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Harry Reeder: God just says this is an unconditional prophetic promise. This is what I'm going to do. And Daniel says, "Hey, Babylon's already gone, all those kings have been killed, and 70 years is just about up. We must be heading back. I tell you what, I'm just going to sit back till they bring me my visa."

No, he goes to prayer. He immediately goes to prayer. The word drives him to prayer. And basically, what is his prayer? "God, forgive us, be merciful to us, and this thing about taking us back, now God, do it."

Guest (Male): Putting life in biblical perspective with Dr. Harry L. Reeder. This is In Perspective, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

In a time of national crisis, Daniel didn't throw up his hands in despair. Rather, he went to his knees in prayer. Daniel fervently prayed for God to graciously bring his nation and people to repentance so they would turn to the Lord for mercy and blessing and avert the divine judgment that their sins deserved.

How can we learn to follow Daniel's pattern of powerful prayer? Stay with us as Dr. Reeder takes us to Daniel chapter 9 and verses 1 through 19 for today's teaching, part two of the message With Daniel in the School of Prayer.

Harry Reeder: Now, what does Daniel then do? Daniel begins a prayer. Now let's look at the elements of Daniel's prayer beginning in verse 3. Go back with me to Daniel chapter 9. Look with me in verse 3.

So after getting into God's word, 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. Now, what happens first of all? The first element of his prayer we find in verses 3 through 4. The first element is adoration. The first element is adoration.

I turned my face to the Lord God, I sought Him in prayer, I would make a plea for mercy. How? I was engaged in fasting, sackcloth, and ashes, and I prayed to the Lord my God and I made confession saying, "Oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments."

So what's the first thing he does in his prayer but adoration? He subjects himself to sackcloth and ashes, humiliation of himself, and then adoration of the Lord. And by the way, notice how he is fully focused upon the Lord. It says that he humiliated himself in fasting, sackcloth, and ashes, and then he prayed to the Lord my God. And I made confession.

And then what's his confession? Adoration. He adores the Lord, the great and awesome God, the God who is faithful to keep covenant, the God who is steadfast with love, and the God who loves those. And because of His love, there are those who love Him, and He loves those, and those who love Him will keep His commandments. And so that is how he brings adoration.

Now, what's the second element of his prayer? The second element of his prayer is confession. His confession starts in verse 5. He has already acknowledged that he is a sinner. He has already engaged in humiliation. Now look at his confessions. "We have sinned. We have done wrong. We have acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and your rules, your laws."

Now folks, stop right there. You may look at that and say, "Now wait a minute. Why did he do some personal confession?" Well, he will and has done personal confession. But the judgment upon Israel that has put them in 70 years of captivity was why? Because they had together turned against the Lord.

So Daniel now on behalf of the people who have turned against the Lord, he now on behalf of the people confesses the sins of the people as a people before the Lord. "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, to all the people of the land. To you, oh Lord, to you, oh Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame as to 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 they have committed against you."

In other words, why have we been dispersed into captivity? Because of our treachery. "To the Lord our God belongs mercy and forgiveness. We have rebelled against Him. We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in His laws, which He has 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 oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us."

What is he referring to, if you don't mind, we don't have time to turn there? Here's what he's referring to. In the day when Moses wrote out the book of Deuteronomy, he then said to the people, there will come a time you will turn away from the Lord and the Lord will raise up a nation who is not His nation, and He will use that nation to bring judgment against my people. But when you have turned, I will bring you back into your land.

So just what had been declared in the days of Moses has now come upon us. Go if you would to verse 12. "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 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 that He has done, and we have not obeyed His voice." Now let me just jot down for you, or if you'd like to jot down, four things in that confession. Four things.

He says, "God, you've been faithful. We've been unfaithful. And here's the proof of our unfaithfulness." Four things. Number one: We have neglected your word. We have neglected your word. When I saw that in this text and wrote it down, I confess to you a chill over my soul. How many times have I in the mornings neglected His word? On the Lord's day, neglected His word?

How many times have I looked to the wisdom of the world from talking heads to written pieces to editorials and not like Daniel? When his heart was weary and overwhelmed, he went to the word. Daniel says we have not done that. We are under your discipline because we have neglected your word. And he confesses it.

Secondly, we have broken your laws. We've broken your laws two ways, he says in the text. One, we've broken your laws by omitting obedience and by committing transgression. We call those sins of omission and sins of commission. We have not done what your law calls us to do, and we have transgressed what it forbids us to do.

We have stepped over the line of your law. We have disregarded it and disobeyed it by either not obeying it with sins of omission or by disobeying it with sins of commission. Number three: We have ignored the prophets and preachers that you have sent to us with your word. We ignored the prophets and the preachers that you have sent to us with your word.

