The Fire (Part 2)

We call three men out of the fire, and they don't even smell like smoke. All of a sudden, we're talking about a God who saves His servants. We're talking about a God who protects every single hair on their heads. We're talking about a God who lets His people walk out of the fire.

And somehow, we're not talking about a God who walks into it.

Everybody seemed to miss this. The story in Daniel 3 continues:

Nebuchadnezzar said, 'Praise the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He sent his angel and saved his servants, who trusted him. They disobeyed the king and risked their lives so that they would not have to honor or worship any god except their own God. ...No other god can rescue like this. (v. 28-29)

No other God can rescue like this, but that's not the story. The story is that no other God is stepping into the fire like this. 

We all have some measure of fire in our story. We all have trials and troubles. We're all thrown into things we'd rather not be involved in, forced into battles we don't want to fight. And we, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, often find ourselves saying, My God can save me from this trouble...

What we forget is what follows, ...But if He doesn't....

Because we read stories about the God who saves, and we start to think that if He doesn't save us, He must not be God any more. Or we must not be worth it. Or He must not like us. Or He must not be strong enough. Or maybe we're not strong enough. Or...

None of that is necessarily the case. We can't judge our God by wins and losses. We can't believe in Him based on saving graces. What God has always told us is the most true about Him is His presence. We have to put our faith in God based on whether He shows up or not. Whether He's here or whether He's not. What He does when He gets here is irrelevant (kind of); it's whether He's here at all that tells us who He is.

And I am with you always, until the very end of the age.

That's real. That's the truest thing God ever says about Himself. I am here. I am with you. Look around you in the fire.

Here He is. There are four men in the fire.

Does it matter if they walked out smelling like smoke or not? Not really. I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't. Does it matter if they walk out at all? No. Is that hard to believe? Maybe.

But let's say they didn't walk out of the fire. Let's say Nebuchadnezzar throws three men in the fire, looks into the furnace and sees four walking around, those four burn to a crisp, and the king has done what he set out to do. Is God less of a God? No. Because everyone has seen the fourth man. They know that this is a God who, even when He does not save, comes into the presence of His people. Even into the fire.

Don't you think that's going to make an impression?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have prefaced this entire fiery journey with the words quoted above: We know our God can save us...but even if He doesn't.... As soon as the king sees the fourth man at all, he knows that they were right. This, indeed, is not merely a god; this is their God. And what other God does this for His faithful?

There's not one.

Call out to God in the fire. He is able to save you. But even if He does not...He'll be there. He'll come to you when you cry out. He'll walk into the fire just to be in your presence, just so you can be in His. He'll stand there with you with flames all around. And whether you walk out without a hint of smoke or the hairs on your head are still smoldering or you don't walk out at all, know this:

I am with you...in trial, in trouble, in fire, in fear, in hope, in joy, in doubt, in faith...always.

The Fire

There's an interesting story in Daniel 3. It's a story that I have to admit, I've read many times and even been part of an entire VBS centered on the story of Daniel, and still missed this detail. It's the story of three men who walk out of a fiery furnace. Sort of.

Let's look at the text, starting in verse 19: (this one's kind of long. Hang with me.)

Nebuchadnezzar was so filled with anger toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that his face turned red. H ordered that the furnace should be heated seven times hotter than normal. He told some soldiers from his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego so that they could be thrown into the blazing furnace. Then the three men were thrown into the blazing furnace. ...The king's order was so urgent and the furnace was so extremely hot that the men who carried Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were killed by the flames from the fire. So these three men...fell into the blazing furnace. They were still tied up. ...The king replied, 'But look, I see four men. They're untied, walking in the middle of the fire, and unharmed. The fourth one looks like a son of the gods.' Then Nebuchadnezzar went to the door of the blazing furnace and said, 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego - servants of the Most High God - come out there.'

For a minute, we pause here because this is the first interesting thing that happens in this story. (Ok, the first interesting thing I'm going to talk about today.) The Babylonian king, in his anger, has condemned three men to die. He throws them into a furnace so hot that it just killed a few of his guards. He's astonished to realize there are four men in the furnace now, one of whom looks like 'a son of the gods.' And yet, when he starts calling people out of the fire, all he wants are the original three. 

Shadrach. Meshach. Abednego. Come out! Fourth guy...whoever you are...son of the gods...you seem pretty comfortable in there, so.... The one guy that's caught his attention, he does not call out of the fire. He does not request a meeting with the son of the gods. He doesn't want to see what he looks like or shake his hand or ask him any questions. Instead, he focuses on the three guys he already knows and pulls them out of the fire to start talking a little bit about this God of theirs! He's real! He's a real God! Nebuchadnezzar just saw him with his own eyes...sort of.

He was a bit obscured in there by all the smoke, I'm sure.

It wasn't until my most recent reading of this passage that I started to wonder why Nebuchadnezzar had no interest in actually meeting this God. It seems to me the likely thing to say would not be 'Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego...' but 'Hey, all ya'll....' and invite the fourth man out of the fire, as well. I mean, wouldn't you be curious? Wouldn't you want to know? Nebuchadnezzar is about to admit the divine nature of this whole experience, and yet, he's left the divine in the furnace. (Because God does not come where He is not invited.)

It made me wonder about some of us. It seems there are a lot of us content to meet God only through the experience of others. That it's really cool for us to watch God work in someone else's life, but we still hesitate to invite Him into ours. We're interested to hear the story, to listen to the tales of trust and provision. And we're content to focus on the three guys who don't even smell like smoke (verse 27).

There's one tragic flaw in this, and that is that we miss the most important message of who God is. Nebuchadnezzar missed it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego may have missed it. In fact, nobody in all the book of Daniel seems to notice at all the most important message of God here. The coolest thing God does in this whole story is not that He saves His servants from the fire. 

Not by a long shot. 

I'll tell you tomorrow what everybody seems to be missing. It changes the way we think about God. It changes the way we think about the fire. 

Future Past

We can't imagine what Forever's going to look like, but there's one thing we can know: our past will be swallowed up in it.

That's different than the way most of us fear it will be. We're looking at all we've been and all we ever hope to be, and so often, it feels like our future is being held hostage to our past. We don't believe we can expect more of ourselves than we've ever been. We don't think we can overcome some of the troubles we've had in order to have anything better. But that's not the reality of the Promise.

The Promise is that our past is already being woven in, and when we reach the future, we find that whatever we've been through, and whatever we've been, is just another part of the beautiful tapestry of all that we are and all that we will become. This Promise is nowhere greater than in the context of Heaven.

Wouldn't that be weird, by the way, if that wasn't the case? If you die and God re-creates you and you find out this life was all for naught? It won't happen. God, and Heaven, are about meaningfulness; nothing you do in His shadow is meaningless. It can't be.

Anyway, I'm taking this idea from a verse in Revelation 1. It's one of those things you have to know some Bible to really piece together, but it can be done beautifully. Let's start in verse 12:

I turned toward the voice which was talking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven gold lamp stands. There was someone like the Son of Man among the lamp stands. He was wearing a robe that reached his feet. He wore a gold belt around his waist. His head and his hair were white like wool - like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like glowing bronze refined in a furnace. His voice was like the sound of raging waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword. His face was like the sun when it shines in all its brightness.

That's enough for now. Jesus sounds a little....well, a little intimidating...in this account, doesn't He? You can say it. He does. But let's look closer at the elements of the story. When we do, we will discover they are the elements of the stories of God's people (and God) across time.

He is standing among lamp stands. Lamp stands were used prominently in the Old Testament as part of the Lord's Tabernacle. So right from the outset of this description of God, Israel was able to connect Him back to His first presence among them - the Tabernacle.

The robe He is wearing also goes back to this, but it goes a little further. One of the priestly garments was a robe, and we know that the priest was required to be fully covered when performing the duties in the Temple. So God is not now just in His tabernacle; He is defining Himself as a priest in it. The belt further identifies Him as the same figure Daniel saw in Daniel 10:5. So here, God is tying Himself back to the story again and again.

His head and His hair were white like wool - and we know that God is the shepherd. He constantly uses the imagery of sheep. He's wanting to evoke those images again. 

His feet were like glowing bronze refined in a furnace. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They were thrown as three men into the furnace but were seen as four men in there, and we know the furnace was used for death but also for refinement. This Jesus is saying, "I am the God who has walked in the hard places with you." And the bronze? It was the king of the Babylonians who had the statue made of bronze.

He held seven stars, in a tradition where the people knew it was God who set the stars in place and held them there. Out of His mouth came a two-edged sword, a verse found in Hebrews. The Word of God...is sharper than any two-edged sword. And go back to John 1: ...and the Word was God. 

His face was like the sun when it shines in all its brightness. Remember the transfiguration?

Yes, this is Jesus. And we know that Revelation has much to reveal about the day that is coming. We know that all of these symbols say something about tomorrow as much as they would ever say anything about the past. It's important not to lose that. But it's also important to know that it's very possible that as the people of God read and heard these words, they couldn't help but think about their own story. The stories they knew so well about where they'd come from and how God had been with them, and here He is, tying those stories to tomorrow. He's wrapping up the past into the future. 

He does the same with us. 

It's hard to see, sometimes, in the midst of the trouble. It's hard to know, or even to believe, that things could maybe ever be different. It's easy to feel like tomorrow is somehow hostage to today. But it's not. It's always today that has to answer to tomorrow. And God is already busy weaving your past and your present into His Promise. It's all going to come together. 

Really.

Unfathomable

It's hard to imagine God naked. Or ourselves naked, for that matter. But the truth is it's hard to imagine what anything is going to be like when Forever comes. Or even when tomorrow comes.

One of the cool things about God is that He promises things aren't going to be like this forever. Sometimes, that's a promise for Heaven and for the world to come. Sometimes, that's a promise for tomorrow and the temporal world. The trouble is that in a fallen state, we can't really imagine things ever being much different.

Think about Heaven for a minute. Think about the promise that we all share. What do you imagine Heaven to be like? If you're like most of us, myself included, you imagine Heaven to be pretty much like this except with no problems. And by no problems, you often mean...not the problems you have now. And by not the problems you have now, you very frequently mean...things will sort of still be like they are but it won't bother you any more. 

Right?

You'll have all the strength and all the joy and all the peace you need to deal with life however it is, and so it won't necessarily be that life isn't hard any more; it will be that life doesn't feel hard any more because you're going to be okay with it. What a shallow vision of Heaven! (And again, I'm condemning even myself here.) God never said about the world to come that "you're going to be okay with it." Is that Heaven? Could it even be? He said, "Things are going to be okay."

That means you won't need all that strength, joy, and comfort. You won't have to be okay with things because things will be okay with themselves. It's not that things are going to get easier; things are going to get good. Can you even let yourself think about that? Is there a way for our human minds to fathom what "good" even means? I don't think there is.

I don't think there is because I have tried. I know many others who have tried. And in all our visions of what is good, we hold a shadow of what is now bad. Good is comparative, not objective. It's an improvement, not an initiative. It is a renewing but not necessarily a restoring. That's tragic. I don't fault our fallen brains for not being able to conceptualize a world un-relative to the Fallen, an eternity where there won't even be an echo of time. I think we're sort of trapped in that. But I wonder what we're missing in our lack of imagination.

It's not always Heaven. Sometimes, God gives us a promise for this world and it's just as hard to hold onto. Sometimes, God promises to take something that's broken, something that's been broken for a very long time, and restore that broken thing in you. He leads you through the journey, takes you on the steps, calls you forward into something new. And I guarantee if you're honest with yourself, there will come a point in any restorative journey where you find yourself with the haunting realization that whatever this broken thing is, it's been your truth for so long that you can't even imagine what life would be like without it. You know in your head that it's going to be different, but you can't understand what different even means. You have no concept of it. You have no imagination for it. 

