Daniel 11, Knowing Your God on the Way to the Manger, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Daniel 11, hear the word of the Lord. And as for me, in the first year of Darius the

Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. This is the angel speaking from the end of chapter 10, remember?

And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them.

And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up against the kingdom of Greece.

Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills.

And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these.

Then the king of the south shall be strong, but one of his princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority.

After some years they shall make an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement, but she shall not retain the strength of her arm, and he and his arm shall not endure.

But she shall be given up and her attendants, he who fathered her and he who supported her in those times.

And from the branch, from a branch, from her roots, one shall arise in his place.

He shall come against the army and enter the fortress of the king of the north, and he shall deal with them and shall prevail.

He shall also carry off to Egypt their gods with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold.

For some years he shall refrain from attacking the king of the north. Then the latter shall come into the realm of the king of the south, but shall return to his own land.

His sons shall wage war and assemble a multitude of great forces, which shall keep coming and overflow and pass through, and again shall carry the war as far as the fortress.

Then the king of the south, moved with rage, shall come out and fight against the king of the north, and he shall raise a great multitude, but it shall be given into his hand.

And when the multitude is taken away, his heart shall be exalted, and he shall cast down tens of thousands, but he shall not prevail.

For the king of the north shall again raise a multitude greater than the first, and after some years he shall come on with a great army and abundant supplies.

In those times many shall arise against the king of the south, and the violent among your people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they shall fail.

Then the king of the north shall come and throw up siege works and take a well -fortified city, and the forces of the south shall not stand, or even his best troops, and there shall be no strength to stand.

But he who comes against him shall do as he wills, and none shall stand before him. And he shall stand in the glorious land with destruction in his hand.

He shall set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom, and he shall bring terms of an agreement and perform them.

He shall give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom, but it shall not stand or be to his advantage.

Afterward he shall turn his face to the coastlands and shall capture many of them, but a commander shall put an end to his insolence.

Indeed, he shall turn his insolence back upon him. Then he shall turn his back toward the fortresses of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall and shall not be found.

Then shall arise in his place one who shall be an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom.

But within the days he shall be broken, neither in anger nor in battle. In his place shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given.

He shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. Armies shall be utterly swept away before him and broken, even the prince of the covenant.

And from the time that an alliance is made with him, he shall act deceitfully and he shall become strong with the small people.

Without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province and he shall do what neither his fathers nor his father's fathers have done, scattering among them plunder, spoil and goods.

He shall devise plans against strongholds, but only for a time. And he shall stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army.

And the king of the south shall wage war with an exceedingly great and mighty army, but he shall not stand, for plots shall be devised against him.

Even those who eat his food shall break him. His army shall be swept away and many shall fall down slain.

And as for the two kings, their hearts shall be bent on doing evil. They shall speak lies at the same table, but to no avail, for the end is yet to be at the time appointed.

And he shall return to his land with great wealth, but his heart shall be set against the holy covenant and he shall work his will and return to his own land.

At that time appointed, he shall return and come into the south, but it shall not be his time as it was before, for ships of Kittim shall come against him and he shall be afraid and withdraw and shall turn back and be enraged and take action against the holy covenant.

He shall turn back and pay attention to those who forsake the holy covenant. Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress and shall take away the regular burnt offering and they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate.

He shall seduce with flatteries those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their

God shall stand firm and take action. But the wise among the people shall make many understand, though for some days they shall stumble by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder.

When they stumble, they shall receive a little help and many shall join themselves to them with flattery and some of the wise shall stumble so that they may be refined, purified, and made white until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.

And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god and shall speak astonishing things against the god of gods.

He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished, for what is decreed shall be done.

He shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all.

He shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these. A god whom his fathers did not know, he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts.

He shall deal with the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign god. Those who acknowledge him, he shall load with honor.

He shall make them rulers over many and shall divide the land for a price. At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, and the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen and with many ships, and he shall come into the countries and shall overflow and pass through.

He shall come into the glorious land and tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand,

Edom and Moab and the main parts of the Ammonites. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

He shall become ruler of the treasures of gold and of silver and the precious things of Egypt and the

Libyans and the Kushites shall follow in his train, but news from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction, and he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain.

Yet he shall come to his end with none to help him. May the

Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, it's Christmas Eve, which means school is out.

It's not a time for lessons, is it? It's not for gaining new knowledge, for studying.

We take a break from learning new things, from work. We just relax, right?

It's a holiday, our most sentimental holiday, really. People like to listen to old songs, usually the same old songs that they've heard over and over again.

They listen to them this time of year, like on a loop, even the same performances of the same songs.

They just don't want to hear anyone singing chestnuts roasting over an open fire. They want to only hear the

Nat King Cole version. Don't bother me with anyone else. They'll watch the same movies over and over again.

Many people annually rewatch a few favorite old Christmas movies. One of the versions of A Christmas Carol, maybe the one with Muppets.

It's a Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street. Over the last decade, it seems

Christmas Vacation has become a popular favorite for rewatching, and maybe now

Elf. They've seen these movies so often, they even know the next line.

This is where Scrooge says, Christmas is picking a man's pocket every 25th of December. This is where George Bailey runs through the town yelling,

Merry Christmas, even. Merry Christmas, you miserable old savings and loan. Where Kris Kringle gets bubble gum in his beard, or where Cousin Eddie says his subscription to the

Jelly of the Month Club is a gift that keeps giving all year round. This is, I think, the most hilarious line ever.

And where Buddy the Elf accuses a department store Santa of sitting on a throne of lies. They just know it's coming because they've seen these movies over and over again.

You watch the movies so much because you want the same feeling, the same sentimentality.

You want to learn something new. You don't have new characters or a new plot where you really have to pay attention.

These movies you've seen so much, you could walk out, go get yourself a sandwich and come back and you know what happened in between.

Just because you've seen it. That's part of the point. And there's nothing wrong with that. We need breaks, need time to recreate, recreate, to rest between working, even have a break between learning.

God made us to have a day of rest per week. And there are holidays. There's festivals and celebrations like they had in the law in Israel.

Not only did they have the weekly Sabbath in Israel, they had three major celebrations three times a year. They had

Passover and then what's called Shavuot, which means weeks or Pentecost. And Sukkot, which is tabernacles or booths, the

Feast of Booths. So they had these three major holidays that also kind of broke up the year to get a break from the weekly routine of six days of work and one day of rest, a break from life as usual in the world.

And today and tomorrow in our culture and our time is one of those. But a break from what?

Is it just a break from making more money? Paying the bills from work?

Yeah, it should be. You need that. We need a break from that. But we should not want a break from learning about and knowing

God. That's what we'll be doing here from Daniel 11 so that you will know your

God. Do you know your God? We get to know him better here in Daniel 11 in three parts.

First, about the eternal. Second, about the enemies. And finally, third, about the end.

But do you know your God? Know that he is eternal. And that doesn't mean he lasts through all time.

He's just kind of really old from the beginning of time to the end of time. No, he is actually over time and over history.

He sees it all as one big picture. And this is important to remember at Christmastime because when

Jesus is born, is it when the son first began to exist? He always existed.

This is the miracle of the incarnation. Incarnation means coming in the flesh. He existed eternally.

He's over time. But in the incarnation, the one who is beyond time is the eternal, came into time.

And we see evidence of that here in Daniel. You notice what is going on here, particularly the verb tense is over and over again, almost probably every verse.

It's the future tense. But it's talking about things happening. It's talking about things. And from our point of view now are in the past.

So this is history told in advance, told in the future tense, because God sees it, knows what's going to happen.

And so he tells Daniel here through the angel. And it covers much of the period from the time between the end of the

Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. And it was fulfilled in every detail, just as the angel told

Daniel. For example, in verse two, the angel first began talking about Persia, which is the dominant empire of Daniel's time near the end of his life when he had this vision.

He, this angel, says that a wealthy king will arise from Persia. I think he's three kings and then a wealthiest king who will stir everyone up against Greece.

And this was fulfilled by the Persian king Xerxes who gathered all the wealth and the might of Persia to try to capture the

Greek city -states. Seems like he would have had enough land already, but whatever. He kept wanting to expand to try to attack

Greece, what's known as the Peloponnesian Wars. And then in verse three, it says, a mighty king will arise. By the way, the

Greeks withstood him, so he wasn't successful. But in verse three, a mighty king will arise.

That is Alexander the Great, who conquered most of what we today call the Middle East. But he died young.

He died at age 32 before he had any children. The angel says that his empire goes into four parts, but not to his posterity, in other words, not to his children, because he didn't have any children because he died so young.

And it says, after he has appeared, this Alexander the

Great, his empire would be broken up and parceled out into the four winds of heaven. Alexander's empire was divided among four generals.

As far as Judah was concerned, the two most important of those divisions were between Egypt, which is what is repeatedly here, so often here, called the

King of the South, and between Syria, which is what is called over and over again the King of the

North. These two kingdoms are referred so much by the angel here,

Egypt and Syria, King of the North, King of the South, North, Syria, South, Egypt. The Egyptian kingdom, the

King of the South, is strong and it is dominant for much of this time, just as it says in verse five. Even little details are foretold just as they happen and is foretold in a future tense.

Notice that in the middle of verse six, the daughter of the King of the South will go to the King of the North to make an alliance.

This happened when the Egyptian King Ptolemy II sent his daughter Berenice to the

King of Syria, Antiochus II, to be his wife and so ally the two empires together through marriage.

The kingdoms in those days often did that, send a daughter to the king and so you're allied together by marriage.

Now your in -laws can't do war with each other if you're in -law, if you're family, right? Well, they would still end up doing it, but whatever. This happened in the year 246

BC, but God had already revealed it to Daniel about 300 years before, as he says here, as he's predicting it.

Not just predicting, predicting is kind of like guessing the future. God's telling, this is what's going to happen. And as the angel foretells, that alliance and the marriage did not last.

In fact, the previous wife, Antiochus II, his previous wife didn't like the second wife,

Berenice, and so had her killed. Oh, things didn't go well with the family alliance.

And on it goes in great detail. There's so much detail here. If we spent time describing how this is fulfilled by that, we would go a couple hours and you may want to go home after that.

So we're not going to go through all the details. If you're interested, there are places you can read about commentaries or histories of the time.

What it shows, the important thing for us is that it shows us history written in advance, history written in the future tense.

So someone could ask, you're a little skeptical, well, if that's the case, why doesn't

God tell us everything? We want to know. We can use that knowledge. Why doesn't he reveal the date of Christ's return?

So we'll know how much time we have left to evangelize. Or why doesn't he give us perfect stock tips?

If only like 30 years ago, he would have told us to invest in Google. Imagine how wealthy we could be. We could take the profits.

If he gives us an inside trader knowledge, we can invest the profits in missions, of course. And we'll keep a little commission for ourselves.

God could have done that, certainly. But this is here to show us this history in advance in the future tense, to show us that God is glorified by proving that nothing that has happened has caught him by surprise.

Even though many of the events are seemingly bad for God's people, none of this has happened just by surprise.

That everything that brought history on the way to the manger, to the birth of Christ, even how the enemies of God tried to destroy

God's covenant, and all the persecution and the torment, the killing they went through, all that was guided by God toward his goal.

It shows us the eternal, standing over history, his story.

Do you know your God? Second, know the enemies of God.

There are three basic enemies. There's the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Now, remember, chapters 10 to 12 are all really one narrative, one story.

And we're taking just this part in the middle out of it and looking at it. But remember, I began in the previous chapter with Daniel's encounter with this angel.

And first, the angel tells him about the enemy we saw last week. He's awesome, whatever, prince, demons, calls him chief, what do you call them, chief princes, principalities and powers that we wrestle with, seeking to hinder the word of God.

That's the devil. Then there's the world. This prophecy is all about the kingdoms of this world.

The world is one of our worst enemies. Now, here we see what the world will do to try to destroy our covenant and our commitment to and from God.

Here we see what the world will do to destroy our relationship with God. Every once in a while, leaders arise in the world who are able to get great power and seek to grasp everything in the world.

And that is what human beings have been trying to do ever since the fall. They reached out their hand and grasped what

God said don't grasp, is to do as we will. My will be done.

That's the essence of sin. I'll do what I want to do with no accountability to God.

But most of us are constrained by lack of money. We can't afford, can't afford it.

Or lack of power or family tells us to go straight. Community obligations, the society around us or the law keeps us from doing what we would do if we had this unlimited power.

But once in a while, the world has a powerful man who lives that quest to do as he please on a grand scale.

Three times in this chapter, it tells us of men who are driven by this will to power, who are able to do as they please.

In verses 3, 16, and 21, on the way to the manger, they seek to do according to their own will.

It says, verse three is about Alexander the Great, who was a young man who imposed his will on most of the

Middle East. But he was called to account before God early at the age of 32.

Then in verse 16, he who comes against him shall do as he wills.

None shall stand before him. There's that will to power. And that's about Antiochus II, also called

Antiochus the Great, who ultimately and finally decisively brought the promised land, much of Israel, fully under the control of his empire, based in Syria.

He shall stand in the glorious land with destruction in his hand. Verse 21 reveals about another such man.

It says a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given.

And we've mentioned this person before. He's a man some call the Old Testament Antichrist. In verse 21, he is just called a contemptible person.

Just contemptible, just scorn him. He was Antiochus IV. He called himself epiphanies, like from an epiphany or manifestation.

God manifest. That's what he said about himself. I am the manifestation of God.

Imagine the ego that comes with that. He was called by the Jews Antiochus the Wicked. He was a king of the north, a king of Syria, the

Seleucid Empire, for 11 years from 175 to 164 BC. And just as the angel foretold in verse 23, he shall act deceitfully.

In other words, he says things that are false, makes promises he doesn't keep. And he shall become strong with a small people.

It starts out small. He was never supposed to be king. He took the throne of Syria by plotting, by maneuvering, by deceit.

Just as it was foretold in the middle of verse 24, he was initially about to achieve more than the other kings of the north had been able to.

He shall do what neither his fathers nor his father's fathers have done. He's going to take over the king of the south.

He's going to expand, almost putting back together all of Alexander's kingdom. But Antiochus is rising over the king of the south in Egypt, nearly able to completely conquer it.

And in the middle, think of if you know, you've got a map, you think Syria up there, Egypt down there. In the middle between the two, of course, is

Judah, which is under his control with his temple and his covenant with the true God. And like other conquerors, like all fallen people, he wants to do as he pleases.

It says he does as he pleases. And then something happened that infuriated him. You know, we get furious when something interferes with what we want.

I want this and it's not working right. And someone who does as he pleases all the time, anything that gets in his way makes him furious.

He was in the process of laying siege to Alexandria, Egypt, which is then the capital of Egypt, right on the

Mediterranean coast up there in the north. But Egypt allied itself with a new power rising in the west,

Rome. The Roman ships, as he's laying, Antiochus, the wicked, laying siege to Alexandria.

Roman ships arrived with a Roman ambassador on it, came to the negotiations with the king of the south,

Egypt there, and the king of the north, Antiochus. And these are the ships of the western coastlands, as mentioned there, or of Chittim from the west, mentioned in verse 30.

And this is the first time in the Bible that I believe that the Roman empire shows up. And of course, the

Roman empire plays such a big part in the New Testament. Luke begins his account of the birth of Jesus with how the

Roman emperor issued a decree that made Joseph take pregnant Mary to Bethlehem.

How did Rome get involved all the way with Israel? Well, this is kind of the beginning here. Here, Rome first appears when

Antiochus is on the cusp, he thinks, of conquering Egypt. It's right in his grasp.

He almost has Egypt. He has Alexandria under siege. But then he's confronted by an old man, an ambassador from Rome, who demands that he withdraw his troops from Egypt.

Antiochus says, I'll think about it. And so then the Roman ambassador takes his staff, like his walking stick,

I guess. He draws a circle. Imagine Antiochus is standing there. This old man comes and draws a circle all around him as he's standing there and tells him that before you step out of that circle, you had better decide whether you will withdraw your army or Rome will be at war with you.

Now imagine this man so full of himself, he names himself

God Manifest, Epiphanes, always doing his will, my will be done.

And he's humiliated like that. This old man, this ambassador from Rome, comes up to him and draws a circle around him and says, you make up your mind before you step out of the circle.

Imagine what that does to his mind. So he knew he couldn't stand up to Rome. So he retreated.

He backed down. And then he showed that he was the

Antichrist of the Old Testament. In the middle of verse 30, Antiochus, frustrated by the Romans, decides to vent his fury.

He's furious at the way he's been humiliated by Rome, but he couldn't take it out on Rome. And he's not allowed to take it out on Egypt now because of Rome.

So he's going to take it out against, it says here in verse 30, the Holy Covenant. He wasn't just like other enraged tyrants who simply want to kill people who are different than him.

He was not trying to destroy the people of God, but God's covenant with them. He set out with all his power and his will to power to wipe out faith in the

Lord. He used bribery to get the people of Judah to betray their faith. Like the priest, he would bribe a lot of them.

That's how you begin to create the Sadducees who were more allied with the Greeks and that culture.

Even leading priests in the temple turned as traitors and supported Antiochus, or Antiochus, sometimes it's pronounced. He tried to find and destroy every copy of the

Torah, of the law, the first five books of the Bible, so people wouldn't have a record of God's covenant with them anymore.

He required the people of Judah to offer sacrifices to his Greek God, to Zeus. Then he set up an idol to Zeus in the temple itself,

God's temple in Jerusalem, set up an idol to Zeus there. It was supposed to be for the Lord. No idols, no images, it was supposed to be in the temple.

Set up an idol to Zeus on it and sacrificed a pig on the altar to Zeus. This was the abomination that causes desolation in verse 31.

That's something so abominable that it makes the temple itself desolate or empty of holiness.

It's no longer a worship place for God because of that abomination. In order to make it suitable for God's worship, you have to take the abomination out and cleanse it.

So Antiochus, or Antiochus, and the world through him was determined to obliterate

God's covenant, God's name from the earth. So there'd be no memory of God's promises anywhere on the earth.

It's almost like a Terminator movie. Somebody from the future coming back to try to stop the Savior before he appears.

And that's what Satan is trying to do here and the world's trying to do here. Stop the Messiah before he's even born.

And he almost succeeded. He almost succeeded because of the flesh. Remember the three enemies?

The world, the flesh, and the devil. We dealt with the devil in chapter 10. And now we dealt with the world, but the world makes people conform by appealing to their flesh.

What's the flesh want? The flesh wants greed. It's greedy. It wants money. It can be bribed.

It can be rewarded. Or the flesh is full of pride. It likes to be flattered, told how great it is.

Or the flesh is just concerned about preserving itself, so it's cowardly. So it appeals to greed or pride or cowardice.

It punishes nonconformity and rewards conformity. Today, with popularity, with clicks and likes and followers and money, do what we say and you'll be popular.

You'll have a big crowd. You'll be very famous and you'll be loved. Antiochus got traitors to betray the covenant with God by bribery.

In other words, he paid them off, appealing to their greed. Now, do this, the world tells us today, you'll be wealthy.

Put the chasing of money ahead of seeking God's kingdom and you'll have a big house and you'll have lots of money.

You'll be rewarded. I will reward you. It appeals to your greed or by flattery appealing to your ego. If you do what we say, you go along.

You're cultured. You're a tolerant person. You're a good person. You're one of us. We accept you. We like you. In the middle of verse 24,

Antiochus gets followers by distributing loot and wealth to people. He appeals to their greed so that they who care more about material things, their covenant with God, carry out this

Antichrist plot to destroy the covenant. And then notice again, the beginning of verse 32, he uses flattery again by appealing to our pride.

Also a manifestation of the flesh as a way of using people to help him eradicate the covenant.

Come along with me. If you do, tell them how great you are. You're wise.

You're on the right side of history. Greek culture is the future. Don't you want to be with the future? It's where every civilized person is gonna be at.

Today they'd say, come along with us. Affirm what we say, affirm. Condemn what we say, condemn.

And if you do, then you are tolerant. You are inclusive. You're sophisticated. You're a civilized person.

We accept you and we'll put you in faculty here and you'll be a famous person. Get lots of clicks and likes and all of that if you go along with us.

And of course, being a violent man, a man so violent he was sometimes called the madman.

Called him a lot of things, didn't he? Called himself Epiphanes. Jews called him the wicked. Some others called him the madman.

By threats of violence, by actual violence, he terrified many people into following him and forsaking

God's covenant. He threatened and killed people who resisted him, sometimes thousands of them.

So loving one's life more than a relationship with God. In other words, by killing people, others would look at that and say,

I don't want to be killed, so I'm going to do what he says. I'm going to offer the sacrifice to Zeus. I don't really believe it in my heart, but I'm going to go along because I don't like to die.

And so that's cowardice. And cowardice is a fruit of the flesh, a rotten fruit of the flesh.

Does the flesh really have fruit? It has works, I guess. It's a work of the flesh. So without the flesh, without the greed and the pride and the cowardice, it produces this antichrist of the

Old Testament. I should say the flesh produces with greed and pride and cowardice this antichrist.

