Chapter 3. Nebuchadnezzar’s Image

Chapter 3. Nebuchadnezzar’s Image

What a poor, weak, foolish, and conceited creature man is at his best estate, altogether vanity (Psa 39:5)! Not always the wise and noble of the earth are set over the kingdom of men, but God gives it to whomsoever He will, and sets over it the basest of men (Dan 4:17). It might have been supposed that this proud autocrat had been taught a lesson, by means of the defeat of his magicians, that he would not readily forget, and that henceforth the God of Daniel would be the only God that would have place in his thoughts. Abundant testimony had been given to the supremacy of the living God above all the gods that he had previously served, but yet will he venture into the arena in a trial of strength with the God he had acknowledged as “a God of gods, and a Lord of kings.” The madness of the human mind away from God is incomprehensible. Now all the dealings of God with the mere child of nature bear witness to the great fact, that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”! Where there is no moral foundation in the soul how easy it is to quiet conscience, and to forget the reality and power of the Most High, even after He has brought Himself manifestly before our mental vision! Nebuchadnezzar is bowed at the feet of Daniel today, as a slave before his master, acknowledging Daniel’s God as the God of gods, and tomorrow he will set up a god of his own, and will cast the three friends of Daniel into a furnace of fire, because they refuse to do homage to this nothing that he in his ignorance and pride has created. This is man! It is both reader and writer. By nature we are all clay of the same lump—poor dupes of the devil, and in the things that relate to our responsibility to God as ignorant as the beasts of the field. For a moment we may be overawed, as we are confronted by some special manifestation of the reality of His existence, and of the fact that He takes account of our doings in this world, but the natural heart refuses to receive any lasting impression, and we quickly drop down into our normal state of God-forgetfulness. A God all-powerful, and who had wisdom beyond the gods with which he was accustomed to have intercourse, was all that the God of Daniel was in the estimation of Nebuchadnezzar. He was awed in the presence of the wisdom with which Daniel was endowed, by that Being of whom hitherto he had no knowledge. But his accountability to that God for the way in which he conducted himself down here does not seem to have entered into his darkened understanding. His return to his dumb idols is both rapid and thorough. The impression made upon him by this signal intervention of the God of heaven is soon gone, and when gone it is as completely gone as though it never had been.

“Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold.” He is completely in the hands of the devil. In committing dominion to the Gentiles, which in the purpose of God belonged to Israel, He makes known to the king the changes that would take place while the times of the Gentiles were running their course, until the Christ should take the government of the world into His own hands. God does not usually put people into a place of privilege and responsibility without telling them how things are likely to turn out in their hands. When He had brought Israel out of Egypt, and when they were about to enter into the land of promise, he makes known to them how thoroughly they would corrupt themselves, and how their abominable behaviour would compel Him to drive them out of the land, as He was about to drive out the nations that had the land in possession, and how He would scatter them among the nations of the earth. And before the apostles of our Lord had left this scene, He has put it on record how that the professing Church would depart from the faith, and in the end would have to come under His judgment. So also must this proud Gentile hear of the judgment by means of the stone cut out of the mountain without hands that would bring Gentile dominion to an end upon the earth. But though the dream and the interpretation were both given that the king might know that Gentile domination must one day cease to exist by the judgment of God, no lasting good seems to have been effected by means of the light granted to him. The devil uses it as a means of increasing the natural pride of his heart, and of giving his headlong career on the way to perdition a greater impetus. He used the serpent of brass, which was made by Moses in the wilderness, and which typified the lifting up of the Son of man on the cross, to lead the wayward people into idolatry. And by engaging the vain thoughts of this monarch with the glorious position he occupied, as represented by the head of gold, and hiding from his mental vision the deterioration of the successive kingdoms, as well as the utter destruction of all by the judgment of God, he leads him to make an image to the empire over which he had been placed, and to compel under pain of the most horrible death every one to do homage to it. And when we turn to the Apocalypse we find this thought conceived in the head of gold coming out into manifestation in the feet of iron and clay. There an image is made to the beast—the revived Roman Empire—and every one who will not do homage to the image of the beast must be killed (Rev 13:1-18). In the thought of the Gentile rulers nothing is of any importance but the kingdom. Everything must be sacrificed to the expansion, grandeur, and greatness of the kingdom under which men live. God and the relation of men to Him are of no account. A religion is of course felt to be a necessity. In an autocracy it must be a state religion, and individual conscience is little, or not at all, tolerated. Generally speaking where democracy prevails men may have whatever religion they like or none at all where this is preferred. But whether the government is autocratic or democratic religion must be subservient to the state. It is a kind of decoration for the kingdom, and is used by the devil as a silencer to the conscience, for man must serve a God of some sort. But, regarding the individual’s relations to the powers that be, conscience toward God cannot be tolerated. The conceptions of the head become conspicuous in the feet. But in carrying out the projects and purposes of this world the witnesses of God have always to be reckoned with. They are the irritating substance that vexes the godless fellowship of the world. Its best laid plans are either frustrated or marred by their obstinacy. They are always in the way, a brake upon the wheel, or a barrier in the path of human prosperity, as this is understood by men. They are not governed by the same thoughts that govern the rest of men. And the worst of it is that they seem to be insensible to the praise or blame of the multitude. They do the best they can for the country in which they live. They pray for kings and for all that exercise authority. They cannot be accused of riot, nor are they movers of sedition. They are quiet, inoffensive, and law-abiding, if the law does not come in between their conscience and God, but, if it does, their subjection to it comes abruptly to an end. At all cost they will obey God rather than men. In all this I am speaking of the people of God as in complete subjection to His holy Word. Alas! not as many are actually found in the disorder that exists in the professing church of today. In the chapter before us we have a fine example of this determination to be true to the living God whatever might be the consequence to themselves. These three men along with Daniel were resolute against partaking of the food from the king’s table; if anything they are more resolute now in the matter of the idol. The appalling insolence of the man, in whatever exalted position he might be found, who by the threat of a horrible death would attempt to drive them from their allegiance to their Creator, produces nothing but abhorrence in the souls of these three faithful men of God. The outrageous, ignorant, and wicked conceit of this crowned worm of the dust, instead of terrorizing them into obedience, so bedwarfs both himself and his little brief authority, that they tell him plainly that they are not even careful to answer him in the matter, and they also declare their determination neither to serve his gods, nor to worship the golden image that he had set up. God would have every man honoured to whom He commits power and authority. We are to honour the king, and in this neither Daniel nor his three friends were found at fault. But when to obey and serve the king would sever my relations and responsibility to God, he loses his position as king to me, and becomes in my estimation nothing but a poor slave of the devil, and to his commandment I have no respect. The boldness of the apparently weak servant of God, when his loyalty to his Master is put to the test, has always been an astonishment to the mere worldling, and exasperating to the rulers with whom he has to do; and the very helplessness of his position has the tendency of making his insubjection all the more aggravating, because it is powerfully forced home to the souls of those that exercise authority over him, that it is not he that is powerless but themselves. The silent dignity with which our Lord met the accusations and the insults of His persecutors caused the Roman governor no little astonishment, and it was not the Divine Prisoner but the judge in his judgment-seat that felt how utterly weak and contemptible he was. And when, in a later day, the rulers of the Jews were confronted by Peter and John, the two “unlearned and ignorant” disciples of the Lord, they marvelled at their boldness (Act 4:13). And now, when three of the servants of the same Master have in manifest friendlessness and weakness to stand for the truth of the one living God, and that in opposition to the most powerful monarch in the world, threatening with the most awful death that his infuriated mind could invent, they avow that they have no need to study the answer they are to return to such a demand on his part. Upon his own head must fall the consequences of his diabolical act. And all that he could do was little compared with the power of Him against whom he was waging his insane warfare. He could at the utmost but kill the body, but God would destroy both body and soul in hell (Mat 10:28). And even the body is beyond his power to injure, unless it is allowed by God.

Here is the will of this conceited idolater thwarted. Here is rebellion lifting its head in his otherwise peaceful kingdom. If it had not been for these three, in his estimation, fanatical obstructionists, everything would have freely moved along to the goal at which he determined to arrive. They were the brake upon the wheels of his universal empire, that was peacefully rolling onward to glory. The bare audacity of these three recalcitrants fills the king with madness, and he gives commandment that the furnace of fire shall be made seven times hotter than it had been made. And into the furnace the most mighty men of his army cast the three witnesses of the living God. This he, no doubt, supposed would be the end of the present opposition to his will, and would furnish an object lesson for others who might afterward be mad enough to dispute his authority. Our Lord has forewarned us that in this world we shall have tribulation. It cannot be otherwise, for the believer is here in subjection to the will of God, and on earth, as I have already indicated, whether the form of government be autocratic or democratic, it is the will of man that is dominant. In the former it is the will of one man that is dominant, and in the latter it is the will of the people that is supposed to rule. With neither is it the will of God. We are told that whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God (Rom 13:2), but that is in things within the sphere of its authority. It has no right to force the subject into rebellion against God. When the time comes that Antichrist will attempt to force all men to worship the image that he shall set up to the Roman empire, God declares that “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name” (Rev 14:9-11). In every kingdom upon earth throughout the whole history of the world, the servants of God have had to make their decision between obedience to certain enactments of the state under which they lived, and the specific commandments of the living God on whose behalf they were here below. And this must always be until the kingdom of God shall come in power, and His Christ shall reign, and then “Judgment shall return unto righteousness, and all the upright in heart shall follow it” (Psa 94:15). But until then the servants of God must find themselves, if they are faithful, subjected to persecution, imprisonment, and even death itself.

Laws are made for the safety of the community, and in making them it is no question with the legislators what the will of God is, but what they themselves consider good. But with the servant of God it is altogether the Divine will that is to be the rule of his life. He also knows right well that this is best for the creature; hence in every way he is encouraged to travel on this line whatever it may cost him to do so. He can very well afford to leave the results in the hand of the righteous Judge of all. It may entail imprisonment and even death itself to him, but if that be the will of God for him, he will be supported through it, and the Lord will be with him in the trials he may have to undergo. Flesh may well tremble at the thought of that torture which the ingenuity of the fallen creature, under the inspiration of the devil, can invent, and the heart may faint at the bare prospect of having to undergo the horrible ordeal, but when the dread moment arrives, and we find Him by our side, the chariot of fire that is to transport us to our heavenly home becomes the most welcome sight that ever gladdened our vision. In the midst of the furnace of fire the three witnesses walk unharmed in the company of the Son of God. Surely to them this must remain a never-to-be-forgotten moment. Never previously had they been so wonderfully privileged and so highly honoured. How veritable, indeed, is His holy Word which says, “In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them” (Isa 63:9). When in front of that fiery furnace they were being bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, to be consigned to that raging volcano that opened its mouth to devour them, they had the support of the Almighty God; but in the furnace itself they had not only His support but His company. The cords that bound them and the men that gave them to the fire were both consumed. The fire did nothing but set them free from their bonds. And now, instead of three men being quickly reduced to ashes in the flames, Nebuchadnezzar sees four men walking about loose in their midst, and the form of the fourth, he says, is like the Son of God.

Thus is Nebuchadnezzar faced with the intervention of the living God on behalf of His faithful and beloved servants and smitten upon his brazen forehead by the gauntlet of the Almighty in answer to his impudent challenge, “Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hand?” In this battle he is utterly defeated. He has lost some of the best men of his army. He himself is humiliated in the presence of his nobles, he has to accept defeat in the sight of the representatives of the various dependencies, who were gathered together to do homage to his god of gold, which is now fit for nothing but the melting-pot. He sees himself beaten and abased in the plain of Dura; and he is compelled to accept it, and to confess, “There is no other God that can deliver after this sort.” He sees how well able the living and true God is to safeguard His own glory in a world of rebels, who are blinded by the very darkness in which they love to walk, and who are driven by the devil into insane conflict with Omnipotence. Surely His compassions are the wonder and study of all who know Him, and the way in which He gives witness to all men of His power and goodness of heart, and of His long-suffering toward those whose evil ways are to Him a constant provocation, is marvellously astonishing. The trial of strength in this instance, as in all others, was between God and Satan. But the spectators are numberless, the celestial hierarchy, the denizens of the infernal regions, and those over whom the proud Gentile monarch had sway. And all this spiritual drama is enacted in the province of Babylon, for the enlightenment of a world steeped in ignorance of the true God, and which desired none of His ways. The light of God came into Babylon with His afflicted, down-trodden, and captive people, and brightly it shone in the midst of the deep darkness. What effect may have been produced in the souls of the multitude who were gathered together from every quarter, we know not. It may be that many, when they saw the hand of God, and knew that now the golden image must be consigned to the crucible, that the precious metal may be put to other and better uses, may have welcomed the saving light, and have cast away their idols as things of naught and for ever after bent their knee to Jehovah only. If this good effect followed, Daniel does not put it on record. As to Nebuchadnezzar, the decree that goes forth from him is indicative of nothing but a mind overawed by the unexpected and marvellous intervention of God on behalf of His devoted servants, and of a heart unaffected by the mercy extended to him and his kingdom. With him the true God is as yet nothing but one with the many, though the most powerful of all. But God has not yet finished with this idolatrous autocrat.