Daniel's Prayer

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Well, good morning, Andy, will you open us up with a word of prayer?
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Yes, sir. Our Father God, again, we thank you for who you are.
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We pray, Lord, this morning as we open your word, that you would bless it, that you would hold us fair, that you would teach us. And that all that we say and all that we do.
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Amen. Judah, you'll come pass these out for me, and if we run out,
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I can make some more copies if I need to. I did. I got Daniel 9,
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Ezra 9, and Nehemiah 9 right beside each other, the prayers that I... And I took
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Nehemiah, and the first part of Nehemiah 9 is basically giving a recollection of redemptive history, the time they went into Egypt and all that.
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So I removed that part and just got to his confessional part of his prayer, so that you can see them beside each other and see how close they are in comparison.
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Same language, and let me just so you know,
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I didn't put these on there, but Daniel 9 would have been around 538, 539
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B .C., Ezra 9 would have taken place probably somewhere around 458, 457
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B .C., and then Nehemiah 9,
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Ezra 9, Ezra 9, Ezra 9, Ezra 9, Ezra 9, Ezra 9, probably 444, 444.
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That's how far apart they are. The canonical order is not this.
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The canonical order, remember Ezra, Nehemiah, and Archicanon comes before Daniel, but this is the order in which they would have come chronologically.
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So anyway, I hope it's helpful. If it's not, make a paper airplane and throw it at me at the end of the class.
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Open your Bible to Daniel 9. We will read from 9 through 19.
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It says, To the Lord, O God, belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him, nor have we obeyed the voice of the
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Lord our God to walk in His teachings which He set before us through His servants, the prophets.
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Indeed, all Israel has transgressed Your law and turned aside, not obeying Your voice, so that the curse has been poured out on us, along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him.
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Thus He has confirmed His word which He has spoken against us and against our rulers who ruled us, to bring us great calamity.
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For under the whole heavens there has not been anything done like what has been done to Jerusalem.
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As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the
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Lord our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to Your truth. Therefore, the
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Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us. For the Lord our God is righteous with His respect to all of His deeds which
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He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice. And now, O Lord our God, who have brought
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Your people out of the land of Egypt and have a mighty hand, have made a name for Yourself. As it is this day, we have sinned, we have been wicked.
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And, O Lord, in accordance with all of Your righteous acts, let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city
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Jerusalem, Your holy mountain. For because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers,
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Jerusalem, Your people, have become a reproach to all those around us.
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So now, O God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake,
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O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary. O my God, incline
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Your ear and hear. Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by Your name.
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For we are not presenting our supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of Your great compassion.
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O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and take action. For Your sake,
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O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.
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So, last week, I was attempting to get to verse 9 and didn't. So, you remember last week what we saw in the earlier part of his prayer?
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What were some of the attributes of God that we saw that Daniel was appealing to?
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Okay? What else? Forgiveness.
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Not quite yet, but that's today. Righteous. And what did we say about God's righteousness?
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Everything that He does, He has to do out of this, because this is His nature.
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Therefore, He has to act according to His righteous nature to His rational creatures, which is you and I, in such a way that He can only do it under mercy or justice.
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That's it. That's the only two options we have. God either will show us mercy or He will show us justice.
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Now, under the new covenant, mercy is given to us because God's justice has been paid at the cross.
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Under the old covenant, God's mercy was put on basically on hold, and it was put off until God dispensed
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His justice on Christ, and then He was able to extend full mercy and offer salvation, which
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Keith preached on last week, if you remember. It was in Romans 3, 21 through 26, is actually the passage where God said, in times past, it looks like He passed over those sins previously committed, like it didn't matter, but until the appointed time when
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Christ comes, and He poured out that just righteousness on His Son, making God the just and the justifier of those who would place faith in Him.
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So here it is. We've got God being righteous. He has been merciful. He is showing justice.
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And that gets us to the point to 9, verse 9, when it says, O Lord, to you belongs compassion.
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Why would Daniel say compassion? Because he didn't have to.
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He certainly didn't have to. Do you think that those that families were slaughtered in the fall of 586, do you think they thought this?
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No. But what is Daniel appealing to? He's appealing to the fact that he knows that God's gracious, he's merciful, he's just, and he remembers the prophet
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Jeremiah that said this, I have plans for you to do you good, not harm, to bring you back into the land so that you may prosper.
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Go read Jeremiah 29. And that's exactly the appeal that Daniel is doing.
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And then he says here, and forgiveness. Well, these are connected.
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Those whom God shows compassion on, what does he do? He forgives.
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Matter of fact, that is one of the biggest acts and demonstration of compassion of God on his people is to forgive them.
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Remember, what did he tell Pharaoh, or about Pharaoh? I will have compassion to whom I will have compassion. I'll have heart on whomever
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I want. This is an act of God's sovereign choice to have compassion.
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It says here, for we have rebelled against him. What had they done? What had they done?
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What was the rebellion of the people of God that brought this calamity on them, specifically?
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They weren't honoring the Sabbath. They weren't honoring, specifically not honoring the Sabbath. But he went through and said how many of the prophet after prophet after prophet, and you can look in the three prayers that I gave you, look at each one of them, and it talks about how many times the prophets came to them and came and came and came and came, and they did not listen.
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And they did not listen. And they did not listen. And they did not listen. And then because they did not listen, then their rebellion intensified and grown exponentially until God says, and he says it in here in just a second, until you filled it up.
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And then once it was full, that cup was full of God's wrath. What did he do? He poured it out right on their head.
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Yep, poured it out right on their head. It says in verse 10,
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Hey, not only did the prophets come and prophesy doom and gloom per se because of their disobedience, but the prophets actually told him the way to stay in fidelity to God.
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And what did they do? They didn't care. They wanted to do it their own way. I mean, even when, think about one of the first major prophets we would say would be
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Samuel. When he came to Saul and he told Saul, you have acted wickedly.
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What you have done is wrong concerning the sin against the Amalekites. Remember when he went to the
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Amalekites? What was he supposed to do? What was the command? When you go in there, and this is hard for some people to swallow, when you go in there, you kill every man, woman, boy, girl, suckling, meaning infant, every cattle, everything.
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You go in there and you wipe them out. Don't save any of them. And what did he do? What is that bleeding in my ear?
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Yeah, he did. He thought his way was better than God's way. And he pretty much said that. When Samuel comes to him and says what
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Mike just said, what's that bleeding in my ear? And he said, hey, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I saved these for you.
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I saved these for the sacrifice. He said, that's not what God told you to do. You had specific instructions from God.
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Remember when Samuel came, he said, this is what God's telling you to do. This is what you're supposed to do.
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And he didn't do it. He thought his way was better. And then you have an 80 -year -old man grab an axe, and then what does he do to Agag?
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He hues him into pieces, as the King James says. It said, you have acted wickedly.
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You did not listen to the prophets. In verse 11, indeed, all of Israel has transgressed your law, turned aside, not obeying your voice.
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From the perspective of Daniel, all of Israel.
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Were there some faithful people in Israel? Sure there were. Let's name four that's been in this book.
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Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel. And what does Daniel do here? He puts himself in the category of the unrepentant rebellious.
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He said, all of Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, not obeying your voice.
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And here it is, what we talked briefly about towards the end of the class last week. Said that the curse has been poured out on us along with the oath which was written in the law of Moses, the servant of God.
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What was the ultimate covenant curse under the Mosaic law?
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The kick out of the land. What's that? The exile. Yeah, expulsion from the land.
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Remember, we went all the way back to the garden. What happened in the garden that was the curse for them, eating of the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil?
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What was the curse? Expulsion from the garden. Remember, we didn't see the dwelling place of God or men being able to dwell where God dwells on from the biblical accounts from 2 ,500 years.
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I mean, it could be more. I'm just going on the genealogies within the Bible. I believe it was long. Until that comes about.
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So here, the covenant curse was being put out of the land, and God had already told them, if you do this, this is what will take place.
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If you just obey my Sabbaths every seventh year, let it lay fallow, I will leave you enough produce in the sixth year so that you will have enough food to take you on into the ninth year.
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And then he said, and then on the seventh seven of 49 years, if you will then set everybody free.
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Every debt? Anybody remember what the name of that was? The year of Jubilee. And I want you to know,
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I don't know if I said this or not, you know we have not one record of the year of Jubilee ever once being observed.
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Not once being observed. And the logical conclusion would be obvious.
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If they weren't obeying the sabbatical years, how would they have been able to keep count?
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They would not. And so the covenant curse was expulsion from the land.
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And they knew it. God even told them when he gave the Levitical law, he said, if you do this, I will send mildew and blight, and because of your disobedience,
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I will run you out of the land, and if you don't listen to me, then I'm going to send armies in there, and they're going to rape your women, they're going to kill your men, they're going to make their hearts melt, and if that doesn't work,
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I will remove you from the land, I will wipe it out and leave it a desolation. And that's what
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God did. Then, not only did he give it to the unbelieving generation in the book of Leviticus, but then the next generation, when the
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Deuteronomy came, the second giving of the law, before Joshua led them over the
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Jordan River to then take the conquest of the land, he told them the same thing on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, where they did the covenant curses and the covenant blessings, and what did they do?
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We'll do it! Same thing the unbelieving generation said. We'll do it! And what did they do? They went their own way.
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So they were expelled from the land, just as the law of Moses said he would.
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In verse 12, it says, and thus he has confirmed his words which he had spoken against us and against his rulers who ruled us to bring us great calamity.
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He spoke against the rulers. He spoke against the rulers of, and that's not just meaning the kings, but there was also part of the ruling, quote, class, per se, would have been the
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Levitical priest. What was the Levitical priest's job? Teach the law.
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Teach the law. Teach the law. Matter of fact, when you come in after this, and we'll get to this when we get to the restoration part, when they come in,
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Ezra actually, this comes from, this was Artaxerxes.
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The first gave a command. We'll use a decree, and we'll get to this when we get towards the end, because some people believe that this was part of the 77th, which
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I'm going to tell you it ain't, because this decree has nothing to do with going back to the land and rebuilding the city.
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He sends him back to actually for Ezra then to begin to teach the people the law.
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If any of y 'all were here maybe, I think it was this past year or the year before when we did the revival in the
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Old Testament, it was because of Ezra's going back and then teaching the people the law for some 11 years that he then stood up with Nehemiah when they built the platform and he preached.
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It was a great act of repentance within the nation. It was because of that.
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But it's when Ezra goes back, then at the restoration he begins to preach, and it was showing, hey, it's our responsibility as the, quote, spiritual leaders of the community, as the
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Levites, as the priests, to teach the people of God the law from the smallest to the greatest.
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It's our job. It's our job. And if you remember that passage, even when he was preaching, there's actually translators there, which is kind of cool because that tells you, man, those people were still stuck in paganism.
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They were still stuck in Babylonian times. Even though the Persian Empire had set them free, they were still stuck and they couldn't, they didn't speak
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Aramaic or Hebrew, so they were probably needing translators to explain to them what the preacher was saying.
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And it was the Levites that did that. And it says that in verse 13,
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I'm sorry, let me back up. It says, for the whole heaven, in the end of verse 12, for under the whole heaven there was none or nothing has been done like this in Jerusalem before.
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What had happened to Jerusalem that nobody would thought would ever happen?
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It was burnt to the ground. I remember in Jeremiah, the false prophets, when
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Jeremiah was saying, look, you've got to turn. If you don't turn, this is not going to end well for you.
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He told Jehoiakim. And Jehoiakim then took his scroll, took it up, cut it with his knife, and he threw it in the fire.
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He took the words of God and he threw it in the fire and burned it because he didn't believe anything that Jeremiah said.
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The false prophets, the whole time that Jeremiah preached, said, peace, peace.
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God will not destroy this place. This place has got the temple of the Lord. This is where the Lord dwells.
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God will not hurt His people. That is an act of arrogance to say that God will not punish the unrepentant.
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And God eventually did that. And in 586, He did the unthinkable.
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Imagine Daniel. He had already been in captivity for quite some time. He was part of the first deportation.
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Then come 597, Ezekiel's deportation. And then just a few years later, he hits word in Babylon being that Nebuchadnezzar had flattened the temple.
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I bet his heart was crushed. Well, we know it is based on this prayer right here because what is he praying for?
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He's praying for God to bring them back into the land, restore His people, and restore the city.
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Understand, as we go through this, you can't make a separation between the restoration of the temple and the city.
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Look, no temple, no city. No city, no temple.
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So there is no distinction. And then he goes on into verse 13.
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He says, As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the
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Lord our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention. What is he saying there? He's saying, even after all of these covenant curses that has come upon the people, all of it, did they still repent?
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They did not. Anybody in their mind remember where this is actually spoken of again, almost in the same terminology?
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When we get the book of Revelation, the same thing. It says, hell was coming down.
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And God had pounded them with the wrath of God. And it says, they wanted to go hide in the caves.
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And it says, even under the wrath of God, they still would not repent.
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So a simple wrath of God, the judgment of God, will that convert a man's heart? No. As a matter of fact, based on Revelation, it actually recalcified their heart, making it all the more harder.
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Because they did... We see that in Pharaoh. Yes. When Pharaoh, when the judgments came, all it did was make him all the more emboldened to try to push against the
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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yes. Well, until he killed his son. Yes.
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And when that happened, his tail was tucked between his legs, and he said, get out. Take whatever you want with you.
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Just for a little bit. Yes, then he figured out they had to actually go back to work. He was like, hey, go get all our slaves back. It says, and then in the middle of verse 13, yet we have not sought the favor of God by turning away from our iniquity and giving attention to your truth.
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Look, it's not just the fact that they're saying, hey, we have sinned.
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What is repentance? It's not just a recognition of your sin. What is it?
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Turning around. Yes, it's a turning and going the other way. And that's what he is saying here. Look, when we go out and we do evangelism, or I'm on the job and I'm talking to someone,
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I think one of the best analogies to use with them is being in a courtroom.
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And you go, okay, so if you had committed all these heinous crimes, murder, rape, and you just told the judge, hey,
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I recognize that what I did was wrong, because that's how most people see forgiveness and repentance.
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Well, hey, I just say, hey, I'm sorry I did what I did. I know what I did was wrong. And we're in that conversation.
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So if you just confess before that judge, I know what killing those people was wrong. I know raping that young girl was wrong.
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You think that judge is going to let you go? No. He's not, because he's just.
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And repentance towards God is the recognition that I've offended a holy God, I've offended
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His law, and now I'm going to turn from the offending Him, and I'm going to turn and I'm going to serve
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Him, the true and living God, and go back to covenant fidelity under the old covenant.
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It was going back to covenant fidelity. And then it says here in verse 14,
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I mean, therefore the Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us.
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Once again, I'm saying it was just building it up. I mean, imagine God's wrath just building and building and building.
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And I believe it's longer, because me and Andy were talking a couple weeks ago after the class.
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We don't see anywhere where the sabbatical years were ever observed, even from the time of the judges.
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There's no indication that they kept the sabbatical year to let the land lay fallow, so it's longer than 490 years.
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It's actually probably closer to 1100 or more. But specifically, God's using a 490 -year curse, and we're going to get into that at the end of the chapter of why.
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But he says here, he has stored it up. Hey, man, that would be like standing in front of the
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Hoover Dam. Anybody been near the Hoover Dam, see how big that thing is?
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Imagine if one little dude standing there. Imagine a little wee little me standing there. And boom!
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That wall just falls. I'm going to be... If it falls, it would probably stand tall.
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He'd part it. Yeah, it would just obliterate you. You'd be engulfed, and nobody could find you.
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Well, he's saying here, this has been stored up and stored up and stored up, and now he's going to pour it out on your head. Hey, this is no different than how
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God has acted towards the Amorites. Remember what he said about the Amorites? He says iniquity's not full yet.
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Iniquity's not full yet. One day it's going to fill up, and I'm going to dump it out on them. He says, and they have brought it on us, for the
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Lord our God is righteous, in all the respects and all that he has done in these deeds which has been done.
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But we have not obeyed his voice. Verse 14, does anybody where it says calamities, does anybody say evil?
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King James say evil? Yeah, that's actually the word. And I think we brought this up a week or two ago.
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Our English translation has tried to move God away from being any part of being evil, and I understand why.
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But man, when you see death and destruction, and the raping of women, the slaughtering of children through these wicked armies, they go, oh, there's no way that God could have done that.
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Who sent them there? God did. Look, man, God's in control of everything.
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He can use the wicked to punish the unrighteous. And then when God's done using them, he can punish them for their wicked deeds.
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And if you don't believe me, read Isaiah 10. He actually talks about using the
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Assyrians long before he used the Babylonians. We're going to use
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Sennacherib to come in. He actually, the purpose in which it served, it served to scare the daylights out of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah repented.
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God recoiled Sennacherib. Sennacherib wound up going back. Remember, Sennacherib was right on the outskirts of Jerusalem, fixing to besiege it.
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He actually had already started. And he used that for Hezekiah's prayer. And then when
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Hezekiah prayed, God says, I'm going to extend you. I'm going to extend your time. Sennacherib left.
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And what did God do to Sennacherib? He had him killed in his temple, blurting his own gods.
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And nuked a whole bunch of men. Yeah, he sure did, yeah. Like 85 ,000 or 185 ,000, something like that.
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Which is interesting. They wound up killing their self. God confuses them. And one of the covenant curses is confusion.
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If you can go back and look in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus when he gives these, is confusion and people killing each other.
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I just don't want to give all of it away, but do you understand what happened in Jerusalem in 70
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A .D.? God turned them people over to a debased mind, and they were butchering one another inside the city.
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That's exactly what happened when God gave them, his enemies over to a debased mind.
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It says, and God was righteous in doing it. Why was God righteous in doing it? Because all of His ways are righteous.
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Hey, look, God may do something we disagree with. Who's wrong? We are.
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God may do things that we don't like. Well, God ain't out to please me. Why? God's out to please
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Himself and to bring His self -glory. There's something more important than you and I, and it's the glory of the
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God of all creation. And He says right here that they didn't obey
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His voice. Look, it's not because they didn't hear God's voice. Even in the book of Hebrews, when
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He's talking about the unbelieving generation, and He says do not let your heart be hardened if you hear
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His voice. Harden not your heart today as they did in the day of the provocation. God is speaking.
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It's are you listening? God's voice is always speaking. It's can you hear it?
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That's why the command is if you hear His voice, harden not your heart. But they did not want to obey
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His voice. In this case, the covenant people of God heard the voice. And they heard it for well over 490 years where the prophets came in and in and in and in.
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And then they killed the prophets. And if you're reading there Nehemiah, I don't think Ezra's prayer talks about it, nor does
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Daniel's prayer talk about killing the prophets. But look at Nehemiah's prayer. He says we killed the prophets.
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Now history says that evil king Manasseh put, tradition says evil king
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Manasseh put Hezekiah in a hollow cedar tree and sawed him in two. Isaiah, put him in there, stuck him in there.
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That's how they killed the prophets. And now, sir?
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Jesus in several of His parables references just that, the death of the prophets and how the people...
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Oh yeah, when you get to... Himself as the greatest... And that is part of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
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AD is because of that. Look, every one of those prophets that came before, He even says back to Abel, remember?
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He said, I think it's in Matthew 23, He says, you are now once again filling up the wrath of God from the righteous
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Abel. Who was the first, quote, martyr? Let's just be honest. Who was the first martyr?
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It was Abel. Why? Because Abel brought the firstlings of his cattle and his brother
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Cain said, man, any old pumpkin will do. And he just reached down there and grabbed an old pumpkin that was probably beginning to rot, and he offered that to God.
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I don't think it has anything to do with being blood. I think it had to be not being the firstling. That's what I believe.
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Whatever your produce was, that's what you were supposed to give. Well, Cain's like, it doesn't matter.
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Any old dirty ear of corn or any old pumpkin will do. And when God didn't accept his sacrifice, he was upset.
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So what did he do? He killed his brother for it. He killed his brother for it. And then he, like he said,
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And then Jesus said from righteous Abel to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah.
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That was the last prophet under the Old Testament in the Hebrew canon, which would have been in 2
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Chronicles. That was the last prophet to die. And he says, you're going to fill up the measure of them.
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And you're going to do that when you kill me because I'm the final prophet. I'm the one who they all spoke of.
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I'm the one who all they pointed to. When you kill me, you're going to fill it up, and then
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I'm going to pour out my judgment on this generation. And in verse 15,
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And now, O Lord our God, who hath brought your people out of the land of Egypt and made a mighty hand, and with a mighty hand have made a name for yourself, as it is written this day, we have sinned.
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When God brought his people out of the land of Egypt, was it for the people of Israel to be mighty and great?
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It was for his name to be put on display. Matter of fact, if you remember some of that scenario, when they got out and they disobeyed, they sent the 12 spies in, 10 came back and said, hey, there's like giants in there.
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We look like grasshoppers. And then Joshua and Caleb are like, dude, mount up. We can whack these guys.
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And they said no. They picked up stones. They were wanting to stone them, Moses, Aaron, and all of that.
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You remember what God said to Moses? He said, step back.
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I'll wipe every last one of these unbelieving, wicked generation. I'll wipe them all out, and I'll start fresh anew with you.
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I don't know about y 'all, but if I heard, they'd be like, well, man, look at me. That's not what Moses did.
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Moses pleaded for the people, and he says, don't do that. Don't do that, because if you do that, it will make your name look bad.
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And he went back to those attributes. He fought by those attributes of God. He went back to God's nature.
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Be compassionate on your people. You brought your people out. You did all of this. You put all of those plagues on Egypt.
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Don't let all those plagues go to waste. That's basically what he was saying. Don't let all of that go to waste by coming out here and killing all of them, saying that God couldn't preserve them.
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He could get them out, but then he couldn't keep them right in the wilderness to get them into the promised land. It was a 14 -day journey for them to get to Canaan.
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And because of their disobedience, they wandered in a circle for 40 years. I mean,
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I think I figured it out one time. It was like that when he says, hey, this whole wicked generation is going to die.
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I think I figured out it was like 1 ,180 people died a day.
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That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. I'm sorry, my, my, my.
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That's a lot of people. That's a lot of funerals. And then on top of that, remember, their clothes and their shoes didn't wear out.
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So what you did is when you buried old Uncle Jethro, you went and got his old sandals and made sure they fit, and you put them on.
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You're like, man, I'm wearing a dead man's clothes. And then when I die, they're going to get them. They didn't. And God, once again,
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God's nature, what did he do? He cared for those people, even in their unbelief, even in their condemnation, swearing in his wrath that they would never enter his rest.
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He still took care of them, providing them manna and providing them food and providing them protection, even in that time.
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But the whole reason for them coming out of the land of Egypt was to make God a name, not to make Israel a name.
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Even when they came out, why did God love Israel? Was it because they were bigger and better and greater than anybody?
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Anybody remember what God said? Why? That's it! He said, you know why
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I love you? Because I love you. That's different. You know why
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I love my wife? Because she's hot. That's not what God said about the nation of Israel.
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He took people that were actually unlovable and he loved them.
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Matter of fact, they shouldn't have been loved. God should have opened up the ground like he did with Korah and swallowed every last one of them.
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But he continued to show them compassion. He continued to show them grace. He continued to show them mercy because he was righteous.
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And then, we've got to start wrapping it up here. And then he says, as it is this day, we have sinned and we have been wicked.
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Once again, he has appealed to the graciousness of God's nature, his character, and then, what has he appealed to again about the nature of man?
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Continually wicked. He hasn't said one thing good about the people. Wicked, rebels, rebellious, dishonorable, full of iniquity, full of pride.
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And he says in verse 16, O Lord, in accordance with all of your righteous acts, let now your anger and your wrath turn away from your holy city.
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So how long was God's wrath being poured out on the holy city?
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According to what Daniel said, 70 years. We're right there close to 70 years.
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70 years of God's judgment on people.
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70 years. When we get to the end of the chapter, he's going to say,
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Daniel, you think this was bad? Imagine that.
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Imagine that. You thought 70 years was bad? After 70 years, there was going to be restoration.
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It was promised. You get to the end, after these 77s, utter desolation.
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Utter desolation. No restoration. No restoration.
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Questions, comments, riots, demonstrations, letters to the editor. We've got five minutes.
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So y 'all can throw stuff at me, disagree with me, tell me I'm wrong.
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This is interesting. Daniel was probably, as a man, probably the holiest man other than the
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Lord. He doesn't, as he goes through here at the end of what you just taught, he puts himself in the category of people.
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He's talking about the wickedness. He doesn't say their wickedness. He says our wickedness.
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We have sinned. We have done wrong. He loved those people.
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Yeah, he was actually an intercessor. He was taking the sins of his... In a sense, we could say, okay, as an illustration of Christ, just like you just said, he was righteous.
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Hey, we have no record of Daniel doing any wrongdoing. He was a sinner.
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I want you to understand that. Daniel was a sinner, okay? So was Joshua. Those men, and Joseph.
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Those men that we don't see any recorded sins in their life. They were sinners. They had wicked hearts, just like you and I.
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But in this case, God has chosen in his revelation to show that these men were faithful.
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These men were faithful in a time of a generation that was unfaithful. There was a time, like in Daniel's case, here it is, he was hauled off into a land where he could have enjoyed any type of sensual pleasure that the heart could desire.
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And what did he do? He chose to serve the Lord. He chose to serve the
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Lord. And then now, after him studying the prophet Jeremiah, he sees that this time is almost up, or is up, depending on how you understand the decree and when it came.
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Was it 539? Was it 538? Whatever. We'll talk about that. He knows that this is up.
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And he knows that restoration is on the horizon. And he is going, well, wait a minute. Because of these people, and I'm collectively a part of those people,
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I am guilty. I'm guilty of their sins. You say, well, the
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Scripture says that the sins of the father can't be bared out on their children.
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Well, the consequences can. The consequences can. I mean, you go into captivity for 70 years.
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They're having children. They're building homes. They're living their life.
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Were those children responsible for the unbelief of their parents?
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No? But were they enduring the consequences of the unbelief of their parents? Yeah. I mean,
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I've said it before. I'll say it again. I mean, as a federal head, their parents put them in trouble.
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Their leaders put them in trouble. Their leaders put them in a place where the consequences were bared out on them.
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It would be like our brainless president sending a missile somewhere and starting a war.
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Are we culpable for that? No, but him as our federal head has made a decision that will affect our way of life for who knows how long.
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You were going to say something before? No, it's interesting. Just to tie onto that, it's interesting, the whole promise of restoration of Jerusalem being coming back is because of that covenant born by David.
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Because you look at Israel, there was no restoration for them. Syrians haul them off. There's no recorded evidence.
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Yeah, for the Northern Kingdom. For the Northern Kingdom for them coming back. But for David, because of that, with him being that federal head of that covenant he made with them, you have the promise of restoration coming back because of, for my name's sake, and for my servant
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David. My servant David. Because of my servant David. It was recorded numerous times. That's just interesting.
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Yeah, matter of fact, when Solomon, I may have said this last week or the week before.
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Remember when Solomon, it says that God appeared to him twice. He said, hey, you're messing around with these pagan women.
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You shouldn't be doing that. They're going to haul your heart away. And what did Solomon do?
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He said, you know what? I'm going to get me some more pagan women. And I'm going to get me some pagan concubines.
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And God again came to him and said the same thing. And he said, all right, I'm going to wipe you out.
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But not you. I'll do it after you. And I'll do it because of you, like you just said. He said because of your daddy.
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Because your daddy was faithful. Hey, there's one thing you can say about King David.
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He didn't go off no idolatry. Don't get me wrong. He committed adultery and murder. And he probably did some things in his conquest that we probably would disagree with.
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And the Bible is kind of, it's describing what he did. It's not saying it was right.
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I mean, you got to remember when he was going out and he was raiding over there in the Negev in the time that he was running from Saul, you got to remember, man, he was going in there and he was killing everybody.
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The Bible is just describing what happened. Now, whether you think it was right, wrong, or indifferent, there's something to be said when
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God didn't tell him to go do that. But what did David not do? David never hauled the country off into idolatry.
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He never built temples. He never built groves and poles and asterisks and all of that. He remained faithful to the covenant.
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All right. Keith, you'll close us? Word of prayer? Father, thank you for the opportunity to again be about the study of your
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Word and today as we have considered the reality of your righteousness on display and the fact that your nature is righteous.
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And as we move into the service today and we talk about the righteousness of Christ becoming ours by faith,
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Lord, we are reminded that in and of ourselves we are not righteous. As Brother Mike Smith said, as Daniel identified himself with the sinners, so did
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Isaiah when he said, Woe is me, for I am undone. And Lord, we are all sinful before you and yet you provide a righteousness for us which is obtained not through the works of the law, but which is obtained through faith in Christ.
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So Lord, let us be thankful that you have provided a perfect righteousness, not a halfway righteousness, not a portionary righteousness, but a righteousness which is sufficient for all that we need.