Daniel 4

Daniel 4:1-37

’S DREAM OF THE GREAT TREE Daniel 4:1-37THE Book of Daniel has long involved disputes as between Bible believers and Bible critics. The circumstance that Daniel’s interpretations of dreams, had by the king under whom he served and also by himself, have so far fitted history as to provide a strong argument in favor of their inspiration, and have puzzled the critics and at the same time, pleased believers. There are many points in the Book of Daniel, the accuracy of which can be tested by the known facts of secular history. The kings mentioned there are known to such history; and the archeological spade has demonstrated some of the incidents recited.There are those among biblical critics who bring against this fourth chapter the charge that neither secular history, tradition, nor archeology attests the truthfulness of the same; and some even go so far as to declare it “inconceivable that Nebuchadnezzar could ever have issued the decree voiced in this chapter.” But such criticisms seem to us to ignore two very patent facts: First: Secular history is not supposed to take account of Divinely-given dreams; in fact, the unregenerate world, as a rule, does not believe in supernaturalism of any sort. Second: The decrees that are here set forth as a result of Daniel’s interpretation of the dream, are in perfect accord with the common effect of such interpretations upon the ancient and Oriental kings; and if this one be disputed, then those of similar character are also brought into grave question, and, in the end, the whole Book is discredited. Meantime it is a matter of moment that the evidences for Daniel’s date of living, the kings under whom he served, and the certainty of many of the events recorded in his Book, constantly accumulate. In view of that fact one need not falter in his faith, nor doubt either Daniel’s existence or authorship, or veracity.In looking through this chapter the natural subjects presented are The King’s Dream, The King’s Downfall, and The King’s Redemption.THE KING’S DREAM This dream was not from mental disturbance!“I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace: “I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me” (Daniel 4:4-5). That is a unique report of a dream. Commonly the exact opposite is true. When one’s rest is broken and his affairs are going badly, and his thoughts are troubled, then he dreams. But the king takes pains to say that none of these things are so; that he was never more at rest than when this dream came.There are people who make much of dreams. If they have a bad one they conclude that there is some disaster in the offing; if they have a good dream they immediately imagine that some splendid fortune is in store.The fact is that dreams do not influence future events, but are profoundly influenced by past and present experiences; and still more profoundly by the state of body and mind. Personally, when my body is in health my dreams are uniformly pleasant; the very moment I am seriously troubled or ill, hell itself could not exceed their agony.I imagine that this is not a unique, but a common experience; and on that account, perhaps, the king was all the more astonished at the character of his dream.

Consulting his past experience he knew that it should have been of another, and even of a delightful, character; but recounting the vivid impression, he was compelled to confess, It made me afraid.Without being able to explain why it is, the most of us have the feeling that dreams are real experience. They may be grotesque and yet one senses their possibility.

They may involve the impossible, and yet, paradoxical as it sounds, one fears that they may find answering facts. Waking out of an unpleasant dream, it is not unusual for one to be grateful to God for the fact that it was a fanciful picture; and yet, while the thanksgiving is still upon his lips, a certain terror holds his heart. He knows the body has escaped the experience imagined; but somehow he feels that the soul was involved in it, and time only will shake off the fear of it and leave one either to forget or to ignore.There is then, a residium of intellectual and spiritual reality in every dream; and in those dreams given of God, that reality is not only substantial, but instructively suggestive.This Nebuchadnezzar dream was a Divine revelation. At least so Daniel understood and said. In that circumstance it stands not alone. His previous dream of the great figure—head of gold, shoulders of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet part iron and part clay, and “the stone cut out of the mountain without hands” that smote the image upon his feet and toes and brake them to pieces, was a companion piece.When Joseph dreamed of his coming supremacy, history fulfilled that dream to the letter.

When Pilate’s wife heard of the trial of Jesus, she sent to Pilate saying, “Have thou nothing to do with that Just Man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of Him”.If our Bible is, as the atheists claim, a collection of myths, why has God again and again made Divine use of dreams and Divine revelations through them?Perhaps among modern dreams no one created a more profound and lasting, or such profitable results as the dream that A. J.

