Daniel 3 • But If Not...

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Let me ask that you would look in your bibles this morning at Daniel chapter 3, Daniel chapter 3, as we continue to look at the life of Daniel and, more particularly this day, his three friends.
I introduced them to you last week as Shadrach, Meshach, and into-bed-we-go, which caused a lot of you then in the lobby afterward to tell me your favorite references to Daniel's three friends.
One of my favorites is my-shack, your-shack, and a billy goat.
No, that's.
[Laughter]
That just won't do.
These truly are heroes of the faith for reasons that may surprise us as we go through the book of Daniel.
Right now, as I said, the spotlight actually shifts off of Daniel to the three friends:  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
For reasons that aren't quite clear to us, they are now separate.
Daniel apparently having responsibilities in the royal court of King Nebuchadnezzar and his three friends called to minister in the outer province.
They are doing separate jobs now.
Daniel's not around with his three friends.
For reasons still not clear to us, Nebuchadnezzar seems to have forgotten the lesson that he previously learned from Daniel when Daniel interpreted his dream.
At that point, Nebuchadnezzar declared Daniel's God the God of god and the Lord of kings.
But by the time you get to Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar has erected to himself a statue of gold 90 feet tall.
Think of that.
Floor to ceiling of this building:  Multiply it three times.
A statue of gold 90 feet tall and says to the people of the kingdom, "Whenever you hear my band play, everybody, bow down and worship my statue."
They all do.
Except for three:  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Let's stand, read God's Word, and see what happens next.
Daniel 3 and verse 13, "Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought.
So they brought these men before the king.
Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, 'Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?
Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image I have made, well and good.
But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?'
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, 'O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.
If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.'"
That response makes Nebuchadnezzar all the more angry.
He orders the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual and carries through with the command.
Verse 24, "Then King Nebuchadnezzar," having thrown them into the furnace, "was astonished and rose up in haste.
He declared to his counselors, 'Did we not cast three men into the fire?'
They answered and said to the king, 'True, O king.'
He answered and said, 'But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.'
Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!'
Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire.
And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men.
The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them."
We'll stop there for now.
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, thank You for the example of these three who lived faithfully in a furnace.
And yet even as we mention them, we recognize for many of us, we too easily relegate to Sunday School stories that are a long way away from the real life that we live.
You have these men in Your Word for a reason.
By Your Holy Spirit, You inspect--, You expect to instruct us in Your ways.
So, Father, open our hearts.
Help us to know what we should know, that we too might honor You as You intend, even if You call us to the fire.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
A few weeks ago, some of the leaders of this church had a great privilege.
We were actually preparing for the next phase of the Global Gospel Delivery initiative of this church as we think of how Grace Church with its long legacy of media ministries might actually now again work toward a worldwide global gospel delivery service.
You hear be mora--, you'll be hearing more about that in just a few weeks, but for the moment, recognize that as we were dealing with a consultant who was teaching us from his own global experience of how we might begin to reach out beyond ourselves, he told us his own experience of working with a church in Saudi Arabia.
Now, that should surprise you.
You recognize Muslim country:  It is illegal to convert in that country.
It is illegal for ministers to come in to perform their official practices.
How does a church survive, much less thrive, in such a country?
Our consultant told us.
He said, "Here's what they do."
He said, "The people who are primarily in leadership in that church are business people who will be in Saudi Arabia for a few months, maybe a couple of years.
And as a consequence, knowing they will soon be gone, all leaders train someone else to take their place.
There is a missing person plan in effect.
Everyone is training someone to take their place."
Do you recognize that's precisely what is happening in the book of Daniel at this point?
If you look just toward the end of Daniel chapter 2 and verse 49, you'll see Daniel's plan begin to unfold.
Verse 49 of Daniel chapter 2, "Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon.
But Daniel remained at the king's court."
Daniel is recognizing at some point he will not be present to guide, to lead.
And so he begins the others on a path of leadership.
"King, give them leadership responsibilities."
It's something we don't necessarily like facing.
We want familiar leaders.
We don't want transition to occur.
And yet, we begin to recognize that every single one of us to be faithful for God should have a missing person plan.
We are the missing people.
All of us should have a planned obsolescence as we recognize for the gospel to carry on, for the kingdom work to continue, we are con--, making sure by the contribution of our efforts, of our lives, of our teaching, that others will follow in our place.
Our work and worship is not just about us.
As difficult as it may to hear, our faith is not just something personal.
It is always about preparing others for the kingdom work to which God calls them as He has called us.
If you begin to think of what that plan looks like, just think what you already know about the life of Daniel.
Daniel walks with these three young men first through a time of testing.
That was chapter 1, when the king urged them to defile themselves by partaking of his kingly food despite the plight of their brethren.
And they resolve not to under the leadership of Daniel.
Not only did Daniel walk with them in that time of testing but to a place of prayer.
That's Daniel chapter 2, as the king had this dream, wanted others to interpret it and also tell him what the dream was, and when they couldn't, he ordered the destruction of all the wise men of Babylon, which included Daniel and his friends.
Daniel gathered his friends together and they prayed together for the work of God.
There was a time of trial:  He walked with them.
There was the practice of prayer:  He led them.
And now we learned there is a path to leadership.
And he actually requests the king to put them on that path.
"I may not always be here; others need to know."
It's a simple statement.
It is hard to fulfill as we begin to recognize in our work, in our worship, we are never thinking about ourselves alone.
We are thinking, as Daniel and his friends did, horizontally.
How does my life touch peers and friends?
There are wonderful things happening in this church, as we think about life on life, groups that are studying scripture and helping one another, community groups, mothers helping mothers on Tuesday mornings and Wednesday nights.
As we think about radical mentoring, as we think about people in Bible studies in their homes, as we think about people just around the coffee table or at Starbucks who are saying, "My life is not my own.
I am bought with a price.
And part of my purchase price is the commitment now for me to be enfolding my life into the help of others."
And just as I meet with others on life on life discipleship, whatever that is in your life, I am horizontally preparing friends and peers to know the Lord Jesus and His gospel purposes.
But there's more going on here.
There is generational preparation as well.
The words that are so important in this particular chapter, and we will look at them more:  Start at verse 16.
"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, 'We don't have any need to answer you in this nature.
If this be so,'" that is, you're going to kill us, "'our God whom we serve is able to deliver us.'"
Verse 18, "'But even if he doesn't, we are only going to serve our God.'"
Those words have echoed through the centuries, generation after generation after generation, as we recognize that part of our faithfulness is being faithful witness to the generations that will follow after us.
We are part of a missing person plan.
We are the missing people.
But the gospel shall not be missing in the world until the knowledge of God covers the earth as waters cover the sea.
We are not the end of the plan.
And so we are always preparing generations to follow after us as Daniel and his friends did.
It's just what we recognize to be part of the, if you will, the noteworthiness of those who give themselves for the sake of others.
And once you learn it, it moves everywhere, up and down, through the generations.
A selfie that went viral this week was of a police officer taking a selfie with a young man in the background.
Did you hear it?
Did you see it?
A teenager in Houston saw a police officer pumping gas at a gas station in the rain.
And in a part of the country where there has been violence and hatred between police officers and other communities, the teenager went to the police officer, walked up behind her, actually, at the gas station and said, "Can I stand here while you pump your gas?
I've got your back."
The police officer took a selfie and it went viral.
But do you recognize what that is actually saying should be happening in the church?
That we are saying one to another over and over again, "I've got your back."
And so, when Lindy Arnold for 50 years ministers in a way that we celebrated two weeks ago to generations of second graders, we say, "Praise God for somebody who has the back of a coming generation."
And it works the other way.
When so many of you went on Palestine ministries and mission this summer and came back to tell the accounts of, there were moments when the younger people helped the older over rugged terrain and there were times in which the older people helped the younger people over rugged relationships, each was saying to the other, "I've got your back.
I am not just caring about me; I am here for a purpose, and it is to care about you and make sure that the generations are protected for the work of God."
It's what we're doing in worship.
I embarrassed him in the first service; I'll do it again here.
We rejoice in the ministry that Kevin King has had among us, as we recognize he seems to have such an understanding of the resonance of what's needed for the traditional service, for the contemporary service.
But as much as we are appreciating the music, you should recognize:  He has a mission given by the elders of this church.
And it is in the traditional service that we would also be learning contemporary songs, so that we would be saying to a generation that may be older, "You need to learn how to minister to your grandchildren."
And at the same time, in the contemporary service, we will be learning hymns, so that we will be preparing us to carry on the faith of our fathers.
We are always preparing others to carry on.
It's not just about us.
Faith is not just personal.
It's not just self directed.
We are obligated to recognize we may be the missing persons much sooner than we ever imagined, and so we are preparing others to carry on.
And they may not even be here now.
As you look at the life of Daniel and his friends, they were not just preparing others to carry on who were their peers and not just subsequent generations but even other nations to hear, be touched, and carry on the gospel.
I did not read past verse 28.
I'm going to ask that you look there now.
Chapter 3 of Daniel and verse 28, once Nebuchadnezzar recognized there's been a miracle, God has rescued these three young men, in verse 28, "Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, 'Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their God.
Therefore I make a decree:  Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should be torn from limb to limb,'" that's not the best gospel plan.
[Laughter]
"'Their houses laid in ruins.'"
Why?
"'For there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.'"
I mean, even Nebuchadnezzar said, "If this is the supreme God, other nations need to know."
And one of the beautiful things that has happened through the leadership of this church is even as we celebrate God's faithfulness through generations in this church, there's a looking outward to say, "What does the future hold?"
And some of us, we recognize, we're largely an Anglo church in a suburban, middle-class setting.
What does it mean for the future, though?
I mean, we look at our own census statistics, and some of you know that those who are Anglo are said, "You won't be the majority anymore in 2044."
That seems like a long way away.
But our children, if we're Anglo, will not be a majority in 2020.
Five years from now, Anglo children will no longer be a majority.
What does that mean for a church that is preparing for the gospel beyond ourselves, as we begin to say:  What a blessing to live in a community that by the work of industry and the medical institutions and the educational institutions, we have the nations coming to Peoria, that we have all kinds of people of different faiths, different nationality, different races, that we have the opportunity to present the gospel to.
And that is actually our calling:  that we are called to help not just peers and not just children, not just grandchildren, but the nations carry the message of the gospel.
And we are trying to be a church that feels that responsibility by having a missing person plan, thinking beyond ourselves for the sake of the gospel.
Now, if we are to be faithful to that missing person plan, we have to have a genuine faith to pass along, a faith that is biblical.
And to understand that faith, I want you not just to notice the missing person in this account in scripture but the missing prediction.
Did you catch it?
Verse 17, remember what was going on there?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say to Nebuchadnezzar who's threatening them, "'If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
But if not, we're still going to serve our God.'"
Whoa, wait a minute:  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, no ifs, man; you can't say that.
Have faith.
You know, God's going to deliver you.
You know, be firm.
No, these are great men of faith who say, "Our trust is in what God does, not what we want to happen."
And that understanding that we should have that here we are in one of the great prophetic books of all the Bible where there are men of God predicting what will happen centuries, predicting what will happen millennia in the future, right in this moment they say, "We don't know what's going to happen in the next few seconds."
Now, I don't know why that is, why this prediction at that time and not a prediction in another.
I don't know.
But I recognize they said, "Whether or not we know the future, we are going to trust and serve God."
And it is the faith that is commended most often in scripture and sadly is a faith that we may miss at times in our culture where faith gets sold for personal pleasure, for personal comfort, and at times the luxury of church leaders.
You and I recognize there are all kinds of false faiths being sold out there:  "If you just give me enough money, if you will touch your TV screen, if you will just summon enough faith, then God will give you what you want."
And by such teaching, even those in the church prey on the poor and the desperate and the needy throughout the world.
Faith is not so much predicting what we want and hoping God will do as doing what God commands:  trusting Him whatever the results may be.
If you want to see biblical faith, think how it unfolds right here in front of you.
Verse 17a.
What's the first thing that these faithful men do?
They say, "'If this be so,'" that is if you're going to punish us, "'our God whom we serve is able to deliver us.'"
That's the first step.
They simply declare the sovereign nature of their God:  "Our God is able.
He can move mountains.
He created the world.
He gave us life.
Our God is able to deliver us."
That is not the end of the account.
If you go forward into 17b, you'll see there more.
They say at that point, "'He is able to deliver us and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.'"
Now, what does that mean, in light of what you know of what's coming in verse 18, "'He will deliver us out of your hand, but if he doesn't do it, we're still going to serve him'"?
