Daniel 9:1-19
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word. Daniel chapter nine, we begin at verse one. It says,
in the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, by descent
Amid, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, In
the first year of his 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 70 years. Then I turned my face to the
Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy, with fasting
and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and
made confession saying, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who
keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him
and keep his commandments. We have sinned and done wrong
and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments
and rules. We have not listened to your
servants, the prophets who spoke in your name, to our kings, our
princes, and our fathers. and to all the people of the
land. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open
shame, as at this day to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are near and those
who are far away in all the lands to which you have driven them
because of the treachery they have committed against you. To
us, O Lord, belongs open shame. to our kings and to our princes
and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the
Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled
against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God
by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants,
the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your
law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse
of the oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant
of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned
against him. He has confirmed his words, which
he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing
upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven, there
has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem.
As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has
come upon us. Yet, we have not entreated the
favor of the Lord our God, turning aside from our iniquities and
gaining insight by your truth. Therefore, the Lord has kept
ready the calamity and has brought it upon us for the Lord our God
is righteous in all the works he has done. We have not obeyed
his voice. Now, O Lord, our God, who brought
your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and
have made a name for yourself at this day, we have sinned and
we have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your
righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from
your city, Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins and
for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have
become a byword among all who are around us. Now therefore,
O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas
for mercy. And for your own sake, O Lord,
make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and
hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations
and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present
our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because
of your great mercy. O Lord, hear. Oh Lord, forgive. Oh Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not for your own sake.
Oh my God, because your city and your people are called by
your name. Amen. This is the word of the
living God for us. I have a whole rack of devotional
books as I’m sure many of you do. These books are designed
to give you little snippets. Right, you read on, what is today,
September the 5th. So you turn to September the
5th and it has a nugget. usually from a verse, usually
from a whole chapter of the Bible, and it’s within a book, within
the whole of the 66 books of the scripture. But this little
nugget zeroes in like a microscopic look at this verse, very often
ignoring the stuff that goes on around it, if it’s the typical
devotional book. And then it somehow, someway,
miraculously makes that verse, guess what, about you. And so
we read these devotional books, and I have a whole shelf of them,
so guilty as charged. We read these devotional books
and we begin to think to ourselves, every verse in the Bible is about
me. Everything is about me doing
what I can through God who strengthens me, playing NBA basketball, making
threes in millions. You graduate from high school
and you get the Jeremiah 2911 card, I know the plans. I have for you declares the Lord,
plans to prosper you and to give you a hope and a future. And
so you’re going to go on to big things, right? You’re going to
hang from the stars of heaven. You’re going to get your college
degree and your MBA. And you’re going to, you’re going
to be, uh, well, Jeremiah 29, 11, guess what? It was not written
to you. It was written to Israel. And it was written to Israel
in exile, the things we’ve been studying in the book of Daniel,
the things we just read or sang in Psalm 79. God has plans to rescue Israel
from their captors, from exile, and to return them to the promised
land, to rebuild the temple, to reignite the fires of the
altars of God at Jerusalem. And so you begin to see these
little devotional books. And mind you, I have a whole
shelf full of them. They really don’t help us much. Now, I will tell you this, I
refer to them all the time. I look and see if there’s a nugget
of truth sometimes from a passage that is helpful. But we really
ought to, well, hold on for it, just read our Bibles. That’s
the most helpful thing we can do. It’s why when we have new
members, guess what we give you? a Reformation Study Bible. We
want you to have a good copy of God’s Word with good study
notes. Now, you may have your own copy that you’re used to,
and you refer to this and to the good notes and outlines and
study helps, but it’s just best to read your Bible and to get
the whole of it and to see God at work in human history. These devotional books, and they
have their place and they are helpful. Trust me, I get that
and I’ve used them in certain ways, but they’re like a caffeine
pill. You know, you go in the convenience store to pay for
your tank of gas, and you see there on the counter all the
pick-me-ups. You know, you got a late night
at work, and so you buy the energy drink, right? But do they take the place of
a steady diet? Well, for some people, they do,
but it’s not what they’re meant for. And so a quick pick-me-up,
a quick caffeine pill will not get you or bear you up through
the Christian life as well as reading the whole Bible. So let me encourage you at the
outset of our study of Daniel 9 tonight to read your Bible. And as you read your Bible, do
like Daniel does here. Formulate your prayer time based
on what you read. I threw this grid up here. Adoration,
confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. You’ll see tonight
in Daniel’s prayer, as he’s reading the Bible, book of Jeremiah,
He’s realizing who God is. He’s realizing his and Israel
or the church’s sin and confesses it. He gives thanks to God for
his mercies and then he gets to supplication. And so we want
to think through these things tonight that are in Daniel’s
prayer, these parts. What have we got as our title?
How to pray and what to say. And so I think some of these
things will be helpful as you read the Bible as Daniel did.
And it stimulates you with truth about God. It stimulates you
to confession and acknowledgement of God’s mercies. And it stimulates
you to pray for things that are in God’s will for his people. So let’s think through these
things. I have five things. It’s a little more than adoration,
confession and thanksgiving and supplication, but you can keep
it fitted into this simplified grid. Let’s first think about
Daniel’s adoration. So Daniel is praying. He’s reading
his Bible. Remember, he’s praying three
times a day. He won’t bow to the gods of the Medes and the
Persians and the Babylonians, but he’s praying, he’s a man
of prayer, and on some occasion, he’s reading the book of Jeremiah,
it seems. He’s got his Reformation study
Bible, right? He’s a good, reformed kid. Well,
he’s not a kid anymore. The marker at the beginning of
the passage in the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus,
it’s almost been 70 years since exile began. Daniel’s getting
to be on up in years. Daniel is older, maybe older
than some of you, and guess what he’s still doing? He’s still
bearing fruit in old age. He’s the tree with good sap. He’s the tree planted by the
waters. He’s not said, well, I’m in Babylon, I’ll do as the
Babylonians do. I’ll get me a little devotional
book and do two minutes with God and then do my other 23 hours
and 58 minutes with Babylon. No, he’s a man of walking with
the Lord. And so as he’s reading his scriptures,
he comes to verse four and we see his prayer to the Lord, my
God. He’s making confession. And here
the word confession is not confession of sin. It’s confession of who
God is. We can use this word in a couple
of ways. It’s a confession of faith. He says, Oh Lord, the
great and awesome God who keeps covenant. He keeps steadfast
love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Here’s adoration. Very often,
I think, in our American culture with our two-minute devotionals,
which do have their place, I hear that, but read your whole Bible.
Adoration is lacking. We treat Christianity as a condiment,
right? You go to Chick-fil-A and you
put your order in. Sorry, y’all. And what’s the
last thing you’re asked? Do you need any condiments? Do
you need any ketchup? Do you need any barbecue sauce?
Do you need any mustard sauce? A little salt, a little pepper,
whatever. And we take those things and we take perfectly good food
and squirt it on and sprinkle it on. The integrity of the chicken’s
just fine, right? The integrity of the burger’s
just fine. I was told by a chef one time, it’s offensive to ask
for salt or barbecue sauce. You eat it as they served it
because they served it to perfection, right? But we live in a world
where we think Christianity’s a condiment. I’ll take my pagan
life, which we rather enjoy, and we’ll put a little Jesus
on. We make sure we say the blessing before meals. We make sure to
say our prayers before we go to bed at night. But if you had
to put us in front of the the government captures and say,
do you confess Jesus? Do you adore God? Are you willing
to die for your faith? Most of us would say, no, no. Christianity is just a convenience.
I go to church for social reasons. I go to church to make me feel
better about myself, to cover my guilt and my shame. That’s
American Christianity, but not so for Daniel. Daniel understands
three things very clearly. He understands who God is. He
understands what God has done, and he understands that there
are promises of God that are yet to come to pass, but they
for sure will. And so as we adore God in our
prayers and in our morning and evening service, as we adore
God in our private and family devotions, or however it is we
express to God that we adore him, We need to think in these
categories, who God is, what God has done and what he is yet
to do that we trust his promises will fulfill. This is Daniel
on bended knee. This is us on bended knee before
God. He is the creator and we are
the creature. And the first thing we do in
our prayers is we adore God. for who He is, what He has done,
and what He has yet to do. And as you read your Bible, you
can fill in this square pretty quickly. Now, I’m a little weird. I write, I don’t type, and my
eyes are so bad, I use different colors, but I write my adoration
in purple. It’s purple. It’s the color of
royalty. I’m not saying you got to do this. I write my confession
in red. I write my thanksgiving in green
and my supplications in blue, but it helps me see the thought
process. So I read through a passage of
scripture. What in here helps me adore God? What in here helps
me confess my sin? What in here helps me, jogs my
memory to be thankful? What in here should I be praying
for? And so we adore God on bended
knee. But one of the things we ought
to remember, not only as we enter sacred worship, our morning service,
I was going to say a bit more formal, no way more formal. Here
on Sunday night, we’re a little less formal, maybe too informal
at times. But we ought to realize when
we walk in this building set apart for worship, when we sit
in our sacred place where we study our scripture, it’s an
encounter with the Holy One. I can tell you about it because,
well, she’s not here, but our sister Marian, many of you know,
is a student of the Word. And a couple weeks back after
she had surgery, Mandy and I helped her into the house. And I saw
her dining room table covered in Bible study materials. And
I thought, that’s her, that’s her place, right? It’s good for
you to have a place where you worship God corporately. I point
to the sanctuary next door, but here as well, but it’s good to
have a place where you meet with God every day and you adore him. But we want to think about the
confession of sin that pops up in our passage. And if you look
at verses five through 13, you see a mouthful. And I want to
read it to you again, and I want you to follow the sin words,
but I want you to also follow the seriousness with which Daniel
treats sin. We live in a world that treats
sin as mistakes. Or we say, oh God, I’ve broken
your law and thoughtward indeed. And so forgive me, and then we
move on about our life, breaking God’s law again, and thoughtward
indeed, because we didn’t really have a broken heart, all right? We’re a lot like the two-year-old
or the three-year-old, and the mom catches them doing something,
and she says to him, say you’re sorry, because we love to modify
behavior, not the heart. And she has this wrestling match
with this two or three-year-old for a little while, and finally
he stomps his foot and says, sorry. Right? That’s not how
it’s supposed to go. So notice the words that Daniel
uses. Verse five, we have sinned. We
have done wrong. We have acted wickedly. We have
rebelled. We have turned aside from your
commandments and your rules. We have not listened to your
servants, the prophets. who spoke in your name to our
kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the
land, to you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open
shame, as at this day to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those
who are far away in all the lands to which you have driven them
because of the treachery that they have committed against you.
To us, O Lord, belongs open shame to our kings, to our princes,
and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the
Lord, our God, belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled
against him. We have not obeyed the voice
of the Lord, our God, but walking in his laws, which he set before
us by his servants, the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your
law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse
and the oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant
of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned
against him. He has confirmed his words, which
he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us by bringing
us a great calamity for under the whole heaven, there has not
been done anything. like what has been done against
Jerusalem. As it is written in the Law of
Moses, all this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not
entreated the favor of the Lord our God, we have not turned from
our iniquity, nor have we gained insight by your truth. This may be the most significant
thing that Daniel says that ought to land right on us and sink
in. In fact, we would do well probably
to go home tonight and not turn on our TVs. We would probably
do well to go home tonight and to sit in silence and say, Lord,
could it be that my unconfessed sin, could it be that our unconfessed
sin as a church, and I don’t mean just First ARP, but the
church, is the reasons God’s glory is not as great as it could
be in this world. That’s what Daniel is praying.
I have a book on my shelf. Some of you probably have read
it. It was written in the seventies. And even if you don’t read the
book, the title is worth the, the, the price, whatever became
of sin, whatever became of sin. Well, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve whittled
it away. We sang or heard sung today in
our hearing in Christ alone, my hope is found. Several years
ago, another Presbyterian denomination wanted to include that in their
new hymnal. So they went to the Gettys and said, we love in Christ
alone. Well, it was popular and that’s
probably why they wanted it in there. And they said, but we’d
like to change a line. We’d like to take away that line
in there about the wrath of God has been satisfied. Because,
well, church in the 21st century is not as bloody as it used to
be. Church in the 21st century is a kinder, gentler church.
We don’t talk about the blood, we don’t talk about the atonement,
and we for sure don’t talk about sin, because among plight company,
that’s your business. And so what did the Gettys say?
Oh sure, just change it to whatever you want, we don’t care, it’s
the honor of Christ at stake, just don’t worry about it. And
they said no, it’s our way, or no way. And that’s the reality
of where we are today. We have written away sin in the
church. Why? Because we want to make
religion palatable. We’d rather get somebody in than
have them stay out. You know, I really feel like
a heel, not a tar heel. I really feel like a heel when
I fence the table for the Lord’s supper. And today I felt that
especially. I don’t know why, but when I
say to this table, the Lord invites all who have confessed their
sin and received Jesus alone and have united with the church
by faith and have been baptized. But if you hadn’t done that,
you can’t come to the table. That’s just not nice in today’s
culture. We don’t though have in our denomination
what’s called an open table. Oh, just come, Jesus will make
it all better. No, I’m supposed to protect you
from what? The judgment of God. That’s right. We just replaced
Judas with Matthias. How did Judas die? Well, he really
got killed by the judgment of God. Ananias and Sapphira in
a couple of chapters. How’s that going to go for them?
Well, burnt toast, right? They’re gonna be consumed for
their unfaithfulness. God is a consuming fire and if
we’ve seen accurately who he is and we adore him, we will
sure come on our knees before him confessing our sin because
we have a true definition of who God is and what sin is and
what God requires. The church has written sin out
of our scriptures. We have written sin out of our
confessions, out of our songs, out of our creeds. We’ve made
religion palatable and we have, well, we’ve simply lied. We’ve
simply lied. Oh, we want to reach the lost.
We want to make it easy for them to come to church. And we just
flat lied to them. And they’re going to have a pretty
big wake up call one day, aren’t they? When they stand before
almighty God and he says, why should I let you enter my glorious
presence? Well, uh, I was pretty good. Well, I made some mistakes, but
my mistakes were outweighed by my good deeds. Or, Lord, the
church really made me feel good. That preacher with the white
teeth, he smiled so big and told me I could pull myself up by
my bootstraps, and I spent my entire life pulling up on my
bootstraps, and well, here I am. What’s God gonna say? There’s
no one righteous, no, not one. And unless you were found by
faith hiding in the cleft of the Lord Jesus, And so we can
make religion palatable all we want, we can put lipstick on
a pig all we want, but the reality is we need a definition of sin.
And these are the most striking words, I think, used in succession.
It’s almost as if Daniel loaded a machine gun and he just pow,
pow, pow, fires away iniquity, fires away treachery, fires away
open shame, he fires away sin words, which, well, because of
our niceness we don’t use any longer. And so you can answer
the question, whatever became of sin, the title of that book,
maybe with a sequel, whatever became of the gospel. If you
don’t have a definition of sin, you have no gospel because you
don’t need saving. And so take example from Daniel. He uses the words of the Bible
to describe their iniquity, their sin, their falling short, their
transgression, their wickedness, their rebellion, their ignoring
God’s ways and his words. And we treat We treat sin like
Daniel did, with specificity. I can’t say that right. We treat
sin as a transaction. God is offended, and until we
admit to him what we’ve done, and we confess it, and we receive
his grace, it is a transaction unmet. You open the mail tomorrow, and
you win the publisher’s clearinghouse, right? Actually, Ed McMahon would
come to the house for that, right? He’d bring the big check and
you’d be on TV. Well, if you get that check from Ed McMahon,
you need to take it to the bank, right? But in order to fulfill
that transaction, you have to go, you have to do something,
you have to take action. And we say, oh, Lord, I’ve sinned
and thought word and deed, forgive me and move on about our day.
Or what’s the great apology today? I’m sorry if I offended you. What does God need to hear? Oh
God, I have offended you. I’ve turned my back on you. I’ve
rebelled against your word. You can put it in today’s terms,
what Daniel said, I haven’t been listening to the preacher. I
haven’t let your spirit teach me and guide me. I haven’t done
this, that, and the other. Notice, well, we got three Ds
here under confession. In verses five and then seven
to nine, there’s disobedience. And it’s worth us running through
these. We have sinned. We have done
wrong. We’ve acted wickedly. We’ve rebelled.
We’ve turned aside from your commandments. That’s verse five.
And then look at seven through nine. To you, Lord, belongs righteousness,
but to us, open shame. As at this day, to the men of
Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel,
those who are near, those who are far away, and all the lands
to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that
they have committed against you. And then verses eight and nine. of verse nine to the Lord, our
God belong mercy and forgiveness for we have rebelled. There’s
sin words and we need to use them. And then there’s a disdain
for God. Look at verse six. We have not
listened to your servants, the prophets who spoke in your name.
God, remember the parable Jesus tells sent prophets, sent prophets. They killed him. They killed
him. They sent the son. And what did they do with the son? They killed him. And
so we need to confess that Lord. I have grieved your spirit and
I have rejected your son. When we don’t obey God’s holy
and righteous law, there’s disdain for God’s provision. It’s there
again in verses 10 and 11. We’ve not obeyed the voice of
the Lord. We’ve not walked in his ways, which he set before
us. We’ve transgressed your law. We’ve turned aside. We’ve refused
to obey your voice. And did you catch this? It’s
in verse 11, then it’s again up In verse 13, apparently Daniel
has this remembrance. And those of you who read your
Bibles all the way through, you catch these things as you read
your Bible year by year. Moses warned about this. When
was Moses? Moses was a thousand years before
Babylon destroyed. And what did Moses say in the
word? If you don’t obey God, we’ll put it in our modern day
parenting terms, you’re going to get it. And here they are,
they got it. Exiled from Babylon, Jerusalem
destroyed, carried off by the Babylonians, living in a pagan
land, away from God, away from his presence. And God did what
he said he would do. He cursed them and he hurt Israel
quite badly. Then there’s denial, verses 12
and 13. And this is what we need to land on under confession.
As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has
come upon us. And guess what? We still haven’t
entreated the favor of the Lord. We’re still turning or we’re
still in our iniquity. We’ve not turned from our iniquities
and gained insight by your truth. Think about this for a moment.
If you’re seeking God’s blessing and you’re living in sin, do
you think God is going to bless you? No. And so one of the things
you can do in your confession is say, Lord, by your word, because
you’re sitting down and you’re writing these things down, it’s
a good helpful tool. And you’re saying by your word and by your
spirit, convict me of my sin. You know, we get lazy in the
Christian life. We think we’re doing pretty good. Oh, I go to a good
Reformed church. They believe the Bible. We worship
morning and evening. We have Wednesday night Bible
study, and I go to all these things. You can do all those
things, and you can even preach all these things, and we can
still be hiding from God because we love our sin too much. And
so pray with Daniel. that we as an individual, we
as a church, might acknowledge our sin because God shows it
to us. Well, enough on confession. That’s
where we wanted to land for a moment, but let’s move to the next thing,
the third thing. In addition to adoration and
confession, we see in verses 14 and 15 an acknowledgment,
an acknowledgment that God is righteous in what he’s done.
Jerusalem is in ruins. The people of God are scattered
among the nations and mistreated. And he says in verses 14 and
15, the Lord has kept ready the calamity. He has brought it upon
us. The Lord, our God is righteous
and all the works that he has done because we have not obeyed
his voice. Now, Lord, our God, who brought
your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and
have made a name for yourself as at this day, we have sinned
and we have done wickedly. It’s good to say to God, or it’s
good to say to those you’ve offended. Here is how I’ve offended you.
We’ve gotten away from transactional repentance and confession and
forgiveness. We’re on the path of, I’m sorry
if, and actually we’ve moved beyond that. We say, well, it’s
your fault that you perceived that what I did hurt you. Have
you heard that mess these days? That’s not how we confess sins.
That’s not how we acknowledge. And Daniel does a great service
to us. He shows us how we say to God
what God already knows. Daniel’s saying, God, I’ve got
a firm grip on reality. I realize why I’m in Babylon
and it’s not to serve the Kings. That’s a byproduct of why I’m
here. I’m here because the people sinned. I’m here because we have
sinned. And so he acknowledges it. You know, your parents, when
you were young, you know, they gave you a little pat on the
back, pat on the bottom, I mean, and what’s the saying? They’ll
thank you for it someday, right? There’s a point where you grow
up and you mature and you realize that the chastisement of your
parents, the chastening which you receive, and now as grownups
you receive from the Lord, you realize it’s an act of love and
it’s an act of mercy and it’s an act for which we ought to
be thankful. Getting caught is a mercy. God
putting people in our lives to rescue us from our sin and our
madness is a great mercy. Fools despise correction. but righteous and wise people
take it to heart. And so Daniel acknowledges God
was right. God was right to do this. Well,
there’s a fourth thing in the passage, it’s petition, got adoration,
confession, acknowledgement, and now petition. And verses
16 and 17, he’s getting to the heart here. Oh Lord, according
to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn
away from your city, Jerusalem. Turn away from your holy hill
because our sins and for all the iniquities of our fathers,
Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among the nations
around us. Therefore, oh our God, listen
to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy and
for your own sake, oh Lord, make your face shine upon your sanctuary,
which is desolate. Well, here’s the petition. This is the reason for the prayer. Now, I think I was talking with
Robert this morning about praying for toenails. Have you noticed
that prayers in the Bible are a little more serious? But what
do our prayers become in the church? They become organ recitals,
not the things with keyboard and a set of pipes that make
beautiful music. hearts and livers and big toes
and little toes. And my cousin’s friend who once
knew somebody who has an aunt who has a brother. And our prayer
list goes on and on like that. And yes, God cares about toenails.
God cares about our cancers. But what does God care most about?
He cares most about his glory. And what does Daniel realize?
He realized the glory of God. Well, it’s non-existent. His
sanctuary is in ruins. And all the nations around for
sure these 70 years have said their God cannot save. Look at
what Babylon did to them. Their God can’t save. In fact,
they’re still there. We watched the evening news and
we saw that all those Jewish people are still over there in
Babylon. And so what happens when a church falls into shame,
when a preacher does something foolish? What happens when the
Jimmy Swaggerts and the Jim Bakers get on the news? God’s glory
is defamed in this world. And so we need to pray like Daniel. Yes, for big toes and hearts
and cancers and things. That is important. We don’t want
to think not. But God’s glory. Let your kingdom
come. Let your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven. We want to pray these great petitions.
It’s important that God’s glory be made manifest. That’s how
evangelism happens. Evangelism is corporate. It’s
not necessarily individual. The glory of God on the earth
attracts people and we’re to be a light to the world. But
notice what he says a number of times, the city is in shame.
We are under reproach. Other gods are winning. Their gods are better than our
God who seems to have abandoned us. There’s a fifth thing, a
last thing here, not just adoration and confession, acknowledgement
and petition, but there’s an appeal. Verses 18 and 19. Why should God incline his ear
and hear? Why should God open his eyes and see the desolations
and the city? Well, we don’t present our pleas
before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.
Oh Lord, hear. Oh Lord, forgive. Oh Lord, pay
attention. Oh Lord, act. Delay not for your own sake. Oh my God, because your city
and your people are called by your name. There’s an appeal
here for the glory of God. There’s an appeal here for the
fame of the name of Yahweh among the nations. And so we ought
to pray, oh Lord, our sanctuary, and I’m speaking of ours next
door, it needs some repairs. Don’t do it so that we have the
best sanctuary in town or the most comfortable seats. Don’t
do it because we don’t want the black stuff growing on the ceiling.
Don’t do it. Do it, Lord, so that there is
a place where the hearts of your people are open before you and
they bow on your knees and they worship you and they sing and
lift up their voices to almighty God. We need to appeal to the
highest reason, don’t we? We need to appeal to the highest
reason for God to answer our prayers, and it’s for his own
namesake. So think of these things in your
personal devotions, your daily devotions, your family devotions.
We don’t need the quick fix sugar pill. Those devotional books, Table
Talk and all others included, they have their place, but let
me encourage you to a robust, can I say it this way, put hair
on your chest, You need to labor in the word and
labor in your prayers for the sake of the church, for the sake
of our own service. We wonder why our church, the
church is so ineffective. Well, we hold back in our walk
with the Lord and we take these sugar pills and we really don’t
know what to pray. And so we resort to the organ
recital. And we fail to give God his glory
to confess our sins. We see churches building our
own kingdom, preserving our own happiness. There’s another thing
to think about in here other than our Bible reading and our
prayers, our devotions. Listen to the preacher. I’m saying
this to a Sunday night crowd and I’ll see most of you again
on Wednesday night. But God is graciously speaking
through the ministry of his word. And it’s a privilege to have
a group of elders who love the word. It’s a privilege to have,
and I don’t say this in a self-aggrandizing way, it’s a privilege to have
a minister. There was a time in Israel’s history where there
was a famine in the land. There was a famine in the land
from the hearing of the word. And we are not famished here. When
you think about us, we’re making our way through Acts. We’re making
our way through Daniel. We’re making our way through
Genesis. We have other opportunities other than that to grow in grace
and so sit under the word. Give these things a try and see
if God does not bless your life. See if he doesn’t answer your
prayers and see if he doesn’t bless our church. We heard the
prayer earlier that God might do mighty and great things in
our lives. He does it when we get to praying.
And he does it when we get off the organ recital, but we pray
for things that mean much to him. Let’s look to him in prayer. Lord, we pray that our Bible
study, our Bible reading would get us praying. And there are
many ways we could be like Daniel, faithful in hard times, faithful
in the face of lions, but make us faithful, Lord, in our walk
with you. May our life in your word and
our life on our knees be richer because of the example he set,
but most especially because of the pattern that is presented.
Help us, we ask in the name of Christ. Amen.