{"id":18388,"date":"2017-02-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/daniel-013-the-perils-of-pride\/"},"modified":"2017-02-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T06:00:00","slug":"daniel-013-the-perils-of-pride","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/daniel-013-the-perils-of-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel 013: The Perils of Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[72],"series_event":[467],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18388","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-daniel","series_event-daniel","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Daniel 013: The Perils of Pride","sermon_date":"20170219","sermon_month":"2","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":4381,"sermon_slides":4382,"sermon_mp3":4389,"sermon_id":"219171145262","series_or_event":467,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":72,"chapter_and_verse":"4:19-33","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Perils of Pride\n\n2-19-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Daniel<\/a> 4:19-33\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Lesson 13\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 If we could take our Bibles and open them to Daniel, chapter 4 and verse 19.\u00a0 The title of our message this morning is The Perils of Pride.\u00a0\u00a0 I really appreciate it what Kristen and company did with the youth room.\u00a0 The only problem now is the rest of the church doesn\u2019t look very good by way of comparison.\u00a0 The youth room is like the New Jerusalem.\u00a0 [laughter] And the rest of the church is still in the tribulation period.\u00a0 Maybe we could get her to do another award somewhere and fix the whole church up.\n\nDaniel 4:19, the title of this message is the perils of pride.\u00a0 Anybody ever struggle with pride?\u00a0 Someone said no.\u00a0 [Laughter]\u00a0 That\u2019s the sin of lying, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Of course we\u2019ve been working our way through the book of Daniel. \u00a0Daniel is a voice of God; he spells out prophetically what\u2019s going to happen during a very difficult time of Israel\u2019s history and he also is a role model regarding how to live in hostile territory.\u00a0 Chapters 1-7 is historical; chapters 8-12 is prophetic. \u00a0We are just in chapter 4.\u00a0 Chapter 1 sort of laid out the setting of the book and then we moved into a section which is all written in Aramaic that\u2019s chiastically structured.\u00a0 In other words, the information in chapter 2 is restated in chapter 7 in different word.\u00a0 The information in chapter 3 is restated in chapter 6 and the information in chapter 4 is restated in chapter 5.\n\nWe have already seen chapter 2 which is a panorama, if you will, of Gentile history in the form of a beautiful stature.\u00a0\u00a0 And then we moved in to chapter 3 which is God\u2019s rescue operation of three Hebrew youths, how they were rescued in the midst of the fiery furnace.\u00a0 And we move now into the internal part of the chiasm; in both of these chapters, chapter 4 and chapter 5, God is revealing Himself to Gentile kings.\u00a0 He reveals Himself to the first king during the times of the Gentiles, the first Babylonian king, a man named Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 And as we\u2019re going to see God reveals Himself to this man through grace.\u00a0 And the same theme will recur in chapter 5 when God reveals Himself to the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, a man named Belshazzar.\u00a0 And God will reveal Himself to that man in judgment.\u00a0 So the question is how do you want God to reveal Himself to you?\u00a0 Grace or judgment?\u00a0 And that largely is based on the responses that we give to God when He calls us into account.\n\nThe antagonist, all the way through chapters 1-4 is this man, Nebuchadnezzar, an unbeliever that I think becomes a believer, ultimately, in this chapter. \u00a0Many seeds have been planted in his heart that are being brought to fruition as God aggressively deals with this man in chapter 4.\u00a0 Daniel is probably about age 45-50, we would guess, around this time; he is no longer a teenager and God is still working through him now in middle age.\n\nVerses 1-3, as we look at just a very fast outline of chapter 4, is introductory.\u00a0 Verses 4-18 is a dream,\u00a0 yet another dream Nebuchadnezzar had and he describes it.\u00a0 Verses 19-27, which we\u2019re going to start getting into this morning, is the dream is interpreted by Daniel.\u00a0 And then finally in verses 28-37, at the end of the chapter God, as he always does, makes good on His prophecies in this man\u2019s life, Nebuchadnezzar.\n\nYou will recall last time we looked at verses 1-3; we noted that this chapter is unique amongst any chapter that Daniel wrote because Daniel apparently did not write this chapter.\u00a0 These are the words of Nebuchadnezzar; it has to do with a public decree that he made over his kingdom wanting to describe an experience that he had with God that was so personal, so life-changing that he wanted to describe it himself, in the form of a decree.\u00a0 And apparently Daniel took that decree and included it in his book.\n\nNebuchadnezzar, as we saw last time, had a dream, yet another dream, verses 4-18.\u00a0 As is common he narrates the dream to his so-called wise men who cannot interpret it for him but Daniel, who has been gifted, we know all the way back from Daniel 1:20, Daniel 1:17, was gifted by God in interpreting dreams, and is able to successfully decipher what paganism cannot decipher. [Daniel 1:17, \u201cAs for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom; Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Daniel 1:20, \u201cAs for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and conjurers who were in all his realm.\u201d]\n\nWhat did Nebuchadnezzar see?\u00a0 He saw a giant tree; he saw the tree being cut down by an angel.\u00a0 He heard in this dream a command to not uproot the stump that remains and then he saw a glimpse of somebody that\u2019s described as a person, with a personal pronoun him or he, turned into a beast given the mind of an animal for seven years.\u00a0 And then he awoke and he requested, what does this mean.\u00a0 And Daniel is able to explain what Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s wise men could not explain, let alone understand.\n\nThis is one of the great advantages that you\u2019ll have as a child of God; you\u2019ll be able to understand life in a way that the unsaved cannot understand life.\u00a0 And they may whisper about you in the office, they may say all kinds of nasty things about you, they may call you names, but one of the things you\u2019ll discover about people is when the chips are down they know who to go to for advice.\u00a0 When they\u2019re going through a divorce, a bankruptcy, a financial problem, a health problem, you\u2019ll discover that you are suddenly the person that they\u2019re seeking out because there\u2019s something different about you.\u00a0 And what is different about you is the Holy Spirit is inside of you and you have the Word of God and you have the capacity to grasp the things of the Spirit in a way that the unsaved mind simply cannot understand.\u00a0 This was the predicament that Daniel found himself in as the spotlight of attention and all of Neo-Babylonia now moves upon Daniel .\u00a0 And he receives this explanation of the dream from Nebuchadnezzar, its contents, and he begins to interpret it in verses 19-27.\n\nNotice, if you will, Daniel\u2019s reluctance, his unwillingness, his reticence, to interpret this dream.\u00a0 It says, \u201cThen Daniel, whose name is Belteshazzar, was appalled for a while as his thoughts alarmed him.\u00a0 The king responded and said, \u2018Belteshazzar, do not let the dream or its interpretation alarm you.\u2019 Belteshazzar replied, \u2018My lord, if only<\/em> the dream applied to those who hate you and its interpretation to your adversaries!\n\nNotice first of all in verse 19 the two-fold repetition of the word \u201cinterpretation.\u201d\u00a0 As you drop down to verse 24 you\u2019ll see again the word \u201cinterpretation.\u00a0 [Verse 24, \u201cthis is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king:\u201d]\u00a0 The reason I bring this up is many people come to the Bible with what I called a sanctified imagination; they can come up with some of the craziest interpretations of difficult imagery like this and the problem with us, many times, is we are impatient with the interpretation God gives.\u00a0 Remember the giant statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw.\u00a0 When we got to Daniel 2:36 we read, \u201cThis was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king.\u201d\u00a0 God has not left me to my own devices to under\u00adstand these images and prophecies.\u00a0 He typically will provide an interpretation, sometimes\u2026 most of the time, within the same context.\n\nThe book of Revelation is probably one of the hardest books of the Bible to understand unless you understand this, that God interprets Himself in the book, 26 times.\u00a0 John Walvoord in his commentary of Revelation actually has a list of the number of times the visions are given by God and interpreted by God and that is just basic good Bible study habits, letting the Lord interpret Himself, the Bible being a self-interpreting instrument.\n\nYou\u2019ll notice that Daniel was appalled, he was alarmed, he said I wish this vision, Nebuchadnezzar, concerned someone that hated you or your adversaries because it\u2019s something that\u2019s going to come into your life that\u2019s going to be difficult.\u00a0 You know, it\u2019s never fun to be the bearer of bad news because many people want to shoot the messenger, and yet Daniel is always faithful to his calling.\u00a0 No matter what the pressure is he is faithful to disclose what God has given.\n\nA question for us to ask about ourselves is are we that way in conversations, when people ask the hard questions, when we know that telling them the truth is going to perhaps hurt feelings or alienate are we the type of people that speak truth in love.\u00a0 You know, it\u2019s easy to speak the truth if you don\u2019t care about love and it\u2019s easy to speak love if you don\u2019t care about truth.\u00a0 But Ephesians 4:15 tell us that we are to speak the truth \u201cin love.\u201d\u00a0 [Ephesians 4:15, \u201cbut speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0 That is the calling of the Christian.\u00a0 We are not called to shrink back, to leave out, but at the same time we are not called to be so rude and belligerent and obnoxious that we add an offense that God has never added.\u00a0 What a difficult balancing act this is and yet God wants to guide us by His Spirit and in empower us so that we can do just that.\n\nWe go down to verses 20-22 and we start seeing how this tree that Nebuchadnezzar saw is interpreted. Verse 20, it says, \u201c\u2018The tree that you saw, which became large and grew strong, whose height reached to the sky and was visible to all the earth [21] and whose foliage was<\/em> beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in which was<\/em> food for all, under which the beasts of the field dwelt and in whose branches the birds of the sky lodged\u2014\u201c\u00a0 Verses 20-21 is just a description of that tree, it\u2019s repeating information we already know; it\u2019s a growing tree, a large tree.\u00a0 The tree provided shade; the tree provided nourishment, the tree provided rest for the birds of the air.\u00a0 This was a tree that was meeting the needs, really, of the whole world.\n\nAs you look at verse 22, Daniel says, \u201cit is you, O king; for you have become great and grown strong, and your majesty has become great and reached to the sky and your dominion to the end of the earth.\u201d\u00a0 This reminds me of what Daniel said regarding the head of gold back in chapter 2. \u00a0He told Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2:38, \u201c\u2026You are the head of gold.\u201d\u00a0 And now in Daniel 4, with the tree of awesome sight Daniel explains to Nebuchadnezzar, that the tree Nebuchadnezzar, represents you; it represents the Neo-Babylonian Empire which was the known empire of that day, a worldwide empire with no rivals.\n\nIt goes in verses 23-25 and describes the cutting down of the tree.\u00a0 Verse 23 says, \u201c\u2018In that the king saw an angelic<\/em> watcher, a holy one, descending from heaven and saying, \u2018Chop down the tree and destroy it; yet leave the stump with its roots in the ground, but with a band of iron and bronze around it<\/em> in the new grass of the field, and let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and let him share with the beasts of the field until seven periods of time pass over him,\u2019\u201d so an angel is going to come and chop the tree down and yet the stump, as I mentioned before, is not to be uprooted.\u00a0 Somebody called \u201che\u201d or \u201chim\u201d here, which apparently is Nebuchadnezzar, is turned into what we would call an insane person for seven periods, which I believe is speaking of seven years.\n\nAnd then as you move down to verse 24 it says, \u201cthis is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king:\u201d this is a decree of God that is about to transpire in your life.\u00a0 You may pretend like it\u2019s not coming; you may choose to ignore what I am giving you today, Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar, by way of prophetic utterance, but this is the interpretation.\u00a0 Something is coming into your life that is of an adversarial nature.\n\nNebuchadnezzar had a problem; he had an \u201cI\u201d problem, he had a \u201cme\u201d problem.\u00a0 Modern day psychologists probably would diagnose this as narcissism, but there\u2019s a tendency for Nebuchad\u00adnezzar to believe that the entire world revolved around him, and he himself was responsible for the advent of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.\u00a0 Nebuchadnezzar forgot what Daniel said back in chapter 2, [verse 37]\u201cYou O king are the king of kings to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom.\u201d\u00a0 He goes on and he says, [38] \u201cHe has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold.\u201d\u00a0 You, Nebuchadnezzar, are in the position you\u2019re in because God put you there.\u00a0 It has nothing to do with your resume, your agenda,\u00a0 your intellect, as lofty as all of those things maybe you are in the position you are in because it\u2019s the hand of God.\u00a0 Heaven understand this, God understands this, the angelic realm understands this, probably most of your subjects understand this.\n\nEverybody seems to understand this but you so I\u2019m going to reach into my tool box and I\u2019m going to pull out one of the greatest tools I have, called human suffering. There is nothing that empties us of ourselves more than the reality of human suffering.\u00a0 When you walk through a valley you quickly figure out that you don\u2019t have things figured out, that you don\u2019t even have anything figured out.\u00a0 In fact, you don\u2019t even know where your car keys are half the time.\u00a0 And we have to be reminded of this because of the innate sinfulness that\u2019s inside of us, the \u201cI\u201d complex, the \u201cme\u201d complex.\u00a0 And so this decree is coming for the purpose of pedagogy, for the purpose of teaching something that should be obvious to you.\n\nNotice verse 25, he says, \u201cthat you be driven away from mankind and your dwelling place be with the beasts of the field, and you be given grass to eat like cattle and be drenched with the dew of heaven; and seven periods of time will pass over you, until you\u201d what? \u201crecognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes\u201d I like this expression here, \u201crecognize.\u201d\u00a0 You\u2019re going to be changed into an insane man for seven years until you \u201crecognize\u201d something.\u00a0 That, in a sense, shows me a lot about the grace of God.\u00a0 Nebuchad\u00adnezzar could have gone into a trial that would go beyond seven\u00a0 years, eight year, ten years, twenty-five years, forever.\u00a0 But God, in grace, allowed it to continue until Nebuchadnezzar himself figured out something.\n\nWhat a tremendous tool that God has in His disposal to wake us up to reality, to wake Nebuchad\u00adnezzar up to the reality of Daniel 2:37-38, that Nebuchadnezzar was there because God put him there.\u00a0 God uses many, many tools to get our attention.\u00a0 One of His greatest tools is the reality of human suffering.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean to imply that every trial you go through is to achieve the same result because when you get into the study or the doctrine of trials and tribulations in the Bible you\u2019ll discover that there are many reasons God sends us into trials.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s not even for some overt sin in your life; there are storms of correction, there are storms of perfection.\u00a0 Sometimes God sends you into a storm to correct you, to correct me, much like He did with Jonah.\u00a0 Jonah was told to go preach to Nineveh; Jonah got on a boat and went the opposite direction.\u00a0 And we know how God dealt with Jonah; by the time he was vomited out on the dry land Jonah 3:1 says, \u201cNow the word of the LORD came to Jonah\u201d what \u201ca second time\u201d\u00a0 This time you have a different attitude in Jonah, don\u2019t you.\n\nSo that would be a storm of correction; there are other storms that I just call storms of perfection where God just says it\u2019s time to go to the next level of growth; I can\u2019t take you there unless you become more dependent upon Me so let Me introduce a few problems into your life. \u00a0So not every trial you go through has to do with some overt sin.\u00a0 We know that Job went through a series of trials and everybody thought they understood why Job was going through trials.\u00a0 Job thought he knew.\u00a0 Job\u2019s three counsellors, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar thought they knew.\u00a0 Another guy comes along late in the game, Elihu thought he knew; none of them had the foggiest idea.\u00a0 Because we as the reader read the first two chapters of the book of Job where we learned that there was a conversation between God and the devil in heaven that Job knew nothing about.\u00a0 And the book of Job is just an explanation on the finitude, the limitation of humans to understand the deep workings of God.\n\nI wish I understood why everything that happens to you has happened to you; I can\u2019t give you that explanation but I know at the end of the day God sifts it, He allows it to accomplish some purpose that apparently takes precedence beyond our immediate comfort.\u00a0 Our number one goal is comfort and I don\u2019t think God is against comfort but sometimes God has a goal beyond comfort and that goal cannot be achieved absent an interruption of comfort.\u00a0 Storms of correction, storms of perfection, I think what Nebuchadnezzar is experiencing here or is about to experience is a storm of correction.\u00a0 It\u2019s something he brought upon himself that was avoidable.\n\nNotice, if you will, verse 26, we have an interpretation of the preserved stump and roots of the tree.\u00a0 \u201cAnd in that it was commanded to leave the stump with the roots of the tree, your kingdom will be assured to you after you\u201d what? \u201crecognize\u201d the problem is not Me God says, Nebuchadnezzar, the problem is you, your blindness, pride.\u00a0 Until \u201cyou recognize that it is<\/em> Heaven that<\/em> rules.\u201d\u00a0 Nebuchad\u00ad\u00ad\u00adnezzar apparently is to be restored to his position of authority after this period of seven years elapses.