40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Daniel 9:1-19 (Episode 520)

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Daniel and Chad walk through the opening of Daniel 9, where Daniel reads Jeremiah, realizes the 70 years of exile are nearing completion, and responds with a prayer of confession. The episode focuses on how Daniel prays with Scripture, how confession works in the Bible, and why this chapter sets up the 70 weeks prophecy. Have a listen. More from 1517: ·       Support the work at 1517 ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education New Books from 1517 Publishing: ·       The Turk at the Door by Adam Francisco ·       Luther and the Lion: A Narnian Catechism by Samuel Schuldheisz ·       By Water and the Word by Brian Thomas ·       Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Read some articles, watch some videos, sign up for some academies. And after you get all done with that, go to that right-hand corner. Go to that Donate link, man.

And you can become a contributor. Keep us doing this stuff ad-free. You don't want Chad trying to sell you, I don't know, some running shoe company. Texas Barbecue. Texas Barbecue. creatine uh you don't want to sell any vitamins or anything man so uh you know keep it ad free and going chad we are in daniel chapter nine uh end of chapter eight it was kind of interesting daniel had you know had some visions and uh we talked about those and uh at the end of it he

says, I was overcome by all that stuff. And basically, I was sick afterwards, right? So visions were a lot to handle. Lay sick for some days. He is an old man at this point, you know, these visions are taking a toll on him. And he says, I didn't understand it, even though we tried to tell you what it was. But Daniel himself said, I kept it to myself, wrote it down so that, you know, we can read it later, didn't understand it. And it could be that Daniel thought that those, maybe that was the last of those things, you know, he's getting old and maybe I'm not gonna have to deal with this anymore,

but his supernatural experiences are not quite over. No, in fact, so when you go from Daniel 8 to Daniel 9, he's even older. So he's a, well, you know, Daniel kind of skips around. So he's pretty close to the same age in Daniel 9 as he was back in Daniel 6 because we have Darius introduced again. So from Daniel 8 to 9, about 12 years pass. So he's like, he's an octogenarian at this point. He's 80, which is kind of crazy for him to be having these visions.

I mean, he's been at Babylon since he was a teenager, shows up in 605 B.C. And, you know, now we're all the way into around 538, something like that. So he's been there a long time. And, yeah, he's not sleeping well because he keeps having these visions and getting sick. So poor, poor Daniel. I mean, we're the beneficiaries, but he's having it kind of rough right now. You start having these kind of visions in your 80s, dude, and, like, you're going to think I'm losing it. Dementia has definitely set in.

It's not good, guys. Yeah. Yeah, God spare me from having anything like this because my dreams are wild enough as it is. Every single night I wake up thinking I'm going insane because my dreams are so nutty. I can only imagine what it would be like if they were of biblical proportions. That would be pretty wild. So most people who have studied Daniel, maybe heard a sermon series on Daniel, maybe there was a sermon on the end times, prophecies that you've heard before, whatever that might be. then chances are you know that Daniel 9 is a big deal

when it comes to this kind of eschatology, prophecies of the end times. Not just amongst our dispensational friends, but among basically anyone who's studying the end times. Now, what's interesting about Daniel 9 is when you hear, like if you're talking with someone about prophecies of the end times and someone mentions Daniel 9, Really, they're typically not referring to the whole chapter. They're actually referring to the last few verses of Daniel 9, which starts around verse 24, is when you have the 70 weeks, which are mentioned.

Well, of course, that means that the first 23 verses have a lot in them as well. And that's actually what we're going to focus on in this episode. So we're going to make sure we pace ourselves so we don't get into verse 24 in this episode, because we want to be able to start at that fresh and be able to discuss all of those verses in one episode. But the first part of this is, most of it anyway, is a long confession prayer. It's similar to what you see elsewhere. Some of these we've covered. There's one, it's interesting, these are all like chapter 9.

So Ezra 9 and Nehemiah 9 and now Daniel 9 are these fairly lengthy confessions on the part of, well, Ezra and Nehemiah and now Daniel, where they're rehearsing not their personal sins, not their, you know, not this is what I've done, but it's more of a national kind of prayer that's voiced by one person. And Ezra was lamenting the unfaithfulness of his people with regard especially to marriages. Nehemiah kind of went through Israel's history, rehearsing all the various ways that they have rebelled against God. Some of the Psalms do this as well. I think in Psalm 106, it kind of goes through Israel's history, documenting their rebellions. But Daniel's going to do something like that in his prayer. And so it's going to be a lot of actually some really rich theology of confession and prayer and who God is and how God interacts with his people and both his law and his gospel way of dealing with his people. So a lot of really rich stuff to get to.

