Daniel’s prayer of confession Part 1
1. Introduction
Today we are continuing our mini-series on prayer, and looking at an amazing prayer which teaches us about saying sorry. It’s a prayer which the prophet Daniel said; we find it in Daniel 9. I’m going to start to look at it this week and complete it next week.
Before we look at Daniel’s prayer, let me give a quick recap on Daniel. I imagine most of us know the main points of his story. Daniel was living in Jerusalem, probably a teenager, when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem. Daniel was taken into captivity to Babylon and there he served Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, but he remained faithful to the God of Israel.
At the beginning of the Book of Daniel, Daniel’s fellow Jews have an amazing moment when they refuse to bow down to a giant statue which Nebuchadnezzar made and they are thrown into a fiery furnace. Later, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of another great statue and Daniel is able to interpret it. After that, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a tree, and once again Daniel interprets it. Later, Nebuchadnezzar dies and his son Belshazzar takes over. Belshazzar uses the vessels from the Jewish temple for his feast, and a hand appears and writes a mysterious message on the wall. Once again, Daniel interprets the message. Belshazzar gets booted out, and someone called Darius the Mede starts to rule. We don’t know exactly who he was. Some people think that Darius was a title, not a name, and Darius the Mede is another name for Cyrus. Maybe he was a governor under Cyrus. We just don’t know. But it was in the time of Darius the Mede that Daniel prayed.
By this time, many years have passed, and Daniel is probably about 80.
But there’s another aspect of introduction I’d like to give you. Until about 200 years ago, almost everyone accepted that Daniel was a real person. But over the past couple of hundred years, a number of scholars have taken the view that Daniel wasn’t a real person, and the Book of Daniel was written about 200 years before Jesus, in the time of some people called the Maccabees, who were a kind of Jewish rebel group. However, the three commentators I went to in preparing this talk took the view that Daniel was written by a real person called Daniel in the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
[Slide: Stephen Miller: ‘a second-century date for the autograph of Daniel is extremely difficult to maintain.’ / Steinmann: ‘This evidence is in harmony with the view of its authorship by Daniel around the year 536 BC.’ / Tremper Longman: ‘I interpret the book from the conclusion that the prophecies come from the sixth century B.C.’]
Without further ado, let’s take a look at Daniel’s prayer.
2. Why Daniel prayed
In verse 2 we pick up a really important point. Daniel writes:
…in the first year of his reign [i.e. Darius's reign], I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
What was Daniel on about? Daniel lived towards the end of the time when the Old Testament was written. He would have had quite a lot of the Old Testament we have today, including the book of Jeremiah. You can imagine him poring over these old Hebrew scrolls, wondering what they meant.
Daniel is not one of those people who read just a few pages of a book and then give up. He’s reached Jeremiah 25. And this is what he found.
25:11-12 This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste.
If he continued to Jeremiah 29, he’d find God saying the same thing.
29:10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place.”
Let’s notice a few things about this.
First, Daniel read scripture! It’s such an obvious point! We should seek to understand God’s purpose – based on scripture – and then pray according to that. Daniel read the prophets. We need to do the same in our time, especially with all that’s happening in the world in connection with global warming, Covid-19 and so on.
Second, Daniel wrote, ‘I, Daniel, perceived … according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet.’ Daniel believes these words that he read are God’s words.
Third, given that Daniel believes the words are God’s words, he takes them to mean 70 literal years. I liked what one of the commentators, Miller, wrote about this:
Jeremiah had foretold the end of the exilic period seventy years in advance, and Daniel fully expected this prophecy to be fulfilled. Neither did Daniel “symbolize” these seventy years but took the prophecy literally. This is the safest procedure for believers today as they study prophecies of future events.
Let me make one further point, although it isn’t part of Daniel’s prayer. God did what he said he would do. Jeremiah made his first prophecy in about 605 B.C. when Daniel was probably a teenager, and that was the time he went into exile. Cyrus issued the decree releasing the captives in 538 or 537 B.C., and the exiles returned shortly after that. That means 68 years had passed. So maybe God rounded 68 to 70 when he said 70 years would pass. Maybe he decided to fulfil his promise two years early. But the point is that what God said would happen, happened. God follows through on what he says he will do.
To summarise: the first thing we saw was that Daniel read Scripture, understood it and believed it, and this guided his prayer.
Are we like Daniel? Do we read Scripture, understand it and believe it, and bring it into our prayers?
3. How Daniel prayed
In verse 3 we read:
So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.
What’s your impression? What do words such as ‘pleaded,’ ‘petition,’ ‘fasting,’ ‘sackcloth’ and ‘ashes’ communicate?
Daniel is really intense! I am not this intense when I pray. I’m nowhere close. I really don’t plead with God. I hate fasting although I very occasionally fast. I certainly don’t do ‘sackcloth’ and ‘ashes.’ Thomas Becket wore sackcloth, but that was back in the 12th century. There are some people these days who put ash on their faces on Ash Wednesday. But generally, it’s something we hardly do.
