The most popular article that Sports Illustrated ever published was about the 10 greatest comebacks of all time. The Arizona Diamondbacks beating the New York Yankees after losing the first three games of the World Series in the year 2000 made the list. So did Ali knocking out George Foreman. The 10 greatest comebacks of all time. You might be surprised that the Bible is full of people and their stories of making a comeback. For example, Paul murders Christians. He hates Jesus. He hates the church. He wants to destroy it. But Jesus interrupts him on his way to Damascus to kill more Christians. Paul becomes a believer in Jesus, because he sees the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes. And Paul turns completely around. He makes a rebound. And Jesus makes him the greatest evangelist and preacher in the history of the church. A monumental rebound. Or you take Levi. He was a greedy tax collector. He was Jewish, but he was collecting taxes from Jews that supported the occupying Roman legions. He was despised by all Jews. He was the lowest of the low. But one day, Jesus walks up to his tax-collecting booth, and He calls Levi to be part of His 12 disciples. He says, "I want you." And for some reason, he'd heard Jesus preach in Capernaum, he gets up and follows Jesus, and Jesus transforms him. He becomes a disciple, a devoted follower of Jesus. Jesus changes his name to Matthew, which means "gift of God." And he ends up writing the Gospel of Matthew. You talk about a turnaround, a rebound. That was Levi. Or you take Judas. Judas had it in his heart to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, didn't he? And what does Jesus do? At the Last Supper, He seats Judas next to Him. He knows what's in Judas's heart, and He's trying to help Judas rebound from this horrible mistake that's brewing in his heart, of betraying Jesus. But Judas swatted Jesus's hands away and betrayed Him anyway, and then hung himself. Not everyone makes a comeback, do they? Not everyone makes a comeback. Maybe some of you are in the position right now that so far you have not made a comeback. You need a comeback, but it's not coming. Making mistakes is something everyone does. Learning from them is not. Surely you know someone who's made mistakes and is stuck in the past. They have not made a comeback. They instead have repeated the same bad choices over and over, and gone through the same pain over and over in their life. Many do this. They cycle through that pain. I want to tell you, as a pastor over the years, one thing I'd say for sure: so much pain that I see in families and in individual lives is unnecessary. It didn't need to happen. But there was no change. There was no repentance. No rebound from the choices that they had been making. Maybe you've made a lot of mistakes, and you're discouraged by the messes that you've made. And maybe you've come to the conclusion that you're hopeless, that your life cannot be salvaged, that your future is done. I declare to you, that's a wrong conclusion. I declare unto you that no one is hopeless. No one's future is hopeless if they're in God's hands, and God wants to come and give you a rebound in your life. And my proof is Nebuchadnezzar. He is the Bible's prime example that for God, no one is hopeless. Even though some of us are more challenging. And you might be in the challenging group. But you're still not hopeless to God. Nebuchadnezzar had conquered the known world. His rule was bloody, ruthless, devoid of mercy and compassion. He had the ego the size of Texas. And why not? He'd never lost a battle. The whole known world was submitted to him. He built one of the seven wonders of the world, which was Babylon. This city was so luxurious that "luxurious" is too weak a word to describe what he built. Why shouldn't he be proud, and his ego big? A very huge theme in the book of Daniel is that God does not give up on Nebuchadnezzar, regardless of this pride, and regardless of his cruelty and his sin in his life. And He won't give up on us, either. If He did not give up on Nebuchadnezzar, He's not going to give up on us, or someone you know that you're beginning to think they're hopeless. Nebuchadnezzar, though, was a slow learner. In Daniel chapter 4, he rebounds from a lifetime of swatting away God's hands. A lifetime of sin, a lifetime of cruelty, a lifetime of idolatry. He even set up an idol to himself and had people worship him. He thought he was God. Nebuchadnezzar rebounded to the place that he converted to the God of the Bible. And he rebounds from 60 years of bad choices. You may know somebody who's made 60 years of bad choices. They're still not impossible for God. The first thing we learn from him is that when God gives you another chance, take it. I don't care how bad your choices have been. I don't care how deep the hole you have dug, even if it's as deep as the Grand Canyon. I don't care if your family and all your friends declare you to be hopeless, and have put a period after your life, as if it's over. I don't care if you've made horrible mistakes relationally, and you consider yourself, and others consider you, as damaged goods. You are not, with God. There is no one who is damaged goods in the hands of God. Because God is the God of multiple chances. Not just second chances. Not just third chances. Not fourth. Not even fifth. He gave Nebuchadnezzar six chances to rebound. And he finally did. He finally took it. But if he had not, I guarantee you, God was prepared to give him a seventh chance. The only problem is, no matter how many chances God gives some of us, we don't grab them. We keep on the same road we are. We don't grab the chances God gives us. God is endlessly optimistic about you. God will give you more chances than mistakes you make. God is going to give you another chance. I promise you, it's coming. Take it, and turn around in your life. That's Nebuchadnezzar. This book is about the chances God gave him. The first chance was when Daniel and his three friends, who had been kidnapped from Jerusalem when he conquered Jerusalem, said, "We don't want to eat the king's luxurious food. We're going to stay faithful to the food laws of God in the Old Testament." Laws that were given to protect their health in the ancient world. And they didn't