I was not converted in a Church Gathering, nor did anyone lead me to Jesus. As said before I before, I was saved whilst bathing one night after reading the Book of Colossian a good few times. There was nothing spectacular about this happening apart from the fact I knew God has worked salvation in my heart. My immediate desire was to worship God. To thank Him for His grace and mercy in my salvation. To thank Him for pardoning me for all my sin and delivering me from all guilt … and to just worship and adore Him for whom He is … the Lord God Almighty, God of Creation, God of sustaining His Creation and the God of the New Creation at Calvary. I could not explain the change. I did not even understand everything that had happened. All I knew was that I was different. I felt different. There was peace in my heart. I was bursting with love for Jesus. I wanted the world to know the change. I just wanted to love and worship the Savior of my soul.
1) The immediate change in king Nebuchadnezzar. I cannot speak for him. What went through his mind and how his heart and emotions were influenced only he may say … but I am certain his experience was the same as anyone who has found the Savior’s mercy.
Da 4:34 Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
Mercy and restoration to true sanity of the soul does one thing … and that is to look to heaven because such a soul knows that grace and mercy come from the Throne Room of Glory and no other place. Not king David, but another author penned important words that are helpful to us to know and understand where our focus must be and where our helps comes from
Ps 123:1 I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.
As soon as king Nebuchadnezzar’s acknowledged God as the true supreme God who reigns everywhere, his sanity was restored and he praised the Most High. You see, spiritually speaking, from the beastly insanity of spiritual deadness to the delight and refreshment of spiritual light and life, there must be a change of attitude, heart, affiliation and Lordship. In the business of your life, your home and family, your career or business, your studies and recreation … where is your heart? Where do you focus your attention? Do you occupy yourself with the here and now? Are you possessed with pleasure, image, wealth or earthly security? If you do, you focus is in the wrong place. Heaven must have your attention … or you die spiritually!
2) Notice how king Nebuchadnezzar compares God’s life to his own. I honored and glorified him who lives forever. He knows he is mortal and will die … yet God, he says … lives forever. He honors and glorifies Him who is eternal. This very concept ought to drive people to consider that if God is eternal, He lives forever … what about man He created in His image and likeness? Surely the soul lives forever. That is the teaching of the Bible. The king realized this after his bout of beastly existence … what about you? If God lives forever and my soul lives forever … where do I want my soul to be? With God in heaven or in hell with the devil? Why are choices so difficult to make about whom to follow. Surely it ought to be a “no brainer!”
3) Notice how king Nebuchadnezzar compares God’s kingdom and reign to his (and any earthly king’s) … His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. He moves from the eternal existence of God to the eternal existence of God’s Kingdom and Rule. He acknowledges that kingdoms come and go … yet God’s Kingdom continues from one generation to another … endlessly! What a grasp of God and His reign. Suddenly it is no longer the king and himself and his glory … it is all about God. This is how it ought to be. How often do we get all puffed up thinking we have arrived in business or in achievements? How often do we make ourselves great? That was this king and God dealt with him in the fields amongst beasts to bring him to the understanding that there is one true God and He is King eternally. Does God need to break us through punishment and discipline? Or will we and do we acknowledge His eternal existence as God and King and that His Kingdom is eternal and that He enjoys dominion over all nations and peoples whether they know it or like it … or not?
4) King Nebuchadnezzar now reaches the point where he acknowledges that people compared to God are nothing. Nothing in the sense that they are powerless as individuals and in unity against God.
Da 4:35 All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” Look at the nothingness of the people of Babel!
Look at the nothingness of this king … he landed up in grasslands with animals for companionship. This is true of all people outside of Jesus Christ. Their nothingness is seen and evaluated in their death … and eternity of uselessness other than pain and suffering. Only in Jesus do we become something … Children of the Living God. We are
1Pe 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
See the nothingness before Jesus … Once you were not a people … and … once you had not received mercy. But then … look at what we are in the Lord Jesus! Truly the reason for worship and rejoicing! In verse 36 the king is restored. But note
Da 4:37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
Pride causes one to become beastly and fall.
Dear Lord, thank You for this passage and the lessons I may learn about You and myself. Help me to worship You endlessly with passion and may I be demonstrative in my living under Your Lordship and reign for the world to see. Amen.