I wanna start this message off with the statement that an intimate prayer life needs a proper understanding of God. An intimate prayer life needs a proper understanding of God. In fact, you could say any interaction with God, whether that be prayer, whether that be worship, in the narrow sense of our singing, of our praise to Him on a Sunday like this, or in a broader sense of our actions in response to what He has done for us, our upright living, our raising of our kids in a godly fashion. All those things when done with intimacy reflects a proper understanding of God. A common accusation that I've heard often, in dealing with non Christians especially, or Christians that are struggling in their faith and their walk with God is the accusation that God is vindictive, that He is a bully of a God.
People say that the Old Testament shows Him directing people to die. He directs genocide, committing all kinds of sin, and being just plain harsh. This leads some people to throw out God entirely. Well, if God does this, how can I serve a God like that? Others say, and there's been all sorts of cults and superstitious spiritualities that have resulted in saying, well, the God of the Old Testament is a different God to the God of the New Testament.
The God of the Old Testament is vindictive, is judgemental, is harsh, but the God of the New Testament is grace. He is love. He is mercy. Have you ever experienced that twinge of doubt? Have you ever been confused or troubled by that idea of God or the seeming contradiction that exists between the Old Testament and New Testament God.
Have you ever thought that God's way in dealing with you or with someone was a bit harsh, a bit strict? Perhaps you've experienced God's intervention in your life personally. Perhaps something has happened in your life that has made you bitter or angry with God. This morning, we're going to be looking at a situation in Daniel that could have made anyone disappointed or angry with God. Remember that, the Israelites had experienced decades, not a few months, not a few years, but decades of oppression, decades of persecution at the hands of the Babylonians.
Daniel's people, the Israelites, had no more holy city of Jerusalem. They had no temple anymore. It was destroyed. They had no promised land. It was all taken away.
It was all destroyed. So the question is why would God do this? How could He let this happen to us, His people? The ones that have been faithful to Him, the ones that have been proclaiming that He is the only God. How could He let this happen?
Who is God to let this happen? Is He fickle? Is He vindictive? Is He an angry God? Let's read Daniel 9 and we'll see what Daniel held and how Daniel understood God.
Daniel 9:1. Let's have a look at the context again. Daniel says that it was the first year of Darius. Now if you remember, the story, Darius was the Persian who was also known as Cyrus, and he was the Persian conqueror that came and destroyed and overwhelmed the Babylonian empire. This was in May.
And at this time, Israel had been in exile for about sixty years. It was about sixty years that Israel was in Babylon. And so Daniel remembers the prophecy of Jeremiah. They were contemporaries, Jeremiah and Daniel. Jeremiah preached to Israel, to Judah to repent of their ways and warn them that the time was coming that they would be taken, and it would be very soon.
And lo and behold, they were taken away into exile. But Daniel reads the scripture, it says here. He reads the scripture, and he comes to understand that Jeremiah said that there will be a time of seventy years, and then God will restore them and bring them back. Have a look. Jeremiah 25:12 and 29:10 reads like this.
But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians for their guilt, declares the Lord, and will make it desolate forever. That's in Jeremiah 25. Jeremiah 29:10, it says, this is what the Lord says. When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil My good promise to bring you back to this place. It's an amazing part of prophecy, and it's an amazing part of hope.
And so Daniel reads this, and he works, you know, out hey. This is about seventy years. We're sixty odd years now. And so he prays to God. He prays, God, You've promised this.
I ask, Lord, in Your great mercy to act and make this happen. And this leads us to our first point this morning. In our prayer life, we must know God's character. To have an intimate prayer life, to have a prayer life that is so connected and so in tune with God, we must know who God is. Intimate prayer life needs a proper understanding of God.
Daniel prayed with an amazing knowledge of who God was. He knew God based on the scriptures. He knew exactly what God had done for his ancestors in Egypt and what He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knew the covenants that God had made with Abraham and with David. I can list several verses here of where he says, this is who You are, God.
Now verse 4, O Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of love with all those who love Him. Verse 9, the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving. Verse 15, our Lord, O Lord, our God, who brought Your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand. There's many many instances if you go through this chapter of Daniel proclaiming this is who You are, God. This is who You are.
You forgive. You are merciful. You are mighty. You are powerful. Daniel appeals to God.
He prays to God because he knows who He is. This is a prayer that is based on an intimate knowledge of God and of the character of God. Daniel knew that God is righteous. Righteous meaning that God does what is right in every situation. Daniel knew God was merciful and forgiving.
He knew that God was powerful, that He was able to bring an entire nation out of Egypt, an entire nation that was under bondage and oppression, and bring them out and give them a new land, a new home. Daniel knew who God was because he knew the God of the Bible. Appealing to the character of God. Appealing to the character of God is biblical prayer. Appealing and reminding God of how He acts and what He has done in the past is appealing to what He has done over and over again in the Bible.
Why can we trust that God can come through for us in difficult situations? Because He has done so in the past. He has done so with thousands and thousands and millions of people. Why is it that God will forgive our sins against Him? Because the Bible says that He is merciful and forgiving.
Why will God do what is right in terms of reestablishing His rule and His kingdom on earth? Because He is absolutely just and will not allow sin to go on forever. An intimate prayer life, a life of prayer that is effective and in line with God's will is a prayer life that knows God's character. When we pray, we bring forth those memories of God and who He has shown Himself to be. We can pray to God for Him to save our non Christian friends because He has done that in the past.
We know that God is a missionary God. We know that He is a God who has sent out prophets again and again to speak to people, to proclaim that God wants them to come to Him again. We know that He sent out His very Son to preach to the lost. How can we pray for our unsaved friends? Why can we pray?
Because we know God. We know God. We can pray to God to save because we know His character. The second thing we see in this chapter about prayer and the prayer life is that we should know our place before an awesome God. Prayer that is in line with God's will is essentially a prayer that is humble.
Daniel knew his place. He knew the place of Israel before God. Verse 5 says, we have sinned and we have done wrong. Verse 7, Lord, You are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame. There's four or five of those sort of verses.
This prayer is a prayer that understands the brokenness, that understands the imperfection of who we are when we are compared to the majestically holy and perfect God. In particular, Daniel knew that it was sin. It wasn't just mistakes. It wasn't just bad choices. It was sin that had placed them in that situation that had separated them from God's blessings.
The blame, notice, wasn't shifted. It wasn't, oh, well, you know, we had a few bad years of famine, and we thought, well, let's go over to the Baals and worship them. Or, you know, we just didn't have a very good political policy, and so the Assyrians and the Babylonians came and destroyed us. The shame, the blame wasn't shifted. It was our fault.
It was our sin. We are the ones who rebel, Daniel says. We can be so arrogant sometimes in our life, in how we think, in our thought life, but also in our prayer life, can't we? I should get this job because I deserve it, God. I've worked really hard.
I should get this promotion, this raise. I deserve it. No. You don't. It is a gracious gift from God.
I should marry a rich man. I should have a happy home life. I think I can ask for that. I do lots of work in the church. I deserve it.
No. You don't. The very fact that we are sitting here, the very fact that we are living and breathing is a blessing from God. Simply a gift. You can't tell your heart to keep beating.
If your heart stops, no amount of willpower, no amount of positive thinking will get it going again. God has that right. He has that power. Everything we have is a grace gift of God. And even though we are sinful and broken, the great truth is we are precious in God's sight.
We are precious. And even though Israel had been raped and pillaged, its beautiful temple destroyed forever, brought low, humiliated. Humiliated. Its gold and its ornaments spread to the far corners of the earth. The special sanctuary of God where God met His people destroyed forever.
Despite all of that, God was not done with Israel. He had not finished with them. Thank God for that. A prayer life that understands that we are broken and rely fully and wholly on God's grace will be a prayer life that is grounded in grace. It'll lead to a life that is humbled.
And that leads us to our next point. So we said knowing where we stand with God, knowing who we pray to is important. The third thing is knowing what grace means. It's one thing to say we live by grace. We receive things by grace.
But do we know what it means? And do we have our prayer life, affected and changed by that? Our worship of God affected and changed by that. Have a look at verses 17-19. It is one of the most significant passages I believe in the Old Testament.
Verse 17. Now our God, hear the prayers and the petitions of Your servant. For Your sake, O Lord, look with favour on Your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear. Open Your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears Your name.
We do not make requests of You because we are righteous, but because of Your great mercy. We do not make request because we are righteous, but because of Your great mercy. A humble prayer life knows what grace is and prays accordingly. Daniel understood the amazing truth about grace. Grace is receiving something that you absolutely, completely, and wholly do not deserve.
It is something that is done or given to you that cannot be claimed, that cannot be demanded, that cannot be earned. Grace in its purest and truest form is something that will astound the receiver every time they receive it. Every single time. Grace in its truest form can never go unnoticed by the person who receives it. That is what grace is.
Daniel understood God's grace, and he knew that grace is something that comes to us in spite of us. I'm currently reading a book by Tim Keller, a pastor and a preacher and an author of a church in New York, a Presbyterian church there. The book is called The Prodigal God, if you've ever read it. And it talks about the story of the prodigal son. It's a great book.
It's I think it's based on a sermon that he's preached. Very thin, very easy to read, but I really recommend reading it and perhaps even doing it in your cell group. But in it, he makes a claim that it was not just the younger brother who walked away from the family and was lost, but the older brother as well. The older brother was as lost as the younger brother. They both resented their father.
The well, the one resented him in a way of taking his money and leaving. And the other brother resented by doing the right thing and being faithful to the dad, but absolutely not wanting to share anything with the dad. The one brother acted immorally and the other one acted morally. One seemed good and the other seemed bad, but deep down, they were both lost. And this is what Tim Keller has to say about the grace of God's love that comes through in this parable because it is the gospel in a nutshell.
This is what he writes. Jesus does not divide the world into the moral good guys and the immoral bad guys. He shows that everyone is dedicated to a project of self salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control. We are just going about it in different ways. Even though both sons are wrong, the father cares for them and invites both of them back into his love and into the feast.
