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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

The Candlestick, The Prophet, And The Fall Of Babylon

We played in the orchestra at Southern together many years ago.

Bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Father in Heaven, we thank You for this beautiful week that You've given us and this special day that we can come together and open up Your Word.

And I pray that Your Spirit would be with us now.

And I pray that your spirit would speak through me.

Hide me behind the cross and may the words I speak be not my own but the words that you would have me to say.

Well, the title for today's sermon, as you can see in the bulletin, is the candlestick, the prophet, and the fall of Babylon.

And this sermon is based on Daniel chapter 5.

You have Belshazzar and the handwriting on the wall and at the end of the chapter Belshazzar is slain by Darius the Median.

But if you wanted to summarize in 1 term what Daniel chapter 5 is about, you could probably entitle this chapter the fall of Babylon.

Daniel chapter 5 is the fall of ancient Babylon.

Now we know that in the book of Revelation there's the talk of another Babylon that has fallen, so it could be possible that what we will see in Daniel chapter 5 is very relevant to the book of Revelation.

So that's what we're going to look at today.

So I'm going to start in Daniel chapter 5 verse 1.

Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand.

Belshazzar, whilst he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem, that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines might drink therein." So what do we have here?

We have a great feast that Belshazzar is throwing, it's a big party if you will, and the people that are at this feast or at this party happen to be the lords of the kingdom of Babylon, Which gives you the idea that this is a very political event This is the political thing that's happening in town if you're anyone of political significance you would want to be at this party Because they'll shatter the king is throwing the party, and you don't want to be left out it'd be like President Bush holding a state dinner and boy if you're 1 of the leading politicians in town you'd sure like to be there.

And so Here you have a political event taking place.

Now notice what they're doing at this political event.

Now, interestingly enough, It might be fair to say that they were drinking the wine of Babylon, since that's where they were.

And I don't think I have to tell you that when you drink wine, I've never drank wine by the way, and I hope if you haven't that you won't start.

If you have, by God's grace, you can live a better life, you know?

But I don't have to tell you that if you drink wine, it clouds your thinking.

I'm a neurologist, so I can tell you the pathophysiology if you want me to, but I won't.

And when it clouds your thinking, it causes you to do things that you maybe wouldn't do under normal circumstances.

You lose your inhibitions, and without even realizing it, you've gotten yourself perhaps into a lot of trouble.

This has happened over and over again in the history of this earth.

People think, well, I'm different than anyone else.

Well, Belshazzar and these lords are no different than anyone else who drinks wine.

Another way to look at it is that they probably came under delusion as to their true condition because what was really happening Outside of the city was that they were being surrounded by the the army of the Medes and Persians So well, they thought that they were safe inside the city a storm was brewing outside and they didn't even know it So notice what happens after they drink this wine which I like to call the wine of Babylon, Belshazzar loses his inhibitions and he says, hey, why don't we get those golden and silver vessels that my grandfather Nebuchadnezzar took out of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Now, Elshazer probably was a very good student of history, knowing what had happened to Jerusalem, how it had been taken captive, how they had brought the Jewish captives to Babylon, but he also knew that the God of the Jews was really all-powerful.

He had seen that none of the wise men of Babylon could interpret or even tell Nebuchadnezzar what the dream was in chapter 2.

He had seen Daniel properly predict Nebuchadnezzar's future after Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 4.

And yet, once he started drinking that wine, he basically said in defiance to God, You know what?

I'm going to mix my wine with your holy vessels to show you who really is king of Babel.

Now, when that happened, notice what happened next in verse 4.

It says, They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

So Nebuchadnezzar came to an understanding of who the true God was, but Belshazzar, he says, you know what, I know my grandfather thought that the God of heaven is the all-powerful God, but I'm going to show the God of heaven who the king of Babylon is.

So he mixes the wine of Babylon with these holy vessels.

They drink the wine and then they start worshiping false gods.

The gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone.

Now interestingly enough 4 of these elements are the same elements in the image in Daniel chapter 2.

And an application you could say is that they were worshiping the gods of the kingdom of this world, refusing to acknowledge that God is God and that He is the 1 who sets up kings and takes them down.

And that was the lesson that Nebuchadnezzar had to learn.

And that's the reason why he was turned into an animal for 7 years.

If you read the end of chapter 4, he finally comes to the understanding that it's God who sets up kings and takes them down.

But here Belshazzar is saying, I'm the king of Babylon, and I'm going to defy the God of heaven.

I'm going to pour my wine into the holy vessels of God.

And You almost wish that there was a videotape of this scene But I think we can still create some great word pictures in our minds of what happened next.

In verse 5, it says, In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against a candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote." If you've ever wondered where that phrase, the handwritings on the wall, comes from, it's from this story.

We've probably all used that phrase at some point in our life when we know that something's about to crash and burn.

It's like, yep, the handwriting's on the wall.

You know if the handwriting's on the wall, that's a bad sign.

Why did fingers of a man's hand come over and write against the wall and the candlestick shines light on this writing?

Well, if you look a little bit more carefully at the first 4 verses, Belshazzar brings his political lords to this feast.

They start drinking wine and then it turns into some kind of a weird religious service.

So here you have the political leaders of Babylon in a religious worship service, drinking wine.

So what you have here at the beginning of Daniel chapter 5 is, you have a false unholy union between that which is holy and that which is profane.

You have the wine of Babylon mixed with the holy vessels.

And when the people drink the wine, they start worshipping false gods.

So you have a union of church and state under false preachings as a false worship.

Because Babylon should have known that the God of heaven is the true God.

But instead they chose to worship a false god, which they were more easily led to worship when they drank their wine of Babylon.

And so then in verse 5, you have the fingers of a man's hand that write upon the plaster of the wall, and you have a candlestick that shines light upon this message that's being written on the wall.

Now, let me point out a few places of what fingers of a man's hand could possibly represent in the Bible.

Now, if you look at Daniel 5, verses 23 and 24, it's clear Daniel tells Belshazzar this hand was sent forth from God.

So God sends this hand to write this message on the wall.

But if you look in Scripture there's a few places where we have the hand of God, the fingers of God, so to speak, writing a message.

1 place is the 10 Commandments written by the finger of God and tables of stone.

Another place, you have the woman caught in adultery.

Jesus steps down and writes with his finger in the dust and writes all the sins of the leaders that were accusing this woman and he says neither do I condemn you go and sin no more but in essence he was judging those leaders who were condemning this woman that was caught in adultery And 1 other place that I'll point out, there's probably others, is Exodus 8.19.

And in Exodus 8.19 you have the plague of lice being poured out upon the Egyptians.

The plagues were judgments of God upon Egypt for not letting his people go.

So you have the plagues of Egypt being associated with the judgments of God and up until that time the magicians of Egypt have been able to copy some of these plagues, but when the lice came, they were not able to copy that plague.

And so in Exodus 8, 19, they said, truly, this is the finger of God.

So if you put those different examples together in scripture, the finger of God is associated with judgment.

So what you have here, you have in Babylon, in ancient Babylon, as we are studying in Daniel chapter 5, this fall of Babylon and the sequence of events that led to its fall.

You have Belshazzar calling a political event, drinking wine, using the wine in holy vessels, and then He worships false gods.

And that combination led to the handwriting on the wall, which surely is connected with judgment.

And obviously in verse 6, Belshazzar is very troubled, as well he should be.

And then verses 7 and 8, Bill Schazer decides to call the wise men of Babylon to try to help him understand what this handwriting on the wall is.

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The Candlestick, The Prophet, And The Fall Of Babylon

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