What is your spiritual weight – Part 1

Key Verse: Daniel 5:27, “TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting,” (NKJV).

God weighs you, your thoughts and actions, and will hold you accountable for them just like He did to Belshazzar. Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar and an emperor over Babylon Empire from about 553 BC. He did what pleased him; he commanded everything that was around him. He had tremendous power, authority and influence across the world, but spiritually weighed nothing when place on a scale. Daniel Chapter 5 is a sobering chapter to study. Belshazzar dishonoured God. He never learned from his father’s mistake of pride and how he desecrated the vessels of God with his wives and concubines. God put him on His scale of justice and found him wanting.

King Belshazzar made a great feast and invited thousands of his officials, wives and concubines and he drank wine with them. In Babylon, Assyria and Persia, these massive banquets served a very important political purpose in that they showed the glory of the king. While they tasted wine, he gave command that they bring gold and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his officials, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. Everybody was drinking and desecrating those holy vessels that have been consecrated to the Almighty God. They were praising their gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. Who knows what they were telling these gods? Probably, they were giving them praise, honour and glory for making them to overcome God’s people. Little did they know that the people of Israel had sinned against God and God had decided to punish them by allowing them to be taken into captivity so that they will learn their spiritual lessons and come back to Him. It was not that the idols of Babylon meant anything; it was not that the idols of Babylon gave any victory to the people of Babylon or were responsible for the plights of the people of Israel. No, it was the sin of God’s people!

As the kings and his guests were merrymaking, the fingers of a human hand suddenly appeared and wrote on the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. The king’s countenance changed and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking against one another. What is this hand? What is going on? What is this writing?

Immediately, Belshazzar is scared sober, and he called for the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers. Then he said to them: “Whosoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.” Despite the prize placed for the person that will interpret the writing, the king’s wise men could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant.

Thanks to God that the queen upon discovering that the king was greatly troubled came around and said there is a man in the kingdom, a man that the king’s father made the head over all the astrologers and magicians; one of the people they brought from Jerusalem in slavery. She said the spirit of the gods is on the man and that he should be called to read and interpret the writings.

Daniel was summoned and he addressed the king. He told the king because you have dishonoured God by desecrating His Holy Vessels, God sent the hand that wrote the inscription: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.” Daniel went further to interpret the inscriptions to the king and said: ‘Tekel’ means you have been weighed on God’s scale and found wanting.

• Today’s nugget: God’s scale will reveal your true self. Prayer: Lord help me not to be weighed and found wanting. Prayer lines: 08054477940. E-mail: servantofgod111@yahoo.com. Rev. Pastor Ejikeme Ejim, General Superintendent, Assemblies of God Nigeria.