Convictions Over Compromise
Posted: June 4, 2023 Filed under: Babylon, Convictions, Culture, God, Government, Jesus, Persecution, Sermons, Service Leave a comment“You gotta serve somebody!” Bob Dylan made this song famous in 1979, but its words are still relevant today:
“You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Might be a rock ‘n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be livin’ in another country under another name
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a preacher preaching spiritual pride
Maybe a city councilman takin’ bribes on the side
May be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, maybe somebody’s heir
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)”[1]
Who are you going to serve? When I talk about serving, don’t think of just serving somebody food at a restaurant or even serving in a ministry at church. Those are great, but serving goes beyond paid and volunteer work or community hours. Service means worshipping and obeying what is most important to you 24/7. The reality is that you and I are either serving God or somebody or something else – the devil or the Lord as Bob Dylan puts it. Theologian Paul Tillich called this “The Ultimate Concern – the thing or person one is most concerned about, thinks most about, and affects one’s life the most.”[2] What is the thing or person you are most concerned about, think about the most and affects you the most? Write it down! That is who or what you are serving![1] Today, we turn to one of the more famous stories in the Bible to do a service check on our lives. It is a story about having to make a choice about who one is going to serve. It comes down to convictions about who God is rather than compromising your beliefs. Let’s read about it from Daniel 3. Please turn in or on your Bibles to Daniel 3! If you do not have a Bible, we would love to give you one. In chapter 1 of Daniel, we saw how despite what we see around us, God is in control through His discipline, favour and wisdom. In chapter 2 of Daniel, we continue to see God’s sovereignty as He gives us dreams which should cause us to pray, love our enemies and declare who He is to others. Now, we are in chapter 3. Read Daniel 3!
Serve God! That is the simple message for today. Choose this day whom you will serve! Serve God! He is the only Master that will treat you right. He won’t abuse you. He is generous and gracious. He will teach you and help you. He is patient and long-suffering with you. Serve God when everyone isn’t! (v. 1-7) In these first seven verses, we see a huge gathering. It was both religious and nationalistic in nature. The closest we come to in our country is Canada Day festivities – patriotism and praise. In Daniel 3, all of the wise men and government officials of Babylon joined a worship service to King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue. The statue was 60 cubits, which is 90 feet or 30 metres high or triple the height of our auditorium. It was 6 cubits in breadth, which is only 9 feet or 3 metres. It was very skinny. This three-story statue wasn’t massive and would have been more like an obelisk structure due to its architecture, but remember it was gold. “The fact that all peoples were to bow to his statue, Nebuchadnezzar intended to unite his kingdom under one religion,”[3] but probably not at the exclusion of all other religions. “This was not very difficult because the Babylonians were polytheists”[4] and like Hindus, who often don’t mind adding another god to worship if it adds values to one’s life. It was just adding onto one’s spirituality like the Bahai Faith today that tries to take something from each religion. You see it on bumper stickers where all the religious symbols are included. Syncretism is alive and well today. But as believers serving God, when everyone isn’t, means you will avoid the failures of the past. Avoiding the failures of the past is often determined by evaluating where we are presently. We could call this remembering the Why? Keep your head in every situation. Stop and reflect in the middle of a crisis, why are you in this predicament in the first place? Why was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Babylon in the first place? Because their forefathers committed idolatry! The exact same sin that they were being tested to commit. The Catholic Edition of Daniel 3 includes the Prayer of Azariah. It may not be at the level of inspiration, but it is instructional. Azariah communicates he was thinking of the why. Why his present circumstances were determined by past failures. Here is his confession to God, “For we have sinned and broken Your law in turning away from you; in all matters we have sinned grievously. We have not obeyed Your commandments, we have not kept them or done what You have commanded us for our own good. So all that You brought upon us, and all that You have done to us, You have done by a true judgment. You have handed us over to our enemies, lawless and hateful rebels, and to an unjust king, the most wicked in all the world.” (Daniel 3:24-91 NRSV Catholic Edition) Remember the why? Why are you here? Why is this happening? By the end of verse 7, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego had already been living differently than everyone else. They didn’t stage anything. Their actions came out of their convictions. We know this because they lived differently in chapter 1 and then it is reported in 3:12, “These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” From the sound of the horn, they didn’t bow to the idol because before the idol was built, they had built their convictions on the solid rock of the Word of God. So avoiding the sins of the past occurs by making intentional choices. It happens before you are identified as different. If holiness is being different from the world and being devoted to God, that happens first in your heart and mind before it happens in your behaviour. In Daniel three friends, they were already acting with conviction rather than compromise because the only way out of God’s discipline is to live obediently and differently. What failures from the past are you avoiding? I surveyed some of you and this is what you came up with failures from the past: not focusing on the man-made rules, being more transparent and less protective of organizations, having less a sense of entitlement, not leaving creation care to the upcoming generations, reading the Bible as a family and having family meals together, spending more time with your family than being absentee parents, avoiding vices like drugs, alcohol, porn or sex outside of marriage, and avoiding screen time as much those in the past. Serve God when everyone isn’t by intentionally avoiding the failures of the past.
But don’t just serve God when everyone isn’t. Serve God when the culture has turned against Him. (v. 8-15) Let’s go back to verse 1 first, “King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold.” The last time we read about King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man on earth was when he was bowing the knee before Daniel and more importantly God (2:46-47). What happened? “The Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint gives us a clue. It places this event in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year as a celebration of the fall of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 52:29).”[5] Recall Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the third year of his reign. It had been 15 years since God did the miraculous in Nebuchadnezzar’s life. There had been a change in culture. “These informers in 3:8 are identified as ‘certain Chaldeans’ and probably were professional colleagues who hated to see gifted foreigners rise so quickly and so high in the Babylonian government.”[6]And so the enemies that Daniel and his friends prayed for and spared, turn against the three friends. There had been a change in the culture. Maybe you have lost friends as the culture has changed? Worse, maybe God did something life-changing and undeniable many years ago in your life, but you have forgotten about Him? Maybe the culture has shifted to forgetting or even fighting God? Nebuchadnezzar reverted back to his pagan ways. All the while, he should have remembered and been thankful to God because as the head of gold in his dream of chapter 2, he was still in power. It was a miracle because kings were under constant threat from enemies within and without. You and I are here today too because God has sustained us. But don’t get comfortable. “Whenever a culture treats the government like a god, we are on a collision course of religious convictions where hard decisions will need to be made.”[7] “A society may erect very impressive ideas and overlay them with gold.”[8] There is the promise of power and wealth. Remember, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were not priests. “They were not pastors, but government officials (politicians).”[9] The culture had changed and was opposed to God and yet, these three men now most likely in their prime as thirty-somethings didn’t choose to remain atop Babylon’s corporate ladder. God already had given them power and they weren’t about to try to hold onto it to compromise their convictions. That’s counter-cultural. When the culture changes, it is good to remember what my brother-in-law Craig Trierweiler teaches in his book Bold in Babylon, “God + Me = The majority!”[10] We are now in a post-Christian, some say post-truth culture. Is God not still on the throne? Yes! Serve God when the culture has changed against Him because God + Me = The Majority!
Serve God when everyone isn’t, when the culture has changed against Him, but also Serve God when the heat gets turned up. (v. 15, 19-23) The fiery furnace or furnace is used 9 times in this chapter (v. 6, 11, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26) and fire used six times (v. 22, 24, 25, 26, & 27 twice). Wendy Widder sums it up well, “It’s a toss up in the story, which is hotter – the king or the furnace.”[11] Nebuchadnezzar cannot tolerate obstinance, especially from his key leaders. He is infuriated as stated in both verse 13 and 19 and wants to make an example out of these provincial leaders (2:49). So he orders the furnace to be turned up. “Through an opening at the bottom, the furnace could be heated and the men within could be seen, but the men were cast into the furnace from the opening at the top.”[12] But who died in the story? Those loyal to a wicked king and his idol. “Loyalty to a godless and foolish king brings death, not the life one would expect.”[13] My friends, you have a choice who you are going to serve and be loyal to – God or the world. Loyalty to God brings eternal life, whereas loyalty to the world brings eternal death. “The only fire to fear was the consuming fire of God.”[14]Serve God when the heat gets turned up and you are going to have to pay the price for obedience to Him. You can be guilty of breaking an earthly law, but be good by keeping a heavenly one – You shall have no other gods before Me, God commands! Here is a formula that Craig Trierweiler suggests that I think is very helpful:
“A. We are people who obey God.
B. We are people who obey governing authority.
C. When A and B disagree, we are people who obey God first, come
what may.”
Obey God first, come what may. This leads us to our last way we find how we can serve God from this passage.
We not only serve God when everyone isn’t, when the culture has changed, when the heat gets turned up and Serve God when there is no promise of earthly rescue. (v.16-18) Look at Shadrach’s, Meshach’s and Abednego’s response to King Nebuchadnezzar in verses 16-18, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” The three righteous friends had their convictions and would not compromise, even if it cost them their lives. They had faith and contentment in God’s sovereignty. John Calvin taught, “God saved in the fire, not from the fire.” Some of you may be saved from the fire, and some of you saved in the fire and some of you saved only from eternal fire. However, I believe that all of us believers are going to go through some type of fire. I would rather be wrong as a pastor trying to prepare the flock for persecution than you not be prepared for the wolves. Some of you may die for Christ. Some of you may live for Christ. Serve God when there is no promise of earthly rescue.
And no matter what, there is hope. Look at verse 21. “Ordinarily, before criminals of any sort were bound, at least their mantles and their finery would be stripped off. In this instance, due to the urgency of the king’s orders, the victorious were taken just as they were.”[15] And they were bound. But notice verse 24. They were walking around because their bonds were burned. “God had permitted the fire to bring benefit to His servants and to testify to a forgetful king and nation.”[16] Even better than the bonds being gone, there is a fourth man in the furnace. “The fourth man in the fire was either a Christophany or an angel.”[17] This was God the Son come in the flesh before He came as Jesus. Craig Trierweiler reminds us, “Never forget that the Lord is with us in the fire.” It reminds us that even if we are in prison, Christ has broken our bonds and is with us. You gotta serve somebody! Even King Nebuchadnezzar learned this truth. At the end in verses 28-29, he was blessing God and “The king was forbidding anyone in all his realm to say anything ‘erroneous’ concerning the Judean God.”[18] I love the end of verse 29, “For there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.” You gotta serve somebody! Who will it be – Big God or another small g-o-d? I am going to give you a moment to pray to God and let Him show you who you are serving. If it is anybody or anything other than Him and you want to serve only God, I am going to ask you to stand up like Daniel’s three friends did. It is good practice for when the firing squad comes. As we sing this song, I know that there are a lot of you who have never gone public with your conviction of who God is. Today is that day regardless if nobody else won’t, the culture has changed, the heat gets turned up or there is no promise of earthly rescue.
[1] Bob Dylan, “You Gotta Serve Somebody,” Slow Train Coming album (Special Rider Music, Universal Tunes, 1979).
[2] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951-1963),
[3] Joyce Baldwin, Daniel – An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries) (Madison: IVP, 1978), 99.
[4] Tremper Longman, Daniel (The NIV Application Commentary) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, Kindle Edition, 1999), 96.
[5] Leon Wood, A Commentary on Daniel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1973), 78.
[6] Longman, 96.
[7] Craig Trierweiler, Bold in Babylon: Living with Conviction in a Culture of Compromise (Kindle Locations 799-800). Kindle Edition.
[8] Trierweiler, Kindle Location 729.
[9] Craig Trierweiler, Bold in Babylon: Living with Conviction in a Culture of Compromise (Kindle Location 827). Kindle Edition.
[10] Trierweiler.
[11] Wendy L. Widder, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 73.
[12] Edward J. Young, The Prophecy of Daniel (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), 93.
[13] Longman, 102.
[14] Widder, 74.
[15] H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Daniel (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1949), 155.
[16] Wood, 93.
[17] Iaian Duguid, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 1592.
[18] Wood, 97.
Great explanation of what it means to serve.
Commissional 