How Are the Mighty Fallen!

Daniel 4:1-37

     We're gonna look at Daniel 4 tonight.  Daniel 4.  And these are narrative passages so we're taking them in kind of large chunks.  Daniel 4 has 37 verses.  Now if that was 37 verses of Pauline theology it would probably take us about 37 weeks to get through it.  But since it's a basically a narrative passage, you kind of flow with the story a little bit and you can keep moving along.  And we'll see how far we get tonight.

     We've entitled this fourth chapter, How are the mighty fallen?  How are the mighty fallen?  Perhaps the most destructive word in any language is the word pride.  Pride.  Pride damned Satan and his angels.  Pride has damned men throughout human history.  Pride is destructive because it breaks that first and great command that we ought to have no other gods before God Himself.  God is to be the first and only God.  God is the only one to be worshiped.  The only one to be praised.  The only one to be served.  And His will is absolutely supreme.

     And pride asserts that man is to take a place of superiority over God.  Or that an angel is to take a place of superiority over God.  Pride places self above God.  That's the essence of pride.  And in the scripture, through the prophets, God said, "My glory will I not give to another."  And He laid down a basic premise.  "My glory will I not give to another," means that He will not tolerate a usurper elevating himself above God.

     Listen to what God said about pride.  Proverbs 21:4, He said, "A proud heart is sin."  Proverbs 6, He said, "These things doth the Lord hate, a proud look."  Proverbs 16:5, "Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord."  Proverbs 8:13, "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogance."  Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall."  Proverbs 29:23 says, "A man's pride shall bring him low."  And Proverbs 11:2 says, "When pride comes, then comes shame."

     Now just from the book of Proverbs, we gain an insight into how God feels about the matter of pride.  It is a serious and severe sin and condemned repeatedly throughout the scripture.  It leads to abomination because it desecrates the name of God and the rightful place that He has.  It brings about destruction, for the end of pride is judgment.  And it leads to a fall and to shame.

     In Jeremiah 49, there's a very interesting verse where the Lord gives a prophesy against Edam.  You don't need to turn to it, but Edam was very, very proud because Edam was an area in east and south of Jerusalem, an area in the wilderness and the desert that had many natural fortresses, and particularly the city of Petra.  The great capital city of Edam was a city fortified by virtue of the fact that it was in the midst of walls of great high cliffs.  And the only entrance, and I've been through that entrance, is just one wide enough for a single individual to pass.  And so it was very easy for that city to be guarded by one soldier and almost invulnerable.

     In Jeremiah 49:16, Jeremiah gives a prophesy against Edam.  "Thy terribleness has deceived thee and the pride of thine heart, o thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that hold us the heights of the hills, though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle," watch this line, "'I will bring thee down from there,' saith the Lord.  'Also, Edam shall be a desolation and everyone that goes by it shall be appalled and hiss at its plagues.'"

     If you were to go there today as I have, you would find that it is absolutely empty.  There's no city there anymore.  You say how could it ever happen?  Well, Petra had water coming into the city in little troughs flowing down the sides of the cliffs.  The troughs were still there.  They cut off the water supply and pretty soon the people had to give up because they had no water.  God brought them down.

     James 4:16 sums it up.  And you ought to jot that scripture down.  It's a very important one.  It sums up God's view toward pride.  It says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."  "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."  Now that is the lesson of Daniel 4.  God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.  If you ever were looking for an illustration for James 4:16, you'd find it in Daniel 4.  It is an apt and graphic illustration of that very basic truth.  When you are proud, God fights against you.  When you are humbled, God gives you grace.

     Now a proper recognition of the sovereignty of God, a proper recognition of the supremacy of God, a proper recognition of the humility of man is what this chapter is all about.  And the key phrase in the chapter, notice in verse 17, is, "That the living may know that the most high ruleth in the kingdom of men."  That's the key phrase.  The whole chapter is set to teach that truth, that everybody may know that the most high that is God rules in the kingdom of men.  No man can set himself up above God.

