The big idea: We learn at least four things about pride and why / how to be healed from it.

1. The sleep of pride.
In verse 10 he is satisfied but cannot sleep. He has achieved big success but could not sleep because of pride.

2. The heart of pride.
Pride is saying that things are done by me and things are done for me. Pride is cosmic plagiarism pride in saying that what I have is mine and not a gift.

3. The outcome of pride.
Pride dehumanizes you. When you aspire to be more than a man, like God, ironically you ecome less than a human. Pride in Nebuchadnezzar’s life made him lesser than a Man as he ate grass like a wild beast.

How does pride turn you into an animal?
A. It keeps you from empathizing with people.
B. Pride makes you like an animal driven by survival instincts C. Pride like an animal makes you incapable of joy, peace through pain.

4. The healing of pride.
The joyous life sees everything we have as a gift. On the other hand, the self-absorbed life sees everything good that we get as ‘its about time’ and the bad that we have as totally ‘unfair.’

In order to be healed of pride, we must see two things:
A. We have God’s anger against us for our cosmic plagiarism. B. At the same time we are the object of God’s great and abundant mercy

Nebuchadnezzar was not the master of the universe though he took it that he was. In reality, the real master of the universe, Jesus Christ, lost everything on the cross so that we might be his. This is how God healed and forgave Nebuchadnezzar of his pride.

In Isaiah chapter 52 it says that Jesus the servant would be beaten and marred beyond human recognition. Since in our pride we are made less than human and Jesus Christ was beaten to the point that he didn’t even look human, we might be restored to God!

Daniel tells us what it looks like when we are healed of pride.
A. We look to him and say everything is under God’s control and reign. We look to him and say everything you do is right. Everything that we have here on earth is better than we deserve.
B. Daniel says to remember the poor. It is the acid test of our life to see if we believe these things and have been healed of pride to how we spend our money.

Until we see that we are not the author of our lives but rather that we are God’s beautiful workmanship and prize art, we will not be healed of our pride.