Disciples and the Church

Disciples and the Church

(Ephesians 3.8-11, 4.1-16)

Jason Procopio

There are a lot of people out today, at our weekend retreat, but they’re actually joining us via streaming. So even if they’re not physically with us here, they’re worshiping with us there. (A big thank you, by the way to those of you who were at the retreat and who came back this morning to help out here.)

This weekend we had the joy of hearing from Philip Moore, my old boss and my mentor for years now. Philip took us through Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, helping us understand discipleship. And we’re going to be staying in this subject, and other writings of Paul, today and next week, before starting our annual Advent series. (There’s probably going to be some overlap with what Philip said, so if you were at the retreat, good news: you’ll get the chance to go over these things again and again over the next two weeks.)

When we talk about discipleship, we’re talking about what it means to be a disciple of Christ, a follower of Christ. As Philip told us, a disciple of Jesus Christ is someone who observes all he commanded us. And discipleship is the process of learning to do that. So that’s what we’ll be talking about the next two weeks.

But before we get started I'd like to share a little bit of my own story with you.

About a year after we got married, Loanne and I moved to France—she was coming home, I was setting off on my first “adventure” in Europe. We were both very young Christians when we arrived. We landed in a small town in Normandy, we got jobs, and we found a little local church where we served as best we could.

The pastor of this church was well-intentioned and he liked me, so he started giving me responsibilities in the church, even though I knew practically nothing about my Bible outside of the stories I’d heard growing up. I did that for a few months, until I confessed that I felt ill-equipped—not just for responsibilities in the church, but for anything. I was realizing (through a series of personal difficulties) that I just didn’t know how to live the Christian life. So I asked him for help.

He said I should go to Bible school. 

I did that for a year, in a little charismatic institute he suggested, which was clearly designed to teach Christians the main points of charismatic doctrine, but which taught very little of the Bible itself.

So when that didn’t prove very helpful, I turned to the only other resource I knew: the Internet.

I started listening to sermons and conference lectures and online courses to help me understand how to read the Bible faithfully, and to know what the Bible says.

God was gracious: he helped me grow during this time. But pretty quickly I realized what I was missing. And it wasn’t resources or training or teaching. It was the church.

When I went to see my pastor, wanting to grow in my knowledge of the Bible he directed me outside the church. I don’t think he was malicious in that suggestion (I think that’s all he knew), but the reality was that my growth in the knowledge of the Word of God, my growth in Christian maturity, was being outsourced to structures outside the church that weren’t remotely equipped to bring about that growth.

And often, that’s how we think about our Christian lives. We each grow on our own, with the resources we manage to find ourselves, and we imagine that it’s sufficient.

But according to the Bible, that’s not how it works.

So I’ll invite you to get a Bible and to turn to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in chapter 3. (We’re going to camp out in chapters 3 and 4 today.) 

Today we’re going to lay a foundation for discipleship, by looking at why the church exists—what is the goal of the church?

And then we’re going to look at how God plans to achieve that goal.

the goal of the church (Ephesians 3.8-10)

Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians to encourage them in their work for the gospel. This was a church Paul knew well, because it was a church that he planted; he lived and worked in this church for many years.

We’re going to start reading at Ephesians 3.8:

8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Real quickly: this “mystery” he’s talking about is what he’s spent the first two chapters of the letter explaining. The mystery that is revealed now is God’s plan to save his people by sending his Son to be the sacrifice for their sins. It’s a mystery, not because he’s never spoken about it (he revealed a lot of this plan through the prophets), but because he fully revealed his plan in the person of Jesus Christ.

So why did he do it?

10 …so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 

Paul talks about rulers and authorities in the heavenly places—what that means is, basically, angels and demons. He says it this way because occult practices were a big deal in Ephesus at the time, so he knew that image would be particularly pertinent for them. 

But that image is a stand-in to talk about not just our world, but every world in every galaxy, in every realm of existence. 

So to put it simply: God’s goal in everything he does in this world is to teach the universe who he is. He wants the universe to see his wisdom, and his power.

And his plan for doing that sounds absolutely insane to me.

He plans to do teach the universe about his wisdom and power through the church.

What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

If you have spent any time in church, you can see why that sounds nuts. The church is, and has always been, messed up. People don’t agree on things, they use religion as a means for abusing others, they get focused on really unimportant matters and all the while forget to do simple things like loving one another.

The church, on its own, is no better than any other group of people who get together for a common goal. 

And that’s kind of the point. 

God’s plan is to take a group of very imperfect people, who have the same struggles and problems as everyone else, and to transform them together into something better.

And that’s what he’s been explaining since the beginning of the letter.

Chapter 1: God saves his people through his sovereign grace alone: we—and what we do—are hardly mentioned. It’s God who saves, from beginning to end.

Chapter 2: The Holy Spirit takes the dead people we were and brings us to life together with God, so that we might do the good works he’s prepared beforehand for us. And at the end of that chapter, he explains the community aspect of this work: how God opened his promises to all the nations of the earth, although he’d initially given those promises to a specific people, the people of Israel. And he has united us to one another under the umbrella of those promises.

God’s plan for the church is to take these imperfect people we are and transforme us together, as a family, into something better.

Now before we get into what that looks like, think about the reasons why people typically come to church. We want to maintain a certain tradition, or avoid conflict in the family, or have an “experience” with God…

On our own, we almost always come to church for reasons that are centered around ourselves.

But coming to church will never make sense if we’re doing it mainly for ourselves. In the Bible, you cannot separate your individual faith from the collective body of the church.

You cannot live your Christian faith in isolation from the community of the church.

ministry and the church (Ephesians 4.1-11)

So with that idea in mind, let's see how God plans to display his wisdom to the universe, in the context of the local church. 

Ephesians 4, starting at v.1:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  

In case it’s not clear for you, Christianity is not remotely individualistic. 

Now by that I don’t mean that Christ didn’t save us individually. Christ didn’t just save a faceless mass of people—he saved me. I am an individual human being, I can’t be anything else. And Christ saved me. He knows my name. He knows my face. He knows my fears and desires and tendencies. He died for me.

That is gloriously true, and we don’t want to take away from that. 

But the problem is that in our highly individualistic society, we’re taught, “Whatever I want is what’s good. Whatever I need is what’s most important. Whatever I feel is what is most true about me.”

So naturally, we take that highly individualistic mindset that’s been built into us, and we transplant that into our faith. If I come to Christ, I come for me. I come for what he can do for me.

But there is one body. One Spirit. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  

Or to put it another way, any time I spend time thinking about my faith in Christ, I should be thinking about our faith in Christ.

V. 7:  

7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says, 

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, 

and he gave gifts to men.” 

9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

Verses 8-10 are sort of a weird aside, and depending on the translation you’re reading, they may even be in parentheses, because many people will read those verses as being a bit off topic. But in fact, it’s not off-topic at all.

In v. 8-10, he’s talking about the incarnation and the ascension. Christ became a man—he descended to earth and was incarnated in a human body—and in that body, he fulfilled his ministry. And after all that was complete, he ascended back to the right hand of his Father, where he now holds all power and authority over the earth he created. And because he has that authority, he establishes specific people in specific roles of responsibility in his church.

V. 11:

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers… 

Stop there for a minute. 

That’s not an exhaustive list of everything that could be called a ministry. He gives this list as a kind of representative list—these are the main ministries we see in the New Testament, standing in for all the others.

And they all have the same goal. They don’t use the same means to get there, but they all have the same goal. 

What’s the goal? V. 11 again:  

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ… 

Do you see it? 

He says that these ministries exist, not so that pastors do all the work of building up the body of Christ, but to equip the saints—ordinary Christians—for the work of ministry, and so that these ordinary Christians might build up the church.

In case that’s not clear: the apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors are not the ones who build up the church—or at least, we don’t do it alone. My job as a pastor is not to do the work of ministry. My job as a CHRISTIAN is to do the work of ministry, because that’s what all Christians are called to do. But that’s not my job as a pastor.

My job as a pastor is to train you to do that.

I am not responsible for building up the church: WE, the saints, are responsible for building up the church.

Now just real quickly, think about how this reality changes the way we think about what happens when we come to church. 

What do we do when we come to church?

We pray. We sing some songs. We listen to a sermon. We try not to fall asleep during that sermon. We take communion.

When service is over, we hang out a while, have some pleasant conversations, have some lunch, and then leave.

The simplicity of what I just described would be totally shaken up if we realized that every time we come together, we are engaging in the work of ministry—we are not just “coming to church.”

Think what that would change, simply in the conversations we have together.

If, when we gather together, we are not coming merely for ourselves, but to engage in the work of ministry, in every conversation we have, we’re not just thinking about the next ten or fifteen minutes. We’re not just thinking about the end of this discussion.

We’re thinking about the rest of this brother or sister’s life.

It’s no secret—just look around—that our church is filled with people who are mostly aged 20-30. One great thing about pastoring a church full of young people is that they are so enthusiastic, and so energetic, that it’s easy to get them motivated. 

But every time I get up to preach, I’m not thinking about getting you motivated. I’m thinking about giving you what you’ll need to stay motivated, when you aren’t young anymore.

This is often hard for young people to grasp, so you’ll just have to trust me: you’re going to get old. Your friends are going to get old. And you’re going to suffer along the way. That’s just life.

And—please hear this—if you’re getting through your Christian life on youthful enthusiasm alone, then you will almost definitely crash and burn somewhere between age 30 and age 50. 

