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Good Tuesday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
Have you ever had an experience which required an extended time for you to think through and adjust your life to? I think there’s a time gap of perhaps as much as 10 years between Daniel 3 & 4, primarily for all those involved to really soak in and understand what we witnessed yesterday, do you remember? About 2600 years ago in Babylon the great king Nebuchadnezzar had built a gold plated, 90 ft tall statue of himself and demanded that the leaders from all across the Babylonian empire gather to bow in worship before his statue. That remarkable story is found in Daniel 3 in the Bible.
As you recall 3 Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were among the gathered leaders, stood while everyone else bowed. (Daniel 3:12) When called to give account to king Nebuchadnezzar they made it very clear it was not a matter of insubordination, it was a matter of conscience, integrity and spiritual allegiance to their God, the God of Israel.
When threatened with death they responded: “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if He does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up.”(Daniel 3:17,18) So I have an important question for us my friends: where does that type of courage and spiritual integrity come from?
The truth is Jerusalem had been invaded not once but three times by king Nebuchadnezzar and finally destroyed in 586bc because the God of Israel had REMOVED His hand of protection from His city and His temple and His people! Jerusalem was in ruins and the Temple burned to the ground, and almost all living Jews at that time were in captivity, because too many of the kings of Israel and the vast majority of the people of Israel had NOT been faithful to God in their allegiance or worship.
Too many had embraced the idolatry of surrounding nations including very wicked and immoral idolatry practices, such as parents killing their own children on altars of sacrifice to those idols.
Despite the warning messages from prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, the Jewish kings and people had turned their backs on the God of Israel and suffered the disgrace of being conquered by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies. For that reason, king Nebuchadnezzar was stunned at the confident, courageous, bold statements of these three Jewish captives in their total reliance upon the same God of Israel that so many other Jews had abandoned.
It raises a key question for us today my friends: How do you measure your confidence in God and His trustworthiness, His reliability, His sovereignty especially when you are facing very difficult circumstances.
As we saw yesterday, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did not falter nor panic even as they were bound with ropes and carried to the mouth of the furnace. No evidence of pleading for mercy, no angry cries of hatred… silence, similar to what Isaiah had written in Isaiah 53:7 in predicting how the Messiah would die: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.”
Yesterday we saw in Daniel 3:21,22 that the fire was so hot it actually killed those men who came carrying Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego ready to throw them into the furnace. Yet as Nebuchadnezzar watched, he was stunned by what he saw and exclaimed: “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire? Look, I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed and the fourth looks like a son of the gods!” (Daniel 3:24,25)
So how do you explain this miracle my friends? How did the fire kill strong warriors carrying the bound men to the furnace but not in any way affect those thrown into the furnace? How could they be walking around in the fire, as though taking a stroll on the beach? And who is this fourth man in the fire?
As Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego climbed out of the blazing furnace we have no record of the flurry of questions which certainly poured forth from Nebuchadnezzar or any of the rest of the crowd which I’m confident had gathered. Nor do we have any record of comments made by the three Jewish captives who had walked around in the furnace! Perhaps this is one of those great miracles which takes your breath away and needs no human explanation. Clearly the power of God protected these men from being incinerated alive!
But who was that fourth man and why did Nebuchadnezzar declare he appeared as a ‘son of the gods’? Was it perhaps the same man that appeared to John the apostle in the vision that we have recorded as “the Revelation”? (Rev. 1:12-16) We have no Biblical explanation. We do have several Old Testament appearances of angels and perhaps this was an angel sent by God to encourage His three faithful servants and demonstrate God’s power in the fire.
Many Bible scholars believe this fourth person in the furnace was an Old Testament appearance of God the Son, who was, about 580 years later, born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger and named Jesus, remember? (Luke 2:6-12) Because God the Son had not experienced the ‘incarnation miracle’ of taking on human flesh in the person of Jesus, His Old Testament appearances are not consistent in appearance, nor is HE identified in the Old Testament as “Jesus”.
The one identified as ‘the angel of the LORD’ who appeared to Hagar in Genesis 16:7-13 or to Abraham along with two angels in Genesis 18:16-33 are both presumed to be God the Son, in the Old Testament. The voice in the burning bush which was not consumed when encountering Moses (Ex. 3) or the voice which spoke from the cloud of God’s Presence several times on Mount Sinai when Moses climbed up to meet with God, are all presumed to be God the Son, Who came to earth to encounter God selected human beings, for a specific purpose.
In the years between that event in Daniel 3 and the next story Daniel gives us of God’s work in Babylon in Daniel 4, we can safely assume the events of Daniel 3 were discussed many times by all who witnessed them.
God had not abandoned His Jewish people in captivity. Ezekiel was God’s spokesman bringing the captives God’s messages for several decades, while Daniel and his three friends were positioned by God in the most important offices in Babylon, for the purpose of helping the most powerful men in the world understand God and God’s messages to them. King Nebuchadnezzar had concluded his powerful declaration after the furnace miracle with these words: “…no other god can save in this way.” (Daniel 3:29)
Can you echo those words as your confident declaration of truth, my friends?
Do you base your declaration upon personal experience with God’s mighty power in your life?
Aren’t you glad Daniel made sure he recorded, in great detail, this remarkable, world changing event, which for 26 centuries has been a favorite, truthful story which parents and grandparents have passed along to their children inviting them to believe in God?
Do you have some stories about your experiences with God that you’ve written down for your descendants? Maybe that would be a good thing for you to do right now, and perhaps this worship song will help you remember some of your God experiences.
Today’s Scripture: Daniel 3:16-30.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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