Episode Transcript
Good morning to everybody.
You take God's precious word and turn the book of Daniel, chapter 5, please.
Daniel chapter 5, and God willing, we'll be expounding verses 28 through 31.
That's a lot of verses for us.
Usually we're one or two verses.
But for context, we need to be able to finish this chapter up.
Daniel chapter 5, verse 28 is where we'll begin.
The title of the message this morning is A Kingdom Divided.
A Kingdom Divided.
Now we've been studying Verse by verse of the book of Daniel.
We made our way now up to the point this point.
In the past few weeks we've been studying the dialogue between King Belshazzar and the prophet Daniel, as Daniel explains the message that God sent Belshazzar, when God had that hand of a man writing three words up on the wall of his banquet house, which we'll look at those three words here in just a moment.
Our text this morning, if you're taking notes, is going to reveal five things.
That happened to the kingdom of this world and have been happening to the kingdom of this world and will once again happen in the end of time.
If you're taking notes, I'll go ahead and give them to you now The first one is division.
The second is distribution.
Third is proclamation.
Fourth is termination.
Proclamation.
Do you need that again?
I saw it.
I'll repeat them again at the end of time.
No, I'm kidding.
The last is acquisition.
So let me go ahead and repeat them again.
Division, distribution.
Proclamation Termination Acquisition These five things happened to Belshazzar's kingdom.
And again, they're going to happen again to the kingdom of this world in the end of time.
So remember everything we study about here in the book of Daniel, Daniel is a book of history and is a book of prophecy.
So what we see happening in the past in Daniel Into these kingdoms is a picture of what we're going to see and experience happen in the future To us in our kingdoms.
Isn't that great?
So we're reading about the past so we can learn about the future.
That's the beauty of prophetic books like the book of Daniel.
All right.
But for now, let's go ahead and see what happens to Belshazzar's kingdom, so we'll know what's going to happen to ours.
To the agency of a man's hand, God had written three words on the wall, numbered, weighed, and divided.
Or in the Chaldean tongue, Mene, Tikel, and Perez.
Now, if you have King James as a farsen, it's the same word as Perez It just has a just to make it simple and without getting to great detail, it basically has a conjunction built into it.
If you notice when I said Menae Tikle, And peres.
Well, and peres isn't a word.
Perez is, and and is, but in the Hebrew you have that little conjunction.
And it says a farcin, but it's it's Paris, okay?
So the the word numbered meant, as we learned last week, that The the kingdom's days, Belshadra but the days of Belshazzar's kingdom, they were numbered and coming to an end We then learned as we brought the scales out here, we had the balances out here, we showed you how God judges people He puts his commands on one side of the scale.
He puts us on the other side of the scale.
And if we come short of balancing the scale, That's where we get the term, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
We don't balance the scale.
We're unequal, that is inequity, iniquity, right?
So we learned all that last week And so through the agency of a man's hand, God had those three words, and numbered meant his kingdom was numbered.
The days of his kingdom were numbered.
Then we went to the word weighed And that meant that Belshazzar had been weighed in the balances of God's judicial scales and found to have come sh been come short of what God required of him.
And now God willing, we broke off there last week.
We didn't get to that last word, peres.
And so now we're going to learn the message behind the last word that was written on the wall.
And that's the word divided, divided, which in the Chaldean language is paris.
And this brings us to our first point, which is division.
Look with me now in verse 28, please.
Daniel says, Perez, or he says, if we had all this completely translated, remember I told you that uh Mene, Taikal, and Peres, they were all Chaldean words, just like everything else we've been reading here in Daniel 5. but they were left untranslated by the translators.
So he basically said, divided, let me explain to you what that means, King.
It means your kingdom is divided.
Okay?
So the fact that God can divide a man's kingdom like this shows us that God has sovereign control over all political powers in this world.
Boy, I tell you what, I'm so glad that I don't have to worry about, now I'm going to do due diligence.
I'm going to make sure and go vote when it's my time to vote, and I'm going to vote the way God says for me to vote, and the way God says for you to vote. is to vote for a candidate that's most closely aligned with his word.
Okay?
You can't go wrong obeying God's word You will always go wrong if you push a candidate that is pushing for legislation against God's word.
And so uh i but in spite of all that, in spite of the due diligence that we have, or the voting machines that we think are going to miscalculate something.
It's so good to know that at the end of the day, God's in control.
At the end of the day, God's the one that divides the powers up.
And puts people in charge.
And he puts them in charge according to what we deserve.
I'll tell you that right now And uh so all the all the sovereign power and control of every political power on earth, it belongs to God.
And that's because uh this earth And everybody in it belonged to God.
Psalm chapter 24, verse 1.
Psalm chapter 24, verse 1 says a psalm of David, the earth Who does the earth belong to?
The earth is what?
Is the Lord's.
And the fullness thereof.
That means everything in this world is the Lord's. the world and they that dwell therein.
Man, we need to embrace that.
Every political leader needs to embrace that and realize that No man is his own man.
We all belong to God.
And so this passage that we're studying about here in the book of Daniel, it's all about God's kingdom authority.
His kingdom authority.
There is one God who created this world, and therefore there's only one true king of this world.
And that is God, our Creator.
Isaiah chapter 33, verse 22.
Isaiah chapter 33, verse 22 says, For the Lord is our judge The Lord is our lawgiver.
The Lord is our king.
You know what you have there?
He's our judge, that's your judicial branch.
He's our lawgiver, that's your legislative branch.
He's our king, that's your executive branch.
Isn't that neat?
And so God's all of them.
He has complete authority over us, and that is why That we obey the laws of man until they conflict with the laws of God.
In the beginning, There was no divided kingdom, but uh eventually as man grew and families were multiplied and divided up across the world then God's authority was divvied up to different people groups across the world.
And God, the king of all ages, is about to divide Belshazzar's kingdom.
And he's going to redraw the line, so to speak, the territorial lines.
He's going to divvy up the kingdom as he sees fit.
And God has made these political divisions ever since the book of Genesis.
Genesis chapter ten, which we call the Table of Nations.
Genesis chapter ten, verse thirty two, says, These are the families of the sons of Noah. after their generations, and by these were the nations, say that word with me, divided in the earth after the flood.
Perez, your kingdom is what?
Divided.
So God's about to do his redrawing of the lines again.
And he's about to exercise his sovereign judgment by dividing the kingdom he had given Belshazzar charge of.
And he's going to redistribute that kingdom to another political power, which now brings us to our next point, and that is distribution.
So we had division, your kingdom is divided.
Now we have distribution, that is God distributing that kingdom out.
And so your kingdom is divided.
Look back at your text.
And here's our keyword, given. given or distributed to the Medes and Persians.
Now, don't misunderstand the word given here.
This isn't going to be some gift that God's going to give.
And the Babylonians just gonna say, oh, okay, well God's gonna give this to you here.
Take our kingdom.
Here's the keys to the kingdom.
No, the Persians are going to have to fight for it.
But what God will give them is the victory, you see?
The fight belongs to the people, the victory belongs to God.
If you'll learn that right here, it's that way in our lives too.
The fight belongs to us, but the victory always belongs to God.
So as Christians, we always fight from a standpoint of victory, okay?
But the victory always belongs to God.
So the Medes and Persians would have to fight for the kingdom.
But God would give them the victory over Belshazzar and deliver the kingdom into their hands.
And this, again, it's the same way God promised. uh the promised land to the Jews, right?
When they went into the land of the Canaanites, the high tithes.
They had to fight for it But God gave them the victory.
Because of this, God told them in the book of Joshua, chapter 1, verse 6, he said, be strong.
And of a good courage, for unto you shall for unto you, I'm sorry, for unto this people shalt thou, there's that word again.
Divide, you see how that's repeated?
I told you this has been happening since the very beginning.
We saw it back in Genesis 10 We see it here now in Joshua, and then today we're going to see it again in the book of Daniel.
At the end of time, we will see it once Again, he said, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to There's our word again.
Give them.
There's your distribution.
Divide is your division.
You see how all that works?
It is God's repetitive way of dealing out his sovereign kingdom authority.
God is telling them to be strong and of a good courage, meaning they would have to fight for the land.
But God said That they would divide the land that God had given unto them.
And Daniel said God had divided the kingdom of Babylon and given it to the Medes and Persians.
Now one of the things that I love about God's Word.
Is that unlike other so-called sacred texts, it's interwoven with world history.
Interwoven.
In God's great wisdom, all of the events that we read about in Scripture, they occur in a historical timeline of world events.
So you can always plot and chart what is taking place, when it took place, where it took place and the people it was taking place among at that time, so you can corroborate the testimony of God's word with the history of man as we know it.
And if history does not corroborate God's word, then in the future there'll be an archaeological dig and they'll find a name, they'll find a piece of pottery, they'll find something, an old text, and they'll say, aha, there it is, just like the Bible.
Now, who were the Medes and Persians?
When we read history like this in the Bible, a lot of times we get all tangled up. with these folks and it doesn't seem very relevant to us.
Well it will this morning.
It will this morning.
The Medes and Persians Are the Iranians?
How about that?
You ever see the Iranians in the news?
This is just as current as it can possibly be when we're reading the history here.
The Medes and Persians are the people of Iran, the very people that the United States and Israel are in conflict with today.
Now, during the time of Daniel, The Medes occupied the northwestern part of Iran, and they were considered a sister nation with the Persians.
If you'll listen sometimes, especially the Jews, if you'll listen to Benjamin and Netanyahu and his referring to the Iranians, a lot of times he'll refer to them as Persians.
Y'all ever heard him do that?
This is why.
They are the ancient Persian people.
And so there in the land of Iran, you had the Medes and the Persians, and just to give you an idea, they were like sister sister nations, kind of, okay?
So if you could think of when Israel was divided up, you had Israel up north, you had Judah down south.
They were one people, but they were two political nation kingdoms, right?
And then you have today North and South Korea.
Same folks speaking the same language, but they hate each other and they're two different political entities, you see?
And so you think now of the Medes and Persians the same way.
They're all Iranians.
They're essentially the same people group, sharing the same type of culture and all that good stuff.
And so they they pulled their resources together.
And they came against the kingdom of Babylon at this time in the book of Daniel.
And so during the time of Daniel, Iran, the Medes and Persians joined together to conquer Babylon, which today is called Iraq.
Iraq.
When you we sent people over there to fight in Iraq.
We were sending them to Babylon.
Okay, is what we were doing.
So that's modern-day Iraq today.
So perhaps that'll help you understand uh some of the history that Israel has gone through.
You think of it this way, in the book of Daniel, Israel was conquered by Iraq and Daniel was led away.
And then in our text this morning, Iraq is about to be conquered by Iran.
And then you fast forward to today, and Israel and the U.
S. are battling Iran.
And hopefully that'll make things in the book of Daniel clearer for you.
So Daniel just told the king of Babylon or Araq, the people of Arach, that God was giving his kingdom to the Medes and the Persians, Iran.
That was the message of the handwriting on the wall.
And having interpreted this message from him or for him, King Belshazzar does what he promised to do.
He promoted Daniel in the kingdom of Babylon.
And that brings us to our next point.
Proclamation.
Proclamation.
Look at it with me in verse 29.
Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, that's royal apparel, and uh put a chain of gold about his neck It made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.
So after hearing God proclaim that Belshazzar's kingdom was ending, Belshazzar proclaimed Daniel to be the third ruler in the kingdom.
Does anyone see any kind of conflict with that?
God just proclaimed, Daniel just proclaimed, or God proclaimed through Daniel.
Belshazzar, your days are numbered.
The days of your kingdom are numbered.
It's over with.
God's divided it up.
He has given your kingdom to the Medes and Persians.
He goes, well, look at that.
Well, how about that?
He cracked the code.
You did it, Daniel.
I hereby make a proclamation.
I make you third ruler in this kingdom.
In other words, Daniel just got promoted to being third ruler in the kingdom that was about to be overthrown.
Last week, a Baptist church.
Posted a very sad post on Facebook that this Sunday, this Sunday today, would be its last service.
After this Sunday uh They're going to close their doors for good.
They had a uh uh a pastor retire And they couldn't get another pastor to come.
And I, Brother Shepherd and I have talked about that many times before.
There's so many churches that if the pastor has to work, In addition to being pastor, they it's hard for them to ever get a pastor, hard for them to get anyone to come there and be a pastor if they got to work.
They want to come and they want to get a full-time salary.
It's all over the United States.
I see it all the time And so they're closing their doors unless God intervenes this Sunday.
Now suppose that they have a guest preacher there this Sunday.
And suppose after service the congregation were to say, man, that was good preaching, brother.
Good preaching.
And so they call a business meeting together and they say, I hereby make a motion that we call Brother So-and-so to be our next pastor of this church.
And suppose every member knowing that this is going to be their last service And at midnight, there'll no longer be a church.
And they enthusiastically all say aye and they vote yes to calling him as their new pastor, even though it was the last day.
They give him a set of keys to the church.
They all come around front and they shake his hand and and uh and welcome him as their new pastor.
They even make a Facebook post and announce on social media he's their new pastor.
They rush it up and they put his name on the sign as the pastor of that church out front by the highway.
But at 12 midnight, there'll no longer be a church, and everybody knows it.
Can you imagine how foolish that would be?
Can you imagine how empty and confusing that man would feel that just got called to be their pastor?
He's only got a few hours To be a pastor, what does it even mean?
What's the purpose in it all?
And that has to be the way Daniel must have felt.
He just got promoted to a fine position.
In the kingdom that's ending that very night.
And everybody is celebrating but him But whether for a few hours or a few years, the days are numbered for every promotion that we receive in this world. every one.
Like the old saying goes, only one life so soon will pass.
Only what's done for Christ will last.
Now the problem with what Belshazzar declared, it was a nice gesture.
But the problem with what Belshazzar declared was that it contradicted what God had declared.
God had declared that Belshazzar's kingdom was ending.
That Belshazzar himself had been weighed in the balances and had come short.
And that his kingdom was given to the Medes and Persians.
So if Belshazzar was wise, do you know what he would have done?
He would have declared what God declared.
That is the key to success right there.
That is faith.
When you see in the Bible about if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, that's not telling you to pray a prayer to be saved.
It's telling you to declare What God's declared.
The gospel says Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.
He was buried.
He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
That is the good news.
And by faith we declare what God's declared.
We say Christ died for my sins according to the scriptures.
He was buried.
He overcame death for me.
He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures for me.
That is a position of power.
When we declare, when we proclaim What God has proclaimed.
Let me tell you something.
When you say what God says, you can say it in confidence.
You can say it in confidence.
Sister Elizabeth asked me a question this morning.
I was pretty sure I knew the answer to it, but I I I couldn't take my mind and put it to a scripture verse And so I said, Sister Elizabeth, I think it's this, but I couldn't be wrong.
I'd have to look it up.
You know why?
I can't say something confidently unless I know God said it.
And if I know God said it, I can stand on it and I can shout it from the roof, from the housetops, and know that His word is going to be done.
So if Belshazzar was wise, he should have declared the same thing God declared.
To me, when I study this, I I pictured if Belshazzar would have been a wise man.
He would have, instead of gathering everyone around and promoting Daniel, I can picture this him saying, people of Babylon.
I hereby declare that I have behaved foolishly and sinned against my Creator.
My kingdom because of that is now coming to an end.
And I now declare Israel's God to be my one and only God.
And I encourage you all to do the same.
You know what?
I believe God would have had mercy on him.
I do.
I believe God would have had mercy on him.
Could you imagine how things may have gone for him had he done that?
Had he declared what God declared?
When we declare what God declares, we're exercising our faith in God's word.
Here's a kingdom of truth for you this morning.
When we say Why God says, we can be sure of what we're talking about.
When we say What God says, we can be sure of what we're talking about.
Write this down in your notes on your margin.
Hebrews chapter 13.
Hebrews chapter 13, verses 5 and 6 Look what the scripture says.
Let your conversation, that means your lifestyle, be without covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have.
Watch this.
Very beautiful.
For he hath said, trying to see if I could find my little pointer.
I don't see it right here.
Oh, I found it For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
Move on to the next part.
Click it to the next.
Is that as far as it goes?
There we go So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
Now listen to these key phrases.
In verse 5, can you go backwards?
Do you have that ability?
Watch this.
He hath said, now go forward.
That we may boldly say.
Isn't that beautiful?
That is a beautiful golden truth in Scripture.
That the reason God gives us his word and speaks to us, he has said So that we may boldly say.
He has said so we can live and speak and make decisions and act in the position of confidence.
Confidence in God's word.
He has said, so that we may boldly say.
We can speak and live boldly in this world, no matter what this world says, no matter what it does to us.
No matter what it uh uh uh tries to uh promote in some ungodly way of thinking, as long as we are proclaiming what God has proclaimed.
But Belshazzar apparently didn't do that Which brings us to our next point, termination.
Termination.
Verse 30.
In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.
It's terminated.
Never to be king again.
Termination.
Everything in this fallen world, everything that's not rooted in the Lord Jesus Christ, is coming to an end.
It's going to be terminated.
Belshazzar was trying to hang on to something that was coming to an end.
And people in this world do the same thing all the time.
I was speaking to an old Vietnam veteran the other day who uh I was told was an unbeliever. 90 years old.
Yeah, a lady called this church and Said uh wanted we had an outreach.
He wanted to talk to someone who was a veteran and he was lonely.
Want to talk to someone who was a veteran.
And one of them to come by, I said, ma'am, we, you know, I guess like visiting angels or something, we, you know, we don't just have time to go sit with old people and talk to them.
We have a mission, and our mission is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But I said, I tell you what, I'll call him.
And there's a man in our church, I was thinking of Brother Larry Colvin And uh he was in Vietnam, Brother Larry's in Vietnam, and I thought maybe Brother Larry can call him and and uh and uh and uh speak with him and maybe that'll make him feel better having spoken to someone And uh so uh I called him.
I said, this is pastor of Central Baptist Church in Maybank, and he told me all I want is to talk to other veterans about the military.
And I thought, how sad.
How sad.
And while I respect our service members, you would think that if you're 90 years old and you don't know the Lord, you would want to talk to someone about the potential life that's ahead of you.
I mean, real soon ahead of you.
And not simply the life you've already lived that's behind you and that's quickly coming to an end.
He said, I used to sit at a table at the assisted living facility with the other veterans, and they've all died.
All I want is to talk to another veteran.
Here's a keen one truth for you this morning.
If everything you care about is passing away, then you need to find something better to care about.
And we'll say it again.
If everything you care about is passing away, then you need to find something better to care about.
I proudly served 25 years in Texas state law enforcement.
And there are many retired officers that they'll hop on their motorcycles and they'll go drive and they'll meet at a restaurant and they'll they'll hang out with other retired law enforcement officers on a regular basis for fellowship and listen.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I love the people that I worked with, but I find my present and future walk with Jesus to be far more thrilling than my past.
You see, one day, thank God, there's not going to be any more law enforcement.
Law enforcement is coming to an end.
One day, there'll never be a veteran.
One day, the military, thank God, is coming to an end.
Because when Jesus comes, at the end of his reign, God's law will forever be fulfilled.
It will never be broken, and there will never, ever, ever be another war.
Which brings us to our final point.
Acquisition.
Acquisition.
For all that to take place There must be an acquisition.
There's going to have to eventually be because since the very beginning, we we look there in in Genesis when God divided up that political power among men.
The table of nations we talked about.
And he has been redividing, redistributing over and over and over again.
That's how America became a nation, right?
1700s?
That's how we became a nation.
Divide and distribute.
That's what happened.
He divided from the British Empire.
He redistributed to us.
And he's been having this division and this redistribution and this proclamation over and over and over again, but finally one day it's going to stop.
And there's going to be a final acquisition.
And the final acquisition, when that kingdom is acquired at the end, that's going to be the end of any redistribution of authority.
All authority is going to go back to God, and it will be retained in the hands of his saints.
Isn't it beautiful?
The way it was supposed to be to begin with.
In the beginning, God said concerning man, let them have dominion.
But then man turned against God, tried to rule in his own authority.
And it's been this over and over tumbling and redistribution of authority ever since.
But it's finally going to stop.
There's gonna be a final acquisition.
Right now it's gonna be the Medes and Persians that have the acquisition.
They're about to acquire the authority historically.
Okay?
So it says here now look acquisition verse 31 and Darius the Median so Darius King Darius belonged to the side of the Medes he was a an Iranian right but he belonged to the side of the the Medes And Darius the Median took, that means he acquired, the kingdom, being about three score and two years old.
So Darius the Mead took, he acquired the kingdom from Belshazzar because God had given or delivered it into his hands.
And again, this has been a repeated cycle of kingdom authority throughout the earth. history, distribu division, distribution, proclamation, termination, and then acquisition by new power.
And it's going to happen one last time when Jesus comes.
For God has proclaimed, and remember, I can say this boldly Because he has said, I'm going to say to you boldly what's going to happen.
God's proclaimed that he's going to divide the kingdoms of this world. and distribute them unto us.
And we shall take, we shall acquire them, and reign in the kingdom authority of Jesus Christ.
Daniel chapter 7 Daniel chapter 7, verse 18.
Let's skip forward just a little bit and look there.
Watch this.
But the saints of the Most High shall take.
That's the choir.
Just like the Medes, just like Darius did, he took the kingdom.
Look who's going to take the kingdom in the end.
But the saints of the Most High shall take the king. and possess the kingdom, say it with me.
How long?
Forever, even forever and ever.
The final acquisition Now, church, that's what I want to talk about, and that's why the saints are the people I want to talk to Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
We thank you, Father, for our past accomplishments.
We thank you, Father, for the days of your great success that you've given each and every one of us in different areas of our lives and the incredible mercy that you've shown toward us.
But Father Lord, more important than that, more important than any accomplishment of this world, dear Lord, any promotion or any accolade, any any award or any any wealth that we've accumulated, more important than any of that, dear Lord God, we look forward.
To that final acquisition where you have proclaimed that you're going to divide the authority up You're going to take it from the unbelievers.
You're going to distribute it, Father Back to your Son Jesus, and we will rule and reign in his authority.
He will be our King.
You will be our God.
The law will be forever fulfilled.
And sin will be no more.
And Lord, we so look forward to that time.
And without that great hope, There is no hope at all.
We ask this in Jesus' name, Father, that if any do not know Christ as their Savior, they'll come to know Him today, Lord, or very soon, and they'll seek the truth, dear Lord God.
Father, in that they'll come to me or Brother Shepherd or Brother Doug.
And Father, Lord, let us take God's your word, dear Lord, and show them, Father. how they can know that they are a citizen of the kingdom of God through faith in your Son, Jesus, who died for them.
In his precious name we pray.
Thank you.
For this great proclamation you've made, we eagerly look forward to the kingdom to come.
Amen
