[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to start this morning on a roof.
[SPEAKER_00]: The year is around 570 BC in the most powerful man alive is standing on the roof of his palace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is looking out over the city that he has built.
[SPEAKER_00]: The walls of this city are so wide you could drive chariots along the tops of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are terrorist gardens that reach into the sky known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a processional which is tiled with blue glazed tiles that lead to towering gates, emblazoned with bulls and lions, and dragons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each representing a different Babylonian god.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he looks out over all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in Daniel 4, verse 30, we get a record of what he says.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, he's not this the great Babylon I have built.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't get to finish the thought, and the text tells us that even as the words are on his lips, a voice comes from heaven and he is all taken away from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom, the palace, his authority, and even his mind, all gone in a sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the next time we see this king,
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not on the roof of a palace.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's out in a field on his hands and knees, eating grass like an animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soaked through with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: His hair grown long like feathers and his nails looking like the claws of birds.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most powerful man in the world is reduced to thinking here's an animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does a man get from the roof of a palace to a field?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're going to get to that, but I want to give you a hint.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep an eye on where his eyes are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now a quick recap of Daniel because we've been working through the first three chapters of Daniel so far and this one comes on the back of that and today we meet again the King Nebuchadnezzar who in chapter one we see Conkers Jerusalem he looks the temple he marches the people of that kingdom into exile and yet in these first three chapters he runs
[SPEAKER_00]: first through Daniel interpreting a dream for him that no one else could.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then through another three young men, Shadrak, Mishak and Abedna go, who walk out of a fiery furnace, unburned.
[SPEAKER_00]: And both times King Nebuchadnezzar says quite profound observations about God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He even seems to praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It turns out that you can recognize things in God and you can even declare things about God and not be changed by Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in chapter four, we come to a slightly different chapter because it's written in Nebuchadnezzar's voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's written not just about him, but by him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is his testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost written as an open letter to his empire.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most powerful man in life, telling the world about another encounter that he's had with the most high God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's let us start in verse 4 by telling us that he's in his palace and that he's contented and prosperous.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's contented and prosperous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he has another dream, and this dream terrifies him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to pick up the story in verse 10, when he tells us this dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the visions I saw when I was lying in bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked and there before me stood a tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the middle of the land, its height was enormous.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tree grew large and strong and its top touch the sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was visible to the ends of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit was abundant and on it was food for all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under it the wild animals found shelter and the birds lived in its branches.
[SPEAKER_00]: from it, every creature was fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hold onto this picture of this tree for a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a picture of beauty, of abundance, of provision, of shelter.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then the dream turns.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns in a way that terrifies Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: A heavenly messenger orders that this tree be cut down, that its branches be locked, that its leaves be stripped, that the fruit be scutted and that the animals run away.
[SPEAKER_00]: only a stump and its roots remain in the grounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the dream turns in its language.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to take note of the pro-knowns that are being used.
[SPEAKER_00]: It stops being talking about a dream and it and starts talking about a him, a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let him be drenched with the duvet of heaven and let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth and let his mind be changed from that of a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: and let him be given the mind of an animal till seven times pass for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the king wakes up from his dream, a dream with a tree, an axe, a messenger from heaven, a stump, and a man in a field, and he has no idea what it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he seems to realize that it's got to do with him, because he's terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he does what he does in chapter two.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sends for the wise men the professionals, the magicians, the astrologers, and ask them to interpret the dream and they cannot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like in chapter two, Daniel, a young man is brought into his presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And despite when Nebuchadnezzar shares the dream with Daniel, Daniel is terrified, because he knows how people get treated by this king when they bring bad news.
[SPEAKER_00]: He pushes through and he speaks truth to the most powerful man in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he tells him your majesty, you are that tree, words that must have chilled Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to stay with the picture of a tree just for a moment, because this description of this tree is really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a dream sent from God and it starts with a beautiful picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is God's description of this man in his life, and it's not a grudging picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a, yeah, he built in our city, but it lingers in the beauty and the abundance, the provision and the shelter of what this man has provided, which is not what you would expect in a chapter about judgment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly, it's not what you would expect about a king like Nebuchadnezzar, who is a violent man.