So when you speak with anyone—believer or not—if you know the goal is building up the body of Christ, you’re not just thinking about the next few minutes. You’re thinking about what needs to happen in this person’s life to not just bring them to faith, but to keep them faithful over the long haul.

And the Bible’s means of keeping us faithful is the church.

So what does that look like? What does it look like to build up the body of Christ?

Or to put it differently, when we gather together as a body for worship, or when we spend time with other Christians, what are we working toward?

the growth of the church (v. 12-16)

Paul tells us in v. 13-16. 

…he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God...

So the first thing we’re working toward is unity.

Apparently, there was a lot of diversity in the church in Ephesus. That’s what we see in chapter 2: he speaks about how we have been united to one another, despite our differences. (This clearly applies to our church, where we have an enormous diversity of backgrounds and nationalities.)

God saved us all the same way (1.1-2.10), and we are all fellow heirs with Christ (2.11-22). We are all one body.

That’s the unity he spoke of earlier, in v. 4; and now, he qualifies that unity. He says that we are united, first, by our common faith. It’s not my faith and your faith—it’s our faith.

How many of us actually take the time to realize that we are united to our brothers and sisters by our common faith in Christ—united in a way that makes our actual blood relationships pale in comparison? 

If you are married, you are united to your spouse by marriage, and that’s wonderful. But there is a unity between the two of you that is much greater than the unity of marriage. You will be married until one of you dies; you’ll be brother and sister in Christ forever.

And that unity also exists with every man, woman or child who has come to faith in Christ.

How often does that factor into our thinking when we’re speaking with another Christian? How often do we realize that every conversation we have with another believer is a conversation with someone to whom we will be united for the rest of eternity? What would that change about the way we speak to each other?

As crazy as it seems, we are united, forever, by a common faith, and, secondly, by a common knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ.

We have the same faith in the same Savior. If you don’t know Christ, then you can’t possibly have faith in him. When he saved us, the Holy Spirit essentially opened our eyes to see Jesus clearly. We realized that we were sinners, that we need a Savior, and that Jesus Christ is that Savior. Our faith has a name, and a focus: Jesus Christ.

But here’s the thing: Paul doesn’t describe this unity as something which is finished—as if we could say, “Okay, we’re united, so we can move on to something else now.” He describes it more as a process: until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…

In other words, we need to work at the unity which exists between us. We have to constantly come back to the basis of our unity, until the day when Christ returns, when we can say that we have all arrived to the same measure of faith, to the same knowledge of Jesus Christ.

And that takes time. Time we have to spend working at our faith together, and helping one another discover Christ. Those who know him well help those who know him less to know him better. And even those who know him well, as they speak with their younger brothers and sisters about what Christ is doing in their lives, will discover new facets of his person and his work.

So the first thing we are called to work at together is our unity: the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

The second thing we’re called to work at it the maturity of the body of Christ.

13c …to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

It is an almost universal truth: young people are easily swayed, and easily distracted. (Show of hands if you've looked at your phone during this sermon. You see?) When you reach a certain age, even if what you believe is absolute nonsense, at the very least, you are stable in that nonsense. After a certain age, you know what’s important for you, and where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there. Maturity in life means stability, even if it’s stability in folly.

And in the same way, spiritual maturity means spiritual stability. When you are spiritually mature, you're not just set in your ways; your ways are built on the solid foundation of the truth we find in Scripture, and we are set in those ways. We won’t be diverted by clever arguments or deceitful rhetoric—we are not tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. We are stable in the truth. We are no longer children.

And not only do we, individually, grow to spiritual maturity, but the whole body, together, grows to maturity as a body. 

My daughter Zadie is almost eighteen months old. She’s adorable.

She wobbles around on her little body—two tiny legs, a great big head. If she stops too fast, she’ll just keel right over: the force of gravity on that head is too great for her body to resist.

But as children grow, their proportions balance out. The body becomes stronger. The legs are able to stay under that head.

That’s the image Paul gives here. Just as our bodies grow, the church grows, and each individual member grows in the body, and each member grows to help stabilize the others.

We have different parts of the body, which serve different functions, but which serve those functions so that all the other parts might serve and grow correctly. If one part of the body disappears, or doesn’t serve as it should, that will inevitably have an impact on all the other parts.

Have you ever had an infected toenail? A toenail is a tiny part of the body, and honestly it’s hard to see what good it does. But when it’s infected, take my word for it—your whole body takes a hit. 

We are all members of his body, and the way we live our lives in Christ has an impact on our brothers and sisters. Your sin doesn’t just hurt you; it hurts your brothers and sisters too, even though they may never realize it. And by the same token, when you grow in the body, the other members of the body are better able to grow as well.

But we don't grow randomly. We grow up into Christ, who is the head of this body, and we draw our growth from Christ.

Our own growth, and our growth in the body, has one source, and one goal: Jesus Christ. A mature Christian community, is a community in which every member clearly sees Christ as he is revealed in Scripture, and can say without hesitation that Christ is everything for them. The source and the goal. The end and the beginning.

I’m sure you know this, but most of you probably don’t believer it: you’re going to get old. You’re going to suffer. You’ going to be crushed by the weight of the experiences life throws at us.

And I honestly don’t know how you’ll ever weather the trials that will come your way if Jesus isn’t enough for you. 

And Christ will never be enough for you if you aren’t growing together to be like him. If you aren’t growing together to the measure of the stature of Christ’s fullness. Christ is the measure of our maturity. He is the standard which we are all aiming for.

And we grow toward the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ together. We are one body.

So when we come to church, we are not coming to spend a private moment with God. We are entering once again into the working of a body in which every part depends on every other part, so that the whole body grows together towards the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, and towards the maturity which the body was designed for.

Brothers and sisters, that is how God plans to make his manifold wisdom known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Once again, it is not my job (as your pastor) to bring you all to unity and to maturity. That is your job. You are called to do this together. (And I am too, not as your pastor, but as your brother.)

So to close I’d encourage you to think and pray about two specific things.

Firstly, examine your own implication in your local church. If you come here regularly, examine your own implication in this church. 

Do you go to church, or do you belong to your church? Do you know to whom you are accountable? Do you know for whom you are called to care? Are you a part of the body, or do you occasionally visit the body?

Listen, I know it’s hard. I know there are a lot of things fighting for your attention. But you have to realize that you need the body of Christ.

Thursday night the folks in our community group were thanking Loanne and me because we often have people from the church at our place; they were thanking us for our hospitality.

But we told them that honestly, we don’t invite people from the church to our place mainly for them; we do it for us. Because it’s for this body that we were created. God didn’t create us so that we could get married and start a family. He created us so that we might live in his body, be a part of his family.

God did not design you to live for him outside of the body. He doesn’t save people, he saves A people. 

So give yourself to your church, however big or small it may be; be a member of that local body. And make it your goal, in everything you do, to build up the body of Christ, because that is why Christ saved you.

Secondly, examine the way you think about what you do when you come together to worship on Sunday, or when you spend time with your brothers and sisters in Christ. 

What needs to change about the way you interact with one another, the way you come to church, the way you go about a simple meal, when you realize that it is your job to do the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ?

Here’s a challenge for you. (It’ll be impossible to do perfectly, because we’re forgetful, but it deserves our best effort.) Try to never have a conversation with another believer without thinking about, and praying for, the next fifty years. Try to never have an interaction with another Christian without realizing you’ll be seeing that face for all eternity, and that you are committed to that person, in Christ, for the rest of your life.

What is the church to you? And what are you to the church?

These are the questions Paul answers in this text. And if you plan on staying in church—any church—these are the questions you need to ask yourselves. And you need to be ready to give answers.

But there’s one final question: how does all of this work itself out in our day-to-day lives?

And that’s the question we’ll be tackling next week.

Disciples in the Church

Disciples in the Church (2 Tim. 3)

Jason Procopio

We’re taking a break from the gospel of Luke for a couple of months; next week we’ll be entering our annual Advent series.

We had a two-week gap between the two, and so we decided to stay in the theme for our church retreat last week and see how the Bible would have us pursue being disciples of Christ. 

Last week we saw that fundamentally, we cannot be disciples of Christ without the church: we need the church to be effective disciples of Christ.

It is by the church that God plans to show the universe his manifold wisdom, and he will do it through giving us the power to work together towards the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and towards maturity as the body of Christ. That’s what we saw last week.

That’s what we mean when we speak of discipleship—it’s the process of learning to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.

But it’s sometimes difficult to know what that looks like in practice.

So to see that, we’re going to make our way through 2 Timothy chapter 3.

False Discipleship in the Church (v. 1-9)

At the time Timothy receives this letter, he is the young pastor of the church in Ephesus. (So Timothy is now the pastor of the church to whom Paul was writing in the letter we looked at last week.) They were very close: Timothy was Paul’s protégé, and Paul had left him in Ephesus to care for the church he had planted.

Paul is in prison when he writes this letter, and clearly he anticipates that his death will come soon. So this, for all intents and purposes, is his goodbye letter to his young brother in Christ: his final exhortation to keep the faith and to minister faithfully.

In chapters 1 and 2 Paul exhorts Timothy to guard the deposit of the faith which has been entrusted to him. He encourages Timothy to live faithfully for Christ and to transmit that faithfulness to his church.

