Lord of History (Daniel 9:1-2, 20-27)

We're going to look today at the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter nine again. We're going to read aloud together. It's a shorter passage, so I'm going to make you do the work. We're reading the NIV because it's a little bit more literal to the Hebrew. So if you would join your voices and mind as we read together from Daniel 9:1-3, and then again toward the end of the passage, starting in verse 20.

In the first year of Darius, son of Xerxes, a Mede by descent, who is made ruler of the Babylonian kingdom in the first year of his reign. I, Daniel, understood from the scriptures according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition and fasting in sackcloth and ashes. — Daniel 9:1-3

Now verse 20:

When I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people, Israel, and making my request to the Lord my God for His holy hill. While I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, "Daniel, I have come now to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I had come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the vision. Seventy sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and anoint the most holy. Know and understand this. From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed one, the ruler comes, there will be seventy sevens and sixty-two sevens. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two sevens, the anointed one will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood. War will continue until the end and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven. In the middle of the seven, he will put an end to sacrifice and offering and on a wing of the temple, he will set up an abomination that causes desolation until the end that is decreed is poured out on him. — Daniel 9:20-27

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory, right? It's like one of those where you're like, "Really? This is what we're doing today?" Yeah, you came on that Sunday. Congratulations. So charts and graphs Sunday at CTK. But for real, we're going to dig into this.

A Personal Story

I want to start this way. Years ago, when I was in college, beginning my junior year, I was really interested in this girl that I'd gotten to know, and we were in that beginning, flirty stage of dating—we're not official yet. So we went with a group of friends to this county fair, and it was toward the end of the evening when the fair was beginning to clear out. We were riding all the rides because there were no lines. We got on this one—the giant swing. It has a mechanical pillar in the middle, a big round thing on top with all the swings hanging down, and over on the side is the operator who just turns it on and off.

We get in the swing, and for the first three and a half minutes, this is really fun. But out of the corner of my eye, I watch the operator walk away. After three and a half minutes, what has been fun becomes a dizzying, nauseating kind of not fun. We're just going. I'm thinking, "Oh no, when is this going to end?" I could probably exaggerate this in telling the story, but it was probably two minutes. In my mind, though, it felt like fifteen. We're on this swing and nobody's at the controls. At this point, I began to think, "Okay, really, if I got out of this harness and jumped, I'll break a bone, but how many? Like, really, how bad can it be?"

Finally, the operator comes back and pulls the lever and we slow down. I'm done. I'm kind of done for the night as far as nausea goes.

Current Events and Uncertainty

I tell that story because that's how you may feel right now about current events, about what's happening in the news, about what's happening in the lives of people that you love. You can look around and see this year, right? What's going on in Ukraine? What's going on in Russia? What's going on in Gaza? What's going on in Israel? You may be like, "What felt like fun for a couple years is now a nauseating, dizzying kind of not fun."

I'd like to get off this ride. Or you can look around at the lives of people that you know and love dearly. People who are close to you whose lives feel like a nauseating, dizzy, and kind of not fun. And you're like, I want to help them get off the ride. Like, this is not a fun ride. Is there anybody at the controls of the universe? Do you ever feel this way? All by myself up here this morning? Do we all feel this way sometimes? Like, really? What's going on? What is going on?

And you know, this is perfectly put in the mouth of Macbeth in Shakespeare. Macbeth says, this life feels like tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Can you relate to that sometimes? Chaos. What's going on?

If you feel a little nauseated today, you're in the right place because Daniel has a word for you. Daniel has, as we bring this passage, a word of understanding for you about what's happening. And we only have two weeks left in the book of Daniel. Started this at Labor Day. We're going to finish it next Sunday. And really this week and next week, have the same theme. This week, we're going to talk about the lord of history. Next week, we're going to talk about the lord of the future and it's the same sermon. Just one's applied to the past and one's applied to the future, and here's the main message. There is a God at the control center of the universe, and He's not walked away from His post. And He's good, and he knows what he's doing. Even when it's hard to see it, even when it's hard to feel it, when it feels like life is a dizzying, nauseating kind of not fun.

So, here's where we're going to go for today. Three points, god knows, god decrees, and finally, for his glory and you're good. Let's look at this together.

God Knows

In the first sermon in Daniel, I went over the language and the structure of the book, because it's really important. It's a weird book. It's a book that's half written in Aramaic and half written in Hebrew. Only book of the Bible like that. It has two parts. It has a beginning part that's all the stories you know from VeggieTales and VBS. And then it's got all the weird acid trippy part like we just read. The prophetic section of the Book of Daniel.

