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, so that the king and his
nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. … They drank the
wine and praised the gods of gold and 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. Daniel 5:1-2,4-6
One of the most well-known phrases from the bible comes from
this text. A lot of times in business,
sports and just in life, everyone seems to know or have heard the phrase the handwriting
is on the wall. This phrase is normally spoken
when it is clear that without intervention something is inevitable. It is a warning to do something now to stop a
later consequence.
Here
we have a man named Belshazzar who was the King of Babylon at this time. Belshazzar was the grandson of
Nebuchadnezzar. This young man was around to witness what happened to his
grandfather when he failed to take heed to the voice of God. He was around when his grandfather was told
by Daniel to stop worshipping idols, to stop sinning, to do what was right and
be merciful to the poor. Belshazzar knew
that his grandfather's biggest mistake was thinking that he had obtained all
his success on his own. His grandfather
had failed to listen to Daniel the prophet and ended up losing his mind so
badly that he finds himself eating grass with the cows every day. Wow! The Bible
says he was wet with dew and his hair grew as long as eagle feathers. His nails grew and became like bird claws and
he was in a terrible state for seven years.
Yet when his mind finally returned to him he praised and worshipped the
most High God. This man had lost his
mind because he had forgotten who allowed him to become great. This is a good time for me to tell you that
God’s Word says in him we live and we move and we have our
being.
Many
times we may gain success in life but we must remember who the praise goes to. Without Him we could do nothing, without Him
we would fail. God allowed his
grandfather to go through a terrible situation to bring him to the
understanding that he needed God always.
Now
Belshazzar is on the throne and he finds himself falling into the same trap
that his grandfather fell into and he is terrified of what his happening. I submit to you that the greatest mistake in
life we can make is not making mistakes but failing to learn from our mistakes
or the mistakes of others.
If
we would learn from our mistakes we would not fall for the same trap that the
enemy presents to us each time. Many
times we make the same mistakes because we are not paying attention to the consequences
of others or even our own pain. We live
for the moment like these men and we tend to think things won't happen to us
like it happened to our predecessors.
Yet if we look at the Bible it's amazing how history repeats
itself. The biggest mistake is not
learning from our mistakes and the second half of that is our failure to keep
God in the forefront of our lives. There
comes a time when “the handwriting is in the wall” and we must deal with consequences.
Scripture to Claim:
Nevertheless, with
most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the
wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not
crave evil things as they also craved. 1 Corinthians 10:5-6
