In the Fire and yet Not Burnt.

Read Daniel 3.
A GREAT king made a great image, and thought he could make everybody bow down to it. Most of the great people of the earth were willing enough to do so. Princes and captains and rulers came to worship; they were the men of power from different parts of the kingdom. Then the “counselors” were there, and the “judges”; the wise men, and the men who were set to see that right was done. They might have said, “We are all here, to do what our king commands; all the greatness and the wisdom in the world are here, and we all agree to bow down to this great golden statue—what everybody says must be right.” But there were, at least, three young men who dared to think that the people were all wrong; or, at any rate, that it would be wrong for them to do what the rest of the world were doing. Some might come to them and say, “How proud, and how stupid you must be, when all the world is wondering at this great image, and worshipping it, to say that you won’t join them! Why should you set up to be right, and everybody else wrong? If you chose not to own any God but Jehovah when you were in your own land, you are in Babylon now, and you must do as Babylon does. Your own God has cast you off and given you into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (ch. 1, 2), and yet you will not do what he tells you; how foolish you are!”
But it would all go for nothing with Shadrach and his two friends. They knew the living and true God, and His word to them was that they should not bow themselves down to any graven image; and that was enough for them. Nebuchadnezzar’s idol might be thirty-six yards high or more. The music of all kinds might be very charming to the senses; but there was a greater charm for them in pleasing the God they served, by keeping His word and not denying His name. And if the king thought to terrify them by telling them of the furnace they should be cast into if they refused, still he would find that they did not fear all that man could do unto them so much as they would fear to displease “their own God?’ So they told the king they hardly cared to answer him about doing such a thing as bowing down to an image he had made and set up. They were quite sure that their God whom they served was “able to deliver” them; and even if He did not see fit to deliver them, they would not disobey Him by worshipping this great image. Then the king became furious with them, and ordered the furnace to be made seven times hotter than ever it had been before. So hot they made it that they had to pick the strongest soldiers in the army to get anywhere near it. And even then, when they went to fling these three good men into the fire, the flames came out and burnt the strong men so badly, that they were killed. The heat outside the furnace was enough to kill the strong men, but the weak ones “in the midst of the burning fiery furnace” were not hurt by it at all! It did not even singe the hair of their heads, nor was the smell of fire upon them. The only thing the fire did for them after burning up their enemies, was to burn up the bands they were bound with, and set them free to walk about with the Angel of the Lord, who came to be with them in the furnace. They had been faithful to God when in the king’s palace (ch. 1), for His name’s sake they had refused the king’s image; and now that they found themselves in the king’s furnace, He would see that they were not left alone there.
The king and his nobles were astonished beyond measure, and well they might be. They had put three men in, and they were closely tied up; but they nod see four there, and are all walking about! And the king calls to the three whose names he knew, to come out. His mighty men had put them in, and lost their own lives in doing so, but not all the men in his army could have fetched them out again. But when the king called them, out they walked, for they were not disobedient men, although they would not obey the king when to have done so would have been to disobey God. So they came out, and all the great people had to see and own that God had so taken care of His servants, that the fire had “no power” over them, and they had “no hurt” when they were in the midst of it. Nebuchadnezzar’s image had “no power” to command their worship; his music “no power” to charm them; nor his threat to frighten them; so now his furnace had “no power” to harm them. God was the One who had power. Shadrach and his fellows knew it; Nebuchadnezzar and his nobles had to, learn it, and confess that there was “no other God” who had such power. If all the great people of the earth came to see and worship the king’s golden image, they went back to tell of the wondrous power of that God who gave him his kingdom and glory, although in the pride of his heart he had forgotten Him (ch. 2:37).
How well it was that these three young men had believed and obeyed the word of God! They honored Him, and He did not fail to put Honor upon them (vs. 28; 1 Sam. 2:3030Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. (1 Samuel 2:30)). And now, although we may not be called either to be cast into furnaces, or to be delivered out of them, still we can say, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” He still loves that we should treasure His Word; saying to us, “If a man love me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” And to some of those who have kept His Word, and have not denied His name, but have been despised by others, He says, “I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee,” as He made Nebuchadnezzar to know at the end of this chapter, that though he might proudly say, “Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” yet there was a, God who could and would deliver His servants who trusted in Him.
But there are those still who despise this same God, either disbelieving or forgetting both His goodness and His infinite power.
They despise Him and neglect His Word as if it had no authority over them. They say by their lips or by their lives, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Then there is another “furnace of fire” (Matt. 13:5050And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:50)) which will never need to be heated seven times more than usual; a “lake of fire” from which there will be no coming forth unhurt. God, not Nebuchadnezzar, has prepared it; but who, my dear reader, young or old, “who is the God that shall deliver” from that burning those who turned away from the “grace of God that bringeth salvation?” “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
W. TY.