Gooding, David: 8 - Ultimate Values

Now, this being the last time I shall be privileged to be with you for the moment, let me very sincerely, and from the warmth of my heart, thank the elders of this particular church and all its members for inviting me in the first place to come along, having invited me to have surrounded me with the warmth of their love and their kindness, and what is more, uh, endured me over a very long session. It is said that you cannot have too much of a good thing, but the other proverb that goes fittingly with that is that you can have too much of a gooding, and therefore, to say, I thank you from my heart for the way you have persevered in extraordinary long sessions and have not complained, or at least I suspect you have complained and complained to the elders that they in their courage have not related your complaints to me. Thank you, therefore, for the way you have come and worked and made it so easy and such a pleasure to talk to you and to work with you in this study of God's Holy Word. The Lord bless you in the days to come and keep you and make his face shine upon you, be gracious to you, and give you his peace. Now tonight, if we are to come anywhere near finishing our study of the book of Daniel, though our studies of all of them been very superficial, we must attempt at least to scan some of the details of two stories. We group them together in this series of studies, chapter three and chapter five, because they, both of them deal with the question of ultimate value. Chapter three in particular will talk to us about the cost of resisting idolatry. Whereas chapter five will talk to us about the cost of rejecting God. The first story is the story of Nebuchadnezzar's image, not the one he saw in his dream, but the golden image that he made, made and set up in the plain of Dura, and thereupon commanded particularly all his ministers of state, from the highest to the lowest, to bow down and worship his image. His image was, on the one hand, meant to be an image of his God. On the other hand, it was a very thinly disguised symbol for Nebuchadnezzar himself. For when three Hebrew young men refused to bow down and worship his image, Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to bring the final twist of the thumbscrew on their will. He pointed out to these three young gentlemen that if you defy my order, you shall be cast into the fiery furnace, and which God is it that shall deliver you out of my hands? He didn't say, and it was significant, he didn't say, who what God will deliver you out of my God's hands. What God shall deliver you out of my hand. The story is how that these three Hebrew young men refused to bow down and worship his image, and for their trouble were thrown into a furnace of fire, and there were delivered by the miraculous, miraculous power of God. Maybe this is the first step in our study, therefore, tonight, read one or two passages in the New Testament that will help to put this ancient story in a more up-to-date context. And this time, the first of all, the book of the Revelation, chapter thirteen. The book of the Revelation, chapter thirteen, where in symbolic language, the prophet is sketching in for us what conditions will obtain at the end of this age. Chapter thirteen of the Revelation then and verse eleven: And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and his face as a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his sight, and he maketh the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose death stroke was he. And he doeth great signs, that he should even make fire to come down out of heaven upon the earth in the sight of men. And he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by reason of the signs which was given him to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast who hath the stroke of the sword and lived. And it was given unto him to give breath to it, even to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And because of all the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand or upon their foreheads, and that no man should be able to buy or to sell, save he that has the mark, even the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. He that has understanding let him count the number of the beast, for it is the man number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty and six. Go to the page into chapter fourteen and verse nine. And another angel, a third, followed him, saying with a great voice, if any man worships the beast in his image and receiveth a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Our first story then is that how in his ancient times, Meduch had never made an image of gold, and setting it up in the plain of Dura, demanded that all his ministers of state throughout his empire, being assembled, should bow down and worship the image on pain of death. And how that when three Hebrew young men refused to do it, they were cast into a furnace of fire, but then there took place a miracle, and they came out unscathed. The fact that in that ancient story there took place a miracle should not allow any of us, I trust, to imagine that this ancient story is some kind of a fairy story. Or if there lingers in our mind some suspicion it may have been, reflection on our own century will show us that what Nebuchadnezzar did in his day is all too relevant to the century in which we live. Nebuchadnezzar was not the last to deify the state and make the totalitarian demand that all his subjects should own that the state has absolute claim on their complete loyalty. And of course, in our own times, one could think of half a dozen countries that have had the same law, could we not? And