Sunday, September 28

Therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn, and let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Let's go to God in prayer. Father, as we dive into the wonder of your Word, that you have inspired, that you have preserved, that you have given to us in clarity and in our own language, may we see your greatness, may we see your glory, and may we humble ourselves before your mighty hand. Help us to trust in you, to hope in you, and to see your goodness in our lives. It's in your Son's name we pray. Amen.

So every, at least every child that I have, and some children that I have been familiar with, they all go through this phase. They can walk and they can talk, but they're very, very young, and maybe you've experienced this, this phase that says, "I can do it all by myself." Right? And the reality is that most of them cannot do it by themselves, and it doesn't matter how much you try to explain to them, or help them, right? The response is, "I can do this all by myself." Pride at its heart is us saying, not maybe to our parents, but to those around us, or to God, that I can do it all by myself. And we are experts at identifying pride in other people, right? It's easy to look back through history and identify people who have gone wrong because in their pride they said, "I've got this handle," and it turns out that they didn't.

Or to look into the world of politics and say, "Well, you look at that politician. Look at how great and how proud they are." C.S. Lewis and Mare Christianity in his chapter entitled, "The Greatest Sin," speaking about pride, says that the more pride we have in our hearts, the more easily we recognize it. And I think this is important, dislike it in others. And so I want to begin with a reminder that pride is not just out there for others, but it is here and it's a struggle in our hearts. And I want us to know, as we begin, what pride looks like, because the way pride works in its deceitful, dangerous destruction that it brings into our life is that oftentimes when we hear about pride, we say, "Well, that's not really the kind of pride I have."

He's talking about a different kind of pride. Or we just turn ourselves to others and go, "Man, you know who really could use some input and maybe some guidance in regard to pride?" Not me, but I know some people who can. You see, pride in its deceitfulness, if we are not clear about what pride is, we find ourselves in this circle of justification where we say, "It's not about me. It's about somebody else." You see, there's different kinds of pride, and Scripture is very clear in Proverbs 8 that there's a kind of pride that God hates. And the kind of pride God hates is not the kind of satisfaction that God hates. The kind of satisfaction that comes when we do something well, and we say, "I've accomplished this." And we look at that and say, "Isn't that wonderful?" Right?

Through God's strength and through the gifts that He's given me, I've been able to do this. Pride is not the joy we express in the accomplishments of somebody we love. Right? The kind of pride we're talking about comes from sort of this self-conceit. And it is sin, and God hates it, because it builds between us a wall. As C.S. Lewis says in that same chapter in "Mere Christianity," there's no way we can look up when we're always looking at ourselves or looking down on others. So I would define pride like this. It's the sinful elevation of self that blinds us to God. It sets us against others. It is, by nature, competitive. And what you find is that it makes us less. It destroys what we are created to be. And pride at its heart is rooted in competition,

having more or being better or being greater than someone or something else. In Daniel chapter 4, we're going to walk through Nebuchadnezzar's story this morning, and we're going to see how pride deceives us, how pride is dangerous, and how pride destroys. And so we're going to start with the deceitfulness of pride. And as we dive into the deceitfulness of pride, I want us to sort of think about pride in its deceit as one of those foggy days where we can't see much that's in front of us. A couple of years ago, we were in Vermont for a little bit of a vacation, and we had just eaten some pizza. And in this little town, there is a road that goes over the mountain. And at the top of the mountain, usually you can look out and see out over the valley. It was just about sunset.

And because it was the middle of summer, sunset really late, and so it had been kind of foggy and rainy all day long. And so I said, "Well, it looks like it's kind of clearing up. The weather map looks like it's clearing up. Let's drive to the top of this mountain so we can watch the sunset together." You know, so we're going to go up and look out over the Champlain Valley and see the sunset. The glory and the joy of God's creation. And I have a history of telling people, "Hey, let's go to the top of this mountain and see something cool." And never once has it turned out to be okay. So we start driving up this, and this road is in part gravel. There's like a couple little places that is paved at the top. There's a mile that is paved.

It's the steepest paved mile in America. The road's closed in the winter. There's no guardrails. And as we go up this mountain, instead of climbing above all of the fog and everything, it just got more and more foggy. In fact, it's probably one of the foggiest situations that I have ever been in. So much so, right, you basically had to turn off your headlights because as they shot against the fog, it didn't matter high beam, low beam, or the fog lights that our car had, like you still couldn't see anything. A lot of people in the car, we won't name names, are like, "Is this really a good idea? Should we be going up this road right now?" And that fog, like you could see nothing. Barely could see the road. You see, living in pride is like trying to drive to the top of that mountain in dense fog.

And pride, in that situation for me, I can drive anywhere at any time, right, blinds me to the danger. The same way pride blinds us to the danger of life and to the destruction it brings into our lives. You see, pride deceives by creating a false belief in us. We trust our own abilities and our own strength and our own resources over God, and it distorts how we see God, and it distorts how we see others. And pride deceives in a couple of different ways. One way pride deceives is it makes our victories bigger. I was talking to some people this past week about fishing, and I said the thing I love about fishing is you can go fishing and catch two fish like this, but by the time you get home, you can turn them into something like this, right? And what pride does, it does exactly that in our lives.

It takes our victories, and it makes them bigger. And the other thing that pride does is it makes our failures smaller. So we make our good qualities, we inflate them, while minimizing and hiding our brokenness, and it also erases the contributions of others, right? I did it all by myself. And as a result, pride changes our focus, our mission, and our seeking of what is good and right. Our mission becomes solely self. Our purpose becomes to build ourselves up, and our search for what is right is replaced by searching for what we want. We're going to see that in the life of Nebuchadnezzar, right? We look through where we've seen Nebuchadnezzar in these first three chapters going into chapter 4, and it becomes apparent pretty quickly that Nebuchadnezzar is not the most humble person in the world, right?

He chooses the best of the best as he takes captives. When he has a dream and nobody can give him the right answer at first, he says, "I'll just kill them all and replace them." And that dream which shows him that his kingdom will one day end, instead of listening to the message of God, despite acknowledging the fact the message was in fact from God. In chapter 3, he fights that dream by building a giant statue instead of just the head being gold, in an attempt to make himself seem greater and be eternal. And Scripture doesn't say this about the statue in Daniel chapter 3, but I imagine it looked pretty similar to Nebuchadnezzar, right? He builds a giant gold statue and seeks to have everyone worship it. So we've gotten some clues that he may not be the most humble man in the world.

Let's take a look at Daniel chapter 4. Here's what we find in verse 4. "I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house, prospering in my palace." Now we'll come back to what happens next in a moment, but it begins with, "I'm comfortable in my house, and I am prospering," right? Life is good. Things are going great, as we'll see in a minute. It's because I'm such a great man, and we've seen the seeds of pride, and in a moment we're going to see the fruit of pride. We're going to sort of zip forward almost an entire year to verse 29. "At the end of twelve months," he, speaking of Nebuchadnezzar, "was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon, and the king answered and said, "Is this not great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence,

for the glory of my majesty?" And that answer either is that maybe he's answering as he's thinking about this dream that happened a year ago, that he'll be torn down like a beast of the field, and he goes, "Oh, look at what I have built." Or maybe he's just talking to himself, right? "Self, is not this the biggest and best city that you've ever seen? Of course it is self. You've done a great job building this self. No one will ever tear it down. You're doing a great job." You see, we said pride is deceitful, and it changes our focus and our mission and our pursuit of what is good and right. Here it is in Nebuchadnezzar's life. While Nebuchadnezzar has contributed to the rise and the glory of Babylon, it's not only been him.

