The Finger on the Wall

How can Christians stay faithful to God in a culture that doesn't share our beliefs? The ancient Israelites faced the same question when they were exiles and Babylon. Written during that time, the Old Testament book of Daniel addresses the complexities of living faithfully in a pluralistic society. Today, Tim Keller explores what it looks like to seek the good of the cities and communities God has placed us in while remembering that our true home is in his coming kingdom. We're going to read from Daniel chapter 5. Let me remind you what we're doing these few months before the onslaught of summer. We're looking at the book of Daniel because Daniel is a story, is a set of narratives about what happened when the Jewish people were taken through the Babylonian exile into, pardon me, where I saw the glory, but I hope I don't see it again. The Jewish exiles were taken out of a country in which there was a set of cultural institutions that supported the biblical God. They were taken into Babylon, which was a pluralistic society in which all of the cultural institutions were committed to the idea that there were many gods, there were many moralities, all equally valid. So, the believers had to learn how to function in an unbelieving or in a pluralistic society, and that's really where we are today, in Western society, and we learn a great deal about, in the book of Daniel, about what it means to function in such a situation. Now, we've seen Daniel in his younger years in Daniel 1 and 2, but this story, this narrative, brings us to a place when Daniel is very old, and he is now serving under a very different king. This is Daniel chapter 5, verses 1 to 6, and verses 17 to 31. King Belchazar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles, and drank wine with him. While Belchazar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, might drink from them. So, they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone. Suddenly, the fingers of a human hand appeared, and wrote on the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale, and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together, and his legs gave way. I'll just a bit later, then Daniel answered the king. You may keep your gifts for yourself, and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king, and I will tell him what it means. "O king, the most high God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. Because of the high position he gave him, all the peoples and nations and men of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death, those he wanted to spare, he spared those he wanted to promote, he promoted those he wanted to humble, he humbled. But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal he lived with a wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with a dew of heaven until he acknowledged that the most high God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone he wishes. But you, his son, nobel shassor, have not humbled yourself. Though you knew all this, instead you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblins from his temple brought to you, and you and his nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold of bronze iron wooden stone which cannot see, or hear, or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription. This is the inscription that was written, "Many, many, tackle, parsin." This is what these words mean. Many? God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. "Teckel, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." "Paris, your kingdom is divided and given to the meads and Persians." And then at bell shassers' command, Dana was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom. That very night, bell shasser king of the Babylonians was slain. And Darius the meat took over the kingdom at the age of 62, and this is God's word. Now if you take a look at the story, a fascinating story, it's amazing how many of the stories of Daniel have actually got features that have passed into our language, like Daniel chapter 2, is where we get the very term, "feet of clay," where did you get that idea? "Feet of clay," what's that mean? It's from the great golden image that had "feet of clay" in Daniel 2. And here we have the source of another phrase that has come right into our English language, the handwriting on the wall. And there's really three parts of the narrative, it's very simple to see. The first part has to deal with this wild party. The second part has to do with this great party crusher, Daniel. So you might call it the party crusher of all party crusher's, Daniel. And then lastly we have to look at the fingers of God and what they wrote. So let's look at the party, let's look at the party crusher and look at the fingers of God and the writing on the wall. First of all, the party. The party tells us the deep need we have for significance. This party is a big party and it has all the nobles and all the ruling class of Babylon together, but there's a lot of evidence, this is a very unusual party, it's an unusually frenetic party. First of all, the first thing we see here notice is, and this is very unusual, you wouldn't strike you the first time you read it, you say oh yeah paganism and you remember Cecil B. DeMille and you remember Hollywood and the parties that you always saw there. But the fact that Nebuchadnezzar brings in his concubines, just bringing his wives in, his harem, his wives would have been one thing, to bring in your wives and concubines in with your nobles, was not protocol at all, it was very, very wild, you might say. And basically what we have here is a deliberate effort on his part to create a setting of sensuality and pleasure. Secondly, he calls