I’ll use Psalms 8:1, 16:2, 31:1-3, and 145:1-3

My Shepherd met me in His green pastures and laid me down in Daniel 3. The Spirit used verse 1 to stir my thoughts this morning:

Daniel 3:1 ¶ Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

This was a really big image: 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide. The scene might have looked something like this:*

God identified Nebuchadnezzar as “My servant” (“And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him”—Jeremiah 27:6).

This appellation is reserved for the likes of the following luminaries: Job: And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job” (Job 1:8), Abraham (“I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake” (Genesis 26:24),

And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father” (Genesis 26:24), Moses (Numbers 12:7), Caleb (Numbers 14:24), Jacob (Isaiah 41:8), David (2 Samuel 3:18, +16x), Isaiah (Isaiah 20:3), Zerubbabel (Haggai 2:23), and CHRIST (Zechariah 3:8). (And we should include Cyrus—who was called “My Shepherd” (Isaiah 44:28-45:1).

This king was introduced to God near the beginning of his kingdom (Daniel 2), when he extoled the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Daniel: “Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret” (Daniel 2:47). He elevated God’s men to the highest offices of his kingdom (Daniel 2:48-49).

But after Nebuchadnezzar completely destroyed the Temple of Daniel’s God (586 BC), about 19 years after his dream (Daniel 2), the King was lifted up in pride and created an image that defied the prophecy Daniel gave concerning Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom being limited to the “head of gold” followed by a gradual degradation to silver, brass, iron, then iron mixed with miry clay. He cast a vision for a continuing Babylonian empire.

Nebuchadnezzar needed to be reminded that his kingdom was given to him by the God of Daniel (Daniel 3). Daniel’s three friends refused to bow, and the King threatened to cast them alive into the raging fiery furnace. The Bible tells us, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Daniel 3:16-18).

The King responded in prideful arrogance and rage against the God of Daniel, Whom he once extolled: “Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed,” and in his wrath, he commanded that the three Hebrew children should be cast into the fire (Daniel 3:19-21).

When the King saw that GOD appeared in the fire with the “rebels” and protected them from his wrath (Daniel 3:24-27), he humbled himself and remembered what he had learned earlier about the God of Daniel:

“Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort” (Daniel 3:28-29).

When Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged that GOD is LORD above all the kingdoms of men, he was given “the kingdom,” and was highly exalted in the earth. But every time he forgot this essential truth, he was put to shame, and also, each time he forgot his pace, the shame heaped on him increased, and the the LORD doubled down on the message. After seven years being deposed from his throne in madness and living in the open pasture with kine, God clarified things for him:

The Heavens rule (Daniel 4:26).

The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will (Daniel 4:32).

And when the King understood these lessons, he proclaimed: “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase” (Daniel 4:37, see 34-37).

Along the still waters, I was thinking about the rise of Marxism in Democratic Party-controlled cities and States. I thought of the Marxists who have infiltrated our schools and corrupted our youth. I thought of the Deep State bureaucracy that has been under construction in America since Woodrow Wilson (1912) and is now a massive behemoth, rising above the people, and demanding that we serve the “golden image.” I thought of the spiteful denial of Christ as King, the refusal to acknowledge GOD-endowed inalienable rights, the hatred for the biblical principle of Consent of the Governed, the utter forsaking of our founding principles, and the disavowal of GOD and of Christ as King. I thought of how many nominal “Christians” join the wicked in bowing down to the “golden image” of Marxist Socialism, and I wondered that God’s wrath tarries.

Thomas Jefferson once remarked: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever” (Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII (“Manners”).)

America must awake from her long, deranged insanity, and “remember GOD.”  Consider the madness that has seized so many among our youth and many among our seniors: embracing the absurd doctrines of evolution has broken society from reality and given us to the unnatural behavior of men with men, and the women also who changed the natural use for what is contrary to nature (Romans 1:26-27), the destruction of the maternal instinct in the murder of babies in their wombs, the destruction of the male instinct to protect and provide for his own supplanted by the Welfare State, and this repudiation of nature has made us insane: men can become pregnant with child, women can stand in a boxing ring with men, men can demand access to a woman’s private spaces, oh, and Marxist Socialism is a fair and equal economic system, and has not been responsible for the murder of multiple millions. This only touches the surface of the deep sleep into which much of America has succumbed, and the bizarre insanity that now afflicts so many Americans today.

It is the Christian who must “awake to righteousness, and sin not” (1 Corinthians 15:34), for it is the believer who is called “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14), and how can those who are lost find their way to the light if we fail to let our “light shine before men” through our good works (Matthew 5:16).

In the valley, Jesus attended me there, and called to me: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). We must deny our “self” or self-destruct.   As with nations, so too the wicked who forget God: both are turned into hell (Psalm 9:17).

At the table, He anointed my head with His oil and filled my cup with strength sufficient for my day (Deuteronomy 33:25). Goodness and mercy followed as we walked together into the harvest.

Praying for revival! 🙏

Going live asap:

https://rumble.com/v7bu87u-shepherds-pasture.html

[*If the image were solid gold, today’s cost would be roughly 1/2 the total worth of Elon Musk’s portfolio—close to half a trillion dollars. If we assume it was gold-sheathed, as was customary for images covered with gold in ancient times, the best approximation of the cost of an idol this size would be 150,000 troy ounces of gold at a mean price of $3,350 per ounce, or about $503 million. The “golden image” created by socialism in America has reached 39-40 trillion dollars: forty times the wealth of Musk.]