Writing On the Wall - Daniel 5

One of the most famous “battles” of the revolutionary war was the crossing of the Delaware River. Do you remember that story? If you don’t - George Washington after facing defeat after defeat mustered his courage and his men to perform a surprise attack on the German mercenaries that were called Hessians. They crossed the Delaware river in the middle of the night for a surprise attack on Christmas day in 1776. Some say the Hessians had gotten drunk celebrating Christmas eve, others argue that that wasn’t true - but either way the surprise attack lead to a much needed victory - the first major victory of the war. Now that’s a very famous story, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the commander of the Hessians, a Colonel Johann Rall died in that battle with a piece of paper in his pocket warning him that Washington was coming. Apparently a loyalist spy showed up at the headquarters before the attack with a warning. The spy was denied an audience with the commander, and so he wrote the message on a piece of paper. A porter took the note to the Colonel, but Rall was very involved in an intense poker game, and so he stuff the note - unread, into his pocket. What’s crazy is that America might not exist the way it is today if that guy had taken just a moment to read that warning. 

But warnings are a tricky thing - ignoring warnings is a terrible idea, but we also don’t want to live terrified fear based lives jumping at every possible danger. In America - we know what that looks like! Do you remember, must have been 30 years ago - the Hot Coffee Lawsuit? For you young-uns who might not know - way back in 1994, an older woman named Stella Liebeck burned herself on McDonalds coffee and won a huge financial settlement by suing them. Her situation was actually pretty serious, she was in the hospital for those burns, but that lawsuit opened the doors for lawsuit after lawsuit of people suing companies for not having warnings labels for what most people would call common sense. And so the response for most companies is to put warning labels on EVERYTHING. It used to be survival of the fittest, but then we bubble wrapped stupid and it survived and I’m not we’re doing better because of it. Here’s what I’m talking about - these are real warning labels you can find in the real world. Now there are SO MANY of these, but I grabbed just a few - just to give you a taste. Number one, on a chain saw you might see THIS lovely warning [Do not hold the wrong end of a chainsaw]. Or maybe an indoor appliance, you buy a nice new hair dryer and it comes with this little number. [Do not use while sleeping]. I know some of you ladies have some LONG hair, but boy - I don’t think it’s supposed to take that long. Or you’ve taken the clothes out of the dyer, you’ve forgotten to fold them right away - so now you need to bust out the ol’ iron. Well on the side of that scalding hot wedge of metal you might notice this warning [Do not iron while wearing shirt]. That’s probably good advice. This one is a bit of a throwback - there used to be this device called an ipod shuffle. It was this little thumb drive sized device that held music, and in the instruction manual - you can’t make this up, I had one of these I remember it saying this - it says, [do not eat the ipod shuffle]. This reminds me of my favorite verse out of proverbs, chapter 30, verse 2. I am too stupid to be human and I lack common sense. And last but not least - we’ve talked about eggs in the last couple of weeks, but have you ever noticed that some of the brands carry this label? [May contain eggs.] This product may contain eggs. We live in a world with a lot of warning signs, don’t we. But like that military commander when Washington crossed the Delaware - we’ve gotten really good at ignoring them, even when they are actually important. Like the check engine light on our car - we know, up in our brains, we know we probably should get that checked out. But modern humanity, and that includes all of us - we have become experts at not seeing what we don’t want to see, haven’t we? Today we are diving back into our series in the book of Daniel. And we have this incredible story about a king and some warnings - but before we get to all of that, I want to bring this home to each of your lives. Are there any warning signs in your life right now? On the dashboard of your life, is the check engine light blinking at you today? Is God trying to get your attention, to show you an area that you need to work on? An area of conviction? Of growth? Do you have shame you need to let go of? Forgiveness you need to offer? A challenge you need to answer? As I tell you the story of my man Belshazzar, I want you to look at your own life and answer the question - are there warning signs in your life right now?

Now if you want to grab your bible, we are going to be in Daniel chapter 5. If you forgot your bible, you can definitely grab one off the back wall - or, of course, there’s a ton of really great apps you can use to follow along as well. Just fyi, I’m using the NLT translation of the bible. Sometimes I switch between translations, but the NLT is one I really enjoy. Now while y’all are looking that up, let me sort of catch you up. Even if you’ve been with us every week in this series so far - there’s still a bit of a jump. Up through chapter 4 we were dealing with this guy Nebuchadnezzar, he was the king. But then in chapter 5 we leap forward in time a little bit, we’re now something like 12 years into the future. Nebuchadnezzar is gone, and we have this new king - King Belshazzar. You would have thought that when Nubuchadnezzar was gone we could have gotten a guy with an easier name to pronounce, but noooo. So anyways, we drop in on this story of Belshazzar, and he’s having a huge party. Now to understand this party we need two quick pieces of backdrop. First - Nebuchadnezzar, when he conquered Israel - he plundered the temple. He took all the stuff he found in the temple, including gold and silver cups, and he moved it all to Babylon. He took some of their sacred vessels. That’s the first thing we need, the second thing is that - and there’s some debate about this, but there’s pretty good consensus that there is an army just outside the gate durign the party. Belshazzar is throwing this party as a way to prove he’s not scared. Persians are at the gate, and this party is sort of Belshazzar’s way of thumbing his nose at the enemy. It’s sort of like he’s saying, “I don’t even care. I ain’t scared. I’m going to throw this party to show how I have conquered all these other people. 

And so there’s lots of drinking, and they bring out all the idols of the gods of the people they have defeated. But when it comes to Israel - they don’t have any idols, so what do they use? The stuff Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple. They’re drinking with the gold and silver dishes as a way to insult Israel. This whole thing is a way for people who are powerful to mock the people they have conquered. Verse 2 gets us into it [verse 2]. Now, I don’t know about you - but I sort of think it’s a bold move to have his wife AND his mistress at the same party. You’d think people who live like that would want to keep those groups separate. Not this guy - but that’s sort of the point. Are you seeing that? This whole party is built around the mentality of “let’s throw this epic rager with all the depraved, messed up stuff we can think to do. YOLO. Pour some more wine into my sacred wine cup.” [read v.3-4]. And then the night gets weird. Verse 5 [read v.5-6]. This is like a cartoon scaredy cat. [read v.7-9]. So let’s not sugar-coat it. Belshazzar and his buddies have had a bit too much to drink. They see this crazy thing where four words are written on the wall. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. But those words are not in a language that anybody knows. Freaks Belshazzar out. He’s terrified of this vision, these words on the wall, he’s got this enemy outside the gate - not to mention he just desecrated some holy elements, all of that combines to sober him up real quick. He calls for his enchanters - nobody can figure it out, and so they call for Daniel. They promise Daniel the world - we’ll give ya gold, position, power, anything - just give us the answer. 

Verse 17 we get this amazing response, Daniel says, [read v.17]. This has echoes of Rack, Shack, and Benny with the fiery furnace, right? They look at the king and say, “look, good thing, bad thing - we’re just here to give you the truth” I don’t want your gifts - keep them or give them to someone else. And Daniel starts explaining the words on the wall. But here’s where it gets interesting. Daniel doesn’t start with the translation. You can see the translation is down in verse 26, but up in verse 18 Daniel starts by talking to Belshazzar about his predecessor King Nebuchadnezzar. He tells him - Look Nebuchadnezzar had everything - kingship, greatness, glory - But he acted proudly, and he lost it all. Verse 22, Daniel tells him, [read v.22]. Belshazzar, look at all this pride, all this arrogance - we just did this with the last king! There’s this lesson that looks really obvious to us - Pay attention to what comes before and you can live into a better tomorrow. But no - you had to go and make the same mistakes as the previous generation. And then he tells him what it means. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin - these four words tear Belshazzar apart. This is one of the most terrifying things you could ever hear. Daniel says, “Mene” means that God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Mene mene - means you are about to die. Tekel means that you have been weighed on the scales and have been found wanting. So, not only are you going to die, but you are insufficient, you have wasted your life. And then Parsin - means your kingdom is divided and will be given up to the Medes and the Persians. With four words written on the wall, Daniel has stripped away anything Belshazzar ever had, ever thought or ever hoped to have. He tells the king - you are about to die, you were not good enough, you didn’t measure up, and your legacy will be erased from the earth. Is there anything more terrifying to hear at the end of life? And then verse 30, [read v.30]. 

You know - sometimes I read stories in the bible, and I really struggle to understand. Have you ever had that? Where you read something in the bible, and you just think - what on earth was that? Where’s my happy ending? Where’s my good news? What am i supposed to do with that bizarro story? The phrase “the writing on the wall” has become super famous and common in our culture to mean “a warning” - like, I could see the bad thing coming, the writing was on the wall. Maybe it’s not that common, but if you’ve ever heard it - this is where it comes from. But then I read this story, and I know it’s about warnings - but I don’t think it’s talking about the writing on the wall. I mean, think about this - the writing on the wall: he dies right away. That very night he gets conquered and killed. Scholars debate the timeline - but some argue that while Belshazzar was partying, the army outside his doorstep rerouted a river that ran through the city and then they broke in through the dried river bed and unlocked the door in the night. But here’s my point - we say the writing on the wall was a warning, but he dies right away! He didn’t have a chance to fix his life! Where was the warning? But then I go back to what Daniel said in verse 17. He didn’t start with the words on the wall, right? He started by talking about what? King Nebuchadnezzar. The warning was what happened to the previous generation. And so what I want you to grab onto from all of that is that history IS the warning. God warns us, he does. God warns us about destruction. Even better, God warns us about SELF-destruction. Verse 22 says, [read v.22]. You knew all this man, and yet you have not humbled yourself. If you open your eyes to see - what we realize is that God has given us all the warnings we could ever need in the things that happen to those before us. History IS our warning. Belshazzar failed to listen to the warnings of the previous generation, and he lost everything. The writing on the wall was not a warning, that was judgment. The warning came way before that. 

So let’s bring this up to your life today - what are the warning signs in your life? Like the check engine light in a car - what alarm has been going off on the dashboard of your life? Where has God been trying to get your attention? Has God been challenging you to do something that you have been avoiding? Is there a relationship that needs healing and you just don’t want to deal with it right now? Are there issues in your life that need attention, but you just avoid thinking about it? Something with your kids, your spouse, your co-worker? You ever have a voicemail or an email and you read it - but you don’t know how to answer the question or deal with the problem and so you just leave it unread - and then just days, weeks go by. Has God been calling and you’re sending him straight to voicemail? And this applies to SO MANY places in our life! Is it something with your health? Your physical or emotional or spiritual growth? Augh, when I push on it - is it supposed to hurt like that? And you’re just putting off going to the doctor - hoping that the problem will just go away on its own. It’s the same thing in our spiritual life - like, if you wake up one morning and you push on your side and it’s just flaming pain all down that half of your body. And your wife or husband, kids, friend, whatever - and they say, “Oh, it’s not supposed to hurt when you push on it like that - you should go get that checked out by the doctor.” In our spiritual lives, have you ever been challenged by something you read in the text, something you heard the preacher up front say. Have you ever been in a conversation, and you’re not even sure why - but the person said something that just triggered a huge response in your heart. Your reaction was bigger than you expected and you don’t know why. Maybe the response for your soul is, “oh, it’s not supposed to hurt like that when I push on it - maybe you need to go to the great physician. Get that checked out.” Maybe it’s about money - and I say something like, “we live in a very greedy culture and generosity is something we have to develop. It’s important to prioritize God and the church and giving in your personal budget.” And if you have this huge reaction - ask yourself, why does it hurt so much when I push on it? Or maybe it’s an ethical question - I think about lust or sexual ethics, and I’ll say something along the lines of “God actually does care about what we do with our bodies and temptation to sexual sin is SO strong in our culture” and maybe you just sit there and nod, but in your head you have this huge reaction, “Don’t tell me what to do, don’t try to control my body or tell me how to live.” And it’s like, woah - why does it hurt when I push on that? Or maybe it’s forgiveness. Or loving your enemy. And you were hurt in your life, maybe it was even a long time ago. And even though it was years ago, that hurt still has a grip on your heart, and over the years it’s turned to bitterness, but you’re doing a really good job of ignoring the warning light on the dashboard. And then some idiot pastor comes along and says, “love your enemies” and cracks open the wound you’ve been trying to tape shut with band-aids. Pay attention to your life and the way you react to the teachings of God. If you have a strong reaction, if you yelp when people poke that topic, that area of your life - chances are that’s a warning light. And what I want you to see is that the warning lights in our life are actually an invitation from God for you to grow, for you to heal, for you to move forward. The great physician will see you now.

I think about Belshazzar, and the way he just repeats the mistakes of Nebuchadnezzar. I think it all boils down to the fact that there are two types of people in this world. When someone gets hurt, and we see it - there are two responses. Some of us see the bad thing happen - and we learn from it. Our buddy sticks a fork in the wall socket and gets a REAL nasty shock and we think - I am not going to do that. But then the other category insists on proving every lesson for ourselves. Our buddy sticks a fork in the wall socket and gets a real nasty shock and we think - woah, really? Let me try. History IS the warning - and if we’re smart, if we pay attention to the signs God has given us - we can find healing before it is too late. 

