The Cost of Commitment (Daniel 3:8-23)

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Welcome to Kootenai Community Church unwelcoming adult Sunday school. So I need to warn you all, or southern with y 'all y 'all, that we're not gonna find out whether they live or die today.

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So if you wanna read ahead, you can. It's okay. So we're gonna try and get a

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PowerPoint going, but if we do, we do, if we don't, that's okay. Scripture doesn't depend on PowerPoints, fortunately.

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So we have a number of people out sick today. We'll pray for them and look into God's word.

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Let's pray. Father, we are again grateful this morning for the time to gather together and to sharpen iron and to look into your word, to see the great things that are there that are life -changing and that are absolutely innervating.

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We appreciate and love you, Lord, for what you gave to us through your word and through your son. And so this morning, as we look into your word, we look forward to what you're going to teach.

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We pray for those who are out sick today, Lord, might you encourage them, help them to be into your word even so today that they might receive from you the comfort and the sustenance that every one of us needs from the

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Lord Jesus Christ every day. Well, thank you for what you're going to do and look forward to it in Jesus' name, amen.

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So we are still in the book of Daniel for probably the next lifetime. And I think we left off on chapter three, verse seven last week.

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Let me see how far we think we might make it. I dream on.

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So let's read chapter three, the whole chapter, because there's a good chance we'll make it to towards the end.

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Daniel chapter three. Nebuchadnezzar, the king, made an image of gold, the height of which was 60 cubits, and it's with six cubits.

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He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar, the king, sent word to assemble the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up.

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Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the rulers of the provinces were assembled for the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up, and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

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Then the herald loudly proclaimed, to you the command is given, O peoples and nations and men of every language, that at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, bagpipe, and all kinds of music, you are to fall down and worship the image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, has set up, but whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.

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Therefore, at that time, when all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, bagpipe, and all kinds of music, all the peoples, nations, and men of every language fell down and worshiped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up.

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For this reason, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and brought charges against the Jews. They responded and said to Nebuchadnezzar, the king,

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O king, live forever. You yourself, O king, have made a decree that every man who hears the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, and bagpipe, and all kinds of music is to fall down and worship the golden image.

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But whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into the midst of a blazing, of a furnace of blazing fire.

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There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the administration of the province of Babylon, namely

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, have disregarded you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.

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Then Nebuchadnezzar, in rage and anger, gave orders to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then these men were brought before the king.

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Nebuchadnezzar responded and said to them, is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?

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Now, if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, and bagpipe, and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made very well.

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But if you will not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire, and what

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God is there who can deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, oh,

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Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our

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God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he will deliver us out of your hand,

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O king. But even if he does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

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Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath, and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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He answered by giving orders to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated.

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And he had commanded certain valiant warriors who were in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in order to cast him into the furnace of blazing fire.

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Then these men were tied up in their trousers, their coats, their caps, and their other coats, and their other clothes, and were cast into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire.

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For this reason, because the king's command was urgent and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of fire slew those who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire, still tied up.

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And we're gonna stop there in suspense. So last week,

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I talked to you about the size of the statue and some of the other things.

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So maybe we could go to slide 66. That's probably way back.

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So give us just a second here, or a moment, if you will. If you can find slide 66, we'll start there, and we'll look at some.

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So the plane, the image was approximately 60 cubits tall, which is about 90 feet or so, and six cubits wide, nine, 10 feet wide.

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And I mentioned, as he gets to it, that those of you who might've been familiar with the statue of Jesus that stands over Rio de

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Janeiro, that's about the same size. I think that one's 99 feet tall, and this statue would've been 90 feet tall.

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66? At least that's my theory this morning. Yeah, there we go.

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So that's actually a fairly good composite showing about how they are.

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The statue in Rio de Janeiro is a little bit taller, 98 feet tall. I've heard various numbers, 98, 99 feet.

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I can't even get it right on something that exists today. Just stretch a tape measure from a helicopter, come on.

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And so the statue was set up on the plains of Dura, and which is about six or so miles southeast of Babylon.

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Most people agree, and I mentioned also that at that location, an archeologist discovered a gigantic brick platform, which would probably have been the base of that statue.

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The statue would've been completely out of proportion if it was 99 or 90 feet of man, six feet wide.

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So most commentators, most scholars and archeologists agree that there was a fairly high platform that it was built on, and then the statue itself was built to a dimension that would've been more representative of human size and relationship of size.

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So there's the instruments we talked about. Last week, for those of you who weren't here, I didn't have the

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PowerPoint going. So those are the instruments that we were talking about that are listed in the section of Scripture here.

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Notice that they're rementioned every time. God doesn't rename, remention stuff every time just because He needed filler.

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It was important for those people at the time to know what kind of instruments were going to be playing and what was going to happen, because guess what happened if they didn't pay attention?

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They'd get killed. So God reiterates all of that information several times.

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And then it was such that we talked about the two prophets in Jeremiah who had prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would be deposed, and they were wrong.

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And so God had them done away with by Nebuchadnezzar, and that was Jeremiah 29, verse 22.

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Okay, so today we're going to look at chapter three, verses eight and following.

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So at seven, we have the sound of the images, the herald reminding them of when all the people heard the sound, actually, the herald had reminded them, then the images, then the instruments were played, and everybody fell down and worshiped except for at least three men.

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Maybe there were more. I was doing some further study, and we don't know for sure that there weren't other godly

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Jews on that plain who refused to bow down, but we know for sure there were three, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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And it would have been very obvious if I had all of you stand up, and then

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I said, everybody sit down, and Sean kept standing, it would be obvious.

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He's pretty tall, and he would be the only one standing in the room, and you'd all, in that day, you can just picture going, what's he doing, why is he still standing?

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What's going on here? So there would have been concern and delight in the ideas, or excuse me, in the hearts of those who wanted to fill the positions that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had been given by Nebuchadnezzar.

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So verse eight, for this reason, at that certain time, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and brought charges against the

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Jews. So the English standard version, the ESV adds the word maliciously, brought charges.

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This is actually based upon the actual translation of the words here. The translation of brought charges is to eat the pieces of someone.

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We all have colloquialisms, quicker than this or dumber than that, or we all have colloquialisms.

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Well, this was a colloquialism at the time of Babylon where it meant if you were going to eat the pieces of someone, you were gonna chop them up and eat them.

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It was figurative. You weren't actually going to chop them up and cannibalize them, but you were going to destroy them.

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The intention of these Chaldeans in bringing these charges forward wasn't to honor the king.

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It was to get rid of rivals. It was to destroy someone. It was to kill. It's an

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Aramaic colloquialism that means to devour piecemeal, to chew them up.

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And the idea is of bringing charges against someone to destroy their life. There was a great degree of jealousy that most likely prompted this as the

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Chaldeans were agitated with Nebuchadnezzar for putting Jews in charge of the province of Babylon.

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They were a captive people after all, and they should actually be under the authority of other people.

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So the Chaldeans, the astrologers, the soothsayers would not have been happy about this at all from the beginning. So they were probably, just as we'll find out, they've been looking for a way to get rid of Daniel.

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They were probably looking for ways to get rid of these people, and here it was. They were commanded to obey, to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's idol.

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They didn't bow down. Now we have an opportunity to get rid of them. So they brought malicious charges, and here's what they say.

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Oh, they responded to Nebuchadnezzar the king. Oh, king, live forever. Well, sure, he wants to hear that.

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So when you're gonna falsely accuse some, you first need to probably butter up the person in charge that you are bringing the accusations to.

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And so the Chaldeans start out with the accepted greeting for a king, which is to loudly call out for them to live forever, even though you know they won't.

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I mean, do you think in their wildest dreams, the Chaldeans thought, we better say this because he's going to live forever.

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Nobody had lived forever up to this time. It was a pretty good chance that, statistically speaking, nobody was going to.

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But they can say that. That would encourage the king that they are bringing important information to him.

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Verse 10, you, oh king, have made a decree. Now, let me stop there. Do you think Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten that good decree he had made?

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I wonder what I did that these guys came forward with all this information.

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You have made a decree that every man who hears the sound of them, and they name all the musical instruments, the horn, the flute, the lyre, the trigon, the psaltery, and the bagpipe, and all kinds of music, is to fall down and worship the golden image.

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So as the Chaldeans, they remind the king of the exact wording of his command to everyone about worshiping the golden image.

