Behind the Curtain: God’s Invisible War for His Beloved

Good morning, church family.

What a blessing it is to be in God's house today together, to sing together, pray together, worship together, hear from God's word together.

If we haven't met, occasionally we have, or quite often we have visitors here and we haven't had a privilege of meeting.

Um I'm Tim, one of the pastors, and uh I'm thankful to get to bring the Word of God this morning from Daniel chapter 10.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

And also next uh next Sunday I'll be here.

Um so if today doesn't go very well, you know to avoid next Sunday, find somewhere else to go.

Uh we'll be in Daniel chapter 11.

Daniel 11 · chapter mention

So if you have a Bible with you, would you open to Daniel chapter 10 as we continue in our series of messages through Daniel?

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

Daniel is going to challenge our vision of reality.

The way we see the world, the way we interpret occurrences and events in our lives, Daniel is going to challenge those.

I wonder if you ever thou in prayer and you find yourself wondering if there is a God who is actually hearing your prayer.

Or maybe you believe that there's a God somewhere out there in the distance, but he's apparently quite unentertained by you and your prayers, and all you hear back from God is silence.

You wonder what God is up to.

Wonder if he's actually listening.

Has he given up on you?

Have you given up on him?

Materialism is the name of a worldview that sees the world, that looks at reality and says, There is only physical things, only material things that make up the essence of reality.

In other words, their consciousness is not the soul in some kind of complex interplay with the brain and the soul in material aspect of the human nature.

There's no soul.

There are no angels, there are no demons.

In materialism, there is no God.

There's nothing except what meets the eye.

What you see is all there is.

Obviously, as Christians, we don't go around professing that we are materialistic, naturalistic atheists, and there's nothing out there.

That's sort of anti-Christian creed, right?

But so often we live as if that's the case.

So often we live really no different than practical atheists.

We profess one thing on paper, but when it comes down to the decisions we make when we pray, when we interact with God in his word, we we live, perhaps, more like atheists than like those who believe everything Scripture says.

This morning I'd like to title our message from Daniel chapter 10, Behind the Curtain.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

God's Invisible War for His Beloved.

Behind the Curtain, God's invisible war for his beloved.

The chapter divides rather cleanly into two major parts, verses one through nine and verses ten through twenty-one.

In verses one through nine, we're going to see the invisible realm revealed, the invisible realm revealed, and then in verses ten through twenty one, the invisible war revealed.

Let's begin by thinking about the invisible realm.

Let's read verses one through three.

In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar, and the word was true, and it was a great conflict.

And he understood the word and had understanding in the vision.

That's commentary.

And then verse 2, Daniel begins to speak.

I've never heard of a Christian doing the Daniel fast and not bathing for three weeks.

But if you're going to be biblical, he didn't bathe or anoint himself for three weeks.

Let's not get crazy.

Here we have Daniel challenging, as it were, pulling back the curtain on reality.

And it begins with him mourning and grieving.

He mentions that this is a third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, which means that there has been a regime change since the last we've heard from Daniel.

Well, maybe chapter 8 is where the regime change occurs.

We have Daniel here seeing a vision of reality, seeing a vision of God, seeing a vision of angels in the third year of Cyrus.

This is actually really important that he just kind of throws this out there.

Often when we see dates mentioned in the Bible, we sort of pass over them because we don't have a timeline in front of us, and whether the dates this date or that date really doesn't matter.

It actually matters hugely in this case.

Because when he says the third year of Cyrus, he's signaling the fact that this was just probably a year, maybe two years, after the end of the 70-year exile of the Jews.

The exile began in 605.

This is independent secular sources would verify that 605 BC was when Nebuchadnezzar went on a campaign from the east to the west and besieged Jerusalem and took Jews captive to Babylon, 605 BC.

Well, what's 605 minus as we're going back in the timeline?

70.

535.

Cyrus came to power in 539.

Three, three and a half years prior to the end of the 70-year exile.

What we read about in Cyrus' reign is rather remarkable.

What we have is the coincidence or the coinciding of numerous events coming together, coalescing, maybe is the word, coming together in a perfect accord that I think couldn't happen apart from divine guidance of the events of history.

Here's a couple of them.

Listen to this.

Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 8, which was written in 605, the same year, yet prior to the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, 605, he says this.

Jeremiah 25:8

Then after 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord.

That would be the same year that Nebuchadnezzar would haul Jewish men, women, children to Babylon.

Seventy years later, Cyrus would come to power and he would actually decree the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

There are at least five stars that have to align for all these things to come to pass.

The first one is the fact that it was a 70-year exile.

Realize that the 70-year exile of the Israelites in Babylon was not a random number.

It wasn't like, oh, seven's the perfect number, 70, let's add a zero.

No, it actually corresponded with 490 years that Israel had disobeyed God.

They were told to, every seventh year, to rest the land.

He said, I'll give you a bumper crop the sixth year.

You won't have to plant anything on the seventh year.

Just trust me and I'll provide for you.

Israel's like, nope, we're not going to trust you.

We're going to plant every seventh year.

It was a Sabbath cycle year.

And so for 490 years, they neglected the Sabbath year 70 times.

And God says, You didn't want to rest the land?

Well, guess what?

The land's going to get rest.

It's going to get rest because you're going to be taken captive for 70 years.

So we have this star, as it were, fixed in the sky.

The 70 years, not arbitrary, corresponds with 490 years of disobedience in Israel's history.

God raises up Nebuchadnezzar, he's called in Isaiah chapter 46, the ravenous bird from the east who's going to discipline his people, gets really greedy, comes into Israel, besieges Jerusalem, and carries them away in 605 BC.

Isaiah 46 · chapter mention

The clock starts ticking.

There's star number two.

Star number three is that at the end of the 70 years, guess what happens?

You have mysteriously another world power, the Medio-Persian Empire rising.

And in 539, just before the 70 years was complete, Cyrus on October 12th, 539 BC, takes over and storms the city of Babylon and takes over the empire.

And the Medio-Persian Empire rises to power as the preeminent power in the world.

What happens in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia?

It says in uh Ezra chapter 1 that God puts it in the heart of Cyrus to rebuild the temple.

Ezra 1 · chapter mention

And he actually decrees that the temple in Jerusalem be rebuilt.

He allows 42,000 Jews to go back to Jerusalem a year or two after he becomes king, right on the money of 70 years.

Isn't that coincidental?

So we have these the 70-year exile corresponding to 490 years.

It's not arbitrary.

Nebuchadnezzar begins the 70-year clock.

Virtually 70 years later, Cyrus comes to power.

And then number four, the fourth star is that Cyrus not only takes power, and there's like a change of world powers, happens to be after the end of the 70 years, but Cyrus actually allows these Jews to go back, leave losing 42,000 workers in his economy.

Why would he do that?

Why would any world power like say, okay, see you later, go enjoy your religion?

No, God was in Cyrus' heart.

So the fourth unlikely thing to align is that Cyrus actually said, No, I'm gonna get on board with this.

And then fifthly, what's the fifth star that has to align for all these things to happen?

The fact that these things didn't just coalesce, but that Jeremiah prophesied all four of them before they happened.

Jeremiah said, Babylon's gonna be the one who's gonna carry Israel to exile.

It's gonna take place for 70 years.

At the end of those 70 years, Babylon's gonna be destroyed by some other world power.

And not only is the exile gonna end, but Jews are gonna come back and the temple will be rebuilt.

Wow.

The naive materialist will come to this chapter, will overlook that and say, those those things happen in human history, sure, but hey, coincidences happen.

But Jeremiah didn't get just really lucky.

The astronomical odds of in human history these things all taking place and being prophesied.

Would you not be intellectually honest enough to say this doesn't sound like a coincidence?

And yet Daniel 10 finds Daniel a year, maybe two years after the first delegation of Jews go back to Jerusalem.

He finds we find him mourning and grieving and fasting.

Why?

Well, because it wasn't a full restoration.

Tens of thousands of Jews were still scattered and not even intending on moving back to Israel.

Only 42,000 of them had gone back.

And the temple that they were going to rebuild was going to be pathetic compared to the glory of Solomon's temple that had been leveled 70 years before.

And Daniel is grieved over the lack of the fullness of the fulfillment of all God's promises.

And he's praying for what God would have in store for his people.

And so we come in verses four through nine, where Daniel's prayers are interrupted by a supernatural experience.

Daniel chapter 10, verse 4.

Daniel 10:4

On the twenty fourth day of the first month, I was standing on the bank of the great river that is the Tigris.

I lifted up my eyes and I looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold from Euphaz around his waist.

His body was like Burl, which is a sort of a translucent gem.

And his face like the appearance of lightning.

That's impressive.

His eyes are like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.

And I, Daniel alone, saw the vision, for the men who were with me did not see the vision, but a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled and hid themselves.

They knew something supernatural was happening, like there were maybe noises or earthquake or something, and they ran and hid.

And Daniel alone was left to see this appearance of this being.

And we kind of scratch our heads and we can think, well, maybe it's an angel, maybe it's Michael the archangel.

When we come to the New Testament in John chapter, or Revelation chapter one, when John the Apostle is uh receives a vision, that's why the book of Revelation is called a Revelation.

It's a vision of Christ.

And in Revelation chapter 1, he describes almost an exact representation of the being Daniel sees here with one slight difference.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

If you see in this chart, the fact that in Revelation chapter 1 and Daniel chapter 10, each of them records these things.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention Daniel 10 · chapter mention

It's interesting that he in Revelation he doesn't mention his body being translucent.

When that's that's called uh in textual criticism, that's called a criterion of difference.

So the fact that the lists aren't identical means that he wasn't just copying him.

That there are certain differences.

So for example, uh one describes his face like lightning, the other like the sun.

If he was just copying him, he just said like lightning.

Or flaming torches versus a flame of fire.

Uh his voice was like the sound of a multitude versus the roar of many waters.

Differences, but the same idea.

This powerful, overwhelming, roaring voice.

The criterion of difference is obvious that they they were describing the same being, yet they weren't simply copying one the other.

I believe this is because Revelation chapter 1 is makes it very clear that this is the Lord Jesus in his post-resurrection body.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

I think this is a Christophany in Daniel chapter 10.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

That is an appearance of Jesus Christ prior to his incarnation.

We do have an interesting textual, as we come to scripture, we want to be consistent, we want to be theologically sound.

And what you're actually going to find is in verses 10 through 21, an angel talks to Daniel and actually tells him that he's been trying to get to Daniel, he's been fighting to get to him, but there was a prince of Persia, a demonic force keeping him out.

And he had to enlist the help of Michael the archangel to overcome him to actually get to Daniel.

Well, that raises the question: well, if that's Jesus, then how can Christ not have power over the Prince of Persia?

How would he need Michael the Archangel to help him?

In fact, in Jude verse 9, you have Michael the Archangel uh instead of fighting against Satan, he just says, The Lord rebuke you.

In other words, according to Jude, the Lord is way more powerful than Satan, and Michael's not.

So maybe it's not Jesus.

I think the way we reconcile this is in the first nine verses, Daniel sees a vision of Christ.

And then he falls on his face in this deep sleep, and because he's before, in the presence of this glory, he just falls on his face like a dead man.

And then we see in verse 10 a hand reaches out and touches him.

And I believe that was an angel sent to strengthen him and to communicate the rest of the vision.

And it wasn't Christ at that point, but was another angel.

In fact, as we read the text, it sounds like there may have been several angels in this account.

So we have an invisible realm revealed here in Daniel chapter 10.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

This isn't the first time that God has pulled back the curtain on the spiritual world.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible, just a story in 2 Kings chapter 6, you have Elisha the prophet and his servant who are thorns in the side of the Syrian armies.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

Because as Syria is trying to position themselves and attack Israel and that sort of thing, uh, God will give uh Elisha a vision of where they are, and he'll send a messenger to the king, and they can um avoid ambush and that sort of thing.

And so they're like, How does Israel know exactly where we're gonna be?

And then someone's like, It's because they have a guy named Elisha, and he is receiving visions and he's telling them where you are.

If you were a Syria, you probably should stop right there and be like, wait a what?

There's a guy who has God doing that?

Okay, I think I'm gonna we're gonna lay off.

But no, they were very stubborn.

They said, We're gonna find this Elisha and we're gonna kill him.

And so they find him in the city of Dothan.

They besiege the city.

In the morning, Elisha's servant wakes up, looks out the window, and he sees the city surrounded with hundreds, thousands of soldiers from the Syrian army.

