“It’s a Miracle: Handwriting on the Wall”
Daniel 5:5
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Have you ever wondered where certain clichés come from?
Take, for example, the phrase, “Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.” You have to admit, it is a rather strange thing to say.
Apparently, the phrase dates back to the 18th century before anyone invented box springs. Back then, unless you were very wealthy, you slept on a straw mattress laid across a net of ropes. And over time, those ropes would stretch and sag until the heaviest part of your body would fall and touch the ground. So if you were to get a good night’s rest, it was important to sleep tight or else the bed bugs, (and who knows what else!), would bite.
Or how about the phrase “lock, stock and barrel,” a synonym for completeness, totality? We say things like, “I bought the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel.”
That cliché also comes from the 18th century and was used to refer to a fully assembled musket made of three main parts—a lock, a stock and a barrel. So when you bought the whole thing, you bought it “lock, stock and barrel.”
Or how about the phrase, “he wears his heart on his sleeve”? People as diverse as William Shakespeare, Ringo Starr, Carrie Underwood and Eminem have used that cliché. So where did that phrase ever come from?
Back in the Middle Ages, when a knight performed in a jousting tournament, he would show his affection for a particular lady of the court by wearing her handkerchief on his arm. When people saw it, they would say, “He’s wearing his heart on his sleeve.”
And think of the many, many other clichés that are so much a part of our lives, like…”It’s all Greek to me” (when it really isn’t Greek at all)…or “I’m as happy as a clam” (Do you think clams are really happy?)…or “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (I can see throwing out the bathwater, but never the baby!). Or others like, “fit as a fiddle,” “time will tell” and “as old as the hills.”
You get the idea. I could say more, (it would be a “piece of cake”!) because those are just “the tip of the iceberg.” But if I say any more, I’m afraid you might “read me the riot act” or give me “the third degree.”
Our text for today comes from the book of Daniel chapter 5, and it introduces us to yet one more. It’s a phrase that refers to something that’s obvious, ominous and imminent. It’s a cliché you’ve heard countless times before. It goes like this: “The handwriting is on the wall.”
If you could, please turn with me in your Bibles to page 942 as I read the words of Daniel chapter 5. It begins with this. Daniel chapter 5, verse 1: “King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand. Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.”
Before we go any father, let me give you a quick history lesson, so you can have an idea as to what’s going on.
Not too many years before, there in Babylon, a man named Nebuchadnezzar was king. When he died, his son, Amel-Marduk, became king. But he only reigned for a couple of years, because his brother-in-law, Neriglissar, assassinated him. Then when Neriglissar died four years later, his son, Labashi-Marduk became king. But he was king for only nine months until a group of conspirators killed him. Then Nabonidus became king and ruled for seventeen years.
But Nabonidus wasn’t a member of the royal family, so people didn’t really like him. So he agreed to move out of town and let Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, become king instead. (Don’t worry. None of this will be on the test!)
So there he was, King Belshazzar, barely thirty-six years old--young, head-strong, decadent, idolatrous, and immoral--the great, invincible king of Babylon.
But there was a problem. His kingdom was about to fall. The Medes and the Persians had already taken one city after another, until finally only one was left—the capital city, the very place Belshazzar called home.
But what a city it was! Archaeologists have discovered that it was heavily fortified. Its walls were eighty-seven feet thick, three hundred feet high and fifty-six miles long! More than a hundred towers were strategically placed to provide crossfire and surveillance. And inside, there was enough food stockpiled to last twenty years. Sure the Medes and the Persians were laying in wait, knocking on their door. But as far as Belshazzar was concerned, they could knock all they wanted, but there was no way they were ever, ever going to get inside.
So what would you do if you were the proud, stuck-on-himself, high and mighty king of Babylon? He threw a party, a really big party, with the best of meats, the finest of wines and the most exotic, beautiful women he could find.
Then, when the party was in full swing, when he and his guests had more than enough to drink, he had an idea. Why not send for those golden goblets his grandfather, old Nebuchadnezzar, had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem? Sure it mocked God, but it would be a way to show who was really the boss, who was really king.
But as he and his thousand lords and wives and lady friends joined in their raucous, sumptuous feast, something strange, something weird, something eerie began to happen. Look at the words of verse 5: “Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together.”
“What is it?” he cried. “Who can read that writing? Who can tell me what it says?”
None of his enchanters, his magicians or his astrologers had a clue, until Belshazzar’s mother, the queen mother, had an idea. Look at verse 10: O king, live forever! Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change. There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods.” Then at the end of verse 12, it says: “Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.”
Then when Daniel came, what did he say? Look at verse 25: “And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin.” And verse 26: “Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. Numbered, numbered, too light, divided.
For the past thirty-six years, Belshazzar did what he wanted to do and lived like he wanted to live, but now his time was up. His day of reckoning had come.
And sure enough, that very night, the Medes and the Persians dammed up the Euphrates River, crept beneath the city gates, and took the life of old King Belshazzar.
The handwriting was on the wall.
Some twenty-five years ago, back in 1988, theologian Carl F. H. Henry wrote a book about America. He called it, The Twilight of a Great Civilization.
This is what he said: “The Barbarians are coming and they threaten to undermine the foundations of Western civilization by promoting a humanistic rejection of God and the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western culture.” And he wrote: “They proclaim that there is no fixed truth, no final good, no ultimate meaning and purpose, and that the living God is a primitive illusion.”
In his book, The Marketing of Evil, journalist David Kupelian agrees. He writes that even though most Americans are adamantly opposed to such social and cultural change, the media, courts and universities are promoting secular values that are corrupting America, teaching that marriage is obsolete and that abortion and euthanasia must be legal in a mature and tolerant society.
And instead of learning the truth about God and creation and our Savior Jesus Christ, our children learn about Muhammad, Shiva, and how to be a witch.
Our nation is guilty of every sin anyone has ever been able to imagine. There’s not one sin in the history of the world that’s not being committed in America today.
Roman philosopher Seneca once said: “The time will come when our successors will wonder how we could have been ignorant of things so obvious.” Even Thomas Jefferson saw it coming when he said, two hundred years ago: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
What did Jesus say? He said, “You serve Me with your lips, but your heart is far from Me.” Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Don’t be deceived. God cannot be mocked.” And Jeremiah wrote, “They will sow wheat, but reap thorns.”
The handwriting is on the wall.
Is there any hope? There would be no hope at all if it weren’t for the One who not only wrote on the wall, but who once wrote on the ground.
Remember? For in the book of John chapter 8, a woman was caught in the act of adultery. “Caught…in the act,” the Bible says.
And as men dragged her kicking and screaming through the city streets and threw her down before Jesus, disgraced, humiliated and ashamed, what did He do? The Bible says He bent down and wrote with His finger on the ground. Then He stood up to say, “He who is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone.”
And there we find our hope, our only hope, for ourselves and for our nation—in a Savior who’s come to pardon, to forgive, and to redeem—the One whose name is Jesus.
All thanks be to God.
Dear Father, once a mighty king of Babylon dared to ridicule You and mock You. And sometimes, even we have done the same. Help us, by Your grace, to come to You in repentance and faith as we see the handwriting on the wall. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen