The Fall Of An Empire - pt.3

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Thomas Ekkel

Pierson Bible Church

God's Sovereignty • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago • 39:42

Judgment

God

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Intro:

We have been making our way through Chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel.

By way of review, King Belshazzar held a huge banquet. He had made the mistake of using the sacred cups that were stolen from the temple in Jerusalem. He used them as part of his celebration… We called this “A Fatal Feast”.

During this Fatal Feast a hand came out of nowhere and started writing on the wall. This sobered everyone up almost immediately… King Belshazzar did not understand what the writing meant. So, he called in his,not so “wise men” to try to interpret the writing. They could not interpret anything for the king… and we ended last week with the queen suggesting that they bring Daniel in to interpret the message… which we called “A Fatal Sign”

So, 2 Weeks ago we looked at “A Fatal Feast”, Last week we looked at “A Fatal Sign” and this week we are going to finish this chapter and look at…

“A Fatal Message”

Let’s get right into it this morning… turn in your Bibles to Daniel 5… (vv.13-31)

The Fall Of An Empire - pt.3

Meat:

As we pick up our study this morning, the first thing that we see is…

1. Daniel is Summoned

John MacArthur makes this observation and I think it is a lesson in and of itself… Daniel is never hanging around the rest of those people, or indulging in their sinful activities. From the time he was a teenager, he has been taking a stand for the things of God and even now going into his 80’s he is still standing for the things of God and not comprising on what he believes and knows to be God honoring.

“Lord help me to be more like Daniel”… …

Picture this scene for a moment… Daniel walks into the banqueting hall and casts a glaring eye at the tables strewn with food, the floor strewn with drunks and the walls strewn with the dead, deaf, and dumb idols of Babylon.

As he sees the type of party that was going on, I am sure that he was saddened and disappointed by the complete disregard of righteousness and the blatant indulgence of sinful activities…

His sadness and disappointment quickly turn to a severely broken heart when he spots something on the floor... There lying amongst the debris of the evening shenanigans is a harlot, and what is that in her hand… “no, they wouldn’t have stooped so low as to use those” and then he realizes that they did... it is one of the sacred vessels from the temple of the Living God. Desecrated and used for sinful pleasures.

Then Daniel sees the message on the wall.

Picture of Writing

There are the glowing letters written with God’s own hand… … Could Daniel really read what was on the wall? Of course he could he had been reading God’s Word for almost 80 years.

And this was the very reason that Daniel was summoned…

1.1 To Give an Interpretation

Daniel 5:13–16 “13 Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king spoke, and said to Daniel, “Are you that Daniel who is one of the captives from Judah, whom my father the king brought from Judah? 14 I have heard of you, that the Spirit of God is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you. 15 Now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing and make known to me its interpretation, but they could not give the interpretation of the thing. 16 And I have heard of you, that you can give interpretations and explain enigmas… ”

This was not a new situation for Daniel to be in, he’d been here once or twice before; a revelation from God, a fearful and frustrated ruler, not so “wise men” realizing they are useless when it comes to actual important things and God’s servant being called in to bail them out.

Daniel was summoned to give an interpretation and he was also…

1.2 Offered a Reward

Some would even call it a bribe… the last part of v.16 says…

Daniel 5:16 “... 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.””

Belshazzar tries to butter him up and tells Daniel that if he can give the interpretation which the wise men have failed to give, then he will be made the third ruler in the kingdom.

Daniel was not impressed with Belshazzar’s offer. After all, who wants to be the third highest ruler in a kingdom that would crumble within a few short hours? Not to mention, the higher up you go in the rank, the more likely you are to be one of the first ones that are killed.

Which leads us to…

2. Daniel’s Response

And I can assure you… it is not what Belshazzar expected to hear.

Daniel starts his response and…

2.1 Refuses The Reward

Daniel 5:17 “17 Then Daniel answered, and said before the king, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another; yet I will read the writing to the king, and make known to him the interpretation.”

I believe the term is “quid pro quo”… “you do this for me and I’ll do that for you”… “you give me the interpretation and I’ll make you rich and politically powerful”.

To avoid any accusation of only giving the interpretation for a reward, Daniel refuses the gold, the clothing, and the high ranking position. Basically he was telling Belshazzar “I don’t work for you, I work for All Mighty God”.

Try to find a man like that in our society. Try to find a man like that in the politics of our society, a man who can’t be bought, a man with absolute integrity who has no interest in gifts and rewards. That’s who Daniel was...

Daniel also responds with…

2.2 A History Lesson

Daniel tells Belshazzar how God had dealt with his grandfather. God had put him on the throne and had given him a world kingdom. Then he tells Belshazzar of the experience that Nebuchadnezzar had…

Daniel 5:18–21 “18 O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father a kingdom and majesty, glory and honor. 19 And because of the majesty that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whomever he wished, he executed; whomever he wished, he kept alive; whomever he wished, he set up; and whomever he wished, he put down. 20 But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. 21 Then he was driven from the sons of men, his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and appoints over it whomever He chooses.”

Philosopher George Santayana (Sont u yana) said “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it,”...

Daniel reminded the king that he had failed to follow the example of his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar… and as Daniel reviewed Nebuchadnezzar's pride and self-exaltation, King Belshazzar began to sense that his own pride and blasphemy against the Lord were about to be judged.

Warren Wiersbe gives a warning for us today… he says…

“Like King Belshazzar and his guests, many people in our world today are unmindful of the lessons of the past, unintelligent when it comes to interpreting the present, and totally unprepared for the consequences that lie in the future.”

Even though the consequences of sin are clearly stated and literally seen throughout Scripture, people today still choose to live for self glorification instead of the glorification of the only One Who is worthy of it… The Most High God… Eventually, if they continue to be unrepentant, they will face the same fate as everyone else who rejects God… and they will be eternally separated from Him.

Moving on... Daniel continues his response… and…

2.3 Belshazzar is Rebuked

Daniel 5:22–23 “22 “But you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this. 23 And you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house 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, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified.”

Without hesitation, Daniel rebukes the king. Belshazzar was guilty before the Lord in the fact that, despite knowing about his grandfather's experience, he had refused to follow in Nebuchadnezzar's footsteps of repentance.

Daniel rebukes Belshazzar for 5 different things…

1. He was guilty of pride, refusing to humble himself before the Lord. And with the example of his grandfather to follow, he didn't have any excuses.

2. He was guilty of being hard-hearted and defiant toward the Lord, guilty of lifting himself up in the place of God. (another aspect of pride)

3. He was guilty of blasphemy and of profaning the holy name and things of God. In a spirit of arrogance and shamelessness, he and his guests had taken the sacred cups of the Lord and drank wine from them while toasting the false gods of Babylon.

4. He and his guests were all guilty of idolatry, of worshiping the false gods whom they were toasting.

and…

5. He was guilty of failing to honor the Lord who holds in His hands the life and destiny of every human being. Belshazzar and his nobles may have been some of the most powerful leaders on Earth in that day and time, but in the eyes of the Lord they were mere men who were failing Him in every area of their lives.

It was the culmination of all of this and the fact that Belshazzar, as v.22 says “knew all this” that God finally said “Enough is Enough”.... “Party is over!” and He sent the hand that wrote the message on the wall.

The fact that Belshazzar knew exactly what he was doing was wrong is a major factor in this account… His sin was not a sin of ignorance… He knew what happened to Nebuchadnezzar. He knew that God broke him, and God was demanding to be worshipped. And even with that knowledge, he still chose to rebelliously sin against God.

I don’t want you to miss this… this is an unbeliever rebelling against God… Not really that surprising, right? Its the fact that he knew what happened to N… who at the time was also an unbeliever who rebelled against God, that makes Belshazzar’s offence so much greater.

ILL:

Lets say you get pulled over for your tail light being out… you say “sorry officer, I didn’t realize that it was out.”… cop makes record of it, says “get it fixed within the next couple of days” and he sends you on your way.

2 Weeks later you get pulled over again, same cop, same tail light is out… at this point you cannot say that you didn’t know about it, and now you are probably going to be getting a fix it ticket…

Why? not because the cop is unfair… but because you knew the right thing to do and did not get it done.

Just as James 4:17 says“... to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”

How much greater the offence when it is someone who claims to be a Christian that continues in a lifestyle of sin… You cannot claim that you don’t know what the principles are in God’s Word, at least here in the U.S., because it is so easily accessible for us… If you don’t know what Scripture says, its because you are choosing to not know what Scripture says… and guess what… that is not a valid excuse for sin…

Lets move on to our next point… and that is...

3. The Interpretation

After rebuking Belshazzar, Daniel finally reads the writing on the wall and gives the interpretation of it. Nothing he said would cause Belshazzar anything but agony.

