Men, the title of my sermon this morning
is The Handwriting on the Wall.
The handwriting on the wall.
This is an expression that we will use
in our language today.
And I just Googled the definition
just to see what it would say.
And it said that it refers to a clear, unavoidable omen
or sign that failure, disaster,
or a negative event is imminent, right?
So if you say, hey, I can see the handwriting
on the wall here, it means you know that punishment
is coming, judgment, something bad is going to happen.
And it says in the definition as well,
it implies that the warning signs are already present
and visible to those who are willing to see them, right?
So when you talk about somebody not being able
to see the handwriting on the wall,
it's like they're ignoring the obvious signs
of doom and catastrophe that are coming.
Now I wanna go through this story with you
about the handwriting on the wall
and make practical applications for us today.
Number one, we see that the divine judgment,
it starts out with the sin.
And what leads to the sin?
Pride, arrogance, and hubris is what leads to the sin.
Let's take a look at this.
Verse number one says,
"Bel-Shazar the king made a great feast
"to a thousand of his lords
"and drank wine before the thousand."
Now look, this guy's at the top of his game
when he's got a thousand lords under him.
This is an extremely powerful man.
Everything's going great and unfortunately,
the prosperity of fools will destroy them.
And so this success goes to his head
and we gotta be really careful
when things are going well for us,
when we're doing well, that we don't get puffed up,
get a big head and start getting arrogant.
It says here that "Bel-Shazar while he tasted the wine,"
verse two, "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,
"his concubines might drink therein."
So they're having a party, they're drinking,
but then they sort of up the ante by saying,
hey, let's take those vessels that we stole from church,
let's take those vessels that were plundered
from the house of God and let's drink booze
out of the vessels that belong to the Lord.
So now they've added blasphemy to their sin.
They brought the golden vessels that were taken out
of the temple of the house of God,
which was at Jerusalem, verse three,
and the king and his princes, his wives,
and his concubines drank in them.
They drank wine and praised the gods of gold
and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
So the particular sins that we're looking at here
are drunkenness, blasphemy, and idolatry, right?
These are the particular sins here.
But you know what, you could really just fill in the blank
with whatever grievous sins people might be involved in
in 2026 America.
What leads to those sins is pride and arrogance,
being puffed up.
What do I mean?
Well, people think, oh, you know what?
I can get away with this.
Nobody's gonna catch me.
Nobody's gonna find out.
I'm not gonna get busted.
Or how about the pride of saying, well, you know what?
I can play with sin and it's not gonna affect me.
You know, I can do these things.
I can drink and I can keep it under control.
I can take drugs and I know how to, you know, micro dose
and I'm gonna dose this responsibly and you know,
oh, you know what?
Hey, I'm not like these other gambling addicts
that go and waste all their money in life.
You know, I have strict rules that I gamble by
and I just bring that $50 bill
and that's all I'm gonna spend.
And when that $100 runs out, then I'm done gambling
and that's it or whatever.
You know, it's the pride and the arrogance
what does the Bible say?
"Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall."
Not to have this puffed up at,
oh, it can never happen to me.
Other people failed.
Other people went all the way off the cliff.
Other people cheated on their spouse.
Other people committed adultery.
Other people got the DUI.
Other people got in the fiery crash from, you know,
being under the influence while driving.
But it's not gonna happen to me though.
Well, let him that thinketh he standeth,
take heed lest he fall.
We don't wanna be prideful and puffed up
or just thinking, you know what?
Hey, I deserve it.
I'm awesome.
And so therefore it's okay for me to push the boundaries
and delve into sin and whatever.
So our sin often starts out with pride, arrogance, hubris.
Okay, so the first thing is the sin.
Number two in the story, we see the warning from God, right?
It says in verse number five,
in the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand
and wrote over against the candlestick
upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace.
And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
Then the king's countenance was changed
and his thoughts troubled him
so that the joints of his loins were loose
and his knees smote one against the other.
This is that classic, like you're so scared
that your knees are literally knocking into each other.
But just to make sure that everybody understands the story
and that every child understands the story here,
this is not a whole person writing on the wall.
This is not even a whole hand writing on the wall.
This is just fingers.
Does everybody understand this?
This is just fingers, disembodied fingers of a man's hand
that are writing on the wall.
So I don't know if they're holding some kind of a pen
or a stylus or whatever, or just whatever.
But fingers of a man's hand.
Now this is extremely scary and creepy and weird.
And maybe he's probably thinking,
"Man, what's in this stuff? What are we drinking here?"
Or somebody spiked my drink with something weird,
some kind of hallucinogenic drug or something.
But here's the thing, everybody sees it.
And after the fingers of the man's hand are gone,
the writing is still there.
And so when the king sees this, he's horrified.
I mean, can you imagine how creepy and scary it would be
to look over at the wall and to just see
just fingers writing on the wall?
This is obviously bizarre and scary.
Obviously it's a miracle.
This is God sending him a very dramatic message.
So what does this look like in modern times?
You know, the warning from God comes something bad
or scary happens to ourselves or other people, right?
So we're going through life and we're proud,
puffed up, involved in sin, and then something dramatic,
something scary happens to ourselves or other people.
And this is the warning from God.
This is the shot across the bow.
This is God trying to get our attention.
And if we're smart, we'll take heed unto it
when those things happen.
But then the next thing I want you to see, number three,
is that ungodly people fail to understand this warning.
People that are ungodly, they don't get it.
They don't get the message.
Even though it's dramatic, even though it's clear,
they don't understand it.
Look at verse seven.
The king cried aloud to bring the astrologers,
the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers.
And the king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon,
"Whosoever shall read this writing
and show me the interpretation thereof
shall be clothed with scarlet
and have a chain of gold about his neck
and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom."
So he's offering just huge prizes
to anyone who can make any sense.
Because look, when disembodied fingers
of a man's hand write something on the wall,
you want to know what it says.
It's probably a pretty important message.
So you want to know what it is.
And so it says in verse eight,
"Then came in all the king's wise men,
but they could not read the writing, nor make known
to the king the interpretation thereof."
Now it's kind of odd that they were not able to do this.
Because if you jump down,
we actually know what was written.
Obviously it's been put into English letters for us,
Roman letters, so that we could see it
and understand it in our own language.
Meanie, meanie, teekal, you farson.
And then of course it's broken down
in the following verses of 26 through 28.
But here's what you have to understand is that
this is something that you would think
that they should have been able to understand.
And what do I mean by that is that this is Aramaic.
And Aramaic and Hebrew are kind of like Spanish
and Portuguese as far as how different they are.
Like they're very closely, like if you know one,
you could learn the other in like a matter
of a few weeks or something,
at least to be able to understand it.
Like it's very similar.
Remember these are like educated people.
These are scholars.
Now we don't expect them to be Hebrew speakers,
but we do expect them to be Aramaic speakers
'cause Aramaic is a huge language at this time,
is important lingua franca in that part of the world.
But the reason that I bring up
how closely related Aramaic is to Hebrew
is that even just from reading a King James Bible,
like before I had even studied Hebrew and Aramaic,
I remember seeing these words and understanding
that there's a connection to Hebrew words
that you even know just from reading the Bible in English.
Like for example, and I don't know if you thought about this
or made these connections, but if you look at the word
in verse 28, for example, Perez,
there are people in the Bible named Perez,
and it talks about what their name means.
For example, there's a place that's called Perez Uzzah
because the Lord made a breach upon Uzzah.
Or like when there's a character named Perez born,
it says, "Oh, how you've broken forth."
And his name's called Perez.
So Perez in the King James Bible is even defined
as like being some kind of a breach or a breaking
or whatever, and of course he's going to define it
more accurately in Aramaic as being divided.
But you can see how you could make this connection
even just without even knowing these languages.
And then obviously the Tikal portion there
is very similar to the word shekel, right?
And that's you weigh things with the shekel.
Shekel's a unit of weight or a unit of money.
And what does he say in verse 27?
Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.
Now look, you're like, well I didn't put that together.
Yeah, that's 'cause you speak English.
But I'm saying to people who actually speak Aramaic
fluently or something, you know, there's no reason
why they shouldn't have been able to understand
at least the basic words here,
even if they didn't know the meaning.
But what does the Bible say?
It says in verse eight, they could not read the writing
nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof.
So it's not that they just saw these words,
which basically just translate out to numbered,
numbered, weighed, divided.
And it's kind of like, oh, what does that mean?
Numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided.
I mean, that's pretty cryptic.
Even if you could read the words,
but the Bible says that they couldn't even,
they couldn't even read the writing,
let alone make known the interpretation of.
Does everybody follow what I'm saying?
I'm trying not to get too far into the weeds here,
but I just want to make this important point here
that there must have been some way
in which this was obscured to them
to where they couldn't read it.
Okay, like, and there are different theories on this
that we could put out there.
Like for example, maybe it was not written
in the normal Aramaic letters,
instead of using Aramaic alphabet,
perhaps it was just written in the Hebrew alphabet,
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
that would have been around at that time.
So maybe it's like an alphabet
that they're not familiar with.
So even if you knew it, once you heard it,
they can't read it.
But you know, another possibility
is the fact that Hebrew and Aramaic
are both written without vowels, just consonants.
Okay, so basically, you know,
to make an English analog here,
it'd be sort of like if you just had an M and an N,
and that's it.
MN, MN, and then you just have the TKL and the PRS.
Here's the thing, you might not know
with such little context of just these words
that are separate and not really connected,
then you might think to yourself like,
well, I don't know how to pronounce it,
because without context, I don't know what these words are,
'cause I don't know which vowels to stick in.
What part of speech are we talking about?
What are we doing here?
Is this a verb, is this an adjective, now, whatever.
So it could be that they're written in an alphabet
that they understand, but they're like,
well, we can't pronounce it
'cause we don't know the vowels,
because we don't know the context,
'cause we don't know what this is saying.
Or it could be that maybe, you know,
God has just blinded their minds or something.
You know, the Bible says that obviously,
people that are not saved can't understand the scripture.
The natural man receiving not the things
of the Spirit of God, their foolishness unto him,
neither can he know them
because they're spiritually discerned.
So, you know, perhaps there's some kind
of a divine obscuring.
In my opinion, it's probably either just a different alphabet
or they can't read the vowels or whatever.
But the idea is that the truth is out there.
The truth could be known.
The right linguist could at least figure out
how to read the thing and pronounce the thing.
But at the end of the day,
the bottom line is the unsaved people of this world,
or even just backslidden ungodly Christians
who are walking in the flesh,
they're gonna fail to understand the word of God.
They're gonna fail to understand the warning.
They're gonna fail to understand the message.
They're also going to fail to interpret events correctly.
