Waiting for Redemption

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Transcript:

But tonight we’re going to be in Daniel chapter 9, if you have not already turned there. And last week when I talked to you about Daniel chapter 9, we looked at a part of the chapter that I’ve sort of just glanced over really quick usually in the past when teaching on this. You know, Daniel chapter 9 seems like we tend to focus on the prophecy, the prophecy of the 70 weeks and ignore the prayer that went on before that.

And I didn’t do that last time because I really took time to sit there and look at it and was just impressed by the sincerity of Daniel’s prayer to God. And so Daniel is somebody who was sitting there. He’s sitting there in Babylon.

He’s been taken captive by the Babylonians along with several other people from his country. A good number of the Jews were taken captive to Babylon. And Daniel’s among them.

And they’re looking at this realizing that God had punished the kingdom of Judah because of its idolatry and because of its wickedness. And yet you’re sitting here and you’re in a time of trial. Even though he was in a position of influence, in a position of authority, I’m sure he’d have much rather been back in Jerusalem. He’d much rather been back home.

He’d have much rather been back where they could worship God and his temple and so on. So they’re in this time of trial in Babylon thinking our nation is being punished for its sins. And yet Babylon is worse, and God told them, you know, under the prophet Habakkuk, that don’t worry, basically Babylon is going to get what they deserve as well.

And so they watched this happen when Darius the Mede comes in, and under Cyrus, who was king of Persia, comes in and takes over the Babylonian empire, and now Daniel is there serving under the Persians, who are even stronger. And I’m sure thinking, is this ever going to end? Because the Babylonians, I’m sure they thought nothing would ever set them free from the Babylonians, and now they’ve been taken captive by an even stronger empire.

And it probably had to have looked to Daniel and to his associates like things just got a little darker. All of this took place in that first year when they ruled over Babylon. He prays, and he acknowledges, as I talked about last week, the sins of his nation.

He acknowledges his part in it, and he cries out to God to save them. He doesn’t say, God, we had our reasons, so can’t you just overlook it? He says, God, we’re wrong, but could you be merciful to us just because you’re merciful?

And fortunately, that is a request that God delights to answer, because God is merciful. And God is willing to forgive when we are willing to repent. And so after this prayer, God speaks to Daniel and lets him know that things are not quite as bleak as they seem.

Yes, you’re still in Babylon. Yes, you’re still captives. Yes, you’re still under the control of this pagan empire, but it’s not going to last forever.

And God did have a plan. And I have to tell you that sometimes in extraordinarily trying times of my life, it’s been those reminders that I didn’t necessarily want to hear in the moment that God has a plan for this that have given me the strength to continue on. And I’ve heard that from my mother.

I’ve heard that from others. God has a plan for this. And I may not in that moment want to hear about God’s plan.

I’d rather He just work His plan without me having to go through this. But here we are. But it helps to realize that God has a plan and that God is always working His redemptive plan and that the struggle, the suffering does not last forever.

So we start in verse 20 tonight, and he says, Whiles I was speaking, he has just finished his prayer. Before the words have really even left his mouth. Whiles I was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God.

Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. So God wastes no time after Daniel prays this prayer of confession and this prayer asking for mercy for his people. God wastes no time in speaking to Daniel.

He sends the angel Gabriel, and it says in verse 22, and he informed me and talked with me and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications, The commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee, for thou art greatly beloved. Therefore, understand the matter and consider the vision.

So there’s a neat little clue in there that he says when you began your supplications, when you began asking God what you were asking him in prayer, the commandment went forth. So in other words, God didn’t wait for him to finish the prayer. God sent Gabriel with the message while he was still speaking because God knew what was in Daniel’s heart before Daniel even got the words out of his mouth.

So he says, understand the matter, consider the vision, and he reminds Daniel, you are beloved by God. God cares about you. Now, as I said last week, Daniel was an upright man.

He was a godly man who tried to do what pleased and honored God, but he was not a perfect man because there’s no such thing apart from Jesus Christ. But the message, part of this message from Gabriel to Daniel is, by the way, don’t forget God cares about you. And I think that’s a message we need to hear when we get in the middle of these troubles and struggles that are part of God’s plan. We can forget that it’s part of God’s plan, and we can feel like we’re so isolated in the struggle that nobody notices, nobody’s paying attention.

Hey, if God was paying attention, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. We need to be reminded God cares about us. You belong to Him, and as a believer, as one of His children, He cares for you.

You’re greatly beloved. And Daniel, as one of his people, was greatly beloved. It says in verse 24, 70 weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city to finish the transgression and make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

And by the way, I will just go ahead and caution you here that a lot of the material tonight will sound a lot like the material from this morning talking about the plan that Jesus has for his return. And there’s good reason for that because these two are ultimately talking about the same thing. But he tells Daniel that it’s going to take 70 weeks.

There are 70 weeks of events that are going to take place. Now this doesn’t mean 70 seven-day weeks. That would mean, you know, about a year and a half, somewhere in there.

He’s talking about weeks of years. And that’s not really a phrase that we use very often, but he’s talking about seven-year increments, weeks of years, 77s of years. And he says it’s going to take that long of these events to get to this end, this time where transgression has ended, where sin is finished and judged and put behind us, where reconciliation for iniquity, where God and man are fully reconciled and everything’s wrapped up and we get our happily ever after.

It’s going to take 70 weeks of these events for these to take place. So he’s really talking about a period of about 490 years. And in that time, God is going to be at work, and you’re going to see some of these things come to pass.

And he explains them, and he says, Know therefore, in verse 25, Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of a commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah, the prince shall be seven weeks and three score and two weeks. So he says there’s going to be a 69 week period, roughly 483 years until the Messiah is cut off. It’ll all start when there is a decree that goes forth for them to rebuild Jerusalem.

Now we see that, that decree given in the book of Nehemiah by King Artaxerxes the first. I don’t think it’s the same as the decree that Cyrus gave for them to be able to rebuild the temple. For the city to be rebuilt, and we know that Nehemiah went in and he rebuilt the walls and he fortified the city and he got them started going in good shape. He did that with the authority of the king Artaxerxes I of Persia, and that happened in about 445 BC.

Now the important thing you need to know about these years here is that they are close to what we consider a year, but their calendar wasn’t, the Jewish calendar wasn’t and isn’t based on revolving around the sun. It’s based on lunar months, and so their calendar year is roughly 360 days, somewhere in there, where ours is 365 five and a quarter days to go around the sun. So they’re going to be off just a little bit from our calendar.

So it says there are these 483 years until the Messiah is cut off. That translates to about 476 years of our calendar. I sat down and did the math this week again to verify what I was talking about.

And what I did was I took these numbers, however many years there times 360 for the number of days in their years, and then divided it by 365 to get the number of years on our calendar. And then there were some days left over. I just rounded, because for our purposes tonight, it’s not that essential to be exact.

So I gave you all that background information. He’s saying that there’s going to be this period of six score and two and seven weeks, which adds up to 69 weeks, 483 of their Hebrew years until the Messiah was cut off. That factors into about 476 years our time.

So going from that decree in 445 B. C. , that gets us to right at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion around 30 A.

D. Now some people will say it was 29, some people say it’s 33. It’s right in that area.

And a rounding error in my math could make a little bit of difference one way or the other. But folks, God pointed out exactly when the Messiah was going to come. Exactly when he was going to be crucified.

It was yet another, it was another prophecy that they could have looked at and known that Jesus was who he claimed to be if they were looking for it. But they had in their minds that he was going to be one kind of king and ignored everything else. So he says, verse 25, Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah, the prince, shall be seven weeks and three score and two weeks.

The street shall be built again and the wall, even in troublous times. And after three score and two weeks, the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself. Okay, so the three score and two weeks is 62 weeks.

And that’s saying from the time the city is rebuilt to the Messiah. So he’s telling them that there’s going to be a seven-week period that it’s going to take to rebuild the city. Nehemiah started the rebuilding of the city, and he built the walls in 52 days.

But it took a lot of time. It took years for them to completely get the city back to where it needed to be by this prophetic timeline about 48 years. And that fits in with what we know about the scriptures, because Nehemiah went and he helped them rebuild the walls, and he stayed there, and he was governor over the city for a while.

Then he went back to go serve the king. And several years later, the king sent him back to oversee the city and to govern the city and to help them because they were still trying to get back where they needed to be. So this took them about 48 years, but God said, Don’t worry about it.

He told them this in the time of Daniel, which was a few years before this all started. He said, Don’t worry. The city is going to be rebuilt.

it’s going to take some time, but you’re sitting here looking at your time in captivity and wondering when it’s ever going to end. He said, and I’m telling you that there’s going to be a decree and that they’re going to get to go back and they’re going to start the work on Jerusalem. And even though it’s going to happen in times of trouble, and we see that in the book of Nehemiah, where the people around Jerusalem tried everything they could to prevent the work.

He says, even though that’s going to take some trouble and it’s going to be, there’s going to be trouble and it’s going to take about 48 years to get it done, that city is going to be restored. The holy city, the city that they all look to and where they went to worship God, he says, don’t worry, there’s going to be restoration there. God promised that even though things looked dark in Daniel’s day, even though it looked like the captivity was never going to end, God was promising them one day Jerusalem is going to be rebuilt.

And that seemed, that seemed impossible. I mean, I remember back to right after the Twin Towers came down. And we started hearing, you know, talk about one day rebuilding.

I didn’t think with the amount of mess that there was at Ground Zero, and with all the litigation that everything was going to be tied up in, and the investigations, and all the arguments about what should be there, what shouldn’t be there, I didn’t think it would, I thought there was a good chance it wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime that something would be rebuilt there. And yet there it is. I can’t imagine for them to see their holy city destroyed.

And it looks like you’re under a government that tightly controls you and has no interest in your holy city being rebuilt. I can imagine they felt the same way, only more so. It’s never going to happen.

It will never happen. And yet God says, don’t worry, there will be restoration. Jerusalem will be rebuilt.

After that, he promises to send a Savior. He says in verse 26, And after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself. You know what?

He was already telling them the Messiah wasn’t going to be killed because of anything he did or because of anything he needed. It wasn’t for himself and for his cause that he needed to die. It’s like Jesus said he came for the purpose of seeking and saving that which was lost. He wasn’t cut off for himself.

He was cut off for us. And the people of the prince that shall come destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war and desolations are confirmed. And he shall confirm covenant, excuse me, the covenant with many for one week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease.

And for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate even unto the consummation, and that the determination shall be poured upon the desolate. So he tells Daniel that there’s coming a time in about 476 of our years that the Messiah was going to be cut off around 30 AD and that he was going to be cut off for the people of Israel. And by the way, this goes to the whole overall plan of putting an end to sin and bringing reconciliation between God and man.

This was part of the plan all along. God promised to send Israel a savior. So for a country, for a group of people who are in captivity, and they’re under the thumb of the Persians, and they’ve been told, they’ve been told that there’s a Messiah coming, now they’re being told when he’s going to come.

Help is on the way. They’re being told that this promise that they’ve heard their whole lives, that looks like right now there’s no chance of it being fulfilled, that God has not forgotten the promise and that God is going to send a Savior at just the right time. It wasn’t an accident of history that Jesus was born and ministered and crucified and was crucified when he was.

It was part of God’s plan all along to send him at just that time. The Bible says where it was in due time that he died for us. It was just when God planned it to be.

Part of that was so we would have the collusion of the Roman authorities and the Jewish leadership to put him to death, but also so that you would have a common language and basically an open borders policy throughout the eastern Mediterranean so that the message of the gospel could spread like wildfire all over the place. God prepared this at a certain time and he fulfilled it. It looked to them, I’m sure, like he had forgotten about them.

We’re stuck here in captivity in Persia. And God said to Daniel, I haven’t forgotten about you because at this point in history, I’m going to send a Savior for Israel. And by the way, thank God that he didn’t send that Savior just for Israel.

Amen? He sent him for us too. And then we see that God promised to rule in righteousness.

Now, there’s 70 weeks. We would look at this and say, okay, all of that adds up to 69 weeks. Where’s the last week?

He doesn’t say exactly, but I can tell you what I understand it to mean. Okay? So I told you this morning that my understanding of the scriptures is that there’s a pre-millennial second coming and that there’s a pre-tribulation rapture.

I know lots of really smart and really godly people who disagree with me on that, but just from my own study of the scriptures, that’s where I come down. And if that is the case, then there’s a seven-year tribulation that the Bible talks about that just happens to line up with the fact that there’s seven years unaccounted for. And if you’ve ever watched people in a chess match, and I can’t, I mean, I know the rules of chess, but I can’t figure out the strategy of it, and I just know, okay, this piece moves here.

They will, they will move with, they have it planned out, and they move quickly, and they make their move, and then they hit the clock, and they stop it, and they wait for the other guy to do what he needs to do before the clock up again and they make the final move. You’ve seen that, they hit the clock and the clock stops. That’s what I picture having happened here.

That there were 70 weeks of activity that God was going to complete, things that were going to happen until all of this was wrapped up. And we got to the end of the 69th week, the Messiah was cut off and the clock was stopped. And now we’re in kind of a a holding pattern while the enemy tries to work out his strategy, not realizing that at just the right time again, God’s going to start that clock up again.