Picture #2

Daniel 5:24–28 “24 Then the fingers of the hand were sent from Him, and this writing was written. 25 “And this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN 26 This is the interpretation of each word. Mene: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; 27 Tekel: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; 28 Upharsin: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.””

Lets look at each of these words briefly…

3.1 MENE, MENE - Counted and Numbered

God had numbered the days of Belshazzar's reign and that number was now up. This was a message from the All Mighty, Sovereign God, that it was indeed Him and Him alone who determines when a nation rises and when it falls and that Man had nothing to do with it.

It is The Lord, not man, who determines how many days a person lives. When Belshazzar was born, the Lord counted out the days of his life. Now his days had run out and were coming to an abrupt end.

God, who numbers all kingdoms, says, “You’re finished.” And He says it twice, “Your number’s up; your number’s up.” Mene, Mene…

3.2 TEKEL - Weighed

The word “Tekel” literally means to be weighed and to be found too light. In those days, when they weighed things, they would put whatever the standard of weight was on one side of the scale, and on the other whatever the commodity was, and it had to balance.

Belshazzar had been weighed and found wanting. He had been weighed against the righteousness of God and found to be totally deficient. The king had completely ignored the Lord and His holy commandments and had chosen instead to live a fleshly, covetous, and prideful life that glorified idols and dishonored God.

He had chosen to pursue the fleshly pleasures and greedy Spirit of this world and had arrogantly defied the Lord himself. So, when weighed in the Lord's balance, the king came up short, utterly lacking in righteousness and morality.

3.3 UPHARSIN - Divided

Some versions use the word PERES which also means divided… UPHARSIN is just the plural version of PERES which would indicate more than one division…

Belshazzar's kingdom was now to be divided and given to the Medes and Persians. The king felt that Babylon was secure because of its massive walls, storage of food, and seemingly endless supply of water from the Euphrates river that ran through the city.

Daniel's interpretation of the handwriting was not a warning to King Belshazzar, but rather a pronouncement of judgment. It was a sentence. The day for warning and a hoped for repentance was over. The king had gone too far in his sinful behavior, beyond the point of ever repenting. As a result, the Lord had to judge him. Belshazzar was to immediately feel God's hand of judgment falling upon him.

Which leads to the last few verses…

4. The Results

First of all… even though he specifically said he didn’t want it…

4.1 Daniel Is Rewarded

Daniel 5:29 “29 Then Belshazzar gave the command, and they clothed Daniel with purple and put a chain of gold around his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.”

Maybe Belshazzar thought that these gifts would alleviate the situation… maybe another quid pro quo attempt… “Here are these gifts, can you please see if God will reconsider??”.... sorry, not going to happen...

The final result was…

4.2 The Fall Of An Empire

Daniel 5:30 “30 That very night Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, was slain.”

Herodotus, the historian, tells us... the night in which Belshazzar had his feast, which by the way, the night is marked for all history – the sixteenth day of Tishrei, 539 B.C, which figures out to be the 11th or 12 of October… That night the Medes and the Persians outside the city built a damn on the Euphrates river which flowed under the wall of the city of Babylon.

They diverted all of that water from the Euphrates, into a swampland, except a little shallow portion. And when the water began to fall, in the midst of the banquet, it came down to about the knees or the waist of the soldiers. They marched underneath the wall on that shallow riverbed, went into the city, killed the guards, threw open the gates, and the whole Medo-Persian army descended on that city in one unified attack.

And the Golden head of the statue in N’s first dream, which represented the Babylonian Empire, fell to the breast and arms of silver, which represented the Medo-Persian army, just as the Lord, through Daniel’s interpretation, said it would.

Daniel 5:31 “31 And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.”

Closing:

As we come to the end of this chapter, the very place in Scripture where we get the phrase “The Writing on the Wall”… it is only appropriate for me to give you a warning…

To let you know… that the day is coming when every one of us will see God's handwriting on the wall. On that day, we will stand before the Lord to face his judgment.

And as shocking as it sounds, a number of us are looking at death square in the face right now and may not even know it… none of us are guaranteed tomorrow… we are not even guaranteed to make it home from here... But one thing is for sure… after death, comes the judgment of God.

The question each of us must ask is this… …

When God weighs me in the balance will I be found wanting? The only people who can measure up to God's standard are those who have placed their faith in Christ. One who has not trusted Christ as their personal Savior will be found lacking and deficient.

Belshazzar disregarded the Word of God along with the lessons of history… and it cost him, his kingdom and it cost him, his life. May we not make the same mistakes today!