THE EPISTLE OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR II

THE EPISTLE OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR II
How Humiliation Can be the Best Thing for a Man
Daniel 4:28 to 37


Last time we ended with Daniel’s warning (Read v. 27)

But the king refused to listen and we find him here 12 months later, everything that was promised in the dream came upon Nebuchadnezzar (Read v. 29-33).

Have you ever been really proud of yourself? I mean so proud that it actually caused you to look down on other people. I remember when I was 19 and driving around in my heavily financed, shiny new red 1990 Jeep Comanche pick-up truck. I thought I was something. I even looked down on other guys my age who were taking the bus, until I smacked up my truck and could no longer afford to insure it and had to take the bus myself.

Have you ever had that kind pride? It’s hard to imagine that humiliation can actually be a grace from God until you realize the devastating effect of pride. Pride is the greatest obstacle to salvation because it refuses to repent and so God must often use humiliation and affliction to draw us to the cross.

Among the sins of men and angles, pride is the most subtle yet sinister. It caused Satan to become the Prince of Demons and the Father of lies. Every other vice or sin is in some way rooted in pride isn’t it.

C.S. Lewis says this of pride,

“…the more pride one [has], the more one [dislikes] pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘how much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me… or patronize me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride…. Pride is essentially competitive…. [It] gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more than the next man. We say people are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or good-looking, but they are not. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.” (“Mere Christianity,” 122).

That’s why you never see a Jesus-Pride parade in the Bible, only a Jesus-humiliation parade: “Behold your king is coming to you, lowly and sitting on a the foal of a donkey.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s sin is most pernicious because it is not that he is enjoying the blessing of God, but he has elevated himself to the status of God. “Is this not Babylon the great, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty powers and for the honor of my majesty?”

The Aramaic word for Royal dwelling is very ambiguous and is often translated Temple. It is as though Nebuchadnezzar believed that his great empire was a temple to himself.

Ancient kings and emperors were frequently deified, but God seems to take particular interest in Nebuchadnezzar and shows him the breadth of His great mercy in this story. He uses Nebuchadnezzar’s pride humiliation to bring the great king kneeling before the throne of the King of Kings.

God says of Himself in Isaiah, “For I am God, and there is no other…. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure… I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have proposed it, I will also do it.”

Nebuchadnezzar didn’t build Babylon- nor did Satan. God did it. He did it for His own purpose and pleasure. Nebuchadnezzar’s pride puts him in direct competition with the Most High God- “look at how great my Kingdom is” he says “What is the Kingdom of God compared with Babylon the great.”

"The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:20-21).
If anyone wants to be great, let him become the least- “seek first the Kingdom of God and all this shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). “Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a (Warrior? No, as a) little child will by no means enter it." (Mark 10:15).

I don’t know about you, but all my labour here on earth is worthless if it is for the purpose of building a temple to myself. I am better off a popper and a beggar in the Kingdom of God then a to be the emperor of Babylon.

Something about Nebuchadnezzar’s fall that reminds me of the rise and decline of great empires and of our own nations rise and fall. I cannot say that there was a time when Canada was a Christian nation- the only nation that ever belonged to God was Israel.

But there was a time in our nation when morality and civility and honor prevailed even among the lowliest of men. Men held doors for ladies and gave up their seats on the bus for the elderly - the good old days.

Honor is in short supply today, so is wholesomeness, and the fear of God. Art and entertainment has become vulgar. Rather than to delight its audience, popular art often intends to shock and horrify. It’s like our nation that once had the heart of a man has been given the heart of an animal and forced to live like beasts.

Romans ch. 1:22 lucidly describes what we see happening to our culture:

22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man--and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

Doesn’t this describe the direction that our world is heading?

Here in Whalley I come into a lot of contact with the effects of Chrystal Meth. This drug is not like anything that anyone has ever seen before. There’s something like a 96% rate of addiction the first time that someone uses it. And addicts will stoop to anything to get their next hit.

When I see them I can immediately tell that they are using Meth. They’re like the living dead- one expert describes the effects on their minds as like turning it into cottage cheese. These people live like animals, they sleep in bushes and places where you would never want your children to end up.

They will say or so anything just to get a hit and I had basically given up on even sharing the gospel with them since I wasn’t even sure if they still had a soul.
But recently I met a man who has come off of using Meth as a result of the ministry of NightShift. He restored my hope that Meth addicts can change. He said the only thing that gets him through to the next day is his faith in Jesus Christ.

Sometimes humiliation can be the very best thing that has ever happened to us. You have painful memories of embarrassing things that happened to you. Count it all grace, that God uses those times to shape us in to the character of His Son.

Read V. 34 to 37.

Even Jesus Himself was humiliated on our behalf that we might be exalted with him. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Is 53:3-4).

Paul, reflecting on his life wrote:

I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…. that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

What a small thing for us to share in his sufferings that we may also participate in his exaltation. Not that we can do anything to earn it, but because he has given it to us freely so that we count this world and this kingdom as nothing compared to the surpassing excellency that is promised to us in heaven.

If you’re suffering affliction or going through a time of humiliation, look up, see your redemption draws near. God is perfecting the good work that he started in you. He does according to His will… and no one can restrain His hand (v. 25).

God works all things for good to them that love him so that we can say with Paul,
I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me….And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil 4:11-19).

There is hope for drug addicts, there is also have the hope that our nation may turn from its path. The only hope for our nation is for God to sovereignly move upon the hearts of people and cause them to lift their eyes and give them understanding that they might kneel before God and bless Him who lives forever. All His works are truth, and His ways justice.