Daniel's Prayer

We live, it seems to me, in a period of desolation for the church – so the book of Daniel is very relevant to us. On these new year evenings we’ve been learning from the second half of the book of Daniel. This evening we’re zooming in on one of those chapters, chapter 9. Please have that open in front of you. Share if you need to. You’ll find Daniel 9 on p 894 of the Bibles in the pews.

I have three main headings, each with a sub-heading. You can see them on the insert in the service sheet – and they’ll go up on the screen.

First, THE FACT OF PROPHECY: the Scriptures tell us what we need to know about the future.

Take a look at verses 1-2:

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.

Now, Daniel, let’s remember, along with many of his fellow Jews, is in exile in Babylon. The ruthless Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar had crushed the Jewish nation of Judah, razed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and carried off a substantial part of the population into exile. The prophets – God’s spokesmen to God’s people – were quite clear why this was happening. This was God’s judgement finally falling on Judah after centuries of idolatry and immorality. But God would not abandon them completely. The exiles had found a way to survive in Babylon. They got used to the desolation.

Nations, churches and individuals do experience desolation in various forms. Economically, this nation has never had it so good. But spiritually, the picture is very different. We live in an era of desolation for the church of Christ in the West. For well over a century the church has been in decline. To give one example of that: in 1900, around 56% of all children were in Sunday school groups. By 2000, that was down to 4%, and it’s still falling.

Daniel, though he had been through some very tough times, found himself personally prosperous in Babylon, with wealth, high office and social status. But that didn’t change the underlying reality that his people were in desolate exile, hundreds of miles from home and with their city and their temple a wasteland where the weeds were growing through the ruins and the rubble.

Like Daniel, JPC, up to a point, is doing OK. As Alan Munden shows in his new book, this church, too, had its period of relative spiritual desolation not least when freemasonry took a hold in the middle period of the last century. But that is not so now. And we praise God for the growth other churches too. But none of that changes the overall picture. The church in this country – as in Western Europe generally – is desolate.

And of course in our individual lives we can experience desolation as well. Some terrible event takes place that shatters our peace and our plans. Long term hardship and suffering grind us down. Our hopes and dreams seem to lie in ruins around us. Maybe you identify with that yourself because of all you’re going through. Maybe you see that desolation in the lives of others you care about.

Tough experiences can cause lasting personal desolation. Some, to the outward eye, learn to cope with that. They get on with life. Day follows day. They may even find a measure of peace and prosperity. But just beneath the surface the desolation remains.

My grandfather was a vicar. In the midst of his busy ministry, he got the news one day that his eldest son had been killed. He was a medical student, hit by a lorry as he cycled to lectures. After a couple of weeks of funeral arrangements and visits, he was back at work in the parish. A while ago I read for the first time some of his private papers, and caught a glimpse of the desolation that my grandparents carried inside themselves.

Daniel was a coper. He was doing OK. But scratch the surface of his life and you find desolation. Month after month, year after year, even decade after decade this great grey cloud hung over him. He and his people were trapped and subjugated in this alien and hostile land, far from home, with God apparently distant, unmoved, not acting to change this terrible mess that they’d got themselves into.

But then something happened. The apparently indestructible Babylonian dynasty collapsed. A new power held sway – the Medes and Persians. And Daniel went back to his Bible. He didn’t have all of the Bible we have, of course – no New Testament, no book of Daniel (to state the obvious). But he did have the Law, and the prophets up to the time of the exile, including Jeremiah. And he reports here (in verse 2):

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.

That prophecy is there in Jeremiah 25.11-12, and it’s repeated in Jeremiah 29, which records the letter that Jeremiah sent from a beleaguered Jerusalem before its destruction to those who had already been exiled to Babylon. He tells them to settle in for the long term because this exile is not going to be over any time soon. And he says (Jeremiah 29.10-11):

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you to 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 you heart.”

This seventy years is a round number – there’s no need for us to strain to find dates that fit it exactly. That’s true also of the numbers at the end of the chapter. We could think in terms of a full lifetime, as if the Lord is saying that most of them will die before there is any return to Jerusalem, but some of those who were young at the start of the exile, and who live long, can expect to see it happen.

The simple fact is that God plans and knows the future. And his plans for his people are good. And he tells us all we need to know about the future so that we can live faithfully in his service in the here and now, trusting him come what may.
Prophecy that is real and true is God’s word to us about the future, and you can find it in here – in the Bible. God doesn’t tell us everything, and he doesn’t give us detail. And that’s just as well. When you look back on your life, very likely you’ll be glad that you didn’t know beforehand what course it was going to take. But we do need to know where we’re heading, and how to get there, and God tells us. Prophecy is a fact. The Scriptures tell us what we need to know about the future.

How did Daniel react when it came home to him that things were on the move? He began to pray. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been praying. But he began to pray with a new intensity under the powerful impetus of the Holy Spirit, as if to say, “Lord, I can see you’re on the move. I’m not going to let go now until I’ve got an answer.” We need to learn from him. So:

Secondly, THE EXAMPLE OF DANIEL: the Scriptures give us the basis for bold prayer

The prayer runs from verse 4 down to verse 19. We heard it read earlier and it’s too long to repeat but I want us to look at some of its features, so we’ll sample it.

Notice, for a start, that Daniel’s prayer is serious.

We can see the prelude to his praying in verses 3-4:

So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: “O Lord, the great and awesome God…”

Real prayer is doing business with God. It’s not just some kind of vaguely God-directed wishful-thinking. When we pray we’re talking to the living God, who is really listening. True prayer isn’t whistling in the wind – it’s more like wrestling, though I doubt that much of our praying comes close to that. The sackcloth and ashes aren’t necessary, though the attitude of humility is. The fasting isn’t necessary though the attitude of earnestness that it signifies is, and we should take the possibility of fasting seriously and practice it as appropriate. If we take prayer seriously, God will take us seriously.

Notice, next, that Daniel’s prayer is Bible-based. Daniel’s mind must have been saturated with Scripture for him to pray like this. He has absorbed the Bible’s teaching, and accepted the Bible’s diagnosis. Almost every phrase of Daniel’s prayer here makes reference either to the Law or the Prophets. There’s an obvious example in verse 11:

Therefore the curses and sworn judgements written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you.

When our praying is inspired by our reading of the Bible then we know that we’re on the right track and we’re praying in line with the mind of Christ. That’s when we can get bold and confident standing before the throne of God, with Christ at our side and the Holy Spirit giving us the words to say.

Then notice that Daniel’s prayer is built on a foundation of worship. He lets God know that he knows who he’s talking to. He knows because he has believed the Word of God, that shows us what God is like. He worships God for who he is and he worships him for what he’s done. Verse 4:

O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands…

Verse 7:

Lord, you are righteous…

Verse 9:

The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving…

Verse 14:

… the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does…

Verse 15:

Now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day…

That looking back to the Exodus under Moses is the Old Testament equivalent of us looking back to the cross and resurrection of Christ – the great redeeming act of God that made us who we are as God’s family.

Jesus taught us to pray in this way, of course, building on a foundation of worship: “Our Father, hallowed by your name…”

When we’re inclined to pray in a haphazard and shallow way, this discipline of starting by thinking about God and telling God what we know about him will concentrate our minds, and focus our requests. Sometimes we pray because we’re desparate and we just want to jump straight to our needs. At times like that, starting with words of worship will help us to ask for the right things and will deepen our faith.

Now notice that Daniel’s prayer continues with comprehensive confession of sin. The whole of verses 5-15 is a great heartfelt outpouring of confession, admitting sin in all its aspects. It’s striking that this is such a corporate confession – “we have sinned”, “we have been wicked”. Daniel is an outstandingly Godly and faithful man, and yet he knows his heart and his dependence on God’s grace and that he shares in the collective responsibility for the waywardness of God’s people, near and far, past and present. “It’s our fault”, he says. And he means it.

So he speaks of their rebellion, which focuses on how they’ve poisoned their relationship with God. He admits their wrong-doing, which focuses on the sinful actions that their rebellious hearts have lead them into. With ruthless honestly he spells out their disobedience, which flows from their arrogant rejection of God’s law. And he describes what you could call their deliberate deafness by which they’ve wilfully ignored the gracious warnings that God gave them through his prophets about the inevitable end result of their sin if they didn’t come to their senses. You can see all that, for example, in verses 5-6:

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…

So in the light of all that, Daniel finds no difficulty in acknowledging the justice of God’s judgement, severe as it is. “We deserve nothing less” is effectively what he says. And as he contemplates before the living God this guilty catalogue, his response is shame. He knows that, but for the grace of God, God’s people should be hiding themselves in a hole in the ground, not daring to show their faces. Verse 8:

O Lord, we and our kings, our princes and our fathers are covered with shame because we have sinned against you.

As we contemplate the desolation of the church in this country, the first step to a way out is for us to be ashamed before God for our rebellion and wrong-doing and disobedience and deliberate deafness. One of the striking things about the way our society is moving is that there is an increasing absence of shame. Sin is becoming something to boast about, not something to hide. God forbid that should become true in the church.

But Daniel doesn’t stop there. The purpose of shame is not to drown us in self-loathing, but to lead us to repentance, and so to forgiveness and freedom. So now Daniel dares to make demands of God. Why can he do that? Because of what he’s asking. It’s in line with God’s character. It’s in line with God’s past dealings with his people. It’s in line with the future that God has revealed – not least through Jeremiah’s seventy year prophecy. And it’s motivated by a supreme concern for the glory of God’s name. This praying is possible because of Daniel’s radical humility. There is not a scrap of arrogance here, for all his breath-taking boldness.

In fact I would go so far as to say that it would be dishonouring to God to be timid in our requests. We would either be denigrating God’s mercy, effectively thinking “How can he forgive us?” Or our timidity would indicate that we think God gives us what we ask if we deserve it, and we’re not sure that we do – as if we’re thinking “Am I good enough to ask for this?”

