The Writing Is on the Wall | Special Sunday Message

Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie encouraging you.

If you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org. I go to the gym, okay, and they had this really fancy high-tech machine. And the guy says, Hey, Greg, we'd like to do a test on you. No charge. It's free. We'll measure you. We'll tell you what your body fat is. You know, you'll learn everything you need to know about where you're at right now physically. I said, free?

Okay, let's do it. And so they measured me, my height, my weight, my body fat, et cetera. So right out of the gate, the guy asked me, how tall are you? I said, I'm 5'10 and a half.

He goes, oh. He measured me. He says, you're actually 5'9 and a half. I said, wait, no, I am 5'10 and a half.

No, you aren't anymore. So I realized, oh great, I've shrunk an inch. And then he says, and you're overweight.

Great. So now I'm bald, I'm fat, and I'm shrinking. It's like that song says, I'm not half the man I used to be.

I guess that's true. In my case, I thought, why am I gaining weight? And then I realized, I think I know the reason. It's something I discovered at the market not long ago. They're called chica chips.

Have you ever seen these? Okay, so these chips, they're very affordable. They're like $3.50 a bag. So I bought a bag and tried them.

I thought, these are good. They're like addictive. I ate the first one. Then I ate two. Then I ate three.

Then I'm almost eating an entire bag. So I blame it on chica chips. So I said to my wife, Kathy, I have to stop buying these chips. They're evil chips. Don't let me buy them anymore.

But I was at the market not long after that with one of my granddaughters. And I grabbed a couple bags and put them in the basket. And she said, Papa, why are you buying the evil chips?

Because I like them. Well, so I did a little post on Instagram about these chips, jokingly calling them the evil chips. And I got contacted by the Chica Chip Company. And they were very happy because I pointed out I call them the evil chips only because I'm addicted to them because they're so good. And they thanked me. And as their way of saying thanks, they sent me a big box full of chips.

And I didn't know this. They're a Christian company. And I noticed that next to the little character here. This sounds like a commercial for them, doesn't it? But next to the little character, this little tortilla chip guy on the back, they have John 3.16 written there at the side.

All right. So my wife says, why are you eating the evil chips? I said, they're not evil chips. They're Christian chips.

And it is my responsibility as a Christian to support this company. But it didn't work out too well on the scale. So I've gone on this keto diet. Has anybody here tried the keto diet? You're really screaming for the keto diet?

Okay. The problem with the keto diet is the greatest diet on earth for the first three days. You can eat meat. You can eat cheese. You can eat fattening things. Avoid carbs. But like literally after two days, I'm dreaming of carbs.

I'm dreaming about pizza. And the worst kind of diet to be on is the keto diet and then eat carbs while you're on it. Because now it becomes the weight gain diet. So, you know, when we get on a scale, in general, we want to weigh less, not more, right? Well, that's not true of God's scales. When we get on God's scales, we want to be a heavy weight. We want our life to have substance and meaning and weight because of our relationship with God. So we're going to look at a story now that you've probably heard before, and some of you maybe haven't, about a young man who happened to be the king of Babylon who was weighed on God's scales.

And this guy was the lightest of light weights. And this is a story where God wrote on the wall of the palace. You've heard that expression.

The writing is on the wall, right? This is where that expression came from. This is a story of Belshazzar, who was the grandson of King Nebuchadnezzar. So this king, we're going to look at in a moment, went out of his way to mock and attack God. And he faced the consequences.

Listen to this. It's never a good idea to mock God because the Bible says, be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that will he also reap. Don't be a mocker of God. I used to mock Christians because I didn't know any better. I thought they were crazy. I thought they were delusional, but I had to admit they were pretty happy. And so as a 17-year-old kid, this is 10 years ago, plus decades more, on my high school campus, I decided to eavesdrop on the Christians.

And I started off looking at them with skepticism and sort of laughing at them, and for the first time I heard what it was they were saying, and that was the day that I ended up believing. And so this is what happens here. Here's a guy who could not respond appropriately to the writing that was on the wall.

