TWO NIGHT SCENES
Alex G Mair
Daniel 5: 1-6, 13-31
Acts 16: 22-34
My attention was drawn to a public figure who was diagnosed positive with Covid 19: the first question he had asked was, ‘Will I die?’. It struck me. Death is upon every man; death is something that people are afraid of. There was a great out-spoken atheist who was dying and as he was getting weaker he was getting more fretful. His friends who were surrounding his death bed said to him, ‘Come, come, do not lose heart. You have lived your whole life as an atheist you can face death this way’. And he said, ‘It is not death I am afraid of; it is the hereafter’. Scripture says, “it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment”, Heb. 9: 27.
The two scenes that I have read of are very similar. Both are night scenes; both men in them, Belshazzar and the jailor, were heathens. They had no idea what God was requiring. Belshazzar should have known, but he ignored it. What God in His grace drew to the attention of both of them was the course they were on. One received the blessing; one did not receive the blessing - he was totally indifferent. Both those men were convicted; conviction is not enough. You have to do with the Lord Jesus as to the matter of your sins and as to your eternal welfare. It may be that there is someone listening behind the doors. That sometimes happens, so I will speak to the unbeliever. Where will you spend eternity? There is one man here that we have read of and, as far as we can tell, he is going to spend eternity away from God. What an awful, awful position. It ends up that he was slain that night. The other received the word that came to him, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved”. That is the only way of salvation. Now he was a heathen man. The reason I say that is that he rejoiced having believed in God: he did not believe in God before. Now that you might say is a very extreme situation. Most persons in this country will accept that there is a God. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”, Ps 14: 1. There are people like that, but the gospel is presented to every kind of man. God has in mind your blessing and my blessing, but first I must make you aware of the seriousness of ignoring God’s overtures of grace.
So I want to speak therefore about this king. He was very powerful; he thought he could do anything he wanted. That is man away from God, energised, we might say, by Satan. He was one of Satan’s dupes. You think of it. He made this great feast around himself and his greatness. Then he thought he would use the vessels from the house of God that were brought to Babylon when the people were taken into captivity. Not only was the man away from God but he was going to despise the very things that God had pleasure in. That is you and I, as away from God. God in his grace intervenes. You might say, ‘Well, it was a pronouncement of judgment’. Yes, but God intervenes. If Belshazzar had been affected he would have fallen down and asked for forgiveness – as happened to Nebuchadnezzar, who came to know that God was the God that ruled the kingdoms of men, Dan 4. This man, Belshazzar, should have known what happened to Nebuchadnezzar his father, but he was going to do everything that he could in his power to despise anything of God. That is the extremity that the enemy would drive man to.
But then there are the fingers of a man’s hand, writing over against the candlestick on the plaster of the wall. Oh! you think of the clarity of it. Man uses this expression in his everyday language, ‘the writing is on the wall’. Tonight, dear friend, the writing is on the wall: neglect the glad tidings at your peril. You cannot afford to say, ‘I will leave it until tomorrow’; for you tomorrow may not be. That is the solemnity and urgency of the glad tidings. This man died that night and he apparently died unrepentant and away from God. But all the while, you see the grace of God in that there was a Daniel there. God has his messengers. And Daniel tells him it was that God that sent the fingers of that man’s hand. Tonight, the gospel is going forth and the message is telling you of your condition away from God in order that you might turn to Christ, because the whole matter of your sins, and your state, can be met by the Lord Jesus. The gospel does not go forward presenting judgment; it is preached to present the love of God, and God’s love is seen in this chapter in the way that Daniel is available to bring the truth of Belshazzar’s sin to bear upon him.
The king tried to get the magicians and the wise men to interpret the writing. How often persons are deluded with what those wise men may say. How can an unconverted man unfold the greatness and glory of Christ, and the work that He has done? How can he? It is an impossibility. I always ask a clergyman, or a priest when I meet them, ‘I want your confession; where do you stand regarding Christ?’. I asked a priest that question and he just looked at me, and I said, ‘Well, I am a believer in the Lord Jesus’. Then he said, ‘Yes, so am I. The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanses us from all sin’. So I said to him ‘Well, you preach that on Lord’s day - it is the gospel’. He said, ‘Well it might not be too well accepted’. Oh! think of the awfulness of persons pulling back and not presenting the Saviour to sinners. The gospel has to be preached regardless of the opposition, regardless of anything and that is Daniel’s position.
He draws attention to Belshazzar himself, because in verse 22 he says, “And thou, Belshazzar”; there is no missing the point. Tonight, God in His grace is presenting the glad tidings to you - not only to the person next to you, not your father, not your mother, not your brother, not your sister, but to you. It is presented to the individual. People like to be spoken to en masse because they can hide in the company. Adam did not like the thought of God speaking to him after he had sinned; he hid himself. He hid amongst the trees. But God singled him out; He says, “Where art thou?”, Gen 3:9, 10. ‘Thou’ is the important matter in the glad tidings. Where do you stand regarding your salvation?
But then it says at the end of verse 23, “and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified”. Have we ever considered that every breath that we draw is God-given? Elihu says,
If he only thought of himself, and gathered
unto him his spirit and his breath,
All flesh would expire together, and man
would return to the dust,
Job 34: 14,15.
God in His grace has not withdrawn His breath - it is still the day of grace at this very moment for you. I cannot speak for later, but today is the day of salvation. Paul announces that to the Corinthians, “now the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6: 2); do not leave it until tomorrow.
Let us have a look now at the writing that was on the wall. “MENE, God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it”. Here is one of the greatest men in the world at that time, and God has overruled saying He has numbered his kingdom and finished it; He has just disposed of it. That is the God with whom we have to do. He is all powerful, omniscient; He sees everything; He knows everything. He knows what is in the heart of man; He knows everything about us. What He has set out regarding judgment He has set out in grace. But there is no recovery for this man; he was indifferent to it. God has alerted him, but he is totally indifferent as to it.
But then it goes on: “TEKEL, Thou art weighed in the balances”. Oh, how do we measure up in the balances? These are not the balances of man: this is the balance of God: It is a righteous balance, and where do you stand? It is not a case of all your good deeds against all your bad deeds - that is a delusion of the devil and men try good works and try to live a good life and hope to get to heaven. Dear friend, it cost God too much to allow anything of that order. Romans 8: 32 tells us, “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son…”. Indeed, anything that you may seek to do would only spoil it; the work of Christ is complete and is entirely satisfactory to God - that is the value of the glad tidings. It is a completed work and God is entirely satisfied.
Now someone might ask, ‘How is God entirely satisfied’? Well, there was One, the Lord Jesus, who knew not sin. We sometimes sing,
God come down, a heavenly stranger,
(Hymn 112).
He took up manhood’s condition (sin apart) in order to draw near to man, and not only draw near to man but to take up all the liabilities that lay upon man and discharge them before a righteous and holy God. And He has done it. How has He done it? He went to the cross. You think of the cost to the Lord Jesus. He says, ”I lay down my life that I may take it again… I have received this commandment of my Father”, John 10: 17,18. That is how He has done it. He has carried everything out on the basis of obedience. Over against man’s disobedience there is the obedience of the Lord Jesus to the will of God. What a glorious Person He is; never was the like seen on this earth. And that Man had to die on the tree; He had to suffer. What He suffered at the hands of men! But think of what He had to suffer at the hands of a holy and righteous God in order that sins might be dealt with. What suffering! We cannot fathom the greatness of that work undertaken by the Lord Jesus, when “the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53: 6) was put upon Him and He bore it. He took my place. Can you say that? Did he take your place there? It is open for all, but the blessing is not for all: it is only for those that believe. The Lord Jesus taking my place there on the cross, and bearing my sins, is one of the very great blessings in the glad tidings.
Now in the last part is, “PERES, Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians”. That is, that it is given to another. Later on it says that that night Belshazzar the king was slain; as far as we can see, he was totally indifferent to God’s word. Had he turned and pleaded for mercy God would have seen that Daniel was there to be able to help him, but when he heard the message, he was totally indifferent.
