Sunday, October 5

Let's pray. So, to add to that, there's a study guide that goes Monday through Saturday. The first three days kind of summarize what we talk about on Sunday. The next three days lead us into the next Sunday. So, I'm going to go ahead and pray, and then we're going to dive right into Daniel chapter 5. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for your people. I thank you for how you have brought us together, and how you have encouraged our hearts, you have strengthened our minds, and how you have directed our actions through the good news of the gospel. And so I ask, as we come to your word, that we would not put ourselves over it, but we would humble ourselves beneath your mighty and gracious hand. May you be with us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

So I think God, in His grace, gives parents different strengths. And sometimes you read about that, you know, a car has trapped a baby, and a mom comes along with sort of this superhuman mom strength and lifts the baby, or lifts the baby, lifts the car off the baby. Now, dads, I think our gift is a little different, and you can go to YouTube and find these videos. Just go there and search, maybe not right now, but search for "dad reflexes." You find this remarkable sense that dads have, that when their kid is going into danger, almost without looking, they can kind of stretch out an arm and catch them. And sometimes the dad reflex catches them and sort of brings them into a hug, and then there are other times, in a little bit of a more dramatic manner,

that the dad reaches out and grabs his kid, and they're hanging by an ankle off the balcony, because they just fell off the railing, and dad reflexes, grab them, and pull them back to where we are, where they are supposed to be. And what we find is our Heavenly Father has remarkable and perfect reflexes for grabbing hold of our hearts. And sometimes it's grabbing us and sweeping us into a hug of comfort, and sometimes it's as we are cannonballing into the greatest danger that can be imagined, he grabs us and pulls us up short. Let me show you from the book of Romans. Paul writes this, "For whatever was written in the former days," he's speaking Old Testamentally, "was written for our instruction that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope." And what Paul says is as we go to places, for example, like Daniel chapter 5, what was written in the former days, it does some remarkable things. It shows us where we should walk, it helps us endure, it encourages us, and all of these things, the instruction, the encouragement, the call to endurance, it leads us to this hopeful place that the Word of God grabs ahold of us, pulling us out of our sorrow and our hurt and our

brokenness and wraps us up in hope. But sometimes what we need is to be pulled back from the edge of danger. And so the writer of Hebrews, quoting from the Old Testament, will say this, "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness." And especially those first words, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts." Just as God's Word instructs us and helps us endure and brings us to hope, it also warns us in no unmistakable terms. A few verses later, the writer of Hebrews says this, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil and unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is

all today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." And what you find is God, through His Word, through His Spirit, through His people, sometimes grabs ahold of us and runs us into hope. And other times, as we are heading into the danger of sin or distraction, He grabs ahold of us, and sometimes in ways that surprise us and startle us, and He brings us back to where we are supposed to be. In chapter 5, if you want to see it in a nutshell, it's in part, to some who read this, what you're going to do is be called into hope. You're going to see how God is unshakable, and His people who trust in Him can walk through difficulty, including the fall of kings and the destruction of a nation, and come out on the other side in hope. Now, the other side of that is those who walk in pride, right? There is a call here for deep repentance.

You see, Belshazzar's story tells us two things. This king, it's a warning. Pride will be shaking that God sees, God confronts, God exposes, and God judges, and those who mock His glory will be silenced. So to harden your heart, like the king will see today, is to invite sudden ruin. But there is here as well a message of hope that God's Word has the final say. Behold of Him, the rock that does not move. What you'll see is there is security in the fire and a kingdom that shall not be shaken. So we need a little history as we come into Daniel chapter 5. We've been moving through sort of a week at a time through these chapters, Daniel 1, 2, 3, and 4, and they've happened pretty quickly, fairly quickly. But between Daniel chapter 4 and Daniel chapter 5, there is a gap of about 20

years. There's been a succession of kings, and now we are here with Belshazzar. There have been new rulers, and Daniel what we'll find is he's no longer in the center of things. Where he once was second in command of all the kingdoms surrounded by his friends who he has delegated authority to, Daniel is now forgotten. The king throws a party and Daniel isn't even invited. And what's interesting is while there is this 20 year gap of time, between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, there is not a gap in what God is trying to teach us from this book. Look at how Daniel chapter 4 flows so perfectly into Daniel chapter 5. Here's how Daniel chapter 4 ends. "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just, and to those who walk in pride he will humble." And in the very next

verse, 20 years later, pride, and the chapter ends in humbling, almost as if Daniel chapter 4:37 provides for us the outline and the picture of what happens in Daniel chapter 5. What we see is that God sees who we truly are. And so what tends to happen is oftentimes we will hide behind a curtain of pride our fears, our insecurities, our struggles, our brokenness, and we throw it all up behind this facade of pride. And here's what I would say to that is sometimes in our hurts and our insecurities and our fears, we don't even realize that we're hiding this behind a picture of pride that I am doing good and that I'm doing okay. So up until we adopted Ranger, our three dogs before that have experienced what I can only describe as generational trauma. Our first dog, Rigby, who adopted had been very, very badly abused, we think maybe by somebody who worked for UPS, because she didn't like FedEx, didn't like the mailman, but she could hear the UPS truck coming four blocks away and started growling immediately. Now in her mind, right, this is a threat, somebody who attacked my family, and in her mind, she didn't realize that her behavior on the outside

was happening because of what she had dealt with previously. Dogs don't think that deeply, but oftentimes neither do we, right? And oftentimes our behavior on the outside is a result of an unexamined problem on the inside. And one of the things that pride does is it disguises that brokenness on the inside by putting up a curtain of how great I am on the outside. And here's the reality. You can fool others, sometimes you fool yourself, but you can never fool God. Let's take a look at these first four verses. "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 silver that Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem, be brought so that the king

and his lords and 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 and his wives and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and they praised the gods of gold and silver and bronze and iron and wood and stone." Now to us, this may sound a little bit like a normal Babylonian party, right? We say, "Well, that seems like kind of par for the course for Babylonians throwing a party. A bunch of people, a bunch of wine, a bunch of gold and silver kind of praising false gods. It seems normal." The reality is this party is exceptionally abnormal. So to help us understand, so imagine we are living in this time period. Not only that, we are a ruler of a great kingdom.

We are in our capital city, surrounded by all our advisors and our military, and there has been an empire that has been rising up, and it's been attacking our territory. And at this very moment, that empire has surrounded our city, has declared war upon us. What would we do in that scenario? Think about it. If you're in a king, as a king, in a surrounded city, and the enemy is outside our gates, how might we act? I think maybe a good way to act in this is there's a Muppet movie where they're checking into a hotel, and the desk clerk says to the Muppets, "You want to pay cash, credit, or sneak out in the middle of the night?" And they all look at each other and go, "Sneak out in the middle of the night," right? If I'm the king and my city is surrounded, like, that's an option that's on the table, right? Let's sneak out of the city in the middle of the night. Like, I'm going over the wall, right? Every man for himself, let's get as far

away from the battle as possible. The other option that we might try, maybe we say, "Oh, I'm not going to run away. What I'm going to do is I'm going to fortify. I'm going to look for weak points. We're going to sort of shore up our defenses. We're going to make sure that we have solid men and strong men standing watch. We're going to have a rotation of guards, right? Anybody who falls asleep on the job or pushing off the wall, right? I'm going to fortify this. Or maybe we might send out negotiators. How can we come to an agreement? Maybe we can exchange some territory. Maybe we can pay some tribute. Maybe we can come to an understanding that doesn't involve violence. But there's also the option here that we might choose, if we are a king of a surrounded city, is that we're going to grab our army, we're going to put on our armor, we're going to get in our horses and chariots, and we're going to ride out the gates, and we are going to fight for our lives. Nebuchadnezzar, in this moment, this moment with the feast, knowing that he is...

not Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, in this moment, knowing that his city is surrounded, throws a feast. He's facing enemies literally at his gates, and he throws a feast for thousands of his lords. And it's more than just having a party, right? Historically, we learn that kings in this time period may not necessarily participate in this kind of behavior, where it's sort of implied in the text, drunken debauchery in front of so many witnesses. Not to say that they were necessarily good people, but they generally tried to maintain an image of regal, godlike, kingly authority, but not Belshazzar. He's also seeking in this moment to demonstrate how he has conquered the God of Israel. That's the whole point of bringing out these vessels of gold and silver. I have attacked other gods. I am greater than a God. Do you see how his pride, with fear behind it of the enemy

his gates is beginning to erect a curtain of his own greatness. And he's worshiping these false gods. And there's a contrast here between the gods of the Bible, the God of the Bible, and the gods of Babylon. It's remarkable that the false gods of Babylon are made out of the same thing the silverware is in the house of God. Don't miss that picture, right? The cups and the vessels of the house of God are made out of gold, right? God's not made out of gold. He is great and mighty and has already demonstrated his power over kings and names. But these false gods are made out of the same stuff as the place settings in the temple. And here's the reality. Our pride lies about who we are. Right? I'm not worried. I'm strong. I don't need any other God. Look what I have accomplished. And our pride always leads us into some sort of self-salvation project. My plans, my strength, my idols that I have made will save me.

Here's the problem. It's not true. It's not true historically. The walls of the city will not save Belshazzar. It's not true prophetically. A little more than a hundred years before this, Isaiah writes this. You, specifically about this moment, you felt secure in your wickedness and you said, "No one sees me." Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray and you said in your heart, "I am and there is no one beside me, but evil shall come upon you which you will not know how to charm away. Disaster will fall upon you for which you will not be able to atone, and ruin shall come upon you suddenly which of which you will know nothing." It's also untrue eternally because nothing can silence the glory of God. Right? This party the king is throwing is very much like a team that has just lost the game. The final whistle has blown. They have been soundly defeated and they are cheering

and celebrating how great they are. You see, pride just doesn't convince us to sin against God. It makes us fools. It convinces us to boast of victory while defeat is already at the door. And what you find is that pride is shaken because the claims are empty. But if you contrast this with God's people, faith is unshaken because it rests on the eternal God. And I want you to understand very clearly that God sees past your bluster. He sees past your bragging. He sees past your desperate attempts to remain in control. And like Belshazzar, we have two choices. We can either double down on ourselves or we can run to the one who brings us through the fire and through the flood and through our hurts and through our fears. You see, Belshazzar, his bluster claims the last word.

But it's all noise. And in an instant, God is going to turn this whole scene upside down. The party is going to turn to panic. The laughter is going to turn to trembling. And the one who thought he held victory now sees defeat written before his eyes. Here's the reality. Pride is a curtain that hides, and curtains are not very good at defending ourselves. So pride is the same way. You pull aside this curtain that may look like a barrier, but it is not. And here's what we realize: that pride cannot protect. And when that curtain is pulled back, everything begins to crumble. Immediately, not an hour or two delay, but 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. And then the king's

color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him, and his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. And the king called, loudly, to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, the astrologers. And the king declared to the wise men of Babylon, "Whoever reads this writing and shows me its interpretation shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold around his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom." Then all the king's wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then King Melshazzar was greatly alarmed, and his color was changed, and his lords were perplexed. You see how when the curtain of pride is pulled back, everything turns upside down in a moment, right? One minute there's feasting, laughing, toasting, idols, and the next his face drains of color, his knees knocked together, and the hall that once rang with noise and music as in silence. And let me give you another reaction that isn't necessarily clear

in the English, where it will say, "His limbs gave way." In verse six, let me give you another translation of that. This is from the Christian Standard Bible. "His face turned pale, his thoughts so terrified him that he soiled himself and his knees knocked together." Right? This is not a good moment for the proud, powerful king. Right? It has become broken so far. And what he was doing is by drinking from the temple vessels, he was claiming that Yahweh was defeated and just another conquered God. And to add to this, disembodied hands symbolize defeat and weakness. So if you remember, when the Ark of the Covenant is in the temple of the Philistines and its idol falls down and its hands break off, that's not unintentional. It's showing that that God, that false God, can't do anything because he has no hands. And in

some cases, armies in this time period will count their casualties by chopping off their enemies' hands, right? It's pretty simple. You can't fight me if you don't have arms. But here, this disembodied hand that should be a picture of defeat appears, but it's not severed. It's not lifeless, and it's riding with power. And what looked like the vessels in the temple, the disembodied hand, what might be interpreted by the culture of the day as defeat, becomes a picture of God's victory. And so the king calls for his wise men, and he offers wealth, and rank, and power. And you're going to get purple, and you're going to get gold, and you're going to get all of these great things. And this whole scene has become a failure in pride. Pride may be able to sustain the party, but it cannot overcome the power

of God, and it doesn't have answers to the hard questions. You see, when God confronts our pride, it's exposed as weak, defeated, and foolish. And what we thought was strength is revealed as weakness, and what we thought was victory will be shown as defeat. Pride collapses the moment God enters the room, and he is shaken, Belshazzar, because God has reversed all of his illusions. However, to those who put their faith and trust in God, he reverses what we see as defeat. In Daniel chapter 1, this command for compromise of the defeated Hebrew young men is turned into a picture of victory. In Daniel chapter 2, the defeat of the unknown, how can we know the future, is turned into victory by the power of God. The fear of the fiery furnace in chapter 3 is a picture of defeat turned to victory.

Daniel chapter 4, even the failure of Nebuchadnezzar's pride is turned into a picture and a demonstration of God's mercy. You see, God comes into this room, he pulls back the curtain of pride, showing that it's worthless, and then topples everything on its head. And he's going to show us that he knows, but he's also going to show us that he judges and that he saves. And so God confronts our pride. We've seen this pretty clearly in the first nine verses. However, in case we haven't, it's going to make it unmistakably clear to us that God does not just see our sin, he acts on it. It's not a question of, "Well, I know about it." It's a question of that God does something about it. And at this point you find that Belshazzar has come up so empty, nobody can answer any of his questions. There is no help in the room, but there

is help in his nation. There's two people who are not there who come. 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 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, in King Nebuchadnezzar, your father. Your father, the king, made him chief of the magicians and enchanters and Chaldeans and astrologers because of an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and to solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation."

So the queen comes who remembers Daniel, and Daniel is now brought before the king, and this moment is a turning point. Daniel chapter 5 is meticulously crafted. It's what's called a chiasm, and it just means the shape of an X. And so what it means is that this chapter, Daniel chapter 5, is symmetrical. And so like the beginning lines up with the end, the middle lines up with the end of the middle, and in the middle, the turning point that makes this chapter symmetrical is let Daniel be called and he will show the interpretation. That at the heart of this, the only hope that is found is in the one who can come and can speak for God. And so the king says, "I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems, and if you can read this and make known to me, I'm going to give you fancy robes. I'm

going to give you gold chains. I'm going to make you the third ruler in the kingdom." And listen to what Daniel says, "Let your gifts be for yourself and give your rewards to another. Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation." Notice the contrast. The Belshazzar's pride is blustering, promising gold and silver and power. And here's the remarkable thing. He can't deliver it. He's going, "Hey, you want to be third in command of a city that's under siege? And if you take this role, they're going to come in and kill you with the rest of us." It's an empty promise. Daniel's humility is respectful and firm. Let your gifts be for yourself. Give your rewards to another. He doesn't seek gain, but he declares God's truth. And before he interprets this writing, he's going to

