Daniel 9:11-14 “This Business of Doing Wrong”

 Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹¹and the all of Israel has overstepped Your law and turned aside, not hearing/obeying in Your voice, and the curse has poured out on us and the oath which [is] written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, because we have sinned to Him. ¹²And He has confirmed His words which He spoke (intensely) against us and upon our judges who judged us and to bring on us a great evil which has not been done under the all of the heavens like it has been done in Jerusalem. ¹³Just as [it is] being written in the Law of Moses, the all of the evil in this has come on us and we have not entreated the face of the LORD our God to turn from our iniquities and to give attention in Your truth, ¹⁴The LORD watched on the evil and He brought on us because the LORD our God [is] righteous on the all of His doings which He does and we have not listened/obeyed to His voice.

I would like to suggest these verses in Daniel are a most appropriate study in our world today. Theologians call it “Hamartiology,” which means properly our “theology of sin.” What it all comes down to is this whole business of doing wrong. I’m suggesting this is an appropriate study precisely because I fear this is today an all but forgotten subject, even amongst professing Christians and the Church.

As we see the rapid devolvement of our nation, Christians in America like to quote II Chron. 7:14, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The emphasis then becomes the need to “humble ourselves and pray and seek His face.” Those are good things, but notice there is another condition given: “and turn from their wicked ways.” Whose “wicked ways?” Who is the subject of this passage? “My people.” Us. Professing Christians. The Church. And whose sins need to be forgiven? Ours. Us professing Christians’. The Church’s.

Note again that Daniel lives in none other than Babylon itself. Babel. The very epicenter of evil in our world. The drunken harlot of Revelation 18 and 19. Yet whose sins need to be forgiven? Whose sins are the focus of Daniel’s prayer? His own and his people’s.  Just as in Daniel’s case, the healing of our land doesn’t mean somehow getting all these bad people around us to stop their abortions and all our other national sins. It isn’t about them, it is about us.

And if we would get serious about our sins, where would we start? May I suggest one of the most prevalent and unaddressed sins in the Church itself today is sexual sin? I suspect for the men of the church today that starts with pornography. It is interesting to note in Prov. 6:26, “By means of a harlot, a man is turned into a loaf of bread…” Men a bunch of loaves of bread? I’m sorry, but what more fitting epitaph could we offer for the men of the Church today? Men are supposed to be rocks. They’re supposed to lead the Church, their families, and even our nation in a manly resolve to be moral, to be people of determined integrity, to show everyone else what it means to stand for something.

What does it do to a man when he is “secretly” clicking around on his phone or computer to take in pornography? As the verse says, it turns him into a “loaf of bread.” And why? I believe it is because the most driving passion in any man’s heart is sexual desire. What God calls us men to do is to conquer that passion in our hearts, in the privacy of our hearts and in the control of our eyes. Jesus Himself said, “If any man looks on a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). Proverbs would tell us, “Drink water from your own cistern…Rejoice with the wife of your youth…may her breasts satisfy you always, may you always be captivated (literally ‘intoxicated’) with her love (literally ‘lovings’)…For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord” (5:15-21). God calls us men to conquer the most driving passion in our hearts. When, and to the extent we do, we become men of steeled resolve. We become rocks. All of the other matters of morality – honesty, dependability, control of our finances, etc. – become lesser challenges because we’ve already conquered the biggest monster in our hearts.

If I may stay on this sad subject just a little longer, I know of a Christian counselor who told me once, when he is doing pre-marriage counseling with any young couple, his first assumption is that they are already having sex. Christian couples. Young people who sit in the pews and sing, “Oh How I Love Jesus.” I’m repeating the man’s sad observation because I strongly suspect he’s right.

What do we all think God should think of this? These are not “debatable” issues of what we eat and drink and what we do. This is a direct violation of literally one of the Ten Commandments. It is bald-faced, willful, deliberate sin. And I’m suggesting God’s Church is full of it. Not only is the Church full of it – can I suggest it basically goes completely unaddressed? If we Christians really want the Lord to “heal our land,” may I suggest it will begin with our serious repentance of exactly sexual sin?

Once again, Daniel would teach us it isn’t about denial or despair. Following His example, it is about clearly acknowledging our sins and then the repenting of them as people of great hope. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). To our God belong “mercies and forgivings.” Obviously, our sin problems go far beyond the matter of sexual sin, but I would call our attention to this one in particular as I believe, especially for us men, it is one of the most prevalent and damaging and unaddressed sins of our generation. If we would seriously address “this whole business of doing wrong,” let us be specific. Let us go for the jugular, so to speak, then work our way down from there.

Daniel wasn’t afraid to address this whole business of doing wrong. Let us be like him!