What Do You Want for Christmas?

Daniel 9:20-24

So what would you like for Christmas? That’s a question that you hear at this time of the year, isn’t it? The text that we just read has actually quite a bit to say about, to us, about that question. What do I want for Christmas? And understand that we need to put ourselves into the shoes of the Israelites at that time. What was going on in their history? Well, more than 150 years previous to our text, the northern kingdom, Israel, had been conquered by the Assyrians who had scattered them all over the place, and they had, by this time, with few exceptions, basically disappeared. Wow, five-sixth of the people of God gone. The southern two tribes, Judah, had unfortunately not learned a lesson, and so God had allowed the Babylonians to come in and conquer them in 605 BC. Daniel and some of his buddies were taken off into exile. The Babylonians had come back and reconquered them in 597, probably came back again in 592, and one more time, just for good measure, in 586, at which time they were sick of it, they leveled Jerusalem and, most importantly, destroyed the temple. In short, the Israelites are a mess. (piano music) But most incredibly and graciously, God didn’t forget, reject, or abandon his people. Nor will he ever forget, reject, or abandon you. And so he gave this wonderful prophecy to the prophet Jeremiah that said, “The exile will last for 70 years.” And Daniel had read Jeremiah’s prophecy, trusted that what God said to him was the truth, and it was kind of figuring out that that 70 years must be about coming to an end. Now God had not told them when to start counting the 70 years. If you don’t know when to start counting, you also don’t know for sure where the end will be. Make sense? But Daniel had enough knowledge to kind of figure out it must be getting close. And so he goes to God in prayer, and that’s the beginning part of this chapter. And what is Daniel’s prayer? Daniel’s prayer is basically this. God, we have made such a mess out of it. We have sinned over and over and over again. We have rebelled against you. We have not been faithful to you. We have not focused on you. God, we have messed up oh so badly. Please have mercy on us and be gracious to us. And that’s where our text picks up. Now we’re told that as Daniel was finishing up that prayer, all of a sudden Gabriel was there. Yes, the mighty angel Gabriel, the same one who’s gonna appear to marry 550 years after this to announce the birth of Jesus to her. Gabriel appears. And the way it reads in our text is it basically reads like this, that Gabriel says yeah, while you were praying, a message was sent to, a word was sent to me, and I was sent to deliver a message to you. Whoa! Does God answer our prayers? Yes, he does. Does he hear them? Oh my, does he? And how is he able to answer? He can even send a mighty angel if that’s what needs to happen. And that mighty angel gets the memo, and off he goes to deliver a message. What honor you have, what honor I have, that we get to bring our prayers to the throne of the almighty God. He hears them, he answers them. And no, I’m not expecting that the angel Gabriel is gonna show up and answer to my next prayer, but could he? Yes. And is it possible that he already is just in invisible form? Absolutely. And what’s the message that Gabriel brings? Very frankly, it’s a little hard. And it goes for about five or so verses. We’re only gonna look at the first one. 77s are decreed for your people in your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. What is this about? There are different thoughts as to what exactly it means, but I think the thought that makes the most sense is this. Those 77s, that’s the rest of the Old Testament times. And the Old Testament times would come to its end, its culmination, in who? In Jesus. In the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus. And in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, what was Jesus going to do? He was going to put an end to sin. He was going to finish sin. Oh yeah, what did Jesus say on the cross? It is finished. Is this a foreshadowing of the words of Jesus on the cross? I think it is. To atone for wickedness. Remember the great day of atonement, where the high priest got to go behind the curtain and go into the most holy place, the only day he got to do that, and he sprinkled the blood on the cover of the atonement seat? Remember what happened to that most holy place on the day that Jesus died? That curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom because now you can go in there. And oh yeah, he’s also gonna bring in everlasting righteousness. Not only did Jesus take your sins away, and he took every single one of them away, every time I’ve been bitter, angry, selfish, failed to love God, failed to love my neighbor as myself, and doubt-filled, worried, Jesus took every single one, and when he said it’s finished, he meant it. Oh, but he also gives you something else. He gives you perfection. He lived for 30-some years as a real human being to fill up the righteousness that you and I needed. And when he called you to faith, can you imagine? He gave you the righteousness that he earned. So in the eyes of God, you don’t look to him just that your sins have been taken away, but you also look perfect and holy in his sight, because he’s given you an eternal righteousness that lasts, that lasts forever. What do you want for Christmas? May I suggest the better question is what do you need for Christmas? What do I need for Christmas? And may I suggest that what you and I really need, and therefore also really want, is exactly what we see here in our text? I need a salvation that is 100% fully, completely taken care of. And in Jesus, I have exactly that. And that’s what Christmas is all about. Merry Christmas. Amen? And amen.