Sunday, January 23, AM

Welcome to Sunnyside this morning. It's a beautiful day to be together, to worship together, to fellowship together, to read

God's word, and just to be together today. Few announcements as we get started this morning.

Come back tonight for our special time with the Wilcox. If you haven't had a chance to meet them yet this morning, be sure and come back tonight and do that.

They're here, they've got their brood with them, kind of filling up the back part of the sanctuary there.

So we love them. They've been a part of Sunnyside for a long time, and we've just loved supporting the

Wilcox family and even their kids through the years. So we'll have them sharing tonight in our evening service tonight, and then a cookie fellowship.

Who can say no to that, right? Afterwards. Coming up on Wednesday, we'll have our meal at 545 in the fellowship hall, and then prayer for the adults and tag for the kids.

And then looking ahead to next Sunday, the 30th communion in the morning, the Lord's Supper together, and then flock groups in the evening.

So you'll meet with your elder at their home or any place they've designated that they'd like to meet together, and that's at 530 next

Sunday. Our fighter verse for the week comes from Romans 15, verses one and two.

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves.

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. Just a reminder,

I've said it the past couple Sundays, contribution reports for 2021 are on the back table. So if you haven't gotten those for your tax preparation purposes, those are still back there.

Also, with the Wilcox in town, if you would like to have them over to your home or maybe take them out for a meal or coffee, there's a link in the bulletin or in the church email newsletter where you can sign up to do that and be a ministry to them.

Also mentioned our church podcast, that's still going along. Think through any kind of questions and you're welcome to submit those to the guys to include in the podcast.

And then also we're continuing to gather for Christmas time in 2022.

This is a good time to kind of get some cold weather clothing, small things that can be put in shoe boxes.

And as we do that throughout the year, we'll have plenty of stuff to be able to send on to Operation Christmas Child for those kids to receive.

All right, any other announcements before we start worship together? Okay, we're gonna have time of prayer to prepare our hearts for worship this morning.

And then we'll finish with that. Brian will come up and open us in prayer. Father, the joy of gathering with your brothers and sisters in one place, the encouragement we share with each other, the burdens we carry together, the joys we celebrate together, the word we study together, the praising of our voices and lifting music to you together.

Father, let us not take for granted this blessing, this blessing of brothers and sisters, young and old, who've chosen to walk in your ways, who've chosen to mature in their knowledge and understanding and wisdom.

So this day, Lord, would you open our hearts and minds and souls to you. May we receive all you have for us.

May we leave rejoicing. In the name of Christ, our

Savior, the Son of God. Amen. Would you stand with me for our call to worship?

Our passage this morning is found in Psalms chapter 73. We'll be reading verses 25 and 28.

Read with me together. Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fill on, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish, but you have been to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the

Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works.

So our first song is in our Psalms for Worship hymnal, page 73C, which is gonna be right from the passage we just read in Psalm chapter 73.

Song is yet constantly I am with you. —

Yet constantly I am with you. So show us me what to do, then guide me in the things

I plan. And afterward, you shall get me.

You will with honor welcome me. Are you not all

I have in him, and else on earth do

I cling? Come to himself will be my portion through eternity.

Those far from you will surely die who dealt with you.

Ungratefully, but as for me, I will draw nigh how good that God is to me.

I refuse taking God the Lord, that all your works

I may record. In the song,

God is the strength of my heart. We'll sing it twice.

Who am I in heaven but you?

There is nothing on earth I desire beside you.

My heart and my strength, many times they fail.

But there is one truth that always will prevail.

God is the strength of my heart. God is the strength of my heart.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Forever. God is the strength of my heart.

God is the strength of my heart. God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Forever. Who am

I in heaven but you?

There is nothing on earth I desire beside you.

My heart and my strength, many times they fail.

But there is one truth that always will prevail.

God is the strength of my heart. God is the strength of my heart.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

God is the strength of my heart. God is the strength of my heart.

Page 43. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness,

O God my Father. There is no shadow turning with thee.

Thou changest not thy faithful.

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest.

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above.

Join with all nature in manifold witness.

To thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness.

Morning by morning new mercies

I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided.

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Pardon for sin and the peace that endureth.

Thy Lord give presence to cheer and to guide.

Strength for today and pride on the side.

Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness,

Isaiah. Good morning.

Would you open your Bibles with me to Isaiah chapter 14? We'll be reading verses 1 through 11.

When the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and again choose Israel and settle them in their own land, then strangers will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob.

The peoples will take them along and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them as an inheritance in the land of the

Lord, as male servants and female servants, and they will take their captors captive and will rule over their oppressors.

And it will be in the day when the Lord gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and harsh service in which you have been enslaved, that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon and say, how the oppressor has ceased and how fury has ceased.

The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers, which used to strike the peoples in fury with unceasing strokes, which subdued the nations in anger with unrestrained persecution.

The whole earth is at rest and is quiet. They break forth into shouts of joy.

Even the cypress trees rejoice over you, and the cedars of Lebanon saying, since you were laid low, no tree cutter comes up against us.

Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come. It arouses for you the spirits of the dead, all the leaders of the earth.

It raises all the kings of the nations from their thrones. They will all respond and say to you, even you have made weak as we.

You have become like us. Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to shale.

Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you and worms are your covering.

Pray with me. Father, we are in awe of your majestic ways, of your mighty ways, which we can not wholly comprehend.

But we have the assurances and the promises that you have given to your people.

And we trust in you. We trust in your plan supremely.

When coming to these texts, knowing that we have been given from him, been given a receipt of cleanliness, and that our debt has been paid, that we may not be covered by maggots, but that we are raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection.

We pray now for an even greater grace and mercy that you extend our affections to Christ, our submission to Christ to be complete, and continuing to sanctify our hearts.

When you bring this message today, we ask that our hearts be prepared to receive it and submit to your word supremely, to our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

Many in our church body have been going through a lot of difficulties, illnesses, storms, trials, and that's even on top of all of our normal daily sin that we battle with every day.

But there is one who is an anchor. There's one who is sure and steadfast, and that's

Jesus Christ. So sing with me together, Christ the sure and steady anchor.

And then after that we'll go to page 512, My Savior's Love. My Savior's Love I will hold fast to Thee, anchor,

It shall never be removed. Christ the sure and steady anchor

While the tempest rages on When temptation claims the battle

And it seems the night has won Deeper still in goes the anchor

Oh, I justly stand accused I will hold fast to Thee, anchor,

It shall never be removed.

Christ the sure and steady anchor

Through the floods of unbelief Hopeless somehow, hold my soul now

Calvary is my ballast of assurance

See His love forever proved I will hold fast to Thee, anchor,

It shall never be removed. Christ the sure and steady anchor

As we face the wave of death When these trials give way to glory

And we draw our final breath We will cross that great horizon

Clouds behind and life secured And the calm will be the better For the storm that we endure

The shore of our salvation Ever faithful, ever true

We will hold fast to Thee, anchor,

It shall never be removed.

How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be

How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be

All is my Savior's love for me

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the

Nazarene And wonder how

He could love me A sinner condemned unclean

How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be

How marvelous, how wonderful All is my

Savior's love for me

Wasn't there God? He made not my will, but Thine My sins and my sorrows

He made them His very own And suffered and died alone

How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be

How marvelous, how wonderful All is my

Savior's love for me When with a ransomed in glory

His face I at last shall see

It will be my joy through the ages

To sing of His love for me

Oh, how marvelous, oh, how wonderful Let's go to the

Lord together in prayer. Father, I thank You for gathering us here today.

I pray for those who can't be here. Lord, we love our sisters and our brothers in Christ who are sick or unable to come.

Lord, we feel their distance from us, and we pray a special blessing upon them that You would encourage them today, that You would hear our prayers with favor and bring healing to those who are sick, comfort to those who are sorrowing, and bring encouragement to those who are afflicted with doubt or anxiety.

We pray that You would look upon us with favor here as we have gathered to bow the knee to our

King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ, and receive His Word in our lives.

We thank You for this sword, Your sword, the

Word of God, perfectly true and powerful, eternal, unchanging, that by this

Word, through the power of Your Holy Spirit, You cut right to the heart of the matter in each one of our lives, and You would have us turn to You in submission, in humility, as You do

Your work in us, washing us with the water of Your Word, working godliness in our midst.

We ask that You would do so freely and abundantly. Lord, we ask this morning, as we read this text from Daniel chapter 8, that You would give us understanding by the light of Christ, and that in beholding

His light, we would worship You and rejoice in You, and You would conform us to His image, so that as we look at Him in this

Word, we will look like Him in this world. And we pray for these mercies, looking to Him with whom

You are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your

Bibles and turn with me to Daniel chapter 8. Daniel chapter 8.

Last week, we read verses 1 through 14. This week, we'll read verses 15 through 27.

