I thank God for being in this house today, for getting to be with you, all of you, as we worship Him together. You know, I wanted to start today by telling you guys a story. I'm going to tell you guys about my 20-minute midlife crisis. It only lasted 20 minutes, but it was a bad one, all right?

So I went to shave the other day, and I went into the mirror, and as I was in the mirror, I was getting ready to shave, and I looked, and I saw a gray hair on my chin. It was super traumatic. I'm not going to lie. It wasn't long ago that I was up here and it flashed in my head that I told you all that it was all downhill after 21, right? And that flashed in my mind and I started to panic a little bit. I don't know what came over me. I started to breathe heavy and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, what's happening? I was looking around thinking somebody was going to be there to share this moment with me. I started to panic and I had to get a hold of myself after a minute. And I was like, whoa, why are you—what's going on? I'm like, why are we getting all upset. And I started to think about, what is it that brings about this panic upon people?

It's really the fact that we try to hold on to this thing. We try to… it's this “it”, right? We're like, I got “it”, and I still got to maintain it. And we kind of panic, “Oh, I'm getting old.” And this is when people get all crazy with all sorts of procedures and dyes and all sorts of stuff. Everybody's trying to maintain that thing where they're like, I still got “it.” And I stopped for a second. I looked in the mirror and I said, “You know what? You never really had it to begin with,” you know? And once that happened, I got to admit, once I said that, I was fine. Everything was fine. I never thought about it again. I've had multiple gray hairs since in my beard. It's like that Wednesday morning, my body just decided to start giving up. I don't know why, but that was the Wednesday. That random Wednesday was not good, but I guess my body said he's had enough. You know, so I don't know.

But as soon as I came into truth, as soon as I came into the truth of, “Hey, you never really had it that great to begin with,” all of a sudden I calmed down. My 20-minute midlife crisis was over. I got off the internet, stopped looking up Corvettes or whatever else I was doing, and I was good after that. And I haven't thought about it since.

You see, when we come into truth, all of a sudden the lies of the world, the things that try to haunt us, the things that try to come against us, they kind of fade away. You see, truth brings about a grounding in Christ. As much as I joke around at it being like this midlife crisis, there are a million lies in this world that happen all the time, that try to come against us, that try to get into our minds, that try to tell us the way things work in this world.

"Truth brings about a grounding in Christ."

But truth, when you come into truth, you can stand against all lies of the world and stand and remain grounded in Christ. So the title of my sermon today is “Living in Truth.” Today we're going to be reading from Daniel chapters 1 and chapter 3. I skipped out two, just one and three. And we're going to be learning about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Many of you guys know this story. We've all heard it probably, some of you since you were kids. But today I want to look at how these young men remained in truth. They remained in daily truth. They lived every single day in truth, and that gave them the ability to stand against insurmountable odds, against a seemingly insurmountable trial. So we're going to talk today, starting by saying that we must live in truth every single day so that we can remain. So that we can remain.

So let's look at our history for a second of where we are in the Bible. Babylon had come and taken over Jerusalem. They had won the battle and they had gone into the temple of God. And they had taken all of the instruments out of the temple. So all of the trays, all of the gold-laden candle holders, everything. They had taken it out and they had brought it back to Babylon and began to put it inside of all the temples, the different temples of the gods that they served.

Let's look at some of the gods that they served in Babylon at this time. So the first one was Nabu. Nabu was like their patron God. He was a god that you probably haven't even seen pictures of him, believe it or not. It was like a guy who stood up straight. He had a beard and he had a tablet in his hand and a stylus in this hand. And he was the god of wisdom and the god of prophecy. And it said anything he wrote down would come true. That was their patron god.

Besides that, they served Bel. Bel was the god of regeneration and magic. They served Rock. Rock was just like Ra in Egypt, was the god of the sun. They served Shach. Shach was like Aphrodite, right? That was like the god of perversion and the god of sex. And then there was Nego. Nego was called the god who was a servant of fire. So these are their main gods that they would serve as they brought all of the things from God's temple and began to put it inside of these other temples.

Not only did they take the things from the temple, but they began to take the young Jewish men who were the best looking, the smartest, the greatest crop that the Jews had at that time. They took them as well and brought them back from Jerusalem into Babylon. They did something, I'm going to say it was kind of ahead of their time. They had a training program, believe it or not. And it was a training program that they would put these young men in the palace in this training program for three years. And after three years, these young men would be ready to serve in the palace and serve the king Nebuchadnezzar. Now, they did something else when they took these young men. They took these young men, and the first thing they did was they changed their names. The first thing they did was change their names.

So let's talk about some of our main characters. We have Daniel. Daniel, his name meant “God is my judge.” God is my judge. Then we had Hananiah. Hananiah's name means “beloved by God.” Mishael is “who is as God.” And Azariah, the “Lord is my help.” These were the young men that they took from Jerusalem and brought them over to Babylon. And they changed their names. Daniel, he was changed from “God is my judge” to Balthazar, meaning “Bel's prince”. Bel being the god of magic.

They took Hananiah and changed his name to Shadrach, meaning “illuminated by the sun god.” So they took God as my judge, and made him into Bel's prince. They took beloved by God and made him illuminated by the sun god. Then they took Mishael and changed his name to Meshach, saying “who is like Shach.” And then they took Azariah, “the Lord is my help,” and they changed him to Abednego, meaning "servant of Nego” or “servant of fire.”

You see how they almost purposely changed their names that it looks very similar to what their names were in Jerusalem. Who is as God? Who is like Shach? Right? They changed it almost subtly trying to get them to change their God, change their identity. Their names meant a lot of the same things, but it was changing, taking the focus off of God, off of Yahweh, and putting it on these gods that they served.

And that's where we pick up the story. We're going to read in verse 5 in Daniel 1. I'm going to jump around a little bit if you're following around, but it'll be up here.

It says, “The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that, enter into the king's service.” Jump forward. Verse 8. “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with royal food and wine. And he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.”

Now it says Daniel, but it also, Daniel was just the first one that spoke up and included all four of these young men. And he said to the chief official in verse 12, “Please test your servant for 10 days: give us nothing but vegetables and water to drink.” Fast forward to verse 19 after they had been doing this for a while. “The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the king's service. In the matter of wisdom and understanding about what the king questioned, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and all of the enchanters in his whole kingdom.”

I love this, right? Because God had these young men resolve themselves that it didn't matter where they were brought, it didn't matter the surroundings, it didn't matter if they gave them a new name, they knew Who they served. In their hearts, they remained with God. They remained to be sons and daughters of God, and they would not be separated from Him. You know why? Because they lived in truth of who they were every day. They lived in truth that they served God. That truth would not leave them. That was what they believed in.

You see, when you have no truth, it's very easy to compromise. It's very easy to compromise when you have no truth. And these men, it would have been so easy for them. They came and they gave them a place of honor at the king's table. They changed their names. They put the food right in front of them. And remember, this food was consecrated to idols and would have been a direct violation of God's law for them to go and partake of it. And it would have been so easy at that moment to do it. But they resolved themselves to remain in truth and to stay with God.

The enemy was doing everything he could to get them to forget where they came from and who they were. They changed their names. They changed their surroundings. They gave them a place of honor.

Sounds very familiar. Sounds exactly like the world likes to do today. They'll bring you in. Maybe you start a new job. Maybe you get into a new school, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, you're brought in. The world starts to, for somebody who doesn't live in truth and for somebody who still has a desire inside of their heart to be accepted and to be with a group outside of God—well, I'll tell you, they make it look really enticing, right? They bring you in. Maybe you're not Kris anymore. Maybe you're like KB or K-Dawg, right? They change your name. You're cool now, right? They bring you in. They sit you at your table. They change your surroundings. Hey, come out with us. Come here. Come there.

You know, the surroundings begin to change, and they give you a place of honor. All of a sudden, you feel, and believe me, this comes from someone who has lived this, you feel accepted. If you're not living in truth you want to be accepted by anything and everything else except God. People who live in truth only need to be accepted by the Lord Jesus Christ. People who do not live in truth want to be accepted by everyone else and that builds and it builds and it builds until there comes a time of a crossroad where you have to compromise. Where you either have to look away from all those other things and remain with God or you have to compromise and begin to mix in your heart.

You see, the mixing happens inside the heart. The mixing happens inside the soul. That's why these men, they had their names changed, everything, their surroundings changed. That was all on the outside, and that was okay, because they wouldn't mix inside of their soul. They remained in truth and stood and remained with God. And when the time came, when the crossroads came, when they said, here's the food, it's time to eat, they said, “No, I will remain with God. There's another way.”

