Daniel Lesson 17

Judgment Announced and Enacted – Daniel 5:13-30

 

The book of Daniel is a book of crises in the life of an isolated believer, a young man—he’s no longer as we come to chapter 5, but he started out as a young man, a captive, separated from his parents, separated from all the sources of encouragement, all the doctrinal sources, but he had been so well taught by his parents, so well indoctrinated with the Word of God that as a young teenager he was able to survive in an alien culture.  Unlike most teenagers today, Daniel was tough. Daniel was tough because he knew doctrine, he know how to apply doctrine to his situation.  He had learned, for a teenager one of the greatest lessons that can ever be learned, and that is that there are times when you have to make your break with the crowd and if the crowd is anti-Biblical then the hell with the crowd.  And that attitude must be developed in vigorous believers, that they must decide they are going to influence their surroundings rather than let their surroundings influence them. Daniel was such a man.

 

By the time we come to Daniel 5 he has survived crisis after crisis in his career.  Therefore we find Daniel to be one of the great believers who illustrated the use of the faith technique at every point in his life.  This is not to say that he was perfect by any means, but Daniel was a man who had the maximum production because he was a man who marched to a different tune, God’s tune.  And when it came to people on the job that harassed him, and when it came to people who would be responsible for his promotions, he laid the matter in the Lord’s hands and moved on.  He was not a man who coddled up to people and made compromises in order to gain various short term goals. 

 

Now the book of Daniel was written during the period of the exile, and this is an era of history that is very important.  If you are interested in “what about the other religions of man,” remember that during the exile six religions began: Confucius started in China, Buddha started in India and southeast Asia; Jainism and the revamping of Hinduism, Zoroaster in Persia, you have the rise of philosophy in Greece; all during the exile there was tremendous [can’t understand word] all over the world in the world of thought and religion because something had happened, and whereas the rest of the human race could not analyze what it was that had happened, all men on all continents were aware that something had changed.  Just like people living in the 20th century almost intuitively know that this century is different, there’s an entire mentality, particularly since World War II that has developed, a global awareness that all of our problems are not local but global.

 

So in this era God chose to reveal certain things and these things were written for all time in Scripture.  You must learn to think your way through Scripture.  We will continue our campaign to have every member family in this congregation functioning according to the lined of Deuteronomy 6.  It is not the job of the pastor to teach children, that is the job of the parents. It is your job to teach your children and you shouldn’t look upon it as a burden; as a parent the most thrilling thing that you can do is to lead your children to Jesus Christ and then to lead them in the Word.  That’s your first role as a parent.  Many parents have provided for their children all sorts of material things, saved for college, etc. and yet they can’t devote five minutes during the week, particularly fathers, to teach their children the Word of God. 

 

During the exile we have many doctrines that are revealed but one great doctrine is the doctrine of God.  That was revealed in past events; it is shown in every event but chiefly in creation.  This is why, when children are taught evolution in the public schools, the teachers are undermining the child’s concept of God.  You cannot have the Biblical view of God and still hold to what we call mega and cosmic evolution; it is impossible.  If you are not straight on creation you cannot be straight on the character of God.  But now during the exile God is going to amplify His character.  He is going to show things about His essence that were there from creation, but He’s going to show things now about His character that are particularly revealed by Daniel’s life, Ezekiel, and the life of the exile.

 

God’s character: God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, and eternal.  These are the attributes of God.  Every child should know these attributes of God.  If you have a small child in your home before you talk to him about Jesus you must teach him these attributes of God; it is foolish to introduce the gospel of Jesus Christ to a child who does not know the character of God.  God’s character must be known of Jesus is meaningless—who’s Jesus.  You cannot interpret the category unless you give him vocabulary.  Every child ought to be taught the attributes of God and what they mean.  These attributes of God are emphasized; different attributes in different eras.  And during the time of the exile two attributes in particular were shown, the attribute of sovereignty and the attribute of God’s love, or as the attribute of love shows up after the fall we call it grace.  Love before the fall was love, love after the fall is grace; grace is love toward those who do not deserve it, and after the fall there has never been a member of the human race who deserved God’s love.  Therefore all love that God shows us is gracious love. 

 

Now what about these two attributes in particular?  During the exile Israel had to learn something about God’s sovereignty.  She had to learn that God could work on history apart from Israel. Israel had previously had the concept that God would work through Israel upon the nations.  So all of it would be outward, much like we as Christians think of God the Holy Spirit working in our lives upon others in the environment.  That’s the normal starting off picture of God’s sovereign work.  As a young believer we all entertain this idea, and it’s true as far as it goes, but there comes a time when we have to grow up and realize that God’s sovereignty is a lot bigger than just God working through us.  And this was a time when the nation Israel grew up and realized that God could work on the Gentile nations, say Canaan, Philistia, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, Assyria, and various other areas.  So God could work on these nations round about through their contact with Israel.  But now the new revelation of the exile showed that the sovereign characteristic of God was so big that God could work on these nations directly without going through Israel.