You understand what I'm saying?
Like they're not gonna put two and two together.
They're not gonna see.
It's sort of like, even when I just read
the modern definition of what the handwriting
on the wall means, it's like they're unwilling
to see that doom is imminent
and to understand the message that God's giving them.
Also, I think it's interesting that the message itself
is sort of disembodied
because the words are like out of context.
It's not a full sentence.
It's just this numbered, numbered,
weighed and divided.
Numbered, numbered, weighed and divided.
It's just a thought.
Sort of like the fingers of a man's hand
that aren't connected to the hand.
They're just fingers.
It's like these little clues or hints.
But here's the thing, Daniel's able to understand it.
And here's the thing about that is that the man of God,
the spiritual person, the godly Christian,
the spirit-filled saved person,
they're able to put two and two together
when it comes to what they're reading in the Bible.
They can read it, they can understand it,
they can make sense of it.
And then they can take that lens
and they can actually make sense of life
and what's happening and interpret events
through that lens.
Whereas the wicked, the backslidden, the unsaved,
they're not able to do this.
They can't figure it out.
And so it says in verse nine,
then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled.
Now he's really upset because his expert linguists
and scholars and academics,
they can't figure out the message.
And guess what?
They, you know, universities all over America,
scholars and academics,
they're trying to figure out God's word
and they're astonied as well.
They're confused.
They don't know what it says.
If you want to get good Bible doctrine,
you need to get it from a saved spirit-filled Christian,
not from the people of this world.
So we see that number one,
sin is what starts the ball rolling
toward God's judgment, right?
It's the sin that causes God's anger
that's gonna result in judgment.
Number two, the warning from God comes.
Something bad or scary happens to ourselves or others.
Number three, ungodly people fail to understand the warning,
which leads us to number four, the man of God,
he does understand the warning.
He gets it, as we just said.
Look at verse 13.
"Then was Daniel brought in before the king,
"and the king spake and said to Daniel,
"'Art thou that, Daniel?'"
You know, I just wanna make sure
I have the right Daniel here,
'cause that's a pretty common name.
I don't know if it was this common back then.
"Which art of the children of the captivity of Judah,
"whom the king my father brought out of Jewry?
"I've even heard of thee,
"that the spirit of the gods is in thee,
"and that light and understanding
"and excellent wisdom is found in thee.
"And now the wise men, the astrologers,
"have been brought in before me,
"that they should read this writing
"and make known unto me the interpretation thereof,
"but they could not show the interpretation of the thing.
"And I've heard of thee
"that thou canst make interpretations and dissolve doubts."
I love that phrase, dissolve doubts.
I love it, why?
Because it's one thing to know the truth
and it's another thing to know that you know it
and to know that it's right.
And I think that preaching should answer questions
and not raise more questions than it answers, right?
The preacher's job is to dissolve doubts, to make us sure.
And what's the number one most important thing
to be sure about is to be sure you're going to heaven, right?
You know, I like the kind of preaching
that makes people sure that they're on their way to heaven.
These things have I written unto you
that believe on the name of the Son of God,
that you may know that you have eternal life
and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God, right?
That kind of assurance,
this is the promise that he had promised us,
even eternal life, God that cannot lie,
promised us eternal life before the world began.
Then you have these people coming
with this kind of vague, confusing, double-tongued preaching
that makes us doubt.
Like, well, I mean, yeah, you're saved by faith,
but if you're still struggling with sin,
it's like, here, let me finish that sentence for you.
If you're still struggling with sin, join the club.
It's how that sentence should end,
because even in Romans chapter seven,
even the apostle Paul talked about struggling with sin.
Even the apostle John, the beloved disciple
who leaned on Jesus' breast,
the disciple whom Jesus loved, said,
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
"and the truth is not in us."
But then you got these vain, puffed-up, arrogant pastors
getting up and saying,
"Well, you know, you can't have your sin in Jesus."
Okay, well then you can't have your sin in Jesus.
I mean, that cuts both ways.
Is Bro saying that he's sinless, that he has no sin?
Because then that means he's a liar
and the truth is not in him.
Because the Bible says there's not a just man
upon the earth to do with good and sin if not.
And so here's the thing,
it's because of our sins that we need Jesus.
That's why we believe in Jesus as our savior
to forgive us of our sins.
But this confusing preaching
that one minute is telling you it's all by faith,
and then the next minute is telling us
you have to turn from your sins, give up your sins,
turn your life around, clean up your life.
I mean, you can't just live however you want.
It's like, which one is it?
What does the Bible say?
It says, look, if it's of works, then it's no more grace.
Otherwise, grace is no more grace.
But if it's of grace, it's no more works.
If it's works, it's like, which one is it?
Romans 11 six makes it clear,
it's gotta be one or the other.
It's either grace or it's works, it can't be both.
But there's a lot of doubt inducing preaching out there,
making people, and look, I've been in churches
where this preaching comes in that's confusing
and everybody starts doubting their salvation.
And all these people start getting re-saved
just because they're confused now.
And they think like, I don't know if I was even saved
'cause I thought I was saved,
but then he's up there telling me
that because I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z sin,
I must not be saved.
Here's the thing, look,
if you're struggling with sin in your life,
it's time to get more spiritual, right?
It's time to get in church more.
It's time to read your Bible more.
It's time to pray more.
It's time to up your game spiritually,
sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
But you know what, it doesn't mean you're not saved.