There are others who have come before him for more than a thousand years. And what you find is pride deceives us, and it maximizes self, and it diminishes the work of others. And even though his empire, built by another, brought to prosperity by his father in a resurgence of Babylonian power, he has minimized all the contributions of everybody but himself. Now that's his focus. Look at his mission. I'm going to read a long section of this. Daniel, in this account, right, we hear about the dream, we hear about the dream again, and we hear about the dream and its interpretation. I'm going to read verses 19 down through 25. Then Daniel, so he's had this dream. Daniel is coming to interpret it, but we will see what God's purpose is for Nebuchadnezzar and how he has abandoned it and sought to chase his own agenda rather than righteousness.

Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was dismayed. And for a while his thoughts alarmed him. This is where he has been asked to interpret the dream. The king answered and said, "Belteshazzar, let not the dream or its interpretation alarm you." And Belteshazzar answered and said, "My Lord, may the dream be for those who hate you and its interpretation for its enemies." When you hear words like that about what you have just dreamed, you know it's not going to be good. The tree you saw, which is Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which grew and became strong, so its top reached to the heavens, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose leaves were beautiful, its fruit was abundant, and in which was food for all, under which the beasts of the field found shade, and whose branches the birds of the heavens lived. It is you, O king, who have grown and become strong.

Your greatness has grown and reaches to the heavens, your dominion to the ends of the earth. And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven, saying, this is the decree of God, chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave a stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him. This is the interpretation. O king, it is the decree of the Most High, which has come upon my Lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men. Your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, you shall be wet with the dew of heaven,

and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives it to whom he will. Now, in these verses, one of the things that we see is the purpose of Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom. In this picture that he has of the tree, his purpose, both in verse 12 and in verse 21, is to bring good things to the people that he governs, right? The tree is Nebuchadnezzar, the animals are his subjects, and under the tree of his rule, they find a home, they find food, they find protection under the rule of the Babylonian government. Now, there is in this, I think, a fascinating theology of what government is supposed to do, but like we have done, Nebuchadnezzar twists it to serve the governing rather than to protect the governed.

He has been seeking his own good instead of what is good and right, so he has shifted his focus to himself. His purpose has become twisted to get as much as he can rather than caring for others. He has also abandoned what is good and right. Therefore, this is Daniel's summary, "O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you. Break off your sins," another way of saying that is "repent," "by practicing righteousness," "and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed," "that there may be a lengthening of your prosperity." And there is this phrase that is repeated three times throughout the chapter, that God gives the kingdom to who he will, ultimately for his purposes, but we in our pride seek our own. The pride, the focus, and the mission that Nebuchadnezzar has left to seek himself.

He's rewrote what he is supposed to be doing, giving credit to himself for what God has given. And here's the reality: without the humbling work of God, we're all little Nebuchadnezzars. We all lose our purpose, our focus, and we stop seeking righteousness. So in all the cars that we generally take on long trips, we have this orange hammer, and it's called a life hammer. It comes in a little case, and it's for when you go over a long bridge or you're driving by the water, and although the likelihood of this happening is zero, the big problem is if your car goes into the water, you've got to be able to open a door, and with electronic locks and electronic windows, so you have something to break the window, equalize the pressure, swim out of your car, and to cut your seat belt.

You have this little life hammer sitting there so that if we are ever trapped, there is a way of escape. And the beauty of what God has done for us, for you and I, when we are trapped in our pride, in the fog, and in the place where we can't escape from, He has given us a hammer in which to break through the fog, to break through the windows that are holding us back, to cut the restraints of our pride. And it's so simple that it sounds silly, but the reality is it's an earth-shaking blow to our pride, and that is simply gratitude. When we begin to thank God, we stop rewriting our story for what I have done, and we see what God has done. It breaks up this rejection of correction that we have in our life. I don't need to hear this.