 

So the attribute of God’s sovereign becomes bigger.  Now theoretically they knew this all along, but it hadn’t been clearly demonstrated in history. So when we read in Daniel about the four kingdoms, Babylon, the Medo-Persian Empire, Greece and Rome, we are reading how God directly works on the heathen without even the Jews help.  So when God raises Cyrus up in history he’s called “my messiah,” the same word used for Jesus Christ as is used for the Emperor Cyrus.  And no Jew was involved in Cyrus’ birth, in Cyrus’ preservation, in Cyrus’ accession to the throne, no Israelite was consulted; no Jewish prophet played a role in all of that process and yet God says My word calls for Cyrus.

 

When Alexander the Great, one of the most brilliant young men in the ancient world, in his 20’s Alexander had conquered all the known world and was reputed to have in the areas and reaches of what is now eastern Iran, cried one night when he realized that he had nothing left to do because he had conquered the entire world as known to that time.  Alexander was a man who, as we see in later passages of Daniel, was called without the help of any Jew, without the help of Israel, without the help of a prophet, without the help of the Old Testament.  So the God of Israel is also the God of the entire cosmos.  Why is that truth important?  Because we as believers have the same concept.  We stand here and we visualize God working on this person, this loved one that we want to win to Jesus Christ, or we have the concept that we have some big problem down here and we’ve got to handle the problem and all of God’s options are limited to working in and through us.   And then we’ll have some other difficulty and we’ll say all right God, you have to work through me on this particular problem.  Well God does work through us on these particular problems, that’s correct, but it’s a partial truth and not the whole truth because God can bring forty people up to this loved one and have them witness to the loved one without you opening your mouth.  That’s not justification not to witness; it’s just simply stating the fact that if God has someone over here and He wants that person to get gospel information, He will get gospel information to that person. 

 

And it all doesn’t depend on you.  So this means that when you are out of fellowship, you are sidelined from service, it doesn’t mean that these things are automatically sidelined, that solutions to these various problems aren’t being worked on even while you are out of fellowship.  So that’s the application of this enlarged view of the sovereignty of God that was demonstrated, very painfully, to the Jews for some 70 years during the captivity.

 

But the other attribute of God that was shown during the exile in particular was the attribute of God’s grace and this was a painful lesson for the Jews to learn, it’s a painful lesson for us to learn, in that God, when we are suffering here, as the Jews were suffering in Babylon, and next Sunday we will present probably one of the most vicious Psalms in the entire canon of Scripture, Psalm 137, a Psalm about the babies who are dashed against the wall, and this was a prayer that was answered in Daniel 5.  So to show you why Daniel 5 ends the way it does we’ll go to Psalm 137.  But during that time you’ll see believers suffering, and the tendency always is when we are suffering to want relief and want it immediately.  And in order for God to give relief to our suffering He must judge the evil forces that are causing the suffering. 

 

So the call for relief is a call for judgment.  And the Jews called for judgment upon Babylon: let their babies be dashed against the wall.  They have a very quick way of killing children, picked them up by the legs, whirled them around like a slingshot and slammed their skulls into some stone.  This way you crushed their head and killed them.  This was the way that people slaughtered and that was what the Jews actively prayed for and they were filled the Holy Spirit while they were praying that prayer.  So in case you have some sentimental friend that doesn’t like that kind of thing, don’t bring them next week.  That is not the week to bring somebody like that here.

 

Suffering, to be relieved, ought to be brought about by judgment.  So the Jews are suffering and the Jews pray for justice.  Now that prayer is postponed; it’s only answered partially.  It is not answered fully until the return of Jesus Christ.  So now the big question: why the delay in coming to the aid of Jews who are suffering.  They are in exile, why oh God, how long oh God, do you allow this suffering to go on without relief.  And the answer that is revealed through these books is because God is a God of grace, that’s why.  You say how does that answer the question?  It answers the question in the following way: God, because He’s a God of grace, wants to maximize the opportunity of all men to trust in Jesus Christ as Savior.  If God judged the world in 530 BC or thereabouts, in the Persian era, or say even earlier, say 580 BC, that would put it back in the Neo-Babylonian period, if God chose to judge at either of those times you and I would never have had an opportunity to trust in Jesus Christ.  God withholds His final judgment because He is gracious. 

 

So that now with the exile we have demonstrated for us how God handles the problem of suffering.  God does not handle the problem of suffering immediately because He is trying to forgo maximum eternal suffering for those who will die without trusting in Christ as Savior.  Because God loves the Babylonians, because God loves the Medo-Persians, because God loves the Greeks and God loves the Romans, He does not answer that Jewish prayer en toto, He answers only part of the prayer, enough to give temporary relief but not permanent relief.  Why? The reason again, God is a gracious God and He is maximizing the time in which men can repent and reconsider their evaluation of the person of Jesus Christ.  So God’s sovereignty and God’s grace are the key attributes revealed during this period of the exile. 

