Daniel Message 11

The Time to Separate – Daniel 3:1-12

Remember that Daniel is primarily not a book on prophecy. We know this because of its position in the canon and we know this because of the overall argument. Prophecy is only part of a greater whole in Daniel; Daniel is a wisdom book, not a prophecy book. It has prophecy in it but the prophecy serves a greater purpose and the purpose is chokmah or wisdom or as we have translated it, skill in every day living. And the book of Daniel is given that we as believers might live inside the kingdom of man; the kingdom of man is that orientation. The kingdom of man begun by Nimrod in history, smashed by God at Babel, incarnated by the Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks and the Romans in our day, the kingdom of man always seeks to create security apart from God. It always seeks to generate a distorted bastard concept of man subduing the earth; it wants to subdue the earth but it wants to subdue the earth on man’s terms. It always wants to ignore God’s laws and yet not pay the price for ignoring God’s laws.

In our own generation, in front of our eyes, we see millions of Americans upset by inflation but the same millions of American do not want to pay the price of a free market which is the only way out. Why? Because they’re afraid of losing their security, they have no faith in God, He is an untrustable God and an untrustworthy God, and therefore they will not trust in Him and therefore they want government wage and price controls. The wage and price controls by God’s laws of economics always destroy goods. It did from Diocletian, and when the government and the unions and the companies all pressure the present administration to go to wage and price controls you will see scarcity develop because God’s laws will work, in spite of Americans. Then we have the other problem and the problem in our own generation, everybody wants a strong military; we believe that we want the best military in the world, we want to be greater than Russia, etc. and yet the very same people want the military budget cut. So it’s the same principle, the kingdom of man is still with us.

But we’re dealing with more serious problems in Daniel. Daniel goes to the worst kind of problems; Daniel faces the worst kinds of pressures and Daniel does so as a 17 year old boy. Daniel represents one of the great strong men of Scripture; at 17 years old, cut off from his home, a prisoner, a political hostage, Daniel survives a totally hostile environment. Daniel is able to be a light to the world; he’s able to be a testimony to those men. He’s able to lead to Jesus Christ the most powerful man on earth, and we’ll watch the steps by which Daniel leads Nebuchadnezzar to Jesus Christ. It’s an exciting story of a young man who has nothing; he has no job security, he is on a completely, as it were, free market situation. He has no one to lean upon but Jehovah and lean upon Him he does.

So we find that Daniel represents for us a perfect teaching device of how to live inside the kingdom of man. For example, we found in Daniel 1 the doctrine of separation, and we found part of that doctrine of separation and we will see more of it in chapter 3. The first point of the doctrine of separation, we learned three steps, these three steps will be used over and over by believers and have been for century after century after century, the battle doesn’t change, it only changes the various details. Overall principles remain the same. Daniel, in the first way, had 1005 different places he could have protested; he had many, many situations where divine viewpoint collided with human viewpoint. Daniel knew as a young boy that it was wrong for his name to be eliminated; he was called Belteshazzar and that was an apostate name given to destroy the testimony of his Jewish name, Danel, El is for God, Dan, the verb judge, God has judged or God is the judge, Danel. So Daniel’s name was a testimony and it was smeared all over, erased and destroyed by the powers of state; the state decreed there shall not be a divine viewpoint in our educational system and therefore all students who have Bible names will have their names changed if they are to enter this curriculum and they will be changed by force if necessary. So Daniel had that as a possible issue.

Daniel had the issue of the curriculum that he studied under for three years in Nebuchadnezzar’s school, but he did not protest that. Where he finally protested was to the apostate communion service of eating and partaking of the king’s table because the food had been offered to idols. And so therefore the first principle is that Daniel concentrated his attention on one issue; he didn’t dissipate his efforts over a whole broad spectrum of issues, he narrowed his sites down to fire at one or two targets. And that’s the principle for Christians, we’ve got too many battles upon us, we can’t dissipate energy worrying about whether the latest movie has an X or R rating, we have to deal with more fundamental issues. And these are the issues that demand out attention and if we don’t do them we’re going to lose and we’re going to lose by default.

