Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at the response that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego gave to king Nebuchadnezzar after he gave them a second chance to bow down to his idol. He ended that appeal with a challenging, somewhat mocking statement: “Who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” (Dan. 3:15).
And here’s what they said:
“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.” (Daniel 3:16b-18)
Now, what is amazing to me here is that Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego would have such faith in God’s power to save them. After all, all that they had experienced over the last twenty years had been watching their God seemingly being defeated by other gods. As young men, they were among those deported to Babylon, emasculated and forced into serving a pagan government. Since then, they had seen Nebuchadnezzar’s forces deport even more Jews from Jerusalem, ultimately destroying their city and God’s temple.
But as surprising as these events might have appeared to those unacquainted with God, these young men knew from Scripture that all these things had happened according to God’s sovereign control of history in fulfillment of the warnings by Moses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the prophet Jeremiah.
So whether God delivers them or not, they determine, “we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Dan. 3:18). They did not know what God would do, but they knew what they would not do. Like Daniel in the first chapter, they took a stand.
And the king blew up! His pride was wounded, his will had been denied, and he was so mad he exploded!
John Philips says, “Nobody had spoken thus to this pagan king in all of his memory and experience. He was thunderstruck. His personal condescension had been spurned, his new golden god has been scorned, the God of these fanatical Hebrews had been extolled, his proposed global religion had been challenged, and his threat of fire and brimstone had been treated with utter contempt” (Exploring the Book of Daniel, p. 65).
Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “Only by desertion can we be defeated. With Christ and for Christ victory is certain. We can lose the victory by flight but not by death. Happy are you if you die in battle, for after death you will be crowned. But woe to you if by forsaking the battle you forfeit at once both the victory and the crown.”
What do you think? Do you think you would have this same level of courage and confidence when faced with a similar choice of denying Christ and a painful death? God has only promised us to give us the grace we need in the situations into which He actually brings us, not every dangerous situation. Which reminds us that this same battle may be fought daily in our hearts over much lesser issues. There are a number of tempting situations that we face to trust in the idols of our culture which prove where the loyalties of our hearts lie.
Iain Duguid says, “For some, the golden image is the respect and admiration of others. As young people, we often feel the pressure to be one of the ‘in-crowd’ at school, even though the cost of admission to this club is that we mustn’t show respect to our parents [or any authority], or talk about God, or keep ourselves mentally and physically pure until marriage. ‘Bow down to me,’ the image says, ‘or I will throw you into the fiery furnace of the mockery and ridicule of your peers. This idolatry was described by C. S. Lewis as the allure of ‘The Inner Ring,’ the desire to be on the right side of an invisible line that divides ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’” (Daniel: Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 54).
For pastors that idol may be the respect and admiration we get for “excellent sermons” or the fact that we are successful and our church is growing. For others it may be food or drink, sexual satisfaction or romantic daydreams. There may be no gun pointed to our heads, but we bow before these idols because we want to please others or ourselves (our most demanding idol!).
William Peel notes: “One of the greatest decisions every one of us makes is who will take care of us. Repeatedly God challenges His children to entrust themselves to His care. Any alternative will invariably lead us away from obedience. If I assume ultimate responsibility for my welfare, without fail I will be offered a way to save my skin that will violate God’s law. If I doubt God’s protection, I will cut and run every time” (Living in the Lion’s Den without Being Eaten, p. 92). So settle that issue: God is my Protector and I will trust Him to protect me in every situation no matter how difficult it may be. This is what Jesus did on the cross (1 Pet. 2:22-23).
Needless to say, Nebuchadnezzar’s countenance was altered from conciliatory patience to vehement rage…
19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. 20 And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. 21 Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. 22 Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
The answer of the three men to Nebuchadnezzar left no doubt as to their determined purpose not to serve the gods of Babylon and worship the image. After all, this was forbidden in Exodus 20:4-6.
When we stand up to our idols, we better be prepared to experience their wrath. Nebuchadnezzar was “furious with Shadrach, Meschach and Abed-Nego.” He had been angry before (v. 13) and now his anger had risen to a fever pitch.
The Scriptural idea of being “filled with” something indicates that the emotion we are “filled with” takes over and we are now controlled by it. And of course, this was shown on his face as well. [This is why we must be “filled with the Spirit” and not with anger or fear or doubts.]
The book of Proverbs, filled with wisdom, has this to say about standing before a king:
A king’s wrath is a messenger of death, and a wise man will appease it. In the light of a king’s face there is life, and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain. (Prov. 16:14-15)
It is a noted point of weakness for rulers and leaders to be unable to control their tempers. A point of weakness for this king was his inability to control his anger. He should have remained calm so that he could think through a more rational response (non-anxious presence).
Right now, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego were behind in the count, down two strikes—a wrathful heart and an angry countenance. They were skating on thin ice.
He was so angry his countenance changed. Most people automatically reflect their feelings in their faces and other forms of non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication, however, is notoriously difficult to interpret, but we have Nebuchadnezzar’s actions word and actions here to indubitably express his extreme anger.
While able to be rational before and giving them an opportunity to obey his command, their explanation of their faith in God caused him to become quite irrational, proven by his outrageous efforts to burn them to the utmost extreme.
Nebuchadnezzar is as angry as he possibly could be under any circumstance, his face is distorted, his pride has been severely punctured, and he gives the foolish order to heat the furnace seven times hotter than usual, as if this would increase the torment.
Finally getting control of himself enough to at least spew out a few words, he “ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated” which is likely a hyperbole (since they had no thermometers back in the day), just indicating that it was exceedingly and dangerously hot, as hot as possible. He wanted the temperature of the furnace to match the temperature of his rage. See how destructive rage can be?
As William Peel points out: “Obviously Nebuchadnezzar didn’t understand that whether the temperature was 100 degrees or 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, it made little difference to the Creator and Preserver of the laws of physics” (Living in the Lion’s Den without Being Eaten, p. 86). There was indeed a God who was able to rescue these men out of the king’s hand!
Geoffrey R. King writes, “He lost his temper! That is always the mark of a little man. His furnace was hot, but he himself got hotter! And when a man gets full of fury, he gets full of folly. There is no fool on earth like a man who has lost his temper. And Nebuchadnezzar did a stupid thing. He ought to have cooled the furnace seven times less if he had wanted to hurt them; but instead of that in his fury he heated it seven times more” (Daniel: A Detailed Explanation of the Book, p. 85).
Wasting no time, Nebuchadnezzar ordered “some of the mighty men of his army to bind” the three Jews and cast them into the furnace. The extreme heat and the strong men were attempts by the king to forestall any possible fulfillment of the trust that these men had in their god to deliver them. This way there would be no escaping on the way to the furnace, nor once they were inside it.
The mighty men then bound the faithful youth, further securing them to death, who were still wearing “their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments” (v. 21). Clothing could catch fire more easily and thus accelerate the process. They would become flaming human torches!
This reminds me of a story Tim Williamson once told me. Upon discovering hornets coming up out of a hole in his yard, he decided to pour gasoline down the hole and light it. It blew a five-foot hole in his yard and spewed out flaming hornets flying through the air!
At this point the young men were possibly wondering whether their God would deliver them. But God definitely had a purpose in allowing things to go this far.
One was that the impression on Nebuchadnezzar and other Babylonians, when the deliverance had been carried out, would be the greater as a result. The other was that, even for the three, the blessing of being saved through the fire rather than from it would be more wonderful. When all was over, they would be glad that God had arranged the overall occasion just as He had. When our lives are over, despite all the difficulties we have been through, we will be amazed at the wisdom and goodness of God expressed in exactly how things worked out.
“And so it was done. The captives were bundled into their clothes and bound with all the strength that these mighty men could command. Then they picked up these human bundles and dragged them to the lip of the seething cauldron of fire and flame. Everything in the vicinity of the furnace must have been scorched by the white-hot heat. The very bolts and bars glowed with the terrible heat. The flames roared. The heat was enormous. The king’s men felt the fury of the flames. Even as they flung their captives into the furnace, its heat overwhelmed them and they perished in a flash. The dreadful deed was done” (John Phillips, Exploring the Book of Daniel, p. 65).
In the process of carrying out his anger, Nebuchadnezzar lost some of his men. This just shows that these were real flames, no Hollywood props. Proverbs 11:8 gives us the general principle: “The righteous is delivered from trouble, and the wicked walks into it instead.” These men die while Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego live.
As we’ve seen before, Satan is not against losing some of his followers if only he might take away a few of Christ’s followers.
Such is the folly of decisions made in anger (Prov. 14:17, 29; 25:28; Eccl. 7:9; Matt. 2:16). Here we find an important principle: those under authority generally suffer from the poor decisions of their leader—whether the leader be a king, master, father, or husband, especially decisions made in anger.
Are any of you NBA fans? Daniel Darling recently posted an article entitled “The Luka Trade and the Peril of Emotional Decision Making.” Apparently what happened is that Luka Doncic, one of the top three players in the league, was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers because the general manager of the Mavericks, Nico Harrison, had a falling out with his star. Harrison made the move in isolation, fueled by resentment, without consulting people who might have given him good counsel and advice. Now, the star Dallas traded for in return, Anthony Davis, is out for several weeks with his own injury. They traded a 25-year-old star who sometimes gets injured for a 31-year-old star who gets injured even more. The point is, it doesn’t make sense, but the decision was made because of anger. And it has cost the team.
Ironically, we see that the men who cast the three Hebrews into the fiery furnace died on the outside of the furnace from the heat, while the three who fell into the flames were preserved!
“At this point the Greek translations insert the ‘Prayer of Azariah’ and the ‘Song of the Three Youths’ with some introductory verses” (Young, The Prophecy of Daniel). “It is between these verses that the apocryphal Song of the Three Children, as it is called, has been inserted by St. Jerome and others; but with this note: Quae sequuntur in Hebraeis voluminibus non reperi; ‘What follows I have not found in the Hebrew books.’” (Adam Clarke). In other words, it is part of the apocryphal books, written between Malachi and the Gospels, which were not included in the Hebrew canon of recognized books.
Following upon The Song of the Three Children, the LXX resumes at verse 24 with the additional inserted phrase, “And Nabuchodonosor heard them singing praises . . .”
Conservative scholarship is agreed that this is not part of the scriptural text, although it is possible that these men, godly as they were, might have expressed prayer in a similar way if time permitted.
Well, apparently the fiery furnace had some feature that allowed the observers to see inside, and something caught the king’s eye. What was this? Were his eyes deceiving him? Had he forgotten how to count?” Maybe he asked those around him, “Wasn’t it three men that were cast into the furnace?” The king was startled.
Not only were the three friends free and unharmed, but they were also joined by a fourth individual.
Verse 24 reads, “Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O king.’”
But there were four men. Verse 25 says, “”But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”
Three curious factors: First, there were four men, not just three.
Second, they were all walking around “in the midst of the fire” unbound and yet unhurt. “Apparently no pain was etched on their faces; they were not limping; nor where they clutching some part of their body as though suffering” (Leon Wood, A Commentary on Daniel, p. 93).
And third, and best of all, this fourth person “is like a son of the gods,” apparently he looked differently than Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. How Nebuchadnezzar came to this conclusion is not clear, but he probably did so because of the miraculous element of deliverance.
It was true alright. Some power, likely the power of that godlike visitor, had “quenched the violence of the fire” (Heb. 11:33-34). God had preserved these three young men through the fire. That was a miracle. But an even greater miracle to them was seeing a “fourth presence” with them in their trials. Maybe they had previously regretted the fact that Daniel had not been with them to give them confidence and strength to go through this, but this was so much better!
This was “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,” as Paul says in Ephesians 3:20.
But who was the fourth man? That we will explore next week!
Grace Still Amazes 