Learning the Hard Way That God Is God and We Are Not

Proverbs 16:5

Nothing will make us so tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.

François Fénelon, The Inner Life, 1697

Daniel, the man of God, is now stunned and alarmed (NIV, “perplexed” and “terrified,” v. 19). I do not think he feared for his life; I think he feared for what might happen to Nebuchadnezzar. I think Daniel genuinely cared for the king. They had spent many years together, and he had a genuine affection for him. However, compassion does not get in the way of conviction (and commission) for the man of God. They can and should complement each other. Nebuchadnezzar, interestingly, seeks to comfort Daniel: “Belteshazzar, don’t let the dream or its interpretation alarm you” (v. 19). Daniel responds by saying he wished the dream were not about Nebuchadnezzar but about “those who hate you, and its interpretation to your enemies!” However, Daniel must, as Ephesians 4:15 says, speak the truth in love. He does not stutter or stammer but gives it to the king directly. Like Moses before Pharaoh, Elijah before Ahab and the prophets of Baal, John the Baptist before Herod, and Jesus before Pilate, Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar not what he wants to hear but what he needs to hear. We can summarize Daniel’s interpretation in straightforward and simple propositions:

I appreciate David Helm’s insights into Daniel’s interpretation:

We must be willing to share the bad news with people that they are out of sorts with God, even as our heart breaks for them while saying it. We must be willing to tell others that God is not pleased with this pride—the human tendency to push him aside, and think that we are the measure of all things. We must be willing to say why God works against us—so that we might one day know that he rules, and not us. Finally, we must be ready to call for repentance and offer hope.

Daniel did all of that. And then the text stops. We are not told what the king said on that day. In fact, the verses that follow take the reader into the future, to at least one year later, and then seven periods of time beyond. Clearly, God didn’t feel any need for us to know how this private witness was received. He wanted us simply to see that it was given. . . . Daniel didn’t shirk from speaking God’s word into the life of the most powerful man in the world. In doing so, he has provided us with an example of the backbone needed to be faithful when our opportunity comes. And come it will, for God is in the business of revealing himself to prominent, powerful people. (Daniel for You, 78)

DANIEL 4:28-33

The pride of mankind will be brought low, and human loftiness will be humbled; the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.

Isaiah 2:17

Do not desire to be the principal man in the church. Be lowly. Be humble. The best man in the church is the man who is willing to be a doormat for all to wipe their boots on, the brother who does not mind what happened to him at all, so long as God is glorified.

Charles H. Spurgeon, “Micah’s Message for To-day,” 1889

Nebuchadnezzar pays the price for his “I” and “my” perspective in verse 30. “At the end of twelve months” (v. 29), after Daniel interpreted his dream and called the king to repentance and mercy (v. 27), “all this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar” (v. 28). The hammer of God’s judgment came down, and it came down with a vengeance. Bob Fyall notes, “Nebuchadnezzar is like Adam and Eve who when confronted with another tree, instead of becoming gods, were banished from Eden” (Daniel, 70).

Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten who is the Most High and who had given him his great kingdom. He forgot or chose to ignore Daniel’s warning and call to repentance. “As he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon” (v. 29; this was not the only palace he had!), he began to brag and boast about who he was and what he had done: “Is this not Babylon the Great that I have built to be a royal residence by my vast power and for my majestic glory?” (v. 30; emphasis added). He essentially said, “I did all this, and I deserve all the praise. I am the smartest. I am the strongest. I am the wisest. I am the man!”

Those who have accomplished great things need to remind themselves daily that they have nothing that God in grace has not given them. We are born where he decides. We are the people he made us to be. The things we have, he gave us. “He gives [them] to anyone he wants” (vv. 17, 25). Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten this basic, fundamental truth of life; and now he will be reminded the hard way.

While the king was still crowing about his own greatness, “while the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven” (v. 31). A divine thunderclap came down from heaven with a message of severe judgment and sentencing. The Most High who rules the kingdoms of men declares:

Immediately “the message [of the Most High God] against Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled” (v. 33). He was struck by what was probably a behavioral disorder called boanthropy, where “one imagines oneself a cow or bull and acts accordingly” (Davis, Message of Daniel, 59). It is also referred to as lycanthropy, where a person believes he or she is an animal and behaves like an animal. The one who saw himself as superman became subman. The one who thought he was superhuman became subhuman. He lived with animals instead of with men. He ate grass like an ox, not food like a man. He lived and slept in the field, not in the home and bed of a man. He had fingernails and toenails like the claws of a bird and not those of a human. Sinclair Ferguson is spot on when he says,

The one who refused to honor God’s glory loses his own glory. Refusing to share what he has with the poor, he becomes poorer than the poor. He becomes outwardly what his heart has been spiritually and inwardly—bestial. (Daniel, 93)

You might hear the words of Galatians 6:7 whispering in your ears: “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap.”

DANIEL 4:34-37

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

James 4:6, 10

Jesus came into the world to convert people from God-like dependence on self to child-like dependence on God. And then he died to pay the penalty for our pride and to show us the way to humility and to send all our boasting toward God and not toward ourselves.

John Piper, “Believing God on Election Day,” 1988

Psalm 121:1-2 says, “I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” I do not know if Nebuchadnezzar knew these verses. What I do know is he not only looked up to the hills, but he also lifted his eyes up to heaven (4:34). After looking down to the ground like an animal, he turned and looked up to God in heaven and was restored to being a man made in the image of the God he had come to know as Savior. Yes, I believe Nebuchadnezzar was genuinely converted and saved and that he entered into a life-changing relationship with the one true and living God, the One he now acknowledged personally as “the Most High.” The king’s reason returned to him, and he immediately did what any right-thinking person does: he worshiped the only living and true God. He “praised the Most High and honored and glorified him who lives forever,” whose dominion is everlasting and whose kingdom goes on forever (vv. 34-35).

In the midst of this song of praise, Nebuchadnezzar gets theological in verse 35. In comparison to the sovereign God whose dominion is everlasting and whose kingdom endures forever, humans are not much: “All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing.” The Most High God does what he wills in heaven above, and he does the same on earth below. You cannot stop this God, and you should not question this God. (I hear Job saying, “Amen!”)

Nebuchadnezzar got back his mind, and he also got back his kingdom (v. 36). In fact, God not only set him back on the throne, but “even more greatness came.” But this time Nebuchadnezzar did not claim credit for the increase of his kingdom: “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and glorify the King of the heavens.” This is the only time the phrase “King of the heavens” appears in the Old Testament. And why does this king on earth praise and extol and honor the King who is in heaven? Three reasons are given: (1) “all his works are true”; (2) “his ways are just”; and (3) “He is able to humble those who walk in pride” (v. 37). These are Nebuchadnezzar’s last words in Scripture. He is now dead. He is long gone. However, the King of the heavens, the Most High God, is still on his throne, and he is still sovereign over the universe.

Daniel 4 gives us glimpses of the Lord Jesus in several ways. First, it reminds us to remember who is God and who is not, who is King and who is not. Nebuchadnezzar, as great as he was, was only a finite and temporal king with a small k However, One is coming whom the Ancient of Days will give a dominion and kingdom that will be “an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and . . . will not be destroyed.” In this kingdom “those of every people, nation, and language should serve him” (Dan 7:13-14). This is God’s King with a capital K ! This is God’s Lord with a capital L. This is the King who will rule the nations because he has written “on his robe and on his thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Rev 19:16).

Second, we see Christ in striking contrast with Nebuchadnezzar. As Tremper Longman says, “How could those of us who read the New Testament fail to think of Christ in the light of Nebuchadnezzar’s pride and shame?” (Daniel, 125). Consider the following contrast between the Christ we see in Philippians 2:6-11 and the depiction of Nebuchadnezzar we see in Daniel:

Third, God gives kingdoms “to anyone he wants and sets the lowliest of people over [them]” (4:17). An ancient Hebrew person reading this verse could easily have thought, God did this in our past. Will he do it again in our future? Is there a prophetic impulse in Verse 17? Sidney Greidanus notes,

In Israel’s history God set over his kingdom the young David, bypassing his older brothers; he chose the younger Solomon over Adonijah. Isaiah prophesied about God’s chosen Servant, “He was despised and rejected by others” (53:3), but God allotted him “a portion with the great” (53:12). . . . Jesus born in a stable, poor, despised, crucified, but claiming after his resurrection that God had given to him “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). (Preaching Christ from Daniel, 128)

Yes, God had done it before. And yes, God would do it again!