The second principle of separation that we have so far studied in Daniel is that when Daniel went to affect his protest he didn’t do it with violence; he tried to live as peacefully as he could with his men. He always acted out of an attitude that respected authority. Daniel did respect the authority of those set over him. He did not try to be a teenage brat when he wanted to separate. He wanted to be a person who respected authority and so he did, and he gives an excellent testimony of it in Daniel 1, he’s very courteous, he’s very polite but very firm and very uncompromising. You can combine with the power of the Holy Spirit an uncompromising position with a polite and courteous attitude. You can be courteously uncompromising and Daniel had that tremendous balance of truth and grace.

And finally we found out what Daniel did when you get a “maybe” answer. Obviously if you had a yes answer that would be finished, you wouldn’t have to worry any further in the doctrine of separation. If you get them to agree with you, fine, no problem. Here however, it was maybe, maybe Daniel, maybe we will change the diet. And so when you face a maybe type situation Daniel shows us to argue pragmatically. The world doesn’t accept the authority of Scripture so don’t argue on the basis of the authority of Scripture. If the heathen want to go to hell let them go to hell. The issue is that you argue with them pragmatically and Daniel argued with him pragmatically. He said I don’t care if you don’t buy my Bible, if you don’t buy the Word of God, fine but just look at it from a practical point of view. And it was that approach that Daniel used here in these “maybe” type situations.

Now in chapter 3 we are going to finish out the doctrine of separation because here we have the same kind of thing, concentration on an issue, we have men very courteous about it, very peaceful, but instead of getting a “yes” or a “maybe” answer they get a “no” answer. That finishes out separation and its tactics. What does a Christian do when he’s in a situation where he says I’m sorry, I cannot go along with this, this violates the Word of God and I am not about to partake of this, and he runs into collision with his employer, he runs into collision with his superior officers some place or in some area, some situation he’s running into collision with the power structure of the kingdom of man. Now what happens? Daniel 3 is about what happens when you get a “no” answer.

It starts out in verse 1 New Testament making an image of gold, Daniel 3:1, “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. [2] Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. [3] Then the princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. [4] Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, [5] That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: [6] And whoso falls not down and worships shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. [7] Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. [8] Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused the Jews. [9] They spoke and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live for ever. [10] Thou, O king, hast made a decree, that every man that shall hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image: [11] And whoso falls not down and worships, that he should be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. [12] There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego; these men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

Now obviously this is a crisis, the third crisis we’ve seen in the book. Every chapter in the book of Daniel is a crisis of some sort; one crisis after another of a believer living in Satan’s world. Sound familiar; it was Henry Ford who said that “history is the sequence of one damned thing after another,” and that is basically what the book of Daniel is. That’s one of those profound statements for your history course. In Daniel 3 we have the crisis of Nebuchadnezzar’s state religion. This is a situation that gets involved, and unfortunately we may face it as Christians in the United States. Things are shaping up that we may be cast in the same position of the believers in chapter 3. Fortunately so far in our country we have had freedom of religion, at least in name.

Other people in other parts of the world have not been so blessed. There are believers rotting in Siberia today and no one blows horns for them, no one defends them; silently they perish in the concentration camps behind the iron curtain. They perish for only one reason, because they insist upon teaching their children the Word of God, and the secret police have come and said you will not teach your children the Word of God, the state is the authority over your children and so they prefer to die in concentration camps than to bend their knee to the secret police, and they pay a price. And there have been thousands and thousands of believers that are paying prices, behind the iron curtain and other place of the world. There are probably more anti-Christian forces in the world at work today than there were even just 100 years ago.

We live in a time of tremendous pressure and Daniel 3 is God’s provision in those times. God always speaks ahead of the situation. The interesting thing about Daniel 3:1-2 is that not one mention is made of the presence of Daniel; there is mention made of the presence of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego but nothing of Daniel. Why these three and why isn’t Daniel there. What has happened to Daniel? Daniel nowhere appears in chapter 3. Did Daniel compromise? Where has Daniel gone? The Scripture doesn’t tell us where Daniel has gone, we just know that he’s not here and that introduces an interesting principle about chapter 3. Who of the four boys was the natural leader? It was Daniel.

Now you’ll find yourself in this situation as a believer, you’ll have a believer you respect, a believer that’s mature, a Christian leader that you look up to and people will tend to cluster around that person. And when God thinks that these believers have enough of the Word of God He will remove that person from them and then try a test on them to see whether they’re leaning on the Word of God or whether in fact they are leaning upon the other person. You see, Christian friends who are mature, who are your leaders, people you respect very much can themselves be very dangerous idols for you. So therefore God will put you in a situation where you won’t have the opportunity to have another more mature believer around to consult, cry on their shoulder or do something else. You won’t have that at all; God will put you in these positions. These boys were put in such a position. No Daniel, they couldn’t go in and say Daniel, what do we do now; we never faced this, that furnace is hot, what do we do? Daniel is gone, so all they can do is go directly to the Lord themselves.

This is one of the blessings, God doesn’t have it in for these guys; He’s not picking on them. He’s trying to get them in a situation where they have got to depend upon the Lord and the Lord alone, like He is trying to work in your life, to get you in a position where you are not going to rely on some person, some gimmick, some investment, something else, that you are going to have to rely upon the Lord alone. And He’ll engineer something to work it out, you can be sure of that, and He’ll keep on engineering it until you learn the lesson. It’s hard but there’s a blessing in learning this lesson. So Daniel 3 begins with no Daniel; the three boys are on their own, they have taken in the Word of God, they’ve studied with Daniel, they’ve prayed with Daniel, now is the time of testing. Now is the time to fly, they’ve been in the nest long enough.

So Nebuchadnezzar makes an image of gold, an image, and idol, and we’re back to the doctrine of idolatry. How does idolatry start? It starts out of the chaos of the human heart. Idolatry is born inside man, not outside man. It starts with that five level thing that we’ve gone over and over, the deterioration of man. It starts off with negative volition; it starts off with a lack of thanksgiving, no praise, dissatisfaction with what God has provided, dissatisfaction with my job, with parents, with wife, with husband, with children, with something else. You name it, there will always be dissatisfaction, God hasn’t really provided for me, God has it in for me and so forth. So it starts out you’re out of fellowship, that’s how it always starts, out of fellowship and in carnality. And if we don’t get back in fellowship that carnality turns into compound carnality; it turns into advanced deterioration and the next step up is the darkening of the heart. This occurs when we have said no to our conscience and God has built in a self-destruct system so that if we don’t want to listen to our conscience, fine, God just has scar tissue grow right over the conscience and we can’t listen to it. And finally we become very imperceptible, Scripture becomes dull, we join the crowd that’s always looking for something more; God’s Word isn’t enough, we have to go to a hand-holding group, roll down the aisles, go through all sorts of emotional experiences to make up because the Scriptures themselves aren’t interesting enough. God Himself, in other words, isn’t interesting enough. We have to have something in addition to the Scripture.

And from that point we go further, we begin to become suckers for human viewpoint; the human viewpoint is pressuring us all around and finally it just creeps in. We begin to be deceived about doctrine, we are deceived about certain people around us, we misread motives and we begin to develop all sorts of paranoia plots about what somebody is going to do to us and so forth. This is when we begin to come under demonic influence. This is when demon powers begin to exercise stronger and stronger control over us.

Then finally we get into the position where we actually hate God, and it’s at this position where we actually start with idolatry. This is where idolatry is born. What is idolatry? It’s simply replacing God with something that is in the creation, some process in the creation, something in our culture, it can be sex, it can be drugs, just culture itself, the urge to chaos, as we saw in chapter 2 it can be scientism, it can be all sorts of idols, idols that are born on the apostate fallen imagination of man. And then finally we reach the stage of final frustration, the stage when we have tried everything and nothing works, a stage when we realize that we are at the end of our human viewpoint rope at least, we just can’t go any further. We’ve tried this, we’ve tried that, we’ve tried this gimmick, that gimmick, all the other gimmicks and God has graciously seen us out to the end and He’s just sitting there waiting for us to turn around; we’re like the prodigal son at the pigpen.

