Daniel 4:1-18

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

Dan 4:1-18

It does us good to hear how a man like Nebuchadnezzar spoke. We do not know what we ourselves have said, as to its effect, until we have heard some other man repeat our own words. The speaker never exactly expresses himself. He is talking to his own consciousness, and is often approved by himself; he therefore supposes that other people can hear what he is speaking to his own spirit. He does not give utterance to all his thought, that is to say, an outside aspect and effect. The speaker hears his own tones; he also hears, as it were, spiritual tones when none but himself can hear. Not, therefore, until we hear other people read our letters do we know what we have written: we are not ashamed of the letters, but we are ashamed of their reading of them. We do not know our own sermons until we hear other people quote from them; then in very deed we are ashamed that we ever preached. Quotation is the ruin of eloquence. The quotation shows how short we have fallen of our purpose. It is interesting beyond all other studies in words to hear an out-and-out worldling talk about religion; it is refreshing, exhilarating, surprising, confounding. We should listen to Nebuchadnezzar. How wondrously he mixes up gleams of the true faith with the strange crosslights of his own pagan thought and heathen education! He is perfectly willing to mix up ideas respecting any number of gods with the ideas which he has derived from the study of his own mythology. Nor must we be amused at him as at a unique specimen of the genus theologia. We are always mixing thoughts that have no proper or vital relation to one another. Herein again is that saying true, Ye cannot mix, or serve, or intermingle God and mammon. The speech of the Church is partly Christian and partly pagan The whole utterance of the Church needs revision, filtration, sanctification. In this chapter Nebuchadnezzar is both heathen and Israelitish; there is part of himself and part of Daniel in his talk; he is in an initial state of education into higher mysteries; and it is delightful to hear how this infantile giant tries to talk the new speech.

Nebuchadnezzar was an instance of sudden conversion: he began instantaneously to preach and testify and publish; he went into authorship before he was a week old in the new faith. That was characteristic of the man's ardour: he was an urgent, furious, tempestuous man, and what he did he did at once. It would have been better if he could have waited, thought, studied, prayed. But you cannot re-create a Nebuchadnezzar; we must allow him to be himself, for he never could be any other man. We must not even smile at these child-letters; there is something sweet in them, and comely, and right beautiful, such as suits the soul when it is in its finest moods. We must not parse the religion of Nebuchadnezzar; it is not laid before us for grammatical analysis and criticism. He who would parse a child's letter ought never to receive one.

Nebuchadnezzar the king thought it good to show the signs and wonders that the high God had wrought toward him ( Dan 4:2 ). This was a fine passion. Here indeed is a sign of reality. A wonderful change is marked by this new thought. Many men who look upon Nebuchadnezzar as a pagan could allow all the signs and wonders of God to pass by without note, comment, or record. We have filled up our diaries with chaff; we ought to have stored their pages as garners are stored with wheat. Many have risen to see the dawn of day from some mountain tower, and have all the while regretted that they got up so soon. Many persons allow a whole summer to pass away without ever seeing a flower; yet they think they see it. When we charge men with not having read the Bible they say they read it through once every year. Perfectly so, and yet they never read it at all; but you cannot drive into such heads the thought you mean to convey by "not reading." A man cannot read the Bible through once a year if he reads it at all; it is not an almanac; it does not admit of being read through once a year. It is the eternal, the infinite record; it arrests a man at the first verse, and will not let him pass by. If he be a fool, and can vault over the Bible once a year, who would disturb his nightmare or his mechanical piety? Nebuchadnezzar was a man of different metal. He had seen a new revelation, and he would talk about it; something new had shone upon him from the opening heavens, and he would tell all the empire about it Armenia, Syria, and the dwellers by the Persian Gulf, and the Elamites, and all who trembled at his frown, should hear that he had seen a new aspect of the universe. Nebuchadnezzar had not yet become so ineffably pious as to say nothing about his piety. There are Christian men concerning whom it would be a revelation if one of their workpeople could be told that they even professed Christianity; an errand-boy might be frightened out of his propriety and sanity if he were told that his employer had family prayer. Nebuchadnezzar did not belong to the silent religious community: he would publish a proclamation, he would announce a fact, he would preach what little Gospel he had; he would say, There is more light in creation than I had imagined: come, let me tell you what the light is like, and what wizardry it works in colour and shadow and suggestion.