Last week, we ranged back and forth throughout the entirety of the chapter, seeing what was there in the vision, the symbols, the pictures that Daniel received, and then moving forward to see

Christ's interpretation of the vision that He provided to Daniel by the angel

Gabriel. We'll be doing the same today, looking at the images in the vision in verses 1 through 14, and then looking ahead to the second half of the chapter to see the interpretation.

We see from this chapter that it's about what unfolds in history, that before history unfolds,

God has already woven His pattern. He reveals some of those upcoming events to Daniel, and He does this to strengthen the faith of the saints.

They're going to go through rough times, but He tells them before it happens, and He promises them deliverance.

He shows that He's a shepherd, and history is

His flock, and He moves this empire around like a shepherd would a ram, and He moves this empire around like a shepherd would a goat.

God's in control of it all. Tyrants will ascend to the throne.

They will kill truth in the streets in the name of peace, but God's word remains unaltered and true.

Devilish men will blaspheme Christ and slander

His gospel, but the promises of God will be proven as the patience of the saints.

You'll stand with me in honor of Christ as I read Daniel 8, verses 15 through 27.

These are the words of Christ through His Spirit to the prophet Daniel.

Then it happened, when I, Daniel, had seen the vision and was seeking the meaning, that suddenly there stood before me one having the appearance of a man, and I heard a man's voice between the banks of the

Ulai, who called and said, Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.

So he came near where I stood, and when he came I was afraid and fell on my face, but he said to me,

Understand, son of man, that the vision refers to the time of the end. Now as he was speaking with me,

I was in a deep sleep with my face to the ground, but he touched me and stood me upright, and he said,

Look, I am making known to you what will happen in the latter time of the indignation, for at the appointed time the end shall be.

The ram which you saw having the two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia, and the male goat is the kingdom of Greece.

The large horn that is between its eyes is the first king. As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power.

And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise having fierce features, who understands sinister schemes.

His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power. He shall destroy fearfully and shall prosper and thrive.

He shall destroy the mighty and also the holy people. Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his rule, and he shall exalt himself in his heart.

He shall destroy many in their prosperity. He shall even rise against the prince of princes, but he shall be broken without human means.

And the vision of the evenings and mornings which was told is true. Therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future.

And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick for days. Afterward I arose and went about the king's business.

I was astonished by the vision, but no one understood it. This is the word of the

Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. The title of the sermon is

On the Right Side of His Story. Play on the common phrase being used in every day to go to seminary.

I was working as a coordinator for a after school program at Presbyterian Day School.

This is one of the elite private schools in Memphis, and it's for boys up to sixth grade. And one of the boys was named

Frederick Douglass, intentionally named that, and he was very keen on being on the right side of history.

That year the college football team for USC, University of Southern California, did very well, and their running back,

Reggie Bush, had gotten the Heisman Trophy, and little Frederick was covered every day in USC swag.

He was a deeply loyal Trojan fan. And as the national championship drew near,

I began to tease him a little bit how his team might stumble against the Texas Longhorns and their standout quarterback,

Vince Young. And he responded with a lot of smack and predicted an embarrassing blowout and yada, yada, yada.

And it turned out to be a great game. And the Longhorns won, and I didn't think much more about it.

But the next time I saw Frederick at school, he walked into the classroom with a sheepish grin, sporting a brand new

Texas Longhorns hat. No, he didn't lose a bet. I asked him if he had lost a bet, and he confessed that he had always liked the

Longhorns, and he was celebrating their win. Now here is a young man cut out for a career in politics.

He wanted to be on the right side of history. He wanted to be seen as rooting for the winning side.

Now is that how the right side of history is determined? The winner of a contest? The winner of a debate?

The winner of an election? The winning of a war? If popular opinion concerning a controversial question sways significantly in one direction and stays that way for half a generation, we have been trained to think that that means the final word has been settled on the matter.

This is what James says being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

There's no point in trying to loudly claim agreement with the ever -shifting gales of the majority.

And the experts? Oh, the experts. The experts repudiate themselves on a six - to 18 -month schedule.

You know that healthy habit of writing down your prayer requests and going back and reviewing them six to 18 months later and, oh,

God answered my prayer. And you write that little note beside it to praise the Lord for answering your prayers, keeping track of His goodness.

We should do that with the experts. Just write down the things that they say. Give it six to 18 months, and they'll come back and say something totally different.

That's not the right side of anything. If we keep in mind the beginning of history and the center of history and the end of history, we'll know what the right side of history is.

