Grace Still Amazes

One of the things I like to watch on YouTube are funny fails, videos of people trying to do something, sometimes routine, sometimes daring, but in every case they fail.  Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cringe.

One of the recurring themes of the book of Daniel is the failure of the king’s wise men and enchanters to be able to successfully guide the king because they cannot interpret the dreams or signs (Daniel 2:10-11, 4:7, 5:8-9).  However, in each case Daniel can.  Why?  Because he has a personal relationship with the God who not only sovereignly sends these dreams and signs, but that God then enables Daniel to correctly interpret them.

Today we’re going to be looking at vv. 4-7 of Daniel chapter 4.

4 I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. 5 I saw a dream that made me afraid.  As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. 6 So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. 

First, we see that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream greatly troubled him.  He was “afraid” and “alarmed” by the dream.

Gleason Archer Jr. believes that this dream occurred in 583 B.C., allowing for a seven-year period in which there were no major military operations (582-575 B.C.) (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 60).

Before Nebuchadnezzar relates the judgments brought upon him because of his pride, he gives an account of the fair warning he had of them before they came.

While Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in his private life and prosperous in his royal life, he discovered that security in his kingdom did not bring peace, and personal prosperity did not enable him to sleep.  Whereas Nebuchadnezzar was “troubled” by his first dream (Dan. 2:3), this one “alarmed” or “terrified” him (Dan. 4:5).

When the king describes himself as “thriving” in his palace, the adjective used, raʽnan, corresponds to a Hebrew word used to denote the luxuriant foliage of a tree (e.g. Deut. 12:2, ‘under every green tree’; Jer. 11:16, ‘a green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit’).  It is used metaphorically when the image of a flourishing tree is used to denote human prosperity (e.g. Ps. 37:35; 92:13–15 [evv 92:12–14]).  Here its use no doubt looks forward to the content of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Ernest Lucas, Daniel, ed. David W. Baker and Gordon J. Wenham, vol. 20, Apollos Old Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 2002), 108)

It may also be significant that about half its occurrences in the HB are in the phrase ‘under every green tree’, referring to the sites where the Israelites indulged in pagan idolatrous practices, of the sort with which the young men in the preceding story refused to have anything to do (Ernest Lucas, Daniel, ed. David W. Baker and Gordon J. Wenham, vol. 20, Apollos Old Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 2002), 108–109).

Truly the king had every reason to feel safe and secure and satisfied.  There was no one to challenge him; he had anything he wanted.  Ease and prosperity characterized Nebuchadnezzar’s life at the zenith of his empire.  He was at peace because everyone was afraid to oppose him.  He had thousands of Jews in his kingdom who were virtually slaves, doing all the work the Babylonian people did not want to do.

He was content.  He had plenty of money in Babylonian Trust and Savings, even after building a golden statue.   He had just completed a new palace and built a new capital in southern Babylon, a place called Tema, later renamed Babylon.  Life just does not get any better than this.  It is possible that during this time he had built the famed Hanging Gardens.

His wife had sired him a son who would be the heir to his throne.  As he was getting older, nearing retirement, he was considering giving his son co-regency.  

The man was content and prosperous and proud. In his pride he concluded that he did not need God.   His contentedness and prosperity were obstacles to the work of God in his life that had to be addressed if his heart was to be changed.

Iain Duguid has this insight: “Discontent and disaster, or at the least profound personal discomfort, are very often the necessary precursors of spiritual growth and change.  As long as we are comfortable and at ease in this world, we are not normally ready to examine our hearts and institute deep change.  On the other hand, when God disturbs the calm waters of our lives we begin to be ready to seek different paths to pursue….These shattering experiences should prompt within us the expectation and hope that God is going to do something important in our lives.  It is precisely through the storms of life that God will show us who we really are and, even more importantly, who He really is” (Daniel in Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 64).

There is no rest for the wicked, however (Isaiah 57:21) and God was about to disturb that rest.  God soon shook him from his false security.  God began to stir up his heart.  The transformation would require stripping away of everything in which Nebuchadnezzar had formerly gloried.

At this point we see Nebuchadnezzar’s admission, “I saw a dream that made me afraid” (v. 5), and this reminds us of another time when he had been troubled about a dream (2:1).

Once again, for a second time, he saw a vision from God while sleeping.  What he saw—“fancies” and “visions”—alarmed him because without understanding their meaning he could not discern how they applied to him or his kingdom.

This dream was quite different from the dream in chapter 2, where Nebuchadnezzar was pictured as the head of gold, a very prominent and enviable position.

More dreams and visions.  God doesn’t seem to communicate this way so much in our Western world, “but in the Middle East and other parts of the world, such things are not uncommon.  Many Muslims who live in countries where the gospel is prohibited, like Iran, have come to faith in Jesus Christ through dreams and visions.  A common story told among new believers is of a man coming to the foot of the bed and telling them about the hope that can be found in Yasu, the name for Jesus used by many Arabic Christians.  When people do not have the Word of God available to them, the Lord still finds ways to make Himself known to those who desire to discover the truth of the Creator God” (Amir Tsarfati, Discovering Daniel, pp. 78-79).

So Nebuchadnezzar had this dream.  He was “afraid” and “alarmed.”  So he did what kings normally do, and that is that he called his advisors, his wise men and enchanters, to his throne.

Just like before, Nebuchadnezzar called “all the wise men of Babylon” in an effort to understand what this disturbing dream meant.

6 So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. 

Why did Nebuchadnezzar need their help in interpreting this dream?  Maybe Nebuchadnezzar had a sneaking suspicion that he knew that this dream was not so complimentary as his former dream and that it portended a much more negative event in Nebuchadnezzar’s life.  Maybe he hoped that in interpreting the dream they would tell him that this had nothing to do with him or that it wasn’t nearly as bad as he might have feared.

As in chapter 2, this dream troubled Nebuchadnezzar, but in this case, unlike in chapter 2, he “told them the dream” but even with that advantage they still could not interpret it for him.  They couldn’t even make something up!  Even though the dream was adverse and might present a problem in telling Nebuchadnezzar, they probably would have made some attempt to explain it to him, if they had understood it.

The same group of advisors were there who had been surpassed by Daniel and his friends in chapter 1, then who were unable to recount and interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2.  These men were only still alive because Daniel had been able to recount and interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2.  Yet here they are again, this hapless and helpless bunch of frauds.

So Nebuchadnezzar calls in Daniel, the one who “had understanding in all visions and dreams” (Dan. 1:17), whom Nebuchadnezzar consistently found “ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Dan. 1:20).  Nebuchadnezzar knew from experience that Daniel’s God was “a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery” (Dan. 2:47).

Matthew Henry reminds us, “Many make God’s word their last refuge, and never have recourse to it till they are driven off from all other succors” (Commentary on the Whole Bible, p. 1089).

Why is it that we typically save going to God for the answers until we have exhausted all other recourses?  We plan and scheme and do and talk, but we fail to go to the source of wisdom and knowledge, to God Himself.  Daniel was God’s man and could tell the king what God was trying to communicate to him in this dream.

So in verse 8 Nebuchadnezzar calls in Daniel. “At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods…”

Daniel is the only wise man who wasn’t afraid of the king.  He didn’t live in fear of the king because he feared God.

Nebuchadnezzar reminds himself that Daniel’s “real” name was Belteshazzar “after the name of my God” Bel, possibly to prop up his flagging belief in the power of his own gods, and then notes that in Daniel “is the spirit of the holy gods” (a true plural here), to be able to interpret his dream.  At this point Nebuchadnezzar was still married to his gods.

He will also, in verse 9, say that “no mystery is too difficult for you.”  Whereas his other psychic advisors had failed him again and again, Daniel had come through every time he was needed.  So the king appeals to him once again, acknowledging that he needed Daniel’s help.

In the OT the presence of God’s Spirit often implies the activity of God in his dynamic power, giving life and freedom to his people and to the world; the effect of this on human beings is to make them behave in remarkable ways and perform extraordinary deeds.  A person who receives out-of-the-ordinary insights or revelations does so by the work of the divine spirit (Gen 41:38; Num 24:2; 2 Sam 23:2; 2 Chr 15:1; 20:14; 24:20) (John Goldingay, Daniel, vol. 30, Word Biblical Commentary, p. 87).

The same is true for Christ followers under the New Covenant.  We have been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit, sometimes miraculous in nature, but always enabling us to be able to perform ministry beyond our natural abilities, wisdom or strength.  We are dependent upon the Holy Spirit not only for fruitbearing ministry but also for flourishing in our Christian growth.

The transformation in Nebuchadnezzar’s thinking that takes place in the course of this chapter is underlined by the names that Nebuchadnezzar uses for Daniel.  In the narrative frame, written after his experience of humbling, Nebuchadnezzar calls Daniel by his Judean name (meaning, “God is my judge”), whereas in the reported conversations that took place earlier, he called him “Belteshazzar” (meaning, “Bel, guard his life”).  In the same way, prior to his humbling, Nebuchadnezzar described Daniel in pagan terms as one “in whom is the spirit of the gods” (Dan. 4:8).

What is meant by this statement?  John Walvoord notes:

It is debatable whether gods is singular or plural, as it could be translated either way.  Young, with a wealth of evidence from Montgomery, considers it a singular noun and thus a recognition by the king “that the God of Dan. was different from his own gods.”  This distinction is borne out by the adjective “holy” (4:8, 18; 5:11). The philological evidence supports the singular, although Leupold agrees with Driver that the noun and its adjective are plural and a reflection of the king’s polytheism.  

The word holy, according to Young, refers to gods who are divine, rather than specifically having moral purity.  The ultimate judgment of the expression depends on how well Nebuchadnezzar comprehended the nature of Daniel’s God.  He obviously had high respect for the God of Daniel and may have had a true faith in the God of Israel.  Nebuchadnezzar, having justified his singling out Daniel of all the wise men, now records in his decree his conversation with Daniel which includes a restatement of his dream.

I do believe that by the end of this experience Nebuchadnezzar has finally come to believe in the one true God, God Most High, the God of Daniel.  However, it may be that at the beginning of this experience, before his humbling, he still thought of Daniel’s God as one among many gods to be worshiped.

Ligon Duncan points out: “Isn’t it interesting, in verses 8 and 9, how they record for us both Nebuchadnezzar’s trust in Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s fear of Daniel.  Notice in verse 8, Nebuchadnezzar is careful to call Daniel Belteshazzar who was named after his own gods.  It’s almost like he reminds himself that Daniel is Belteshazzar, who is named after his own gods, to protect him from any undue influence that this Hebrew prophet might have over him.  You can almost see the king’s insecurity with the power of this man, with this man’s connection with heaven, with his evident godliness and character, and so he makes sure to call Daniel, not by his Hebrew name, but by his Babylonian name and remind himself that that name itself is the name of Nebuchadnezzar’s own god.  He’s a little bit frightened of the kind of influence that Daniel may have over him.  And at the same time, we see in verses 8 and 9 that Nebuchadnezzar knows that Daniel will tell him the truth.  What a testimony to Daniel’s faithfulness.  Of all the people in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, Daniel and those three witnesses were the most faithful friends that Nebuchadnezzar really had because they would tell him the truth no matter what.  Even Nebuchadnezzar knew that.  He knew that whatever the case was, Daniel was going to tell him the truth, he would tell him what that dream really meant.

There is a lot of pressure on Christians these days to express their love for others by agreeing with their sinful choices.  But in reality the most loving thing we can do is to tell people the truth, to warn them that their choices will not give them true joy and satisfaction and fulfillment, that true freedom is found not in pursuing our own will and desires, but in pursuing the will and desires of God.  We are to always “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) even when it may seem to rub people the wrong way.

In our current culture, friends who tell us what we want to hear are the ones we naturally value.  People more likely prefer friends who flatter them. They want friends who will respond to a problem about a difficult decision in their life with, “You should do what makes you happy.” Friendship in our culture often involves mutual encouragement to sin.

Bur a true friend will point out spiritual things to us we can’t see, such as sin and idolatry.  They will point out to us when we’ve wandered off the narrow path.  They will show us areas in our life where we lack joy in God — relishing in the wonder of who he is and what he has done.  A Christian friend won’t tell us what we want to hear, but what we need to hear.  “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:5-6).

As C.H. Spurgeon said about such friendships,

True friends put enough trust in you to tell you openly of your faults. Give me for a friend the man who will speak honestly of me before my face; who will not tell first one neighbor, and then another, but who will come straight to my house, and say, “Sir, I feel there is such-and-such a thing in you, which, as my brother, I must tell you of.” That man is a true friend; he has proved himself to be so; for we never get any praise for telling people of their faults; we rather hazard their dislike; a man will sometimes thank you for it, but he does not often like you any the better.

Daniel was this type of friend to Nebuchadnezzar, and that is why Nebuchadnezzar turned to him time after time for help when he needed it.  Let’s try to be a friend like Daniel, one who will tell the truth even when it is difficult because we truly love that person.

So, last week we talked about how, when we think so highly of ourselves, that God sometimes has to take us down a notch or two, to humble us, to get us to see reality, to help us understand who is really on the throne.

Some of you are old enough to remember Mike Tyson.  He was a great heavyweight boxer in the 80’s and early 90’s.  He had a string of heavyweight challenges between 1985-1990 which he knocked out in 1 minute or less—ten of them.  But at the peak of his career, in 1990, Iron Mike squared off against a no-name fighter by the name of Buster Douglas.  This wasn’t even supposed to be a challenge.  Tyson had knocked out his previous opponent in 93 seconds, so the bets were not on whether he would win, but how long it would take. 

But Mike was had such a big head from his previous successes that he didn’t even prepare for this fight.  He stayed out late partying the night before.

You can guess what happened:  Buster Douglas won by knockout in the 10th round.  That no-name boxer beat the champion.  Tyson’s career went rapidly downhill from there.  Mike Tyson’s life illustrates a tragic truth: defeat is difficult, but success can be fatal.  It can cause us to take things for granted and believe we are invincible and the creator of all this success.

God did the same thing for Nebuchadnezzar.  In the midst of all his success and glory, God took him down a notch of two and literally made him eat grass.  But through it all, Nebuchandezzar learned his lesson and came out a winner again.

The world is filled with people who think they don’t need God, or believe that they are God—that is, capable of living their own lives to their own satisfaction.  But God still knows how to humble the proud.

British playwright George Bernard Shaw put it this way:

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire, and the other is to gain it. We don’t look at it that way. In our eyes gaining your heart’s desire is the very purpose of life itself. But how many people have achieved their dreams only to be ruined in the process? Success can be just as big a temptation as failure, perhaps more so since success tends to make us take life for granted. While it is true that God speaks to us both ways, we tend to listen more when God speaks through sorrow, pain, loss, and personal failure. Success tends to make us complacent but failure cannot be denied.

In this chapter of Daniel Nebuchadnezzar is enjoying the zenith of success.  Everything is going his way.  He has conquered many nations, he has built a beautiful city, the envy of the world, he was living in peace and abundance and luxury.  But God was going to teach him a lesson about how little he was and how big God is.

We enjoy hearing the testimonies of those who have come to put their trust in Jesus Christ.  Sometimes those stories are very dramatic, in which people have been saved out of a traumatic or wicked past and God’s grace is made much of.  Others grew up in Christian homes and their story, while maybe not as dramatic, is still real and relevant as they speak of how God used various influences in their lives to acquaint them with the gospel.

In Daniel chapter 4 we have the testimony of Nebuchadnezzar.

Chapter 4 begins like a letter, like the New Testament epistles: “King Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you!” (Dan. 4:1)

Doesn’t that sound similar to the way Paul introduces his epistles?  “Grace and peace…”

The opening formula, ‘(From) X [the writer] to Y’[the recipients], is common in Aramaic letters of the Persian period (Fitzmyer 1974: 211), and is also found in Neo-Babylonian letters (Knutson 1983: 20) (Ernest Lucas, Daniel, ed. David W. Baker and Gordon J. Wenham, vol. 20, Apollos Old Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 108).  A greeting very much like 4:1 is found in Daniel 6:25 where Darius wrote a similar decree with almost the same wording.  And, of course, we see this in the New Testament epistles as well.

So this is news that Nebuchadnezzar wants spread far and wide—“to all peoples, nations and languages, that dwell in all the earth.”  Like a newborn Christian, Nebuchadnezzar wants the whole world to know what God has done for him.

Wherever Babylon had influence, the tale would be told.  He wants everyone in his kingdom (and even beyond) to know what Most High God had done for him!  That’s pretty amazing.  He is being an evangelist here!  Even more amazing is that this story is not flattering to Nebuchadnezzar at all!

But, as we saw in chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar was not afraid to humble himself when confronted with power greater than his own.  As Warren Wiersbe notes: “That Nebuchadnezzar should openly admit his pride, his temporary insanity, and his beastly behavior, and then give glory to the God of Israel for his recovery, is indeed a remarkable thing” (Warren Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: Old Testament, p. 1356).

Now “peace be multiplied to you” would surely stick in the craw of most of those nations who had been subjugated to Babylon’s military might, especially the Jews.  Psalm 137 paints a vivid picture of how nations, ground beneath the Babylonian juggernaut, felt toward imperial Babylon.  Peace?  You’ve got to be kidding!

This was either cruel hyperbole, or evidence of a glorious change of heart!

This benediction upon them shows awareness of his responsibility as God’s instrument on their behalf to further their prosperity and security, as any God-fearing king would do.

Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon and its empire, yet his message’s recipients extended far beyond his empire.  The purpose of his account was “to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me” (v. 2).

It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. (Dan. 4:2)

These verses (vv. 2-3) introduce the central concern of this story: the kingship of Nebuchadnezzar and the kingship of the Most High God.  What God had done to him and for him served to convince him that God alone is the source of power and authority and that any power and authority he possessed he now acknowledges as being by God’s permission (Romans 13:1, 4).  As the book of Daniel constantly emphasizes, and something we do well to remember even today, is that any position of power and authority is a gift from God; it is given to them by God (cf. Rom. 13:1-4).

The words “seemed good to” declares to others his experience because it is good to declare this truth.  It was good news!  David Guzik says, “It is good to declare what God has done for us.  Satan has a huge interest in keeping us unnaturally silent about the signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for us.”  But we should be excited and bold to share it with whomever might listen!

Remember the song Blessed Assurance?  “This is my story, this is my song…”  We should be constantly voicing our praise of this great God who has saved us from our sins and eternal punishment.

So these words became the introduction to a Babylonian state document and “God did something with this proclamation of Nebuchadnezzar that the emperor could not have imagined: He picked it up and incorporated it into His own deathless Word, which can never pass away” (John Phillips, Exploring Daniel, p. 70).

Matthew Henry says, “Nebuchadnezzar was now old, had reigned above forty years, and had seen much of the world and revolutions, yet never till now was he brought to admire God’s signs and his wonders” (Commentary on the Whole Bible p. 1089).

These wonders include a vision and an interpretation of the vision (vv. 4-27), a judgment involving beastly behavior (vv. 28-33), a restoration of his reason (vv. 34-35), then after that an increase of his greatness (vv. 36-37).  Due to the emphasis on God’s granting the kingdoms of men to whomever he will (vv. 17, 25-26, 32), the king’s humiliation and restoration are especially in view.  As Nebuchadnezzar made clear, he attributes these wonders to “Most High God” (v. 2; cf. 3:26).  His gratitude overwhelms his soul and he can’t help praising the Most High God.

David Jeremiah, in his book Handwriting on the Wall, calls this chapter “The Gospel according to Nebuchadnezzar.”

As others read this letter, many might have wondered at this point, “Who is this Most High God?”  Is he more powerful than Marduk or Nabu?  Is he more deserving of worship than that giant golden idol erected by the king on the plains of Dura?  Is he worthy of the worship I’ve given to my gods throughout the years?  Who is this Most High God?

Then there was the group of Jewish exiles.  They knew who this “Most High God” was, but why was Nebuchadnezzar now praising him?

With two pairs of parallel statements, Nebuchadnezzar extolled God’s deeds and rule (4:3).

How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders!  His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation. (Dan. 4:3).

Nebuchadnzzar is extolling God’s greatness and goodness to him, the true King, the ultimate King who reigns forever.  His kingdom will never end and never be taken away from Him.

The content of the first line in each pair is repeated in the second line.  His deeds are “great” and “mighty” and are called “signs” and “wonders.”  God’s rule is synonymous with “kingdom” and “dominion,” and its duration is “everlasting” and “from generation to generation.” The hymn-like nature of verse 3 resembles the acclaim of Yahweh voiced by his prophets, but the words did not imply true worship from Babylon’s king.  To him, “God Most High” was real, but he was not God alone.  At least not yet, but he does seem to get there by the end of this chapter.  Of course, these opening sentences are giving us “The Rest of the Story.”

Now, notice that this letter is addressed to “peoples, nations and men of every language,” the same group summoned in the previous chapter to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar’s image (4:1; 3:7).  It was like Nebuchadnezzar was now, to his credit, trying to reverse a past mistake.  Whereas he had formerly called all these people to worship the idol, he tells that same group of people now to worship, not the idol, but the true God, God Most High, the God of the Jews.

Also, the “miraculous signs and wonders” would certainly fit the deliverance of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace.  The key difference, however, is that now Nebuchadnezzar speaks of “signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me” (4:2).  From being a persecutor of the faithful in the previous chapter, Nebuchadnezzar has now himself become a loud witness to the power of the true God.

Iain Duguid points out: “This is a striking shift in the life of the most powerful man in the world.  It is as dramatic as the transformation in the New Testament of Saul, the persecuting Pharisee, to Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.  How did such an incredible change take place?  In both cases, the change was not wrought by witnessing the power of God as an observer.  King Nebuchadnezzar watched Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego emerge unscathed from the fiery furnace (Dan. 3) even as Saul saw the Lord’s grace sustain Stephen through his violent death (Acts 8:1), yet neither man was immediately converted by the experience.  Miraculous demonstrations of God’s power can certainly stop people in their tracks and make them think, but true conversion can only be accomplished by a personal experience of God’s power and grace” (Daniel in Reformed Expository Commentary, pp. 63-64).

Writing in the aftermath of the First Great Awakening in New England, Jonathan Edwards wrote one book defending the signs and wonders attending the revival and then a second book A Treatise on Religious Affections he meticulously explores the nature of true religious conversion, distinguishing it from mere emotional experiences or outward displays of piety.  He emphasizes that while intense feelings and observable actions can sometimes accompany genuine conversion, they are not, in themselves, sufficient proof of a transformed heart.  In other words, miracles, or extraordinary events and experiences, do not necessarily equate to genuine conversion. 

For conversion to happen, there must be a divine work of a change of heart, or a new birth or resurrection which enables one to believe.

In each of our lives we must be exposed to the mighty power and amazing grace of God and be humbled before him in order for that miraculous conversion to happen to us.  The Holy Spirit must open our spiritual eyes and ears to behold the beauty, sufficiency and supremacy of Jesus Christ as our Savior.

Although Nebuchadnezzar would not have welcomed the notion at this point that his earthly reign would end, he opened his account declaring that God’s kingdom is the one that truly is an everlasting kingdom.   Since unending dominion belonged to God, it did not belong to the king of Babylon.  This admission is both true and shocking because of Nebuchadnezzar’s attitude and actions that we’ve observed in chapters 1–3.  

Throughout the first three chapters of Daniel, we have seen God working in the king’s life to teach him humility.  In chapter 2, God sends a vision to Nebuchadnezzar of the statue.  The purpose of that vision was to remind him that even the most powerful human civilizations would all eventually fall, and only God’s kingdom would endure forever.  But instead of responding with humility and submitting himself to this God, Nebuchadnezzar built an idol (reminiscent of the golden head, but this time made completely of gold) and demanded everyone in his empire to worship it.  Needless to say, the vision went to his head!

God therefore used the occasion of the dedication of the image to remind Nebuchadnezzar of who was really on the throne.  The Lord crashed the party.  His three chosen instruments would not bow down to his idol.  So, the king grew furious and had them thrown into the fiery furnace.   He definitely thought that his power was absolute and that he had the final word.  But God protected their lives and once again demonstrated that He, not Nebuchadnezzar, was the King of Kings.

While Nebuchadnezzar did make a perfunctory statement about God’s greatness at the end of chapter 3, it was possibly just a temporary blip and soon he regressed to his old arrogant ways.  Unfortunately, we see that happen all too often, even in our own lives, how we get excited about God and make grand promises to him and then a few weeks later we slide back into old bad habits.  But God wasn’t finished with Nebuchadnezzar, as the events of this chapter show.

Some, however, do believe that Nebuchadnezzar’s spiritual turning point came in chapter 3.  Bill Wenstrom that Nebuchadnezzar’s praise of God in Daniel 3:28 came from the mouth of a true believer.  He goes on to say: “The king’s praise is an expression of his faith in the God of Israel.  The Aramaic verb b^erǎḵ which we translated “worthy to be praised” appears only once in the book of Daniel.  However, its Hebrew equivalent bā∙rǎḵ (בָּרַךְ) (baw-rak´) appears 75 times in the Old Testament.  When the word is used of praising God, the individual praising God is always a believer and never an unbeliever.  Thus, Daniel 3:28 is recording for us the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar.

Therefore, if Nebuchadnezzar was not yet a believer at the end of chapter 3, chapter 4 is God’s further work in humbling him so that he does finally come to commit himself to the worship of the true God in chapter 4.  On the other hand, if Nebuchadnezzar’s spiritual birth happened in chapter 3, then chapter 4 points out to us believers the reality that sometimes God may have to deal with us ever so severely to rid of our sins, particularly the insidious sin of pride.

Normally a doxology like this comes at the end of the events to which it refers.  Some have compared these three verses to a movie or television episode which shows the ending first, then backs up to a previous time and describes what brings about such a surprising ending.

God had to do something pretty drastic to get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention.  This time, God deals with him personally.  He doesn’t just show him a vision (chapter 2), or do something miraculous for someone else (chapter 3), but he directly shows Nebuchadnezzar who’s really the boss.

What happened to Nebuchadnezzar happens to all of us sooner or later.  And we can thank God when it does.

One of the most powerful and chilling portrayals of the insanity of rejecting God—which we do whenever in words or actions we proudly affirm our own greatness and achievements—is Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4.

Daniel 4 is that strange chapter in the book of Daniel which shows that the greatest man on earth, the moment he proclaims his own greatness, is humbled by the truly greatest God of heaven.  He spends seven years on all fours, rooting around the ground like an animal.

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis called it “the great sin.”  Do you know what that sin was?  He goes on to say…

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when they see it in others; and of which hardly any people, except some Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. There is no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves; and the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), p. 109).

This vice is the sin of pride. Lewis called it “the great sin” because of the enmity it created not only between man and man, but between man and God.  You see, sin is imagining that we deserve to be in the place of God.  Again, C. S. Lewis said, “It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the completely anti-God state of mind” (Mere Christianity).  This is why God hates pride (Prov. 6:16-17; 8:13).  “God abhors those people worst who adore themselves most” (William Secker, The Consistent Christian).

Robert Rayburn notes: “Pride is the idolatry of the self.  It is the nature of pride as competition with God – the displacing of God by the self at the center – that has led many Christian thinkers through the ages to regard pride (superbia) as the mother sin and the essential element in all sin” (“Pride and Humility,” Tabletalk, May 2008, p. 64).

Pride is essentially stealing glory from God, believing that we deserve the credit and glory for what we have made of ourselves.  Nebuchadnezzar will commit this vertical larceny, standing on his balcony basking in the glory of his achievements, proclaiming “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30).

America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, said this about pride:

Pride is a person having too high an opinion of himself. Pride is the first sin that ever entered into the universe, and the last sin that is rooted out. Pride is the worst sin. It is the most secret of all sins. There is no other matter in which the heart is more deceitful and unsearchable. Alas, how much pride the best have in their hearts! Pride is God’s most stubborn enemy! There is no sin so much like the devil as pride. It is a secret and subtle sin, and appears in a great many shapes which are undetected and unsuspected.

Jesus told the story of two men who lived in Jerusalem.  This is found in Luke 16:19-31.

One was a humble, poor beggar who loved the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The other was a proud, wealthy man who looked down upon the poor beggar and never took the time to look up to the living and true God.

They died about the same time.  Since Lazarus, the poor beggar, was trusting in Jesus Christ alone for his salvation, he immediately went to Heaven.  The wealthy man died and found himself in the torment of Hell (Hades/Sheol).  Now he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus at his side.  He begged and pleaded that Abraham would send Lazarus to him for just a moment so he could dip his finger in water and cool his tongue because he was in such agony.

Abraham answered, “No.” He said, “There is a great chasm fixed so that no one in Heaven can cross over into Hell and no one in Hell can ever cross over into Heaven.”  In other words, there is no crossing over from one realm to another, so therefore no assistance can come to you.

Do you remember what the wealthy man said next?

Then the proud, wealthy man begged and pleaded with Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to his five brothers to tell them about this place of torment so they would not end up there.  The wealthy man now understood how his pride and prosperity had kept his heart away from the Lord, and he was desperate to get his message out so his family would not end up in the same torment.

He said, “I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment” (Luke 16:27, 28).  Can you feel the urgency and the passion of this proud, wealthy man to get this message out?  Ah, but it was too late; there was now nothing he could do.

Nebuchadnezzar, here in Daniel 4, had this same sense of urgency and passion to get that same message out to those whose hearts were so filled with pride and whose lives were so filled with prosperity that they had no room for the true and living God.  The lesson he learned is recorded in the last sentence of his testimony: “Those who walk in pride [God] is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37).  The lesson Nebuchadnezzar learned came from the worst experience of his life, but today from Heaven he would tell you it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It is best that we learn this lesson as well.  For both the Old and New Testaments warn us: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” (Prov. 3:34; James 4:6)

And 1 Peter 5:6 tells us, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”

James Montgomery Boice’s commentary entitles this chapter, “The Sin that God Will Not Tolerate.”  All sin will be judged. Many sins are judged in this life; all sins will be judged in the life to come. Thus in using this title I am speaking in a different sense, and what I want to point out is that although God does temporarily tolerate some sins in this world, yet there is one sin that God does not seem to countenance.

