Knockout

Well, some of church in our different locations in the triangle and those of you who are joining us at home.

Welcome to all of you. We are so grateful for the rapid decline of covid cases, North Carolina. And as most of you know, both the CDC and Governor Cooper have removed the social distancing capacity restrictions and mask requirements for vaccinated adults. And as such, like we announced on Friday, if you were paying attention or connected to us on social media, we are removing the request for everyone to wear mask at our weekend services, except for the time being. Summit kids, staff and volunteers will continue wearing them as a safety precaution. Of course, you are free to wear one if it makes you feel more comfortable at campuses where we rent the space, which some of you are joining us there now. We don't unfortunately set the rules.

The venue owner sets the guidelines. So for those of you that are at a mobile campus, not a permanent one, then your campus pastor will instruct you in what to expect. We will continue by God's grace to offer summit online for those who feel at risk and are just still not comfortable.

Being in a large group environment like this, our goal is to make worship accessible to all of us. I'm not exaggerating. Even had a video game named after him, Mike Tyson punch out. That was one of my favorite arcade games.

My parents could drop me off at the mall with $2 and I could play that game for three hours. Mike Tyson got so rich from his wins that there was this infamous story about him running out of gas in his Ferrari and just leaving it on the side of the road, never returning to pick it up. He was everything there. In the boxing world, in the late eighties, early nineties at the peak of his career, however, 1990 1990 Iron Mike was his nickname squared off with a no name fighter Buster Douglas.

Now, when I say nobody, I mean nobody. It wasn't even supposed to be a challenge. Mike Tyson had knocked out his previous opponent in 93 seconds. So the bets in Vegas, the bets in Vegas were about how long it would take for him to win. But Mike was so heady from his previous successes that he did not even prepare for this fight. He stayed out late part of the game and lost here. from his previous successes that he did not even prepare for this fight.

He stayed out late partying the night before. You can of course guess what happened. Buster Douglas won by knockout in the 10th round. And I remember when it happened, being bewildered. I was a junior in high school, being bewildered because this was literally the plot of Rocky III, which had come out just a few years before this fight, right? Rocky takes himself for granted, gets fat and out of shape and then loses to Mr. T. Mick dies, it was like the low point of the 1980s for me. So Mike Tyson should have known, I thought. But Mike thought he was special and Buster Douglas showed him that he was not.

That fight, by the way, proved to be a watershed. After this fight, Mike Tyson's career went rapidly downhill. Mike Tyson's life illustrates a very tragic truth that some of you, maybe in a less dramatic way, but you know it all the same and that is this, defeat is difficult. Defeat is difficult, but success can be fatal.

Defeat is difficult, but success can be fatal. In Daniel chapter four, Nebuchadnezzar is suffering from a bad case of what we'll call the success. And the Almighty is about to knock him out with a right hook. But unlike the punch that was thrown by Buster Douglas or Mr. T, Clubber Lang, the hit that God lands is a healing punch.

It is truly a crazy story. But you need to see this, read this, as the final round in God's battle versus Nebuchadnezzar. Round one, round one, if you recall, was when God had prospered Daniel and his friends after they defied the king's order to eat defiled foods that were forbidden by the Jewish law. They said, we're gonna obey God, not you, and at the end of the time of examination, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were found to be smarter, healthier, and brighter than all the other wise men.

So round one goes to God. Round two was Daniel two, when God gave Daniel the ability to do what none of Nebuchadnezzar's wise men could do, and that is to reveal and then interpret a mysterious dream, a dream about a gigantic statue that was warning Nebuchadnezzar about setting up a kingdom independent of God. In that encounter, Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged something. He said, something is special, Daniel, about your God. He can do what no other God can do. He said, in fact, I quote, chapter two, verse 47, surely your God is the God of gods, and he's the Lord of all kings.

