Living in Exile: Reading the Writing on the Wall

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our worship service. Thank you for joining us here in person on this beautiful Sunday morning.

I have a few announcements in your bulletin that I’d like to highlight today.

No doubt you’ve heard of Ronnie Chandler’s passing yesterday morning. I spoke with Connie, you can imagine she’s very heartbroken. Please keep her and her family in your prayers during this difficult time. I don’t have details of a funeral service as of yet, but we’ll be sure to pass those along once things have been decided.

Please keep Twila’s brother Larry in your prayers as well. He suffered a heart attack yesterday and is in the hospital but doing better, so please remember him.

Also, please notice in your bulletin that during the month of February we’ll be taking a love offering for a long-time church family who is facing a financial emergency due to some pretty steep and demanding medical bills. Please consider giving as you are led.

Our church council will meet tomorrow at 7:00, and we’ll also be having our quarterly business meeting this Wednesday.

And the men’s group will not be meeting tonight. Jim and Lisa both are feeling a little under the weather, so keep them in your prayers as well.

Della, do you have an announcement this morning?

And lastly, a bit of good news. You’ll notice that Daniel Johnson isn’t with us this morning. That’s because he’s across the mountain bringing Brenda back home. She’ll be having therapy in-house, which is good, and Daniel says that if you’d like to visit her, she’ll be right where she’s suppose to be — in their house.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father as we come to you this morning there are some hearts here that are heavy to the point of breaking. There are hearts that are anxious and fearful. Hearts that are weary. and burdened. But all of our hearts, Father, long for you. We long for your comfort, long for your peace, long for your presence in this moment and every moment. And we know you’re here, Father. We know you’re right here among us, and we feel your strength, we feel your love, we feel you lifting up each of us. Thank you for our blessings, no matter the form they take. Thank you for these people. Thank you, Father, for all you do. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Sermon

Last week we talked about the danger of pride, and we looked at the temptation of pride through two different people. There was Nebuchadnezzar’s pride, which he fully gave in to, didn’t he? God knew that Nebuchadnezzar’s pride would be the ruin of him, which was why God had to bring the king so low.

We also looked at Daniel himself. Daniel could easily have been prideful that Nebuchadnezzar was about to be judged. You could even say that Daniel would have been justified in being a little prideful. He could have said, “O king, you destroyed my nation. You took God’s people to this land filled with false gods.

“You made them worship your kingdom and your culture. And when my friends said no, you threw them into a furnace. Well, now it’s time to pay. You’re going to get exactly what you deserve, and I can’t wait. I’m going to enjoy it, because you’re being punished for the evil king you’ve always been while I’m still kept safe because God loves me.”

But Daniel didn’t say that at all, did he? He didn’t give in to pride. Instead he tried through kindness and compassion to get Nebuchadnezzar to change his ways. That’s exactly what we should be doing for our own unbelieving culture.

Thankfully, Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson, and when his reason returned, he praised God and said, “all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.”

Nebuchadnezzar was restored, and so was his kingdom. But things don’t work out so well for the next king we meet. Even if you don’t know anything about King Belshazzar, I bet you can make a good guess about how he handles power and wealth. Because you know how people are, and hopefully you know how you are too.

We talked a little about that last week too — history always repeats itself. There’s nothing new under the sun.

It’s easy to watch the news and think that nobody’s had to live through the times that we’re living through. But that’s not the case. As Christians, we’re given the unique perspective of seeing as much through God’s eyes as possible. And when you see things through God’s eyes, you realize that society might change, technology may change, our understanding of the world may change, but people never really change at all.

That’s why even though Daniel lived thousands of years ago in a culture that’s long gone, he’s still very much relevant. Daniel feels like one of us, doesn’t he? We can still learn from him, and from Nebuchadnezzar, and from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, because we see ourselves in them and their times in our times.

Through them we learn how to live in exile, and today we’re going to learn a very important part of that exile — how to always be ready. Because sooner or later all the pride that runs through every culture is going to result in judgment, and the church needs to be ready for when it does.

That’s the lesson of Daniel chapter 5, and that’s where we are today. We’re going to start out in verses 1-4:

King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.

Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

And this is God’s word.

About 30 years have passed between chapters 4 and 5, and right away we see a major change in the Babylonian kingdom. We have a new king. Nebuchadnezzar has died, and the man in charge now is named Belshazzar. Verse 2 seems to imply that he’s Nebuchadnezzar’s son — “ ... the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple ... ” — but that isn’t the case. That word “father” means more like a predecessor, someone who came before.

Belshazzar is actually Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, and his father is a man named Nabonidus. They both kind of rule Babylon together, but Belshazzar is the one who pretty much runs things. And he has the ego to prove it, as we see right from verse 1.

Belshazzar is throwing a feast. There are a whole lot of people — verse 1 says a thousand were invited — and there is a whole lot of wine. And when you get that many people together with that much alcohol, nothing good is going to happen. The king is showing off, bragging about his power and prestige, and as that wine starts working on him in verse 2, Belshazzar gets a terrible idea — he commands that the vessels of gold and silver his grandfather had taken from the temple in Jerusalem be brought out so everyone can drink from them.

Kind of strange when you think about it, isn’t it? I mean here’s the king and a thousand of his lords throwing a party and living it up. They’re celebrating how wonderful they are and their kingdom is, and right in the middle of it Belshazzar’s thoughts turn to the God of one of the nations Babylon conquered. Not just that, but the God of one of the nations Babylon conquered fifty years ago. What’s going on here?

Our sense of pride directly influences our spiritual condition. Have you ever noticed that? The more we start thinking of ourselves, the less we start thinking of God. The more highly we consider ourselves, the more lowly we start considering God. So it kind of makes sense that in the middle of this huge celebration of how great and mighty Babylon is that the king starts thinking about how small God appears to be.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of why Belshazzar starts thinking about the Jewish God. Why does he start thinking of Jehovah so much that he makes this command to get all the vessels that were taken from the temple so they could drink from them?

That answer comes in two parts: it has to do with what’s happening outside the city gates at this moment, and it has to do with Nebuchadnezzar.

First, let’s talk about what’s happening outside the city. After all these years of Babylon’s dominance, it’s the Persian and Mede empire that’s now rising. The Persians have conquered every nation in its path, and now they’ve come for Babylon. In fact, Belshazzar’s father, the other king, has been captured by the Persians. And now the Persian army has camped outside Babylon’s walls for about four months. Belshazzar can look out from his palace and see the massive Persian army just waiting.

Here’s what else Belshazzar probably knows — he knows what his grandfather was told all those years ago. Remember Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream? It was an idol with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs bronze, and legs of iron and clay. That head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar. It was Babylon.

But God had given Nebuchadnezzar that dream to show that his kingdom would end. All kingdoms will end. There’s only one kingdom that will last forever, and that’s the kingdom that God sets up. Babylon was the head of gold, but the next kingdom, the one that had a chest and arms of silver that would rise up to defeat Babylon, was Persia. And that’s the army that’s camped out just beyond the city walls.

Here’s what Belshazzar has going for him, though. The city of Babylon is the greatest fortress in the world. We know from a Greek historian named Herodotus that Babylon’s walls were 56 miles long. They were 80 feet thick. And they were 320 feet tall. Can you imagine that? Belshazzar knows the Persians can never get inside. Plus, the city has enough food and water to last 20 years. There’s no way an army can lay siege to a city for twenty years. All Belshazzar has to do is wait the Persians out.

So what’s Belshazzar thinking? “My granddad was so worried about this Jewish god, but this Jewish god is nothing. Not even he can get past my walls.”

And so in a final act of defiance, he throws a gigantic party. Belshazzar’s not worried about the Persians. He’s not worried about God.

But then Belshazzar does something that seals his fate. He calls for the holy vessels that have been taken from the temple in Jerusalem, and Belshazzar drinks from them and offers them to the gods of Babylon. This is pride to the extreme. This is a level of pride that not even Nebuchadnezzar reached. Belshazzar’s saying, “Your God is nothing. The only thing He’s good for is for us to use these cups, these symbols of his power, to enjoy ourselves and to toast our gods.”

But then that all changes. Look at verses 5-6:

Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king's color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together.

The king is sitting there enjoying his feast, his wine. Drinking out of those golden vessels, safe inside the strongest walls in the entire world. No one can get in. Except God.

It seems like more than cups from the temple were brought out. Candlesticks from the temple were brought out too, and all of a sudden the king sees the fingers of a hand writing on a portion of the wall right above one of those candlesticks. This isn’t accidental. For one, that candlestick throws enough light for the king to see those fingers. And for another, those fingers writing on the wall right above that candlestick tells Belshazzar why he’s in trouble. He’s profaned something that belongs to a holy and righteous God.

I love verse 6. You won’t find a better description of terror in any book or novel anywhere. Everyone else is celebrating — for the moment, only Belshazzar can see that finger writing. And all of a sudden that smile he had freezes and then breaks. His face drains of color and goes pure white. Verse 6 says “his thoughts alarmed him,” and the word for “alarmed” there means haste. A thousand different thoughts fly through the king’s mind in that moment, so many thoughts that all of his thinking grinds to a halt. He’s brain-locked. And this king, this brave and unshakable king, is now so frightened that his knees knock together like a little boy’s.

Amazing, isnt’ it? All God has to do to knock Belshazzar off his mighty perch is lift a finger.

And now it’s as if Belshazzar starts to understand what a terrible mess he’s in. He starts screaming for everyone to stop. Starts screaming as those fingers fade away to leave behind words written on the wall above that holy candlestick. Starts screaming, in verse 7, for the same people that the Babylonian kings screamed would always scream for whenever there was trouble, the wise men.

It’s easy to think these wise men weren’t very wise at all, because every time we’ve seen them in the book of Daniel they always have the same answer for everything — “Gee, your highness, we don’t know.”

They couldn’t interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream about that huge idol, they couldn’t interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream either (even though as we saw last week, chances are they knew exactly what that second dream meant). And here not only do they not know what the handwriting on the wall means, they can’t even tell the king what it says.

But then the queen comes in. Funny how the queen of Babylon wanted nothing to do with this party. It’s almost like she’s the only one in the royal court who has a grip on reality. But with all this shouting and yelling and running around going on, she arrives to talk some sense into everyone.

Look at verse 10 through verse 12:

The queen, because of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banqueting hall, and the queen declared, “O king, live forever! Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change. There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him, and King Nebuchadnezzar, your father—your father the king—made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.”

This queen here is actually the queen mother. She’s Belshazzar’s mom, and Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter. And since she’s Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter, she remembers all the times a certain wise man from a foreign country who was chief of the magi had helped the kingdom. She says, “Bring Daniel here. He can tell you what this means.”

So Daniel is called, and Daniel comes into that great dining hall in the palace. He’s not walking straight and tall anymore, he’s a little bent over. And he’s moving a little slower. His eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be. We can’t blame Daniel for any of that, because he’s probably about 90 years old.

Verses 13-16:

Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king answered and said to Daniel, “You are that Daniel, one of the exiles of Judah, whom the king my father brought from Judah. I have heard of you that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you.

“Now the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought in before me to read this writing and make known to me its interpretation, but they could not show the interpretation of the matter. But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Now if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation, you shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around your neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.”

What you need to notice right off here is how the king first talks to Daniel back in verse 13: “You are that Daniel, one of the exiles of Judah, whom the king my father brought back from Judah.”

Did you get that? “You’re that guy named Daniel, one of the people my grandfather conquered.” He’s talking like Daniel’s just a piece of trash. It’s terrible. But more than that, Nebuchadnezzar had made Daniel one of the most powerful people in Babylon. Only Nebuchadnezzar himself was more powerful and important. But Belshazzar doesn’t even know who Daniel is. He’s never heard of Daniel. And his mother, even though she knows Daniel’s name, doesn’t seem to have ever met him either from the way she talks up in verse 12: “because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel,” this guy named Daniel.

We can’t just pass over this, because it’s important. Remember back in chapter 3 when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the furnace and not hurt. What did Nebuchadnezzar declare to everyone in Babylon? Chapter 3, verse 29:

Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”

Nebuchadnezzar isn’t just saying this, he’s making law. But thirty years later in Daniel 5:13, everything’s changed. The God who had done so much to Nebuchadnezzar and for Nebuchadnezzar has fallen out of fashion. He’s been forgotten. And Daniel’s been sidelined by the new king. Nobody’s come to him for advice or counsel since Nebuchadnezzar died.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Look at this country 50 years ago. Look at how prominent God was in the daily lives of just about everyone. Now look at how prominent God is. Look at how the church has been sidelined in society.

But when things get at their worst, when it’s a matter of life and death, it’s God’s people who are always looked to, and it’s God’s people who are called to stand in the breach. That’s Daniel right now. He’s been ignored for 30 years, but what’s he been doing? He hasn’t been sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Daniel hasn’t been griping and complaining about how bad everything’s gotten and how people are going to be sorry sooner or later. No, he’s still working. He’s still being used by God. He’s still growing closer to God. He’s still praying.

But it’s amazing when he stands up there with Belshazzar, because the king is still prideful. Look at verse 13. “You’re that guy Daniel, right? You’re one of those foreigners my grandfather took from Judah.”

How disrespectful is that? But Belshazzar just can’t help himself. That’s who he is.

He gives Daniel all the background of what’s happened. Then in verse 16, he says this:

But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Now if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation, you shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around your neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.”

“Tell me what I want to know,” the king says, “and I’ll give you all this stuff, and I’ll make you rich and powerful.”

And Daniel says the greatest thing in verse 17. He says, “Keep your gifts. I don’t want them. I don’t need them. Give them to somebody else. Your little trinkets don’t mean a thing to me, O king. But I’ll tell you what this writing means, because you need to know.”

Then Daniel tells Belshazzar about Nebuchadnezzar’s pride, and how God dealt with that by making Nebuchadnezzar spend a few years thinking he was a cow. Then starting in verse 22, Daniel drops the hammer. Verses 22-24:

And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.

“Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed.

“You’re even more prideful than your granddaddy,” Daniel says. And pay attention to verse 22, because Daniel makes sure to tell the king that he has no excuse. “You knew all of this, O king,” he says.

And then in verses 24-28, Daniel tells the king what the writing on the wall means. That finger has written three words, with the first word doubled: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Peres.

Those three words aren’t some sort of magical spell or language of the angels. They’re just three different weights that were used to weigh precious metals on a scale. But the message it means for Belshazzar is deadly:

Mene, mene means God has numbered the days of Belshazzar’s rule.

Tekel means Belshazzar has been weighed and found wanting.

Peres means Belshazzar’s kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

What do you suppose Belshazzar’s thinking now? Do you think Daniel’s warning affects him at all? Doesn’t matter, because it’s too late. But look at verse 29: “Then Belshazzar gave the command, and Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler of the kingdom.”

Belshazzar keeps his word, doesn’t he? The first time the king makes that promise, Daniel says, “Keep them. I don’t want your fancy clothes.” So why does Daniel accept them now? Maybe it was because Daniel didn’t want the king to think he was interpreting that writing on the wall just to get something out of it. Or maybe Daniel decided to let Belshazzar make one final act as king, even if it was just an empty act. Either way, knowing what we do about Belshazzar, I don’t think he was too concerned about what Daniel said. Because he still had Babylon’s walls to protect him, didn’t he? And nobody was getting through those walls.

And you know what? Belshazzar was right. Babylon’s walls couldn’t be breached. Nobody could get through them. Nobody could get over them. But the Persians were smart. They didn’t have to go through or over those walls. They could go under.

What Belshazzar didn’t know was the whole time he was enjoying that party, the Persian army had dammed up part of the Euphrates river that ran under Babylon’s walls. The water levels dropped, the river turned into more of a swamp, and that allowed the Persians to wade their way right down the riverbed, under the wall, and into the city. The Babylonians didn’t stand a chance. And that is why we have verse 30: “That very night, Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.”

