In 2007, the atheist writer Christopher Hitchens published a book entitled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. As the title suggests, the main point of the book was to make a case against all religious beliefs on the basis of moral outrage. According to Hitchens and others who have made similar arguments, religion is a tool of oppression, a structure imposed by the powerful on the powerless in order to restrict human freedom, and if we as a society could simply move beyond it altogether, the world would be a much better place. In short, religion is simply wrong, and it’s time for us to repent of it.
The irony of making such an argument is that in order to have categories by which to decide that something is right or wrong, Hitchens has to borrow from Christian ideas. Let’s take the atheist view on its own terms and work it out to its logical conclusion. If there is no God, then there is no final judgment coming, no day of reckoning. That means there will never be a time when the truth will finally and fully be revealed, when all wrongs will be set right, and when all who have committed evil acts of oppression toward others will have to answer for their crimes. One day, the universe will simply fizzle out, without ever coming to any resolution on what is good vs. what is evil. And so, if religious people are indeed oppressing others by making religious claims, guess what: they will never have to answer for that. And if that is the case, on what basis can an atheist say that it is actually wrong? You see, in spite of the moral outrage of Christopher Hitchens, there really are no categories for even understanding right and wrong if there is no God to begin with.
And that is why the doctrine of divine judgment is essential to our faith. We live in a culture that abhors the idea of judgment. It seems that John 3:16 is no longer the most well-known verse in the Bible; now it is Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Any talk of divine judgment is likely to earn us the “fundamentalist” label and make us unpopular with the cool kids of society. So it is tempting for us to be embarrassed by the biblical teaching on God’s judgment and try to minimize it.
And yet, while “judgment” is often a dirty word in our culture, “justice” is still a very positive idea. Our cultural heroes are those who fight for justice against the corrupt systems that have entrenched themselves in society. So, if you’re keeping up, judgment is bad, but justice is good. Do you see the glaring contradiction here? There is no justice if there is no final judgment. We must not be embarrassed by the biblical teaching that God stands against evil and will judge it. And when he does, by what standard will he judge? By the standard of himself. God is the center of everything, and everything must be evaluated by its relationship to him. Therefore, all people will be judged on the basis of how they stand in relation to God, and when history is over and final judgment has been pronounced, God’s name will be vindicated.
In Daniel 5 we see a story of God’s judgment in history against a king who defied him, one particular example of how God acts toward human rebellion in order to defend his name. It’s about a Babylonian king named Belshazzar, and it comes right after the account in chapter 4 about King Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling before God. I want to show you again an outline of chapters 2-7 because there is a clear structure to what the author is doing here. These chapters are unique in the book of Daniel because they were written, not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic, the international language of the day. And these six Aramaic chapters follow an “A-B-C-C-B-A” pattern, with the emphasis falling on the middle, the two C levels of the outline, which is as follows:
A. The Four Kingdoms: A Dream (chapter 2)
B. Deliverance from the Fiery Furnace (chapter 3)
C. Judgment on King Nebuchadnezzar: Positive Result (chapter 4)
C. Judgment on King Belshazzar: Negative Result (chapter 5)
B. Deliverance from the Lions’ Den (chapter 6)
A. The Four Kingdoms: A Vision (chapter 7)
The two middle stories are two stories about kings with very different results: one king is humbled into a true worshiper, while the other is killed under divine judgment. From one perspective, we could say these two stories are very different. But from another perspective, we could say that they are very much the same, because both stories are ultimately about the defense of God’s name. The point is, whether God humbles an arrogant king or annihilates an arrogant king, he will show himself to be God in the end. The main point of this story for us today is that sooner or later, God will give a fitting answer to all rebellion against him. All sin demands an answer from God, because all sin tells a lie about him. If God allows the lie of sin to go unanswered forever, then he gives approval to it. The very moral fabric of the universe, which depends on the fact that there is an ultimate distinction between right and wrong, demands that every sin, every act of defiance against God, receive a fitting answer from him. Sometimes that answer comes later, and sometimes it comes sooner, but the point I want you to get this morning is that it definitely will come.
And that should be an encouragement to us. We live in a culture that is in open defiance of God, and the cultural pressure on confessional Christians is increasing on a daily basis. May this story remind us that God always wins, so we should just shut down right now any hint of temptation to abandon his side for the world’s approval. Sooner or later, he will give an answer to all rebellion against him. Note three words of instruction from this story for us this morning as we take heart from the certainty of his coming judgment against an arrogant, rebellious world.
First,
One question that Christian theologians have wrestled with for centuries is the question of how sin ever originated in the first place. On one level, we may wonder why Adam and Eve, who were created without sin, would have any inclination to listen to the voice of the serpent, when they were living in Paradise, surrounding by anything they could have ever wanted. Taking it back one step, we may wonder why the serpent was there to begin with, tempting them. These are not easy questions, and theologians have given different answers to them. We may never come to answers that everyone will find satisfying. But I think that is actually fitting. It is an indication to us that we actually should feel some confusion about the presence of sin in God’s world. Something isn’t right here. This is not the way it was supposed to be. And our inability to give a full explanation for the problem of evil is a testimony to the utter folly of sin. It just doesn’t fit right, and yet it’s here.
So notice how this story highlights the utter stupidity of sin. It begins with a reference to King Belshazzar. Whereas the previous four chapters were all set during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, who died in 562 BC, we have now moved ahead to October 12, 539 BC. Nebuchadnezzar has been dead for over twenty years, and his successor Nabonidus (who may have been Nebuchadnezzar’s son-in-law) is now reigning. So then, who is this Belshazzar figure? Until the late 19th century, the name “Belshazzar” was unknown in any historical records pertaining to Babylon. A number of scholars concluded that the author of Daniel simply made him up as a fictional character. But lo and behold, further discoveries since the latter half of the 19th century have confirmed that Belshazzar was actually the son of King Nabonidus. Furthermore, we know that Nabonidus had left the city of Babylon and retired to the city of Tema, probably because of his devotion to a different god than the one who was worshiped in the city of Babylon. And guess who took charge of the city in the absence of King Nabonidus. That’s right: his son Belshazzar, who is even called “king” in this story, in the sense of being a coregent with his father. It is interesting to note that when Belshazzar promises a reward to whomever can interpret the writing on the wall (vv. 7, 16, 29), he promises the rank of “third ruler in the kingdom,” not second ruler. Why would that be? It’s because he doesn’t have the authority to designate a second ruler. He is the second ruler in the kingdom, behind his father Nabonidus. So that subtle detail of the text is just one of the numerous indications that when you read the biblical stories, you are reading accurate historical accounts that have been confirmed by historical evidence time and again. There are remaining difficulties and questions about some things in the Bible, but I am confident that as we gain more knowledge about the past, we will see more and more the reliability and accuracy of the Bible.
Well, that’s just a little historical introduction to Belshazzar. The point I was making is that this story puts on display his utter stupidity. It begins with an enormous feast that the king hosts for a thousand of his lords. Just to set the context, we should understand that the Persian army has laid siege to the city of Babylon at this time. The enemy has set up camp just outside the city walls, and yet Belshazzar is throwing a feast inside. Why? We don’t know for sure. Maybe it was a regular religious celebration. Whatever the case, Belshazzar seems to want to communicate to his people that he is not troubled in the least by the fact that their city is under siege. Babylon had an intricate system of walls that they believed no army could penetrate. Furthermore, the Euphrates River flowed under the city walls and into the city, giving them all the water they would ever need. And on top of that, they had storehouses of food that would last for years. Belshazzar probably assumed that they were safe inside and would be able to outlast the Persians in a siege. But notice how the story begins in verse 1: “King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.” The reference to drinking wine in front of the thousand does not indicate that Belshazzar merely held up a glass and toasted. It indicates that, contrary to the customary practice, he made himself the center of attention at the feast and got drunk, which would have led the party to devolve into a public display of revelry and debauchery.
