Sermon: Daniel 4, “The Beast in (You and) Me,” September 28, 2025

Scripture: Daniel 4

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

 Title: “The Beast in (You and) Me”

This week we’re continuing our sermon series on the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Things have been pretty wild so far. Pretty wild, and pretty weird.

This week, though, might be the weirdest so far.

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the world’s largest empire, has himself another dream. There’s this beautiful, giant tree. One whose branches reach out, sheltering, and bearing fruit for the entire world. All creatures and creation.

Suddenly, though, we’re told a “watcher” appears. An angelic being descends. “Chop it all down to a stump!” He says. “Strip its branches and scatter its creatures!” Then the watcher points a holy finger at Nebuchadnezzar himself. “Scatter them all including him! Send him out naked into the bush for seven years. With an animal’s brain.”

Now, you’ll have recognized a pattern at this point. Nebuchadnezzar dreams, his pagan magicians can’t tell him what the dream is, then Daniel–the faithful Jew–steps swoops in to interpret the thing. And that’s what happens here. “I can’t believe I have to tell you this,” he says, “but it’s all about you. The tree–-that’s you and your kingdom.”

“Basically, God’s gonna teach you a lesson,” he says. “He’s gonna chop your kingdom down at the root, and he’s gonna knock you down to size. You think you’re the height of human civilization? You’ve been crushing and killing and consuming people and gold like any everyday carnivore. So he’s gonna make you one. He’s gonna strip you naked and send you into the bush with wild hair and toenails like eagle claws. Seven years you’ll wander sniffing bark and chewing on carcasses. That is, until you shift your tone from stalking the weak of the earth like prey, to standing tall for the sake of injustice. Until you learn that God is God, not you… you’re limited to life on all fours.”

And that’s what happens. One day while he’s admiring the opulence of his royal palace and congratulating himself for his brilliance and his glorious majesty–a voice booms from heaven and–BOOM–he scurries off to the bush. And chomps on some dewy grass.

Like I said–weird. As weird as it is, though, the message is pretty straightforward, for the Jews living in exile living under the boot of Babylon, anyway. Despite Nebuchadnezzar’s appearance of invincibility, despite Babylon’s apparent omnipotence, there is a God in heaven who is still yet greater. One who laughs at the pretence of kings and their illusions of control. It’s no wonder that African-American slaves had a special love for the book of Daniel. Yet again, we hear in this good news for those who live under the boot of oppressive regimes of all kinds. A message of courage and perseverance. A source of hope for all facing seemingly unbeatable odds.

And yet, like virtually all other stories in scripture, there’s also more. This is also a story about human nature. Yours and mine.

Nebuchadnezzar’s core problem is that he’s repeating the very first sin in the Bible. In the Genesis story Adam and Eve are created by God, and placed in the garden of creation. They are set apart from the animals, and given dominion over creation and all living things as God’s representatives. “You have made [human beings] little lower than God,” sings the psalmist, “and crowned them with glory and honour.”[i] Like, we are animals, yes. But we’re also made to be more than animals.

But rather than seeing themselves as gardeners cultivating creation for God’s glory, they are tempted by a snake to be more. God says here’s a whole orchard, you just gotta leave this one tree alone. The snake says “he’s just hoarding all the good stuff for himself. You eat that ye shall be as gods.” They eat it, but instead of riding up the escalator of evolution, they fall out of paradise, cast out of the garden, wrapped in animal skins. Rather than becoming superman and woman, they become like all the other beasts. 

Here Nebuchadnezzar is doing the same. One commentator says that this chapter runs creation in reverse.[ii] He’s been given tremendous power, yet he’s driven not by glorifying God, but by fulfilling his own base instincts. For power, for prestige. His animal drive towards violence. Though he thinks he’s a god, he’s actually no different than any beast of the earth. The sentence he’s given is just a reflection of the inner reality of who he is. The beast was already there. It’s just now just in the open where everyone can see. 

And according to the Bible, you and I all have this very same beast in us. It’s given other names–the Power of Sin, the Old Adam. But it’s there. It’s that drive in us that responds with anger. That seeks vengeance and control. That force within us that, flees in fear, or simmers with resentment. The urge in us to fulfill our immediate, physical desires above all else. This is what makes drug addiction so scary–like animals we’re reduced to a singular drive for momentary satisfaction. Evolutionary scientists sometimes speak of the “lizard brain,” and I think that’s pretty cool cuz it points towards the snake in the garden and the snake inside us. At work in and behind our conscious minds.

“The beast in me,” sings the English musician Nick Lowe,

“The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars/restless by day and by night rants and rages at the stars./The beast in me has had to learn to live with pain/and how to shelter from the rain/and in the twinkling of and eye/might have to be restrained./God help the beast in me.”[iii]

Some of us here know exactly what he means. The beast has felled friendships by our fury or our fists. Or has let us and others down through our libidos. Or has overwhelmed us with obsessive desire. Like, just scroll your social media for fifteen minutes if you wanna hear your beast growl in anger or fear or resentment. For some of us it manifests less in obviously threatening emotions, but emerges in subtle, manipulative powerplays. Regardless, we all have a beast inside of us. And when he gets out the consequences are the same–alienation from society, ourselves and those who we love. If not in this life, the next.

Nebuchadnezzar is just you and I when our inner beast is given free rein. Same drive, same consequences. When our inner beast goes unsubdued. 

Now, it’s clear that our inner beast must be subdued. But have you ever tried?

Like, I know I’ve exploded before and I know I shouldn’t have even while I’m doing it. But it just feels like I’m watching myself do it. We might be able to hold it back, but like Nick Lowe says, the bars holding the beast back are frail and fragile. Sometimes it gets out, no matter how hard we try to keep a lid on our souls. We just can’t do it. So what are we supposed to do?

Well, if you’re at this point, according to Christian tradition, then you’ve already started the process. Counter-intuitively, our ability to overcome our own beastliness begins with admitting that we don’t actually have the ability to overcome it on our own. It’s also the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous–admitting we “are powerless, and our lives have become unmanageable.”[iv] Alcoholics Anonymous, of course, though being opened to many spiritual paths being patterned after Christianity. And the second step in the pattern being the same, too. “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

And guess what? After seven years of mindlessly digging and scratching and skulking, that’s exactly what Nebuchadnezzar does. “When that period was over,” says the King. “When that period was over, I Nebuchadnezzar–of all people!--lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me.”

I love what one writer Danna Ferrell says, “A man who thinks he is like a god must become a beast to learn that he is a human being.”[v] It takes humility. It takes realizing he has no control over the beast within him. And a power greater than himself, in the language of AA, overpowers the Old Adam, subdues the power of sin, breaks the back of the beast within. And restores him to sanity. That power being the power of God. According to the scriptures, that’s how it works. Not only for the King of Babylon. But also for people like you and me.

And you know, with each of these sermons I’ve said that they point forward to Jesus. Same thing this week–yet again. You remember what Jesus does first, fresh off his baptism? He retreats to the wilderness for forty days. You know what he does there? In Mark’s gospel it says he goes to be with “the wild beasts,” and to be tempted by the devil.[vi] Like Adam may have opened the human heart to the beast, and we–like Nebuchadnezzar may have just been following in his footsteps ever since. But, so the story goes, Jesus is the one who’s broken the cycle. Jesus does what neither we nor Nebuchadnezzar could do for ourselves, never taking his eyes off heaven.

He not only resisted the beast within, but the beast without, every satanic snake lunging and every human heart lashing out in lionous rage, obedient unto death, even death on a cross. There dragging the beast down to hell with him, only to be raised again victorious to new life. Jesus is not only the new Adam, but God-with-us. God assuming our weak and fragile animal flesh to overcome it for us. Dying the beastly death we are owed, in order to drag us out of the wilderness, and to take our rightful place at his side forever. As sons and daughters of the one true King. That’s the promise! That’s the power we’re dealing with!

That’s the power we’re dealing with. And this power, dear friends is ours. It’s yours. Yours. And you know how it’s yours?

First of all, for those of you who are living with guilt and shame. For all the times you’ve let the carnivore out of its cage, intentionally or unintentionally wounding and maiming those who you love. Every time you’ve lashed out, clawed your way through, bitten off more than you can chew, leaving nothing but scars: the Lord himself says to you this: you’re forgiven. The Lord has taken it all into himself on the cross. Your old Adam died with him. May your reason return to you. Because you’re forgiven.

Second, for those of you who are currently wrestling with a wildness you can’t contain. Being pulled this or that direction by your base appetites your lower desires. Which my guess is all of you, all of us, to varying degrees–take heart. Jesus says “take courage because I have overcome the world,”[vii] and he has not left our lot to be with the animals of the field. But he is with us in this wilderness. He has gifted you and I with his very presence in the form of the Holy Spirit. No matter how lost in the jungle your spirit may be, you can turn to his Spirit in your time of need. May your reason return to you, because you’re not only forgiven. You’re not also alone.

And finally, for both those who’ve let it out and those doing all they can to keep a lid on it now–a prayer. That this community would be for you a sanctuary for the forgiveness, acceptance, and healing grace that you’ve always longed for. One time somebody told me that they were disappointed because church people were just as flawed and fallen, could be as beastly as everyone else. Guess what? It’s true. But it’s not actually a knock against the church. It’s its reason for being. The only difference between us and everyone else should be is that we know the beast within, and we’re honest when it gets out. And we know our own powerlessness to fight it ourselves. But—another AA metaphor—we’re together in recovery. We’re here to share the same grace we’ve received. And to encourage each other in our sobriety from all the ordinary savagery of human life. I pray that in this community this is what you find.

Because friends, dear friends, we all live, like Nebuhadnezzar, with the beast within. And according to the scriptures overcoming the beast within is not something we can do by ourselves. And the only way to overcoming it is giving up the delusion that we can do it at all. But there’s good news. And the good news is that rather than searching inside ourselves for the cure, the cure has come to us from the horizon of heaven. The only way to overcome the old Adam is by being overcome by the new Adam. Thinking we can kill the beast ourselves is crazy! The way to have our sanity returned is by turning to God. And his restorative, beast-soothing and subduing grace.

Like Nebuchadnezzar may we praise and extol and honour the King of Heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride. And for those of us crushed by pride he has an answer: resurrection and new life.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Psalm 8:5 (NRSV).

[ii] Andre Lacqoque, quoted in W. Sibley Towner, Daniel: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox, 1984), 65.

[iii]  Nick Lowe, “The Beast in Me,” The Impossible Bird (Demon Records, 1994).

[iv] Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Thousands of Men and Women Have Overcome Alcoholism, 4th ed. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Service, 2001), 59.

[v] Danna Fewell, quoted in Tremper Longman III, Daniel: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1999), 122.

[vi] Mark 1:13.

[vii] John 16:33.