Part 1.
(Read Dan. 5)
GOD always warns before He judges. He is giving you your warning tonight, friend. You will do well to be wiser than Belshazzar. He had his warning, but did not heed it; nevertheless he had it. Had he heeded it, I think it might have ended differently with him, because God, although He does judge, loves mercy. Scripture calls judgment “his strange work” (Isa. 28:21). He loves mercy, He loves blessing. He loves to bless the soul. Do you suppose, friend, that God wants to judge you? No, it is the last thing in His heart; but, if you refuse to be blessed by Him, you must be judged.
Now of all the night scenes in Scripture I think this in the fifth Daniel one of the most suggestive and striking, because it shows the way in which God can step into a scene where man is doing his very best to make himself happy without God, and what the effect of the intrusion is. Here we see Belshazzar doing his best to insult and defy Him. And mark this, my friend, Belshazzar is not the only man who has openly insulted God in the way that this chapter describes. It is a scene of the most daring impiety the eye could possibly rest upon, and when Belshazzar defies God, He as it were rises, and says, We will see who is the greater. Friend, if you are on the road of impiety, sin, carelessness, and opposition to God and His grace, you had better learn the lesson from this chapter, that the man who resists God always gets the worst of it. What God wants is your salvation. He wants your blessing. He desires to bring you into touch with Himself in the day of His grace, for, I repeat, judgment is “his strange work.”
Now look at this scene. “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand” (vs. 1). It must have been a marvelous assembly. The banquet took place in one of the many palaces which adorned the city regarded as the mistress of the earth. Babylon stood on a broad plain, and was exactly square. Its walls ran fifteen miles in each direction, were 300 feet high, 75 feet broad, and pierced by a hundred brazen gates, with lintels and side-posts of brass. The broad river Euphrates divided the city into two parts as it ran through its midst, the river banks being faced with burnt brick, and brazen gates closed the streets which ran at right angles to the river and dipped into the water. Brazen gates, dipping low, also guarded the opening in the walls through which the river glided. Thus defended, Babylon thought herself impregnable. It was a city where all the gaiety, the godlessness, and the luxury that man could possibly surround himself with were gathered together. The king and the inhabitants thought themselves proof against every power, either heavenly or earthly. But they were mistaken, for they had forgotten God, and He had said by one servant, one hundred and fifty years before, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen” (Isa. 21:9); and a hundred years later had predicted the manner of the fall: “One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end” (Jer. 51:31).
Little did Belshazzar the king regard God, or trouble his head with His predictions―on the eve of fulfillment―the day that he “made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.” History says it was an annual feast. Of that I am not certain, but Scripture tells us that it was a feast marked by daring impiety on the part of “Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine.” Many a man has been led to ruin through wine. Whiskey will do quite as well. Many a man, many a woman, has made his, or her bed in hell, if not through wine, through whiskey. Ah, friend! are you a whiskey-lover―a wine-lover? Let Belshazzar warn you. There is no pravity to which the soul will not descend that gets under the influence of strong drink. Its victims worship it, while it damns them. I met a woman a little while ago, in this town, in a stair in College Street, as I passed up to see a sick child. I was led to speak to her about her soul. She listened quietly for a minute or two, and then when I said, “Would you not like to go to heaven?” she nervously said, “Is there any whiskey there?” “No,” I replied, “and there is no water in hell.” She was perfectly sober when she spoke, but it was a revelation as to what governed her. My negative surprised her evidently, and the statement as to hell startled her. Good would it be for every lover of strong drink if it were borne in mind.
“Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father (or grandfather) Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone” (verses 2-4), and they thought they had done bravely, doubtless. But what had they done? I will tell you. Belshazzar had flung down the gauntlet before the eye of God. The bringing into that feast of the golden vessels, which were taken from “the temple of the house of God,” was tantamount to saying to Jehovah: “My gods are better than you. My gods helped the men who took your golden vessels, and brought them here.” That is what he meant. These golden vessels, brought from the house of the Lord, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, were exhibited as trophies of the Babylonian victory over Jehovah’s people, and therefore over Jehovah.
