Living in Exile: Your Job and God's

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us for worship today.

I have a couple of announcements to highlight for you as we get started. The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30, talking about Lifestories by Mark Hall.

I’ll remind you of the Sanctity of Life baby bottles that you can pick up and fill with your spare change. Those are in the windows, and we’ll need them back by February 19.

Also in the window sills are our new church directories. Please pick up one of those on your way out today and make good use of them, and contact the church office with any corrections. Though Twila says she doesn’t want to hear from anybody because she’s been working on this thing for months.

Della, do you have an announcement this morning?

One last note, I’ve been meeting with some local pastors for a while now, and this was all actually started by Dave Chappell at over at White Hill. We all feel like God’s been calling all the churches in town to come together and work more as one in reaching our community.

We are in the process of doing some things that will bring our local churches closer together, and I’ll update you on those as they get finalized. But right now our larger plan is to rent out the park up here sometime in the early summer for a seven-day town revival, complete with food and prayer and preaching and booths for everything from counseling to ministries like Comfort Care.

I think it’s going to be amazing. For now, though, we’d all like your prayers for God to reveal His will and make some paths straight.

Jesyka, do you have anything?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father, we thank and praise you for the life you have so richly given us. Thank you for the incredible blessing of being your sons and daughters and for the beautiful creations you have made us to be.

Lord, we give you all that we are and ask that we might engage with your Spirit today. We ask your blessing upon our country. We lift our hearts that you might fill them with new love. We lift our minds that you would pour fresh hope into our thinking. We lift our hands and our voices to sing your praises in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Sermon

We’ve been spending the past few weeks talking about how much our society and culture has changed, and how the Christian church should respond to that change.

But we don’t respond by doing anything new, do we? In fact, the way that God says we’re supposed to react to the changing culture is to remember what the Apostle Peter wrote a couple thousand years ago — we’re supposed to remember that we’re exiles in a foreign land, and that our true home is in another world.

All through the Bible, God reminds you that the way to hang on when everything around you seems to be changing is to focus on the things that never change. Things like keeping in mind that your real home is in heaven, and making sure your attention is on treasures that will last forever instead of ones that will fade. And there’s one more thing that never changes, and that’s your job.

What’s your job as a Christian? I’m sure you know this, but it always helps to have a reminder. Your first job as a Christian is to, as Peter wrote, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” It’s to work with Holy Spirit that’s in you to every day live a little more like Jesus, talk a little more like Jesus, and treat people a little more like Jesus.

Theologians have a fancy word for that called “sanctification,” and it’s just you and God both doing that work of making you more and more like Christ.

But you have another job too, and that’s to take the forgiveness and grace and mercy that God’s given you and tell others that they can have all those things too. That all the meaning they’re looking for in life, and all the acceptance, and all the love, really can be found.

That’s a tough thing for some of us to do, isn’t it? It’s even tougher now. Twenty or thirty years ago, if you shared your faith with somebody the worst you would probably get was them saying, “Yeah, okay. I’ll think about that.” Now the person you’re speaking to might get downright hostile. Now if you try to share your faith in the wrong place, you could get in a lot of trouble.

But your job still hasn’t changed, even if society has. And the fact remains that the strength of your faith is most clearly shown in the amount of confidence you have to share Christ to an unbelieving world.

So how does that work? More importantly, what’s your role in bringing other people to Christ, and what’s God’s role? What will it take for others to come to faith?

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” That sounds an awful lot like a process, doesn’t it? Like steps that you have to take to get to where you’re going. Something that doesn’t happen overnight but takes a long time to do. Life really is a journey, and the struggle on every step of that journey for both Christians and non-Christians is pride.

Pride’s the big one. Pride is the big sin. Pride is what got the devil kicked out of heaven. Pride is what ultimately led Adam and Eve to taste that fruit. Pride is what drove Judas to betray Jesus.

Pride is what keeps many from even considering God today. They can give you all sorts of reasons, but deep down a lot of people don’t want to believe in God because if there’s a God, that means they have to answer to someone other than themselves.

Pride was also king Nebuchadnezzar’s big problem, and today we’re going to see both how that pride cost him and how we’re supposed to speak to our modern unbelieving culture.

Because the way that God deals with Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel is the way God deals with the world through us. As we’ll see, Nebuchadnezzar’s about to suffer greatly. But he comes out of it a better person, and that’s because of two things — God’s humbling, and Daniel’s courage.

Our scripture today is Daniel chapter 4, but instead of reading all 37 verses at once and then talking about them, I’m going to talk about them as I read them. And we’re going to start out this morning in Daniel 4:4-9:

I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me.

So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods—and I told him the dream, saying, “O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation.

And this is God’s word.

Daniel is a pretty strange book. About a third of it is Daniel talking about everything that happened to him and his friends after they’d been taken into exile. Another third or so involves some very strange and very frightening visions that Daniel has about the future and the end times. And then you have chapter 4 here which is completely different than all the rest, because it’s the only part of the Bible written by a pagan.

Chapter 4 is not written by Daniel. Look how verse 4 starts: “I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace.” Nebuchadnezzar himself is writing this portion, which is amazing. And we find him now in much the same circumstances as we found him the first time, because Nebuchadnezzar has another dream.

But before he gets to that dream, Nebuchadnezzar does a bit of foreshadowing in verse 4. This chapter is about Nebuchadnezzar’s sin and God’s judgment, and Nebudchadnezzar gives us a few words here about what started the whole thing: He was at ease in his house and prospering in his palace.

His wars were done. His kingdom was at peace. He had built the greatest city the world had ever known up to that point. Nebuchadnezzar had more wealth than anyone, more powerful than anyone, more fame than anyone. And now he was in a place where he could pass away the rest of his life with ease and happiness.

In other words, there’s absolutely nothing going on in Nebuchadnezzar’s life right now to make him have such a horrible nightmare. And so that means to him that this nightmare could only come from the same place that his first nightmare came from — from God.

Now, here’s Nebuchadnezzar’s nightmare: He dreams of a tree standing by itself in the middle of the land, and the tree is so big that it reaches all the way to the heavens and spreads over all the earth. It’s a beautiful tree, filled with fruit and giving protection to all the beasts of the earth, and all the birds of the heavens, and all the people.

But then, starting in verse 13, there’s a judgment given. Verses 13-16:

“I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. He proclaimed aloud and said thus: ‘Chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it and the birds from its branches. But leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, amid the tender grass of the field. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his mind be changed from a man's, and let a beast's mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him.”

You’ve heard how history repeats itself? It’s true. It’s one of the truest things you’ll ever hear, and if we paid more attention to that we’d save ourselves a whole lot of trouble. History repeats itself here too, because Nebuchadnezzar does the same thing with this dream as he did with that first dream he had — he calls the wise men. And the result this time is the same as the result the first time. Look at verses 6 and 7:

So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation.

Again, these magi, the wisest people in the world, can’t tell the king what his dream means. But this time is a little different than that first time. These wise men had their own special system of interpreting dreams. That was one of their biggest jobs. And seriously, this dream Nebuchadnezzar had isn’t that hard to figure out, is it?

There’s this huge flourishing tree — that has to be the king, right? And then that tree gets cut down — that has to symbolize some kind of judgment. I mean, that’s pretty cut and dry even for someone like me, so why can’t these wise men figure that out?

Actually I think they do figure it out. These wise men know exactly what the king’s dream means. They’re just afraid to tell him. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar has this bad habit of throwing people in furnaces. So the wise men kind of get together and say, “Let’s just tell him we don’t know what his dream means, because then we can keep our heads on our necks.”

So what does Nebuchadnezzar do? Well, he doesn’t do what he did last time and call the captain of the guard and say, “I want you to go kill every wise man you see.” Nebuchadnezzar hasn’t learned a lot, but he has learned some. Instead, he summons Daniel.

Verses 8 and 9:

At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods—and I told him the dream, saying, “O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation.

Now, a couple of things we need to notice here. First, remember that Daniel is a magi. He’s a the chief of the wise men. But he also doesn’t seem to have much of anything to do with the other wise men, does he? All the other wise men come in, Daniel’s not there. All the other wise men huddle together and decide how they’re going to answer the king, Daniel’s not among them. Daniel seems to keep a distance from them. He arrives to the king separate from them. He talks to the king in a different way.

So far Daniel has faced his culture in the exact same way that we’re supposed to face our culture. He’s in exile, just like we are, but he’s worked hard to make Babylon great. He supports the government and is loyal to the king. But he’s also made it clear that God is first, and Daniel has drawn those lines in his life and made a vow not to cross them. And it’s because of his faith in God that Daniel can do what none of the other wise men will even dream of — he’s going to tell the king the truth.

Daniel says, “Your dream is a vision from God, and it’s a warning. O king, you’re going to be judged because of your pride and your arrogance.”

Look down in verses 24-26:

“ ... this is the interpretation, O king: It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. And as it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that Heaven rules.”

Daniel just spells it right out for the king, doesn’t he? Daniel doesn’t pull any punches. He does exactly what he’s supposed to do. Do you know what a preacher’s job is, especially on Sunday morning? A preacher’s job is to comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable.

The two best compliments a preacher can get after Sunday service is, “Boy I really needed to hear that this morning,” and “Boy you really stepped on my toes today.” Because you have to tell people the things they desperately need to hear, and you also have to tell them the things they desperately don’t want to hear. You have to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Which one of those was Nebuchadnezzar? He was comfortable, wasn’t he? Look back at verse 4 — “I was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace.”

What happens when we start getting a little too comfortable in our lives, especially our spiritual lives? We start getting lazy, don’t we? We start letting our guards down. Nebuchadnezzar was a little too comfortable, so he needed to be disturbed. That’s why God sent him that dream.

Daniel says, “O king, you’re going to be stripped of all your majesty. You’re going to be brought low. You’re going to be humbled in the worst way. But even in the midst of God’s judgment, He’s going to give you mercy. God won’t strike you dead, and He won’t take your kingdom completely away, but it’s going to be tough going for a while.”

And then Daniel says this beautiful and courageous thing in verse 27. Here’s where Daniel preaches, and he uses what I call the “Amazing Grace” formula. You know that line in “Amazing Grace” that says, “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved”? First you have to fear, because God will use that fear to bring the peace of His forgiveness.

Daniel says, “Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”

“Here’s a warning,” Daniel says, “because God is holy. But here’s a way to avoid all this, because God is merciful.”

Which one do you think Nebuchadnezzar chooses? Yep, the same one we usually choose.

Verses 28-32:

All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?”

While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”

Now pay attention to the first part of verse 29. This is twelve months later. This is a whole year after Daniel gave Nebuchadnezzar his choice. How patient is God? How loving is God that He gives Nebuchadnezzar every opportunity to change? He is slow to anger but quick to bless. Paul writes in Romans 2:4 that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”

But Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t repent. In fact, he does the complete opposite. And again, what did Daniel say was the reason for Nebuchadnezzar’s dream? Pride and arrogance. Both of those are on full display in verse 30. Look at that verse again, and notice how many times Nebuchadnezzar refers to himself:

“Is not this great Babylon, which _**I**_ have built by _**my**_ mighty power as a royal residence for the glory of _**my**_ majesty?”

I, I, I. Me, me, me. That’s Nebuchadnezzar.

Jesus had something to say about this sort of pride. He told a whole parable about it. Put your finger there in Daniel chapter 4 and turn real quick to Luke chapter 12. Luke 12:16-21:

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

The rich man uses the pronoun “I” six times in that parable. Everything’s about him. He’s the most important person in the world, and surely the most important person in his own life. And so God brings judgment.

It’s the same with Nebuchadnezzar in verse 30 of Daniel chapter 4. And so God’s patience finally runs out. He wants to save Nebuchadnezzar, but He knows the only way to save Nebuchadnezzar is to punish him. And that is verses 31-33:

While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws.

Everything that Daniel had warned the king would happen comes to pass. Nebuchadnezzar’s stripped of his splendor, stripped of his authority, stripped of his place in society, stripped of his sanity, stripped even of his humanity. It’s as if God said, “You want to think like a beast and live like a beast, fine. Then you can be a beast.”

Now, it’s verses like this that a lot of unbelievers point to and say, “See, that’s why I don’t believe in the Bible, kings becoming cows. That’s just ridiculous. That doesn’t happen.”

But it’s funny the things you come across when you’re working on a sermon, because this week I learned about a mental illness called boanthropy. The first two letters of that, “B O”, stand for “bovine,” which is the fancy word for a cow. It’s a very rare condition, but people who suffer from it actually believe they’re cows. They crawl around on all fours, they moo, they even eat grass. In Daniel 4 we find the first documented case of a person suffering from boanthropy.

But it wasn’t just a mental illness for Nebuchadnezzar, it was God working in him. The king was overcome with pride, so God had to overcome him with humility. Not because Nebuchadnezzar was powerful, but because God is merciful. Nebuchadnezzar had to learn that even though he was king, there was a greater king. Even though he was powerful, there was a greater power. Nebuchadnezzar had to learn what he truly was — a normal person completely dependent upon an all-powerful God — and that’s why God turned him into the most common animal there was: a cow.

God brought Nebuchadnezzar down low when Nebuchadnezzar’s heart was at its highest. But why in the world would God do that? So that Nebuchadnezzar could be truly lifted up. And the only way that Nebuchadnezzar could be truly lifted up was if Nebuchadnezzar repented. For the king to be brought down so low like that was painful, but it had a purpose, and one that was glorious — to bring the king to salvation.

