What Daniel Saw

1 This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon … It said: 4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 ‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.’ 8 Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. 9 They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,’ declares the Lord. 10 This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.’ (Jeremiah 29:1-14)
 

1 In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom – 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. 3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the Lord my God.  (Daniel 9:1-4)
Yesterday we learned from Acts 4 how we are to become effective in our prayers by praying the promises of Scripture back to God. He has hidden what he wants to give us at the back of his cupboard and has given us clues through the Scriptures as to what he wants us to pray so that he can give us what he longs to give us.

Today’s Bible readings from Jeremiah 29 and Daniel 9 show us that this is not a one-off lesson. This is consistently how the great men and women of God in the Bible learned to pray effective prayers.

It is 539BC, a few weeks after the fall of Babylon to the Persians. Daniel is in the early days of his new job of overseeing forty provinces of the Persian Empire. He is clearly determined that this busy role will not distract him from his daily Bible readings. When he gets to Jeremiah 25:11-14, he suddenly gets very excited. The Lord has made a promise to the Jewish exiles. “These nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt.” “This is what the Lord says, ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place.’”
 

Daniel has just witnessed the fall of Babylon, so he quickly does a sum in his head.  If he went into exile in 605BC, then there can be only three years left until this prophecy is fulfilled. He is about to see the glorious return of the Jewish exiles to the Promised Land!

That’s where I might have stopped. I might have written the promise down in my notebook and then taken a few moments to worship the Lord for his promises. But Daniel doesn’t see the Scriptures as a ceremonial sword, to be admired. He sees them as a double-edged sword to be wielded against the forces of darkness through our prayer. He writes that “I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition.”

The Hebrew text can be translated, “So I set my face towards the Lord God”. There is a steely determination here in Daniel. He doesn’t treat the promises of God as a done deal. Scripture doesn’t make him retreat into passivity. It inspires him to go to war! He reasons that, if the Lord has revealed that the Jewish exile will only last for seventy years, then he must have done so in order to inspire the Jews to pray for their exile to end. He therefore makes those promises the subject of intense spiritual warfare.

I love the way that the famous nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon highlights this as the secret of how he led tens of thousands of nonbelievers to salvation. Using the language of old-fashioned banking in Victorian England, he urges us to see that “A promise from God may very instructively be compared to a cheque payable to order. It is given to the believer with the view of bestowing upon him some good thing. It is not meant that he should read it over comfortably, and then have done with it. No, he is to treat the promise as a reality, as a man treats a cheque. He is to take the promise, and endorse it with his own name by personally receiving it as true … This done, he must believingly present the promise to the Lord, as a man presents a cheque at the counter of the bank. He must plead it by prayer, expecting to have it fulfilled. If he has come to Heaven’s bank at the right date, he will receive the promised amount at once. If the date should happen to be further on, he must patiently wait till its arrival; but meanwhile he may count the promise as money, for the bank is sure to pay when the due time arrives. Some fail to place the endorsement of faith upon the cheque, and so they get nothing; and others are slack in presenting it, and these also receive nothing. This is not the fault of the promise, but of those who do not act with it in a common-sense, business-like manner. God has given no pledge which He will not redeem, and encouraged no hope which He will not fulfil.”

Let’s learn from Daniel to treat the promises of Scripture as a double-edged sword in our hands. Let’s learn from Charles Spurgeon and from his friend Hudson Taylor, the British missionary to China, who saw the same Gospel breakthroughs in China that his friend Charles Spurgeon saw back at home. He concluded that “There are three great truths: First, that there is a God. Second, that He has spoken to us in the Bible. Third, that He means what He says. Oh, the joy of trusting Him!”
1)   Let’s continue doing what we began to do yesterday. Which additional promises can you think of in Scripture which speak into some of the challenges that you are facing personally?

2)   Which additional promises can you think of in Scripture which speak into some of the challenges that we are facing as a church as we move out of lockdown together?

3)  Why wait to follow in the footsteps of Daniel, Charles Spurgeon and Hudson Taylor? Bring those promises to God in prayer right now and ask him to give you the very thing that he has promised you.
Today’s Everyday Devotions were brought to you by Phil Moore, who leads our team of whole-church elders.

If you have time, consider carrying on your conversation with God using one of our helpful Prayer Pathways.

Today’s Everyday Devotions have also inspired a devotional video that you can watch on our YouTube channel.

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