Daniel 9:1-3 NLT It was the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede, the son of Ahasuerus, who became king of the Babylonians. During the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, learned from reading the word of the Lord , as revealed to Jeremiah the prophet, that Jerusalem must lie desolate for seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes.
One morning, shortly after the Medes and the Persians had conquered Babylon, Daniel was reading the book of the prophet Jeremiah.
Daniel 5:30-31 NLT That very night Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, was killed. And Darius the Mede took over the kingdom at the age of sixty-two.
Jeremiah had been a prophet in Jerusalem when Daniel was a boy. As he read the prophet's words, a couple of passages seemed to leap off the page
Jeremiah 25:8-12 NLT And now the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighboring lands will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. “Then, after the seventy years of captivity are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his people for their sins,” says the Lord . “I will make the country of the Babylonians a wasteland forever.
Jeremiah 29:10-11 NLT This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
God promised that Israel's captivity would last seventy years, and then God would bring them back to the land. Daniel began to add up the years since his deportation and realized that the captivity was almost over! As Daniel's mind was gripped by the written Word of God, He got the urge to pray.
This passage not only teaches us about Daniel's response to God's Word; we also learn how we should respond to God's promises to us.
In times of deep personal crisis, men and women are often driven to pray.
Let’s read the prayer;
Daniel 9:4-19 NLT I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: “O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! You always fulfill your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands. But we have sinned and done wrong. We have rebelled against you and scorned your commands and regulations. We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets, who spoke on your authority to our kings and princes and ancestors and to all the people of the land. “Lord, you are in the right; but as you see, our faces are covered with shame. This is true of all of us, including the people of Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel, scattered near and far, wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you. O Lord , we and our kings, princes, and ancestors are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. We have not obeyed the Lord our God, for we have not followed the instructions he gave us through his servants the prophets. All Israel has disobeyed your instruction and turned away, refusing to listen to your voice. “So now the solemn curses and judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured down on us because of our sin. You have kept your word and done to us and our rulers exactly as you warned. Never has there been such a disaster as happened in Jerusalem. Every curse written against us in the Law of Moses has come true. Yet we have refused to seek mercy from the Lord our God by turning from our sins and recognizing his truth. Therefore, the Lord has brought upon us the disaster he prepared. The Lord our God was right to do all of these things, for we did not obey him. “O Lord our God, you brought lasting honor to your name by rescuing your people from Egypt in a great display of power. But we have sinned and are full of wickedness. In view of all your faithful mercies, Lord, please turn your furious anger away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. All the neighboring nations mock Jerusalem and your people because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors. “O our God, hear your servant’s prayer! Listen as I plead. For your own sake, Lord, smile again on your desolate sanctuary. “O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open your eyes and see our despair. See how your city—the city that bears your name—lies in ruins. We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy. “O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act! For your own sake, do not delay, O my God, for your people and your city bear your name.”
If God had already promised to release the nation after seventy years of captivity, why did Daniel have to pray?
Go back to Jeremiah 29:10 but this time let’s read all to way to verse 14
Jeremiah 29:10-14 NLT This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord . “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”
It says that they would pray after 70 years and in praying they would be seeking God.
When Daniel prayed he appealed to certain aspects of God’s character as the basis of his requests. Can you identify any of them?
- Great God who keeps His covenant
Daniel 9:4 NLT I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: “O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! You always fulfill your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands.
- Righteous
Daniel 9:7 NLT “Lord, you are in the right; but as you see, our faces are covered with shame. This is true of all of us, including the people of Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel, scattered near and far, wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you.
- Compassionate and forgiving
Daniel 9:9 NLT But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him.
- Faithful to His Word
Daniel 9:12-14 NLT You have kept your word and done to us and our rulers exactly as you warned. Never has there been such a disaster as happened in Jerusalem. Every curse written against us in the Law of Moses has come true. Yet we have refused to seek mercy from the Lord our God by turning from our sins and recognizing his truth. Therefore, the Lord has brought upon us the disaster he prepared. The Lord our God was right to do all of these things, for we did not obey him.
- Forgiving
Daniel 9:19 NLT “O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act! For your own sake, do not delay, O my God, for your people and your city bear your name.”
Which act did he refer to, and why do you think he chose this particular one?
Daniel 9:15 NLT “O Lord our God, you brought lasting honor to your name by rescuing your people from Egypt in a great display of power. But we have sinned and are full of wickedness.
What failures of the nation are identified as the cause for God's judgment?
- Sinned - verse 5,
- Rebelled - verse 8
- Disobedience - verse1 0
- Ignored God’s prophets - verse 10
Daniel consistently uses the plural pronoun we throughout the prayer. Why do you think Daniel could confess for the whole nation?
Because he knew, based on the fact that God had given him visions of what was to come and the ability to interpret dreams of the kings, that He was a prophet to the nation, therefore a leader.
Plus, as you remember from last week Gabriel had been told to explain the visions to him.
Daniel 8:16 NLT And I heard a human voice calling out from the Ulai River, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of his vision.”
Why does he include himself in the confession?
Because he was part of the nation. Just as we include ourselves as part of the US. In general what the US does we are a part of even if we don’t specifically do it like war when the military goes to war we say we go to war.
What specific insights about your prayer life can you glean from Daniel's prayer?
- Recognize God’s sovereignty
- Confess our sins
- Ask for forgiveness
- Pray God’s promises
Now let’s go to the message from God in response to Daniel’s prayer:
Daniel 9:20-27 NLT I went on praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people, pleading with the Lord my God for Jerusalem, his holy mountain. As I was praying, Gabriel, whom I had seen in the earlier vision, came swiftly to me at the time of the evening sacrifice. He explained to me, “Daniel, I have come here to give you insight and understanding. The moment you began praying, a command was given. And now I am here to tell you what it was, for you are very precious to God. Listen carefully so that you can understand the meaning of your vision. “A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One —comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, despite the perilous times. “After this period of sixty-two sets of seven, the Anointed One will be killed, appearing to have accomplished nothing, and a ruler will arise whose armies will destroy the city and the Temple. The end will come with a flood, and war and its miseries are decreed from that time to the very end. The ruler will make a treaty with the people for a period of one set of seven, but after half this time, he will put an end to the sacrifices and offerings. And as a climax to all his terrible deeds, he will set up a sacrilegious object that causes desecration, until the fate decreed for this defiler is finally poured out on him.”
Daniel 9:21-23 NLT As I was praying, Gabriel, whom I had seen in the earlier vision, came swiftly to me at the time of the evening sacrifice. He explained to me, “Daniel, I have come here to give you insight and understanding. The moment you began praying, a command was given. And now I am here to tell you what it was, for you are very precious to God. Listen carefully so that you can understand the meaning of your vision.
I think he’s talking about the vision back in chapter 8. Specifically the part of the vision with the goat with the 4 horns one of which really persecuted the Hebrews.
Daniel 8:8-9 NLT Then from one of the prominent horns came a small horn whose power grew very great. It extended toward the south and the east and toward the glorious land of Israel.
Remember I said that, most biblical scholars believe, this small powerful horn was Antiochus IV who reigned from 175 to 164 BC he was called Epiphanes ("Magnificent") by friends, Epimanes ("Madman") by enemies. A lot of people see what happened with him and the Jews as him being a type of Antichrist, not the Antichrist but a type. and his actions against Christ and his people in the end time. He came from the Syrian kingdom the Seleucids
1. Gabriel mentions six things that will happen for the people of Israel and the holy city of Jerusalem within seventy "sevens" (usually interpreted as 490 years)
Daniel 9:24 NLT “A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
(1) To finish the transgression. To complete the kind of transgressions that Daniel had been confessing for his people. They were to come to an end. We know however that has not happened yet.
(2) To make an end of sins. The Hebrew means, to seal up, to put an end to.
If you look at
Revelation 20:1-3 NLT Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the bottomless pit and a heavy chain in his hand. He seized the dragon—that old serpent, who is the devil, Satan—and bound him in chains for a thousand years. The angel threw him into the bottomless pit, which he then shut and locked so Satan could not deceive the nations anymore until the thousand years were finished. Afterward he must be released for a little while.
This is the sealing of Satan's prison to restrain him for a while. That’s what the Hebrew word translated to seal up, to put an end to sin means. This has not happened yet.
(3) To make reconciliation for iniquity That happened for us the believers on Calvary.
The first three items of accomplishment are negative. The remaining three are positive:
(4) To bring in everlasting righteousness. For the believer again through the Cross.
2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
Jeremiah 31:33-34 NLT “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord . “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord .’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord . “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”
(5) To seal up the vision and prophecy The word in Hebrew is actually prophet not prophecy. When the people stop sinning, there won’t be the need for prophets or prophecy with it’s words of discipline.
Remember in our study on spiritual gifts a characteristic of a person with this gift was the focus is on correcting behavior and applying biblical truth to culturally sensitive issues. These people identify and try to correct deception and sin. They often seem blunt and opinionated. Generally they can cause one to be uncomfortable.
The prophets in the old testament talked about what was going to happen if the nation of Israel and its leaders did not stop it’s disobedience and sin.
(6) To anoint the most Holy (most holy place, asv marg.). This creates some problems in interpretation because it appears to be talking about the Holy of Holies. The place in the temple, but it appears to conflict with what it says in
Hebrews 7:27 NLT Unlike those other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins first and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all when he offered himself as the sacrifice for the people’s sins.
So we will just have to wait to see what the fulfillment of this part of the prophecy means. I’m pretty sure to Daniel it meant the Holy of Holies because that is all that he knew at the time.
These six things were answers to Daniel’s prayer. Daniel was praying for his people. They had done wrong things and God had punished them and was going to restore them to their land and telling Daniel what would be going on in the future for his people.