How did the three confessors meet this rumble of thunder about their ears?  The quiet determination of their reply is very striking and beautiful.  It is perfectly loyal, and perfectly unshaken.  ’We have no need to answer thee’ (Revised Version).  ’It is ill sitting at Rome and striving with the Pope.’  Nebuchadnezzar’s palace was not precisely the place to dispute with Nebuchadnezzar; and as his logic was only ’Do as I bid you, or burn,’ the sole reply possible was, ’We will not do as you bid, and we will burn.’  The ‘If’ which is immediately spoken is already in the minds of the speakers, when they say that they do not need to answer.  They think that God will take up the taunt which ended the king’s tirade.  Beautifully they are silent, and refer the blusterer to God, whose voice they believe that He will hear in His deed.  ’But Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me,’ is the true temper of humble faith, dumb before power as a sheep before her shearers, and yet confident that the meek will not be left unvindicated.  Let us leave ourselves in God’s hands; and when conscience accuses, or the world maligns or threatens, let us be still, and feel that we have One to speak for us, and so we may hold our peace.

The rendering of verse 17 is doubtful, but the general meaning is clear.  The brave speakers have hope that God will rebuke the king’s taunt, and will prove Himself to be able to deliver out of his hand.  So they repeat his very words with singular boldness, and contradict him to his face.  They have no absolute certainty of deliverance, but whether it comes or not will make no manner of difference to them.  They have absolute certainty as to duty; and so they look the furious tyrant right in the eyes, and quietly say, ‘We will not serve thy gods.’  Nothing like that had ever been heard in those halls.

Duty is sovereign.  The obligation to resist all temptations to go against conscience is unaffected by consequences.  There may be hope that God will not suffer us to be harmed, but whether He does or not should make no difference to our fixed resolve.  That temper of lowly faith and inflexible faithfulness which these Hebrews showed in the supreme moment, when they took their lives in their hands, may be as nobly illustrated in the small difficulties of our peaceful lives.  The same laws shape the curves of the tiny ripples in a basin and of the Atlantic rollers.  No man who cannot say ‘I will not’ in the face of frowns and dangers, be they what they may, and stick to it, will do his part, He who has conquered regard for personal consequences, and does not let them deflect his course a hairsbreadth, is lord of the world.

How small Nebuchadnezzar was by the side of his three victims!  How empty his threats to men who cared nothing whether they burned or not, so long as they did not apostatise!  What can the world do against a man who says, ’It is all one to me whether I live or die; I will not worship at your shrines?’ The fire of the furnace is but painted flames to such an one.