Napoleon is portrayed by the artists he commissioned to memorialize him as a strutting little man, standing defiantly with his right hand pushed between his vest buttons or as a hero astride a fiery steed, pointing the way for his troops to cross the Alps.  His bicorn hat made instantly recognizable and imitated at costume parties through the years.  He was proud, a man driven by ambition to conquer Europe.

On the morning of the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was describing to his commanding officers his strategy for that day’s campaign.  He said, “We’ll put the infantry here, the cavalry over there, and the artillery in that spot.  At the end of the day, England will be at the feet of France and Wellington will be the prisoner of Napoleon.”

One commanding officer responded, “But we must not forget that man proposes and God disposes.”

With typical arrogance, the little dictator pulled his body to its full five-feet-two and replied, “I want you to understand, sir, that Napoleon proposes and Napoleon disposes.”

Victor Hugo, the novelist, wrote, “From that moment, Waterloo was lost, for God sent rain and hail so that the troops of Napoleon could not maneuver as he had planned, and on that night it was Napoleon who was prisoner of Wellington, and France was at the feet of England.”

Again pride is #1 on God’s hate list.  “There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes” (Prov. 6:16, 17a).  While the remainder of the “seven deadly sins”—lust, sloth, greed, and so on, have been recategorized as harmless peccadilloes, pride is still generally reckoned deservedly to go before the fall.

Proverbs hits the issue of pride hard:

“The LORD detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished.” (Prov. 16:5).

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.” (Prov. 8:13)

So God obviously hates pride.  It takes God off the throne and puts ourselves on the throne, making us sovereign over our lives.  We determine what is best for us and how we live.  The biggest problem with pride is that it is so easily seen in others, but we find it hard to admit in ourselves.

And here is what pride leads to…

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov. 16:18)

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” (Prov. 11:2)

In God’s grace and mercy to us, he sometimes uses life’s difficult experiences to remove the blinders from our eyes and show us what our hearts really harbor.  He exposes and confounds our pride in order to transform us from the inside out.

Spurgeon said: “No matter how dear you are to God, if pride is harbored in your spirit, He will whip it out of you.”  In fact, it is a sign of God’s love that He will whip pride out of us.  And that is what God is going to do for Nebuchadnezzar.

God has been dealing with Nebuchadnezzar now for decades.  There were times when Nebuchadnezzar seemed close to bowing his knee to God Most High (Dan. 2:47; 3:28-29), but he had never crossed that line of committing himself totally to being a worshipper of Yahweh alone.  It seems that the events of this chapter were necessary as the tipping point in Nebuchadnezzar’s faith journey.

Overview

This chapter is unique in Scripture.  It is the one time that a Gentile monarch narrates a story.  It is Nebuchadnezzar’s personal testimony of how God took him from where he was to where He wanted him to be, and Nebuchadnezzar tells in his own language exactly how God dealt with him.  We have Paul’s testimonies in the book of Acts, but this is the only personal testimony in the Old Testament.  And again, what makes it so unique is that it is the testimony of a Gentile.

The key to understanding these early chapters, and perhaps the entire Book of Daniel, comes in the second verse of the book, “And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god” (Dan. 1:2).

By this symbolic act Nebuchadnezzar was asserting that his gods were stronger than Jehovah.  And so it seemed.  We know that God permits others to triumph over his people for his own reasons, generally to bring judgment for sin.  The temporary victory of evil persons does not mean that God is not more powerful than evil or that he will not ultimately be victorious.  Yet this is what Nebuchadnezzar thought.  These opening chapters of Daniel show Jehovah teaching this proud monarch that neither his gods nor Nebuchadnezzar himself was stronger than the Most High.  God is God!  “My glory I will not give to another,” says God.  He does not allow Nebuchadnezzar to give God’s glory to another in this story.

So after two to three decades since the first one, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that no one but Daniel can interpret: a tree grows to a great height and provides food and shade for animals, yet a command is given for it to be chopped down to a stump (4:5-7, 8=16).  The lesson of the dream once again concerns God’s rule over earthly kings and kingdoms (v. 17): Nebuchadnezzar is the tree (vv. 20-22), and God will humble him if he does not repent and practice righteousness (vv. 25-27).  God fulfills the dream by giving him the mind and behavior of a beast (vv. 29-33).  Once God restores Nebuchadnezzar’s faculties, the king praises God and declares his unconquerable sovereign power (vv. 34-37).

Nebuchadnezzar wanted the whole world to know what God had done for him.  It is apparent from our study of the first three chapters of Daniel that God has been dealing with Nebuchadnezzar’s heart.  This is the third time that the Babylonian king has been confronted by his Maker.

Outline

1. Judgment on Royal Arrogance (4:1-37)
2. Nebuchadnezzar Confesses God’s Everlasting Dominion (4:1-3)
3. Nebuchadnezzar Is Afraid Because of a Dream’s Content (4:4-5)
4. The Wise Men of Babylon Fail to Interpret the Dream (4:6-7)
5. Nebuchadnezzar Tells Daniel the Dream (4:8-18)

3′. Daniel Successfully Interprets the Dream (4:19-27)

2′. Nebuchadnezzar Is Humiliated Because of the Dream’s Fulfillment (4:28-33)

1′. Nebuchadnezzar Confesses God’s Everlasting Dominion (4:34-37)

This narrative begins with the lesson Nebuchadnezzar learned as a result of the events recounted in this chapter and ends with the same exclamation: God’s dominion is forever (1 and 1′). Also common to 1 and 1′ is language addressing everyone who dwells on earth (vv. 1, 35).

The next sections of the chiasm relate Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that troubles him (2) and this dream becoming a reality that humbles him (2′).  In the former, he prospered in his palace but became fearful (2), and in the latter he became prideful in his palace and experienced the dream’s fulfillment (2′).

3 and 3′ provide a contrast between the Babylonian wise men and Daniel.  Even though Nebuchadnezzar told his wise men the dream, they did not even attempt to interpret it. Daniel, however, interpreted the dream after the king described its content.

Nebuchadnezzar’s description of the dream is the central section (4) of this chapter.  This description is itself an inclusio, marked by the language in verses 8-9 and 18 that includes the name “Belteshazzar,” a reference to “the spirit of the holy gods,” and a recognition of the wise men’s inability contrasted with Daniel’s ability. Within the inclusio (vv. 8-9, 18) are two distinct subsections: verses 10-12 and verses 13-17.  The first subsection describes the activity of the tree (vv. 10-12), while the second subsection relates the command of the watcher against that tree (vv. 13-17).  Each subsection begins similarly: “The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold . . .” (v. 10) and “I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold . . .” (v. 13).

Chapter 4 stands out from chapters 1-3 as first-person narration from Nebuchadnezzar’s point of view (cf. 4:1, 4, 18 24, 27).  Only in this chapter of the book does someone other than Daniel convey a first-person account (cf. 8:1; 9:2; 10:2; 12:5).  There is a brief transition to a third-person vantage point in 4:28-33, but the verses surrounding it (vv. 1-27, 34-37) are the king’s account.  Chapter 4 is the last chapter in the book featuring Nebuchadnezzar as a character.

Perhaps we commit vertical larceny (stealing God’s glory) much more than we realize. Perhaps we quest for personal glory more than we think. Perhaps, in some way, we stand on our balcony and take credit for what only God can produce.

Perhaps we’re not too far from Nebuchadnezzar’s sin.

This Old Testament story is a warning to us today, and in the story, God uses Daniel to warn Nebuchadnezzar (see 4:24-27). Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream and pleads with him to “break off your sins by practicing righteousness.”

When you read this story, you must meditate on how incredible God’s mercy is. In the face of the arrogance and murderous self-glory of Nebuchadnezzar, God has every holy reason to rise in righteous intolerance and wipe this man from the face of the earth. Everything this worldly ruler stood for was an abomination to the Lord Almighty. It should stun you that God stooped first to warn him.

Again, we find ourselves in the shoes of Nebuchadnezzar. If you’re God’s child, you are blessed with the convicting, warning, merciful ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The question is: are you listening?

When the Holy Spirit blesses you with convicting grace, it will be tempting to harden your heart and argue for your righteousness. It will be tempting to claim your biblical literacy and theological knowledge as evidence of your spiritual maturity.

When the Holy Spirit visits you with a merciful warning, it will be tempting to compare yourself to others and argue that you are surely more righteous than they are. It will be tempting to ignore these warnings if God chooses to use people who you think are unqualified or less mature than you.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego took a brave stand for their faith in God, refusing to bow down to the imposing idol that Nebuchadnezzar had built.  The penalty for refusal to worship the image was to be cast into the fiery furnace.  In his anger, Nebuchadnezzar pumped up the heat seven times.  However, these three young men not only survived the flames, but had the opportunity to spend at least a few moments with “one like the son of God.”  Daniel 3:24-25 says…

24 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.” 25 He answered and said, “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.”

While these three men still survived and would be taken out of the fiery furnace, the first reward mentioned for their faith and their faithfulness is that a fourth men walked with them.

Who was this fourth man, one “like the son of the gods”?

In favor of identifying the individual as an angel is Nebuchadnezzar’s statement in verse 28 where he refers to the individual as an angel and the numerous passages in the OT where angels are referred to as sons of God (Gen. 6:2-4; Deu. 32:8; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7).  Also supporting this identification is the subsequent delivery of Daniel in the lions’ den which is said to be by an angel (Dan. 6:22). This is the view taken by some commentators.

On the other hand, some passages in the OT refer to a unique individual as God’s Son (singular), who appears to differ from the angels (Psa. 2:7, 12; Prov. 30:4; cf. Dan. 7:13.  This is what theologians and commentators call a “Christophany,” a pre-incarnation appearance of Jesus Christ.  Many Christian commentators take this individual to be one and the same as the Angel of the Lord—the mysterious figure who speaks in the first-person for God and even receives worship (Gen. 16:7-14; 22:11-15; 31:33-13; 32:28-30; Exod. 3:2-5; 23:20-23; Num. 22:35; Deut. 4:37; Josh. 5:13-15; Judg. 6:11-24; 13:21-23; Hosea 12:3-5).  Although it is beyond the scope of our treatment to expound on this topic at length, many believe this special angel was a preincarnate representation of the Second Person of the Trinity: Jesus Christ.

The wonderful promise of the Gospel is that Jesus came as Immanuel, “God with us.”  He dwelt among us (John 1:14) and lived a perfect life and then died for us.  And now, He promises to live within us (Matt. 28:20; Col. 1:27; Gal. 2:20).  Just like these three young Hebrews, Jesus Christ experienced being abandoned to judgment by God.  Iain Duguid comments: “When the fire of God’s wrath burned him to the core and blazed unchecked over him, he was entirely alone” (“Daniel” in Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 58).  And He did that for our sake!  But not these three young men!

It may well be that these three young men had remembered and had claimed the promise uttered by the prophet Isaiah some years before: “But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isa. 43:1-2).

“He was with Moses who saw Him in the burning bush, with the disciples in the midst of the storm at sea, and with Stephen as he was being stoned by an angry mob” (David Jeremiah, Handwriting on the Wall, p. 83).

Christ did not keep them out of the furnace but found them in it.  He does not always shield you from all distresses and dangers, but it is in the loneliness, in the betrayal, in the loss that the Fourth Man comes and walks with you.  He has the knack of both exposing you to, yet keeping you through, waters and rivers and fire (cf. Isa. 43:2–3)—and operating rooms and funeral parlours and an empty house.  The Fourth Man can always find his people.” (Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail, ed. Alec Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), p. 58).

God had been faithful to keep His promise.  He has called Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego by name thirteen times in this narrative.  And he had delivered them through the fire.  And most of all, he had been with them.

Do you feel God’s presence with you when you go through significant trials?  When everything else seems lost, do you feel His presence?  Do you see the fourth person standing in the fire with you?

God doesn’t always keep us out of the fires, but sometimes lets us go through the fires, but never alone.  Our Lord has promised to be “with us,” Immanuel.  As a result, nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love (Rom. 8:38-39).  That commitment to be “with us” finds its richest fulfillment in the coming of Christ.  In Jesus, the promise of “God with us” took on flesh and walked among us, experiencing all the pressures and temptations of this world, yet remaining utterly without sin.

And this is not because his commitment to holiness went untested.  He faced Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-10).  Being tempted three times He passed the tests.  “He faced the difficulties and frustrations that we all feel, without once bowing his head to an idol.  He never surrendered, even under the greatest temptation and pressure.  However, even this humbling of himself was not sufficient identification with us in our trials.  To complete the process, Jesus Christ was himself falsely accused, condemned to death by the Roman authorities, and then nailed to a cross.  Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, his obedience was tested and found faithful unto death” (Iain Duguid, Daniel: Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 57).

God delivered Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, but not His own Son.  Why?  “The answer to that question is that on the cross Jesus was taking into himself the fiery pains that we deserve for our compromise and idolatry.  Unlike Daniel’s three friends, I am no hero of the faith.  Every time I bow down to the idols of my heart, I merit for myself God’s judgment curse.  I choose to escape the fiery threat of my idol, but only at the cost of earning the fiery judgment of God for my unfaithfulness…Yet in the case of his people, God took all our fiery judgment curse and laid it on his own Son.  He personally paid the price of my hell during those six hours on the cross so that I might pass through the threatening fire unburned and emerge safely on the other side.  What is more, his perfect faithfulness is now credited to my account as if it were my own.  A faithfulness that far exceeds that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is now mine as a free gift” (Iain Duguid, Daniel: Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 58).

God was faithful to deliver Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  Daniel will soon experience similar supernatural protection during his night in the lions’ den, “was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God” (Dan. 6:23).

We don’t know if anything like this has ever happened again.  In the first few centuries many martyrs died in the flames.  But in this case God did deliver these three young men who trusted Him and worshiped Him alone.

God’s promise to preserve believers through the fire (cf. Isa. 43:2) was a source of comfort for the English Protestant reformer Thomas Bilney on the night before his martyrdom:

The night before his death [in 1531], he was eating a hearty meal when Matthew Parker and some friends came to visit him. They tried to comfort him before the horrible ordeal of the following day, but Bilney said nothing. When he had finished eating his meal, he slipped down the bench to where they were sitting, put his open Bible on the table beside him, held his index finger over the flame of the candle and burned it to the bone. He looked at his stunned friends and pointed to Isaiah 43:2 – “When though walkest through fire, thou shalt not be burned.”

Hugh Lattimer and Nicholas Ridley were influential English Reformers in the mid 1500s.  Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley are fastened together in history primarily because they were fastened to the same stake on October 16, 1555, on the north side of Oxford. 

