Daniel 4
Charles Spurgeon · Citado em PreceptAustin
Daniel 4
Spurgeon comments on Ps 91:11,12 - Not one guardian angel, as some fondly dream, but all the angels are here alluded to. They are the bodyguard of the princes of the blood imperial of heaven, and they have received commission from their Lord and ours to watch carefully over all the interests of the faithful. When men have a charge they become doubly careful, and therefore the angels are represented as bidden by God himself to see to it that the elect are secured. It is down in the marching orders of the hosts of heaven that they take special note of the people who dwell in God. It is not to be wondered at that the servants are bidden to be careful of the comfort of their Master's guests; and we may be quite sure that when they are specially charged by the Lord himself they will carefully discharge the duty imposed upon them. To keep thee in all thy ways. To be a bodyguard, a garrison to the body, soul, and spirit of the saint. The limit of this protection "in all thy ways" is yet no limit to the heart which is right with God. It is not the way of the believer to go out of his way. He keeps in the way, and then the angels keep him. The protection here promised is exceeding broad as to place, for it refers to all our ways, and what do we wish for more? How angels thus keep us we cannot tell. Whether they repel demons, counteract spiritual plots, or even ward off the more subtle physical forces of disease, we do not know. Perhaps we shall one day stand amazed at the multiplied services which the unseen bands have rendered to us. Verse 12. They, that is the angels, God's own angels, shall cheerfully become our servants. They shall bear thee up in their hands; as nurses carry little children, with careful love, so shall those glorious spirits bear up each individual believer. Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone; even minor ills they ward off. It is most desirable that we should not stumble, but as the way is rough, it is most gracious on the Lord's part to send his servants to bear us up above the loose pebbles. If we cannot have the way smoothed it answers every purpose if we have angels to bear us up in their hands. Since the greatest ills may arise out of little accidents, it shows the wisdom of the Lord that from the smaller evils we are protected. (Treasury of David—Psalm 91) From heaven - Heaven is a key word in Da 4 - 11x in 10v - Da 4:13, 15, 23, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37.
Daniel 4
Spurgeon - He is not like the sheep which are preserved of the Great Shepherd, but like the hunted beast which is doomed to die. He lives a brutish life and dies a brutish death. Wallowing in riches, surfeited with pleasure, he is fatted for the slaughter, and dies like the ox in the shambles. Alas! that so noble a creature should use his life so unworthily, and end it so disgracefully. So far as this world is concerned, wherein does the death of many men differ from the death of a dog? The beasts of the field - God used the metaphor of a beast to describe the Gentile kingdoms in Daniel 7 and the last world ruler who would eventually come out of the beastly Gentile kingdoms (Rev 11:7; 13:1ff; 14:9, 11; etc) Warren Wiersbe rightly concludes that... Men and women are made in the image of God, but when they leave God out of their lives and resist His will, they can descend to the level of animals. “Do not be like the horse or like the mule,” warns King David, who was guilty of acting like both (Ps. 32:9NKJV). Like the impulsive horse, he rushed into sin when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then like the stubborn mule, he delayed confessing his sins and repenting (2Sa 11:1ff). When the Lord arrested Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, He compared the pious rabbi to a stubborn ox when He said, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 9:5NKJV). (Wiersbe, W. W. Be Resolute) Given grass to eat like cattle - He was to become a strict vegetarian! Until - This time phrase always signal an end (praise God!). We all do well to remember that it is God Alone Who changes the times and epochs (Da 2:21-note ) The psalmist reminds us... For not from the east, nor from the west, Nor from the desert comes exaltation But God is the Judge; He puts down one, and exalts another. (Ps 75:6, 7) Jeremiah echoes this truth of God's sovereignty over His creation... I (Jehovah) have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in My sight. (Jer 27:5) Until you recognize (Da 4:32, 5:21) - The clear indication is that after seven years of humiliation and crawling like a beast on the earth, the King will indeed come to the end of himself and will come to recognize the Most God as the only true King of Heaven and Earth. Parker explains... When will God take us out of the furnace? When He can see His image enough. When will God cease to lacerate our poor shrinking flesh? When we have learned to obey Him (cp Ps 119:67, 71). When will he take the wolf away from the door, so that we can go out into the meadow and enjoy the sunshine? When we have yielded back all wickedly acquired gain, and have thrown down the thirty pieces of burning silver for which we sold the Christ of God. Why this penal system in the universe? Why loss? Why decrepitude and helplessness? Why burning fevers? Why all the maladies that afflict the body? Why all the ills that flesh is heir to? "Till thou know." (Ibid) R. K. Harrison attests to a personal encounter with a clinical case with some similarities to the king's condition... A great many doctors spend an entire, busy professional career without once encountering an instance of the kind of monomania described in the book of Daniel. The present writer, therefore, considers himself particularly fortunate to have actually observed a clinical case of [lycanthropy] in a British mental institution in 1946. The patient was in his early 20's, who reportedly had been hospitalized for about five years. His symptoms were well developed on admission, and diagnosis was immediate and conclusive. He was of average height and weight with good physique, and was in excellent bodily health. His mental symptoms included pronounced anti-social tendencies, and because of this he spent the entire day from dawn to dusk outdoors, in the grounds of the institution.... "His daily routine consisted of wandering around the magnificent lawns with which the otherwise dingy hospital situation was graced, and it was his custom to pluck up and eat handfuls of the grass as he went along. On observation he was seen to discriminate carefully between grass and weeds, and on inquiry from the attendant, the writer was told the diet of this patient consisted exclusively of grass from hospital lawns. He never ate institutional food with other inmates, and his only drink was water.... "The writer was able to examine him cursorily, and the only physical abnormality noted consisted of a lengthening of the hair and a coarse, thickened condition of the finger-nails. Without institutional care, the patient would have manifested precisely the same physical conditions as those mentioned in Daniel 4:33" (Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969). Joseph Parker comments that... Some men require violent teaching. We will not obey God's love: when he whispers to us we do not hear him; unless he take up the trumpet of his thunder, we pay no attention to the voice of Heaven. Pleasant angels have come to seek us and bring us home, but we have declined their evangel and their gospel and their company; summer has come, with spring on one side and autumn on the other, all beautiful and rich, abounding in all things lovely and useful; and they have said they have come to bring us back to heaven, and we have defied the whole of them. Not until God takes up the rod of his lightning do we begin to be religious. A plague would fill the church; an epidemic would make a prayer-meeting at five o'clock in the morning seasonable: we are cowards! Yet, blessed be God, he does not withhold violence if it will do us good. If we will not have the company of angels we shall be thrust into the society of beasts, and in that humiliation we may be willing to listen to terms and proposals that otherwise would have fallen upon deaf ears; and there in the open field, with only beasts to talk to, we may begin to pray. (Ibid) Daniel 4:26 'And in that it was commanded to leave the stump with the roots of the tree, your kingdom will be assured to you after you recognize that it is Heaven that rules. to leave: Da 4:15 the heavens: Mt 5:34 21:20 Lk 15:18,21 Daniel 4 Resources - Multiple Sermons and Commentaries After you recognize - Here we see God's grace in using the judgment to humble not harden the king's heart, that he might receive spiritual vision. And thus the time of humiliation is promised to come to an end when the king comes to his senses and sees God for Who He really is, the Most High God. Harry
Daniel 4
Spurgeon - Be not proud of race, face, place or grace...Neither God nor man will care to lift up a man who lifts up himself; but both God and good men unite to honour modest worth. Lord, pride, that fearful enemy, So quickly takes control; I plead, this day, Your pardoning grace To cleanse my heart and soul. —DJD Pride is the mother of all sins. Is this not Babylon the great - In human terms, it was great (and in the last days will again be great), but not when weighed on God's scales (cp Da 5:27)! Rebellious men will continue to trust in Babylon the great (See article - Babylon is Babylon!), even until the very end of this age, when God finally says "Enough!" and renders His final verdict on the great city, John recording that the kings of the earth are seen... standing at a distance because of the fear of her (figuratively speaking of Babylon) torment, saying, 'Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.' (cp Da 4:31!)...And a strong angel (cp "watcher" Da 4:13, 23) took up a stone like a great millstone (great enough to crush and obliterate the great city) and threw it into the sea, saying, "Thus will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer. (Rev 18:10-note, Rev 18:21-note, cp Rev 16:19-note, [note that first "great city" in this verse = Jerusalem = "into three parts"], Rev 17:5, cp Ezekiel's prophecy Ezek 26:17) (See The Destruction of Babylon and Babylon’s Predicted Destruction) Archer notes that Nebuchadnezzar's... works there were most impressive. The celebrated Ishtar Gate...seems to have been erected by him, along with the enameled-brick facing, displaying a procession of dragons and bulls. The East India House Inscription, now in London, refers to about twenty temples he rebuilt or refurbished in Babylon and Borsippa, and also to a vast system of fortifications and large shipping docks (cf. Ira M. Price, The Dramatic Story of Old Testament History [Philadelphia: Revell, 1925], p. 356). On one of his inscriptions, Nebuchadnezzar boasted, "The fortifications of Esagila [the temple of Marduk] and Babylon I strengthened, and established the name of my reign forever" (cf. George A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible [Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1916], p. 479). To this inscription he appended a prayer to Marduk: "O Marduk, lord of the gods, my divine creator, may my deeds find favor before thee … Thou art indeed my deliverer and my help, O Marduk; by thy faithful word which does not change, may my weapons advance, be sharp and be stronger than the weapons of the foe!" At the time of his enthronement, he had composed a hymn that included this humble petition to Marduk: "I am the prince who obeys thee, the creation of thy hand. Thou art my creator, and the sovereignty over the hosts of men thou hast entrusted to me. According to thy mercy, O lord, which thou hast extended over all of them, incline unto compassion thine exalted power, and set the fear of thy godhead in my heart. Grant that which may seem good unto thee" (Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 1, pl. 53). Below is a 16th century engraving by by Dutch artist Martin Heemskerck depicting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world... The king reflected - Would that this read "The king repented", but 12 months had passed and no watcher's voice had disturbed his days and apparently no more frightful dreams had disturbed his nights. He was content and consumed with self. He misinterpreted God's silence which is a danger Solomon alluded to (and to which we all should take heed)... Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil. (Ec 8:11) Tony Evans... We see a great lesson of this in Daniel 4. This is a sweet chapter because sometimes we get the big head. A song from the sixties began “Mister Big Stuff, just who do you think you are?” Well, old Nebuchadnezzar thought he was God’s gift to creation... Some of us are crazy when it comes to thinking about God, because we think wrong about Him. Until we start thinking right about God, we won’t think right about ourselves. Only after Nebuchadnezzar started thinking right about God could he say, “At that time my reason returned to me. And my majesty and splendor were restored to me” (Da 4:36). (Our God is Awesome) If old Nebby were here, he would tell you, “Don’t ever do what I did, standing on my balcony talking about ‘Look at this great Babylon that I have built.’ “Don’t ever do that because my nails started to grow, and hair started growing out all over me. I crawled like an animal for seven years, but I learned my lesson. When I got my sanity back, I let it be known that there’s only one God in the universe. So let me tell you, God will bring you down to the dirt on your face, if He has to, to teach you this lesson.” (Evans, A. T. The Battle is the Lord's : Waging Victorious Spiritual Warfare) Babylon the great (See excellent summary and pictures emphasizing the greatness of ancient Babylon) - This affirmation takes us back to the beginning of Babylon in Genesis. And the beginning of his (Nimrod's) kingdom was Babel (confusion) and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. (Ge 10:10). Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2 And it came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4 And they said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. (Ge 11:1-9)
Daniel 4
Spurgeon comments: The Psalmist looked so high that he could look no higher. Not to the hills, but to the God of the hills he looked. He believed in a personal God, and knew nothing of that modern pantheism which is nothing more than atheism wearing a fig leaf. The uplifted eyes naturally and instinctively represent the state of heart which fixes desire, hope, confidence, and expectation upon the Lord. God is everywhere, and yet it is most natural to think of him as being above us, in that glory land which lies beyond the skies. "O thou that dwellest in the heavens", just sets forth ,the unsophisticated idea of a child of God in distress: God is, God is in heaven, God resides in one place, and God is evermore the same, therefore will I look to him. When we cannot look to any helper on a level with us, it is greatly wise to look above us; in fact, if we have a thousand helpers, our eyes should still be toward the Lord. The higher the Lord is the better for our faith, since that height represents power, glory, and excellence, and these will be all engaged on our behalf. We ought to be very thankful for spiritual eyes; the blind men of this world, however much of human learning they may possess, cannot behold our God, for in heavenly matters they are devoid of sight. Yet we must use our eyes with resolution, for they will not go upward to the Lord of themselves, but they incline to look downward, or inward, or anywhere but to the Lord: let it be our firm resolve that the heavenward glance shall not be lacking. If we cannot see God, at least we will look towards him. God is in heaven as a king in his palace; he is here revealed, adored, and glorified: thence he looks down on the world and sends succours to his saints as their needs demand; hence we look up, even when our sorrow is so great that we can do no more. It is a blessed condescension on God's part that he permits us to lift up our eyes to his glorious high throne; yea, more, that he invites and even commands us so to do. When we are looking to the Lord in hope, it is well to tell him so in prayer: the Psalmist uses his voice as well as his eye. Notice the progression: (1) Personal choice (enabled by grace) to look up (cp Isa 45:22KJV). (2) Reason returned - God's sovereign will and word fulfilled. (3) Praise Offered - Not for getting his kingdom back but uninhibited praise to the real King, the Most High God.