How can they declare that He will deliver us out of Nebuchadnezzar's hand?
I think of how the apostle Paul spoke of it in Romans 14 in verse 8, as he declared for God's people of all time this truth:  "If we live, we live for God; if we die, we die for God; but whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God."
"Nebuchadnezzar, if God delivers us from the fire, we're out of your hands.
But if we die in the fire, we're still in God's hands and out of yours.
Whether we live or whether we die, our God still has the final chapter of the story."
They are trusting God whatever comes.
We have to be reminded over and over again in our Christian lives:  Our survival is not God's only option for His glory or even our good.
For Christians, there are worse things than death:  betrayal, wandering.
There are worse things.
Our comfort is not God's only means to bless or build the kingdom.
God may use us in hard circumstances as a witness to the world, as a way of speaking to generations to come.
If faith means something in the furnace and not just in your times of ease and comfort and luxury, then maybe you have something worth trusting for eternity and not just on the basis of material earthly blessings.
Once they said, "We will declare who God is and we will trust His plan," what do they do next?
They do His will.
"'We will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.'"
Though we don't know where it's going, we will do what God calls us to do, even if it gets worse before it gets better.
You remember the account.
They do not do what Nebuchadnezzar says, and so Nebuchadnezzar heats the furnace how many times hotter?
Seven times hotter, so hot that even the guards who were going to throw the young men into the furnace are burned up in the fire.
It is incredibly hot.
It gets worse.
You know, until they declared their faith, they were at least safe.
Now when they declare their faith, they're in greater danger.
Sometimes it may seem that way for us.
And so we have to remember the words of Edith Schaeffer, "We have to learn to let God be God," to do what God requires and leave the results to Him, believing that He is the eternal, sovereign God.
He is not a genie in a lamp that we somehow rub to make Him do our will.
God is not on our leash.
We are not able to make Him perform in our behalf.
He will do what is best for us and His eternal purposes.
And when we say that, we are actually lifting people's eyes beyond their earthly comforts and sometimes beyond their earthly priorities to the eternal things they must trust forever.
So much damage has been done to the cause of the church of Jesus Christ by charlatans and the naive who simply say, "You plug enough faith nickels or actually nickels into whatever church machine that you need, and you will get exactly what you want."
I mean, it's not just a John Oliver comedy rant that's running rapid on YouTube.
I mean, recognize that this understanding, you give enough, you do enough, you have enough faith and you can get what you want, sometimes is pushing world missions among the poor and the desperate and the majority world in such a way it is just tragic.
So much of the prosperity gospel and across Latin America through the '90s and the early parts of the 2010s that what began to happen was we saw mass conversions take place, and now a half generation later, millions of people are leaving the church in Latin America because they have seen how false is that gospel.
In Africa and Asia, it's something very different.
In Africa, people have learned the falses and they're actually turning toward greater maturity.
In Asia, it's up for grabs right now.
China, one of the great nations in which Christianity is spreading like wildfire, orthodox Christianity is spreading and cultic Christianity is spreading almost as fast.
As this notion of "you can make God do what you think is best":  Do you recognize how that hurts?
Just think about your own lives and people you know who've been affected by that type of teaching.
My landlady when I was in school, who during a snowstorm one time when her son was late coming home one time said, "I have faith, so I know he's going to be okay."
Well, he wasn't okay.
And that led to a crisis of her faith.
My own brother, when he was in the military, trying to get back to camp on a holiday weekend when lots of gas stations were closed, traveling with a friend who was not a Christian, said to the friend, to be a witness, "We're going to make it.
I've prayed in faith.
God will get us there."
They didn't get there.
And it may sound silly to you:  It was a crisis of faith in my brother's life that lasted for years.
In another town in which I ministered previously, some of you will know the story, there was a ministry established by some well meaning farm families that began to teach, "If you just have enough faith, you can have health and you can have wealth that you want."
And that sounded so good when these families were affluent and lives were going great, until a child had a child who was special needs.
And then the families began to blame their own son for not having enough faith that caused the special needs child.
And once the son and his family were ostracized, they began to teach, continued to teach of the health and wealth gospel, until in the farm economy of the 1980s, their own farm went into bankruptcy and they lost it all.
