No Compromise

There was a, it was a TV show several years back that I used to watch all the time. I loved the show.

I was addicted to it. It's called 24. Anybody watch 24? Jack Bauer, you know, Kiefer Sutherland and all that.

I love this TV show. It's about a federal agent that stops terrorist attacks. And the very first episode of the first season, he's a federal agent and all his fellow federal agents are angry at him.

Why? Because he turned in some corrupt federal agents. They were part of his group. They had taken some bribes. They were corrupt. He turned them in.

Everybody's mad at him. And so one of his co-workers said, Jack, so why did you have to be so honest? Why didn't you just turn a blind eye and let it go? I love what he said. Next time. And then the next time.

And pretty soon, that's all you're doing. It's compromising. You know those guys I blew the whistle on? You think they were bad guys?

They weren't bad guys. They were just like you and me, except they compromised one time. I'm looking at the church in America.

And I'm looking at us pastors in America. And it seems like we're beginning to compromise on issues. And we think it's okay to compromise on this issue.

Now that leads to compromise on the next issue, and the next issue, and the next issue. You walk with Jesus long enough, you're gonna be tempted to compromise. You're gonna be tempted to compromise on your taxes. You're gonna be tempted to compromise morally. You're gonna be tempted to compromise on moral issues and on cultural issues. You walk with Jesus long enough, you're gonna be tempted to compromise.

strong or do I wimp out and compromise? And in Daniel 3, as we'd be going through the book of Daniel, we're in Daniel 3, and three young men, probably in their mid to late 20s, maybe early 30s, teach us how to stand strong when the temptation to compromise come. Let me give you the background. There's a madman on the throne in Babylon.

Anybody know what his name is? Nebuchadnezzar. He is a dictator.

This is the only superpower active in the world now. And Nebuchadnezzar, this megalomaniac, has conquered nation after nation after nation, and he's brought a lot of these people from these different nations, and they're now all in Babylon. And so evidently, what Nebuchadnezzar wants to do is unify all these people from different backgrounds.

And so what he does is takes a huge group of them south of modern-day Baghdad to this plain called the Plain of Dura. And Nebuchadnezzar sets up this big statue. And he says, I know y'all worship all different gods, you're from all over the place, but we're gonna unify everybody under the auspices of this god. So here's what I want you to do. We're gonna play some music. And when the music plays, I want everybody to drop down and bow down and worship this idol.

Y'all got it? Hear the music? Bow down to the image. And if you don't, y'all see that crematorium over there? We're gonna take, I'm speaking metaphorically, everybody who looked over there, it's not a crematorium, but.

Is that a crematorium over there? I'm gonna take you, and we're gonna burn you alive if you don't bow down. It's kinda interesting as you look at Daniel chapter three. Nebuchadnezzar seems to be a foreshadowing of the coming world leader that we call the antichrist. Nebuchadnezzar was the first global Gentile king.

The antichrist will be the last global Gentile king. Nebuchadnezzar set up an image and demanded that everybody worship that image. According to Revelation 13, one day the antichrist is going to set up an image and demand that the entire world worship that image, just like Nebuchadnezzar did. It's kinda interesting in Revelation 13, 15, it says this. This image is a non-living image, but Revelation 13, 15 says the antichrist has the ability to make that image come to life and talk and move around. Now keep in mind, John's living 2,000 years ago. What I think this is is a technology statement. I think John looked into the future and he saw the ability to take an inanimate image and make it come to life.

I think he might be describing our hologram technology we have today, where we can take an inanimate image and make it talk and come to life, or maybe AI, where we take some type of image and make it come to life. I think that's what John is seeing here in the future, and evidently that's what the antichrist is gonna do. It's interesting that Nebuchadnezzar's image involves two sixes.

It's 60 cubits tall by six cubits wide. The antichrist's image is gonna involve three sixes, six, six, six. So Nebuchadnezzar's statue, keep in mind, 60 by six cubits, that's really 90 foot tall by nine foot wide. So this is a grotesque, weird looking statue. And Daniel three talks about the instruments that played, the music that played and the specific instruments, and scholars have looked at those instruments and they said, those ancient instruments don't go along with each other. So this wasn't some beautiful, peaceful music. This is weird, satanic, cacophonous music.

And he plays the music, the band plays, this weird, cacophonous, satanic music, and everybody bows down to this weird statue. So imagine, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of people on this plane, bowing down, but three young men did not. You know what their names are? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Everybody comes to Nebuchadnezzar and says, Nebuchadnezzar, everybody bowed except for three young men. And now they're in a lot of trouble. These men are probably mid to late 20s. Scholars think that there might be 10 to 15 years between Daniel chapter two and Daniel chapter three.

So these guys are now in their mid 20s, maybe early 30s. And what's happening is society is trying to get them, here's the word, you ready for the word, to compromise. Listen to me, compromise is killing our churches and compromise is killing our families. Instead of standing strong for the truth, we are compromising. And listen to me, Satan is not an innovator, he's a duplicator. He uses the same attacks generation after generation after generation. And the same attacks he used on those three boys back then, he's using them on you and your kids and your family today.

Can I give you these tactics? Number one, first tactic that Satan used on them and he used on us to get us to compromise is indoctrination. Remember, these three boys, their names are not really Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They're Hananiah, which means Yahweh is gracious, Mishael, which means who's like my God, and Azariah, which means Yahweh is my helper. But these pagans did not want any vestige of their true worship of the living God in their names. And so they said, we're gonna change their very names. And they gave Hananiah the name Shadrach, which means the one who is under the command of Aku, the moon god.

Mishael became Meshach, which means who is like Aku, the moon god. Abednego means servant of the god Nebo. Let's wipe out any vestige of the true worship of the living God. Let's indoctrinate them. And they're doing the same thing to your kids. Every ism is allowed to come into your mind, the mind of your kids. Every weird, twisted, perverted doctrine and teaching is allowed to infiltrate the minds of your kids.

But you bring them to a church like this, and people say that you're trying to brainwash your kids. We are trying to brainwash your kids. We're trying to wash their brains in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and make them right thinkers in this messed up culture. We're trying to brainwash them. We're trying to tell them what is right in a world that has lost its ever-loving mind. Indoctrination. Second way they try to get them to compromise is isolation. Chapter three, verse seven, now imagine this. You have thousands and thousands of people who bow down. Three did not.

What they're trying to say is implication. You guys are the oddballs. Everybody else is right and y'all are wrong. They try to isolate them. How many times have I heard youth in this church that pray for me? I'm the only believer in my classroom.

Pray for me. I'm the only person who walks with Jesus at my workplace. If the enemy cannot indoctrinate you, he'll try to isolate you and make you feel like you're the only one who believes the way you believe. Which is why it's good to come to a church like this so that you can see you're not the only person who believes the word of God is true and Jesus is the only way to salvation.

There are other people, you're not alone. But the enemy will try to isolate. We had at our women's conference last year a young lady who was on the women's national soccer team. One night before they go to have their match, their dream is to be in the Olympics. The team says, we're not wearing our team jerseys tonight. No, no, tonight ladies were wearing pride jerseys. And so they handed out the pride jerseys and she says, but I'm a Christian.

I can't wear this. And the pressure that young lady must have felt because she was the only one on that team who said, I can't bow my knee to this godless agenda and she was kicked off the team. What's the enemy trying to do? Isolate her.

You're the only one. The enemy will indoctrinate to get you to compromise. He'll isolate to get you to compromise and then he will intimidate you. Nebuchadnezzar says, if you don't compromise, I'm gonna burn you alive. That's intimidation, wouldn't you say?

They're doing the same thing for you. After HR is through with their little presentation, you need to sign this document that says, you've heard the presentation and you believe that there are more than two genders and gender is fluid and if you don't sign that document, you're gonna lose the job. That's intimidation. I was reading about a prominent plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael Miller. He was the head of plastic surgery at Ohio State University, a strong Christian. He just, he finally got his dream job, the head of plastic surgery at a major university and on the first day on the job, he was assigned a transgender reassignment surgery. He said, there are other doctors that can perform that surgery. I can't do that, I'm a Christian. They said, you do the surgery or you lose your dream job and I love his response. He said, quote, if the great physician made you a man, a human physician has no right to come in and mutilate your manhood, I can't do that and he lost his job. That's intimidation.

