Sunday, September 5, 2021 AM

This morning.

Welcome to Sunnyside Baptist Church.

We're grateful that you are here with us to worship the Lord together.

This morning my name is Ken Smith and I'm the announcement guy version 1 .0.

My son Kyle is version 2 .0 and he's not here this morning, so we're

going back to an older version of all this.

So just want to again welcome you.

We're glad that you're here.

A couple of announcements just to bring to your attention.

We're continuing to collect items for Operation Christmas Child.

Those are listed there in your bulletin and if you can bring any of those

items and leave those in the box, the green box that's out in the foyer.

We're gathering all those to put together for care packages, for Christmas gifts

for children in other places, other nations as a testimony

for God's great gift, his greatest gift in the person of Jesus Christ.

So again, if you can help with that, that would be a great blessing.

The sewing ministry also has a need for some things, some bias tape and elastic.

So again, if you can contribute to that, that will be used to be a blessing to

others.

A couple of other things.

There will be a meeting for deacons this next Saturday, September 11th at 8 a .m. here at the

church.

So deacons, if you would put that on your calendar and hopefully you will be able to come and participate

in that meeting this Saturday at 8 o 'clock here at the church.

Also on the back table are some Bible reading plans.

Many of our ladies have participated for a number of years now in what's called the Bible reading challenge,

and that always starts in September for a nine -month period of

time, runs through the school year, and then they have another interim one that goes through the summer.

So the summer one has just finished up about a week ago.

The new one for the next nine months starts, I think, tomorrow.

So if you'd like to participate in that, and it's not only for ladies, although it's primarily been women who have been a part of

that, but anyone can participate in that.

So those Bible reading plans called the Bible reading challenge are back there on the back table.

I think they're in color.

I think there's a ship on the picture to kind of help you find that there.

So again, be sure and pick one of those up if you'd like to participate in that Bible reading challenge.

Many of you are aware of what has happened this past week in the Supreme Court

ruling of the Texas abortion law to

severely restrict abortions in the state of Texas, with the heartbeat

bill that was passed by the Texas legislature, then was upheld

by the Supreme Court in at least not deciding to take the case.

So to allow it to stand.

So the belief is that there will probably be a lot of women from Texas who will migrate to

other states seeking abortions, and one of those states being

Oklahoma, where I think a similar law has passed but won't go into

effect in this state until November 1st, I think.

And so the belief is that there will be a number of women who will make the drive up I -35 to

come into Oklahoma, particularly to Oklahoma City.

And so John Mishner is asking that anyone who can to be

at the abortion mill, the abortion facilities that are just a couple of blocks

away, to be there Tuesday and to be there throughout the

day.

Probably the biggest influx will be in the morning, but there will be people coming and going all day, morning and

afternoon.

If you can come and just be present to stand for life,

for the sanctity of life, if you're able to do that.

He's asking for anyone who is able to come and be there on Tuesday.

And certainly if you cannot come, pray.

Pray for lives to be spared, for

hearts to be changed, for the gospel to be

held out clearly, so we can all pray for that.

All right, Friday verse for this week is a good one for us to remember,

and certainly it applies in a variety of ways.

2nd Corinthians 9 verses 6 and 7.

Paul says this, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap

sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion,

for God loves a cheerful giver.

So let us hide God's Word in our heart, meditate on his Word,

and walk in his ways this week.

Let me pray, and and then we will, well we'll take a few

moments for some some personal prayer and preparation for worship, and then I'll

pray, and then then we'll enter into.

Our time of corporate worship together.

All right,

Almighty God, we thank you for.

The quietness of these last few moments,

that in the in the stillness, in the quiet, we would be reminded of

your rule and your reign, that you are God, that there is none like you.

You are worthy of all praise and glory and honor and blessing.

So we come into your presence, we come before your throne this morning,

asking that you would draw near to us and help us to seek your face.

We come not in any righteousness of our own, but being clothed in the

righteousness of Christ by faith in him as our Redeemer, our Savior, our

Lord.

We gather together as the redeemed of the Lord to say God

is worthy of all praise and glory and honor and blessing.

May Christ be exalted in our hearts and from the fruit of our lips today.

Fill us, Lord, with your spirit, that we might indeed worship you in spirit

and in truth.

So we give you thanks in the name of Christ, amen.

Would you stand with me for our call to worship?

We're in Psalms chapter 71 this morning.

I'm gonna be reading verses 1 through 3.

Read with me together.

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge.

Let me never be put to shame.

In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me.

Incline your ear to me and save me.

Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come.

You have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my

fortress.

And this, we're gonna sing this very passage of scripture.

If you would, turn to your Psalms for Worship hymnal, page 71A,

and we'll be singing verses 1 and 2.

In you, O Lord, I.

Put my

trust.

Praise be to God.

Our next verse, our next song, is on page 148, and.

This, again, also comes from the book of Psalms.

Psalms 148.

I won't take time to read the whole chapter to you, but basically it's a

call for all of creation to give praise to the Lord.

Whether it be the mountains, the sky, the water, the

moon, the sun, all of creation is to praise the Lord.

So praise the Lord together as we sing 148B.

Hallelujah.

Praise the Lord's name.

...is our scripture this morning,

and this scripture references the rebellion of God's people

and that he has had enough.

Isaiah 1, 1 through 20.

The vision of.

Isaiah, the son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reign

of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, for the Lord speaks.

Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have revolted against me.

An ox knows his owner, and a donkey his master's manger, but Israel does not

know.

My people do not understand.

Alas, sinful nation!

People weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons of who act corruptly.

They have abandoned the Lord.

They have despised the Holy One of Israel.

They have turned away from him.

Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion?

The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint, from the sole of the foot even to the head.

There is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds,

not pressed out or bandaged, nor softened with oil.

Your land is desolate.

Your cities are burned with fire.

Your fields, strangers are devouring them in your presence.

It is desolation as overthrown by strangers.

The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field,

like a besieged city.

Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a few survivors, we would be like Sodom.

We would be like Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.

Give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah.

What are your multiplied sacrifices to me, says the Lord?

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cow cattle, and I take no

pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats.

When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts?

Bring your worthless offerings no longer.

Incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies.

I cannot endure iniquity in the solemn assembly.

I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts.

They have become a burden to me.

I am weary of beating them.

So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you.

Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands are covered with blood.

Wash yourselves.

Make yourselves clean.

Remove the evil of your deeds from my sight.

Cease to do evil.

Learn to do good.

Seek justice.

Reprove the ruthless.

Defend the orphan.

Plead for the widow.

Now come and let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow.

Though they are lead like crimson, they will be like wool.

If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land.

If you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.

Truly, the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we have sinned against you.

Our nation is in sin.

This world is in sin.

And you've said you are not obligated to continue with our iniquity,

but you call us to humble ourselves and repent and turn from our wicked ways

and walk in your ways that you might bless us and we might have fellowship with you.

And so, Lord, we ask that we might ask for your

forgiveness and we might see your hand a blessing upon

not just us individually, but us as a nation, as a world.

May the name of the.

Lord be praised. Amen.

You may be seated.

Our next song will be in our little.

Black hymns, Modern and Ancient.

So if you would turn to page 42 and we'll sing God's Word Shall Stand Forever.

And then following that song, Haley will start us.

Off

on

Show

Us

Christ.

I

thank

you

for

gathering

us

here

today.

What

a immense.

Blessing it is to be gathered together as the house of the

Lord, living stones being built and formed,

forged together, the building of your temple.

And Lord, I ask that you would sanctify our hearts, that you would set us

apart and make us holy, that you would wash us with the water of your word,

that our lives together as this church and our lives

wherever we go would be holy unto you,

that you would be present with us by your Holy Spirit, bringing to mind all the things that Christ has

taught us, and that we would truly be the light of the world, the salt of

the earth, the city set upon the hill for all those

around us who are in the throes of fear and terror and

sadness and rage.

Lord, we ask that you would take your word today as the sword of the

Spirit and as your precise scalpel

to get into our hearts and do your work.

And as your healing balm and as your restoring medicine,

exactly what we need.

Bring us ever more into fellowship with you as we say things the way you

say them, see things the way you see them.

According to your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray for these mercies.

Amen.

I invite you to open your Bibles to Daniel chapter

5.

Daniel chapter 5, we'll be reading verses 1 through 12 here in a moment.

Daniel is a book of riddles.

It's full of riddles.

Real -life riddles in the matters of statecraft where people's

lives are on the line.

Book of Daniel also has many riddles that are apocalyptic, riddles

seen in the fabric of dreams and visions that displayed the rise and

fall of empires.

But Daniel is a book of riddles in which wisdom triumphs over all.

And every last riddle in the book of Daniel is beautifully answered

in the manifestation of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 1, we learn that wisdom is the principal thing.

Facing all the problems of paganism, what we need is God's wisdom, which of course begins with the fear

of the Lord.

Chapter 2, we observe that wisdom is justified by all her children and those who fear the Lord will

triumph with Christ in his kingdom.

In chapter 3, we are reminded that by wisdom kings reign.

The government rests upon Christ's shoulders and statism ultimately fails

when it meets Jesus.

In chapter 4, we meditated on God's resistance to the proud and rejoiced in

God's grace humbling us unto salvation.

And now we're to chapter 5 where we're going to look at the hand writing on the

wall.

I invite you to stand with me if you are able to and I'm going to read verses 1 through 12 of Daniel chapter 5, the words of our

Savior and Lord Jesus Christ by his spirit through his prophet Daniel.

Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank

wine in the presence of the thousand.

While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had

taken from the temple, which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his

concubines might drink from them.

Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God, which had been 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 and

iron, wood and stone.

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.

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.

The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Galileans, 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 gold chain of gold around his neck.

And he shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.

Now all the king's wise men came, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king its interpretation.

Then King Belshazzar was greatly troubled.

His countenance was changed and his lords were astonished.

The queen, because of the words of the king and his lords, came to the banquet hall.

The queen spoke, saying, O king, live forever.

Do not let your thoughts trouble you, nor let your countenance change.

There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the Holy God.

And in the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were

found in him.

And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, the king, made him chief of the magicians,

astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers.

In as much as an excellent spirit, knowledge, understanding, interpreting dreams, solving riddles, and explaining enigmas were found

in this Daniel, whom the king named Belshazzar.

Now let Daniel be called, and he will give the interpretation.

This is the reading of the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

The writing on the wall.

Here you see a picture, a painting that I thought was

excellent.

The writing on the wall.

Get the vision of the writing on the wall before a thousand people in a way that all of

them would be confronted with it.

And it's the grandeur and the glory of Babylon.

Everything is now fixated on the hand that wrote the writing on the

wall.

Everything now is focused on just the handful of words inscribed

on the wall.

The glory of Babylon, the grandeur of Babylon, all forgotten.

This is all meaningless before the hand that wrote these words upon the wall.

The writing on the wall is an expression that comes from this text, and it is still highly used.

Just a quick search will confirm this to you.

Movies and television episodes and books use it as a title.

Over 30 songs of note in the last 60 years have had this title, the writing on the wall.

It is well known as an expression of doom.

Everyone knows what that means, the writing on the wall.

It's an expression of doom.

Example sentence, why did he resign?

Well, he saw the writing on the wall and knew his time was short anyway.

Very popular expression.

The expression is particularly rampant throughout political prognostications.

But out of all the pop culture conversational political usage, interesting,

it is not normally said the handwriting on the wall.

The hand part of it just drops out.

But that's the most important part, is the hand.

This is what Nebuchadnezzar fixated on, was the hand, the fingers of a man's

hand.

This is what stopped everything, and then subsequently they wanted to know what the words meant, but everything

was focused upon the hand.

Do we really know what the writing on the wall means anymore?

And furthermore, what of this hand who put the writing there?

We don't know our doom unless God reveals his word to us.

This is the condition of all mankind.

It was the condition of Belshazzar and his thousand lords.

We do not know our doom unless God reveals his word to us.

Now, of course, we live in a culture of fear.

Our culture is shaped by what we fear, and we fear death and we fear man.

This is why our culture is the way that it is.

We fear death and we fear a man.

And so oppression and tyranny, vaccine mandates and Taliban and bad politicians and civil unrest are the topics

of our day because our country is driven by fear.

Our community is driven by fear.

Our acquaintances in the workplace are driven by fear.

Our families are driven by fear.

These are the topics of our time, and everybody can spy the writing on the wall.

Everybody can spy the writing on the wall.

And then they cry pitifully to their gods, but we must fear the Lord.

We must fear the Lord.

Seeing the writing on the wall is no big deal.

Belshazzar saw it, his wives saw it, his concubines saw it, his thousand lords saw it, and

nobody knew what it meant.

But as they feared man and as they feared death, they all were

assured that they were doomed somehow, but none of them knew what it meant.

And so prognostications abounded.

Many can spy the writing on the wall, but we must fear the Lord.

Why?

He's the one who's been putting graffiti all over our grandeur.

The Word of God exposes this in our lives, exposes the darkness of men.

First of all, in this chapter, in verses 1 through 12, we see that God's

Word interrupts the fool.

God's Word interrupts the fool.

Jesus Christ, in his words through Solomon, tells us about the naive, the simple, and the fool.

In Proverbs, you read about the naive and the simple and the fool.

The naive need knowledge and need instruction.

The simple need guidance and wisdom.

The fool needs rebuke and repentance.

Why?

The fool has received knowledge and instruction.

The fool has access to guidance and wisdom.

The fool knows better.

In fact, the fool knows to know better, but he determines otherwise.

Fools engage in fictional world -building.

Fools speak in echo chambers and goes LARPing all the day long.

There are three kinds of dumb, but the fool hopes to discover the fourth.

His words and his thoughts are caught up in a solid traffic jam at the interstates

of fearing man and fearing death as those merge.

And unless someone interrupts him, unless someone cuts him off, he's going to

doggedly advance along that broad way which leads to destruction.

We are to examine the fool as he is presented to us here in Daniel 5, Belshazzar the fool.

He is drunk in the dark, he is blind in the light, and he is far from the truth.

And we're not here to take potshots at Belshazzar, an easy thing to do.

We're not here to take potshots, we're here to take it to heart.

We have to take it to heart.

Our doom has been foretold.

Are we going to be quiet long enough to hear it?

Will we be humbled enough to focus our attention on the hand spelling it all out?

First of all, the fool whom God interrupts is drunk in the dark,

verses one through four.

Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in the presence of the thousand.

While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father

Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his

concubines might drink from them.

Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been 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 and iron, wood and

stone.

We are suddenly introduced to a new king.

We have finished the saga of Nebuchadnezzar and it was rather on a positive note.

Suddenly, however, we're talking about Belshazzar, his son?

Belshazzar's ascension to the throne followed anything but a straight line.

You can read all about the history of Babylon if you wish in various sources, but Nebuchadnezzar's death left a power

vacuum in which several heirs to the throne were rapidly removed by various

stress tests involving coups and assassinations and exiles.

Belshazzar came to the throne and immediately owned Nebuchadnezzar as his father and

kept on saying that Nebuchadnezzar was his father.

The state -run media kept on saying that Belshazzar was the heir and the son of

Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadnezzar was the father of Belshazzar.

They said it over and over and over and over again.

In fact, they say it over and over and over again in the text because this was the most important thing for everybody to realize

that Belshazzar really was the son of Nebuchadnezzar and everybody needs to believe that.

There were no other arguments.

Now, Belshazzar wasn't actually the son of Nebuchadnezzar, but he

owned Nebuchadnezzar for political purposes because Nebuchadnezzar was such a great and well -renowned

king.

And he clearly hoped to evoke the power and stability of the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar in his own session

as king.

And how do you get these thousand lords that had just been recently involved in so many backstabbings and

political intrigues?

How do you get a thousand lords to get all on your good side?

Well, it's easy.

You make them fat and drunk.

And so he hosts this massive banquet for his thousand lords and they all come together to

honor the son of Nebuchadnezzar.

To further his connection to Nebuchadnezzar, that greatest of all Babylonian kings, Belshazzar brings out the

gold and silver vessels captured from Jerusalem by his father

and he brings them out on display.

Remember this conquest of my father?

It's a very important political scenery.

You may remember this, these gold and silver vessels from chapter 1 and verse 2.

And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and with some of the articles of the house of God, which he

carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his God.

And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God.

In that, what was Nebuchadnezzar trying to say?

He had thought himself the victor.

He had thought himself the conqueror of Israel's God.

But by the end, that was chapter 1 at the beginning, by the end of chapter 4, what do we discover?

God had conquered Nebuchadnezzar.

God had conquered Nebuchadnezzar.

He is the one who had changed Nebuchadnezzar's heart.

So what Belshazzar now does in the name of his father is actually in full dismissal of

his father's royal testimony concerning his conversion and God's worthiness.

This is great absurdity, profanity, and immorality on

display.

Daniel rebukes this drunk in the dark in verse 23 of our chapter.

And he says,.

And you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven.

They have brought the vessels of his house before you.

And you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them.

And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see

or hear or know.

And the God who holds your breath in his hand and owns all your ways, you have not

glorified.

This was no neutral act.

This was no mere political scenery.

This was shaking his fist in the face of the God who held his very breath in

his hands.

No fear of God.

And so he is a massive fool.

Look at those here with Belshazzar.

They thought themselves sophisticated.

They thought themselves clever.

But notice that their defiance of God, the rejection of the truth, has brought

them to this level.

They worship chunks of mineral and chunks of wood.

This is the zenith of sophistication

which denies God.

You get to bow down before rocks and firewood.

That's as high as you can go in your rejection of God.

These idols had non -functional eyes, non -functional ears, a non -functional mouth, non -functional throats,

non -functional hands, non -functional feet.

Which is why pagan society devolves into being non -functional.

They do not have sight, hearing, or understanding.

And so also the pagans who worship them and make them.

So, in the will of God, time to shake things up.

They drunk in the dark.

It's now blind in the light.

The light is shown upon him.

And as you read what happens in verses 5 through 9, I think of some scene where

there's a big crowd of drunken revelers in a city park.

And they're just doing their own thing, their own way, for their own reasons.

And their drunkenness is as much a statement as their of their rejection of standards and authority as anything else.

The music is loud.

The women are loose.

The men are lewd.

And the corporate value there is lawlessness.

But it's all a fiction.

It's all a fiction.

They're just LARPing.

What happens when 30 spotlights flare all around them while blue and red pulsates

the sky, sirens yelp and howl, and a gruff amplified voice cuts through the air?

What then?

The sudden appearance of authority violently decompresses their

party plane and immediately they nosedive in terrified chaos.

That's what happens here in Daniel 5 verses 9, 5 through 9.

Authority shows up and the party comes to an end.

Those there, this is the king of Babylon.

These are the thousand lords of the great empire of Babylon.

These drunken revelers thought that they were the authority in the empire, in the city, in their palace.

But when the hand of Christ appears,

everyone there knows immediately that the someone else who

was in charge is personally confronting all of them.

The light is shining in their faces and that's all they know.

They don't know what the words mean.

They don't know who it is that has shown up, but they know it's the one in charge and they're in a lot of trouble.

Verses 5 through 9.

In the same hour the fingers of a man's hand appeared and were 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.

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.

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 shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.

Now all the king's wise men came, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king's interpretation.

Then King Belshazzar was greatly troubled.

His countenance was changed and his lords were astonished.

Don't you just love God?

Look how marvelous his mercy is.

Look how good his grace is.

He writes his words in the best -lit, most obvious

place in a way sure to garner attention.

That's amazing.

It is the favorite pastime of God -denying pagans and God -belittling churchmen

to accuse and to insinuate that God is a bad communicator,

that he's inept really, that one cannot know and one can never be sure.

It's all very confusing and it's just too bad that God wasn't more clear.

How unfortunate that God could not overcome all of our cultural differences to say something that transcends

our issues.

It's just sad that his thoughts and his ways and words aren't higher than ours and aren't revealed supernaturally to

us.

Actually, it's too bad that God -denying pagans and God

-belittling churchmen cooperate in such an alliance of unbelief.

And one reason they do so is that if you can claim that God's words are unclear or

unknowable, then you may escape a sense of accountability, avoid submission to God's

authority.

But we see in this text that it is actually impossible.

Even if God's word is unclear to you, even if you're being blinded by the very light

of God's word, you still know that God is still in charge.

His authority is still maintained.

Now, there are the experts in this text that are there along with the king and they all know that something bad

has been declared.

They don't know what it is, but the hand showed up and there's writing on the wall and we're all doomed, but they don't know what it means or what it

contains.

So you may imagine that they're trying to figure it out and one says one thing and another says another thing, but nobody is clear on the

specifics.

But they all agree we're doomed.

I don't know what it means, but we're definitely doomed.

Despair.

Despair is the religion of paganism.

You see it all around you in the world today.

The PTSD from Eden exile combines with God's general

revelation both in creation and its subjection to the curse.

All this combines to level an accusing finger at sinful, God -denying,

truth suppressing man and man then says, oh it's climate change.

It's systemic racism.

It's aliens.

It's asteroids.

It's viruses.

It's overpopulation.

It's whatever.

It's manna.

Who knows?

The pagans all know that they're doomed, but they can't agree what kind of doom

it is.

The writings on the wall.

It's been put there by the hand, but unless God reveals what it is, we will not know

our doom and we will not know our actual need for salvation.

Unless God reveals it to us, unless God sends along the mediator to interpret the text for

us and show us what it means, we will not know that we are sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But we do need to know that.

And as believers, when we live in this despairing world, have compassion on those who are in

despair and fearful and running for their lives and scared of every snapping twig

and drifting breeze.

And do not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doomspeak.

That's all there is out there is doomspeak.

Do not be tossed to and fro.

Trust in the Lord.

Fear God.

Now Shather does not have the foggiest notion of what the words mean and blazing upon his own palace wall, but he does know that authority has rolled

up upon his party scene and that he has been caught.

He doesn't know exactly what he was doing wrong, but he knows he's caught.

He knows he's in trouble.

He doesn't know what the words mean, but he is aware to the very core of his being that he's in trouble.

Just look at his physical reaction.

The joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other.

The literal rendering of the Aramaic here is the knots of his loins were loosed.

Let's just say that Belshazzar lost command and control of his personal critical mission objectives.

His timbers began to shiver and he was immediately aware that his soul was not the only thing soiled about him.

He sits in this hall and he manipulates a thousand lords, but he cannot

manage his own bowels.

The all -powerful king is confronted with his creaturely limitations and his weaknesses.

And the point is driven home again in this text, as it has been all the way through Daniel, that all the king's magi and all the king's men cannot

put the peace of the kingdom back together again.

And despite his most lucrative offering, he's like, look, I'll clothe you in purple.

Look at all this honor you'll get.

I'll give you a bunch of money.

I'll make you a third in the kingdom.

Despite his lucrative offering, no one can properly read or interpret the meaning of

God's handwritten text.

