Daniel 4 - A Humbled King

Daniel chapter 4, continuing our sermon series in the book of Daniel, we come now to chapter 4, where we once again meet King Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel 4 · chapter mention

As I asked the children during our children's sermon earlier, I will also ask you to consider.

Have you ever met somebody who had a certain penchant for boasting and bragging about their accomplishments, about their abilities, maybe about what they have, what they've accomplished, what they're able to accomplish.

Some people really like to wave their resume in front of other people's faces.

But we all have a tendency to think a little much of ourselves.

And sometimes we come to moments in life that knock us down a notch or two, humble us a little bit, help us to realize that maybe we're not quite all that.

God can use those moments in our lives to help us walk more closely with Him.

I recall being in the fifth grade, and I was in PE, physical ed, in the fifth grade, and we were playing soccer, and there was a particular student who was quite athletic, very good at all sorts of games, but it wasn't something that he liked to keep a secret.

He liked to remind people of his athletic prowess and his skill, especially on the soccer field.

He was agile, he could kick well, he could move quickly.

In one particular game in PE, we were playing soccer, and this one kid was the goalie.

And when he was the goalie, everybody thought, well, nobody's getting the ball past him.

You know, he is the absolute best athlete.

He can move faster than any ball, he can catch faster than anyone can kick at the goal.

And so during the game, when another student, not particularly known for being athletic, approached the goal about to kick, this student stepped up and had a pretty smug, confident look on his face that he was going to stop this one no problem.

Well, much to everybody's surprise, this other kid, who was not well known for being athletic, kicked the ball right past this athletic star and scored a goal point for his team.

And everybody was stunned.

There was a lot of hollering, a lot of, ooh, ah, and the kid who thought that he was all that just sort of hung his head in shame at having been defeated by the less athletic kid.

Sometimes in life, there are moments that can humble us.

There are moments that can take us down a notch, make us realize that we are not all that.

King Nebuchadnezzar has one of those moments in this passage, in the book of Daniel.

King Nebuchadnezzar comes to a moment where he is humbled, where God has to teach him a little lesson about who he really is.

And when Nebuchadnezzar learns something about who he really is, he does that by learning who God really is.

The path to true humility involves recognizing not simply who we are, but recognizing who God is.

And that's what Nebuchadnezzar learns in the text for this morning.

So as we study this story, it's a story about how God humbles the proud.

And it's a story about how God also wants to humble each one of us so that he can use us more effectively for his glory.

I'm not going to read the entirety of chapter 4.

The text is in the bulletin.

You may follow along.

I will read selected portions of it.

As we come to Daniel chapter 4, we meet again King Nebuchadnezzar, and God has been dealing with him.

Daniel 4 · chapter mention

We've been reading about this king.

In chapter 2, he was given a vision that his kingdom would come to an end.

He was the undisputed military leader of the day, a supreme ruler with armies at his disposal.

He had perhaps every reason to brag and to boast, but God needs him to remember that he's not all that.

In chapter 2, he was given a vision that his kingdom would one day come to an end.

In chapter 3, he then made a statue and demanded that everybody bow down to this statue or they would be put to death.

He was trying to control people's worship, setting himself up as God.

And now in chapter 4, God continues to work with them.

And Nebuchadnezzar gets another lesson in humility.

He has a dream in chapter 4.

He has another dream.

We already saw in chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and he demanded that the astrologers and the magicians of the Babylonian religions interpret it, and they could not do so.

Only Daniel, who had a connection to the one true God, the triune God we know through Jesus Christ as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that God.

Only that God was able to reveal the meaning of the dream.

And now in chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar has another dream, the other priests and the other astrologers are not able to interpret it, but that's okay, because now Nebuchadnezzar goes directly to Daniel for the interpretation.

He says in verse 8, I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in him.

Nebuchadnezzar doesn't know the one true God.

He's still thinking in terms of there being multiple gods.

There is only one true God.

Nebuchadnezzar doesn't know this God, but he knows Daniel.

And Nebuchadnezzar knows that there's something about Daniel that's a little bit different.

He might not know the one true God, but he knows Daniel, who does know the one true God.

And because of that, Nebuchadnezzar knows that Daniel is a little different.

Let me ask you this.

People around you might not know the one true God, but do they notice something different about you because you know God?

People that you come into contact with might not have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but they have a relationship with you.

Does their relationship with you point them toward the one true God?

Do people know that there is something different about you because of your connection with Christ?

Relationship with God is something that is invisible, but it manifests itself visibly in the way that we treat others, in the way that we act, in wisdom for living, in how we order our priorities, what's important to us.

Our relationship with God is evidenced by the way that we live our lives.

Nebuchadnezzar doesn't know the one true God, but he knows Daniel, and he knows that Daniel is different.

