What god is there who can deliver you out of my hands? (Daniel 3:15)

 What god is there who can deliver you out of my hands? (Daniel 3:15)

The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is well-known, found in Daniel 3. These three friends of Daniel are captives in Babylon, and the king, Nebuchadnezzar, has not yet been humbled  by God. He has built a statue in honor of himself and is commanding that everyone assemble and bow to it on signal. The three young men have refused, and now they are being given their last chance:

Dan. 3:15 “Now if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery and bagpipe and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, very well. But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?”

The story is highly stylized and polished, and the repeated references to musical instruments and fiery furnace indicates that Nebuchadnezzar was conditioning the people to respond to his whims as though they were lab rats or Pavlov’s dogs. But not all the rats and dogs were complying.

We are all conditioned in certain ways, even to the point of being conditioned to resist being conditioned, or not. We live by patterns much of the time. But these boys were not having it. They stood against the authorities and the compliance of the masses, and they stood for their faith for their God.

Dan. 3:16 “Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. ¹⁷ “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. ¹⁸ “But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

The one, living and true God is able to deliver. He does it in different ways and at different times, though He has done it chiefly in the gift of His Son to die on the cross and rescue us from ourselves and this world system that has only temporary blessings to offer. God’s deliverance may be temporal, evidenced over the centuries and around the world, but often His deliverance waits for eternity, in which death is vanquished and life is everlasting. Faith in this God allows us to “stand against,” and also to “stand for.”