LOSING YOUR MIND TO REGAIN YOUR SENSE (Daniel 4:19-37)

Sometime we must lose it all to see what is of real value.

Transcript

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Mitsuo Fujita was a proud militant Japanese commander. He led the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. It killed 2,400 Americans. After World War II, Fujita took up farming near Osaka, Japan. One day he was called to Tokyo to testify in war crimes trials. He got off the train, and then someone gave him a pamphlet entitled I Was a Prisoner of Japan. It told of one named Jacob de Schazer, an American POW who converted to Christ in a Japanese prison camp simply by reading the Bible alone. It piqued Fujita's curiosity. He bought a Bible, returned home, and read it every day. Eventually, the cross of Christ crushed Fujita's pride. In April 1950, he received Christ. He was later asked to head Japan's Air Force, but he turned it down, and he spent the rest of his life traveling instead in Japan, the United States, and Canada, sharing how Christ had changed him. It's hard to imagine a man so hard and so proud that can be so dramatically changed. You know, not everyone changes so simply. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, is proud. Daniel four is his testimony about how he came to faith in Yahweh. God has given to him a baffling dream of a tree that touches heaven with beautiful leaves and abundant fruit. Everything lives in or under it. But the tree is cut down, and it becomes somehow an animal. The king orders Daniel to interpret the dream in Daniel 4 and verse 18, and he now reports in third person his dream's interpretation and its fulfillment after the fact. So the dream interpreted takes place in chapter 4, verses 19 to 27. The dream upsets Daniel so much that the king tries to comfort Daniel in Daniel 4.19. And Daniel responds by saying, If only this dream was for your enemies, so what's coming cannot be good. Daniel then retells the dream in verses 20 and 21 of Daniel 4, and then says, It is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. In other words, Daniel is saying, The tree you dreamed of, it's you. The tree is the king. He's going to be cut down, he's the stump in the ground. He's going to be like an animal in the field. Daniel goes on to say in verse twenty-four, This is the interpretation, O king. It is a decree of the Most High which has come upon my Lord the King, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of the heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. And as it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that heaven rules. In other words, the king is going to lose his mind and have an animal's mind. It has been said, if a man thinks he's God, he must become an animal to see he's only human. Ignoring our maker reduces us to an animal. It's kind of amazing today that a lot of people think they're animals. And if we think we're animals, we'll act like animals. In fact, we're in trouble. The king is going to act like an animal for what Daniel calls seven periods or maybe years, until he understands who's really in charge. And once he does, his kingdom can be restored. So what should he do? Well, it's at this point that Daniel risks something, advising the king. In verse 27, it says, Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you. Now Daniel is speaking. This was Daniel's advice. But his words fall on deaf ears. The king does not repent, and so ultimately the dream is fulfilled, and this is described in verses 28 to 33. Verse 28 reads, All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. So let me pause to say, a year passes, and God gives time to Nebuchadnezzar to repent, but he doesn't do it. He's out walking on his roof. The roofs were flat. The fulfillment, of course, is going to be bizarre. And when he's walking on this roof, the king answered and said, Is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty? Notice the repetition of I and my, not God. At the pinnacle of his power and ease, the king is sitting back simply to admire his life's work. And Babylon was an opulent city of two million people, the showplace of ornate temples. It's eight-story high, 16-mile-long, six-lane wide wall with something of an ancient Interstate 270 around the city. Babylon's gardens still amaze us. The king built this for himself. He lived for himself. He has it made all by himself. He did it all himself. That was his thinking. Verse 31 continues, while the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven. O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken. The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws. Here's the king, he goes from being the world's richest, most brilliant, and most powerful man to a raving maniac. He instantly loses his mind. He leaves his palace, goes into the field, gets on all fours, and begins to eat grass. Surely someone within his cabinet tried to intervene, but to no avail. He stays where he is, in the field. His hair and nails grow out, his hygiene goes. He loses everything. He's homeless. And he stays this way for seven periods. Sometimes we ask the question, how long must we suffer? And the answer, till God knows that we learn what he wants us to learn. I want you to see the dream's impact. And this is sort of told to us in verses 34 to 37, because after seven eras of humiliation, by God's grace, the king's reason returns. And Nebuchadnezzar now resumes speaking in the first person. Without a hint of resentment toward God, the king amazingly draws three conclusions that I want to share with you. His first conclusion is that God controls it all forever. In verses 34 to 35, we read the following words. At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, again speaking first person, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can say stay his hand or say to him, What have you done? The king here is humbled. You know, pride puts us up looking down. But true humility puts us down looking up at God. By the way, false humility has us