it is interesting and solemnizing to remember what happens when totalitarian governments do that. Last September, I and my friends, being in Moscow and wishing to visit certain of the national firms in Moscow, had for our guide from later and friend an exceedingly cultured lady. As we got to know her in the days that followed, we eventually felt free to ask her whether she had any personal faith or not. She said, well, yes, a year or two ago I was baptized as a Christian. And then she added, but I couldn't do it before. You see, my father was an airline pilot, and he had flew planes from Russia to the outside world and back, and therefore he had to be a member of the Communist Party. And if the state had known that any of his children were Christians, he would have been dismissed from the party, and of course, from his job. I have a friend in East Germany and used to visit him in the bad old days before the war came down. I remember vividly sitting in his home, the telephone of which was bugged, and his little girl of some twelve or thirteen years old telling us how that at school the teacher had brought pressure to bear upon all the children to join the Young Communists of Consomol, the atheistic organization of atheistic Marxism. This little girl of her own bat, being a believer, had refused and told the teacher that she would never join the young youth communist league. And looking her straight in the face, the cha- the teacher told her, there then is no higher education for you. And all of us are aware, of course, that Russia was not the worst in this regard. In Albania, it was a capital offense simply to believe in God and to profess that belief. What has happened in times past, what has happened in our own century among millions of people, will, according to the New Testament, happen again at the end of this age. The final form of Gentile imperialism, before the Lord Jesus comes again, will be a dictator who will ultimately banish every other kind of religion, defy the state, and demand that all bow down and receive the mark in their hand or their forehead on pain of death. That is not so good as you might think sitting here on a calm, sunny Sunday evening. You'll see it has happened many times in history, and there has been a common thread of reasons why it has happened. It happened with Nebuchadnezzar because he had received a vision, says Daniel, that his own empire would not prove permanent and that it should pass into the hands of others. And therefore, being a shrewd politician and suspecting that disloyalty would come, if it came from anywhere, from his ministers of state, his sheriffs and governors in the far distant province, who could easily become disaffected. He summoned them all together and sought to tap the ultimate loyalty of the human heart, that loyalty that should only be given to God the Creator. He sought to tap that loyalty and harness it for state reasons, for the security of the state and the solidifying of his empire. Making an image of gold and setting it up in the plain, he commanded that all his ministers of state, at the appropriate moment, should bow down to the image and offer the state their ultimate abject worship and allegiance. It was that for a similar reason that the Roman emperors in their day introduced the worship of the emperor. There was not so much that the Roman emperors wanted that they worship themselves in their educated, among their educated friends, of course, which was a little bit of a joke. And when the educated took their pinch of incense and offered it on Caesar's altar, they did it with a tongue in their cheek. Of course they did. They said, if the silly old fool wants to be worshipped, well, we don't mind. A pinch of incense here and there doesn't cost a lot of money, and if it keeps him quiet, we'll say, well, uh, all to the good. The reasons why the emperors did it was that they'd inherited the vast empire, and the republic that had preceded it had gone down in absolute rivers of blood in the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. And the question was, how did you unite all these different nations with all their different religions and their tendency to nationalism and to fight each other? How did you get them welded together in one great empire to live in peace? And that was the motivation originally of the Roman emperors, to get worldwide peace, and they thought to do it by giving the whole member states a heart, a center, a something that their ultimate devotion could be aimed at, and therefore they deified the state in the person of the emperor. So it will be at the end. Although you suppose that the biblical prediction of the end of this age is that the earth will be stalked by hobgoblins and foul fiends, that people will live in ultimate distress, poverty, and persecution. The Bible says that in that day men shall say peace and safety. They will have devised mechanisms they have throughout the whole world to secure peace and security, to stop the little nations all getting so heated up about nationalism, like they are doing in Yugoslavia at the moment, that they will threaten world peace. And to do it, they will at first, uh, use religion, but then the mighty and coming dictator that shall head that final phase of Gentile power shall dismiss all other religion and set himself up in the temple of God, to use the phrase theology of the New Testament, claiming for himself divine honor, unpaying that if anybody refuses it, they shall neither be able to sell nor buy nor eat on pain of death. And I have to tell you, I have to remind you of the simple lessons of history, that when emperors do that kind of thing, the majority of people bow down and worship their image. Not only the poor and the illiterate and ignorant, but the highly sophisticated, the members of the intelligentsia, the leading politicians. In the end, they bow down to that kind of totalitarianism. They did it under Nebuchadnezzar, didn't they? All except the three Hebrew young men. They did it under the Romans. The senators, the learned, the philosophers, they bowed down to those terrors of persecuting emperors. When people like Thrasio Peters in the Senate rose up and defied the emperor and his rule. He brought upon himself not the compliments and praise of his fellow senators, you remember, but he brought upon himself their hatred and indignation as their consciences were stirred that some one man at least had dared to strike a blow for human freedom and refused the intellectual and spiritual degradation of bowing down and treating a fellow human being as though he were God. Instead of admiring him, the men that compromised hated him. There is, of course, a deeper reason why the end of our age will see this kind of totalitarian worship of the state and its empire. And that is a completely different reason, but it, uh, comes from the fact that there is a spiritual warfare proceeding in the universe. And behind all the affairs of men, of individuals, and the state, there is a spirit of opposition against Almighty God, a Satan- a satanic spirit that is watching over the harvest of a seed that Satan sowed all that long way back in the Garden of Eden. It is the seed that he put into the mind of Eve and Adam. Eat of that fruit, says he, and you shall be as the gods. You don't have to be dependent upon God. You can make up your own mind. Man is the master of his fate. You can live and enjoy life to the full, dismissing the notion of God or any supreme authority. These are that trees, and man shall be his God. That is the lie. The Bible dubs it the lie. It has run in the background and under the soil of human experience all down the centuries. Sometimes its obnoxious weeds have appeared on the earth in the form of a Nebuchadnezzar or an Antiochus Epiphanes or Tiberius Caesar or Nero or somebody, or the Russian or the Albanian. It will come to its harvest, its full grown harvest. As men and women taught for generations, atheism, that there is no God behind our universe, comes to the full harvest, and in the end exalts man as God. Think it not, Lewis. It is already the belief of millions of people. The Bible warns us that when it happens, it will, of course, be the ultimate degradation of mankind. When the Mark of the Beast is given us in the book of the Revelation under the symbolic number of six six six, the Holy Spirit of God points out to us that it is a number of a human being. What degradation of the human spirit is this? And men and women shall bow down and give ultimate loyalty to a mere man. It was a tremendous blow for human freedom and dignity and intellectual independence that the three young Hebrew men struck when they defied Nebuchadnezzar to his face and refused to bow down to his image. We in our day have admired, haven't we, the dissidents in Eastern Europe, the Solzhenitsyns of this world, who dare to stand for human intellectual freedom and freedom of conscience and the dignity of man made in the image of God against the totalitarianism of an atheist state. But if bowing down to a fellow man and deifying the state is the ultimate degradation of the human spirit, it is also, of course, the ultimate sin against God. And here we want, we do well to make sure that we have an adequate concept of sin. According to many people's popular ideas, the greatest and the most grotesque sin is perhaps murdering somebody. Suppose murder your mother or murder your father or something. Serious as that kind of thing is, of course, according to the Bible, that is not the ultimate sin. For the first and the greatest commandment in God's holy law is this, that we shall love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. When God says we shall love him so, God is not thinking merely of nice feelings that occur- course through our breath. He is thinking of love both as affection and, uh, desire, but also in a political sense. Love in the sense of loyalty, utter, absolute loyalty. And of course, if there is a God, and if we are each one his creature, and if, as the Bible says, we were made for his pleasure, then of course the chief commandment is understandably that we love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. To fail to do so, and to compromise our allegiance to him, is the ultimate sin. Oh, my good friend, allow me to remind you. You know, it's so easy here to imagine that we can sit on the fence. Said somebody, you know, I'm not against God, Mr. Preacher. I'm glad to hear that. You're not against him. That's something for a preacher to say, I suppose, isn't it, against the Almighty? I'm not against him. But then, of course, I don't take things to the extreme. I- I- I'm not gonna get a mad keen on God, but I'm not against him. And people imagine that they can sit upon the fence. Some of them imagine that sitting on that fence is a mark of sanity and balance of mind, if you please. What would you say if a young man who you met and was proposing to marry a young lady, and the day before the ceremony you went to him and said, tell me, my boy, what do you really think of her? And he says, well, to be honest, you know, I'm not against the woman. Do you know that? On the other hand, I, I don't take things to extreme. I'm not mad keen on her, you will say. I like to keep a balance in these affairs. And you wouldn't say, how commendable is his sanity? You'll say, what a poor fish, wouldn't you? And our blessed Lord warned us, talking to one of his churches, he said, I guess against thee that you are neither hot nor cold. You're neither against me, you're not for me. You're not against me, but you're not mad keen on me. And I find it, said the risen Lord Jesus, absolutely enunciating. You can stand there and tell me that you're neither against me, nor are you mad keen on me. How think you it sounds in the ears of Almighty God? If in our heart, if our hearts are saying to him, all right, God, but we're not against you, but on the other hand, we're not mad keen. Or not to be mad keen on God is the ultimate sin, the ultimate treason. It will bring its ultimate punishment. And therefore our study tonight takes on a certain somber tone, because we cannot possibly dismiss it as just an ancient story. It has a searching lesson that is all too uncomfortable to us today. For at the end time, when there shall exist this dictator who will sit in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God and demanding divine honor. It is not only said that our blessed Lord will destroy him by the brightness of his second coming. It is said that in those terrible days, God shall send some people a strong delusion, that they believe the lie. Why so? Well, not because God himself is a tyrant. There will come a point when God himself desists from warning and beseeching anymore. As Holy Scripture. They knew the gospel. They had heard the gospel. They knew the truth. Steadfastly over the years, knowing the truth, they refused it. And they refused the love of the truth. And the God that pleaded with them many a time to repent and believe will in the end say, well, have it your way if you will not believe the truth. Believe the lie. It is the most colossal lie that you can have a paradise on earth under a reign, not merely of atheism, but the deification of man. And so therefore we turn to consider these three young men who resisted the emperor. And there too, I issue a warning, lest there lingers in our mind that this has some kind of a fairy story. I suspect that some of you had pictures of it in your infant book, didn't you, your picture Bible, or even by some secular infant book published by the press, and there was Jack and the Beanstalk on one page, and there was Noh with a ridiculous looking arc and the giraffes sticking out their heads. And on the next page was, uh, old Nebuchadnezzar with his mustache going up and down, and the three young men defying him and getting put into the furnace, you'll see. And it could be that some sort of dim echo of that is in your mind, and you'll think this was some kind of a fairy story. And that somehow it went like this. You know, there was this great tyrant puffing his old cheeks out and and telling everybody they must bow down to his image or get thrown into the fire. And there were these three young men, like David and Goliath, these young men opposing the great giant tyrant, and they opposed him till he couldn't stick it anymore. And he commanded his servants to make slung them into the furnace of fire. And at that precise moment, God did a miracle, and they didn't feel not a hair singed and came out unscathed. What a story. Then you say to yourself, I wouldn't mind of being that, you know, in fact, I'd rather relish it. Come the day when some old tyrant faces me, and you see, I would defy him too, you see, and I could be sure that, um, just as I was going to be executed, or I was going to be tortured, or I was going to be thrown into the den of lions or into the furnace of fire, God was in the manger, and I would come out unscathed. And what a story it would make, and what a topic of conversation the next time I held a dinner party. Do you know how I stood? And God did a miracle and delivered me, and I didn't have to suffer anything. But if you got that idea, then you have got a childish idea. For it is the fact that sometimes God has done miracles and his people have come through their persecution. It doesn't always happen so, does it? Some die under it. But quite apart from that, read the story carefully and you will see that these three young men were not saved from suffering. That's a lot thing they were saved from. They were saved not from the fire, were they? They were saved in it. They didn't know in advance that there was going to be a miracle. Listen to them talking to Nebuchadnezzar. Is it true, he says, that you didn't bow down to my image and did you won't? Absolutely true, your majesty, they said, we will not bow down to your image. Said they, you know our God is able to deliver us, and if he deliver us well, but be it known, Your Majesty, that if for some reason God does not deliver us, we must pay the penalty, then still we will not bow down to your image. The story tells us that the furnace was heated so hot that even the guards who stood near the open mouth of the furnace were suffocated with the heat and died. If there had been no miracle, the three young men would never have felt any pain the moment they were thrown in. Instantaneously, they would have perished. But they suffered, didn't they? But the suffering was not inside the fire. It was in those terrible days before the fire. Can you imagine it? As the three young men went to their various homes that night, and when the children in bed, with hushed and worried tones, told their wives of the decree, there's going to be this mass meeting, and we're going to be required to bow down. Can you imagine the anguished discussion between husband and wife? What are you going to do, my dear, says the wife. Well, what can I do? But... but if you refuse, you can't leave me and the children. What do I do? You know we're foreigners in this foreign land. And if you go, what will happen? But I shall have to bow down. I shall have to refuse. How can I bow down? Does not our God, Holy Lord, say, thou shall have no other gods but me? Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve with ultimate allegiance. But yes, but couldn't you, I mean, I mean, you know, couldn't you just pretend to bow down? Surely there will be lots of others there, the sheriff, you know, old sheriff Timbuktu. Ah, old rogue a man is. He'll bow down, and as he bows down, he'll be cursing never, never under his breath, and then your silly old. Nah, but he'll bow down and he'll keep his job. Why, I mean, can't you pretend, you know, pretend that you're bowing down? As you bow down, you can be praising the Lord in your heart, but um... But as they thought of that, they thought of pretending to be disloyal to God, and failing to stand and confess God before men, brought home to their hearts what the issue must be. We shall have to refuse. And then the worried nights that followed, there wasn't much sleep, was there? Then the last day they kissed their wives and their children and went out. It was like tearing the very flesh off their bones. But I don't think that was very fair of God, really. I mean, God could have made it easier for them, couldn't he? He could have told them in advance, don't worry, I'm going to do a miracle. Why didn't God tell them in advance? And save them all that anguish. Because God can't. Why can't he? Well, play consider what the issue at stake was. For the issue at stake is a choice between worshiping God and all other forms of idolatry. And to settle that, it must be that God will have to make us face it. And we shall have to make the choice. And therefore, even for us in our smaller circumstances, there will have to come before we go home to glory, a situation where God piles up everything else on the one side and himself on the other, and says choose. That is what the battle is. And you can't go home to glory till you have decided it. That's why Abram eventually was called upon to justify his faith, wasn't he, by his work. He had begun by professing to believe in God, his faith altogether in God and God's promise, and not in his own work, and he was justified by faith. Genesis fifty. But they had to come to bear when Abram was called upon to demonstrate that his faith was genuine. And God raised the issue with him, Abram. Whom do you really trust? Is it me or Isaac? And why are you faced with the choice, me or everything else? What would you choose, Abram? Abram chose God and surrendered his Isaac and demonstrated that his faith was genuine faith. And it can't be done without our making the decision. Sooner or later, God must bring us to the point and set us down at the examination table and say, choose! That is the cost of resisting idolatry. And hence the s- apparent severity of our Lord's terms. Whoever you be, he says, who does not renounce all that he has, cannot be. My disciple, salvation is free, is it not? Now, do you see, for many people it becomes very soon obvious after their conversion. To some it is obvious before they get converted, that if they accept the free gift of salvation from Christ, absolutely free, yet receiving it will involve them in the loss of all things. Try being a Muslim that gets converted to the Lord Jesus and then gets baptized, and you're liable to be poisoned within the next two weeks. With what right does Christ face us with such an alternative. Why, because he is God, isn't he? Christ is not the garage repair man, a resource person. Alas, how little are our concepts of God these days. We tend to look upon Christ as though he were resource man, and we treat him like I treat my garage man. I've got an itching garage man. I didn't spend much time with him, you see. It's just when the car goes wrong and I'm in a difficulty and things have broken down, and I go and see the g- the garage man and say, you are a very nice garage man, and I believe you can put this right, and of course he puts it right for me, you'll see. But once he's put it right, I I don't say, well now, old chap, I'm so grateful to you. Please get in the car and from now on tell me everything I've got to do with my life and where I am to go and where I'm not to go. No, I don't. As soon as he's put it right, I say, thank you very much. Goodbye, garage man, until I meet you again. And alas, when we attempted in our anxiety to get converts, to preach that kind of gospel to the people, that Jesus Christ is a resource person. Are, are, are you feeling the blues? Yes, a bit. Well, Christ could help you over that. You're not feeling the blues? Oh, too bad. Well, then you won't feel any need of Christ. Really? Really? The very terms of salvation are this, that if you want salvation as a free gift, it is through faith in Christ, and you become his disciple. He will demand that you renounce everything else you have and take him as sovereign Lord. You'll say, but why do you try to apply this ancient lesson to us in this far off day? Our circumstances are easy. We're not likely to come into the kind of crisis situation, are we, that the three young Hebrew men came into? Well, perhaps you may manage not to, and go home to glory before you meet any Russian dictator or Albanian dictator or whatever. That's not the point, really, is it? This, I repeat, is a decision that every one of us must make. You see, unless our hearts are surrendered absolutely to Christ and given the choice between him and everything else, we choose Christ. We wouldn't be safe in heaven, would we? What do you mean? Well, if the devil can take the little things of this passing world and so hold them out behind our noses that in fear to lose them, we got them and leave the failure. What would happen if you were in a heaven with ten thousand millions alive, and your heart was not first of all rooted in the Savior, that he is supreme above them all? Why can't you have never turned up to a heavenly prayer meeting once in two years? Because the very delights of heaven would take you away from the Savior. Let us finally notice that when the young men were cast into the fire, their decision had been made. It was the heart that mattered everything. And the trial and the examination having been passed with flying colors, God chose on that occasion to deliver them from death. They found, as they entered the flame, not merely that the flames didn't actually hurt them, they found in the flame one that was imperishable. And here in this life, those young men had discovered the living God and the eternal, and they found they had the better part of the bargain. The fire did not loose their bond, set them free to walk. So shall we, as we journey through life and are called upon to make our decisions, even at our little and lowly level. As we learn to let things go for Christ's sake, we shall find the eternal and the imperishable, and having him, we've lost nothing. In together in our thinking, chapters three and five of the prophecy of Daniel, because both of those chapters deal with the question of ultimate values. As we have seen, chapter three is bringing before us the cost of resisting idolatry. It is only fair if we spend a few moments now considering chapter five, for it will bring before us the cost of indulging idolatry. That will remind us that if our blessed Lord tells us that there is a cost involved in being his disciple, and elsewhere he reminds us, of course, that there is a cost also in not being his disciple, and that cost is immeasurable. And so we come to the story of Belshazzar in his banquet in chapter five of the book of Daniel. There to see a vivid detailed description and watch that great crown prince of Babylon coming to his ultimate decision about what life's values are. As each one of ourselves ultimately shall. For long years, apparently, Belshazzar had been dilly-dallying, never finally making up his mind, like many of us do as we meander through life, never coming to grips with what life's ultimate values are. But we shall one day, as Belshazzar did. Belshazzar the king, it says, and he was only a crown prince, but acting as king, made a banquet to a thousand of his lords. And what a banquet it was. Crown prince of Babylon, with all the wealth of that imperial city at his command, and some of the finest buildings that the human ability has ever been able to build upon the face of the earth. And there were all his friends, the lords, the lieutenants, the sheriffs, and their wives, and the women, you should have seen their dress, how spectacularly beautiful it was, and the dripping earrings from their ears, if not from their noses, and the men there in their military uniforms, maybe, and their medals of service across their breasts. Oh, what an occasion it was, and I tell you, the cuisine was not McDonald's on that occasion. It was the very finest that Babylon, at its imperial height, could devise, and the wines were of the riches. It was at that banquet, curiously enough, when Belshazzar had had enough wma- wine for him to tell the truth to himself. You know how it is suddenly? You're aware that the matter that you've been thinking over perhaps for months, perhaps for years, suddenly it seems to become stark and clear, and you know where you stand, and you make your decision. That's what happened to Belshazzar. It was a sorry thing that he did it when he was a little tipsy. Oh, my friends, it could happen to you. If I speak to any tonight who is not yet a Christian, and you have heard God's gospel many a times, and you did it, and you haven't made up your mind, and you thought about the pros, and you thought about the cons, it could happen to you too. One of these days, in some fashionable hotel at a manager's conference, you could have had just a little bit too much. And it will suddenly seem clear to you. And you'll make your decision. And oh, God's, God's mercy be on you. It could be the wrong decision, couldn't it? You see the thing apparently that had been hurting Belshazzar all these years was this. His grandfather, an old bearded old boy. It wasn't his grandfather, really, but that's the way the Babylonians talked, you see, it was his ancestor on the throne. Had had some kind of spiritual experience, as people would say, got converted or something. You'll say, uh, he'd been an idolater like anybody else, but then he'd had some kind of a breakdown, who should describe it properly, and had lived like an animal for some years. When in his distress, he reached his hand up to see if there was anybody really there, and found the hand of Almighty God coming down that gripped his hand and pulled Nebuchadnezzar out of the distress and the indignity of his mental breakdown and his animal behavior, and brought him up to sanity and health once more. A very dead humble experience of the reality of God. And of course, everybody in the palace had heard about it, how couldn't they? And the queen mother, you know what queen mothers are, always throwing a lot and getting on to the young pet men and saying, now look here and be wise, and you should copy your grandfather and all this kind of thing. And he'd heard it, and he'd heard it, and he'd heard it. Came out of he. It's time you sought the Lord, they'll shatter, it's time you got converted. This night at this banquet, he came to his decision. He'd had enough of this business. He would decide it once and for all, what life's true values were. Calling one of his office, officers, he bade him go to the temple where Nebuchadnezzar had deposited the golden vessels that he had taken out of the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem and bring him, bring them to the banquet table. Why so? Why, those vessels were golden, and they had originally been made and placed in the temple of Jerusalem by the Israelites to express their faith that God is man's supreme value, and the supreme significance and value of human life is to worship Almighty God, our great creator and our redeemer. This is life's true value. We were made to do his will. It is our significance as human beings that we were made in the image of God, and life's supreme value, I repeat, is to worship and serve the Creator. Nebuchadnezzar had taken those vessels, golden vessels, and with great reverence, idolatrous though he was, with great reverence he had put them in the house of his god and never attempted to use them for his own pleasure. Now this night, Shaza, coming to his decision about what life's ultimate values were, called for the vessels, and when they were placed on the tables, he ordered them to be filled with wine, and calling through the herald for the attention of the thousands of people that were at the banquet, so that they all looked to his majesty, he rose from the table, and taking the golden vessels of divine service filled with their wine, he drank from them himself, and the crowd went aghast. And then they looked it. It would be in the press tomorrow morning, headlines, wouldn't it? And he made his law and made his drink from those vessels. And he was saying this. He was saying this, I'm tired of all this conversion business and getting saved. I'll tell you what life's values are. Life's value, life's chief value is me. Me! My pleasure. I'm going to have it that way. All that exists. This is the meaning of it all. It exists for me and my pleasure. Sooner or later we face the choice, do we not? What is life's pleasure? What do I mean? What am I? What am I meant to be living for? And we shall choose what the three young Hebrew men chose, that life is for God. Or we shall choose what they'll shatter. Life's chief value is myself and my pain. And so that has made his decision. He comes to his value evaluation of God. What happened next? Well, God replied, how shouldn't he? And made his evaluation of Belshazzar. And there came forth a hand of a man and wrote upon the plaster, and the king saw the hand that wrote. And now his face was changed and growing pale, and the sweat breaking out on his forehead. He half stood, he half sat. And the people followed the gaze of the emperor and saw he was looking at this mysterious writing on the wall. Why has he might, he couldn't read the writing, and it was scary. He didn't need to be told that this was God now intervening. This was God writing on his wall, and he couldn't read it. It's a scary thing to wake up to, isn't it? There are many people, they take a Bible in their hand in their distress, and they know it's God's word. Instinct tells them it is so, and they can't read it, or they can read the English. They don't know what it means. Well, my friend, allow me to ask you, can you read the writing? Let's take the very simplest of the writings. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life. Can you read the writing, friend? Does it make sense to you? Or is it all double Dutch? Our very eternity depends on our being able to read the writing. Why couldn't you read the writing? It was very odd because the words that were written, mene, mene, tekel yufasin. El Shaddai had seen them on the weights and measures of his. Aramaic words, mene for a minor, tekel for a shekel, yufasin meaning two halves of a shekel. They were stacked on the weights and measures of his reign, and since in those days they didn't have coins, they used weights for coinage. So mene, mene, tekel, yufasin on the king's wall were simply weights and measures and coins, so to speak, money, if you like. He'd seen them a thousand times. Why couldn't he read them now when the hand of God wrote them? But then what would you make out of it? Oh, my friend, if tonight you went home and sat down at relief at the end of the day in your, uh, in your drawing room, and presently the hand of God came out and wrote on the wall shillings and pence, marks and francs. Francs and centimes. Dollars and cents. Could you make sense of it? Would you say to yourself, and what on earth might God be wanting to tell me? Marks and, and, and pennies and francs and centimes or something, pounds and shillings and pennies. What on earth is he saying? Oh, money, you say. And what is money? We say that's easy. Money is value. No, it isn't. Money is only the way of measuring value, isn't it? And you see, as we go through life, values change, don't they? You do the experiment when you think, uh, feel like it next. You give ten pounds to your grandson of seven years old and see what his values in life are. Ah, you'll say, you'll probably want to spend it on the succession of the biggest ice creams you ever saw, you'll say. That's his sense of value. It's not an old painting of Rembrandt or something that you've got out of some secondhand bookshop. You'll say, no, no, no, ice cream is his value. You give ten pounds to your niece, a sweet, uh, sixteen or seventeen, and see what she does. She'll put it with another ninety and get a dress out of Christian Dior or something, you'll see. She's not for ice cream. No, no, no, that's that's long since lost its value for her, you'll see. Life has a way of changing its values as as it goes on, isn't it? And you'll give ten pounds to your, uh, honourable father, who's now fifty six. Well, he's got everything, and what will he do? He'll probably put it with another three hundred and get a golf club or something, you'll see. Values change, don't they? Tell me, when you come to life end, are there any eternal values that never change. You could look at it another way, couldn't you? What are you worth? What's your value, friend? You'll say they tell me that, uh, the child needs its mother. Yes. But then it's true, isn't it, the mother needs the child, actually. You see, mother loves to feel wanted, doesn't she? And that little infant at her breast and having to look after it, oh, how it makes mother feel good. Someone needs her. And it's sometimes a cruel thing for women in mid-age, isn't it, when their children have grown up and left home, and nobody wants them. You'll see diamonds, the real thought, if they weren't used in industry, their only value is that women like them, you see. If women didn't like them, men wouldn't pay thousands for them. You can't eat them, can you? It's simply that people like diamonds, you see, or women do. They say he's forever or something, and they like them. It's what gives the vi- diamond its value. And when the children have grown up, when maybe husband is gone, madam, and you stand on the edge of the great eternity. Will anybody want you? What will you be worth? Ah, human worth is this. But explain it if you can. God, our creator, wants us, and he is a self-sufficient God. Don't ask me how to explain it. He decided to want us, and he made us. And when we sinned against him, oh, marvelous mystery, he so much wanted us that in the person of Jesus Christ, his son, he died to obtain us. That's our value. Here comes God now. Through that way Nebuchadnezzar, uh, uh, Belshazzar. Daniel comes in, he takes the words as you, as you can do in Semitic languages. He keeps the consonants, and he puts in other vowels and reads it like this. Neme, turning it as a verb, God has measured your kingdom and brought it to an end. Little life is past now, Belshazzar. It's ended. The good wine, the food, the lords and the ladies, the power, the glitter. It's over now, Belshazzar. And you're found wanting. You've come short. Your character is eaten through with sin. You're a light kind of a thing. You are found wanting. Perez, your kingdom is divided. And given to the Persians. Have you said Belshazzar? Belshazzar, listen, man, you know what it means. If the Persians come here tonight, I'll flip your hope, Belshazzar. The show is over. You've got to go out into the great eternity, Belshazzar, oh, Belshazzar. And you're a sinner like the rest of us. There is but one hope for you, Belshazzar. Cast yourself, man, on the mercy of God, your creator. Perhaps he'd save you yet. Your eyes turn back to the table. It's not looking so pretty now as it when it was at the beginning of the banquet. There are bits of bread and fish and stains of wine, and you look now, you know how bedraggled the table looks at the end of a banquet, don't you? This is the show when it's over. There, amongst the debris of the banquet, stand the vessels of gold. All beshappened. The only thing that could ever have given you value, and value for life, and value for eternity, God himself, you have rejected. And you made your decision. You said the chief value in life is me. And tonight you will be slain. See his corpse, ladies and gentlemen. What would you value him at now? And he's gone out into the darkness, there to exist eternally. Oh God, oh, oh friend, what, what would you say is the value of a lost soul? And we bring the lesson home to ourselves. What are we worth? What are we? Ultimately, are there any eternal, unchanging values? Is there anybody that wants us? And the magnificent answer is this: let atheism wither away in shame. Yes, there is a God, and he made us, and he made you, sir, and he made you, madam. He made you in his image. Like the rest of us, you have sinned. God cannot pretend otherwise, but not on the basis of our works and in spite of our shortcomings. He loves us still and gave the precious blood of his son to redeem us. This is your worth. Place not your worth elsewhere, your worth is here. But if you will receive God's Son, his blood will not only atone for sin, but buy you eternal redemption and buy you eternal significance, and with it an eternal inheritance and eternal glory. Perhaps tonight has become the time when some of us must make our decision. Who are you, friend? Think long before you take the cup and raise it to your lips and say, I have decided the ultimate value in life is I myself and my pleasures let God go hang. Oh, ponder it well. Ponder the cost of indulging in idolatry. Rather, let our decision tonight be to rise up, and as the psalmist put it, take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. Shall we pray? Now, in these moments, Lord, in one of the many days of life and at its end, and we are tired, yet having listened to thy word, we ask grace of thee now, that we may take appropriate decisions. Of those of us who are already and long since believers in thy son, to examine our hearts, and if in anything our discipleship is compromised, help us, Lord, counting the cost deliberately to present our bodies yet again a living sacrifice. Lord, if any of us trembles undecided upon life's fundamental decision, grant now in these moments quietness and clarity of thought, that thy spirit's voice may be heard, calling and intending, that the right decision be made and eternal salvation and glory received. Thus be thy parting blessing upon us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.