Daniel (Week 5) - You Have Been Weighed

Chapter 5 of Daniel, verses 22, through the end of that chapter.

But you, his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself,

though you knew all this. Instead, you've set yourself up

against the Lord of Heaven. You had the goblets from his

temple brought to you. You and your nobles, your wives,

your concubines, drank wine from them.

You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, ironwood,

stone, which could not see or hear or understand.

But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life

and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that

wrote the inscription. This is the inscription that was

written. Mayne.

Mayne Tikal Farsen. This is what those words mean.

Mayne, God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to

an end. To Cal, You have been weighed on

the scales and found wanting. Ferris, your Kingdom is divided

and given to the Medes and Persians.

Then, at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a

gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the

third highest ruler in the Kingdom.

That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was

slain, and Darius the Mede took over the Kingdom at age 62.

I learned a new phrase this week which goes to fiddle while Rome

burns. It comes from an old story that

while the city of Rome was burning in AD 64, Emperor Nero

was supposedly off somewhere playing music.

Now, historically, Nero wasn't playing a fiddle, but you, you

get the point. The phrase stuck.

And so to fiddle while Rome burns means everything around

you is coming to an end. But instead of facing it, you

distract yourself or entertain yourself.

You keep the party going. And apparently this isn't

something that just like Roman emperors would do.

As a matter of fact, in the year 2002, some of you remember it,

one of the largest companies in America, Worldcom, was

collapsing. Investigators discovered

billions of dollars in fraudulent spending and

accounting, and the stock absolutely collapsed.

Thousands of jobs were in jeopardy.

And on July 21st, Worldcom filed for what was then the largest

bankruptcy in American history. Imagine that, the largest

bankruptcy in history. And yet check this out.

Less than two weeks later, somebody apparently looked at

that situation and thought, you know what would improve morale

right now? A booze cruise.

So about 75 Worldcom salespeople were scheduled to board a luxury

yacht for an evening of unlimited food and drinks.

OK, so check this. The company's bankrupt.

The ship is sinking, and they're literally getting on another

ship to party it up. OK, you can't write this stuff

now. There's something very human

about this type of story, because when bad news gets

closer, humanity tries to drown it out with music, do we not?

When we don't want to think about where our life is going,

we stay busy, or we eat and we drink, or we go out and buy

something, or we take another vacation, chase another

promotion. You get the point.

And what this is, it's a sort of defiant despair.

It's despair because time is running out, but we're defiantly

pushing against it. This is human nature when

confronted with our own mortality.

The truth is, we're all mortals and what our days are all

numbered. Just a light topic for this

morning, right? But for all of us, time is

running out. For some, they fiddle while Rome

burns, right? They believe there's no real

afterlife. So I might as well enjoy it here

today. After all, if this is all there

is, why not enjoy it while we can?

Why not cling to things for significance, like achievements,

our name on a plaque, or the relationships around us or

whatever? And so for us, I want to ask as

we dive in today, how can we live a life of weight, of

substance and significance as we prepare to stand before God one

day? How can we resist living in

defiant despair and avoid just pursuing pleasure and a pain

free life while we can? So today we're in the book of

Daniel. So if you have your physical

Bibles, go ahead and grab that. Now, if you would, we also have

them available somewhere in the back.

We can grab those for you if you like Daniel's in the Old

Testament if you're new to the Bible here right after the book

of Ezekiel. And last week we were in chapter

4, which was a sort of Part 1 and we encourage you to go back

and listen to that if you'd like.

Last week we titled Part 1, the beast talking about

Nebuchadnezzar. This week is Part 2, the feast.

All right, so Daniel chapter 5, verse 1 is where we're going to

Daniel 5:1

be today. Verse one it says this King

Belshazzar gave a great banquet for 1000 of his nobles in drank

wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking

his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver

goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple

in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wife and his

concubines might drink from them.

So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from

the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his

wives and his concubines drank from them.

As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and

silver, of bronze, ironwood and stone.

So Belshazzar's throwing this crazy feast.

He's bringing in goblets. There's wine, there's drink,

there's music. You get the point.

Now, to fully grasp the significance of this moment in

history, we need some much needed historical context.

First of all, who is Belshazzar and where did he come from?