for the gold and silver goblets that were the booty as it was, the plunder from the temple of Jerusalem which of course Nebuchadnezzar 22 years before, Nebuchadnezzar by the way, has been dead 22 years at this point, and Belshazard is about the fourth inline by the way from Nebuchadnezzar, you have to remember when they call somebody your father, just like a lychee called Elijah, your father means your illustrious predecessor. But that was a great triumph and in they bring the gold and silver goblets, why? It's a way of remembering, it's a way of deliberately talking about the greatness and the might of our empire, we are superior, we are greater than anyone else, we have all these conquests, and thirdly, the third thing now is they don't just bring in the silver and gold goblets, but they drink from them, they drink wine and they toast their own gods, the goblets of the temple of God, they are toasting their own gods. Now that was a deliberate act of spiritual defiance because under Nebuchadnezzar, the religion of Israel had made great inroads, I'm pretty sure Belshazard knew what he was doing, but it was a way of a particular act of spiritual defiance. He was saying we are going to drink from the goblets of this god and toast our own gods. What was all this about? Why the freneticness of it? You see, it's essentially frenetic, it's spiritually frenetic, what's going on? The thing that you wouldn't know, unless you know history, what history tells us is this. What actually was happening was there was a huge shadow over all of Babylon and over Belshazard in particular, only a week before, somewhere between a week and ten days before, a man named Cyrus the Persian, had brought the Meadow Persian Empire and had brought the great army down and had just defeated only 50 miles from Babylonia, 50 miles from Babylon, had defeated the Babylonian army decisively, which meant Babylon was now completely defenseless. And, everyone in the capital was in an amazing tizzy because on the one hand, what would happen with the meads and the Persians march into Babylon, raise the city of the ground, or maybe just capture it and destroy all of the king and the nobles, or would they just send a diplomatic mission? And would everybody stay in power, but it become a vassal state to the Meadow Persian Empire? Nobody knew. Everybody was scared, nobody knew what was going on, and in that situation, Belshazard just throws his party, because you got to really know that, or the party doesn't make sense. Now, you know, commentators have speculated about it, why this incredible wild bockin alien romp? At a time like this, well, some people have said it's just denial. It's just a way of dealing with this fear. Some have said, "Oh, no, no, no, it's very politic. How do you make sure your nobles don't depose you immediately and sort of wait for Cyrus and to show up?" But actually, here's the main point out, and you know, some people have said it's just macho. saying I've always lived like a king and I'm going to live like a king and no upstart, no God is going to stop me. But the main point is the closer death gets, the more frantic, the rolling in the sensual pleasure, the reveling in the silver in the gold, and the religious frenzy, the toasting of the gods. You got those three things? The closer death gets, the closer the cloud gets, the more rolling in sensual pleasure, the more reveling in silver and gold in wealth, and the more religiously frenetic everything gets. Now, that's quite a picture. And you know the people who know best at what's going on here are not very often Christian writers. In fact, as I was studying this and trying to understand what was happening here, it was the secular writers. It's modern secular writers, some of whom in their own beliefs are personally agnostic who understand what's going on. A man that I often quote, but today I want to actually use him extensively over the next five minutes to try to show you there's nobody who explains this feast, this party. Better than the pillow surprise winner Ernest Becker. You often hear me quote him. He wrote a book in 1973 called The Denial of Death. But I want to just show you that actually he doesn't only, his book doesn't just help us. He was agnostic and he died virtually the same year the book came out. But he understands this. Here's what Becker says. I'm going to read you some sections, but I want to show you. He understands even the features of this, this banquet. First of all, Becker says is human beings cannot live in full honest awareness of the meaning of death. Human beings cannot live in full honest awareness of the meaning of death. Let me say this carefully. If death, if our death is personal extinction, if our death is personal extinction, so that when we die, there's no continuance. There's nothing there survives. There's nothing that goes on. And if the sun's death is civilization extinction, so that when the sun dies, even the year all the years of civilization will be just insignificant in relationship to the oceans of dead time before and it come after. So that nobody will even be around to remember anything that was done. If death is the end, here's what Becker says, nobody, nobody can live like that. Nobody can live in the face of it. Nobody can live honestly. Here's why. Because if death is it, if our death is personal extinction and the sun's death is the end of civilization, Ernest Becker says there is no reasonable difference for choosing X over Y or A over B. Do you understand? Nobody can say this is better than this. Nobody can say it's better to kiss somebody than strike somebody. Because in the end, there's no difference. No difference. Nothing has meaning. Nothing matters. Everything is ephemeral. Everything is passing away. And Becker says not only is that the case, but human beings have three ways of dealing with that. And they're the same three things we see at the feast. Let me just read you a couple things. First of all, Becker says this, and this is what I just mentioned. Becker says, and by the way, I'm going to apologize right off the bat for the lack of gender neutral language. He did write this in 1973. Okay. He says every culture is in its most essential intent, a way to heroically deny our creatureliness, to deny death. We need to feel heroic. We need to know our life matters and the grand scheme of things. We need to know that there's some higher meaning. Now you see what he says? He says culture. He says the purpose of every culture is to help us stave off the sense that we are utterly insignificant, absolutely forgettable, and completely insubstantial. He says this is the purpose of culture. No human being can possibly live really knowing that when we die, that's it. When the sun dies, that's really it. Nobody can live like that. Because if that's true, then any discussion that this is more important than this, or this matters, or this matters, or anything matters, is it's gone. He says so culture, every culture has one main job to stave off that sense of insignificance, to stave off the sense that we are nothing but phantoms, that we are nothing but waves on the sand, footprints in the sand, where the beach is, where the water's coming, that we're nothing but smoke and dust. And we have to stave that off. And he says every culture does that. Everybody has to find some way of doing that, and there's three ways we do it. The first way he calls the romantic solution. The romantic solution, the the wives and the concubines. And here's what he says. He says the closer we get to a sense, you know, how are we going to deal with our sense of insignificance? Well, he says modern man fixes his need for cosmic heroism onto another person in the romantic solution, in the form of a love object. The self-glorification, I notice how he's using that term, he doesn't use certain glorification where you and I tend. Glory means weight. Glory means substance. In other words, he says, how am I going to know I'm there? How am I going to know I'm not a dream? How am I going to know I'm not a phantom? How do I know I'm not a wave on a sand? He says the self-glorification in the romantic solution gives fulfills our innermost need by looking at the love partner. Romance becomes the divine ideal within which I fulfill my life. Salvation itself is found in the other. Now, if you don't want to admit how deified romantic love is in our culture, just listen to pop songs. They are filled with references to stars, angels, heaven, divinity, but this is not new. As an old Hindu song puts it, my lover is like God, if she accepts me, my existence is utilized. But here's a problem with the romantic option. How can any human being be a God like everything to another? So one of the ways we stave off the insignificance is we find somebody who loves us. He says that's a romantic solution, but how could anyone be a God like everything to another? But he says that's not all, and there's a second approach. Some people don't do that, or some people give up on it. And the second approach he calls the creative solution. Not the romantic solution, not the wives and the conchevines, the gold and the silver, the power. And he says, here's the creative solution. You separate yourself out of the herd. Your creative work is the way to earn immortality as a result of your own unique gifts. Your uniqueness is what makes you different from others. That's what gives you a sense of being substantial. But you see the immense problem in this process. How can anyone justify himself? Who are you to say that this is good or better than what someone else has done? The achiever's work is an effort to justify himself, but you're still a creature and you will feel more intensely than anyone else, the creative person, that you and your work is ephemeral. It's bad. It's potentially meaningless unless it's justified from outside yourself and from outside itself, you have no right to justify yourself. So this is the second thing people do is we achieve. If we don't try to do the romantic approach, the family approach, the sexual approach, what do we do is we try to achieve. We try to, you know, we're going to be different than others. We're going to stay out from the herd. And because we're different, because we're unique, and because we do things that nobody else does, and because we're special, that makes me feel substantial. But he says, who are you? Who are you to say that you're better than anybody else at all? Who are you to say? He actually says, who are you to bring new meanings into the into the culture? He's talking especially to artists who say, well, I'm special because I've done something very interesting. He's very interesting. He says, who are you to bring new meanings into the culture and say, everybody ought to notice that? But then there's the third solution. And the most obvious solution, what are you going to deal with the sense of being insignificant? One is the romantic, see, the wise and the concubines. One is the creative, conquest, silver and gold. But the third is religion, right? Toasting the gods. And you see that you would think, well, that's the most obvious one, right? And maybe you even think I'm going to say, well, that's the right one. But you see, it's the most obvious way. And over the years, it's the way most people have overcome the sense of insignificance. What they they posit a god, they find out what God's will is. And then they do it. And they say, I am good. I am right. I'm going to last. I'm going to last because I'm a good person because I'm a righteous person. But you know what? Ooh, in the in the introduction to book, Ernest Brecker's book, The Denial of Death, he says something which shows me why he didn't pick that up, that solution up, and why so many other people in the modern world don't. And this is what he says, how easily religious people will shed blood. To purchase assurance of their own righteousness. Our need to deny our nakedness and be a raid in glory keeps us from acknowledging that our emperors have no clothes. What's he talking about here? He's talking about something we'll have to see. We have to recognize the religious people in an effort to say, I will last. I am righteous. I need to oppress people. And they do oppress people. And so here, where are we? What have we gotten to? What a picture. The closer death comes. The more frantic everybody gets into the romantic solution or the creative solution or the religious solution. But in the end, it's falling apart. In fact, Becker even says something about parties. It's pretty amazing. And think about it in terms of Daniel 5. He finally says this is the last quote from him. Okay, modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness or spending time shopping, which is the same thing. As his need, listen, as modern man's need for heroic dedication is provided less and less by a culture that just believes in any moral, spiritual or social heroism, that same society finds out. ways to contrive him to forget, to try to help him to forget. So here's what you have, picture of the modern world, picture of a pluralistic society. We deeply aware of our insignificance, and we have frantically locked ourselves into either the romantic solution, the creative solution, the religious solution, or else we go back and forth, or we're trying them all at once, or we hate that one and we go to this one. But in the end, we got a shop, or a drink, or do something to stave off the sense of our utter failure. In other words, this is teaching us without God's glory, we have no glory. Without God, we don't exist. And we know that, and that's really at the root of all society. That's the root of all character, and it's the root at the heart of every culture. So the wild party shows us this desperate sense of significance and our failure to find it. Secondly, the second thing we have, though, is the great party crash. Now what happens is the hand writing on the wall. And of course, Bell Shazzar is very upset. And when it says his knees knocked and his legs gave way, it must have means he collapsed. And the first thing he does in verses seven and nine, and I haven't shown you that, the first thing we didn't print it in there, the first thing that he does is that he calls in the enchanters and the diviners and the astrologers. And he says to them, I will close you in purple. I will put a gold chain on your neck, and I will make you the third highest ruler in the kingdom if you can interpret the words. But we're told two things. One is they couldn't decipher what the words meant. They couldn't even decipher the words, nor tell them what they meant. But finally, they bring Daniel in. And as you can see from what Daniel says, he is sort of the ultimate party pooper here. What he says is he indites Bell Shazzar. But if you look carefully, he brings up a comparison between Bell Shazzar and Nebuchadnezzar, his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar, who had repented and had actually either was converted or to at least certainly supported belief and faith in the God of Israel. And if you look at his indictment, Daniel actually tells us three important lessons for how you can find significance. See, if the party tells us that we have this deep need for it, it's Nebuchadnezzar, it's Daniel who comes and gives us three extremely important lessons on how we can find significance in God. And these three lessons are extremely important, not only for finding God the first time, but actually for going deeper into God. And here's what the three are. Let's look at them. First of all, verse 17. The first lesson is Trust God's Word. How would your life change if you no longer had to prove yourself to anyone? We often live as though our value depends on our accomplishments, the opinions of others, or whether we're meeting our own expectations, leaving us trapped in a cycle of trying to measure up. In his short book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, based on a sermon from 1 Corinthians 3, Tim Keller explains how the gospel offers a completely different foundation for our identity. One that's free from insecurity and pride, and that allows us to rest in God's complete acceptance. This month, as thanks for your gift, to help gospel in life spread the transforming love of Christ with more people. We'll send you two English copies of The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, and one Spanish copy that you can share with a Spanish speaker in your life. Request your copies today at gospelonlife.com/give. That's gospelonlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Trust God's Word. Verse 17, He says, Daniel, answer the king, "You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king." Now, wait, it's easy to go right by that. There was a lot more in there than it looks. You may keep your gifts for yourself. Now, don't forget what happened. He had said, "Whoever is wise enough to interpret this, I'll give purple robe, gold chain, third ruler in the kingdom." And when he turns him down, he's not just being humble. He's not saying, "Oh, no, no, no." What he's actually doing is he's actually saying, he's making a statement. If you were here two weeks ago, when he speaks to, in