Troubling Thoughts?

Troubling thoughts

Introduction: What might make your thoughts cause you trouble?

Text, Daniel 5:5-9, KJV: 5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. 6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. 7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. 8 Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof. 9 Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonied..

Thoughts

The other night, actually during the early hours of the morning, I woke up with some very troubling thoughts. A couple of my cousins have serious health issues, and I prayed for them; plus a number of other things that came into mind but I still couldn’t get back to sleep.

Relief hardly came at all that night but then a hint came to me when I heard the alarm clock. Usually I activate my cell phone’s alarm clock ”app” for my alarm plus a standard clock as a backup. That day the backup was the only one that worked!

Needless to say, my thoughts were troubling me (how could I forget that, setting the alarm!) as I wondered what was wrong that morning. Even so, there is little doubt that had I checked the phone, I would have seen the alarm wasn’t set. Troubling thoughts, absolutely: just imagine if that was a Sunday morning, and if I had overslept, becoming late for the services?

But that was nothing compared to what happened to Belshazzar, the last ruler of Babylon. He was throwing a large party or feast but then he saw a hand writing words on one of the walls, and, you guessed it, “his thoughts troubled him”. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Babylon had resisted, standing firm against everything and every attempt to conquer that city. This time, though, time had run out for Belshazzar and the former Babylonian Empire. In just a few hours the city was taken and Belshazzar was slain (see the rest of Daniel 5).

One of Spurgeon’s sermon outlines was based on this passage. As best I remember, the three main points were: I, He had no reason for his thoughts to trouble him; 2, And yet, his thoughts did trouble him, and 3 Might not your thoughts be troubling you?

Something to think about.

Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV)