Chapter 5 of Daniel, verses 22, through the end of that chapter.
But you, his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself,
though you knew all this. Instead, you've set yourself up
against the Lord of Heaven. You had the goblets from his
temple brought to you. You and your nobles, your wives,
your concubines, drank wine from them.
You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, ironwood,
stone, which could not see or hear or understand.
But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life
and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that
wrote the inscription. This is the inscription that was
written. Mayne.
Mayne Tikal Farsen. This is what those words mean.
Mayne, God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to
an end. To Cal, You have been weighed on
the scales and found wanting. Ferris, your Kingdom is divided
and given to the Medes and Persians.
Then, at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a
gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the
third highest ruler in the Kingdom.
That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was
slain, and Darius the Mede took over the Kingdom at age 62.
I learned a new phrase this week which goes to fiddle while Rome
burns. It comes from an old story that
while the city of Rome was burning in AD 64, Emperor Nero
was supposedly off somewhere playing music.
Now, historically, Nero wasn't playing a fiddle, but you, you
get the point. The phrase stuck.
And so to fiddle while Rome burns means everything around
you is coming to an end. But instead of facing it, you
distract yourself or entertain yourself.
You keep the party going. And apparently this isn't
something that just like Roman emperors would do.
As a matter of fact, in the year 2002, some of you remember it,
one of the largest companies in America, Worldcom, was
collapsing. Investigators discovered
billions of dollars in fraudulent spending and
accounting, and the stock absolutely collapsed.
Thousands of jobs were in jeopardy.
And on July 21st, Worldcom filed for what was then the largest
bankruptcy in American history. Imagine that, the largest
bankruptcy in history. And yet check this out.
Less than two weeks later, somebody apparently looked at
that situation and thought, you know what would improve morale
right now? A booze cruise.
So about 75 Worldcom salespeople were scheduled to board a luxury
yacht for an evening of unlimited food and drinks.
OK, so check this. The company's bankrupt.
The ship is sinking, and they're literally getting on another
ship to party it up. OK, you can't write this stuff
now. There's something very human
about this type of story, because when bad news gets
closer, humanity tries to drown it out with music, do we not?
When we don't want to think about where our life is going,
we stay busy, or we eat and we drink, or we go out and buy
something, or we take another vacation, chase another
promotion. You get the point.
And what this is, it's a sort of defiant despair.
It's despair because time is running out, but we're defiantly
pushing against it. This is human nature when
confronted with our own mortality.
The truth is, we're all mortals and what our days are all
numbered. Just a light topic for this
morning, right? But for all of us, time is
running out. For some, they fiddle while Rome
burns, right? They believe there's no real
afterlife. So I might as well enjoy it here
today. After all, if this is all there
is, why not enjoy it while we can?
Why not cling to things for significance, like achievements,
our name on a plaque, or the relationships around us or
whatever? And so for us, I want to ask as
we dive in today, how can we live a life of weight, of
substance and significance as we prepare to stand before God one
day? How can we resist living in
defiant despair and avoid just pursuing pleasure and a pain
free life while we can? So today we're in the book of
Daniel. So if you have your physical
Bibles, go ahead and grab that. Now, if you would, we also have
them available somewhere in the back.
We can grab those for you if you like Daniel's in the Old
Testament if you're new to the Bible here right after the book
of Ezekiel. And last week we were in chapter
4, which was a sort of Part 1 and we encourage you to go back
and listen to that if you'd like.
Last week we titled Part 1, the beast talking about
Nebuchadnezzar. This week is Part 2, the feast.
All right, so Daniel chapter 5, verse 1 is where we're going to
be today. Verse one it says this King
Belshazzar gave a great banquet for 1000 of his nobles in drank
wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking
his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver
goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple
in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wife and his
concubines might drink from them.
So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from
the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his
wives and his concubines drank from them.
As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and
silver, of bronze, ironwood and stone.
So Belshazzar's throwing this crazy feast.
He's bringing in goblets. There's wine, there's drink,
there's music. You get the point.
Now, to fully grasp the significance of this moment in
history, we need some much needed historical context.
First of all, who is Belshazzar and where did he come from?