So I'm looking forward to working our way through these verses. Yeah, but kind of prayers and confessions are fun things to go through because you get to see how somebody talks to God and how – kind of in their own voice. And they're all kind of different. There's similar things about them, but they're also – there's things that are different about them. And I don't think I've ever done this before, but it'd be an interesting study to just take all of the prayers out of the Bible and kind of say, okay, what are the commonalities and what are the differences in these things? And you find that there's a lot of different ways to talk to God. Yeah, yeah, for sure. If you just took the confessions that you have in the Bible, like the ones I've mentioned, plus, of course, more from the Psalms, David's famous confession in Psalm 51, you're going to see a lot of similarities, of course, with regard to, well, they're confessing sins.

And so the same kind of language is going to be used, the same kind of language can be used with regard to God's long-suffering, his mercy, his compassion, his forgiveness. But they're also going to be unique because, of course, these are coming from unique individuals in unique situations. David's, of course, is very personal, and yet Psalm 51 has become the confession prayer of believers, you know, for the last approximately 3,000 years. So that can be like one person's prayer and yet fit in the mouth of every person who is praying these prayers. All right, so let's get the first couple of verses. It's going to kind of set the stage for what he is about to say and kind of situate us chronologically as well. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus by descent Amid, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. Now, this is going to be extremely important for setting the stage, not just for the prayer, which is to come, but actually for that end of the chapter, verse 24 and following that I mentioned a few minutes ago, because we're going to hear a lot about 70 weeks in verse 24 and following.

It's kind of just tuck that in the back of your mind. But this is as far as the year this is all said, it's the first year of Darius. We talked about Darius back in chapter 6. Not going to spend a lot of time on him. His identity is disputed. Some people think that he was appointed by Cyrus. Some people think this was just another name for Cyrus. If you're interested, you can go back and listen to that episode where we covered that.

But this is the first year, meaning that this is around 539, 538 BC. So Daniel's about 80 years old. 12 years have passed since the vision recorded in Daniel chapter 8. And this is the first year of his reign. So Daniel, this is, I love this section. This is so unusual and so meaningful too. What's Daniel doing? He's basically reading the Bible.

He's reading, he says, I perceived in the books, meaning, of course, the biblical books in this case, That according to what God said to Jeremiah, the prophet, there's going to be 70 years that are going to comprise the years that you have Israel going into exile and then the end of the desolations. That's the way that it's phrased here. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. But I think it's important just to kind of pause and think, oh, so it wasn't like, you know, you had Moses write or whoever wrote the historical books or David write the Psalms or Isaiah wrote his stuff, Jeremiah wrote his stuff. So it wasn't like, okay, these are written and kind of, you know, filed away. And that was that. You actually had people, in this case Daniel, reading and studying and reflecting upon and even interpreting or applying or expanding what had earlier been said to people like Jeremiah.

Pretty fascinating stuff. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you, yeah, maybe you think that all this stuff got written down and then was like thrown in a cave somewhere and then, you know, we stumbled upon it. and that was the first time anyone ever read it. Yeah. Yeah, so this means that the words of Jeremiah, in this case, of course, were written on a scroll. They were carried into exile.

They were studied by, in this case, by Daniel. And this kind of thing would have happened all the time. I like to talk about how you have a layering of the Scriptures. We have the foundation being kind of picture this as a pyramid, I suppose, if you want to. You have the foundation being the Torah. then you have built upon that the historical books, you have built upon that the prophetic books,

you have the Psalms. But all of these books are interacting with each other. Now, we're very comfortable or very used to talking about this with regard to the New Testament, because the New Testament writers are always saying something happened according to the Scripture to fulfill what was spoken by a prophet. So we're used to the New Testament writers

referring back to previous scriptures but in this case it's in the old testament itself where you have daniel referring back to other scriptures but this would have been happening all the time we saw that actually happening when we covered joshua where whoever wrote joshua reflects back upon the promises made in deuteronomy saw the same thing happening in first and second samuel where this or that was fulfilled. So keep in mind when you're reading the scriptures that those who wrote the scriptures were actually reading other parts of the scriptures

when they were composing their own. It's kind of interesting to think about guys sitting around reading the writings of prophets rejected not so long ago. We think of Jeremiah or something like that. And you're like, yeah, it's a prophet or whatever. If you're Daniel reading him, you're like, this is a guy that nobody listened to not that long ago. Yeah, like a generation ago, right? Yeah.

So this is the end of the Babylonian exile. And Jeremiah lived through the destruction of Jerusalem. And then, you know, was forced by a group who survived the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem to go down into Egypt. So, yeah, this is, I mean, just kind of a generation after Jeremiah was rejected. Of course, everything he spoke did come to pass, and Daniel's well aware of that. So, obviously, given what Daniel says, Jeremiah is the one who prophesied the 70 years. So the 70 years are dated in different sorts of ways. Now, you've got basically two traditional ways of doing this, and both of these, I mean, these are 70-ish, so we're not like, it's got to be like right down to the day.

But the two traditional ways of doing this, of dating the 70 years of exile, are, number one, from 605, and that was when you had the very first Israelites deported to Babylon, including Daniel. And I think this is probably how, if you were to sit down with Daniel and say, hey, Daniel, when did the 70 begin? I suspect he would have said, well, when I came to Babylon. Like this was the first time that you had Babylon, the Babylonians deporting Jews. So 605, and that would have ended then in 536. So the time that the Israelites are allowed to return, and then you have the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the temple commencing with Zerubbabel. So 605 to 536 is the first option of the 70 years. The other begins not with the first deportation, but with the actual destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and that would be in 586 BC.

Ending then in 516, and 516 was when the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem. So each of those is 70, 70-ish years. I suspect because Daniel was the one who was deported in 605, that if you were to ask him, he would have said, oh yeah, this started back in 605, the 70 years. But anyway, Jeremiah is the one who explicitly then prophesied this. did that in chapter 25, verses 11 to 14, and then also in chapter 29, verse 10. And the idea is there's going to be 70 years for the land to rest. It had been corrupted, it had been polluted, it had suffered the results of the poisonous idolatry of the people of God. And so God is

going to basically give this place these sabbath years of rest which total 70 so anyway that's what he's talking about here with these 70 years and now if if if we think about daniel's age and uh if we go with the if we go with this time frame the 70 years are almost up we're like the 67th year so daniel's probably pondering okay well then what's coming i mean we're almost at the end of the seventh decade so how are the desolations of jerusalem finally going to be brought to an end and this prophecy fulfilled fairly exciting right i mean yeah daniel spent the vast majority of his life in this you know so uh if you're reading it you're like hey wait a minute. I think this might be ending soon. It's pretty exciting. Pretty exciting stuff. Yeah.

So because he's kind of, you know, he's reading, he's studying, he's grappling with this, he is going to begin to pray. And that's what we pick up with in verse three. Then I turned my face to the Lord God. You know, maybe he faced toward Jerusalem. That was the direction we're told earlier in Daniel that he prayed. So presumably he did that. He turned turn his face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. So that last part, fasting and sackcloth and ashes, alerts you to the fact that this is not going to be a hallelujah prayer. It's going to be more like a Lord we have sinned, please grant us your mercy and grace kind of prayer because, you know, fasting, sackcloth

and ashes don't go together that well with hallelujah. So that alerts you as to what kind of prayer we're going to be looking at. So verse four says, I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession. Well, there you go. We're making it explicit now. His praying is a prayer of confession. And here's what he said. Oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments so there's your you know a lot of prayers kind of begin this sort of way they invoke god's name oh lord or oh god or heavenly father or lord jesus christ or whatever whatever that address might be followed by a description in this case he's great an awesome god he keeps covenant steadfast love that's chesed with those

who love him and keep his commandments so you have this ascription this description of god and now he's going to launch into the confession part verse five we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled turning aside from your commandments and rules we have not listened to your servants the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings our princes and our fathers and to all the people of the land. That's a pretty good place, a pretty good way to start, pretty good place just to kind of pause for a second. One of the things I'll point out is that when he says we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly, that is almost verbatim. A quote from 1 Kings chapter 8. So this is part, 1 Kings 8 is part of Solomon's prayer at the

dedication of the temple. And if you remember in that prayer, Solomon goes through all these various scenarios. So if this happens, if there's a drought, or this thing goes wrong, or this bad thing happens, then when your people turn toward this place, meaning the temple, and pray to you, then hear in heaven and forgive, or heal them, or whatever it might be. Well, in 1 Kings 8, So when he gets to the section about his people being exiled, which, of course, is where Daniel's at, then this is 1 Kings 8, 47. If they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, we have sinned and acted perversely and wickedly. Then he goes on from there. Well, that second part where they say those words, that is exactly what Daniel is saying here, which also means that Daniel had read 1 Kings 8.

He knew these scriptures as well. He's not just kind of making this up on the fly. He knows what Solomon prayed, and so he is echoing, or more like directly quoting, those words from Solomon's prayer, which Solomon said, hey, when you're in exile, pray these words toward God. One of the things that's interesting about this is that, well, one, with confession, typically they'll start this way, right? So it starts by you saying, okay, God, this is who you are. You do that, and then you say, this is who we are. Of course, that's much worse than the other thing, and that's how it goes. But also, Daniel, by all accounts, not that this doesn't describe him,

And not as though like Daniel's not a sinner, not suggesting that. But Daniel's not the reason they're in exile. Right. Okay. So this is not like the prayer that you might pray. This isn't like Psalm 51 where like David is the man, right? If everybody was like Daniel, they're not in exile. That's just the way it is.

And not because he's not a sinner, but he's not this particular God-abandoning type sinner. He's not out there doing that. It almost feels like, you know, Daniel's like reading the scriptures. He's like, man, this thing seems like it might be coming to an end. And then, you know, maybe he's reading Solomon. And it's like, somebody's got to pray this prayer. Tell you what. I mean, somebody's got to do this, and the only one that's going to do it is probably a person who doesn't really need to pray this prayer.

This doesn't actually really apply to me individually. And so you get this real picture of Daniel sort of being this intercessor on behalf of the people, which, of course, is a very Christ-like thing to do. confessing these sins that aren't really his. You took the word right out of my mouth. Yeah, I was going to say, what a great analogy to what Christ does. Yes, it's an analogy. It's not a one-for-one, but it is an analogy. You know, there's a lot of the Psalms that are quoted in the New Testament as being fulfilled by Jesus.

You know, a verse or two verses are quoted and this is fulfilled by Christ or this was done to Jesus or done by Jesus to fulfill what was spoken by this psalm. But when you go back and you read the entire psalm, there's verses in that psalm which contain a confession of sins. So it's not like Jesus was just fulfilling part of the psalm. He fulfilled the entire psalm and part of the way he did this is by what you were just describing. He confesses our sins that he's made his own, and that's an analogous way of what Daniel's doing here as well. Yeah, because if this applied directly to Daniel, he wouldn't have ended up in a lion's den. That's how this works. Yeah. It's the whole, like, not turning aside that gets you in a lion's den. That's kind of how that whole thing works. Yes, exactly. And when he says in verse 6, we have not listened to your servants, the prophets. Well, of course, one of those prophets is the one mentioned earlier in the chapter, Jeremiah.

Yeah. He wasn't, of course, the only prophet who warned the Israelites to turn from their wicked ways or God would send the Babylonians. But he is certainly the most prominent of the prophets who did that, who said that. But when I think about this, like Daniel's like reading Jeremiah and thinking, yeah, people should listen to him. Um, uh, I can't help but think about, uh, and I love this line that Stephen gives when he's talking, you know, to the Pharisees. And it's like, remind me, uh, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? Right. Daniel knows this.

He's like, we've rejected like every single one of these guys. Uh-huh. Yeah. Give me that list of names of those prophets that, uh, everybody was just hanging on their words and doing everything they said. I know that list is way shorter than the ones you did. The ones you didn't persecute is way shorter than the list of ones you did. Yeah. Yeah, so definitely have not listened to those prophets.

Now, verse 7, picking up from there. So he's already made one address to the Lord, and he's going to do the same thing. Here in verse 7. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness. But to us, open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven us because of the treachery that they have committed against you. Some great lines in there.

