Daniel 3:1-25
The Rev’d Quintin Morrow
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Fort Worth, Texas
www.st-andrew.com
The Text Summary: God’s people are to know, proclaim, and live His commandments, despite threats and pressures by the culture to do otherwise, all the while trusting the Lord to save them.
The Text Outline:
I. The King’s Evil Decree (vv. 1-7).
A. The project (v. 1): Nebuchadnezzar builds a gold statue 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
B. The politicians (vv. 2-3): Nebuchadnezzar summons all his political leaders to attend the statue’s dedication.
C. The proclamation (vv. 4-5): When the music sounded, everyone present was to bow down and worship the statue.
D. The penalty (vv. 6-7): Those refusing to bow down were to be cast into a fiery furnace.
II. The Three Men’s Faithful Response (vv. 8-23).
A. They wouldn’t bow (vv. 8-12).
B. They wouldn’t bend (vv. 13-18).
C. They were bound and cast into the fire (vv. 19-23).
III. The Lord’s Miraculous Deliverance (vv. 24-25).
A. The three men were joined by a fourth.
B. The three men wouldn’t burn.
One of the more frequent themes of our Lord’s parables and teaching during His earthly ministry was the tremendous cost of following Him as a disciple. Jesus was not esoteric or obscure about this; He said plainly and often that one must consider carefully the sacrifice demanded of those following Him because, as He said in John chapter 15,
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, “The servant is not greater than his lord.” If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
Now there are greater and lesser degrees of persecution that result from following Jesus as a Christian, depending upon where God has placed you. In many Muslim countries being a believer in Christ makes one liable for prison, torture, or even death. In a socialist society being a disciple may mean the confiscation of goods, a work camp, re-education, or an inability to get decent housing, a well-paying job, or entrance to a university. In the Untied States there is no state-sponsored persecution for followers of Christ, but if one is living the life of a radical, daily, sold-out disciple, there will be a price to pay: marginalization at the office, the misunderstanding of family members, even perhaps the abandonment of old, dear friends.
Being persuaded then of the reality of the difficulties and opposition we will encounter as disciples of Jesus Christ, how are we to respond? And how are we to live as soldier-saints behind cultural enemy lines, with integrity, pleasing our Lord? Simply, we are to live with conviction, courage, fortitude, and faith.
The model for how we are to live as Christians in this world is portrayed beautifully for us in the incident relayed in Daniel chapter 3: The confrontation between the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the three Jewish exiles Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Context, as always, is essential for our proper understanding and application of the passage. After years of covenantal unfaithfulness on the part of the people of Judah—specifically idolatry and sexual immorality—God’s forbearance was finally exhausted. After decades of refusal to heed the warnings of the Lord’s prophets and repent, God raised up the pagan Babylonians as an instrument of correction to chastise His people Judah. In 586 B.C. the Babylonian juggernaut rolled through town. Jerusalem was conquered, the temple of Solomon leveled, the treasures of the temple and the royal palace were pillaged, and with the brightest and best of the Jewish young men, were carted off for 70 years of captivity in Babylon.
Four Jewish men were among those exiles. Daniel, renamed by Nebuchadnezzar Belteshazzar, and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, renamed by the king Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego respectively. Suddenly, these four faithful Jewish men found themselves in a hostile, pagan land. The language was foreign to them; the culture, the dress, the entertainment, and especially the religion of Babylon, were all foreign to them. These four had two choices: They could either abandon their faith in and obedience to the one, true God and adopt the culture of Babylon and blend in with everyone else, or they could resist inculturation and remain faithful to the God of their fathers—regardless of the cost. And there would be a cost if they chose the latter.
In Daniel chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a great statue, but none of the court magicians, soothsayers, or astrologers could interpret the dream for the king. Only Daniel, given special wisdom by God, is able to interpret the king’s dream. The statue, Daniel tells the king, represents all the empires of human history. The golden head of the statue, however, represented Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon, the greatest emperor and empire the world had ever seen. Nebuchadnezzar responds to this revelation by rewarding Daniel, and making a similar image of gold 90 feet high and 9 feet wide, and demanded that everyone within the sphere of his influence would bow down and worship the image when he struck up the band. It isn’t hard to see that a showdown was inevitable.
One of the fundamental precepts of Jewish religion was and is the belief in the one, true, and living God, and the related prohibition of making images of and worshipping other gods. The first and second commandments from Sinai were these:
And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments (Exodus 20:1-6).
Not lots of wiggle room there, nor much ambiguity or loopholes for compromise.
And don’t miss the irony of this situation in Daniel chapter 3. The Lord sent the children of Judah into captivity in Babylon for their continued idolatry. Yet here in that captivity are three faithful Jewish men now being threatened with death if they DO NOT fall down and worship the image of a false god.
