Daniel 4

I wanna start this morning with a question to you. How far will God go to get His message across to us? How far will God go to get His message across to us? Think about your life and think about the question, how far has God gone to get His message across to you personally? Has there been times in your life where you can look back now and you can see God's guiding hand?

You can see where you've traveled down the road at a 100 kilometres an hour and God has made something in your life do make you turn a 180 degrees, made a huge u-turn in your life? Has there been times in your life where you've just been faced with God's answer and direct response to a situation where you've just cried out to God? How far does God go to get that message across? This morning, we see from Daniel that God does whatever it takes to get His message across. But the question is then, what happens if we don't listen to God's message?

What if we don't want anything to do with that? And perhaps you can remember in your life a time when God said, do this. Obey me in this, and you have chosen not to. What happens if we don't want to hear what God has to say? Well, the answer is that God does get the message across, and He does whatever it takes to get that message across.

Even if we don't listen, God does whatever it takes, but He does it perhaps by turning up the volume, speaking more directly, speaking more authoritatively into our lives until He has our undivided attention. If you're not sure about this, if you're not sure about whether God does this, let me tell you about the story of the king who went crazy. It's a story of a series of strange events that happened twenty five centuries ago. And the moral is both timeless and as shocking today as it was back then. It's as shocking today as it was back then.

It would be as shocking back then as it would be today if, say, Prince Charles or Prince William went absolutely mental. And even though the world has changed a lot since the days of Daniel, the human heart hasn't changed at all. The world is still filled with men and women who think they know what's best for their lives. They know better than God knows. And the story we see here this morning is that God still knows how to humble the proud, how to humble the arrogant.

British playwright George Bernard Shaw put it this way: there are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire, and the other is to gain it. One is to lose your heart's desire, and one is to gain it. This is always a hard message to preach. You don't ever hear anyone shouting hallelujah and amen for saying, humble yourself before God.

But the truth of Daniel four, as we will discover, is that failure can be a gift from God, especially if it breaks sinful confidence, sinful self reliance, and brings us to a place where we acknowledge God's centrality in our life. God's place of kingship. And that's the lesson that King Nebuchadnezzar, the king who went crazy, learned the hard way. From this story, we learn how God humbled a pagan king. How God brought a king to conversion, to the point of making God his king.

So the story begins at a time when King Nebuchadnezzar is on the crest of the waves. He is contented and prosperous and so he should be. He was the king, the emperor of the biggest empire of the entire known world. If there was a Forbes magazine of the 100 most influential and powerful people of the time, he would be number one. He spoke and it was done.

He commanded and his armies did whatever he asked. And Babylon, the city of Babylon, man, that was an impressive place. The walls around Babylon were said to go on for about 24 kilometres. 24 kilometres, it is said. The height of those walls were about 26 metres, and the thickness of it was about eight metres wide.

It is said that chariots could actually run across the top of those walls of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar had every reason, humanly speaking, to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel content. Who in the entire world could challenge him? Who could topple him? But one night, the Bible says he had a troubling dream.

This wasn't the first time that God had spoken to him. If you remember in Daniel two, he had a dream of a giant statue made out of four different metals. And the interpretation of that dream revealed God's plan for him, but for the ages, in fact, until God's kingdom and Jesus Christ would be established. But this dream in Daniel four is quite different. It's a very personal dream.

It's a dream that disturbs him, but that Daniel would show to him later actually does not speak necessarily of what would happen to other empires, but what would happen to him. Have a look at Daniel four. Now this whole chapter, let me just explain that, is a first person account, is Nebuchadnezzar's personal testimony, if you will, of his experience with God and how he came to a place of humility before God. So he writes in the first person. And in verse 10, he starts like this.

He says, in the visions I saw while lying in bed, I looked and there before me was a holy one, a messenger coming down from heaven. He called in a loud voice, cut down the tree and trim off its branches. Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the animals flee from under it and birds from its branches. But let the stump and its roots remain bound with iron and bronze in the ground, in the grass of the field.

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 or seven years pass by for him. Now the king intuitively realised that this dream had a message of importance. But no one in the kingdom could explain it once again. The story says he called for his astrologers.

He called for his wise men. He explained the dream to them, but they could not give him an adequate answer. And so this time, instead of forcing or giving the call to kill those people for not understanding, he called Daniel. And he asked Daniel to interpret the dream. In fact, interestingly, he said he called Daniel because he knew that Daniel possessed the spirits of the gods.

