We're coming to Daniel chapter
9. We're going to be looking at verses 20 through 24. This
is one of those passages that you can almost say says it all
concerning the glory of Christ's person and the power of his finished
work. And so I decided to divide this
up into two lessons. Because I want to say, these
passages, especially from verse 24 to 27, they've been abused
so much by people. And a lot of so-called Bible
scholars, and they're really not, but a lot of who call themselves
Bible scholars, they projected the things that Daniel was prophesying
here on into a future time, beyond us, a future millennial kingdom,
in which the Lord will set his kingdom up in Jerusalem, rebuild
a temple, reestablish the priesthood, and all kinds of things like
that. But that's not what this is about, and I've titled both
lessons, today's and next week's, Lord willing, Daniel's Prophecy
of Christ. Because that's what this, he
is what this prophecy is about, Christ. It's not about a millennial
future. It's not about a physical kingdom
on earth. It's about the Messiah who's
identified here in verse, let me see, yeah, verse 25, as Messiah
the Prince. And of course you know the Lord
Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace and all of that. But
anyway, it starts out in the first 19 verses of this chapter. Daniel is praying to the Lord.
Now, they'd been in captivity and it was coming close to the
time when the nation Judah, the southern kingdom who'd been brought
into captivity in Babylon, that time was going to end. Jeremiah
said it was gonna be 70 years. And next week, more than today,
we're gonna be talking about some of these numbers. There's
symbolism in these numbers, but I believe that if you count these
numbers literally, you can pretty well make it fit historically.
So we'll talk about that next week. but they'd been in captivity
70 years. And you know the number seven
or multiples of seven is symbolic in the scripture because it symbolizes
a finished work, a completed work. And the 70 years of captivity
of Judah and Babylon is literally the completed work of judgment.
that God brought down upon them for their sins. And then the
decree was issued to let them go back to Israel and Jerusalem
and rebuild the city and rebuild the temple. And that's where
you have the prophets that come after Daniel, Hosea and Malachi,
all what they call the minor prophets. They're not minor because
their message was major, but they usually call minor prophets
because of the shortness of the book. But Daniel's praying, and
what he does is he cries out to God for mercy. You can read
the first verses of this chapter. He's crying out to God for mercy,
crying out to God for forgiveness. Isn't that what we do all the
time? We do it all the time and should do it all the time. I
mean, I'm constantly reminded in myself that God saves me in
spite of myself. because we're nothing but sinners
saved by grace. We're so hard sometimes. We're
so apt to fall into bad thoughts
and sins and all, and God saves us. And so we cry out to God
for mercy. Forgive us, Lord. We know that
that forgiveness is accomplished. You know, somebody said one time,
well, we don't need to pray for forgiveness because we're already
forgiven. Well, we need to acknowledge it. because I need forgiveness every
day. And I know I'm forgiven. I know the blood of Christ brings
forgiveness and covers all sin. And that's his blood alone. But
we need to acknowledge that and acknowledge it every day. Only
a sinner saved by grace. Only a sinner saved by grace.
This is my story. To God be the glory. And so Daniel
cries out for mercy and forgiveness according to God's word and according
to his righteousness. And even though I don't believe
Abraham is mentioned in the first 19 verses, this all goes back
to God's promise to the nation through Abraham. And what Daniel's
praying for, Lord, bring them out of this captivity, establish
them in the promised land. You remember God promised Abraham
that through him, he would bless all nations. And you know that
the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy was going to be accomplished
by the coming of the Messiah to save spiritual Israel, God's
elect out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. So God purposed
to keep this nation together. Now understand now, the Northern
Kingdom, the 10 tribes were already gone at this time. The Assyrian Empire had captured
them and scattered them. So here we're talking about just
Judah and one other tribe, Benjamin, that made up the Southern Kingdom.
And you know Judah had to be kept intact somewhat by God because
the scepter was not going to depart from Judah until Shiloh
come, until Christ come. And so Daniel was confident that
God was going to keep his promise to Abraham and bring the nation
back. Well one of the things that Daniel
does in his prayer is he acknowledges His sins and the people's sins.
Now, I thought about this as I was reading through this. You
know, the Bible, God's word does not hold back on the reality
of his people. The feats that were accomplished
by God through them, and then the defeats, the sins. I mean, God's honest about it.
You go all the way back, go back to Noah. You know, Noah found
grace. Noah preached righteousness for
120 years, but Noah was still just a sinner saved by grace,
wasn't he? And God records where Noah planted
a vineyard and made wine and got drunk and all kinds of things
like that. You go back to Abraham himself.
Abraham, when he went into Egypt, he told Pharaoh a lie about his
wife, told him that she was his sister, because he didn't want
to be killed. And you go on through and you
see the sins. But you know, Daniel, there's not one thing said in
God's word about any specific sin that Daniel committed. And
I believe he's about the only prophet that's true. I'm not sure about that. But
Daniel knew the truth. He knew his sins. And he knew
his faults. He knew that if it weren't for
God's mercy, brought through the righteousness of the promised
Messiah that he'd be condemned and damned forever. And he knew
that, even though. So when he prays here, God, and
he's asking God to give him a word, and God sends an angel named
Gabriel. He's called the man Gabriel.
Now, the word angel, as you know, means messenger. And so we're
not sure, is this an angelic being named Gabriel? Well, I
think it is because you remember it was the same one named Gabriel
who came to Joseph and told him about Mary's pregnancy, that
she was with child by the Holy Spirit, not to put her away.
And it was Gabriel who told him what to name the child. His name
shall be called Jesus. for he shall save his people
from their sins. But he appears here to Daniel
as a man. His name means God is great. That's what Gabriel means. And
he was a messenger and his message was a prophecy of God's whole
purpose in forming and preserving the nation Israel, the main purpose. and that was to bring Messiah
the Prince into the world to save his people from their sins
by fulfilling all righteousness on their behalf. And so this
is what this prophecy is about. Now the first verses here, look
at verse 20. It says, and while I was speaking
and praying and confessing my sin, see Daniel's, even though
nothing specifically is recorded about Daniel's sin, he's a sinner.
just like all of us. And he's a sinner saved by grace.
So, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and
presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy
mountain of my God. And he says, yea, while I was
speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen
in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly,
touched me about the time of the evening oblation or offering,
And he informed me. He's gonna give Daniel a revelation. That's what we need, isn't it?
We need a revelation from God. Well, where are we gonna find
that? Not in our dreams and our visions. We're gonna find it
in his written word. That's the revelation of God
in his gospel. in Christ. So he informed me
and talked with me and said, oh Daniel, I am now come forth
to give these skill and understanding. I'm going to make you able to
understand these things. Now you know that God had already
given Daniel the gift of interpreting dreams. He had that skill and
understanding, but here's something else. He says, in verse 23, at
the beginning of thy supplications, the commandment came forth, and
I am come to show thee, for thou art greatly beloved, therefore
understand the matter and consider the vision. So Gabriel said,
I'm gonna answer you, Daniel. I'm gonna show you something. Daniel already knew about the
promised Messiah. But he said, I'm gonna give you
some information here that's gonna knock you down. I mean, it's amazing. And it's
the fullness of the gospel of God's grace in Christ. And he
says in verse 24, here's the vision, here's the answer. This
begins the prophecy of the Messiah. 70 weeks are determined upon
thy people and upon thy holy city. Now, most scholars agree
that what that literally means is 70 weeks of years, and I agree
with that. And it comes out to about 490
years. And we'll talk about that more
in depth, but remember, as I said, the nation of Judah was to be
held in captive in Babylon for 70 years. And from the time that
God gave a commandment, and I believe that's a commandment that came
through Cyrus. You remember Cyrus, the king
of the Medes and the Persians? When he conquered Babylon, he
gave a decree for those people, and it came from God. In fact,
Cyrus is called God's messenger, God's servant. Now he wasn't
a believer, but he was a man used of God to accomplish his
providential work in history. And so Cyrus gave a command for
them to go back and build Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, rebuild
the city and the temple. And from that time up to the
time of the Messiah was around 490 years. And these are multiples
of seven, so we got a symbolic aspect to it here, the finished
work. God's gonna finish it. And as
you know, that it was a work in time. You know, people say,
well, if you believe in eternity or eternal justification, you
don't believe in time? I got a watch. I got a clock
back there. I believe in time, don't you?
I'm growing older. I'm gonna die. Everything in eternity that God
purposed will have its fulfillment in time. And the main fulfillment
of all of God's purpose in salvation was the work of Christ on the
cross in time. And Galatians 4 says, in the
fullness of the time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.