It’s only when we really understand that we deserve nothing from God but condemnation that we can be outrageously bold in our praying, because then our demands are totally based on God’s grace and mercy. And what is it that Daniel demands? Daniel asks for an end to the desolation. Isn’t that what we yearn for as we look at our desolate church in this land? Isn’t that what we want when we see desolate lives or find ourselves living in desolation ourselves? From verse 17:

Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favour on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.

The Scriptures – not least in this example of Daniel – give us the basis for the boldest of praying. That’s my second main point. And so to my third and final main heading:

Thirdly, THE ANSWER TO PRAYER; the Scriptures give us insight that enables us to persevere.

The final part of this chapter – verses 20-27 – tell us what happened in response to Daniel’s bold prayer. It’s a remarkable passage of Scripture. It’s not easy to understand. There are symbolic numbers and obscure references to events. I’ve come to my own conclusions but we haven’t time now to go into the details.

In fact, I think these visions given to Daniel are not meant to be easy to understand. There are depths to them that we can’t fathom, and there are deliberate ambiguities that we’re not intended to be able to pin down. The questions we tend to ask as we read are these: Exactly when is this going to happen? And to what precise events does this refer? But often there are multiple references, not least because there are patterns in God’s dealings with the world and his people: restoration, destruction, restoration, destruction; growth, pruning, growth, pruning.

So there are multilayered references here to the events of the exile, and to the fearful oppression of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes in the 2nd Century BC, and then, above all, to the events surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Roman general Titus in AD 70 which was also prophecied very clearly by Jesus himself. But the references don’t stop there either – there are patterns revealed here that will get played out until Christ returns.
However, though not everything is clear, some things are.

For one thing, God answers serious prayer. Look at these wonderful verses 20-23. This is Daniel speaking:

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making request to the Lord my God for his holy hill [that is, Jerusalem] – while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the vision …

I don’t suppose we’ll know ‘til we get to heaven how involved the angels are in the process of answering our prayers, but here’s a window on to one example. And see how eager the Lord is to answer. The moment Daniel begins to pray, the Lord issues the answer, and Gabriel arrives with it even before Daniel has finished. Let’s take heart from that as we pray. The problem with prayer is not God’s willingness to listen or answer. The problem is our reluctance to ask. We might not get the answer we want. But an answer will come.

The answer that Daniel gets is there in those complex verses 24-27. What’s the request? “Lord, please end the desolation of Jerusalem and of your people – and please end it quickly”. And what’s the answer? “Yes, but it won’t be how you expect, and it won’t be when you expect, and ultimately it will be much more wonderful than you expect.”

Let me just expand that answer with some of the key points that arise from what Gabriel tells Daniel.

One. The timing of everything that is going to happen is known to God. We don’t need to be crystal clear about the meaning of the seventy sevens, the seven sevens, the sixty-two sevens and the one seven to be absolutely clear of the main point: God is in control of history and the times are in his hands.

Two. Jerusalem will be rebuilt. But that won’t be the end of its suffering. The rebuilding will take place (verse 25) “in times of trouble”.

Three. The time will come when sin is dealt with once and for all. God’s plan (verse 24) is…

“to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness…”

We know from our vantage point that right at the centre of that plan is the cross and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and his return at the end of this age. And there is more than a hint of that here (though we see it more clearly than Daniel ever could) because…

Four. One will come who is anointed by God – chosen and appointed by him – and who will be killed as part of God’s plan to rid the world of sin. Verse 26: “the anointed one will be cut off…”

Five. Once again both Jerusalem and the temple will be destroyed by the enemies of God (that’s in verse 26).

Six. Wars and desolations will continue until the end. That’s there at the end of verse 26: “War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed”. The desolation will not be continuous. There will be the best of times as well as the worst of times. But desolation will not yet cease. So we are to take encouragement that every desolation is temporary. But we are to be realistic that suffering will by no means end yet. Indeed…

Seven. There will be an enemy of God who will arrogantly set himself up against the rule of God. He will be boastful, brutal and powerful. He will set up “the abomination that causes desolation”. That is the phrase from Daniel that Jesus later picks up and uses himself. The abomination that causes desolation will be set up right in the heart of the temple – in New Testament terms, in the heart of God’s people.

That fits the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes. It fits the Roman destroyer Titus. But the New Testament is clear we haven’t seen the last of antichrist yet. He will keep reappearing in one guise or another until the final and worst antichrist shows his face. But he will always be destroyed. And ultimately he is the one, in the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2.8:
whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming.

So: Eight. There will finally be an end to desolation. “Will there be an end to the desolation of God’s people?” cries Daniel. “Yes”, says the Lord. “Will there be an end to the desolation of the church in this country?” we cry. “Yes”, says the Lord. “Will there be an end to the desolation in the lives of those we love?” we cry? “Yes”, says the Lord.

Desolations will not last. They are time limited. And the day will come when the final desolation comes to an end, and “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes.” And “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain”. And Christ will be all in all.

So what do we do now? God gives us in his Word all the insight we need so that we can persevere. So keep going. Keep trusting. Keep faithful. Keep working for the glory of Jesus and the spread of his kingdom.