33In its moment the thing was
fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar and from the man he was chased and the grass like
oxen he ate and from the dew of the heavens his body was wetted until his hair
like eagles grew great and his nails like birds.
So, in fact, Nebuchadnezzar was stricken with madness. He’s
lost his mind. Instead of the proud, powerful, commanding king, suddenly he is
a mindless cow. Suddenly he is stripped of every ounce of dignity he ever
enjoyed and now he wanders around a
disgusting, repulsive maniac, alive but seemingly mindless.
Lots of thoughts go through our heads. I can recoil from the
horror of it all and pity the man. I can play the judge and condemn him: “He
deserved it! Serves him right!” As I studied this verse – in particular, this verse
33 – I seemed to hear the Lord keep saying to me, “You’re the man!” Finally, one
of the old guys I read mentioned how sin turns us into animals and it struck me
what He might mean. I wondered, as the Lord looks down from heaven and sees me
in my sins, do I look like a beast to Him? Does our sin actually turn us into
animals in His eyes? Could this be one reason why He hates sin so much?
I wondered, if that is true and if that is what God sees,
perhaps if I could see it too, it would help me hate sin more. Maybe this is a
way to see myself more clearly through God’s eyes? And so, I took off on a
small excurses to see what the rest of the Bible had to say on this subject.
Here is what I think I found: First of all, going all the
way back to Genesis 1, one thing is very clear: God created animals – fish and
birds and reptiles and livestock and wild animals – and then He created man.
After God had created all the other “living things,” or “beasts” or “four
footed animals,” He said, “Let us make man in our image, and let them rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the wild
animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (1:26).
Man is not an animal.
In taxonomy, man is a mammal. He is grouped with all the
other warm-blooded creatures that breathe air and give live-birth to their
young. Perhaps that is fair enough. However, evolutionary theory goes on to say
we are one of them, that we are
nothing more than a highly developed ape.
That is not what God says.
He made the animals, then He made us. We are not
one of them. He made us separately. He made us in His image and He made us to
rule over them.
I wonder if that isn’t part of the problem today? The world
has bought evolution hook, line, and sinker, They tell us we are nothing but
animals. No wonder people think it’s okay to act like them. God created human
beings with a dignity that not one other creature on earth was given. We are
born with the dignity of bearing His image and ruling over the very creation in
which we live. In rejecting the truth of Genesis 1, we have robbed ourselves of
the very dignity we were created with!
Man is not an animal. He shouldn’t act like one. In a
sense, Nebuchadnezzar’s judgment is the same as ours – to be robbed of this
dignity and left to act like brute beasts. Anyone who saw or heard about
Nebuchadnezzar would know it wasn’t right. He’s not a cow. He shouldn’t act
like one. Right. And neither should we.
Consider some other passages I found.
II Peter 2:12ff says, “They are like brute beasts, creatures
of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed…Their idea of pleasure is to
carouse in broad daylight…With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning…”
We see sin degrading people in Romans 1:21ff, “For although they knew God, they
glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful...Therefore God gave them up in
the sinful desires of their hearts to impurity for the degrading of their
bodies with one another…filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and
depravity…”
It is interesting to me that in Daniel 2, the king has a
dream and sees the four kingdoms of the earth as gold, silver, bronze, and
iron. Then in Daniel 7, Daniel himself has a vision, and sees the same four
kingdoms, only in his eyes they are beasts. What looks like precious metals to
this world is a bunch of beasts in the Lord’s eyes. Also, throughout
Revelation, the antichrist is called “the Beast.”
People should not be beasts. It is a bad thing for people to
act like beasts. We were created in the image of God. We give up the very
dignity that is ours when we step down from that image to act instead like the
very creatures over whom we are supposed to rule. To be born again, to grow in
Christ, to live more and more according to the Word restores to us the dignity
we were created to enjoy. Redemption means you and I act more and more like God
and less and less like a bunch of hyenas!
Nebuchadnezzar thought he could spit in God’s face and rule
his own life. Next thing we know he’s on all fours eating grass. We should all
realize we are just a half a step behind him. Sanity itself is a gift from God.
May the Lord somehow enable all of us to treasure more the dignity that is ours
as human beings. May we actually value knowing we are God’s special creation in
this world to bear His image. May we see that sin is a stooping to behaviors
unfitting to the dignity that is ours.
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