Humbling the Proud

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Transcript:

Tonight, we’re going to look at Daniel chapter 4. There’s a verse I’ve been sharing with my kids here lately, as we’re dealing with the lying situation again. You know, you don’t ever just tell your kids something one time, unfortunately.

You have to repeat it over and over. You have to drill it into them so that they get it. And there’s a verse in Proverbs, or a couple of verses in Proverbs that I’ve been repeating from Proverbs chapter 6, starting in verse 16, says, These six things, excuse me, doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him, a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among the brethren.

I’ve been sharing that with the kids and saying, what does that tell us about how God feels when we tell a lie? And the answer to that is he hates it. He absolutely hates it when we are dishonest. But the first thing that he mentions in that list that he hates is a proud look.

God has a real problem with our tendency to be prideful. And the reason for that, I think, is that it is at the root of much of our sinfulness. Is the pride that says, I know better than God.

It was pride that caused Satan to fall. If you look at, I believe it’s Isaiah chapter 14, where it talks about him falling as lightning, him wanting to bunt himself up and be higher than God. That was pride.

To say, I know more than God is. I can be more glorious than God is. It’s that pride that caused Adam and Eve to fall.

What was Satan’s promise to them? you will be like God if you’ll eat from that fruit of that tree. What’s one of the things that Satan promised Jesus when he took him out and tempted him?

Hey, if you’ll just bow down and worship me, I’ll give you all of this stuff. Hey, if you’ll throw yourself down off of the roof of the temple, everybody will see it and they’ll be amazed. Everybody will love you.

Things like that appeal to our human pride. Jesus didn’t fall for it. But pride is at the root of a lot of our sin.

I mean, the Bible even says that sin consists of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Those are the things that cause us to sin. That pride gets in between us and God and makes us think we know better.

And pride is something we all struggle with to some extent. And it’s really bad in a place like Babylon, where there is all this wealth and all this power to be had and all this splendor around us. and we’ve been going for the last few Sunday nights through the book of Daniel and looking at how he and his friends, his brothers in the faith, how they survived life in Babylon, this center of wickedness, this place that was in rebellion against God, how they survived.

And I tell you each week that Babylon is typically used in the Bible, although it’s a literal place, it is often used in the Bible as a symbol for the world at large. And so you could say that we are in Babylon as well. Not literal Babylon, but we’re in a figurative Babylon as well.

And that being the case, there are things that we can learn from their stories. There are principles that we can learn that apply to our own lives as we deal with this wicked world that we have sort of been exiled into as we wait to go to our real home. As Daniel and Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah did.

They were not from Babylon. They were in Babylon, but not of Babylon. And they, along with all the other Jewish exiles, waited for the day that they got to return to their promised land, to their home.

And so we too are stuck traveling in Babylon while we wait to return to our home. And one of the things that we have to deal with in a culture like what we have, just as they did in Babylon, is with pride. Because you look and there’s wealth to be had.

America is not a poor place, is it? we have poverty in America, but in most cases, now there are some real cases of abject poverty, but in America, in most cases, our poor have things that people in the third world can only dream of. Refrigerators, cell phones, cars, most of the people that are classified as poor in society have some of these things that people in the third world could not imagine having.

In America, we are a celebrity-driven culture, aren’t we? Is that just my assessment of it? I think we’re a celebrity-driven culture.

I mean, look at the last election, and I’m not saying negative about one or the other. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. But the guy we elected, whether you like him or not, he was helped out by the fact that he’d been in people’s living rooms for years.

People knew him because he was a celebrity. Now, you might look at that and say it’s a good thing. might look at it and say it’s a bad thing.

Doesn’t matter. It’s a factor. And people, maybe not y’all, but people all over the country tune into entire networks to see what the Kardashians are wearing or who did what.

I don’t understand the e-news phenomenon. I don’t understand how they call it news or why it’s even a thing. But, you know, people tune in because they want to see the celebrities.

We’re a celebrity-driven culture. And it’s easy in things like that to get swept up in, or I have the most stuff, or I have the best new iPhone, or I have more money than this guy down the street, I’ve got the nicer car. We start to look at how well we’ve done for ourselves, and we can get a little prideful or take away the material things.

I have such a well-behaved family. I’m not like my neighbor down the street whose kids run wild. By the way, you know I’m not talking about myself because I feel like my kids run wild in here.

