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00:03 Once again, it's my joy and privilege to be standing here sharing with you from the word of God. We have just started
00:09 the new series on prayer. And last Sunday, Dr. Peter, if you were here, he
00:14 delivered the first installment uh on Abraham's prayer for the city from
00:20 Genesis chapter 18. And this morning um it's the second sermon in the series
00:26 with a text taken from um I've got the clicker
00:37 with the text taken from Daniel chapter 9 uh verses 1-19. Thanks to Brandon for
00:42 reading the text to us. We'll be looking at the uh prayer of Daniel for forgiveness. Now from the title you
00:49 might expect the message to be uh something on sin and forgiveness. We
00:55 will of course touch on these issues. Uh after all this is a prayer uh of confession. But more importantly we want
01:02 to go deeper into the text to see uh what we can learn on uh how to pray uh
01:09 specifically the kind of attitude that we should demonstrate when we uh when we approach the throne of God in prayer. In
01:17 other words, what uh spiritual posture should we adopt when we pray? Uh not
01:23 only when we pray for forgiveness, but also uh generally whenever we pray. In
01:28 our text today, we see Daniel pouring his heart out when he comes before God
01:34 in prayer and confession. It sounds like he's uh praying and confessing on behalf of all Israelites like a sort of a
01:42 corporate prayer. But in verse 20 in the verse immediately after our text uh it
01:49 says that uh Daniel says while I was speaking and praying confessing my sin
01:55 and the sin of my people Israel. So it appears that uh as much as it is a corporate prayer it is also a private
02:03 prayer for Daniel himself is not without sin. And this the prayer of Daniel in Daniel
02:10 chapter 9 is one of the most instructive passages of the Old Testament and our
02:16 prayer life will likely not be the same henceforth after we have unpacked these verses and we see the way Daniel prays.
02:25 uh verse three in verse three he says um so I turned to the Lord God and pleaded
02:30 with him in prayer and petition and he continues in verse four I pray to the
02:35 Lord my God and confess so what is Daniel praying about why is
02:41 he confessing we will of course look into this but as I just said uh more
02:46 importantly we'll also want to see how he prays uh shall we first commit this time to the Lord let's Pray.
02:55 Our father in heaven, often times our prayers are just so short and shallow. We habitually come to you with our list
03:03 of needs and wants, treating you as a mere provider of solutions to our
03:08 problems. As we study this prayer of Daniel, teach us to pray less casually and more
03:15 deeply. May these verses come alive to shape our attitude during prayer and our
03:21 attitude towards you. For this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
03:28 About a month ago, uh my wife and I were in Tokyo for a week. Uh she had two days
03:34 of meetings to uh to attend at her company headquarters. Uh while I also
03:39 had to meet uh with several people on business related matters. But apart from
03:44 that uh we spent several wonderful days together enjoying this fascinating city.
03:50 Tokyo is always very nice. But the best part of the trip was um spending a
03:55 lovely evening uh with our ex- boss, our means, both of us, our ex- boss, Mr. Hi
04:01 and his wife. I have not met them uh in more than 20 years
04:07 because back in 1988, Mr. Hi offered me a job in Ko Malaysia where I where I met
04:14 Lean for the first time. She was in human resource and she was very helpful to arrange uh every aspect of my joining
04:22 the company. But it was it wasn't exactly love at first sight
04:28 as it took a bit of time and effort to just together to respond to my
04:33 overtures. We got married six years later in 1994
04:38 thanks to our Japanese MD because if not for him I wouldn't have met my the woman
04:44 who will later become my wife. Of course if I had not known Mr. Hi or
04:49 not taken up his offer I will probably have married someone else.
04:54 Then I will not be as happy and blessed as I am today.
05:03 I'm saying this as an advice to all of you husbands
05:08 because you must learn to say sweet words like this to your wife and you better mean it.
05:17 This is the picture taken uh on 12th June last month with Mr. Mr. Sarai. We
05:22 had a lavish uh Italian meal on the top floor of uh the Asah Tower in Asakusa
05:30 overlooking Tokyo by night. It was a wonderful evening of catching up uh talking about children, about work and
05:37 also reminiscing the past. Actually, what I really want to tell you is this. That over the 22 years of
05:44 marriage, my wife and I have been harboring this growing sense that it was
05:49 God who brought us together. That Mr. Hai's action was merely a part
05:55 of his sovereign plan. Which is to say, we came to believe in a God who
06:00 intervenes in our lives, who arranges things in our paths so that everything happens according to his uh sovereign
06:08 will. Do you also believe in such a God?
