CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE (Daniel 11:1-35)

It is infuriating that God's people are always feeling caught in the middle of the endless battle of the wicked. Why is this? Stick it out with this challenging but ignored Bible chapter and the paydirt will be rich.

Transcript

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Well, we now come to Daniel chapter 11, and I'm telling you, it's not getting any easier. So again, you may want to have an open Bible before you as you're listening to this message. Let me set the stage. Babylon has fallen. The superpower of the world is now Persia. This would be modern-day Iran, not Iraq to the west. And of course, Iran has figured predominantly in the news lately. But going back to this particular time of Daniel chapter 11, two years earlier than what we're going to read here, the Persian king Cyrus frees Judah from exile. They're allowed to go back to Jerusalem, and few do. Those who do get discouraged and quit. Daniel, who is back in Babylon, feels defeated. He knows that this is not going well. And he prays and fasts for three weeks, according to Daniel 10 and verse 1. Christ then appears to Daniel, and he tells him that he and Michael had to fight off the princes of Persia for three weeks in order to get to Daniel so that he could give him an answer to his prayer. And now Christ adds these words in chapter 11 and verse 1. And by the way, I should point out that this might be Christ through Gabriel the angel. Nonetheless, he says, As for me, in the first year of Darius the Mead, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. Now let me pause here for just a moment. Darius the Mead is Cyrus' deputy who's ruling over Babylon. We learn of him in chapter five and verse thirty one. In his first year, that would be five thirty eight BC, Christ then stands up to help him, to strengthen and confirm him. Who's the hymn? This would be Michael the Archangel. Now maybe you've heard that between Malachi and the New Testament, there are 400 years of so-called silence. The so-called 400 years of silence between Malachi and the New Testament are going to be laid out with great precision in Daniel chapter 11. Now, this is not an era that most Christians know a great deal about. And Daniel is letting us in on what is going to happen. Now we now know, being able to look back on these things, that Daniel spoke with great precision because, of course, he's speaking through the Holy Spirit. And what's going to be laid out now is an extensive prediction of the sweep of events that will unfold in the next 400 years from Daniel's time into his future. Daniel chapter 11 deals with the years from 536 to 164 BC. Israel at that time is going to be dominated by first the kings of Persia 536 to 336 BC, and then secondly the kings of Greece, 336 to 164 BC. Now, admittedly, Daniel chapter 11 is very hard to follow. Again, it foretells things that we are now look back on that are now ancient history and most of us quite frankly care little about. I want to assure you that we're not going to cover in detail all 45 verses. Like skipping a rock on water, we'll touch down on key places in order to get the basic idea without being sunk in the details. Daniel chapter 11 speaks of kings of Persia and then kings of Greece. Now this again has already been predicted in Daniel, in Daniel chapters 7 and 8, but here we're getting a much greater detail of these events. In verse number 2 of Daniel 11, it says, And now I will show you the truth. The I hear, of course, is Christ probably speaking through Gabriel. Behold, three more kings shall rise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them. And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Now what he's talking about here are the Persian kings. The Persian kings specifically, Xerxes. Now that name may ring a bell. If you go back to the book of Esther, Xerxes is the king. He's called Ahasauerus. Ahasawerus is richer than all of the Persian kings. And Ahasawares stirs up all against the kingdom of Greece. In other words, he gets up everyone to fight. Fact of the matter is, we now look back, and some forty-nine nations are allied together to fight the kingdom of Greece. In other words, this Ahasawarus or Xerxes, this king of Persia, pokes the bear, and guess what? He's defeated. In time, the king of Greece emerges. Verse three of chapter eleven says, Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority over which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these. This mighty king to arise, we now know, is Alexander the Great. You've heard his name before. He begins his reign over Greece at age twenty in the year three hundred thirty six BC. He quickly swallows up the Persian Empire, and he actually conquers the world by age twenty six. But then, strangely, at age thirty-three, he dies drunken on wine, while choking on his own vomit. And still, as predicted in Daniel chapter eight, the power shifts from Persia now to Greece. This is what's being described in Daniel eleven, verses two through four. Israel is now ruled by Greece. But things are going to be divided. We're going to see North and South pitched against each other. Here's why this happens. When Alexander the Great dies, his Greek empire is divided into four segments among four of his generals. But only two of those generals prevail and really have much to do with Palestine or Israel. The first of those generals is a guy named Ptolemy, who rules in the south or the region towards Egypt. The second of those generals is a guy named Seleucus, who rules the north, or more towards Syria and Babylon. Both of these kings established great dynasties. And for 160 years, from 323 to 164 BC, Israel is ruled by a succession of Greek kings. So again, Babylon has been defeated, the Persians are now out of it. Now we have the Greek kings clamping down on God's people. And Daniel chapter 11 repeatedly speaks of these Greek kings as the king of the south or the king of the north. And they fight against each other constantly. Verse 5 of Daniel 11 says, The king of the south shall be strong, but one of his princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority. Kings of the South, the Ptolemies, as they're called, rule Israel from 323 to 198 BC. And at first they're harsh with Israel, but later they treat them quite well. During this time, Greek culture or Hellenism and Jewish culture coexist peacefully. Eventually, Greek thinking