Ridley was the first to strengthen his friend. “Be of good heart, brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.” As the bundle of sticks caught fire beneath them, Latimer had his turn. Raising his voice so Ridley could hear, he cried, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” (https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-british-candle)

God didn’t keep Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego out of the flames because, first, it is within the fires that our faith is tested and approved (1 Peter 1:5-7).  These three young men had great faith before, but now they had fire-tested faith!  Second, by going through the flames unharmed, and with the revelation of a fourth person, it was a testimony to Nebuchadnezzar that these men worshipped the true God.

This is the second time that Nebuchadnezzar had been confronted by the true God.  He would need a third time before it really sank in.

The result is that Nebuchadnezzar was “astonished” (Dan. 3:24).  Nebuchadnezzar and his princes and counselors were astounded.  Certainly nothing like this had ever happened before.  Nebuchadnezzar now realizes that he has overstepped into something much bigger than himself.  He quickly sought to remedy the situation.

The second reward for exhibiting faith in God and faithfulness in not bowing down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol is their rescue.

26 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!”  Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire.  27 And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them.

Nebuchadnezzar and all the rest saw that “the fire had not had any power over the bodies of these men.”  Their bodies were not harmed, their clothes were intact, there hair was not signed and their bodies didn’t even smell of smoke.

God had fulfilled Isaiah’s promise made two centuries earlier: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isa. 42:3).  Notice that this is not a promise to take us around the waters or to keep the fire far from us, but, like we are promised now (Acts 14:22; 2 Tim. 3:12; John 16:4), God will be with us in our trials and persecutions and will produce something good (1 Pet. 1:6-7; Matt. 5:12).

Notice the change in perspective in Nebuchadnezzar.  Before he had challenged them that no god could deliver them out of his hands (v. 19) and now he admits that they are “servants of the Most High God.”  He had seen an amazing demonstration of the power of this God and he was now convinced of His supremacy.  In admitting that He was “Most High God,” Nebuchadnezzar was saying about the same thing that he did earlier to Daniel when he used the phrase “God of gods” (2:47).

When Nebuchadnezzar called “come out, and come here” this was an admission of defeat.  He had taken several special measures to guarantee their deaths and nothing had worked.

Unlike Jesus’ triumphant “Lazarus, come forth,” Nebuchadnezzar’s “come forth” was an admission of defeat.  Like Satan, Nebuchadnezzar could not keep these men dead, and they came “out of the grave alive.”

This would have humiliated Nebuchadnezzar.  As Leon Wood notes, “The careful and extreme effort that had been made to destroy the men made the miracle wrought in the furnace still more remarkable in the eyes of the king’s counselors and others standing by” (A Commentary on Daniel, p. 95).

Third, we see that Nebuchadnezzar was deeply moved.  Their faithfulness proved who the true God was.

28 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.

Forgotten now was the foul image that had so occupied Nebuchadnezzar’s mind for months.  He now realizes that the God of the Hebrews was the true God to be worshipped, for He had delivered His people in a decidedly miraculous way.  “Because of the courage of these three young men, a loud-mouthed, proud, vain king was [now] led to praise the God of heaven” (David Jeremiah, Agents of Babylon, p. 106).

I love what it says about them, that “they trusted in Him,” even though they had possessed no assurance that He would come through for them.

Also, they daringly “set aside the king’s command,” taking a risk that was very dangerous by not obeying his command.

And finally they “yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.”  They laid their lives on the line, declaring their loyalty to their God alone.  This reminds me of what is said about the tribulation saints in Revelation 12:11, “[T]they have conquered him [that is, Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

If you know that God is holy and will keep his word to punish sin, you know that it is better to die trusting Christ and clinging to the gospel than to go on living by denying that gospel.  Better to die with the gospel than to live without it, because if you live without the gospel, you still face the alarming prospect of standing before God.  Without the gospel, when you stand before God, all Satan’s accusations will ring true, and you will be damned with Satan, your master who will turn on you, accuse you, then take his pleasure in your pain.  But you can be delivered from Satan. You need only turn from your sin and trust in Christ. (James Hamilton, Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches).

But as a result, they were not harmed.  Not a hair was singed; their clothes did not even smell of smoke.  Their was no soot on them.  The only objects that suffered harm were the king’s ropes and the strong men.

Nebuchadnezzar and these officials had just witnessed undeniable evidence of the supremacy of the Judean God that day.  This was no slight of hand trickery that delivered these three men., no optical illusions. It was obvious that a miracle had occurred.

And so now Nebuchadnezzar blesses their God.  He is forced to praise the very God he had previously mocked.  Again, it is unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar at this point is one who has put his faith in Yahweh alone, as chapter 4 will demonstrate, but he is drawing nearer.

Nebuchadnezzar’s heart was not yet changed at a deep level, despite the great miracle he had just witnessed.  The sad truth is that throughout history people have always been able to explain away the miraculous.  In itself, Jonathan Edwards showed in his Treatise on Religious Affections, the miraculous doesn’t convince; it doesn’t guarantee faith.

The last thing that happens is another promotion.

29 Therefore I make a 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.”  30 Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar does an about-face and proposes that instead of worshipping Nebuchadnezzar’s image, no one should speak “anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego” or they would face terrible deaths.  Why?  Because “there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”

This is an about-face from what Nebuchadnezzar had said in v. 15 when Nebuchadnezzar had arrogantly said, “who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”  Obviously Nebuchadnezzar had learned his lesson.

Grant R. Jeffrey notes the far-reaching impact of this new decree from Nebuchadnezzar:

“The full spiritual and prophetic significance of this new decree is often missed.  While Nebuchadnezzar’s initial order required only that public officials must worship the golden image, it is certain that the decree would have subsequently been expanded to include all the subjects of his empire.  The millions of Jews living in captivity throughout the Babylonian Empire would have been ordered to worship an idol.  If God had not intervened, all the Jews who refused to worship a false god would have been executed.  By choosing obedience to God, the vast majority of the Jews in Babylon would have fallen victim to genocide” (Grant R. Jeffrey, Countdown to the Apocalypse, pp. 70-71).

Is there a hint, here, of Nebuchadnezzar’s own budding faith?  Maybe he was examining his own relation to this God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

In his repentance, Nebuchadnezzar goes a step further, promoting these three Hebrews further up the ladder in the province of Babylon.

God rewards faith.  He rewards the day-to-day faith that expresses itself in obedience and sacrificial love.  He reward the dangerous faith that doesn’t compromise, even when the consequences are harsh.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego knew that a life submitted to the one true God was the only worthwhile way to live.  Nebuchadnezzar didn’t understand that quite yet, but he was about to learn.

This book, indeed this chapter, was written by Daniel to encourage his readers to be faithful and worship and obey God alone no matter the cost.  This amazing miracle encourages us to stay true to God, and whether or not He delivers us, we will see Christ.

But even more important than a miracle which gave comfort to exiled, distressed Jews, was the message that the worship of God is paramount.  This furnace story tells of deliverance but it is about worship.  Daniel 3 means to tell me that the only matter that matters is that I keep the first commandment even if it kills me (Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail, ed. Alec Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), p. 58).

John Chrysostom was one of the greatest Greek church fathers.  He lived in A. D. 347-407.  As a very young Christian he was brought before the emperor, who said that if he would not give up Christ, he would be banished from the country.

Chrysostom said, “You cannot, for the whole world is my Father’s land.  You can’t banish me.”

The emperor said, “I Then I will take away all your property.”

“You cannot.  My treasures are in heaven,” was the reply.

“Then I’ll take you to a pale where there is not a friend to speak of.”

Chrysostom replied, “You cannot.  I have a friend who is closer than a brother.  I shall have Jesus Christ forever.”

The emperor finally threatened, “Then I’ll take away your life!”

The answer was, “You cannot.  My life is hid with God in Christ.”

And the emperor finally said, “What do you do with a man like that?”

Indeed, what do you do with a man or woman who lives as if everything is in Christ, every joy and delight, even their very life?  You cannot take anything away from them to hurt them if what they treasure most is Jesus Christ and their life in Him.

That is the secret of these three Hebrew men—they worshipped the true God and found their joy and delight in Him and Him alone.  Even their very lives were held in forfeit if they could only have this God.  As Asaph says in Psalm 73:26, “My heart and my flesh my fail, but God is the strength of my life [now] and my portion forever!”

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!

Every once in awhile, a person shows their complete dedication to God through an amazing statement of faith.  Think of Esther’s “If I perish, I perish,” or Martin Luther’s “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.  God help me.  Amen.”  Or think of the bold declarations of faith from Ruth and Mary, the mother of Jesus.

It is to this amazing declaration of faith from the three Hebrews that we come to in our study of the book of Daniel.  We read them in Daniel 3:17-18.

17 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. 18 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.”

These three Hebrew men were confident that their God had the power to deliver them out of any situation, no matter how impossible it might seem, just like God had rescued Israel from Pharoah’s armies or David from Goliath.  In fact, having grown up under the reign of godly king Josiah, they had likely been introduced to the narrative of David’s fight against Goliath.  There David had said, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” (1 Sam. 17:37).

Biblical faith has the assurance to say, “I know my God is able to deliver me.”  We are told to pray, “Deliver us from evil.”  So faith has the confidence to say, “I believe that my God will deliver me.”  But it also has the submission to say, “But even if he does not, I will still trust him.”   Strong faith is not presumption.  It doesn’t presume that just because God can, means that He will.  They had strong confidence in God’s ability and power to save them, but they submitted to his willingness to save them.  It wasn’t “Could He?”  but “Would He?”  There were confident in God’s ability, but did not presume that it was His will.

As Iain Duguid says, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not presume to predict what the outcome would be in their case.  If God were our servant, or our accomplice, he would be predictable; he would always do our bidding.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego understood that since God is sovereign, however, it was his choice whether he opted to be glorified in their deaths or through their dramatic deliverance.  Either way, it didn’t make a difference to their decision.  Whether they were miraculously delivered or left to burn in the fire, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego would not compromise their commitment to the Lord” (“Daniel” in Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 53).

It’s as if they said: “We don’t know what our God will do, O king; you may turn us into puddles of carbon; but in one sense it doesn’t matter; the bottom line is that we will not serve your gods or worship your image.”  So, although they were unsure of God’s circumstantial will (whether they escape) but they were confident of God’s revealed will (‘You shall have no other gods besides me’).  They did not lose sight of the most crucial matter.  What mattered most is not whether they would be delivered, but whether they would be obedient!

The verb for worship (Aram., sĕgid) appears eleven times in this chapter (5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 [twice], 18, 28), while serve (pĕlaḥ, in the sense of ‘serving’ a deity) occurs five times (12, 14, 17, 18, 28). A total of sixteen usages hammers the point home: what really matters is not security but worship. And the three friends never forget this (18). (Dale Ralph Davis, the Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail, ed. Alec Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), p. 56).

“Nebuchadnezzar had just declared that no god could deliver them out of his hands, and now they were replaying stoutly that their God could do so.  They were ready to risk their al in their earnestness to give a proper witness to their God” (Leon Wood, A Commentary on Daniel, p. 88).

The “ability” in question here is God’s ethical ability, or willingness.  It is similar to the statement in Genesis 37:4, that says “when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him,” the “could not speak” does not refer to physical inabilities, but to willfulness, they “would not speak peacefully to him.”  Likewise, when Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he utters, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39).  “In terms of absolute possibility, the Father was certainly able to deliver the Son from drinking the cup.  Yet given the Father’s will to save sinners, the cross became the consequent absolute necessity, for that goal could not be accomplished in any other manner” (Iain Duguid, Daniel: Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 52).

They faced a challenging decision that put their faith to the ultimate test.  There was a lot of pressure to conform here.  I have to ask himself: What would I have done?

They knew their God to be a consuming fire (Exod. 24:17; 33:5; Lev. 10:2; Num. 11:1; 16:35; Deut. 4:24; 5:25; Heb. 10:31; 12:29).  They also knew Nebuchadnezzar’s threat of being cast into the furnace was real (Jer. 29:21-23).  But they elected to face a pagan consuming fire rather than a divine consuming fire.

This is similar to what the beleaguered Job said in Job 13:15, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”  Even more commendable than their stout faith that God could deliver them, was their trust in God even if He would not deliver them, if that is possible.

Leon Wood identifies two matters that stand out for notice:

• First, the young men recognized that God’s will might be different from what they would find pleasant, and they were willing to have it so, without complaining. Too often Christians are not willing to have God’s will different from their own, and then do complain most vigorously when it proves to be that way.
• Second, they did not make their own obedience contingent upon God’s doing what which was pleasant to them. They were ready to obey, whether God chose to deliver them from the furnace or not.  In other words, they found their object of affection in God’s Himself, not in what God did for them. (A Commentary on Daniel, p. 89).

In fact, they were ready and willing to die rather than compromise their allegiance to the true God.

Studdert Kennedy was a chaplain during World War I.  His role often thrust him into danger on the front lines of battle.  One day, while traveling through war-ravaged France, he wrote this letter to his young son:

The first prayer I want my son to learn to say for me is not “God keep daddy safe,” but “God made daddy brave, and if he has hard things to do make him strong to do them.”  Life and death don’t matter…right and wrong do.  Daddy dead is daddy still, but daddy dishonored before God is something awful, too bad for words.  I supposed you’ll like to put in a bit about safety too, old chap, and mother would.  Well, put it in, but afterwards, always afterwards, because it does not really matter near to much” (Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, The Hardest Part, pp. 110-111).

Athanasius was one of the early church fathers.  We are indebted to him for the purity of the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ against Arianism.  The story is told that someone came to him and said, “Athanasius, don’t you know that the emperor is against you, the church is against you, and the whole world is against you?  Athanasius answered, “Then I am against the whole world.”  A phrase was coined that became rather famous in the early church: Athanasius contra mundi: Athanasius against the whole world.

Fortunately, none of these three men had to stand alone against the world; they stood together.  Dan Schaeffer in Defining Moments points to the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as successful because they were making a stand together.  He says…

“An incredibly powerful dynamic occurs when Christians stand together.  We feed off each other’s strengths and faith.  An act of courage that might seem impossible on our own is made easier when we are with others of like mind and faith.  One of the greatest benefits available to us is our close Christian friendships.  They can be the determining factor to us to make the right decision” (Dan Schaeffer, Defining Moments, p. 142).

He says that with others we can face our fears with new courage.  I don’t know if there is anything more scary than dying in a fire (except maybe drowning).  Both of them are excruciating ways to die.  Even the bravest among us have things we fear.  But the combined faith and encouragement of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego enabled them to have a collective courage (Eccl. 4:9-12).  That is why it is so important to be a part of a church fellowship or a church youth group.

Second, you will stand your ground with greater conviction.  This is a God that these three young men had “served” for years.  Many claim to believe, but few actually serve.  And what an encouragement it was to each of them, when the instruments sounded, to look to their right or left and see someone else standing with them!

Third, together our faith can be taken to a higher level.  When they were thrown into the fiery furnace they had their faith validated as few ever have.  They walked with God in the fire!  Even Nebuchadnezzar praised their faith, seeing that they were committed to the one true God.  Iron sharpens iron (Prov. 27:17).

Faith in God may not translate into victory in every circumstance (see Heb. 11:32-39).  To these three men the outcome was irrelevant, for what was at stake was not God’s ability or their own lives, but their faith and obedience to serve Him regardless of the cost.  His glory was at stake.

We all love the first half of this equation (that God can deliver).  We love it when God answers our prayers and gives a miraculous rescue or healing.  Our Charismatic brothers and sisters have great confidence in God’s ability to heal and do miracles.  We shouldn’t be afraid to cry out to God to show His miraculous power and show his amazing compassion to heal or to do miracles.  In other words, don’t back down; don’t hesitate.  Storm the gates of heaven!

But it seems that very few Christians can maintain this firm belief that God can and will deliver us while simultaneously possessing a submissive attitude to his sovereign will if it differs from our request.  These three Hebrews knew that God could deliver them, IF He wanted to.

These men give us then a full-balanced picture of faith: faith knows the power of God (he is able, 17), guards the freedom of God (but if not …, 18a), and holds the truth of God (we will not serve your gods, 18b).  There are some in our day, however, who would not be entirely happy with this ‘faith’. In their view, faith involves being far more cocksure about God’s ways.  Their kind of ‘faith’ is allergic to any uncertainty about details.  If they could re-write the chapter, they would have the friends declare: ‘Nebuchadnezzar, we are going to call down God’s deliverance; we, O king, are going to bind the fire.’  But Bible faith doesn’t do that. Faith does not predict God’s ways; it simply holds to God’s word (in this case, Exod. 20:3); faith obeys God’s truth, it does not manipulate God’s hand; faith is not required to plot God’s course but only to obey God’s command.  Faith’s finest hour may be when it can oppose Nebuchadnezzar’s three words (burning fiery furnace) with three of its own: ‘But if not. (Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail, ed. Alec Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), p. 56).  Thus, the real miracle of Daniel 3 has already happened.

Walter Luthi was right: “That there are three men who do not worship in Nebuchadnezzar’s totalitarian state, is a miracle of God.  The miracle of the confessing Church.  That the three were not devoured by the fire is no greater miracle.  Suppose the fiery furnace had consumed them.  The real miracle would have happened just the same” (Luthi, p. 50).

“But if not.” What a poignant phrase. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were resolved to obey God, whether or not he chose to save them.  They knew he wasn’t obligated to help them.

In the summer of 1940, more than 350,000 soldiers—most of them British—were trapped at Dunkirk.  The German forces were on their way, and they had the capacity to wipe out the British Expeditionary Force.  When it seemed certain that the Allied forces at Dunkirk were about to be massacred, a British naval officer cabled just three words back to London: “But if not.”

“But if not.”  These words were instantly recognizable to the people who were accustomed to hearing the scriptures read in church.  They knew the story told in the book of Daniel.  The message in those three little words was clear: The situation was desperate.  The allied forces were trapped.  It would take a miracle to save them, but they were determined not to give in.  One simple three word phrase communicated all that.

For some reason, people are still not sure why, the Axis powers hesitated.  They backed off, briefly, and what’s known as the Miracle of Dunkirk took place.  British families and fishermen heard about the poignant telegraphed cry for help, and they answered.  They answered with merchant marine boats, with pleasure cruisers, and even with small fishing boats.  By a miracle, they evacuated more than 338,000 soldiers and took them to safety. (https://robertbsloan.com/2013/03/11/but-if-not-the-miracle-of-dunkirk/)

“My God will deliver me — but if not, still I will trust him.  The Lord is strong enough to rescue me if he chooses.  But if not, I will not give in to sin.  My God is able to heal me if he decides it best.  But if not, I will not forsake my confession of faith.  My God can undo this disability if he but speaks the word.  But if not, I will trust in the God who will raise me from the dead.”

What amazes me in the statement of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is not that they believe that God “is able to deliver” and “will deliver” them, but that even if he does not, we will still be obedient to God.

Leon Wood states: “Two matters stand out for notice.  First, the young men recognized that God’s will might be different from what they would find pleasant, and they were willing to have it so, without complaining.  Too often Christians are not willing to have God’s will different from their own, and then do complain most vigorously when it proves to be that way.  Second, they did not make their own obedience contingent upon God’s doing that which was pleasant to them” (Leon Wood, A Commentary on Daniel).

We all believe that God is powerful enough and compassionate enough to grant our request (as long as it is not selfish, James 4:3).  Even if God does not answer our earnest prayers, He is still able to do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).  But are we willing to trust Him to work out His will as He has determined, submitting to His will even if that differs from our own?

Far too many people lose faith in God precisely at this point.  They cry out to God for healing, for rescue, for a miracle, for reconciliation, and it doesn’t happen.  Because they permitted God no alternative, when God didn’t come through exactly as they requested, they lose faith in God (or sometimes blame themselves for not having enough faith).  Neither perspective is helpful.

But God in His sovereignty does not always answer our prayers exactly as we desire them.  First of all, He is far wiser then we are and knows whether or not this is really good for us.  Ruth Bell Graham, married to Billy Graham, said that “God has not always answered my prayers. If He had, I would have married the wrong man — several times!”  I assume that was before she met Billy.

We need to remember that faith is not a rabbit’s foot, and God is not a genie who is bound to do for us whatever we want.  God is sovereign.  He has promised to “work all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose,” so we can trust Him and remain obedient to Him even if He does not answer our prayers as we think He ought.

We must pray with confidence in God’s power, but also pray with a submission to His wisdom.  Matt Chandler, in his article “My Prayer for the Furnace,” was occasioned by the discovery of a brain tumor and all his treatments for that.  He says, based on this passage, that we pray (1) believing that our God can heal, (2) and we pray believing that our God will heal, but (3) we continue to pray even if our God does not heal.  So he ends his article with this prayer: Lord, I know you can heal.  Lord, I believe you will heal.  And Lord, if you don’t heal now, bring glory to your name and keep my faith in you.

Such confidence and submission are powerfully captured in the words of Samuel Rodigast written in 1675:

What e ‘er my God ordains is right:

His holy will abideth;

I will be still whate ‘er he doth,

And follow where he guideth.

He is my God; though dark my road,

He holds me that I shall not fall:

Wherefore to him I leave it all.

We are in Daniel 3, that amazing story, a true, historical narrative, of how God miraculously preserved Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.  Having erected a 90 foot statue and required everyone to bow to it, several jealous public officials noticed that out of a sea of bowing people, three men stood tall and erect, possibly even turning their backs to the statue.  These jealous officials attributed malicious motives to their civil disobedience.  Along with rightly acknowledging that they were not bowing to or serving the Babylonian gods, they mistakenly included that they were being disloyal to Nebuchadnezzar.

However, that was not true, as the last two chapters have demonstrated.  It is clear from previous interactions that they had normally paid high regard for the king.  In verses 13-18 we see the king’s angry response and the young men’s amazing statement of trust in God and commitment to obey God alone.

13 Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought.  So they brought these men before the king. 14 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? 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?”

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 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. 18 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.”

Would you and I be able to take such a bold stand for the Lord with the very possibility of our lives being at stake?  Who would want to withstand a fiery furnace?  I can think of two horrible ways to die—in a fire, or drowning in water.  Both of those are unthinkable.

So what was it that kept them faithful to God despite the high stakes?

Today, I want us to notice the reaction of the king.  Verse 13 says that Nebuchadnezzar was now “in a furious rage.”  How dare they despise him!  The personal nature of his reaction suggests that the statue embodies not only a religious and a national commitment but a personal one.  His expectation is, “You shall have no other god but me” (Baldwin).  You know, the prouder we get, the more important we think we are, the more readily we take any act that doesn’t applaud us or appreciate us or serve us as an act worthy of severest punishment.  I’ve known people of furious rage and I’ve experienced it being directed at me.  It usually comes from a sense of importance (pride) that, in their eyes, has been attacked.  So they attack in return.

Had Nebuchadnezzar not put forth great effort in making sure that this very thing did not happen?  Did he not make clear the consequences of disobedience?  Any parent would have been equally frustrated when clear instructions along with possible consequences had been given ahead of time, and the children still refuse to obey.

The king’s reaction, therefore, was not surprising: in fury he ordered that “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought.”  Given their knowledge of the king’s decree and their refusal to heed it, they surely knew what this summons would involve and how it would end.

That is what makes their statement of resolve so amazing.  They were to be given another chance, and yet they stand firm in their resolve not to compromise.

In verse 14, “Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, ‘Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?’”

Now, let’s give Nebuchadnezzar some credit here.  He doesn’t just accept the rumor-mongering of the Chaldeans at face value.  He made sure of it by interviewing the young men.  He got the facts of the case.  That is so important.  After all, Solomon says in Proverbs 18:17, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”  In other words, it is always best to listen to both sides of the story.

But, this was also a greater test for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  David Guzik notes: It is one thing to make a stand for God; it is a greater thing to stick to your stand when pointedly asked, “Is it true?”  Peter followed Jesus after His arrest, but he wilted and denied Jesus when asked, “Is it true?”  Nebuchadnezzar was giving these three young men the opportunity to deny the charge if they wished.

Nebuchadnezzar asked the three men if they had indeed refused to worship the image.  It is to be noted that he did not repeat the first accusation of the Chaldeans.  He mentioned only nonservice and non-worship of his god.  This may be a clue that he now recognizes them as Daniel’s friends and remembered from past experience that they had, indeed, honored him.

He had granted them a standing in his court (1:20) and promoted them over the affairs of the province (2:49), yet despite his favors they now seemed to be defying him.  Although the herald had warned, “Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace” (3:6), the king gave the three Jews one more opportunity to worship the image.  He offered them a second chance.  If they did obey this time, all would be “well and good.”  But if they persisted in their initial refusal, they would “immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.”  Their high position in the province did not exempt them from the king’s decree.  They couldn’t expect special privileges.

Calming down for a moment, the king looked at these three young, promising lads whom he had recently promoted to a high place in government (2:49) and smiled. “Boys, surely there must be some misunderstanding, so I will give you a second chance (v. 15).  “Just bow down when you hear the music this time, okay?”  You can sense his pleading.  Maybe this is where the phrase “turn or burn” comes from!

We can imagine the enormous pressure on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego to compromise.  Everything in front of them – the king, the furnace, the music, their compatriots, their competitors – all of it conspired to convince them to compromise.  Yet God was more real to them than any of those things.  They lived “before the face of God,” coram deo.  They feared God more than they feared the fire.

Spurgeon says, “Do not judge the situation by the king’s threat and by the heat of the burning fiery furnace, but by the everlasting God and the eternal life which awaits you.  Let not flute, harp, and sackbut fascinate you, but hearken to the music of the glorified.  Men frown at you, but you can see God smiling on you, and so you are not moved.”  Stay true to your God!

Nebuchadnezzar was so confident of his sovereign power that he boldly mocked the possibility of any deliverance: “Who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” (Dan. 3:15).

This arrogant question sets up the story of the deliverance by focusing the issue on the power of their God.  Jerome answers the question: “That same God whose servant thou didst recently worship and whom thou didst assert to be truly God of gods and Lord of kings” back in the previous chapter.

Nebuchadnezzar thought nothing of insulting all gods with this statement.  He is more of a secularist or a humanist than a theist.  The god he really believes in is himself, not the gods of Babylon.  “My hands are the only ones that will make a difference here.”

Nebuchadnezzar, like Pharoah and Sennacherib before him, made the mistake of slighting the power of Israel’s God:

But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?  I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” (Exodus 5:2)

Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'” (2 Kings 18:35)

Nebuchadnezzar’s series of victories over his enemies had led him to conclude he and his patron gods were unstoppable, he was the prime moving force of the universe.  In this, he was like Sennacherib and likely other ancient kings when they claimed:

Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, “The LORD will deliver us.”  Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  [implied answer: a resounding “NO!”]  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad?  Where are the gods of Sepharvaim?  Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?  Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'” (Isaiah 36:18-20)

In other words, if nobody else’s gods could deliver them, then who are you to believe that your own God is capable of delivering you?

But Nebuchadnezzar would soon discover, as Pharoah and Sennacherib had before him, that the God of the universe was listening to his challenge and would respond with judgment (Daniel 4:30):

this is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: “‘She despises you, she scorns you– the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you– the daughter of Jerusalem.  “‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?  Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights?  Against the Holy One of Israel! (Isa. 37:22-23)

The foundational shift in Nebuchadnezzar’s attitude toward Daniel’s God that he had exhibited at the end of the previous chapter (Dan. 2:47) only seems possible if a significant time period has intervened.  There he had seemed almost ready to bow his knee to Daniel’s God, whereas here he flippantly disregards His very existence.

We are led to inquire what has caused this radical change against the God of the Jews.  Was Nebuchadnezzar not sincere when he made his confession to Daniel, or had subsequent events caused him to change his mind?  We must not forget that the Dream of Nebuchadnezzar had occurred twenty years before, and that in the meantime, he had taken Jerusalem the second time (B. C. 598) and carried captive the majority of its inhabitants, including many of the sacred vessels of the Temple, and furthermore, he had besieged the city the third time (B. C. 587), took and destroyed it, and burned the Temple, and left the Holy Land in desolation.  As Oriental Monarchs believed that their victories were a triumph of their “gods” over the “gods” of their vanquished foes, it would be conclusive evidence to Nebuchadnezzar that his victories over the earthly Capital of Jehovah, and the destruction of the Temple, meant that Jehovah was not the supreme Deity, but that his own God “Merodach” was. (Clarence Larkin, The Book of Daniel).

It would be very natural, given all his conquests over Jerusalem itself, that he had come to regard his god, Marduk, as superior in every way to the Jewish God, Yahweh.

So this is the reaction of king Nebuchadnezzar.  He reacted with “furious rage,” but settled down to give them another opportunity to bow down to his god, ending with this challenge which insulted their God.

Do you realize how much pressure these men were under to now bow down to the statue?  There was the pressure of authority.  This was the command of their king, the most powerful man on earth, who had the power to condemn them to death.

Secondly, everyone around them was bowing down, including possibly some other Jewish brethren.  When our children claim, “Everybody’s doing it” we can hardly take that at face value.  Maybe a few of their friends are doing it.  But that creates enough pressure in their lives to want to do it, and, let’s admit it, in ours as well.  But in this case, literally “everybody’s doing it,” making it extremely difficult to not join the crowd.

That pressure mounts here with the intimidating anger of their king.  I find this amazingly difficult, to stand against the withering gaze and loud clamor or vicious words of someone in charge, someone we’re supposed to look up to and follow.

Look again at their response:

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 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. 18 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.”

Isn’t that an amazing response?

We have here one of the greatest statements of faith in the entire Bible.  It reminds me of Martin Luther’s statement at the Diet of Worms in 1521, “I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.  Here I stand.  I can do no other.  May God help me.”  The big difference is that Martin Luther needed a night to come to this conclusion and bold statement.  This was not afforded to the three Hebrews and they make their confession without giving it another thought.

If the king was expecting a submissive response from his “reasonable” explanation of the state of affairs to these young Hebrews, he was in for a rude shock.  They refused to budge.

They could have given in at this point.  They might have reasoned about how much the Jewish people (and God) needed them to keep their government posts.  How could they act as buffers for Israel if they burnt to a crisp (cf. Calvin)?  Also, the king was giving them a second chance.  Wouldn’t they seem ungrateful not to respond to his kindness with compliance?

These three young men, influenced by the godly character of Daniel, who in chapter 1 dared to be holy, stood before the furious king and the fury of the fire and answered the king with one of the most beautiful expressions of Biblical faith ever heard.  Let me just read it again.

“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)

Nobody talks to the king like that!  Understandably Nebuchadnezzar was floored and even more furious.  His authority was being challenged.  His influence was being diminished right before his eyes.  His honor was shattered.  Were they in for it!

But notice what they had said.

“We have no need to answer you in this matter” indicates that they were not about to change their stance nor did they have anything to say by way of denial.  Nothing could dissuade them.  To them, the issue was settled, no matter how “guilty” it made them.  No matter how many chances the king gave them to change their minds, they were determined not to compromise.

The boldness and ease with which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego respond to Nebuchadnezzar reflects their predetermined resolve to obey God.  They had an ongoing relationship with God, wherein they were consistently determined to serve Him alone (v. 17).

Because they lived according to biblical principles, they had no need to deliberate the matter, as would have been necessary if they had practiced situational ethics, as is popular among believers today.  They had no need to ask themselves, “What do I do in this situation?”  Like Daniel, they had already made up their minds beforehand, they had resolved in their hearts that they would not bow down to any idols but worship Yahweh alone.

“This matter,” however, which requires no answer, is not the indictment but the offer of a reprieve on condition of compliance.  The response from these faithful men is that compliance is out of the question.

Their boldness originated in their confidence before God: they were convinced their situation was sure to gain God’s attention (Prov. 28:1).  Their ready answer must have been prompted by the Spirit of God (Matt. 10:19-20; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12; 21:12-15; Acts 4:13).  They knew that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.”  They were neither anxious, nor afraid.  Therefore, they could take a bold stand, even with their lives in jeopardy.

Although there is “no need” to respond, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego do, in fact, give two further statements to explain their position.  They hold two theological realities in tension in their lives.  First, that God is indeed powerful enough to deliver them.  Second, that God is sovereign and it is His prerogative whether or not He actually decides to deliver them.

The 1992 hit movie Indecent Proposal may have caused many Americans to more closely examine their moral ethics than any church sermon in the last few years.  The movie proposed a moral dilemma: Would you, or would you permit your mate to, have sex with someone else—for the right price?  In the movie, $1 million did the trick.

What if we upped the ante to $10 million in real life?  According to the book The Day America Told the Truth, Americans are ready to trade some dear things for that kind of money.  Twenty-five percent said they would abandon their families, 25 percent would abandon their church, 23 percent would become prostitutes for a week, and 7 percent would kill a stranger.  Alarmingly, the figures remained consistent even when the potential payoff was reduced to five, then four, and finally three million.  All of us must ask ourselves what we would do in a situation when we have something to gain by violating our conscience, or stand to lose something very precious to us, even our very lives.

If we are like most Christians, we compromise more than we want to admit.  Again, according to George Gallup, even though 94 percent of us believe in God and 84 percent believe that Jesus is God’s Son, fewer than ten percent of us can be called committed Christians.

Bob Slocum, businessman and author of Maximize Your Ministry, discovered why this may be true.  After teaching a Sunday morning class that addressed the issues of ethics and right and wrong, a bright young businessman approached Slocum with the following observations:

He thought that in talking about good and evil I was three levels above where most people are living.  He said that when people must make a business or personal decision, the first question they ask is, “Do I or don’t I want to do it”—not “Is it good or evil?”  If they get to the next level, they ask whether it is legal or illegal.  At the third level, they may ask whether it is right or wrong as judged by friends and peers.  Only at the fourth and highest level would the question arise of good or evil as judged by God.  And the young man didn’t think most people ever get to that level (Robert Slocum, Maximize Your Ministry, pp. 21-22).

Let’s just admit it, most of us are prone to cave in or compromise rather than pay the price for doing what is right.  But the problem we tend to forget is that there is a price for compromise as well.  In fact, most often that price is steeper.

What’s that old saying?  “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

Now well established in their careers as Babylonian officials, Daniel’s three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who at the time were in their mid-life, were offered a simple alternative: bow or burn.  Caught in the web of global politics, they were being called to choose between their commitment to God and their allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar.

At the sound of the music everyone was supposed to bow before the 90 foot statue Nebuchadnezzar had built to exalt himself and to solidify allegiance among the disparate peoples he had conquered.  A roaring furnace added to the noise, reminding everyone of the extreme price to be paid for disobedience.

For a moment, the whole world was united in bowing to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue.  The curse of Babel had, it seemed, successfully been reversed.

So people all around went down to their knees, and then this sea of humanity fell like a wave on their faces before the image and the throne.  But in the middle of this sea of bowing humanity, three figures stood firmly, quietly, not bending a knee!  In fact, it is quite possible that they turned their backs on this abominable idol.  Their names were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  These young men did not compromise, and for all practical purposes, it looked like they were to pay for that stand with their lives.  We can applaud them for their uncompromising position, but what about you and me?  What will we do?

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego must have felt very alone as they looked about and saw everyone else obeying orders.  Where were their fellow countrymen?  Where was Daniel when they needed him?

These young men, instead, show contempt for the image (Dan. 3:8-12) by refusing to bow.  Other cultures and religious beliefs could accommodate pluralistic worship, but the Jews could not.  They worshipped God alone.  So they did not bow down, and some of the jealous officials, peeking during worship, came and tattled on them.  Some had noticed that they had not bowed down.

These three Hebrew children remembered and held in reverent fear that God had said:

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. (Exodus 20:4, 5)

They probably also remembered when the newly redeemed Israelites created an image of a golden calf and danced around it (Exodus 32:4).  They remembered how their God hated that and exercised swift and sure judgment.

Theologian John Calvin writes, “A true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence…His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form….Therefore, to devise any image of God, is in itself impious, because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is” (Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, p. 108).

Standing with the heat of a blazing fire in their face, I can see how they would have been tempted to rationalize and convince themselves that it would be all right to bow down just this once, ignoring the command of the Sovereign Lord.  Some might make a case for situation ethics.  In this situation it would be all right to bow down because they would get killed if they did not.  Certainly God would not want these three young men to die, would he?

But this is exactly what this world is crying for: men and women, boys and girls, who have conviction of heart and do not change their convictions on the basis of their circumstances.

Others would argue in terms of culture. “The Babylonians are not going to understand the laws of our God.  We don’t want to offend our culture and ruin our witness, do we?  We will bow now so they will listen to us later.  Anyway, nobody that we know will see us.”

Still others would argue on assumption of forgiveness.  “We have a loving God who is slow to anger and quick to forgive.  We will bow just this one time and then ask forgiveness. God is more understanding and forgiving than these Babylonians.  It’s His job to forgive.”  Now, it is true that God does forgive the sins of his people.  Jesus died to pay the penalty for all of our sins.  However, we misunderstand the grace of God when we base our disobedience on his gracious forgiveness.  That is absurd!  The apostle John tells us that he gives the opportunity to confess and be forgiven our sins, but not as an excuse to go ahead and sin (1 John 1:5-2:1).  Sinning so that grace may abound reveals a deeper problem of the heart.  Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God.”

Some would prefer a silent protest.  “We will kneel on the outside, but we will be standing and worshiping the true God on the inside, in our hearts.  Surely God will understand.”

The uncompromising nature of the king’s decree provided incentive for some to accuse “the Jews”—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  “Certain” Chaldeans went to the king and “maliciously” made charges against Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

The three Hebrews could have come up with many excuses to justify their disobedience to the Law of God.  We often do.  We compromise under pressure even though the pressure we face is nothing compared to that of facing death if we obey.  But the three friends of Daniel considered the first two commandments and decided to defy the king’s order.

[And remember, there are more than two commandments!]  Biblical faith obeys God’s laws.

I love what Charles Spurgeon says about these three young men: “Their actions were not public but neither were they hidden.  These three Hebrew men must have known they would be discovered, yet they obeyed God rather than man. “You will not be able to go through life without being discovered: a lighted candle cannot be hid.  There is a feeling among some good people that it will be wise to be very reticent, and hide their light under a bushel.  They intend to lie low all the wartime, and come out when the palms are being distributed.  They hope to travel to heaven by the back lanes, and skulk into glory in disguise.  Ah me, what a degenerate set!”

These Chaldeans couldn’t wait to tattle to the king.  Remember, these “Chaldeans” had been losing out to Daniel and his friends ever since they had arrived in Babylon (cf. Dan. 1:20; 2:49) so they had plenty of incentive to spy upon these men and tell the king of their infraction.  Seeing their chance, they report it.

They were obviously motivated by jealousy and envy.  These sins feed off inequality—the fact that someone else has something I don’t have—popularity, power, friends, influence, possessions.  Success breeds envy like nothing else does, and along with it: rivalry, competition, covetousness, territorialism, and resentment.  Proverbs 27:4 indicates that jealousy can be more powerful and dangerous than even anger and fury!

Jealousy involves the fear of losing something or someone to a rival; envy is the feeling of resentment towards someone for something they possess that you lack.  “In envy you recognize people who are better off and you burn with bitterness.  John Gielgud, the great British actor, in his autobiography, said, ‘When Sir Laurence Olivier played Hamlet in 1948 and the critics raved, I wept.’” (Timothy and Kathy Keller, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, p. 127).  You can see both jealousy and envy in the “certain Chaldeans” who came forward and “maliciously accused” the three friends.

Jealousy and envy can destroy a relationship, a ministry, a church.  When others possess something we don’t have, or might take away from something we have, we get anxious and react, often by “tattling” to someone in authority.

Jealousy in ministry is dangerous not only because it is sin, but because it is sin that so quickly hides itself.  It takes refuge in places like “correct theology” and “the right methods” and pretends to be anything other than what it really is.  It did with the Pharisees, who were jealous of Jesus’ popularity.

Instead of being filled with gratitude to God for his kindness, we become so many Sauls, stewing resentfully as we hear the crowds singing, “Saul has tweeted to thousands, but David to ten thousands.”

Sarah Nixon, involved in student ministry, shares these diagnostic questions to see if we are fighting jealousy with self-righteousness:

1. Is my first thought or comment about this ministry or person a critique?
2. Do I feel the need to distinguish myself from “them,” to specifically note differences in our theology or methodology?
3. Am I “leaking” comments to my peers or students that slander or malign this ministry or person?
4. Do I seek out negative information or opinions, or ask for “more” information under the guise of confirming my bias?
5. If given the chance, would I want their ministry or impact to suffer?
6. Am I willing for the Lord to “set me aside” and use someone else? What if it is, indeed, this particular ministry?
7. If this student comes to know Jesus more through this ministry, would I rejoice?
8. Is my response to the last question, “but that’s not possible! No student could come to know Jesus more through another ministry!”?

John the Baptist could have been jealous and envious at his cousin Jesus’ ministry.  But fortunately he models for us how we ought to respond to someone else’s ministry being blessed.

First, he remembers where all blessing, success, and opportunity comes from.  “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.”  We kill envy when we remember that whether we succeed or whether someone else does is ultimately given from the God who reigns in heaven.  And how dare we assault his wisdom by murmuring about the opportunities and success of others.

Second, John remembers his role.  He is the friend of the Bridegroom, the groomsman, not the Bridegroom himself.  And the groomsmen rejoice greatly when they hear the voice of the Groom.  Now most of us aren’t jockeying to replace the Bridegroom.  We don’t want to be Jesus.  But we sometimes act like we’re in a competition to be the best man.  Which is why it’s so important to labor to rejoice greatly when we hear the Bridegroom’s voice in the voices of our fellow groomsmen.

Finally, John’s joy is complete when the Bridegroom arrives and surpasses him.  Where Christ increases, John is content to decrease.  But are we?  Are we content to decrease, when Christ increases through the ministry of another?  Do we even acknowledge that Christ is increasing in the ministry of others?  Or do we attribute their success to some other factor: their ambition, their compromises, and in our worst moments, to the efforts of the devil?

So jealousy and envy are dangerous and destructive for ministry, for fellowship, even for our own spiritual life, and that is what we see expressed by the Chaldean officials in vv. 8-12.

8 Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. 9 They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, “O king, live forever!  10 You, O king, have made a decree, that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image.  11 And whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace.  12 There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

These men begin with flattery, “O king, live forever!”  Their plan was to draw the king into their rhetoric and guide him to the conclusion they hoped for, and so they reminded him of his decree: everyone who heard the instruments was to worship the image.  They reiterated (v. 10-11) the warning of death for dissenters (cf. v. 6).

Their climax was to remind the king of how illegitimately these men had arrived at their exalted positions.  You can almost hear the sneer in their voices. “There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”  However, notice that they didn’t even voice their names, merely calling them “the Jews” and “certain Jews whom you have appointed.”  You can feel the antisemitism in their words.  You can see the disdain dripping from their lips.  After all, these defeated peoples should be servants, not leaders (v. 12)!

Those who refused to worship could have been described as certain individuals, or certain leaders, or even certain men.  But it was their identity as Jews their accusers emphasized when describing their behavior.

That hated, belittled Jewish race who had no place in your exalted kingdom O King, these men “pay no attention to you” emphasizing that they had ignored his command to bow to the image, “they do not serve your gods” emphasizing that they were outsiders and they do not “worship the golden image that you have set up” which shows their defiance to the king himself.

The words “maliciously accused has the idea of “eating to pieces.”  As their own insides were being gobbled up by jealousy and envy, so now their tongues tear apart these three Jewish friends.  John Phillips says, like most rumor mongers, “they enjoyed every word of it.  They went all around the issue, savoring every statement and making it last as long as they could.  They were prodding the king, provoking him, preparing him for the news that some people would not bow” (Exploring the Book of Daniel, p. 64).

They made three accusations against the Hebrews:

1. They were disloyal to Nebuchadnezzar.
2. They didn’t serve the Babylonian gods.
3. They didn’t worship the image.

“As usual, jealousy resulted in a slippery grip on reality, causing the astrologers to think the worst of the three men.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego certainly didn’t worship the image or serve the Babylonian deities, but they were never disloyal to Nebuchadnezzar—until he tried to pull rank on God and commanded them to worship the image” (William Peel, Living in the Lions Den without Being Eaten, p. 84).

Daniel 3 is one of the more memorable stories in the book of Daniel.  Again, I use the word “stories” not because these are myths or fables, but rather because they are real-life events in narrative literature that have all the qualifies of a good story.  It has compelling characters, a strong plot, conflict and tension and universality and relevance (in other words, we can relate to it).

