Sun.’s Devo - The Writing on the Wall

Read: Daniel 5:1-31; 2 Peter 2:1-22; Psalm 119:113-128; Proverbs 28:19-20 This chapter happened 25 years after the last one. Belshazzar has succeeded Nebuchanezzar and he apparently didn’t learn anything from Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling experience of being mad for seven years. Belshazzar was having a party and had his servants bring in the gold and silver cups that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple of God in Jerusalem. He wanted his guests and all his wives and concubines to drink from them and praise their false gods. While they were drinking God wrote a message on the wall and all they saw was the hand that was writing it and what it wrote. Belshazzar was trembling in his knees as he watched this. He called for all his sorcerers and wise men to interpret the words. None of them could make sense of it. The queen mother came in and immediately knew who to call because she was probably a young girl when Daniel had interpreted the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. She told them about Daniel and they called for him. He was promised a purple robe, a gold chain for his neck and to be promoted to the third highest ruler in the kingdom. Daniel told them they could keep their gifts because they didn’t mean anything to him but he would tell him the meaning of the words. The words were in Aramaic. Mene was written twice meaning that his days had been numbered and finished. Tekel meant that Belshazzar had been weighed in the balances and had not measured up. Peres meant that his kingdom had been divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Belshazzar gave Daniel all the gifts he had promised him and that night the king of the Chaldeans killed him and Darius the Mede took the kingdom. Peter warned the believers of false teachers. They cleverly taught destructive heresies and even denied the Master who bought them (Jesus). They would self-destruct. They taught immorality and slandered the truth. They made up schemes to trick the scam the people of their money. God condemned them long ago and they would soon be destroyed. God didn’t spare the angels who in Genesis 6 came down from heaven and had sex with the women of the earth. They have been thrown into hell in pits of darkness where they will be help until the judgment. God didn’t spare the pool oof the ancient world of Noah. He only spared Noah and seven others. God condemned Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of asked. He made them an example of that will happen to ungodly people at the end of their lives if they don’t repent. He rescued Lot because of his righteousness. Wicked people are proud and arrogant and scoff at the supernatural beings that even the angels are afraid to speak against. These false teachers would be caught and their reward will be their destruction. They delight in deception and their desire for sin is not satisfied. They love to earn money for doing wrong like Balaam who was hired to curse Israel. God had to speak through his donkey. They are doomed to blackest darkness and are drawn to twisted sexual desires. They are slaves of sin and corruption. Peter gives a dire warning to those who know the Lord and Jesus and choose to go back into darkness. Their end will be worse that it would have been if the had never know Jesus. They prove the proverb, “A dog returns to its vomit” and “a washed pig returns to the mud.” That doesn’t mean that a dog or a pig can’t be totally redeemed and changed into a new man by renewing his mind in the Word but they have to be willing to do the work to change their patterns. God’s grace is sufficient to do just that. Lord, may we have eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to understand the things of You.