Daniel 28: The Hope of Glory
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Dan 12:1-4
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, and thanks for being here to worship the Lord Jesus together! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor of the church family of Eastern Hills, and it is a joy to get to serve in this position. Thank you, church family, for making my position such a blessing!
If you’re visiting with us this morning (either in person or online), we would love to be able to send you a card to thank you for your visit, and to see if there is anything that we can do to minister to you. If you’re online, you can fill out a communications form by visiting our website and scrolling to the bottom of our “I’m New” page. If you’re in the room you can do that as well, or you can fill out a physical card while you’re here. You’ll find it in the back of the pew in front of you. You can return that to us by bringing it down to me here at the front after service is over, because I would really like to meet you personally and give you a gift to thank you for your visit today. If you don’t have time for that today, I understand. You can get that welcome card back to us by dropping it in the boxes by the doors as you leave after service. Thanks in advance for filling that out!
I want to say one other thanks this morning. Our audio-visual ministry is a vital part of everything that happens in this room, both on Sundays and during the week. They run the lights, the sound, the lyrics, and the stream every Sunday. They come to band practices and choir practices. They come and serve at the programs, practices, and events that the school puts on. They’re always literally behind the scenes, and so are rarely acknowledged. Thanks, AV Ministry team for your service to this church family!
Announcements
Announcements
State Missions Offering begins next week, and we will be taking it during September and October. Goal: $13K
Opening
Opening
Well, today we begin the final chapter of the book of Daniel. Our focal passage this morning includes the last few verses of the last vision that Daniel was given as recorded in the book. We have seen that this vision included a revelation of God the Son, a detailed prediction about events to come (most of which are ancient history for us), and last week: a prediction about the deceiving, destroying, but ultimately doomed despot known in Scripture as the antichrist.
The remainder of chapter 12 is still a part of the same visionary moment in Daniel’s life, but is more instruction than prediction. We will cover that next week. For this morning, please open your Bibles or Bible apps to Daniel 12, and stand as you are able in honor of the reading of the word of God as we read the first four verses of that chapter:
1 At that time Michael, the great prince who stands watch over your people, will rise up. There will be a time of distress such as never has occurred since nations came into being until that time. But at that time all your people who are found written in the book will escape. 2 Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, and some to disgrace and eternal contempt. 3 Those who have insight will shine like the bright expanse of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. 4 “But you, Daniel, keep these words secret and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.”
PRAYER
Have any of you ever had a day where you just feel as if you can’t get anything right? I had one of those days yesterday. It was a perfect storm (and I don’t mean the rain last night): to continue with the weather metaphor, a cold front of stress swept in from the north through an unexpected situation, while warm tropical moisture in the form of an unwanted question at exactly the wrong moment came up from the south, and from my flesh sprung a tornado of anger, frustration, and rudeness. It hurt the person I spoke that way to, my potential witness to anyone who was around, and ultimately my Lord—the party proper to any and all sin (Psalm 51:4). I’ve already repented of this and confessed to the one I sinned against and to the Lord, so I don’t say this as a means of confession, although if you now are upset with me over this failure, I ask that you forgive me as well.
This instance showcased the continued necessity of my sanctification, my desperate need for Christ, and the fact that I am, to quote James, one who “stumbles in many ways.” (James 3:2) Are there any fellow “stumblers” here this morning?
Well, fellow brothers and sisters in stumbling, this morning I declare to you that there is hope! The state that we currently find ourselves in—full of frailty, weakness, cowardice, pride, selfishness, fear, worry, lust, and any other method of stumbling that you can think of— is not our final state if we belong to Jesus! Instead, we can share Paul’s perspective in 2 Corinthians 4:
16 Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. 17 For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. 18 So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
What we find in the first few verses of Daniel 12 is a promise of what is to come. Just as the events surrounding the antichrist that we looked at last week have not occurred, so the incredible promise of our focal passage has not been fulfilled. We have these things to look forward to!
What I am talking about today is our glorification—the hope of every believer in Christ. And this morning, we consider the road to glory, the hope of glory, the call of glory, and the truth of glory. First:
1: The Road to Glory
1: The Road to Glory
I’ve said many times throughout this series that God, the hero of the book of Daniel, is taking history to the end which he has appointed for it. And as we saw when we looked at the seventy weeks prophecy in chapter 9, there will come a day when God will, “bring the rebellion to an end, put a stop to sin, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the most holy place.” (9:24) However, the road to that glorious kingdom travels right through the Great Tribulation, which was predicted to Daniel:
1 At that time Michael, the great prince who stands watch over your people, will rise up. There will be a time of distress such as never has occurred since nations came into being until that time. But at that time all your people who are found written in the book will escape.
