Ever read an article
about Christ or Christians
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in the secular press,
and then read the blogs?
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People mock Jesus,
they make fun of Him.
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But you know, they
might be a lot more sober
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if they would
just do a little math.
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Yes, we do live in a
world today unfortunately that
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does make fun of
Jesus and the Lord
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and the God of heaven.
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But people don't
realize how much proof there is
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behind the Messiahship of Jesus.
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And we're going to talk
today about mathematical proof
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that Jesus is the
Messiah of the world.
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But first of all we're
going to ask the question,
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why does the world
need a Messiah anyway?
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Well the problem
is a thing called sin.
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And people hear
that word and they don't
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really know
what it really means.
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But let me tell
you what's behind it
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and why it's a big problem.
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The basics are simply this.
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That God created the
universe, a God of love,
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and He created it for life.
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Don't you enjoy life?
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And yet look all around us.
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Everybody is
dying. People are dying.
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People are in trouble.
The world is full of misery.
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So how is it that
this wonderful God of love
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created a universe
filled with love, but this world
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turns into being such a mess?
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But we need
deliverance out of this mess.
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And that is because God
runs His universe by law.
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And the way He keeps life is
because He keeps unselfishness.
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Life cannot exist unless
it exists in an atmosphere,
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environment, of unselfish love.
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It's the unselfish love
that makes life possible.
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Now we're not going to
talk much about it this time,
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but at some point,
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that was the whole issue
over the great controversy.
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Satan believed he could
be selfish and still live.
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But you can't.
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So God gave ten commandments,
ten commandments to guarantee
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unselfishness in our world.
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And unfortunately, of
course, we know what happened.
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That got broke.
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When God made the universe, He
made it to be filled with love.
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Let's take a look at those ten
commandments for just a second.
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In fact, Jesus was
asked the question,
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"What is the
greatest commandment?"
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And somebody answered
and He commended them for it.
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It says, "To Love the Lord
your God with all your heart,
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your soul, your
mind, your strength."
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Now he got that,
of course, from Moses.
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And Moses got it
right. That is the greatest.
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And Jesus gave and affirmed
the fact that the second one
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is like unto it.
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It's to love your
neighbor as yourself.
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So the law of God is
based on unselfish love.
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And the ten commandments
are there to guarantee that.
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To keep unselfish love as
the basis of our existence.
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And we know that.
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If you go to the
ten commandments,
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we're not going to go through
all the ten commandments,
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but I do want to
look at the tenth one.
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All the commandments
tell you, "Do not do this."
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"Do not do that."
It's very specific.
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But the last one says,
"You shall not covet..."
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Now, "covet," is
an issue of heart.
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So it says, "You shall not
covet your neighbor's wife."
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Or his house, or his ox,
or anything else that he has.
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Don't covet.
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So the heart has to be changed.
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It has to be unselfish
in order for life to exist
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and for happiness to exist.
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And that's why we have
so much misery in the world.
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That's why there is
so much unhappiness.
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It's because people
have become so selfish.
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And they become selfish
because they have broken
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God's law.
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So we go to the apostle John.
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The apostle John
says, he defines what sin is
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so that we can know it,
and it's not a hard definition.
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He says, "Sin is the
transgression of the law."
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Or sin is lawlessness.
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So if you break the law of God,
that's the definition of sin.
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And that's what brings misery,
and sorrow, and suffering.
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In fact, in Romans, Paul
in the book of Romans says,
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"The wages of sin is death."
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Isn't that
awful? Sin pays wages.
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You have to earn
this misery, so to speak.
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So we need a Savior.
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We've got to have a Messiah.
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We cannot get
ourselves out of this.
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Most of the religions of the
world teaches you that you can
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pull yourself up
by just being good.
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But the truth is that
you can't be good enough
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to get yourself out of the mess.
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For two reasons: one, all
of us have broken God's law,
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and all the goodness in
the future will not undo that
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if it's been broken.
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And number two, we've got a
problem with a carnal heart.
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We'll talk a lot more
about that in this series.
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So we need a Savior who
can do three things for us.
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First of all, He
pays the penalty.
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A broken law
means there's a penalty.
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And He's paid it.
Isn't that good news?
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And the second
one, we need a Messiah
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that can change our
hearts and make us new people.
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Change us from being
selfish into being unselfish.
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And number three, we
need a Messiah that can
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resurrect us from the dead.
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Because the whole
human race is dying.
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So when man first
sinned to Satan's temptations
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in the Garden of Eden,
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Jesus made a
promise to Adam and Eve.
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They're full of
tears and sorrow,
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they've broken God's
law, they've lost the garden,
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and now Jesus makes a
wonderful promise to them.
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And here's the promise
that Jesus makes to them.
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It's a promise
that just should fill
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all of our hearts with hope.
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In Genesis 3:15
Jesus says to Eve,
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"I will put enmity between
you, Satan, and the woman, Eve,
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and between your
seed and her Seed."
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Jesus not only
comes as the second Adam,
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He comes as the
Seed of the woman.
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And He comes to do something.
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Satan would
bruise the heel of Jesus,
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but that's not a deadly wound.
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But Jesus would
bruise the head of Satan
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and his selfish principles.
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And that's a deadly wound.
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And that's good
news for the human race.
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That there is a way out
of the mess that we have
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gotten ourselves into.
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Isaiah 53:5-6,
talking about the Messiah,
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captures this in
such a beautiful way
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that I'm going to read
some of the most sublime words
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I think in all of
Scripture, where he says,
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talking about the
Messiah that would come,
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he said, " He was
wounded for our transgressions,
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He was bruised
for our iniquities;
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the chastisement of
our peace was upon Him,
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and by His
stripes we are healed."
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Isn't that beautiful?
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You have trouble in your life,
you have difficult in your life?
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You feel the strifes
and the difficulties of sin
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and living in a miserable world?
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In Jesus and in His stripes
and in what He did for us,
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we find healing and peace.
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It says, "All we like
sheep have gone astray;
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every one to his own way;
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but the LORD has laid on
Him the iniquity of us all."
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So Jesus is that
Messiah that takes away our sin
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and our selfishness,
and returns us to a state of
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joy, and happiness, and
liberty, and peace, and life.
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It's a wonderful thing.
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So this hope was
given to Adam and Eve,
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it was given to
Abraham and Sarah,
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it was given to David, it
was given to all the prophets.
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All of them looked
forward to the Messiah.
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Thank the Lord for
the Jewish prophets.
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But the Messiah was to be given
not just to the Jewish people,
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as wonderful as they are.
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The Messiah was to be
given to the whole world.
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The Jewish
people were the conduit.
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They were the deliverers,
if you please, of this Messiah
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that God would send
through the Jewish people.
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So we have this
wonderful promise of a Messiah.
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And we need Him.
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I'm telling you, the Messiah
is the only hope the world has.
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I almost named this, The
One Week That Changed The World.
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But you'll see
what I mean by that
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when we get
down to the prophecy.
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Because we're going
to come to that prophecy.
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Daniel, of
course, now is a captive.
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He's an old man,
he's in his 90's.
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He's captive still in Babylon.
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Jerusalem lays in
ruins, the temple is in ruins.
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And Daniel's heart
wants to see it rebuilt.
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And he begins a beautiful
prayer asking God's forgiveness.
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And he gets down to
the end of that prayer,
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and that's where we pick it up.
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Some of the most beautiful
words, most appealing words
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to Jesus, to
the heavenly Father.
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Listen to him as he
prays in Daniel 9:19.
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"O Lord God, hear!
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O Lord God, forgive!
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O Lord, listen and
act, and do not delay
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for Your own sake, my God,
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for Your city and Your people
who are called by Your name."
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Now God was listening.
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God hears and answers
sincere earnest prayer.
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And God was listening.
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And Gabriel was sent
to answer that prayer.
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Now many times God does
something extraordinary.
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In fact, the Bible teaches
that He will do exceedingly
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abundantly more
than we can ask or think.
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And He does that for Daniel.
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Gabriel is sent to
answer Daniel's prayers to when
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the temple would be rebuilt,
when Jerusalem would be rebuilt.
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But the angel Gabriel gives
another message in addition.
