Tas Valley Sermons
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Title: True Power
Bible Readings: Daniel 4. 1-8, 19-27, 28-37
PICTURING PEACE
Conversion can be a long and messy business. It was for Nebuchadnezzar. In Daniel chapter 2, we saw how Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream – and how Nebuchadnezzar declared Daniel’s God to be above all other Gods. By Daniel Chapter 3 he seems to have forgotten this and orders everyone to bow down to a gold statue. Still after Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego sail through the firey furnace, he declares that anyone who speaks against their God will be chopped up into tiny little pieces. Nice! He has acknowledged God’s power – but still is playing power games in his own life. We read that he was proud of his achievements and said “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty.”
You perhaps would have thought after 2 major miracles, Nebuchadnezzar would be a bit humbler – a bit more ready to recognise that all he was and he had came from God. You’d have thought Nebuchadnezzar would have been properly converted by now. He was, you could say, a bit slow on the uptake.
But actually, most of us have a Babylon – achievements that we tend to take all the credit, leaving God out of the equation.
“At least I’ve been a good mother”
“I’m a self-made man.”
“No matter what’s happened to me I’ve always provided for my family”
Often we find our sense of self-worth in these things instead of in being God’s child. We forget how dependent on God we are.
Nebuchadnezzar got there in the end. The shocking thing is how he got there. God sent Nebuchadnezzar mad. The King had 8 years of mental illness, which nevertheless brought him in the end to a place of true mental health and wholeness – based on finding his true place in God’s world.
Nebuchadnezzar is not alone. It often takes a real shake up in our lives to recognise that of ourselves we are powerless to help ourselves. Joni Errikson-Tada found God’s power in her life only through a diving accident in which she became a quadriplegic. She says “When life is rosy we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus”.
God often brings wonder out of disaster and even out of sin if we can give him space to do it. Take the 16 year old devasted to find that she was pregnant, now the daughter she had is the point of joy and celebration in her life. Nebuchadnezzar became a wiser, humbler, better ruler after his ordeal.
It is only recognising that true power belongs to God that can help us to exercise power with the humilty and love which Jesus did. We need to pray particularly for world leaders who call themselves Christians because the experience of power is so insidious - It is easy to wear a cross and call oneself a Christian but then to turn the whole meaning of the cross upside down in the way we treat people: Listen to this extract from a novel.
A Jewish couple are walking illegally through German-occupied Paris, without their star of David, discussing the mystery of why Christians seem to hate them so much :
PG 100 SING THE LORD’S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND
May we learn the lesson that Nebuchadnezzar learned – That true power belongs not to us but to God. And may that knowledge enable us to exercise our own power with humilty and love that is shown in the cross.
Whatever I am he made me
Whatever I have he gave me
Whatever I may come to be, Christ alone shall do for me.