Daniel 9:4-19
Try to imagine how you would deal with these circumstances. What would it be like if you were just a young teenager when you were kidnapped by a hostile enemy and deported hundreds of miles away from your homeland. How would you handle that grief and stress? Imagine you had to walk all the way, no cars or planes to take you there, just a rough guard to push you along. At least you are not alone. Some of your friends are also captive. Thoughts of escape float through your mind, but the armed guards and the hostile terrain convince you to forget about escape.
This was the fate of the prophet Daniel, 2700 years ago, in the Middle East, at a time in history in which pagan armies had no idea of any Geneva convention or civil rights and they couldn’t have cared less if you tried to bring it up. They would likely just run a sword through you for mentioning anything of the sort. It was a dangerous time to live.
Worse for the Jews because God had warned his beloved nation for hundreds of years about what would happen if they persisted in rebellion, and finally He had kept that promise and removed his hand of blessing. A great and evil power had swept across the known world ruthlessly, demolishing nations and cultures that dared to stand in the way of its world conquest. Now it looked like the Babylonians were in control, and before Daniel passed on to glory, it would look like the Medes and then the Persians were in control of the world.
And yet, if you read the book of Daniel you can clearly see that Daniel believed God was still in control. Daniel honored and feared the Lord God more than the king of Babylon, so he found a way to continue to obey the food laws of Israel, rather than enjoy the unkosher savories of the king’s table. God got the credit for preserving Daniel’s life and making him appear to be wiser than others so that the King of Babylon would favor him and choose him for his counsel. God got the credit for Daniel’s interpretation of the King’s prophetic dream, and Daniel rose in power, authority and respect, in spite of jealous conspirators who tried to get away with murder. That’s what the lion’s den was all about.
Over and over in the book of Daniel we see that Daniel believed that God was still in control of everything, and God himself repeatedly acted to prove it, up to and including the fiery trial of Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So, based on his faith that God really was in control and would fulfill the time he had allotted for the exile then restore the nation of Israel, Daniel took note of the calendar, observed that the time was up, and called upon God to fulfill his more hopeful promise of his people’s return from exile. That’s the prayer we read this morning.
This is a prayer of Daniel, one of Israel’s greatest prophets. It was prompted by his concern for his nation, a nation that had rebelled against God’s good wisdom and clear instruction. The nation of Israel had suffered the consequences of its rebellion by having its economy ruined by invasion and many of its citizens exported into exile.
Daniel was one of those exiles. But he did not accept his status as a victim of circumstances beyond his control. He still saw himself a servant of God. So even though circumstances were largely beyond his control, his own actions within those circumstances were highly significant as they portrayed a man of great faith in God and the fact that the circumstances are certainly not beyond God’s control. And so, Daniel prayed for a nation he had barely known. If you were doing all right and had a good job in the king’s court would you feel concerned to pray for the nation that you barely remember? But Daniel’s remembrance of Israel and any personal involvement with it in his future was not what mattered most. Daniel knew God’s Word, and through his faith in God’s concern for Israel, Daniel was most concerned about God’s plan of salvation and the key role Israel was to play in that future.
But what does that have to do with us? Well, we may think we’re more civilized and we certainly have vastly superior technology, but we live in a day when wars and violence are on the rise. Even within our own borders, the culture around us is trying to push further and further away from faith in God and obedience to his wisdom, just like Israel did. Our money says, “In God we trust” and our pledge says, “one nation under God.” Those are nice tributes, but, church attendance is down, knowledge of the Bible is on the decline, and the majority of people alive in our country seem to be doing what seems right in their own eyes, enjoying the hard-won freedoms in this land to ignore God’s Ten Commandments.
Israel had much the same problem. That’s what its rebellion was really all about, ignoring God, even though they paid him lip service and claimed that they were special people because they had God’s temple so he would protect them. We have much in common with Israel. They knew they were God’s chosen people, a blessed nation founded on God’s blessings and even miracles. We who know the history of America know how much of a role he played in providing the victories that set us free from tyranny.
The Israelites believed in God’s Covenant promises to them, that his plan of redemption would flow through their prosperity. But they began to assume that because of such a great beginning, and the promise of a good ending, that God would never really let them fade away. They must have figured his warnings from the prophets were just men taking things too far with their complaining about what they thought was going wrong. The religious leaders of the day certainly didn’t blame themselves for helping to lead Israel astray as they catered to the whims of political power.
So too in America, religious people are concerned about what his happening around us, but we tend to blame society and circumstances beyond our control. We’re certainly not wanting to blame ourselves. We see ourselves as the faithful ones trying to do things God’s way. But those other people are responsible for the country’s demise. And Daniel could have put himself in that category and held himself aloof from blame. He was not an idol worshiper. He was not an evil king leading the people astray. And yet, as we heard in the reading, Daniel set a better example for us by lumping himself right in with his people and accepting his share of the guilt as if he were a great sinner. Listen again to some excerpts:
“Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land.”
This is fascinating, Daniel lumps himself in with people who didn’t listen to the prophets, but he himself actually is one of the prophets!
“Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. We and our kings, our princes and our ancestors are covered with shame, Lord, because we have sinned against you.”
Daniel lumps himself in with the sinners. He includes himself as guilty of rebellion, not just by association, but by his own admission of actual failure to be totally faithful, or even adequately faithful to God’s commands.
Then he acknowledges that what God was allowing to happen to his nation is good, and right and just. Not good as in enjoyable, but good as in appropriate. And God’s actions are right as in, correct response to rebellion and sin. His actions are also just, as in, the punishment fits the crimes against God. All of this acknowledges that God is in full control. Things aren’t just happening as if God is powerless to change everything in a moment. History is being directed by God to accomplish his good purposes. He intends to teach Israel her lesson and then resume his plan of redemption through re-establishing her as a nation and setting the stage of world history for the Savior to be born at just the right time.
Daniel’s prayer acknowledges all this and then he raises his petition. “Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”
Daniel begs God to listen, to forgive, and to see their great need. To ask God to listen is to rightly acknowledge that only God can fix the predicament of Israel. Even though the time is up, the predicted seventy years have passed, no amount of human effort will accomplish anything. Daniel can not raise and army. No king of Israel can rise up to resist the king of Babylon unless God supports him. Daniel is acknowledging before God that the situation will only change if God hears his people asking him to act on his word. Then God will do something about it.
It also acknowledges that God chooses in some cases to not act on his own. He desires our partnership in faithful, loving relationship with him. He chooses to watch to see if anyone will cry out to him, if anyone has faith in his word enough to say to God, “Ok now, please do what you said you would do.”
Once God is listening, the first thing he wants to hear from his people is, “We have sinned. Please forgive us.” This makes sense even on the level of human relationships. Which of you fathers, or mothers, if your child has been disobedient or rebellious, will act as if everything is fine when they ask you for a favor, like to borrow the car or have some money to go to a movie? Wouldn’t you first want to hear your child talk about what has caused the breach in your relationship and work to set that right, before they assume you will just give them whatever they want? God our heavenly Father is very wise and knows that his children should confess their sins to him, so that they learn and grow in wisdom by agreeing with his will and wisdom.
So, Daniel humbled himself on behalf of all Israel. But here’s some good news. If he can lump himself in with the sinners and speak as if he is as much to blame as anyone, that corporate identity works the other way too. He can lump all of Israel in with himself, as if all of them are praying with him in humble repentance. In fact, we can see that Jesus, our Lord and Savior fulfilled this principle even more wonderfully. He is God but identified with us by becoming human and taking all our sin upon his own person. He died for us as the guilty party, and rose again to intercede for all who are in Christ! And it is as if we are all praying along with him.
Finally, in Daniel’s prayer, he didn’t ask for freedom as we might expect. He didn’t ask for a political victory. He didn’t ask for the death or destruction of his enemies who held him captive. He didn’t ask for any kind of victory. He didn’t ask for vindication. He asked for God to just look at what had happened to God’s favored city and to his temple and remember what it was supposed to be there for. Daniel knew that God would do the right thing and fulfill his word when God’s people turned to God and said, “Look at what we have done to your beautiful world! We can’t fix it. Daddy, please help us!”
