Yesterday we took a look at the account of
the three men in the fiery furnace,
Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego
were thrown into the fiery furnace,
and God stood there with them,
and he rescued them.
And then the king, he responded in a great way.
King Nebuchadnezzar he said,
"There is no God like your God, guys,
"a God who is able to save,
"and a God who is able to rescue."
Again, a great statement of faith from Nebuchadnezzar.
So you can see his faith is kind of continuing,
it went up and then it went down,
and now it's up again.
Today
we kind of see it waver.
In fact, we're looking at two kings today.
We're looking at Nebuchadnezzar
and then we're looking at his successor,
one of his successors named Belshazzar.
And we look at those two kings.
We give
one very important lesson,
the same lesson from both of them related to pride
and how we feel about ourselves in relation to
how we feel about God.
The first lesson comes from us,
the first part of that lesson comes when Nebuchadnezzar
had another dream.
This time he didn't dream of a big statue
that was made up of different materials
that a rock came and destroyed.
He dreamt of a big tree,
a large tree that spread over the face of the whole Earth,
provided shade for a lot of people.
It was massive, it was beautiful,
it was wonderful.
But then a voice came from heaven to cut down the tree,
and the tree was cut down.
But the voice from heaven said,
"But leave the stump and leave the roots."
And so that was the dream.
Because Daniel had shown great ability
from God to come and interpret dreams,
he brought Daniel in to interpret the dream again.
And Daniel told him the meaning of the dream.
He said,
"King Nebuchadnezzar,
"that tree represents you,
"and it represents your kingdom.
"It's massive and it's beautiful.
"It's great and it does so much good.
"It provides shade for so many people in the world."
He said, "But at some point,
"you're going to turn away from God
"and God is going to see that,
"and he is going to cut down your tree.
"But he is going to leave the roots,
"and he's going to leave the stump,
"so that when you turn back to Him in faith,
"He's going to build the tree back up again.
"It can grow up again."
So Daniel urged him.
He said, "Don't put yourself in that position.
"Just love God, love God, love God,
"and don't put yourself above God."
But of course, Nebuchadnezzar, he didn't.
He didn't listen.
Part of the interpretation of the dream
was what was going to happen to Nebuchadnezzar
after he turned away from God.
As in not only was the threat of his kingdom being,
his kingdom was going to be taken away from him for awhile,
but he himself was basically going to go crazy,
go insane,
act like a lunatic in a lot of ways.
And that ended up happening.
Because one day, Nebuchadnezzar,
he's just walking through the middle of his kingdom
and he's looking around,
and he just pauses and he says,
"What a great kingdom I have built.
"Look at how awesome I am.
"Look at the awesome things that I do.
"There is no one on Earth like me.
"I am the greatest person ever in the history of ever."
(laughs)
Loose interpretation,
I don't think he said it exactly that way.
But God heard it,
and that's exactly the thing that Daniel
had warned him against.
Give credit to God for all the good things in our lives.
But he didn't.
He looked at himself, he elevated himself,
and he said, "I'm so great."
So God did exactly what he promised in the dream.
In a moment he became insane,
he became crazy,
and in some really unique ways.
I encourage you to read through it.
But it didn't take long before he remembered the lesson
that Daniel had taught him through the dream.
Where he realized,
"Wow, this is really happening."
And God really is serious about us wanting
to recognize Him as God and not ourselves as God.
And so he repented.
And once he repented,
he got his clear mind back again,
he was back to himself,
and he was back ruling his kingdom.
And then at the end of that,
after all of that happened,
it says, "Nebuchadnezzar,
he praised and he exalted and glorified the King of heaven"
These are his own words.
He says, "Because everything He,
"everything God does is right
"and all His ways are just.
"And those who walk in pride He is able to humble."
And those are the last words we hear from Nebuchadnezzar.
We don't hear what happens after that.
We don't know when he died.
When you get into the next chapter,
the very next verse takes us to one of his successors,
King Belshazzar.
And King Belshazzar,
he's having,
it refers to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's father.
He's having a big party.
And during the party,
you might remember that Nebuchadnezzar
had gone into Israel and he had,
and part of taking all of the people
from Israel back to Babylon,
was taking a lot of the things
that had been in the temple back to Babylon.
And Belshazzar, when he's having this big old party,
he says, "Hey, let's grab some of those cups, and goblets
"and stuff that we took from the temple,
"and let's use them to have a good time."
And so they go in and they grab a lot of the cups,
the silver, and the gold,
and they pour wine into them,
and they're having a great time.
And then it says they started to worship
the silver, and the gold,
and all those different things
as if those things were the gods.
And then as soon as it says that that started to happen,
that they were worshiping something other than the true God,
they were worshiping these cups
and different things like that,
and then it says something suddenly appeared out of nowhere,
and it was a hand.
It was just a hand appearing in the middle of nowhere,
and it started writing on the wall.
It started writing a message on the wall,
"mene, mene, tekel, parsin" it said.
And Belshazzar was just terrified.
This floating hand writing a message on the wall.
And he didn't know what it meant.
He wasn't able to interpret it.
And none of the,
none of his other wise men were able to do that either.
He was really, really scared.
So they brought Daniel back in again,
and Daniel was able to tell him
what the hand writing on the wall meant,
which is by the way where that phrase comes from.
You may have heard of the phrase,
"They've seen the handwriting on the wall."
It was an indication of what's coming.
It comes from this biblical account,
the handwriting on the wall.
But Daniel came in and he said,
"Belshazzar, I can tell you what this means."
He says, "God has evaluated you,
"and he takes what you did here very seriously,
"and you're going to be punished for it."
He gave a little more insight.
He said, "Belshazzar, you knew what your father did.
"You knew about all the ups and downs in his faith.
"You heard his confession of faith at the end.
"And you knew how he turned away from his other gods,
"and eventually he came and he worshiped the true God.
He said, "You knew those things,
"and yet you still decided to worship another god.
He said, "So Belshazzar,
"your life is going to end.
"And it's going to end quickly."
And it did.
He died that night.
That was it.
While God had given Nebuchadnezzar
chance after chance after chance,
Belshazzar, maybe in part because
he should have known better,
he cut off his opportunity right away.
Now God doesn't tell any of us exactly how long we have on,
how long we have on Earth.
We might have five minutes,
we might have 50 years,
we might have, we don't know.
But we do know this,
that this time on Earth is our only opportunity
to get right with God.
Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar,
they both suffered from pride.
There was something that they loved
more than they loved God.
And if there's something in your life
that you have loved more than you love God,
if it's yourself
or anything else,
do not wait any longer
and acknowledge that to God.
And repent of it,
and turn to him just like Daniel
urged Nebuchadnezzar to do,
just like Belshazzar should have known to do.
Turn to him and what will you find?
No matter the sin,
whether it's pride or anything else,
no matter what you've been holding onto with all your heart
more than you hold onto God,
you'll always find a God who is determined to hold onto you.
Who's already forgiven it,
and who obviously can take care of those
who walk with him in faith.
We certainly see that in Daniel.
We see it show up in so many different ways.
And tomorrow, we'll see it show up in probably the most
well known way of all with Daniel.
I'll see you then.
Today, we took a look at the sin of pride
which can be such an easy one to fall into.
One of the greatest ways to combat
the sin of pride is by thinking of
ways that we know that God is greater,
ways that we know that God is good to us.
And by focusing on those good things,
so that's a little bit easier to say,
look at the good things God does,
look at the great things that God does for me.
And so maybe if you wouldn't mind sharing one thing
or a thousand things that you're grateful for
when it comes to your relationship with God
as a way to keep all of our eyes focused on
who our great God is
so that we can simply feel safe in His great care.
Share those things.
Give us all lots of reasons,
and collectively let's give each other lots of reasons
to look to God as the great God that he is.