Daniel 3:17-18 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 your hand… These Jews were placed in a perfect dilemma. Life and death are now presented for their choice — life with all its blessings if they would conform — death in all its terrors if they should refuse compliance. If they had consulted with flesh and blood, in forming their determination or in framing their reply, what a multitude of cogent and plausible arguments might have been found to justify their compliance. They were not required to renounce the God to whom they had been hitherto devoted-to adjure His name, to abandon His worship, and to profess the god of Nebuchadnezzar as the only living and true God. No such profession was required; all that was necessary was an outward act of homage, which might have been done with a secret disavowal of the image as a god, and a mental protestation in the sight of Heaven that they still owned none save the God. of their fathers, and worshipped none else but the invisible Jehovah. But these men, by a previous refusal, had already lifted up their testimony against the idolatry of which they had been the witnesses; and their obedience now, after such a testimony, could be regarded in no other light than as an involuntary constrained act, in which their feeling of constraint destroyed their guilt. A multitude of considerations must naturally have suggested themselves in palliation of the crime. But no token of retraction was given, no sign of irresolution appeared. They addressed the king in calm, but uncompromising terms. The principle which actuated these youths was a scrupulous regard to the will of God, and a deep-seated confidence in His power and promises. Idolatry was a sin prohibited and denounced by God as a derogation from the honour that was due unto His name. In defiance of the punishment which threatened them, they resolved to adhere to the plain line of duty, disdaining the subterfuges which carnality would suggest. The application of this history is far from being a remote one. There is little likelihood, indeed, that any of you should ever be placed in circumstances so critical. But you may be the subjects of tyrannical dictation from another quarter, even from that world in which you dwell, and from those masters which dwell within you — your lusts, your appetites, your passions. Temptation may often be presented to make you swerve from the path of rectitude. You may meet with many who will ridicule your faith, and more who will ridicule your practice, if that be in strict conformity to the faith you profess. But we need not so much to warn you against others as to warn you against yourselves. There are tyrants within who would constrain you to do them reverence. Money, sensual pleasures, vanities, etc., all have something within you to which they make appeal. (J. Glason.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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