I thought that I was be able to go through a whole chapter on the sermon. Sadly, I failed this week. You have a two-part sermon once again in front of you. There is too much packed in this chapter. And so, the idea was to do…. what was it?… 30 odd verses. There’s no way!
So, when I… I… I was about at 5000 words going up to 6000 and realized this is a 2-part sermon…so!
I’ve entitled this sermon Honor God or Die… Honor God or Die. So, I would encourage you guys if you, throughout this week and next week, read this chapter and ponder it. Daniel Chapter 5. It’s… it’s a passage which tells us really that the writing is fundamentally on the wall. You don’t know when it is on the wall for your life. As our world spirals into greater and greater levels of wickedness, as we see the government leaders show their discontent – or discontempt and dishonour to God, it’s very easy to lose hope. I think you look at what’s going on out in society. Your heart tends to sink down very quickly.
John Calvin says. All wickedness…, interestingly, flows from a disregard of God.
“All wickedness flows from a disregard of God.”
It’s easy to wonder, this question: is God still in control when I’m seeing so much chaos all around me? Unbelievers often think nothing, or no one will hold them accountable for their sinful lifestyles, and so they carry on in the way that they’ve been living – thinking there’s no God! There’s no one that can impact me!
And I think our passage this morning reveals the night of judgment – for a king, who in his prideful heart had been dishonouring God – been thinking. Ohh! there’s no one who’s going to hold me accountable.
It reveals the fulfillment of God’s Word, His Promises to Jeremiah and Isaiah of judgment upon the Babylonian Empire. This is a very critical night. It’s a fulfillment of a number of prophecies that we found in the scriptures. You see, when we think of prophecies, we only think of the prophecies that …that point towards the coming of Christ.
But here, this very night, was a fulfillment of a number of prophecies that we find that Jeremiah and Isaiah had been proclaiming many years earlier. This was a judgement to the nation for idolatry, and specifically how they had treated the nation of Israel. A judgment to a proud king! Where disregarded the lessons God had taught his grandfather, King Nebuchadnezzar. The writing was literally on the wall for the king and his empire that night. The sand… out of the sand glass had run out. The last drop of sand had fallen. And Proverbs 16: 18 says pride goes before destruction. This was the night before destruction would happen to this king.
It says pride goes before distraction and a haughty spirit before a fall. That’s Proverbs 16:18.
This was the night that he had his appointment. What appointment?
His appointment with death! Cause, death had come and Hebrews 9:27 it says, and just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.
Brothers and sisters, you and I need to realize, this morning, that each of you have an appointment. It’s an appointment with death!

We need to recognize it, and you don’t know when that appointment comes. And death in the moment has, as are often mentioned, 100% success rate. And so, you need to realize on the moment, it’s 100% successful that you will have that appointment. The only thing that will intervene with that is Jesus Christ, if He comes for His church.
That very night, many people would die, and the empire would be crushed and replaced. That night, was a demonstration of Daniel 5:21, which is kind of a theme of the book of Daniel and… and… and the… and the second-half of that sentence says that the most high God rules the Kingdom of mankind and sets over it, whom He wills. Fundamentally it’s teaching you, God is in charge of all the kingdoms of every king, over every governor, over every president, over any person in authority – God is in charge. He puts them there and He removes them!

Now previously, as we interacted with Daniel, in Chapter 2, we… we had discovered… we’d met with Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadnezzar had learned that God is omniscient. He knows everything. Remember, Daniel had revealed the dream and the interpretation to him in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, the King had learned that God is a saving God when He miraculously… miraculously saved Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace – because they weren’t willing to bow down and worship his… his… his idol or the statue that he’d… he’d made.
In Chapter 4, we had learned how God is sovereign, how He humbled king Nebuchadnezzar. Changing him to start to eat grass, for a number of years, it sounds like seven years, and eventually when he was humbled, he finally came out of that, exalting God! And he most likely, many commentators, believe this was the point where King Nebuchadnezzar was saved.
And here in Chapter 5 – we kind of jump forward a number of years – and we meet a following king – king Belshazzar, who in his pride had dishonoured the sovereign God and God killed him. It’s interesting… the previous chapter, Chapter 4, we have a king who humbled himself and was saved and, but who was prideful, and he humbled himself and was saved. In the next chapter, another king who had… who didn’t humble himself, was prideful, and God killed him. And so, we really need to see this contrast between these two kings. Our key verse in this chapter would be verse 23.
We… we read that the God in whose hand is your breath and whose hand are all your ways, you have not honoured. That’s the key thought there – king Belshazzar never honoured God. Why?
Because of his prideful heart. And so, God killed him that very night!

Now some background because we suddenly we jumped from Nebuchadnezzar straight into Belshazzar. For thousands of years – by the way – this term, King Belshazzar – the name Belshazzar was challenged by a number of commentators because many of them thought there was no such figure as King Belshazzar. You see no records outside of the Bible mentioned him. The only record that mentions him was the Bible. According to external records that they had, like from Berossus, Nabonidus was the final king of Babylon. That’s what all the records were saying. And you know what?
This gave the liberal commentators a lot of ammunition to challenge the historic… historicity of Daniel’s account and Daniel 5. And so, therefore, they were challenging the inerrancy of Scripture.
But like Ericsson says about God’s Word; Inerrancy is the doctrine that the Bible is fully truthful in all of its teachings.
The Bible is true because God is true.
And in 1954, J.G. Taylor discovered 4 Cunnane cylinders in the foundations of the Ziggurat of Ur. I think I might even have a picture of that. There we go.
On it, they found the following inscription:
This was a prayer: As for me Nabonidus, King of Babylon, saved me from sinning against You – Great God-head. And grant me as a present, a life, long of days. And as for Belshazzar, the eldest son, my offspring, and still reverence for your great God-head in His heart, and… and may not commit any cultic mistake. May he be sated with life of plenitude.
All of a sudden, they had four cylinders – all affirming what the Bible has always been affirming. In other words, archaeology finally caught up with the inerrancy of God’s word. God’s word is inerrant! OK!
It just takes archaeology some time to catch up with some of these things. And God is true. His word is true and historically accurate, and the liberals and other commentators had to swallow their words with ketchup!
Between Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, 25 years, in fact, had passed. This was 70 years after Jerusalem was captured. As mentioned in Daniel Chapter 1. You remember, 70 years had been decreed for Israel to go into exile. This is a critical night! Nebuchadnezzar, between that time period had died peacefully in his sleep – 562 B.C. – of natural causes.
His son – I don’t know if you’d call your son this – but his son was called Evil Merodach.
O.K… so he ruled for two years.
Berossus says, he… he was an arbitrary ruler. In other words, a dictator acting on the whims of his feelings. And he was licentious. In other words, immoral, lustful, depraved. That’s what characterized his kingdom.
His brother, Neriglissar assassinated him and then ruled for 4 years. Or sorry, I think it’s his brother-in-law.
And his death, in 556 BC, his son Labashi-Marduk, who was a child, reigned for 9 years or 9 months…. sorry. According to Berossus,…according to Berossus, as some commentators say, one month… some say nine months. That’s debatable – until a conspiracy resulted, and where his friends beat him to death. One of his friends, apparently, was Belshazzar!
There’s no evidence to support that. But some guys say that, they… then these conspirators, so-called friends, appointed the old scholar, Nabonidus, as a ruler, and Nabonidus ruled. He was the overarching ruler of Babylon for 17 years, from 556 to 539 B.C., which is recorded in all the records. But 3 years into his reign in 553, he left Babylon. He was involved in a variety of military campaigns in Syria, …Cilicia and Arabia, and then focused all his attention on restoring various temples of various gods in his realm. And so, he then established his capital in Te… Temar, in Arabia, and he remained there for 10 years. And so, during that time, his son Belshazzar ruled Babylon as Co-Regent. And so, from a… a Jewish perspective, Belshazzar was the king, and so 100% accurate!
And their historians and the commentators didn’t know all of this background until they found some of these cylinders, like the cylinder of Nabonidus. And since that time, I read another commentary, spoke of 30 odd references concerning Balthazar on other pieces of …of… of the stuff that they’d found in that area. And so, basically, what we have here is Belshazzar was ruling in Babylon. Nabodidus, apparently returned to Babylon in 542 to stave off the advancing Persians, but was captured when Babylon fell to Cyrus in 539 B.C. We begin our passage on the evening that Cyrus was entering into the Babylonian city in 539 B C. – a critical night.
And so, with this sermon over this week and next week, we will be giving you 7 Events That Reveal the Danger of Dishonouring God and Delaying Repentance.
The Danger of Dishonouring God and Delaying Repentance
• Verses 1 through 4, we… we discover The Revelry of the King.
• Verses 5 – The Revelation from God.
• The… The Reactions of the King – verses 6 through 9,
• The Return of Daniel verses 10 through 16. Now, I think we’re not going to be able to get to that section today.
• And then for verses 17 through 21, the Recital of History. We have now Daniel interacting with Balthazar
• verses 22 through 28, – The Revealing of God’s Judgment and then
• The Rewarding of Actions – verses 29 through 31.

So, we’ll, we’ll… we’ll go through the story. And so, think of this as like, you know, when you watch a not a “seepie,” what do you call those – when you’re watching a story, part one ending on a cliffhanger and then next week you hear. So, this is kind of an advert to be here next week.
If you want to find the crux, the main point of this story, historical story, by the way, which is important for your soul, OK, so don’t miss the end of this story.
Let’s begin. And verses 1 through 4 – The Revelry of the King.

7 Events that Reveal the Danger of Dishonouring God and Delaying Repentance
1. Revelery of the king – vv1-4
2. Revelation from God – vv5
3. Reaction from the king – vv6-9
4. Return of Daniel vv10-16

Part 2
5. Recital of history – vv17-21
6. Revealing God’s judgement vv22-28
7. Rewarding actions – vv29-31