I've been thorn among roses after that, thank you very much. Some of you know probably most of you know I'm involved in a class now here on Wednesday nights, Christiani and the formation of America. And I'm enjoying this class as much as I've enjoyed teaching a long time and I'm learning a ton about American history and about the role that our faith played in making this nation what it is unique in all the nations of the world and I'm doing a lot of reading outside the class and enjoying it. I love history, I love this country, I love my God, I love our faith and to combine those things has just been wonderful. One of the things that stands out as I read about the founding fathers and the framers is that the contrast, and I'll just say this across the board, the contrast between when you read what they had to say in their speeches and their writings, compare that to what we get from our political leaders today. It's like professionals and amateurs, it's astounding the difference, the intellectual content and the vocabularies and so forth. We think we're smart, we need to read some of these founders and their writings, you need it if the source, just to know what a lot of the words are. Another thing that strikes me is the contrast between the greatness of these men and women, their greatness and their humility. They're so humble about who they are and what they are, knowing that it is God Almighty has given them everything they have and it's a trust that he's given to them, the contrast between their greatness and their humility. I said about way of introduction to Texas morning because it's also a study in contrast. I'm going to talk about those contrasts, let me set it up a little bit, we're reading Daniel chapter 4 verses 1 through 18. If you recall the last couple of weeks or if you weren't here, let me just tell you that we last, a couple of some of you who looked at the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego refusing to bow down to the 90 foot idol of gold that Nebuchadnezzar had made and they get thrown into the fiery furnace and we saw at the end of last week it was Hebrews 3, fiery furnace 0 or the thing how you look at it, you could say it was Hebrews 4 because there was a fourth one that looked like a son of the gods, the Nebuchadnezzar and his furnace 0. And now approximately we know by the dating of the chapter, approximately 10 to 15 years go by here, it reads like all the next day but about 10 to 15 years go by here and Nebuchadnezzar speaks in this chapter 4 here of Daniel is the only chapter in the entire Bible written by pagan. It's known written by a non-believer, a non follower of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And as we read this, we're going to look at the contrast between Nebuchadnezzar's mindset and worldview and the mindset and the worldview of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego. It's a studying contrast, a real long with me from Daniel to chapter 4. Verse 1, King Nebuchadnezzar to the nations and peoples of every language who live in all the earth, may you prosper greatly, it is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the most high God has performed for me, how great are his signs, how mighty his wonders, his kingdom is an eternal kingdom, his dominion and doers, generation to generation. I Nebuchadnezzar was at home in my palace, contented and prosperous, I had a dream that made me afraid. As I was lying in bed, the images and visions that passed through my mind terrified me. So I commanded all the wise men of Babylon be brought before me to interpret the dream for me. When the magicians and chancers, astrologers and diviners came, I told them the dream that they could not interpret it for me. Daniel came into my presence. I told him the dream. He is called Belteshazzar after the name of my God and the spirit of the Holy God is in him. I said, Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, I know that the spirit of the Holy God is in you and no mystery is too difficult for you. Here's my dream, interpret it for me. These are the visions I saw while lying in bed. I looked and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. The tree grew large and strong, and its top touched the sky. It was visible to the ends of the earth. Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and on it was food for all. Under it the wild animals found shelter, and the birds lived in its branches. From it every creature was fed. The visions I saw while lying in bed, I looked and there before me was a holy one, a messenger coming down from heaven. He called and allowed voice, cut down the tree, and trim off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit, let the animals flee from under it and the birds run its branches, but let the stump and its roots bound with iron and bronze remain in the ground in the grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth, let his mind be changed from that of a man, let him be given the mind of an animal till seven times past for him. The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declared the verdict, so that the living may know that the most high is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lolliest of people. This is the dream that I, King Nebuchadnezzar had, now belt of shazard, tell me what it means for none of the wise men in my kingdom can interpret it for me, but you can, because the spirit of the Holy God is in you, let's pray to God. Father, we thank you for this word, it is eternal, it is