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Context No. 1731 of 4322 · Daniel (Greek)

Context · Reflection

Daniel (Greek) 3:46-50: in context

46The king’s servants who put them in didn’t stop making the furnace hot with naphtha, pitch, tinder, and small wood, 47so that the flame streamed out forty nine cubits above the furnace. 48It spread and burned those Chaldeans whom it found around the furnace. 49But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace together with Azarias and his fellows, and he struck the flame of the fire out of the furnace, 50and made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist whistling wind, so that the fire didn’t touch them at all. It neither hurt nor troubled them.

The three young men have been thrown into the blazing furnace, heated so fiercely with pitch and tinder that its flames leap up and kill the men who stoke it. But into that furnace the angel of the Lord comes down, to be with Azariah and his companions. He beats back the flame and makes the middle of the furnace like a moist, whistling wind, so that the fire does not touch them at all; it neither burns nor troubles them.

The wonder here is not that the three were kept out of the fire, but that they were kept safe in it. God did not spare them the furnace; they were thrown in, and the flames were real, real enough to kill the men outside. What God did was to come into the furnace with them. The angel of the Lord came down into the fire, stood with them in the middle of the blaze, and made the burning place as harmless as a cool breeze. God's presence in the fire was their protection, not an exemption from it. There is a truth here that we need, for often God does not spare us the fire either. We are not always kept out of the furnace, the trial, the suffering, the ordeal that seems certain to consume us; sometimes we are thrown in, and the flames are real. But the promise this scene embodies is that God comes into the fire with us. He does not always keep us from the furnace, but he is present in it, and his presence is such that what should destroy us cannot. When you walk through the fire, God says elsewhere, you will not be burned, for I will be with you. The three young men learned this in the flames: that the fire an enemy meant for their death became, with God present in it, a place where they were unharmed, walking as in a cool wind. If we are in the furnace now, the assurance is not that we were spared it, but that God is in it with us, and that his presence keeps us through a fire that by all reckoning should consume us.

When I am in the furnace, thrown into a trial or suffering that seems certain to consume me, can I trust that God does not abandon me to the flames but comes into the fire with me, as the angel came down into the furnace, and that his presence can keep me through what should destroy me?

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