The point of interest in this passage is not the fact that Daniel and
his friends prayed. This is neither unusual nor surprising under the
circumstances. Their lives were at stake unless they had a direct
revelation from God. One would be shocked if they did anything else
but pray. One does not need to be a unique person of prayer to cry
out to God when the danger is great. Even unbelievers pray when
they face grave danger. The text, therefore, does not even give us the
prayer he offered for help. It gives us the response he made in
prayer after God granted the help by revealing to him the dream and
its meaning.
When he prayed for help his prayer was a solemn matter of
petition, and his heart would be heavy. He would be on his knees, or
flat on his face earnestly pleading for God's mercy. But in this
response we see a totally different aspect of prayer. It is a matter of
praise, and his heart would be light, and his body so filled with
grateful joy that it is likely he would be standing or walking with
eyes uplifted to heaven. The posture of prayer and the nature of
prayer varies with the circumstances. There is no best way, for it is
such a personal matter of one's own relationship to God that the best
is relative to the individual. Two Christians going to prayer may be
very different, and one may desire to fall on his knees before God
while the other wishes to stand. Daniel goes through both of these in
one night, and it is his shout of praise that is recorded.
Richard Llewellyn in How Green Was My Valley has this
conversation. Mr. Gruffydd, a minister, tells a boy to keep his spirit
clean, and the boy responds, "And how shall it be kept clean, Mr.
Gruffydd?" He said, "By prayer my son, not mumbling, or shouting,
or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiments. Prayer is only
another name for good, clear direct thinking. When you pray, think
well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that
are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that
strength shall become a part of you, mind, body and spirit. I think
the author has gone to far here in ruling out sentiment and the role of
emotion, but what he does say is good. It fits the character of the
prayers of the Bible.
Some of our best thinking and theology, and practical guidance
for life comes from the prayers of the Bible. Daniel's prayer of praise
is a prayer of solid things and clear thinking. We want to examine if
from the point of view of what it teaches us about God. The first
thing this prayer of praise teaches us is that-
I. GOD IS WORTHY OF PRAISE.
Someone has said, "There is something sweeter than receiving
praise, the feeling of having deserved it." God alone is always
deserving of praise, and that is why Jesus begins the Lord's Prayer
with the adoration, "Hallowed be thy name." Daniel also begins
with adoration: "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever."
Adoration of God is the highest attitude one can have in His
presence. Someone has written, "In adoration the soul comes to God
sensible of His love, majesty, holiness, and infinite greatness; feeling,
and seeking more fully to feel the awe, reverence, and holy affection
due to His great name; it transcends admiration and wonder; it is a
blending of love with the fervent desire that all the world should
know and magnify the glory of the Lord."
Our praise and adoration cannot exalt God objectively for He is
already the highest and ultimate in majesty, but it does exalt Him
subjectively by placing God in His rightful place in our lives and
thinking, and that is right at the top in first place. And attitude of
adoration and praise is essential if we are to have an adequate
concept of, and relationship to God. God alone is worthy of the very
highest of our emotional responses, and if He does not receive them
then we are lacking an allegiance to Him. Or if someone else or
something else receives them we are idolaters.
The occupation of heaven is praise someone said, and this is
because those who are there are fully aware of the majesty of their
Maker. On earth we often slip into an unawareness of the greatness
of the God who loves and saves us. Because of this it is important
that praise be a part of our prayer life, for praise tends to keep us
conscious of our smallness and God's greatness. In petition and
intercession we are usually focusing on self and others and human
needs, but when we praise we are caught up to heaven to focus on
God and his all-sufficiency for every need. In praise we focus on the
Giver and not just the gift.
God does not need the creatures praise for he is self-sufficient, but
the creature needs to praise the Creator to keep himself conscious
that he is not self-sufficient but dependent upon the grace and mercy
of the Creator. Praise is a benefit to man for both now and in
preparation for eternity. Andrew Melville said, "Praise is the best
auxiliary to prayer. He who most bears in mind what has been done
for him by God will be most emboldened to ask for fresh gifts from
above." To neglect praise does not injure God, but id injures your
own soul and cuts your blessings in half because you lose the joy that
comes with praise. Thomas Chalmers said, "One of the most essential
preparations for eternity is delight in praising God." Man will be at
his highest when his whole being expresses adoration for God. Faber
looked into eternity and sang-
Father of Jesus, love's Reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
The twenty four elders that John saw falling down before the
throne of God were singing and this was their song in Rev. 4:11:
"Worthy art Thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor
and power..." We praise God because he is worthy of our praise.