I have the best behaved kids. I have the perfect family, the white picket fence, the whole nine yards. Look at me.

We can get kind of prideful. I’ve been promoted at my job. I’m climbing the ladder.

We can get prideful. As a pastor, there’s a temptation to become prideful and say, well, everybody listens to me. Not necessarily.

People listen to me. People care what I think. And that’s why you see a lot of guys get prideful and a lot of guys fall because of it.

In whatever station we’re in in life, there’s a tendency to become prideful. And God says this is a problem. It’s okay to enjoy our success.

It’s okay to enjoy when something good happens to us. It’s okay to feel good about our accomplishments, but it’s a totally different story to become prideful and say, look at me, look at how important I am. Because when we start to think about ourselves and how important we are, we sort of push God to the sidelines in our thinking, don’t we?

We say, look at me, I’ve got life figured out. I’ve got this all under control. I’m not really that concerned with what God says.

We may not even be saying, I don’t like God, I don’t care about God, but in our thinking, we start to push him over the sidelines a little bit. And Daniel dealt with somebody who did that very thing. In Daniel chapter 4, he’s there as he has been in a couple of these other stories.

He’s dealing with King Nebuchadnezzar, who was the most powerful man in the world at that time. And it says in verse 4, this is actually Nebuchadnezzar telling the story, But Daniel plays very prominently in it, in this interaction between God and Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar starts telling the story in verse 1 of what has happened and the change that God has made, but he goes into a flashback here in just a moment.

But it says, Nebuchadnezzar, the king unto all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied unto you. So Nebuchadnezzar is sending this message out, this story out, to the people throughout his empire, wherever they might be. And he says, I thought it good to show the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me.

How great are his signs, and how mighty are his wonders. At this point, Nebuchadnezzar is still overwhelmed with what God has done, and he’s exclaiming here, how great is God? His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation.

So he’s saying God is just incredible. And this is a complete turnaround of where Nebuchadnezzar was when the story started. Now he’s at the end of the story and he’s looking back and he’s saying, let me tell you a story.

I thought this might benefit you to hear this story that happened to me because God is incredible. And the problem comes if you look all the way down at verse 30, and I know we’re jumping a little bit ahead here, quite a bit ahead. If you look all the way at verse 30, Nebuchadnezzar is walking around.

He’s looking at all his palaces and all the glory of himself. And it says, the king spake and said, is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty? He looks out at everything and he says, isn’t this a wonderful testimony to how great I am and what an awesome king I am and how glorious a person I am?

And that was not just a one-time outburst because this is something God has warned Nebuchadnezzar about. This is Nebuchadnezzar’s, this is the way he thinks. And God calls him out on it.

What happens in verse 30 will lead to God sending some consequences. But this is the way Nebuchadnezzar thinks starting out. And so God in verse 4 begins to deal with him.

Nebuchadnezzar said, I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in mine house and flourishing in my palace. He said it was a place of ease and I was flourishing. We know what that means, the difference between just existing and flourishing.

I’ve had some plants in my garden that just kind of existed. And then I’ve had plants that flourished, plants that would not stop producing squash. We know the difference between existing and flourishing, and he says, I’m flourishing.

And he says, I saw a dream which made me afraid. He had yet another one that made him afraid. And the thoughts upon my bed and the visions in my head troubled me.

Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers, and I told the dream before them, but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof. So even though, just a couple chapters ago, he has had this dream of the statue, if you recall a couple weeks ago, he could not even remember the dream of the statue, but he remembered he had a stressful dream, really bothered him, and so he wanted his magicians and everybody to come in and tell him what was the dream and what did it mean.

And he saw right then that they were all a bunch of phonies because not one of them could tell it. And he was about to have everybody killed for lying to him all this time until Daniel came along and God, Daniel prayed to God and God told him what the dream was and what it meant. And yet for some reason Nebuchadnezzar has gone back to these same frauds and these same charlatans who’ve been lying to him and he knows now that they’re lying to him.

And he says, he tells them the dream this time and says, what does it mean? Well, none of them can tell him the interpretation. None of them understand what the dream means.

Verse 8, though, but at the last Daniel came before me, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the name of my God, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. And before him, I told the dream, saying, O Belteshazzar, master of the magicians, because I know that in the, that the spirit of the holy gods is in thee, and no secret troubleth thee. Tell me the visions of my dream that I have seen and the interpretation thereof.

Well, he is still looking at the God of Israel, even though he has made this decree that the God of Israel is wonderful, everybody should respect him, nobody should say anything against him. He’s still looking at the God of Israel as being just one of many gods. He hasn’t quite nailed down that he’s the only true one, that he stands head and shoulders above all these false idols that they were worshiping.

And so when he says, Daniel, I recognize that there’s something divine about you. Not that Daniel was a god, but that Daniel was in communication with a deity. He says the spirit of the holy gods.

See, he still hasn’t figured out that there’s just one. But he still recognizes that Daniel has this unique relationship with his god. And he said, I want you to tell me the interpretation of the dream.

Actually, he goes to Daniel and says, I want you to tell me the dream and the interpretation. But he says, thus were the visions in my head. Explain to me what this is.

He says, tell me the dream. And Nebuchadnezzar then goes on to tell him the dream. But he says to Daniel, tell me the dream, meaning explain it to me.

Explain to me what is going on in this story in my head and what does it all mean? He says, I saw, behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew and was strong, and the height thereof reached into heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth.

The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all. The beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the bowels thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. So he says, I saw in my dream, in my vision, I saw this massive tree.

It stretched all the way up into the heavens, into the sky, and you could see it from all over the earth. And it was full of leaves, and it was full of limbs, and it gave tremendous amounts of fruit. Everybody could eat from it, and there was plenty of shade under it for all the animals.

There was plenty of roosting space for all the birds, and everybody just was supported by this mighty, mighty tree. He says in verse 13, though, I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and behold, a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven. It sounds like he saw a vision, maybe of an angel there.

And he cried aloud, verse 14, and said thus, Hew down the tree and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves and scatter his fruit, let the beast get away from under it, and let the fowls, excuse me, and the fowls from his branches. So he sees this vision where this angel, this holy one, comes down and says, cut the tree down. cut the tree down, strip all the leaves off of it, tear off its branches, throw the fruit away, and make all the animals get away, make the birds leave and go someplace else.

Seems like kind of a waste of such a majestic tree that benefited so many people. Nevertheless, verse 15, leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass in the tender grass of the field, and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his heart be changed from man’s, and let a beast’s heart be given unto him, and let seven times pass over him.

So this is all the things that he’s recounting that the Holy One, the angel, has said in his dream. Verse 17, this matter is by the decree of the watchers and the demand by the word of the Holy Ones, to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the beast. Excuse me. Let’s try that again.

And giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. So, again, this angel is saying, this is done so that we’re going to change this man’s heart. We’re going to do this until he recognizes that the Most High God put him here, and that the Most High God is in charge over him, and rules over him, and he can raise up to power whoever he wants, and he can lower down out of power whoever he wants to.

And he says, This dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, have seen. Now thou, O Belteshazzar, Daniel, declare the interpretation thereof, for as much as all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known unto me the interpretation, but thou art able, for the spirit of the holy gods is in thee. He said, I believe you can do what none of the others can do.

Verse 19 says, then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonished for one hour. Imagine that, being so shocked that you can’t speak for an hour. So he just stood there for an hour, pondering, and his thoughts troubled him.

Because Daniel knew that this was not good news for Nebuchadnezzar, and he did not. . .

Nebuchadnezzar is not somebody you want to bring bad news to. That’s kind of like being the guy who has to go tell Hitler or Saddam Hussein, They’re losing the war. You don’t want to be that guy.

Because that guy’s probably not in for a good reaction. His thoughts troubled him. He knew this wasn’t a good dream for him.

So the king spake and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation there of trouble be. So he says to Daniel, hey, don’t hold back from me just because you’re worried about giving me this bad news. Tell me the truth.

So Daniel does. Shazar answered and said, My lord, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies. So he’s prefacing this by saying, King, I wish that this dream was about your enemies.

In other words, he’s telling him, I am not enjoying the fact that I’m having to tell you this. I don’t wish this on you. He said, The tree that thou sawest, which grew and was strong, whose height reached into the heavens, and the sight thereof to all the earth, whose leaves were fair and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all, under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation.

He said this wonderful tree with all the limbs and all the leaves and all the fruit and all the space and everything else, he said that tree, verse 22, it is thou, O king. He says the tree, the mighty tree, represents you, Nebuchadnezzar. He said thou art grown and become strong for thy greatness is grown and reacheth unto heaven and thy dominion to the end of the earth.

