Weighed In The Balances
Intro. Belshazzar's great feast for a thousand of his lords. Under the
influence of his wine he ordered the gold and silver vessels to
be brought that had been removed from the Temple in Jerusalem, that
they might drink their wine from these sacred vessels. As they
drank from these vessels, he praised the gods of gold and silver,
when suddenly their appeared a hand that wrote on the plastered
wall a cryptic message in four strange words. When none of his wise
men were able to decipher message Daniel was called for.
I. Mene, "God has numbered your kingdom and finished it.
A. Your days are numbered and its all over for you. Sort of, "It's
curtains, man."
1. God has allotted each of us so many days.
a. There will come for each of us that last day
that God has allotted for us on this earth.
b. That day when God will say, "Your pilgrimage on
earth is over."
2. A person in their youth seems to have a sense of
immortality.
a. Very little thought is given to death.
b. It always seems that you have your whole life
before you.
c. It is not until a person reaches their forties
that they begin to realize that they have hit
the half-way mark, and they begin to look at
life seriously.
1. This is the time that a lot of career
changes are considered.
2. You ask, "Do I want this all of my
life?"
3. You are still looking ahead.
d. It is not until you get into your late 60's
that you start looking back.
1. At this point many of your high school
friends are already gone.
2. You begin to realize your frailty.
3. You begin to think before you jump over
the wall.
4. You realize that you are not as agile
as you once were, if fact you begin to
feel a little fragile.
3. In his later years Moses prayed, "Teach us to number
our days that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom."
a. I may have only 3500 days left, maybe even
less, so help me to use them wisely.
b. The clock is ticking for each of us.
II. Tekel, "You have been weighed in the balances."
A. The balances are the symbol of justice. The thought usually is
the balance between the good and evil done in your life. The
right is balanced with the wrong.
B. These were the things on the scale that doomed Belshazzar.
1. He knew the power of God.
a. He knew of the experience his grandfather
Nebuchadnezzer had of insanity for seven years.
He knew the proclamation that his grandfather
made when he regained his sanity, how he
extolled the King of heaven.
b. He knew that the vessels of gold and silver had
been dedicated to that God his grandfather had
extolled.
2. While he was blaspheming God, he was praising insensate
gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood and stone.
a. These gods could neither hear, see, or know.
3. The true God in whose hand his very breath was, he had
not glorified.
a. You depend upon God for your very breath. He is
the one who sustains your life, and determines
your days.
b. Our lungs as our heart is one of the
involuntary muscles of our bodies.
1. We have voluntary and involuntary
muscles. The voluntary muscles are
attached to the skeleton of your body
and are controlled consciously by the
brain.
2. The involuntary muscles are not
attached to the skeleton and are not
controlled consciously by the brain.
3. Those muscles that are vital for
continuation of life, God has left
under His control. You do not have to
think to make your heart tick, nor
think "I had better breathe now."
4. God has designed these muscles to
function automatically.
c. At the very moment, the kings breath was fouled
with the smell of wine. He used his fouled
breath to curse the true and living God, upon
whom he depended for his breath, at the same
time he praised the gods of gold and silver,
iron and stone, who did not breathe.
C. Your life is being weighed in the balances. Does God declare of
of you, "It is found wanting."?
D. The mistake that man often makes is that he thinks that His
good is being balanced by his evil. This is what is being
weighed in the scales.
1. This is the mistake that the Jews make today on Yom
Kippur.
2. Most people have been deceived into thinking this.
3. They protest that they try to do good things. They try
to live an honest decent life.
4. It might be well for you to remember the words of Jesus
to His disciples, "Except your righteousness exceeds
that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no wise
enter the kingdom of heaven.
E. The truth of the matter is that there are two sets of scales,
the one that balances your good against your evil, and the
other that balances your righteousness against the
righteousness of Jesus.
1. You protest, "That isn't fair, He was the Son of God."
2. Fair or not is not a judgment that you are privileged
to make. That is the way it is.
3. God has declared the righteousness that is essential to
grant you entrance into heaven. He does not want any
polluting influence to defile the absolute purity
there.
4. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would testify of
righteousness because I ascend unto My Father. His
ascension into heaven, was a declaration from God, that
here is the righteousness that I will accept.
5. You protest, "But no one can be that good." and you are
absolutely right.
6. That is the very reason that God made provision to
impute to you the righteousness of Jesus Christ by your
simple faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
7. God will account your faith in Jesus Christ for
righteousness.
8. Paul the apostle was one of the Pharisees that was
struggling hard to attain a righteousness by the works
of the law. Keeping the rules. One day on the road to
Damascus, he met the Savior Jesus, and surrendered to
Him as his Lord. Later he wrote concerning the
righteousness that he had been seeking under the law,
"Those things that were gain for me (The things that I
was putting on the scales.) I counted loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and do
count them as refuse, that I may know Him and be found
in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of
the law, but the righteousness which is by Christ
through faith."
D. As you are being balanced on the scales, what are you putting
on your side as a counter balance to your evil?
E. What a glorious thing that God puts on my side of the scales,
the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That totally outweighs all
of the sin that I had loaded on the other side of the balances.
III. Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the
Persians.
A. In verse 30 we read "And that night was Belshazzar the king of
the Chaldeans slain and Darius the Mede took the kingdom."
B. That was the end of the road for Belshazzar, and his kingdom.
C. One day your name will appear in the obituary column, will it
be said by God, "He was found wanting"?
D. Jesus spoke of a rich man who prospered abundantly, until he
said, I am so rich I have no room to store up my wealth, what
shall I do? He said, I will tear down my old storehouses, and
build larger, but the Lord said to him, "You fool, this night
your soul will be required of you, and then who shall possess
your riches?"
1. You may plan for your future, but if you do not include
God in those plans, you are a fool.
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Chuck Smith (1927 - 2013)
Pastor Chuck was used in the Jesus People revival where he was used along with others to minister to the hippy young people. They saw a work of the Spirit where many were added to the church and discipled. He has raised up many pastors who are a part of the Calvary Chapel movement now and where he pastors the large Costa Mesa church in California.The Calvary Chapel movement is based of simple principles that Chuck Smith taught over the years such as: The priority of agape love, Simple fellowship amongst the saints, the breaking of bread, the teaching of God's word chapter by chapter and verse by verse. And lastly and most importantly the principle not by might nor by power but by my spirit saith the Lord.