Daniel 9
very restful numbers
(Daniel 9)
Jason Procopio
I’ve spoken with quite a few people over the last couple weeks about the dramatic change in tone of the book of Daniel. Chapters 1-6 of this book are like adventure stories: there’s mystery, intrigue, miracles, danger… They’re a blast. Then chapter 7 flips everything on its head: Daniel begins recounting visions with symbols and beasts and numbers and it all gets very complicated, very quickly.
I mention this because Daniel chapter 9, our text for today, is definitely the most complicated text in the book of Daniel, and one of the most difficult texts in the entire Bible. And as a result, some people have used this text to say any number of crazy things about the end times, about the Antichrist, about the things that will happen before Christ returns. This is one of the texts people often use to claim that they are definitely, 100% sure that the world will end on this day of this month during this year.
And it’s easy to see why this would be the case. There are some things in this text which I think are very clear; but there are many things which aren’t so clear. There are many possible interpretations for this text that people have offered over the years, and anyone who says that it presents a perfectly clear picture of any one of these interpretations isn’t treating the text as seriously as they should.
We’re going to try and grasp some of these difficulties in this message, and I’m going to give you the interpretation which I think fits the best overall, but I’m warning you ahead of time: there will be details in this text which we will not cover. I will definitely not answer all the questions you might have about this text.
And that’s okay. It’s okay that we won’t answer all of these questions. It’s okay that we won’t look at all the details. For two reasons.
Firstly, I’ve said it several times over the last few weeks: one of the main goals of apocalyptic literature is not to transmit clear information, but to awaken our imagination, to create in us a big awareness and awe of our very big God. And as such, it’s almost necessary that there be things about God and his ways which we don’t understand. If we understood everything about God and his ways, we’d be as big as him. So he sometimes gives these images which are so dense and giant that we are simply left in awe, not entirely sure what we’ve just witnessed, but amazed at the fact that God knows exactly what’s going on here.
Secondly, it’s okay if we don’t answer every question about every detail, because regardless of which interpretation we hold to, the big idea of this text remains the same. Think of it like a mixed media painting, in which the painter uses not only paint, but little sticks, and dried leaves, and bits of string, in his painting. You can puzzle over these elements—what the sticks mean, what the leaves mean, why the string is this particular color—and you can disagree with others about the details; but when you take a step back and look at the whole, you can see the idea behind the work as a whole.
Same thing here. People’s interpretations of the details vary, but the point is the same—and I’ll give it to you right now. The point of this text is to drive home the message that God has a plan to bring about salvation for his people and judgment for his enemies. And I’ll argue that regardless of the tricky details, the means by which God achieves his plan is made very clear when you take a step back and look at it as a whole.
So that being said, let’s begin reading our text at chapter 9, verse 1, because verses 1-19 give us the context of the vision that comes after, and that context is absolutely crucial.
Daniel’s Prayer (v. 1-19)
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. 6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. 7 To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. 8 To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him 10 and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. 12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem. 13 As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. 14 Therefore the Lord has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. 15 And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have made a name for yourself, as at this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly.
16 “O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us. 17 Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. 18 O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”
Daniel begins this chapter by telling us where he is and what he is doing.
Some time has passed between chapter 8 and chapter 9; now we are in the first year of the reign of Darius, whom we met in chapter 6. The Babylonian empire is no more; Babylon has fallen under control of the Medo-Persian empire. And Daniel says that in this year when Darius took the throne, he realized something as he reflected on (v. 2) the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet.
In Jeremiah 25.1-12, the Lord tells his people, the people of Judah, that because they have rejected the covenant God had made with them, they will serve the king of Babylon seventy years (Jeremiah 25.11), and that after the seventy years are over, his wrath will be poured out on the nation of Babylon instead of Judah.
Daniel has been in Babylon since nearly the beginning of the exile, since shortly after King Nebuchadnezzar pillaged the temple and brought the exiles back. He came as a young man and is now old; he has been serving one king of Babylon after another for over sixty years. So as Daniel ponders the word God gave the people through Jeremiah, he realizes that their seventy years of exile are nearly over.
And what does Daniel do when he realizes this? He doesn’t do what we do when we think about God’s promises in the Bible. He doesn’t think, “Oh wow this is great,” and then move on to something else. As he realizes that the promise of God has nearly reached its promised time, he prays that God might fulfill the promise he had made.
