If I had to pick one character, from all of
Scripture, not including Jesus, who has been
presented in the best possible light, a character
who presents a shining example of the
Chrisitan heart and life, my choice would take
us to the Old Testament, to the rivers of
Babylon and the palace of Nebuchadnezzar,
where we find the wise prophet Daniel
kneeling in prayer.
I choose Daniel not because he never sinned,
for all have sinned and fall short of God’s
glory. I pick him because of the example that
the Holy Spirit makes of him. If you read the
book of Daniel, especially chapters 1 through
6, you will see that Daniel is the prophet that
leaned on his God in many ways. For
example, when fasting for the king’s feast by
eating only vegetables, God blessed Daniel
with a bill of health greater than the pagan
guests at the festival, and thus giving glory to
God. Later on from them, Daniel would be
shown to be the prophet who prayed to God
that Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams may be
interpreted correctly, lest he be executed for
misinterpretation. God blessed Daniel, and
through his interpretation gave glory to God
and His Kingdom. Daniel held to the truth,
never wavering in his stern witness to the
wicked Belshazzar. And in old age, Daniel
kept praying to His God, despite Darius’
satraps attempts to have him killed by lions.
The Lord blessed Daniel by sending angels to
close the mouths of the lions.
Yes, Daniel provides and excellent example to
us Christians, and in our text for today, we see
his best demonstration: a prayer of penitent
leaning on His Lord. At this point in the book
of Daniel, the prophet was now advanced in
years, and with Babylon gone, he now served
under the Medes and Persians. Daniel saw
power changes time after time, and though he
knew that the Lord, the only power that
endures forever, would soon bring Israel back
to Canaan, he wondered how much longer,
perhaps tempted by impatience and weariness.
In Daniel 9:2, we see the prophet consult the
letter of his contemporary, Jeremiah. Jeremiah
prophesied a 70-year exile for Israel, and they
were coming up on the 70th year of exile. One
could imagine an attitude of excitement, or an
attitude of anxiety coming from Daniel. In the
spirit of the latter, Daniel perhaps thought that
this 70-year exile had been extended due to
further sinfulness on the part of the Israelites.
And so, what does Daniel do? Humble and
contrite, he comes to the Lord in prayer to ask
for His ever-present mercy.
I pick Daniel as our Christian example this
morning because of the witness of his heart
demonstrated by his prayer. The Christian
heart of Daniel, as well as ours, is on the one
hand crushed by knowledge of its sinfulness,
and on the other hand confident that the Lord,
with mercy and grace given through the
Messiah Jesus Christ, will save, comfort, and
teach us day after day. Let us now ask the
Lord in prayer for His blessing before we
study further the witness of His
prophet…(Lord, sanctify us…)
In studying the prophet’s attitude and his
prayer, we come first to a most foundational
feature of the Christian heart: the heart is
crushed. In his collective “we,
” Daniel does
speak for Israel as well as himself. He says,
first,
“we have sinned.” Israel has missed
God’s mark of perfection. In God’s game of
holy archery, you are only allowed to hit
bullseyes, and Israel did not, in fact they shot
the arrow away from the target, so far away
that its practically in the audience. Daniel
intensifies this sin by saying,
“we have done
wickedly.” In other words, “Lord, this is no
small thing. We are awful people!”
And God has every right to be angry with
Jerusalem, with Israel. They transgressed his
law in all the ways possible. And, as is
confessed in the confession of our Lutheran
liturgy, the Israelites justly deserved God’s
temporal and eternal punishment. In fact, we
already saw His temporal punishment applied
to them. Because of the sins of Israel’s
generations, from their grandfather’s
wickedness—loathing God and His heavenly
bread in the wilderness, adopting Canaanite
gods in Judges, asking for a king against
God’s rule while Samuel was prophet,
worshiping in vain rather than in the way God
described—all of this down to the current
wickedness of Daniel’s generation, Israel was
now desolate. Their sanctuary was in ruins.
