Daniel 3: The Furnace and the Fourth Man - Linda Bailey
Imagine standing in a crowd of thousands. The music starts, and everyone around you drops to their knees. Your friends. Your colleagues. Maybe even your family. Staying on your feet would make you instantly visible, and the penalty for standing is death. What would you do?
That's not a hypothetical scenario for three young men in the book of Daniel. It's the moment their whole lives came down to.
This week at One Church, Linda Bailey continued our Resisting Babylon series in the book of Daniel, taking us into Daniel chapter 3 and the famous story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the fiery furnace, and the mysterious fourth man walking in the flames. You can watch the full message in the video above, or listen to the audio version below.
A king above the law
Linda set the scene: King Nebuchadnezzar has conquered Jerusalem and carried off a group of promising young Jewish men, assimilating them into Babylonian culture to serve his empire. Daniel is one of them. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are three others. Then the king builds an enormous gold statue and commands every person to bow down and worship it when the music plays.
Interestingly, as Linda pointed out, we don't actually know what the statue looked like. The Bible doesn't say it was a statue of Nebuchadnezzar. It isn't given a name, and it isn't credited to any of the gods of Babylon. It's just a gold statue. But what it represents is unmistakable: the king's claim to ultimate authority.
Even the judges and magistrates were commanded to bow. Linda noted how dangerous that is. When a leader demands that the judicial system itself bow to him, he is placing himself above the law and above justice. And Nebuchadnezzar goes further still. When he confronts the three men, he taunts them: if you don't worship, you'll be thrown into the blazing furnace, and "then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" He isn't just putting himself above the people, or above the law. He's putting himself above the gods.
That's the culture Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were living in. And it's the pressure they were standing against.
The hardest test anyone could face
Linda invited us to feel the weight of their decision. Everyone else was bowing. And the three men could easily have justified going along with it. What good would they be to God dead? Surely they could bow just this once, keep their positions of influence, and do more good for God's people from inside the system.
Linda shared a quote from John Lennox, whose book on Daniel the preaching team has been reading through this series:
It would have been immediately obvious to them that this was the hardest test of loyalty to God they had ever faced. Indeed, it was the hardest test anyone could face. It was the ultimate value decision. On one side of the equation was position, family, wealth, security, life itself. And on the other side, there was God.
Everything they could see and touch, everything that offered them comfort, control and a good life, was right there for the taking. All they had to do was bow down to something other than God.
What are you bowing down to?
This is where the story stops being ancient history and starts asking questions of us. Linda put it directly: what are you bowing down to? What is it in our culture that persuades us it's better than the God we worship?
She quoted Tim Keller's famous definition:
An idol is anything more important to us than God. Anything that absorbs our heart and passions more than God. Anything we think we can't live without.
The Babylonian culture was strong and seductive, but so is our Western secular culture. And Linda offered a warning: if you don't think our culture influences you, the chances are you've already been brought on board by it.
She illustrated the point with a sociological study from just over a decade ago called Premarital Sex in America, which compared young men who grew up being taught that sex before marriage was fine with those who grew up in families and religious communities that taught it wasn't. The difference between the two groups turned out to be negligible. The researchers concluded that the surrounding culture was so persuasive that the majority of both groups simply functioned the way the culture dictated, regardless of what they'd been taught.
For us it may not be about sex. It might be money, power, influence, control, or building up the kingdom of self rather than the kingdom of God. The pull to be like everyone else is enormous. But just as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood firm, we have the same choice, sometimes in big things and sometimes in small ones.
Linda reminded us that this costly discipleship is exactly what Jesus described in Luke 14, where he says that anyone who doesn't carry their cross and follow him cannot be his disciple. As the theologian David Gooding put it, ‘salvation is free, but that doesn't mean it's cheap’.
Faith on a Monday
Linda was honest that for most of us, the test won't come as one dramatic furnace moment. It comes in the everyday moments. It's wonderful to gather on a Sunday morning and sing that Jesus saves alongside fellow believers. But what about on Monday? In your workplace, at the school gate, in your neighbourhood. That's when the challenges come, and that's where we make our everyday stands.
A couple of weeks ago Tim encouraged the church to pray a simple prayer every day for a month: "Lord God, help me to act more like Jesus today." Linda shared that she's put it in her daily reminders and has prayed it every single day since. It's a small practice, but it reorients each day around a single question: how can I be more like Jesus today?
She also quoted Brené Brown's observation that character isn't just revealed in crisis; it's revealed in the little choices, in the quiet moments when no one is watching. So Linda pressed the question into the corners of ordinary life. Are you bowing down to God in how you handle your finances? In your relationships? When you make a mistake? When someone else makes one? Not just on a Sunday, but on a Monday and a Tuesday and every other day of the week?
Not an insurance policy
Then came perhaps the sharpest edge of the sermon. Are you bowing down to God even when the answers to your prayers aren't what you hoped they would be?
The three men's reply to the king contains one of the most remarkable statements of faith in the Bible: our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods or worship your image. Their worship wasn't conditional. It wasn't an insurance policy taken out to guarantee comfort and protection from suffering.
Linda told a story about her husband Cameron, who has a friend who is extraordinarily wealthy. Whenever they went out for dinner with this friend, Cam would insist that they pay for the meal, even though the friend could have bought the whole restaurant. When Linda asked why, Cam explained that people often just assume his friend will pay because he can. "I never want him to think we're in relationship with him because he can pay for the meal," he said.
Do we come to God the same way? Do we worship him for who he is, or for what he can do for us? Linda's answer rang out through the rest of the message: with everything God has already done for us, in creating us, giving us Jesus, and offering us grace and salvation and eternal life, we have already won. If God did absolutely nothing else for us for the rest of our lives, we would still have everything we need. Nothing in this world can offer us more.
Spiritually fireproof
That's the secret behind the three men's courage. Nebuchadnezzar thought he held the power of life and death. But they knew that only God holds that power, and that eternity with him was already theirs. The king couldn't take that away. As Linda put it, they were spiritually fireproof before they were physically fireproof.
She shared another Tim Keller quote that captures it:
Yes, God can always rescue you from death, but if you're a believer, he will always rescue you through death. Because if you die in him and you wake up in his arms, there's nothing but freedom and liberation and joy, and therefore you see that you're always safe.
And of course, the story doesn't end with the men thrown into the flames. Nebuchadnezzar leaps to his feet in amazement: didn't we throw three men into the fire? "I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods." The men walk out without so much as the smell of smoke on them, and the king who had set himself above the gods ends the chapter praising the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
The one who entered the furnace for us
Linda finished by turning our eyes to Jesus. We live on the other side of his life, death, resurrection and ascension, and each one anchors the confidence the three men had.
His life shows us how to live and how to bow down to God every day. His death shows us that he was willing to go through the ultimate furnace for you and for me, suffering not just physical pain but spiritual separation from God, so that when we walk through our own furnaces we know he understands and sits with us in them. His resurrection reminds us that even death has no hold over us. And his ascension means the Holy Spirit now lives in us as advocate, comforter and guide, helping us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus when the daily decisions come.
That's why it was so fitting that this message led into communion. As Linda said, the bread and the cup are a reminder of the furnace Jesus went through, his body broken and his blood shed, so that we may receive grace. And coming forward to take them is more than remembrance. It's a declaration, a renewal of allegiance, a way of saying with our bodies: I will bow down to Jesus, and to no one and nothing else. None of us come to that table in perfection. None of us have earned that grace. He gives it freely.
One way to live it out this week
Take up the prayer Linda mentioned and pray it every morning this week: "Lord God, help me to act more like Jesus today." Put it somewhere you'll actually see it, in your phone reminders, on the bathroom mirror, or at the top of your to-do list. Then at the end of each day, take one minute to ask where the culture tried to get you to bow, and where God gave you the courage to stand. Small daily acts of allegiance are how we become the kind of people who could stand in the big moments.
A short prayer for your week
Father, you are worthy of our worship, not for what you might do for us, but for who you are.
Thank you that in Jesus you entered the furnace for us, and that in him we have already won.
Forgive us for the idols we bow to, the quiet ones, the respectable ones, the ones no one else sees.
Give us courage to stand when everyone around us is bowing,
and faith to keep worshipping you even when the answer is "not yet" or "no".
Help us to act more like Jesus today.
Amen.
Personal Reflection
Be honest with yourself: what is one thing in your life right now that absorbs your heart and passions more than God, or that you feel you couldn't live without?
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego trusted God "even if he does not" deliver them. Is there an area of your life where your trust in God has quietly become conditional on him answering your prayers a certain way?
Where in your ordinary week, at work, at home, online, with money, do the "little choices when no one is watching" reveal who you're really bowing down to?
Small Group Discussion
Read Daniel 3:13-28 together. What details of the story stand out to you that you hadn't noticed before?
Nebuchadnezzar placed himself above the people, above the law, and even above the gods. Where do you see our culture making similar claims to ultimate authority today?
The three men could have justified bowing "just this once" to keep their influence in Babylon. When have you felt the pull of that kind of reasoning, compromising a little now for the sake of some good later?
Tim Keller defined an idol as "anything more important to us than God... anything we think we can't live without." What idols do you think are most powerful in our particular community and stage of life?
Linda cited a study suggesting that the surrounding culture shapes people's behaviour more than what they were taught growing up. Do you find that confronting? How have you seen culture's influence in your own life?
What do you make of the phrase "but even if he does not" (Daniel 3:18)? What would it look like for your faith to hold if God didn't come through the way you hoped?
Linda said the three men "had already won" before they were thrown into the furnace, and that believers today have already won because of what God has done in Jesus. How would really believing that change the way you face this week?
What furnace, big or small, is someone in your group walking through right now? Spend some time praying for one another, asking God for the courage to stand firm and the assurance that the fourth man is in the fire with you.