Daniel chapter 3. Go ahead and
just put a marker here. We're going to come back and
forth from this chapter a little bit. I'm going to start reading
a few verses starting in verse 13. Then Nebuchadnezzar, in his
rage and fury, commanded to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
and they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar spoke
and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
do not you serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which
I have set up? Now, if you be ready, at what
time you hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the harp,
the sackbut, the psaltery, and the dulcimer, and all kinds of
music, that you fall down and worship the image which I have
made? Well, but if you worship not, you shall be cast the same
hour into the midst of a burning, fiery furnace, and who is that
God that shall deliver you out of my hands? What I'd like for
us to talk a little bit this morning about would be the Believer's
Reward. That's the title of my message.
Now, there are many people who believe that they will be rewarded
by something that they have done or something that they've not
done. They will be given potentially
a higher spot in heaven as opposed to someone else, or they will
be granted the ability to rule over other believers that are
in heaven because they have a higher seat. I had one woman even say
to me after I preached, she was waiting to receive her crowns
for the things that she had done. Well, if that's so, then I don't
want any part of that because that institutes some hierarchy
where we have one over one another and it'd be just like this world
is. And that's not what heaven is. That's not what the reward
of the believer is. So reward, as defined by the
scripture, is that which is owed. This is wages that are due because
of presumably something having been done. Now, reward is mentioned
101 times in the scriptures, so we have to say the Bible does
speak of rewards. In preparing for this message,
I was trying to gather information to understand about what a reward
was, and I tried to listen to a message, which proved after
about the first five minutes to not really yield a lot of
information that was useful, other than to say this was this
man's message to his congregation. He said, We must be covenant
keepers. And if you do all these things,
you will obtain your reward. What confidence does that give
me? What burden does that put back on your salvation? It puts
it back on you. I have to keep a covenant with
God? If that's so, I will not be saved. And this man is absolutely
right. If you do keep God's law perfectly
in word, in thought, and in deed, you will obtain your reward,
and your reward in the highest. This was the message to Israel
for over 4,000 years. This do and live. But yet in
4,000 years, there was not one man or woman to ever have successfully
done this. And make no mistake, this do
and live, this is salvation by works, either in part or in whole,
even if it's something as simple as, I chose to believe, therefore
I'm saved. By you choosing to believe or
not to believe was a work in and of itself. And make no mistake,
you cannot have Christ and be saved in this manner. We are
met on the grounds by which we approach. Now, these Old Testament
stories and the one that we're going to be looking at today
in Daniel 3 are all given to us as pictures, pointing to something. We have a story of salvation
by works, which is anything that you do to contribute towards
saving yourself. And had you not done it, you
wouldn't be saved. It's a story of salvation by
grace where he saves you because you can't save yourself. In this
story, we see Nebuchadnezzar, king, king of Babylon. He represents
the law, harsh, unbending, unchanging, exacting in his requirements.
Would Nebuchadnezzar accept anything less than to fall down and to
worship the image which he created? No. He said, if you don't fall
down, you're going straight into the fiery furnace. Now, why would
we assume that God would accept anything less from the laws that
he set up? This earthly king wouldn't. Why
would God set anything less? So in Daniel 3 here, we find
Israel in Babylonian captivity. And King Nebuchadnezzar, he's
built the golden idol, which everybody's got to bow down to.