Let that be true of us as well.

Nebuchadnezzar tells Daniel his dream.

He says in verses 11 and 12, there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land.

Its height was enormous, the tree grew large and strong, and its top touched the sky.

It was visible to the ends of the earth.

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

Under it the wild animals found shelter.

The birds lived in its branches.

From it every creature was fed.

In a dream, Nebuchadnezzar sees a vision of a large tree.

Have you ever stood underneath a large tree?

I think, for example, of willow trees that I stood under when I was in Savannah, Georgia.

Beautiful, magnificent willow trees.

I've never been to them, but I've seen pictures of redwood trees in California that seem to be miles and miles tall.

Make you look like an ant standing next to them.

They are so vast.

Nebuchadnezzar sees a vision of a large tree.

It seems to fill the whole earth.

But then something happens to the tree.

Something that seems impossible.

Despite its size and its impressive stature, it gets cut down.

That tree gets chopped away and is no more.

Something that seemed to be so large and so majestic is suddenly reduced to nothing.

Verses 13 through 15 describe it.

The limbs are sawed off, the trunk is cut down.

Animals that used to take shelter under the tree suddenly scatter in fear.

Birds used to nest in the branches of the tree, but those birds are forcefully evicted as the branches are cut down and the tree is no more.

All that remains at the end is a stump in the ground.

A tree so tall, so high, reduced to merely a stump.

At the house we moved into last year, we discovered that the trees in the yard unfortunately gave to us oat galls.

You know what oatgalls are?

They're these large, annoying little things that you step on.

They fall from the trees, you step on them, they really hurt to step on, they're very annoying.

Well, we had this oat gall tree in our backyard, and that tree, I don't know exactly how tall it was, but it was several times the size of the house.

It was massive.

And it rained down oat galls and leaves and sticks, made a mess of our backyard.

Couldn't stand that tree.

But for a long time I figured, well, we're stuck with this tree.

I mean, what am I going to do with a tree of this height?

Well, turns out there was actually an answer to that.

Hire somebody to cut it down.

Somebody showed up one day, a gentleman with a couple of knives and some ropes, and he started climbing that tree, armed with a saw.

And I thought, he's not going to make a dent in this tree.

I mean, this is going to take forever.

This tree is massive.

Well, we had to go somewhere that day, and so we left shortly after he arrived, and we came back several hours later.

And that guy had climbed this entire tree and cut it down limb by limb.

And then he cut down the trunk bit by bit.

And when we arrived, he had a truck full of lumber.

And the only thing that remained in our backyard was a big old stump and a pile of branches.

I couldn't believe it.

It made the yard look twice the size that it used to be.

Those oat galls that terrorized me and tormented our toes for the past year were no more.

A massive tree that towered several times the size of our house was suddenly reduced to a mere stump in the ground.

That's what Nebuchadnezzar dreams about.

A massive tree that seems taller, more powerful, stronger than anything, suddenly becomes nothing.

In this dream, not only does the tree become nothing, but there is an individual pictured who's under the tree, and when the tree gets cut down, this individual loses his sanity.

Verses 15 and 16.

Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth.

Let his mind be changed from that of a man, and let him be given the mind of an animal, till seven times pass by for him.

It pictures somebody who loses his mental faculties, can no longer reason or function as a human being.

Not only does a tree get cut down, but a human being gets cut down in terms of ability and capabilities.

And Daniel interprets this dream for Nebuchadnezzar.

He says, Your majesty, you are that tree.

You are that tree.

Imagine the nerve that it takes Daniel to say that to Nebuchadnezzar.

The king who had on multiple occasions now tried to do away with his life and the life of all of the Israelites.

This powerful king.

And Daniel has the nerve to go to him and say, look, buddy, I know you think you're all that, but you're nothing more than a tree that's about to be chopped down and turned into firewood.

Daniel tells it like it is, he doesn't mince words with his king.

But also mixed with Daniel's truth-telling, there is compassion and there is grace.

And he delivers a message from God that is a message that he can still turn around and repent, go the other direction.

And so Daniel says to him in verse 27, Therefore, your majesty, be pleased to accept my advice.

Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.

It may be that then your prosperity will continue.

Daniel says, the direction that you're headed right now, you're on the way to being chopped down.

But you still have an opportunity to turn this around.

You can turn it around by repenting.

And repenting means changing your mind, but it means more than that.

It means changing the way you think so that it changes the way you live.

Repentance is not simply thinking about something differently, but acting differently.

When we repent, we turn away from sin and turn toward God.

And repentance works itself out in the way that we treat others.

Daniel says that he can renounce his sins by doing what is right, renounce his wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.

The strength of our commitment to God is measured by our commitment to the least of these.

Daniel says to this powerful king, You want to turn around and walk with God?

Be kind to the oppressed.

