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Daniel 9 is one of the great chapters of the Bible. We’re going to see God fulfilling His promise to Israel about the 70 year exile, Daniel at prayer, God answering Daniel’s prayer, and then that great 70th week of Daniel in verses 24-27. Daniel 9 had been called the key and the backbone of biblical prophecy. Daniel 9 will take us to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, rebuilding the city, the first coming of Christ in humiliation, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and then the final seven years just before Christ returns at His second coming!
This morning we’re getting a close up view of Daniel seeking his God. And what a prayer it is. Daniel 9:3 says he set his face to seek the Lord. Puritan Thomas Manton wrote, “Seeking God is the great work of our lives upon earth…. We were made for God; it is the end of our creation. Therefore this must be the business of our lives.”
Do you spend good time seeking God? Do you seek God above all else? Jesus said the Gentiles eagerly seek the stuff of this world (the world is all they have), but God’s people seek first the kingdom of God. God made us for Himself and He wants us to seek Him willingly and out of a loving heart, that we might not only experience His blessings, but that we might really know Him. If you’re like me, we let too many things take our time and seeking God often takes a back seat.
David put it like this in Psalms 63:1, “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
Psalms 105:3-4, “Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad. 4 Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face continually.”
Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
However, Psalms 10:4 says, “The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him.”
And Romans 3:11 says about non-Christians, “There is none who seek God!”
Seeking God daily, whole heartedly, diligently, and out of love for Him is our #1 priority as believers. The natural man in his sin does not seek God.
Daniel is a model for us of seeking God. We know he prayed three times a day, but here he is especially seeking God. What is driving him to set his face to seek the Lord his God? Verses 1-11 identify four elements in seeking God that we can all apply every day of our lives.
SEEK GOD MOTIVATED BY GOD’S TRUTH
Daniel 9:1-2 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans– 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
Daniel is still serving in a high position under Darius – the same king who had him thrown into the lions’ den. In 539 BC Cyrus had conquered the Babylonians and now we’re closing in on the end of the seventy years that God had said Israel would be in captivity. Daniel’s been studying the Word. He’s very aware of God’s timetable. The sovereign God who controls every moment of every day controlled the precise time of 70 years because Israel had not practiced something for 70 years.
What’s the back-story on these 70 years? Very briefly, in Leviticus 25:1-7 God commanded Israel to work the land for six years, but let the land rest on the seventh year. So on every seventh year – “You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard” (Lev. 25:4). God also warned them that refusing to obey this command would lead to a curse of being scattered among other nations, giving the land rest while they were gone (Lev. 26:33-35). Israel didn’t obey, so God sent them into captivity to Babylon for 70 years, one year for each seventh year they had not let the land rest. Second Chronicles 36:20-21 says God took the remnant captive into Babylon and the land rested until the 70 years were completed just as Jeremiah has said. Where did Jeremiah say this? At least three times. Here’s one.
Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says the LORD, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My word to you, to bring you back to this place.
This is what Daniel is reading. This is what sent Daniel to a special time of seeking his God and praying to Him and making supplication. You might wonder why we should pray if God already has everything predestined. Daniel didn’t wonder that. The more you know about God’s plans the more you ought to pray. Prayer isn’t getting God to change His mind. Prayer is acknowledging that God is good and right. John Calvin has fifty pages in his Daniel commentary on this prayer. He says God’s promises should stir us up to pray. MacArthur notes, “Prayer is the means by which the believer lines himself up with the sovereign purpose of God.” Arthur Pink in a chapter “Sovereignty and Prayer” wrote, “It is because God has promised certain things that we can ask for them with full assurance of faith.” For example, Christ promised He’s coming again in Revelation 22:20, so John prayed, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.”
Seek God based on God’s direction in His Word. Notice too that Daniel took God’s word literally about those 70 years, just like we take the 1000 years literally in Revelation 20. When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense or you’ll have nonsense. Daniel did the math, remembering that he was taken into captivity around 605 BC, and now it’s around 538 BC, and he knew the 70 years was about up for God to restore Israel to Jerusalem. This reality both fired him up and deeply pained him as he thought about Israel’s sins.
SEEK GOD IN GREATEST HUMILITY
Daniel 9:3, So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.
ESV says, “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking Him by prayer and pleas.” Daniel carved out special time to come before God to worship Him and pray on behalf of his people Israel. He was dead serious. He humbled himself, using normal meal time to pray instead of eat. In his prayer time before God, he put on a garment of coarse dark goat’s hair, and then threw ashes all over his head and over the cloth as outward symbols to express to God the humiliation he felt before Him. These are all marks of humility, urgency, and fervency.
He may have knelt down in the dust and just identified himself before God as absolutely penitent and needy. We don’t need to do these ancient outward customs, but we should humble our minds and hearts before God when we seek Him. The first beatitude is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Spurgeon said, “You cannot expect anything of God unless you put yourself in the right place, that is, as a beggar at his footstool; then will he hear you, and not until then.”
SEEK GOD REMEMBERING HIS GLORIOUS ATTRIBUTES
Daniel 9:4, I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments…. v. 7 “Righteousness belongs to you.” v. 9 To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness…”
Daniel recognizes who God is, His glorious character, and His attributes. It is good to mull over God’s attributes. You may remember the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s description of God prayed by that young Scotsman George Gillespie, “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchanging in His being, wisdom, power, holiness,, justice, goodness, and truth.”
Daniel first reminds himself in prayer of the one true and living God. We often start right in telling God what we need and what He should do for us or give us. Instead, let’s be like Daniel and first meditate on who our God is.
He recognizes God’s names and titles: Yahweh – the self-existing and faithful God (Daniel only uses Yahweh in this chapter, seven times); my Elohim – creator and sustainer; O Adonai – sovereign master and Lord!
He recognizes his God’s majestic attributes: great and fear-inspiring or even dreadful One.
He recognizes his God’s redeeming character: gracious and loyal to His promises. Without these we have no hope.
Go down to verse seven. Daniel remembers God is righteous in all He does. God was righteous in sending Israel into exile.
Then in verse nine Daniel remembers that God is compassionate and forgiving. The two words are plural, compassions and forgivenesses, indicating intensity, ready to show compassion and ready to forgive. Thank God, like a mother who tenderly loves her child, God is full of compassion and forgiveness.
SEEK GOD FULLY AWARE OF YOUR NEED OF GOD’S MERCY
Daniel 9:5-6 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 “Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.
Now Daniel contrasts the glory and the goodness of God with Israel’s own sin and rebellion. And notice that Daniel identifies himself with Israel, his people. You’ll see “we” and “our” and “us” over and over as Daniel confesses their sin.
It’s like Daniel is doing an autopsy on man’s depravity here, digging into sin’s ugliness. It isn’t pretty and when you compare our wicked hearts with God’s glorious character, it’s infinitely worse! Daniel doesn’t spare himself or any of his people. This is gut-wrenching. We thank God for Jesus Christ, who dealt with all our sins on that cross. But we are still sinners, like Israel. Daniel description looks like our own wicked nation. Think about how far our nation has gone from God! Back in 1636 Harvard was founded to train men for the Christian ministry. Today they have an atheist for a chaplain.
We have sinned. We have completely missed the mark of living for God’s glory. Instead we have lived for our own selfish desires.
We have committed iniquity. The Hebrew word is avah, bent, twisted, bent out of shape like a twisted key that no longer fits. God made us for His glory and we have twisted and bent ourselves to live for our own glory.
We have acted wickedly. Wickedly means loose, ill-regulated, running to and fro. Isaiah 57:20-21, The wicked are like the tossing sea, that cannot be silent, whose waters cast up refuse and mud – wickedly.
We have rebelled – done the very opposite of what God called us to do, defying God’s authority. Jeremiah 6:16, Thus says the LORD, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is, and walk in it; And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ We’ll do it our way, not God’s way! Frank Sinatra revealed men’s hearts when he sang, “I did it my way!”
We have turned aside – flat out refused to follow God’s directions. We don’t want God telling us what to do, what is right and wrong. “This is the way; walk in it.” We’re not going to do it.
We have not listened – When God spoke to us, we turned away and refused to listen. Over and over in Jeremiah it says they did not listen. Jeremiah 25:4, And the LORD has sent to you all His servants the prophets again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear. Jeremiah 44:16, As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you! God asks, “Are you listening to Me?” And they turned their backs on God. How true this is in our own nation. We’ve become a nation that refuses to listen to God. God deserves and expects to be heard. If you won’t listen to God, God will not listen to you! It’s that simple, and dreadful. Are you listening to God?
Daniel indicts everyone on all levels in verse six, from the common folks to the kings and princes. They have all closed their ears to the voice of God in the prophets’ mouths. But this is true of all of us in our natural depraved condition. Romans 3:23, All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
One thing is for sure. Daniel doesn’t soft-pedal anything here. “We are a guilty, rebellious nation and God is absolutely righteous in bringing His judgment on us for these 70 years!”
Daniel isn’t finished…
Daniel 9:7-8 Righteousness belongs to You, O Lord, but to us open shame, as it is this day–to the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of their unfaithful deeds which they have committed against You. 8 “Open shame belongs to us, O Lord, to our kings, our princes and our fathers, because we have sinned against You.
Open shame belongs to this special people who should be glorifying God among the nations. We have so messed up our lives and our nation has so rejected God and His truth, we are full of shame, a painful emotion of humiliation, disgrace. Just like a rebellious child brings shame on his parents, this reality of our guilt has brought us into open shame. The nations are looking and they see us under God’s judgment. Open shame – what a heart-wrenching thought and reality!
Daniel 9:9-11 To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him; 10 nor have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His teachings which He set before us through His servants the prophets. 11 “Indeed all Israel has transgressed Your law and turned aside, not obeying Your voice; so the curse has been poured out on us, along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him.
Daniel is not needlessly repeating himself in his confession. John Walvoord quotes Frederick Tatford, “He sought to express by every possible word the enormity of the guilt and contumacy of himself and his people…. Their cup of iniquity was full…. All were implicated.” They had done such evil and when God sent them prophets, they refused to listen. In fact, they did listen, but they listened to those false prophets who told them what they wanted to hear: nice things, all will be well, God is so loving He overlooks your wicked behavior. Here’s Jeremiah’s warning, and I think this applies perfectly to our own times.
Jeremiah 5:30-31, An appalling and horrible thing Has happened in the land: 31 The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it?
So Daniel read in the book of Jeremiah about the 70 years. He is keenly aware those 70 years are nearly up. God will sovereignly move King Cyrus to send Israel back to Jerusalem. But Daniel is even more concerned about Israel’s spiritual condition. He knows they don’t deserve God’s goodness in restoring them. So he seeks God with all of his heart.
As sinners redeemed by the sovereign mercy and grace and compassion and forgiveness of our God through His Son, like Daniel, our duty and delight should be to set our faces to seek our God every day! Is seeking God at the top of your daily priority list? Daniel gives us the pattern here.
First, spend time in God’s Word.
The Word exposes your sin and gives you God’s promises.
Second, humble yourself before God in prayer. You don’t need to throw ashes all over yourself, but you do need to set your heart – focus your heart and mind on seeking God through Christ. Remember David in Psalm 63:1, “I will seek your earnestly!”
Third, remember God’s glorious attributes. Recall how gracious your God is. How awesome and infinite and eternal and immutable He is. And holy. All He does for us sinners is by His grace. He is ready to forgive all who come to Him through Christ. He is full of compassion.
Fourth, confess the full extent of your sin. Hold nothing back. Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me O God and know my heart… See if there be any wicked way in me.” If you’ve not been listening to the voice of your God in the Bible, repent of that, open your Bible, and seek your God.