But who was the king of Babylon? What was this Nebuchadnezzar but the whip that the Lord had selected and used to chastise His guilty and law-breaking people Israel? A hundred years before He had said: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so.... Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks” (Isa. 10:5, 6, 7, 12): God raised up Nebuchadnezzar for that purpose. He was the head of gold in the remarkable figure which you read of in the second chapter of this Book of Daniel, and God used him to punish His chosen earthly people, who had departed from Him. All men wondered when they learned that Jehovah had allowed His temple to be razed to the ground, and His holy vessels to be carried to Babylon.
The lesson to be learned from this is, that God will never be a party to hypocrisy, nor will He maintain His people in a false condition. He knows how to take care of His own glory, even though His people utterly fail, so He allows the vessels of His earthly sanctuary to be carried into captivity; but when Belshazzar, intoxicated with wine, flaunts in the face of Jehovah these trophies of victory, as a sort of indication that the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone, were those who had helped in the victories, and won these trophies, and thus, you see, insulted God to His very face, then God takes up the gauntlet.
Ah, my careless, worldly, sin-loving friend, you may not defy God in the same way perhaps as Belshazzar. You may not be running full tilt against God in exactly the same way as this impious king did, but are you not following dangerously in his track?
Without doubt the wine had begun to circulate, and had inflamed Belshazzar’s mind ere he gave the order that wrought his ruin. “They that be drunken, are drunken in the night,” we are told (1 Thess. 5:7), and that this was a night scene is unmistakable from the statement that “in the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote”; and also that “in that night was Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans slain” (verses 5, 30). In the middle of the festivity, when all is gay and bright, and hilarity and impiety are at their height, all of a sudden God steps in. Now everyone knows the utter collapse of everything worldly when God comes in. Bring the Lord into a scene of worldliness and what is the effect? He spoils it. Solemn thought! It is the effect of sin, and the answer of conscience regarding God as an intruder. How does He intrude here? “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.” It was only part of a hand, but the king saw it. The light of the candlestick shone on it, the eye of the impious monarch was arrested by it, and in a moment that man’s conscience awoke with the sense, The eye of God is upon me. Do not forget, my friends, that God has His eye upon you too.
Belshazzar recognizes the hand of God as he sees those fingers writing his doom on the plaster of his own palace. What is the result? “The king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another” (vet. 6). He is frightened. His conscience is reached. It is a blessed thing when a man’s conscience gets divinely reached. Has your conscience ever been reached? Come, friend, now frankly and honestly own, has your conscience ever been totaled? And have you ever been convicted of you sins against God? Oh, you say, we are all poor sinners. I do not call you a poor sinner. God calls you a guilty sinner. Possibly you are a hardened sinner, even an impious, sacrilegious sinner. Oh, but you say, I have not sinned like Belshazzar. Are you sure of that? Belshazzar made light of the Lord. So have you, my friend, and your guilt is great, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” Scripture says.
You may not have been mixed up in a scene of revelry and devilry as manifestly as Belshazzar and his guests were, but “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man” (Prov. 27:19). The devil was the spirit that ruled that feast. They were all pleasing themselves, but the devil was behind them all. You have been pleasing yourself, and the devil has been working behind us all, for Satan is the god of this world. Are you aware how Satan has ruled you, governed you? The man who does his own will is in the service of Satan. The man who does his own will is but the property and the slave of Satan. Therefore our Lord said, “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace” (Luke 11:21). The strong man is the devil; his armor “the pleasures of sin”; his palace the world; and his goods sinners in their sins. Possibly you do not believe that. I do. Of course the devil will not let you believe this solemn fact if he can help it. He keeps his goods in peace―false peace―till it be too late to get God’s peace. Belshazzar pleased himself, and so have you. So did I until Christ met and saved me. That is what He wants to do for you. Will you let Him?
The king saw the part of the hand, and his conscience, although seared by depravity, was reached, for the moment. What was written on the plaster, was perfectly plain, since it was written in Chaldee characters, but the king nevertheless did not understand the import. Blinded by the god of this world, whose utter slave he was―as is every man till God illuminates his heart―writing in his own language failed to convey to his mind any definite sense of what was meant, though he trembled before the hand that wrote his doom. He felt instinctively that One whom he had impiously defied had him in hand.
