Daniel 4

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Well, good morning church.

As you've heard many times, my name is Josh McCoy and I'm excited to be speaking to you guys from the day today from the book of Daniel.

Um, as we most here know, we've been going through a series about the book of Daniel and today we're gonna look at Daniel four.

So just to give us a little mindset of where we've been, um, let's look over the first three chapters a little bit.

In Daniel one, we looked at different ways that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were able to impress the officials of the Babylonians with their stance on their biblical convictions.

If you remember, it's the first chapter of them getting, um, exiled and them, you know, having changes to their names, but when it came to something important like their diet, they stood up, they stood for their convictions and impressed the officials.

And then in Daniel two, we had house churches, but we looked at Daniel's ability to go to God in an intense situation, right?

And pray and especially pray with his friends, right?

And it was about one of Nebuchadnezzar's dreams.

And when God had revealed the dream to him in his, in his sleep, instead of just going to the king and being like, look what I found, Daniel immediately went back to God, thanking him rather than taking credit for himself.

And then last week, Jaron looked at Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego's faith while they stepped through the fiery furnace and their ability to have faith in God, no matter the circumstance and no matter the result, but they had no idea if they were going to die in the furnace, but they were willing to stand up for their faith, no matter the circumstance, no matter the result.

And through that, God blessed them.

And so this week we're going to look at Daniel four and we will be looking more at the story of King Nebuchadnezzar and we will be looking at kind of one of his second dreams, kind of his story in this.

So it's almost like looking at the, at the antagonist here, but looking at how he's been humbled.

And so today the title of the lesson is serving a God who humbles.

So I have two points and the first point is God needs to humble because we forget, right?

So let's start by looking at Daniel four verses four through 12.

Daniel four verses four through 12.

And it reads, I, Nebuchadnezzar was at home in my palace, contented and prosperous.

I had a dream that made me afraid.

As I was laying in bed, the images and visions that passed through my mind terrified me.

So I commanded that all the wise men of Babylonian be brought before me to interpret the dream for me.

When the magicians, enchanters, astrologers, and diviners came, I told them the dream, but they could not interpret it for me.

Finally, Daniel came into my presence and I told him the dream.

He is called Belteshazzar after the name of my God and the spirit of the holy gods is in him.

I said, Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and no mystery is too difficult for you.

Here is my dream.

Interpret it for me.

These are the visions I saw while lying in bed.

I looked and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land.

Its height was enormous.

The tree grew large and strong, and it touched the top of the sky.

It was visible to the ends of the earth.

Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and it was food for all.

Under it, the wild animals found shelter and the birds lived in its branches.

From it, every creature was fed.

We'll dig more into the dream here in a little bit, but first I want to kind of look deeper into how Nebuchadnezzar talks here, right?

So this isn't the first dream he had.

If you remember Daniel 2, he already had a vision and was terrified for it.

Well, this is round two.

And when Neb realizes he has another dream, the first thing he commands is, he commands the magicians, the astrologers, all of the enchanters, diviners, to come interpret for him.

And just like in Daniel 2, they weren't able to.

And then after he comes, and after that he comes to Daniel.

And then when he comes to Daniel, it's really telling on the quote unquote way he compliments Daniel, right?

In verse nine, he says, you're the chief of magicians.

Like I believe, like you, what do they say, like, right, the, I named you after the name of my God, Belteshazzar, you know, and the spirit of the holy gods.

And if you read it, it's gods, G-O-D-S, right?

And so let us recall, first off, some of the ways Nebuchadnezzar has experienced the quote unquote gods of the Israelites up to this point.

So right in Daniel 2, Daniel interprets the first dream.

And in his response, King Nebuchadnezzar falls to the ground and says that surely your God is the God of all gods.

And then if that's not enough, in Daniel 3, when he throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fire furnace, and right when they're in there, they see a fourth person, right, who they believe to be the son of God, right?

He says he praises to the God of these three men.

So you think that in Daniel 4, he'd have a different response to the dream, right?

He maybe should have gone to Daniel first, right?

But no, he goes right back to the magicians of the time, the astrologers, the people who probably would tell him something that he'd want to hear, not what he needed to hear.

And then when he refers to God as God, he says holy gods.

He kind of goes back to this mindset that Daniel serves like one of many gods or something of that matter, instead of being like, no, like you serve the God of the universe, right?

Nebuchadnezzar does not do this.

He has not learned the lesson of being reverent when referring to the Lord.

And right, we bring that up, and I think so many times like, Nebuchadnezzar, that's pretty dumb, like you should have known better, like all these visions, right?

We shake our head.

We think we would know better.

We think we would have done things differently.

But so often we are just as forgetful, just like Nebuchadnezzar.

And I think on a Sunday when the women are at a retreat, I think it's appropriate to bring up how much we forget our mother's advice in our lives.

I think that's oh so true in my life, unfortunately.

I think my life can be designed as a multiple pathways of me not listening to my mom and then telling my mom, mom, you were right, right?

There have been multiple times.

My mom would tell me something over and over and over again, and somehow I just couldn't figure it out, right?

Whether it be about making sure I did my chores, my homework, advice about friends, that one's been true too many times, you know, about relationships.

So many times I didn't listen, and my mom has been right.

Often it isn't just our parents that we don't listen to or we don't go to in times, right?

We do this with God as well.

Just as Nebuchadnezzar forgot all God had done for him, we forget.

And we, I think there's another slide there I didn't click to.

Yeah, yeah, despite the miracles, Nebuchadnezzar still failed to acknowledge God.

We forget, like we forget just as Nebuchadnezzar forgets, right?

And as we've been looking at prayer through the book of Daniel, right, kind of put us back in this lens of what this means in our prayer life, how many times are we going to prayer first thing when life happens, right?

I think about this so much.

I think about, like when I'm driving, I think it's a simple one, it's so small, we do it every day.

The amount of times I just think about anger, frustration, how I want to get back at this person or whatever, right?

Like instead of breathing and being like, God, I need to be calm now.

I need to be humble.

I need to remember that this anger inside of me isn't the biggest thing, right?

I forget this.

And then even just on bigger things, I think we get so caught up in a day-to-day muck of our lives and we just forget all the great things God has done for us.

And that's, I think, super big, like Nebuchadnezzar, I don't know the exact time span, I didn't look that up, between all of these events, but I can tell you it probably wasn't like this week that happened, next week that happened, and this week, like he probably would have had a different response if it was like that.

But as time goes on, and if you're not getting with God every day, if we're not having our prayer life so strong on a day-to-day basis, we forget so often when time passes.

And so for us, Nebuchadnezzar is a strong warning of what can happen if we don't go to God in our prayer, in our day-to-day lives, and in our event-to-event lives.

And so, with that, I have a second point.

So now that we've looked at why God has humbled us, like why God needs to humble us, let's look at how God does humble us.

And so the point, too, is he helps us see ourselves accurately.

He helps us see ourselves accurately.

I'll just go to the next one so I don't forget.

So we're going to take a look, we're going to jump down to Daniel 4, 28 through 37, but before we do that, this is where we're going to talk a little bit more about the context of the dream.

We're just not going to read it, you know, verbatim, but let's kind of get into this.

So just be following along within Daniel 4 as I talk about this, because it won't be word for word.

So right in the start of chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar has this dream.

It's the dream of a giant tree, and the tree is massive.

It encompasses the whole sky and can be seen at any point over the earth.

As Nebuchadnezzar is looking at this tree, a messenger from heaven comes down and tells him to cut it, but leave the roots.

And so when Daniel is given this dream to interpret, he tells Nebuchadnezzar that the tree is him and his kingdom.

Now, if Nebuchadnezzar doesn't take the chance to acknowledge God as the provider of his expansive kingdom, then he will make the king live like a wild animal for seven years, to eat grass like an ox, to have hair as long as the feathers of an eagle, and to have nails as long as the claws of a bird.

And Daniel, in verse 27, pleads Nebuchadnezzar to repent of his sins and to acknowledge God, and that's what we're going to pick up in verse 28.

It says, verse 28, all this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar.

Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence?

By my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty, even as the words were on his lip, a voice came from heaven.

This is what I decree for you, King Nebuchadnezzar.

Your royal authority has been taken from you.

You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals.

You'll eat grass like an ox.

Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the most high is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and give them to anyone he wishes.

Immediately, what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled.

He was driven away from people and ate grass like an ox.

His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.

At the end of this time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my hands toward heaven and my sanity was restored.

Then I praised the most high.

I honored and glorified him who lives forever.

His dominion is an eternal dominion.

His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the people of earth are regarded as nothing.

He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of earth.

No one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done?

At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom.

My advisors and nobles sought me out and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before.

Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt to glorify the king of heaven because everything he does is right and all his ways are just and those who walk in pride he always is able to humble.

So let's dig into this, guys.

The crazy part about the story is that Nebuchadnezzar had a heads up from Daniel what would happen if he stays prideful, right?

Daniel is quite explicit on exactly what Nebuchadnezzar had to do, plan for plan to change his life, right?

But in verse 30, Nebuchadnezzar must have had amnesia because he forgot about these warning signs, right, that Daniel had told him.

Because when talking about how great Babylon is and the power of the kingdom, who does he give all the credit to?

He gives it all to himself, right?

He doesn't refer to, even the first part, he doesn't refer to any of his amazing advisors.

He doesn't appreciate all the hardworking people that have made this kingdom great.

But most importantly, he doesn't recognize God for giving him this mighty kingdom.

And right, it says in verse 31, God, as these words left his lip, fulfilled the dream.

He stripped all authority Nebuchadnezzar had and made him roam the earth like a wild animal.

Think about how crazy this is, right?

Like if you were a citizen of Babylon, this is the most powerful kingdom of the earth at this point, right?

I think we can correlate this right back with America because we've been more or not the powerhouse of the world since the 1940s, right?

So if you were a citizen of Babylon, and let's say you're going out to the forest to scavenge or whatever.

I don't know exactly how they did things entirely back in the day.

But right, it's a vision walk with me here.

You're out there and you spot someone and you're like, who is that?

And it's this person just eating the grass like this crazy manged animal.

And then you realize, that's my king.

That's the person that there's, there are statues, there's gold statues of that man that if I didn't bow to, my head would have been cut off.

And he's eating grass like a wild animal, like he has no control over himself.

I think about that, like if I saw any of our presidents do that, like we would automatically lose all credit for this person being like, okay, like, what are you doing?

Like, like you're supposed to be the leader of our nation.

What are you doing, you know, looking like, you know, like the craziest 1970s hippie that ever was combined with, you know, like the, like, it looks like, like a drug addiction, right?

This is what Nebuchadnezzar looked like, right?

And for, and even just for Nebuchadnezzar, for most of his life, he had servants to meet his every command.

And then in an instant when he did not recognize God's authority, God turned him into this.

God humbled Nebuchadnezzar, showed him accurately as someone lost without the Lord.

But the dream isn't just about the punishment.

It's about having the humility to acknowledge who God is and what he has given us.

And that is what Nebuchadnezzar does in verse 34, right?

He raises his eyes towards heaven, praises God and understands that there is no one like the Lord almighty.

Now this is something we wish that he would have gotten in Daniel 2.

In Daniel 3 and maybe before this event in Daniel 4 when he actually has the dream interpreted, but it took all of this humbling for him to see the king of heaven rules over everything.

So when I look at this story, and I think especially to start the book of Daniel, like there are, you know, there's like four, no, five main characters, right?

You look at Daniel, you look at Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Nebuchadnezzar.

I think those are the five, you know, main characters.

And in Daniel 1, 2, and 3, we look at kind of, like I said, the pros, like, oh man, like Daniel is so great.

Like we, you know, we look at Daniel's life, his humbleness, his, you know, the outstanding man he was, the high character.

We look at the faith that, you know, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had, and we're like, oh my gosh, like these guys, this is like, this is what it means to be faithful in all these tough times.

And then there's like Nebuchadnezzar, the antagonist, the guy who's making all this happen, right?

Like he's the bad guy that's making their faith look good.

So more often than not, I think I'm Daniel.

I think I'm Shadrach.

I think I'm Meshach.

I think I'm Abednego.

But realistically, through my time on this earth, my heart has been more like Nebuchadnezzar than I would ever like to admit.

Right, a little backstory to the reason I became a disciple was because God needed to humble me.

I feel like a lot of here could probably say the same.

He needed to show me that I was living like Nebuchadnezzar more than I was Daniel.

So a little story, I think this is the first time I've gotten to share a little bit of my testimony with you guys.

So when I was a senior in high school, I had what I thought was the whole world in my hands, right?

I went to a private school in a place called Arvada, Colorado.

I will talk about Colorado many times.

This is the first of many.

The first, the first.

The first, I played basketball there and at my school, like basketball was keen.

The five years before I became a freshman, we'd won five straight state championships, right?

You had this idea if you didn't win a state championship, it was a bad season.

And that is all I wanted to do.

It's the only thing I think that ever crossed my mind, you know, for like 80% of my time through high school.

And so on one hand, I had this, you know, quote unquote, sports career, if you can call it one.

And then on the other hand, in my junior year, I got a girlfriend, who I deeply, deeply cared about, right?

And if most of us can take a step back and just envision high school, again, we are in a high school, it's a perfect setting for this.

You would understand why I thought my world was perfect, right?

But here's the problem with this picture.

Not one ounce of that credit went to God, right?

In my heart, I got the basket, I got to the basketball team, it was my hard work that did it.

And it was my abilities as a younger, a lot skinnier, handsome looking man that got this amazing girlfriend, right?

I created this amazing life for myself.

So in return, God did what he does best.

He humbled me.

So that year, we were really, my senior year, right, we were a really good basketball team, we had a legitimate chance to win it all that year.

And pre-context, we hadn't won it in the three years up to this.

You know, I could have been a part of that, you know, I think about that the year we started, we didn't, you know, I started high school, we didn't start winning state championships.

So, you know, I don't know if there's any coincidence that but it kind of hurt.

But you know, this senior year, we, we were one of the top two seeds.

And we had home court through up to the, they call it the elite eight.

That's when you go to, like, one of the bigger stadiums and you play, right.

And so this is the round of 16.

We get upset at home.

And it was the last time I ever experienced real competitive basketball.

And as a young kid who put so much effort and time into this sport, I was devastated when we lost.

I would say it's probably one of the top three moments I cried for a really long time.

And then to make matters just that much worse, my girlfriend broke up with me two days later.

That, yeah, that, that, that, that game happened on a Saturday.

And then that Monday, my girlfriend broke up with me.

And right as a young kid who had experienced much loss, any real hardship, had been basically skating through life, you know, this whole time thinking I created this amazing world for myself.

God humbled me, you know, and to this point, like, I am so grateful God humbled me in those situations.

I look back, I kind of laugh, I'm like, like, it's a basketball team, right?

Like, I'm so much better off, like, right, I have so many more things to live for in life.

Like, it was a high school relationship, I can tell you guys all about some of the stupid things I did.

And I, you know, if I could go back in time, I'd probably punch younger me for some of the stupid things I did.

But like, in that moment, I was heartbroken.

I had this whole world put up for myself.

And God took it down, right?

But because of that, God lifted my eyes and showed me my life as it truly was, lost without God.

And that summer, I had to really think about that.

I sat with a lot of those emotions, and I worked construction, a lot of it by myself, and I had to think about these things.

And then going into that next semester is when I met a man named Turner Glissman, studied the Bible, and became a disciple.

And so, right, these things are so important, right?

And if we don't live this life in reverence of God, it's a dark path.

Especially when we know the power of God, when He's done the miracles in our lives, when He's changed our lives around and we decide to turn back.

God is not afraid to show us what our lives look like without Him.

And I think we can all imagine or maybe picture what that looks like.

So the application for this week in our lives is one of gratitude.

We need to be praying every day, and those prayers need to be prayers of remembrance.

Remember where we've been without God, and then who we are with Him.

And making sure that when the time comes to acknowledge God for all He's done, that we are not hesitant to do it.

We don't look at ourselves, we look to God.

Prayer is so much about a grateful mindset.

Nebuchadnezzar didn't have one, and it led to him having to be humbled.

Let us not get to this point.

Let us be grateful for all that we have.

With that, that's the end of the lesson point.

This is where we're going to get into communion.

And as we kind of go into the mindset of communion here for a second, let us have a prayer of gratefulness.

Let us remember these things that have come in our lives.

Let us not be Nebuchadnezzar and forget all the great things God has done for us.

Let us pray for communion.

Dear God, I'm just so grateful.

I'm grateful that I can share my life.

I can look back at the senior kid who thought he just had everything, an 18-year-old who thought the world was his, and I am so grateful you humbled me, God.

I'm so grateful that instead of continuing to live like Nebuchadnezzar, I'm trying to live my life more like Daniel, more like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, being humble.

And as we take communion today, God, let us have that mindset.

Let us be grateful for everything we have.

Let us not forget the great things you've done in our lives.

In your name I pray, amen.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

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