The Idol of Power and Glory (Chapter 5)
Notes
Transcript
A World Possessed.
That is how Dutch historian Johan Huizinga described the mood before World War II.
He looked around at his age and wrote,
“We live in a world possessed. And we know it.”
He was describing a society seized by powerful ideas that promised salvation and delivered disaster.
The Nazis claimed to be protecting the love of nation and people.
Which in and of itself, is not a bad thing,
because Patriotism is not an evil in itself.
But under their control it became a dark, destructive force that brought shame instead of honor.
About 150 years earlier, during the French Revolution,
Maximilien Robespierre told the National Convention that the goal was liberty and equality,
and that the “Terror” would be only prompt, strict justice.
In reality it became widespread injustice,
and Robespierre himself was executed without a fair trial by the same guillotine.
In both cases, something good was turned into something ultimate,
and once it became ultimate, it became demonic.
That is a picture of idolatry.
And scripture teaches us that created things cannot bear the weight of being treated like gods.
Love of one’s people, when made absolute, hardens into racism and hatred.
Love of equality, when made absolute, often turns into resentment and violence toward those with advantages.
When a culture loses the living God, it does not become neutral.
It seeks a replacement.
Some look to romance,
others to money.
Many look to politics.
Leaders become messiahs,
platforms become gospel,
and activism becomes a kind of religion.
How to Recognize Political Idolatry
How to Recognize Political Idolatry
One of the clearest signs of an idol is fear.
When our political hopes are threatened, we don’t just say, “This is disappointing.”
We say, “This is the end!”
We speak as if hope itself has died.
This level of despair tells us we have placed a spiritual weight on politics that it was never designed to carry.
Another sign of political idolatry is demonization.
Political opponents are no longer people who are wrong about important matters; they are sub-human, evil enemies.
Which turns conversation poisonous because the ultimate thing must be defended at any cost.
Which means even the relationship must go.
So why do fear and demonization grow in the public square?
It’s because we’ve made it a counterfeit god.
The Bible names sin as the world’s fundamental problem
and the grace of God as the fundamental remedy.
But political idolatry finds a different villain and a different savior.
It demonizes one group and deifies another.
The result is overblown hope, crushing disillusionment, and cycles of rage.
And beneath it all is a sickness,
a spiritual unrest that the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called “the will to power.”
In the garden, the first temptation was to be “as God”
to take control, to write our own story.
And because we gave in to that temptation,
we now have a will to power runs through us,
turning good things like love of country or a passion for justice
into idols that demand our absolute allegiance.
The Story of Power
The Story of Power
As we saw in Daniel,
we find a vivid case study of this sickness in a man named Nebuchadnezzar who embodied the will to power and who learned a hard mercy.
In the sixth century B.C., he was the most powerful man on earth.
He commanded armies and ruled nations.
Yet, as Daniel chapter 2 tells us, he could not sleep.
He dreamed of a towering statue with a head of gold and feet of clay,
and he awoke in a sweat,
terrified that his empire would fail.
Which shows us that power often wears a confident face while the heart is in chaos.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream exposed the fragility underneath the grandeur.
And so, God sent Daniel to interpret it.
The statue, Daniel explained, pictured human civilization in all its glory—
it was an idol to human achievement.
But then a rock, cut without human hands, shattered it.
That rock is the kingdom of God.
Which shows us that Human empires glitter, but always crumble.
because power is not achieved, but received.
And all power apart from Christ’s has an expiration date.
On one hand,
Nebuchadnezzar seemed to bow to that truth,
but the change did not go deep.
So God pursued him again in Daniel chapter 4.
But this time, the dream was of a great tree that sheltered the earth,
and then a voice from heaven ordered it cut down.
Daniel, with fear, told the king the meaning:
which was that he would be driven away to live like an animal until he acknowledged that “the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.”
The lesson was clear:
God’s sovereignty is not theoretical.
It calls rulers to justice and the strong to humility.
But twelve months later, Nebuchadnezzar walked his rooftop and admired his city.
“Is not this the great Babylon that I have built by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”
And as the text tells us,
in the same hour, Nebuchadnezzar’s sanity departed from him and he ate grass like and ox.
Why?
Because of a spiritual law that was at work here.
and it’s this:
When human beings try to become more than human, they become less than human.
Which means that pride deforms us.
In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
a selfish boy named Eustace falls asleep on a dragon’s hoard with greedy thoughts and wakes up as a dragon.
He becomes what he worships.
He is now enormously powerful,
but also hideous and completely lonely.
Lewis shows us that the outward power Eustace gained cost him his humanity.
That is what pride does.
It promises elevation and delivers isolation.
In the story, Eustace tries to peel off his dragon skin.
He manages to remove a thin layer, but underneath he is still a dragon.
He tries again, and again, and nothing changes.
Finally Aslan, the great lion, tells him, You will have to let me undress you.
Eustace lays down in fear and trust.
The first cut feels as if it reaches his heart.
It hurts more than anything he has ever felt.
But when the lion pulls the thick, rugged hide away, Eustace stands smooth and new.
He becomes a boy again.
But the point Lewis is telling the same truth we see in Daniel.
Pride must be cut away by a power outside us.
We do not save ourselves by our strength.
We are restored by grace.
That is the mercy God gives Nebuchadnezzar.
After the years of humiliation, which was God’s deep cutting into the heart of this king,
Nebuchadnezzar lifts his eyes to heaven.
His sanity returns.
He confesses that God’s dominion is eternal.
He owns that the Most High does according to His will and that no one can stay His hand.
He is restored to his throne.
And the text adds that he became greater than before.
This is The strange arithmetic of grace.
The way up is down.
Humility comes before honor.
The cross comes before resurrection.
But why is this so hard for us?
Why is it so difficult for us to let go of our pride?
It’s because we have very broken theology…
Sociologist Christian Smith has a phrase for it.
He calls it moralistic therapeutic deism.
It’s the view, God wants people to be nice.
The main goal is to be happy and to feel good about yourself.
God is there if you need Him, but most of the time He is distant and uninvolved.
And if that is your vision of God,
you remain the captain of your soul.
Salvation becomes self improvement.
Prayer becomes a tool for personal comfort.
And power is still how we secure a meaningful life.
But the Bible tell a very different story.
It tell us that us that Most of who we are is received, not achieved…
Think about it:
We did not select our parents.
We did not choose our century.
We did not design our natural strengths.
We did not place ourselves in the social networks that opened the doors of success.
It’s all received, not achieved.
Yes, we make real choices and they really do matter.
Yet, all of our choices all made upon the foundation of God’s gifts.
This is why the apostle Paul says,
7 For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
And so humility is seeing that our lives through the grace of God!
Think about how backwards our culture has this…
We tell young people, You can be anything you set your mind to.
because we want to encourage them to work hard and aim for success…
But ultimately, this is not true.
I know many of us love the football movie Rudy…
But a five foot four teenager will never become an NFL linebacker.
A brilliant musician may never be a surgeon, no matter how hard they try.
In my twenties, I got really into reading the author Malcolm Gladwell as several of his books,
I did not agree with everything he wrote, but he helped me see something that Scripture has said all along.
Timing matters.
Place matters.
Access matters.
And none of those are things we chose.
In fact, most of the highly successfully people in the past 100 years all had overlapping opportunities…
They were born at the right time,
in the right location,
with the right access to successful people that enabled them to become successful.
Now, his point was not to erase hard work.
It was to expose how much of life is gift.
Which is exactly what Paul just told us:
“What do you have that you did not receive?”
Once that lands in your bones,
pride loosens its grip.
Gratitude rises.
And idols start to lose their grip on us.
Which means,
if most of life is received,
then politics cannot carry the weight we try to put on it.
Yes, politics matters.
It is part of loving our neighbor.
But politics makes a very poor god.
So how do you know when politics has become one?
Watch for fear.
When your side loses and it feels like hope itself has died.
Watch for fury.
When people who disagree stop being wrong and start becoming your enemy in your mind.
Watch for fantasy.
When you imagine that a win will fix everything, or most everything.
Watch for Factionalism.
When critique of your party feels like an attack on your faith,
and causes a tribal attitude in you against others.
These are not small alarms. They are idol warnings.
In Daniel chapter 2,
the statue sparkles, but it stands on clay feet.
Which is every human project.
But then a stone arrives, cut without human hands.
No vote created it.
No court can overturn it.
Then chapter 4 shows us how God breaks the spell of human pride.
The Most High humbles a king so the king can lift his eyes.
Nebuchadnezzar learns what every heart must learn.
Power is not achieved, it is received.
Heaven rules. Not sometimes. Always.
So how do we live this out?
Pray for rulers by name, even the ones you did not choose.
Honor everyone, not only those in your tribe.
Speak the truth without getting angry and resentful.
Do justice and good for people who frustrate you.
Seek the welfare of your city,
but refuse to see social good as a replacement for the gospel of grace.
But to do this, we have to create counter habits to re-train our loves.
Fast from the outrage news-cycle from time-to-time.
And instead fill the same hour with Scripture and prayer.
Invite a believer who votes differently to your table.
And when they talk listen, and pray together.
Serve someone who cannot repay you.
As the theologian G K Chesterton once said:
Don’t love humanity as a whole, love the person before you no matter how unlovely they might be.
Confess quickly when you mock or exaggerate.
because repentance is essential for killing our pride.
Underneath our political idols are deeper ones:
Power, approval, comfort, control.
Politics promises to satisfy all four.
If my side wins, I matter.
If my tribe applauds, I belong.
If the policy favors me, life will finally be easy.
If the right people hold office, I can relax.
But none of these can satisfy the human soul.
Instead, gaze more deeply into the gospel.
Because:
In Christ, power becomes service,
as seen in Jesus who washed the disciples feet.
In Christ, approval is given.
The Father says, You are my beloved.
In Christ, comfort is not the goal.
Instead, we take up a cross and hope in a resurrection.
In Christ, control is surrendered.
We pray, Your kingdom come,
not our kingdom come.
Because as Daniel 2 shows us,
our kingdoms will be destroyed by Christ’s when it comes.
This is why The cross must sit at the center of our life.
Not just privately, but publicly.
And Jesus sets the patten for us:
When He came, He did not seize power - He laid it down.
He did not win by crushing enemies - He died for them.
And because He did, all authority has been given to Him.
That is the story that steadies our hands from shaking and eases our hearts in the midst of a troubled world.
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
This is the truth we must live out in our lives.
Maybe you’re thinking: this sure sounds passive!
No it’s, it’s actually not though…
Instead of being passive, it actually makes us fearless and patient.
We still vote.
We still write letters.
We still show up to serve.
But we do so refusing to speak or act as if the future of the kingdom rests on us.
Which frees us to be faithful without being frantic.
But to do this, we have to get to where Nebuchadnezzar got to when he says:
34 At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; 35 all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
Nebuchadnezzar’s sanity came with surrender.
He confessed that God does according to his will and none can stay his hand.
And only then was he restored.
And as that text tells us: once he did this, he became greater than before.
Because God’s does not shrink people and make them useless - it re-sizes them.
By making us small in pride and large in love.
While being gentle but also brave at the same time.
But to do this, the belief that heaven rules cannot just be a slogan to us.
It must become a vivid reality in our lives.
How?
Begin where Nebuchadnezzar ended:
Lift your eyes to heaven.
Name the idols.
Repent of fear, fury, fantasy, and factionalism.
Rehearse the true story.
Christ has overcome the world.
His kingdom is the rock not cut by human hands.
And it is coming soon to a world near you!
Practice counter habits.
Pray for rulers by name.
Bless enemies aloud.
Fast from outrage for a week.
Open your Bible in the hour you used to scroll.
Invite someone who votes differently to your table and pray together.
Serve someone who cannot repay you.
Engage in discipleship regularly with others.
And make your life a life of worship.
Come ready each and every Sunday to sing joyfully.
Spend time looking at Sunday’s passage ahead of time so you’re ready and prepared to dig deeply into it.
Do personal and family worship throughout the week.
And as you do this, live quiet, courageous lives.
Tell the truth without contempt.
Do justice without panic.
Love your neighbor without conditions.
When headlines shake, speak Jesus’s words that we just read from John 16:33 to your soul.
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
