Sermon: Daniel 3:13-30, September 21, 2025

Scripture: Daniel 3:13-30

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Today we’re continuing in our sermon series “Faith in Exile,” on the Old Testament book of Daniel.

You’ll remember that in the book of Daniel, the Babylonian empire conquered the kingdom of Judah, dragging the best and brightest of God’s people into exile in Babylon, as prisoners in a strange land far from home. This includes Daniel—and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—the latter of whom are the focus of today’s reading.

This week, Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon has erected for himself a 90 foot golden statue. Could be a statue of one of the Babylonian gods, or a statue of himself—we’re not sure. But he orders officials from every conquered corner of the empire to gather together. There’s a great parade—you know, soldiers, tanks, huge marching bands. And when the band strikes up the Babylonian national anthem, everyone gathered from every nation and language, is ordered to bow down and worship this golden monument. If you do, you’ll be rewarded as a worker for the world’s largest, wealthiest, most powerful empire. And, if you don’t bow down, you’re dead. You’ll be tossed in a fiery furnace.

The choice is obvious for everyone. Except for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—they stand tall while everyone else kisses the ground. They’re brought before the king, given a second chance, but they still won’t bend the knee. The choice is between supplication and death. And they choose death. So they’re tied up, and tossed in the furnace.

Now, clearly, nobody is asking you or I to kneel before a 90 foot tall golden idol. We live in the post-Christian west, and are heirs of the scientific revolution. It’s hard to imagine being forced to kneel before any kind of object. Let alone under the penalty of death.

However, in the biblical tradition gods are not limited to various-sized carvings of great interest to Indiana Jones.

In his commentary on the Ten Commandments, the great Reformer Martin Luther said that “whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” Whatever your heart clings to and confides in.[i] Whatever we trust for security or for happiness. What we turn to for meaning, for peace in this life, or the next. We all have our gods, from Christians to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews. Even atheists and agnostics. We all have gods we bow down to, even if we don’t believe in gods at all.

There are some more obvious ones that we’ve detailed many times in worship. Our hearts cling to wealth and career success. Our souls are stirred by the promises of status and importance. We bow down to beauty, strength and power, or sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Notice, though—this story isn’t only about individual choices. It’s about the crowd. It’s about what whole societies worship together.

There are also more obvious versions of this. Raising our right hands to a Nazi swastika, for example, kneeling before the nation-state above all else.

But we have gods who are much more subtle, but just as seductive as the golden statue.

There are many—the freedom to do whatever we want without regard for our neighbor. Perhaps the most prominent one right now, though is politics.

What do I mean by that? Our tendency to organize ourselves based on political groups and ideas. Now before we nod our heads and say “yeah! Those people are the worst!” There’s a problem… when ever we do that we fail to follow Jesus’ command to take the log our of our own eye before we try to dig the splinter out of our neighbour’s eye. This applies to all political parties, both sides of the political aisle, every point on the political spectrum.

To be clear, this is not to say that certain people or certain movements are equally as dangerous or abhorrent as others. No. But it is to say that we are all susceptible to the groupthink of bowing down, worshiping our team over all others. “No one is righteous,” says the Apostle Paul, “not one.”

Why? Like worshiping the Babylonian gods it comes with both temptation and fear, even when we don’t recognize it.

Temptation, because we win respect and love of the crowd. Or it gives us a deep sense of our own rightness and goodness—like never underestimate how satisfying and seductive it is holding the right opinions and detesting the right people. In fact, it might help me get ahead at work.

And fear, because we are afraid of losing the respect and love of the crowd. Fear that in not holding the right opinion or sharing the right meme, well lose that sense of purpose, meaning, goodness and rightness. In fact, it might lose me friends if I don’t. Or a promotion.

The problem with all these gods, whether individual or collective, is that they drive us to do horrendous things—like create a willingness to toss each other into the fire, whether literally or metaphorically. They’re the gateway to atrocity and destruction. And corrosion of the spirit.

The problem is that the gods never actually deliver on their promises. Remember that the Babylonian guards themselves burn up when they load the three into the killer kiln.

As soon as we hit any significant heat in life, these idols tend to melt. Money is momentary, beauty doesn’t last. Every drug gives us exactly what we need, but only until the next hit. And our politics—they promise us meaning, and hope, and a sense of goodness, and they might for a time. But they all turn to ash in the end. As do we!

Not only that, but Christians do believe that none of our gods are of any use beyond the grave. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” says Jesus, channeling the fiery furnace. “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”[ii]

In the end, no matter which god our hearts cling to, no matter what we worship, when we bow down to them not only do we end up tossing others in the fire, we, too get burned. Physically, spiritually or otherwise. None of our gods can save us.

Now, the answer to bowing down to the wrong gods isn’t to worship no god at all—remember, we all worship! Not it’s finding the right god to worship. The answer to serving a god disappoints and destroys and has you dropping others into the fire… is to serve a god who won’t.

Remember the Babylonian guards were consumed by the fiery furnace. Their gods failed to keep them from the heat. But not so with our dear heroes Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Because, even though they were dropped into the belly of the boiler, from the king’s vantage point these guys appear to be alive and well. They’re just chillin’ there in a white hot center of 900 degrees.

But how?

The king blinks, and rubs his eyes a few times. Turns to his magicians, saying “do you see what I see?” And they do—there’s a fourth man in the fire. One different from the other three, one who, in the king’s words has the “appearance of a god.” Not exactly sure what a god looks like, but it’s clear to the King that an angel of the God of Israel has preserved his people through the inferno. And he’s so blown away by the fact that they emerge without so much as an eye-brow burned off, that he not adopts a policy of religious pluralism, making badmouthing Daniel’s god a crime, he gives the three of them top jobs in his cabinet. Premium positions of power in kingdom.

But here’s the key line in the text. Ironically, coming from Nebuchadnezzar—the pagan king! “No other god,” he says. “No other god can save like this.” Not only a key line in the text, but it’s also more or less a great summary of the Bible: “No other god can save like this.” They wouldn’t bend, bow, or burn to the false gods, because they trusted the true god. While the gods of Babylon appeared strong and shiny, seductive and threatening, in the end they have proved powerless. It’s the God of Israel—the true God who delivers. Not from the fire. But through it. “No other god can save like this.”

And, of course, throughout the history of the church, Christians have read this book in the light of the New Testament. And they couldn’t help but think of Jesus. The early church father St. Jerome said that the fourth man in the fire was a “type” or “symbol” of Jesus. Jesus, God who became a flesh and blood human being. Emmanual, God-with-us. Jesus, who like the fourth man, stepped into the towering inferno of human life. Jesus, who like Shadrach, Mescach and Abednego, refused to kneel before any of our false gods, who turned away the temptations of evil, and refused the fear of torturous crucifixion. Jesus, who went into the oblivion of death on the cross, withstood the inferno of divine judgment, to deliver all of humanity from the powers of sin, death and the devil. All to give us seats of power in the everlasting kingdom of our God.

Unlike all the other gods we bow down to, the gods who mislead us, exploit us, and ultimately fail to deliver, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, tells us that that there is a god who will stand the test. There is a god who will not give in to the pressure of temptation, nor melt at the prospect of evaporation. A god, who, if we bow down and worship, will not drive us to destruction of ourselves or our neighbours, no fail to deliver on his promises, nor will consume us with bitterness or hatred. But One who gets in the fire with us  who will bring us through any and every trial unscathed—even death itself. No other god can save like the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

And the thing is that with this God, we suddenly find ourselves, not prepping the fireplace for our enemies, but getting into the fire with them. Just like how our Lord’s done with us.

In 1783, there was severe epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia, USA. One that, either immobilizing them with illness, or striking them down with death.

One physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, wanted to do something about it. It was believed that since Africans were originally from sub-tropical environments, they were immune. So Rush sent two former slaves, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to tend to the sick and dying in the city, and to remove the corpses of those who had died. This belief is unfortunately, untrue, meaning that they danger was even greater than they’d expected.

In addition to getting sick, though, there was another significant danger: the Caucasian patients and their families. While Philadelphia was not a slave state, defacto segregation was the norm. Suspicion and outright hostility to African-Americans was commonplace.  There was a good chance that you show up to help somebody they would think you were there to rob them and could shoot you down. There was the pressure of not only illness but also violence and hostility. They didn’t have to help. No doubt they were tempted to sit on the sidelines, rather than braving the furnace to help some people who didn’t thing they were full human beings.

And yet, that’s exactly what they did.

“We found a freedom,” wrote Allen after the fact. “We found a freedom to go forth, confiding in him who can preserve in the midst of a burning, fiery furnace, sensible that it was our duty to do all the good we could to our suffering fellow mortals.”[iii] Woo that’s good.

These guys are living proof of the gospel. Living proof of the power of the true god in the face of all the other fakes we turn to for life. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they would not bow down to the gods of their individual fears or communal hatred. Nor would they give into the temptation to save their own skins. But instead, finding a “freedom to go forth,” they strode right into the white hot oven of danger, possible illness, and probable death, in the service of their fellow suffering mortals. Some who even hated them. All thanks to “the fourth man in the fire” with them.

And this, dear friends, is the same promise to us given in Christ. Though we, too, have hearts that cling to many gods, that we, too, bow down to many gods who will not save but only stoke in us fear and resentment. Whatever furnace we might face, there is always a fourth man in the fire with us. One who not only promises to be with us in the fire, but to bring us through all fires to his everlasting kingdom. Dousing our own hatreds and giving us the courage to step into the breach for love of our neighbours. There is no other god who can save like this.

May we, may you “find the freedom to go forth, confiding in him who can preserve in the midst of a burning, fiery furnace, sensible in the duty to do all the good you can for suffering mortals.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Martin Luther, Luther’s Large Catechism: God’s Call to Repentance, Faith and Prayer, trans. John Nicholas Lenker (Minneapolis: Luther Press, 1908), 44.

[ii] Matthew 10:28.

[iii] Quoted in Carol Newsom with Brennan Breed, Daniel: The Old Testament Library Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 124.