Man, I wish, I wish that when we got saved,
we just magically lived wonderful lives.
No, we gotta work at it every day.
We gotta deny self and take up the cross
and follow Jesus.
You know, Daniel's the kind of preacher
where he preaches the truth,
and not only does he preach truth,
but the listeners are like,
I know what he's saying is true.
I guess, you know, I like to go to church
and I have the Bible in my lap and the preacher preaches,
and I can look down and be like, this guy's right on.
I know this message is right, 'cause there it is.
It's right in front of me, I can see it right here.
John 3:16, there it is.
John 6:47, right there, 1 John 5:13, got it.
You know, and that salvation is just one example.
Lots of other examples of convoluted, confusing preaching
where one minute, you know, the Jews are God's chosen people
and they're under a special blessing from God,
but then the next minute, everybody who's unsaved
has God's wrath abiding on them.
He that believeth not the sun shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
I'm like, "Well, which one is it?
Is God's wrath abiding on unbelieving Christ rejecting Israel?
Or are they blessed and God's, the apple of God's eye?"
Really, I guess God sends the apple of his eye to hell every day.
That doesn't make any sense.
It's confusing.
It's dubious.
You know, all, look, preaching needs to be clear and it needs to be based on clear Bible
verses, clear scripture, clear teaching so that people walk out saying, you know what?
I know I believe this and I know it's biblical and I heard the message today and I checked
it in my Bible and it's clear and I believe it and it settles it for me.
I walked in.
I was a little shaky, but pastor shored me up on some things.
Now I'm feeling solid.
Now I'm built on the rock.
You know, we need men of God who dissolve doubts, not create doubts.
And so the Bible says here that he had heard about Daniel, that he's the kind of guy that
can dissolve doubts.
It's not like he'll tell you what it means and then you have to take his word for it.
Because I guarantee you, once he explained the handwriting on the wall, I mean, just
think about it.
Couldn't anybody just come in and make something up?
Hey, I can read the writing.
It's this, this, and this.
But here's the thing.
When Daniel came in and read the writing, all the astrologers and the soothsayers, once
it was explained, they had to acknowledge, yeah, this is making, oh, that's an M, that's
an N, that's a T, oh, I know that word.
Oh, that is what that means.
Does everybody understand?
See, sometimes the pastor will get up and preach something that you've never heard before.
And maybe you're like, whoa, this is new, I've never heard this before.
But here's the thing.
Once he explains it, you're saved, you got the Holy Spirit living, and then you check
your Bible, you should walk away saying, okay, now I see it.
Not like, well, I still don't see it, but I'm just going to trust Pastor Anderson on
this one.
No, no, no.
My goal is that we all walk out and we all know it for ourselves.
We don't have to trust Pastor Anderson.
We've all seen it.
It's there.
There it is.
And the Bible says here, you can dissolve doubts, verse 16, "Now, if thou canst read
the writing and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet,
and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be third ruler in the kingdom.
Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy
rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
So the man of God gets it, and here's the thing, it's not paid to play with this guy,
right?
He's putting all of his preaching and all of his teaching out there for free for the
world because it's like, look, I just want the truth to be heard.
It's not about getting the accolades or the recognition.
It's not about enforcing a copyright or about, you know, getting paid purview or something
like that.
It's more just, no, just, hey, let me just tell you what's up.
You can do what you want with your gifts.
Keep them.
So number four, the man of God understands the warning.
But number five, the man of God says to take warning when other people are punished.
You see, here's the thing.
It's always best to learn from experience, but it's better to learn from other people's
experience than your own experience sometimes.
You shouldn't have to go out there and experience every punishment from God yourself and go
out and try alcohol and drugs and learn everything the hard way and go to the casino and learn
the hard way.
No, no, no.
You should learn from other people.
And that's the first thing that Daniel says because he says in 17, "Hey, I'll make known
the interpretation, but before I do," verse 18, "O thou King, the most high God, gave
Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, a kingdom."
Right?
So he says, "Look, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, a kingdom and
majesty and glory and honor, and for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, languages
trembled and feared before him.
Whom he would he slew, whom he would he kept alive, whom he would he set up, whom he would
he put down."
He said, "Look, your father," actually his grandfather, but you know, father loosely,
he's saying, "Look, he is a guy who had absolute power.
He did whatever he wanted.
He could just off with his head and just do whatever he wanted.
Super powerful, sort of like you right now.
But verse 20, "When his heart was lifted up and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed
from his kingly throne and they took his glory from him and he was driven from the sons of
man and his heart was made like the beast and his dwelling was with the wild asses.
They fed him with grass like oxen and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till he
knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men and that he appointed it over it, whom
soever he will."
So the bottom line is, you know, just because you're powerful on this earth, you're still
nothing compared to God.
It's God who gave you whatever power you have, whatever strength you this morning have, intelligence,
money, power.
God gave it and God can take it away like that.
And so he's bringing up the fact that someone else got punished.
He's saying, "Look, someone else in your same situation got severely punished by God.
You should see the handwriting on the wall here that you're next."
And so other people getting punished, that is often the handwriting on the wall in our
lives.
People around us getting punished.
Let me give you some examples.
Somebody that you know gets a DUI.
"Well, it never happened to me."
"No, no, no.
Why don't you think, 'Well, okay, someone I know is getting a DUI, whoa, that could
happen to me.
I'm next."
That's the handwriting on the wall.