So the source of idolatry is the autonomous chaotic heart imagining things about the world and it is fed by demonic powers. Now an interesting thing has happened down through history that men have usually, at least before about 400 BC, after 400 BC this thing kind of gets very, very hazy, but up until 400 BC men would make concrete images. We call it idols, and you look at these idols and you say, well, nobody thinks that way, do they really think there are beings like that, those crazy idols that you see in Egypt, Assyria and Mesopotamia. The early church fathers had a theory; Augustine and some of the others, that what was happening and the reason why men insisted on making these idols was that these idols were nothing but going to the craftsman and having the craftsman actually physically make what the people had dreamed, so that in these dreams, which would be the functioning of the imagination of the person, the subconscious of the person, which would be filled with all this chaos, all this the negative volition, all the human viewpoint, all this in one chaotic bundle would pop up during the dream. It would be aided, in fact, by demon powers, demon powers that could project images of themselves into the human brain, and so these people would dream and they’d see these things at night and they would see them in the daytime, they’d see all these images. And then they would go to a craftsman and they would commission a craftsman to build them an image like what they had dreamed; and so many of these idols have been borne out of demonic dreams.

Now to show that this is not an early day phenomenon it’s very interesting to see that this still goes on and the dreams that are demonically inspired have exactly the same format as they did in the ancient world. Several years ago I worked with some people that were having problems that we would call demonically induced problems, not that the demons are to blame but carnality. I had them record some of the terrifying dreams they had and someone drew these. One was a composite animal of the dream and every part of that animal is on the list of the unclean animals in Leviticus. The person didn’t even know Leviticus, leave alone what unclean animals were, yet the image fit very precisely. What causes this? We believe that demonic powers stimulate these kinds of dreams, trying to solicit fear, soliciting a lack of trust in the Lord; to fear the powers of darkness more than the Lord Jesus Christ; to transfer trust from the Word of God to these powers in nature. Why is there continuity in these symbols? If it’s just man’s innocent imagination why do the details fit so precisely? The conclusion is they are demonically caused. No one has come up with a better hypothesis. Nowhere in Scripture does it say these things are impossible, and we have centuries of testimony of Christians, including Martin Luther, who says this does in fact occur.

So it’s not too unusual that we read in Daniel 3:1, that “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold,” an image of gold, that sounds familiar. Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which he saw an image and perhaps from the dream he saw an image of gold. Of course, that’s the dream of chapter 2, and what has Nebuchadnezzar done? He has simply taken the dream of Daniel 2 and he’s made it concrete. He’s built him an image, an image like all the kings were doing in the ancient world, images of his dream, and the dream, he would commission various craftsmen, goldsmith, and perhaps wood carpenters, to erect this tremendous image. You notice it says it is sixty cubits high. Do you know what that is? That’s ninety feet; a ninety foot tall thing. If this was solid gold someone computed it would cost about two billion dollars, and these kings had the gold to do such a thing, but usually from what we know in archeology they didn’t do it solid gold, it was gold plating over a wooden structure.

So he erected this thing, and we know from archeology that this is not terribly unusual in the ancient world. We know for example the colossus of Rome that was over seventy feet tall, in Greece, so men did make these tall images. We know in archeology there’s a mound of earth a few miles southeast of Babylon which apparently is the base of this. It’s a brick mound and we can tell that there was something on that mount; it’s destroyed now but the mound is still there and apparently that mound is the mound that formed the pedestal of this great image of Daniel 2; it’s a few miles just southeast of Babylon; a 90 foot tall thing could be seen throughout the whole city.

Now Nebuchadnezzar had reasons for doing this kind of thing. We know that the Ancient East was characterized by this as a normal procedure. You can turn to a book like Herodotus, one of the first, supposedly, historians in the world; Herodotus was a Greek, he traveled around the world and he interviewed various people. In the first book of Herodotus, Section 183, we deal with Herodotus’ trips and his interviews in the city of Babylon. Herodotus tells us the following account, not that he saw exactly the image of Daniel 3 but listen to what Herodotus did see:

“Below in the same precinct,” of the city of Babylon “there is a second temple, in which is sitting a figure of Jupiter, all of gold. Before the figure stands a large golden table, and the throne whereon it sits, and the base on which the throne is placed, are likewise of gold. The Chaldeans told me that all the gold together was eight hundred talents’ weight. Outside the temple are two altars, one of solid gold, on which it is only lawful to offer sucklings; the other a common altar, but of great size, on which the full-grown animals are sacrificed. It is also on the great altar that the Chaldeans burn the frankincense, which is offered to the amount of a thousand talents’ weight, every year, at the festival of the God. In the time of Cyrus” that was the man who conquered the city of Babylon, we’ll read about him later in Daniel, “in the time of Cyrus,” this is a very strange notice, “there was likewise in this temple a figure of a man, twelve cubits high,” which is considerably shorter than this one, maybe it was an image derived from this one, “entirely of solid gold. I myself did not see this figure, but I relate what the Chaldeans report concerning it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, plotted to carry the statue off, but had not the hardihood to lay his hands upon it. Xerxes, however, the son of Darius, killed the priest who forbade him to move the statue, and took it away. Besides the ornaments which I have mentioned, there are a large number of private offerings in this holy precinct.”

So what we reading in Daniel 3 is not the figment of somebody’s imagination. Don’t be swayed by the critical attacks that would argue that Daniel 3 is just a sweet little story dreamed up. It fits precisely in the culture and with the times that we know.

Well why of all things did Nebuchadnezzar take the dream of Daniel 2, the dream that was given by God in chapter 2, and turn it into an idol in chapter 3. What has happened, what has gone wrong; I thought we had Daniel there, didn’t Daniel carefully explain to Nebuchadnezzar, look Nebuchadnezzar, the dream meant this, this, this and this. Why, then did Nebuchadnezzar distort the Word of God. Because Nebuchadnezzar right now is an unregenerate man. Nebuchadnezzar does not know the things of the spirit of God; Nebuchadnezzar has not been born again yet. Nebuchadnezzar, therefore, has not the spiritual apparatus aboard in his soul to understand this and so as all unregenerate people do, he distorts the truth.

And he takes what originally is the truth that God has given to him, the power to rule over all the earth, he takes that truth and he says ah, I am the first kingdom, remember he had this big statute, the second kingdom, the third kingdom, the fourth kingdom, all right, I am the head of that statue, I am the first one, and so instead of saying just the head is of gold he makes the whole thing gold. Why? Because he considers himself as the source of this kingdom, forgetting how did the kingdom end? By being smashed with a stone cut without hands from heaven. It will be smashed; it will be essentially eternally useless. God would only allow these kingdoms to go on and develop but Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t see that, as so many unregenerate people do, he hears what he wants to hear and sees what he wants to see. He does not to see the Word of God in all of its totality; he just selects a verse here and a verse there to make up his little system. And so he selects all that about the gold head, he is the gold head. Hadn’t Daniel told him, “thou art the head, O Nebuchadnezzar.” So he says that’s very fine and so out of the dream he follows through; the human viewpoint patterns of behavior get the better of Nebuchadnezzar. He just acts finally like all human viewpoint kings of that day acted; he becomes the mediator of gods on earth, and he makes a very fatal, mistaken conclusion to the matter. And it’s that conclusion that the theology of chapter 3 is undermining.

Chapter 2 said God had sovereignly granted the kingdom of man a time on earth; the head of that time would be the Neo-Babylonian Empire. That’s true; what Nebuchadnezzar has done is combine this truth with a human viewpoint idea that the state is God on earth. Remember Pharaoh; he’s God, the Assyrian kings, the Babylonian kings considered themselves to be mediators; they not only cared for their people in military, they prayed for their people, they were the priests of the people and they were the prophets of the people as well as the king of the people. The man in all of his being summed up man’s relationship to God. So we have the gods here, we have the human viewpoint king here, and we have the people here. So the king becomes the channel of blessing for the people. That’s the human viewpoint concept. Remember God hasn’t corrected it yet in history, He has in Israel but not outside of Israel. This is the chunk of human viewpoint Nebuchadnezzar has in his head. He combines that chunk with this truth and comes up with the statue. And he is going to make, if you pay attention as we go through the text, he is going to make certain points to Shadrach about this whole thing; he’s going to make certain points about Shadrach’s God versus his god, and you won’t understand the force until you understand what Nebuchadnezzar has done. What he has done is said ah, God has given me freedom to rule, therefore men approach God by approaching me; what I am God is, there’s a continuity between the king and the God now. So even though it was Daniel’s God that gave him the dream, it is Nebuchadnezzar that administers God’s program on earth.

And so to commemorate the dream he calls for a dedication service, and that’s the service we read about beginning in Daniel 2:2, “Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together” these people. Now the words are deliberately repeated twice in verse 2 and verse 3, big long list, it looks monotonous when you read it, but the Holy Spirit has a reason for repetition; to emphasize a point of detail and the detail is that Nebuchadnezzar at this dedication southeast of the city of Babylon, he wants the entire spectrum of the political establishment; he wants that entire spectrum there. They are the ones who are the mediators between God and man; they are the ones who will convey God’s blessings to the masses, and the masses must approach them for God’s blessing and so all levels of government are called together in a gigantic meeting.

The first one, “the princes,” these were the chief regional officers, we would think of the governors of the various states of the United States. The princes were the governors of the various states of the Babylonian empire. Then “the governors,” these were the military commanders in each district; they would be equivalent in the army to corps commanders; “the captains,” they were commanders of smaller units, they would be equivalent to, say, a general over an army division; “the judges,” they were the chief bureaucrats, these were the men who made these decisions, the general staff and so on. “The treasurers,” those are the people in the tax collecting business and paying bills; “the counselors,” these are the men who would be the guardians of the law, literally, or the prosecuting attorneys. These would be the men that staffed the courts. “The sheriffs” is an old English word for sentence-givers, not our concept of a sheriff, but in the concept of old England the sheriff was what we would call the court district judge, the man who makes the sentences, “and all the rulers of the provinces,” the lesser officials.

So you have here from top to bottom all levels of power in the political establishment assembled. All of them must be involved, their allegiance must be secure. That’s the key of chapter 3 as we begin. Nebuchadnezzar must secure allegiance to his new program. His new program inspired by the Word of God, his apostate program inspired by a wrong interpretation of the Word of God must get a hold over every government official. It must get hold of the courtroom; it must have hold over the military; it must have hold over all the law profession and so on. Notice it’s one dedication, “to come to the dedication of the image.”

Daniel 3:3, “Then the princes,” and they’re all “gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.” And they stood, notice the emphasis over and over, three times in verse 2-3 and the Holy Spirit doesn’t waste words so when you see something repeated in the Word of God it means the Holy Spirit is emphasizing it. At the end of verse 2, what does it say about the image? It says “the image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up. What does it say in verse 3, “the image which Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up.” What does it say at the end of verse 3, “the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.” What do you suppose the Holy Spirit is pointing out by repeating that three times? It’s very easy; Nebuchadnezzar, it’s his work that’s distorted the thing of chapter 2, he is the one that has ruined the picture; it’s Nebuchadnezzar who is at fault, not the Holy Spirit for giving him the dream. It’s Nebuchadnezzar who has set it up.

Now in Daniel 3:4, the threat of power. “Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages,” this means that the government officials, they have been recalled to the city of Babylon. Keep in mind geography. Here is the Middle East; here’s the Persian Gulf, the mountains up to the north, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, Palestine, Nile. The Babylonian Empire extended all the way to the northeast, all the way to the west, down through Palestine to the Egyptian border. So it is a gathering of people from many different nations under one kingdom; different languages and different cultures. Now the first of the four kingdoms of Daniel, keep in mind those three kingdoms, the first one was gold, the next one was silver, the next one was bronze, the next one was iron. Deterioration, wasn’t it; now what do we find out about what those metals meant. They meant the strength of the culture, and since gold was the most valuable metal, though it was the softest metal, we find that the first kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom was most successful in integrating people of different race, people of different language, people of different culture into one United Nations type system, one type of world government. Nebuchadnezzar was very successful, and here’s his attempt to do so.

In Daniel 3:5, he communicates with music. Why? Music is the international language. Music would be perfectly understood no matter what language you spoke. So music becomes the international language and it is music that is the tool of conveying the command to worship. Music is viewed as a manipulation device, in other words. You watch that because music still is being used as a manipulation device and the Christian when he performs, when he writes, when he composes, ought to be very careful that he is not using his music to manipulate. Music is an aid to worship but it doesn’t deliberately try to put some little thoughts in one’s minds. Heavy rock, for example, does this, it’s basically physiological manipulation and it does so by indirectly hitting your emotions without going through your rational processes and therefore it becomes a form of subliminal communication. Subliminal communication officially is illegal in this country, you can’t show a film and every 30 frames inject, say a bottle of coke or something, and then everybody runs out after the film to buy coke, and they never saw the coke but you just inject it in the film quickly and it becomes a form of subliminal communication. That is illegal in this country but even though we have laws against it, it doesn’t stop other forms of subliminal communication.

We have music being used to manipulate, and then we have in Daniel 3:6 governmental power used to threaten dissidents, and this is when it becomes dangerous. The Christian can tolerate images if he can be free to separate himself from the images, but when those images become promulgated by the fourth divine institution, and under the threat of power we have to bend out knee, now we’re in trouble. And so this is a very [can’t understand word] point at verse 6 when idolatry has combined with the fourth divine institution into government power. “And whoso falls not down and worships shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” The concept of execution by a burning oven was used in Persia as late as 1662; incidentally for our modern purposes, it’s interesting in 1662 the Persians set up fiery furnaces once again to kill. It was during a time of great famine in Persia and the situation was that the government had imposed wage and price controls. And they threatened any grain merchant who sold his grain for more than the price control, they would put him in the fiery furnace; governmental power used to impose these kinds of things. The Persians always have used the fiery furnace, it’s very much part of that area of the world.

Daniel 2:7, “Therefore” and that’s obviously a satire, “Therefore at that time,” everybody did that, in other words, the kingdom of man secured allegiance by power. How does God secure allegiance to His kingdom? Does Christ come along and twist arms? He does not; the gospel is preached and you are free to reject it or accept it. Christ does not arm-twist, and evangelism ought never to be manipulation. This is why we don’t sing 40 stanzas of Just as I Am and lock the door and ask anybody with a mother please come forward. That is manipulation and that is a wrong presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ does not use power to compel people to believe; it violates the whole principle. Jesus Christ appeals to your choice and you are free to choose and you are free to reject. You can walk in here and say ho-hum to the Word of God and that’s your business; I’ve satisfied my responsibility by teaching it, and my responsibility stops with teaching it; your responsibility starts with what you’re going to do with what you hear. Are you going to study it, think it through, reject it, that’s your business? Here we have the opposite, the kingdom of man doesn’t come this way, the kingdom of man comes with force and with power.

Then we find in Daniel 3:8 the beginning of the believer’s problem, “Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused the Jews.” Here is the rise of anti-Semitism; instead of accusing the three young boys, what is it they make an issue out of? The individual or their race? They make an issue out of their race. So this is prejudice, this is racial prejudice being injected. It’s their race that counts, not their choice. So we have the rise of anti-Semitism. You watch this, as Israel comes under more and more pressure from her Arab neighbor’s, as the world’s wealth shifts into Arab hands, Arabs are the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Ishmael all during history have been the authors of anti-Semitism, and you are going to watch anti-Semitism grow in this country. It’s going to be the Jews that are the ones to blame for the oil; listen, the Arabs have enough gold to supply every Palestinian refugee with a Cadillac; we have given our money to every nitpicking nation on earth; now let’s see what the Arab sheiks do with their money; they’re keeping it to themselves and then with crocodile tears they worry about the poor Palestine refugees. The sons of Ishmael have never had the character of the sons of Isaac, never will, and that’s just the way history is made, and so people hate the Jew and here in verse 8 we have people hating the Jew. The Jews are always the people that never seem to fit. The Jews are always the monotheists who refuse to bow before the idols of the Gentiles and so the Jews are always accused of being the misfits; it’s always the Jews that are behind Europe’s money problems. We even have Christian organizations today who allow the anti-Semitism to breed, because they’re amill, and they believe all the promises of the Old Testament transfer to them.