Daniel chapter 2, when he speaks to Nebuchadnezzar, he says there what he implies here, and that's this. He says, "The reason I don't want to reward you is because what I'm about to tell you is not human wisdom. What I'm about to tell you is not the product of my research. It's not the product of my analysis. It's not the product of my insight. This is what I'm about to tell you is the word of God. This is revelation from God. This is propositional revelation from God." And what Daniel's actually saying all through the book of Daniel? Haven't you noticed, every time something happens, it's puzzling. They wheel in the world's experts. It's just like CNN. Every time something happens, income the PhDs, income the sociologist and the psychologist and the experts and the policy, you know, planners, they wheel them in. The enchanters, the astrologers and the diviners. And they can't read the writing. They don't know what it means. Now somebody's trying to say, and what Daniel's saying is the word of God, not worldly wisdom, is where you have to start. If you want to get to the bottom of things, it's the only way you're ever going to really find significance. Now somebody's going to say, "And rightly so." Wait a minute. You can't take our scientists and compare them to astrologers and diviners and enchanters. That was just superstition. You know, these are science now. But now, listen, basically, when it comes to finding your significance, when it comes to dealing with the things, the main thing in our lives, the main thing cultures after. The main thing therapies after. The stuff that Ernest Becker is talking about. Modern worldly wisdom is absolutely not a bit more helpful than ancient worldly wisdom. What do I mean? My perfect example of this, my favorite example, is my favorite example of this is the place in Becky Pippert's book where she was in a counseling psychology course at Harvard. And that course was, there's one place where there was a wonderful case study being done by the professor in which it was trying to show that a particular man, his hatred for his mother, had filled him with both bitterness and guilt, and pretty much ruined his life. And they were looking at how his both his guilt and his bitterness had basically ruined his marriage and ruined everything in his life. And when he was all done, I think it was Becky herself that put up her hand and said, "Well, how do you help this guy actually forgive his mother and get over his guilt?" And the professor looked at her and smiled and said, "Well, if you're looking for forgiving heart, you can't look in the psychology department. You've got to find some other department." He suggested to the Divinity School. Well, all the psychology students raised their hand. They were very upset about this. They said, "It was very simple. Of course, you can help them. First of all, you tell them, "Look, okay, you're mad at your mother, but everybody's mad at their mother." That doesn't make you a bad person. And then the second thing you say is, "You've got to forgive. It's right to forgive." And you know what? He wouldn't, he wouldn't. The professor would not back down because he was actually agreeing with Daniel. What he was trying to say, "The minute you say you're not bad, you're out of the realm of science." Science cannot tell you anything but what it is. It can never say what it ought to be. Science can describe. The minute you say this is good and this is bad, that's not science. We don't have a little test that tells you, "Oh, it's 13% good." As soon as you say, "Aught." As soon as you say, "Right and wrong." As soon as you say, "You're a good person." As soon as you say, "You're a worthwhile, significant human being." You are out of the realm of science. You're talking about you are assuming what human beings are made for. You're assuming they're not accidents. You're assuming all sorts of things about the nature of the universe and the nature of things and the meaning of persons and the reason for human life and all sorts of moral assumptions. He would not back down. What he's really trying to say is exactly what Daniel's trying to say. If you want to figure out whether you're significant, if you want to get to the bottom of things, worldly wisdom cannot help you. Science can't help you any more than astrology can help you. The only way to know that you're significant is to find out whether or not you were created. If you're an accident, you're not significant. You're pointless. If you were created, you have to go and find out from the creator. What Daniel is saying is that he says, "The Nebuchadnezzar he says to Bell Shazry says to you, 'I want you to realize what I'm about to tell you is the word of God. You need the word of God. You need to go to the Bible. You need to go to the word of the prophets and the apostles.' The real wise men and women, the people who really spoke the word of God. He says, "Unless you go to the word of God, you cannot possibly ever deal with the issue of significance. Forget your seminars. Forget mystical meditation. Forget all the other things you're trying to do. You're going to have to go to the word of God." That's what he's saying. And by the way, before we go on to the second lesson here, it's some of you saying, "No, wait a minute. I learned in college that the Bible's a lot of legends and there's all these historical inaccuracies. It's pretty interesting to me and very ironic that Bell Shazry himself is a cautionary tale for religion 101 classes. For years and years and years and years, people taught in religion 101 classes that this is a perfect example of why you can't trust the Bible. We know that after [BLANK_AUDIO] There were three other kings of Babylon, and the last king of