Copyright © 2006 by The Voice of Prophecy

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A Tyrant Faces His Weakness

Today we move into another fabulous story in the book of Daniel. Over the past week and a half we’ve explored Daniel’s arrival as a POW, after a forced walk from Jerusalem to Babylon in the country we now call Iraq, and his selection by the monarch to be trained as a leader to influence the other Jewish POWs brought from Jerusalem. But as we read the chapters of Daniel we learn that the king’s intentions are being reversed. He is being influenced by Daniel and his friends, not the other way round! And it’s begun to happen so often, that King Nebuchadnezzar must have wondered where this would all end.

Soon after the captives arrived in his capitol, God gave the king a dream of a great multi-metallic statue, and Daniel was able to share with the king the meaning God intended him to see. As we open chapter 4 today, the king has another dream, just as unsettling as the first one.

However, there’s a most important difference about the story of Daniel 4. Daniel tells all the stories in his book—except this one. King Nebuchadnezzar wrote this story, and he made it part of the official court records of Babylon. The king published this document and Daniel copied it into his book.

One of the unexpected aspects of this story is that it paints the king in a very proud and unflattering light. Most of us try to cover up our major faults. But you must take your hat off to Nebuchadnezzar in this case, for he holds nothing back in painting a pathetic figure of himself at center stage in Babylon.

He begins by telling us that life had been very good to him. His kingdom had flourished. After some years of battle, and travel, and deprivation with his troops, he began to take life easy and to devote himself to building the capitol.

To guarantee the safety of the city, he built a wall that could withstand virtually any attack. Slaves from a score of campaigns made the bricks and laid them with pitch and built the walls. That left a moat the size of the wall ── after they finished digging the clay to make the bricks to build the wall.

Then they made plans for a strong defense against siege. If an enemy failed to batter his way into the city, he might camp outside the walls for a few years and try to starve the city into subjection. But the city had been built on both sides of the Euphrates. Irrigation ditches took the water into the fields to water the crops to sustain the city in time of siege. And to stop any visionary from floating a barge down stream, they built massive gates across from each bank.

Then Nebuchadnezzar created an impressive ceremonial gate, not exactly a gate “into” the city, but an entryway once you got inside. The gate has been meticulously reconstructed and you can see it today in The Museum of the Ancient Near East in East Berlin. A visitor’s brochure says you can ( I quite):

walk through and wonder at the world-famous reconstructions of brilliantly coloured Babylonian monuments: the Processional Way, the Ishtar Gate and the facade of the throne hall of King Nebuchadnezzar II . . . Sections of the buildings were re-created to approximately the original dimensions by meticulously re-assembling the many broken pieces of excavated glazed bricks. Along the walls depictions of lions, bulls and dragons symbolize the major gods of Babylon.

Well, if you ever walk through that reassembled gate in the museum, and if you listen, you’ll hear in your imagination the sound of drums and trumpets as the army band rolls back into town with a hundreds of slaves cringing before their new masters, as they’re led directly to the site of the next major building project that Nebuchadnezzar has contrived; there they may spend the rest of their lives.

After a few years of such enormously creative work, Nebuchadnezzar wrote a document that Sir Hartford Jones found in 1862 about 4 miles south of the ruins of the ancient city. He wrote:

“I have built like a mountain in bitumen and brick . . . the temple of sacrifices . . . I have built at Babylon the temple of great light to the [moon] god . . . I have built at the entrance of the wall at Babylon, the form of a square, the temple of the queen of the house of Oannes, who has mercy on me . . I have raised up the royal palace, the house of wonder to men, the dwelling of my majesty in Babylon. . . . By thy help O mighty Merodach [another god] I have built this house. May happiness be here! May I dwell here without sorrow and find tranquility and multiply my race sevenfold.”

But that dream would not become a reality, because one evening, the builder king had another dream. This time, as before, he called his court counselors. But he didn’t play games with them this time. He just came right out and said, “This is my dream, I need to know what it means.” And he described it in eloquent terms. I have no evidence to prove this, but it seems plain to me that someone at the Disney organization read this chapter when they designed the centerpiece of the new Animal Kingdom in Orlando! If you’ve been there, you’ll know what I mean! I’m reading Daniel 4:10 and on the words of the king himself
. . . before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. . . its top touched the sky . . . Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant . . . Under it the beasts of the field found shelter, and the birds of the air lived in its branches; from it every creature was fed. In the visions . . . I looked, and [saw] a messenger, a holy one, coming down from heaven. He called in a loud voice: 'Cut down the tree and trim off its branches . . . But let the stump and its roots, bound with iron and bronze, remain in the ground . . .

The king asked his counselors for an interpretation of the dream, and they were speechless. They didn’t dare concoct something that might prove to be wrong. So they admitted they had no idea.

But when Daniel listened to the king describe the dream he hesitated for just a split second. The King James Version says, here in Daniel 4:19, “an hour,” but it means literally “the twinkling of an eye.” In a flash God revealed to Daniel the full import of the dream he’d given Nebuchadnezzar.

But how do you tell the king of the world he’s about to go mad? There’s no fancy way to tell the king his life hangs by the most slender thread.

Daniel wanted to see the king respond to God, not just for the short term this time, as in the story of Daniel 2, but for the long term. You see, the story is rich in symbolism. God wanted Nebuchadnezzar to have “a change of heart.” Not a surface change, not a make-believe change, not a convenience change, but a conviction change. He wanted Nebuchadnezzar to have a completely new heart. In this way his natural heart, devoted to self-glorification and pride, would be replaced by a pure heart devoted to giving glory to God. Only then could he discover the sheer delight of doing what’s right.

There’s something very personal here. God doesn’t have to give you and me a new dream, any old dream from God will do to awaken my conscience and direct me to a higher spiritual plane of living. This dream will do! What it says to Nebuchadnezzar applies equally to me. I’m no king, but I do know that “king self” is constantly on the prowl in my life.

I’m glad this chapter precedes the prophetic chapters where some other kings are brought to light. It’s so easy to point the finger to political tyrants like Hitler and Saddam Hussein, but God would have us point the finger inward.

Which brings us to the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. What did God intend Nebuchadnezzar to learn form his dream? Friend, don’t miss tomorrow’s broadcast for then we will read God’s highly personal message to the king — and to each of us as well. God bless you until we meet at this same time tomorrow on this station.