So they accused the Jews, not the boys, it’s always anti-Semitism, it’s the Jews fault. Daniel 3:9, “They spoke and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live for ever. [10] Thou, O king, hast made a decree,” notice how they put it, they want to get Nebuchadnezzar’s emotions activated, and so “you have made a decree that every man that shall hear” and so on and so on and shall fall down and worship the golden image: [11] And whoso falls not down and worships, that he should be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

Now Daniel 3:12, “There are certain Jews” and notice what it says, not who are set, but “whom you hast set,” in other words, you’re to blame, you compromised with the Jews, big Jewish plot going on Nebuchadnezzar, three teenage boys didn’t bow their knee, it’s a big Jewish plot. That’s always the way it is, some ridiculous thing like this. It always happens because Satan wants to erase the Jew from history because he knows that it’s through the Jew and through Israel that that fifth kingdom is going to come back, and that’s why Satan will try everything. He always wants to destroy Israel, weaken Israel, destroy the Jew from history, and if Satan could do that he would nullify the prophecies of the Bible. All he’d have to do is destroy the Jew. So he says three things, “these men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Three accusations, (1) they have not regarded you, Nebuchadnezzar. (2) they serve not your God, and (3) they don’t worship the golden image, which you have set up.

Notice the tie-in between religion and politics; always true, the religion and the politics are united, it is not just any idols, but it is Nebuchadnezzar’s idol; what have the Jews done? On their own these three young men, without Daniel around to help them, with no parents around to go to, with no teacher of the Word, there’s no Jeremiah here, there’s nobody to talk to them, but you have three guys that are fantastic, they have taken in divine viewpoint into their souls and they are willing to sizzle in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace if that is necessary, but they are not going to bow down to this foreign power. This is where all the sweetness and the light stops, right here. It’s the Word or it’s the idol, and these boys have made the choice; when it comes to that we separate. If we get a no answer, we still separate. If you’re going to kill us, we don’t care, we still separate.

Now it’s interesting that of all the Jews, why is it that only three of them are listed. Maybe the rest of them compromised, just like Christians today. They know they’re in an apostate organization but you always hear this, oh well, I have a ministry, it’s a sinking boat but I’m throwing out life preservers. That’s always wrong. If you are part of a Christian organization that is apostate your Biblical command is to get out, don’t stay in there, you are just helping them, and that is a point when you have to separate. We have a lot of evangelicals, even fundamentalists who have never got the message because at this point they’re blind to a commandment of Scripture. They do not separate. These boys paid a price for separating.

What do we conclude from this chapter so far? When you have idols that are combined with the fourth divine institution you introduce a crisis of separation of the worst sort. What are we to do as Christians? We are to pray for our nation, 1 Timothy 2, and add a petition as you pray for our nation in our time. Pray that the present state power not combine and congeal with idolatry. Where are some danger points on our points on our present modern day scene of combining with idolatry? One is in the area of law, of depriving men from law and changing law into something that any man can do, it’s flexible, there’s no such thing as enduring principles of law because we have yielded to the god of upward development and chance, all is flux, all is change, and so there’s no steady principles any more. We’re in danger of ourselves being jammed into a judicial system in which there are no enduring principles of right and wrong.

Another place where we see this is an attempt to dictate to parents the education of children, to come in and take your children out into day care centers. It’s not happening yet, but pray that it doesn’t happen. Pray that the government be hindered in these areas, that these programs would be stopped so we don’t have to face what Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are facing here. We see the handwriting on the wall, let’s pray about it; let’s pray that God stop this from happening.

When we see areas that could possibly conflict, such as the ERA with church policies, of the government come walking in here and dictating the fact that you will and have male and female ministers and so on, on equal status, in violation of New Testament policy. Pray that this movement gets frustrated and thwarted. These are danger signals and every alert Christian today ought to pray for this.

Next week we’ll finish what the boys did and how they applied the Word in this situation.