Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
7To You, Adonai, [belongs] the righteousness and to us the shame of the faces as [it is] this day to the men of Judah and ones dwelling [in] Jerusalem and the all of Israel, the ones near and the ones far in the all of the lands which You cast them out there in their unfaithfulness which they were unfaithful to You. 8LORD, to us [belongs] the shame of faces, to our kings, to our rulers, and to our fathers which we have sinned to You. 9To Adonai, our God [belong] mercies and forgivings because we have rebelled in Him, 10and we have not listened/obeyed to the voice of the LORD our God to walk in His commands which He gave to our faces in the hand of His servants the prophets, 11and the all of Israel has overstepped Your law and turned aside, not hearing/obeying in Your voice…”
First a couple observations: This chapter really reveals to us Daniel’s heart, or, shall I say, the reasons why he was who he was. Back to my earlier thoughts on Daniel’s theology, I think it worth noting that our Daniel was who he was precisely because of what he believed. If we would admire his life and desire to be like him, then we need to think deeply on what he believed, how he saw life, how he saw God. I will maintain again that it is his faith that allowed him to rise above his circumstances and even his own sinfulness to actually become perhaps one of the most admirable characters in our Bible. I’ll never cease to wonder how a young man could be drug halfway around the world, dropped into the very epicenter of evil, forced to study and live an occupation that was itself repulsive to him, and yet to rise above it all and be a hero of faith. His life shouts down through the centuries, “I did it. You can too!”
My other thought is to observe his amazing selflessness. Remember, at this point, Daniel has been in Babylon something close to 70 years. If he was 15 when he was drug there, that makes him somewhere around 85 years old even as he is praying this prayer. So if, in fact, the Seventy Years should end, what does that mean for him? His life is essentially over and he knows it. I would guess at 85, it is even unlikely that he could travel back to Jerusalem. It’s like 1,500 miles – a rough trip for a young person, perhaps impossible for someone of his age. Even if he did survive the trip, there is nothing to see there. Nebuchadnezzar totally destroyed the temple and the city. Something like 50 years later, the devastation of the city still brings Nehemiah to tears. My point is that, at his age, none of this will really be of any benefit to him personally.
I once sat in a meeting and listened as an elderly man described the efforts he was making to convince the State they needed to run a new interstate through his area. Not only did he want to see the new interstate, he was actively lobbying to make sure it went right through his county, so they would all benefit from the economic opportunities it would afford. This man had to be on the order of 85 years old himself. What struck me was that, even if such an interstate was approved that very day, it could easily take twenty years to actually get it built. And even if that time could be reduced, how long would it be before those economic opportunities actually turned into real improvements in that county? At 85 years old, he could not possibly live long enough to see those improvements, much less enjoy any personal benefits. I was smitten with the man’s selflessness and was reminded of that old saying, “Civilizations are built as old men plant trees under which they’ll never sit.” Daniel was that kind of man. He’d spent his life looking out for others’ welfare and kept it up right into his last years, when none of it offered to him any advantages at all!
Looking at the passage itself, it is, of course, impressive how clearly Daniel confesses Israel’s sin while in no way impugning the Lord’s righteousness. We hear almost constantly people blaming God for their troubles. Pain and loss make people question God’s goodness: “If He’s a good God, how could He …?” As I noted before, the Jewish people themselves very commonly use their troubles in this world as an excuse to reject faith at all. Daniel is none of the above. God is good. The problem is our sin. Daniel understood it cannot be otherwise. God is absolutely perfect in every way. He is perfect in wisdom, perfect in goodness, perfect in justice, in anger, in love, in mercy, and perfect in the working of all those attributes together. And remember, when sin is no longer an issue, what does He give us? Heaven. He would give you and me and the Jewish people heaven today except that we are still Adam’s sons and daughters. As the song says, “Adam’s image now efface, stamp Thine image in its place.” When our sin is no longer an issue, the God of the Universe gives us eternal joy and happiness. The reason we suffer now is precisely because there is something wrong with us … not God!
Then think more deeply about it all. What do we read in this passage? We read an awful catalog of exactly who we are. Daniel musters almost every Hebrew word there was for sin: we’ve sinned, we’ve done wrong, we’ve been wicked, we’ve rebelled, we have not listened to Your prophets, we’ve turned away, we’re covered with shame… Think about this remembering, “We are not ignorant of Satan’s devices.” Faced with the horrors of who we are and who we’ve been, Satan would lead you to one of two responses. He would either have you deny (or ignore) it all and sear your conscience, or plunge you into hopeless despair. In a world without God, what other option could you possibly have?
How many people have you known who live into old, old age and yet still absolutely cannot ever admit their problems have been their own sins? I’ve been literally shocked to listen to people who, for instance, have been married and divorced several times, and yet the problem was always the spouse. In fact that is so common, it’s actually a relief to hear someone whose been through those things and yet says, “I don’t blame them. I could have done so much better myself.” I suppose, in a sense, that is the easiest way to deal with my failures: “The woman You gave me, she…” “The serpent, he…” Blameshift. Deny. Pretend. Evade.
But then there are those who see those failures and it leads them only to despair. At the far extreme, a realization of our failures leads people to seriously contemplate or even commit suicide. “I can’t live with myself…” Short of that, we can go around expressing our despair as anger or we could be manic depressives. Those are the two options Satan would offer you: Denial or despair.
Daniel has another idea: “The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving.” I like that what he says in Hebrew actually is something like, “To the Lord our God [belong] mercies and forgivings.” Also, the word for mercies is basically the same word for a mother’s womb. In their ancient “picture” mentality, they saw God’s mercy like the intense love and care of a mother for the baby in her womb. Daniel doesn’t deny and he doesn’t despair. He turns to the God of “mercies and forgivings” – the God who loves us like that mother her baby and who offers to us the only answer for our sinfulness – His forgiveness!
Why doesn’t Daniel have to deny or despair? Because he has hope. What the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ provides for us fallen, broken, suffering sinners is hope. The Son of God was given the name “Jesus” why? “For He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). John 3:17 tells us, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him should be saved.” Jesus calls to each of us, “Come, come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest…” (Matt. 11:28).
Here is, to me, what this comes down to in everyday life: Because of Jesus’ love, you and I are actually free to live above the “deny or despair” of our failures. Because we are assured of the Lord’s intense love and because we can be assured of His forgiveness, we are free to totally own all those failures. We look up to the Lord and realize He knows all about them anyway; yet still He loves us and forgives us in Jesus. Then, not only does He forgive us but, in a thousand different ways, He assures us that He is a Redeemer. Remember “He shall save His people from their sins…” He’s not only willing to forgive us – He’s also on a personal mission to fix us! No need to deny. NO need to despair.
Once John MacArthur was under attack and being falsely accused of all sorts of “sins.” Someone asked him if that bothered him. He just smiled and said, “No. They just picked the wrong sins!” Do you hear the freedom? He had no fear of being “accused?” Why? Because he already acknowledged he was a sinner with plenty to be accused of! In this particular case, the only problem was that his accusers just picked the wrong sins! That is precisely the freedom available to us believers. We’re not stuck in “deny or despair.” We can stand up straight, look the world in the face, own our faults and failures, then go on with life in the glorious hope that our God not only knows every bit of it, but also in Jesus forgives us, and is even now busy about the task of making us better! “He who begun a good work in us will continue it until the Day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
A good passage to insert here is I Cor. 4:3.4: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” Hear Paul expressing the same freedom Daniel enjoyed: “It is the Lord who judges me.” The wonderful thing about what both Daniel and Paul are doing is they’re dealing completely in truth. Truth is a very simple thing. It either is or it isn’t. What the Lord knows about us is the truth. Like John MacArthur’s case, people’s accusations may or may not be true at all. However, even our own self-evaluations are clouded. “Hard to see the dark side is.” “The pride of your heart deceives you.” “The heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it? It is the Lord who searches the heart.” “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Know my anxious thoughts and cares, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
The truth is we are all sinners. The truth is we have failed in many ways. But, like Daniel, a believer isn’t stuck in “Deny or Despair.” Like Daniel, we can own the very depths of our sin, be completely forthright, accept the consequences we’ve brought on ourselves, and then plunge ahead swimming in the wonderful love and freedom of our God’s “mercies and forgivings!”
Lead on, O King eternal!
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