Daniel 9:24 stands as one of the most important prophetic verses in all of Scripture. In a single verse, God outlines His complete redemptive plan through the prophecy of the seventy weeks.
Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
The song we just sang is a rather sober song. It talks about good and evil, what are you going to follow. I hope you caught the words in there. Daniel 9:24
A lot of times people are willing to follow good when everybody is following the good. And then they’ll be very noble and they’ll follow it. But then all of a sudden, evil rises up and persecutes the good.
And then all of a sudden, those that were willing to join and follow truth will fall away. Because there’s pressure that comes from standing for truth. And I hope you caught the power of the last verse.
Where it talks about that no matter if evil appears to be prospering, truth is still truth. And sometimes we may have to stand for truth. And there are Christians that are dealing with this right now around the world.
More Christians have been killed in Nigeria in than in any other year. Martyred for their faith, simply because they’re Christians. But if you look at the history of the world, oftentimes when those would stand for the truth of Scripture, uplifting God’s name and the gospel message, they’d be put to death.
But out of their death, as it says in this last verse, would come victory. And others would be saved. And the whole time, God is there.
And He’s not taken by surprise. And He’s there for His people. As we come to Daniel chapter , this morning again, we’re not going to get into the full breakdown of the weeks.
I want us to look at some of the things that Daniel is speaking of. Last week, we looked at that he was dealing with the Lord’s holy city and His people. And today, I want us to look at some other portions of that verse that speak about what God is dealing with during the time of Daniel.
Why Daniel 9:24 Matters Today
As you look at the circumstances that are happening in our country right now, do not be afraid. I want you to understand, it’s not the first time God’s people have been faced with all kinds of evil. And then evil rising up, like these protesters in Minneapolis who desire to prevent all the wickedness that has been going on from being fully discovered.
One of the newscasters had interviewed one of the ladies. And she asked her, how are you making money? How are you making money? And finally, this lady who’s protesting and screaming, she says, I’m being paid. They’re being paid.
A lot of them are being paid to do this, to cause havoc. Because wickedness does not want to be discovered and wickedness does not want to be found out. What we’ve seen in the state of Minnesota, there’s been more theft and fraud and wickedness and evil that has gone on.
Billions of dollars stolen from people that needed it and that it was supposed to go to. What does that have to do with Daniel? Well, if you look at Daniel, Daniel had done nothing wrong. But Daniel had to suffer consequences with those who had done wrong.
The nation of Judah and prior to them, the northern kingdom of Israel. As we saw when we were looking at Elijah on Wednesday, or Ezekiel rather, on Wednesday night. All four corners of the nation were guilty.
They were guilty of rejecting God. They were guilty of rejecting His truth. They were guilty of worshipping other gods.
They were guilty of doing everything that God told them not to do. That’s what they would do. And then they thought that they could just wink and God would just wink back at them and ignore it.
But a day of reckoning came. The northern kingdom taken away into captivity by the Assyrians. And now the southern kingdom is being attacked by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians.
Daniel was taken away. On the first invasion of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel would be taken away on the second invasion.
And the third invasion by Nebuchadnezzar, virtually everyone would be taken away. The temple destroyed. The city leveled.
The walls torn down. There were no houses left. The king’s palace was ransacked.
What had Daniel done to deserve all of that? Nothing. But in the midst of all of that, Daniel, when he’s taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, and God is judging the nation of Israel, He’s chastising them for their wickedness and their sins. Daniel keeps his eyes on God, walks with the Lord, does everything he can to honor his God in the face of living in a culture that is totally disobedient and rejects the God that he loves.
I want us to look at the promises that Daniel possesses. We possess the same promises and the same promises are given to us so we should never be men and women who are lacking faith and trust and hope. And God revealed through Daniel and through these weeks, which we’re going to investigate, events that were going to transpire which enable you to be sitting here today and will enable you to be caught up with the Lord when He comes to gather His church for the wedding feast and meet Him in the air.
And you will return with Him when He comes with His ten thousands of saints to rule and reign on this earth and to deliver the nation of Israel and fulfill the final moments of these weeks. Daniel understood why all of the things that were happening were happening because remember, he went to prayer and he prayed for his sin and he prayed for his nation’s sin. And he understood the rebellion of the people who should have known better was a problem.
The biggest problem we have in America today is not communism, socialism, the rioters in Portland, New York and Minneapolis. I think the biggest problem we have today is that God’s people do not want to acknowledge their own sin and repent of it and call on the name of the Lord. And you even have much of the church looking at the time of Daniel and saying, that’s why God is done with Israel.
Look at how rebellious they were. Yet, how much of His church today is just as rebellious. I gave you a little handout and we’ll be getting into that more when we get to the last portion of chapter as it breaks down the weeks and how they are broken out.
But this morning I’d like us to take a look at chapter and I want us to begin again at verse . weeks are determined upon the people and upon the holy city to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring an everlasting righteousness and to seal up the vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. Let’s just volunteer.
Dear Heavenly Fathers, we come before you this morning. Let us understand the great promises that were given in this verse. Not only to the nation of Israel, but to all who would trust and believe in you.
Promises of the fact of the revelation of who’s in control. Who is the Redeemer? Who is the Deliverer? Who speaks the truth? And where does our hope lie? Father, I pray that this morning you would help us to understand in greater depth that we may understand the circumstances that are even happening in our world today and realize this is still very abnormal because it’s driven by the wickedness and rebellion against you and the truth of your word and your character, but it is not eternal. And Lord, help us to realize that we have hope and that hope is in you.
Speak to us this morning, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. It’s interesting, Daniel had hope.
Even when Daniel looked all around him, Daniel had hope. When Daniel was placed in positions of authority by Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel never compromised his faith. He never changed his diet.
He never changed his behavior. During the whole time of the Babylonian reign and then when Daniel was appointed to the cabinet, if you would, of the king of the Medes and the Persians, Daniel never changed his behavior. He always prayed to the Lord three times a day.
And it’s interesting, he made it very evident who his prayer was to because he lived in a culture that was very religious both times. But they served gods that were not the God of the Bible. The Babylonian culture had numerous gods.
And Nebuchadnezzar even tried to raise himself up to be worshipped as God. Not unlike many cultures in our world today where they are ruled by dictators who want to be adored by the people and acknowledged as God. North Korea is a prime example.
Venezuela was another example. He didn’t demand the people worship him as God, but he acted like God. He was saying that he was the only one that could control anything.
And we see that around the world there are very many people and men like that. We were just studying in the adult Sunday school class today. Right now we’re looking at the accounts of how sin entered the world and how Adam sinned.
And when he sinned, he determined that he was going to make decisions that were only decisions to be made by God. And he in essence became a god unto himself. And that’s really what happens when people walk in rebellion against God.
They are saying, I don’t believe in God. I’m going to do what I want to do. I am going to be God of my life.
What we’re seeing happen right now in our country is that very thing. People think they’re above the law. People think things don’t apply to them.
People think that they have the right to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. And there’s no accountability or authority they need to answer to. That was not Daniel.
Daniel believed God. And Daniel lived his life showing forth that belief. It’s interesting, last Sunday we looked at a history of the Middle East as it applies to why it’s his people, his city, and his temple.
And one of the things that we saw last week is God calls people out of darkness, as he did with Abraham, into light. And that calling doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to see the events and the promises he’s given to you in this lifetime. My wife’s grandfather, on her mother’s side, loved the Lord.
He loved prophecy. And he lived to see the nation of Israel come back into the land. But he didn’t see a lot of other things happen.
And as he looked at the prophetic Word of God, he told my mother-in-law, who was, I believe, a teenager at the time, I’m not going to live to see all this happen, but you are. My mother-in-law is years old today, and she’s still living. And many of the things that he had said are going to happen are happening today.
You can take the book of Revelation. You can take Matthew and . You can take the book of Ezekiel and Daniel and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zedekiah and Hosea.
And you can begin to look at other portions of prophecy that speak of the last days. And the events that they speak of are happening. The events that Daniel was revealed to Daniel.
He never saw most of them happen. He saw the fall of the Babylonian Empire. He saw Nebuchadnezzar become like an animal and then be resurrected again by the Lord to his position of king.
And Nebuchadnezzar’s heart changed where he worshipped God. He saw that. He saw the Babylonian Empire fall to the Medes and the Persians just as God had revealed in his prophetic dreams that Daniel had.
He lived during the times of the Medes and the Persians, during the first times of their kingdom and rule. And he saw some of the things happen that he had prophetically spoken of about their kingdom. But much of what we’re seeing and most of what we’re going to look at this morning Daniel never saw.
Yet he believed it would happen. I want you to understand the things that we’re going to look at, you can look back in history and you’ve seen many of those things have happened. Let’s just take a look at what he says here.
He says, to finish the transgression, the whole purpose is that there’s going to be weeks of days, weeks of years that are going to come upon the nation of Israel and it’s going to be upon his people, that is the nation of Israel, upon his holy city, that is Jerusalem, to finish the transgression. Now what is the transgression? Another word for transgression is rebellion. To finish the rebellion against God by the Jewish people and that’s why God had removed them from the land.
