[Darris McNeely] I've been teaching Daniel 3 in one of my classes here at Ambassador Bible College. You know, there are some stories from the Bible that make great lessons, Bible school stories for children, especially Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace happens to be one of those. But, you know, it's more than just a good Bible story that we might tell our kids, it's really an adult story. It really is more of an adult story, it applies to us because these three young men who were thrown into the fiery furnace because they would not bow down to the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built in some type of a loyalty oath that he wanted all of his officials to bow down for, they wouldn't do that. They wouldn't succumb to idolatry under any circumstance and you know the story. They were bound, hand and foot and thrown in but what they said just before being thrown in is really the key to the entire story.

So in Daniel 3:18 where they gave testimony to God about God and His power and His faith, that He was able to deliver them from the hand of the king and even from the fiery furnace. But in verse 18, they said, "But if not, let it be known to you O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up." But if not, in other words, they knew God could save them but they also knew that God might choose not to for His purposes alone that they might not know and understand and their lives would be snuffed out as soon as they were thrown into that furnace. But they were not going to give in. They were not going to compromise their faith, they were not going to bow down to an idol.

Now, there's a lot of lessons from this, let's just draw one here very quickly. We don't have golden idols today that we are commanded to bow down before, or do we? We have different types of idols though. We have the idols of celebrity, we have the idols of self, we have the idols of status, power, and money. We still have a lot of different idols that influence us today that can cause us to disobey God, to abandon faith, to just completely throw God out of the picture and out of our life if we bow down to them. And we have to come to a point in our life where we are not wanting to do that, where we recognize that the path that God has placed us on of faith, of confidence, of hope, and of truth, is the path we're going to stay on for the remainder of their lives.

That's a very important thing to think about, and that we will not bow down to any of those idols.

There's several other lessons that we can explore in this but ask yourself what it is? What would it be? What is your idol in your life that you put before God among the modern idols that we have? Yourself, your money, your status, somebody else? Something to think about.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.