     You'll notice in verse 25, again, the same thing.  "Till thou know that the most high ruleth in the kingdom of men."  You'll notice that in verse 32 that, "The most high ruleth in the kingdom of men."  In verse 34, "I bless the most high, praise and honor Him who liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion.  His kingdom is from generation to generation."  The theme then is to recognize that God is the ruler in the kingdom of men.  Now when you don't realize that, you're in trouble.

     In Acts 12, Herod was beginning to feel proud, and lifted up, and boastful, and he gave a great speech.  And the people all shouted that it was the voice of a god and not a man, that he was feeding his soul on the glory that was coming his way.  And he became puffed up and proud.  And in Acts 12:20-23, the Bible says very suddenly, "He was smitten by God and eaten by worms and he died on the spot."  And the text says, "Because he gave not God the glory."

     In Jeremiah 13, Jeremiah said to the people of God, "Give God glory.  And if you don't give God glory, he'll cause you to stumble on the dark mountains.  He'll trip you up and you'll fall into death."  In Romans 1 it says, "Because mankind gave not God the glory, He gave them over to a reprobate mind."  It is a severe thing to set oneself up above God.  Because God fights against the proud and spares His grace for the humble.

     Now in this chapter we meet a proud man.  Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Babylonian Empire, the first of the great monarchs of the four empires that rules that part of the world.  The great Babylonian empire.  This man, monarch of monarch, king of kings, ruling all the world that he perceived became proud, and puffed up, and bloated, and inflated, and self-centered, and set himself up as God.  And we saw in the last chapter, he even built a great big 90-foot high idol out of gold as an image of himself and forced everybody to bow down and worship.  And when three didn't, they were thrown into a fiery furnace.  So we understand a little about his ego.

     But in this chapter, we see how God brings this man low and then gives grace to him in his humility.  He resists him in his pride.  He gives grace to him in his humility.  And if I can extrapolate a little bit, I'd like to do that.  I think there's more in this chapter than just the story of Nebuchadnezzar.  I think Nebuchadnezzar is a symbol of several things.

     First of all, I believe he is a symbol of any other individual in history who tries to do the same thing.  He is sort of a model or a pattern for how that works out.  Before all of the shahs, and ayatollahs, and the Amins, and the Hitlers, and the Mussolinis, and the whoever elses of the world who want to set up their petty, puny little kingdoms and rule as the monarch of their own self designed empires and set themselves up and their egos as that which is beyond and above God, this is a warning to them as well.  And Nebuchadnezzar stands as a symbol of what God does with all people like that.

     But beyond that, I think there is here a warning to us who may never rule any empire other than the little one we invent for ourselves.  And we who in our simplicity a very uncomplex life and in our lack of public notoriety build an empire and crawl up on top and crown ourselves king, this is a warning to us, also.  And I think even in a broader vein, I think what we see with Nebuchadnezzar here is a symbol also of how God will deal with all of the proud empires of the times of the gentiles.  For He crushed the Babylonian Empire.  He crushed the Medo-Persian Empire.  He crushed the Greek Empire.  He crushes the Roman Empire.  It'll revive.  He'll crush it again and establish the kingdom of Christ.

     So you see this is not just Nebuchadnezzar.  This is any other would be monarch of the world.  And it is any man, woman, or young person of the world who sets up his own little empire and crawls up on top and declares himself king and defies God.  And it is also a symbol of how God has dealt with the whole of the gentile period known as the times of the gentiles.  And so we learn much from it, a fitting symbol of how God judges pride and gives grace where there's humility.

     Now I have to tell you this so you'll know going in.  This is the climax of the spiritual biography of Nebuchadnezzar.  Now we know that in the first three chapters, the Lord is working on Nebuchadnezzar, don't we?  He drops Daniel in his lap.  Daniel, first of all, defies Him by not being willing, along with his friends, Mishael, Azariah, and Hananiah, not being willing to eat the king's meat or drink the king's wine or do certain things that they do.

