Daniel 9, Trouble on the Way to the Manger, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Daniel’s Prayer After the Seventy Years

Chapter 9, be reading the entire chapter, hear the word of the Lord. In the first year of Darius, the son of Osiris, by descent Amid, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes, I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and have done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.

We have not listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open shame, as at this day to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, and all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you.

To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets.

All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and the oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned against him.

He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven, there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem, as it is written in the law of Moses.

All this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. Therefore, the Lord has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us.

For the Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made a name for yourself as at this day, we have sinned.

We have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city, Jerusalem, your holy hill, because of our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers.

Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us. Now, therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy. And for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.

O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.

O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not for your own sake, O Lord my God, because your city and your people are called by your name. While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice.

He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved.

Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and profit, and to anoint a most holy place.

Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks, it shall be built again with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time.

And after sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war.

Desolations are decreed. And we shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, have you ever set out on some goal and then run into unexpected trouble along the way? It could be a trip, but then you get a flat tire or get caught in a horrendous storm or a traffic jam because of an accident or construction.

I've got a blocking 86 here for something just this morning. Maybe though because of whatever you run into, your trouble, you arrive much later than expected or have to stay overnight in some motel along the way.

But the funny thing is, it's those trips that you remember the most. You know, remember when we were going to grandma's house for Christmas and we hit that snowstorm and had to creep along at like 20 miles per hour and hardly able to see the road until we gave up at about 2 a .m. and pulled into this mom-and-pop motel in some town we never heard of with thin mattresses and no hot water?

Ah, but we finally made it. Ah, the memories. Those were the good times. The trouble makes it seem sweeter. Maybe it's a bigger life goal. I wanted to be an athlete in track. That was a goal, but I ran into trouble, injuries, discouragement.

First going to a college that had very little track program, athletic program, even a canceled season, and then they revived that athletic program as I was there. But just the fact that I ran into trouble along the way and obstacles to overcome makes the accomplishment even sweeter.

Maybe for you it's finishing an education that was sidetracked sometime earlier, and so now you get to walk across the stage and graduate, getting that degree. It's sweeter because of the trouble you encounter along the way.

Maybe it's starting a business when you hardly had any money in a place where every other business had gone bankrupt, but through hard work and long hours you made it succeed. One of the stories that people love in sports is the drama of a comeback.

Just love to see a team come from behind and win at the last moment. You know, not just victory, not just winning, but overcoming trouble to get it, being down by five points with only a few seconds to go.

It's fourth down on the 31-yard line until that last second desperation pass. Ah, that makes it fun, doesn't it, if that could ever happen. Trouble when it's overcome just adds to the sweetness of victory.

Have you ever run into trouble? Well here Daniel has trouble, and actually the whole nation of Israel does. They got into trouble, deep trouble with the Lord because of generations of ignoring him, doing their own thing.

Sure they kept the temple going, but they added idols on the side, some foreign superstitions to play with. They kept slaves, kept their own people as slaves, ignoring the parts of God's Word that they found too inconvenient, like the command to leave the ground unplowed one year out of seven, have a Sabbath year for the land.

I guess they could look after their animals or whatever. They would work, but they were supposed to leave the fields uncultivated for one year out of seven. It's called a Sabbath year. But of course that means one year out of seven, their fields aren't productive.

And they were thinking, well, we've got to look after the bottom line. We've got to be practical. We can't just leave our fields empty for one year out of seven. So people, just like people around us, claim to be Christians but ignore God's Word when they think it's too much trouble.

Here they had commands from God that they never actually obeyed. And so they got into deep trouble with the Lord, and so much so that he had them, along with the young Daniel way back, now it would be like 70 years, 50, 70 years before, taken captive by the Babylonians.

And there by the rivers of Babylon, they would get to sit and to think about the trouble that they were in, and the land would finally get its Sabbaths. Well here in Daniel 9, we see God's people in trouble and how they will have trouble all the way to the manger and beyond.

And we see that in three parts. First the confession, then the supplication, and finally the tribulation. Well, first the confession for verses 3 to 15. It's the first year of a new empire, the Medes and the Persians toppling the Babylonians and capturing all the territory.

And when it begins, the first year of Darius, it had over all the Chaldeans, which means they conquered it. That's how they, he's over it. And Daniel knew from the prophet Jeremiah that after 70 years that Israel would be able to go back into their homeland, to Jerusalem, and now that time was up.

The Babylonians were gone, 70 years has passed, now it was time for the Israelites to go back. That's God's decree. They're going to go back after 70 years. Now some people say, well, if it's God's command, God's decree, then you don't have to do anything about it.

You hear this, people criticizing the theology about the sovereignty of God. Well, if God's decreed who's going to be saved, you don't have to do any evangelism. Well, you do. Maybe your logic's wrong, but here, they had the word of God, 70 years, they're going back to Israel, and 70 years are up.

What does Daniel do? Does he just kind of go, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be? When God wants the temple rebuilt, he'll do it himself? No. Instead, he prays. This prayer we just read. By the way, this is a great model prayer that Daniel has prayed.

It's a model of how to pray and seek God to be contrite. He turns his face to the Lord in verse 3, and this may be what he was praying during those times facing Jerusalem three times a day, remember? That habit that got him into trouble with his enemies, or at least his enemies used against him.

Well, he prays, he pleads for mercy, and he did so, it says in verse 3, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. I don't think this is some, like, coolly calculated religious ritual that he did to get what he wanted out of God, as though he had read the most recent book on how to pray, and it said, you know, if you really want to get something out of God, you've got to fast, in other words, don't eat, wear sackcloth, and put ashes on your head, and so he did it in order to manipulate God.

No, it's not the product of a strategy, but a passion. He had a passion for his people to have a temple, to be in God's place, under God's rule, in God's blessings. He wanted it so strongly, and he felt it so deeply for the distress they were in.

They're scattered, they're homeless, forced to be foreigners, that he fasted, because he couldn't eat. It's not as though, I don't think it's just, I want to eat, but I got to do this to get what I want out of God.

He says, I'm so consumed with his passion to pray for his people, he doesn't feel like eating. He just wants to pray. He didn't feel like wearing nice clothes, so he wears sackcloth. He didn't feel like being cleaned, so he puts ashes on himself.

His city was in ashes, so he would be in ashes. And that's what you do when you know you're in trouble. How do you pray? How do you pray when you're in trouble? Well, that depends on whether you're like Daniel or you're like many people today who have a view of God, summed up by that wildly popular, yes, I'm going to bash it again, The Footprints in the Sand poem.

The poem asks the Lord, you know, why, when I needed you most, God, you have not been there for me. There's only one set of footprints in the sand, you must have abandoned me. How dare you, God, let me down?

And the Lord replied, according to Mary Sullivan, the author of the poem, by explaining that he wasn't really absent after all, you got it all wrong. And so the lesson then is when we're in trouble, we can accuse God, and God must defend himself.

He has to explain himself to us. That's the popular view of God and ourselves in relation to God. Now, think of that attitude toward God that's in that poem, that's behind that. He's there to help us in some kind of sweet, you know, unseen, therapeutic way when we're in trouble.

That's what he exists for. Or at least he should be. And if we catch him laying down on the job, we can give him a tug lashing. But of course, oh, he is reliable after all. We're mistaken if we don't see that.

He won't let us down. And what about the sovereignty of God, though, in that poem? That he's actually in control of the trouble when we see only one set of footprints in the sand. He's actually in control of that situation.

That strange idea isn't to be found anywhere in the poem. And what of our sins that we actually deserve the trouble we get into? You see that a lot in Daniel's prayer, don't you? My sins, Israel's sins, our iniquity.

It's nowhere in the footprints poem. That idea is nowhere to be seen. So put that footprints poem, so popular that it adorns plaques and posters and Bible covers and whatever you can stick it on. Put it side by side, compare, with this prayer in Daniel.

Compare the language, compare the attitude, the approach to God, and the approach to trouble. Well, footprints sees the trouble and immediately accuses God of not being there during the trouble. Well, here in Daniel, Daniel sees the trouble and confesses.

