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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

Garhett Morgan

Facing the Fire: Defying the Beast

All around us right now, there is a lot of uncertainty.

There's a lot of pent-up anger in our world, specifically our country right now, as in the next week or 2 we are heading into an election period, and there are going to be angry people no matter what the outcome is.

I think many of us are bracing for that, emotionally, spiritually, and Father, today, may this Sabbath be a time that we can hit the pause button.

May we remember that this world is not our home but we are simply just passing through.

And as we look at our Message this morning, we open your word.

This is a spiritual thing, Father, and we don't naturally think spiritually.

So, Lord, be with our minds, be with our hearts.

Today, we are going to be taking a look at the book of Daniel, if you'd like to turn there with me.

And this is the story of the burning fiery furnace as you all well know it.

We're gonna be looking at it from a few different angles today, so I hope that you enjoy it.

But we'll have a little bit of background before we jump into our story.

Daniel chapter 2, many of us know Daniel chapter 2 fairly well.

It's the story of the king having a vision, right?

And he has the vision of the statue with the head of gold and a chest of silver and belly of bronze and leg of iron and feet of iron and clay.

Of course, the rock comes and smashes it on its feet.

And this, of course, represents the different kingdoms that would have to do with Israel's history.

It's a pretty incredible passage of Scripture and the vision is incredible as well.

Nebuchadnezzar gets that vision, He remembers it again after Daniel tells him.

But notice how he closes Daniel chapter 2.

We'll look here at verse, oh, we'll look at verse 46, and Nebuchadnezzar's reaction.

It says this, "'Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face "'and worshiped Daniel and commanded that they should "'offer an oblation and sweet odors unto him.

"'The king answered to Daniel and said, of a truth it is that your God is God of gods, a Lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, seeing that you could reveal the secret.

Then the king made Daniel a great man and gave him many gifts, made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, the chief of the governors over the wise men of Babylon.

Now 49 might seem like a detail, it's gonna be important here in just a second.

Then Daniel requested the king and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon, but Daniel sat in the gate of the king.

Nebuchadnezzar responds very positively towards this dream.

Of course, he doesn't necessarily like the outcome very well because he understands that his nation is going to be overtaken by another nation that's inferior to his.

Now, I don't know about you, but it's okay to get beat by someone that you know is better than you, but it really sticks in your craw a little bit when someone that you know is weaker than you beats you.

So Nebuchadnezzar knows that his nation's gonna be overthrown.

He's probably not a big fan of that, but he recognizes that this dream comes from this God, and so he says this God is great.

It's very obvious, though, that Nebuchadnezzar doesn't truly understand the God of Daniel and these 3 Hebrew worthies.

First of all, he bows down and doesn't worship God, but who does he worship?

And then he also says, and it's probably the best that he knows to do, he says that God is the greatest gods of all the gods, right?

So he doesn't deny that the other gods exist in his mind, it's just that the Hebrew God is better than the rest of the other gods.

So he still, and this would have been very Babylonian of him, the Babylonians as well as the other pagans had no problem worshiping a lot of different gods, right?

He just said, you know, this is another god for me to worship.

Seems like he's the greatest God that I've ever seen, so I'll add him in my list of all the great gods.

Of course, Nebuchadnezzar still has quite an education to go and we see in Daniel chapter 3 that knowing this Hebrew God, or at least claiming that he exists, doesn't really convert King Nebuchadnezzar because we find quite an angry Nebuchadnezzar here in Daniel chapter 3.

As far as we know, between Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 3, there's that gap between stories.

We believe, I've seen numbers anywhere from 18 to 20 years past between Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 3.

Long enough that the significance of perhaps knowing that God and getting that interpretation may have died out a little bit in the king's mind, but he certainly remembers the dream because notice what happens in Daniel 3, verse 1.

The king made an image of gold whose height was three-score cubits, the breadth thereof 6 cubits, and he set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.

So a few things here which is interesting.

Number 1, Nebuchadnezzar immediately recognizes that, alright, I'm gonna build a statue and a likeness to myself.

The word image there can also mean an idol, right?

And he sets this idol that's gold-plated or solid gold, we don't know, but he sets this 90-foot statue-ish up on the plain of Dura.

Now Dura's a Babylonian term which means on the wall.

And so it's likely that this 90-foot image was on top of the wall of Babylon, so as you approached it would be magnificent, it would be high, so that all could see it and all could worship it.

Also, Nebuchadnezzar doesn't make this statue like the 1 he saw in his dream 20 years earlier, but he makes it all of gold, representing my nation is never going to fall.

Now, you might be asking yourself the question, why is Nebuchadnezzar suddenly doing this?

Well, we read this a little bit more in verse 2.

Nebuchadnezzar's doing something very pointedly.

It says, then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together princes, the governors, the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces.

Notice that term specifically, rulers of the provinces.

To come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up.

Nebuchadnezzar made a lot of enemies, however, Nebuchadnezzar was pretty good to those that he conquered.

When he would go and conquer a nation, what he would do, and this was very unusual for the time, was that he would leave the local government set up and still there.

He would tell the king, usually he would tell the king, as is in the case of Israel and Judah, he would tell the king, you can remain being the ruler of this province.

We're not gonna call you a king anymore, though.

So you can still be kind of a ruler of this land.

That's all fine and well and good, but just know that you report to me, right?

He left those local governments in place, and they were fine as long as the money kept coming to Babylon and as long as those rulers kept submitting to King Nebuchadnezzar.

It worked out pretty well, except around the time of Daniel chapter 3, there was not only just rumors that there were rebellions that were coming up in the province of Nebuchadnezzar, but something happened that sparked Nebuchadnezzar's want of power and protecting his kingship.

Around the time of Daniel chapter 3, which is about 595 BC, there was an assassination attempt on the king's life.

We have a lot of historical records for this, 1 of which I'll share with you right now.

This is a Chaldean text that was found during the same time of Daniel chapter 3 when it was happening.

And notice what it says here, then in the 10th year, the king of Akkad, which is Babylon, this is in reference to Nebuchadnezzar, in his own land from the month of Kislev to the month of Tibet, there was rebellion in Akkad or Babylon, and with arms he slew many of his own army, and his own hand captured his enemy.

Now this is just a little piece of the story, but what we know from secular history is that Nebuchadnezzar had some people that had been paid off within his own army.

And as Nebuchadnezzar was sitting there on his throne, there was an assassination attempt on his life.

He looked at his guards and says, take care of it.

So he had to unsheath his own sword and fight his way out of his own throne room, as the legend goes.

We have no reason to actually disprove that because the biblical narrative lines up along with this well, which we'll talk about in just a minute.

So there's an assassination attempt upon the king's life.

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Facing the Fire: Defying the Beast

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