set it in context. He reminds the king of Nebuchadnezzar's story of the pride, the humiliation, and the repentance, and then he delivers the verdict. Then from his presence, the hand was sent, and the writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed, "Mene, mene, tekel, parson." This is the interpretation of the matter. "Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Tekel, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Perez, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and to the Persians." The simple message is this, that God is closing up the books on this kingdom. The scale is out. The king doesn't measure up. His reign is over. His kingdom is divided, and it's exposed as empty. And for us, God sees every sin. He exposes it with his righteous

standard. Every proud heart will be weighed, and apart from Christ, we will be found wanting. Romans tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but here is the good news. There is one. We stepped onto the scale, and we were measured, and we were weighed, and we were found sinful and wanting. There is one who steps onto the scale for us. And Christ bore our judgment. What we drank from the cup of pride. He drank from the cup of God's wrath. He carried our sin, and he met God's perfect standard in our place. And one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that he is the Lord to the glory of the Father. And the question that remains for us is, will we bow in repentance

now, or will we bow in judgment later? You see, pride always leaves us empty and wanting. It shakes us down to nothing. But faith in Christ brings us to security, and we can stand unshaken because he alone fills the scale with his perfect righteousness. Listen to how God judges. "Then Belshazzar gave the command. He was clothed with gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him." The question is to who? You're in a besieged city. "That he should be the third ruler in the kingdom, and that very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom being about 62 years old." The kingdom that seemed unshakable crumbled in a single stroke. The great walls that are massive, the storied feasts, the boasts of strength, none of it could hold back the judgment of God, and it stands in

sharp contrast to what happened with Nebuchadnezzar. In the beginning chapters, chapter 2, 3, and 4, Nebuchadnezzar always ends the chapter by giving some sort of confession of God's greatness, but here in chapter 5 there's none of that. Belshazzar shows no repentance for his arrogance. His blasphemy, his idolatry, and his pride. Now he keeps his word to Daniel, and I have to imagine it's grudging. But when you see through his pride, these rewards seem empty. And meanwhile, outside the banquet hall, history is already turning. What is happening outside of this city is the Persians have come, and they have diverted the Euphrates River that runs along and serves as a barrier, and they divert the river into a marsh in order to lower the water level so they can march underneath the walls. And one historian records this, not a Christian or Jewish historian, but just a historian of the time records

this. They chose this very night because the Babylonians were feasting in drunken revelry. And so on October 11th and 12th, 539 years before Christ, Babylon falls and Belshazzar was slain. But there's more to this story. You see, for God's people, in part, this serves as a preview of what we find in Revelation, the 18th chapter, that speaks of the final fall of Babylon, the great world system of arrogance and idolatry and rebellion against God. And Daniel 5 gives us a foretaste of that day. The kingdoms of the world will shake and will fall, but God's kingdom endures forever. I want you to understand that pride never ends in glory. It always ends in ruin. This feast ends in death, his boasts end in silence, as God's judgment comes surely and without escape. We need to understand that the

kingdoms of this world may rise and fall, but if you belong to Christ, you stand in a kingdom that cannot be shaken. You see, our hope is not in Babylon or Persia or any other earthly empire, but in the eternal reign of the king of kings. You see, there's this sobering contrast. Belshazzar was shaken in his pride and fell, but that same shaking, when it happens in our lives and received with humility, drives us to the hope in Christ, and then we can stand unshaken in him. So I want you to hear this warning. Do not harden your heart, and I want to hear you to hear this hope. Run to the rock that cannot be moved, for while the kingdoms of this world rise and fall, the kingdom of God endures forever. Father in heaven,

pull back the curtain of our pride, and may we no longer seek to defend our fears and our insecurities and our shortcomings and our sin, but may you bring forgiveness and righteousness and hope and peace into our life. May we not be like Belshazzar who stands repeatedly in pride even when the curtain is pulled back, but that you would bring us to the kingdom that cannot be shaken, to the new covenant of your Son, to that wonderful, joyful gathering we see in the rejoicing of the angels in that heavenly city. So give us hope this morning where we are fearful and weak and struggling. May you remind us that our feet stand upon the rock. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.