Growing up, I heard the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace many times in Sunday School. It always seemed like a story from a completely different world. After all, this is a story in which a king seeks to impose the worship of a false god on his subjects. As Americans protected by the First Amendment, it seems that kind of thing could never happen to us. We don’t have any false gods at the center of our society and culture.
Except we do. More and more I am coming to realize that in twenty-first century America we have revived an ancient practice of worshiping the Roman goddess Venus, goddess of sexuality. Sex is everything in modern America: it is what constitutes identity, purpose, freedom, and human rights. The new sexual orthodoxy says that any boundaries placed on sexual behavior between consenting adults are boundaries of oppression, and any refusal to give public approval to whatever consenting adults decide to do is bigotry. Sex has become our god, and abortion is the sacrament that honors it.
Albert Mohler has noted that we live in an age of conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty. We saw another battle in that ongoing conflict this past week, when the governor of Georgia, under pressure from corporations who threatened to leave his state over the issue, vetoed a bill designed to protect churches and religious institutions from legal trouble over issues of gender identity and marriage. What these events seem to indicate is that it is not just Christian bakers and florists who are coming under attack over their refusal to give public approval to same-sex marriage. It is also Christian institutions, and perhaps one day even churches. What that means for us is that it is gut check time. We have to prepare ourselves to deal with the fact that in the battle between religious liberty and sexual liberty in America today, sexual liberty is winning, and there seems to be no intention on the other side to let up any time soon. That means, if we intend to remain faithful to what God has spoken in Scripture about human sexuality, marriage, and gender identity, we will likely suffer for it. Some of us may lose major career opportunities over this. The Christian institutions that employ many of us may be forced to downsize or even go out of business over new government regulations that may be coming. One county clerk in Kentucky has already gone to jail over this issue. And be sure of this: all of us who stand for truth will be regarded more and more as hateful bigots, on par with the Ku Klux Klan. Unless the trajectory of our culture changes, we will be forced to choose at some point: either pay homage to Venus as the price of full participation in this society, or face the consequences.
The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is more relevant to us now than perhaps at any other time in our lifetimes. Here we see three young Jewish men, having been carried into exile in Babylon and subsequently appointed to high-ranking positions in government, being tested at the point of worship. And in telling the story of how they passed the test and were subsequently delivered by God from the consequences, the author of Daniel writes to encourage all who are tested to stand firm in their loyalty to the true God, no matter what the cost. So I want to ask the question: How can we remain faithful to Christ in a society that is increasingly demanding that we compromise? I believe this story gives us two helpful words of instruction.
First,
The call to follow Jesus is the call to bear your cross, to die to yourself, and to suffer for his sake. I have always known that, but on some level it has long seemed theoretical rather than real. We don’t really expect that the cost will be great for us. For other believers around the world, maybe. But we who enjoy the blessing of religious liberty have felt largely immune from real suffering. But if religious liberty continues to erode as it has been doing recently, the coming years will reveal who the true disciples of Jesus are and who the pretenders are. As Jesus said in Matthew 24:13, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” But we will not be ready to endure if we have no expectation of being pressured by the world.
Notice all the sources of pressure that our three heroes face. First is the pressure of ceremony. By telling the story with what seems like excessive repetition (mentioning all of the categories of governing officials and all kinds of instruments more than once), the author seems to mirror the formality of the occasion and also heighten the tension. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdengo are brought out the plain of Dura where before them is a massive statue, 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide, overlaid with gold. I noticed that the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro is about the same size (minus its pedestal), so I have posted a picture of a man standing in front of that statue to give you a sense of how big Nebuchadnezzar’s image would have felt. Moreover, Nebuchadnezzar dedicates this enormous image in a ceremony featuring all kinds of instruments played by skilled musicians. The awe-inspiring nature of the ceremony itself would have brought pressure on anyone present to go along with the show and not cause any kind of disturbance.
