Boundary of Arrogance

The Holy Bible is full of stories of arrogance and self reliance, but one of the most arrogant rulers, I believe was King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Like most ancient rulers, they believed that the sun and moon were at their command, but there is only One Lord, God and King of the Universe. Fortunately these earthly rulers learned a painful lesson of who really is in charge.

Similar to Pharaoh Ramses, the Lord had used a powerful earthly kingdom to prove His authority. Through Pharaoh, the Lord revealed His power to keep His word and through King Nebuchadnezzar He revealed His power to discipline those He loves. Through scripture the Almighty God reminds us that He will use many sources of correction to wake us up, like He did the Israelites, who had slipped away from believing the Lord.

As the story of King Nebuchadnezzar unfolds, he is allowed to besiege Jerusalem and take the Israelites away as captives. (Daniel 1:1-2). While the Israelites were captive, the King knew they were a special people and wanted the finest in his palace.

The king had already witness the power of God to protect those who honored him, when he protected Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace (Daniel 3: 26-30), but his praise of the Eternal God was short lived because of arrogance.Soon the king was back to self-worship.

King Nebuchadnezzar became quite enamored by a young Israelite named Daniel who could interpret dreams (Daniel 3:46-49). The Lord wanted the King to know, who was the real authority on earth once and for all, and so he sent the king a dream. Daniel again was given the ability to interpret this terrible dream and had the unpleasant job of informing the king what God was going to do with his arrogance.

In the book of Daniel, the prophet described the dream to the King, ‘This is what the dream means, Your Majesty, and what the Most High has declared will happen to you. You will be driven from human society, and you will live in the fields with the wild animals. You will eat grass like a cow and be drenched by dew from heaven. Seven periods of time will pass while you live this way, until you learn that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of the world and gives them to anyone he chooses” (Daniel 4:24-26 NLT).

King Nebuchadnezzar was humbled when the dream came true. The king learned that the Lord keeps his word and supplies all needs according to his grace.

“For God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. But sorrow without repentance is the kind that results in death” (2 Corinthians 7:10 NLT)