I spoke about the archangel Michael back on August 4 in my second message about Daniel’s fourth vision. However, by way of reminder: Michael’s name means “Who is like God?”, and he is the archangel overseer and protector of God’s covenant people, who fights in the spiritual realm for the cause of God. We get this information by collecting all of the places where he is mentioned in Scripture (3 times in Daniel, twice in the NT).
It says that “at that time,” Michael will rise up. At what time? At “the time of the end” that Gabriel told Daniel about in verse 40 of chapter 11. This final pouring out of God’s wrath against sin will culminate in a battle that will take place in both the physical and spiritual realms, and at the end of this time, the antichrist will meet his end, as we saw in 11:45. However, this time will be exceedingly difficult, and will last for three and a half years according to several passages, such as Daniel 7:25, Revelation 11:2, and Revelation 13:5.
Paul tells us what things will look like leading up to this:
2 Timothy 3:1–5a (CSB)
1 But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5a holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.
This doesn’t sound much different from today, does it? It just goes to show us that this time can come whenever God decrees it to come. He holds the timeline. The severity that the tribulation will hold for the people of Israel is mentioned several times in Scripture. Jesus spoke of this time when he said in Mark 13:19-20:
19 For those will be days of tribulation, the kind that hasn’t been from the beginning of creation until now and never will be again. 20 If the Lord had not cut those days short, no one would be saved. But he cut those days short for the sake of the elect, whom he chose.
Side note for a moment: this passage and its parallel in Matthew is part of why I personally believe in a mid-tribulation or “pre-wrath” perspective on the rapture—the miraculous removal by God of all believing Christians from the world. Basically, I see the “Great” Tribulation as the last three and a half years of the seven year tribulation generally. And as I have said before, this is not a first-order doctrinal question. All believing Christians should agree that Christ is coming back and will receive all true believers to Himself. This is without question according to the Bible. What is still debated is exactly when that will occur. I’ll just say it this way: I’m a mid-tribber who hopes the post-tribbers are wrong, and the pre-tribbers are right.
So how I read verse 1 is that at the time of the end, Michael will rise up and defend Israel against the antichrist, and at that point, this time of great distress (the Great Tribulation) will come upon the world. But those who are followers of Jesus (both Jews and Gentiles) will escape the wrath to come either before it, in the midst of it, or at the end of it (depending on your point-of-view), because their names will be found written in God’s book of life (or remembrance) because of their faith. This book is mentioned in the book of Malachi:
16 At that time those who feared the Lord spoke to one another. The Lord took notice and listened. So a book of remembrance was written before him for those who feared the Lord and had high regard for his name. 17 “They will be mine,” says the Lord of Armies, “my own possession on the day I am preparing. I will have compassion on them as a man has compassion on his son who serves him. 18 So you will again see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
And what is recorded in this book will be the basis upon which humanity will be judged, according to Revelation 20:12. And according to Daniel 12:2, there are exactly two outcomes for people, and one of them is:
2: The Hope of Glory
2: The Hope of Glory
It’s really this verse that led me to open my sermon the way I did today, and to give it the title that I did. Daniel 12:2 is the clearest reference to bodily resurrection and eternal direction in the Old Testament. Consider what that verse says:
2 Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, and some to disgrace and eternal contempt.
First, let’s address the use of the word “many” at the beginning of the verse. The exclusive way we often use the word “many” today—often meaning “lots, but not all”—causes us to ask the question, “Does this mean that not everyone is resurrected? That some are not resurrected at all, either to eternal life or eternal death?” Certainly not. Instead, we can see that the Scriptures sometimes use the word “many” in an inclusive sense, meaning “all, which is lots.” For example, look at Isaiah 53:12:
12 Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
In this passage, we see both the exclusive use of “many” (“I will give him the many as a portion”) and the inclusive use: “yet he bore the sin of many.” While lots, but not all, will be justified (v11) and be Christ’s “portion,” Jesus bore the sins of all humanity, which is lots of people, on the cross.
This last use is echoed in Hebrews 9:28:
28 so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
There are other examples, but I’ll just give one more: consider Matthew 20:28:
28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Did Jesus only die as the ransom for “lots, but not all?” No. His death is payment for all, but not all trust that payment and are saved. Paul uses this phrase “as a ransom for” when writing to Timothy in his first epistle, but notice Paul’s interpretation of it:
6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.
