Well, all right. We don't need it anyhow. Daniel chapter 5. We're going to start reading in verse 5 this morning. So I'll ask those who are willing and able to just stand with me please as we reverence the reading of the Word of God today. It says, Suddenly the fingers of a man's hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace. And the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. And then the king's face grew pale, and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack, and his knees began knocking together. The king called aloud to bring in the conjurers, the Chaldeans, and the diviners. The king spoke and said to the wise men of Babylon, Any man who can read this inscription and explain its interpretation to me shall be clothed with purple and have a necklace of gold around his neck, and have authority as the third ruler in the kingdom. And all the king's wise men came in. but they could not read the inscription or make known its interpretation to the king. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed, his face grew even paler, and his nobles were perplexed." Well, let's pray about this, pass the scripture. So Father, we come before you this morning, we thank you for the opportunity just to gather around the amazing, the inspired Word of God. What we hold in our hands is nothing that men have written or men have imagined or come up with in their own minds. But what we hold in our hands has been preserved for us by the Holy Spirit. and put in a canon for us to read this morning. We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would open our eyes to what's happening here in this passage in the book of Daniel. We need your Holy Spirit to convict us of our sins, to draw us closer to you. We need your Holy Spirit also to encourage us with the truth that when we leave this building, we'll walk out of here bolder than we came in, believing firmly and holding firmly to the reality that we belong to you. You are our God. And through Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and his shed blood for us, we don't have anything to fear about the future. It has been sealed for us. We know that we belong to You. We know that heaven is our home because our sins are completely paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. And for those here who may not have that assurance, God, we pray for them. We hold them up to You. We pray that Your Spirit will do the work of conviction that only Your Spirit can do. No man can do it. I certainly can't do it, but I know Your Word, the truth of Your Word, and the Spirit can do it. Now, Lord, preserve us, prepare us, open our minds, clear us of any thoughts that might interfere with the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So, last week we looked, obviously, at the first four verses, particularly the passage of Scripture, and we saw Belshazzar's blatant, outrageous demonstration of rebelling against the God of Israel, because he had taken some of the holy vessels and was now using them as something just to drink out of. And, you know, he was using them as common vessels. They were taken from the Temple! Taken from the Temple in Jerusalem! And his father, grandfather rather, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken them from the temple when he destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. And Belshazzar began to reign some 50 years later in 536, maybe 537 BC, somewhere around in there. So he's 50 years down the road from the time that these vessels were taken out of the temple in Jerusalem. and so they've been in storage for 50 years they've been in storage and it's only been about 25 years since his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar has died okay and so unfortunately Belshazzar His reign only lasted about two years before the Medes and the Persians came in and began to capture the city of Jerusalem. But for whatever reasons and purposes, he remembers that his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, had captured the Jews, taken some of the temple utensils of gold, and put them in storage. And so he decides that he's going to take those utensils out of storage. And he begins to blaspheme the name of God by simply using them in a very profane way. His all proud, arrogant, spoiled brats do. He lived his life in defiance and rebellion. He chose to worship the gods, the Bible tells us, of silver, of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, and blasphemed the name of the God of Israel. This was 180 degrees from where Nebuchadnezzar was. 25 years earlier. As a matter of fact, if Nebuchadnezzar was still alive, he would have had his grandson torn from limb to limb for desecrating the god of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He said that. Literally, he said that. So how things have changed so quickly, one generation can make a difference. And that's why it's so important for us as husbands and for us as fathers to constantly be thinking about Paul's command to the Ephesian church when he said, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. And to be quite blunt with you, this is exactly why Israel was in Babylon at that particular time, because their fathers had failed to take the responsibility seriously of teaching their children about the Lord's ways. We, as fathers, must be spiritual leaders in our families. And part of that means we have to discipline our children. That's not always easy or fun. But it's true. If we do not, if fathers do not discipline their children, they will wind up out of control. They will not have any respect for anybody or anything. It is only through discipline that children learn self-discipline. And self-discipline is the mainstream of respect for other people. They go hand in hand. Hand in hand. A child who has no self-discipline only cares about one thing, folks, and that's gonna be himself. That's it. A child who has no self-discipline has no respect for other people's property. When a child is disciplined by their father, a child learns how to respect his father, and when a child learns how to respect his father, that's where he learns how to respect other people. That's the process. That's how it works. That's God's plan. If you want to know the source of our country's problems today, it's in the home and it's in failed leadership of fathers. And I'm not, you know, I'm talking about even in pastoral homes. Pastors fail this principle. Unfortunately, Nebuchadnezzar did not pass down to the next generation what God had taught him. And as a result, he has this egotistical grandson slash king who's out of control. And as we saw in our previous study, in the first four verses of this particular chapter. So Belshazzar does what anybody does who cannot handle reality. You know what people do who cannot handle reality? You know what they do? They