Episode Transcript
Daniel chapter 4 verses 15 through 16.
The title of the message this morning is Wet with Dew.
Wet with Dew.
We've been studying Nebuchadnezzar's second dream. in which he saw a great tree grow up to heaven and providing lodging for all the creatures of the earth.
We saw that last week.
And we've learned by comparing other prophecies in the Bible that this tree represents a world empire, whose king, lifted up with pride, acted as if he was a god.
So in our verses last week, an angel of God came down from heaven, and in verse 14, he cried aloud and said thus, Hew down the tree. and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit.
Let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches.
Having lifted itself in godless pride, this great world empire represented here by a great and fruitful tree.
Would finally be cut down to size.
The angel said, Hew down the tree.
Watch this now in verse 15.
Nevertheless, leave the stump.
Leave the stump.
Don't chop or grind the stump.
Don't burn the stump.
Don't pull the stump out.
He said, Leave the stump.
Cut down the tree, cut off its branches, shake its leaves, and scatter its fruit, but leave that stump alone.
A stump is just barely above the earth's surface.
A stump is as low as a tree can go without completely destroying the tree.
By cutting the tree down, God was humbling the king.
By leaving the stump, God was being merciful to the king.
I'm going to repeat that again.
By cutting the tree down, God was humbling the king By leaving the stump, God was being merciful to the king.
And in this, we observe that God's judgment Is often tempered with God's grace.
That's what we're seeing in this dream.
The tree gets cut way down, but the stump gets to remain God's Judgment is usually tempered with God's grace.
God doesn't cut people down because He wants to destroy them.
He cuts them down because He wants to deliver them.
Here's a kingdom truth for you this morning.
God humbles men by his judgment, that he may lift them by his grace.
God humbles men by his judgment, that he may lift them by his grace.
There have been a lot of men too proud to repent and come to Jesus.
But after God humbled them through some type of tragedy and brought their hearts low, made some kind of bad something happen in their lives and suddenly their manly pride gets crushed and suddenly they're they're on their knees and they're thinking, what happened?
And suddenly they realize their need for God.
They realize their need for salvation and they receive the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's happened to a lot of people God fails the trees because he hates the sin, but God leaves the stumps because he loves the sinner.
The stump contains the roots of the tree, and the roots sustain the life of the tree So the angel said, leave the stump, look back in your text, of his roots in the earth Leave the stump of his roots in the earth.
Now again, the roots contain the life of that tree.
We've all, I'm sure, cut down some type of vegetation down to a stump Only to see it the next spring with the the the the stumps sprouting back up again, right?
And that's the concept that we see here, that leaving the roots in the earth of this tree, it shows us that God cares about the life of the sinner.
He was sparing the life of the person who was the target of this dream.
Jesus said in the Gospel of John chapter 10, verse 10.
The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy.
He's come to cut trees down, to grind up the stumps, and to pull them out, so that they never live again.
He said, I am come that they might have life.
And they might have it more abundantly.
Notice where God commanded to leave the roots.
The angel said, leave his roots where?
In the earth.
Leave them in the earth.
And that's another way of saying, spare his life now.
Don't take him from the earth just yet.
Sometimes we get close to dying and God's merciful to us and he lets us live a little longer.
We say, well, God's not through with me yet.
If he was, he'd have taken me from the earth.
And that's why he's saying, leave his roots in the earth.
Let him live, let him continue to live, even though he's living in such a small way.
So cut down so low, he just barely existing.
Leave him in the earth.
Have a look back. over my life many times and I've thought of many occasions that God spared my life when I could have easily died.
Y'all ever done that?
Yep And I thank God for keeping this old stump in the earth so that I could live long enough to know Jesus.
I do.
Man, I almost drowned in a swimming pool when I was a kid, going over to my friend's house.
And I could have been ran over anytime driving on my motorcycle as a kid.
On highway patrol before I became a Christian, God's left this old stump in the earth because he loves me.
And he loves you.
Some people foolishly think that God accepts them because he spared their life in the past.
They think, well, because they didn't die in a car crash, that means that somehow God accepts them and that they're going to heaven because God left the stump.
No Leaving the stump doesn't save the tree.
It just gives the tree another chance to come to Jesus.
You see?
The angel said, leave the stump in the earth.
Look back in your text, even with a band of iron and brass.
A band is a shackle, such as a prisoner would wear.
So picture a stump. of this exceedingly tall tree, and all that's left is this stump.
And the stump is in a shackle of iron and brass.
The idea here is that the king that's represented by this tree, he would be bound to the judgment described in this dream.
No reprieve.
No talking your way out of it, no getting let out by a liberal judge, you're going to be bound to the sentence that I'm uh uh uh passing upon you in this dream.
And the fact that the band was made of the strength of Iron and brass and iron represents strength in the prophecies of the Bible.
Brass represents judgment in the prophecies of the Bible.
That means God's judgment is going to come down.
It's going to come down strong, and you're not getting out of it.
Now notice where this sentence is to be carried out.
The angel said, Leave the stump.
Look back in your text, not just in the earth, but look, in the tender grass of the field.
You might want to underscore grass of the field.
So this tree would go from dwelling in the sky in the heaven far above every other tree to now dwelling in the grass.
When I was a kid, if somebody was really low down, then you would call them a low-down snake in the what?
In the grass.
Y'all ever heard of that four kids?
No?
You'd have?
All right.
Well a few of them have.
Low-down snake in the grass.
Whoever this king was in Nebuchadnezzar's dream was going to have a long way to fall He would go from living as the tallest tree to living among the tender grass.
Now here's the difference.
It's tender grass.
It's not. some kind of stubby vegetation.
It's tender grass.
Now, in my front yard I have some tender grass.
Behind my my backyard, I have a wooded area.
You might enjoy walking barefooted in my front yard. you wouldn't try to walk in the wooded area barefooted.
And so what we see here is this The king dominated the world.
He was taller than every tree.
He was over everybody.
We say that about people, don't we?
If someone is the top of the food chain in business.
Or in politics, we'd say, well, they're over these people.
They're over everybody.
They're over all of that project.
The king was over all the earth He was used to getting his way, but now he'd be living in the tender grass. where people could just walk all over him.
He's not over anybody.
He's under everybody now.
We're talking about an exact polar opposite of the life that he's been used to living.
The man who'd been over the world's people would now be under the people's feet.
You see?
He would no longer dwell in the king's palace, but in the field, it says.
Leave the stump in the field, in the tender grass.
He would no longer sleep in the king's bed, but in the grass.
The angel said to let the stump be in the tender grass of the field.
Look back in your text.
And let it be wet with the dew of heaven.
That's an important statement.
You see, if the stump is wet with dew, it means it has no shelter over its head.
Like an animal.
The subject of this dream would sleep outside in the grass completely exposed to the elements.
Do you remember the tree in the dream?
In the dream, the tree when it was up really high.
Do you remember what lodged under it?
The beasts of the field did.
They lodged in the shadow of the tree. the shade of the tree, the birds lodged in its branches.
And now the tree, which had given shelter to all, would have no shelter himself.
You can't get any more humbling than that.
This is going to be a long way to fall again.
Now in the Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he wasn't going to run the kingdom from the field.
Rather, as long as he was in the field, in this lowly state, he would not only lose all kingly privileges and authority.
But he would lose all human privileges and authority.
In the Bible, God set men over the animals.
But this king in Nebuchadnezzar's dream would fall so low that he would fall beneath even the human race.
The angel said, look back in your text, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth.
The Chaldean word translated portion here.
It's the same word used to describe how the Israelites divided up their land to each tribe.
They would cast lots and they would divide it up by lots.
Each tribe, except the Levites, was given a particular plot of land.
And that that lot or plot would be their dwelling place.
And in the case of this king in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, His lot, his dwelling place, his portion would be with the beast of the field who dwelled in the grass of the earth.
He would be an equal to a cow or other similar beast that laid in the grass, and he would live and think like one of them.
The king would lose his mind.
The angel said verse 16, let his heart, that's his understanding, his thinking, be changed from man's And let a beast's heart be given unto him.
This is amazing to me.
In my Genesis to Jesus class, we learn that there is a great difference between a beast and a man.
John, I'm sorry, Jesus said in John chapter 4, verse 24, Jesus said, God is a spirit.
And they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
A beast has a body and a soul.
But God gave man a spirit so he can know God and thus worship God in spirit and in truth so he could comprehend spiritual truths.
But God would cause the king in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, who thought himself to be like God to be changed to that of a lowly, stupid beast.
His spirit would be blinded So that he would become like a beast having no comprehension of spiritual things.
The man who thought himself to be like a god would become like a dumb beast in the field.
And he would be bound to this terrible judgment for seven years.
The angel said, look back in your text, and let seven times pass over him.
He was sentenced, shackled, to the earth, to the grass, as a stump for seven times.
What we would call seven years.
The word translated times here it means a set period of time, which is often defined by the context that it's used in.
It doesn't have to be years.
It could be any set revolution of time.
But a year is one of the definitions of this word, and there's no other context given here.
And for this reason, the seven tides is understood by most to mean seven years.
Until seven long years had passed.
This high and mighty, brilliant leader would become like a lowly dumb beast living out in the field.
And when everybody saw this, they would know that it wasn't the king who set himself over all the earth when he was a tall tree.
It was God who set that king over the earth.
And it was God who was over the king.
Never give yourself credit for what God accomplishes in your life.
Never do it.
And you know, if you do, if you get braggadocious, if you start thinking, look what I've accomplished, man, you couldn't you couldn't accomplish your next breath if it wasn't for the grace of God.
You couldn't.
You say, God, thank you for what you've done in me.
And you give all the glory to God.
And if not God may humble you to teach you a lesson, like he was about to do to this particular king.
This was going to be a great wake-up call for some king.
But he won't wake up to realize what happened to him for seven very long enumbling years.
Now, when God judged Israel in the wilderness, he caused them to wander in the desert for how many years?
Forty.
Those of y'all who understand and we've taught on Bible numerology before, we've we've touched on it briefly.
In our Genesis Jesus classes, this that we're doing right now, those of y'all who've been through it, you've been through quite a bit more.
We know the number 40 represents a perfect trial, a perfect test. 40 years they wandered in the wilderness.
That was God's judgment on them.
God didn't judge them for seven years in the wilderness.
He judged them for 40.
And when Jesus fasted in the desert, how many days did he fast?
Forty.
When Noah was in the ark, it rained how many days and nights?
Forty.
The number 40 is the number of a perfect judgment.
God's judgment upon man, God's judgment upon Israel, God's trial and test of Jesus, that perfect. test that he put him through in the wilderness.
But God didn't sentence the king in this dream to 40 periods of time.
He didn't say till forty times pass over you, but to periods of seven.
And what does the number seven represent in Scripture?
Perfection.
Perfection.
Absolute perfection And we know from our previous studies of God's Word in many areas of the Bible that this is confirmed that it represents a number of perfection.
God rested on the seventh day while all the work was finished.
It was perfected.
And since seven years must fully pass upon this king.
Remember, he's bound to this these seven periods of time.
And since he must fully endure these seven times, as it's worded in scripture, that means the king won't return to his manly senses again until the eighth year.
Of this ordeal the eighth year.
Now Those of y'all who understand new Bible numerology, as we we've taught here in this church before, the number seven represents perfection.
You have seven days in a week.
On that eighth day, that eighth day, which today's an eighth day, last Sunday, that began the first day of the week We had seven days in that week.
Today is the eighth day after that seven days.
Now we begin a what?
A new week.
And so the number eight, which comes after seven is perfectly accomplished, the number eight represents a new beginning.
That is why in the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to circumcise their little boys on the what day?
The eighth day.
Remember the Apostle Paul said, circumcised on the eighth day.
A Hebrew of the Hebrews, right?
That's what he was.
Because when they circumcised that little boy, It represented a new beginning in Jesus Christ.
Old things have passed away.
The Bible says, behold, all things have become what?
New.
All things have become eight.
A new beginning in Jesus Christ.
Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
A new creature.
Speaking of Jesus when he fulfilled this Old Testament law, the Bible says in Luke 2.
21.
And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
Eight.
The day of circumcision, the day of new beginnings.
So as tragic as this ordeal would be, the king's fall to the earth, the king's judgment.
Would not be his end, but it would be the beginning of the man that God created him to be.
God would give him a new beginning.
And by this we learn that God's greatest blessings are often discovered in man's greatest sorrows.
And with that, I'll close with some poetry I wrote to sum up that point.
Wet with dew in a field I lay.
Dumb as a beast with nothing to say.
But God fell the tree and God sent the dew to send his grace and make me new.
Father, we thank you for your precious word.
God, what an incredible story.
What depth your scripture, Father, takes us into.
What amazing truths, dear Lord God, lay inside your word and your Holy Spirit, Lord teaches us and edifies us, gives us light so we can see.
And I pray, dear Lord God, that these precious souls who came here today will continue to come.
Continue to grow, continue to learn, as we continue to feed upon your precious word in the book of Daniel.
Ask these things in Jesus' wonderful name.
Amen.