If their hearts had fallen in that moment, if they had mixed before that, that time of compromise would have come and they would have fallen to it. The same is true for us today.

So what is truth? We get to the part of the sermon where we say, what is this truth that you are talking about? I'll tell you right now. Truth is summed up in the Lord Jesus Christ. Truth is God. Jesus Christ is the truth. He is truth incarnate. You know why? Because I know that my Bible is true. And He is the Word made flesh. So everything that He is, He is truth. So if you have truth, you have the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don't have truth, then you are living in lies and you are living far from Him. It's really that simple. But I will even make it simpler for you today.

I'll give you three ways that you can know whether or not you are in truth today. Very simple. If you are in truth, number one, about who you are. Who you are. If you are in truth about the fact that you are a sinner in need of a Savior. If you are in truth—not thinking that you're so great—this is where people mess up, right? They're not in truth about who they are. They think they're so great and everything about them is awesome. And they've got so much to offer and they're just the man.

But somebody who is in Christ says, “No, God, there is nothing good about me outside of You. I am yet a humble servant, and I need You, God. I am a sinner in need of a Savior.” That's part one.

Part two is you're in truth about who God is. You see, it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That you look at God, and you just don't see somebody you can leave or take. Somebody you can be like, maybe it's like an attachment upon me. This is my life, and I'm also a Christian that's attached to it.

No, you look at God and say, “God, You are holy. You are mighty. You are terrifying. You are awesome. You are powerful. And Your Name is meant to be revered.” Somebody in truth knows the name of God and knows who He is and trembles at the name of God because He is the Creator over all things. Amen.

And part three is you're in truth about your surroundings. You see, you walk every day in this world knowing that it does not belong to God. It has been given over to satanic powers. We walk every day in this world knowing that we are an alien in this world. And we walk around set apart, not mixing in. If you are in truth about those three things, chances are you're with Jesus Christ. But if you find yourself falling, if you find yourself in untruths about any of those things, then we know that we have to get real with God. We got to come in and be saved. We need our hearts and our minds transformed so that we can be in truth.

Because let me tell you something. Christianity is about a lack of compromise. That might seem counter to what you believe or what you have seen in this world, and I understand it. Christianity is about a lack of compromise. I know all we look around, it seems like Christianity is the only religion in the world where compromise is almost expected and celebrated, but that is not the real Christianity.

The real Christianity is looking at these three young men who were 17 years old. 17 years old, but yet refused to compromise. But yet refused to bow in need of any other God. Yet refused to move away from God. But said, “No, I am going to remain with You no matter what this world throws at me. They can change my name. They can change my surroundings. They can try to honor me. But God, I only want to be honored by You.” That is what Christianity is about.

They were in truth about their identity. It would have been impossible for these young men to reconcile the fact that they were young, that they were God's children. Young men and women who were loved by God and then mixed in with every other God. You see, you can't reconcile those two things when you're in truth if you have no truth, though. If you don't live in truth about who you are and who God is and this world that we live in, well, then it's very easy to go out and mix. It's very easy to go and take those praises into your heart. It's very easy to go into the world and think, well, everyone else is doing it, so I might as well.

Truth makes you remain with God. Truth does not allow you to move away from God. And this is how the Jews ended up in Babylon in the first place. Wars—they had won a bunch of battles. They felt really good. They felt like they had everything together. They no longer needed God. And they began to all of a sudden mix in with all these other gods that were popular in that land.

"Truth makes you remain with God. Truth does not allow you to move away from God."

You see, these other gods were just the way it was done back then. They're just the way things went. We look today and see all the gods that run this place. All the gods that are held over our workplaces and our children and everything. All these other gods that run this place. And you look at me and say, “Kris, you don't understand. That's just the way things are today.”

Well, that's the way things were back then. There's no sin that is different underneath the sun, that God has not seen. It's the same then as it is today. But yet these young men decided to remain holy. They knew they were not of this place and they acted accordingly. And I love the fact that they didn't do the thing the same way everyone else did. They said, “Hey, give us water and vegetables. That's all we'll eat and watch and see what happens.” And God was able to bless them because they didn't do things the same way the rest of the world did. They remained with God.

