R. Dean: Daniel Lesson 40
Petition in Prayer – Daniel 9:10-19
We'll continue our study of Daniel 9 and we will conclude our study of Daniel's prayer in the first 19 verses. Daniel is praying this prayer as an intercessor for the nation Israel. He is standing in their place seeking God's grace; He is challenging God to let the people return to the land on the basis of his studies in Jeremiah and in Deuteronomy. Daniel has recognized that they were to be out of the land for seventy years due to the number of sabbaths and sabbatical years that they had failed to follow. Under the Mosaic Law every seventh year was a sabbatical year and during that sabbatical year no one was to work, they were not to work in the fields, and they were to let the fields lay fallow and it was a time when the nation would be trusting God. That was the whole purpose of the sabbath one day a week as well as the sabbatical year, was to exemplify nationally that they were relying upon God to take care of all of the national needs.
Now they had failed to trust God by following the sabbatical year concept for a number of years, we don't know how many, there have been a number of different speculative schemes trying to work out just exactly which years were involved but none of them fit any precise Biblical pattern. We do know that there were seventy years and that since a sabbatical year occurred once every seven years, that comes out to 490 years. That figure, 490 years, is going to be important for understanding and interpreting Daniel's vision, called Daniel's seventy weeks, starting in verse 24, one of the most important and impressive prophecies in the Old Testament. That is a prophecy that truly helps us understand that God has a future plan for Israel and the timetable involved in the coming of the Messiah as well as some important information related to the Tribulation and the antichrist. But that's next time.
Tonight we are going to finish up the prayer where we have seen and learned several important principles related to prayer and one of those has to do with the importance of confession. Confession was not something that was related simply to the Old Testament. Now in terms of understanding confession, a couple of points I want to make because these things I find are not brought out and not clearly understood by a lot of people. There were two problems that you could run into in the Old Testament as far as sin was concerned. One had to do with ceremonial uncleanness and this had to do with the ritual and ritual worship in the temple or earlier in the tabernacle. Then on the other side we have the problem of personal sin and national sin.
Now these must be kept distinct because, for example, in the Old Testament you could touch a dead body or be in the presence of a dead body or touch something that had just touched a dead body and you would be rendered ceremonially unclean. There were many other things that could render you ceremonially unclean but we'll take that as a good example because there's nothing inherently immoral or unethical with touching a dead body. So you could touch a dead body and the reason these things made a person ceremonially unclean is because they usually were associated with death or in some other way with the consequence or penalty of sin as outlined in Genesis 3. And so what God is emphasizing in the ceremonial or ritual law is that just about anything man does is contaminated by sin and affects his relationship with God. As a result of coming into contact, or violating any of the ceremonial laws which rendered a person ceremonially unclean, he had to follow the basic stipulations and prescriptions in the Law. Sometime this involved a waiting period of six or seven days; other times it was less than that, but it always involved a sacrifice. And in the Old Testament that sacrifice was either a sin offering or a guilt offering. And this was designed to bring ceremonial cleansing to the individual so that then he could come and participate in the rituals in the temple.
On the personal side, if you committed personal sin, or in the case of Daniel's prayer here in Daniel 9 a number of other prayers in the Old Testament including Nehemiah's prayer in Nehemiah 1, national sin, you confessed sin. For example, when David sinned with his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and then the cover-up where he conspired to have her husband Uriah killed and did have him killed, so he's guilty of adultery, conspiracy to commit murder and murder, when he confesses his sin in Psalm 51 he admits his sin; he says to God, "Against You and You alone have I sinned." Why? Sin may affect other people and it certainly did in that case and it had tragic consequences on a number of people, not the least of which was Bathsheba and Uriah, but sin is a violation of God's absolute, therefore every sin, no matter what it is or no matter how many people it affects, every sin is primarily directed toward God because it's a violation of His character. David confessed his sin in Psalm 51 and there's no record that David is going into the temple and offering a sacrifice.
Now he would have had to do that the next time he went into the temple, but there's a distinction between these two and the reason is that the ceremonial and ritual practices are designed as visual training aids to teach us about what's going on in the arena of personal sin and national sin. In the Old Testament the high priest would go into the temple or tabernacle and on the day that the high priest was inaugurated into his role he would be washed completely; he would take a complete bath and this was a symbol, it doesn't mean he was saved, I'm sure there were high priests in the Old Testament that were not saved. This does not mean he was saved but it symbolized it, he was washed from head to toe and that is a symbol and represents the fact that at the instant of salvation we are all completely cleansed from sin, we are positionally cleansed from sin and then each time he would go into the temple he would come to the laver and he would wash his hands and his feet. He only had to have the complete washing once but ever time he came into the temple he would have to wash his hands and his feet and that again symbolized the necessity of continual cleansing from sin in order to be able to go into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. So there we have the emphasis in the Old Testament.