Now in their 40s, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were well established in their careers as Babylonian officials.  Now they were offered a simple alternative: bow or burn.  Caught in the web of global politics, they were called to choose between their commitment to God and their allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar.  With no other options—short of compromising their faith—they chose to be faithful to God and suffer the consequences.

Who hasn’t heard the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, the three brave Hebrew youths who refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and were thrown into the fiery furnace?

After dreaming about an image (2:31-45), Nebuchadnezzar constructs an image and commands everyone to worship it (3:1-5).  Defiance would mean swift destruction in a fiery furnace (v. 6).  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the image (vv. 8-12) and declared their confidence in God (vv. 13-18).  When the king has them thrown into the fiery furnace, but their God delivers them (vv. 19-27).  Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges this divine deliverance and warns that anyone who speaks against the God of these Jewish men will be destroyed (vv. 28-29).  Having escaped fiery death, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are promoted once again (v. 30).

This chapter raises a number of important questions:

• When Nebuchadnezzar issues a decree contradicting God’s law regarding the worship of idols (Ex. 20:4-5; Lev. 26:1), how are the Jews to respond?
• What risks must the Jews be willing to face to remain faithful to God?
• Will God always intervene to rescue His people from their plight, as He does in this chapter for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego?

Structure

Like many chapters in Daniel, this chapter is structured as a chiasm.

Divine Deliverance from Death (3:1-30)

1. The Herald Proclaims a Royal Decree (3:1-7)
2. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Are Accused (3:8-12)
3. Nebuchadnezzar Is Enraged and Gives Orders (3:13-15)
4. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Declare Resolve (3:16-18)

3′. Nebuchadnezzar Is Enraged and Gives Orders (3:19-23)

2′. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Are Delivered (3:24-27)

1′. Nebuchadnezzar Proclaims a Royal Decree (3:28-30)

Daniel 3 is framed by different commands (1 and 1′).  In the first, the king’s herald announces the obligation to worship the image, and in the second the king decrees that anyone who speaks against God will be destroyed.  This is a divine reversal.

The main drama of the story occurs in verses 8-27, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are accused of defying the king (2) but are delivered from the fiery furnace without harm 2′).

In the penultimate sections of the chiasm (3 and 3′), Nebuchadnezzar gives commands.  When he hears that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship the golden image, he commands that they be brought to him and he questions their allegiance (3).  Part of this section includes the warning about death in the fiery furnace.  Then, in 3′, Nebuchadnezzar orders the furnace to be made hotter than usual and the three young men to be cast in.

Central to the story of chapter 3 is the resolve of three young men.  Like Daniel in chapter 1, they knew that there was a line that they could not cross and they had already decided not to bow down to a graven image.  In verses 16-18 they declare their trust in God to deliver them but also their intent to be faithful to him no matter what the cost, even if he chooses not to spare them from death.

Date

The setting up of Nebuchadnezzar’s giant golden graven image on the plains of Dura did not happen right on the heels of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2.  Rather, some 23 years had passed, time enough for the king to have amassed several more military victories.  He was indeed that “head of gold” and now his success seems to have gone to his head!  Had he desired, he likely could have gone on to conquer a greater part of the known world.  The potential was present, but pride threw up an obstacle.

Back in Jerusalem, the wicked king Jehoiakim had died.  Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar had heard about this vassal king, sitting on his puppet throne, being given “the burial of an ass.”  The kings of Judah came and went at Nebuchadnezzar’s whim.  By this time Nebuchadnezzar had taken another group of captives in 597 B.C., among whom was Ezekiel.  A third invasion of Judah resulted not only in the final fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple but also the monarchy itself.  Egypt had been conquered and a 13-year siege of Tyre had finally been won.  And all of this went to Nebuchadnezzar’s head.

Since ancient cultures considered their fortune in war as an indication of power of their patron deities, it may be that Nebuchadnezzar’s amazement of the Jewish God, as recorded in chapter 2, had eroded in the subsequent events leading to Babylon’s final destruction of Jerusalem. Having destroyed God’s house (the temple) and burned the city, Nebuchadnezzar may have interpreted his overthrow of Jerusalem as an indication of the weakness of Israel’s God. (https://www.spiritandtruth.org/teaching/Book_of_Daniel/commentary/htm/chapters/03.html#3.3)

Daniel’s Friends Would Not Bow (Daniel 3:1-12)

Verse 1 records for us: “King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.”

The plain of Dura is just southeast of Babylon, constructed near the city so the largest number of people possible could see the magnificent golden image and participate in public worship of the king.  Professor George Rawlinson noted in an article in Smith’s Bible Dictionary that an archaeological explorer named M. Oppert discovered remains of an enormous “pedestal of a colossal statue” in the plain of Dura.

Ninety feet high and nine feet wide.  It is likely that Nebuchadnezzar had seen the pyramids, the sphinxes, the colossal temples and the giant statue of Rameses the Great when he conquered Egypt.  The sheer size of these monuments left an indelible image on Nebuchadnezzar’s imagination and the great size of this statue matched Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which was of a “mighty” image (2:31). 

“Before I die, I must have a gigantic monument built for me to impress future generations of my greatness, wealth and power.”

Here in the U. S. we now have a 90-foot statue of an Indian god.  After housing the temple with the tallest gopuram (87-feet) in North Carolina and the world’s second largest Hindu temple in New Jersey, America unveiled the tallest standing statue of Lord Hanuman on 18 August following a three-day prana pratishtha ceremony in the south coast. Remarkably, the 90-feet tall Hanuman sculpture is the third tallest statue in the United States, next to the Statue of Liberty in New York, and the Pegasus & Dragon in Florida.

And, of course, while Egypt’s monuments were made of bricks Nile mud and chopped straw, but Nebuchadnezzar would construct his out of gold!  After all, he had amassed plenty of gold from the peoples that he had conquered over the last 20+ years, likely most of it from Egypt.

Some wonder whether it was solid gold, or just plated with gold.  Amir Tsirfati, in his book Discovering Daniel, calculates that a statue of this size had a volume of 7,290 feet.  A cubic foot of gold weighs 1,188.6 pounds.  That would be a total weight of 8,664,894 pounds!  And because you are dying to know, based on the current price of gold at $3,344.70 [6.10.25] per ounce.  That’s nearly 464 trillion dollars!

That’s a lot of money, even for the king of Babylon!  I opt for it being plated with gold, which would still be very expensive and very gaudy.  “Jewish tradition holds that the Babylonian king used gold from the treasures taken from Solmon’s Temple to cover the surface of the man-shaped statue” (Grant R. Jeffrey, Countdown to the Apocalypse, p. 66).

Another thing to notice is that although only the head of gold in chapter 2 represented Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon, here he makes the whole image of gold.  Was this expressive of a desire to live forever, or to have his legacy never forgotten?

No silver, bronze, iron, or iron/clay were included in his statue.  From head to toe, the golden statue symbolized the king’s hubris and defiance of what the God of heaven had revealed to Daniel.  It is as if the king thought he could stop the vision from coming true.   This was an apparent attempt to try to counteract the dream.  It was a definite statement asserting that there would be no end or “after this” with respect to his kingdom, but rather that his glory would continue forever (E. A. Lucas, Daniel, p. 93).

“Nebuchadnezzar was a flawed man.  Chief among those faults was pride, as we’ll see even more clearly in the next chapter.  Whether this image was of the king of a god, or simply a giant obelisk, it was still a tangible representation of Nebuchadnezzar’s power and majesty” (Amir Tsarfati, Discovering Daniel, p. 62).  “This not only indicates the superficial nature of his earlier confession of Yahweh as ‘God of gods and Lord of kings’ (2:47), but it also suggests an egotism tending toward megalomania” (Gleason Archer, Jr., “Daniel” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 50).

So Nebuchadnezzar would make an image and it would be the focal point of worship , something he believed would unite the empire.  “In ancient times it was common for kings who conquered nations that held diverse beliefs and religious practices to attempt to create political and religious unity by imposing a new national religion.  Such religion usually was based on worship of the emperor as a god” (Grant R. Jeffrey, Countdown to the Apocalypse, p. 67)

 It also seems to be Nebuchadnezzar’s declaration of independence from God.  Unlike the golden head in the image in chapter 2 which was superseded by the arms and chest of silver, Nebuchadnezzar believed himself to be undefeated and deserving an eternal kingdom.  James Montgomery Boice writes: “In this way he defied God and said in effect, ‘I will not allow the God of Deaniel to set my kingdom aside.  My rule will endure’” (Daniel: An Expositional Commentary, p. 42).

“Though young men usually feel invincible and immortal, Nebuchadnezzar had more reasons than most to do so.  He was, without dispute, the most powerful monarch the world has ever known.  No one else, before or since, has ruled over more people and property with such absolute power as Nebuchadnezzar….To a man like Nebuchadnezzar, there was certainly no way some Hebrew god was going to call the shots.  Dream or no dream, Nebuchadnezzar was the master of his fate.  After all, he had defeated God’s people three times—twice since the dream, and on Hebrew turf as well” (Willim Peel, Living in the Lions’ Den Without Being Eaten pp. 82-83).

What did this image represent?

If, as we suppose, the image is Nebuchadnezzar’s response to the revelation provided by Daniel’s interpretation of the dream in the previous chapter, it would be natural for the image to resemble that of chapter 2: the form of a man.  “According to a number of patristic authors, the image represented a deification of Nebuchadnezzar himself.” (Stephen R. Miller, “Daniel,” in E. Ray Clendenen, Kenneth A. Mathews, and David S. Dockery, eds., The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1994), Dan. 3:1)

David Jeremiah comments: “It is no coincidence that the designers of this bizarre statue made it sixty cubits high and six cubits wide.  In Revelation 13:19, the number of the beast of the Antichrist was the number of man, 666  The Bible gives the number six to mankind; seven is the number of perfection.  We fall short; we never come up to the standard. 

The image is a good picture of mankind; it was made of wood overlaid with gold.  That’s the way our projects are outwardly [impressive], but inwardly inferior.  Man is always setting up his gigantic projects, but when you get down to the core of them, there’s not much there” (David Jeremiah, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 73).

Others suggest that this was not a deification of Nebuchadnezzar, but rather an image of Nebuchadnezzar’s patron god, Nebo (or Nabu).  Prostration before Nebo would amount to a pledge of allegiance to his viceroy, Nebuchadnezzar. The dimensions are not that of a human, except maybe former NBA player Manute Bol.  It is extremely tall and skinny.  He was 7’7” and weighed only 201 pounds!

Leonardo da Vinci, an artistic genius, saw God’s artistry in the way He has designed the human body.  He called it the Vitruvian Man and it shows the mathematical proportions of the human body.

The drawing represents Leonardo’s conception of ideal body proportions, originally derived from Vitruvius but influenced by his own measurements, the drawings of his contemporaries, and the De pictura treatise by Leon Battista Alberti.  Nebuchadnezzar’s image was nothing like this.

Some posit that it is a human placed upon a pedestal so that the dimensions would be more human-like.  Some see in the dimensions a reference to the number 666 (Rev. 13:13) the number of man in all his glory.  This would reinforce that Nebuchadnezzar was merely a man, no match for God.

Heslop writes: “On the plains of Dura there stands today, a rectilinear mound, about twenty feet high, an exact square of about forty-six feet at the base, resembling the pedestal of a colossal statue.”

Others suggest that the image more exactly appears like the Asherah, the Hebrew tzelem, denoting something shaped by cutting or carving, more like a pole (Ezekiel 16:17; 23:14).  But even if this statue represented a god, no one was left in any doubt as to whose power lay behind its existence.  In contrast to Daniel’s confession that it was the God of heaven who set up kings and deposed them (2:21), the statue was Nebuchadnezzar’s defiant declaration that as king he could set up gods for his people to worship.

Regardless of what it may have symbolized, it was erected on a plain so that everyone could see it and worship it.  The plain of Dura was the same Babylonian plain upon which the Tower of Babel had been erected (Gen. 11:2).  In like manner, Nebuchadnezzar had erected this statue to communicate the dominance of his legacy, making a name for himself, and seeking that this image would unite the empire.

Throughout history egomaniacs have used religion to solidly their own praise and power.  In the late 1930s it was written:

“One cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God.  But an avowal of faith in the eternal Germany is an avowal of faith in the eternal God.  Whoever serves Adolf Hitler the Fuhrer serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”

Later on, in 1942, this was written:

“There is a lot of talk in Germany about Hitler’s Messianic characteristics.  The thesis that Hitler is a miraculous being sent by a Supreme Power, and that he is capable of mystic communion with the German masses is gaining greater currency.  Consequently, the attack on Christian religion becomes more severe.  In Germany, no attempt is made to stamp out the faith in the supernatural.  The policy is more blasphemous.  It is to replace Christ.  Religion is now counterfeited than dismissed.  This extraordinary tendency is perhaps without parallel during the last two thousand years.  The Nazis are trying to create an anti-type of Christianity.  They have made their leader God.”

[These last two quotes are unattributed, but found in David Jeremiah’s Handwriting on the Wall, p. 74).

Iain Duguid, in his commentary on Daniel, illustrates further examples of how dictators today want to be worshiped, from Mao to Lenin to Saddam Hussein, then he applies it to our lives today:

“When put in these terms, it becomes evident that our culture places the same pressure on each one of us to put our Godi second place, albeit in more subtle ways.  We too find ourselves constantly pressed to keep our beliefs private, and therefore secondary.  We are told that the public sphere must be kept untainted by any religion, for any other opinion threatens the unifying dogma of the separation of church and state.  We can believe whatever we want, by all means.  However, we are strongly discouraged from talking about it or trying to influence the beliefs of others” (Iain Duguid, Daniel in The Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 48).

Of course, this is exactly what the Antichrist will do during the tribulation, to try to win the allegiance of the whole world, including Jews.

The LXX renders צְלֵם [ṣ^elēm] as εἰκόνα [eikona], the same word used in the Greek NT for the image of the beast from the sea, the Antichrist, which all the world is forced to worship at the time of the end (Rev. 13:14-17).  So this image foreshadows that equally idolatrous event.

The beast whose image is referred to is the same Antichrist.  A statue of him is made animated and empowered by the second beast, the false prophet.  The world’s population will then be forced to worship the man behind the image.  The penalty will be the same as in this chapter in Daniel: death.

Man’s desire to be worshiped is as old as Adam.  Nebuchadnezzar’s ceremony illustrates the well-worn path of totalitarian leaders who prostitute religion in the service of egotistical personal or political aspirations.  He is one of many in the line extending from Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-9) to Antichrist (Rev. 13:15).  And is represented in recent years by images of Saddam Hussein, portraits of Kim Il-Sung, King Jong-Il, Kin Jong-Un and Kim Jong-Suk.  This dictatorial self-exaltation is not surprising.  After all, pride is the sin that caused the fall of the great enemy himself (1 Tim. 3:6) and illustrated in the fall of the kings of Babylon (Isaiah 14:12-14) and Tyre (Ezekiel 28:13-14).  Whether these passages refer implicitly to Satan or to Adam, they still reflect the inclination of the Evil One to desire all worship and to encourage us to worship ourselves.

Robert Bellah, in his 1996 book Habits of the Heart, describes an interview with a young lady named Sheila Larson, who described her own faith as “Sheilaism.”  In defining what she calls ‘my own Sheilaism,’ she said: ‘It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself.  You know, I guess, take care of each other.  I think God would want us to take care of each other.’”

Today, so many people believe that their own desires are sovereign, so that it defines who they are, but this is just another expression of idolatry—holding the self up to be worshiped as in control of our lives, our identity and our destiny.

Why did Nebuchadnezzar have this statue built?  Was it because of his dream and his desire that his dynasty would last forever?  Or was it motivated by the wise men of Babylon who were trying to trap the faithful Hebrew young men into a compromising position or die for their beliefs?

Throughout history rulers have mixed politics with religion to try to strengthen their grip over their citizens.  An example of this was displayed in 1936 when Herr Baldur von Schirach, head of the youth program for Nazi Germany, said: “If we act as true Germans we act according to the laws of God.  Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the führer, serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”

This is the spirit of Babylon, self-worship, self-actualization and expressive individualism.  It has crept into our society and churches here in the U. S. as well.  Let us humble ourselves before the Most High God.

Daniel has recounted and interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s troubling dream, successfully in the eyes of Nebuchadnezzar.  As happens with the interaction between Nebuchadnezzar and the Hebrew children in chapters 1, 2, and 3 and in chapter 5 with Belshazzar, they are rewarded for providing the wisdom and direction they needed in these situations.

Daniel’s public triumph is seen in vv. 46-49.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him.  The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.”  Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.  Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon.  But Daniel remained at the king’s court.

Nebuchadnezzar was so emotionally overcome by Daniel’s definitive recall, description and interpretation of the meaning of his dream and the monstrous image that appeared.  First he “fell upon his face”—perhaps because he was grateful or overwhelmed or fearful— and then impulsively “paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him” (v.  46).  

John Calvin remarks: “Nebuchadnezzar was really a very powerful monarch, and it was difficult for him so to regulate his mind as to attribute the glory to God.  Thus the dream which Daniel explained could not be pleasing to him.  He saw his monarchy cursed before God, and about to perish in ignominy others, too, which should succeed it were ordained in heaven; and though he might receive some comfort from the destruction of the other kingdoms, yet it was very harsh to delicate ears, to hear that a kingdom, which appeared most flourishing, and which all men thought would be perpetual, was of but short duration and sure to perish.”  So to prostrate himself before Daniel IS a sign of humility.

Clearly, Daniel had done what everyone considered humanly impossible.  He had told the king the dream that Nebuchadnezzar alone knew (and stubbornly wouldn’t tell anyone) or had perhaps even forgotten, and Daniel had given an interpretation of the dream that made sense to the king.  Consequently, Nebuchadnezzar concluded that Daniel must be some sort of god, and he proceeded to treat him as one by bowing before him, presenting an offering to him, and burning incense to him (cf. Acts 10:25; 14:13).

Nebuchadnezzar was not yet personally bowing his knee to this God of the Jews.  Notice that he still says that this is Daniel’s God (“your God is God of gods and Lord of kings”), to which Calvin admits he’s “not quite in his senses.”  Nevertheless, his respect for Daniel’s god was growing. 

Immersed and raised within a polytheistic culture, Nebuchadnezzar may simply be stating that Daniel’s God is the greatest among the pantheon of Babylonian deities.

By “God of gods” he may be beginning to doubt the existence or power of his own familiar gods and by “Lord of lords” “he claims for him the supreme dominion over the world; he means to assert that Israel’s God not only excels all others, but holds the reins of government over the world” (John Calvin)

In falling down before Daniel (and his God) in deference, king Nebuchadnezzar demonstrated the truth of this statement, “May all kings bow down to him and all nations serve him” (Psalm 72:11); “By me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just; by me princes govern, and nobles—all who rule on earth” (Prov. 8:15-16); Jesus will be “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5).  In the final war against the Lamb, he will overcome them because “He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14).  This is written even on His thigh (Rev. 19:16).

He adds, he is a revealer of secrets.  This is our proof of Divinity, as we have said elsewhere.  For Isaiah, when wishing to prove the existence of only one, true God, takes these two principles, viz., Nothing happens without his permission; and his foreseeing all things. (Daniel 48:3-5.)  These two principles have been inseparably unified (John Calvin)

At this point we might say Nebuchadnezzar was a henotheist, placing the Most High at the “head of the line.”  As Gleason Archer Jr. says, “The king’s praise to the Lord does not necessarily mean that he doubted the existence of other gods, much less that he had experienced any sort of conversion” (Daniel in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 49).

The instance is instructive, as showing to what extent a mind clearly not under the influence of any genuine piety – for subsequent events showed that no “permanent” effects were produced on him, and that he was still an idolater Dan. 3, and a most proud and haughty man Dan. 4.

John Calvin concurs, “Let us learn from this passage, how insufficient it is to celebrate God’s wisdom and power with noisy declamation, unless we at the same time reject all superstitions from our minds, and so cling to the only God as to bid all others heartily farewell. No fuller verbal confession can be required than is here set before us; and yet we observe how Nebuchadnezzar was always involved in Satan’s impostures, because he wished to retain his false gods, and thought it sufficient to yield the first place to the God of Israel.”  God deserves not first place, but sole place.

This great king was obviously impressed.  He just wasn’t in the habit of showing such respect to anyone, especially to a foreign slave he had almost executed with the rest of the wise men.  This serves to confirm that had Daniel accurately reported the dream and had skillfully explained its meaning to the king.

First, the king praises Daniel (2:46-47).  He is astounded at Daniel’s ability to interpret his dream and orders that he would be honored as if he were a god.

While “King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him” he seems to be doing this in recognition that Daniel’s God was unquestionably, incontestably superior to his gods, for He was “God of gods and Lord of lords.” (By the way, this prefigures what kings and presidents and premiers will do when Jesus Christ appears: fall down and worship, the King of kings and Lord of lords.)

In Philippians 2:9-11, Paul concludes:

9 Therefore [since Jesus humbled himself to serve and die for us] God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Nebuchadnezzar falling prostrate before Daniel prefigures Gentiles bowing the knee before Jesus and the eventual submission of Gentile governments to Israel in the Millennial Kingdom (Jer. 3:17; Zech. 14:16).

Josephus records a similar instance in which Alexander the Great bowed before the high priest of the Jews.  One of his generals asked him why he would lower himself to bow before a mere Jewish priest when even other kings would prostrate themselves before Alexander the Great.  The world conqueror replied, “It was not before him that I prostrated myself, but the God of whom he has the honor to be high priest.”

We see this in v. 47 where he also acknowledges, as Daniel desired, about Daniel’s God, “your God is God of gods and Lord of lords” and it was Daniel’s God who is “a revealer of mysteries.”  This is because at every stage Daniel had turned the spotlight from himself and cast it upon his God.  He was not, by receiving these honors, claiming the glory for himself.  By this statement we know that Nebuchadnezzar understood that Daniel was the ambassador and representative of God but not deity himself.

“In the process of offering worship to Daniel’s God, Nebuchadnezzar actually pays a great tribute to the God of Daniel.  It is most significant that he does not even mention his own gods which had failed to produce a suitable revelation, except in the statement that Daniel’s God is “a God of gods,” that is, Daniel’s God is supreme over any other gods commonly worshiped in a polytheistic system.  Although Nebuchadnezzar was short of true faith in Daniel’s God at this point in his life, the evidence that Daniel’s God could reveal a secret and may indeed have been the author of his dream impressed Nebuchadnezzar with the fact that no other god could be greater” (John Walvoord, Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation).

One can hardly doubt that Nebuchadnezzar was sincere in this proclamation, however, the next two chapters indicate for us that Nebuchadnezzar could hardly be called a committed follower of Yahweh yet. As Wiersbe says, “this was the first step.”

We should not miss the evangelistic influence of Daniel’s faithful walk in the events of this chapter.  Although Nebuchadnezzar has not yet come to full faith in Daniel’s God, Daniel’s trust and faith led to an unprecedented opportunity for Daniel to provide evidence of the power and authority of God later.

Second, the king promotes Daniel (2:48-49).  Since Daniel had so decisively proved himself a true prophet with access to the great God he worshiped, it was only logical that Nebuchadnezzar place him in charge of all the diviners at the court of Babylon.  He had proved his worth, while they had failed miserably and absolutely.

He gave Daniel “high honors” and “made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.”  He opened the royal treasury and showered gifts upon him.  Why?  Because Daniel affirmed that Nebuchadnezzar was a great king and because he had interpreted the dream.

“As far as concerns gifts and the discharge of public duties, we can neither condemn Nebuchadnezzar for honoring God’s servant, nor yet Daniel for suffering himself to be thus exalted. All God’s servants ought to take care not to make a gain of their office, and we know how very pestilent the disease is when prophets and teachers are addicted to gain, or easily receive the gifts offered them. For where there is no contempt of money, many vices necessarily spring up, since all avaricious and covetous men adulterate God’s word and makes, traffic of it. (2 Corinthians 2:17.) Hence all prophets and ministers of God ought to watch against being covetous of gifts. But as far as Daniel is concerned, he might receive what the king offered him just as Joseph could lawfully undertake the government of the whole of Egypt. (Genesis 41:40)” (John Calvin)

“In times of adversity, believers usually have their greatest spiritual growth spurts and greatest spiritual moments, but most do not do nearly as well when they are enjoying times of prosperity (cf. Deut. 8:10-11).  Daniel, however, will live consistently well for the Lord during the years ahead of him even though he is prospering as few ever do” (Paul Benware, Daniel’s Prophecy of Things to Come).

Now, it is important for us to recognize here that “Daniel is not placed among these specific classes of diviners, but is “chief prefect” (רַב־סִגְנִין [rab–-siḡnîn]) over them (Dan. 2:48).  He is their supervisor, but he is never one of them.  Later too, Daniel is not among them, but separate from them.  He is not included among them in Daniel 4 and is brought to the king only when they cannot interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan. 4:7-8).  Nor is Daniel among them in chapter 5.” (Steinman, Daniel, p. 110).

The appointment of Daniel over the wise men is undoubtedly connected with the arrival, hundreds of years later, of wise men seeking the king of the Jews.

There is no means of determining whether the μάγοι ἀπˊ ἀνατολῶν [magoi ap anatolōn] of Matt. 2:1, 7, 16 are specifically Babylonian astrologers or astrologers in general.  The former is more likely, since it is only in Babylon, by contact with the [Jewish] exiles, that the μἀγοι [magoi] would acquire an interest in the Jewish king (Messiah) (Gerhard Delling, “Magos,” in Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey William Bromily, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964-c1976), 4:358)

Subsequent revelation given to Daniel concerning the Seventy Sevens (Dan. 9:24-27) would have allowed prediction of the time of the arrival of Messiah.  This knowledge may have been passed down among the Babylonian wise men until the arrival of the predicted time.

Earlier in the chapter, Daniel’s life was in danger (v. 13).  Now, he not only was spared from death and given gifts (cf. the promise of reward in 2:6) but also had ascended in rank under Nebuchadnezzar’s authority.  This was indeed noteworthy.  As Gleason Archer Jr. says, “Normally this position would be reserved for a Chaldean nobleman, a member, like Nebuchadnezzar, of the master race.  For a Jew from the Captivity to be so honored was unprecedented and shows how deeply his intelligence and integrity had impressed the king” (Daniel in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 50).  Daniel had clearly prospered under God’s favor.

It wasn’t all good, however, for being appointed “over all the wise men of Babylon” was sure to fire up latent jealousies and envy.  Some of these same men may have been the ones who brought him before Darius as a violator of the edict to pray to none other than Darius himself.

Nor did Daniel forget his friends.  He remembered how they had prayed with him for God’s revelation with him.  He was too wise to promote himself.  He did, however, bring their names before the king, and the king, on the basis of his trust in Daniel’s integrity and insight, did not hesitate to promote them as well.  He was loyal to his friends.  How they handled the special snares of advancement is told in the chapter that follows.

Like Daniel, his companions had once been under a royal decree of death (v. 13), but now not only have their lives been spared but they have ascended to a new rank.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego became overseers in the province, which probably implied managerial duties over the citizenry.  God’s vindicating hand was upon these faithful Israelites as they depended on him during their exile.

The first chapter ended with the king granting Daniel and his three friends a standing in his court (1:19, 21), and the second chapter ends with even greater positions (2:48-49).  This pattern of faithfulness resulting in blessing or promotion will be repeated in chapters 3, 5, and 6, showing us that it is God’s pattern to reward faithfulness to him, especially when we do not seek the glory for our success.  Where Lot was a compromiser, Daniel was inflexible for truth.

The cycle of Daniel’s life thus far (being taken to a foreign country, remaining faithful to Yahweh, becoming an adviser to a pagan ruler, interpreting a ruler’s dreams, being promoted within the kingdom) is reminiscent of Joseph’s.  As God did not abandon Joseph, he has not abandoned Daniel. Rather, God is with Daniel and his people in Babylonian captivity.  Further, the Egyptian captivity ended with an exodus when God later raised up a deliverer.  Daniel, a new Joseph, is in Babylonian captivity, and another exodus is perhaps in store.

Daniel himself remained in the palace and was available to Nebuchadnezzar as an adviser when the king needed him.  God prepared for the arrival of thousands of exiled Judahites (in 597 and 586 B.C.) by placing men in authority who were sympathetic to their needs (cf. Joseph).

John Walvoord concludes: “Thus Daniel, the obscure Jewish captive who could have been lost to history like many others if he had compromised in chapter 1, is now exalted to a place of great honor and power.  Like Joseph in Egypt, he was destined to play an important part in the subsequent history of his generation” (Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation, p. 78).  Thus Daniel was in a condition to be a helper to, and relieve much oppression over, his own people, just as Joseph did down in Egypt before him, as described Genesis 41:1-44.

Tom Constable ends this chapter with this chart, which he borrows from Arnold Fruchtenbaum.

An Overview of Daniel’s Prophecies in Chronological Order
Date	Daniel’s Age	Reference	Prophecy
602 B.C.	ca. 18	2:1-45	Great image
553 B.C.	ca. 67	7:1-28	Four beasts, Ancient of Days
551 B.C.	ca. 69	8:1-27	Ram and he-goat
539 B.C.	ca. 81	5:1-31	Fall of Babylon
539 B.C.	ca. 81	9:1-27	Seventy sevens
536 B.C.	ca. 84	11:2-45	Future of nations
536 B.C.	ca. 84	12:1-13	Future of Israel

Next week we will begin chapter 3, that wonderful story of the three brave Hebrew men who defied the king and trusted God to protect them.