I'll read on a little bit farther. Verse eight, to us, O Lord, belongs open shame. to our kings to our princes to our fathers because we have sinned against you to the lord our god belong mercy and forgiveness for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the lord our god by walking in his laws which he set before us by his servants the prophets now i'll stop there there's that what exactly what you were describing and when what happens in confession. So here's who you are, God, and here's who we are, God. And one of these things is definitely not like the other. In this case, he says in verse 7, to you, O Lord, belong

righteousness. And then in verse 9, to you, the Lord, our God, belongs mercy and forgiveness. So pretty good trio there. You got righteousness, you got mercy, you got forgiveness. But what about us well he focuses upon the shame to us open shame to kings princes fathers and of course he spells out why they have this open shame because we have sinned against you we have rebelled against the lord our god haven't obeyed the voice which he set before us by and here we have it again by his servants the prophets he's making it clear that it wasn't like one day israel clueless i mean didn't have any idea all of a sudden we're surrounded by the babylonians and they were beating down their walls and destroying the temple and shipping them off

into exile and israel was like what we didn't see that one coming oh they had they had no excuse because god sent them preacher after preacher after preacher there's the hebrew idiom it's usually translated something like uh i consistently sent you the prophets the hebrews more literally early in the morning i sent you prophets it's always picture god like getting up uh pouring a cup of coffee me like up time to send another prophet gotta gotta forewarn the people send another messenger to that vineyard see what happens right yep and uh yeah well what happens So he got beat up, thrown out of the vineyard, killed. All of the prophets were rejected.

Oh, yeah. One thing that's great about this, too, is that when he does this, okay, so God, what you've got is righteousness and mercy and forgiveness. What we've got is no righteousness, but a lot of things that need mercy and forgiveness. So this is how this works. The things that you have, we either don't have or desperately need. Right. Yes. Yeah. The second time he says that, I think it's especially meaningful and to some extent ironic, unexpected, because, I mean, you would expect them to say to you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, right? Or holiness or something like that. But the second time when he says, to the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, that's like, oh, okay, I didn't see that one coming, but I see what you're setting up here. You're setting up the fact that he's not just a righteous God, but he's also a merciful and a forgiving God, which, of course, is exactly what we're going to need.

Well, it's also good that you're—and this is a good way to pray—that when you're in need of mercy and forgiveness, you don't need to go to God as if you're asking him to do something for the first time, like do something brand new, right? Where it's like, I know you're a righteous God, perhaps, though, you know, somewhere in there you could find some mercy or forgiveness lying around. No, you're not asking God to do something out of his character or something that is new. This is stuff that he does. In fact, these two things belong to him. He claims ownership over mercy and forgiveness. Yeah, he's got a long track record of doing exactly that when people actually confess their sins to him. Okay, so verse 11.

All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned against him. He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem. As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us, yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us For the Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done And we have not obeyed his voice

When I was looking at this earlier before we started recording It struck me how many times Daniel is referring back to the scriptures Begins by quoting the prophet Jeremiah explicitly he is referred now more than once to the prophets who warned jerusalem and now he's going back even further to the torah because he mentions twice now the torah of moses so daniel's he's not just confessing his sins he's doing so on the basis of what jeremiah wrote what moses wrote he's borrowing the language from first kings 8 the solomon parade so this is a a doubly doubly biblical prayer it's a biblical prayer because well it's in the bible but it's also biblical

prayer because it is so rich with biblical material and biblical reference in it also and what he's talking about when he talks about how the curse and oath have come upon us that written the law of moses he's he's really referring back there to leviticus 26 and then deuteronomy 28 which are the two sections in the torah where you have the list of blessings and curses. So if you keep the covenant, all these wonderful things are going to happen to you. If you break the covenant, all these horrific things are going to happen to you. And all those horrific things exactly is what fell upon Jerusalem because of their rebellion against the covenant. One of the things that he does here that is kind of surprising,

not that he does it, but that it's true, it's surprising that it's true, is that you have all Oh, man, all that stuff that was said to Moses, we got the bad end of that because you really kept your word when you were talking about what was going to happen. I mean, it took a long time, and you were very long-suffering, but, man, did it come down. And yet, somehow, we have not entreated or, you know, we have not pleaded for the favor of the Lord. This is, you know, we have not, like, begged for grace and turned from our iniquities. So despite this, somehow, some way, we have not come to you, pleaded for grace, and repented. Yeah. You know, I was thinking of that recently.

I had been listening to Jeremiah. I like audio Bibles, so I was listening to Jeremiah. And it was toward the end. I can't tell you the chapter. But it's after the destruction and the group that survived, they take Jeremiah down to Egypt and they're still making sacrifices to the queen of heaven. And Jeremiah is like on their case about it. And they're like, listen, Jeremiah, when we stopped doing that, things got worse for us.

So we're going to start sacrificing again to the queen of heaven so that things will go better for us. I remember just shaking my head, thinking, man, this is such a sinner thing to do. You know, all this horrific destruction happens. You're self-exiled to Egypt, and you're still refusing to repent. In fact, worse, you're like saying, we're going to go back to idolatry. Things were much better when we were sacrificing the Queen of Heaven. Just, yeah, it makes me shake my head.

This is the thing about if you want the mercy and forgiveness, God's ready to go with that stuff. The thing that must precede it is a plea of guilty, and there's nobody who will do it. It's all it takes, yeah. Okay, so picking up with verse 15. And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made a name for yourself as at this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly. I like that reference back to the land of Egypt. I mean, that's some good gospel stuff here. You're the God who did this great thing for us by bringing us out and made a name for yourself.

Well, we've sinned. We've done wickedly. He's making his confession here. Oh, Lord, verse 16. Oh, Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city, Jerusalem, your holy hill. Because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword. I would translate that just like a joke. Become a joke, a byword among all who are around us.

Now, therefore, O Lord our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, that's a great line, for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. I'll stop there for a second. That's some great material there. This is who you are. This is what you've done. This is what we've done. And so not for our sake, don't look at us and look for some reason to forgive us based upon anything in us. But for your sake, for the sake of your name, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary once more.

Yeah, that byword, whenever I see that, I always think of your people and your city here. It's become a punchline. Yeah, that's an even better translation. Yeah, we become the butt of the jokes, right? We're just a punchline. And so maybe for your own name, you could do something about that. I mean, because you're not going to find any reason to do it if you're just like investigating us. Yeah, yeah.

All this is so—it's such rich material for us when we think about confessing our own sins. I mean, who in their right theological mind begins to confess their sins and say, oh, Lord, look within me and see what a worthy person I am, and for my own sake, forgive my sins? I mean, that's crazy. Instead, what do we do? We point outward to the work of Christ. For his sake, what he's done on our behalf, forgive us, not because of who we are, but because of who Christ is. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's always good to – I mean, you see this all through the Old Testament.

Like the guys that know, you know, you know the guys that know. Because they're always like, well, you know, you think about Moses doing this, right? You think about Abraham doing some of this. And Moses does – God's ready to destroy everybody. Moses isn't like, well, I mean, some of them are not so bad, you know. He doesn't do that at all. He's like, well, I mean, they're going to call you a liar. Yeah.

Yeah, he appeals to God's name. Listen, they're going to think that you brought out these people just so you could destroy them. For your own name and reputation, you can't do that. And God listens. God forgives. Okay, so we got just a couple minutes here. We just got a couple of verses. Perfect timing.

Verse 18. this is a man this is a great way to end oh my god incline your ear and hear open your eyes and see our desolations and the city that is called by your name for oh man this this is this is my favorite uh verse in the entire bible for for prayer right here or for why why does god answer prayers. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. Wow. And then verse 19, O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name you could attach uh you could attach that line we do not present our pleas before you

because of our righteousness but because of your great mercy you could you could attach that to the end of every single prayer that you pray i'm not praying this i'm not presenting my prayers before you because because of my righteousness oh god uh but because of your great your great mercy that says it all no it's great i one of the things i love about this too is that you is Daniel asked God to do—asked him to do the two things that the people refused to do that got them there. When he says, incline your ear and hear, this is what God's been trying to get these people to do forever. And they won't do that. And so Daniel's like, well, we're not going to do that, but I do need you to do that to this prayer.

I need you to open your ear and hear this and, you know, and then open your eye and see. This is the complaint that God has, a bunch of deaf, blind people running around that won't pay attention to him, won't listen to him. And Daniel knows that I'm going to ask you to do the thing that we just can't and won't do. And I'm going to ask you to do that. And don't hear that plea based, obviously, of our righteousness because we're a bunch of blind, deaf people running around here. But listen to it because of your great mercy, which is great. Yeah, yeah. What an awesome prayer.

What a great way to end, too. Well, we are set up, therefore, to jump into verse 20 when Gabriel is going to show up with an answer. And then we're going to hear a lot about these 70 weeks, 77s that are coming up here. So we'll have some fun next time finishing up Daniel chapter 9. Absolutely. All right. We'll see you then. See you then.