Lord be pleased to bless us together
tonight as we consider his word. Let's turn to the book of Daniel
chapter 9 and we'll read verse 25. The book of Daniel chapter
9 and read verse 25. Know therefore and understand
that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and
to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks
and three score and two weeks the street shall be built again
and the wall even in troubleous times this account in this ninth chapter
is an outstanding occasion. It is an outstanding occasion
because we read of Daniel, we read of his prayer, we read of
Gabriel coming and speaking to Daniel. And that which was spoken to
Daniel was of course a prophecy and it was written near or right
at the end of the captivity of Judah in Babylon at the time
when they were about to return once again. And so we see here
Daniel in Babylon should not forget that God's people are
not exempt from times of suffering with a nation and it is God's
ordained way. But we see here in this account
Daniel's prayer for God's favour and for God's mercy. And as we
read it through together, I'm sure we understood that He confessed,
confessed his sin, confessed the sin of the nation and he
wanted not to rush over it, but to fully bow down before his
God. And he did need then the Lord
to come and the Lord to hear and the Lord to answer. He needed
to know that the Lord was going to honour his word and once again
bring Israel back to Jerusalem. And so he comes and he pleads
with the Lord. Oh my God, incline thine ear
and hear, open thine eyes and behold our desolations and the
city which is called by thy name. We do not present our supplications
before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. Oh 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. What a pleading we see here in
this prayer of Daniel. I know that you and I might be
blessed with like pleading in our prayers. There is, I believe,
a great need in the day and age in which we live for prevailing
prayer. A great need for the Lord to
come upon us and to bless us in this way. Now Daniel pleaded
with his God. My friends, he pleaded with his
God, believing the Lord would hear and answer his prayers.
He didn't pray thinking, well, I don't think there's any point
really in praying. He prayed believing that his
God would hear and answer his prayer. And as I mentioned, don't
forget his situation. He came to seek by prayer and
supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. He didn't come and rush into
the presence of God and say, well, I've just got a few minutes,
I must rush through this prayer. No, it was a great time for him
to come to his God, and therefore he came in this good and right
way. Good instruction for us today.
Sometimes we expect God to hear and answer our prayers. And if
we analyse them, well perhaps we haven't been very honest in
our prayers. Perhaps we haven't been very
urgent in our prayers. We may just have gone through
a form of prayer. Know that we might be blessed
with such a prayer as this and a blessed of prayer and supplications
to our God. Now we read, while he was praying, speaking
and praying and confessing his sin and the sin of his people
and presenting his supplication before the Lord my God, for the
holy mountain of my God, He was concerned really about the Church
of God. What a blessing it will be if
you and I are concerned about the Church of God. He tells us while he was speaking
in prayer, even the man Gabriel, the angel Gabriel as we know,
came and spoke to him and addressed him and informed him and talked
with him, and told him, I have now come forth to give thee skill
and understanding. Perhaps we might think that such
situations don't exist today, well perhaps not in the same
way, but it will be a blessing if when we pray, we have the
evidence that our prayers have entered in to the holy place. Our prayers have not just been
words. It would be a blessing if we know the truth of that,
when we really pray in our prayers. Not just then, a mere going through
actions. No, it's a blessing, because
when the Lord gives us as it were, that access at the throne
of grace, through the Saviour, and we have the evidence of it
in our heart, then we can believe. The Lord will hear. The Lord will answer. It may
be like this. In a similar way, the Lord will
come and confirm to us that our prayers are heard and our prayers
are answered. And the angel Gabriel then came,
and he spoke to Daniel, and he spoke to him some very important
things. There were to be many years,
very soon, after the prophets ceased, there was no open vision,
it wasn't long after this, and the Church of God for several
hundred years, something like 400 years, there would have been
no open vision, And they would have been reading and remembering
the words that were recorded by the Prophet Daniel. And what
did they speak of? They spoke of the coming Messiah. That's what the Church of God