And it’s not like they weren’t warned. “Not
my people,
” Isaiah named his son, witnessing
against Israel. The pots smashed to pieces by
the potter as Jeremiah proclaimed. Ezekiel’s
wife died and he did not shed a tear, all to
demonstrate how the Lord would shed no
tears when Israel was punished. Israel did not
keep its end of the deal, and they sat in dust
and ashes, amidst the pagans of Babylon, with
all left behind.
Oh, the bloodshed that took place when Israel
was taken captive! And this was just their
temporal punishment. This comes nowhere
close to their eternal punishment. How could
they possibly escape that? Having this
immutable justice enacted upon them, what
else can Daniel do then come to the Lord in a
humble begging. Included in this humble
prayer, Daniel admits the most important
detail about his crushed heart, a detail that
would be detrimental if missed and we would
do well to heed ourselves, that he brings his
supplications before the Lord not because of
our righteous deeds. No righteous deed
performed by Daniel, or any Israelite could
sway the Almighty to spare them and listen to
them. They are filthy rags before God, and
besides, what rights does a guilty prisoner
have before a King of Justice? There is no
way to earn God’s mercy, grace, and favor.
Now, what about you and I? Is your heart
crushed after hearing this? It is true that we
are not the Israelites of old, but if great King
David, humble Moses, and noble Daniel are
sinners as the Scriptures expos them to be,
how much the same or more are you exposed
by the Scriptures to be wretched sinners. We
have sinned, missed God’s mark. All His ten
commandments, like a panel row of ten
bullseyes in an archery range, have no arrow
in them. Comparing our heart to God’s law,
we see no arrows where they should be,
namely the completed perfect performance in
trusting God, using His name rightly, making
use of His Word, honoring authority, taking
care of our neighbor, remaining chaste and
pure, taking care of our neighbor’s property,
honoring their name, and staying content. No,
the arrows are not in the bullseyes, but they
are somehow perpendicular from the firing
range, shot into the crowd of spectators. The
wild arrow of putting things over God going
this way, the cursing and taking God’s name
going that way, the disregard for God’s Word
going straight up not knowing when that will
bite you later, the disrespect for authority shot
arrow after arrow after arrow at archery
security guards in most malicious fashion,
hurting your neighbor—we figured out how to
fire three arrows at a time here, lustful
thoughts like poisonous darts are flying,
stealing through dishonesty, the bloodied
stump of our neighbor’s good name at this
point, and all those flaming arrows of coveting
all around the audience. I’d say we’ve done
more than sin, we ‘ve done wickedly.
So, has God crushed you with this
knowledge? Yes. And what did it take to do
that? Hopefully just the preaching of the
simple Word, but it may have taken a
“desolate Jerusalem and temple” for you, or it
took a sneer of reproach against you from the
unbelievers. What I speak of here is the
consequences that follow sin: You take God’s
name and Word less seriously the less you use
and the more you profane, you bite the hand
the feeds you and find that the authorities,
surprise, are even more annoying with you.
You hurt your neighbor, and now you have a
stressful relationship with them. You lust and
your marriage becomes harder and are even
possibly entranced into addiction, you steal
and slander leading to your own name and
possessions being treated as mud. You are
discontented and are therefore no longer
happy, stuck in a Babylon of heart and mind.
And so, let’s turn to our Lord in humble
prayer, not because we have done anything to
deserve His listening ear. Clearly, we’ve done
enough to deserve the opposite of fatherly
love. No, we bring no righteousness of our
own, yet our hearts are still confident.
Though the heart is crushed by the weight of
sin, the next feature is actually more important
than the first, for if it weren’t for this feature,
all we’d have is a crushed heart left in nothing
but despair. The feature of which I speak is a
confident heart. A heart of trust, of faith, in
the Lord of grace and mercy. Daniel had this
feature most evidently, and his prayer displays
that. His heart and prayer are as confident and
as powerful as what they rely upon: the
gracious and merciful Lord.
Look at how Daniel addresses the Lord.
