Got Your Attention Yet?:
Another Troubling Dream
“How great are his signs,
how mighty his wonders!
His kingdom is an eternal kingdom;
his dominion endures from generation
to generation.”
Daniel 4:3
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• Over the last month, we learned:
1. if we intentionally engage the culture around us by
taking calculated risks based on the assumption that
God is active in our world, then God will put us in the
right place at the right time and equip us properly to
participate in His activity in the lives of people.
2. we’ll often be called to speak tough truth in love and
three reactions can follow –
i. “Nebuchadnezzar moments” where praise is given
to God
ii. “rich young man moments” where we face rejection
and dejection
iii. “fiery furnace moments” where
persecution comes our way
3. In each of these situations, we need
to be assured that God is at work.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
Your Attention, please …
• Today, we learn about how God gains one man’s
attention, and we say goodbye to a character who
has provided a baseline for the narrative so far –
King Nebuchadnezzar.
• “Pride is the only disease known to man that makes
everyone sick except the person
who has it”. – Buddy Robinson
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
Daniel 4:1-28
• “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
endures from generation to generation.” (Daniel 4:2-3)
• Do these words come from Daniel, or perhaps one of
Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego?
• These are the recorded words of
King Nebuchadnezzar.
• What has moved this King from a
position of self-absorbedness to a
posture of praise?
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• At this point, Nebuchadnezzar has had repeated
encounters with the God of Israel through the effective
witness of four men – Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego.
• If the Babylonians learned anything at all from their
military conquests, it was that with the right religious
rituals, you could get any of these gods to give you what
you wanted or at the very least, leave you alone.
• With all of the right gods honoured and appeased,
Nebuchadnezzar sat back in his
throne, enjoying the comfort of his
palace, watching his kingdom
expand and prosper.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• After experiencing a troubling dream, Nebuchadnezzar
calls together his religious brain trust for an
interpretation. They fail …
• Daniel walks in and the king remembers him as a
“religious” guy with a penchant for interpreting dreams.
• The dream: A tree grows great and strong, reaching
high to the heavens and providing safety to animals
underneath it. Suddenly, an angel breaks into the scene
crying for the tree to be chopped down, leaving only a
stump remaining, saying:
• “Let his mind be changed from that
of a man and let him be given the
mind of an animal, till seven times
pass by for him.” (Daniel 4:16)
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• Daniel is greatly distressed and disturbed by the
dream, wishing that it were meant for his enemies and
not the King himself.
• Daniel delivers the interpretation: you are the fruitful
and prosperous tree. Unfortunately, God has decreed
that you will be reduced to nothing, spending seven
years living wildly among the beasts of the field. The
stump though, is God’s promise to re-establish you
once you have humbled yourself before God.
• Daniel urges Nebuchadnezzar to do all he can to stay
the decree for as long as possible,
indicating that no amount of
religious acts will prevent what God
has decreed from happening, but they
might at least earn him some time.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• This chapter challenges the illusion that we can
somehow operate in independence from God.
• It becomes very easy to view oneself as “master of one’s
domain” when God is eliminated from the equation.
• Success becomes about what I have accomplished,
rather than what God has accomplished through me.
• “Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the
roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he 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?”. (v. 30)
• The trouble is that as we grow in
success, we become more self-focussed,
self-reliant, and self-satisfied.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• It’s hard to get one’s attention when he or she is full of
pride … in fact, I would suggest that pride makes us deaf
to tough truth.
• “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive
yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22)
• Had Nebuchadnezzar heeded to word of the Lord, he
might have prevented some suffering!
• I am convinced that one of our enemy’s greatest tactics
is to convince people of their own
innate ability to succeed, effectively
preventing them from acknowledging
that God just might be involved in
their success and keeping them from
offering appropriate praise to God.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• Even though, this is the case, God still attempts to get
our attention.
• Through His Spirit, God is at work in the lives of the
people you live, work and play with and He is seeking
to break through their pride in order to communicate
important truth to them.
• God often seeks to get our attention through five
specific means:
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
1. Making us restless – God often creates a deep sense of
dissatisfaction with “the way things are” in order to get us to
consider other options, including listening for His voice.
2. A word from others – God often uses other people to grab
our attention, often causing the same phrase to come to our
attention repeatedly.
3. Unexpected blessings – God sometimes provides unforeseen
blessings as an attempt to gain our attention.
4. Unanswered prayer – God sometimes allows prayer to go
unanswered in an attempt to gain our
attention.
5. Unusual Circumstances – God sometimes
allows really strange circumstances to
develop around us to gain our attention.
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?
• When God sought to grip Nebuchadnezzar’s attention
through this strange dream, notice what happens … v.8.
• In precisely the right place and at precisely the right
moment, Daniel enters Nebuchadnezzar’s presence, with
the ability to interpret dreams.
• God has positioned you in a particular place, at a
particular time, with a particular set of skills and talents,
in order to participate with God in His work in particular
people’s lives.
• At the same time, we must be listening
for God’s communication with us.
• We have to honestly ask ourselves,
has pride stopped up my ears from
hearing God’s voice?
Daniel 4:1-27 – Got Your Attention Yet?