“How to Invite Disaster” – FBC Morning Light (9/11/2024)

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Well a good Wednesday morning to you. Today we're reading in the book of Daniel again, but we're starting in chapter 8, and then we jump back to chapters 5 and 6, and then jump ahead again to chapter 9.

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Now one simple idea I want to get across from chapter 8 is that the

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Lord, our God, is the God of history. He raises up nations,

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He brings them down, He determines the extent and the duration of their power. All the nations of the earth are wholly, completely subject to Him.

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That's an important truth for us as God's people to hang on to.

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An idea taken out of the Bible, you've seen the handwriting on the wall, and you know that means something bad is about to happen.

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Well, in chapter 5, the handwriting on the wall comes for Belshazzar in the middle of his feast.

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And from this chapter, and what happens here with Belshazzar and the

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Babylonian Empire and its demise, we can see some principles that show a surefire way for a nation to, you know, just utterly collapse, just to have disaster come upon that nation.

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And I just want to mention four different things that are brought out in this passage, and they all have to do with how

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Belshazzar relates to God. And the first thing we discover in verses 18 to 21 is that he completely forgets the past work of God in behalf of the nation.

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Even Babylon. Babylon was not a Christian nation, if you will.

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But God had shown favor to that nation, and verses 18 to 21 tell us how.

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It says, O king, Daniel is speaking to Belshazzar. And remember, just as a background, Belshazzar has this big party, there's all kinds of drunkenness and drinking and carousing going on, and all of a sudden a handwriting, a hand appears and writes on the wall.

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And they can't, nobody can understand, what does this mean? What does this mean? Finally, they bring in Daniel, and Daniel is going to tell him what it means.

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But first, Daniel confronts Belshazzar, and he says, O king, the most high God gave

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Nebuchadnezzar your father. This would really have been an ancestor or predecessor of Belshazzar.

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The most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father a kingdom and majesty and glory and honor.

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And because of the majesty that he gave him, all peoples, nations, languages trembled and feared before him.

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Now notice how Daniel makes the point to say, God gave to Nebuchadnezzar all of this grandeur, all of this success, all of this majesty.

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But, verse 20 says, when Nebuchadnezzar's heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened by pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.

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We saw that yesterday in the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had and how that became a reality.

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Then he was driven from the sons, Nebuchadnezzar was, of men. His heart was made like the beast, he was dwelling with the wild donkeys, and so forth, until he knew that the most high

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God rules in the kingdom of men and appoints over it whomever he chooses. So God graciously brought

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Nebuchadnezzar to himself by bringing Nebuchadnezzar to the end of himself. And this was

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God's grace in behalf of the nation and the king. Belshazzar, verse 22 says, you have not humbled your heart, although you knew all of this.

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So when a nation and its leadership completely ignores, rejects, forgets, abandons the experience of God's gracious favor upon that nation, and refuses to recognize that that past grandeur was due to God's grace and his blessing and his favor, then that nation is well on its way to disaster.

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But there's a second step here, and that comes in verses 22 and 23, and that is when the nation's leadership, and the nation as a whole perhaps, becomes proud and arrogant and exalts itself above God himself.

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This is what Belshazzar did in verses 22 and 23. Belshazzar, you have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this, and you have lifted yourself up against the

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Lord of heaven. You've lifted yourself, and how did he do that? They have brought the vessels of his house before you and your lords, your wives, your concubines, and have drunk wine from them.

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So total arrogance and indifference toward God. And that brings up the third point.

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To reject and denigrate the Lord will lead a nation to disaster, and this is expressed in what they did with the vessels of the

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Lord, where they brought in these vessels that had been taken from the temple, and desecrated them in their drunkenness.

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And then a fourth step is when a nation comes to worship stuff while utterly dishonoring and wholly rejecting the one true

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God. The rest of verse 23 tells us this. I would suggest that there's a lot that we can learn from this passage as citizens of this great nation, and I hope that we do.

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And I hope that in our learning, we as a nation, from the top leadership in Washington down to the most rural community,

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I hope that we learn from this and really humble ourselves and repent, that God may be merciful and gracious to us.

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Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians was the outcome for Belshazzar and the

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Babylonians, and it happened incredibly fast. There is nothing, nothing that can prevent

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God from doing the same thing with the same haste again.

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So we should learn from this. Our Father and our God, I pray that we indeed shall.

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And may your people, especially those who name the name of Christ, may we be sensitive to our national pride and sins and forgetting of God, and may we be sure that we don't enter into such pride and arrogance, but instead do all that we can to lead our nation and its people to repentance, we pray.

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In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Wednesday.