The Fourth Warning Passage (Hebrews 10:26-31) - Worship Service | Adult Sunday School

Worship Service Opening and Congregational Singing

Yeah, we'll try that.

All right, let's go to, I think there will be, but let's do a bow rushing wind of second verse.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Let all things their Creator bless, and worship Him in humbleness. O praise Him, Hallelujah. Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son, and praise the Spirit, three in one.

O praise Him, O praise Him. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Okay, so I don't hear any of the female vocals in the monitors at all. You do?

I hear it more than normal.

Um, I will praise them still, we'll do that one. Yeah, I think so, they're fine. Get ready to find out. All right, go ahead.

When the morning falls on the farthest hill, I will sing His name, I will praise Him still. When dark trials come, and my heart is filled by the weight of doubt, I will praise Him still. For the Lord our God, He is strong to save, from the arms of death, from the deepest grave.

And He gave us life in His perfect will, and by His good grace, I will praise Him still.

When the morning falls on the farthest hill, I will sing His name, I will praise Him still. When dark trials come, and my heart is filled by the weight of doubt, I will praise Him still. For the Lord our God, He is strong to save, from the arms of death, from the deepest grave.

And He gave us life in His perfect will, and by His good grace, I will praise Him still.

I think that's good, Dave. Can we check the condenser mic for the violin, please?

Are we on? There we are. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Adult Sunday School, Kootenai Community Church. We will be in Daniel chapter 5, moving right along. So let's open in prayer. Lord, Your Word is such a delight every day to bring us to You, to show us Your mind and Your heart for Your people.

And this morning as we look into Your Word, we want to lift You up and honor You, and find new ways to be able to spread Your Word among the inhabitants of the earth. For the world is in turmoil, but You not only anticipated it, but You are sovereign over it.

And so we commit this day to You, we commit this study to You, and we commit the results to You, in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're in Daniel chapter 5, and if you would, with me, turn to Daniel chapter 5, and we will read the first nine verses.

While you're turning there, I'm just going to double check something here. Yeah, I only make it just a little way, so we're good. Daniel chapter 5. Belshazzar the king held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousand.

When Belshazzar tasted the wine, he gave orders to bring the gold and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple, which was in Jerusalem, in order that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, might drink from them.

Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God, which was in Jerusalem. And the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank from them. They drank the wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

Suddenly the fingers of a man's hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace. And the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. Then the king's face grew pale, and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack, and his knees began knocking together.

The king called aloud to bring in the conjurers, the Chaldeans, and the diviners. The king spoke and said to the wise men of Babylon, Any man who can read this inscription and explain its interpretation to me will be clothed with purple and have a necklace of gold around his neck, and have authority as third ruler in the kingdom.

Then all the king's wise men came in, but they could not read the inscription or make known its interpretation to the king. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed, his face grew even paler, and his nobles were perplexed.

The Sovereignty of God in Daniel and the Fall of Babylon

So we're going to be on slide 79, Peter. It's not working? So we're not going to be on slide 79. We are going to be on the slide blank screen, which is a good thing, I guess. So last week we finished off with Daniel chapter 4 and watched Nebuchadnezzar go from the king to an animal and back to the king, all under the sovereign hand of God.

It is most important to remember, as I've mentioned numerous times and you have heard, that this book is about the sovereignty of God. Every chapter exudes the sovereignty of God. Nothing is outside His control.

Nothing eludes Him. Nothing trips the sovereign Lord up. And we have to remember that. We have to remember that as we're going through this book. Last week there were some things that were on the slide that I thought might have been interesting.

We'll see if I can work this thing. Yeah, it's going to take a skill. Oh, do you have to turn this thing on? Yeah, we'll do that. So I'm going the wrong way. So last week we talked about the message that was given to Nebuchadnezzar about his own demise.

And there was just some interesting bits of information that I wanted to show you. There's an awful lot of information available to us about Babylon, about the history of Babylon. We have the Babylonian Chronicles.

We have Herodotus. We have numerous Greek scholars who wrote in just a few hundred years later, chronicling the things that happened in Babylon. And when we looked at different kings claiming to be king of the world, that was common.

And this is one of the impressions that was done. A cylinder of Cyrus, the king who conquered Babylon, and said he was the king of the world, the great legitimate king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four rims of the earth.

Well, we all know that he ruled over an area about the size of Texas. Now, any Texans in here say, well, that's huge. It is, but it's not the whole world. But that's what kings would claim. And this was some artistic impressions of Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

And then some of the cylinders that we have, that we've been able to use to decipher and understand the language of Babylon, and that have given great color and depth to understanding the book of Daniel.

This is the East India House inscription that we talked about last week. And then this would have been one artist's rendition of what the city of Babylon looked like. The stepped ziggurat and the Asgila temple of Marduk to the right of it.

They erected numerous temples to their false gods. So now we're going to look at chapter 5, and we've read the first 10 verses, but we will probably get through an introduction in just a few of the verses this morning.

So now begins the chronicle of the fall of Babylon. You will notice that there are five kings who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar. Only four of them are mentioned in most ancient histories. Even Josephus in his history of the Jews, the antiquities in chapter 10, conflated Nabonidus and Belshazzar.

So Nabonidus would be this guy, and Belshazzar. Those two, for many, many years, until the discovery of some of the Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions, the name Belshazzar didn't appear. It appeared in scripture, therefore it's true, by the way.

We don't need history. The scripture's true. But it's always interesting when scripture is maligned for centuries, and then some discovery is made, and scripture's confirmed to the last letter, and that news isn't nearly as big as the news preceding it, when some thought scripture was wrong.

So what we will read here, I'm going to read you something that Josephus wrote in his antiquities. He says this,. But now, after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Evel-Merodach, every time I ever saw this in scripture, reading the book of Daniel, I always thought they were saying, Merodach was evil.

That's actually his name, Evel-Merodach. But now, after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Evel-Merodach, his son succeeded in the kingdom, who immediately set Jeconiah at liberty, and esteemed him among his most intimate friends.

He also gave him many presents, and made him honorable above the rest of the kings that were in Babylon. For his father had not kept faith with Jeconiah, when he voluntarily delivered himself up to him, with his wives and children and his whole kindred, for the sake of his country, that it might not be taken by siege and utterly destroyed.

Josephus continues, As we said before, and when Evel-Merodach was dead, after a reign of 18 years, Niglisar, his son, took the government and retained it 40 years, and then ended his life. And after him, the succession in the kingdom came to his son, Labsarodacus, who continued in all but nine months.

And when he was dead, it came to Balthasar. That's Balthasar. Who, by the Babylonians, was called Nabonidileus. No, he wasn't, but we'll find out. Against him did Cyrus, the king of Persia, and Darius, the king of Media, make war.

After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, where are we? There we go. Evel-Merodach assumed the kingdom. The name of the son and immediate successor of Nebuchadnezzar was this fellow, Evel-Merodach. The Babylonian form of the name is Amalou-Merodach, that is, Man of Marduk.

They were named after their gods. About 30 contract tablets dated in this reign have been found. Excuse me. They show that Evel-Merodach reigned for two years and about five months. Josephus got it wrong.

Go figure. He is said by Berossus to have conducted his government in an illegal and improper manner and to have been slain by his sister's brother, Nergoshaur-Ukr, who then reigned in his stead. Evel-Merodach is said in 2 Kings 25, 27 -30 and in the parallel passage in Jeremiah 52, 31 -34 to have taken Jehoiachin, king of Judah, from his prison in Babylon, where he seems to have been confined for 37 years, and to have clothed him with new garments, to have given him a seat above all the other kings and to have allowed him to eat at the king's table all the rest of the days of his life.

It's an undesigned coincidence that may be worthy of mention that the first dated tablet from this reign was written on the 26th of Elul and Jeremiah 52, 31 says that Jehoiachin was freed from his prison on the 25th of the same month.