And you know what? That’s exactly what happens. God took away from Nebuchadnezzar, but starting in verse 34, God gives back. Look at verses 34-37:

At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,

for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;

all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,

and he does according to his will among the host of heaven

and among the inhabitants of the earth;

and none can stay his hand

or say to him, “What have you done?”

At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

God gave everything back to Nebuchadnezzar, didn’t He? Everything except Nebuchadnezzar’s pride. That’s gone now, and now Nebuchadnezzar says, “God’s bigger than me, God’s greater than me, and next to Him, I’m nothing. My pride has given way to praise.”

His counselors and lords sought him. They said, “It’s good to have the king back again.” But Nebuchadnezzar said, “I’m not the king I was. Oh no, I’m different now. Because now I understand. It’s God who’s in charge, not me. He’s taught me my life’s greatest lesson: ‘those who walk in pride he is able to humble.’”

It’s the most amazing thing, isn’t it? This prideful man, this king over an empire, is now a humble believer in the one true God. How did that happen? Through his trials, yes. Through God’s who humbling hand. But also through one man, through Daniel. God worked through Daniel to reach an unbelieving Nebuchadnezzar, and God will work through you to do the same to an unbelieving world. Because that’s your job, and your job hasn’t changed.

Let’s look at how God did that. Look back starting at verse 19. Daniel’s standing before the king, before this man who had taken Daniel from his home, who had almost had Daniel killed, and who had thrown Daniel’s three best friends into a furnace. Daniel’s interpreting this dream, and he could keep quiet. He’s living in a foreign land and speaking to a foreign king. But instead, he speaks.

Daniel speaks because God wants him to speak, but he doesn’t speak in anger. He doesn’t say, “You’re about to be judged, Nebuchadnezzar, and I can’t wait. I can’t wait for you to get what you deserve.”

That’s what we do to the people who stand against us, isn’t it? To the people we don’t like. That’s not what Daniel does. He speaks to the king with compassion. He says, “I have to tell you what’s going to happen, but I’m going to tell you how to avoid it. Because I don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want you to have to go through this.”

Truth and love. That’s the way Daniel speaks to an unbelieving king. And that’s how we need to speak to an unbelieving world that’s increasingly turning against us. And that’s hard because we think evangelism doesn’t work, or we can’t do it right, or we’ll never be good enough to do it. But the beautiful thing is that you don’t have to be good enough. You’re confusing your part in all of this. You have to know what your job is and what God’s job is.

Your job is to faithfully live out and proclaim the gospel. God’s job is to work through what you as His servant says. That’s what we see in Daniel 4. You communicate the message, God opens the eyes. You speak with compassion and conviction, and then pray that God works to open that person’s heart. Because He’s the only one who can, not you.

It’s easy to look at the way the world is right now and think that the best thing we can do is to do exactly what Daniel didn’t, which is just stand there and keep quiet. When we do that, God starts to become smaller in our eyes. We start doubting His power and His control to grow His kingdom. We get angry and fearful.

But God says now isn’t the time to quit your job, now’s when you start working overtime. We have to restore our thinking of God as He truly is. He’s the God who was able to humble the most powerful king in the world, and then raise that king back up as a believer. Daniel understood that, which is how he could speak both truthfully and with kindness.

Your job and my job is not to convert people. It’s to share the gospel. God is big enough to do the rest, and that’s how He’ll build his church. That’s what He’s doing now. I spoke during the announcements about meeting with some of the town’s pastors this week. All this talk about people turning away from God and Christianity dying, we don’t see that in our churches. Not now. There’s something happening in this town. Something’s about to be born. We’re called to be a part of that, we’re called to stand ready to deliver God’s truth with kindness and compassion. We’re called to get ready, so let’s get ready. I for one can’t wait to see what God will do next.

Let’s pray:

Father in a time when it always feels like we’re on the defensive as believers, when it feels like the best thing we can do is just keep quiet and get along, help us to remember that our task as Your children hasn’t changed: we are called to bring light into the darkness, to bring healing to the broken, and to provide hope where there’s only despair. Grant us the courage and the boldness to do just that, and to do it just as Daniel did — with compassion, with kindness, and with the knowing that You will do Your work to draw those whom You will to you. And as You deal with the pride of others, Father, deal with our own sense of pride. Deal with our own arrogance. Help us to remember that our trials and struggles are meant to bring us closer to You and to make us more like Christ. For it’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.