The Parish Magazine June 2023
Serving the communities of Charvil, Sonning, and Sonning Eye since 1869
Serving the communities of Charvil, Sonning, and Sonning Eye since 1869
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
PARISH NOTICEBOARD — 6<br />
Standing firm in faith<br />
About 600 years before Christ, King Nebuchadnezzar of<br />
Babylon swept south with his army, overran Judah and<br />
conquered Jerusalem. He sought out the noblest of Jewish<br />
youths to take to Babylon where, for three years they were<br />
taught to think and act like Babylonians, but four of them<br />
stood firm in their faith.<br />
<strong>The</strong> aim was to make wise courtiers out of the captives who<br />
would then faithfully serve the king so their names were<br />
changed to honour the pagan Babylonian gods — their<br />
Jewish names honoured God. One of their stories is told in the<br />
Old Testament Book of Daniel.<br />
Daniel and his three friends names were changed to<br />
Belteshazzer and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. However,<br />
they stood fast to their faith in God while those around them<br />
wavered.<br />
SOMETHING REMARKABLE!<br />
Things came to a head when Nebuchadnezzar built a huge<br />
golden 90 foot high idol and assembled his musicians. When<br />
they played, everyone had to lie down and worship the idol.<br />
If you refused you would be thrown into a fiery furnace and<br />
burnt to death.<br />
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego would have nothing to<br />
do with worshipping a pagan idol — thou shalt have no other<br />
gods — so into the furnace they were thrown.<br />
<strong>The</strong> furnace was stoked so hot that the soldiers escorting<br />
them died from the heat as they approach it.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n something remarkable happened, a fourth person<br />
appears in the fire and saves them from even being scorched.<br />
Nebuchadnezzar calls the fourth man an angel of God.<br />
This was not the first time an angel of the Lord, or God,<br />
appeared in fire, it happened to Moses when God first called<br />
him, it happened during the wanderings in the desert when<br />
the Israelites were at night guided by God in a pillar of fire,<br />
and when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples on the day<br />
of Pentecost.<br />
We are not told who the fourth person was, and that is not<br />
important. What is important is that God was with Shadrach,<br />
Meshach and Abednigo in a powerfully visible way. It was by<br />
God’s hand they were led out of the fire, and it was God that<br />
Nebuchadnezzar recognised and to whom he decreed that<br />
everyone should give glory to.<br />
DIGGING DEEPER<br />
As Christians we believe that God’s hand that will lead<br />
us is Jesus, for he is the way, the truth and the life. And this<br />
is one of the reasons why some have felt it necessary to dig<br />
deeper into who the fourth person in the furnace was to show<br />
that he was Jesus. Some of their arguments make sense. For<br />
example, one link to Jesus is said to be in Paul’s second letter<br />
to the <strong>The</strong>ssalonians when he writes: <strong>The</strong> Lord Jesus shall<br />
be revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire<br />
taking vengeance on those who know not God, and who obey not<br />
the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. <strong>The</strong>se shall be punished with<br />
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the<br />
glory of his power.<br />
Whether it convinces you or not, there is an undeniable<br />
similarity with story of the fiery furnace in Daniel. Jesus who<br />
comes with fire destroys the wicked but does no harm to the<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Parish</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> - <strong>June</strong> <strong>2023</strong> 17<br />
Mosaic of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in a fiery furnace in<br />
Westminster Cathedral Jozef Sedmak, dreamstime.com<br />
righteous writes Paul, while Daniel says the fire killed the<br />
soldiers but not Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.<br />
This is also is the point of the parable of the weeds that<br />
Jesus told. On the last day, the unrighteous will be weeded out and<br />
thrown in the fiery furnace while the righteous will shine like the<br />
sun in the kingdom of their Father, said Jesus.<br />
SURROUNDED BY EVIL<br />
So what relevance to us does a story from 2,600 years ago<br />
about God leading three people to safety and of one at some<br />
unknown time in the future when Jesus returns to finally<br />
rid the world of evil? Well, they are, of course, both relevant.<br />
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego not only lived in a world<br />
surrounded by paganism but their captors were trying to<br />
indoctrinate them into their ways of evil. <strong>The</strong> parable of the<br />
weeds paints the same picture in the future, where a good crop<br />
is spoilt by evil seeds being sown among the good.<br />
Today the good in the world that God created for us is being<br />
nibbled away by the evil that Jesus promises to deal with at<br />
the end of time. Because there is so much of it everywhere,<br />
and because so many people around us accept it as the norm,<br />
it can often be easier for us to comply with such evil in the<br />
world than to stand firm against it. It’s often easy for us to bow<br />
down and accept it, just as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego<br />
were expected to do. But surely however hard it may be for us<br />
to stand firm in our faith it can’t be as hard as it was for those<br />
three who were prepared to face the fiery furnace rather than<br />
disobey God.<br />
And as God provided someone to lead Shadrach, Meshach<br />
and Abednego to safety, he will do the same for us if we stand<br />
firm in our faith. In fact, the good news is that he has already<br />
provided not one, but two people, for us —Jesus who is the<br />
hand that leads us to an everlasting life with God the Father,<br />
and his Holy Spirit who guides and comforts us and gives us<br />
the strength and the courage to reach out and grasp the hand<br />
that Jesus is holding out for us. For this we should constantly<br />
be thanking God. Amen.