The Prayer From Inside the Fire

Some of our suffering in this life doesn't come from illness. It doesn't come from accidents. It doesn't even come from the normal course of life in a broken world.

It comes from other people.

A colleague takes credit for your work. A family member spreads a version of events that makes you the villain. Someone with power over your livelihood makes a decision that is careless, or worse, deliberate. Someone accuses you unjustly, and the court of opinion (or maybe even a real court) convicts you, despite the fact that you are not guilty of precisely that which you were accused.

And the wound is not just the loss. The wound that really festers is the injustice of it.

Something in us cries out that this should not have happened. We grow angry, restless, and resentful. We rail against the injustice committed against us, and beg for God to right the wrong.

We can live for years in that cry. Over time, it becomes the very shape of the house we live in. We rehearse the case, sometimes during a succession of sleepless nights. We assemble the evidence and imagine if only people saw the truth you'd be vindicated, if not wholly, at least in part.

But that vindication never comes.

And all the while the furnace burns as hot as ever. Not just encroaching on our flesh, on our external lives, but from within our hearts.

The Book of Daniel gives us three young men in an actual furnace, and one of them prays.

His name is Azariah, Abednego by the Babylonian name he was given. He stands in flames heated seven times hotter than usual (and the "usual" would be enough to complete most executions).

He's condemned by a king who considers himself a god.

And even as the flames dance around his flesh, he begins to speak. He opens his mouth. And what comes out isn't what most of us would expect. Not a scream in torment. Not a protest against injustice. He speaks praise.

 

Why isn't this in my Bible?

Now, this text isn't in every Bible. I don't want to get lost in the weeds of textual debates here, but I wanted to add a short section here for those of you who want to know. If this interrupts your meditation on the devotion today, just skip it, or come back to it later. But I anticipated some questions about this, so wanted to get ahead of the two-dozen e-mails I'd have to answer otherwise :)

The Septuagint—the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament—is longer than the Hebrew manuscripts. Between Daniel 3:23 and 3:24, the Greek text includes two large sections: a long prayer spoken by Azariah, along with the Song of the Three Young Men.

Without getting into the debate today about whether these specific verses were in the original scrolls, I'll simply point out that the earliest Christians overwhelmingly viewed them as inspired. In fact, these passages became a staple of early Christian worship. The Codex Alexandrinus, a spectacular 5th-century Bible containing almost the entire Bible in Greek, shows that these songs were a regular part of Christian liturgy/worship for centuries.

It is also worth noting that the New Testament writers themselves heavily relied on and quoted from the Septuagint. This Greek translation was highly revered in the ancient world; Jewish legend even held that the initial translation of the Torah was miraculously completed by seventy Jewish scribes whose independent translations matched perfectly. Ultimately, whether originally penned in Aramaic or preserved as separate genuine songs, early believers embraced these words as a vital part of the Daniel narrative.

As to why your Bible might not have these verses. Well, during the sixteenth century (at the time of the Protestant Reformation) there was a debate in the academic community about whether these texts, which survived in Greek but not Aramaic, should be retained. It wasn't a debate that split neatly along Protestant/Catholic lines, as there were scholars representing both sides of the debate in both Protestant and Catholic communities.

However, it was the personal opinion of Martin Luther that only the Hebrew/Aramaic text should be considered inspired scripture... and when he published his German Bible, he published these sections in an "appendix" rather than within the text of Daniel itself.

Given the influence of Luther in Protestant communities, Protestant publications of the Bible followed this convention based on Luther's judgment/opinion. For centuries, even Protestant publications of the Bible followed this convention (keeping them in an appendix), but in the mid-1800s in order to keep printing costs down and to make Bibles more affordable, they were removed entirely.

To put it bluntly, if your Bible doesn't have this in it (either in Daniel itself or in an appendix) was due to an economical decision, not a theological one. I don't know about you. But when I learned this, it kind of irked me.

I say all of that only to point out that when you open your Bible, these verses may or may not be there. You can read the entire text of the prayer I'm writing about HERE>>

Now, history lesson aside, let's return to the prayer itself. Because no matter what Christian communion you belong to, these prayers are quite profound and meaningful.

