Daniel 9
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
A.A. Milne is the author and creator of Winnie the Pooh
He wrote a bedtime poem about his son Christopher Robin who the character is named for in the books...and it begins this way
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
It’s a beautiful picture of drawing close to listen to a pure heart going to God
It’s a picture of Daniel 9
We should say here Hush Hush whisper who dares The prophet Daniel is saying his Prayers
and God moves on this man's behalf when he prays.
And teaches us so much about how to pray
HE PRAYS God’s Promises(1-3)
HE PRAYS God’s Promises(1-3)
In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, a Mede by birth, who was made king over the Chaldean kingdom—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be seventy. So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.
THOSE FIRST LINES OF NAMES WE CAN'T PRONOUNCE AREN'T WASTED.
THEY ARE INTENTIONAL BECAUSE THEY TELL US WHEN…
AND WHEN IS CRUCIAL TO THIS CHAPTER and the Gospel it promises
Daniel had been taken into captivity when he was a teenager around 605 BC. That means that it has been almost 70 years in exile for God’s people. And that he is close to 90
These opening verses tell us the trigger for the desperate plea from God’s man Daniel.
He is reading and meditating on the book of Jeremiah he says
Specifically he is in Jeremiah 29:10-14
For this is what the Lord says: “When seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place. For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “I will restore you to the place from which I deported you.”
He has done the math…and it sounds like its time for the nightmare to begin to end
Tucked in it is the promise that when God seems absent He is actually playing the long game and isn’t out to hurt us but to save us
This is huge for those of us that struggle to pray
What do we say when we don’t know what to say?
Daniel shows us
Dale Davis ssys- It’s quite simple: the Lord’s promises drive his servant’s prayer. It’s as if God’s promises have Velcro on them and our prayers are meant to ‘get stuck’ there. In practice this promise-to-prayer pattern means Christians should let the Bible become their prayer book
Has this nightmare come to an end. Have they paid the price due for their sin against God?
Don’t miss the posture he takes precisely because he is praying anchored in the Word…
He does not presume and demand of God based off of the Promises that he wants to read into God’s word.
He is looking at the big story God is writing and prays that God would be who he says he is to win the war of our hearts…not simply make Isreal great again
He knows there is a greater reality going on beyond what he can see in the moment
HE PRAYS REALITY (4-14)
HE PRAYS REALITY (4-14)
Daniel prays to God, acknowledging the sins of his people and their disobedience, while humbly pleading for God's mercy and forgiveness, recognizing God's greatness and faithfulness to his covenant
He is looking at the end of the nightmare but remembers 2 things
he remembers the mess they made living against God that got them there in the first place
He remembers that if we don’t get a new heart it will happen again
He remembers that something deeper is going on
There is a greater exile we are desperate to see end
This is a prayer full of sad content and desperate longing
But why?
The 70 years are ending from Jeremiah so why not celebrate
We can’t miss the long game view Daniel has
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 3. The Sad Content of Prayer (5–14)
What concerns him, it seems, is not so much the return to the land as the people who must return. What good will it do to have a people back in the land with still no sense of their sin and no exercise in repentance
This real for us in American Christianity
What good is a get out of hell free card if the heart doesn’t change?
Here is the historical reality we see from the books of the bible that recount the return to Israel like Nehemiah and Ezra
Many got so comfortable in the affluence of Babylon they never left even when they were offered the chance to go home
Many walked away from the faith when God looked too weak to win in a momentary circumstance
Many gave up when the obedience to God was going to cost them what they wanted
Is that us?
Daniel has seen the people heart that led to the exile and he has seen that not much has changed in exile
That is the human condition that really needs rescue
The point of the sadness of the prayer is that Daniel knows that if the heart doesn’t change none of us stand a chance to live in the freedom of new life
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 3. The Sad Content of Prayer (5–14)
One author syas humanity in general is averse to admitting sin and guilt
What we prefer to do is make a God in our own image who affirms what we want him to affirm so we can live how we want with our own God’s blessing
That was Israel and it is no different today
Daniel models where to start when we are in the exile of this life outside of Eden
We mourn things aren’t how they are supposed to be
We mourn our sin and the sin of others that has hurt us
Jesus tells us that is the first step of being Gospel happy in Matthew 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
What makes us so happy about mourning things aren’t how they are supposed to be?
It makes you in awe at the rest of the rescue story
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 3. The Sad Content of Prayer (5–14)
one of the primary marks of a Christian is that he or she continually mourns over his or her sins. Herman Veldkamp puts it well:
What distinguishes us from the world is not that we are less wicked but that by the grace of God we have learned to see our wickedness for what it is and that we confess our sins. The church is the only body on earth that confesses sin. Where the confession of sin dies out, the church is no longer church
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 3. The Sad Content of Prayer (5–14)
Daniel’s concern (at 13b–14) seems to be that there is precious little of such sadness and mourning among Israel in his own time. They have gone through all this disaster (13a) and are without home, without temple, without freedom, and—sadly—without repentance
Aren’t we the same?
We hate a world of cancer and regret
We hate that we keep falling back into the same old sin patterns or vices
But we aren’t broken by the sin that shatters the world to the point we mourn to God over it and stand in awe that he is moving all of world history to make every sad moment of your life come untrue
That is the posture
Now he models the content
The Request - 15-19
The Request - 15-19
He is asking for Restoration bigger and deeper then simply going home as unchanged people
The Message of Daniel: His Kingdom Cannot Fail 4. The Primary Concern of Prayer (15–19)
His primary request comes in verse 16: Let your anger and your fury turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill.