Don't use your power for evil, but use it on behalf of those who don't have power.

Repentance, a true change of mind, results in changed behavior for those who can't help themselves.

There's an opportunity given to Nebuchadnezzar to repent, to turn around.

And sure enough, that's exactly what comes to pass.

In verse 28, it tells us, it says, all this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar.

Everything that Daniel predicted through the Spirit of God came to pass.

It says in verse 29 that the fulfillment came twelve months later.

Twelve months later.

The judgment upon Nebuchadnezzar took a year to come about.

God gave Nebuchadnezzar an entire year to do a 180 and turn around.

But he didn't do it.

And so Nebuchadnezzar, verse 29, walked on the roof of his royal palace in Babylon, and he said, Is this not the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?

He ascended to the top of his castle, looked over a kingdom, and he said, This is all mine, and I did it, and it all reflects on me.

All glory to me.

None of us probably have ever done that quite so explicitly.

I suspect none of us have woken up in the morning and said, This is my life that I've built all for my glory.

But let me ask you this.

When you look at your life, when you look at your possessions, the things you own, your accomplishments, the things you've done, the things you have, who do you give the glory to?

When you look at your life and what you've been able to do and the possessions you've been able to acquire, who do you give the glory to?

Do you look at your life and think, this is all my doing?

Because each one of us has a tendency easily to do that.

I do.

Every one of us does.

Whereas all of the things that we're able to do, things we're able to accomplish should be opportunities to praise God.

We as human beings who are fallen turn inwardly and praise ourselves instead of God.

It may be true that you accomplished a lot in your career, but who gave you the help and the ability to do that?

God did.

It may be true that you were able to acquire a lot through earning wages, through smart financial decisions.

But who gave you the wisdom to do that?

God.

All that we have is from God.

Nebuchadnezzar didn't realize that.

He had everything that one could ask for, and he attributed it all to himself.

And God's about to teach him a lesson.

God had given him a year to repent.

God had given him a year to turn around, to humble himself, but he didn't do it.

The Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 2, verse 4 that God's kindness is intended to lead us to repentance.

Romans 2:4

God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.

In other words, when God delays judgment, it's not because he's unjust, it's because he's merciful.

God's kindness in our life is meant to turn us away from ourselves and towards him.

This morning, right now, God's kindness is extended to each one of us.

And it's an opportunity to turn toward him in faith and give him the glory.

It says in verse 31 that as the words were on Nebuchadnezzar's lips, as he was praising himself, a voice came from heaven.

This is what is decreed 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 will eat grass like the ox.

God says to Nebuchadnezzar, You think that you're high and mighty?

I'm going to make you live like one of the farm animals.

You have a royal palace where you eat dinner every night with a staff to serve you filet mignon and the finest food.

Try having grass for dinner five nights a week.

See how you like that.

God had to teach him a lesson.

God had to knock him down off the pedestal.

And it goes on in verse 32.

It says, Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all the kingdoms of the earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.

Nebuchadnezzar was humbled until he could give God the glory.

The embarrassment, humility that he suffered endured only as long as he continued to praise himself.

The purpose of the loss he experienced was to remind him where all of his blessings ultimately come from.

That they don't come from him, that they come from God.

And so after boasting about the greatness of his kingdom, he's reduced to nothing.

He's driven away to live with the wild animals.

He loses his sanity.

His mental faculties are erased, and he becomes like an ox eating grass.

He goes through this experience and he comes out on the other end having a realization about God.

Verses 34 and 35, he says, At the end of that time I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored.

Then I praised the Most High.

I honored and glorified him who lives forever.

Nebuchadnezzar came out on the other end with a new appreciation of God's power and dominion.

He had stood upon his royal palace, looked out at his kingdom, and thought there was none greater than me.

Now, at the end of his humbling, he looks up to heaven and realizes that God is far greater than he ever will be.

In verse 35, I love this.

This is at the end of his humbling experience, and he gives praise to God in verse 35.

It says, His dominion is an eternal dominion.

His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.

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

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

God is so powerful that he is dependent on no one.

And he is so perfect that he answers to no one.

There is nobody with the authority to call God to account.

There is nobody with the power to overturn God's plans.

There is no one with the wisdom to outsmart God.

Nebuchadnezzar had to learn that.

He had to go through some embarrassment.

He had to go through a loss of power.

He had to go through a loss of social status.

He had to go through a loss of his intellect in order to realize where all of those things really come from.

God gave them to him, and God could take them away in an instant.

Everything Nebuchadnezzar had was on loan to him by God's grace.

None of it truly belonged to him.

And he gets a glimpse of who God is, and he stops thinking so highly of himself.

And in verse 37, he says, Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the king of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just.

And those who walk in pride, he is able to humble.

He learns the hard way that God does not take well to prideful people.

