11.7.21 Daniel 12:1–3
1 Then at that time, Michael, the great prince who stands over your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress that has not happened from the first time that there was a nation until that time. At that time your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. 2 Many who are sleeping in the dusty ground will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame, to everlasting contempt. 3 Those who have insight will shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who bring many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever.
Guard Us Waking Oh, Lord, and Guard Us Sleeping
Daniel talks about many who are sleeping in today’s text. You would think going to sleep would be something most would look forward to. Yet going to sleep can sometimes be a scary thing for some.
If you know you aren’t going to sleep well, or if you tend to have nightmares, you might not like going to bed at night.
If you live in a rough neighborhood, you might fear that your house will get broken into.
Sometimes children are afraid of the dark. One of the night time prayers includes the phrase, “If I should die before I sleep.” It’s kind of a scary prayer for a child to pray, to think about dying in your sleep and never waking up.
Anesthesiologists are very cognizant of the fact that people don’t always wake up from the sleep that they are put under.
So yes, sleep can be a scary thing. God compares death to sleep. This too can be scary, even with the euphemism. We are going someplace we’ve never been before, to an unknown world. We weren’t created to die. The body was not meant to be separated from the soul. It is usually a painful thing to die, as your body parts break down and stop working. Most of us still want to stay awake in this world. Yet we shouldn’t be terrified of sleep when we think of where we are going, not when God says we get to sleep with Jesus. This is what Daniel wants to focus us on today, especially on the Final Day, on Judgment Day, when we get to wake up.
Judgment Day is kind of a scary looking thing in some senses. Jesus will come with angels. He talks about having a winnowing fork in His hand. He talks about bringing fire on the earth. Some will cry to the mountains to fall on them. Some people have their bodies burned and spread in the ocean in hope that their bodies will not be raised from the dead. Their version of “heaven” is a simple lack of existence in death.
Back in Paul’s day some people were afraid that they had somehow missed Judgment Day, but he assured them that nobody would sleep through it. Nobody will fail to wake up. Daniel says, Many who are sleeping in the dusty ground will awake. We know from other Scriptures that “many” is actually ALL. Paul wrote HOW we will be woken in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” The same voice that raised Lazarus from the grave will wake up the world.
The question is, what will you wake up to find? A dream come true, or a nightmare scenario? Many who are sleeping in the dusty ground will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame, to everlasting contempt. The first option is the Christian dream come true, that you wake to everlasting life. This is what God wants and what Jesus died for, life! God is a God of life! He loves life! We have this life inside of us now, when we live with the knowledge that God loves us and died for us. Even as Jesus was dying, He was doing it to conquer death and bring life! He was speaking life and hope into the thief on the cross. In heaven we get to live with Jesus forever, where your body has no sign of death, and there is no fear of it in any way. How FREELY you could live and truly ENJOY food and drink when there were no fears of drinking too much or feeling like a pig afterwards! How wonderful it would be to REJOICE without any fear of hitting a bad note or embarrassing yourself. NO shame or worry that someone is judging you! No jealousy over your happiness. Only life, and an ETERNITY of it!
The only other alternative is the nightmare. You rise to everlasting shame and contempt. What a terrifying thought! Imagine God bringing up all of your sins in your life, and everybody publicly hearing everything you’ve done. The thoughts, the words, the actions, all being drudged up and exposed to the world. Then it mentions “contempt,” which can also be translated as “abhorrence.” If you think this world is full of contempt, just think of what hell would be. Everybody hates everyone and everything. And what is worse? God ends up abhorring you too! What a nightmare to wake into!
Oh, and here’s another thing. If heaven is eternal, so is hell. There is no going back. That’s it. One life to live. One death to die, which then leads to either life or to damnation. One judgment will be made, with NO appeals. How will you wake up? More importantly, how can you be saved?
Look and see what Daniel says! At that time your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Throughout the Old Testament records were constantly written down and dug out at different times. When the temple was being rebuilt, a searching of the archives found the original order of Cyrus which authorized it’s building, which then enabled the building to keep being built. (Ezra 6) It was a late night reading of records that led to the praise of Mordecai and the humiliation of the vile Haman in the book of Esther. So when Daniel made mention of names being written in a book - it was a great illustration to show that the LORD would not lose track of the Israelites – no matter where they were – even in the land of Babylon – where Daniel was. No matter where you are – even languishing in a nursing home all by yourself - as long as your name is written in God’s book – He won’t forget about you on Judgment Day.
When you go to the National Cathedral you can write your name in the guest register so that you are officially archived as having been there. But this book of life isn’t sitting somewhere on top of Mt. Ararat with a golden pen waiting for you to come sign it. It’s God’s book – only He can write in it and only He knows whose names are written in it.
How do we know if we are written in it or not? In today’s text, Daniel connects the book of life with WISDOM or INSIGHT. Those who have insight will shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who bring many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever. So the natural question is, “How do I get this insight? Daniel was given it from HEAVEN above by divine revelation! He wrote in Daniel 9:20–23, While I was still speaking, praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, I was casting my prayer for grace, concerning the holy mountain of my God, before the LORD my God, 21 while I was still speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the first vision, touched me. . . . He instructed me, “Daniel, now I have come to give you insight with understanding. . . . So pay attention to the word and understand the vision.” God revealed wisdom to Daniel, and God reveals wisdom to us in the Bible.
Jeremiah explained wisdom and insight like this in 9:23–24 when he contrasted HUMAN wisdom with DIVINE wisdom when he wrote, “This is what the LORD says. The wise man should not boast in his wisdom. The strong man should not boast in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches. 24 Instead, let those who boast boast about this: that they have understanding, and that they know ME. They know that I am the LORD, who shows mercy, justice, and righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things, declares the LORD.” So wisdom isn’t just in knowing your Bible. Wisdom is in knowing the GOD of the Bible, in knowing the LORD of MERCY and JUSTICE and RIGHTEOUSNESS. Don’t judge Him by whether you’re successful or healthy. Don’t judge Him by the floods or the famines or the wars. See Him as HE SAYS He is.
MERCY is not getting what you deserve. JUSTICE is getting what you deserve. If God was really JUST then we should all end up in hell. But if He’s going to be merciful then He’s not going to send us to hell. You’d think it would have to be ONE or the OTHER. But not when you have JESUS and the CROSS. It is here where God shows mercy to humanity by not punishing us, and instead punishing JESUS instead of us. It’s where God damns us and saves us in the person of Jesus Christ. So Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that “Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. This is the only wisdom and insight that brings us to heaven.
God imparts WISDOM and INSIGHT when He says, “Find your salvation in HIM - in the God dying on the cross! Listen to HIM! Believe in HIM!” In baptism God says, “Do you want to be bathed from your sins? Go here, to the waters of life! Get bathed in Jesus blood in baptism! Here is your salvation!” Wisdom is revealed when God says to you, “Are you afraid of my wrath? Go to this Supper. Here I will give you the very thing I used to pay for your sins. I will give you my body and blood, shed on the cross, through time and space. I will enter you. I will forgive you. I will give you my righteousness, for I have taken your sin!” Anyone else looking at this God and these rituals would see them as meaningless and empty. Our wisdom has nothing to do with intellect and scientific formulas. Our wisdom is found in simple places of water, bread, wine, and word, where Jesus is found. We have the insight of knowing that in these Means of Grace we have life and salvation. In these simple places we find the God of mercy and justice.
Jeremiah prophesied in 3:14–15 “I will take you—one from a city, two from a family—and bring you to Zion. 15 Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” Yes, this wisdom is brought to you when you come to worship and Bible study! When you are fed with the Word of God with pastors and teachers who take after God’s heart and give you JESUS in Word and sacrament. This, right here, is how God brings you wisdom and insight in Jesus. It is here that God opens your mind to who He is.
All of this wisdom is meant to open up heaven for us, so that we can come out shining on Judgment Day and not be afraid of it. Look at how Daniel envisions the beauty of heaven. Those who have insight will shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who bring many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever. Think of Moses, on the way down from Mt. Sinai. In a sinful reflection of the beauty of God, his face would shine and beam, so that he had to cover his face. Think of Moses and Elijah from the Mt. of Transfiguration, where their bodies beamed with light. When Stephen was arrested, those who saw him said his face beamed like that of an angel. (Acts 6) He wasn’t afraid of dying! This is how God says we will shine in heaven through faith in Jesus. Jesus promised in today’s Gospel, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” The smiles that cover your faces and the hope that fills your heart will be completely evident on Judgment Day. No more sad faces. No more anger. No more troubled eyebrows. No more sagging backs. No more hip or knee surgeries. No more locked doors. No more fear. How glorious it will be! I think of seeing the face of a husband or wife on their wedding day. How much more will we have that look on our faces on Judgment Day. I think of the joy and smiles that come forth from those even at funerals in the midst of tears and sorrow. What joy will be ours when all of these promises are fulfilled!
We just got done with Halloween being celebrated in America, where people love to be afraid. Popular horror movie called a Nightmare on Elm Street had a murderer stalk people’s dreams in order to terrorize and kill them in their sleep. A similar thing happened in Eye of the World where a demon like creature stalked three boys in their dreams. Sometimes it seems like this world we are living in is turning into a dystopian nightmare. It is a scary place to live. Yet God envisions a different dream for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We don’t need to fear death or the resurrection, when Jesus comes to judge, scary as that Day may be.
Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial right now for a shooting that occured in Racine during the riot over the Jacob Blake shooting. I imagine there is anxiety on both sides of the prosecution and the defense. How will the attorneys perform? What kind of evidence will be permitted? How will the judge rule? We don’t always know, even when there seems to be solid evidence, sometimes verdicts are made out of fear of what will happen in our society.
We don’t have to worry about that when it comes to the Final Day. The Judge is also our defense attorney. He is a God who keeps His Word in Christ. He promises us that the evidence has been submitted for our acquittal, through the death and resurrection of Christ. On Judgment Day our verdict is already done when Jesus was raised from the dead. Through faith in Christ, through baptism, our names are written in the book of life. Scary as the Day may be, we know what our verdict is. Not Guilty. You have God’s Word on it. Hebrews 9:28 says “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” You will wake up to see Jesus and all of the saints in heaven. So one of the final cries of the Bible is the cry eager cry of John to Jesus. Jesus says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. No fear. Just faith. Look up in eager expectation! God give you faith to look forward to that Day. Guard us waking Oh Lord, and Guard us Sleeping. Amen.