The beginning of history is God creating the world and making man in His own image.

The center of history is the revelation of Jesus Christ as God's image.

The finale of history is Christ raising all of the dead to judge them by the parameters of the image of God.

So we know what the right side of history is. It's Christ's story.

Are we right with God through Christ? That's the right side of history. Are we in submission to the

King of kings and the Lord of lords who reigns at the right hand of the Father till all His enemies are made a footstool for His feet?

That would be the right side of history. Are we pursuing the interests of Christ with the full degree of our stewardship, whatever that is, seeking first the kingdom of God?

That would be the right side of history. And how are we to stay faithful in a pagan culture that opposes

Christ? We are to hold to the promises of God because the promises of God are the patience of the saints.

The promises of God are the patience of the saints. And God gives promises to Daniel through this vision and through the interpretation of the vision.

God graciously provides this revelation to Daniel and to His people to hold for generations to come.

And they would see that God's word is true. And we see that God's providence in history is revealed as we have seen from last time we were together how the nation of Persia ascended in the form of this ram with unequal horns.

We saw the goat that was moving so fast his feet never touched the ground and the main horn of that goat being

Alexander the Great. We saw Persia ascending and Alexander rising.

And now we come to the main point of the prophecy, the reason why

God wanted His people to have this Antiochus defiling.

When you think about the progress of the history recorded in the scriptures, we realize that there are many promises in the

Old Testament which name specific places like Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Judea and Galilee.

And these promises center on the arrival of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the new covenant.

Very, very important. These promises indicate that the people of Israel are going to be still living in these places, that they will be in position to receive the new covenant and direct the nations to Messiah.

But the promises stop coming with the prophet Malachi in the 400s. So what happens in those centuries between the end of the

Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament? You know, you've got like two or three pages between your Old Testament and your

New Testament and your Bible. What happens in between? The scholars have unfortunately decided to call this period the intertestamental period, which doesn't sound very exciting.

Lots of exciting things happened. Daniel 8 is one of the prophecies in the Old Testament that tell us some of the things that happened during that time period and how it was that despite the catastrophic transitions and instabilities of world empires,

God's people remained in God's place under God's rule anticipating the arrival of Messiah and the blessings of the new covenant.

One of the most difficult challenges that they faced during this time was the profane tyranny of one named

Antiochus Epiphanes. And such was the power and the prosperity of this evil emperor that those who lived during his time might have thought, and we know that they thought, that doing things his way meant being on the right side of history.

Doing things the Greek way. Doing things the Hellenistic way.

That was the future. The way of the Jews of old. The way of sacrifices and feasts and cleansings and observations of the

Sabbath and circumcision. That's the old way. Obviously, Antiochus Epiphanes has changed everything.

His is the way of the future. We want to be on the right side of history. But the word of God in Daniel 8 puts this episode of this one tyrant's rule into its proper perspective.

It was only for a season. It was one in a series of preparations that God was making for the arrival of his son.

So I want us to look in chapter 8 of Daniel and see what is said about the power and the prosperity and the purpose of Antiochus Epiphanes.

We're going to look at verses 8 -10 to see the power of this tyrant. As we read about the fracturing and replacement of horns,

I want us to hold onto that metaphor because it's a very helpful picture that teaches the saints about the actual strength of rulers and the duration of their tyrannies.

Emperors and despots, they are like the antlers of a deer which fall off in their season if they're not first broken off as they butt heads with other deer.

That's about how strong the empires of man are. Is there a fierceness to horns?

You bet. But there's also fragility. Daniel 8 verses 8 -10.

Therefore, the male goat, which Christ through Gabriel tells Daniel later that the male goat is

Greece. The male goat grew very great, but when he became strong, the large horn was broken.

The first king that sped that goat all over the ancient world, that was Alexander the

Great. The large horn was broken, and in place of it, four notable ones came up toward the four winds of heaven.

And out of one of them came a little horn which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land.

And it grew up to the host of heaven, and it cast some of the host and some of the stars to the ground and trampled them.

So the goat is the empire of Greece. That's what Gabriel says to Daniel. In chapter 2, it was envisioned as a bronze metal waist and thighs on a four -part idol to the state.

In chapter 7, it was envisioned as a four -winged, four -headed leopard. Now we see it as a goat with one prominent horn between its eyes which broke the horns of its enemy, the

Medo -Persian Empire. And this prophecy accurately portrays

Alexander the Great's thorough defeat of the empire, but then also shows his great horn suddenly broken off in the wake of victory and replaced by four other horns.