This means that Jesus' message, is the gospel, is a completely different spirituality. The gospel of Jesus, the gospel and the message of Jesus is not religion nor is it irreligion. It's not morality like the older brother or immorality. It's not moralism versus relativism. It's not conservatism versus liberalism, nor is it something that is halfway between the two poles.
The gospel is something altogether different. The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches. In its view, everyone is wrong, but everyone is loved. And everyone is called to recognise this and change. Everyone is wrong, but everyone is loved.
By contrast, elder brothers, they divide the world in two saying, that there are good people like us and we are in. And the bad people, they are the real problem with the world and they are out. The younger brothers, even if they don't believe in God at all, they do the same thing. They say the open minded, the enlightened, they are in. The bigoted, the narrow minded, the religious, they are the real problem with the world and they are out.
But Jesus says, the humble are in and the arrogant are out. The people who confess that they aren't particularly good or that they aren't particularly open minded, they are the ones that are moving toward God. Because a prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know that you need it. The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know that you need it. The people who think that they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God.
When a newspaper posed the question, what's wrong with the world? Tim Keller writes. A Christian writer by the name of GK Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response. Dear sirs, he wrote, I am. Sincerely yours, GK Chesterton.
What is wrong with the world? I am. This is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of grace. Then we come to the fourth and the final part of understanding and having an intimate prayer life, and that is on to understand what grace does. We understand what grace is, that it is receiving something that we wholly, completely, utterly do not deserve.
But now to understand what grace does. And we find that in verses 20-25, about the 70 sevens, that strange part of scripture. After Daniel prays for God's grace and mercy on his people, the angel Gabriel comes to him for the second time with a message. The message is one of hope, that a time is coming where there will be an end to sin, an atonement for wickedness, that there will come a time of everlasting righteousness. These are words that he actually says.
70 sevens, however, would need to pass from the time of Daniel's prayer till this event would happen. Friends, again, we can take the symbolism of numbers and figures, and we must take it with some humility. We must take it with, not too tightly. It could be that these 70 sevens refer to a completeness, a wholeness because it uses the symbolic number of seven, which we know is God's number for completeness of holiness, of perfection. And so, some have suggested that Gabriel is saying here that in God's time, He will put an end to sin.
He will put an end to suffering. He will put an end to unrighteous living. And so God maybe is telling Daniel that in His time, He will restore His people and put an end to sin. But there's also an amazing coincidence, if it is a coincidence, that when we work out how much 70 sevens equates to, the number is 490. And the coincidence is uncanny if we consider that this is roughly the amount of time that was left between Daniel and the arrival of Jesus Christ.
Verse 21, 25 says, until the anointed one, the ruler comes. Sorry. Seven sevens and 62 sevens. After 62 sevens, the anointed one will be cut off and will have nothing. Now if we were to look at other passages of scripture of prophecy, we'd come up to Isaiah 53 and read this about the one who is also called the anointed one.
Isaiah 53:4 says this, surely He took up our pain and He bore our suffering. Yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.
Verse 10 goes on. It says, yet it was the Lord's will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer. And though the Lord makes His life an offering for sin, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand. After He has suffered, He will see the light of life and be satisfied. By His knowledge, My righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.
What could Daniel be referring to but for Jesus Christ and what he was going to do? Daniel said that there was going to be a time that was going to be ushered in by the anointed one and that this time would put an end to sin. That would put an end to transgressions. That would set up eternal righteousness. I put it to you that the 70 sevens does not talk about some sort of end times prophecy of when Jesus will return and when God will establish His kingdom completely once and for all.
I wanna say that this points to the coming of Jesus Christ into our world. He who put an end to sin, He who put an end to transgression, He who came to atone for wickedness by shedding His blood and who bought eternal righteousness for His people. God said to Daniel, yes. I will restore your land. I will restore it, and He did.
He brought Israel back. He brought the Jews back to Jerusalem. But their sins, God says, against Me will need to be paid for. They will need to be paid for. I can give you back your land, but I cannot forgive you without justice being done.
Someone needs to pay for what you did, but I'll take care of it, Daniel. A time is coming. A time is coming, and I will make a way. Effective praying means that we pray because Jesus Christ has enabled us to come to God. Grace makes all the difference.
The vindictive, fickle bully of a God in the Old Testament was never a fickle bully of a God. Even Daniel knew that God was a God of mercy and grace. Not only did God overlook the terrible sins of Israel and restore them at the end of the seventy years of exile, but roughly four hundred and ninety years later, He sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to die. And not only for the sins of Israel, but for the entire world. His mercy, His grace, His character was shown at its most glorious, at its most divine in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, And that is pointed to us in Daniel, in the Old Testament.
Is this a God who is merciful? Yes. We can pray and we should pray according to the character of that God. We can pray and we should pray knowing our place before this God, a place of humility certainly, but a place of restored relationship as well. Because of Jesus, we understand grace.
And in Jesus, we have seen what grace does. Let our prayer lives be marked with wonder and joy and adoration to the God who is merciful and gracious. Asking Him for all our needs because His character has ultimately been revealed to us in that way. He is good, and He is gracious.