Now some people have come along and said because Christ is the end of sacrifices, Christ was the end of the Law, and He paid the penalty for sin completely, there is no need for confession of sin in the New Testament, in fact that's just legalism; and then they usually interpret 1 John 1:9 as a salvation verse. The problem with that is that after the Tribulation, when Jesus Christ returns at the Second Coming and establishes the millennial temple, as described in Ezekiel 40-47, there is a return to an animal sacrificial system in the millennial temple. Now without going into all the details, it is not the same as the Levitical system. One imported realm of sacrifice or category of sacrifice is missing in the future millennial temple, and that is atonement sacrifices. The sacrifices that are emphasized are the guilt offerings and the sin offerings. And the reason that these are present once again in the Old Testament is not that they are effectual for salvation or for cleansing. Remember, we have to keep that original distinction, that there's a difference between ceremony and ritual and the personal reality. People received personal forgiveness for sin without the sacrifices but the sacrifices were designed to teach a lesson and that took place inside the tabernacle and the temple.
In the millennial kingdom there will be a Levitical priesthood, descendants from Zadok, and in the Zadokite priesthood, these are descendants from those who survived the Tribulation. And because they have survived the Tribulation and have not gone through physical death and glorification, they will still have a sin nature and so they will commit sins. So for this Zadokite priesthood in the millennial kingdom to come into the presence of God in the millennial temple, they are going to have to go through ceremonial cleansing.
Now the point is that if Jesus Christ's death was such that it rendered unnecessary confession of sin or dealing with sin after salvation and having cleansing from sin after salvation, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a millennial sacrifice or a sacrifice in the millennial temple for cleansing then. So in the future there's cleansing, there's cleansing in the past in terms of the age of the Law, there's cleansing in the future during the millennium and that indicates that there must always be some sort of mechanism for cleansing from sin after salvation. It's not that sin causes us to lose salvation but sin affects our fellowship with God and our ability to have access to God, therefore in the Church Age the issue is confession.
Now the key word, then, in 1 John 1:9 is the issue and the word cleansing and that is necessary. Remember in the Old Testament model and in the millennial temple model you have two important things going on along with this. You have a temple and you have a priesthood. And in order for the priesthood to function in the temple there has to be cleansing, ongoing cleansing for ritual purification. In the same way, in the Church Age the body of the believer is the temple of God the Holy Spirit and every believer is a priest unto God. That means to function in your priesthood in relationship to your temple there has to be ongoing cleansing from post salvation sins. So this is what is exemplified both in the Old Testament and in the future millennial temple and the Church Age is no different.
Confession, though, is often misunderstood, it is not some matter of trying to impress God with how sorry we are that we sinned, because as I keep saying, God knows you're going to commit that sin another six thousand times so He's not impressed with your sincerity when you try to convince Him you'll never do it again, you're so sorry you committed that sin. All God wants is for us to admit or acknowledge our sinfulness. Now sometimes, though, we go a little long before we confess our sins and we do commit certain sins that bring about an emotional response. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying that the emotion of feeling sorry for your sins or the emotion of shame is not the issue. That is simply what God…that public humiliation or private humiliation is simply the means that God is using to get our attention that we need to deal with the sin in our lives.
Last time I concluded by looking at the doctrine of shame and I want to review that again briefly before we go on because this is something that people have a lot of trouble with and that trouble stems from two things; number one, we think that somehow we need to manufacture feelings of guilt or shame whenever we sin and that's false, God is not impressed with our superficial approach to sin. Too often, though, we are not ashamed of sin and that's because we've committed that sin a thousand times, we're going to commit it a thousand more times and so we need to recognize we're not going to necessarily be as shocked over that as the first time we committed that sin, and so we don't need to be worried about the fact…or try to generate feelings of guilt or feelings of shame over that sin, that's not a problem.
On the other hand, we don't need to try to manufacture something to impress God. But shame and embarrassment is often related to sin in the Old Testament and God again and again emphasizes that Israel should be embarrassed, humiliated and ashamed because of their idolatry and this terminology is almost always used in relationship to the idolatry of the nation Israel. So let's just review this and once again I want to address the sixth and final point.
The first point is that God does bring shame on the believer who disobeys Him. This is seen in Jeremiah 2:26, "As the thief is shamed when he is discovered, so the house of Israel is shamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets," and here there's the emphasis on the leadership, that the leadership should be ashamed because of their failure to correctly lead the people and the fact that the leadership was as involved in idolatry and rejection of Bible doctrine as the people were. So the first point is God does bring shame on the believer who disobeys him; not always but there are times when he does.
Second point, shame is part of an intensification of divine discipline. Remember, there are three stages of divine discipline; there is first of all warning discipline when God is simply getting our attention because we need to deal with the sin in our life, we need to confess and we need to get back in fellowship and move on. If we are somewhat hardened and calloused to that warning discipline and it does not have its proper effect then God is going to turn the heat up a little bit, He's going to move from maybe a switch to a 2 x 4 or a 2 x 6 in order to get our attention, and that's called warning discipline and God is going to continue to intensify that warning discipline until He gets our attention as believers, and if He doesn't, then it moves into the third stage which is dying discipline. So there's three stages of discipline and when life begins to fall apart for you and you go through various stages of suffering you need to pay attention to the fact that maybe it's because God is bringing some discipline in your life. It may not be but that ought to be something that you pay attention to. Warning discipline, intensive discipline and dying discipline; the Scripture says in Jeremiah 6:15 states, "Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all," this is an indictment on the nation Israel that they had been in idolatry for so long that they had been calloused in their soul so that they were no longer even ashamed or embarrassed over the idolatry in the nation. God says "they did not even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall down among those who fall; at the time that I punish them they shall be cast down, says the Lord." So God uses shame to bring discipline, to wake us up and then if that fails He intensifies it to dying discipline.
Third, shame is public humiliation in order to enforce humility." See sometimes we… the problem with ongoing sin is always arrogance and when we are arrogant then we think that we can get away with whatever the sin is sin our life and we think that we don't have to deal with it, somehow it's just okay, that it was paid for at the cross and we come up with all kinds of rationales to justify our sin. But then God has to do something if that continues for a lengthy period of time, sometimes God is going to publicly humiliate an individual in order to teach them humility that they need to rely upon Him and bring them back to grace orientation. Jeremiah 3:25 states, "Let us lie down in our shame, and let our humiliation cover us; for we have sinned against the LORD our God," this is a recognition on the part of Israel of their sin, "we and our fathers, since our youth even to this day. And we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God." So shame is used by God in order to enforce humility.
Point number four, however the end goal is not shame or embarrassment per se, see, some people want to wallow in that; if you have a trend toward asceticism, if you have a trend towards self-righteousness, then perhaps you like to wallow in your humiliation and in shame. That was what motivated a lot of the early monastics; that was a movement of asceticism that began in about the 3rd century AD and perhaps its most extreme was a group that was called the Pillar Saints and these were people like Simeon Stylites and a number of others who would go out in the Egyptian desert and they would sit on top of a pillar, sometimes for years, in order to impress everybody with their humility and people would come from miles, hundreds of miles around in order to hear their words of wisdom. And as the years went by they would increase the size of their pillar and that was a way to indicate…and then they would also get involved in wearing camel hair shirts inside out so it'd be extremely uncomfortable, some were involved in self-flagellation where they would go into the caves and they would whip themselves, all of this in order to self-inflict humiliation and shame because they thought that that in and of itself was a sign of spirituality. But God merely uses the shame and the embarrassment as a means to an end if we are resistant to discipline. So shame is designed to get our attention, Ezekiel 16:63 states, "In order that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth any more because of your humiliation, when I have forgive you for all that you have done." So God uses that to get our attention and to teach us to keep our mouth shut, and humble ourselves for the teaching of His word.
The issue is not shame or embarrassment, the issue is to confess our sin and to move on, and confess means to admit or acknowledge guilt. It doesn't mean feel sorry for your sins, it doesn't mean to try to bargain with God and to ask God…the Scriptures do not say ask for forgiveness. The Scripture says confess your sins and God will forgive you. So we are to simply admit or acknowledge our sins to Him and move on and then at the instant of confession of sin we are restored to fellowship and we recover the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Now the sixth point is one that has come to mind more and more in the last couple of weeks, especially as we watch this horrible scenario unfold on television related to the Roman Catholic priesthood and the pedophilia and the sexual abuse and everything else because we live in an age where there are a number of people who have grown up in situations when they were victims of sexual abuse, when they were victims of physical abuse, when they were victims of pedophilia and often people who come up in a background like that are very embarrassed, they have a sense of shame and this is something that hangs over them for much of their life. That is a problem for them. The principle here is that when you have done nothing wrong and you're the victim of a crime, then you have no reason to feel shame. Now you might, but that's a problem, a test that you're going to have dealing with your own sin nature. You have to learn to apply doctrine to that and realize that that was a particular problem that you faced in life, other people faced other problems in life, we all live in a fallen world and God's grace forgives us for anything that we have done but in those situations there's nothing that you have done and so you need to learn to apply God's Word to that situation and move on.
God was fully aware in eternity past of any and every problem we face in life, no matter how horrendous, how awful, no matter how terrible it may be, no matter how overwhelming those feelings might be at some time, God knew about those in eternity past and He made a perfect provision in His Word giving us promises so that we can deal with situations like that. And that is exactly what we have to do and so the principle is that there is a couple of situations when it is wrong to feel same. One is when you have done nothing wrong and you're simply the victim of some crime or some sin by child abuse, rape, or sexual abuse. The other time in which it's wrong to feel shame is once you have confessed your sin; I don't care how terrible the sin was, I don't care how horrible it was, or how much the public humiliation, we all know that there are times when people commit certain acts, certain sins, everybody knows about it, it's right out there in the open and it's easy to kick yourself and go on a pity party and beat yourself up for weeks and months and years to come, but God's Word says that once we admit our sin to God it's over with; God forgives us, God forgets the sin, He removes it from us and every time we get involved in pity parties, every time we get involved in feeling guilty over that, what we are saying in effect is God, You really didn't forgive me, I have to help out in the situation by feeling sorry for this. So it is a sin to feel guilty about sins that we have already confessed because at the instant of confession we are forgiven and all we're doing is trying to dredge it up again and that is the path to self-destruction and all kinds of emotional problems.
Now Daniel prays, starting in verse 7 we read, "O Lord, righteousness to you, but to us shame of face, as it is this day—to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far off in all the countries," that is those who have been scattered outside of the land in the Diaspora, "to which You have driven them," and the verb there indicates that God has actively driven them out of the land, "in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against You," and that term for unfaithfulness will takes us back to the Mosaic Law. What we must understand is that Daniel's prayer is grounded in an understanding of God's covenant with Israel. And I've said this again and again, you have to understand that the Mosaic Law was a covenant, a contract, between God, party of the first part, and Israel, party of the second part. Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Law and He was the end of the Law so that the Mosaic Law is no longer in effect. It was one doctrine, one hole, it had its own internal integrity, but once Israel…it went out under 70 AD and when there's no nation Israel, when Jesus Christ ended the ceremonial aspect of the Law, the Law became null and void, it was no longer in effect.
Now it's interesting, somebody asked the question, does that mean we don't have to obey anything in the Old Testament. Well yes and no; we don't obey what's in the Old Testament in terms of the Mosaic Law because that's not for us, but every key principle in the Mosaic Law in terms of moral and ethical standard is repeated in the New Testament except for the command to obey the Sabbath. But murder was not made wrong because of the Ten Commandments; adultery was not made a sin because of the Ten Commandments, murder, adultery, thievery, lying, false witness, were all wrong from the instant Adam ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge good and evil. The Mosaic Law was simply the constitution, the legal code for the nation Israel and in that code God promised Israel that if they obeyed the Law God would bless them in certain ways; if they broke covenant with God, if they were unfaithful to that covenant then God would disicpilne them and God outlined five successive series or cycles of discipline that the nation would go through and the most extreme form, the fifth cycle of discipline was that God would remove them from this land that He had promised them, this land that was supposed to be a land of milk and honey, a place of blessing and God would take them out of the land and that would be a sign to Israel and to all the nations that God was punishing Israel. So what Daniel is saying here is that because of the unfaithfulness, that is because they broke the Mosaic Covenant, they are outside the land and God drove them outside the land.
Then in Daniel 9:8 he reiterates this same principle, "O LORD, to us belongs shame of face," or that is "open shame," it's an idiom in the Hebrew for visible shame and embarrassment, "to us, LORD, belongs open shame, to our kings, our princess and our fathers, because we have sinned against You." Notice the parallel with what Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 2:26, "their kings, their princes, their priests and their prophets." So it is clear from the vocabulary in 9:8 that Daniel has saturated his soul with the Word of God in terms of the scroll of Jeremiah.
In Daniel 9:7 we read, to the land "which Thou hast driven them," we have to look at four reasons why God cast them out of the land. First God cast them out of the land because of negative volition. They had rejected God's Word, God's Word was not a priority for them, they would rather be involved in any of the details of life than be involved in going to listen to Jeremiah teach the Bible and responding positively by applying Bible doctrine in their lives.
Second reason that they were taken out of the land is given in Jeremiah 17:1-4, they were involved in idolatry. Idolatry as, as Scripture clearly describes in several passage, idolatry is merely a subtle form of demonism. It always gets man involved in depending upon himself for his own solutions, it introduces a false scale of values and in fact it emphasizes slavery to the details of life and this is seen in Jeremiah 17:1-12 actually.
The third reason they were taken out of the land is the primary reason and that is the rejection of the sabbatical law. They rejected the seven year observance of the sabbatical year as described in Exodus 23:10-11, as well as in Leviticus 25:3-4; 2 Chronicles 36:20-21; and Jeremiah 25:11-12, and Jeremiah 29:10.
The fourth reason is that they were trying to solve their problems through human viewpoint techniques and not divine viewpoint techniques. For them the human viewpoint technique is they were going down to Egypt and entering into alliances with the Egyptians in order to handle the military threat from Nebuchadnezzar. God had set aside Israel as a unique nation so that Israel would demonstrate to all of the nations that they could face and handle all of their problems simply by relying upon God alone. When they started relying upon other nations and looking to foreign alliances for their security, for their safety, they were rejecting God and they were operating on human viewpoint. That's no different than today when Christians rely upon all sorts of secular helps, such as secular psychology in order to try to solve the problems we face in life. [seems to be a few words missing]…run into the same problem and enter into divine discipline, and with Israel they were taken out of the land.
So in Daniel 9:8 Daniel says, "Open shame belongs to us, O LORD, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee." So this is a great example of confession, outlining sin and taking personal responsibility for sin.
Daniel 9:9, "To the LORD our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him." Now in this passage we have the use of the word "compassion" which is the Hebrew word, rachamim, and the "im" ending is a plural of intensification, and it involves an intense form of compassion and this is the application for Daniel of divine mercy and grace. See, what Daniel is relying on in this prayer is God's grace. This is an example of grace orientation; he understands God's grace and he is going to appeal to God's grace as one of the bases for answering prayer. He says, "to our God belongs compassion," and secondly, "forgiveness," forgiveness is the result of His grace and this is the Hebrew word celiychah which means to forgive and to forget. See, God's forgiveness is such that He is not going to bring it up again, it's not going to be an issue, He will wipe the slate clean.
One of the biggest problems that American have, I think, is understanding what really is. Forgiveness means…in the New Testament it uses some terms synonymous to forgiveness that are related to like forgiving a debt, we still use it that way, you forgive a debt. If you owe me $1,000 and I forgive that debt, then that means that that slate is wiped clean, I don't come back six months or a year from not and say what about that $1,000 you owe me. That's what forgiveness means, it implies forgetting it. But forgiveness is a personal thing; it is not a judicial term. Forgiveness is a relational term so that if somebody commits some crime against me I am responsible as a believer to do two things: to forgive them, which is a personal term, I'm not going to hold it against them, I am not going to react in bitterness and vindictiveness, and secondly I'm going to make sure they're prosecuted to the full extent of the law because they are a criminal. That's justice. There is a difference between justice and forgiveness. You can forgive a criminal but that does not mean that they are no longer judicially liable.
In fact, the reason God is able to forgive the believer for his sin is because prior to that forgiveness Christ dealt with sin on the cross judicially. First the judicial payment is dealt with, then forgive-ness which allows us to have a personal relationship with God, enters into the picture, and those are two separate categories. But most Americans don't have a clue about the distinction there. I was kind of caught off guard yesterday, I was watching one a news show and they were talking about what's going on with the Roman Catholic Church right now and they were interviewing and extremely liberal lawyer from Southern California, one of the top feminist lawyers in the country and what shaped her view, like most liberals what shapes their view is their personal experience, not absolutes, was that she had represented seven victims of sexual abuse from priests and one of the things that came in as a question was, well, there ought to be forgiveness for one of these cardinals because he's admitted that he did wrong, and she came back and she said well, forgiveness is great but he broke the law and so we need to prosecute to the full extent of the law. I kind of shook my head and though maybe I ought to completely reevaluate all of my views here because I'm in agreement with this individual. That just shows that just like a stopped watch is right twice a day someone who is a flaming liberal can be right on occasion.
