The Writing on the Wall

We continue our studies in Daniel as we turn to chapter 5. I invite you to follow along as I read once again just part of this chapter. These chapters are long, and, of course, as I’ve said each time, I’m anticipating that at least some of us are reading ahead.

Daniel 5:1:

“King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.

“Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

“Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. The king called loudly to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers. The king declared to the wise men of Babylon, ‘Whoever reads this writing, and shows me its interpretation, shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around his neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.’ Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed, and his color changed, and his lords were perplexed.”

And then the queen comes in and instructs him to seek out Daniel, who then in turn comes and gives to him the interpretation of the scene that had been depicted before him on the wall of the palace. And he, in the course of that, recounts what had happened to Nebuchadnezzar. And in verse 22 he says:

“‘And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.’

“‘Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, … Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.’

“Then Belshazzar gave the command, and Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

“That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.”

Amen. May God bless to us the reading from his Word.

Let’s pray together, shall we?

Father, you know the end from the beginning. You are the one who watches over our going out and our coming in.[1] You set up kings and you bring them down.[2] And you are the one who speaks to us life-changingly through your Word, by the Holy Spirit. It is for this we long as we turn to the pages of the Bible now. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, as we come to chapter 5, let me take just a moment to say a couple of things, by way of introduction, concerning chronology and terminology.

God is in charge of the whole universe, and you can trust him.

If you come at these chapters failing to realize the purpose of the author—namely, to say again and again and again essentially the same thing: that God is in charge of the whole universe and you can trust him—and you begin to look for a way in which you can establish a strict chronology through it, then you will inevitably be disappointed. For example, between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, there is probably a gap of some thirty years. And it is clear that the author is choosing to take in one chapter the life of this particular king in order, once again, to encourage those who are the readers about the fact that while man builds his proud empires, that God in a moment is able to destroy them and put someone else in that person’s place. And that is, of course, the story here in chapter 5: of the judgment of God that falls on Belshazzar—a judgment that is swift, that is sudden, and that is absolutely secure.

In terminology, I want you just to be alert to the fact that father, the word father, as it is used here is often not used in ancient Near East and in the Bible, again, in strict terms (i.e., “my father”; “I had a father, John, and he was my father”), but in terms of the fact of “my father Abraham”: “I am one of Abraham’s children, by grace, through faith—and so are you.” What we mean by that is not that Abraham is our literal father but that he is our predecessor, that he is our ancestor. And in actual fact, Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, and he served, it would seem, in a kind of coregent position along with Nabonidus. But he is referred to here in relationship to Nebuchadnezzar, and purposefully so. I take it also that the queen, whom we will meet, is actually the queen mother. I can say more about that later on. But that by way of introduction, let’s get immediately to the text.

“The King Does His Thing”

In these opening verses, my heading was simply “The King Does His Thing.” “The King Does His Thing.” I know that’s a bit of a colloquialism now. My first title was “It’s My Party, and I’ll Drink If I Want To.” But I cleaned it up for… Well, I didn’t, actually, now I mentioned it to you. But there you have it: “The King Does His Thing.”

It may remind you of the banquet scene at the beginning of Esther, you’ll remember, where the wine flows and Xerxes and his colleagues lose the plot pretty quickly.[3] Once again, that picture is here—not as expressive in the record, but nevertheless, you will notice that it speaks of opulence, of extravagance, of a lack of sobriety, certainly a lack of decency, and the whole thing unfolds with no regard for the Most High God—the Most High God, whose attendees at the banquet are breathing as a result of his permission. The psalmist says in Psalm 10: “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek [the Lord]; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’”[4]

And what we find here, as Belshazzar has this great feast, is that he is essentially showing off. You will notice it says in verse 1 that he “drank wine in front of the thousand.” He was in the position of prominence, and he was making a great display. And in the course of that, as the wine begins to take hold, he suggests that they send to the temple treasury and bring the vessels of gold and silver—which, as we’ve already seen, were emblems of both the power and presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and bring them out of where they have been stored (there were some 5,400 of them, Ezra tells us in the opening chapter of Ezra),[5] in order that they might make use of them. And that is exactly what they do. It’s some seventy years since the exiles had been torn from their home in Jerusalem and brought into Babylon, and this material has been there under the jurisdiction, as it were, of these Babylonian kings.

And now this final Babylonian king takes it, if you like, up a notch. And you will notice we’re told in verse 3 that “they brought in the golden vessels,” and the author is making the point of them having “been taken out of the temple … in Jerusalem.” And they have been then drunk from by “the king and his lords, [and] his wives, and his concubines,” and then, even worse still, they have now used them to toast the gods that cannot see or cannot hear or cannot speak.[6] So, it is an amazing expression first of pride, and then of sacrilege, and then of idolatry.

And what we really have the record of is of Belshazzar leading the people under his care in proclaiming, “Hey, this is what we think of your God. This is how we treat your God. These little things that we brought here, the gold and the silver, they’re nothing to us, because he is nothing to us. And so we will use the very symbols of his power to toast our own Babylonian gods—the moon god, and the sun god, and Marduk, and all the others that we have in our grouping.”

Not a lot has changed, loved ones, as people get together for their proud parties and boast of their achievements, not realizing that the God who made them is the God who holds their breath in his hands.

“The King’s Color Changed”

So, “The King Does His Thing.” And then, secondly, “The King’s Color Changed.” “The King’s Color Changed.” That’s verse 6. Because “those who walk in pride [God] is able to humble.”[7] And that’s what he’s doing now. And “the fingers of a human hand,” we read in verse 5, began to write on the plaster of the wall, beside the lampstand, and suddenly, the ominous nature of what is taking place knocks the proud king off his perch.

And he is described here in verse 6 as a real basket case. There’s a physiological response to what has happened. His color has changed. Psychologically, he is destabilized; his head is gone. And “his limbs [have given] way, and his knees [knock] together.” Actually, the literal translation of one of these phrases is “The joints of his loins were [loosened].”[8] I’m not going to go into the details of that. You’re a bright group. But it was not a particularly striking pose that he now offered to the thousand whom he was in front of. One minute, he’s the great king: “Bring the vessels! Let’s toast the gods!” And the next minute, he is a quivering mass of humanity.

The closest I could come to this—and I don’t mean to use this is in an incorrect way at all—was my recollection of the banquet in Tokyo, in 1992, for our then president—George, president forty-one—who, you will remember, began to fade from view at the table and then disappeared under the table, only to have Barbara come and mop him up, and his Secret Service put him back together again. It was a dreadful thing. It was very humiliating. On that occasion, that was on account of sushi. On this occasion, it is on account of sin. There’s a huge difference. A huge difference.

And so, Belshazzar does what we’ve now anticipated will happen: he begins to call out. He calls “loudly,” verse 7, for these same people again. It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? You would think that after all this time, these kings, having learned from their forebears, would have come up with a different plan. “Who you going to call,” you know? They call Ghostbusters every single time. And now he is confronted by the circumstances. He says, “If you fellows can pull this off, you get a new outfit, you get new jewelry, you’ll be the third ruler in the kingdom,” and so on. But verse 8: “[And] all the king’s wise men came in, but they could[n’t] read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then [the King] was greatly alarmed.” Once again, “his color changed.” It would appear that the blood is draining from him. “And his lords,” in turn, “were perplexed.”

“Well,” you say, “well, how stupid these people were, six hundred years BC! You don’t find that kind of thing happening today, do you?” Yes, of course you do. Man in his folly turns again and again to the wisdom of fools. It doesn’t sound very nice. I know, when you say it to your friends, they don’t like to hear that, because it is an offense to their intellects. But it is exactly what Paul says when he goes into Corinth—Corinth, a proud and effective city, with great leadership and so on, all kinds of architectural, spectacular buildings and everything else. And he calls out, he says,

Where[’s] the one who is wise? Where[’s] the scribe? Where[’s] the debater of this age? Has[n’t] God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.[9]

Man is destabilized by his circumstances when he is confronted by his own finitude, by his own frailty—when somehow or another, the hand writes on the wall, whatever that may be—and he reaches out again and again to the same places he went before, only to discover that that treasury is completely empty. The hymn writer put it, remember, “I tried”—picking up from the prophecies of the Old Testament—“I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but, ah, the waters failed.”[10] “I kept going back to the same broken place”—which is exactly what he does.

There is ultimately no intellectual road to God.

Now, you don’t take your brains out in order to come to an understanding of God’s revelation in Jesus, but there is ultimately no intellectual road to God. If you’re waiting to analyze yourself into the kingdom, you’re on a dead-end street. No, he has chosen “through the folly of what we preach…” “The [message] of the cross is [foolishness] to those who are perishing.”[11] The natural response of man, it says, “That is stupid. That doesn’t make sense. That offends against my intellect. That offends against my pride. You’re telling me that I can’t fix myself.” Well, I’m not, but that’s what it’s saying. “You’re telling me that I can’t get there through my intellect.” Well, I’m not, but that’s what it’s saying. “And you’re saying that first I need to bow my knee before this creator God.” Yes! And anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists “and that he is [the] rewarder of [those who] diligently seek him.”[12]

Well, even big kings need to listen to their mom. And so, in verse 10, the king listens to the queen. I take it that she’s the mother because the queens and the concubines were already in the banqueting hall. It’s not a main or a plain thing, so don’t write to me on it, but I’m assuming that this is the case. You remember Esther had a dreadful time trying to get in to see Xerxes, because her way was barred by the soldiers with the axes. You don’t just go in and talk to the king, if you’re his queen—unless, of course, you’re his mom, and your mom can get away with all kinds of things. And it appears that she does here. She makes a good start: “O king, live forever!” That’s nice. And, “Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change.” To which he might have said, “That’s easy for you to say!”

Essentially, she goes in and she says, “Hey, Belshazzar, get ahold of yourself! Get ahold of yourself!” Now, he needed to get ahold of himself on multiple fronts. “There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods.” I love that! “There is a man in your kingdom…” And when Daniel is described here, if you pay attention later on—you can follow up—and you see that he’s described in terms of “light,” “understanding,” “wisdom,” “an excellent spirit,” “knowledge,” and the ability to “solve problems.” In other words, he is described in messianic terminology. If you read the beginning of Isaiah chapter 11, the portrait that is given of the Messiah who is to come is a Messiah who is described virtually in these same terms.[13] So when it says that “the spirit of the … gods”—which is the pagan explanation for it—is upon this man, that there was something about this man, the thing that was about him was God who was about him. The Spirit of God rested upon him, and it was a spirit of wisdom and of understanding.

And that’s why when you read the Old Testament, you ought to have the sensation again and again that it’s pushing you forward. It’s pushing you forward to, finally, to the Lord Jesus Christ—that the Old Testament, as some of the Puritan writers put it, are the swaddling bands, as it were, that contain the Lord Jesus. You remember, they wrapped him in swaddling bands, and they laid him in a manger.[14] So the Old Testament are the swaddling bands, presenting to us the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when I stopped for a moment and I was thinking about that phrase, “There is a man”—“There is a man”—I immediately went in my mind to the statement of that lady, “Come, see a man.”[15] Remember? “Come, see a man.” She said, “I want you to come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. I want you to come and see a man who knows me inside and outside. I want you to come and meet a man who is full of light and of understanding and who has explained my life to me and has explained something of himself to me.” Of course, she was the woman at the well, who had been going back to the same well for the same answer and never getting it. She’d been married four times, and she had a live-in lover. She was looking for satisfaction, presumably, in all the same places and never, ever coming up with it. And in fact, in the dialogue, when you read it in John chapter 4, and Jesus says certain things to her, and she says, “Well, let’s just say that when the Messiah comes, he’ll take care of all of this”—and then Jesus says, “I got news for you: I am the Messiah.”[16]

Can I say to you that there is a man in this kingdom to whom you may go? There is a man who has come down into time—namely, Jesus—who is wisdom and might and forgiveness and peace and hope and contentment. And in this man there is the answer to the longing of your heart. It is not in a religion. It is not even in a religious expression. It is ultimately in a person. And Daniel is set forward here by the queen mother as the one who foreshadows he in whom all the answers are to be found.

So, the king—verse 13—presumably says, “Okay, Mom, we’ll give it a try.” And in verse 13, Daniel is “brought in.” Now, bear in mind, seventy years have elapsed since these vessels and these boys were torn away from Jerusalem. So Daniel is at least in his late eighties, still going strong. Still going strong.

And in the dialogue that ensues, once again, this king is not particularly nice. He’s still stuck on himself. I find it remarkable that given the fact that his loins have been loosed, he can still approach Daniel with such arrogance. It is once again a picture of the pathetic nature of man. Soiled by his own arrogant perspective on life, he then confronts the man who has the answer to his questions, and he treats the man as if he were a captive. He treats Daniel as if Daniel was just a prisoner—as if somehow or another that his power and his majesty was greater than that which this prophet represented.

It happens all the time. It may not happen to you. In pastoral ministry, it happens when you’re with successful people in different environments. They’ll often just dismiss you as the poor little pastor, the poor little fellow: “Obviously, he must have banged his head somehow or another. He fell out of his bed and bumped his head. Otherwise, he would have a proper job, and he would have a proper place to go, and he would have something worthwhile to say about himself. He’s just got that same old stuff, again and again. Who would ever listen?”

Well, look at how he approaches him: “So, you are that Daniel.” “What do you mean, ‘that Daniel’? I am Daniel.” “So you are that Daniel, one of the exiles of Judah, whom the king my father brought from Judah.” In other words, “So, you’re just a captive slave? That’s who I’ve brought in here? I’ve heard about you. Apparently, you have some kind of gift for giving interpretations, solving problems. Well, I’ve had my wise men in, and they’ve done nothing at all. I’ve offered them these things, and I could offer the same thing to you. Now if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation…”

Well, then the king is confronted by the truth: “Then Daniel answered and said before the king…” “Let me say a number of things immediately. Number one, you can keep the outfit. Number two, I’ve got all the gold chains that I ever could want. And number three, a little history would help you, Belshazzar, if you just thought for a moment or two.” And then he provides him with a history.

In the telling of the story, this is… What do you call it in creative writing? I can’t think of the word right now. But what he’s doing is he’s slowing the thing up, before he gets to the punchline, by rehearsing—the drama of it is increased by the retardation. That’s what it is. He’s retarding the progress of the drama. He could have gone immediately to “Mene, Mene, Tekel, … Parsin.” He could have gone straight there. But he doesn’t go there. He says, “Listen, let’s think about things for a moment. God set up your father, Nebuchadnezzar.” That’s verse 18. “The Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar, your father, his kingship, his greatness, his glory, and his majesty. If he hadn’t done that, Nebuchadnezzar wouldn’t have been worth a button. He couldn’t have done a thing! God gave it. God set him up.” Verse 20: “And God brought him down. He brought him down when his heart was lifted up, when his spirit was hardened, when he dealt proudly; he was brought down from his kingly throne.” You would expect that Belshazzar, by now, is putting two and two together and going, “You mean like I’ve just been brought down from my kingly throne? Like what has just happened to me here, with the writing on the wall?” You presume he just listens away, and the judgment comes.

Now, the use of “you” and “your” is purposeful here as Daniel drives home the implications: “And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And these vessels have been brought in before you, and you have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver, and you have not given honor to the God in whose hand is your breath and whose are all your ways.” In other words, he says, “You have been guilty of pride, you’ve been guilty of sacrilege, you’ve been guilty of idolatry, and you have chosen not to honor God.” And here’s the kicker, and I want you to notice this: “Even though you knew.” Verse 22: “And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this.” “You knew this.” In other words, “You can’t plead ignorance.”

Do you know that’s what the Bible says about all of us, as we stand as sinners before God—that none of us will be able to plead ignorance? We can’t plead ignorance. Once again, it is offensive to the mind of man, but it is the truth of God’s Word.

Paul confronts the Corinthians when he begins with the folly of man’s wisdom.[17] And he confronts the Roman church, when he writes to it, with the absolute folly of man exchanging the glory that is God’s for a glory that is part of his creation. Can I read it to you? Will you listen carefully? The thought is “Even though you knew.” “Even though you knew.” Here’s Paul: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”[18] “By their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

You see, Belshazzar’s view of reality was messed up before he started drinking. It’s not that he started drinking and his view of reality got skewed. His view of reality was wrong, and he drank on the back of his messed-up reality. Our view of the world, because we’re sinful, is wrong. And God has revealed himself. He has made it plain. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” Shown what? “His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power[, his] divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”[19] In other words, atheism is a choice. It is a rebellion against God. “The fool [has said] in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”[20] And God has made himself unmistakably clear in his world and in the oughtness that is part and parcel of a moral being in our conscience. That’s why we say, “Oh, I don’t think I should do this,” or “We ought to do this.” From whence cometh this? From the very fact that we are made in the image of God, in all of the moral consequences of that.

So, he says, “Ever since the creation of the world, these things have been made known.” Here we go: “So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did[n’t] honor him as God [nor] give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [And] claiming to be wise, they became fools.” And then what did they do? Well, they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”[21]

That’s exactly what they were doing! “We don’t care about your God, your Most High God. We have all our little creeping, crawling gods. We like these gods, because they do our bidding. They do what we want them to do. We can keep them or change them just whatever we want! But we don’t want any news about a God who made us and before whom we are responsible and to whom we are accountable. Give me a god that’s an accessible god, an easy god, an absorbable god, you know?” It’s a very contemporary perspective.

And what happened? Well, when they claim “to be wise, they became fools.” They “exchanged the glory.” So what did God do? He

gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! …

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.[22]

And it is in that context that you then have the issue of lesbianism and homosexuality addressed. Whether you like it or not, that is exactly what God says: “I made you, and I made you expressly for this. You now have turned your fist against me, and you’re going your own way. Don’t ever come to me and say that you can excuse it on the basis of ignorance, because you can’t.” And that is the very point that is being made here by Daniel before Belshazzar: “Even though you knew this, you still did it.”

I don’t know about Belshazzar. Perhaps he had figured in the notion that God gave Nebuchadnezzar twelve months from the time that the interpretation of the dream was conveyed to the execution of the judgment that was represented in the dream.[23] You remember that from last time? We said, “How merciful of God to give him twelve months to clean up his act.” Maybe Belshazzar says, “Well, he got it. I’ll probably get it.” Don’t ever imagine that! Don’t ever play that game! If you know in your heart that God is speaking to you, calling you to repentance and faith, don’t play the Uncle Bill story: “Well, my Uncle Bill, you know, he waited till just a couple of days before he died, and he got off all right.” Number one, you don’t know about your Uncle Bill, and number two, you only know about you right now, which is: there is no guarantee that you’ll eat your lunch, because this is the only moment you have. That’s why the Bible always says, “It’s today.” And that’s why the execution of God’s judgment in this chapter is so salutary. “Immediately,” verse 5, there was the fingers of the hand of a man. Verse 30: “[And] that very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed.”

Remember the story of the rich fool? “Tonight your soul will be required of you. And who then will get the things that you have laid up for yourself?”[24] Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Businessman!

Spending counterfeit incentive,
Wasting precious time and health,
Placing value on the worthless,
Disregarding priceless wealth.
You can wheel and deal the best of them
And steal it from the rest of them.
You know the score, their ethics are a bore.[25]

But let me tell you, you better take care of the real business, Mr. Businessman, which is the fact that you have an unending soul and that you have an appointment with the Most High God.

Belshazzar, true to his promise, gave Daniel the clobber. It’s quite remarkable that verse 29 is in here! Credit where credit is due. He’s about to die, and he says, “I promised you you’d get a new outfit, you’d get a gold chain, and you’ll be the third ruler in the kingdom.” And after that, “the Chaldean king was killed.”

