Sermon Tone Analysis

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Introduction
Today we are looking into this dream of Nebuchadnezzar that so disturbed him, he was willing to execute all his wisemen if they could not give him the dream and its interpretation.
Dreams are something we all deal with.
I am not talking about dreams for the future, Like MLK’s “I have a dream” or your own dream for your future.
Which really amounts to a wish or hope for something you deem as good for you.
Rather, I am talking about dreams we have while asleep.
We all dream.
I dream every night.
You may have a dream that startles you awake, or maybe you have nightmares.
What are we to make of the dreams we have?
Should we plan our life around them?
Sometimes, people have ominous dreams.
Abraham Lincoln share a dream he had with his wife of what he thought was his impending death.
I remember once after watching the movie Jurassic Park I dreamed that I was being chased by prehistoric dinosaurs.
What am I to make of that dream?
I won’t go to a park that boasts of prehistoric animals that’s for sure.
I am jesting, but the truth is many people put great stock into dreams.
Dreams have always been a part of life in history.
entire systems of belief and religions have been built around dreams.
We even have Moslems who are saying that they had a dream and through the message of that dream they came to believe in Jesus Christ.
We have records of dreams in the Bible: Joseph dreamed in ; We also note that Joseph was called on to interpret the dream of Pharoah in .
Gideon was moved to action through an enemy soldier’s dream
Joseph Mary's husband was told in a dream to take Mary as his wife, , then later was warned in a dream to go to Egypt with Mary and Jesus,
So it should not surprise us that God gives a dream to Nebuchadnezzar.
Especially, when we realize that Babylonian culture was full of dreams as the direction of their empire.
I am not promoting dreams or that we should put a lot of stock and importance in dreams you have.
Not at all.
We have the infallible Word of God, to guide and direct our lives.
We the scripture to direct our financial decisions, they will direct us in decisions regarding who we should marry, what church we should attend, how we should spend our time.
Every decision we can possibly make the Scripture will most certainly have some input for us to consider when making choices.
, makes that clear.
We do not need dreams to enable us to direct our future.
There is One who knows our future, who has a plan and purpose for us and we have only to know Him and seek His Word in order to find out what He wants us to do with our daily lives.
it is no wonder then that we have in His word, a record of a dream that He gives to a pagan King, to be interpreted by One of God’s own choosing, to show what God has planned for the future of mankind.
Since Babylonians put such stock in dreams, because of the absence of their belief in the true God, it is not surprising that King Nebuchadnezzar was so disturbed by his own dream.
So let’s unpack this passage.
I. Divine Disturbance, v.1
It is clear from our text that God has disturbed the emotions, conscience, mind of the king through this dream.
The way this is laid out in Hebrew is that this dream was a recurring dream.
Lit. he dreamed dreams.
This dream so disturbed him that sleep left him.
He couldn’t sleep.
“His spirit was troubled and his sleep brake from him.”
In other words, he was really anxious about this dream.
It captivated his mind, he couldn’t think about anything else.
Now this was no wonder when you consider the dream.
vss.
32-35 He sees this colossal image of head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet of iron and clay.
Then a stone cut of the ground without the use of hands that suddenly smashes against the image and breaks it into pieces like chaff on a threshingfloor and carries it away.
Wow!
Put yourself in Nebuchadnezzar’s place where dreams carried a lot of weight as to omens of the future.
In the culture of kings, the political intrigue that was prevalent in that day and still is.
Two kings after him were assassinated.
Who are your friends and enemies, they seem to blend in.
Just a short reading of the books of the kings shows you that kings were regularly assassinated by those who wanted to take over.
That kind of intrigue happens today doesn’t it.
Well with that in mind, you can understand why he might be so disturbed.
Is this dream about him?
Is someone going to kill him.
Can you not see why he might be disturbed?
Even understand his fury at the inability of his advisors to give him a satisfactory answer?
What are we to make of this?
Does God still guide by using dreams?
He could if He wants to.
But He uses the word of God through the Spirit of God today.
Even still, the very passage we are studying is the Word of God.
As we meditate on and study the Word of God, that is how He guides us today.
The problem is our heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all, Jeremiah said.
The imaginations of our hearts is only evil continually, .
The fact is our subconscious is influenced by all sorts of things and capable of producing all kinds of dreams.
In he warns the people and us that demonic forces can cause dreams that are not the truth of God, but might look like it.
The only sure thing we have is the Word of God so don’t put too much stock in your dreams.
But, do not ignore the divine disturbances that God puts on your heart.
Look for what God is communicating to you through the distress in your life.
If there is a dissonance in you then don’t ignore it.
Explore what it is about.
ILL:
As with Nebuchadnezzar he must have realized that he was in trouble, the fall of the image by a rock that comes out of the earth, must have created a fear in him.
That fear can only be resolved by faith in Christ.
quote from CS Lews in Mere Chrisitanity,, P. 106 "if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
Joy that was other worldly I will say, was something that he said was a “pointer to something other and outer.”
(ibid, p699).
While lewis was speaking of joy, I thought of this in terms of disturbances like that of Nebuchadnezzar that forced him to look to someone or something else for an explanation in the same way that Lewis look at desire as explained in this quote.
He calls it ‘Ontological proof of God.’ (Piper, 21 servants of Sovereign Joy, p. 697)
Joy that was other worldly I will say, was something that he said was a “pointer to something other and outer.”
(ibid, p699).
I thought of this in terms of disturbances like that of Nebuchadnezzar that forced him to look to someone or something else for an explanation in the same way that Lewis look at desire as explained in this quote.
He calls it ‘Ontological proof of God.’ (Piper, 21 servants of Sovereign Joy, p. 697)
The unanswered questions in our lives that let us know that there is something else in life beyond what we know or experience create within us a thirst for more.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit drives us to the revelation of God and then shows us the person we need is Christ.
As with Nebuchadnezzar he must have realized that he was in trouble, the fall of the image by a rock that comes out of the earth, must have created a fear in him.
That fear can only be resolved by faith in Christ.
However, his search for meaning led him to his most natural and normal source, His advisors,
II.
Human impossibility to find the answer, v.2-13
Being so disturbed by his dream, he does the natural thing and calls for those who were the ‘experts’ in deciphering dreams.
The magicians, astrologers, sorcerers and Chaldeans/Chesidim.
His goal, to find out the correct interpretation.
We all want to know the future, live the best life we can, don’t we?
And we do the same thing he has done.
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