You know, I remember when I was getting hired as a cop, I had my interview coming up and Jessica and I sat down for a long time and we went over some of the points that we wanted to hit. And it came to a point where she was like, “Listen, you can't answer the questions like everyone else answers them. That's not you. You know, you're not going to do what everyone else does. You're not the same.”

And I was like, “All right.” So I went in there and they asked a bunch of questions. And at one point, you know, I was able to say, “Listen, there's core values that every department has, right?” And I looked them up and I memorized them and I went in, and I named them, and I said, “Listen, those core values that you have in the department, I embody those values. Not because I'm great, but because those values are Christian values. You didn't make those up. You didn't come up with those on your own. Those are biblical values that I embody because I live my life by my faith.”

And I went in, and I started to talk about how I embody these values, not because I'm great, but because my God is great. And I went in and talked about that, and everybody was stone-faced, not an emotion in there. Five people looking at me like I had seven heads, right? And I'm like, “Oh man, I bombed!”

So I left there and I called Jessica and I'm like, “I don't think it went well.” And I started to get phone calls. “Hey, you did great.” “Hey, that was awesome. I really love what you said.”

And it wasn't until a moment where I ran into a guy who was actually the mayor at the time and he said, “Kris, it was the weirdest thing. I talked to your chief and I talked to your captain and they said that you told them that you embody all of these values because you're a Christian.” He's like, “Honestly, I don't get it, I don't get it, but they were super excited about it, and they loved it. And they tried to explain it to me, and they saw that I wasn't getting it, and they were just like, ‘Look, it was great,’ you know?” And they went through, and I was laughing because he wasn't there, so he doesn't get it, I understand.

But all of a sudden—it wasn't me—God was able to move because I didn't try to do everything the way that everyone else does it. I didn't try to operate inside of the world's rules. I was able to stand on Christ and remain with Him. And honestly, that has a lot to do with my wife just saying, “You can't do what everyone else does.”

God's people, I'm telling you today, to remain with Christ, to remain in His truth, to know Him means you cannot do things the way the world does it. God is going to separate you. He's going to do something as he did with these men. Remember, they were 17 years old and they went and asked for vegetables and water.

When I’m fasting, if I can't check my Clash of Clans for a week, I'm sweating, going through withdrawal symptoms, right, if I can't play my games on my phone. These men, you know how long they were in Babylon eating vegetables and drinking water? Seventy years. Seventy years they remained with God and remained separate and did things not the world's way, but God's way. And for seventy years, they were blessed and God was with them. Amen? Amen.

So we must live in truth to remain.

Secondly, we must live in truth to endure. To endure. So let's go back to our history lesson here. Nebuchadnezzar comes, and after that, it's a little while after that, and he sets up a huge gold statue of himself. Talk about a midlife crisis. He sets up a huge gold statue, and he goes and he makes a law. And he says, “This law says that every time you hear a horn and every time you hear music start to play, you have to fall down and you have to begin to worship this gold idol that I have set up.”

And the gold idol… let's remember that Nebuchadnezzar served the god Nebu, right? Nebuchadnezzar, Nebu. He took the name of his god and he was trying to embody this god. And he was the god of prophecy and the god of wisdom. So this giant statue is up there of him. And he's got his tablet. And he's got his stylus. And he's saying, “I am God.”

And these men come and they refuse. So the trumpet call goes out. They knew it was coming. They had read the law. They knew what was going to happen. The cry goes out. The trumpet sound. And they stand. And there were these guys named the Chileans. The Chileans were a people that had been conquered by Babylon. And they were ready to narc on them. As soon as it happened, they ran to the king and tattled on them. And said, “Hey, these guys aren't doing what you said.”

This is where it picks up at verse 12. “But some of the Jews you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.” Remember, the king knew who they were because they had already been through this. And they were ten times smarter than everybody else because they had done things their own way. “Who pay no attention to you, your majesty. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up.” And now the king comes and questions them. He's angry at this point.

Verse 15, he says, “Now when you hear the sound of the horn and all the music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image that I have made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be immediately thrown into a blazing furnace. Then what God will be able to rescue you from my hand?”

Now, I love this because they didn't even wait for the next music to go out. They had their answer ready. Verse 17. He said to the king, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it. And he will deliver us from your majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up.” What pressure.

Can you imagine being them? They didn't even hesitate. They didn't even wait and be like, “Okay, we'll see what happens the next time the music goes out.” No, they were ready. In the midst of all of that pressure, they remained in truth and were able to endure all of the lies, all of the pressure, all of the things that said, “You're not going to make it, you're going to die, you're going to be without.” All of those lies that come from the world, they stood and they stood and they stood and said, “I will not bow.”

How would you endure such pressure unless you were living in such absolute truth of the God that you served and what was to come? You see, they had a big picture mindset. A pastor said something last week that really touched my heart. He said that people who are enthralled by sin, you know it right away because they can't see past the “right now.” You get sucked into the “right now.” Everything seems so big and everything seems so insurmountable. And it begins to put pressure upon your soul.

So I'm going to do a little exercise with you. I swear to you, I do this all the time. I do this for myself all the time. And almost every time I'm in church, I do it. I want you guys to look down at the floor, at the carpet. Everybody look down. Pick out one loop of carpet there on the floor. Everybody got to pick one loop? Now pick out one thread in that loop. That is our lives. Everybody look up and look at the whole carpet. Look around you from the window to the front and the back, that's eternity. Our lives are but one thread of one loop of carpet. And you guys laugh, but I do this all the time. I think about it all the time. I think Pastor Janeth taught me this entire carpet is even a bad representation of what eternity is like.

You see, we get so wrapped up in what the pressures of the world are and the lies and the things that come. But I tell you, when you begin to look at what eternity is, what eternity with God is going to be. What it's going to be like that this world, that this life that we live in is nothing but a mist. It is here one second and gone the next. If I looked and picked out the thread of the carpet, I'd never be able to find it again, right? Why? Because it's so little and tiny, but our eternity with God is going to be forever at His table. I look at the daily pressures and the lies and the things that we face in this world. Some of them are so hard. I'm not saying they're not. Some of them seem so tough. But in comparison to eternity with God. Are we going to mix inside of our hearts? Are we going to allow the pressures and the pride and the arrogance and the stupid things that come up in our lives? Are we going to allow them to soil our eternity with God? Or are we going to stand and stand like these 17 year old kids did and say, “No, I will not bow a knee.”

These threats of the world come. “If you don't conform you'll be destroyed. If you don't stress like we do, you'll be consumed. If you don't fight for what you have, you will be without.” And our children live with these lies every single day, and we hear these things every day. But Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, [good being serving God], for at the proper time we'll reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Now let me explain something to you. There is a difference between living, between God's truth and something being true. There's two different things, right? There are things that are true. For example, that furnace was hot. There's no doubt about it. The furnace was hot. That is true.

Another truth: if they didn't bow, they were probably going to get thrown in the fire. That is true. But yet in the midst of the world's truth, there is God's truth. God's truth says He will never leave you nor forsake you. God's truth says He will be with you in the fire. God's truth said you will stick your hand in the fire and you will not be burnt. God's truth said He will see you through all the way into eternity where you will be with Him.

So the only question that remains is which truth are you going to live your life by? Which truth is going to shape your decisions? Which truth are you going to look at and say, “Oh, I got to do something about this?”

You see we can live our lives by the world's truth or God's truth. I'm not saying that we're not going to come into hard times. I'm not saying that there's not going to be difficult times in this life because there absolutely are. What I am saying is that we need to stop acting like the world that has no other recourse, that has no other option for we have a greater truth that we can live by. We can live by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, live by the truth of who we know He is and who we know we are and who this world, the truth of this world that we live in. You see, He came and died on the cross so that you might be free, free from all of the shackles of this world, free from the threats of this world, free from the sin and the bondage of this world. He came and died on the cross so that you might be free.

"We can live our lives by the world's truth or God's truth."

You see, there was a fire that was to come. Nebuchadnezzar told them about a fire and said, you better bow down and worship or else there is a fire coming. I'm going to say the same exact thing today. I'm going to give you guys the warning that he gave. There is a fire of coming. It is a fire of judgment. It is a fire of wrath against the enemies of God. It is coming. But today, if you bow a knee to God, you can escape the flames. Today, if you fall down before God and say, “God, I want to be in truth about who I am. I am a sinner in need of a savior.” He will come in. He will burn away all those old things, and you can live inside of the truth of who He is.

You see, the lie was not that they were going to get thrown in the fire. That wasn't a lie. The lie was that they were going to get burnt. The lie was that they were going to be consumed. We're going to go through hard times in this life, people. We're going to go through hard times. Believe me, I've been in it. I've been up at night with my son figuring it out. It's like torture watching him not being able to breathe, and you sit in there breathing fine, right? It's horrible, and I know we've all been through really, really tough times. The truth is not that you will never…Trust does not mean you will never face a trial in your life. Trust means that in the fire, you are trusting God to rescue you, to be with you, to be the fourth man in the fire, to deliver you, to see you out the other side, and to deliver you into eternity.

You see, when you live in truth, you can endure. When you live in truth, you can endure without bending a knee to Satan. We are not subject to the flames like everyone else. I'm not saying that you're not going to go through a hard time, but we can trust God that He will deliver us. We serve a living God that even in the midst of the flames, He will be with you and He will see you through.

Deuteronomy 3:18 says, “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid and do not be discouraged.” So even in the midst of the fire, are we going to be ones that stand on truth and say, “I will not bend a knee. And even if God doesn't rescue me, even if God is not there, I still will not bend a knee because I know that there is eternity waiting for me in heaven.”

God has called us to endure. “Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” You see, this is someone who lives in truth. “God, I know who You are and I will not turn against You. I live in truth and I will endure.”

Finally, we must be in truth to overcome. So he gets that fire, right? Seven times hotter. He says, “That's it. I'm mad.” You know, Nebuchadnezzar is upset. He says, “Make that fire seven times hotter than what we usually have it.” And then he gets some of his strongest fighters. I thought this was interesting. He went and got some of his strongest fighters from the army. For these men who drink nothing but water and eat nothing but vegetables, he had to get his strongest men from the army to come in and tie them up. And the furnace is so hot that as they're moving to throw these guys in, the soldiers actually get burnt up and end up dying. They burnt up just from getting close.

Now, I want to think about this for a second. Here we have these men that come to Nebuchadnezzar, the god of prophecy, right? He's named after the god of prophecy, and they almost give a prophetic thing saying, “Listen, we're not bowing, God's going to save us, and we're not going to bow to you.” They almost deliver a prophecy to him. Then here's Shadrach, named after the sun god, being thrown into the blaze. And Abednego, named after the servant of fire, being thrown into the furnace. All of this, and they all go in, and Nebuchadnezzar looks inside of the fire and sees a fourth man in the fire. Sees them standing and sees them not falling.

Daniel 3:26-28, “Then Nebuchadnezzar went near the mouth of the burning, fiery furnace and spoke, saying, ‘Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here.’ They came out from the midst of the fire, and all the governors and counselors gathered together, and they saw that these men on whom the fire had no power. The hair on their head was not singed, nor their garments affected. Even the smell of fire was not on them. Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent His angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They have frustrated the king's words and yielded their bodies that they should not serve nor worship any god except their own.’”

I said it before, I'll say it again. “Christianity is about not compromising.” It's not what we see in popular media where everybody just does whatever they want. Christianity is about standing on the truth and not compromising all the way until you overcome.

You see, if you live in God's truth, you will overcome. But it takes someone willing to stand. It takes someone willing to say, “On the good days I'm going to praise you, and on the hard days I'm going to stand on Your truth, and endure and remain with You and wait until You come and deliver me for I will overcome.” Amen.

These men were willing to stand on God's truth all the way into the flames. Trust is not saying that the flames will never come. Trust is saying that we know in the midst of the flames there is a God who can save us. One who can make us overcome. Who in the midst of the turmoil, in the midst of the heartache, in the midst of the times of pain, when you're going through it, you can look to God. You can say, “God, Your Word says, ‘because I love him, says the Lord, I will rescue him. I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me. I will answer him. He will be with me in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.’”

I love how it says here that they frustrated the king's word. You see, if we're not frustrating the world's word, the world's things, the world's lies, if we're not frustrating them, then we're doing something wrong.

I think about this church, and I love it, right? This church stands, and we stand, and it's almost a frustration to all the people that said, “It's not going to happen, it's not going to work, you're going to crumble, the doors are going to close, you're not going to make it.” All the lies of the world.

He proved, these young men proved the king's word wrong. And this is someone who is not used to being wrong. And as much as he wanted to contribute it to anything else, you see, this is why I think those soldiers actually died when they were bringing them close. Because, remember, they were from a culture that served magic and illusions and all of that stuff. So anybody could have said, “Oh, it was just a light show. It was just mirrors and smoke and all that stuff.” But no, they felt the heat. These men, these strongest men of the army, just died from getting close.

You see, there is no doubt in the end of that story that God had rescued them. That God was the One who had delivered them. When we stand on the truth of God, there should be no doubt in your life that the reason that you have been delivered, that the reason you have overcome is not because of your own goodness, your own strength, your own mindset, but because of God. Because you don't do things the same way as everybody else.

These men drank water and they ate vegetables, yet they were the smartest and the strongest and the most learned people – ten times smarter than anybody else there learning history and mathematics. They were probably not even taught that there like Babylon was. Babylon's known as one of the greatest cultures to ever live when it comes to science and mathematics and all of that. Yet they came in and were ten times stronger. Men who couldn't eat anything but vegetables. I get shaky when I don't eat enough carbs. I don't know about you, but I can't think and I'm in a fog and I'm shaking. These men did it for 70 years, yet stood on God's promise. Yet stood on God's truth. There was no doubt that God had delivered them.

I love how Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges their God as the Most High God. That is a lofty claim for someone who serves every other god in the world. You see, God wants to use your life to make His name known. Your life is meant to make God's name known. Not your own life, right? Not your own name. Not how great Kris is. Not how great Angel is. Not how great Silas is. No, how great God is.

We are meant to be displaying God's power and God's overcoming might to be ones that say, “God, make Your name known through my life.” But we have to be in truth to say, “Listen, I'm a sinful man. I come from a long line of sinful men. Yet, God, I need a savior this day. It doesn't matter who I am for You are great and I will stand on Your truth and I will not bow a knee to my pride, to my arrogance, to the lies of the world, to the things that everybody tells me; how I have to act, how I have to do things, how I have to go about it. No, God, I will stand on Your truth.”

My wife gave a word a couple weeks ago. She gave it to me. She said, I'm not allowed to use it, but I'm going to use it anyway. She's like, “I have to preach too.” I need my own words, but I'm going to steal hers, right? So she was talking about Deuteronomy and it was talking about Egypt. And it's Deuteronomy 6:23. So she looked over my sermon before I did it. I left this part out because I knew she was going to yell at me, right? So she couldn't see it. I added it later. Work smarter, not harder.

So Deuteronomy 6:23 says, “He brought us out of there that He might bring us into the land that he swore to our forefathers.” You see, Egypt was a land of slavery. When she said it, it hit my heart. Egypt was a land of slavery. It was a land where they had no choice what to do. They had to do things exactly as Pharaoh said to them. They were led by the nose into sin time and time again.

You see, we people of God need to stop acting like we still live in Egypt. He brought, or maybe you are here today and you need freedom. He brought us out of Egypt. He brought us out of that place so that we might be brought into His kingdom, so that we might be brought into His freedom. That we might be brought into His power and His truth.

We need to stop going about this world like we're still in Egypt. Having to do things the way the Egyptians did them. No, God is calling for a different way. These men lived in a land that they knew was not theirs. They were purposeful in how they lived. They knew they were aliens in a land that was not their own. My question for you is do you live purposely as an alien in this world knowing that this world does not belong to us? God has called us to remain separate, walking every day, saying, “I was taken out of this slavery, and God has separated me, and I will not allow my heart to mix into anything else besides God.”

God has called you to be an overcomer. He who has an ear, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. “To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

Ultimately, people of God, Jesus Christ is truth. He is truth incarnate. His name is truth. His being is truth. Everything about Him is true because He is the Word made flesh. We have to live in truth every single day. Truth of who we are, truth of who God is, truth of this world that we live in. We're meant to be in this world, but not of this world. We go out into our workplaces, we go out to our schools. We go to the supermarkets. And we need to stop acting like we live in Egypt. But instead, stand on His truth every single day.

"Ultimately, people of God, Jesus Christ is truth."

God wants you to be overcomers. God wants you to be ones that come and live by the truth of God. You see, these men were warned of the fire. And again, I do the same thing. There is a fire that is coming. It is a fire of judgment. It is a fire that we know this world is going to be burnt up in flames, but yet for God's children, for those who stand on His truth, God delivers them into eternity.