It was too late for Belshazzar - and this is the second big thing I want you to realize this morning. It was too late for Belshazzar, but it is not too late for you. God warns us - that is absolutely true. But we are not Belshazzar. We can do something about it. You can ignore the warning signs, like he did, OR you can do something about it. Today’s footprint is tomorrow’s legacy. Whatever has come in the past, it is not too late for you. There’s an old saying, “if you want shade in your yard, the best time to plant a tree was thirty years ago. The second best time is today.” If you’re looking at the warning signs in your life and looking at your past and thinking, “Bah, I should have done this all those years ago” - yeah, probably. You should have done it all those years ago - but the second best time is today. What you do today, today’s footprint, determines what tomorrow will look like. I’m not going to say that “it’s never too late” - it was too late for Belshazzar, but it is not too late for you. Today’s footprint is tomorrow’s legacy. What you do with your life today determines what tomorrow is going to look like. Maybe what we are talking about is giving your life to Jesus Christ. Maybe you’ve been walking on the edge of faith for a long time, and today is that day that you are ready to accept him as your Lord and savior. If that is you this morning - please come talk to me, it would be an honor to guide you through that process. Or if you’re nervous, fill out one of the cards in the back, we’ll connect. Or maybe you’ve given your life to Jesus a long time ago, but you’ve got warning lights on your dashboard, you’ve got places where God is tugging on you to take that next step in Christian growth. Today’s footprint is tomorrow’s legacy. 

So let me leave you with two challenges, two ways to make this practical in your lives this week. First - pay attention to yesterday, so you’ll be ready for tomorrow. Literally, one of the reasons we read this book is because the lessons those humans needed to learn back then are the SAME lessons THESE humans need right now. We read the bible, and look back over the history of God’s people as a method of getting us ready today for whatever we might face tomorrow. Sure, in the modern world we get around faster in our vehicles and with all the technology our lives are more physically comfortable - but the core struggle of humanity remains. We’re not better than them. And the core need in our lives is the exact same for us today as it was all those years ago - we need Jesus. Think of this way - there’s a lot of really great teachings in the bible. We are told to love 645 in the New Living translation of the bible. We are told “do not fear” 74 times, and if you add in the phrase “be courageous” it goes up to 200. We are taught to pray - 650 times it’s mentioned in the bible. But the bible uses the word remember over 8,600 times. I don’t get up here every Sunday because I’m obsessed with this book. I’m obsessed with this book because it helps us remember. It helps us remember the one thing we need in life. It points us to Jesus. Timothy tells us “All of scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Pay attention to yesterday, so you’ll be ready for tomorrow. 

The second challenge, and the last thing I have for you this morning is “Make your legacy a love of Jesus - and everything else will follow.” When we think about legacy, sometimes people will ask me - Hey, do you hope your kids will be pastors? I’m a fourth generation pastor, and so sometimes people wonder - do you want your kids to follow in your footsteps? And the truth is - no. If God places a call on their lives - I hope they won’t ignore it, or run away from it like I did. But honestly, I don’t care what they do - I care if they love Jesus. If my boys grow up and get a steady job, earning an honest living - if they are men of God, men of integrity, they can do any job they want - from garbage collector to brain surgeon and I will be so proud of them. I say boys - I know I have a daughter too, I didn’t forget - but she and I made a deal, she’s never going to grow up, so I don’t have to worry about that. [Pause]. But here’s the thing - if my children grow up to be wildly successful, world leaders with millions or billions of dollars to create life changing technological or medical advancements that get written about in history books - but they don’t know Jesus, then they will be incomplete. 

And I know parents don’t have complete control over that - children have free will and we can’t make good decisions FOR them. We do the best we can - but I think about how we prioritize getting them to school. And we prioritize getting them to sports. And we prioritize getting them to clubs and extracurriculars and I wonder, looking back over the scriptures at all the warnings and mistakes of centuries of humans who prioritized everything except God. I mean ask yourself this question - would you rather your kid have the whole world, but lose their soul? And maybe there are warning lights going off, but we’re ignoring them because the kids seem to be winning according to the world’s standards, according to Belshazzar’s standards. But if we pass on character and a love of Jesus - even if we give them nothing else, our children will be able to take that and go out there in the world and win. And this isn’t just about parents - but the legacy of all of us. For young people - you look back at your parents and where you come from. Are there things you can do today to change the way your family tree grows? I think about Byron Center and the affluence of a place like this. Our legacy in our community can’t just be money that we leave as an inheritance. It has to be more than that. Pay attention to yesterday, so you’ll be ready for tomorrow and then pass on a love of Jesus first, and everything else will follow.

I think about when George Washington crossed the Delaware river, and that Hessian commander had the warning in his pocket. But he ignored it, and so he fell. That was 250 years ago. Belshazzar was two thousand five hundred years ago. He ignored the warnings and he fell. But you are not Belshazzar. When the warning lights on the dashboard of life go off for you - my prayer for you is that you’ll pay attention. Oh, why does it hurt there? I need to go see the great physician. You can make a change today that will change your life forever. Today’s footprint is tomorrow’s legacy. Let’s pray.