All Ye Proud, Be Warned

Daniel 4

I’m going to tell you what the problem is today—the problem with every nation, every leader, every ruler, every counsel, every committee, every assembly, every group that comes together. It’s one problem.

Romans 1:21

²¹ Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,

Romans 1:22

²² Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, [wokeness]

Romans 1:28

²⁸ And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

The leaders of the world are essentially arrogant fools who have no hope of changing anything because they do not understand the real problem. Problems in the world are not economic, financial, social, military; not problems of foreign policy, government policy, capitalism, free market, socialism. That’s not the problem. The problem is not Venezuela, Iran, or nuclear war. The problem is not Muslim terrorists. Those are all symptoms of the problem. The problem is not abortion. The problem is not homosexuality. The problem is not sexual liberation. The problem is they didn’t see fit to acknowledge God any longer.

That’s the whole point of Romans 1.

Romans 1:18

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

Daniel 4 is an illustration that will help you to see this in a vivid way. It’s a first-person testimony of what happens to a world ruler who sets himself against God.

Psalms 2:2

² The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed…

This is a powerful example of what happens to those who try to eliminate God.

We were outraged at the execution of Charlie Kirk. But that is nothing compared to the execution of God going on. Now what you have in the fourth chapter of Daniel is a testimony from Nebuchadnezzar. And the bottom line in this testimony is one statement that he repeats four times- that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men. Things don’t happen by chance. They’re not fate. God rules in the kingdoms of men.

Defy God and you will be judged. You remember Herod in Acts 12 who declared that he was some great thing. And he was immediately struck by God, eaten by worms and died on the spot.

World leaders are consumed with arrogance, pride, boastfulness, narcissism. We see it in our own country. We see it in spiritual leaders, consumed with themselves. We see it in our political leaders. Some of them talk about God, they use the word God, but they’re not referring to the true and living God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in Holy Scripture.

Let’s start in verse 1. This is first person; this is the testimony of Nebuchadnezzar himself. Daniel recorded it and placed it in his book because the Spirit of God wanted him to do that.

v. 1  Nebuchadnezzar wants to say something internationally. He wants to speak globally. He wants to speak to all the peoples and all the nations on the earth.

v. 2  This is his personal testimony.

v. 4  By ‘rest’ he doesn’t mean he kicked off his sandals and he was lying on a couch. He means I was at ease in the sense of peace, prosperity, tranquility in my empire. There were no fears. There were no apprehensions. There were no enemies on the border. He had conquered the world. He was resting in a time of prosperity. He goes on to say, “flourishing,”—literally in Hebrew, “growing green”.

This is 25 years to 30 years after the fiery furnace, which happened early in his reign. Daniel, by now, is 45 to 50 years old because he came as a teenager. So Nebuchadnezzar’s done what no ruler in human history had ever done—built a world empire. And he’s in his palace, relishing all of this.

V. 5  It blasted him out of his comfort. It was a terrifying dream. Pharaoh, you remember, was panicked by a dream. Pilate was panicked by a dream. And I think the more wicked a person is, the more likely it is that he would be panicked by dreams of horror. You know, Isaiah said [57] that “the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up dirt and mire. There is no peace to the wicked.”

V. 6  There you have a picture of where the world is today. Fools turning to a collection of fools for answers. The world is powerless to deal with spiritual reality. Things of God are hidden from the wise and the prudent, right? Revealed to babes. We know more about what’s wrong with the world than the leaders of the world, far more. This is the folly of human wisdom. It’s a ship of fools. There’s nobody on board who can help.

V. 8  As long as human rulers look for answers among other fools, the answers will never come. They will not come until they listen to someone who knows holy God and in whom the Spirit of God lives and who can show them the revelation of God. We’re here, but they don’t want us.

The next few verses are the dream.

It’s a fascinating picture. The trunk with its roots remains as a stump, still alive, protected and watered so it stays alive. And now we hear “him,” and “he.” It’s a man this symbolizes.

v. 16         This is a judgment. Whoever this represents, whatever man that’s symbolized in the tree, is going to be turned into an animal. He’s literally going to lose his mind.

v. 17        God is in charge of who rules and who reigns. He lifts up leaders and he puts leaders down. This is the dream. This is a warning to every proud ruler.