Babylon, the last king of Babylon before Cyrus, and the Meads and the Persians, conquered Babylon, was a man named Nabonitis. He was the third and last king in the Babylonian line. And therefore this bell shazarder was no such thing as bell shazarder, and he was not the king of Babylon. None of this could have happened. This is a legend. These people guys don't know what they're talking. You can't trust the Bible. And I just think about how many little college freshmen over the years. Listened to those. And you know, they wanted to have sex anyway. So they said, "Hey!" I said, "You know, you can't really trust everything. The Bible, there's good things in there. Like, love thy neighbor, where there's a lot of things we don't like." So they let it go. And then not too long ago. They dug up an inscription. They figured they found out something. Nabonitis moved out into the desert and left Babylon under the regency of his son, bell shazard. And that's the reason why when bell shazard says to Daniel, "I'll make you third highest ruler in the country." That's all the higher he could make somebody. And that means that the chapter, the writer of Daniel, knew a whole lot more about the history of ancient Babylon and what happened there than modern historians. You know, we can't trust the Bible. And so I'm going to completely change the basis of my life. And then, whoops, somebody digs up an inscription. Let me give you a suggestion for why you ought to at least give it a shot. To trust the Bible. Daniel is telling us, unless you take the Bible seriously and take it completely and trust it and submit to it, even those parts that you don't like, you can have a God who is not an idol of your own making. You can either have the Bible, and then you know you have a God who can contradict you. And I've heard me say this before, but let me show you in this context. If you say there's some things in here I just don't believe. I don't believe in a God who would do that. I don't believe in that. So I believe this part and I don't believe this part. In other words, here's my question. How would you ever know whether you've got a real God? If, how do you know you don't just have an idol? If you are able to make God into what you want, isn't that an idol? How can you have a personal God who's got a living, a living personal God, a living self who can sometimes make you mad? If you're in a marriage with somebody who never makes you mad, you don't know who that person is yet. That person isn't a real person. That person's not showing you him or herself. So the first thing you've got to do is do you want to live in God or do you want an idol? Do you want to get to the bottom of things? Do you ever want to find your significance? Go to the Word. Daniel says, I don't want your reward. Because what I'm about to tell you is the Word of God. And that's what you need. Number two, the second thing you've got to do is you got to come to grips with pride. Look at verse 22. What was the whole problem with Bell Shazard? What was the whole problem with Nebuchadnezzar? Pride. Let me be practical about this too. Over the years, I've seen so many people say I can't understand Christianity. Why not? What's this wrath of God's stuff? Why did he have to die on the cross? And I go to and listen to sermons and I hear people say, Oh God loves you. He's gracious to you. He forgives you and I'm on move. I don't get it. I'll tell you why I don't get it because you don't get sin. If somebody tells you, Oh God loves you and he's been so gracious to you and you don't understand sin, why should you be moved? If you hear somebody say, Jesus had to die for you and you don't understand sin, why should he have done it? Why should he have done that? If you hear people talking about judge and you don't understand sin, you look at yourself and you say, I'm as good as anybody. I mean, better than most people. So why would Christianity, unless I've done something really terrible, why would he even Christianity make sense? I understand it for drug addicts. I understand it for people who've ruined their lives. I understand it for people in prison, but not for me. And what the Bible says, what Daniel says every chapter is you've got to look at pride. If you want to understand what's wrong with you. He said, Well, what is pride? I'm not a proud person. Well, he even defines it. If you want to go back and really understand that you have to go to Daniel 4, which is what this is describing, but I'm not going to go to Daniel 4, but if you want to hint at what he says in Daniel 4, you look at verse, you look at the very interesting place in verse, pardon me. Yeah. What is it? Verse 21. They're very long verses. And he says he was driven away until he acknowledged the most high God sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets them over anyone he wishes. Now you want to know what pride is? This is what he told Nebuchadnezzar and what he's telling bell Shazar. This is pride. Pride is simply not seeing that absolutely everything you have and everything you are is a gift of grace. At the reason you're Nebuchadnezzar or the reason you're the CEO or the reason you've accomplished whatever you've accomplished, it's sheer grace of God. And if you can't handle that, you're proud. And you say, Well, now that doesn't make sense. Didn't you just spend the first, the whole first part of this sermon telling us that people struggle with this with low self-esteem? No, I didn't say that. And here's what I said in significance. Well, isn't that the same thing? No, it's not. The reason that Nebuchadnezzar struggle within significance, the reason I was always having nightmares about people coming and taking him. The reason he was always trying to prove