Perhaps, more people have been harmed by success than by failure. Success often proves a slippery ground where most people lose their balance. An example in the Bible of someone who fell for the seductiveness of success is king Nebuchadnezzar. He looked back with pride at what the empire had become. In self-adulation, the king spoke in our text. Two things went wrong with his acclaim. Firstly, he thought he conquered the nations by his military prowess. If that was true for other nations, it certainly wasn’t for Israel. It was God who delivered His people into the king’s hand. Without that, all of Nebuchadnezzar’s might could do nothing. He failed to acknowledge divine help in his conquests.
“What is done in the flesh or for personal glory can never receive divine approval.”
Secondly, he declared that what he built was for the honour of his majesty. That is self- seeking and self-centeredness. Check through the Bible, every time people made themselves the focus of any project, they ran into trouble. At Babel, the people embarked on an ambitious project to make a name for themselves. The project did not get off the ground. If we are going to build anything at all, we better count on God’s strength and be sure it is to honour His name. What is done in the flesh or for personal glory can never receive divine approval. Boasting is wrong, except it is in the Lord.
