The Fourth Man

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Over the last several weeks, I’ve been sharing with you some of the instances of foreshadowing in the Old Testament, some of the places where God used people and things and events in the Old Testament to prepare us for what Jesus was going to do when He came. Today I want to share one last with you. I could have gone on with this series forever.

As a matter of fact, as we were talking Wednesday night on our journey through the Scripture story by story, I was reminded of some more instances where God was pointing ahead to Jesus. They are all over the Old Testament. You cannot shake a stick at the Old Testament without something pointing to Jesus.

But we’re going to end the series here this morning with one final example. Like I said, these are not the only, these nine that we’ve gone over today and in the last several weeks are not the only places, but there’s some that stood out to me as I was preparing this. And in this final instance that we’re going to talk about, God prepared us in part for the coming of Jesus by sending Jesus ahead of time.

There are instances throughout the Old Testament that scholars look at and say that had to have been Jesus. They call them Christophanies. They are appearances of Jesus throughout the Old Testament before he came in the incarnation, meaning before he came in Bethlehem, before he was conceived in Mary’s womb.

I think sometimes we have this idea that Jesus came into existence there at Bethlehem, that that’s where he started. But Jesus, if he is God, if he is the second person of the Trinity, as the scripture teaches, then he is eternal and he’s every bit as eternal as the Father. So he couldn’t have just come into existence at Bethlehem.

Scripture tells us he was there from the beginning. He was there before the beginning. He had a hand in creation every bit as much as the Father did.

And I believe there are places that He shows up in the Old Testament. We’re going to talk about one of those today, where the Father sent the Son in order to fulfill His promises. You know, I as a father do this sometimes in order to fulfill my promises.

I send my Son. Now, I do it because I sometimes can’t get it done without my Son. God, the Father doesn’t have that problem.

He chooses to use the Son. But I think of yesterday and all the things that I had on my list of things to do and all the things I told Charla I was going to accomplish. It actually started at the end of last week where she called me and said, are you still at the store?

No, I’m almost home. Okay, well, I’m about out of cough syrup for the little kids and I need some. Okay, well, I’ll get some next time I’m out because I’m almost home.

I love where we live, but it’s not always convenient to run to the store. So I said, I’ll do that next time I’m out. I still forgot.

I went down to Dollar General yesterday for cough syrup. I came back with a sprinkler and forgot all about the cough syrup. So I don’t know.

But yesterday I told Charla, this is what I plan to do. She hasn’t been dogging me about it or anything, but I know she’d like the flower beds to look pretty. We’ve talked about it.

And so I told her, I’m going to work on the flower beds. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this.

I’m going to do this. I realized pretty quickly into my day yesterday that my list of things to do was longer than the time I had allotted. And so what was my answer?

Oh, Benjamin, boy, he’s a great helper and a sister too, to an extent. But Benjamin usually is the one I call on just because I’ve known him the longest. But I’ll call him and say, hey, I need you to do this. I need you to help with this.

And sometimes I’ll reward him for that. sometimes I reward him by letting him live in my house and eat my food. But he helps.

And so yesterday I had Benjamin moving rocks, and big rocks, some of them. And we got as much done of the flower bed as we could, but I couldn’t have gotten nearly as far through my list yesterday as I did, and I didn’t even finish the list, without sending my son. Now, the father doesn’t do that because he’s incapable of carrying out anything.

The father sends his son because that’s what he’s promised to do. And we’re going to see an instance of this in the Old Testament. If you would turn with me to Daniel chapter 3.

Daniel chapter 3. If you don’t have a Bible with you, it’s going to be on the screen. Or if you have difficulty finding it, you can also click on the little link in our bulletin and it’ll take you right there on your phone.

But Daniel chapter 3 is where we’re going to be this morning. And we’re going to start in verse 16. So once you’re there, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, starting in verse 16, and we’re going to go through verse 27 this morning.

So it says, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.

Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury, and the expression on his face changed towards Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He spoke and commanded that they heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. And by the way, that may be a euphemism for saying, turn up the fire as hot as we can physically make it go.

And he commanded certain mighty men, verse 20, certain mighty men of valor who were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their coats, their trousers, their turbans, and their other garments and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Therefore, because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace exceedingly hot, the flame of fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Now don’t miss that. He said, turn up the furnace as high as it’ll go and throw them in there. And it was so hot that even without getting into the furnace, the soldiers who carried them there to throw them in from a distance, the heat killed them even at a distance.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and he rose in haste and spoke saying to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire, into the midst of the fire? They answered and said to the king, true, O king. Verse 25, look, he answered, I see four men walking loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the son of God.

Then Nebuchadnezzar went near the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spoke, saying, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came from the midst of the fire. And the satraps, administrators, governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together, and they saw these men on whose bodies the fire had no power.

The hair of their head was not singed, nor were their garments affected, and the smell of fire was not on them. And you may be seated. And that’s amazing that they were not burned, they were not scorched, their hair was not burned at all.

They didn’t even smell like smoke. All right, if I’m anywhere near a fire, I smell like smoke all the rest of the day. And yet they didn’t even smell like smoke.

So this is probably a familiar story to a lot of you. These three men are thrown into a fiery furnace because they defied the commands of the king. By the way, they’re called in this chapter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

That’s the name we typically know them by. Their Hebrew names, Their given names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And in the past, I’ve been in the habit of referring to them by those names.

So if you’re unfamiliar with the story, if I switch back and forth on those names, I’m talking about the same three men. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So these three men, they were in deep trouble because Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had built a 90-foot golden statue to one of his gods, and he was demanding that everybody within earshot bow down and worship this statue whenever the music was played.

He said, we’re going to have a big worship service. They’re going to play all these instruments. And wherever you are within earshot, whenever you hear the sound of these instruments, you have to bow down and worship this golden statue that I’ve made.

And he was so attached to this God and to this idol that he was personally offended when people bowed down and refused to worship the statue. And I don’t completely understand this. Because when I drive by on Sunday mornings and see my neighbors out mowing their yards and not at church, I mean, I feel a tinge of sadness, but I don’t take it personally and want to burn them alive.

This man had some kind of bizarre attachment to this idol. I’ve heard some commentators say he may have built it based on his own likeness. Kind of building a statue to the god Nabu, but using himself as a model.

I don’t know. but he had some kind of attachment to this God and to this idol that caused him to take it personally when they refused to bow down and worship it. And so he said that they were going to be killed.

Anybody that refused to worship the statue was going to be killed. Now, we also think that Daniel must have been off on official business because he’s not mentioned in the story. And we know that based on everything else Daniel did, the lengths that Daniel went to not to disobey God, We know there’s no way Daniel was going to bow down to this statue.

But he’s not mentioned here, so he might have been out of town on official business or something. These three men were the only ones who refused. These were not the only Jewish men in that community.

These were not the only men in that area who had pledged their loyalty to the one true God, and yet these are the only three men who refused to bow. And so when everybody else is bowing and they’re still standing upright, they attracted the king’s attention. And he basically approaches it like, okay, maybe you didn’t understand.

Maybe you didn’t hear. Maybe you don’t know what’s going on. We’re going to try this again.

When you hear the sound, when you hear the music, you’re going to bow like everybody else. And they basically say, I don’t think so. That’s not the way it’s going to work.

Now, many biblical historians believe that this statue was to the god Nabu. I mentioned that just a minute ago. Part of the reason they think that, there may be some archaeological reasons for that.

But part of the reason they think that is because Nebuchadnezzar’s name is based on the name of the god Nabu. And so it’s possible that that’s sort of his namesake and could explain part of his attachment to that particular deity. If his statue was of Nabu, I’ve mentioned that for years and never really thought to go and check out who Nabu was.

Nabu was the Babylonian god of wisdom. He was also the son of the Babylonian god Marduk, which reminds me of a character from a Disney movie. It’s not the bear in that one Scottish Disney movie.

Marduk is the Babylonian creator god, which becomes important later. He said, you’ve got to bow down to this idol of the god of wisdom, the son of the creator god, or you’re going to be killed. And they say, no, we’re not doing it.

And there are some things that we can, and that brings us to where we started in the reading with their conversation with him. We’re not doing it. No matter what happens, no matter what the outcome is here, we’re not doing it.

And this teaches us some things that we can use and apply to our lives when it comes to our relationship with God and how we trust Him through circumstances. It also teaches us some things about why we can trust God. And the first thing I want you to see here this morning is that the more we know and trust God, the more readily we’ll obey Him.

Sometimes it seems hard to obey God because sometimes God asks us to do hard things. But we’re more capable of obeying him the more we know him and trust him. You know, I know that I’ve asked Benjamin to do some things that did not make sense to him at the time.

And more often than not, he’ll say, okay, he may look at me like I’m crazy, but more often than not, he’ll go ahead and do it. Because he knows me and he trusts me, I think. Madeline and I were shopping Friday at Walmart, and I was showing her the app where you can scan your stuff and just check out that way on your phone.

I said, we’ll just scan this and then we’ll go. She said, so you’re going to steal it? I said, Madeline, did you really just ask me if I was going to steal it?

Yeah. How long have we known each other? A long time.

I said, your whole life, right? Yeah. Have you ever known me to be a stealer?

No. Think about it. You know me.

You know what kind of person I am. When they think about it, my kids know what kind of person I am and they know what to expect. And so when I ask them to do something, they may question, they may act curious, they may look at me strangely, but more often than not, they’ll do what I’m asking.

If it’s something specific, if it’s just clean your room, no, you know, I haven’t cracked the code to that other than the whole mama’s coming thing that I told you about a few weeks ago. But they’re willing to do things the more they know and trust me. If some random person off the street asked them to do something that doesn’t make sense, they’re probably not going to do it because they don’t know and trust them.

See, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew and trusted God, and that made it a lot easier for them to obey them. I’m not minimizing the difficulty here. This was a rough situation.

This was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. But it became much easier for them to answer and say, we’re going to obey God because they knew Him and they trusted Him. As a matter of fact, we look at verse 16 where we started this morning and they started off by saying, we have no need to answer you in this matter.

They’re not saying, we don’t have to tell you anything about that. We don’t have to give you an answer. This was not necessarily a disrespectful response.

What they were saying when they said, we have no need to answer you in this matter, they were saying there’s nothing more for us to discuss. Because Nebuchadnezzar has already drawn his red line in the sand. He’s already said, I will kill you if you don’t do what I want.

And they already know that there is no way in heaven or on earth that they are going to do what he wants. And so at that point, what is there left to discuss? We don’t have to stop and think about it.

We don’t have to try to figure out a way to justify it and say, how could we work this where maybe God would be okay with it? How can we save our own skin? There’s nothing left to discuss.

That’s basically their response. Because they trusted God, we’re going to do what we got to do. You do what you got to do.

That’s where we are. And then they said, but if not, after they talked about God delivering them, they said, but if not, be it known to you, O king, this is in verse 18, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the golden image which you have set up. They were saying no matter what God intended the outcome of the situation to be.

That’s in that phrase, but if not. Because in the previous verse, in verse 17, which we’ll come to a little bit more later, in verse 17 they talked about God’s deliverance. And in verse 18 they said, but if not.

Meaning even if God doesn’t deliver us, even if these circumstances don’t work out the way we think would be best, we are still not going to bow to your golden statue. There is no way that they were going to disobey God by bowing down. And the reason for that we see in verse 17 is their reference to our God whom we serve.

They don’t talk about Him in these distant terms. He’s not merely the God of Israel. He’s not merely the God of our fathers, even though He was those things. They called Him our God.

We are personally attached to this God. we know this God our God whom we serve they had a history with the God of Israel they had devoted their lives to the God of Israel they knew him and they trusted him and we see that as they’re discussing what could and what could not happen and saying we believe that he could set us free we believe that he could deliver us we believe he could do all these things because we know him and we know what he’s capable of but even if he does not we are still going to trust him and we’re going to obey him and we are not going to do what you’re trying to get us to do that’s going to dishonor him. All of this comes back to this relationship and this history that they had with God.

Sometimes I think it’s more difficult for us to obey God because we’ve let ourselves grow distant from him. When we’re walking with him in that relationship and we know him, like the verse and the hymn say, I know whom I have believed. When we’re walking in that relationship and we’re reminding ourselves of who he is, what kind of God he is, and what he’s meant to us in the past, it becomes easier to trust Him and easier to obey Him.

The more we know and trust God, the more readily we’ll obey Him. Which brings me to the second thing I want you to understand this morning, is that our trust in God should not depend on our circumstances, but on His character. Their trust in God was built on His character.

It was built on who He had shown Himself to be. Not only in the life of the nation, but in their own lives as well. See, in the Old Testament, and even into the New Testament, There’s this habit that the Jews have developed that whenever they came to a difficult spot, they would start to recount all the ways that God had taken care of them, all the ways that God had delivered them.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew about all the times God had delivered Israel. They had also experienced in the earlier chapters of Daniel where God had delivered them from some pretty sticky situations, not just this one. And so they look at who God has shown himself to be over and over, who He has told them He was, and who He has demonstrated that He was.

And that’s why they were able to say in verse 17, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. They were saying He has proven Himself to be capable of doing anything that He says He’ll do. There is nothing that God has promised that He’s not capable of fulfilling.

I want to say that again. There is nothing that God has promised that He is not capable of fulfilling. There’s nothing that God has promised that He does not intend to fulfill and have a plan to fulfill.

There is nothing that God has promised that He will not fulfill. He’s shown it over and over and over that He can do anything He wills to do. And so they said, if He wants to, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace.

If that’s what He wants to do, He can do it. And then they say in verse 17, He will deliver us from your hand, O King. Now this has always confused me a little bit.

He will deliver us from your hand, O king, verse 17. They sound so sure. And then right into verse 18, but if not, he will, but even if he doesn’t.

That makes a little more sense when you realize, and I’m not an expert in these languages, okay? I just read the writings of people who are. In the original Aramaic that they were speaking and that this was recorded in, that phrase in verse 17, he will deliver us from your hand, O king, is not as certain that it’s going to happen as it sounds in English.

It’s a verb tense we don’t necessarily have that talks about possibility. Basically, that he’s capable. Not saying, oh, I know for sure that God is going to do this, but they’re saying again that God is capable of doing this.

Now, why do they say this? Why do they keep pointing out that God is capable of delivering them? It’s because if you go back to verse 15, right before we started reading, Nebuchadnezzar is pounding his chest and he’s boasting that there’s no God in all of the universe that’s going to be powerful enough to free them from what he intends to do to them.

Nebuchadnezzar is saying, I am the biggest and baddest guy there is. And if I decide to punish you, you better watch out because there’s nobody, there’s no God that’s going to set you free. And so all this talk where they’re saying, our God can deliver us.

Our God will deliver us if he chooses. is in direct answer to Nebuchadnezzar’s question, what God is there that’s going to deliver you out of my hand? And they’re saying there’s only one, our God, the God we serve.

And it’s important that we understand that because we know how the story ends with them coming out of the fiery furnace. And we probably think from time to time, well, yeah, it’s easy to obey God when you know for sure He’s going to do what you think He ought to do. Listen, these men knew that God was more than capable of doing what He did, but they had no assurance that that was his plan.

Their confidence here is not based on the circumstances or how they’re going to turn out. Their trust in God was not based on everything’s going to work just the way we want it to because God’s already showed us the end of the book. Their confidence was based on who God is regardless of how the circumstances turned out.

And that’s important for us as believers because there will come a time when our circumstances don’t turn out the way we think they ought to. And in those moments, we are tempted to doubt God. Is He real?

Is He there? Does He love me? Does He even care?

Is He listening? Folks, our trust in God needs to be rooted in who He is and who He has proven Himself to be and not just how the circumstances work out. Because listen, God has a plan that we cannot possibly understand every facet of.

We see just a very small part of it. And so what God is doing and working out for our good and for His glory doesn’t always look in our very limited perspective like it’s the best thing. We could look at things and say, this is so terrible.

God, how could you let it happen? But God, through those difficult circumstances, is working out something better than we could ever imagine. Our trust in God cannot be rooted in what our circumstances are today or what we hope our circumstances might be tomorrow.

Our trust in God has to be rooted in who God is yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever. And so they’re effectively pointing to God and saying that He’s proven Himself to be a deliverer. Whether He comes through in this circumstance the way they think He ought to or not, He is a deliverer.

And one way or another, He’s going to deliver them. He’s either going to set them free from the fiery furnace the way He ends up doing, or He’s going to deliver them through death out of the fiery furnace to be with Him. Either way, Nebuchadnezzar can’t do anything that God doesn’t allow.

And that’s why they were able to say in verse 18, but if not. even if the circumstances don’t work the way we think they ought to, God is still God and we will still worship Him and Him only. We’re not bowing to your statue, even if it costs us our life.

God had proven Himself faithful time and time again and their trust was rooted in that, in the character of God, in the faithfulness of God. And folks, God has proven Himself faithful over and over and over, not only to them, but also to us. And He has proven Himself faithful, most noticeably, by sending His Son.

not only to us, but also to them. God’s intervention and His deliverance don’t always come in a way that we expect. It doesn’t always look like what we expect.

Have you ever been on the other side of a situation and you’ve looked back and said, wow, thank you God for working it out that way and not the way I asked you to. Because even though it wasn’t what you wanted, it worked out better than what you had asked for. His deliverance does not always come the way we expect or prefer.

In this case, they were still thrown into the fiery furnace. They still had to walk around in there. How did God demonstrate his faithfulness?

Nebuchadnezzar is the one who noticed it. Look at verse 25. He says, look, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt.

He’s confused because we only threw three people in there and now there are four. It’s crazy enough that they’re up walking around because the fire is so intense it killed guys who even got close to it. But where’d that fourth guy come from?

And he says the form of the forth is like the Son of God. Now sometimes skeptics will object to the teaching about Jesus from this passage because they’ll say, well, he said a son of the gods. I went and looked it up.

Absolutely. It’s a plural there. Son of the gods.

So what? You think Nebuchadnezzar knew more about the incarnation than Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? You think Nebuchadnezzar was privy to God’s plans and he suddenly realized this is the only begotten son of the one true God who showed up and he knows New Testament things, we wouldn’t expect him to say the Son of God.

If Jesus showed up in the fire, we would expect him to say a son of the gods. Because they, in their pagan philosophy, they looked at gods as being families, kind of like in the Greek mythologies as well. Families.

And so you see a God in there walking around. He’s a son of the gods. He’s one of them.

But you and I know that if there’s only one true God, there’s only one option for who this is. If there’s only one true God, and he only has one begotten son, then there’s only one option for who’s in that fire. And most Bible scholars recognize this as a Christophany, like we talked about at the beginning of the message.

One of those appearances of Jesus Christ in physical form before he showed up in Mary’s womb. Because again, he didn’t just suddenly come into existence at Bethlehem. He’s been with the Father from before there was time, and been with the Spirit from before there was time.

And together they’ve been working out the plan of redemption for mankind. And sometimes Jesus would step into time and space and fulfill the plans of the Father. This is one of those times.

Now, the reason I mentioned to you earlier about who this statue was of, this gave me goosebumps when I noticed it this week. Matter of fact, I went running out of the office looking for anybody that was in there because I needed to tell somebody, poor Candy, she was the only one here, so she got an earful. Listen to what I just found.

If this was Nabu in the statue, as most historians think it was, And they were thrown into the furnace on behalf of one son of God. Because remember, Nabu was the Babylonians thought of him as the son of the creator God. So they were thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the Babylonians’ idea of the son of God.

Their false Christ. And they were convinced that nothing would be powerful enough to free them from this fiery furnace. But they hadn’t counted on the son of the one true God. The son of the true creator God.

When I noticed this, when I caught this parallel between the father and the son and Marduk and Nabu and the creator God and the son, I realized it’s our son of God can beat up your son of God. And it gave me goosebumps that they thought Nabu and Nebuchadnezzar, his servant, were so powerful they were no match for Jesus Christ and his servants. I don’t know if any of you are as excited about that as I am, but I just, man, the God of Israel was more powerful and more faithful to keep his promises than Marduk and Nabu.

Because on their side, they were saying, we’re going to kill you. That was their promise. We’re going to kill you if you don’t bow down.

And there’s nothing you can do about it. The God of Israel said, I will never leave you or forsake you. I’ll protect you.

Guess who fulfilled their promise? It was the God of Israel. He sent his son to walk with him through the fire.

Jesus showed up as he did at times throughout the Old Testament because God’s people were in deep trouble. They were rescued in the fiery furnace, not from it because they still had to go through it, But they were rescued in the fiery furnace when the Son of God showed up to walk with them through it and deliver them. And folks, that foreshadows a time when that same Son of God would step in because we were in deep trouble again.

When we were facing fires that threatened to destroy us. And it foreshadows how He would come and rescue us again. When that fire was sin and its consequences, Jesus Christ came and walked through that fire.

The Scripture said that He who knew no sin, He had no sin of His own. He was made to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus Christ came and bore the weight of the wrath of God on our sins.

He endured God’s judgment, all the consequences that God had to pour out on our sins. Jesus Christ took every bit of that. He walked through our fire when He was nailed to the cross, when He shed His blood, and when He died.

He walked through our fire so that you and I could be delivered. And no matter how much the enemy threatened that we were going to be destroyed, Jesus Christ rescued us from out of the fire. Folks, God is always faithful as they knew and as we’ve had even more opportunity than they have to see.

God is always faithful to keep His promises and the fulfillment of some of His most important promises have come through His Son. His promise to deliver them is one of those. The greatest was His promise to deliver all those who would trust in Him.

That promise was fulfilled through His Son. Jesus Christ shed His blood and died on the cross to bear all of our punishment, to take every bit of what we deserve to rescue us.