Daniel replies with as much tact as possible.  I wish this dream was about your enemies and their punishment.  But I hate to say it, it’s about you.  Like Nathan with David, “You’re the man, it’s about you, for you’re the one who has “become great and grown strong, and your majesty has become great and reached to the sky and your dominion to the end of the earth.” It is you. The judgment will fall on you. We say it with compassion, but we say it.

You say, “Well, what about leaders who affirm the existence of God.” That’s not enough. You can’t just affirm the existence of God. What God? The true God, the living God, and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the Triune God. Any other god is a false god. And the worship of any false god is animosity toward the true God.

“You’re going to be humiliated, crushed, turned into a madman.”

And then Daniel gives him a ray of hope in the vision.

v. 26        You’ll get your kingdom back when you acknowledge God. Until then, you will be a madman, a maniac, a beast.

The leaders of the world have to recognize that God rules and submit themselves to Him and obey Him and do His will.

v. 27        That’s an invitation. If you will repent and if you will go in the path of righteousness and acknowledge the true God, and it will be so genuine it will show up in a transformed life, which will be merciful rather than brutal as you have been. If you will turn from your sin, God will withhold the judgment.

This is a warning with a promise of blessing for repentance. But the king must break with sin and enter a righteous relationship with God. That’s what we ought to be praying. You know it says in 1 Timothy 2, “Pray for those that are over you. Pray for the rulers and the kings.” What are you praying? You should be praying for their salvation. You should be praying that they would hear the warnings of Scripture. You should be praying that they would turn from their sin and their wickedness and their unrighteousness to the living and true God.

Daniel is really saying what Isaiah said in Isaiah 55 when he said, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord. He will have mercy on him, and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon.” This is an invitation to Nebuchadnezzar to repent. He pleads with him to repent, but he’s like Felix in Acts who said, “When I have a convenient season, I’ll call for you. On your way.”

You remember Jonah said, “Forty days and this city’s going to be destroyed.” God gave Nineveh 40 days. And God gives Nebuchadnezzar twelve months until we see the realization of the dream.

vv. 28-33         God is so patient, you know—twelve months for this man, 120 years for the antediluvian civilization. And during that 120 years, Noah preached righteousness and warned them. God always gives a time of warning. The Lord said to Samuel when he was mourning over Saul, “I gave him years, I gave him years and years to repent and change and now I’ve rejected him.”

But Nebuchadnezzar was stiff-necked, proud, and inflated. He’s the first great world ruler; he’s accomplished a lot. And he took all the credit for it. He was boasting, looking out over the massive Hanging Gardens of Babylon and many other things. They say there were at least 50 edifices that he built that were monuments to his power and wealth and genius.

And so he’s basking in all of this. And while the words were in his mouth his judgment came. Listen, sovereignty is given and removed by God. Rulers are where they are because God put them there.

Why this judgment on him? He had, first of all, rejected God and rejected the revelation of God. He was a vile, cruel, violent man; wanted to butcher a whole group of men back in chapter 2. Heated the furnace seven times hotter than normal to burn up the three young men. In Jeremiah 29, we read that he roasted two Jews. In 2 Kings 25 he took Zedekiah after the sack of Jerusalem and he put out his eyes. But before he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, he massacred his two sons in front of him so in his blindness the last vision he would have would be of his slaughtered sons.

Second Kings 24 says he imprisoned 18-year-old King Jehoiakim and left him there for 36 years. He was a very evil man. He was arrogant. He was proud. He deserved judgment. Most of all, and the final reality, he refused to repent. And that’s always the issue. Thunder breaks on his head. He becomes a madman. And everything God said happened to him. Seven years he crawled around on all four and ate grass and lived like an animal, a beast. God will bring down every proud heart, and every proud ruler.

The end of the story is so wonderful. Verse 34

Nebuchadnezzar said, “I now understand; I’m not in charge. God’s in charge.”

The only hope for the world, the only reprieve we get on final judgment is the salvation of leaders and the salvation of people. A fence around the stump protected the stump and for the seven years that he was out there, there was no other king in Babylon. Usually there would be a rush to fill the throne. But there was no other king. Maybe Daniel oversaw that. And when the time came, he came back and God restored him. And he’s one of the first people I want to meet when I get to heaven.

V. 36        Wow! He even became a greater ruler.

v. 37        Imagine our nation and our world if our leaders could in truth say such!

Now turn to Psalm 2 – this chapter sums it all up.

All ye proud, be warned.  Those who walk in pride He is able to abase.