And refuse they do. “O Nebuchadnezzar,” the three say,
We are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
Filled with rage, Nebuchadnezzar stokes the fire seven times hotter than usual, and casts the three men into the furnace. The hapless guards charged with throwing them in get toasted, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walk around in the furnace completely unharmed. In fact, the three are joined by a fourth man—the pre-incarnate Christ, the second person of the blessed Trinity—whom even Nebuchadnezzar recognizes as a son of the gods. And their deliverance is assured. These men didn’t bow. They didn’t bend. They didn’t burn.
The essential situation these three faithful men found themselves in is not really all that different from the one we as believers striving to be faithful to our Master find ourselves in today, though the details and the circumstances are dissimilar.
We are behind cultural enemy lines as Christians. If you don’t think so, go to the movies, watch MTV, listen to popular music, or look at the women’s magazines at the check-out counter in the grocery store. And the pressure on us to “fit in,” conform, and be swallowed up and inculturated is enormous.
And yet the call to believers has not changed one bit. We are to live as a strangers and pilgrims in this world. We are to live as citizens of heaven, adopting its values, ethics, manners and concerns. We are to dress differently, behave differently, and love different things. We are to be salt and light in this world, to be sure, living as a positive infection in this culture. But we are to come out from among the corruption, immorality, dishonesty and be separate.
The cardinal passage for us are firstly Romans 12:1-2:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Well, how do we do those things? How do we live as aliens in this corrupt world, striving to faithfully please our Lord and Savior in what we think, what we say, and what we do?
Firstly, we must be a people of conviction. Conviction is the certainty of belief and the refusal to compromise it. Convictions are different from preferences. The former are immutable, and the latter can be modified over time.
Conviction is being convinced of what we believe and why we believe it, coupled with the determination to live or die by that belief. And let me add this: In the midst of the heat of battle is the wrong time to determine your convictions. You must settle them beforehand. Young people, sitting in the backseat of a car with your date is the worst time to decide how far you can righteously go with physical contact. In Daniel chapter 1 Daniel and his three friends are commanded to violate God’s dietary laws and eat forbidden food from the king’s table. They refuse. And in verse 8 of chapter 1 we read this significant insight: “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.” Before the time of testing; before the moment of crisis; before the heat and pressure to conform was applied, Daniel settled his convictions before they were put to the test.
Christian, you must settle in your mind right now: There are certain things you may not do, and certain things you may not have in this life. Ever. You may not be unfaithful to your spouse. You may not cheat your employees or customers. You may not gossip or destroy someone’s character. No circumstance, no special mitigating situation will ever make those things, or the other things God has forbidden us to do, right. Being a believer of conviction means knowing and saying that certain things are always right, regardless of circumstances, and certain things are always wrong, regardless of circumstances.
Secondly, to live faithfully in this world we must cultivate the virtues of courage and fortitude. Courage is the capacity to meet danger or difficulty with firmness. And fortitude is the strength to endure. “Never, never, never, never give up,” Winston Churchill said. Courage and fortitude are Gospel virtues. Paul encourages us to endurance as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. The faith “hall of fame” in Hebrews chapter 11 lists saint after saint who accomplished great things for God. The list ends with this:
And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— of whom the world was not worthy.
Charging Hell with a squirt gun. That’s what those saints of old time had the courage and fortitude to do. We need believers with those virtues today who will do right and fight for right regardless of the cost.
And finally, we must increase our faith. Faith is nothing more or less than an absolute unwavering confidence in and reliance upon God. The three Hebrew men had it. “The God we serve is able to save us from you,” they told the king, “but even if He doesn’t we will not bow down and worship your image. So do your worst.”
A common theme of the psalms is the question of why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. Do you want to know what the answer is? The righteous do suffer, though they are never alone, and in the midst of suffering our faith grows. “Count it all joy,” James says, “when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith works patience.” But the wicked do not prosper; they only appear to prosper. The wicked may die in his sleep at a ripe old age, seemingly immune from judgment. But another judgment awaits him, and he will not prosper there.
We’ve got to quit asking God to keep us from suffering, and begin learning patience, faith, and humility through suffering, and seeing God in our suffering. “Didn’t we throw three men into the fire?” Nebuchadnezzar asks. “I see four men in there now, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”
Being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t mean showing off your new hat or new car to your friends at church. It is about donning the armor of God and fighting the fight which is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers, and the rulers of this world, and spiritual forces of evil in high places we signed up for when we said “yes” to Jesus Christ and “yes” to heaven.
The November 19, 1990 issue of Newsweek magazine ran an article titled “Letters in the Sand,” a compilation of letters written by military personnel to family and friends in the States during the first Gulf War.
One was written by Marine Corporal Preston Coffer. He told a friend, “We are talking about Marines, not the Boy Scouts. We all joined the service knowing full well what might be expected of us.” He signed off with the Marine motto: Semper Fidelis, Latin for “Always Faithful.”
They that have ears to hear, let them hear.
AMEN.