He said, King Nebuchadnezzar, you have grown so strong. He was the most powerful man in the world. He said, your power reaches up to the sky and as far as we can see, it’s all yours.

And where is the king, verse 23, and where is the king Saul, watcher and a holy one coming down from heaven and saying, hew the tree down and destroy it, yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth. even with a band of iron and brass and the tender grass of the field, and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field until seven times pass over him. He says in verse 24, This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the Most High, which has come upon my Lord the king.

He said, This is what that means. This is what God has said, that they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. So he says, there’s going to come a day when God is going to intervene because of your pride, and you are not going to any longer live in the world of men.

You’re going to be out there with the animals. And he says, you’re going to be out there, and you’re going to be eating the grass of the field like you were cattle, and you’re going to be out there getting the dew of heaven on you, which means you’re going to be out there just in the open field. I mean, there’s not a house to go back to.

You’re just out there in the pasture. You’re going to think you’re an animal. And he says, until seven times Passover, he said, you’re going to be out there for seven years until you learn that the Most High God is really in charge over you. Because, see, Nebuchadnezzar had been puffed up in all this pride, and he thought, even though he knew the power of the God of Israel, He thought, I’m the greatest. I don’t have to answer to anybody.

I’m in control. I’m important. I can do what I want.

And God had been trying to get his attention for a long time, trying to get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention, trying to call Nebuchadnezzar to repent, trying to call Nebuchadnezzar to bow the knee. And Nebuchadnezzar, in his pride, could never come to a point where he could say, God is first and I’m second. He could never come to a point where he could submit himself in any way to the Most High God.

And so now God was going to do whatever it took to get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. And God will do that with us too. God will strive with us from time to time and try to get our attention.

And if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do, God can and will and does start taking things away and start intervening and start stepping up the efforts to get our attention. But he says in verse 26, Whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots, thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee. After that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule.

He said, but there’s hope in here for Nebuchadnezzar. Because the angel didn’t, you know, rip the tree out by the roots and burn it up. Just cut it down to a stump, but he left the roots there.

And they were banded with this iron, which, you know, kind of sounds like it was shackled, but some people have said maybe it represents God’s protection. He’s capped off the tree stump. And I don’t know enough about working on trees and tree surgery to know what that means, but I’m going with people who sound like they know what they’re talking about.

It sounds like that was a protective thing, that God’s saying here, we’re going to come back and do something with this tree. Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was not lost forever because he said there’s going to come a point where you are going to get it through your thick head, that you’re not as important as God. that you’re not as powerful as God, but that you are in fact subject to God.

When you realize that even you, as king of the largest empire on earth, that even you are subject to God and even you have been put there by God and even you can be removed by God at any time, he said, then God is going to restore your kingdom. Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee. He’s pleading with him here as someone who genuinely cares about the king and saying, please listen to me.

He said, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee and break off thy sins by righteousness and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility. He says, please, please. This was not a promise that God would do this.

This was Daniel’s hope because he knew the character of God and he knew how God had interacted with Israel in the past. He said, please, if you’ll just humble yourself, if you’ll just turn away from this sinful pride, If you’ll start changing the way you do things because you’ve humbled yourself before God, he says maybe, maybe if you’ll do that, then God will hold off on what’s about to happen. And that was Daniel’s earnest hope. And you know what?

I believe that’s what God wants for us as well. I don’t see that God enjoys punishing us or he wouldn’t give us so many opportunities. I mean, the Bible says that God is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, But he’s merciful and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Why has God not, the context there is, why has God not punished this evildoer? Why has God not punished this? How long is so and so going to get away with this?

And the answer is, it’s not that God has forgotten to be just. God is delaying the punishment. God is delaying the discipline sometimes to give us that one last opportunity to repent. Because just like me, I do not like having to spank my kids.

Oh, I hate it. they’re in here and they need to hear this, they know this, I will do it if it’s necessary, but I don’t like it. Oh, I’d much rather give you one more chance to just do what you’re supposed to do.

And Daniel, I think here is pleading because he knows the character of God and knows that there’s this chance. God doesn’t want to strike Nebuchadnezzar down. God wants Nebuchadnezzar to be humble.