Why he removed them the first time and he removed them the second time? Because of their rebellion against him as their God. If you look back and those of you who were with us when we went through the study of the kings of Israel, you will see that there was a constant problem that existed within the southern kingdom, within the United Kingdom to start with and it began very early with the first king. The first king was Saul and Saul was appointed first king not because God necessarily wanted a king, God didn’t want a king.
The people wanted a king because the people wanted to be like the world and guess what, the people didn’t even consult with God on who they should pick as their king. They looked on the external, God looks at the hearts and they picked Saul because he stood head and shoulders above the rest of Israel. In my mind, if Saul could be standing before us today, he’d probably be a very good looking guy, a handsome man, everybody would be attracted to him and they wanted him as their king although Saul had no heart for God and it was evident in various situations that occurred during his reign and his life and when at the end of his life he did that which was abomination to the Lord.
But that’s what the people wanted. That was the beginning of going down a track of rebellion against the will and the purposes of God even though they were the chosen people, God had created them, he brought them into the promised land, he’d given them blessings and cursings, told them, you follow me, these are the blessings, you rebelled against me, these are the cursings. They all agreed to it when they came into the land.
They were to read it continually, to be reminded from generation to generation, unfortunately they didn’t do it and we see it came to the times of the kings and the kings began to slip into various areas of rebellion against the will of God. When the nation was split at the time of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, Rehoboam being the son of Solomon, that is the beginning of the great rebellion because the northern kingdom immediately worshipped false gods, didn’t worship the way God told them to, determined that they were going to get to God in a different manner, a different way, with different priests. They set up their own worship centers.
The southern kingdom still had the temple and still worshipped, but they began to fall into apostasy as well. And you can read by the time it comes to the time of Daniel, apostasy had grown so great that every king in the southern kingdom was getting worse and worse as well. And Josiah was the last good king.
Now Daniel saw the judgment come of taking them out of the land. But God promised them, I haven’t forgotten Israel. And so he revealed these things to Daniel in these weeks of years that were going to be the time period that it would take to deal with the rebellion.
And so we see here that he says that the weeks of years are to finish the transgression, that is the transgression of the nation of Israel, and to make an end of sins. The first is in the singular. The second is in the plural.
What’s the difference between the transgression or the rebellion? Isn’t sin rebellion? Well, the transgression was the fact that the nation of Israel had failed in their calling and obedience to the call and purposes of God to do what He called them to do, to be the light and salt for the world, and that the world was to see through them and the worship that He had established in Jerusalem, the coming Messiah and the promises that God had given. But they chose to go a different way. Sins, there’s going to be an end to sins.
Sins in the plural is sins of the multitude of people. But as we’re going to see, it’s not just the sins of the Jewish people that are going to come to an end, but it’s the sins of all the whole world. Going back to the book of Genesis, we realize the promise of the Messiah was given to Adam, and it wasn’t at that time narrowed down to, well, Adam, it will only be certain of your descendants that it will be promised to Messiah.
No, it was all, all those that would come from Adam and Eve would have the promise of Messiah. It’s just that the only contingence on it is to receive Him. And already at the time of Adam and Eve having children, and it’s recorded in Scripture, you had those that would seek God and those that would rebel against Him and walk in total rebellion.
And you had men like Seth who sought God, Abel who sought God, men like Cain who didn’t want to hear what God had to say, men like Tubal-Cain who became a very wicked man who introduced all kinds of sinful thought and behavior into the world. And down the road, men like Nimrod who totally rebelled against what God wanted and did his own thing and tried to create his own world and kingdom and be his own God. So, what is the sins? Well, it’s interesting.
God’s going to deal with the nation of Israel, but He’s also going to deal with the sins of the world, and it’s all going to be done in this year period. And during this period, He’s going to send His Messiah. During this period, His Messiah is going to come twice.
The first time, He’s coming to redeem the sins of the world. The second time, He’s coming to establish His kingdom upon the earth. One of the problems that the nation of Israel had with the first coming of Christ, they did not understand there were two comings.
They didn’t understand that the first coming, He had to come and be the suffering servant who would pay the penalty that by His stripes we could be healed, we could be forgiven by the shedding of His blood. And He didn’t come to establish His kingdom, but He came to redeem not only the Jewish people, but the people of the whole world. And that the second time, He would come and He would come to deliver the Jewish people from their ultimate destruction by the whole world that was not those following Christ, and establish His kingdom in Jerusalem.
And there would be an end to a sinful world as we know it, as He would rule with righteousness and justice. So He says to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity.