Daniel Message 12

Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in the Furnace – Daniel 3:13-30

In Daniel 3 we are continuing with the wisdom of this book. By the position in the canon and by the argument of the text, Daniel is primarily a book written about wisdom, not primarily about prophecy, though it contains the most spectacular prophecies probably known to the Church. Nevertheless, the prime intent of the book is not prophecy, it is wisdom principles, how to live in the kingdom of man. Daniel is a boy in exile who must live under the authority of the kingdom of man, which means that he has to devise a strategy for living, he has to use certain details, he has to take advantage of certain principles that he himself not only learned but he learns as he goes along, trusting in the Lord at every point.

In Daniel 1 we found the principle of separation. There was the issue of Daniel facing a multitude of areas where he collided with the human viewpoint culture around him, and Daniel chose the principle of concentration. Daniel had hundreds of places where he could have objected to the culture, but Daniel didn’t object to the culture at every point; he objected only at the crucial point and when it came to participating in a communion service which was a communion service involving elements dedicated to Bel, to Marduk, and to the idolatrous gods, Daniel refused. That was apostate religion and he separated from it. He was able in chapter 1 to separate because in chapter 1 he was not given a clear cut “no” answer; in other words it was a “maybe” situation.

In Daniel 2 we found Daniel in the midst of another crisis, the crisis of the king destroying all educational institutions, the entire academic establishment was to come in for complete annihilating judgment. The reason for so doing was because human viewpoint education did not provide him with the means of solving his problems. Nebuchadnezzar was, in 603 BC the most powerful man on earth, yet his God-consciousness, he was not a believer, his God-consciousness nagged at him. The Holy Spirit working through God-consciousness began to hit him at a very weak point, and every unbeliever is highly vulnerable at this one weak point, and when God the Holy Spirit goes to work on an unbeliever He often works at this one weak point. And the weak point is that no man separated from the Word of God, no man can possibly know the future. No man can really be sure that his world isn’t going to cave in tomorrow and Nebuchadnezzar’s dreaming about it and he’s upset. This is where God the Spirit works.

Now in chapter 3 we’re back to separation. This time instead of a “maybe” situation, that was covered in chapter 1. What happens when you get a “maybe” type situation? You know now how to handle “maybe” type situations; that is when you propose a separation and it may be conditionally accepted, you sell your proposal to the unbeliever on a pragmatic basis. This is the precedent of Daniel 1. But now in Daniel 3 we have separation under the “no” condition. This is when you wish to separate from a practice, a group of people, or someone in the family and you get a sharp negative answer, “no.” Now what do you do? Daniel 3 is all about how to handle that kind of a situation.

Now to understand Daniel 3 we have to go back to the way Nebuchadnezzar thought. In Daniel 2 the dream was dreamed. Daniel, through the Holy Spirit, gave the divine interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The problem we found, however, was that in Daniel 3 Nebuchadnezzar chooses some years later… and there was a feedback card handed in and someone asked wasn’t there a time gap between chapter 2 and chapter 3; yes, very definitely, the Septuagint argues there was 18 years between chapter 2 and 3, but in chapter 3 you have this great statue, several miles southeast of the city of Babylon, set up. The base of that statue may still be in existence, there’s a strange pedestal there and it looks like that could have been the base for this tremendous statue of gold.

Now why did Nebuchadnezzar make this image of gold? Obviously Nebuchadnezzar made it because like all men in the ancient world, Nebuchadnezzar believed in making his dream vision concrete. And over the years, particularly in the early church, it was the universal belief of the Church fathers that the idols made in the ancient world, all these things that you see in archeology magazines and so on, were not made up; those idols that we see were carved in stone, or that were carved in wood and plated with gold or bronze, that these statues were not just made up, but rather were craftsmen who designed the statue after demon inspired dreams. Milton mentions this in Paradise Lost, how the demons will get people… see what they do is they take some unbeliever and they’ll cause a dream, and this dream will have a picture, and then what happens is that this whatever it is in the dream, he tells this to a craftsman and this craftsman makes up a statue equal to that vision. So the statues that have been made in the ancient world are not just somebody making something up but they actually reflect the shape the demons appear in dreams.

And so Nebuchadnezzar follows this ancient mentality, he has a dream vision and so he makes it concrete. Now when he makes this image in Daniel 3, he has done something which has to be changed. See, Nebuchadnezzar is going to be won to the Lord but not yet. In Daniel 3 he has not yet become a Christian, a believer. But the Holy Spirit is working on him, very slowly in various areas of his life. Remember, 20 years may separate Daniel 2 and Daniel 3. So it takes the Holy Spirit some time working in his life, but here is the error that Nebuchadnezzar made, here’s his reasoning that led to this statue as near as we can reconstruct it.

His first point in his thought, syllogism, the first point in the syllogism was true, that Daniel’s God called him to be the head of the kingdom. That’s true, that’s a bona fide fact that Nebuchadnezzar does not mess up by his human viewpoint. That’s in the dream, Daniel tells him that and God wants him to know that. Fine, everything’s great. But now we come to the second thing and here is where he gets off the track, and this is what you’re going to find, you might as well learn now if you haven’t had this sad experience before, when you go to try to communicate the Word of God to someone you are going to find sooner or later they are going to reinterpret what you have said, it’s the old story, people hear what they want to hear. Nebuchadnezzar hears what he wants to hear in Daniel 2 and drops the rest of it. And so what he does is he thinks that Daniel’s God, the God of Israel, is like the gods that he already knows. He hasn’t got straightened out on the doctrine of divine essence; he doesn’t know that yet, he’s still not clear, he may have heard it but it hasn’t registered, and so he interprets the dream vision as a commission by a god like the god he knows, Bel, Marduk, Ishtar, these gods and goddesses of the ancient world.

Now why is this important? Because the gods of the ancient world, when they would go to work in history they would work in and through rulers, that was the belief. So in Assyrian art you’ll have a picture of a chariot, for example, being drawn by some horses, and Ashurbanipal is in the chariot, and he has his bow, he’s hunting, and the artist draws this picture of Ashurbanipal with his archery with his chariot going across this mosaic; then the artist does a very clever thing, and not too many people notice what was happening in these Assyrian artwork until they really began to see it; every one of these pictures had such queer things added, and nobody could figure out what this addition meant and it finally dawned, that’s the theology of these ancient people. Up here, maybe to the right or to the left, somewhere in the upper part of the art picture there would be a god who would look like this; the god would always be doing the same thing that the ruler was doing at the bottom of the picture, and finally the long series of art criticism and discussions, it came to be realized that the artists were saying that the gods are in one to one correspondence with the rulers. So if Ashurbanipal pulls his bow like this, that means that the God, Bel or Marduk or whoever is pictured in the art, is also pulling his bow. So what does that communicate? That the god and the state are in unity.

And this is the concept that Nebuchadnezzar had, that God and the state are one; the concept that Pharaoh had. So his problem was right here, here’s where his human viewpoint came in. He started out with a divine viewpoint fact that God had made him the head of the kingdom. Then because his soul was filled with human viewpoint, when he went to reason it out he came to the conclusion that Nebuchadnezzar’s acts equal God’s acts. It’s not arrogant if you accept this theology; it’s just saying that what I say is God’s Word. This is why he erects the statue, and this is why, as we ended last time in verse 12, they come to Nebuchadnezzar with this accusation against the Jews, and it says “O king, they have not regarded thee,” see it’s all in apposition, “they have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” It’s all wrapped up together; respect for Nebuchadnezzar is equal to respect for the gods. If you reject what Nebuchadnezzar says then you reject the god, whoever it was, that spoke to him in his dream.

We’re not trying to excuse the behavior, I’m just trying to get you to see what’s on Nebuchadnezzar’s mind because this furnace deal that’s coming up is just going to be a perfectly designed thing, it’s going to blow it, the whole picture, it’s the most beautifully designed way the Holy Spirit has of correcting this problem, but you’ve got to see the problem first. He thinks the God of Israel is like these other gods, therefore what he has done, to go back to the divine institutions, which is always a threat in our own day, we can deal with these divine institutions. Now the way God’s Word pictures these divine institutions is that they’re all true for a sphere of life. The Dutch Calvinists call this, not divine institutions, but they call it the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. It’s the same thing, whatever label you want to use, that each one of these areas has a certain sphere.

If you look on this chart you’ll see that first is the sphere of your human responsibility; that’s basic human freedom, that no government has the right to take that freedom away. The government is not to legislate in these areas. Two, in the area of sex and marriage, that is another whole area controlled by another whole set of principles in the Word of God. The state is not to butt in there either, it can control divorce and a few other things but the state isn’t to come in and order you to marry you, and you can’t marry her, that’d be a violation of the second divine institution, a violation of the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. Similarly in the third divine institution, we have parents; parents are the basic source of authority, not the state, and so when the state tries to come in and say that parents have to send their kids to child care centers and all the rest, it’s the fourth divine institution lapping over into the areas of the third divine institution. Now the tendency that men have always had on a human viewpoint basis is to take the fourth divine institution and blow it up, and here’s what happens. Take divine institution one, two, three, and five, they all get squished; it’s like you have so much room, and if one of those divine institutions expand the other ones have to contract, so you pull the whole pattern out of shape by doing this. This is what Nebuchadnezzar is doing, and it was common in his day; he would elevate the fourth divine institution, the state, he’d blow this thing up until it destroyed the first divine institution which was freedom. This is always the tendency; Nebuchadnezzar is doing this right here. Nebuchadnezzar is doing it because of false doctrine. Remember he entertains human viewpoint and the human viewpoint principle is that the God, in this case Daniel’s God, the gods equals the state for all intents and purposes. The gods are the state, what the gods say the state must do.

