Daniel 3 - Confidence Over Cowardice
Tom Shrader examines the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3 as they face Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. He emphasizes that true biblical convictions must be maintained regardless of outcomes, highlighting their declaration that God can save them but even if He doesn't, they will not compromise. The teaching challenges believers to develop unwavering convictions that aren't dependent on God's deliverance from difficult circumstances.
“It's one thing to say, hey, we know he'll get us out of it, but it's the other part - even if he doesn't, don't you for a second think that that in any way is a mark against His reputation.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Integrity Under Fire (2005)
Recorded: February 17, 2005
Duration: 41 min
Themes: courage, faith, convictions, persecution, compromise, obedience, trust, integrity, facing persecution, standing alone, workplace pressure, cultural opposition, young adult, new believer, leader, parent teaching children
Scripture: Daniel 3, Romans 12:18, Daniel 2:48, Hebrews 11, James 1, Romans 5:1-10, 2 Corinthians 4
Theological Themes: biblical convictions, divine sovereignty, faithfulness, spiritual warfare, sanctification, biblical worldview, providence, moral courage
Full Transcript
A Counterculture Faith
Here we go, session three. When we finish today, we will have passed the halfway point in this series, looking at the first six chapters of the book of Daniel. We've encouraged you to stop and take a look at the chapter we'll cover the next day. Go ahead and read, even make some notes perhaps, and see if you pull out the same things that we do. You'll find yourself receiving from God all sorts of insights, I hope, as the Spirit of God applies it to this lesson and to your heart.
The series is titled Integrity Under Fire, and we talked about convictions under attack, principles for living in a hostile environment. It's funny to me how often what I teach on Sunday dovetails into what we teach during the week. This is certainly one of those occasions right now. We're working our way on Sunday through a study in the life of Jesus, and we're at the Sermon on the Mount, working our way through the Beatitudes.
As we look at the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety, most commentators will point out the counterculture nature of Jesus' teaching. In fact, one author says, speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, it's probably the most familiar of all Jesus' teaching, but arguably the least understood and the least obeyed. The phrase that John Stott uses with the Sermon on the Mount is that it's a call for us as Christians to understand that our life as believers is counterculture. We're swimming upstream.
That isn't anything new. That's been true of the people of God through all of history, and that's right before us today as we look at the life of Daniel and his boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In fact, as we look at chapter 3 today, there's something noticeably absent. If you read chapter 3 in preparation for this, you noticed that Daniel's name does not appear one time. This is a Daniel-free chapter.
The Connection Between Belief and Behavior
The principle that we are striving for here in this study, and we keep it in front of you all the time, is this: What you believe has to affect how you behave. What you think is true will inevitably affect how you act. If you think that there is a stock out there today at $10, and at the end of the week it's going to be $50, and you have the resources, you're going to buy it. What you think, what you believe, will affect how you behave.
That is really true for us when we look at the example of Daniel. We develop these convictions. They're not just ideas. They're even maybe stronger than beliefs, in that what we're trying to do there is solidify the word, saying, this is what we firmly believe, upon which we will not compromise.
Since we're counterculture, you might get the sense that we're constantly in conflict with everyone around us. Yet Paul writes to us as Christians, Romans chapter 12 verse 18, "As far as it's possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with one another." Well, how do we do that and still keep our convictions intact?
Finding Win-Win Solutions
There are a couple of ways. One, oftentimes we just stand for the convictions, and other people will yield. Caving is not an option. What we saw in week one is oftentimes we can take our convictions, we go into those areas of conflict, we have an opportunity to sit down with people on the other side, and once we dialogue with them, understand what they're trying to achieve, we can oftentimes find a win-win proposition. By the way, that is not going to be the case today in lesson three.
Last week, we looked at the idea of integration over segmentation, which means simply, if I say I'm a Christian, it has to permeate every area of my life. I cannot isolate my faith to a compartment of my life that's relegated perhaps to Sunday and a few very specific, hand-selected events through the week. My faith has to affect how I behave.