That the spiritual impression of Nebuchadnezzar was of the right kind is shown by his introductory exclamation, "How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders!" It is beautiful to see how the shining of God upon the soul affrights all our little speech. Here the man is touching the inexpressible, the infinite; he can only hint at his meaning by way of exclamation: How great his signs! how mighty his wonders! there is no attempt at analysis, explanation, measurement, definite statement. All religious exaltation is overpowering. The mischief of our piety is that we can tell just what we believe and exactly what we feel. When a man can be so definite about his religion, the question is whether he has any religion to be definite about. No religion is complete that does not simply defy the believer to tell what it is in all its scope, in all its indications, in all its exalting enthusiasms. Sometimes we can only tell our creed by our tears. When a man touches the highest point of his faith he is silent; when he does speak he speaks in great bursts of feeling. To those who listen he may indeed be incoherent and unconnected, so that they, listening, may wonder what he is saying, for the only thing definite about the man is the indefiniteness of unutterable joy. Do not measure God; report nothing concerning his stature; gather up his universe, and regard it but a symbol, poor and dim, of his majesty. We are the better for these great billows of enthusiasm rolling through the soul; it does us good to be brought into the sanctuary of the unutterable; so long as we can speak all we feel the fountains of the great deep have not been broken up. Incoherence in the sanctuary may be but the highest and grandest aspect of eloquence: how great, how noble, how wondrous: all this is but exclamation to the man who carries his religion as a burden; but all this is inspiration to the man of whose soul his religion is an essential part.

Nebuchadnezzar will now speak about himself, and like all undisciplined minds, minds that are just feeling the first touch of intellectual dawn of the highest kind, he will tell his dream. Let us hear the king's quaint speech: "I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace": there was nothing wanting; every goblet full of wine, every corner an echo of music, every chamber a refuge from pagan trouble and imperial excitement: I never was more comfortable or restful in my life; the house never was so charming, the palace was never so grand, and I pillowed my head on down, and expected to see visions that would make me glad by doubling and redoubling all the poetry and music and wealth of my existence: that was my delightful case; and even in the midst of that enjoyment "I saw a dream which made me afraid." Let us not tamper with this graphic language, but take it as it stands in the English tongue. Nebuchadnezzar "saw" a dream: it was part of himself, yet it was wholly outside, so that he could fasten his eyes upon it; it was in him and without him, above him, round about him, beneath him; and he was "afraid." Sometimes we ask the question, Do dreams come true? Why, they are true. A dream does not need to come true, because it is there, a fact; it is already part of the history of the brain. There need be no other hell than a dream. Who can count the resources of God? In a dream we can be burned; in a dream we can be encoiled by serpents; in a dream we can be eternally suffocated; in a dream the serpent's fang may be within one inch of striking our life, and we may have no power of resistance or flight. The dream made Nebuchadnezzar afraid, and Nebuchadnezzar was not accustomed to fear, for he had brass enough, iron enough, chariots enough, horsemen enough; at the blast of his trumpet an empire stood up in his defence: but a dream made a fool of him. You cannot strike a dream; you cannot lay your hands upon it and compel it to make terms with you. These are the resources of God. If he would fight us with lightning we could make some device that might catch the lightning and bear it away; if he would fight us always with whirlwinds we could order our masonry accordingly, and hide ourselves behind the granite wall till the great euroclydon cried itself to rest: but he will not do this; he will trouble us with dreams, and make us afraid with visions; and whilst we are flourishing in the palace he will make the floor tremble under us, or there will be a movement behind the screen, the curtain, the arras, and that movement will frighten us more than we ever were affrighted by thunderstorm at midnight. If Nebuchadnezzar had heard that an army was thundering at one of the gates of Babylon, he would have been delighted: war is the amusement of kings; battle is the recreation of royal luxury and ambition: but this was a dream that came through the great brass gates that made the great wall of Babylon memorable as one of the finest structures in the world. You cannot bar out a dream, or lock it out, or bolt it out, or set a watch to keep it out; a wakeful sentry, armed at every point, may be looking at the dream while it touches him, and he cannot touch it, or blow it back, or threaten it, or defy it; it smiles upon him, and passes on, to work its murder in the king's head and the king's heart, and turn the king's imagination into an intolerable perdition. When Pilate was puzzled about the new king and the new theology and the unheard-of sedition which was not written in the Roman books, "his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." God has made great use of dreams in history. Spiritual impressions may be laughed at by those who read nothing but cold type; but they are regarded as having unutterable suggestion to those of a more sensitive and exalted order of mind.

Nebuchadnezzar now sought for interpretation. He had all the wise men of Babylon brought before him:

"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, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers: and I told the dream before them; but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof" ( Dan 4:6-7 ).

In exalting God, are we to be outdone by a heathen king? Have we nothing to say for our God, our Master, our Christ, the Cross by which we are saved? Is our piety to be dumb? Are our prayers to be so spoken that none may hear them? Is there no place for enthusiasm in the service of the Church? Exclamation may be argument, enthusiasm may be logic with wings, reason on fire. Are we to take no heed of spiritual expressions? Nebuchadnezzar had his dreams, and remembered them, and encouraged them, and dwelt upon them, and sought interpretations from them. Have we no dreamings of a moral kind? Are there no efforts of imagination which require to be explained? Are spiritual impressions nothing? Is the world we can see all there is to be seen or appreciated or valued or appropriated? What! has it come to this: that we have life that could grasp the heavens, and yet must feed it with a handful of dust? It cannot be; the irony is its own answer. Is it of no account that all the wise men have failed? Christ has not yet been written down. The very noblest attempt that ever has been made to reduce Jesus Christ to insignificance has but formed part of the pedestal on which he stands in infinite uniqueness and unparalleled glory. Where are those wise men themselves? Ah me! they wrote when they were in mid-life, when the blood was full and hot, when the world was applauding and cheering and paying; but when these same assailants had to put their own theories to the test they found their polysyllables were hard pillows on which to lay a dying head. No religion is complete that forsakes a man when he is an invalid, when he has lost all his money, when his friends have withdrawn from him and left him in loneliness; no religion is worth cultivating that will not sit up with the sick man all night, and a hundred nights, and never say, I am tired. The religion of Jesus Christ has proved itself practically; it has a sublime argument and is itself an argument sublime: but when it comes to practical service, the real service of man, it may dismiss all its advocates and will prove itself by its beneficence. It wipes the tear from every eye, it trims the midnight lamp, and makes the flickering light as a dawning morning to the soul that yields itself to its inspiring, illuming, ennobling influence; it is as a rod and a staff in the valley of the shadow of death, and when our loved ones leave us Christianity tarries in the house to say: "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

Christianity does not die with the dying saint; Christianity goes to the grave, fills it with flowers, and then comes back to the house of mourning, and says it will tarry till the torn hearts be healed, and they are permitted to begin a new and hopeful youth. The religion that can do that has for its symbol the Cross, and for its end the glory that excelleth.

Prayer

Almighty God we cannot tell what thou art doing, but if thou wilt walk with us through all the mystery of this life, and tell us somewhat of its meaning, we shall be comforted and strengthened. There are those who tell us the meanings of thy riddles and parables, but they do not fill the soul with sacred contentment; we feel that the answer is still beyond, a larger reply than has entered into the heart of man to conceive; if thou thyself, by thy Holy Spirit given unto us through our Lord Jesus Christ, wilt explain the meaning of all that is passing around us, our edification will be assured, and thou shalt have all the praise. We see great tumult, and we are afraid of it; we see the great billow rolling towards our poor little vessel, and we cannot tell why the waters should be angry with us; then we see portents in the sky, strange lights, cross-fires, wonderful colours; sometimes we think we hear voices in the wind that we ought to know, voices of old friends, voices of genial ones, who would make our life better if they could; then in our dreaming what trouble we have: we cannot reconcile the lines or the figures or the voices; we know not what is going on around us: what wonder if sometimes our knees smite one another in fear, and we are utterly left without strength to do the duty of the day? Lord, abide with us; say unto us, Be not afraid, it is I, working out all manner of discipline for the soul's good: then shall we be glad in the storm, and we shall have our full vision in the night-time, and at midnight we shall sing, and at noonday we shall be glad to rapture. We begin to see a little of thy meaning; now that we do see it we are glad with a sacred joy, we say, This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes; we should have been presumptuous but for that affliction, we should have trusted to ourselves but for God's humiliation of our vanity; we should have said, We know all things, but that we were convinced of our boundless ignorance; we should have put forth our hand to touch the forbidden tree if God had not smitten it with disease, and left us to mourn over it as men mourn over a wreck. Now take us wholly into thy care; we would rest in our Saviour's arms; he who loved us so much as to die for us will love us unto the end, he will complete in our final deliverance what he began in our redemption. We have seen Jesus walking amongst his disciples, pitying their littleness, condescending to their weakness, anticipating their hunger, going to them through the wild winds when the waves were high; and in all this he was but expressing his inexpressible love. The same Lord rules, the same sweet Jesus looks down upon us all; he will not let one of us perish, he will put out his hands farther than sin can drive us, and he will draw us to himself again. Let the Lord's blessing be given to us as if it were a new benediction: surprise us by the brightness of thy presence, by the tenderness of thy voice, by the largeness of thy gifts: once more show thyself to be acquainted with us, so that there is not a word on our tongue, or a thought in our heart, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. If thou dost know our need thou wilt supply it; we have not been permitted to wish; thou hast been so good yesterday that we know thou wilt not fail us tomorrow. Amen.