“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”—Daniel 3:16-18.
If you read the second chapter of the Book of Daniel, you will think that Nebuchadnezzar was not far from the kingdom. His dream had troubled him; but Daniel had explained it. Then the king made this confession to Daniel, “Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret.” He acknowledged that Jehovah, the God of the Jews, was the greatest of gods, and was a great interpreter of secrets; and yet in a short time we find this man setting up an idol, and persecuting to the death those who would not worship it. He seems, indeed, to have turned the blessing into a curse, and made the image of his dream the pattern of the idol he set up for the nation to worship; thus making that through which God had graciously revealed his power and wisdom, the very instrument of his folly and vain glory. Man’s proud heart is the same in all generations, and the same thing happens even to-day. Have you not seen in your time men seriously impressed? They could not hold their own; they seemed stricken down by the force of truth, and you felt almost sure that they would become, like Saul of Tarsus, true converts, and even apostles of the faith. But after a while they forgot it, forgot it all, and became at length the most bitter and determined opponents of the truth before which they seemed once to bow. Every minister, who has a congregation of any considerable size, must have met with such people. I remember one who, being at a prayer-meeting where there was much wrestling power with God, was so overcome that he prayed aloud, and seemed to cry with all his heart for mercy, and ere he left he said that he had found it; but the next day he declared that he would never go to such a meeting again; that he had been almost caught, but he would not trust himself in such society any more. And I fear that he never did; for he could always speak with great severity against the people who met for prayer, and were earnest in the faith. We know, then, what to expect; that some who seem like fish almost landed, will, nevertheless, slip back into the stream; that it will happen unto them according to the true proverb, “The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” They will go out from us because they are not of us, and the last state of such men will be worse than the first.
This great king of Babylon was an absolute monarch His will was law; no man ever dared to dispute with him. Who would differ from a gentleman who could back up his arguments with a fiery furnace, or with a threat to cut you in pieces, and to make your house a dunghill? And now, when it comes to this, that he sets up a god of his own, a huge colossal statue, and gathers all the princes and potentates of his world-wide dominion together, to bow down before this image, it seems a strange thing to him that there should be anybody found who would not do so. And yet there were three Jews who mastered him. Once before, they had broken the laws of his court, and refused to eat unclean meat; and though they ate nothing but pulse, “At the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat.” Having stood firm for the right before, they were the bolder to face the more terrible ordeal. The king himself had exalted them in the land, and he expected them, of course, to do his bidding, and set an example to others; but these three of the despised race of the Jews were unconquerable even by the master of the whole world. They stood out before Nebuchadnezzar, and carried their point for God and for conscience.
As we dwell upon this deed of noble heroism, may we become sharers in the courage and faith of these men, whose names stand high on the roll of worthies in the kingdom of God! Thirteen times their names recur in this chapter, like a refrain to the song which speaks of their deed of valor.
Notice, first, the excuses they might have made; secondly, the confidence they possessed; and thirdly, the determination at which they had arrived.
I. First of all, as we think of these three brave Jews, let us consider THE EXCUSES THEY MIGHT HAVE MADE. They were accused by the Chaldeans, who had so recently been saved from death by Daniel and his three friends. The surest way to be hated by some people is to place them under an obligation. “What favor have I ever done him, that he should hate me so?” said one. But in this case the wrath of man was to praise God. The incensed monarch called the offenders before him, and, scarcely believing that in his realm any could have defied his authority, he put the alternative plainly before them. “Here is the golden image; you three Jews are to bow down before it. If you do not, there is the burning fiery furnace, and into that you shall be cast at once. What is your answer?”
They might have said to themselves, “It is perfectly useless to resist. We cannot contend against this man. If we submit, we do it unwillingly; and surely, being coerced into it, we shall be but little blamed. A man cannot be expected to knock his head against a brick wall, nor throw his life away; and therefore we will bow our heads, as the rest of the multitude have done, and worship the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king has set up.” It is a bad excuse, but it is one that I have often heard made. “Oh,” says a man, “we must live, you know; we must live.” I really do not see any necessity for it. We must die; but whether we must live or not, depends upon a great many things, and it is infinitely better to die than to sink your manhood, and to violate your conscience, at a tyrant’s bidding.
Again, they might have said, “We are in a strange land, and is it not written by one of our wise men, ‘When you are in Babylon, you must do as Babylon does’? Of course, if we were at home, in Judaea, we would not think of such a thing. We would remember how God has said, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.’ If we were at home, we would obey that law; but we are many hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem, and surely we may be permitted to yield in this point.” Thus have I known many who say they are Christians at home act when they are abroad; they have not regarded the Sabbath, neither have they even regarded the decency or the indecency of the amusements to which they have betaken themselves, because, forsooth, they were not at home! “We would not do this in England; but we are in Paris, you see, and the case is altered,” they say. Is the case altered? Is God the God of this island, and not the God of the Continent? Has he ever given us permission to do abroad what we may not do at home? It is a vile excuse, but commonly enough made.
They might also have said, “We are in office”; and seeing they were set over the affairs of the province of Babylon, they might have found some difficulty in detaching their private religion from their public duty. They were high officials; and what an excuse this is for a great deal of roguery and trickery everywhere! A man gets elected to a parish vestry, or a council, or a board, and when he once gets to sit on that board, he seems to have left his honesty at home. I say not that it is so always, but I am sorry to say that it has often been so. The official has no sooner put on his robes of office than his conscience has vanished. But these men were not so foolish as to think that because they were made rulers in Babylon, they might therefore sin against the Most High God. It is true that they were bound to obey the lawful orders of their sovereign; but whether it be right to obey men rather than God, their conscience could easily enough judge; so they never made that excuse.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
