Daniel 3:19-30 Saved from the Furnace

Its fundamental to 1. God’s holiness, righteousness and justice, 2. The evil of sin, 3. The need for Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection to forgive that sin, and 4. The mission of the church.

Well God is love, we should just focus on that. We don’t need to talk about Hell, wrath, and judgment.

And so many Churches don’t.

But that actually causes two problems when we are afraid to talk about God’s wrath.

First, it minimizes God’s holiness and glory which has a direct impact on living a godly life and our witness.

But ironically, ignoring God’s wrath to only focus on God’s love leaves us understanding neither and keeps us from truly seeing the glory of Jesus Christ and worshiping Him.

God saved us from the furnace of His wrath by sending Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

It is the wrath of God that reveals to us the height, and depth, length, and breadth of the love God has for us in Christ.

Without having a biblical theology of Hell the gospel becomes cheap, and we will be blind to the love of God which will keep us from giving Him the glory due to His Name.

What does Hell and the wrath of God show us about God’s amazing, gracious, steadfast love for us in Jesus.

Let’s start in Daniel 3:19 with point number 1 ,the wrath of God burns against our sin.

I. The Wrath of God Burns Against Sin

Daniel 3:19-20 Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

Remember where we are.

In chapter 2, God gave Nebuchadnezzar a dream that showed him the fall of his kingdom.

In the dream there was a statue made of four different metals that represented the kingdoms of men.

In his dream, Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, and God showed Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom would be conquered by another kingdom - the Medo Persians.

And that kingdom would be conquered by one after that - the Greeks and Alexander the Great.

And then that one would be conquered by yet another kingdom, Rome, until God Himself conquers them all.

In the dream there was a stone not cut with human hands that struck the statue, and it crumbled the dust. The kingdoms of men were blown away by the wind never to be seen again.

That stone was Christ, King of the Kingdom of God. And His Kingdom, that stone, grew and grew and grew, until it was a great mountain, a symbol in the Bible for mighty kingdoms, and that mountain grew until it filled the whole earth.

The dream was a prophecy that in the Last Days, the days between Christ’s first coming in humility and His glorious second coming in victory, the Kingdom of God would conquer the kingdoms of this world.

That Jesus would have dominion from sea to sea to the ends of the earth until all His enemies were made footstool under His feet and the nations worshiped Him.

According to Hebrews 10:12, that is what Christ himself expects to happen in history as He reigns at the right hand of the Father.

Well this dream did not go over too well with Nebuchadnezzar, so he made an image of gold.

A rival statue to the one he saw in his dream that was entirely devoted to his glory and the glory of his kingdom.

And he commanded all peoples, nations, and languages, everyone in his kingdom, to worship it.

The idea was if God thinks that he can set up and remove kings, then Nebuchadnezzar could also set up and remove gods.

And if anyone did not worship the god Nebuchadnezzar had set up, they would be thrown alive into a burning fiery furnace.

Well Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), three Jewish men who were taken into captivity when Nebuchadnezzar laid seige to Jersualem, refused to bow down.

For them the glory of God was more valuable than their very lives even in the face of one of the most horrible deaths any of us could ever imagine.

Nebuchadnezzar brought them before him and asked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Is it true that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? (Daniel 3:14).

If you will fall down and worship, everything will be good. We will have no problems.

But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.

And then Nebuchadnezzar even issued this challenge: And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands? (Daniel 3:15).

Who can save you from my wrath?

Daniel 3:16-18 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “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.”

In faith, these three men said, “We don’t even need to think about it.”

We are not going to bow down and worship your god. We are going to worship God alone.

And you need to see this because this is important for us today.

Their faith was not rooted in God miraculously saving them from the fire.

When Nebuchadnezzar asked “Who is the god who can deliver you from my hand?” They said “Our God. Our God can deliver us from your hand.”

But even if He doesn’t we're not going to bow down.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would have rather died than rob God of any of His glory.

That’s what drove them to the flames.

And that faith should be an example for us.

God should be so holy and glorious and worthy in our own hearts that we would joyfully follow Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the flames if it were God’s will, instead of for even one moment, bow down to an idol and give our glory to another.

Well, this answer enraged Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel says He was filled with fury.

And so he ordered that the furnace be heated sevenfold.

Seven is a symbolic number for completeness. Wholeness. Fullness.

So heating the furnace 7 times hotter than normal symbolized the fullness of Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

How dare they defy him, and refuse to worship the God he set up.

So Nebuchadnezzar ordered three of the mightiest men in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the fiery furnace.

Verse 21...

Daniel 3:21-23 Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.

The heat of the furnace was so intense, so brutal, that it instantly killed the three mighty men of Nebuchadnezzar’s army.

No one could survive the flames.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound hand and foot with no chance to escape and they fell into those flames.

They were going to die under the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace.

And this is where we get to what I want you to see today.

This story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego really does work on two levels.

On the one hand, its a story about staying faithful to God. Refusing to bow down to the idols of the world no matter the cost.

Death over idolatry. That’s what we looked at last week.

But this story also works on a spiritual level.

The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is a Frankenstein’s monster of a gospel. Its almost a mirror image.

A wicked, pagan king burns with wrath. The righteous are thrown into a fiery furnace.

But ultimately this story shows us the wrath God has against our sin and His amazing grace to deliver us from that wrath through faith in Jesus Christ.

The gospel is good news. But to get to the good news, you need to know the bad news.

Nebuchadnezzar burned with wrath against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego for not worshiping the god he set up. He threw them into a fiery furnace heated sevenfold.

Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace, shows us the bad news.

Its a picture of Hell - the burning fiery furnace of God’s wrath heated sevenfold against all sinners for not worshiping Him alone.

So let’s talk about Hell.

After all, the more we understand the bad news of the gospel, the more we will understand God’s glorious, amazing grace in the good news of Jesus Christ.

Hell

Hell is the final destination for every person that does not trust in Christ, and dies in their sin.

The word Jesus used for Hell was Gehenna.

Gehenna was a valley southwest of Jerusalem and it was where in Israel’s history idolators had sacrificed their children to Moloch by burning them alive.

And because of that history, that valley was desolate. Israel turned it into the place where they would burned all their trash and waste.

This was why Jesus pointed to it and said that’s Hell.

Its fires burned constantly and the smell of the flames was terrible and grotesque.

In Jesus day, Gehenna was a cursed place good for nothing but to burn the waste and refuse of the world. And that’s what Hell is.

Its a place of eternal conscious torment, torture, and pain.

The Bible calls it the second death where God punishes the wicked for all eternity in His burning fiery wrath.

And let me be explicitly clear. Hell is worse than anything you could ever imagine.

Throughout the Bible, God uses several images and pictures to show us and help us understand what our sin deserves.

Daniel 3 is one of those pictures.

Jesus himself had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in mind when he told the Parable of the Weeds and the Parable of the Net in Matthew 13.

Jesus said Matthew 13:41-42 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown alive into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, sinners are thrown into the fiery furnace of Hell to burn alive forever.

Its the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The weeping is that regret. Wishing it could just be different but knowing it never will be.

The weeping is also tied to a guilty conscience. When your conscience convicts you, there’s that aching, that groaning inside.

Well in Hell sinners suffer for eternity with the guild of a perfect conscience. One that never grows quiet or forgets all the ways we sinned against God.

In this life, the wicked suppress the truth to excuse all their evil deeds. In Hell, you can never suppress it. Its always there.

That’s why there’s gnashing of teeth.

That intense pain that makes you grind your teeth just to try to bear it. To get through it.

But that pain never relents. It never goes away. It never gets better.

In another parable, Jesus describes Hell another way. Matthew 22:13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

We know we are talking about hell because we have the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But now Jesus says its like being bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.

Remember how we said Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound and that showed us how there was no chance of escape.

That’s Hell. No chance of deliverance or salvation. Its an eternity of outer darkness.

What’s that?

Its the kind of darkness that is completely and utterly devoid of light. Pitch black.

And here’s the idea. Remember how when you were a kid you were afraid of the dark?

That dread, that terror, that fear that overwhelmed you. Stopped you in your tracks. Paralyzed you.

That is the kind of dread sinners will have in Hell forever and ever.

Here’s another one. Matthew 18:6 But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

We know Jesus is talking about Hell here because right after this is when he says if your hand causes you to sin cut it off because it is better to enter life crippled than to be thrown into the eternal fire with both your hands.

And look at the picture Jesus gives. Imagine someone capturing you. Taking you out to the middle of the ocean, tying a large stone around your neck, and throwing you into the water.

As that stone pulls you down you start to feel the water begin to crush you and squeeze the breath out of your lungs knowing the next time you try to breathe it will kill you.

For some of you that’s your worst nightmare.

And Jesus says that is better than what you would experience in Hell because eventually you would drown and it would be over, but in Hell its never over.

And maybe the clearest picture of Hell comes from Revelation 14:10-11 [The sinner] also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.

Again, Hell is a furnace of God’s wrath.

And it smells of sulfur. The smell of rotting eggs or refuse.

And ultimately Hell is the drinking the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger where there is no rest, day or night.

No escape. No relief. Only wrath of a Holy and righteous God forever and ever and ever.

From these pictures, I hope you can see just how horrible Hell truly is.

When you take all these pictures together, the Bible describes it is a wholistic, eternal, conscious torment for our sin.

It is physical, emotional, and spiritual pain and torture poured out in perfect justice.

Absolute anguish and a complete loss of hope.

Its obvious why this is one of the most unpopular doctrines we believe.

We recoil at the idea of God punishing sin because every single person knows we are guilty and that is exactly what we deserve.

That’s why liberal Christians and the world will do everything they can to explain it away.

Universalism

They’ll teach Universalism.

Everyone goes to heaven. There are many paths to God.

God never judges because God is love.

The only problem with that is John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Annihilationism

Ok well, maybe God punishes sinners but not forever.

Maybe He just punishes them for their sins and then destroys them. This is called Annihilationism.

However, God is infinitely Holy. And because we sinned against a Holy, Eternal God, our sin deserves an eternal punishment.

Not to mention Jesus says on the day of judgment the wicked will go to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (Matthew 25:46).

So the eternal punishment of the wicked has to last at least as long as the eternal life of the righteous.

If Heaven is eternal, then Hell must also be eternal.

God is Love

So finally, it all comes down to this. I don’t believe a loving God would ever send somebody to Hell.

But here’s what that’s really saying. God isn’t actually, Holy, Just, and Righteous. He’s only love and feel goods.

And my sin really isn’t that big of a deal and if god would send me to Hell for it, He’s not fair.

But here’s whats so ironic. God’s wrath and Hell don’t diminish God’s love. It actually magnifies it.

It allows us to see God’s love, grace, and mercy in all of His glory.

Hell was not created for people. For God’s image bearers.

Most Christians don’t know this, but Jesus said in Matthew 25:41, Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels.

Hell was made for sinners. And the devil and the demons that followed him in rebellion against God were the first sinners.

And when Satan tempted Adam and Eve, we rejected God and threw our lot in with him.

Through the Fall, we became sinners too. Destined to suffer God’s eternal wrath, and like Nebuchadnezzar said, we had no one to deliver us from God’s hand.

Romans 3 says None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.... There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:10-12, 18).

But what did God do?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

God could have left us to die in our sin and suffer His wrath for all eternity, and he would have been perfectly good and just and righteous to do so.

But when no one could deliver us from God’s hand, God made a way.

The wrath of God burned against our sin. That’s the bad news.

But the good news is that when we were lost and dead in our sins, utterly hopeless with no chance of escape, God loved us and sent His own Son Jesus Christ to satisfy the wrath God had against us.

That’s point number 2...

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II. The Wrath of God is Satisfied in Christ

Daniel 3:24-25 “Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”

After Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell into the flames Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t believe his eyes.

I mean, he had just seen three of his mightiest soldiers die instantly from the flames, but here they were walking in the midst of the fire, but not hurt at all.

And what made Nebuchadnezzar even more confused was that there was a fourth man walking with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Nebuchadnezzar said his appearance was like a son of the gods.

Well, who is this?

Now this could be just an angel. A spiritual being sent by God to save and comfort Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

In the OT, angels are called the “sons of God.”

Nebuchadnezzar even says in verse 28 this is God’s angel.

But I don’t think this is just an angel. I think this is actually Christ, the eternal Son of God, before His incarnation.

We know Christ shows up in the Old Testament.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:4 that the Rock in the wilderness that gave the Israelites water, was Christ.

And when you read about The Angel of the Lord, theologians often assume that the Angel is Christ.

And this makes sense when you think about it.