abiding, it is unchanging, the Lord, ask withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God abides forever, I do not pray that you would make this word alive to us, this word is alive, it is living, it is active and it is sharper than any two-edged sword, and it pierces down to the divider, it is so in marrow, Lord I don't ask that you make this word alive for us, I ask that you make us alive to your word, that you use this word to break us where we are stiff necked, and to heal us where we have been broken, and to use this word to mold us, and shape us, and shake us up if you have to, and rattle our cages if you need to, comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, that you use this word to meet each and every one of us, including the one who preaches at the point of our need, who ask in the name of Jesus the living word, oh man, well I read a passage like that and I want to say any questions, good, let's go chapter five, can't do that, we're going to talk about this passage this week and get the interpretation next week, but once you know this passage is a study in contrast, so let me get to the first one, the contrast between the rhetoric and the reality, the rhetoric and the reality, and remember at the end of chapter three, in Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego emerged from the flames unscathed, and Nebuchadnezzar was, he was praising that, he sounded like a veritable charismatic, he said that the most high God, or Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego was to be praised, and he threatened with great bodily harm, anybody who said anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego, he sounded like a praise service in a Pentecostal church, and chapter four begins with some of the same rhetoric, and he says I'm Nebuchadnezzar, and I'm so great, he says it is my pleasure, verse two, to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the most high God has performed for me, how great are his signs, how mighty his wonders, his kingdom as an eternal kingdom, his dominion endures from generation to generation. All I'm missing here is an altar call, a few verses of just as I am. I mean, he is sounding very much like a true believer in the one true God, but as soon as trouble comes, if a Nebuchadnezzar comes in the form of a dream, a troubling dream, as soon as trouble comes, who does Nebuchadnezzar turn to? It's not the Lord God most high. Nope, he calls from the editions, the enchanters, the astrologers and diviners, not the God of Daniel, not the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego. That's just like a pagan. That's just like a pagan. God performs miracles in front of him, he does great things to him, and yet when things get tough, he forgets all about God. Isn't that like a pagan? Isn't that like me? Isn't that like us? We talk a good game, folks, some of us anyway. We talk a good game, boiling trouble hits. We forget all about the God who is sorry. I mean, I'm cruising along thinking I've got everything under control. I want to say, you can relax for a while, God, I'm here, I can handle it. Then the bottom falls down. I become a veritable prayer warrior at that time. I mean constantly fellowship with God when the crisis comes. Rhetoric versus reality. A few weeks ago, when I first encountered the astrologers of Babylon, I made the comment about astrology and what it is, the belief that the stars, God, are destinies, and I told you how the signs of the Zodiac since they were set somewhere in the first 200 centuries AD, how we're now off because the earth has shifted on its axis. We're now off one full sign of the Zodiac, and I'm not telling you which way, but whatever you read in your horoscope is false, it's wrong. It's wrong by a degree again, okay? We talked about the astrologers, and I mentioned the time when President Reagan was in office, and we found out that wife Nancy was consulting an astrologer, labeled him to jump quickly out of San Francisco to help set the president's schedule, and it was quite a scandal and appropriately so. I have great admiration for President Reagan on a number of levels. This was a shameful thing that was going on there in the White House, a friend of mine who lived in Los Angeles at the time who was quite esceptic, attended occasionally, Bel Air Presbyterian Church. It's not one of ours, but it's an understanding, good, solid evangelical church, and his comment to me in a letter. Remember letters before there was email and I aming and texting and tweeting. Remember when we used to write letters by hand, he sent me a letter in his own cynical way, talked about going to church and said yeah, Nancy and Ron attend here when her astrologer says it's okay. See folks, the world doesn't need much to condemn it, we're all phonies, to see the difference between our rhetoric and our reality. The world does not need much to be convinced that we are all 14 carat phonies, and when we put anything above God or anything between us and God could be astrology, could be numerology, could be my financial security, could be playing tennis, could be watching the dolphins. I know I just stepped on a bunch of toes there. When we put anything above God or between us and God, that's idolatry folks. That is idolatry. We damage our credibility or we totally destroy it. And again, the world does not need much to be convinced that we are all phony, we're all bogus. Worse than that, we commit idolatry. And God takes a rather dim view of idols. He says in Exodus, chapter 20, the lead into the 10 commandments. He says to them, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me. God takes a very dim view of idolatry. So now I stepped on some of your toes. Let me go ahead and really really mash them. Got any idols in this church? Does church have any idols? We can. We can make the church an idol. We can put the church above or between us and God. We can put Presbyterian, we can make Presbyterianism an idol. We can make our theology an idol. We can make our worship an idol, our music an idol. Calvin said that the human mind is a factory of idolatry. We are able to turn out idols all the time. I can make myself an idol. I can make myself my own idol. First contrast with tears, the contrast between the rhetoric and the reality. And second one is between the pretenders and the prophet. See my guess is, once we read that dream, my guess is that dream is really not all that hard to interpret. My guess is that that dream was fairly transparent. You need to know in ancient Near East, kings and emperors having dreams of trees where the tree stood head and shoulders above all the other trees in the forest. They're not that uncommon. We have records of kings having these dreams. And guess who was always the big tall tree? You didn't have to be Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung. You didn't have to see Avatar to know what was all going on with that tree. So my guess is the magicians, the enchanters, the astrologers and the dividers, they prove I knew what that dream was all about. They just didn't want to say it to the king. So the gosh king, you're matched yet. That's a tough one. We better go away and think about that one. They had an idea what it was about, but they knew, they knew. They were bunch of con artists, con artists and a slight of a hand parlor magicians, they knew. And they were not about to risk their positions and their security and their very lives to speak truth to power, you know, to speak to the king and tell him what the bad news was. And so it's Daniel to the rescue again, Daniel to the rescue, the difference between the pretenders and the prophet. One place is a higher premium on his own life, his own security, his own ability to retain his office. One place is a higher premium on the truth. I remember hearing something years ago that stuck with me, a scribe tells you what he's read, but a prophet tells you what he's seen. And Daniel had seen the glory of God Almighty. He'd seen the glory of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, now the God of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, he had seen the glory of the one true Lord and he was willing to put everything on the line for what he knew to be right and true. Then I'm reading a lot of American history and thoroughly enjoying it just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. When it had been signed, and I told you, I don't know, a month or two months ago that two nations in the history of the world have ever been begun by a covenant. When was ancient Israel? When was the United States of America? That Declaration of Independence, it's a covenant. I never thought about it before. Why didn't I have to be signed? They could have just posted it, but they didn't because the covenant requires some might ratify it. So the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, you know Thomas Jefferson, you may know James Madison, you probably know John Hancock, maybe you don't know the names of John Witherspoon and Benjamin, well you know Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, these men were giants. And after the document had been signed and sent to the printer for publication, someone overheard that actually Dr. Benjamin Rush overheard the conversation between Benjamin Harrison and Virginia and Eldridge Gary of Massachusetts. And Benjamin Harrison said this to Eldridge Gary, I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gary when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body, I shall die in a few minutes. But from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air for an hour or two before you are dead. He wasn't joking. They absolutely knew that what they were doing would have been regarded as treason by the King of England, and if they were captured they would have been hung. So when they signed off that document, that last line saying, and for the support of this Declaration with a firm alliance upon divine providence, capital P, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. And then they put their names to the document. They were willing to literally put their necks on the line for what they knew to be right and true. See, there's pretenders, and then there's a prophet. So the magicians, the enchaners, the astrologers and the diviners, they weren't taking any chances. They said, gosh, imagine that's a tough thing. We need to get back to you on that one. A bunch of phonies, a bunch of pretenders. Daniel knew what it meant to. He knew what that dream meant, and yet Daniel said, I will tell you the truth of your dream. You imagine the, I will tell you what the dream is about. Not because I'm better or smarter than other men, because my God will be glorified. Next Sunday we're going to talk about Daniel's interpretation of the dream in the rest of chapter 4. That's what a real prophet does, folks. That's what a real servant of God does. He glorifies God. The phonies try to cover their back sides. The man of God stands up and says, thus sayeth the Lord, regardless