have been looking forward to. Right from Adam's day, the coming
of the Messiah. But now there is that more clear
and particular reference to the coming of the Messiah. Now, I
don't profess to be able to give you an accurate summary of these
words here. The Lord knows there have been
many, many books written about these words and various conclusions
But one or two things I believe are straightforward. First of
all, we notice the Lord says, know therefore and understand
that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and
to build Jerusalem. Well, I think that probably refers
to the time recorded by Ezra when quite remarkably the King
Cyrus commanded that there might be that returning to Jerusalem. You may remember in the first
chapter in Ezra, we read now, in the first year of Cyrus, King
of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah
might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit
of Cyrus, King of Persia. The Lord can do anything and
everything, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and
put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia,
that Lord God of heaven and earth, Lord God of heaven hath given
me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build
him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among
you of all his people He is God be with him. Let him go up to
Jerusalem which is in Judah and build the house of the Lord God
of Israel. He is the God which is in Jerusalem. Well it was amazing really that
such a king should be instructed by the Lord to do this. And it would appear therefore
that that was what Gabriel was speaking of this beginning. And
then we see he gives him then a term And he says, to build
Jerusalem unto the Messiah, the prince shall be seven weeks and
three score and two weeks. Now, if we analyze that in days
and the days were referred to as years, we come to a number
of 483 days. And that would appear to run
from this date up to the time that the Lord Jesus Christ was
cut off. That means when he died. That
means when he was 33 years. That would appear to be the time
scale that we have here in this statement. And so, I'm sure we
can realise how relevant it was to the Church of God in those
days. They'd been looking for the Messiah. And as the situation
deteriorated, which it did, after the prophet ceased to prophesy
those 400 years, when there was no open vision, how Israel would
have searched the word of God for evidence of when the Messiah
was to come, how needful it was, how they were looking forward
to the time when he would come. And therefore such a word as
this would have been an encouragement to them. And to build Jerusalem unto the
Messiah, the Prince shall be seven weeks and three score and
two weeks. The street shall be built again
and the ward even in troubleous times. Now just very briefly,
first of all, to just talk about historical position. We know
that when this command was given by Cyrus, that there was a returning
to Jerusalem And the people gradually came back and there was a time
of beginning to rebuild the temple. Well that was a wonderful occasion,
beginning to rebuild the temple. But of course the enemies of
the Lord didn't want that to occur. So they wrote to the king
in Babylon and advised him that these people were evil people
and they should be stopped. The king should check out from
the scrolls what had occurred. And so that came to pass. And the king then, Artaxerxes,
the king at that time, searched and said that they should cease
from building. And so then, we read in the fourth
of Ezra, then ceased the work of the house of God which is
at Jerusalem. So it ceased until the second year of the reign
of Darius, king of Persia. Now that was a very sad time
really, and just beginning the fifth chapter we read, then the
prophets Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Ido,
prophesied unto the Jews, that were in Judah and Jerusalem,
in the name of God of Israel, unto them. And you can read of
course in Haggai more particularly and also Zechariah of their prophecy
how they spoke to Israel to get on with the job and to ignore
that which had been set forth by these evil people. And so they then did right and
they got confirmation that it was in order to continue. And
so they built the temple. And of course then, we can think
of also the time in Nehemiah's day. And that was the same era,
the same time. And what happened then? Well,
they were building a wall around Jerusalem. And again, there were
those men, Sambalat, Tobia and Gishan, who came against them
and got them to stop building. or at least try to get them to
stop building the wall. But you see, Nehemiah wouldn't
come down, he wouldn't parley with them. They wanted to meet
him. He said, no, I'm doing a great
work, I can't come down. He wasn't taken in by their words. And we know then that they continued,
and they continued it in not an easy way, and we're told then
they build it on the wall, and they that bear the burdens, those
that laid it, every one of his hands wrought in the work, and
with the other hand held a weapon. For the builders, every one had
his sword girded by his side, and so builded, and he that sounded
the trumpet was by me. And I said unto the nobles, and
to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, The work is great
and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one from another. In what place, therefore, ye
hear the sound of the trumpet? Resort ye thither unto us, our
God shall fight for us. So you can read on. And so we
see there the fulfilment of these words which were given by Daniel. And the street shall be built,
and the wall even in troubleous times. Now that was true at that
time. And my friends, the situation
is still true today. The devil is very active today
to try and stop the work of God being done. To try to stop the
Word of God appearing. But yet the Word is still true
and it's still faithful and there shall be that building and it
shall rise and God will honour and bless the work. Just reading
on and after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut
off not for himself and the people of the prince that shall come
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary and the end thereof
shall be with a flood And until the end of the war, desolations
are determined. Now, we know that the Lord Jesus
Christ was cut off in the midst of his age. 33 years of age is
really the prime of life. And with 33, probably we are
in our prime. The Lord Jesus Christ was cut
off. And we read here, but not for
himself. Why was he cut off? He was cut
off to redeem his people from their sins. The time had come,
that time which had been prophesied, that time was to be fulfilled
when the Lord Jesus Christ would be cut off And there would be
a continuance of these trouble times. And we see here the statement
that when the Lord was cut off, that after that time there would
be that destroying of the city. And we know that Jerusalem and
the temple was destroyed. And there was no more. then those
sacrifices which were carried out, there was the end of that. Because all those things have
been fulfilled in the life and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. So as we consider these truths
here this evening, let us be thankful that there was this
prophecy and let us be thankful there was a fulfilment of this
prophecy. And the Lord Jesus Christ, who
was indeed the Messiah, the Prince, he was indeed cut off, not for
himself. Well, what a blessing it would
be for us tonight, if first of all, we come under the situation
that Daniel was in, confessing his condition. You know we can
never expect to know anything of a blessing of the Lord until
the Holy Spirit directs us to our true condition before a holy
God. Now Daniel wasn't under any misapprehension
of his state and yet he was a godly man. He was a bold man. Indeed we know that he He feared
God and yet he still came and confessed his sin and the sins
of the nation. And so it will be important for
us to remember that. That all of us need to know this
true position. Never think that we are righteous
ourselves. Let us come to our God in this
way, humbly, praying unto God, praying and making confession,
realising who we stand before. I think today, so often there
seems to be a little realisation of the greatness of God There
seems to be almost a situation which has developed that people
treat God as themselves, on the same level. Well, God is high
and lifted up. God is holy. God is great. He is a great God. And we should
never allow ourselves to, in the least way, trifle with this
great God. And if we are not to trifle with
this great God, then surely we should desire to come in the
same way that Daniel did before his God, confessing the situation
that he was guilty. Yes, he knew God's law. The people
knew God's law. They knew the commands. and yet
they ignored them. They turned their back on them
and therefore they were in this state and this condition. But
he comes pleading for mercy. Now what a favour it would be
if the Lord convinces us of our sin, our gross sin. Sin against light and knowledge. which it was here. So it may
be in our lives, sin against light and knowledge, it's not
easy to come to that state of confession. But it's good when
the Spirit of God breaks down the hardness and rebellion of
our heart, so that we come to the Lord in this way, seeking
for forgiveness, seeking for his mercy, seeking for his blessing. And what was the situation then? The Lord heard, and there was
a building up. There was a restoring. Well, I'm sure that's what we
need. I believe it's what we desire. A restoring. To be brought back. Now, it wasn't
easy. And the way of a Christian is
not easy. Just think how those two occasions
when they're building the temple. Yes, the enemies of God stopped
it. They got a writing from the king.
So you can't do any more. You've got to stop. It's very easy, isn't it? You
know, the work wasn't easy. And if we are found in that situation
and we are told to stop, we may very well listen and say, well
I can't do anything else, I've just got to stop. Well, if that's
our condition, and it may be, you read Haggai, you read Zachariah,
and be encouraged by their words of encouragement, their words
of admonition, So they did not stay where they were. They did
follow the word of the Lord and they continued. And then think
of the building of the wall. Yes, they worked from sunrise
to sunset. They worked all the time that
they had available to them. They made use of every daylight
minute. And they had their sword in their
hand. Now today, we don't have a physical
sword in our hand. But we do have an enemy. We do have an adversary who will
try and stop us. You see, Sanballat and his friends,
they did all they could. and they belittled the work that
was going on. They said, well, even if a fox
stands on a wall it will break it down. Yes, they decried the
work that was happening. My friends, the devil today will
come and try and decry the work that's being done. As you and
I perhaps may be trying, as it were, to place one block upon
another, One stone upon another, as it were, to build a picture. The devil would come and say,
there's no point in you doing that. An intrepid has no value. It needs to be knocked down. Nehemiah was not discouraged. Nehemiah didn't take in those
words. And therefore they had their
swords by their side in case they were attacked. And so today,
we don't have a physical sword, but we do have a sword. And you
young people, remember, you have a sword against the devil. And that sword is the word of
God. You read it. in your times of
need. You read like this prayer of
Daniel. See how he prayed. See the need
he had. See the honesty in his prayer. He didn't pretend to be what
he wasn't. He was honest. He poured out
his heart to his God in prayer. It's a wonderful blessing if
we have the sword of the Spirit The devil comes and belittles
our little faith, desires to overturn it. As it were, we may
be building. As it were, the Lord is brought
to our attention in certain situations and we're building. It may be
the devil comes and says, well, it's not worth anything. Just
blow upon it and it will collapse. Remember the sword of the spirit,
the word of God. And don't think that your spiritual
building will develop in a smooth way. Don't think it will be an
easy build. It's why we have a situation
like this, it's why we have a picture like this, to encourage us that
our spiritual building is not easy. Indeed, it's specified
like this, in troublous times, times of difficulty, but nonetheless,
the building, the wall, rose up. Nevertheless, the temple
was built again. The enemies of the Lord could
not stop it. Why could they not stop it? Because
it was the Lord's work. Because the Lord had ordained
that it should be done. The Lord is faithful. Let's remember
that today in our little life. The Lord is faithful. Now the
clear picture here was to be directed to the Messiah, to his
life, to the Prince, the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt it was mysterious to
them, but they had a hope that the Messiah would come. Perhaps
sometimes these things may be mysterious to us. But it would
be a good thing if we have a hope that the Lord Jesus will come. That he will come to us. That we may have revealed to
us that the Lord Jesus Christ did die. He was cut off for our
sins. Yes, he did suffer. so that we
might live. He did take our sins upon himself. Remember those words, by his
stripes we are healed. Encouraging words that we can
read in the word of God as we travel and are involved in this
building. Troubles times. Not easy. We're very foolish, aren't we?
So often we think it'll be an easy thing. We often think Christianity
will be easy. It won't be easy, because the
devil wants you to fall. The devil doesn't want you to
succeed. Well, you won't succeed in yourself,
but you will succeed through the merits of Christ. Have a
confidence in what He has done. Look forward to that finished
work, as it may come and be applied to you, that you may know that
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was indeed cut off, so that you
might live, not for Himself, no, but for His people, for His
Church, to pay the price of your sin. reiterate, we come through
this way, confession of sin, brought to realise our need,
directed then to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to
realise how so e'er the way, we might say, how so e'er the
way, dear Saviour, still lead on, nor leave me till I say,
Father, thy will be done. At least we do but taste the
cup because thou alone hast drunk it up. Now it will be a blessing
if the Spirit of God directs us so that in measure we taste
the cup. And the cup means that we shall
face difficulties and temptations. Temptations as to our spiritual
building. I don't want to destroy it. My
friends, if your foundation is on Christ, you won't be able
to destroy it. Because it will be like this,
on Christ, the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. If you are on Christ, my friends,
you won't sink. It doesn't matter how difficult
it is. How many storms come upon you?
You'll stand. And stand you will. Although
there will be these troubleous times. So we have this testimony
of Daniel. As he prayed to his God. The
wonderful revelation that when he ceased praying, the Lord came
to him. It was a pervading prayer. The
Lord came to him. We see, don't we, the urgency
in it. It wasn't trivial, was it? It
was from his heart. Oh, bless God, my friends. And
may we earnestly seek that God will give us real prayer from
our heart. The Lord will come. The Lord
will look upon us. The Lord will have mercy. And
although it will be in troubleous times, yet to be led to the Saviour,
to know that he was cut off so that we might receive the great
and glorious gift of eternal life. Amen.