She soon learns those words first appeared on a banquet wall of the Babylonian King, Belshazzar – grandson of King Nebuchadnezzar. You can find the story in the fifth chapter of Daniel:
Belshazzar the king held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousand. . . . Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God which was in Jerusalem; and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. They drank the wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.
Suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. Then the king’s face grew pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack and his knees began knocking together. The king called aloud to bring in the conjurers, the Chaldeans and the diviners . . . but they could not read the inscription or make known its interpretation to the king.”
When the queen reminds Belshazzar of Daniel, who’d been a counsellor of his grandfather, he calls Daniel to the banquet hall. We pick up the story again at verse 25 as Daniel interprets the handwriting on the wall:
“Now this is the inscription that was written out: ‘MENĒ, MENĒ, TEKĒL, UPHARSIN.’ This is the interpretation of the message: ‘MENĒ’—God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. ‘TEKĒL’—you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. ‘PERĒS’—your kingdom has been divided and given over to [others]”
Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, that period in the Church calendar during which God gives His children an opportunity to reflect perhaps more deeply, and with greater focus on Christ’s Passion, crucifixion, and His resurrection. An opportunity to start a new pattern – one that will draw us closer to our God and Savior.
This is not to say we cannot reflect on these things at any other time of the year, but Lent is given to us as a time of reminder – 40 days of reminder – that we can start anew, afresh. We can start to do better.
Mene: Jesus tells the bank CEO her days are numbered. And by implication for the television viewer, for each of us, OUR days are numbered. That’s why the Psalmist implored the Lord, “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Psalm 90:12)
Tekel: Her life is being weighted on God’s scales – just as your life and mine is weighed on His scales. Here is what the Lord Jesus said to those in the seven churches found in Revelation chapters two and three: ‘I know your deeds . . .‘I know your tribulation . . . ‘I know where you dwell . . . ‘I know your [works] . . . . In other words, the Jesus of Scripture reminds us that He knows who we are, where we have been, what we have done, how often we have done it, and in whom we have – or have not – put our faith.
Pharsan: To the CEO, and by inference to each of us, Jesus shares this sober truth – a truth everyone reading this essay knows to be true: What we have accumulated in life will eventually be distributed among family and strangers or tossed into a dumpster.
You might remember the story Jesus told of the rich farmer in Luke chapter 12. It’s a warning to each of us about accumulating wealth, but not accumulating a rich relationship with God:
[Then the farmer] said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:17-21)
Some people reading this message might think none of it really applies to them. Long ago they settled their sins at the Cross. Long ago they decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.
But if you are like me, over the last years and decades of your life you still recognize that in your flesh there is no good thing. We still do the things we don’t want to do, and still don’t do the things we want to do. And we still cry out at times with the great apostle Paul, “Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from the body of this death!?” (Romans 7)
This message today is for three audiences. The first are those who gave their lives to Christ a long, long time ago, but remain unhappy with the person you still see sometimes in the mirror.
The second audience are those who never got honest with themselves or with God. They never called themselves what they really are – a sinner fully deserving of God’s condemnation.
The third audience are those who at one time tasted God’s forgiveness, but the siren call of the culture, the desire for bigger-better-more, and the fears of what others might say or think about them – these entered into their day to day life and the seed of the gospel died a slow death within their soul. Now all that remains is a memory of what was, and a gnawing sense of what could have been.
Listen! I have wonderful news for all of us on this first Sunday of Lent. As C.S. Lewis wisely said: “You can't go back and change the beginning. But you can start where you are and change the ending.”
Neither you nor I have to be the person we were yesterday. We can be different. God WANTS to give each of us a clean slate today. Right now. Old things can truly have passed into the sea of God’s forgetfulness. New things can start even before I you finish this message.
How can that be? It’s simple, really, but only if God is tugging at your heart. And if God is tugging at your heart then you already know that you are a sinner, deserving of Hell and all the agony that goes with Hell for an eternity.
But you need to be assured of God’s love and mercy, who says to us, traitors as we are to His divine kingship: “Come to Me, just as you are without one plea, except that Jesus shed His blood for you – so that you, lost and trapped in sin, might confess your sins to Him and ask for His mercy.”
Listen again! We have God’s divine assurance that He will receive all – ALL – who come to Him in honest. Oh, the mercy and love of God! There has never been, nor can there ever be, a sin so great that God’s grace is not greater.
Will you allow God to use this period of Lent to draw you afresh Himself, to establish or to reestablish your relationship with Him? To be reconciled with Him? No longer nagged by fear and guilt and remorse, but now freed – freed to grow in His mercy, love, and forgiveness of every sin, all sins, regardless of the depth of those sins – all of them forgiven and erased by the blood of Jesus?
Oh, hallelujah! Have you ever in all your life ever heard such great news?
I’m thinking now of the two thieves on their crosses on either side of the Son of God. You remember the story. One joined the mob at the foot of the cross and mocked and blasphemed the only One who could have saved him. But the other thief turned to Jesus and sought forgiveness.
Stephen Curtis Chapman, a Christian song writer, imagined what the good thief was thinking while he hung there between heaven and hell. Here are part of those lyrics:
“My life began like any other man held beneath a mother’s loving gaze
Somewhere between now and then I lost the man I could have been
Took everything that wasn’t mine to take; But Love believes that it is not too late.
“Only one of us deserves this cross, a suffering that should belong to me.
Deep within this man I hang beside is the place where shame and grace collide, And it’s beautiful . . . that He believes it’s not too late for me
“This is how Love wins, every single time. Climbing high upon a tree where someone else should die. This is how Love heals the deepest part of you.
Letting Himself bleed into the middle of your wounds. This is what Love says, standing at the door, “You don’t have to be who you’ve been before.”
“What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood, nothing but the blood. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood, Nothing but the blood. Because this is what Love says, standing at the door, You don’t have to be who you’ve been before. And silenced by His voice, death can’t speak again. This is how Love wins.”
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Oh, please hear this: God is in love with you. That's why “softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See on the portals He’s waiting and watching, watching for you and for me. Oh! Come home. Come home. You who are weary, come home.”
Ask God to forgive your sins – all hat you can think of. Ask Jesus to wash them all away with His most precious blood. Then thank Him for hearing your prayer and giving you a clean slate.
He will never deny any who come to Him for mercy.
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