The Reflection of a King - pt.1

I wonder how many of you can relate to this… There are certain times in your life, when things are happening and you wonder why they are happening… could be a health problem, could be a marital problem, could be a family problem… could be some sort of emergency, maybe you are not where you thought you’d be at this stage of life…

And then a year or two goes by, maybe 5 years, 10 years, 50 years… and all of the sudden, as you look back over the years, you go.... “Ooohhh, that’s why God had me go through this experience”....

*** Use personal experience after Graduating FSB in 2011***

There are times in our lives when we don’t know exactly why God allows us to experience some of the things that we go through and for some, we may not know until we are in Heaven… But if we were to sit down and truly look back and reflect about the different experiences that we’ve had and the outcome of those experiences, I am sure that we will find the sovereignty of God working through each and every one.

That is exactly what Chapter 4 of Daniel records…

The Reflection of a King - pt.1

I have pt.1 listed as we will be looking at N’s reflection on the events of his life for the next few weeks as we make our way through chapter 4 of Daniel.

Here in this chapter we will see N (a gentile King), give his own account of how he struggled with pride and arrogance… and then he will reflect on the circumstances that God used to bring him to a point of humility.

There is a debate as to whether or not N came to a point of conversion and actually sought to have a relationship with the Most High God… A case could be made for both answers to that question… but in reality, the only One who can answer that question with any sort of authority, is God… so we won’t get into a debate that has nothing to do with us…

However, I will say this… as Pastor Thompson said in his notes… Daniel Chapter 4 is a great example of the fact that “God does whatever He wants, with whomever He wants, in order to bring people to the realization that He is sovereignly ruling over everything”…

With that in mind… won’t you stand with me today, as we read Daniel 4:1-18…

Meat:

The King’s Decree:

This reflection is not just something that N wrote in his diary… it is not a letter that he wrote to Daniel or other close friends… this reflection comes in the form a Decree… and there are a few observations that I want to point out this morning.

First of all… This decree was…

1. Sent Out to Everyone

Daniel 4:1 “1 Nebuchadnezzar the king, To all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: … ”

Whatever N is about to say, he wants to make sure that the whole world knows about it. Like I said before, this is a reflection of events that had already happened and he wanted this document to be sent out to everyone…

and he opens by…

1.1 Expressing Peace

The end of v.1 says “Peace be multiplied to you”…

I don’t know if it sticks out to you here, but it did to me… I believe this is the first time that the word “peace” has come out of the mouth of N… At least the first time that is recorded in Scripture… Usually, whatever N says, is motivated by anger, anxiety or astonishment… However, it would seem that this time around, he is motivated by a sense of peace.

J. Vernon McGee is on the side of the debate that N had a conversion experience and says this… N “is not speaking of peace among nations—he already has such peace, attained by his military might and enforced by his superior power. Rather, he speaks here of the peace of heart which comes to a sinner when he knows he has been accepted of God and is at peace with God”

The same guy who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace in chapter 3,… the same man who, even after seeing God’s power, decreed that anyone who spoke against the God of Heaven would be cut up into tiny pieces and their house destroyed… is now expressing peace…

Now, as I sad before, I don’t know if N truly had a conversion experience, however, there are some signs that suggest its possibility… But I do know this…

If you are not in a right relationship with God, you will never know true peace.

Those that never enter into a relationship with God by repenting of their sins and asking for His forgiveness… they’ll never know true peace…

And the ones that have entered into a salvation relationship with God, but are currently not living in a way that honors Him… they do not have true peace…

If you are not in a right relationship with God, you will never have or know true peace.

So, N sends this decree out to everyone… and it is…

2. A Personal Proclamation

The wording of v.2 lets us know that it is a personal proclamation…

Daniel 4:2 “2 I thought it good to declare the signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me.”

On top of expressing peace, N gives a personal account about how the Most High God has worked in his life.

N proclaims…

2.1 God’s Power

Daniel 4:3 “3 How great are His signs, And how mighty His wonders!…”

The word rendered signs… means something that points out or designates anything… Through out Scripture, we see God using different things as signs, to reveal Himself or His plan to certain people at certain times…

Genesis 1:14 NKJV

14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;

Exodus 7:3 NKJV

3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.

Jeremiah 32:20 NKJV

20 You have set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, to this day, and in Israel and among other men; and You have made Yourself a name, as it is this day.

The Rainbow after the flood was a sign… Jesus being born of a virgin, was a sign…

Signs were a demonstration that God exists and at the same time, revealed His Power…

The word “wonders” is very close to the same… it means - that which is fitted to produce astonishment, or to lead one to wonder…

This word is applied also the word “miracles”, because that is the effect they produce.

When N finally realized how awesome and powerful God really is… he was in a state of awe, a state of wonder… a state of amazement…

N also proclaimed…

2.2 God’s Everlasting Kingdom

Daniel 4:3 “3 How great are His signs, And how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom… ”

Next week we are going to look at what finally made N realize that his throne has no stability… The first dream that he had revealed the destruction of the Babylonian kingdom… this huge kingdom that he built…

He didn’t like that interpretation and 20 years later, he built a statue completely made of gold… as way of saying “I am in control, my kingdom will not fall”…

But as we will see next week, God brings him to a place of humility and as a result of that, he is now proclaiming that God’s Kingdom is the only one that is stable and permanent.

Folks, don’t be surprised when you see nations fall… especially as they get further and further away from God… Yes, our own nation included…

The only Kingdom that will last forever, is God’s Kingdom… Reality check… if you are not part of God’s Kingdom during this life, you will not be a part of it in the next…

N goes on to proclaim…

2.3 God’s Sovereignty

Daniel 4:3 “3 How great are His signs, And how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And His dominion is from generation to generation.”

God will continue to sovereignly rule over all of creation from generation to generation… There is no one who can stop it, no one who can replace Him, either by force or even by default.

All other earthly leaders will eventually be replaced, either by force, by voting, by sickness, by death… But not God… He will remain in control for all eternity and His will is being accomplished through out the whole world, no matter who else thinks they are in charge.

And now, towards the end of his life, this is what King N has finally figured out… but it took a major event in his life to get him to this point… it was an event that God, once again, used a dream to reveal N’s future.

N includes the details of this experience in his decree to the world…

This personal proclamation… this decree to the world…

3. Reveals Another Dream

Daniel 4:4-5 “4 I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house, and flourishing in my palace. 5 I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts on my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.”

We are not going to get into the details of the dream today, we will save that for next week… however, there are a somethings that I want to point out about this dream…

First of all… this dream came during a time…

3.1 When Nebuchadnezzar Felt Secure

Daniel 4:4 “4 I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house, and flourishing in my palace.”

The word rendered “at rest” means - to be secure; to be free from apprehension or alarm… His wars were over; his kingdom was calm; he had built a magnificent capital; he had gathered around him the wealth and the luxuries of the world, and he was now in a condition to spend the remainder of his life in ease and happiness.

If you look at that a little more than just what you see on the surface, a very important lesson can be learned…

Notice the phrases “My House”… “My Palace”. At the time when this dream came to him, he still had the attitude of “Me, me, me…” an attitude of pride…

N was at rest and flourishing while he was still lost in his sins and a stranger to God… Folks, I am here to tell you that there is a deceitful rest, a deceitful peace, that will lure many souls into a false sense of security.

Just because you may not be currently experiencing any ramifications or negative results of living a sinful lifestyle, does not mean that God approves of your actions.

Satan has the ability of giving us a sense of false peace… It goes all the way back to the garden of Eden… “did God really say?”… Did God really say that homosexuality is an abomination? If it is such a terrible sin, then why aren’t you getting in trouble for it?

If God really wants us to wait until marriage to live together or have certain relations, then why did He allow us to get house together… We prayed that the loan approval would be a sign that we were doing the right thing and the loan came through…

Folks, Just because you have a sense of peace or security does not prove that all is well between you and God. He will never give you a sign that says it is ok to do something that goes against what He says in His Word… Which means... We need to be studying God’s Word to see how we can honor Him with our lives and then do just that.

In both of the illustrations that I just mentioned, the ones that were looking for a sign… were looking in the wrong place. You cannot look to a sinful, worldly system to give you a sign from a Holy God.

You need to go to the only Holy source that we have available… His Word… And if how you are living does not line up with the principles there-in, then you’ll have to make some changes.

Moving on… this dream…

3.2 Caused Fear

Daniel 4:5 “5 I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts on my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.”

How many times have you woken from your sleep, bathed in sweat and then suddenly, thankfully realizing that it was just a dream. The details soon fade and you can’t even remember it by the morning.