eat the king's food. And what happened was, the king saw that they became healthier than all their other Jewish friends who did eat from the king's table. That was the first time Nebuchadnezzar saw that the God they worship really does make a difference. That was his first chance. But he didn't take it. The second chance was, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. Now, Babylonians thought the gods communicated through their dreams. So God was using a dream all through the book of Daniel to communicate to the Babylonians. Just like today, He's using dreams in the Muslim world to bring people to Jesus. It's happening. People are converting to Jesus because of dreams that they have. Well, that's what was happening here with Nebuchadnezzar. It was a dream about empires, including his own, that would fall and turn to dust. But God's was eternal. Nebuchadnezzar honored Daniel for interpreting the dream. He said, "Your God is the greatest of all gods, the revealer of mysteries." "Your God." That's your God, not my God. So he still doesn't... even though the dream is revealed as from God, he still doesn't grab the second chance. The third chance God gave Nebuchadnezzar was when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to an image of Nebuchadnezzar and worship him, and were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. And Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, and there was a fourth person who appeared. And he said, "He looked like the Son of God." And he sees that the fire is not killing them. The fire's not even burning their clothes or singeing their hair. And they walk out, not even smelling of smoke, after having been in that furnace. Nebuchadnezzar sees a monumental miracle, but he still doesn't surrender to the God who does this. Missed opportunities to rebound. Missed opportunities. It's very sad, because that means we have to continue to go through the same pain over and over again. Missed opportunities. I see it all the time. A marriage is a struggle. There are many unhappy nights. There's tension. Maybe arguments. Maybe just smoldering anger towards one another. Why? In this church? Because great marriages are between great forgivers. But one of them holds grudges and keeps a record of the past. I can't tell you how many times Chris and I counsel people, and one or the other refuses to let go of the past. Refuses to forgive. And so they have to go through the pain. Sermons about forgiveness, so many that I've given. And about anger. And about how love keeps no record of wrongs. Sermons like this that I've given over and over at Compass. But those sermons are rejected. They are heard but not done. Those sermons, whether we realize it or not, are opportunities. Chances to rebound. But they're refused. A sermon's an opportunity. Insanity is behaving the same way, expecting better results. Everybody knows that. I want to tell you, much of Salinas is insane. We have to sleep in the bed that we make. The consequences come. Sermons are opportunities to rebound. But for so many people, they slap away the hand of the Holy Spirit speaking to them through a sermon. God gave Nebuchadnezzar a fourth chance in chapter 4. It's another dream. It's a dream about a thriving tree that, by God's orders, is chopped down. Only the stump is left, and it's stripped of all of its leaves. It was a message of warning that the judgment of God is coming to Nebuchadnezzar's flourishing life and kingdom. He calls on Daniel to interpret it, because Daniel has interpreted the dreams when the other advisers could not. And he tells him the truth. He says, "Nebuchadnezzar, God is going to strip you of your throne, and He's going to drive you to insanity, so that you are going to be in the fields, eating grass like cows. If you do not repent of your ego and of your sinful ways, this is coming to you. This is going to happen till you recognize God as the Most High God, far above Nebuchadnezzar, you whose ego's the size of Texas. Until you humble yourself." God is giving Nebuchadnezzar another chance to repent and to rebound. But sadly, Nebuchadnezzar swats away the hands of God and does not respond to the opportunity. He's a slow learner. A lot of people are slow learners. In fact, you might be in that group. A slow learner, where you have to go through repeated things. Does that ring a bell? Making the same mistakes and not learning. Behaving the same way. Going through the same pain. Things don't get better. And maybe you, in the last year or so, have been through this. It's called déjà vu. Déjà vu: it's when you've been through this before. You feel like, "I've lived this before. This feels familiar." And it is. Déjà vu cycles, repeating, because there's no repentance and change. That's Nebuchadnezzar. God is patient. He waits a year for Nebuchadnezzar to wake up, but he doesn't. And one night, Nebuchadnezzar is strolling on the patio of his palace, looking out over the city, and he says, and I quote, "I have built this beautiful city to display my majestic grandeur." And verse 31 says the words are barely out of his mouth, and the judgment of God falls upon him. He was patient, patient, patient. And Nebuchadnezzar mistook the long-suffering and patience of God as, He really didn't mean judgment would come. A lot of people make that mistake. Because it hasn't come, we think it isn't going to come. Because the consequences haven't come, we think they aren't going to come. But they are going to come. That's Nebuchadnezzar. C. S. Lewis calls this a severe mercy. It's become a very famous phrase: a severe mercy. Making Nebuchadnezzar insane, and humbling him as a wild beast, was a severe, painful experience brought on by God. But it was merciful, because it turned him away from his old ways and turned him towards God. It brought him to the place where he repented, which saved him from a lot more pain that was up ahead on this road, unless he got off the road. A severe mercy, where the pain is so great, we wake up and say, "I don't want to do this again. I am going to change." It's severe, but it's merciful. C. S. Lewis famously said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts to us in our pain. Pain is God's megaphone for a deaf world." God is reluctant to bring pain, but