Chapter 5: Practice From The Heart

Page 19

I spent some time studying it today and was astonished again by the message from God. Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar and was

now the ruling Babylonian king. He had a great feast in the company of a thousand. During the feast, he gave the command to fetch the gold and silver vessels, which his father had taken from God’s temple in Jerusalem.

The king and his lords, his wives and his concubines drank wine from them and “praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.” It literally incensed God who sent Belshazzar a direct message.

[5] “In the same hour the fingers of a man’s hand appeared

and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”

[6] “Then the king’s countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other.”

[7] “The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. The king spoke, saying to the wise men of Babylon, ‘Whoever reads this writing, and tells me its interpretation, shall be clothed with purple and

have a chain of gold around his neck; and he shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.’ ” Daniel 5:5-7

Imagine looking at the wall and seeing only the fingers of a hand,

writing a message with no arm or body attached. This is what Belshazzar was witnessing. Verse 24 of Daniel 5 tells us that the fingers were sent from God. You might just feel a little sick yourself. I wrote earlier that God would take only so much from man. God has limits. This time, the king had

crossed God’s limit. How much mercy and grace will God display to you? I cannot say. I can only state that you had better get yourself straight with God and stay that way. That includes whether you claim to have Jesus or not. The principle is the same. God tolerates sin up to a certain point and

then no more. Belshazzar had gone too far and God had responded with a message on the wall that none of his advisors could decipher. Now what?