Daniel 4:1-37 The Proud Prince Humbled

Introduction

There are many ways to bring the tall timber down. At St Paul’s Warragamba last year, I pulled down a small dead tree with a rope tied to the towball of my Tarago. The pre-schoolers cheers, including Rory’s, were very satisfying. There are those who bring them down with a chainsaw or an axe. Phyllis could tell us about the crosscut saw with her on one end and her father on the other. At the Silverdale property, taller timber requires more serious machinery, bulldozers and the like.

But there are other ways that timber gets tumbled. When we used to live at Shellharbour, we’d get some strong winds coming off the sea. One day Kath called out and said, ‘Come and have a look at that gum tree. Do you think it’s going to fall?’ And I said, ‘No, she’ll be right, she’s not going to fall. It’s just swaying in the wind’. And Kath says, ‘no, I don’t think so, that just doesn’t look right.’ Sure enough, 5 minutes later, there’s this huge crack, and the whole things come down and crushed the 6 foot steel fence. Some of you have told me about trees exploding in the 2001 fire. Fire can kill them.

Sometimes a tree has been hollowed out by white ants. The tree looks good to the untrained eye. But on the inside there’s nothing there except air, those honeycombs they make and termite mud.

Sometimes trees are killed by fungal diseases like canker. You can see the mortal wounds from the outside. Or they have just have grown old.

You see them driving up from Penrith on the Mulgoa Road. There is a tree still standing. But it’s dead. It has no leaves and has turned that funny grey colour. Great for burning, but it lives no more.

Men are a bit like great trees, aren’t they? They all topple, in the end. Even the great ones, the 6 foot 8 ones, the NRL footballer Olympian type of ones. They too become late ones. Even those magnificent specimens of men. And the average, every day, garden variety type of man, he too gets felled. They all come down. What goes up must come down, including men. Gravity and decay will have their way.

There are many ways men get felled. Sometimes they’ve hardly lived, and die before they’ve reached their full height. While still a sapling, a tragic accident cuts them down. Sometimes it’s in the prime of their lives, at the height of their powers. They are brought down by war, or on the road, or at work, or in a fight. They are felled unexpectedly, as if by an axe.

Sometimes they are white anted. They’ve got no insides left. Maybe they’re hollowed out by marriage breakdown, disappointment with life, a midlife crisis, restlessness, slavery to some addiction, or some fatal character flaw. They look like good on the outside, they look like they are standing, but they are ready to fall.

Sometimes their physical or mental weakness is apparent to all. The canker clings to them until it takes their life. And they hobble on until they succumb to the inevitable.

And sometimes they just wear our and die, gnarled, twisted, wizened, shriveled, unable to stand anymore, a shadow of their former self. And we do them the dignity of covering them with earth in burial so that what we remember is their glory and not the corruption that we see. For we know that they now have gone to where we are going.

Context

In creation, God made men kings. And now, after the fall, men are at best fallen kings. They stand until God fells them.

Nebuchadnezzar is the archetypal self-made man. He epitomizes kingship without God. He is what every self-made man is or wants to be. Nebuchadnezzar is fallen man as he would be if he could be. Every man without God is a little Nebuchadnezzar.

It is clear that by the end of chapter 3, Nebuchadnezzar is only one tenth converted at best. And even throughout chapter 4, he still has many pagan ideas. By the end of chapter 2, he recognized that the God of the Hebrews as beyond everything he has encountered. He has seen great signs –through Daniel and through Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. But he still hasn’t recognized that Heaven rules. He will not let God be God. He does not acknowledge that ‘the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes’ (Daniel 4:25 NIV).

Understanding that he was merely a doomed head of gold in chapter 2, he attempts to establish his kingdom by erecting a gold statue in chapter 3. Nebuchadnezzar is at war with the Sovereign God of Heaven. But the Most High showed Nebuchadnezzar that he could and would protect his servants, the Hebrew exiles. The God of the Hebrew Exiles is a God who saves like no other.

Chapter 3 has Nebuchadnezzar as the persecutor. But Chapter 4 opens with Nebuchadnezzar as the preacher. Like Saul the angry and violent persecutor became Paul the Apostle, Nebuchadnezzar the raging monarch becomes praising preacher.

A Letter to the Four Corners of the World about the Most High God (verses 1-3)

Chapter 4 of Daniel is actually a letter. God is concerned for the entire world. It has always been the case. And so Nebuchadnezzar starts his letter where he finishes it. With praise for the Most High God. Daniel chapter 4 verses 1 to 3:

¹ King Nebuchadnezzar, To the peoples, nations and men of every language, who live in all the world: May you prosper greatly! ² It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me. ³ How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation. (NIV)

Just as he saw in chapter 2, now Nebuchadnezzar is brought to realization that God’s kingdom, not his own, is the eternal one. May your Kingdom come, becomes Nebuchadnezzars prayer. It took the events of chapter 4 to teach him it. It was a hard won lesson. And now he wants all his subjects to join him in learning it and praising God his teacher.