He does not accuse and say, Lord, you said, you promised you were gonna let us go back after 70 years. Time's up. We demand you send us back now. Keep your promise. There's no accusation. There's confession in verse four.

There's not even a sense, well, we deserve to go back. You promised we'd go back. No, it's we don't deserve it at all. You've been, we've been, we've sinned against you in so many ways. You're the, you're the exalted God.

We don't deserve anything from you. In verse four, I prayed to the Lord and made confession. Now think of the difference in attitude. Daniel's attitude is not rights-based. And we have a right to go back.

Give it to us. He's not trying to force the Lord into doing something, holding him to an obligation. We can lay, we can lay hold of him. We can give him an ultimatum. We can catch him. We can get God in a verbal contract that now he's required to keep.

It is first, Daniel's prayer is first and predominantly, from verses four to 15, it's a confession and an admission that I am wrong and you, Lord, are right. Nothing about me earning it. God is right in all His ways.

We deserve what we've gotten. We need your mercy. That's what we entirely depend on. So notice first how he addresses God in verse four. Oh, Lord, the great and awesome God. This is the God manifest over and over in Daniel.

He's great and awesome. He's over and beyond us. He's able to, he's able to do as he wills, as Nebuchadnezzar said in chapter four, remember, no one can stop his hand. So we're not able to obligate him to do our bidding.

So we come in adoration, we come in exaltation, not with the attitude, but you promised you were gonna do thus and so. We ain't gonna do it. And Daniel says, no, you are great and awesome. Today, we say, you are obligated.

But that doesn't mean that God's arbitrary, you know, that He's unpredictable, He's unreliable, that He can just, He can do any, whatever He does, whatever He does is right, but it's not just, He says He'll do one thing and He doesn't do it and we just can't, well, what can we do?

He does whatever He wants. That's not to say that He may save or damn or punish or bless, and there's no way of telling what He will do and to whom He will do it. He's like, oh, totally arbitrary. Instead, that, by the way, is the view in Islam.

God is sovereign in Islam, you believe God is sovereign, but He's totally arbitrary. He can do anything He wants and He doesn't keep His word or He, you know, He can break His word because that's, nothing you can say about it.

Here in Scripture, He is sovereign, He does everything He wants, but everything He wants is according to His word. It's righteous, it's according to His covenant, it's that key word. As Daniel says in verse 4, you keep covenant, you make a promise, you keep it.

You have this common word in the Old Testament, steadfast love, chesed. You make your commitment to people and you keep it, you're consistent with it. So He is, in other words, He is faithful. He makes commitments with certain people to love them and He most certainly keeps those commitments.

So it's not like so many people who will say, like people today, who will say all the right things, they say how they love, will even sign their names to contracts or to covenants, or they will take vows before a congregation to love, honor, whatever else, until death do them part.

And then they'll walk away as if their word means nothing. There's no consistency between what they say and what they do. They're arbitrary, they're unpredictable, they're unreliable, they're lacking in covenant loyalty and steadfast love.

That's people in our day, probably many in their day. They might even speak sweetly of God, even use God as an excuse why they don't keep their covenants. Oh, sure I said that, but God led me to do this.

No, He didn't. When they are judged by the God they presume to know, they'll find out they're in deep trouble. Daniel and his people are in trouble here. And so he makes a confession to the great and awesome God.

His confession is just full of conviction. It's just a sampling. He could go through it line by line, I'm not going to do that this time, just a sampling of it from verses 5, 8, 11, and 15, he says overtly, we have sinned.

Notice the we. And he's not individualistic, as though it's just him and God, there's only two sets of footprints on the sand, just me and God. No, it's not they that sinned, you know, I didn't, I didn't sin, God, but those people did.

You know, help them out if you can. I'm glad, I'm better than they are. No, he identifies with them even though certainly Daniel did not personally commit the sins here that he confesses. He didn't personally commit the sins that got him into so much trouble, but he's part of them.

He identifies with them. So he says, we have sinned. He says, we have not listened to your servants, the prophets. Now, think about it. He was just here reading the prophet Jeremiah. He was listening personally, Jeremiah, I mean, Daniel was listening to Jeremiah.

But he says, we have not listened to your servants, the prophets. He still identifies with the people. And Israel committed treachery against you. He says in verse 7, Daniel didn't commit treachery personally, but he says, we have.

We have rebelled against the Lord in verse 9. We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord. In verses 10 and 14, all Israel has transgressed your law. In verse 11, we have no record of Daniel transgressing his law, but he puts himself in their midst.

We have not entreated the favor of the Lord. He's actually doing that right here. And he says, we haven't done it. But he puts themselves in them. In verse 13, even though Daniel personally prayed to him three times a day.

Think about that. He got thrown into a lion's den for three times a day, personally entreating the favor of the Lord. And then he says, we have not entreated your favor. Because he's identifying with them.

And finally, in verse 15, we have sinned. We have done wickedly. Daniel identifies with the people of God, even in their sin. Even the sins he did not personally participate in. He understood that he stood before God as part of a people.

Now, to be Christian is to confess, is to be contrite, is to tremble at the Word of God, of a great and awesome God, and to discern, that is, think about the body, to understand our connection to other believers, that we are part of a people.

Now, sometimes we can say, well, we're Reformed. We don't do these other things that other churches do, other denominations do, that are unbiblical. Sure, they are unbiblical. And we can get the attitude, well, we're not guilty of it.

We're personally no part of it, and to a extent, hopefully, that's true. But in another way, we have to understand, we are connected with all other Christians, even those who are doing unbiblical things, that we protest, that we say are wrong.

But still, we are not listening to your Word, God, and we need to change. God calls all his people together through one covenant. We're not just walking with God alone. There's not only two sets of footprints in the sand.

And he's walking with the church, not just with you. You see how different we are, we are today, from Daniel. And do you see that if we don't change, we're in trouble? Well, Daniel knew he was in trouble, and so he came to the Lord in confession.

Humble Supplication for Mercy

And then second, supplication, from verses 16 to 19. Supplication is the form of prayer, of asking humbly. The definition of a supplication is a humble entreaty or petition, a plea to a superior. Supplication is a request by the lesser person, the acknowledged inferior partner from a superior, something you have no right to get, not a demand, not a protest.

It's a plea that you hope you could get grace. To simply say that Daniel asked for things, you could say, I could say, well, Daniel just was asking for the thus and so, he was making a petition. Well, that wouldn't be sufficient, that wouldn't do this, his plea, justice.

He supplicates, he begs like someone who has nothing to appeal to, except the sheer mercy of the one he is seeking the favor from. He appeals to the Lord's righteous acts, not his own. He doesn't say, you know, because me and my friends have been so good.

Lord, don't you see how good we've been? We didn't eat the unclean meats, we didn't bow to statues, we didn't stop praying even when it was illegal, we're willing to be thrown into lion's dens and the fiery furnaces.

We've been so good, we earned it, you deserve, wait, we deserve what we're asking for. Pay us back for this thing that we're asking. Give us Jerusalem back. He doesn't pray like that. Instead, according to your righteous acts, in verse 16, twice he says, for your sake, not just for my sake, just because we want it, but for your sake, that God's name would not be embarrassed by the condition of his people.

He admits that we have been rightly punished for our sins. Others, we deserve this, what we got, this exile, this destruction we've gotten. But he begs the Lord to relent. He pleads for mercy, in verse 17, to not get any more of what was deserved.

He calls himself the supplicant, that is, the supplicant, he calls himself God's servant, I'm your servant, in verse 17. Verse 18, we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness. You know, because we wouldn't eat the unclean meat and we wouldn't bow to the statue and we wouldn't stop praying, not because of that, not because we earned anything, but because of your great mercy.

And finally, in verse 19, he concludes with three short, rapid petitions, each prefaced with, Lord, our master, oh Lord, hear, oh Lord, forgive, oh Lord, pay attention and act. He prays like a desperate man who knows he's in trouble and that the Lord is the only one who could get him out of that trouble.

The problem with so many of our prayers and prayer meetings today is that we don't pray like Daniel. We don't pray like self-consciously sinful people, people who are aware of our sins, aware that whatever problems that have come on us or whatever trouble we deserve, addressing a great and awesome God, contrite and sorry, grieving, begging, pleading for mercy.

Imagine a man slowly, inescapably slipping into quicksand, a slimy pit full of mud and mire, and he's about to smother him, about to drown in mud. Nothing to hold on to. There's nothing to step on. There's nothing to reach out for to save him, nothing to keep him sinking slowly down, nothing to do except to plead for mercy to the one that we've rejected, the one we've rebelled against and insulted, and hope that he will have mercy on us.

That's the position we are in, in our sins. We're in trouble. And so the only thing to do is to offer supplication, to beg desperately, help, hear, forgive, listen, and act. When we know God and know ourselves, we make confession.

When we know we're in trouble, we make supplication. Third, when we know the future, we know we will have tribulation. In those last two paragraphs, starting in verse 20, we see that in this world, we will have tribulation.

The definition of tribulation is a grievous trouble, severe trial, or suffering. Amazingly, some have used these last two paragraphs, the last two paragraphs of Chapter 9, to tell God's people that they will not have tribulation.

That's the way that some people take this passage and say, you know, there's this 70th week of Daniel that's been postponed. They say it's been postponed, which contains all the trouble, and we get to skip it till we get no trouble.

In this world, you will not have trouble, so don't worry about it. And that assumes, of course, that there's a gap in this timeline. A timeline starts like a clock ticking down, a countdown, in verse 24.

The passage tells us that when the edict is made, edict is issued by the emperor to rebuild Jerusalem, then the clock starts, right? Timeline starts. The timelines now only make sense if they are continuous.

You understand? If it just arbitrarily stops and starts, that doesn't make any sense. It's not a timeline. They only make sense if they predictably lead to something. But some say there's a gap in the timeline after the 69th week and before the 70th week, and in that gap is where we live, they say.

And we'll get to all the troubles in that 70th week, and so we get to escape the trouble, the tribulation. Of course, again, it makes no sense, does it, to arbitrarily insert a gap in a timeline just to make it fit our preconceived conclusions?

Well, what does it really mean? Well, these are difficult verses, admittedly, difficult both to translate from Hebrew and difficult to interpret, even once they're translated. But let's try to see here what it clearly teaches, the things that it clearly teaches.

Some things are ambiguous still, but there are a few things that it clearly says. Hold on to those, and then leave aside speculation. And that is, the clear things is, after the confession and the supplication, we're shown that there will be tribulation and salvation.

Remember, Daniel's been praying that the people be restored to the promised land, Jerusalem be rebuilt, a new temple be built so that sacrifices could be made for sin, so that they will have a way of making atonement.

Remember, their faith depends on making an atonement with God. They're aware of their sins, you've got to make an atonement or be right with God by making sacrifices, and you can only do that in the temple.

So, Daniel desperately wants that temple rebuilt so they can make atonement and they can get forgiveness for their sins. That's the way it works in the Old Testament. That's the urge burning within him.

That's why he's praying so passionately, sackcloth and ashes on his head and fasting. Give us a way of being right with you again, Lord, so we need our temple. And so, God sends the angel Gable again in verse 21.

At the same time of day, notice it says, the same time of day, the sacrifices would be offered. So, and Daniel's aware of that because he's so sad. Give us this temple again. This would be the time when we would be offering a sacrifice to you, Lord.

And so, God sends the angel to him at that very time. And remember, Daniel encountered Gable in the vision last week. So, this is the second encounter with him. And Gable was sent. Here it says, verse 23, that he was sent when the pleas, Daniel's pleas for mercy started.

And Gable tells Daniel, for you are greatly loved by God. Another divine passive, God is the one doing the loving here. Gable tells him that he's come to give him insight and understanding. So, if the following words, he calls it a vision, but I guess this is the revelation, this teaching, is given in response to Daniel's prayer.

He's praying for Jerusalem to be rebuilt, the temple to be rebuilt, so we can make atonement. And then Gable comes, gives him this explanation. So, if we want to understand the vision, which is the answer, we need to understand the question, what was Daniel seeking?

Daniel was asking God to restore the temple in the city of Jerusalem, that God would give them again a way of approaching him and a way of ruling over them, to have righteousness and God's kingdom over them.

Remember, Jesus said, seek first the kingdom, the rule of God. That's what Daniel's praying for. You need the city and his righteousness, that is being right with him. You need atonement. That's what Daniel's praying for.

Give us your righteousness, being right with you, atoning for our sins. Give us your kingdom, where your king can rule us again. Give us the place where we can make sacrifice for sin and the throne of David.

And so, Gable then comes and tells him, this is the answer to that. That's what Daniel's request was. Gable comes and tells him, here's the answer. Okay, there's going to be a new temple, second temple.

Jerusalem is going to be rebuilt. In fact, Gable gives him a summary of the history of this second temple. Again, this is history in advance, on the way to the manger and beyond. And Gable says that there will be 70, and here's where it gets a little confusing.

I'll try to make it as clear as I can, as far as I understand, which is not perfectly. But Gable says there will be 70 sevens. Ah, does that make sense? No. Literally, that's the Hebrew word for weeks.

Sevens, it means weeks. So, 70 weeks, and it means weeks of years, like a day of...a week of days is seven days. So, a week of years is seven years. That's a little strange to us. We don't normally think of years coming in groups of seven.

We usually think of years coming in groups of 10, right? We're talking decades. But they like to think in sevens, so they would think of weeks of years. And he said there's going to be...Gable says there's going to be 70 of those.

And this reflects Leviticus 25, where the Lord told the people to let the land rest every seventh year. So, you have these weeks of years. And during the last year, in the week of years, you don't cultivate the ground.

There's no planting, there's no plowing. It was a Sabbath year. A week of years, that's six years, followed by a year of rest for the land. And just like a week of days is followed by a week of rest on the Sabbath day.

But they thought that they knew better than the Lord. Remember, they probably thought that they couldn't spare that much time being unproductive, let our land not produce anything. And maybe there were economists with their charts and graphs talking about how, we need to maximize our productivity.

We can't let our land go one year out of seven without growing something. Or maybe they were just greedy and thought that the command was just impractical. Like some people today who reason, you know, we just can't close the business just to go to church on Sunday morning.

And so, it's just too impractical. So, it was a command that was never kept. And 2 Chronicles 36, verse 21, tells us that Jeremiah, who's the prophet, remember, that Daniel was studying, that Jeremiah had prophesied that the land would be vacant for 70 years to make up for all the Sabbath years they had failed to follow.

So, again, trying to keep track of all these, I know some of these details are new, but Daniel was asking, now, Lord, please, after the punishment for the sevens, because we didn't keep the Sabbath years, restore us, give us a new temple so that we can make atonement for sin and be right with you, reestablish Jerusalem, the city of David, so we could have the kingdom of God.

We're seeking it first, so that the son of David can rule us again. And to that, Gabriel comes, gives him the answer, starting in verse 24. It's not going to be just 70 years for disobeying about the sevens, the Sabbath years, but 70 times seven.

Sure, you're going to go back up to 70 years, and they do, but there's something else coming. There's 70 sevens, 70 weeks of years. That is, do your math, seven times 70, 490, 490 years. 490 years are required to finally, fully, really deal with sin, to finish transgression, atone for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness.

That's what Daniel's asking. Daniel's asking, Lord, let us be able to finish transgression, atone for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Gabriel comes and tells him that's going to happen after 70 sevens, 490 years.

So, the answer to Daniel's question, verse 24, is both good and alarming from Daniel's point of view. He was hoping that now there would be a new temple, and that new temple, they could deal with sin.

They could cancel it. And answer, Gabriel tells him that when there is the decree to rebuild Jerusalem with a temple, then this countdown starts. The 70 weeks of Daniel starts with the decree. That decree is coming soon, and it came soon.

But the answer takes Daniel beyond what Daniel was expecting, beyond just the temple, because the temple wouldn't really deal with sin. That's what Daniel's seeking. We want to deal with sin, and Daniel assumes if we have a temple, we can deal with sin.

We can get atonement. We're going to deal with sin. It's going to take more than just a literal temple after 70 years. Hebrew tells us that sacrifices there never finished transgression, never atoned for iniquity, or brought in everlasting righteousness.