We're gonna be in the book of
Daniel both hours this morning, if you'd like to be turning to
Daniel chapter one. Daniel begins with Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
the king of the Chaldeans has taken the children of Israel
into captivity. He has destroyed Jerusalem, it's
in ruins. And this is what we heard the
same account given Ezekiel by Jeremiah the prophet. We see
that when Nehemiah and Ezra came back, Nehemiah built the wall
that was destroyed because of Nebuchadnezzar. And then Ezra
rebuilt the temple because all the things in the temple were
taken to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple as well.
So this is where it opens up at, the Jews' captivity. And
we see that it's all part of the Lord's purpose and all part
of the Lord's design And we just see at the beginning of all the
books of the Bible, every chapter, every time you begin a verse,
you might as well just say, and it came to pass according to
the Lord's purpose over and over again. That's where we're at.
Now this hour, I hope that we're able to see Nebuchadnezzar as
us. And I hope by the time this hour
is over, we're crying out for mercy and grace, the same mercy
and grace that was shown to Nebuchadnezzar. I've titled this message, Abased
by Grace, Abased by Grace. Abased means humbled, humbled
by grace. Chapter one establishes Daniel,
the man Daniel, who wrote this book and Hananiah and Mishael
and Azariah. Now, most people don't know who
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah is, but they know who Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego is. It's exactly the same three men.
That was their Jewish name, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Whenever
they got to the captivity, the king said, okay, we're going
to do away with your Jewish names, and we're going to give you Chaldean
names, Babylonian names. Daniel's name was Belteshazzar,
and then the other three was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
God gave them favor with this king. The king was a wise enough
king by the purpose of the Lord to have all these new citizens
in his country, and he knew that they had something to offer.
He had to teach them Chaldean, and in turn, they would teach
him some of the things that they do, some of their customs. Maybe
they were farmers, he learned how to farm different things,
or maybe it's agriculture, music. You think about different cultures,
every culture has their own niches, things that they do that's unique
to them. And so the Lord gave him the
desire to want to learn from these Hebrews. As he sets up
the provinces and he's putting people over these provinces,
there's four Hebrews that stand out above the rest. And it's
Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The Lord gives him
Daniel, favor with the king and these three men as well. Now
at the end of chapter one, the beginning of chapter two, they
had already obtained favor from the king. And in chapter two,
the Lord sends Nebuchadnezzar a bad dream, a very bad dream. And he's troubled by the dream
exceedingly, the scripture tells us. He calls upon the magicians. He calls upon the soothsayers.
He calls upon the astrologers. He calls upon everyone to tell
him the bad dreams meaning. But there's one problem. He can't
remember the dream. Can you imagine somebody, even
if you were able to interpret a dream, somebody saying, I can't
remember the dream though. You got to tell me the dream
first. I mean, all these men look at him and say, it's not,
their words are, there is not a man upon the earth that can
show the king's matter. There's not a man upon the earth
that can do this. Now, Nebuchadnezzar had a bit of a temper. The scripture
is very clear in his behavior and his actions. And he says,
well, if you can't tell me what I need off with your head, I'm
going to kill every one of my soothsayers, my magicians, my
astrologers, you're useless. You can't, I mean, obviously
he has a temper. And so he does just that. He begins to go and
kill all of these and Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,
they fall into that category as some of the king's men. I
can see Nebuchadnezzar jumping up and down saying, I'm the king,
I'm the king. And normally if a man does that,
he's not a good king. Matter of fact, I've never seen
a king do that, that was a good king. Rulers that do that are
dictators, aren't they? Now, this man had all the power
in the world, I would remind us. At this time, this was the
most powerful entity in the world. Soon hereafter, and we're going
to see the next hour, in chapter 5, the kingdom was given over
to the Persians. The Persians come in and invade.
But as of right now, they are the supreme entity in the known
world. He had conquered everything.
He had done more than any of his fathers had done. But what's
not realized by him now that will be later on is it was all
by the hand of God, by great designs of the Lord for the punishment
of Israel, for the Israelites to be turned back to God. So
Nebuchadnezzar was an instrument. An instrument is all he was. Nebuchadnezzar did desire the
truth. He desired to know what was going on with his dream.
He was desirous to know what it meant. He knew that it meant
something because it was such a powerful dream. So he had a
desire for head knowledge. And we see that in society. That's
why there's so many different religions. I think I looked up
and it was something like 40,000 different religions in the world.
I don't even know how that's possible, but you can believe
everything on Google, right? And that's where I got the information
from. 40,000, that's a lot of religions. And so Nebuchadnezzar
had a desire to know this dream, just as he had a desire to know
who Jehovah was when the Israel came over. Who's your God? Tell
me about Jehovah. He was interested in learning
these things, not to be converted to what they believed in, but
to have a head knowledge of it. And this by nature is what men
want to do. They want to gain knowledge.
And the scripture says, ever learning, but never able to come
to the knowledge of the truth. So they come to kill Daniel and
Daniel pleads before the king. He says, give me time and I'll
answer the dream. And the king says, okay, I'll
give you time. And he begs before the God of glory. Daniel believed
God. Daniel's a dear brother. Daniel
was given faith to believe God. And the Lord gave Daniel the
revelation of this dream. And you can read yourself for
the sake of time. We're not going to look at it, but. You can read
in chapter two where Daniel literally prays unto the Lord and it's
Thanksgiving that he's giving unto the Lord for giving him
this dream. So he honored the Lord. And so he goes to the king and
he begins to, he's going to tell the king an answer. Look in chapter
two, verse 26, the king asked him a question. Chapter two,
verse 26. The king answered and said to
Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, art thou able to make known unto
me the dream which I have seen and the interpretation thereof.
Daniel answered in the presence of the king and said, the secret
which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers,
the magicians, the soothsayers show unto the king. But there
is a God in heaven that reveals secrets and maketh known to the
king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days, thy dream
and the visions of thy head upon thy bed are these." Now I'm going
to try to get all the way through chapter four. So I'm not going
to go into the dream that was given, but it was basically how
the Lord was showing him that he's one kingdom and his kingdom
is going to fall to another and to another, to another. And the
four of them, if I can remember correctly, that the Chaldeans
and the Persians, then the Greeks and then the Romans. And that's
how the Lord did. Then we see the Romans were in
power when Christ came. They were the most, the greatest,
nation, if you want to put it that way, that's ever been as
far as the size and the vastness of it. But they fell as well,
didn't they? And so that's the dream that he gives to him. Now,
Nebuchadnezzar loves this answer. And look in verse 46, if you
would. And this is exactly what the king does as a respond to
this dream that was given. Then the king Nebuchadnezzar
fell upon his face and worshiped Daniel and commanded they should
offer an oblation sweet odors unto him." Now, men in religion,
women in religion, when I say men or I say brethren, I'm not
being sexist in any way. It's what Paul addressed, men
and brethren. It's the same, both female and
male. But here we have what men and
women do the same as Nebuchadnezzar did. Men are looking for a wow
factor. They're looking for something
that wows their mind. We go to amusement parks for
excitement. We see people on stage performing
because it's a wow factor. And men have taken religion,
they've taken what God has said in his word and they've made
it into more of a wow factor. You'll have different men that'll
have spotlights upon them when they're preaching. They become
very theatrical and it's to motivate people and to move people. And
during the week as it goes on, it's like men examine their self
and they see maybe that their life is good and they go and
they get affirmation of that goodness. But that is not what
the Lord's people do. We don't come for a wow factor
for the flesh, do we? We come for the inward parts,
to see Christ. And it is certainly wow whenever
we see him, but it's not entertaining to the flesh. It's not appealing
to the flesh because no amount of wow factor can derive something
spiritually. Nothing that's a wow factor can
bring a spiritual change. It takes the Lord doing the work
in the heart, doesn't it? The evidence that nothing spiritual
happened to Nebuchadnezzar was, is he worshiped Daniel. He worshiped
Daniel. He didn't worship God. He didn't
worship Daniel's God. He worshiped Daniel. And men
do this in religion. They worship each other. They
worship themselves. It's an exaltation of the flesh.
That's what religion is. All false religion exalts man.
And only the Lord's people worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. If you don't have the Lord's
spirit, we can't worship him. And it is he that gives it, isn't
it? He does it by the preaching of his gospel. This week I was going to upload
the messages that we had, the message we preached Wednesday,
the service. And sometimes you pop on there
and there's a live feed that's happening. And I popped on there
and this guy was talking and he was mentioning the verse about
not yielding your members unto anything Christ. And he said,
and this is how you do this. What your eyes see should be
perfect. What your ears hear should be perfect. What your
feet do should be perfect. And I said, yeah, that's absolutely
true, but that's impossible. They that are in the flesh can't
please God. And he says, you need me, this was his words,
you need me to be more like Christ and I need you to be more like
Christ. Now that is true, but that's not possible, is it? We can't be more like Christ. We need a substitute, don't we?
We need one that is Christ. We need to be found in him, not
having our own righteousness, which is of the law, not in us
keeping the law or doing things pleasing unto the Lord, not worshiping
the flesh. We need Christ. We need Christ. We need to be found in him. I
mean, look for an outward sign. Men look for, men exalt themselves. Men believe that they're higher
than others in so many ways. I sit a little bit higher than
you do because I'm doing this right and I'm doing this right.
God is going to reward me because I'm not as bad as you are. That
is all religion everywhere, isn't it? That's what men believe is
going to get them into glory and it's not true. We must be
found in Christ. We are all base, aren't we? We're all grass. We are all just
false and full of sin, and we need a substitute. Men believe that church is something
like taking a self-examination and finding finding a lump of
some kind and going to the doctor, and the doctor says, well, you
have cancer, and here's what you have to do to fix it. Well,
this is how men treat religion. This is how men approach God.
They see, okay, I'll have a little bit of wrong in me, and this
is what I can do to fix it. We can't do anything. We're leprous.
We're cancerous, if you will, from the top of our head to the
bottom of our feet in God's eyes. We can't fix it. The evidence
that Nebuchadnezzar had nothing spiritual happen to him whenever
he heard this interpretation is that he worshiped Daniel. Now, further evidence of this
is in chapter three, but I want you to hear what Nebuchadnezzar
says in verse 47 of chapter two. First, the king answered him
to Daniel and said, of a truth it is that your God is a God
of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, seeing
thou couldest reveal this secret. Then the king made Daniel a great
man and gave him many gifts, many great gifts and made him
ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief of the governors
over the wise men of Babylon." Now, so you see, he has the right
lingo. He's the God of gods. He's the
God of kings. So he has the right lingo, but
he doesn't have the right heart. That's That is religion, isn't
it? Men talk about Jesus, but don't
know who Jesus Christ is. It's a revelation that he gives
to the preaching of the gospel. It's by repentance and it's through
faith. And at this point, Nebuchadnezzar
had been given neither. He had saw a wow factor, a sign
and a wonder, and he worshiped Daniel. And that's exactly what
men do in religion. Now in chapter three, we have
further evidence of this. Because look at the beginning
of chapter three in verse one. Nebuchadnezzar the king made
an image of gold whose height was three score cubits and the
breadth thereof six cubits. He set it up in the plain of
Dura in the province of Babylon. Now, he had just heard, he had
just heard the dream that he had and the interpretation of
it. And he says unto Daniel, he worships
Daniel. Then he says unto Daniel, your God is the God of gods.
In the very next chapter, he makes an image 60 feet tall,
60 feet tall and nine feet wide. That's a pretty big image, isn't
it? And what do you think the face of that image looked like?
It looked like Nebuchadnezzar, didn't it? It had to, it had
to. Why? Because it's evident that
he did not know who God was, so he has his own God still.
See, either you're your own God, or God is your God. And there's
the only two possibilities in all of humanity. Either God is
your God because he has become so by his own will and him doing
it, or we are still our own God, thinking that we're good enough,
thinking that we deserve worship, thinking that what we're producing
is not that bad. This is where Nebuchadnezzar
is. Nebuchadnezzar represents in this, in himself, it's all
free will works religion. The natural man's end, if we're
left to ourself, we're gonna erect a statue 60 feet tall and
say, look at me, look at what I am, look how amazing I am,
the slender that I am. That's what we do by nature,
not the Lord's people. The Lord's people have been abased
by grace. The Lord has humbled them. And
we're gonna see, that's what happens to Nebuchadnezzar, he
gets humbled. One of the probably, Physically, probably one of the
most physical, humbling, one of the most in all of scripture
was Nebuchadnezzar. We'll get to that in a moment.
This image is the same image that we contend with every day.
It's our flesh. It's our flesh that wants to
be seen. It's our flesh that wants to
be recognized. It's our flesh that wants to
be noticed for the splendor that we are. All men by nature, every
single man and woman without exception wants to be recognized.
They desire to be seen. They desire to be praised. That's
how it was from the beginning. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.
It was because Eve was told you're going to be like God if you eat
the fruit. You'll have worship. You'll have the power. You'll
have the popularity. You'll have all the pleasure. And she said,
I'll take it and eat it. That sounds good to me. Well, here
we are because of the Lord's grace and mercy. We now need
a substitute, don't we? Because we are the offspring
of that sin and we are nothing but sin. We need a substitute.
We need the Lord Jesus Christ who put away the sin of his people. All men and women, without exception,
just like Eve, will take the fruit every single time. Men
want to be seen. Women want to be seen better
than what they are, don't they? And I'm not going to just pick
on the ladies, but ladies wear makeup because they want to be
seen better than what they are, don't they? Guys will go and
lift weights and they want to be seen better than what they
are. We use camera filters, don't we? Everybody uses camera filters
these days. put the blush on and take this
off. I want to look better than this. I don't want people to
see that. I want them to see I look good.
And this is exactly what Nebuchadnezzar is doing by erecting a 60-foot
statue. He's saying, look at this guy.
Boy, he is something else. The conqueror of the world. He's
the man. Everybody bow down and worship
him. This is exactly what's happening here. We're told why. We're told why all of this that
I just spoke on is. Men love the praise of man more
than the praise of God. And then he tells us why. Men
love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.
Only the gospel can shine into the heart of a sinner and show
us that we're not 60 feet tall. We're not even six feet tall
in the Lord's eyes. We're nothing but worms. And
yet the Lord became a worm to save his people from their sin. Only the gospel gives all glory
to Christ. Now the gospel demands that we
take sides with God against ourself. Literally saying, Lord, you're
right and I'm wrong. You're good and I'm bad. You're
holy and I'm sin. You're truth and I'm a lie. The
only way that a man or a woman will do that is by the grace
of God. If the Lord abases us by his grace. The good news of
the gospel is he's going to abase every single one of his elect
children and show them that they are nothing but dust. And he
became dust to make us one with him and one with his father." Well, King says, everybody's
going to bow to this statue. When you hear the psalter, he
gives a list of the instruments. And I don't know what some of
them are. I tried to look up some of them, but I guess it was irrelevant.
So I kind of pushed it to the side, or at least I could see
that it was irrelevant at the time. But the point of it is,
is every instrument that was known, it was all going to be
praising this image. And he says, everyone's going
to bow down and worship it. Everybody. Everybody's going
to bow down and worship it. Well, the Hebrew men, Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, those three. And we found out that
Daniel was still in the palace of the king. He was dealing with
business of the king. This is why he's not present
at the time. But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego says, we're not
bowing to that. We believe in the true God. We believe in the
true God. Well, the king got word of that
and he got a little upset and he began to threaten them. He
was insulted that they would not bow to him because he believed
he was right. Every man and woman by nature
believe that they are right. We do. We believe that we are
right. We'll argue with people because
we believe we're right, won't we? We'll go back and forth.
We'll say, well, this is what I believe. You should think like
I think, because I'm right. That's the way we are by nature,
isn't it? You know what the Lord's people do? They say, truth, Lord. Whatever you say is right. I'm
not right, you're right. The believer will not take anything
but the whole truth. The believer will not bow to
anything but the whole truth. It's because we're made to. Lord's
people are made to. Can't be satisfied with the half
truth anymore because we've heard the truth and only the truth
satisfies the believer. I love, I have dear family members. They're not believers. They don't
know the gospel. They reject it. They don't want to talk about
it. They try to find a common ground with me. They say, well,
yeah, you believe this and we believe this. Let's just mesh
it together and call it the same thing. I'm like, can't do it.
