Discovering God’s Will in Surrender

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I want to talk to you this morning about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If you ever get the opportunity, I don’t know that I’d call it an opportunity, but if you ever get the chance to ride with me somewhere, and I’m the one driving, I’m notorious in my family for asking somebody a question. I get in the car and turn on the ignition and look over at somebody, and the dreaded question comes, are you in a hurry?

I’m an explorer. I always have been. I drive some people crazy in my family.

My sister, my poor sister, growing up, she’d say, can we just get where we’re going most of the time? But I like to explore. I like to get in the car and take roads I’ve never taken before, even if I had taken them before.

I like to take the back roads and see what I haven’t seen in a while, see if anything’s changed, see if there’s anything new, see if there’s any trouble I can get it, not really trouble, but see what I can get into. And I’ve been very fortunate to have a wife that, more often than not, I could probably count on one hand the number of times while we were dating or engaged or now that we’ve been married, that she said, yes, I’m in a hurry, can we just get where we’re going? Most of the time, she says, no, I’m just along for the ride.

But like I said, I’ve always loved to explore. My sister, when she was in high school and I was in college, she enrolled at the local vo-tech to learn cosmetology, and it was in another town. And my parents were afraid she’d have to drive herself to school and she’d get lost in the country between here and there.

So they said, can you take her and show her some different ways to get back and forth so she doesn’t get lost? And I’ve done the math and conservatively speaking, there are about 117 different routes. I didn’t make that number up.

There are about 117 different routes where you can get from Moore to Norman. I showed her all of them to this day. It took us a couple weeks, but I showed her all of them.

And to this day, my sister doesn’t get lost. Told her just get in the car, shut up, we’re going for a ride. My lovely wife, even when we started dating, I’d say, are you in a hurry? She’d say, no, where are we going?

Most of our dates, I had no idea where we were going, but we just went. Then after we got married, we were able to take longer trips, because it wouldn’t have looked right if I’d taken her across state lines when we were dating. There have been times that we woke up on a Saturday morning when we lived in Oklahoma.

We woke up on a Saturday morning, and we had to run to Walmart or something. We’re leaving Walmart, and I said, are you in a hurry? And she said no. And after several other stops, we ended up in Kansas on a Dairy Queen run.

I mean, that’s the kind of thing that my wife and pretty much anybody else that rides with me has to put up with. You know, if you’re going to ride with me, you can either hurt my feelings and tell me, yeah, you’re in a hurry, or you can just have a little faith in me that we’re not going to end up dead. And just say, I don’t care where we’re going, we’re just going.

And that’s one of the things I love about my wife. She doesn’t care where we’re going, we’re just going. And I don’t think I’ve ever gotten us lost. Well, we’re here today, so I know I’ve not gotten us lost. Not gotten us injured, I’ve ended up in quite a few parades.

I asked a question about that at Senior Saints, and y’all thought it was a trick question. How many parades have I ended up driving my car in by accident? And the number was four, now it’s five.

Just end up in parades by accident. But it takes a little faith, it takes a lot of faith to tell you the truth, to get in the car and say, I don’t care where we’re going. I don’t care where you take us, but I trust you.

I know where we’re going. And so wherever you want to take me is fine. It takes a lot of faith.

It takes a lot of faith to say that to me because you might end up in Kansas going to Dairy Queen. Folks, it takes faith to be able to tell God. And I’m not comparing myself with God because one day I may get us lost. One day we may get arrested accidentally driving in a parade.

God will never steer us wrong, but it takes faith to be able to say, God, I don’t care where you’re taking us. I don’t care where we’re going as long as I’m going with you. That’s all that matters.

Just take me where you want me to go and sit back in the passenger seat and enjoy the ride. It takes faith not because it’s so scary to trust God. It doesn’t take faith because there’s a chance God will get us lost. It just takes faith because it’s not an easy thing for you and me to give up control, for you and me to say, I don’t care where we’re going.

Because quite honestly, a lot of times if we tell God, I don’t care where we go, you just take me where you want me to be, God’s going to take us places where that really wasn’t in our plans. I think if you’ve served God for any length of time, you can probably attest to the fact that when you have surrendered and said, God, whatever you want to do, whatever your will is, folks, a lot of times you end up someplace you never would have imagined. Not necessarily a bad place, but not the place you had planned.