And now that the total inability of the king and the kingdom is made clear, Belshazzar and his lords

are very disheartened.

Belshazzar is so desperate to know what the writing on the

wall is.

He is so desperate to know what this revelation means that has come down from the outside, that he intends

to greatly honor and reward the man who can serve as a mediator.

Third highest in the kingdom, increased wealth, great honor, but no

such mediator was immediately found.

Which gives us pause to recall that God, who at various times and in various ways,

spoke in time past, even by the writing on a wall, has in these last days

of the old covenant spoken to us by his son, through whom he has brought about the new

covenant.

God appointed Christ the heir of all things, and through him he made the worlds.

So consider that Belshazzar was willing to honor and reward a mediator.

Third highest in the kingdom, increased wealth, more honor, but the mediator which God offers to man,

even the one whose hand was seen writing the word of God upon the wall of the palace,

that this mediator, Jesus Christ, deserves far more than what Belshazzar was willing to

offer.

Not third place, but highest, king of kings.

Not an increase of wealth, but all wealth and all glory is for Christ.

Not more honor, but all honor and all praise in heaven and on earth.

Consider how many today are willing to honor and give so much of

their lives and their bank accounts to so -called mediators who can tell them what to think about the

world and about themselves and about God.

There are many who pose themselves as priests and priestesses, prophets and prophetesses, who claim to

clarify all this muddle of fear and doom.

But there is one mediator.

There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

And he has sent his Holy Spirit to lead us into all of the truth written here.

And the truth is that Christ must have the preeminence in our lives.

Not third place.

This fool, Belshazzar, was interrupted.

He was a drunk in the dark.

He was blind in the light.

He was far from the truth.

He was far from the truth, even though the truth was stuck on the stones right in

front of his face.

Daniel 5 verses 10 to 12.

The Queen, because of the word of the King and his lords, came to the banquet hall.

The Queen spoke saying, O King, live forever.

Do not let your thoughts trouble you, nor let your countenance change.

There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the Spirit of the Holy God.

And in the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the

gods, were found in him.

And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father the King, made him chief of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and

soothsayers in as much as an excellent spirit, knowledge, understanding, interpreting dreams, solving riddles, and

explaining enigmas were found in this Daniel, whom the King named Belshazzar.

Now let Daniel be called, and he will give the interpretation.

She reminds me of Vashti and Esther of the Persians.

This Queen, she's absent from the drunken party of the King.

She's not there mixing it up, and so she still is sober.

Praise the Lord.

And like Esther, and even like the wife of Pilate, this leading lady has something to say

to the man in charge.

And what she has to say is something that he should have already known.

Her formal statement to introduce the things, O King, live forever, is darkly

humorous, as we're about to find out here in this chapter that this is Belshazzar's last night

on earth.

Even now, as this is all playing out, the Persian army has rerouted the flow of the Euphrates River,

lowering its depth to about wading height, that flowed through the gates of this great city.

Even now, as the chief Babylonians tremble in their drunkenness, their enemies are conducting their operations to take

the most powerful city on the face of the earth.

And all of this is unknown to Queen and King.

All of it unknown to the thousand lords and these so -called wise men of Babylon.

The Queen reminds Belshazzar of Daniel.

He's really good at untying all those knots.

Why don't you call Daniel in?

He cites all this history with Nebuchadnezzar, your father.

Remember your father the king?

He is your father.

She's giving the party line.

And she lists his resume, very impressive.

And it's notable then, isn't it, that this Daniel is absent.

This Daniel is not there.

He's been totally forgotten, sequestered, canceled, put away.

The vessels of God's temple are there, being desecrated.

But the leading Jew, the leading God -fearer in the kingdom, is not there.

Belshazzar is far from the truth, even though the truth is not far from the king.

The king has been suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and so he has removed Daniel far

from him.

He has locked Daniel out of his mind, so that he does not have to consider

calling him at all.

This man of God, Daniel, filled with the Spirit of God, ready with the Word of God,

is right there nearby.

That's the grace of God.

Yet the king was far, far from the truth.

The truth was near to him, but he had suppressed it, silenced it,

turned his back, and ran from it.

And in fact, Daniel confronts him about that in verse 22, saying, although you knew this,

he says, you knew this, and Belshazzar suppressed it.

As we've noted, the despair of paganism and paganized churchmen is that there's no man, there's no man who can lead

us out of doom into salvation, out of darkness into light, out of confusion to confidence.

But there is a man.

There is a man, the God -man Jesus Christ, and he has not hidden himself.

He has not hidden himself.

Our salvation through him was made public, in an

open place, in a public place.

It was not done in a corner.

And he has come near.

Jesus Christ has come so near in his incarnation and by his sending

of the Holy Spirit.

He has given us his Word in our language, in our hands.

He has sent his disciples to make more disciples.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a word that is distant from us.

The word, the truth, is near.

Romans 10 verse 6, but the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, do

not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above,

or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.

We don't have to climb to the heights to a guru to find out the truth.

We have to have special perspective and special experience before we can have anything worth saying

to the world today.

And we don't have to go down to the depths of hell itself and go through all sorts of torment and suffering before

we have the proper experiences and the proper journey to share these things with others.

No, Christ is the man.

Christ is the mediator.

He is the one who has come down from heaven and has gone back to the right hand.

He is the one who has suffered and gone even into death for us and has been risen from the dead.

Verse 8, but what does it say?

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of

faith which we preach, that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and

believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made

and to salvation.

For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will

not be put to shame, will not be put

to shame.

Why share in the shame of fools?

Why share in the shame of fools like Belshazzar?

Why count yourself among the sophisticated class of despairing pagans and doubting churchmen?

Why remain hopeless?

Why would you keep trolling on in the filth of your sin?

Christ is at hand.

He's at the right hand of God and he is here and now in the day of salvation.

In his resume puts all others to shame.

Christ has written the gospel of God in his own blood on the cross

and by the folding of his own grave clothes and he has

written it across the wall of history in his own nail -pierced hand.

So turn to him, honor him and trust him.

God is gracious to interrupt the fool with his wisdom, to expose the darkness

of man by the light of his word.

All God's light and wisdom is toward us through Christ and does he not cry out and lift up his

voice?

He takes his stand atop of Calvary beside the straight and narrow way,

crying out at the gate of the New Jerusalem, those ancient doors.

He cries out, whoever is simple, let him turn in here.

As for him who lacks understanding, he says to him, come eat of my bread and drink of the wine

that I have mixed.

Forsake foolishness and live and go in the way of

understanding.

He's got the wisdom of God entirely on display.

As Jesus in John 7 37 stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst,

let him come unto me and drink.

Don't be a drunk in the dark, blind in the light.

Far from the truth, Christ has come and he informs the naive

and he instructs the simple and he interrupts the fools.

Thanks be to God.

Let's pray.

Father, we come before you this morning and we praise you that you mock the fools and

scorn the scornful and show us our need of your word,

hand delivered by your chosen mediator.

Thank you for not leaving us without a clear word, without a sure word.

Show us who we are in our sinfulness and our righteous damnation

before you in your glorious name and perfect character

that you have given us your son.

You have given us your son who has offered himself in our place and for our sake.

So we give you praise and we cling to Christ.

I ask for those who are here today.

I ask that she would turn the naive and the simple and the fool towards yourself here today.

They would know the salvation of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we thank you for your long -suffering and your compassion toward us

and that all day long you have held out your hands to a stubborn and stiff -necked people.

That your long -suffering is far greater than our ability to resist.

So Lord, we thank you and we give you the praise in Jesus.

Name.

Amen.

Would you stand with me for our song of benediction?

Mercy, grace, and.

Salvation is through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our song is going to be in our.

Psalm for Worship hymnal, page 119.

We'll sing evermore, O Lord, the

love

of the Father and the.

Grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

We are.

Dismissed.