Apocalyptic Redemption

When I was 15, I almost completely poked my eye out.

I was uh dog sitting for some people and had to go around to the kennel at night.

It was my first night going there.

And they had a wire fence with some wires hanging off of it.

And as I was going through the gate, I couldn't see very well, I was going through the gate.

As I was walking through, one of the wires was right there, went right towards my eye, and the only thing that stopped me from losing my eye were my big Coke bottle glasses that I wore at that age.

And uh, you know, as I thought about it through the years, I've I recognized I've always had a problem with night vision.

I don't know if the rest of you are that way.

So when when I go to a theater and the lights go down, it's like, well, I'm stuck now.

I'm not going anywhere at this point.

When I'm walking outside, I'm kind of like testing with my feet and seeing where I am.

And part of that, I've actually looked it up, is because I was severely nearsighted.

And now I've had cataract surgery and all kinds of stuff with my eyes and I've had detached retina surgeries, all these things.

So night vision doesn't work very well for me.

Now, why am I even uh start starting with that?

Is well because when I go into a maybe a theater or something now, I grab the rail and I hold on to the rail so I know exactly where I'm walking.

So even if I, you know, if I can't see what's directly in front of me and understand what's going on, I have the rail and I know where it's going to take me.

And this is why when we've been talking about the book of Daniel, the golden thread that we've talked about is so important.

Now, the golden thread in the Bible is Jesus.

And Jesus, it, you know, Jesus showing up in the Bible, he's not plan B.

There is no plan B in the Bible.

There's only plan A.

And plan A is Jesus coming into the world and securing salvation for God's people.

That's what the story of the Bible is from beginning to end, is the story of Jesus coming in.

And we're getting ready to read a passage that can be very uh confusing for people.

And we look for a lot of things that we bring in from the headlines and bring in from the world around us, and we're trying to find it in these passages.

And the reality is that can get us far afield of what the passage is really about.

So, what I'm gonna have you do in your mind's eye is I'm gonna have you take hold of the golden thread, the story of Jesus, his death, burial, resurrection, crucifixion, all of these things, him stepping into the world.

Take hold of that and let it guide you through the murky depths of this passage.

Uh, the coming of Jesus into the world to redeem God's people.

That's the story, and I'm sticking to it.

Okay.

There's a prayer, you know, as we go through a little, there are two movements.

There's a prayer from Daniel, and then there is an immediate response from God through the person of Gabriel the angel.

Now, there's also this feature, and I'm going to try to highlight this as I'm reading.

Uh, in the Bible, there are two words uh that are used for the Lord or for God.

One is capital L, lowercase O, lowercase R, lowercase D.

That's the word Adonai.

And the word, that's an it's a Hebrew word, and what that word means is the absolute authority of God over everyone, everywhere, everything, everywhere, in all dimensions of life, forever.

He's the Adonai, the capital L, lowercase O R D.

Capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's Yahweh.

That's the covenant name of God.

And the reason this is important is because that's the name by which God made his covenant with his people.

I have a covenant name.

My name, covenantally, is Stephen Humphreys Speaks.

It's on the day that we got married, I said, I, Stephen Humphreys speaks.

Don't call me Humphreys.

Stephen Humphreys speaks.

Take you, Rebecca Lena Talmage, to be my wedded wife.

I made a covenant, and that was my name.

God made a covenant with his people, the Lord.

He made a covenant and bound himself to his people.

Um so Rebecca and I, we have we have three kids together.

We have joint accounts.

We do not share a toothbrush unless we have to.

So Daniel at this point is an old man.

He's in his 80s.

He's been in uh he's been in Babylon for almost 70 years now.

So he's grown up.

His adult life has been lived in this place.

And so he's reading about the promise of God to return home in Jeremiah.

What we're gonna read in Daniel chapter 9, it's a long passage.

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

So why don't you stay seated in honor of all of our mothers?

Okay.

In the year of Darius, the son of Ahasuras, a descent by descent Amede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, that's the uh Babylonians.

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.

Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, O Adonai, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love of those who love him and keep his commandments.

We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.

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.

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, and all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you.

To us, O Yahweh, belongs open shame to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.

To the Adonai, our God, belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of Yahweh our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.

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.

We 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.

As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not entreated the favor of Yahweh our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth.

Therefore, Yahweh has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us.

For Yahweh our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice.

And now, O Adonai, our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have made a name for yourself as it this day, we have sinned.