I started thinking about this, not to do this message. I didn’t even know we were going to be living here when I started thinking about it. But I started thinking about this concept of seeking God’s will by surrendering to it in advance a couple years ago when we were first in training to be missionaries in Oklahoma, that we had to read all these books, and some of them were helpful, most of them weren’t.

But there was one that quoted a man named George Mueller, and I can’t tell you all of the details of his life. What I know about him, he was a good man. He started orphanages and did things that, he was a Christian man, and did things that everybody around him said were impossible, and had so much success in ministry that somebody asked him toward the end of his life how he managed to always know what God’s will was.

And being the really helpful person that he was, He wrote it down in one of his books, the steps, actual steps that he took to discerning God’s will. And I loved what he said about step number one. Step number one for him was to pray and to bring himself to the place where he had no will of his own about the matter.

To bring himself to where he had no will of his own about the matter. What does that mean? That means if you’re seeking God’s will, what I’m talking to you about this morning is that if you want to know God’s will, I believe George Mueller was right, and I believe we see this as an example from the story we’re about to talk about, that if you want to see God’s will, you really want God’s will, I believe the first thing that we really need to do is to get ourselves to the place where we can say, God, I don’t care where you’re taking me.

God, I have my own will over here. I have what I want for my life. I have what I want to happen here.

I have my hopes, and I have my dreams, and I have all these things, and God, you know what they are, But I’m going to bring myself to a place of subjection and a place of surrender. And I’m not saying it’s something that can happen immediately. But bring ourselves to the place where we can say, God, you know all of that.

You know all the will and hopes and dreams that I have. But get to the point where I can honestly say, God, none of that matters. Because all I want is what you want.

Folks, I’m not telling you that’s an easy thing to do. As I stand up here preaching it, there have been times I’ve been able to say, God, whatever you want. Coming here was one of those instances.

Part of me wanted to come here and part of me thought, you don’t leave Oklahoma ever. Never. Nothing good ever happened to anybody in my family by leaving the homeland.

Until us. Good things have happened here. But leaving that first week after I came in view of a call and said, God, part of me wants to be here, part of me wants to be in Oklahoma.

Get me to the place where I really don’t care, where all I want is what you want and then I’ll do what you want me to do. And then he showed us. But even as I say that, and even as I’m preaching these things to you this morning, I’m not telling I’m not representing myself as somebody who’s always able to do this perfectly.

Because if that’s the impression you’re getting, that’s mistaken impression. I am not so spiritual that I can always say this. God, I don’t care, wherever you want to take me.

But folks, when I can and when you can, it’s for our good because we see what God’s will is. And God’s perfect will for us is best. It doesn’t always feel best, but it’s best. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I think, understood this fact. Understood that we see God’s will when we surrender to it.

We find God’s perfect will down the road when we surrender to his will before we even know what it is. In Daniel chapter 3, starting in verse 1, it says, Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold whose height was three score cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits. Now that means 60 cubits, 60 being about the length of your forearm from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger, roughly.

And so some people have estimated that this statue was about nine stories high. He made an image of gold whose height was three score cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits, and he set up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. It’s in modern-day Iraq.

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. Then the princes, the governors, the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and the rulers of the provinces were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. Several places in this chapter, it gives a list of several people or things, and we’ll repeat that list several times.

So it feels like you’re repeating yourself sometimes. Did I get lost and go back to the previous verse? But what he says, basically, is all these important people, Nebuchadnezzar built this image and then called them together to come see it.

And all of them gathered there together. All of the most important people in the kingdom were there to see this statue. And we don’t know if it was a statue of himself, if it was a statue of one of their gods.

It doesn’t matter because it was a statue that was something that they were being asked to bow to that was not the one true God. That’s what it boils down to. And it says at the end of verse 3, And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

And I imagine here a great unveiling because, you know, if you’re going to go to the trouble of this nine-story solid gold statue, and you’re going to go to the trouble of calling all of the most important people from your empire together, and you’re going to have this big ceremony. It’s kind of anticlimactic if they’ve already seen the thing as soon as they get there. So just my imagination, I imagine that they’re there for a big unveiling ceremony.

And it says in verse 4, Then an herald cried aloud to you it has commanded, O people, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up. So he says, when you hear all the music, When you hear the band start to play, you bow down before the statue. And whoso falleth not down and worshipeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning, fiery furnace.

This is something that I’ve only heard of from this passage until I went and did some digging. And wouldn’t you know it, true to its nature, the Bible proves to be true in its details, that apparently the Babylonians were known for burning people in ovens when they misbehaved, so to speak. That’s not just something that they only find in the Bible.

That’s history. He said they would be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. Therefore, at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sack, but psaltery, and all kinds of music, all the people, the nations and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

So when they had this big, what I picture to be an unveiling, and the band starts to play, all the people bow down before the big statue, or so it says. Verse 8, wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near and accused the Jews. They spake and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live forever.

Thou, O king, hast made a decree that every man that shall hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, see what I said about these lists that repeat themselves, shall fall down and worship the image. King, you said when they hear the band start to play, they’re supposed to bow down and worship the image. Verse 11, you’ve also said, Whoso falleth not down and worshipeth, that he should be cast into the midst of a burning, fiery furnace.

Well, king, you’ve said these things. You’ve said that there’s this image that people are supposed to come see, and when they hear the music, they’re supposed to bow down before it, and if they don’t, they’re going to be cast into the furnace and killed. You’ve said that, king.

Well, let me tell you, there are certain people who didn’t do that. Verse 12, there are certain Jews who now have said over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, These men, O king, have not regarded thee. They serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

There are three men who were there when all of the empire bowed down before your statue. King, there were three men who did not bow down. And he says here, they have not regarded you.

They have not regarded thee. They had no respect for you, King Nebuchadnezzar. They don’t serve your gods.

They don’t worship the golden image which you have set up. Verse 13, Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage and fury commanded to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Then they brought these men before the king.

Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, is it true? Do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up. So he calls them in.

They get called into the principal’s office. And he said, Is it true what I’m hearing that you don’t worship the statue? You don’t serve my gods, and you don’t worship the image that I’ve set up.

Now, if you be ready at that time, it sounds here like he doesn’t even give them a chance to respond because he already knows the answer. He’s been told by his lieutenants that they didn’t worship. He knows the Jews.

He knows Daniel. So he knows something of the Jewish religion that they were exclusive. All the other religions around, hey, what’s adding a few more gods?

But the Jewish religion said, no, there’s one God, and he’s the only one we’re going to worship. So he knew. I believe Nebuchadnezzar knew before he even asked the question.

So he says in verse 15, Now, if ye be ready at that time, at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sack, but, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made. Well, he said, if you’re ready when you hear the music again to fall down and worship the image, good, that’ll be just fine. But if ye worship not, ye shall be cast into the same hour, cast the same hour into the midst of a burning, fiery furnace.

And who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? It’s a pretty bold statement from Nebuchadnezzar. What I find interesting and didn’t notice before yesterday is that Nebuchadnezzar here, actually, he gives them a second chance.

He’s furious, and he’s recorded in history as being a bloodthirsty tyrant, and yet he gives them here a second chance when they’ve disobeyed him in front of the entire empire. And a lot of people, and I think I probably agree with it, a lot of people believe that it’s because of his relationship with Daniel, out of respect for Daniel that he gives them a second chance. Because Daniel had promoted these three men to Nebuchadnezzar, gotten him to put them in charge.

And Nebuchadnezzar loved Daniel, in some manner of speaking, had respect for Daniel. And I honestly have wondered, where is Daniel in this story? Because I do not think for a minute that Daniel bowed before the statue.

Where was Daniel? Was he off on some errand that he wasn’t even there when it happened? Was he somehow exempt from the law?

I don’t know. But I don’t believe Daniel bowed either. But I believe it’s out of respect for Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar, even as wicked as he was at this point, decides to give Daniel’s friends a second chance.

He says, you can bow or you can go in the furnace. This is your last chance. And he says, this is what I say is a bold statement because it’s written, it’s phrased as a question, but behind it, it’s not really a question, it’s a statement.

Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? He’s asking a question here, but the statement behind it is, your God is not powerful enough to deliver you out of my hands. You’ve neglected to serve my gods.

You’ve neglected to bow before my statue because of this God that you serve. And I’m telling you, your God is fine up there in the heavens, but I’m going to throw you in that furnace. And he’s up there and I’m down here.