For a long time historians thought this was just like a

made-up character in the Bible, someone that Daniel, whoever the

author, was made-up because he couldn't be found in any sort of

archaeological records of the kings until they eventually

found him. The reason his name wasn't

listed in the list of kings previously is because it was

actually his dad Nabenitis, who was the king of Babylon at the

time. However, Nabenitis spent more of

his time in Arabia flirting with other gods that the Babylonians

didn't really care for, and so it was actually his son

Belshazzar, who is effectively the king ruling Babylon at this

time. OK so Belshazzar is like a Co

region. Does that make sense?

He's acting as the king of Babylon while his dad is away.

What's remarkable about this biblical account is that we know

almost the exact night that this party happened.

This is very rare in the biblical text.

We know almost to the date the exact night that it happened.

That is, that the night of this feast was at the same time that

the great Babylon would fall to the Persian Empire.

It would fall under Cyrus on October 12th, 539 BC, so long

before Jesus, 539 BC. What had happened is a couple

days earlier, before this night, Cyrus the Persian had defeated

Nebenitis and the and the Babylonian army at a city called

Sapar. So this is only about 60 miles

away from where Belcazar's party is, only 60 miles away.

The Babylonian army had just been wiped out.

Nabenitis had fled the scene. Dad is nowhere to be found.

And so at the time of Daniel 5, the chapter we're reading today,

check this out, the Persians are literally at the gates of the

city of Babylon. That's the context here.

Babylon is defenseless. The armies are gone.

There's no way to defend themselves.

And what does King Belshazzar do?

He says, let's throw a party, right?

This actually has historical backing as well.

Outside of the Bible, historian Herodotus and other Chronicles

confirm that the night Babylon was taken they were engaging in

weed and drinking and partying. Isn't that interesting?

So outside of the Bible, it confirms the historicity of

Daniel itself. He gets all the details right.

One more thing, historically, not only does history tell us

the very night that this all happened, but we also know the

exact location, at least we believe we do.

It's in modern day Iraq. I actually got on Google Maps

this week. Here's this next picture.

You can go on Google Maps. You can find this exact

location, that rectangle on the bottom middle, that is actually

the throne room there that you can see.

Next slide. This is what it looks like from

an aerial view. You can see where the throne

room is. I asked my brother and I said,

hey, John, did you get to visit this site when you were in Iraq

in 2003? My brother was on an all

expenses paid trip to Iraq by the Marine Corps.

OK Thank you for your service. Semper Fi OK, but he was over

there. This is his pictures, as you can

see my brother. Next slide, my brother's on the

left with his rifle, and you can see that they'd actually

reconstructed what Babylon would have looked like.

Next slide, you can see this is a better picture of what the

temple could have looked like. This would have been the gate in

there. But the point is, this is an

actual place at an actual time in a precise moment in history.

This is the context of what Daniel 5 is surrounded by.

OK, so we know the date, we know the location, but we're still

left with the question, why would Belshazzar throw a party

knowing his city was defenseless and the enemy would arrive at

any moment? Was it arrogant pride?

Our walls will never fall. Was it to sort of rally and

encourage his leaders? You know, we'll make it through

this if we stick together. Maybe it was just to drown out

his fears and some sort of hedonistic like pleasure party

full of sex and alcohol and music because he's facing

onslaught, right? Maybe it's some combination of

all of those. But the question is, why fiddle

while Rome is burning? Verse 5 Suddenly this is during

the party, Belshazzar's thrown it up.

He's having a blast. It's it's a night of tension.

Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and rode on the

plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace.

The king watched as the watch the hand as it wrote.

Verse 6, His face turned pale and he was so frightened that

his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

By the way, there's a lot of phrases we get from this chapter

like writing on the wall or knees we're knocking.

But what's happening here is supernatural fingers appear in

the middle of this party in that throne room we just looked at

and begins to write on the wall. Menay, Menay, tackle Parsons.

Those are the words. And what we see here is that

translated these words, Menne menne teko Parson, they're

actually units of weight and currency.

So imagine we're here, we're having service together, we're

singing worship. And all of a sudden on the wall,

like way up there, there's like these, this hand appears and it,

and it and it on the wall, it says something like ## oz half

pound. We'd be like, what on earth does

that mean? OK, think about it in terms of

like British currency or UK currency.

So this next slide, think about it in terms of money, like pound

as in a pound of sterling silver ## penny, half pound.

It was not just a weight, but it was also currency, right?

It's not that we wouldn't be able to read it, it's that we

wouldn't be able to understand it.