\n\nIt\u2019s interesting to me that this trial is not indefinite, it doesn\u2019t go on forever.\u00a0 It goes on to achieve a pedagogical point and then the trial stops.\u00a0 One of the first things I did as a new Christian, and I don\u2019t recommend this, I taught a Bible study through the book of Revelation.\u00a0 And I was right here in Revelation 9:5 and it says this, \u201cAnd they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment\u201d that\u2019s the demons, \u201cfor five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man.\u201d\u00a0 I was up in front of my Sunday School class going on and on about how bad this is going to be, how terrible it\u2019s going to be, and an elderly gentleman in the back of the church raises his hand and he says do you see the grace of God in this?\u00a0 Grace of God??? \u00a0In Revelation 9:5 the grace of God?\u00a0 I said well how do you see the grace of God.\u00a0 He says the term \u201cfive months.\u201d\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t go on six months, it doesn\u2019t go on seven months, it doesn\u2019t go on for a year, it\u2019s limited.\u00a0 Suffering is limited, suffering is bound, suffering in God is finite.\u00a0 In fact, the time is coming in human history when there won\u2019t be any suffering at all; isn\u2019t that great?\u00a0 You can read about it in Revelation chapters 21 and 22.\n\nThe suffering would exist as long as it took for Nebuchadnezzar to learn his lesson.\u00a0 That\u2019s the grace of God.\u00a0 Yes, it is the justice of God and the judgment of God but never forget the grace of God in the midst of it.\u00a0 In fact, I would say that if you\u2019re in any passage of the Bible and you\u2019re not seeing the justice of God and the grace of God simultaneously you\u2019re missing something in the passage.\u00a0 You\u2019ll see this all the way through the Bible, these two great attributes of God: holiness on one end of the stick and His love on the other.\n\nAnd so consequently in verse 27 Daniel gives to Nebuchadnezzar an exhortation, notice what he says there in verse 27, \u201c\u2018Therefore, O king, may my advice be pleasing to you: break away now from your sins by doing<\/em> righteousness and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the<\/em> poor, in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Translation\u2014the whole thing is avoidable.\u00a0 You, by responding now to this warning can call the whole thing off; the power of choice and destiny is in your hands, Nebuchadnezzar.\n\nOne of the things I love about the Bible is it\u2019s not a book of don\u2019ts, don\u2019t do this, don\u2019t do that.\u00a0 We have a tendency to look at the Bible that way.\u00a0 That\u2019s how the unsaved world looks at our belief system, don\u2019t smoke, don\u2019t chew, don\u2019t go with girls who do, don\u2019t do this, don\u2019t do that.\u00a0 One of the things\u00a0 you\u2019ll discover about the Bible is it\u2019s not a don\u2019t book, it\u2019s a book about better; stay away from this (whatever \u201cthis\u201d may be) but I\u2019ve got something better for you.\u00a0 Do you see that there in verse 27?\u00a0 Break away from your sins by doing, see that?\u00a0 Break away from your sins by doing righteousness, and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.\n\nIt reminds me very much of what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 6:11-13, he says, \u201cEven so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but\u201d what? \u201calive to God in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 [12] Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, [13] and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as<\/em> instruments of unrighteousness;\u201d I\u2019m so happy the verse doesn\u2019t stop there, but it says, \u201cbut present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as<\/em> instruments of righteousness to God.\u201d\n\nThe book of Ephesians, chapter 4, it talks about the hands that used to steal, take those same hands and produce, and become so prosperous with those hands that you\u2019ll reach a point in your economic life where you\u2019re giving away to the poor or to the needy.\u00a0 What a different way of looking at the use of the body.\u00a0 Probably one of the most sarcastic people on my college campus was myself; I had the ability to cut down and tear down just about anything and anyone I wanted to, and that was a recurring sin in my life that I had to hand over to God and it\u2019s so interesting to me that the Lord made me a teacher of His Word, that the same mouth that was on fire to tear down can now be used as an instrument of building, can now be used as an instrument of edification.\u00a0 Think of the area of\u00a0 your greatest sin and think what that could become in God as you relinquish that to Him.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a book of don\u2019t, it\u2019s a book of better.\n\nAnd it\u2019s interesting to me here that Daniel gives to Nebuchadnezzar a warning, and I want you to see something about God; before He moves His hand into either judgment or discipline, I believe this, there is always a warning.\u00a0 The problem is many times we\u2019re not paying attention to the warning.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re honest with yourself and go back into your life you\u2019ll discover that the warning is there.\u00a0 We learn of a great flood in the book of Genesis.\u00a0 Did you know that before that flood came there was a warning?\u00a0 2 Peter 2:5 talks about \u201c\u2026 Noah, a preacher of righteous-ness\u2026.\u201d \u00a0Genesis 6:3 says that this warning went out for 120 years, half the length of the United States of America.\u00a0 \u00a0[2 Peter 2:5, \u201cand did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;\u201d\u00a0 Genesis 6:3, \u201cThen the LORD said, \u2018My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.\u2019\u201d]\u00a0 That\u2019s a long time, a hundred and twenty years.\u00a0 But the warning was there; before judgment came, came the warning.\n\nWe read in Revelation 2:20, concerning the church at Thyatira, there were terrible sins happening there.\u00a0 It says, \u201cBut I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus says this, [21] \u201c'I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.\u00a0 [22] Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.\u00a0 [23] And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds,\u201d and you read that and you say that is a horrific reference to coming discipline of a very severe nature into a congregation and yet people skip over verse 21, \u201cI gave her time to repent.\u201d\n\nPaul the apostle, when he was writing to the Corinthians and there was a bad scene there in Corinth, where they were drunk and disorderly at the Lord\u2019s Table to the point where God began taking home saints early.\u00a0 And Paul says this is that whole environment, 1 Corinthians 11:31-32, \u201cBut if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. [32] But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.\u201d\u00a0 The fact of the matter is God knows the nature of sin; He knows what sin can do, He knows its destructive power.\u00a0 We are deluded into thinking that we can contain sin, we can control sin.\u00a0 Let me tell you something about sin\u2014it is a fire out of control!\u00a0 It is something destructive that is unleashed on a person\u2019s life and God knows the only way, many times, to get us away from sinful habits is through discipline.\u00a0 And yet the discipline itself can be severe and God sends a warning ahead of time.\n\nWhat warnings have you received in your life lately that you are not listening to?\u00a0 My exhortation to you is to listen to the hand of God, or the voice of God, or the Word of God. If God is saying something in your life right now that has to change follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit because I am convinced of this, many of our struggles today that we go through, not all but many are avoidable.\u00a0 We bring bad circumstances on ourselves through our own bad choices.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot like a parent; no parent enjoys disciplining their children and so the parent prior to discipline will send a warning hoping that the child will correct his or her ways so discipline can be avoided.\u00a0 That\u2019s the heart of a parent.\n\nI remember when I was younger, we had a telephone pole right there in our back yard and I\u2019d like to climb things so I just started climbing right up that telephone pole, grabbing those little spikes, I went right up to the top and of course you know what\u2019s at the top, the live wire.\u00a0 I remember my father shouting to me, \u201cAndrew,\u201d that meant I was in trouble, Andy was one thing, Andrew meant something different.\u00a0 And I remember coming down from that pole and being severely disciplined by my father.\u00a0 And yet what was he trying to do at the end of the day?\u00a0 Destroy my life?\u00a0 NO, he was trying to prevent me from destroying my own life by touching some wire that I had no awareness of its power.\u00a0 You see?\n\nThis is how God works, \u201cWhom the Lord loves the Lord\u201d what? \u201cchastens.\u201d\u00a0 You know, the book of Proverbs says if you don\u2019t discipline your children you are actually a child abuser.\u00a0 Today we\u2019re so warped in terms of our value system we think that parents that implement discipline are abusive but the Bible says it\u2019s the opposite, that the man that hates his child, the book of Proverbs says, who lets his child go unrestrained, God loves us too much to see that happen but the process of discipline, as painful as it can be, deserves a warning.\u00a0 Nebuchad\u00adnezzar was given a warning\u2026. CHANGE so this circumstance will not overtake you.\n\nWhich moves us into the final part of the book, the dream is fulfilled.\u00a0 Notice, if you will, verse 28, we have Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s insanity and then later his humility.\u00a0 Notice if you will verses 28-29,\u201dAll this<\/em> happened to Nebuchadnezzar the king.\u201d\u00a0 If I were you I would take that verse and underline it, or highlight it or draw stars around it; that is one of the most profound verse in the Bible, \u201cAll this<\/em> happened\u201d everything God said would happen happened to this man, Nebuchad\u00adnezzar.\u00a0 How long did it take?\u00a0 Verse 29, \u201cTwelve months later\u201d that\u2019s a year, \u201che was walking on the roof of<\/em> the royal palace of Babylon.\u201d\u00a0 The process of discipline began to manifest in his life a\u00a0 year after the warning was given.\n\nLet me tell you something about God.\u00a0 When God says something it\u2019s going to happen.\u00a0 If I were a betting man, and I\u2019m not, I would bet on God every single time because the book of Hebrews, chapter 6 and verse 18 says, \u201c\u2026it is impossible for God to lie.\u201d\u00a0 Are there some things God can\u2019t do?\u00a0 Yes, He can\u2019t violate His own character.\u00a0 When He decrees something, when He predicts something, when He speaks something it\u2019s just a matter of time before that happens.\n\nThink about this prophecy here, Zechariah 12:10, written 500 years before the time of Christ, \u201c\u2026they will look on me, whom they pierced,\u201d think about the improbability of that happening.\u00a0 [Zechariah 12:10, \u201cAnd I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.\u201d]\n\nThe Jews didn\u2019t kill people by piercing them, they stoned them to death.\u00a0 It was the Romans that pierced people.\u00a0 The Roman Empire wasn\u2019t even in existence at this time and\u00a0 yet a prophecy was made 500 years in advance anticipating the rise of Rome, anticipating the incursion of Rome into the land of Israel, anticipating the removal from the Hebrew people, the power to execute their own criminals, shifting that into Roman hands, which explains why Jesus had to be turned over to the Romans by the Hebrews for execution, and lo and behold what happened?\u00a0 Jesus Christ was pierced, exactly like Zechariah 12:10 says.\u00a0 When God says something it will happen!\u00a0 All this happened to Nebuchadnezzar and this is an example of what we would call a short term prophecy.\u00a0 Well, my goodness, if God\u2019s short term prophecies happened with such precision maybe I can trust His long term prophecies, which are evident all over the book of Daniel.\n\nJesus, in John 13:19 made some short term prophecies in the Upper Room. He says, \u201cFrom now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He.\u201d\u00a0 If that weren\u2019t enough He says it again in the same Upper Room Discourse one chapter later, John 14:29, He says, \u201cNow I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.\u201d Christianity is not a lying faith, it is a faith build on a track record of God.\u00a0 God, as we look at the prophesies for the future doesn\u2019t just call\u00a0 us to have some kind of blind faith that these prophecies will come to pass.\u00a0 He gives us a track record of past fulfillments.\u00a0 And when we study the past fulfillments it builds our confidence that the long term prophecies are just as precise, just as specific, just as ironclad and are exactly on schedule.\u00a0 The most foolish thing a person can do is not take God at His Word.\n\nSo all of these things happened twelve months later, regarding the vision of the tree.\u00a0 What was the culprit?\u00a0 What was the cause?\u00a0 The \u201cP\u201d word, pride!\u00a0 Look at what Nebuchadnezzar says here in verse 30, \u201cThe king reflected and said, \u2018Is this not Babylon the great, which\u201d what? \u201cI\u201d the guy has a bad case of the \u2018I\u2019s, \u201cI myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?\u2019\u201d\n\nWhat happened to Nebuchadnezzar?\u00a0 He took credit for something that God did.\u00a0 I\u2019ve already shown you Daniel 2 where God is very clear that Nebuchadnezzar is in the position he\u2019s in because God put him there; it says it four times there in Daniel 2:37-38, and yet Nebuchadnezzar uses \u201cI\u201d or \u201cmy,\u201d what\u2019s the count here, one, two, three, maybe four times.\u00a0 Narcissism, taking credit for something God has done.\n\nAnd you know, there are people that are like that; you can\u2019t even get through a conversation without them interjecting themselves constantly, me, my, my plans, my goals, my accomplish\u00adments, my abilities.\u00a0 And it\u2019s so easy during times of prosperity to forget the hand of God.\u00a0 This was one of the problems with Pontius Pilate; in John 19:10 \u201cPilate said to Him,\u201d Jesus, \u201c\u2018You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 And I love Christ\u2019s answer, verse 11, \u201cJesus answered, \u2018You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; [for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.]\u2019\u201d\n\nRomans 13:1 says, \u201cFor there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God, and those which exist are established by God.\u201d\u00a0 Are you a teacher in a school?\u00a0 God put you there!\u00a0 Are you a pastor of a church?\u00a0 God put you there!\u00a0 Are you the ruler in government?\u00a0 God put you there!\u00a0 Are you in a position of influence over employees as a manager of some kind?\u00a0 God put you there!\u00a0 And you got there because God put you there, and many times we just forget that, don\u2019t we, and we start to take credit.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been to countless pastor\u2019s conferences where I\u2019ve heard people speak and to be completely honest with you I can\u2019t tell who\u2019s getting the credit\u2026 look at what I did to grow the church, look at my strategy, look at my tactics, forgetting that the church is the building project of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Jesus said, \u201cI will build My church.\u201d\u00a0 [Matthew 16:19, \u201cI also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0 It has nothing to do with us, a strategy or a tactic or a way of speaking or a spiritual gift (as wonderful as spiritual gifts are), it\u2019s the building project of God, the church is.\u00a0\u00a0 Just like human government is an institution of God, it wouldn\u2019t exist without God.\n\nBut Nebuchadnezzar began to take credit for something that God had done, and let me tell you something, a person becomes ripe for discipline when they move into that mindset.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Because of Isaiah 42:8, God says, \u201cI am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images.\u201d\u00a0 I like what Billy Graham says on this; there are three things that tear down every ministry; every man of God or woman of God is torn down by one of three things, or sometimes they run in tandems, two of the three or three of three, it\u2019s always the same, these all begin with the letter \u201cG.\u201d\u00a0 Number in, don\u2019t touch the G<\/u>irls, sexual immorality.\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell you how many people I know that are now on the sidelines, people with gifts and talent that are unused because they transgressed the principles of God in the area of sexual immorality.\n\nThe second G is G<\/u>old, don\u2019t touch the girls, don\u2019t touch the gold.\u00a0 How many ministers are pulled down because of embezzlement.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I love the way our accounting system works here.\u00a0 I know absolutely nothing about it and I love it that way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know who gives what, I don\u2019t want to know.\u00a0 Now I can defend everybody equally, it\u2019s great.\n\nAnd then number three, the third G is don\u2019t touch the G<\/u>lory, if you touch the glory of God you\u2019re ripe for discipline.\u00a0 If you start to take credit for what God has done you\u2019re ripe for discipline.\u00a0 This is why the Apostle Paul is so clear and this is instructive to us because we\u2019re in the deacon\/elder selection nomination process; we ought to remember what God says about who to make an elder and deacon over a local church.\u00a0 1 Timothy 3;6 says, he shall \u201cnot a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.\u201d\u00a0 What\u2019s \u201cthe condemnation incurred by the devil\u201d?\u00a0 I\u2019ll show it to you in just a minute.\u00a0 First comes pride, then comes a fall.\u00a0 The problem with the new convert is he\u2019s in a position of authority and God is using him in that position and he gets confused about where the glory should go; he starts to take credit for what\u2019s happening.\n\nAnd Paul says you do that you\u2019re putting man in a position of vulnerability if he doesn\u2019t have the character to handle the work of God through Him he will, maybe not take all the glory but just a little bit off the top, just deflect a little bit my direction.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got history on that, it\u2019s the fall of Lucifer.\u00a0 And so you see in verse 30 this stubborn pride that God is working in our lives to empty us of.\n\nAnd we move from Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s pride to Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s punishment, judgment, payday someday.\u00a0 Look at verses 31 and 32.\u00a0 \u201cWhile the word was<\/em> in the king\u2019s mouth,\u201d what\u2019s \u201cthe word?\u201d\u00a0 Look at this beautiful Neo Babylonian Empire that I have created... the words hadn\u2019t even come out of his mouth yet, \u201cWhile the word was in the king\u2019s mouth\u00a0 a voice came from heaven, saying,<\/em> \u2018King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you,\u201d pride and its perils.\u00a0 [32, \u201cand you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be<\/em> with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.\u2019\u201d]\n\nProverbs 16:18 says what? \u201cPride goes before\u201d what? \u201cdestruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.\u201d\u00a0 The ultimate example of pride is Lucifer who had a bad case of the I\u2019s himself, \u201cBut you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God,\u201d this is right out of Isaiah 14:12-15,\u201dand I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Sounds like Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 [14]\u00a0 \u201c\u2018I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.\u2019\u00a0 [15] Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit.\u201d\n\nThat\u2019s what Paul means when he talks about \u201clest he fall into the condemnation of the devil.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 You have a parallel passage in Ezekiel 28, 12-17, I won\u2019t read the whole thing to you but verse 17 of Lucifer says, \u201cYour heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.\u00a0 I cast you to the ground\u2026.\u201d\n\n[Ezekiel 28:12-17, \u201cSon of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, \u2018Thus says the Lord GOD, \u2018You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.\u00a0 [13] You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the ruby, the topaz and the diamond; the beryl, the onyx and the jasper; the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald; and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you.\u00a0 \u00a0On the day that you were created they were prepared.\u00a0 [14] You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there.<\/em>\u00a0You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked in the midst of the stones of fire.\u00a0 [15] You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteous\u00adness was found in you.\u00a0 [16] By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned; therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God.\u00a0 And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.\u00a0 [17] Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.\u00a0 I cast you to the ground; I put you before kings, that they may see you.\u201d]\n\nActs 12:21-23 says this, \u201cOn an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began<\/em> delivering an address to them. [22] The people kept crying out, \u2018The voice of a god and not of a man!\u2019 [23] And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.\u201d\n\nI don\u2019t claim to know everything about God but I know this much, God hates pride.\u00a0 Paul, the apostle, I believe, of all of the sins he could have struggled with I believe the issue that he struggled with so much in his life was the issue of pride.\u00a0\u00a0 2 Corinthians 12:7 says, Paul writes, \u201cBecause of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,\u201d what is he talking about?\u00a0 He is talking about how he was lifted into the third heaven and heard things that human beings aren\u2019t fit to hear.\u00a0 Paul, by virtue of his apostleship understood things about God from that heavenly experience or journey that your average person didn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Think of what that would do to a person\u2019s ego.\u00a0 Think how it would be inflated, how it would cause you to sort of lord your authority over people.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me-- to keep me from exalting myself!\u201d\n\nGod\u00a0 says Paul look, here\u2019s the problem I have with you: I have so blessed you with knowledge and gifting that if I leave your life unchecked I can\u2019t use you because of\u00a0 your arrogance so I am going to empty you of your arrogance by giving you a thorn, which obviously hurts, I don\u2019t know what the thorn was but I know it hurt, I know that much.\u00a0 And that\u2019s going to keep you in a place of dependence and humility because that thorn is God\u2019s gift to you, because every time you experience that thorn you\u2019re going to be reminded of your own humanity and that you\u2019re not God, and I\u2019m going to use you to bless the world.\u00a0 I can\u2019t do it though, without this thorn in the flesh.\n\nLater on in that paragraph Paul pleads with the Lord three times, take it away, and this is what is so frustrating to watch so-called Christian television where they tell you that you can name and claim your diseases away.\u00a0 What Bible are we reading?\u00a0 Has anybody read 2 Corinthians 12:7 and following?\u00a0 There\u2019s the man that had, I would think if it\u2019s not a disease it\u2019s something that agitated him to the point where he pleaded with God take it away three times; each time God said I\u2019m not going to take it away.\u00a0 I will say this though, Paul, \u201cmy grace is sufficient for you.\u201d\n\nYou have to understand something, we as elders see all the prayer requests in this church.\u00a0 And it is overwhelming reading these, recognizing what people are going through.\u00a0 If I had my way I would wave a magic wand and everybody\u2019s sufferings would disappear, but I\u2019m not God.\u00a0 And so what we pray for constantly is for people to get well if they\u2019re suffering from some kind of ailment.\u00a0 However, Lord, You\u2019re the boss,\u00a0 You\u2019re in the driver\u2019s seat, if it\u2019s not Your will to heal such and such a person we pray over them 2 Corinthians 12:8-9, that they would have the grace to sustain whatever it is they\u2019re going through.\u00a0 Give them the grace. \u00a0\u00a0[2 Corinthians 12:8, Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.\u00a0\u00a0 [9] And He has said to me, \u2018My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.\u2019 Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.\u201d]\n\nPaul had to have this because of the issue of pride.\u00a0 1 Peter 5:5 says, \u201cfor God is opposed to the proud; did you know that there are some people that God is working against?\u00a0 That\u2019s what the Bible says, \u201cfor God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.\u201d\u00a0 Do you want to be opposed by God or have the grace of God?\u00a0 It relates to the perils of pride and the issue of pride.\u00a0 Satan is lifted up with pride and he fell.\u00a0 Herod is lifted up with pride, he fell.\u00a0 Paul is lifted up with pride, almost fell, had it not been for a corresponding trial that kept him humble.\u00a0 Or think about Uzziah, in the Old Testament.\u00a0 Do you know what Uzziah did?\u00a0 He as the king went into what only the priests are supposed to do and it says this: \u201cBut when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful to the LORD his God, for he entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense.\u201d\u00a0 Do you know what happened to Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26?\u00a0 He spent his entire life as a leper, covered with this disease from head to foot until his dying day because he did something that a king is not supposed to do, that only the priest is to do and what moved Uzziah in this direction is right here in verse 16 of 2 Chronicles 26, his heart became proud; the perils of pride, the hall of the humbled.\n\nVerse 32, \u201cand you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until\u201d see that? \u201cyou recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.\u201d\u00a0 Verse 33, and with this we\u2019ll close, \u201cImmediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled; and he was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles\u2019 feathers and his nails like birds\u2019 claws.\u201d\u00a0 And you say well gee, this is the most ridiculous thing I\u2019ve ever heard of, I can\u2019t believe this any more than the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.\u00a0 I mean, obviously the Bible is filled with errors in it; we know that Daniel was dated late, the liberals say, it\u2019s filled with errors, it\u2019s just fiction, errors.\n\nThink again.\u00a0 Roland Harrison in his Introduction to the Old Testament<\/em> writes this: \u201cA great many doctors spend an entire busy professional career without once encountering an instance of the kind of mania described in the book of Daniel.\u00a0 The present writer, therefore, considers himself particularly fortunate to have actually observed a clinical case of boanthropy in a British mental institution in 1946.\u00a0 The patient was in his early 20\u2019s who reportedly had been hospitalized for about five years.\u00a0 His symptoms were well developed on admission and diagnosis was immediately conclusive.\u00a0 He was of average height and weight with a good physique and was in excellent bodily health.\u00a0 His mental symptoms included pronounced antisocial tendencies and because of this he spent the entire day, from dawn till dusk, outdoors in the grounds of the institution.\u00a0 His daily routine consisted of wandering around the magnificent lawns with which otherwise a dingy hospital scenario would have graced and it was his custom to pluck up and eat handfuls of grass as he went along.\u00a0 On observation he was seen to discriminate carefully between the grass and weeds and on inquiry from the attendant the writer was told the diet of this patient consisted exclusively of grass from the hospital lawns.\u00a0 He never ate institutional food with the other inmates and his only drink was water.\u00a0 This writer was able to examine him cursorily and the only physical abnormality noted consisted of lengthening of hair and a course thickened condition of the fingernails.\u201d\n\nIsn\u2019t that what we\u2019re reading about here.\u00a0 \u201cWithout institutional care the patient would have manifested precisely the same physical conditions as those mentioned in Daniel 4:33.\u00a0 From the foregoing it seems evident that the author of the fourth chapter of Daniel was describing accurately an attestable, if rather rare, mental affliction.\u201d\n\nI think we judge the Word of God prematurely.\u00a0 We say such and such could never happen and yet it can happen.\u00a0 And God allows it to happen because of His love for creation, His desire for creation to not destroy itself with the perils of pride.\n\nAnd maybe you\u2019re here today and you\u2019ve never trusted in Christ personally.\u00a0 Let me tell you something, the greatest act of pride that you can commit against God is rejecting the gospel.\u00a0 You say well, I\u2019ll make my decision later.\u00a0 Well you just made your decision.\u00a0 The gospel, to receive it, requires humility because in the gospel is the recognition that you can\u2019t fix yourself; you cannot climb up by your own bootstraps to God.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work that way.\u00a0 And so humility is required to trust in a free gift, which we call the gospel, because it means good news; good news because Jesus did all the heavy lifting.\u00a0 What we are to do is receive it as a gift and a lot of people don\u2019t.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t they?\u00a0 Because it goes against the grain of pride which says I want to earn something for God.\u00a0 The fact of the matter is God has designed this whole thing in such a way that humanity gets no bragging rights so that, as Ephesians 2:8-9 says \u201cno one can boast.\u201d\u00a0 [Ephesians 2:8-9, \u201cFor by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; [9] not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.\u201d]\n\nAnd yet receiving this gift is your only ticket, it\u2019s your only hope and so even as I\u2019m speaking, as the Holy Spirit convicts people of their need to trust in Christ, you can respond to the gospel in humility by trusting in what Jesus did.\u00a0 In the quietness of your own mind, in the quietness of your own heart, without having to raise a hand, walk an aisle, pledge to do better, as the Spirit places you under conviction our exhortation is to respond the best you know how to the promises of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 You\u2019re no longer in your heart of hearts trusting in self but trusting in what Jesus has done.\u00a0 That enters you into the realm of humiliation before God and\u00a0 yet those that are humbled God exalts.\u00a0 Those that exalt themselves God abases.\u00a0 It\u2019s a simple lesson but I want us to think about it in terms of the gospel, I want people present that may be unclear about their relationship with God to respond in faith, in confidence, in a moment of privacy, to what Jesus has done for them, trusting in His work and His alone.\u00a0 If it\u2019s something that you need more explanation on I\u2019m available after the service.\n\nShall we pray.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for this story about pride and what Your Word reveals about it.\u00a0 I pray, Father, that we would be people of humility allowing You to work in our lives sovereignly and I ask, Father, that as a result of that we would bring forth the fruit that You would have for each of our lives.\u00a0 We ask You to do this great work.\u00a0 We lift these things up in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026 Amen.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t