God Humbles Kings: Nebuchadnezzar’s Return to God

``Now this story is really powerful, and it's one that you may have heard before. You may never have heard it at all, but I think it was worth it for us to read through it because it carries with it some incredible truths about who we are and who God is. [00:35:10] (15 seconds)  #TruthsAboutGodAndUs

Now if you're tracking with that story, you found that Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king of the world to see the world had ever seen to that point. He was king of Babylon, an empire that conquered the entire known world. He was the undisputed king of humanity at that time. Incredibly wealthy. No one could tell him no. He had absolute dominion and control over the world, and yet God humbled him. [00:35:25] (29 seconds)  #PrideFallsBeforeGod

And the promise that Daniel tells him when he interprets this this dream is that if Nebuchadnezzar does not humble himself, God will humble him and he will lose his mind. And just like that troop is cut down, he will be out in the fields completely out of his mind for seven times, seven seasons, until he realizes that God is God and he is not. [00:36:07] (26 seconds)  #HumbleOrBeHumbled

And this dream was terrifying and Daniel counsels Nebuchadnezzar and says, hey, listen, you should be very careful. Do some good so that this will not happen to you. Maybe you can avert God's judgment on you, but Nebuchadnezzar can't help himself. One day, he's walking on the rooftop of his palace. He looks over this massive city that he's ruler of, he looks at his dominion. He goes, hey. Did I not do this? Was I not the greatest king? Am I not the most powerful being on the earth? And in that moment, it's all taken away from him, [00:36:33] (32 seconds)  #PrideLeadsToDownfall

and he is sent out. He lives in the fields. He lives like a wild animal. His hair grows long. His beard grows long. His nails grow out to be like eagles' talons, which by the way is like sometimes, you know, like one of the grossest things you can see, people are just like really long, gnarly nails. Right? He gets to be that disheveled, that unkempt, and it's only until he realizes that God is God and he is not, that his mind is restored to him and he is replaced back onto that throne, And he realizes that God is worthy to be worshiped. [00:37:05] (36 seconds)  #RestoredWhenWeHumble

And we see this in our passage here, that God is sovereign over everything. What does it mean that he's sovereign over everything? It means that he's in charge, that he is the ruler of everything, that there's no one that can tell God what to do, that he's ultimately in charge of human history. He's in charge of our future. He's never surprised. He's fully in command. This is one of the central themes of the Bible, that God is different than us. [00:38:05] (29 seconds)  #GodIsSovereign

reassuring for us as Christians. You know why? Because often we get so spun up. Like, we look at Instagram. We look at TikTok. We look at the news. We look at Twitter. Like, we see all these social media outlets. We look at the news. We see it on television. We feel so much anxiety. We hear feel anxiety about, like, wars that we see. We feel anxiety about elections that are happening. We wonder, like, is this all going down the toilet? Like, what's happening in the world? Is everything gonna become chaos? [00:39:20] (31 seconds)  #FaithOverFearOnline

which is deeply reassuring. There's never been a president, a king, or emperor that God was surprised by. He was never like, hey. How did this happen? Like, God's always been in control over our government and our reality. And, ultimately, that's what allows me to sleep good at night regardless of what the headlines say, regardless of what we go through, because God is God, and he's in control. [00:40:13] (23 seconds)  #GodNeverSurprised

Are we willing to have God take the center stage to be the the centerpiece of our story? Are we willing to give him full control of our life? And many of us go to church. We're like good Christian people, but we've not fully given God control. And the reality is that God already has control. We're just not aligning ourselves with the universe, with where the world really is headed. And so for many of us, when we run up against something that we don't like, we start raging against God. Why? Because it goes against our our our deception that we kind of given ourselves that we determine what the future is and and how that's supposed to be, and God doesn't work that way. God's ultimately in control of all things. [00:41:45] (44 seconds)  #GiveGodCenterStage

Well, Nebuchadnezzar had a choice. Daniel told him, hey. Listen. You can either be humbled now. Like, while you have everything, while everything's going great, Nebuchadnezzar, I I think you should consider to to just just, like, put yourself at God's mercy. Do good. Try to court God's favor. Pursue God. That's my advice to you. Or this will happen to you, and you'll be humbled later. [00:43:04] (24 seconds)  #ChooseHumilityNow

You know, a lot of us don't like to think that way because we think like, hey, listen, I can just kind of get by with what I'm doing right now and maybe maybe it'll work out for me later. Like, we like to delay all kinds of pain. We try to delay anything beyond the status quo. We're hoping later we can figure that out. Right now we're gonna get as much as we can right now. I think a lot of us live that way. We're like, man, I'll follow God later. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow God, like, when I when I have kids and they need to go to church, then I'm gonna go do that. But right now as a single adult, right now as a college student or a, you know, high school student, junior high student, I'm just gonna go after all the things I can get, experiences, relationships, any kind of just joy I can take right now. I don't I'll follow God when I'm growing up and mature later. [00:43:29] (47 seconds)  #DontDelayFaith

But you know what happens for a lot of young couples is that then they get married, have a kid, and they're like, man, everything's so busy. And then we have like all these kid sports, and we're just trying to, like, survive. So this fall of God later, when our kids are in high school, when they need to go to youth group, that's when we're gonna lock in. And and we'll do that later when our kids are more mature. We have a little bit more margin, maybe a little more money, then we'll do that later. You know, high school is over in a blink, and things are so busy, and then there's travel ball, and you got all this stuff going on. So then parents often go, and people can just say, hey, you know, we'll do that after the kids are in the out of the house or empty nesters. We'll have all this time later. And and then then that season comes, and, man, you're not any less busy. You've got a lot of other stuff going on and you kinda like set in your ways and you just don't really like lock in and follow the Lord. And pretty soon you come to the end of your life and you realize there's no more later. [00:44:16] (51 seconds)  #NoMoreLater

See see, the time to repent and to humble yourself underneath God's hand is always now. Today is now is the right moment to trust God with your life. It's not later. It's right now in this moment. And you have a choice. Are you gonna humble yourself before the Lord today, or will you take your chances later? And later is always more painful. [00:45:08] (21 seconds)  #RepentToday

Listen. The reason God calls you to be humble is because he knows what you need. He knows what's best for you. And when you trust him, when you say, I'm gonna cast my cares upon Jesus, I am trusting that he knows what's best for me, cares for me deeply, and is for me. And because of that, I can have confidence that if I trust God, he's never gonna let me down. He's never gonna let me stumble. He's never gonna let me fall, [00:47:10] (30 seconds)  #TrustGodHeCares

and he's for me. So the invitation from the scriptures over and over again is saying, hey, listen, humble yourself. Why? Because pride ultimately is lying. You know, pride at its essence is saying, I don't need God. I actually want to take God's place. I don't need anything else or anybody else. I'm awesome. And when we do that, what we're doing is we're lying about what's really true about who we are. Because we are not God, and we are not the center of the universe. [00:47:40] (36 seconds)  #PrideIsALie

And when we make ourselves the center, what happens? We break because we're not meant to carry that kind of weight. And we come to a place of deep brokenness and desperation if we're not willing to humble ourselves underneath the hand of God. Nebuchadnezzar experienced that. [00:48:16] (24 seconds)  #PrideBreaksYou

But what's most glorious in this story is that God pursues people. God pursues people. He pursues Nebuchadnezzar. We've been seeing this in the last several weeks where God's been chasing Nebuchadnezzar because God wants Nebuchadnezzar to know him and have a relationship with the God of the universe who created him. [00:48:39] (23 seconds)  #GodPursuesYou

Nebuchadnezzar, this pagan king, has an encounter with the living God. And God's been pursuing him and he revealed himself to Nebuchadnezzar from the very first dream he has with Daniel. He reveals himself to Nebuchadnezzar through the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But here, God breaks Nebuchadnezzar's will, his pride, in order that Nebuchadnezzar could know that there's a God that loves him and he changes his life. [00:49:32] (33 seconds)  #GraceBreaksPride

And you would think that would be something to be like, hey, you never have a chance to have a relationship with God. You're always on the outs. You're unlovable. It's the unforgivable sin. But what do instead? We find that God pursues Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar repents and declares that God is God, and he is not, and that he's the only one worth following, and that everybody should follow the God of the Bible. He has this remarkable transformation. [00:51:25] (26 seconds)  #RepentAndBeTransformed

So the invitation for you is to realize that God is sovereign over everything, including your life. He has written your days out before you were born. He knows who you are. He has a plan and a purpose for your life. And part of that purpose is to realize that he is God and you are not, and have you come to a place where you humble yourself underneath God's righteous hand so that at the right time, he can raise you up because he cares about you. [00:52:55] (27 seconds)  #HumbleToBeRaised