We have done wickedly.

O Adonai, 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.

Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to the pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Adonai, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.

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.

O Adonai, hear.

O Adonai, forgive.

O Adonai, pay attention and act.

Delay not for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before Yahweh, my God, for the holy hill of my God.

While I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, it's an angel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice.

He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding.

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.

Seventy weeks, some of your translations may say seventy sevens, are decreed about your people in your holy city, to finish to 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.

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.

And after the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall cut 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.

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 abomination shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.

Are you holding that golden thread?

I hope so.

Let me pray for us and ask God to bless us.

We want to see Jesus.

We need his healing words, we need his healing hands, we need his healing presence.

We pray that you, Holy Spirit, would hold our hands firmly on that golden thread.

That we may see Jesus.

Bless us.

And be with us.

Be with me.

I'm handling holy things, and I have grubby little hands.

So I pray that you would be pleased to take the words of a broken person to bring healing to your people.

And we pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We had a friend years ago, and uh in the church that he grew up in, it was a common thing for their church to have uh a youth-led Sunday worship time.

Some of you may have been in churches like that.

And so it was uh coming around at that time, and he was asked to give the prayer for the morning since he was in the youth group and he was very well respected.

And that's a terrifying thing, if you've never done that, to stand up in front of a group of people and pray.

And so he did what any teenager would do.

He wrote his prayer on a piece of paper.

Wrote it on a piece of paper, practice it, practice it, practice it, practice it, thought he had it down.

Um, and then he uh sat where he normally sat on that Sunday morning on the back row and he read over it while all the rest of the service was going on until it came his time.

And then he he put it down and he walked to the front and he got in front of everybody and he said, uh, let's bow our heads to pray.

And they did.

And he went blank on his prayer.

And he reached in his pocket to get the prayer out and remembered he left it on the back row where he normally sat.

And at that point, into the microphone on a Sunday morning on live radio in front of the whole church, he let an expletive fly.

And being shocked at what he had just done, he let another expletive, a worse one, fly.

And at this point, he said, Amen, and went and sat down.

So, true story, we know the guy, you know it was.

And uh that's not the way to pray.

Um so, you know, and I think he's not the only one who struggles with prayer.

I think we struggle, even not just in public to pray, but in private to pray.

And so Daniel is praying.

People would say this is a master class on how to pray.

And so let me just say a few words about prayer as we're beginning to get into this.

To pray well means that we listen well.

To be a good conversationalist means that you listen to what the other person's saying and you respond.

And this is the way that prayer is, and that's what we see Daniel modeling here.

He's responding to what he's heard.

So we read in the first in the first couple of verses that he was reading Jeremiah the prophet.

And what exactly was he reading that led him to pray the way he was praying here?

Well, this is in Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 10.

Jeremiah 29:10

It says, This is what Yahweh says, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.

Now that's the shortened version of things that Jeremiah said elsewhere, and where God spoke elsewhere to his people.

But he's saying, after 70 years, and Daniel's been here for almost 70 years, the Babylonians have been defeated, the Persians are now in power, and Daniel knows God's going to fulfill this promise that he made.

So it's been almost 70 years, and so Daniel is praying.

Now he's not just praying any ordinary prayer.

You know, we there are different elements to prayer.

We can pray adoration, we can pray supplication, ask God for things, we can pray thanksgiving.

His prayer has some of those elements, but it's largely a prayer of confession and repentance.

So this is in Daniel 4, verses uh Daniel 9, verses 4 and 5.

Daniel 9:4

He says, I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, O Adonai, the great awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.

So he's confessing his sins and the sins of his people.

Now, in the Bible, confessing sin is not telling somebody something that they don't know.

It's telling God something that we now realize about ourselves.

The Greek word captures this.

It's a Greek word, it's homologeo, and it means to say the same thing.

So what you do when you confess is you say, I agree with you.

God already knows.

He knows our sin in general, but he knows our sin in specific.

So when you're telling God, when you're confessing sin to God, what you're doing is saying, not, I want you to know something bad that I did.

What you're saying to God is, I know and realize that what I did was bad.

You knew it, now I've come to realize it.

I'm confessing this to you.

And what what we see in Daniel is he's seeking real restoration, reconciliation, he's uh seeking forgiveness.

There's sincere, penitent, honest, real confession.

And sometimes it's not.

Sometimes confession, you know, when you're confessing to somebody in your life, you are actually trying to get out from unjust, you're not trying to be reconciled, you're trying to get out of the consequences of what it is.

Great example of this.

Uh Rebecca and I were watching, uh, it was, I think it was done in 19, not 1970, 2017, you tell them dating myself.

Uh, Anne with an E.

Have any of y'all seen this?

It's on PBS, parts of it.

Anne with an E.

It's a it's a Canadian retelling of the Anne of Green Gables story.

I think some of it's accurate to the books and things.

Uh, but Anne, in one episode, is required to apologize to an older neighbor named Rachel Lind.

Remember that episode?

So the guys are going, no, the women are going, yes, I've seen that one.

Um she's kind of Rachel Lynn said something that was unkind to uh Anne.

Ann lost her temper and just let it all fly at Rachel Lynn.

And then she gets in trouble with Marilla, and she's gonna have to stay in her room until she's willing to apologize to Rachel Lynn.

Well, eventually, Ann comes around and says she's ready to apologize.

And her hyperbolic emotion-laced language is clear.

She's not really apologizing, she's performing.

So she begins by saying this, oh, Ms.

Lynn, I am so extremely sorry.

I could never express my sorrow.

No, not if I used up a whole dictionary.

And then she concluded it this way after lots of hyperbolic language.

Oh, Mrs.

Lynn, please, please forgive me.

If you refuse, it will be a lifelong sorrow for me.

You wouldn't like to inflict a lifelong sorrow on a poor little orphan girl, would you?

Even if she had a dreadful temper?

Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't.

Please say you forgive me, Mrs.

Lynn.

And of course, Mrs.

Lynn forgives her.

And what's interesting is Anne is leaving with Marilla.

Maria, Marilla is standing there smirking the whole time because she realizes Anne's not, she has all the air of being sincere, but she's not really necessarily being sincere.

And as she's walking out, uh Ann shoots Marilla a look, a side-eye look, like, did you see that?

And she's then said, I apologized pretty well, didn't I?

And then she said, apologizing is my new favorite thing.

Now, what's fascinating about that is Anne's prayer wasn't penitence, it was performance.

If I say the right words in the right way, then she's going to give me what I want.

With Daniel, this is real penitence, it's real contrition, it's it's admitting to God.

He's saying, You told us, but we didn't listen.

We are guilty, we are contrite, we repent.

We we learned our lesson, and we've been here for 70 years, and now we're ready to go back.

Please forgive us and send us back home to Jerusalem.

We've learned our lesson.

We're gonna go there, it's gonna be different.

We're gonna serve and worship you.

We want to go back, make your face shine upon us again in Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, we'll we'll get back to doing it right.

And then something happens that I know you and I wish would happen in our prayers.

He gets an immediate response from heaven.

An emissary, Gabriel, comes to Daniel.

And what God says to Gabriel is I'm doing something more important, more permanent, more pervasive than sending you back to Jerusalem.

Your sin is too deep.

So when you go back, it's not going to be any different.

You underestimate the power of your sin in your life.

You will go back and you will rebel again.

And this is going to happen.

The city is going to be destroyed again.

You need more than going home.

You need a fuller salvation, you need greater grace, you need a greater salvation, you need a greater redeemer.

You don't need the city.

You need the son.

And that's where he goes in the rest of this.

Daniel 9, 24 to 27, we need to hold that golden thread.

We need to walk through this because this is really about the coming of that son.

It's dealing with our sin.

So the second part is about what God is doing to deal with it.

Now, I know that there are a lot of things in this passage that, you know, people want to speculate about time periods and when everything is.

But I'm going to hold that golden thread as we walk through this, and I'm going to show you, hopefully, that this is not so much about the future and what's going to be happening, but what has happened in the past and what God has accomplished.

So who is he talking about here?

Daniel 9, 25.

He says, 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.

So, an anointed one.

Who is he talking about here?

Who is this?

Now, the word anointed one is a Hebrew word that we translate as Messiah, or in Greek, Christ.

And that word can refer to any of the Old Testament historical kings or the historical priests.

They were anointed and sometimes referred to as the Lord's anointed.

But what's interesting.

What's interesting about this use in this passage is it's the only time in the whole Old Testament when the word or the phrase the anointed one or the word Messiah is used about a future person who's going to come.

The Messiah, not who's presently on the scene, but a Messiah who is going to come.

And so what God is saying is, I'm going to take care of it, Daniel.