But if it takes a spanking to humble him, then that’s what’s going to have to happen. Well, Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t listen to this. Verse 28 says that he, all this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar.

At the end of 12 months, he walked in the palace of the king of Babylon. And this is where in verse 30, he spoke and said, is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty. That’s when a year later, he’s still the same guy.

He’s still the same prideful, arrogant guy saying, I’ve done all this. I’m the master of all this. completely ignoring that Daniel has told him, you’re about to be disciplined, you’re about to be chastised in this severe way until you realize that God put you here, and God did all this.

And it says in verse 31, while the word was still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, O Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee. So the words have not even left his mouth yet, the thoughts already taken place in his heart. But while the words are still in his mouth, he hears a voice out of heaven saying, the kingdom’s gone from you.

It’s out of your hands now. And they shall drive thee from men. And thy dwelling shall be with the beast of the field.

They shall make thee to eat grass as oxen. And seven times shall pass over thee until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will. So he hears that again, what he heard in the dream.

The same hour, verse 33, was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. And he was driven from men, and he did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with dew. with the dew of heaven, until his hairs were grown like eagle’s feathers, and his nails like bird’s claws.

So at that same hour, Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, and he began to think he was an animal. Think about that, this magnificent king, this man who lived in splendor and had power of life and death over hundreds of thousands of people, now thinks he’s an animal, and he’s out living in the wild and he’s out eating grass and he’s getting wet when it rains and when the dew comes and he’s his his hair has gotten matted to where it looks like feathers you know that’ll happen if you don’t comb your hair every so often he he was just unkempt and his his uh his nails looked like claws and I you know sometimes I’ll joke with charla if I don’t you know you don’t clip nails ever so often the kids if we don’t clip the kids nails they’re going to be able to swoop down and scoop their dinner out of the river with eagle’s claws. His really looked like that.

So there was nothing seemingly human about him. And at the end of the days, this took place for seven years. Not only think of how humbling that would be for Nebuchadnezzar, that everybody’s looked at him, and this once mighty man is now out there like a lunatic thinking he’s an animal. But also think the king, this source of stability, the guy who held this big empire together, has been out there thinking he’s an animal for seven years.

Think of what that would do to the kingdom. Think of the instability that would grow up and what Nebuchadnezzar was going to have to come back to. And at the end of the day, as I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes unto heaven.

So finally, this guy looks up from the food, the ground that he’s been focused on for seven years. Finally looks up to the Lord. And mine understanding returned unto me.

And I blessed the Most High. And I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?

So this is how we can tell that there’s actually been a change of heart. When someone is prideful, when we’re prideful and we get slapped down for it, if we’re still prideful, we come back and we resent that, don’t we? Can you believe how she talked to me?

they’re not going to get away with that. Do you know who I am? He didn’t do any of that.

He said, oh my goodness, God is in control. God does what he wants and nobody gets to question him. There’s nobody who can question him.

His might, he goes on to talk about his power, his dominion, his sovereignty over everything. Nebuchadnezzar is somebody who’s come out of this massive spanking and saying, wait a minute, I deserve that. And he comes out of it with a proper respect for God.

At the same time, my reason returned to me. And for the glory of my kingdom, mine honor and my brightness returned unto me. And my counselors and my Lord sought unto me, and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me.

Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment. To those that walk in pride, he is able to abase. And so Nebuchadnezzar learned that God is serious here, that he was going to deal with the sin of pride.

And this was a guy who had a lot of pride, and so it took a lot to deal with him. But the message here is that God is in control of all of us. If God is in control of the most powerful of all of us, then God is in control of the least powerful of all of us, and everybody in between.

If God controls the destiny and fates of nations, if God is sovereign over nations, then God is sovereign over you and me. Now, I still don’t believe, and I don’t believe the Bible teaches, that that means God makes every decision for us and that we have no free will. God is so sovereign, God is so sovereign that he can allow us some free will and his sovereignty not be threatened by that a bit.

And he gives us the choice whether we’re going to submit willingly or not. And it’s like I tell my kids all the time, I learned this a few years ago. You know, I would say, clean up your room or you’re getting a spanking.

Now, what I really want them to do is submit and clean up the room, do what they’re supposed to do. But one of my children, and I’ll just let you wonder which one, one of my children would more often than not take the spanking because I’m not doing what you want me to do.

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