 

[Daniel 5:13-16, “Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spoke and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Jewry? [14] I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee. [15] And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not show the interpretation of the thing:
[16] And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.”]

Now in Daniel 5:17, we pick up the narration, again we are on that fateful evening, October 12, 539 BC.  You recall that Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, an adopted son of Nabonidus, has staged a big blowout on the eve of invasion.  The armies of the Medes and the Persians occupy all areas outside the famous walled city of Babylon.  The people in Babylon feel very secure because, though the river goes through the middle of the city, there are locks along that river.  All the drawbridges can be retracted when an enemy is coming.  The city is broken up like holds of a ship; each area is defended.  Under normal invasion type siege preparation, each area of that city is defended by a certain group of soldiers, so that if one area of the city falls the enemy has to fight their way into the next city, there’s no such thing under normal circumstances as that city ever falling.  Babylon, from the human point of view, was impermeable to enemy invasion.  And so the citizens relaxed in their super, super defense project. 

 

The defense project was largely the result of a woman, Nitocris, one of the great women of history.  Nitocris was the wife of Nebuchadnezzar; she apparently remarried after Nebuchad­nezzar’s death Nabonidus.  And that woman was the stability of her nation because unlike many women today she was a woman who understood that women are always the victims when the military doesn’t perform.  When the military loses battles the women suffer the most; so where you see the anti-war crowd, and where you see the pacifists and they’re females, they are stupid; when enemy soldiers invade a foreign land and they rape and pillage, where are these pacifists going to be?  They’re going to be crying for the soldiers; where are the soldiers?  You disarmed them by your vote; you forced our service to be so weak and incompetent and have so many low-class people in it that can’t stand authority, that now the military can’t function.  Nitocris wasn’t one of those kinds of women; Nitocris was a fantastic woman, she was creative, and she produced, as only three or four other great women of the Ancient East. 

 

There are several great women, outstanding women of history and you have some magnificent forerunners.  Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt should be one for you to investigate biographically; Nitocris of Babylon is another one; Deborah of the book of Judges is another woman. There are some great women; Esther of the book of Esther, these are all great women, they were all political leaders and in various times and places they had authority over men.  And they had authority over men by God’s decree because the men were so defective in the generation and so incompetent and so lazy spiritually, that God said all right, no man’s going to fill in the gap, I’ll put a woman in the gap.  And this is what He did with Deborah.  Deborah and Barak is a key story of the Scripture.  Esther is another illustration.

 

So we have the city of Babylon; the city of Babylon from the human point of view is imperme­able, and so the people have their orgy and they bring out all the vessels of Jehovah, the God of Israel, they can’t find any idols made to the God of Israel, to they bring out His vessels and they desecrate them.  Desecration was considered a very, very serious sin.  Desecration was practiced in the Ancient East.  The story in 1 Samuel about taking the Ark of the Covenant and brining it into the temple of Dagon and putting it before Dagon is a story of desecration of a nation’s sacred shrine.  This was always done; it was part and parcel of warfare in ancient history to desecrate your opponent’s shrine.  There was a theological reason because if you could accomplish the desecration of your opponent’s shrine it meant that your deity was more powerful than his deity.  And so the very humorous story in 1 Samuel, how they would place the ark of Jehovah in the temple of Dagon, in the morning Dagon would be fallen over; bowing down to the ark. What happened is that God sent some of His angels and they knocked the statue down during the night.  The Jews thought that was very funny; this was a humorous period of history.

 

Now here we have the same thing, Belshazzar wants to desecrate the shrine, the nearest thing he could get to, he can’t get to the shrine, that’s already been destroyed, so he went to desecrate the pieces that were taken out of the shrine, that’s the way he could get back at the God of Israel.  So the handwriting comes on the wall and this particular handwriting announces a strange thing and none of the wise men, who are called in immediately, none of the state department of the time, can figure it out.  So a bribe is offered to Daniel. Daniel, at last, is called in, and the only reason Daniel was ever called in here, by the way, is because of this fantastic woman.  And in Daniel 5:10 the queen is none other than that famous woman, Nitocris.  And she is placed in the role, as so often happens in Scripture, a woman who knew the Word of God, who is ready for the crisis, and therefore when the crisis comes is able to give encouragement to males who ought to have stability and don’t, her son is now involved in a drunken brawl and is obviously unregenerate, a man who has paid no attention to the Word of God, yet his mother has, and she goes in and she straightens him out at the end of verse 10.  She is the queen mother, not just the queen.  She is not his wife, she is his mother.  And she directs him to the prophet Daniel and he offers Daniel a rulership in the third place in the kingdom.