Now, you probably noticed this, and I'm not going back and I'm not picking each verse apart because I'm going to sum up these three things by adding a fourth thing. As he confesses, every time he confesses something, you can almost see it trigger in his mind the sinfulness of the sins, and he goes back and confesses it again, but this time with greater intensity and passion and clarity.

In other words, he keeps confessing these three things. We have neglected your word. We have neglected your faithfulness. We have broken your laws. We have neglected and dishonored your prophets whom you sent to us. We have done all that. We and the rulers have done that. And then what he does is he keeps going back and restating those things and repeating them, and each time he becomes more passionate, more intense, and more clear in his confession.

It wasn't enough for him simply to say, well, I sinned against you, Lord, we're really sorry about that. No, he really begins passionately to identify it with repetitions of intensity and clarity. Well, that brings us to the third part of the prayer, from adoration to confession, then finally to petition. Verses 16 through 19.

"Oh 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, oh God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, oh Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate."

"Oh 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. Oh 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."

Again, you can see the petitions being repeated with greater intensity, and they basically are threefold. He petitions first of all for mercy in place of righteous judgment. He says, "You are right to judge us, but oh God, please be merciful to us." What is mercy? When God withholds from us what we deserve. So he calls upon God for mercy, and he repeats that call.

Secondly, he then calls for God for grace. Mercy is when God withholds what we deserve, grace is when God gives us what we don't deserve. He calls for mercy, withhold this judgment we deserve, and then he asks for grace. "Oh God, grant us favor." That's the same word that he's giving for grace. Give us grace. Noah found favor.

God, grant us grace like Noah. Grant us grace as you have in the past. Give us what we don't deserve while you withhold from us what we do deserve. And then he says, "Oh God, thirdly, oh God, minister to us according to our needs, not according to what we deserve." Minister to us according to our needs. Look upon us, see us desolate, our needs are great. Minister to us according to our needs, not what our sins deserve.

And then here is his seal, and he says it three different times. "Lord, it's your city, not ours. We are your people. We are called by your name. Act for your name by granting us mercy and grace." And now we see that his desire, did you see how it ended up? "Oh Lord, pay attention, delay not, for your own sake, my God, because your city and your people are called by your name. Hear, see, respond. We are yours, oh God, preserve us that we might declare your praise."

Well, let me give you some takeaways in conclusion. I've got a Roman numeral 3 up there, and the Roman numeral 3, by the way, is God's answer to this prayer. Okay? "Harry, what was God's answer to this prayer?" I'll tell you next week. Next week is the answer to the prayer, and that begins in verse 20 all the way through, and that's the one that everybody wants to know about from the book of Daniel. Can you tell me about those 70 weeks?

So Gabriel's going to come with an answer of 70 weeks. But before we get to the answer next week, what can we learn about this prayer of Daniel? Well, just jot down these five things. First of all is the importance of engaging in prayer and the word as an inseparable act. Here is Daniel in a time of great distress. So what does Daniel do? What does Daniel do? He goes to the word and then he goes to prayer. Then he goes to prayer and he goes to the word.

How was the first church in Jerusalem built? Acts 1, they're in a prayer meeting. Acts 2, they had a sermon. Prayer and the word. Do you remember in Acts chapter 6 when the church was about to split because of the accusation of racial prejudice? "You're not taking care of the Hellenistic widows, just the Hebrew widows."

And they came up with a solution. Okay, we're going to be good elders, but we're not going to neglect prayer and the word. So what we'll do is raise up some good deacons who can take care of the resources and the mercy ministry of the church so we can give attention to what? Prayer and the word. These are the top priorities of the church, these are the foundational building blocks of the church.

Prayer and the word. In prayer, you unlock the word. And when you come to the word, it drives you to prayer. Notice, Daniel reads, "God, what about these desolations?" So he goes to the word. And when he finds out from the word, I am going to bring an end to Babylon and after 70 years I'm going to bring my people back. And there's no conditions on this. God just says this is an unconditional prophetic promise. This is what I'm going to do.

Well, and Daniel says, "Hey, Babylon's already gone, all those kings have been killed, and 70 years is just about up. We must be heading back. I tell you what, I'm just going to sit back till they bring me my visa." No, he goes to prayer. He immediately goes to prayer. The word drives him to prayer.

And basically, what is his prayer? God, forgive us for what we've done to put judgment upon us, be merciful to us, and this thing about taking us back, now God, do it. So God's given you a promise for your children. I'll be a God to you and to your children after you. But what do you do? You go pray. God, do it. Forgive me for my iniquities. Renew a right spirit within me, but now do what you promised.

And so when we see the promises of God, when He tells us that He'll make us effective, when He tells us that He has promised whatever His promise is, what do we do? Well, when we hear the promises of God, the word sends us to prayer and prayer sends us back to the word. These are like Siamese twins. They are absolutely inseparable.

Here is what one of the great divines of the Puritans said. And I'm not going to quote him because I'm really not quoting him. I've kind of paraphrased him and I don't want him to feel any responsibility in heaven for how I might have messed up what he said. But after I read it, this is what I wrote. What a Christian is before God in the closet of prayer and the word on his knees is what he is and no more.

What a Christian is in the closet of prayer and the word and on his knees is what he is. He is no more than he is in that closet. We are to be prayer and the word. The word drives us before the throne, and the throne of grace when we call upon it opens up our understanding of the word. And when we understand the word, we then call upon the throne of grace, "Oh Lord, do it."

Secondly, the second thing I want to mention to you is prayer is worship and God-centered. What does it say? What does it say? It said that when Daniel went to prayer, he called out upon the Lord. He gave adoration for the character and the faithfulness of God. And then it says he set his face toward Jerusalem. He put his face toward the Lord Himself.

This is God-centered prayer. This is not man-centered prayer. It has to do with our sins and our need of forgiveness, but it's God-centered because he says, "God, do this for your own glory." Prayer is not only an element of worship, prayer is worship. Prayer is not only an element of worship, it is worship.

God, you are great and glorious. You have been faithful to your word. You've been faithful to your people. You've shown mercy. Your steadfast love has gone from generations to generations. You have upheld your people. And so when he calls upon the Lord, he acknowledges with humility His faithlessness, but he lifts up with adoration God's faithfulness. Our faithlessness, God's faithfulness.

The third thing that I want you to see is that God's promises of grace never lead to passivity but to sacred activity. And the most sacred activity possible is prayer because when you pray, you just walked into the Holy of Holies. You just went to the throne. You can go anytime because the way's been sprinkled clean by the blood of Jesus.

But when we hear God's promises of grace, folks, listen, you do not prove that you believe in God's grace by living a sloppy life. Sometimes we think, "See, I'm going to show you how much I love Jesus. I'm not even going to worry about who I'm associating with. I'm not going to worry about what I'm watching. I'm not going to worry about what my eye gates open to, what my heart gates open to. I believe in grace."

That's just sloppy agape. That's all that is. No, when you hear the promises of grace, you don't see sloppiness in Daniel. You see intensity and passion. You see sacred activity, not sinful passivity. I know we rest in the Lord, but resting in the Lord is not a call to passivity, it's a call to dependency and an utter devotion to that which God has given to us.

And there is nothing more sacred that He's given to us than prayer. We get so excited about our cell phones. God's had wireless for a long time. Long time. Number four, and by the way, He paid the bill for you to use it at Calvary. So use it. And by the way, it doesn't drop out. It stays connected. Just call upon Him. Just use it.

Number four: Prayer packages not only the recognition of our faithlessness but also the acclamation of God's faithfulness. Prayer packages the recognition of God's faithfulness as well as in sackcloth and ashes and with confession our faithlessness. That God, we have not been faithful before you, forgive us, yet you have been faithful throughout all the years.

And then finally, while prayer, this is just a last final word about prayer and God and us. Now, I've tried to say this carefully, so let me just say it in close with prayer. Prayer reveals our heart and declares our will before God. Aren't you glad that God says, "Come here and tell me what's on your heart"?

Prayer reveals our heart and prayer declares our will. "God, I want you to know about this in my heart and God, would you do this?" But the purpose and blessing of prayer is not for me to reveal my heart and declare my will and get God lined up with it. The blessing of prayer is after my heart has been revealed and my will has been declared, then God will line me up with His heart and His will.

"Not my will be done, but thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And your Father's heart and will is pure and faithful and good for you and His glory. My will is always polluted with my sin. My heart is always distracted with myself. God's heart and will is what I desperately need to be lined up with. Come, there's His word, and here is the throne of grace, and He is ready to receive you.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Perspective featuring the teaching of Dr. Harry L. Reeder. Our current sermon series, Daniel's Memorable Memoirs and Message. Visit inperspective.org for additional teaching by Dr. Reeder.

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And once again, if you would like to receive this month's free gift offer, the series Unlocking the Relationship of Baptism and the Great Commission, call 1-800-488-1888. Daniel spent time in the school of prayer, and the Lord responded in a unique and extraordinary way. Join us again next time as Dr. Reeder shares insights from God's answer to Daniel's prayer. That's next time as we turn back to the scriptures to put life in biblical perspective.