He says, you're going to bow down and you're going to worship
or you're going to die. this do and live. This is the law. Now Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
they said we're not going to bow. And if you pick up reading
in verses 23 here, and these three men, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, they fell down bound in the midst of the burning
fiery furnace. They were thrown in. Then Nebuchadnezzar,
the king, was astonished. He rose up in haste and spake
and said unto his counselors, Did not we cast three men bound
into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the
king, True, O king. And he answered and said, Lo,
I see four men, loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and
they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son
of God. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near
the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spake, and said,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you servants of the Most High
God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
came forth out of the midst of the fire. And the princes, and
the governors, and the captains, and the king's counselors, being
gathered together, saw these men, upon whom, whose bodies
the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed,
neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire passed
on them. The believer's reward is contained
in this passage, and that's going to be what we're going to look
at a little bit later. But what was it as a result of? What was
the reward as a result of? It was a result of their faith,
wasn't it? So if we read their statement of faith here in verse
16, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king,
when he said, who's that God that's going to deliver you out
of my hands? O king Nebuchadnezzar, we're not careful to answer thee
in this matter. If it be so, our God, whom we
serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace,
and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not,
being known unto thee, O king, we will not serve thy gods, nor
worship the golden image which you've set up. How I desire a
faith like this, to stand before what these men did. And you know
God was the only reason they had the ability to stand and
speak the way they did. And this world applauds this
beautiful story and their confession of faith. And it is. It is something
to look at and be astonished at. But it's a misplaced admiration. You see, this world glories in
the creature and what he's done instead of the Creator. They
look to the one being saved and exalt them instead of the one
who has the power, the mind, and the will to even save it
all. But yet the Lord says in many of the gospel accounts to
men and women, thy faith has saved thee. So how do we reconcile
that? Because we can see without their
faith they wouldn't have been saved. But also knowing that
my faith can't be a work because we just talked about that a second
ago. So there's three questions on faith that we must answer
before we look at what this reward of faith is. If you'll turn over
to Ephesians chapter 2, I think this will provide us a nice reference. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse
8, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God. So first of all about faith. So when we talk about my faith
that I have, who gave it? It's contained in this verse. Faith is the gift of God. Nothing more needs to be said
about that. If you have faith, the only reason you have it is
because God gave it to you. Why then do we have it? Well,
that's contained in this verse also. By grace are you saved,
through faith. Well, how do I get grace? Is
there something that I can do to obtain grace in order to get
this faith? Romans 4.4 says, Now to him that
worketh is a reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. So the
only thing that I can conclude from this is there's nothing
I can do to work in order to get grace, because grace is no
longer grace if I have to do something to get it. Grace is
getting something that you don't deserve. Grace is getting something
that you can't provide. So, who gave it? God gave it. It's the gift of God. How do
I get it? You got it by grace. The third thing, what now is
the object of our faith? You must have faith in something.
If you'll turn over to 2 Timothy chapter 3, tell us what that
is. 2 Timothy 3, 15. And he's speaking to, Paul's speaking
to Timothy, and he says, and that from a child thou hast known
the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So what is the object
of our faith? So let's just look at this word.
He says you have faith on what you've known, which is in the
scriptures. What do the scriptures do? They make us wise unto salvation
through faith. The Lord says of the scriptures,
they are they which testify of me. So in knowing the scriptures,
this is giving me faith. How do I know the scriptures?
He's got to give you eyes to see. You can read this. How many
times have you read a passage over and over and you never saw
something? But then one day you saw Christ
in there. Who gave that to you? He did. That's the only way we can have
eyes to see. And where is faith found? It
says right here. Faith's found in Christ Jesus. So this is where faith is found.
He is the source of our faith. He is the object of our faith.
His strength. His power. He's the King. He's
the Lord. He's our Savior. Who then can
stand before Him? If He's King and He's Lord, there's
no one that can stand before Him. Ecclesiastes 8.4 says, where
the word of a king is, there's power. And who may say unto him,
what doest thou? The object of our faith is a
sovereign God, one who does as he pleases. Our pastor has said
many times, I can't worship a God that is not sovereign. How can
you respect someone who you can manipulate to do what you want? That's not God. I don't know
what it is, but it's not God. But if you go back to Daniel
chapter three, When we're enabled to see His face and to feel His
presence with me, we can speak with the boldness of a lion,
as these three men did in verse 16, where we said, we are not
careful to answer you in this manner. And you could imagine
them standing before him and just, you know, in reading the
words, you try to picture the way they answered him. They were
very bold in their response. He says, you know, at what time
you hear the soundest music, you bow down or you're getting
in the furnace. And they said, we're not careful to answer you
this manner. If God be pleased to deliver
us, it's gonna happen. And there's nothing that you
can do about it. And so this is the words of the sinner coming
before God, the leper, who's asked to be cleansed. He's saying,
Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. This is what they're
saying is they have an understanding who they are. If he be pleased
to do so, God doesn't owe me anything, but he can do it if
he will. And if not, we're still not gonna
bow. So this is a right view of oneself,
what these three men saw here. They saw that God doesn't owe
them anything. They said, we're sinners, we're
unworthy, and I can't manipulate him, but if he'd be pleased to
deliver us, it's gonna happen, and there's no one that can stop
that. You see, they had understood what it was to be seated in the
house of a king. They understood who their Lord
was. They understood that it was him who had the power to
save them. And our allegiance is with Him,
whether it be in life or whether it be in death. I am His and
He is mine." What would their faith have been worth if they
had bowed? Even though in their hearts they
knew it didn't mean anything, this was a point of reckoning,
a point of testing of their faith. And they stood strong. In Psalm
31 23 says, the Lord preserveth the faithful, and he plentifully
rewardeth the proud doer. So now what I'd like us to look
at is what the title of my message was, was the reward of a believer. So we've seen the faith of these
men is what earned this reward, but again, going back to their
faith, who gave it, how did they get it, and what's their object?