still looking at ourselves, that we're worthless. It's false humility, but we're still self-focused. God built Babylon, not Nebuchadnezzar. God gave it to him. God does what he pleases, when he pleases, how he pleases, and with whom he pleases. No king, nation, circumstance, or combination of these on earth or beyond overturns God. God asks permission from no one. He consults no one. If we know who is on the throne, we're not worried about who is in the White House. God is in control even and especially when evil seems to be, or when I think I am. This is what Nebuchadnezzar comes to know. Sometimes we ask, God may be in power or in control, but is he right? What keeps him from abusing his power? Those kinds of questions are arrogantly being posed today. I want to respond by saying, Is power always evil? Could it be that God holds power righteously? I believe that he does. Verse 36 says, At the same time, Nebuchadnezzar says, My reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right, and his ways are just. Nebuchadnezzar gets it. He understands that God uses his power righteously. Power in and of itself is not evil. And God uses his power in righteous ways. The king's reason, by the way, is restored. And so is the king's power. And once his power is restored, he says that God is always right. Everything God does is right and just. Or where was God when? Why did God allow? One day we'll see it. One day we'll get God's eye view, which we cannot see now. And when we see the God's eye view, we will then admit he was right. So first, God controls it all forever. Secondly, God is always right. The third observation that Nebuchadnezzar reaches is I'm no match for God. He goes on to say in verse 37, the last part of the verse, the very last line, those who walk in pride he's able to humble. I want you to look at all of the ways that God tried to humble Nebuchadnezzar. Look at all that it took to break the king's pride. Teenage captives get smarter than all his wise men by simply ten days of vegetables? His servant Daniel tells him his dream and sees five hundred years into the future. He throws three men into a furnace who refuse to worship him, a furnace that's so hot his own soldiers die? And yet they come out, these three men, with not so much as even a smell of smoke on them? And now he has spent seven years eating grass like an animal. It takes all of this to break Nebuchadnezzar's pride. Isaiah 2 and 12 says, The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted, and they will be humbled. No one is too big for God to handle. The greatest king had to lose everything before he saw anything. Why is this? Because sometimes we have to lose to learn. Nearby was a sheep lying on straw with a broken leg. And she asked how the broken leg happened. And the shepherd admitted, I broke it. He was my most wayward sheep. He often comes dangerously close to cliffs, repeatedly disobeys my call and leads others into danger, so I broke his leg. It'll heal. And he'll be mad at me for a while. He'll snap at me when I feed him. But all of that's gonna pass. He will eventually be the model of my entire flock. Because he will learn obedience through what he suffered. That's so true with us. God cannot teach you he is in control until he strips you of yours. And you may be listening to this thinking, you know what? I have? I've lost it all. Your tree is cut down. You're lower than a stump. You're eating, as it were, grass like a cow. Your animal mind keeps you from ever asking why. Your pain only makes you mad. And if that's true, I simply want to tell you that your pain has not yet accomplished what God wants from it, because he wants your pain to break you. God wants your pain to make you see that he is in control. He is always right, and you are no match for him. You did not build your Babylon, and God is only doing what is needed with the heart that we've given him to work with. He's got to break it in order to open it. This is why it says in Psalm 34, God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Back in 1993, we buried my wife's brother, Rick. And Rick was a Nebuchadnezzar. He had the world by the tail. He was good looking, smart, funny, good athlete. He was just too full of himself. And we heard as he went into a far country twelve hundred miles from home. Rick lost his love for God, his marriage, his children, his job, and his joy. He found himself face down in a field eating grass. And only after a time of eating what cows ate did he come to his senses. And God granted Rick repentance. And still crushed over his sins and losses, he came back to God. Oh, he struggled mightily, but he found grace and peace. And so in June 1993, though, Rick was fishing with his son at a friend's pond near Dallas. He fell out of the boat into twenty feet of murky water and never came up. You know, that's shocking. But God never fails at the win of death. I genuinely believe that when God gets us as ripe as our hearts will allow, He at that time picks us. A broken leg saved a sheep's life. A broken pride saved Nebuchadnezzar's reign. And a broken heart saved Rick's soul. I know Rick is in heaven. And I think Nebuchadnezzar's there. I'm just stunned at how God got them there. And even more stunning is what they will say is the best thing that ever happened to them in this life. They will say the time when my shepherd broke my leg, the time I lost it all, the time I lost my mind to regain my sense. If they had not lost everything in this life, they would have gained nothing in the next. And that is real loss. Nebuchadnezzar was a man who exalted himself as if he were God. By contrast, Jesus was God who humbled himself to be human. And I would say to you that Jesus is a better king. He builds a better kingdom. He gives you a better place. And he is easier to kneel to. And as well, he keeps you from real loss. So I want to appeal to you, if you're in the field, come to your senses. Leave the field and come back to the God who controls it all forever. Is always right and ever will be.