And all the plans that the enemy has, God already knows about and has already spelled out for us. And those seven years are going to happen. There’s going to be time of tribulation.

There’s going to be desolation in the temple. There’s going to be conflict. There’s going to be all the things that are spelled out here in the book of Daniel, but guess what?

Jesus still returns in the end. Jesus still steps into the madness. He says in verse 24, 70 weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city to finish the transgression.

And it’s like I talked about this morning with the second coming. Jesus is the one who’s going to finish transgression. If you think that we can be sinless and live in a sinless world, apart from Jesus Christ and apart from Him making all things new, then you are confused about how human nature works.

That he’s going to finish the transgression. He’s, in other words, what the forces of darkness do during that 70 years, Jesus is going to come in and say, y’all knock that off. He’s going to put a stop to that.

He’s going to make an end of sins because he’s going to make us all new. Do I know exactly how that works or what it looks like? I don’t, but I understand and believe the promise that he gives us that he will make all things new.

See, it’s really easy to make peace with the fact that you don’t understand the details when you trust the one who does. And he’s going to make reconciliation for iniquity. Okay, Jesus Christ already paid for our sins, past, present, and future on the cross.

But when he comes again, all of that sin, all of the sin in the world, not just what’s already under the blood, but all the sin of the world is going to be dealt with and it’s going to be put in the past and everything is going to be reconciled. All the accounts are going to be balanced. All the transgressions, he’s going to right all the wrongs.

And as I said this morning, he’s going to restore a new creation. He’s going to restore things in a new creation to be like they were supposed to be to begin with. God created us to have perfect harmony and fellowship with him and with others around us.

And that is broken by sin. And only God can bring reconciliation to that. Only Jesus Christ can bring reconciliation to them.

And to seal up the vision and prophecy and anoint the most holy. So God is promising them that not necessarily 70 weeks of years immediately preceding that, but after the end of these 70 weeks of years, after the end of these 490 years of activity, where we seem to be on a stopped clock right now, at the end of these 490 years of activity, he’s going to solve it all. And so they would look at it and say, well, we feel like we’re forgotten about.

We feel like this captivity is never going to end. And yet God reminds them, hey, I’ve got a plan. And at just the right time, I’m going to step in and I’m going to fix all of this.

Not only the captivity in Babylon, not only the oppressive rule of the Persians, but I’m going to fix all of it. And I’m going to put everything back the way it should have been. And folks, I know that we are not living in literal Babylon.

That’s sort of been the premise of this whole series, that Babylon was a real place in Scripture. It’s a place that they really went, but it was also sort of symbolic of the wicked world system. And so they were living in Babylon and trying to do the things that they’re trying to survive in Babylon while still honoring God and being obedient to Him.

And you and I are faced with the same challenge today. We don’t literally live in Babylon. I mean, we’re not over there in a ruined city in Iraq.

But we live in the wicked world system that is hostile toward God. And we have to try to survive here while still being obedient. Actually, flip that because it’s more important that we be obedient.

And we walk that walk every day. And so my hope has been that we could take some inspiration in that from Daniel and his associates in the way that they did it. But folks, we need to be reminded that God has a plan, that God knows when his plan is going to come to pass.

He knows how it’s going to come to pass. Even if we don’t know all the details, he does. And we’ve got to trust him.

Kay and I were talking about this this morning during Sunday school, about how we look at the world around us. And I feel like I’ve had these similar conversations with many of you over the last few months, that the world just seems at times to be spinning out of control. And I have felt that more in the last year than at any other time that I can think of.

And part of it is because I’m starting to think of the world that my children and future grandchildren are going to grow up in. And part of that, as I was telling Kay this morning, came to a head for me during the presidential election last year when we’re looking at who’s going to lead our country. And I’m thinking, we’ve got two choices on the ballot that I wouldn’t even let babysit my children.

We’re in a mess. what’s going to happen it’s time to panic and then I had to remind myself no matter how dark the world gets we must never forget that God’s got a plan and we don’t know all the details we don’t know how he’s going to work it out we don’t know the timing but as I said a moment ago it becomes a lot easier to make peace with the fact that I don’t know the details when I know and trust the one who does folks don’t ever feel like God’s forgotten you because just like he told Daniel this applies to us as well this promise that one day he’s going to restore and he’s going to reconcile and he’s going to fix everything that’s wrong. And folks, we will have the privilege.

We will have then the privilege of being forever with the one who loved us enough to die for us and go through all of this to reconcile us when we didn’t deserve it.

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