"Pride And Punishment"

"Pride And Punishment"

Isaiah 14; 4,15

I want to speak to you under the heading 'Pride And Punishment'. Some of you know 'Pride and Prejudice', well, this is 'Pride And Punishment'. Isaiah 14, beginning to read at verse 4 please, Isaiah 14 verse 4: "That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.

Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit".

Let us pray, please: Father, we thank You for Your holy word, we thank You that it is a lamp unto our feet, and a light to our path. We pray that it will shine light to the feet of some poor soul who has not yet found the road that leads to Calvary, the road of repentance and faith, where the burden of our sins can roll away,,, into the empty tomb of Christ.

O Lord, speak with a voice that wakes the dead, we pray. O Lord, we ask that You will have mercy this morning - in wrath remember mercy, save souls, and stir up those who might be in a backslidden state, and bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ this morning as the gospel is preached. Help me Lord, for I need You much, Amen.

The Bible, in one sense, could be called a tale of two cities.

Of course, probably the most commonly mentioned city in the whole of the word of God is the holy city of Jerusalem,,,,

I think it's mentioned round about over 300 times in the scriptures.

Of course, Jerusalem means 'the city of peace', and Jerusalem is the city that God chose to reveal Himself to prophets, to kings, and,,, and to various other holy men.

Much of the word of God emanated out of the city of Jerusalem, and of course Jerusalem was the place where God,,,

Ahhh,,, ahh, Ordained that a Saviour should die, just outside the city walls, on a cross for the sins of the world.

That,,,, that,,, that makes Jerusalem very, very special.

But the second most mentioned city in the Bible is the city of Babylon.

If Jerusalem, we could call it, was the centre chosen by God for His earthly operations;

Babylon was the city that Satan chose as the centre of his diabolical operations.

Now what you may not know about the city of Babylon is: many scholars believe the traditional site, geographically,,,,

Too,,,, to be the place where we think the Garden of Eden actually was in the beginning of creation.

Now, of course, if you know your Bible, you will know from the book of Genesis that it was in the Garden of Eden that Satan revealed himself to man,,,, and began to lie to man about God.

Now that's worthy of remembering, because that's something that Satan wants to do today, and has always wanted to do: to spin lies about almighty God.

Now following the flood in Noah's day, the kingdom of Babel came to be located around this same area - Genesis 10:10 tells us that.

There was also a place called Shinar, now 'Shinar' is a word that is related to another word 'shina', and that word can mean 'shine', it can mean 'year', or it can mean 'repeat'.

If you put those three ideas together: shine, year, to repeat - you get the idea of the yearly cycle of months, which might well be a distant allusion to astronomy or astrology.