Daniel 3:26-27 NIV “Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, 27 and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.”

This passage of scripture comes from an Old Testament book written by the prophet, Daniel. As a young man he was taken captive and drugged from his Hebrew home by the Babylonians to be retrained for leadership along with his peers in the courts of King Nebuchadnezzar. Through the favor of God in their lives and their unwillingness to compromise their beliefs, the four friends were quickly elevated to high positions in the kingdom. But an unforeseen problem occurred one day when the King demanded that all of his subjects bow down in worship to a statue that he had erected of himself. As devout Jews, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were unwilling to waiver in their faith and obedience to the law to accommodate this royal decree. They refused to bow down, resulting in a furious king and a piping hot furnace as punishment. King Nebby had them tied up and thrown into the midst of this blaze. The Bible says that it was SO hot that the men throwing them into the furnace actually died from the emanating heat. 

So let’s jump ahead in the story…after throwing three young men into the fire, the King sees four figures walking around in the midst of the furnace. And the fourth looks like “a son of the gods”!  And here is where we find this amazing line: “the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was the hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.”

All four of these miraculous proofs were sure signs of divine intervention! I mean who among us has ever sat near a campfire or walked in and out of a BBQ restaurant and not had the smell of smoke linger for hours afterwards? Just this week I was patching up and repacking our church tent four days after Saturday’s Broomfield Days festival and the smell of a nearby food truck grill was still saturating the canvas. It’s simply a natural impossibility that you don’t smell like smoke after being near a fire!

But it’s also recorded in Matthew 19:26 “Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” 

It’s possible because there is a fourth man in the fire! Listen, I don’t know what life is throwing at you in this season. There’s a good chance that it isn’t something that you were expecting to go through, and maybe the furnace feels hotter than it’s ever been before! The pressures keep mounting in the area of finances or the frustrations seem overwhelming in a current relationship. Maybe you or a loved one have had to navigate some really hard challenges in your health. I’m praying today that the reality of the fourth man will become your personal revelation, and that you will come out of this moment with a renewed sense of freedom and no lingering residue of the experience! The test will become your testimony of God’s faithfulness to see you through.