Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the series "Minority Report" teaching from the Old Testament book of Daniel to illustrate how God's character is just both in Daniel's time and in the present day.

Message Transcript

Well, you don't need to be around church for very long to sooner or later hear somebody tell a story about persecution of the church, especially in other parts of the world. Often, there is a sense in which people will say, in another part of the world there's incredible persecution of Christians. I heard one story recently about a group of Christians who were gathered to worship, and some people came in to disrupt their worship and they literally had to make a choice of saying, do I continue in worship in this moment or do I give ground to these people who are trying to disrupt? And there was peril involved for them. Sometimes it's hard to imagine in the United States because where we live in the time in which we live, it doesn't seem very common. 

And although there are some who would say religious persecution in the United States is on the rise, and there is a lot of signs that religious persecution is coming more and more, there are others who would say, if you want to talk about religious persecution, certainly don't talk about it if you're an American because you have no reason to ever talk about what it has been like. And I can see both sides of that. But one thing seems clear to me, and that is that there is certainly a dialogue in our country today to silence the voice of people of faith. 

Let me just give you one example. This is an article that appeared in the USA today, and it was in response to the events that took place at the Capitol last month. Here's what Rachel Mikva wrote and what she said. "One of the leaders in this assault on the Capitol cried out, Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. It was a vivid demonstration of the problem of Christian nationalism, and the danger that this poses to our country. An estimated 20% of American adults, most of them white, believe that the United States should be an expressly Christian country with biblical teachings guiding every aspect of civic life. Furious and frightened about losing the cultural war battles over abortion rights, LGBTQ equality and gender norms, Christian nationalists have declared a holy war drawing on apocalyptic language from the book of revelation about the cosmic battle between good and evil. At the Capitol riot, insurrectionists carried large wooden crosses, Bibles and Jesus flags. Some organizers called the attack, the Jericho March." 

What caught my attention after I saw this article was, I heard a commentator talk about a Bill Maher episode. He does real time I think on HBO, I don't have an HBO subscription, so I Googled it later, saw it, but I saw somebody talk about it. And Bill Maher had a segment in which he went after this idea of Christian nationalism. Now, to be sure, Christian nationalism is an issue. Christian nationalism says that United States and Christianity are one in the same. And that therefore all that we do as a nation should be blessed by God. But what Bill Maher did, who by the way, is a cultural Jew, not a person of faith and would be a proud agnostic atheist in the way that he describes himself, what he did is he said, basically, if you are a Christian and you have any affinity for our country, you are a Christian nationalist. And what he was quickly doing was moving from there's this group, this fringe group, that you should maybe be concerned about to anybody who believes the Bible is one in the same. Okay? 

And the reason that this caught my attention is because the way this article was written and the way he talked about it, what was being said was, if you believe anything about the Bible and you stand for the National Anthem or you pledge allegiance to the flag, then you're a danger to our society because you're a Christian nationalist. And notice how the words were phrased. Mostly white, another word you're also probably a white supremacist, and you are opposed to abortion rights. So, you're against women's rights. You're opposed to LGBTQ rights. In other words, you hate gay people and therefore you're a danger to our society. 

Now, if you have been around Orchard Hill, hopefully that strikes you a little bit, because those are things that you don't need to associate with because if you are biblical and hopefully if this is your expression of faith, what you've come to say is that God loves people, all people. And we love people. We love all people. We may take a stand on some issues, but it doesn't mean that we're anti-groups of people. But what's being done is, it's saying that if you have any biblical view, then you're a Christian nationalist, you're a danger. You should be excluded from public debate. Now you may say, okay, what does this have to do with Daniel? I'm glad you asked. 

We've been in this series that we've called Minority Report. And we've been tracking the movements of the people who in Daniel's book had gone into exile. By the way, a lot of the old Testament is either prophesying exile or prophesying after exile or around exile. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are when they come out of exile. And then you get this whole backend of the Old Testament that is either prophecies of, or experiences of exile. So, Daniel and his friends were exiled, taken from their home Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire where they spend 70 years. And were now into the third reign of this. 