himself is because he felt that he had earned the place he was because he felt that everything he had done was his accomplishment. Not that God had just set him over it. Not that God had just given it his grace until you acknowledge that everything you have in your life is grace of God. You're going to be trying to earn it. You're going to be trying to prove yourself. You're going to be trying to accomplish it as a result. You're going to always be filled with a sense of your own significance, insignificant, filled with the fear that you're not living up. And needing to push other people down to prove to yourself and to others that you are significant. The root of the sense of insignificance is pride. Pride is the root of it all. That's what it's saying. Until you get an understanding of that. Read CS Lewis' book, "Merchristianity," just this chapter on the Great Sin. I don't know how many people I've known that have become Christians finally because they understood that chapter. Sin is the root of all inferiority. Part of me. Pride is the root of inferiority because it's self-absorbed with how do I look? And it's the root of superiority. Pride is the root of worry. You're not worried unless you're sure how life ought to go. Pride is the root of all your bitterness. Why? Because you're only bitter against somebody if you say, "I would never do something like that." Pride is the root of even your unresolved guilt. Why? Because when somebody says, "Don't you see, you shouldn't feel so guilty." I feel guilty. Look, we forgive you. God forgives you. Why won't you forgive yourself? Because you want to earn it. Because you don't want charity. Because even though you didn't earn it, you should have. Pride is the basis for nationalism and war. Pride is the basis for tribalism and racism. Pride is the reason for in our post-modern world for sophisticated boredom and cynicism. Why do you think so many people are bored and sophisticated? Because they're too proud to let themselves enjoy something. They're too sophisticated for that. Why do you think Jesus Christ says he who humbles himself will be exalted? He who exalts himself will be humbled. So the second lesson is pride. The third lesson is first lesson is go to the word. You'll never deal with your insignificance otherwise. The second lesson is figure out the fact that prides the root of your problem. And the last thing is know the difference between religion and faith. This is self-port. The third lesson is know the difference between religion and faith. What do I mean? Well, look at this. They bring the temple goblets in and they drink wine from God's goblets, toasting other gods. You say, "Well, that's really weird, but I don't think I'm ever going to do anything like that. That sounds like terrible sacrilegian blasphemy, but not likely one of my sins." Oh, yeah. Let me tell you something. I remember very, very, very distinctly a guy that when I was in college, he professed and maybe he was, but I don't think so. He professed to become a Christian. And you know, we were so happy he was going to become a Christian because you know, he was really a wild band. And everybody on campus knew as a wild man. He was particularly bad in the area of sex. Not just that he was sexually active. That wasn't the most interesting thing, but he was what he would do is he would seduce women and as soon as he had, he dropped them. He lost all interest in them. And he was well known for therefore being a heartbreaker and being cruel and being sexually licentious. And he said he was going to become a Christian and it looked like he did because he certainly stopped all that behavior. But we noticed that in every Bible study, he had to be right. We noticed that he had to be elected, you know, an officer in the fellowship. We noticed that when he was in any conversation with a non-Christian where he was trying to tell him why the Bible was right and why Jesus was right and so forth, he was really, really, really pretty abusive. He had to realize that the way he was actually trying originally to get his significance was through power and influence other people. And before he was doing it in an irreligious way and now he had come into Christianity and he was using all the goblets. He was using the Bible studies. He was using ministry. He was using all the all the religious stuff to toast the same old God. You must know the difference between religion. Religion is I give God a good record then he owes me a good life. The gospel is God through Jesus Christ has given me a perfect record which I received by faith and then I live in grateful knowledge that he's accepted me forever. Those are two utterly different things. And therefore you're never ever going to get your significance in life. You're never going to get your way through as you go to the Word, understand pride and recognize the difference between religion and true faith. Now, lastly, and very quickly actually. What's the handwriting on the wall? Here's what it tells us. A lot of people say, "That's wonderful." Now we have unmasked the secular pluralistic society. Under the party, we see that there's really this frenetic desire to earn our significance somehow. And under the party crusher, we see how to avoid it. We see how we can stay out of all that. How we can even, you know, and why we even have to be very careful that if we get religious and we just start to go to the Bible and we clean up our lives that we're not just toasting the same old gods using religious rituals and artifacts and so forth. So we know how to escape it. Now here's my question to you. What are Christians supposed to do to the world? How are we supposed to talk to the world? How are we supposed to relate to this pluralistic