Turn back to Daniel chapter 5. Daniel 5, and if you'll remember
what has just taken place, quite a fearsome and sobering event. This king by the name of Belshazzar
has given a very riotous banquet. and all his lords and his concubines
and such, they have all been eating and drinking and doing
so, I'm sure, to excess, when all of a sudden there appears
a hand out of nowhere. And that hand writes on the wall
a few words that are a message from God. I hope that as we look
at this today, that we'll remember what we always need to remember
when we read these Old Testament passages. Paul said, now all
these things happened unto them for examples, and they are written
for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."
They are recorded for us to read and receive as words from God. But while we like to think that
this man Belshazzar, this king, was a wicked and awful and ungodly
man, maybe above many, the truth is, he is like every sinner,
like every one of us, apart from God's grace. If you remember,
and it is mentioned again in this chapter, his father was
that man Nebuchadnezzar, who stood out on the balcony overlooking
all the kingdom of Babylon and said, O great Babylon, that I
have built, that I have done for my own glory. And God stopped him, and he brought
him to an end of himself so that he had to acknowledge God for
who he is, the Most High, and confess that God raises up whom
he will, And He does everything according to His will in the
armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth, and nobody
can stop Him. And we believe that this man
Belshazzar should, by that very history in his ancestor, he should
have taken and learned a lesson from that. But before we condemn
him so clearly and strictly, we ought also to have taken a
lesson from our ancestor, from our first father, whose name
was Adam. If you look here in Daniel 5,
beginning in verse 17, It says, "...then Daniel answered
and said before the king, let thy gifts be to thyself, and
give thy rewards to another." Here supposedly the queen will
say that it was this man Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar made head
over all the wise men. But he did not, like all these
other so-called wise men, clamor to make an interpretation, and
to do so that he might be rewarded by the king. He said, you can
give your money and your perks and all these other things, you
can give them to somebody else, but I will tell you the interpretation. Yet I will read the writing unto
the king and make known to him the interpretation. O thou king,
the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom and majesty
and glory and honor. And for the majesty that he gave
him, all people, nations, and languages trembled and feared
before him, whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept
alive, and whom he would he set up, and whom he would he put
down. But when his heart was lifted
up, and his mind hardened in pride. He was deposed from his
kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. And he was
driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the
beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses. They fed
him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew
of heaven. till he knew that the Most High
God rules in the kingdom of men, and that He hath appointed over
it whomsoever He will. And thou, His Son, O Belshazzar,
hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this."
You see that? He was not without knowledge. He was not without some responsibility
toward God based simply on what he already knew had happened
to his father. And likewise, our father Adam
in Romans 5 and many places, it tells us that he defied God,
that he acted in a way that was inconsistent to what God had
commanded him, and that he fell, and the Scripture says, by him
sin entered in and death by sin. He failed to take heed of that
warning. And likewise, obviously, he was,
like us, born with a nature of sin. That's what his father Nebuchadnezzar
was. And like always begets like. You can't bring a clean thing
out of an unclean thing. And so, as is demonstrated in
his conduct in life here, he had a nature of sin. And that's what we all have.
