06/10/2020 GETTING THROUGH IT
(Lessons from King Nebuchadnezzar)
Daniel 4:1-3 This is a proclamation of Nebuchadnezzar the king, which he sent to people of every language in every nation of the world:
Greetings:
I want you all to know about the strange thing that THE MOST HIGH GOD did to me. It was incredible—a mighty miracle! And now I know for sure that HIS kingdom is everlasting; HE reigns forever and ever.
KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR
MY PROCLAMATION
Greeting. I am called Nebuchadnezzar. “Nebuchadnezzar” is the name the Israelites call me. My father named me Nabu-kudurru-usur, which means “Nabu, preserve my first son.” Nabu is the name of one of the gods in my culture. Names are very important in my culture. That’s why when we capture slaves, we rename them. We want to assimilate them into their new culture as quickly as possible. We want to separate these slaves from their past and their GOD.
Let me tell you who I am. I am the king of Babylon, one of the greatest cities in the whole kingdom. I am the most powerful man in all the kingdoms. I have a powerful army and I have conquered many cities, which are now cities within my kingdom. I am king!
A few years ago, I attacked and conquered Jerusalem, the famous city of the Jews. I took the sacred cups from the Hebrew Temple of GOD and placed them in the treasury house of my god, Shinar. Daniel 1:2 I selected the best of the Jewish boy captives and instructed Ashpenaz, my master eunuch, and the chief of my court officials to train these boys so they would become Babylonians. I wanted to change their minds and change their allegiance to me and my gods.
There were four special Jewish boys. The one called Daniel I re-named “Belteshazzar,” which means “Bel protect the King.” “Bel” means lord or master. Bel is what we call the Babylonian, god, Marduk. We call Marduk lord and master because that is what we believe. I gave the other three Jewish boys Babylonian names too. I called them Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego. These Jewish boys turned out to be very smart and very wise. All of them became advisors in my court. Their advice seemed to far better than that of all the skilled magicians and astrologists that I encountered in all my kingdom. Daniel 1:20
During my early reign, I was very powerful! If fact, I was intoxicated with power. Intoxication can be a dangerous condition. It can distort one’s vision, cause one to see oneself bigger than one actually is. Intoxication can also cause one to make mistakes, stumble, and fall. Power intoxication can be a dangerous condition. It can also lead to what I like to call “royal tantrums.” A “royal tantrum” is when you become so intoxicated with power that when you don’t get what you want or sometimes even when you do get what you want (but want even more), you become irrational and lose sight of the humanity of others. You lash out indiscriminately, not caring what happens to those around you! It is an especially dangerous condition for a king like me, who is already very powerful, because when I went into a royal tantrum, I not only became a danger to others and, as you will see, I became a danger to myself as well. This is what happened: