The Writing is on the Wall

We are in a series on Daniel, and I'm just going to jump right into this. We've been going through this very challenging book, it's been really preaching to me as well, and kind of straightening me up on some things as well, and we've been walking through this. We are in chapter five, and if you have your notes, and if somebody could grab me some water, I'd appreciate that, as I've got a little bit of a frog in my throat today, and we've been walking through it chapter by chapter, expository messages. series that we are in. And how many of you have heard the phrase, the writing is on the wall?

Writing is on the wall. You know, you've used it often as a very common tagline. It usually means something bad is about to happen. You better get out before it happens. The warning is there.

Take heed, and thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Take heed because, you know, you never know what's going to, you don't know what's coming. You know, something bad's coming, right? That phrase actually comes from Daniel 5.

The year is 539 B.C. Nearly 70 years have passed since Daniel and his friends were brought to Babylon. Daniel was a very old man. He's about 80 years old.

Maybe not very old. If you are 80 years here, you're 80 years young, so don't take offense. Don't take offense. Don't send an email saying the pastor has said you're old. Nebuchadnezzar has been dead for about 23 years.

Last week, we talked about Nebuchadnezzar and the age of Nebuchadnezzar. Now we're 23 years in. Nebuchadnezzar is now on the throne. He is the un-uber-privileged, spoiled grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar is hosting this wild, drunken 100 kegger, let's just say, just partying it up. Why do we know that it was a wild party?

Because the Aramaic word that describes party literally means lots of wine. So they were drinking it up, and while they were partying, this thing happened. This incredible, scary thing happened. A severed hand appeared in the room, became to come across the room while they were partying, and sketched something on the wall. I mean freaky.

We're getting close to Halloween. Y'all are seeing a lot of freaky things around right now. This would take the story in this area if we saw something like that. This severed hand etches three words on the wall. Mani, Mani, Tikal, and Parsin, and we're going to talk about that today.

So people start screaming. The party goes crazy, and I'm just kind of walking through the first part of chapter 5. If you're following along with me, I'm just kind of giving you the story-telling part of it here. And Belshazzar is so scared that his face turns white, his knees begin to knock together. He looked like a cartoon character, I'm sure.

He was so afraid. And as they usually did, as we discovered in the previous chapters, they call in the wise men of the world. You know, let's bring in the wise men. Let's figure out what's going on. And again, they could not really give a good answer to the explanation that was taking place.

Well, the elderly queen, the elder queen of the picture here is Nebuchadnezzar's wife, who is still alive and very well, mentions to her grandson, there is a man named Daniel. And Daniel interprets dreams. Your grandfather listened to Daniel. Let's bring him in and see what he has to say about it. So here we are in Scripture, in chapter 5, verse 26, if you're following along, and he begins to explain these three words that were put on the wall.

Significant words here. Mene, mene, which means God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Tekel, which means weighted, and it means you have been weighted on the balance and found deficient. And unlike his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar, he had never humbled himself before God. So he was out of weight.

He was out of time and out of weight. Because this next part, parsens, means divided. It means your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. And that very night, 50 miles away, they would be coalescing our army together. And by the end of that evening, Babylon would be destroyed and every one of the royal family would be taken out in that very night.

This story is about how God ultimately brought down a prideful and rebellious and unjust Babylon empire and kept his promise to restore his people and the kingdom that he had set up from the very beginning, the Promised Land. But the story is also to give us a picture of how God deals with prideful and rebellious people in times and places throughout history. This teaches us even today. So I want us to look at this story through two lenses. What it means for Babylon, what it means for society in general, and what it means to us, us individually.

I'm going to give you four things we're going to talk about today, just to kind of set you up. First of all, partying in the face of death. The failure of the wise men, number two. The writing on the wall for all of us. And four, how the finger of God has appeared to this generation.

Now let me share a little history with you just for fun. Up until recently, Religion 101 classes in universities would tell you that this Belshazzar guy was not even a king. He didn't exist. There's nothing in history. Therefore, the Bible is not true.

It's not accurate. Up until recently, archaeological finds in the area of where Babylon used to be in modern-day Iraq, they found a piece of rock that inscribed that. That Belshazzar was actually the sitting king in Babylon, taking the place of his father. So it's not a book. It's not going to work and do.

But even if there are things like the food and the other Mark was out there. Nebonidus, who was the, what we know, the last reigning king of Babylon, so therefore, you know, the Bible is accurate and true. And what I would say, my point is that, you know, there's a lot of scholarship out there and there's nothing wrong with scholarship. There's nothing wrong with trying to find out truth and things from a scientific and archaeological standpoint. But if you give it enough time, if you give the Bible enough time, it always rises to the occasion.

We find that it is true rather than, and another little point there is that that's why Daniel, when he, in this scripture, he is, for interpreting the dream, was awarded the third highest honor, Belshazzar being the second highest. So the third highest, so it actually adds up to scripture, you know, so we still have a reigning king, we have Belshazzar, and then we have Daniel. So my point here is not to be disrespectful to secular historians, but these contradictions that we hear about all the time, just give it a little time. And eventually, they come forth as truth. So let's go on with these points.

Number one, partying in the face of death. Partying in the face of death. See, Belshazzar knew the combined armies of the Medes and the Persians were only 50 miles away. It wasn't a secret. He knew it.

Everybody knew it. In fact, all of Babylon knew it was happening. After all, it wasn't the first time this happened, but this was different. There was a well-organized effort, an alliance that was taking place just outside the kingdom. And it was a very scary thing, I'm sure, to most people, if not all of them.

So why, in the face of danger, does Belshazzar throw a party? To you, it might not make sense. Well, maybe. We don't really know. There's nothing in the Bible that tells us exactly why he did this.

Maybe he was just trying to put on a brave face. Maybe he was drowning his fears and numbing his senses of what was going on around him. Maybe he was just so arrogant that it didn't really, he just thought that they would win in the end anyway, because Babylon is Babylon and the walls and everything that we talked about last week, the power of that empire, maybe that's what it was. I don't know if you remember, if all of you are old enough to remember Y2K and when that happened. You know, this super bug that was in computers that would bring the economy to a screeching halt once.

It went from 1999 to 2000 and people were scared to death. They thought that food supply chains, power grids, money would evaporate from banks and people were really scared. Gas shortages would take place. People were scared. And when people get scared, they did, in this particular situation, they did two things.

One thing they did is they begin to stockpile food in rooms like a lot of Christians did for some reason. I don't know why it was mostly Christians, but they were stockpiling foods in rooms and they had just all kinds of things going on there. On the other one, people would just party. That's where we get the term party like it's 1999, you know, if you're a Prince fan. That's where we get that phrase.

Go to pray. That's what Belshazzar was doing. He was partying like it was 539. That's what was going on there. So why do people do this?

Why do people party in the face of danger? Why do people party in the face of death? Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer, he said that the most consistent human reaction to unpleasant thoughts about their morality is a distraction on amusements. Meaning that, in other words, if death is coming, it's coming and we can't get away from it. Let's distract ourselves with all the things around us.

Let's buy more. Let's do more. Let's party more. Let's put things in place so that we don't have to think about it. The inevitable is coming, but we don't really have to think about it.

He even described it as a stagecoach barreling towards a cliff. And while we're in that stagecoach, knowing that eventually we're going to come to the edge of that cliff, we're looking out at the scenery around us, enjoying the sights and stuff. We're having pleasantries with the people in the stagecoach. But we know it's coming and there's no way around it. So maybe that's why people have a midlife crisis.

They buy cars and they do things and they purchase land. I'm a fan of Home Improvement, the old 90s show Home Improvement with Tim Allen. I love that show. I binge watch it a lot when I just need a break from life. So that's my pleasantry when I'm not thinking about whatever.

But even the other day there was this midlife crisis episode of him where he buys a piece of land by the lake or he's planning to buy a piece of land by the lake because he just says, you know, I'm getting to the end of my life and I want to distract myself. I feel like I haven't accomplished anything. And I'm just kind of doing the same thing while everybody else moves on. So that's what we do. We typically at the face of death, we just try to exchange it with pleasantries.

One Jewish philosopher, Ernest Becker, he's actually an atheist Jewish philosopher, said in the book Denial of Death, in the face of our own mortality, we usually turn to one to three things to console ourselves. And Belshazzar did these very things. The first thing we do is we boast about our accomplishments as if it gives us some kind of immortality. Like we just say, yeah, wow, I accomplished this. The legacy is going to live on beyond me.

And we see Belshazzar do this in scripture where he's pulling out his gold and all that. He's bringing it out into the rooms and everybody's looking at it as the inevitable ends coming. He is focused on what power Babylon has and the beauty and the gold of Babylon. The second thing he says is we turn to romance, which we find meaning in thrills of sex or the feeling of being treasured by someone. And their love justifies us and gives us reason to live.

And we see that in Belshazzar with the party filled with his wives and concubines and every kind of sexual activity that was probably going on in that party at the time. And finally, he says, we turn to religion to show that whatever is out there, we're worthy of it. We use religion to console ourselves that we're the best of all people and that for whatever. We do. We do.

Thank you. Next, we'll be counted worthy. And you can see that in Belshazzar's extravagant toasting of his gods, he was doing the very same thing. And Becker says this, who is an atheist by the way, he says human beings cannot live in full honest awareness of the meaning of death. Even if you are one of those rare people that is remembered 10, 15, 20 years, or you build a legacy that goes beyond you.

And his definition that the sun's going to burn up and everything's going to blow up anyway, and nobody will exist. Nothing will ever exist. That's the point of view of those who don't believe in God. But unless you believe in an eternal kingdom, that you believe in a God that exists beyond time, space, and everything, and that we have a purpose and a meaning to life. Steve Jobs says it like this, y'all know Steve Jobs, the Apple's legendary founder and CEO, in a 60 Minutes interview, right before he died, they asked him, did he believe in God?

He says, sometimes I believed in God and other times I didn't. But when he found out he had cancer, he started really asking questions about the existence of God. Here's what he said. It can't be that when we die, that it's all just, y'all just fades in black. All the wisdom we've accumulated as a race, all of our accomplishments, somehow they have to live on.

He was thinking about these things. And incidentally, that's why he didn't put an on and off switch, a quick on and off switch on an Apple computer, because he didn't like the idea of life just ending like that, like a computer somewhere just ending like that. That's why you and I are trying to figure out how to cut off our computers. And we're, you know, why is this taking so long? Where's the button?

What's going on? That's because of him. So, so what is life all about, my friend, is really the question. What is this life all about? Are you prepared for the end?

Are you prepared? You see, the only difference between Belshazzar and us is that Belshazzar knew the day he was going to die. He knew that. We may not know the exact day, but we know it's coming. It may be next year, it may be next month, it may be this afternoon.

Are you prepared to meet God is the question. Isn't that really the only question that matters? So, maybe it's time to stop distracting ourselves from the pleasantries of life and start focusing on the things that really matter and look at what really is going on. Because after all, that's the only question. Really, that was Job's question.

You know, is this just meaningless? Is all this just meaningless? The real questions that we have. Number two, the failure of our wise men. The failure of our wise men.

A repeated theme of Daniel is the failure of Babylon's wise men to deliver when the questions really matter. That's right. It wasn't that they didn't have some kind of meaningful advice or wisdom because the king clearly kept them around. If they were no use, he probably would have gotten rid of them. So, there was actually some kind of knowledge that was given to the king at times when it was needed.

But consistently, when it really mattered and the questions were really... Things that they needed to hear, they failed every time they let the king down. And each of those times, Daniel appears and reveals the real reason for the dreams and answers the real questions. There's some point at which the wise men of every age will eventually let us down. They will.

So let's just consider for a second, who are the wise men of our age? Who would they be? I might say the scientists. Now let me be clear, scientists, I love science. Science is good.

Let's not denigrate science. Science is a wonderful gift from God. In fact, it actually proves the existence of God if we really want to let the cream rise to the top and really explore it. But we see places today where science fails us, right? Or at least it hasn't proven or given us the answers to the real philosophical meanings that go a little deeper.

You can ask somebody who says, you know, I believe in science. I don't believe in God. I believe in science. Well, as soon as... I would ask the question, as soon as science stops and the microscope is not there, then what is the meaning of life?

And what happens is, when they pull away from that, they start philosophizing about what that really means. What is the meaning of life? Asking questions of why am I here? And what is right or wrong? Science can't answer that.

Right. You can get all the numbers and all the figures together. You want to. But why in the world do I have this thing deep inside of me that's wondering what is this life all about? And what is my purpose?

And why is there a right? And why is there a wrong? And where does all of that come from? Science can tell you the what, but it can't tell you the why. And ultimately, anybody who says science is my God will ultimately come back to that point and have to ponder whether that, you know, that science answers those questions.

And I would add politicians and educators as well. But haven't they proven that we are unable to solve humanity's primary problem? Our heart issue? I mean, they can't do that. Has any politician, any philosophy, any political philosophy ever proven or helped the corruption or the greed or the abuse of power that we see in this world?

Has any of that ever happened? The right talks about the importance of family and tradition and values and integrity and leadership, yet we celebrate and champion people that don't really honor those things. On the left, it talks about ending discrimination, but you have leaks in Hollywood a few years ago when we see that racism in that arena is just as big as it is anywhere else. And the left talks about caring for the poor. And statistically, the right actually does way more for the poor than the left.

If you want to look at the actual numbers, someone from the San Francisco area told me a few years ago, if you want to disabuse yourself of the myth that all the thought leaders of the left care about the poor, go to San Francisco and watch how they deal with the homeless there. They... Their main strategy is homeless vouchers that they give to them to move them out to the outskirts of the town in order to get them away from the wealthy and the young single and vibe crowd going on there. That's what we got going on in this world. So the point is not to pick on the right or to pick on the left, nor am I trying to say that there's not a wiser choice when it comes down to voting.

And can I say this? You know evangelical Christians don't vote. Do you know we have a huge statistics of evangelical Christians that don't vote? Our women went to the Million Women event in D.C.

, and that's one of the things they talked about is that, you know, evangelical Christians are out of the pictures. They just choose to vote. Let me tell you, you know, it's a God-given gift to be able to do this, that we live in countries that you can't do this. I don't care if you're right. I don't care if you're left.

You need to honor that God-given right. I think it's very biblical to note that we have that available to us. So I'm not saying that there's not a wiser choice necessarily. My point is simply that no political unit, no educator, no wise man has proven to cure the larger scale problems of the human race, and that's really the heart. So just as with Babylon, when it comes to the ultimate questions that the wise men have from Steve Hawkins to Steve Jobs to party leaders, the left and the right, we need a word from God.

That's what we really need. We need to hear from God. That's why Daniel said to Belshazzar in verse 17, he didn't accept the gifts because he said this, you may keep your gifts and give your rewards to someone else. I will read the inscription of the king and make the interpretation known to him free of charge. You got it free because this doesn't come from me, Belshazzar.

This comes from God, and you don't need to hear the wise men's interpretation of this. You need to hear God's interpretation of what's going on. You need to dig a little deeper, and it isn't me, Belshazzar, that's speaking. It's God speaking. It's God saying these things, and he's speaking through me.

If any of you are offended today about anything that I say that comes from Scripture, or maybe you celebrate it, but on the other side you're offended by it, let me tell you, I'm just preaching Scripture. I'm preaching from the Word of God to you, and that's what you need to hear. That the Word of God, you need a word from God. The failure of the wise man. And number three, the writing on the wall for all of us.

The writing on the wall for all of us. We see these three terms, Mene, Mene, for your days are numbered. Tekel, you have been weighed on a balance and been found deficient. And Parson, your kingdom has been taken from you and divided. The Bible says this will ultimately be God's verdict for every single person.

At a personal level, that's a real truth. Let me... As Daniel interprets the message, he explains the nature of Belshazzar's sin. First, he recounts that Belshazzar, in the first part of Scripture, he recounts that you have not worshipped God, you have not honored God, you have not served God, and your grandfather did. Your grandfather honored God, he humbled himself, he went insane for seven years, and then he came back and he realized that he is not the most powerful man in the world.

God is the most powerful, and the only reason he is powerful is by God's hand. And he humbled himself and looked towards heaven and said heaven rules. Heaven is above all. And then Daniel said this in verse 22, if you're following along. But you, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this.

You knew all of this, Belshazzar, you knew about your grandfather, you knew what was said and what he did. Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of the heavens. The vessels from God's house were brought to you, and you and your nobles and your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. They praised the gods made of silver and gold, which you do not see or hear or understand. And you have not glorified the God who holds your life breath in his hands and who controls the whole course of your life.

You have not honored the true and mighty holy God. And Daniel Charles and Belshazzar are with two main things here. If we look in this scripture, we see two main things. The first thing we see is a failure to worship the God of gods. He didn't worship God.

You have not given glory to God. You have not given credit to him. You have not given power and success to him. You've only given it to yourself. And you haven't lived your life in response to him.

You have not held him first place in your life. Instead, you worship idols because you have thought that you could control those idols. That you're over those idols and you've lived to please yourself and not God. And then secondly, he says, you took the vessels that God set apart for holy and you've used it to party with, to use it for your own means, your own purposes. You used them for yours.

Specifically, Daniel identifies temple artifacts that Belshazzar is now parting with, like the knives and the plates and the candlesticks that were used for the consecration of the temple that were taken from the temple and used in his parties and for his drunken orgies. And he calls this out and Daniel has given him a glimpse of the nature of sin. This is the nature of sin, that sin consists of taking what God has set apart for his purposes and using it for your own. Sin consists of taking what God has taken and made sacred, the things that he's given you that are sacred and set them apart for your own purpose rather than his purposes. What are these things?

What would be these things? Well, this is going to be really hard hitting for some of you, so get ready. You ready? You ready? You ready to hear this?

He wasn't worried about getting from this issue. No, I'm sorry. I wasn't sure. Once answered this? You ready?

Your talents. Your talents. Your gifts, your talents were given to you by the glory of God, for God's glory. The things that you've been given and the abilities that you have, what was their purpose? They were consecrated things that were given to you so that God could be glorified.

Even if you go to church every Sunday, even if you pray every day, even if you follow the Ten Commandments. Jesus told this story in the Gospels about three men with talents. One was given five, one was given three, one was given one, and he talked specifically about this guy who had the one talent, the $100,000 or whatever you want to say it was that he had invested in. He buried it in the ground. He buried it in the ground.

The rest went and invested theirs and they doubled it, they tripled it. And what's interesting to me is that Jesus said this and that the king responded or the boss responded to the man, you wicked servant. He said, you wicked servant. What was wicked about the thing that he had done? Evidently, there's more to being wicked than just not following the Ten Commandments.

There's a lot more of being wicked than just plain old what we know is sin. There's more to it than that. There's two types of sin. The first sin is the sin of commission. That's breaking the Ten Commandments.

Adultery, stealing, murder, but you also wicked by failing to leverage your talents for the purposes of God as well. That's the sin of omission. That you could keep all the commandments and still be wicked. Because if God has given you these things in your life and you're using them for your own glory rather than his glory, if you've held on and buried it in the ground, you could be the model church member. You can just go all day without breaking the laws of God, but God sees you as wicked simply because you didn't offer your talents back to him.

The things that he gave you, the things that he said, I'm putting you here. I formed you before the creation of the earth and I set you here to do something for my glory and I've given you everything you need to glorify me, God. And we choose them to do other things with them. It's theft. That's what basically what the Bible says.

It's theft when we don't use those things. How about your resources? Your resources, money, money, money. Let's talk about money just for a second. You know, Malachi says, and I'm just quoting the Bible here.

It says, will a man rob God? People hate that. Hate that. Will a man rob God? You ask, have we robbed God?

