"Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride."
Daniel 4:37
As I was reading the Bible this morning, I was struck by the ending of Nebuchadnezzar's appearance in the Daniel saga. Nebuchadnezzar, in case you never heard the story, was king of the Babylonians during their ascendancy as a civilization. Among his other imperial conquests, Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Israelite civilization, bringing their best and brightest back to Babylon to simultaneously indoctrinate them and keep them from leading any sort of insurrection. Daniel and three of his friends, however, not only resisted assimilation, they rose within Nebuchadnezzar's court through a series of miracles, ranging from clairvoyance to incombustibility.
What struck me this time as I read through Daniel's saga was not, however, the faithfulness and bravery of Daniel and his friends, but Nebuchadnezzar's conversions...
...all three of them, including this last one at the end of chapter 4.
Three times Nebuchadnezzar is amazed by these four Israelites and their God, and three times Nebuchadnezzar proclaims to his entire kingdom that the Israelite God is indeed greatest of all: "God of gods and Lord of kings." Yet after the first two times something strange (or perhaps expected...depends on your opinion of human nature) happens: Nebuchadnezzar takes actions totally contrary to the idea that the God of the Israelites is God of gods. After his first proclamation that Daniel's God is Lord of kings, Nebuchadnezzar constructs a golden statue and orders all of his people (including the Israelites) to worship it. After his second proclamation regarding the God of the Israelites that "His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation," Nebuchadnezzar looks upon the majesty and glory of his own kingdom and rejects the sovereignty of God over all of creation.
There are many ways to look at Nebuchadnezzar's actions in the book of Daniel, but the theme that jumps out to me is the relationship between the king's pride and God's grace. We can't miss the fact that God has no reason to show any mercy to Nebuchadnezzar, at least in the legal or imperial sense. In conquering the Israelites, Nebuchadnezzar makes it a point to try to exhibit sovereignty over God by taking the sacred Hebrew artifacts out of their temple and placing them in his own museum next to all of the other statues, idols, and holy objects of civilizations that he had conquered. What would have been expected, and what perhaps the Israelites longed for, was for the stronger of the two to show his might in smiting the other or his people. If the God of the Israelites was stronger, then at some point he should strike Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians down.
In fact, twice God does prove his sovereignty over Nebuchadnezzar, and twice Nebuchadnezzar sees and is converted to this truth. This is two more chances than Nebuchadnezzar really deserved, at least according to the standards of the time. The God of the Israelites would have been well within his rights to display his power over Nebuchadnezzar not by explaining the unexplainable to him through Daniel, but by crushing him with divine power. And (this is what really got me this morning) as if God didn't display enough mercy to Nebuchadnezzar, he is even patient with the king's pride a third time, handing him over to a consequence that is really more teaching than punishment.
I think there are two really valuable things we can take away from all of this. The first is the true reach of pride. Pride (not in the self-esteem sense, but in the power/sovereignty/self-worship sense) is not only at the heart of all of our problems with God, its removal from our lives is a lifelong struggle, taking many cycles of understanding, repentance, and surrender to God. This has certainly been true in my walk with God. Even though I can tell you the moment I began laying down my own claims to sovereignty and and instead began trusting in His promise to me, I can say with equal conviction that my central problem is still rebellion against Him. I still try to play God in my life in so many different ways, I still demand of Him, "What [do you think] you [are] doing?" (4:35) All of us who follow Christ must face the reality, scope, and persistence of our pride.
Yet this is not the final word, which brings us to the second thing I think we can take away from God's relationship with Nebuchadnezzar: that, after all of this, a relationship actually still exists. Like me challenging Kobe Bryant to a game of one-on-one basketball, Nebuchadnezzar's claim to sovereignty rightfully should have been shrugged off by God. Their relationship should have consisted of no more than God's putting Nebuchadnezzar back in his place. Instead God answers the king's challenges with grace, three times allowing him to not only take those challenges back, but even enter into a right relationship with Him.
Mercy is a funny word. It takes power to be merciful, and it seems to me that you don't always have to be loving to be merciful. Grace, on the other hand, is a word that is at the heart of the character of God. Grace forms a relationship when there really shouldn't be one. Grace answers rebellion with redemption. Grace takes our weaknesses and displays God's saving power through them. And, through the already poured out blood of Christ, we can put our trust in this grace.
2 comments:
so, is there a balance we have to use?
[amount of God's sovereignty and my own pride]
where do we draw the line?
[science and religion?]
'we can put our trust in grace' thats good.
if I'm understanding your question correctly, then the answer is that there is no balance. Holding on to our own pride is ridiculous in the presence of a sovereign, creator God.
this is not to say, however, that God has not gifted us in many and wondrous ways. science is not in itself an act of pride, but a powerful tool of discovery, understanding, and creativity. the line is only crossed when we assume that, like a boy feeling confident in running away from home after making himself a sandwich, science has given us enough provision to say goodbye to God.
Post a Comment