So then, Evel-Merodach was murdered by a Negreliser and succeeded by him. And I'm going through these kings' names because what the Lord has done here is he wrote when he penned, when he had Daniel or whoever it was penned the book of Daniel, when we ended with chapter 4, verse 37, a whole bunch of time has passed between that verse and the first verse of chapter 5, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

So he was succeeded by Nergal Protective King is what this man's name means, one of the princes of the king of Babylon who accompanied Nebuchadnezzar in his last expedition into Jerusalem. So this man was with Nebuchadnezzar when he took Jerusalem, this king.

Another of the princes who bore the title of Rab Mag, which simply means official, he was one of those who were sent to release Jeremiah from prison, Jeremiah 39, 13, by the captain of the guard. He was a Babylonian grandee of high rank from profane history in the inscriptions, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and succeeded him on the throne of Babylon around 559.

He was married to the daughter, a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, the ruins of a palace, the only one on the right bank of the Euphrates, bare inscription denoting that it was built by this king. So one of the palaces of Babylon was built by this king.

He was succeeded by his son, a mere boy, who was murdered after a reign of just nine months by a conspiracy of the nobles, one of whom was Nabonidus, who many people thought Belshazzar was the same as and was not.

He was succeeded by Nabonidus who ascended the vacant throne and reigned for a period of 17 years at the close of which period Babylon was taken by Cyrus. Belshazzar, who comes into notice in connection with the taking of Babylon, was by some supposed to have been the same as Nabonidus, who was called Nebuchadnezzar's son, Daniel 5 .11, 18, and 22, because he had married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter.

But it is known from the inscriptions that Nabonidus had a son called Belshazzar who may have been his father's associate on the throne at the time of the fall of Babylon and who therefore would be the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.

The Jews only had one word, usually rendered father, to represent all of these relationships such as father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. Sometimes they would say a father's father, but often when they said father, you had to trace the lineage to find out if they were actually talking about the father or the grandfather.

It could have been either. Negreleser was succeeded by his son Labashi-Marduk. History indicates that he was a youth, if not a child, but he only reigned for two or three months before he was murdered.

So Labashi-Marduk, this child, may I not come to shame, was his name, O Marduk, that's what his name meant, was the fifth king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling in 556 BC. He was the son and successor of Negreleser, though classical authors such as Berossus wrote that he was just a child when he became king.

Babylonian documents indicate that he had been in charge of his own affairs before becoming king, suggesting that he was a young adult, a youth, an adult youth, if you will, 18, 19, 17 to 20 years old probably.

His reign was very short, lasting only two to three months, and with the latest evidence of Negreleser being alive from April 556 BC and documents dated to a successor, Nabonidus appears at June of that same year.

He led a coup against the king, deposing and killing this young king, Labashi Marduk. The reason for his usurpation of the throne is unknown. Berossus only describes the justification as Marduk, the young fellow, lived in evil ways.

One possible explanation is that whereas Negreleser derived his claim to the throne from having married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, Labashi Marduk could have also been a son of Negreleser by another wife.

The chronicle captures the date that Cyrus took the city as the 16th day of the month of Tishri in Nabonidus' 17th year, which translates to Saturday, October 12th, 539 BC. Regarding Belshazzar's relationship to Nebuchadnezzar, Walvard in his commentary explains it this way.

So we have Belshazzar mentioned in Daniel but not mentioned in antiquity until these chronicles were discovered in the early 1920s. So for all these years, people were confusing, thinking Nabonidus and Belshazzar were the same person.

They were not, and the Bible knew that. Go figure. Much has been made of the reference to Belshazzar's relationship to Nebuchadnezzar, Walvard says, who is described as his father in verse 2. When Belshazzar tested the wine, he gave orders, which is mentioned as his father in verse 2.

Even Kiel, of Kiel and Delitzsch, is influenced by this to consider Belshazzar a literal son of Nebuchadnezzar. This is not entirely impossible, for as Leopold shows, Nabonidus could have married a widow of Nebuchadnezzar who had a son by Nebuchadnezzar.

That son could have then been adopted by Nabonidus as a way of strengthening his hold on the throne. Nabonidus assumed the throne in 556 BC, only six years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar was probably at least a teenager when Nebuchadnezzar died, if he was old enough to be co-regent with Nabonidus in 553 BC.

And it is thus at least possible that Belshazzar could have been a genuine son of Nebuchadnezzar and that his mother, after Nebuchadnezzar's death, was married to Nabonidus. This, however, is conjecture, and it is more natural to consider Belshazzar a son of Nabonidus himself.

Though, as noted earlier, his mother could have been Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, but no one knows for sure. Although the precise identity of Belshazzar may continue to be debated, available facts support Daniel's designation of Belshazzar as king and a physical descendant of Nebuchadnezzar.

The reference to the father may be construed as grandfather. As it has been stated, neither in Hebrew nor in Chaldean is there any word for grandfather or grandson. Forefathers are called fathers or fathers' fathers, but a single grandfather or forefather is never called father's father, but only father.

So that led to some confusion for many years. Why am I going through all this? Because for centuries, literal critics of the Bible pointed to Daniel 1 as a wrong verse. It was wrong because Nabonidus was king.

There was no Belshazzar. He was never mentioned in any of the ancient chronicles. And folks, that's what happens when we believe something other than Scripture first. It's the Bible first, and then we look to history for information to flesh it out because we don't have the Babylonian chronicles flesh Daniel out in a wonderful way.

But the Scripture said Belshazzar was king, and guess who was king? And it was finally authored. It was finally, the world finally accepted it. Belshazzar was king. So all of that, just to show that it took history 1 ,900, no, I guess it would be almost 2 ,600 years to catch up to what we already knew.

Belshazzar was king. So verse 1, now we're at verse 1, finally, he says, Belshazzar the king, who really was the king, held a great feast for thousands of his nobles, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousand.

So now, 23 years have elapsed from the end of verse 37 of chapter 4 and the first words of chapter 5. Of course, liberal scholars attack this verse, as we mentioned, stating that Nabonidus was the king that succeeded the young man, and thus the book of Daniel was mistaken here.

We have already seen that subsequent discoveries have clearly shown that Nabonidus was the king of Babylon at the time, but he was often away, and his son Belshazzar ruled in his stead. In his commentary on the Bible, Reynolds Showers explains it this way.

The opening verses of chapter 5 present the reader with two problems. First, who was Belshazzar? For centuries, this was a mystery. For available Babylonian records mention no king named Belshazzar. As a result, critics said that this proved that the book of Daniel was historically inaccurate.

However, during the 1920s, the deciphering of more recently discovered Babylonian documents solved the mystery. These documents indicated that Belshazzar was the son of King Nabonidus. The second problem is this.

If Nabonidus was king during the events of Daniel chapter 5, then why does verse 1 call Belshazzar king? Some Babylonian documents solve this problem as well. They indicated the following in 555 B .C. Nabonidus marched an army westward to conquer rebels who had revolted against the Babylonian rule since the death of Nebuchadnezzar.

Before he left Babylon, on this trip, this expedition, Nabonidus entrusted kingship to his oldest son, Belshazzar. Through time, Nabonidus built a royal palace in the distant town of Tirna or Tima in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, a long ways from home, and he settled there.

While Nabonidus retained the title, maintained the title of king in Arabia, Belshazzar exercised kingship in Babylon. Many letters and business documents indicated that Belshazzar functioned as the real authority in Babylon.

Thus a co-regency situation existed and Daniel was perfectly accurate in calling Belshazzar king. So it was not uncommon, we see, that he threw a feast. Belshazzar the king held a great feast for thousands of his nobles.

I was amazed when I looked into this just what kind of feasts they threw back then. They really threw parties. The Greek historian Ctesias reports feasts with 15 ,000 guests. That's like the population of Bonner County when I was a kid.

When Ashur-Sharmanapal dedicated his new capital in Cala in 879 BC, 65 ,574 guests were present at the feast of dedication. How would you feed them all, I guess. Now the last days of Babylon were chaotic.

Nabonidus had returned to Babylon to deal with an internal rebellion while simultaneously dealing with this besieging army. So while we're reading verse one, remember that encircling the walls of Babylon right now is the Medo-Persian army.

They're outside the walls right now as we're reading verse one while Belshazzar is having his feast. What king throws a feast while he's surrounded by an invading, a very well-respected and frightening foreign invading army?

So then at the beginning of the following spring when Cyrus, this is from Herodotus. This is Herodotus' explanation of what was going on right now in Babylon. When Cyrus had punished the Gyandes, he punished the Gyandes River by building canals.

And dividing it among the 360 canals, he marched against Babylon at last. The Babylonians sallied out and awaited him when he came near their city in his march and they engaged him but they were beaten and driven back inside the city.

There they stored provisions for very many years because they knew already that Cyrus was not a man of no ambition. And they saw that he attacked all nations alike so now they were indifferent to the siege.

They were indifferent to the siege. And Cyrus did not know what to do, being so long delayed and gaining no advantage. So Cyrus is outside the walls. He's looking for ways in while they're having their feast.

Whether someone advised him in this difficulty, Herodotus says, or whether he perceived for himself what to do, I do not know, but he did the following. He posted his army at the place where the river goes into the city and another part of it behind the city where the river comes out of the city and told his men to enter the city by the channel of the Euphrates when they saw it to be fordable.

Having disposed them and given this command, he himself marched away with those of his army who could not fight. And when he came to the lake, Cyrus dealt with it and with the river just as he had the Babylonian queen, drawing off the river by a canal into the lake, which was a marsh.

He made the stream sink until its former channel could be forded. When this happened, the Persians who were posted with this objective made their way into Babylon by the channel of the Euphrates, which had now sunk to a depth of about the middle of a man's thigh.

Now if the Babylonians had known beforehand or learned what Cyrus was up to, they would have not let the Persians enter the city and have destroyed them utterly for then they would have shut all the gates and opened on the river and mounted the walls that ran along the riverbanks and still caught their enemies in a trap.

But as it was, the Persians took them unawares and because of the great size of the city, those that dwell there say those in the outer parts of it were overcome, but the inhabitants of the middle part knew nothing of it.

All this time they were dancing and celebrating a holiday, which happened to fall then until they learned the truth only too well. So the Persians, the Medes and Persians are surrounding the city. Belshazzar's throwing a feast.

Belshazzar's pride in the city was humanly well-founded, but God had designs that would come to fruition that night. One can look at the insanity of Nebuchadnezzar and ascribe it to mental issues, but the fact that it happened on God's timetable demonstrates that providence or miraculous power and the miraculous power of God was what disposed of Nebuchadnezzar's mental issues.

One can also ascribe the fall of Babylon to military acumen, but everything happened according to the timetable God had ordered and this too is a testimony to the providence and miraculous power of the sovereign Jehovah.

These are important aspects that should never be forgotten by the people of God of every age. He is always sovereign. Verse two, when Belshazzar tasted the wine, he gave orders to bring the gold and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar...

Oh, are there any questions about the verse one of the introduction, which took some time? I'm sorry, but any questions? Verse two, when Belshazzar tasted the wine, he gave orders to bring the gold and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had taken out of the temple, which was in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, might drink from them.

So this was sort of a method of a king showing superiority over the peoples that he conquered by misusing their sacred objects. There were many vessels in the temple of Marduk that had been taken from conquered nations.

Why did Belshazzar choose only the vessels from Jerusalem? Much speculation has been applied over the years. So this probably occurred after Belshazzar and his nobles were already very drunk. He would have been seated likely on an elevated platform where all of the other guests could see him.

The feast would have been attended by great amounts of alcohol. The word father, here again, is a term that is loosely used in ancient languages. It could refer to the actual father, a grandfather, or a great-grandfather.

It could refer to a legal ancestor, such as the case where one might be the son-in-law or grandson-in-law of a king. But Belshazzar was talking about Nebuchadnezzar. He intended to desecrate the vessels by having everyone drink from them.

The nobles, the wives, and the concubines were properly present for the subsequent orgy that would follow. Drinking bouts like this were common among the Babylonian and Persian peoples. Often they were accompanied by lavish feasts and included especially prepared dishes of unusual animals, including ostriches, camel, horses, and other animals.

So they would have butchered numerous animals for the dinner and they would have had immense amounts of alcohol already. So when he tasted the wine, he was already drunk, most likely. And so he probably did something that normally he wouldn't have done and had these vessels brought to the party for everyone to drink from.

Verse 3, yes. We're going to find out, no. Daniel really rebukes Belshazzar. I mean, what a brave man. Of course, he faced all kinds of things down. No, Belshazzar is acting irresponsibly even by Babylonian regulations.

And Daniel takes, later on we'll see Daniel will take him to task for that. So they then brought, verse 3, the gold vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God, which was in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank from them.

So from the history of the Babylonian chronicles, we understand that Belshazzar as a boy would have been involved in the royal court of Nebuchadnezzar. He would have been in Nebuchadnezzar's court and would have known Nebuchadnezzar.

He would have been about 14 years of age at that time. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BC, so he would have understood some of God's dealings and sanctions against his grandfather. He would have known about Nebuchadnezzar's pride.

He would have known about Nebuchadnezzar refusing to honor Jehovah as the sovereign Lord. Even after repeated admonitions from Daniel, he would have known who Daniel was. He would have known all of this.

Just as you know the people in your history from 10 years ago, 15 years ago. You remember the presidents and you remember the senators and the legislators and the good, the bad, the ugly. You remember them all.

If I named some of them, you would know their names. This would be the same situation with Belshazzar. He knew what was going on. He was no fool. Well, he was a fool, but he was not stupid. So he would have understood God's dealings.

He would have seen his grandfather go into madness at God's direction and then come back out of madness and have his kingdom restored to him. He would have known that the history of the Babylonians didn't provide that kind of mercy.

Generally, when a king was deposed, he was killed or he was killed to be deposed. And in this one case, the king was deposed, set aside, and came back seven years later. He would have known all this. Verse 22 indicates, and here's one of the things if we want to jump ahead real quick to verse 22.

You can see some of the dealings that Daniel had with him. Daniel says to Belshazzar, when Belshazzar finally brings him in, in verse 22,. Yet you, his son Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this.

And Belshazzar knew better. Daniel points it out. He probably had been told about Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the prophecy and the fall of Babylon to meet Opersia. Hello, guess who's outside the gates?

Meet Opersia. Even more interesting is the fact that ancient sources show that meet Opersian troops under King Cyrus had conquered the entire surrounding countryside outside of Babylon at least four months prior to the night of the feast.

So the conquering army is outside his gates. They've subdued the entire area. All that's left is Babylon. And he's drinking himself into a drunken stupor. The irony was... By the way, this would also explain why there were so many Babylonian officials in Babylon.

They had probably been running ahead of the advancing army, escaping them to lose their heads and taking refuge in the city of Babylon. So the irony is that on the night Belshazzar was raising his fist at Jehovah by defiling the vests of the temple, the conquering army was encamped outside the city of Babylon.

Showers in his commentary again says this. He says, It is a fact that Nebuchadnezzar had made Babylon into the world's mightiest fortress. The outer wall surrounding the city was so thick no battering rams or other instruments were sufficient to knock it down.

Remember, explosives didn't exist back then. Firearms, gunpowder, it was spears and battering rams and catapults and such like that. The presence of the second inner wall and numerous fortress towers and ramparts made any attempt to scale the walls suicidal.

As a result, Babylon appeared impregnable. Belshazzar and his officials were convinced that the Medo-Persians could not penetrate those amazing defenses. Brothers and sisters, translate that to today as we're moving through this.

The people that are destroying our country right now think they're inconquerable. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. What is the reverse of that? Go ahead. Cursed is the nation whose God, who abandons the Lord.

The time is coming when what happened in Babylon may very well happen today. When I say the time is coming, it's going to happen. It's just when. It's a matter of when. Are we spreading the gospel as fast as we can?

Are we demonstrating to the world outside that it is Jehovah God who is in control? We need to be doing that. So, Reynolds showers, continuing. He says, the presence of the second inner wall with numerous fortress towers and ramparts made any attempt to scale the walls suicidal.

As a result, Babylon appeared impregnable. Belshazzar and his officials were convinced that the Medo-Persians could not penetrate those amazing defenses. But even if Babylon's defenses could keep the Medo-Persians outside the city, how long could the Babylonians inside hold out against a blockade?

They would need food and water to survive. Preppers in 650 BC. They would need food and water to survive. The Babylonians had solved this problem as well. The walls of Babylon had been built over the Euphrates River.

So there's the big river. So they had a continuing supply of fresh water. In anticipation of a blockade by the Medo-Persians, the Babylonians had supplied the city with enough food to maintain its population for more than 20 years.

That's a lot of food. 20 years of food. Ancient historians indicate that in light of these great preparations, the people of Babylon laughed at the siege of their city by Medo-Persia. So this explains why Belshazzar was busy getting drunk when one of the larger armies in the world was outside his gates.

In light of these historical factors, Reynolds Showers goes on to say, it seems rather obvious that Belshazzar decided to desecrate the sacred vessels of Jehovah for one major reason. To show his utter contempt for the God of Israel and his prophecy concerning the fall of Babylon.

The king was so confident of Babylon's defenses that he decided to challenge this God. His defiling of the vessels was his way of shaking his fist at God and saying, you have said that Babylon will fall to the Medo-Persians, who are now encamped outside our gates.

I am declaring to you that Babylon will not fall. Its defenses are impregnable. No one will be able to take it. My actions show you what I think of your prophecy. Once again, a pagan king was providing God with a splendid opportunity to demonstrate his sovereignty.

So, I actually finished there, but are there any questions about this? Anything you have to observe about a comparison to what's going on today? Oh, surely. No, Herodotus goes on to mention that, that enemies from inside, someone communicated to Cyrus to draw off the water from the Euphrates and cause it to sink down and then they could get in under the walls in the Euphrates River.

Yeah, it would. Yeah. I should have looked up this quote, but a nation can survive its enemies, but not the traitors from within. It's much more elaborate and impressive than that, the quote is, but that's the gist of it.

The fact is, it is a complete dismissal of God's word and the truth of God's word that leads to the downfall of nations. And in Babylon, Daniel had already demonstrated through the early years, early, the middle and the late years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, the sovereignty of God.

Belshazzar had all of that information and he refused to believe it. Peter, see I told you he said it much better than I did. Redneck renditions are usually not that good. So, we're going to close a little early today, but I just wanted to remind us if we need to pound anything home, it's two things.

It's that God is always sovereign in every age, in every situation. He will not be mocked. He will not be mocked. Let us not be among those that even accidentally ignore his sovereignty or accidentally, we don't mock him, but when we don't obey him, it's the same as mocking him.

And so as we look at these, and we're going to get into the fall of Babylon and then the further prophecies and frankly, a lot of commentators that I've read ignore a lot of this and they only focus on the prophecies, the ones in the early chapters and then from chapter seven on.

They actually don't even comment on chapters three, four and five and some of six. But doesn't the scripture say that every word of scripture is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction for us so that we might be fully equipped to live lives.

I'm again paraphrasing a redneck paraphrase of the book of Timothy. But we are equipped to follow him by studying and understanding and believing everything that's in the scriptures. So before we close, I didn't want this to be a lesson of simple application, but it's ending up something like that.

We need to be the people who demonstrate that we believe the word of God first, that we trust the word of God and that we live according to the word of God. Daniel did, Belshazzar didn't, and Babylon fell.

Every nation can fall. We like to think of ours as, we always, everyone who is in a nation that at least for whatever reason starts out good likes to think of their nation as lasting forever, as eternal.

It's just not so. Only God is eternal. Only God is eternal. Let's pray.

Father,.

It is a sobering thing to reflect on the fact that your hand will be against those who are against you. And so we pray, Lord, for the salvation of souls in this nation that you would turn hearts inside, you would turn the hearts of men, for that is the only way for true repentance and revival.

We look to you, we look to your hand, we look to your sovereignty, and we look to your word that the Lord Jesus Christ might be lifted up in this nation in a manner in which he has not been for so long.