A Dangerous Precedent
1960, John F. Kennedy is running for president. I personally, looking back, remember as an 11-year-old boy, hearing Kennedy make this statement. I thought, that's an odd statement. He was, of course, a Catholic running for president, and the charge was, if he's elected president, the pope will run the country. Well, that's silly, and you know that. It's a silly charge.
Kennedy is in Texas before a group of Protestant ministers, and Kennedy makes this statement: "I will not allow my faith to affect the way I govern." I remember thinking, what a stupid... If I said that to my dad, he'd knock me up the side of the head. If I said to my dad, "I'm not going to let my faith affect the way I live as a young boy," he'd whack me in the head and say, "What's wrong with you, Tom?"
If you're in the office, and you're hiring somebody, and they say, "Yeah, I'm a strong Christian who believes in biblical principles, but I want you to know it won't affect the way I work," you would say, "Well, I'm not interested in you." It is a categorically stupid thing to say, and it got him elected president. I believe it sets up, now we institutionalize dumb thinking all the way through into what most people would say the pivotal year in modern history for us as a culture, 1968, where everything began to just disintegrate.
I say 1968. Let me stop there. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and we were just talking about not everybody is up to speed on everything, and he said he was at the bookstore the other day. He was at Borders, and he was looking for a specific item. It was "In the Arena" by Richard Nixon, and went up and said to the gal, "I'm looking for a book by President Nixon, 'In the Arena,'" and she said, "Nixon, what's that first name?" So we've lost a little bit along the way. We're struggling. Richard is the answer, by the way, as some of you, looking at each other.
We saw last week. Today, we look not at Daniel, but his buddies. We're going to look at them as they have this opportunity, face to face with the most powerful man in the world, to cave. And they don't.
We're talking about confidence over cowardice, trusting in the deliverance of God as we battle with the corruption in the world we see around us. We said first week, creative compromise. There isn't any here. Chapter 3, as I mentioned, Daniel's not mentioned at all.
One last warning as we do this. There's a tendency to sterilize this as one of those Old Testament stories, kind of like Aesop's fable, something that's there to teach a principle. It's a historic event, and hopefully we're going to get that out of our study today.
The Golden Image
Daniel chapter 3, verse 1: "King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold. It was 90 feet high, 9 feet wide, centered on the plain of Dora in the providence of Babylon."
So here's this plain that's as flat as that table that's sitting in front of you. It's a 90 foot high statue. Now here's what I want you to know, because a lot of people read this and they've never - they're just going, oh, here's fiction. Archaeologists have discovered not the statue, they haven't found that, but they found the pedestal that it was sitting on, and that was 20 feet high.
So here's this object, 90 feet high, sitting on a pedestal 20 feet high. So this gold statue is a statue about 11 stories high on this flat area. It would be visible through all the region. When the sun would hit it in the day, it would just shine and sparkle, blind you as you looked at it. Again, getting the idea here, this is a true, actual, historic event.
Verse 3: "Then a herald proclaimed loudly. This is a declaration from the king. This is what you're commanded to do, O people and nations and men of every language. As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, the flute, the zither, the lyre" - by the way, anybody bring their zithers or lyres with them today and we can jam when we're done here - "harp, pipes, and all kinds of music. You must fall down and worship the image of gold that the king has set up."
The King's Declaration and Our Modern Idols
So there's the declaration. The king is saying, listen, I may not declare myself God, but at least I'm going to determine who you're going to worship and what you're going to worship. And for now it's going to be this gold statue, this image. And when you hear this music, I want you to bow down.
And if you need some incentive, there it is in verse 6: "Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace." That's the background. He said, listen, we're going to have a whole new entity that we're worshiping. It's going to be this statue.
Now you may look at that and say, that's really silly. We would never do anything like that. I may worship a god, but I'm not worshiping a statue. I'd never worship an idol. Listen, an idol is anything in your life that's taking place or the place of the one true God.
