Daniel 9 - Something Better In Mind

Main Idea: Humble your sinful self before the holy, forgiving, saving God.

• We are sinners in need of rescue. (Vs. 1-19)

  • Sin is thinking, acting, or behaving unlike our perfect God.

  • God has made His nature & will explicitly clear in Scripture.

  • We are both personally & nationally culpable for our sin.

  • Our world’s only hope of rescue is God’s mercy on us.

• God has always planned humanity’s rescue. (Vs. 20-27)

  • God loves & treasures us, & wants us to know His plans.

  • Jesus is the rescue that humanity has always needed.

  • There is an ultimate rescue from Jesus that is still ahead.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We are continuing our study in Daniel 7-12, affectionately entitled Apocalypse in July. And I hope that even as we've been going through this, that it's been an encouragement to you.

We saw in the first week, in week seven, God's kind of big picture of human history.

Daniel was a prophet there in about the 6th century BC, about from 602 BC would have been when he was in Jerusalem, was kidnapped as a young boy and brought over 1000 miles to the Babylonian Empire and was trained in all of their ways.

And God had a special plan for this young man. And it was specifically so that we would be given in scripture, God's view of human history and the pinnacle of human history, which is Jesus Christ.

But not just 2000 years ago, what had happened, but the promise of the Lord that he's not abandoned us. He didn't send Jesus and then was like, all right, you guys, you guys enjoy the rest of this on your own. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

No, Jesus is coming back again. Today's message is entitled, Something Better in Mind. Something Better in Mind.

I love a story that's told by one of my friends, who's a pastor in Newington, Connecticut. Him and his family had for about 20 some years served at a church down in Southern California. And they were up in the Mojave Desert.

If you've seen Top Gun Maverick, it's where like a lot of those scenes were filmed. And so they were down there and the pastor tells the story. He was a youth pastor at the time and his son, Lance, who I also know, he's a great guy.

Lance was in school. He was a little bit younger, maybe elementary school at this point. And the pastor, Kerry, he had a great idea that he was going to take Lance on a school day and he was going to take him down to Disneyland.

And he knew, okay, this is going to be amazing. Lance is going to have such an amazing time. And so he wanted it to be a surprise for Lance.

And so he had Lance get in the car. And so, you know, Lance has, you know, his book bag and all that kind of stuff. And so they start driving and Carrie doesn't take the turn that you would take to go to school.

And Lance started getting a little concerned. He was like, hey, dad, you missed the turn. And as Carrie continued to drive and drive, Lance just noticed, like, we are not at all getting to school.

Like, I am in big trouble. You know, my teachers are going to be mad at me. I'm not going to get to see my friends.

So what's going on? Carrie eventually was like, hey, we're going to Disneyland. And day at school, day at Disneyland, one of those is far better than the other.

He had something better in mind. Now, Lance didn't know about it. Lance just thought that he was going to miss out on a whole time.

But God had something better in mind. In much the same way, as we look at the story of the Old Testament, God had something better in mind than what any individual person could have thought up or dreamed up on their own. I want to say this.

We're looking at some big picture stuff today because it's the big picture of the Bible. So I need everyone to like lock in. And Lord willing, we will be done right on time.

I've got some people that have to go to some family events and reunions right after this. So I've got to lock in. So I want all of you to say, I'm listening.

Okay, run with me, this will be good. If you need to later, look back on like YouTube or Facebook, put it at, you know, 0.5 speed and listen to it that way, but we'll get there. Here's the story of the Old Testament.

God created us to image him, that we would show others what God is like in the things that he does. He's creative, he orders things, he fosters life. He created us to do that in the world that he created.

But we abandoned his way and instead started walking down the path of sin and death away from God who is holiness and life and love. But God loved us way too much to allow us to continue down that sinful path to destruction.

He promised to send us a Savior, a Messiah, one who would destroy the evil that seduced us and bring us back into fellowship and our initial purposes of accomplishing God's good plan in his good world.

He chose to send not an angel or some spiritual messenger, but a human, a special human, one who is both God and man, but a real person.

To send this human into the world to save us, God selected a family that the human would come from, starting with one man in Babylon named Abram. We looked at that back in Genesis and his wife, Sarah.

