Holiness

Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives . Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, September the 25th. I'm Mark and I am holding a great cup of coffee. This is really good coffee and I'm actually working some toast here with Strawberry Jam on it. Amazing strawberry jelly is incredible and I'm working all of that as I think about yesterday's Sermon on Holiness. And as we get ready to plunge into the book of Daniel, this is the real stuff in Daniel, isn't it? Visions and beasts and monsters and the ancient of days. As we begin the vision section of Daniel, all of this and more in this week's podcast, let's get started. Yesterday's sermon was a combo sermon as I put together some ideas from the unzipped series, things that we don't hear a lot of sermons about, and talked also about having a heart for God. And that came together in this sermon on holiness. And I think that is some super important stuff. Really love talking about that. And I wanna say a word or two more like I promised in the sermon about this business of holiness being bizarre and being peculiar. Lots of people think that's what holiness is all about. And you may have even thought of a passage, isn't there verse in there somewhere that says that we're supposed to be peculiar? And in fact, Titus chapter two and verse 14 says that Jesus gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all inequity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. That's the King James of Titus two 14 and one Peter two, verse nine in the King. James says, you're a chosen, I'm , I'm sorry not you ye, ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. So based on that, maybe, maybe that means holiness does mean we should be eccentric and abnormal and weird all in the name of the Lord. And of course the answer to that is that is not what that means at all. Peculiar may have meant something very different in 1611 when the King James was translated than it means for us today. And that's why the e s v has of Titus two 14 to purify for himself a people for his own possession and the new living translation says to make us his very own people. That is the idea behind that expression, peculiar people, not weird, but mine , my special people. And so the E s V of one Peter chapter two in verse nine says, you are a chosen race , a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And the new living translation says God's own possession. So we are not called to be strange, we are not called to be weirdos. The Bible does call us to be set apart from the sins of the world so that we can be used by God because we are God's special people. That's what holiness is about. Don't think you have to be weird to be holy. And if you are being weird, don't write that off as your attempt to be holy . That won't work. And then maybe you are still wondering about Simon, the pillar guy and how he lived on top of a pillar. Simon STIs , if I'm saying that correctly, lived on top of a nine foot pillar, which ultimately was raised even higher. Uh, he lived there 37 years as I mentioned yesterday in the sermon. And I said something about how I'd give you some more details on the podcast. Well here you go. If you're wondering how he managed that, he did sleep curled up on the platform, but ultimately some smaller platforms where erected around his main platform so that if he moved in his sleep and turned over or got restless, he wouldn't fall off the pillar and die . And buckets on a rope were used to haul bread up and other foods so that he didn't starve to death. And yes, buckets were used so he could take care of his business. That's just pretty weird, isn't it? And maybe the saddest part about all of that is that this fella fancied himself as being really holy and really thought he was doing something great for God. And the truth of the matter is he was just being weird and he missed out on a lot of joy and a lot of blessing that comes when we live with people and enjoy God's creation and all the amazing things that God has for us. No, he isolated himself and lived a miserable existence on top of a pillar for 30 something years because he thought that's what holiness was about. No, that isn't what holiness is about. Let's be truly holy for the Lord set apart for his use as we talked about yesterday. And a great place to see that is in the book of Daniel because Daniel is absolutely set apart for God's use. And in the seventh chapter of Daniel, he begins to see incredible visions. That's our Bible reading this week. Let's get our Bibles. Let's talk about daily Bible reading. Today is Monday and we are reading in Daniel, we're reading Daniel chapter seven verses nine to 14. This comes out of our reading of course from Friday. And you may want to just step back and get the first eight verses of Daniel seven. Daniel seven depicts a number of kingdoms and then beginning in verse seven, this terrible fourth beast, we need to talk a lot about that fourth beast. And I think we'll do that probably tomorrow because the fourth beast reappears in verse 19. So we'll save that. Just hold this idea of this terrible fourth beast. He's going to be destroyed in verse 11. We really wanna give our attention to the ancient of days and son of man, that's where the focus is in our reading today, we have these four kingdoms and now there is a fifth kingdom verse nine. The ancient of days takes his seat on this great throne. This is the kingdom that will last. This is the kingdom that will ultimately triumph. This is the kingdom that is supremely important. And this throne scene looks an awful lot like Ezekiel's throne scene and a lot like Revelation four. Those are kind of the standard throne scenes. If you're gonna talk about the throne room of God, that of course is what you would describe it as. That's that's how it's supposed to look. And so it does look exactly like those other throne scenes, the ancient of days here, ancient here probably references God's eternity. And we need to remember in Daniel's culture, being old gave you status, gave you eminence, people respected the elderly that may have something to say about our society today. You could be respected and venerated if you had gray hair in Daniel's time today we just make fun of and try to shovel people out of the way. His hair, the hair of his head is like pure wool white as snow that references the holiness of God. Talked a little bit yesterday about God's holiness in some ways means his otherness, his separateness that uh , a characteristic of God that we can never fully be like he is utterly pure and completely sinless. And then there is this flaming fire in these wheels. All of that gets a lot of attention and lots of speculation and it's nothing but the window dressing in the scene to make the throne room awesome. We sing that song. I stand in awe of God. If you were standing here with Daniel, I don't think any of us would say, I wonder what that what that flaming fire river thing I , what does that stand for? No, we would just be bowing down in awe of the incredible power of God. That's what we're seeing here. The sovereignty of God and the beast then is destroyed. And the son of man comes verse 13, behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, he came to the ancient of days. He is given dominion in a kingdom. So this everlasting kingdom, this great power and sovereignty is given to the son of man who rides the clouds. In the culture of Daniel's time, many idle gods, particularly Baal, are are portrayed as being cloud writers . They come on the clouds in in the sky with great power. And lots of times in the Old Testament, things that were ascribed to idols are then given to God. No, it's not that fake God that does that. Jehovah does that. The real God does that. And that's what's happening here in Daniel seven 13 writing the clouds of Heaven. God is the cloud writer and this one who comes is the son of man who is this son of man. Well of course the son of man. Here is Jesus, the son of man is Jesus' favorite way of referring to himself. It's used 83 times in the Gospels. And it is true that sometimes son of man just means you're a human being. It is used in that way in Ezekiel, but Jesus takes it to himself and gives it a higher meaning. It is his favorite, as I said, his favorite way of talking about himself. It only occurs four times after the gospels, but more than 80 times in the Gospels like Matthew eight 20, Matthew 1613, Jesus will talk about how he is the son of man and he uses that to identify himself as this one in Daniel seven, in verse 13, of course maybe the best illustration of Jesus using that is in Matthew 26 64 where in his trial he says to the Sanhedrin counsel , so I tell you from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. And the high priest then verse 65, tore his robes and said He has uttered blasphemy. They certainly understood his claim to divinity in his claim to be the one of Daniel seven in verse 13 by calling himself the son of man. So this is Jesus and he receives a kingdom. That's really the significance here in Daniel seven, Daniel seven not really talking about the Messiah and all that we get out of the gospels mostly talking about power, sovereignty, dominion, a greater kingdom than these four other kingdoms that we saw in seven, one to eight. That's what's being emphasized, the power of the son of man. And that will continue in our reading tomorrow. I'll see you on Tuesday. It is Tuesday and today we read in the book of Daniel, we're reading Daniel chapter seven, verses 15 to 28. We complete the seventh chapter and this will be a good time for everybody to just get comfortable with saying, I don't know, and particularly with hearing me say, I don't know, one of the big keys in reading vision sections, apocalyptic sections like this is to keep our eye on the big picture and not get lost on trying to sort the details out. I like to think of an apocalyptic vision. Books like Ezekiel Revelation here in Daniel as being like a mural. If you stand too close to the mural, you really can't see what it's all about. You get up right up against the wall and maybe you're looking at the hand of one of the figures painted there. Now you can't see the whole scene. Or another great metaphor for this kind of material is a movie and everybody's been to the movies with somebody who obsesses about the details and ruins the movie. And you get out of the film and you're talking and they say, well, you know, captain Kirk said, let's go warp factor vii , but you really can't travel faster than the speed of light because I stop, stop you're, you're making too much out of these details and you're ruining it. And so there's gonna just be a lot here that we may not be able to point specifically this is exactly that person or that event or that battle, but we're going to be able to get the overall meaning of the movie, the overall meaning of the, of the mural that Daniel is painting for us here. So that starts for us today in Daniel chapter seven. We are reading in Daniel chapter seven, and somehow I lost my Bible reading schedule and I don't know where I'm starting Daniel seven in verse 15. There's my Bible reading schedule. When you have your Bible open and notes and coffee and toast, there's just stuff everywhere here. And somehow the Bible reading schedule always ends up on the bottom of all of that. So Daniel was anxious verse 15, and he hears that these four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth. The emphasis then is given to the fourth beast and that the saints verse 18 receive the kingdom during this time. And it's very easy to say that saints here are Christians and that that's who we're talking about. And that may well be the case. It is so that the term saint here is the term holy one. And usually in the Old Testament, that is not people usually that's angelic beings. In fact, only in the 34 Psalm is it used to mean people in Psalm 89, 6 in job five, one couple of other places, it means heavenly beings. And this may reflect heavenly warfare, which is a common theme in apocalyptic literature that happens, for example in the book of Revelation in Revelation the 12th chapter. So maybe saints holy ones here is, is about the angelic beings , uh, about heaven and, and about God's kingdom beginning there. Maybe there's cosmic warfare going on again. See, like I said, yeah , not everything is gonna be 100% sure. Oh, I know this means this. And then brings us to this fourth beast two is this fourth beast, lots of emphasis on him. He's different from the rest and he's just terrifying. And there are a couple of options that that you can go with here. Lots of people want this to be Rome, which makes Daniel seven match up with Daniel two . And I think there's a good case for that. This beast looks a lot like the beast in in Revelation 13. And that beast certainly is Rome. And so that would make the little horn then probably be Sation as you get your line of Caesars out. And there were three very weak Caesars before him . So Rome is is a good option here. Maybe not the best option because I think it's a mistake to take Revelation 13 and plug it into Daniel seven. Revelation 13 is written about 600 years later. And one of the things about apocalyptic literature is that sometimes it uses stock imagery. Oh, this movie about God's dominion power and sovereignty and putting down evil showed a beast that looked like this and this, I'm I, I'm making a movie about that. So I'm gonna use the same kind of beast very much like westerns always portray the bad guys wearing a black hat. Is that because in the last western where I saw the bad guys in the black hats robbing the stage, now I'm looking at another western and there's a bad guy in a black hat. Oh, he must be robbing the stage. Well no, not in this movie. He's robbing the bank, but he's a bad guy. So what, what stock imagery would you use? Of course he's wearing a black hat and and by the way, we don't ask why is he wearing a black hat? That's just what the bad guys wear. Why does the beast look like? Well , this is how beast look . He's terrible, he is awful, he's evil. And so I'm not content to just plug revelation into Daniel. I'm not content to plug Daniel into revelation. That's a huge mistake and it makes a mess. You have to let each of these visions stand on their own and and serve the people of their time. And in fact, there are some differences here between Daniel two and Daniel seven in some ways that that works. I think there's some things about that that I like. But in second, in in second, Daniel, how about that? In in Daniel two , Daniel interprets the vision, but in Daniel seven he doesn't interpret, he just sees things. And in Daniel two , the fourth empire is very weak. Here in Daniel seven, this fourth empire is violently powerful and the imagery here is much more descriptive in Daniel seven than it was in Daniel chapter two. I think there's a good chance here that this fourth beast here is an Antiochus epiphanies or anus epiphanies. I haven't made it in my mind how to say his name yet. And he did attempt to change the calendar and try to change the times and try to stamp out Judean religion. He tried to move them from a lunar calendar to a solar calendar, which would be consistent with some of the things that this terrible beast is trying to do change times and laws verse 25. So maybe this is that terrible awful king during the time between the testaments, Antiochus epiphanies. I think I'm just gonna go with that. Okay, Antiochus epiphanies will be how, how we refer to him from now on. I'm not sure then where those 10 kings would be. Maybe that's some of his ancestors, the lucid line of kings. And that just brings us then to time, time and a half a time in verse 25. And everybody wants to know what that means. And if you know what that means, tell me first because I would love to know what that means too . You can add the times 42 months or 1,260 days, you get three and a half years and you can multiply 'em and divide 'em and square root them and do all kinds of things with them. And you're never gonna get a firm and certain answer it's, it's just uncertain. It seems to be an indefinite period of time, perhaps because seven is the perfect number. Seven is the absolute perfect number. And so this might be saying that evil only works half as long and probably the most emphasis here is 26 and 27 that in the middle of this terrible beast doing all these terrible things and nobody seems to be able to stop him, God cuts him short, sudden judgment comes why? Because God is sovereign. Look at 26 and 27. Even if we don't know for sure who the fourth beast is, we know what this is about, don't we? God is greater, God has more power. God reigns, God rules the son of man, his kingdom is the one that matters. His kingdom is the one that will be established. So whether this is Antiochus epiphanies or whether this is Rome, we still know where to put the emphasis. Trust in Jesus, be in Jesus's kingdom. He's going to be the one who conquers all that is what Daniel chapter seven is about. That's what Daniel is seeing. That's where we need to put our emphasis today. Hope that helps you as we get ready for more visions tomorrow. Daniel chapter eight, Rams and goats. See you then. It is Wednesday, it's hump day and we are reading in Daniel chapter eight, Daniel chapter eight, verses one to 14 is our reading for today. This is really where the book of Daniel stands to bridge between Malachi and Matthew, the history and the times of God's people during what we often call the silent years. That's a period of about 400 years when God did not speak to the people through prophets. There was no word from the Lord, but an awful lot was going on and a lot of it was very difficult for the people of God as they were persecuted under the lucid kings, under the lucid line that comes out of these visions here and that these visions discuss Antiochus epiphanies particularly attempted to eradicate Judaism. And this Daniel eight talks about some of this and helps us understand some of what's going on. So here we start in the third year of the reign of King Bell Shaar . And so that would be somewhere the third year was about , uh, equal to 5 53, 5 52. Somewhere around there Daniel sees this vision and he looks, and there is a ram standing verse three with two horns. Clearly this is the mito Persian empire. The horns are not equal because the Persian power was dominant over the median power in , in fact, on the March Persian kings actually carried a gold Rams head. That was their logo, that was their emblem. And they expanded that empire verse four westward towards Greece and north to the Caspian Sea and even south toward Egypt. The Persian empire was mighty and great. I'm actually doing some reading and research into the Persian Empire and I'm just awed . I don't think historians have paid nearly enough attention to how impressive and incredible the Persian empire really was. But of course it did not last because verse five, here comes a flying goat and it is a flying goat. His feet don't touch the ground. And the flying goat is Alexander the Great and the flying goat is Alexander the Great and the kingdom of Greece. By the way, if you just look across the page in your arrival , look down your text. 8 28 21 Identify for us the two horns, the kings of media in Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. So I'm not making this up and it's not subject to discussion. Sometimes in apocalyptic literature you get a this is that which is always really helpful and very much appreciated. And this is that we understand exactly who the goat is. It is the king of Greece. It is the Greek kingdom and Greek, the Greek kingdom under Alexander just ran over the Persians. In fact, at a great battle there , um, in Northern Palestine, Darius III met Alexander and the Persians had over 200,000 men in their army. Alexander was marshaling less than 50,000 men. The Persian army got behind Alexander's army. Alexander turned his army around. He did not have enough forces to withstand just the weight of the Persian army. So he had to divide his forces, which is usually a disaster in battle. And he decided the thing to do was to fight through the line and capture Darius. If he could capture the king, everything else would break and the morale of the Persians would fall and they would be routed. And that worked. They cut their way through the Persian lines and he captured Darius. And as a result the Persians broke. And as they ran, they were cut to pieces in verse eight. Then he was great and then he dies. And Alexander died very suddenly in 3 23 BBC of Fever. He was in Babylon. He was only 33 years old. And when that happened, his kingdom was divided by , uh, it was divided into four parts by his four generals. Lisi , Maus got tha and Bethia . Cass Sander got Macedonia and Greece. So Lucas got Syria and moving east towards Babylonia. And then Tomi got Egypt and Palestine. And it's the toes and the Sids that matter so much because that that is the area of the holy lands, that's the area of Palestine. And the Lucid always want Palestine. And when they get Palestine the toes , they want it back. So you can just see if, if you are in Syria and your arch enemy is in Egypt, what's in the middle, what's in the way. That's right. Judea is right smack in the middle of that. And so they , these armies just walk over them going backwards and forwards all the time as they're taken and retaken. We'll get more of that later in the book of Daniel. But just get ready for lots of lucid and lots of toes that comes out of these four generals who divided Alexander's kingdom. And now we have the little horn of verse nine. And this is Antiochus epiphanies. He was a saluted . He came to power at about one 70 and he just was horrible. He is the man that attempted to destroy Judean religion. Probably as verse 10 begins to allude to probably because he tried to take Egypt and it seems that he was going to be able to push the , told him he's out of Egypt and take Egypt. But the Romans showed up in December 1 68. They stopped him and said, Rome is not gonna let you have Egypt. They did not want his power to grow to that extent, especially because Egypt was the breadbasket for Rome. And so the Roman commander said, you must stop. And Antiochus said, well, I'm gonna think about it. And the Roman commander drew a circle in the sand around Antiochus and said, I'll have your answer before you step out of that circle. And that humiliated Antiochus and made him bow to Roman power. And as a result on his way back home as he left Egypt and went home to Syria in the north, he passed through Palestine and he vented his wrath on Jerusalem, deciding once and for all to rid the world of Judaism. He erected an idol of Zeus in the temple. He desecrated the altar by offering pig meat on it. He suspended the practice of Judaism. He burned Torah scrolls. That idol in the temple by the way becomes known as the abomination of desolation. He did all of these awful and terrible things. And so verse 13, how long is this going to go on? And it is verse 14, 2300 evenings and mornings and that would be 1,150 days. And that kinda works out to about the amount of time that the temple was desecrated. Antiochus took away the sacrifices and then Judas Maccabee cleansed the temple in December, December 14th, 1 68 BC when he took Jerusalem back and he offered sacrifices and purified the temple and all the things that go with that. So maybe that's where that is. Maybe that is a definite number. Maybe it's, maybe it's just an indefinite period of time. But it means that this terrible oppression is going to go on for a while but not forever. It only goes on for 2300 days. So hang on through this terrible time where there's this persecution and all these bad things are happening. So we just get world events. The Persian Empire is great, the Greek Empire is great. And out of that Greek empire comes for generals. And out of one of those generals, Lucas comes this terrible, terrible King Antiochus who's going to do such awful things to the people of God. Daniel will talk about this more as we resume the reading tomorrow in Daniel eight and verse 15. I'll see you then. It is Thursday. And today we complete Daniel VII chapter. This is Daniel eight, verses 15 to 27. And here Daniel gets an interpretation of the vision, pretty clear, not altogether difficult to understand. Daniel receives information about this time of the end, verse 17. That doesn't mean the end of all things. That's a common expression used in the prophets and in apocalyptic literature to reference the end of these events. The end maybe of this time period. We think of the patriarchal period, the Mosaical period, the Christian period. But not always is this the end, the end, the capital T, capital E . And Daniel clearly doesn't view it that way because later on he will talk about the restoration of the sanctuary. So clearly time goes on, it's not the end of all things. It might in some ways be the end of the period of God's wrath upon Israel, the end of the time of the captivity and the end of all this persecution and the terrible things that happened to them during the oppression by the lucid and particularly by Antiochus. And that's really again the focus here we get the goats and the rams. We understood all of that. That wasn't very complicated yesterday. And then verse 23, here comes when the transgressors have reached their limited king of boldface. I want who understands riddle, he shall arise. This is Antioch's epiphanies. He reigned from 1 75 to about 1 64, somewhere around in there. And his power was great, but not by his own power. Notice that God allows him to do this. This is about the sovereignty of God and by his cunning, he does terrible things. He destroys many. He shall even rise up against the prince of princesses. Verse 25, he actually minted coins, Antiochus minted coins with the title Theos epiphanies God manifest. And that's how he saw himself and that's what he thought of himself as he tried to in the Jewish religion and force everyone to worship his gods and even to worship him. And so we have an interesting tie here to the rest of Daniel because as Nebuchadnezzar expected everyone to worship the image that he set up. So Antiochus expects everyone to worship the images that he has set up. But of course he dies. He shall be broken. Verse 25, but not by human hand. It's about God, isn't it? It's about the sovereignty of God. It is about the Lord. And interestingly, two , Maccabees, nine, now the book of Maccabees , there are four of those. And when they're not all written by the same author and lots of discussion about some of that. But first and second Maccabees give us a pretty good history of some of this time period, this time between Malachi and Matthew that that's called the Intertestamental period. And, and you can read that stuff. It's online and it's freely available. It's in the public domain. And first and second Maccabees is, is interesting stuff and fascinating stuff about the McAfee in wars and about this particular time period. And second Maccabees chapter nine records that Antiochus died in agony, begging the God of Israel to spare his life. How about that? How about that? As he came to the end, maybe he did recognize the sovereignty of God. And so once again, as the chapter closes, Daniel doesn't understand everything. Notice that there's , uh, bookends here. Verse 15 when I, Daniel and then verse 27, I , Daniel was overcome. So there's, that's called an iuso , a start and a finish that holds that section together. Daniel was appalled at the terrible things that were going to happen. He didn't understand everything that was going to happen. Makes me feel better. I don't understand everything that this is talking about either, but I understand that my hope is to be found in God. If God brings down this terrible fourth beast, then surely God is the one that I need to stand with, not the fourth beast. Don't get caught up in world powers. Don't get caught up in political movements. See , we can make some application of this. I , I don't think specifically this is referencing Napoleon or Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or any of the other bad actors throughout human history. But the principle here is don't get caught up in political movements and think, oh, look at that power. They have all the power I've got to throw in with them. They're persecuting those who serve the Lord. I'm gonna give up my faith in God because I I , I don't wanna be killed. I don't wanna be harmed. I don't wanna be tortured. I don't wanna be put in prison. I'm gonna , I'm going all in with those guys. Don't do that. Don't do that. They'll be broken. Not by human hand stand with God. That's the message in apocalyptic literature. By the way, that's the message in the Book of Revelation as well. Didn't , didn't think you were gonna get bonus material from Revelation today, did you ? That is the message in Daniel eight. That's the message in Revelation. That is the message in Matthew chapter 24. Stand with the Lord, don't give up and join with evil powers. Tomorrow we begin, Daniel chapter nine. Daniel does some praying. If you're a little wore out on visions, get ready to kneel in prayer. One of the greatest prayers in all of the Bible. We start it tomorrow in Daniel nine, it's Friday and today we read Daniel chapter nine. We begin reading Daniel chapter nine, the