? Man of sorrows, what a name ?
For the Son of God who came ? Ruined sinners to reclaim ? Hallelujah,
what a Savior Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned
he stood, Sealed my pardon with his blood, Hallelujah, what a
Savior! Guilty, vile, and helpless we,
spotless Lamb of God was He. Full atonement can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior! Lifted up was he to die, It is
finished was his cry, Now in heaven exalted high, Alleluia,
what a Savior! When He comes, our glorious King,
All His ransomed home to bring, Anew this song we'll sing, Alleluia! What a Savior! Please be seated. And the four and twenty elders
and the four beasts fell down and worshiped God that sat on
the throne saying, Hallelujah, Amen, Hallelujah. That's our testimony, isn't it?
Let's ask the Lord's blessings on our time together. Our merciful
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would Send your
spirit in power. Enlighten the eyes of our understanding.
Lord, increase our faith. We pray for your saving grace.
Lord, those that remain strangers to you, Lord, we pray that you
would call them out of darkness into thy marvelous light. We
pray, Lord, that you would open the windows of heaven, shine
the light of thy grace, thy love, and thy glory in Christ in our
hearts. Draw us Lord unto thyself. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Well, good morning. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Daniel chapter four, please. Daniel, Daniel chapter four. Paul in admonishing Timothy in
first Timothy chapter six, says to Timothy, you gave a good confession
before many witnesses. And then he goes on to say, because
you have followed him, which witnessed a good confession before
Pontius Pilate, the Lord Jesus Christ. How every believer desires
to have a good confession, a confession that's true. a confession that
will save him, a confession that will sustain him through this
world and into the world to come. What is the believer's confession? That's the question I want to
try to answer this morning and we're going to be in Daniel chapter
4 both hours and so the point of this passage is that Nebuchadnezzar's
confession is every believer's confession. What Nebuchadnezzar
confessed is what every child of God confesses. And normally
when we think about the penman of scripture we think of men
like Moses and David and the prophets, we think of the apostles,
we think of the Apostle Paul, and these were men, holy men
of God, that wrote as they were moved by the Spirit of God. They
did not write by private interpretation. How many of us have ever thought
of Nebuchadnezzar being a penman of Scripture? He was. He was. All of Daniel chapter
4 is written in the first person. It is Nebuchadnezzar's confession.
And here's the first point of my message. Every believer's confession is
that no one is beyond God's saving grace. No one is beyond God's
saving grace. Nebuchadnezzar, the man who just
in the previous chapter had built an idol and forced all of his
subjects to bow to that idol and those who refused to bow,
the people of God, he threw into a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar,
the king of Babylon? The one type of the enemy of
God in all of the scriptures, Babylon? And yet God reaches
through all of that and saves Nebuchadnezzar. And what a confession
he gives. No one is beyond the reach of
God's grace. rich, poor, male, female, Jew,
Gentile, bond, free, regardless of what a person has done, regardless
of what a person has not done, God's grace is sufficient to
save to the uttermost. No one has ever sinned to the
uttermost. No one has ever put themselves
beyond the grace of God. Where sin abounds, grace does
much more abound. And the amazing thing of this
is that not that God would save Nebuchadnezzar, but that God
would save me. You see, every believer's confession,
every believer's confession is that confession that we sing
when we say I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene
and wonder how he could save me a sinner condemned unclean
how marvelous how wonderful and my song shall ever be how marvelous
how wonderful is my Savior's Love for me? For me? Is that your confession? Do you
stand amazed that God would reach down into Babylon and save you? Are you more amazed that God
would save you than you are that God would save a man like Nebuchadnezzar? That's a miracle of grace, isn't
it? No one is beyond the reach of God's saving grace, not even
you, not even me. How marvelous. Pass me not, O
gentle Savior. Sinful though my heart may be,
even me, Lord, even me. Some drops fall on me. Isn't that what we sing? Yes, whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. Nebuchadnezzar. Every child of God's confession
is this, if I were God, I would have given up on me a long time
ago. Is that your confession? Now
the unbeliever doesn't think like that. The unbeliever thinks
that God's obligated to save them. The unbeliever thinks that
he's got some merit for salvation. The unbeliever compares himself
to other men and believes that he's better, compares himself
to himself and believes that he's getting better. But the
child of God's confession, Lord, you would save someone like me? His love faileth not. His mercy
endureth forever. His grace is sufficient, is sufficient
to save someone as unfaithful as me and you. You have your Bibles open in
Daniel chapter 4. Nebuchadnezzar, the king unto
all people, nations and language that dwell in all the earth.
Peace be multiplied unto you. I thought it good to show the
signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought towards me. How great are his signs and how
mighty are his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom and his dominion is from generation to generation. Every believer's confession is
that Nebuchadnezzar said, I fought it good to show to you the signs
and wonders that the Lord showed towards me. Is that not every
believer's confession? I know we fail in taking advantage
of the opportunities that God gives us to be the witness we
ought to be. But our heart's desire is for
other men to know Christ, isn't it? That's our confession. We look at men, we understand. We can relate to their plight.
We know, we can remember when we were dead in our trespasses
and sins. We can remember when we were
without God and at enmity with God. And our heart's desire. like Nebuchadnezzar's confession
here. Oh, I thought it would, I thought
it good. I remember what it was like to
be without hope. I remember what it was like to
be hell bound. I remember what it was like to
be blind. And I know the joy of being forgiven. I know the joy of having the
hope of eternal life. I know the joy of having the
light of the gospel shine in my heart in the face of the Lord
Jesus Christ and my confession is that you would have the same
thing. That's my greatest desire for all men is that they would
know God. Wasn't that the woman at the
wells confession? After the Lord made himself known unto her,
I that speaketh unto you am he. And what did she do? She ran down into Sychar and
she said, Come, meet a man who told me everything I ever did.
Is not this the Christ? Oh, yes, he is. And they came,
didn't they? They came because of her testimony.
Come and see. Now what Philip said to Nathanael,
Philip went to his brother Nathanael, he said, we have found him whom
the prophet spoke of, Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael said,
can anything good come out of Nazareth? And what Philip said,
you know, come and see, just come and see. And when the Lord
saw Nathanael, he said, oh, an Israelite indeed in whom there
is no guile. And Nathanael said, how do you
know me? When Philip found you under the fig tree, I saw you. I saw you. God had obviously
set Nathanael's heart to prayer. And the very one that Nathanael
was speaking to in prayer under that fig tree was now the one
that he's speaking to face to face. Oh, Nathanael said, thou
art the son of God. David in Psalm 51 said restore
unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me by thy free spirit
then I will teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be
converted unto thee. Now it's very natural for an emotionally healthy person
to be compassionate towards those who are hurting. You don't have
to be a believer to feel empathy for someone who is in need. Everybody has that experience
unless they're just so narcissistic, I guess, that they
have no empathy towards other men. But when we see, when believers
see unbelievers, though we may have compassion for a physical,
temporal need that they have, our real concern for them is
for their soul. It's for their soul. What's the
first thought that comes in? This is our confession that we
want other men to know God. We want them to know Christ.
We want them to be saved. We want them to have what we
have. And when we hear of someone who leaves this world without
Christ, what is the dark cloud that covers our hearts? Especially if it's a loved one. The truth is, if a person leaves
this world without Christ, it would have been better had they
never been born. And that's every believer's confession.
Every believer knows, they understand what's at stake because they've
experienced that. by the grace of God. This is
Nebuchadnezzar's confession. No one's beyond the reach of
God's grace and like Nebuchadnezzar, we want others to have what we
have. He said, I thought it good to
write down the things that the Lord has done for me. Now look
at verse 4. I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest
in my house and flourishing in my palace. Every believer's confession is,
I wasn't looking for God. I had believed the testimony
of my perverted conscience, and I had believed the testimony
of those false prophets that said, peace, peace, when there
was no peace. I was content. I wasn't looking
for anything different. Certainly wasn't looking for
God. No man seeketh after God at any time. My testimony, my
confession is that like Mephibosheth, God had to fetch me. I was living
in Lodabar. I was not feasting on the bread
of life. I was separated from God and
the king had to send a servant with a message, come, come. Saul of Tarsus said my conversion
was a pattern for all men's conversion. What was Saul's conversion experience? He wasn't looking for God, was
he? He thought he was serving God. He thought he was serving
God. Blaspheming, injuring the church. He thought he was doing God's
service. What was he doing? He was going, and the Lord arrested
him, didn't he? Just stopped him in his tracks.
That Nebuchadnezzar's confession, I was at rest in my house. I thought all was well. When they say peace and safety,
then sudden destruction shall come, and as a woman in travail,
they shall find no escape. I believed the message of peace
and safety. I looked at my life, and I thought,
I'm okay. Everything's fine. The Philippian jailer had to
have the foundation of his life shaken, didn't he? He wasn't
looking for God. He had just arrested and beaten
and put in chains the preachers of the gospel and the Lord had
to come and shake the foundation of that jail, didn't he, and
unlock those doors in order to unlock the heart of that Philippian
jailer. That's every believer's confession.
God had to come to where I was and arrest me. I could not get
to where he was. I could not get to where he was. The truth is that no man knows
he's lost until he's saved. I'll say it again, no man knows
he's lost until he's saved. He thinks he's fine. Only the
new man can identify the old man. The old man thinks he's fine
until the new man comes on the scene and then he exposes him
for what he is, doesn't he? And the new man says, oh wretched
man that I am. who shall deliver me from the
body of this death. I didn't know I was dead until
I made life. I was at rest in my house and
I flourished in my palace. I was doing fine until God stopped me in my tracks.
Is this your confession? Or is your confession like the
testimony that I hear of religious people say, I was searching for
God with all my heart and I was just... I'm not saying you weren't
searching for something, I'm saying you weren't searching
for God. Maybe you were searching for some peace and for some prosperity
or for something but no man seeketh after God. God has to make us.
He has to cause us to seek Him. He does that by first seeking
us. You hear religious people tell their testimony all the
time, don't you? I wasn't Nebuchadnezzar's confession and that's not any
believer's confession. I was at rest in my house and
I was flourishing. I was just doing fine until God
showed me what I was. Verse 5, I saw a dream which
made me afraid and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions in
my head troubled me Oh, when the Lord shows you your sin for
the first time in your life, you understand something about
the fear of God, don't you? I was afraid, oh, if God doesn't
save me, if he doesn't take his, if he doesn't, if he doesn't
provide everything necessary for my salvation, if he doesn't
do the work of redemption, if he doesn't atone for my sins
himself, I can't do it. I can't do it. of standing, here's
every believer's confession, the thought of standing in the
presence of a holy God without an advocate grips my heart with
fear. I know that there is a holy God
with whom I must do and I'm not capable of doing with Him. I
need an advocate. I need a Savior. I need a sin
bearer. I need a substitute to stand
in my stead and represent me before God. That's my testimony.
That's my confession. Verse 6, therefore made I a decree
to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me and that
they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream.
Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, the
soothsayers, and I told the dream before them, but they did not
make known unto me the interpretation thereof. The gospel is a mystery. Now
by mystery, the scripture speaks of the gospel being a mystery
time and time again and by mystery it doesn't mean that it's strange
or mysterious, it means that it's hidden. Hidden. Proverbs chapter 25 verse 2 says
that it is the glory of a king to conceal a thing. It is God's
glory to keep his gospel and his Christ hidden from the natural
man. Truth can only come by divine
revelation. God has to do it. Nicodemus,
you cannot see the kingdom of God unless you're born again.
You've got to be born in the spirit. The natural man cannot
receive the things of the spirit. They're spiritually discerned.
And that's Nebuchadnezzar's testimony. I went to all the soothsayers,
all the Chaldeans, all the magicians, all the false prophets, and they
could not tell me the interpretation of the dream. They couldn't give
me any answers. How many times do we read of
the Lord taking someone aside by them, or someone out of the
crowd, He'll pull them aside and deal with them one on one,
won't He? And that's the way God deals with His children.
He takes you aside. Some trust in horses and some
trust in chariots, but God's people trust in Him. They don't
look to the right hand or to the left hand. They are brought
As the Lord took that, remember the man who saw in Mark chapter
8, the man who saw other men like trees? And then the scripture
says, and the Lord took his face, put his hands on his eyes. I
mean, you could just see the Lord taking this man and then
caused him to look up. And when he looked into the face
of the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, then he saw everything
clearly, clearly. The Lord's got to do that for
us, doesn't he? He has to take us aside. He has to turn our
heads towards him. He has to cause us to not look
anywhere else for the hope of our salvation, to look to the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. He exposes those false prophets
for what they are, doesn't he? Nebuchadnezzar's confession is
that those guys had no answers for me. Jude calls them clouds
without water. He calls them trees with withered
fruit. He calls them raging waves of
the sea. Wandering stars reserved for
blackness and darkness forever. That's what he calls all the
false prophets. All those who would cause you
to, who would have you look anywhere else other than the Lord Jesus
Christ for the hope of your salvation. A wandering star. You know what
a wandering star is, don't you? To the ancients, they couldn't
tell the difference between planets and stars. They saw this The
stars were always in the same position in relationship to one
another, and you could navigate by the stars, but in the same
sky were these wandering stars. They weren't stars at all. They
were planets. They look like stars, but they weren't stars.
And the Lord calls false prophets wandering stars. They're in the
sky. They look just like a star, but
they're never in the same position. You cannot navigate your life
by them and you will not find the north star by them. All the stars of the sky revolve
around the north star, don't they? And they all point to the
north star, not the wandering stars. We listen to wandering stars until that friend who sticketh
closer than a brother The One who was born for adversity made
Himself known unto us and caused us to look to Him. This is every believer's confession.
This was Nebuchadnezzar's confession. Look at verse 8. But at the last, at the last,
when I had no place else to go. You know coming to Christ is
a last resort. It is. It's when you've got nothing
else. You've got no place else to go.
You've tried everything else. You listened to the soothsayers.
You rested in the peace of your house. You had everything going
well until all of a sudden you've got no place else to go at last. I turned to Daniel. Now Daniel's
name, you know Daniel in this book, is a picture of Christ.
And those other Hebrew children, a picture of the church. And
Daniel's name means God is my judge. That's what Daniel's name
means. Now God judged the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he judged him innocent. He judged him satisfied. He said, there's my beloved son. In him I'm well pleased. I'm
satisfied with the sacrifice that he made for the putting
away of the sins of his people. I see that in him is no sin. I see that the sacrifice that
he made of himself is sufficient to bear the guilt of the sins
of his people because he had no guilt of his own. He took
their sins and made them His, didn't He? Daniel, God is my
judge. You want God to be your judge?
Only if you're in Christ. If you're in Christ, you have
nothing to fear from the judgment of God. If you're looking to
the same place He's looking and you're trusting the same one
He's trusting, we have no fear of the judgment of God. The fire's
been quenched. The sword's been wet with the
blood of Christ. God's wrath has been made propitious. There's no more judgment. All
condemnation is put away. Otherwise, we, a man who would
stand in the presence of God like that publican, like that
Pharisee and say, God, I thank Thee that I'm not as other men.
Look at me. Go ahead and judge me. You'll find me better than most
folks. If anybody deserves to go to heaven, I do. Oh, that's
not the child of God's confession, is it? But at last, at last, I had no
place else to go. I had to go to Daniel. Daniel came in before me, whose
name was Belshazzar, verse 8, according to the name of my God,
and in whom... You see how this whole chapter
is written in the first person. This is Nebuchadnezzar's words.
He's the penman here. And in whom is the spirit of
the holy gods. And before him, I told the dream. Nebuchadnezzar is going to come
to a full understanding by the end of this chapter, that there
are no gods. There's but one God. But he did
recognize something about Daniel. And that was that the spirit
of God was upon him. Now that's every believer's confession.
Every believer's confession is the Spirit of God is upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Christ means. That's
what Messiah means. God has anointed me. He has placed His Spirit upon
me. The Lord Jesus Christ came in
the full power of the Spirit of God to accomplish the purpose
for which God sent Him. He's the Messiah. He's the Christ. Even that half Jew, that woman
at the well, knew that when Messiah comes, he'll lead us into all
truth. No Jew to this day has ever imagined
a Christ, a Messiah, an anointed one sent from God that wasn't
going to save all of Israel. That's what Messiah means. They
know that. That's a Gentile heresy. That comes right out of Greek
mythology. You know, the gods fighting with
the man and seeing who's going to get preeminence. What I'm
saying to you is that the picture of Christ, they call him Christ,
they said you'll honor me with your lips but your hearts are
far from me. What men say about Jesus Christ today is nothing
more than what the Greeks said about their mythological gods. He's fighting. He's wanting to
save. He's not able to get to him.
He's not able to get it done. Today's Christianity is nothing
more than Greek mythology. That's what it is. Nebuchadnezzar saw that Daniel
had the Spirit of God. If anybody can interpret my dream,
Daniel can do it. Is that your confession? The
Lord Jesus Christ, He is the Christ. When Messiah comes, He'll
lead us into all truth. He cannot fail. He cannot fail. That's what Isaiah said about
Him, didn't he? The Jesus we hear about today
is a miserable failure. What say ye about Christ? Is he trying to save? He wants
to save? He's doing his best to save?
Is that your confession? No. No, it's not, is it? This is every believer's confession. Same as Nebuchadnezzar. And we're gonna continue the
same message. That's part one. We're gonna
finish this chapter. And the second part of it is
the same title, Every Believer's Confession. Can you identify
with what Nebuchadnezzar says about himself and about Christ? Because God's given it to us
in his word that we might be able to say, amen. That's what
I believe. All right, let's take a break.