Episode Transcript
We'll be in Daniel chapter 4 this morning.
Daniel chapter 4.
God willing we'll be expounding verses 34 through 35.
We've been studying verse by verse to the book of Daniel for quite a while now, and we've got a long way to go.
Brother Shepherd was commenting to people the other day that it'd be a few years before he finished teaching through the book of Job.
He just started in it.
And uh it's a tremendous amount of uh of learning involved when you teach verse by verse.
And uh and if you're consistent. to listen to the messages verse by verse, then next thing you know, you'll understand the whole book And uh if you can retain it.
And that's that's the problem is retaining it for us.
But uh uh at least you can have the uh have the notes.
I want to remind everybody. that uh we have a podcast.
It's called uh No I'm Saved Bible Teaching.
And so every sermon that uh like this morning's sermon of this morning's Sunday school You can tune in.
You can go to the church website.
That's uh CBC Maybank, Central Baptist Church Maybank, CBC Maybank Maybank. org, and you can scroll down and it'll have the sermons from the previous week.
Or you can access all the way back to the first of the book of Job, or the first of the book of Daniel when we started, and for some even further back than that in other books.
So you can turn it, tune it on in your car, listen to it in the house throughout the day, and re-listen to that message if you want to hear it again, okay?
Or if you miss one if you were out sick Daniel chapter 4, verse 34 through 35.
The title of the message this morning is Lifting Your Eyes.
Now in our text last week, The humiliating judgment that God had sent its Nebuchadnezzar to a year earlier suddenly came to pass.
Verse 33 says, The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen. and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagle's feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.
He was driven out of his palace to graze in the field like an ox, the Bible says, for seven periods of time. probably years, but at least months.
And now the Bible says in verse 34, and at the end of the days.
Now, when we're considering the end of the days, we have to remember how all of this began.
It all began with Nebuchadnezzar having a bad dream.
And after he had a bad dream, he was troubled.
And Daniel had to come tell him the interpretation of it.
And then he had another bad dream.
And after that bad dream, he was troubled again.
And Daniel had to come tell him the interpretation.
Nebuchadnezzar's life is in turmoil.
Nebuchadnezzar is rattled.
Nebuchadnezzar, remember how the bad dream started?
It started with Nebuchadnezzar having a question in his mind.
He was wondering what would happen after he died.
That's how this whole thing started here in the book of Daniel that we've gotten up to right now.
He was wondering what would happen after he died, so God gave him these prophetic dreams so he would understand what would happen in the time to come, after his time was over.
And it's a crippling thing when we start wondering about what happens after we die.
Because death is that which we try not to speak of, isn't it?
Death is the thing that we try to put off, try to avoid.
We know it's there, but at the same time We don't want to think about it because death is debilitating.
Death is discouraging.
Death will suck the life out of you literally, whether it's you or somebody else you love who's dying And this is what started this whole thing off.
And now, after God giving Nebuchadnezzar these dreams, the dreams are basically showing Nebuchadnezzar, number one, you're going to die.
Number two uh after uh after you, uh then uh there's gonna be another kingdom.
Come conquer your kingdom.
Remember, he ruled the uh kingdom of Babylon, which was a world empire, about five or six hundred years before Christ came.
And God said, after your kingdom, there's going to be another kingdom, come conquer yours, and another kingdom come conquer them.
And uh, and uh, but but he showed him this tree, remember?
And he was the big tree.
And he showed the tree falling down.
But he left the stump there.
So that the tree could grow back up.
And he told Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar, you're about to take a big fall.
You're about to go through a really, really difficult time.
You're going to lose your sanity.
And you're going to go out in the field like a cow eating grass.
Silence your devices, please, whoever has that.
Thank you.
Until I'm done with you.
And until you acknowledge.
The Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, not you.
Not you.
And so now the time has come.
He went out to the field He ate grass like an ox.
And now in verse 34, those seven periods of time have come to an end.
It says, and at the end of the days.
Remember, God told them that he would continue in that field with the mind of a beast.
