But If Not

Three young men, a gold statue ninety feet high, an orchestra, and a furnace. Everyone knows they came out alive. The story is not about that. It is about the two words they said to the king before they went in, when they did not know they would come out, and about who was seen walking in the fire with them.

The plain of Dura

They had been taken from Jerusalem as boys and renamed. Their real names were Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, "the LORD is gracious," "who is what God is," "the LORD has helped"; Babylon renamed them for its gods, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego (Daniel 1:7), and gave them government jobs, and for years they did them well. Then "Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura" (Daniel 3:1), and gathered every official in the empire, and a herald cried: "at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image… And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace" (3:5-6).

The music plays, and a plain full of people goes down on its face, and three men are left standing up. It does not take long for someone to notice. "There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon… these men, O king, have not regarded thee" (3:12). Colleagues, most likely; the sort of report that gets written about foreigners who have been promoted.

But if not

Nebuchadnezzar is furious, but he gives them a second chance, and he gives it in the form of a question that is really a threat: "if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" (3:15). Who is that God. He has asked the right question by accident. And they answer him, and it is the answer this story exists for:

We are not careful to answer thee: we do not need to think about it. Our God is able. He will deliver us. But if not. Read those two words slowly, because everything depends on them. They are not saying God will save them; they are saying He can, and that whether He does or not changes nothing about what they will do. Faith that only stands while the fire is unlit is not faith in God, it is faith in an outcome. These three had settled it before the music started, and what they had settled was not that they would live. Chrysostom, preaching in a city under the emperor's threat, saw where the victory actually happened:

The wreath was on their heads at "but if not." The furnace was afterward.

Seven times hotter

"Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed" (3:19). He orders the furnace heated seven times over, has the strongest men in his army bind them, and they go in "in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments" (3:21), fully dressed, because there was no time to strip them. The soldiers who threw them in are killed by the heat at the door. And the three "fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace" (3:23). Bound. Fell. That is the last thing anyone expects to see of them.

Four. Loose. Walking. Three men fell in bound; four are walking around, and the only thing the fire burned was the rope. And the fourth, says a pagan king who has no idea what he is saying, looks like a son of the gods. The church has never been able to read that verse without seeing who it was. Whoever the fourth was, He did not pull them out of the fire. He got in.

"upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them" (3:27). Not even the smell. And the king, who had asked "who is that God," answers his own question in front of the whole empire: "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God" (3:28). Yielded their bodies. He understood what he had watched. They had handed themselves over before they knew the ending.

Cyprian wrote that to men in prison waiting for their own executions, in the persecution of Decius. He did not promise them the fourth man would put the fire out. He promised them He would be in it.

Where this lands

Isaiah had said it a century before, to the same exiles: "when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee" (Isaiah 43:2). Walkest through. Not around. Peter, writing to Christians who were about to find out what Nero's Rome did with them, told them not to be surprised "concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you" (1 Peter 4:12). And Hebrews puts them in the roll of faith: "Quenched the violence of fire" (Hebrews 11:34). By faith. The faith was "but if not."

Most people who have prayed for deliverance have not got the furnace-with-no-smell ending, and the story knows that; the three men knew it going in. What they got, and what everyone who says "but if not" gets, is the fourth man. He does not stand at the door. He is not seen until you are inside. And the king was right about His form, though he could not have said why: it was the Son of God, who would one day yield His own body to a fire that did burn, so that the rope would be the only thing it ever took from His people again. But if not. Be it known. That is the whole confession, and it has never once been made alone.

Related: Tested, Hope, Daniel and Revelation, Read Together, and Songs in the Night. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.