Daniel 9:1-3, ‘In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of years which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.’
So Daniel was reading his Bible, and he had a moment of understanding of what God had said about him and the other Jews living in captivity in Babylon, the Babylonian exile.
Jeremiah 29:10, ‘Thus says the Lord, “When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I’ll visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.”’
Daniel suddenly realised, after a quick calculation, that the seventy years of captivity that God had mandated were almost up. We’ve talked about studying prophecy and about being balanced and not being weird, and we’ve also talked about studying it because it’s important enough for God to put into His Word for us. Daniel is a wonderful example of a balanced man of God. Being Jewish, he also viewed the fulfilment of Bible prophecy as being literal and not merely spiritual analogies.
What’s really interesting about Daniel’s understanding of the imminent fulfilment of prophecy regarding his people in Babylon, is in his immediate response to it.
Since Daniel was reading the writing of the prophet Jeremiah about the captivity being for seventy years, do you know what the Scripture immediately after said?
Jeremiah 29:11-14, ‘”For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you’ll call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I’ll listen to you. You’ll seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I’ll be found by you,” declares the Lord, “And I’ll restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places where I’ve driven you,” declares the Lord, and I’ll bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.”’
We like to quote verse 11 for ourselves, to emphasise that God doesn’t want us to experience calamity, but in this context, God was promising a future return to His people, promising them that His desire was to see them restored and brought home again. In fact, He sent the remnant to Babylon to keep them safe while His judgment fell on the wicked in Israel and Jerusalem. This particular passage that we like to hold onto for ourselves, is all about a future of restoration and security for the people of God after seventy years of exile in Babylon.
Isaac Newton, the scientist, was a very godly man who believed solidly in Scripture and he believed that all believers had the responsibility to try to understand God’s plans and purposes as revealed in the Word. He wrote a book called ‘Of Ye Day Of Judgment and World To Come’. [1] He was writing in the 17th and 18th centuries, but his focus was on the time frame of the Jewish people returning to Israel and he was particularly focused on the prophecies in Daniel, because they are all so incredibly accurate. I mention Isaac Newton only because, like Daniel, he took the Word of God, and the prophecies within it, very, very seriously, literally, and he was looking toward the day when Israel would once again be restored.
The real focus for us however, is to examine Daniel’s response to what he realised was about to happen. Daniel, a man of God, realised that he was about to witness a miracle, when his fellow Jews, exiles in Babylon for almost seventy years, were going to be allowed to return to Israel and their beloved Jerusalem.
What did Daniel do? He certainly didn’t do nothing. You’d think that would be the case, after all, God said something would happen and if God said it, then that’s the end of the argument, he could have simply sat back and watch God fulfil His Word and enjoy it all, after all, nothing he could do or say would change God’s plans. Daniel was absolutely confident that God would keep His promise. However, Daniel did do something.
- Daniel didn’t ask God to fix the world, he didn’t ask God to destroy wicked leaders, he didn’t ask God to move this or bind that or stop something else, or release here or there…what did he do?
- First, he honoured God for His covenants, His lovingkindness toward those who love and obey Him and then he repented for himself and his people. He repented.
- He confessed to the sins he and his people had committed that resulted in their exile to begin with, and confessed that he’d rejected the false prophets who’d been lying to them.
- He honoured God by declaring God’s righteousness which exposed the unrighteousness of his own people, admitting that the exile and punishments they’d experienced were justified and right.
- He honoured God by declaring that compassion and forgiveness belong to God and detailed all the sins his people had done.
- He asked God, who is righteous, to turn toward His people and forgive them, restore them, and deal compassionately with them because it was the nature of God to do such things.
Daniel’s prayer and all he said validated God’s judgment on this people, that He did the right thing by sending a remnant of His people into exile as a punishment. People tend to accuse the God of the Old Covenant as being brutal, heartless and lacking in compassion and that He was cruel, but Daniel, one of the exiles, confessed that God had been absolutely righteous and good in His dealings with them?
When things in our lives get hard, or we think God has forgotten about us, or doesn’t care, read Jeremiah 29…not just verse 11. God dealt with His people and told them they were going into exile because they deserved to be there…BUT…He also promised to bring them back, to give them a future and to restore them to their original home and plan. God was the orchestrator of it all…the punishment, the exile, the struggle and restoration, as well as the future and the hope.
Daniel’s prayerful response acknowledged God’s righteous perfection in all His dealings with His people.
There’s another thing about Daniel and his prayer life we need to finish with. He prayed three times a day. We’ve already talked about repeating our prayers and that by doing so we align ourselves with God’s Word and we build faith. That’s what Daniel did too.
Shalom
Mandy
(1) From S Snobelen’s paper: “The Mystery Of This Restitution Of All Things”: Isaac Newton on the Return of the Jews pp 12-13