Paul even changes the word to “all,” clearly saying that Jesus’s death was the ransom payment sufficient to rescue all of humanity, should we believe (which we don’t).
The “many” in verse 2 should be taken in this inclusive sense: that “all, which is lots” who sleep in the dust of the earth (so, those who have died) will awake. So with that cleared up, we can move on to our consideration of the rest of verse 2.
There are exactly two kinds of resurrection: To life with God (eternal life), and to NOT life with God (disgrace and eternal contempt). There will be no middle ground, like limbo or purgatory, where we might hate it for a long time but eventually work our way out. There will be no do-overs, no excuses. There will be no transfer requests, and no hope of parole for good behavior for those suffering in hell (the place of disgrace and eternal contempt).
In this way, resurrection day will also be separation day. Look at how Jesus spoke about it:
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
41 “Then he will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!
46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
You see, God created us to be with Him, but our sin separates us from Him, because He must judge sin in order to be righteous. He can have nothing to do with sin. And because we are sinful, we can’t successfully work our way into being NOT sinful, so we all deserve judgment—we all deserve hell. But the Bible reveals to us something that Daniel didn’t exactly understand when his visions were given. It reveals to us that the Son of God, the man Jesus Christ, lived a sinless life in our place, and then died a sinners death in our place. That’s how the One paid the ransom for the many. But He rose from the grave—He was resurrected—so that those who believe in Him as Savior (those who trust in His payment for their sins) and surrender to Him in faith as Lord (those who die to themselves) will receive that eternal life that Gabriel told Daniel about in chapter 12 verse 2.
These are the ones who we saw in verse 1 are “found written in the book”—these will escape the wrath of God against sin and receive eternal life with Christ. But as it says, those whose names are not found written in the book will still rise, but to “disgrace and eternal contempt.” Revelation 20:15 agrees with what Jesus said in the Matthew passage we just looked at:
15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
And the torment of that lake of fire will never be quenched, as it says earlier in the book of Revelation:
9 And another, a third angel, followed them and spoke with a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, which is poured full strength into the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb, 11 and the smoke of their torment will go up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or anyone who receives the mark of its name.
Reminder: the “beast” in Revelation is the antichrist.
What a terrible eternal future awaits those who do not trust Jesus! But what a blessed hope awaits those who do! Eternal life will not be the cliches that we imagine it to be—floating around on clouds with wings and harps as if we were angels. We won’t be. We’ll still be human, just the way we were meant to be from the beginning—without sin and fear and death and great and pain.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. 3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. 5 Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life.
In fact, we will fully realize on that day the transformation that God has wrought in our lives if we believe in Jesus. We don’t see it now, just as we don’t see Him now, but we will see it then, just as we will see Him in all His glory then! John wrote about this in his first epistle to the church:
1 See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know him. 2 Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.
We will finally arrive at that brotherly likeness with Him on that resurrection day. Do you belong to Jesus? Will you trust in what He has done for you today?
Those who have trusted Christ are those who have heeded:
3: The Call of Glory
3: The Call of Glory
Verse 2 is a fascinating, even a surprising, verse in the Old Testament because of its clear reference to the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked to their respective eternal ends. And likewise, verse 3 as a surprising focus—one that we don’t expect to come across in the Old Testament:
3 Those who have insight will shine like the bright expanse of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
Some commentators see these two statements as parallel—that the same thing is being said twice in two similar ways—and they are certainly right. But one aspect of Hebrew parallelism is that the second statement can sometimes expand on the first (called progressive parallelism). This is often true in Proverbs. Here’s an example:
4 The slacker does not plow during planting season; at harvest time he looks, and there is nothing.
I think that Daniel 12:3 is an instance of progressive parallelism.
First idea is that of “those who have insight” or who are wise, understanding, or prudent. These Gabriel says will “shine like the bright expanse of the heavens.” Those whose names are written in the book, so those who walk by faith, those who understand the truth, those who escape the wrath of God poured out against sin, will generally shine like the “bright expanse of the heavens.”
This is still related to our glorification, but also touches on our sanctification. Through the work of the Spirit in our lives, God is working to make us look more and more like Jesus in the here and now—we’re taking on more and more of the Lord’s glory:
18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
In Jesus’s parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13, we see similar imagery as what we see here in Daniel. I won’t read the whole parable and explanation this morning for time’s sake. But Jesus’s illustration and explanation are clear: the good seed are the “children of the kingdom” (Matt 13:38), or those who belong to Christ by faith. At the “end of the age” (13:39) that separation will occur, and
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom. Let anyone who has ears listen.
Paul said something similar about those who walk faithfully with the Lord in his letter to the church at Philippi:
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. 14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world,
So we are called to have “insight;” to have understanding and prudence; to follow Jesus; to work out our salvation through willing obedience as God works in us. And if we will walk that way, then we will shine like stars or the sun in this world.
But then in Daniel 12:3, Gabriel progresses the idea of insight—he says “those who lead many to righteousness” will shine “like stars forever and ever.” Certainly in the Hebrew mind, this would have had the idea of one who helped another learn wisdom—how to live a life that honors God. And that meaning is not gone from this verse here in the 21st century AD, some two-and-a-half millennia later. But Gabriel, who was telling the future to Daniel, a man who couldn’t understand it all, seems to hint at something here—evangelism!
Brothers and sisters, can we think through this for a moment? We have the blessed calling on our lives to extend the call of God to those around us who do not know Christ, so that they would hear the hope of the Gospel, trust Christ, and be saved. We GET to be a part of God’s work. And through sharing the Gospel with others, we get to be used by God to “lead many to righteousness,” as His ambassadors:
18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”
He does the saving, we don’t. We just get to join Him in His mission:
10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”
We have the message of the hope of glory, hope for those who have never believed, maybe even never heard the Gospel. Hope that’s eternal. Hope that can never fade or fail. And through us being obedient in sharing the Gospel with those we get the opportunity to do so with, we reflect the light of Christ, shining like stars forever and ever.
Thus ends really the vision itself. But I wanted to connect verse 4 to this week’s passage because it’s kind of Gabriel’s instruction about what Daniel should do now that he’s received the vision. He has received:
4: The Truth of Glory
4: The Truth of Glory
Verse 4 contains instructions to Daniel that we’ve seen before in previous visions. However, the last phrase could be taken in a positive sense or in a negative one. Either way, Gabriel has declared the truth in this vision, a truth that will need to be preserved for the people of Israel in the future.
4 “But you, Daniel, keep these words secret and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.”
We saw similar instructions in chapter 8:
26 The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true. Now you are to seal up the vision because it refers to many days in the future.”
What we saw there is the same as here. We usually think that this means that Daniel was to “hide” the vision, and that is probably true as far as King Darius was concerned. But the idea of sealing the book was to preserve the vision for the Hebrew people of the future, because they would need to know how to interpret the signs, so that they could cling to hope. The book, or the scroll, would be sealed with a seal to prevent anyone from reading or tampering with it, until such time as it was needed by the Hebrew people.
So what about this last phrase: “Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase?”
Some take this in a negative sense because of the word “roam.” They suggest that this means that humanity will be aimless, and knowledge about ungodly things is what will increase. They support this view using Amos 8:12:
12 People will stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east seeking the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.
However, this Hebrew word more usually denotes roaming around in search of something (as in Amos, apart from “stagger” as in a drunken stupor), not aimless wandering. So I believe that Gabriel was making one last mention of what would happen to the Hebrew people in the years to come, and the fact that it would be years. As the Jews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt, as they lived their lives in Israel again, and as they then were part of the stage of world events, they would watch for the signs in this vision. And as these signs were fulfilled, their knowledge of the truth would increase.
For application for us, however, we have the blessing of getting to know the end from the beginning. We can tell others about what is coming because the Scripture has informed us, rather than having to watch the signs slowly unfold over hundreds of years. We have the truth of glory—the Gospel of Jesus Christ—now. We can point people to the hope that is to be found in Jesus, standing on the truth of the Word of God.
Closing
Closing
It’s amazing to think that even in our sinful selves, and the storms that invade our lives, that God gives us hope for eternity in Christ! We know what’s coming, and we have the blessing and responsibility of telling others the truth, so that they might believe the gospel and be saved. Brothers and sisters, family, can we commit to regularly sharing the gospel as a part of our everyday lives? We should long to see people come to faith, so that they can avoid the tribulation, have hope for eternity, and shine like stars themselves. We will not share if we don’t decide to.
Repentance/submission to calling to share the Gospel
Trust Christ
Baptism (filling next week)
Church membership
Prayer
Giving
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (1 Chron. 29—finishing this book today, Ps 51)
Pastor’s Study tonight: talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit
Prayer Meeting this week
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
1 So then, dear friends, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.