PRECEPTS FOR LIFE
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The following is an actual transcript of the PRECEPTS FOR LIFE Broadcast. For the purpose of filling transcript requests quickly, they have received only light editing. If you have questions concerning the material covered in this broadcast, Kay has published a number of books explaining the Scripture in depth. These books may be ordered by contacting the telephone number or address printed above.
OPEN
Is there anything in your life that you are unwilling to compromise for? Is there anything that if someone said if you don’t do this, it’s going to cost you your job, if you don’t do this it’s going to cost us our relationship, if you don’t act the way we think you should act, then you’re out the door? What would you do if someone said that to you? Would you bow before them? Would you bend or would you stand upright in your convictions?
PART ONE
Well in our last program beloved, we were standing with Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego before king Nebuchadnezzar as he in all of his fury and all of his wrath warned those three Jewish guys that if they did not bend, if they did not bow, if they did not worship his gods, if they did not worship his image then they would go into the fiery furnace.
And you remember their response. But maybe if you didn’t remember their response or you have found this program for the first time, you would like to know how they responded. And you need to know how they responded and you need to know what happened. It’s no accident that God has taken this part of Daniel’s life and put it into the Word of God for us. He has a purpose for it to be here. It is necessary so that you and I might be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto every good work of life. And so let’s see what their response was.
He says they turned to the king and they said O, verse 16 of chapter 3 of Daniel. O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of the blazing fire. I want to stop there and I want you to know and understand that to these young men, God was the God of the impossible. There was nothing too difficult for God. There was nothing too hard for God.
I mean Jeremiah, the prophet, a contemporary of Daniel had said, is there anything too difficult for You? No there’s nothing too difficult for the Lord; nothing is impossible with Him. And they knew that if they were cast into that furnace of fire that God was able to deliver them; that God was able to keep them from the heat and from the, the scorching and from the searing of that fire upon them. God was able to deliver them. But they also knew that whatever happened that God would deliver them out of his hand. It says and He will deliver us out of your hand O king.
So if they die, they’re delivered out of the hand of the king and if they live they are delivered out of the hand of the king, because the hand of the king, the mouth of the king I should say. The mouth has just said you know, there is no god that’s able to save you from my hand. You know in Daniel, chapter 1 it’s Daniel that shines. It’s Daniel that goes to the chief of the officials or the commander of the officials and says look, I’ve made up my mind and I’m not going to defile myself with, with this food from the king’s table or with the wine that he’s drinking.
And so you see Daniel shining. But here Daniel is off the scene so to speak and it’s only Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. And it shows that these are three men of conviction, three men that can stand even if Daniel, who may have been their leader, in all probability was, even if Daniel is not there, they are able to stand.
And this is so important for, for you to understand, because the whole purpose of this program, beloved, is so that you, you, as a child of God might know God yourself, might know His Word, might know the whole counsel of God, know the character of God, know the ways of God, know the promises of God, so that no matter what happens, if you’re ever alone, if you’re ever challenged to compromise, to bend, to bow or to burn, then you know God so well, you understand His Word and you believe that it’s true, so that you are able to stand alone and stand on your own two feet.
I think about Paul at the end of his life when he’s in prison and he goes to trial and he says no man stood with me, but the Lord stood with me. Paul so knew God that he was able to stand alone, because he knew that in essence that the Lord was with him. So beloved you and I may stand alone as far as other human beings that we can see, but the Lord is always with us. He’s always there.
And so Nebuchadnezzar looks at these men. He is furious in verse 19 of chapter 3 when they say we will not bow; we will not worship your image. We will not serve your gods. Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath. I mean he was, he was raging. And his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. I mean all of a sudden his whole countenance changes and his whole countenance changes because all of a sudden here are these men that at the threat of their very lives still will not yield to him.
And here is this blazing furnace that all can see and here is everybody standing there watching him. And he is determined; they have determined that they are not going to submit to the edict of the king and so his whole facial expression changes.
And it says then Nebuchadnezzar filled with wrath and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. And he answered by giving them orders to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. I want to tell you something; this man was man was heated. I mean he was heated. And if he was heated he was going to heat that furnace.
