All blockbuster films have a near-miss moment. The hero, or the person who loves the hero has been captured and is headed toward a nasty end. Whether it’s the conveyor belt to the incinerator in Toy Story 3 or a near-death moment in James Bond, these are the edge-of-the-seat moments which keep audiences gripped and coming back for more. Despite being drawn in as if you’re almost there, inevitably, the hero enters and saves things from an almost messy end, or if they’re the victim, wiggle themselves free just in the nick of time as the car plunges, the rocket explodes or the cliff crumbles.
One of the Bible passages I love so much is Daniel 3, where three of the noble men who were taken captive to Babylon with Daniel, renamed as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, refuse to bow in worship to Nebuchadnezzar’s self-styled idol.
I love their boldness! I love their audacity! I love their refusal to bow to the culture of the day but instead to bow only to the Lord Almighty. Sadly for them, the consequence set by Nebuchadnezzar is death-by-firery-furnace. Nebuchadnezzar’s temper is reflected in the temperature, cranked up seven-fold, so hot that even the soldiers who were carrying them towards into it were killed by the fire just by going near it. Just like a blockbuster movie, the fire is getting brighter, the men are getting closer. The soldiers carrying them get burnt to death, they’re getting closer and closer… but unlike Hollywood, there’s no last minute rescue here, the superhero doesn’t fly in and rescue them, there’s no last minute red stop button twist to the plot. “And these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.” (Daniel 3v23).
It seems as if they’ve met their firery fate, but in the next few verses, we read that Nebuchadnezzar leaps to his feet “he said ‘look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods’”. (Daniel 3v25).
People sometimes make empty promises that following Jesus makes life good and easy, that we’ll be free from harm, sickness or difficulties. I don’t know where they get such claims from, because the Bible records many of God’s people being in difficult moments, which result in Kingdom glory. Maybe at the moment with the unknown, the ever-possible threat of the coronavirus spiking, it feels like we’re in the fire. We thought it would all be OK. We thought God would bring us through, but we’re still in limbo-land, waiting.
Maybe you’re experiencing something different, or at some point in life have experienced a time when it has felt like you are well and truly in the fire. There was no last-minute rescue, no lifting of the suffering, but your situation just got harder and harder. Maybe like these men, you were ‘thrown in’ by others; maybe it was your own doing; maybe it was habitual sins, stress and being overwhelmed, just one of those unexplainable things or even seemingly by God Himself.
This passage gives hope to those who feel like life is ‘in the fire’ and serves as a reminder of God’s faithfulness to those who aren’t, that Jesus is with us in the fire. Sometimes we pray that God will end the suffering, which is right, but maybe we need to become more aware of Jesus with us in the suffering. The One who suffered, is with us in suffering. The Bible records God’s words as saying on many occasions: “I will never leave or forsake you”.
Secondly, in the fire, gold is refined. When we are ‘in the fire’ of life, God can use that time to refine us, to show us things about ourselves. In this lockdown season, I think we have all been aware of this: how our identity has been wrapped up in certain things, how we’re desperate to ‘do’ things, how we love shopping, or our faith is action based. God can use hard times to refine and reshape us. Jesus speaks of our refining in terms of gardening: “I am the True Vine and my Father is the Gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful”. (John 15 v 1 – 2). Notice it isn’t the dead ones which get pruned, but the fruitful ones. Just like Mishach, Shadrach and Abednego were fruit-bearing, faithful witness bearers to God, they were refined in the fire. God was with them, and God saved them – not from going into the fire, but from within the fire. God is with us in ‘the fire’ and will refine and save us from within it.