Daniel in lifting his voice in praise to God makes it clear where his
ultimate loyalty is placed. God is indeed his God, and he longs for his
name to be blessed forever and ever. The second thing this praise
prayer teaches us about God is
II. THE ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKE HIM WORTHY OF PRAISE.
The two that impress Daniel at this point are God's wisdom and might.
These are called His omniscience and omnipotence. He is all
knowing and all powerful. Daniel is praising God for showing these
attributes in his own life. In verse 23 he says he thanks and praises
God forgiving him wisdom and strength. All the wisdom and power
we have comes from God, who is the source of all wisdom and power.
Daniel is especially conscious of this, for let us remember, at the
time that he is praying he has had a full revelation of the king's
dream. He knows what history is going to bring forth in the future.
He knows there will be many changes, and kings will rise and fall.
This is what he is speaking of in verses 21 and 22. In verse 20 he
names the two attributes, and then in 21 and 22 he spells out how
they effect history. The first he explains is God's might. He changes
time and seasons, and he removes kings and sets them up. Changing
times are not mere accidents. They are a part of God's plan. Behind
progress is a planner with a goal. God works in history through
changes. We need to be among the optimists who believe that God is
working even in the rapid changes of our time. It is easy to talk
about God as a sovereign and powerful God of history, and then turn
around and talk as if history was in the hands of men or Satan.
William James visited Thomas Carlyle in 1856 and afterward
wrote this to a friend: "Carlyle, the same old sausage frizzing and
sputtering in his own grease, only infinitely more unreconciled to the
blessed Providence which guides human affairs. He names God
frequently an alludes to the highest things as if they were realities,
but it almost looks as if he did it only for a picturesque effect, so
completely does he seem to regard them as habitually circumvented
and set at naught by politicians." His belief in a sovereign God was
only theoretical but not practical. He never carried the doctrine into
reality, but kept it strictly in the realm of words.
I fear that Carlyle is not an isolated example, and that all of us
tend to fall into this trap of keeping belief and action in water tight
compartments. The Greek word for believe is so much a matter of
action that there is an actual record of a farmer who believed his
seed to the ground, he committed it and trusted it the ground. He bet
his life on the fact that it would grow. Christian belief has got to be
practical, or it is powerless. To believe seed will grow and never to
act on it by planting the seed is not faith, but it is folly. So also to
believe in a God of history who is sovereign, and yet to talk of only
the despair and act as if it was only a meaningless mess is to deny in
action what you profess in words.
Like Daniel we must not only say it, but live as if we really
believed in God's power. We need to understand that being all
powerful does not mean that he can do anything. Thomas Aquinas
said, "Omnipotence is the power to do whatever does not involve a
contradiction." This means that there is much in history that is not
God's will, for He cannot let man be a free agent, and then make sure
he does not use his freedom to do anything contrary to God's will.
Evil will have consequences that are not God's will, but evil can only
postpone God's plan. It cannot stop it, and so the Christian can
always be hopeful, and they can always praise God because he will
accomplish his purpose.
Daniel is greatly impressed also with the omniscience of God.
He has all wisdom. There is no mystery so deep, or no question so
dark that his light cannot penetrate it and make it clear. Daniel has
just had it revealed to him concerning the great empires that will
follow the Babylonian Empire, and he marvels at God's knowing the
end from the beginning. Some poet has written,
Eternity with all its years,
Stands present in Thy view;
To Thee there's nothing old appears,
Great God, there's nothing new.
James says that if we lack wisdom we need to ask God, for He is
the source of all wisdom. Daniel is praising God for the wisdom He is
giving to him, and we are all wiser if we will follow his example and
constantly praise God in prayer.