Despite all the wickedness, he still calls Him
the Lord our God. He is the God that brought
Israel out of Egypt, using plague upon plague
and trapping Pharoah in his watery grave. He
brought Israel out of bondage into liberty. He
by this and His many righteous acts—turning
Balaam’s curses, knocking down Jerico,
sending a man who destroyed a palace to
crush thousands of Philistines; and also
sending prophets like Nathan, Elijah, and
Elisha to proclaim the coming Messiah—by
these things the Lord has made a name for
Himself as it is this day. This is the Lord God
of power and grace. He has guided His people
for His purpose of bringing His ultimate
mercy: His Son by which any man may know
the Father through His teaching, work, and
rule.
This is Daniel’s God and He appeals to His
righteousness to turn away His anger and fury,
to hear and see their desolations. Daniel says
that the people of Israel are a disgrace, and for
God’s name’s sake, for the sake of everything
there is to know about the Almighty, He
should turn away His anger and desolation. It
reminds of Moses pleading for the wilderness
Israelites, saying, “what will Egypt think if
you wipe them out?” This was God’s nation of
messengers and representatives. How would
the nations benefit if Israel was full of
reproach and desolate. It’s as if Daniel prayed,
“hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,
thy will be done.” Lord, that your name, your
will and gracious gospel may be spread
abroad, please turn our favor around toward us
again.
Daniel does all this appealing to the Lord’s
righteousness and glory, the greatest feature of
which our text ends with: the Lord’s mercies.
Daniel asks all these things knowing that it’s
not the product of his crushed heart that turns
God, but he is confident that his asking will be
blessed because of the Lord’ mercies. Israel
had done absolutely nothing, and the Lord
blessed them. He showed them mercy, sparing
them from what they deserve. He showed
them grace, blessing them with what they
don’t deserve. And He would do this in the
greatest way by sending the Messiah, Jesus
Christ, as their salvation.
Now Daniel’s confidence is the same as yours.
Though your heart be crushed by the weight
of your sin, turn to God in confidence to hear
the same blessings. We claim Him by faith as
the Lord our God, our Redeemer and Creator.
As He brought Israel out of Egypt, so He has
brought His church from age to age, defending
them against all evils of flesh, world, and
devil. You are a part of His Church, and He
will deliver you from this Egypt that is life,
from this Babylon of pain, to halls of heaven.
He has done many righteous acts, so that His
name is still proclaimed. The birth, death, and
resurrection of His Son serve as the renown of
His name, and His outpouring of the Spirit
through the Gospel at Pentecost still ripples
throughout the world. This is your God. This
is your confidence.
Therefore, oh humble ones with crushed
hearts, lay hold of your confidence. Appeal to
the Lord our righteousness as Daniel did, that
He may turn His anger and wrath away from
you, making you no longer desolate. Ask Him
to shine His countenance of grace upon you,
giving you every manner of blessing. Appeal
to this Lord our righteousness in the person of
Jesus Christ. He is the mediator who has
turned away God’s anger and wrath forever.
He went to the tree of calvary to give your
heart the greatest confidence. He shed His
blood to take away your sin, all those sins I hit
on earlier, filling the bullseyes of God’s Law
for you. He is your righteousness lived for
you, and He has purchased and won you from
your servitude to the broken Babylon of
Satan’s clutches. This is your greatest
confidence, therefore lean on it
And finally, in contrition, repentance, and
faith in Christ, bring all your prayers to God
not because of what you do, but because of
His mercies shown toward you. Through His
Son Jesus Christ He has spared you of
temporal and eternal punishment. And if He
freely gave up His Son to save you from hell
and death, how will He not also freely give
you all things? This God of mercy and grace
is where your Christian heart leans in
confidence. Though your heart be crushed day
after day by the sins it commits, lean in
confidence on your God who has provided
your forgiveness in Christ. Come to his word
and sacraments to know that you have Christ’s
forgiveness given to you. And come to him
with a heart filled with prayer knowing that
He in His mercy will answer as you so have
requested, for He has claimed you as His own,
washed you in grace, restored your crushed
heart, giving you the greatest confidence a
heart can have: not your own deed, but the
mercies of our Lord. Amen.