The Kings He Served (New Year Service)

Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom seemed the mightiest on earth, yet in a dream he saw ahead of time a tree being cut down. Belshazzar was feasting with the vessels of the temple when the fingers of a hand appeared and wrote upon the wall, and that same night he was slain. Through all the years in which one king gave way to another, Daniel remained chief minister, and even after the king’s seal had been set on the decree, he still knelt and prayed three times a day.

Power appears to rest with human beings, but it is God who raises it up and God who brings it to an end. Nebuchadnezzar was granted a year, yet did not turn back, and was punished by living like a beast of the field; Belshazzar knew what had befallen his grandfather, yet was every bit as proud, and that night he lost his kingdom. Daniel, by contrast, did not forsake God, though he knew he would be thrown into the lions’ den.

God does not judge even a king at once, but gives him chance after chance to repent. Yet those who let such chances go unheeded and carry on as they always have will in the end fall just as they are. Daniel’s unshaken faith brought him alive out of the lions’ den and led a pagan king to praise the living God with his own lips, and the sermon declares that in the new year, too, God’s people must live by the same faith.