“Many years later King Belshazzar gave a great feast for 1,000 of his nobles, and he drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking the wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver cups that his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. He wanted to drink from them with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. So they brought these gold cups taken from the Temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. While they drank from them they praised their idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of the king’s palace, near the lampstand. The king himself saw the hand as it wrote, and his face turned pale with fright. His knees knocked together in fear and his legs gave way beneath him. The king shouted for the enchanters, astrologers, and fortune-tellers to be brought before him. He said to these wise men of Babylon, “Whoever can read this writing and tell me what it means will be dressed in purple robes of royal honor and will have a gold chain placed around his neck. He will become the third highest ruler in the kingdom!” But when all the king’s wise men had come in, none of them could read the writing or tell him what it meant. So the king grew even more alarmed, and his face turned pale. His nobles, too, were shaken.”
Daniel 5:1-9 NLT
Daniel’s story resumes with a new king but an old story. Whatever lesson Nebedchednezzar had learned about who God was, and his place before him, did not translate to his successor. The outworking of this kings pride would be a swift and stark judgement rather than the long and drawn out one given to Nebedchednezzar. It cannot be ignored that Belshazzar’s pride was of a different level. He used the instruments of God to mock him. While Nebedchednezzar rallied against God’s control of his fate, he never outright blasphemed God in a fit of drunken debauchery. Between the two kings, we see the incredible breadth of control that God has. He can bend and break anyone he chooses, when he chooses, because he chooses. Those who bend before him will be in his good graces, but those who mock him, will be broken, and harshly. Like a bit caught red handed, Belshazzar trembled in fright. Judgment came because he was culpable of mocking a God who he had every responsibility to know was supreme. It was there in the writing on the wall the whole time.
JOSH McGARY.COM 