He will, if that's the only thing that will wake us up and bring us to repentance. Every parent knows the truth of this. Sometimes the only way to get through to a child is to let the consequences come. Let the pain come, and they become teachable. The same with us. But anyone reading this passage should be asking themselves whether or not they're teachable. Whether or not they have swatted away the hands of God, in a sermon or in some other way, and refused to change. To ask ourselves if we're in that position. Because if we are, we're in danger of a severe mercy. Nebuchadnezzar becomes a genuine believer. Verse 34 says, "My sanity returned, and I praised and worshiped the Most High God." He becomes converted to the God of the Bible. But it took a severe mercy, and that was the sixth chance that God gave to Nebuchadnezzar. Some people still don't repent, even with a severe mercy. God was prepared to give him another chance, if that's what it took. Sometimes there's pain in our life, and people shake their hands and their fists at God and blame God for the pain in their life, when in fact, it's just consequences of their attitudes and behavior. Just consequences that God lets come, which is the severe mercy to them. The pain is actually God offering us another chance to rebound. To make a comeback in our life and get on the right road. If that happens, take it. Don't keep living the same way, making the same messes over and over. Listen: progress is impossible without the willingness to change. No one and nothing changes without making changes. Wouldn't you agree with that? Progress is impossible without change. Secondly, you learn from Nebuchadnezzar: rebounding from mistakes requires repentance. I boarded a plane not long ago, and I was 25 rows back, 'cause I wouldn't pay the extra money to sit up front. I'm going to get there just the same, so I don't pay the money. I sit there in the back. I'm in an aisle seat. I always like the aisle seat. And I see this guy that has two cameras on his shoulder, you know, a video and then a still camera. And then on the other shoulder, he has one of these big, long duffel bags that you often see people in the military carrying. And he's coming down the aisle like this, and he's whacking people on the aisle seat. Takes another... whack, whack, whack. Goes another... whack, whack, whack. And each time, you can hear this guy say, "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." [laughter] Next... whack, whack, whack. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." No, he isn't. [laughter] And I get a call from God. I'm on a mission for God. [laughter] I'm just waiting for him to get to my row and say sorry, 'cause I'm going to stand up and get in his face and say, "No, you're not. You keep whacking people. You're not sorry. You're not sorry unless you stop this." You know what happened? He sat down in his seat two rows in front of me. I was bummed out, because I was on a mission for God, and I didn't get a chance to fulfill it. But it just goes to show you that if you're really sorry, you change. Change is always the best apology. If there's no change, then we are not honestly sorry, are we? I have a friend who's a world-famous internist. He was in my church when I was in Denver, and now he's in Houston, and he travels the world, educating doctors to a higher level with all that he has discovered as a researcher. And in a conversation with me, he told me a story about a guy he operated on who had cancer of the bladder. He said, "If you'd have come to me two years earlier, the operation would have been routine, and I'm certain I could have gotten the cancer out. If you'd even come to me six months earlier, I still think the surgery would have been successful." It wasn't. He died. And here's what John said to me. He said, "He was a victim of delay." A victim of delay. I've seen that over and over again. People who wait too long to change, until it becomes too late, in their career, or their relationship, or their health. Eventually, it does become too late. People think to themselves, "Someday I'll change." But someday is not a day of the week. If we say someday, that day will never come. And so people who say someday, they never do. Because someday's not a day of the week. Nebuchadnezzar, over 30 years, said, "Someday I'll grab one of these chances God has given me. Someday." It was only after a severe mercy, pain, deep pain, that someday became today, and he grabbed the chance. Like I said, I see so much pain in people's lives that is unnecessary. But it comes because they swatted away the hands of God. Don't be in that group. And remember, the past is where you learn the lesson. The future is where you apply the lesson. And what that means is, we learn from our mistakes. If you're perfect, you can't learn anything. But because you make mistakes, it's your opportunity to learn and to change. And when you do, all the past is forgiven and forgotten. And that was with Nebuchadnezzar. Psalm 103 says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed my sins from you." God says in the book of Isaiah, "Though your sins are as scarlet, I will wash them whiter than snow." I declare to you that rebounding from your mistakes in the past depends upon you believing the Word of God about forgiveness. It depends upon you believing that all your sins are washed away and forgiven. Because if you don't, you'll keep rehearsing those sins in the past, the bad things you did. You'll keep living in guilt, and you will never rebound, reliving your past mistakes. You must believe the forgiveness of God. Do you? Amen. A lot of people don't. I read this last week in my research, this quote: "All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner." [laughter] Don't be mad at me. I'm just reporting what I read. How do we rebound from bad choices? We admit them, learn from them, we repent, and we receive forgiveness and cleansing. Make a mistake once, and it's a lesson. Make the same mistake twice, and it's a choice, becoming a habit. Is that happening to us? Don't be in the someday group. Be in today's group. Lord Jesus, help us with this. Help us, Lord, as You speak to us about behavior and attitudes, today to repent and change. I pray it in Your name, Jesus. Amen.