Verse 13 is the response, remember they had a dedication ceremony to this great statue, the three young boys, you’ll notice Daniel is not present in Daniel 3, which is another principle that we said last week, and the principle is that God may have you face and adversity or trial in your life and the mature Christian that you always looked to isn’t there. A woman may face this trial, all this time she’s been depending on her husband, and maybe as far as the Lord is concerned the woman has depended more upon her husband than upon the Lord. So the Lord in effect says okay lady, I’m going to have your husband out of town and then I’m going to drop a nice little piece of adversity right in your lap and see how you handle it. Well if that happens, it shows that the woman was trusting her husband more than the Lord, didn’t know how to handle the thing. Or it may be that you’re a young believer and every time you had a trial you could call somebody on the phone and that’s fine up to a point, and then you’re going to see that person or persons who God has used to edify you, to help mature you, they’re going to be gone, out of town or doing something else, and all of a sudden boom, the thing drops in your lap and you don’t know where to go. It’s deliberate, just like these three boys here in Daniel 3. Here they are, hey, I wonder what Daniel would say about this. Daniel isn’t here, he’s off some place. It could be that if this was 20 years later that he’s actually in Jerusalem because this would be a little bit after the time of the captivity, he may have been gone to Israel on business. But Daniel is out of the picture completely and these three young boys had to face it all by themselves.

Daniel 2:13, Nebuchadnezzar hears about their refusal, here’s the separation principle, they refuse to bow to the state; the state has no right to interfere in this sphere of religion. So they refuse. “Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage and fury commanded to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Then they brought these men before the king. [14] Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?” And then he offers them a proposal. Now it’s interesting if you look at verse 13, Nebuchadnezzar responds in rage; Nebuchadnezzar is going to go to the funny farm, literally, in Daniel 4. And when he goes there he is a man who has reached the state of psychosis. He’s not just neurotic, he’s psychotic. The man is gradually going insane. And the reason that he is going insane is that Nebuchadnezzar is heading for one big fat crash because of his rebellion against his God-consciousness. He is an unbeliever who was on negative volition and God the Holy Spirit is working on him.

Now here’s another principle you’ll see from this; we’ll summarize all these principles at the end; there’s a tremendous amount of principles in here, just practical things you can see in the Christian life. God is working on this man; He’s working on this man through Jeremiah; Jeremiah taught for years in Jerusalem, and when Nebuchadnezzar’s armies come up to Jerusalem Jeremiah is going to be the one who says surrender, and people are going to accuse Jeremiah, Jeremiah, you’re not a patriot, what do you mean, we should stand up and fight the Babylonians, and Jeremiah says no, no, this nation has entered the fifth degree of discipline and because it has we must surrender to Nebuchadnezzar. And so therefore Nebuchadnezzar let Jeremiah off, and Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations, which is about when he escaped from the punishment, and so on, and he bore witness to Nebuchadnezzar. Then Daniel witnessed to Nebuchadnezzar. Now he’s going to have these three guys witness to him. So look what’s happening to this man, over a 10 to 20 year period how many ways is God acting on him? This is something you ought to remember when you’re working with a loved one in your family, or you’re working with somebody at the office, or you’re working with someone in school. Don’t think it all depends on you. If God’s chasing that person it’s going to depend on maybe four or five different people, and maybe you might just be the least involved.

Now this is not an excuse not to witness; it’s just saying be relaxed when you witness. Realize that when God, like He’s working on Nebuchadnezzar here, it doesn’t all hang on those three boys; it hangs a little bit on Jeremiah, a little bit on Daniel, a little bit on them, and we’ll see later on a little bit more on Daniel later on. So God is slowly working and He’s pinching one avenue of exit after another, slowly surrounding Nebuchadnezzar. And one of the ways He’s doing this is that He’s bothering Nebuchadnezzar so that on his negative volition every time he goes to trust in human viewpoint he gets blasted. In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar tried to build his kingdom and realized in a big panic that human viewpoint wouldn’t sustain him. So he reacted like many unbelievers will. Instead of saying okay I surrender, what they’ll do is they’ll have the urge to smash, smash everything, there’s no answers in life, I’ll smash all the answers that come up. So the urge to smash, smash marriage, smash the state, smash authority, smash education, smash it all. Why? Because there’s no answers; they know there’s no answers except the Bible, they wont’ accept the Bible answer so smash everything else.

So Nebuchadnezzar has that in Daniel 2; we come to Daniel 3 and now he’s losing control of his emotions. His rage and his fury means that this man is going to lose some of the top men in his military, men who would have been tremendous officers. And in one stupid decision, made by his emotions in the fury of a moment, he is going to lose some very valuable people. And this is a picture of a man who has lost control of himself. He has not subdued the earth, he hasn’t even begun to subdue his own emotional patterns. And so he responds in rage and fury, and he commands that they be brought before him. And he says is it true? And in verses 14-15 he proposes something to these three boys. And this as an attempt, probably, by Satan to see if he can get Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego to compromise. He said, “Is it really true,” that this is the case, now I’m going to be nice to you guys and I’m going to give you a second chance.