Who’s going to save you now? That’s what we can read between the lines there from Nebuchadnezzar. It’s a threat.

And it’s a statement that he thinks he’s more powerful than their God. Verse 16 says, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. They did not have to think it over.

I love that. They didn’t even have to stop and entertain the notion. Well, should we bow?

Should we not? Well, maybe if we just bow a little bit, we can confess later and deal with it, and we’ll stay alive and we can serve God that way. And they weigh their options.

No, they didn’t do any of that. They said, we are not careful to answer you in this matter. It doesn’t mean they were reckless, but it means they already knew what the answer was.

We are not careful to answer you in this matter. If it be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. Verse 18, but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

We don’t even have to think about it, Nebuchadnezzar. He says our God is able to deliver us from the furnace, and our God will deliver us out of your hands. Now notice here he does not say our God will keep us out of the furnace.

Our God will protect us in the furnace. He said our God is able to deliver us from the furnace. What he says God will do is to deliver them from Nebuchadnezzar’s hand.

Whether God somehow miraculously intervenes as he’s able and gets them out of the fire, or whether God lets them get killed in the fire, one way or another, they’re going to be delivered out of Nebuchadnezzar’s hand, but they’re not going to bow. But he says our God is able to do this if God chooses to do so. But if not, see they haven’t boxed God into a corner.

They’ve said God is able to do whatever he wants, Nebuchadnezzar, But even if he does not, that’s where I get the part about surrender. It did not matter to them at this point whether or not it was God’s will to deliver them from the furnace. It didn’t matter whether there was going to be some kind of divine intervention, whether they were going to be saved, whether there was going to be a miracle, or whether they were going to die in the flames.

It did not matter to them what God’s will was. What mattered was that they were obeying what God’s will was, what they knew to be God’s will. It didn’t matter whether God was going to save them or not.

God, it doesn’t matter where we’re going, as long as we’re with you on this. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king. Nebuchadnezzar, mark it down so that you will know and your children someday will know that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden image that you have set up.

And God can do whatever he wants. Well, I would imagine Nebuchadnezzar was a little hacked off by this. It says so in verse 19.

Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury and the form of his visage, his face, was changed against Shadrach. He was already mad when he called them in, but it says the form of his face changed because he was enveloped in this fury. Therefore he spake and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated.

However hot it normally was, and it had to be hot enough to burn and kill people, however hot it normally was, he was so angry and so furious that he told his people to turn it up seven times hotter. That means if it was up to 400 degrees, I don’t know how high the heat has to be to burn flesh. Don’t want to know.

But let’s just say 400 degrees for lack of a better idea. That means he’s turned it up to 2,800 degrees. If it was already higher than that, maybe it was overkill already.

Whatever it was, seven times that. That’s pretty mad. Turn it up seven times more than it was wont to be heated.

And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. He gets the toughest men he has and says, Tie them up and throw them in there. Then these men were bound in their coats and their hosen, their stockings and their hats and their other garments and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.

Therefore, because the king’s commandment was urgent and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The fire was so hot that the men even got close enough to throw them in and they were killed too by the heat. And so they’ve thrown Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace.

And verse 23 says, And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste and spake and said unto his counselors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.

He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt. The form of the fourth is like the Son of God. And they say in the Hebrew, it literally means a son of the gods.

Regardless, we still recognize this as Jesus Christ in his pre-incarnate form. The Son of God walked in the midst of the fire with them. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spake and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

He was so overcome by what he was seeing. These men had died because they’d gotten so close to the edge of the furnace. And he’s so fascinated and enthralled by what he’s seeing that he actually walks up to the edge of the furnace himself.

I’m guessing he’s having to step over bodies on the way to it. came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spake and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came forth of the midst of the fire.

See, Nebuchadnezzar was a very proud man until God kind of smacked him down. We see this several times in the beginning of the book of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar gets a little too big for his britches. God smacks him down a little bit, and then all of a sudden, Nebuchadnezzar realizes who is God.

And he says, ye servants of the most high God, come out. and they came out of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counselors, being gathered together, saw these men upon whose bodies the fire had no power.

Think about that. This fire that had killed the men who even got close to it, the Bible says, over Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it had no power, nor was a hair of their heads singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them. It did nothing to them.