The faith they have, the Lord gave to them. But these are the
rewards that the Lord gives the believer for this faith. The
first and the most important, number one, you get freedom.
So, if you look in verse 25, the king said, Lo, I see four
men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no
heart. So, in verse 20 and 21, it says when they fell in, they
were bound. The picture here being, we're
bound by our sin. Our sin enslaves us. Paul said,
what I allow not, that's what I do. I have no control over
my sin, it dominates me. It's all I know and it's all
I can see. When I look at me, even though
I know I have the new man within me, all I see is my sin. I see
no evidence of the new man in terms of what I do. And every
time I try to do something I know I should, I can't because my
sin overpowers me. And if left right here, my sin
will deliver me unto death. The wages of sin are death. But
there's a verse of scripture in Psalm 37 that's one of those
ones I underlined in my Bible a long time ago and I come back
to and I feel more particularly weak than at other times. Psalm
37, verse 32 and 33. It says, the wicked watcheth
the righteous. and seeketh to slay him." And
this is what the wicked of this world do. They look upon the
righteous and seek to slay them. And the wicked here doesn't have
to necessarily be another person trying to be out to get you,
and it might be. But the wicked here could be
sin, death, devil, evil, the sin that's in you, everything
that stands against you and seeks to slay you. Then in verse 33
it says, the Lord will not leave him in his hand nor condemn him
when he's judged. The Lord is my deliverer. So
even though sin, death, the things of this world, the devil, things
that are greater than me that I have no control and no power
over, the Lord looks upon me and says, I'm not going to leave
him in his hand because he would be utterly consumed if I didn't.
all of which things will entrap you and leave you in bondage
if you're left right there. If the Lord didn't look upon
me to deliver me from his hand, I would be right back in the
bondage of sin. If he delivered me once and left it up to me
to take care of it, I'd be right back in bondage five minutes
later. So there's nothing that I can do to avoid it. But if
the Son shall make you free, You are free indeed. This is
the deliverance that we're going to have and the freedom that
we have in Christ Jesus. If the son has bled and died
for you, how can you not be free? The debt has been paid. You've
been bought with a price. I am owned by somebody else.
Sin has no claim on me anymore. Christ Jesus owned me. He paid
for me. And that's why the king looked into the fiery furnace
and he said, I see four men loose. They're not bound anymore. All
right, back to Daniel 3. So our first reward of the believer
was freedom. The second reward to the believer,
if you, we'll spend the rest of the time in verse 27. It says,
they saw these men upon whose bodies the fire had no power. Now in this life, this is a picture
of our flesh and our sin. The flesh can only sin. The flesh
doesn't get better. It only stays bad and only gets
worse. Your flesh can do nothing but
sin, and it one day will die and be put down, and justly so. But if you've been born of God,
you have a new man, a new heart, you've been given eyes to see,
ears to hear, a heart can receive the gospel, which has all been
given by God the Holy Spirit. And if born of God, sin has no
power here, nor can it. 1 John 3 says, So if you've been
born of God, you can't sin. That's what this verse is saying,
in whose bodies the fire has no power over it. So sin is in
my flesh, it invades everything that's in me, but not the new
man. When this flesh is dropped and I die, my new man will be
left. He's not subject to death, because
the only reason for death is sin. It has no power here and
it can't hurt me anymore. I don't really even... I want
to know what it is like to be without sin. In our experience
in this life, we can never truly understand and experience that
in a way where we can understand it. But yet, I want to be, more
than anything, without sin. And I am. Now, the new man's
here. I can't see him. I can't see
him. But I know, based on what the Lord said in his word, whosoever
is born of God doth not commit sin. And therefore, I don't have
to fear. I don't have to fear punishment.