begins to influence the Jews. Now, some of the Jews like this, others do not. And during this time, two religious parties emerge. The pro-Greek party, which would be the seeds of what we now know as the Sadducees, and then there's the Orthodox Jews or the Hazidim, the pious ones. These would be the ancestors of the group that we now know as the Pharisees. These groups, these parties, emerge very fully established at the time of Jesus and are described quite clearly in the New Testament. And they polarize the Jews politically, culturally, and religiously. It is during this particular time, though, that this polarization begins to take place. And then this happens. Verse 6, Daniel 11. After some years, they make an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the South shall come to the king of the north and make an agreement. Now I'm not going to go into great detail here, but simply to say a southern girl marries a northern boy, and guess what? North and start, south start fighting. They're in constant war against each other. And this is important. Where do they fight? Largely in the promised land where the people of Judah have migrated back towards and have now tried to restore. There's war in the promised land. And over and over again, Israel in the restored land of Palestine is caught in the middle of this battle that seesaws back and forth, north and south. It's monotonous, and the details of the predictions of this ongoing war are tediously described in Daniel chapter 11, but it is precisely fulfilled and now historically documented so well that many critics think that Daniel chapter 11 had to be written all after all of this took place. Well, the conflict escalates until control finally shifts from the south, or the Egyptian contingency, to the north, or Syria. The main king of the north at this time is a guy named Antiochus III the Great. The 125-year control of Israel then by Greek kings of the south ends, and Israel is caught in the middle. This time, Israel is taken from Egypt and annexed to the Syrians to the north. And from 198 to 164 BC, Israel is ruled by the Greek kings of the north. And things get markedly worse from here. In Daniel chapter 11, verses 21 to 35, tell of the rise of the most vicious Greek king from the north. He is the Syrian ruler by the name of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Now you may have heard of that name, and you may not have heard of that name, but I want to briefly describe this particular individual and his importance for this time. Daniel is told in Daniel 11 and verse 21 that in time shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given. He shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. That's Daniel 11 and verse 21. Antichus IV Epiphanes is this person. He reigns from 175 to 164 BC. He has no legal right to the throne. He gains it by flattery and force. He plunders the South. The South tries to retaliate, but they lose. And then verse 27 of Daniel 11 says, As for the two kings, their hearts shall be bent on doing evil. Now, regarding the king of the north, verse 28 says, His heart shall be set against the holy covenant. In other words, he is going to make war against Yahweh and persecute Israel. When you skip down to verse 31, it repeats, forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. He's still talking about this guy named Antiochus IV Epiphanes. And we now know in the year 168 BC, the Jews celebrate a rumor that Antiochus IV, this very evil man who persecuted them, died in war. It was a rumor. Well, Antiochus learns of this celebration, and he is outraged. He comes to Jerusalem, he bans all sacrifices, forbids circumcision, annuls all the Sabbath days, outlaws the feast days, and he destroys almost every copy of the Hebrew Bible. Daniel 11, 31 goes on to say, and they shall set up abominate the abomination that makes desolate. An abomination is something repulsive to God. To make something desolate means you destroy it. So something repulsive to God is going to destroy everything that the Jews regard as sacred. And guess what? This is exactly what happened. Antiochus IV puts something repulsive to God in the temple. He builds an altar to Zeus, the pagan god, and he does this in the most holy place. He sacrifices a pig there, forces the priests of Israel to eat pork, and then sacrifices to Zeus himself. He massacres 80,000, takes 40,000 prisoners, and sells another 40,000 as slaves. He robs the temple of nearly one billion dollars by modern calculations. He installs in it a Greek military post. The temple then is desolate. It's defiled. It's ruined and empty. This is the first fulfillment of something that Daniel is going to mention three times, Daniel 9, Daniel 11, and Daniel 12. And that thing is the abomination that makes desolate. He says it three times. Antiochus IV will carry on with all of this unhindered. No one steps in. Verse 32 says he shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action. In other words, he uses flattery to get those less godly Jews to side with him. Now those who are loyal to God will stand firm. And we're told in verse 33 that many will die. Verse 34 says that they will receive a little help. What is this help? Again, we now know this because we look back and history reveals this to us that Antiochus and his abuse provokes the Jews to retaliate. When one Syrian official forces pagan sacrifice in a particular village, there's a man by the name of Matthias, an elderly priest, who revolts against this abuse. He slays the official who is forcing this pagan sacrifice, and then he himself flees to the mountains. Matatthias. And by one sixty seven BC, thousands of faithful Jews join him. When Matthias dies, three of his sons carry on what he started. He is in revolt. Revolt against the Syrians, particularly this Antiochus IV. The family is named Maccabees. Maccabees is from the Hebrew word for hammer, because they struck hammer blows against their enemies. The turbulent tyranny of Antiochus IV comes to an abrupt but muted close. In 164 BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes dies of a painful bowel disease that gives him an odor so foul no one wants to be even near him. In that year, the Maccabean Revolt recaptures Jerusalem and purifies the temple. There are four apocryphal books of Maccabees that record all of this, and you can read of this history there. The Jews celebrate this victory with a new festival called Dedication, or we know of it