...Shall Be Humbled | Dan 4:28-37
Notes
Transcript
PRIDE ILLUSTRATION
Last week we started walk though this personal testimony of King Nebuchadnezzar. He told the story and he started out with his conclusion. It is God who reigns, it is the most high that has an everlasting dominion, his kingdom is from generation to generation. We saw the grace of God in recounting the works of God.
As we got into the testimony, we saw the failure of the king’s paganism once again, as he had this dream that terrified him and no one was able to explain it. We talked about his fear was a grace from God because it drove him to seek, and ultimately find truth.
And then, as Daniel explained the dream to Nebuchadnezzar, he didn’t just explain it, but was grieved by it and urged the king to repentance. We saw the grace of God in the warning that was issued to the king.
As we conclude this testimony of the King today, we are going identify two more graces of the Lord toward the king, and contemplate what that grace reveals for us about the Lord, namely, that the grace of God reveals his sovereignty over all things.
Let’s begin to read our text.
We are picking up the reading midstream. We lest off with Daniel’s explanation and warning to the king. Break off from you sins by doing righteousness in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity.
“All this reached Nebuchadnezzar the king.
“At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon.
“The king answered and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal house by the strength of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’
“While the word was in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is said: the kingdom has been removed from you,
and you will be driven away from mankind, and your place of habitation will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you know that the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whomever He wishes.’
“Immediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was accomplished; and he was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.
“But at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes toward heaven, and my knowledge 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.
“And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can strike against His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
“At that time my knowledge returned to me. And my majesty and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom, and my high officials and my nobles began seeking me out; so I was reestablished in my kingdom, and extraordinary greatness was added to me.
“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride.”
The saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
There comes a point in when someone rises to a position of great power, prowess, authority, stature, or acclaim, that a certain target gets put on the backs of those individuals.
Everyone loves the underdog story. David beating Goliath. Pulling for the little guy.
I can remember watching super bowls with my dad, and when asked who he was cheering for he would ask “who is the underdog?” and he always pulled for them.
When the underdog won, for many people the source of their joy was not in the winning underdog but in the losing Giant.
Why?
Because so often, when teams or individual are at the top of their game, they can often gain an air of superiority, invincibility, and pure arrogance that makes them odious to us.
I read a quote this week that said that Pride is the disease that makes everyone sick but the person who has it.
We can all see it, all smell it, all sense it.
And when they fall. hmm. In our own carnality it can be delicious.
Such might have been the case for some as they observed Nebuchadnezzar.
Vs 23 says “all this reached the king”
All what? All that the was revealed in the dream. Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty king, represented by the mighty tree.
Cut down to nothing.
Why?
vs 30 tells us his arrogance.
“Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal house by the strength of my power and the glory of my majesty?”
Words of pure arrogance.
Years ago there was a lot of controversy when President Obama made the comment “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that”
and he was heavily criticized for it.
Interestingly enough, the point he was trying to make has validity. People who build a business did not do it in a vacuum. They benefited from those who have gone before and from the existing infrastructure that was in place allowing said business to thrive.
A similar thing can to said about Nebuchadnezzar. He is looking at Babylon the great, and he is claiming to have built it.
And there is perspective where he would be considered correct. Just like we would say that Noah built the ark, or Nehemiah built the walls of Jerusalem, or David built the kingdom of Israel. Their leadership led to the success.
But there is another sense where of course he didn’t build it.
It was the Lord who had given all these things to Nebuchadnezzar. It the the Most High God who had granted success and great power.
It wasn’t for the glory of Nebuchadnezzar.
And that was his gave error.
None of us accomplish anything in a vacuum.
None of us are able to will ourselves to success in anything. From a limited human perspective it might seem like that is the case, but it just isn’t so.
Paul makes this point in 1 Cor 4:7
For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
God has granted you your gifts, abilities, talents, intellect, wisdom, strength, ingenuity, etc.
If you attain to a position of influence, it is the Lord that has placed you there. If you gain a place of authority, it is only because God granted it to you.
It may appear from a human perspective that you went out to seized it by your own work, but in reality it is the Lord.
And it is this point that the Most High God wants to drive home to Nebuchadnezzar for his own benefit and the benefit of all who will read.
You see, pride is robbery. It’s taking the glory and honor that should be rendered unto the Lord and pulling it down from heaven and giving it to ourselves.
Praise and glory are beautiful things when given to the right person. They are ugly and off-putting when given to ourselves.
We rightly react negetively when someone brags about themselves in front of others. After a victory, we appreciate the interview with the athlete that givesn praise to his teammates, coaches, and God. We have a negative reaction to the ones who say things like “I knew I was the best and I just proved it. No one does what I do”
It can show up more subtly “I don’t deserve this” when treated badly.
“I deserve that” when considering something you want.
Just pay attention to how many first person pronouns you use when talking about things in your life, and hidden pride will begin to make itself known.
Nebuchadnezzar was consumed with himself and his accomplishments. I my self built this, my power, my strength, for my majesty.
And God said. Enough.
Before he had even finished speaking his hearts delight, the decree came from on high. His mind became like a beasts. His hair grew unkempt, his nails grew untrimmed.
For seven years he became like a beast of the field. He lost his dignity. He lost his power. He lost his majesty. He lost his kingdom.
Everything that he thought was so great was stripped away from him.
Last week I framed everything as means of God’s grace to Nebuchadnezzar, and I’m going to do the same this week.
I want us to consider the grace of humiliation
God’s Grace is seen in Humiliation
God’s Grace is seen in Humiliation
Pride is robbery of the Lord, it robs him of his glory.
Humiliation puts us back in our proper place and forces us to come to terms with reality. We aren’t all that and a bag of chips.
Sometimes God has to bring us to the utter end of ourselves to make us realize this truth. If we will not be humble and give glory were it is due, the Lord will humble us for us to teach us where glory belongs.
And this is a grace. Pride is a deadly disease. It skews our perception of reality. We cannot think straight. See straight. Correctly process reality.
We’ve all encountered this. Individuals who seem to have a mentality of entitlement that something is owed them, despite reality telling a different story. No amount of explanation or reasoning gets through.
We don’t see or thing straight when hung up on our own pride.
So when God’s grace comes in in to humble us, even humiliate us, and it causes us to see reality for what it is, when we recognize that we are not the center of our universe, we are not the master of our domain and the captian of our own souls, yes, that is God’s grace!
It is not to our benefit that we be full of ourselves. It is not to our benefit that think the world revolves around us. It is not to our benefit live with the boast pride of life in our hearts, something that John explicitly says is passing away.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
And the world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.
When we are humbled by the Lord, it causes us to see our need to him and recognize that HE is the one who is control, HE is the one who directs all things, that HE is the one who given us our gifts, and that HE is the one who reigns.
Don’t see the humbling of the Lord as God’s displeasure with you. See it as God’s grace driving you to come to your senses.
As Spurgeon has said
“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me upon the Rock of Ages”
Yes, God’s humiliation is a grace, especially when it leads to waking up to reality.
God’s Grace is seen in humble recognition of reality
God’s Grace is seen in humble recognition of reality
Notice what Nebuchadnezzar says.
he says his knowledge returned to him. This could also be translated as his reasoning. We might even say he came to his senses.
In contrast to what he thought about himself previous, now he says, as he noted in the introduction to this whole testimony,
“HIS kingdom is an everlasting dominion
HIS kingdom endures from generation to generation
He does according to HIS will
No one can strike against his hand or say “what have you done?”
And then he repeats what he said in verse 34 again in vs 36. My knowledge returned to me. I came to my senses.
God was gracious to restore to him the kingdom, but that was just icing on the cake. The real grace is him coming to his senses. The real grace was him recognizing what was true. The real grace was giving proper place to the honor and glory of the Lord in his life.
This is why he concludes the chapter as he does.
Daniel 4:37 ““Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride.””
He had to be brought to the very end of himself to comet o his senses and recognizes who the real ruler of the universe is.
I find it interesting that the NT uses similar language to speak of how we should think of those outside the faith.
And the Lord’s slave must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may give them repentance leading to the full knowledge of the truth,
and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
This should be our desire to all. That the Lord would be so gracious to grant them repentance and that they might come to their senses!
We see such grace from God on display in the life of Nebuchadnezzar.
And all this grace really serves to prove an even larger point, which is really the main thurst of this chapter and main thrust of the entire book.
God’s Grace Reveals His Sovereignty
God’s Grace Reveals His Sovereignty
Three times in this chapter it is emphasized:
first by the “watched” or the angel from God:
“This edict is by the resolution of the watchers, And the decision is a command of the holy ones, In order that the living may know That the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind And gives it to whom He wishes And sets up over it the lowliest of men.”
Then by Daniel as he explains the meaning
that you be driven away from mankind and your place of habitation be with the beasts of the field, and you be given grass to eat like cattle and be drenched with the dew of heaven; and seven periods of time will pass over you, until you know that the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whomever He wishes.
And then by voice from heaven declaring
and you will be driven away from mankind, and your place of habitation will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you know that the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whomever He wishes.’
It seems Nebuchadnezzar got the message.
“And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can strike against His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
God’s Grace reveals his sovereignty over all. It is his intervening in human affairs to accomplish his good purposes. It is him exercising his divine right to do all his good pleasure.
Our conclusion should be the same as Nebuchadnezzar
“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride.”
Applicaiton.
Pride in our owns lives.
I have concern for people in positions of office who brag about their accomplishments.
President Trump
etc.
God is able to humble. God is able to save
There is a chance we will see Nebuchadnezzar in heaven. We don’t know his heart. But wow. It sure seems like he finally gets it.