The application to our day is that we must not assume that everything that is wrong with our nation is all someone else’s fault. And we must not equate the church with the nation. The Church is God’s people, not America. But America will be blessed by as much as the Church is salt and light in the nation.
Daniel’s example shows us that we all must share the blame and guilt. No matter what our position or status in this world, we should be willing to humble ourselves enough to identify with all sinners and acknowledge our corporate guilt before the high and Holy God, our sovereign Lord. This reminds me of Jesus’ words about logs and specks. It is so easy to see someone else’s sin and so easy to remain blind to our own. This is because our natural inclination is to defend our own position as in the right. We are afraid to be wrong.
So, when we think about why our kids and grandkids aren’t interested in church, we want to blame the culture around them. But the truth could be that the church failed in its responsibility to disciples its children effectively so that they could withstand the temptations of the culture. It could be that the church actually failed to function fruitfully as the body of Christ, didn’t deal well with conflict, didn’t adequately confront sin and teach believers to obey everything that Jesus commanded, didn’t equip believers to live by godly wisdom and so we fell back on common sense and worldly ways. Maybe our kids didn’t see enough of our concern to be evangelical and thus didn’t see the power of God to produce new birth from evangelism. Maybe they didn’t see us humble ourselves and pray together for God to do among us what we cannot do for ourselves. Maybe our kids saw us pursuing the American Dream when they should have seen us pursuing the Kingdom of God.
Maybe we were listening too much to the prosperity gospel that blesses the believers with Christ’s riches and not enough to the salvation gospel that blesses the unbelievers when we bother to speak to them about Christ’s love. Let us, the church, remove the logs from our eyes and humbly repent of the errors of our ways and seek God’s guidance into truth and power for service. We lead sinners to repentance, not by telling them to repent, but by being good examples of repentant sinners who find forgiveness in God’s grace and mercy and rejoice that it is free for all to enjoy!
Everyone has something to offer and all are called to do whatever they can, offering to serve others, seeking to do good, supporting good causes, praying for God’s help. If you refuse to be part of the solution, you are part of the problem. There is no neutral position. No one is helpless. Being good citizens of God’s Kingdom, serving America as an ambassador for Christ, is what will have the greatest positive impact in the future of this nation and bring God’s blessings as we continue to depend upon him. Anything less than that is a return to an idolatry of self-concern, self-gratification and even self-aggrandizement that leads to the dire consequences of God’s judgement.
In our text, Daniel was just doing what God had told his people to do when Solomon dedicated the temple that lay in ruins by the time Daniel prayed his prayer. It is recorded in 2 Chronicles 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.” People get the wrong idea about what it means to humble ourselves. A lot of us think it means to wallow in misery and shame and guilt and feel bad about the sins we have committed. But that’s not it at all!
I like what Madeleine L’Engel said about it. Based on the fact that God called us to come to him as little children, innocent and dependent upon father God, the truth is, “we can only be humble when we know that we are God’s children, of infinite value and eternally loved.” It is God’s forgiving and gracious love, displayed on the cross of Christ and vindicated in his resurrection from the dead that gives us the courage to be honest before him and admit to the logs in our eyes. It is the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts when we believe this gospel that gives us the Spirit that cries out Abba, Father. Daddy, help us!
True humility leads to joy! It is the joy of knowing that we can be happy in Christ even though we don’t deserve it. It is the joy of knowing that no matter how bad things look on the outside, God is in charge, and as we depend on Him he can use us in His plan to make things better. True humility is what gives us the power to change the world! Think of it, Daniel in his captivity was used by God to lead the pagan King of Babylon to a better faith in the one true God.
