Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 949
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 4, 1870
“At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes unto Heaven, and my understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored Him that lives forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and He does according to His will in the army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What do You?” Daniel 4:34,35.
NO one has ever numbered Nebuchadnezzar with the Prophets, or believed his language to be inspired. We have before us simply a statement made by an uninspired man, after passing through the most extraordinary experience. He had been among the greatest and proudest of men—he suddenly fell into the condition of a grass-eating ox, by losing his reason. And upon being restored, he acknowledged publicly the hand of the Most High. I should not have taken his language as my text if it had not happened to be, as it is, a most correct and vigorous statement of sublime doctrines which are clearly stated by the Holy Spirit in different parts of Scripture.
It is a singular instance of how, when God comes to deal with men in afflicting Providences, He can make them clearly see many great Truths concerning Himself, and can constrain them to express their convictions in identically the same way as they would have done if His own Spirit had dictated the terms. There are certain parts of the Divine Character which even the unspiritual man cannot avoid seeing. And after passing through certain processes of suffering and humiliation, the man is compelled to add his witness to the testimony of God’s Spirit with regard to the Divine Character.
Every single word that Nebuchadnezzar here utters can be backed up and supported by undoubtedly inspired words of men sent of God to proclaim infallible Truth. We shall not, therefore, need to answer the objection that our text is simply the statement of Nebuchadnezzar—we grant that it is so—but we shall show as we proceed that Babylon’s humbled monarch herein has spoken most correctly and accurately—and in full accordance with the testimony of other parts of Scripture.
Before I conduct your minds to a close consideration of the text, I must make one remark. Many of you will very naturally suppose that the chapter read during this service, the hymns and the sermon, were all intended to have reference to a certain great political event reported in the papers of last night [the surrender of Napoleon to the King of Prussia]. But please observe that your supposition will be unfounded, for my text was fixed upon yesterday morning, before any sort of news had reached me, and the service would have been the same if that event had not occurred. So that anything strikingly suggestive in the choice of the passage may be looked upon, if you will, as denoting the guidance of God’s Spirit, but must not be imputed to any intentional reference on my part.
We will now come first to consider the doctrinal instruction of the text. Secondly, we would learn the practical teaching of it. And thirdly, we would exhibit the spirit suitable after the contemplation of such a subject.
I. First, then, let us turn to the text, and consider THE DOCTRINAL INSTRUCTION here given to us. We have here plainly stated the doctrine of the eternal Self-Existence of God. “I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored Him that lives forever.” If this word needed to be confirmed we would refer you to the language of John in the Book of the Revelation where we find him describing, in the fourth chapter, at the ninth and tenth verses, the living creatures and the four and twenty elders as giving glory and honor and thanks, “to Him that sat on the Throne, who lives forever and forever.”
Better still, let us hear the witness of our own Redeemer, in the fifth of John’s Gospel, at the twenty-sixth verse, where He declares that, “the Father has life in Himself.” My Brethren, you need not that I marshal in array a host of confirmative passages, for the eternal Self-Existence of God is taught throughout the Scriptures, and is implied in that name which belongs only to the true God, Jehovah, “I Am that I Am,” where, note that it is not “I was,” which would imply that in some measure or respect He had ceased to be.
Nor is it “I will be,” which would intimate that He is not now what He will be, but I AM, the only Being, the root of Existence, the Immutable, and Eternal One. “We,” as a venerable Puritan observes, “have more of nothing than of being,” but it is God’s prerogative to BE. He alone can say, “I am God, and beside Me there is none else.” He declares, “I lift up My hands to Heaven, and say I live forever.” He is the One only underived, Self-Existent, Self-Sustained Being. Let us know of a surety that the Lord God whom we worship is the only Being who necessarily and from His own Nature, Exists.