And I think the writing is on the wall for our culture right now. You see it in the newsfeeds. You see it in events that are happening around the world. You see it in violence, random acts of violence. I was just talking with the police chief, and he was telling me violent acts are up. I said, chief, I see these things on the news. Is it really that bad? He says it is more than ever.

It's hard for the police officers out there right now. And we, of course, have the continuing opioid crisis, and we continue to have conflicts over in the Middle East, and we continue to have just instability among the nations of the world and the potential for war. We're literally seeing Bible prophecies being fulfilled before our very eyes, and the writing is on the wall. So are we going to read it, or are we going to ignore it? Are we going to pay attention to it?

And here's what the writing said to young King Belshazzar. Buddy, your number is up. And one day, your number is going to be up. And one day, my number is going to be up.

And we don't know when that is. I heard about a pastor that went to visit a man named John who was very sick. In fact, he was dying in the hospital. He couldn't even breathe.

He needed an oxygen mask to assist him. Therefore, the pastor could not hear what he was saying, and his condition suddenly grew worse. And so the pastor dropped to one knee and began to pray fervently for John. And he could see John was trying to say something, but he couldn't speak because of the oxygen mask. And the pastor gave John a pen and a piece of paper, and John scribbled something down, and tragically, right there, John passed into eternity. So the pastor took that little note that John wrote and put it in the pocket of his coat and kind of forgot about it until a few days later when he was doing the memorial service for John. And as he was getting ready to speak, it suddenly occurred to him, John wrote me a note. These are actually his last words, and without even reading it, he said to all the people assembled at John's funeral, he wrote me a note. I'm sure it will inspire all of us, and he pulled it out and read these words.

Pastor, you're standing on my oxygen tube. It's a joke, people. There never was a guy named John dying in a hospital. It's a joke. Okay. Okay, make a note. Wait one sec. Never use this joke again. People took it seriously and were traumatized and didn't really laugh. Okay, I got that. It's all a joke.

But there's going to be a day when we hear those final words, and we too will pass into eternity. A little background on Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. So Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. He conquered Israel and brought them into captivity back into this land that was filled with all kinds of false gods and idols. He was a very cruel king. In fact, he took the king of Israel and forced him to watch his own children be put to death before his very eyes, and then he gouged out the eyes of the king of Israel. So this is a wicked man.

This is an evil man. This is what you would probably think of as an unreachable man, but the prophet Daniel interpreted the dreams of King Nebuchadnezzar, and God ultimately humbled this powerful king, and he came to his knees, and he put his faith in God, and literally told his entire kingdom he was now a believer in the Lord God of Israel. It would be like if someone like Kim Jong-un of North Korea came to Christ and told everyone, I'm a Christian now.

Or someone like Saul of Tarsus, who was a Christian killer hunting down followers of Jesus, but the Lord got hold of him and transformed him into the apostle Paul, one of the greatest preachers of all time. This is a reminder that no one is beyond the reach of God. Think of the most evil person you know. Maybe it's your mom or dad. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's a coworker.

Maybe it's somebody else. But whoever this person is, you can't even imagine them ever believing in Jesus Christ. And I'm telling you right now, start praying for them, and don't give up on them, because no one is beyond the reach of God. God reached Nebuchadnezzar. So he told everyone he believed, but somehow this message did not get passed down to his son, and ultimately to his grandson. So Nebuchadnezzar died, and his son ruled in his stead, and the name of his son was Evil Miradoc. Who names their kid Evil Miradoc? I mean, that kid ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. He lived up to his name. People come up with really random names to name kids these days.

I actually did a Google search. Weird names that parents have given to their children. And these are all real names. None of these are made up. These are things that parents have literally named their kids, starting with A, B, C, D, E. What kind of a name is that for a kid?

At least they know the beginning of the alphabet. How about this one? A real name. Arson. Do you really want your kid to live up to that name?

Arson. Another child was named Bacardi. Why not Tequila? I mean, you're naming your child after booze? How about this one? They named their child Banana. Oh, that kid's going to have a great time in school, I guarantee it. Another child was named Brick.

Brick? Another child was named Burger. Another was named Chaos. Would you hang around with a kid named Chaos? Hey, how's it going? My name is Chaos.

Want to go do something? Not really. Well, I've got my friend Arson here. Now, I don't want Arson or Chaos.

I want nothing to do with you. Here's another one. I'm not making this up. Parents named their kid Gassy. That's just sad.

Gassy. Another kid was named Hashtag. Really? Another kid was named Ikea. Really? What about Target?

I don't know. That would be really a bad name. But then another child was actually named Kale. Oh, that's really sad. No one will ever play with a child named Kale because no one really wants to eat kale.

They're forcing it on us. Right? Another child was named, I can't believe this, Netflix?

Really? Is this our child Netflix? We almost named him Amazon Prime. Or Hulu.

But we went with Netflix instead. And then one kid was named Riot. Riot. Hey, Riot, do you want to play with Chaos, Havoc, and Gassy?

I mean, it's crazy. Two more. They named their child Keesh. Oh, man. Keesh and the final one, Velveeta.

Velveeta, Keesh, and Burger, we're all going to play together. Gassy, you fit in here somewhere as well. So Nebuchadnezzar named his son Evil Miradoc. He lives up to his name.

He turns out to be an evil person. And clearly Evil Miradoc did not pass that faith on to his grandson. Look, my son Jonathan is a pastor today. But he's not a pastor because his dad's a pastor. He's a pastor because he put his faith in Christ. Just like Matthew West, his dad's a pastor.

That doesn't mean anything. You have to make your own commitment to Christ. God doesn't have any grandchildren.

Just sons and daughters. And the way you become a son or a daughter of God or a child of God is by receiving Christ. The Bible says for as many as received him, he gave them the power to become sons of God. So as Daniel 5 opens, we have the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Evil Miradoc, going out of his way to laugh everything off. And he went out of his way to mock and challenge God.

Let's see how that went for him. Daniel 5, starting in verse 1. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. King Belshazzar had a great feast for a thousand of his nobles. He drank wine with them. And while Belshazzar was drinking the wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver cups that his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

I'll just throw in a little detail. These cups and such were used for the worship of God. He wanted to drink from them with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. And he brought these gold cups taken from the temple, the house of God, along with his kings and nobles. And they drank from them.

And when they drank from them, they praised their idols made of gold, silver, and stone. So he's going out of his way to laugh at that which God had set apart. Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand riding on the wall of the king's palace near the lampstand.

The king himself saw the hand as it wrote, and his face turned pale with fright, and his knees knocked together in fear, and his legs gave way beneath him. So it all starts when Belshazzar said, I'm going to have a big party. And I'm going to show off all my cool stuff, kind of like what guys do when another guy comes over to visit. Come out in the garage and look at my stuff. So that's Belshazzar. Check out all of my stuff.

Look at what we took from Israel. Look at all of these things. So he's going out of his way to make fun of God, and then the drinking begins. You know, drinking makes you do stupid stuff, doesn't it? I just read about a four-year study that determined the following. And I quote, young adults who drink frequently are more likely to show bad behavior, bad decision-making, and other patterns that their peers who don't drink show.

You needed a four-year study to reveal that? I could have told you that for free. You know, when you drink and you come under the influence of alcohol, this can really lead to some bad things, as it did in this story. They're worshiping these false gods, and they're breaking God's very law. And now they see a hand writing on the wall, verse five, at that very moment. They saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of the king's palace.

So check it out. They're looking at the wall. There's a lamp lighting it. And they see this hand. They don't see the arm. They just see a hand writing this heavenly graffiti upon the wall.

What is that? And they read it, and those mysterious words, many, many, tackle, farce it. So here's a man who had reached all of his goals. This is a man who had checked all the boxes for success.

He climbed to the top, and he found there was nothing there. Belshazzar was the most powerful and famous and wealthy man in all of the world. You know, a lot of people think fame is going to fill their soul. You know, if I can just get some more followers on Instagram or Twitter.

You know, if I can just become more well-known. I read a survey that said 81% of 18 to 25-year-olds said getting rich is their generation's most important goal. 81%, getting rich is the most important goal. 51% said the same thing about being famous. My response is, careful what you wish for.

You might get it. Actor and comedian Jim Carrey was quoted to say, I hope everyone will one day get rich and famous, and they will have everything they ever dreamed of, and no, that is not the answer. David Bowie of Fame said, Fame puts you where things are hollow. Amy Winehouse, who tragically died of alcohol poisoning at the peak of her fame, made this statement, Fame is like terminal cancer. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Justin Bieber posted on Instagram a while ago, Hey world, that glamorous lifestyle you see portrayed by famous people on Instagram, don't be fooled into thinking their life is better than yours, end quote. Careful what you wish for, because a lot of people get it and they see how empty it is. Bill Shazar had that and more, and he is terrified as he sees this writing on the wall. The smirk is gone. The defiance of God is gone, and now he is sobering up quickly, and he doesn't know what to do, and what does it say? It says you've been weighed in God's balances.

Loose paraphrase, you are a spiritual lightweight. The Bible says he turned pale and his knees started knocking. It's implied in the original language he defecated. Okay, if you don't know what that means, one commentator put it this way, he pooped in his pants.

I mean, think about it. You'd see this hand writing on a wall. Man, this guy sobered up so quickly, and so enter the queen mother. It's time for grandma to show up. This is the wife of Nebuchadnezzar, and she comes into her foolish grandson, and she says, you know what? You need to call for the prophet Daniel. Now, Daniel had been there through the life and career of Nebuchadnezzar. He didn't have much to say to evil Miradoc.

He had kind of gone off the grid, shut down his social media accounts. He's 90 years old. They say, Daniel, you need to go see the king right now, so Daniel sort of comes out of mothballs and walks there into the court of Belshazzar and sees what is happening, and Belshazzar didn't know a thing about Daniel. It's almost like he was intentionally ignorant. He didn't want to know about his grandfather and his conversion.

He wanted to live his wife the way that he wanted to live, and that's how some people are. You tell them about Jesus. They say, I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it. I remember for years, I talked to my mom about my faith in Christ. She said, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about that. Over and over, I don't want to talk about that. One day, I felt directed by the Lord to go to her, and say, we're gonna talk about this today, and thankfully, that conversation resulted in my mom finally coming around to Christ and following him, but it took a long time, because the hardest people to reach are members of your own family, and so you might know somebody like this, but God wants to reach them, and he doesn't want you to give up on them, so the prophet Daniel tells Belshazzar about his grandfather's conversion. He says in 22, Belshazzar, you knew all of this, but you have not humbled yourself. You knew it.

He didn't do anything about it. Sometimes the question is asked, what about the person who has never heard the gospel? Will God send them to hell if they live in the middle of a jungle or in the middle of a desert?

They're always in a desert or a jungle. Will God send them to hell? Listen, you will be judged according to the light you have received, but here's the bottom line. You have heard the gospel. You say, what do you mean gospel? The gospel is a word that simply means good news, and the good news is that there is a God in heaven who loves you, but the bad news is you've broken his commandments and fallen short of his glory, but Christ died on the cross for your sin, and if you'll turn from your sin and put your faith in Jesus as your savior and lord, he'll forgive you, and you can go to heaven when you die and find the meaning of life right here and now. That's the gospel. So don't say I've never heard it. You just heard it, and God will hold you accountable.

So Daniel says you were willfully ignorant of this. You didn't want to hear it, and now God has said your days are numbered. That's what many means. Many, your days are numbered.

Your number is up. The Bible tells us the same. Psalm 90 verse 10 says 70 years are given to us. Some may even reach 80. You don't know how long you're gonna live. I am 68 years old right now.

Hard to believe, isn't it? I'll be 69 by the end of this year. I'm just one year shy of 70, so it's real. I understand that, but I'm not afraid. God gives me 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Every day is a gift to me from God, and I want to live it for his glory, and I want to reach people with the gospel. You cannot extend your life. You know, you think if I just have a healthy diet and I exercise more, it seems like every time you turn around, it's a person who's out jogging who drops dead and has a heart attack. Meanwhile, the random person that eats all the wrong foods lives longer. I remember watching a show on television, the news program, and they said, we have a man who's over 100 years old, and he's gonna reveal the secret of his longevity. So I watched a whole dumb program just to find out what this guy did.

Finally, they reveal it. He's this old dude, and he says, every day I eat a hot dog. I'm like, seriously? And it showed him in the market buying these really random hot dogs, not like Hebrew National.

These are the kind that it's questionable what they're made from. He ate one of these hot dogs every day. He lived past 100 years old. Well, the billionaires are trying to crack the code. You know, when you're a billionaire, you can do all kinds of stuff.

Fly to outer space. We just saw a couple of billionaires do that, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and the other guy who went up to space as well, and so this is something that, you know, I've got all this money, and now the billionaires are trying to figure out how to extend their lives through technology. They want to find a cure for aging. One well-known billionaire wants to have a computer chip strapped to his brain.

I'm not making this up. One Silicon Valley billionaire is investing in a startup that promises to upload your brain into a computer to grant eternal life to you, to your consciousness. Uh, no. Technology is not gonna give you eternal life. Technology is not gonna extend your life, and it's certainly not gonna save your soul. Only God can do that. Here's another thing.

I'm not making any of this up. Billionaires are getting blood transfusions from healthy young people between ages 16 and 25 feeling this could reverse aging. It had an unexpected side effect. They found a strong desire to move back into their parents' homes and play video games all day long.

They didn't plan on that. But he says you've been weighed on the balances, and you've been found lacking. You want to have weight in your life as a follower of God. Well, Belshazzar was saying, oh, you know, thank you for revealing this to me. I want to reward you. I want to lay some bling on you. I'm gonna give you a gold chain. See, they're wearing gold chains even back then. And it says that, verse 29, he dressed Daniel in purple robes, and a gold chain was put around Daniel's neck, and he was proclaimed the highest ruler in the kingdom.

But that night, King Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, was killed. It's too late. It's too late.

He went too far. You know, there is a point of no return where you reject something, you reject the gospel, you say no to God, and your heart can be irreparably hardened. Every time you hear the gospel and you say no to it, your heart can become harder. Your conscience can become more seared. And then before you know it, you're gonna have your last night, you're gonna have your last meal, and you're gonna give your last statement.

And you may not even necessarily know at your last statement. Michael Jackson was trying to make a comeback and he was rehearsing for a world tour. And his final words were, this is it, this is really it. And he died shortly after making that statement. Nostradamus, who's known for predicting the future, predicted it right at least one time. He said, tomorrow I shall no longer be here.

And he wasn't. The famous artist Pablo Picasso gave his last words, drink to me, drink to my health, because I can't drink anymore. A leader of a famous rock band took his own life and on a note clipped on his shirt, he wrote his final words, I am a lonely soul.

Are you a lonely soul? It was too late for Belshazzar. He went too far, but it's not too late for you. You wanna be ready. You wanna get right with God. And so all he had to do was admit his sin.

But he was unwilling to do that. This is not the only time God has written. God wrote on a wall in our story before us, but there's another time God wrote.

It's when Jesus walked this earth. And you remember there was a woman caught in sexual sin. And they brought her before Jesus and they threw her on the ground. And they said, the law says she should be put to death.

What do you say? And Jesus looked around at these self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrites. And the Bible says he reached down and started to write in the sand. I'm wondering, what did he write?

Was it a tic-tac-toe game? Here, say, I'm X, you're zero, go. I don't know what he wrote. But then he stood up and said, let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.

And the Bible says they left from the oldest to the youngest. Then he turned to this woman and he said, woman, where are your accusers? She said, I have none, Lord. He said, neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no more.