06:13 Now for a for a more dramatic display of God's intervention in our lives, let me relate an incident during the trip last
06:19 month. We were on our last day in Tokyo, a Thursday and the night before I was
06:26 listening to the weather forecast on TV which predicted a 100% chance of rain the next day. So I told Lean that
06:33 tomorrow was going to be a wet day. Her answer was, "Never mind what the weatherman says. I'm going to pray that
06:41 God holds back the rain." I tried to point her to the weather map
06:46 and explain to her that the low pressure system was coming in and what it meant. Low pressure means bad weather. High
06:55 pressure means good weather. To me, it was signs. To me, the next day, sure
07:01 rain. My wife replied, "Thank you very much, but I'm still going to pray." So
07:06 the next morning, I brought along two umbrellas. The sea was the city was blanketed by dark, heavy clouds. But you
07:14 know what? Not a single drop of rain throughout the day. We could enjoy our
07:20 last day in Tokyo. After dinner around 8:00 p.m., uh we returned to the hotel to to uh collect
07:27 our luggage because we took a night flight back. A taxi happened to be waiting outside the hotel. As soon as we
07:33 got into our taxi on the way to the airport, it started to pour.
07:39 It was as if the sky couldn't wait to unload all that rain. And talk about
07:45 timing. The moment we step into the taxi and the moment the taxi left the hotel, it started to pour.
07:52 And that evening, I learned a thing or two from my wife about the power of prayer. that our God who calmed the
07:59 storms, who parted the water of the Red Sea, surely he could hold back the rain.
08:05 But that's not my point. My point is again, do you believe in a God who
08:10 intervenes in our life? But what has all this got to do with Daniel chapter 9? I will come back to
08:16 this in a moment. And so let us get started with the text. Uh the first two verses uh give us the historical
08:24 background to the chapter. Uh let's look at verse one. In the first year of Darius, king of Zersix, uh this is a
08:30 very hard name to pronounce. Uh I checked the internet is supposed to pronounce uh Zersix
08:36 a meet by descent who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom. We shall
08:42 spend a couple of minutes on this and see what was going on. Whenever necessary, it it is worthwhile to read
08:48 certain portions of scripture in their historical context so that we can get more out of our study of God's word. In
08:56 the book of Daniel, Daniel was not in Jerusalem, but he was
09:01 held in captivity in Babylon. In 606 BC, he was exiled as a young man
09:09 to the capital of the Babylonian kingdom. And you can read more about this in Daniel chapter 1.
09:15 In 606 BC, the year he was exiled to the Babylonian uh capital, this empire was
09:23 at the height of his power. And there was there was a king in in in Judah at that time uh King Jehoakim.
09:31 But he was a weak king and he was subject subjugated by this more powerful and famous Babylonian king
09:39 Nebuchadnezzar who took many Israelites as captives to Babylon.
09:44 And this deportation to the of the Jews to Babylon took place in four waves, not
09:50 once but four waves uh from 606 BC to 581 BC. And Daniel was among the first
09:60 wave of captives. Now many of us know a bit about this not
10:05 from the pages of scripture but from this group Bonym
10:10 with their hit song Rivers of Babylon and many of you know the song those who
10:16 are older and the first line goes like this by the rivers of sorry I can't sing by the
10:21 rivers of Babylon we there we sat down yeah we wept when we remembered Zion
10:29 of course it's not exactly a Sunday school song it is a pop song about the exile of the nation of Israel to
10:36 Babylon. Many of you do not know that much of the lyrics uh was taken from Psalm 137 and a
10:45 smaller portion from Psalm 19. So Bonam,
10:50 they knew the Bible. If you're not impressed by the the lyrics of a of a song from a pop group,
10:56 let me direct you to this uh clay tablet kept in at the British Museum. It is
11:02 part of a collection of tablets known as the Babylonian uh chronicles
11:08 excavated uh in the 19th century more than 100 years ago in modern day Iraq.
11:13 Now this particular piece is interesting because it records uh the events of the
11:20 in the Babylonian Empire from the year 605 BC to 594 BC and it mentions the
11:27 captivity of the Israelites uh in Babylon. That is if you can read the the
11:33 uniform writing. I'm telling you this so that you can be assured that the Bible is not a
11:38 collection of myths and fables. It is well authenticated by archaeology.
11:45 Between Daniel chapter one and chapter 9 today, Nebuchadnezzar had already laid waste
11:53 the city of Jerusalem and completely destroyed the temple. And that happened
11:58 in the year 586 BC. A very important year in Bible history. Remember 586 BC
12:07 Jerusalem and the temple was completely destroyed. And that happened 20 years
12:12 after Daniel arrived at Babylon. And uh just two decade decades and city was
12:17 gone. But the Babylonian Empire didn't last very long after that only for
12:24 another less than 50 years. So by the time we get to Daniel chapter 9:1, our
12:30 text today, the Babylonians had just been conquered by a even more powerful
12:36 middle Persian Empire led by another powerful king Cyrus the Great. And you
12:42 can see that it covered an area even larger than the earlier Babylonian Empire.
12:48 And here is a a summary of the timeline of what we have seen so far to make it easier for us. So 20 years from the time
12:56 Daniel arrived at Babylon in 606 BC until the destruction of the temple uh
13:02 in Jerusalem in 586 BC. Okay. 20 uh 20 years and then another 47 years before
13:09 the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the middle Persian Empire. So at a point
13:16 in Daniel chapter 9:1 the year was 538 BC and the Israelites
13:23 have been in captivity for 68 years. If you total up 606 to 5 5 38 BC they have
13:30 been in captivity for 68 years. Now going back to the first verse of Daniel
13:36 chapter 9, it says that is the first year of Darius king of Zersix meet by uh
13:43 by descent. Now this Darius uh is said to be like a governor uh appointed by Cyrus the great
13:51 to to rule over or to to take charge over the the Babylonian territory within
13:56 the larger empire. And this is supported by the second part of verse one. He was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom.
14:05 Now this Darius here must not be confused with the king Darius uh
14:11 recorded in the book of Ezra. The Darius in Ezra who appeared much later was the
14:18 third king of the empire after Cyrus the great and another king. Okay, so be
14:23 careful. Two persons of the same name. And further in verse one it says that this local ruler Darius was the son of
14:31 Zersix. Now again there is another king Zersix in the in Ezra and so we should
14:38 not confuse uh these two person you know the Zersix in the king Zerix in Ezra is
14:44 the son of king Darius. I'm so sorry uh Bible study can be very
14:49 confusing because people share the same name. Okay we put it this way. Okay, the
14:56 Zersix here is the father of Darius. Okay, they are different from king uh
15:03 Zersix in the book of Ezra who was the son of king uh Darius.
15:10 Are you still confused? Okay, never mind. This not so important.
15:17 Lastly, it says that uh Darius was a meat by descent. Now the term Darius the
15:24 meat okay uh it actually appeared more than once okay you you can also find it in Daniel 5:31 and also 11:1 it simply
15:32 means that this guy Darius uh came from a region known as Media uh somewhere in
15:38 the center of the empire just south of the Caspian Sea. Now I hope you will bear with me giving
15:45 you this lengthy explanation of the historical setting because knowing the history will make verse two uh uh uh
15:52 clearer and in turn the rest of the text will make more sense to us. Now let's quickly get on with verse two which is
15:58 more important. Verse two, I Daniel understood from scriptures according to the word of the
16:05 Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet that the desolation of Jerusalem would last
16:11 70 years. Now you can imagine how the Israelites, especially Daniel, they were very
16:17 distressed over the disaster that had fallen upon them. Namely, the exile the
16:23 exile to Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. They had been taken by force to a foreign land and
16:30 their own city Jerusalem had been destroyed. Their temple was gone. But
16:36 Daniel knew his Bible well. He had been diligently study the word of God. From
16:43 specifically from Jeremiah 29:10, he knew that this disastrous period known
16:49 as the Babylonian captivity would only last 70 years. Jeremiah, there's a
16:55 prophecy in Jeremiah 29:10. This is what the Lord say. What? This is what the Lord says. When 70 years are completed
17:03 for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. This place means
17:10 Jerusalem, back to their their own land. So at the point of Daniel chapter 9:1 as
17:16 in our text today 68 years has has has passed which I I' I've shown you the you
17:22 know the timeline has shown you since the first wave of the exile to Babylon.
17:28 So we have two more years to go uh Daniel calculated uh would God keep his
17:34 promise? Although not explicitly mentioned here, Bible scholars have speculated that
17:41 actually Daniel was a bit worried because he must have also read another
17:46 passage in Jeremiah 18. I have no time to show that to you. Jeremiah 18 suggests that God's promise of 70 years
17:54 was conditional. If the Israelites were not repentant and were still
17:60 disobedient, then God might extend the exile and they might as well forget
18:05 about Jerusalem and the temple. Hence, we have Daniel coming uh to the Lord in
18:10 this intense prayer in chapter 9 and he as he approached God in deep confession
18:16 because two more years to go, okay, before the exile was supposed to end and Daniel paused his heart out and beg God
18:24 to keep his promise. Now, although not part of our text today, let me give you the ending to the
18:29 story. So, we jump, we fast forward, and it's a beautiful ending. As it turns out, Cyrus the Great was sympathetic to
18:36 the plight of the Israelites. And in 538 BC, the year that Daniel prayed this
18:41 prayer and after he prayed this prayer, Cyrus the Great issued a decree to allow
18:47 the Israelites to return uh to Judah and to rebuild their temple. And two years
18:52 later in 536 BC the foundation stone uh of the second temple was laid marking
18:59 the end of 70 years of Babylonian captivity. And so I must add the last line to the timeline uh uh from 606 BC
19:08 when Daniel was taken to Babylon until the bottom 536 BC when the foundation
19:14 for the temple was laid exactly 70 years. Now before I wrap up this portion of
19:20 sermon, let me offer you some thoughts uh for reflection.
19:26 Uh the Babylonian king Nemadezar, he is famous for taking the Israelites out of
19:32 their land, okay, and destroying uh their temple. Cyrus the great, the
19:38 Persian king on the other hand is well known for allowing the Israelites to return to their land and helping them to
19:45 build the temple. Now both of these kings in their respective place and time in history
19:52 they did what they did. They acted in accordance to their plans and their
19:57 strategies and their objectives. Yet at the same time, scripture is so
20:02 clear that he was the mighty hand of God moving through the pages and chapters of
20:09 history intervening in the lives of his people so that everything turns out
20:14 exactly according to his will and that's why I started the sermon the way I did.
20:20 Mr. Hi, who offered me that job in 1988, he did what he had what he had to do. He
20:25 acted according to the plans he had for the company. And yet behind the scene, unknown to us at that time, it was God
20:33 who was arranging things, intervening in my life and Lean's life. Do you believe
20:39 in such a God? We're now ready to to extract the main lessons from the rest
20:44 of the text. Remember, this is a prayer of confession and we are going to pick up some important points regarding
20:49 prayer or more specifically our attitude during prayer. There are four key lessons. One, we need to pray with fear
20:59 and trembling. Two, we need to pray with confidence. Three, we need to pray with
21:05 humility. And number four, we need to pray with expectation. We look we will look at uh them one by one. And as we do
21:12 so, we'll also examine some in some important attributes of God because each each of these point is based on a
21:18 certain character of God which if we can properly understand will change the way
21:24 we pray. Let's start with the first one um which is to pray with fear and
21:32 trembling. And the basis of this is that our God is a great and awesome God.
21:39 When Daniel starts his prayer, he begins by declaring in verse four,
21:45 Lord the great and awesome God. So from the onset he acknowledges that go the
21:52 the God he worships is mighty and powerful. He is in absolute control and
21:57 there is nothing that has happened or is happening or will happen that is outside the bounds of his will.
22:04 The Bible often speaks of the mighty hand of God including this chapter in verse 15. Now Lord our God who brought
22:12 your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
22:18 But how do we grasp or or take in the the greatness and awesomeness of God?
22:24 How how does a finite mind comprehend the infinite? I must admit that it is not easy. Maybe
22:31 it's impossible. Perhaps not in our lifetime, not in this current state. But
22:36 I'm sure that there will be one day when we reach the other side, when we approach the the throne of God physically, we'll be able to gain a full
22:44 measure of God's glory and majesty. Until then, in the meantime, what I do
22:51 is that I often go back to to the pages of of the Bible and to remind myself that my God is a great and awesome God.
22:60 My favorite passages are Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, both of which describe the
23:06 throne of God in heaven. And when you see what is happening around the throne of God, you cannot help but respond with
23:15 awe and wonder. You will start to use the term Almighty God differently and
23:22 more seriously. So I urge you to read Isaiah chapter 6 and Revelation chapter 4 as often as you can to remind yourself
23:29 the kind of God that we worship and serve. It will affect the way you pray
23:35 because the larger vision of God, the deeper the prayer, the acknowledgement
23:41 of God's power and sovereignty, his glory and majesty. If would you if you would acknowledge these attributes of
23:48 God, it will launch your prayers in in a in a different trajectory that will
23:53 bring you to a higher level of communion with God. The other suggestion is to is to listen
23:59 to or sing songs like how great thou art. One of my favorite. And the first
24:05 stanza reads, "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds
24:11 thy hands have made. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder, thy power
24:16 throughout the universe displayed. Then comes the beautiful words of the chorus. Then sings my soul, my savior God to
24:24 thee, how great thou art. So you see what is happening here. When
24:31 you acknowledge God's power and greatness, your soul lips in respond to
24:37 who he is. Hence, when you pray, please don't jump straight into your your list of needs
24:44 and start paring your your requests. Of course, you can come to God with your problems and pain. You can come to God
24:51 with your issues and challenges. He wants to hear them, but that can come a little later. We should always start our
24:57 prayer like Daniel by worshiping his greatness and awesomeness, by acknowledging his power and sovereignty,
25:05 his glory and majesty. And this is the first lesson from Daniel's prayer in Daniel chapter 9 that we should pray
25:12 with fear and trembling. But it's not to say that we should be afraid or we should be terrified when we
25:18 whenever we approach God in prayer. Although a little bit of that might do you a little bit of good. Now these two
25:24 words fear and trembling appear often in the Bible and they can be misunderstood.
25:30 What the term fear and trembling really means is more of respect and reverence.
25:37 To respect means to to to have a deep sense of admiration for someone because
25:42 of his abilities or qualities. To revere means to hold someone in high esteem or
25:49 to think highly of someone. And this is the tone we find in Daniel's prayer.
25:55 Daniel's prayer is first and foremost marked by reverence for God. As you read
26:00 the 19 verses of today's text, you can pick up more than a trace of fear and trembling as he approaches God in
26:07 prayer. Paul himself also use this term fear and trembling for example in
26:12 Philippians 2:12. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now
26:19 much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Now this verse is sometimes
26:26 wrongly used to to frighten Christians that that they stand to lose their salvation if they fail to do this or that. But what Paul is trying to say is
26:33 that as we press on, as we strive to be more Christlike and to be more obedient, and this is what it means by by uh
26:39 working out your salvation, as we continue to grow and mature, we do so with a healthy dose of a sense of awe or
26:47 an attitude of respect and reverence for God for who he is. And hence the first lesson, pray with fear and trembling.
26:57 The second lesson on our attitude during prayer is that we should pray with confidence. And the basis of this is that our God is
27:05 a loving God. In verse four, after he addresses God as
27:10 a great and awesome God, Daniel describes God as a God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him
27:17 and keep his commandments. In other words, our God is in a covenantal relationship with his people and that
27:24 relationship is based on love or in short, God loves us and wants to have a
27:30 relationship with us. Now to underscore this, there is a verse outside our text further down in verse 23 of Daniel
27:37 chapter 9. Um verse 23 has this uh scenario. After he finishes his prayer,
27:44 an angel appears before Daniel and he says to him, "As soon as you begin to pray, a word went out and I've come to
27:51 tell you." So the angel has come to tell Daniel, for you are highly esteemed.
27:58 So Daniel is told, "You are highly esteemed." Now this is a bit hard to understand, but in the New King James
28:04 version, it says, "You are greatly beloved."
28:09 And in the New Living Translation, they they have it as you are very precious to God. What is the angel telling Daniel?
28:16 He's telling Daniel, God loves you. And what does this mean to us when when
28:22 we come to to to to God in prayer? God loves you. God loves me. And if you and
28:28 I are in an intimate and functioning relationship with God, it changes everything, including our prayers. The
28:36 trouble with us is that while we profess we love God, our actions and our lifestyle indicate otherwise in reality
28:43 we only love God to a certain extent only to a degree that is convenient to
28:49 us according to our term. Our relationship with God often is not as deep as it should be. So isn't it any
28:56 wonder that our prayers life is our prayer life is also weak and in ineffective.
29:03 Now, I was listening to a sermon by pastor Tim Keller of New York. Uh Peter
29:08 sent it to me and he was talking about the darkness and and and and gloom and
29:15 turmoil uh engulfing the world today. And last Sunday, Dr. Peter also showed
29:20 us some pictures of what has been happening in the various cities from Brussels to Paris, Orlando to Dallas,
29:28 from Anara to Tel Aviv, from Baghdad to to Dhaka in Bangladesh and just three
29:34 days ago shocking news from the city of Nice in uh in southern France.
29:41 But isn't it any wonder that all this is happening that when you take God out of the picture when people are turning away
29:48 from God or even turning against God what do you expect? Year after year statistics show that the
29:55 number of atheist is r is increasing and church attendance is dropping. The media
30:02 also paints uh the rising tide of this other religion with his growing radical face. And Tim Keller commented that we
30:11 often looked out the window and we tend to say that this is not what is supposed to be. The world is not what it's
30:18 supposed to be. We ask why is the world descending into chaos.
30:24 But Tim Keller also suggested that instead of just looking outside the window, we should also look into the
30:31 mirror. We should also look at ourselves and ask are we the person that we are
30:38 supposed to be. And this morning I extend uh Tim Keller's question by
30:43 asking are we in a close relationship with God that we are supposed to be in?
30:50 As I said, as I said just now, if you and I are in an intimate and functioning relationship with God, it would change
30:57 everything. Now, let me offer you an analogy how intimate relationship with God will
31:05 change everything. In 1988, when I was when I accepted the offer, the job offer from Mr. Hay, he
31:12 assigned me to work in this big factory in Plang.
31:17 Now this was a picture taken around that time in front of the factory with a group of Japanese visitors. I picked
31:24 this picture to show you that there was once my where my hair was more black. Okay.
31:32 Anyway, I was leading this team of technicians to run uh and maintain this
31:37 new high-tech machine that the company has bought. It was so long. I think it
31:43 stretches from this end to the other end, you know, across the length of this hall. A huge high-tech machine and
31:50 because the machine cost several million ringit, it was critical for us to keep
31:55 the thing running as smoothly as possible. And Mr. kept bugging me and you know asking me about the efficiency
32:02 rate which is defined as uh the total working time uh less the downtime of the
32:08 machine and it was supposed to be around 75 to 80%. That was the target he gave
32:13 to me because he was very concerned. We met investment very high and how did we keep how do you achieve a high rate of
32:22 of machine machine efficiency? I had a shelf full of manuals
32:29 one for each part of the machine a big book from for every circuitry.
32:34 You know I was constantly reading them digesting them. I was also in constant touch with the manufacturer in Japan
32:41 talking to them asking them this and that. You may say that I was in a close relationship with the manufacturer.
32:50 The analogy is this. The manuals I was reading on studying are like the Bible.
32:56 My frequent calls to Japan are like prayers and the machine is not like our
33:01 lives. And the point is, how can we expect to live our lives the way they should be lived without reading the
33:07 Bible and without praying? How can our lives be purposeful? How can our prayer life be effective without an intimate
33:15 relationship with our manufacturer? When we are in an intimate relationship
33:21 with God, we can approach God with confidence. Just like our two children,
33:26 they come to us in confidence because they know we love them. and the they
33:32 love us. God loves Daniel and Daniel loves God and he is in a close
33:37 relationship with God. That's why Daniel's prayer here is also marked by a sense of confidence that you can detect
33:43 throughout the prayer. His motivation is that he knows God personally and he can
33:49 come before God confidently. And this is the second lesson.
33:55 The third lesson is besides praying with fear and trembling and with confidence, we can we should also pray with
34:00 humility. And the basis of this is that our God is a righteous God. Daniel in
34:06 his prayer says this not once but three times in verses 7, 14 and 16. In verses
34:12 7, in verse 7, Lord, you are righteous. Verse 14, the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does. Verse 16, Lord,
34:18 in keeping with all your righteous acts. When we say God is righteous, it means that he's holy. He is pure and perfect,
34:27 meaning he cannot tolerate the slightest sin and not a trace of sin can be found
34:33 in him or near him. It also means that he is a fair and just God and he did and
34:38 will punish all sins and wrongs. I have mentioned in a previous sermon that if
34:44 God does not hold sinners accountable for their sins, if God does not meet out
34:50 judgment against evil, then this God is not worthy of our worship. He will not
34:55 be God by definition. In the earlier part of the sermon, I laid out for you uh the historical
35:01 setting to the text. how king Nebuchadnezzar exiled the Israelites to Babylon from 606 BC and how he destroyed
35:09 the Jerusalem and the temple in in 586 BC. I also highlighted that it was God's
35:14 mighty hand moving behind the scene intervening in the in the history of the Israelites. But I didn't explain why God
35:21 delivered such a severe judgment upon his people. If you scrutinize the text,
35:27 five of the verses point to God's judgment upon the Israelites. Verse 7, you have scattered us. Verse 11, curses
35:33 and so on judgments have been poured out on us. Verse 12, bringing on us great
35:38 disaster. And verse verses 13 and 14 say the same thing about the disaster that God had brought upon them. Why did God
35:46 punish them? You see, in the years and even centuries before the events of uh
35:52 of in the book of Daniel, the Israelites had turned away from God. They had rebelled against him. They worshiped
35:59 idols and broke many of his commandments. In short, they thumbmed their noses at God. But God was super
36:06 patient with them. He sent prophet after prophet to warn them, but to no avail. And finally, he had to act. In his
36:13 righteousness, he acted through the Babylonians. In our second lesson, we saw how God is
36:19 a God of love. Here we see God as a righteous God. God is love. At the same
36:24 time, God is righteous. They are like two sides of the same coin. Now, it's easier to appreciate a loving God, but
36:31 it's much harder to grasp or to to to to take in the idea of of a righteous and
36:37 holy God. But how does an awareness of the of God's righteousness help shape
36:42 our attitude during prayer? By making us realize the sinfulness of
36:48 our sin. So that we can remove any trace of
36:53 self-righteousness and self-justification. so that we can draw even closer to God. The more we perceive
36:60 God's righteousness, the deeper will be our prayer.
37:05 Now earlier I mentioned Isaiah chapter 6 which describes the throne of God. From that passage you will notice that in a
37:12 close encounter with God a person will realize the depth of his sins.
37:18 When Isaiah saw God in all his holiness, he reacted uh uh uh by crying out in
37:23 verse six of Isaiah verse 5 of Isaiah 6. Woe to me I'm ruined for I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people
37:29 of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king the Lord Almighty.
37:36 It is important to note that in the presence of God who is righteous, Isaiah suddenly became very aware of the
37:43 sinfulness of his sins. It's also important to note that Isaiah was no ordinary person. He was the a prophet of
37:50 God. Yet he described himself as unclean.
37:55 And this is what I mean by praying with humility. In other words, to lower yourselves in the face of God's
38:02 righteousness and holiness. Now, let me give you another example that is more recent and even closer to
38:09 home. A few days ago, someone sent me this YouTube link and I listened to this
38:14 amazing testimony by an Iranian who now lives in Vancouver. His name is Af Afin
38:21 Javeed. Now he left his former faith and became a follower of Jesus. And that
38:26 happened in 1989 in Kolalumpo. In Kolalumpo. At that time I was still
38:33 busy working in Port Clang. That year 1989, Afidin was in Malaysia but he was
38:39 soon arrested for some immigration offenses and he ended up in Pudu jail for about 6 months. Now to cut a long
38:45 story short, while sitting in his jail in Pudu, he had an encounter with Jesus.
38:51 Now what I want to point out is this. When Jesus stood in his cell in Pudu,
38:56 Ashin immediately felt the holiness and the righteousness of of God. and he
39:03 quickly withdrew to a corner with his with his face in his hands crying, "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me."
39:10 Now, the key to a to a more intense prayer is to is to be aware of the
39:16 immense gap between the exalted height of God's righteousness and the utter
39:21 depth of our sins. The bigger we perceive this gap, the
39:27 deeper will be your prayer. And this gap will seem smaller if you harbor any measure of self-righteousness or
39:34 self-justification. And the result will be a half-hearted confession or a half-cooked remorse. Confession is
39:41 admitting you have done wrong. Remorse is regretting you have done wrong. And
39:46 confession is meaningless without remorse. Going back to the text, you can see
39:52 Daniel in deep confession and sincere remorse because in 19 in 11 of the 19
39:60 verses, there's a lot. He lists the sins of his people by using the pronounced
40:05 we, us, our, he's including himself as he admits to all the wrongs that he and
40:11 his people have committed. Verse five, we have sinned. We have done wrong. We have been wicked. We have rebelled. We
40:17 have turned away from God's law. Verse six, we have not listened to the prophets. Verse 7, we are we are covered
40:22 with shame. We have been unfaithful. And the rest of verses from 8 to 11, from 13 to 16, he repeats and repeats the
40:28 mention of all these transgressions over and over again. And now this is not to say that we should employ repetition in
40:35 our in our confessions. No, we should avoid meaningless repetitions. But here we get the sense that Daniel keeps
40:42 repeating himself because he's truly sorry for what he and his people have done. It reflects the s the sincerity of
40:49 his remorse. When you are sincerely remorseful like Daniel, you do not attempt to mitigate
40:56 the punishment. There is no hint of mitigation in Daniel's prayer. We only
41:02 see humility in the face of a righteous God. I skip this. He says in he says in
41:09 verse 18, we do not make requests of you because we are righteous. We do not make requests of you because we are
41:14 righteous. There's none. As for us, we often try to excuse our mistakes. How
41:20 often do we say, "I'm I'm so sorry I'm late, but you know, now the traffic is so unpredictable. You know, the car
41:28 wouldn't start and all this." When sorry is followed by but,
41:33 then it is not sincere remorse because confession and mitigation cannot go
41:39 together. And speaking of mitigation, when I was working in BLANG, Around that
41:46 time, 1988, 1989, I was issued a summon. I was once issued a summon for speeding. I think I was rushing to work. But I
41:52 left the summon in the car and I soon forgotten about it. Many many months later, you know, I saw it in the car and
41:59 I rushed to the police station in Clank to settle it and the clerk at the station, she was checking her records,
42:06 you know, and told me that unfortunately the grace period was over and my file had been sent to the magistrate court.
42:13 So I went to the magistrate court nearby and the clerk there located my file. My
42:18 file was there and she was very kind. She she told me that the court was in session and she would try to to pass my
42:23 file to the magistrate. I was told to wait in the courtroom and it was a very uncomfortable feeling sitting among
42:31 motorcycle thieves and rapists and they were all in handcuffs.
42:37 I was numbered among the criminals left and right. It was like wearing a sack cloth. You
42:43 know, when my turn came, the charge was red that I was over the speed limit uh
42:48 on such and such a road or such such a date and and this time and the lady's
42:54 magistrate looked at me sternly and asked how how I would plead. So I answered guiltier
43:01 and she asked me she asked if I have anything to say, you know. And so I went
43:08 into this long mitigation speech. Luckily I was wearing my factory uniform
43:14 and said I said I was a humble factory worker earning very low salary which was
43:19 not true. I also mentioned that it was my first offense which also was not true and I
43:26 promised I will never ever speed which of course it would never happen.
43:32 Finally she slammed her what do you call that hammer the gavvel or the gavvel and pronounced denda dato slap plur ringit
43:41 or in other words 280 ringgit fine I gladly paid a fine but was I remorseful
43:47 absolutely not you may laugh but I I'm relating this experience in order to illustrate how
43:53 much we need to come before God in deep confession and sincere remorse out of an
44:02 awareness awareness uh that he's supremely righteous and exceedingly holy without a hint of of self-righteousness
44:09 or self uh justification because the Bible describes our righteousness if there's any as filthy racks. In other
44:16 words, to come before God with utter humility. Now, we need to rush a little bit. God says in Isaiah 66:2, "Has not
44:24 my hands made all these things?" And so, they came to being this wonderful verse. These are the ones I look with on with
44:30 favor. Those who are humble and contrite in spirit. Those who are humble and contrite in spirits. God look at these
44:38 people with favor and who tremble at my word. And this is the third lesson that we should lower ourselves and pray with
44:44 humility. Now let's quickly get on with the last lesson. We should not only pray with uh fear and trembling with
44:50 confidence and humility, but also with expectation. And this is because our God
44:56 is a merciful and forgiving God. Now Daniel mentions this in his prayer in
45:02 verse 9. The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving. And he somewhat repeats
45:07 this in verse 18. Because of your great mercy. Now earlier in verse in lesson two, we we saw how God is is a God of
45:14 love. He loves us but he hates sin at the same time. However, because of his nature as a merciful and forgiving God,
45:22 we sinners have hope yet. Because of what Daniel knows about God and his
45:27 mercies and his forgiving nature, he decides to beseech God to turn away from
45:33 his anger and his wrath. From verse 16, he's counting on God's mercy. As
45:39 Lamentations 3:23 tells us, his mercies are new every morning. How wonderful
45:45 indeed because Daniel is so optimistic that God will act according to his merciful nature. It gives him a sense of
45:52 bonus towards the end of his prayer. And the last three verses of our text are pretty remarkable. I was amazed to read
45:58 this as Daniel concludes his prayer with amazing audacity. Verse 17, hear the
46:05 prayers and petitions of your servant. Okay. And verse 18, give ear our Lord and hear. Open your eyes and see. Verse
46:14 19. Lord, listen. Lord, forgive. Lord, hear and act. Do not delay.
46:23 Do you dare to pray like this? Tell God do not delay. You know, but even as he
46:28 prays, Daniel can only hope that God will relent. As explained earlier, he
46:33 knows from Jeremiah 29, well, the exile the exile will was supposed to end in 70 years. But he also read from the Daniel
46:41 uh this Jeremiah 18 that suggests that this promise may be conditional. So he
46:47 was thinking you know have have they been punished sufficiently for their evil and wickedness? Has the ros of God
46:54 been satisfied? You know and you can only hope and there is no guarantee because they still might be sin in in
46:59 their midst. You might like to know that the temple that that they rebuilt in the in in 536
47:06 BC and which they completed in 516 BC, it was again destroyed later by the
47:11 Romans in 70 AD and the R and the brutal Roman army worse than the Persians. They
47:19 completely desolated the temple and not a stone was left standing and this was
47:25 under a separate and a different more severe judgment for God from God. And in that year AD70, another important year
47:31 in Jewish history, the Jews were expelled mostly to Europe, but later they they were found in many parts of
47:37 the world in from South Africa to South America, from US to to India. And there
47:42 was even a small Jewish community in Pinang. And today you can visit
47:48 uh this sorry today you can visit a Jewish cemetery not far from Kta,
47:55 although I'm not sure if you can go in. I think it's locked. And notice the date on the tombstone
48:02 1835. And I think the last Jew to be buried there was uh just 5 years ago
48:08 2011. Now this exile uh last this second exile uh lasted from 70 AD until recently 1948
48:17 when God again in his mercy allowed the Jews to return once again to their homeland. Now, from 70 AD, you calculate
48:23 until 1948 and this second exile lasted almost 1,900 years. My point is this,
48:29 compared to this 1,900 years of exile, the recent exile, this 70 years of exile
48:35 in in Daniel is is quite short. But of course, Daniel didn't know that because
48:41 we have the hindsight of history. Nevertheless, he approached he still appealed to God's mercy and he hoped
48:46 that his compassion would prevail. Okay, enough of history. But how does an an
48:52 awareness of God's mercy and forgiving nature help to shape our prayers? What does it mean to pray with expectation?
48:58 Yeah, this is the fourth point. Now here I would like to speculate this that had Daniel lived 600 years later after the
49:04 events of the gospel after what happened at Calvary, if he had prayed after the
49:10 atoning work of Christ on the cross, he would have prayed not just with hope but with expectation. Because when Jesus
49:16 died on the cross, he bore the punishments for all of humanity's sins including the Israelites. So timing was
49:23 uh is critical. And we on this side of the cross, we can come before God with a
49:29 blessed assurance that not only is he merciful and forgiving, but he has already he has already showed showed his
49:37 uh his mercy and he has already already forgiven because of the work of Christ on the
49:43 cross. So we need uh only to embrace his uh mercy and forgiveness because one
49:49 John 1:9 assures us if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our forgive us our sins and
49:55 purify us from all unrighteousness. And that's why we can pray with expectation. In con in concluding the sermon, let's
50:02 do a quick recap of the four lessons that we have learned today from the prayers of Daniel. We have picked up uh
50:08 number one uh we should pray with fear and trembling with confidence. Number three with humility. And lastly, we
50:14 should pray with expectation. And let me end the sermon with a point of application.
50:20 Now, in our journey of life, God may not hold back the rain all the time,
50:26 metaphorically speaking, but when we pray deeply and earnestly
50:32 with the right attitude, it will lead us to a higher level of trust and faith in
50:38 God. so that come what may we may rest in his faithfulness. But how do we acquire the
50:46 right attitude during our prayers? How do we pray like Daniel with the right attitude? Now you can remember all these
50:51 lessons and you can even write them down. You know, you can try to put them to practice. But let me tell you, it won't be easy. And a parallel to this is
50:58 when Jesus said to his disciples in John 14:15 uh in the upper room, if you love me,
51:04 keep my commands. If you love me, keep my commands. But do you think it's easy to keep God's commandment? Of course
51:11 not. And that's why immediately after he said that, he promised the disciples that the father would send them a
51:17 counselor or a helper who is the Holy Spirit to help them. So how do we acquire the right attitude during our
51:24 prayers? The answer is to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us to counsel us and to help us. The key is the Holy Spirit.
51:31 You can never do it on your own. And I pray that the spirit not only dwells in you but also fills you and works in you.
51:38 But how do I know that the Holy Spirit is filling me and working in me? Now that is the topic for another sermon.
51:44 Okay. Shall we close in prayer? Our father in heaven uh teach us to pray
51:49 like Daniel pouring our hearts to you with fear and trembling and with humility and also with confidence and
51:56 with expectation. May your spirit continue its transforming work in us so that each time we pray we can enjoy the
52:04 sweet of prayer. For this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
