Daniel 9:11-14 “More on 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 sadly think this is a passage where we’d do well to just park and ponder for a good long while. As I said before, I’m afraid this subject of sin is all but unaddressed today. Personally, I can’t change the world, but I can try to stand myself openly before the Lord and let Him teach me what He will. Jesus told the Laodiceans, “I counsel you to buy from Me white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see” (Rev. 3:18). Whether anyone else does or not, you and I can open our Bibles, sit before the Lord and say to Him, “Yes, Lord, give me Your white clothes and salve for my eyes. I do want to see!”

Let me begin with the Lord Himself. What would Daniel and his prayer teach us? I believe what he teaches us is monumental! What do I mean? What is the message of this whole book of Daniel? Is it not, “The Most High rules in the nations of men”? That truth has been (or should have been) for us a great source of hope as we go on living in the same world of constant turmoil and threats, just like Daniel. However, let us be reminded, when it comes to this subject of sin, this truth is a two-edged sword. The Lord rules. As we would take shelter under the blood of Jesus, that is an enormously comforting truth. However, if we would spit in His face, we’ll soon find out there is an entirely different understanding of that truth! In Jesus, we rejoice in the truth that He will do for us “immeasurably more than we could ask or think,” but let all the world know that when we would offend the Most High, He is just as able to reign down on us curses and miseries “immeasurably more than we could ask or think!” He is no one to be trifled with. As we’re told in Hebrews, “Our God is a consuming fire!”

What are we dealing with here? We’re dealing with the fact that our God is infinitely just. He is infinitely loving and merciful and forgiving, but let us be reminded He is also infinitely just as well and that at all times and in all ways, our God expresses all of His infinite attributes in perfect, infinite balance. What is going on in the passage before us? The Lord had entered into a covenant with the people of Israel. They promised to obey Him (“All the Lord commands us, we will do”) and He laid out very clearly for them the promise of His blessings if they would obey and the horrific threat of His cursings if they did not. Read for yourself Deuteronomy 28.

Daniel read Deuteronomy 28 and what is he saying in his prayer? “We, the people of Israel have utterly violated our covenant with You and You, Lord, have brought on us exactly the cursings You said You would.” Can anyone else see that is perfect justice? The Most High rules. He said He would…and He did. Daniel says, “Under the whole heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done in Jerusalem,” and what does he say next? “Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us…for the Lord our God is righteous in everything He does,,,” (vv.12-14).

Our God is not like the indulgent parent who says to their child, “You stop that or we’re going home!” then says, “I told you to stop that! You stop that or no video games tonight! If you stop that, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone! … and on and on and on. No. The Most High rules. He does what He said He would do. In His world, to do right is to be blessed, to do wrong is to suffer consequences.

Of course, I can insert here that this is, in itself, the wonder of who Jesus is. What do we learn in Romans 3:25,26? “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – He did it to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” God’s infinite justice means that, since Jesus Himself has already been punished for our sins, if we will accept His offering, then the Lord will forgive us. In a sense, He must. He is just. As He warns us, “The wages of sin is death,” but that only requires one death. Jesus’ death can be that one death, that one payment required to satisfy God’s infinite justice – and it is, if we by faith accept it.

The world stands warned. Outside of Jesus, God’s infinite perfect justice guarantees that sin will be punished – infinitely punished. It’s called hell, a place where “their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.” However, for those of us who would take shelter under His blood, though we move into the glorious privilege of becoming the children of God, we need to recognize that He remains the same. His perfection is now expressed as our Father, rather than the Judge, but understand, He is still our Father. As Israel found out, He is no indulgent parent. He loves His children too much to let us go on sinning and self-destructing. If anything, in this world, we may find His chastening hand more severe on us than He seems to be on the world around us! And why? Because He loves us justly.

Even as Daniel observes, “Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem,” so I would sadly suggest has been pretty much the entire history of the Jewish people. Right down to the horrors of the Holocaust, their sufferings in this world have been horrific. However, what would that teach us? It ought to teach the world that God loves His people too much to just let them sin. If only the Jewish people would pray like Daniel prays, acknowledge that it is their sins which have brought on them those horrible consequences, and turn to the Lord in personal and national repentance, the same Lord would pour out all the blessings He promised in that very chapter – Deuteronomy 28.

He is just. He is infinitely just. “The Most High rules in the nations of men.” He is no one to be trifled with. In Jesus, let us “come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need.” May we come as “dearly loved children” to crawl into the lap of our wonderful Father, but let us come thanking Him that He loves us too much to let us just go on sinning! Let us tell Him, “Thy rod and Thy staff (both!), they comfort me!” May we happily accept His admonition, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons…our fathers disciplined us as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness” (Heb. 12:7-10).

Daniel understood and it made him who he was. Let you and I join him in worshiping the God of perfect, infinite justice, and may we too be people of faith, just like Daniel.

 

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!

 

Daniel 9:7-11 “Deny or Despair?”

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!

 

Daniel 9:5,6 “Daniel’s Prayer”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁵we have sinned and we have perverted [our way] and we have acted wickedly and we have rebelled and [we have] turned away from Your commands and from Your judgments, ⁶and we have not listened to Your servants the prophets who spoke in Your name to our kings, our leaders, and our fathers and to the all of the people of the land.”

In vv.3,4, Daniel addressed the Lord Himself, acknowledging His greatness. Now in vv.5,6, we begin to hear what is on his heart. He has discovered studying his scroll of Jeremiah that Israel’s captivity was only to last 70 years and, doing the math, he realizes that time is at hand. Anyone else might have just concluded, “Oh, good! It’s about over,” and gone on with their day. However, our Daniel knows that passage in Jeremiah 29 goes on to say, “‘Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity’” (Jer. 29:12-14).

Daniel would also know, even the thought of that verse was based on Solomon’s prayer in I Kings 8, where he said, “If Your people Israel are defeated by their enemies because they have sinned against You, and if they turn to You and acknowledge Your name and pray to You here in this Temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people Israel and return them to this land You gave their ancestors” (vv.33,34). In that prayer Solomon later gets even more specific and says, “When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and give them over to their enemies, who take them captive to their own lands, and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with You and say, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly’; and if they turn back to You with all their heart in the land of their enemies, forgive Your people, and cause their captors to show them mercy” (vv.46-51).

Notice Solomon prayed, [if they say] “We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly…” – those are exactly the words Daniel uses in v.5 and in the same order. Our friend Daniel knows his Bible! He is very deliberately praying the very prayer that Solomon described in his prayer some 400 years earlier. He isn’t just arbitrarily speaking out of the miseries of their captivity. He knows his Scriptures. He knows His God. And he is conforming even the words of his prayer to the very words God spoke through Solomon to address this very situation.

Fortunately for us, our God is very gracious and will hear whatever squeaks and moans His children cry in His arms, but how much better when (like Daniel) we’ve spent the time studying our Bibles so that we know His heart and speak to Him in the very words His servants have spoken before to us? One of Daniel’s confessions in v.6 was that “We have not listened to Your servants the prophets…” Obviously, Daniel was doing all he could to make sure that wasn’t true of he himself. He has listened and listened well, and because he did, he is able at this time to pray exactly the prayer the Lord wished to hear to bring to an end the Babylonian captivity.

Forgive me my lathering over our friend Daniel, but I find it enormously encouraging to see him doing exactly what so many of us today are trying to do – to be sincere students of the Word and then to order our lives accordingly. Once again, what a fine example our Daniel is! Even in the privacy of his own devotions, we find him exactly the man he should have been! Lord, help us all to be like him!

And what of his prayer? What do we learn? The very first thing I’d like to note is how the entire thing is prayed in the 1^st person plural – “we.” This is something frankly foreign to us Americans. We are probably the most “individual” people in the history of the world. As I read Daniel saying, “We have sinned… we have not listened to Your prophets…,” it makes me want to say, “No! Not you, Daniel!” Yes, the people of Israel have been very wicked, but ever since we first met our Daniel, he has shown us nothing but an exemplary godliness. To me, he should be praying “they!” I know the answer in part is that, of course, Daniel is a sinner and could no doubt recount to us various ways he knows in his own heart that he himself has “sinned, and done wrong, and acted wickedly,” but still, it’s hard for me to lump him in with the immoral, idol-worshipping, child-sacrificing, God-ignoring people of Israel.

Clearly, he doesn’t have my problem! I’m suggesting part of that is because he naturally sees himself as only one small part of his nation as a whole. Their world is his world. Their sins are his sins. He is part of it. If we would think about it, his perception of reality goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam fell, who did he take with him? Us! When Jesus died, who did He die for? John states emphatically that He died, “not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world” (I John 2:2). I would suggest it would do us Americans good to step back from our “rugged individuality” and think more sometimes how we are members of the entire human race, we are members of our nation, we are members of our family, we are members of each other. As the Englishman John Donne said (ca. 1623), “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” His point was exactly what Daniel is saying, that each of us is an integral part of the whole, so that the loss of any part is actually a loss to each one of us individually – which then leads to observation that we are all involved one way or another in what we are all doing.

In my American heart, I don’t like this idea. I want to insist that I’ll own my own sins but no one else’s. What I’m suggesting is that Daniel is a whole lot wiser than me (us) and we’d all do well to think more of how much we are each a part of a whole. That would probably go a long way towards humbling us and stirring more of a sense of gratitude and concern for those around us.

Then notice Daniel’s words. He seems to catalog almost every known Hebrew word for sin! “We have sinned,” is the most general Hebrew word for sin and has a meaning something like “missing the mark” or “missing the way.” “We have done wrong” is actually a word meaning “to twist.” Probably the closest English word today is “to pervert,” although that word itself has taken on such a sexual connotation, we risk missing the meaning if we simply call ourselves perverts. However, if you let the term extend out to all the ways we’ve “twisted” our standards of right and wrong, that is exactly what we are. Then he says “We have acted wickedly.” The word is the opposite of “righteousness.” It is a word where our behaviors are compared to God’s holy standard. In that sense, of course, we all fail miserably.

He then says, “We have rebelled.” It means exactly that. The Lord is our Master and we have defied His rule over us. “We have turned aside from Your commands and from Your judgments.” Elsewhere, the Lord says to us, “Here is the way; walk ye in it,” but our hearts get drawn aside by all of this world’s promises of pleasures, possessions, and applause.

Finally, Daniel says, “We have not listened to Your servants the prophets who spoke in Your name.” You and I live today in a world that utterly denies there is a God and then that He has spoken. They would leave us believing that the people of God were either deluded fools or else bald-faced liars, since nothing they said was true. As we noted above, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This world hasn’t even made it to “the beginning!” How well do you think the team will do that doesn’t even show up for the game?? To “not listen” to the Lord’s prophets is, in fact, to cut one’s self off from reality. God’s prophets were not deluded. Living in a world ignoring them is in fact a delusion!

If we would not be like the people of Daniel’s day, then you and I first of all need to give “the more earnest heed” to what God’s prophets have said, and we will find that most clearly and most assuredly in the pages of our Bibles. We also today still have our pastors and teachers and we should sit through every service very deliberately listening to what they say. In their case, we like the Bereans, need to ourselves “search the Scriptures” and “see whether these things be so.” I don’t want to devolve into a whole discussion of the state of Bible teaching today and what we do about it. What is important to you and me is to answer the question, “Are you listening?”

What we need to admire in Daniel today is that, for one thing, the very reason he’s praying this prayer is because he’s been doing exactly that. He’s been “listening.” He’s had his Bible open. And that said, he is able to give a very thorough and frank evaluation of exactly where things stand. “We have sinned.” The reason why the people are in Babylon to begin with is not that somehow the Lord has failed. Daniel will go on to make that very clear. The fault lies entirely with us sinners. God is good. He is perfectly wise, perfectly just, perfectly kind, and it is utterly impossible that He has in any way “done wrong.” No, we’re the ones who’ve done wrong. We deserve the troubles and trials and pains we suffer.

One of the common themes I’ve heard all my life is Jewish people challenging God for all they’ve suffered in this world. They see all of that as a reason to in fact condemn Him and renounce any sense of faith. I’ve always marveled that none of them reads Deuteronomy 28. What that should tell them is that what has and continues to go on was predicted some 3,500 years ago! Way back then, the Mosaic Covenant promised them blessings for their obedience and terrible curses for their rebellion. I don’t know anywhere in the world you could find a more detailed and specific prediction of the Holocaust itself. If they read it (and believed it), they would pray just like Daniel. “We have sinned.” But then, that’s where “We have not listened to Your prophets” is unfortunately still true.