Gordon had a half century ago on “How Christ came to Church.”Gordon was among the best balanced of men, and he said:“Of the hundreds of dreams which have come to me in the night seasons, I cannot remember a one that has had any profitable significance either for good or ill.”And yet this one which occurred on a Saturday night, when wearied from the work of preparing Sunday’s sermons he had fallen asleep, not only profoundly impressed him but determined absolutely his future course and conduct in Christian and church affairs.He saw himself in the pulpit with a full house before him. He was just about ready to begin the sermon when a Stranger entered and passed slowly up the aisle looking first to the one side and then the other, as if to see if any would offer Him a seat. He was about half way up when a gentleman stepped out and motioned Him to a place in his pew, which was quietly accepted.Immediately upon beginning to preach, Gordon thought his attention riveted upon this hearer, and he found himself saying over and over, “Who can that Stranger be?” When the benediction was pronounced, before he could get to Him, He had left the house.Finding the man who had so kindly offered to share his pew, Gordon asked, “Who was the Stranger who sat with you today?” To which the man calmly answered, “Why, didn’t you know that Man? that was Jesus of Nazareth.”With a sense of keenest disappointment, Gordon said, “My dear Sir, why did you let Him get away? I was so desirous of speaking with Him.” With the same calm indifference, the gentleman replied, “Oh, do not be troubled; He was here today and He will come again.”That single sentence involved two critical turning points in Gordon’s ministry.First: He sensed the fact that Christ was in every audience where he preached, for so He had promised to be; and Second, that Christ was a listener to every word and an observer upon every act of the sanctuary.One can readily imagine what such an impression would mean if it burned its way into the heart of the true minister of God. It would affect the whole order of the service; it would affect the whole spirit in which the service was rendered; it would affect the singing, the praying, the speaking, the seating.It would affect the uses to which the house of God would be put; it would affect life itself!Beyond doubt, Joseph’s life was delineated in his dreams; and in no small measure determined by them. And beyond doubt Nebuchadnezzar’s history was profoundly influenced after the same manner.

And yet beyond all question, both of them believed that God had granted the visions or the dreams, that they were revelations from Heaven.The intention of this dream was to teach the absolute sovereignty of God. That Nebuchadnezzar had apprehended that fact is fairly and somewhat fully set forth in the king’s statement:“I thought it good to shew the signs and wonders that the high God had wrought toward me. “How great are His signs! and how mighty are His wonders”! (Daniel 4:2-3). And then when the dream is rehearsed and the effect is reported, one perceives that the lesson was the lesson of Divine sovereignty. It was a lesson that Nebuchadnezzar needed to learn. The proud, the haughty, the imperious—they are the ones who must be told in no uncertain speech. The statement must be repeated until it is understood, God reigneth over all! The mightiest monarchs need most to be shown that their rulership is naught beside His power and authority; that their highest endeavors are as puny in comparison with His easy accomplishments as the passing second is puny in comparison with eternity.As Campbell Morgan reminds us in one of his volumes, “God is absolute monarch wherever He is King at all. His government is autocratic.

He does not consult us as to what He shall do with us, where He shall send us, what He would have us to do. Moreover, His government is an imperative government.

He never permits us to make compromises with Him for a single moment. He speaks the word of authority.”All power in Heaven and in earth belongeth to Him.Some years ago Dr. Helm, pastor of the First Methodist Church of Los Angeles, California, preached a sermon on “THE LORD .” He recited His power through history, and showed how all the puny plans of men had perished before His slightest will; how the mightiest armies had been brought to naught, and how even the wings of the wind had whelmed certain of them and changed the fate of nations.The Editor of the magazine, in which this sermon appeared, said;“In these days of naturalized weather reports, materialized newspapers, secularized schools, and anti-supernatural history, we and our children need a reminder like this.”The truth is that He never does anything less than wondrous! The only word that passes His lips is a wondrous word—“Never man spake like this Man”. Every work wrought by His hands is a wondrous work. By human endeavor it was never seen on this wise.The object of the king’s dream, then, was not missed. Nebuchadnezzar perfectly understood that God was showing him the true seat of authority, and the true deposit of power; and was teaching him that they were not with the king of Babylon, but with “the Lord of Heaven and earth”— Creator and Administrator of all things.THE KING’S This dream recorded between Daniel 4:14 and Daniel 4:18 is interpreted by Daniel in Daniel 4:19 to Daniel 4:27 inclusive.. And what a perilous interpretation!Joseph Parker thinks that the statement “Daniel, * * was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him” practically means that for a few minutes or moments, he was literally stumped. He was sorely troubled. He saw the plain intent of the same, but hesitated; yea, even hated to speak the truth to the king. The king was his friend. His high office he held by the king’s good will, and now he is once more placed in a position where he is compelled to uncover the king’s unfortunate future.What a testing!

What a testing of fidelity to God who had given the dream; and, what a testing of fidelity to the king who had befriended him, and whose black future he was in honor bound to uncover.That is the meaning of the word “astonied”; that was the occasion of his embarrassment, his hesitation. Nebuchadnezzar, seeing that circumstance, encouraged him to proceed and tell the truth, and so the meaning of it all is brought abroad.The huge tree symbolized the king’s sovereignty. It will be remembered that Ezekiel, Daniel’s immediate predecessor in prophetic visions, described the Assyrian after this manner, as“A Cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. “The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. “Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. “All the fowls of Heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. “Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters”, etc.The figure of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is of close akin; and as that tree was to be “cast down to hell”, so this tree was also to fall to the earth; and, as in the former case, so here; great was to be the fall of it; or rather, great was to be the fall of him who was symbolized by it.That was a delicate task for the Prophet; to tell the potentate of the earth that disaster was to overtake him is a distasteful task. There are people who imagine that preachers like to heckle those in authority, that the Prophet Nathan gets real pleasure out of pointing his finger into the face of David crying, “Thou art the man”!But that would only be true of the false prophet. God’s Prophet could no more utter such speech with pleasure than Jesus could pronounce the doom of Jerusalem with joy. The true Prophet is always a weeping Prophet; his ministry makes the deepest drafts upon the fountain of tears. His task is always a very tedious, and even agonizing one. To pay compliment to men, that is the province of the politician; but to tell men the truth— often the blunt and wounding truth—that is the heavy obligation of the minister.Perhaps no man ever walked the earth who said so many unpopular, and yet such strangely needful things, as Jesus of Nazareth.

His words roused indignation, kindled wrath into a flame, and finally effected for Him Calvary and the Cross.But not a one of them was falsely uttered. They were the words of truth and soberness.

They were not the sinister song of the siren, but the physician’s honest diagnosis instead. Their employment was pain; but their suppression would have been the death of souls. You cannot reach Kadesh Barnea except by way of “the great and terrible wilderness”.It is useless to interpret the Word unless one makes application of the same.Joseph Parker says truthfully of our great fathers in the ministry that “they were mighty in exhortation; they wrestled with their hearers.” It was the angel who wrestled with Jacob until his thigh was out of joint that finally brought him a blessing; so those men who deal honestly with souls until they saw themselves hell-bound, and then stayed with them until they had turned them back toward Heaven, were real prophets of God. So the present-day preacher who deals only in fine compliments, and winsome flatteries pushes his auditors nearer and nearer to the pit.It is a painful speech, “It is thou, O king”, but it is the truth, and nothing but the truth can warn him, bring him to repentance and affect for him final redemption.Oh, that God would give to those of us who stand in the pulpit the courage to deal honestly with our congregations, interpret symbolical truth until men shall see the danger in pride, pleasure and sin!The falling of this tree symbolized the king’s overthrow. One coming down from Heaven said,“Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him; “This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my lord the king: “That they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. * * “Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity” (Daniel 4:23-25; Daniel 4:27). Whether this was “the angel of the Lord” or some specially commissioned and Heavenly spirit is not a matter of the first moment; the message is the great thing. When Heaven sends down a message of judgment the day of its execution is not far distant. Heaven is not the source of alarm but it is the seat whence come dependable announcements.Saul had heard many testimonies from Christian lips and they had not profoundly impressed him; in fact, they had only sufficed to exasperate him and enflamed his anger against the witnesses. But when a voice was heard from Heaven, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me”? he was instantly attent!Somehow or other all men carry an awe of the supernatural, and fear the fire of judgment from that source. That is the pain of living for many a modern monarch. Take the experiences of the last five years as they have affected the financial kings of the earth and you will find that real agony is not with the poor and the unemployed.

Theirs is a grinding, grueling experience, but small beside the sufferings of kings.He was the greatest financier that England ever knew. He laid his hands on the largest financial interests of England during the war and brought them out of chaos, and built up more than twenty of the mightiest corporations that England ever saw in a few short years; and then, the earthquake came.

His financial foundations were loosened. Twice his wife’s two billion dollar diamonds saved him. But finally he fell with a tremendous crash, and the judgment against him was “eleven years” in the tower of London.Who can tell the agony through which that man passed! The Bible description of hell—a burning caldron, could hardly exceed the mental worry and the soul anguish through which such a man passes.Or take Paul Krueger, the most dominant name in the financial world. Only yesterday, in a Chicago paper, I clipped a statement made by Aminoff of how he visited Krueger at the latter’s Park Avenue Apartment in New York City; of how Krueger walked about the room, answering bells that had not rung, opening doors on which no one knocked. He was literally beside himself!

Such agony is reserved for kings of finance; for kings of political fortune.This thought comes even closer home. There are a few thousand people in the country who suffered when the Foshay fabric went flat to earth; many of them losing hundreds; some of them thousands, and some probably touching the millions.