society? Well, I know what a lot of people think, like Daniel. We're supposed to show up in parties and say, "Stop it." We're supposed to say, "Wipe that off your face." God is coming and he's going to judge you. And you guys think you've had your fun, but you've been in power and you've made us feel little. You know, we believers, but you're going to get yours, and that's how we're supposed to relate. Now, you know what? The fact is that Jesus Christ completely reinterprets, but in the perfect and ultimate way, this passage. In the book of Luke, chapter 10, he sends his disciples out and he says, "Preach grace, heal the sick, feed the hungry, cast out demons." And they come back and they're amazed that through Jesus' price power, lives are changing. People are being fed. People who are under the power of demonic idols in their life now are being liberated. And right after that, in Luke chapter 11, in Luke chapter 11, Jesus casts out a demon and he sees a person's life changing. He turns around and says, "I want you to know that if I cast out demons by the finger of God, you know the kingdom of God is at hand." And Earl Ellis, who is a very, very excellent commentator, a great scholar, great biblical scholar, in his commentary on Luke says this, "He says, 'The Lordship of Satan and of death yields to the in-breaking powers of the new age, yet just as King Bell Shazor's guests continue to feast unaware that his kingdom had fallen and his doom had been sealed, so the present age is unaware that Satan's reign is broken. It cannot read what has been written. For Luke tells us the mission of the church to make the kingdom visible, through feeding the hungry, through changed lives, through the preaching of grace, is now the writing on the wall. It's only a token. It's only a minute foretaste of the universal revelation of the kingdom at the glorious coming of Jesus, but we Christians must explain that writing on the wall, that the kingdom of God is impending." You see, what Ellis says, Jesus is saying, does the only place that Jesus ever uses the term finger of God. It's the only place that the finger of God is ever used in the New Testament. It's clearly, clearly, a reference back to one of the only places you even see it in the Old Testament. And here's what Jesus is saying. The writing's on the wall, but the writing is my people. I have created a community in which people's lives are being changed. I've created a community in which they are not subject to insignificance anymore. So they're not hurting each other. They're not trampling on each other. They're loving each other. And they're loving you. And they're changing lives through my word. That is how I want the world to see that its kingdom is coming down. Its kingdom based on self-lorification and coercion is coming down. It's a message of hope. But you know what that means? Christian friends, are you legible? I mean, are you any different? And are you willing, if you are legible, are we different enough that we really are a sign of the coming kingdom that we're so different? Because we now know that we're significant in Christ. And that frees us to serve us as your life different enough so the world can see the hand writing on the wall that its kingdom is coming down. Now somebody says, you know, are you legible? You say, well, how can anybody be that different? Here's why. Because don't you understand that our king is different than the world's kings. Our king gave up his glory. He emptied himself of his glory on the cross. He became completely insignificant. He was his father turned away from him. He ignored him. He sent him into the darkness. Jesus Christ gave up his glory, unlike the bell chaser, the kings of the world, so that you and I by receiving him in faith could have the glory of God. God now loves us. And as a result, the kingdom is a party that will make that party look like nothing. The kingdom is an offrantic party. It's a feast of the kingdom. And Jesus Christ says, are you legible? Can the world see that my kingdom is coming because you're the hand writing on the wall? Can they see that? And are you, Christian friends, gutsy enough then to explain it to them? To say, this is what this means. This is what my life means at the kingdom is coming. How much better is that than saying, wipe that smile off your face? Let's pray. Our father, we ask that you would show us how to understand what's going on in the world. And secondly, how to avoid what's happening in the world through the word of God, through the humbling of our pride, and through the avoidance of religion and the embrace of real gospel faith. But then thirdly, help us to so take this into our lives that our lives become a party, a feast of the real kingdom, and that we become a community of people who in our service and in our love become the hand writing on the wall for the world, but a hand writing of hope, not hand writing of condemnation. Let us be so different that the world will give up its revelry and make you, Lord Jesus, the Lord of their feast. And we pray this in Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for joining us today. We hope this message was encouraging to you. We'd also like to share that today's sermon is one of the first of Tim Keller's sermons that we've translated into five additional languages through our Translation Initiative, the Global Reach Project. You can find and listen to the translated version of this in other sermons and learn more about this initiative at theglobalreachproject.com. Again, that's theglobalreachproject.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you here on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was seen your pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.