An Angel is a messenger. Someone who carries God’s Word and serves His will.

Well, Jesus is the Word. John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And Jesus came to serve the Father’s will (John 6:38).

And I think the thing that pushes it over the edge for me to say that this person is a preincarnate Christ, is that this event, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walking through the flames without being burned is an explicit fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaiah 43:1-3.

Isaiah 43:1-3 Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

God promises I will be with you. I am the Lord your God. I am your Savior.

And is not Jesus called Immanuel which means God with us (Matthew 1:23).

If this is a picture of how God saves us from Hell, it would make perfect sense that Christ would be there.

But either way you take it, whether this fourth person is Christ Himself or just one of God’s angels, it ultimately doesn’t matter for understanding the passage.

Whoever this person is, they are there to show us God’s grace in Christ to save us from our sin and Hell.

Propitiation

Remember why Nebuchadnezzar had wrath in the first place. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship his god.

And when you get down to it, that is exactly why God has wrath against us.

Our sin is a refusal to worship God. To bow down to Him and Him alone and give Him all the glory due to His name.

Romans 3:23-25 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All of us. No exception. Every single person has sinned against God, and even one sin damns us to suffer God’s wrath in Hell for all eternity.

And in our sin, we have fallen short of the glory of God. What does that mean?

Well the glory of God is His weight, Majesty, Magnificence.

And God made us in His image that in everything we would glorify Him.

That all of our works, all of our words, and all of our thoughts, would be for Him and conform to His will.

That with every step we take, every breath we breath, and everything we are, we would love Him and do what he commands.

And falling short of that means we missed the mark.

So we could talk about all kinds of individual sins, but it really all boils down to this.

If you have not lived every single aspect of your life, every single second, in perfect obedience to God to the glory of His Name, you are guilty of refusing to worship Him and the sentence for everyone that does not worship God is a burning fiery furnace heated seven fold.

Well what hope do we have? Who can deliver us out of His hand? The same one that delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from Nebuchadnezzar’s, Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:23-25 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

This is the good news.

Even though every single one of us deserved to suffer the terror of God’s wrath, in love, he sent Jesus Christ to satisfy the wrath God had against us on our behalf.

In Christ we are justified.

That’s a loaded word, so here’s what it means.

To be justified is to be declared righteous. Not guilty. Perfectly obeying the Law of God without breaking even one of His commands.

Well who can be righteous before God? Who can say they lived all of their life in perfect harmony with ever Jot and Tittle of God’s perfect Law?

No one! All have sinned and fall short. None is righteous. No not one.

We are all guilty. So how does a holy and righteous God, perfect in justice, justify us?

How does He declare the guilty righteous and deliver them from His wrath?

By His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Later in Romans 6:23 Paul says For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This verse is so familiar to us that its easy to miss the glory of it.

The wages of sin, what we deserve, is death, God’s wrath, and Hell.

But the free gift, something God gives us out of His own good pleasure and will, something we don’t have to earn and never could even if we tried, is eternal life in Christ.

God gives us the gift because Jesus paid our wages.

He was put forward as a propitiation by his blood.

He was offered as a sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God. That’s what a propitiation is.

A substitutionary sacrifice that satisfies God’s wrath.

How? By His blood. The wages of sin is death. And Leviticus tells us that the life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11).

Jesus Christ, God Himself, the eternal Son of God, became a man and lived a perfect sinless life.

He had no sin of His own to die for.

And He offered Himself on the cross, a pure spotless lamb, The Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

And on the cross, God laid our sin on Christ.

Isaiah 53:5-6, 11 He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

On the cross, Jesus died in our place for our sins.

God poured out the wrath He had against us on the Holy Son of God so that by his blood, by His sacrificial death, all the wages of our sin would be paid for and we would be forgiven.

And don’t skip over that as we talk about Hell.

Matthew says for the three hours Jesus hung on the cross, from noon, to 3pm, there was darkness all over the land.

And at the end Jesus cried out with a loud voice, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:45-46).

All the terror of Hell, all the outer darkness, all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all consuming fire, all God’s wrath for your was poured out on Christ, and not just your sin, but every sin of every person that has ever or will ever put their faith in Him.

That’s why Jesus said It is finished (John 19:30).

Through faith, all the wrath we deserved was poured out on Him.

