6 Truths That Reveal God’s Divine Plan for Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple that Jesus is the Center Piece of History:

God’s Divine Plan in answer to prayer – vv20
God’s Divine Messenger – vv21-23
God’s Divine Plan for Israel and Jerusalem – vv24
God’s Divine Plan’s inception for Jerusalem restoration and coming Messiah – vv25
God’s Divine Plan for Messiah’s death and destruction of Jerusalem – vv26
God’s Divine Plan for the anti-christ’s final week – vv27

So, I’ve entitled this message God’s Divine Plan for Israel for Jerusalem and the Temple, God’s Divine Plan for Israel for Jerusalem and the Temple.

If many of you may have been watching the news lately and you would have noticed there’s war going on constantly in Israel and in Ukraine. That’s… that’s often… you just kind of click on the YouTube and you often see that kind of scenario. I like… we live in a world of turmoil. We live in a world that seems to be out of control.

We see also how anti-Semitism is growing. The world hates Israel.

And as you look at these things, one may wonder, is God still in control?

Is He in control of history?

What is this plan with Israel?

Where do you and I fit in into this grand scheme of things?

Because we’re not… Jewish. Not that I’m aware of, for this congregation.

Well, I think what’s a joyful thing is… is God has not left his people in the dark. In the Book of Daniel, we discover God is in control. He is controlling world history. He has a very specific agenda, both for the Gentiles and for Israel.

Normally the Bible is divided in either you an Israelite or non-Israelite. And so, when I use the term Gentile, I’m talking about the nations and when I’m talking about Israel, obviously the nation of… of Israel.

And so, in the book of Daniel in Chapters 2 through 7, we had learnt about God’s plans for the Gentile nations. And remember, it was written in Aramaic.

In Chapter 8, we learned about God’s plan for Israel and was written in Hebrew.

In Chapter 7, you may recall, we saw how God will set up his son as the Eternal King.

And we see that… we saw the distraction predicted of the Antichrist.

In Chapter 8 of Daniel, we… we read about Antiochus and He revealed to us a picture of what the Antichrist would look like.

And throughout the book of Daniel, we learned how God had numbered the days of Belshazzar of the Antichrist, and Antiochus as well – his days were numbered.

Now, in chapter 9, we see how God has a specific time period allotted for Israel. Once again, the numbering started to kick in. He has got specific purposes for the time period of… of this… this his history of Israel.

And we see how God has numbered the days before the Messiah would come, and how God had then numbered the days of the Antichrist, that would rule before his demise. And God, in this chapter, also reveals what will happen to Jerusalem and what would happen to the temple. This is by the way, one of the very controversial chapters in terms of commentators, and you can understand it because if you come at this passage from a… a preacher’s perspective, you can interpret this as it’s already happened during the Roman time period or Antiochus’ time period. Or if you approach this passage as a kind of a amil, you’re going to try and spiritualize this passage.

If you come to this as a… a post millennialist, you’re going to reinterpret the same passage in a different way, and so, no wonder the guys are landing everywhere… concerning this passage.

And so, as we go through this, I’m going to go through this slowly.  Like, once again, it’s like the… the prayer we needed to learn about prayer. This is just one of the most profound passages in all of Scripture. Once again, Daniel just takes you from this one mountain top Everest to the next mountain top in terms of theology.

Now, you may recall the background as Jews had broken God’s covenant. They’d rebelled against God, and they forsook him for idols, and God had punished them by sending them to exile. They lost their land. They’d… they’d lost their independence, really, as a nation, they were now slaves, literally all exiles under the Babylonian captivity and now with the Medo-Persians were in control of Them. You may easily have felt a sense of hopelessness if you were in exile during that time.

What is God’s plan for His people?

Is there still hope for the nation of Israel?

Is there still hope for Jerusalem?

What’s gonna happen with Jerusalem?

And as Daniel immersed himself into God’s word, he had realized, according to God’s word, this exile is coming to an end. And God was bringing hope. You know, when you study God’s word, you’ll find hope for your soul. You discover the ultimate source of hope, which is Jesus Christ.

And Daniel 9: 1-2, remember as we dived in and we learned all about prayer, but in 9: 1-2, we read,

In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— In other words, we see… in the Medo-Persian kingdom. in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.

So, Daniel knew. Hey, it’s been 70 years that we’ve been in exile. Maybe God is going to take us now back and that’s why he then steps in and starts to pray. Daniel understood that God had promised to restore his people to the land. You may recall Jeremiah 29: 10.

For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are complete for Babylon, I will visit you. And I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

And remember, so as… as Daniel’s reading these sections, he’s… he’s seeing these passages and he’s saying: Hey, if I check my… my watch, I don’t think they had a watch like we had today. But if I check my timing – it’s been 70 years!”

And so, Daniel prays this prayer of confession, and he pleads with God to restore Israel to the land. Why? For God’s own glory!

We see. We saw that in Chapter 3. Sorry, Chapter 9: 3-19. It ends in verses 17-19. Let’s just have a look at Daniel 9: 17…17-19, after he confessed all his sins.

Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and notice…and for your own sake, O Lord, Make your face… face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. And notice what his focus is on… on the sanctuary, on the temple.

Oh my God. Incline your ear. And here, open your eyes. See our desolation and the city that is called by Your Name.

The next thing we notice with Daniel is his focus is on the… on the city. Why? Because the city is called by Your Name.

And he goes on… For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, God, don’t answer because of us – whether we obey or not. Answer because of Your great mercy – he is appealing to God’s great mercy to answer.

And then there’s verse 19, O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

And so, essentially, we see something of that… Daniel’s heart. He… he wants God to restore the people. He wants forgiveness for the people. He… he wants them to go back to the land and he wants the temple or the sanctuary to be restored. And God answered Daniel’s prayer. He answered it with a vision that revealed God’s timeline and God’s goals. How is He going to go about restoring Israel?

How is He going to go about restoring the city?

How would He go about restoring the temple?

And so, we kick off this morning with this profoundly difficult passage, according to commentators. One commentator says concerning Daniel 9: 24-27. He says: “It represents not only the greatest interpretive challenge to the book of Daniel but may possibly be the most difficult passage to interpret in all the Old Testament.

Montgomery went so far as to say: The history of the exegesis of the 70 weeks is the dismal swamp of Old Testament criticism.

And so, as you come to this passage, if you wonder why, why is Karl slowing down? It’s because he doesn’t want to keep going at the same speed that he normally preaches when he preaches the whole chapter, especially when all the commentators are saying: “We don’t know how to interpret this passage!” And they struggled with that!

But I think if you slow down and we look at the key things say you’re going to find, it’s not that difficult, especially when you approach it from a literal, grammatical, historical approach, especially when you come to it as our theology is a pre-millennial theology, our understanding of Daniel, you’re going to say:

Why did Karl say this? Is that difficult?

But I’ve got to go slow as we go through these things and… and so today in a sense, we’ll finish up to the second part of chapter 9 verse 24a – just kind of the first half of that verse. Why?

Because there’s some key things that you guys need to understand.

So let me read the whole passage, but we’re going to stop at 24a. So, Daniel 9: 20-27. This gives us the overarching picture.