The King of Heaven — Part Two

Daniel chapter 4. You say, “Now, you’re not allowed to break your own rules. You’re supposed to do one chapter a study, and that’s your lot.” Somebody said to me the other day, “How did it take you so long to go through Timothy, with far less verses?” Sometimes it’s good to just speed along. But it’s pretty daunting, actually, this challenge of going a chapter at a time. I think perhaps you feel the pace of it. I know it’s a bit of a chase, and I come to the end of it feeling, I suppose, that I’d like to have another go at it, or perhaps I’d approach it differently.

And I want just to allow myself a tiny luxury in that regard this evening by turning us to what I think is perhaps… If we were choosing a key verse out of Daniel 4, it would be the seventeenth verse, I think, where we’re told that “the sentence is by the decree of the watchers”—that is, the sentence of judgment on Nebuchadnezzar. “The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones”—these angelic visitors, the divine visitants—“to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.”

Father, we pray that as we just think briefly along these lines this evening, that you will help us—that we might have the experience of which Isaiah speaks: that you will “keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”[1] And we pray that this God, to whom we are introduced here in this amazing chapter of Daniel, may be the focus of our praise and of our devotion as we gather around the Table of his Son and as we prepare to enter into the responsibilities of the week that lies ahead. Help us to this end, we pray. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

It’s over forty years now since J. B. Phillips wrote a book which became, relatively quickly, something of a Christian classic. Many of you will have read it. It has the title Your God Is Too Small. Your God Is Too Small. And essentially, what he does in the book is explore, first of all, inadequate conceptions of God that he said are present amongst the people of God in a way that is not only a detriment to God but also has a negative impact on their ability to serve God and to follow him. And then in the book, having explored the inadequate conceptions of God, he explains why it is necessary, obviously, to have adequate conceptions of God—an understanding of God as he is revealed in Scripture.

It’s not uncommon for us to hear on a fairly routine basis somebody in conversation say, “Well, I like to think of God as…” And often, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to God as he has revealed himself to us first in creation and in his Word and finally and savingly in his Son. It bears no resemblance to the God of whom Paul writes, when he ends 1 Timothy with a great flourish, as referring to God as “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion.”[2] It’s an amazing, immense statement of the magnitude of God, and it just flows, as it were, from the pen of Paul because it emerges from the heart of Paul.

Now, as some of us saw this morning, Nebuchadnezzar had to come to this discovery by way of a hard road. He has, as we’ve read of him earlier in the book, had certain dramatic and exciting moments where he has, if you like, flirted with an understanding of this God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But he still, to this point in the chapter, remains, what we would say, unconverted.

Calvin, commenting on the way in which God works in the life of a person not unlike Nebuchadnezzar, says this: “When God, therefore, wishes to lead us to repentance, he is compelled to repeat his blows continually.”[3] So, we have mentioned the notion of being charmed by the gospel but remaining unchanged by it—or, if you like, what we saw last time as a spiritual diversion, as distinct from a spiritual conversion. And so Calvin says, because God wants to lead to repentance, he is then compelled to keep hammering away at the individual, either because he is not moved when he chastises us with his hand, or we seem roused for the time, and then we return again to our former apathy. He is compelled, therefore, to redouble his blows.

If you think about this, it’s a quite remarkable thought. Why would God even be bothered with Nebuchadnezzar? Such an arrogant rascal! Such a big-headed character, completely fascinated by the gods of his own making and so on. What a gracious God! What a merciful God, that he who is worthy of all praise and adoration would come and rain his blows upon this character in order to lead him to repentance.

Edwards, along the same lines, talking about the way in which many are brought to conversion, says conversion is often prefaced by a “humiliation before the Sovereign Disposer of life and death”—namely, God—where he “is wont to prepare [his creatures] for his consolations.”[4] So, it’s along the same lines, isn’t it? And this is why we often go wrong, when we’re speaking to people about the gospel, by trying to attract them with all kinds of ideas and concepts and how super it’s all going to be, when in actual fact, the law of God shows us how dreadful we really are. “I once was lost in darkest night [and] thought I knew the way.”[5] That’s the testimony of the songwriter. It’s not that I was a little anxious and needed peace, I was a little lost and needed some direction in my life, I was a little poverty stricken and needed some cash. No, I was blind, and I was lost, and I was going my own way, and I was convinced that the way I was going was the right way, until God brings humiliation into my life—the humiliation which causes me to bow down before his sovereignty.

And as we said this morning, the overarching emphasis in these chapters is on the sovereignty of God. And here, Daniel references it again and again, referring to God as “the Most High.” If you happen to have your Bible open, you’ll see it in verse 17: “to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men.” In verse 25: “This is the judgment that will fall upon you, Nebuchadnezzar,” he says, “until you know that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives it to whom he will,”[6] repeating what he has said in verse 17. In verse 26: “until the time that you come to understand that Heaven rules.”[7] And then, in verse 32: “You [will] be driven from among men” and so on, “[until the] periods of time [have passed] over you, [until] you know that the Most High rules the kingdom[s] of men and gives it to whom he will.”

Now, let me say again what we said this morning, quoting Jonathan Edwards: in declaring God’s sovereignty over everyone, we are simply declaring that God really is God. It’s such a straightforward statement and yet so vitally important. But what do we mean when we say that God is God? Supposing one of your children were to ask you, “What does it mean that God is God?” what would you say? Someone asked when we had Q and A a couple of Sundays ago, “Well, who made God?” And we had to respond and say that he is self-existent. And then some poor parent had to explain self-existent when you got home—that he is entirely other than ourselves.

Well, that was part of the task that was set to the Westminster Divines, the doctors of divinity, as they sat down to take biblical theology and encapsulate it in a form, in a confession, that would stand the test of time. Listen carefully to two paragraphs written in the Westminster Confession by these men who were seeking to encapsulate this one truth. Listen carefully; there will be a test. All right?

There is only one living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection. He is a most pure spirit, invisible, with neither body, parts, nor passive properties. He is unchangeable, boundless, eternal, and incomprehensible. He is almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, and most absolute. He works all things according to the counsel of his own unchangeable and most righteous will for his own glory. He is most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He is also most just and terrifying in his judgments, hating all sin, and will by no means acquit the guilty.[8]

That’s paragraph one.

Here’s paragraph two. You would think that they had exhausted themselves by that time, wouldn’t you? How long do you think it would take a group of us, sitting down, to come up with a paragraph like that?

God has all life, glory, goodness, and blessedness in and of himself. He alone is all sufficient in and to himself, not standing in need of any creatures which he has made nor deriving any glory from them, but rather manifesting his own glory in, by, to, and on them. He alone is the fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. He has absolute sovereignty over them to do by them, for them, or upon them whatever he pleases. In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent of his creatures, so that nothing to him is contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men and every other creature whatever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.[9]

Now, when you think about that for just a moment, surely we find ourselves kneeling down by our beds and echoing Paul’s words at the end of Romans 11: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things.”[10]

When God was alone, before the creation of the universe, he was entirely self-sufficient.

Now, when you allow this to settle in your mind for a moment or two, you realize how radically different this is to conceptions of God and divinity and the kind of blasphemous things that are routinely trotted out in the media and oftentimes in circles such as our own. Let’s just be really clear tonight: God does not need us. God does not owe us anything. When God was alone, before the creation of the universe—because before there was time and before there was anything, there was God—when God was alone, before the creation of the universe, he was entirely self-sufficient. He was not in need of the creatures that he made. He did not need them, nor does he need them, to sustain his life, to increase his glory, to disclose his goodness, or in any way to add to his blessedness. That is why it is such a great wonder that this God, that this sovereign God, deigns to disclose himself to us and enables us, in Jesus, to call him “our Father [who] art in heaven.”[11]

Now, in this chapter here, Nebuchadnezzar had to be driven from society and live like an animal before he came to this realization—before he came to understand that “the Most High rules [over] the kingdom of [man] and gives it to whom he will.” In other words, it was going to take this in Nebuchadnezzar’s life to discover that God reigns and that he does just exactly this. “The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.”

Well, we can work that out, can’t we? Just take, for example, the history of Israel itself. And when the kingdom is established, and Samuel comes looking for a king, and all the big, tough brothers are there and lined up for the interview, and he goes through them all, and eventually he says, “Is this the whole group?” They said, “We have another one. He’s a little guy. He doesn’t do much around here. He looks after sheep.”[12] And Samuel anoints David as king, the lowliest of the brothers. He chooses the younger Solomon over Adonijah.[13] And Isaiah prophesies the one who is to come, who will be the very King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and we’re introduced to him as one who is “despised and rejected by men.”[14] And yet that same one who is “despised and rejected by men” is assigned a portion with the great.

And we turn from the Old Testament into the New, and we encounter this Lord Jesus Christ, who is born to a slip of a girl in a backwater province in the Middle East, in a very forgettable little town. And when he is finally brought forth from the birth canal, he is laid in a trough in a stable.[15] And his father’s not a senator. Joseph’s not a senator; he’s a carpenter. And for thirty-three years he is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”[16] The birds have nests and the foxes have holes in the ground, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.[17] He’s finally betrayed and abandoned by those who had declared their love for him. He’s mocked by his own creation: “Save yourself! Come down from the cross if you’re such a great savior.”[18] And he dies. And he who is the Lord of glory is nailed up on a Roman gibbet. And the apostles tell us that there in that moment, he’s bearing “our sins in his [own] body on the tree.”[19]

The humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar was nothing compared to the humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And why was he humiliated? In order that we might have the privilege of bowing before him, declaring him the Servant King, declaring him to be the God of the broken, declaring him to be the very epitome of humility, acknowledging him to be the one who is “gentle and lowly in heart” and who offers rest for our souls,[20] realizing that he was the one who washed the feet of the disciples[21]—and recognizing, too, that one day, as we sang this morning, “every knee [will] bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”[22]

Jesus, my Savior, to Bethlehem came,
[He was born] in a manger to sorrow and shame;
[And] oh, it was wonderful, blest be his name,
Seeking for me, for me.[23]

Down from his glory,
Ever living story,
[Our] God and Savior came,
And Jesus was his name.
Born in a manger,
To his own a stranger,
A man of sorrows, tears, and agony.[24]

I think it’s good for us as a church to consider whether Phillips had actually put his hand on something that is compellingly relevant to us as a church—namely, that at this point, our God is too small; that we seek to meet him, as it were, on horizontal plane rather than to bow down before him and to acknowledge that he is not in need of us, he is vastly different from us, he is utterly unassailable by us, and the only reason that we would ever know him to call him Father is because he broke through in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who invites us to come and share in the Table that he has provided for us.

[1] Isaiah 26:3 (ESV).

[2] 1 Timothy 6:15–16 (ESV).

[3] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Prophet Daniel, trans. Thomas Myers (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1852), 1:245.

[4] A Narrative of Surprising Conversions, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1979), 1:352.

[5] Jordan Kauflin, “All I Have Is Christ” (2011).

[6] Daniel 4:25 (paraphrased).

[7] Daniel 4:26 (paraphrased).

[8] The Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1. Paraphrased.

[9] The Westminster Confession of Faith 2.2. Paraphrased.

[10] Romans 11:34–36 (paraphrased).

[11] Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2 (KJV).

[12] See 1 Samuel 16:11.

[13] See 1 Kings 1:1–53.

[14] Isaiah 53:3 (ESV).

[15] See Luke 2:7.

[16] Isaiah 53:3 (ESV).

[17] See Matthew 8:20.

[18] Matthew 27:40, 42; Luke 24:37; Mark 15:30 (paraphrased).

[19] 1 Peter 2:24 (ESV).

[20] Matthew 11:29 (ESV).

[21] See John 13:1–17.

[22] Philippians 2:10–11 (ESV).

[23] “Seeking for Me” (1878).

[24] William E. Booth-Clibborn, “Down from His Glory” (1921).