Forgiveness is a personal, a relational term and it is not the same as justice. Remember that! And because justice was taken care of on the cross, Christ paid the penalty for our sin, therefore we can, on that basis, have forgiveness, which is a personal application of that, in our relationship with God. When God forgives us He removes our sin from us. Psalm 103:12 says "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." That means that when you sin, no matter how much you shock yourself and no matter how much you shock your friends and family, when you confess that sin God forgives you and He forgets it and removes it from you, and when you bring it back up, either in memory or by feeling guilty over it again you are basically saying simple confession wasn't enough and you have to add your own pity party to it in order to impress God. Isaiah 43:25, God states, "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins." God is the one who removes that sin for us as far as the east is from the west. And these are two verses that you should commit to memory, especially if you have a problem with always feeling guilty over your sins.
The emphasis here is grace; what gives Daniel the courage to pray like this is the fact that he is grace oriented and he understands that the basis for answered prayer is God's grace and so he is going to maximize his dependence upon God's grace and he is going to take advantage of God's grace and he's going to exploit God's grace. And that's the mark of a mature believer. I always find it amazing when I run into believers who are hesitant to really ask God for anything, and that just shows they don't understand grace and usually they're too impressed with themselves and they don't understand the dynamics of grace. God wants to give things to us; we "have not because we ask not" James says, and we often ask not because we have a false understanding of God's grace.
I remember an episode with a pastor I grew up under, George Meisinger told me this story one time back when he was in seminary and he and his wife were down in Houston, and they were house-sitting for the pastor. This was back in the mid-60s when a dollar was worth a lot more than it is now. You know, $10.00 back then would buy about what $100.00 would buy now. So the pastor, his wife and family were getting in the car to head out for vacation the pastor got out of the car and came back to him and said, George… because you know George is a poor seminary student, he said you're probably going to be a little strapped for cash and he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a wad of bills and peels out two hundred dollar bills; that was a lot of money in 1965, and hands those bills to George and George is saying no, no, you don't need to give me anything and the pastor looked him in the eye and said if you don't accept this you don't understand grace, and if you don't understand grace you'll never make it as a pastor. That's a great lesson to learn; too many people are hesitant to ever accept a gift, and if you won't accept a gift you don't understand grace, because that's what salvation is all about, it's a free gift and God wants to bestow free gifts on us and that's just an illustration of grace orientation and what that is all about.
Now in Daniel 9:10 Daniel goes on with his confession and he says, "nor have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God," that is, they did not listen to what He said through His prophets, we have not "obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His teachings," that's the application, they didn't obey them and they did not walk in them. You see, you can't obey what you don't accept, and what you don't believe, and you can't apply what you don't know. So if you don't know something and you haven't listened then you won't obey it and you won't apply it and he says that "we did not obey the voice of the LORD our God," they refused to listen to the prophets, "we did not obey the voice of the LORD our God to walk in His teachings," they rejected doctrine, they would not apply doctrine, "which He set before us through His servants the prophets." And in essence what he is saying here and in verse 11 is a recognition of Israel's national sin. I want you to notice that he includes himself in this confession.
Daniel 9:11, he says, "Indeed, all Israel has transgressed Thy law," it didn't matter if Daniel, who wasn't a part of that, who had not been involved in the idolatry, Daniel who was a young man was positive to the Word, Daniel still includes himself because he was part of that culture and they were corporately guilty. "Indeed, all Israel has transgressed Thy law and turned aside, not obeying Thy voice; so the curse has been poured out on us," notice he includes himself in that, "along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him." Notice once again, sin is not against the people you have offended. Sin is always against God because sin means to violate His standard; sin is not a violation of human standard or human law. So he is reminding God about the fact that the nation has disobeyed God as God had warned them about in Deuteronomy 30, and so he is calling God back to those promises in Deuteronomy 30 that if the nation turned to Him, then they would be blessed.
Deuteronomy 30:1-6 reads, "So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all the nations where the LORD your God has banished you, [2] and you return to the LORD your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, [3] then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity," this is what Daniel is praying for, national restoration of all of Israel from captivity. Now he's not going to get it because all of the nation isn't turning back to God. Daniel is standing as an intercessor but the nation is still primarily negative, so only a portion of the nation is going to return to the land in 535 BC and in fact before our Lord returns. You do not have a complete restoration of Israel to the land in the Old Testament. God had promised, though, that he would "restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and willl gather you again from all the peoples," see, that didn't happen, He did not restore them from all the peoples, only some of them, "from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. [4] If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back." Since this is promised and hasn't yet been fulfilled we know it must be fulfilled in the future and there will be a complete international regathering of the nation in the future.
