Words and Works of Faith

Daniel tells us of an incident where 3 men who had been taken captives,  were told by God to live their lives without rebellion, have families and succeed until he brought them back.  These 3 were castrated and made servants of a pagan king and his court, yet they stood for what they believed – what they knew in their insides was true, though everything in the moment would seem to stand against that truth.

So the king came to them and talked to them about their stand and about their failure to comply with his wishes and their refusal to acknowledge the inevitable.  Then he gave them another chance.  He would sound the cue one more time just for them.  They obviously had his attention and a certain amount of respect but he was the king.  He warned them that if they failed him, no one would deliver them from him.

I don’t know if they conferred or if they answered in chorus, but I know they all agreed.  “We don’t have to be careful about our answer,” they said, “because our God will deliver us from you and your anger.  But if not, well, we won’t do it anyway.”

That made the king boil with rage and he irrationally ordered that a sufficiently hot fire be increased greatly and that these arrogant, insolent individuals be tied up –also an irrational decision if you think of it- and tossed into it.  He lost some good and faithful trained soldiers in the whole thing and then looked in to see that the 3 had been joined by a 4th and they were all unharmed inside the fire.

We get the symbolism and we celebrate the victory of these faithful men who weren't singed or injured in anyway.

Question 1:  Weren’t they supposed to live in peace and submit to the authorities over them knowing that God appoints rulers?

Question 2:  Once they confessed their faith that God would save them, wasn’t it a lack of faith for them to say “But if not . . .” Wasn’t that a wavering faith?

I will not belabor the similarities to our own world and its Godless efforts to weaken us and enslave us by stripping our dignity, questioning our right to believe, and acclimating us to accept carnal living and thinking.  I doubt there is a need, but if you want to debate that, I will let you flesh that one out without me, though I’m not opposed to honest questions or opinions. 

The end of the story gives us a view of God’s reaction to what they did.  On both counts the action of God exonerated them, but for the sake of arguments being waged about our testimony and moral stance in today’s amoral world, I will address the questions anyway.

Question 1:  We are commanded to live in peace as best we can and as it depends on us.  We are not to be punching the world in the face.  We are not to be the aggressors in the argument nor are we to be violent.  We are to be testimonies to the grace, power and rightness of God’s plan and we are commanded to stand firm in faith and in our convictions.  We are salt and we are light.  God is big enough to take care of his reputation, but be assured, Satan will bring the fight to us.  If we suffer, it should be for doing right not for being a giant pain in bootie of society. 

That said, there is a time to take a stand.  As I’ve said, Satan will be sure the fight is brought to us.  Jesus said “They will hate you, for they hate me.”  We have the right to say “No, I cannot go that far for peace, though I will not bomb your office in retribution.”  If we are to follow the Spirit of God, we must be willing to obey his voice when he says ‘Stand up’ and when he says ‘Shut up.’  We must be willing to speak when he says speak and pray when he says pray. 

I’m sure there were more Israelites who were chosen to be court servants, but the ones who are singled out are the ones who stood up when they were forced to cooperate with practices that watered down or directly disobeyed the commands of God and said “We cannot agree; we cannot cooperate.”  They didn't poison the food supply of the king.  They didn’t set fire to his storerooms full of forbidden foods.  They simply said “We can’t.”  But through God’s spirit, they became rebels with an alternative plan and God gave them favor.

In the second incident recorded, and the reading indicates there were more incidents that were not recorded, they were being forced to worship an image set up by the king.  So what if they had bowed their knees and stayed true in their hearts?  As long as the heart was pure, what is the difference?  Wasn’t the king the guilty party anyway for ordering them to do it?  Again, if you stand for righteousness, if you are true to God, Satan will be sure the fight comes to you.  These men had gained a leadership position and a reputation through standing for their belief and the indigenous servants didn’t like it one bit. They pointed out the non-cooperative behavior to the king. The three were not betraying or opposing the king, they were simply saying “No.  I cannot do that,” based on what they knew God had said.  Their allegiance was to God while their service was to the king.

They were not disrupting funerals or bombing offices, they were simply standing on what they knew to be right; they were obeying a higher calling.  That was more important than their reputations, their jobs or even their lives.  Why do we think the world will applaud our stand for God or our steps toward righteousness?  When obedience ends in death, death is transcended.  One man wrote “A dead prophet makes no converts.”  Yet life and death are in the hand of God, not man and an unfaithful prophet makes a difference in favor of the enemy of God. 

We must, however, be sure we are listening and hear the voice of the spirit and not the voice of a man with his own agenda.  That comes from the conditioning of repeated obedience through the smaller matters.  God honored the obedience of these men with amazing divine action.

Question 2:  Many people speak of our testimony and our assertions of faith as though what we say is the real value of faith.  Peter denied Christ, yet Christ was on his side and prayed for him to be able to fulfill his calling.  Peter could never undo his denial of Christ, but he went on to be a giant of faith and stood for Christ in the face of governmental, religious, and even colleague criticism.  Denial of Christ isn’t one word on one night around a campfire.  It is a life style that results in disbelief and disassociation.  You can deny Christ and never speak the words “I don’t know him.”

Some people ask for healing.  They speak it into their lives or the lives of others and expect that word to hold power.  But they forget that the power lies in the word of God that refuses to go back without accomplishing what it was sent to do.  My word really does not have that kind of effect unless it is bound to the living word breathed by God into my spirit.  If it has that, it will not be ineffective no matter how weak I am.  When I pray, I am either praying to my own psyche –which is useless, or I am speaking to the unlimited God of the universe which holds all the power I could imagine.  Prayer is not a wish list for us to command.  The word of God will not be bound to our arrogant or selfish desires.  It has no sticking power there.

So what did these guys say exactly?  Well they didn’t say “God can do this, but that doesn’t mean He will.”  They didn’t say, “It may be my time to die.”  They said “God will deliver us from you.  But if not, we still stand on his command.”  I believe they were saying “There is something more important than us being rescued.”  I believe they were saying “Pleasing the God of eternity is more important than living in this temporary world.”  They were standing firm, believing that God would do something miraculous with their testimony in life or death.  They were believing in plans, in hope, in the future.  They were proclaiming the awesome power of their God to control the universe for them and still conceding that he would be awesome and they would win regardless of what it looked like to the king.  The result is laid out for us as an example of how faith works.

In the coming time, we will face conflict.  There will be miraculous events in the conflict.  How we relate to God’s personal voice within will determine our part in both the conflict and the miraculous. God delivered Peter from the prison in an amazing miraculous act.  God empowered Steven to endure death by stoning and his death was a testimony to many and resulted in the eventual salvation of one of the key men in the spread of the gospel.

First, we must know what God has said about good and evil so we can avoid personal pits that trap us in sin or unbelief. The Psalmist said “Your word is buried deep in my heart so that I will not sin against you.”  Second, we must know the voice of God as it speaks today, and determine to obey before we hear the word. Third, we must seek wise Godly counsel and wait for God’s command to speak or act.  We are needed; we are privileged to be part of the amazing family and work of God in this day.  Let us stand firm and see the salvation of our God.