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They didn't want to go too far. Or too short. They wanted to make sure that what the charges they were bringing were appropriate so that they could get the desired outcome.

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They didn't want him to forget what he said, when he said it, when they brought the charges. They want the charges to stick.

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So they didn't embellish and they didn't understate. They told him exactly what he had said. That's always surprising to me because generally, when

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I tell somebody something, I generally editorialize. Don't you? How fast was that car going?

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Oh, it had to be doing 140. You know, it was a Volkswagen Bug. I doubt it was doing 140.

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But it sounds better. Verse 11, and then we'll ask if there's any questions. But whoever does not fall down, and here's the charge, and worship, shall be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.

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This was the other part of the king's command. Here is the crux of the king's decree, the phrase that is most important in which the

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Chaldeans hope will resort or will result in these upstart Jews being destroyed.

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They remind the king of the sanction he decreed for those who would not worship the image. They remind him right down to the adjective used about the fire, a blazing fire, a very hot fire.

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Interesting, because they didn't editorialize on the charges. They just reminded him of the exact words.

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Now, remember this, that Nebuchadnezzar was the last, at least in this case, the only,

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I should say, of all the kingdoms that followed, a kingdom where he could have changed his mind.

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Later on, the Medes and the Persians, they talk about the laws of the Medes and the Persians. They can't change their mind. If it's decreed by them, they're stuck with it, and that's kind of what happens in the lion's den situation, but not here.

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Nebuchadnezzar could have said, well, they're good guys. They've been doing a great job.

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Let's just spank them and send them home without food, but he didn't do that. Are there any questions or comments about those three verses?

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Verse 12, here it comes. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the administration of the province of Babylon, namely

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, have disregarded you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.

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So like I said earlier, we don't really know if there were more Jews than Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that did not bow down, but for the purposes of Daniel's iteration and his pointing again and again at the sovereignty of Jehovah, he just tells the story of the three men.

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If there were, the officials ignored them because their accusation was designed to remove rivals from positions that they themselves thought they should occupy.

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The accusation that these men do not serve your gods was tantamount to challenging

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Nebuchadnezzar himself. If you did not worship the king's gods, you challenge the very authority of the king who worshiped those gods, and that was a death penalty.

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The Babylonians believed their gods had provided a victory over the Jews, and for these men to refuse to bow down was to challenge the gods, the victory, and the victors, and the king.

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It was challenging the entire state, if you will, the entire nation. It was a political as well as a religious statement against Babylon, the ruler of Babylon, and even the people of Babylon.

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It was far more, in their eyes, sinister than it might appear to us at first glance.

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It was a challenge to the very structure of the entire nation, and these people knew it, and they knew they had them.

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We're gonna be able to kill these guys. We're gonna finally be able to remove them because this was a massive challenge against Babylon.

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And then verse 13, then Nebuchadnezzar, this is what it prompted in him, in rage and anger, gave orders to bring

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then these men were brought before the king. It must have heartened the accusers, the

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Chaldeans, that their charges had brought the intended effect, and enraged Nebuchadnezzar.

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They were probably gladdened to see him be so angry. Nebuchadnezzar, however, to his credit, did not immediately have them cast into the fire.

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He had them brought before them so he could question them himself. It would have been much better for the accusers if Nebuchadnezzar had simply cast them into the fire because they were most likely angling for those positions themselves.

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This disobedience would not only have been a personal affront to Nebuchadnezzar, but as I said, would have been a threat to the political security of the kingdom.

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He could not let this pass. What if others throughout the nation began to stand up and challenge his authority?

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He could have civil war on his hands. He could have internal conflict that might not be managed. And remember, what we talked about earlier, most likely this entire spectacle of creating the image and requiring the officials in the kingdom to bow down was the result of an attempted military coup in 594, 597

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BC. And he put that coup down viciously. And then this follows not, as most scholars and archeologists think, this followed not too long after that.

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So it was a loyalty oath, if you will. It was a pledge allegiance to the Babylonian flag.

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And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would not pledge allegiance. Verse 14, then Nebuchadnezzar responded and said to them, is it true,

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?

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First statement, not is it true that you didn't bow down? That was the action, what it portended, what it was saying was you do not worship my gods.

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That's what he asked them. Is it true that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?

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So to his credit, he doesn't carry out, immediately carry out the punishment. Rather, he questions the men and he gives them an opportunity to change their minds.

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This is not what Babylonian kings did, Babylonian rulers did, they just killed you. It's interesting, it's the sovereignty of God is at work here.

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He asked the question, however, in a manner that no true Jew who loved Jehovah could ever answer in the affirmative.

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He asked him, is it true that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? All they could say was no to the first and no to the second.

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He said, no, we don't serve your gods and no, we don't worship. And he knew that. He knew the

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Jews were a nation and a culture apart who worshiped a different God than his.

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He knew that. He did, however, give them the opportunity to recant and to save their own lives.

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And that's interesting in itself. To me, to most commentators, it shows, again, the sovereignty of God at work over this king of the earth as what he thought he was.

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So now he says to them in 15, chapter 15, verse 15. If, now, if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, and the bagpipe, and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image that I've made very well.

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But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire. And then he follows it up with this.

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And what God is there who can deliver you out of my hands? He sets himself up more powerful than the gods.

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That's an interesting statement. Repeating his original command, Nebuchadnezzar gives the three men an opportunity to rethink their position and decide to bow down and live.

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Now, stopping there for just a moment, how many people would have thought, he's really gonna do this?

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It's not that big a deal. If I just bow down and worship this stupid image,

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I can stay in a position of authority in Babylon and maybe be a force for good for Jehovah in the future, in the years to come.

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And wouldn't that be better for me to still be in authority, in a position of authority so I could help the

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Jews and help people and be an influence on Nebuchadnezzar, kind of slow down the evil things that Babylon's doing?

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Wouldn't that be better? I can picture people reasoning like that. No, it wouldn't be better.

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It would be bowing down and worshiping something other than Jehovah, period. This is a lovely story.

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And the world knows this story. And you're not gonna learn anything new here today, but it's good to remind ourselves of what it means when someone challenges the biblical authority of God and people say, we won't bow down.

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You wanna say something, Mike? Yeah, he does do that.

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He challenges both of them. What God is there? We'll call you and raise you, yeah.

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I didn't realize that they knew poker back in the age of Babylon. That's pretty cool. This must be

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Texas Hold 'em or Dura Hold 'em. And see, now

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I lost my place. That's really great, which is really good, you know.

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So if he was willing, even this was unusual for a Babylonian king, he was willing to overlook their initial disobedience if they would simply obey now.

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And no one really knows, as much as I read, there's all kinds of speculation, but why did he do this?

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He did it because there was a sovereign God at work, period, in my estimation.

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Implicit in his statement, though, is what would happen if they continued on this path of disobedience.

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And he even challenged them, there's no God that can deliver you from what I'm about to do to you.

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You are dead ducks. See, there's a co -equalism, an

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American one. His object was to terrify them into disobedience, remind them of the penalty, remind them of how bad it's going to be, and you'll get obedience.

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So, for it is well known by those who rule that most follow them out of fear rather than out of love, especially tyrants.

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Tyrants will always attempt to capitalize on that fear. They know they are followed mostly because of fear, not because of love.

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And so they will always attempt to capitalize on that fear. They attempted to put the fear of their gods into Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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Nebuchadnezzar's statement about how God, about God not being able to deliver them, seems to indicate that he had already forgotten it was the

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God of Israel who was the only one who was able to give his interpretation to him. And he had acknowledged that, and even in a semi way had worshiped, provoked worship of Jehovah God.

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But he never got saved, he never trusted, he never turned his heart to Christ. His heart was never turned to Jehovah.

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He just, he was a pragmatist. Back then, Jehovah did something for him. He's a great guy.

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Right now, here's these guys challenging my authority. They've gotta die. And he knew that they served a different God.

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And he had acknowledged the power of God and even attributed worship to him in front of Daniel, but now his pride and his anger swept all that memory away, and he issues a challenge to these men regarding their

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God. Let's stop there for just a moment. I don't know what the worst sin is. There's lots of bad sins, but I think pride ranks right up there towards the top.

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It will prompt us to do things that we didn't even think we would do, looking back on them. It's the most sinister destroyer of love for God that there is, pride.

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It wrecks marriages, it wrecks families, it wrecks nations, and it wrecks everything it comes into contact with.

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There is no good thing I can say about this kind of pride. And we all struggle with it.

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Nebuchadnezzar just had the power to do something about it. All of us have the power in our own sphere to do something about it, with our pride, about things with our pride.

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This is what the result is. It generally results in destruction and death, if not always.

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So verse 16. I love this reply. And I misunderstood this reply for 40 years.

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I thought they were being smart. I was like, we don't need to talk to you. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king,

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O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. Okay, you've already not bowed down.

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Now you're telling him tough luck if you don't understand why we did this. To our ears, this sounds insolent, but it was not.

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They were not saying, Nebuchadnezzar, are we being detained? They were not saying, are we under arrest? Do you have a warrant?

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They were not saying any of those things that would be familiar to our ears. We don't need to answer you. They were admitting that the charges were true, and that they didn't need to say anything about that because there was no defense or apology forthcoming.

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The charges were true. You already know about our lifestyle, about our

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God, about how we worship Him. You've seen some, they didn't say all this, but implicit would have been, you've seen some of the results of this kind of thing.

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Especially when Daniel was the only person who could bring you the interpretation of your dream. All of your gods failed you.

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We don't need to answer you. The truth is right out there in front of you. And then they say this, verse 17.

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If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will deliver us out of your hand,

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O King. Probably recognizing that a long dissertation about the power of their sovereign

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God and the reasons for their unwillingness to serve pagan deities would be a waste of time, the men give a short, if terse, answer to Nebuchadnezzar.

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They did not mean it disrespectfully. They likely understood that this pagan king would not be able to apprehend the reason for their unalterable stand against idolatry.

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Their statement is one of confidence in their God, but it also clearly communicates to the king that they do not fear what he's doing to them, or what he thinks he can do to them.

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That in itself would have been another affront to Nebuchadnezzar. Verse 18, now this, yes, right.

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That's an excellent point Jenny makes, that the deliverance would have been either way. He could either remove them from the furnace or deliver them through burning up into paradise with Jehovah himself.

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Either one would have been a deliverance. And to those men, either one was good enough for them.

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Either one. What a good place to be in your Christianity, in your understanding of Jehovah.

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So, but even if he does, even if he does not, let it be known to you,

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O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. This does not indicate that the men do not believe

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God can deliver them. It is a statement that whether he chooses to or not, they will not worship the false god.

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They would, as Jenny has pointed out, consider either of the results to be deliverance, proper deliverance by a righteous, sovereign

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God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego recognize that God does not always deliver his children out of the difficult circumstances he has allowed them into.

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They are simply stating that whether he does or not, they will remain true to him. Even though Nebuchadnezzar follows this up with a command to throw them into the furnace, it had to have affected him,

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Nebuchadnezzar himself. It had to have affected him. Their steadfastness in the face of what normally would cause others to wilt in fear and their abject obedience to God, their decisive obedience to God made its mark on him.

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This may be the key verse in this entire section. If he does not, let it be known to you,

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O king, that we are not going to serve your god or worship the golden image that you have set up. These men had decided that they would honor their god no matter what

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Nebuchadnezzar did. He knew that his choices, they knew that their choices would always be, they knew that, let me start over.

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They knew that God's choices are always righteous, whatever they are. They're always righteous.

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And that they would glorify him, himself, and they were interested and willing to participate in that glorification no matter what it cost them.

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There was no demand for a miracle, no better life now garbage. They simply understood the cost, they counted it, and they stood with Jehovah.

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Their worship and love of God was not predicated on his performance for them. Their worship and love for God was predicated on his glory and righteousness alone and what they knew of him.

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Verse 19, then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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He answered by giving orders to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. Okay, so one of the other things that pride does to you and anger and rage is it causes you to get really stupid.

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I mean, if he really wanted those guys to suffer, he should have said, turn the furnace down. Turn it down so that it's just a little more than what a human can survive for very long so that they'll be in pain for an hour or better.

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He decided to heat it seven times and that was a hyperbole.

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So this is something we've probably all seen when someone gets very angry. Their eyes bulge, the veins stand out in their face and their neck and their visage changes.

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Some people, when they get really, really angry, they kind of don't even really look like what they did 10 seconds before.

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It just changes a person completely, this kind of rage and anger. This is volcanic rage.

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So he answers and gives orders to heat the furnace seven times more. As I pointed out, if he wanted the men to suffer more, he should have had the furnace turned down so that it would take more time for them to burn up.

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Heating it to such a temperature would cause the deaths of these three men to be nearly instantaneous upon being thrown in.

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So I don't know what seven times means, how much I didn't, there's no math here necessarily, but these kilns were designed to withstand really high temperatures.

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They were made out of adobe and brick and my mother used to do enamelware, adobe adobe adobe adobe adobe.

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And she would heat it up to 1 ,500, 2 ,000 degrees or more. And all it did was bake it and make it hard so that you could use it for a coffee cup.

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But what it would do to a person would be to, it would just consume them almost instantaneously. Within just a few seconds, they would be gone.

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So verse 20, he commanded certain valiant warriors who were in the army to heat the furnace in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in order to cast him into the burning, the furnace of blazing fire.

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Why he thought he had to have, so the translation of the word is valiant, his strongest, some of his most important warriors.

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Why he thought he had to have some of his strongest men in his army tie up these three Jewish captives is not known.

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Most likely, he assumed they would act like most men would in the situation they were getting themselves into and try to escape.

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They would try to run, they would try to get away. They didn't. They were totally confident in the sovereignty of their

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God. He wanted the soldiers, he wanted to have soldiers who would be able to handle the attempt at escape.

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So he chose some of his best. Another dumb mistake, really dumb mistake.

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Verse 21, then these men were tied up in their trousers, their coats, their caps, and their other clothes, and were cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.

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Normally, as I studied about this, the clothing would have been removed. It was useful. They could use it for other things.

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Clothing was much more of a premium in those days than it is today, where you can just run down to a 90 % off on a

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JCPenney's going out of business and get a $50 dress for eight cents, you know, or something. So he had them, he left their clothes on them.

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They were tied up. The clothing would normally be removed, but soldiers tied the men up with their clothing on. This would later be another testimony to the sovereignty of God.

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God sets this up so beautifully. It's amazing. So they were cast into the furnace, fully clothed with the ropes bound around them to keep them from being able to resist or attempt to escape.

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And I get the impression from the fact that they were thrown in is their legs were tied up too. They probably couldn't walk. They had to be packed up and tossed into the furnace.

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So that means whoever tossed them in had to get pretty close to the opening. Now, I don't know how big these three men were, but I've packed bodies, live bodies before, not dead bodies.

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And they're always heavier than they look, even the lightest ones, especially if they just flop.

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Any of you ever pick someone up who is unconscious? They're hard to, it's like picking up a noodle, 75 pound noodle.

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I didn't mean that by anybody who knows me who I've done that to, so just. For this reason, verse 22, because the king's command was urgent and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of the fire slew those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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Here, some of Nebuchadnezzar's folly is exposed. The heat of the furnace was so intense that it killed the men who threw them into the furnace, probably rather quickly.

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Most certainly, no one would draw attention to this for fear of being thrown into the fire. Nebuchadnezzar, what did you do that for? Guess what, you're next.

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But meanwhile, Nebuchadnezzar lost three warriors that he did not need to sacrifice. All of this just completely goes awry for Nebuchadnezzar, and it's at the sovereign hand of God.

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I'd never, I didn't really understand the intensity of how much

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God was superintending this and how much he set it up for his complete glory, completely obliterating any of the glory of that stupid statue standing on the plain that everybody was being killed for, these men were being killed for.

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So verse 23, and we'll finish up here. If you wanna know if they live or die, you gotta come back. But these three men,

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell in the midst of the furnace of blazing fire, still tied up. Now, remember what caused this.

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I shouldn't say what caused this, but what continued to cause. All they had to do was bow down and worship, a simple little act that none of the people on the plain would have been smart aleck about.

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None of them would have gainsated. They would have said, yeah, you did the right thing, because it's more important to live.

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What they chose to do was to honor God. So lest there be any confusion, Scripture clearly indicates here that the men were in the furnace, in the fire, and it was blazing.

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Lest the critics who say, well, they actually just stood up next to it or some other stupid thing. By all accounts, there was no chance for them to survive this.

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I don't know what the temperature is, but somewhere north of 1500 degrees, probably even more than that.

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Much, much more than a July day in Babylon. The heat was so great that it killed the men who threw them in, and yet here we read that they fell right into the middle of the furnace, all still tied up.

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So Scripture is always true. There would have been an indication if anything had happened at this point, it would have been in Scripture.

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So now, this is an interesting section right here. And yet here we read that they fell right into the middle of the furnace.

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There was an audience that day, and most certainly there would have been gasps of wonder at what was transpiring.

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There were people watching. These men were thrown into the middle of the fire with their clothes on, and they're laying there in the middle of the fire.

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Now, just for your own edification and information, the interesting thing about this, and I did a little bit of study on this,

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I'd read these before years and years ago. All of you are familiar with the Apocrypha. They're in the Scripture, the spurious books.

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Well, at this point in the Septuagint, if you go online and look at the Septuagint, you will find this information.

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At this point, the Septuagint includes a section called the Prayer of Azariah, one of the three that were thrown in.

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It is inserted here. It's 68 verses, and it's included in the Catholic Bibles.

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Protestant scholarship has rejected it because it is not found in the Hebrew managing scripts. And as Metzger points out, it was originally composed completely in Greek.

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So that would mean it was not written 590 years before Christ. It was written many, many years later and inserted.

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And also at this point, there's an Apocryphal story called Bell and the Dragon that's inserted.

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And it's a cute little story. It's just not Scripture. And it's about, basically, it's about a statue of Baal, which is where they get

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Bell, that's set up, and they feed this statue, and they put the food there at night, and when they come back in the morning, the food's all gone.

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So this is proof, positive, that this thing's real. It's eaten up the food, this brass statue, gold statue.

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So Daniel challenges that, and in this Apocryphal story, Daniel challenges it, and basically, he lays down ash.

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He has some helpers lay down ash in the room where the statue is. The king says,

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I'll prove it to you. We'll feed the dragon, we'll feed the god, we'll seal the temple, we'll come back in the morning.

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Well, the priests had an entrance underneath the altar. They come up in, they eat the food, and then they go back out that night, the priests and their family.

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And when they come in the next morning, Daniel points out the footprints on the floor. And so the king has the errant priests and their family killed.

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That's the story. That's one of the stories. And the other is about Daniel helping kill the dragon, an actual dragon.

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So these are all Apocryphal stories. Again, there's no scriptural support for them, no canonicity support for them.

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They're just fairy tales of the day that people added because they wanted to embellish the story.

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I think the story stands on its own, don't you? These men made a decision to serve

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Jehovah, no matter what it cost them. And it has rung down through the ages to be one of the premier scriptural stories, truths, that can give modern -day

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Christians courage and strength, that God will always do the right thing. God will always do the just thing.

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God will always do the thing that will glorify Him. And He will always, as Romans 8 .28 says, do what is best for His people, for His children,

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His sheep, always. So next week or whenever I'm back again, we will find out whether or not

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Daniel's three friends live or die. Any questions? Yes. So the timeline between the translation of the dream and the story of the three.

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Okay, so the two most put forward timelines is 18 years and eight to 10 years.

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18 years based on Jeremiah chapter 52, where it talks about Jerusalem being destroyed. There's no reason to connect this story to the destruction of Jerusalem, but some scholars do.

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Others look at that military coup, attempted military coup in 594, and date it just after that.

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So eight to 10 years after is the most likely amount of time that it passed, eight to 10 years after the story in chapter two.

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Yes. He's an unbeliever.

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So it was important for him at the time. Now Jehovah hasn't done anything for him. He hasn't given him his best life now.

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So we forgot him. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, that's a good point.

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We should spend time in the Word so we don't forget. That's where we find the

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Father. That's where we find Him, is in the Word. Any other comments or questions before we close? Sorry, we started late.

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Let's close in prayer. Lord, we know that your word is true. And alongside of that, we also know that you are true.

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We serve you because you are true. We serve you because we love you. We love you because you first loved us. And in that, we find comfort, solace, and courage.

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Help us to think through these things that we see in the lives of these three men, that you orchestrated this for their best, and that you do that often in our lives, no matter what the circumstances seem to be around us.

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Lord, let us be always about the business of serving you, honoring you, and refusing to bow down to the gods of the day.