Even If He Does Not

Most of us have a quiet deal with God we have never said out loud. Let the test come back clear. Let the job hold. Let her get better. We do not notice it is a deal until the answer comes back wrong.

Three young men said both halves out loud, in front of a king who could kill them within the hour. The famous half is the rescue. The other half is the one worth memorising.

Some background. About 2,600 years ago the empire of Babylon captured Jerusalem and carried off the promising young men of Israel for palace service. Three of them are in this story. Babylon gave them new names — Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego — along with a new language, new food and a new job. They took all of it.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar built a gold statue about ninety feet tall, set it up on a flat plain, and called every official in the empire to stand in front of it.

1. The order was to bend, not to believe

A herald announced the rule.

When you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image... And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.

Daniel 3:5-6

Notice what the king asks for. Not a change of mind. A body, bent, when the palace orchestra plays. Nobody has to mean it. You can tell yourself it is only your knees. The furnace was no fireplace but a brick oven for melting metal, hot enough to kill a man at the doorway.

So why not just bend? Because God had already ruled on that exact motion, in the second of the ten commands he gave Israel through Moses, the man who led them out of slavery in Egypt.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image... You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

Exodus 20:4-5

Look at what is forbidden: not believing in a statue, but bowing to one.

Israel's book of songs says why that matters.

They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see... Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.

Psalm 115:5-8

An idol is something people make and then treat as though it made them. The sharp line is the last one: you slowly turn into whatever you worship. Bow to something with no eyes and no ears, and in time you stop seeing and hearing too.

2. The three words that make faith faith

Officials report the three men for staying on their feet. The king offers one more chance, with the music ready to play again, and asks who the god is who could rescue them. Their answer is famous for the wrong half.

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.

Daniel 3:17-18

Two halves, and the joint between them is everything. First: our God can do this, and we believe he will. Then the turn. But if not. If he does not save us, we still will not bow.

They will not make the rescue the reason for their loyalty. You cannot threaten someone whose obedience does not depend on the outcome. Most of us pray the first half. The second half turns it from a deal into worship.

Habakkuk — a prophet, meaning a man who spoke for God — watched an invading army coming, and said the same thing in farm language.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines... the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

He lists everything a farming family eats and earns — fruit, oil, grain, sheep, cattle — then crosses each one out. That is not a poor season; that is hunger. And the sentence still lands on yet. This is "even if" stretched over years instead of minutes.

Then comes the part that resists a tidy ending. A letter written to early Christians runs a long list of people praised for trusting God, and this furnace is almost certainly in it.

Quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword... Some were tortured, refusing to accept release... They were stoned, they were sawn in two... of whom the world was not worthy.

Hebrews 11:34-38

Those lines sit a few verses apart: same praise, opposite endings. The writer never explains why one group walked out and the other did not, and he will not say the second group had weaker faith. Anyone who promises that trust always produces a rescue has not read to the end of the list.

3. The rescue happened inside the fire

The king has the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual and the men tied and carried up to it. Then a detail almost everyone skips.

Because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Daniel 3:22

The soldiers carrying them die at the door. Whatever happens next happens inside a fire fully able to do what fire does.

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.

Daniel 3:25

The king is counting. He put in three, tied. He sees four, loose, walking about as though the furnace were a room. Notice where the help turns up: not at the door, not instead of the furnace. Inside it.

Who is the fourth? The book does not say. That is a king who worshipped other gods reaching for words; later he calls the figure an angel God sent. Christians have long read this and thought of Christ; better to admit the page does not tell us than to claim more. What it does give is a pattern: when his people are in the fire, God is in it with them. Centuries later that pattern takes a body.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

John 1:14

"The Word" is John's name for the Son of God before he was born as a human — the man the world came to know as Jesus. The verb behind dwelt is built on the word for a tent: he pitched camp among us. God did not send instructions from a safe distance. He moved in.

Isaiah had made this promise to the very people Babylon carried away.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you... when you walk through fire you shall not be burned.

Isaiah 43:2

Read the small words. Through the waters, through the fire. Not around either one. The promise is that the thing will not finish you, and you will not be alone in it.

When the three come out, the officials find the fire had no power over them: not a hair singed, not even the smell of smoke (Daniel 3:27).

4. What they actually handed over

Nebuchadnezzar's summary of what he saw is exactly right.

They yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.

Daniel 3:28

He does not say they had strong feelings. He says they handed over their bodies. Worship in this story is not a mood. It is what you do with your knees, your hands, your hours.

But the furnace does not settle everything. Centuries later Jesus knelt in a garden in the dark and prayed the same two-part prayer.

My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

Matthew 26:39

He prayed that the night before he was killed; "this cup" is the death coming in the morning. He asks to be spared, which tells you asking is allowed. Then the turn, the same joint as but if not. Then the part that makes this more than a brave example: it was not possible. The cup did not pass.

Paul, who wrote many of the letters in the Bible, draws the conclusion.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Romans 8:32

He argues from the hardest thing down: God did not spare his own Son, so you cannot say he is holding the costly thing back until you deserve it. Three men were pulled out of the furnace. The Son was not, and that is why anyone can face one.

What to do with this

Say both halves out loud. Take the thing you are most afraid of — the results, the money, the person who has stopped speaking to you. Pray the first half: God is able, and I am asking him to do it. Then say the second half, with the real name of the real thing in it: and if he does not, I will still not bow.

Spot the small bow before the music plays. Almost nobody is asked to deny God in one dramatic moment. It comes as the meeting where you laugh along, or the form where the true answer is inconvenient. Name the one you can already see coming this week, and decide now what you will do.

Look for God inside the thing, not only past it. If you are in something that has not ended, write one sentence about what God has been during it. That is not pretending the fire is fine. The men in the furnace were not spared it. They were not alone in it.

They went in tied and came out loose, and the only thing the fire took was the rope. But the sentence came first, with no promise attached: even if he does not. Once someone means that, there is nothing left to threaten them with.