Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Nov 01, 2020

How’d we get here?

How’d we get here?

Passage: Daniel

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Of Kings and Kingdoms - Daniel

Keywords: test, favor, gave

How did we get here? It is the question in the minds if not in the lips of many in this season of national unrest. Even if we knew how it came to this, is there any way out of it? The question is timely--and also ancient. Daniel 9 offers some potential parallels as well as some real hope.

 Order of Worship

OPENING PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer
CALL TO WORSHIP: I Chronicles 16:28-31
NT READING: Romans 12:3,9-10,14-16,17-18,21
MESSAGE TITLE: How’d we get here?
CENTRAL TEXT: Daniel 9
RESPONSE: Nehemiah 1:3-11
BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 13:11

Readings & Scripture

OPENING PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

For Thine is the Kingdom
and the power and the glory
forever and ever Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP: I Chronicles 16:28-31
LEADER: 28 Ascribe to the Lord, O clans of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
29 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;

ALL: 31 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!”

NT READING: Romans 12:3,9-10,14-16,17-18,21
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

CENTRAL TEXT: Daniel 9

Dan. 9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— 2 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, seventy years.

Dan. 9:3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. 4 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, 5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. 6 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. 7 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, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. 8 To us, O LORD, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him 10 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. 11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and 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. 12 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. 13 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. 14 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. 15 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.

Dan. 9:16 “O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us. 17 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. 18 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. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

Dan. 9:20 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, 21 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. 22 He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, “O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. 23 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.

Dan. 9:24 “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 prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 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 moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the 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. 27 And he 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.”

RESPONSE: Nehemiah 1:3-11
. . .they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”

Neh. 1:4 As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 And I said, “O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. 8 Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, 9 but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ 10 They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. 11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy

BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 13:11
LEADER: 11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • 2 Chronicles 36:20-21
  • Nehemiah 1:4-9
  • Isaiah 6:1-9
  • Isaiah 30:15
  • Jeremiah 25:11-14
  • Jeremiah 29:10-14
  • Ezekiel 36:22-32
  • 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

ILLUSTRATIONS:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Everyone these days is a political pundit. Why not you, too? If you had to offer explanations as to what accounts for our current set of crises, what would you say? What ideas or assumptions has a nation adopted that explains this current duress?
  2. What mainly drives Daniel to pray? What does his prayer reveal about what he believes? What is remarkable about how Daniel sees himself as it pertains to what he prays?
  3. How does one’s culture--one’s nation--have the power to shape the beliefs, desires, and priorities of any person within it? How might then reinforce, or at least broaden, the inclinations to those beliefs, desires, and priorities?
  4. How does that suggest what is required for a nation to see those beliefs, desires, and priorities change?
    Imagine having just prayed what Daniel prayed, and then hearing this word of regard from one like an angel. How might you have responded?
  5. The last verses speaking of a vision are hard to interpret. Even if it takes study to know what Daniel might’ve meant by the various figures mentioned, what’s the basic gist? To what does its material refer?
  6. What might that vision have meant to communicate to an exiled Judah? What effect would it likely have in them?
  7. If we sense a hint of what would come to reality in Jesus, both at his first advent and in the culmination of his second, how would that idea allow you both to rest in some way, but also to be catalyzed to a new kind of living?

QUOTES:

  • How do you tell a scribe from a prophet….? The prophets love the people they chastise…. - Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
  • Temptation comes clothed in many forms. May God expose them to me and deliver me from them! - Herman Bavinck
  • Is it not, then, the duty of the Church to preach national repentance? I think it is. But the office — like many others — can be profitably discharged only by those who discharge it with reluctance. We know that a man may have to ‘hate’ his mother for the Lord’s sake. The sight of a Christian rebuking his mother, though tragic, may be edifying; but only if we are quite sure that he has been a good son and that, in his rebuke, spiritual zeal is triumphing, not without agony, over strong natural affection. The moment there is reason to suspect that he enjoys rebuking her — that he believes himself to be rising above the natural level while he is still, in reality, groveling before it in the unnatural — the spectacle becomes merely disgusting. - C.S. Lewis
  • . . .Christians in the latter decades of the twentieth century focused on politics as the best way to enact cultural change, dedicating much time, energy, and money toward that end. It’s not clear, however, that cultural change works the way those Christians assumed it did. Too often, they prioritized politics to the neglect of other formative cultural institutions and the callings of everyday Christians to engage in those institutions. - Kristen Deede Johnson, Uncommon Ground
  • Those who invest all of their spiritual energies in politics will reap the whirlwind. The evidence is all around us — the paroxysms of inchoate, infantile rage suffered by those who have turned fallible politicians into saviors and devils, godlike avatars of Good and Evil. - Camille Paglia
  • We have more to fear from those who let their politics determine their faith practices and who turn their religious communities into political armies. We have more to fear from people who look to politics as a substitute for faith. - David Brooks
  • “. . .nine rings were gifted to the race of Men — who above all else, desire power.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
  • Words are the physicians of a mind diseased. - Aeschylus
  • God accepts no one except the abandoned, makes no one healthy except the sick, gives no one sight except the blind, brings no one to life except the dead, and makes no one holy except sinners. - Martin Luther
  • And grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we also can forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves. - Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS / TALKS: