The Lord is Our Salvation - Daniel 3

Introduction

Last week we looked at how God is King over all and that He had this vision for King Nebuchadnezzar. This vision included a great image made up of five different elements, gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. This vision was a message for Nebuchadnezzar that while God has made him to be a great king on earth, his kingdom would not be an eternal kingdom. In fact, no earthly kingdom would have the final say. God wanted him to know that his kingdom is merely one of many kingdoms that would point forward to the ultimate eternal kingdom that would one day be established by Christ, the Son of God.

Because God used Daniel to reveal the mystery of this dream to the King, Nebuchadnezzar bowed before Daniel and paid homage to him and made a great declaration: Daniel 2:47

Daniel 2:47 (ESV)

The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.”

While this is a great statement and sentiment, we will see that Nebuchadnezzar has still not come to submit himself to this God of gods and Lord of kings. In fact, his statement here shows that while Nebuchadnezzar might be recognizing Yahweh as a God, he is merely accepting him as the greatest of the many gods he believes in. He is still a pluralist and does not yet recognize the fact that Yahweh is the One and Only True God of all creation.

But now in the face of this vision, Nebuchadnezzar is faced with a terrifying reality, that while his kingdom is the greatest of all, his kingdom will still one day come to an end. He, like all people, is being reminded of the fact that there is a day when his kingdom and his life will end. We are all temporal creatures, unlike our eternal God.

In this broken world, we are all faced with the terrifying concept of the temporary nature of life. We inwardly know we were meant for life and that death is an intruder in God’s creation and so we seek to find ways to outsmart death and try to find some kind of permanence to life. We are all looking for salvation from the death that is haunting us all.

Read Daniel 3:1-7

Daniel 3:1–7 (ESV)

King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that 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 that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.” Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Daniel 3:13–25 (ESV)

Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, 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.”

Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. 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. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “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.”

Prayer

I. Some Look for Salvation in Themselves

Recap:

1. Nebuchadnezzar:

A. Nebuchadnezzar is seeking to build a kingdom that will rival God’s kingdom and will last forever. (The image is fully of gold, rather than of the various metals in his vision).

B. Nebuchadnezzar, is not only seeking an eternal kingdom, he is seeking to be a god in his own right. Here’s the truth of the matter, we will worship whatever it is we think can save us and bring fulfillment and satisfaction to our lives. For Nebuchadnezzar, this is himself.

this has been the temptation for all of us since the garden, that we can be like God so we don’t need God because we can do all we need ourselves

C. This image is to make his name great among all the nations. (Tower of Babel)

D. Nebuchadnezzar is wielding the weapon of death in order to subjugate the peoples to him. He is threatening with a punishment similar to that for those who rebel against the LORD God.

E. But notice his lack of control in the situation.

Where he is seeking to build unity, there is division among the Chaldeans and the Jews

When he hears of the Jews’ rebellion against his decree, notice in v. 19 the expression of his face has changed. The word here is the exact same word for the image that he set up. (While he is creating an image for himself, he is unable to control the image on his face because of the rebellion from the three Jewish men.)

Oftentimes, in a story like this, we like to see ourselves as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. But before we can get there, we have to ask the question, how are we like Nebuchadnezzar? Like Nebuchadnezzar, we can try to solve our problem of death on our own. We will end up worshipping whatever we think can save us from this world of death, including ourselves.

We do this by basing our salvation in

Our good works

You might be familiar with the question that is often asked, “What must one do to be saved?” While there are many answers people can give to this question, there is one primary way that most people and even religions give:

We need to be a good person.

While most people will admit that they have not always been good, we typically define goodness in such a way as to downplay any kind of evil, badness, or sin within us. Or we say our good deeds must outweigh our bad deeds.

We must prove ourselves to be good and in that way we can earn eternal life. This is essentially what Nebuchadnezzar is trying to do. He is trying to prove his goodness on a grand scale, to show that he is able to do what no other king has been able to do, bring peace and unity to the entire world. By claiming to be a god worthy of worship, he is declaring his goodness and his worthiness to earn eternal life.

When we try to secure salvation by our works, we too are playing God. When we say that I can be good enough on my own to a point where God owes me eternal life, I am saying that I am a god that the Lord God has to submit Himself to. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar has acknowledged the existence of Israel’s God, but he wants to be a greater god than Him. This is what we do when we play the self-righteous game of earning our salvation. We are playing god and making God bow down to us. We also want to hear the praises of other men as to how good we are, thereby earning their worship as we hear their praises.

Justifying what we do

Another way we try to find salvation in ourselves is by justifying what we do. Instead of simply saying our good deeds must outweigh our bad, we change the rules by declaring for ourselves what is right and wrong.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego could have done this to save themselves. They could have said, we can bow down to this idol physically while still only worship God in our hearts. This would have been a form of self-justification.

We have entered into a relativistic age where no one can say what is absolutely right and wrong. Each person gets to decide for themselves what is right and wrong and what is wrong for you might not be wrong for me, so we are deemed to be hateful and a bigot when we speak out about what is right and wrong.

But if there truly is a God who has created the universe, then He does get to decide what is right and wrong. We do not get to play god by choosing for ourselves what is right and wrong.

It doesn’t matter what our hearts might feel, marriage and sexuality are to be experienced only between a husband and a wife. Our genders are not chosen by ourselves, but by the God who has created us. We are not to show prejudice or discrimination of any kind, whether it is based on race, gender, religion, or social-economic position for all people are created in the image of God. We are called to forgive, no matter what. Gossiping and slander are wrong, no matter how bad someone else has acted or treated us. Coveting what someone else has is sin, regardless of how much we might feel we deserve what they have more than they do.

We start playing God whenever we pick and choose what seems right to us instead of basing the standard of right and wrong upon God’s Word. We become subjective in our standard of right and wrong because it allows me to remain in control of how I choose to live my life.

Trusting in the idols we’ve created

Finally, we look for salvation in ourselves by trusting in the idols we have set up in our lives.

Nebuchadnezzar is trying to control his kingdom and his life through this idol he has erected.

Our idol might be money. If I can make enough money, then I can find salvation by remaining in control of how my life is lived out and how money can provide security for me.

Or that idol might be a relationship. We think we can find security in being with a certain person and that they will provide ultimate fulfillment for us.

Or that idol might be success in my job or having the perfect family. Whatever it is, the idols in our lives are our way of controlling our own image and seeking praise and worship from others and to make ourselves believe that we are somehow earning our way towards an eternal life and kingdom of our own.

However, like Nebuchadnezzar, we will quickly find that we can never earn our way to salvation and that actually trying to seek salvation on our own is a sure way of never finding salvation and constantly being frustrated that we can never truly be satisfied!

II. Salvation Can Only Be Found in Christ

II. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

These three Jewish young men are faced with a decision now. There is this new idol that everyone is being called to bow down to and worship whenever the music begins playing. And the warning is threat of death if you do not.

so they too are facing the temporary nature of life with their imminent death In the fiery furnace

These men are being tempted with the idea of finding their salvation by capitulating to the culture around them. They could give in and say the only way we can survive is by going along with the flow.

They might also be tempted to say, you can physically bow down to the statue while not truly worshipping in your heart. In this way, you can still live and be useful to God.

The problem with this is that God is not looking for useful people. He is looking for people who seek to love Him regardless of the cost. And believe it or not, when a believer dies for what he believes, that often goes a lot farther in sharing the gospel with the lost than someone seeking to save his life by renouncing his faith.

A. Nebuchadnezzar gives them the choice to submit to him and bow down to the idol

B. Nebuchadnezzar asks them, what god could possibly save them from his hand?

C. The men answer him by saying that the LORD God could save them from the fiery furnace. They believe in the all-powerful character of God to be able to save and deliver them.

D. However, their obedience is not predicated on the guarantee that God will save them. Their response stands in stark contrast with the prosperity gospel which says if you have enough faith, God will give you what you want. Again, the prosperity gospel is another false gospel simply seeking to be a greater god than God Himself.

E. They say that even if God does not save them from the furnace, they will not bow down. They have acknowledged the truth that it is better to lose one’s life than to lose one’s soul.

F. They are ready to die. Why? Because they know that their salvation and security is already found in Yahweh. God has already saved them so the weapon of death has no power over them. They are essentially saying with Paul, “To me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Because even if we die in this fiery furnace, we will be ushered into the presence of our God and Savior. The Lord is our Salvation and we are assured of this salvation, even if our bodies are destroyed!

G. If the story ended there with Nebuchadnezzar throwing them into the fire and with their deaths, we should be able to walk away knowing that these men are safe within the hands of Christ. However, God is going to do something now to prove to Nebuchadnezzar that Yahweh alone is God and able to save. I believe this next part is not really for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but for Nebuchadnezzar’s sake.

H. When they are thrown in, notice who dies and who doesn’t die. Nebuchadnezzar’s mighty men end up dying. The one who is claiming to be a god cannot save his own men. And The men he intended to kill ended up surviving.

I. But notice that God did not save the men from the furnace. He saved them through the furnace. God does not promise to save us from the hardships of life. In fact, Christ promises us that in this world we will have trouble. Life does not become easier because we choose to follow Christ, in fact, most times it becomes harder. But the struggles in life become worth it because we know that Christ has overcome the world.

J. Nebuchadnezzar sees this truth as he looks into the furnace. He sees that the men are walking around unbound and then there’s a fourth man who looks like a son of the gods, which simply means some kind of supernatural person.

K. Who is this fourth man? It could be an angelic messenger God has sent or it could be Christ Himself showing His presence with the three men. I tend to lean towards the latter, but either way, we see that God’s presence is with these young men.

L. And what we are meant to see here is that God has chosen to save us by entering into this world with us. We are seeing the gospel on display once again. Just as Christ has shown Himself to be the eternal King through his humiliation and death upon the cross, so we see that Jesus has chosen to save His people not simply by plucking them out of the troubles of this world, but by taking upon Himself the fullness of the wrath that we deserved. While Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were facing the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, we all deserve the wrath of God against our sin. And yet, Christ has chosen to save us from the wrath by coming down to walk among us and then to die on the cross to take upon Himself the full wrath of God against our sin. This is the way Christ has chosen to overcome the world.

And now, those who have put their faith in Christ as Savior and Lord have no need to fear the ultimate fire that can destroy both body and soul in hell, and as a result, believers have no need to fear those who can only harm the body. We can stand boldly and faithfully in obedience to Christ knowing that nothing can truly harm us because our salvation is guaranteed in Christ.

True worship occurs when we trust our security and salvation in the hands of Christ and seek to love Him no matter the cost. This might cost us our relationships, our reputations, our jobs, or even our lives. But salvation comes when we trust and believe that God alone is worthy of our love, worship, and devotion.

Where do you place your salvation and security? Who or what do you worship and trust in?

Conclusion