My suspicion would be that you have idols scattered all over your life. You may wear your idol, or drive your idol, or swing your idol. You may be - I think I know people who have taken the family to an unhealthy position and idolized the entity of family. It may be your job. It's anything that takes the place that should be reserved in your life for the one true God.
So when we say, ah, we don't worship idols, I'm a God worshiper. If you worship anything other than the one true God, the God that we discover in the Scripture, anything other than Him, you're an idol worshiper. Now in the case before us, the incentive is if you don't worship, when that music sounds, here's what happens. We're going to throw you in the burning fire.
The Astrologers' Accusation
Verse 8: "Some of the astrologers came forward and denounced the Jews." I want to remind you what we said last week. At the very end of Daniel chapter 2, remember the background? The king had been - he'd had it with his astrologers and his magicians and all the wise men, because he's telling them the dreams and he's saying, you interpret it. He said, we're going to do something different this time. You tell me what the dream was. Remember that?
And they said, whoa, nobody can do that. Only the gods can do that. No one could possibly do that. He said, well, you better do that, because if you don't, I'm going to cut you into pieces and I'm going to burn down your house. And in fact, it was in the midst of that that Daniel emerges with the dream.
And as a reward of that, he received gifts, other rewards, and a position of high honor. Daniel chapter 2, verse 48: "The king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole providence of Babylon and the chief perfecter over all the wise men of Babylon. And he also, at Daniel's request, appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the administration of the providence."
And we said when we saw that last week, uh-oh. Here are these young boys. I would sense that there's just kind of an inbred professional jealousy to begin with. Here are these young whippersnappers, and they're displacing us. But what you see here is what you would suspect, and that is they're denouncing him because of who they are. Here are these Jews. And they came in here a short period of time ago as captives. Now they're ruling us. And we said, uh-oh, they're not going to like that. And when they get the chance, they're going to try to take these guys down.
Well, they've got the chance. Here are these young Turks, the new generation, the new breed, and these old guys want a piece of their action. And they're going to get it.
Verse 12: "Some of the Jews," now what's happened is these astrologers have gone to the king. "Some of the Jews whom you've sent over the affairs of the providence, specifically Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, these three guys," three things. Here they are in verse 12. "They pay no attention to you, O king." Here's the second thing, "nor do they serve your gods." And the third thing is -
they don't worship the image of gold you've set up. You get the backdrop? You get the attention?
These guys now go to the king and they say, "King, we know you're the ruler. You're the grand poobah. You're the big kahuna. You're the guy that's in charge of everything. You be the man. And what you say goes. Well, at least until now, we're all bowing down. And as we bow down, we kind of look around, apparently, and we've spotted that these three guys aren't bowing down. And our recollection is that you said that whoever didn't do that, you'd burn them up. And historically, you've been a man of your word. In fact, you just got done cutting into pieces some of these guys that couldn't tell you what the dreams were. So we're guessing you're going to want to do something about that, aren't you Nebuchadnezzar?"
Nebuchadnezzar's Investigation
In verse 14, Nebuchadnezzar gets all excited here and he goes to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and he says, "Is it true?" He didn't have to do that. He certainly is not a man who is restricted by due process.
I think, and I could be reading too much into the text, I think he has such respect for these guys and he doesn't want to lose these guys, that he wants to make sure it's accurate and establish the fact. "Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I've set up?"
The Bold Response
And the boys answer, and here's what they say: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we're thrown into the blazing furnace"—that was the promise—"if we're thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it and He will rescue us from your hand, O king."
The king comes and says, "Did you do this," or in this case "not do it," "did you not bow down?" And they say, "Guilty as charged." And we're not going to defend ourselves, we're not going to argue with you, we're not going to explain it to you, we're not going to have a word of war with you. Here's the deal: you throw us in the fire and our God is a God who saves. Ours is a God who rescues.
Ours is a God who's all powerful, who's all knowing, who's extraordinary, who's bigger than you, Nebuchadnezzar. And He's bigger than fire, He's bigger than anything. He created it all, and He has dominion and control over it all, and there's nothing you can do that He can't stop. There's no events that you can put into motion that He can't alter. And we serve a great and mighty and holy God.
The Power of God in Scripture
And we carry that over. We talked about it a couple weeks ago. You get into Hebrews 11, the hall of fame of faith, and you start looking at the stories of Abraham and Joseph and Moses. You look at these magnificent stories of how God intervenes in people's lives, and the great things that He's done, and He continues to do. And you say, "Amen, our God can do this, He's an all powerful God."
And they know this, and they stand face to face with the most powerful man on the planet. And I'll tell you what many of you already know: they're going into the fire and are going to get out. And it bugs me. It just bothers me. It bothers me they get delivered, and it bothers me that this has a happy ending, because in my brain, in your brain, our mind is, "Oh, if we obey God too, everything's going to be okay. If we just do what God told us to do, He's certainly not obligated to do this, but I'll bet He'll just get us out of it, because that's the kind of God He is."
The Most Important Verse
That's why Daniel chapter 3, verse 18, is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. Because here's what the boys say: "But even if He doesn't." In other words, we're not going to be surprised if He gets us out of the fire, and we won't be disappointed if He doesn't. "Even if He doesn't, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up."
See, it's one thing to say, "Hey, we know He'll get us out of it." You've got a lot of that going on in Christendom today: claim this promise, do this, God will do this, He'll do this, He's obligated to do this, believe this, conceive it, believe it, achieve it. It's there, it's magic, it's as though Christianity is this genie in a bottle. Rub it, say abracadabra, say it in Greek or Hebrew, abracadabra, and out comes the genie and he'll get you whatever you want. And that's simply not true.
The Other Side of Faith
It's the other part of Hebrews 11, where they were tortured and cut in two, and they were relegated to wandering around in the desert. It is a tragic mistake to think that there is necessarily—that's a key word—a connection between your financial and physical condition and your spiritual condition. It's simply not true. To think that every sickness or illness or financial hardship is a result of sin in your life, or worse yet, lack of belief, simply isn't biblical. And the fact that God might want you sick, and God may want you struggling, is indeed possible.
Why God Allows Suffering
I'm going to probe—let's probe it just a little bit. Why would God do that? Why would God want this to happen? I'll give you four reasons at least.
Number one, it's going to make you strong. That's what James says, James chapter 1: "Count it all joy, brethren, when you encounter various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance." James says, "Here's what I understand: that my testing results in endurance." That if I want to be in this for the long haul, if I want to indeed believe what we say, that the Christian faith is a marathon, not a sprint, and I want to be able to have the endurance to run that race—if I want to have that endurance, I need to suffer, because the result of that suffering is, I begin to grow.
Romans chapter 5: "Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God." When we're talking about peace with God, we're talking about a cessation of hostilities between who we are and who God is. We have peace with God. Verse 6: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 8: "God demonstrated His..."
love for us, and that while we were yet helpless, hopeless sinners, Christ died for us. Verse 10, if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by His life?
Tucked away in the midst of this magnificent news about Jesus saving us, verse 3, Paul writes this, and not only this, but we exalt, give me another translation, we rejoice in our tribulations. Why would I rejoice in tribulation? That seems like a very odd thing to say. Why would I rejoice in the middle of tribulation? Well Paul tells you the answer, because you know that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance proven character, and character hope, and hope doesn't disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within us.
Why We Can Rejoice in Tribulation
Why would I rejoice in the midst of tribulation? Because I know something. Can I go back to a message that we taught in here, and we continue to go back to over and over again? What you know trumps what you feel. What you know trumps what you feel.
So you're going to be involved in all sorts of things in life where your feelings are going to race over here, and your mind is going to race over here, and we instinctively are pessimistic. We instinctively want to think the worst. I see this all the time. When you're playing golf, you're in a foursome, and a guy hits a drive, and the drive is going at a trap. The three guys watching will say, you flew the trap. The guy who hit the ball will say, no it's in it. I watch it every time.