And we should not chide or chortle in any way, but we should grieve for a faith that is misrepresented.
In the Bible, there were people who were faithful who saw miracles, and there were people who were faithful who faced the sword and, do you remember, the cross.
What does that teach us?
Maybe we just have to bring it closer to home.
I think of the account of Jim Conway, who you may know, a pastor in Urbana, Illinois for a number of years.
When his daughter, Becky, was diagnosed with a bone cancer that was going to require the amputation of her leg, the church and Jim and Sally, his wife, began to pray that the amputation would not go away; that God would take away the cancer.
"Moody Monthly" picked up the story.
A crowd of friends from the church came to wait with the family, as on the day of the surgery they required the doctors to retest the leg, presuming God would've answered and taken the cancer away.
Jim Conway's words:  "When the surgeon came out with the test results, I could tell from his face what he was going to say.
I couldn't face it.
I couldn't face all those people.
I ran to the hospital basement where no one would find me.
I cried.
I yelled.
I pounded my fists against the wall.
I felt like the God whom I'd served all of my life had abandoned me at the hour of my deepest need.
Was He so busy answering prayers for parking places that He could not help my Becky?"
The problem with a faith that insists that God do as we in our human wisdom think is best is that it just cannot be found in the Bible.
The idea that we, with our limited human wisdom, strength, and understanding, can somehow sidle up to the throne of an eternal God in heaven who made all things and continues to control all of them by the word of His power, that we can go up to God and say, "God, I know You're running things, but I got a plan; I know what You ought to do," no, we don't.
We really do not.
Some of you have seen in your lives God's wisdom surpassing yours, things that you thought were tragedies that were turned to triumph, things that you thought were the worst things that happened to your family and it humbled your family.
I think I've told you before of the work in my own family's life when marital separation and the imprisonment of my brother actually led to the salvation of my brother and my parents coming back together.
I would have never chosen the path.
I would have never believed it was possible.
I'd prayed that it wouldn't happen.
God knew better.
Yes, there were those who prayed, saying, "God, do this," and they saw it happen.
Yes, that happens in the Bible.
And there were those who declared, "God is able," and they faced horror.
Of course we are to offer our desires to God, but always with the understanding that Jesus Himself did:  "Yet, Lord, not my will but Your will be done.
You know what's right; You know what is best.
I honor You by praying to You, by asking You for it, but I do it with the honor of a sovereign God before my heart and eyes.
I bow before You.
That is my faith, not what I think ought to happen:  My faith is actually in what You think ought to happen," as Jesus Himself prayed.
Think of just what you know about the scriptures.
If we will look not just in one little segment and place but think of the scope of the Scripture's witness.
Second Corinthians 12:  The apostle Paul prayed how many times for the removal of his thorn in the flesh?
Three times an apostle prayed for the removal of his thorn in the flesh.
Now, we don't know what the thorn was, and probably that's part of God's providence that we can't say it's this or that.
That we have to think there was something that was oppressive and hurtful in his life.
And he prayed three times for it to be removed.
Did God take it away?
No.
Why?
God said to Paul, "So that you would know my grace is sufficient for you, my strength made perfect in weakness."
The evidence of that in Galatians 4 where Paul the apostle actually praises God at that point for his sickness that he experienced in Galatia that kept him from moving on.
He was forced to stay and preach.
And as a consequence of staying to preach, the church in Galatia was established.
Not Paul's plan.
Not what he would have prayed for.
Now, wait a second:  This is Paul who even has cloths that touch his body able to heal at certain points in his ministry.
And at other times, he will write, "Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach's sake, because you're got an upset stomach."
Well, if you can get over the wine stuff, will you at least think:  Why medicinal anything?
Why not just pray that it go away?
Paul writes, "I left Trophimus sick at Miletus."
Wait, Paul, you left Trophimus sick at Miletus?
Why did you do that?
Why didn't you just pray for his heal?
I don't know.
God had a plan.
God had a purpose.
And ultimately faith is not faith in what we think is best, not in our wisdom:  It is faith in God.
Maybe no better place to look than 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul talks about his own life.
"I have been imprisoned, beaten, near death, five times the 40 lashes minus one, three times beaten with rods, one time stones, three times shipwrecked.
I have been sleepless, hungry, thirsty, cold."
Well, Paul, if you just had a little more faith.
No, we recognize the path of faithfulness in the life of Paul.
He did what he knew was best and trusted God with the rest.
What about Hebrews 11, that great faith chapter?
What does it mean to express faith?
I mean, verse 33 reflects on our passage of today, right?
"By faith the saints of old stopped the mouths of lions and quenched the power of the flame."
Whoa, that's Daniel being referenced there.
That's great faith.
What else happened?
Verse 35 of Hebrews 11, "Women received back their dead by resurrection."
Wow.
The dead were raised to life by faith.
Keep reading.
"And some were tortured so that they might rise to a better life.
Others suffered mocking, flogging, chains, prison.
They were stoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, destitute, afflicted, mistreated."
Is that because they didn't have enough faith?
No, the writer of Hebrews says in verse 39, "All of these were commended for their faith."
They lived faithfully, though did not know what the results would be.
You just know the scriptures; you know the answers.
Elisha, who was able to raise people from the dead, Elisha got sick and died of the sickness.
Jesus, you know, was crucified and taught us all:  "In this world you will face afflictions.
You will be reviled and persecuted.
For so they treated Me and so they treated the prophets before you."
And the reminder of the prophets takes us back to the prophecy where we see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, great men of faith.\
And what exemplified their faith?
What did they do in the trial?
They said, "My God is able to deliver us."
That's the first step always.
We turn to God and we say, "My God is able."
We tell the world, "My God is able."
And the second thing:  They did God's will, not knowing where it would go.
We believe God is able; we know He's able to deliver us.
He says is best and we will do His will.
And then, we will trust the results to God.
That's the faith.
We know; we believe He's able to do absolutely beyond whatever we could think or even imagine.
But we trust Him to do as He knows is right, and so we will do--, deo--, do His will and trust Him to take care of the rest.
What happened next to these faithful men?
Well, they declared who God was and trusted Him to do what was best, and then they got thrown in the furnace.
What happened next?
The Lord showed up in the furnace.
Nebuchadnezzar said, "Look, didn't we put three in the fire?"
"Yes, king, we did."
"I see four, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods."
Well, he was almost right.
I don't know whether this is the appearance of Jesus Himself or a messenger that Jesus sent, but here is the presence of God in the furnace.
And the consequence of God being with His people in the furnace, in the hard thing, in the hot place:  What happened next?
Well, they did not burn up.
They were saved alive.
And if you think of what that means biblically, what does it mean they were saved alive?
They learned to see all of life in view of eternity.
All of life in view of eternity.
They were alive.
And what that means is they lived happily ever after and there was never another problem in their life anymore.
Is that right?
You know it's not right.
The lions' den is still ahead.
Daniel will prophesy for himself and for his people, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Generations of suffering to come.
He will look at the millennia of God's great coming and provision and at the same time will fall to his knees in grief for weeks at what God tells him will be the suffering of his people for generations to come.
And still they trusted, because what did they learn?
They learned that God is not a missing person in the furnace.
He is there.
And when He calls us into the fire, He will be there too to do what is absolutely best for us.
And He has shown us that when He sent Jesus into the furnace of this world to give Himself for your sin and for mine.
Why do I trust Him even in the furnace?
Because He came down into it with me and for us.
Some years ago at Covenant Seminary, we sent a delegation of students to learn something about suffering by going to one of the darkest places in the world in Africa where A.I.D.S. was just rampant and to learn how to care for people who are suffering deeply and share the love of Christ.
And there was a moment in which there was a contingent of students with a professor who began talking with a young woman.
And because of the advance of A.I.D.S. in her body, even as she stood, she could stand no longer; she collapsed onto the ground.
And as they kind of thought about, "How do we show this person the love of Christ?" one of the beautiful young women had the heart of Christ in her and she got down in the dirt and laid beside the woman and embraced her and prayed for her.
She got down in the dirt with her to show her the love of Christ.
Why do I trust Him and call you to do the same?
Because He's not a missing person.
I can't talk to you all on this subject without looking across you and recognizing the people whose lives have deep hurts in them right now.
Why should you trust Him?
Because He's not a missing person.
He comes into the furnace, and as you trust Him and follow His will, He'll do what is absolutely best for eternity.
I know that, because He sent Jesus into the furnace for you and for me.

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