When
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon in the first century before Christ,
fell from the glory, honor, and brightness of the kingdom God had given
to him, his thinking was changed from the heart of a man to the heart of
a beast. The thinking processes of his mind changed. The base of his
understanding, his soul, shifted completely. He lost the capacity to
observe, to comprehend, and to enjoy the glory, honor, and brightness of
his existence. He became driven by the simple motivations and drives of
an animal. Although he was still the king of Babylon, one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, he experienced life as a lowly beast of
the field.
The story of the fall of Nebuchadnezzar is the story of every man. It
seems that every man in the course of experiencing life loses sight of
the simple truth that God gives and rules the domain of which he lives.
God directs the course of events that transpires in every man’s life.
When any man perceives, as Nebuchadnezzar, that the world of his
existence has been built by the might of his personal power for his
glory and honor, he, too, will fall from the glory, the honor, and the
brightness of the kingdom given by God. When man toils and works at
experiencing life (attempting to control the times and the seasons of
life), it has been predetermined by God that man will struggle in life.
He that seeks to save his life will lose it. He will fall from the
wonder of human existence to act as a beast of the field.
When man becomes beastly, he attempts to live life in the nature of the
beast. He becomes animalistic in his motivations to experience life. All
the complexities of intellect, emotion, and will that enable man to
observe, comprehend, and enjoy the kingdom given of God are reduced to
three simple drives that dominate his thinking. The nature of the beast
puts man into the bondage of survival, procreation, and territorial
rights.
Becoming as a beast of the field, man’s primary purpose in life
becomes simply to survive. Everything that transpires in life is
designed by the man who attempts to control his life--to perpetuate his
personal existence. He is driven continually to hunt for food and for
shelter--for things that will meet his basic need to survive. This hunt
for things dominates his life.
Becoming as a beast of the field, man’s motivation for survival is
fueled by his procreative drives. He becomes consumed not only to
perpetuate his existence by fathering and mothering children but by the
greater urge to create life. The beastly ability and motivation to
perpetuate its kind becomes in fallen man the hunger to create the
happenings of life itself. Man becomes consumed with the notion and the
attempt that he can make life happen.
Becoming as a beast of the field, the drive for survival will force man
to protect the things and the happenings that he perceives is his life.
He will become territorial. He will mark the domain of his survival--the
place where he experiences his life. He marks them because he must
protect them. They are his rights. He becomes controlled by the
self-preservation of his existence.
When man falls from the glory and wonder of the kingdom given of God (by
grace, through relationships, and in innocence), there is nothing else
he can experience but the world of the nature of the beast. Working to
make life happen by the exercise of his own thinking, he becomes beastly
in all of his relationships. When the world he has created by his own
effort is threatened, he will attack with malice, guile, deceit,
jealousy, and defamation. He will strike out to destroy all that appears
to challenge his survival. Having his heart changed from the heart of a
man to the heart of a beast, there is nothing else he can do but attempt
to protect the domain which he has created to give himself purpose and
meaning to life. He has fallen from the kingdom given of God to a domain
that is now controlled by the nature of the beast.
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