Daniel 3:19-30 “Faith in the Fire”
I was thinking about this story of Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego and realized the irony of this story! You see, first they got fired by Nebuchadnezzer, but then afterwards they actually got promoted! What a great ending to the story! It is one thing to be tested to the extreme. Perhaps we get this all the time. It is another thing to be rewarded afterwards!
Last week, we actually heard about King Nebuchadnezzer having this dream about a huge statue that is destroyed by the stone. It is smashed to dust. The king is informed by Daniel that the statue represents the king and that his kingdom is going to come to an end. Now, just as an aside, this has nothing to do with the sermon in fact but is merely a curiosity, if you had had such a dream interpreted to you, what would be your response? Go out and build a giant statue to yourself? Isn’t that like ensuring that the outcome of the dream is going to come true?
Anyway, Nebuchadnezzer builds himself a giant golden statue because he considers himself a god—small “g.” He orders that everybody stop and bow down to this statue of himself whenever the music starts to play. Of course, those who know the Ten Commandments will affirm that this is wrong. That is the number one commandment! “You shall have no other gods before me.” The second commandment says that “You shall make no idols.” So, this huge statue just blows the true believers in God away. Naturally, they refuse to bow down. Because they refuse to bow down, the king sets to make an example of Shadarach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are to be punished most severely by being thrown into the fiery furnace.
I like this description of the furnace. It is the “fiery” furnace. This is in apposition to the not so fiery furnace, that lukewarm furnace that many of the rest of us might find ourselves in. What would have happened if those three true believers were thrown not into the furnace that was made seven times hotter than normal but had been thrown into a furnace that was about 80 degrees or so?
The reference in the Bible to being “lukewarm” is NOT in the Gospel According to Luke (where one might argue it should be belong as its namesake) but rather in Revelation 3:15-16 in the message to the church at Laodicea, “I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
It takes little or no faith to go volunteer to jump into a furnace that is only lukewarm! However, if you think about it, you could die just the same. It will just take longer. Eventually you will die of dehydration or starvation. But, you may die without having your faith in God affirmed. And, that is the real key to the furnace, if you will. If you jump into a lukewarm furnace, you may not get the sense that you need God to get you through it. To borrow an idea from my colleague at Lihue Christian Church, Kahu Jim Fung, we have in our culture this “anti-dependency” issue. If the fire is not that hot, we probably would not even know that we need help from God.
In 2004 a book came out that became very popular. It was entitled 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. It was a great book. A few years later a man by the name of Bill Wiese wrote a book entitled 23 Minutes in Hell. I have of course read both books. I will recommend to you (although I am not part of the book club here in the church) the book about 23 minutes in hell. The idea of going through the fiery furnace must be related to hell. Without faith in God in heaven, we are going to be stuck in the furnace!
Just as an aside, the woman from the Pua Kea Regency who gave me her copy of 90 Minutes in Heaven is now in heaven! God bless her, too. I know she made it to heaven!
If you do not believe that there is a fiery furnace that you can end up in, you may not believe that you need Jesus’ help to get out of the flames! That is the good thing about the book 23 Minutes in Hell, it reminds us in a most vivid way that we need faith in God to save us from those flames!
Have you ever run into someone in your life whose faith is just so incredibly deep and powerful that you almost become jealous of that person? You begin to question yourself as to why your faith just does not seem as strong? It is but with rare exception in this world that one has that kind of deep faith in God without having been through a hellish trial of faith. When we find such believers of great faith, we should be asking ourselves what trials they have been through to get them to rely so heavily on God in their life.
But those who have the absolute strongest faith as I have seen are not just those who have been through great trials but those who were lost in the trial that they faced. You know, it takes great courage and great faith to say that one is going to take on the battle with cancer, for instance. But, it takes an even greater faith and courage not to fight.
When I think about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I see that they are not running away from the furnace, hiding out with followers of similar faith, and then coming back bearing arms to wipe out the injustice of having to bow down to a false idol. Why don’t they? Why don’t the three of them figure out some way to bring down the great statue? That would show the king! In stead, they allow themselves to simply be walked up to the fiery furnace and thrown in.
This is like Jesus himself who allowed himself to be crucified while being taunted by others, saying “If you are the messiah, take yourself down off of the Cross.” You know, Jesus had that power. No, the Cross was his path laid out by God. This is the greatest faith.
Most recently we have been praying for many good people who have been stricken with life-threatening illness. We have been praying for divine intervention and miraculous healing while they face the illness with faith and courage. However, they may not be healed. They may die. What then?
I want us to look more closely at our text for today, specifically at verse 17 of chapter three of Daniel, “If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, o King, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods, and we will not bow down to the golden statue that you have set up.”
Do you get that? What tremendous faith it is to keep it when even you face certain death yet you cannot give up on God!
You know, as a former volunteer firefighter, I am assured of the strange but true fact that fire puts out fire. I spent a lot of my time as a fireman actually starting backfires in order to put out another blaze. Fire is really the best tool to put out a fire. When I consider Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I can see plainly that they have a fire burning inside their hearts for God that can put out any other fire that they might face. It is an interesting word study to go through the Bible and see how often the idea of fire is associated with God. God appears to Moses as fire. God appears to the Hebrew people as a pillar of fire leading them. At the Pentecost, fire came down and rested on top of people who received the Holy Spirit.
Besides these obvious examples of God being on fire, if you will, is one vision that comes from the Book of Daniel itself. We are going to get a little preview then right now from Daniel 7:9 and on, “As I watched thrones were set in place, and an ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair on his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence.”
In Hebrews 12:29, also we read quite clearly these words: “Indeed our God is a consuming fire.” Jesus talks about baptism by fire in Luke 12:29, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Have you got that fire burning inside of you? Is your faith flaming up? Is your faith strong enough to cause the turmoil in your life, the suffering, the evil, to be ineffectual against your spirit? Can you fight fire with fire today?!
Know that the spark that you have within you, it can save another’s life not just your own. That fire inside of you, it is not just your own faith; it is the essence of the Creator. You have God’s fire within you and it is strong enough to face any challenge.
Amen.