Try to remember some of the best meals you’ve ever shared with others.
Now, think about what made those meals great. Was it the food? The environment? The conversation? The people who were there? Was it that someone else paid for everything?
Many things set apart our most significant and memorable meals. One of my own favorite meals barely involved eating at all: right after Amy and I got engaged, we went to a Chinese restaurant, ordered mountains of delicious food, and hardly touched it because we were so excited to be getting married!
We will be looking at Jesus’ final meal with the disciples before going to the cross. Not only was this meal memorable, but it was also meant to be about remembering. But what, exactly, are we to remember about it? And how do Jesus’ actions that night impact the way we think about every meal we eat together now?
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:54 — 35.0MB)
Downloads
Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesSermon Transcript
Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: Prayer
March 2, 2014
Daniel’s Intercession
Daniel 9
I want you to think about this question. If someone close to you, a family member or friend, or maybe your children or your spouse, was observing your life and they had to answer this question… Let’s say Amy was looking at my life and she had to answer, “Jon lives to…” what? Fill in the blank. “What does Jon live to do?” If someone was looking at your life and they knew you well, knew your habits, knew kind of your regular routine and they would say, “You live to…” what would be in the blank?
Just be really honest. I mean, for some of us, probably those around us would say, “You know, he lives to be with his family.” For others, maybe it would be, “Oh, he lives for the weekend. All week long, it’s just grinding it out, but Saturday and Sunday… He lives for the weekend.” Usually when people say that, they don’t mean going to church. Or, “Oh, she lives to work. She just thrives on her work.”
What it would be for you? If someone were just looking at your life, you live to (fill in the blank). I was convicted by this question this week. Maybe this is part of the reason my heart is tender. Because reading in Hebrews, chapter 7 (you don’t have to turn there; I’ll just read it to you briefly), it’s talking about how Jesus is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, which is essentially a way of saying Jesus is a priest forever. He is eternally a priest.
Because of this, it says in Hebrews 7:24, “…he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:24-25) Did you catch that phrase? Jesus in heaven right now, the Scripture says, lives to make intercession.
Is that what would have filled in your blank? “I live to intercede”? That’s not the only thing Jesus does, but it’s such a powerful phrase. Jesus lives to make intercession. When I try to use that phrase in my own life (“Jon lives to…”), intercede just doesn’t fit. I am deeply convicted by this, and yet we know over and over again we are called to be like Jesus, to emulate Christ, which means we probably all have some room to grow in this area of intercession.
We’ve been looking at prayers in the Bible. This morning I want to look at intercession. It’s one of those words that sort of is familiar. If you’ve been around the church, maybe you’ve heard it frequently, but if you’re not regular at church, then maybe it’s one of those words that sounds like a Christian code word.
Essentially, the idea of interceding (at least in this passage from Hebrews 7 where Jesus is living to make intercession for the believers, those who draw near to God through him) is the idea Jesus is representing his people before the throne of God. He is bringing all those who are drawing near to God through him before God. He is bringing their needs before God. He is presenting their cares before God.
It’s not like God is angry and just constantly has to be reminded by Jesus, “Hey, take care of this one. Hey, take care of this one. Hey!” That’s not what’s going on. It’s just that Jesus is present in the throne room of God as a representative for his people. It’s so beautiful, such a powerful picture. Intercession as prayer is simply praying to God on behalf of another. I mean, there are all kinds of prayers. We talked about the prayer of blessing. We talked about the Lord’s Prayer.
We’ve talked about making our requests known to God and petitioning God for what’s going on in our lives. Intercession is a little bit different in that it is specifically praying on behalf of others, praying for other needs, just like Jesus is doing for us. Richard Foster writes about intercession. He said, “If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others.”
Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever just been around someone, and you just cared deeply for them? You realize there are things you want to see happen in their lives that you can’t make happen. As much as you try, as much as you try to set them up for success, it’s beyond your power. It’s beyond your skill. That’s what leads us to the prayer of intercession. That’s that place where we begin saying, “All right, God. Please work there.”
I’m glad Jesus is interceding, because I forget to all the time. I was thinking about why, just personally reflecting, “Why is it that I have so much room for growth in this area of praying for others, of remembering to pray for others?” I think some of it is just busyness. It just feels like the cares of the day, the occupations and the requirements, all the stuff on the calendar sort of squeeze out those moments where we can sit down and really pray for the needs of others.
I think sometimes it’s overload. In the mornings, I like to get up. I like to read the news, go on a few different websites, and see what’s happening in the world. If you were going to try to intercede for every news story that’s troubling, you’d never get away from the website. You know? I mean, there is so much going on in the world. The world is a pretty messed-up place. You kind of go, “Oh, how can I even pray for any of this stuff?” You just get overloaded with the amount of need that’s out there.
I think sometimes, if I were to be really honest, maybe deep down I don’t always have faith that intercession makes a difference. How many of you guys have prayed for something and you didn’t see it happen? You prayed several days for something and felt like it didn’t come through. Maybe you prayed for weeks or months, and it didn’t go the way you were asking God.
Those things sort of sometimes can accumulate in our hearts to the point where we become a little bit calloused to prayer and say, “Oh, God didn’t work then. It seemed like he wasn’t answering there, so what’s the use?” Sometimes I don’t know how to pray. I come across a situation, and it’s just overwhelming. “I don’t know how to pray for this.” Other times, I simply don’t care enough to pray.
I mean, I care in the moment. I hear about a need. I hear about someone, someone’s life yearning for the kingdom of God. I hear about that stuff, but it doesn’t lodge deeply in my heart, connect at that place of real intercession. As I’m sort of recognizing these factors in my own life, I think probably for a lot of you guys, you’re way beyond me in prayer. At the same time, I think we can all learn a little bit from Daniel as an intercessor.
As we’ve been journeying through the book of Daniel with a perspective on prayer… You know, Randy several weeks ago started us off and talked about the power of Daniel’s prayer life in relation to his purity, that idea of daring to be a Daniel, maintaining faith in the true God, trusting God, purposing in his heart, even though all around him were these pagan idols and pressures. “You have to bow down to the emperor” and everything else.
Then we looked, and we saw Scott talking about Daniel in relation to Nebuchadnezzar and how humility is such an essential aspect of prayer. Daniel, chapter 4. Daniel, chapter 5. Daniel is just such a humble man, whereas Nebuchadnezzar is constantly just puffing himself up and touting his own accomplishments and everything else. Really that prerequisite for prayer is humility.
Then last week Brian was here, and he was sharing about Daniel as an exile seeking the transformation of his community. He went over to Jeremiah 29. He was talking about what they’re doing over in Monroe at Grace-Monroe. Really all of our Grace churches are working with that in mind, that we would see the redemption, the shalom of the city, as it talks about in Jeremiah 29.
This morning we’re going to see Daniel the intercessor. This is chapter 9. I think we’ll at least see the beginnings of the answers to some of our key questions about intercession. I mean, how do we really intercede well, pray before God on behalf of others? Where should it start? What triggers that authentic, biblical intercession? What does it look like to really pray for others? How does God respond? Why should we pray, and does it make any difference? These are the sorts of questions.
Starting in verse 1, it says, “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, 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, seventy years.” (Daniel 9:1-2)
What we’re going to see in these first two verses is the beginning, the trigger, the fuse, the provocation of prayer comes out of the promise of God. A little bit of history. We’ve talked about this the last few weeks, but Nebuchadnezzar came. It talks about this in Daniel, chapter 1. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, came to Jerusalem, besieged it, overran it, carried off a number of the best young leaders, and also took a lot of the sacred instruments of worship, the golden vessels, out of the temple in 606 BC.
Here in verse 1, it talks about the first year of Darius’ reign which, from history, we know occurred around 539 or 538 BC. This means Daniel is probably in his late seventies or early eighties at this point. He has been there in Babylon his entire life, basically, ever since his teenage years in Jerusalem and then moving over here. He is reading the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
As he is reading, he comes across (we believe it was probably either Jeremiah 25, maybe Jeremiah 29; Jeremiah says it in a couple of different places) Jeremiah’s prophecy about the exile of the Israelites, Jerusalem being desolate, and the Israelites, the people in the southern kingdom, just scattered in exile. Jeremiah says that’s going to be 70 years. Jeremiah 25:12 says, “‘Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity,’ declares the Lord, ‘making the land an everlasting waste.'” (Jeremiah 25:12)
You know, we’re pretty familiar with verses 11 and 12 of Jeremiah 29, but verse 10 says, “For thus says the Lord: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.'” (Jeremiah 29:10-12)
Get the picture. Daniel has been in Babylon roughly 66 years. One day, he is reading in the prophet Jeremiah, and he sees these predictions that God is going to bring judgment upon Babylon and restore the fortunes of the people of Israel after 70 years. It grabs his heart. He perceived in the books the number of years that must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem.
What happens here is really that he perceives how one of God’s very powerful promises affects the people he cares deeply about. This is where intercession really begins. The best intercession starts with a promise. I mean, Daniel is in his Bible. If you want to invigorate your intercessory life, a great way to begin that is to study your Scriptures and find those places where God makes promises about what he is going to do or the future he has.
For Daniel, I mean, it’s extremely literal. He is literally in Babylon, and 70 years… I mean, that’s a pretty easy connection. All throughout the Scripture, you know, we find these places where God is making promises about his heart for people, his heart for the earth. Jesus is talking about what his goals and his plans for us are. When we come across those promises and there’s this connection to the people we deeply love, that’s where we start praying, because there’s a gap.
We recognize God has promised this, but this is the reality. There’s a space here. In this space, this is where we intercede. This is where we begin to pray, saying, “God, would you take this reality which we acknowledge is not your full beauty plan of the kingdom, and would you move it toward this, what you have promised?”
Maybe it’s not even so literal for you as like a promise in the Bible. Maybe you’ve just had that sense where you look at someone in your family and you feel like they’re making decisions that are leading them farther and farther away from the right thing. Maybe you’ve been just driving. You come up to an intersection, and you see a homeless man or a homeless woman there on the corner holding up one of those signs saying, “Will work for food.”
You get that feeling that this just isn’t right. This isn’t right. There’s more than this. That, too, is the place where intercession really starts, because whether you realize it or not, that feeling of, “This isn’t right” is rooted in the idea that God actually has a right thing for people and God has a future and a hope for people. When we start tapping into those places of intercession where God’s promises connect with the people we love, suddenly it fuels a very powerful prayer life. Isaiah 62 talks about it this way. It’s a great verse. This is verse 6.
It says, “On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.” (Isaiah 62:6-7) This idea of the watchmen on the walls is kind of a picture of the people praying. It says, “You who put the Lord in remembrance…” You who are reminding God about his promises, don’t rest. Don’t stop! “…and give him no rest…” Don’t let him.
It’s not that God is going to forget his promises, but as we’ll see in a minute, it’s that these prayers are continually reminding God, “This is what you’ve promised. This is what you’ve had. This isn’t right. This is where you’re bringing us. Lord, come and work in this place.” That is the essence of intercession.
Just as a side note, I want to encourage us that we cannot pray this way for everything. You know? I mean, if you were to take the example of reading the news on the Internet and you saw all the things… “Man, God has promises for the nation of Syria right now. God has promises for the economy. God has promises for the physical well-being of citizens of America and everything else.”
I mean, you can get overwhelmed with that. So there’s a real art. As you’re entering into intercession, as I’m learning how to intercede more effectively, there’s an art to recognizing how the Spirit of God is really connecting the promises with the people who are deep in your heart. Paul in Romans, chapter 10, talks about this. He is praying for his people, the Jews who have rejected Jesus.
He says, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” (Romans 10:1) Paul says, “My heart’s desire… There’s something I’m feeling in my heart, and that’s linked to my prayer for them. My intercession is coming out of this place not just that there’s a promise from God, not just that there’s a problem, but that somehow God has connected the problem of the people we love and the promise in my heart.”
See how that goes together? Maybe you’ve been in this. I don’t know if you’ve sat in prayer meetings, and sometimes it feels like you’re just in a circle. I was in a situation, and it was kind of the end of a gathering or something, the end of the time. They said, “Well, let’s all have a word of prayer.” They asked one of the people to lead it. We all kind of held hands. We were in a circle like this.
She goes, “Okay, this is a popcorn prayer.” Have you guys ever heard that? The idea, you know, of popcorn prayer (if you’ve never been around people who say popcorn prayer) is you just kind of pop your prayer from somewhere in the room. Whenever you have for your prayer… Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Like that. Not everyone in the circle really knew what a popcorn prayer is. I mean, I did. We’re all standing there, and she goes, “This is a popcorn prayer, and I’ll close.”
She closes her eyes. I see everybody else in the circle kind of looking around like, “Is there some Orville Redenbacher around? Where is the microwave?” She wasn’t really super aware of what was going on. This is what she said to just sort of stimulate, to remind everyone we should be praying. She goes, “Pop!” Eventually, everybody in the circle was like, “Oh, I think she wants me to pray.”
They began praying, but it just sort of felt random. You know, it was kind of like one request over here, one request over here, one request over here. It just petered out sort of at the end. Then she closed us. Those prayers matter, and God hears those prayers. But have you ever been in a prayer meeting where it’s not like popcorn where everybody is just kind of saying their one request that’s on their heart, but it’s more like the Spirit of God just grabs everyone’s heart?
You’re there, and it’s not even like… Everyone is praying. You’re just together, and you’re just, “All right, Lord. What do you want us to pray about this morning?” You start waiting on God. As you’re reading the Scripture and the promises of God are kind of coming out and our hearts are linked in with the prayer, suddenly it feels like somebody sometimes will start praying, and you can almost sense this supernatural wind on it or something. I don’t know how to describe it other than that except suddenly you know, “Yes, that’s what’s on God’s heart right now.”
You start praying with that. Everyone in the group… It’s not just Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! No. It’s this stream of God’s Spirit moving us toward prayer. It’s like it feels like this is the thing Jesus himself is interceding before God for right now. It feels like such a close unity, us and him and him and the Father and all that together. The Lord is just sort of drawing us along. Have you guys had that experience in prayer? That is great when that happens, and I think it’s God’s heart for us.
As we’re looking at this, where do we begin in our intercession? Well, it starts with a promise and a problem really, but, at a deeper level, learning how to recognize the guiding of God’s Spirit as we’re praying can give us so much greater energy. That’s what’s happening here with Daniel. He is in the Word. His heart is gripped, and so he begins to pray. This is Daniel’s prayer. We’re going to read verse 3 through verse 19. It’s a big chunk. Then we’ll come back in and make a few more comments about it.
In verse 3, Daniel says, “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, ‘O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 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. 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, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you.
To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and 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. 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. 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.'” (Daniel 9:3-15)
It’s interesting. In Daniel’s intercession to this point, how many requests has he made? Up to this point, he is pretty much focused on saying, “God, you’re amazing, you’re merciful, and we’ve blown it.” Now did Daniel himself sin and rebel against God? No! If we read his history, I mean, he is one of the very few figures in the entire Old Testament who we have no record of him sinning, actually.
He is really a paragon, a model of behavior and of righteousness. Yet as he is confessing here, he is saying, “We have done this. This is our people.” He is owning the sin of his people himself. Bringing, gathering up all those things of his people, and bringing it before God. Now in verse 16 we see how he begins to move toward the request side of his intercession.
He says, “O 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 among all who are around us. Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate.
O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. 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.” (Daniel 9:16-19)
You know, I don’t even really have to preach on intercession. You can just go home and read that and substitute in the promises and the people, the problems of your own lives, and the things that God is stirring in your heart. There are two things I want to just draw our attention to very quickly out of this beautiful prayer.
The first one is Daniel, as soon as he discovers the words of Jeremiah saying, “Hey, God is going to work after 70 years,” and Daniel recognizes he has been here 66 to 67 years… “This is coming up soon. God is going to do something. This is on God’s heart.” As soon as he recognizes it, what does he do? He says, “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” (Daniel 9:3)
When was the last time you wore some sackcloth? I don’t even know exactly what sackcloth is. I don’t think it’s comfortable. It’s not like Under Armour, you know? I don’t think it breathes very well in the Babylonian humidity. For Daniel, when he recognizes God is about to act and his heart is gripped, he prays. But he doesn’t just pray in his head. He doesn’t even just pray with his mouth.