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

God had to remind the king of his own limitations, and he did that to get his attention off of himself and back on to God.

When our heads get a little too big, sometimes we need to be reminded of who God is.

I like what C.S.

Lewis says.

He was a great Christian writer, and he says this about humility.

He says this in God, you come up against someone who is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.

In every respect, God is immeasurably superior to us.

Lewis says, unless you know, unless you know that God has that superiority, you do not know God at all.

Says a proud person is always looking down on things and people.

And of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see someone who is above you.

All of us have a natural tendency to look down on others.

Thank God that I'm not like that.

Thank God that I'm not like him or her.

Thank God that I have all this.

Thank God that I was able to accomplish all that.

And it causes us to look down at people.

And as long as we're looking down at others, we're not able to look up at God.

And Nebuchadnezzar looked down off a high perch and looked down upon everybody else.

And so God brought him low, lower than anyone perhaps had ever been.

And through that, Nebuchadnezzar learned, I better look up instead of look down at others.

When we see God for who he is, we see ourselves for who we really are.

Like this king, we have a tendency to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to.

Many years ago, after I had uh come to a point where I'd graduated from school, I was making plans for what I was gonna do with my life after school.

And I had some plans that I was pretty sure were gonna work out well for me.

I was gonna apply to some doctoral programs.

Uh, there were some other things that I planned to do, but as soon as I made plans to go about with everything I thought I was gonna do, things kind of turned on me.

I got very, very ill.

My health came to a point where I felt weaker than I'd ever been.

Because of that, I wasn't able to apply to a lot of the PhD programs I had planned to apply to.

I was only able to apply to one program.

But it was alright because I had met the people who ran the program, I had a good application, I was a shoe-in to get accepted to that program.

Imagine my shock when lying ill and barely able to move, I found out that I got rejected from the only program that I was able to apply to.

Well, now what was I gonna do?

My health had failed me and limited my options.

I wasn't competitive enough to get accepted to where I thought I was gonna go.

Wasn't smart enough, wasn't accomplished enough.

Ouch! Now I was lost in the wilderness, it seemed.

All of my plans had come to nothing.

I didn't know what to do with my life.

As I look back on that, I think God had something to teach me through the process.

God had to teach me that any accomplishment that I have in life comes from his grace.

God had to teach me that any health I may enjoy, any ability that I may possess, is on loan to me, a gift from him.

It is not my own.

And through that, as I look back on it, he said to me, Eric, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to.

Because you really ought not think very highly of yourself at all.

God might need to take you through some things before he can really use you.

God may need to humble you a little bit before he can truly use you for his glory.

It may mean letting you experience failure.

It may mean letting you experience disappointment in order to empty you of self-dependence.

But on the other side of that process, there's a freedom that comes with knowing our limits and knowing the limitless power of God.

Sometimes failure, disappointment, embarrassment, and frustration are not meant to be the final chapter in God's book for our lives.

But they are an important chapter to lead us to better things.

God used in Nebuchadnezzar's life humiliation, loss to teach him a lesson.

And God may need to use something similar in your life to teach you some lessons about walking with him.

It's not an easy process.

It can be painful at times to be chopped down, but it's worth it.

Because on the other end, there is a freedom that comes with recognizing our own limitations and knowing the power of the God that we serve.

There was a researcher named Arthur Brooks, and he was doing some research on the topic of humility and how it is that thinking less of ourselves, thinking about ourselves less, can actually be good for our mental health, for our sanity.

And uh he talked to one college student who uh took an astronomy class in school.

She wasn't uh an astronomy major, wasn't a science major, didn't have to study the stars and the galaxies, but wanted to.

She took this class and she said that she was somebody who suffered a lot of fear in her life, a lot of anxiety, a lot of insecurity about herself.

But she said that uh taking this astronomy class, she'd spend 90 minutes studying galaxies and billions of stars and the vastness of the universe.

She said she would walk out of class feeling relieved.

She told this researcher, she said, Well, when I leave, I realize that I'm just a speck on a speck.

That's all I am.

And it's freeing.

It's freeing.

We can think very highly of ourselves, but at the end of the day, we are very small, we are on a very small planet in a vast universe created by a God who is infinitely vast.

Humility doesn't mean putting ourselves down or having no self-regard or self-respect, but it means recognizing that we, in comparison to God, are powerless.

And we, in comparison to God, cannot accomplish anything.

It's all by his grace.

In the words of this one college student, we are just specks on a speck called earth.

That can be scary to face, but it's also freeing.

Because it frees us to trust in God and to stop focusing inward so much.

Maybe God is taking you through some things where he needs to humble you.

He needs to bring you to an end of yourself.

Allow him to do that.

Trust the process that God works in your life to bring you to a point of greater dependence on him.