No God Like Yahweh

Daniel chapter 3 is probably the best known of all the passages in Daniel, and we read from verse 1:

“King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits”—that’s about ninety feet high—“and its breadth six cubits,” about nine feet wide. “He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And the herald proclaimed aloud, ‘You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you[’re] to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.’ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

“Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, ‘O king, live forever! You, O king, have made a decree, that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.’

“Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, ‘Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now if you[’re] ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?’

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.’”

I think I’ll stop there, assuming that you have been doing your homework and, if not, that you will do it before you go to bed tonight. The balance of the story is there for us to learn.

So, just a brief prayer:

Lord, guide my words and our thoughts, and fulfill your purposes as we turn to your Word together now. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, this morning we ended at the end of chapter 2, with the four Israelite men being promoted as a result of all that had taken place, as Daniel had been privileged under God to give to Nebuchadnezzar both his dream and the interpretation of the dream. And it appeared at the end of chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar had really made a big change. We left him falling on his face, paying homage to Daniel and ensuring that they are promoted and are in an even more privileged position than they were at the end of chapter 1.

Then we come to chapter 3, and we immediately read that “King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold,” and it is described here. He also, we’re told, “set it up [in] the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.” In other words, he set it up on the plain in Shinar, as we noticed in chapter 1, which is where the Tower of Babel had been constructed all those years before, where man had, to his own self-aggrandizement, said, “We will be able to raise a testimony to ourselves, to our power, and our control,”[1] and God had come and scattered them, and the story had continued from there. Well, here you are all these years later, and our man Nebuchadnezzar has decided that he’s going to go ahead and do this.

I suggested to you this morning that the response of Nebuchadnezzar was as the response of others in being confronted by the miraculous intervention of God: that he was charmed by it but that he was not changed by it. Matthew Henry says strong convictions often come short of sound conversions. And it would appear that the response of Nebuchadnezzar had dissipated at least over time. Perhaps there was in his heart a desire, in the aftermath of the events of chapter 2, to really consider this God of Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. But the time lag between the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3 is probably somewhere in the region of nine years. So nine years have elapsed, and in that time a lot has taken place, and now we find that Nebuchadnezzar, who had been described as “the head of gold”[2] in the statue in his dream, has presumably decided, “Well, I liked that part about me being the head of gold. I did not like the part about how my kingdom was going to be collapsed and superseded by another kingdom.” And so it would appear that in his endeavor to stand, as it were, against the word of revelation, against the word of prophecy that had been given him by Daniel, that he pretty well takes matters into his own hands, and he says, “And so I will erect this great statue of my own, and I will raise it there as a symbol, essentially, of the power of Babylon.”

And that’s why in the unfolding story of the Bible, you have both Babylon and Jerusalem appearing again and again. Babylon represents man in all of his proud defiance against God, Jerusalem representing God and his revelation and the submission of people to his law and to his rule. And so, when he does this, he’s taking his stand firmly on the side of that which is in opposition to God, and he is seeking, as had been done before in the Tower of Babel, to make a name for himself.

The God of heaven deposes kings and sets up kings, and he does so to the end that man might know that his kingdom will outlast them all.

Now, there something that is inevitably repetitious about these narratives, isn’t there? We’re already beginning to see it—that in chapter 1, the standout of Daniel and his friends has addressed the need that the exiles had to be assured of the fact that God is in control and that there is no need for them to compromise in their circumstances. In chapter 2, as we saw this morning, they were being reminded of the fact that the God of heaven deposes kings and sets up kings, and he does so to the end that man might know that his kingdom will outlast them all.

Now, here in chapter 3, in the context of, once again, the stranglehold of Babylon on the people of God as represented in these three men, the message that comes to the readers of the book is that this sovereign God is able to deliver his people from the furnace. And whether he does or doesn’t, they mustn’t serve foreign gods, even if refusing to serve these foreign gods should result in their death. And it is that which is here for us in the balance of this record.

Verses 3–6—and we’ll have to move through again quickly. There are big chunks of narrative, aren’t there? In verses 3–6, the program is organized. I tried to point out to you the repetition in “set up,” “set up,” “set up.” I hope you didn’t think I just had gone crazy. When repetition takes place in the Bible, it is there purposefully. There’s no underlining in the Bible. There’s no change of font. There’s no big yellow marker or anything. So one of the ways in which the author conveys emphasis is by repetition. And so nine times that I could count, it tells us that Nebuchadnezzar set this up: he set it up, he set it up, he set it up.

And there’s a kind of irony in the way in which the writer conveys the story, describing twice in short succession “the satraps, the prefects, … the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, [and] the magistrates.” And then, when you just caught your breath, he does it all over again. And I think there is a matter of… There’s a literary element in this, you see. For those of you who do English and who do creative writing and do stories and things, you can learn even from this as well. The Bible is an amazing book on multiple fronts. And so what is being done here is you get this picture of the satraps, the magicians, the enchanters, the… You can see them all coming out in line, and he summons them all, and here they all arrive, and he sets before them this great image that he himself has set up. And then the herald makes the proclamation: “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the cacophony of sound that is going to come—not least of all from the bagpipes—you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.” It’s amazing, isn’t it? “And you should know that if you don’t fall down and worship, you’re going to fall down in a fiery furnace, ʼcause that’s the way this works. If you hear this and you don’t fall down, then this will be your portion.”

Now, the people who were listening to this knew that this was no idle threat. Death by cremation was part and parcel of the Babylonian strategy. Jeremiah 29:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying a lie to you in my name: Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall strike them down before your eyes. Because of them this curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah in Babylon: ‘[And] the Lord [will] make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire.”[3]

So, this is no funny little anecdotal material; this is a dead-serious deal. “I have had this amazing monument put up, and I want universal submission to this monument. This is for all the peoples, all the languages, all the nations.”

If you know your Bible, you know how it ends, don’t you? That it will be all the people, all the languages, all the nations that are represented before the throne of Almighty God, declaring that he is God and that there is no other.[4] But en route to that final denouement, you find that man in all of his opposition to God again and again and again raises these monuments to which he wants universal acclamation. What a world!

And at that time, the three fellows… Incidentally, “Daniel remained at the king’s court.” That’s how 2:49 ends. I assume that’s why he’s not present on the plain of Dura, but I don’t know. But it is interesting that he’s not here. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are here on their own. Presumably, the writer wanted us to know that he was staying there in the king’s court so that when we said just now, like we’re saying, “I wonder where he is?” somebody would say, “Well, he’s probably still in the king’s court,” because that’s probably just exactly what we were supposed to know. But his three friends are in it up to their necks. And what are they going to do?

A pathetic picture, isn’t it, in verse 7, when the peoples heard the sound of the horn and the pipe and everything and they all bowed down and worshipped the golden image that the king had set up? It made me think of Paul Simon: “And all the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they[’d] made.”[5] And you see pictures all around the world of great swathes of humanity bowing down at various shrines and places, often with great sincerity of heart, but not bowing down at the place where God keeps all of his appointments: at the cross of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Every other bowing down to any other altar and to any other place is to bow down in the realm of false religion and emptiness and ultimate poverty of spirit. It is a solemn picture in verse 7: “And they all bowed down.”

Verse 8 is pivotal: “At that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews.” Here we go again. And in verses 9–12, they tell the king what he already knew. They rehearse for him the facts of the matter. And so they say that these characters, “whom you have appointed,” verse 12, “over the affairs of the province”—in other words, there’s a little dig in that, I’m sure. “These are your boys. You’re the one who gave them the great job.” Presumably, there’s a measure of animosity and jealousy contained in that. There often is. And then, “These people pay no attention to you. They don’t serve your gods or worship the image you have set up.” Well, actually, they were paying attention to him, weren’t they? They recognized that they were the beneficiaries of his generosity in the promotions that they’d enjoyed. But it was true that they were not going to bow down to this golden image that had been established.

And so, in verse 13, Nebuchadnezzar, who is enraged by this, has the three of them brought in. And he starts by asking them, “Is it true that you don’t serve my gods or worship the golden image that I’ve set up?” The notion is, he’s incredulous: “Are you guys… I mean, is this true? Everybody bows down to this image. That’s what I’ve said must happen. Now, let me give you another chance,” he says, in verse 15. “I’m going to get the orchestra out again for one more go. We’ll get all the boys out—the bagpipes and the trigon and the lyre and all this cacophony of sound. The symphony will begin again and will play the music, and I’m giving you a chance to fall down and worship the image I have made. If you do it, that’s all well and good. But if you don’t, then immediately you will be cast into this fiery furnace.”