Until he finally came to realize that God, not him, ruled in the kingdom of men.
So the end of the days grazing in the field for King Nebuchadnezzar. was the beginning of his days knowing the truth about Almighty God.
And let me assure you, it's worth grazing in the field. to come to know about God.
It's worth going through hard times to come to realize the difficult truths that we all need to accept.
Nebuchadnezzar said, at the end of the days that I, now notice this is speaking in the first person, not the third person.
These are words that King Nebuchadnezzar A Chaldean Gentile king wrote.
We're about to read his words, his account.
Look here now in uh in the next um phrase here.
I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven.
Now here he is out in the field.
He lost his sanity.
He lost his mind.
He's out in the field.
And now suddenly, oh Nebuchadnezzar.
Looks up to heaven.
What a pathetic state of being that man was in.
Recently I saw a I'm sure sure y'all did too on the news.
It was a uh childhood um uh actor, a star.
He was in some kind of sitcom.
Do you see that video, Brother Doug?
I I never saw the sitcom, but uh he was uh he he played some whiz kid or something on some show.
And it showed him homeless, lost his mind, and uh his former fellow co-stars tried to bail him out, get him a hotel, and he trashed the hotel and And uh he looked pathetic.
Now you picture old Nebuchadnezzar.
This was this was a this was a childhood star.
And now he's living out on the streets.
And you think of King Nebuchadnezzar, it's very much the s in in a lot of ways the same.
He was the ruler of the world.
And now he's out here in a field like a cow crawling on his all fours.
And at the end of those days.
He lifted up his eyes to heaven.
In that poor pathetic situation he was in, he finally lifted up his eyes to heaven.
Lifting your eyes to heaven is a description of where a person looks.
For their help.
Are you going to look to drugs?
Are you going to look to alcohol?
Are you going to look to this belief system or that belief system?
Are you going to look to this person or this government handout?
Are you going to look to God?
Everybody's looking to something.
Because everybody wants to be well.
And Nebuchadnezzar had been looking everywhere but up.
But when he looked up to heaven, he wasn't just glancing up to look at the sunrise.
He was glancing up.
To cast his eyes on God for help.
Psalm 123.
Psalm 123, verse 1 and 2 says, a song of degrees, unto thee lift up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens.
Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until that he have mercy upon us.
That is the position Nebuchadnezzar got himself into.
Nebuchadnezzar had been so used to barking out orders and having people follow his orders, and if they didn't, he would have them killed And finally, Nebuchadnezzar, here he is, like a servant looking up to his master.
He finally looks up to God and puts God in the position that God has a right to be in, and he put himself in the position where he should have been the whole time.
Under God, not instead of God, not over God.
So the psalmist here says, we're looking to you, God, for the mercy we need.
Nebuchadnezzar lifting up his eyes to heaven means he turned his hope and heart to the Lord above him. seeking him for help in the desperate situation he was in.
Not only that, but Jesus turned his eyes up to heaven too.
And when he did, he prayed.
So this could very well mean that Nebuchadnezzar not only looked to God in a sense in his heart of desperation, but he also prayed to God. in the sense of communication, when he lifted up his eyes.
John chapter seventeen, verse one.
John chapter seventeen, verse one says, These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven.
See the connection there?
So more than likely, when Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes to heaven, he also lifted up his voice to heaven.
Lifted up his voice to God.
But Jesus, when he lifted up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come.
Glorify thy Son, that thy son also may glorify thee.
So for this reason.
Some of the modern translations say at the end of those days Nebuchadnezzar prayed to the God in heaven.
Now that's not what the text says, so that's not what we're going to say.
But, that very well possibly could have been what happened.
What we do know is this, Nebuchadnezzar finally quit looking to himself as the ruler of his own world He quit looking to himself as the one who had all the answers to all of his needs.
And he finally looked to God He finally acknowledged that God was his sovereign creator that he must depend on.
None of us got here on our own.
We all depend on the one who brought us here.
Nebuchadnezzar didn't think he needed God when things were going well for him.
When he was on the throne, he was barking out orders and he was building Babylon and ruling the world.
Everything seemed okay.
He didn't need God.
He was like Pharaoh.
Who's God that I should obey him?
But after losing his sanity and living outside in the field for a while, Nebuchadnezzar came to a breaking point.
The experts couldn't fix his problems.
You remember every time he had one of those dreams, he called in the experts.
Every time he called in the experts.
And every time the experts failed him.
And then Daniel walks in and says, okay, King, this is really a spiritual issue.
This is about God here.
It's about God.
I can just imagine the Babylonian social workers.
Imagine the ruler of the world empire.
He's out in the field, thinking he's cow.
And I can just imagine all the Babylonian social workers coming.
Trying to help them.
I can imagine the mental health professionals out there trying to reason with them.
Now, now now King.
You're you know you can imagine that can't you Doug?
Now King you're you're you're you're not a cow.
Come on, come on now.
Come on up here.
Let's let's let's reason with this together.
This is not reality But by divorcing himself from God, he had divorced himself from reality, and God let him have a taste Of that.
He let him get his butt belly full of the decision he made.
So he would become sick of it.
The mental health professionals couldn't help them, the medical doctors couldn't help them, the false religious experts all tried taking a crack.
At giving King Nebuchadnezzar the help he needed, only to shrug their shoulders, give up, and walk away.
His servants couldn't fix his problems.
He couldn't fix his problems.
Only God could fix his problems.
And the problem was he didn't have the Lord.
You see, Nebuchadnezzar had the same problem when he was on the throne as a king as when he grazed in the field as an ox.
He didn't realize he had the problem.
That was the difference.
When he was on the throne as a king, everything seemed to be okay.
No, he had a big problem He didn't have God.
You can only sit on the throne for so long.
We have past presidents.
They were powerful.
Now they're dead.
And Nebuchadnezzar is a past king.
He was powerful.
Now he's dead.
And so when he was on the throne, And when he was on the field, whether he's sitting on the throne or crawling on his knees, he had the same problem.
He didn't have God, and eventually he would die without him.
The difference was it took the field to show him he had a problem, you see It took falling down that big that big tree.
He was so high up in the air, remembers that big tree in his dream.
But when he fell, now he's just a stump out in the field.
He's nobody.
And sometimes it takes God knocking us down to our knees and putting us at an all-new low before we can look up to the Almighty God on high.
That's what God did with Nebuchadnezzar.
It was an act of mercy.
It took the hard fall that Nebuchadnezzar experienced to show him that he was never in control in the first place.
It was God that had put him on the throne. throne.
It was God that had given him his health, his intellect, and his powerful position as a king.
It was God that had raised him up to that position, but he didn't realize it until God brought him down.
And fortunately, when this godless king fell down, thank God, he finally looked to God to pull him back up.
He finally cast his eyes upon the right place.
He said, I lifted up my eyes to heaven.
Look back in your text, and mine understanding returned unto me.
When his eyes got on the right place, his understanding returned to him.
He finally got it all figured out.
Ain't that good, Brother Doug?
Brother Doug, that's good.
Before this debilitating and humiliating experience, Nebuchadnezzar thought he knew everything.
He thought it had the world figured out, but he figured wrong.
Nebuchadnezzar was made for God, but he tried to live his life and rule his kingdom without God.
And that's man's problem today.
No different.
No different.
Everything we learned about Nebuchadnezzar we're learning about us.
We established that when we first started this message.
In building uh this uh study of Daniel, in building your life without God.
It's like building your house without the solid foundation that it must have to stay.
A house will last no longer than the foundation it's built on So our life may appear strong.
It may appear beautiful.
It may seem comfortable for a time, but if it's not set on a sure foundation, then it will surely start.
Tumbling down.
In the end, Nebuchadnezzar paid a heavy price for leaving God out of his life He tried putting himself where only God had a right to be, but when he finally looked to God for his help, lifted up my eyes to heaven, he said, that's when he finally understood the world he was living in.
You cannot understand this world without the God who made this world.
Be like trying to my daughter, y'all want to see it?
Hang on.
I hope I brought it with me.
Mmm.
It's my birthday if you didn't know.
I'm 58 today.
Thank you Alison, what kind of flyer did you say you made this out of?
Huh?
Minecorns?
Say it louder.
Eincorn?
I've never heard it.
Have y'all ever heard of that?
Okay.
I thought I was a health nut, but I guess I'm not.
I told her I wanted it healthy.
Now, how well would it be if you made this?
This is a brownie, right?
A big huge brownie.
How well would this have worked out had you made this brownie without that flour?
Not very well at all.
Not very well at all.
She could have had all the ingredients.
I bet it's good too, and you're not getting a bit of it.
She could have had all the recipe But trying to put this together and enjoy it, without that main ingredient of that flower, it would fail every time.
It would be a mess.
You may have the liquid in here.
You may have the egg yolk in here.
You would have a mess.
It's all you'd have.
And trying to put your world together without God, all you're going to have is a mess.
You can't understand it.
Without God, the world has no purpose.
Without God, the world has no hope.
Without God, we spend years going to school, going to work, building a life that inevitably will end.
Nebuchadnezzar's empire would eventually come to an end.
He would die.
His posterity would die.
And the Medo-Persian Empire would come and conquer his kingdom and take everything he had built.
But when King Nebuchadnezzar cast his hope on God, do you know what he did?
When that king and that field looked up to God, the king of all creation, That day, Nebuchadnezzar exchanged a kingdom he could not keep to gain a kingdom he could not lose.
You see.
That's when he got it all figured out.
And that makes all the sense in the world.
I've got a really good job.
There's gonna come a time I can't do it anymore.
A lot of y'all in here have already gone through that.
I love being a pastor.
There's going to come a day I can't do it anymore.
I love my family.
There's going to come a day when I'm going to die and leave them.
If I live long enough, there'll come a day when they die and leave me.
And everything, I love my house.
I even like my chickens.
But you know what?
Everything I built and worked for I find myself as I get older and older just preparing to go.
That's gonna happen to everybody.
You try to figure out how long will your money last before you can, you know, you try not to outlast your money But you know you're gonna go and and you get a load, you just prepare to leave.
You just prepare to leave everything behind.
And I'll tell you what, my little grandkids this morning, they come into my Sunday school class and they brought me, they were both holding it, one holding the other like it was some kind of big load.
They wanted to both present me my little birthday present.
And I hug those grandkids and love those grandkids.
And let me tell you something.
Life would be one big sick joke.
If you could fall in love with those grandkids, build relationships with them.
Only to get old, get sick, and die, and all of it come to nothing.
I'd rather not be born at all.
What's the point?
Well, that's the thing.
Without God, there is no point.
And without God, there was no point for Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom.
But that day, Nebuchadnezzar realized something he should have realized all along, but he had been missing, and that is he was missing God.
And again, he exchanged a kingdom he could not keep for a kingdom he could not lose.
And I remember when I was a highway patrolman and I was young and I was strong and I was a black belt in martial arts and I could bitch press 300 pounds. little 165-pound man, and I felt I had the world by the tail And when I worked this accident and saw this young woman dead and she was my age, it got me thinking about my future And the sense of my mortality sank in, and I knew I was going to leave this world behind.
And I told God, because I knew there was a God, I'd worked way too many accidents.
I knew we didn't get here by accident.
Accidents cause chaos.
Accidents create damage.
Accidents cause disorder.
They never produce order.
They never no one ever takes a car, runs into another car, and gets out and says, well, that looks a whole lot better.
My wife and I, we left uh Lauren's house the other day, drove down the road, and just missed an accident, and there they were.
They just rolled a vehicle over.
There's a lady laying out there in the road.
The ambulance hadn't gotten there yet.
But I never, out of all the accidents I worked, I've seen a lot of people dead.
I've seen a lot of carnage.
I've seen people's heads caved in.
I've seen a lot of bad stuff. from accidents.
And never once did I ever see anybody get out of the car after an accident and say, whoo, I feel better.
We, I knew I didn't get here by accident.
And I knew I had to somehow take the life. that I knew I could not keep.
I'd seen so many other people lose their lives.
And I knew I had to take the life that I could not keep.
And gain one that I could not lose.
And when I understood the gospel of Jesus Christ, I turned my eyes to God, and then God eventually turned my eyes to the cross of Jesus Christ.
And when I look there, my understanding returned to me.
I got the world figured out.
I got hope in my heart, and heaven is my home.
Praise the Lord.
Here's the kingdom truth for you this morning.
When you look to the God above you, that's when you'll finally understand the world around you.
When you look to the God above you, that's when you'll finally understand the world around you.
Nebuchadnezzar said, My understanding returned to me.
Look back in your text, and I blessed the Most High.
Whoo, we got a believer now, folks.
We have a man who's worshiping his creator.
We have a man who says he's most high.
I've been so blessed Watching God work in Brother Chris Johnson's life.
There he is back there.
When he came here, he was an atheist.
Excuse me.
And I got to watch him go to that Genesis of Jesus class we're teaching next door.
I got to watch God open his eyes.
And I got to watch him lift up his eyes to heaven.
And I got to watch God return his understanding unto him And now the same God that put the hope of eternal life in Nebuchadnezzar's heart It's the same God that put the hope of eternal life in Chris's heart and the same God they both lifted up their eyes to and found their hope in Jesus Christ.
Nebuchadnezzar no longer despises the concept of God, but he now celebrates the truth of the Most High, as Christ does. who sent his son to deliver him from a world that's built on sinking sand.
Man, you can't, you, you, you cannot turn on the television to see all the turmoil in this world.
And not realize it's just sinking sand.
It's going away, folks.
We're like, we're it's like we're all living on a big cruise ship with a hole in the bottom of it.
And God in his grace has sent us a lifeboat.
And we're all fools if we don't jump out of what we know is falling down and sinking to get on a lifeboat that can take us to a shore that Jesus Christ will rule and live in forever.
Listen to King Nebuchadnezzar's testimony.
Listen to what this Gentile, this Chaldean king, said 2500 years ago, and I want you to be encouraged by it.
He thought he had it all until all was taken away from him.
But when he turned to God, he was happier in the field than he ever was in the throne.
You didn't see him praising the Most High in the throne, but you saw him praising him in the field.
He said, I bless the Most High.
Look back in your text, and I praise and honored him that liveth forever.
Now Nebuchadnezzar has the aspect of eternity in mind.
You must live with an eternal perspective.
Other than that, there's no hope at all.
Other than that, there's no purpose at all.
Other than that, there's no meaning at all.
And Nebuchadnezzar figured it out.
He said, I praised and honored him that lives forever.
Take your pen underscore forever.
Now go down just a little bit after you underscore forever.
Underscore.
Everlasting.
And after you underscore everlasting, go down a little bit further in your Bible and underscore from generation to generation.
And once again, remember how all this started in the previous verses.
It started with Nebuchadnezzar pondering his life and wondering what was going to happen after he died.
I've been there.
A lot of y'all have been there too.
And now God had given him this answer.
If he has a God that lives forever Then he can live forever.
God said, I'm the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
And then Jesus said, God's not the God of the dead, he's the God of the living.
An ever-living God has ever-living people, ever-living children Now Nebuchadnezzar has an eternal foundation to build his house upon.
He has an eternal kingdom that can't be conquered by Medo-Persia, by Greece, by Rome.
He has an eternal kingdom, and he said, I praise and honor him that lives forever and ever.
Look back in your text, whose dominion.
Now this is him speaking as a king.
Nebuchadnezzar's got it figured out.
One king speaking about another king.
Nebuchadnezzar realized, my dominion is not forever.
But God's dominion is, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom, unlike mine, is from generation to generation.
To put it plain, if you have an everlasting king, then you belong to an everlasting kingdom.
And that is something to praise God for.
That is why He's praising God.
He wondered in the beginning: God, what happens after I die?
What happens to this kingdom?
What happens to me?
And now by the grace of God, he's been brought so low that he looks up and he says, I got it figured out now.
I have an everlasting God who has an everlasting kingdom.
And guess what?
I need to become a citizen of that kingdom.
He said in verse 35, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing.
Again, he figured it out.
We're nothing without God.
That's what Nebuchadnezzar is saying.
Without God, we're nothing The most powerful man on earth at the time in the world, Nebuchadnezzar, look him up, he's in the encyclopedia.
He realized that all his earthly power had come from God. who can raise men up and cast them down.
He said, look back in your text as we begin to close.
And he that is God doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
God is in control of all of it.
Whether it's heaven or earth.
He says, and none can stay his hand or say unto him, What doest thou?
In other words, no one can, if God's got something he's going to do, no one can say, oh, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, no, we can't allow that.
No one can do God that way.
And no one can say, well, wait a second.
Now what are you doing?
God doesn't have to answer to anybody.
Nobody can stop God.
And God doesn't have to answer to anybody.
He's God.
When God determines to do something, nobody stops him.
He answers to nobody, and Nebuchadnezzar is now a believer and he's worshiping the one true God.
And I look forward to seeing Nebuchadnezzar in heaven.
One day.
His earthly kingdom historically was conquered by Persia Which was then conquered by Greece.
By the way, that's why our New Testament is written in Greek.
But Greece was conquered by Rome, which is why Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross.
And then Rome, you know what Rome happen what Rome did?
Rome eventually fragmented and then fell apart.
And now all you have in Rome are some old ruins of their glory days gone by.
Everything man builds will come to an end.
But everything built on God will stand forever.
Now the world is ruled by many nations that struggle for great power.
I'd sit back with absolute awe and watch the struggle for power in this world.
If you watch the news, you see it.
Struggle for power over Venezuela.
Struggle for power over Taiwan.
Struggle for power over Greenland.
Struggle for power over the United States.
Struggle for power over Canada.
Friend of ours in Alberta.
Boy, they're trying to secede from Canada now.
It's all a struggle for power.
It's a power grab.
A struggle for power.
All the nations of the earth, I don't care where you are, they're all struggling for power But when Jesus comes again, we learned about God's promise to Abraham about making him a great nation.
When God makes Abraham a great nation, that's when we'll finally have one nation under God.
That's what the book of Revelation is all about.
God's promise of making Abraham a great nation finally coming to fruition.
We will, in the end, Jesus will come and we will be one nation under God.
When Jesus comes again, Revelation chapter 11, verse 5 says this.
It says, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.
One nation under God.
And Nebuchadnezzar was wise enough to realize his nation was coming to an end.
But Jesus' nation never would.
And that day, on his knees, out in the field, he lifted up his eyes to the King of kings.
And had a divine exchange of citizenship.
And when you come to understand who God is And that the only hope for eternal life is through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That is the only way that you, through his death, can overcome the condemnation of your sin.
You, through his burial and resurrection, can overcome the finality of the grave.
When you rest your hope in what Jesus Christ has accomplished for you and God's promise To destroy what sin has done and restore us to him.
That's when You will have that divine exchange of citizenship.
That's the kingdom that Nebuchadnezzar accepted.
That's the kingdom that I have accepted.
I pray that's the kingdom that you have accepted.
And if you have not, I pray you will.
It all starts by looking up.
And from there looking to the cross and seeing your King and accepting him who died for you.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
God, as I open up your Bible and I look at your truth, I see your message to a hurting world.
I see your message, Father God, to a world that is falling apart.
I see your message, Lord, to people who thought they were strong but are actually weak.
I see your message, Lord, from the highest people on earth, all the way down the lowest people in the field, Lord.
You have a message for all families and all nations and all people of all statuses because we're all stuck on the same sinking ship.
With a hole knocked in the side by sin.
And God, I pray that if there's anyone here that does not have their hope in Jesus Christ, That they'll get off that ship soon and place their faith where you put their sin on Jesus.
In his precious name we pray.
Amen.