first eight verses. This is a wonderful, wonderful prayer of Daniels and unfortunately the prayer just gets mostly ignored because of all the stuff about the 70 weeks at the end of the chapter. Well, we'll get there. We will get there. Don't panic. We will arrive and talk about the 70 weeks, but we ought to talk about this great prayer. Look how much space the Holy Spirit has given to this prayer. It does help us understand how to pray in a time of trouble because, and make no mistake about it, this is a time of trouble for Daniel Judah is in captivity. And by the time that we were read, Daniel chapter nine, the first year of Darius , the son of hazardous verse one dating there is really problematic. It's probably 5 37, 5 38, but there's lots of discussion about who was ruling where and when and what his name was and so forth. That's beyond the, the scope of a podcast for sure. But somewhere about 5 3 7 5 38 by this time, the people of God have been in captivity for a long time. For a long time. And so Daniel reads the book of Jeremiah. Notice that he understands the book of Jeremiah is the word of God. No counsel needed to meet to vote on that. Canon is not decided by the voting of men. And he says, Hey, we're supposed to be here 70 years. Well, isn't the 70 years up? Isn't it time to go home? Can we go home now? Please Lord. And so Daniel is old and he's watching empires come and go. The Babylonian empire with Nebuchadnezzar and all the glory that's gone, the Meto Persian empire is now ruling. God, where are we? I thought maybe by now we would be home. What ? What ? What is happening? Isaiah said that we would get to go home. Isaiah chapter 44, when are we going home? And Daniel is concerned about that, but he's even more concerned about vindicating God's name and God's reputation. And so he turns and prays Chapter three, I turn my face to the Lord God seeking him by prayer and I prayed and made confession. Please notice the adoration of God in this prayer. The great verse four, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. There is an emphasis here on God's faithfulness. There is an emphasis here on God's awesomeness. There is an emphasis here on God being the keeper of his promises. And Daniel is using here Jehovah. You see the the small caps. I prayed to the Lord, my God, Lord is the name of God, Jehovah. Or sometimes people will say, Yahweh, God is being addressed by his name here. And then Daniel talks about how we have sinned and done wrong. Verse five. It's not God's fault that we're in Babylonian captivity. It is not God's fault. He is exonerating the name of God. God had not been defeated by the Babylonians God. He had not abandoned Judah simply because he doesn't care about them anymore. The problem is sin. Sin. This was willful and deliberate sin. And to Daniel, it is important that they confess their sin. I think Daniel understands we can't go home until we acknowledge why we are in exile. So the 70 years certainly seem like they are nearly up. If you date that off of Daniel's exile and 6 0 5, then this is somewhere close to 5 35, Daniel would be saying, God, should we be packing up? And I think he is asking the question, is it time for us to go home? God, keep your word and take us home. Of course, if you want to date it off of maybe Ezekiel's exile in 5 97, then the 70 years isn't up yet. Or even the burning of the temple in 5 86 there sometimes still to go, but Daniel is imploring God, take us home again and we read more of this great prayer as we start the week next week on Monday, still reading in Daniel chapter nine. I'll see you then. That closes the podcast. Then for this week, thank you for listening. If you love the Monday Morning Coffee podcast, you know what to do. You need to follow or subscribe on your apps , so we'll download automatically. If you're having trouble with that, ask me or someone at church and we'll help you with your device so that it's just popping onto your device right there without you having to do anything. It'll be ready for you on Monday morning and of course, really encourage you to tell other folks about the show. It's a good thing to post about on social media. Let people know that you're a Bible reader and that you're interested in understanding the Bible. This is what the podcast is about. So until next week, I hope that your coffee is delightful and that your Friday is wonderful and that the Lord will be with you today all day. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the Westside church of Christ podcast. Monday morning coffee with mark . For more information about west side , you can connect with us through our website, just christians.com and our Facebook page. Our music is from upbeat.is that's upbeat with two P'S UPP , B E A T , where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others. And we look forward to seeing you again with a company coffee, of course, on next Monday.