Redemption is a time event. And all of God's purposes and
all of God's dealings with his people, his elect, in salvation,
in adoption, in justification, in redemption, in regeneration,
is founded upon or grounded upon that one event in time, the cross,
the blood of Christ. And so this issue of time comes
into play here but God's complete work of judgment. And he says,
this is a prophecy now. He says, 70 weeks are determined
upon thy people and upon thy holy city. And that's the people
and the holy city here ultimately refers to spiritual Israel and
the spiritual people of God. Spiritual Jerusalem. The Bible
teaches of that, the heavenly Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which is
above. Now again, As we see in these
prophecies, at this point in time, there's always a limited
application to the physical nation of Judah, because they were to
come out of captivity, they were to go back and rebuild the city
and rebuild the temple, but that's not the eternal aspect. The eternal
aspect is to the people of God under the headship of Christ,
believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that promise given to Abraham
was for Jew and Gentile, all whom God chose, whose names were
written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of
the world, that Lamb slain, and all whom Christ died for on the
cross, and all whom the Holy Spirit comes to and regenerates,
brings to Christ. So that's the ultimate, and that's
descriptive of God's chosen people. Now again, remember, And I think
this is significant. Remember that Gabriel, the angel
who appeared as man, the man Gabriel, is the same one who
appeared to Joseph. And I think he's the same one
who appeared to John the Baptist, father and mother, and told him.
So anyway, in these verses here in verse 24, he gives six things
that describe the complete work of Messiah the Prince. The complete
work of the Lord Jesus Christ as our representative, our surety,
our substitute, our redeemer, our life giver, our preserver,
our intercessor, this is the complete work. And let's take
each one, that's why I wanted to devote one lesson to this.
He says, here's what's going to happen.
He says, number one, to finish the transgression. To finish
it. That word finish means to restrain
it in prison, to shut it up, to confine it. You know, the
word transgression means rebellion, law breaking. We're all transgressors
of the law. We've all broken the law, we're
all sinners. And God's Word tells us that
sin is the transgression of the law. And it says that Christ,
the Lord Jesus Christ, was manifested to take away our sins in 1 John
chapter 3. And here's the point, having
all the transgressions of God's people imputed to Christ, he
went to the cross and he died to arrest it, to bind it, to
put our transgressions away completely. And they're so confined and well
done away with that they cannot be charged to us. First John 3, 5 says, in Him,
in Christ, is no sin. As we stand, we know that in
Christ, personally, there's no sin, but that means as we stand
in Him, no sin is charged to us. No transgression. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth righteousness without works. And so that's the issue. He came to finish the transgression. And I love that because though
it's not the same word in the Hebrew, it means the same thing.
Christ on that cross said, it is finished. It's done. All right, that's the first one.
Now he says to make an end of sins. That means literally to
seal them up. so that they cannot, as stated
before, be charged to us. He made an end of all sins, and
you know, these first three things that he mentions here, transgression,
sin, and iniquity, what that does is it shows us sin in every
aspect of it is taken care of by Christ. There's not one aspect
of our sinfulness, transgressions, sin, iniquity, that Christ did
not totally take care of on that cross. And so he made an end,
he sealed it up. And I always think about when
I see that phrase made an end of sin, I always think about
Genesis chapter four where God spoke to Cain. And you remember
Cain was rejected. And God came to him, I believe
in the person of Christ, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, and said,
now Cain, why are you angry? You know if you do well. If you
do well, you're fine. And what is it to do well? It's
to bring the blood of the Lamb, like Abel. Plead the blood and
righteousness of Christ. Listen, do we do anything well? I've heard people say, well,
we do well when we plead Christ. Because it is well with those
who plead Christ. And so he told Cain, he said,
you know if you do well, you'll be fine, you'll be accepted.
But if you don't, if you reject it, he basically said, sin lieth
at the door and you have it to do. In other words, if you plead
Christ, this issue and matter of sin is taken care of. It's
over. Conquered. You cannot be condemned. Who shall condemn us? It's Christ
that died. But if you plead your own works
like Cain did, your own issues, then sin lies at your door and
the picture there is like a wild animal. Let's say like a lion,
hungry lion, outside your door just waiting to devour you. You
what he meant there when he says you have have to have it to do
He means and you've got to deal with it yourself. Well, you can't
deal with it We can't deal with this thing of sin We can't even
deal with our own personal sins, can't we? We can't just turn
it off like a faucet But Christ did He made an end of sin. And in the book of James, it
says in James 1 15, sin, when it is finished, brings death. Well, if we don't have Christ,
if we're not washed in his blood and clothed in his righteousness,
sin's gonna finish us. But if we're in Christ, he made
an end of sin. He finished it. He made an end
of it. And so he finished the transgression,
he made an end of sins by the price of his blood, he put an
end to them. He suffered the full punishment
due unto all the sins of his sheep imputed to him. And then
here's the third thing, to make reconciliation for iniquity. Now what that means, and literally
in the Old Testament, it means to cover or make atonement for. And you've heard this, that in
the Old Testament, the work of the issue of the animal blood,
the sacrifices, it was called an atonement, as if it were a
covering. And in the New Testament, it's
changed to reconcile. But God did not, for example,
when you look at people like Daniel who were saved by grace,
who were justified before God based upon the righteousness
of Christ, That animal blood pictured something. The animal
blood didn't cover sin, didn't do away with sin. The blood of
bulls and goats can never take away sin. And it was a covering
but it wasn't meant to picture anything such as that God just
covered over sins and hid them from view. We can do that, that's
what hypocrisy is. When people try to cover over
and hide their sins from view and try to act like outwardly
that they're something that they're not. That's not what the atonement
means. The covering of the atonement
pictured the blood of Christ which took away sins. And that's
what people like Daniel, who were informed of these things,
revealed. That's who they looked to. And
so when it says, make reconciliation for iniquity, it simply means
that all of those things had to be reconciled by the justice
of God, this iniquity, this inequity. To cover or make, in the Old
Testament, as I said, it points to the blood of atonement in
the death of sacrifices, which were pictured in the blood of
reconciliation accomplished for us by Christ. And the truth of
the Old Covenant sacrifices was not that they're just covered
over, and nor did it teach that we could act as if our sins and
iniquities don't exist, or that they never existed. The iniquities of God's elect
must be reconciled to God's justice and holiness. And so what this
is simply saying is this, that the only way that God can be
reconciled to sinners, and sinners can be reconciled to God, is
upon the basis of justice satisfied, and that by the blood of Jesus
Christ. So he made reconciliation, Christ is the reconciler. And
I believe God has always been reconciled to his people in the
person and work of Christ. We're sinners saved by grace.
Somebody said, well then why did Christ have to come and die?
Because if he didn't come and die, we would not have been reconciled
in the sight of God. We would have been under condemnation. But God always viewed us in his
son. And then he says, he caps it
all off here as far as that cross death of Christ to make reconciliation
for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness. I
think about Christ at his baptism when he said, suffer it to be
so for us to fulfill all righteousness. And that's the merit of his work,
the value of it, The merit of Christ's work of redemption for
his people is his everlasting righteousness. It's the righteousness
of God revealed in the gospel, Romans 1, 16 and 17. It's the
Christ's righteousness imputed to his people, which they received
by God-given faith in him. He was made sin, Christ who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,
all of that. And it's the perfection of the
law. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. So it's his righteousness which
the saints in all ages from the beginning of the world are justified
before God. It's the ground of our justification. It's the source and power of
our regeneration. It's the summation of the whole
work of God for his people in Christ. Now the next one, he
talks about sealing up the vision and the prophecy. In other words,
this is going to be a work that's going to seal up the vision and
the prophecy. Well, what does that mean? It
means it's going to fulfill it, make an end of it. The vision means
the word of God. The prophecy means the word of
God given to the prophets. concerning all things that were
prophesied, especially the person and work of Christ, things about
the kingdom, things about the church, all of that. It's all
sealed up. It's all fulfilled. It all finds
its conclusion in the person and work of Christ. That's what
he's saying. Remember when Christ sent his
disciples down and he taught them concerning the law of Moses,
the prophets, and the Psalms, concerning himself, his death
on the cross, his burial, his resurrection, all that he would
accomplish. And so Christ sealed it up. John 539, when he told the Pharisees,
you do search the scriptures, in them you think you have eternal
life. They are they which testify of me. Abraham rejoiced to see
my day, he saw it. Everything in this Old Testament
points to Christ in the glory of his person and the power of
his finished work. And then it says he's going to
anoint the most holy. And I believe that's the most
holy place. And what was that? That was the
holy of holies in the temple, the tabernacle in the temple.
Where the high priest alone went one time a year with the blood
of the Lamb for the people, and that way was barred to everyone
else. Nobody else could go in there.
Well, Christ fulfilled that earthly type. And the point is not just
that he fulfilled the type and made an end of it, which he did,
and that's an end to the Old Covenant. That's the abolishment
of the Old Covenant. You can read about that in Hebrews
chapter eight and other places. But the point of this is is that
Christ, by his cross work, In his death, burial, and resurrection,
he made a way into the holiest of all for all who come pleading
his blood and righteousness. We have boldness to come to the
throne of grace, the throne of judgment through Christ. And that's why, you remember
when Christ died and he said it's finished and the veil was
rent into from top to bottom? That's what that prophecy's about,
okay.