Isaiah 14:12-20. Part of the taunt of the king of Babylon that Isaiah prophesizes will be made once Israel is brought back from the captivity. The king will have "fallen from heaven"; the man who thought himself the "Day Star, Son of Dawn." He will be cut to the ground, not even to be buried in his own sepulchre. He who said in his heart "I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high... I will make myself like the Most High" will be brought down to the depths of the pit. People will look at him and wonder how he could be the same man "who shook kingdoms, ... made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities."

Two things strike me with this. First, God uses Israel's enemies to discipline her when needed, but it is always all about Israel in the Old Testament - they are the chosen people, the loved ones, the bride. When her foreign captors treat her poorly, the captors will ultimately suffer for it, as Isaiah is prophesying here that the king of Babylon will. It is easy for this king to think he is the "Day Star," an all powerful leader challenging God himself, because, and only because, he has been allowed his victories by God.

Isreal's neighbors in the Old Testament knew about Israel, they knew that the Israelites believed that their God would always protect them as he had promised to (and he always did, it's just that sometimes they left his protective love and suffered the consequences). This confidence in God's love and protection on the part of the Isaelites sometimes became almost an added incentive to conquer Israel - to "show them" who the real power was. We see this over and over again in the Old Testament - Israel's enemies taunting her saying her God cannot protect her. When God then allows those enemies to successfully conquer Israel (and remember, this is his permissive will - it really is the consequences of Israel's having turned away - they have left God's protection, so they fall), they feel like it is proof that they were right - Israel's God is nothing to be concerned about! How heady they must feel - how powerful - how much like a God themselves! But this is their downfall - they will eventually suffer the consequences of spiritual physics just like everyone else. And their fall will be so much harder, because they put themselves so much higher. The lesson here for us is not to take our victories or wealth or power in this world as a sign of our own merit. They may be, but only if we are pursuing God first, and humbly acknowledging it all comes from him and is given to us to use for his purposes. If we do not have the right orientation, these things instead can be the very source of our destruction - the more we have, the better we think of ourselves, and the farther we have to fall.

Second, Isaiah says that the Babylonian king said "in his heart" that he would ascend to heaven above the stars and be higher than God himself. Truly corrupt people don't say these things in their minds or with their mouths, they feel them in their hearts. That is where it is the most dangerous, because they don't even see their own corruption, they are blind to it - they have convinced themselves of their own supremacy. If they would even just acknowledge that they thought this way, there would be room for correction, and for their salvation.

We must rationally dissect the feelings of our hearts by examining our consciences because that is where the most danger lies. Any rational being knows that he is not going to live forever, and if he thinks about this, he will (or should) amend his ways after considering the afterlife. But as long as it is his heart lying to him, and his mind refuses to acknowledge it, he is blinded to these truths and therefore doomed.

So we must examine our consciences, probe the feelings of our hearts, and compare everything we do and think to God's laws and God's ways. Are we making a god of ourselves? We often are.