He wrote on the sand. And he forgave her, just as God wrote on the wall. And I wonder if there's somebody right here that's been running from God. Maybe you've gone out of your way to make fun of Christians. But you're realizing you need God right now because listen to me. One day, your number's gonna be up. One of these days, you're gonna have your last meal and you're gonna make your last statement and then you're gonna enter eternity. And the thing you wanna be sure of is that you will go to heaven and be right with God. And I wonder right now, as you hear me, I wonder if you could say, I know I will go to heaven when I die.

Or maybe that's something that has a big question mark over it. I was talking to a guy not long ago. We're out riding motorcycles and we're watching this guy fish and we started to chat with him and I started talking to him about Christ and I asked him a question.

Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die? And he said, I think so. And I said, why? He says, because I'm a good person. And I said, I'm sure you're a very good person. But unfortunately, you're not good enough to get to heaven in your own ability because we've all sinned and we've all broken God's commandments and that's why God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die for us on the cross.

But it's not just enough to know that. Intellectually, I have to respond to it and the Bible says, I need to repent of my sin. The word repent means to hang a U-turn.

It's a military term that means to turn around and about face. So instead of running from God, you run to God and then you need to receive Jesus Christ into your life as your Savior and Lord. And that's why I wanna close this message for you right now. This is your moment to ask Christ into your life and be forgiven of all of your sin so you can know with certainty you'll go to heaven when you die.

If you haven't done that, do it now. You say, well, I'll do it when I'm older, like you. I wait till I'm like 80.

Okay, here's the problem with that. If you hear the gospel over and over again and say no to it, you're gonna be set in your ways. It won't be that God doesn't wanna forgive you. He's always willing to forgive, but there could come a point where you would go beyond the point of no return and actually you would not want to be forgiven. So don't put it off and then how do you know you're gonna make it to 80? How do you know you're gonna make it to 70?

Belshazzar was a very young man when his life came to an end. This could be the last night for somebody that I'm talking to right now, but if you're a Christian, you don't have to be afraid because the Bible says to live is Christ and to die is gain. I know, going to God's presence, but if you're not a Christian, you should be scared.

You should be worried, but that can all change. Right now for you, if you'll say, Lord, forgive me of my sin. Come and live in my life. I wanna be ready to meet you one day.

If you've not done that yet, you can do it right here, right now. I'm gonna close with a prayer and I'm gonna ask you if you don't have Christ living in your life, if you're not sure your sin is forgiven, I'm gonna ask you to respond to this invitation. I'm going to extend to you right now. So let's all bow our heads and everybody pray. Father, thank you for your love for us.

Thank you so much for sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sin and to rise again from the dead. Now I pray for everyone here and everyone that's watching and listening, wherever they are. If they don't know you yet, let this be the moment they believe. Let this be the moment they come to put their faith in Jesus Christ.

We commit them to you now. In Jesus' name we ask this. Now while our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed, maybe there's somebody here that would say, I wanna go to heaven when I die. I want Christ to come into my life. I wanna be forgiven of all of my sin.

I don't know when my number will be up, but I wanna be ready to meet God. Pray for me. Listen, if you're not sure Christ is living in your life, if you're not certain that you'll go to heaven when you die, if you've tried to fill that hole in your heart with all the things this culture offers and have found it isn't working, and you want Christ to come and live inside of you, I want you to raise your hand up right now wherever you are, saying I need Jesus in my life right now.

Just raise your hand up and I'll pray for you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. Wherever you are, I see your hands.

Raise your hand up. Let me pray for you. God bless you as well.

Anybody else? You need Jesus in your life. God bless you. God bless all of you. Now I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, and I'm gonna ask you to pray this prayer, and you that are watching, I'm gonna ask you to pray this same prayer. This is a prayer where you're asking Jesus Christ to come into your life. So again, as I pray, just pray this. In fact, you could pray it out loud after me right now. Pray these words. Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner, but I know that you're the savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. I turn from my sin now, and I choose to follow you from this moment forward as my savior and Lord, as my God and friend. Thank you for hearing this prayer and answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.