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AUTHOR: DR. JERRY VINES
FORDOCHE Chataignier
11/28/93 12/06/09
03/09/97
A QUIET TIME !
SERMON TEXT: DANIEL 9:119
1. In the first year of Darius
the son of Ahasuerus (uh-haze u Eros), of the seed of the Medes,
which was made king
over the realm of the Chaldeans;
2. In the first year of his reign
I Daniel understood by books
the number of the years,
whereof the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah the prophet,
that he would accomplish
seventy years
in the desolations of Jerusalem.
3. And I set my face unto the Lord God,to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes:
4. And I prayed unto the Lord my God and made confession and said,
O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant
and mercy to them that love him,
and to them that keep
his commandments;
5. We have sinned
and have committed iniquity,
and have done wickedly,
and have rebelled,
even by departing
from the precepts
and from thy judgements:
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6. Neither have we hearkened
unto they servants the prophets, which spake in thy name
to our kings, our princes,
and our fathers,
and to all the people of the land.
We are in the prophetic portion
of the book of Daniel
And we have discovered that
the latter chapters
have to do with the prophecies
that God gave to Daniel
concerning GENTILE WORLD POWER at the end time.
Before we go into
this prophetic matter
I want to deal with
a very practical
and down-to-earth subject.
Now, in the eighth chapter
and the last verse,
we have a tremendously important
and tremendously complicated section of Bible prophecy.
God has revealed
all of this prophecy to Daniel,
and after that revelation of prophecy
Daniel says in verse 27:
27. And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days. Afterward I rose up, and did the king's business...
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One time, The Lord Jesus
was talking about the future?
And in one of those parables
predicting the future,
the Lord Jesus said:
"Occupy till I come."
In other words,
there is a job for us to do.
There is a work for us to carry out.
We are to occupy,
we are to do the king's business
while we are waiting for the king.
Bible prophecy
is never intended
to cause believers
to become star-gazers:
Remember when the Lord Jesus
was getting ready to
go back to Heaven,
He carried His little band of disciples
out to the Mount of Olives,
and from the top of the Mount of Olives
the Bible says that:
Jesus visibly, literally,
right before their very eyes
went back to Heaven.
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And the Bible says they were gazing
and they were looking for
that last glimpse of the Lord Jesus.
While they were gazing
the Scripture says:
that two men in white apparel
revealed themselves to them,
and the men (they were angels)
said to the disciples:
Ye men of Galilee,
why stand ye gazing up into Heaven?
This same Jesus
who is gone up from you
into Heaven
shall so come in like manner
as you have seen Him
go away into Heaven.
And then the Bible says
they left the Mount of Olives,
they went into the city of Jerusalem,
and the book of Acts
gives us the result
of what took place.
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They didn't stay on a mountain
gazing at the stars
but instead:
they went into their world
and told people about Jesus,
won souls,
built churches,
and carried the gospel
to the end of the earth.
Do you see,
what the Holy Spirit does
in these opening verses of Daniel 9
is give to us a very intimate
and precious glimpse
into what I call
"Daniel's Quiet Time."
Now, of course,
a quiet time is very important.
One of the very first things
any young Christian ought to do after he is saved
is to establish a quiet time,
To have a daily time
where you, as a child of God,
meet the Lord in daily fellowship
a quiet time.
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Daniel, evidently had a time
when he met with God,
talked to God,
and the Lord spoke to him
through His word.
It is very important
for a young Christian to do this.
Having a daily quiet time
is essential to several things.
I. One thing,
is SPIRITUAL CONDITIONING.
You cannot grow and mature
and be strong in the Lord
apart from a daily meeting time with God.
The Bible says that our Savior said in:
Matthew 4:4
"Man shall not live by bread along,
but by every word
that proceeds from the mouth of God."
The Lord Jesus indicated there
that spiritual conditioning
is contingent upon
that daily feeding
of the Word of God.
then the Bible, God's holy Word,
is essential
if you're going to grow
and mature in your Christian life.
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A daily quiet time IS ESSENTIAL
to spiritual conditioning.
II. It is also essential
to SPIRITUAL CLEANSING.
You and I,
when we receive the Lord Jesus
as our Saviour,
are not sinless perfect.
WE STILL SIN as believers.
We don't want to sin
and yet the Bible says we do sin.
