Reading: Daniel 3:8-25

Alternate Title: Faith Worth Dying For

You may know the story. Here’s my quick summary: A powerful (and ruthless) king sets up a gigantic image of himself and requires all his subjects to bow to it and pray to him. The penalty for disobedience is an expedited trip into a furnace. Three faithful men of God wouldn’t. God went through the fire with them and delivered them.

Here, though, is the part that captured my attention this morning:

“There are certain Jews…these men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (11).

“There are certain Christians . . . .”

“There are certain Mennonites . . . .”

“There are certain [Apostolics, Baptists, Methodists, Nazarenes, YourDenominationHere] . . . .”

Not all of God’s people then stood against the sin and apostasy and lukewarmness and spiritual laziness of their day.

Only certain ones.

Not all of God’s people today stand against the sin and apostasy and lukewarmeness and spiritual laziness of our day.

Only certain ones.

The expression “certain Jews” reminds me of a similar expression in yesterday’s Sunday School lesson (taken from Daniel 1:8-21) — “the children which are of your sort”.

I want to be one of those Certain Ones.

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of your sort the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).

I want to be a true and accurate example and sample of my sort (ie, those Certain Ones, those followers of Jesus, those Christians).

(This is my introduction to the Sunday School lesson for April 13, 2008. Tomorrow I plan to post my regular piece on the lesson over here: Sunday School Thoughts.)

from Daniel 3:25

A little bit more from Daniel 3: Our God Is and Will