Can't do it. There's only one truth and his
name is Jesus Christ. There's only one savior and his
name is Jesus Christ. And what he did upon the cross
was not try to accomplish anything. He accomplished salvation. It's
that simple. That's all I want to eat from that, that, that,
uh, his body is the bread of life. That's all I want to drink
from is that fountain. It doesn't matter whether it's
our friends or our family, our neighbors, those that we love
dearly. If it's a half truth, we can't agree with them. Can
we? We have to just say, you don't say, I'm sorry. It is what
it is. You can't agree with them because
it's not the truth. I can't bow to that. I cannot
bow to that. We've been made to know adding
one thing or taking one thing away from it means you have no
part with him. We want the whole truth, don't
we? It's because the truth is Christ. That's why we want Christ. That's what we desire. We want
him. Nebuchadnezzar threatens them,
threatens these three Hebrews. He says, okay, well, if you don't
bow, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to throw you into the
fiery furnace. He was very serious about this
creation he had made. He was very serious about this
image, wasn't he? He was very serious about himself. No, if
you don't agree with me, If you don't agree that this is good
and you need to bow to it, I'm going to throw you in the fiery
furnace. And just as he did before, whenever the soothsayers and
the magicians and everybody else couldn't answer the question,
he says, okay, I'm the King. I can do what I want. He says,
if you don't bow to this, I'm going to kill you. And they say,
oh, King, we're not careful to answer you in this. Be it known
unto you this day, you can throw us in the furnace or whatever
else you want to do. We are not bowing. We are not
bowing to this false image. The king lost his mind. He said,
heat it up seven times hotter and throw them in there. That's
exactly what happened, isn't it? I am so thankful of the picture. I'm not going to spend a lot
of time on this because I preached this a while back, but the picture
here is the three men going into the fiery furnace and the only
thing that was burnt was the cords that bound them. They were
freed because Christ Jesus is our substitute. Whenever he,
upon the cross of Calvary, took the fire of God's wrath for us. And then the king looks in to
the fiery furnace and says, did we not throw three men into the
fiery furnace? They said, yeah, truth, king. And he says, I see
four. And the fourth is like unto the
son of God. He saw a pre-incarnation of the
Lord Jesus Christ with those three men in the fiery furnace.
He saw Christ. Fourth is like the Son of God.
He said, open the doors, let them out. Let them out, loose
them, let them out. Yet still it was not enough to
convince Nebuchadnezzar. It was not, it didn't convert
him. It was not faith. It was not
given with faith. Question I have for us this morning
is, is how close can we be to the truth and still miss it?
I would remind us that a man named Judas was a disciple, a
follower of Jesus Christ. And he kissed him on the face
and he went to hell. That's how close we can be. That's
why we must have the truth and we don't want anything else.
I don't want to be deceived. I don't want to have a counterfeit. I want the real thing. And that's
all that'll get the job done. We need Christ and his precious
blood, not by works of righteousness, which we have done in any way,
by his own blood. That's what we need. Well, in chapter four, Nebuchadnezzar is given another
dream. This time he can remember it, but it still troubles him
and he wants to know the interpretation of it. And he asks everybody,
he asked all the Chaldeans, he asked all the soothsayers and
magicians again, and he says, what does this mean? They say,
we have no idea. And he remembers, he remembers a man named Daniel. Look in verse six, chapter four. Therefore made I a decree to
bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me that they might
make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. Then came in the
magicians and astrologers and Chaldeans and soothsayers, and
I told them the dream before them, but they did not make known
unto me the interpretation. But at the last, Daniel came
in before me, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the
name of my God, and in whom the spirit of the holy gods, plural,
and before him I told the dream. Now, We see very clearly here
that he has not been made a believer at this time because of his confession
of Daniel, the spirit of the holy gods, plural. It's not until
later on in this chapter, and we're going to see that he finally
recognizes God is God and there's only one God period. And it was
because of repentance given to him. Daniel is the very last one that
he calls. Do you know why that is? Think
about this. He knew Daniel before was the
only one that can interpret the dream. Why not call for him first?
Why not say, where is Daniel? He'll be able to tell me the
dream. He called the soothsayers. He called the same men again.
He was testing everyone, trying to get pardon and whatever, you
know, they had to be. There were several, several different
gods, the Chaldeans. It wasn't just one God, as he
just said here. The reason that he didn't call for Daniel is
men will not come to the truth. until they are made to. Men will
not come to the truth until they are made to. This gives all the
glory to the Lord in salvation. See, his confession was wrong.
He wasn't interested in coming to the truth until he was made
to, wasn't he? And Daniel reveals the interpretation
of the dream. And after 12 months, it comes
to pass. Look with me in chapter four in verse 28. All of this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of the 12 months,
he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spake and said, it's
not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom
by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty.
Boy, he was full of himself, wasn't he? He thought he was
something else. He really did. And if we're left
to ourself, we'll do the exact same, not only physical, but
spiritual, and see, there's the problem. There's the problem. While the word, verse 31, and
this was the interpretation of the dream also, by the way. While
the word was in the king's mouth, 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 among,
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 an oxen, until seven times shall pass over thee, till thou
knowest that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth
it to whomsoever he will. 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
bird's claws. Now that seven times it mentions
there is the word years. Seven years. Now understand that
he had the interpretation of this dream given to him prior
to this. The Lord said, you are going
to be driven You're going to be driven from men, and you're
going to eat grass like oxen. Your hair is going to grow like
eagle's feathers, and your hands like raven claws, or bird's claws,
it says. He was told that this is going
to happen. And then Daniel says, repent,
do good, give unto the poor, and maybe it'll prolong your
days. That's what Daniel told him,
but he didn't do that. He was perfectly content going about
his way and forgot the truth, didn't he? And a year later,
the Lord strikes him down. The Lord breaks him. The Lord
puts his face in the dirt. He ate grass like an ox. I do love the number seven. We
studied numbers when I first came up. You all remember that
on Wednesdays. What is the number seven? That's
the number of perfection, isn't it? Why the number seven? Because it was the appointed
time. It was the duration of time given for perfection. It's how long it took to humble
Nebuchadnezzar, seven. And it's the same amount of time
you and I, perhaps not seven years, could be one hour. We
could hear the preaching and believe it immediately, but sometimes
it'll be like the apostle Paul, when he first heard it from Stephen,
when Stephen was being stoned, a long time passed by before
the Lord appeared unto him and revealed himself. Lord said,
it's hard for you to kick against the pricks, isn't it? The pricks
of the heart that you heard, the gospel that you heard that
keeps pricking upon your heart. This is what this number seven
represents, is when it became time at the end of this, the
Lord gave him his mind back. And what do you think Nebuchadnezzar
did? He worshiped God. He worshiped God after this.
See, the Lord abases us by grace. He reveals to us that we are
the vile, the filthy, the wretched beast that we are. It takes the
Lord to reveal that though. And until the Lord reveals that,
we will have no need of a savior. We will have no need of a substitute.
The good news of the gospel is, is he reveals what you are and
then reveals who Christ is and gives the faith to look to Christ
for everything in your salvation. Now, if God leaves us here on
our face in the ground, if he just showed us we were a sinner
and he left us there, he would be right in doing so, wouldn't
he? He would be right. I mean, just showing us what
we are, he would be right, but he doesn't leave his people there,
does he? He shows them Christ. the sinner substitute. He says,
this is what I had to become in order for you to be made the
righteousness of God. I had to become this beast, this
creature, this dust that you are made of. He who knew no sin
became sin. He had to become the substitute
for his people, literally, so that we could become the righteousness
of God in him. I was teaching a class one time
of children and I was trying, it was a Bible class, much like
what my wife's doing this morning. And I was trying to bring a way
out for them to understand. And we don't understand anything
we believe. We just believe because of faith.
But I tried to explain it to them as best I could, a substitute. And I said, do you know what
a substitute is? And the kid looked at me and said, yeah,
a substitute teacher. And I said, what's the substitute teacher's
job to do? Everything that the teacher was supposed to do. That's
a pretty good answer, isn't it? What did our substitute do? Everything
we were supposed to do, but could not. Everything we were supposed
to do, but could not. He did for his people in putting
away our sin. He became everything that we
are so that we become the righteousness of God in him. And he first did
it by putting us down in the dirt and showing us that we're
nothing. And then he showed us he's everything. This is what
he did to Nebuchadnezzar. Now look in verse 34. At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar,
lifted up mine eyes into heaven, and mine understanding returned
unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored
him that liveth forever, 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? At the same time, my reason returned
unto me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my honor and brightness
returned unto me, and my counselor and my Lord sought unto me, and
I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added
unto me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise
and extol and honor the King, the King. You notice that word
King is in capital letters. The King of heaven, all whose
works are truth and his ways judgment. And those that walk
in pride, he is able to abase. Is that your confession? That's
the same confession for every single elect of God. What he just said right there.
That is our confession, isn't it? Lord's just and right and
can do whatsoever He wants to, when He wants to, how He wants
to, with whom He wants to. He's God and He's sovereign and
right in doing so. And who can say unto Him, what
doest thou? He does whatsoever He will. We bow to that, don't
we? We say truth, Lord, you're right. I am a dog. I am a dead
dog sinner, but I desire the crumbs that fall from your table.
I desire to be one of your dogs. That's our heart's desire, isn't
it? God changed his heart. Out of
the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. His confession
came because of the new heart that the Lord had given him.
The Lord doesn't want the heart that you have. We're not trying
to let Jesus come into our heart. The Lord says, your heart's deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. I'm gonna take your heart
of stone out and give you a heart of flesh. That's what he does
for his people, isn't it? That's what we need is a new
heart, one that looks unto him. Lord, give us repentance, change
our mind. We'll never change our mind on
our own. Make us, if he's not made me this beast and show me
this is what I am yet. Do it today, Lord, show me that
I am the man that would betray you. Lord, save me. That's the heart that the Lord
gives his people, isn't it? Give us repentance and faith
in Christ. Now, the first thing that he
did for Nebuchadnezzar is he troubled him. He troubled him
and he made him desire the truth, didn't he? Gave him a bad dream.
He gave him a bad dream, made to need the truth. The second
thing that happened to him is he saw Christ in the furnace.
He saw Christ in the furnace, but he had not seen his need
yet. He had heard the truth and he
had seen Christ, but he had not been made to have a need yet. Lord, make me needy. Is that
what that makes you cry? That's what it makes me cry.
Lord, make me needy. Don't just let me have a head
knowledge of this glorious truth. Lord, do a work inside of me
that only you can do. Lord, I don't need a quadruple
bypass. I need a new heart. Do that work on the inside that
only you can do by your spirit. Wash me in your blood. My blood's
polluted. Don't leave us to ourselves.
You know what he does? He shows every single one of
his children themselves, and he abases them by grace. And
by grace are you saved through faith in that not of yourself,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Nebuchadnezzar didn't boast anymore
about his own works, did he? He didn't say, look at this Babylon
I have done. He said, I will praise and extol the most. I
will praise and extol, and I will honor the most high. All glory
to him. That's what he said. That's what
we say too, isn't it? Lord, you get all the glory and
salvation. God changed Nebuchadnezzar's
confession. He changed Nebuchadnezzar's mind.
Nebuchadnezzar didn't even talk about himself anymore, did he?
He does say that excellent majesty was added unto him, but he's
recognizing where that's coming from. The Lord gave him that
excellent majesty. That's what he's implying here.
He's not saying I'm majestic. He's saying the Lord added that
into me. This is the same confession. throughout all of scripture of
the Lord's people. We no longer look at our 60 foot statue thinking
that we're something when we're nothing. We see ourself as nothing,
don't we? And we see him as everything.
We see ourself as impotent and know that he is strength. We
need his power. We see ourself as lame and know
that we need legs to walk. We see ourself as blind. We don't
confess to know anything. Lord, I need my sight. I need
your wisdom. And this is what he does for his people. And all
the glory goes to God. Now, if the Lord would have left
Nebuchadnezzar to himself, he'd have been like all men, believing
that they have the power. They have the power to choose
or not to choose. They have the control over their
life. We can't control anything. Did you know that? We can't will
away a cold, can we? This virus pandemic that we just
came out of is good evidence of that. Everybody was scared
to death, weren't they? I mean, we were all scared. At
some point, if you heard a loved one had the virus, it became
frightening, didn't it? Because of the unknown. We can't
control anything. So they, they tried to control
people by saying, do this and do this and do this. And I'm
not getting political on this today. I'm trying to say, we
can't control anything. Can we? Not really, especially
something as a virus. What makes us think we can control
our eternal destiny? I wouldn't need to control mine.
Would you? Do you trust yourself to control your own eternal destiny?
Certainly not. You know why? Because you've
been made the beast. The Lord's abased you by grace
and he's shown you that it's all of grace and by him for his
glory. He's shown us that we're just
like Nebuchadnezzar. We're arrogant, we're selfish,
we're prideful. If I wasn't prideful, I'd never
argue with my wife. That's all about pride, isn't
it? It's all about pride, it's all about self. The Lord abased
us by your grace. Lord, show us that it's all of
grace and save us. Call us. Lord, you'll have to
do all the work. Every one of us are narcissistic
by birth, naturally. We're narcissists. We think so
highly of ourself. We're devoted to ourself. That's
why everybody has their own favorite color, their own favorite flavor
of ice cream. It's all about self, isn't it?
It's all about self. I have three children. Every
one of them have a different flavor of ice cream, a different color. Different flavor of bubblegum,
it's all about self, isn't it, naturally. Lord, I know that
if you leave me to myself, I deserve hell, and you are just in sending
me there, but Lord, have mercy upon me, the sinner. Lord, I'm
the beast that's mentioned in this chapter. Lord, I need your
grace. I need your mercy. I need you
to have done something for me, because I can't do anything for
myself. I'm just eating grass. and the
dew's just falling on me. Lord, cause me to look up. Lord,
make me alive, quicken me by your spirit. This is our hope,
isn't it? We're made to know the only difference
between Judas and Peter is that Christ prayed for Peter. Christ
loved Peter. Christ did not love Judas. Jesus
does not love everybody, but he loves his people, and he redeemed
his people. He saved them from their sin,
from their self, showed them what they were, Abased them by
his grace, then exalted them by grace, didn't he? Made us
one with the Lord Jesus Christ. I was gonna have his turn somewhere,
but for the sake of time, I'm not going to. I'm gonna tell
us this. The good news of the gospel is
that he does all of this by grace. He is just. and the justifier. And he hath not appointed us
to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. And
Wednesday, somehow my notes got jumbled up and I put this out
of place and I tried to go back and I just messed it up. So thankfully
I've got it in order this time. But he says here, God hath not
appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord
Jesus Christ. That word obtain is the same
word as preserved. The Lord hath not appointed us
to wrath, but preserved us. to obtain salvation by the Lord
Jesus Christ. That means he's delivered us
from harm. He's delivered us from ruin. He's delivered us
from loss. He did it all by his grace. He did the appointing and he
did the saving. He humbles his people. He humbles his people. And in Luke chapter 14, verse
11, Christ said, he that exalted himself shall be abased, but
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Can you humble yourself
enough to please God? No. No, we've seen ourself as
Nebuchadnezzar. Lord, humble me. Lord, cause
me to see Christ. Shut me up to him or I have no
hope. Lord, trouble me as you did him.
Make me need the truth. Lord, make me see Christ suffer
the wrath of God. Nebuchadnezzar got to see that
Christ suffered for his people in the fiery wrath of God, in
the fiery furnace. That's what he saw. He didn't
know that's what he saw. But can you imagine after he was
converted, what he realized he had saw? Isn't that the same
with you and I? We have no, I was raised in religion
where I knew all the stories. They kept saying, have faith
like Daniel. We're gonna hear Daniel Alliance
in the next hour. Oh, our faith needs to be more like Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego. Are you ready to go into the
fiery furnace? They'd say. I said, nope, I'm certainly not.
It wasn't their faith. It was given to them, and they
could say it's theirs because it was given to them, but it
was the faith of Christ, wasn't it? That's what kept them. We're
kept by the power of God through His faith unto salvation, ready
to be revealed at the last time. Finally, Lord, show me I'm unclean.
I am the unclean beast. Abase me by Thy grace. That's
the same prayer of every believer, isn't it? And the Lord does for
His people. And at the end, we say, Lord, All glory forever. Or tear down that 60-foot
image of myself that I have in my heart and replace it with
Christ. Cause me to see Christ. Abase
me by thy grace. Father, thank you that you do
it all because we can do nothing but your word. In Christ's name,
amen.