Failure is often a great teacher if we are willing to learn. Sometimes the failure is our own, and sometimes it is the failure of someone else. In Daniel 5, we read about the failure of a king of Babylon to recognize God Most High.

What was one of your greatest failures?
What did you learn from it?

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. 3 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. 4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. —Daniel 5:1-4 (NIV)

What is going on here? What is the problem?

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 legs became weak and his knees were knocking. —Daniel 5:5-6 (NIV)

The writing on the wall was clear, but it was not understood. And so, for the 3rd time in this book, a king calls all the wise men to interpret the writing. But none could.
Then someone remembers Daniel. You see, this event takes place about 50 years after the events in chapter 1. Daniel (and all the good he has done for Babylon) has almost been forgotten.

How would this make you feel? How would you respond?
How does Daniel respond?

“This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin 26 “Here 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.” —Daniel 5:25-28 (NIV)

What does this mean?

It seems that Belshazzar’s judgement came swift, but Nebuchadnezzar had 2nd chances offered to him.
Why the change?

Read Daniel 5:18-23.

Compare that passage to Romans 1:18-20.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. —Romans 1:18-20 (NLT)

What does it mean they “they have no excuse”?

God holds us accountable for what we know.

What does this mean?