Friday, January 22, 2021
The Spiritual Lightweight
“Tekel means ‘weighed’—you have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up” (Daniel 5:27 NLT).
The other day I was at the gym, and an employee asked me if I wanted to step onto their scale. It was a very fancy scale, so I said okay. Then he measured me to see how tall I was. I discovered that I was shorter than I originally thought, and I weighed more than I was supposed to weigh.
On God’s scales, though, we want to weigh more, not less.
The Bible tells us about a spiritual lightweight, the grandson of King Nebuchadnezzar. His name was Belshazzar, and he went out of his way to mock God.
One day during a feast, King Belshazzar asked for the gold and silver cups that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. Then Belshazzar and the others drank from them and praised the false gods of Babylon.
While they did this, a hand appeared and began writing on the wall. Then a terrified Belshazzar summoned Daniel to interpret the message.
Daniel told him, “This is the message that was written: Mene, tekel, and Parsin. This is what these words mean: Mene means ‘numbered’—God has numbered the days of your reign and has brought it to an end. Tekel means ‘weighed’—you have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up. Parsin means ‘divided’—your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 5:25-28 NLT).
Belshazzar stepped onto God’s scales, and there was nothing there. So that was the end for him.
I believe that God is giving us a warning today. He’s telling us that our time is short. I don’t know when the end of the world will be, but the end of your world or mine could come sooner than we expect. So don’t be a fool like Belshazzar. Don’t be a spiritual lightweight.
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