Fiery Furnace
A lesson in standing for God no matter what. (Skit for six: Announcer, Talk show Host, King, Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego. The rest of the class acts as the audience.)
TOPICS:Obedience, Persecution, Reputation, Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego, Stand Firm MATERIALS:5 Chairs (4 chairs together for guests and 1 apart for the host) DURATION:Approximately 15 minutes |
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| Announcer | Good Evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our show. Tonight our guests will be: Our king! Nebuchadnezzar, and three of his amazing, death defying subjects Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And now, let’s hear it for our host, David Numberman! |
| Audience | (Cheers and whistles) |
| (Host comes in and sits in host's chair) | |
| Host | Hey, hey, how is everyone tonight? We have a great show for you, perhaps one of our best. So let’s get started. Everyone give a hand for our king, Nebuchadnezzar! |
| Audience | (Cheers and whistles) |
| (King enters and sits on one of the chairs) | |
| Host | Welcome O king. Thank you for joining us tonight. |
| King | My pleasure, what a miraculous story. That fire was… |
| Host | Hold on King, we’ll get to the story soon, but first let’s welcome our other guests. Everyone, please give a hand for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! |
| Audience | (Cheers and whistles) |
| (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego enter and sit on the other chairs) | |
| Host | Great! Let’s see now, we have one, two, three, and four. Wonderful, all four guests are here. So my first question goes to our king. How did this whole amazing event get started? |
| King | It started about three weeks ago. I built a large image of gold. It was about 90 feet high and about nine feet wide. |
| Host | Hold on King. You said 90 feet tall? Wow, that’s tall! Oh, sorry, go on. |
| King | Well, as I said, I built an image of gold. Then I made it a law that whenever the people heard the sound of horns, flutes and harps together, they must bow down and worship the image, or else be thrown into the fiery furnace. |
| Host | Shadrach, what happened next? |
| Shadrach | Well, sure enough, we heard the sound of the horns, flutes and harps, but my friends and I refused to bow down to the image. |
| Audience | (Boos, awes and shameful noises) |
| King | I know! I know! That’s why I had the furnace heated up seven times hotter! |
| Host | Seven times hotter! You said seven? Wow, if it were that hot, you couldn’t even open the furnace door without being burnt to a crisp! |
| Meshach | Very true. In fact, the servants who threw us into the furnace were burnt up and died. |
| Host | Get out of town! So what happened to the three of you? |
| Abednego | First we were bound up and then thrown into the fire. But even though the fire was so hot, we knew our God would be with us. |
| King | Then I saw an amazing thing. Instead of three people in the fire, I saw four. |
| Host | Four! You said Four? How could that be when only three men were thrown into the fire? |
| Shadrach | We were not alone. As Abednego said, we knew our God would truly be with us because of our obedience. |
| Host | What do you mean because of your obedience? |
| Shadrach | Only God is worthy of our praise and worship. It would be wrong to worship anyone or anything else. It was important for us to obey God in this matter and worship Him only, even though we all could have died. |
| Host | But you didn’t die did you? |
| Meshach | Well no! How else could we be here now? |
| Audience | (Laughter) |
| Meshach | The next thing we heard was the king calling: "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the most high God, come out and come here." So we did. |
| Abednego | Not a hair on our heads was singed. We didn’t even smell like smoke after we came out. |
| Audience | (Wows and awes) |
| King | It was truly amazing. So I made a new law that anyone who speaks against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego would be killed, because there is no other God who can save people like that. |
| Host | Well, we are out of time for tonight. I truly want to thank our guests for this amazing story. So remember the number one. It is an important number because as we found out tonight, there is only one true God and we must worship only Him. Goodnight! |
| Announcer | And that concludes our show tonight. Be sure to join us again tomorrow for the David Numberman Show! |
| Audience | (Cheers and whistles) |