And the structure of the Book, it's funny, underscores the message. In fact, Hebrew writing uses a little device. It's called a chiasm. If you ever remember when you were a kid you had to learn how to cut out a heart in preschool or elementary school? What do you do with the paper? Fold. Right? Fold it in half, and then you cut it out, you unfold it, you have two matching parts. Well, that's really how Hebrew is written. It's written in little halves like that. And this book, of all the books in the whole Bible has not just one but two chiasms, double chiasm. Remember, double rainbow across the sky, right? Come on, am I that old? Double chiasm across the book. That's what we get in the book of Daniel.

So, let me show you this. There's an intro chapter to the book of Daniel, chapter one, and then you get these weird hearts folded in half and unfolded. So, here's how the chiasm goes. Chapters two and seven go together. There's a four part statue in Chapter two. There are four beasts in Chapter seven. They will mirror each other. Chapters three and six go together. Thrown in the furnace, thrown into the lion's den. And then Chapters four and five go together. You get the kind of pride and fall of Nebuchadnezzar and restoration, and then you get the pride and the fall of Belshazzar, two of these kings. That's the first half of the book, the first heart.

Now, what's funny about this is chiasms always point like to the middle, to the fold in the heart. And the fold of the first half of the book is actually words that are in the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar the first, the great, after he's been humbled. He says this:

Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the God of heaven because everything he does is right and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

Now, do you hear that? That is a crazy message to come out of the mouth of a Babylonian emperor. He's saying, you can trust God. Now, this is the message in exile for the people of God. Can you imagine how encouraging this would be? God hasn't abandoned you. He knows what He's doing, and you can trust Him.

The second part of this book, the second half also has a chiasm and it goes chapters eight and eleven, prophecies about beasts, prophecies about kings. Both of those go together and then chapters nine and ten. And what's funny about this, chapters we're kind of skipping over these because they're highly, highly repetitive, and if you have a good study Bible, you can read through these things. It's kind of tedious for a sermon. It's great for a study.

So, Chapter eight describes these two beasts. One is a ram, and the other is a goat with one horn.

I'm going to call it a unigoat, because unicorn goat, one horn, right? So, the ram, and it's very explicit what these represent. Horns in the Bible I want you to think of a crown that a king wears with the little spikes. Those are pictures of horns. In the Bible, that's a picture of royalty. So, there's these pictures of these kingdoms. One's a ram and it's laid out for us. That's got a ram with two horns. One's bigger than the other one because one is the kingdom of the Medes and one's the Persians and they formed a coalition government, and that's one of the big emperors that's coming right in the history of Daniel. The other one is the unigoat, which is Greece, and the one horn is Alexander the Great. These all picture for us empires that were coming. Babylon, then Medio-Persia, then Greece, and then finally Rome. And this is laid out for us in the near history in the book of Daniel.

Chapter 11, which I just described as well, is about kings, and it goes into incredible detail, person by person, going from the history of 500 BC all the way to seventy AD, and it's incredibly precise. In fact, it is so precise. This is history for us, but this was prophecy for Daniel and the people in Babylon. And what's wild about it—it is so precise down to particular people in history that if you open up history, go to Google, and study history of the ancient Near East from May to '70, and you open up the book of Daniel, you can go through and map out this is the exact people and exact circumstances of what happened. And this kind of study is incredibly detailed. And it's why we're not going into great detail on it, because it's sort of repetitive. It's history for us.

But it's like reading if somebody in the year 1500 had written a book about the future, and they say, here's what's about to happen. Well, there'll be the adventure of the printing press. And then there'll be the Reformation in Europe. And then there'll be the Silk Road in Asia. Then there'll be the colonization worldwide. There'll be the creation of the United States. There'll be the Industrial Revolution. There'll be the Spanish Flu. There'll be two World Wars. There'll be the Digital Revolution. Now, if somebody had written that book in fifteen hundred A.D. and you could pick that up today, you'd be like, this is incredible. This is incredible. Someone five hundred years ago could have mapped out and known everything that happened with that kind of precision. The Old Testament book of Daniel has that kind of precision.

Historical Verification

So much so that there's actually extra-biblical evidence that some of the people mentioned in the book of Daniel found out their names were in this book during their own lifetimes. One extra-biblical writer, Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote, for example, that King Cyrus the Persian, the one who would eventually make it possible for the Jews to return back home after the exile to their homeland, he comes as he's conquering Babylon. And he starts walking toward the city—his troops have conquered it—and there to meet him is Daniel. This is what Josephus says, and he's holding a scroll from the prophet Isaiah, and he turns in the scroll to what for us is now chapters 44 and 45, and shows him his name. Isaiah wrote that down one hundred and fifty years before Cyrus was born. And this is the kind of stuff like, this really happened.

Similarly, Josephus records an event that happened with Alexander the Great. Alexander rose to prominence in the 300s. Alexander was just about to enter Jerusalem and conquer it. This is after the people had been returned back from exile. And as he does so, there's a high priest named Jaddua, J-A-D-D-U-A. And he comes out of the city with some of the nobles and some of the leaders of the city, and they walk out to meet Alexander the Great, this great, incredible military leader. And they come to him and say, please don't destroy our city. Well, Alexander had a dream the night before that there was going to be a priest who came out to him and told him his name and asked him not to destroy his city. And Jaddua takes him back to the temple and opens up the scroll of the prophet Daniel and shows him the prophecy in chapter 8 of one coming up out of Greece, the unigoat with the one horn that would come in his youth and conquer. And because of that, Alexander let Jerusalem stand. He didn't wipe it out.

All to say, God knows. God knows the big picture and God knows the details. And I know current events right now, either in the world or in the lives of people that you know, make you nauseous, make you dizzy, make you ask the question, are the inmates running the institution? Is this complete chaos right now? It feels like chaos. What's happening in Gaza and Israel feels like chaos. What's happening in Ukraine feels like chaos. What happens in our presidential election may feel like chaos, or the environment.

If anything happens, does God know? Does God see? That's an important question. The answer is a resounding yes in the Bible. Yes, He does. The God of the universe knows. Nothing escapes His notice. He knows all. But what's more? This is important for you to know. I want to push you another step on this. God decrees.

Now, this word is found right here in verse 24. "It was decreed." It was decreed that this would happen in Jerusalem, seventy years in exile. It was decreed. Now, when it says it was decreed, that's kind of English nerd here—passive voice. But what that means is God decreed it. God is the one who's acting here. And to decree something, I don't normally decree things. Kings decree. Kings make royal pronouncements. It's like a pronouncement with muscle behind it. It means that God not only knows but He's in control. That lever that I'm talking about with the giant swing, God is not only standing at the lever, His hand is on it. His hand is on it.

Do you know the phrase, "It was all part of the plan"? That's said by the Joker in The Dark Knight, that Batman movie. It's said by sportscasters when they see a great football play that a team has really crafted. "Oh, that was a part of the plan." It's said by Albus Dumbledore regarding the death of Severus Snape and all the events of what happens in all the Harry Potter series. "It's all part of the plan." And what that phrase means is that even though things turned out well in the end, there were some dark chapters along the way where it was questionable and it was scary. "It was all part of the plan" means that like, it didn't look like there was a plan, but there was a plan. There was a plan, and that's what I want to remind you of from God's word this morning. God not only knows, God decrees. He can say, "It was all part of the plan."

God is no fortune teller. God doesn't have a crystal ball. God is not just a soothsayer or mere predictor. He knows what's coming because He purposes what's coming, and He performs what He purposes.

So consider this part of the book of Daniel, like we read here from chapter nine verses 24 through 27. Remember what I said? Double chiasms across the book. Right? The second half of the book of Daniel, the most important part of it, the fold of the heart, is right here in this little section. This little section—it's the center of the second chiasm—and it tells us that God has a timer. God is not just knowing what's happening. He's in control of the calendar, the dates, the lineup of history. He knows exactly when because He purposes when. He not only controls the what, He controls the when.

So this passage is about the seventy. And I know, like, "What is going on? Seventy sevens and sixty-two sevens and one seven—all this." So what does that mean? What are we talking about here?

Now, this number seven—if you paid attention in Sunday school, you know seven is kind of an important number in the Bible. God creates the world in how many days, class? You were awesome this morning. You're on it. Seven days. On the seventh day, God rested, made it holy, and gave it as a gift to you. This is a day for your rest. This is called the Sabbath. The other number in this passage is seventy. Seventy is also a really important number in the Bible. It's seven times ten. Ten is a big number. Seven is a big number, but seventy—right here we just read—is the number of years that God had proclaimed that the city of Jerusalem and the people would be in exile. So seventy and seven. What does this mean? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm so glad that you're curious about this.

You know, the last book in the Bible, in the Old Testament in an English Bible, is Malachi. But that's not true in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrews divide up their Bible differently than the way that we do. They have three sections: the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, then the prophets, and then the writings. And the last book and the last chapter of the last book—2 Chronicles chapter 36—the last thing in the Hebrew Bible tells us something about why God put His people in exile to begin with. And this is really weird, but I want you to listen again for the number seven. Listen, this is what it says:

God deported all those who escaped from the sword to Babylon. They became servants to Nebuchadnezzar and his sons until the rise of the Persian kingdom. This fulfilled the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet. The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests all the days of desolation until seventy years were fulfilled. — 2 Chronicles 36

You hear that Sabbath again? Seven and seventy? So why the exile? This is a really weird thing. It says so the land could enjoy all the accrued Sabbaths, all the places where they hadn't celebrated the Sabbath, all the times they ignored the Sabbath. Now, again, weird for us, but God really cares about this. God really cares about rest for His people.

God really cares about providing a break, about people worshiping and being restored to Him and restored to themselves, and even the land getting a rest. In the Old Testament law, the land and the people were supposed to get a rest. Every seven days you were to take a day off of work and not do anything. Every seven years you were to give the land a break, and you weren't supposed to plant any crops. Do we have any ag people from NC State here? Yeah, okay. We got some people, right? You know your stuff. Like, all those people could give us a great lecture on why you let land rest and don't just plant and plant and plant.

But this is part of the law that was given in Leviticus 26. And God says, if you don't give the land its rest, if you don't take a rest, this is what He says: I'm going to take you into exile. I'm going to make sure that there is rest. I'm going to actually force a break for God's people and for the land for seventy years. And the writer of Chronicles takes that and applies it to the exile and says, "See, this is what happened."

And actually he goes back and says, this 70 times seven period—some of y'all are math people, how much is that? 70 times seven. Four hundred and ninety, right? Four hundred and ninety years. That's actually a very specific timeline in the Bible. That's the timeline of all the kings of Israel and Judah, from Saul in the beginning to Zedekiah at the end. And again, 2 Chronicles draws on this. All during those four hundred and ninety years, that's the time when Israel had neglected to observe the Sabbath, and so it begins to build up. And God says, this is now going to happen. He's got the timer. He knows when. People don't obey—exile for seventy years to correct for the four hundred and ninety.

So this exile is really important. It's patterned on another exile. If you're a student of the Bible, there's an original exile that happens in the first three chapters of the Bible. God puts a man and a woman in a garden, says you can eat from any tree, but that one, and if you don't obey, I'm going to put you in exile. But I want to work and rest with you. I want to be with you. Of course, they don't obey, and what happens? They are exiled from the garden. And this is the big capital E exile of the whole Bible. This is the really big one that we're still living in in some ways. We're still not fully restored, are we? I mean, is this Eden? Is this a perfect world? Is this the way that God meant it to be? We all know it's not. Something still needs to be done.

So as we open up this chapter, Daniel chapter nine, old man Daniel now—he's been through this long seventy year period—and he's doing his quiet time in the book of Jeremiah, and he opens it up. He's like, "Seventy years? Seventy years? God, you said this was going to be." So this is what I'm going to show you—this is what this lines up to be.

This is the history of your Bible. 2000 is Abraham, about 1500 is Moses, about 1000 is King David, 722 is when the Northern Kingdom falls, and then right here, 605 to about April 538—this is the period we're talking about. There's exile for seventy years, seventy-ish years, and then people begin to return back home. God had allowed Babylon to be in charge for almost seventy years, and Persia right after that for almost seventy years.

God's Sovereignty Over History

Now I want you to think about this. Our theological statement as a church says, "According to His own holy and wise counsel, [God] does freely and immutably ordain whatever comes to pass." A lot of people say, "Hey, is God in control?" You'd be like, "Uh-huh, I guess so. Yeah, God's in control." But how in control is God? I want to kind of push you on this this morning.

The late R.C. Sproul had a stark way of putting this. He called it the one maverick molecule principle. And this is how it goes: if there is one maverick molecule, one molecule that doesn't obey what God purposes in history, then can we really say God's in charge? If there's anything that's outside of God's control, if there's any such chaos like this, can we really say God is sovereign and in charge? Because if that's true, if there's some kind of rogue elements out there, maverick molecules out there, then can we really trust that God is going to finish the job? That He's going to bring us home, that He's going to perfect us, that all the promises of the Bible are true? Can we even say that?

I remember when I was a kid, I remember reading this nursery rhyme. Maybe you're familiar with it. And it's all about how the dominoes fall. So it says this:

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For the want of the horse, the rider was lost. For the want of the rider, the battle was lost. For the want of the battle, the war was lost.

You hear that? It's like little dominoes. Something small caused this great implication. And here's what R.C. Sproul means by this.

Did something happen, one little thing, that somehow we're off track of history? Is there something out there that's maverick and out of God's control? If there's one maverick molecule running loose, then can we say that God's in charge? And this is what we see over and over. This is what we say in our church: God, from all eternity, according to his own holy will and wise counsel, did freely and immutably ordain whatever comes to pass. God decrees. God is in charge.

Now, of course, you're already there. I know some of you all are very intelligent people. You're like, "Well, what about...?" You got the yebuts in your head. You're like, "Yebut this, yebut that. Like, really? Can we really say that? Do we really want to say that?" God is the author of all kinds of evil in this world. God is in charge of what's happening when innocent people are being killed this morning? Do we really want to say that?

And to be honest, there are two different ways we can talk about how this comes about. There are two different ways that God ordains things to come to pass. It doesn't necessarily mean that God is like, "Yeah, I love this and approve of it. Yeah, I'm really excited about this." It doesn't mean that God is directly and immediately involved in everything that happens in this world in certain terms of purposing it. But the trick in that statement has to do with the word ordain.

We talk about ordain. This is what we see in the Bible. God both purposes things and allows things. We talk about his efficacious will where he purposes things, and his permissive will where he allows things. And yet, both we would say are under God's sovereign control—no maverick molecules. All of it in His hands. God always has the power to stop and prevent. And yet, many times He doesn't choose to do so. And this is hard for us. It's hard to hold on to this.

It doesn't mean that God applauds everything that's going on in our world. It doesn't mean that God sanctions everything. But God does allow things to happen. Again, he's in charge. He's at work. God knows. God decrees. He's in charge.

God knows and decrees, and this is the final point, for our good and for His glory. And without this point, actually, you have the cruel God of fate. You have this God that sounds like He's just out there having fun in the chemistry lab and making our lives terrible. That's the god of the Greeks and Romans—causing chaos and enjoying it. No, this is not what we see. We see a God who knows and decrees for his glory and for our good.

The Scope of God's Plan

So in Daniel 9, in response to Daniel's prayers, the angel Gabriel shows up and says in effect, "Hey, you thought it was seventy years. Sorry, buddy. In fact, we're just getting started." The return from exile that you've been waiting for is actually not the big idea of the Bible. That's a return from the little e, exile—a return from Babylon for the Jewish people. But God cares about the capital E, Exile, because He cares about undoing what happened way back, not just in Jeremiah, but in Genesis chapter three. God is about that.

So seventy years was just a start. You've just finished seventy, but it's a far larger thing that God has in view right now. All of a sudden, what's revealed to Daniel by Gabriel is that the return to rebuild Jerusalem—hey, that's great. That's not the big idea. The return to the homeland? Great, not the big idea. Even the land itself? Great, but not the big idea. The return of Ezra and Nehemiah, 538 BC? Isn't the big idea. God is up to something bigger. God is up to something bigger, and it's what He's doing in this return from exile that Daniel was all excited about, just about to happen, was just a prototype and just a picture of what God was up to.

So now in Daniel 9, he's being told that there are four hundred and ninety—ish—more years to come. Seventy times seven more years being added on to this timeline that he thought he was done with. Seventy years. Yay. We're done. No. We're just getting started. Four hundred and ninety more years. Why?

To bring the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision of prophecy, to anoint the Most Holy Place for the Anointed One, the ruler, to come. — Daniel 9:24

That's what's going to bring what God is really excited about—the true end of the exile.

And so when do the four hundred and ninety years start? Great question. This is what it says:

From the issuing of the decree to restore and build Jerusalem until the anointed one, the ruler, will be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens. It will be rebuilt in a pause and a mode but in difficult times. — Daniel 9:25

God sets another clock. At this moment in history, God sets another clock—another four hundred and ninety years. This is what happens.

Around April, there's a decree from Artaxerxes. That's Nehemiah 2. And he sends the people home. There have been a couple of waves before that have gone, but he really starts the rebuilding. This is the beginning of the rebuilding. This is the first seven sevens—forty-nine years. That's roughly how long it took to rebuild the temple and the walls around Jerusalem. Sixty-two more sevens would pass after that.

So after these sixty-two sevens, the Anointed One will be cut off. Seven sevens plus sixty-two is sixty-nine sevens. Keep watching. That's seven sevens plus sixty-two sevens, four hundred thirty-four years. So, sixty-two sevens plus seven sevens is four hundred eighty-three years.

So if you do your math, remember this is BC. You take April and subtract four hundred eighty-three years, you get to thirty-two AD. What happened in thirty-two AD? A Jewish peasant was crucified on a Roman cross outside the city gates of Jerusalem. Who claimed to be the Anointed One, the Son of God Himself. And His death and His resurrection was the linchpin of history. This is the beginning of the ultimate return from exile.

Because what is God up to? He's up to something far larger than just bringing some Jews back to their homeland. He's concerned with bringing humanity home, to be with Him, to worship Him, to fellowship with Him. This is why we can say God can ultimately say, "Hey, it was all part of the plan." You know, this horrible time in Babylon, all the sadness that we read in the book of Daniel, all the sadness that we even know that's going on in our world—we can say yes, God is still up to good for His glory and for our good.

God not only knows the what. He controls the when. He's that in charge.

Four Applications

A couple of applications for you this morning. I know this has been a very detailed sermon, but here's the big picture.

Number one: Don't be nauseated by the news. Either news of what's happening in global, geopolitical events, or what's happening in the lives of people that you love and know very dearly. It's really easy for us to say, "Man, I am done with this ride. How many bones will I break if I get out of the swing right now? I want off the ride, God. This is a hard road. This is a dizzying, nauseating kind of not fun." But don't go too far down that pathway. God knows, God decrees, and He is about His own glory and He is about our good, even when we can't see it.

Number two: Don't doubt the goodness of God in history. In all the great stories, the middle part is the hard part. We would not be interested in them if they all were like, every day is puppies and kittens and rainbows. We like stories with hard chapters where the characters don't know what's going on. Those make for the best stories—they don't make for the best lives. But don't doubt there's a good God at the control of history.

Number three: Pray. This may sound bizarre. In a sermon about God's sovereignty over all things, can I ask you a question? Why would you pray to a God who's not in charge? I mean, what good would it be to pray to a God who's not in charge? There's a lot of people who are like, "I don't know if I like this God who's so in charge. Then why would you talk to Him? Why would you ask him to intervene in the lives of people you love? Why would you ask him to be at work in this world?" If you don't believe He actually has power to affect those things, no—we have a God who's that in charge. And so when we pray to Him, we're going to the one whose hand is on the controls of the universe. He loves to hear His people pray and He uses that as part of His work in this world.

Finally: Remember, God is playing the long game. God is always playing the long game. It's so easy in this life to take a snapshot of what's happening today and say that's how it's always going to be. And you can do that and give up on people that maybe the Lord hasn't given up on yet. You can do that and despair over loved ones and covenant children and people who've walked away.

But I want to remind you, God is playing the long game. Some of your testimonies are about God playing the long game. Some of your stories about redemption—redemption stories always have dark chapters. Always have seasons where it seems like nothing's going on. What is going on? The inmates are running the institution. Chaos reigns. No, no, no. God's playing the long game.

If you could take anything away from this passage—four hundred ninety years—God is playing the long game. Can you trust Him for the long game?

Back to my initial story, you know, that woman that I was sort of interested in, in those early phases—we will have been married thirty years this coming June. Well, thanks. You really ought to applaud her. But my point is, that was a nauseating, dizzying evening.

That was a blink in the eye of what is a larger context of a much greater relationship. I mean, I can't tell you how I never think about that time, that night. There's so many events of our lives that feel like they are so big, and yet in the slice of eternity, in an eternal relationship with a God who has purpose to be with you forever and ever—even the dark days.

These light and momentary afflictions. — 2 Corinthians 4:17

I know it's hard. Brothers and sisters, don't lose heart. God knows, God decrees for our glory and his good.

Prayer

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you are up to so much good in this world. Lord, we thank you that you are in charge and we thank you that you're not only in control of the what but the when. And it's hard to hear this. Lord, people come to mind we dearly love. Lord, we want to trust you this morning for the long game. We thank you that you've been playing the long game in our lives. We thank you, Lord, that redemption stories have dark chapters. And Lord, we thank you that you are the author of redemption. That Lord, this picture of a return from exile, this is what you're up to in the world, and we get to be a part of it. We praise you and honor you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song together.