Daniel 5:27

GOD’S SCALES

‘Weighed … and … found wanting.’

Daniel 5:27

I. God’s scales are adjustable scales.—He weighs in reference to quality as well as quantity. He weighs the lives of men as a lapidary weighs the diamond. He weighs us in reference to our past opportunities, and to what we ought to be. God does not judge all men alike.

II. God not only judges men on account of their past opportunities, but on account of the opportunities of the present, and of the future.—A man is judged not only for the damage he does to his own soul, but for the damage he does to the souls of others. Belshazzar drunk meant that the court was drunk, the army was drunk, and that even the sentinels on the walls were drunk. Thus the king was responsible for the whole.

III. God judges each and all of us independently of anybody else.—Because other people in the Church work iniquity, that is no excuse before God for our wrong-doing. And God’s judgments come when least expected. In one night the banqueting hall of King Belshazzar was turned into a slaughter-house. No man knows when his life shall be weighed in the balances.