Whether that's because we can't imagine or we're afraid to let ourselves, I couldn't tell you. Maybe it's different for everyone. But I wonder sometimes what our lack of imagination is keeping us from. 

So what? What's the point? Or what's the answer? I don't know. It's just something worth thinking about, don't you think? It's worth wondering what we're not wondering. It's worth imagining a world in which we can truly imagine. It's beginning to think about fathoming the unfathomable and putting a vision to the yet unseen.

I don't know that we can. I don't know that it's possible for any of us to fully escape our fallen mind, our broken state. But I know this shouldn't keep us from trying to dream. It shouldn't keep us from understanding there is so much beyond our understanding and throwing ourselves into the process God has laid out before us, following His steps because we know they lead to somewhere beyond our wildest imaginations. It's hard when we don't know what that promised thing looks like. It's hard when we can't wrap words around it. Or even feelings. But He promises this:

It's gonna be good.

Anatomy of a God

Adam and Eve weren't the only naked beings in the Garden, by the way. God was naked, too.

Don't write me off as crass; I'm not trying to be. But what is it about us that we always picture Adam and Eve in fig leaves and God in a flowing white robe? We're afraid, even today, of the nakedness of Creation. We're afraid of things as they were intended to be. And even for those of us who could possibly imagine Adam and Eve in all their created glory (naked), we can't fathom God without His robe. 

God's robe in the Garden is our creation, not His. 

God created this world on the foundation of love, and in love, there is nothing He had to hide from us. He placed knowledge and life in the fruit of the tree so we wouldn't be so distracted by these qualities in Him, and He gave us Himself. After all, we were created to love Him, and He created us in love, and love cannot exist where there are secrets. Love cannot exist without openness, without honesty. Love cannot exist in a place where either party is less than the full measure of themselves. Not true love, anyway, and don't you think God envisioned this Creation as a place where true love is possible? 

If true love is possible, God is naked, too. 

There's nothing we can't know about Him. Even today, one could make that argument. God gives us everything we need to make an informed decision on who He is. Yes, some things in a fallen world still require a measure of faith, but the information is still there even if we don't see the implementation of that information. That is, we see echoes of God's justice even when it doesn't feel like such a just world. We see remnants of His faithfulness when it feels like He has abandoned us. We hear whispers of His grace when we're least deserving of it. The haunt of holiness is all around us, and it continues to make love possible between the Fall and Forever.

The same is true, by the way, of the coming Heaven. Heaven is a place where shame will be defeated, where man returns to his original form and stands naked before God. Revealing, without shame, who he is. And where God stands naked before man, revealing, in glory, all He is. And you know what? We're all going to be okay with that.

We're going to be okay with that because there is no shame, no grief, nothing lesser. Everything is "good" again, and there's no reason to hide. We'll understand everything we were created to be and everything the Creator is and it's all going to be okay. 

Yet here we are again, and I can't help but reflect on knowing that when we all imagine Heaven, God's still wearing His flowing robe. He's covered in white; I'm clad in jeans and a t-shirt. (Don't get me wrong; I look good, finally, like one of those jean ads, but still....) In Heaven, there will be no need for jeans, no need for T-shirts, and no need for robes. God can't wait to show us exactly what He looks like.

And I can't wait to see under His robe.

I can't wait to see what mercy really looks like, in a place where I'm not going to need any more of it. I can't wait to see grace in the flesh, and in everything else around me. I can't wait to see what holiness really is, what it looks like to be un-fallen, what it looks like to be whole. I can't wait to see what righteousness and justice and peace and faith and joy and comfort and presence look like....all wrapped in love. 

I can't wait to see what Love looks like. 

These are things I can't fathom here, things I can't know in a fallen world. But this much I do know - every one of these things is naked. And as much as that makes my skin chafe now to think about, I can't wait to see it.