And then, in chapter 3 he makes a bit of a turn. He warns Timothy of the danger ahead of him in the church (which has already begun to make itself apparent), and he tells Timothy what to do in response to that danger.

The danger in question is that of false discipleship. 

Let’s read starting at v. 1.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 

There’s something that we can miss if we skim over these first verses too quickly, but I’ll confess that the first time I saw this, it shook me.

In v. 2-4 Paul describes the kind of people who will start showing up in the church, and he makes quite a list. Self-centered, greedy, arrogant, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, no self-control, and so on. He describes everything that none of us want to be. 

But here’s the surprising thing: these self-centered, proud, arrogant, abusive, slanderous, unholy, brutal people…have the appearance of godliness (v. 5). You would think that with the kind of list he describes before, these people would be easy to spot, because Christians aren’t supposed to act that way. Surely if there are people this corrupt in the church, you could see them coming a mile away.

But no—Paul says they have the appearance of godliness. These verses alone should disabuse us of the moralistic gospel so many of us have grown up hearing: “Do these things, don’t do these things, and God will be pleased with you.” 

Clearly it doesn’t work that way, because these people were doing everything right—at least on the outside—but were still suffering from broken, twisted hearts. They had the appearance of godliness, but lacked the power of godliness, which is rooted not in right behavior, but in hearts transformed by the Holy Spirit.

In everything Paul has just listed, he is not talking about patterns of behavior which are readily apparent, but dispositions of the heart which can be easily hidden. 

But as unsettling as that reality is, it’s not the main point Paul is trying to make here. 

The main point, which he will get to in due course, is what he says at the end of v. 5: these people have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power. 

What is the power of godliness? It is the working of God in and through the lives of his people. For there to be power in godliness, and not just the appearance of godliness, you need two things: you need the Holy Spirit working in you, and you need obedience working out of you. 

Paul’s going to come back to this later, but for now he wants Timothy to see what happens when you don’t have that. What do you get when you have people in a church who seem to be good, solid Christians, but who have not actually been transformed by the Holy Spirit? You get false discipleship.

V. 6: 

6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. 

Now just to clear up a misconception real quickly: Paul is not saying that women are more easily led astray than men. Anyone who’s ever known a godly woman knows that’s not true. More than likely, Paul is almost certainly responding to an actual recurring problem in the church in Ephesus, in which men who fill the bill he described in v. 1-5 preyed on those who would be easy targets in that culture.

His point here isn’t whom they are targeting; he wants to reveal the deeper truth in what they are doing.

First of all, they are looking for easy prey. These women are burdened by sin, and they are led by their own sinful desires. They are always learning, and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 

So often people think, If I can learn the right thing, if I can figure these things out, then I’ll love God more and I’ll be able to live for him. So they’ll read books, and they’ll listen to sermons, and they’ll even go to Bible school… They’ll do all these good things, and never realize that their problem is not in what they know, but in what they want. 

It’s so important to see this: because they are burdened by their sin, and led astray by their own sinful desires, they are always learning, and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Now matter how smart these people seem to be, they are led by their gut, and their heads follow suit.

And this is true for all of us.

What we know—what we do with the things we learn—is led by what we desire. No matter what evidence we have in front of us, if we want to see something different, we will see something different. If we desire sin more than the truth, no matter how brilliant we are, we will remain totally ignorant concerning the things that actually matter—we will be, as these men and women are, corrupted in mind.

Let me give you a really quick and concrete example of what this might look like in practice. Take the example of sex. The Bible tells us that there is one proper framework, not just for sexual intercourse, but for any activity that you could characterize as sexual in nature—and that is marriage between a man and a woman. 

Now, many people aren’t aware of this when they meet Christ, so they keep on doing what they’ve been doing because they don’t know any better, and the culture sells sex as something that should be totally open and free. 

But many unmarried Christians, who know perfectly well what the Bible says about sex, still find themselves playing games with it, asking questions like, “Well, where’s the line? Can we do this? Can we do this? It’s not intercourse; it’s not oral sex; so it must be okay, right?” 

The Bible’s answer is obvious: no! God created sexuality for marriage, as a gift for marriage, and as an expression of the intimacy of the union between Christ and his church. (We saw this in our series on sex last summer.) And if we know our Bibles, and think about it for two seconds, we know perfectly well, not only what is acceptable, but what is wise for our holiness. If we think about it even for a moment, we’ll know that being together on a sofa in an empty apartment is probably not going to be helpful in maintaining our purity.

But here’s the thing. When we’re with someone to whom we’re attracted, with whom we’d like to share that intimacy, everything we know goes out the window. Our brains totally shut down. We put ourselves in situations in which sexual activity outside of marriage is possible, and because we want it, we give ourselves latitude to play all kinds of crazy games, to make what the Bible clearly says is unacceptable seem like not such a big deal.

When we allow ourselves to be led, not by the Word of God, but by our own sinful desires, we oppose the truth of the Word, and we find our minds corrupted. Not because we don’t know any better, but because at that moment, we don’t want to accept what the truth is telling us.

And the danger is that, no matter if the context is sex or money or power or false ideology or whatever, if we let this opposition to the truth continue, we may find that our faith was a sham, and find ourselves disqualified concerning the faith. 

That’s what’s happening here.

These men are looking for easy prey, and they are exploiting the weakness of these women—their own sinful desires. We don’t know exactly what they’re doing or how they're doing it, but it’s definitely shady: Paul says they creep into households and capture these women. In other words, they see a weak spot which they themselves could benefit from, and they exploit it. 

Here’s the point.

If we Christians do not do the work of discipleship, someone else will do it for us. If we, as a church, are not in each other’s lives and homes, helping one another to grow in a knowledge of Christ, out of a sincere desire to glorify God and know him as he has revealed himself in Scripture, someone else will come into our homes and lives and lead us away from Christ. (The Internet does an incredible job at false discipleship.)

That’s what Timothy has already been seeing in his church, from all appearances. That’s what he’s up against: the false discipleship of people who say they know Christ, but who have no desire for Christ, so end up opposing the truth and leading people away from Christ.

And this danger is present in every single church which has ever existed.

So if that’s what will happen if we do nothing, what can we do to counteract it?

The good news is that we can—Paul’s not pessimistic about this. Notice he says in v. 9: But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all… He’s realistic about what’s going on, but he’s not worried.

And he’s not worried because true discipleship, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is more powerful than false discipleship.

True Discipleship in the Church (v. 10-15)

And there are two main domains in which this true discipleship plays itself out.

The first domain in which discipleship plays out is our lives with other Christians. Paul explains this by speaking of his own experience with Timothy.

V. 10:

10 You, however, have followed my teaching...

Now let’s stop there for a second. We need to recognize that, especially in our connected age, most Christians stop right here.

We live in a really great period in history. Bad teaching abounds, absolutely, but so does good teaching. Christians will listen to sermons (at church and online), they’ll listen to podcasts, they’ll read blogs, they’ll listen to conference messages. We have a wealth of good teaching at our disposal, and many Christians make the most of it. And that’s good. 

Timothy spent years hearing Paul teach and preach. And Timothy learned well. He took that teaching to heart. He learned it so well, in fact, that he became able to teach it to others. Right teaching is essential to growth in Christian maturity.

But it cannot stop there.

How many Christians have spent countless hours listening to wonderful truths in the faithful teaching of the Word…and found themselves still unable to conquer their sin, or to grow in their affection for Christ? How many Christians spend hours consuming right teaching, but remain, for all intents and purposes, unchanged?

Let me put this as bluntly as I possibly can, because I love you.

For some of you, your passion for faithful Bible teaching amounts to little more than a stimulating hobby. You love it because it’s interesting, but you find yourself perplexed as to why, for all the time you spend exposed to faithful preaching of the Word, you still love John Piper more than Jesus.

I’ll tell you why: because as essential as right teaching is, teaching alone is not enough. What we learn must be lived. And if we are to live it, we need more than our ears and our brains.

And thankfully, the teaching of Paul is not the only thing Timothy followed.

V. 10 again:

10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. 12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

So you see: Timothy didn’t just learn from listening to what Paul said; he learned from watching what it looked like for Paul to live out his faith.

Timothy and Paul spent a lot of time together, both in and out of ministry contexts. He heard him teaching—both in the church and one-to-one—and he saw him in action.

He saw his behavior. He saw when Paul lived what he believed, and he surely saw Paul repent when he failed.

He saw his single-minded passion for the gospel and for other believers. (He saw his tears as he said his goodbyes in Ephesus, cf. Acts 20.17-38.)

He saw Paul’s faith to believe in this incredible gospel despite hardship.

He saw his patience with slow believers.

He saw his love for the brothers and sisters under his care.

He saw everything Paul suffered for the gospel—at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra—and how he persevered in the midst of that suffering.

Now, the question is, what might that look like today?

One way to begin is through what we call discipleship groups. We encourage people in our community groups to get together with other people of the same sex in their group to form a discipleship group—a group of three or four people who will meet regularly to read the Bible and pray together.

Again, we all need this. We all need to read our Bibles with one another. We all need to take time to not only listen to the Word preached, but to actually walk through the text with another Christian, to help us learn to read the Bible well. We all need people to whom we are accountable. This is an essential part of growing in our knowledge of the Word.

But while it’s a good start, discipleship groups cannot be the whole of our experience of discipleship.

If we’re reading the Bible together, but never get to see one another vulnerable, see one another suffering, see one another displaying patience in a stressful situation, see one another love despite opposition, then we are not seeing all we need to see.