Therefore, as true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, let each citizen of our own great nation take full responsibility for the future of this nation. There are so many avenues of service. Find what is meaningful to you and participate, whether it is caring for people through education, day care, homeless shelters, food pantries, jail ministries, evangelism, teaching, or even preaching. But it all starts with our humble and prayerful dependence upon God to show us the works he has prepared in advance for us to do. We must depend upon his Holy Spirit, through whom we receive gifts that enable us to serve.
This is not a time to throw up our hands in despair and blame anybody else for the problems we see. This is a time to call out to God, throw up our hands in praise to his holy name and see where he would call us to serve. Let each citizen of this great nation give thanks to God for the freedoms and liberties we do enjoy. Let each one seek the Lord’s face and answer his call to do whatever we can do to make the world in which we live a better place.
I have been speaking to the Church, the citizens of the Kingdom of God, the only nation in the world whose God really is the Lord. But I must not close this message without offering an open invitation to anyone who has not yet realized that God’s welcome home is still available to anyone who now sees their need of forgiveness and grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! That’s the heart of the gospel. It is what God has done for you through Christ on the cross! Faith in that will lead you into a new life of humble service and obedience to your one true King. It is not necessarily an easy life, for we enter into a battle against the sins that still want to rule us. But it is a good life and the best life and we have each other for help and support. Let us pray.
Hear us from Heaven O Lord! Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. “Lord, you are righteous, but because of Jesus, your one and only soon who died in our place, this day we are not covered with shame. We are covered by the righteous blood of Christ!
“Now, Lord, our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand, who later lead your people to the shores of this land and helped us form what would become the United States of America and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, hear the prayers and petitions of your servants. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your people, the body of Christ, the living temple of the Holy Lord, that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.
Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O Lord, do not delay, because your people bear your Name. Strengthen us again to serve you well and bear much fruit, going everywhere we can to make new disciples and instructing them in true obedience that brings the greatest freedoms and joys. Thank you for you great, great love Father God, patient and kind. Grant that we may see, with our own eyes, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, as we watch you add to our number daily those who are being saved through faith in Jesus Christ, in whose mighty name we pray. Amen.”
Try to imagine how you would deal with these circumstances. What would it be like if you were just a young teenager when you were kidnapped by a hostile enemy and deported hundreds of miles away from your homeland. How would you handle that grief and stress? Imagine you had to walk all the way, no cars or planes to take you there, just a rough guard to push you along. At least you are not alone. Some of your friends are also captive. Thoughts of escape float through your mind, but the armed guards and the hostile terrain convince you to forget about escape.
This was the fate of the prophet Daniel, 2700 years ago, in the Middle East, at a time in history in which pagan armies had no idea of any Geneva convention or civil rights and they couldn’t have cared less if you tried to bring it up. They would likely just run a sword through you for mentioning anything of the sort. It was a dangerous time to live.
Worse for the Jews because God had warned his beloved nation for hundreds of years about what would happen if they persisted in rebellion, and finally He had kept that promise and removed his hand of blessing. A great and evil power had swept across the known world ruthlessly, demolishing nations and cultures that dared to stand in the way of its world conquest. Now it looked like the Babylonians were in control, and before Daniel passed on to glory, it would look like the Medes and then the Persians were in control of the world.
And yet, if you read the book of Daniel you can clearly see that Daniel believed God was still in control. Daniel honored and feared the Lord God more than the king of Babylon, so he found a way to continue to obey the food laws of Israel, rather than enjoy the unkosher savories of the king’s table. God got the credit for preserving Daniel’s life and making him appear to be wiser than others so that the King of Babylon would favor him and choose him for his counsel. God got the credit for Daniel’s interpretation of the King’s prophetic dream, and Daniel rose in power, authority and respect, in spite of jealous conspirators who tried to get away with murder. That’s what the lion’s den was all about.
Over and over in the book of Daniel we see that Daniel believed that God was still in control of everything, and God himself repeatedly acted to prove it, up to and including the fiery trial of Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So, based on his faith that God really was in control and would fulfill the time he had allotted for the exile then restore the nation of Israel, Daniel took note of the calendar, observed that the time was up, and called upon God to fulfill his more hopeful promise of his people’s return from exile. That’s the prayer we read this morning.
This is a prayer of Daniel, one of Israel’s greatest prophets. It was prompted by his concern for his nation, a nation that had rebelled against God’s good wisdom and clear instruction. The nation of Israel had suffered the consequences of its rebellion by having its economy ruined by invasion and many of its citizens exported into exile.
Daniel was one of those exiles. But he did not accept his status as a victim of circumstances beyond his control. He still saw himself a servant of God. So even though circumstances were largely beyond his control, his own actions within those circumstances were highly significant as they portrayed a man of great faith in God and the fact that the circumstances are certainly not beyond God’s control. And so, Daniel prayed for a nation he had barely known. If you were doing all right and had a good job in the king’s court would you feel concerned to pray for the nation that you barely remember? But Daniel’s remembrance of Israel and any personal involvement with it in his future was not what mattered most. Daniel knew God’s Word, and through his faith in God’s concern for Israel, Daniel was most concerned about God’s plan of salvation and the key role Israel was to play in that future.
But what does that have to do with us? Well, we may think we’re more civilized and we certainly have vastly superior technology, but we live in a day when wars and violence are on the rise. Even within our own borders, the culture around us is trying to push further and further away from faith in God and obedience to his wisdom, just like Israel did. Our money says, “In God we trust” and our pledge says, “one nation under God.” Those are nice tributes, but, church attendance is down, knowledge of the Bible is on the decline, and the majority of people alive in our country seem to be doing what seems right in their own eyes, enjoying the hard-won freedoms in this land to ignore God’s Ten Commandments.
Israel had much the same problem. That’s what its rebellion was really all about, ignoring God, even though they paid him lip service and claimed that they were special people because they had God’s temple so he would protect them. We have much in common with Israel. They knew they were God’s chosen people, a blessed nation founded on God’s blessings and even miracles. We who know the history of America know how much of a role he played in providing the victories that set us free from tyranny.
The Israelites believed in God’s Covenant promises to them, that his plan of redemption would flow through their prosperity. But they began to assume that because of such a great beginning, and the promise of a good ending, that God would never really let them fade away. They must have figured his warnings from the prophets were just men taking things too far with their complaining about what they thought was going wrong. The religious leaders of the day certainly didn’t blame themselves for helping to lead Israel astray as they catered to the whims of political power.
So too in America, religious people are concerned about what his happening around us, but we tend to blame society and circumstances beyond our control. We’re certainly not wanting to blame ourselves. We see ourselves as the faithful ones trying to do things God’s way. But those other people are responsible for the country’s demise. And Daniel could have put himself in that category and held himself aloof from blame. He was not an idol worshiper. He was not an evil king leading the people astray. And yet, as we heard in the reading, Daniel set a better example for us by lumping himself right in with his people and accepting his share of the guilt as if he were a great sinner. Listen again to some excerpts:
“Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land.”
This is fascinating, Daniel lumps himself in with people who didn’t listen to the prophets, but he himself actually is one of the prophets!
“Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. We and our kings, our princes and our ancestors are covered with shame, Lord, because we have sinned against you.”
Daniel lumps himself in with the sinners. He includes himself as guilty of rebellion, not just by association, but by his own admission of actual failure to be totally faithful, or even adequately faithful to God’s commands.
Then he acknowledges that what God was allowing to happen to his nation is good, and right and just. Not good as in enjoyable, but good as in appropriate. And God’s actions are right as in, correct response to rebellion and sin. His actions are also just, as in, the punishment fits the crimes against God. All of this acknowledges that God is in full control. Things aren’t just happening as if God is powerless to change everything in a moment. History is being directed by God to accomplish his good purposes. He intends to teach Israel her lesson and then resume his plan of redemption through re-establishing her as a nation and setting the stage of world history for the Savior to be born at just the right time.
Daniel’s prayer acknowledges all this and then he raises his petition. “Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”
Daniel begs God to listen, to forgive, and to see their great need. To ask God to listen is to rightly acknowledge that only God can fix the predicament of Israel. Even though the time is up, the predicted seventy years have passed, no amount of human effort will accomplish anything. Daniel can not raise and army. No king of Israel can rise up to resist the king of Babylon unless God supports him. Daniel is acknowledging before God that the situation will only change if God hears his people asking him to act on his word. Then God will do something about it.
It also acknowledges that God chooses in some cases to not act on his own. He desires our partnership in faithful, loving relationship with him. He chooses to watch to see if anyone will cry out to him, if anyone has faith in his word enough to say to God, “Ok now, please do what you said you would do.”
Once God is listening, the first thing he wants to hear from his people is, “We have sinned. Please forgive us.” This makes sense even on the level of human relationships. Which of you fathers, or mothers, if your child has been disobedient or rebellious, will act as if everything is fine when they ask you for a favor, like to borrow the car or have some money to go to a movie? Wouldn’t you first want to hear your child talk about what has caused the breach in your relationship and work to set that right, before they assume you will just give them whatever they want? God our heavenly Father is very wise and knows that his children should confess their sins to him, so that they learn and grow in wisdom by agreeing with his will and wisdom.
So, Daniel humbled himself on behalf of all Israel. But here’s some good news. If he can lump himself in with the sinners and speak as if he is as much to blame as anyone, that corporate identity works the other way too. He can lump all of Israel in with himself, as if all of them are praying with him in humble repentance. In fact, we can see that Jesus, our Lord and Savior fulfilled this principle even more wonderfully. He is God but identified with us by becoming human and taking all our sin upon his own person. He died for us as the guilty party, and rose again to intercede for all who are in Christ! And it is as if we are all praying along with him.
Finally, in Daniel’s prayer, he didn’t ask for freedom as we might expect. He didn’t ask for a political victory. He didn’t ask for the death or destruction of his enemies who held him captive. He didn’t ask for any kind of victory. He didn’t ask for vindication. He asked for God to just look at what had happened to God’s favored city and to his temple and remember what it was supposed to be there for. Daniel knew that God would do the right thing and fulfill his word when God’s people turned to God and said, “Look at what we have done to your beautiful world! We can’t fix it. Daddy, please help us!”
The application to our day is that we must not assume that everything that is wrong with our nation is all someone else’s fault. And we must not equate the church with the nation. The Church is God’s people, not America. But America will be blessed by as much as the Church is salt and light in the nation.
Daniel’s example shows us that we all must share the blame and guilt. No matter what our position or status in this world, we should be willing to humble ourselves enough to identify with all sinners and acknowledge our corporate guilt before the high and Holy God, our sovereign Lord. This reminds me of Jesus’ words about logs and specks. It is so easy to see someone else’s sin and so easy to remain blind to our own. This is because our natural inclination is to defend our own position as in the right. We are afraid to be wrong.
So, when we think about why our kids and grandkids aren’t interested in church, we want to blame the culture around them. But the truth could be that the church failed in its responsibility to disciples its children effectively so that they could withstand the temptations of the culture. It could be that the church actually failed to function fruitfully as the body of Christ, didn’t deal well with conflict, didn’t adequately confront sin and teach believers to obey everything that Jesus commanded, didn’t equip believers to live by godly wisdom and so we fell back on common sense and worldly ways. Maybe our kids didn’t see enough of our concern to be evangelical and thus didn’t see the power of God to produce new birth from evangelism. Maybe they didn’t see us humble ourselves and pray together for God to do among us what we cannot do for ourselves. Maybe our kids saw us pursuing the American Dream when they should have seen us pursuing the Kingdom of God.
Maybe we were listening too much to the prosperity gospel that blesses the believers with Christ’s riches and not enough to the salvation gospel that blesses the unbelievers when we bother to speak to them about Christ’s love. Let us, the church, remove the logs from our eyes and humbly repent of the errors of our ways and seek God’s guidance into truth and power for service. We lead sinners to repentance, not by telling them to repent, but by being good examples of repentant sinners who find forgiveness in God’s grace and mercy and rejoice that it is free for all to enjoy!
Everyone has something to offer and all are called to do whatever they can, offering to serve others, seeking to do good, supporting good causes, praying for God’s help. If you refuse to be part of the solution, you are part of the problem. There is no neutral position. No one is helpless. Being good citizens of God’s Kingdom, serving America as an ambassador for Christ, is what will have the greatest positive impact in the future of this nation and bring God’s blessings as we continue to depend upon him. Anything less than that is a return to an idolatry of self-concern, self-gratification and even self-aggrandizement that leads to the dire consequences of God’s judgement.
In our text, Daniel was just doing what God had told his people to do when Solomon dedicated the temple that lay in ruins by the time Daniel prayed his prayer. It is recorded in 2 Chronicles 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.” People get the wrong idea about what it means to humble ourselves. A lot of us think it means to wallow in misery and shame and guilt and feel bad about the sins we have committed. But that’s not it at all!
I like what Madeleine L’Engel said about it. Based on the fact that God called us to come to him as little children, innocent and dependent upon father God, the truth is, “we can only be humble when we know that we are God’s children, of infinite value and eternally loved.” It is God’s forgiving and gracious love, displayed on the cross of Christ and vindicated in his resurrection from the dead that gives us the courage to be honest before him and admit to the logs in our eyes. It is the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts when we believe this gospel that gives us the Spirit that cries out Abba, Father. Daddy, help us!
True humility leads to joy! It is the joy of knowing that we can be happy in Christ even though we don’t deserve it. It is the joy of knowing that no matter how bad things look on the outside, God is in charge, and as we depend on Him he can use us in His plan to make things better. True humility is what gives us the power to change the world! Think of it, Daniel in his captivity was used by God to lead the pagan King of Babylon to a better faith in the one true God.
Therefore, as true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, let each citizen of our own great nation take full responsibility for the future of this nation. There are so many avenues of service. Find what is meaningful to you and participate, whether it is caring for people through education, day care, homeless shelters, food pantries, jail ministries, evangelism, teaching, or even preaching. But it all starts with our humble and prayerful dependence upon God to show us the works he has prepared in advance for us to do. We must depend upon his Holy Spirit, through whom we receive gifts that enable us to serve.
This is not a time to throw up our hands in despair and blame anybody else for the problems we see. This is a time to call out to God, throw up our hands in praise to his holy name and see where he would call us to serve. Let each citizen of this great nation give thanks to God for the freedoms and liberties we do enjoy. Let each one seek the Lord’s face and answer his call to do whatever we can do to make the world in which we live a better place.
I have been speaking to the Church, the citizens of the Kingdom of God, the only nation in the world whose God really is the Lord. But I must not close this message without offering an open invitation to anyone who has not yet realized that God’s welcome home is still available to anyone who now sees their need of forgiveness and grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! That’s the heart of the gospel. It is what God has done for you through Christ on the cross! Faith in that will lead you into a new life of humble service and obedience to your one true King. It is not necessarily an easy life, for we enter into a battle against the sins that still want to rule us. But it is a good life and the best life and we have each other for help and support. Let us pray.
Hear us from Heaven O Lord! Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. “Lord, you are righteous, but because of Jesus, your one and only soon who died in our place, this day we are not covered with shame. We are covered by the righteous blood of Christ!
“Now, Lord, our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand, who later lead your people to the shores of this land and helped us form what would become the United States of America and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, hear the prayers and petitions of your servants. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your people, the body of Christ, the living temple of the Holy Lord, that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.
Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O Lord, do not delay, because your people bear your Name. Strengthen us again to serve you well and bear much fruit, going everywhere we can to make new disciples and instructing them in true obedience that brings the greatest freedoms and joys. Thank you for you great, great love Father God, patient and kind. Grant that we may see, with our own eyes, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, as we watch you add to our number daily those who are being saved through faith in Jesus Christ, in whose mighty name we pray. Amen.”
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