In other words, your God is better than higher than my gods. Nebuchadnezzar was a little dazed after this round, but he wasn't knocked out yet. So round three was the skirmish by the furnace, as I like to call it, where Nebuchadnezzar set up a 90-foot gold statue of himself and commanded everybody to bow down to it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Daniel's friends, refused to do it, and that set up a third confrontation between God and Nebuchadnezzar, where Nebuchadnezzar threw the three teenagers into a fiery furnace. But instead of dying instantly, like everybody expected, Nebuchadnezzar sees them up and walking around in the fire with a mysterious fourth man that Nebuchadnezzar calls the Son of God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego emerged from the fiery furnace without even so much as a hair on their head singed or the slightest whiff of smoke on their clothing. At the end of this round, Nebuchadnezzar exclaims, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They defied the king's command, and they yielded up their bodies rather than serve or worship any god except their own god. There is no other god who is able to rescue in this way. In other words, this god is one of a kind. Now, it really feels like we're getting somewhere, like Nebuchadnezzar might be ready to throw in the towel, but as round four opens in Daniel four, you're gonna see that Nebuchadnezzar is still fighting.

So Daniel four is God's knockout blow. Strangely enough, I will tell you that there is no story in the Bible that I identify with personally more than this one. No, I did not have a season where I went insane, ate grass, and didn't cut my fingernails for seven years, like we're about to see Nebuchadnezzar have deuce in this chapter. I know some of you parents are like, that sounds like my middle schooler.

That's a teenager, fair enough. But when I was a teenager, I felt like God did some dramatic things to humble me. And I remember reading this chapter at the end of that season, and when I got to the part where Nebuchadnezzar summarizes how God had humbled him and what God had taught him through that, and Nebuchadnezzar, one of the wickedest, most pagan kings in history, lifts his defeated, humbled eyes in worship to God, I felt like I was reading something out of my own biography.

Let's take a look. Chapter four, verse one. To those of every people, nation, and language, Nebuchadnezzar says, who live on the whole earth, may your prosperity increase. I'm pleased to tell you about the miracles and wonders the Most High God has done for me. How great are his miracles, how mighty is wonders. His kingdom is an eternal kingdom. His dominion is from generation to generation.

I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and flourishing in my palace. By the way, this is a chapter of your Bible that's written by a pagan king. I had a dream, he said, and it frightened me. So, as was his custom, he called in all the wise men of Babylon to give him an interpretation.

But none of them could do it. They were probably a little scared because Nebuchadnezzar had threatened to have them all killed for making up dream interpretations. You might remember that from Daniel two. But, verse eight, finally Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my God, Nebuchadnezzar said, but the spirit of the holy gods, the true God, is in him, he came before me. I told him the dream.

Here it goes. I saw a tree in the middle of the earth and it was very tall. Its top reached to the sky and it was visible to the ends of the earth. Its leaves were beautiful. Its fruit was abundant and on it was food for all. Wild animals found shelter under it.

The birds of the sky lived in its branches and every creature on earth was fed from it. But then Nebuchadnezzar said, while I was admiring this tree a messenger dropped down from heaven and proclaimed in a loud voice, cut down the tree, verse 14, and chop off its branches. Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit.

Let the animals flee from underneath it and the birds from its branches, but leave the stump with its roots. Let him be drenched with dew from the sky and share the plants of the earth with the animals. Let his mind be changed from that of a human and let him be given the mind of an animal for seven periods of time. This is so that the living will know that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms.

He gives them to anyone he wants and he sets the lowliest of people over them. Now, verse 19 tells us that when Nebuchadnezzar told Daniel this dream, Daniel was deeply troubled and he asked Nebuchadnezzar to not make him give the interpretation. He said, Nebuchadnezzar, please, my Lord, may the dream not apply to you. May it apply only to those who hate you.

May its interpretation apply to your enemies. By the way, can I just observe that it appears that Daniel, by this point, had learned to genuinely love King Nebuchadnezzar, that pagan king, that one who had enslaved him, that one who had killed his parents. He had learned to love him, not to admire him, not to approve of all of his practices, far from it, but to love him as a person. Daniel had obeyed God's command that we looked at in Jeremiah 29 a few weeks ago to make his home in Babylon and then to seek the blessing of its inhabitants. He genuinely loved Nebuchadnezzar. I might just ask you, is that how you feel about the antagonistic Babylonians around you, the ones in government, the ones that live beside you, even when they threaten to throw you, so to speak, in the fiery furnace?

Are your Babylonian neighbors around you with their offensive signs in their yards and their offensive Facebook posts, are they primarily political opponents for you to overcome or are they people that you genuinely love, that you weep for and that you pray the best for? Nebuchadnezzar is loved by Daniel. So Daniel said, please, Nebuchadnezzar, don't make me interpret this dream. And Nebuchadnezzar, who would also learn genuinely to trust Daniel, evidently responded, verse 19, oh, Belteshazzar, don't let the dream or its interpretation alarm you, just tell me, just tell me. And so Daniel said, verse 22, King Nebuchadnezzar, you are the tree and like the tree, you have become great and strong.

Your greatness has grown and even reaches the sky. Your dominion extends to the ends of the earth, but God has issued a decree, Nebuchadnezzar, about you from heaven, that because of your pride, you, like this tree, you're gonna be cut down. Verse 25, you're gonna be driven away from people to live with the wild animals. You're gonna feed on grass like cattle, be drenched with dew from the sky for seven periods of time until you acknowledge that the most high is ruler over human kingdoms.

And he gives them to whomever he wants. As for the command to leave the tree stump with its roots, your kingdom will be restored to you as soon as you acknowledge that heaven rules. Daniel pleaded then with King Nebuchadnezzar to repent, to turn his life over to God, to separate himself from his sins. Verse 27, therefore he said, may the king heed my advice, separate yourself from your sins by doing what is right.

Separate yourself from your injustices by showing mercy to the needy. Perhaps there will be an extension of your prosperity. Sadly, however, Nebuchadnezzar did not. And so verse 29, at the end of the 12 months, as he was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon, admiring its power and its beauty, his heart feeling with a swelling sense of pride over what he had accomplished, the king exclaimed, is this not Babylon the great that I have built to be a royal residence for my vast power and for my majestic glory? While the words were still in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven. King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared that the kingdom has departed from you.

You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals and you will feed on grass like cattle for seven periods of time until you acknowledge that the most highest ruler over human kingdoms and he gives them to whomever he wants. And at that very moment, the message against Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. God had given Nebuchadnezzar 12 months to repent.

Actually, longer than that. That was only after four chapters full of warnings and signs. But the day came when Nebuchadnezzar crossed the line and God said, that's it, enough. By the way, God knows when that day is for you and it's never where you think it is. God says you have walked in disobedience long enough. You have hardened your heart too many times.

You have ignored too many pieces of counsel. And that very hour, he sends something to destroy your foundations to rock you to your core. So what happened to Nebuchadnezzar? For seven periods of time, he ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with dew from the sky.

His hair grew like eagles feathers and his nails like birds claws. By the way, we're not exactly sure what seven periods of time means. Most say, most scholars say it means seven years and I think that's right. Probably more important is that seven is the Old Testament number for fullness. So it's the Bible's way of saying that Neb suffered from this for the full amount of time. In other words, as long as it took.

Or let me make it really simple for you. As much time as it took for Neb to realize that God was God and Neb was Neb and for Neb to abdicate the throne that he had usurped from God. During these seven seasons, the mightiest king in Babylon was reduced to a groveling madman. He lived outside. He ate grass like a cow. His hair grew out like eagles feathers and his nails like the talons of an eagle. By the way, that's another reason I think it was seven actual years. We're not talking about a no-shave November or a bad case of split ends from not using condition or wearing the same pair of underwear for a week.

We're talking so many years that his hair became so long and matted that it looked like feathers instead of human hair and during this time he ate grass like a cow. It was utterly humiliating. A moving experience.

Sorry. Believe it or not, psychologists actually have a classified name for this. It's called Boanthropy.

It's a mental disorder that while rare, the victim believes that he or she is a cow. God was using Nebuchadnezzar to give us a picture of what happens to humanity when we rebel against God. You see, like Nebuchadnezzar, we were created to rule on earth. But when we reject God and we give ourselves to sin, we become like beasts, insane. And this is not just true of individuals either. It's true of whole societies that turn their backs on God. The Apostle Paul said in Romans that the human race, professing themselves to be wise, what did they become?

They became fools. In other words, in all our sophistication and all our advancement and all our much learning, we go insane. We say things like the human race is nothing more than the product of chance plus time, that nothing times nobody equals everything. That all we are is really slightly evolved beasts, no different than monkeys except for some reasoning ability and opposable thumbs. Insanity. We say things like, you know, if you're an advanced parent and you think your 10-year-old boy is really a girl trapped in a boy's body, then give him hormone therapy and irreversible invasive surgery to make him a girl.

And if anybody opposes that, we'll call that a hate crime. Insanity. This is not just about Nebuchadnezzar, this is about the whole human race.

It's about you, it's about me. So let's stop here and reflect on human pride because that's what is most at work here in this chapter. That's the source of Nebuchadnezzar's other sins.

Like C.S. Lewis said, pride is the mother sin. It gives birth to all the others. So what we're gonna look at is pride's roots, pride's fruits, and then pride's cure. Number one, pride's roots in this chapter. In this chapter, we see that pride has at least two roots.

Number one, it's a failure to see that every good thing comes from God. In verse 30, Nebuchadnezzar says, is this not Babylon the great that I have built as a royal residence by my vast power and for my majestic glory? I, I, my, my, there's no acknowledgement that it all comes from God.

So God says, verse 32, you think you did all this, Nebuchadnezzar? I'm ultimately in charge of it all. Every talent you have, every breath you take, every ounce of strength you exert is a gift from me.

I'm gonna set up and tear down whomever I want when I want. I would say to us that Americans in particular believe in this myth of the self-made man or woman. Many of us look out at what we have and we say, I work for everything I got.

You should have seen where I came from. Look what I've now created by my vast power and for my majestic glory. Listen, I do not wanna take anything away from human ingenuity or from your hard work. I am a big believer in a free economy, but even the slightest moment of self-reflection will show you that the whole self-made man bit is not entirely true, right?

Let me think about it. The biggest factors contributing to your success, you had no control over, like where you were born, the education you received, the society you were born into, the influences that inspired you to succeed. Even the genes that gave rise to your talents were ultimately gifts from your parents. The most fundamentally determinative factors in your life, you had no control of. You might have worked hard, yes, but you were using health and energy supplied to you by God.

None of us are truly self-made men. We took gifts that God gave us and we utilized them and did not acknowledge that is cosmic plagiarism, right? Plagiarism borrows something from somebody else and claims to be the sole author of it.

I've never been the victim of that, okay? Right, fake J.D. Greer is my plagiarist.

I don't know who he or she is, but they're hard at work at it. Your whole life oughta have one big footnote, right? This came from God, not my doing.

When you write your name, you oughta put a little footnote there. This came from God, not my doing. Pride's first truth is a failure to see that everything we got is a gift from God, right?

It's always accompanied by a second root, the twin root, and that is the foolish assumption that the good life is gonna last forever. Nebuchadnezzar assumed that he was safe, and relatively speaking, he was. Nebuchadnezzar was, in his time after all, the most powerful man in the world.

Furthermore, historians say that no more than five people in all of human history would have had the kind of power and privilege and wealth that he enjoyed. Babylon, his capital city, located in modern-day Iraq, was the headquarters of the known world. It was an architectural wonder. It was built like a great hanging terrace garden on two different sides of the Euphrates River, connected by a tunnel underneath the river.

His palace had a 400-foot-high waterfall. The city was bedecked with jewels and gold. Remember, I told you a few weeks ago about Herodotus, who was a contemporary historian, who visited Babylon during the days of Nebuchadnezzar and wrote that never in his life, never, had he seen such an abundance of gold everywhere. Nebuchadnezzar's capital was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

It was New York City and San Francisco and Hollywood and London and Dubai, all kind of combined into one. Furthermore, he had made Babylon virtually impregnable. He built a wall around Babylon, I told you, that stretched for 56 miles in many places.

Most places, in fact, it was about 80 feet wide and in some places, over 300 feet high. They would raise chariots on top of the wall that was so wide. The point is, if anybody should have felt secure about the future, it was Nebuchadnezzar. He could not be attacked.

Literally no army in the world compared to Babylon. He couldn't be fired. He was an unchallenged monarch. He couldn't go bankrupt.

He was the world's bank. But both you and I know God always has a way. You might be sitting on top of the world.

You might have enough savings for any contingency. Or maybe you're young and you feel like you've got so much talent that everybody tells you the world is your oyster, just go get it. But then everything changes with a simple three-word diagnosis. You've got cancer. Little over a year ago, an invisible virus that none of us had ever heard about shut our entire society down. Reminded me of the builders of the Titanic who famously boasted not even God could sink this ship.

But then there's that iceberg. I remember reading a Civil War biography. It was talking about one mighty Civil War general who boasted that he had never lost a battle, and it was true. But then he became violently ill and died from a tick bite.

You just think about the picture of that. I can oppose the strongest armies and win, but something that just happens to me in my sleep takes me out. Maybe it's happened to you this year through your spouse telling you that she's done.

My first ministry assignment down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I remember sitting with a man who was 30 years older than me, one of the richest men in Fort Lauderdale, just weeping and pouring his eyes out to a 22-year-old as his wife had just informed him that she was done, she was leaving, she was gone. Maybe that's happened to you. Maybe it's happened through something happening with one of your kids. Ain't no pain like kid pain. Ain't nothing that can reduce the mightiest person to nothing by something happening to one of their kids.

Maybe like Nebuchadnezzar, it's happening through mental illness. The human body is so delicate, so fragile, so easily thrown off. Then you watch one of those nature documentaries on Netflix and realize how fragile our whole ecosystem is. I was watching one the other day, and the scientist was explaining that the right solar flare at the right moment aimed the right direction could destroy life on Earth as we know it. So it's like it could happen at any time. We'd have about eight minutes before it all destroyed us when we would know that it was coming. Or an asteroid, or an earthquake. The financial markets get disrupted. The right set of factors creates a Wall Street crash, and then billionaires are jumping out of windows.

Somebody says the word gas shortage, and North Carolinians begin filling up plastic bags with gas. You know who you are, okay? Y'all crazy. The point is we're not as impregnable as we think we are, folks. Part of Satan's lie in the Garden of Eden was you will not surely die. It is a lie that he whispers in our ears today. It's not that he convinces us to deny death's existence. It's just that he makes us forget about it as a reality.

You just don't live with that awareness that it's coming. Years ago, I was watching one of these Faces of Death documentaries. It had a video footage of a guy who, what he did for a living was he filmed people parachuting out of airplanes. He would jump out after them, so you know, a couple on their honeymoon, would do skydiving. He'd jump out after them and film it, give it to them as a video. So on this one, you see him, his camera jump out of the plane with this couple, and he's getting some great shots of them. After about a minute, the camera starts to go crazy, and the commentator comes on and says, we think it was at this moment that he realized he jumped out of the plane without his parachute. He jumped out so many times, he just forgot it.

Just jumps out, and so you're just watching this incredibly morbid video of this camera just go farther and farther and farther down, and then it just cuts off. You understand that you and I in some ways are like that. Well, we all know it's coming. We all know that death is there. We're all falling toward it.

We just have no idea how far we have to fall. So right now, you might walk out on your roof and look out over your empire, your portfolio, your future prospects, and you say, look what I built by my power, for my glory and my enjoyment, and with one small flick of the Almighty's finger, everything changes. When I was a teenager, one of the things that God used to shake me up was a kid that I'd grown up with who died in a car wreck. It was gruesome. He'd been one of the coolest kids in the school, and I remember standing there before his casket thinking Jamie is in eternity. I wonder if he's in heaven or hell. At that moment, everything that he and I competed in, sports, grades, girls, none of it mattered. All that mattered was where he stood with the Almighty God. Pride's roots are the failure to recognize everything. Everything, every breath you take is a gift of God. And second, the foolish assumption that it'll last forever. These roots give birth to Nebuchadnezzar's fruits of pride.

We get his roots, now you're gonna see some fruits. Let me just walk you through them pretty quickly. Number one, competitiveness. Competitiveness, Nebuchadnezzar's language is filled with boasting, isn't it? I, I, my, my, that's the surest sign you're eating up with pride. You're always comparing yourself to other people. I don't mean a healthy desire to do your best. I mean a drive to show that you are the best. C.S. Lewis says that the quickest indicator light that indicates you have pride, well watch this, not what you think it is, quickest indicator light to say you have pride is that somebody else's pride bothers you.

I've always loved this little section of mere Christianity. If you wanna find out how proud you are, the easiest way is to ask yourself, how much do I dislike it when other people snub me, refuse to take any notice of me, patronize me or show off? The point, watch this, the point is each person's pride is in competition with everybody else's pride. It's because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I'm so annoyed at somebody else being the big noise.

Two of a trade never agree. Pride is essentially competitive. It is competitive by its very nature, there you have it. How much does somebody else's pride bother you? How much are you like, I just hate it, why they're always bragging, always showing off, always trying to wear, show that they're a big deal, they're driving this, trying to show they got all this money they always think that they're something, that they're the best, that's a sure sign that you got a bad case of pride. Because see their pride is competing with yours.

You're mad because they're getting the attention when deep down you really wanted the attention, it takes you off and they think they're something because deep down you wanted to be thought of as something and their somethingness is getting in the way of you're somethingness and you don't like that. The irony, the irony about all this is you may not even recognize it. But it's obvious everybody around you. That's why your spouse right now is sort of shifting uncomfortably.

C.S. Lewis said that pride's a funny disease because those who suffer from it most never know it. But they make everybody around them sick. John Calvin said that Neb's insanity gives us a picture of the blindness of human pride when somebody's insane. They don't know they're insane. They think they're normal.

Everybody else knows they're insane. That's number one. Number two, ingratitude. Ingratitude, the Apostle Paul in Romans one said the reason for the fall, reason for the fall of man at its core was that we did not glorify God as God, nor were thankful. Gratitude is the sign of humility. Unthankfulness is the sign of pride. When you're humble you recognize that everything you have is a gift. Everything you have is a gift, and as a sinner you don't deserve any of it. So you're constantly giving God glory for it, and you're thanking him for it, and that leads to number three. Ingratitude's ugly twin brother, entitlement. Entitlement, pride says I deserve good things.

Look at what I've done. I worked hard, I did something good, I did something difficult, I did something special, I sacrificed myself, I did what nobody else would do, I, I, I, my, my, therefore I deserve glory, praise, appreciation, more money, a better marriage, better kids, a break, whatever. And when your life is going well, pride says well, this is how it should be.

I deserve this blessing in life, I'm owed this kind of marriage, I'm owed these kinds of kids, I deserve this kind of friend, I deserve this kind of job, thank me. And when things go poorly, pride is like well this isn't fair, this is not right. You live with resentment, you're blaming others for how they've let you down, your husband, your friends, your kids, you blame God. By contrast, when things go well for humility, humility says wow, this is a gift, this is mercy, thank you God. And when things go poorly, humility says well, God is growing me, God is growing me, which is good, because I sure need it, thank you God. Pride leads to entitlement, humility leads to gratitude. Number four, overconfidence.

Neb believes his kingdom's gonna last forever. In the New Testament, James tells us that a sign of pride is that you take the future for granted. In fact, James goes so far as to say, don't be so arrogant as to declare that you're gonna do this or that tomorrow, because you don't know what tomorrow's gonna hold. Your life is so fragile, it's like a vapor that can be whisked away with the slightest whiff of God's hand.

Rather, James says, you should say, if the Lord wills, I'll do this, if the Lord wills, I'll do that. Overconfidence is seen in the bold self-assurance that well my future's always gonna be bright, I always find a way to get back up on top, I get knocked down, but I get up again. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. And yes, I'm just quoting a bunch of late 90s songs. Listen, a little can-do attitude is great.

I love it, I really do. But realize that you can only do those things as God supplies the strength. How does Paul say it, right? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Overconfidence leads to number five, self-will. Neb isn't afraid to go into the future without God because he believes that he has all he needs to make life work. But God's about to show him how foolish that is. You see, there was another wealthy king, King Solomon, who said it this way, he said, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God means, in that context, a recognition of how much you need him. Think of it like this, I fear God like I fear oxygen.

It's not that I'm terrified of oxygen, I just know how essential oxygen is for life, so I fear being separated from oxygen and I would never put myself in a situation where I would be without it. Those who go through life without seeking God's will are those who are foolish enough to think that they can make it in life without him. If you are not surrendered to God seeking his will right now your problem is not first rebellion, it's just flat foolishness. What's it gonna take to wake you up from that insanity?

Friend, I am terrified to think about ever being in a place anymore where I do not have God guarding my present, giving life and blessing in my relationships, or securing my future. Number six, pride, fruit, stinginess and exploitation. Verse 27, Daniel pleads with Nebuchadnezzar, separate yourself from your sins and do what's right. Premier injustice is by showing mercy to the needy. It's significant that Daniel puts repentance in terms of a new attitude toward the poor. That's because a sure sign of pride is callousness toward the needs of others. If you feel like you're responsible for all the good things in your life and you got nobody to thank but you, well then you have no natural compassion for those who are poor.

But if you realize for even a second how much you owe to God your heart naturally goes out to others in need. In fact I love that little phrase, showing mercy. I told you this chapter is written in Aramaic.

In Aramaic, the language of Babylon. In Aramaic, that phrase literally translates as complain on behalf of. Complain on behalf of the poor.

Advocate for the poor. Entitlement is the sign of pride. Advocating for the needs of others is the sign of humility. So Nebuchadnezzar, you see the roots of pride. You see the fruits of pride. Now let me show you pride's cure. By the way, can I just tell you how frustrating it is as a pastor to have pride's roots, pride's fruits, and then I need something that rhymes with that. I spent a lot longer on that than I probably should have.

And I was like, if you can come up with something I'd be grateful. I was like pride solutions or, you know, it didn't work. Pride's cure, that's all I got.

This was pretty short. Pride's cure, suffering. Failure.

Maybe that's happening to you right now. I need you to understand that failure by itself is not enough. In fact, failure often leads to more bitterness and more resentment. God's Spirit has to awaken in you an understanding of your failure. John Calvin said Nebuchadnezzar's insanity alone did not wake him up. God's Spirit had to give him eyes to see. You hear in your soul a voice calling you to look upward toward heaven. Verse 34, but at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, I looked up to heaven. The Holy Spirit took his finger, put it under my chin, and he lifted my eyes.

My sanity returned to me. God says to you, is that happening to you right now? You hear his voice in your soul calling you to look up?

How much more, how much more are you gonna have to suffer? Y'all, Nebuchadnezzar's final statement here might be one of the most stunning declarations of humility anywhere in our Bible. And by a pagan king, the most high God, he says, lives forever. You know, Nebuchadnezzar's flatterers had always greeted him with, oh king, live forever.

Nebuchadnezzar now says that epithet only belongs to God. We're all temporary. Our lives are like vapors in the wind, our kingdoms like sandcastles on a beach. Don't flatter yourself, Nebuchadnezzar would tell you that we're all gonna remember you when you're gone. To quote the great Mark Twain, the world laments you for an hour and then forgets you forever where I've told you before, at your funeral, your family's gonna gather up all your prized possessions that you spent a lifetime accumulating that you were so proud of and they're gonna be like, what are we gonna do with all this junk?

And then they're gonna hold up your clothes and make fun of them and then that's it, you're gone. Verse 34, like God, Nebuchadnezzar continues, only God's kingdom is an everlasting dominion. Only his kingdom is from generation to generation.

That means that you trying to erect a life independent of him is like a gnat trying to build a nest on the surface of the sun or a kid trying to build a sandcastle on the beach right before a hurricane. Only one kingdom lasts forever, Jesus'. Only one life to live will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. And only things that are done through his power will last. You can't make that marriage work.

You can't make those kids turn out right. Somehow we can't build this church unless the Lord builds all these houses. Those who build them labor in vain, apart from me, Jesus said, you can't do anything. All the inhabitants, Nebuchadnezzar continues, they're before him like nothing. Verse 35, God's not impressed with Babylon. He's not impressed with America. He's certainly not wowed by the summit church.

My talents are your money. He has no need of any of us and our greatest achievements are of no consequence to him. No, he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth.

He is fully in charge of history. Armies of angels move at his command as do the smallest molecules on our planet. Not a sparrow falls from the sky apart from his permission. Not a hair falls from our head without his knowledge.

We are just inhabitants of the earth. God's in control of it. There is nobody, he says, who can block his hand. His power is irresistible. No one ultimately will ever frustrate his purposes. Not you, not Nebuchadnezzar, not Hitler, not Hollywood, not Washington, not the UN, not Satan, not Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, nobody. He does whatever he pleases. Nobody can stay his hand or say to him, what are you doing? All his works, all his works are true and all his ways are just. In the end, we're gonna see that God was just and true in all that he did and it was our complaints about what he was doing that are gonna feel foolish.

We feel so justified right now, don't we? God, what were you thinking? Why didn't you do this?

Why did this happen? I don't get that. But then your eyes are open to see what God was really up to and you're gonna feel foolish. Me too, we're gonna see like three-year-olds who are questioning the wise and loving ways of their parents. The prophet Isaiah, again, a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar, says that on that final day, the wisdom of the wise will perish. The intelligence of the intelligent will vanish. The arrogance of man will be brought low. Human pride will be humbled. The Lord alone is gonna be exalted on that day. Nebuchadnezzar concludes he is able to walk, humble those who walk in pride. The mightiest men and women ever to walk the face of the earth on that final day are gonna find themselves crumbled in a heat before the king of the universe, unable even to lift their heads. For at the name of Jesus, Paul tells us, every knee's gonna bow in heaven and on earth and every tongue is gonna proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

That's it. That's the conversion testimony of the prophet Isaiah. The testimony of the richest, most powerful, most wicked king in human history. He is able to humble all those who walk in pride and that included by the grace of God, J.D.

Greer. Y'all, this blows my mind. I get to be in heaven with Nebuchadnezzar. I'm gonna call him brother Nebuchadnezzar. What about you? Has he humbled you?

Hey friend, are you ready to listen? You know, the worst thing for you is to enter eternity un-humbled. For God to wake you up through some tragedy compared to facing the terror of his wrath on the day of judgment. That leads us to probably the best part of the story. You see, Jesus was the true king and even though Jesus walked his whole life in humility and submission, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of Jesus' life, God still drove him into the wilderness of suffering and Jesus died like a beast on the cross. But because of that, he can forgive us of our sins and restore us from our insanity.

Do you remember that little phrase in verse 26? Leave the stump with its roots? A stump with roots can grow again. Yesterday, Veronica had me out in the yard digging up a stump in one of our flowerbeds.

Evidently, the previous owner had cut down a tree but left the roots and this hickory tree was starting to grow again. When Jesus died on the cross, his life was pulled up by the roots so that he could forgive and restore you and you could grow again to what God intended for you to be if you'll let him. And so now, he calls to you in your insanity to come to him, to separate yourself from your sins, to humble yourself and surrender.

Are you ready for that pain in your life that you're going through? He's not trying to punish you. He's not trying to indicate that he hates you. He's trying to wake you up. It's like we say, he's not trying to pay you back. He's trying to bring you back.

He wants to restore you. You ready to listen? You ready to listen? Why don't you bow your heads if you would? At all of our campuses, if you're joining us at home, if you're joining us at home there on your couch, bow your head. I mean, if you say, this is me, right here, right now, this is me.

I'm gonna ask you to do something incredibly bold. Everybody's gonna keep their head bowed, but I want you to acknowledge this and I want it to be something that you remember. You're like, right here, right now, I'm lifting my head in surrender and saying, heaven rules, I surrender and I receive you, Jesus, as my savior if you haven't already done that.

Or maybe you have, but you're just repenting and recommitting your life to Jesus. If that's you right now, would you just stand up? I'm not having anybody look for you, but I want you to stand up on your feet and say, right here, right now, this is what I'm doing.

I, I'm similar to Nebuchadnezzar. Right here, right now, wherever you are, I can't see everybody, obviously, at our campuses, but would you just stand to your feet? Father, I pray for everyone who is standing. God, I pray that this would be a moment of change, a moment of eternal destiny shift.

Give them wisdom and clarity. I pray to follow this all the way through, in Jesus' name. You guys can be seated, the ones of you that were standing. Amen. As our campus pastors and worship teams come, listen, if you made that kind of decision or you need to, just text the word ready to 33933. It allows you to, allows us to get back with you, which we would love to do. Our worship teams will come. Let's worship with Nebuchadnezzar, the God, the God who rules and reigns redemptively in eternity.