And he prays in a very specific way. His prayer is founded on and even structured through the lens of the covenant God made with his people.
He acknowledges God’s grace and glory, repeating those words which God himself used so often to describe himself—v. 4:
“O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments...”
He confesses the sins of his people against God—v. 11-12:
11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. 12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity.
The covenant God made with the people of Israel was two-sided: that is, God promised to act toward them in a certain way (to be for them a God who keeps covenant and steadfast love), and the people promised to act toward God in a certain way (to love him and keep his commandments). But if the people break their side of the covenant, God is no longer bound to respect his. Daniel confesses freely that the people have broken the covenant, and acknowledges God’s justice in sending them into exile for their sin.
And then Daniel reminds God that he has put his own name on this people, and calls him to act for the sake of his name—v. 19:
19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”
The high priest of Israel wore a breastplate upon which were inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of Israel—he acted as a representative of the people before God. But he also wore on his forehead a head covering, on which was inscribed God’s name, Yahweh—he acted as a representative of God before the people.
This was a visualization of the fact that when God made a covenant with the people of Israel, he put his name on them. They represented God to all the other nations. (And this is what he meant when he told them to not take his name in vain in Exodus 20.7—it’s not just about making oaths or saying bad words. He’s literally telling them not to carry his name lightly: because they bear his name before the nations, they are to bear it well, to represent God well.)
So Daniel reminds God of this fact—that your city and your people are called by your name—and asks God to bring them out of exile as he had promised to do, for the sake of his name.
That’s what’s going on in Daniel’s prayer, and it’s vitally important to remember that, because Daniel’s prayer is the context of Daniel’s vision. Or to put it another way, Daniel receives a word from God through the angel Gabriel, and what Gabriel says is a response to what Daniel prayed.
Gabriel’s Message (v. 20-27)
20 While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, 21 while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. 22 He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, “O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. 23 At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision.
24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
Now, there are many problems inherent in these verses, many of them involving language. Remember how way a while back the original language of Daniel switched from Hebrew to Aramaic? Well, in chapter 8 it switched back to Hebrew—because these final chapters deal mostly with the people of Israel—and the Hebrew of Daniel 9.24-29 is notoriously difficult to translate. And you can tell when you look at different translations.
We have problems with the word “weeks”—which is a big difficulty because it is the main unit of time in these verses. (Literally, the word translates as “sevens”—v. 24: Seventy sevens are decreed.) So there’s a lot of debate as to whether weeks are meant, or years, or some kind of symbolic grouping.
We have problems with the word “anointed one” in v. 25 and 26, because in v. 25, the word “prince” is added to it (whereas in v. 26 the word stands alone); and the contexts of the two verses suggest a different person is in view in both verses. (Usually the word “anointed one” refers to a human leader set apart by God for a specific action.)
We have problems with the word “prince” in v. 26, because this seems to indicate yet another prince than in v. 25 (because it’s used separately from “anointed one”), and because the prince of v. 25 seems to be on the side of God, whereas the prince of v. 26 definitely is not.
You can tell how difficult this all is when you look at the translations: because of the ambiguity of the Hebrew, most of the time this text is translated according to the way the translators interpret the meaning of the prophecy.
And there are nearly as many different interpretations as there are stars in the sky.
But we have to remember that biblical texts are rarely as difficult as this one is. Most of the time different translations will have a very similar meaning, with different ways of communicating that same meaning.
God does not speak in riddles. He doesn’t ever reveal something he doesn’t mean to be understood, at least in a limited way. He doesn’t tell us everything, and he certainly leaves room for mystery; but whatever he reveals, he reveals to tell us something, not to confuse us more. (As G.K. Chesterton once said about another apocalyptic book of the Bible, “St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, [but] he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”)
And in fact, we don’t need to do a lot of mental gymnastics with the text to come out with a much clearer reading of what we see here.
We simply need to—you guessed it—remember the context.
First we have the context of the entire chapter, which Daniel gave us in v. 2: he prayed his prayer and had his vision during the first year of the reign of Darius (also known as Cyrus). Daniel sees that the 70 years’ exile of Israel prophesied by Jeremiah are nearly complete. So he prays in response to this realization, according to the covenant God had made to his people and his faithfulness to that covenant.
This fact also gives us the context of Gabriel’s message to Daniel. Since Daniel’s prayer to God is covenantal in nature, Gabriel’s response is also covenantal in nature: that is, the numbers we see here should be interpreted in light of the way they are used within the covenant God made with his people. They should be interpreted symbolically, not literally, because these same numbers were applied to specific things in the context of God’s covenant with Israel.
So let’s take this little by little. We’ll look at the symbolism of some of these numbers later, but first let’s just try to get our bearings.
There are three groups of “weeks” mentioned by Gabriel: a period of seven weeks (v. 25a), a period of sixty-two weeks (v. 25b-26), and a period of one week (v. 27)—totaling seventy weeks in total.
So what are these first seven weeks? If you know your Bible, you’ll remember that at the end of this 70-year exile in Babylon, Cyrus issued a decree (which we find at the end of 2 Chronicles and the beginning of the book of Ezra) that the temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt, and that God’s people should return to build it. This is the “word” of Daniel 9.25a:
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.
After the events of the book of Daniel, Cyrus released the Jews to go back to Jerusalem, and Ezra and Nehemiah led the charge to rebuild: Ezra led the efforts to rebuild the temple, and Nehemiah led the efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Ezra comes from a priestly family, from the line of Aaron (Ezra 7); and the word “prince” is used by Daniel in chapter 11 to refer to a great leader, a priestly figure. So these “seven weeks” of v. 25 are probably this period of time in which the last Old Testament prophets do their work—it is the period of Ezra, of Nehemiah, of Malachi: the last Old Testament prophet. (After Malachi’s prophecy, God falls silent for four hundred years.)
Then (v. 25b):
Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
So what do we see in these sixty-two weeks? First of all, we see the completion of the work to rebuild Jerusalem—the time in which the temple and the city are standing once again.
And they run until the coming of “an anointed one”, who “shall be cut off and shall have nothing.” Who does that sound like to you? Who is the “anointed one” of God?
The title gives it away: it’s the Messiah, Jesus Christ (the term “Messiah” means “anointed”). So the “anointed one” who is “cut off” is none other than Jesus Christ, who is killed for the sins of his people.
This is probably what Gabriel is referring to when he speaks of God anointing a most holy place. Since there is no record in the Bible of the temple ever being “anointed,” this is almost definitely a reference to Christ’s baptism, during which the Holy Spirit descended on him and God audibly declared him to be his Son, publicly commissioning him to do the work of the anointed one.
Next, in v. 26-27, Gabriel mentions the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and says that he will make a strong covenant with many for one week, and that he will put an end to sacrifice and offering for half a week. Who might this “prince” be?
Well, if we know what happened after the time of the New Testament, it seems fairly obvious. In A.D. 70, the Roman general Titus led the Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem and the temple for the last time. So this last “week” begins when the Messiah, Jesus Christ is baptized; he is killed (or “cut off”), and some time later (“half a week” later), Titus and the Roman armies destroy the temple and decimate the city of Jerusalem. Or, as Gabriel put it in v. 27, on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate (that would be Titus again, the “prince” of v. 26—Gabriel is elaborating on what he said before).
This is what Jesus was talking about in Luke 21.20, when he used the same language to foretell the destruction of Jerusalem:
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.
By destroying the temple, Titus put an end to sacrifice and offering. These events are the abominations and desolation of which Gabriel is speaking in Daniel 9, and which mark the beginning of the second half of this symbolic final week (in which we are still living today).
And it is during this time, during this final week, that Christ establishes a strong covenant with many—with us. As he said at the last supper, This is the new covenant in my blood (Luke 22.20).
So let’s recap:
Cyrus’s decree marks the beginning of this period of seventy weeks. Seven weeks mark the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, the time of the rebuilding of the temple and Jerusalem, the time of the last OT prophets.
After that, Jerusalem stands rebuilt for a long time. Life goes on, and a lot of things happen, but the prophets fall silent. This lasts a little more than four hundred years—the sixty-two weeks of Gabriel’s message.
Then, Jesus shows up and is baptized, which marks the beginning of the seventieth week. In the first half of this week, we have Jesus’s ministry, his death, his resurrection and ascension, the beginning of the church as described in the book of Acts, and then, finally, the destruction of the temple by Titus.
Since then, we are living in the last half of the seventieth week. And although persecution against Christians began brutally and has continued in the same brutal fashion in some form or another ever since in many parts of the world, God has made it abundantly clear that sin and Satan will no longer be able to deceive the nations. The gospel continues to go forward, and will continue to go forward until the return of Christ at the end of this “seventieth week”.