I don't know. And you're not giving your tithes. You're not giving your tithes, says the Lord. Of all that God gave you, you were to give back just 10%. He gave you everything that he owns.

I was praying this morning before service and I told our team. I said, he owns the cattle of a thousand hills and he just allows us to have a little bit of it. And it's great, right? But when we don't honor God with what He's given us, our finances and our resources, we misappropriate those things in the kingdom of God. It's embezzlement.

It's spiritual embezzlement. You're misusing the consecrated things. How about this one? Our view of sex. Sex.

To use someone else for sexual gratification outside of what God designed sex to be in the covenant of marriage. Something special. The word the Apostle Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 4-6 is defrauding. He actually uses that word literally. Don't defraud one another sexually, he says.

The body is a sacred thing. It is made in the image of God. God created our bodies as a temple for His living. Sex is something you go into with someone after you have fused your whole life with that person. And in a lifelong covenant.

And when you use someone else for sexual pleasure, you are taking the precious things that God has given us and you're using them for your own glorification and your own gratification. And the writer of Hebrews says, marriage is to be honored by all and the bed is not to be defiled. But those who engage in sexual immorality, God will judge. God will judge. And when you look at pornography, you're doing the same thing.

You're defrauding that girl or you're defrauding that man. Let's just be honest. Women have just as much of a problem these days with pornography as men. And what God intended that person to be, their dignity, we've taken and defrauded that. And Belshazzar, of course, he did the worst despicable sin.

He had sex slaves. There's nothing worse than that. We have that going on around the world right now. He's taken something precious, holy, and he's forced it without consent of that person. And just awful, egregious things.

You're taking something that God considers holy by force and using it for your pleasure. Belshazzar's story gives us warning of how serious God takes that. He takes these things very serious. So that's three examples, and there's more. There could be more, but we have those there.

But Paul says that whatever you do, we should do it for God's glory. Everything that we do and anything we do that is not first and foremost done in the act of worship to him is stealing. It really is. That's what he's ultimately saying. Like, if you do not invest, if I give you something and you don't invest it for my glory, I've given you everything that you have.

So these two things, failing to worship God as God and serve him above all things and commandeering God's sacred things that he's given us for our own benefit and our own glory. So... Let's go back to the writing on the wall. There are things we all are guilty of. So this handwriting on the wall is for all of us.

It's for all of us. Many, many, your days are numbered. Did you know it says, it is appointed once for man to die. That's what it means. And Tekel, you've been weighed on the balance and found deficient.

How would you do it if we weighed these two parts in your life? I want you to ask yourself that for a minute. How are you weighed out? How is your life weighed out? Where does it fall in the balance?

Where are those divine scales this morning? If you're really honest and ask yourself, have you loved and served God above all things? Have you used the time, the resources and the talents that God has given you for His glory and for His purposes? Or have you used it for yours? If the answer to those questions is not an absolute yes, then the judgment of those last words is parsin.

And that is, your days are coming to an end. Your life will be taken from you. For what is Scripture's verdict to all of us in the book of Romans? Paul declares, for there is none righteous. No, not one.

There is none righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks God. All have turned aside.

Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. That's what Scripture says. And it says, the wages of sin is death.

It is death. Man, this is a hard message, pastor. Aren't you like the good pastor that gives us all butterflies and stuff? I need you to understand this. I'm getting to the good stuff here in a minute.

I've got the best news for you ever, ever. But you need to first admit that you have not weighed your scales properly on your own. You cannot do it on your own. Which leads me to the last point. The finger of God has appeared to this generation.

It has appeared to this generation. And maybe you're sitting here and like, Leon, that's cool and everything. But a severed hand that appears, come on. You know, that's kind of carving the divine message on a plastered wall like over here somewhere. I just don't know.

I don't know if... I'm not getting what you're getting here. But that's where you need to see the bigger picture of this story. There's some divine imagery that we see here in this story. We see this wasn't the first time the finger of God has appeared in the Bible.

We go back to Exodus 8, 19. And if you remember Moses and the plagues. And when Egyptian magicians and Pharaoh's authority were able to replicate the miracles of Moses. They threw a snake and a staff on the ground and turned into a snake, mocking what Moses had did. And we had to take it to the earth's pines of God and to put your hands in the middle of the house.

And when he was talking about it, he was not talking about it. So, the word, he was saying, how is it? Nipulating Moses. But in Exodus 8, Moses does something incredible. He raises his stake and they become gnats.

He goes, whoosh, and they just become gnats. And it goes out into the kingdom. It goes out into the Egyptian kingdom and just infiltrates the people there. And Pharaoh's like, what's going on? Can you do this?

Are you able to do this? And you know what the magician said? It says, this is the finger of God. We cannot do this. This is only the finger of God.

The second place we see the finger of God in Scripture is when Moses sent the Ten Commandments. That the finger of God came down and etched in the stones on the mountain. The law of God. So, here's what it means. The finger of God indicates the power that only comes from God or a direct communication from God Himself without a human messenger to relay it.

So, which makes Jesus' claim to be the finger of God so relevant? Did you know He made a claim that He was that? If you look at Luke 11, 20, He says, but if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. And what did He do? He indicated who He was by doing miracles, doing signs, and doing wonders that nobody had ever seen.

He walked on water. He gave the blind sight. He raised the dead. He himself died and raised from the dead. And He proved that He, in fact, had the power that only God had the finger of God.

He said that these miracles proved that He was the finger of God. And He claimed that to hear His voice was to hear the voice of God directly. In fact, He told Thomas, if you look upon me, you look upon the Father. If you see me, you see the Father. And Romans 12, the Apostle Paul said that God, through Jesus Christ, engraved God's law on our hearts.

The finger of God is engraved on our hearts, just like the hand in Daniel wrote God's words in plaster. He writes it on our hearts. And by the Holy Spirit, God brings changes in our lives that only He can make, that have no explanation. And my point is that in the person of Jesus, the finger of God has appeared to this generation. He has appeared to us, verified with prophecies and miracles, and most of all, His resurrection.

And these show that God is speaking to this generation just like the mysterious hand spoke to Belshazzar in their generation. The finger of God has been given to us. So in Jesus, we are given a message just as serious as Belshazzar's. The first generation received. So the question is, are you going to listen?

Let me offer you a conclusion for those who are not yet in Christ that may be here today, and then I want to give a message for those that are in Christ. I've got about two messages, conclusions to land on today. For those of you who are not fully surrendered to Christ today, let me say this. Many, many, your days are numbered. It is appointed once for man to die, and then the judgment.

That one day we will have to appear. Every one of us will be held accountable for the things that we've done in this world. And our days are numbered. It is appointed once for man to die, and then the judgment. Takel, let me say this.

You have been measured and found deficient. You have been measured. Again, all of us have been weighed and found deficient. It's not just you, my friend. It's all of us.

We've all been found deficient. Charles Spurgeon wrote a conclusion to his message on this very passage. He said this, and I had to quote all of this because it's so beautiful. Not all of it, but most of it anyway. I would have every man put himself into a divine scale.

These scales are true to the hair. One grain of sand will tip them. On one side of the scale I put only one commandment. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. And I invite any man who flatters himself that he has no need of mercy, no need of washing in the blood of Jesus Christ, no need of atonement to put himself into the scales and see whether he measures up just to one commandment, that one commandment.

Oh, my friends, if we did not weigh ourselves against the very first commandment of the law, we would have to acknowledge ourselves as hopelessly guilty. But then, as we begin to drop into the weight of the other commandments until the whole sacred ten are there, there is not one man under the scope of heaven who has anything less to say, but must confess that he is wholly short of the mark than sin. Because all have fallen short of the glory of God. And it says the wages of sin, Romans says the wages of sin is death. And one day we will all have to give account to a holy, righteous God, perfectly just God, one day.

And I'm not going to be with you. You're not going to be with me. It's going to be you and God. It's going to be me and God. And one day we're going to have to stand, but when this life is all over, whatever those days are that have been numbered, we will have to stand before him.

And the stagecoach is coming, my friend, it is. The reality of death is there. The statistics are one and one. All die. Your days are numbered and have been weighted.

And some of you say, well, I don't like this God of judgment like this. Pastor, you're talking about some pretty... But don't you see how he is reaching out? This is the beauty of it. He is reaching out in his mercy.

That's the point of the finger of God. Like he did with Belshazzar, I'm reaching out to you. How has your life been without me? Let me show you. I'm warning you over and over and over again.

And he doesn't want any to perish but all to have eternal life. So he sent his Son, Jesus, and his words and the finger of God pointed us to the cross. It pointed us to who the Father really is. The gift of God, which is eternal life. The wages of sin is death, but the last part of that is the gift of God is eternal life.

The gift of God is eternal life. And the core of Jesus' message was that you can never be good enough to get into heaven. You can never be good enough. And we can never be righteous enough to tip those scales in our favor. So what Jesus offers was a substitution to take divine judgment in our place.

On our behalf, he took it on. He didn't just urge us to become a better person. I just want to become a better person. He didn't do that. He actually took this bad person and replaced it with the blood in himself who did live a righteous life.

When I couldn't live a righteous life, when I couldn't make the right choices, he made the right choices. And he died and he rose again, something that I could never do. And he tipped the scales in my favor. He balanced the scales for me of righteousness on the Christ side of the scale. And on the other side of the scale, you know what he did?

He took away the condemnation. That was holding us down. And from our sin and from the things that were left on the scale. And that means that if you are in Christ on the scales of God's justice, you are no longer deficient. You are completely efficient.

You are completely in Christ. That should be something to celebrate today. The finger of God is pointing out to every person now that there is a way and there is a truth that holds true and makes us right with him. And that is very good news, my friends, because all have sinned. But the gift of God is eternal life.

The gift of God is Jesus Christ. So consider, my friends, if you don't know the Lord or haven't completely surrendered to Jesus, maybe you've had a relationship or maybe you've fallen away or maybe you're just not where you need to be with God. Consider those words for those of you who are not surrendered. And then there's those for the believers today. Let me offer you some words of encouragement.

Daniel wrote this book to the Israelites to encourage them rather than to discourage them. It's easy to get discouraged in Babylon because it seems like everything that's going on around us is so bad. We see them getting away. With blasphemy, with injustice, with cruelty and sin, and with impunity. It's as if it's just happening and nobody's doing anything about it.

But God hasn't forgotten us. God didn't forget then. Has God forgotten us? No. It's been 2,000 years, Pastor.

How much longer do we wait? There were Israelites there in Daniel that were saying the same. We've been in captivity for a long, long time. Where are you, God? Where have you been?

And many were wondering, is God still in charge? Or does He even remember me? Does He even remember us? Us who are faithful? Does He remember us?

Because the days of wickedness are, here's the truth, numbered. The days of wickedness are numbered. God and Jesus Christ will return and He will make things right. There is hope that a king is returning, just as we see here, as we see in the book of Daniel, that there will be a deliverance, there will be a promised land out of this. Out of this, Jesus is coming back.

And that hope gives us strength to survive in exile, so that you can be a shining, bright light in Babylon. Bright in Babylon. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank You so much for Your Scripture.

Spirit, take the room now. As we focus on You, Lord, is there a heart here today that has not submitted to Jesus? Is there a heart here today that has not confessed and received Jesus as Lord? Because the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Will you give your life to Jesus today?

Will you make a decision for Jesus? Just confess it to Him. Lord, Lord, I'm a sinner. I've done things that I'm not pleased with. I can't be good.

I realize that I can't do it. But Lord, I receive Jesus Christ who did it, who did it all, who lived the perfect life, who died and rose again. Come into my heart, come into my life. And for those of you who are discouraged and don't know what's next and think that God has forgotten you, can I just pray for you? Lord, help those hearts, Lord.

Know that You are still at work. Even when we don't see it and even when we don't know it, You are still doing a great work. You are always working. And your plans will be fulfilled ultimately. In Jesus' name.

Amen.