You don't need to go back to the city.

You're going to go back to the city, but it's going to be there that I'm going to send my son.

And he's going to bring about the salvation that you're really asking about.

You don't need the city, you need the sun.

You're wanting to go back to the city that bears my name, but I'm going to send to you the Son, the anointed one who bears my name.

So that in Paul's writings in Philippians, he says that to Jesus, God has given the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord Adonai Yahweh.

That's who you need.

And this is what he tells us he's going to do through him.

In Daniel 9, 24, he says, seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

So these six things that he brings up here, six things that he brings up here, are pertaining to the work of Jesus during his life on earth, and perhaps some of it to what is about what is going to come.

To finish transgression or to put an end to rebellion, sin's pollution.

He's saying that through Jesus, God's people are going to quit disobeying God.

They will never transgress again.

To put an end to sin, sin's motivations will no longer exist.

Ezekiel says, I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit in them.

So the other prophets are talking about this too.

There's going to be a change within us that's going to bring about a change in the way that we live.

To atone for iniquity, that's sin's penalty, it's guilt, it's going to be removed.

Justice will be fully satisfied.

To bring in everlasting righteousness.

The Bible talks about the new heavens and the new earth being the home of righteousness.

It's going to be where we live.

It's going to be eternal.

To seal up both vision and prophet, what's he talking about?

Well, he's talking about the end of the line for the golden thread.

We actually get to a point where that story ends and something else picks up.

It's at the end of Revelation.

At the end, something new comes in and a new way of living.

So the prophets, the visions, everything is going to be completed and fulfilled.

And then he says, to anoint a most holy place.

Now, the most holy place in the Old Testament was the very center of the temple where God resided with his people.

Revelation 21 says, there's going to be a new Jerusalem, and behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and be their God.

So what he's talking about is the work of Jesus in his life on the earth, his incarnation, his ministry, his death, burial, and resurrection.

Now, those six things are, there are a few doctoral dissertations in that, and there's a lot I can't say.

But one I want to focus on for just a little bit is this idea of atoning for iniquity.

A way of thinking about the word atonement is the word neutralized.

It means that our guilt is paid for by Jesus.

It's completely neutralized.

It means that the debt against me, the judgment that was against me, the punishment I deserve because of the guilt I incurred, that's neutralized when Jesus died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

Our sins were placed in his body on the tree.

And he paid for that.

So the punishment that was mine has already fallen on Jesus.

The payment has been made.

And this is what Hebrews tells us.

Hebrews 10, verses 11, 12, and then 14.

Hebrews 10:11

Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

That's huge because he's saying that's what Jesus has accomplished for all who trust in him.

It's done.

When were you saved?

I was saved on a cross outside of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago when Jesus paid for my sins.

He paid for it on the cross.

And that's huge.

Because of the way that we think about how we are saved, and we know that none of us can be saved by what we do.

There are people who are who are obtuse and they can't see their sins.

And Jesus says, yes, those sins are covered too.

And there's people, there are people who are so anxious-driven about the sins that they have that they can never find peace.

And the gospel is for both of those sets of people.

The first one.

I remember years ago I was sitting down with a man and his wife, and uh we were talking about the gospel.

And he was, yeah, he was kind of had this idea that it's up to us.

Jesus is there just in case, but as long as we confess our sins, all those sins are forgiven.

So as he's talking, I recognize he's telling me that every single sin that you uh you commit, as long as you take that sin to Jesus, that sin's forgiven.

I said, wait a second.

Are you telling me that the sins that you not that you don't confess particularly to Jesus, those sins are not forgiven?

He said, Yep.

I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Do you mean to tell me that you have confessed every single sin you've ever committed and that that's why your sins are forgiven if you've you've confessed those to Jesus?

And he said, Yep.

And I looked at his wife, his wife's going, No, he hasn't.

No, he hasn't.

And then I said, You mean to tell me that you know every sin you've ever committed?

And he said, Yep.

And his wife's going, no, absolutely, he has no idea.

We're so broken that you aren't aware of all the sins in your life that Jesus has covered.

And what he's telling us in this passage and throughout this golden thread is Jesus has died for those who confess him and believe in him, that he's paid for all of them, even if I don't know what they are, which I don't.

But if we were to do that exercise with me and you asked if I uh if I had confessed every single sin, I'd say, nope, I don't know them all.

My kids probably do, but I don't.

I don't see them because I'm obtuse and I need a savior who is that gracious to cover over even the things that I can't see and I'm not even aware of.

But then there's the other side, and that's the person who is so anxious all the time about their performance and how they do it.

And they know, they know that there's an area in their life where they're struggling.

When I worked at college students years ago, I did um I did a con I did a seminar on sexual sin just for guys.

And I would have 200 guys for two different seminars come in to the room to talk to talk about sexual sin.

Because all of them had phones, all of them had computers, and they may not have been doing anything physically, but they were all viewing it.

And they were trapped, and they needed the gospel to help them.

And and as you as you're talking to them, you're recognizing is they all think if I if I'm gonna come to God, I've got to get my life together and then approach God.

That's not the way it works.

The way the gospel works is I come to Jesus confessing my sin and he forgives it all, and he cleanses me, and he grows me, and he enables me to escape from whatever trap of sin that I'm in in my life.

That's how the gospel works.

And so what he's telling us here is going back to Jerusalem is not gonna change anything.

In fact, you see this at the end of the passage when it's talking about uh the anointed one coming uh and he's gonna make it desolate.

He's talking about Jerusalem.

And Jesus came in around 33 AD to Jerusalem, and he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, woe to you.

I've longed to gather you, but you would not.

Now your city is left to you desolate.

The people of the prince he's talking about there are the Jews at that time who rejected the Messiah.

And what he's telling us here is you don't need the city.

You need the Son.

That's the golden thread.

It's not it's not works righteousness, it's not your own righteousness, it's faith, it's the righteousness of Jesus.

That is what we need.

And so what he's telling us is faith in Jesus saves you.

Jesus is the object of your faith, is the basis for your salvation.

Not the extent of that faith, not the intensity of your faith, not the consistency of your faith, not the sincerity of your faith.

It's faith in Jesus.

I have a big savior.

So even if I have just a little faith, he still covers over all of my sin.

So, what he's telling us in this passage, the big idea.

Now, I know that some of you have questions about time periods and those kinds of things.

Um, talk to Bryn.

I think Bryn would be the person to talk to him.

Uh yeah, you can come, you can come ask your questions, and I'm gonna say, let's walk with the golden thread.

We're gonna make sure we we've got the main thing in there.

But one of the things I think is so beautiful about this passage is that we have a God who knows the future.

He knows my future, he knows the future of the world.

Prophecy in the Bible is not a prediction of the future, like trying to predict the elections.

It's not a best guess, it's a guess, it's a roadmap, it's a plan.

God is saying, this is where we're heading, and there's a happy ending for all who trust.

And that's actually disturbing for some people.

Because a God who knows the future and still allows uncomfortable and even tragic things to happen, that bothers us.

And as we come into this passage, I uh you know, the answer to the question is maybe not to try to explain into words, but to show you, to show you something.

Is it's this Jesus knew the future and he didn't swerve away.

If anybody had reason to say, hey, I know the future and I'm not going to a cross, I'm not going to bear the wrath of God, I'm not going to a tragic end, that would be Jesus.

But he didn't do that.

He didn't do it because he didn't make himself immune by his knowledge of the future.

He didn't do it because he knew what it was going to accomplish for us.

He's going to accomplish our salvation.

And so this is, it's no wonder that Gabriel is the one who came and told Daniel about the coming of the Messiah.

And he's also the one who went and told Mary that she was going to be with child.

Daniel 9.23, at the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I've come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved.

Daniel has gone through something very hard.

But here he says, But you are greatly loved.

You are greatly loved.

And this is why it matters.

Because that golden thread that unites and ties the Bible together is the same thread that's woven through your life if you believe in Christ.

It's the same thread that's there.

So that when you're walking and you can't see the murky things that are around you, and you're tapping your feet and you've got your hands in front of you, and you don't know what dangers are out there, you at least know this.

I am bound with the golden thread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And whatever happens to me, I know that he's pulling the thread.

And someday, one day, I'm going to end up with him at the mandatory happy ending.

We know how the Bible ends.

We know how the story ends.

Uh, and the Bible tells us how the story rebegins with the new heavens and a new earth.

And what he's telling us here is we know where your story is going if you're in Christ.

We know how your story begins, we know how your story continues, that everything will be set right and restored in the end.

So, what do we learn?

We learned that Jesus is on every page of the Bible.

And Jesus is present in every day of your life until all is sealed, all is over, and we are home.

Let me pray for us.