Without it, without those things, without greed or pride or cowardice, he could not have succeeded so well.

He almost succeeded completely. But as it says in verse 32, verse 32

I think is the key verse in this chapter and the verse this chapter is most well known for.

The people who know their God firmly resist the enemies of God and then they take action for God.

The key is knowing God. Those who do resist the world, the flesh and the devil and they act for God.

There was an old priest living in a small town in Judah with five sons and his name was

Mattathias. One of his sons was named Simon, another was named John. You read the New Testament, why are there so many Simons and Johns around?

Because they were named after Mattathias' sons. His name was Mattathias and when a few of Antiochus' men came to his town to get them to sacrifice to Zeus, you know they're going around, you got to send your bureaucrats around to make sure everyone's worshiping

Zeus now. Get there, I guess you get stamped or something. You've done it, you've done that deed of sacrificing to Zeus.

When they came to his town, Mattathias and his sons instead attacked the

Syrian men, Antiochus' men. They destroyed the altar to Zeus and then of course they knew they were going to be, they would be attacked by Antiochus' army and so they went into the wilderness, they hid out there and over time other believers in the

Lord who knew their God and wanted to preserve God's covenant came to them.

They began to gather together out in the wilderness, kind of like David and his men. They gathered in the wilderness.

Over 14 years, they fought a guerrilla war and finally they were able to liberate

Judah and restore the temple. They took action.

They took action because they knew their God. Now some people say that if you believe that God has written all of history, you know, he's written it all out.

It's set in concrete, you can't change it. Like here, it's just predicted already, right? Think about that.

Here, much of the history between the Old and New Testament is written out for us, which means, you think about it, that means it can't be changed.

You know, the angel's not saying, well, it might happen if so -and -so does this or if he chooses that.

We kind of think he could go that way or he could go that way. Who knows what he might do? No, he doesn't say that. He says, this will, this will, this will, this will.

And some people say, well, if that's the case, then God is the eternal, who sees the end of his enemies before they even arise.

Then if you believe that, then won't you just be passive? Just kind of go along?

You think, well, God's going to take care of it. His plan will be fulfilled no matter what we do.

So might as well just relax, do nothing. Don't resist anything. Don't take action for anything. They say if you believe history is his story already written, then you'll be lazy, passive.

You'll do nothing to change it. You won't evangelize. You won't go into missions. You won't try to change the world. You won't resist any evil.

You won't take any action for good because you just think, well, God's going to take care of it all. But the reality, but the reality, and if you look at real history, the reality is the opposite.

When you see that you serve a God who is eternal, who isn't just kind of guessing that history might, if he can persuade people to do what he wants, that hope it goes this way or that.

No, that he has it written out. He's standing over time and that history is his story, that the defeat of his enemies is certain even before they arise.

He sees they'll rise, they'll appear so triumphant, they'll do as they will, but their will, these enemies of God, their will ends up serving

God's will. You'll see that if you're on his team, God's team, you're on the winning team.

You'll see that God is triumphant and so you will be joyful.

And that inspires you to stand firm and take action.

If you see whatever it is coming your way, Antiochus and his men threatening to kill anyone who resists them, you see that even if it looks just overwhelming, that you can stand up against them because you have

God on your side. You can take action because God is triumphant at the end.

Well, here on the way to the manger, as God's enemies furiously tried to destroy God's covenant before Christ could fulfill it, the people who knew their

God stood firm and took action. They resisted Antiochus, they defeated his forces, they liberated

Israel for a time. And verse 36 describes the enemy. The king shall do as he wills.

There's that description again, that's their characteristic. They think they're doing their will, they're imposing their will, they're the enemies of God, but it always ends up serving

God's will. Three times it says that. They do as they will.

And at the end, God's will is done. It says he shall exalt himself. So verse 36, exalt himself.

He magnifies himself above every God and shall speak astonishing things against the

God of gods. This is not just true of Antiochus who described himself as Epiphanes, you know,

God manifest. Look at me, that's who I am. I'm a God manifest. And he tried to impose his God Zeus on the people. It's true of all antichrist, beast.

It says in verse 37, they show no regard for any God, except in verse 38, a

God of fortresses. Like Mao, who said power comes out of a barrel of a gun.

It's the God of fortresses. Although it's power is all that matters, they think. Well, guess who ends up having power over them?

Well, this is the man consumed by a will to power without any knowledge of God, secular people, without any respect for powers beyond them.

Like Herod, you know, Herod married the fourth, you know, great, great, great, great granddaughter of Mattathias.

So he ends up marrying into the family and he used that connection to get support from the

Romans to be king over Judea in Jerusalem. So that's where Herod comes from.

Like Herod, who in his old age, when he should have known that he's dying soon, that he doesn't have much time left.

And so no child is going to be a threat to him. Still, when he was told that the

Messiah was born in Bethlehem, had all the baby boys there killed. There's a tyrant doing as he wills, not restrained by God's law.

Like Napoleon, who arrogantly crowned himself, publicly demonstrating that he did not recognize any claim to divine authority over him.

Like Hitler, a secular man who sometimes used the name of God to justify his actions and impose his

Nazi ideology on the church in Germany. Or communist dictators who deny that there is a

God and arrogantly claim that power comes not from the Lord of Heaven, but out of a barrel of a gun from the god of fortresses.

At least Antiochus showed some respect for a small g kind of God, fictional, mythological, but he showed some respect for something.

For Zeus, these modern Antichrists care nothing for any claim to authority above them.

They think they can just do as they will. Still, despite beast, Antichrist, contemptible people, the wicked trying to be the great.

Still, despite them persecuting or bribing, seducing with flattery in verse 32, the people who know their

God shall stand firm and take action. That was true in the past when

Mattathias and his sons refused to worship the idol and took action. It's true now when we're tempted to serve mammon, to live for money, or to live for the things that it can buy, the gifts we can get for Christmas.

And it will be true in the future. The coming attacks of God's kingdom will use the pressure of the world.

Like before, there will be betrayal from within, like from within the church, people who claim to be

Christians, claim to believe in the Lord, and they will betray God, betray us because of the flesh, because of the appeals that they want to be popular.

They know if they say this or that, they can get a huge church, thousands of people. Some will love the respect they can get from being part of the world, or some will love the wealth they can get that can be bribed.

Notice that in the end of verse 39, the Antichrist, the past or future, will reward those who acknowledge him rather than God.

Those who acknowledge him, that's these Antichrists, like Antiochus. He shall load with honor.

You want honor? Sure, we all want honor, don't we? We don't be respected, regarded. Well, you can get it if you go along with an

Antichrist who's doling it out to people who go along with him. He shall make them rulers over many and shall divide the land for a price.

Want to be a ruler? Sure, we would all love to be rulers, don't you? Price, just pay him off.

Give him something he wants, pay him. He'll make you a king under him. He's the emperor. You can be a king, sort of, like Herod.

Herod did that. Herod did exactly that. In our modern world, people demand a God who respects their will to power, their free will.

I can do what I want to do. I can will what I want to will. Their so -called freedom to do what they choose.

Even about God, over the last generation, there's risen a movement among supposedly evangelical Christians.

I don't think they qualify for that anymore, but supposedly, to deny the full knowledge and sovereignty of God. They are arguing that since people, they start out with the idea that people just must have free will.

That's the one thing you cannot deny, and so everything is arranged around that. So they'll argue, this is the way they reason.

Since we must have free will, then God cannot know what we will decide, because then we can't change our mind, and our will has to be free.

That's the one undeniable fact, they think. Our will has to be free, so God cannot know what we might decide.

So we can't know the future, so the future is open, they say. God does not even know with certainty what will happen.

God doesn't even know what we're going to decide, because we might change our mind, and our will has to be free. This is the so -called openness of God.

Open theism, it's called. I prefer to call it mini -theism, because it's a small God. God is supposedly, in this system, open to whatever the future holds, because he doesn't hold the future.

Our will does. I even saw one Christian writing that on the September 11th, 2001, in the terrorist attacks, that God, they said, quote,

God was totally surprised to see the victims from the attacks coming to heaven, because he couldn't see, in the future, what would happen.

Just totally surprised. Apparently he couldn't even overhear their conspiracy. That's why I call it mini -theism. That's a small God. This person probably thought that he was defending

God from accusations of not stopping the attacks. That's the way they think. We've got to make

God seem popular to people, appealing to people, and if you have a God who sees all the future and is in control of it all, and yet these horrible things happen, well, then he must be guilty of it, in some way involved in it.

Why didn't he stop it? That's the problem of evil. So, you know, well, we've got to, we've got to save God's reputation from that.

So we've got to say, well, our will can do anything we want, so it's all based on our will. But such people, what they end up doing is making a small

God. It's mini -theism. And so such a person who believes in a mini -God like that, who doesn't see the future, can't, because our will is sovereign, doesn't know his

God. And so when the pressure comes, he won't be inspired to stand firm and take action.

Are you going to stand firm, take action for a God like that? For a

God who can't even know what we are going to decide because he's limited by our will? Just like Antiochus used traitors in the midst of Israel, so too will coming

Antichrist use traitors from the midst of God's people, from the middle of the church, in order to try to destroy the covenant.

And the last paragraph takes us to the end, the end of the beginning. So third, the end.

Starting at verse 40, at the time of the end, that's the end of the beginning, the king of the south, that's from Egypt, remember, attacks the king of the north, from Syria, Antiochus, and their war overflows into other countries and comes into the glorious land, verse 41, that's the land where the glory of God is revealed, glory to God in the highest, said in Israel.

There's a lot of killing and looting, as Antiochus, the Old Testament Antichrist, stretches out his hand against other countries all around that area.

Verse 42, but news of threats from the north and the east alarms him, so he takes out his fury again on the people of God.

In verse 44, he sets up his palatial tents, very specific, isn't it? He has very elaborate tents.

He sets them up. It says, between the sea, it's the Mediterranean Sea, and the glorious holy mountain, which means

Mount Zion, where the temple was in Jerusalem. But then suddenly, he comes to an end.

It says, with none to help him. He dies in an accident, apparently, apparently falling out of his chariot, as it was speeding along.

And then soon the end comes when on that glorious, holy mountain, the

Son of Man makes an end of sacrifices by sacrificing himself.

So what happened when Jesus was born was the beginning of that end.

Do you know your God? The only way we can withstand the coming attacks on the world, the flesh, and the devil is if we know our

God. God will be opposed. Jesus will be opposed.

He has enemies. I know at this time of year, it looks like everyone believes in Jesus. Everyone has a favorable opinion of it. It's not true.

A lot of people, their idea of a Jesus they support is not the true Jesus. They have a fictional

Jesus they made up in their mind. No crying he makes in a manger. He's a baby, unthreatening, always saying sweet things.

That's not the real Jesus. If they knew the real Jesus, they read his word, they would be opposed to that.

They would be an enemy of that, and they are. We have a covenant with the real Jesus, and our covenant, our committed relationship with him will be attacked.

And when that happens, we'll see who really knows their God. John Calvin wrote, we do not really acknowledge

God unless we boldly contend when we are put to the test.

Our culture today, especially at Christmas time, is full of talk about God, but it's a

God, a small g, God, who serves us, who helps us do as we please.

A divine Santa Claus, like the way people take the original Christmas greeting from heaven.

The original greeting was glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

And what we do, what our culture has done to that is cut off the glory to God in the highest, cut that out, throw it away at the beginning, and cut off at the end with those whom he is well pleased, and so what's left, what they think is the greeting, is only peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

That's what the popular God, built by edited portions of Scripture, tells us

Christmas is about. And knowing that popular God will not give you the strength to stand firm against enemies, because they're

God's enemies, the enemy can't get to God, he'll try to get to you because you're his people, to stand firm against enemies, or that popular

God will not give us strength to have the motivation to take action, but knowing a true

God who saw and ordered all of history, it's his story, on the way to the manger, preparing the way so that everything would be perfectly set in place, you have

Herod, you have the Roman Empire, everything set for what he wanted to achieve. When the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth his Son for Christ to be born in Bethlehem, just as foretold, to be raised in Nazareth, just as foretold, to his ministry from Capernaum, just as foretold, to do not his own will, but who knelt in the garden and prayed, not my will, but yours be done, the opposite of these

Old Testament antichrists who always were doing their will, not my will, he said, but yours be done.

He was betrayed by a traitor from within, who loved flattery and money, and he then bore the sins, our sins, the sins of his people, and rose, and now reigns until he puts all his enemies under his feet, knowing that God, the

Eternal, who did all that He said, just as He said it, knowing that God fires in us the courage to stand, to resist our enemies and to take action, knowing

Him shows us that He is triumphant so we can be joyful and we can't help but to come and adore

Him. The question for you then is whether you really know your