throw a party, right? And they get drunk. People still do that. Now, more than likely today, they're just going to take a pill, or they're going to go to the doctor, or they're going to go to the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist is going to offer them a pill. The inability to handle reality is always going to be the result of believing a lie. Mark it down. What is it about reality that causes people problems? Why can people not handle reality? I'll tell you why they can't handle it. It's because reality scares them to death. It scares them. They don't know how to handle it. Fear is the result. Reality strikes fear in the hearts of people. And then when we begin to experience fear, guess what you want to do when you experience fear? You want to find a way out. You want to find an escape from the fear. Nobody likes fear. Everybody here knows exactly what I'm talking about, including myself. We cope with fear by making up lies and telling ourselves lies and taking drugs or getting drunk or getting hooked on whatever immorality that deadens our fear or anything that the world sells us that says it's going to help us. It is only with God Almighty and the truths of the word of God and the promises of the word of God that we can handle reality in the world in which we live. Those are verse five. Suddenly, the fingers of a man's hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace. And the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing." All right, so all of a sudden, in the first four verses, there's a bunch of reverie going on. We get to verse 5, and all of a sudden, the party's over. Just seconds ago. There were 1,000 men who were laughing and jeering and joking around and jostling around. They were drunk on the king's wine, as well as the king's wives and his concubines. And so they were having a big time. It was a rowdy, drunken feast is what it was. And then in a matter of seconds, when you get to verse 5 here, it immediately goes deathly quiet. Now, they may have been drunk, folks, But they knew that what they were witnessing was more than just being in a drunken stupor. They knew that what they were witnessing was strange. Something was going on here. So we get to verse 5. We see this strange event unfolding before our very eyes. And so what I want to do is I want to develop that thought a little more. I want you to understand exactly what's going on in verse 5. In order to do that, you're going to have to jump ahead to the story, okay? You're going to have to drop down to verse 25. Let's do that. Or 23. So drop down to verse 23. And so let's see the power behind what's going on here in verse 23. It really explains it. So in verse 23, it says, but you have, talking about Belshazzar, but you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. And they have brought the vessels of his house before you. And you and your nobles, your wives, your concubines, we don't know how many of that was, but probably a lot, have been drinking wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone. which do not see, hear, or understand, but the God in whose hand all your life breath, in all your ways you have not glorified, then the hand was sent from him, and his inscription was written out." This was the Power of God. This was the hand of God, so to speak, that was riding on this wall. And they knew this wasn't a figment of imagination. This was not an illusion of some kind that was going on in them. This was not a mirage. But what they were seeing here was something that was real. It was happening. Can you imagine? He had this hand, and the Chaldean language here says, my version says, he saw the back of the hand. Okay, this is what's going on here. He saw the back of the hand. And so it was a hand, it had no wrist, it had no arm, right? It had no torso, it had no body. All of a sudden, you just see, you look out here and you see the back of this hand. Now in my mind, I have to think, you know, this was a pretty large vision that they were looking at here. They did some excavation work. They think they found the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. And they think they've uncovered the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar. And if all that's true, then by their standards, by their measurements in the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar was 56 feet wide and 176 feet long. You remember now we're accommodating a thousand men plus wives and concubines and probably some servants and other stuff going on. And so you got this room that's 56 feet wide across. 176 feet long. That's 9,600 and some odd feet. That's a big room, 9,600 square foot room. This house is only like 2,000, so you've got five of these houses in the throne room. So if you had a normal human hand writing on the wall, you probably wouldn't be able to see it, and nor would it make much of an impression. So in my mind, looking at this particular situation, I think this is a pretty large hand that they see writing on the wall. So the point is, God says, I am here. The point is, God is saying, you know, I want you to know, I want you to know that I am in your midst. He wanted them to know that He was here, that it was His hand, that this was supernatural that was going on here. And we know this isn't the first time, right, that God has ever used His hand to write something, right? Most of you are familiar with the Ten Commandments. You know that Moses went up on a mountain and God wrote with His finger the Ten Commandments, right? He had to do that twice, one in chapter 31, 32 of Exodus. So God used his finger to write the Ten Commandments, right? And you remember a little bit later on when earlier when Pharaoh was, when Moses was Pharaoh and he was doing the miracles and they got to the point where Pharaoh's magicians could not copy what Moses was doing. And the Pharaoh's magician said, this is the finger of God. We can't copy this, right? So we know God has used His written, alright? When we talk about the finger of God, we're talking about the power of God, right? And so when Jesus was on the earth and He was doing His personal ministry, He was casting out demons, right? And so the Bible says this, but if I cast out demons by the finger of God, right? If I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has not come upon you. And so what he's talking about there, the finger of God is obviously referring to the power and majesty of God, right? And he cast against the demons. God wanted Belshazzar and all those thousands of other guys out there to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was there. This was supernatural. Well, did what God do in verse 5 get his point across? Well, let's look at verse 6. Then the king's face grew pale, and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack, and his knees began