The Scripture makes it very clear
that we are still living in this world after we are saved.
Jesus, says in John 17:6
that we have been saved
out of the world.
In other words,
we don't belong to
this world any more.
But he also says that
we are still in this world.
Though we are not of the world
we are still in this world.
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All around us
there are things in the world
that ought not be there.
It is very easy for us as believers
to get dirty in our spiritual lives.
So you see,
there needs to be that daily time
where you can get alone with God
and be cleansed in your spiritual life.
III. A quiet time is also essential to:
SPIRITUAL CONQUERING.
You and I
are faced with many enemies
as we go out into daily life.
The Bible teaches
that we are faced with:
the world,
the flesh,
and the Devil.
It is by means of a quiet time,
where we study the Word
and where we pray,
that we are able to conquer
and able to overcome
the enemies that attack our souls
as believers.
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So you see:
I'm not talking about
something that's minor,
I'm talking about something
that is absolutely essential ...
the importance of having a quiet time.
You have to keep in mind
that the man we are studying about in this book,
the man Daniel,
was a man who was
very high up in the affairs of state.
In fact, for many years
this man Daniel
was responsible to
the ruler of the nation
for the welfare of the entire nation.
Now you think how busy
that man must have been.
He was a very busy man
and yet, this man, Daniel,
took off three times every day
to have time alone with God
and talk to God in prayer.
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I wonder what would happen
if our President,
congressmen,
and our senators
would just take some time every day
to have a quiet time with God.
WELL,
WE DO HAVE SOME THAT DO THAT
AND I THANK GOD FOR IT.
We have men in Congress
who are Christians,
but I want to tell you something,
for the most part
we do not have men of prayer
in Congress.
FOLKS, if you're a parent
the business of bringing up children
in our kind of society,
ought to drive you
every day of your life
to that quiet time.
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Your children, if for no other reason,
deserve a mother and daddy
who know what it is to pray.
But I want to tell you something,
that is almost
an extinct species in our day,
most parents don't PRAY DAILY
for their children.
I'm not talking about in the lost world.
I'm talking about in the church world.
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Christians,
you better pray for your children.
You better have some time everyday
when you get alone.
THESE ARE DESPERATE DAYS
AND WE NEED TO MEET WITH GOD IN PRAYER
ILLUSTRATION:
I like what Abraham Lincoln said.
"I HAVE OFTEN BEEN DRIVEN
TO THE THRONE OF GRACE IN PRAYER
BY THE AWARENESS THAT
I HAD NOWHERE ELSE TO GO."
When everything is going just right
the tendency is
to neglect
that time in prayer with the Lord.
But when the problems come
what do we do?
We get humble and we say:
Lord,
I haven't been praying
like I ought to.
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Do you know what I'm talking about?
That's one of the reasons
persecution is good for us.
It drives us to the Lord.
There are two activities
that are revealed
as you look at these verses
very carefully.
I. Daniel read the Bible
in his quiet time.
verse 2. He said,
"In the first year of his reign
I Daniel understood by books..."
One day old Daniel,
was going over that scroll of Jeremiah
and he come to Jeremiah 25:11-12,
and then he maybe read on down
to 29:10-14 ...
And he discovered that God
had made a prediction
about the length of the captivity,
That God had revealed
through Jeremiah
that the people
would go into captivity,
and that the people
would be in bondage
to a foreign land.
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But then God had revealed to Jeremiah
that the captivity
would only last seventy years
and then God would deliver them
from their captivity.
Daniel took the Word of God
and he took his calendar
and discovered,
that he was on the very verge
of the end of the captivity.
Can you imagine the shouting fit
he had that morning?
II. The second activity is PRAYING.
Look at what happened.
When he read that
and saw that he was sitting
on the edge of fulfilled prophecy
IT MOVED HIM TO PRAYER.
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In verses 3 right on down through 19,
there is one of the mightiest,
most moving prayers
recorded in all of the Bible.
Bible reading is God talking to you.
Prayer is you talking to God.
Look at verses 3 through 5.
In verse 4 he says:
I prayed to the Lord,
made my confession.
Look at verse 5:
we've sinned and committed iniquity
and done wickedly.
Let me tell you something,
the closer you get to God
in your Bible reading
and in your prayer
The more aware you will become
of your utter sinfulness
and unworthiness.