Is it something we might consider doing? Jesus told us not to make it obvious when we’re fasting. Perhaps he would have told us not to make it obvious when we’re wearing sackcloth and putting on ashes. But that isn’t possible. Maybe there’s a time to show the world that we’re grieving and repenting. Daniel certainly did.
And scripture calls God’s priests to do this. Joel 1:13 says:
Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;
wail, O ministers of the altar.
Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,
O ministers of my God!
This minister obviously had that idea! [Slide, African priest wearing sackcloth]
Are we like Daniel? Are we passionate and earnest when we pray? Are we sincere in our grief and repentance?
4. Who Daniel prayed to
In 9:4 Daniel says, ‘I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God.”’ Daniel uses four separate Hebrew words for God here.
Daniel starts by saying, I prayed to Adonai, my God. ‘Adonai’ is a Hebrew word for God meaning ‘owner, ruler, or sovereign.’ God is the owner and ruler of the universe. He hears Daniel’s prayer and he can direct world history in order to answer it!
Then Daniel addresses God as ‘Yahweh.’ That’s God’s name. It’s connected to bringing into being and giving life. But it’s particularly associated with God making a promise, as he declared to Moses, here in Exodus 6:1,2.
And Yahweh said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh, because with a strong hand he will release them, and with a strong hand he will drive them out from his land.”
And God spoke to Moses, and he said to him, “I am Yahweh …
Daniel also says, ‘the Lord my God.’ ‘God’ here is ‘El’ – the ancient Canaanite word for god, the supreme God.
But not only does Daniel use lots of different words for God, there are pronouns and adjectives here too, and a clause. This will test your grammar!
Where’s the pronoun? Daniel says, ‘my God.’ For Daniel, God is ‘my God.’ Daniel felt God close to him. Do you remember how Jesus taught his disciples to pray? ‘Our father… ’? ‘OUR father.’ Not anyone else’s father: a father who I have a special relationship with. ‘My God.’ Not anyone else’s god: God who I have a special relationship with.
Where are the adjectives? Daniel says, ‘the great and awesome God.’ Jesus taught his disciples to pray, ‘Our father, who art in heaven… ’? God is ‘MY God’ and ‘Our father.’ We have a personal relationship with him. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s in heaven, and he’s great and awesome.
So, Daniel can claim that God is his God, but still, as he comes to God, he’s full of awe and respect.
But there’s one more part of speech to look at here. There is a clause in the centre of Daniel’s opening address to God. I think it’s amazing. It tells us something about Daniel’s attitude to God, and it also tells us something about theology.
Daniel says, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.”
I think we need to reflect on this! ‘God … keeps covenant and steadfast love …’ A covenant is an agreement between two parties. Daniel knew God as someone who keeps an agreement. If God says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. Daniel also knew God as a god of love. We constantly hear this idea that the God of the Old Testament was a god of wrath whereas Jesus, in the New Testament, was a god of love and mercy. But let’s observe that Daniel’s experience of God was that he was a god of steadfast love – and Daniel was fully aware of the destruction of Jerusalem.
But who does God keeps covenant and steadfast love with? ‘…with those who love him and keep his commandments.’ What does that mean? It means that God doesn’t keep covenant and steadfast love with those who don’t love him and don’t keep his commandments. That’s the plain meaning, isn’t it?
Is that an Old Testament idea which has now been superseded by merciful Jesus? Many people today who call themselves Christians act appear to believe that it’s possible to knowingly and deliberately commit sin and it won’t matter: God is infinitely forgiving.
I wonder what the New Testament has to say about that? Perhaps Paul or John or one of the other apostles says something about it? But we don’t need to go to an apostle. Jesus gives us the answer, perfectly plainly:
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love – John 15:10
If we want to abide – or remain – in Jesus’ love, we have to keep his commands. It follows the same principle as abiding in God’s love. To keep God’s law, we must listen to it and do our very best to follow it. We must not ignore it or disregard it. Let me put it plainly. If your Bible remains on your shelf and you do not read, you will not know God’s commands. If you do not know God’s commands, you will not obey them. And if you do not know obey God’s commands, then God will cease keeping covenant and steadfast love with you.
Are we like Daniel? Can we call God, ‘My God’? And if we can, do we hold on to a huge sense of awe and respect for God? Do we understand, like Daniel, that we are in a covenant relationship with God? That we have to play our part, if we want to remain in God’s love – and therefore have a hope that God will hear and answer our prayer?
There is just one teensy-weensy problem. Look at verse 5.
After finishing addressing God, Daniel prays, ‘We have sinned.’ The Israelites certainly had sinned! But if God ‘keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments’ – and yet, as Daniel acknowledges – God’s people have sinned, then how can Daniel approach God with any hope that God will look favourably on him?
Next week, we’ll take a look at how Daniel continues his prayer.
Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 28 June 2020