Now we'll come back to this. And these words have a long

history of translation interpretation.

That's fascinating. I'm not going to get into it and

bore you today, but if you're confused at this point, think

about how Belshazzar must have felt.

He's drunk on power, he's drunk on booze, and all of a sudden, a

glowing finger appears out of nowhere, scratching up the

wallpaper. And So what does he do?

He calls in the experts, the diviners, the magicians.

These are called Chaldeans. And what they're known for is

they're known for being able to read signs like this.

They're able to be able to kind of understand what's going on.

And we do the same thing today, do we not?

Something happens in our culture.

A news story breaks. People get on CNN and Fox News,

and we bring in the politicians, we bring in the doctors, we

bring in the sociologists, the psychiatrists, all the talking

heads, right? And we interview.

I'm trying to make sense of what's going on here and this.

And Belshazzar is doing the same thing.

But just like in Chapter 2, the wise men can't do it.

Human wisdom and man made religion is failing Belshazzar.

And so the queen or the Queen Mother perhaps Belshazzar's mom

has a simple suggestion. She says, hey Belshazzar, don't

worry, I got a guy all right, Daniel 512.

She says call for Daniel and he will tell you what the writing

means. He's your guy.

I've seen what the work he's done with Nebuchadnezzar.

Great work. You can trust him.

So in comes Daniel at this point in the story.

Now keep in mind Daniel is probably about 80 years old at

this time, so quite a leap from where we were.

The chapter before Daniel is old.

He's coming in at this time. And this is what it says in

verse 13. So Daniel was brought before the

king, and the king said to him, Are you Daniel, one of the

Exiles my father the king brought from Judah?

I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that you

might have insight, intelligence, and outstanding

wisdom. These wise men and enchanters

were brought before me to read the writing and tell me what it

means, but they could not explain it.

Now I've heard that you are able to give interpretations and

solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and

tell me what it means, you will be closed in purple and have a

gold chain placed around your neck and you will be made the

third highest ruler in the Kingdom.

Quick note, why the third highest ruler in the Kingdom?

Well again, remember you have Nebonitis, who's the true king?

Belshazzar's underneath him, he's the Co Regent, his son.

And then Daniel would have been the 3rd.

So history, historically, Daniel gets all the details right.

It's pretty fascinating. But notice another thing.

Notice the condescension in Belshazzar's voice towards

Daniel, the disrespect as the king addresses Daniel as an

exile from Judah rather than a royal advisor.

He's treating him like a prisoner, not someone who's like

served in the Royal Court for 65 years.

And this is actually an indication of Belshazzar's

character that we need to pay attention to. 17 Then Daniel

answered the king. You may keep your gifts for

yourself and give your rewards to someone else.

Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell

him what it means. Daniel says, Nah, you can keep

your gifts. You can keep your status to

yourself. I don't want it.

This isn't Daniel, by the way, just being like humble and be

like, Oh no, no, no, I insist. I'm glad to do it.

As we mentioned in Pastor Patrick sermon a few weeks ago,

he takes no credit because it's divine revelation that he's

receiving. It's not his own smarts.

Does that make sense? So he points back up to God

here. He's not going to take payment

for prophesying. In other words, he's not a

prophet for profit. You get it?

I thought that would land a little bit better.

That's OK. 18 verse 18. Your Majesty, the Most High God

gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and

glory and splendor. Because of the high position he

gave him, all the nations and people of every language dreaded

and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to

death, he put to death. Those he wanted to spare, he

spared. Those he wanted to promote, he

promoted. Those he wanted to humble, he

humbled. So what's Daniel doing here?

He's he's recounting the story of Nebuchadnezzar from last

chapter who came before Belshazzar, and he calls him his

father, as in predecessor, not his biological father.

But that would have been Ibaneidis.

What Daniel's doing is he's saying that when God bestows

some of his authority upon a ruler, that ruler has a divine

responsibility to steward it in humility, to steward it for the

flourishing of the people who are underneath him.

And so he continues in verse 20. But when his talking about

Nebuchadnezzar. But when his heart became

arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his

royal throne and stripped of his glory.

He was driven away from the people and given the mind of an

animal. He lived with the wild donkeys

and ate grass like an ox, and his body was drenched with the

dew of heaven until he acknowledged that the Most High

God is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and sets over

them anyone he wishes. So Daniels retelling the story,

God humbled Nebuchadnezzar by deposing him from his high

throne and lowering him to the ground like a wild beast until

until he acknowledged God. That's the key.

What we're able to see is that Belshazzar is now in the same

position, but has a very different response, very

different response. So Daniel's about to drop the

hammer. You ready for it?

Here it is, verse 24. But you, Belshazzar, his son,

have not humbled yourself, though you knew all of this.

Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of Heaven.

You've had goblets from his temple brought to you, and you

and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from

them. You praise the gods of silver

and gold, of bronze, ironwood and stone, which cannot hear or

see or understand. But you did not honour the God

who holds his hand in his hand, your life in all of your ways.

Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

So Daniel gives out his indictment of the King

Belshazzar. You had the knowledge.

You'd been given the warnings, dude, and yet you still refuse

to humble yourself and notice Daniel's line.

He says, though you knew all of this.

So in other words, Belshazzar did not take God's knowledge and

instruction seriously. Parents, do you know that

moment? You know that moment when it's

bedtime and you look at your kids and you say, OK, kids, it's

time to brush your teeth, right? And they look back at you and

they say something like, brush my teeth tonight of all nights.

This is brand new news to me, right?

And so you look at them and you're like, no, no, no, we

literally do this every single night.

We brush our teeth before bed, right?

And they look back at you and they say something like, well,

then let the revolution begin, right?

In a similar way, King Belshazzar knew that God humbles

the proud, and yet he chose to make his defiance stand anyway.

He knew what he was supposed to do, he just didn't want to do

it. And this is such, Oh my

goodness, Church, this is such a practical and sobering reminder

for all of us here today. Right?

Like, after all, we have far more knowledge of God than

Belshazzar did. We know what God requires of us

as Christians. We know what pleases Him.

We know what purposes He has for us.

And so to the Christian here today, real quick, I just want

to ask, do you take the word of God seriously in your life?

In other words, is it authoritative over your life?

Look, in our modern age of, you know, scepticism and jadedness

and mistrust and all of that, it can be really, really easy, even

for believers, really easy to scrutinize the words of

Scripture rather than trusting them.

So Simply put, like, do you actually believe that God knows

better than you, even in the areas where your pride and your

habits are confronted? Do you really believe that God,

God actually knows what he's talking about?

Do you take him at his word? And another question, like, is

there anything maybe God, God has even been nudging you about

recently. Maybe it's something he's been

inviting you to remove out of your life or to be more

proactive about or whatever it is, right?

Like we have the knowledge oftentimes about what God

requires of us. It wasn't just that Belshazzar

had knowledge about the dangers of pride and didn't heed them.

He took it a step further. Even worse than that, he took

the sacred goblets. Here's sort of a picture from

Rembrandt, the sacred goblets of the temple here.

And notice how in this picture, this painting from Rembrandt,

notice the goblet that the the woman's holding.

And he filled them with wine and he's essentially toasting his

own gods from the goblets that came from God's temple in Judah.

This is a deliberate act of defiance, right?

He took check this, he took what was sacred and he was uniting it

with something that was profane, common.

This act of taking sacred items from one nation you conquered

and bringing them into your temple, the temple of your gods,

was like a way of saying our God just dominated your God,

Belshazzar saying our God has the real power.

See, how else could we have captured these precious goblets

from you? This act of drinking out of the

goblets of Judah, God's goblets here, it's very similar to what

what sometimes happens with rival sports teams like Army

versus Navy, right? Let me give you an example.

So for an example, the beloved mascot of the University of

Texas is what anyone know it. It's Bevo the Longhorn steer

right? Go Longhorns hook em horns or

whatever. OK.

At one point in time, however, it was stolen by their rivals at

University of Texas A&M. And so the Aggies took the

Longhorn and they branded on the side of it the numbers 13 and O

on the side of the cow. Do you see this?

I don't know if this is actually a real picture or not, but this

story evidently happened. What's 13 and O?

It was the final score of the game where the Aggies defeated

the Longhorns. That was the score of the game.

They branded it onto their mascot.

Them's fighting words. You know what I'm saying, right?

That's crazy. You've heard the phrase don't

mess with Texas. Well, apparently when Texas

messes with Texas, things get real weird and like cows get

branded with sports statistics. And I actually, it's a fun fact.

I actually texted my buddy from Austin, TX who grew up there and

I was like, is this story true? And he's like, yes, it was

absolutely true. And then he said this, he said,

quote, ever since we have been whooping their butt in sports as

much as we can. So I thought that was kind of

funny, but you get the point here, right?

This is rivalry, hatred, insults.

It's the desecration of sacred mascots.

OK, now amplify that. Amplify all that tension by

pride, by a prideful ruler insulting the one true God by

toasting his made-up gods using sacred temple vessels.

That's what's happening here. Tremper Longman puts it this

way. He says he's toasting lifeless

idols of his own religion. He spits in God's eye, as it

were, and then he goes over to a statue that he himself has

created and expects that lifeless hunk to protect him

from what is to come. And it's because of all of this,

everything that Belshazzar is doing here, because of all of

this, that here we finally arrive at the final verdict, the

writing on the wall in the King's throne room.

This is what it says. Daniel 5 verse 25 Verse 25

Daniel 5:25

Daniel finally interprets it. He says this is the inscription

that was written. Many many Tekle Parson here is

what these words mean. Many God has numbered the days

of your reign and brought it to an end.

Tekle, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Perez, your Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and

Persians. The inscription from the finger

of God had been interpreted. It's it's it's like this.

It's as if. It's as if the accounting office

of Heaven itself had performed A moral audit on Belshazzar and

the final report had come in. What's their verdict?

This is their verdict. Menne Menne Teko Parson.

Daniel sees these nouns on the wall and he interprets them in

their passive participle form, which means numbered, numbered,

weighted, and divided. Daniel then delivers this moral

audit to King Belshazzar and he says your days are numbered.

God is removing you. Why?

It's because the sum total of Belshazzar's life up until this

point had been placed on the scales of heaven, the weighing

scales of heaven, and his life was quote found wanting.

It was lacking substance. Belshazzar failed to live into

his intended calling and purpose to rule and steward people well

in humility. And so when his life was placed

on the scale and weighed, he came up short.

There's this phenomenon that has been well documented in

scientific journals, and it takes place among people who

experience what's called a near death experience.

So these are people whose heartbeats have stopped for a

period of time and then they have these conscious experiences

while they're dead and laying on like the hospital, hospital room

bed or whatever. And what's interesting is that

there there's a commonality amongst these people who

experience these near death experiences called the life

review. It's a phenomenon reported.

And what happens is when people come close to death, they

sometimes describe suddenly seeing their entire life laid

out before them. So they see all of their

actions, their relationships, their choices, even the effects

that they had on other people. So they can like feel what other

people felt when they were like interacting with them.

Isn't that fascinating? This is this is like a well

documented phenomenon for for these people.

And basically what's happening is they're experiencing a sort

of moral audit on their entire lives from every perspective.

It's really fascinating stuff. There's a quote from Doctor

Bruce Grayson. He's a psychiatrist who studied

near death experiences for decades.

This is what he writes. They often have a sense of

reliving their entire lives, often in a matter of seconds.

And then he writes, how we think about death and dying effects,

how we think about life and what we do in life.

In fact, these studies show that many people who experience a

near death experiences, when they come back to life, they

live a more moral life, they live a more altruistic life.

Isn't that interesting? Because they're confronted with

this life review. Now, science can't really

explain why or how this life review phenomenon happens.

And as believers, we don't like, take it as gospel truth.

But the scriptures do remind us that how we live this life

matters as we enter into the next life.

Did you catch that? That we will have to give a

moral account for how we lived before God?

Each of us? The Scripture says we'll have to

give an account before God one day.

And Belshazzar, in this moment, he's experiencing his divine

life review. What's the result?

His Kingdom is divided. The Persians had arrived to

claim his life. 29 Then, at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was

clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and

he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the Kingdom. 30

That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was

slain, and Marius the Mede took over the Kingdom at the age of

62. That very night, October 12th,

539 BC, Babylon was officially no more.

It had fallen along with its Prince, King Belshazzar.

So what is this story about? It's about many things, but

ultimately it's a it's an account that reminds us of a

simple truth. God's sovereignty gives him full

authority to install or depose earthly rulers as he wills.

God has full authority over all the kingdoms.

He raises up kings, and he removes them as he wills.

It's a story that God judges the heart, and he determines who

he's going to raise up, or if he's going to strip them down to

nothing, right? Belshazzar was a prideful king

who had the knowledge of what can happen when a ruler takes

credit and refuses to honor God. But unlike Nebuchadnezzar before

him, Belshazzar refused to humble himself.

