I love campfires. Getting to see your friends in the
flickering light. Making s’mores or spider dogs. Having someone play guitar and
starting to randomly sing. But probably the thing I love most about campfires
is the smell. And especially how that smell follows you everywhere. You put on
the same sweater the next morning, and it still has that amazing campfire
smell!
Now I don’t know if they had campfires back in Bible times,
but I do know that there’s a ton of stories involving fire. God shows up as a
pillar of fire to lead the Israelites through the desert. God sends fire from
heaven to prove that he is God to a bunch of people who had stopped believing.
But also there’s a story in the book of Daniel that’s about fire.
That’s right, we’re talking about Daniel’s friends and the
fiery furnace today.
But first, let’s backtrack for a minute. Last week we heard
from Arioch about a weird dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had. In the dream, the
king saw this giant statue where each part of the body was made of a different
material. Eventually the dream statue was destroyed and Daniel told the king
what that meant (check out last week’s story for more info on that), and then
King Nebuchadnezzar praised God.
I wish I could say that King Nebuchadnezzar believed in God
from that point forward, but sadly that’s not what happens. In fact, the king
seemed to forget all about this dream and what it meant pretty quickly.
Well, he didn’t forget everything
about the dream. You see, right after that story, the next thing the Bible
tells us is that King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue that was 90 feet
tall. That’s basically as tall as a 9 story building! And then King
Nebuchadnezzar gave an official proclamation to the people. He commanded that
when music played, everybody had to go out, bow down, and worship the statue. And
anyone who didn’t would be thrown into a furnace!
Now we don’t know what the statue looked like, but we can
probably take a guess. King Nebuchadnezzar had just dreamed about a giant
statue, so he probably made the real statue look similar. In the dream, the
statue had arms and legs and terrified the king, so we can imagine the statue
probably looked like a scary person too.
But what’s important is that King Nebuchadnezzar hadn’t
learned his lesson yet. God was trying to teach King Nebuchadnezzar that He was
the one and only God. Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians worshipped all kinds
of idols. In case you don’t know, idols are statues or objects that people
treat like gods. The Babylonians would worship these statues by bowing down to
them, giving gifts to them, and maybe even singing songs to them.
But worshipping is about way more than just the actions of
bowing or giving or singing. Worship is all about the heart. When you worship
something, you are treating it like it’s important. Like it’s really important.
Like it’s the most important thing in the entire universe. You worship
something to respond to how great that thing is.
The problem was that the Babylonians were worshipping the
wrong things. Their idols didn’t deserve to be worshiped. These idols didn’t
create the world or save anybody. There is only one being who deserves to the
worshipped, and that is our God. Our God is the only God, and He deserves our
worship because He created the world, because He saves us, because He is bigger
and more powerful than we can possibly imagine. And so we worship God through
singing and prayer and all kinds of other ways so that we can celebrate God and
say thank you to Him.
But in our story for today, King Nebuchadnezzar was trying
to introduce a new idol for the people to worship. He wanted the people to
treat his massive golden statue like it was God!
Now a lot of the Babylonians wouldn’t have cared. They were
used to worshipping idols; they didn’t know it was wrong. So when King
Nebuchadnezzar gathered up all the people in his palace and told them to come
out where the statue was, the Babylonians would’ve done this without thinking
twice. They would have come out in their best clothes ready to worship as soon
as that music started playing.
But the Israelites were probably not as okay with this. They
knew that the whole reason that God had let the Babylonians capture them was
because the Israelites had been worshipping idols instead of God for a really long time. So you can imagine
some of the Israelites were pretty nervous when King Nebuchadnezzar was trying
to make them worship idols again. The Israelites wanted to worship God only,
but what were they supposed to do? If they didn’t worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s
statue, they were going to be killed! Talk about an impossible situation!
They didn’t have much time to think about it though.
Suddenly, the music started to play. All of the Babylonians bowed down and
worshipped. And a bunch of the Israelites did too. We don’t have a choice, they thought sadly. But this only made it even
more obvious when three people remained standing.
These people were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – Daniel’s
friends. The three of them had learned from that whole vegetable eating incident we talked about a few weeks ago that doing that right thing isn’t
always easy. But that doesn’t mean we should stop doing what is right. So, even
though they knew that not worshipping the statue could lead to their death,
they still put God and His instructions first!
The Babylonian officials didn’t see it this way though.