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And that is, when
this long hoped Messiah
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that's the hope of the
world, when would He show up?
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And that's where
the math comes in.
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This wonderful pure
math, if you please.
00:10:31.56\00:10:35.56
So he gives
Daniel a time prophecy.
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Now you don't have to be,
again, you don't have to be a
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rocket scientist to get this.
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This math is not that difficult.
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If you can do a little
basic math, you can do this.
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I have confidence that you can.
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And the angel gives it
in the terms of 70 weeks.
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He said, "Seventy weeks are
determined for your people."
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But these are
not 70 literal weeks.
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These are 70 weeks of years.
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So when we say 70 weeks, we're
talking about 70 weeks times 7.
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And that's 490 years, not days.
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But we'll just talk
about the 70 weeks of years
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because it's easy for the
math, very easy to do the math
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with just
focusing on the 70 weeks.
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But you know before we start,
it's really 70 weeks of years.
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So we want to go
back to the 70 weeks.
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And each day, as I've already
mentioned, represents a year.
00:11:35.19\00:11:39.46
But first of all,
I want to talk about
00:11:39.49\00:11:41.63
the division of those 70 weeks.
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And the reason I want to do
that is because I want you to
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hear this carefully.
00:11:46.74\00:11:48.10
The 70 weeks are
divided up into three pieces.
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Kind of like dividing the pie.
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Kind of like, you know,
mother bakes an apple pie
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and junior gets the smaller
piece, maybe mother gets the
00:12:01.42\00:12:04.29
next largest piece.
00:12:04.32\00:12:05.65
I'm just using this
for an illustration.
00:12:05.69\00:12:07.02
Maybe dad gets
the biggest piece.
00:12:07.06\00:12:09.02
So this pie is
divided up, this 70 weeks is
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divided up into three parts.
00:12:13.46\00:12:15.66
It's divided up into 7
weeks, 62 weeks, and 1 week.
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That's easy, isn't it?
00:12:23.41\00:12:24.74
7 weeks, 62 weeks, and 1 week.
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You can remember that
as we go through that.
00:12:31.15\00:12:33.48
Because we're going
to take each one and show
00:12:33.52\00:12:35.32
what happens, of
course, with each one.
00:12:35.45\00:12:37.75
Now at the end
of each one of these
00:12:37.79\00:12:39.99
something
important would happen.
00:12:40.02\00:12:41.59
At the end of the 7
weeks, for instance,
00:12:41.79\00:12:44.83
something
important would happen.
00:12:44.86\00:12:47.63
At the end of the 62
weeks, that's going to
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bring us to the Messiah.
00:12:50.73\00:12:52.37
And at the end of the last week,
we're going to find the 70 weeks
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are finished
and what that means,
00:12:58.14\00:13:00.28
what that last
week means to the world.
00:13:00.31\00:13:03.75
Because it means
something pretty wonderful.
00:13:03.78\00:13:06.55
This is astounding prophecy.
00:13:06.88\00:13:09.28
It's a prophecy that
will reaffirm your faith,
00:13:09.32\00:13:12.15
give you courage,
and I hope that you'll
00:13:12.25\00:13:14.56
share it with your friends.
00:13:14.59\00:13:16.22
Because people need to
have their faith strengthened.
00:13:16.26\00:13:18.86
And it's hard to
argue with this math.
00:13:19.09\00:13:21.66
Math that proves that Jesus is
indeed the Messiah of the world.
00:13:21.76\00:13:27.57
The Messiah that
the world has hoped for.
00:13:27.90\00:13:30.01
The Messiah the
world has longed for.
00:13:30.11\00:13:32.34
The Messiah
that the world needs.
00:13:32.61\00:13:34.64
Because the whole
world, the whole human race,
00:13:35.01\00:13:37.81
it's just facing all the
misery and the sorrow of sin.
00:13:37.85\00:13:41.98
Death is everywhere.
00:13:42.68\00:13:44.35
We need this Messiah,
00:13:44.39\00:13:45.92
this Messiah who
can deliver us from the
00:13:46.02\00:13:49.19
terrible penalty of sin.
00:13:49.22\00:13:51.69