And now, because of Christ, all of God’s love, favor and grace is poured out on us because through faith God puts us in Christ.

What that means is that in the same way God put your sin on Jesus, He takes Jesus’ righteousness, perfect obedience, and credits it to you.

In Christ, God loves you with the same love the Father has for the Son, and that’s why God adopts you into His family, the church, as a holy son or daughter.

Someone is going to pay for your sin. Either you will pay for your sin for all eternity in Hell.

Or through faith Jesus Christ will pay for your sin on the cross, and just as He rose again victorious over sin and death, He will give you life eternal and the second death will have no power over you.

Well, what does that look like?

Daniel 3:26-27 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them.”

The salvation of God in Jesus Christ is so total, so absolute, so powerful to save that the fire of His wrath will never touch you.

Not a hair will be singed, and not even the smell of fire will come upon you.

Or as God says elsewhere, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

No guilt. No wrath. No fiery furnace.

The wrath of God is satisfied once for all time in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that leads us to point number 3...

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III. The Grace of God Saves Us from the Furnace of Hell

Daniel 3:28-30 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.

Now before you get all excited, this is not Nebuchadnezzar’s salvation.

This is not him putting his faith in God.

If anything, this is Nebuchadnezzar trying to save face after God embarrassed him.

What this tells us is that making a profession of faith doesn’t save you.

Especially in the Bible Belt, so many people just assume because they said the prayer, walked the aisle, or got baptized way back when, they are saved.

But when God gives genuine faith, the fruit of that faith is a completely transformed life.

One that loves Christ, hates sin, and worships God alone.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were delivered because they trusted in God.

And their faith drove them to yield up their bodies to be burned rather than serve or worship any god except their own.

If your faith is a confession only, one that doesn’t produce the fruit of a life lived for Christ and the glory of God, I don’t want you to be deceived.

Jesus said on the last day there will be people that cry out to Him Lord, Lord! But Jesus will say, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

So how do you have true faith and not just a mere Confession?

Gospel Call

The first words out of Jesus mouth when he began his ministry were this. Mark 1:15 The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.

True faith repents and believes.

True faith turns away from sin and idolatry to worship God alone.

And true faith trusts in Christ alone for salvation. Trusts in His sinless life. His work on the cross. His death and resurrection.

The only way to be delivered from the wrath that is to come is faith in Christ.

Repent of your sin and trust in Him.

Confess that Jesus is Lord of your life. And believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead to save you from your sin.

And God promises that you will be saved.

Do not face that Day unprepared.

Jesus said nothing is hidden that will not be made known. None of your sin will stay hidden in the dark when the light of God’s righteousness shines on your life.

And if you reject Christ you will stand before God naked and ashamed with nothing to hide you or save you from His wrath.

But if you come to Christ, if you repent and believe, God will cloth you in the righteousness of Christ. Instead of naked and ashamed, you will stand before Him dazzling white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Isaiah 61:10).

Has Hebrews says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts (Hebrews 4:7). Come to Christ and be saved.

Nebuchadnezzar, might not have believed it, but he preached the true gospel when he said verse 29...

Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.” Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

We must worship God through Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

If not, you will be torn limb from limb, and your house laid in ruins for all eternity, for there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way except Jesus Christ.

Love of God

And that promise, should quicken every Christian’s heart.

That is why I said a true theology of Hell and the wrath of God, magnifies the Love of God.

You mean God saved me from that? You mean God didn’t destroy me when I deserved it but loved me and sent His own Son to die, for me a sinner?

When we truly see, endured the wrath of God on our behalf, and we understand from God’s Word what that wrath meant, that’s when we see the love of God.

1 John 4:9-10 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This is why the gospel is good news. When we deserved wrath God gave us grace. And the reason God gave us grace is because He loved us.

We didn’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it, but that’s who God is.

Exodus 34:6-7 The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Jesus paid for all of our sin. There is therefore now no condemnation.

Jesus bore the wrath we deserved so that not even a hair on our head will be singed, but, through Christ, we will hear Well done good and faithful servant on the day of judgment.

Conclusion

God saved us from the furnace of His wrath by sending Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice of propitiation to satisfy the wrath of God on our behalf and save us by grace alone.

Let’s Pray

Scripture Reading

Ephesians 1:3-8 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight”

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