Interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's first dream

Daniel 2v36-45

25^th October 2019

To save his life, the lives of his friends, and the lives of every advisor King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had, Daniel needed to know what Nebuchadnezzar had dreamt, and then he had to stand before the king, relate the dream, and then interpret it. To do so he had to pray, and put all his faith in God. God granted Daniel's request; He gave him the same dream. Daniel told the king:

Daniel 2v31-35
"You looked before you, O King, and there before you stood a large statue, an enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly iron and partly baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time, and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without a trace, but the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth."

If you were absolute ruler of an ancient empire, and that was your dream, of an amazing, dazzling, huge statue reduced to nothing, you'd be nervous too, wouldn't you? Because the obvious interpretation is, "Nebuchadnezzar, mate, your time is up. Come in number seven." But that wasn't the interpretation. Having related the dream, Daniel delivered the interpretation:

Daniel 2v36-38
"This was the dream and now we will interpret it for the king. You, O King, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory. In your hand, he has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the beasts of the air. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold."

As we saw earlier, Daniel wasn't being blasphemous when he called Nebuchadnezzar the "king of kings". Jesus is the true King of Kings, of course, but Nebuchadnezzar was the king of kings in two senses. Firstly, in Hebrew "king of kings" means "best king" or "greatest king", and Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful king in the world. But it was also true in the sense that other kings acknowledged Nebuchadnezzar's authority and paid him tribute. He was literally the king of other kings - what some people called the high king. He had effectively all authority in that part of the world.

Nebuchadnezzar was, like most kings in those days, a brutal ruler, as we saw from his threat to have his advisors cut to pieces and their houses turned into piles of rubble. But every government, including the ones you disapprove of, are in position because God put them there.

Why would God choose people like that? I don't know, but God's smarter than me and He has plans I don't understand. He may put a government in place for blessing, or for judgement, or for some other reason.

God chose Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and whoever comes next. Perhaps you wouldn't have chosen them. Because we're a democracy and nobody ever gets more than about forty-four percent, every time we have an election, most people didn't choose the government. But God did. It's comforting to know that God's in control even though we don't understand or even agree with His choices. Thinking about the people who may become prime minister soon does give me some cause for nervousness, but God is in control. He knows what He's doing. Don't panic.

Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that the golden head of the statue represents him. And then he tells him that his kingdom won't last for ever:

Daniel 2v39-43
"After you another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron - for iron breaks and smashes everything - and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw, the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, for this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united any more that iron mixes with clay."

So the dream is a prophecy about four kingdoms: Nebuchadnezzar's and three others. The prophecy came to pass, of course, because it was from God.

Nebuchadnezzar ruled the Babylonian empire, which controlled a large swathe of the Middle East from Egypt in the south west to Iraq in the north east. The Babylonian empire rose around about 612 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar's father Nebonidus destroyed the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, and took over what used to be the Assyrian empire. In 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar came to power and extended the empire further. But in 539 BC that empire was utterly destroyed. The Medes and the Persians took Babylon without a battle, and killed the last king's son, Belshazzar. We'll read about that in Daniel Chapter 5. The Babylonian empire, of which Nebuchadnezzar was so proud, was gone forever. It had only survived for 73 years.

Empires, which look so strong and seem set to last forever, often last just a few decades.

The Third Reich under Adolf Hitler was sometimes called the Thousand Year Reich. It lasted just thirteen years. Empires end. When I was a young man, we were seriously concerned that the soviet empire might invade the west. Plans were laid for how we could slow them down if they invaded. I still remember the night that I watched the Berlin wall being torn down. I remember Mikhail Gorbachev dissolving the Soviet Union. I don't think people born around the time I was born thought that would happen in our lifetime, but the Soviet empire is gone and Eastern Europe is free again. Empires end.

The Medes and the Persians under king Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonian Empire, and they ruled an even bigger empire than the Babylonian empire, for 208 years, - from 539 to 331 BC. This empire is represented by the chest and arms of silver.

Then Alexander the Great of Macedonia, one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, conquered Greece and all the territory eastwards as far as India. In a series of battles, he utterly destroyed the Medo-Persian Empire. And when he was just 33 years old, he died. What was the point? His empire continued after his death, but soon broke into four parts. These continued, but the Greek empire, even bigger, even stronger, even wealthier than the Babylonian empire, didn't last for ever. Empires don't last. The Greek Empire is represented by the belly and thighs of bronze.

The Greek empire lasted until the second century BC. Its end is usually dated to 146 BC, when the Greeks lost the Battle of Corinth to the Roman legions. Actually, the conflict had been going on for some time. They had been paying tribute to Rome for a while, but it was all done and dusted in 146 BC. The Greek empire had lasted from 331 to 146 BC- 185 years. Even the empire of Alexander the Great was gone forever, and the Romans now held sway.

If you know your Roman history, "a kingdom strong as iron because iron breaks and smashes everything. It will break the others. Then mixed, partly strong, partly brittle, and eventually divided." describes the Roman Empire perfectly.

As the statue had two legs, eventually, the Roman Empire divided in two - the Eastern empire and the Western empire. But where are they? They too have gone. The Western Empire fell to the Germans in 476 AD and the Eastern Empire fell to the Turks in 1453 AD. Empires end. And they still end. Even the British Empire ended. They used to day that the sun never sets on the pink bits of the map, but it does now! All empires end, except one.

To recap:

• Head of gold: Babylonian Empire
• Chest and arms of silver: Medo-Persian empire
• belly and thighs of bronze: Greek Empire
• Legs and feet of iron and clay: Roman empire

But one more kingdom was still to come:

Daniel 2v44-45
In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain but not by human hands. A rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the silver and the gold to pieces. This great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy.

More than 500 years before Jesus was born, Daniel prophesied that "In the time of those kings - that is, in the time of the Roman empire - God would set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed: the Kingdom of God. We'll look at that next time.