THE king’s great feast was spread, and his thousand guests were arriving, taking their places in the long banqueting hall; but, just when the heart of each one is lifted up within as the wine flows freely, suddenly the flushed cheek of the king is seen to grow pale; his thoughts trouble him, and the joints of his knees are loosed, and smite one against another.
What is the meaning of his strange actions? Has grim death, with his icy grip, laid his hand upon him? Is he seized with some disease or a fit?
Every eye is turned for a solution of the problem. Hark! he cries aloud; his countenance is changed; his gaze is fixed. There, opposite the king’s candlestick, in the blaze of the light, appears a man’s hand in all its mystery, yet clearness. It writes upon the plaster of the wall certain wondrous words. This could be no work of the astrologers or soothsayers of Babylon—no magician’s cunning or magic craft. It was plain, above board, and distinct.
One of those five words that hand wrote upon the palace wall, was, “Tekel,” which Daniel interprets to mean, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
Who had dated to put Belshazzar in the scales? What lord had fixed the weights? or whose fingers had carefully adjusted, and whose hand had held, those balances? His nobles declared him monarch of the world. All envied this great man of the earth, and princes fell before him. Who, then, judged Bel-shazzar?
The One whom he least regarded. He had lived in forgetfulness of Him, even the King of kings.
He had placed the king of Babylon in the scales, and the Lord of lords had fixed the weights. The judgment was given, “Thou art found wanting—thou art not up to weight—thou hast come short.”
How different are the thoughts of God from the thoughts of man. The wisdom of the wise men would have judged very differently from the wisdom of God. But a higher court than that of Babylon, and a Supreme Judge had passed His verdict: “Thou art found wanting.”
But now, dear young friends, what about yourselves? You are neither kings nor queens, nor even men or women; some of you are very young, but have these balances anything to do with you? Yes, indeed, they have. God knows all about you; you cannot get away from Him.
What the Lord God did with the great Belshazzar two or three thousand years ago, He has done with you. He has weighed you. He has poised you in His hand, and found that you do not come up to weight. With you in one side of the balance, and His first commandment in the counter scale, up you go as a light weight, for He has not seen your whole soul set upon Himself alone. Weight after weight is thrown in, till all the ten have only proved surely the same solemn truth, that you are only to be cast out as wholly unprofitable. If you had stood at the bar of your companions, their judgment of you would have been widely at variance.
It may be you are beloved, both in the family and the social circle, but an unseen eye has scrutinized you through and through, you have utterly and continually come short; so that with absolutely nothing to bring to God, you are cast, as a helplessly lost one, upon the mercy of God. But with God there is mercy. He has made a great provision for you. God weighed Christ as a man, and there was nothing found wanting in Him. He went much beyond that; He greatly glorified God in His whole life, and then He, the only spotless One, gave Himself a ransom for sinners, and now God declares that all who believe in Him are complete in, Him, and even accepted in that perfect, risen Christ.
“There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23).
ML-07/11/1920