 

The Prayer from the Furnace

Prayed by Azariah:

"For you are just in all you have done to us, and all your works are true and your ways right, and all your judgments are true... For we have sinned and broken your law in turning away from you; in all matters we have sinned grievously" (Daniel 3:27-29).

Notice, Azariah does not protest his innocence. He does not catalog Nebuchadnezzar's crimes. He looks at the flames and calls them just.

But at the same time, he doesn't even pretend to imagine that the king, himself, acted justly.

Azariah makes that totally clear: "you have handed us over to our lawless enemies, most hateful rebels, and to an unjust king, the most wicked in all the world" (Daniel 3:32).

So there are two judgments running side by side. They don't cancel each other out.

The men are unjust. God is just.

The injustice of the instrument does not compromise the justice of the Hand that permits it.

This is one of the hardest truths in all of Scripture, and we see it throughout the Bible. In Genesis, Joseph says it to his brothers: "you intended to do harm to me, but God intended it for good" (Genesis 50:20). Peter says it at Pentecost about the crucifixion itself: "this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law" (Acts 2:23).

The wickedness is real wickedness. But none of that confounded God's plan. In fact, in God's infinite and mysterious wisdom, he co-opted even these evils into His plan.

That does not mean God is the author of evil, of wickedness, of injustice. It just means that no amount of human evil is so great that God cannot redeem it for His purposes. God is just that awesome.

What this means, practically, is that the question we most want to ask in the furnace is not the question that will save us.

We want to ask: why did they do this to me? The question that opens the door is: what is God doing with me here?

Azariah asks the second question. And the answer he receives is not an explanation. It is a companion. It is God's very presence. We'll touch on that tomorrow. Because there's still more in this prayer I'd like to look at today.

 

The Only Sacrifice Left

These men have lost everything. They're exiles. Their religion is in literal ruins. The Temple is destroyed. There is no altar. There is no priest in Jerusalem offering sacrifices. No lamb, no incense, no place on earth where the prescribed worship of God can be performed.

Azariah says as much: "In our day we have no ruler, or prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, no place to make an offering before you or to find mercy" (Daniel 3:38).

Everything is gone. And in that emptiness he discovers that one offering remains: "Yet with a contrite heart and a humble spirit may we be accepted" (Daniel 3:39).

This is the same discovery David made: "For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:16-17).

Babylon had taken everything from Azariah except the one thing God actually wanted.

The one thing that the other things, the offerings, the temple, all of it, was supposed to represent. For God never needed goats or lambs. He wanted human hearts.

The contrite heart can never be stolen. It can only be forfeited, held onto, denied. And it was that very denial that had led to Israel's just exile.

Living This Week

Three things we can apply to our lives based on this prayer:

First, retire the case. Identify the injustice you have been silently litigating. Write out, in one sentence, what you have been waiting for someone to admit. The wrong that was done to you. How was God dealing with you justly even if the people who did these things to you acted unjustly? Hand it all to God as an offering. You are not saying the wrong was right. You are owning your own sin, your own faults. You're fashioning the contrite heart, not building a fortress around an offended heart. It is the contrite heart that smells sweetest when offered to God. Do this daily if needed. It may take months.

Second, name what remains. Azariah made an inventory of what he had lost and found one thing left. Make yours. What has the fire not taken? Begin there, because that is where the altar is. That is where worship begins. It's where healing begins.

Third, pray for the one who threw you in. Not vaguely. By name, once a day. This is the hardest of the three and the most diagnostic. If you cannot yet do it, say so honestly. Pray if you must, "Lord, I want to want to let go of this; I want to want to forgive. Lord, my desires remain imperfect. Refine my offering!"

The three men walked out of the furnace and not even the smell of fire clung to their clothes. That is the promise held out to the baptized who suffer wrongly: not that the fire will be canceled, but that even the fire can serve God's purpose to refine us into the saints God created each of us to be.

 

God Bless,

Judah