The Lord blessed us with a wonderful
Wednesday of gathering, food, fellowship, and study. I met several people
yesterday who blessed my heart. These are the moments we cherish and know that
we are loved and cherished by the One who holds the world in His hands. One of
the men I met was a teenager whom I had known in church. Many years later I had
spoken to him while he was in a teen challenge center recovering. The Lord has
fully restored him. He is married and has his own business and his own home in
the country. He and his wife are blessed with five children. Their son is
studying computer science at RIT and his daughter is studying nursing at Roberts
Wesleyan. The family loves the Lord and serves Him faithfully. Praise the Lord
that the young people we knew as teens are now grown up and have their families
and serving the Lord and living for Him.
As I have shared on several
occasions that I have been blessed by the British writers, poets theologians,
and missionaries. British
playwright George Bernard Shaw spoke about life in this
way:
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire, and the other is to gain it. We don't look at it that way. In our eyes gaining your heart’s desire is the very purpose of life itself. But how many people have achieved their dreams only to be ruined in the process? Success can be just as big a temptation as failure, perhaps more so since success tends to make us take life for granted. While it is true that God speaks to us both ways, we tend to listen more when God speaks through sorrow, pain, loss, and personal failure. Success tends to make us complacent but failure cannot be denied.
A colleague coined the phrase, "the sacrament of failure". Indeed, failure can be sacramental especially when it breaks our sinful self-confidence and brings us to the place where we acknowledge that God is God and we are not. In our study last night we looked at Daniel 4. That’s the lesson King Nebuchadnezzar learned the hard way. From this story we learn how God humbled a pagan king. Daniel 4, unlike other chapters in Daniel, was written by the king himself. In fact, the first few verses and the last few are written in the first person singular. Reading this chapter is almost like reading the king’s personal diary. Again Daniel 4 describes in great detail the king’s most humiliating experience. It would be as if your personal journal were posted on the Internet so that your innermost thoughts and the hidden secrets of your life were revealed for everyone to read.
Daniel chapter 4 contains an extraordinary story. What happened to Nebuchadnezzar happens to all of us sooner or later, and for many of us, it may happen more than once. The story began at a time when King Nebuchadnezzar was on the crest of a wave. He was contented and prosperous, and at the height of his glory; Nebuchadnezzar was king over the greatest empire the world had ever known. Truly the king had every reason to feel secure, safe, and satisfied. Who in all the earth could dare to challenge him? But one night he had a strange and troubling dream.
The dream had distinct parts. First, the king saw a vast tree, with leaves and branches stretching as far as the eye could see. Birds nested in the branches and animals found shade under its leaves. Second, the tree was cut down and stripped and the stump bound with iron and bronze. Then somehow the stump became a person who lived among the animals for seven years. Evidently this person lost his mind completely.
When Daniel heard the king’s dream, he knew exactly what it meant. For a long time he stood silently, not wanting to tell the king the awful truth. After summarizing the first part of the dream, Daniel came to the bottom line: “You, O king, are that tree!” (Daniel 4:22). He went on to say that God had ordained that the king would become like a beast of the field: “You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle and be drenched with the dew of heaven. 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” (Daniel 4:25).
The key word in this passage is “until.” This divine judgment was disciplinary, not merely punitive. For seven years the king would live as a wild beast, having lost his mind. He would live with the beasts “until” he acknowledged that God alone is sovereign.
The rest of the story unfolds quickly. Verse 28 tells us that “all this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar.” First, for twelve months the king had time to change his ways, though evidently nothing Daniel said sank deeply into his soul. Perhaps he didn’t believe him or perhaps he thought he had plenty of time to repent. Perhaps he made excuses for his behavior, or perhaps he got so caught up in his glamorous life that he paid no attention. Whatever the reason for his behavior, there came the fateful moment that changed his entire life: “As the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, 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?’” (Daniel 4:29-30).
“Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird” (Daniel 4:33). This is all that is said about his seven years of insanity. One moment he was surveying his royal kingdom, the next he was ripping off his clothing, making strange snorting noises, and galloping on all fours down the main street of Babylon, totally naked and stark, raving mad. What happened to Nebuchadnezzar was a kind of spiritual parable for all of us. It shows what can happen when a man tries to become like God and instead becomes instead like the animals.That’s not the end of the story. Seven years later the king’s life took another dramatic turn: “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever” (Daniel 4:34). Just as suddenly as he lost his mind, he regained it in an instant. We know he was truly changed because of what he said when he came to his senses: “His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. 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?’” (Daniel 4:34-35)
The once-pagan king now openly declared the praises of God. He truly got the message. God can do anything he wants to do, and no one can stand against him. Earthly kings rule by God’s permission and they stay on the throne only so long as it pleases God to give them power and authority. Nebuchadnezzar has learned the truth the hard way and proclaimed it for all the world to hear.
Timeless Truth for all of us today:
“Those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” Whenever we think we can live without God, he reaches down from heaven and begins to shake the things in which we place our confidence. Because God is entirely righteous, he will not stand idle forever while his children live in sin. Sooner or later he will intervene.
In Daniel 4, I find great hope and abundant grace. There is hope for all of God’s children because God will not allow us to live in our sin forever. God loves us too much to let us go on in our sinful rebellion forever. Sooner or later, he intervenes, sometimes in ways both public and painful, to bring us back home again. There is hope for those who are far from God today. Nebuchadnezzar was 100% pagan. He neither knew God nor worshiped him. Yet when God got through with him, he sounded like a brilliant theologian and a passionate preacher. . .That’s what God can do, and only God can do it.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/qWOqINa80C4
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