Moving Forward with Repentance

The Horror of Repentance

The Same-Sex Marriage plebiscite is move the debate over homosexuality into top gear, and in the process we’re going to be forced to look at this issue from many angles - whether we agree with those angles or not.

This morning I have no intention of exploring those arguments right now, other than looking at one aspect which I believe shows an interest insight into our society.

You see, one of the central ideas behind proponents of same-sex marriage, is that people should be free to do whatever feels right to them. The idea that someone could possibly say that something that feels right to them is actually not right, is to them, an anathema. In other words, for them, you just can’t deny someone this right to act on what they feel is acceptable. It’s the reason you often hear them talk about the issue in terms of denying human rights.

In Christianity, acceptable behaviour is not decided upon by feelings, which we know can be deceiving at the best of times. Instead, our basis for our ethics come from God, who created the universe in the first place.

As I said, my intention is not to explore the issue of homosexuality this morning, rather, I want to show that through this core difference whereby one determines values by feelings, and the other by God, we can see how repentance becomes such a difficult issue to deal with.

You see, repentance literally means to turn around and change your ways.

Before you get to repentance however you need to have a direction in which to turn. If that direction is determined by feelings, then repentance becomes very superficial.

Example of stealing from workplace

Take for example you may steal from your workplace only to get caught. Upon getting caught you realise that you’re about to be fired, so you repent, maybe even genuinely, but the basis of your repentance is that you don’t want to lose your job rather than a realisation that you have done something inherently wrong.

Why repentance is hard?

I believe that this is actually one of the reasons it is so hard to convince people they need God - because they don’t think they have done anything wrong.

God’s way no longer has any bearing on the way we act, so to tell people they need to repent before God becomes a laughable idea.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking can easily seep into our way of thinking, and unless we do something seriously wrong, it is easy to conclude that we don’t need to repent.

What I want to show today by looking at Daniel’s prayer, is that as we move forward towards the day of Christ’s return, we need to have a repentant heart.

Now a quick word before I continue. Many of you might be familiar with this chapter, but probably because of the last section which regards the seventy seven’s, or what many translations actually says seventy weeks. Unfortunately, I think that section almost hi-jacks our attention away from the main message of repentance, and I want to be careful that I don’t let it hi-jack my message today - but don’t worry, I will still look at this a bit later on.

Into the passage

We’ve been working our way through the book of Daniel for the last few months now, and we’ve seen how it is set in the period when Israel was sent into exile by Babylonia.

As Daniel reminds us right at the start of this chapter in verse 2, Jeremiah actually prophesied about this period. For those not familiar with Jeremiah, he was a prophet who bravely spoke up for God in Jerusalem in the lead up to Babylon wiping them out.

In particular, we find Jeremiah specifically telling us that the nation of Israel will be taken into exile for a period of 70 years, which if you are the type of person who likes to look up references, you can see that in , . Now I already mentioned something about 70, so just keep this reference to 70 in the back of your head for the moment because we will come back to it.

For the moment however, the immediate context makes it clear that Daniel understood Israel to be near or close to the end of the 70 year period.

The prayer

And so this is what prompt his prayer.

Imagining yourself as Daniel

Now if you can try to picture yourself in this scenario. You’re in your late eighties, maybe even pushing into your nineties.

Although it has now been 70 odd years, you remember yourself as a teenager growing up in Jerusalem. You remember the huge stones that made up the temple, and the reverence that was shown to it.

You remember the sounds and smells of animals being sacrificed as the priest atoned for the sins of the people.

You may recall it wasn’t perfect but it was your home and it had become as much your identity as your very family.

As you’re remembering those early years, your memory is interrupted by the intrusion. You were forced to leave that place that you so identified with and instead moved to a foreign land. And while that foreign land might not have been all bad, every single day you keenly felt the longing to be back at the place you identify with.

But despite that longing, you have spent the best part of seventy years away from it.

Now you recall a proven prophet of God who said that this would end after 70 years, which you calculate to be about now.

Now with all this in mind, try to think what sort of prayer you might say?

I could well imagine my prayers in this situation pining for the days of old. Certainly I know that it is easy to look at the past with rose-coloured glasses.

Interestingly, I believe that this tendency is what happens when you focus too much on feelings. When your prayers are focused on God rather than your own feelings, I believe the result will be much closer to what we see in Daniel’s prayer.

Content of prayer

The prayer starts with giving praise to God - something which I think is always a good way to start prayers. Mostly because he deserves our praise, but also because it is a good way to avoid the tendency to make the prayer too much about ourselves.

You can see this praise in verse 4 where he starts by calling him great and awesome, but it is the next statement in his praise which will feed into the following prayer - namely that God is one “who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments”

You see, by realising that God is a loving God who has made a covenant with his people, we gain the all-important objective guidelines for which we are to judge ourselves.

And so as the prayer continues, rather than focusing on the fact that the Israelites have somehow ‘served’ their time, or done their dues so to speak, when God is the measure, the right and proper thing to do is to repent of your ways.

Repentance

Starting in verse 5, Daniel starts repenting on behalf of the people.

It’s a recognition that the situation they have found themselves in is entirely their own fault.

This actually hasn’t been a major feature of the book up to this point. Prior to this, the focus has largely been on the ungodly foreign nations that stand in God’s way - but while it hasn’t been explicit previously, there has always been the sense in which they are where they are because of their wrong doing, and chapter 9 just makes that explicit.

As the prayer continues, Daniel brings in the issue of shame. The way they have acted, both before and since the exile have not been up to God’s standard, and for this reason they have shame associated with them.

Sin against God

In verse 8 it is also explicitly made clear that their sins have been against God.

Now it’s important to note here that what becomes clear in scripture is that all sin is against God.

We see this in the case of David. If you know the story of King David, you’ll no doubt remember the story where he commits adultery with Bathsheba and then effectively has her husband murdered.

Following this, David shows true repentance, and we get a picture of this repentance in .

If you’ve never read it, it is worth reading the whole thing, but for now, I want to point out verse 4 which says: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight”.

It almost seems strange that when his sin is essentially adultery and murder, that he claims it is only against God - but that’s because he has recognised the bigger picture.

Certainly his sins did affect others, and so in one sense you could say he sinned against certain individuals, however when you understand what God has done and set up for us, no matter what the sin, it is essentially against God.

The consequences

As we get into verse 11, Daniel then considers another aspect of the covenant that God made with his people. The is the covenant that actually goes right back in the history of Israel when Moses was around.

It was actually the book of Deuteronomy that most clearly spells out this covenant, and interestingly, if you study that book, you can actually see similarities with how standard covenants were made in that time of history.

But I won’t go into all that detail now, except to point out that at the end of these covenant documents there was always a section on consequences for either following it or not as the case may be.

In Deuteronomy, you’ll find this clearly spelt out in chapter 28, where about the first fifth of the chapter concerns the blessings for obedience, but then the last four fifth concern the curses for disobedience.

In fact, in this section, you see that this time of exile in Babylon was essentially foreshadowed.

Daniel is making clear references to this in the second half of verse 11 when he talks about the curses and sworn judgements written in the law of Moses.

You see Daniel is not naive enough to think that Israel are innocent, but knows that they have got what they deserve.

And he knows that the future is not just going back to how things were, but there has to be change. In fact, as we will see soon, that change can’t just be a small change on what has happened, but a fundamental shift.

The Appeal

And so this brings us to verse 15 where the prayer shifts into the appeal for change. Daniel knows that they can’t keep on going living in the way that they have. They are in need of God to bring them back so they can be the people God wants them to be.

In verse 16 he asks God to turn away his anger and his wrath.

But it is in verse 17 that we actually see the basis for this request. The basis is not self-focused, as you may well imagine it could be, but instead it is focused on God’s good name.

Just look at some of the words he uses. Half way through verse 17 he says “for your sake...”. And in verse 18 he adds “the city that bears your Name”. And again in verse 19 he says “for your sake, my God”.

Just look at the last half of verse 18. “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy”.

So often our own prayers can be focused on ourselves - and I think this is because we don’t recognise who we are talking to. God is not some genie in a bottle who is there to grant our wishes. He is not there to just serve us in the ways we want. Rather prayer is about us communicating with the one who has it all in control.

The fact that God invites us to bring our requests to him is not because we deserve it, but because he has a deep love for us.

This prayer really expresses the attitude that we so desperately need to show. Daniel is clearly aligning himself and his people with God. He is not trying to twist God into fitting into his own ideas and feelings.

Gabriel

Well, this prayer then leads to an encounter with Gabriel, who tells him that a word went out when he was praying. Exactly what that means I’m not sure, but with it resulting in Gabriel’s visit, I think we can safely say it was a good thing.

But then starting in verse 24, the message he gives starts to become a little cryptic. 4

Gabriel tells Daniel that seventy “sevens” (or weeks), are to be decreed for your people and your holy city. And then he lists six things which are to happen during this time.

Those six things are:

finish transgression

to put an end to sin

to atone for wickedness

to bring in everlasting righteousness

to seal up vision and prophecy

and to anoint the Most Holy Place

Now some of these are easier to understand than others.

The first three can be seen as a natural conclusion to the prayer that Daniel has prayed. They all consider some aspect of sin coming to an end in some way.

The first two describes that sin ceasing, however the third one describes it being atoned for - something which from a New Testament perspective, we know clearly refers to the work of Christ.

The next three talk about what we can look forward to. Certainly the idea of everlasting righteousness sounds wonderful.

The fifth one, which is to seal up vision and prophecy, is generally not thought to mean to seal in the sense of hiding it away, rather seal in the sense of giving it approval.

The last one about anointing the Most Holy Place is perhaps the hardest one to figure out. It could refer to the temple in someway, or as many people see it, a reference to Jesus who we are told in the New Testament is greater than the temple.

Gabriel elaborates somewhat by saying that the time starts when word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, although various dates are suggested for this. He then divides the 70 into three groups. The first is a group of 7, where it seems to imply the streets will be rebuilt, although this is a little ambiguous. The second is a group of 62 sevens, culminating in the Anointed One being put to death. And the third and final group is just one seven, which ends in the abomination that causes desolation.

It seems like it should be straight forward but it’s not and we are left with various puzzles. What are the seventy “sevens”, and what are the various markers that it is measuring?

There are a lot of different ideas, and I’m going to briefly look at some.

First, what is it that the seventy “sevens” is counting down?

It is a puzzle that has led to many different solutions, and to be honest, all of them have a few issues.

And secondly, what do we mean by seventy “sevens”?

It is a puzzle that has led to many different solutions, and to be honest, all of them have a few issues.

So let’s briefly look at some of these explanations.

Historical

One approach is sometimes called the historical interpretation. In this view, the Anointed One, is actually not associated with Jesus, rather proponents of this view consider the more general understanding that anyone appointed by God to do his work is anointed. Essentially this view sees the 70 years already served in Babylon being part of this period. Cyrus is the anointed one, and the period will end with the persecution the Jews suffered in the second century BC under Antiochus, which if you were here last week, we considered as part of our understanding of chapter 8.

Jesus as anointed one

Perhaps more common, is to assume the Anointed One actually refers to Jesus, which there is very good reason to assume as much. Various people have actually provided dates in which this prophecy adds up.

One commentator has shown a date of 455 being when Artaxerxes said that Jerusalem should be restored, and 49 years later, it was complete. And then 434 years after that (being 62 sevens), Jesus came. It all seems so perfect, except that it’s a bit of the case of fudging a few numbers to make it fit. A few of these dates are a bit unclear. However, even in this view, it’s a bit unsure what happens after the final 7 years.

For those who hold to a dispensational premillenial view (which is just a really fancy way of saying a seven year great tribulation period is going to immediately precede the final return of Christ, then they would often see the final 7 years being after a long pause. A pause that we are still in. That being said, there is no evidence that a pause is being suggested here.

Summing up

There are of course countless variations on these views, as well as a few other views as well.

However, as we’ve seen in chapters 7 and 8, there is almost a sense in which it is being deliberately ambiguous. Certainly I don’t think that it wants us to be too precise. After all, you may or may not know that the 70 years of exile prophesied by Jeremiah, actually wasn’t exactly 70. The precise number of years in exile depends on which date you start and finish the period, but which ever you choose, you will be hard pressed to make it fit to 70.

I believe we will do best if we keep the numbers somewhat symbolic.

Indeed this is where I want to draw my main point for today back into this discussion.

The main point of the chapter is that as we move forward we need to do so by repenting of our ways and aligning ourselves with God’s way.

We can get caught up with the time frames and exactly what is in view, but what is clear is that God is bringing things to a conclusion. A conclusion that will result in sin being eradicated, and God’s glorious kingdom set up. Whether or not the full picture that we are now aware of as New Testament believers was part of the seventy sevens or not as understood at the time, is almost beside the point, because clearly I believe it project towards it.

Our Task

What is left, is for us to consider what this means for us.

In short, it means that we know that the end is coming. Exactly how close that is we are no clearer in understanding, except that it is coming, and as it does, we are in need to bring ourselves in line with who God is.

We need to stop thinking in terms of what takes our fancy, or what suits me best, and instead in terms of what God wants for us.

In some matters such as sexual boundaries, it should generally be clear. On other matters, such as some of the big decisions we face, it will be less clear, but we need to be drawing ourselves close to God so that we can be better placed to hear him.

Daniel provides a very good template for how we approach this coming age with God. Recongising his greatness and our need to submit to him.

Let’s pray...