“Silent witness: Handwriting on the wall”
Daniel 5:24-25
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Described as a “white, twenty-eight-year-old, scruffy-casual, jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing kind of guy,” Robin Gunningham, also known as, “Banksy,” is an English film director, political activist, and street artist. While some might describe him as a creative outlaw or an annoying political gadfly, others call him a graffiti superhero. According to a London gallery’s artistic director, Maeve Doyle, “If you go to Mexico, mechanics will know Banksy. It’s wonderful!”
His story dates back to the early 90s when he first started to paint graffiti--a mix of political and social commentary--on local streets, walls, and bridges. And ever since then, his themes have been war, capitalism, hypocrisy, and greed. His subjects are rats, apes, policemen, children, and even members of the royal family.
Maybe you’ve seen some of his work before, like Love is in the Air in Jerusalem, or Washing Zebra Stripes in Mali, or There is Always Hope in London, or I Love New York in New York City. One of his latest works called, Show Me the Monet, recently sold for, believe it or not, nearly $10 million! Who would have thought?!
But Banksy is really nothing new. Graffiti, a word that means “to scratch,” or “to write,” has been around for a long time, ever since the days of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman empire. In more recent history, World War II had its Kilroy was Here, supposedly named after a shipyard’s rivet inspector. And Berlin had graffiti on its wall, at least on the western side. Stretching nearly a hundred miles, it’s been called the largest canvas in the world.
But of all the graffiti past, present, or yet to come, the most famous of all is found in the words of Daniel chapter 5. I’ll begin with verse 1: “King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand. Belshazaar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone” (Daniel 5:1-4).
Before we go any farther, let me give you a quick history lesson, so you can have an idea as to what’s going on.
Thirty years have passed since a man named Nebuchadnezzar reigned as king. When he died, his son, Amel-Marduk, became king. But he reigned for only a couple of years, because his brother-in-law, Neriglissar, assassinated him. Then when Neriglissar himself died four years later, his son, Labashi-Marduk, became king. But he was king for only nine months until a group of conspirators killed him too. So a man named Nabonidus became king and would rule for the next seventeen years.
But Nabonidus wasn’t a member of the royal family, so people didn’t really like him. So he agreed to move out of town and let Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, become king instead.
So far, so good?
So there he was, King Belshazzar, barely thirty-six years old--young, head-strong, decadent, idolatrous, and immoral--the great and powerful king of Babylon.
But there was just one problem. His kingdom was in trouble. The Medes and the Persians had already taken one city after another, until finally, there was only one left--the capital city, the very place that Belshazzar called home.
But what a city it was! Archaeologists who have dug there tell us it was heavily fortified. Its walls were eighty feet thick, three hundred feet high, and fifty-six miles long! More than a hundred towers were strategically placed to provide both surveillance and crossfire. Its gates were made of bronze.
And if all that wasn’t enough, not only did a river run right through the middle of town, providing fresh, sparkling water to every man, woman, and child inside, there was enough food to last twenty years. Sure, the Medes and the Persians were laying in wait, knocking on their door, but as far as Belshazzar was concerned, they could knock all they wanted, because there was no way they were ever, ever going to get inside.
So what would you do if you were the proud, stuck-on-yourself, high and mighty king of Babylon? When he should have been fasting, he was feasting! He threw a party, a really big party, with the best of meats, the finest of wines, and the most exotic, beautiful women he could find.
Then, when the party was in full swing, when he and his guests had more than enough to drink, he had an idea. Why not send for those golden goblets that his grandfather, old King Nebuchadnezzar, had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem? Sure it mocked God, but it would be a perfect way to show who was really the boss, who was really king.
And as he and his thousand lords and wives and lady friends joined in their raucous, sumptuous feast, something strange, something weird, something eerie began to happen. Verse 5: “Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote.”
Then what? The Bible says his face which, only moments before had been flush with wine, was now ashen white. His lips quivered, his knees knocked, and his heart beat out of his chest. And as all that royal feasting and dancing and drinking came to a screeching halt, a deathly silence filled the air.
“The fingers of a human hand,” it said. No body, no face, no legs, just fingers--the same fingers that once sent plagues to destroy ancient Egypt, that wrote ten commands on tablets of stone.
And what did they write? No one knew. No one had a clue.
“Bring in the enchanters, the astrologers,” he said, “and whoever can read this writing shall be clothed in purple, wear a chain of gold around his neck, and become the third highest ruler in my kingdom!”
Still, none of them knew. Not one of them had a clue.
Just then, who should hear what was going on, but Belshazzar’s mother, the queen mother. “O king, live forever!” she said. “Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change. There’s a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods.” And she said, “Let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.”
And as Daniel stepped into the room, into the middle of all that horror and terror, there was no fright on his face, no knock in his knees, and no fear in his eyes, for he knew the One who had written on the wall.
Then calmly and quietly he said, “This is the writing that was inscribed: Mene Mene Tekel Parsin.”
What did it mean? “Numbered, Numbered, Weighed, Divided.” To put it another way, “You have been examined once, Belshazzar, and you’ve been examined again. But you were found empty and worthless, and so this very night, your kingdom will be taken from you and given to the Medes and the Persians.”
For the past thirty-six years, Belshazzar did what he wanted to do, and lived like he wanted to live. But now his time was up. His day of reckoning had come.
And sure enough, that very night, just as Daniel said, the Medes and Persians diverted the waters of the Euphrates River out into an open field, then crept beneath its city gates, and took the life of King Belshazzar.
The handwriting was on the wall.
In his book, Our Dance has Turned to Death, author Carl Wilson chronicles the downfall of both the Greek and Roman cultures. He said their decline began to happen when men stopped leading their families in spiritual and moral growth. And as they pursued material wealth and power, and became so preoccupied with business ventures, they neglected their wives and children, and became involved with other women. So marriage laws were changed to make divorce easier. And since neither male nor female role models were in the home, children began to lose their identity. Many were unwanted, abandoned, molested, and aborted.
Search through the rubble of history, and you’ll find that the tendency of every great nation is exactly the same. When it begins to believe that it’s an undefeatable superpower, when it slowly pushes God out of the picture, takes Him out of public life, forbids the mention of His name, ridicules those who believe in Him, exalts man and downplays God, rejects absolutes, and lives by its own set of rules, when it finds refuge in its idols of technology, and worships the things its hands have made, it’s end is soon to come.
As much as we might hate to say it, even our nation, the United States of America, is guilty of every sin anyone can imagine. In fact, there’s not one sin in the history of the world that’s not being committed in America today. Even Thomas Jefferson once saw it coming when he wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
Jesus said: “You serve Me with your lips, but your heart is far from Me.” And Paul once wrote to the Galatians, “Do not deceive yourselves, for no one makes a fool out of God.”
Mene Mene Tekel Parsin. The handwriting is on the wall.
In the words of a poem: “At the feast of Belshazzar and a thousand of his lords/While they drank from golden vessels, as the Book of Truth records/In the night, as they reveled, in the royal palace hall/They were seized with consternation at the hand upon the wall./See the brave captive Daniel, as he stood before the throng/And rebuked the haughty monarch for his mighty deeds of wrong/As he read out the writing ‘twas the doom of one and all/For the kingdom was now finished, said the hand upon the wall./See the faith, and zeal, and courage that dare to do the right/Which the Spirit gave to Daniel, this the secret of his might/In his home in Judea, or a captive in its hall/He understood the writing of his God upon the wall./So our deeds are recorded, there’s a hand that’s writing now/Sinner, give your heart to Jesus, to His royal mandate bow/For the day is fast approaching, it must come to one and all/When a sinner’s condemnation will be written on the wall.”
Is there any hope? There wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the One who not only wrote on the wall, but who once wrote on the ground.
Remember? For in the book of John, a woman was caught in the act of adultery. “Caught in the act,” the Bible says.
And as men dragged her kicking and screaming through the city streets and threw her down on the ground, ashamed, disgraced, and completely humiliated, what did Jesus do? He bent down and wrote with His finger on the ground. Then He stood up to say, “He who is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone.”
And there we find our hope, our only hope, for ourselves, for our families, and for our nation--in a Savior who’s come to pardon, to forgive, and to redeem--the One whose name is Jesus.
Dear Father, once a king of Babylon dared to ridicule You and mock You. And sometimes, even we have dared to do the same. Help us, by Your grace, to come to You in repentance and faith as we see the handwriting on the wall, for Jesus’ sake. Amen