 

So in Daniel 5:17 we pick up the text as Daniel now responds.  All the eyes in the room are focused on him; the handwriting has been etched into white plaster; this long room which archeologists have found, 154 feet long, with a small indentation, just as the Bible says, with a table and a platform where Belshazzar, that fateful night of October 12th was sitting with some of his royal family.  And as he was drinking out of these vessels the hand came down and wrote on white plaster in back of that area where he was sitting.  So the party is stopped, the music has stopped, everybody has stopped fornicating long enough to look up and see the handwriting all over the white plaster. 

 

And all eyes are on this old man as he walks in; probably by now Daniel is an old man, with white hair, and he walks in very stately, this is the second person that’s walked into that room with stability, Nitocris shortly before has walked in and they’ve seen here talk to Belshazzar and they know something’s afoot because here comes Daniel. And Daniel walks in and there probably was a hush in the room to listen to the conversation.  And we know that this conversation was observed by the way the Holy Spirit wrote the text because it says that as Belshazzar turned around to look at the handwriting, and remember Daniel wasn’t in the room yet, his knees smote together, so obviously somebody was out here who later told Daniel about, that he was looking and under the table at Belshazzar’s knees.  Now Daniel says his peace.

 

Daniel 5:16, “And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.”  Notice he offers him the third ruler, and that ought to have settled Biblical critics for years before the Nabonidus evidence was discovered.  People always said the book of Daniel was wrong here in chapter 5 because obviously Belshazzar couldn’t have been king of Babylon, Nabonidus was king of Babylon, and yet if Belshazzar had been number one king as they claimed the Bible was saying, you would have expected him in verse 16 to offer Daniel the second place in the kingdom.  The fact that he offers him the third place proves that Belshazzar wasn’t the first line king; he must have been only the second line king or he would have offered Daniel the second place.  He couldn’t offer him his own so he offered him the third place. 

 

Daniel 5:17, “Then Daniel answered and said before the king,” now this is an answer that shows again the greatness of Daniel’s soul, a greatness that comes about only by a lengthy period of application of the Word.  “Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.” Now what is Daniel saying?  Daniel is saying Belshazzar, my motivation in life isn’t rooted to the temple horizon; I don’t build my life on short term goals; you can offer me anything you want in this kingdom and that isn’t going to sway me one way or the other because I’m not swayed by short term goals; I live my life with the motivation to please my God, and knowing that I must live in His presence for all eternity.  And since I must live in my Lord’s presence for all eternity, I obviously want to be pleasing to Him; therefore I am going to please him, I’m not going to live around you all eternity, I’m not going to live in Babylon for all eternity, I’m not going to be ruler over this kingdom for all eternity, but I am going to be in God’s presence for all eternity and therefore while I am on earth I will live my life oriented to the long-term goal—eternity. 

 

So Daniel is a future-oriented believer; he is a grace oriented believer, he’s oriented to eternity, not to time, and because Daniel is oriented to eternity and not to time, this gives him stability.  When everybody else is scrounging for the short term advantage, Daniel is relaxed; he doesn’t care about the short term advantage, he cares about the long term advantage. 

 

You see this again and again in Scripture.  Why did Eve get in trouble in the Garden?  She settled for a short term advantage, she said the food looked good.  It looked good, it tasted good and it would make me wise, all short term goals and these short term goals were preferable to the long term goals and Eve fell. 

 

Moses, in Hebrews 11, it’s the same concept in reverse.  Moses has to make a decision, as a confident young man, high up in the Egyptian administration, an adopted son of Pharaoh, obviously one of the heirs to the throne of Egypt, very well schooled, all of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, all of the Egyptian culture, probably a military man if we are to believe extra-Biblical evidences, all these things.  Moses could have said the throne, if I could only get to the throne of Egypt I would have the short term advantage of doing something great for my people; if I could just get the hand of political power and pull the right switches and levers, I could change society.  Moses could very well have been tempted to do that, and yet at the age of 40 years Moses gave up all political power and he went out and associated with his own people, giving up every political and social prestige.  And as far as Moses knew he would be a non-mentionable person for the rest of history but he didn’t care because he knew that he had to live for all eternity in the presence of the God of Israel.  So Moses made the critical decision; I’m going to leave this.  And of course we know later that Moses actually is far better known in history because of that decision than he would have been known had he just been one of the Pharaoh’s of one of the dynasties, he’d be a name on an Egyptian stone [can’t understand word], that’s all he would have been.  Now he’s known by most people in the western world as the great Law giver, the man who did more for more people than any other ruler in history as far as legislation is concerned.  He made the decision to go for the long term, not the short term. 

 

That ought to prey on some of your consciences as to whether you are personally living your life with the long term in mind or whether you have picked up through sloppiness, through mental attitude sin, this idea of getting by for today, and if I can just get a gimmick to save me today or this week, or deal with this semester, or deal with something else, then I’ve got it made instead of thinking so what!  Tomorrow are you going to be different than today after you get your gimmick deployed.  And even if it’s successful, even if that promotion you’re angling for… this is not knocking these kinds of advancements, the idea is just get it in perspective.  Are you going to be really a different person?  You know better than that; you know that all the advances that you have ever made in your life to date have never changed your inside soul.  You are exactly the same person you were before.  And we all know this; the only changes that are made on the inside in our soul spiritually are changes that God makes in us through His Word and Holy Spirit.  Those are the only changes that count, and you can devote a lot of your attention to the pursuing wind, as the book of Hosea puts it, and all you’ll reap is the whirlwind, the storm that comes and blows all the rest of it away.  So Daniel is a man to think about; he is a man without the gimmicks and he denied the gimmicks of verse 17, just keep your short term stuff, he tells Belshazzar.  Now it’s not being rude to say this, he’s just stating it; Belshazzar, I am not impressed with anything you can offer. 

There’s a man by the name of Jim Voss, an ex-convict, one of the great wire tappers of Mickey Cohen.  At one time Jim Voss could tap in any phone in the city of Los Angeles (for a price), and give you a recording on it; it was a business that he had going; brilliant when it came to electronics and one day he heard the gospel through Billy Graham, he trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and he faced a crisis in his life.  He belonged to an organization that you can’t quit; no one had ever quit it before and lived.  Jim Voss said I can’t go on because I trust in Jesus Christ, so with much fear and trepidation he went to his boss, Mickey Cohen, and miracle of miracles he got out of the organization.  Then he decided he could use his talents in a unique ministry and he went to the Harlem and picked out the most crime infested district in the city of Harlem, which is the 125th precinct, Hellgate station, and began a work with the boys on the streets.  All he had was a store front, he had no welfare grant; he was supported completely by contributions of believers and he changed that entire district.  The statistics of the New York City police department reflect in the middle 60’s a drop in crime that was so impressive that HEW sent in investigators to find out what’s the secret; how come he can do things on a shoestring budget that we who take millions and millions of dollars to do can’t do.  How can Jim Voss do things without a massive staff, one field worker and four secretaries, that we can’t do?  It reminds me of this passage, that he was called in before one of the Senate committees that was investigating welfare reform and figuring out how to make it more efficient and Jim proceeded to tell him why it was, because it was grounded on the Word of God; he approached young men as creatures made in God’s image first, race second.  And then when they trusted in Christ he had a fantastic system of follow up; he brought them off the streets, taught them skills, and the boys turned around and they became workers and they began to win more people to Christ and teach more people to Christ. 

 

And today he is forming juvenile centers in the major crime infested areas of the United States.  And they said we think you qualify for a loan from HEW and we’re willing to fund you and your organization so you can expand.  It would have been a great temptation to take their funds but he said no, and he gave one of the most magnificent testimonies that has ever been given to a Senate committee and he said I can’t use your money; we use the Lord’s money from believers who have trusted the Lord and believe in our work and those are the only dollars we accept; we grow at the rate that God gives us support; we do not allow these extra temptations to come in.  Again, long term goal, not short term goal, just like Daniel said, keep your reward to yourself, so Voss said the same thing.

 

Another thing about verse 17, when we look at this we see a phrase, “Let thy gifts be to thyself,” put yourself in Daniel’s place, your people are oppressed.  Wouldn’t it have been a temptation to be the third place in the palace structure of society?  Think of what you could do for your people; it would have been a tremendous temptation for Daniel, just like Moses, same temptation, get in the palace structure because once I’m in the palace structure then I can do something for my people.  Daniel said no, that’s not the way God works, keep your reward.  But he says in verse 17, “I will read the writing unto the king, I will go ahead and do what my job as a prophet is to do and that is to teach the Word of God and you asked me for it and now I’m going to tell you.  I will read the writing unto the king and make known to him the interpretation.”  Now that is Daniel using the gift that God has given.  He doesn’t accept anything for it, money is not an issue to Daniel; he doesn’t expect the king to pay him, he operates on the premise of Matthew 10:8, freely you have received so freely give. 

 

Now in verse 18 he begins to tell the story and this is a model of conviction of sin, and this again, like we have seen in the book of Hosea is how the Holy Spirit really convicts us of our sin.  It is always a specific conviction, not general.  There’s not some vague aurora of guilt, there is always something specific.  So in Daniel 5:18, “O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honor,” now in verse 18 he announces a fact of history.  He tells Belshazzar that God is the lord of history.  Remember the two attributes, God is sovereign and God is gracious.  Those are the two attributes that come up again and again and again in the exile. So therefore Daniel say God is the Lord.

 

In Daniel 5:19 he then goes on and shows not God’s sovereignty, but Nebuchadnezzar’s sovereignty.  The verse skips; verse 18 is God’s sovereignty, verse 19 is Nebuchadnezzar’s sovereignty.  Now Belshazzar could not have understood verse 18 but he could have understood verse 19 and Daniel knows that, so watch how he sneaks around in this presentation and then comes right back to the point that he knows Belshazzar is never going to get unless he emphasizes it.  So he starts out and kind of throws it out, verse 18. And then in verse 19 he moves on, leaves verse 18, moves on to verse 19, and he knows in verse 19 Belshazzar will understand that, Belshazzar will stand there up at that bench where he was drinking and say oh yeah, I understand that Daniel.  “And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him,” Belshazzar would have said yes, I remember that, everybody came to my father, my father was the commander over all, and “whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down,” it’s all the volition of Nebuchadnezzar. 

 

So verse 19 is a complete exposition of the vast power of Nebuchadnezzar.  But you see, Daniel, being on doctrine, knew that he couldn’t get to verse 19 unless he did verse 18 first.  The sovereignty of all the divine institution’s is derivative; the first divine institution, the second divine institution, the third divine institution, fourth divine institution and fifth divine institution.  The first divine institution is volition, the second divine institution is marriage and sex; the third divine institution is family, the fourth divine institution is government, and the fifth divine institution is the tribal nature of the human race, that it’s divided up culturally.  Now each one of these spheres derives its authority from God.   God is sovereign, and since God is sovereign He decrees the limits of volition, the limits of marriage, the limits of family, the limits of government and the limits of the tribes of men.  Now we are talking about the fourth divine institution.  And this sphere, Daniel insists, has power.  Verse 19 gives you the authority inside the fourth divine institution.  But verse 18 gives you the authority over that divine institution.  So you can have true authority inside government, the salute to the flag, the oath in the courtroom, the oath of office, all these are signs of true biblically okay authority.  Where we get off is when we fail to put verse 18 before verse 19.  We say yes, but that authority structure itself is obtained only because of what God is doing.

 

Now Daniel 5:20, this is what happens to one of these institutions; the institution has what we call latent or inherent authority to it, such as in the family, the parents have authority.  If you’re not using your authority both positively and negatively you’re failing as parents.  You have a certain authority but even that authority is not unlimited.  A parent has authority up to certain limits over their children.  Government has authority up to certain limits over its citizens.  A husband has authority over his wife up to certain limits.  It’s always up to the limits that God sets. 

So it says in verse 20, “But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him,” and this is when the fourth divine institution under Nebuchadnezzar swelled out beyond the Biblical limits of power and it became power-hungry and grasping all areas that didn’t belong to it.  We saw in chapters 2-3 what those areas were, namely religious areas, just as the state always does when it gets too big, it wants to invade the area of religion.  The public schools want to dictate your worldview by teaching mega evolution which is a religion and not science.  This is not new; this has gone on for century after century.  

 

Daniel 5:21, “And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen,” we went through these characteristics, this is boanthropy, “and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointed over it whomsoever He,” that is God, “wills.”  Nebuchadnezzar had to get straight on the structures of reality and the structure of reality was the structure of the fourth divine institution.  He had to realize that as a man he had authority but that authority had limits.  God gave him that authority and so the issue with Nebuchadnezzar, the conjunction “until” he knew; it means that God operated through the adversity test upon this unbeliever and won him back to God-consciousness.  You see, every unbeliever is God-conscious.  We know this from Romans 1 and 2, and every unbeliever who is God-conscious has inside himself a testimony.  He can sit there and be an intellectual atheist all he wants to be, it doesn’t make any difference, he knows in his heart that God is there. And he also knows that he’s made in God’s image and he knows that he is also responsible to that God.  Now every once in a while he becomes very high and mighty and thinks he can avoid that conscience, the sting of conscience.  But when that happens God operates through the prosperity test or adversity test upon him, and here we find Nebuchadnezzar won around by God putting pressure on.

 

Now Daniel 5:22 is one of the stinging indictments that Daniel brings against Belshazzar.  So far it’s all been his father, what happened to his father, he did this, he did that, this happened to him, that happened to him, and Belshazzar is sitting there nodding his approval and going on.  “But thou” Daniel says, “And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knew all this,” so we discover from verse 22, aha, there is one other person in the room that knows history and doctrine besides Nitocris; when she walked in and she reminded Belshazzar of Nebuchadnezzar, Nitocris wasn’t the only person in the room that knew doctrine, Belshazzar knew doctrine, and Belshazzar knew doctrine and he had suppressed it.  And his point was negative volition toward the Word led him to forget the Word; you haven’t “humbled your heart.” 

 

Daniel 5:23, “But hast lifted up thyself against the LORD of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified,” he brought these vessels in and he indicts him. 

 

And that’s why in Daniel 5:24, “Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. [25] And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,” now the writing that was written apparently, we surmise this from the inability of the scribes to understand it, it is not that hard to understand the way it is written in the Bible, therefore it’s puzzling that the scribes and the wise men didn’t understand it.  And it has led Jewish people for a long time, even before the time of Jesus, to speculate on how the writing was made. 

 

We know first of all it was probably writing in consonants only; the Hebrew script doesn’t have verbs because at the time it was developed most people knew the oral tradition and they would pronounce it and they wouldn’t put the vowels in, no vowel markings, nothing, you just put the consonants in.  Then we think it was written backwards, in an acrostic, and here’s the way it looks; I’ll just write the English consonants.  You write from right to left; these are the words, they’re going down.  That is the 12 letter acrostic, it’s like a crossword puzzle and you have to figure out, is it going this way, is it going this way, this way, or this way.  There are too many permutations and combinations to figure out for sure which way it’s going.  So the scribes were thwarted in what happened, so Daniel says I’ll tell you what happened.  See, the hand reached down on that white plaster, everybody was having an orgy dinner and this hand just dropped down from the ceiling and started writing.  And you can imagine what a weird experience it was.  More than one person in the room was wondering whether they literally wee seeing things. 

 

So the first word, “MENE, MENE,” Daniel 5:26, “This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.”  Again, as with his father, Belshazzar must learn a lesson.  And that is God is sovereign, not man.   

 

Daniel 5:27, “TEKEL; Thou art weighed” the word means to weight, you “art weighted in the balances, and art found wanting.”  That’s the sad destiny of every unbeliever.  At the Great White Throne judgment a person who has not trusted in Jesus Christ must stand before Jesus.  We have this picture of Jesus holding a sheep, sweet Jesus with a sweet little lamb; that’s only half of Jesus’ character, the other half is that Jesus is also the judge, and at the Great White Throne judgment those without Christ must stand before Him and they are going to be questioned on the basis of the creation ordinance of Genesis 1:26.  Jesus is going to stand as the judge of the universe and He’s going to say to them as a creature made in Our image, because Jesus will speak for the Trinity, as a creature made in Our image what have you produced?  What ground have you subdued, what has been your production.  He’s not going to ask about the sin because Jesus has taken care of the sins on the cross, but He is going to address the creature and say what has been your production; We required it of you, We told you at creation that you were created for a purpose and a destiny in history which was to subdue and produce.  What has been your production? 

 

The answer will be –R I have no production the unbeliever will reply and Jesus will quite literally say to hell with you.  Is God being unfair to require production?  No, God is sovereign, He’s our creator, He can require what He wants.  Moreover is He unfair?  No, because after all Jesus Christ solved the sin problem and through the filling of the Holy Spirit and through the application of Christ’s right­eous­­ness we have the production in Christ and so therefore a person who has trusted in Jesus Christ will not appear before the Great White Throne judgment, because in Christ we have subdued.  Make sure you understand, it’s in Christ and in Christ alone that our production is focused. 

 

Here, when you see the word TEKEL in verse 27 that is the word to be weighed and be found wanting; it’s a picture of judgment, a picture of the scales, the scales of justice, and they’re tipped against us, and Belshazzar has been chosen by God in history to be a man to whom this had to happen publicly, historically, and a historical record had to be made of it all so that down through the centuries men would understand this is what judgment is like.  You have been numbered and you have been evaluated and you are found wanting.  And as you read this, don’t just think of it as Belshazzar, because this is a model of a judgment going on; it is not the judgment, it is a judgment, but all of God’s judgments are kind of like this; even the bema seat which is a judgment not to test us for our salvation but to test us for our production. Each one of us must stand before the bema seat of Jesus Christ and we are going to be asked the same question; what have you brought forth in Me?  In Me I have you all the operating assets; when you became a believer you wee in Me, Christ is going to tell us, My Father has foreknown you, My Father predestinated you, My Father called you and during your lifetime through many instances of your personal experience, My Father justified you and My Father has glorified you.  My Father has provided everything on your behalf.

 

And then He’s going to go through what He has done for us.  I gave you My righteousness, for years I lived on earth and got My feet dusty walking around the streets of Palestine, I had dirt under my fingernails, I faced the same frustrations you face as a member of the human race and I came out of it perfect.  And it’s that perfect righteousness that I have generated in history that is available to you, so I solved your positional problem.  I died and I rose again, I provided you with an exit from judgment so you don’t have to stand before the Great White Throne judgment; you’ll never be asked absolutely what have you produced, you’ll only be asked at the bema seat what have you produced in Christ.  And I have made intercession for you; for years and years during your lifetime every time you fell down, every time you rebelled against God’s Word, every time you screwed up, I at the Father’s right hand made intercession for you, I held your salvation for you, even when you weren’t thinking of it I continued to make intercession for you.

