The Prophetic Calendar - Part 1 | Daniel 9:20-27

And now. The Moment you’ve all been waiting for.

I don’t know if you feel that way, but I kinda do. The end of Daniel 9. the 70 weeks.

This prophecy is arguably the most foundational piece of end time prophecy from a dispensational perspective. Many of the things we associate with our theology have the genesis of their teachings in this text. The idea of a 7 year tribulation period and that the antichrist will a seven-year covenant with Israel and will break it half-way through, those ideas find their starting place here.

Texts like this make people like me rub their hands together with excitement and anticipation. Time to roll up our sleeves and dive into the issues. Let’s talk end times, let’s talk prophecy. Some might even be tempted to say that the only reason to start a study through the book of Daniel is just to have an excuse to get to this passage right here and teach on it!

First, I don’t believe that. As we have seen there has been a wealth of value from studying this book in its entirety and that will certainly continue to be the case and we conclude the final chapters over the next several weeks.

But I mean come on. This has gotta be the main event, amirite?? We’ve got the 70 weeks here to study!

I am very excited and interested to exegete the 70 weeks prophecy with you, but before we get there, there are a few verses that we would do well to consider.

In fact, I’d like to read to you the introduction that Dale Ralph Davis provides to the second half of chapter nine. I don’t often read such lengthy quotes, but in this case I think there is unique value for us.

Davis writes

“In the 1950s-60s, what some might call the heyday of American baseball, Willie Mays was the iconic center-fielder of the New York (late, San Francisco) Giants. He was fast, powerful, and electrifying. But he was a bit slow at first in picking up on major league ways. Once in his rookie year, Mays and Earl Rapp, a teammate who was not known for his speed, were walking across the ball field toward the clubhouse. Rapp suddenly bargained: “Race you the rest of the way for five dollars.” Off they went. Mays won easily. Rapp said “Okay, let’s have the five” Mays was flabbergasted; he’d beaten Rapp, and Rapp owed him. “Wasn’t anything said about beating anybody,’ Rapp noted “I just said I’d race you.” The same problem carries over into our Bible reading; we tend to ‘jump the gun’ and make rash assumptions. In Dan 9, for example, we can be so eager to get to the seventy weeks (24) that we ignore this very instructive interlude between Daniel’s prayer and Gabriel’s revelation; we are prone to dismiss verses 20-23 in a sentence or two so we can bury ourselves in the seventy weeks, This is a mistake; slow down and think it through.”

Personally, I needed that reminder, and not just because he used a baseball illustration. That’s just icing on the cake.

But truthfully, I was so eager to get to the seventy weeks, that I was glossing over vs 20-23, and I needed to be reminded to slow down.

There are great things in vs 20-23 that we should not miss.

I want us to remember a few things today as we approach studying this prophetic calendar. Things that you likely already know. Things that Jim has already covered last week. Things that have been taught or at least hinted at earlier in this book.

We need to remember the significance of Daniel’s prayer, Remember that the 70 week prophecy is an answer to his prayer, and understand the how the prophecy answers the prayer.

Let’s read the first four verses of our text for today.

Daniel 9:20–23 LSB

Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before Yahweh my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, and while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, touched me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. Then he made me understand and spoke with me and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. “At the beginning of your supplications the word was issued, so I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so understand the message and gain understanding in what has appeared.

1. Remember the Significance of Daniel’s Prayer

Well, in case you missed it from reading the prayer itself, Daniel reminds us what he has been doing. Speaking, praying, confessing, presenting. This string of participles may indicate the habitual or ongoing nature of Daniel’s prayer. Notice how he frames things:

a. Remember Daniel’s Contrition

Though Daniel is clearly an upright and pious man, he begins with himself and his own sin. He says he was confessing MY sin and the sin of my people, and presenting my supplication before Yahweh.

Daniel’s penitential prayer started with himself. Jim highlighted this last week, how Daniel included himself in the sins of his people from verse 5 “we have sinned” Here he stresses it all the more. I have sinned. I need to confess my own sin before the Lord before I start bringing the sins of others.

It’s not just the sins of other less pious Jews for which he seeks forgiveness, but his own as well.

This is a good example for us to remember when we think about praying for our own nation. Do you begin here, with humility and brokenness over your the state of your own heart, or are you just focused on the sins of others?

Remember Daniel’s contrition.

second,

b. Remember Daniel’s Concern

We are reminded of Daniel’s focus: not himself, per se, but on the reputation of God as evidenced in the holy city Jerusalem. He prays on behalf of the holy mountain of God, that is Jerusalem.

Remember back in 16-17

Daniel 9:16–17 ““O Lord, in accordance with all Your righteousness, let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people have become a reproach to all those around us. “So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your slave and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary.”

Jerusalem is God’s holy mountain. This is God’s holy city. Daniel’s concern is that the reputation of the Lord is tied to the fate of the city.

He says do this for your own sake!

Because of Daniel’s position in the kingdom and his age, the likelihood that he would have made a a trip back to the land was probably slim, and I imagine he would have known that. He isn’t in pursuit of his own interested, but rather the glory of God and fate of his people. This was his primary concern.

Third,

c. Remember Daniel’s Consistency

I mentioned the string of participles. They communicate the ongoing nature of the prayer even as he receives an answer from the Lord. But notice also two other details:

Daniel received this word in his extreme weariness. Your translations might say something like “swift in flight”. The debate here about the root of the word that would determine the meaning, as both words conjugate similarly. From what I can gather, it is more likely that the word is weariness, rather than flight, and would refer to Daniel rather than Gabriel. The overall meaning of the text is not impacted by this; in either case, Daniel was ministered to by the angel Gabriel. But if the LSB gets it right, and I believe it does, it reminds us about the earnestness of Daniel’s prayer.

I have fallen asleep praying more times than I can count, I’m sure you have done the same. That is not what would be going on here. Daniel would have labored so much in prayer that he was at the point of exhaustion. Back in verse three Daniel says that he was fasting as he prayed, which would have contributed to this weariness. But he is laboring in prayer

Notice it says at the time of the evening sacrifice. This is fascinating. We know that Daniel is in Babylon. We know that the temple was destroyed. There are no evening sacrifices being offered. Even if they were, they wouldn’t be being offered in Babylon. It seems that Daniel likely reserved this time that would have had weighty religious significance for him if he were back home.

I feel like I could preach a whole sermon just on that. Think of the implications of that.

At times here in our American context, it can be like pulling teeth just to get parents to prioritize church over their kids baseball games.

We stress the importance of having regular times of prayer and Scripture reading before the Lord, but our lives are so busy and we just zip zip zip through the day and never give God a second thought.

We have seen how Daniel made his time of prayer a habitual practice. When going through chapter six we talked about how the righteous prioritize their faith. We saw how consistency assists courage. Discipline feeds faithfulness.

Here Daniel is, keeping his watch synchronized with a non-existent temple in a city that has been destroyed. He’s on “Jerusalem time” as Dale Ralph Davis put it, “he tells time liturgically”.

It is good to be reminded of this. Good to be challenged in our own consistency.

We would do well to be reminded of Daniel’s prayer. His contrition, concern, and consistency.

Second,

2. Remember that the Prophecy was an Answer to Daniel’s Prayer

Once again, so often we want to get on with the details of the prophecy and we want to know: what do the 70 weeks mean, and how does that fit in to Matthew 24, 2 Thess 2, and the book of Revelation, and we forget that this prophecy was given as a direct answer to Daniel’s prayer!

This prophecy was not given in a vacuum detached from any surrounding circumstances! And this is important to remember because if the goal of our Bible study is always to pursue discerning the intended meaning of the author, then the context of the passage is vitally important!

So often people approach this text like a puzzle to assemble, or a tangled mess of cords to unravel.

We’ve got our boys enrolled in trail life, which is like a Christian boy scout program, and we had a camping trip two weekends ago. I cannot tell you how often I was untangling these kids fishing lines.

One of the keys to untangling such messes is to find the end and work in, right? You have to follow the line.

When it comes to this prophecy, first of all, I’m not convinced it’s the tangled mess that some make it out to be. I’ll explain more about that next week.

But one of ways to make sure we get it straight is to remember that this has a context! It was given in answer to a specific prayer!

When you consider the context of Daniel’s prayer for his people and the holy city Jerusalem, it makes no sense whatsoever to spiritualize the prophecy and say its actually about the church.

When we start with the context, it keeps us away from certain errors, and helps us get this right.

Alright, so this prophecy is given in answer to the prayer, and this reminds us,

a. God is the God who Answers Prayer

We are reminded that God is the God who answers prayer. We don’t have time to develop this fully, but the details here are astounding.

While Daniel was still speaking. While he was still praying. Gabriel shows up.

It calls him the man Gabriel, which refers to the fact that Gabriel is appearing in a human form to Daniel.

He says to Daniel in vs 23 “At the beginning of the your supplications, the word was issued”

Before Daniel had even finished praying his prayer, God was giving an answer. Gabriel was dispatched.

God didn’t wait for Daniel to finish, he didn’t say “let me think on that for a while” No, he sent Gabriel with the word.

Something I’ve said over and over again, and whenever we are on the subject of prayer I will say it every time to help beat it into our mind.

God delights to accomplish His purposes through the prayers of His people.

God delights to accomplish His purposes through the prayers of His people.

God is not just the God the ends, but he is the God of the means, and is accomplishing His purposes in the world but he uses the prayers of men like Daniel, and he uses the prayers of people like you and people like me.

I love James 5 which states that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and yet when he prayed that it would not rain, God caused it not to rain. Why? He was accomplishing his purposes and using the prayer of Elijah to do it. This is why the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, or it availeth much, as the old KJV says.

Now, we don’t usually get the benefit of having Gabriel personally coming and giving us the answer to our prayers, at least I don’t. Maybe you do, and if so, I wanna talk to you and kind out what you’re smoking.

We don’t have that, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hear and answer our prayers. It’s good to be reminded that God hears, and he answers.

Second,

b. God is the God is Gives Understanding

I love verse 22-23. Daniel says He made me understand. some translations say “he gave me this explanation” or “he informed me” or “instructed me”

Nearly every commentary you pick up is going to say that this is one of the most difficult passages in all of Daniel to interpret, perhaps even in the entire Old Testament. And I certainly understand why they say that. There are some challenging aspects to this. There are many ways it’s been understood.

But God gave this to Daniel to aid understanding, not to obscure it. The meaning is discernable. We don’t have an impossible task in front of us.

I mentioned untangling fishing lines. I was successful untangling those lines in every case, except for one. It was so hopelessly tangled that after fooling with it for probably 15 minutes I just cut the line and re-tied the hook, which I probably would have done sooner if it was my own pole, but we were borrowing someone else’s. It was an impossible knot.

That’s not Daniel 9. Daniel 9 is not the impossible knot.

God has not spoken here in such a way that is impossible to understand. We gotta reckon with some difficult stuff, but it’s not impossible. And I would actually argue it is far simpler than many have made it out to be.

In one of my commentaries, there are 66 pages devoted to wading through four verses, and much of that is spent critiquing erroneous views and offering a defense of the grammatical-historical understanding of the text.

There’s so much noise surrounding these four little verses.

So I just want to encourage us today. It will take a little work. It’s not as easy as some passages. But it’s not impossible. God has spoken with the intent in being understood.

What, then, is being communicated? What is God’s point? How does God answer the prayer of Daniel?

3. Understand that Desolation is not Desertion

Daniel 9:24–27 LSB

“Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. “So you are to know and have insight that from the going out of a word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be restored and rebuilt, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are decreed. “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will make sacrifice and grain offering cease; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

There is a saying that I am fond of that I have tried to find the original source for it, but have been so far been unsuccessful.

Biblical Prophecy was given not to merely give us a calendar, but to shape our character.

REPEAT

Even when there is a clear calendar given to us, like this passage here, we remember that it was given in the context of answering Daniel’s prayer to redeem Israel and restore Jerusalem. There is an intent here that extends beyond the timeline and gets to issues of the heart.

That is not to dismiss the chronological elements. Lord willing we will dive head first into all that next week.

But it does mean we want to understand why God was giving this to Daniel who will see the majority of it.

Remember what Daniel says in vs 18.

Daniel 9:18 (LSB)

“O my God, incline Your ear and listen! Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by Your name;

I’m in my final semester of Hebrew and this word for desolation was actually one of my vocabulary words to learn this last week.

It’s a word that communicates astonishment, something appalling, or something utterly laid waste that it is shocking.

Daniel says, Lord. Your city. It’s been desolated.

And this is the answer to Daniel’s prayer. Yes, I see the desolation. I’m not blind to it.

There is a day coming when the walls will be rebuilt. But know that all is not to be restored yet.

There is a day coming when the Anointed one, the Messiah shall come!

But there will be a day when he will be cut off.

Even more desolations are decreed. But know this. Even through all that, a complete destruction is coming, and it will be poured out on the desolator.

God says “I’ve got my calendar set. 70 weeks have been determined.” There is a limit to the suffering my people will face.

I’ve got my purposes. To finish transgression, make and end of sin, make atonement, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the holy of holies.

In other words, God has his plan. The 70 year captivity is going to come to end, just as Jeremiah prophesied. But that isn’t the end of hardship for Israel. There will still be times of distress.

But God still has his plan and his calendar.

He will send his anointed one, the Messiah…he’s going to be cut off.

But God still has his plan and his calendar.

The city will be destroyed once gain, and even more desolations are decreed.

But God still has his plan and his calendar.

A prince will make great promises only to break them and stop sacrifices, and will bring in abominations.

But God still has his plan and his calendar.

In the end, this evil prince will be will have his end in complete destruction.

Because God has his plan and is operating on his calendar. He has not deserted His people, but will be faithful to the promises He made to the very end. Desolation is not desertion.

3. Understand that Desolation is not Desertion

Should the Lord tarry we will get into the details of this prophecy next week. We will wrestle with the many ways it has been understood, and identify who the key figures are.

Just by way of preview, 70 weeks are 70 seven-year periods of time.

The decree is the decree of Artexerxes to rebuild Jerusalem.

The Anointed One is the Messiah

The ESV get three key things wrong in their translation that could mislead the casual reader

Prince to come is the anti Christ, the man of lawlessness of 2 Thess 2.

There is a gap between the first 69 weeks and the 70th

The 70th week is the tribulation period on the earth.

Next week, we’ll get into how we can have confidence in all that. Should he tarry.

For now, the takeaway for us should be comfort and confidence.

We are presently living in the United States of America in the year 2024.

Over the last decade we’ve seen a roller coaster economy, a global pandemic, riots and protests across the nation, threat of international nuclear war, wars in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, etc., and several tumultuous elections here.

God’s calendar was not giving just so you can mark off days. It’s given to shape your character.

God has his plan and is operating on His calendar.

That should give you comfort. No matter how insane the world gets, God has his time.

Knowing this should also give us confidence and courage. God answered Daniel’s prayer to let him and his people know that tough times were ahead. Don’t give up now.

We sang songs like Christ is our hope in life and death, and we’re almost home. Now’s not the time for quitting.

I close with this:

A few years ago the Chicago Bears hired a new General Manager with the intent that he would get the team back on track after years of failure and almost success. We want to win some footballs games.

He hired a new coach, who had certain principles he intended to drill into the team.

He made trades, some good and some bad. He drafted a new Quarterback.

Along the way, the fan base and the talking heads who analyze everything were at times excited, other times concerned, other times downright frustrated at the moves being made.

I remember listening to one analyst who repeated came back to these two phrases:

Trust the process. Let him cook.

Trust the process. He’s got the right principles, but you cannot go from last to first overnight. It takes time.

Let him cook. He’s gotta make his moves. Let’s see how they pan out before we call for his job.

Perhaps there is a lesson there as we consider this prophetic word. Trust the process. Let Him cook. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got his plan and the power to make it happen.