That said, we should all agree they are still God’s people and worthy of our deepest respect and support. This is the year 2023 and the nation of Israel is at this very time engaged in a terrible conflict with the terrorist group called Hamas. I’m very thankful that, as a nation, we are still publicly supporting Israel. That itself is somewhat of a miracle, that our very, very wicked, crooked, immoral, lying government would actually do something godly, but I’ll take it for what it is! God told Abraham, He’d “bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” I definitely know which side of that equation I want my country to fall on!

Back to us, may we be challenged like Daniel to own our own sins and even the sins of this wicked nation of ours. May we pray like Daniel and seek the Lord’s favor for us, our families, and our nation. May we be the more determined to “hear” the Word of God, and, who knows? Maybe the Lord will then hear us and, like the Jews in 539 BC, show us His mercy!

 

Daniel 9:1-3 “My Buddy Daniel!”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹In the year the first to Darius the son of Ahasuerus (from a seed of a Mede) who was made king upon the kingdom of the Kasidim, ²in the year the first of his reign, I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years which were of the Word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet to fulfill the desolations of Jerusalem seventy of a year, ³And I set my face to the Lord God to seek [by] prayer and requests in fasting and sack cloth and ashes ⁴and I prayed to the LORD my God...

My, my. What a treasure! This entire chapter promises enormous blessings, but I find that just these first few verses could keep us all learning and growing for a lifetime! The entire chapter offers us a glimpse into the very heart of our friend Daniel. Would we have the faith of Daniel? Would we live the faithfulness of Daniel? Then here we have a glimpse into the heart of Daniel, that we might learn from him and be like him.

The “first year of Darius” would be the first year after Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and killed wicked Belshazzar. The night Belshazzar died was chapter 5, the story of the handwriting on the wall. We first saw Daniel under Darius in chapter 6 with the story of the lions’ den.  There’s no way to know for sure, as Daniel writes this chapter 9, whether he’s already been through the lions’ den episode or not. We know he’s writing in the first year. It didn’t say in chapter 6 what year that was. All we know is this is the first year of Darius. My guess would be that he hadn’t faced the lions’ den yet. Back there in chapter 6, it said, “It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel.” It then goes on to say, “Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.” It’s hard to imagine all of that happening just in the course of the first year that Darius was ruling. So I will assume the lions’ den experience is still ahead for our 80-some year old Daniel.

Let us be reminded too these last few years have been emotionally brutal for Daniel. Being godly doesn’t exempt us from feeling the turmoil of a world in convulsions -- and that is about the best word you could use for Daniel’s world. Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, had ruled the civilized world. Although Nebuchadnezzar was a wicked man, yet he was a very capable administrator, and Daniel got to enjoy the relative calm of living and working under that stable government. Since Nebuchadnezzar died, just eleven years earlier, he’s been through four changes of administration with the royal family butchering each other. That had gone on until the completely incompetent, profligate Belshazzar was placed on the throne and the nation finally collapsed as the Medo-Persian empire rose to power and themselves conquered the civilized world.

Let us remember no one likes change. I have many times observed people when their companies were being bought and sold. It is very unsettling to us humans. We like stability. We don’t like uncertain futures! From Daniel’s perspective, as I’ve noted before, all through human history it has been the common practice of conquering kings to kill everyone even remotely associated with the previous administration. Daniel, being high up in the government of Babylon would have been a prime target for exactly that sort of mayhem. Even if he didn’t fear death, he would have faced that awful uncertainty of the future. He no doubt had some sort of government salary he lived on and lived in his apartment. With every new administration, would he just be fired and pushed out on the street? It is too often true, when companies are being bought and sold, people lose their jobs. Remember too, he’s in his 80’s. If he can’t do his government thing, who will hire him to do anything different? Just like us, Daniel had to live in the moment, never knowing for sure exactly what the future holds.