Instead, he intentionally stood opposed to the one true God,

taking what was sacred, the temple goblets, and uniting it

to what was profane. He elevated the gods he could

hold in his hand, rather than worship the one true God who

held Belshazzar's life in his hand.

But what does this story have to say to us?

What can we possibly learn from it in an era of smartphones and

electric cars and AI and all the other things we concern

ourselves with? Well, to answer that question,

let's answer that question with another question from earlier.

And the question is this. What causes a man like

Belshazzar to throw a party at the end of his life as his enemy

is about to crash down around him?

Why is he playing the fiddle while Rome is burning?

The late, great pastor, his name is Tim Keller.

He argues that perhaps Belshazzar threw a party in

order to gather around himself in those final moments, all the

things that he felt gave his life some kind of significance.

In other words, in his hours of final desperation, Belshazzar

gathers his nobles and his rulers, as if to say, See how

respected I am, See how many men I have at my command.

He doesn't stop there. He gathers his wine and his

wives, and he says, See how loved I am, all of these women

available for my romantic needs. Finally, he gathers the spoils

of victory of the great Babylon, the sacred cups from the temple

of Judah, goblets that reminded him that his gods had one.

As if to say, See how important I am.

I have achieved this. I hold in my hand proof that the

gods are on my side. It'd be like, you know, like a

professional athlete, like a professional athlete who's on

her, her hospital deathbed. And before she dies, she

desperately gathers all of her trophies to hold in her failing

hands as she's passing away, watching highlight reels,

clinging to significance, clinging for meaning in this

temporary life. Elshazar's last grasp at

significance as he's about to be killed.

Look, Church, like this king, we too are tempted to cling to

created things for our sense of significance.

We chase after love. And we say, if someone else says

I'm worthwhile, then I must be. We chase after the good pleasure

filled life for significance, right?

We we say to ourselves, I saw the sights, I experienced the

culture, I ate, I drank, I relaxed, I enjoyed, I had long

weekends and plenty of vacation. Surely this is what life is

about. Or maybe we chase after good

behavior, good religious behavior, even, for our sense of

security and significance. Right?

We say to ourselves, I served enough, I did good enough, I

attended enough Sunday services, I gave enough money in the

offering or whatever it is. Or maybe we chase after

achievement for our significance, because if we can

point to something that we've built, that must mean that we

mattered. Church, the human condition, our

condition is to worship created things rather than the Creator.

But until the very end, Belshazzar clung to created

things in an act of defiant despair.

Defiant despair. And I got to wonder, like, are

the people in our world today, myself included, are we living

in this same kind of defiant despair when faced with our own

mortality? For some, the idea of a God or

like an afterlife, the idea of judgement, it's just sort of

like a fairy tale, right? And after all, they're like,

there's a certain sense of freedom in that, right?

Like doing what we please when we please.

There's freedom in that, but there's also a defiance in it

too. I don't have to answer to

anything higher than myself. I'm just going to do what I

please. I'm going to do.

It feels good in the moment because this life is all there

is, right? It's defiant despair.

All of us are faced with our own mortality.

Death, last time I checked, is a 100% guarantee.

So how do we cope with it? How do we cope with that?

Look, like most of us here in Ankeny, we're we're likely not

coping and soothing ourselves with drunken orgies or drinking

tequila from communion cups, right?

OK, that's probably not our thing, right?

And now, now please hear me for just a second.

If that is your lifestyle, if that is you here today, I'm so

glad you're here. OK, let me just clear the air.

All right? Can I get an agreement from the

church with an Amen? OK, We're so glad that you're

here. If that is your lifestyle, even

if you did that last night. OK.

But likely for many of us, we're not out doing those things.

But yet there still is for most of us a quiet hedonism that

we're chasing after a quiet pleasure filled life.

We want a pain free, problem free life, do we not?

So what do we do? We position ourselves in comfort

and security. We set up our future as well so

we can have ease and entertainment and weekends and

retirement. We set our kids up for success.

All of that. And again, that's not all bad in

and of itself, but it's the same kind of thing, right?

It's still hedonism. It's still I want a pain free

life church. You and I face the constant

temptation to kick our feet up and enjoy life while we can and

not think much beyond this temporary life.

And Jesus himself warned against this type of mentality, right?

Jesus himself, he told this story about a man.

