God puts up with a lot from the wicked. The history of Israel shows that God will use the wicked deeds that evil people do to discipline his people. The actions of Assyria and Babylon were sometimes just as bad as, if not worse than, what Israel did. The same may be the case when we are taken to task. When God’s people suffer, they wonder if there will ever be justice for the wrongs inflicted on them.
For our next Lesson from Babylon, we’ll look at how God brought those he used to punish Israel to justice for their own evil.
Daniel doesn’t tell us much about the sins of the Babylonians. Israel was punished for their pagan idolatry, but we see the Babylonians were pagan idolaters, too. History also tells us they were brutal in war, and we get some glimpses of that in places like 2Kings 25:7, where the king’s sons were killed before him then his eyes were put out, and Psalm 137:8-9, which describes infants being dashed against rocks. They were not good people. Babylon was allowed to run roughshod over everyone for God’s reasons.
By Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar should have been well aware of that fact. He’d had his dream in chapter 2, which explained the source of his authority and that it would not last. In chapter 3, he’d seen the power of the God of Israel to miraculously save his people. And still he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built ... by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (4:30). So God punished his pride by having him live like an animal for several years (4:32) until he acknowledged God.
Belshazzar knew all that had happened to his predecessor. Still, his pride seemed to know no bounds. Nebuchadnezzar had, as usual, taken all the gold from the temples of the conquered, showing that their gods couldn’t save them. Belshazzar took it a step further, using the golden goblets from Jerusalem in his pagan revelry. “So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone” (5:3-4).
Nebuchadnezzar was prideful; Belshazzar was blasphemous. And his punishment was to die that night, presiding over the fall of Babylon (5:30-31).
One of the messages of the dream of the statue in Daniel 2 has been born out in history again and again: every human kingdom ends. Some fizzle out, withering from the inside; others are torn down. Some die quietly, slowly; others end catastrophically. But they all end. And Daniel insists that God is behind it all, that he removes kings and kingdoms at will.
But that’s not all. Daniel also insists that justice will come for these wicked nations. Our lesson from Babylon is, God will not be mocked forever.
The wicked, the oppressors, the blasphemers, they will all get their due in the end. Maybe it will be in this life, maybe it will wait until Judgment Day, but no one will get away from God’s justice.
Comparing the lot of the church in the West to Israel in Babylon breaks down here. We will not find ourselves in Babylon because of our sins. To be sure, things are worse than they might otherwise be because of decisions Christians have made in years and decades past, but mostly this is just the natural degradation of our society (see Romans 1). But we still may wonder if there will be justice for the evils that befall believers. There will be.
When we struggle in this world, we can end up like Asaph whose feet “almost slipped ... For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:2-3). The innocent suffer while the wicked party. The godly struggle while their oppressors profit. It’s natural to think “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure” (Psalm 73:13). But Asaph brings us back to reality:
If I had spoken out like that,
I would have betrayed your children.
When I tried to understand all this,
it troubled me deeply
till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny. (Psalm 73:15-17)
Don’t give in to despair. Babylon always falls. One day our Babylon will fall. God will right every wrong and bring every evildoer to justice. He still plans to make a world with no death, mourning, crying, or pain (Rev 21:4). When the world seems to be going crazy, when your soul cries out for justice, be patient and remind your heart that God has a plan.
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