A second source of pressure is the authority of the king himself. The title “King Nebuchadnezzar” is used eight times in this passage, more than half of all of the occurrences in the book of Daniel as a whole. Nebuchadnezzar is the king of the Babylonian Empire, the most powerful man in the world, and in his royal authority he commands all who are present to bow to this image, an image that appears to represent the power of the state (he was likely inspired to make it by the dream he had in chapter 2, where his rule is represented by a head of gold on a statue). Nebuchadnezzar is seeking to solidify his authority over a unified empire by having officials from its various provinces bow down to the god who represents his rule.
A third source of pressure is peer pressure. The author lists several times all of the provincial officials who are there bowing down as demanded. He lists them in descending order: satraps at the top, followed by prefects, then governors, then counselors, treasurers, justices, magistrates, and other officials. It must have been a massive crowd of dignitaries, almost all of whom had no problem whatsoever bowing down to one more god. In the pagan worldview, no god demands absolute loyalty. But the God of Israel said in the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” “Before me” in that commandment does not mean “prioritized above me,” as though it would be okay for Israel to have other gods so long as he was number one. No, “before me” means “in my presence” or “in front of my face,” as though God commanded, “You must worship me alone, and don’t even think about bringing any other gods around.” And yet, when you are standing on a plain crowded with all of the dignitaries of the Babylonian provinces, and all of them are complying with the order of the king, it can extremely difficult to become the oddball. Peer pressure is a powerful thing.
A fourth source of pressure, of course, is the threat of death that awaits all who refuse to comply. And it’s not only death that is threatened here, but it is a brutal, painful, gruesome death of being burned alive in a huge furnace. Our three heroes are faced with the choice of either disloyalty to their God or loss of their lives. And when the music plays, they refuse to bow.
And, as expected, their noncompliance leads to a showdown. Some Chaldeans (high-ranking officials) who were apparently jealous of these three Jews (likely because of their recent appointment to high positions) made sure the king did not miss out on the fact that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to the image. And when they brought word to the king, he was furious. Nebuchadnezzar summoned them before him and gave them one last opportunity to comply. The showdown culminates with the question of verse 15: “Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” With this question, we recognize that this story isn’t really about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdnego. It is about God. His name is on the line, because Nebuchadnezzar has thrown down the gauntlet before him. And I can imagine that, as the clay pot Nebuchadnezzar boasted of his power over the Potter, the Potter had a good laugh about it.
What we see here is full-blown religious persecution against the people of God. According to John Stott, “Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value systems.” We see two irreconcilable value systems clashing in this story, and we see them clashing in our society almost on a daily basis. And yet, I know that often my first impulse when I hear news stories that involve religious persecution in America is to complain about it, as though I am shocked that it is occurring. Again, John Stott provides wisdom when he writes, “We should not be surprised if anti-Christian hostility increases, but rather be surprised if it does not.”
Coercive pressure to conform to the world, and persecution of those who refuse to conform, is such a strange concept to us as Americans that it takes us by surprise. But it’s time to change our expectations. If the Bible says anything about persecution, it tells us to expect it. If it catches you off guard, it will rattle you to your core and leave you unprepared to respond in a God-honoring way. So don’t let it catch you off guard. Expect to be pressured by the world to compromise your loyalty to Christ and bow before the god of this age. That is key to remaining faithful to Christ.
A second word of instruction for us is this:
In Mark 4, Jesus gets into a boat with his disciples, and while they are sailing, a great storm comes upon them and begins to swamp the boat with waves. During this time, Jesus remains asleep in the stern of the ship. The disciples come running to wake him up, saying, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus wakes up and commands the wind and sea, “Peace! Be still!” And immediately the storm ends. Jesus then turns to his disciples and asks, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” There is a certain logic behind that question that goes like this: You should have known that you were never going to die in that storm. Why? Is it because God has promised that he will never allow his people to drown? No. God has made no such promise. But God did send his Son into the world with a mission, and since that mission had at the time not yet been fulfilled, and since Jesus was on the boat with them, there was no way that boat was going to sink. In that situation, Jesus wanted the disciples to know that they were, in a sense, invincible, destined to be delivered.