Brothers and sisters, the church isn’t an organization; it’s a family. 

When you live in a family, necessarily you will see each other in these kinds of situations, and you’ll learn from each other. 

But the thing we so often forget is that if you don’t actually live under the same roof, this kind of “family discipleship” takes time, and effort, and intentional openness—in our homes, in our daily activities, in our schedules. It takes effort to make this happen—because in our connected society, it’s really easy to feel like we’re doing this, when we’re actually just sitting in front of our computer screens. 

So let’s get really specific.

One of the most precious things God has given to Loanne and me has been the family of Philip and Rachel Moore. When we were interning with Philip’s church before coming here, they invited us over on a regular basis: not to do a Bible study, or even to talk about anything specific, but just to be there. To hang out with them. To watch them doing ordinary things. To learn from how they spoke to one another. To learn from how they loved and disciplined their children. Just to observe what the Christian life looks like in an ordinary setting.

Mature Christians, you need to be inviting younger believers into your lives—and not just for a Bible study. They need to see what the Christian life looks like. You need to be inviting them into your lives, into your homes, to watch and participate in your life.

If you’re married, you need to invite them into your home, to be there during the time you spend with your spouse, and with your kids. 

If you’re single, you need to invite them into your home, to watch and participate in your life as your younger brothers and sisters.

They need to see you living well. And they need to see you repent when you fail.

Don’t just tell them about it: show them what it looks like.

And younger Christians: you need to be knocking on the doors of your older brothers and sisters, asking to be let in. Seriously—impose yourselves on us. Sometimes it may not be possible for us to get together at a given time, but we will commit to finding the time.

And it's not just so that you can watch us. Believe it or not, Christians who are mature in their faith need younger Christians too.

We actually saw an example of this very recently.

Yesterday we had a baptism service. What I'm about to say, I could say about more than one of the people who were baptized, but for one of them, baptism was actually a painful experience. He knew that his parents disagreed with him on this topic, and when he told them that he was going to get baptized, they said that if their son believed things that were in such sharp contrast with what they believed, then he shouldn’t live in their home anymore. From one day to the next, he had to move out.

Loanne and I had him over for dinner a couple days after this happened to talk it over, and he was obviously shaken. This was profoundly painful to him, because he loves his parents and didn’t want to hurt them. But at the same time, he felt convinced that this was what God called him to do, and stayed firm in his conviction.

Here’s why I mention this. Later that evening, in our community group, he shared his story again. And ALL of us got to see firsthand what perseverance in suffering looks like. We all got to see God’s grace to him, to give our suffering brother the strength to suffer well, and to remain obedient in spite of that suffering. We got to see it, and we all learned from it.

That’s what Paul is saying here. This is what discipleship looks like.

That’s what discipleship looks like in the body of the church. And for many people, that’s where it starts. 

But for some of us—and Lord willing, for more of us as time goes on—it will and should begin, not in the family of the church, but in our actual families, at home. And that’s the second domain of discipleship Paul mentions.

At the beginning of his letter, in chapter 1 verse 5, Paul mentions the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother. He says,  

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.

And now, in chapter 3 verse 14, he comes back to that heritage:

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 

Timothy is a young man who was raised in the faith. He grew up in the gospel. His grandmother and his mother were both Christians, and they shared their faith with Timothy. 

And what we don’t see Paul doing is giving Timothy the impression that his own discipleship of Timothy was more valuable than the discipleship of his mom and grandma.

That is simply incredible. This is the apostle Paul talking here— but even so, Paul never gives the impression that “Yeah, your mom was okay, but you really learned the faith from me.” He talks about Timothy’s childhood, and says, Remember from whom you learned the Scriptures. 

Parents (and those of you who hopefully will have kids one day), you need to know this: when your kids are young, the church is not the main vehicle for their discipleship. The home is.

Not because the family is holier than the church, but rather because we grow in holiness through experiencing the gospel lived out with other brothers and sisters; and nowhere is that more possible than in the family. Because you’re together, under the same roof, all the time.

So everything we said before about what young Christians need to see from more mature Christians applies first and foremost in the home.

Parents, you need to disciple your kids.

I know this kind of talk is frightening in our day, because many people in our society will fight vigorously to make sure this doesn’t happen; they’ll equate discipling your kids with intellectual child abuse.

So just to be clear: discipling your kids does not mean forcing them to be Christians, or brainwashing them into believing what you believe. That’s not faith, so it’s pointless to do that anyway.

They’re the ones who will have to choose, at the time of their choosing, what they believe and why concerning Jesus Christ.

But until that day, we have the responsibility to show them—not only by our words but by our acts and attitudes and transformed hearts—why following Jesus is worth it. We don’t try to convince them of anything; we try to show them, through our day-to-day lives living out the gospel, why Jesus is better, so that we won’t need to convince them, we won’t need to force them, but that they might be convinced by what they’ve grown up seeing in us.

So even if we must tell our kids what we believe, so that they can make a thoughtful choice when the time is right, it’s not enough to tell them.

We have to show them.

Your kids need to see your behavior. They need to see you live what you believe—in the most ordinary contexts, when you’re washing the dishes or getting ready for bed—and they need to see you repent when you fail. 

It is not the church’s job to disciple your children. It’s not the Sunday School teacher’s job, or the youth worker’s job, to disciple your children. It’s your job. (And dads, lead in this. Don’t pawn this responsibility off to other “dads”, and do not force your wives to shoulder this responsibility alone. Don’t count on a Paul to come in from the outside—be Paul for your kids.)

Now, really quickly, a word for singles and for single parents.

If you’re single—you’re not married and you don’t have kids—this kind of talk can be depressing, because for many of you, you dream of doing these things, but right now you can’t.

You still need to take these things to heart while you’re single, for two reasons. 

Firstly, because you are still our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we need help. Don’t assume that just because a person is married with children, that person doesn’t need what you have to give him. Parents need to be discipled too, and not just by other parents.

Secondly, as far as your own future family goes, take my word for it: if you're already clear on what kind of home the Bible calls you to have, before you get married, before you have kids, you will be much better equipped to actually do it when you have one.

And in the meantime, remember that our nuclear families—moms and dads and kids—are not eternal. Our family in Christ is eternal. So if you are not married, if you don’t have kids, no matter how much you want those things, in reality, you are lacking nothing which is essential. You already have the one family you actually need. So rather than spending your time lamenting the nuclear family you don’t have, pour yourself into the church family you do have.

One last thing: single parents. If you’re a single parent—and particularly a single mom, which is sadly more often the case—the weight of this burden can seem almost unbearable. How are you, one person, supposed to do something that two people are supposed to do together? 

Notice what we see in this letter. Paul talks about Timothy’s mother, he talks about Timothy’s grandmother…but he makes no mention of Timothy’s father. So more than likely, either Timothy’s father wasn’t a Christian, or he was simply absent.

Being a single parent in no way means that you can’t do this.

It’s more challenging, for sure—but when the ideal is lacking, God’s grace abounds all the more. The vacuum left by the father or mother that should be there is filled in other ways. It is filled first by the church—by the big brothers and big sisters who come along and help disciple our kids in ways we can’t. 

And ultimately, it is filled by the Holy Spirit—you don’t bring your children to faith; God brings your children to faith. All he asks of us is to obey him as faithfully as we can, to disciple our kids as faithfully as we can, and trust him to save our kids. We plant, we water, but God gives the growth. So you can do what he has called you to do, even in a less-than-ideal situation.

Now finally, what is the goal of all this? We’ve talked a lot about what discipleship looks like in the context of the church—but what's the endgame?

Paul has already said that Timothy learned Scripture from his mother and grandmother, and that this Scripture is able to make us wise for salvation in Jesus Christ. 

But Scripture doesn’t just bring us to salvation in Christ; it brings about growth in Christ, through the experience of living out the gospel in community.

The goal: Growth in the word (v. 16-17)

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 

This is the key passage for speaking about the divine inspiration of Scripture: it is the key text we turn to when we want to speak about the inerrancy of the Bible. And these verses absolutely do affirm that. 

But when we read these verses, we still very often make the one mistake we’re always warning against: we forget the context. The context of these famous verses is not that of preaching, but of discipleship: Paul’s discipleship of Timothy. It’s only following these transition verses that Paul turns to his charge that Timothy “preach the word” (4.2). 

So what do these two things—discipleship and the sufficiency of Scripture—have to do with each other?

Two things: firstly, these verses reassure us that we need nothing but the Word to disciple one another effectively. We don’t need a program. We don’t need a theology degree. We don’t need to be a pastor. Every man, woman and child can do this, because we have the Word, and the Word is enough.

Secondly, these verses remind us that this sufficient Word of God has to be lived.

After God revealed himself to his people through the law and the prophets, he revealed himself to us in Christ: God in the form of a human being, showing other human beings what it looks like to live out the Word of God in practice.

And after his ascension, he sent us his Spirit, to live in us, to make us new and to bring us into a body, in which we can live the Word of God in practice.

Human beings, living out the Word of God, showing other human beings what it looks like to live out the Word of God.

Discipleship is not a means to be more spiritual, or to feel more connected to other people, or to grow in life experience. Discipleship is a means by which we get to take the Word of God we know, and live it out together, in order to grow in it.

And if our discipleship is firmly based in the Word of God, which is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, then that discipleship in the Word will make us men and women of God—complete, equipped for every good work. 

Daniel 8

The Fruit of Hard Truths

(Daniel 8)

Jason Procopio

According to an old story, the preacher John Wesley was on his way down the road to a preaching engagement, and he was stopped by a stranger who recognized him. The stranger asked him what he would do—how he would live his life—if he knew that Christ was going to come back at noon tomorrow. 

It’s a good question. Most of us, if we knew Christ was coming back at noon tomorrow, would be beside ourselves with worry: “I have to clean up this area of my life, I have to speak with this person, I have to stop doing this and start doing this...” Because we don’t want Christ to come back and find us doing anything other than what we should be doing.

But that’s not how Wesley responded to the man’s question. Instead he reached into his pack, pulled out his diary, read out his appointments and engagements for the next twenty-four hours, then said, “That, dear sir, is what I would do.”

It takes an incredible amount of confidence in God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness to be that simply faithful, when faced with the idea that Christ could return tomorrow. And it takes an incredible vision of God’s sovereignty and goodness to already be doing what we should be doing, before the question is even asked.

It’s this kind of confidence in God’s sovereignty and goodness that the book of Daniel is meant to produce in us.

Last week we saw Daniel’s vision of the four beasts which represented the four kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, and of the little horn which seems to represent a type of Antichrist figure who pops up from time to time in the New Testament (though never by that name). We also saw this glorious picture of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, taking up his throne at his ascension, judging the fourth beast, and sharing his kingdom with his people.

Daniel 8 shows us something similar, but in a more concentrated way. Rather than deal with all of these four kingdoms again, it zooms in on two of them—Medo-Persia and Greece—and gives us many more details. So many more details, in fact, that many critics point to Daniel 8 as irrefutable proof that Daniel couldn’t have written this book, because his predictions are simply too accurate. (But, as we saw in one of our Connexion vous répond videos, Jesus himself saw Daniel’s prophecies as predictive prophecies spoken by God through Daniel, so we can certainly trust that Jesus is right.)

So we’re going to do something a little strange today. We’re going to start at the end before coming back to the beginning. I’d like to speak a little bit about the things that happened in Judah and Jerusalem after the time of Daniel, leading all the way up to about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, because when we know everything that happened after, both the vision and its interpretation makes a lot more sense.

Jerusalem After Daniel

You’ll know if you’ve followed this series from the beginning that the temple in Jerusalem was ransacked and nearly destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. He brought many exiles into Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his three friends. Daniel lived until the Jews were released by Cyrus (Darius) in 538 B.C.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Bible recount the return of the Jews from exile, and the work to rebuild the temple, which was completed in 516 B.C. Then Jerusalem’s walls were rebuilt and the city was rededicated to Yahweh (God) in 444 B.C. 

But during this time, Judah and Jerusalem were still under Persian control, and would be until Alexander the Great showed up. Alexander drove the Persians out of Judah, and the Greek Empire assumed control. Alexander promptly threatened to destroy the temple, because the Jews wouldn’t honor him as a deity. But he didn’t do it, and he died at a very young age in 333 B.C. 

Upon Alexander’s death, his kingdom was divided into four parts (as we saw last week). One of these parts, ruled over by the Ptolemies, took control of Judah and Jerusalem. (You’ve heard of Cleopatra? She was the last Ptolemaic ruler.) Thankfully, the Ptolemies didn’t care about Judah at all, so there was relative peace until 198 B.C., when the Seleucid king Antiochus III came to power.

Antiochus III was one of the most fervent defenders of Alexander’s legacy. And as such, he vowed to turn the Jerusalem temple into a Greek pantheon—he wants to Hellenize the Jews (that is, to force Greek culture onto them). The Jews, who refused to submit to such blasphemy, revolted against him. Their revolt failed, Antiochus III died, and soon after his death, his grandson, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, took the throne.

Antiochus IV immediately took up the project of Hellenizing the Jews. And he did it with unparalleled intensity. He demanded the Jews give up Jewish culture and worship in favor of Greek culture and worship. And the fallout of his demands were disastrous for the Jews.

Antiochus banned Sabbath observance and circumcision (the heart of Jewish worship). He ordered that a statue of Zeus be erected in the courtyard of the temple of Jerusalem. He ordered his priests to sacrifice pigs (an animal the Law of Moses considered unclean) on the same altar the Jews had made sacrifices to Yahweh.

It was a catastrophe. So what happened next isn’t that surprising.

One of the high priests, Mattathias, was ordered to sacrifice a pig on the altar. Mattathias refused, and actually killed the Seleucid priest who had given him the order. 

The Jews took his action as a rallying cry: they assembled behind Mattathias and his five sons, which led to the second revolt, which is usually called the Maccabean Wars.

One of these five sons was named Judas Maccabeus (who had the coolest nickname ever—“The Hammer”). He led the Jews to drive the Seleucids out of Jerusalem. After this, he oversaw the purification of the temple, and by 164 the altar is rebuilt and rededicated to Yahweh.

And it is this massive victory that the Jews celebrate today with the festival of Hanukkah.

These events are what Daniel sees in his vision in chapter 8, some 350 years before these events ever took place.

So with that backdrop in mind, there are two things we see particularly well in this chapter. Firstly, that God is sovereign over human history. (Remember what James Boice said: “[God] is able to foretell what will happen because he has determined what will happen and because he has the power to make it happen.”). And secondly, that God reveals his Word to us in order that we might live faithfully for him in human history.

The Ram and the Goat (v. 1-14)

Let’s see what Daniel saw in his vision, beginning at v. 1. 

1 In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. 2 And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. 3 I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. 4 I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. 

So Daniel’s vision centers around two central animals. Rather than the four beasts of chapter 7, he zooms in on two of them, and the symbols change. In this case, it is a ram and a goat instead of a bear and a leopard; but they nevertheless represent the two kingdoms those two animals represented: Medo-Persia and Greece. 

The Medo-Persian Empire (which would come to power a few years after Daniel saw this vision) is represented by a ram. This ram has two horns—Media and Persia—and one is longer than the other: Persia was stronger and more dominant. In addition to that, history makes it easy for us to know that this ram represents this empire: the Persians marched with rams at their forefront as they marched into battle. For a long while, the Medo-Persian Empire was the dominant empire in this part of the world.

That is, until Greece showed up. V. 5-8: 

5 As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. 

(I always feel the need to mention this, because it’s just too funny to miss: Greece is represented here by a unicorn. Yes, a unicorn: except the animal with “a conspicuous horn between his eyes” is a goat and not a horse, which makes it a lot funnier.)

6 He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. 7 I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. 8 Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. 

So no one thought Medo-Persia could be defeated until Greece showed up, and when Greece showed up, it came in like a tidal wave through the armies of Alexander the Great. Remember: Alexander died young (the great horn of v. 8 was broken), and upon his death Greece was divided into four kingdoms which would all continue to maintain Greek culture until Rome came on the scene—the four conspicuous horns which went toward the four winds of heaven, or “the four corners of the globe,” as they say.

V. 9-12: 

9 Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. 10 It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. 11 It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. 12 And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper.  

Everyone agrees that one of these horns was the Seleucids, out of whom came the “little horn”, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who set his sights not only on the people of Judah, but on the deity of Judah—the “Prince of the host” of v. 11. 

Antiochus had coins made upon which you can see his face and an inscription reading, “King Antiochus, God Manifest.” He erected a statue of Zeus in the courtyard of the temple, whose face was made to look like—you guessed it—Antiochus. He defiled the temple removing the sacrifices to Yahweh and by setting up the sacrifices of pigs to Zeus. 

In other words, he had challenged the God of the Jews, and it seemed—at least for a time—that he had succeeded.

V. 13-14:

13 Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” 14 And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.” 

Now usually in apocalyptic literature numbers are symbolic; but in this case, the numbers fit the reality of what actually happened. Daniel hears a discussion between what seems to be two angels. One of them asks how long this will be allowed to continue—how long will the worship of Yahweh be desecrated like this? The response: 2,300 evenings and mornings. 

Please allow me to nerd out for a minute, because this is incredible.

There has been some debate about what these 2,300 evenings and mornings refer to. At first glance, you might think that it’s a literal 2,300 days—almost seven years. And some have hypothesized that the nearly seven years here are the time between the death of the last Jewish high priest in 170 B.C. and the day when Judas Maccabeus restores sacrifices to Yahweh in the temple, in 164 B.C. It’s possible.

There’s another possibility I prefer. The angel asks how long the sanctuary will be given over, and the “host” (the court of heaven) be “trampled underfoot.” In other words, “How long will the glory of the heavenly God be mocked by pagan sacrifices offered in his temple?”

If that is indeed the context of the question, then the numbers come out differently, because there were two sacrifices offered for sin every day—one in the morning and one in the evening. In that case, the 2,300 evenings and mornings would refer to 2,300 sacrifices NOT offered to God—which would make up for a period half that long: 1,150 days, or three years and fifty-five days.

As it turns out, Antiochus defiled the temple in 167 B.C.  And Judas Maccabeus restored sacrifices to YHWH in the temple in 164 B.C.: just over three years later.

Either way, the precision we see here is astonishing.

But we shouldn’t get so caught up in the details that we miss the point: God has set a limit to the horn’s actions.

Again, he is sovereign—even over something as seemingly horrible as this. The little horn will be allowed to do this, but only for as long as God allows.

God Reveals the Interpretation (v. 15-27)

We can talk about this now because we are on this side of history—we know what happened after the time of Daniel. But Daniel himself had no idea what all this was about. He saw the vision like we do when we read it for the first time: a ram and a goat-unicorn and horns coming out and falling off and being broken.

So obviously, he wants to know what all this is about.

And God, in his mercy, grants his desire for understanding.

V. 15: 

15 When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. 16 And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” 17 So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.” 

Two things to see here.

Firstly, the angel God sends to explain his vision is none other than the angel Gabriel himself (whom many people, even outside the church, know about). 

Secondly, many people read the end of v. 17—when Gabriel says that the vision is for the time of the end—and think that he’s necessarily talking about the end of the world, the world as we know it, before the return of Christ. But given the context it is more likely that he’s talking about the end of the people and events prophesied in the vision.

I’m generally very suspicious of people who read apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible and easily match symbols with actual, living people. Even in the face of good evidence, it often seems like a big leap.

But in this case, we don’t even need to make the leap ourselves, because the Bible comes right out and tells us that the ram is a symbol for the kings of Media and Persia, and the goat is a symbol for the king of Greece. V. 18: 

18 And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. 19 He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. 20 As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. 21 And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. 

(That’s Alexander the Great.)

22 As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. 

(Remember: at Alexander’s death the kingdom was split into four separate and weaker kingdoms.)

23 And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. 

(That would be Antiochus IV Epiphanes.)

24 His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. 25 By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. 

(Desiring to be a god, he tricks himself into thinking he actually is a god.)

Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand. 

This is really interesting. Antiochus didn’t die in the Maccabean revolt. He didn’t die in war at all. He died unexpectedly of natural causes.

26 The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.” 

That’s an understatement. Daniel received this vision (v. 1) in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, which would have been around 550 B.C. Antiochus IV Epiphanes died in 164 B.C., the same year the Maccabean War ended. That’s almost four hundred years later.

God knows exactly what will happen in history because he is sovereign over history. He knows what will happen because he will bring it about.

God Reveals His Plans to His People

Now it would be so easy to look at a passage like this and say, “OK, Daniel gets a weird vision, God interprets that vision, and it comes true. Great...”, and then move on to other things. That’s what a lot of people do. Still others are actively put off by the strangeness they see here. They get frustrated that these kinds of things are in the Bible. 

And that reaction is far milder than the reaction Daniel himself had to his vision. V. 27: 

27 And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.  

If you have a hard time with texts like this, Daniel feels your pain.

But we have to remember that God was never obliged to communicate with us. He could very well have created human beings, then left us to our own devices and said, “Good luck.” 

But he didn’t do that. He spoke. Our God is a God who speaks to us. He spoke to the people of Israel through the law and the prophets; he spoke to the church through Jesus Christ and the apostles; and he still speaks to his church, through his Spirit applying his Word to our hearts. 

And in everything he says to us, he is honest with us. 

This text, and other texts like it, tell us three things about the truth God communicates in his Word. 

Firstly, because God is honest, the truth he communicates in his Word isn’t always what we want to hear. Difficult texts like this prove that God is honest with us. If he was dishonest he would simply tell us what we want to hear. He would give us easy-to-understand, easy-to-digest facts that we can easily integrate and apply to our vision of the world. 

But God doesn’t do that. He tells us what is true, not what we want to be true.

Daniel surely didn’t want to hear these things. This prophecy told him that a persecutor would come who would overthrow the temple, throw truth to the ground, and steal worship away from Yahweh. Hearing these things—especially without the historical context we have today—left Daniel sick for days, appalled by what he had seen. 

How many times have we felt this way? How many times have we read the Bible and seen in its pages the worst of what is inside of ourselves? How many times has God told us in his Word that we are far worse—far more broken, far more sinful—than we think we are? 

God loves us, and so he is honest with us: he doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, but rather what is true.

Secondly, because God is honest, the truth he communicates in his Word doesn’t always take the form we want it to.

We’ve grown into a very efficiency-oriented culture. Give me something practical, something I can use. We have little patience these days for abstractions and symbols. But God isn’t in the business of simple efficiency. Every different book of the Bible, every different type of writing within those books, have different goals. And as we said last week, one of the goals of apocalyptic writing isn’t merely to communicate information, but to awaken the imagination to the greatness of what God is doing in the heavenly places. 

He could simply made Daniel see the facts of Medo-Persia and Greece, of Antiochus IV and his desecration of the temple, of the Maccabean War. But instead he peels back the curtain, to show Daniel that behind the ordinary facts of human history, massive elements are at play, trying to aid or thwart God’s plan, and an even bigger God is working, to accomplish his plan. Daniel’s reaction to these things is exactly right: it shows that he has grasped the immensity of the things he has seen.

Thirdly, because God is honest, the way he communicates truth in his Word is better than whatever we would have preferred. 

Or to put it another way, God always communicates the right way to produce the effect he desires.

Daniel sees this vision; he is sick for several days; and he continues to be appalled. But what does he do, after he has begun to get over his vision?

V. 27 again: 

27 And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.  

Sinclair Ferguson writes of this verse that after Daniel’s recovery, “He returned to the duties to which God had called him. He did not retire from the world in view of the evil days that were coming. Nor did he go to the opposite extreme and live on a ‘high’ visionary excitement. Instead he did his duty.”

The immensity of God’s revelations to Daniel, as much as they bothered him, also produced trust in him, trust that his God was greater than any foe. Daniel had been living with this trust for some time, and his adverse reaction to the visions of chapters 7 and 8 didn’t weaken his trust in God, but strengthened it. 

Remember this was before the events we saw in chapter 6. Daniel received both of these visions before he was thrown into the den of lions. A couple of weeks ago, we asked what could have produced this kind of courage in Daniel. How likely is it that when he learned of the edict Darius had signed (which said anyone who worships another god than Darius would be thrown into the den of lions), Daniel considered the den of lions, and then remembered his vision of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man, his vision of the goat rising against the Prince of princes and being broken? How threatening would a lion really be, when he remembered that this God was on his side? 

This is why God reveals his plans to us through his Word—sometimes in straight fact, sometimes in mystery, sometimes in parables, sometimes in poetry. He reveals himself that we might live in the full confidence of his sovereignty and his grace at work for his people.

We are so privileged to be living at this point in history! We have the revelation of God’s plan, not for any one nation or people (like Daniel did), but for all of human history. God had long spoken to his people through the law and the prophets, through types and shadows, but at the right time God gave the ultimate revelation of himself and his plan in his Son. For the first time in history, he didn’t tell his people what he is like, or what he was doing; he showed them. 

Through his Son, he was establishing right worship: no longer was sacrifice for sin to be offered twice a day in a temple; in Christ, sacrifice was made for sin once and for all. 

Through his Son, he was building a new temple: not a building made of brick or wood but a people, saved by grace and united with one another.

Through his Son, he was bringing his presence and reign to this new temple: he sent his Spirit to dwell in the hearts of his people, to open our eyes to see the beauty of his grace, and to enable us to live in keeping with his reign.

Seeing God’s revelation has always required divine help—even Daniel had to ask for God to help him understand what he had seen.

But God, in his grace, through his Spirit, gives us eyes to see, that we may live in light of that final victory, going about our King’s business, living faithfully as he calls us.

If we truly saw how powerful our God is, and had faith in God’s plan, and trusted him to carry it out, we’d want to do nothing else but live in that plan. If we truly saw God for who he is, as he reveals himself in his Word, then should anyone ask us what we would do if we knew Christ was returning tomorrow, we would pull out our smartphones, open the calendar app, look at the tasks we have scheduled, and say, “That, dear sir, is what I would do.”

Distinctives 2 Complementarianism

Distinctives (2): Complementary Roles of Men and Women

(Genesis 2.15-23)

Jason Procopio

We’re in the second week of our series on our theological distinctives: those points of doctrine which are of secondary importance, but which we feel are important enough to affirm and teach for the life of our church.

This week we’re going to be talking about probably the most divisive point on our list: the complementary roles of men and women in the church and in the home. Simply put, this doctrine says that men and women were created in the image of God, equal in value and dignity; but that we were created different from one another, and as such God gives us unique and complementary roles to fulfill in the home and in the church.

This subject is divisive because we all come to this table with preconceived ideas of what it means—ideas which come from our culture, our education, even our disposition. But if we come to the table with our hands open, willing to lay aside our own ideas and hear what God actually says in his Word, we always find that what he says is better than what we had in mind.

Now, we’ve talked about this subject before, and at some length. But for the most part, we’ve focused mainly on how this plays out in the home. So because of that, today we’re going to focus more on how this plays out in the life of our church. (If you want to know more about how this plays out in the home, go to our website: we’ve done lots of teaching on the subject.)

But before we get into it, we need to set the stage, to see the big picture that should cover all of this.

And that big picture is this: nothing God calls us to do individually, or collectively as the church, is an end in itself. Everything he calls us to do is meant to point our eyes upward to himself, and his glory. 

Our eternal God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is complete in himself, and created the world out of the simple love he had within himself. He created human beings to be a people, a family who would see his glory and enjoy him forever. 

We rebelled against him, but that didn’t stop him—he sent his Son to live our life and die our death and come back to life and ascend to heaven, in order to unite us to the Father. Because we are in Christ, we are now the Father’s children, members of his family. 

And as his family, united to the Father, we are necessarily united to one another; we were brought into this family to help one another see and enjoy his glory together. 

I say that because all the questions we usually ask about this topic, some of which we’ll answer today, can be distractions from the main goal of it all if we’re not careful. It’s not just about who “gets to” do this or who “gets to” do that in the church. It’s about the glory that God’s design is meant to help us see.

So to see that, we have to start again at the beginning and look more closely at what God said about us as men and women when he created us. To do that, I’ll invite you to go to Genesis 2 with me.

Man and Woman at Creation (Genesis 2.15-23)

Let’s remember the context. Genesis 1 tells the story of creation from a wide-angle perspective: it goes through the seven days of creation, and what God did on a global scale.

Genesis 2 tells the same story, but this time telling it from a ground-level perspective, going into much more detail on the subject of human life. 

God creates the world, creates all the animals of the world, and then in v. 7, we read:  

...the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Then in v. 15:  

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, 

“This at last is bone of my bones 

and flesh of my flesh; 

she shall be called Woman, 

because she was taken out of Man.” 

There’s a lot to see there, but for today’s purposes, we need to mainly see one thing.

God creates Adam (the name “Adam” means “man”), and gives him a job to do: he puts him in the garden to work it and keep it. And the first thing God says after giving the man this job is that he can’t do it alone. He needs a helper “fit for him” (or “corresponding to him”). 

So God brings all the animals to Adam, and the first job Adam is given as intendant of creation is the task of naming the animals. So he names all the animals (not “Fluffy” or “Bob”—he names the difference species). 

But of course, there is no animal there that “corresponds to” Adam: none of them are like him. 

So God puts Adam to sleep, and takes out one of his ribs, and from the rib, God creates a woman. 

We need to see that this new creature God creates is a part of the man. She is not something else, something “other,” like the animals. She is made of “the same stuff” as man.

God takes the rib and creates the woman, and then brings her to the man. And Adam, when he sees her, gives this beautiful poetic refrain praising the goodness of the woman, and in this refrain he emphasizes exactly the same point: she is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”—she is made of the same stuff as me; she is like me; she corresponds to me.

This is why earlier, in chapter 1 verse 27, we read:  

So God created man in his own image, 

in the image of God he created him; 

male and female he created them. 

God creates man (“man” in the collective sense of “humanity”) in his image, and he creates humanity male and female. Both in his image. Both like one another. There is a distinction, which is first and foremost anatomical—he creates them male and female. But the fundamental characteristic of both man and woman is that they are created in the image of God.

So there is one idea that runs through this entire text, and I want us to see it very, very clearly. 

The first word of the Bible on the subject of men and women is not one of distinction, but one of sameness. The very first thing the Bible teaches us about men and women is not how they are different, but how they are the same.

Men and women are more alike than they are different. There are differences between us, of course; but we are first and foremost human beings, made in the image of God. Our differences have to come in second place, under that reality.

What About the New Testament?

Now, I know what some of you are going to say. All this celebration of our sameness sounds great…but it’s Genesis 2. This is before the fall, before sin.

After this, in the Old Testament, we seem to see women thrown to the sidelines. There are a lot of reasons for that—coming from questions of culture, and the curse of sin—but the Old Testament is sometimes brutal, so we kind of expect it.

In the New Testament, we think, it will surely be better.

But, according to many people, things don’t actually change that much, because in the New Testament, we have the apostle Paul.

Paul gets a lot of flack on this subject, because complementarian roles in the church come directly from his letters. And in those letters, he says some things that can be troubling if we take them out of context.

So let’s look at some examples from Paul’s letters, case by case, to see what he really thinks.

1 Timothy 3.1-7: Elders

Go to 1 Timothy 3. We’re going to read two verses in a minute, but just to set the context, in chapter 2 Paul has been speaking about the way Christians are to conduct themselves in their regular gatherings. And he says in v. 12 that teaching with authority is a responsibility reserved for certain qualified men. 

And in chapter 3, Paul tells us what kind of man is qualified to receive this responsibility of authority in the church (we’re just going to read v. 1-2):

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach… 

…and so on. Paul goes on to describe more qualifications for elders in v. 3-7.

So he’s very clear: those who are given the authority of overseeing and teaching the church are certain qualified men. Not all men, but certain qualified men, who fit certain criteria. There will be people—men and women—who will meet these moral criteria, without being elders. But all elders must meet these criteria.

That said, what does Paul say about women?

1 Timothy 2.11-12: The Way to Learn

1 Timothy 2.11-12:  

11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

Now before we get angry, we should notice two things, one of which we’ve already seen.

In v. 12 he gives the framework that he’s going to explain in chapter 3 (which we read just before): that the elders, who carry the responsibility of teaching with authority in the church, must be qualified men; and he’ll give those qualifications just after.

Secondly, we must see the first half of v. 11—already, in those words “Let a woman learn”, we have an idea of where his mind is, if we know a bit about the historical context. 

The idea that a woman should “learn” shattered ancient stereotypes. Women were considered second-class citizens at this time and place; they were not educated; they weren’t supposed to “learn” anything. (In the Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah 3:4, 19a, we see this horrible phrase: “Better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman.”) 

So Paul’s insistence that women should learn is already a massive departure from the norm. 

Women, he says, have a responsibility to learn God’s Word—he expects women in the church to be biblically literate.

But what about his insistence that women learn “quietly, with all submissiveness”? 

Well, the context of Timothy’s church, the church in Ephesus, is important, and we see it in Paul’s letter. Some women in the church in Ephesus were, Paul says, “going about from house to house…[being] gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.”

So Paul is insisting that women in the church not be like that: they should have a quiet disposition when learning about the Bible, just like everyone else. As Thomas Lea and Hayne Griffin point out, “Paul was not demanding physical silence but a teachable spirit.” Paul is intentionally singling out women here because many women in Timothy’s church were struggling with this teachability in a particular way.

And if we read the rest of the Bible, we clearly see that this is true for men as well. Every Christian in the church, man or woman, who sits under the authority of the elders, should learn in this same way; we should all be teachable and respectful of the preaching of the Word. (Myself included: when Paul or Arnaud preach the Word as elders, I learn under their authority as elders.) 

Now at this point, I want to get to the bottom line I know some of you are thinking right now: Why this separation? Why do the apostles insist that elders be men? Why can’t women be pastors? (That is the question in most people’s minds when they talk about this.)

The Bible gives us some clues—in v. 13, Paul links the role of teaching with authority, to creation, before sin; and in v. 14 he makes a link to what happened at the fall. Let me just be frank with you all. Those verses (v. 14 in particular) is an incredibly difficult verse to interpret. I’ve heard (as recently as last night, and from men whose ministry I admire and have profited from) people suggest that women are naturally more gullible than men and are vulnerable when they go around without a ‘protector.’ 

We don’t have the time to see all of this right now (and I preached a whole sermon on just this passage in our series on 1 Timothy, if you want to look it up on the website). Let me just say that I do not believe that Paul is saying women shouldn’t be elders or teach because men are wiser, less gullible or stronger—that women shouldn’t be elders because they are by their nature incapable of leading. And I don’t believe that because I know women. I know women who are far wiser, far more discerning, and far stronger than me.

So we need to recognize that when we ask the question, ‘Why can’t women be elders?’ the Bible doesn’t give a very clear answer. 

And that’s okay—it doesn’t need to.

Here’s what we have to understand: everything the Bible says, it says for a reason. And by the same token, everything it doesn’t say, it leaves out for a reason. If we come to the Bible to find specific answers to questions arising from our modern era, we’re going to be disappointed, because it’s just not interested in answering all of those questions. 

There is not a single word missing from the Bible that should be in it—the Holy Spirit knew what he was doing when he inspired these words. 

So what can we take from what is here, and from what is not here?

We can take that a) this is how God ordained the church to be governed (by certain qualified men acting as elders) and b) that it has nothing to do with our value or ability, and everything to do with trusting that God only commands good things to his people. 

Because that’s what it comes down to, right? When we ask, ‘Why can’t women be elders?’ The underlying question is, ‘When God says elders should be men, is that really a good thing? Can I trust God to only command good things?’ 

And I’d suggest that before you’ll ever be able to start digesting difficult verses like v. 14, you need to be firmly convinced about that underlying question—Can God be trusted to only command good things? That if you, as a woman, accept this vision of complementarian roles, you will not be handicapped in your ministry? 

The Bible tells us that the answer to that question is yes—and we see that at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Romans 16.1-15: Women Who Serve the Church

At the end of Romans, Paul includes (as he often does) greetings to specific members of the church. But what is interesting about this list is the sheer number of women he includes, and the way in which he speaks about them.

He specifically greets Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus’s mother, Julia, and Nereus’s sister. 

And look at the way he describes them: he calls Prisca a “fellow worker in Christ Jesus” (v. 3). He uses the term “to work,” or “to labor” to speak of how Mary (v. 6), Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis (v. 12) served the church. While Prisca is mentioned as a “fellow worker” along with her husband Aquila, these other mentions of “labor” and “hard work” are only used for women. 

So we can conclude that these women were vitally involved in the hard work of ministry to the church.

In addition, before that, in v. 1-2, he mentions Phoebe. Phoebe was, he says, “a deacon of the church at Cenchreae”—she served in an official capacity as deacon of her church, and is the only person in this list to receive such a title. Clearly Paul thinks very highly of her: he commends her heartily, instructing the church in Rome to “welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints” (v. 2).

We’ll stop there, but these are not the only places we see Paul speaking of women in this way. The accusation that Paul, or any of the New Testament writers, viewed women as second-class members simply does not hold up to careful study of the text.

Women were held in honor in the early church, and worked diligently in the ministry of the gospel, just like their brothers. 

Distinctions in the Church

Now here’s why we needed to see all that: no church which holds to complementarian theology would contradict what I’ve just said about women being held in honor. But practically speaking, the church (on the whole) has had a hard time living out what we affirm.

We’ve affirmed that certain qualified men should be elders, and that’s good. But we’ve taken it a good deal further than that.

We’ve put the men over here, and the women over here. Men do these things, and women do these things. If you’ve spent any time in church, you’ve surely seen it: women do children’s church, and men lead Bible studies. Women organize church meals, and men do the Scripture readings during corporate worship. Women serve coffee, and men serve Communion.

ALL of those responsibilities are necessary and worthy of honor. But when we separate the genders in these ways, both genders end up handicapped. 

The young men end up believing they could one day be church leaders because they’re men (which, as we’ve seen, is false). And because the main roles of service in the church have historically been given to men, the young women can end up with the idea that the church doesn’t really want their help, unless it concerns cooking or kids (which is, obviously, also false).

In everything God gives us to do as a body, as the church, men and women are both necessary allies in this work, because we are both created in God’s image.

So the big question is, how can we, as men and women, honor the sameness we see in Genesis 2, and at the same time affirm and celebrate the distinctions which God created between us?

We could speak about the answer to that question all day; but we need to start by developing an appropriate vision of service in the church, and an appropriate vision of discipleship in the church.

Service in the Church

As we’ve said, the elders in our church are qualified men who have been observed and approved as qualified—myself, Paul and Arnaud. We do it this way because we believe that the Bible is inarguably clear that this is the way elders in the church should be chosen.

In every other possible capacity, we believe the Bible gives us a lot of freedom.

Every task is open except those of preaching the Word and actually administering, or presenting, the time of Communion (tasks which fall under the responsibility of the elders, because they are commonly viewed as “authoritative” acts).

Deacons in our church are both qualified men and women (qualified according to the criteria for deacons in 1 Timothy 3).

Men and women serve on the welcome teams. 

Both men and women serve in children’s church.

Both men and women lead worship under the supervision of the elders. 

Both men and women distribute the elements during Communion.

Both men and women lead our home group discussions; and in gender-specific contexts, women lead the women’s Bible studies, and men—not just the elders—lead the men’s Bible studies. (In addition, the men and women who lead these studies are called to seek out and train other men and women to know their Bibles and to lead future studies.)

Mixed-gender teaching environments, such as our marriage prep classes or our members’ classes, can either led by an elder, by a man and a woman together, or both. (Loanne recently co-taught a marriage prep class along with me.)

On top of all of that, as you know, Deborah Prisk will be joining our staff in the fall. Let me just take a minute to talk about Debs (she’s not here, so she won’t be embarrassed by my praising her a bit). 

Deborah is a wonderful Bible teacher, theologian and disciple of Christ. Loanne and I have known her for longer than we’ve known any of you, because we actually worked together at our sister church in Lagny-sur-Marne while interning there. And she’ll be joining us to do here what she did in Lagny for many years: to work to train women in the church in discipleship.

Debs fully agrees with this view of complementarian roles in the church: she will serve under the authority of the elders. 

But it would be a wild mistake to think that we will be planning out her tasks for her, or that her service in the church will only be limited to women.

Debs knows far more about practical discipleship than I do, and she’s honestly a better theologian than I am. She has knowledge I need to learn, as you all do. She will be regularly interacting with our elder team and the other deacons, to help us figure out together how we can better live out the gospel in the church. And she’ll be learning from you as well.

Do you see the point of all this?

Men and women are not competitors in the work of the gospel; we are ALLIES in the work of the gospel.

I think Jen Wilkin is absolutely right to point out that if discussions of church life are relegated only to men, what we will essentially end up having is a single-parent family, with only father figures (the elders) free to influence. And if we do that, we deprive ourselves of the kind of motherly influence that we all need. Men and women are not interchangeable; we need both.

But we need to go a little further than just talking about roles in the church if we are going to do justice to this subject, because just as we need both men and women to participate in roles of responsibility, you need each other—brothers and sisters—to build up the body, as disciples of Christ.

Discipleship in the Family of God

We use the word “discipleship” a lot in the church; what do we mean when we say it?

Discipleship is very simply when one disciple of Christ helps another disciple of Christ to better understand the Word of God, and to better live that Word out in practice.

Historically, discipleship is something that we have segregated—men disciple men, and women disciple women. 

There’s wisdom in that: that’s why in our church we don’t have mixed-gender discipleship groups. There are things you share in some contexts which would be inappropriate in a mixed-gender environment—things could get very confusing very quickly.

But if you’re only discipling other Christians when you meet with your groups, then—I’m sorry—you’re doing it wrong; discipleship should be happening every minute of every day. 

And this “everyday discipleship” should not only happen with members of the same sex. 

The idea that you should only do theology or live out discipleship with people of the same sex is ridiculous, because God created us, men and women, in his image, to be allies in this work. It would be crazy to imagine that I shouldn't learn from a fellow image-bearer of God just because she happens to be a woman.

I recently heard someone say this, and it is so true: I have learned more about theology from my wife than from any class I've taken or any book I've read. Not just through conversations we've had together or with other people—though that’s true too—but especially through watching her live out the practical implications of the gospel. 

I was a very immature Christian when we met, and she grew in her faith more quickly than I did. So during the early years of our marriage, I was watching someone a little further down the road from me figure out what becoming like Christ and living like Christ looks like.

That is discipleship, and it should be happening with all of us. We should be learning these things from our brothers and sisters.

Now, I’m going to address the men for a moment just for the sake of clarity, but what I’ll say holds true for women as well.

Brothers, you need to be very wise and very careful about how and where and when you have conversations with your sisters, single or married. It’s not going to be the same as it is with the guys, because again—we don’t want to lean so heavily on the sameness of men and women that we forget our differences. (Think of Priscilla and Aquila discipling Apollos in Acts 18. Priscilla wasn’t discipling this young man alone; her husband was present.)

You need to make sure you do this in a group, not one-on-one; that you’re not creating a false sense of intimacy with any of your sisters; that there is not even the possibility of any ambiguity, or potential for temptation. Safeguards are wise, and vitally important.

But we’ve gone from putting up wise safeguards to making outright prohibitions on discipleship with our sisters, and that’s not wise either, nor is it biblical. We need safeguards, but we can’t stop there. 

All of us need to go deeper. We need to work on our hearts and ask ourselves, How do I see this man or this woman in front of me? As a potential mate? Or as a brother or sister in Christ?

I’ll never forget a conversation Loanne and I were having with a young couple fairly recently. We were talking about marriage, and Loanne said something that completely floored me.

She said (of the two of us), “The most fundamental relationship of our lives is not the relationship of husband and wife, but of brother and sister.”

I had never thought of that—or at least I’d never heard it so clearly stated.

Loanne will be my wife until one of us dies; but she will be my sister for all eternity. 

Guys, when you look at your sisters, and ladies, when you look at your brothers, you need to see it: you are FAMILY. You CANNOT—you MUST not—primarily see the men and women around you as potential spouses, or (God forbid) potential sexual partners.

They are your brothers. They are your sisters. 

You are a family.

And how dysfunctional is the family which lives a segregated life, in which the brothers only have meaningful, influential relationships with their brothers, and not their sisters? 

Men, you cannot do discipleship or theology well without your sisters. Women, you cannot do theology or discipleship well without your brothers.

We need each other, and we are responsible for one another. So we are called to protect each other, to take care of each other, and to learn from each other.

Conclusion

Now before we close, let me speak real quickly to anyone here who is not a believer. What should you take away from all of this?

I hope, at minimum, that you’ve seen that church isn’t the unwelcoming, exclusive boys’ club some people say it is. 

But I hope that’s not all you see.

As we saw at the very beginning, the big takeaway here, for all of us, is that God created us to be his people. We were separated from him because of our rebellion against him, so he sent his Son to take our place, to take our rebellion on himself, and to be punished so that we wouldn’t have to. On the cross, Christ paid the penalty for our sin, and gave us the perfect life he had lived, so that we could be reconciled to God.

And because of his work, we have been adopted into his family as brothers and sisters.

I don’t know what kind of a family life you have, or had growing up. But no matter if it was good or bad, it’s temporary. Every family lasts only as long as its members are alive, or as long as they don’t leave.

But God didn’t create the family unit as an end in itself. He created families—mom, dad, sister, brother—to reflect THE family he created us to be a part of: this family, the family of God, united in Christ, who will see and enjoy God’s glory for all eternity. This family is not temporary; this family will be family for all eternity.

So take a moment to think about this wonderful reality:

How good must Christ be, to save us into a family in which the ones we love will never die, and our Father will never leave?

God created all of us to see and enjoy his glory together, and because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, he invites all men and women to come to him in faith, and to be adopted into his family. 

So if you don’t know Jesus this morning, place your faith in him; repent of your rebellion; and rest in the knowledge that Christ will not turn away anyone who comes to him in faith. Be adopted by the Father, and know that your family will be your family forever.

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.