When Outcomes Are Uncertain Series

Well, 2020 is again a year like no other. We have a terribly contentious Presidential election. And election day and night come, and the result is inconclusive. Who will be the next President of the United States? Most folks have been sitting on the edge of their chair wondering. Some are surely losing sleep over it. Who will be in charge of our country? Whose agenda will now be pursued. But the results are delayed by a close election, charges of fraud, lawsuits being filed. Now, we wonder if by inauguration day if the matter will be settled, and what this means for the United, or Disunited, States of America.

However, the truth is, in the long run, human life and human government are often chaotic and unpredictable. That’s the history of mankind. It was a history that the prophet Daniel had become familiar with in his relatively long life. One moment, his nation, Israel, had been a proud, independent nation. The next, it was defeated by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. He had been taken into captivity 500 miles away from his home in Israel, and for the next 70 years he had served the kings of Babylon and Persia. And now, in the first year of Darius the Mede, the Medes and the Persians had defeated the Babylonians, and now he was serving a new Gentile Kingdom. And he had still been wondering what would become of his own nation, his own people, their land, and the treasured temple of God that had been destroyed, left desolate in the Babylonian invasion years earlier. Now he had read in the prophet Jeremiah’s scroll--as we mentioned Jeremiah had been a contemporary of his, only he had lived out most of his life back in Jerusalem. But Daniel had read that the captivity of Israel would last 70 years. And lo and behold, 67 years had passed, so things were about to change again. And he understood that it was when his nation prayed and sought God with all their heart that they would find God, and that God would bring them back into their land. And so that’s what he had sought to do in Daniel 9, confessing the sins of his people Israel, seeking God’s forgiveness, and in prayer, seeking the welfare of both His people and their holy city, and the temple which had been built on it. And so, in a sense, he was seeking to know what would become of his people and his holy city. There had been a long delay in what would be the outcome for him as well, when an angel, the Angel Gabriel, interrupted his fervent prayers late that day.

And from Gabriel’s answer to his prayers about the outcome for his people and his city, we can learn something about how to respond to the political uncertainties of our day. When the results are delayed, be at peace, because God will still achieve His purposes. For Daniel, those purposes had to do with Israel specifically, but they also had to do with Israel’s world. And so what the angel had to say to Daniel is relevant as we experience the political and social turmoil of our own day, now some 2500 years later.

In verses 20-23, Gabriel now tells Daniel that he is highly esteemed in heaven, and as a result of his fervent prayer, confession and intercession for his people, Gabriel had now come to give him insight and understanding. He’s exhorted at the end of verse 23 to “give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.”

And so that’s exactly what I hope to do for you. To help you to give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.

Now, as we’ve read it, it is a mouthful, and a mind full. More prophetic ground is covered in these four verses than perhaps anywhere else in all of the Bible. And it begins with a declaration that God’s purposes will ultimately be achieved. No matter what happens, no matter how long the delay, and there will be a delay while men attempt to work things for their own purposes in this world, ultimately, God on High will achieve His purposes in history. So in this sense, we need to be still, to cease striving, and know that God and His purposes will be exalted upon the earth.

Verse 24: “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.”

Daniel’s prayer had been all about his people, Israel, and the holy city Jerusalem, in tandem with concern about the great temple that had once been the center of activity in that city. Both had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns against the Jews decades earlier—they lay desolate, and the people exiled in Babylon now for 67 years. And now the angel lays out God’s program for Israel and says that it will be accomplished in a period of seventy weeks.