But no man of them all has endured such agony as Foshay himself, who, after nights of distempered dreams, days of agonizing worry and alarm, finally faces an eleven year imprisonment.The value of money looks enormous to the man who has none; but there are circumstances under which the sight of it becomes a flame in which one’s flesh is consumed.The story is told of a man employed in the Spanish treasury who stole the key to the strong room and at night unlocked the iron door and crept into the vault, expecting to carry away enormous sums of money; but while intent upon his booty he heard a click, and turning, he saw that the heavy door had swung with its own weight and closed with the spring lock, fastening him in beyond the hope of escape. There he stood, heaps of money all about him, but as the hours wore on and hunger and thirst united their powers with suffocation to ravish his body, he would have given all the gold that lay in heaps about him for a poverty-stricken freedom and one deep breath of fresh air.The retained stump was a symbol of promised recovery. The stump with a band about it resists the destructive elements of rain and weather, and may often sprout again and live. One of the most beautiful and shapely trees of my back yard in Linden Hills, is the stately shoot from the stump left there more than twenty years ago. I agree, therefore, with John Skinner, in “The Expositor’s Bible,” that the band about this stump had no other significance than the suggestion that the king’s authority and power might sprout again.We have an adage, “As long as there is life there is hope.” It is always finding fresh illustration. There are men who are down and out today, but will be on their feet next week, and will be heard from next year.

God’s judgments are commonly tempered with mercy.A book like Harold Begbie’s “Twice Born Men” reveals the fact that those we reckon dead may live again. The poor Gadarene was not only under the power of demons, but a legion of them possessed him.

His mind was a riot of madness and his body a menace of uncontrolled powers. The whole community counted him done for, and lost forever. But, when Jesus came that way He gave a fresh demonstration of the fact that even demons were subject to His command; that the most destroyed man could be rebuilt. We should not be surprised, therefore, to find that the rest of this story recordsTHE KING’S It commenced with his mental recovery.“At the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto Heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me” (Daniel 4:34). This Old Testament miracle reminds one of the New Testament record of the Gadarene. The big thing that took place in both instances was the mental recovery. In the Old Testament—“Mine understanding returned unto me”. In the New Testament—“Clothed, and in his right mind”.The Scripture that precedes this presents the pitiable estate in which the king had been through this period, supposed by some to be seven years, but by others to be seven shorter sections of time. He had been an outcast from society, had eaten grass as an ox, his body had been wet with the dew of Heaven, his unkempt hair was like eagle’s feathers, and his nails, like bird’s claws. In other words, he had been reduced to a bestial level.The madness of kings is nothing new in human history.

Dr. Skinner in “The Expositor’s Bible” calls attention to the cases of Charles VI. of France, Christian VII. of Denmark, George III. of England, and Otho of Bavaria, and notes in passing that in all these cases the insanity of the king did not interfere with the normal administration of the kingdom.

His appointees continued to rule in his name, and as the extreme seclusion, common to the customs of eastern monarchs was such that the subject seldom saw the face of the ruler, months and even years might pass without any public knowledge whatever of insanity on the throne.It was an Old Testament incident of healing; and while there are those who would see nothing supernatural in the recovery of a deranged intellect, the truth is that it is a miracle as much superior to that of healing a body as the mind itself is superior to the physical frame.Arthur Pierson in “The Miracles of Missions” tells how John G. Paton, that marvelous missionary to the New Hebrides, when he was doing work in Scotland among the Wyands in Glasgow, was called to see a Doctor who was both an unbeliever and a drunkard. In delirium tremens he had attempted suicide more than once. Finally, Mr. Paton came to his bed-side and secured from him his promise that he would do anything that the missionary might ask. Thereupon Mr.

Paton took down a dusty Bible, and after reading from it said, “Now shall we pray?”“Yes,” said the Doctor, and Paton responded, “You pray first,” to which the physician answered, “I curse; I cannot pray.”“But you promised to do all that I asked.” “Yes,” he replied, “but I cannot curse God on my knees. Let me stand and I will curse Him; but I can’t in the attitude of prayer.”Mr.

Paton firmly but gently said, “Try to pray now; let me see that you cannot.”Instantly the Doctor cried out, “Oh, Lord, Thou knowest that I cannot pray,” and he strove to rise up as though Satan were struggling within him to turn this beginning prayer into a curse. Mr. Paton put his arm about him and held him firmly on the floor. Picking up the phrase he continued it himself as though he were in the blasphemer’s stead, and the man kept quiet. Later, as Paton sat beside him, he fell into a sleep and Paton quietly retired. Returning a few hours later, he found him awake, clothed, and in his right mind, and throwing his arms about Paton, he said, “Thank God; I can pray now!

When I awoke, my mind was clear and for the first time in my life I have prayed already with my wife and children.” Later he joined Dr. Symington’s church, and gave his medical skill to a holy ministry to God’s destitute children, showing himself as anxious to save souls as he was capable in bringing blessing to their bodies.But mark a further step in this recovery:The saved king paid tribute to Jehovah’s power and authority.“And I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honoured Hint that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His Kingdom is from generation to generation: “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and He doeth according to His will in the army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou”? (Daniel 4:34-35). The proof of redemption is often if not always in the behavior that follows it.When the Gadarene went home and bore testimony to his family and friends of “how great things the Lord had done for him”, he demonstrated both his redemption and the Divine power that had accomplished the same.Possibly the greatest need of this present time is the witness of men who have experienced the Grace of God.There is a wide-spread impression that only college graduates and theological seminary products are to preach the Gospel. Practically every one of the big denominations are harangued annually in this direction. Such intellectual ignorance ignores the fact that the best preachers known to the last century never saw the inside of a college and carried no diploma from any theological school.Witness Spurgeon of England and Moody of America; not to speak of such lesser lights as Harry Ironside, the present pastor of the great Moody Church of Chicago; Campbell Morgan, a popular Bible teacher and extensive author; and Peter Philpott, ex-pastor, Philpott Tabernacle, Moody Church, and the Church of the Open Door.I have been an ardent advocate of higher education. I sincerely believe that my own ministry was aided by the college course and theological seminary training that I had; but I am compelled to confess, in a recent careful survey of Northwestern graduates now in the active field in the world’s service, the men that I have encouraged to complete college courses and to finish theological seminary curriculums are not more successful, either in the pastorate or in evangelism, than are their less schooled fellow-graduates of Northwestern. So I am a bit nonplussed as to wisdom’s course; but this I do know, that the great need of the hour is the testimony of the man of experience; the man who can say, “Whereas I was blind, now I see”; the man who can tell how Christ cured him of the leprosy of sin, or the one who can tell how Christ came to him and unstopped his ears to hear the Truth and loosened his tongue to tell of his experience of Grace; the man who can declare by the Word of Christ, the demons that possessed him departed, and who exults in the great things that God has done for him; the man who can say as the king here did say, “Yesterday I was among the beasts of the field; but thank God, today my mind is clear, my heart beats high with hope, and Jehovah, in His matchless love, wrought the change!”It is doubtful if Decapolis ever heard a preacher that equaled the redeemed Gadarene. There is a question whether any amount of intellectual equipment can equal the effectiveness of that spokesman because of the consciousness of salvation from sin.Finally: The king affirmed his determined loyalty.“Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of Heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment: and those that walk in pride He is able to abase”. Here again he rehearses his experience. He had walked in pride, he had looked on the palace in Babylon and kept Babylon itself with its walls “three hundred and eighty feet high and eighty-five feet thick, and each side of the quadrilateral they enclosed was fifteen miles in length. The mighty Euphrates flowed through the midst of the city, which is said to have covered a space of two hundred square miles; and on its further bank, terrace above terrace, up to its central altar, rose the huge Temple of Bel with all its dependent temples and palaces. The vast circuit of the walls enclosed no mere wilderness of houses, but there were interspaces of gardens, and palmgroves, and orchards, and cornland, sufficient to maintain the whole population. Here and there rose the temples reared to Nebo, and Sin the moon-god, and Mylitta, and Nana, and Samas, and other deities; and there were aqueducts or conduits for water, and forts and palaces; and the walls were pierced with a hundred brazen gates.”It was of this city that his pride was born, and in its buildings that he saw the expression of his own might and power and honor of his personal majesty.But now that his mind was recovered, he remembered that while the boast was yet on his lips, “there fell a voice from Heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will” (Daniel 4:31-32).“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fair.

That he had experienced; but also the better part, the humble, God by His grace had lifted up, and lo, now he affirms his eternal loyalty.The story of Nebuchadnezzar ends here and ends suddenly. Let us hope that he passed into eternity in the sincerity of his pledge and in the salvation of his confidence.Campbell Morgan sententiously said, “No man reigns in life who is not under subjection of the government of God.”And Maltbie D. Babcock highly poetizes:“We are not here to dream, to drift; There is hard work to do, and loads to lift. Shun not the struggle; face it. ’Tis God’s gift. Be strong! It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong; How hard the battle goes, the day how long. Faint not! Fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.”