The Dream Daniel Deciphers: The Tall Timber Tumbles Till Seven Times Pass (verses 4-26)

The King was content, secure, and prosperous (verse 4). Life was good. But God was about to change all that. News of God’s judgment came directly to him, in a terrifying dream. As we’ve come to expect, the Babylonian experts have no idea what the dream might mean. That is the case, even when Nebuchadnezzar tells them the dream (verse 7). But Daniel is different. He has God given ability to understand dreams. Moreover, he has the courage to tell the King what it means.

For the dream is a judgment. It is a decree against the King, a verdict from the court of heaven.

In the dream, the King sees a great and magnificent tree covering the whole earth (verses 10 to 12) But then he hears of what sounds like wanton destruction. A holy one, a messenger, calls out:

‘Cut down the tree and trim off its branches; strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit.’ (verse 14 NIV)

And the loggers cheer, and the greenies have no time to chain themselves to it. But it seems even then there is hope. For the stump and roots, bound with iron and bronze, remain in the ground.

And then the image of the dream changes. It is now of a man being dehumanized. It is a human losing his humanity and becoming an animal. Verse 16:

¹⁶ Let his mind be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal, till seven times pass by for him. (NIV)

The picture is of a man stripped of his human dignity. It is of a man driven away from people, living with the animals, without clothes, without shelter, eating grass like cattle And Daniel of course is scared and appalled (verse 19). But as a faithful servant of both God and King Nebuchadnezzar, he declares God’s verdict on the King.

Verse 22: ²² you, O king, are that tree! (NIV) You are the man. You are to be cut down. But there is hope. It is not a final judgment. It is to teach you something – a lesson you have been slow to learn.

Verse 17: ¹⁷ … so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.’

Again, verse 25: ²⁵ Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.

And yet again, verse 26: ²⁶ … your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that Heaven rules.

The lesson Nebuchadnezzar needs to learn is that he is not God. He is not captain of his destiny and master of his soul. God is God. God is sovereign. God sets whoever he wants over the kingdoms of the world. God rules both heaven and earth.

What to do when Judgment threatened: Repent (verse 27)

So, now the axe is at the root of the tree. But because the judgment is foreshadowed in advance, it serves as a warning.

²⁷ Therefore, O king, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.” (NIV)

When Jonah preached to Nineveh, ’40 days and Nineveh will be overturned’, the implicit command was repent. What is implicit for Nineveh is explicit for Nebuchadnezzar. Repent. Renounce your sins. Do what is right. Change your behaviour. And such repentance will be shown by your works. As Paul says before King Agrippa:

²⁰ First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds. (Acts 26:20 NIV)

Live differently. Be kind to the oppressed. Those whose forced labours are building the city you so take pride in. How many people must suffer in your vain desire for glory and greatness.

Pride Before the Fall (verses 28-33)

The book of Proverbs warns us against pride:

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18 NIV)

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34; cited by James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5)

And Nebuchadnezzar’s sin is the typical attitude of the self made man: Verse 29:

²⁹ Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, ³⁰ he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (NIV)

My city of Babylon. It testifies to my power and greatness. I have made it.

What’s your Babylon? What’s the thing that sings your praise? Your house. Your car. Your boat. Your business. Your church. Your website. Your library. Your academic qualifications. The titles before your name, the letters after it.

What was driving Nebuchadnezzar? What was powering his great building projects? His own name. He fell into the old sin of Babel. He wanted to make a name for himself (cf Genesis 11).

So God brought him low. Very low. He went from King of kings to a beast of the field, acting like an ox.

Here is the sharp discipline of God. He humbles the proud. Verse 37: ³⁷ And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

And indeed, God humbles every man. Every one of us will be brought down to the grave, unless Jesus’ comes first. God will in the end bring us to our knees, indeed, will lay us flat on our backs in the dust.

Whether cut down in our prime. Felled by unforeseen tragedy. Wasting away from having our insides eaten out. Twisted and brought low by sickness and old age. Eventually, laid low in the dust of death. Such is the discipline of God to sinful men.

There is nothing more humiliating than death. Death takes everything we have built for ourselves. We cannot save ourselves from it. And we cannot help ourselves in it. There is only one remedy, and that is to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand, so that he might lift us up again in due time (James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6) And for those who have trusted Christ, God will lift them up once more. He will raise them from the dust of death.

Praise After the Restoration (verses 34-37)

Pride brings insanity. But sanity brings praise. After Nebuchadnezzar does his time as a brute beast, he gives God the glory. Verses 34 and 35:

Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. ³⁵ All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” (NIV)

Nebuchadnezzar was the proud King who God humbled. And each of us are little Nebuchadnezzar wannabees. We would be if we could be. And so God humbles us, so he can raise us again.

Nebuchadnezzar was the proud king humbled. But Jesus Christ is the humble King raised. King Jesus did not oppress the poor to build a name for himself. He did not conscript forced labour to build his city. Rather, though being God, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the death of a cross. And so God exalted him. God raised him up to the highest place. And God gave him the thing that the men of Babel have always coveted. A name. Jesus Christ has the name above all names. At the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2)

Let’s pray.