Now we get another night scene in the Acts. Here it is in a jail. Consider what kind of man this jailor would have been. Philippi was the centre of the commercial world at that time, so he would have to deal with robbers, thieves, murderers, crooked men, persons that would cheat, everything evil. He would probably have been a brutal type of person. Paul and Silas, their backs bleeding, were in this jailor’s inner prison, their feet in the stocks; and they were praising God with singing. It is interesting that the prisoners listened to them. The prisoners listening were affected by those two men, so that when the earthquake came they did not run. They were held by the power of what Paul and Silas were singing about. With the earthquake you find the jailor at his extremity. Like Belshazzar, the jailor was trembling, but he was really convicted. How was he convicted? There was this voice coming from the deep recesses of that prison, “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here”. How did Paul know that he had drawn a sword and was going to kill himself in the middle of the night, the blackness of night? The Spirit of God uses the servant Paul to give that word for that man. It is the same God that sent forth the fingers of a man’s hand to bring conviction to Belshazzar. The jailor is not indifferent to God’s message. It says he called for lights and rushing in fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, and led them out, saying, “Sirs, what must I do that I may be saved?”. Have you ever asked that question? How do I come into the good of salvation? It is only by way of a transaction with the Lord Jesus. Each one, each believer, has had to do with the Lord Jesus. In 2 Timothy 2 there is the first side of the seal, “The Lord knows those that are his”, v 19. Every one that is a believer has had to do personally with the Lord Jesus. What about you?
Paul says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved”. It was not exactly, ‘believe on Jesus’; that would be important, but “believe on the Lord Jesus”. He is using the assembly title in order that there might be something secured for the pleasure of God and the satisfaction for the heart of Christ. So he says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved”. It was not only the side of relief for the jailor but it was the clearance of all the past history, and he is brought into blessing. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. The whole matter is ended and God is entirely satisfied, and He can come out in such wondrous blessing. Paul and Silas say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house. And they spoke to him the word of the Lord”. And that is very important. The jailor is now coming under a different authority: what a wonderful thing. He is no longer a man away from God, he is no longer a man like that, he is coming under the authority of the Lord. Peter’s first preaching concludes, “God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”, Acts 2: 36. That is, He is there in glory as having satisfied every matter for God, and He is there as the One that we are to come into subjection to.
Now, just before I close, I want to mention the epistle to Philippians. You find that when Paul writes to the saints at Philippi he does not mention the jailor, nor does he mention Lydia: it would not be in keeping with that epistle. He only mentions two sisters, exhorting them to be of the same mind in the Lord, and the brother who was local there who had been very ill. There is something in that, because what the jailor was and what Lydia was before they were converted has been removed in the death of Christ. They are now among the saints in Philippi. If you read in the beginning of Philippians, the apostle mentions his remembrance of them from the first day, and this section of scripture in the Acts where we have read was that first day. This was the gospel going into Europe. There was Lydia and the jailor and his house among the saints there. We can see from the epistle what a good locality Philippi would have been. This is the model, we might say, for every gospel preaching - that persons are converted and brought into the enjoyment of the assembly. So you too might be able to praise God with singing, even in difficult circumstances.
What a wonderful matter that God has His own object in your blessing. Your blessing is almost incidental, although very necessary. God is looking for His own pleasure, as we touched this morning: men in sonship. What an experience. Sonship is one of God’s great gifts; it is for the heart of God. Our pleasure is involved in it, but this is what is secured for God and it is secured in persons like the jailor, through the work of Christ. What a work it has been. The Lord Jesus went into death, ”that the death of the cross”, Phil 2: 8. His blood was shed; He was buried and He has come out of death; He was raised by the glory of the Father, and He is installed in glory! God is entirely satisfied with Jesus and His work. What about you? Are you satisfied with Jesus?
May it be so for His Name’s sake.
GRIMSBY
4th October 2020