Too much alcohol never leads in a good direction. And so it is here. With his inhibitions removed by the wine, Belshazzar orders that the holy vessels from the temple in Jerusalem (which Nebuchadnezzar had acquired when he had conquered the city) should be brought in so that all the guests could drink from them and use them to pour out drink offerings to the Babylonian gods. It was not unusual to toast your gods at a party. It was unusual, however, to take shots at another god while doing so. And that is exactly what Belshazzar does here, defiling the holy vessels of Solomon’s temple, vessels that had been set apart exclusively for use in worship of Israel’s God, by using them in the worship of false gods. This is an open, defiant, blasphemous act. In 2 Samuel 6, Uzzah was struck dead because he merely reached out his hand to steady the Ark of the Covenant when it was about to fall over. He touched what belonged to God, and he died. Belshazzar is not merely touching these vessels; he is actively defiling them by using them in a drunken stupor to honor the false gods of Babylon.
All of a sudden, God interrupted the party. The figure of a human hand appeared out of nowhere and wrote a mysterious message on the plaster of the wall, bringing the festivities to an abrupt end as Belshazzar began to tremble with fear, suddenly realizing that he had offended Israel’s God. But as he looked at the words written on the wall—mene, mene, tekel, parsin—he couldn’t make sense of the message. So he called for his enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers to come interpret this message for him. By this time in the book of Daniel, we already know what is going to happen. These men are going to come out like clowns tumbling out of a tiny car and, once again, make utter fools of themselves. This is now the third story in Daniel in which a message from heaven has been given to a king, and it is the third time that the wisest men in Babylon are clueless about how to interpret it. The bankruptcy of paganism is once again on full display.
But verse 10 tells us that the queen (probably the queen mother, either Belshazzar’s mother or grandmother) heard about the commotion and came into the banqueting hall. She had not been in attendance at the party, but she was ready to offer a suggestion to Belshazzar about how he might figure out the meaning of the words written on the wall. So she mentions Daniel to him. By this time, Daniel would probably be in his 80’s, and he has apparently been out of the public eye for a good while. It’s quite possible he had retired after Nebuchadnezzar’s reign ended. But the queen mother remembers Daniel’s reputation for having the spirit of the holy gods within him, enabling him to interpret messages from the gods. So Belshazzar calls him and makes the offer to him: “Tell me what these words mean, and you shall be clothed with purple, have a chain of gold placed on your neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.”
First, Daniel responds by telling King Belshazzar to keep his reward. Daniel’s services on behalf of the Lord are not for sale. But he will interpret the meaning of the words. But before he does he reminds Belshazzar of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, which had been recounted in chapter 4. After describing the great power of Belshazzar’s predecessor, Daniel says in verses 20-23: “But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was brought down from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. He was driven from among the children of mankind, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will. 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.” Daniel recounts here to the king a story that the king already knows, as verse 22 makes clear. Belshazzar certainly would have heard about Nebuchadnezzar’s period of madness, and it is even possible that he had witnessed it himself. Belshazzar, in other words, has seen the judgment of God in action against the arrogant.
So, did Belshazzar learn anything from the sufferings of his predecessor? Did Nebuchadnezzar’s ordeal lead him to turn from his sins and honor the God of Israel in order to avoid a similar judgment? No. With full knowledge that the God of Israel had humbled the arrogant in the past, Belshazzar essentially dared him to do it again with his blasphemous acts.
Do you see how foolish this is? But of course, all sin is foolishness, because all sin stands in opposition to God. All sin takes what is most glorious, beautiful, desirable—namely, God himself--, and says, “I would rather have less.” And it does so in spite of the fact that we all know that God will not leave sin unanswered forever. You simply cannot live in rebellion against God and still turn out okay in the end. Is there a single soul in this room who doesn’t already know that? And yet, how easily we are led away into sin! We might assume that if we just have enough information, we would draw the right conclusions and avoid sin. But that just isn’t the case. We don’t normally sin because we are ignorant. We normally sin because it is simply the desire of our hearts, and we deceive ourselves into thinking rebellion against God really isn’t so bad after all.
So as a fellow soldier in the fight against sin, let me give you this word of tactical advice: learn to spot the stupidity in your sin and think through exactly what makes it stupid. Writing about the sin of lust, Douglas Wilson has said this: “Study your lusts. Undertake this study with the full knowledge that your lusts are liars, and so is the devil. Look at your lusts instead of looking with them. When you look with your lusts, you will see many curvaceous delights. When you look at your lusts, all you can see is a little chimp with bright red lipstick on. Find out what’s actually going on.”1 And those words apply to any sinful desire. Study your desires to see where they are leading you away from God. Ask yourself what lies they are telling you, and expose them for what they are: folly. Recognize the foolishness of sin.
