Word of Salvation – Vol.50 No.25 – July 2005

 

How Can Daniel Pray As He Does?

(The Covenant Background of His Prayer)

 

Sermon by Rev J De Hoog on Daniel 9:1-19 (part 1)

 Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 29:1-14

Suggested Hymns: BoW 32; 130; 467; 302; 388

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Take some time now, turn on your imagination, and get ready to see an image in your mind’s eye. A man is kneeling, bowed down to the ground, a picture of sorrow and anguish… and, paradoxically, also a picture of hope! Sorrow and hope together!

He is an old man, he is an important official in the empire of the Medes and the Persians, he is one of the three top administrators of the Empire appointed by Darius the Mede. But he wears no finery. He has changed his official robes for sackcloth, and he has gathered ashes out of the fireplace and put them on his head. He is Daniel. Daniel has been reading the Book of Jeremiah. Daniel 9:1, “In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over 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.” Daniel understands from reading Scripture, from reading Jeremiah, that the period of the desolation of Jerusalem is to last seventy years. And now, the seventy years are nearly over! It’s been nearly seventy years since Jerusalem was destroyed!

As a consequence of this understanding, Daniel takes a particular action. Verse 3, “So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.” Daniel says, “So I turned to the Lord God.” Because I understood this, that the seventy years of desolation for Jerusalem were nearly over, because I understood this, “so I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.”

Why does Daniel take this action? What is the sense in Daniel fasting and wearing sackcloth and covering himself with ashes because of his new understanding?

Understanding Daniel’s actions is central to understanding his prayer. Why does Daniel humble himself in this way and plead with God? The answer lies in the covenant background to this magnificent prayer that we find recorded here in Daniel 9.

What text in Jeremiah has Daniel been reading? The text is almost certainly Jeremiah 25:4-13 and Jeremiah 29:10-14. Let’s turn to these passages now. In Jeremiah 25, God has been condemning the people of Judah and Jerusalem for not listening to the ministry of Jeremiah, his prophet.

Jeremiah 25:4, “And though the Lord has sent all his servants and prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid anyattention. They said, ‘Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways andyour evil practices, and you can stay in the land the Lord gave to you and your fathers for ever and ever. Do not follow other gods to serve and worship them; do not provoke me to anger with what your hands have made. Then I will not harm you.’ But you did not listen to me, declares the Lord, and you provoked me with what your hands have made, and you have brought harm to yourselves. Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the peoples of the north, and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, declares the Lord, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin. I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, the sound of millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years. But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt, declares the Lord, and I will make it desolate forever. I will bring upon that land all the things I have spoken against it, all that are written in this book and prophesied by Jeremiah against all the nations.”

And then, go to Jeremiah 29:10. “This is what the Lord says: When the seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

So here is Daniel. He reads these words of Jeremiah. He believes Jeremiah; he believes God! He knows from his own historical life experience that the seventy years are almost up. And so he acts! He does the most powerful thing he can do. He engages in extended, specific, directed, serious, deeply repentant, humble and sacrificial prayer.

But really, it is still not entirely clear why he prays as he does, is it? If this is what God has promised, and if Daniel trusts in God’s promises, then why can’t Daniel simply sit and wait? Why not simply watch, and wait and see how God does what he said he is going to do? Why does Daniel, as an old man, feel the need to make himself so uncomfortable and to pour so much energy into praying as he does? I mean, sackcloth? Ashes? Isn’t that a bit over the top?

The answer to that question lies in the further covenant background of all that God has said through Jeremiah and the rest of his prophets.

I’d like us to build up a picture of this covenant background to Daniel’s prayer. I don’t normally like asking people to read too many extra passages beyond the one I am preaching from, but in this case it will be very useful to construct the overall picture of the covenant relationship between God and his people that Daniel is building on in his prayer.

You see, Daniel’s mind is steeped, soaked in Scripture; he knows the writings of Moses and the prophets, and he understands the words of Jeremiah with that Scripture-soaked mind. So if we are going to understand Daniel’s prayer, we need to get a feel for his Scripturesoaked mind, and we need to soak our own minds in the same way.

Let’s first see from Daniel’s own words the way his thinking has been shaped by the Scriptures. The very first words of the prayer show that Daniel has a covenant background in mind as he prays. Verse 4, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, we have sinned and done wrong.” You see, Daniel addresses God as the one “who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands.” The whole prayer is cast in this frame of God’s covenant of love with his people.

And then the words throughout the prayer reflect this covenant of love between God and his people. When you consider the words in detail, the whole prayer is almost entirely cast in covenant language. God is called great and awesome and righteous and merciful and forgiving and the one who brought his people out of Egypt. He is described as the one who is faithful to his covenant commitments. On the other hand, Israel is repeatedly described as failing to keep her covenant commitments. Verse 5, “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets… ” Verse 11, “All Israel has transgressed your law and turned away, refusing to obey you. Therefore the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you.”

Daniel reflects covenant thinking in yet a further way: he acknowledges that God’s treatment of Israel has been appropriate in the framework of the covenant. Verse 13, “Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us… The Lord our God did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does.”

Here then are four ways in which covenant thinking stands behind this prayer:

in the language used throughout,

in the way God is described,

in acknowledging the sin of Israel,

and in acknowledging that God’s treatment of Israel in sending them into exile is entirely appropriate.

But there is yet a fifth covenantal aspect to Daniel’s prayer, and that is found in the way he words his plea, his appeal to God. To see that, it is important that we understand that Daniel, as he bows low before God in sackcloth and ashes, is not only a figure of great sorrow and humble repentance – he is also a figure of great hope!

How can Daniel have any hope? Once again, his hope comes from being soaked in the Scriptures. And not only from the promises of Jeremiah that we read earlier, that after seventy years God would once again visit his people there in exile and release them from exile and bring them back to the land. Yes, Daniel has been reading those promises, as he tells us in this chapter. But Daniel also knows the promises of restoration that God had given his people way back in the very early days of the covenant of God’s love.

Let me point you, for example, to Leviticus 26:38-45. The people of Israel are at Mount Sinai, just out of Egypt. God begins by telling Israel how terrible it will be if they disobey and are sent into exile. From verse 38, “You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away. But if they will confess their sins and the sins of

their fathers – their treachery against me and their hostility towards me, which made me hostile towards them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies – then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.”

Let’s think about this. Here is Israel in this passage in Leviticus. They are still at the foot of Mount Sinai, about three months out from Egypt.

They have not yet even entered the Promised Land. Indeed, it is the first generation that we see here camping at Mount Sinai, and most of that first generation of Israel did not even make it into the Land, but their bodies lay scattered in the desert. And already, at this very early point in their history, God is laying out the fundamental principles governing his covenant of love with his people. God will always be faithful to his covenant; he will never break his promises. Yet, if Israel is faithless and rebellious, then she will be punished. She will be sent away from the land, and the people will waste away in exile in the lands of their enemies.

However, God’s punishment will always stop short of finally terminating his covenant of love. God will not give his people over absolutely and finally. And if those in exile acknowledge their wrongdoing, and the wrongdoing of their fathers, and if they acknowledge that God has been right in punishing them, then he will remember his covenant with them.

If they return to the Lord, he will restore them to the Land.

In Leviticus, in Numbers and in Deuteronomy, and then right through the Prophets, there is passage after passage just like this. Repentant, humble confession of sin and seeking the Lord with all your heart will avail with God! God will listen, and when you who are in exile return to the Lord in this serious, humble, repentant manner, he will return to you.

For God is a covenant God, and he will not abandon his covenant promises. The passages that we read from Jeremiah, the same passages that Daniel was reading in Babylon, were just two of the dozens of passages that speak in the same kind of way.

What do these passages look for? They look for extended, specific, directed, serious, deeply repentant, humble and sacrificial prayer.

Daniel is soaked in these Scriptures. And when he understands that the seventy years are almost over, what does he do? He does the most powerful thing he can do. He engages in extended, specific, directed, serious, deeply repentant, humble and sacrificial prayer. Daniel acts on behalf of his people to fulfil the conditions that God himself has laid down for the return of the people of Israel to their Promised Land.

Daniel fulfils the conditions, so that God might act.

Will God listen? Will God respond as he has promised to respond when he sees such repentance and prayer? Will he act?

[Pause]

Can you see now why Daniel is not just a picture of sorrow and anguish, but also a picture of great hope? He believes Jeremiah, he believes the rest of the Scriptures. He believes God! And so, even in his deepest anguish and repentant sorrow, he is a man of unshakeable hope.

Brothers and sisters in the Lord, I want to come back to this prayer again, for it has so much to teach us about God and about ourselves.

But simply see this today. God is a faithful covenant God, and that is something we can rely upon absolutely. He will never abandon his people. We may abandon him – we do abandon him as we reject his law and walk in our own ways and think about the world and all our work and all our time and all our lives apart from God. But as Ecclesiastes teaches us, life under the sun, life apart from God, no matter how good it is in itself, is finally futile and eternally frustrating. But life lived in the context of the covenant relationship and obedience to its terms is rich and fruitful and eternally worthwhile. And, as long as we live, there is always the opportunity to come back to that rich and fruitful and worthwhile life.

If you have been apart from God, away from him in the foolishness of rebellion and disobedience, now is the time to return to him. How can you return? In the way that Daniel demonstrates here in Daniel 9.

Through serious, genuine repentance, and through hopeful faith in a faithful God. For us who live this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that means through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Repentance is the first word of the gospel. How did Jesus begin his preaching ministry? Mark 1:14-15, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” Repent and believe the gospel. Repentance is the first word of the gospel.

Sometimes I come across Christians who don’t know if they really repented and believed when they first became Christians. They are unsure of the genuineness of their repentance, they are even unsure of the genuineness of their faith. They are not sure they ever really repented, or ever really trusted in Christ properly.

What do you say to such Christians? You say, “Don’t worry about the past; that’s gone forever. Worry about today. Repent and believe today!”

The Christian life is an ongoing life of repentance and faith; serious genuine repentance of sin and rebellion, and hope-full faith in a faithful God. God has not changed. He does not break his covenant. What is he looking for in rebellious and sinful people? What does he love in them? A broken and a contrite spirit he will not despise. In verse 4 Daniel describes God as “the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all those who love him and obey his commands.” What is his command when you have sinned and rebelled against the Lord? His command is that you repent and believe the good news about Jesus Christ. We come to the Lord as repentant sinners, holding fast to God. He holds fast to us! In Jesus Christ, he keeps his covenant of love. Praise be to his name!

Amen.