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Engraving the Walls of an Iraqi Palace

We’re going to open the last few verses of Daniel 5, and see what happened to King Belshazzar where we left him in yesterday’s broadcast. This chapter has an intriguing theme: All decisions have consequences, often unexpected and unintended. An illustration outside the book of Daniel is one I mentioned a moment ago, the decision of Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon River in northern Italy.

In 60 BC, the Roman senate placed the country's fate in the hands of three men: Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, they were called the triumvirate. Crassus ruled the East, Pompey conquered much of the Middle East including Jerusalem, and Julius Caesar conquered what we now call England and France. But the three couldn't get along. Each wanted to rule alone. After a battle that took the life Crassus, only two remained. Caesar's daughter Julia had married Pompey, so these two had to put on a face of cooperation although they loathed each other. But when Julia died unexpectedly, Pompey headed for Rome to persuade the Senate to take away Caesar's command.

Caesar had set up camp in North Italy at the time. So Mark Anthony and Cassius were dispatched from Rome to tell Caesar the Senate's decision. When the messengers arrived, Caesar arranged a grand banquet. As the evening progressed he excused himself, changed into battle dress, headed north to confuse any spies, then turned back south. At dawn he met his army at the banks of the Rubicon river.

In that quiet dawn, he shouted, "The die is cast." Two months later he became the supreme ruler of Rome after conquering all Italy without shedding a drop of blood. Caesar's decision at the Rubicon changed the course of human history. But with consequences he could never have imagined.

And with that introduction about decisions, we return to Daniel 5, where we find a similar theme.

We learned yesterday that Belshazzar, the Babylonian king of an empire that ruled the world from 606 BC to 538 BC, made a fateful decision. It also had a vastly different outcome than he could have imagined. He planned a dissolute banquet for a thousand of his princes, lords, and favorites, and at the climax of the evening celebrated the gods of Babylon drinking wine from the sacred, dedicated vessels used in the holy Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Yesterday we learned that the decision to take the goblets in this infamous disrespect for God brought a staggering consequence. The mysterious hand of an angel from heaven wrote on the walls of the banquet hall, three Aramaic words: mene, tekel, and upharsin. The words were common words, they meant, “counting,” “weighted,” and “pieces."

The effect of the mysterious angelic hand writing on the palace wall was staggering. The wisest men in the realm were called to explain what these common words were meant to signify. They failed, and suddenly the king’s mother, uninvited, stood before the king. It was an incredibly audacious and brave act. No one comes to the king without an invitation!

She told her son to call Daniel. "Daniel can interpret dreams," she told him, “Daniel can explain mysteries. Call Daniel!" In desperation he summoned Daniel.

A short time later, Daniel found himself ushered into the banal banquet hall. His eyes scanned the walls, his mind scanned the words blazing from the plaster surface of the brick walls.

Belshazzar spoke first and said:
"Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah? . . . I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom." [That is, after Belshazzar and his father Nabonidus]
Then Daniel answered the king, "You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means.”
But rather than interpreting the words, Daniel delayed by saying, I’m reading Dnaiel 5: verse 18 and on:

" . . . the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar . . . greatness and glory and splendor . . . Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death; those he wanted to spare, he spared; those he wanted to promote, he promoted; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled. But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle; and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone he wishes.
"But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.
Only then did Daniel declare with eloquence and gravity the meaning of the words flaming from the plaster the banquet hall walls.

Even as Daniel spoke, feverish activity filled the night outside the walls of the city. Darius and Cyrus the Median and Persian generals were putting the finishing touches to a strategic plan of attack. Through their spies in the city, they knew about the banquet. It would mean a time of lax security. So they were proceeding with a brilliant but complex plan.

The Euphrates river ran diagonally through the city bringing life-giving water. A series of 100 massive brass gates swung across the stream prohibiting any boats from entering the city. So Darius and Cyrus had their soldiers divert the stream into a marsh. They dug for hours. Then at the last possible moment they began to throw dirt into the main stream to divert it. At first a trickle diverted, but shortly the full force of the water from the north found its new course and flowed away from Babylon, not through it.

As the level of the water in the river dropped, the soldiers clambered along the muddy bottom of the stream, ducked under the gates, and tested the defenses of the city. There were none. The guards were as drunk as their lords.

Back in the banquet hall Daniel came to the climax of his short speech. "Mene you know means, 'counting,'" he said, "and God has counted the deeds of your reign and He has decided to end it.

Tekel, you know means "weighed," and God has placed you in His heavenly balances and you have come up short.

Upharsin, you know means "pieces," and God is cutting your kingdom into pieces and handing them to the Medes and Persians.

Scarcely had the words died on the early morning air when a storm of protest erupted at the doors of the banquet hall. Soldiers, muddy from head to toe after clambering up the river-bed, sloshed their way into the hall, waving their swords and decapitating every defenseless lord in sight. They moved swiftly, defiantly, inevitably towards the royal dais.

At this point, Daniel vanished to his private quarters. But as he left, he saw God's words fulfilled as the soldiers murdered the king, and the kingdom fell into the hands of the Medes and Persians.

Floating through his mind I'm sure were images of a great statue of several metals God placed in Nebuchadnezzar's mind, and the words he had used to describe the meaning. He had told Nebuchadnezzar,

"After you shall come a second kingdom, an inferior kingdom, just as silver is less precious than gold."

It had happened. The night had arrived. And miraculously the aged Daniel had lived to watch the transition. But he could never have imagined the honors that would soon be heaped on him by the conquerors, nor the unbelievable trials. And so ends Daniel chapter 5.

All decisions have consequences. We all make decisions about our children, training decisions, school decisions, vocational decisions, often with unimagined and unintended consequences.

We all make decisions about our devotional lives, what to read, what to study, when to pray or not to pray, what to pray about. And every such decision has consequences, often with unimagined and unintended consequences.

Belshazzar decided to treat as common the sacred, to use what had been consecrated for a high and holy purpose for a degrading purpose. It brought unimagined and unintended consequences.

And we too are His vessels. Each of us has been molded by His creative hand, each one of us consecrated to His service, each given priceless gifts for ministry. But our daily decisions about our relationship with Him, and decisions about our relationships with each other, determine whether the consecrated vessel will be kept for its high calling, or allowed to be commandeered for a common, secular use.

Every decision, as we saw with Columbus, and Caesar, and Belshazzar, has consequences, often with unimagined and unintended consequences. You see God’s writing is on the walls of my heart, and yours too.