Nebuchadnezzar learned the hard way Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” But he also learned the hard way that “whoever humbles himself will be exalted” spoken by Jesus in Matt. 23:12.
Nebuchadnezzar was born into royalty. His father was king. He was the heir apparent. He was like the 5 or 6 year boy who arrived with his mother at the dentist’s office. This little 5 or 6 year old didn’t want to be there. He kind a strutted in, though, like he owned the place. The dentist introduced himself and could immediately tell this kid was used to calling the shots and he wasn’t very happy.
The dentist said, “Son, go ahead and climb up in the chair.” He said, “No.” The dentist didn’t crack a smile – he just said, “Mom, you can stand over there, and you, son, get up in the chair.” And he said, “If you make me get up in that chair I’m going to take my clothes off.” The dentist didn’t even bat an eye . . . he just nonchalantly said, “Alright, go ahead and put your clothes on that table over there and then get up in the chair.
The kid was stunned. But he wasn’t bluffing, so he took off his shirt and put it on the table. The dentist said, “Alright, now get up in the chair.” The boy said, “I mean it. I’ll take my clothes off.” The dentist again said, “Okay, put them over there with your shirt.” He stripped down to his shorts and the dentist said, “Now get in the chair.”
The boy completely wilted and climbed up on the chair and had his teeth cleaned while shivering there in his shorts. Finally, the dentist said, “Well, that’ll be all” and the kid hopped down and went for his clothes and the dentist said. “Oh no, we’re keeping your clothes, if your Mom wants to come back and get them later, she can.”
So this little boy walked out into the waiting room holding mother’s hand, for the first time in a long time. They walked through the waiting room and out to their car. A couple of days later, the Mom walked back in, you’d think to sue the dentist, oh no. She said to him, “I can’t thank you enough. He’s threatened that in the grocery store, the playground and in the neighborhood, whenever he didn’t get his way. You’re the first person to stand up to him....and he hasn’t been the same since” (Stephen Davey).
Nobody ever stood up to proud Nebuchadnezzar until Daniel did in chapter four. The theme of Daniel is the sovereignty of God before whom we must humble ourselves or He will.
I. Our Sovereign God Blesses Godly Character (chapter 1)
II. Our Sovereign God Controls the Nations (chapters 2-7)
A. Our Sovereign God Gives Wisdom (2:1-30) to interpret the Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream.
B. Our Sovereign God Predicts the Future (2:31-49) (“The Times of the Gentiles”)
C. Our Sovereign God Tests our Faith (3:1-30)
D. Our Sovereign God Humbles the Proud (4:1-37) (In Part One, God humbles Nebuchadnezzar and in Part Two, God humble Belshazzar in chapter 5).
(Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream came near the end of his 43 year reign which was about the 35th year of his rule. Daniel was about 50 years old. Between 25 to 30 years have elapsed since chapter 3).
God gave Nebuchadnezzar three opportunities to respond:
The first opportunity came in chapter two in Nebuchadnezzar’s second year when Daniel interpreted his first dream. The king’s profession of faith is in 2:46ff.
The second opportunity took place in chapter three in Nebuchadnezzar’s fifth year when God delivered the three Hebrews friends. The king’s next profession of faith is in 3:28ff.
The third opportunity transpired thirty years later in chapter four in Nebuchadnezzar’s thirty-fifth year. God has been dealing with Nebuchadnezzar for 35 years.
Nebuchadnezzar gives his salvation testimony in chapter four of how God humbled him
1) The Result of being humbled (4:1-3)
Nebuchadnezzar identifies himself as the author of this proclamation (4:1). Gleason Archer states this chapter “is the only chapter in Scripture composed under the authority of a pagan” (“Daniel” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985, 58). Nebuchadnezzar states the purpose of his testimony (4:2-3) which was to tell everyone that the Most High God’s kingdom is eternal and uninterpreted which cannot be said about any other kingdom especially his kingdom. Jesus said, “If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father.”
2) The Means God used to humble (4:4-34)
a) A message from God (4:4-8).
This is the second dream and time God has revealed Himself to Nebuchadnezzar. Life was good for Nebuchadnezzar as he testifies in 4:4. He had defeated the Egyptians and the Tyre, the capital of Phoenicians. But then God brought conviction by means of a frightening dream in 4:5. The wise men are called in again but they do not interpret the dream because of its content of humiliation for Nebuchadnezzar. Again, Daniel will do what the Babylonian wise men cannot.
b) The content of God’s message (4:9-18)
1. The tree that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream was large, healthy, and beneficial for the whole earth (4:9-12). Trees were often used to symbolized kings (In Ezekiel 19:10-14, Israel was once a strong and fruitful tree until uprooted by the Babylonians).
2. An angel came down and commanded that the tree be cut down but not killed with bands put around it to preserve it from splitting. Also the person the stump was symbolizing would think and live like an animal. This disease is called lycanthropy. This condition would last until “seven times passed over it” or seven years as 7:25 indicate (4:13-16).
