Today we are going to look at chapter 3 of the Book of Daniel. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter for yourself. It doesn’t take long, and it is worth every verse.
Here is the short version. King Nebuchadnezzar built a golden image and commanded everyone to bow down and worship it. Three young Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, would not. When the king heard of it, he gave them one last chance to bow, and he made the stakes plain. Worship the image, or be thrown alive into a burning fiery furnace. Then he asked a question he was certain he already knew the answer to.
Daniel 3:15 “…And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”
He was about to find out.
I want us to slow down right here, because there is something in this story we tend to rush past. We read Daniel 3 as a rescue story, and it is. But it is not a rescue from the fire. It is a rescue in the fire. And that one difference changes everything about how we face our own.
Let’s start with the part we would rather skip. God allowed the furnace. Let’s not soften that. Nebuchadnezzar had the men bound. He had the fire heated seven times hotter than usual, so hot that it killed the very guards who carried them up to it. And they went in. God, who could have stopped all of it before it started, who could have struck the king silent or shattered the golden image where it stood, did not. He let them be thrown in.
That is a hard truth, isn’t it? Because it means the fire in your life may not be a sign that God looked away. Our God is sovereign over kings and furnaces alike, and nothing reaches His children that has not first passed through His hands. Sometimes He keeps us out of the fire. And sometimes, for reasons we cannot yet see, He allows us to walk right into it.
But watch what He does next. He does not allow us to be in it alone.
Daniel 3:24-25 “Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound 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.'”
Four men. They threw in three, and the king counted four.
Do you see it? God did not spare them the furnace. He met them inside it. He did not call down encouragement from a safe distance. He got in the fire with them. And notice what the flames actually did. The only thing that burned off of those men was the rope. They went in bound, and they walked around free. The fire that was sent to destroy them could not do anything but loosen what held them.
This is the God we serve, and He said it long before Daniel’s day. He means it still.
Isaiah 43:2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
He does not promise us a life with no fire. He promises us Himself, in the middle of it.
Now here is the part I cannot get past. Before they knew anything about a fourth man, before they saw a single flame, these three already had their answer ready.
Daniel 3:16-18 “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.'”
But if not.
They believed God was able. They hoped He would. And they settled it ahead of time that even if He didn’t, they still would not bow. That is faith that does not hang on the outcome. It is not “God will fix this the way I want, so I will trust Him.” It is “God is worthy whether He rescues me the way I want or not, so I will trust Him either way.”
Most of us can trust God for the deliverance we can already picture. The deeper faith, the harder faith, is the kind that holds on in the dark, before we know how the story ends, and still says, “Even so, I am His.”
When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego finally walked out, Scripture tells us the fire had not had any power over them. Their hair was not singed, their clothes were not scorched, and they did not even carry the smell of smoke (Daniel 3:27). And the same king who built that idol ended up blessing the God of these three men in front of his entire kingdom. The fire did not consume them. It displayed God.
I don’t say that lightly, because I know some of you are in the furnace as you read this. This is not a promise that your trial will be short, or that deliverance will come on the timetable you would choose. Paul understood that as well as anyone.
2 Corinthians 4:8-10 “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”
Afflicted, but not crushed. Struck down, but not destroyed. How? Because there is a fourth man in the fire. There always is.
So if you are in it today, hear this. The flames around you are not proof that God has abandoned you. He allowed this. He is in it with you. And He will not waste a single degree of the heat. You may go in bound. By His grace, you will not go in alone, and you will not come out the same.
He is with you in the fire. He always has been.