Nebuchadnezzar experienced something similar, but when he awoke, the dream, in all of its mystifying details, was still so vivid and real… and it scared him…

I can see N very quickly remembering the dream that he had a few decades prior to this one… we will see next week that this dream, even though it is different, has several similarities to the first one.

The first one had N shaking in his boots, he was afraid to even go back to sleep and it would seem that this dream is having a similar affect…

And finally this morning… This 2nd dream that was revealed…

3.3 Required Interpretation

N was so disturbed by this dream that he needed to know what it meant…

Daniel 4:6-7 “6 Therefore I issued a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers came in, and I told them the dream; but they did not make known to me its interpretation.”

There are a few things that stuck out to me here…

N didn’t learn his lesson from last time… … 1 Corinthians 2:14 “14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

This means that the unsaved man (one who does not have a relationship with God) cannot receive or interpret the oracles of God because he does not believe in them and cannot understand them.

N called on the same old crowd that couldn’t help him with his first dream… and once again, these so called scholars, philosophers, psychics, educated men, leaders of Babylon could not help him when it came to the things of God. They were just as ignorant and useless as the last time they stood before him after a dream.

Which leads to the second thing that stuck out to me...

2. N must have got some sort of control over his temper by the time he had this 2nd dream, but there is no indication that he ordered to have all of these ignorant “wise-men” killed.

Last time, when they couldn’t fulfill the task, they all received a death sentence…

Here is something else that sticks out…

3. Even though v.7 tells us that N told the dream to these “wise-men”, they couldn’t give him an interpretation… which is not surprising, as we just read from 1 Corinthians… they were not men of God so they wouldn’t be able to interpret His Word anyway…

But, the interesting part is, it doesn’t seem like they even tried. Whereas a couple of decades prior to this, they would’ve given a bogus interpretation that would have made it seem like N was in favor of all the gods…

I am going to speculate here… but I wonder, if knowing that Daniel was coming in, they didn’t want to risk the chance of being caught in a lie… or it is possible, since Daniel has been their supervisor for the past few decades, that they have learned to recognize their own ignorance… … I am not exactly sure, but this dream, is definitely being handled differently than the last one.

vv. 8-9… “8 But at last Daniel came before me (his name is Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god; in him is the Spirit of the Holy God), and I told the dream before him, saying: 9 “Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the Spirit of the Holy God is in you, and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and its interpretation.”

You can almost here the relief in N voice… “At last, Daniel came in...”

And before N even presents his dream in this decree, he makes sure that everyone knows that there was a man of God that who could interpret the mystery that had been revealed.

He first calls him by his Hebrew name (Daniel) and then his heathen name (Belteshazzar). The fact that the king uses both names in this document, I believe, suggests that he had grown fond of Daniel over the years and didn’t treat him like an ordinary exile.

Closing:

We can learn several things as we look at the opening of N’s reflection…

But one thing that really stands out is the importance of our relationship with God. N could have avoided the fear, avoided the events that he is reflecting back on, if he would have humbled himself before God. But instead, he let pride take control and he suffered for it.

N could avoided the feeling of disappointment with his “wise-men” had he specifically summoned Daniel from the start…

So often people will turn to the wrong sources to put a spiritual band-aid on their fears and problems… like I mentioned before… Just because something is socially accepted, doesn’t mean that God approves of it… You need to look at Scripture and compare your life to the principles that God has given us…

Jesus said it this way…

Matthew 16:24 NASB95

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

To deny yourself means to give yourself wholly to Christ… You are committed to doing whatever pleases Him.

To take up the cross means to identify with Christ in His rejection, shame, suffering, and death… and if you are living in a way that honors Christ, you will experience the rejection, the shame, the suffering, and possibly death… because the world hates Christ and everything He stands for…

N only wanted to live for himself, he wanted to glorify himself… it took a lifetime for him to realize that God is the One who is worthy to receive ALL the glory.

The question is… are you willing to deny yourself today? or are you going to continue to let pride control your life?

Will you continue to follow the world? Or Are you going to follow Christ… Remember… He is the Way, the Truth and The Life, no one comes to Father (No one has access to God) accept through Him.

Do you know Him today? do not turn Him away Oh Jesus,… Without Him how lost I would be

Prayer:

What a prideful world we live in…

its so easy to get caught in the trap of the pleasures that this world has to offer.

Lord, help us to Your will, Your desire for our lives, so that we can please and honor you with our thoughts, our words and our actions...