     And so immediately he is forced to be confronted by these four young men.  As he confronts them, and questions them, and deals with them, he finds that they are far and away beyond anybody in his kingdom in terms of their integrity, and their intelligence, and their education, and their wisdom, etc., etc.  So beginning then in chapter 1, God begins to build an affinity toward them.

     And then we find in chapter 2 that Daniel is given the responsibility of solving an incredible problem.  The man had a dream, and nobody knew what it was, and nobody could interpret it.  But Daniel could.  And we remember that Nebuchadnezzar was struck by the amazing capability of Daniel to read visions and dreams and rightly interpret them.  And again, God was driving a wedge, as it were, into the mind of Nebuchadnezzar.

     Then in the third chapter, when the decree went out that they were to bow to the idol and they didn't, the three did not.  Daniel must have been out of town somewhere.  Immediately they were thrown in the fiery furnace and there appeared with one like with them, one like a son of the gods.  And they came out.  There wasn't any burning.  There wasn't any smell of smoke.  And Nebuchadnezzar again had seen God at work.  Once in every chapter.

     And now we come in the fourth chapter to the climax of his spiritual biography.  I really believe in my heart, and this is a - you can't be totally dogmatic about this.  I'll try to show you why I believe it.  But I believe at the end of this chapter, Nebuchadnezzar truly comes to faith in the true God.  Some have entitled the chapter, "The conversation of Nebuchadnezzar."  I hate to let you in on the ending of the chapter.  Why did I do that?  Anyway.  I wanted you to know how exciting it's gonna be as we progress through 'cause I want you to know something wonderful is coming.

     Now as we look at this chapter, we focus then on the spiritual biography of Nebuchadnezzar, an incredible, astounding, amazing man.  One of the geniuses of all of human history.  Brilliant beyond those of his time.  Equipped in many, many ways in a human sense.  Puffed up and proud as the ruler of the world.  And how God literally crushes him into nothing and turns him around.  And he does it beloved through another dream.  Another dream.

     Job 33:14 it says, "For God speaks once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men in slumberings on the bed then He openeth up the ears of men and sealeth their instruction that He may withdraw a man from his purpose and hide pride from man."

     Now here in Job 33, the statement is made that God uses dreams to draw pride out of men's hearts.  It almost seems as if this is a fulfillment of that passage.  "For God uses a dream to break the pride of this mighty monarch."

     Now let's look at the introduction and the first three verses very quickly.  "Nebuchadnezzar the king unto all people, nations, and languages."  We said that that little triad simply encompasses everybody.  It's just a common phrase of the time to embody all the people who would be in sound of this decree or this testimony.  "Nebuchadnezzar the king unto all people, nations, and languages who dwell on all the earth, peace be multiplied unto you."

     And by the way, peace as a greeting, shalom or whatever, was not common only to Israel.  It was used all over the ancient world.  We find it in multiple writings of multiple nations and it was the commonest form of greeting.  So he said, "Peace be multiplied unto you.  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.  His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and His dominion is from generation to generation."  Stop right there.

     Now this is really amazing.  This is amazing.  You say who wrote this chapter?  Nebuchadnezzar did.  Now I think he probably had it edited a little by Daniel.  You say well, was Nebuchadnezzar an inspired writer?  No.  But God made sure that what Nebuchadnezzar said was accurately recorded.  The Bible is accurate in this sense.  When the devil speaks something in the Bible it isn't always true, is it?  But it's truly recorded that that's what he said.

     And so here it isn't that Nebuchadnezzar is an inspired writer.  It is that Nebuchadnezzar is giving his testimony and Daniel was able to record it exactly as it was given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The wonderful thing about it is is that it happens to be a wonderful testimony and I believe that's why the spirit of God instructed Daniel to put it in.

     Now I want you to notice that it's in the first person.  "Nebuchadnezzar the king unto all the people," etc.  This is his personal testimony.  This is kind of like Nebuchadnezzar giving his testimony on how he came to believe in the true God.  This is his personal spiritual biography.

     Verse 2, "I thought it good to show the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me."  Now he has finally seen - and this is, of course, a recap of really what you're gonna see in the story.  He is saying, "I'm gonna tell you the testimony of how I came to believe in the high God, the God above all of the deities of my own people.  How great are His signs," he says in verse 3.  Oh, he proved himself.  "And how mighty are His wonders."

     And by the way, signs and wonders are used together frequently in Hebrew in the Old Testament to indicate miracles.  He says, "I've seen enough miracles to know that His kingdom is beyond mine.  It's everlasting.  His dominion is beyond mine.  It is from generation to generation."

     Now notice in verse 1 that he was speaking to all the earth.  As far as he perceived it, he rules the whole earth.  As far as the capacity that they had in that day to extend themselves and discover people and nations, they believed they rules the world.  And so he's saying, "I'm telling everybody, the whole world as far as I see it, the story of the high God.  The one who is the supreme being.  I've seen enough miracles, enough signs and wonders, to know that this God is beyond any other God."  So you have here the personal testimony of a pagan king.  The first monarch of the times of the gentiles giving you his spiritual biography.

     All right, let's look at the dream.  Point number one, the reception of the dream.  Verse 4, "The reception of the dream."  This is his first hand account.  It begins in verse 4 with what word?  What is the first word?  I.  "I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house and flourishing in my palace.  I saw a dream which made me afraid.  And the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me."

     Now the word for rest means free from apprehension and free from fear.  His kingdom did not have any significant problems at the time.  The empire was very settled at this time.  He was experiencing no serious attacks.  He was prospering in a fantastic way.  And by the way, the word flourishing there means to grow green.  To grow green.  Everything was greening in Babylon.  Everything was flourishing in Babylon.

     Now I would venture to say that this is likely between his 30^th and 35^th year of reigning.  Because we're getting toward the end of his life.  It's probably, get this, 25 to 30 years after the fiery furnace that this takes place.  And by now, Daniel would be 45 to 50 years of age.  So we have a tremendous time gap between 3 and 4 of 25 to 30 years.  And God brings the second dream.  It panicked him.  It blew him right out of his comfort and his rest and he was totally fearful.

     Now how did he react to this?  Verse 6, "Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me."  Boy, does he have a short memory.  Those losers?  The last time they came in, they couldn't tell him anything and he said he was gonna kill them all.  Well, 25 years and you got to keep the system moving, I guess.  So they were still around.

     So he, "Made a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream.  Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans," and they were the highest of the system of castes that they had.  "The soothsayers.  And I told the dream to them, but they did not make known to me its interpretation."

     Now he calls back these same bunch of losers who couldn't help him at all the last time and he goes through this same routine.  And in verse 18, the reason they didn't tell him the interpretation is it says they're not able to make known the interpretation.  They couldn't tell him 'cause they didn't know.  But this time, they didn't admit they didn't know.  They just didn't tell him.  So he gives them the dream and they're incapacitated.

     And here we are right back at the folly of human wisdom.  I tell you I was listening the other night.  Patricia and I were driving up to the Couples Conference.  And we were listening to a tape.  We do talk now and then, but this time we were listening to a tape.  And there was a man who was being asked multiples of questions about all the problems in the world in the church.  And he just kept giving answers and answers and answers out of his own mind.  And it was so frustrating.  I kept thinking to myself, "If he would just refer to such and such a verse, that would answer that question."

     But he would say, "Now according to what I believe and I am an educated man," so and so and so and so.  It was a lot of double talk.  Beating around the bush and never saying anything.  By the time we were all done, we thought we'd arrived back at home because we hadn't gone anywhere.  Around in circles.

     The world doesn't have any answers.  1 Corinthians 2:14 says, "The natural man understandeth not the things of God."  Jesus said He'd hidden the things from the wise and prudent of the world and revealed them to babes.  The world never knows.  They're ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.  And so he's right back in the same pit again with the same guys who claim to know it all and don't know it at all.

     Verse 8.  I love this.  Daniel was cool.  He had a sense of timing.  Get this, "But at the last, Daniel came in."  Don't you like that?  "At the last, Daniel came in."  He just came in, saw the chaos, waited for the set up for his moment.  And then it says, "Whose name is Belteshazzar."  And since this is a testimony made by Nebuchadnezzar to the Babylonians in chapter 4 he wants them to know who Daniel is so he uses his Babylonian name.  "According to the name of my god." His god was Bel.  "And whom," I like this, "is the spirit of the holy God."

     Now we don't want to spend all evening tonight trying to go back and forth, back and forth, on whether it means gods the plural and he's talking about some deities that he has in his mind or whether it means the true God.  After my study, I lean to the fact that he's referring to the holy God.  And for those of you who would like a little support for that, try Leon Wood's book on Daniel.  He takes that same view.  And he's one of the finest writers on Daniel, just to give you a footnote so you don't think I'm in left field all alone.

     But anyway, Daniel came in, "Whose name is Belteshazzar according to the name of my god."  Watch.  "And whom is the spirit of the holy God."  Now where did he get that information?  He said he was the most high God way back when the first dream was told, didn't he?  And he said he was the most high God way back when the fiery furnace happened 25 to 30 years before.

     But where did he get the idea that God was a holy God?  I'll tell you where.  In the 25 and 30 years intervening, do you think Daniel never told him anything?  You better believe that in that 25 to 30 years, Daniel, who was the prime minister in the whole empire of Babylon was feeding everything he could feed into the mind of that man.  He cared about him and we'll see that in a moment.

     Now I don't know where Daniel had been when he came in at the right moment, but he had a great strategic sense of timing.  And when all the chaos was going on and they were all standing there with a blank look on their faces and their mouths shut and the king was trying to get the answer, he just came in at the last and relieved all of the pressure by giving him the answer.  Isn't it wonderful that Nebuchadnezzar recognized as the years went by that the spirit of the holy God dwell in this man?

     And the deities that you see of the Babylonians were not holy deities.  Pagan deities are not any better than the men that worship them.  But there was a holy God and his spirit dwelled in Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar knew that.  He had a fuller understanding of the nature of God now than he did before.

     I think it was not only what Daniel taught him, but I think it was probably what Daniel was like.  I think he got an idea of the holiness of God from the holiness of Daniel, don't you?  Daniel wouldn't defile himself with the king's meat and Daniel wouldn't drink the king's wine.  And Daniel wouldn't indulge in the immoralities and the excesses of behavior that are against God.  Daniel lived a pure, and a holy, and a virtuous life.  And the conclusion of Nebuchadnezzar would be that he had a holy and a virtuous God.  Because a man worships a God and that worship will reflect what he believes that God to be.

     When Stanley found David Livingston in the heart of Africa, he stayed with him for six months.  And Stanley was a professed skeptic when he found Livingston.  But he came away from six months with David Livingston a Christian.  And someone asked what Livingston said that converted him.  To which Stanley replied, "It was not what Livingston said, it was what Livingston was that brought me to Christ."

     Livingston, according to Stanley's report, never asked Stanley if he were a Christian.  He never preached to him nor seemed to pray for his conversion.  But Livingston was so thoroughly a Christian that it dawned upon Stanley that one who was not a Christian was something less than a Christian.  Pretty simple.  Livingston was a man of God who permitted the Lord to live through him.  And consequently, his life was a life of victory and blessing.  And by the sheer influence and impact of his virtue, he brought that man to Christ.

     And that I think is probably in Daniel's case what may have happened.  Daniel not only spoke of the character of God, but manifested it, as well.  And so we see the reception of the dream.  He received it.

     And now let's look at the second point, the recitation of the dream.  Daniel comes in and he comes in at a strategic moment to solve the problem.  Listen, I got to add another footnote to this.  I don't think Daniel even hung around with the rest of that bunch.  Even though he was a wise man and even though he was one of the erudite educated and one of the courtiers of the Babylonian court, I just get a feeling that he never messed with that bunch.  He operated in a class by himself.  They came in and later he came in.  He made clear there was a distinction of identification.

     Verse 9