And so in Daniel 3:15 he says, “Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” Now everything was fine up until that last clause in verse 15, and the enemies of God always wind up doing this. And this illustrates a very interesting principle. Let me explain what’s wrong with the end of verse 15, then show you how you as a Christian can exploit this in your personal relationships with unbelievers. There’s ways, since you are aware that this is the way God works, there are now ways you can apply this doctrine; it’s a very interesting situation.

The problem with verse 15 is the problem with Goliath in 1 Samuel, it’s the problem with the people in the patriarch’s day, it’s the problem with the Canaanites, it’s always the problem of the enemies of God, who finally, when they look at the believer, here’s the believer giving their testimony, they look over the believers at what they stand for and begin to malign the character of God. When that happens in Scripture you’re setting up for a judgment. As long as they just attack the believers as people, there doesn’t seem to be a judgment. But what is different about this trial and why we’re going to have a very startling deliverance is the three boys are not just being attacked; their God is being attacked. God Himself and His character are being maligned, and this draws down the wrath of God, and this also spells salvation for these three boys. They have so perfectly identified themselves with Jesus Christ that the enemies of them become the enemies of Jesus Christ. And therefore, Jesus Christ will avenge His character. God will avenge His essence and will not permit it to be distorted in any way, shape or form.

Now this tells you something or should by now about a little hint of strategy. If, for example, you have an unbelieving partner in a marriage relationship, you’re a student/professor type relationship, or you’re in an employer/employee type relationship, or you’re just with a crowd, whatever the thing is where you get this problem of tension between should I obey the Word or compromise, this tells you a very neat little principle to use. If you can so work it in the situation that as the people begin to attack you more and more they begin to attack Jesus Christ, you have really accomplished something and you’ll get action very, very fast. God will not permit His character to be maligned.

In other words, you are gracious, you work this situation out, some snide remarks or something like this are made, and instead of reacting in the flesh, in the old sin nature which will just draw down an attack against you, not the Lord, if you can just stay in fellowship while all this is going on and also at the same time, just say a few things; I don’t mean preach but just identify why you’re acting the way you are with the person of Christ. When someone comes in they might say how come you can take all that; this guy walks in the office and he lets you have it and it doesn’t get to you; don’t just sit there and keep your mouth shut; now don’t preach but at that point it’s time for a little verbal explanation of why. You just say it’s simple, because I’m doing this job as unto the Lord Jesus Christ, period. And make that the issue, that’s all you have to say, don’t say anything more and just go with whatever you are doing. You have just dropped an explanation into the conversation. Words and works; words and works can be done in the home, marriage, family, employee/employer relationship. It’s not preaching, just words and works, and by that words and works, giving a testimony, finally if this persecution is really coming to a head, or if the pressure is coming to a head it’s going to explode onto the person of Christ, not just you, and when you have reached that situation you are accomplishing something.

Now that’s the situation the boys have reached by the end of verse 15 and that’s why there’s going to be such a startling deliverance and I want you to see that before we get into any of the deliverance, because so often people say well, the Lord will deliver me. The Lord may not deliver you; the Lord may not deliver you because people are persecuting you because you’re such an ass, it has nothing to do with your testimony for Christ, you’re just a jerk, so don’t claim God’s protection in such a situation. But if you have worked it carefully, as unto the Lord, when the pressure comes it’s going to be directed toward Christ, then we’re going to see some interesting results.

Now that’s why he says at the end, “And who is that God, who is able to deliver you out of my hands?” Remember what he’s saying here, is that I am in one to one correspondence with God. Didn’t He give me a vision, I am the head of the kingdom. And the reply in verse 15 would seem to indicate that he’s not identifying in his mind the God of Daniel with the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. He’s just saying is there another God who can bother me, I’ve been given the kingdom and no god is going to take it away from me. Again, remember his error, he’s just about to get straightened out real fast. His error was that second step in his syllogism, that the God of Israel is like the gods of the world which operate through the state. That’s the basis of verse 15. No God is going to bother this state government, this is set up, there’s my statue, I have been decreed to be the conqueror of the world, haven’t the dreams said that all power in heaven is given into my hands; there’s no God that’s going to bother me at this point. And so it’s a challenge to God’s character. Jesus Christ reacts to these kinds of challenges in history because ultimately the person behind these challenges is Satan.

Daniel 3:16, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.” Now this is a very difficult area to translate, there are several problems with verse 16-17 that are very difficult, but it appears the thrust of what they’re saying, they’re not being insolent, they’re not being snotty about it, Daniel wasn’t snotty and these three boys aren’t snotty. These three boys are recognizing the authority of the king. They recognize the authority of the legitimate part of the authority of the fourth divine institution, they say “O king,” they put themselves in submission to the state, because the state does have this authority; they’re not undermining that part of the state’s authority. That’s legitimate it so they recognize it. But then they go on to say, “but we are not careful,” literally it reads “we have no need to defend ourselves.”

Now this may be due to several reasons, it may be due to the fact that for one thing it wouldn’t have done any good, they realized they’re working with a man who’s falling apart, verse 13, “rage and fury,” you can’t sit there and reason with this kind of an individual. But there’s also a deeper reason, and again this shows a principle of working in the home or on the job, or in various situations you may find yourself in. Consistently through the Bible you will find a very interesting point that when unbelievers get to a point of the rejection of the authority of the Word, the believers in the situation zip it up and say nothing, and begin to act.

For example, do you remember what Jesus said to Pilate? When Jesus was before Pilate, Pilate said huh, what is truth? Jesus said nothing, He just sat there and looked at him, and Pilate threatened him, he said I have authority [can’t understand words]; and Jesus said nothing, because that was the time not to say anything. It wouldn’t have done any good at that point because they had already rejected the authority of the spoken word, they were beyond that point of reasoning and so the answer is silence. And that’s what the boys are saying, we have nothing; we’re not going to argue with you. We’re not going to make a legal defense. In verse 17-18 they simply make this… and this is not preaching, this is an expression and explanation of their work. Now this is a technique that you can often use, just keep in mind the two words: words and works, and use those. You can’t just go by works alone because the unbeliever isn’t going to interpret your works correctly; you’ve got to give them explanations of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Always include an explanation when it’s pertinent, it doesn’t have to be a long one, a preachy one, but just a quiet, shot, concise explanation expressing your trust in the God of the Bible.

So Daniel 3:17-18 is the most beautiful expression of the faith technique that these believers are using, and it also has a technique of divine guidance in it for us. “If it be so,” and literally it means… the translators chickened out on this one, verse 17 literally reads, “If God is able,” you can see why the translators hedged because that sounds like it’s a heresy, you mean if these guys, these little boys doubt maybe God is able? It appears to say that, we’ll explain it in a moment. “If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. [18] But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” No argument, just an announcement, it’s done submissively, it’s done not trying to deliberately antagonize him but it’s a simple statement of defiance.

This is the answer under separation conditions. When you get a “no” answer and you’ve made the issue separation, the state prohibits it, then you just have to quietly defy the state. If the state goes ahead and passes legislation that grants women all sorts of ambiguously worded rights in our land, and the state comes in and says Lubbock Bible Church’s constitution is contrary to federal law because it violates federally guaranteed women’s rights, that is that women should have an equal shot at the pulpit, then this is the answer we’re going to have to give; if our God deliver us He will, and if He won’t, we’re not going to obey you anyway, period. So this is a principle that is used over and over again throughout history.

But another curious thing; how are we going to explain that strange clause in verse 17, “If God is able,” isn’t God omnipotent? Do these three boys doubt that God is able to do this? No, what the boys are saying, and here we get to another principle if divine guidance. During this era, beginning with Daniel, on down through history, is called in the Bible “the times of the Gentiles.” During this era, as a general principle, Israel is sidelined. Revelation stops to Israel about 400 BC, it picks up again with John the Baptist in about 28 or 30 AD, it extends on down possibly to 90 AD and after 90 AD it quiets down and Israel is again derailed, so to speak, from active revelation. So that most of the years and centuries of the times of the Gentiles are centuries when we do not have active living prophets. This means that we’ve got to go about our divine guidance differently than we would had we active prophets. These boys here give the model of how to proceed when you don’t have an active prophet telling you what God’s will is definitely. These boys in this wisdom book give us the chokmah principle for handling the times of the Gentiles when there’s a silence of God.

What did the boys do? Look at their argument. “If God is able,” and the principle is maybe God will do this and maybe God will not. In other words, these boys do not know for sure what God is going to do. This is very analogous to things you’ll see in your Christian life all the time. You’ll see a situation and you don’t know what God is going to do in that situation. You’d love to call me on the phone and say Charlie, what’s going on, I’d get my little crystal ball out and we’d go to it. No, can’t do it that way. There’s no way of knowing what God is going to do so what do you do when you don’t know for sure? You do what these boys are doing, you operate on the known principles of Scripture and leave the results in the Lord’s hands. You’ve got to go on the known, not the unknown. So you start with what you know from the Word of God, act on it and let the Lord pick up the pieces. If the world blows up because you trusted the Lord, let the world blow up, that’s His problem, not yours. Your job is to obey the Word, submit to it in faith, and then you just trust the Lord with the rest of it. That’s where you get the principle.

This is one of the key places in divine guidance in God’s Word for getting divine guidance when you don’t have a prophet around, when the canon of Scripture is closed. So they’re saying “if our God is able.” Well, how are we going to explain if our God is able? That means, basically, if God is willing. The verb isn’t the same but the idea is, if God is able to do this in accordance with His plan, that’s what they’re saying. If God is able to do this in accordance with His plan, then He’ll do it. So when you see the word “able” at the beginning of verse 17 you are seeing three tremendous saying this, in effect, to God: God, we want Your best plan for this situation. Now if within that plan You’re able to save us, fine, but if you can’t and You have your plan, we cast our lives into your hands, trusting you to work it out. Now that’s their faith, a fantastic act of these Jewish boys faced with the most powerful man on earth. So they make the announcement.