Every time there's a guy who hits a shot, he'll hit a shot, and he'll say, I think it's in the rough. And the other three will say, no, I think it rolled into the fairway. We instinctively say, it's in the sand, it's in the rough, I know it's cancer. That's a thing.
Got a message yesterday. I had my physical a month ago. I got a message yesterday. Call the doctor. Test results. Well, I know what He's going to say, but the minute you think it, Susan's going, I wonder if you caught what I have. And I said, I don't think it works that way. I don't think I have breast cancer, but maybe I do. I got other issues, but not that one.
The Eternal Perspective
How can you rejoice in that? Because you know. And that's what these boys say. It's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. Though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction. To me, it's become my definition of life. Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison because we don't look at the things that are seen. We look at the things that are unseen because the things that are seen are temporal or temporary. The things that are unseen are eternal.
And so all of a sudden, our life, it's not that we're whistling through the graveyard. It's that all of a sudden, we got a bigger picture here. When Sarah had her accident a few years ago, and then the brain seizure and all the stuff, and of course, the people, again, they can't leave well enough alone. They assume that at that point, she's dying or dead. People are amazing in that whole process.
And so all of a sudden, after a few days, Sarah responds, and then pretty soon we're out of intensive care. And as I'm walking into church to teach, I'm hearing from people, Sarah is going to live God is good. Sarah is going to live God is good. So I took my notes and put them away, and I did a message that night that was titled, God is good even if she dies.
God's Goodness Is Not Circumstantial
God's goodness is not wrapped up in my daughter's health or my wife's health or my health. God's goodness is not wrapped up in your success or your failure or your aggravation. God is good. That's a fact. That's a fact. All these other things can cloud that issue and can take a month.
See, that's why it's important to be anchored in the Scripture. That's why when we talk to you about making sure that when you pick a church, you go wherever you want to church, but make sure it's a Bible-believing. That's a great start. In other words, they believe the Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of God, and they teach it. Why?
Well, because as life throws this stuff at you, which inevitably will. I was at a church yesterday, and we were just looking at some buildings, and they this year had seven funerals for high school students. Now that stuff's coming at you. If you don't have an anchor, if you aren't grounded, your theology's going to get whacked real fast.
That's why you've got to be able to say like the boys here. Our God is able. Our God can save us. Our God can put this fire out. Our God can do whatever He wants to do. But even if He doesn't, don't you for a second think that that in any way is a mark against His reputation.
Nebuchadnezzar's Response
And Nebuchadnezzar hears this, and he's not very happy. See, he's attacking. My first job out of college, I was working for a guy, and he was the classic, to me, the classic sales manager guy. He was a great guy, but he was a classic sales manager. Always smoked, always had a cigarette, and he always kept it about right there. Never let it get too far away. And he never flicked ashes. He just let them fall.
And he went every day for lunch to a place called the Gay 90s, which was a little restaurant, like Durant's. And he'd come in, and they'd always have a Manhattan for him. And he'd have his Manhattan, and he'd eat lunch and have another Manhattan, and he was always easier to deal with in the afternoon. And about once a month, he'd let me go to lunch with him.
So we're there one day, and I loved this guy. I loved listening to him. My very first day in his office, we're at the end of the first day, and he said, how was it? And I said, it was fine. He said, any problems? I said, eh. He said, no. I said, the receptionist is awful. And he said, well, what do you mean? I said, she's argumentative, she's yelling at customers, she's yelling at everybody. She is terrible.
He said, "She's my daughter." And he said, "I know she's bad, and that's why I gave her the job, because she could not survive anywhere else."
So we're at lunch one day, and I have a problem with an order. I'm trying to get this guy, trying to move him, trying to get our product in there and do some labeling and all this. And he said, "Well, what's his price?" I said, "I don't know. Cost plus seven." He said, "No, no, no, no. What's his price?" I said, "I don't know what you mean." "What's it going to take to buy him? What's it going to take to buy the business?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "Tommy, everybody has a price. So let's find out his price, and let's get it for him, and we'll have the business."
And we go, "Oh, that's terrible. That's like the Enron guys, or these, they're terrible." There you go. What's your price? At least they're getting millions out of it. Sometimes you're selling out for a dinner, a cup of coffee. You're cheap. So he wants your price.
The High Stakes of Faith
What in that moment? Now, these guys are high stakes here. They're betting their life. They're believing that this is what God says, therefore they can't compromise. And the stakes are their life. And they know it, and Nebuchadnezzar sees it, and he is not a happy guy. I don't think the king hears this often.
Verse 19: "Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and his attitude toward them changed." That's a little cleaned up. That's the NIV. The New American Standard says this: "his facial expression was altered." His veins are popping out. You can see the vein in his forehead. The contour of his face has changed.
"Who are you? Who do you think you're messing around with? I'm the king. I could have had you killed in Israel. I could have had you killed here. I brought you in here. I fed you. I put you over all these guys, and this is the thanks I get from you?" He's mad. He's angry.
The Furnace Seven Times Hotter
And in the midst of his anger, he does the boys a favor. Now they have him bowed down to the image, so what's the consequence? Into the fire. So here's what he does. He does the boys a favor. He ordered that the furnace be heated seven times hotter than usual.
Now that, to me, is good if you're going in it. If they're going to throw you in it, you don't want it cooler. You want it hotter, right? You don't want them to turn it down. You want to get in and get it over with. You don't want to go to the crockpot desk. You want to get in and get it over with. That would be my feeling.
Now verse 22: "The king's command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego up." Now here's what's going on. They'd have this area, this kind of fiery pit area. You could see in it, but to put objects, in this case the guys in it, they would go up and then drop them down into the fire. In this case, as the soldiers took him up, they were burned themselves, and apparently the guys just fall into the fire. "These three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace."
The Fourth Man in the Fire
The king's hot. The king's a man of his honor. In fact, if you could have an isolated camera on him through this incident, he starts out angry with a proclamation, then he calms down, then he heats up, but boy, when you get to verse 24, there's a whole new look.
"Then the king, Nebuchadnezzar, leaped to his feet in amazement and said to his advisor, 'Weren't there three men that we tied up and threw in the fire?' And they replied, 'Oh certainly, king.' And he said, 'Well look, I see four men walking around in the fire. They're unharmed, they're unbound, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.'"
He said, "We threw these boys in, they were all tied up, now there's four guys, not three, and they're walking around, and this fourth one has an interesting look to him. He looks as though he may be one of the sons of God." In fact, some of your translation will have the word "son" with a higher case, "God" with a higher case, and what they're telling you by that is what most scholars believe, and that is, this is a picture, a reality of a pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.
Jesus Is Always With You
Now if you're teaching, and now it's time to apply, this is a beach ball. You can get excited here. We have a system in our church where they're trying to train men to preach, and so we wind them down real tight. "What's the author intending?" All these kinds of things. That's really important. What's going on here though, I'm going to take just a little bit of latitude and try to say, here's a pretty graphic picture of something you don't always see, but you should always feel, and that is, in your life, and if we wanted to get carried away here and say, particularly in the fires of your life, Jesus is always with you. That's just the way it is.
When you go into that meeting today, and you don't want to be any part of it, you don't have anything to do with it, you've done something, and now all hell's breaking loose around you, Jesus is with you. You're going home tonight, maybe it's to a marriage that you're not happy with, and you're barely functioning in, and you want to throw in the towel, Jesus is there. You fill in the blank. Whatever it is, He's there.
Do People See Jesus With You?
Now there's a couple of questions that I would ask. Number one, do people see Jesus with you? It just occurred to me that I was talking about suffering, and I said, "I'm going to give you four things," and I only gave you one. There's a couple other things. Number one, you grow in it. Number two, it's a great testimony to others. All of a sudden, people see you, and all of a sudden, you have a great testimony to them.
Well, every day, people are asking how Susan is, and I really appreciate that. And somebody the other day said, "You know, she's just so strong." And I know it's not the intent, but it almost trivializes the response. Or at least the sentence needs to be finished: she's so strong in the Lord. She's certainly not strong on her own. She's certainly not enjoying this process.
Suffering Allows Us to Serve Others
Here's the third thing about suffering: it allows you to serve other people. It also allows people to serve you. So sometimes when you suffer, you need to understand you get to be the recipient of God's grace. We seem to be better, generally, at serving others than being served.
People all the time say, "In my moment of need, the church wasn't there." I'll say, "Tell me about it." Well, we had this, this, this, and this. I say, "I didn't know. Who did you tell?" "Well, we didn't tell anybody." How are we going to help you if we don't know? "Well, I just figured you'd know." How would we know? How would we possibly know?
By the way, the last thing about suffering that's a benefit is you now have a story to tell others. You can now sit down with somebody and say, "I've been in your shoes."
The King's Proclamation
Here are these boys. They are in the fire. They're walking around. The king sees it. The king is absolutely stunned. And the king makes an extraordinary statement. He started the day with a proclamation or a decree. He ends it with one.
"Therefore, I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will be cut into pieces and their house turned into piles of rubble." That seems to be his standard greeting, I guess. He's into cutting and burning.
And then he makes this statement, the final part of verse 29: "for no other God can save in this way."
No Other God Can Save
So you and I live in a country that celebrates our diversity. Theologically we're pluralistic. You can have a synagogue and a mosque and a church and churches of all denominations on every corner. Hundreds of churches in Phoenix. And that's fine. That's good. We celebrate that America and all that goes with it.
Here's the problem. If because there's this pluralistic society, you believe all these churches are equally valid or true, you've made a mistake. There may be a lot of churches who teach a lot of different things, but there's only one of them that's right. And they can't all be right.
And what the king says here is absolutely true. There's no other God who can save like the God of Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego and the God who sent His son Jesus to die so that you'd have eternal life.
Religion Versus Biblical Christianity
Every other religion is just that. It's religion. It's man with his best efforts trying to appease a holy God. That's all religion is. Anything other than biblical Christianity is about man appeasing a holy God. Do this. Don't do this. Come over here. Stand this way. Come over there. Do this. If you do this, you're in. If you don't do it, you're out.
And you better do enough of it to outweigh your sin. And if that doesn't work, then we'll try to come up with a system that somehow negates the sin. But it's all going to be dependent upon you and how you respond. That's religion covered in different shades.
Biblical Christianity is, no. All you could do is get yourself into it. You can't get yourself out of it. Jesus died on the cross so that you'd have eternal life. If you come to Him and you believe in Him, you're saved. If you don't, you won't be. No other God can save.
And then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And that's the end of the story for us.
Living Out Your Convictions
Here you go. I'll give you a couple of principles and out the door you go. In the midst of this, it's what we looked at last week. Your convictions need to be decided right now. You need to figure out what those convictions are. You need to practice those and communicate that.
And then you've got to live in a way where you are not surprised if God intervenes and delivers and not disappointed if He doesn't. Because that's the kind of God He is.
This story has a happy ending. I wish it didn't. I wish, in a sense, these guys burnt up only for this reason. And that's probably a silly thing to say, right? But only for this reason that I don't want you to fall into the trap to think that somehow if you do well and you obey, God's obligated to save you or protect you because He's not.
Old Daniel comes back in the scene next week. We'll pick up Daniel chapter 4 next week.
Father, help us see this and apply it to our life. We're getting ready right now to say amen and walk out this door into a hostile environment. And almost from the minute we leave this property, our convictions will be challenged. God, let us have the courage to live as these boys did. Let us remember that whatever happens, You're able to deliver us. But even if You don't, that's not a mark against You or Your reputation. God, we pray that as we go through the fires in our life, the people around us would see. They would see You in us. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week.