Daniel 2: Faithfulness and rewards.

Where is our discernment? I mean, we have been duped on several occasions over the decades. In fact, I might characterize the church (generic) as being rather gullible. We hear someone say that they are “born again”, they sing songs that COULD refer to Jesus and heaven, or they use language that we expect only true Christians to know and use and we immediately conclude that these people are also true Christians. I dare say that there are people in the church today that would conclude after Daniel chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar had been converted. However, chapter 3 gives a somewhat different view of the king.

Obviously, based on the things that God said about Nebuchadnezzar in the dream and its interpretation, Nebuchadnezzar was an ambitious person. He had high aspirations and perhaps this is why his kingdom was the head of gold and represented so much earthly glory. His ambition is evident in the opening of chapter 3 as he erects a statue of his own (as compared to the one in his dream). This one is all of gold and it is about 90 feet tall. This piece of art was pretty impressive by any standards. However, it wasn’t simply a piece of art. Remember that Nebuchadnezzar was a pagan king in a pagan country and although he had recognized the God of Israel as being special and unusually powerful compared to his own gods, he was still a pagan at heart.

So when the statue was completed, he gathered together all of the leaders that were under his command. He invited them to come and participate in the dedication of this new work that he had made (v. 3). When he had gathered everyone together, he had an announcement made to all who were there. The announcement was that everyone was to bow down and worship this statue when they heard the music begin to play. Sounds a little like church, doesn’t it. After all, we play and sing music when we “worship” god, don’t we. A lesser man than Daniel and his friends might have seen this sight and thought, “What could be the harm in this? After all, it isn’t like this statue is alive or anything.”

Daniel and his friends new that God had commanded that His people should not worship anyone (or anything) except Him. After all, it logically follows that we should not elevate the art above the artist or the music above the musician or the creation above the Creator. What would we (or should we) expect for a reaction from our mother if she cooks a wonderful meal for us to enjoy and we begin to give all our praise and thanks to the food itself instead of to her, after she has prepared it intentionally for us?

If bowing before this image could be viewed as “not a big thing”, then there would likely be little or no consequence to failing to bow. But the king commanded and the herald declared that anyone who did not bow to the image would be thrown into a fiery furnace. This may not have been such an unusual thing as some pagan cultures practiced human sacrifice and this was the type of ceremony where such a thing would have been likely to take place. Also, burning human sacrifices in a furnace was not an uncommon method of performing this type of sacrifice. In any event, by placing this level of punishment on anyone who refused to bow the king made it clear how important this (forced) idol-worship was to him.

Thought: The Scriptures urge us repeatedly to be discerning. Solomon used words like wisdom and discernment over and over in the Book of Proverbs. Also, Jesus said that we would know people by the “fruit” of their lives. We need to be more careful in our examination of people to know for certain what they believe, not just take their word for it. Words can be very deceiving and we often do not interpret words in the same way as others based on the context in which they are used.

Let us determine in our hearts to be more discerning, to exhibit the wisdom of God in our daily interactions with others. After all, we cannot pray for the salvation of a lost person if we falsely believe them to be saved and we cannot encourage the believer if we do not know that they are in the family.

By His grace, there is more to come….