And as we thank God, we realize that yes, I do need Him. And so if we are those people, the little Nebuchadnezzars, the practical application of breaking through the fog, freeing us from our pride, is by going to God in gratitude. And not just in general, "I thank you for this day," but speaking and writing down and sharing specific things that God has done for us. Gratitude shifts our focus from what we have done to what God has done to what He is doing, and in His promises we see what He has promised to do. And so if you want to break through the fog of pride, you must first of all cultivate in your life the practice of gratitude. Let's see the danger of pride. There is one vice, C.S. Lewis says, of which no man in the world is free, which everyone loathes when he sees it in someone else,

and which hardly any people except Christians ever imagine they are guilty of themselves, and that is pride. And it's not just that pride makes everything foggy, it's what we crash into as we travel through that fog. You see, pride keeps us from seeing reality. Let me give you the reality of what's happening in Daniel chapter 4. To the end, that the living, the Most High God rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, and he sets it over even the lowliest of men. Until you know that the Most High God rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, one more time. Until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to who he will. The reality is this, that God is sovereign, and he is in control even over the kingdoms of men, including the mighty kingdoms of Babylon.

But Nebuchadnezzar, in his pride, has been kept from that reality and thinks that it's all about him. We also find that pride separates us from others. "Is this not great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of our majesty?" And so pride blinds us to the reality that God is in control. It minimizes the contributions of others. Here's where pride gets really dangerous, because it keeps us from seeing the warnings that God has given to us. You see, Nebuchadnezzar is familiar with the one true God. At the end of Daniel chapter 2, he says, "As truly your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings, the revealer of mysteries, and you have been able to reveal this mystery." Daniel chapter 3. "Therefore I make a decree, any people or nation or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn from limb,

and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way." In this dream that Nebuchadnezzar is given, and Daniel interprets, he's given another warning. That if you continue in your pride, your tree will be cut down. And because of his pride, Nebuchadnezzar has missed every warning in his driving off the cliff. And if you even want to dive a little deeper into Daniel chapter 4, you see that at the beginning this dream troubles him. It's another warning. He sees Daniel's reaction and his hesitancy to reveal the dream. Another warning. He hears the interpretation, and it changes nothing, right? Pride puts our foot to the floor in the midst of the fog of our delusions, and drives us right toward the bridge that is completely out. And pride ultimately keeps us from that which would save us.

All he had to do was acknowledge God. In verse 34, "And he doesn't do that until everything falls apart." We think about the Pharisee in Luke 18. "I thank you that I am not like other men." So we talked a moment ago about driving through the fog. There's one other time where I remember driving through dense fog. In fact, I didn't even have my driver's license yet. I had my learner's permit. And we were going to a church men's thing, first thing on a Saturday morning. And I was excited to be able to drive, and then we got in the car, and it was the densest fog. I mean, I don't know if it was dense, but in my memory it was very, very dense. We picked up one of the guys from church. So it was dad and myself and this other guy, and we're driving through the fog.

And I can only imagine that their blood pressure was up because you've got a 15-year-old driving a car for the next 20 miles. And you can't see anything, and nobody has their headlights on. And if you're not hitting your brake lights and you're driving a gray car, you're essentially invisible. And so what happens, right? All of a sudden, you've got like a passenger seat driver and a backseat driver who's like, "I think I see a car up there. There's brake lights! Brake lights! Brake lights!" It just gets louder and louder as you see the brake lights approaching. Right? That's what we need. We need that community of people who surrounds us. Right? Gratitude helps us break through pride as we focus on God. But our brothers and sisters in Christ who sit next to us as we travel this life, who can see our blind spots,

who eyes pick up things that we may have missed or have taken for granted. And so who has permission in your life to talk to you gently and in Christ about those areas where we're missing things? Are we regularly confessing our brokenness? Do we have people around us who will watch out for comparison and resentment and needing to be noticed? And pride symptoms aren't always, "I'm better than," like that focus of pride on ourselves may be the other way around, right? Focus so much on self that it leads us into discouragement and despair and anxiety that I can't do it, I can't face it, face it, I am not strong enough. Just another form of pride. I'm at the center. God's out there. One form of pride says, "I don't need him." The other form of pride says, "I'm too broken. He can never help me."

And so what we find is not only do we need gratitude to break through pride, we need brothers and sisters in Christ who can help us and walk with us and see our blind spots. You see, pride destroys. And one of the reasons we minimize sometimes the danger of pride is because the inevitable judgment isn't always immediate. Right? You rob a bank, you're caught usually very quickly. You drive 25 miles an hour over the speed limit in front of a state trooper, right? Your judgment comes pretty quickly. But pride sometimes we say, "Oh, they're confident. They're just good at what they do." Pride often in our lives seems even socially acceptable or without consequence until we come up against something bigger and stronger than us. And God sometimes punishes us or stops our pride by saying, "Stop that."

But sometimes He takes away those things that we are trusting in. And then what happens here in Daniel 4, God simply lets Daniel find out, not Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar find out what happens without him. He says, "I've given you power, prestige, wealth, and even your mind, and without it you are nothing." And so this is what happens to Nebuchadnezzar. God says, "If you want to be without me and trust yourselves, here's where you end up." Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men. He ate grass like an ox. His body was wet with the dew of heaven. Till his hair grew as long as eagle feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws. He goes from being the tree to living under a tree. From providing food to eating grass. From elegant clothes to long hair.

You see, the one who refused to honor God's glory loses his own glory. Refusing to share because he seeks to get more for himself, he becomes poorer. However, he outwardly becomes outwardly what his heart has been spiritually and inwardly a beast. That's from Sinclair Ferguson. God essentially says, "If you want to do it by yourself, fine. Good luck." And while this boast is still on his lips, God's judgment falls, and pride the mask is torn away, and God exposes who he really is. Oftentimes, our hearts tend to run like Nebuchadnezzar's toward ourselves. And so, the call here is to do what Nebuchadnezzar was called to do: lift our eyes. Alright, that's a turning point in verse 34: "I lift my eyes to the heavens." You see, pride always destroys. God humbles, but not to leave us broken, but to restore us.

And there is a remarkable contrast here, because Nebuchadnezzar is forced into humility, but Christ willingly humbles himself in order to save us. And so, here we are, fighting the enemy we can't beat, and God is the one who restores. At the end of days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, I lifted my eyes to the heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. While pride ultimately deceives and leads to danger, and eventually destruction, God does the opposite. Right? It's through this judgment that Nebuchadnezzar is restored. Not just restored, but transformed. If you go back to the very beginning of this chapter, verse one. These are Nebuchadnezzar's words. "King Nebuchadnezzar to all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied to you.

It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are his signs! How mighty are his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation." It's clear from Nebuchadnezzar's words that he views the discipline of God as a reason to rejoice. Seven years eating grass, without a haircut, without a manicure, living in the rain and the elements. He views this as a blessing from God because God has transformed him. Prides would say, "I don't deserve all this." Humility will say, "Look what God has done." "In your time of brokenness." And so I want to remind you that pride deceives. And we break through that window with gratitude. Pride is dangerous. And so we seek those who can spot for us and watch out for us.

And that while pride destroys, God restores. He humbles the proud and restores the humble. What's remarkable is that the same king who humbled Nebuchadnezzar is the king that came and humbled himself for us so that we can be restored to sanity, and our humanity can be restored, and we can live in eternal praise. God's grace ultimately is greater than our pride. There's a remarkable similarity in the New Testament to what happens in Nebuchadnezzar. In Luke 8, you find a demon-possessed man living in the tombs without clothes, fighting everyone who comes near. Jesus comes, restores this man, gives him back his mind, casts out his demons, and he sends him home and he says this, "Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you." And he went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

Look at the restoration of the king in his words in verse 2. It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. Not just proclaimed to his town, but proclaimed to every people, language in the world that the Babylonian Empire touched. God can restore you. And so the question we have this morning is will we proclaim him instead of ourselves? Let's pray. Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you that you are the God who disciplines, and you are also the God who restores. So we ask that you would restore our souls, that we would walk in gratitude with our brothers and sisters in Christ, lifting our eyes to you rather than seeking our own purposes, our own mission, and our own way of walking. May you guide us in the paths of righteousness for the glory of your name. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.