And he says, Alas, master, how are we gonna get out of this one?

And Elisha says, Calm yourself.

Uh those that are with us are more than those who are with them.

And the servant's like, What are you talking about?

Like, we're it.

Maybe look out the window down below when there's people scurrying around, hiding in themselves.

Like, what are you talking about?

There's an army out there.

And Elisha says, Lord, open his eyes that he can see.

And God opens the servant's eyes, and behold, the mountain around the city of Dothan is full of chariots of horses of fire.

For horses and fi uh and chariots of fire.

And he sees that this that these warrior angels are all around them.

And he's amazed, and he draws comfort.

And God delivers them out of the hand of the Syrians.

A couple years ago, a friend of mine, uh, I think a trustworthy man uh of virtue and honor, he told me a story where he had uh maybe 15 or so years ago had been in a prayer meeting in a gymnasium with a bunch of Christians.

And as they were praying, he he he opens his eyes and something catches his eye to the left.

And and he says, It's his word, he says there was an angelic being who was standing with his arms outreached over the prayer meeting and had huge wings and was like this impressive thing.

His head was just under the ceiling of the gymnasium, and he couldn't believe his eyes, and he reached over and grabbed the person next to him, and when he looked back, it was gone.

You could say, ah, that was a figment of his imagination, and maybe it was.

There are hundreds and hundreds of books of alleged first-hand accounts of people seeing uh angels, demons, having supernatural experiences.

And I think it corresponds with the fact that we humans, uh, I think many of us deep down inside believe there's gotta be more to this world than what meets the physical eye.

Certainly would explain a lot of strange things that happen around us that have no scientific explanation for them.

I know when I was a sophomore in college, I was uh taking a night class on a Monday night.

Went to my class at 6 p.m., was driving home around nine.

I stopped, I was hungry, got a burger, and as I was driving home that night from my class, like the immature 20-year-old I was, I had the light on in my the cab of my truck.

I was driving with my knee and I was unwrapping my burger and eating on the pitch black road.

Fairy Lake Road, driving back to my home, my parents' home.

And I was driving around, driving along, and it was very dark, and there were no streetlights or anything, and it was in the country, and I was looking down at my burger and it was messy and driving with my knee, and um I'd probably look down for a couple seconds, and I felt feel the wheel jerk.

Like it scares me.

I thought maybe I'd hit something or whatever, and I grabbed the wheel and there was nothing out there, and maybe two, three seconds later, I pass a cyclist in the left lane on a curve.

I can take you to the curve right now on three on Fairy Lake Road.

Uh a cyclist, no lights, just riding along at 9:30 p.m.

And I immediately realized, like, wait, what just happened?

I was looking down, driving my knee, and the wheel jerks to the right, and then I passed the cyclist a few feet away to my left.

And it impressed upon me the fact that I wasn't alone.

Like, I don't have any scientific way, maybe a leg spasm or something, spared his life, spared me manslaughter as a 20-year-old.

Whether it was the hand of God or the hand of an angel, I don't know.

I don't really care.

I praise God that I wasn't left to my folly.

And I think many of you probably have your own stories of things that have happened in your life that just don't quite make sense if explained in a materialistic way.

The Apostle Paul, very rational individual, actually says in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 that early on in his ministry, he said 14 years prior, he had this experience.

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

He says, whether it was in the body or an out of body experience, I don't know.

All I know is that I was caught up into the third.

Heaven, whatever that is, some other dimension of reality.

And he sees things he says that are too glorious to even articulate.

I couldn't even describe them to you.

And he says, so great and glorious was this vision that God actually had to keep him humble lest he be lifted up in pride.

And God gave him a thorn in the flesh, a minister of Satan to continually beat on him to keep him humble, the rest of his ministry.

Many times you and I, maybe in our innate skepticism, we think, why doesn't God just appear to us?

Why all this walk by faith and not sight kind of stuff?

That's really convenient.

Why don't the angels just appear to us?

Why don't we have visions of, why isn't it universal?

Everyone gets to see God, everyone gets to see the angels.

And I think if we're just being honest with the depictions of these experiences in Scripture, it's in our best interest we don't yet see those things.

There will be a time in the future when heaven has come to earth, when the new creation, when angels and humans bow before the same throne of Christ, and we behold his glory, and his face will light up the land like the sun, and we will be joining hands, I think, with angelic beings in resurrected bodies.

We're not there yet.

And in fact, if the Apostle Paul just for a few moments caught a vision of something that would have made him an arrogant jerk the rest of his life unless God afflicted him.

I'm okay not seeing that for now.

I'll do a I'm okay not having a thorn in the flesh.

Jacob in Genesis wrestles with God all night long.

God changes his name from Jacob the supplanter to Israel, a prince.

And we're like, why doesn't God wrestle with me?

We forget that whenever he was wrestling with God, he touched his hip and he limped the rest of his life.

There's always a cost.

There's always a cost when God reveals something to us.

As Batman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

Spider-Man, sorry.

One of those fictional characters.

So I wonder if we tried, if God were to say, you know what, I'm just gonna appear to this brother or this sister every week or two, if you responded like Daniel responded, in the text he's gonna say he's mute, can't even talk.

He falls on his hands and knees, he falls on his face in a deep sleep.

Can you imagine an angel just like appearing, knocking on your, you know, you're like, Lord, show me your glory, and then an angel like uh as you're brushing your teeth, taps on your shoulder and is like, hey, and you just like fall over dead.

And it's Monday morning, you gotta go to work, and your wife's like calls in your boss, hey, uh, Jim's not gonna be in for a few hours.

He just saw an angel again.

I know, I know.

Uh, and uh he's kind of incapacitated.

Like that's the way it is.

If someone says that God talked to them and they were, you know, brushing their teeth.

I've heard uh faith healers talk about this, they're brushing your teeth, and God starts talking to them and they see angels and they don't have a life-changing response, you can better believe they're lying to you.

Because when Daniel saw Christ, he falls down like a dead man.

When in Revelation chapter 1, when John sees Christ, he falls down like a dead man.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

When the Roman soldiers around the tomb of Christ have an angel appear to them, they tremble and they become like dead men.

So the question is, do you want to get to work on time or do you want to see an angel?

In uh verses 10 through 21, we see the invisible war revealed.

It's not just that there are angelic beings, that God is existent, that these things are out there.

It's that we have a glimpse in Daniel chapter 10 into what's going on that helps explain some of what's going on in our world, the invisible war revealed.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

Let's read verses 10 through 12.

And behold, here's Daniel face flat on the ground.

A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees.

And he said to me, Oh Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you.

How do you think this is a different angel than the one than Christ, who appears in verses one through nine?

And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling.

Then he said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand me, to understand, and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.

Oh man, when you pray, do you believe that God is gonna send someone, send some aid, send a person, send an angel, send a message from God, send a provision because of your words?

This challenges the way I see reality.

So often I pray, and I pray with sort of this glimmer of hope that God might answer my prayer.

And I forget I prayed it the next day, let alone three weeks later.

I don't remember what I prayed three weeks ago.

Here's Daniel begging God for three weeks, and this angel comes to him and says, Hey, it's probably out of breath.

I came as fast as I could.

In fact, from the first moment, the first day that you were praying, I came to your aid.

But why the delay?

Playing basketball in the spiritual realm.

I was boxed out.

I couldn't get to the goal, the angel says.

Verses 13 and 14 say this the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days.

How many days was Daniel praying?

21 days, three weeks.

For three weeks there was a war in heaven in an attempt to answer Daniel's prayer.

He says, He withstood me 21 days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is happening to your people in the latter days, for the vision is for days yet to come.

This is fascinating.

He talks about a prince of Persia and then kings of Persia.

There's this hierarchy of angelic beings, both good and evil.

There's someone over the entire kingdom of Persia, and then there are those rulers underneath that, and he was left there fighting, and Michael the Archangel had to come and help him.

This is fascinating.

Why the delay?

What is clear in this text is that what was happening in history and even in our lives is part of a much greater war.

Why is life so hard?

Yeah, it's a fallen world.

Yeah, there's things like gravity that break hips when we fall.

There's things like inertia that result in car wrecks that are fatal.

There's laws of nature all around us, and there's diseases and cancers, and but it's not merely the physical realm that's affecting our world, according to Daniel chapter 10.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

In fact, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament tells us this in Ephesians 6, verse 11 and 12.