He's like a farmer. And this man had a terrific

banner year with crops. This man had like an abundance

of grain. And this is what it says in Luke

12. Then he said, this man, this

farmer. Then he said, this is what I'll

do. I will tear down my barns and

build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.

And then I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for

many years. Check this out.

Take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry.

Verse 20 But God said to him, You fool, this very night your

life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have

prepared for yourself? What is Jesus saying here?

Jesus isn't saying that eating and drinking and being merry is

bad. In fact, Ecclesiastes argues

that it's actually a good thing to enjoy your life as long as

you're recognizing it comes from God, right?

Check this out. Enjoying life isn't the problem.

The problem is chasing pleasure out of the belief that this is

the only life. Does that make sense?

Let me put it another way. When we believe this life is all

we have, pleasure stops being a gift and it starts becoming a

God. When we believe this life is all

that we have, we, you know, we're tempted to just say, hey,

we might as well eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Live it up for today. This is all we have.

It's a narrow minded view of eternity, right?

We're forgetting everything that's going to come after the

moment we pass into the next. So in the worship of pleasure,

we see this all over today. We're all tempted with it.

In our pursuit of pleasure, we take what is sacred, the temple

goblets. We take what is sacred and we

unite it to things that are common.

We unite what's holy with what's not right.

We we unite our bodies, which are holy dwelling places to God.

We unite our bodies with things that are unholy, sensual

pleasures and appetites and sexuality and pornography and

whatever it may be, whatever it is for you.

You see, when we believe that this life is all there is, we're

tempted to use our bodies for pleasure rather than purpose.

We all have to be honest about this.

We all have to confront this. Or maybe we do it in a different

way, right? Maybe it's not our own bodies.

Or or maybe we treat others who are also made in the image of

God with anger, disrespect, condescension.

I think This is why the New Testament is just so clear.

Like there's not to be any slander or anger or malice or

rage or bitterness or backbiting or gossip or any of that.

There's not to be any of that among you as the church, because

you're all made in the image of God.

You're profaning what is holy with what's unholy.

Does that make sense? You're uniting what's holy.

Our very body is the people of God to things that have no place

in our lives. Am I the only one who's

convicted right now? Maybe it's not treating others

poorly. Maybe we just end up using

people to meet our emotional needs rather than truly serving

them. But what if instead?

What if instead, we could be more like Daniel?

What if instead we could look at all the world with all of its

offerings, its pride, it's pleasure, it's achievement, it's

status? But what if, like Daniel, we can

look at all those things, but we could also see the writing that

is on the wall? Instead of receiving what's on

offer from a king and a Kingdom that's about to fall, what if

instead we could see them for what they really are and say to

the powers, You have nothing to offer me.

All the pleasure, all the pride, everything you're trying to

offer me, it's empty and we're all about to be weighed.

So the question for us here today at church, I know this is

heavy, but the question for us is, what will your life weigh?

What? What will your life be built on,

and what substance will this life have?

Proverbs 16 two says all a person's ways seem pure to them,

but motives are weighed by the Lord.

For Samuel 23 says for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him

deeds are weighed. Just this last week, I had to be

checked by God, as in like a hockey player being checked, if

you know what I mean? It was one of those busy days,

right? Where I felt like I was like

getting it done, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I was moving, I was shaking, I was hustling, I had

some Starbucks caffeine in me. So I was jazzed, you know what

I'm saying? Like I'm making moves and I'm

kind of surveying my accomplishments, not externally,

just inside. I'm sort of like, I've done some

things, you know what I'm saying?

Anyone have that feeling? I was feeling myself a little

bit, if you know what I'm saying.

And in that moment, I got one of those like Holy Spirit nudges.

You ever had one of those? And the nudge was basically

this. God said something like, Ben,

aren't you preaching on pride this weekend?

And I felt terrible. You know, it's just one of those

moments where I'm like, oh, it's so sneaky, isn't it?

It's so sneaky to think you're worth something.

And please hear me, We all have intrinsic value and worth with

God, our creator, right? But like, but I thought I was

worth something. And so, you know, and then I

swung to the other side of my emotions, right?

All of a sudden I'm beating myself up for not leading

better. I'm worrying about how about how

people are going to perceive me or if my sermon will impress

people. I'm feeling like I should be

doing more. I feel like I should be more

organized, more disciplined, more patient, giving more time

to my family, etcetera, etcetera.

And then it hit me. This is just a different version

of pride because I'm still thinking about myself.

You catch that? So whether it's me surveying all

of my accomplishments and feeling pretty good about myself

or me swinging into despair and feeling like garbage and, you

know, worrying about all the things I'm doing wrong, it's

still pride because it's still focused on me and not Jesus.

Praise God to a God who convicts hearts and shows us the real

motives and intentions inside of us.

And so I just had to repent. I had to repent then.

I had to repent today, and tomorrow I'm going to have to

repent again, and the next day, and so on and so forth, right?

This is part of the process of being a Christian.

Living a life with weight means living to glorify God with both

our motivations and our actions. It's taking what knowledge and

revelation He's given you and stewarding your life.

Well, in the view of it. Romans 1412 reminds us so.

Then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Tim Keller describes God's glory as his infinite weight, his

supreme importance church. We need his weight, his glory in

our lives in order to have substance.

It's only through what Jesus did in his death and his burial and

His resurrection that we can have any sort of weight, any

sort of glory. God's glory is the weight, and

our transformed lives are how we participate in it.

It's the only way we can be weighed on the scales and not

found lacking as the end approaches.

Question, churches, this What are you clinging to for your

weight? For your significance?

There is only one who can ultimately tip the scales when

we are measured. And His name is Jesus.

He's the only one that we can cling to for significance.

We do not survive the scales of judgement by our own good deeds.

We do not survive death by our own good motives.

It is only by our faith in Jesus that we can ultimately be saved.

And I just want to be so clear on that.

It's only by our faith and what Christ did.

So point your life and everything you do and all of

your hearts intentions back to Jesus.

It is not about our accomplishments, but what He

accomplished on the cross. It is not about how much we've

accumulated and bought, but how much it cost Him to buy us.

It's not how loved we were by others, but by by how loved we

are by Jesus. This is what gives our life

weight. This is what gives our life

substance. It's who God says we are.

It's being found in his love and his care and his goodness.

In the Psalms, when looking over, the psalmist was looking

over all of creation and his splendor and all the stars and

all the beauty and all of its majesty, and he gives glory to

God. And he says that all of the

heavens, everything was created, says the by the work of your

fingers. When God sent the plagues to

free the Israelites out of from prideful Pharaoh's rule, his

magicians look at the miracle and they say, quote, this is the

finger of God. Once God's children were free,

he gave the knowledge of his commands and his will for their

life. And it says the 10 commandment

tablets themselves were quote inscribed by the finger of God.

Finally in the account of the fall of Belshazzar in Babylon,

we see that the evil rulers fate was sealed by the very fingers

of God writing his judgement on a wall.

And just like in Daniel 5, where the new Persian's Kingdom was at

the gate and the power was about to shift forever to a new

Kingdom, in the same way the rule and reign in this world is

about to shift forever as well. Daniel 244 says in the in the

time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a Kingdom

that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another

people. It will crush all those kingdoms

and bring them to an end, but it itself will endure forever.

What is this Kingdom? It's the Kingdom of Jesus.

It's the Kingdom that is here. It is now, and it will one day

be realized. Luke 11 Jesus says, But if I

drive out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God

has come upon you. You see, church, it's by the

hand of God that the universe was created.

It's by the fingers of God that his people were delivered out of

slavery. It's by the fingers of God that

the law was written. And now it's by the finger of

God that he reminds us that all rulers, past and present, will

eventually fall and bow to him. But he doesn't stop there.

Jesus reminds us that it's by the finger of God that even the

demons are driven out by Him and His disciples.

In other words, it's not just the kings like Belshazzar whose

end is near. The writing is on the wall.

For Satan and the kingdoms of darkness as well.

The writing is on the wall. The reign of evil will soon come

to an end and Christ's Kingdom will be fully realized.

Are you found in that Kingdom? Daniel 5 warns us not to fiddle

while Rome burns, clinging to empty pride and pleasure and

achievement or anything else that promises to fulfill us.

Instead, may we find our satisfaction in meaning in

Christ Jesus. May we build our lives on him

alone. And at the end of our lives,

being found in Jesus, he will be on the scales with us, and we

will not be found wanting or lacking.

Rather, we will lack nothing. We'll have lived a life for his

glory. Not an empty life, but life to

the full. So I leave you with a poem.

The writing is on the wall. These kingdoms will fall.

God's reign is near. Indeed, it is here.