It's exactly what happened in history. Alexander the Great died very young, soon after concluding his massive military campaign which entirely broke the hegemony of Medo -Persia.

Then four of Alexander's generals divided up his new empire, Antigonus, Cassander, Seleucus, and Ptolemy.

Four different generals divided up his empire, four horns out of the one horn. Their regions of control spread throughout the known world to the four winds.

And then consider Christ's official interpretation of Daniel's vision as rendered by Gabriel, verse 22.

As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power.

So we see that the dissemination of power proved just as unstable as the consolidation had been.

What did we learn? We learn, again, that kings and kingdoms are fragile with one exception.

There's only one king that will never lose his throne. There's only one kingdom that will never be shaken.

And the scripture tells us who that king is and what kingdom that is. Every other kingdom and king in the scriptures, you will see, they are all shown as fragile, temporary, and though they make great boasts, they can't back it up.

Through many political intrigues and military maneuvers, these four different regions of control were consolidated into just two.

The Seleucid dynasties in Asia Minor and the Ptolemaic Empire based out of Egypt.

Why would we even care? The relevance of the struggle is

Jerusalem. The relevance of the struggle is Judea. You see, the land of Israel was the only land route between both warring factions.

The Seleucids coming down from the north and campaigning down into the south to attack the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt.

And then them falling back and retreating. And the Ptolemies getting their armies together. And them going up north through that same area and attacking the

Seleucids. So back and forth, back and forth. And here are the Jews in Jerusalem, in Judea, subject to many threats and a great deal of violence.

How do you stay faithful in the midst of all of this controversy and all of this world instability?

And while there was always a remnant of faithful believers by the grace of God, often unfaithful men perversely preyed upon the people of God and they broke

God's covenant with a high hand. And during such a time, near the end of the

Greek dominion, a king from the Seleucid line by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes rose to power.

Daniel 8, 23 through the beginning of 24. And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features, who understands sinister schemes.

His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power. Antiochus Epiphanes was not in the direct line of kingship for the

Seleucid empire. He was given the throne as a steward until they were ready to bring forward the real king.

Antiochus didn't like his temporary position, and so he developed schemes to take control of the throne for himself.

He is much like the little horn of the fourth kingdom, Nero, in that this usurper in the third kingdom also acted insane, and he took actions which made no sense to anyone else.

We see that the power of this little horn did not come from himself. His installation and his success depended on another power.

He only prospered for God's purposes. Look at verses 9 and 10. And out of one of them, out of one of those four horns that replaced

Alexander the Great, out of one of those four horns came a little horn, right?

So Antiochus Epiphanes came from the Seleucid Empire, which grew exceedingly great toward the south and toward the east and toward the glorious land.

Daniel's name or Gabriel's name for the promised land. And it grew up to the host of heaven, and it cast down some of the host and some of the stars to the ground and trampled them.

Well, Antiochus Epiphanes reigned from 175 to 163 BC, and he waged war against the

Ptolemaic Empire down in Egypt. That necessarily brought him into conflict against Judea and Jerusalem, the glorious land.

He killed tens of thousands of Jews, and he overthrew many systems of authority. So whether we read the stars of heaven as a reference to the children of Abraham, Genesis 15, or we read the stars of heaven as a metaphor for governing authorities given to us in Genesis 1, either way it's clear that Antiochus Epiphanes had a great deal of power.

He killed a lot of Jews. We read about that in history. And he overthrew the standing systems of government.

And nobody could oppose him. Nobody could stop him. He did whatever he wanted to. He prospered.

Verses 11 and 12. He even exalted himself as high as the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifices were taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

Because of transgression, an army was given over to the horn to oppose the daily sacrifices, and it cast truth to the ground.

He did all this and prospered. Antiochus Epiphany was able to prey upon the divisions within the

Jewish authority structures. At this time, as you may imagine, as is so common in the human experience, in Judea and in Jerusalem, there was a conservative faction, and then there was a liberal faction.

The conservative faction said, let's be more like the Old Testament.

Let's live according to the Torah. Let's keep covenant faithfully. And the liberal faction said, no, no, the way of the future is the

Hellenized culture, the Greek culture. Let's go more that way and see if we can't bring together a synthesis between Jewish ways of living and Greek ways of living.

