Isaiah 14:15-20. Part of what God promises his people will say to the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, once their exile is over. The king thought of himself as invincible, but he will be brought down into Sheol, to the depths of the pit. People will see him and stare asking "Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms," who destroyed cities and would not let his prisoners go home? Other kings are buried in glory, but he will be cast out, away from his sepulcher, "like a loathed, untimely birth ... like a dead body trodden underfoot."

I had the beginning of this passage before and wrote about pride and its dangers. This time I am focusing on what going to extremes does to us. Nebuchadnezzar was a king. As such, he is entitled to a burial like other kings of the earth - one with honor and glory, each in his own tomb. Kings are important and, as I've said before, God gives certain men this power for a reason. If they exercise it with any amount of humility and justice, they will be honored in death. They don't have to be perfect, no one is, but they do at least have to be trying to act rightly.

The king of Babylon was not doing this. He let his pride and lust for power take over and thus built what he thought was a mighty kingdom, knowing no bounds of justice or mercy. Everything was in pursuit of power and might, for both himself and his nation, with no thought of people. And so he is not entitled to a burial of any kind, much less a kingly sepulcher. His body will be cast aside, trod upon, and his soul will be will descend into the depths of hell. This is what we he chose when he failed to put any moral brakes on his desires. Jew or not, he would have been entitled to some degree of kingly honor in death if he had just tempered himself.

This is a lesson that God is the God of all of us, whether we accept him or not. Everything we have comes from him, and he has written his moral laws on each of our hearts. Thus, no matter our religion or state in life, or even if we don't accept God at all, we are still bound to his rules, they are the rules that govern the universe. When we let our passions turn us into something like Nebuchadnezzar, we will suffer the consequences, whether we believe in God or not.