For a long time historians thought this was just like a
made-up character in the Bible, someone that Daniel, whoever the
author, was made-up because he couldn't be found in any sort of
archaeological records of the kings until they eventually
found him. The reason his name wasn't
listed in the list of kings previously is because it was
actually his dad Nabenitis, who was the king of Babylon at the
time. However, Nabenitis spent more of
his time in Arabia flirting with other gods that the Babylonians
didn't really care for, and so it was actually his son
Belshazzar, who is effectively the king ruling Babylon at this
time. OK so Belshazzar is like a Co
region. Does that make sense?
He's acting as the king of Babylon while his dad is away.
What's remarkable about this biblical account is that we know
almost the exact night that this party happened.
This is very rare in the biblical text.
We know almost to the date the exact night that it happened.
That is, that the night of this feast was at the same time that
the great Babylon would fall to the Persian Empire.
It would fall under Cyrus on October 12th, 539 BC, so long
before Jesus, 539 BC. What had happened is a couple
days earlier, before this night, Cyrus the Persian had defeated
Nebenitis and the and the Babylonian army at a city called
Sapar. So this is only about 60 miles
away from where Belcazar's party is, only 60 miles away.
The Babylonian army had just been wiped out.
Nabenitis had fled the scene. Dad is nowhere to be found.
And so at the time of Daniel 5, the chapter we're reading today,
check this out, the Persians are literally at the gates of the
city of Babylon. That's the context here.
Babylon is defenseless. The armies are gone.
There's no way to defend themselves.
And what does King Belshazzar do?
He says, let's throw a party, right?
This actually has historical backing as well.
Outside of the Bible, historian Herodotus and other Chronicles
confirm that the night Babylon was taken they were engaging in
weed and drinking and partying. Isn't that interesting?
So outside of the Bible, it confirms the historicity of
Daniel itself. He gets all the details right.
One more thing, historically, not only does history tell us
the very night that this all happened, but we also know the
exact location, at least we believe we do.
It's in modern day Iraq. I actually got on Google Maps
this week. Here's this next picture.
You can go on Google Maps. You can find this exact
location, that rectangle on the bottom middle, that is actually
the throne room there that you can see.
Next slide. This is what it looks like from
an aerial view. You can see where the throne
room is. I asked my brother and I said,
hey, John, did you get to visit this site when you were in Iraq
in 2003? My brother was on an all
expenses paid trip to Iraq by the Marine Corps.
OK Thank you for your service. Semper Fi OK, but he was over
there. This is his pictures, as you can
see my brother. Next slide, my brother's on the
left with his rifle, and you can see that they'd actually
reconstructed what Babylon would have looked like.
Next slide, you can see this is a better picture of what the
temple could have looked like. This would have been the gate in
there. But the point is, this is an
actual place at an actual time in a precise moment in history.
This is the context of what Daniel 5 is surrounded by.
OK, so we know the date, we know the location, but we're still
left with the question, why would Belshazzar throw a party
knowing his city was defenseless and the enemy would arrive at
any moment? Was it arrogant pride?
Our walls will never fall. Was it to sort of rally and
encourage his leaders? You know, we'll make it through
this if we stick together. Maybe it was just to drown out
his fears and some sort of hedonistic like pleasure party
full of sex and alcohol and music because he's facing
onslaught, right? Maybe it's some combination of
all of those. But the question is, why fiddle
while Rome is burning? Verse 5 Suddenly this is during
the party, Belshazzar's thrown it up.
He's having a blast. It's it's a night of tension.
Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and rode on the
plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace.
The king watched as the watch the hand as it wrote.
Verse 6, His face turned pale and he was so frightened that
his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.
By the way, there's a lot of phrases we get from this chapter
like writing on the wall or knees we're knocking.
But what's happening here is supernatural fingers appear in
the middle of this party in that throne room we just looked at
and begins to write on the wall. Menay, Menay, tackle Parsons.
Those are the words. And what we see here is that
translated these words, Menne menne teko Parson, they're
actually units of weight and currency.
So imagine we're here, we're having service together, we're
singing worship. And all of a sudden on the wall,
like way up there, there's like these, this hand appears and it,
and it and it on the wall, it says something like ## oz half
pound. We'd be like, what on earth does
that mean? OK, think about it in terms of
like British currency or UK currency.
So this next slide, think about it in terms of money, like pound
as in a pound of sterling silver ## penny, half pound.
It was not just a weight, but it was also currency, right?
It's not that we wouldn't be able to read it, it's that we
wouldn't be able to understand it.
Now we'll come back to this. And these words have a long
history of translation interpretation.
That's fascinating. I'm not going to get into it and
bore you today, but if you're confused at this point, think
about how Belshazzar must have felt.
He's drunk on power, he's drunk on booze, and all of a sudden, a
glowing finger appears out of nowhere, scratching up the
wallpaper. And So what does he do?
He calls in the experts, the diviners, the magicians.
These are called Chaldeans. And what they're known for is
they're known for being able to read signs like this.
They're able to be able to kind of understand what's going on.
And we do the same thing today, do we not?
Something happens in our culture.
A news story breaks. People get on CNN and Fox News,
and we bring in the politicians, we bring in the doctors, we
bring in the sociologists, the psychiatrists, all the talking
heads, right? And we interview.
I'm trying to make sense of what's going on here and this.
And Belshazzar is doing the same thing.
But just like in Chapter 2, the wise men can't do it.
Human wisdom and man made religion is failing Belshazzar.
And so the queen or the Queen Mother perhaps Belshazzar's mom
has a simple suggestion. She says, hey Belshazzar, don't
worry, I got a guy all right, Daniel 512.
She says call for Daniel and he will tell you what the writing
means. He's your guy.
I've seen what the work he's done with Nebuchadnezzar.
Great work. You can trust him.
So in comes Daniel at this point in the story.
Now keep in mind Daniel is probably about 80 years old at
this time, so quite a leap from where we were.
The chapter before Daniel is old.
He's coming in at this time. And this is what it says in
verse 13. So Daniel was brought before the
king, and the king said to him, Are you Daniel, one of the
Exiles my father the king brought from Judah?
I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that you
might have insight, intelligence, and outstanding
wisdom. These wise men and enchanters
were brought before me to read the writing and tell me what it
means, but they could not explain it.
Now I've heard that you are able to give interpretations and
solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and
tell me what it means, you will be closed in purple and have a
gold chain placed around your neck and you will be made the
third highest ruler in the Kingdom.
Quick note, why the third highest ruler in the Kingdom?
Well again, remember you have Nebonitis, who's the true king?
Belshazzar's underneath him, he's the Co Regent, his son.
And then Daniel would have been the 3rd.
So history, historically, Daniel gets all the details right.
It's pretty fascinating. But notice another thing.
Notice the condescension in Belshazzar's voice towards
Daniel, the disrespect as the king addresses Daniel as an
exile from Judah rather than a royal advisor.
He's treating him like a prisoner, not someone who's like
served in the Royal Court for 65 years.
And this is actually an indication of Belshazzar's
character that we need to pay attention to. 17 Then Daniel
answered the king. You may keep your gifts for
yourself and give your rewards to someone else.
Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell
him what it means. Daniel says, Nah, you can keep
your gifts. You can keep your status to
yourself. I don't want it.
This isn't Daniel, by the way, just being like humble and be
like, Oh no, no, no, I insist. I'm glad to do it.
As we mentioned in Pastor Patrick sermon a few weeks ago,
he takes no credit because it's divine revelation that he's
receiving. It's not his own smarts.
Does that make sense? So he points back up to God
here. He's not going to take payment
for prophesying. In other words, he's not a
prophet for profit. You get it?
I thought that would land a little bit better.
That's OK. 18 verse 18. Your Majesty, the Most High God
gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and
glory and splendor. Because of the high position he
gave him, all the nations and people of every language dreaded
and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to
death, he put to death. Those he wanted to spare, he
spared. Those he wanted to promote, he
promoted. Those he wanted to humble, he
humbled. So what's Daniel doing here?
He's he's recounting the story of Nebuchadnezzar from last
chapter who came before Belshazzar, and he calls him his
father, as in predecessor, not his biological father.
But that would have been Ibaneidis.
What Daniel's doing is he's saying that when God bestows
some of his authority upon a ruler, that ruler has a divine
responsibility to steward it in humility, to steward it for the
flourishing of the people who are underneath him.
And so he continues in verse 20. But when his talking about
Nebuchadnezzar. But when his heart became
arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his
royal throne and stripped of his glory.
He was driven away from the people and given the mind of an
animal. He lived with the wild donkeys
and ate grass like an ox, and his body was drenched with the
dew of heaven until he acknowledged that the Most High
God is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and sets over
them anyone he wishes. So Daniels retelling the story,
God humbled Nebuchadnezzar by deposing him from his high
throne and lowering him to the ground like a wild beast until
until he acknowledged God. That's the key.
What we're able to see is that Belshazzar is now in the same
position, but has a very different response, very
different response. So Daniel's about to drop the
hammer. You ready for it?
Here it is, verse 24. But you, Belshazzar, his son,
have not humbled yourself, though you knew all of this.
Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of Heaven.
You've had goblets from his temple brought to you, and you
and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from
them. You praise the gods of silver
and gold, of bronze, ironwood and stone, which cannot hear or
see or understand. But you did not honour the God
who holds his hand in his hand, your life in all of your ways.
Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.
So Daniel gives out his indictment of the King
Belshazzar. You had the knowledge.
You'd been given the warnings, dude, and yet you still refuse
to humble yourself and notice Daniel's line.
He says, though you knew all of this.
So in other words, Belshazzar did not take God's knowledge and
instruction seriously. Parents, do you know that
moment? You know that moment when it's
bedtime and you look at your kids and you say, OK, kids, it's
time to brush your teeth, right? And they look back at you and
they say something like, brush my teeth tonight of all nights.
This is brand new news to me, right?
And so you look at them and you're like, no, no, no, we
literally do this every single night.
We brush our teeth before bed, right?
And they look back at you and they say something like, well,
then let the revolution begin, right?
In a similar way, King Belshazzar knew that God humbles
the proud, and yet he chose to make his defiance stand anyway.
He knew what he was supposed to do, he just didn't want to do
it. And this is such, Oh my
goodness, Church, this is such a practical and sobering reminder
for all of us here today. Right?
Like, after all, we have far more knowledge of God than
Belshazzar did. We know what God requires of us
as Christians. We know what pleases Him.
We know what purposes He has for us.
And so to the Christian here today, real quick, I just want
to ask, do you take the word of God seriously in your life?
In other words, is it authoritative over your life?
Look, in our modern age of, you know, scepticism and jadedness
and mistrust and all of that, it can be really, really easy, even
for believers, really easy to scrutinize the words of
Scripture rather than trusting them.
So Simply put, like, do you actually believe that God knows
better than you, even in the areas where your pride and your
habits are confronted? Do you really believe that God,
God actually knows what he's talking about?
Do you take him at his word? And another question, like, is
there anything maybe God, God has even been nudging you about
recently. Maybe it's something he's been
inviting you to remove out of your life or to be more
proactive about or whatever it is, right?
Like we have the knowledge oftentimes about what God
requires of us. It wasn't just that Belshazzar
had knowledge about the dangers of pride and didn't heed them.
He took it a step further. Even worse than that, he took
the sacred goblets. Here's sort of a picture from
Rembrandt, the sacred goblets of the temple here.
And notice how in this picture, this painting from Rembrandt,
notice the goblet that the the woman's holding.
And he filled them with wine and he's essentially toasting his
own gods from the goblets that came from God's temple in Judah.
This is a deliberate act of defiance, right?
He took check this, he took what was sacred and he was uniting it
with something that was profane, common.
This act of taking sacred items from one nation you conquered
and bringing them into your temple, the temple of your gods,
was like a way of saying our God just dominated your God,
Belshazzar saying our God has the real power.
See, how else could we have captured these precious goblets
from you? This act of drinking out of the
goblets of Judah, God's goblets here, it's very similar to what
what sometimes happens with rival sports teams like Army
versus Navy, right? Let me give you an example.
So for an example, the beloved mascot of the University of
Texas is what anyone know it. It's Bevo the Longhorn steer
right? Go Longhorns hook em horns or
whatever. OK.
At one point in time, however, it was stolen by their rivals at
University of Texas A&M. And so the Aggies took the
Longhorn and they branded on the side of it the numbers 13 and O
on the side of the cow. Do you see this?
I don't know if this is actually a real picture or not, but this
story evidently happened. What's 13 and O?
It was the final score of the game where the Aggies defeated
the Longhorns. That was the score of the game.
They branded it onto their mascot.
Them's fighting words. You know what I'm saying, right?
That's crazy. You've heard the phrase don't
mess with Texas. Well, apparently when Texas
messes with Texas, things get real weird and like cows get
branded with sports statistics. And I actually, it's a fun fact.
I actually texted my buddy from Austin, TX who grew up there and
I was like, is this story true? And he's like, yes, it was
absolutely true. And then he said this, he said,
quote, ever since we have been whooping their butt in sports as
much as we can. So I thought that was kind of
funny, but you get the point here, right?
This is rivalry, hatred, insults.
It's the desecration of sacred mascots.
OK, now amplify that. Amplify all that tension by
pride, by a prideful ruler insulting the one true God by
toasting his made-up gods using sacred temple vessels.
That's what's happening here. Tremper Longman puts it this
way. He says he's toasting lifeless
idols of his own religion. He spits in God's eye, as it
were, and then he goes over to a statue that he himself has
created and expects that lifeless hunk to protect him
from what is to come. And it's because of all of this,
everything that Belshazzar is doing here, because of all of
this, that here we finally arrive at the final verdict, the
writing on the wall in the King's throne room.
This is what it says. Daniel 5 verse 25 Verse 25
Daniel finally interprets it. He says this is the inscription
that was written. Many many Tekle Parson here is
what these words mean. Many God has numbered the days
of your reign and brought it to an end.
Tekle, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
Perez, your Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and
Persians. The inscription from the finger
of God had been interpreted. It's it's it's like this.
It's as if. It's as if the accounting office
of Heaven itself had performed A moral audit on Belshazzar and
the final report had come in. What's their verdict?
This is their verdict. Menne Menne Teko Parson.
Daniel sees these nouns on the wall and he interprets them in
their passive participle form, which means numbered, numbered,
weighted, and divided. Daniel then delivers this moral
audit to King Belshazzar and he says your days are numbered.
God is removing you. Why?
It's because the sum total of Belshazzar's life up until this
point had been placed on the scales of heaven, the weighing
scales of heaven, and his life was quote found wanting.
It was lacking substance. Belshazzar failed to live into
his intended calling and purpose to rule and steward people well
in humility. And so when his life was placed
on the scale and weighed, he came up short.
There's this phenomenon that has been well documented in
scientific journals, and it takes place among people who
experience what's called a near death experience.
So these are people whose heartbeats have stopped for a
period of time and then they have these conscious experiences
while they're dead and laying on like the hospital, hospital room
bed or whatever. And what's interesting is that
there there's a commonality amongst these people who
experience these near death experiences called the life
review. It's a phenomenon reported.
And what happens is when people come close to death, they
sometimes describe suddenly seeing their entire life laid
out before them. So they see all of their
actions, their relationships, their choices, even the effects
that they had on other people. So they can like feel what other
people felt when they were like interacting with them.
Isn't that fascinating? This is this is like a well
documented phenomenon for for these people.
And basically what's happening is they're experiencing a sort
of moral audit on their entire lives from every perspective.
It's really fascinating stuff. There's a quote from Doctor
Bruce Grayson. He's a psychiatrist who studied
near death experiences for decades.
This is what he writes. They often have a sense of
reliving their entire lives, often in a matter of seconds.
And then he writes, how we think about death and dying effects,
how we think about life and what we do in life.
In fact, these studies show that many people who experience a
near death experiences, when they come back to life, they
live a more moral life, they live a more altruistic life.
Isn't that interesting? Because they're confronted with
this life review. Now, science can't really
explain why or how this life review phenomenon happens.
And as believers, we don't like, take it as gospel truth.
But the scriptures do remind us that how we live this life
matters as we enter into the next life.
Did you catch that? That we will have to give a
moral account for how we lived before God?
Each of us? The Scripture says we'll have to
give an account before God one day.
And Belshazzar, in this moment, he's experiencing his divine
life review. What's the result?
His Kingdom is divided. The Persians had arrived to
claim his life. 29 Then, at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was
clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and
he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the Kingdom. 30
That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was
slain, and Marius the Mede took over the Kingdom at the age of
62. That very night, October 12th,
539 BC, Babylon was officially no more.
It had fallen along with its Prince, King Belshazzar.
So what is this story about? It's about many things, but
ultimately it's a it's an account that reminds us of a
simple truth. God's sovereignty gives him full
authority to install or depose earthly rulers as he wills.
God has full authority over all the kingdoms.
He raises up kings, and he removes them as he wills.
It's a story that God judges the heart, and he determines who
he's going to raise up, or if he's going to strip them down to
nothing, right? Belshazzar was a prideful king
who had the knowledge of what can happen when a ruler takes
credit and refuses to honor God. But unlike Nebuchadnezzar before
him, Belshazzar refused to humble himself.
Instead, he intentionally stood opposed to the one true God,
taking what was sacred, the temple goblets, and uniting it
to what was profane. He elevated the gods he could
hold in his hand, rather than worship the one true God who
held Belshazzar's life in his hand.
But what does this story have to say to us?
What can we possibly learn from it in an era of smartphones and
electric cars and AI and all the other things we concern
ourselves with? Well, to answer that question,
let's answer that question with another question from earlier.
And the question is this. What causes a man like
Belshazzar to throw a party at the end of his life as his enemy
is about to crash down around him?
Why is he playing the fiddle while Rome is burning?
The late, great pastor, his name is Tim Keller.
He argues that perhaps Belshazzar threw a party in
order to gather around himself in those final moments, all the
things that he felt gave his life some kind of significance.
In other words, in his hours of final desperation, Belshazzar
gathers his nobles and his rulers, as if to say, See how
respected I am, See how many men I have at my command.
He doesn't stop there. He gathers his wine and his
wives, and he says, See how loved I am, all of these women
available for my romantic needs. Finally, he gathers the spoils
of victory of the great Babylon, the sacred cups from the temple
of Judah, goblets that reminded him that his gods had one.
As if to say, See how important I am.
I have achieved this. I hold in my hand proof that the
gods are on my side. It'd be like, you know, like a
professional athlete, like a professional athlete who's on
her, her hospital deathbed. And before she dies, she
desperately gathers all of her trophies to hold in her failing
hands as she's passing away, watching highlight reels,
clinging to significance, clinging for meaning in this
temporary life. Elshazar's last grasp at
significance as he's about to be killed.
Look, Church, like this king, we too are tempted to cling to
created things for our sense of significance.
We chase after love. And we say, if someone else says
I'm worthwhile, then I must be. We chase after the good pleasure
filled life for significance, right?
We we say to ourselves, I saw the sights, I experienced the
culture, I ate, I drank, I relaxed, I enjoyed, I had long
weekends and plenty of vacation. Surely this is what life is
about. Or maybe we chase after good
behavior, good religious behavior, even, for our sense of
security and significance. Right?
We say to ourselves, I served enough, I did good enough, I
attended enough Sunday services, I gave enough money in the
offering or whatever it is. Or maybe we chase after
achievement for our significance, because if we can
point to something that we've built, that must mean that we
mattered. Church, the human condition, our
condition is to worship created things rather than the Creator.
But until the very end, Belshazzar clung to created
things in an act of defiant despair.
Defiant despair. And I got to wonder, like, are
the people in our world today, myself included, are we living
in this same kind of defiant despair when faced with our own
mortality? For some, the idea of a God or
like an afterlife, the idea of judgement, it's just sort of
like a fairy tale, right? And after all, they're like,
there's a certain sense of freedom in that, right?
Like doing what we please when we please.
There's freedom in that, but there's also a defiance in it
too. I don't have to answer to
anything higher than myself. I'm just going to do what I
please. I'm going to do.
It feels good in the moment because this life is all there
is, right? It's defiant despair.
All of us are faced with our own mortality.
Death, last time I checked, is a 100% guarantee.
So how do we cope with it? How do we cope with that?
Look, like most of us here in Ankeny, we're we're likely not
coping and soothing ourselves with drunken orgies or drinking
tequila from communion cups, right?
OK, that's probably not our thing, right?
And now, now please hear me for just a second.
If that is your lifestyle, if that is you here today, I'm so
glad you're here. OK, let me just clear the air.
All right? Can I get an agreement from the
church with an Amen? OK, We're so glad that you're
here. If that is your lifestyle, even
if you did that last night. OK.
But likely for many of us, we're not out doing those things.
But yet there still is for most of us a quiet hedonism that
we're chasing after a quiet pleasure filled life.
We want a pain free, problem free life, do we not?
So what do we do? We position ourselves in comfort
and security. We set up our future as well so
we can have ease and entertainment and weekends and
retirement. We set our kids up for success.
All of that. And again, that's not all bad in
and of itself, but it's the same kind of thing, right?
It's still hedonism. It's still I want a pain free
life church. You and I face the constant
temptation to kick our feet up and enjoy life while we can and
not think much beyond this temporary life.
And Jesus himself warned against this type of mentality, right?
Jesus himself, he told this story about a man.
He's like a farmer. And this man had a terrific
banner year with crops. This man had like an abundance
of grain. And this is what it says in Luke
12. Then he said, this man, this
farmer. Then he said, this is what I'll
do. I will tear down my barns and
build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.
And then I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for
many years. Check this out.
Take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry.
Verse 20 But God said to him, You fool, this very night your
life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have
prepared for yourself? What is Jesus saying here?
Jesus isn't saying that eating and drinking and being merry is
bad. In fact, Ecclesiastes argues
that it's actually a good thing to enjoy your life as long as
you're recognizing it comes from God, right?
Check this out. Enjoying life isn't the problem.
The problem is chasing pleasure out of the belief that this is
the only life. Does that make sense?
Let me put it another way. When we believe this life is all
we have, pleasure stops being a gift and it starts becoming a
God. When we believe this life is all
that we have, we, you know, we're tempted to just say, hey,
we might as well eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Live it up for today. This is all we have.
It's a narrow minded view of eternity, right?
We're forgetting everything that's going to come after the
moment we pass into the next. So in the worship of pleasure,
we see this all over today. We're all tempted with it.
In our pursuit of pleasure, we take what is sacred, the temple
goblets. We take what is sacred and we
unite it to things that are common.
We unite what's holy with what's not right.
We we unite our bodies, which are holy dwelling places to God.
We unite our bodies with things that are unholy, sensual
pleasures and appetites and sexuality and pornography and
whatever it may be, whatever it is for you.
You see, when we believe that this life is all there is, we're
tempted to use our bodies for pleasure rather than purpose.
We all have to be honest about this.
We all have to confront this. Or maybe we do it in a different
way, right? Maybe it's not our own bodies.
Or or maybe we treat others who are also made in the image of
God with anger, disrespect, condescension.
I think This is why the New Testament is just so clear.
Like there's not to be any slander or anger or malice or
rage or bitterness or backbiting or gossip or any of that.
There's not to be any of that among you as the church, because
you're all made in the image of God.
You're profaning what is holy with what's unholy.
Does that make sense? You're uniting what's holy.
Our very body is the people of God to things that have no place
in our lives. Am I the only one who's
convicted right now? Maybe it's not treating others
poorly. Maybe we just end up using
people to meet our emotional needs rather than truly serving
them. But what if instead?
What if instead, we could be more like Daniel?
What if instead we could look at all the world with all of its
offerings, its pride, it's pleasure, it's achievement, it's
status? But what if, like Daniel, we can
look at all those things, but we could also see the writing that
is on the wall? Instead of receiving what's on
offer from a king and a Kingdom that's about to fall, what if
instead we could see them for what they really are and say to
the powers, You have nothing to offer me.
All the pleasure, all the pride, everything you're trying to
offer me, it's empty and we're all about to be weighed.
So the question for us here today at church, I know this is
heavy, but the question for us is, what will your life weigh?
What? What will your life be built on,
and what substance will this life have?
Proverbs 16 two says all a person's ways seem pure to them,
but motives are weighed by the Lord.
For Samuel 23 says for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him
deeds are weighed. Just this last week, I had to be
checked by God, as in like a hockey player being checked, if
you know what I mean? It was one of those busy days,
right? Where I felt like I was like
getting it done, you know what I'm saying?
Like, I was moving, I was shaking, I was hustling, I had
some Starbucks caffeine in me. So I was jazzed, you know what
I'm saying? Like I'm making moves and I'm
kind of surveying my accomplishments, not externally,
just inside. I'm sort of like, I've done some
things, you know what I'm saying?
Anyone have that feeling? I was feeling myself a little
bit, if you know what I'm saying.
And in that moment, I got one of those like Holy Spirit nudges.
You ever had one of those? And the nudge was basically
this. God said something like, Ben,
aren't you preaching on pride this weekend?
And I felt terrible. You know, it's just one of those
moments where I'm like, oh, it's so sneaky, isn't it?
It's so sneaky to think you're worth something.
And please hear me, We all have intrinsic value and worth with
God, our creator, right? But like, but I thought I was
worth something. And so, you know, and then I
swung to the other side of my emotions, right?
All of a sudden I'm beating myself up for not leading
better. I'm worrying about how about how
people are going to perceive me or if my sermon will impress
people. I'm feeling like I should be
doing more. I feel like I should be more
organized, more disciplined, more patient, giving more time
to my family, etcetera, etcetera.
And then it hit me. This is just a different version
of pride because I'm still thinking about myself.
You catch that? So whether it's me surveying all
of my accomplishments and feeling pretty good about myself
or me swinging into despair and feeling like garbage and, you
know, worrying about all the things I'm doing wrong, it's
still pride because it's still focused on me and not Jesus.
Praise God to a God who convicts hearts and shows us the real
motives and intentions inside of us.
And so I just had to repent. I had to repent then.
I had to repent today, and tomorrow I'm going to have to
repent again, and the next day, and so on and so forth, right?
This is part of the process of being a Christian.
Living a life with weight means living to glorify God with both
our motivations and our actions. It's taking what knowledge and
revelation He's given you and stewarding your life.
Well, in the view of it. Romans 1412 reminds us so.
Then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Tim Keller describes God's glory as his infinite weight, his
supreme importance church. We need his weight, his glory in
our lives in order to have substance.
It's only through what Jesus did in his death and his burial and
His resurrection that we can have any sort of weight, any
sort of glory. God's glory is the weight, and
our transformed lives are how we participate in it.
It's the only way we can be weighed on the scales and not
found lacking as the end approaches.
Question, churches, this What are you clinging to for your
weight? For your significance?
There is only one who can ultimately tip the scales when
we are measured. And His name is Jesus.
He's the only one that we can cling to for significance.
We do not survive the scales of judgement by our own good deeds.
We do not survive death by our own good motives.
It is only by our faith in Jesus that we can ultimately be saved.
And I just want to be so clear on that.
It's only by our faith and what Christ did.
So point your life and everything you do and all of
your hearts intentions back to Jesus.
It is not about our accomplishments, but what He
accomplished on the cross. It is not about how much we've
accumulated and bought, but how much it cost Him to buy us.
It's not how loved we were by others, but by by how loved we
are by Jesus. This is what gives our life
weight. This is what gives our life
substance. It's who God says we are.
It's being found in his love and his care and his goodness.
In the Psalms, when looking over, the psalmist was looking
over all of creation and his splendor and all the stars and
all the beauty and all of its majesty, and he gives glory to
God. And he says that all of the
heavens, everything was created, says the by the work of your
fingers. When God sent the plagues to
free the Israelites out of from prideful Pharaoh's rule, his
magicians look at the miracle and they say, quote, this is the
finger of God. Once God's children were free,
he gave the knowledge of his commands and his will for their
life. And it says the 10 commandment
tablets themselves were quote inscribed by the finger of God.
Finally in the account of the fall of Belshazzar in Babylon,
we see that the evil rulers fate was sealed by the very fingers
of God writing his judgement on a wall.
And just like in Daniel 5, where the new Persian's Kingdom was at
the gate and the power was about to shift forever to a new
Kingdom, in the same way the rule and reign in this world is
about to shift forever as well. Daniel 244 says in the in the
time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a Kingdom
that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another
people. It will crush all those kingdoms
and bring them to an end, but it itself will endure forever.
What is this Kingdom? It's the Kingdom of Jesus.
It's the Kingdom that is here. It is now, and it will one day
be realized. Luke 11 Jesus says, But if I
drive out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God
has come upon you. You see, church, it's by the
hand of God that the universe was created.
It's by the fingers of God that his people were delivered out of
slavery. It's by the fingers of God that
the law was written. And now it's by the finger of
God that he reminds us that all rulers, past and present, will
eventually fall and bow to him. But he doesn't stop there.
Jesus reminds us that it's by the finger of God that even the
demons are driven out by Him and His disciples.
In other words, it's not just the kings like Belshazzar whose
end is near. The writing is on the wall.
For Satan and the kingdoms of darkness as well.
The writing is on the wall. The reign of evil will soon come
to an end and Christ's Kingdom will be fully realized.
Are you found in that Kingdom? Daniel 5 warns us not to fiddle
while Rome burns, clinging to empty pride and pleasure and
achievement or anything else that promises to fulfill us.
Instead, may we find our satisfaction in meaning in
Christ Jesus. May we build our lives on him
alone. And at the end of our lives,
being found in Jesus, he will be on the scales with us, and we
will not be found wanting or lacking.
Rather, we will lack nothing. We'll have lived a life for his
glory. Not an empty life, but life to
the full. So I leave you with a poem.
The writing is on the wall. These kingdoms will fall.
God's reign is near. Indeed, it is here.