It was going to be seven times hotter than it ever was. Throw more fuel on the fire; these guys are going to learn. I have threatened their life and they have not given in. Now listen, you and I can know that every time that there is a death threat on us, there is one behind that death threat, one unseen figure and that figure is the devil himself, the devil and all of his demonic angelic hosts.
He rules through the fear of death. And that’s why so many people have a conviction, but all of a sudden when there’s going to be a death, a death to a hope, a death to a dream, a death to a vocation, a death to a grade, because you, you stand and you will not compromise, although the professor is trying to make you compromise.
Although there’s a death somewhere along the line, you’re not going to get the grade, you’re not going to get the job, you’re not going to get the girl, you’re not going to get the guy, you’re not going to have the relationship. Ah, it may be even physical; you’re going to suffer physically because you will not compromise. You can know this: Whenever there’s that kind of a death situation, there is one behind it and that is the one who rules over the kingdom of death, over the kingdom of darkness.
He is there and he rules. Let me take you for just a minute to Hebrews because it’s so important that you understand this. It’s so important that you have a grasp of what God wants you to see in the Word of God. And in Hebrews, chapter 2, in Hebrews, chapter 2 and this is why you don’t need to fear death because if you put your trust in God. So in Hebrews, chapter 2 it says this, verse 14: Since then, the children share in flesh and blood. Since you and I are human beings, that’s what he’s saying. Since you and I are all alike, we all want to save our skin. We all feel pain.
We all feel emotion, whether we show it or not, it’s somewhere in there or we have capped it. But we’re all human beings. Since the children, since all mankind shares in flesh and blood He, Himself, speaking of Jesus likewise also partook of the same. In other words, Jesus was not always man. Jesus was one with the Father. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He, the Word, was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being by Him. Apart from Him nothing came into being. In other words, Jesus has always been. He became a man when He was put into the womb of Mary and then was born, He, then took on flesh and blood. Now why did He take on flesh and blood? Why did He likewise also partake of flesh and blood? It says that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil.
And that He might deliver those who through fear of death, (now catch this), who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. And see this is what Nebuchadnezzar was counting on. Nebuchadnezzar was counting on the fact that these men would do anything to save their skin. And he thought he had them and he didn’t have them.
And so now he is, he is making that furnace of fire seven times hotter. He is in a rage. Well what is he? He is a puppet of Satan. He belongs to the kingdom of darkness, not the kingdom of light. He’s worshipping other gods, not the one and true living God. Although he acknowledges that He is the God of gods.
And so what God wants us to understand in Hebrews is that because Jesus died for us, because Jesus took the penalty of our sins and the wages of sin is death, because Jesus paid for our sins in full, then death is no longer disaster and destruction, but death is promotion because if I die, then I am absent from the body and I am present with the Lord. Why? Because Jesus conquered death.
You say, but this is before Jesus ever lived. That’s right, but there was the promise of Jesus.
There was the promise of Jesus from Genesis 3:15 and then from Genesis 3:15, it’s called the protevangelicum.
Now that’s a big word, isn’t it?
But it’s the first mention of the good news, the first mention of the promise of a Savior who will come, who will destroy the head of the serpent which is the serpent of old, the devil and Satan, who will destroy him so he no longer has the power of death. Now what gives Satan the power of death is our sins. But see if these Jewish boys believed in God and believed His promises, they were looking forward. And so because they trusted in God they were fully aware that even if they died that they would be with God.
PART TWO
You know, the way we are today, we love these gruesome, horrid scenes. This is a gruesome, horrid scene. I mean it is written in black in white, but you can almost see it in your mind. Remember I taught you that this furnace of fire that was made was like a building with hole in the top and a dirt mound went up to the side of one of the walls of this furnace.
So they would march them up this mound so that everybody could get a clear view of these people as they were about to be thrown into this furnace of fire. And of course they were marched up there, then they were thrown in. You say, well how’s the king going to see them? How is the king going to delight in this?
Well the king has a chair, he has his throne there and he has a big door, so to speak, on one of the sides of those walls so he can watch them when they hit the bottom, So that he can delight in it all the way. Now this is a man of rage. This is a man of war. This is a man of bloodshed. This is a man that is known along with his people for their cruelty.