as Hanukkah, which, by the way, Jesus himself celebrated in John chapter 10. After more than five hundred years then of subjugation and twenty years of war, in one hundred two BC the Maccabees finally forced the Greeks to leave Israel. The Jews remain free for about eighty years. They flourish, and Israel regains boundaries near to that of Solomon's time, until the Romans come in in sixty-three BC and again conquer the land. Now Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, though, foreshadows a final king, with all the worst of him and his predecessors combined. This is going to be described in Daniel 11, verses 36 to 45, and we'll talk about that in another time. Now I know that what we have talked about to this point is probably something that many of us know little about. I get that. And I've tried to kind of again hit the high points here. Now, what I want to do in the closing moments that we have is talk about what this means to us. Because Daniel chapter 11 shows Judah that the 70 years of exile in Babylon are only the beginning of their struggles. That even though they're freed from Babylonian captivity, what lies ahead of them in the next 400 years is a long, bumpy, and disorienting ride. And you're left to wonder why? Why are the forces of heaven fighting the Prince of Persia for three weeks? And why is it that God's people are caught in the middle between two kings that are bent on doing evil? Why is it this way for God's people? When will there be peace? Why does it seem so often that God's people are caught in the middle with no way out? And all we can do is feel the pressure of one side against the other, where both sides hate us and we're in the middle of their conflict, their struggle. Why does God just let this go on and on? And for how long will it go on? I think most of us have felt that. I think most of us have those kinds of questions. And you know, the answers, quite frankly, are probably beyond our understanding. All we can conclude is that the status of the world's miserable condition where we're caught in the middle is somehow necessary, and somehow God is still in control despite what we experience. The fact that God knows the future in such precise detail as described in Daniel chapter 11 indicates that God is in control despite how things appear. In God's world, He is in control, but choices are real. You know, it's pretty hard for us to put those two things together. We've sort of downplayed the sovereignty or control of God. We tend to elevate maybe our own power to choose, and some let one cancel the other out, but both have to be true. There's God's part, my part, your part, and Satan's part. And God's part, God's control, does not always mean that he interferes with our choices. Fact of the matter is, he rarely does. But the good news is that he is in control regardless of our choices, and regardless of the choices of others that impinge upon us. Can I take a moment to give you a very weak analogy? This is a complex idea, but one I think we might be able to get a little insight towards, if you just think about a Rubik's Cube. Do you remember? The cube? We've got all nine panels on each of the six sides. The goal is to try to get those panels to be the same color, and you move things around on the cube in order to quote unquote solve it. I want you to picture the universe as a massive Rubik's Cube. A Rubik's cube that's scrambled, scrambled by our sin and by Satan and by evil. And let's assume that God is solving it. He is bringing about his kingdom amid a universe, an entire universe in revolt. But this universal Rubik's Cube that He's solving, God is solving, does not have just nine panels per six sides. It has nine trillion panels and ten thousand sides. It's much more complicated. And God allows eight billion people now and counting, along with Satan himself, to make real moves in this universe. Now the issue is this. How does God move things on this Rubik's Cube so that in the long haul his kingdom prevails and order is restored? We cannot know what moves God should make. When I look at someone solving a Rubik's Cube, they're making all kinds of moves that seem to be counterintuitive to me, but they know what they're doing in order to get uniformity on each side. And the same thing is true with God. We don't know. We don't understand the moves that He should make. Some of the moves that God makes will not make sense. Evil will seem random. Suffering will seem pointless. And we seem to be victims of accidents and casualties of chance. And we wonder why in the world is God allowing this to happen? Why has this taken place? Why is that person in control? You know, it's easy to assume that Satan and evil are in control. All of this seems to be perplexing to us. Evil seems random. Suffering seems pointless. We seem to be victims of accidents and casualties of chance. It's maddening. And yet, I think the message in Daniel chapter 11 is that over all these forces is an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, and all-present God who controls everything. God knows all the moves that need to be made. He knows who needs to be in power and when and for how long. He knows how to control our moves and everyone else's moves, even Satan's moves. Neither Satan nor his demons, nor me, nor you, nor all of us together can make a move that will ruin God's moves. That's the beauty of this. The cross of Christ proves that the worst choices of eight billion plus people and of all of hell combined in rebellion against God still accomplish God's greatest purposes. And so, my friends, the question is not why is this happening? The question is, what will God do with it? Daniel chapter 11 and verse 35 says, Some of the wise shall stumble, so that they may be refined, purified, and made white until the time of the end. For it still awaits at the appointed time. In other words, God allows us to stumble in trials and hardships in order to refine us. He's purifying us. He is making us white. And he knows what it will take to do all of this. White happens best when we're up against trials and even evil. You see, God knows what he's after. He knows how to get it. He knows when enough is enough. As Job says, God knows the way that I take. And when he has tried me, when I am caught in the middle, long enough. Job continues, I shall come out as gold. Now we seem to be caught hopelessly in the middle. But my friend, we will come out. The question is how will you come out?