Indoctrination, isolation, intimidation and then subjugation. I wanna say to Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar, tens of thousands bow down. Maybe hundreds of thousands bow down to your stupid little statue.

Can you not let it go? These are just three out of thousands and thousands and thousands, let it go but no, subjugation says this, no, every knee has gotta bow. Everybody's gotta play the game. Everybody's gotta put the little rainbow flag on their business. Everybody, hey, there are other bakers that can bake your cake for the gay wedding. They're in this town, they don't have any qualms, I'll give you their card. No, every bakery must bow.

Every florist must bow. Do you understand the intense pressure those young men are under? Do you understand that? I hope you do because it's the same pressure that's being exerted on you today.

How do those young men respond to that pressure to compromise? They're brought before Nebuchadnezzar, these three young men versus a psychopath, the most powerful man in the world and he says, if you don't bow down, fellows, I'm gonna burn you alive and they say, verse 16, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to respond to you with an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to save us from the furnace of the blazing fire and he will save us out of your hand, oh king. But if not, let it be known to you, oh king, we're not gonna serve your gods and we're not gonna worship the golden image that you have set up. Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath and the image of his face changed towards Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Have you ever seen somebody like that?

They're so angry, even their face just changes. He answered and look at what he said to do. He answered and said to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated and he said to certain mighty men of valor who were in his military to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in order to cast them to the furnace of blazing fire. Then these men were tied up in their trousers and their coats and caps and other clothes and were cast into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire. And for this reason, because the king's word was urgent and the furnace had been heated to an extraordinary degree, the flame of the fire killed those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

You understand that? The employees whose job it is to throw these guys in the fire, they get incinerated alive. Verse 23, but these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and hurriedly stood up and he answered and said to his high officials, was it not three men we cast tied up into the midst of the fire?

And they answered and said to the king, oh, certainly, king. He said, well, look, I see four men loosed and walking around in the midst of the fire without harm and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the furnace of blazing fire and he answered and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, come out you servants of the most high God and come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the midst of the fire. Then the safe traps, the prefects, the governors, the king's high officials gathered around and saw in regard to these men that the fire had no power over the bodies of these men nor the hair of their head singed, nor their trousers damaged, nor had the, look at this, nor had the smell of the fire even come on them. Isn't that great? Man, I'm one of the, I love to grill, but I'm not like you uppity people that spend $5,000 on your grill. I still have an old fashioned charcoal grill that I put the charcoal and douse with the lighter fluid and light it up and get all that nice smell on me and Darla's always like, when I grill, she's like, you smell, I can smell that stuff on you.

These guys were in that furnace and they didn't even smell like fire. I wanna be like those men. In a culture that's trying to get you and me to compromise our values. You saw a pastor, you're a pastor. You're not gonna compromise because pastors don't compromise. Oh, no, we're compromising. Part of the reason we're in a mess we are as a church in America is we've been compromising as pastors. Look, I've been reading this book talking about what's going on in the evangelical culture and somebody asked me, they said, just a few minutes ago, they said, why do you think we're starting to see so many leaders in the evangelical movement compromise on these issues? And I said, it's very simple.

We never graduate from junior high school. We all wanna sit at the cool table. And right now, the cool table is environmentalism, LGBT stuff, all this kind of stuff and at some point, you have to say, I would really rather sit in the presence of my enemies with God as my father than to sit at the cool table. How do I stand strong and not compromise? Well, these guys give us three words. Number one, to stand strong and not compromise in these crazy days, the first word is faith. Now, what do you mean by faith? Because these are the words we throw around these theological words all the time. What do you mean by faith?

Don't make this complicated. Faith is simply confidence in God. He's God, he's big, he's strong, he knows what he's doing.

Faith is confidence in God. And we see that here in verse 17. I love what they said to Nebuchadnezzar.

All right, Nebuchadnezzar just said, I'm gonna kill you. They said, if it be so, our God whom we serve is able to save us from the furnace of blazing fire and he will save us out of your hand, O king. Verse 18, but if not, let it be known to you, you ain't gonna bow down to your stupid, silly golden image. Now look, to understand this, there are three kinds of faith in the Bible.

Jot this down. Number one is saving faith. When you got saved, it wasn't because you went to church, you gave a tithe, you burned some incense to Mary and prayed the rosary, that's not what saves you.

What saves you is you say, I'm a messed up person that deserves to go to hell, but that man on that cross 2,000 years ago, he took my hell for me, he died in my place, he came back to life, I turned for my sins and I just say, Lord Jesus, save me. That's saving faith, all right. Second kind of faith is supernatural faith.

Let me ask you all this. You believe God can still raise people from the dead? I mean that, you believe God can do that if he wants to?

You believe he can heal cancers if he wants to? See, that's supernatural faith and you see that in verse 17. What they say to Nebuchadnezzar is, no, you just told us you're gonna burn us alive, our God, he's able to save us.

I don't know how he's gonna do it. Maybe he's gonna send a bolt of lightning here in the second Nebuchadnezzar and fry you alive. Maybe he's gonna send a rainstorm and just supernaturally blow out that fire. Our God is able to save us, that's supernatural faith. But there's a third faith that we neglect sometimes and that's sustaining faith, which says, even if I don't get my miracle, he's still my God and I still love him.

Even if he slays me, yet will I trust him. That's sustaining faith. Sustaining faith says, I might not get my healing, I might not get my miracle, but I'm not gonna stop following him because he's still God and I don't care what Satan does and demons do and the world does, he is still my God and I'm gonna follow him to the day I die. That's sustaining faith. And you actually see that in verse 18. Our God is able to save us, verse 18, but if he doesn't, we're not gonna stop following him.

With my final breath in that fire, I'm gonna be praising God. That's sustaining faith. And beloved, in these crazy days, you and I have got to have that because I've seen a lot of Christians who had a lot of faith in God until they did not get their miracle and they stopped following God.

They didn't have sustaining faith. My daughter, years ago, when she went to college, she was friends with this girl that was part of the, y'all remember this Bring Back Our Girls movement? Remember how Boko Haram, that Islamic group in Nigeria, kidnapped all these girls and took them hostage and made them convert to Islam and all this stuff? My daughter was friends with one of the girls that was kidnapped and she was able to get away.

I think she jumped off the truck and ran into the forest. But these girls, it was horrendous what they went through. There was one girl named Monica, this Nigerian girl who was kidnapped, told by Boko Haram, convert to Islam or we'll kill you, and she refused. And as a result, she was stoned to death. And they interviewed her father, who was a pastor, and they said, how does this feel? Your daughter was a strong Christian. She trusted in God to save her, and yet God didn't. She died.

How does that make you feel? And I like her father's response. He said, well, I was told that my daughter refused to change her religion.

I was told that they dug a hole and buried her up to her neck and stoned her to death. To die for the sake of Christ, that is the happiest thing for me. I'm grateful that she didn't change her religion. She trusted in God to the very end. That's sustaining faith. And when this world comes against you, and you're tempted to compromise, have supernatural faith. Your God's gonna do a miracle.

But don't forget that sustaining faith. But even if he doesn't, he's still my God and I'm gonna follow him. You know, they said, our God is able, but if he doesn't. You need to be able to say, my God is able, HR, to get me another job, but even if he doesn't, I'm still not gonna sign that document. My God is able to get me another boyfriend. But even if he doesn't, I'm still not gonna compromise my morals and my sexuality. My God is able to save my bakery company.

But even if he doesn't, I'm not baking that cake. That's sustaining faith. How do these men stand strong? Number one, faith. Number two, job, this word down, fear. What do I mean by this?

They feared and honored and respected God more than they respected and feared people. I'm gonna go back to what I just said. We all want to sit at the cool table. At some point, you're gonna have to try to impress God more than your Facebook friends. At some point, you're gonna have to live, listen to me, before an audience of one. See, some of y'all's problem is, you got an audience of how many Facebook friends you have, 2,000? You got an audience of 2,000 and you're trying to make all of them happy.

And I'm saying, no, you need to have an audience of one. If you fear God and walk with God and serve God and honor God, let the chips fall where they may. And that's what these boys did. Nebuchadnezzar says, I'm gonna kill you if you don't bow. And look what they say to him in verse 16. I love, they said, Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to respond to you with an answer concerning this matter.

Do you know what they're saying? Nebuchadnezzar, this isn't up for discussion. You say bow down, my God says you shall bow down and worship me only.

We don't even need to discuss this, Nebuchadnezzar. We fear God more than we fear you. In fact, Jesus put it this way. Jesus says in Luke 12, four through five, but I say to you, my friends, do not fear, let me just say this, this is Jesus who's saying that. Again, you know the nice guy that don't wanna ruffle any feathers, he just wants everybody to love each other and get along with each other and he spends all day long with his hair slicked back, he looks like a hippie that just smoked some pot and he's carrying some sheep all day, that Jesus.

Here's what that nice, friendly hippie Jesus said. Jesus said, you don't fear those who can kill your body and then after that, they can't do anything else. If you wanna fear somebody, fear the one who after he kills can send people to hell.

You need to fear him. That Jesus was a tough, strong, God-centered man who said, I wanna serve one person, my heavenly father and if y'all wanna be like me, you serve one person, that's the heavenly father. That's what happened to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They said, Nebuchadnezzar, we don't fear you because we've spent all of our fear on God. How do we stand strong and not compromise? Faith, God's strong. Fear, I serve him and him only. And then number three, fellowship.

Fellowship, fellowship with God. Listen, now you need to understand this. When you're being pressured to compromise, never forget this, never forget this. Remember I just told you, Satan will use isolation? You're the only kid in your class who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. You're the only man in the workplace who's not compromising?

Now let me just kind of back because y'all just staring at me. Y'all understand I'm not saying Jesus is a hippie, right? What I'm saying is this society thinks that Jesus was just this nice hippie that told everybody to get along with each other.

Have you ever actually sat down and read the words of Jesus Christ? John Piper said one time I went through the gospels and beside every tender statement of Jesus, I put T-E for tender. Beside every tough statement of Jesus, I put T-O.

He said when I went back through and read the T-O's far outnumber the T-E's. He wasn't this nice hippie guy that said just get along with each other. He was a strong man who understood that if you're gonna stand strong in these final days like he did, you gotta fear God and nobody else, okay? Now watch this. Fellowship.

When you're tempted to compromise, you will feel like you're the only one not giving in. You will feel like you are isolated and alone. When you're getting heat for following Jesus, the sense of loneliness comes in, that's normal. In fact, do you remember Elijah after he stood for God, he gets depressed.

You ever read this before? And God says Elijah, why are you so depressed? He says I'm the only one who still follows God and God says no, I got thousands of people out there who have not stopped following me, you're not alone. What happens here in verse 24? Nebuchadnezzar is astounded and said, didn't I throw three people in the fire? Yes, king. Well, I see four people and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.

Who do you think that was? That's Jesus. Every now and then in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ makes an appearance. We see him when Abraham is debating with God about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham is saying, God, please don't do it.

And that person that he's debating looks like a man, that's Jesus preincarnate. When Joshua is about to go to battle, the night before, he sees this man, he looks like the armies, the commander of the heavenly host with a big sword and he fell down and he worshiped him, that was Jesus. This fourth man in the fire was Jesus Christ.

I want you to listen to me. That same Jesus is still in your fire today. When you get in grief of following the Lord Jesus, you are not alone. The fourth man is still with you.

When you get that pink slip because you refuse to compromise, it's not just you getting that pink slip. The fourth man in the fire is standing right there with you. When you're told it's cancer and there's nothing we can do about it and you feel lonely, you're not alone because the fourth man in the fire is still there with you. Jesus will fellowship with you.

He will never leave you. He'll never forsake you and I want you to listen to me. There is a revelation of Jesus that you can only get when you go through the fire.

See, here's what we say. We say, look, Paul says in Philippians chapter three, verse 10, Paul says, I wanna know Jesus. How many of y'all say, amen, I wanna know Jesus? And then he says, I wanna know the power of his resurrection.

How many of y'all with him? I want that power. I wanna know Paul on that one. I wanna know Jesus, yes. The power of his resurrection, yes. Then he says this, and the fellowship of his sufferings. And that's where I lose about 90% of you because there's a revelation, an experience of Jesus that you will only have when you go through the fire. How many times have I talked to people in this church that said the worst experience of my life was losing that loved one? When I lost that child, when I lost that spouse, it was horrible. My world came apart, and then I'll hear them say this, and yet Jesus became more real to me then than he's ever been in my life. When I went through that divorce, it tore me up.

Worst experience of my life. And then all of a sudden, I experienced Jesus more than I've ever experienced him before. When they were wheeling me back into that operating room on that gurney, I was so scared, I was shaking like a leaf. And then all of a sudden, when I got into that operating room, I've heard people say this before, suddenly it was like I was in church, I could feel the presence of Jesus in that place.

When you're tempted to compromise, understand you're not alone. That fourth man in the fire is with you. And the world may forsake you, they may befriend you, you may lose everything for following the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happens, I love what the author of Hebrews 13, 13 says, here's what he says. He says, you know, Jesus was kicked out of town, he was ostracized, he wasn't in the in crowd, Jesus was ostracized, Jesus was kicked out. Then he said this, why don't we go outside the walls and hang out with Jesus and be an outcast right along with the Lord Jesus Christ? Beloved, those of you who are going through the fire right now, I'm saying to you, have faith in God.

God may bring a miracle in this situation, but if he doesn't, don't stop believing in God. Some of y'all right now, you're so afraid of what others are, stop it. Just fear God, just honor God, just serve God, and God will take care of the rest.

Fear him. And then fellowship, understand, here's what the man said, you wanna hear what he said? I will never leave you and I'm never gonna forsake you. If you don't like that one, I am with you always even until the end of the age.

Are we the end of the age yet? Not quite yet, so he's still with us. My favorite stories of this, I love this guy. This guy was one of these tough missionaries.

His name was John Patton, P-A-T-O-N. In the early 1800s, he knew Jesus was calling him and his wife to the South Pacific, to the New Hebrides Islands. So he told everybody in Europe, we're going to the South Pacific to serve Jesus.

Everybody thought he'd lost his mind. In that time, cannibals had taken over the South Pacific. People were dying left and right by cannibals in the South Pacific. And so when he said, Jesus has told us to go to the South Pacific to share the gospel, everybody's trying to pressuring him to compromise.

No, don't do that. You can be a missionary in America or you can be a missionary right here where you're at. He said, no, I'm not gonna compromise. Jesus told me to go to the South Pacific.

I like what this one old man in his church said. He said, son, don't go. Patton said, why should I not go? He said, if you go to the South Pacific, you will be eaten by cannibals. John Patton said, well, look, you're an old man and you're gonna die soon and you'll be placed in a grave and you will be eaten by worms.

So I don't care if I'm eaten by cannibals or eaten by worms, I just wanna serve the Lord Jesus Christ. So he didn't compromise. And he got to the New Hebrides Islands. And a short time after he got there, his wife died, destroyed him. And then his little infant son died. He's by himself in a dangerous place and he has to dig two graves and bury his wife and bury his child. And the one evening, man comes running through the forest and says, Mr. Patton, you gotta get out of here.

He said, why? He said, the cannibals are coming to get you. This tribe is gonna come.

They're gonna kill you and eat you and burn everything down. And immediately John Patton climbed up into the big old chestnut tree. And a few moments later, as he's up in that tree, the cannibals came in and they're looking for him. And when they couldn't find him, they just burned his house to a ground. And so he's there in that chestnut tree in a foreign land, seeing his wife's grave there, his child's grave there, and his house with everything in it, burning to the ground. And years later, here's what John Patton wrote about that night. He said, quote, the hours I spent in that tree that night still live before me. I heard the musket shots and the hideous yells of the savages looking for me. Yet never in all my life did the Lord seem more close and real to me than he did at that moment. I was alone, yet not alone.

Then listen to what he says. I would cheerfully spend many more nights alone in such a tree if I could again feel my Savior's presence like I felt his presence that night. Do you know what he's just saying? I didn't compromise, I went through the fire, and Jesus was right there with me. Would you stand with me right now? Some of y'all are being tempted to compromise and to watch this at your workplace, at school, maybe morally, maybe in your finances. This temptation to start backing down and not stand strong for Jesus. I'm just telling you, I've talked to y'all. Some of y'all really been hit by that right now. You don't have to be jerks, you don't go to the office place with both guns blazing, and I ain't going out with your God's gym t-shirt and Bible and bust everybody's with a head.

Don't do that. But what I am saying is be bold, be strong for the Lord thy God is with thee. How many times have you heard me say that in this church? Yeah, I was talking to a young man yesterday who's looking for a new church in another state, and I told him something. I said, churches have personalities just like people have personalities.

Did you know that? And after I told him that, I thought, what kind of personality does cross-assembly have? And the thought hit me, here's our personality. We're a church full of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego's, Joshua's who say, I'm not gonna back down, I'm not gonna compromise. I believe Jesus Christ is coming back soon, and when he comes back, I want him finding me right here, standing strong for him.

That's kind of the ethos that God has given us this church. But right now, I want you to lift your hands. And for those of you going through this fire right now, you're being pressured to compromise, would you pray this prayer, something like this to the Lord? Jesus, make your presence known. Let me sense your presence.

Lord, right now, say something like this. I know you say you'll never leave me and you'll never forsake me, but I'm going through the fire right now, and I need you to reassure me that you're right here with me. Lord, make your presence known to me.

Speak to me in that still, small voice. Let me sense your presence, Lord Jesus. Beloved, here's what I think is gonna happen to us. I think it's the days get more evil. We're gonna be paying more and more costs and prices for standing strong for the Lord Jesus. Some of us may lose our jobs, some of us may lose some friends, some of us may, okay. As the days get harder, the price gets steeper.

Does that make sense? But the day is going to come when we close our eyes in this world and open our eyes in the next world, and we see Jesus face to face. And then we're gonna know it was worth all of it. It was worth all the mess we had to go through. Now here's what I'm trying to say, Jesus is worth everything.

You believe that? Then lift your hands and lift your voices and just sing this to Jesus right now. Let's sing this to the Lord. We sing day and night, night and day, let incense arise. Day and night, night and day, let incense arise. Day and night, night and day, let incense arise. Day and night, night and day, let incense arise.

Day and night. Day and night, night and day, let incense arise. Day and night, night and day, let incense arise.

Day and night, night and day, let incense arise. Day and night, night and day, you're worthy of it all. Yes, you are, Lord. You're worthy of it all.

For from you are all things, and to you are all things. You deserve the glory. You're worthy of it all. You're worthy of it all. You're worthy of it all. For from you are all things, and to you are all things.

You deserve the glory. Man, this is not like a little trite platitude. It's just a weird thought to think, isn't it? That same fourth man in the furnace in Daniel 3, isn't it crazy if you ought to think he's with me, no matter what I go through? Isn't that great? That that same Jesus that was with them is going to be with you this week.

It's got to give you some confidence, boys. That's why I love Joshua. Joshua is about to go out into a crazy world. He's about to face demons, giants, Nephilim, zombies, dragon, hobos, every kind of crazy thing out there. He's going to face them all. And God looks at him and says, Joshua, why are you scared?

No, no, no, Joshua. He's going to be with you everywhere you go. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen and amen. God bless you, Joshua. God bless you.