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Daniel chapter nine, verses twenty through twenty-seven.
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It says this.
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While I, that is Daniel, was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and making my requests to the Lord my God for his holy hill.
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While I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice.
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He instructed me and said to me, Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding.
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As soon as you begin to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.
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Therefore consider the word and understand the vision.
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Seventy sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city, to 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.
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Know and understand this from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed one, the ruler, comes, there will be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens.
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It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.
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After the sixty-two sevens, the anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing.
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The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.
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The end will come like a flood.
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War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
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He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven.
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In the middle of the seven he will put an end to sacrifice and offering.
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And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.
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Let's pray.
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Lord, we thank you for your message to us in this text.
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Many aspects of this text we confess are not easy to understand.
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And we ask, Lord, that you would give us guidance, that you would help us to see that all scripture is profitable, even those passages of scripture which may seem foreign, distant, or irrelevant to us.
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Help us to encounter you through this text, to see how you have communicated to us, and to respond accordingly.
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We ask for mercy to that end.
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In Christ's name we pray.
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Amen.
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This text is indeed one that seems a little opaque, a little strange, maybe not immediately relevant to our needs, what we need.
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Reading a text like this might seem to have little to do with our sense of felt need.
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But I want to ask you this.
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What do you think of as your greatest need?
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What do you think of as your greatest need in life?
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Sometimes biblical texts can have a relevance to needs that we do not fully appreciate.
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In other words, sometimes we don't fully understand what it is that we need most.
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God understands what we need most, and that's why God has inspired passages of Scripture that might seem irrelevant at times.
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What is your greatest need?
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Sometimes, when I'm particularly hungry, I think my greatest need is for food.
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Sometimes when I'm sleepy, I think my greatest need is for a nap, especially after the food.
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Some of us might think our greatest need is for more money, better circumstances in life.
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All of those things in different ways might be valid needs.
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But consider uh what biblical scholar D.A.
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Carson says about our greatest need.
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Listen to what he says.
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He says that if God felt that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent us an economist.
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If our greatest need was entertainment, God would have sent us a comedian.
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If our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician.
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If our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor.
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But because God perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, he sent us a savior.
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The fact that Christ came into the world as Savior speaks volumes to our greatest needs.
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Our greatest needs in life are not merely surface-level needs that we can see, our greatest needs of the issue of our sin and restoration to relationship with God, which has been broken because of our sin.
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That we see with the coming of Christ is our greatest need, the Mount Everest of needs.
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And this text, strange and opaque as it may seem, is a text that speaks to our greatest need.
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It speaks to our greatest need, and it speaks to the plan that God undertook to fulfill that great need.
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This text was given, was written, the vision that it records was given to Daniel hundreds of years before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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And like a calendar,
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it predicts with remarkable specificity the coming of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Christ is certainly found most clearly in the New Testament.
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But let it not be said that the Old Testament is a book that is absent of Christ.
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Because Christ is foreshadowed, predicted, prefigured in the Old Testament, even as he is revealed most fully in the New.
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And here in Daniel chapter 9, we have a passage that speaks ahead to the coming great Savior who would meet our greatest need, fulfill our greatest longings, and deal once for all with the problem of sin.
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The text talks about the way that God has made provision for our need.
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Last week we looked at Daniel chapter 9, verses 1 through 19, and that was a prayer that Daniel prayed.
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It was a prayer specifically because of his sin and the sin of the people of Israel.
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Sin is simply falling short of God's standards, not living the way that God would have us to live.
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And the people of Israel were in exile.
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They had been kicked out of their land and they were in a foreign land as a result of their sin.
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That's not something that's transferable to us today.
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That doesn't mean that if somebody is displaced from their homeland, that it's because of their sin.
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But in this context, it was a specific kind of judgment that God brought upon Israel.
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And Daniel is in a foreign land living in exile.
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And he prays and he acknowledges the people's sin.
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He says, verse 16, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem.
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He speaks about the way that the people's sin had provoked God's anger.
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And in this prayer that we saw last week, verses 1 through 19, Daniel asks for forgiveness.
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He asked for forgiveness for the people's sins.
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He asked God to respond with mercy.
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In other words, he recognizes their greatest need.
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That their greatest need wasn't merely political, wasn't merely geographic, that they needed to go back to their city.
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Their greatest need, underlying all of those physical needs, was a spiritual need for forgiveness and restoration to relationship with God.
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And so as we come into verses 20 through 27, that's the context.
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Daniel is praying about the people's sin.
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And in the prophecy that we are looking at this morning, which I've read earlier for us,
it says that as Daniel was praying, the angel Gabriel came to him and gave him a message, revelation.
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And the prophecy that he's given is an answer to the question: what will we do about the fact that we have fallen short of God's standards?
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What do we do about our sin?
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God is holy and we are not.
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How do we address this seemingly insurmountable gap between what God demands and how we actually live?
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It's what the prophecy addresses.
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And the prophecy addresses it by giving Daniel a timetable for the future.
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All of the events spoken of here are future from Daniel's perspective, although some of them now are past from our perspective.
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The text predicts future events according to periods of time known as groups of sevens.
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Verse 24 says, seventy sevens are decreed for your people.
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Now the text doesn't specify exactly what these sevens are, but the only thing that really makes sense is that it is groups of seven years.
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Seven periods of seven years, roughly totaling four hundred and ninety years.
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And it is four hundred and ninety years wherein God would address the problem of sin.
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We see in verse 24 there are several purposes given for this period of time to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness.
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Dealing with the people's sin and ridding the world of sin itself is the main focus of the prophecy.
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It can be easy to get bogged down in some of the details here, so I want to hit some of the highlights without attempting to get into the weeds on every minor detail.
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There are various aspects of this passage that are quite debated by biblical scholars as to the precise meaning, but broadly speaking, there are some things that we can be clear on, I believe, and that's what I'd like to share with you.
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We've seen that the passage talks about 490 years, 77, seven periods of seven years.
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There's a period of 69 sevens, and then there is a final period of one last seven, a final seven years.
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Look at what verse 25 says.
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Know and understand this.
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From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed one, the ruler, comes, there will be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens.
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So it predicts a group of seven sevens, that's 49 years, and then 62 sevens, that's 434 years.
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It's not quite clear why this first group of sevens is subdivided into the two smaller groups, but they are.
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And the total spoken of in verse 25 is 483 years.
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The text tells us that from the time that the word would go out to restore Israel to the coming of an anointed one, there would be 483 years.
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483 years from the time that Israel starts to be restored to the coming of an anointed one.
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This word or this decree to restore Jerusalem referred to a time when the city of Jerusalem and Israel would be rebuilt.
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This was future from Daniel's vantage point.
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Daniel had been taken into captivity, he had seen Jerusalem destroyed, and as Daniel received this prophecy, Jerusalem lied in ruins, in total destruction.
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But this passage predicts that it would be rebuilt.
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And the thing that it predicts here, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, that can be dated roughly to about 458 BC, about 458 years before the coming of Christ.
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We actually read about this in Ezra chapter 7.
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I won't turn to that and read it, but if you want, you can make a note of Ezra chapter 7.
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That's where we read about the word to go back to Jerusalem, begin restoring it, and begin rebuilding it.
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And so if we take 458 BC, the word to restore Jerusalem is the starting point for this prophecy, and we go up 483 years, then that leads us right about to 26 A.D.
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The 483 years spoken of in this first of the 69 sevens leads us right to 26 AD.
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It leads us right to the time of Jesus Christ Himself.
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The passage predicts in verse 25 that from the time that Jerusalem begins to be rebuilt until the coming of an anointed one would be about 483 years.
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And that fits remarkably well with the coming of Jesus Christ.
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The coming of Jesus Christ, an anointed one, is predicted with remarkable accuracy in verse 25.
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Remember, the time period prophesied about here, it's a period that gives us a timetable for God dealing with people's sin.
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The great need that God is addressing is our sin.
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And how does he do that?
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He does that through the death of Christ.
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Look at how the passage describes the anointed one in verse 26.
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The anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing.
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The passage speaks about an anointed one put to death, and that sounds remarkably like the death of Christ.
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An anointed one put to death.
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It leads us right up to the time of Christ when Christ was put to death.
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And then there is a final period of seven years that is spoken about here.
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In verse 26, it says, After the 62 sevens, the anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing.
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And then it goes on to describe a series of events that will then take place.
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The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city.
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The end will come like a flood, war, desolation.
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Verses 27 or verse 27, we get more detail about an individual who will confirm and then break a covenant.
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All of these events at the end happen within a final seven-year period.
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Now, commentators primarily look at this in one of two possible ways.
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Some say that this final period of seven years that comes after the 483 years leading to the time of Christ, that this final period of seven years occurs right after the death of Jesus.
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Other commentators identify it with events that are still future from our perspective today.
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In other words, the question is whether all the events described in this prophecy have already happened or whether there are some that are still yet to come.
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From my perspective, I can see value in both interpretations, but I think it's better to see the final seven years, verses 26 and 27, to see the events described there as something that is still future from our perspective.
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One reason for that is that the purpose of this prophecy is to bring in everlasting righteousness.
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Says that in verse 24.
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That the prophecy concludes when everlasting righteousness is brought in.
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Says in verse 26 that the end will come.
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The end and everlasting righteousness.
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That is when the prophecy concludes.
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Do we currently live in a world where we experience everlasting righteousness?
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Just look at the newspaper.
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I don't think so.
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And so, from my perspective, and the way that I understand this passage, it predicts the first coming of Christ and also hints at the second coming of Christ.
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It predicts with remarkable accuracy the death of Jesus Christ for our sins and points forward to a time when he will return.
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It speaks in particular about a ruler who sets up a covenant and prohibits worship.
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The basic idea is that it is a ruler who prohibits people from worshiping God.
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This fits remarkably well with the book of Revelation's description of an end-time Antichrist figure.
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It also fits remarkably well with Daniel chapter 7's description of an end-time figure right at the return of Christ.
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Remember that Daniel was living in a time where true worship of God was threatened.
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I've often heard Christians here in the United States speak about their faith being under attack or Christianity being under attack.
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There might be something to that, but the truth is that we have remarkable freedom to worship as we see fit.
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That is a freedom and a blessing that cannot be taken for granted around the world.
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Certainly in this day it could not be taken for granted.
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And remember that Daniel was living under a situation where he had experienced persecution for his faith.
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They tried to kill him for worshiping the one true God.
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And God is essentially telling him that throughout history there are going to be rulers who try to overthrow the gospel.
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He's telling him here that Jesus is going to come and die for your sin, take care of the penalty for sin, and yet there are still going to be human rulers who try to overthrow the gospel.
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The passage, by predicting the first coming of Christ and an end time ruler right before the second coming of Christ, speaks about the fact that Christ's death will deal with our.
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Sin and provide forgiveness.
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But there will still be ongoing opposition, hostility, and persecution until Christ returns.
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And so the passage speaks about a 490-year period, 483 years, from the restoration of Jerusalem to the coming of Christ.
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And then it speaks about a future seven-year period, characterized by an end-time evil ruler who will try unsuccessfully to thwart the gospel once and for all.
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Now there's a lot of detail that I've given you there.
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You can take a breath.
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Whew, okay, we made it through that.
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At least I think we did.
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A lot of detail there, no doubt.
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And this is one of the more challenging passages in the Bible to interpret and to understand.
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But I want to leave us with a couple of applications here to help us see even more the relevance of this passage to our lives.
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Recall what I talked about in the beginning.
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Greatest need.
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What is
your greatest need?
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What is my greatest need?
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We are approaching the time of day and the time in the service where lunch is on the brain.
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Lunch may appear to be the greatest need, but indeed, there is a need far greater than that.
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Our greatest needs are not merely physical, but spiritual.
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And the prophecy of the 77s is given in response to Daniel's confession of sin.
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And it says that the purpose of the timeline is to atone for wickedness.
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Verse 24, this passage is a prediction of how God will atone for wickedness.
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Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 3, verse 25.
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The Apostle Paul says that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of blood.
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Christ was a sacrifice of atonement presented through the shedding of blood.
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Atonement simply means that God made payment for sin.
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That God provided for a debt that you owed to be paid by someone else.
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Have you ever been in debt?
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You ever had debt collectors after you?
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You ever felt the weight of having a debt that you couldn't repay?
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There's a situation some years ago where my family and I, we were out of state, had to make a visit to an emergency room, and of course, not only did we go into the emergency room, but we went into the wonderfully tangled web of health insurance.
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And well, it was out of state, and so insurance would not cover any of it.
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So we got some bill with a bunch of zeros on it and said, well, never gonna be able to pay that.
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Not long after that, we were informed that in that state that we were in, that there was a charity that covers unpaid debt, and that they had stepped in and agreed to cover that debt.
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And the sense of relief and freedom that we felt, knowing that that was something that we never realistically could have paid, had been paid on our behalf.
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Christ, when he went to the cross, paid a debt that you owed that you never could have paid.
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Christ paid the debt that we owe to God because of our sin.
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God is holy.
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God is holy.
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And when we transgress God's law, that is something that must be judged.
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And for a time, God certainly can overlook sin to an extent.
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There's a lot of sin committed that's not immediately judged.
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But again, you can think about it like credit card debt.
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You can rack up a lot of debt, but eventually the bill comes due.
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And the bill came due for humanity's sin, transgression of God's law.
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And that bill was paid once and for all on the cross at Calvary.
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That is the good news of Jesus Christ, that He, Christ, is our sacrifice of atonement.
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And God planned and predicted that 483 years in advance.
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The cross of Christ was not a mere accident or a stroke of good luck.
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It was part of the plan and the promise of God right from the very beginning.
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God knew what he was doing.
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The passage reminds us of the amazing extent to which God has forgiven the debt that we owe him.
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But note also, this passage speaks of the fact that in this life, good and evil coexist alongside each other.
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We live in a world where there's a lot of good, but also a lot of evil.
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The prophecy contains a prediction that sin will be atoned for.
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God will pay the penalty for our sin so that we can be in right relationship with Him.
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But it also shows that visible evil continues on and on.
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The interpretation that I propose to you is that the passage speaks about the sacrifice of Christ for our sins, but then also speaks about a future end-time ruler who continues to try to oppress God's people and overthrow God right up until the very end of the world.
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The presence of sin continues, even though the penalty for sin has been dealt with through Jesus Christ.
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At the cross, God dealt with the penalty of our sin so that we do not stand in debt to him for the wrong that we have committed.
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And yet the presence of sin is something we still live with.
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The presence of sin continues in this world.
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Again, look at the newspaper, look online, see what's happening in the world.
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Regardless of your political or social views, I think many, perhaps all of us, could agree that the world is characterized by the ongoing presence of evil.
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And that is a reality up until the return of Christ.
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The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans chapter 8.
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Romans chapter 8, verse 22.
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He says, We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth, right up until this present time.
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This present world that we are in, where
we look forward to the return of Christ, the Apostle Paul likens the process to childbirth.
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With childbirth, the end of the process, where there is new life, new child, is a beautiful thing.
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But the process itself can be painful, messy, and at times dangerous.
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The end result is beautiful, but the process is difficult.
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And right now, the Apostle Paul says, it's as if we in the world are in a process of childbirth, that we have something beautiful to look forward to, the return of Christ.
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And yet there is pain and discomfort in the present as we await that future.
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Becoming a Christian does not mean that every one of our problems suddenly ceases to disappear.
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Becoming a Christian does not mean that every problem that we've ever encountered will go away, but it does mean that we have a hope beyond this world and that we look forward to that future.
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The passage reminds us of the way that God takes care of sin.
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It reminds us that good and evil exist alongside.
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Finally, in related, it promises the ultimate triumph of what is right.
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That ultimately what is good will win out over what is evil.
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The passage speaks about bringing in everlasting righteousness, verse 24.
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Bringing in everlasting righteousness.
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And that's something, it seems to me, will only take place at the return of Christ, which is why I think this passage has to extend up until the time Christ returns.
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There is much injustice and unrighteousness in the world.
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Perhaps you have a sense that injustice has been committed against you, that something unrighteous has been done to you.
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Perhaps you were the victim of some kind of evil, a crime.
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Somebody stole something from you, somebody took advantage of you, somebody did something to you that was wrong.
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The reality of this world is that there is injustice and unrighteousness.
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But the passage promises that that's not the final state of things.
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The final state of things is everlasting righteousness.
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When Christ returns, makes the world new, and all will be well.
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I can't claim to be any kind of major sports fan, but if you are, think about your favorite team.
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Think about a game where they seem to be losing.
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It just doesn't seem good.
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The whole game, it seems like they're headed for a loss.
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And then at the end, make a miraculous comeback and win.
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That so much of history it appears that evil is winning.
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And yet, at the return of Christ, there's a miraculous, amazing, last minute turnaround just before the clock runs out.
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And Christ wins.
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And if we have trusted in Christ, then we are on the winning team.
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And that is what we have to look forward to with the return of Christ.