God was giving Belshazzar his warning ere He judged him. He does the same now, in the day of His grace, ere judgment arrives. He is on the pathway of blessing now, in the gospel, and is saving, not judging. His blessed Son has lived on earth, accomplished redemption, and gone up into glory; and the Holy Ghost has come down to tell the tale that God is now seeking to bring men to believe in, receive, and exalt Him. That is what God is doing now. Judgment is not His work at this moment. He warns men that He may awaken and save them.
I believe God is giving you your warning just now. I wish I saw your “countenance change.” I have often seen such a change in a meeting like this; many a careless, worldly, sin-loving man has come into a meeting like this, and the arrow of conviction has entered his conscience, and he has learned he is a sinner on the road to hell, and his countenance has changed. The night I was converted―and I am not ashamed to admit it―my countenance changed so much that a lady labeled me as a man of five-and-forty, when I was not half that age. Why? Because I looked serious; and thank God, I felt it. I was a convicted sinner― an awakened man―an anxious soul―a man in the travail of the new birth. I saw I was a man hurrying on the road to hell, and that if God cast me into hell, it would be a perfectly righteous action. God grant that you, young man, and you, young woman, may have your “countenance changed” and your thoughts troubled. I should like to see it. Think of the lost opportunities of your life; look at the whole period of guilt and sin in your history of rebellion against God.
Little wonder that Belshazzar’s “thoughts troubled him.” In a moment the past came up, with its memories of godlessness; the future loomed darkly before him. The eye and hand of God were on him, and he knew it, and “the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.” He was profoundly moved deeply alarmed, and thoroughly wretched, for the moment. Have you ever in your history passed through an experience of this kind, when your countenance changed, your thoughts troubled you and your knees knocked one against the other? Yes, God was speaking to Belshazzar then, and HE is speaking to you tonight. I am certain He is speaking the voice of warning to you, my friend, and your eternal destiny may hang on this night’s meeting.
So alarmed was Belshazzar, that, forgetful of kingly dignity, in his anxiety to understand the writing, he “cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers” (vs. 7). There were plenty of them in Babylon, so they were brought in. “And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.” Why the third ruler? Because Belshazzar was the second ruler. His father was in reality the king, but he was not in Babylon at that moment, and Belshazzar was in joint kingship with him.
The king got no help from his wise men. “Then came in all the king’s wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof” (vs. 8). A spirit of deep sleep was on them; every eye seemed closed to the truth, and the offer of the highest reward produced no effect. “Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonished” (vs. 9). Tremendous was the effect made upon this godless man. We rejoice when sinners are impressed, aroused, troubled, and yet more deeply troubled. The devil, however, is always keen and anxious to get these impressions removed, and in the case before us, I do not think the effect was long-lasting., It is fear, not of God, but of the consequences of sin, that sometimes affects men in this way―fear produced on a death-bed―pure fear of hell, and damnation.
But, you say, some men turn to the Lord on their death-bed. I do not deny it. But who gives you the assurance that after you have spent your life in the service of sin, and after you have lived only for this world, to the utter neglect of eternity, that you will be able to turn to the Lord at the twelfth hour, and have all settled up? Take warning, Belshazzar died that night, and you may die this night.
At this juncture, in the midst of the still increasing alarm of the king, and the bewilderment of his lords, a friend comes into the banqueting-hall in the person of the queen (the queen-mother most probably, see verses 2 and 10). She had evidently taken no part in the feast, but “by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet-house.” Clearly she kept aloof from this scene of sacrilege and devilry. She was outside it, and there was one more outside than herself, the man of whom she can now speak. She comes and says to the king in verse 10, “O king, live forever.” What a delusive wish! Poor man, he died that night. And you, my friend, may not have many hours before you. Death, that terrible archer, has his arrow fitted to the bow tonight, and ere the morning that arrow may have sped its way, found a target in thy heart, and the morning light may find thee gone. W. T. P. W.
(To be continued.)