Now of course all of this—everything I’ve said about v. 25-27—is very, very difficult. the dispensationalists have a strong case, based on this text, for what they say. I think they’re wrong, but it would be arrogant in the extreme to say that they’re not giving the text a careful reading. They are. So if you’re not convinced by this (or even if you don’t quite understand it yet), that’s okay.
Because in the end, it doesn’t matter. The heart of this text is not found in one right interpretation of v. 25-27. The heart of this text comes out of the answers to two questions: Why does Gabriel use these multiples of sevens in his message to Daniel? And What is the goal of the events which occur in these seventy weeks?
Why These Numbers?
As we saw before, you can’t remove Gabriel’s message to Daniel from the context of Daniel’s prayer: it is God’s response to the prayer. Daniel’s prayer is unambiguously covenantal: he acknowledges God’s grace and glory, he confesses the sin of the people, and he begs God to renew the covenant he had made with Israel by releasing them from exile, as he had promised he would do through the prophet Jeremiah.
So because Daniel’s prayer is covenantal, Gabriel’s response is also covenantal. And he structures his response in terms appropriate to the covenant, by using numbers which reflect the covenant pattern of the sabbatical year, and the year of jubilee.
In the book of Leviticus (one of the books of the law God gave to the people of Israel through Moses), in chapter 25, verses 8 to 12, God sets up what is called the “sabbath year.”
Israel was an agrarian society—their main activity was agricultural. They worked the land for six years; but on the seventh year, they were required to have a “sabbath year”. Every seven years, for one year, the people could engage in no agricultural activities. Obviously this gave rest to the people, but it also gave rest to the land, so that the land could recover and come back to a state of relative wildness before being worked again.
Even more important than the sabbath year in Israel was the “year of jubilee.” You know how when your phone freezes up and nothing can fix it, you sometimes have to “reset to factory settings”? When you do this, everything in your phone is wiped, and when you turn it on, it’s just like it was when you first bought it.
The year of jubilee was basically a “reset to factory settings” for the entire society. For forty-nine years, everything would be normal: life would go on, business would be conducted. But on the fiftieth year, all property purchased during that time would be returned to its original owner or family. All debts were cancelled. All slaves were released. The goal here was to prevent abuse and exploitation of the needy: if you came under hard times, it’s not a death sentence, because at the end of this forty-nine-year period, you or your family would get back much of what you had lost.
Notice how everything about rest in the Israelite society happens in groups of seven. The Israelites rested on the seventh day of the week. The land rested every seventh year. In the year of jubilee (after seven cycles of sabbatical years), all property was returned to the original owners, all slaves were released, all debts were cancelled, and the land was, again, left to rest.
And that is why we see all of these multiples of seven in Gabriel’s message. These seventy “sevens” would have immediately brought one word to Daniel’s mind, and that word is REST.
What Is the Goal?
The second question we have to ask ourselves is, “What is the goal of the seventy weeks’ vision?”
Even though Gabriel mentions a lot of things which happen in v. 25-27, he gives the goal in v. 24—and in fact, he doesn’t give one goal, but six.
“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.”
Now before we get into what all these things mean, we have to take a step back and see that the goal here are much greater than simply releasing the people of God from exile in Babylon. Gabriel talks about putting an end to sin. About atoning for iniquity. Bringing in everlasting righteousness.
These are massive, cosmic goals. These goals don’t just apply to the people of Israel, but to all people.
So we see in v. 24 that while Gabriel is definitely giving hope to God’s people in exile in Babylon—that their exile will soon come to an end, and that Jerusalem will be rebuilt—he is actually describing the solution to a much greater exile: the exile of all people from the presence of God because of our rebellion against him, because of our “sin.”
And the release from this exile came through the “anointed one”, who was to be “cut off” for his people—Jesus Christ.
In Christ, God finished the transgression; he put an end to sin—that is, he put an end to its destructive power. No sin can prevent the gospel of Jesus Christ from going out and making disciples of all the nations.
In Christ, God atoned for iniquity. This means that where we could not make amends for our sins, God made amends for us: he placed our sin on his Son Jesus Christ, who suffered and died in our place. He took our punishment, so that we wouldn’t have to.
In Christ, God brought in everlasting righteousness. Christ lived an entirely sinless life and gave that righteousness to his people. It is because of his righteousness that we are reconciled with God, for now and forever.
In Christ, God sealed both vision and prophet. So many people are constantly waiting for God to speak to them; they’re waiting for a “new word” from God.
The prophets spoke on behalf of God to prepare the people for the coming of God’s Messiah. And in Christ, this season of preparation, of foreshadowing, of types and shadows, came to an end. We no longer need a “new word” from God, we just need help from his Spirit to understand and embrace how God has already accomplished his Word in Christ.
And in Christ, God anointed a most holy place. God publicly declared Jesus his beloved Son, and the Spirit visibly descended on him, at his baptism. If we are united to God, it is in Christ, who entered once for all into the most holy place through his own sacrifice (cf. Hebrews 9.11-13).
You see, in Jesus Christ, the goal of these seventy weeks is fulfilled. Everything the Old Testament had been pointing to was brought out into the open.
In Luke 4.16-20, we find Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth, on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read, and was handed the scroll which contained the book of Isaiah. Jesus unrolled the scroll and he read Isaiah 61.1-2 (Luke 4.18):
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
What Isaiah described was the ultimate Jubilee. The ultimate release. The ultimate rest. The ultimate restoration. The ultimate redemption. No longer merely tied up in land and property, but rest for our souls, freedom from everything which makes us less than human today.
And Jesus tells the people in the synagogue (v. 21), “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The coming of Christ was the inauguration of the ultimate jubilee, the beginning of eternal rest, for God’s people.
Hope in Exile
Gabriel’s message to Daniel was a message of profound hope: your exile is soon over, and rest is coming. God’s people had pleaded and waited for such a release for almost seventy years, and they would soon get it.
But as we’ve seen, that rest was never ultimate. More wars came. More foreign occupations. More desecrations of the temple. And finally, the end of the temple itself in A.D. 70. If the hope God extended here was merely for exiles in Babylon, it would have been a much smaller thing.
But the hope Gabriel extends to Daniel is not merely for the exiles in Babylon, but for us—for all humanity, exiled from the presence of God because of our sin. And the answer to that exile is rest in Jesus Christ.
Being a pastor is a strange experience. It definitely doesn’t make you holier than anyone else, or better equipped to live the Christian life. But it does give you a unique vantage point. I’m often one of the first people to hear about a friend or brother or sister coming to know Christ, or to visit a new baby in the hospital (outside of Covid-world, that is). I often have the best seat in the house for weddings—right in front of the bride and groom as they kiss.
But I’m also usually one of the first to know about the ravages sin can wreak on our lives. I’m one of the first to be informed of an abusive relationship, or a dangerous addiction, or a decision to simply walk away from the faith.
There are times when you see more of these painful situations than the good ones. And in those times, the main thing I feel is just weariness. I told Loanne the other day that sometimes it feels like these situations, this collateral damage that comes from sin, just drains you of life, from the inside out.
I’m not the only one who knows what this is like. I know you do too. We have all felt this in one way or another, and if you haven’t, then you definitely will. Living in a world broken by sin, fighting to put your own sin to death, experiencing pain because of the sins of other people, is exhausting. There are days when merely lifting your head feels like a struggle.
So it should be no surprise that when God describes his solution to the problem of sin, he so often describes it in terms of rest. He gives his people the Sabbath, to understand why physical rest is important, and to highlight our need for a much greater rest to come. And he gives us his Son, who told us to come to him if we are weary, to find rest for our souls. He tells us to take his yoke on ourselves, and learn from him, and we will find rest because his yoke is easy, and his burden is light (Matthew 11.28-30).
This sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not—taking his burden on ourselves means living in such a way that sin is little by little put to death in our lives. The source of our exhaustion is slowly smothered. So as we carry his burden, we find ourselves becoming lighter and lighter, more and more awake, more and more alive.
God has a plan to bring about salvation for his people and judgment for his enemies, which he announced through Gabriel in this prophecy. And his plan is Jesus Christ, who gives us rest, and walks with us toward the ultimate Jubilee, which is no longer merely tied up in land and property. He walks with us and ensures for us a rest and a freedom from everything which makes us less than human today.
So if you don’t know him today, come to him and rest. Trust in his work for you. Repent of your sin which is killing you, and place your faith in Jesus Christ, who takes that sin away.
And if you do know him, but you feel burdened by your sins or the sin of others, weary from carrying such a heavy load, then stop carrying it. Jesus already carried it for you. Don’t look at the sin in and around you; look at the future end of that sin. And rest in what you see.