The current high priest was a conservative, but Antiochus Epiphany had been killing

Jews and was ready to go down and destroy Jerusalem, and there was a man who came up to him and said, look,

I have some ties to the priesthood, and I'm willing to do things your way, and here's a bunch of money for you to make me high priest.

Well, that worked for about half a minute until somebody else said, oh, that's a really great idea, and he paid even more money to Antiochus Epiphany and killed the other dude.

Then they also killed the legitimate high priest as well, and then they began to Hellenize Judea and Jerusalem.

What did that look like? Well, they built a gymnasium in view of the temple, so that when you were at the temple grounds, you could look over and see the gymnasium.

It's a hallmark of Hellenistic culture. What would happen there? Well, at the gymnasium, the men would all disrobe and exercise in the nude in view of the temple.

I wonder how that went over. Circumcision was also outlawed.

Circumcision was outlawed. A fortress was built in close relationship to the temple to enforce the whims and desires of Antiochus Epiphany's.

Pigs were offered in the temple to the god Zeus. Anybody who had a complaint was canceled, got destroyed, killed.

And ultimately, in his desecration of the temple, and in Antiochus Epiphany's, in his systematic eradication of every shadow of Christ that he could find, he opposed

Christ himself, the prince of the host, the prince of princes. Now, how does that turn out for anybody in the scripture who decides to go up against Christ?

How does that turn out? It never, ever turns out well.

In Daniel 8, verse 24, halfway through the verse, we read, "...he shall destroy fearfully," this is

Antiochus Epiphany's, "...he shall destroy fearfully, and shall prosper and thrive. He shall destroy the mighty, and also the holy people.

Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his rule." Remember, he threw truth to the ground.

So, throwing truth to the ground means he causes deceit to prosper. "...and he shall exalt himself in his heart.

He shall destroy many in their prosperity. He shall even rise against the prince of princes."

So he is opposing Christ, the king of kings, the lord of lords, the prince of princes.

He is opposing him. "...he cast truth to the ground, so that he could rule in deceit.

He installed false teachers as religious leaders in Jerusalem who would give him legitimacy to his pagan reforms.

He had proven he was willing to kill anybody who opposed him, but his real goal was to eliminate the faith of the

Jews." To eradicate the promises of God concerning his son.

That's a terrible threat to the Jews, isn't it? It's a terrible threat to Messiah's arrival. I mean, how can Messiah be born in Bethlehem and save his people from their sins if 150 years prior, the entirety of the

Jews in Jerusalem were utterly Hellenized and their unique culture and exclusive faith dissolved in some pagan synthesis where there was no more

Judaism on the land. This is a threat. This is the serpent trying to eat the seed of the woman.

This is the same old story. Didn't God deliver his people from that very same threat in Egypt? Didn't God deliver his people from that very same threat in the land of Canaan and in Babylon?

Continually, throughout the story of the scriptures, God intervenes. He does not allow his word to fail or his promises concerning his son to disappear.

So what about this prophesied threat? Well, God again would deliver his people and preserve his name.

Verse 25 ends this way, but he shall be broken without human means.

This little horn would be broken without human means.

He lifted himself up against Christ, but he would be broken. Not by a human contest, you know, horn hitting horn.

That wouldn't be how Antiochus Epiphanes would go down. He would rot from the inside and fall off.

History records that Antiochus Epiphanes died of a fit of melancholy. I have no idea.

What? I don't know what that is, but that's what history says. He died of a fit of melancholy.

He died without human means. At the end, he was a shattered man, a little horn broken without human means.

God is the one who ended him. So God promises the future saints through Daniel the prophet that this great threat to their faith, this bloody, profane tyrant, he would come to an end even though he would look like he had changed everything and the future was forever different and that nothing would ever be the same even though he slaughtered truth in the streets and then had a parade in the name of peace.

Aren't we familiar with that scenario? He could not escape truth.

God's word prevails even in the face of those who try to rule by deceit. God had declared all of this long before and had promised

Antiochus his defeat. So, the question now is why? What is the purpose of Antiochus Epiphanes?

Why? Why would this all happen? God is sovereignly shepherding and herding ram and goat.

Horns get broken, horns grow up, but God's in charge of the whole thing. He's the shepherd of history. He's herding it all into the fold of his glory.

Daniel and the saints would probably wonder why would God bring such a blow against Jerusalem and against the holy people?

Why would God bring about a tyrant like Antiochus Epiphanes to desecrate the temple and outlaw circumcision and attempt to destroy the

Jews? Well, there's reasons given in the text. Verse 12.

Because of transgression, an army was given over to the horn to oppose the daily sacrifices.

You hear that? Because of transgression. Verse 23,

Daniel 8. In the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise.

There's the reasons. The descendants of Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, and Joshua, the fourth and fifth generations beyond Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, they're still living under the old covenant.

They may be the 150s, but they're still living under the old covenant. They're still subject to the covenant blessings and curses that God had declared in Deuteronomy 28.

And they had begun to crave pagan tastes. They had begun to crave the tastes of the world.

They valued Hellenism more than the covenant of the Lord. And their transgressions mounted and mounted until God brought judgment in this form.

He gave them exactly what they wanted. He gave it to them.

You want Hellenism? You want Greek culture? You want paganism? Here you go.

They wanted to be ruled in the manner of the other nations. And God gave them exactly what they wanted.

These are not newfangled transgressions. These are old -fashioned transgressions. And as God had done to His people in the wilderness, so again

He does it here. He gives them what they wanted until it comes out of their noses. We are to be careful that we do not mistake the judgment of God for a series of unfortunate events.

We begin to secularize our faith to the point where we don't think God is involved or that He even cares or that He's doing anything.

We say, oh yes, Christ is King, but we think of Him as a bench warmer instead of being the one around everything revolving.

It is the judgment of God when truth is slain in the streets, when it is trodden by a parade of peace, peace, when there is no peace.

It is the judgment of God that eyes should not see and ears not hear. It is the judgment of God that where once light shone, only darkness remains.

And in the midst of these kinds of losses, we should remember that all was not lost because lies never outlast the truth.

The promises of God are the patience of the saints, but will we believe the promises of God, or are we too sophisticated for that?

Perhaps we've outgrown the promises of God. Maybe we're like, you know, uppity young children or uppity teenagers who don't respect their parents and they don't really care much for the promises of their parents anymore.

They do not live accordingly. Not like, perhaps, little children who hang on that promise and ask about it again and again and again and again.

We're just too sophisticated to live by the promises of God anymore. It's interesting that the specificity of the prophecies here in chapter 8 of Daniel, they're so precise that liberals have long claimed

Daniel could not have written these prophecies back in the 500s. They're too exact and precise.

They must have been written after the effect, after the event. And then it was pretended that he wrote them hundreds of years prior.

I think there's rich irony here. I think it's funny how the experts are lying about this book saying it's a lie because of this passage about a liar.

They have the same problem as Antiochus Epiphanes. They raise lofty speculations against Christ.

Why is there such an allergy to believing the plain reading of the Scriptures? Why is it so unthinkable about seeing

God's promises clearly made and just as clearly fulfilled? What's wrong with that?

It's too sophisticated for that. What keeps folks from receiving the evidences of God's grace and power and the fulfillment of his promises?

It's the same thing that afflicted Antiochus Epiphanes, and it's called pride. It's just pride.

Pride is not unique to ancient emperors and modern billionaires.

Pride is not restricted by class or culture or creed. All of us have to humble ourselves in reading

God's word. We're not going to be helped to wait upon the Lord if we don't come as little children.

Jesus sat a little children in the midst of his disciples of such the kingdom of heaven.

See the promises of our heavenly father. Live by those promises.

The promises of God of the patient. Come back from that.

How long will these atrocities go on and on? Those are the questions asked by one angel to another angel during the vision.

Daniel 8 verses 13 -14. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to that certain one who was speaking,

How long will the vision be, concerning the daily sacrifices and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both the sanctuary and the host to be chapeled underfoot?

He said to me, For 2 ,300 days then the sanctuary shall be cleansed. 2 ,300 days.

That's six years and three and a half months. And it was six years and three and a half months that Antiochus occupied and afflicted

Jerusalem. It was exactly that long. But he was only a man.

And his reign was broken. We discover from Josephus and other books that on the 2 ,300 and first day, the lawful sacrifices were offered again on a new altar, not the desecrated one.

And that although deceit and desecration had triumphed for a time, they came to an end. God's light returned,

God's holiness returned, and this was all the grace of God. Now it gets one to wondering why this desecration and deceit by Antiochus Epiphanes, in collusion with such faithless covenant -breaking

Jews, why wasn't that the end of the Old Covenant? I mean, and this was bad. Why didn't it just kind of dissolve and go away?

Why didn't God just let it all go away and say, well, I've had enough of this? For that matter, why didn't it go away in 586

B .C. when the temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was destroyed? Why is God giving promises, you know, 70 years and you'll come back and you'll rebuild?

Why is he keeping it going? Why is he saying, oh, this desecration will only be for a short amount of time, and then it will get better.

Why is he keeping them going in the face of all this desecration and covenant -breaking?

Remember that Antiochus' opposition to the temple and the sacrifices and so on is an attack upon Christ, the

Prince of Princes. And Christ had not yet come, but his shadows were in place, and the shadows would remain until the substance came.

This abomination of desolation of the third empire, the Grecians against the

Jews, that didn't end the old covenant. How could it? Christ had not yet established the new covenant.

Later on in Christ, the sacrifices are ended at the temple, and the temple and Jerusalem are desecrated by Rome in the fourth empire, another abomination causing desolation, but that physical temple was not cleansed and rebuilt, and the sacrifices did not come back.

Why? Because the new covenant has come, and the new location of the temple, which the

New Testament says over and over and over again, the saints being built up in Christ, is permanently superior.

Even as the old covenant was not going to fall prior to Christ, the new covenant is not going to fall in Christ.

But we still have a need to cleanse the temple, right?

Do you not know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?

How often are we encouraged to seek the cleansing of the Lord in our lives?

Doesn't John tell us that if we want to abide and have fellowship with God, that we must walk in the light as he is in the light, which means that we need to confess our sins and find forgiveness and cleansing in Christ, trusting in Christ's death upon the cross for our sins.

If we want to abide with God, if we want to be with him, and commune with him, we need forgiveness and cleansing, and he has promised just that.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son, Jesus, cleanses us from all sin.

The promises of God are the patience of the saints.

And verses 26 and 27 are our conclusion. And the vision of the evenings and mornings which was told is true, therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future.

And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick for days. Afterward I arose and went about the king's business.

I was astonished by the vision, but no one understood it. Gabriel tells

Daniel this vision, although it's going to take place far off in the future, it did refer to actual real days.

Evenings and mornings. 2 ,300 of them. And those terrible days would not be soon, so Daniel was to seal up the vision, preserve it against the decay of age.

It needed to last a long time to be of benefit to the saints. And then Daniel collapsed for many days.

And then he returned to his normal business. But notice how God's revelation is so powerful and how it humbles us, that even as Daniel gets up and starts walking around to do his job, he's walking around astonished.

He's walking around astonished. You can check the King James, it might be the

King James of Stoney, I don't know. But he's impacted. Is it not the case that the patience of God's promises that are instilled in us is this humble attitude of worship?

That the Scriptures astonish us? That even as we go about our normal business of the day, you know, washing dishes, changing babies' diapers, running harem scaremen in our jobs from one appointment to the next, doing maintenance on our vehicles, going to the doctor, the normal, isn't it true that the

Scriptures astonish us as we realize the meaningfulness of everything going on in our hearts and everything going on in the world around us?

Now we don't look at other people around us as threat vectors, but we see them as made in the image of God, someone to love and to communicate with and declare the goodness of God in Jesus Christ.

The Scriptures astonish us in our normal every day. And we have every assurance from the promises of God that no matter how bad things get or appear to be, that Christ will build his church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

That Christ will reign from the right hand and all of his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet. Christopher Dawson said something in 1938, and if you know your history, you know things are about to get really bad after being bad in 1938, right before World War II.

What he said, I think, is easily said of today, and in fact, if you read your church history, every generation of the saints has had its crisis, or more.

Listen to what Christopher Dawson says, 1938. No one knows where Europe is going, and there is no law of history by which we can predict the future, nor is the future in our own hands, for the world is ruled by powers that it does not know.

And the men who appear to be the makers of history are, in reality, its creatures.

But the portion of the church is not like these. She has been the guest and the exile, the mistress and the martyr of nations and civilizations, and has survived them all.

And in every age and among every people, it is her mission to carry on the work of divine restoration and regeneration, which is the true end of history.

How is that accomplished? By the preaching of Christ, by the proclaiming of Christ from all of the scriptures, until he is formed in all of his people.

Let's pray. Father, we come before you today, and we thank you for the promises that you gave through Daniel to your people, and how you fulfilled them, and how your word is true, and how we can depend upon you.

Help us to hold fast to your promises, be strengthened, and know a patience full of confidence and joy, no matter the weather.

We thank you for these mercies, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you stand with me for our song of benediction?

Sing the song we sang earlier, God is the strength of my heart. ... ...

... ... ... ...

The grace of the son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Come back tonight, let's hang out with the