Daniel Chapter 4
Grant S. Sisson, MSCP, CI
We will return to the book of Daniel today. We diverted course last week for Mother’s Day, and we may divert again for Memorial Day, but we’ll keep after it until we get through Daniel.
Chapter four contains an interesting story of the omniscience of God, demonstrating His power even over the mightiest political rulers of humanity. It’s a story of God’s power over human pride and arrogance. King Nebuchadnezzar was a most powerful man, and he had been thoroughly impressed by the young Hebrew men captured from Jerusalem. He had come to believe in the God of the Hebrews, but there was still something not quite right about his conception of the matter, and certainly not right with his heart.
King Neb was a very arrogant man. It must have been a terrific jolt to his psyche to have to admit that the Hebrews he had conquered and taken into captivity were greater and wiser than all the best soothsayers and wise men in his kingdom, but when Daniel not only interpreted his dream, but told him what the dream was before the King revealed it to him, he was forced to modify his theology, at least somewhat. So he believed that God was mighty, and superior to all the gods that he had worshipped, but there was still a flaw in his reasoning.
He didn’t realize yet that God is not only better than, but THE ONLY God that exists. King Neb. apparently continued to think of his gods as existent, but ruled over by the God that Daniel worshipped, and who had saved Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego from the flames of the fiery furnace. His religion encouraged a belief in many gods, each of whom demonstrated a given aspect of life, and who ruled over that mode of human existence, but his religion did not rule out the possibility that there were some gods that were superior to others, and this was apparently how he modified his thinking to accommodate his experience with his Jewish slaves. You can see this in the fact that he still called Daniel Belteshazzar, by the name of one of the Babylonian gods, even though he had come to know the true God of heaven through his experiences with the four Hebrew friends. But God wasn’t through with his training just yet.
We have all heard the saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It came into common use after WWII, I believe, referring to Hitler. Perhaps this was King Neb’s problem. He was on the very top of the food chain, the most powerful of the most powerful, and it had gone to his head. So God – our God – communicated something to him in a second dream. In this dream, a huge tree became strong and tall to the heavens. It was seen by all to the ends of the earth. Its leaves were lovely and its fruit was abundant so that it provided food for all. Beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the air dwelt in its branches. But a “watcher,” a holy one, came down from heaven and said, “Chop down the tree and cut off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts get out from under it, and the birds from its branches. Nevertheless leave the stump and roots in the earth, Bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field. Let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let him graze with the beasts on the grass of the earth. Let his heart be changed from that of a man, Let him be given the heart of a beast, and let seven times pass over him.”
Now King Neb called for Daniel and asked him what the dream meant. Daniel was reluctant to say, but at length told the King that the dream was about him. The tree was King Neb. He had grown strong and tall, and all the peoples of the earth could see him and his kingdom. He provided food and shelter for the whole region, and his dominion to “the end of the earth.” But God held his pride in contempt. It was to be that God would cause him to be as an insane person who would be cast out of normal society, and he would eat grass like oxen. He would be wet with the dew of heaven, and dwell with the beasts of the field. All this was to occur for seven “times.” This could have been weeks; don’t know what that means literally, but for a period long enough for the King to know that “the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives to whomever He chooses.”
So this is a story about pride and arrogance. The man was not unlike tyrants and politicians from that day to this – he had been kow-towed to for so long that he thought he deserved it just because. He had accumulated so much power that he pretty much could do whatever he wanted. And much of what he wanted was as sickeningly oppressive as it gets.
Proverbs tells us that when good people do nothing, bad people go from bad to worse. This is an eternal spiritual truth, and it applies to King Neb as well as us today. So there is a relationship between what the people do and what the rulers do. When people give to their rulers too much power, things get out of hand. It is only a matter of time until someone rises to office who is a jerk and cares nothing for the well-being of the people, and this one will abuse the people because his arrogance tells him that he is always right. And if he is always right, those who oppose him must be evil and backward folks who must be forcefully controlled. And then the cycle of oppression and tyranny begins.
It’s interesting to see that God knew what was going on, and that He was concerned enough to intervene. There are many in the world who believe that there probably is a God, yet they deny that he is concerned about what happens on earth. But while God may not do things like we think He ought to, as in bringing bad people to justice sooner, he is deliberate and caring in what He does. And injustice will not go unattended to. It was God who created this earth to be paradise, perfect in every way for our lives, and it was us who walked away from His loving plan. For every innocent that is hurt, there is a sinner who has walked away from God who is doing the hurting, and God will not fail to punish those who are guilty of harming one of these “little ones,” as Jesus so lovingly put it when he said that it would be better for the violators to have had a millstone hung about their necks and drowned in the depths of the sea. Yes, God knows what is going on, and His wrath is sure, but we are told in II Peter 3:9 that “the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Please consider this one thing: all injustice will be punished. Either you will pay the penalty of your evil deeds, or Jesus will pay for them for you at the Cross. Either way, God is a God of perfect justice.
And He cares about what is going on here on this earth. There is not a tyrant alive who does not suffer the pressure of God’s eternal spiritual laws. Just like one cannot simply write a law that says gravity will not continue to be, tyrants and oppressors cannot just write laws that say that the money supply is infinite, or that if a nation does not enforce its borders that other people will respect our national sovereignty, or that the State is God. Well, they can write them, if they wish. But God is still in control, and He will demonstrate His power whenever and however He wishes. He reached out to King Neb in a dream. Let’s stop and think about that. King Neb – a proud, arrogant, power hungry tyrant, one who did not know God at all, a pagan. One who by his word could, and did, cause people to die the most horrific deaths that can be imagined. He didn’t care for people. He was an oppressor and a tyrant, one of those sinners who did the hurting. And God judged him in the evil things he did, but God’s actions toward even this evil man were designed to bring him out of his arrogance and sin to know and build a stronger relationship with God. To the exact extent he turned toward God, God reached out to him, shared more with him, and gave him second chances.
And it is still so today. Our rulers have not come to the point of being awed by the power and might of the God of heaven like King Neb was, and so God will act accordingly. He is already showing His displeasure against America in a variety of ways – our schools, once the pride of the world, have fallen below many of the other nations’ school systems; our children grow up in schools where there is no respect taught for God or for any spiritual ideas at all; our streets are no longer safe to travel in far too many places; our very soil has been trampled on by an enemy we know as “Radical Islam,” and thousands of our citizens have perished. We are held in contempt rather than respect and awe by nations that in another time, another reality, were our dearest friends. Our power is fading in the face of our arrogance and pride. And it will continue to do so until our rulers are humbled and “understand that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever he wishes,” or until we the people elect more humble and Godly representatives.
So this man Nebuchadnezzar was a good example of a boastful, arrogant, powerful, self-centered human being. God will not abide pride. So He chose to bring this man low, with the goal of bringing him closer to the true God of the Universe. Perhaps there was a chance; King Neb had softened his stance toward the Hebrew God when he saw the power of Daniel to interpret dreams, and esp. when he saw the three men he condemned saved from the fiery furnace. So God sent him a dream to cause him to stop and think. He was to be cut down, as a tree, but rather than the stump being ground down, it was to be wrapped tightly with a band; in other words, it was to be stopped up for a time, leaving the possibility that it might grow again. When Daniel revealed the meaning of the dream, he said, “Seven periods of time will pass by for you, before43 you understand that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever he wishes. 4:26 They said to leave the taproot of the tree, for your kingdom will be restored to you when you come to understand that heaven44 rules. 4:27 Therefore, O king, may my advice be pleasing to you. Break away from your sins by doing what is right, and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps your prosperity will be prolonged.”45
Can we pray that same prayer? Will our kingdom b restored to us when we come to understand that heaven rules? We Americans understood that heaven rules for hundreds of years, and our God brought us from nothing to the mightiest nation, in every way power can be measured, that the world has ever seen. And we were justifiably proud. And that kind of pride is OK, a pride that says, “I am proud that my nation has trusted its God and has seen the blessings that flow from a close relationship with the God of Heaven.” But when pride goes to the point of saying, “We will be our own gods. The material wealth that has been the envy of the world will no longer be provided to us by our caring and loving God, but our political rulers will give us our wealth; the State will be responsible for our well-being. We no longer believe that God is relevant in our world. We will not be dependent upon God, but upon our rulers.” When we get to that point, God will turn His back on us and allow us to drown in that kind of pride. Then we will have to be our own gods, because we will have none other to turn to. And we will find ourselves in the same place as the ancient Israelites, when they turned their back on God. II Chr 7:11-22: 7:11 After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple and the royal palace, and accomplished all his plans for the Lord’s temple and his royal palace,12 7:12 the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: “I have answered13 your prayer and chosen this place to be my temple where sacrifices are to be made.14 7:13 When15 I close up the sky16 so that it doesn’t rain, or command locusts to devour the land’s vegetation,17 or send a plague among my people, 7:14 if my people, who belong to me,18 humble themselves, pray, seek to please me,19 and repudiate their sinful practices,20 then I will respond21 from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.22 …7:19 “But if you people29 ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep,30 and decide to serve and worship other gods,31 7:20 then I will remove you32 from my land I have given you… and I will make you35 an object of mockery and ridicule36 among all the nations. 7:21 [And]…everyone who passes by will be shocked and say, ‘Why did the Lord do this…?’ 7:22 Others will then answer,38 ‘Because they abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors,39 who led them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods whom they worshiped and served.40 That is why he brought all this disaster down on them.’”
When Russia was overcome by the Communists in the 1917 revolution, there was a series of disasters that befell their country. It is said that the older people would lament, “It is because they have turned their back on God.”
Shall we sit here in our nice little building, seeing all this come down upon us and our children, and do nothing? Or will we stand for what is right, even in the face of very powerful foes who would cast God out of our national life?
It is time for us to say to our fellow Americans, “Choose you this day whom you will serve; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
