What did you dream you would be when you grew up when you were younger? Was it the big six: teacher, actor, astronaut, firefighter, chef, or ballerina. How many of us reached that dream? Sometimes we find the reality not what we dreamt it would be, so we reached for something else. I don’t think Daniel in all his wildest dreams, would ever have thought he would be a Babylonian Wise man, now in a position of great power, a co-ruler over large expansive empire. This is where we find ourselves today in Daniel 9. Again, Daniel is being flooded with a sense of the reality of life, not as he would wish it or like it to be. Daniel was a realist about himself, the nature of those he knew and loved. It is why I think we find Daniel so often at prayer. Today we get a chance to look over his shoulder, getting the inside scoop on what exactly Daniel prays about. He starts by getting his soul oriented before God. Verse 4-6
4 I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: “Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 5 we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. 6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land.
We know that when we don’t know what to do or where to head next
we can pray. We know prayer, is about coming before our Father in heaven
Seeking God’s purposes, it’s what we pray when we ask your kingdom come. I want you to notice one small thing with me about Daniel’s prayer, it’s a small thing, but I think a significant one. Look at the start of Verse 5 “we”. Daniel’s prayer is a corporate one, this is you and me before God together seeking him, and starting at the place we need to start confessing our sin and seeking God’s work in our spiritual formation, making us more like Jesus: we all have sinned;
we all have done wrong, the want and waste of our lives is clear; We all have rebelled; we have all not listened to God’s servants. It’s the direction Daniel keeps going in throughout his prayer, and our gaze is directed looking back
Consider how you’ve done until now. Sin is slippery for us. Our struggle is how easy it is for us seek my kingdom come and my will be done take charge. To erase God from this world we live in and exalt myself. Our struggles so often happen around what we most want listen in to what you most grumble about and we so easily find ourselves consumed by what modern advertising teaches us we most need.
We are experts at self-justification for what we did even sometimes blaming others for making us do, what was always our choice to do. Daniel kept on coming back to the present situation he faced in life. An exile once a captive of Babylon now a captive to Darius the Mede. Daniel had risen to the highest ranks of administration is still his heart was captive only to God. Daniel always thought about who he was as a child of God and trying to make sense of this time Israel was banished from her land, when would they return was pressed heavily on his heart. He had been reading Jeremiah’s prophecy as he had seen God’s judgment would last 70 years for Israel’s exile. That time had now passed. Daniel prays for the timely fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy. Returning home is what he wants. Verse 2-3
In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom— 2 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 meditates on God’s promises verse 7
7 “Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you.
We are reminded of the character, promises and purposes of God. God is right in his punishment. He is righteous and is always right in his judgments, just as we know how great is the compassion of God that through Jesus our sin is atoned for. Faith and love draw us out to see ourselves as we really are as Jesus gives us his own joy, and joy, and how he throws open the doors to the fresh air and bright light of a most kind grace. Daniel is drawn to pray appealing to God’s mercy as he seeks an answer to the question we all would like to know when will the day of the Lord come about, or when will Jesus return and the heavens and earth and all time as we know it. The question is when will it be rolled up like a scroll? Verse 15-16
15 “Now, 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, we have sinned, we have done wrong.16 Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us.
At the moment we find Daniel praying and confessing his sins God sends his messenger Gabriel to draw Daniel to see the tension of what is going on, verse 24
24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
This is where God is leading his people, transgressions finished, with our sin at an end, leading to everlasting righteousness, a most holy has been anointed. This fills us with so many more questions as Daniel started with questions about the future of his own day he found first from the scriptures through Jeremiah. We see through a revelation of God through Gabriel a pattern in the way God acts in his world. This draws us to where we know one place in history where all this has happened only in the person of Jesus are things finally fulfilled. So that what Daniel was seeing are that all of God’s promises are ‘yes’ in Jesus. 2 Corinthians 1:20-22 (The Message)
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.
And further on in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16-20 Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you. 21 How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.
We can imagine being in Christ as being “taken-up” into Jesus. The dwelling place of God is now with men. He is a God who comes toward his people, and this is most pronounced in the incarnation. Jesus takes on flesh, and as a servant he absorbs the suffering of those around him. He pursues the outcasts and touches them. How many times in your life have you prayed How long Oh Lord? We are so much aware of suffering around us. Have you ever noticed in the Bible God doesn’t give us a clear diagnostic tool to determine the particular cause of the suffering. Sometimes it is obvious, more often it isn’t.
getting practical with this how do we pray. Do you pray for alleviation? To have our pain taken away is good, thing is we are pointed the way to pray for more than that, because if this suffering is alleviated there will be more. As one day in the twinkling of an eye Christ will return our future is secured
Let’s pray…
David Hassan @ Tamworth Community Presbyterian Church 19-11-17