In the midst of all this instability and chaos, what do we find our Daniel doing? Studying his Bible and praying! How encouraging is that! He says, “I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the Word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, and so I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with Him...” What’s he doing? Exactly the same thing I’m doing (and I hope it’s true of you too!). He pulls out His copy of the Scriptures, picks a particular passage, studies it, and tries to understand what the Lord is saying. Words fail to express how much that warms my heart to see none other than Daniel himself doing exactly what I’m doing, 2,600 years later! I note too, that Daniel is no ascetic recluse, shutting himself in some room and spending all day every day reading the Bible and praying. Remember what it said in Chapter 6, “Now Daniel so distinguished himself by his exceptional qualities…” And chapter 8 just finished with the words, “Then I got up went about the king’s business…” My point is that Daniel is working hard at his job, but making time to spend studying his Bible and praying. What a wonderful example he is!

Then, think more about what he’s doing. He says he “understood from the Scriptures, according to the Word of the Lord…” Daniel believed the Bible was “the Word of the Lord.” Daniel believed in the inspiration of the Bible. While he hovered over the words, he was convinced he was reading a message straight from the mouth of God.

He says it was “the Word of the Lord, given to Jeremiah the prophet.” Daniel believed that Jeremiah wrote the words, but they were given to him by God. Then notice how he studies. When he reads in Jeremiah 25:11,12 or 29:10, that the Babylonian captivity would last 70 years, what does he think that means? It means 70 years. He could do the math. He could say something like, “Hey! I was 15 when I was brought here, and now I’m 85. 85-15 = 70! Oh, my goodness, that means…” It is always interesting to me when some commentator reads in Revelation 20:4 that Jesus’ people will rise and reign with Him “a thousand years,” then says, “That just means a long time.” They say that in spite of the fact those exact words get repeated in vv.5,6,&7. Four times in four verses, we’re told it will be “a thousand years.” What does that mean? A long time? No, it means a thousand years. What would Daniel have thought it meant? Seventy years meant seventy years. Daniel would tell us, a thousand years means a thousand years. It is enormously encouraging to see he believes exactly what we do!

For whatever it’s worth, I wanted to note that Daniel and Jeremiah were somewhat contemporaries. Jeremiah was actively prophesying when Jerusalem fell and Daniel was taken captive to Babylon. According to Jeremiah 1:2, Jeremiah started his ministry in “the thirteenth year of King Josiah” (626 BC), while Daniel was taken captive in 605. If Jeremiah started at age 20, he would have been 41 years old when Jerusalem fell. If Daniel was 15 at that time, then Jeremiah was 26 years his senior. It’s crazy to think Daniel probably actually heard Jeremiah’s preaching while he was still there in Jerusalem. Perhaps not a particularly important point, but provides a little context.

Finally, it is interesting that Daniel’s response to it all was to pray earnestly. Daniel has already clearly established in his book that he believes “the Most High rules in the nations of men.” God is absolutely sovereign. Now he reads that the Lord already said the captivity would only last 70 years. When he does the math and realizes the time is upon him, you would think he could sit back and say, “Yep. The Lord has it all under control!” However, that is not his response. His response is to pray earnestly. This is kind of a deep thought, but that tells us that Daniel realized God’s infinite sovereignty actually embraces our prayers. This fact is, in a sense, completely illogical. If God is infinitely sovereign, if He has already ordained all that will happen (like a 70 year captivity), then what is the point or even the need for us to pray?  Yet He Himself invites us to prayer. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God…” (Phil. 4:6). James would have us know, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective!” (5:16).

Our God is so infinitely sovereign He can actually include our very prayers in that great sovereign plan of His. Although He is, in fact, infinitely sovereign, He would stoop so low as to allow you and me to participate in that plan. Someone could ask, but wouldn’t it all have happened whether Daniel prayed or not? Do you see, that is a silly question? The fact is, Daniel’s prayers were a part of it all and it did happen. Period. That’s how great our God is and how amazingly gracious He is to us insignificant blades of grass – to let us be a part of what He is doing in this world.

As always, Daniel teaches us what it means to be a good citizen in this world, to be a good worker at our jobs, and yet to make time to study our Bibles, to pray, and to be a part of our God’s great purposes and plans in this world! Again, words fail me to say how encouraging it is to see Daniel studying His Bible just like you and me! What a good friend he would be if he were alive today! What a great example he is!

 

 

 

Daniel 9:4 “Daniel’s Theology 2”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁴and I prayed to the LORD my God, and I confessed, and I said, “O Lord, the God the great, One being feared, keeping the Covenant and the lovingkindness to ones loving Him and keeping His commands…”

Continuing to think about how Daniel saw God, he describes Him as One “keeping the Covenant…” What is he saying? He’s saying our God is a Promise-keeping God. He does what He said He would do. We can count on Him – absolutely 100%, always. Another word we use to describe this is His faithfulness. Faith itself is, underneath it all, simply believing God’s promises, or should I say, believing He keeps those promises, that He is always, always, always faithful.

Peter references this in his second epistle, chapter 1 and verses 3 and 4: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the Divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Notice how it says we can participate in the Divine nature and how we escape this world’s corruption – through His “very great and precious promises.”

Daniel is a Jew and lived under the Mosaic Covenant. It is notable to realize first of all that the Jewish people are who they are not because of the Mosaic Covenant but rather the Abrahamic. God promised Abraham three things: to multiply his descendants like the sand on the seashore, to give them the land of Canaan, and that He would be their God and they would be His people (Gen. 17:6-8). What was enormously significant about that Covenant was that it was unconditional. Gen. 15 describes the strange story of the Lord promising Abraham His blessings, then of Him having Abraham cut the animals in half, then putting Abraham to sleep, and the flaming torch passing between the pieces.

The significance of all of that was that the Lord passed through the pieces alone. That whole business was an ancient ritual where two people made promises to each other, then created the path with the bloody pieces on either side, then walked through them together. Each was thereby saying to the other, “May I become like all these bloody dead animals if I fail to keep the promise I have made to you.” Abraham would have understood that completely. However, when it came time to pass through the pieces, the Lord went through alone. He was saying that Abrahamic Covenant was unconditional. Whether or not it was fulfilled was dependent on God’s faithfulness, not Abraham’s. That is why to this very day, we believers acknowledge gladly that the Jewish people are the special people of God. They simply are. They may be very unfaithful to God, but He will never be unfaithful to them. They are joined to Him by an unconditional covenant.

Then there is the Mosaic Covenant. This one is a different story. The people had said to Moses, “All that the Lord commands us, we will do!” The Lord responded to Moses, “O that they had such a heart in them.” He knew they didn’t. The problem was they didn’t know they didn’t! They said, “Give us the rules, and we’ll keep them!” and the Lord said, “Fine,” then proceeded to give them some 618 rules to live by. They couldn’t keep those, so they made up literally thousands more until, by the time Jesus came, they had become a nation of Pharisees. As it says in Romans 9:31,32, “but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works,,,”

We learn in Galatians that the Mosaic Law was intended just for that reason – it was a “schoolmaster” to “bring them to Christ.” From the very beginning, they should have realized they couldn’t keep God’s laws. They should have then cried out for a Savior, but they didn’t. When they couldn’t keep the rules they had, they just made more. Like the rest of the human race, they were determined to earn God’s favor.

So He gave them the Mosaic Covenant. In this case, He promised them blessings and threatened them with cursings – all dependent on how well they kept that covenant. Read Deuteronomy 28 to see it all in one place. Back to the matter before us, Daniel says of God He is One “keeping the Covenant.” God keeps His promises. What is scary, however, is to realize that is a two-edged sword. He promises great blessings to those who are found righteous and terrible judgments on those who are not. This very business will drive Daniel’s prayer here  in this chapter. He will come to this faithful, covenant-keeping God, counting on the promise that the 70-year captivity will end, but confessing that the entire horrible Babylonian Captivity was simply more of God keeping His promises.

You and I too come to Him as our promise-keeping God. We born-again believers come to Him first of all by the blood of Jesus, confessing from the very start that we cannot keep His laws. We come acknowledging that, in fact, we do not have “such a heart in us.” He then promises to us to save us forever and to place His Holy Spirit in us, so that it turns out, we do have such a heart in us! It’s just not mine, it's His, and by grace, He does help us put off our old selves and be changed into His image. When it is true that our (His) heart is in it, then His faithfulness becomes our hope and joy.

All of this is why Daniel then says He is, “One keeping the Covenant and lovingkindness to those loving Him and keeping His commands.” Notice several interesting insights from just these few words. Note that Daniel says He is not only a promise-keeping God, but mixed right in with that is His lovingkindness. In Hebrew, He is literally, “One keeping the covenant and the lovingkindness.” The two are a package with our God. Uninformed people are always making claims that somehow the God of the OT is just a harsh, lightning bolt throwing, angry, rule-making god, while the NT God is loving and kind. Apparently Daniel would disagree with them!

Then note that Daniel says the Lord’s promise-keeping and lovingkindness are for “ones loving Him and keeping His commands.” The people who maintain the mean old God view of the OT would have simply said, “for ones keeping His commands.” Oh, golly, there’s another term in there: it is for “ones loving Him and keeping His commands.” For people who truly know God, everything is first of all about this love relationship. I discover (to my surprise!) that God really does love me. His love draws me into this relationship. As I described a few paragraphs above, what I find in His “commands” is simply an expression of what pleases Him and what does not. “Keeping His commands” is not the means to that relationship – it is the result. When you love someone, of course you care what does and does not please them. That is just part of any love relationship and maybe more so when we’re dealing with the God of the universe! And, the simple fact is that people who don’t love Him don’t care about His promise-keeping or His lovingkindness, so why should those qualities be “for them.” No. They are for “those who love Him and keep His commands.”

I would suggest it goes without saying that if people everywhere could simply see God through Daniel’s eyes, they would have a very different view of Him. The result of that would be to have a very different view of themselves, as Tozer said, “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” Of course, the whole reason the Lord moved Daniel to write these things down was for exactly this purpose – that we should see Him through Daniel’s eyes. That’s what a prophet does for us. It is only left to us to consider seriously what they’ve said and what it means for us.

I hope we’ve accomplished that here, even if it is just a tiny baby-step in the right direction!

 

Daniel 9:4 “Daniel’s Theology 1”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁴and I prayed to the LORD my God, and I confessed, and I said, “O Lord, the God the great, One being feared, keeping the Covenant and the lovingkindness to ones loving Him and keeping His commands…”

In these few short words, Daniel tells us a lot of what he believed to be true of God. If we would learn from him, that is no small consideration. We all can admire the faith of Daniel and wish to be more like him, and I can say, from the very beginning, I have enjoyed studying this book precisely because Daniel is such a great example. I feel what I’ve learned from him and his friends has profoundly impacted my own faith and life. However, all that said, I would maintain that if anyone truly wants to live Daniel’s faith, we must begin by understanding his theology.

What I mean by that is we must look closely at what Daniel believed about God. In II Cor. 3:18, we learn that, “…we, as we behold the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory…” As we behold His image, we’re changed into that image. As A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

Beholding His image, we’re changed into that image. To see God, to clearly see Jesus, is to be profoundly changed forever. Martha was busy serving. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet. Martha got tired. Mary could never be the same. Our friend Daniel is a Bible student. He, like Mary, has sat long at Jesus’ feet and therein lies the true explanation for who he was and what moved him to do what he did, to be the person he was. Here in this one simple verse, we can learn much of what Daniel saw when, in his mind, he saw God.

Note Daniel says, “I prayed to the LORD, my God.” Whenever, in the English Bible, you see God’s name translated as “LORD,” that is the Hebrew name “Yahveh,” which means “I am that I am.” It is the same name we call “Jehovah.” In Exodus 3, when Moses asked, “Who should I say sent me?” the Lord answers, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you…The LORD, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you” (vv.14,15).  The “I AM” is the Hebrew “Yahveh.” It is considered specifically the name of Israel’s God. Daniel then is very specifically calling on the God of Israel and that is notable when everyone else around is praying to Bel and Marduk and a host of other “gods.”

Then let’s not run past the simple little epitaph, “my God.” To Daniel, this is all very personal. The Lord is to Daniel “my God.” He is certainly the God of the Jewish people as a nation, He is the great Sovereign of all the Universe, yet He is a God who would have a relationship with each one of us personally. The greatest single possession of our human existence is to be able to look up to the Lord and address Him as “my God.” To have Him as my God means I have a Rock, a Fortress, a Shield and Defender, a Strong Deliverer, a Redeemer, Savior, Friend, Father, and King. Without Him, I’m just on my own. In a sense, this little truth is the reason why Daniel was everything he was – he was a man with a God. The wonderful news is realizing that same relationship is wide open and available to each and every one of us. Jesus said, “Whosoever will may come,” and “This is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God…”

Daniel then addresses Him as “O Lord.” As we noted above, when in our English Bibles, you see the name “LORD,” you know that is actually the “I AM” of Hebrew. Here it appears as simply “Lord.” In this case, you can know that the actual Hebrew name of God being so translated is “Adonai,” which means “Master.” Here Daniel first addresses his prayer to “O Adonai,” “O Master.” Once again, what is Daniel’s constant theme throughout this book? “The Most High rules in the nations of men.” As Daniel looked out at his world, as he looked up to heaven, he saw our God as “the Master.”

Is that not, in a sense, the fundamental question before every human soul? Who is “the Master?” Satan couldn’t figure that out and got himself cast down from heaven. Adam and Eve got it wrong and were cast out of Eden. The whole human race gets it wrong and continually self-destructs until it finally would drag us all down to hell. Romans 10:9 would tell us, “That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” Salvation itself comes down to first of all recognizing that, in fact, Jesus is Lord (Master) and accepting that the only answer for the cosmic rebellion I’ve lived to this day is His all-sufficient sacrifice in my place. There it is in plain English: Jesus is Lord and Savior. We each individually must address this question of who will be “the Lord, the Master” – me or God?

Daniel had it figured out and, even as he would open this most heartfelt and ardent prayer, he looks up to God and sees Him as Master. He carries this further as he then addresses Him as “the great and awesome God.” “Great” may have expressed many thoughts in Daniel’s mind, but it does us all well to stop and ponder exactly that – God’s greatness. Our God is infinite. He is not, like Marvel comics’ superheroes, simply a very, very great man. No. He is not a creature. He is God. He inhabits eternity. He exists entirely above this universe in which we live. He created it. He created us. He created time and space for us to live in, while He Himself exists entirely independent of it all. That is why we can observe of Him that He is all those things – omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and infinitely Sovereign. As we, like Daniel, would come to Him in prayer, we come to the One who in fact exercises absolute control over this universe in which we live. He rules in infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite goodness, infinite love and invites us to come before Him in prayer. He is Great.

Then Daniel addresses Him as “awesome.” In Hebrew it means literally “One to be feared.” As we learn in Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (9:10). Today, everyone tries to downplay the “fear” factor and we opt for words like “respect,” but the Hebrew word means “fear.” Even from heaven itself, the Tribulation saints ask, “Who will not fear You, O Lord?” (Rev. 15:4). I’ve elaborated on this before, but, for me, it comes down to this: The fear of the Lord is, in fact, the beginning of wisdom. Any sane person should bow to Him even if for no other reason than just plain fear. “Our God is a consuming fire.” I believe there have been many people saved first of all simply out of fear of hell. That, we can all see is a good thing. Now, as a Christian, although I’m 100% assured of His unending love, yet I know He is my Father. He loves me too much to just let me sin and self-destruct. It is a scary thought to realize the power He has to bring me to my knees and get me back on the right course.

All of that said, His laws become like guardrails in my life. I fear to step over them. However, that fear itself is actually an expression of love to Him. Remember, although the fear of the Lord may be the beginning of wisdom, it is not the end. What is the end of wisdom? Is it not, “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind?” Even those believers who came to Him first of all only out of fear soon learn to embrace His love. Now what I try to say is that I don’t want to be sitting in His lap and then spitting in His face. That is now my life all day every day – to sit in my Father’s lap and enjoy His love – but, if I’m there, how can I let myself think thoughts or say things or do things I know grieve His heart? I guess the bottom line of what I’m saying is that, as Daniel realized, the fear of the Lord is something very real and should, in fact, be present in our hearts, but for us believers it is just another reality that drives us deeper into His big loving lap.

I want to think deeply about what else we can learn from Daniel’s theology in this verse, but I think I’ll close this post and continue in the next.

All praise to Him who reigns above in majesty supreme!