Israel's Future, Pt 2
Daniel 9:24-25
Daniel 9:24‑25 Take your Bible, will you please? And follow it as we study tonight in the ninth chapter of Daniel. Daniel, chapter 9. One of the great exciting prophetic portions of the Word of God, Daniel chapter 9. And we're looking in these days at verses 20 through 27, the last half of the great ninth chapter of Daniel. Now let me see if I can't give you an introduction that will help you to find your focus as we look again at this text.
Jeremiah, the prophet, was a very special man. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. And Jeremiah's role was different than Daniel's.
For Jeremiah lived before the children of Israel were taken into captivity. And his ministry was to warn them about the inevitability of that catastrophic judgment of God. For if there was one thing that Israel cherished it was its independence, its national existence, its autonomy, its personal identification as God's people. But Jeremiah came as a messenger of God to tell them that unless they repented from their sin, they would undergo divine judgment and they would be taken out of their land to become prisoners of a foreign nation.
For years Jeremiah warned them. He warned them in what he said and he put on vivid living demonstrations, object lessons, to show them what was coming. And through all the years of Jeremiah's ministry, nobody listened to him, nobody heeded what he said, they ignored him. They shoved him aside and finally threw him in a pit. But Jeremiah lived to see his prophecies come to pass. He lived to see the Babylonian siege that ended in the capture of the city of Jerusalem and the decimation of the nation. He lived to see an unrepentant, rebellious, sinful people carried off into captivity. Now Jeremiah wrote of this captivity and it provides for us a very important setting for the ninth chapter of Daniel. In Jeremiah chapter 25 verse 9, Jeremiah wrote this: Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant," God used Nebuchadnezzar, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them and make them an horror and an hissing and perpetual desolations. Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of millstones and the light of the lamp and this whole land shall be a desolation and an horror and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years."
In the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah, this is repeated. Verse l0:
For thus saith the Lord, After seventy years are accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you in causing you to return even unto this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil. And then verse l2, And then shall you call upon Me and you shall go and pray unto Me and I will hearken unto you and you shall seek Me and find Me when you shall search for Me with all your heart.
And I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will turn away your captivity and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places to which I have driven you, saith the Lord, and I will bring you again into the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive.
Now Jeremiah gives the prophecy of the Babylonian captivity and indicates it will last 70 years, first of all, in chapter 25 and then emphasizing not the captivity but the restoration 70 years later, he repeats the prophecy in chapter 29. Now with that in mind, look at the ninth chapter of Daniel and you will see how this all begins. Verse 2, In the first year of his reign,. that is the reign of Darius who was the king of the Medo‑Persian Empire in its first year. The first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by. books the number of the years,"
that is the duration of the captivity, concerning which the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem."
Now, Daniel is reading Jeremiah. It isn't that Daniel for the first time discovers Jeremiah, he has known what Jeremiah prophesied. But now Daniel has been in captivity 68 or 69 years and he knows that he is very close to the time of the restoration and no doubt he is familiar with the fact that Isaiah predicted that it would be Cyrus who would give the decree to return. And I take it that Darius and Cyrus are the same individual, most likely Darius being a title and Cyrus being his proper name. And so he senses that the fulfillment of Isaiah's indication regarding Cyrus is possible. He knows that he himself has been in captivity for 68 or 69 years and if God started counting the 70 with the first deportation, it has to be very near when the Lord is going to restore his people to his land.
But he also knows that Jeremiah said it will be when the people turn their heart toward Me, and when the people seek Me with all their heart and when the people turn back in a spiritual dimension. And so, immediately then in verse 3 of chapter 9, he sets his face to the Lord to seek by prayer and supplication with fasting and sack cloth and ashes and he begins to confess his sin and the sins of his people. In other words, he knows there has to be a spiritual response that precipitates the end of the captivity.. So, Daniel is studying the prophecies to get his bearings regarding God's time table. Now may I say at this point that that's precisely what we're doing to? We're endeavoring to understand Daniel so we, too, can get our bearings prophetically, so we, too, can understand what is happening in the flow of history. And this is, frankly, a very good illustration of how to understand prophecy.
I would just point out one thing that just hits me very hard here and that is that when Daniel read the term "seventy years," what did he think that meant? He thought it meant seventy years, didn't he? What amazes me as you read various and sundry Bible commentators is that when the Bible says seventy years, they immediately go into instant hocus‑pocus and they invent all kinds of fantastic symbols which were not the case in Daniel's mind.
And I think it's interesting, also, that when Daniel found out what the prophetic scheme was, he didn't become a prophecy buff and put on his pajamas and sit on the roof. He didn't just play fascination with prophecy. He got on his knees and began to confess his sin to get ready for what God was going to do. That's a proper response because God had given as far back as the twenty‑sixth chapter of Leviticus the condition for blessing and the condition for blessing was confession of sin and obedience to God's standards.
So Daniel prays and he prays from verse 3 to l9 and in verse 20 the answer comes. And that's the text we're going to look at tonight. And we already started it and we're just going to kind of move along.
Tremendous text.
Now, first of all, we mentioned there are three perspectives and three persons in this passage verses 20 to 27. First, there's the circumstances of Daniel, then the coming of Gabriel, and finally the communication of God. Now we've already seen the circumstances of Daniel in verse 20. He was speaking and praying and confessing his sin and the sins of his people Israel. He was presenting his supplications before God and his concern was for the holy mountain of God not for his own purposes and his own goals and his own projects, but for God's. And so, he is communicating with God. That is his circumstance at the moment.
We then move, secondly, to the coming of Gabriel in verse 2l. In the very process of Daniel being involved in prayer, Gabriel arrives, being caused to fly swiftly, the text says. It doesn't take angelic beings long to get from heaven to earth and he moved fast. And he came with an answer, incredible answer. He said in the end of verse 23, therefore understand the matter and consider the revelation." In other words, Gabriel says to Daniel, "Daniel, don't miss this one."
You know, even the best of us can kind of tune in and tune out, can't we? Even the best of us come to times in our lives when we, by our human weakness, sort of miss great realities.
I'm under no illusions, folks, I want you to know that I know you don't hear everything I say. I know that because I get wrong answers when I ask you sometimes. I know. And I know you come in and out.
You're distracted by the...somebody. in front of you who is doing something, or your mind wanders. But may I say to you what Gabriel said to Daniel? Don't miss this one. And if you go away a little bit loose on it, get the tape.
Now God knew that there could be even in a good man like Daniel a little bit of mind wandering in something so mind‑boggling as this prophecy that's about to come and he might get a little lost in the shuffle. And so he says, If you get anything, please get this." You haven't learned at all yet, Daniel. Something to be said for humility.
that can still listen and still learn. Many of us need to be delivered from the false and fatal idea that we've already. got it all. The Lord delivers me from that thought all the time.
That brings me to the third point,the communication of God‑‑ because in verse 24 to 27, you have the message that Gabriel brings from God. The circumstances of Daniel‑‑he's praying. The coming of Gabriel .
dispatched from God with the answer. The communication of God, the most incredible prophecy regarding the history of Israel ever given in the Bible. And we began last time to look at it. Verse 24, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city to finish the transgression and to 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 a Holy of Holies," is the literal rending..rendering. Now, just by way of reminder. This is the overall perspective. Gabriel says I have a prophecy, a period of time called seventy weeks" in the text is determined. Now that word "determined" has to do with the sovereign, eternal plan of God. Comprehensively does God control all future events. Literally the Hebrew word means "to cut off." It's as if God has just cut off or cut loose a seventy‑week period, pulled it right out of human history and in that period He will accomplish His purposes with His people Israel.
Notice again in verse 24, it is not only determined by God but it is determined by God upon thy people and upon thy holy city. That is referring to Daniel's people who were the Jews and Daniel's city which is Jerusalem. So it is a prophecy. about the Jews and Jerusalem. In contrast to the prophecies prior in the book of Daniel which were mainly dealing with the Gentile world powers. This one deals with Israel. And the purpose of it is all given there in verse 24. There is a six‑fold purpose for this seventy‑week period. Three are positive and three are negative. First are the negative ones: to finish the transgression. That is to restrain sin in principle.
Secondly, to make an end of sins, plural. Not only to restrain firmly sin in principle but to break the power of sin in specific, not only the principle of sin but the sins themselves.
Thirdly, to make reconciliation, or literally it is the word used in Genesis for the pitch that Noah put on his boat. And what it means is "to cover over iniquity, to be a covering for iniquity." And we know the covering for iniquity was nothing less than the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
So, God has determined a 70‑week period to do away with sin in general as a principle, sin in specific as an act, and to make reconciliation or covering or atonement for iniquity. And having dealt with sin, there are then three positive things. He will bring in everlasting righteousness. This is a great thought and we didn't really develop it last week, let me just give you a footnote. The word really means "the righteousness of eternity," or the righteousness of the ages." Do you know that there is a righteousness of eternity. In other words, there is a true righteous standard. There is a righteousness in the mind of God that is the righteousness of eternity, but it's never been brought into the earth. We function on a man‑made system. The righteousness of the ages indicates that there are rules and standards of life that are right and they've always been right and they'll always be right and they are God's standards and they. are not now in vogue in the world.
But there will come a day when the 70 weeks are over that the world and all of man's forever will be controlled b.v eternal principles of justice and equity that Daniel calls the righteousness of the ages.
Then the Lord will seal up the vision and prophecy, that is it will be the end of revelation, there will be no more need for scriptural revelation or prophetic revelation. Isaiah 2 tells us that God will dwell in the presence of the earth and will be our teacher and the nations will be brought before Him to learn. God Himself will teach.
And then, finally, to anoint a Holy of Holies. There will be in the Kingdom a building of a millennial temple and that is going to be a marvelous thing.
Now, you get the picture.