For Daniel, prayer is a whole-body thing. This is something that really persists to this day among the Jewish community. If you go to Israel… Scott made the announcement. We’re going to EPIC this summer. We’re going to be in Israel for 10 or 11 days, and it’s going to be wonderful. We’ll go together to the Wailing Wall. There you have the Orthodox Jews praying. As they’re praying, they don’t just sit there. It’s so fascinating.
The reason they’re praying there at the Wailing Wall, the Western Wall, is actually… It’s not the wall to the original temple. It was the wall that was the sort of platform up to where the temple used to be. Because the Jews are not allowed up on top of the Temple Mount, that’s as close as they can get to where the temple was. They feel that’s a place where they can be near to God.
As you watch, if you just stand there and watch… If you’re there on a Sabbath, you’ll see as they’re praying, I mean, they’re rocking like this, just moving. Sometimes they burst into song, and they’re dancing. They’re jumping. I love that in the baptism video. I don’t know if you saw that one college student. As everybody was getting baptized, you just saw this one guy in the back so happy. It was very Jewish of him actually.
When he recognizes this and he is summoned into intercession, Daniel prays with his whole body. I mean, he is full-on praying…sackcloth, ashes, fasting. Fasting is an interesting subject. We don’t have a ton of time to talk about it, but since we have been talking about prayer, it might be worth mentioning just a couple of thoughts about fasting since it so often goes together (fasting and prayer, prayer and fasting).
A lot of times we make the mistake when we think about fasting of thinking we’re fasting to achieve a response. You know, we’re going to try to fast to get a goal. Scot McKnight wrote a really good book on fasting. It’s called Fasting: The Ancient Practices. He is a professor, a really sharp guy. I would recommend just about everything he has written. Scot McKnight. As he is talking about this, he says the biblical pattern for fasting is that it is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous, sacred moment in life.
It’s not that we fast… At least people in the Bible are not fasting in order to get something from God but rather it’s in response. It’s like God reveals something, or they recognize their sin, or they see their peril, or they are aware of the fact they have no idea what to do next. Out of response to that place of utter humility, they fast (stop eating food). Then often God does work, but in the Bible, no one ever fasts just to get something. It’s always in a response.
That’s what we see here with Daniel. He is fasting as a response. We mess this up all the time. McKnight’s thesis in his book is the reason, especially in the West as Americans… I know not everybody in here was born in America, but a lot of us were. Typically in the West as Americans, we have this mindset that separates the spirit (you know, internal stuff) from the body and the external stuff.
Because of that sort of separation, we don’t recognize often how unified we are as people, that God made us in his own image, body, soul, spirit, to be unified. Because of that, we have a lot of strange perspectives about our physical bodies which, of course, come into play when we start thinking about fasting. Some of us think our body is this sort of monster that must be conquered. All of our sinful desires reside in the flesh.
When Paul talks about the flesh in the New Testament, he is not literally talking about the meat of our bodies. He is talking about that deep cesspool of ungodliness that resides deep down in our broken humanity. Some of us see the flesh like the body as a monster that must be conquered, so when we think about fasting we think, “Okay, fasting is mainly just to kill off the flesh.” That’s not really the idea. It’s not to kill off the body.
Some of us in America especially see the body as like a celebrity to be glorified. You know? Constantly we’re thinking about how do we make our bodies look ideal? How do we take pictures that are flattering? How do we dress up our bodies, work out our bodies and everything? Then fasting, if we try to apply it, we have that perspective of the body. It becomes more like dieting. It’s kind of like, “Yeah, I’m going to fast, but boy, I’ll lose some weight doing it.”
For others of us, we think of the body as kind of like this cornucopia. We’ve bought into this idea that the best thing we can do is just be pleased on the finest meats and cheeses and fine beverages and everything else. We just think, “Why would we actually stop eating for a little while? Why would we fast for a period of time? God gave me this body, and I have to just keep filling it up with good stuff.”
You know, these folks… I mean, we have a word for it actually. We talk about foodies. You know, you’re a foodie or a food snob. It’s like, “Oh, I only eat the best things.” You’re just constantly not really thinking about self-denial in any area of eating but mainly just kind of filling it up.
Some of us kind of think of the body as just a wallflower to be ignored. “It’s not really worth anything, so who cares?” You never shave. You just kind of walk around, and everything like that. I shaved my neck this morning actually. Yes. I don’t think Amy is here, but if she were, she would be clapping with you. The “neard.” The neck-beard.
We have all of these sort of confused ideas about how we relate to our bodies. Then when we try to fast, we get it all out of whack. It’s interesting because if you look at the history of fasting, in the Bible anyway, most fasts are either 12 or 24 hours. There are not a lot of examples, except for really extreme examples with like Moses and Jesus in the wilderness (40 days, 40 nights)… Those are kind of set-apart examples.
For the most part, the fasts we see in Scripture are 12 hours, 24 hours. There’s only one appointed fast in the Israelite calendar in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 23, talking about Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement. The people were commanded to fast in recognition, response, to seeing their own sin in the world.
Then as you see the early church, especially for the first 200 or 300 centuries of Christianity, it was regular for every believer essentially to fast two days a week. They would just fast Wednesdays and Fridays. They think that came from the Jewish tradition of fasting two days a week, but since they didn’t want to be confused for Jews specifically in the first couple hundred years of the church’s life, they moved it to Wednesday and Friday. They fasted on different days than the Jews would have fasted.
All throughout the writings of the great saints, there is this huge emphasis on fasting. This is something that’s important to do, with our whole body integrated. It’s because prayer and intercession is a full-body thing. It’s not something we just do in the backs of our minds, but we fully engage it just like Daniel with sackcloth and ashes and fasting.
Saint Athanasius, one of the early church guys, talked about how the Christian calendar was constantly weaving back and forth between fasting over the recognition of sin and brokenness in the world and feasting in anticipation and celebration of the grace of God. It’s this nice, even balance.
I don’t know how that strikes you. I don’t know what your own personal practices of fasting are. I’ve done some longer fasts in my life, and in my zeal, especially in my twenties, you know, it was like, “All right. I really need to hear from God about this, so I’m going to fast for three weeks.”
Those were really rich times for me, but what I’m seeing as I’ve been studying and really just asking God to instruct me, “Lord, how can I become a deeper, more connected intercessor? How can my prayer life just go further with you…?” I’m really challenged in this area. I’m thinking, “Wow. What would it look like to emulate maybe some of those first couple hundred years of the Christian faith, where you just have a regular day or maybe two days where you don’t eat for the day, for 12 hours, like that?”
Instead of eating, you take that time, and you devote it to prayer. Maybe what you would have spent on buying food, you would give it to an area of need. You know, Isaiah 58 is talking about the fast the Lord desires. Not so much the religious badge of saying, “I didn’t eat today,” but more that our fast would create out of us this desire to seek justice in the world.
I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but sometimes I’ve just forgotten to eat. You know, it’s a busy day. I forget breakfast and lunch. Then it’s about 2:00 or 2:30 in the afternoon. It’s kind of like, “Wow, man. If I can make it three more hours, that’s like a fast day.” Have you ever had that thought? I don’t think that’s what God has in mind exactly, although he works with us. He is very gracious.
What does it look like to pray with your whole body? That’s the big question. What does it look like to reconnect with the biblical truth about how God made us just whole people? Then when we encounter things like God’s promises and the problems of the world and the people we love, how do we engage that with our whole bodies? That’s what Daniel is doing here. That’s what our middle schoolers are going to be doing.
You know, this week is Ash Wednesday. Scott announced it. Over at New Hope all day from 12:00 until 7:00, you can drop by. There’s going to be sort of an Ash Wednesday gathering. That’s a great day to fast. Historically Christians have fasted on Ash Wednesday as a recognition of our brokenness.
You come together, and you’re basically saying, “Man, we are made out of ash. We have made mistakes in the world, just like Daniel here. Even if he hasn’t personally been guilty or culpable in the exile of Israel, he is coming in solidarity, in connection with them before God and saying, ‘Man, God, we have blown it. Shame belongs to us. Mercy and righteousness belong to you.'”