Belshazzar thought all of his pride and power and wealth would keep him safe. Instead, those were the very things that led to his death. We can learn a lot from that, can’t we? King Belshazzar is a pretty good representation of our culture today. Our culture says we don’t need God anymore. It goes to great lengths to say that God doesn’t exist, because if God doesn’t exist, then we have the freedom to do whatever we want without any consequences.

But reality doesn’t work like that, does it? Paul says in Romans 1 that deep down we all know the truth about God, but we go to all sorts of lengths to deny that truth. If people don’t know God, it’s because they choose to not know God. That was Belshazzar. It wasn’t that he got drunk during that party and decided to deny God. He had already denied God, so he threw a party and got drunk. He made a choice. Atheism is a choice. It’s a choice to shut your eyes to reality and build your life around that lie.

People don’t want the God of the Bible because that God is holy. That God demands a certain way of life. They’d rather have a God they can bend and twist into anything they want. They want a God they don’t have to answer to, but who answers to them.

But God tells everyone today the same thing that Daniel told Belshazzar: One day you’re going to stand before Me, and you won’t be able to say that you didn’t know. You won’t be able to say I never gave you enough to believe in me, because I’ve written myself into every tree, every sunset, every star, and every baby’s laugh. You just decided to go your own way and live your own life. But there are consequences to that, and they’re greater than you ever imagined.”

That interaction between Belshazzar and Daniel from verse 13 through verse 23 is exactly the way secular culture can treat us. The king didn’t know Daniel, society doesn’t know us. The king thought Daniel wasn’t good for much, society doesn’t think we are.

We shouldn’t be surprised when Christians are kind of shoved to the side. Daniel had spent years not being welcomed into the king’s presence. He’d been ignored. But he still kept his faith, didn’t he? Daniel didn’t change even though Babylon changed all around him. He held firm to the truth and wouldn’t compromise it even in front of the king.

And that’s an important point to make. Daniel had been all but forgotten for thirty years, then all of a sudden he’s back to being the one the king calls on to fix everything. Just like we shouldn’t be surprised to be shoved to the margins of our culture, we also shouldn’t be surprised when the culture turns back to us in times of deep need.

Think about what happened in the weeks after 9/11. It was hard to find a church in the entire country that wasn’t full. Those attacks led to a mini revival because our culture had no answers for what happened, but the church did.

We have to be careful to keep our faith in those times when Christianity is forgotten by most of the country, because remember: our job to be witnesses for Christ doesn’t change according to what our culture says. But we have to be even more careful in those times when people start returning to church, because the temptation then is always to water down the gospel and make God’s word more acceptable to the modern world. It’s the same temptation that Daniel faced when the king stood in front of him and said, “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll give you a purple robe and a chain of gold and a great title.”

Daniel had the strength to look at the king and say, “Keep your pretty things, I don’t need them,” because he’d spent the last 30 years looking at how much wisdom and blessings he’d gained through God, instead of how much influence he’d lost in the world. Daniel understood that there was nothing Belshazzar and the world could give him that he could keep.

There will be times when the world will come the church for approval. But the world doesn’t need our approval, the world needs the gospel. That’s what the church is supposed to offer regardless of of its status. We have to be strong enough in our faith and in what we know is the truth to be able to look at the world and say as Daniel did, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another.”

It’s better to be cast to the side, even better to be mocked, than to compromise what you know is right just so you can join the party. A lifetime of service to God had taught Daniel that. He was in exile, like us. His true home was elsewhere, just like ours. At every step, he remained faithful to God no matter the challenge. But his biggest challenge is on the way. Daniel’s going to find that sticking with God no matter what gets him cast down into a den filled with lions. We’ll talk about that next week as we finish this series. For now, let’s pray:

So often, Father, we get caught up in the happenings of the moment, but you call us to keep our eyes focused on eternity. You call us to always be faithful, no matter what situation we’re in or where our culture leads. You call us to be ready, because no matter who people are, even how much they deny you, there is still inside them a longing and a need for truth, a need for you. For that reason, Father, we are here. So keep us prepared. Keep us ready. Keep us faithful to you so that we can reach your light into a darkened world. For it’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.