When we get to the prophets and you read about the Babylonians, they were known for their extreme cruelty. As a matter of fact, Habakkuk cries out to God and he says why have you allowed such a horrible people that gather, gather people like a fisherman gathers them in the nets? Why are You allowing such a horrible people to come after us? So I mean this is something that, that they would love to watch.
This is something that they love to hear. Of course he would have rather had them bow, but he’s about to see something that is absolutely awesome. Now watch what they do to these guys because I want you to observe the text.
We know that these men are about to be cast into this fire because they will not worship. They will not bow down before Nebuchadnezzar’s gods and before Nebuchadnezzar’s image. Verse 21: Then these men were tied up in their trousers, their coats, their caps and their other clothes, and they were cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.
So they didn’t strip them down. They left these clothes on them, which was even going, in a sense, to be worse in the burning and they just bound them. They bound them all up and then they took them you know and they threw them into that furnace of blazing fire.
Now when they threw them in, eventually and quickly, you would think that the fire would go through the ropes, go through the clothes, that the clothes would be on fire, that it would be hitting their flesh and that those men would just be taking everything that they could in their agony and throwing it off.
Well let’s see what happened. For this reason, because the king’s command was urgent and, or harsh, is another word that you could possibly translate it, and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of the fire slew the men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. In other words here are these men getting ready to cast these other guys, the guilty guys into the furnace and what is happening, those flames because of that fire, because it’s seven times hotter, it kills the men that throw Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in there.
So what do you know? You know it’s a real fire. You know it’s real hot. And you know that it brings death to the men that throw Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in there. And then there’s this wonderful word, but. I love the but. I love it because you see the contrast.
Here are these men being devoured by the fire, but. So often you’re reading along in the Word of God and something is going to be a disaster, but. Or there is a calamity coming, but. Or there’s judgment coming, but. And this is what God is saying. Yes, this is the way it is for the world; this is the way it is for the world, but I am God; but you are My people; but you have stood fast for me.
So it says but these three men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded. He stood up in haste; he responded and said to his officials, was it not three men we cast bound into the fire? I see four men, four men in there. And one looks like the sun of the gods. It doesn’t look like an ordinary, ordinary man in there.
It looks like that fourth; the appearance of that fourth man is like the sun of the gods. Who is there in that blazing furnace of fire? Who was there? Who was there with Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego? They were not alone beloved. As Paul said, no man stood with me, they all deserted me. But the Lord stood with me. You may not always see Him.
Others may not always be able to count and find one more standing there in the midst of that trial, standing there in the midst of that blazing furnace of fire, standing there as you are all alone supposedly, and standing for the gospel of Jesus Christ, standing for your conviction, refusing to bend, refusing to bow and knowing that it is going to cost you dearly. And yet as you do it, you are not alone.
There is a scripture in Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 5 and 6. And it says for He, God has said He will never, never, never and I’m giving it to you in the Greek, three negatives. He will never, never, never leave us, nor never forsake us so that we can boldly say the Lord is my helper.
I will not fear what man shall do unto me. You know as I read this, I think of Esther An Kim, a Korean gal that was a teacher, that lived and, and is still alive as far as I know. But she lived during World War II. She lived when the Japanese came in to occupy Korea. She lived when the Japanese threatened them and they said the war is not going the way that we think. I don’t think they told that to the people, but they said the war is not going the way that it is supposed to go. We are not making the progress we need to make. We need to make sure that we honor our gods.
Now Esther An Kim was a beautiful, sweet, but determined Korean gal, who loved God, who knew that God was God.
And she was teaching in a school. She also spoke fluent Japanese. And she was teaching in this school and one day the principal gathered all the teachers and she said the Japanese government is requiring that we all take our students and go up to the Shinto Shrine and there we bow before the god of the Japanese. And ah, she turned and she looked at Esther An Kim and she said you will go and you will bow. Now they had asked the teachers to do this before, but every time they had to go up to that Shinto Shrine, Esther An Kim made it in such a way that she didn’t have to go.
But now they were sitting there; now they were going to have to go. And now she had a choice. They walked out and as they started walking with the children, the children behind her began to whisper because they knew her faith.
Will Miss Kim bow? Is Miss Kim, she’s a Christian, is she going to bow at the Shinto Shrine? What would you have done if it meant your job, if it meant your life? We’re going to continue this story in the next program.
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