I think there is a similar logic at work in this text that the author wants to us to get, and that is that if we obey God, we cannot lose. We are destined to be delivered. So let’s unpack what happens here and then look at how it applies to us today.
Verses 16-18 are key, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego deliver their answer to King Nebuchadnezzar: “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.” Our three heroes acknowledge two major truths about God in this answer. First, in answer to Nebuchadnezzar’s question (“who is the god who will deliver you?” v. 15), they respond that their God is indeed able to deliver them. He is the God who has power over Nebuchadnezzar and over the fires that burn in his furnace, and there is no question that he has the power to deliver his faithful people. But second, they acknowledge God’s sovereignty to do what pleases him, refusing to presume on his will. So they contemplate the possibility that God might not save their lives if he so chooses, and even in that scenario, they determine it is still better not to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. Let’s note that and then return to it later.
Perhaps the question has occurred to you: Why didn’t Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego simply bow down to the image in order to save their lives, but do so deceptively by not acknowledging with their minds that there was any real god there? We do have something like that in 2 Kings 5, where Naaman, commander of the Syrian army, is healed of leprosy by following the instructions of Elisha the prophet, and as a result Naaman becomes a worshiper of the God of Israel. But of course, Naaman has to go back to Syria, and he acknowledges to Elisha that when he is back in the service of his master, he will go with his master and bow down to the Syrian god Rimmon. So outwardly, he will be worshiping a false god, but inwardly his heart will not be in it. Couldn’t Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have done the same thing here? Well, it is worth noting that even in the other story, Naaman acknowledges that what he will be doing is wrong. That’s why he specifically asks Elisha that the Lord may pardon him for doing so. Moreover, Naaman is a pagan who has just become a worshiper of Israel’s God, so his actions are not presented as a model of mature faithfulness. The bottom line with this question is that what we do publicly matters. If we decide that, in order to save ourselves from suffering, we will publicly affirm the sexual insanity of our culture but maintain our true convictions privately, then we will rob Christ of an opportunity to receive glory. How so? Because when disciples of Jesus Christ willingly suffer in obedience to him, they show the world that he is worth far more to them than anything the world can take away from them. If, however, we compromise publicly (even if not in our hearts), what we are actually saying is that our lives, our opportunities, our wealth, matters more to us than Jesus. May that never be said of us!
So, upon hearing their reply, King Nebuchadnezzar has another furious reaction. This time he is so angry that he gives rash orders that lead to the deaths of his own men. He orders the furnace heated up seven times hotter than usual. That is probably a way of saying he orders it to be heated to maximum temperature. His order to throw the three men into the furnace is so urgent that his men don’t even take the time to strip the clothes off of them, but instead bind them and throw them in fully dressed. And they are in such a hurry to do it in obedience to the king’s urgency that they neglect the normal precautions that would have protected them, and the king’s own soldiers inadvertently die from the heat. The irony here is that the only people who die at the fiery furnace in this story are men who obey the king, rather than those who don’t.
Although I don’t think we know for sure, scholars have speculated that this furnace may have been shaped like a huge old-fashioned milk bottle, with an opening at the top where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in. But there also might have been an opening on the side of it where Nebuchadnezzar looked in. And when he did, he could not believe what he saw. “Didn’t we throw three bound men into the furnace?” he asked his attendants. “Yes,” they replied. “But I see four unbound men walking around in the flames! And the fourth one looks like a son of the gods!”
One of the questions that we can’t help but ask is, who was the fourth man? In verse 28, Nebuchadnezzar refers to him as an “angel” of God, and later in chapter 6 Daniel will speak of God sending an angel to shut the mouths of the lions and save his life. So it is possible that it was an angel who came to rescue these men from the effects of the fire. On the other hand, there is also a figure who appears at several places in the Old Testament known as “the angel of the LORD,” a mysterious figure who is not only God’s messenger but is in some sense identified with God himself. Theologians often refer to him as a preincarnate manifestation of the Son of God, that is, Jesus before he was born as Jesus of Nazareth. I don’t think the text gives us enough information to conclude one way or the other, but whether we are talking about an angel or about God the Son himself, the outcome is still the same: God is with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the midst of the fire, and God is the one who delivers them.
And what a deliverance it was! Nebuchadnezzar called them out, and when they came out, they were uninjured, their clothes were not burned, their hair was not singed, and they didn’t even smell like smoke! Nebuchadnezzar threw everything he had at them, and it had no effect at all. Such is the power of God. So in response to this, Nebuchadnezzar ends up answering his own question. Recall in verse 15 that Nebuchadnezzar asked, “And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” In verse 29 he says this, “Therefore I make a decree [the story began with a decree to worship the golden image, and here it ends with a different 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.” This does not mean Nebuchadnezzar is a full-blown believer in Israel’s God. More than likely, he is acting out of fear because he just tried to barbecue three servants of this God, and he wants to walk that back now. But the point has been made: God’s name was on the line, and God defended his name.
And then the story ends with a little bonus in verse 30: “The king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.” Their Chaldean accusers, who were jealous of their success, hatched a plan to have them killed. It completely backfired, so that instead of being killed, they were actually promoted. God’s deliverance here is deliverance to the uttermost.
I don’t think God has given us this story so that we can say, “Wow, God sure was amazing back in Bible times! It sure would be nice if I could experience a similar kind of deliverance, but of course, we just can’t make any assumptions about that now.” I have said that if you obey Christ, you should expect to be delivered. What I mean by that is that if you are faithful to Christ, deliverance is not a mere possibility. It is a certainty. You cannot lose.
Could I say that about 72 Christians (at least) who were murdered last Sunday by terrorists in Pakistan as they gathered to worship the risen Christ in an Easter celebration? Yes, their deliverance is certain too. Their story is not over yet, and their deliverance from death will certainly come. The last chapter of the book of Daniel makes explicit what is more often an implicit teaching of the Old Testament: that one day the dead will be raised. Daniel 12:2 reads, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
Could this be why Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said in verse 18 that even if their God did not deliver them from the flames, they still would not bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s image? Did they understand that deliverance would certainly come, even if they lost their lives for the present time? I don’t know how much they personally might have understood about the resurrection, but I do believe the author of Daniel wants us to see that, even for those whose lives are taken from them because of their faithfulness to God, the story is not over. Resurrection is coming. And so their answer to Nebuchadnezzar in verse 18 seems to minimize the power of death. Jesus does the same thing in Luke 21:16-18, when he says to his disciples, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish.” Did you hear that? Some of you they will put to death. But not a hair of your head will perish.
Why not? Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that God the Father sent his Son to become a man, to live a life of complete obedience to God, the life that we should have lived, to die in our place, taking the wrath of God that we deserved upon himself, and to rise again on the third day in victory over death. The irony of the Easter murders in Pakistan is this: those terrorists killed our brothers and sisters on the very day they had gathered to celebrate the event that guarantees their ultimate triumph over death. So whether they died last Sunday in an attack, or whether they eventually died of natural causes in their beds years down the road, the ultimate outcome will be the same for them: one day the risen Christ will return and call them out of their graves to live with him in triumph over death forever.
Now, you have to face the reality that, given enough time, you too will die one day. And your death can be either the event that cuts you off from God permanently and begins an eternity under his wrath, or it can be a temporary sleep that will end in resurrection and eternal life with Christ. If you are not trusting in Jesus Christ alone to deliver you from death, call to him today to save you. And then mark yourself publicly as one who belongs to Christ by dying and rising with him in baptism. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ who has been baptized and is a member in good standing with a local church, I want to invite you to eat of the Lord’s Supper with us this morning. We will pass the bread and the cup around, and we will eat and drink together, remembering that Christ’s body was broken and his blood was shed for our salvation. And as we eat and drink, let us do so as a way of proclaiming to the rulers of this age: Jesus Christ is Lord, and so, whatever pressures you put on us, we will never bow to your gods.