Thus begins the children’s classic, Winnie-the-Pooh, which tells the story of a little bear whose world revolves around one thing, honey. Actually Pooh Bear’s world revolves not around honey, but around him eating honey. Winnie-the-Pooh’s humorous self-centered logic, that bees exist to make honey for him, well illustrates the convoluted thinking we often engage in with less cute and cuddly results. For Pooh a limited life perspective is charming; for us the results are disastrous. A world view that revolves around oneself and one’s own needs is far too often true of all of us in our self-serving age, like the bachelor farmer who wanted a wife. So he put an ad in a newspaper that read: "Man 35, wants woman about 25, with tractor. Send picture of tractor." It is less apparent, but equally dangerous in each of us who, when we are crowned with success and have built or are constructing an impressive life, that we imagine that our life exists for us. Who we are and what we do is designed but for one reason: my own happiness and consumption. The buzzing in our lives brings us to the conclusion that the honey of success is there to satiate our appetite. We may put a religious spin on it, not wanting to completely forget God, so we imagine that our success and prosperity are rewards from God for our hard work. With a religious twist we say the same thing: "I’m not rewarding myself with this good life, rather God is rewarding me for being so wonderful." And so we delude ourselves, being lulled into a worship of ourselves. The Anglican Bishop, William Temple once said that sin’s essence is when “I make myself, in a host of ways, the center of the universe.” Therefore it is important to ask and evaluate the fundamental question: What is the driving force in my life? What ambition dominates and directs my life? There are only two options as we answer that question: my glory or God’s glory is my goal. Today is Reformation Sunday, a time when we consider the radical impact upon our culture and our lives of the truths of the gospel. Almost 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Church 95 issues to challenge the church of his day. That portly monk, the academic Augustinian, was used of God to set off a firestorm that to this day dominates the church. What was begun on October 31, 1517, ushered in what the reformers of the church called the five solas: Sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus and soli Deo Gloria. It is this fifth and overarching foundational tenet of the Reformation that I would like to look at this morning, that God and God alone is the One who is to receive all glory. It is He who is the touchstone of all our lives; it is God who should the center of our world view. In order to answer the basic questions as to what should be the driving force in my life, we are going to look at the life of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar well illustrates the problem we all face, that of the desire to maintain a self-centered life. Our passage this morning from Daniel 4 not only illustrates the problem, but offers the solution. In the book of Daniel we meet Nebuchadnezzar on several occasions. Nebuchadnezzar is responsible for the kidnapping of a young Jewish boy named Daniel. Daniel is brought into the King's court as part of a plan to gather the best and brightest from the known world. Nebuchadnezzar is kind, but ruthless. He offers a wonderful new life to Daniel and his friends, but in return demands complete obedience and absolute worship. Through a series of encounters, Nebuchadnezzar begins to learn that he is not in control as much as he imagines. At the climax of this confrontation, Nebuchadnezzar is disturbed by a dream in which a large tree which provides shelter for all the forest creatures is cut down, leaving only a stump. That tree is Nebuchadnezzar.
29. Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, 30. he said, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" 31. The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, "This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. 32. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." 33. Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird. 34. At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. 35. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?" 36. At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before. 37. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble. Daniel 4:28-37 A GOD CENTERED LIFE DENOUNCES PRIDE God humbles a proud Nebuchadnezzar. His exclamation of his accomplishments in verse 30 are strong words, but can he back them up? Is he just bragging that he built Babylon? Babylon was one of the largest and finest cities of the world. It was surrounded by a system of double walls, the outer one of which was 17 miles long and wide enough for chariots to pass on its top. Of the city's eight gates, the most celebrated was the Ishtar Gate, now in Munich. It gave access from the north to the sacred processional way, leading to the grand temple of Marduk and the imposing ziggurat. More than fifty temples crowded within the city walls at the time. In recent years the bricks excavated from the site bear the stamp: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, supporter of Esagila and Ezida, exalted first-born son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon." Nebuchadnezzar had a reason to boast. He created one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, made especially for one of his wives who was home sick, longing for the lush gardens of her mountainous Persian home. The problem of Nebuchadnezzar was not the veracity of the proclamation, but the plumb line he used for evaluating who he was. He appraised his worth by the measuring rod of himself. Whenever we judge ourselves by ourselves we will delude ourselves. What I find so amazing is that if God judges a Nebuchadnezzar with such ferocity when he was indeed a great and powerful man, how does God look on us, when we have the same thoughts about our puny empires, when we survey our lives and with a contented pat on our own shoulders, we say to ourselves: “Look at me, I am pretty good,” but in so doing, fully ignore the God who made us who and what we are? The execution of God’s judgment: “While the words are still in the king's mouth,” immediately, suddenly and completely, God acts against Nebuchadnezzar. This does not come without warning. The dream that preceded this event was a year earlier. Then Daniel warned the King (verse 27). Fair warning was given, but not heeded. Perhaps for the year, he remembered. Maybe for a whole year he tried so hard to remember God is supreme. But Nebuchadnezzar’s heart remained self-centered, rather than God centered. The judgment is pronounced (verses 31-32), his royal authority removed, he was cast away from his people, and lived like a beast. What happened we are not completely sure. His condition seems similar to what the medical profession calls lycanthropy. Lycos in Greek means wolf, anthropy - man. It is a rare condition in which the person takes on the character of a wild animal. His grandkids would’ve said: “Granddad, what big eyes you have!” Whatever technically happened, what we see here is a man whose lifestyle now imitates his heart condition. He measured himself without reference to God and so he lives like the animal he professes to be. What is the problem of pride? Nebuchadnezzar’s thoughts ascend no higher than himself. His object of worship is what he has attained. He is at heart an idolater and the idol he worships is himself. God has no place in his construct. God is not a part of Nebuchadnezzar’s formula. Whenever God is not the focal point of our lives, something must fill that void. When we refuse to worship God, we do not cease to worship. Rather than worshipping nothing, we’ll worship anything and everything. Most often the object of our worship will closely resemble us. Such a self-centered life will always be empty. In Ecclesiastes, the writer views life without reference to God. His perspective is a life absent of God. He calls it vanity, meaningless. It is life a feather on the wind, without any substance. It is completely frustrating. Bertrand Russell, the noted agnostic, wrote in A Free Man's Worship: "All the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system...the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation be safely built." From a similar perspective, Will Durant, the famous historian, said, "Life has become, in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pollution of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it but defeat and death." Fortunately, that hollowness is not the answer this passage gives. Rather than refusing to see beyond ourselves, God calls us to measure ourselves as created in His image. Purpose and meaning are derived, not from what we can do and make, but from the God who has made us. A GOD CENTERED LIFE DEMANDS REPENTANCE (Verses34-37) Such a response is necessary. But Nebuchadnezzar's response was not out of the blue; he had been told before. Daniel explains the dream and offers a solution (verse 27), a visible response of the inward change. Nebuchadnezzar has for years professed a deep admiration of the God of Daniel; he had the knowledge, the understanding, but such facts made little difference in his life. Now he was called to act, to respond, thus demonstrating the faith that God was working in him: repentance. By doing what is right, by being kind to the oppressed is not the means to repentance, it is the evidence of it. Such a response is simple (verse 34), a simple lifting of the eyes, recognizing who God is and who we are. Only then could Nebuchadnezzar respond properly to God, to praise God for who He is. Repentance is called a saving grace, a God given response to both one's own sin as well as the mercy of God found in Jesus Christ. It is turning away from sin and toward God, with the full purpose of new obedience by the power of God. It is not just remorse, it is a change in the fundamental nature of a person, a change brought about by God. It is the acknowledgment of one's own sin, one's inability to change by one's own self. It is the realization that God in the person of Jesus Christ took on that sin, took on the punishment in our place, suffered the penalty of Hell. It is the continuing trust and faith in God that your sins are forgiven and that you, moment by moment, live in light of this change. When the eyes are raised, the sanity is restored, then and only then can Nebuchadnezzar respond to God There is a change from pride to praise as he honors and glorifies God (verse 34). He sees now that ultimately all power and therefore all things come from God. Sanity demands a realistic self-appraisal. We are only the tallest when we are down on our knees in response to God. It is only then that his kingdom is restored. Nebuchadnezzar can only be king when he acknowledges that he is not. It is only then that as his sanity is restored, that his previous honor and splendor are returned to Him. During construction of Emerson Hall at Harvard University, president Charles Eliot invited psychologist and philosopher William James to suggest a suitable inscription for the stone lintel over the doors of the new home of the philosophy department. After some reflection, James sent Eliot a line from the Greek philosopher Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." James never heard back from Eliot, so his curiosity was piqued when he spotted artisans working on a scaffold hidden by a canvas. One morning, the scaffold and canvas were gone. The inscription? "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" Eliot had replaced James's suggestion with words from the Psalmist. Between these two lines lies the great distance between the God-centered and the human-centered points of view, between pride and repentance. A GOD CENTERED LIFE DELIVERS HOPE (Verses 27,32,34,37) Where is there hope here? "All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, "What have You done?'" Is this cold and heartless? Are we only puppets? Only when the verse is wrenched from its context. Go back to verse 27:"Therefore, O king, may my advice be pleasing to you: break away now from your sins by doing righteousness and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity." Nebuchadnezzar was called to repent: this left the door open. This is a response to sin that God accepts. The first step is to agree with Him that we are indeed sinful, that we are alienated from Him and therefore from all reality. God's judgment was limited (verse 32): “You will... until you acknowledge the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." God enabled Nebuchadnezzar's response (verse 34). The lifting of the eyes is not something Nebuchadnezzar could have done on his own. While in the beast-like state, crawling through the wilderness of his lost kingdom, all he sees is the ground. But God was gracious in allowing him to raise his eyes and then regain what he had lost. But as God enables, Nebuchadnezzar does respond. In that response God grants His grace. Correction was given (verse 37). Nebuchadnezzar now knows that what God does is not capricious, not vindictive or mean. Rather it is right and His ways are just. It may be hard to believe that someone as proud as Nebuchadnezzar could respond to God like this after the humiliating seven years lost while insane. But it was that very club which God used to bring him to his senses. The humiliation brought the benefit of now being able to praise God. So when we read verse 35, we need to see what surrounds it. God’s work in His world in this passage does not remove human action, it does not reduce people to robots; rather there is here freedom to work diligently all the while acknowledging God’s rightful reign and rule. Rather than a loss of freedom, true freedom is found in understanding our rightful place in His creation. Though you are one of the teeming millions in this world, and though the world would have you believe that you do not count and that you are but a speck in the mass, God says, "I know you." On what basis do we find hope in this? Because God is in control. We need to always be reminded that those brains we possess are His gifts, those business opportunities are from His providence, those good looks, that athletic body, that talent, those children...all this is His sovereign gift. We are not self-made people as we tend to imagine. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. In an age when everything encourages self-promotion, self-assertion, self-reliance, when the advertisements push the narcissistic image of the successful person into our subconscious, so that we strive to achieve all those things, items of status, with the result that the only thing we are short of is humility, learn the lesson of Nebuchadnezzar, the lesson that a God-centered life is what places all else in perspective. A God-centered, rather than self-centered life tells us not only that God knows us, but that He loves us as well. That love is made clear in the giving of His one and only Son to die for us. It is beyond our comprehension that a God, who controls all of life, would so orchestrate all creation and history so that He would sacrifice His Son. A God-centered life confronts us with the focal point of all creation, the Cross. It is there that God’s sovereign plan takes the greatest shape. God’s power is not demonstrated in His manipulation of our lives, but in the sacrificial death of Christ in our place. The Cross is what God’s sovereignty is all about. Christ’s suffering on the Cross is the crux of all of life. A God-centered life is a life which interprets all that we are and all that we have in light of our Father who loved us enough to make us His sons and daughters. It is for that reason we can and must live a God-centered life. |