The first four chapters were Nebuchadnezzar, and we were working through this canonically, meaning in order. And then chapter five was the reign of Belshazzar, still an exile. And what we did there is, instead of taking the chapters one through six and then stopping, which a lot of people do, are one through six and then the scary visions at the end, we took chapter seven and eight and tied them to chapter five because chronologically that's when they took place. And today we're going to look at chapter six and chapter nine together because chronologically these fit together. And we know this because in verse one of chapter nine and verse one of chapter six, it says in the year that Darius basically came to power. So now Darius, the Mede has come to power and Daniel is at the end of this time of exile. And one of the things that we know is that if you are a person of faith, even if you live in a culture that's friendly to faith and your values, your perception will at times be at odds with your culture. 

This is just true historically, currently, it will be true in the future. Romans 12 talks about this in verse two, where it says, don't be molded into the values of your culture. In other words, your values will be at odds with the culture in which you live. But what we also know is that God's vision for his people living as a minority in a culture is not to be antagonistic to the culture, not to be at odds with the culture, but to be for the culture. 

If you were here at the beginning of the series, we talked about this in Jeremiah 29, where God gives a vision to the people going into exile. Again, remember a lot of the old Testament is about this period. And the vision was that God said, I want you when you're in an exile to be for the people, for the culture, give yourself to the culture. In other words, God's vision for his people is not to be scared and antagonistic to the culture, but to be for the culture. But to understand that there will be times where your values will still clash with the values of the culture. And there will be times to live in resistance and what we get in Daniel is we get a few pictures of this resistance. 

In Daniel 6 it's when Daniel was conscribed to the lion's den. And the reason he was conscribed to the lion's den is because he prayed to the God of heaven rather than to the King. In Daniel 3, we get resistance where the King said, you have to bow down to the statue. And if you don't bow down, I'm going to throw you in the fiery furnace. In Daniel 1, you get a different kind of resistance. So, in Daniel 6, it was saying, I'm going to do what I've always done without fanfare. In Daniel 3 it was, I'm going to stand, and in Daniel 1 is we're going to work this out. 

Now, here's just the simple equation when you look at this in Daniel 6. Daniel was told not to pray to the God of heaven, and he said, no, I'm not going to give in to that. And the question maybe in our day is what if all of a sudden, we were told it's illegal to gather with other Christians to worship? Would you out of conviction say I'm still going to worship because I believe it's what the Bible tells me to do, that's been my custom, and I'm going to keep doing it. Or would you out of convenience say, no I'm done. 

And probably more likely isn't that it'll be illegal, but that it will be frowned upon to such an extent because people will say, if you go to a church, you must be one of those Christian nationalists. One of those people who is a white supremacist and hates gay people, therefore you're a societal menace rather than somebody who says, I simply am a worshiper of God. 

And so, there is a sense in which we have this crisis that's coming. And so, what we're going to do today, and I want you to just buckle in, is we're going to cover a lot of territory very fast, but if you hang with it, I think you'll find a benefit here. We're going to look at chapter nine. There's a prayer in verses 1-19, a confession. We're going to look at that. Then we're going to look at this prophecy in Daniel 9: 20-27, which is one of the most confusing prophecies in some ways and certainly one of the most contentious in the Bible. And I'm going to clear it all up for you in about five minutes when we get there, that is a joke. And then we'll come back to the crisis in Daniel 6 that Daniel was facing. And what I think we'll see is that it was the vision, the prayer, that gave him the strength to be part of the resistance when his moment came. 

So, here's what we'll do. We'll start with this prayer. And here's what we get, Daniel chapter 9. It says this, "In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent) who has made ruler of Babylon." Again, this ties it to Daniel 6. We don't know exactly what came first. If it was this vision or the lion's den but my sense is that this vision came first maybe even it was what Daniel was praying as he was going to the lion's den. And then we get this, "In the first year of his reign, verse 2, I Daniel understood from the scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet that the desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years." 

So, Daniel's having a quiet time reading Jeremiah, and all of a sudden, he sees and understands the prophecy that says in 70 years there'll be an exile. Now, probably part of what was going through his mind is the book of Exodus talked about keeping the Sabbath and that if you didn't keep the Sabbath, that there would be a consequence. And the 70 years equated to the number of years the Israelites had not kept the Sabbath. And so, he's got to be sitting here thinking, okay, we're coming to the end. This is great. By the way, Daniel at this point is probably in his mid-80's. He was 15 when he went into exile and we're almost done with the 70 years, okay? That's how this works. And here's what he does. Verse 3, "So I turned to the Lord God, I pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sack cloth and in ashes" Signs of repentance. 

So, he does just say, well, since God decreed it, it must be, but he prayed and said, I'm going to repent. "I prayed to the Lord, my God and confessed Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments. We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked, and we have rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and laws and have not listened to your servants the prophets who, spoke in your name to our Kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land." 

And so, Jeremiah confesses sin. Now, if you've been tracking the book of Daniel up until now, you would at least have a moment of saying really, you've been the good guy through this story why do you need to confess sin at this point? And you know just in our day that there are a couple of different ways we can use, we. Sometimes you can use we to mean you. And sometimes you use we to mean me. Well, let me give you an example. In my house, my wife does about 99% of the grocery shopping. So, if I say, hey, next time we go to the store, we should get... I don't mean me. I mean you, okay? And she has a whole host of we's that mean you, me, my husband, you do this. I told her I wouldn't use them because I didn't ask her permission today. 

But she has just as many we's that mean you. Sometimes when people look at this prayer, they say, we should get together and pray this. And what they mean is I'm righteous, you're wicked, you should pray it because you need to repent. We need to repent. You need to repent. But what Daniel does here is not, you need to repent because he wasn't the one who had been in the wrong in that sense. But he says, we meaning me. And I believe what we're seeing here is that he had such a vision of the righteousness of God that he was able to include himself in those who needed to repent. 

In fact, here's where we see this in verse seven, here's what it says. It says, "Lord, you are righteous." Now this isn't a word we use all the time. In this book, we've moved from Hebrew to Aramaic back to Hebrew and here in chapter nine, the Hebrew word is Tzedakah for righteousness. The verb is Tzadik, and it's not an English word we use a lot, but in the Hebrew world, that word meant to be relationally right. To treat people according to all that is right and good. To be in a right relationship with somebody. 

So, he says, "Lord, you are righteous." You're relationally right. "but this day we are covered with shame, the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, and all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you." So, what does he do? He says, God, you are righteous to have sent us into exile. And this word is used three more times in this passage. It's used in verse 7, which we just read, it's used in verse 14, "The Lord did not hesitate to bring disaster on us for the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does." So again, he's saying, God, you're just, you're righteous. You were just to bring us into exile. 

Verse 16, "The Lord, in keeping with your righteous acts, turn away from anger and wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill." So, in keeping with your righteous acts, turn away from our sin. Then verse 18, it says it this way, "Give ear, our God, and hear and open our eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your name. We do not make requests because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy." And what I believe is happening here is Daniel is praying and he's saying, God, I'm seeing your justice. And because I'm seeing your justice, I'm humbled, and my we, is me, and I'm looking in the mirror and saying, I have done wrong. You are just in letting us go to exile and notice what he wasn't at this point. He wasn't angry at his culture. He wasn't bitter at his captors. He wasn't saying, oh, those Babylonians and what they did to us. And then it's the Medes today. And they're all bad. 

He instead was saying, we, I need to repent because he had seen the justice of God. And so, he wasn't comparing evil between him and somebody else. What he was doing was saying before a Holy God, I am in need of repentance. And he wasn't upset with his fellow Israelites either for their sins and getting them into the captivity. Meaning he wasn't self-righteous and proud and saying, I'm good. They're bad. And that's why we're here. He was instead owning it. I think it was Fleming Rutledge who once said, if you think that you're among the righteous, you can be guaranteed that you're among the arrogant. 

Meaning as soon as you say I'm right in the people I'm with, we're all right, we think correctly, we're acting correctly, we're the good ones, that you're actually among the arrogant. And in our day and age, that cuts every direction people saying, we haven't figured out, we're right. Daniel was willing to say, I'm not right. And I bend my knee because God, you alone are right. And in saying, it's not our righteousness, but it's your great mercy. I believe what he was doing was he was looking ahead to the cross and saying, it's your righteousness that actually makes it so that I don't face the consequences of my sin. In the old Testament, there was the sacrifice system where you would offer animals as sacrifice and this always prefigured or pictured the work of Jesus on the cross. That Jesus goes to the cross so that his righteousness is satisfied of a penalty being paid for sin. And when you come to Jesus, then it is righteous for him to forgive and to restore. 

In other words, what he was doing in this prayer was saying, I don't deserve anything, but because of Jesus, you've given me everything. And as a result, he wasn't filled with self-pity. You see, he had a sense here of the real justice of God. So that's the prayer, the confession about the justice of God. Here's the prophecy. And this is verse 20 through 27. And here's what we read. It says, "While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people, Israel and making requests to the Lord my God for his holy hill, while I was still in prayer Gabriel, a man I had seen earlier in vision came to me and swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice." It would have been about 3:00 in the afternoon when they did this. 

"He instructed me and said, Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding" since I've come so that you understand not so that you'll be confused because of what I'm about to say, "As soon as you begin to pray, a word when out, which I have come to tell you for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end, to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place." 

Now, those statements are statements that are future-oriented. And what they're doing is they are talking about; I believe a time when Jesus will come. Some of those statements appear to be fulfilled in Jesus work on the cross. Some of them appear to be fulfilled when Jesus comes to rebuild and restore all things. We won't take the time to track through all of it. But that's what it appears is being prophesied. So, Daniel is sitting here saying 70 years, the captivity is done. The angel appears and says 70 sevens is actually what I'm decreeing to you. 

Now seven could be weeks. Sometimes it's translated that way. That's why some versions say 70 weeks. Most scholars believe that the sevens here represents seven segments of year. So, in other words 70 times seven years is what this is referring to. Now, the ESV study Bible gives us a quick summary which if you haven't discovered that as a resource, it's a great resource. And it talks about three ways that this is historically understood. One is what I'm just going to call symbolic. And the symbolic understanding of this is by saying 70 sevens just refers to an indefinite period of time. And all that's happening here is that the author of the vision is saying the year 70 years isn't done, but it will be fulfilled someday. 

To back this up, some people would say, where else in the Bible have you heard the phrase 70 times seven before? Well, if you know your Bible, Jesus used it to talk about forgiveness. And he said, you should forgive 70 times seven. And most people then would say, well, what did Jesus mean? Did he mean that you forgive 490 times and that on the 491st time you no longer have to forgive like you keep a tally and say, "Oh, that's 491? I'm done." No. Most people would say Jesus used it to mean completion, fullness, all time. And so, the symbolic view would be to say, the 70 sevens is symbolic. And it's just speaking of a future time. 

Now the challenge with this view is that some of the specificity, both in this prophecy and in some of the other new Testament prophecies around this, seem to have more specificity than that. Another view is that this has already been fulfilled in a guy called Antiochus. And Antiochus is a figure that we'll talk about a little next week because he's prophesied in Daniel 11. And so, some people would say the 70 sevens refers to a coming of this person who's going to make a desolation. This is chapter 9: 26-27. What some scriptures have called the abomination of desolation. He's going to desecrate the temple. And because he did this in the 100 BC era, this is what this is referring to. 

Now the problem with this is it doesn't appear to take into account the prophecies about Jesus. And it doesn't appear to even hit the symbolic significance of the years. The other view is to take this as a fairly literal view, which is just to say that this is speaking about 490 years. So, let's just take a moment and think about this. So, what we're told is that these six things are going to happen, verse 24. And then we're told about when it happens, verse 25, "Know and understand this, that from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed one, the ruler comes, there'll be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens." So, 69 sevens. Okay. Anybody lost yet? I'm through my five minutes by the way already, but we'll get there. 

So, 69 sevens. So, 69 times seven equals 483 years, okay? That's when the anointed one, it says will be killed, okay? So, at this point, you either have to say this is symbolic, or this is literal most likely, if you want to understand and apply this. And it tells us when the 69 sevens begins or the 70 sevens begins, it says when the decree goes out to rebuild Jerusalem. Now here's one of the challenges. There are four decrees in the Bible about when to rebuild Jerusalem, one in 538, one in 519, one in 457 and one in 445 and three different rulers, Cyrus Darius, one of them was here and Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes is twice. 

If you take the last one, the one of Artaxerxes, and this is Nehemiah 2, and assume that that's what this is referring to, it happened in 445 BC. And if we want to get really specific, most commentators will say that we can even trace that more. It's March 14th. And I'm sure you can't read that. Sorry about that. March 14, 445 BC is when this started. So, what happens when you're trying to understand this literally then is you have to say, okay, so if I go 483 years into the future, what do I land at, okay? 

Now one of the challenges is the calendar was different. Instead of 365 days, they used a lunar calendar in Babylonia and so most commentators would say it's 360 days. So, 483 times 360, all right anybody? Anybody? 173,880. And no, I did not do that in my head. I had that written down and memorized. That's how many days go into 69 sevens, 483 years prophetic years. Now you go from the 14th of March, 445 BC. And where you land is the 6th of April 32 AD, which many people would say is the week that Jesus was crucified. That should blow you away. That there's that much specificity to this potentially. 

Now again, some people get different years. Some people would say it's 33 AD because they don't take the year between the BC and AD into account and there's different things people come to, but this is amazing. This is Daniel getting a clear prophecy about the coming of the Messiah to put an end to all things. And we with our perspective can look back and say, we can do math to get right to the week in which Jesus was crucified here. Amazing. Now, why is this here and a couple other questions? 

First, what about the seventh week? Why is there a break here? Well, most commentators who take this approach, this literal approach would say the final seven years speaks of a great tribulation. And you can see that in this text and in other places, especially as it talks about the abomination of desolation. And the way that some people will take this, is they'll say, the 69 weeks happen and then there's this gap, unspecified gap, unknown why it's there. And then the 70th week, the last seven years will start and that's the beginning of the great tribulation the scripture talks about. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this next week. So that's a tease when we come back unless you're already bored in which case you're going to say, I'll come back for the next series in March. We understand. 

But what happens here is you have to have a 62-week gap to get this or if you take this literal view, all of a sudden you go symbolic. So, you're like literal, literal, literal, now it's symbolic. I don't think the point is ultimately here that Daniel was sitting around going, I don't know which this is. Remember he was told; he has given you to understand. In other words, I don't think he was facing the lion's den going, is this pre-millennial or is this post-millennial or amillennial or pre... I don't think that's what he was doing. 

I don't think he had a little chart, and he was getting it all out. And by the way, that's bad teaching to mention words and not define them. If you don't know what those mean, don't worry about it. If you do. I don't think Daniel was sitting here going, I am this, I have this view of end times. I think he was sitting here saying, oh, my goodness, there is going to be sin, that is going to continue. And God's going to keep dealing with it and keep dealing with it and keep dealing with it until he ultimately deals with it and makes everything right. In other words, the world that we live in is messed up. It'll keep being messed up, but my justice will be seen. 

So, he is praying about the justice of God. Now he gets a prophecy about the justice of God. And by the way, I do believe that there's a tribulation that's future because Jesus, in Matthew 24, Mark 13 talked about an abomination of desolation that was still future. And again, we'll talk a little more about that next week. 

So now let's go back to this crisis. So, Daniel 6, gives us this crisis that Daniel was in. Again, same timeframe. And here's what we see is that as his faith was challenged, that because he had a sense that God was just, he was able to have a life that was both for his culture. He was one of the people in charge that the King, the new King, Darius, wanted to remain in power, and yet he faced a crisis where people were saying, we can get him because of his faith. I love this little phrase in here where it says, "We know that we could get them neither because he was corrupt nor negligence, but it had to be according to his faith." 

And so, what they do at this moment is the people who conspired against him said, if you pray to the King, because they knew he went and prayed every day, then he's got to be thrown to the lion's den. Now, I don't know you've ever read this story. When I read this story as a kid, and even now, there's a piece of me that says, well, this is easy, just close your door. He opened his door intentionally and prayed. And there's a piece of me that says, why don't you just close your door? And I believe the reason he didn't close his door is not because he wanted the experience of going to the lion's den. But because he had such a developed view of the justice of God that he says, I would rather choose faithfulness to God. And in this moment, it feels like faithfulness to God rather than expedience for me. 

You see, we live in a majority culture where what we do is, we say, we want expedience. We want to take care of ourselves. We want to survive. That's our highest end. But when we've been revolutionized by the justice of God, what happens is we start to say, there's something bigger at stake. I can live in light of this current crisis, this current moment in light of what I know is unseen, because I know who God is, and I know where he's taking history. And when that's true, then whether my crisis is personal or whether it's a corporate crisis, what will happen is I'll be able to say, I would prioritize faithfulness to God over my own expedience in life. This is why I believe he kept his door open. 

Now, I don't know what crisis you're facing today if you're facing a crisis. I don't know what crisis you'll face in the future. But what I know is that if you don't have a developed sense of God's righteousness, both now and in the future, that you will be tempted to say right now, what matters is that I get out of this situation unscathed. And sometimes it's because we value the wrong things. Let me just speak maybe to the broader context. I believe that one of the things that's happening in our culture, American culture today, is that religious liberties, freedoms are being encroached upon in greater and greater ways in the days that we're living in. And I can see more of it coming. Now, hear me. I'm a big fan of religious freedom, okay? I like it. I'm for it. Okay. I think we should work to keep it. 

The other thing that I think is possible, and I don't know this obviously, but there's some tremors in terms of our economy and maybe some of the prosperity that we've enjoyed as a nation may not be the same in the years moving forward. Again, I'm a fan of prosperity, okay? I like it. I prefer it to non-prosperity. But let me ask you a question, where in the world today is the church thriving and where is it struggling? You know where it's thriving? China and Africa. What's true in China today? There's religious persecution. Churches are being shut down and there's incredible economic disparity. There's incredible wealth, but there's still incredible poverty. 

In Africa maybe it's not governmental oppression, but there's rogue groups that are against the church and people feel threatened like if I go to church, it's somehow going to be difficult for me. And yet churches are thriving. Why are they dying? Western Europe and the United States, why? You see, Western Europe, the United States, there's religious freedom. There's prosperity. People have said, you know what, church, I can take it or leave it. God, I can take it or leave it if God helps me. Great. If not, my ultimate end is my experience. My survival not faithfulness to God because we've so prioritized this world that we've said, this world is what matters rather than the world that we can't see. 

Now, again, don't get me wrong. I'm for religious freedom for prosperity. I want those things. But what I'm saying is maybe just maybe sometimes God works even more fully and more greatly in a way that we see at least in situations that we would never choose. And maybe when crisis comes either corporately or individually, it's God's way to say, I'm preparing you for something greater. I'm giving you a chance to give testimony to my faithfulness, my justice, my righteousness, in a way that's greater than you can see. And here's how I believe this comes about. Notice how Daniel had this courage. What was he doing? He was praying. He was reading his scripture and he was worshiping. 

You see, a crisis isn't when we forge our response, it reveals what's already there. The reason Daniel was able to resist in the moment of trial, the reason he was able to contribute to a society over a number of years with wickedness all around him was because he was able to say, I believe in the justice of God, that I have cultivated such an internal view of day after day after day of leaning into the scriptures. 

And then what happens is he goes to the lion's den and if you know the story, the lions don't touch him. And the King runs to the place in the morning and he hears Daniel and Daniel comes back out and then the King says, and now we're going to glorify your God. You see, it was Daniel's faithfulness that led to greater glory to God. Again, I don't know what your crisis is, what it will be. I don't know what mine will be. But what I'm certain of is that if you have come to a point of saying, I know the God who is just, and I believe in his future that you will be better prepared for whatever comes. 

Now, I'm guessing that there are some of us who are gathered here, maybe online, maybe on TV next week, who are listening and what you're going to do is you're going to say, part of the reason, I'm not sure that I want to be a person of faith is because I want my life to work out. And I don't want any of this to happen to me. I don't want any crisis. I don't want to be at odds. I don't want people to come after me because of my faith. And I understand that, but don't miss this prophecy. What does it foretell? That God will deal with unrighteousness, and that the only place of safety is under the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He's the one who will deal with sin, who will put an end to sinfulness. And our choice is simple. Either we choose to say, I'm going to go it alone and take my chances, or I will run to the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ and cast all of my hope for my future on that. 

You see, if you are here and you're saying, I don't want any part of this because I don't want to be at odds with anything. I don't want a crisis. You're going to have a crisis. That's what this text is teaching. And the crisis will either be in the prophecy of how God will come against people who are set against him, or it will be in this life with the security of saying, God has promised my future, secured my future. 

The choice is which side do you want to be on? I don't know about you, but I'd much rather take my chances on God than on me. And you can do that by trusting Jesus Christ as your savior and saying, I know that I need what you've done to give me an out from my sin. And if you've done that, then you can say, I know that as I lean into the justice and the righteousness of God, that I can say it is well with my soul, whatever else is going on in this world, whatever else I'm facing, I can say, I know that there's peace. 

Father thank you that the challenges faced generations ago can instruct us today. And God, I pray for me and for each person here that you would let our concept of your justice, your righteousness, point us to a life that's faithful rather than one that's expedient. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.