Without a rehabilitation of our heart we will run right back to the same patterns of behaviors that made a mess of our lives in the first place
Sure they could return
Sure he will save us when we repent and believe
But what good is it if we are the same old people
We need a greater Land to return too then a burnt down Jerusalem
We need a return to Eden
We need hearts that no longer default to the same old sin patterns in the face of life
That is the Gospel
One day a greater land promise is coming where everything will be made right and we won’t even remember the names of the sin we so easily run too
I don’t know about you but that is a better land then a patch of dirt in the middle east today
To Daniel this was about God’s reputation and name
This is God’s people and his reputation was damaged in a way in the worlds eyes when His people went into exile
Now make your name great again God…make it great to the cosmos that you alone can save us from our enemies and save us from oursleves
The cross of Christ and sinners being saved puts on cosmic dispaly that our God alone is God
Heaven is shook in the fullfillment of Daniels words coming true in Jesus
It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. These things have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—angels long to catch a glimpse of these things.
Restoration is the request
And a greater restoration then we can dream of is promised
Gods Solution (20-27)
Gods Solution (20-27)
As is the case in Daniel getting an answer he is probably left saying I wish i didn’t ask
How is God going to save us from an ultimate exile?
How will the line of David where the Messiah come survive this disaster?
How will God end this 70 years…and is it actually a literal 70 years…God tells him yes…and no
The angel Gabriel appears to him to deliver a message from God.
Gabriel tells Daniel that his prayer has been heard, and he is given a vision of the future.
Gabriel explains that seventy "sevens" (often interpreted as weeks or periods of seven years) are determined for the people of Israel and Jerusalem to accomplish certain prophetic events.
These events include the end of sin, the atonement for iniquity, the bringing in of everlasting righteousness, and the anointing of the Most Holy.
Gabriel outlines a timeline:
From the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of an Anointed One (Messiah), there will be 7 sevens (49 years).
After this, there will be 62 sevens (434 years) until the Anointed One is "cut off" (a reference to the Messiah's death).
After the Messiah's death, the people of the ruler who will come (often interpreted as the Roman Empire) will destroy the city and the sanctuary.
A final "seven" (7 years) will be marked by a covenant between the ruler and many, but it will end in desolation, with the abomination that causes desolation.
This prophecy is the promise of the coming of Christ, His death, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and future events yet to come.
Daniel is asking are the 70 years over...and Gabriel says in a sense it is but in a way it is not 70 years there will be 70 sets of 7.
Now this is going to be a head spinning explosion of words but i am going to explain it.
the true threat to our soul...our sin is…. gloriously being dealt with in an unimaginable way and they miss it.
This sums it all up though….
British Pastor Richard Coekin says these last verses are summed up this way:
“There is a BIG PLAN to deal with Sin”
That is what God is doing…
Verse 24- 27 are about all that God is going to accomplish through Jesus.
God is not interested simply in ending the punishment for sin.
leaving us to all repeat it again
God is moving all of history to end what causes the sin.
Look at verse 24 tucked in it is the point of all that God is moving human history too: to put an end to sin
He is about wiping every tear from our eye on the day he makes everything sad come untrue
He is saying I am not just gonna fix a momentary discomfort…i am going to make a way to the place where you won’t even remember the name of the thing that breaks you
Thank God that is His plan
God knew one day a boy named Jason would be born 2000 years later and I would need a savior!!
Israel getting some dirt back wasn’t gonna save me.
Jesus’ death would and that’s what he did. He has a big plan to deal with sin.
God said Daniel, Cyrus will let you back into Jerusalem but my people at West City Church in 2400 years need an atoning death and sacrifice to deal with their sin.
Praise God he is not so short sighted as we are.
This is what is happening and then Gabriel explains 3 historical stages of this long period of set time.
There is the waiting, the arrival, and the last days..
There is the waiting, the arrival, and the last days..
The waiting
The waiting
Verse 25 the waiting...
Know and understand this:
From the issuing of the decree
to restore and rebuild Jerusalem
until an Anointed One, the ruler,
will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.
It will be rebuilt with a plaza and a moat,
but in difficult times.
This is one of those moments where God is telling Daniel..it’t gonna take a minute just watch me work this out and be in awe
And it was coming at just the right time
The arrival
The arrival
There is the Arrival in verse 26...26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall cut off and shall have nothing…
this speaks of the death of Christ as he Cried out My God My God why have you forsaken me on the Cross.
Jesus was cut off to endure hell in our place.
The simplest math of all these numbers assumes that it comes out to around 490 years... sevens take you to 33 AD by the babylonian calendar...march of AD 33
Any idea of what happened in the spring of AD 33?
when Christ was crucified
But after the salvation, the resurrection, will come the end..the 70th 7 in the text. Verse 27: 27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week,7 and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. zAnd on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until athe decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
The last days
The last days
The last days are represented by this last 7…
The middle of the 7 has happened in AD 70 when Roman emperor Titus conquered Jerusalem and put an end to sacrifices set up pagan idols and took the temple to the Ground as Jesus warned.
We are in the last part of the 7 today.
If Daniel was praying for the first coming…we pray for the second
We live in this in between time of trial and tribulation as he did.
Just like the original hearers needed
Just like our brothers and sisters in North Korea and India need today
Our God wins in the end
And we should be like daniel and pray the end comes and cancer and funerals and our sin is gone
We should pray longing for everything to be made right
The oldest copy we have of daniel is dated to 100 BC
that means it was written before all of this happened…and all of it came true
If he moved all of human history to bring Jesus once
I can trust he is moving all of every detail today to bring Jesus back
he is getting you to Revelation 21:1-4
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
So we pray in desperation…come quickly Lord Jesus
Lets Pray