3. The message in this dream was that God is the most high God and he sets up kings and rulers (4:17) or God humbles the proud and He exalts the humble. Peter put it this way: “God resists the proud” (1 Peter 5:5)
4. The king finished telling his dream to Daniel and like 30 years before, the wise men could not or were unwilling to tell the king the negative interpretation, and Daniel was asked again to interpret the dream (4:18).
c) The interpretation of the message (4:19-27)
1. Daniel’s burden for Nebuchadnezzar’s soul caused him to hesitate giving the verdict of the dream (4:19). Daniel confronts the king like Nathan did king David: “You are the man” (4:20-22). Daniel next informs the king that he will be humbled by God but after seven years, he will be restored (4:23-24). The purpose of the humbling is stated in 4:25-26: “till you know that the most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will.”
2. Daniel out of his burden warned Nebuchadnezzar of his need to forsake his sins and especially by showing mercy to the poor (4:27). Habakkuk records how Nebuchadnezzar had abused Israel in taking them captive. Jeremiah also in Lamentations records this mistreatment. The interpretation is simply this: You have a choice to make in response to God’s message. Jesus said to Nicodemus: “You must be born again.” Make this choice! The sovereignty of God and the human responsibility of man is once again balanced.
d) The fulfillment of the message (4:28-33)
God graciously and patiently waited 12 months for Nebuchadnezzar to repent (4:28-29). Nebuchadnezzar revealed the pride in his heart by his boastful words (4:30). Here is how John MacArthur described Babylon: Babylon was the largest and most powerful city of antiquity. The city was a perfect square, 15 miles square. There were wide streets, strong fortifications, numerous public buildings, sufficient land for farming and pasture. The population was approximately 1,200,000. The city was surrounded by a deep, wide moat filled with water, and the wall was 87 feet wide and 350 feet high.The city was literally fortified. On the wall they could drive four chariots abreast. The streets were intersecting through the city and running to 12 different gates. The Euphrates River ran through the city. There were tremendous levies in the city. There was all of this: incredible palaces; there were the hanging gardens, which was the first that we know of in ancient times of an air conditioned building. Unbelievable how he did it, with all the greenery at the top, and the water tripping through, and it air conditioned the whole thing.
Renald Showers notes Nebuchadnezzar “probably was the greatest builder in ancient times.” Inscriptions have been found that Nebuchadnezzar built forty-nine buildings. “Most of the bricks recovered from ancient Babylon bear this inscription: ‘I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon” (The Most High God (Bellmawr: The Friends of Israel, 1982, 44).
God pronounced with “a voice from heaven” (which must have added to the warning) the judgment with which Daniel had warned Nebuchadnezzar (4:31-32). This was the third time Nebuchadnezzar had heard this message: First from the angel in the dream in 4:17, then from Daniel in the interpretation in 4:25, and now from God Himself in 4:32.
Nebuchadnezzar experienced the exact judgment predicted (4:33). So the king who stood high above the city of Babylon on the flat roof of his royal palace from which he could view the entire city is now on all four grazing like a sub-human brute. Nebuchadnezzar illustrates 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Only after waiting one year and giving Nebuchadnezzar three chances to repent, one from an angel, another from the great prophet Daniel, and now from God Himself, only after all these opportunities does God judge.
3) The Humbled Sinner’s Conversion (4:34-37)
First, Nebuchadnezzar looked up to heaven and repented of his pride. Then, God restored his sanity. Nebuchadnezzar learned the intended lesson as stated by Daniel in 4:17, 25, 32. Nebuchadnezzar praised God’s exaltedness, His eternality, and His universal sovereign reign, and His authority (4:34). Nebuchadnezzar had his army (3:25) but God has His even greater army. God restored even more to Nebuchadnezzar than before his humbling himself (4:36). Similar to Job’s experience in 42:12. Nebuchadnezzar continued to “praise and extol and honor the King of heaven” in 4:37 which indicates the lasting result of his conversion. Now, he is not praising himself but God. This was not the case after God through Daniel showed him the meaning of his first dream nor the result of God delivering the three Hebrew friends in chapter three. His praise after these two encounters with God were only temporary.
Contrast the rebellious Pharaoh in Exodus 5:2 who refused to submit himself to God and humble himself. Nebuchadnezzar’s final word is a warning to the proud in 4:37 similar to the future warning of Jesus: “For whosoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt. 23:12).
When journalist Henry Stanley found David Livingstone in the heart of Africa, he stayed with him for six months. And Stanley was a professed skeptic when he found Livingstone, but he came away from six months with David Livingstone a Christian. And someone asked what Livingstone said that converted him, to which Stanley replied, “It was not what Livingstone said, it was what Livingstone was that brought me to Christ.”
Livingstone, according to Stanley’s report, never asked Stanley if he were a Christian; he never preached to him, nor seemed to pray for his conversion. But Livingstone was so thoroughly a Christian that it dawned on upon Stanley that one who was not a Christian was something less than a Christian. Very simple. Livingstone was a man of God who permitted the Lord to live through him; and, consequently, his life was a life of victory and blessing. And by the sheer influence and impact of his virtue, he brought that man to Christ (John MacArthur).
Daniel lived the life and also witnessed powerfully to Nebuchadnezzar.