Now, this is where the first readers of this book must have just been biting their fingernails at this point. After all, they couldn’t turn the page; it was a scroll. Presumably, somebody was reading it for them, and they didn’t know what happened next. And the fellow took a big breath. Maybe he had a drink of water, which is a jolly good idea. And so he said, “If you do this, you’ll be fine. If you don’t, you’re going in a fiery furnace.” And the people are like, “Well, what happened? What happened? What did they do?” I wish somehow—I mean this only sort of superficially—but in some ways, I wish that I hadn’t known the Bible from when I was so tiny, ʼcause, you know, I learned the end of the stories long before, you know… Not before I should. But anyway… So, they would be wondering, “What are they going to do?” It’s not a foregone conclusion. And “Shadrach, [and] Meshach, and Abednego answered … the king.”

Now, it’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? Basically, what they say to him is “God is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace.” That’s pretty gutsy, you’ve got to say. On what basis did they say that? Do we have anything in the record of the Bible so far where God has been delivering people from fiery furnaces? Not that I know of! So basically, they’re saying, “Our God, who is a powerful God, is able to do whatever he chooses to do.”

Throughout the history of the Bible, the extraordinary, phenomenal activity of God is actually fairly limited, when you think about it. That’s what makes it so compelling when it happens. You have it, for example, with Moses and the time of the exodus. You have it in the prophets, in their early prophetic ministry. You have it here in Daniel and the time of the exile. And then you have it in Jesus and his apostles. But really, apart from those four periods of time, the unfolding story of the history of God’s dealings is not marked by all of these dramatic things consistently and continually. Now, but in this case, it is: “Our God is able to deliver us. But we want you to know that if he doesn’t do it, we’re not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image you have set up.”

Now, let’s pause and ask the question at this point, shall we? We could ask it later, but let’s ask it now: Would you have bowed down to this image? Would you have done it? Now, be dead honest. Think about it. It was only a kinda one-off deal. “What’s the problem with just once? The statue’s a joke! We know it’s a joke. If we bow down, we’re not really bowing down. We could bow down, but we’re not really bowing down. We’re far from home. No one will know. Our mothers will never find out. They’re not actually asking us to renounce God. We don’t have to give a speech. We don’t have to say anything. We could just slip in with the crowd. We could just be in there. Most people wouldn’t really know. And after all, he’s been very nice to us. I mean, we’ve got a pretty nice house. He gave us that. We got a nice job. It would only harm our conscience for a wee while. There are plenty of other people that are bowing down. Why wouldn’t we bow down? If we bow down, we won’t die. And if we don’t die, then we’ll be able to be useful to God. And God wants us to be useful to him. Therefore, it would seem, Shadrach, a good idea to bow down and bow down real fast. ʼCause if you don’t, apparently…”

But they don’t do any of that. Why? Because they believe God. And they believe that what God said in his law he actually meant:

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in [the] heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.[6]

That was the beginning and the end of it. It wasn’t a matter of pragmatism. It wasn’t that they would be able to benefit in any way from it. They said, “We’re not going to do it, because we’re not supposed to do it.” That was it! “And we’re going to trust God that when he calls us to obedience, he will take care of us in our obedience. And if that means that we die in a furnace, we die in a furnace. If it means he intervenes dramatically, then we’ll deal with that when it happens. But for now, king, you judge for yourself whether it’s right for us to obey you or to obey God. We’re going to obey God. We will not bow down to your great monument.”

And then, of course, you know what happens. The megalomaniac is completely consumed with fury and with rage, and he has “the furnace heated seven times more.” What does that mean? Well, you know, it means simply this: that he got it as hot as he could get it. That’s what it means. It wasn’t as if they needed it any hotter to kill them, but making it as hot as he could, it made the miracle even better than it would have been if it hadn’t been as hot. Because people would say, “Well, it wasn’t that hot, you know.” But I did a little research, and I found that furnaces in Babylon at that time were used for the firing of bricks. The fuel was charcoal, which, given the needed draft, could produce temperatures as high as nine hundred or a thousand degrees centigrade. The furnace probably looked like a railway tunnel blocked at one end, with an entrance at the other, with shafts in the uprights, so that not only would they support the dome, but at the same time, they would serve as ventilation shafts. And if we’re in any doubt about how hot it was, “the mighty men” who were called upon “to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and … cast them into the burning fiery furnace,” and as they were doing so, these men themselves were burned in the process.

So, the miraculous nature of what happens is absolutely undeniable. Incidentally, for those of you who think that you’ve got a duty somehow or another to explain away the miraculous in the Bible, it’s not a good idea. Most of the attempts I’ve ever found to explain why miracles are not miracles make the miracles bigger than they ever were in the first place. I remember reading Willie Barclay, I think it was, describing how Jesus was not actually walking on the water; it just looked like he was walking on the water, because this boat was just very, very close to the shore, and it was actually floating in about four inches of water, or something like that, you see?[7] And I read that, and I said, “Man, that’s an even bigger miracle than Jesus walking on the water! You’ve got this big heavy boat in four inches of water with twelve guys in it, and it floats! That is absolutely ridiculous! Why not just go with what it says?” He who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is able to do what he does. And that’s exactly what happens here.

And in the encounter, there is the mystery of the fourth figure. King Nebuchadnezzar is urgently involved in what has taken place. He rises up in haste—verse 24. He asks his counselors, “‘Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘[Yes].’ He … said, ‘But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they[’re] not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.’” Well, it’s quite striking, isn’t it? They tie them all up, and they threw them all in, and now they’re walking around, and they’re not bound, and they’re in the presence of a fourth.

Well, who was the fourth? Well, there’s a lot of ink spilt over this one, and people can get in a raging argument about whether it is a preincarnate manifestation of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, or whether it is, in fact, an angel, an angelic visitor. I’m inclined to think of it in terms of an angel—not because I don’t believe that that wouldn’t happen or doesn’t happen elsewhere, but just in terms of what is there before us. And I’ll explain to you, as I finish in a moment, why that is.

And “Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace,” and he says, “I want you to come out and come here.” And out they came. And then, here we go: “The satraps, the prefects, the governors, … the king’s counselors”—here they all are—“gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of [these] men.” It’s really terrific, isn’t it? The ones who have come to testify against them, who thought they had finished with them in having them thrown into the furnace, now are the first to testify to the miraculous event that has taken place. They are the ones who verify the drama that has unfolded. Not a hair of their heads was singed. Their cloaks weren’t harmed. There was no smell of fire had come near them.

Have you ever had a barbecue and got up in the morning, and you took the same sweater, and you said, “Wow!” There’s no way in the world that you can be that close to a fireplace and not smell of the fire. But there was nothing of that on them. And so, “Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies.’” That’s wonderful, isn’t it? Look at what God has done!

When Jesus saves, we will ultimately never die.

Remember what Jesus said as he sent his followers out: “Not a hair of your head will perish.”[8] The God who had delivered his people from Egypt, who had brought them into the bondage of this exile, is the one who has now delivered his servants in this extremity. He doesn’t deliver them from the fire. He delivers them in the fire. And this angel, who delivered them, saved them, but they would one day die an inevitable death. When Jesus saves, we will ultimately never die. I like the notion of the angel doing what the angel does at the behest of God, making us think of what God is going to do in the person of his Son. The angel joined them in the furnace, but the angel did not do as Jesus did—namely, give his life to save them.

What was it that these three characters have done? Verses 28 and 29 tell us, in the words of Nebuchadnezzar himself. He says, “Listen, you fellows, you who have been on the receiving end of this angelic intervention: you have disobeyed me by obeying God; you have yielded up your bodies rather than settling for my command.” In other words, they had chosen to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.[9] And so he makes another decree, verse 29: “Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego [will] be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid [to] ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.” And once again, it ends with the promotion of the three individuals.

Question at the end of the chapter, in light of the beginning of the next chapter: Did Nebuchadnezzar get it at this point? I don’t think so. Because when you read the record, you realize that he was impressed by the miraculous. He was impressed by their faithfulness. Isn’t that what you find people saying? “Well, I read that book about something and so on. It was quite a remarkable book.” “Well, would you like to read the Bible?” “Oh no, I wouldn’t like to read the Bible.” Or they attend a funeral service, and they’re impressed by the way in which the people give testimony to their understanding of God’s promises in Jesus. And what do they say when they leave? “Oh, I admire your faith. I admire your faithfulness.” “Well, can I talk to you about you having faith?” “No, I have no interest in that at all.” It’s not unusual for people to be as Nebuchadnezzar was here.

And one of the questions that I found myself asking, and perhaps you did, too—and with this I will end—is: Did he dismantle this big monument, or did he just leave it there? If he had been truly repentant, the best thing he could possibly have done was take the sucker down. And everybody would have said, “Nebuchadnezzar has been so transformed by the faithfulness of the servants of the living God that he has now, for all time, turned his back on all the idol worship of his heritage and so on, and he’s become a servant of the living God.” I don’t think so. Because when you go into chapter 4, you find him in his proud, arrogant perspective, sitting out on his balcony, playing Ol’ Blue Eyes: “I did it my way.” You read chapter 4 for homework for next Sunday morning, all being well: “To think I did all that, and may I say, not in a shy way. Oh, no,” not old Nebuchadnezzar. “I did it my way.”[10]

Isn’t it amazing how close people can come to the miraculous intervention of God in a circumstance, in a life, and turn around, and walk right outside the door again? I say to you again tonight, as I said to you this morning: you may be charmed by the gospel and yet unchanged by it. You may be brought to conviction and yet remain unconverted. You may be tonight, under the hearing of God’s Word, what I would refer to as an unconverted believer. You are orthodox in your intellectual appraisal of who Jesus is, but you have never as yet taken the idolic structure and crashed it down, saying,

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be
Help me to tear it from [its] throne,
And worship only thee.[11]

Well, we’ll come back to this, all being well, next time.

You know, having said that, I’ll just continue to talk for a moment. Because when you think about this story, again, in the New Testament, and you think about 1 Peter, and you realize Peter says to his readers, he says, “Don’t be surprised at the fiery trial that is coming upon you”[12]—and I don’t think there’s much doubt that he had in mind that picture here from Daniel chapter 3. And in the words of Jesus himself, when he spoke concerning these things, he said, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”[13] In other words, “Who is the god,” says Nebuchadnezzar, “who can rescue you from this furnace?” The inference being, “There is no god.” And the answer is, “Yes, there is. And he is the only one who can rescue us.”

Well, Jesus ended that by saying, “He who has ears [to hear], let him hear.”[14]

Father, we want to be able to navigate our way through these things in a way that does not do disservice to the wonder of the record, that doesn’t play fast and loose with the way in which the story unfolds. We do long, Lord, that you might form in us, in these days where secularism pushes back again and again against the cause of Christ in the realm of education, in the arena of ethical policy, in the matters of public welfare—Lord, the court of public opinion is increasingly a fiery furnace. Just to say the things that we are saying and reading now…

Lord, prepare us for days like this kind of day, so that we might be able to find our confidence in you, a God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly than all that we can ask and ever imagine;[15] that we’re able to affirm the fact that in all things, you work for the good of those who love you, who’ve been called according to your purposes.[16] Preserve your people, Lord, in our day, and fill us with an increased sense of faith and confidence in you, that we might serve you. For we pray in your Son’s name. Amen.

[1] Genesis 11:4 (paraphrased).

[2] Daniel 2:38 (ESV).

[3] Jeremiah 29:21–22 (ESV).

[4] See Revelation 7:9.

[5] Paul Simon, “The Sound of Silence” (1964).

[6] Exodus 20:4–5 (ESV).

[7] William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 2, Chapters 11 to 28, rev. ed., The Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 105, and The Gospel of John, vol. 1, Chapters 1 to 7, rev. ed., The Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 208.

[8] Luke 21:18 (ESV).

[9] See Hebrews 11:25.

[10] Paul Anka, “My Way” (1969).

[11] William Cowper, “O for a Closer Walk with God” (1772).

[12] 1 Peter 4:12 (paraphrased).

[13] Matthew 13:41–43 (ESV).

[14] Matthew 13:43 (ESV).

[15] See Ephesians 3:20.

[16] See Romans 8:28.