THE TWO MINUTE WARNING
Daniel 5:1-31
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR
1. ATLANTA JOKE
The Atlanta Falcons had just finished their daily practice session when a large turkey came strutting onto the field and demanded to be given a chance to play at tight end. Everyone watched with wonder as the turkey caught pass after pass and ran right through the defensive line. When the turkey returned to the sidelines, the coach said, “You’re superb. Sign up for the season, and I’ll see to it that you get a huge bonus.”
“Forget the bonus,” replied the turkey, “What I want to know is, does your season go past Thanksgiving Day?”
2. PATRIOTS JOKE
Bill Belichick looked over a new player and said, “You can’t play unless you can pass a basic arithmetic test. So concentrate hard and tell me the answer to this: What’s two plus two?” The player thought for a moment and then answered, “4?” “Did you say 4?” the coach exclaimed, excited that the player had actually got the right answer. Suddenly all the other players on the team began shouting, “Come on coach, give him another chance!”
B. THE NFL 2-MINUTE WARNING
1. Huge matchup between Matt Ryan & Tom Brady; it promises to be a very close game, with odds makers only seeing a 3 point difference.
2. This morning I want to talk about the NFL’s interesting custom of the “two-minute warning.”
3. It’s a moment when the referees stop the clock and let both teams know how much time remains in the game.
4. IT WARNS that the game will end soon, and that all-out efforts must be employed. It has become a strategic part of the game, helping teams focus, change the momentum.
5. A lot of teams have what they call a “2-minute drill.”
It's a bold, accelerated series of plays that are designed for those urgent moments when you realize the game is almost over and you’re behind.
6. Some teams who are losing come back to win; and others, winning, begin to lose. The 2-minute warning gives the 2 teams a chance to change the game.
C. 2 MINUTE WARNING IN SCRIPTURE
1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. 4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.
5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way. 7 The king called out for the enchanters, astrologers and diviners to be brought….8 but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. 9 So King Belshazzar became even more terrified….
[He sent for Daniel, who said,] 22 "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself…. 23 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. 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." 30 That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain.” Daniel 5:1-30.
D. THESIS
1. This morning I want us to realize that WE are down to the Two Minute Warning!
2. We’re going to look at how Belshazzar responded to his Warning, see 3 wakeup calls from God, and consider how we’re down to the closing moments of human history, and make the decision to take our Two Minute Warning seriously.
3. The title of this message is “The Two Minute Warning.”
I. BELSHAZZAR’S TWO MINUTE WARNING
A. IGNORING CIRCUMSTANCES
1. Often God tries to deal with us/get our attention, with circumstances. His purpose? Redemption.
Disaster had been banging at the gates of Babylon for years.
2. The year was 539 BC. King Nabonidus, co-ruler of the Babylonian empire, had been outside the city with his army defending it against the mighty army of the Medes and Persians under Cyrus and Darius.
3. His son, Belshazzar, was ruling inside the city. Just days before this party, the Persian forces defeated the Babylonian army outside the city. Babylon was now besieged.
4. But with walls 350 feet high and eighty-five feet thick, surrounded by deep moats, and with 250 towers, each a fortress in itself, Belshazzar told himself he had nothing to fear. He had food and water to withstand a siege of many years, and a sizeable army to defend the city with. What could go wrong?
5. To show he is unconcerned, he throws a party! Unlike the King of Nineveh, who proclaimed a fast, he proclaimed a feast. Proverbs 29:1, "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall be suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy." He should have humbled himself before God and sought God's favor with tears. BUT NO, He Ignores and even disrespects God!
B. BELSHAZZAR’S CHANCE TO REPENT
1. This is one of the most mysterious and spooky stories in the Bible. Just a hand appeared and began writing ghostly glowing letters. There was complete silence while the “hand of doom” continued to write, and afterwards the letters continued glowing on the wall.
2. I believe that this was God’s Two Minute Warning to Belshazzar. If he’d repented, God probably would have spared his life. God spared the King of Nineveh, which had 40 days till destruction; God spared King Manasseh who had done the most terrible things of anyone in the O.T.!
3. But Belshazzar went on in arrogance with his charade and died that night! Babylon, though heavily fortified, had one weakness; the Euphrates River ran through the middle of it. The Medo-Persian forces dug another watercourse and diverted the river. Then the troops entered the city that very night by the riverbed (October 13, 539 B.C.).
4. Verse 30. That very night Belshazzar was slain.
II. 3 TIMES GOD WROTE WITH HIS FINGER
Three times in sacred history, God wrote with His finger.
A. THE 1ST TIME GOD WROTE THE LAW
10 The Lord gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the Lord proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire” Deut 9:10.
1. The 10 Commandements [Ex. 20:1-17]:
a. Have no gods before Me b. Don’t have idols.
c. Respect God’s Name d. Observe Sabbath.
e. Respect your father/mother f. Don't kill.
g. Don't commit adultery h. Don't steal.
i. Don't lie j.Don't covet.
2. A Pastor was preaching a series on the 10 Commandments. One man said, “Pastor, this series on the 10 Commandments has made such an impression on me that I'm going to try to keep one of the 10 Commandments each week until I get through them all."
3. The first time God wrote, He wrote the Law. He drew a line we should not cross over. He established a Standard we should not fall below.
4. Many people live under the false assumption that they are good enough to get into heaven. This is totally false. In fact, the Bible teaches the exact opposite. Rom. 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Ultimately, all of us will fail to keep all of God's commands, so the purpose of the Law is to point us to Christ. The first time God wrote the Law...
B. THE 2ND TIME GOD WROTE JUDGMENT
1. The 2nd time God wrote with His finger was in JUDGMENT on Belshazzar because he mocked God.
Heb. 10:31 says, "It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God."
2. There are people all around us who mock God every day by how they live and with their conversation. They act like they can do anything they want with no consequences. But remember that God’s giving us a TWO MINUTE WARNING!
3. If you’re living in rebellion and you have to stand before God, it will not end well. Sin has never been a joke to God. You need to get right with God before you leave this service!
C. THE 3RD TIME GOD WROTE GRACE
SCRIPTURE. 2 At dawn [Jesus] appeared again in the temple courts…he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” John 8:2-11.
BEAUTIFUL PICTURE OF THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST
1. The finger that wrote here was the finger of God! God of God, Light of light, very God of very God!
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Paul said, "God was manifest in the flesh."
2. No one really knows what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground, but we know what he wrote upon the heart of that hurting woman that day. This time, He wrote Grace! Grace is available for those who've crossed the line into sin, for those who deserve punishment, judgment. Instead, God gives them Grace.
3. As one old scholar put it after half a century he said he had learned three things: a. He could do nothing to save himself, b. God didn’t require him to save himself, and c. The Lord Jesus had done it all. Grace = God’s Riches At Christ's Expense.
III. IN GOD’S PROPHETIC TIME TABLE
A. SIGNS OF THE END
1. I believe if we could see God’s Timepiece, we would realize we’re down to the Two Minute Warning.
2. Peter said in Acts 2 that they were in the Last Days. That was 2,000 years ago. Jesus named a series of events in Matthew 24 that would span the centuries until He came back.
3. The last and most significant sign of the soon coming of Christ was the re-establishment of the nation of Israel back in their own country after 2000 years.
4. This was predicted by Christ & is such an improbable event that no one before 1948 believed it would ever happen, but it did. ISRAEL IS GOD’S TWO-MINUTE WARNING!
5. God also predicted the rise of Militaristic RUSSIA (Gog & Magog, King of the North), the rise of the worldwide CHINA Empire (Kings of the East) and the accumulation of knowledge and rise of TECHNOLOGY capable of keeping track of people, their transactions, and worldwide television.
6. These are sufficient to tell us we’re down to the Two Minute Warning – just before Christ comes back in power and great glory!
B. NONE OF US KNOWS WHEN OUR END IS
1. Last Sunday I baptized seven people. One group of five were all from the same family. I remarked what a revival it was in that family, because so many have been saved and baptized in the last 2 years.
One was a quiet man who had wandered far. He’d been a rough neck in the oil field all his life. He’d slowly gotten closer. Many times I’ve seen him come to the altar. Finally he decided to make the big step of water baptism, so we baptized him last Sunday. Happy day! Little did he know, three days later was his time to go to heaven. He was in a car accident Wednesday night and went to be with our God & Savior.
2. My point is, Tommy heard the TWO MINUTE WARNING and responded by repentance. Thank God!
What about you? Are you responding to God’s Two Minute Warning for you? God gave us the Law, Judgment, but last He gives us Grace. Will you choose that?
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. In Warren Wiersbe's Meet Yourself in the Psalms, he tells about a frontier town were a horse bolted and ran away with the wagon carrying a little boy.
2. Seeing the child in danger, the young man risked his
life to catch the horse and stop the wagon. The child who was saved grew up to become a lawless man.
3. One day the man stood before a judge to be sentenced for a serious crime. The prisoner recognized the judge as the same man who, years before, had saved his life. So he pled for mercy on the basis of that experience.
4. But the words from the bench silenced his plea: "Young man, then I was your Savior; today I am your judge, and I must sentence you to be hanged."
5. Someday we may hear the Savior Jesus say those words to us if we don’t surrender.
6. Listen, God’s judgment is real. When the hand of God appeared on the wall, the King was shocked because he didn't believe something like that could happen to him.
7. Hell is full of people who felt the same way. If you could get a 10 second look into hell you'd run to the altar and get right with God this morning.
8. As Belshazzar learned, the judgment of God is serious business. The first finger wrote Law. The second finger wrote Judgment....
B. THE CALL
1. Belshazzar was weighed and "found lacking." Outside of Christ, we will all be "found lacking." There is only one escape -- the Cross! If you’ve never repented of your sins and surrendered to God, it’s time! Step out now and come to the front.
2. For everyone else in the Church, I’m opening the altars for an extended time of seeking god’s forgiveness, asking God for revival, praying for a new anointing, and interceding for our community.
[The title and Intro B. came from David Rigg’s message of the same title.]
