Daniel 9:3 – “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, ‘Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.'”
We have been looking at Daniel 9:3-6 and trying to glean from it aspects of prayer and life that will benefit churches that are truly looking for God Himself rather than religious activity to keep people busy and make them think that they are happy. Verse 3 has a key to true prayer in that Daniel gave his attention to the Lord God to seek Him. It is possible to seek most anything else but God in outward forms of religious prayer as we use His name. True prayer is always a seeking of God for Himself and His presence first and foremost. Daniel sought God by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. These outward things were means to help him focus on what he really needed to do which was to seek God.
We have noted in previous newsletters that in seeking God Daniel confessed his sin. Sin is what separates from God and it must be removed. Sin brings guilt and the guilt must be removed so that a perfectly just God could return to His people. The presence of unrepented sin is also in the soul and must be repented of for God to return. There are several aspects of sin that we can refer to as the essence of sin, but one important essence is that all sin is against God. David taught this in Psalm 51:4 and Daniel repeats that thought in 9:7. The unfaithful deeds of the Israelites were committed against God. It may be true that a believer is forgiven and will not perish in hell for his or her sin, but it is also true that sin is the reason that God withdraws His face from the believer or a church. If any individual or group of people desire to have the presence of God in their midst, that person or group of people must learn to confess sin and seek God to grant them repentance of it. While we are told that we must simply believe that our sin is gone and it is, that is not how the Bible looks at it. Sin must be removed by the blood of Christ and God Himself must grant forgiveness and His presence in our soul according to His own will. God is not obligated to forgive us no matter the words we say. We must learn to seek Him by confession and repentance.
Daniel uses four words for sin here. He is not satisfied to confess sin in the general, he uses four words to get at how bad it really is. He wanted to be thorough and not just get by. If you want to use Strong’s numbers to track these down, the word for sinned is #02398, the word for iniquity is #05753b, the word for wickedly is #07561, and the word for rebel is #04775. The word for sinned has the basic meaning of to miss or go wrong. The word for iniquity basically means to do wrong. The word for wickedness has the basic meaning of to act wickedly, and the word for rebel has the meaning of being rebellious. This may sound simple and straight to the point, but this should help us see the true nature of sin and why we must see our sin and repent of it if we any expectation of God returning to His people in the professing Church and working through them.
There is a contrast in this verse between God and the Israelites. God keeps His covenant and lovingkindness with those who love Him and keep His commandments. This is seen in the New Testament as well when Jesus said in John 14:15 that “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” He goes on in verse 21 to say even more: “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” We must be careful about the cause of love in this text, but we can at least see the link between loving God and God’s disclosing Himself to people. A people that desire God to disclose Himself to them must pursue God in love and keeping His commandments. The Greatest Commandment is to love God and the other commandments are only kept in love.
Without going into distinctions and similarities between the Old and New Covenants, we can at least know that God is the same God and that love for God will always involve keeping His commandments. There is no seeking of God apart from keeping His commandments and there is no love for God apart from keeping His commandments. God comes to those that love Him and keep His commandments and His love is with those people and He discloses Himself to those people. This is a vital point to make. The New Covenant promise is that God would live in His people and work in them to keep His commandments. Part of this work is that only true believers know God and love Him (I John 4:7-10). Only true believers know God in truth and so receive the love from the God who is love. But it is more than just receive the love of God; it is to have this God who is love live in those people and for the Spirit to bear the fruit of love in and through those who have Christ.
In Daniel 3 we see that God kept His covenant, yet the Israelites did not. God kept His lovingkindness, yet the Israelites did not. The covenant and lovingkindness of God were with those who loved Him and kept His commandments. The same is true today. In the New Covenant the love and mercy of God is in and on those who love Him and that very love for Him is from Him. While the Old Testament covenant people were cast off for breaking the covenant, the New Covenant people are in a covenant that God will work in them so that they will not be finally cast off. However, the New Covenant people are still in a relationship with God. They must submit their hearts and wills to Him in order to be His instruments of glory in this world. When they sin, the Lord withdraws and turns them over to hearts that are growing harder. The closeness is not there and the power and love of the Lord are not present with the people. They are turned over to their own devices.
Daniel draws the contrast out for us to see. We need to take a solemn warning from this. Instead of keeping the covenant with God to love Him and keep His commandments; the people missed the goal and went wrong (sinned). In going wrong they actually did what was wrong (iniquity) which broke the covenant. In breaking the covenant they acted wickedly and this was rebellion against God Himself in turning aside from His commandments and ordinances. All that is not in love is wickedness and rebellion against God. Then in verse 6 he confesses that they had not listened to the prophets. What is so bad about that? Prophets spoke in the name of God and indeed spoke the words of God to the people. It is a wicked thing not to listen to God and to actually turn from keeping His commandments. It is not that the people had totally turned from their religious practices, but they had turned from God in their hearts. They did not love God and when they did not love God they were wicked people who did not seek the Lord. They broke the covenant and in doing so they were rebels who deserved death.
In all sin there is a turning aside from the commandments and ordinances of God. We say we want God and yet by our turning from the commandments of God we show we don’t love the way His glory shines through us. The Ten Commandments are reflections of His own holiness and self-regard and when we turn from them we are turning from that which God’s glory shines in. When we turn from the commandments we turn from the way God works Himself in His people and then shines His glory through them. “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” When we turn from the commandments of God we are covenant breakers in that in the New Covenant it is God who works the love and strength in us to do them.
The professing Church in America has assuredly sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled. It has turned aside from His commandments and ordinances. It is not listening to those who truly preach the Word of God and it does not love God and is not keeping His commandments. Is there any reason to think that God is with those who are rebellious against Him and who are sinning against Him? Is there any reason to think that God is with those who do not love Him and keep His commandments? Remember from John 14:15, 21 that God dwells with those who love Him and keeps His commandments and discloses Himself to them. Is there any reason why God should be present with those who take His name today but are seeking the world and numbers rather than Him? We must learn to see the true signs of the absence of God and of the presence of God.
Daniel 9 tells us some of the basics we need to know to return to the Lord and how to seek Him. We must confess our sin in truth and we must see it for what it really is. It is rebellion against God and it is acts of wickedness and hatred against Him. We should not expect the glory of God to dwell in and among us when we are turning from Him like that. It is not confession of sin alone that will cause God to return and disclose Himself to us; it is a true repenting of those sins that have come between us and God. We cannot just turn from outward sins and get busy doing outwardly good and religious works. We must repent of sins of the heart and pray for God to show grace and return in power to our souls. Let us also not think that repentance is something easy that is done without pain in the soul, but instead the professing Church has much sorrow and contrition that must take place. God only dwells with the contrite. Let us learn from Daniel that we need to take sin seriously and to seek a true repentance from all the worldly and religious things we love in order to love Him in truth and keep His commandments from the heart.
God Loves... Himself 
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