Deuteronomy 30:5, "And the LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed," that means there must be a future restoration of the nation in the land, but notice, this restoration is not talking about what's going on today because this is talking about the restoration of a nation that has turned back to God completely. We must make a distinction between the return of some Jews to the land, a partial regathering of an unregenerate or unsaved nation that must be there at the Tribulation and the regathering of a saved regenerate people which takes place at the end of the Tribulation. But as we will see next week and the following week, there are promises in the Scripture of two international regatherings that take place in the future. One is a nation regathered in unbelief and one is a nation regathered in belief and both have to be fulfilled and have not yet be fulfilled. I think what we see today is perhaps a fulfillment of the regathering of the nation in unbelief.
Deuteronomy 30:6 says, "Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants," that's talking about salvation, that's not today, "will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live."
Now in Daniel 9:11 Daniel says, "Israel has transgressed Thy law" and that's the Hebrew word 'abar which means to pass over, to take away or to cross over. That means they have crossed the Law, they have disobeyed the Law. It's a different word for sin than those that were used in verse 5 and it means to cross over the Torah or to break the Torah, to break the Law. When he states here they have transgressed, that is we have "crossed over Thy law and turned aside," that word means to depart, departing from the obedience to the Law into disobedience, and this would bring in the cursing that's outlined in Leviticus 26 and in Deuteronomy 28. When he says, "so the curse has been poured out on us," that is the curse of Leviticus 26, all five stages of national discipline.
Then in Daniel 9:12 we read, "Thus He has confirmed His words which He had spoken against us and against our rulers who ruled us, to bring on us great calamity; for under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what was done to Jerusalem." And that refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. I'm reminded of our Lord's words in Matthew 24 that when He refers to the coming Tribulation He says there was never any destruction like that in all of human history, so this destruction in 586 BC is simply a pale representation of what will take place in the Tribulation.
Then Daniel 9:13-14 we read, "As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come on us; yet we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to Thy truth." See, he recognizes that even though he's turning to God, the nation as a whole is not seeking God's grace, that's what it means, "have not sought the favor of the LORD our God," the word "favor" there means grace, that the nation is not turning to God but he is on their behalf. And then in verse 14, "Therefore, the LORD has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us; for the LORD our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice." And here he recognizes that divine discipline is a manifestation of God's righteousness and God's holiness.
So this is the end of his national confession and we are reminded briefly here of the reasons why Christians suffer. There are six reasons why believers suffer and four reasons why unbelievers suffer. First of all, believers suffer because of the fall, because we are all living in a fallen world and we are fallen creatures we all suffer. Second reason we suffer is because of rebellion toward doctrine; we reject doctrine, we disobey God's specific mandates and the result is suffering, self-induced misery. Third, we suffer because we are associated with others who are being disciplined, either family members or business or in a nation, even though we may be obedient to God as Daniel was, because he was associated with a nation that was disobedient, he suffered. So we have cursing by association.
Fourth, we suffer because we are identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in Satan's world; because you are a believer you have a target on your back for Satan and the demons to attack. Fifth, sometimes there is no other way to learn certain doctrines; we have to suffer because God puts us into those testing situations so that we can learn to apply doctrine. The sixth reason believers suffer is as a testimony to unbelievers, other believers, and to angels. Now those last three do not apply to unbelievers. The first three apply to unbelievers and a fourth reason applies to unbelievers and that is that God is using suffering to get their attention to the cross.
Now in Daniel 9:15-19 we have Daniel's petition. He states: "And now, O LORD our God, who hast brought Thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and hast made a name for Thyself, as it is this day—we have sinned, we have been wicked." So he repeats His confession but he focuses on what God has done historically. He reminds God of what God did in the Exodus, that God brought out a special people for Himself, delivered them from slavery in Egypt, so therefore God had a purpose for this nation. So he is reminding God of the Mosaic Covenant, the establishment of a special relationship with Israel and a special purpose for Israel.
Then in Daniel 9:16 he states, "O Lord, in accordance with all Thy righteous acts, let now Thine anger and Thy wrath turn away from Thy city Jerusalem," notice how he is arguing here. He is presenting a case before God that because God had a purpose in Israel He should complete that purpose. In the eyes of fallen mankind in general it would be a travesty if God continued to discipline Israel, so he is not arguing with God, Lord do this for me because I deserve it, because I'm nice, because we've been miserable for seventy years. He is saying Lord, Your character is at stake here, You called us out with a special purpose and You need to fulfill that purpose. So he goes back to God's promises, He goes back to the foundation of the covenant and He presents an airtight case to God for why God needs to act on behalf of His people. He argues in terms of God's stated plan for history and for the nation and he argues in terms of God's character and the testimony of His actions to the nation.
Daniel 9:17, he says, "So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Thy servant and to his supplications, and for Thy sake, O Lord, let Thy face shine on Thy desolate sanctuary." In other words he's praying to God to bless the nation, let them return to the land and rebuild the temple.
Daniel 9:18, "O my God, incline Thine ear and hear!" He's calling upon God to pay attention, he's using an anthropomorphism here because God doesn't have ears and God doesn't have eyes but He is calling upon God to give him His full attention. "O my God, incline Thine ear and hear! Open Thine eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by Thy name," notice the emphasis, Jerusalem is a city called by God's name, God has a special plan and purpose for the nation Israel, and it is not a city that has any history in Islam. We hear a lot of talk about that today but Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Old Testament and it is not mentioned once in the Koran. He calls upon God to pay attention to "the city which is called by Thy name; for we are not presenting our supplications before Thee on account of any merits of our own," in other words, I'm not arguing for my own life or just to make life easier for us or to get back home, but on the basis of Your promises and Your character, "on account of Thy great compassions." So he appeals to the grace of God.
Then in Daniel 9:19 he states, "O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Thine own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Thy city and Thy people are called by Thy name." So he grounds his whole petition, ultimately, in the character of God, specifically God's faithfulness to His promise and God's grace.
Now I want to close by looking at one other pray in the Old Testament that is very similar and another crucial prayer in the history of Israel and will provide a bit of a backdrop to what we'll study in the next section in Daniel 9. Turn to Nehemiah 1. Historically Nehemiah takes place about 90 years after Daniel and Nehemiah is still in the Persian Empire. And Nehemiah becomes very concerned. He is a cupbearer; that was a position of responsibility. By the time of Nehemiah's life it was almost like being a prime minister. He, like Daniel, had a very high position in the kingdom because the cupbearer was one who was basically a food taster to make sure that the king would not get poisoned. But over the years, of course someone like that had to be someone you trusted, he became a confidant and a counselor to the king. So Nehemiah receives word at the first part of the chapter that things are in pretty much a mess back in Jerusalem, they haven't rebuilt the walls and the walls of Jerusalem, we read in verse 3, are "broken down" and "gates are burned with fire."
Nehemiah 1:4, so it was "when I heard these words, I sat down and wept," notice, he has the same sort of emotional response that Daniel did because of sin. So there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that that doesn't necessarily impress God. He "wept and mourned for many days," he was "fasting and praying," just like Daniel, he just sets aside the details of life to focus on studying the Scriptures and praying, building an airtight case before God so that God will act.
Nehemiah 1:5, he says, "I pray, LORD God of heaven, oh great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments," notice he does the same thing Daniel does. He prays to God and argues with Him on the basis of God's promise. Incidentally, back in verse 1 it's the twentieth year in the reign of Artaxerxes and this places it in 444 BC. That's an important date because that's the date that we're going to see is important in the starting point of Daniel's seventy weeks.
Nehemiah 1:6, he says, "Please Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open," notice the similarity in verbiage with Daniel's prayer, be attentive, "Your eyes open, that you may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel, Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You; both my father's house and I have sinned. [7] We have acted corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments and statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. [8] Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the nations, [9] but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name."
Notice, he is reiterating the argument of Deuteronomy 30. He's doing the same thing Daniel did over 100 years earlier in Daniel 9; he's arguing on the basis of God's promise and God's covenant, and that's a principle for us, that when we pray to God sometimes it's necessary for us to set aside the details of life, to formulate a well-structured, well-thought out prayer and to really investigate the Scriptures so that we can use the promises of God's Word and His character in order to implore Him to act in a certain way on our behalf.
Nehemiah 1:10, "Now these are Your servants and Your people whom You have redeemed by Your great power," that's a reference to the Exodus again, "and by Your strong hand. [11] O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name, and let Your servant prosper this day I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." So we will see the answer to that prayer next time as we get into our study of Daniel's vision of these seventy weeks. But that sets us up for the future because it is Nehemiah's prayer that is going to kick off the beginning of Daniel's seventy weeks.