I don't have to fear God's anger. I don't have to fear that I've
got to come up with something. I've already made the cut. I
don't sin. So therefore, he can't condemn
me to death. So we're given freedom. We're
given bodies in whom the fire has no power over it. We can't
sin. And if we read on, it says, Now, when I open my grill, I like to grill, and really to
grill well, you gotta get the fire hot. And so when you open
up that grill, sometimes I'll burn the hair on my arm or the
hair on my hand, I start turning the meat. But you know, I don't
really notice it. I don't really pay much attention
to it. It just happens. Hair is delicate. It's really
kind of insignificant. I'm not worried about losing
hair on my hands, a little more on my head. But as I'm grilling,
you lose these hairs on your hand. And what this speaks to,
this nor was a hair on their head singed, no matter how delicate,
how weak, and how insignificant we feel we are, if we are one
of God's children, he has ordered all things in time, in this life,
in this world, around the salvation of his children. Before you were
born, What did he do for you? Eternal election. He said, if
I don't put these people in Christ, these people whom I love and
wish to preserve, they'll fall away. So I'm going to put them
in the one place of safety, which is in Christ Jesus. While you're
here, You think about how rare a thing it is to hear the truth
of the gospel preached. This book's used in plenty of
places up and down this street, but we don't hear the truth preached. How rare a thing it is to be
under the sound of the preaching of the gospel. Many of you maybe
spend most of your lives in places where the gospel wasn't preached,
but there was a day when the Lord brought you here. He brought
you to where the gospel was preached in truth. He also gave you his
spirit to a point where maybe you were sitting under the gospel
and you never heard anything, and then all of a sudden, you
heard. He gave you his spirit so that you could hear. This
is all things that are ordered around the preservation of his
people, everything in our lives. And after you die, We will awake
with the revelation of knowing and seeing the works of election.
The first thing that's done for us, the thing that you'll never
really ever know until you get to the point where you've died
and you see that you always were united to his son. Election's
not something to worry about. It's the only reason you can
be saved. Election should be the best news that you've ever
heard, because it gives you the ability to be put into Christ.
You can't put yourself there. God has to put you there. But
it's the last thing we'll ever know. So worrying about whether
you're elect or not as a reason as to whether you would believe,
that's not a reason for that. That's the last thing we'll ever
find out. We are commanded to believe, and this is the only
shelter we have. The smallest, the weakest, the
most easily consumed, the Lord says unto you, fear not, for
it's your father's good pleasure to give unto you the kingdom.
And whatsoever the Lord pleased to do, that did He, in heaven,
in earth, in the sea, and in all deep places. So whatever
the Lord decreed, if He decreed your salvation, there is nothing
that can stop that from happening. And you have that comfort of
knowing that if He saved you and bled and died for you, there's
nothing to prevent that from you coming to salvation. So,
we looked at freedom, we looked at the bodies in whose the fire
had no power over, the bodies who don't sin, we looked at the
hair of the head not being singed, where no one is ever going to
fall away outside of Christ. And the fourth thing it says
is, neither were their coats changed. Now, You can imagine
this is a burning fire. They had clothes on when they're
thrown in. If you're thrown into a fire,
then it's going to burn up your clothes. They're going to be
black. They're going to be, you know, eventually burn up if they
stay in there long enough. When the coats started out, they
weren't burned, but when they were thrown into that fire, they
were changed, weren't they? So our sin is a stain. It's used as a picture of the
stain of our sin, the coats being changed, marred by the fire,
black, smoke infusing them. Our sin is a stain that will
never come out. It's there. Our righteousnesses that we have,
the scripture says, they're filthy rags. And so, you're never going
to get that stain out of that rag. It's only ever going to
be that way. But yet, Revelation 19.8 speaks
of some arrayed in fine linen clean and white. So it certainly
can't be my righteousnesses they have, the righteousnesses they
bear, the clean and white cloaks, because mine's filthy rags. The
scripture says that. So it's nothing that I could
do or contribute to say that God could be pleased with it.
So where did they get that righteousnesses? His righteousness, Lord Jesus
Christ, it stands the heat of the fire. The flames put to my
righteousness, it burns right up. But when the flame is applied
to His righteousness, it stands. It's not burned. It's not marred. It won't be burned up. It's pure.
It's clean. And it's white. And it's unstained. And you consider this. The Lord
Jesus Christ gave His righteousness. to His people, so that when I
stand before God, it's not just His righteousness I bear. It's
now my righteousness, and I don't have to fear. I don't have to
fear in being looked at where He says, you know, how good is
that righteousness? It's the righteousness of Christ,
the only thing that He can accept. It's clean and white, even with
it being on me. And that's something that I,
you know, these are the insecurities and failures of our flesh that
deep down you think that you know what you are. You know what
your flesh is. You know the sin that you've
committed. How could he put that on me and I be made like him? The only way is He was made sin
for us. He died for our sins and took
those away and thereby purged them, purged them out of that
garment. Those sins cannot infiltrate
that garment. And so we're left with His righteousness.
How can this be? Which is the fifth benefit, the
smell of smoke had not even passed upon them. So you can imagine,
these men were thrown into this burning fire. There had to be
a lot of smoke and a lot of heat around this. It got me thinking
that if you've ever been camping, you build a fire and smoke starts
coming up, wood starts burning, you smell the smoke. You really
get a real good whiff of that smoke and after it's kind of
irritating at first, You're around the smoke. It's cold at night.
But then after a while, you get used to that smoke, and you don't
smell that smoke anymore. And this paints the picture of
what our sin is. At first, our sin is offensive
to us. It's wrong. We know it's wrong,
but yet after a while, we live, we move in it, and the sin becomes
less offensive. It's just to the point where
we don't see it anymore. We drink iniquity like the water,
Scripture says. So we're not even aware of how
big and bad the sin is. But yet at this campfire picture,
you come home, you get undressed, and you get a shower. You get
all cleaned up. And then you go and you pick those clothes
up. They stink. They stink like fire. They stink
like smoke. They're all in it. But I couldn't
smell it because before I was so much in the fire, in the smoke,
that I smelled just like it. Now that I've been cleaned, I
can see the clothes for what they are. The smell of smoke
had not even passed upon their clothes. So our sin is the same. The smell's gone. When we consider
what Christ did for us, I picture myself as forgiven. Christ said
that I'll forgive their sins and their iniquities. So I'm
forgiven. But yet when I stand before God,
I know what I've done. And I'm always wondering and
I'm always waiting for him to say, you're forgiven for Christ's
sake, begrudgingly, because you know what you've done. Yeah,
you've got his righteousness, but you know what you've done.
That's how I feel inside. But it's not so with God. We
have such wrong views and twisted views of him. That's how I think
he is. But it's not. In Jeremiah 31,
34, he says, I will forgive their iniquity. So not only are you
forgiven, but he says, I'm also going to remember their sins
no more. So not only are you forgiven,
but he's not even going to remember what you did. It's gone. He wiped
it away so that you don't ever have to answer for it. With us,
it's forgiveness, but not forgotten, but not with God. When he says
it's forgotten, it doesn't exist. There's no trust to rebuild.
Have you ever been where you've broken trust with someone? You
feel like a second class citizen. You're always trying to regain
that trust, trying to come back, trying to show that you're trustworthy
for something that you've broken that trust. We don't have to
do that. There's no shame in our past.
There's no shame that I have to answer for and try to show
that I'm not what I am. And if I have no trust to rebuild
and no shame in my past, I can stand before God with no fear.
Because I'm standing with His, in His Son. His Son's righteousness
is all I have. When He looks at His Son, He
sees me. When He looks at me, He sees His Son. There's no difference. That makes me desirous to never
sin again, because I know what it took to pay for it. I know
what He had to do to purge my sin, to come into this sin-filled
world, to die on the cross, to purge, even for nobody else but
my sin. It took that to purge my sin,
and it gives me what a desire to not sin against Him. So those are the benefits that
we get, the believer's benefits for those who have the faith.
But I'm still left with what rendered the fire powerless.
You can see that fire thrown, you know, you throw anything
into the fire, it's going to burn it up, but yet the fire
was powerless upon these men who were thrown in. In Daniel
3.25, that's answered for us. He said, Lo, I see four men walking
loose in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt. And the
form of the fourth is like the Son of God. What rendered the
fire powerless? It's only he who has all power. It's he who later in this book
shuts the mouths of the lions. They could do no harm in the
presence of their maker. You see, he can cause the rebel
to be seated and clothed and in his right mind, like that
crazy man they found in the tombs. He's the picture of every man
who has never seen Christ. But when he saw Christ, it said
he was clothed and in his right mind and he was seated. And with
him, it said the devils came running unto him to confess his
name. He even has power over the things
that are not part of his body. The devils, they had to obey
him. Satan, when he desired Job, he
had to ask permission just to touch the things around him that
were associated with Job, let alone Job himself. He had to
ask a second time to do that. So the point is, rest in this. If God is your helper, your shield,
your defender, Can anyone or anything harm you without his
willing it to be done so? The answer is no. Can you fall
too low to where he can't reach you? Can you be too sinful for
him to say, I'm not fooling with him anymore. There's nothing
I can do for him. Paul said, who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? Doesn't that make you desire
to come to him? For those of you who have never
confessed Christ, what are you waiting for? There's no life
outside of Christ. There's only death, there's misery,
and you'll be burned up. That's what the picture of this
is. You're either standing with Christ or you stand with the
law. Nebuchadnezzar here is the law. You either bow down and
do it perfectly or you're gonna be thrown into the fire. There's
life in Christ, and while we're alive, there's still hope. We're
to come to Christ. So, when Nebuchadnezzar here,
and this is a beautiful picture here, if you look in verse 28,
when Nebuchadnezzar, remember, he's the law. Nebuchadnezzar
spake and said, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego. He affirms the work of the Savior.
who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, trusting in him
that if changed the king's word, his mind's been changed. So the
law affirms the work of Christ. Before, the law said you do this
and that's the only way you live. And now the law says because
of the work of the fourth one, the man who was the son standing
with him, he affirms the work that was done. He affirms the
person of Christ and says the king's mind's been changed. You're
no longer under the law, but you're under grace. Now Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego stood at the edge of the fiery furnace.
And no doubt they perceived the fire was hot. I mean, they didn't
know what was gonna happen. They just assumed at this point
we're getting thrown in here and we're gonna die for the sake
of the gospel. They had no evidence that we have here that they saw
Christ standing in the fire waiting for them before they were thrown
in. But that didn't mean that he
wasn't there when they needed him. You know, you may be going
through, and certainly I'm sure you are, everybody's got their
own burden to bear going through a hard time. And the grace that
you so desperately need to get through that trial is portioned
in the cup that you bring. You need just a little bit of
grace, and you can do the rest. That's what you'll get. But the
times, at least in my own life, where I've been powerless, I
had no power to influence a situation, and I was at the complete mercy
of God to do something for me, those are the times I've received
the greatest grace because I had nowhere else to look. And that's
what we have in our salvation. There is no we do a little, he
does a little. It's he does it all. And so I
have to come to him for the grace to be saved. Grace was given
to these men at the moment it was needed, and not before, because
then a faith that they had would have been untried. And a faith
that's untried and untested is not faith, because faith is looking
to something. It's a hope for something to
come. He is the reward of our faith. He's also the source of
our faith. He said to Abraham in Genesis
15, fear not Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great
reward. So you see the believers reward
is God himself. May the Lord give us the faith
to trust him and to deliver us by his grace when we're plunged
into the fire. Now Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
their faith looked holy to God to save them. They couldn't do
anything, couldn't run away. They were bound, ready to be
thrown in. No contribution that they could
offer here. And if you come to a saving knowledge of Christ,
your faith will be the same. And I'll close with reading verse
17. And this is our hope as well. If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us, and he will.