You see, there’s a backdrop to this, and that is that all the time that he’s got this banquet going, the Medo-Persian soldiers are working their way into the city of Babylon. Xenophon, one of the ancient historians, records the fact that the soldiers dammed up a portion of the Euphrates River, part of which ran underneath the walls of Babylon. And they dammed it in such a way that they created a marshy area that made it possible for them to walk through without being up to their necks.[26] And so while he is proudly proclaiming that he’s in charge of everything, his demise is being prepared underneath the city walls. And they worked their way under the walls, into the city, into the palace, and took out the king. “Tonight, tonight, tonight.”

You see, the Bible is never morbid about these things. It’s just very straightforward. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s hardly a day goes by you don’t get something trying to sell you insurance for nothing, you know. On the basis of what? “You’re going to die.” Every day, “You’re going to die. You can get this for $9.95.” What kind of insurance policy do you get for $9.95? Anyway… But the point of it is, you’re going to die. Watch the tournament this afternoon. If you watch any more golf this afternoon, I guarantee you it will be on there: “You’re getting old, and you’re running out of time, you’re running out of money, you’re running out of everything.” And everybody’s like, “Yeah, I’d better do something about that!” Well, the Bible actually says you’re running out of time to turn to Christ. And it is only when you find in the love of God the Father the beautiful provision of his Son.

We don’t have time; our time is gone. But, I mean, you think about that finger thing. You know, when the plagues of Egypt were executed, and the gnats came, and Pharaoh tried to get his enchanters, again, to do the gnats, they couldn’t pull it off! And they came to Pharaoh and said, “This is nothing other than the finger of God.”[27] Later on in Exodus, when the tablets are given with the Ten Commandments on them, they are inscribed by “the finger of God.”[28] When the psalmist sits out on his balcony at night and looks up at the sky, he says, “When I [consider] your heavens, the work of your fingers, [and] the moon…”[29] Of course, God doesn’t have fingers. That’s an anthropomorphism. But Jesus steps forward and he says, “The time is fulfilled, … the kingdom of God is [now] at hand.”[30] And he is casting out demons, and is healing the sick, and what does he say? He says, “If it is by the finger of God that I do these things, it is because the kingdom of God is among you.”[31]

And that’s why, when we think about all of our proud assertions and we realize how arrogant we are (not dissimilar to Belshazzar), it is a mystery that God would love us so much to send his only begotten Son,[32] so that whoever would turn to him in repentance and faith may find in him the answer that we so desperately require.

Well, I leave you to study further on your own.

Father, thank you that “your word is … fixed in the heavens.”[33] Help us, Lord, not to do a disservice to it in the way we approach it. Help us to understand its message. Help us to believe in Jesus. I pray for those who are on the knife-edge of these things, who Sunday by Sunday just delay again and again, that you will bring them such a sense of clarity that they might turn to you in childlike faith and believing trust, resting in the immensity of your love. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] See Psalm 121:8.

[2] See Daniel 2:21.

[3] See Esther 1:1–9.

[4] Psalm 10:4 (ESV).

[5] See Ezra 1:11.

[6] See Psalm 115:5.

[7] Daniel 4:37 (ESV).

[8] Daniel 5:6 (KJV).

[9] 1 Corinthians 1:20–21 (ESV).

[10] Attributed to Emma F. Bevan, “None but Christ.”

[11] 1 Corinthians 1:18 (ESV).

[12] Hebrews 11:6 (KJV).

[13] See Isaiah 11:2.

[14] See Luke 2:7.

[15] John 4:29 (ESV).

[16] John 4:25–26 (paraphrased).

[17] See 1 Corinthians 1:21.

[18] Romans 1:18 (ESV).

[19] Romans 1:19–20 (ESV).

[20] Psalm 14:1; 53:1 (ESV).

[21] Romans 1:20–23 (ESV).

[22] Romans 1:24–26 (ESV).

[23] See Daniel 4:29.

[24] Luke 12:20 (paraphrased).

[25] Ray Stevens, “Mr. Businessman” (1968).

[26] Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5.15–16.

[27] Exodus 8:19 (paraphrased).

[28] Exodus 31:18 (ESV).

[29] Psalm 8:3 (ESV).

[30] Mark 1:15 (ESV).

[31] Luke 11:20 (paraphrased).

[32] See John 3:16.

[33] Psalm 119:89 (ESV).