[SPEAKER_00]: who is a pagan king, who has ransacked God's place, his temple, and led his people into exile.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, beauty is what Nebuchadnezzar has built.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could see it up on the roof of the palace, couldn't you?
[SPEAKER_00]: The beautiful gardens, the beautiful architecture.
[SPEAKER_00]: This man had built something beautiful, and what he had built had fared and sheltered people.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Lannick's who have been looking at the book of as we've gone through this series says it plainly, he says there was something positively glorious about what Nebuchadnebbican as his achievements, and it seems that God approved of them at least on some level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to be really clear here about what this does and doesn't mean, because God, I don't think, is endorsing the Babylonian Empire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Babylon was built, it was an imperial machine, built on violence and idolatry, and will come to a moment on who actually built this city.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think what God is recognizing here is something underneath the empire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our human capacity to build, to cultivate, and to make something good.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, right back at the beginning of our Scriptures in Genesis, we see that God is a builder, He's a creator, He's a maker.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He gave people a garden to cultivate, to work, to plant, to be fruitful in, to make something off.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what God gave humanity to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And notice what God is calling beautiful here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a sacred place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a religious act.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a city.
[SPEAKER_00]: A working city.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's walls, it's roads, it's gardens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's food supply chain.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sense here, I think in this dream and John Lennox speaks about this, is that God is interested in what we build.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're eye for art.
[SPEAKER_00]: your desire to plant a lovely garden or to make a beautiful home or to write a beautiful piece of music.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something God just tolerates in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a byproduct of who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: He put it there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's central to who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the urge to build something to make something that lasts isn't a distraction from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually one of the clearest
[SPEAKER_00]: In my 20s, I trained for ministry, and for 10 years, I worked in different church contexts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And through a series of events, in my 30s, I left ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on one level, it felt like the right thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually felt like God opened up an opportunity for me to step into.
[SPEAKER_00]: But on another level, it felt kind of like a emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly to me,
[SPEAKER_00]: and definitely to a few other people who suggested to me that I had sold out and put my priorities to build something for me before God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I carried low-level guilt about that for a number of years.
[SPEAKER_00]: What shifted it for me was a group of Christian entrepreneurs that I got to know who asked me a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said to me, Darren,
[SPEAKER_00]: What if God actually put that entrepreneurial spirit in you?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if He put those gifts in you?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if the itch to build something isn't the thing pulling your way from your calling?
[SPEAKER_00]: But what if for this period of your life, it is your calling?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a really freeing.
[SPEAKER_00]: realization for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the next 20 years I tried to build something that was a reflection of what God put in me for His glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I discovered is that there is more than one way to build something beautiful for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God only endorses the work of those who work in churches, then most of us are spending much of our time on things that don't really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that is the God of this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is not against the things that you have built.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your career, your side hustle, the house you've renovated, the garden you've planted, the children that you've sewn into, the friendships that you have built.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not standing off, but the side of your life with his arms crossed, waiting for you to get to the real stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the God of this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The God of this chapter looks at what this man built, and he says it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can put one thing to bed, I think, as we look at this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever went wrong here, and something definitely did go wrong here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't ambition.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't building something.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't being successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the beauty.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which leaves us with a harder question.
[SPEAKER_00]: If got admired the tree in this dream, why did he cut it down?
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we get to the answer, I want to just look one more time at the picture itself because trees are never just trees in Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who knows their Bible knows that there are trees right from the very first chapters to the very end.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we don't have time to look at them all, but one of the types of trees that we see in Scripture are trees that describe people.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, in Psalm 1, we see this beautiful tree of someone who is living right, and the tree is beautiful, and it's abundant.
[SPEAKER_00]: It provides fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something different about the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream from this tree and the other trees that are talked about in Scripture describing God's people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you look at verse 11, this tree's top touched the sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some translation say, it's top reached to heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have we ever heard that language before about something reaching heaven?
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me of Genesis 11, where a people in Bible said, let's build a city for ourselves with a tower that reaches to the heavens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly the same language as in this stream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is Bible Babylon?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's another tree in Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this tree is in a Zeke or 31.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wish we had more time today because putting it alongside the tree that we find in Daniel 4 is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost using exactly the same language.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tree that's described as a towering cedar with birds in its branches, with nations living in its shade.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a tree that God uses to warn another king, Pharaoh.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost identical, but in Ezekiel, there are two things said explicitly that we don't see explicitly said in Daniel, but they're there underneath.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're worth just highlighting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing is that God says, I made this tree beautiful with abundant branches.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't said in Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Nebuchadnezzar says exactly the opposite of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I built it with my power for my glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: God says, I built the tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in verse 10, when the seeder is chopped down in as if you're 31, it is, there's a reason given because the great seeder towers over the thick foliage and because it was proud of its height.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride is mentioned right at the end of Daniel 4 when Nebuchadnezzar diagnosis the problem that he'd had and it's here, front and center in Ezekiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same story in Ezekiel, in the Tower of Babel, and in the dream, all reaching for heaven, all proud, and all cut down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with this in mind, this height issue, it's really interesting to look in Daniel 4 at the most commonly repeated words.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a description of who God is, and it's used six times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you noticed what God is called in this chapter?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's called the most high God.
[SPEAKER_00]: six times.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only been used once so far in the first three chapters of Daniel.
[SPEAKER_00]: So something is being said to us here.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is the most high God.
[SPEAKER_00]: While this king is busy getting taller, the text keeps reminding us of the one who is most high and it always was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Daniel speaks truth to Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spells out the problem and then he gives away forward for Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way out from being chopped down and we see it in verse 27.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, your majesty, be pleased to accept my advice, renounce your sins by doing what is right and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may be that your prosperity will continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is God's analysis of this man's life delivered to his face and it comes really down to three things, two of them spoken directly to him here, and one of them that is right throughout the chapter, the first one is do what is right.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he was not very good at building his own character.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was not a good man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second thing that Daniel says is, be kind to the oppressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really good reminder for anyone who is proud, because anyone who is proud only sees themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: who actually built Babylon, it was not nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: He may have laid a ceremony or brick or two, but it was conscripted labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was slaves, it was captives, it was prisoners of war.
[SPEAKER_00]: And among them, the people carried away from Judah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nebuchadnezzar was literally standing on the work of other people and calling it his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: I built this city, which is exactly what he was about to do to guide on the roof or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third thing that Nebuchadnezzar was doing was he wanted to put his name on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same as the Tower of Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us build this tower for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nebuchadnezzar was doing this as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was doing it one brick at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: archaeologists have found the bricks from the ruins of this area and they all have one thing stamped into them, the name of Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: He literally built a city out of bricks stamped with his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't just build a city, he signed it and then his words stamped his name on it
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where the insanity is in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not in the city itself, but it's in the attribution, because who gave Nebuchadnezzar the life that he had, the mind that could design the city, who gave him the health to finish the city, who gave him the empire that he inherited, the family that it was born into, the clay that it was born out of, the water from the U.F.
[SPEAKER_00]: ladies that helped make those bricks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who gave him the ability to make this city?
[SPEAKER_00]: It certainly wasn't him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And before we write this story off, it's just an ancient story that has no relevance for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our world tells us to do exactly what Nebuchadnezzar was doing, to aim high, to build something big, to put your name on it, to do something that will make you look good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not 570 BC, that's the water west swimming in.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been told to us all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't until the bright at the end of the chapter when Nebuchadnezzan and names the problem he has.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says those who walk in pride, he is able to humble this word pride that we saw in a ZQ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now pride is a word that we use in a couple of different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe three if we include the Lions pride, but that certainly not what's being talked about here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the pride that you feel when you watch your daughter get presented.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a pride you feel when your child walks across the stage and gets a certificate.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the pride you take in you feel when you look at a good hard day's work, that sense of satisfaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's what's been talked about here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another type of pride, and it's a more insidious thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of us have seen it in other people, haven't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't like it when we see other people with pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can probably think of someone who's sense of their own importance has tipped over into something that isn't quite sane, where the gap between how they see themselves and how things really are, how they really are, has gotten so wired that you think they've lost touch with reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the language that this chapter is reaching for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride is our kneesha about grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's claiming authorship of a life that has always been on loan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love how Tim Keller talks about pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: He calls it cosmic plagiarism.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's taking credit for someone else's work.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is exactly what's going on in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, it's Lewis called pride the great sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said that it's something we always notice in others, but we are very rarely able to see in ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember what I said at the start, keep watching when Nebuchadnezzar's eyes are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or Lewis kind of eludes to this in his writing about pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, a proud man, and it's the same for women, is always looking down on things and people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is why pride isn't just a moral problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a perception problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more impressed you are with yourself, the worse you get at seeing what's actually there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to give us something very practical that we can do this week to counter pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really small thing, but I think it's really powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: If pride is amnesia about griefs, then it starts to come on undone, the moment that you remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to be specific about what we need to remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ask some questions a moment ago of Nebuchadnezzar and I want you to ask them of yourself, particularly with relevance to the things you're proud about, who gave you the minds that you work with.