You know, you can't get away with this stuff forever.
Somebody you know loses their job due to sin, loses their marriage.
Somebody gets pregnant out of wedlock, somebody picks up an STD.
This is the handwriting on the wall for you, my friend.
When you see people around you committing similar sins and facing severe consequences,
that should wake you up.
And you know, when you know the story about an advocacy, and Daniel tells them, by the
way, Daniel says, "You already know this.
I'm telling you a story about your father, you already know the story.
And yet, you're stupidly making the same mistakes."
I mean, I remember I had a friend that smoked cigarettes, which, obviously, I'm not saying
that's the worst sin in the world, but it's obviously stupid and the thought of foolishness
is sin.
You're wasting your money, you're destroying your body, your body's the temple of the Holy
Ghost, and you shouldn't be abusing your body in that way.
But I had a friend, and this guy, smoked cigarettes, and he hid it from his wife, like his wife
did not know that he smoked.
I'm like, "How in the world can your wife not know that you smoke?"
I'm like, "What in the world, like, how do you pull that up?"
And he said, "Well," he said, "I only smoke at work."
And then he, you know, at the end of his shift, he brushed his teeth, chewed gum, doing everything.
And then when his wife calls him out for smelling like smoke, he blames his buddy at work and
says, "Well, I'm in the truck with him, and he's smoking.
He smokes in the truck, and that's why I smell like smoke."
So this guy had it all figured out, you know, of how he's going to get away with smoking,
and he's ashamed of it to where he doesn't want his wife to know that he's smoking,
right?
But here's the thing.
I get to know this guy further.
I won this guy to the Lord, he got saved, and you know, we became good friends and everything.
But here's the thing.
He tells me that his dad died of lung cancer.
And I'm like, well, I said, was your dad a smoker?
Yeah.
I'm like, and you're smoking?
Like what?
And he's like, I don't think that didn't have anything to do with it.
What?
Like, buddy, come on.
Like your dad smoked and died of lung cancer.
Why would you be smoking?
Like, it's just like, why don't, why doesn't that wake you up and say, well, I don't want
to end up like him.
I don't want to die because his dad died young.
You know, this, this guy was like in his twenties, dad's probably in his fifties or whatever.
And so, you know, this is the kind of stuff that we need to wake up and see, okay, people
are dying.
People are getting punished.
People are getting hurt.
People are getting injured.
People are getting exposed.
People are getting called out.
You know what?
Take heed because you're next.
It's the handwriting on the wall.
But number six, people who fail to learn from others must be punished themselves.
You know, it's like they don't learn from other people because it's a lot more painless
when it's someone else getting punished.
And you can preemptively judge yourself.
And you know, it's a verse that I quote a lot and think about a lot.
You know, if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, right?
And here's the thing.
You know, I preached a couple weeks ago about confession and the importance of confession
and you know, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And when we've wronged other people, you know, a lot of times we need to confess to that
person.
And then here's the thing.
When you get busted sinning, you got to come clean, Aiken, and you got to confess your
sin, right?
But here's the thing about that is that you know what?
If you would have just judged yourself way back long time ago and just judged yourself
and fixed it yourself and cleaned it up yourself, you know, you wouldn't need to be publicly
exposed, publicly called out.
You wouldn't have to go publicly make confession and go tell this person, tell that person.
You know, fix it yourself and you say, "Well, I don't know, I need something to get my attention."
How about the fact that other people around you are being exposed?
Other people around you are falling into those sins.
Other people around you are losing their marriage, losing their job, going deeper into sin than
they originally intended to go, which everybody always goes further than they think they're
going to go.
Right?
Sin takes you further than you want to go.
It keeps you longer than you want to stay, and it costs you more than you're willing
to pay.
And so you've got to watch out and you've got to check those things and get those things
in line while you still can.
If you judge yourself, then you won't be judged.
And then people get mad when somebody's sin gets called out or whatever, but you know,
why didn't that person just take care of it themselves?
You know, because a stitch in time saves nine.
Nobody knows what that means anymore because nobody sows or anything, but you know, my
wife sows all every day, so she knows.
But who knows what that means?
Who would say, I'm not quite sure what that means, a stitch in time saves nine?
Like what, what does that even mean?
You know, okay.
Yeah.
So, and I'm not judging you because you know, in the modern world, these things aren't necessarily
relevant to our lives.
The idea is that let's say something tears a little bit, right?
Well, if you can get it in repair right away, you know, it might be one stitch to just seal
up the breach.
Perez.
No, I'm just kidding.
You know, you can seal up the breach in time.
Whereas if you wait and it tears further, now you're going to need nine stitches in
order to repair the breach.
So a stitch in time saves nine, okay?
It's sort of like your windshield, right?
You get a little chip in your windshield, a little crack, sometimes they can come in
and they put some kind of a liquid or something that comes in and seals it up and it stops
in its track.
Whereas like I'm the type of person where when my things break around the house or my
vehicle, you know, what's my philosophy honey, if you ignore it, it might go away, the problem,
you know.
This is my, this is my mantra.
And so I'm the type of person where I'll just ignore it until it's just all, the whole
windshield is just, you know, and then it, you know, a little, a little goop of that
liquid is not going to fix it anymore.
Now you need a whole new windshield.
So does everybody understand what I mean?
It's the same thing in our lives.
A stitch in time saves nine, right?
If we can understand that we're going down a dark path, we've got sin in our lives, we've
got a problem, we've got an addiction, we've got whatever the temptation that's dragging
us into sin.
You know, if we can catch it when it's small, fix it ourselves and we don't even need to
tell anybody about it.
Because you know what?
I don't, the reason I want to say this, I want to balance this out because I don't want
people to misunderstand my sermon because some people will go and like confess things
to their, they'll confess every weird thing they've ever done to every person.
It's like bro, if you fixed it years ago, we don't want to hear about it.
Bro, if you fixed it years ago, your wife doesn't want to hear about it.
You're just hurting her feelings, you're just making her look at you weird, you're making
us look at you weird.
Like don't, just keep that stuff to yourself, just fix it yourself, right?
When it's small, fix it yourself, get it fixed, get it out of the way and then just
move on.
We don't have to talk about it.
When you're getting caught doing stuff, when you're doing stuff currently, when you're busted,
when it's blown into something large, well then yeah, now you do have to confess and
be humiliated and it's embarrassing and then punishments come and you're losing your job
and maybe you're losing your marriage, God forbid or whatever.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
The stitch in time saves nine and you know what, by the way, this is the same thing with
whipping your kids, sorry, but guess what?
You spank them and you nip it in the bud before it blows up into something huge, right?
So your kids start dabbling in some serious sin, you nip that in the bud, you send them
a message, you send them the handwriting on their backside, you know, the handwriting
on the wall is spelled out with a switch on their backside.
The switch in time saves nine and let me tell you something, then they don't go out as teenagers
and become alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, vandals and doing these things, right?
Are there teenagers doing those things?
I'm talking people in junior high and high school?
Yeah, there are junior high and high schoolers that are out there drinking, taking drugs,
fornicating, maybe even committing adultery if you can imagine that, you know, going out
and vandalizing and just random acts of violence.
It's out there my friend.
You know what, I'd rather whip my kids and have them moan and complain about it and not
like it than for them to be out as teenagers and committing crimes, committing grievous
sins while living in my home.
Nope, not going to do it.
Not going to happen.
You got to nip these things in the bud, okay?
If you let things get out of control and then they get worse, you got to stop them and especially
in our own lives.
The stitch in time saves nine, especially in our own lives, we got to judge ourselves
so that we'll not be judged.
And so those who fail to learn from others must be punished themselves.
It says in verse 22, "Thou his son, Obel Shazzar, has not humbled thy heart, though thou knewest
all this."
You already knew, you already saw that dad got lung cancer.
It's like, bro, you saw this other pastor had to step down because he's committing adultery
or photographing, you know, booty at Trader Joe's or whatever, if you saw that story in
the news.
But just the, you know, or whatever the, it's like, didn't you see that and think, I don't
even want to go down that road.
You already heard about these people that went bankrupt and lost their home because
of gambling.
They took over their lives.
Like, why are you gambling?
Why are you smoking?
Why are you drinking?
Why are you chatting with babes online?
Why are you looking at porno?
How many stories do you have to hear?
But thou has lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven, verse 23, and they brought
the vessels of his house before thee, and thou and thy lords, thy wives and thy concubines
have drunk wine in them.
And thou hast praised the gods of silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which
see not, nor hear, nor know.
And the God, and this is a very famous phrase and I love this, the God in whose hand thy
breath is, and whose are all thy ways hast thou not glorified.
I mean the God who can literally just go like this and you can't breathe anymore, right?
The God who's holding your breath in His hand, you didn't glorify.
And so here's what we see too, is that sin takes us down a road where we don't have fellowship
with God like we should.
You know what I mean?
It's like next thing you know when you're living in grievous sin, next thing you know
you start blaspheming God.
You start saying things that are doctrinally stupid and eventually lead to blasphemous
things where you start saying, "Oh well, you know, God's not fair in this Bible story."
And it's funny how you'll see people
that are devout Christians living for God, serving God.
And then it's funny, as soon as they start abusing substances
or getting involved in sexual sin,
now all of a sudden God isn't fair in certain Bible stories.
Well, I'm just not sure that, you know,
they should have wiped out all the, you know,
men, women, and children in Canaan back in, you know,
the book of Numbers chapter 31.
It's like, no, no, no, you just, you like drinking.
You like drugs.
You like fornication.
You like, you know, it's funny how all of a sudden,
they start speaking against God.
And they start speaking against the man of God.
They start speaking against their parents.
They start speaking against other mentors and pastors
and friends that are living for God.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
Like, like this is what it leads to.
It leads to like, well, I can't be wrong.
So it must be God that's wrong.
So instead of just acknowledging, I'm backslidden.
I'm going down a dark path.
I'm saying it's like, no, no, no, I'm just, well, you know,
why'd God do that in the Bible?
And they start being blasphemous about the word of God
and start criticizing the Bible.
And here's where this leads them.
This leads them to a church that's not a fundamental church.
And what do I mean by fundamental?
You know, the word fundamental, okay,
it basically literally means foundational, right?
The fundamentals are the foundation, right?
If I were learning basketball,
the fundamentals would be like dribbling, free throws,
bounce pass, right?
These are things that are fundamental, okay?
So the fundamentalist is the person
who believes that there are certain core truths
and foundational truths in the Bible
that are not up for grabs, they're not up for debate,
and those things are locked in and we're not changing,
we're not giving an inch,
we're not gonna budge on the inspiration of scripture,
the Trinity, the miracles of Jesus,
the bodily resurrection of Jesus, right?