So Nebuchadnezzar had a respect for the word of Daniel. And so Nebuchadnezzar explains the dream to Daniel, and it says that when Daniel heard the king's dream, he knew exactly what it meant. But for a long time, he stood silently. For a long time, he was shocked. He was terrified actually about the meaning of that dream for King Nebuchadnezzar.

So after summarising the first part of the dream, Daniel comes to the bottom line in verse 22. He says, you, O king, you, O majesty, are that tree. You are the tree that will be cut down. You are the tree that will have its mind turned to the minds of animals with the dew of the earth falling upon you. Daniel goes on to say that God has ordained that the king will turn to be like the beast of the field.

In verse 25, he says, you will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals. You will eat grass like an ox and be drenched with the dew of heaven. Seven times will pass by you or by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone He wishes. The keyword here is the word until. And this brings about the idea that we'll hear about more, but that this is a punishment, but it's disciplinary. It's not punitive.

It's to correct rather than to break or destroy. And so for seven years, the king will live as a wild beast having lost his mind. He will live with the beasts until he acknowledges that God alone is king, that God alone is sovereign. The rest of the story unfolds quickly. Verse 28 tells us that all this happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

For twelve months, the Bible says, the king had time to repent. This wasn't a dream that happened, and then the next day he became insane. Or the next day, you know, all these things unfolded. God gave Nebuchadnezzar a fair go. Twelve months to make, to humble himself.

But twelve months comes and goes and nothing in the king's attitude changes. Perhaps even in the first few weeks, Nebuchadnezzar would have been contrite. He would have kept silent. But, with so many stories that I've heard, you know, people get an experience with God. They are shocked and they are appalled, and they are brought to a point of silence before God, and a few weeks later, nothing has changed, and they go back to their ways.

And so we see that nothing really in Nebuchadnezzar's heart has changed. And then came that time, that fateful moment that changed the life of Nebuchadnezzar. As the king was walking, it says in verses 29 to 30, as the king was walking on the roof of the palace of Babylon, he said, is not this great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty? Is not this the great Babylon I have built? Notice the pronouns.

I, my, me, I have built by my mighty power for my majesty. It's all about Nebuchadnezzar. And the interesting thing is, you know, how often is it that we see people come to power? We see the world leaders. We see guys and women with power in businesses, and so much of it is ego driven.

So much is about that person. And so the voice comes and announces the judgment. It says to Nebuchadnezzar, in verse 44, immediately, what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the 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.

Professional psychologists and psychiatrists have looked at these symptoms, and they believe that Nebuchadnezzar had a form of lycanthropy. It's a long big word. Lycanthropy, which is a form of insanity that leads people to believe they are animals. It's a diagnosable mental illness. And that is what happened perhaps to Nebuchadnezzar.

But that's all it says of his state. For seven years, for seven years of insanity, this is what Nebuchadnezzar was. One moment, he was surveying the royal kingdom, his beautiful city, the magnificent Babylon with its hanging gardens, one of the ancient wonders of the world. And the next minute, he's driven out of his office, he's driven out of his powerful place, and he's turned into a raving madman. He runs through the streets naked, the Bible says.

It's hard to imagine a more severe punishment actually. There's a number of ways that God could have punished him, I guess, but seven years to be like that, it's pretty big. There would be no way to keep the king's tragic situation a secret. It would have been absolutely humbling for the whole city, the whole empire to know that their king had just been turned into this raving lunatic. And so for seven years, the state of Babylon was in disarray.

And sooner or later, the word did leak out. Though he was still king, he couldn't reign, he could not speak, he could not appear in public. Indeed, he could not think or communicate as a human being. He acted like a beast on a field. And so when the king was put out to pasture literally, it was a fate worse than death.

Why would God do such a thing? The answer isn't hard to find. The answer is pride. Pride. Now you may have heard this before, but the essence of sin is pride.

The essence of rebellion against God is pride. It's that sin of claiming credits for ourselves that only truly belongs to God alone. What happened to Nebuchadnezzar was a kind of spiritual parable for anyone who struggles with the idea of my way in this situation is better than God's way. I think I can get out of this by relying on my own talents, my own logic, my own emotional awareness. I can do it on my own.

But that's not the end of the story. Seven years later, the king's life takes another massive dramatic turn. In verse 34, Nebuchadnezzar shares his testimony again, and he says, at the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes towards heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High. I honoured and glorified Him who lives forever.

And just as suddenly as he lost his mind, he regained full awareness. Isn't that amazing? Just as suddenly as he had this nervous breakdown, he becomes fully aware of what's going on around him. He realises that he is not an animal. He realises that he's living out in the field or in some desolate place, and he becomes sane.

We know, from his testimony further on that his life truly changed, and that he truly came to his senses. Listen to what he says in verses thirty four and thirty five. He professes that God's kingdom is an eternal dominion. That God's kingdom endures from generation to generation. That 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? This is the testimony of a man who said in chapter three, I'm going to throw you, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, into this fire, and then what God can save you from my hand? And now he professes here, no one can hold back His hand or say to Him, what have You done? This once pagan king now openly declares the praises of God. He has truly gotten the message that God can do anything He wants to anyone He wants to do it to, and no one can stand against Him.

Earthly kings rule by God's direct permission, and they stay on the throne as long as God pleases to give them power. Nebuchadnezzar, however, had learned this truth the hard way. Nebuchadnezzar from the get go was exposed to God so much. He had the witness of Daniel and of his three mates. He directly could see God's deliverance in chapter three, miraculous salvation in the midst of fire.

He realised that God is a revealer of mysteries when Daniel read his thoughts and was able to interpret his dream for him. But nowhere along that line did Nebuchadnezzar come to a point of conversion. Nowhere along that line did he come to a point of humility, humbling himself, making Christ, making God his king. And now he proclaims something amazing that's happened in his life. He has become humble.

Verses 36 to 37 wraps it up for us and it gives us the end of the story. Have a look. Says in verses 36, at the same time that my sanity was restored, my honour and my splendour were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. So not only was he healed miraculously, but God went above and beyond that and returned everything that He had taken away from him, and He gave it back like that. That in itself is an amazing testimony.

If Julia Gillard became insane today and was put into a sanitarium, do you think if she was miraculously healed, if she returned to sanity, that the Australian public would give her the honour and the splendour and the authority of being prime minister again? No way. But Nebuchadnezzar gets to this exact same point. And that again just shows that God is in control. God can put an insane king on the throne again.

God is in control. And He sets up and He deposes whoever He chooses. And don't we recognise that in our life? Don't we recognise that with Muammar Gaddafi? God crushes this man who has set himself up against justice, who oppressed people for decades.

And God just brought him to a point and said that's enough. Your sin will not continue anymore. He ends Muammar Gaddafi's life in a pretty tragic way. But God said, you have not repented. You have not turned to My ways, and that is it.

God has the ultimate authority over even the most powerful people in our world. Those who walk in pride, Nebuchadnezzar finishes, God is able to humble. Those who walk in pride, God is able to humble. For us, as I was reflecting on this, there are four principles I think that we can get from this testimony of Nebuchadnezzar. This might not sound like our story, but there's four principles I definitely think we can learn from his testimony.

Firstly, that God's righteousness causes Him to intervene even when we don't believe we need Him anymore. God's righteousness causes Him to intervene even when we don't believe we need Him anymore. So God can't stand by while we continue to make poor choices. God can't continue to watch as His creation destroys itself. And so He intervenes.

That is why He does it because of His righteousness, because of who He is in His character. The second thing is God's judgment, God's punishment, God's correction is painful because He is cutting sin out of our existence. He is cutting away the sin that pulls us away from Him, and that's a painful thing. It's a painful thing because we might even be really attached to our sin. We might even like it.

And losing that can send you into a depression. Losing that can make you feel awful. It can be a painful thing. But because God is righteous, because of His character, He knows that He needs to do this. He cannot stand idly by and watch us continue with this.

So God's judgment is painful because He's cutting away the sin that pulls us away from Him. Thirdly, God's discipline lasts until we learn the lessons He wants to teach us. God's correction will last however long it takes. It could be that you learn a lesson in an instant and change forever. It could be that it lasts years.

If you look back on your life, and I don't know how you became a Christian or what your life looks like, but if you look back on your life, you may see how long God let you run around in the muck and the mire and the terrible situation you were in before you found His grace. He let you do that in order for you to hit rock bottom, in order for you to understand that I cannot do this on my own. The last thing we can learn from Nebuchadnezzar's testimony is that God's purpose in humbling us is not to destroy us, but it's to draw us back into fellowship with Him. It's not to destroy us, but to bring us back into fellowship with Him. Nebuchadnezzar's testimony reflects so many testimonies that I have heard of people, so many human experiences that I've seen around me, in me.

We look at Nebuchadnezzar and we think, man, he was thick. He was so thick. In Daniel chapter two, we see Nebuchadnezzar experience God as a revealer of mysteries. In Daniel chapter three, we see Nebuchadnezzar experience God and witness God as a saviour, as one who saves people even from a burning furnace. But now, finally, in chapter four, we see his conversion.

God gets in his face, and Nebuchadnezzar experiences Him as the God who personally humbled him. This week at schoolies, we put on a church service for all the schoolies. We call it Red Frog Church, and the relationships that we were able to build this week caused us to be able to invite those people that we felt we had a connection with, those people who were really searching and longing for something else. And we could invite them to come to us. It was fantastic.

It was a huge turnout. And we had someone share his testimony, share the story of grace, of God's forgiveness in Jesus Christ, and we had 107 schoolies come up and say that, I want that. They were ones who put their names down on paper to say, I want to be followed up. I want to be placed in a church. I want my life to be changed.

107. That's an amazing amount. During the week, we also had about 40 kids, the stories came in about 40 kids who also were prayed for and who also said, I want Jesus Christ in my life. So say a 150 kids all up. But the reality is, you can make that decision.

I want my life to look differently. My life isn't great. I want to be healed. But true conversion doesn't come from that. Conversion comes when we say, I want that, but I will humble myself to Christ and make Him Lord of my life.

We can say we want forgiveness and healing and not make Him the Lord of our lives. And that is not true conversion. And that's something we realised and that's something we will have to work up. We're gonna follow those guys up. We're gonna bring them to church, but it's going to be a process of saying you have to be obedient to Jesus.

You have to listen to His word. You have to be a part of a church community. And so that is what Nebuchadnezzar learned. I mean, Nebuchadnezzar praised God those times where, you know, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego were saved. He was impressed by God.

He thought God is pretty awesome, pretty great, but he wasn't converted. So there's a difference there. Some of us may agree that it was only when God completely humbled us that He brought us, when He broke us and made us to hit rock bottom. In those situations, it's only when we have experienced those things that we say that God is completely right in everything He does. We say that those who walk in pride, He is able to humble.

Like Nebuchadnezzar, we finally realised that the truth is that God not only has the right to be completely proud, but Jesus Christ left that pride, left that majesty, and became humble for us. When Jesus Christ came, He did not take this divine nature, this divine right to be proud, but to be humble, but He came in flesh and bone, in the nature of a humble human, and said, I've not come to judge the world but to save it. God alone has the right to be proud. But He says, I have come not to destroy you in your vanity, not to destroy you in your pride, but to rescue you. Instead of humbling humanity in judgment, Jesus took on the form of humble humanity in itself. Instead of humiliating humanity through destruction, Jesus bore the pain of that destruction upon Himself when He gave His life.

The moment when God poured His punishment, when the Father poured His punishment out on Jesus Christ, that is the moment when we were able to come into a full fellowship with God. I mentioned before that God's purpose in humbling us is not to destroy us, but to save us. But that's only a reality because Jesus Christ was destroyed. God's purpose is not to destroy us, but to save us, to correct us, to discipline us. But that is only possible because Jesus was destroyed for us.

The only reason we don't get destroyed, the only reason that God can draw us back into this fellowship is because Jesus was destroyed. But the great news, the great news is that we don't serve a weak king. We don't serve a king that can be turned like Nebuchadnezzar into a raving madman who, although he thinks he is invincible, is very fragile. We serve a king who was able to take back his life even when it was destroyed. Jesus took back His life after being broken for us.

Jesus is the epitome of what Nebuchadnezzar said. His dominion is an eternal dominion, an everlasting reign. Jesus was destroyed, but He was also raised to life and He was given power and authority over everything, including our lives. God's purpose in humbling Jesus was to destroy Him, but God's purpose in raising Jesus was to give us everlasting life and fulfilment. So we can say we can say with Nebuchadnezzar, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, now I, KJ Tromp, praise and exalt and glorify the God 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.