[SPEAKER_00]: who's given you the health to see the things that you've done through, who's given you the years who put you into this time, in this place and the family that you were born into, who placed you into the friendship group, and into the people around you who contributed to your success.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pick the thing that you're most proud of your career, your kids, your business, your ministry,
[SPEAKER_00]: the thing that you're the best in the room out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometime this week, acknowledge the work of others and of God in those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't just say thanks for everything God, be specific, sit with it, and be thankful, be grateful, and glorify God in that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like nothing, but it's the one thing never can as it doesn't do until the end of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Daniel gives the warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells Nebuchadnezz a renounce your sins, be kind to the oppressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's still time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then perhaps the saddest three words in this story to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: One's that I glossed over the first time I read this, but I've been sitting with this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: 12 months later, a whole year goes by and nothing changes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nebuchadnezzar just goes back to being contented and prosperous.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same way he was when he had the dream that terrified him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked at the start, how does a man get from a roof of a
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in a moment, it was a drift.
[SPEAKER_00]: He drafted back to the way things were.
[SPEAKER_00]: He went from being terrified to complacent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think anyone drifts on purpose just a long run of life and slowly the center of gravity shifts and you don't really know when it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 12 months later, you're on a roof for your own palace and you're marveling at your own glory and what you have built in your own power for your own glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look where Nebuchadnezzar's eyes are in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he's on the roof, where he's eyes, they're on his city, they're on his work.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at his words, you can see they're on himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even as he's waxing lyrical about his own power and glory and majesty of voice comes from heaven, stripping him of the authority that he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: he has and driving him out of the palace to live like an animal until you acknowledge that the most high is sovereign over all the kingdoms on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one of the more terrifying pieces of scripture that I've ever read in verse 23, immediately what had been said about
[SPEAKER_00]: And he ate grass like the ox.
[SPEAKER_00]: His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.
[SPEAKER_00]: We in Blake created this image of Nebuchadnezzar in this state how this king had fallen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the irony of this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride doesn't make you superhuman.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes you subhuman.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man who believed he was above everybody ends up below everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man who reached for the sky, reached a place on all falls in a field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Donna Nolan fuel puts it like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, a man who thinks he is a God must become a beast to learn that he is only a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Field didn't make him a beast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The field made visible what was happening on the roof, the insanity of that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm reminded of something that Paul wrote in Romans, which I think really describes so well this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul says,
[SPEAKER_00]: But although they knew God, they needed to glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although that claim to be wise, they became fools.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is the perfect description of Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though they knew God, he'd encountered Him twice already.
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to glorified Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or go thanks to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes thanks to no one, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lost his mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although they claim to be wise they became fools, the perfect picture of Nebuchadnezzar.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there he is, the most powerful man in the world in a field, here like feathers, now is like claws, a pitiful picture, but that's not the end of Nebuchadnezzar's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole thing turns in one simple movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of that time, I Nebuchadnezzar raised my eyes towards heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: and my sanity was restored.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I praise the most high God, I honoured and glorified Him who lives forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the simple turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked up everything in this chapter has been a contest of altitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tree, his greatness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the very first time, he looks up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the only upward movement in this story that actually works.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not climbing anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not building anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stops trying to be high and he simply looks at the one who is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all he lifts his eyes and his sanity is restored.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in his own strength, but it was given back to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a picture of grace that we sung about this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a beautiful picture of repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which isn't first about the feeling sorry, it's about a change of mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he lost his mind by looking at himself obsessively and he got it back by looking at the most high God and doing for the very first time, what it says there, he glorified him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we go any further, I just wanna say something really carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not every hard season in life is God correcting you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you, some of us have been cut right down like that tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't a verdict on our character.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the diagnosis of an illness that came out of the blue, the battle that you had with mental health, the death of someone that you loved, the relationship that ended, the year that took everything out of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: These things are not necessarily God cutting you down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nebuchadnezzar's humbling was tied to a named sin that a prophet puts in his face 12 months earlier that he ignored.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you cannot name it, please don't manufacture it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I do believe for those of us, the small name, who feel cut down by life.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the picture from this story isn't a flourishing tree for you, but a stump, there's a promise in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or want us to go back into the dream just for a moment before we finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: In verse 15, the messenger from heaven gives this oddly specific order.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, but let the stump and its roots, bound with iron and bronze, remain in the ground in the grass of the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tree was cut down, but it was not dug up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyone who's ever cut down a tree and left the stump in the ground knows what comes next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give it a season or two, and there are green shoots coming outside of that stump.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cut down is not the same as finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that you'll get back exactly what was cut down, trees don't tend to grow back the same way the second time, but there is life in those roots.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is I think the message for those of us who feel cut down this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is life in your roots.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has formed for bringing back shoots of life from stumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most famous stump in scripture is in Isaiah 11 and it's a description of David's royal line which is described as being cut back to nothing and there's a promise, a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse, from his roots, a branch will bear fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: From that stump will come something that bears fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyone who knows their Bible knows that this is a prophecy about Jesus, the one who brings life out of the stumps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in Daniel 4, I think we get the key to finding that life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is lifting our eyes to the most high.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this morning, if you see yourself in the stump, that's the invitation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is life in your roots, and there is someone who wants to draw life out of that stump, and that is Jesus the most high.
[SPEAKER_00]: The call is to lift your eyes, and it's a call that we see right throughout Scripture in so many places, and I want to finish with one, and that is Colossians 3.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so beautifully says, since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your minds on things above,
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice what Paul says before he asks anything of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, you have been raised with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't something you cloned to.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that has been done for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been raised with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he says, twice, slightly differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Set your heart on things above.
[SPEAKER_00]: Set your mind on things above.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the word that this whole chapter has been circling around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never can there's a lost his mind by looking at himself, and he got it back at the moment he looked up, and Paul is telling us where to point our minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not on earthly things, not on ourselves, not on aiming high and building big, making a name for ourselves, but simply on him, on Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And where he's seated, he's seated at the right hand of God, the highest place there is.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is only room for one most high, and he is not far off, and he is not against you, and he went to the cross for the pride in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not a stranger to the field either.
[SPEAKER_00]: He came looking for you in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are healed by looking up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wonder if you'll stand with me as we finish this time, just in a moment of prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most High God, we want to acknowledge that you are most high.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for what you reveal to us in this story about you and about us and where we sit in relation to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the reminder of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at I think you made us in your image that our instinct to build, to make, to create
[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you that you made us each with different gifts and abilities and resource and interests.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that you take in interest in what we create with the things that you've given us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that you see beauty in those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God we acknowledge that sometimes we take the good things that you give us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And things drift.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they get out of line.
[SPEAKER_00]: two often we build for our own glory in our own power.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, we want to be people who build for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to build not in the patterns of our world, but by imitating Jesus,
[SPEAKER_00]: and whose way was through the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to build in the way that you build.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I just want to pray this morning for those who feel like the stump in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel chopped down by life dead on the outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray that you would help us who feel that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for the new life that you want to draw out of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you that you are the God who makes dead things come to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do that work in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We bring a season of growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we let us participate in that work in the lives of those that we love in the weeks ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you much to High God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worship you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.