These, you know, we're fundamental.
And then also, the fundamentalist is one
who is basically going back to the founding document,
the Bible, and we're based on that foundation
more than anything else.
Okay, and not, we're not changing with the times,
seeker sensitive, thinking that, oh well, you know,
that's what the Bible said back then,
but that was the culture back then and whatever, okay.
So what you'll find is that people who get into sin,
now they wanna go to a liberal church.
Loose interpretation of God's word,
not gonna preach hard against sin,
not gonna preach hard about anything,
just put on a little show, a little bit of CCM,
little jamming and jiving for Jesus,
20 minute Ted Talk slash sermonette,
and then you go home, chalk it up.
I was there, I did it.
Another Sunday morning goes in the books,
I'm right with God, whatever.
And see, here's the thing,
you go to Faithful Word Baptist Church,
you show up on a Sunday morning, you know,
if you're living in sin, you're getting called out.
Not personally, but I mean, I'm bringing out,
I'm bringing stuff up, and it's like ouch, ouch, ah.
Why?
'Cause you've got that stupid sports betting app
on your phone.
Idiot, delete that thing.
You got the sports betting app,
you're wasting your family's money,
you're wasting the money that God gave you,
you're wasting your brain on that stupidity,
and the love of money is the root of all evil.
So delete your stupid sports betting app,
and delete your stinking dating app,
unless you're like a single person
that's supposed to be dating, I guess.
You know?
If you're married and you have a dating app on your phone,
you're way over the line.
You need to delete that, punch yourself in the face,
and get right with God.
Fool, get rid of that garbage, right?
Hey, you've got junk in your life,
you show up on Faithful Word Baptist Church,
we're gonna talk about it.
I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna preach hard
against every single, you know,
I remember I talked to a pastor
when I first started preaching,
and he was like an older, seasoned pastor,
and he thought I was a little too wild.
You know, he saw, I showed him the invitation to my church,
and he said, this is like a bazooka.
He said, I think you need, you know,
something a little smaller, a little milder, you know.
And he's like, what are you preaching?
He said, tell me about your preaching.
And I said, well, you know, on Sunday mornings,
I try to preach hard against sin on Sunday mornings,
because I said Sunday morning,
the people who are Sunday morning only
are usually the most casual church members.
Maybe they're newer to the church, they're more casual,
they're not as into it maybe.
And so I said, so you know,
that's where I preach my really hard,
face ripping sermons against sin,
because that's probably who needs them the most.
Like here's the thing,
there's probably more gamblers on Sunday morning
than Sunday night.
Let's just be real for a second, right?
There's probably more people that are drinking
or taking drugs on Sunday morning
than on Sunday night or Wednesday night.
And look, I'm not mad at you
if you're a Sunday morning only.
I'm glad you're here, I love it.
But I'm just talking about the statistics.
I mean, do you guys think I'm wrong?
I mean, I feel like three to thrive people
are probably less likely,
people are going Sunday morning,
Sunday night, Wednesday night.
They're probably less likely
to need that sort of basic preaching.
And, you know, unfortunately,
the rationale in most churches is the opposite.
They preach hard on sin on Sunday night.
Wednesday night, it's like, hold up,
you're preaching to the choir at that point.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, Sunday morning, people,
hey, you just got saved last week?
I don't know, somebody here
who maybe got saved two weeks ago,
three weeks ago,
you probably need to hear this more than anything.
This is called the milk of the word.
Don't drink, don't fornicate,
thou shalt not commit adultery,
thou shalt not steal,
thou shalt not kill.
This is basic stuff,
the milk of the word.
And then you have pastors getting up and saying like,
oh, you know, that's a strong meat,
you know, we gotta save that for Sunday night.
Really?
Not smoking pot is strong meat?
Really?
That's complicated?
That's difficult doctrine?
Delete your gambling app.
So difficult.
Wow, that's like exegesis on steroids.
Like what the heck?
It's crazy.
Oh, the reprobate, I heard some bozos say,
oh, the rep, you know, don't tell new believer,
don't go up to a new believer
and explain the reprobate doctrine to them.
They might have a close family member who's a reprobate.
Yeah, maybe that's why they need to hear it.
More than anybody?
And by the way, this guy's from the same church
that produced a film called Psychopath Reprobates,
and the pastor of that church literally said
that he loves to give it to new members,
he loves to give it to new believers,
he loves to give it out, soul-winning door-to-door,
because he said if we can get him right on this,
a lot of other good things will follow.
And you know, hey, I used to go preach
at the community college in the religion class,
and I had a big stack of that Psychopath Reprobates DVD,
and it was always the first one to fly off the table,
'cause we were just given free documentaries and DVDs.
Psychopath Reprobates was a documentary
that was the biggest hit.
Oh, you know, we can't, we can't,
you know, my conscience told me.
You know, you need to strangle Jiminy Cricket, then,
'cause that's not, that's just a cricket,
that's not even your conscience,
that's just a literal bug, that's an insect.
You thought that was your conscience speaking?
Somebody glued a top hat to a literal cockroach,
and you think that's your conscience speaking?
Let me tell you something,
if your conscience is telling you the right thing,
it's gonna line up with God's word,
it's gonna line up with the Bible.
Oh, the Reprobate Doctrine.
Hey, Reprobate Doctrine's a good Sunday morning topic.
And it always has been for the last 20 years
at Faithful Word Baptist Church.
All right, I'm a little bit off track here.
Let's, I'm almost done.
Point number seven is this.
The message is heard and understood by Belshazzar,
but there's no actual repentance,
or fruits meet for repentance.
He doesn't actually change anything or get right with God
when he gets the message.
Look what it says in verse 24.
Then was the part of the hand sent from him,
and this writing was written,
and this is the writing that was written,
Meany, Meany, Tikal, Eupharson.
This is the interpretation of the thing.
Meany, God hath, and you know,
if you want to underline something in your Bible,
you can underline the word numbered.
God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it.
You know, when I was a kid, I always wondered,
how do you fit that whole sentence into one word?
How does Meany mean all that?
But what it is, is that the Meany part
is just the word numbered.
That's it.
Does everybody get that?
So it's like Meany, God has numbered thy kingdom
and finished it.
Tikal, thou art weighed.
You could underline the word weighed.
That is what the Tikal actually means.
Thy kingdom, thou are weighed in the balances
and aren't found wanting, right?
We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God.
And then Perez, thy kingdom is divided,
and you can underline the word divided,
and given to the Medes and the Persians.
There's also kind of a play on words here
between Perez and Persians in the original language.
It's virtually the same word as well.
So a little bit of a play on words there, okay.
And in case you wanna geek out on the language a little bit,
'cause I wanted this as a kid too, reading this story.
Why was it originally uparsan
and why is it Perez down here?
What it is is just, it's the same word,
it's just conjugated, right?
And the U at the beginning is the Hebrew word for and,
or the Aramaic word for and.
So the U is the and,
and then the parsin is just the same as Perez,
it's just a different grammatical use.
Words will change when they're in a different part
of the sentence, especially if you know
inflected languages, you know that.
It says in verse number 29,
"Then commanded Belshazzar and they clothed Daniel
"with scarlet and put a chain of gold about his neck
"and made a proclamation concerning him
"that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom."
Which is hilarious 'cause the kingdom's gonna end
in like a matter of minutes.
So this didn't last long.
But of course, Daniel's is gonna excel
in the next kingdom anyway.
He's gonna go even higher than third in the kingdom.
The next king wants to put him over everything
and just make him the second in command.
And lastly, number eight, destruction comes
and people are irreparably destroyed.
Look at verse number 30.
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldean slain
and Darius the Mede took the kingdom
being about three score and two years old.
And so I'm gonna end on one final verse, Proverbs 29.1.
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck
shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.
So someone who is over and over again told,
you're wrong, you're going down a dark path,
you're in sin, here's what the Bible says,
here's what you need to get right.
The Bible says he that being often reproved
hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed
and that without remedy.
So notice, the handwriting on the wall came.
How long did this guy have to really get right with God?
Literally hours.
So here's the thing, you might hear a sermon like this
and hey, maybe you'll be fine for weeks or months
or even years or even decades, but here's the thing.
Sometimes you hear the warning
and the punishment could come in a matter of hours.
It could come in a matter of days, not weeks.
And so you don't always know because what does the Bible say?
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck
shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.
Suddenly, meaning that it's gonna come at you.
It's not like, well, you know what?
I'm gonna keep going down this dark path
and then when I see the next handwriting on the wall,
then that's when I'm gonna take the warning.
All right, I'm gonna wait and when God starts at,
you know, I know he's punishing other people,
but I think it's a coincidence.
Maybe once I start to get punished,
then I can be like, okay, okay, I'm sorry now.
And I can fix it right then.
Folks, one bad batch of drugs and your brain's gone.
You get busted one time committing adultery
or whatever else.
And you know, you could destroy relationships permanently.
You can get the STD from one thing, right?
David commits adultery with Bathsheba one time
and she's pregnant, out of wedlock, he's busted.
You understand what I'm saying?
Like, the punishments can come immediately.
So you don't, when you see the handwriting on the wall
and the man of God is standing up and saying,
look, let me spell it out for you, buddy.
Since you can't see what's written right here,
this is what God is telling you.
This is what it is, fix it.
Oh, a great sermon, brother.
But then you don't fix it?
'Cause I bet you there are even people
who hear me preach on this stuff.
Big smile, great sermon, brother.
And then, but then they don't apply it to their lives.
You know, this guy, I mean, look,
Belshazzar liked the sermon, right?
I mean, Belshazzar's like, hey, here's a gold chain.
Here's a red outfit.
Be clothed in scarlet, gold chain around your neck.
Great job, brother.
But you know what?
It doesn't really matter if you're not obeying,
if you're not doing it, if you're not fixing things
in accordance with God's word.
You don't want that sudden destruction to hit you.
Be smart, read the handwriting on the wall.
When other people are getting punished,
that's the handwriting on the wall for you.
When something scary or bad happens in your own life
and you know you're in grievous sin,
that's the handwriting on the wall.
Look, if something bad or scary happens
and you know you're right with God,
well then just, it's a trial.
Just push through.
But you know what you did.
And the man of God's calling you out for what you did.
Wake up, buddy.
Handwriting on the wall is for you.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this great story.
And Lord God, I pray that you would just help us all
to get sin out of our lives,
to fix things while they're small,
to be warned by other people's demise,
and not for it have to touch us to get our attention, Lord.
Lord, thank you so much for our awesome church
and all the wonderful people who come here.
I pray that you'd bless all as we go our separate ways.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.