Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. Daniel 3:17-18

The pressure to go along, to conform, to wink at wrongdoing is an old one, and it is one of the greatest challenges of living for God today!   The way to get along is to go along with the crowd. The world hates the whistle blower, the guy who doesn’t cheat on his wife, or the person who refuses to pad the expense account or cheat on the number of hours he or she works. Your integrity becomes an irritation, and your presence becomes obnoxious. But compromising your convictions never wins favor; it only creates greater resentment and hostility because you still are on the other side of integrity.

Long ago a Babylonian king by the name of Nebuchadnezzar, inflamed with his own importance and swelled with ego, passed a law that everyone should bow down to a gold image of himself he had created. And, no matter how foolish it seemed or how much people complained under they breath, everybody did it, everybody, that is, except three defiant young men who refused to fall down and worship an image of gold.

So they got fired? Yes, and no. They eventually did get fired, but not in the way you think they were fired. They received an ultimatum: “Either go along and fall down and worship the image, or you will be thrown into a blazing furnace.” You’ve got to be kidding, you may be thinking. Hadn’t Nebuchadnezzar heard about human rights, or the International Red Cross, or Amnesty International?

Bow down or face the furnace! These three young men, known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18). Issue settled. The bottom line: We believe God will deliver us, but even if He doesn’t, our minds are made up. “We will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up!”

There is liberty in making the decision—no matter how unpopular it is—to do the right thing. You may stand in the company of very few people, but they are the ones of whom the world is not worthy.

If you find yourself faced with the same moral conflict that faced these three men, take time to read Daniel 3 in the Old Testament of your Bible, then turn to Hebrews 11 in the New and there you read of men and women who, in principle, have faced the same situation that now confronts you.

Life is a matter of decisions, and with every choice there are consequences. When you compromise your convictions with the thought of having others’ good will, you end up giving away your very soul. As Tryon Edwards put it: “compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of attaining another—too often ending in the loss of both.”

In the event you don’t know the outcome of the challenge that confronted the three young men in Babylon, here’s the outcome. Their captors were true to their word, and they cast them into the furnace, but lo and behold, the king leaped to his feet and said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods” (Daniel 3:24-25). God delivered those three and used them to change the heart of the king.

Remember, it is always better to lose in a cause that will ultimately win than win in a cause that will ultimately lose.

Resource reading: Daniel 3.