of the consequences. He speaks the truth in love. He speaks the truth in love. And we're not there yet in this country, folks, and I don't know if we'll get there or not, but I'm absolutely convinced. The time could come. The time could come. And for us to say, thus sayeth the Lord, and to speak from this book, it could be a risky proposition. It could be a dangerous thing to say, well, here's what the Bible says. I am a Christian. I'm going to tell you what I believe in the public square. And privacy of our homes and our sanctuary is no problem, but they could come when it could be a risky thing, a dangerous thing to speak up and say, thus sayeth the Lord. And I will tell you very transparently that a lot of what I do week after week when I address what are called controversial, politically incorrect issues. When I speak out about same-sex marriage or about the sanctity of human life or about the ability to proclaim the truth of God and the description of the public square, I don't do that stuff because I just like dealing in the controversy areas. I really don't. I mean, do I have stupid written all over my face? Don't answer that. I do what I do. And I speak out on these issues one because I think God's calling me to do it. But I do it also because I get kids.
And this day may not come in my lifetime, but I am very concerned about the world they inhabit. That they will be able to publicly, without fear of persecution, rejection, sure, repudiation. Yeah, that comes with the turf. But for them to be able to say without fear of persecution or reprisal, I am a Christian. And I believe Jesus when he said, I am the way the truth in the life. And no one comes to the Father but by me. And I believe this book to be the inspired, infallible, and they aren't word of God, for them to be able to continue to say that in their schools and in the public square because I believe is what God has called us to do. The contrast here between the rhetoric and the reality, the prof, the pretenders and the prophet. The contrast between the dreamer and the dream, the dreamer and the dreamer, the never good measure thought he himself was a God that he was above all law and able to tell other people not only what to do, but what to believe and what and how to worship. He thought he would rule over all the known world. And the dream said not so, not so that tree was going to have branches stripped. It was going to be cut down to size quite literally. It was going to stay, roots were going to stay in the ground, but they're going to be bound in iron, foretelling what's going to come to the never good measure in the not too distant future. The men who get put in the positions of authority, and women too, especially men, who get put in positions of great authority, often make the mistake of forgetting who allowed them to be put in that position. We had a very stark reminder of that here in the United States just a couple weeks ago that we're not. Many of our elected officials apparently forgot who put them in office, and in two weeks ago this coming Tuesday, the elected rose up in mass and gave them a stark reminder. We reminded them that power comes from God Almighty, not the government. Power comes from God Almighty is given to the people in a representative republic, and we loan it to our elected officials. And we say to them, here it is, if you handle it well, we might let you keep it for a while. If you miss Hannah, we'll take it back. And we'll give it to somebody else. See how here she handles it. And I hope the newbies that arrived in Washington this week think there's like 69 new representatives and senators. When they get to Washington, I hope they don't forget who put them there and why. Because if they forget, I'm here to say that two years from now or six years from now, whatever the term, we're going to remind them again. People get put in positions of authority. You've heard me quote that old adage. When you see a turtle on the fence post, you know he didn't get their mind himself. Well, a bunch of our turtles got a little shell shocked if you don't mind my putting that way. And even if you do, a little shell shocked a couple weeks ago. We forget folks, everything we have comes to us from God. Everything we have is given to us as a sacred trust from God. It's a stewardship from God. We need to be faithful stewards and what he's given us. Never can measure for God. He forgot. And he was going to get a big wake-up call, the contrast between the dreamer and the dream. But he told Mussolini he thought he was a God or a demigod. He thought he was going to be the ruler of all of his dominion, had delusions of grandeur. They ended when his countrymen executed him on April 28th, 1945, and then he hung his body upside down in a public square. Two days later, Adolf Hitler thought he was going to be the supreme commander of the Third Reich, April 30th, 1945. He appointed a successor, took his mistress Abe Abran into a bunker somewhere, shot her and then killed himself. Paul Pot, the prime minister of Cambodia, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, thought he was above the law. He orchestrated the killing fields, the genocide of two million Cambodians and then locked up with him. Paul Pot died in a little hut in rural Cambodia under house arrest and under various suspicious circumstances. On April 15th, 1998, they forgot. They really thought that who they were was self-made, self-appointed. They forgot if they ever knew there's a God in heaven. And James reminds us, God opposes the proud, chose favor to the humble. The dreamer, verses the dream, the chasm is wide sometimes, the nebuchadnezzar was going to find out, contrast between the rhetoric and the reality, the pretenders and the prophet, the dreamer of the dream and finally the contrast between the watcher and the watched. If you look back at verse 13, nebuchadnezzar says, in the visions I saw while lying in bed, I looked and there before me was a holy one, a messenger coming down from heaven, that word that is translated into their messenger in the NIV in the New American Standard, King James calls him a watcher and actually that's a better translation. It's the first time in the Bible that an angelic being is referred to as a watcher, a one who watches over the affairs of men and women. He's a watcher. What he sees is a man, a king, yes, still a man, a man made in the image of God, not a God, certainly not God himself, made in the image of God an accountable to God for what he does with his life and with his actions. And nebuchadnezzar is going to learn that lesson in a very painful, humiliating way, than not to a distant future. And it's interesting to me, the verse 16, where we read, let his mind to be changed from that of a man, let it be given the mind of an animal to seven times past five for him. Again, you go back to the King James and this has let his heart be changed for man's and let a beast's heart be given unto him, let's seven times pass over him. And the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew language was a lot smaller, a lot less words, a lot less vocabulary. But the word heart in Hebrew, where we would call somebody's heart, usually refers to maybe their emotions. And the Hebrew language, the word heart, refers not just to the emotions, the affections, but also to the intellect and to the will and to the very character, the very nature of the man, who he is. That's this word here. A very core of who? Nebuchadnezzar was. He was going to be changed from that of a man, a royalty, a great king, down to the very level of a beast. He's going to have the heart, the mind, the will, the behavior, the characteristics of an animal. God opposed the proud, chose grace to the humble. Let me ask this. If our lives were subjected to the scrutiny of a watcher, an angelic being a messenger from God who watches over the affairs of men and nations, but over my mind, my heart, my soul, my will, my hands, my feet, if there were a messenger, a watcher, that my life was going to be subjected to that kind of scrutiny. What would he conclude about me today? What would he conclude about us? Would it be a great contrast between my rhetoric and my reality, between my profession and my practice, between my confession and my conduct? Would he see a great contrast, or would he see a great continuity? Well, if that were the only question before the house, we'd all run screaming and say, God help us. I had two conversations in the last two weeks. One of the Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the Jewish friends. And both of them camped out in the fact that we must do right. We must do right. We must do right things before God Almighty. He's watching and he's keeping score. And I said to both of them with respect. And the Jehovah's Witnesses, someone I had just met and the Jews, a friend. I said to both of them with respect. What you're saying is a much different than radical Islam. I'm telling you, I know what I'm talking about. In Islam, they believe we're all born Muslims. You're born with an angel on your left shoulder and an angel on your right shoulder. This guy on the left, he writes down every bad thing you ever do. This guy on the right, he writes down every good thing you ever do. And when the day comes and I'll offer them the God takes the ledger and he opens it up and he reads. He's an accountant in the sky and he told them if you do 51% good, 49% bad, you go to heaven. Guys, we get 72 virgins. I don't know what you ladies get. I think you get the shaft basically. But whatever you get, you go to heaven, 51, 49. If it's 51, 49 to the bad, you go to hell. And I said the difference, the difference between what you believe and the gospel is the grace of God that we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ alone. It is the gift of God not of works. That's any man should both. Stay man. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your mercy, for your grace that we're saved by grace. Father, I know my heart of hearts. If you put me in the position of an African Ezra held, I wouldn't do any better than he did. Lord, I want to think that I would, but I know power crops and absolute power crops absolutely. Lord, I thank you that it's by grace, not by works. We're saved. My prayer this morning is for that man or woman or young person who's here today that maybe has never heard this before. It's been a long time. It's never made sense before. We do not trust in our works, but we all know that best we can do is like filthy rags in your sight and we will all come short of your glory. But by your grace you've provided a means of salvation on an old rugged cross. We've broken the blood with shit. We might be saved. Make our prayer in his name. Amen.
And we thank you for just being here and being part of the family this morning. We're receiving now the benediction of the Lord. Now go in the grace of God the Father, the mercy and compassion of God the Son, fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit and live the life. Amen.