realize you need to make diet a lifestyle it has to be a lifestyle like you can't just go on a diet you just it's never going to work lifestyle so the daniel diet i'm sure some of you have heard this all right the daniel we're going to go on the daniel diet and we're gonna do it for 10 days here's the thing if you want to be anything like these guys you have to do it for at least three years that's the daniel died vegetables three years so the vegetarians are like no problem right so everyone's like shut up three you need to do it for three years it's not about diet in fact they didn't really want to lose weight or look skinny or anything like that it's about holiness it's about setting themselves not even leaving the door open a crack to break god's law to be unholy not even a chance that's what it's about the diet is not about dieting but the true faith the discipline and holiness that come from true faith not fad faith there's a difference yet today i see people if you've done it it's okay i'm not saying it's like a bad or good thing it's just it's funny what i'm saying is is the thought process behind it is ridiculous right so yeah we're gonna do this diet for 10 days and you know what we're going to claim we're all in what you mean what you really said is what a pastor hears you're going to quit on the 11th day that's what i heard i'm only going to do this diet for 10 days that's what i hear so you're all in really and here's how it connects question then are you willing to go from the fad to the fire they connect because you stopped reading in chapter one you needed to go and see what happened it wasn't a 10-day thing first of all a lot of people don't know that it was a three-year thing and after that they were willing to go from that wasn't a fad for them into the fire think about it are we willing to go from fad christianity right to christianity as a lifestyle to truly being on fire or in the fire so we talked about that a couple weeks ago right deny yourself jesus says and i showed you the great redundancy with which he says this dean the prerequisite to follow him deny yourself pick up your cross die for me then you can follow me that's what it says you see daniel and friends they were doing it as a lifestyle they were willing to go into the fire for the lord and so we learn this when we keep reading you'll learn that it's not so trivial there are people all over the bible giving their lives for the lord because they knew there were better things waiting for them it happens a lot but you don't hear about it at all in modern christianity so i want to hop to first peter it talks about fiery trials so the best commentary we have on the old testament is the new testament not pastor gene or any other commentary the new testament clarifies a lot of stuff so we get to the new testament how do the apostles say we should handle these things well first peter's interesting and i'll give you a quick exercise it would only take you probably about 30 minutes so skip friends or something like that or gilmore girls right something like that is that an hour skip that skip that and just listen to you can do it through the bible app listen to first peter one through five absorb it listen to it hear it they heard the word of god hear the word absorb what he's saying listen to it again if you need to then ask yourself does it sound like any modern preaching do it it's kind of interesting when you listen to the word as much as i do i can barely listen to anything because it doesn't sound anything like god's word so they're going through fire fiery trials what's going to be happening or maybe was happening during that time this is historical nero begins to think it's a real cool thing to burn christians alive that's it set them on fire because it's not good enough to send them you know to the lions in the coliseum or get torn apart nah let me light him on fire just watch him run around on fire lighting up his garden it said that this is how like that great fire was started right blame the christians though well he set them on fire first that's how it happened it's bad so peter is writing to these people in a really horrible climate the persecution is going to heat up literally now so what does he say well let's take a look at a little bit of it first peter 1 6. he says so be truly glad there is wonderful joy ahead even though you must endure many trials for a little while these trials will show will show that your faith is genuine it is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold though your faith is far more precious than mere gold so when your faith remains strong through many trials it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when jesus christ is revealed to the whole world that's what they're looking forward to not anything in this world so you see this theme of suffering all throughout and it's not just this letter it's all over the new testament the end coming chapter 4 just like philippians have the same attitude that jesus had who humbled himself in obedience to the point of death even to death on a cross basically the same thing here living for god then first peter 4 12 dear friends don't be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through as if something strange were happening to you instead be very glad for these trials make you partners with christ in his suffering so that some of that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world it sounds identical to philippians that was paul a lot of redundancy here it's cold sorry you don't hear this too much in modern preaching but it's all over the new testament all over the place so are we treating christianity as a fad like the daniel diet you know you've gotten into it that's okay there's nothing wrong with it but don't quit when you do fad diets or things like we're gonna do this program or we're gonna just do this or i'm gonna do the bible in this much time you're going into it knowing you are going to quit that's not faith you never go into something knowing you're going to quit you make it a lifestyle faith is the opposite faith is rejecting the gold statue in your life permanently permanently yet most christians they just put the gold statue on a shelf i'll get back to that leader i'm just not going to do my gold statue for like 10 days faith is rejecting the gold statue permanently knowing you're never it what happens to it god's kingdom crushes it it crumbles and it gets blown away i don't know if i said that before gets blown away like chaff on the winnowing floor that's what they used to do i showed you this illustration in the past right how you separate the chaff from the wheat the grain blown away that should be your desire for every christian that your gold statue would be crushed by the kingdom of god and blown away done we need to go from the fad to being on fire for him and jesus himself as we get to the end of the new testament as we close today i want to show you this he calls for that type of faith he does not want you he'd actually just have you cold off for him or on for him that indifference where the gold statue is no good so revelation prophetic book but it opens up with the letters to the seven churches of that time still pertinent to us today revelation 3 15. i know all the things you do that you were neither hot nor cold i wish that you were one of the other but since you are lukewarm water neither hot or cold i will spit you out of my mouth you say i'm rich i have everything i want i don't need a thing and don't you realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked so i advise you to buy gold for me gold that has been purified by fire then you will be rich also buy white garments from me so you will not be shamed by your nakedness an ointment for your eyes you'll be able to see i correct and discipline everyone i love so be diligent and turn from your indifference look i stand at the door and knock if you hear my voice and open the door i will come in and we'll share a meal together as friends those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne just as i was victorious and sat with my father on his throne you hear what he's saying here to rich really so you're talking about your gold statue really you're poor and miserable my goal for me is not talking about literal gold the treasure is in me the treasure is me buy into me so here's the encouragement as i close the thing is you will share the throne with him you'll be victorious you'll be victorious so you have a prize waiting for you at the end also through your trials through your journey he will be with you he will never leave or forsake you he is always there open the door of your hearts and let him in all the way that's the key so for the sake of time i encourage you to read hebrews 10 just put up on the screen really fast but basically hebrews is all about don't go back to your old religion they're jews they're jewish christians they're being persecuted for being christians and so they're tempted to go back so it's all about jesus is superior to everything everything in the law the priesthood everything and note here he's talking about the early days go back to the early days when you first started this when you are on fire for jesus when you are being persecuted for jesus think back to those days right accept it with joy says i mean everything taken from you accepted with joy why you knew there were better things waiting for you back in the beginning when you were on fire for jesus you knew there were better things waiting for you get back there focus on that stay there finish victorious don't love the things of this world and i want to close with these verses hebrews 13 5 don't love money be satisfied with what you have god has said i will never fail you i will never abandon you so we can say with confidence the lord is my helper so i have no fear what can mere people do to me remember the leaders who taught you the word of god think of all the good that has come from their lives and follow the example of their faith jesus christ is the same yesterday today and forever god says i will never leave you i will never forsake you no matter how hot the fire is that you're in because jesus christ is the same yesterday today and forever amen so so so you