He then chose Abram's son, Isaac, his son, Jacob, his son, Judah, his son, Pharez, and eventually his descendant, David. God didn't just select the one family line, however, he selected a whole nation that would be the homeland of our Savior.

So he chose the Messiah, the Savior is going to come, he's going to be a person. He chose the family lineage and he chose the nation that would be the homeland and the family of that Messiah.

And he gave that nation his word, which was a declaration of his character and his values. He gave it to them through prophets who would hear from God and share his message with the people.

God invited that nation to image him to the world around them, that everyone would see how Israel worshiped God and treated one another, and they would want to know and worship that God too.

However, God did warn the nation that if they refused to worship and obey him, he would send them back to Babylon, where they came from. This would not be a permanent punishment, but there would be a time of exile.

You can read about that in the Book of Deuteronomy.

After about 500 years of Israel worshiping false gods, sacrificing their infants to the Canaanite deities, trusting in the local empires to keep them secure as a nation, and abject refusal to worship or follow God, the Lord sent Babylon to bring

Israel back where they came from, and he told them through the prophet Jeremiah that they would be in exile for 70 years. One year for every Sabbath year that the children of Israel refused to observe while in the land God had given them.

Okay, God says, Messiah, land, people, his word, he gives it all to them. He says, I want you to show everyone what I'm like. If you don't want to show everyone what I'm like, I'll put you back where I found you.

They said, we don't want to do what you have called us to. So he sent them back where he found them.

But because of his love and his forgiveness and the fact that he was still going to bring that family and that Messiah, he says there's a time limit on this. 70 years of exile.

There was a descendant of David, a young boy from the royal family of David named Daniel that we've been talking about, who was taken over a thousand miles from Jerusalem to Babylon to become a court advisor.

The Lord had some plans for Daniel, and over a half century into his Babylonian life, God told Daniel about when and how and why he would send the Savior to rescue Israel and all of humanity from our sin.

So he told him, I'm letting you know the when of when this story reaches its culmination. If you're into rom-coms, this is finally when whatever misunderstanding happened between the guy and girl, like they realized, he didn't lie to me.

And so then they run and there's a big music montage. He says, I want you to know when the culmination of this all is taking place.

Today, as we hear about that story in Daniel chapter 9, I'd like to challenge us with the same thought we'll see from the passage. Humble your sinful self before the holy, forgiving, saving God.

Humble your sinful self before the holy, forgiving, saving God. Let's pray. We're gonna read through the passage, see a couple of things that we can apply even to our life this week.

And I hope that you will be as challenged and encouraged and hopeful based on what Jesus has done for us, as I've been even in studying this week. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for today.

God, I pray that you would be glorified in your church. Lord, I pray that you would be with my mouth. Help me to only say the things that you want me to say.

And Lord, I pray that if there's someone here today that doesn't know you as their Savior, that they would choose to follow this Lord today.

And Lord, for all of us that do know you as our Savior, God, may our hearts be humbled before you and may we recognize your greatness and our incredible need for you. Pray all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

All right, if you got your Bibles, turn over to Daniel chapter 9. Got your Bibles, turn over to Daniel chapter 9.

I am not going to exhaustively walk through this passage because as Pastor Ron's group could tell you, anytime that you're looking at prophecy, you could spend all day, every day for forever.

As I've been mentioning over the past weeks, the point of biblical prophecy is Jesus Christ. When you look at what the Bible says about the end of the world, the point of it is not be afraid or look out for like scary things.

It's look for Jesus, look to Jesus.

When we look at prophecy from the Old Testament, the point is looking forward to Jesus and you can trust the eyewitness account of scripture because every time that they said, this is going to happen because God has said so, God followed through.

And so we can trust scripture based on fulfilled prophecy. All right, Daniel chapter 9, verse number 1. You listen fast, I'll talk fast.

In the first year of Darius, the son of the Haziuerus, a mead by birth who was made king over the Chaldean kingdom. I'm going to stop right there real quick.

This is now in the second world empire that God had told Daniel was going to come on the scene. So it was Babylon first, then Medo-Persia. Here you have Darius the mead of the Medo-Persian empire that is now on the scene.

So Daniel has already seen some prophecy fulfilled in his lifetime that he goes, oh yeah, I remember back decades before when God told me the Medo-Persian empire was going to conquer Babylon and it all came to pass. Like I should probably trust God.

So see that in verse one. Verse two, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the books, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah. Okay, he's reading through.

Notice there he says the books. So there is a compilation of the Old Testament prophets, even during the time of the Babylonian exile. The word of God's not a new thing.

God has always intended for his people to know what he says. So he's reading through the prophet Jeremiah, that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be 70. How many years?

Okay, he says, So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer and petitions with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.

I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed, O Lord, the great and awe-inspiring God, who keeps his gracious covenant with those who love him and keep his commands, we have sinned, we have done wrong, acted wickedly, rebelled and turned away from your

commands and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, leaders, ancestors and all the people of the land. I want to note just one thing right here.

Daniel was very, very, very young when he was taken from Jerusalem in about 602 BC. Did Daniel ignore all of the prophets? This is a national sin.

He says, our people have done this, but instead of just saying, God, they were so bad. They're the reason that I'm in this mess. Daniel aligns himself with his people.

He says, God, the problem is not just other people. The problem is that sin lives in all of us. We have acted wickedly.

We have rebelled. We haven't listened to you. Far too often, especially on a national scale, we want to say, God, other people are the problem with America.

But the truth is this, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us have contributed to the mess of our world. Not all in the same way.

Someone that murders has done more damage to the community physically than perhaps someone that told a lie. But all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. Daniel recognizes this.

He says, God, just as much as they were a problem, I'm a problem. And so, God, we need something from you because we are imperfect. We haven't imaged you like we were supposed to.

Verse 7, Lord, righteousness belongs to you.

But this day, public shame belongs to us, the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far in all the countries where you have banished them because of the disloyalty they have shown toward you.

Lord, public shames belongs to us, our kings, our leaders and our ancestors, because we have sinned against you.

Compassion and forgiveness belong to the Lord our God, though we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the Lord our God by following his instructions that he set before us through his servants, the prophets.

He says, God, we deserve to be shamed because of how we treated you and interacted with you. He says, but God, compassion and mercy, that forgiveness, all of that comes from you. You own all of that.

Verse 11, all Israel has broken your law and turned away, refusing to obey you. The promised curse written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, has been poured out on us because we have sinned against him.

He has carried out his words that he spoke against us and against our rulers by bringing on us a disaster that is so great that nothing like what has been done to Jerusalem has ever been done under all of heaven.

Just as it is written in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come on us, yet we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God by turning from our iniquities and paying attention to your truth.

He says, God, you warned us that this was going to happen. This is me telling B, if you touch the stove while the stove is on, you're going to burn your hand. If he touches the stove, am I a meanie for making the stove burn him?

No. I warned him, if you do this, this will happen. God warned Israel hundreds of years prior, if you do this, this will happen.

They did it, and so it took place. He says, so the Lord kept the disaster in mind and brought it on as for the Lord our God is righteous in all he has done. If a person commits crime, a judge is supposed to hold them accountable.

If I rob a bank, we joked a couple of weeks ago, if I rob Jones Bank, I'm going to get in trouble. I can't just tell the bank people, oh, be merciful to me. They're going to be like, no, you did the crime, you pay the time.

God is righteous. He deals with us justly. He says, but we have not obeyed him.

Now, Lord our God who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand and made your name renowned, as it is this day, we have sinned, we have acted wickedly.

Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, may your anger and wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain, for because of our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people have become an object of ridicule

to all those around us. He says, God, it's not your fault, it's our fault, but everyone looks down on us and they ridicule the people of God because of what has happened to Jerusalem and Israel. I love that he gives the example though.

God, we're imperfect, but just like you brought us out of Egypt, would you bring us out of Babylon? Verse 17, Therefore, our God, hear the prayer and the petitions of your servant. Make your face shine on your desolate sanctuary for the Lord's sake.

Listen closely, my God, and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations and the city that bears your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before you based on our righteous acts, but based on your abundant compassion.

God, I'm not calling you to say, look how good we've been over these last 70 years. You should listen to us. He says, God, the only way that we can experience forgiveness is because you are the God who gives forgiveness.

Your state before God is not a result of your good works or your actions or your church attendance. Your state before God is based on the compassion of God shown to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

He says, Lord, hear, Lord, forgive, Lord, listen, and act. My God, for your own sake, do not delay because your city and your people bear your name. So this is an amazing prayer.

He humbles himself. He confesses sin. He calls on God to work and to operate.

This is a great model prayer for any of us, even as we confess our sins and the sins of our country. And God has an answer.

Verse 20, while I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my petition before the Lord my God concerning the holy mountain of my God. He says, God, the 70 years is about up. Can we go home now?

Will you bring us back home? He says, while I was praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the first vision. So this is an angelic messenger.

This is a spiritual being. He says, reached me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. He says, he gave me this explanation.

Okay, angel's shown up on the scene. Everyone say angel. Okay, he's asking, can we go back?

Angel shows up to give the answer. He gave me this explanation. Daniel, I've come now to give you understanding.

At the beginning of your petitions, an answer went out, and I have come to give it for you are treasured by God. Don't you love that?

At the beginning, like as soon as you're like, Dear Jesus, God's on the way to answer because you are treasured by Him. You're made in His image. He loves you just as much as He loved Daniel.

He says, so consider the message and understand the vision. Here's where it gets a little crazy. So I need you guys to all say locked in.

Okay, here we go. Daniel 9, 24, 70 weeks, this is units of seven. So 77s are decreed about your people and your holy city.

How long was Israel supposed to be in exile? 70 years. He says, okay, I've got good news and bad news.

70 years, yeah, that's the exile. But it's not just going back to normal at the end of that 70 years. You're not going to be like Israel the first time and be brought out from Egypt.

And then just get to experience your own nation for about 500 years or so. He says, there's more that's coming. So I want to warn you about that so that you're not afraid.

You don't think that God's abandoned you. He says, it's not just 70 years. It's seven sets of 70 years or here, 77.

Our decreed about your people and your holy city. Who were Daniel's people? Israel.

What's the holy city? Okay, so this is about Israel and about Jerusalem. He says, to bring the rebellion to an end, Israel is the one that had been rebellious against God.

They sinned. They didn't listen. He says, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

Okay, this is the end of the story. Okay, we're going to see.

This directly interacts with Jesus as well, but we're looking at the very end, when everlasting righteousness appears, when all the vision and prophecy is done, when the most holy place, there you have Jerusalem is anointed, sin is stopped.

I'm looking forward to that day. I hope you're looking forward to that day. So, what is all this about the 77s?

Does no one understand this? From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, the anointed one in Hebrew, that's Mashiach, it's Messiah, until the Messiah, the ruler, will be seven weeks and 62 weeks.

All right, now you're going to do math. 62 plus seven is how much? 69, 69 weeks, 69 sets of seven.

It says, it will be rebuilt with a plaza and a moat, but in difficult times. After those 62 weeks, those 62 sevens, the anointed one, the Messiah, will be cut off and will have nothing.

The people of the coming ruler will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come with a flood. And until the end, there will be war.

Desolations are decreed. So Daniel had already prayed God. The desolation that's happened to Jerusalem is like nothing that's ever happened to any nation before.

And God says, I got good news and bad news. Everlasting righteousness, end of prophecy, end of sin, all of that's coming. But there's some hard times that are coming before that.

And even the Messiah himself is going to be cut off. And notice there where it says, we'll destroy the city and the sanctuary. We would read in Ezra and Nehemiah, Jerusalem and the temple at this point are destroyed.

These don't currently exist. So there's already a prophecy that the city will be rebuilt and that the temple, the sanctuary, will itself also be rebuilt. So there's good news and there's some bad news.

Verse 27, he, this is this coming ruler that will destroy all of these things, will make a firm covenant with many for one week. That's one unit of seven.

But in the middle of the week, in the middle of the seven, three and a half, he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering.

And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple, that on the outskirts of the temple, there's going to be the abomination of desolation. This is an incredibly insulting thing that is there that defiles the temple.

One way in which we have seen this even in human history as a picture of what is to come was, as I mentioned last week, Antiochus Epiphanus, who during, because of his hatred for the Jews, about two, three hundred years after this, he sacrificed a

pig in the temple. Horribly insulting, like vile, like it probably literally caused physical revulsion from the Jews of that time. It's the picture of the kind of thing that is being talked about.

He says, until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator. So the one that defiles the temple will themselves be destroyed. Okay, we're going to go real fast.

So Jeremiah's prophecy, 70 years of exile. Daniel's prophecy is 70 sets of 7 years. So instead of 70 years, 70 sets of 7 years.

That will happen. Now, anytime you get into prophecy, you're going to get a few various opinions. I am not infallible.

This is just to the best of my understanding. If you have questions, take it up with the Lord. Take it up with Pastor Ron.

Take it up with the Internet. You'll find someone that agrees with you. I don't agree with me half the time, but as far as my study of the Word of God has been, this appears to be what is correct.

So these 70 sets of seven years. So it's 70 times seven or 490 years in total. Part of what makes this a little squirrely for us is that the Hebrew calendar had 360 days instead of our 365 day year.

So that messes with it a little bit. So that, he says first the 69 weeks, the 69 sets of seven is 483 years till the Messiah. Or if we're counting on, as we're looking back on calendars, be about 476, 365 day years until the Messiah.

You know, that's a lot of numbers. That's okay. You don't have to memorize that.

You're not going to put that into practice this week. The first 69 sets of seven years, we have the decree from the Persian king, Artus Xerxes in 444 BC to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem.

You can read about that in Ezra and Nehemiah and some of the minor prophets as well. And so 476 years from 444 BC puts you at about 29 to 32 AD.

When you get to that time period right around like 0 BC, 0 AD, the years get a little squirrely because it wasn't like Christ was born and then everyone decided, okay, we're going to start a new calendar right now.

It was like hundreds of years after the fact. So some of those numbers are a little little screwy.

So you have 476 years from 444 BC is put at about 29 to 32 AD, where we're told from Daniel, as Gabriel clarifies this prophecy, that the Messiah is going to be cut off. It's going to be killed.

And Christ in about that time frame enters Jerusalem and is killed. He's cut off for the people. Now, you're sitting here today.

We read that the whole point of this 70 sets of seven years, the whole point of this is to put a stop to sin, to bring in everlasting righteousness, all of that. Are you guys everlastingly righteous? Okay, have you stopped sinning?

Okay, story's not done yet. 39 AD., there was no, like, stop to sin. So something is different about this last seven years.

Now, Jesus made it clear for us while he was on earth. He taught in Mark 13, Matthew 24 and 25. I forget what the corresponding passage is in Luke.

I'd have to look back at that one. But he clarified for us during his earthly ministry that this last 70th week was still to come. And what we can learn from this passage and from a few of the other things is what this last seven years entails.

First, a worldwide ruler makes a treaty with Israel. This ruler makes a treaty with many for seven years, and it's about the people and the city of Jerusalem. He breaks the treaty three and a half years in.

He halts temple sacrifices and defiles the temple, and the week ends with Messiah's victory. So you have this worldwide ruler.

This would be the little horn that we read about in Daniel 7, the one that exalts himself above all other gods who wants to be worshiped as God, just like Antiochus Epiphanus did in about, it's like around 150 BC.

We have this person that unites the whole world in opposition to God's plans and God's ways and God's people.

So this is what we would read from these verses about the final seven years, but it ends with everlasting righteousness, a stop to sin, the anointing of Jerusalem as the city of God, where the Son of Man rules over all the kingdoms of the earth, and

where sin and wickedness and Satan and all of his minions are destroyed from the presence of the Lord forever and ever. That's what we're looking towards. That as Daniel is asking God, can we go back home?

He says, yeah, we can go back home, but I've got something better in mind for you. I can say two things because I am cognizant of the time that we're currently at.

Number one, believers have various views and interpretations of especially that last 70th week of Daniel. That is not a criteria by which you determine like who's a godly pastor or a not godly pastor.

So there's, you know, pre-millennial, on millennial and post-millennial views, pre-trib and post-trib views and mid-trib views and all of that. You don't have to know all of that because God hasn't outlined it for us clearly in Scripture.

It is not something that should ever be a test of orthodoxy or whether or not someone's a faithful Bible preacher.

Most of my favorite preachers are on millennial, whereas I would hold a pre-millennial position for reasons that we're going to go over in the next two weeks. So I want us to highlight very, very shortly these two things.

Number one, we're sinners in need of rescue. Daniel went over this over and over and over again in this prayer. We're sinners in need of rescue.

What's sin? Sin is acting, thinking or behaving unlike our perfect God. Every one of us have sinned.

Every one of us have failed. We haven't treated people the way that God treats them. We haven't talked about them the way that God talks about them.

I want to encourage you, do you love your sin or your God today? Is sin a recurring, unwelcome visitor in your soul or is sin the owner in your life? Today, don't follow the sin that God wants to eradicate from our world.

Instead, choose to follow Jesus instead. Secondly, God has made his nature and his will explicitly clear in Scripture. Daniel highlights for the Lord in his prayer.

He says, hey, here's what Moses said, here's what Jeremiah said, here's what the prophets said, and we ignored all of them. He says, you made it really clear. It wasn't a surprise to us when Jerusalem and Israel were destroyed.

We knew it was coming because we knew what you are like. God's not made it a mystery about which things are sins or why they're sins. If something is wrong to do or say, it's because it's the opposite of what God is like.

So follow God and his nature, seek to be like him. Don't seek your own way. Second there, or I think this might be third, we are both personally and nationally culpable for our sin.

Daniel confesses not just his personal failures, but his nation's failures. While each of us are responsible for our own actions, we are not lone wolves in the worldview of the Bible.

We're all connected to each other nationally, within a city and within families and churches. The sin of one part of our community affects us all. Are you grieved by the sin around you in your family, your city and your nation?

You should be. That should grieve you. Are you grieved by your personal failures to speak and act like God?

You should be. Pray to the Lord, ask for his cleansing, his mercy, his forgiveness, and his salvation of this world that we've ruined. Lastly there, our world's only hope of rescue is God's mercy on us.

As Daniel cries out, we can't simply act good enough for God. We need not God's justice, we need his mercy. Mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.

Instead, he gives life and love and forgiveness, and we have run away from him. So our world's only hope is God needs to have mercy on us. I'm thankful there, secondly, as we close today, that God has always planned humanity's rescue.

That from the very beginning, from the fall in the garden, God promised that he would send the seed, the offspring, the descendant of the woman to crush the head of the serpent.

That that one who seduced humanity away from the Lord would be crushed and that he would rescue us. God loved the world in this way. He sent his one and only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.

God loves and treasures us. He wants us to know his plans. Do you tell other people about the plans of God?

If you knew that everyone that went to Sparrows Point Restaurant today could receive a free meal and a birthday cake because I'm paying, wouldn't you tell other people about the good news? You're called to be like God. He loves people.

He's made his plans known. Will you tell others about the plans of God? Secondly, Jesus is the rescue that humanity has always needed.

There's no righteousness. There's no salvation found in any other name, any other authority than in the person of Jesus Christ. Salvation isn't found in you or how good you are.

Salvation is found through Jesus Christ alone. If you don't know Jesus yet, if you've never called on him to save you, you can do that today. If you could save yourself, Jesus wouldn't have come and died.

He came because we have no other means of rescue. Trust in him entirely to put an end to sin in your life. And lastly, there is an ultimate rescue from Jesus that is still ahead.

So the 70 weeks that has to do with the people of Israel and with Jerusalem, and we're going to talk in the next two weeks, especially two weeks from now, about what that entails for Israel and that story that God has been writing with them

throughout all of Redemption's history. For you and I, we are looking forward to that day when he returns and we see our beloved one again. There is that day where Jesus comes and restores us to himself that where he is, there we may be also.

There is an ultimate rescue ahead. But God doesn't want you to just like pine for that day and dawdle right now.

God wants you to be about the mission that he gave to you, which is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that Jesus commanded you.

That's your mission right now. Are you accomplishing the mission while you await your Savior from heaven? Today, God has got something better in mind for us.

Daniel had an idea of what he wanted from God, of what would be the best, but God says, no, no, no, I've got such a better plan.

It involves the Messiah, it involves Jesus, it involves this world not just gradually getting a little better, but about sin being completely eradicated, about the righteousness of Christ being applied to all who would call on the name of the Lord,

and ultimately he will come to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Have you trusted him as your Savior? And are you following the mission that he has for you today?

Turning away from sin and turning in faith to this God who is in control of all of his world.