DANIEL 5:18-31 THE PROPHET WITHIN

Written by , Rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia
 

¹⁸ “O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. ¹⁹ 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; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled. ²⁰ But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. ²¹ He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle; and his body was drenched with the 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.
²² “But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. ²³ Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and 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. ²⁴ Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.
²⁵ “This is the inscription that was written:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN
²⁶ “This is what these words mean:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
²⁷ Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
²⁸ Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
²⁹ Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.
³⁰ That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, 31 and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

From Israel’s first king, Saul, through the kings of their exile, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, the role of the prophet was to be the king’s conscience. Specifically, the prophets served as God’s truth-sayers when the monarchs were blinded to the reality of God’s sovereign power, and acted as if that power was theirs. Judgment was an opportunity for teaching, in that God provided an explanation of for his judgment through the prophet. The “good” kings consulted their consciences while the “evil” kings ignored or tried to eliminate them. But no matter the power of the earthly king, he could not alter the truth.

With our modern autonomous mindset, each of us acts as if we are our own king. The sovereignty of the self is celebrated and reinforced by our culture. We have parsed the Constitution in such a way that we have individual “freedoms” that the drafters of that document would never have dreamed of proclaiming. All of this gives unprecedented power to us as individuals. To a very real extent we have become subject to the temptation to usurp God’s power in our lives that was characteristic of the monarchs of the Old Testament. But who is our Samuel, Nathan, Elijah or Daniel? Has God left us to our own devices? No he has not, thanks be to God! He has placed his Spirit within us to both convict and guide us.

¹⁶ …I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
²⁶ …the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you (John 14:16-17,26).

Come, Holy Spirit, and cleanse my conscience by convicting me of my willful usurping of the throne of my life. Open my ears to hear the word of truth and break the stronghold of my stubborn self-centeredness so that I might yet again abdicate to the King of Glory. Amen.

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