November 14, 2004

John W. Fowler

Daniel 5:1-12

1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet (in Daniel Chapter 5) for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. 3 So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. 4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.

A weary mother returned from the store,
Lugging groceries through the kitchen door.
Awaiting her arrival was her 8 year old son,
Anxious to relate what his younger brother had done.

"While I was out playing and Dad was on a call,
T.J. took his crayons and wrote on the wall!
It's on the new paper you just hung in the den.
I told him you'd be mad at having to do it again."
She let out a moan and furrowed her brow,
"Where is your little brother right now?"
She emptied her arms and with a purposeful stride,
She marched to his closet where he had gone to hide.

She called his full name as she entered his room.
He trembled with fear--he knew that meant doom!
For the next ten minutes, she ranted and raved
About the expensive wallpaper and how she had saved.

Lamenting all the work it would take to repair,
She condemned his actions and total lack of care.
The more she scolded, the madder she got,
Then stomped from his room, totally distraught!

She headed for the den to confirm her fears.
When she saw the wall, her eyes flooded with tears.
The message she read pierced her soul with a dart.
It said, "I love Mommy," surrounded by a heart.

Well, the wallpaper remained, just as she found it,
With an empty picture frame hung to surround it.
A reminder to her, and indeed to all,
Take time to read the handwriting on the wall

—Author Unknown—

It reminds me of when our oldest boy, he was two years old, and he had found the crayons and decided to do a little art work on the walls in our bathroom and his mother tried to get an honest answer out of him and he said, “Well, Stevie did it.” Now, Stevie was six months old and we thought that was amazing that he got out of the crib and went and did that. But what Phillip did is what you and I do, oftentimes, with the handwriting on the wall: God is trying to get our attention; He is trying to correct something in our life. He is doing it out of love. In Proverbs it says:

But we just simply rationalize; we explain it away, and before we know it, this particular sin, or whatever it is God is trying to get our attention about, He has been warning us about, gets a grip on us and it does its damage.

I want you to look at this setting of Daniel, chapter 5. King Belshazzar is probably the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. He is the king. And just to back up a little bit, in the beginning of chapter 4, we find that Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, the one who had laid seeds to Jerusalem, the one that had put Sandarac, Meshach and Abednego into the furnace because they wouldn’t fall down and worship, and the one who had all these visions that Daniel interpreted. And all that is to say is, God was very patient and God really went out of His way to get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. In fact, he was warned in a dream that this seven year’s of illness would come to him. He still would not change his ways; he would not humble himself. And one day as he went out and looked at Babylon, “O mighty Babylon. Look at all that I have done.” And the judgment came and Nebuchadnezzar, for seven years lost his kingdom, lost his mind. And at the ending of chapter 4 we find these words:

That is something not often known about King Nebuchadnezzar. So, this king’s grandfather certainly had a change of heart and had humbled himself and turned to the Lord God. But his grandson would have no part of that; he loved his power; he loved drinking; he loved partying, and so when Darius, the king of the Medes and the Persians was laying siege to the city, he felt like, “Well, let’s just have a good old time. Let’s go on with the festival that we had planned.”

Babylon was a gated community, to say the least. They had walls that were eleven miles long, sixty-five feet high, eighty-five feet thick. They had the Euphrates River, which was an effective moat. They had a twenty-year supply of food and so, well, what can happen? He is like people today that have a false sense of security that nothing will ever happen; I just simply don’t need God; I just can’t be bothered with Him.

Not only was he having a drunken party, but he was committing blasphemy. He said, “Send for the holy objects from the temple and let’s drink from them.” If you can imagine: Taking the baptismal font, the offering plates, communion cups and having a drunken party with them, you get a sense of just the mockery and the blasphemy that this man was committing. And truly, this will invite the judgment of God into our lives when blasphemy comes like that.

The king has a problem that is a very old problem. Along with idolatry, it is one of the two most common sins. And what is that? It is a sinful pride. It’s this, “God I don’t need you because I am so wonderful and I am so self-sufficient. I’ll call on you if I get in a bind, but other than that, I’m doing fine; I do not need you.”

You see it in the Garden of Eden when the temptation came: Well, if you take of that fruit, you’ll be like God. Well, that sounded pretty good, and so they took of the fruit and the fall came.

The Tower of Babel. They built a great building. Why? To make a name for themselves, and God had them humble themselves.

King Saul, when finally his kingdom was taken away from him, did he change his mind and humble himself? No. He gave way to resentment and jealousy and chasing David, and died a miserable man.

Pride — we’re not talking about a healthy pride; we’re not talking about good self-esteem which so many people desperately need today. We’re talking about a sinful pride. We’re talking about one that essentially tells God, “We don’t need You.”

In Maxie Dunnam' s book on the seven deadly sins, he talks about Vince Lombardi, who was a football coach of the Green Bay Packers. If you are not a football fan you might not know that, but he was outstanding. Many stories are told about his monstrous ego which was not always healthy. One story that was told about him: (I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a good story) he won a playoff game that he wasn’t supposed to win, and his wife, for some reason, couldn’t go to the game. He was very disappointed that she didn’t get to the game and he came home late that night, of course elated that they had won. And he got into the bed with her and his feet were very cold and she said, “God, your feet are cold!” And his quick response is, “When we are in bed you can just call me Vince.”

Now, pride, what is it? Dictionaries give the following definition: An inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable conceit or superiority. Synonyms for pride are not very attractive either: Conceit, vanity, arrogance, self-glorification, boastfulness.

Tony Campolo tells us, really, there are a lot of ways that this pride damages us, but it damages relationships, one, because it keeps us from knowing the truth about ourselves. Tony Campolo talks about a colleague that he had. He writes it this way in his book, The Seven Deadly Sins:

The queen, though, knows that even though these other wise men can’t interpret the hand writing on the wall, because Darius said, when his hand came out and began to write, he was terrified. He sobered up in a hurry. She knew of a man, though, from way back, who was a holy man that she sent for: Daniel. So I want you to look at the interpretation of the story, as we pick up the story in chapter 5, verse 13. It says it this way:

Then in verse 25 it says:

What King Belshazzar had not counted on is that one of the military commanders of the Medes and the Persians figured out that if you dig a little canal, the Euphrates River would be diverted, the water is going to go down. And they were able to come in under the walls, and Babylon fell in a mighty way.

How can we keep pride from getting a grip on our heart? Two ways. First of all, when Christ gives us a servant’s mind, it is much more difficult for pride to get a grip on our hearts. In Philippians 2:5 it says:

When we begin to think like a servant, when we begin to realize that God has put me on this planet for a reason and a purpose, and whatever He has given to me — intelligence, talent — it is to be used for Him for the benefit of others. As long as I keep that in mind, I have no reason to feel this sort of sinful pride about my accomplishments, but I can rejoice in those that I am in partnership with God in the Great Commission and the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor.

Jesus got up and washed his Disciples’ feet; they didn’t understand that, but that is the mind of a servant He wanted to display to them. And ultimately the greatest way that Christ showed His love for us was upon the cross. When Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow Him, when we have the attitude of a servant, pride has a much more difficult time.

And then when we have an attitude of prayer, we humble ourselves before God and say, “God, we need You.” When Solomon had completed a great, great building program, the building of the temple and the palace, in 2 Chronicles 7:14 , he knew that his people had a tendency to drift, for this pride to come in on their hearts, and the answer to him is the answer still to us today that: