Thank you. It's no surprise that most of us would prefer that God would prevent us from suffering altogether,

or at least quickly remove us from danger.

Today on Truth for Life, we'll see evidence that God doesn't always

deliver his people from trials. Sometimes he delivers us through them. Alistair Begg is teaching

from Daniel chapter 3. Well, this morning we ended at the end of Chapter 2 with the four Israelite men being promoted

as a result of all that had taken place as Daniel had been privileged under God

to give to Nebuchadnezzar both his dream

and the interpretation of the dream.

And it appeared at the end of chapter two

that Nebuchadnezzar had really made a big change.

We left him falling on his face,

paying homage to Daniel and ensuring that

they are promoted and are in an even more privileged position than they were at the end of chapter 1.

Then we come to chapter 3, and we immediately read that King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold,

and it is described here. He also, we're told,

set it up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. In other words, he set it up on the

plane in Shiner, as we noticed in Chapter 1, which is where the Tower of Babel had been constructed

all those years before, where man had to his own self-aggrandizement said,

we will be able to raise a testimony to ourselves, to our power and our control.

And God had come and scattered them, and the story had continued from there.

Well, here you are all these years later, and our man

Nebuchadnezzar has decided that he's going to go ahead and do this. Perhaps there was,

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