In Daniel 1:8-16, Belshazzar holds a great feast, on the night when the great city of Babylon fell. There was eating and drinking, and there were even sacred vessels from the Temple in use there—but not for blessing. That was the night when a hand appeared and wrote on the wall that “you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.” There was a feast, and there was food and drink, but there was no blessing, only judgment.
We are gathered in a banqueting hall as well, and God Himself summons us to His table. But while warnings about this Table are certainly appropriate in their place, the handwriting on the wall here says that you are accepted. It says that the penalty has been paid. It says that the judgment is long past, two thousand years ago.
If it had not been for Jesus and His sacrifice, we would gather at a feasting hall, like Belshazzar, only to find it a hall of slaughter, a hall of judicial blindness. But with His sacrifice, we are clean, we are accepted. With His sacrifice, there is no need for fear, no need for panic, no need to have your knees knock together, as Belshazzar’s did. This is not a place for that. This is not Babylon. This city cannot fall.
So then, we are weighed in the balances, and the measurement is perfect. We are found to have the measurements of Jesus Himself. This is a meal of blessing, a meal of kindness. This is the grace of God. So come, and welcome.