 

Then He’s going to go into the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit at the time you became a Christian regenerated you, He created within you a new nature, ex nihilo, He created you out of nothing, He created and He indwelt you.  He baptized you, He sealed you unto the day of redemption, He gave you a spiritual gift and He was an advocate for you, Romans 8.  Now at the bema seat we are going to be weighed and the good works, the silver and gold are going to be acknowledged and the lesser works that were human good, the grass and so on will be dumped.

 

Daniel 5:28, “PERES; Thy kingdom is divided,” now there’ll be confusion between verse 25 and 28; “UPHARSIN,” if you look at the consonants in verse 25, the consonants, not the vowel, the consonants, you will see with the exception of the “n” or the nun, which is an ending consonant, it doesn’t count, you’ll see a “ph” an “r” and an “s” in the consonants of “UPHARSIN.”  Now it is those consonants that are then taken in verse 28 and form the word PERES.  “Thy kingdom is divided, the word “PERES” means to divide, “and given to the Medes and Persians.”  In other words, Belshazzar, the time of God’s grace has finished.  Now that’s something that we talk about grace but every time you mention the word grace always remember grace is temporary.  Grace began at a point in time; grace will end at a point in time.  Grace began at the fall and grace ends at judgment.  And for Belshazzar and his kingdom grace just ended, right then, when the handwriting came on the wall.  Why does God do this?  Again, to train us, to warn us, don’t misinterpret patience for compromise. God is patient and gracious but he’s not compromising and He is not going to permit the new universe to be run like the old one, “PERES,” it is divided. 

In Daniel 5:29 Belshazzar goes ahead with his reward, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.”  And then in a very laconic mood the Holy Spirit adds verse 30; actually verse 31 goes more with chapter 6.  Verse 30, “In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.”

 

The story of that is also recorded in the book of Herodotus, Book I of his history; I read part of this to you last week, here’s the rest of the passage.  Last week we read how the Babylonians shut themselves up, made light of the siege; “having laid in store for many years in preparation against this attack.”  Now here’s the rest of the passage:  Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity.  As time went on he made no progress against Babylon.  In this distress, either” and they don’t know this, and of course it might have been an angel, it might have been another one of his commanders, but “in this distress some one made the suggestion to him or he thought himself of a plan, which he proceeded to put in execution. He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city,” so let’s watch what happens because we’ve got an unsolved problem before verse 30; if Babylon, from the human point of view was so impregnable, if it was such a great fortress, it was made up of all these compartments, if the place where the river went through the city was all barricaded and all guarded, how did Cyrus conquer the city within a matter of hours… within a matter of hours.  It was while this orgy was going on that the city fell.  Now how did it happen?

 

Here’s how it happened.  “He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city, and another body at the back of the place where it issues forth, with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream, as soon as the water became shallow enough. He then himself drew off with the unwarlike portion of his host,” the engineer section of his army, “and made for the place where Nitocris dug the basin for the river,” upstream there was a tremendous reservoir that Nitocris had used earlier to divert the river into so she could line all this with tile. Well, that basin was never filled in, so he takes his engineering force up to that basin where he did exactly what she had done; he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin. So he dammed up the river momentarily and made all the river go into that reservoir. 

 

“…where he did exactly what she had done formerly. He turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin, which was then a marsh, on which the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable. Then the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the river-side, entered the stream, which had now sunk as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town. Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus was about, or had they noticed their danger, they would never have allowed the Persians to enter the city, but would have destroyed them utterly. For they would have made fast all the street-gates,” in other words, they had gates along here so even if the Persian army moved down the street they were shooting at them, all the time, arrows spears and everything else, they would have been sitting ducks.  But they never realized that this thing was going to be pulled off that night to all the guards were taken off of that street bed. 

 

“For they would have made fast all the street-gates which gave upon the river, and mounting upon the walls along both sides of the stream, would so have caught the enemy as it were in a trap. But, as it was, the Persians came upon them by surprise and so took the city. Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare),” Herodotus went to Babylon to talk to the people who lived during the siege and he got this story firsthand, “Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts … long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had happened,” so while he is having his orgy he had this marvelous defense system worked out but he forgot one thing; there was no communication between the sections of the defense, so this fell, then this fell, then this fell, this fell, this fell, and while these were falling the people over here were partying.  So the Medians and the Persians that night just went from one section to the next and picked them off, hour after hour.

 

And it goes on and Herodotus ends this paragraph by saying this, “long after the outer portions of the town were taken, they knew nothing of what had happened, but as they were engaged in a festival, they continued dancing and reveling until they learned the capture but too late. Such, then, were the circumstances of the first taking of Babylon.” 

 

And that’s the story of the fall of Babylon, executed under the sovereign will of God against the most formidable defense system that man had ever seen up to that point. Babylon, from the human point of view, could never have been attacked.  God had decreed.  Four words were written on the wall; you are numbered, you are numbered, you are weighed and it’s divided.  It took only four words of God to destroy Babylon, and all the works of men, the great wall, the great protection against God, were over with minutes and hours.