Pleading. Tenth of May.

Human history is but a long, dusty trail of ruins left behind by the pride of man, a graveyard of empires where the hand of God has brought the lofty low and wiped the defiant from the face of the earth. It is a truth written in the blood of kings: pride is not merely a flaw, but a fatal poison. To harbor this sin is to guarantee a total and eternal separation from the Creator, for God resists the proud but giveth grace to the humble.

We see this divine hand at work in the records of old. Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head of Babylon, walked in his palace and boasted of the "Great Babylon" he had built by the might of his own power (Daniel 4:30). In an instant, his reason was taken, and he was driven to eat grass like the oxen until his hair grew like eagles' feathers. Yet, in His infinite mercy, God gave him grace to live. He was granted the solemn privilege of recording his own humiliation in the Holy Scripture (Daniel 4:37), that his chapter might stand as a perpetual warning to every ruler who would dare to wield this destructive sin before the face of Heaven.

How different was the end of Herod Agrippa. Clad in silver robes that caught the morning sun, he sat upon his throne and allowed the sycophants to shout, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!" (Acts 12:22). He did not rebuff the blasphemy; he drank it in like wine. In that moment of stolen glory, the Angel of the Lord smote him. He who claimed to be divine was brought lower than the beasts, struck down and eaten by worms while he yet drew breath—a gruesome testament against receiving the worship intended for God alone.

The Tower of Babel stands as a desolate monument to the futility of human ambition when it is set against the decree of the Almighty. The people of that age, drunk on their own unity and technology, coveted the very heavens, seeking to build a name for themselves that would reach the clouds. They openly rebelled against the command to disperse and fill the earth, choosing instead to huddle together in a fortress of collective pride. But God was not swayed. He looked down upon their puny tower and, with a single touch upon their tongues, dissolved their strength into a chaos of babble. He Himself subdued their arrogance and scattered them across the distant lands, proving that man’s greatest conspiracy is but dust before the breath of the Lord.

And who can forget the hard-hearted Pharaoh of Egypt? He was raised up by the Sovereign for the sole purpose of being a spectacle of pride brought to utter nothingness. He sat upon the most powerful throne of the ancient world and demanded, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?" Plague after plague, the One True God dismantled the pride of Egypt, striking at their idols until the very Nile ran with blood. Pharaoh and his pantheon of stone and shadow could do nothing against the Living God. In the end, the Red Sea became a tomb for his armies. Pharaoh’s glory did not save him; it only served to make his destruction a more perfect example to all generations that follow: that he who hardens his neck against the King of Kings shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.

Let every man take heed: the higher the tower of self, the more terrible the fall. God will not share His glory with another. Pride is the shortest path to the grave, and the surest way to find oneself an enemy of the Most High. Hence, let the believer never tremble before any man, nor fear those who boast of a power to kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. Nay, rather fear the Lord, who alone hath power to cast both body and soul into the fires of hell (Luke 12:5). Fear the Lord, before whom every knee shall one day bow at the foot of the Great White Throne (Isaiah 45:23, Philippians 2:10-11). Whether they bow now in the brokenness of repentance, bow they shall. Happy is the man who learns this holy fear while the day of grace yet lingers.