Sheridan, Liddon: Month Of Meetings-1989-12 ~ Daniel-The Prophet And The Book

Well, we're looking at Daniel chapter nine, and the first section of it is a, just an amazing prayer. I think it's one of the most wonderful prayers in all of God's word. Daniel, uh, is giving us that prayer in these first, uh, sixteen or seventeen verses, but he introduces the chapter first with these verses. Chapter nine, verse one: In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. Icon. Verse two, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by, and you should insert the word the there because it is in the original, the books, the number of the years concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. We won't have the time to read all of that, but it certainly will bless your heart if you go back and read it again. It is such a wonderful prayer. First of all, Daniel bases his prayer on the scriptures. He mentions the, the prophets in, uh, verse thirteen. he mentions Moses, verse six, he mentions the prophets, and in verse two, he mentioned Jeremiah. So he has this background for praying, the word of God. And you remember Jeremiah was a prophet who uh, prophesied in Judah when Daniel was just a young fellow. And now that Daniel has been taken into captivity, Jeremiah remains in Judah and continues to prophesy. And among his prophecies, you, we won't turn to it, but in Jeremiah chapter twenty five and verse eleven, he, uh, prophesies this: And this whole land shall be a desolation and an horror, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And then in Jeremiah twenty nine verse ten, for thus saith the Lord, after seventy years are accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my word toward you in causing you to return even unto this place. Jeremiah is speaking from Jerusalem, so when he says, cause you to return unto this place, he's talking about those that were taken captive into Babylon, that they would be brought back home to Jerusalem. And that's what Daniel is reading. He said, I understood by the books, and I'm sure he wasn't reading the comics, he was reading the scriptures, and that's why he refers to Jeremiah here. How amazing the way God works. You see, Jeremiah wrote that prophecy, and Jehoiakim, the king, took his pen knife and just cut it to pieces, part by part of that scroll, and threw it all in the fire and burned it up. And God said to Jeremiah, I want you to write it again. And so he wrote it again. And Jeremiah is finally taken into Egypt along with those, uh, uh, Jews that would not hear him when he told them, God said, stay in Judah, stay in Jerusalem, do not go to Egypt. And yet they wouldn't hear, and they carried Jeremiah himself to Egypt. And that those are his last prophecies that we read at the end of Jeremiah there in Egypt, and he dies in Egypt. But though Satan had sought to destroy that book through Jehoiakim, cutting it to pieces and burning it, lo and behold, here we find it in the hands of Daniel, up there in captivity in Babylon. How amazing God works, not only to produce his word, but to pro- protect and preserve his word. And the more we study the scriptures, and the more we find, uh, manuscripts, and the scholars decipher them for us, the more we see we have indeed the word of God. It just reinforces it, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which answered so many attacks of the liberals on such books as Isaiah. And it's just wonderful how God produced his word, and he preserves his word. And so Daniel has the books, and he reads, and he understands, having been in captivity himself now, uh, seventy years, he realizes that this time is at hand when God has said through Jeremiah that he'll let them return to their land. But you notice he doesn't just sit back and let God do it, strangely enough. He prays. And God expects us to pray. You know, one of the most shocking things that I ever learned in the Bible was when I was studying about the golden altar, and I read scriptures that show that our prayers turn the wheels of God's own program in time. And I wish I had time to go into that, but it's amazing. You'll find it in Revelation eight and in the first chapters of, of Luke, that when God is about to make some tremendous change, do a new thing, you'll find the prelude to it is the prayers of God's people. And it's utterly amazing that God would use your prayers and mine to turn the very wheels of his own program, which he's already said he's going to accomplish. But it just amazes me. That's the point. And so here Daniel prays. He doesn't sit back and say, well, you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it. No, he doesn't. He prays, and what a prayer. Notice the earnestness of his prayer in verse three, in sackcloth and fasting and in ashes. And it was an humble prayer because Daniel, of all people, didn't have to say, I have sinned. He has been true to God. He has been faithful to the nth degree. And yet he says, we have sinned. Our iniquities. And my, that's the way we should feel about the local assembly, that their problems are our problems, and that their needs are our needs, and that we should see the glory of God involved in his church, and it should be a burden upon our hearts, and we should include ourselves in the failure of the church as it is today. And so he takes it on himself in priestly intercession, which is praying for others and for the glory of God. And it was an humble prayer. And it was a prayer that was burdened for the glory of God himself. I must read those last two verses of that prayer. Look how he pleads with God to restore his city, his temple, and his people. Verses eighteen and nineteen. O my God, incline thine ear and hear, open thine eyes and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name. For we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, hearken and do. Defer not for thine own sake. O my God, for thy city and thy people are called by thy name. Don't you see the burden of his prayer is not get us out of this misery, though I'm sure he would like to have gotten out, but he prays, Lord, your name is being disgraced this way, and for your own name's sake, do this. Restore your people and your city. No wonder God sent the angel Gabriel to fly swiftly, as he says, to answer his prayer. We won't, uh, consider the angelic ministry here, but on Lord's Day morning, we most likely will, because the book of Daniel, especially when we come to chapter ten, is full of angelic ministry, what angels do, and their involvement in even international affairs. And so Gabriel comes, and he answers his prayer with a revelation, far more than Daniel was asking for. He, uh, gives him this time frame now for this same prophecy that we've been seeing right to the end of time, as in chapter seven. And he gives them the whole story as to time and his dealing with Israel and Jerusalem. And I would like for us to note that very carefully, that Daniel's prayer is not about the church. Daniel doesn't see the church. It was hid, as Paul says in Ephesians three, hid in times past, but now in Paul's day, in the New Testament day, the church- truth of the church was revealed for the first time. And so he's praying about Jerusalem and Israel, God's chosen nation. And you read that prayer and you'll see he continually refers to Israel or Judah and to the city. Thy city, Jerusalem, and thy people are become a reproach, he says. My people, Israel, he says in verse twenty. And so we have to keep this prophecy in focus, that it is not for the church. It is, it is for us to enter into the truth of it, but it is not concerning us, it's concerning Israel. All right, so we'll read what that revelation was. Verse twenty four, this is what Gabriel tells him. Seventy weeks or sevens are determined upon thy people. This He- this Hebrew word, uh, Shabuah here means seven. That's all it means. If you look it up in your concordance, it'll tell you that. It's a seven of anything. Our English word for it is a heptad, which means a seven. Just like our word dozen, though a dozen is twelve, and in this case it's seven, of course. But it's like our word dozen. We, if we ask for a dozen, we mean a dozen of anything. You have to spell it out, don't you, what you mean? A dozen what? Either the person understands what you want, you're looking at some eggs and you say, I want a dozen, and they know you mean a dozen eggs. And if you're not looking at them and you say, I want a dozen, they'll say, what? A dozen what? And that's the way this, this word is used in the Hebrew. It's the word weeks here is not a week as we understand it, though it can be that. It can be seven days, but it is a word that says a seven of anything, and you have to fill it in one way or another. So it actually says seventy sevens, or to use that English word, seventy heptads, or seven of something. Seventy sevens are determined upon thy people. Now that's Israel, because, uh, Daniel has just said that, as we noted in verse twenty. my people Israel. Seventy sevens are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city. That has to be Jerusalem. And now he lists six things that he says that are to be accomplished in this seventy sevens. Notice the first one. To finish the transgression. That's the way he expresses the sin of his people Israel. He calls it again and again in the scripture the transgression. And then to finish, to make an end of sins or to close up sins, which would mean to finally do away with sin completely and to bring in, as he goes on to say, righteousness. But we aren't to that one yet. To make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and he uses that word kophar, which means, uh, the- from the word to cover. It's the word atonement, to make atonement for sin. And though it was made at Calvary, Israel will not enter into their day of atonement until the end of the great tribulation, when he comes and they behold him whom they pierced and shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son. So he's including that to make atonement for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness. Can't you just, uh, hear Isaiah speaking of one day the kingdom would be set up and, and righteousness will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. What a day that will be, but it certainly isn't yet, is it? And to seal up the vision and prophecy, and he uses that same expression he used about sins, to make an end of sins or to close up sins. And so here it's to close up the vision and prophecy. That is, it's all completed and now being fulfilled finally. And so that is included among these six things he says will be accomplished in this period of seventy sevens. One more thing, he says, and to anoint the Most Holy, or as Darby translates it, the holy place, which would refer, of course, to the temple being restored and purified again. And so you have the six things that he said would be completed in this time frame. It's upon thy people and thy holy city. In other words, God is saying, I'm going to deal with your people, Israel, and with your holy city seventy sevens, and I will have completed all my purposes and promises concerning Israel and Jerusalem. Well, that's what you have here in these six things we've just read. Seventy sevens, and so we have that first on the chart. I- I apologize for this crude way this is written, but I had to do it myself, and I'm no artist, uh, and pre- usually when I use the overhead projector, I've had a artist to do everything, and it looked very neat. But this is, uh, just rough, but at least it will visualize what we want you to see, and I think it's necessary to see it in order to m- simplify it. So there's the statement, seventy sevens are determined upon your people and your holy city. And that, of course, is four hundred ninety. seventy sevens. Four hundred ninety. Well, let's say he meant days. Let's try it. uh at four hundred ninety. Well, it wouldn't, it nothing happened in four hundred ninety days. If you make it months, it that won't come anywhere near. None of it took place within that period. But when you look at it as years, then it will make sense. And so it obviously is seventy sevens of years, or uh four hundred and ninety years. And so I tried to set that up a little apart from these figures so you won't confuse them as if together. This is our total figure that we have to work with, isn't it? Four hundred and ninety years. All right, now I'm not breaking it down, God's breaking it down now, and let's see how he breaks it down. Verse twenty five is going to tell us when to start counting those years, and he's going to tell us how many of them he wants us to look at first of all. Know therefore, this is verse twenty five— Know therefore and understand. He didn't say be all confused and befuddled. No, he said know and understand. And so certainly you and I can know and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem. I can imagine old Daniel just saying, hallelujah, he's going to put it back. He's going to restore the city and rebuild it. And God says, from the time the commandment goes forth to restore and build Jerusalem, just like you've been praying for, Daniel. From the time that decree goes forth, unto the Messiah, the Prince, until Messiah should come, will be seven sevens, and so now we've put that down, shall be seven sevens and threescore and two. Threescore is sixty two, of course. Sixty two sevens. So we put those down just like he said. I didn't put it this way, God did. Seven sevens, that's forty nine years, and threescore and two, are sixty two sevens, he says. And that's four hundred and thirty four when you multiply sixty two by seven. And so you total those two, because he said that's how much time it's going to be from the decree to restore and build Jerusalem unto Messiah shall be, and there's the total of it, four hundred and eighty three years. That's the total of those two. Uh, you can barely see that six over there, but that's sixty nine. That's adding those two, seven and sixty two, sixty nine sevens, in other words, the total over here, and it's four hundred and eighty three, or just like you would get if you added the years here. Forty nine and four thirty four makes four hundred and eighty three. So what's he saying? It will be four hundred and eighty three years from the time the decree goes for to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah, the Prince. All right, that decree, when did it go forth? Well, scholars agree almost, uh, completely on this. They might disagree on other things, but they agree that this decree went forth as we see it in Nehemiah, uh, chapter two and verse one. Nehemiah was cup bearer to the king, and he made that request, and the king granted it. The king Artaxerxes, king of Persia. The king said, wherefore the king said unto me, why is thy countenance sad? Well, to save time, let's go, uh, farther over. He said, uh, if it pleased the king, verse five, and thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou wouldst send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's sepulchers, that I may build it. And the king, with the queen sitting by him, said, how long shall thy journey be? And when will you return? And so the king was pleased to send him, send him. And verse seven, if it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors, and so forth. And so the decree is issued here by the king of Persia, and the date which the scholars agree on here is March the fourteenth, of four forty BC. And that's our beginning date. That four hundred and eighty three years began with that decree. And then he said, unto Messiah. And we know the Lord Jesus officially presented himself as the king when he rode on that colt into Jerusalem that day. That was a very official thing he was doing in fulfillment of Zechariah chapter nine. behold thy king, not thy savior, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and lowly, and so forth. And so he was fulfilling that prophecy, and he was officially presenting himself as the king, and that's why the crowd put down palm branches, speaking of royalty and victory and triumph, and other branches before him, and they shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Notice it's the king, and that's the date, and that was in AD thirty two, and it was April, the month of April. I believe it was the sixth of April. Now, Sir Robert Anderson, who is a great scholar, uh, has done a wonderful work on this. He has gone back and taken the Jewish calendar, and he has synchronized it with our calendar so as to show, uh, even how many days this would be, not just years. And, uh, he's shown that it was one hundred and seventy three thousand eight hundred and eighty days, that is, uh, hundred and eighty three years would be that many days, uh, according to the Jewish year, which is a year of three hundred and sixty days. They have to tack on an extra month, uh, now and then to get their, uh, calendar balance corrected because they have thirty-day months, and certainly that was the biblical way of figuring months. Uh, for example, you have it in Genesis seven uh, verses eleven and twelve, and then if you compare that with, uh, uh, Genesis, uh, eight and verse four, and finally with Genesis seven and verse twenty four, you find that it's thirty days to a month there, what we're referring to, but to save time, we just can't go into it, is that it was told us five months that the water, uh, was high, and it took five months for it to abate. And then it puts it in days and says one hundred and fifty days. So that obviously makes a month thirty days. Uh, that's one of the scriptures that shows that's the way the biblical, uh, m- month and year is figured on the basis of a thirty-day month. So that's how he, uh, worked it out, and he shows it was one hundred and seventy-three thousand eight hundred and eighty days. And then checking it all out, Sir Robert Anderson shows that it was to the very day One hundred and seventy three thousand eight hundred and eighty days from the time of that decree in four forty BC by the king of Persia for them to go back and rebuild Jerusalem until Christ rode into Jerusalem on that donkey, presenting himself as king. And so the Jews certainly should have been looking for their Messiah. It was prophesied. All right, then what? Well, I'd like to call to your attention that he's left out one seven, hasn't he? Over here you've got sixty nine sevens, and he started off with seventy sevens. We've had the sixty nine fulfilled when Christ rode into Jerusalem that day. So all you've got left is one seven. I wonder if one of you brethren would come and try to help me with this, uh, overhead projector, if we can just slide it up until we can see that one week that's left. That's it, and over, that's fine. Later on, we'll need to lift it just a little more, but right now, that's fine. One seven is all that's left. If you take sixty nine, the total number that he gave us to start with, from the entire figure of seventy, uh, you have one left, one seven, or just seven years. So it's seven years that are left out of the total four hundred and ninety years. We've run it off the screen, but imagine it up there, the four hundred and ninety. We have just one seven-year period left, and I did not do that. No premillennialist did that. God did it, and I would remind you of that. We are not playing with figures. God separated this one seven-year period from all of the other. Well, what happens now after that? All right, look at verse, uh, Twenty six. Well, uh, you have to take the middle of verse twenty five. Uh, he's accounting for the, uh, the very reason that he separated this like you have here, instead of just saying sixty nine sevens, like he could have said, he broke it down into seven sevens and sixty two sevens. Why did he do that? The reason is obvious. It took this amount of time to rebuild the wall and the city, the streets and the wall of the city. And so he broke it down that way. seven sevens, in other words, forty nine years, and then you still have the sixty two. And so he says, let me read the middle of verse twenty five again. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. So that's what happened in this first part of this total of 483 years. And after the threescore and two weeks, so after you have this period of rebuilding, and then you have the sixty two, and after that, which would be, bring us to the same point, four hundred and eighty-three years. After the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. You realize it was the same week that they de- acclaimed him king, that they cried crucify him, crucify him. And so we're at the same period. He has come, and now we see what happens. First, he's cut off. I never will forget having the privilege of speaking to a crowd of Jewish businessmen in, uh, St. Louis, Missouri at the Sheraton. Unfortunately, it's not Sheridan Hotel, it's Sheraton. And, uh, I was scared as I could be because I was afraid I might be too blunt and run them off and ruin what these dear Christian Jews were trying to do to reach, uh, fellow Jews that were unsaved. And I prayed my heart out, and, uh, I think the Lord gave me a safe way of presenting their Messiah to them. And one of the things, I stayed in the Old Testament, and I was picking out the credentials of Messiah. And this was one of them. Messiah shall be cut off and shall have nothing. The room had been very quiet up to that point, but when I read that, and that's the Darby translation, which is always accurate. I'm not a Darbyite, but I know a giant when I see one, and Darby was a giant and a scholar to the nth degree, and his translation is tremendous. And he translated it, Messiah shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And he didn't have anything, did he? No kingdom. Crucified. And as I said that I heard a commotion in the room, and I looked up to see what was happening, and these, uh, Jewish businessmen knew that some of those men had Hebrew Bibles with them, and they couldn't believe that what I had just read was in their Bible, and so they were leaning over and trying to get to see if it was really so. And we had a time of discussion afterward, and that was the time they would have bombarded me if they could have found a fault in that. And there was not one word, because they knew it said that, and they still can't see. Messiah shall be cut off and shall have nothing. He was crucified the same week in which he presented himself as Messiah. All right, what else happens? And the people of the prince that shall come. Who's this prince that shall come? Well, he's told us already in chapter seven about this little horn, this prince that's coming, this ruler, the man of sin. But he doesn't say he's going to do this, he says his people will do it. The people of the prince that shall come. Who are the people of this little horn here? It's the Romans, of course. And so he's saying the Romans shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Can you believe that? Can you not imagine what must have gone through poor Daniel's heart? He's been praying that the city and the sanctuary will be restored, and God has said it's going to be rebuilt, and now God says it's going to be destroyed again. That's precisely what he said. The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And of course, that's what they did in seventy AD under Titus. Titus didn't want the temple destroyed, even though he was the general. He did not order it, he forbid it. He wanted to preserve temples, no matter what religion, but the soldiers saw the gold, and they had to have it, and so they burned it down to get all the gold out, even from the cracks in the rocks. And then what? And on to the end. The end of it shall be with a flood, which is the way of speaking so often in the scriptures of the enemy coming in like a flood, shall be with a flood and unto the end. And as Darby and the NASB agrees with it, it reads, unto the end, war, even the desolations determined. And let me ask you, what has been the history of Jerusalem ever since Titus, Titus's soldiers destroyed in seventy AD? It's been nothing but a battlefield. The armies of the south, the armies of the north, they sweep back and forth, and poor little Israel caught in the middle, and she's been like a football kicked around, and her land has been desolate all these centuries. And that's precisely what he said would happen. What's next? Verse twenty seven: And he. Who's the he? Well, according to Hebrew grammar, when you have a pronoun sticking out like that, it refers back to its nearest possible antecedent. And the nearest possible antecedent to that pronoun ye is the prince in the middle of verse twenty six. The prince that shall come. He shall confirm the covenant, or a covenant, it says in the original. He shall confirm a covenant with the many, that is, with many of the Jews. For one seven. God now brings it back in, doesn't he? And it's in association with that prince that's to come. Well, my time's gone, and I'm sorry we'll have to stop there. Remember, we've got this one seven left. Seven years that God says he has left to deal with Israel, to bring them into all their promises. Shall we close in a word of prayer? Our Father, we do praise thee for thy precious word. We thank thee, Father, that it's simple, that it simply demands our wanting to know it, and with perseverance reading it until we understand it, taught by thy spirit. We thank thee that thou hast revealed these things unto babes, and so we qualify, and we realize that you can show us your mysteries in your word, and we pray we might appreciate this privilege and give more of our time to reading prophecy until it grips our souls and we walk with thee in the light of thy truth. We ask for this with thanksgiving for thy goodness to us in our worthy Savior's