A second word of instruction for us is this:
Having recounted the story of Nebuchadnezzar as a rebuke to Belshazzar, Daniel now tells Belshazzar what the writing on the wall means. The words mene, mene, tekel, parsin are participles that mean “numbered, numbered, weighed, divided.” And so the word mene means that the days of Belshazzar’s kingdom are numbered. Tekel means that Belshazzar has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, meaning there is no substance or value in him. His foolish acts have rendered him worthless as a king. And then verse 28 uses the word peres, which is the singular form of the plural word parsin, as a declaration that God has divided up the kingdom of Babylon and given it to the Medes and Persians.
To this day, we speak of people “seeing the handwriting on the wall” when they know that everything is about to fall apart. God announced to Belshazzar with this writing on the wall what he was about to do to him and his kingdom. Sooner or later, God will give a fitting answer to all sin and in so doing, defend his name from the lies that sin tells about him.
Our proper response should be to fear such judgment. I don’t mean that we should live in servile fear, with no assurance of God’s favor toward us. If you are outside of Christ today, that would be an appropriate response. As Jonathan Edwards put it, you are standing over the pit of hell on a rotten bridge, and nothing but the mere pleasure of God now keeps you from falling into it. He is not bound to give you one more second of life, so every breath you take is a gift. But I am speaking here to those who are in Christ. God has promised you salvation from the judgment to come. So should you still fear it? Yes, in the sense that you take it seriously enough that you don’t want to go anywhere near it. Knowing that sin leads to death, you make war against sin, rightly fearing the judgment you would face if you didn’t.
magine a house next to a busy highway. In it lives a family with young children. The father tells his children, “You may play outside, but you must stay in the backyard. If you play in the front, you might get hit by a car, so if I ever catch you playing in the front, you will be punished.” The children, because they trust the words of their father, rightly fear what will happen to them if they disobey his commands. So as long as they stay in the backyard, they can play freely, enjoy themselves, and do so with a feeling of security. But even that feeling of security is supported by a healthy fear of what would happen if they transgressed the boundaries set by their father. It’s the same way for us. We who are in Christ are God’s children, and he intends for us to have the assurance of our security in Christ. But it is an assurance that operates within the boundaries God has set for us, namely, that we not willingly harbor sin in our lives. Of course, we all mess up, and we need God’s forgiveness on a daily basis. But my concern here is with the orientation of our hearts. If you sin in the context of a life that is oriented toward God, which leads you to confess your sin, repent of it, and fight against it, then that is simply what is called the Christian life. If, on the other hand, you live in a pattern of sin because it meets with no resistance in your heart, then the Bible offers you no basis on which to think you will escape God’s judgment. And if you make peace with sin in your life, it is an indication that there really is no fear of God before your eyes. You don’t really think that he will set all wrongs right in the end. You don’t believe there will ever be any real justice, at least not for you. And now we’re right back to the stupidity of sin.
It is not inconsistent with the Christian life to have a healthy fear of the judgment of God. In fact, it is essential to the Christian life to have a healthy fear of the judgment of God. It is an indication that you take him seriously, unlike Belshazzar.
One final word of instruction from this story is this:
I like a commercial for the Kia Sorento that came out recently that shows a boy and his father walking to their Kia Sorento after a peewee football game. The boy is holding a trophy, and the father takes it in his hand and notices it says, “Participant.” Then you can hear what the father is thinking: “Participation trophy. But we won every game. Why do we get the same trophy as all those teams we beat? Are we gonna start ending games with hugs instead of handshakes? No. No, no, no, no.” And then he pulls off the label on the trophy that says, “Participant” and writes on it with a sharpie, “Champs.” Every one of you who is a parent has had a similar thought process at one time or another. We live in a culture that is averse to idea that there might be winners and losers. In the name of equality, we have, in many contexts of society, tried to eliminate those concepts altogether.