We are born in sin and shapen in iniquity. And then he also
took the very gifts of God. From the power he gave him to
the wealth that he gave him, no doubt the talents that he
gave him, he took the gifts of God without acknowledging Him
or thanking Him or worshiping Him, but rather he worshiped
idols. I'm sure that the gods that he
in his day worshipped were generally accepted by most people in religion
in that day. But look in verse 23. He says, iron, wood, and stone, which
see not, nor hear, nor know, and the God in whose hand your
breath is." Now, you're spending all your time, and you're not
only worshiping an idol, which is not God at all, But you are
at the same time mocking the true and living God, and He is
described in this way, the God in whose hand your breath is,
and whose are all thy ways hast thou not glorified. Here you are falling down, maybe
even in mockery, to gods that are made of wood and stone and
silver and gold, who can't hear or see or know or speak or any
of these things, but the God who holds your very breath in
His hand, the God who holds everything concerning you in His hand, you've
not glorified Him. And that's the way every one
of us is by nature. That's what every one of us will
do in one way or another if God leaves us to our self. He will show us that's exactly
what we are. And then, if you notice here,
he receives a message. There is a message written on
the wall, a message from God that he could not interpret. He didn't know what it meant. And not only that, all His so-called
wise men in His kingdom, they could not interpret that message,
which shows us, as is said oftentimes in the New Testament, that God
alone can reveal Himself or His Word to us by His written Word
and Spirit. We have to have that interpreter. And then also we find that God
in this hour judges him with a judgment that is very just. His judgment of this man Nebuchadnezzar,
great as he was, Rich as he was, powerful as he was, the judgment
that he issued against this man was a just judgment. Now, I want you to hold your
hand right there and turn back to Isaiah 45. Isaiah chapter
45, and look down with me in Isaiah 45 and verse 20. Listen to what God says, not
simply to Belshazzar. But to every one of us, he says,
assemble yourselves and come, draw near together, ye that are
escaped of the nations. They have no knowledge that set
up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a God that cannot
say." Now I'll tell you this, I'm sure that all these images
of wood and gold and stone and whatever it is, no matter how
ornate men make them, Whether they actually do so literally
or whether they do so with word pictures of them. Because image
is always born as the imagination of a fallen sinner. And here
they are, and men fix them up, they make them very ornate, they
make them very appealing, because that's what we as sinners look
for, that which the natural eye can see or what we can feel. But what good is it, no matter
how they're shined and polished or set up, if they still are
this, a God? that cannot say." A God that
cannot say. "...tell ye, and bring them near,
yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient
time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord, and there
is no God else beside me?" A just God. You see that? A just God. And Nebuchadnezzar is being confronted
at this hour by a just God, and that is the same God that you
and I will have to do with. That's the same God you and I
will have to meet For all eternity, that's the same God that is spoken
of in this book. He goes on to say, "...and a
Savior, there is none beside me." There's no second choice. There's no multiple choice. "...Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else."
Men can talk about many faiths if they want to. They can refer
to their God or my God or your God if you want to. But there
is only one God, and He is a just God. So He receives this message. And it is a message of God. And what is this message that
he receives from God? It says in verse 24, "...then
was the part of the hand sent from him, and this writing was
written." And let me say this, whatever God writes, it cannot
be altered It will never change. He is the immutable God who changes
not. You cannot erase it. You cannot
improve it. You cannot delude it. It's what
He has written. So what does He say? And this
is the writing that was written, "...many, many takel, Well, if I had been there on
that occasion, I wouldn't have known what it meant either. But
God has given us the interpretation. This is the interpretation of
the thing, meaning, God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished
it. He has numbered thy kingdom and
finished it." You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds
exactly like what we read in Hebrews 9, 27. Because he says, "...for it is
appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment."
People say, well, I'm not afraid of dying. So what? What you have
to fear is that which immediately follows death. He says, "...for
it is appointed..." Surely we have to know God is the one who
appoints that. You and I would never appoint
us a day of death. "...it is appointed unto men
once to die, and after this, the judgment." The judgment. And so what does it say? Verse
27, takel, thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. You say, well, that poor fellow,
he just died, he's a wicked man, I can see that. But the truth
is, that's what the God of all infinite justice has to say of
us in ourselves. Doesn't matter who you are, male
or female. Doesn't matter who you are, if
you're my parent or my child. Doesn't matter who you are, if
you're young or if you're old. He says, you are weighed in the
balances and found wanting. What are the balances that he's
talking about? Well, they are simply the scales. You know what scales are. Well,
in this day, they would have been scales such as the scales
that are used to picture and represent the scales of American
justice. If you go look in the building
that houses the Supreme Court, I believe that you'll find a
picture of that lady that represents justice, and she's holding in
her hand a set of these scales or balances, a bar that has a
chain which holds two cup devices. And they would in that day take
a weight and put it on one side, and keep putting whatever was
on the other side to be weighed on that side until it balanced
out. And that's the picture here.