Their first thoughts were, Finally! Now we
have a way to get rid of Daniel’s goodie two-shoes friends! So they raced
to the king (after bowing to the statue of course) and said, “King
Nebuchadnezzar! There’s a problem with some of those Jews you hired to help
Daniel govern Babylon! Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego don’t care about you,
your law, or your gods! They refuse to worship the statue you set up!”
Now if you remember from last week, you’ll know that King
Nebuchadnezzar has quite the temper. And this time was no different. When he
heard that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to his statue,
he got really angry and demanded they be brought to him immediately!
When the three friends arrived before the king,
Nebuchadnezzar tried to be nice. “Shadrach. Meshach. Abednego,” he said. “You
three are usually such good servants of mine, so I’m going to give you the
benefit of the doubt. You must not have heard my instructions. When the music
plays, you’re supposed to go out and worship my new statue. Don’t you want to
worship my gods?”
Meshach swallowed before answering, “There was no mistake,
my king. We heard your instructions. But we worship our God and Him alone.”
“Then you’ll also know that if you don’t bow down,” the king
said, growing angrier as he spoke, “then you’ll be thrown into a blazing
furnace. And what god will be able to save you then?!?”
Shadrach looked at his two friends, who simply nodded at
him. “King Nebuchadnezzar,” they said, “we don’t need to talk about this
anymore. We might be thrown into the blazing furnace. But the God we serve is
able to bring us out of it alive. He will save us from your power. But we want
you to know this, Your Majesty. Even if we knew that our God wouldn’t save us,
we still wouldn’t serve your gods. We wouldn’t worship the gold statue you set
up.” (Daniel 3:16-18, NIrV).
At this, King Nebuchadnezzar lost it. The king was angrier
than Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had ever seen! Nebuchadnezzar yelled for
some servants to make the furnace seven times hotter than normal. And then he
told his strongest soldiers to tie Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego up, clothes
and all, and to throw them into the furnace!
But this is where things get incredible. King Nebuchadnezzar
could see everything that was happening, and something didn’t make sense. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego weren’t burning up! But then the king realized something
else. He squinted hard, then leaned over to one of his advisors and asked, “Didn’t
we tie up three men and throw them into the fire?”
“Yes my king,” the advisors responded.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” he said back. “Look,
there are four people in there, and none of them are tied up! And the fourth
one looks like a son of the gods!” (This means that the fourth person looked
like an angel or someone else who had come from God. But whoever it was, it was
enough to amaze the king!)
“Get them out!” the king cried. “Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come to me! Come out of the furnace!”
And the three friends did exactly that. Their ropes were
gone, but their clothes were perfectly fine. Not a single one of their hairs had
been burned off. They didn’t even smell like smoke! (No campfire smell for
them!)
I can imagine that King Nebuchadnezzar was pretty shaken up
after this. Maybe he remembered his dream and how he had worshipped God once
already. Maybe he realized there was more to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s
God than he had thought. Whatever the case, he praised God again and decreed
that no one could say anything bad about God. If they did, King Nebuchadnezzar
would destroy them and their homes!
And again, I wish I could say that King Nebuchadnezzar
believed in God from this point forward. But the next chapter of Daniel tells
us that this simply isn’t the case. In fact, it wasn’t until King
Nebuchadnezzar humbled himself – until he admitted that God is bigger and
better than Nebuchadnezzar ever could be – that the king finally came to
worship God and God alone!
In fact, that’s what so many of these stories in Daniel are
all about. God wanted His people back then to remember why they had been taken
from their home – because they had worshipped idols in place of Him. And God
wants us to learn a similar lesson today – that there is only one God, and He
is the only one to be worshipped.
Most of us don’t go around worshipping statues anymore, but
we might treat other things as if they are idols. We probably don’t bow down to
our PlayStations or sing songs about our iPads. But when we spend all our time
playing video games or trying to get lots of money without spending any time
focusing on God, then we are treating those things like they’re more important
than God! That’s worshipping an idol.
But God doesn’t want us to worship those things. Instead, He
wants us to worship the one and only God
who stands beside us when things get tough. Money or video games aren’t
going to stand in the fires of life with you, but God will. He is greater than
any difficulty we might face, and He promises never to leave us, no matter how
tough things might get (Hebrews 13:5). And for that reason, plus like a billion
more, God alone deserves our worship.
~Brentagious
No comments:
Post a Comment