Lessons from Daniel 4 on God's Sovereignty part 5

This may be the most important lesson you can learn from Nebuchadnezzar's life about the sovereignty of God.“The fact that God is sovereign means you are not.”Let me say that again, because that simple statement is one of the most important things you could ever understand.The fact that God is sovereign means you are not. There is only King in this Universe and it’s not you!To put it in very practical terms, one of the reasons the sovereignty of God is so difficult to accept is because it rips the heart right out of human pride. The sovereignty of God reveals the absolute insanity of pride.Pride is a denial of the sovereignty of God.Sometimes we think of God’s sovereignty as this topic that people debate. And there are people on one side who say God is not sovereign, and there are people on this side who say that he is. And we think because I am on this side, I’m with the group that says God is sovereign, that must mean I really think He is.That’s just not the case.Refusing to recognize God’s sovereignty is not just this guy who goes around and says, “God’s not sovereign, God’s not sovereign.”Refusing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty is any man who walks in pride.I think it’s interesting, this whole chapter God says I’m going to punish you so you can understand I rule. Then Nebuchadnezzar as he looks back, in verse 37 explains why God punishes him, he says God is able to humble the man who walked in pride.In other words, you want to know what refusing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty looks like? It’s the man who walks in pride.Well, you say what does it look like to walk in pride? Just take a look at Nebuchadnezzar’s statement in verse 30. This is the attitude of a man who refuses to recognize that God is sovereign.First, he looks over his life, he looks at what he has accomplished, and he says I have done this by the might of my power. Circle, underline, highlight that word by.In other words, I am the reason I am great. This man does not think of himself as God-dependent, but instead self-sufficient. When I look at my life, when I look at what I have done, I take pride in the fact that it was by my power, because of my intelligence, due to my ingenuity that all this has taken place. “It came from me and through me.”And second, he looks at his life and adds I have done all this, “for the glory of my majesty.”Why do I do what I do? My purpose in life is that people might see and recognize how great I am.That is the essence of the pride.John Piper explains, “Pride is driven by desire for the glory that men ascribe to human achievements. Pride loves to think of itself as the source of great achievement and the recipient of great praise. The origin of great achievement (by my power!) and the recipient of great praise (for my glory!)” Pride is “the enjoyment of self-sufficiency rather than God-sufficiency and the enjoyment of self-exaltation rather than God-exaltation.”And pride, really, what this chapter shouts out at us, is that pride is the ultimate insanity.Nebuchadnezzar looked insane when he was out there with the beasts, but he was acting insane when he stood up there on his roof, looking at his kingdom, thinking he had done it all. That’s the ultimate delusion. And unfortunately this is a delusion that it’s hard for us to give up. We so desperately want to cling to our pride.As one man puts it, “It is so hard for us to get glory right. It is so hard for us to see through all the near glories of creation to see the transcendent glory of God. It is so difficult for us to remember and be motivated by what is truly important. It is so tempting to be committed to our little kingdoms that the transcendent kingdom of God is of little functional influence. It is so hard for us to make the truly important things functionally important to us.”