Ephesians 6:11

He says to put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Why is this, Paul?

Verse 12.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, that is mere human or even animals, opposite opponents.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

I wonder if this is how you see the world.

Is this how you see the world, or do you see the world like a practical atheist?

On paper, yeah, there's Satan, God, angels, prayer works, but in practice, it's all molecules in motion.

On January 8th, 1956, in the mid-50s of last century, five missionaries, Jim Elliott, Nate Saint, Ed McCauley, Roger Guderian, and Pete Fleming were missionaries to the Aka Indians in Ecuador, the Hurani tribe.

And they had planned for several years their uh missionary efforts to them.

And they, Nate Saint was a pilot, and they would uh they they tried to learn the language down there, and they they strategized these unreached people so they could introduce Christ to them.

And uh Nate Saint took his plane up and they had a long rope and they would go in a circle and then they would drop gifts down and they tried to prime this remote tribe uh in Ecuador so they'd be friendly upon their first approach.

We find that on this date in January of 1956, these five missionaries made first contact with these Hurani uh savages, and they were speared to death because they thought that the plane they were flying was some kind of spirit power, and so they wanted to make sure to not let that survive.

And so they land their plane along the waters and they kill them, and their bodies float in the Hurani River, the Karai River there in Ecuador.

Uh these pictures and the stories can be uh read about in um Elizabeth Elliot's uh writings.

What's interesting is that a couple years later, after efforts continued to be made to reach these people with the gospel, some of the men who actually speared these missionaries to death came to know Christ.

And they told a story.

They said, as after they had speared these evil spirit men or whatever, with had the airplane, they said they saw lights in the trees above their bodies and they heard singing, unlike anything they'd ever heard before or since.

And they knew that, and they backed off because they knew that they had maybe troubled the gods or something.

The angels singing over these slain missionaries who had given their lives, both in life and in death, for the gospel they professed.

I wonder if this is how you see the world.

It's how God sees the world.

Daniel concludes his story here in verses 18 through 21.

He says, Again, one having the appearance of a man touched me and strengthened me, and he said, Oh man, greatly loved.

That's the third time he tells them that.

Fear not, peace be with you, be strong and of good courage.

And as he spoke to me, I was strengthened, and I said, Let my Lord speak, for you've strengthened me.

Then he said, Do you not, or do you know why I've come to you?

But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.

But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth.

There is none who contends by my side except these, against these, except Michael, your prince.

This is fascinating.

He explains the reason for his delay.

He says, I came the moment you started praying, I came from God, O man greatly beloved, to answer your prayer.

For 21 days it was metal on metal against this angelic demon who was guarding the prince, the province of Persia from intruding angelic forces.

And here's Daniel waiting, thinking God is silent all this time.

What's fascinating here is that he says, Okay, Daniel, I've delivered a message.

I'm about to go and go fight against the prince of Persia some more.

And when I go out, the prince of Greece will come in.

There's another world power that has demonic forces behind it empowering it.

And what's fascinating is it sounds like in this text that maybe 10 minutes later after the angel leaves Daniel, he's gonna go fight.

Maybe 10 minutes later, the the the prince of Greece is gonna come and he's gonna fight against him.

We need to realize that that won't happen for another 200 years.

That the Greeks in 331 BC, over 200 years later, after Cyrus takes over Babylon, are gonna come and invade under the direction of Alexander the Great.

So it sounds to us like this is gonna happen really quick, is actually in God's economy, something that takes 200 years.

And I think the angels, which are not bound by space and time, time is probably they're not eternal, but they're not bound by space and time and the decay of the material world like we are.

Decay is actually how we measure time, right?

And this angelic being is like, yeah, I'm gonna go fight some more, and then the Greek uh Greeks are gonna come in.

Dana's like, okay, three 200 years later, the Greeks overcome the Media Persian Empire.

To me, this informs how we should pray, recognizing with great humble sobriety that when we pray, we expect God to be working on our timetable, and if he doesn't answer us the very next day, at very least the very next week, then he hasn't heard us, he's forgotten us, he doesn't care.

And the Satan's like, wait a minute, what are you talking about?

God is eternal.

He's the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He's the same God that appears in Revelation, He's the same God that created the worlds from eternity past, and he's the one who will be with us into eternity future.

And we want God to operate in our timetable.

What's 200 years to God?

2 Peter says a thousand years are but a day.

In a day, a thousand years.

We want God to go around with a magic wand fixing things like a fairy godmother.

As if in the physical world there are laws of nature and there is physical matter and these things and they operate according to certain laws, but in the spiritual world it's just God with a big magic wand.

No, in the spiritual world, there are other forces that are not physical, but nonetheless real.

And they operate according to spiritual laws.

There are forces in conflict.

Our prayers are too often like a child demanding candy from her daddy while he carries her in the dark running from a bear.

She doesn't see the bear.

Maybe she didn't even know about the bear.

He does.

What he's doing doesn't make sense to her, and him not being loud and talking to her doesn't make sense to her.

And him being silent and him not giving her her candy when she wants it doesn't make sense to her, but it's for her good.

What comfort it is that Romans chapter 8 and verse 26 tells us this.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

That the Spirit helps our helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

He knows what's in your heart, he knows the will of God, and he translates our feeble, pathetic, puny, short-sighted, selfish prayers that we almost always offer, and he translates them into something that's according to the will of God.

What an intercessor we have in the Holy Spirit.

Prayer in the book of Revelation is called incense, smells good.

It ascends before the Father.

It actually says the prayers of the saints are incense.

The Father loves to hear our selfish, short-sighted, puny, shallow prayers because the Holy Spirit transforms them according to his will.

And he says, I'll answer that.

Yes.

Every human longs to know deep down what is, if there is anything beyond the physical realm.

Is there a metaphysical?

A whole branch of philosophy is dedicated to this.

Every religion is in an attempt to get us beyond this veil of tears and this veil of materiality into the spiritual world.

You have Roman Catholicism offering seven sacraments.

You have Jainism giving us six vows to keep.

Islam offering us five pillars, four aims in Hinduism, three treasures in Taoism, two truths in Buddhism, and all the while God says, I've offered one solution, that is my son.

And I'm not just gonna go bizzing and welcome you into spiritual paradise.

I'm going to send my son into the world in physical, tangible, mortal human flesh, into the world he created, the physical world, the spirit, the spiritual being, the word, into the physical world to suffer and to wage war on our behalf for our souls.

God's definitive answer to bringing us to God is not to give us a list of things to do to earn our place into the spiritual world or our access, but to come to our rescue, to secure our salvation, and then to give us in the end the glorified bodies so that we can actually see what's going on all around us.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ faced the dark prospect of taking our sins upon himself.

And like Daniel, who prayed for three weeks, Jesus cries out to the Father, Father, take this cup from my lips.

Nevertheless, your will be done.

And he listens, and you know what he hears from heaven?

Silence.

No answer to that prayer.

Jesus offers himself into the hands of betraying Judas and the chief priests and their soldiers, and he goes and he is mocked and he is beaten, and he is tried by the Roman authorities, and he is betrayed by the crowds who demand his crucifixion.

He is marched to the cross, he is crucified, and there he suffers in our place, God's wrath.

And you know what he cries on the cross?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And all he hears from heaven is silence.

In all of our prayers, when we feel like God's not listening to us, God's not working, he must be absent, maybe he's not even there.

Look at the cross.

Look at Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.

What looked like delay and defeat and deafening silence was God working and warring on behalf of his people, the greatest deliverance that ever would be known to man.

That deafening silence would not be broken for three days.

And wouldn't it be broken by the voice of an angel?

In Luke chapter 24, an angel in shimmering clothes appears to the women as they come to anoint the dead body of their Savior.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

And he looks at them and he says, the first words from heaven, since that deafening silence.

And he says, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He's not here, he's risen, just like he said.

I believe every silence that you and I have ever heard from God will be made up in the end.

When he does answer us and he shows us for eternity how he's been working all these things for his glory and our good.

My friends, we must be patient.

God loves us, he is warring and working on our behalf.

May Daniel's vision of reality reignite our hope and our perseverance, knowing that we are greatly beloved.

That God's timetable is so vastly different than ours.

That He and the hosts of heaven are fighting an invisible battle for us, and that ultimate victory for all those who put their trust in Jesus Christ is sure.

May this be our confidence this morning.

Let's pray.