Into the Fire

 

Jesu Juva

Daniel 3:8-28                                                     

March 6, 2024

Lent Midweek 3                        

 Dear saint of our Savior~

        This really happened!  Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Nebuchadnezzar, the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than normal.  This really happened.  What we so casually refer to as a “Bible story” isn’t just a story. This is one of the very first sections of Scripture I ever learned.  I still remember that Arch Book from Concordia Publishing House about the three men and the fiery furnace. It was a terrifying account.  But unlike other scary, childhood stories, this was no fable or fairy tale. This is no bedtime story.  This is history.  This is a real-life account of God delivering His people from evil.  This really happened.

        Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had done everything right.  They were exiles—Judaean Jews—strangers in a strange land—who were living out their faith beneath the beastly Babylonian bureaucracy of King Nebuchadnezzar.  These young men had not compromised on matters of faith while, at the same time, they accepted certain compromises with the culture of Babylon.  They had accepted Babylonian names, and learned Babylonian language and literature—while still maintaining their loyalty to the Lord and to Jewish dietary laws.  Along with Daniel, they were the best and the brightest—faithful men of God appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to manage the affairs of Babylon.

        But as tonight’s reading picks up, these three men had everything to lose.  They had power.  They had status.  They had places at the King’s dinner table.  With the Lord’s help, they were living as the light of the world, amidst the dark and deathly evil of Babylon.  (If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, when you hear “Babylon,” think “Mordor.”)  But it was precisely because of their God-given success—it was precisely because God made these men to be a blessing to Babylon—that they now were at risk of losing everything.

        Satan set His sights on these three faithful men, and soon unleashed a plan to exterminate them.  To do this, he stirred up a vast government conspiracy.  He filled all the bureaucrats of Babylon with seething jealousy against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  The satraps, the prefects, the governors, the king’s counselors all conspired to entrap these three:  Why should these Jews—these foreigners—have such plum positions?  Why should Jews be taking good Babylonian jobs?  And so they concocted a final solution, and laid plans for a little Holocaust that would reduce these Hebrews to ashes.

        The Babylonian bureaucracy lived by lies.  It ran on lies.  They had many, many gods.  And so it was nothing for them to erect a golden image and fall down and worship it.  This would be a little loyalty test—an opportunity to weed out those rightwing, extremist monotheists who refused to bend their knees to Nebuchadnezzar’s big idol.

        Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood to lose everything by not bending their knees.       Yet these faithful three never wavered from their cheerful confidence in God:  O Nebuchadnezzar, 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, we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. They were clear and unambiguous.  No waffling or schwaffling.  They stood firm precisely when the stakes were highest.  One way or another, God would deliver them.

        Babylon was a land of lies.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had so far deftly maneuvered around these lies.  But in this land of lies, the moment of truth had now come.  God’s people do not—ever, under any circumstances—bow down to idols.  You shall have no other gods.

        These three men teach us how to maneuver in a land of lies.  For we too live under a lying Babylonian bureaucracy:  Where the murder of the unborn is called “reproductive health,” where the mutilation of little children is called “gender-affirming care,” where judging person solely by the color of their skin is called “diversity.”  Lies like these have become the idols of our age.  And these idols increasingly demand loyalty.  And those who do not bend the knee—those who hold to a higher authority—those who live by the truth—can expect to be thrown into the fire.

        Jesus knew what it was like to maneuver in a land of lies.  He came from heaven to earth to save us from our sins.  But He was ever so careful not to put on His “Messiah” name tag too soon.  That would have derailed everything, and would have kept Him from His cross.  So Jesus was always saying things like, “My hour has not yet come.”  When the demons cried out that He was the Christ, He shut them up.  He often told His own disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.  To multitudes that experienced His miraculous powers in personal ways, Jesus said to say nothing about it to anyone.

        Tonight’s Passion account describes when the moment of truth finally arrived for Jesus.  Having been arrested, betrayed and abandoned, Jesus was led before the Jewish Council—a collection of seventy scribes, chief priests, and elders.  Seething jealously had led them to bring Jesus before this kangaroo court.  Now Jesus had everything to lose.  Now Jesus was surrounded by His enemies.  Now encircled by seventy men who wanted Him dead, His hour had come.  He would say the thing that sealed His fate:  The high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”  And Jesus said, “I am.”  And with that answer, His suffering and death became a certainty.  And God’s great plan to save the world could commence.

        Suffering happens.  Throughout this season of Lent we’ve been looking at suffering and the Christian life.  And sometimes suffering can be avoided and evaded.  Christians aren’t required seek out suffering.  It seeks us out because we’re different—because we hold to truth in this land of lies.  We’re different—like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  We’re exiles too—citizens of heaven temporarily deployed for duty in a land of lies.  We’re strangers here; heaven is our home.  By His suffering and death, Jesus has made it so.  But here on earth, we will inevitably suffer with our Savior.

        But we do not suffer alone.  No Christian ever suffers alone. Consider this:  Three men were thrown into the fiery furnace.  Three, not four.  But as Nebuchadnezzar peeked into the flames, he saw four men, not three:  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. We know by faith what Nebuchadnezzar could only guess at.  This fourth man—this “son of the gods,” was, actually, the Christ, THE Son of God, delivering His people from evil.  Oh, and by the way, this really happened.

        Jesus who suffered for us and for our salvation—He also accompanies us in all our suffering.  When the flames threaten to devour us—when we are overwhelmed—when we are surrounded by our enemies and their lies—Jesus is with us to deliver us.

        And His ultimate deliverance will come on the day of resurrection.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ultimately take us to Easter!  Not a hair on their heads was singed.  Their clothing was intact.  They didn’t even smell like smoke.  They who had everything to lose had been given more than they desired and more than they deserved.  Even in the middle of Lent, we can only confess that Christ is risen.  In Him death has met its demise.  In Him we have a caring companion who is with us always—but especially in our suffering, and even in our death.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  Live not by lies.  Live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.