In Daniel 3:19 we find the response of a man who is well on his way to psychosis. “Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: therefore he spoke, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was custom to be heated.” Now here again is where God, very quietly, very orderly, worked all things out together for good, including the wrath of man, because what Nebuchadnezzar is about to do is set up a lot of cracks in his armor and God the Holy Spirit is going to drive a truck right through one of those cracks and as a result of this, by the end of the story Nebuchadnezzar will have another chunk of the human viewpoint of his soul just shot down, because in that last part of verse 19, when it says he fires up the furnace seven more times it sets in motion a series of cause and effect things that is going to discredit his viewpoint.

Now to make sense of what’s happening in the next few verses, visualize the furnace something like this; a giant furnace, and there’s a ladder up here, flames coming up the top, and you don’t put the victims in the door of the furnace; you put the victims in the top. So the idea is they’re going to carry these men up and they’re going to toss them in the furnace from the top down. This is why he’s going to do certain things that he’s going to do. But just visualize, that’s the kind of furnace that’s involved here. Now watch the test. He heats this thing up. Obviously heat rises, and when you get a furnace this hot there’s going to be some problems because the men who carry them have to go up toward the edge of that furnace in order to get the people so they can drop them in the top of the thing.

Daniel 3:20 “And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army, to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.” the strongest men, now when you see a detail like verse 20 you want to stop and ask yourself a few questions. Why “strong men?” Does it mean that Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego might break loose? Why does he need the most muscular, toughest men in his army to do this kind of thing? What’s the deal there? It’s not because the boys might break loose, that’s not the point. But do you remember what his defiance order was back in verse 15? Who’s the God that’s going to deliver you? So Nebuchadnezzar has that threat in mind, he’s dead serious when he says there’s no God that’s going to interfere with this. So he heats the furnace up and to make sure that there’s no divine agencies interfering with the process he gets the strongest men in his army as a guard around this; the guard is there not to bind the boys, the guard is there to prevent gods from showing up on the scene, in angelic form, and releasing the boys. That’s why he’s go those muscular men. Now it’s setting up to explain why the story proceeds as it does. See, God tailors his attack beautifully. So they go up and they’re going to cast them into the burning furnace; they climb up the ladder or whatever it was and they’re going to dump them in the top of the furnace.

Daniel 3:21, “Then these men were bound in their coats, their stockings, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.” Verse 21 notes some facts that you want to see, they are bound with their clothes on. Normally this was not the process. Nebuchadnezzar has done two things now out of his fierce anger that are going to redound against him. One, he lost control of his emotions and he fired the furnace too hot. As one commentator said, if he wanted to torture somebody what you do is decrease the heat of the furnace and let them fry. That’s the way the martyrs were done in the Middle Ages, they didn’t burn them at the stake, all of them, they just lit a fire and held them up close to it, so you just burn slowly, you turn to toast first and then you burned up. That’s the way you torture people.

You don’t torture them by heating it up seven times, that’s doing nothing except wrecking your furnace. So he’s going to wreck his furnace; he’s going to wreck his army people, and furthermore this whole thing is going to be frustrating. He forgets to strip them because in most cases the prisoners were stripped and just dumped naked into the fire. And this is going to do something to him. So all the coats and everything is on and the ropes are placed over the clothing, you’ve got to see the picture. They are tied together, the word means to tie with a rope, so the ropes are tied around their clothes, so you’ve got linen in the clothes and linen in the rope, you’ve got cloth in both cases; now watch what happens.

Daniel 3:22, “Therefore because the king’s commandment was absurd,” the word “urgent” is the same word we dealt way back in Daniel 2:14, it doesn’t mean hasty or urgent, it means it’s just crazy. Because this commandment was crazy, “and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.” See, they took them up the ladder, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Verse 23, “And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.”

Now at this point in Christian tradition there’s a gap between verses 23-24 and in the apocrypha there is a section written describing what happened before we get to verse 24. Now this is not the Word of God but it has a base in ancient Christian tradition. It is part of the apocrypha. If you have a Roman Catholic friend his Bible will be different from yours; his Bible will not go from verse 23 to 24, there will be a break in it. And there’ll be two short sections of Scripture inserted between verse 23 and verse 24. Again, this is not the Word of God, we’re not sure that this tradition preserved actually what happened, but what it does preserve is what believers thought about what happened, and that’s enlightening. It is not necessarily what happened but what other believers in years gone by, before the time of Christ, thought did happen at this point. And it’ll give you an idea of how they thought about angels; it’ll give you an idea of how they thought about how God works.

“And they walked in the midst of the fire, praising God, and blessing the Lord. Then Azarias stood up, and prayed on this manner; and opening his mouth in the midst of the fire said, Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers: thy name is worthy to be praised and glorified for evermore:
For thou art righteous in all the things that thou hast done to us: yea, true are all thy works, thy ways are right, and all thy judgments truth.” And he goes on and describes this, and then interestingly he makes this point, remember we have just got through saying this is divine guidance in a prophet-less era. And sure enough, in The Prayer of Azariah, as he goes, he blesses the Lord for this, blesses the Lord for that, then he comes to this verse and he says at this time, no “prince, or prophet, or leader, or burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, or place to sacrifice before thee, and to find mercy. Nevertheless in a contrite heart and an humble spirit let us be accepted. Like as in the burnt offerings of rams and bullocks” etc. etc. etc. 
 
And he goes through the prayer, and then it blends into another book which is called The Song of the Three Young Men. And I won’t read it, except the introduction to it. And the introduction kind of fills in what probably happens when these three boys were led up that ladder to the top of the furnace and it tells you how they visualized the angel helping them. 
 
“The king’s servants who threw them in did not cease feeding the furnace fires below with naphtha, pitch, tow and brushwood,” that shows you what they were using to fire it with. “And the flames streamed out above the furnace forty-nine cubits,” that’s fifty times one and a half, seventy-five feet the flames are shooting out the top of that thing, and it broke through the top of the furnace and burned the Chaldeans as they were going up. So what had happened was is that this was a masonry type furnace and the masonry was just cracking because of the tremendous heat, the flame just shot right out and got them. So apparently just as they dumped these boys in, the masonry cracked and let the heat out at them. “…it broke through and it burned the Chaldeans as they were going up. “But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace to be with Azariah and his companions, and he drove the fiery flame out of the furnace, and made the midst of the furnace,” where they were, “as though a moist wind were whistling through it. The fire did not touch them at all and caused them no pain or distress,” so the fire never even touched them or hurt them.” 
 
Now we can’t be sure that’s what happened, but the Word of God tells us in Daniel 3:24 that something astounding did happen, “Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished,” now he’s sitting out here, he probably has his [can’t understand words] he wants to watch this, on the menu today are fried Jews, and this is an anti-Semitic campaign, genocide is what it is, and he’s going to try and murder them. He “was astonished and rose up in haste, and spoke, and said unto his counselors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.” 
 
Daniel 3:25, “He answered and said, Lo, I see four men” and then look a the word, “loose,” except in the Aramaic it’s “loosened,” passive, they’ve been loosened; now how could those boys that were bound with rope be loosened? Very simple, the fire burned the rope but didn’t burn their clothes. The very pressure that Nebuchadnezzar built, which would be the fire, killed his men and burned the rope. Do “all things work together for good?” Of course; that fire worked together for good; it killed the soldiers and it burned the rope, the thing that was binding them was burned by the very thing that Nebuchadnezzar was going to use to kill them. It was loosened, and they were “walking” participle, continually, “in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt;” in the Aramaic it’s more excited than this, you can translate in the full force of it, he says look, no hurt, no hurt on them is what he’s saying, much more emotional, “they have no hurt and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God,” bar Elohim, a son of the gods. Now we’d like to say that’s the angel of the Lord and it’s the Lord Jesus Christ, and it probably is but we can’t prove it because the word bar Elohim is used for angels in general; it’s like bena ha Elohim. Probably it was the Son of God but we can’t be specific on this. He saw four men walking. 
 
In verse 26 Nebuchadnezzar comes near. Now look at the irony, what were those soldiers sent up there to do? Why did he call those muscular men out of the army, the army’s best men? To protect against divine interference. What frustrated his plan? His own wrath because what had his own wrath done? Fired the furnace to big, so it was Nebuchadnezzar’s mistake that ruined Nebuchadnezzar, and this is always the way it works; Satan’s mistakes always conspire to bring Satan’s downfall. Satan thought he’d gotten rid of Jesus on the cross, only to find out in a matter of hours that what in fact had happened was that Jesus died for the sins of the world and thereby was the legal basis for releasing captives from Satan’s kingdom. If there’s ever a candidate for a neurotic state it would be Satan. Every time he fails, he conspires only to accomplish exactly what God wanted in the first place. So we have Nebuchadnezzar following the satanic line, guarding against the divine interference, the very fire killed his guards and then what happened, divine interference right in the middle of the fire, right in the center of his most confident area; certainly no one can survive my fire, it’s seven times hotter. And that’s precisely where divine interference comes in, precisely where God hits him, where he thinks he’s the strongest. 
 
Between verse 25 and 26 is a tremendous time gap. How do we know? Because the fire calmed down to the point where he could come back to that furnace door. See the door of the furnace was tremendously hot, and Nebuchadnezzar is going to come up close to the door where he can shout inside. These furnaces are tremendously large, so the pitch and naphtha had burned up now, it’s like a gasoline fire, it doesn’t last that long, it flares up and then it dies away. It’s died away now and now Nebuchadnezzar come to the mouth and shouts inside the furnace. Daniel 3:26 “Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spoke, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, ye servants of the Most High God, come forth,” needless to say Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t go in, he asks them to come out, “and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, came forth of the midst of the fire.” Now he calls their God the Most High God, he is still pagan, he was still not born again, God is merely the highest among the gods. He is highest god among the gods, it’s polytheistic terminology.
 
Daniel 3:27, “And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counselors, being gathered together, saw these men,” now at the end of verse 27, another problem, Nebuchadnezzar looks at them as they come out of the furnace, their clothes aren’t burned, but their ropes are; the ropes aren’t listed in verse 27, only the clothes are listed in verse 27, so the fire destroyed the rope but not the clothes, “upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.” Not even the smell of fire had passed on them.
 
Now in Daniel 3:28, and this shows you the power of the strategy that is used in this chapter. “Then Nebuchadnezzar spoke, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants” and notice what he says about those boys? They “trusted in him, and [the God] has changed the king’s word, and [they] yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.” You see the act spoke to Nebuchadnezzar’s heart far more forcibly than a lot of preaching. The boys just quietly did, they explained what they were doing and why they were doing it, and that was the end of it, no preaching, they just acted and they interpreted their action and told him why and let the chips fall. And the chips did fall, and this proves how far the chips fell, into Nebuchadnezzar’s heart because he recognized those boys trusted and that God, whoever He was, that God that they trusted in responds to faith. In the next chapter we’ll see how this works on Nebuchadnezzar.
 
Daniel 3:29, so he says, “Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill,” a public toilet, it’s the same punishment as in chapter 2, they would turn the homes of people they condemned this way, they’d tear out all the furniture inside and turn it into a public urinal, “because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort. [30] Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, in the province of Babylon.” 
 
Now there’s some principle out of this we want to notice and I’m going to summarize chapter 3 under these principles. There are a lot of principles and that’s the only way we can pull it together; there’s not one big idea in this chapter, there’s about eight. So here are some useful principles that you can use in your Christian life. 

The first principle is: when God works on a person it may take years to work on them; don’t think of a five minute presentation and don’t get discouraged; God isn’t working, He hasn’t worked in the last 30 minutes, He’s not working. God takes years to close in on a person. This should encourage some of you, particularly with loved ones in your family. You keep on praying, God will work with them, just don’t panic.

Second principle, when you are involved in a separation issue make the character of God the issue, not yourself. To the degree you fail to do this you fail to really work with the Holy Spirit. If it’s a bona fide area of separation the character of God ought to be brought in in some key so that the person can’t hit you without hitting the character of God. That’s what you’re shooting for in separation. They can’t get to you without going through Christ first. You hide behind Jesus Christ is what you’re doing.

A third principle, the most powerful witness in those situations is often an act of trust accompanied by an explanation. Wife may be a believer, husband unbeliever, husband doesn’t know why all of a sudden his wife is doing this for him, and every once in a while, not enough to be preachy, the woman can offer explanation; why am I doing this? Because Jesus Christ tells me this is the way a woman ought to be in the home, that’s why. What’s the guy going to do, she’s got him caught. It works the other way too.

Fourth principle, during times of the silence of God, when the canon is closed, you will not know which way to go and you’re going to have to play it like these guys did, use a principle of Scripture and go from there, regardless of how much you don’t know about details. You’re going to have to step out and just trust the Lord to honor His Word, and forget about trying to get a blueprint for every minute of the day for tomorrow. You just take a principle of the Word of God and apply it and let the Lord take it from there. Don’t worry if you can’t know all the details, you won’t know all the details because there’s not a prophet around to tell you the details.

A fifth principle we find from this text is that some of your worst trials will come when you are isolated from the believers that can help you the most. Sometimes you will be tested and there will be no one around that is competent to help you, and that is deliberately designed to get you to stop trusting in people and start trusting the Lord and His Word. You’ve been exposed to the Word, you’ve taken in doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, now there’s a situation where you’re going to have to apply it.

A sixth principle is that God can save you out of any situation through the use of angelic agencies, Hebrews 1:14 is a good verse along with Daniel 3. Angelic agencies operate in the physical universe around us, we can’t see them but they are the means that God often uses to deliver you. It goes all the way from automobile wrecks to walking and simply falling on your head. There are all sorts of ways that God can protect you through angelic means.

And finally there’s another principle, the last one in this chapter, the last verse, and it’s nothing more than Matthew 6:33, if you put the Lord first you’ll get your promotion. These boys were promoted. When they started this chapter they didn’t even know if they were going to be alive by the end of the chapter, but they put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ first and their jobs second. And they left their job in the hands of the Lord, and if their employer wanted to fire them, then he’d fire them; that’s all right, but they are not going to abandon their testimony for Jesus Christ and the result was God worked it all together for God, they not only kept their job, they were promoted it says, and more pay, they had a salary increase in verse 30, so it shows you the tremendous grace of God. And in chapter 4 we’ll see how all this conspires together to finally lead Nebuchadnezzar to faith in Jesus Christ.