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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the
sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for His holy
hill—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. He
instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and
understanding. As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come
to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and
understand the vision:”
“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.”
“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.’ It will be rebuilt with
streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’
the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the
ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come
like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been
decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of
the ‘seven’, he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple, he
will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is
decreed is poured out on him.
Daniel 9:20-27
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
God always answers our petitions raised up to Him and it’s
been said that His answers usually fall into three categories:
Yes, No, and Wait.
As we saw in yesterday’s devotion, the fifth of this six
devotion series on elements of prayer, Daniel certainly had a request of God
after his words of praise, words of confession, and words accepting the
consequences sent on the Israelites because of their sinful idolatry. That
request was centered on God’s mercy as Daniel asked for it to be extended to
the exiled people of God who had been sentenced to seventy years of captivity
for their transgressions.
How would God respond to that petition?
We get the answer in the closing verses of Daniel, Chapter
9. Let’s look at those words again now:
While I was speaking
and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my
request to the Lord my God for His holy hill—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. He instructed me and said to me,
“Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you
began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are
highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision:”
“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.”
“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.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of
trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death
and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the
city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until
the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with
many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’, he will put an end to
sacrifice and offering. And at the temple, he will set up an abomination that
causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him. Daniel 9:20-27
What do we find in this response?
Two main things.
First, God sometimes answers prayers very quickly. In fact,
Daniel wasn’t even finished with his prayer when God sent His messenger Gabriel
with a message that leads to the second main thing we find in God’s response. For
through the words of Gabriel delivered from God Himself, the people of Israel
were given reason to hope on two different levels.
For starters, they were going to be restored to their
homeland, affirmed by these words:
“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.”
Note the words “sevens” here actually means a seven year
period. Thus, seventy “sevens” was the equivalency of 490 years, the period the
Israelites had to “finish transgression”, “put an end to sin”, “atone for
wickedness”, “bring in everlasting righteousness”, “seal up vision and prophecy”,
and “anoint the Most Holy Place” which would happen when God’s temple was
reconstructed. And as we see when we read the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the
people of God made good on what God commanded them to do as they rebuilt their
homes, their lives, and their relationship with Him.
This had to be good news for the exile-weary Israelites
after spending seventy years oppressed in Babylon, the imposed penalty for
their sinful disobedience and disrespect toward God. And we could probably say
that good news would have enough on its own merit for God’s people but as we
see in this passage, God had even better news in store for soon He would be
sending His Anointed One to Israel, Jesus, the promised Messiah:
“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.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of
trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death
and will have nothing.”
The holy city of Jerusalem was going to be restored to all
its glory, back to its prominent status that existed before the Babylonians
laid it to waste and took the people of God captive. There the Holy and
Anointed One, the very Son of God who was sent to take away the sins of the
world would come at the end of His earthly ministry, only to suffer and die a
criminal’s death.
The years after this, the one “seven” mentioned has been a
cause of much debate and interpretation but the majority of the feeling is that
there is an indeterminate time between the death of Jesus and the last “seven”
a time when the antichrist will come upon the earth and the following takes
place:
“The people of the
ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come
like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been
decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of
the ‘seven’, he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple, he
will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is
decreed is poured out on him.”
Of course, all this is yet to come like a lot of the
apocalyptic predictions we find in the Bible but let us not get away from the
main focus of God’s response to Daniel because better days were ahead for the
people of God, days when they would get to return home and start anew, once
again God’s people and He once again their God, and days when salvation would come
to in the way of the Messiah, the Son of God sent out of love to die for the
sins of all people.
This Messiah, Jesus, is still the Savior of the world, the
way and the truth and the life, and the only way to God the Father. He is still
the only One through which we can be saved and we can give thanks to God for
listening and answering the prayers of His people like Daniel who asked for God’s
mercy and grace and forgiveness to be granted.
Today and every day, thanks be to God for His gift of Jesus.
Amen
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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