But the Bible clearly teaches that there are winners, and there are losers, and what makes you one or the other is where you stand with respect to the God of Israel. Daniel, who has been faithful and obedient to his God through difficult circumstances, comes out as the clear winner in this story. Verse 29 tells us that, in spite of his prior protest, he still received the purple robe, the golden chain, and the promotion to third ruler in the kingdom. In fact, in every story to this point in which Daniel has appeared as a character, he has received an honor of some sort at the end of the chapter. At the end of chapter 1, he and his three friends, having impressed Nebuchadnezzar with their abilities, were allowed to stand before the king, meaning they were given positions in his court. At the end of chapter 2, Daniel was appointed ruler over the province of Babylon and chief prefect over the wise men of Babylon. Here he becomes third ruler over the entire the kingdom.
Now contrast Daniel’s win with Belshazzar’s loss. Verses 30-31 read, “That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.” Belshazzar thought the city walls would protect him from the Persians. But as it turned out, the Persians came up with an ingenious plan: they diverted water from the Euphrates River that flowed under the city wall, lowering the water level to the point that they could wade through it right under the wall and into the city. And the city of Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian forces without a battle. Belshazzar was killed on that very night, and Darius the Mede (possibly another name for a general of King Cyrus of Persia, or perhaps another name for Cyrus himself) took charge. Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great!
God vindicated his name by the simultaneous exaltation of Daniel and the downfall of Belshazzar. Furthermore, the judgment of one nation, Babylon, would become the salvation of another, Israel, as the conquering Persians would allow the Jews to return to their land and rebuild their temple. Through judgment on his enemies, God brings salvation to his people, and in doing so shows himself to be supreme over all. History will have winners and losers, because we are not the center of this story. We are not the ultimate value. God is, and everything revolves around him. The glory of his name, demonstrated in the salvation of his people and the defeat of his enemies, matters more than anything else.
And so may the coming vindication of God’s name on the Day of Judgment be the hope that spurs us on to faithfulness. Daniel was taken captive from his home in Jerusalem in the year 605 BC, probably as a teenage boy. He spent 66 years as an exile in Babylon, serving his God faithfully, before Babylon finally fell in 539 BC. Daniel was in it for the long haul, and he managed to outlast the Babylonian Empire. How long will we have to wait before we see God’s name publicly vindicated on the day of the revelation of Jesus Christ? We don’t know, and that’s why Jesus told us to be ready at any time, whether he should come sooner than expected or later than expected. But whether it is sooner or later, God will give a fitting answer to every act of rebellion against himself, just as he answered Belshazzar in this story.
That should be terrifying news for us, because our sins have told lies about God that must be answered. Your self-centeredness has told the lie that you matter more than God. Your greed and lust have told the lie that God is not enough to satisfy us, and so we must seek joy in other things. Your envy of others has told the lie that God is holding out on you. Your sexual immorality has told the lie that God is not wise in his design for the one-flesh union of husband and wife as a picture of Christ and the church. Your assertion of lordship over your own life has told the lie that God is not Lord over you. Every sin defies God and lies about who he is. And that is why every sin will be answered with judgment. In the end, the truth about God will win out.
If you are outside of Christ, you will have to answer to God for your sins, and the Bible says he will cast you from his presence to an eternity of suffering under his wrath. You will have no inheritance in the world that is to come, because God will not allow any more lies to be told about him that will spoil that world when it comes. But the good news is that you have a way of escape. The Bible also tells us about the deep love of God for his enemies, love that prompted him to send his own Son into the world. Though Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived a life without sin, he willingly went to the cross, where he died under the wrath of God in order to answer for the sins of his people, and then he was raised again to new life on the third day. So if you trust in Christ by clinging to him alone for the forgiveness of your sins, you can have the assurance that your sins, and the lies that they have told, have already been answered. You have no need to fear the final judgment, because it has already been pronounced over you in Jesus Christ. So put your faith in him today, and mark yourself as one who belongs to him by dying and rising with him in baptism.
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ who has professed faith in baptism and is a member in good standing with an evangelical church, you are welcome to eat and drink with us today as we celebrate again the death and resurrection of Christ for us. Let us eat and drink with joy, knowing that in Jesus Christ, our day of reckoning has already come. Amen.