A most Unpopular Message for A Most Urgent Need

00:01 We walk by faith, not by sight. And our whole lives really are a walk of faith. When you walk with the Lord, you walk by faith. 00:11 And by faith, Daniel said in Daniel chapter 9, which is our text this morning, Daniel prayed, and Daniel studied, and Daniel repented. 00:26 And I've titled the message this morning, "A Most Unpopular Message for a Most Urgent Need." A most unpopular message for a most urgent need. 00:38 It seems like the messages that get us appreciation or words of affirmation or thumbs up on Facebook are those messages that are messages of encouragement. But I wouldn't necessarily expect that this message gets that much affirmation. 00:57 That's not why we preach, by the way. But it is a message that is addressing a most urgent need among us and in our land and in our churches and in our own lives, in my own life. 01:14 And I would like to read our passage here this morning from Daniel chapter 9:1-19. 01:19 "In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, 01:38 that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession and said, 01:57 'O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity. We have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments. 02:18 Neither have we heeded your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us shame of face, as it is this day to the men of Judah, 02:37 to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off, in all the countries to which you have driven them because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you. O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you. 03:00 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him. We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law and has departed so as not to obey your voice. 03:20 Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned against him. And he has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our judges, who judged us, by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under the whole heaven, 03:42 such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem. As it is written in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand your truth. 03:59 Therefore, the Lord has kept the disaster in mind and brought it upon us. For the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and made yourself a name, 04:19 as it is this day, we have sinned. We have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your righteousness, I pray, let your anger and your fury be turned away from your city, Jerusalem, your holy mountain, because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, 04:41 Jerusalem and your people are a reproach to those around us. Now, therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant and his supplications. And for the Lord's sake, cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. 05:02 Open your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by your name. For we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but because of your great mercies. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, 05:22 listen and act. Do not delay for your own sake, my God, for your city and your people are called by my name." And while you're sitting there viewing this, why don't you just say those words there and following along in verse 19? "O Lord, hear. 05:44 O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. 05:51 Do not delay." We hear many messages of hope and encouragement, and especially at this time of pandemic and of isolation and of social distancing and of not being able to meet and so on. And some are unemployed without jobs, without regular income, 06:11 and some maybe without any income. And so these are times when we need encouragement and we need hope. And most of us would just like life to get back to normal. And so we can go on to live our own comfortable lives. I'll be honest with you, that's what I'd like. 06:32 I'd like to just have life get back to normal. And even if normal wasn't all that great in some times, it was really pretty good. 06:40 And so our prayer would tend to be, "Lord, get us back to normal so we can go to church, so we can worship you with the assembly, so we can go back to work, so that we can live our lives in nice 06:56 biblical ways and so on, and spare us from the difficulties." That would be our tendency to think. But my question this morning is, what if life has changed to the point that it never gets back to normal? What we would have considered to be normal? What if it's different forever? 07:18 Would we still praise God? Would we still glorify God? Would we recognize that the life that we live here in North America is really abnormal as far as the world is concerned and by world standards? And I'm not here to promote that idea necessarily this morning, other than to say, can we still praise God when things are not normal? 07:37 And what is God doing today that may change the way the world functions forever? We don't know how that all looks going forward. But the question is asked, and I've asked it myself, what is God doing? God, what are you doing in these days? 07:58 And we see a little glimmer of hope that maybe in a couple of weeks, another week, maybe things here in Indiana will be opening up a little bit and we can start moving around again. But maybe in a couple of weeks we can meet again. We'll kind of have to monitor that. But really, at the bottom line, what is God doing? 08:20 What is he doing? As he shakes the nations, is he shaking the nations? Is he judging wickedness and sin? Is he pouring out plagues? 08:33 Is this a plague, a global pandemic that will threaten the way that people have lived their lives and shake us out of our complacency? Will this result in the reconfiguring of the nations? 08:52 We see a pulling back to more nationalism. But don't forget that the globalists are wanting to see more of a global community and a one-world kind of government. 09:08 Is this setting the stage for a one-world type of government, 09:12 which could monitor all these kinds of crisis things and so that the world would have a united front against plagues and really, in many respects, against God? Is it setting the stage for a worldwide revival? 09:28 You have those in the church today who would say that this is going to shake the things loose and there'll be a worldwide revival of people coming to Christ. Will this be a judgment upon an apostate, false church? 09:45 Will this be a judgment upon false doctrine and false teachers and false religious systems? Or is God preparing the true bride of Christ for the rapture? Is he preparing the bride for his coming? Is he judging the idols of the world like he did the Egyptians? 10:08 You remember the account of the ten plagues in Egypt. Each one of those were targeted at Egyptian gods. And the gods of that world were then targeted by God to overthrow them and to bring about a disgust in the lives of the Egyptians, of their gods, 10:27 and to magnify the one true God. What is God doing today? Maybe he's doing all of those things. Maybe he's doing a number of those things at the same time. Daniel found himself in Daniel chapter 9 asking himself, what is God doing? What is God doing? 10:49 The Bible says that there will be a judgment coming upon this world. It says there will be a time of tribulation coming upon this world. Matthew chapter 24 refers to this when it says, "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall be. 11:10 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened. There will be in the days ahead a humbling of mankind and of his reliance upon self." Recently, I was talking with someone and they made a comment that they read an article that says, 11:30 "Science has the answers. Science has the answers. We can figure this out. We can conquer this problem. We can make life good again and make the world a safe place to live. 11:43 But man's reliance upon himself is an affront against God." Many scientists in the times past recognized God as the one who gave them the ability to do science and to observe and to create and to initiate and to invent. 12:04 But today, man says, "We will do it. We will do it. We can do it. We're entering in on our best efforts yet. And God will humble mankind and his reliance upon himself." There will be a strange mixture in the book of Revelation. It talks about a strange mixture of the wrath of God, the fury of Satan, and the anger of mankind. 12:24 All dumped together: wrath of God, fury of Satan, the anger of mankind in a seething cauldron of anger and judgment. However, lest we say, "Well, that relates to the world," and it does. However, Peter tells us where judgment begins. 12:45 It tells us where judgment begins: 1 Peter 4:17-18, "For the time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begin at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?" In other words, if it's serious and severe for the church of Jesus Christ, 13:05 which has been purchased with his blood to prepare the bride for his coming, what will the unbelievers experience? 13:12 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, the passage says, "Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" At this time, we dare not get caught up in political bashing, as much as I'm tempted to do that at times and question the motives and the agenda of politicians and 13:31 even those who would exploit these kinds of pandemics and these kinds of crises on the national stage and even the international stage. We must avoid getting caught up in political bashing. 13:43 Rather, we must pray for our leaders that they would do God's will and that God would use them to accomplish his purposes and that his will would be done and his kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. 13:58 Daniel, as I mentioned a moment ago, Daniel was wondering, "What is God up to?" And Daniel went on a fast. And Daniel went to prayer, trying to understand the ways of God. And Daniel went to the scriptures to study the scriptures, especially the prophetic scriptures. 14:21 And in chapter 9:1, in that first year of the reign of King Darius, he understood by the books, the number of years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish 70 years, 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. 14:40 Daniel went to the scriptures. And that's where we go to understand what God is doing, is to go to the scriptures. Because we can really not understand what God is doing until we understand what God is saying and has said. So Daniel studied the prophetic scriptures, which had not been written that long before. Jeremiah was a contemporary, 15:01 or yeah, it was on the end of his ministry when Daniel was a young man. And in Jeremiah 25:11, Jeremiah prophesied, "And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years." And Jeremiah 29:10 says, 15:21 "For thus saith the Lord, after 70 years are accomplished at Babylon, will visit you and perform my good word toward you in causing you to return even unto this place." And so God said 70 years of captivity in Babylon, desolation in Jerusalem. 15:40 And at the end of those 70 years, I will cause you to return. 15:45 The first attack under the reign of Jehoiakim, the first invasion of Babylon and the first people that were deported, youth that were deported, many of them young people, and that was deported. The first deportation was in 604 BC. 16:06 And Cyrus's decree for them to return took place in 535, which is roughly 70 years, 69, 70 years, depending on how that year was measured and how those things fell. But right at 70 years. 16:23 The point being here in Daniel that we must respond to what God is saying before we know what God is doing. See, Daniel wanted to know what God is doing. So he went and he looked at what God is saying in the scriptures. And then he responded to what God was saying. 16:42 And then he could understand what God was doing. And in chapter 9:20, "While he was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God, yes, while I was speaking in prayer, 17:01 the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering. 17:10 And he informed me and talked with me and said, 'Oh Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand.'" He studied, he heard, he responded, and then he understood. At the beginning, 17:30 excuse me, he informed me and talked with me and said, "Oh Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand." And then he went on to talk about the prophetic word of God in prophecy of the 70 weeks of Israel and of God's working with Israel. 17:48 And we won't go into that this morning. But what we want to look at here is this whole thing of repentance. Out of his study and his repentance, he began to understand what God is doing. I believe that we need to be utmost cautious to not try to figure out what God is doing until we have done adequate study and repentance. 18:10 Repentance, repenting of our sins, repenting of the sins of our churches and of our land. And we'll talk about that as we go on this morning. Let's look at Daniel's prayer verses 3 through 19. The first thing that stands out in this passage is who he's speaking to. 18:31 He acknowledged the mighty God of the universe. He acknowledged the mighty God of the universe. He put God in his place. And in doing so, Daniel put himself in his place as a servant of God in sackcloth and ashes and repentance and humility. 18:52 Just look at this passage here. In verse 3, he turned his face toward the Lord God. 18:59 In verse 4, "I prayed to the Lord my God and said, 'Oh Lord.'" In verse 7, "Oh Lord, righteousness belongs to you." In verse 8, "Oh Lord, to us belongs shame of face or public shame," one translation says. Verse 9, 19:18 "To the Lord our God." Verse 10, "The voice of the Lord our God." Verse 15, "And now, Oh Lord our God." Verse 16, "Oh Lord, according to all your righteousness." Verse 17, "Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant." Verse 18, "Oh my God, incline." Verse 19, "Oh Lord, hear. 19:40 Oh Lord, forgive. Oh Lord, listen and act for your own sake, my God." And so he's talking to the Lord God Almighty. 19:51 The word Lord here is the word Adonai, Adonai, which is the masculine noun used exclusively for God, emphasizing his supreme power and authority. This was the name for God that recognized his supreme power and authority. 20:11 And then he looks and he says God, which is Elohim. Elohim, which means, is the masculine plural for God, interestingly enough, the plural for God. But it's often in the Old Testament used in a singular sense. So there you have the Trinity in one God in three. 20:31 I believe it's a reference of the Trinity all the way through the Old Testament. But when used together with Lord, Lord God, it is emphasizing his matchlessness. And so there is none like him. He is great and awesome God. There is none like him. He is the Lord God. 20:49 But then I want you to also notice that he goes back and forth between using Lord with a capital L, small case ORD, to using Lord with a capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, which is the English translation for the name Yahweh. Yahweh. And so who was Yahweh? 21:10 He was the covenant God of the Old Testament known in Jesus Christ. He's the covenant God who made known this name to Moses as he initiated a covenant relationship with his people. He is the self-existent, eternal, covenant-keeping God of Israel. 21:31 And this is significant because he's not only praying to the Lord God out there, but he's praying to their Lord Yahweh right here in their midst. And his reason, it appears, for praying that is because this judgment was in relation to the covenant. 21:53 In verse 4, "Oh Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments." And then later on in the prayer, he refers to the fact that God had made this covenant with Moses and the people had broken that covenant. And God had scattered them as he said he would in the covenant. 22:15 And God had judged them as he said he would in the covenant. And God was being appealed to by virtue of the covenant and his own righteousness and his own goodness and his own mercy to have mercy upon the people and allow them to come back into relationship with him. 22:36 And Daniel confessed and prayed. He knows God's place. He knows his place. And he knows that at issue here is God's covenant with his people. And God's covenant with his people, Israel, was the issue that Daniel identified, 22:56 that they had been unfaithful to that covenant. And then Daniel confessed sin. He confessed sin. Look at this list of sin here that he said in in verse 5, "We have sinned and committed iniquity. 23:13 We have done wickedly and rebelled even by departing from your precepts and your judgments." Verse 6, "Neither have we heeded your servants, the prophets." Verse 7, the end, "Because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you." Verse 8, "We have sinned against you." Verse 9, 23:34 "Though we have rebelled against him, we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God." Verse 11, "Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law and has departed so as not to obey your voice. Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, 23:52 had been poured out on us." Verse 13, "Yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God that we might turn from our iniquities and understand your truth." Verse 14, the end, "We have not obeyed his voice." Verse 15, "We have sinned. We have done wickedly." Verse 16, 24:12 "Because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers." And verse, yes, that's pretty much the end of those confessions. Then he appeals to God to hear and to forgive. Now, something that's interesting here is that Daniel is not confessing his own sins. 24:34 Now, I think Daniel did that. But it's not so much recorded here. But Daniel was confessing the sins of his people. I find it interesting that Daniel was not confessing the sins of Babylon. 24:53 But Daniel was confessing the sins of the people of God. Now, I believe there is a place for standing in the gap for our nation. Abraham did this when he appealed to God for his mercy. 25:10 And he appealed to God in the midst of a sinful Sodom and Gomorrah that if there were a few people of righteousness, that God would spare the city. And you know the account. If there's 50, if there's 40, if there's 30, if there's on down to 10. And yet Abraham didn't confess the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. 25:31 He did not ask for mercy on them for the sake of of of of letting God continue to put up with their sin. He confessed and he asked that God would have mercy on the righteous and bring them safely out. 25:51 I don't think it's wrong to confess the sins of the nation and stand in the gap. But I don't think that's what Daniel's doing here. Daniel's confessing the sins of his nation, of his people, not of Babylon. 26:08 And it's really easy for us to point out the sins in the nation: corruption, abortion. In fact, it's interesting to me that in New York City, the hardest hit, maybe it's because we hear more about it, because it's a major population center and a power center in the nation. 26:27 But also, they've been so hard hit. But just a few months ago, they were celebrating. They were celebrating in the streets. They were lighting up the Empire State Building that they had passed the most liberal death law on abortion in the nation. And then Chicago and Illinois came along and said, 26:46 "We're going to do that same thing and we'll outdo you." And it's interesting that the sin of abortion, the taking of life, the murder of innocent children, is being repaid now with the dying of the population. And I don't know. I don't want to make more of that than there is, however, to just say it is significant. 27:06 But it's one thing for us to confess the sins of Babylon and to kind of do that from a sense of being out here and them being out there. But it's quite another thing to confess the sins of the people of God. 27:24 And it's even something more to identify and confess our own sins. He went through this list. He stood in the gap for the people of God even though he was not guilty of necessarily of these sins himself. 27:43 He still confessed it as a priest and prophet of the nation. All that are priests and prophets and pastors in the land of America would begin to confess the sins of the church. 28:00 I spent some time yesterday in preparing for this message just doing so, identifying God, what are those sins that grieve you, that grieve you in my life? Maybe things that don't stand out as being all that bad. 28:17 But they grieve the heart of God and keep us from really moving forth as the people of God in the power of the Holy Spirit, in faithfulness to the King and His kingdom. 28:30 What is it, God, that you are trying to break the church loose from before you return so that you might have a pure and faithful bride? How about us? You see, we must respond to what God is saying before we can know what God is doing. 28:53 So what is God saying about our apathy in the church today, especially the apathy in the North American church? Now, I'll be honest. That apathy can so quickly define my experience with the Lord. 29:12 Oh yes, I just enjoy my salvation. And I praise God for my personal salvation. But when it comes to the things of the kingdom of God, am I motivated? Do I have a zeal for the house of the Lord of hosts like Jesus did when it says of him, "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up." Now, 29:33 I've had to confess the sin of apathy. What about the sin of self-sufficiency? The sin of self-sufficiency. We can do this. We can do this. We grit our teeth and we have resolved. And we're going to do it ourselves. And we're going to make it happen. 29:53 And we don't need anybody else to do that. Self-sufficiency. Sufficiency in man rather than pouring our hearts out to God and calling upon God. And I've had to ask myself, how self-sufficient am I when it comes to my walk of faith? 30:15 And then pride. Oh, we as an American church are so proud. We have programs. We have beautiful churches. We have great and sprawling complexes. We have beautiful worship groups and singing and children's programs. 30:35 And we have wealth and we have spiritual lack. We're increased with goods like the Laodicean church. But are we lukewarm? What about our lukewarmness? What about our God of pleasure? 30:55 The God of pleasure. I'll be honest. All of these hit me in some way or another. And they all hit the church in North America. As we begin to confess the sins of the people of God, what sins are we guilty of that need to be confessed and repented of? 31:15 What about a corrupted faith mixed with worldliness? Rather than a true biblical faith, a corrupted faith mixed with the worldliness of materialism and pride and arrogance and prosperity, instead we want, instead of a biblical doctrine, 31:35 a biblical teaching, a biblical worldview, a corrupted faith mixed with worldliness, an unbiblical worldview where we base our worldview not on what the Scripture says, not on what God has said, but on what we think. Well, that may be how you interpret the Scripture. But this is what I think. And this is what I think God has said. 31:53 And this is what I think about the Bible: an unwillingness to listen to God, a distrust in His Word. Does He really say that? Does He really mean that? Did He really expect that? And so we, as a church of Jesus Christ, and I'm talking about the church in general. 32:13 And if it fits for living water, then so be it. And if it fits for you and for me, then so be it. An unwillingness to listen to counsel when we go our own way. Lift ourselves up and say, "We are sufficient in ourselves. We don't need the brotherhood to admonish us and to help us understand God's Word." A materialism, 32:34 if there's ever one thing that that that plagues us as a people today, as an Anabaptist people, is materialism. A seeking after the things of this world. A chasing after the things of this world. A greed. A covetousness in some cases. 32:56 What about an unbiblical view of God and a lack of trust in His Word, which I've mentioned? What about the sin of gossip? What about the sin of rebellion? What about the moral sins? We haven't even begun to speak about those. 33:09 But moral sins, sexual sins, abuse in homes, sexual perversions, homosexuality and and and and divorce and and and pornography, and all of those things which go around about with the sexual drive that is out of control, 33:28 out of proportion, out of God's will, and unbiblical and unscriptural and sinful. What about the sin in our churches of of of of abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse? What about the callousness about sin? 33:48 We are like the proverbial frog in the pot of hot water that the more sin abounds around us, the more we get accustomed to it. And I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that feeling. The feeling that comes when you think you've heard it all that sin has to offer. 34:07 And it no longer sickens you as it once did. You no longer get that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach because we become callous. I've had to repent of a number of these things in the last day or so. 34:23 The second point I want you to remember is that we must confess and repent to receive the promises. First of all, we must respond to what God is saying before we can know what He is doing. Secondly, we must confess and repent in order to receive the promises of God. 34:44 God was waiting for someone to repent so that He could begin the process of setting them free from the tyrannical bondage of Babylon and return them to their land. 34:58 And I believe that whatever God is doing, at least, at least God is preparing the bride for His return worldwide. And so this morning, I want to leave you with the third point. We must purify ourselves to prepare for the coming of the King. 35:20 We must purify ourselves to prepare for the coming of the King. There are two messages in Revelation. One message to two groups of people: the message of repentance to the seven churches. Five of those churches, He said, "Repent." And then He brought judgment on the nations. But they would not repent. And you can read about it in the book of Revelation. 35:41 I want to close this morning as we run out of time on Facebook with Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 11:4: "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Having therefore these promises, 36:00 dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." God is calling us to relationship. God is calling us to repent of our sins and the sins of our church and the sins of the church. 36:22 May God take these words and resonate them in our hearts so that we would not miss this opportunity to prepare for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father God, thank You for being our covenant keeping God and bringing us into covenant with Yourself. Lord, 36:42 we want to repent for our sins, for my sins, for the sins of the church, for the sins of the church in the nation, for the sins of our church at living water, for the sins of our church in the world, Lord. We pray that You would prepare the bride for that great uptaking, that great ascending to God in the air, 37:05 return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that You'll have mercy on our land and that You'll have mercy on us. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to bless You as a church. Bless You that are listening this morning. We look forward to the day. Yes, still look forward to the day when things return to normal, 37:26 whatever that is, the new normal. May the Lord bless You and keep You and make His face shine upon You, be gracious unto You, and give You peace. Amen.