Source of Trouble
Good morning,
Daniel was one of perhaps the three greatest men in our Old Testament. In Daniel 9:23, he was called “greatly beloved.” In Daniel 10:11&18, there are many other statements made about Daniel and things he did that set him apart from others.
In Daniel 9, we see a lengthy prayer with much time devoted to confession. Although Daniel left Israel as a child and probably had little to do with any of the great sins of Israel, in his prayers, he took the blame: “neither have we hearkened” (9:6). Daniel includes himself in these prayers by often using the words we or us.
Daniel 9:13 “As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the LORD our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.”
vs. 14 “Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice.”
As Daniel confesses the sins of Israel, he gives us a clear prescription of judgment or mercy in this chapter. Notice in verse 13, they did not pray, they did not turn from their equities, and therefore, they did not understand God’s truth.
In this passage, I think we can see much of America’s folly. Honestly, how much prayer happens in the average home or the average Christians life? We must examine ourselves and ask how much time we spend in prayer.
Prayer brings us into God’s presence, and when we see how clean and holy God is, our natural response is to turn from our iniquities. The end result of much praying and turning from our sin is that God gives us understanding. The mess our country is in is because people are thoroughly confused, blind in identifying right and wrong, and have no moral compass to guide their decisions.
The passage does not stop there; notice verse 14: “Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us…”
When we choose to ignore prayer and fail to turn from our iniquities, the result is a tragic lack of understanding about truth and error. As such, being our own decision to ignore prayer and to refuse to turn from our sin, verse fourteen tells us that the Lord watches the evil that is brought upon us. We have no grounds on which to blame God or some political party; it is we who drifted from God, failed to clean up our lives, or lost the ability to understand truth, and when evil comes, God simply watches.
My desire is that God will see evil coming my way and that He will shield me from it or push it away. If that is my desire, then there is a mandate to pray, clean up my life, and beg God for help to understand truth.
The book of Daniel has a great deal of practical instruction and amazing prophetic truth, but this basic principle is brought before us by the man who opened his windows three times a day and prayed toward Jerusalem. (Daniel 6:10 & 13)
Pastor