This Is What Christmas Really Means

The Benedictus of Zechariah

Luke 1:67-79

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It is so wonderful to hear the choir sing the Christmas message. The tradition of singing at Christmastime is as old as Christmas itself. Did you know that the first Christmas carols are written in the Bible as part of the Christmas story? When Luke sat down to write his gospel, he recorded four of the original songs of Christmas. They are found in Luke chapters 1-2.

These pieces of prophetic poetry have survived for over 2,000 years. They have been placed in many different musical settings and joined to various tunes. Philip Ryken refers to them as “the last of the Hebrew psalms and the first of the Christian hymns…the gospel is and must be musical…what He has done must be celebrated in song.”

Today we are going to look at one of these Christmas carols from the Gospel of Luke, the Benedictus of Zechariah, and in it I hope to show you what Christmas really means. More →

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The Seventy Sevens

Daniel 9:24-27

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If you have ever taken a trip with your children to anyplace further than the grocery store, you have probably been asked repeatedly, “are we there yet?”

We have seen in the visions of the book Daniel that the world is moving toward the destination of the eternal kingdom of God. This destination is confirmed by the rest of scripture both in the Old and New Testaments. The question is, “are we there yet?”

That is the question I believe Daniel was dealing with in the ninth chapter of his book. Remember that Daniel concluded after reading Jeremiah the prophet that the 70-year period of Israel’s captivity must be virtually over, and that return of Jews to their own land surely is imminent. With this hope in his heart, Daniel prayed for himself and his people. He confessed his sin and the sins of his people and prayed for the restoration expecting that they were almost there, that God would return His people to their land and establish the kingdom of heaven.

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The Answer to Daniel’s Prayer

Daniel 9:20-27

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In the ninth chapter of Daniel, Daniel concludes after reading Jeremiah the prophet that the 70-year period of Israel’s captivity must be virtually over, and that return of Jews to their own land surely is imminent. With this hope, Daniel prayed for himself and his people. We studied His prayer of confession and intercession. It is a great example of an effective fervent prayer of a righteous man. When we get to verse 20, we find that God answers Daniel’s prayer but certainly not in a way Daniel would have expected. God sent Gabriel, His angel, to give Daniel understanding and insight into the vision he had received. God wanted Daniel to understand the relationship between Israel’s soon return to the land and the rebuilding of the temple—in the light of God’s promise to restore His people and establish His kingdom on the earth. God wanted Daniel to know that Israel’s imminent return to the land was not the coming of the kingdom of God.

Gabriel’s announcement provides Daniel and his reader with an increasing level of understanding of the vision God had previously revealed. Verses 24-27 begin to spell out future events in detail rather than with vague, mysterious symbols as in the visions. While not all Christians agree on the meaning of these verses, I think it is safe to say that all Christians would agree that they provide very important information concerning the last times.

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True Confession

Daniel 9:1-19

(Please note that this sermon recording only includes the end of the sermon because of a technical problem we had while recording it. Sorry we did not get the whole thing recorded)

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2017 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It was on October 31, 1517 that a German monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg challenging the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church to answer the charges. In 1520, Martin Luther wrote an essay which he called “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” What he meant was that forces and powers that were foreign to Christ and to his Word had captured the mind and heart of the church. She was in bondage to godless forces.

Specifically in his day Luther saw these forces in the Roman Catholic Church. But are they any less at work in our day? John Piper writes this:

Millions of church-goers today think the way the world thinks. The simple assumptions that govern behavior and choices come more from what is absorbed from our culture than from the Word of God. The church shares the love affair of the world with prosperity and ease and self. Many groups of Christians are just not that different from the spirit of Babylon, even though the Lord says that we are aliens and exiles and that we are not to be conformed to this age. So, like Israel of old, much of God’s church today is captive to godless forces. … Much of the Christian movement today has become a desolation of disobedience and disunity and dishonor to the name of Christ. So the way Daniel prays for the desolation of his people is a pointer for how we can pray for the desolation of ours.

Last time we saw looked at the first two verses of Daniel 9. We said that verse 1 teaches that 1) Effective prayer recognizes our circumstances in view of God’s plan (Dan. 9:1). Prayer is how we line ourselves up with the purposes of God. In verse 2 we said that 2) Effective prayer is prompted by scripture (Dan. 9:2). Daniel’s prayer was prompted by reading the prophet Jeremiah. His prayer was saturated with scripture. When God’s word abides in you, when it finds a home in your heart and in your mind, then you will pray effectively.

Today I want us to draw out of this passage some more principles concerning prayer. Specifically I want us to see in Daniel’s prayer some elements of true confession. Daniel here is coming before the Lord acknowledging his sin and crying out for forgiveness, for cleansing, for restoration.

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A Ram, a Goat and a Little Horn

Daniel 8

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The Bible is anchored in historical, objective events that have really happened. Think about the gospel of Jesus Christ by which we are saved. We look back in history to the cross of Christ where our Lord died for our sins. We look back to the empty tomb where Jesus was raised from the dead. We read the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament and of the church in the book of Acts and the Epistles. All of these past events and messages from God give us foundations for believing and living as Christians.

But in another sense, our inspiration to persevere as disciples of Christ also rests on things that the Bible says will occur in the future. We know them as certainly as we know the things that have already transpired. We are sustained through the trials of this life not only by remembering the history of our faith, but also by hope in what God promises us in the future. Those of you who have been coming to our Wednesday Bible Study and Prayer meeting know that we have seen both of these emphases in our study of 1 Peter.

Peter, in his first epistle writes to encourage believers who are facing fiery trials of many kinds. He writes in 1 Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” That is the historical reality, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Because of that real event we have a hope for living. We are anchored by that historical, objective truth.

But then in the very next verse Peter also points us to the future, “to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1Pet. 1:4-5). Our hope not only rests on the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also looks forward to the glorious return of our Lord, to the vindication of the righteous, and to our inheritance with Christ in heaven.

By both of these types of scripture, history and prophecy, we are strengthened to deal with today’s trials, persecutions, temptations, and sorrows. As we have seen already, the book of Daniel is both history and prophecy. The first six chapters of Daniel tell the history of the lives of Daniel and his friends who trusted God before kings, in the fiery furnace, in the lions’ den. Under extreme circumstances they believed God and stood firm. We were encouraged to live faithfully as we saw their faith and courage lived out in real history.

The second half of the book of Daniel, however, is mostly prophecy. It tells about the visions that Daniel had of the future. Some of the things he saw and was told about, which were future to him, have occurred by now; others are still to come. These prophecies in Daniel are written for our encouragement and hope. More →

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The Interpretation of the Vision

Daniel 7:15-28

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Daniel chapter 7, what a blessing and a challenge it has been for us as we have considered its prophecy over the last couple of weeks. We have seen Daniel’s vision of the four beasts representing four beastly kings and kingdoms of men. We have seen Daniel’s vision of the throne room of heaven as Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, receives the kingdom from His Father, the Ancient of Days.

Today we will consider the last half of chapter 7 in which Daniel is given some details about the interpretation of the visions that he saw that night. As we have seen these visions are prophecies that are expressed in apocalyptic language. They are in signs and symbols which stand for real persons and events in history and in the future. But as we have seen, some of the details of what all this means is hidden from Daniel and from us.

The good news is that Daniel was at least as troubled by the visions as we are. So Daniel asked about the meaning of the vision. So starting in verse 15 and going to the end of the chapter we have a divinely inspired interpretation of the vision which gives us some help and some more details in understanding this prophecy. More →

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Your Kingdom Come

DANIEL 7:9-14

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Last week, we saw that Daniel had a vision of four beasts arising from the Great Sea. We saw that these four beasts represented kings and their empires – Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. As I said last time, these temporary beastly kingdoms of man serve as a backdrop for the coming of the eternal kingdom of heaven. God is giving Daniel a picture of future history and its consummation.

Daniel was God’s prophet in a time of Israel’s captivity. God had set apart Israel from the other nations to be His special people. God made a covenant with them to bless them with His loving kindness as they observed His commandments. They were to inherit the land and reign in a kingdom.

But because of their continued sin and the breaking of God’s covenant, they had been taken captive to Babylon. Their land was in a shambles. Their temple was destroyed. Their walls of their city were broken down. They were really almost a nonexistent nation.

And the question naturally comes to their mind, “Has God forsaken us?” Have God’s promises failed? From the human perspective, I know that it looked to them as though God had set them aside and was through with them.

But God was not through with His people, Israel. As we will see when we get to chapter 9, there had to be a 70-year purging. There would have to be some time of restoring and rebuilding.

But here God is giving them a message in the midst of their deepest hour of trial that He had not permanently set them aside. And so He gives this vision through Daniel that there is yet a glorious and marvelous future for them. More →

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Daniel’s Vision of the Beasts

Daniel 7:1-8

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Last week we began to study Daniel 7 and his vision of the four beasts. I gave an outline of the chapter, gave some principles by which we should interpret the vision, and summarized the message of the vision.

I summarized the message of this prophecy this way:

Daniel 7 teaches us that the course of humanity is determined in the throne room of God Almighty. Before the kingdom of God is established on the earth, four earthly kingdoms will rise and fall. These kingdoms go from bad to worse. Arrogant, boastful, and even blasphemous kings will reign over the nations, opposing God and oppressing His saints. All of this is by divine design. When the sin and oppression of evil men reaches a predetermined point, God will remove them and establish His promised eternal kingdom. Then the saints will receive the kingdom which will never end.

We are now ready look into the details of the vision and what they mean. First of all, in verses 1-8 we see the vision of the four beasts and the significance of this picture is the apparent power and the evident depravity of the world empires. Daniel sees a panoramic vision of world empires but it serves merely as the backdrop of the inauguration of the reign of the Son of Man in the kingdom of heaven. The central section of this passage, of the chapter, and of the book of Daniel itself is verses 9-14 where we see the coronation of the Son of Man as king and His heavenly kingdom. More →

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Introduction to Daniel 7

Daniel 7

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As we come to Daniel 7 we have come to the second major section in the book of Daniel. Remember that chapters 1-6 were historical. They happen in chronological order and tell us of some major events during the lifetime of Daniel. They take place during the time of the Babylonian exile when the Jewish nation has been destroyed and many of its people were forcefully carried away to captivity in Babylon. Daniel himself was one of those Jewish exiles.

The events in chapters 1-6 take place during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, kings of Babylon, and during the time of Darius and Cyrus, kings of the Medo-Persian Empire. In those chapters we saw that the theme of Daniel is the sovereign rule of God. God controls history. The kingdoms of this world are in the hand of God and He does with them as He wills for His purposes. As King Nebuchadnezzar learned: “the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses,” (Dan. 4:25);  “For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, “What have You done?”” (Dan. 4:34b-35).

So we saw God in control in promoting faithful Daniel and his friends in chapter 1. We saw God sovereign over the kingdoms of the world in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue in chapter 2. We saw God powerfully rescue the three Hebrews from the fiery furnace in chapter 3. In chapter 4 Nebuchadnezzar testifies of God’s sovereignty after God humbles him and restores him. In chapter 5 the handwriting on the wall showed Belshazzar God’s sovereign power to judge the kingdoms of men. And in chapter 6 we saw the saving power of God when Daniel was miraculously delivered from the lion’s den during the reign of Darius the Mede.

Now as we come to the second half of the book of Daniel we will see the same theme, God is sovereign over all. But now, that lesson is given in a different form. The book changes from history to prophecy. In chapters 7-12 we have a series of dreams or visions that Daniel receives from God during the last 20 years of his life. These visions center around the nations and empires of the world, especially as they relate to God’s plan for Israel. The vision of Daniel in chapter 7 ties these two halves of the book of Daniel together. It is both a summary of what has been revealed before, especially in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 2, and also the outline of future world history with which the last half of Daniel is primarily concerned. Chapter 7 reveals in broad terms what the future holds from the time of Daniel to the end of time. More →

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