Pride Comes before a Fall

1
Pride Comes before a Fall

• From pride to prison to peace
• Only the Most High rules in the Kingdom of Men
• What does it profit a man to gain the whole
  world and yet forfeit his life?
• His intense pride
• His humiliating fall
• His restoration

2
His Intense pride

• Ruler of the worlds superpower.
• 40 years or so since he first met Daniel.
• long standing ruler
• prided himself on hedonistic, iconic
  constructions
• Nebuchadnezzar thinks he is in control not God.

3
His Intense pride

• Human power, money and status can lead us to
  think that we are in charge and that God, at
  best, is a consultant.
• Nebuchadnezzar's pride and perhaps our pride
  carry a permanent health warningThe more we
  have, the more we attribute it to our own work
  and shut God out
• Pride was the root cause of all my evils

4
His Humiliating Fall

• He was to suffer what appears to be some sort of
  acute mental insanity
• He went through terrible social disgrace
• from apparent togetherness of being ruler of
  the worlds super power to becoming a wild and
  uncontrollable king.

5
His Humiliating Fall

• God often uses choices that people make or the
  brokenness of this world to teach people how
  earthly pride is often misplaced
• Things are not always as solid as we think they
  are
• We need to try to hear God speaking through
  lifes challenging events or circumstances.

6
Restoration

• Nebuchadnezzar finds a right relationship with
  God.
• He discovers that God is more powerful than he
  is, that his pride was entirely misplaced and
  that humility is the appropriate response to God
• Nebuchadnezzar had found restoration not
  through hard work, having to earn it for we
  cannot earn Gods favour or by striking a deal
  with God but by receiving it through a path of
  humility.

7
Restoration

• The Tree - all that was of real value to God
  that is the root and the stump remained.
• The root and the stump that is our inner self
  and heart are Gods beginnings with us.
• God will use our choices or lifes circumstances
  to reach our inner selves.
• In our journey God may place a Daniel in our path
  
• If I had been blessed by a small helping of
  humility instead of possessed by a surfeit of
  pride, the entire tragedy would have been
  avoided