He says of this king, you are weighed in the balances and found
wanting. And what we have to remember
is that these are not the scales of man's justice, but these are
the scales of God who is described as the righteous God. Turn back over to the book of
Leviticus. Leviticus chapter 19, listen
to what God said to those Israelites, those who were to judge among
the people. And to show us that it is the
same for all, he makes this in reference to the fact that a
stranger, one who is not a Jew, he may sojourn or dwell with
you a while, but it is still the same standard of justice. Verse 35, "...ye shall do no
unrighteousness in judgment." in meat yard, in weight, or in
measure." He said, you are not. If you are a judge, you are to
not show favor, whether they be Jew or one of these strangers
that sojourns among you. The standard is to be the same,
the weighing, the measurement, He says, just balances, just
weights, a just ephah, and a just hen, all these are measurements,
shall ye have, I am the Lord your God which brought you out
of the land of Egypt, therefore shall ye observe all my statues
and all my judgments, and do them I am. In other words, you are not being
called as my people, and you especially as being set forth
as my representative in this world, you are not to act in
a way unjust which casts a reflection and a reproach on my justice
and my judgment. These are not the scales of public
opinion. Now, I know what we like. We
like to be well thought of and praised. We like to be weighed
on the scales of public opinion. And if public opinion for us
outweighs public opinion against us, we think we're okay. And
neither are these the scales of popular religious persuasion. Well, this is what most everybody
believes, I believe what they believe, and so if this many
people believe, this must be right. This is not the scales
of man's morality. In other words, compared to those
who do opposite, I'm the one who's doing right here, and if
I'm doing right, and they're obviously doing wrong, I must
be okay. Not the standards of family favor. Well, my mom's pleased with me,
or my dad, my family, my wife, my husband, my mom. No. No, these are the scales of divine
justice. In Proverbs it says of this holy
God, a just weight and balance are the Lord's. All the weights
of the back are His work. Somebody set forth as the judge
in a case to determine a weight, to determine a measurement. And
here he is, he carries his bag, and in his bag he has all the
various precise measurements that he is to weigh and to try. This is what it says of God.
All the weights are in His bag. This isn't going to be about
us. This is about God. And what did those scales read? What did they say? They said,
King, you're weighed in the balances of God, of righteousness, and
of His judgment, and you're found wanting, lacking, insufficient. And here are those that Christ
speaks of in Matthew 7. And they cry out, and he said
they would say in the day of judgment, they'd say, Lord, Lord,
here we are, we're going to put all these things in the scales,
see how we really show up. Have we not preached in your
name? Have we not done many wonderful
works in your name? Have we not cast out devils in
your name? And I'm sure it would go on and
on and on. But he said, I'll say to them
in that day, depart from me ye that work iniquity. Iniquity? What's that? Inequity. In other words, all that you
do, not only are not enough in quantity, but they're absolutely
not enough in kind to measure up to what I require. You put
them all in the balances, there'll be nothing. Nothing. Go back
and read Romans chapter 3. Turn over there for just a minute
and read Romans 3 with me a bit. The Jews were always thinking
themselves better, more acceptable to God than the Gentiles were,
But Paul, when the Lord revealed the truth to him and how that
no sinner could ever, under that law that Moses gave, ever be
righteous in God's sight, he looks here in Romans chapter
3 in this letter and he says in verse 9, "...what then are
we, him being a Jew himself, better than they? No, in no wise,
for we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they
are all under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth,
there is none that seeketh after God, they are all gone out of
the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that
doeth good, no, not one. Now, what do you determine out
of all this? that the number who would do
all these things are zero, none. They are all unprofitable. They are, as he goes on to say
in this chapter, all have sinned and what? Come short. of the glory of God. And so he says in verse 19, Now
we know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds
of the law, What is the deeds of the law? It's simply by any
principle of doing. By the deeds of the law, listen
to this, shall no flesh be justified in his sight. None. Not Jew, not Gentile, young,
old, whatever it is. by any principle of our doing,
there shall be no flesh justified in his sight." And the scales
that are set forth here in our text, they are very different
than the scales that naturally appear in our mind as sinners
and that are naturally fed by false religion in this world,
which is basically something like this. Here are these balances,
these scales. And by nature, this is what we
want to think, and since men know this is what we want to
think, this is their gospel. Well, God's going to take all
the good that you do and put it on one side of these scales.
And then He's going to take all the bad that you do and He's
going to put it on the other side of the scales. And if what
you've done good outweighs the bad that you've done, you're
okay. But if it kind of is close Jesus will pick up the slack.
That's right. That's what our kids hear from
the day they're born almost. Things like, you want to go to
heaven, you better be a good boy. You make sure you do more
good than you do bad. There's just one problem with
all that, and that is we have no good. We have no good to put
in the scales. Did you not hear Him say, there
is none good, none righteous, no, not one? As a matter of fact,
he describes us in this way. He said, man at his best state,
you and I on our best day, when we've had a run of our best for
a few days, weeks, or whatever, he said he's altogether vanity. You know what that is? Nothing. Nothing. You see, God, it says,
looked down on the sons of men, and He saw that we were only
evil continually. Everything we do is touched and
polluted and tainted with sin. Our righteousness is described,
our best that we think is described before God as filthy rags. And actually, the picture in
this text is the picture of Something like gold or silver being tried
and tested for whether or not it is gold or silver and whether
or not it is the accurate weight. Because gold and silver and some
other metals, they're described as what? Heavy metals. They're
heavy metals. I know when my wife ran the gift
shop, you could find these catalogs, and people were always coming
to her trying to sell her something, and it would be silver, it would
be beautiful, it would shine, you would just look at it, it
would be so nice looking, so appearing silver and pure and
everything like that. Actually, most of the time, better
than real silver. But as soon as somebody put a
piece of it, like a necklace in your hand, it had no weight. Fake gold has no weight. And
so the Scripture says by the prophet Jeremiah, "...reprobate
silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them."
They're not the real thing. Behold, Isaiah says, the nations
are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust
of the balance. They're light, they won't even
weigh anything. All the nations put together. He says by Samuel,
"...talk no more so exceedingly proudly, let not arrogance come
out of your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by
Him actions are weighed." You can talk a good case if you want
to, talk a good game as we say, if you haven't got the actions
to back them up. Paul writing to the church at
Galatia, he says, "...for as many as are of the works of the
law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law, to do them." Though the psalmist says, surely men
of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree, such as Belshazzar,
are a lie, to be laid in the balance, they are altogether
lighter than vanity." We don't even come close to measuring
up. Not only not the best man, but
all the best men together. Not all the riches of this world,
not all the best works of this world, So what is the standard? What is God's standard for man? I know. The man Christ Jesus. Now we can't even think. God
absolutely considered. We cannot even think about the
goodness, the holiness, the righteousness of God. But here's a man. There
is a man. that stands before God, stands
on the scales of God, and he is found absolutely in every
way acceptable to God. Now, you get on the other side
of the scale, see if you can measure up to him. It says he
knew no sin, never thought of sin, never committed an act of
sin, never had the motive of sin. pure, harmless, holy, undefiled,
separate from sinners. But there's a good thing. He
not only is God's standard, He is God's Savior. You think about
this. Keep this balance as these scales
in your mind. Here is the standard on one side. Who is He? The Lord Jesus Christ. God's only got one weight in
His bag. There's this standard. The man Christ Jesus. But here's
this Savior too. Hold your place and look back
where we were reading in Isaiah 45. In that 21st verse, he says,
"...there is no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior."
In other words, God is not only this just God, has this standard,
unchangeable, he must be just, he has to act in righteousness,
he's a just God, and at the same time, a Savior. Here's his standard,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's his Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now you think about this, only
God's equal, in pleasing. There are a multitude of folks
out here in this world, and there have been since Cain's day, doing
everything they can, I mean sincerely trying, to measure up to that
standard, to equal out that scale and balances, to please God,
to be accepted by God, to be counted righteous by God, to
have a ground upon which God can receive them and take them
to heaven. And they've all failed. What
happened to this man? Verse 30 says, "...in that night
was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain, and Darius the
Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years
old." God already had the instrument of His destruction. basically
at his door. You're weighed in the balances
and found wanting. You cannot in and of yourself
measure up. You cannot in and of yourself
or by anything you do meet the weight standard. Only God can
satisfy God. And when you look at his scales,
when you look at this picture that he sets forth all through
the Scripture, this standard that he requires, here's the
Lord Jesus Christ on one side, but here's the Lord Jesus Christ
on the other side. You say, well, how can, if Christ
is the standard and He's the Savior, where do we fit into
this? Where does anybody fit in? Well, there's a people in
Christ. In other words, by God, in His
judgment, Though He looked at them all who were in Adam, which
was all, and they all fell in Adam, He looked at this people
who are the objects of His grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. It says that He chose them in
Christ. He made Christ their surety before
the world began. They're all in Him. They're in
that covenant I talked about last week. They're in Christ
who's the head of this body. And there are those scales. They
swing level and even, and God saves them in Christ Jesus by
virtue of what He did in putting away their sins by His death
on the cross, and Him counting them every one in the risen Christ. That's what Paul is saying in
2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, "...for he hath made him to be sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him." Everyone in Christ measures up, measures up. He
is, on the one hand, this just God, and He is, at the same time,
this Savior. Only Christ can satisfy and be
suitable for both God and men, and that's why He's called the
Lord our Father. righteousness. Paul writes to
Titus and he says, not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to His mercy He saved us. You know, I don't
suppose I'm all that different. When I go to the doctor maybe
a couple of times a year and And he wants to do all those
things to you, you know. He wants to check your blood
pressure. He always wants to check your
weight, too. So what I'll do is, before I
go in, I'll take all my change out. phone, I leave it in the
car, my key, all the extra stuff like that, you know, I can tell
you do the same thing. But I want to be as light as
I can when I step on those scales. I never am, but that's just the
way we are as sinners. We either want to take something
off or we want to put something on and try to measure it, but
you can't. That's why Paul is saying, after
he repents of all that he was as a Jew and a Pharisee and a
keeper of the law and all that, he said, I count all that as
nothing now, that I might be found in Christ. Lord, let me stand in that scale
of your justice clothed in another. Measure me in Christ. The psalmist said, Lord, if you
should regard iniquity, who could stand? But in Christ, all our
sins are put away. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. And Paul, going all the way through
that book of Romans, he gives us that chief example of faith. He says, what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him for
righteous. And then again in Romans 10,
he says this, For the Scripture says, Whosoever believes on him
shall not be ashamed. Standing before God in Jesus
Christ, pleading His blood shed to put away our sin, His righteousness
imputed to us. And that word imputed simply
means Put to our account. Reckon. That's the word Paul
used. That means put to our account. Here we are on the scales. Put
all our works there. Doesn't budge a bit. Lighter
than vanity. But standing in Christ. We'll
never be ashamed. We'll never be found wanting. will never be found lacking.
And that's why David said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. I shall not be in want of anything,
especially standing before this thrice holy, just God. To his people, this is the good
news of the gospel, that in Christ, God has already weighed you in
the balances, and you're found wanting nothing, equal to what
I require. And I'm a just God and a Savior. May God help us to look to Him.
Father, we thank you this day for the good news of the Lord
Jesus Christ, that you do not leave your people to themselves.
to plead their own righteousness, to trust a salvation that's by
their works, their own goodness, but that you reveal to them the
good news that you've already counted them and justly dealt
with them in that same strict justice through the person and
work of Christ the Substitute. Through Christ in Him crucify. He's our standard. Unchanging. Oh, but He's our Savior. And
we thank You and pray and give You all the glory. That's what
it is to glorify You, Lord, to look to the One You've set forth
and provided, the gift of righteousness, Your crucified Son, risen, seated
at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and all Your people
in Him. We thank you and we praise you in His name. Amen.