Their hair wasn’t singed, their coats weren’t burned, they didn’t even smell like smoke when they came out. Then Nebuchadnezzar spake and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies that they might not serve nor worship any god except their own god. Therefore I make a decree that every people, nation, and language which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill, because there is no other god that can deliver after this sort.

So Nebuchadnezzar has had such a drastic change of heart, at least for the moment, that he says, I’m making a decree that nobody can say anything bad about the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or they’ll have to answer to me, because there’s no other God like him. No other God can deliver after that sort. And the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

That’s the story. And when I say story, I don’t mean that it didn’t really happen, because I believe that it did. But the most important part of this story, other than God’s deliverance, We see this so many times as a story of God’s deliverance, as a story of God’s power.

Other than that, the most important factor in this story was what we talked about already in verse 18, verses 17 and 18, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego tell King Nebuchadnezzar that God can get them out of the furnace if he wants to, and that God will one way or another deliver them out of the king’s hand. But even if God chooses not to spare them from the fiery furnace, they still will not bow before his idol. Folks, that’s exactly the kind of thing that I was talking about in the introductions of this message.

I was saying, God, I don’t care where we’re going. I don’t care where you take me, but I’m going with you. They wanted to obey God’s will, what they understood of it.

And as far as God’s will regarding their predicament, they didn’t care. They had no will one way or the other, whether they were to escape the fire or not. But they said, but even if God does not, still we will not bow.

Still, we will only serve God. Folks, that’s an incredible faith. And as a result, they got to see God’s will not only for themselves, they got to see God’s will that He did will to deliver them.

He did will to honor their faithfulness and deliver them from the fire. But He also willed to change the heart of the king, the emperor. He also willed to change the direction of the empire.

But it started out with what little bit of God’s will they did know. Folks, these three Hebrews obeyed God’s will in not bowing to idols. That’s the first thing we need to know this morning.

And I have called this message, Discovering God’s Will and Surrender. We’re in this process of finding out how we can discover God’s will. Last week we talked about obedience.

And obedience, we talked about Jonah, that he knew what God’s will was and disobeyed it. And he could have very easily waited and said, well, God, that’s the past. I know you wanted me to do that, but now that I’m out of the fish, what do you want me to do now? And God sent him back to do the thing that he had already told him to do.

And we discover God’s will, or I don’t believe we normally can discover God’s will, and ask God, what am I supposed to do 20 steps down the road if we haven’t obeyed the first step He gave us? If we’re not faithful in that first step, why in the world would God entrust us with the whole plan? And so what we know of God’s will, we’re to obey.

And we see that in this first point here, that they obeyed God’s will and not bowing to idols. You know, if you were to know, if you even had a very basic cursory knowledge of the Jewish religion, I’m not saying you have to memorize the whole Old Testament, and that’s what they used to do. They used to memorize it and recite it to each other.

We’d probably do well to memorize the Bible if we could. It would be good for us. But folks, you wouldn’t even have to memorize the whole Old Testament.

If you were just a child, a Jewish child, you would already know what God’s will was in this situation because you would have known the Ten Commandments, the most basic part of the law that he gave them. And commandment number one is thou shalt have no other gods before me. Commandment number two is thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

that you shouldn’t make images after the image of men or beasts. You shouldn’t bow to them. The first two commandments talk about making idols, having other gods, and bowing to them.

Even a Jewish child would have known what God’s will was in this situation. That’s why when they say, we’re not careful to answer you this, King Nebuchadnezzar, it doesn’t mean they were reckless. They’re just throwing caution to the wind.

It means we already know. We don’t have to stop and ask God, what is your will in this situation? They knew God’s will is never for his people to submit to idols.

God’s perfect will is never for us to say, well, there’s this other good over here, so I’m going to disobey what God has already told me in order to accomplish this. No, when we know God’s perfect will, when we know the principles he’s taught us to live by, when we know the direction he’s given us, we’re to obey it. And they didn’t even have to stop and think about it.

These three men obeyed God’s will in not bowing to idols. So it ties in with last week’s message about finding God’s will. But a step beyond that, they said God has a perfect will.

His will here is for us to not bow, but beyond that, He’s got a will for this situation about what He’s going to do, what He wants to do, and we don’t know what it is. But it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change the fact that we 

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