That’s what Ash Wednesday is all about. It’s a great time at the beginning of what has historically been sort of the Lent season, remembering and preparing for the celebration of the resurrection at Easter. It’s a great time to just zero back in, dial down, kind of see some of that. You can go to New Hope, but then also here on Wednesday night. This is something Randy and the middle schoolers have done for years now. They talk about Generation Change.
They kick off that Lent season with decisions. Middle schoolers are going to be abstaining from one thing or another and then raising money. The projects they are working on are just beautiful. This year they’re doing the chicken coops for Beyond Poverty. One of the guys who came up through Grace is now doing great work in development and relief in Africa. There’s a school in Lebanon for Syrian refugees. Our middle schoolers are going to be working on that, and they’re going to be praying, and they’re going to be sacrificing so they can give to that school project.
Bible translation into Arabic, the Lawrenceville co-op. These are amazing children who have been orphaned by AIDS. They’ve lost their parents to AIDS in Africa. These are sort of the five projects the middle schoolers have highlighted. I would welcome you on Wednesday night if you want to just come over and have a look at that. Even if you don’t have a middle schooler, just sneak in the back and just see what happens. You can celebrate Ash Wednesday all together.
The point is the sackcloth and ashes and fasting all together is engaging the whole body in prayer. Daniel’s words we’ve already talked about in passing, but essentially he is echoing Scripture throughout. His language sounds like the language of the psalms. He is confessing. Then his requests are really quite simple. I mean, essentially he just says, “God, turn away your wrath from Jerusalem and make your face shine on it.”
When you don’t know what to pray for something, that’s a good way to pray. Spend some time just glorifying God, confessing the reality of the situation, and then say, “Lord, just remove wrath and bring your face. Let your face turn upon it.” Man, there’s a lot more to be done with all of this, but let me just talk a minute about God’s answer and how he responds to this prayer.
Verse 20: “While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice.
He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, ‘O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.
Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.'” (Daniel 9:20-27)
There’s a reason I waited until there was just one minute left in the sermon to get into that. This is one of the most highly contested parts of this passage, and it is interpreted so many different ways, this whole section here about the 70 weeks. One commentator talks about this passage as being the dismal swamp of Old Testament commentary, because so many different people have come at it with different approaches.
Really our goal this morning is not to unpack how all of the weeks work and the timing and everything else but really just to notice how God responds to Daniel’s intercession. This is brief, but essentially Gabriel comes after Daniel’s prayer. He wants to give him understanding and insight. If we were to sort of boil down this understanding and insight he gives him, we could say, first of all, the angel assures Daniel that God has a plan to work. This plan is going to unfold in stages.
He wants Daniel to know enough about the plan so Daniel can work wisely with the purposes of God. So when we’re praying, we’re interceding. We come before God (our whole body…our words, the confession, everything else). The thing to look for and the thing to listen for and the thing to be open to is the response of God reassuring us, first of all, “Yes, I have a plan for that. I plan to unfold that in stages.” How often is it that in prayer things are unfolded over time?
Then how do we work wisely within that plan? I think Daniel understood. Maybe he didn’t fully understand what this was about. It talks about in Peter how the prophets longed to look into the mysteries. They maybe didn’t fully understand it until parts of it were fulfilled. The core of the plan is here in verse 24. “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.” (Daniel 9:24)
What seems to be happening here is the angel comes to Daniel, and he says, “Yes, God has a plan. It’s going to unfold over time. I want you to work wisely with it, but essentially it’s going to hinge on the work of Jesus.” Because even though so many people disagree about the interpretation of this passage, nearly everyone has agreed it is a prophecy about the coming Messiah.
When they look at that verse 24 and what this time frame is going to involve, it’s all about the work of Jesus, what Jesus does to finish the transgression, put an end to sin, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness. All of these things. These are the things Jesus himself does. We sort of finish our time looking at intercession in a similar place to where we began. We talked about it at the beginning.
Jesus is a high priest who always lives to intercede. Here in the response, we see Jesus himself is not just the priest. He is also the one who brings about the powerful working of God as the true sacrifice. As we intercede, it needs not to be simply an unloading of all our requests on God, although that is part of it. We also listen. “Okay, God. What’s your plan? How are you unfolding this over time? How do we work wisely with you in that?”
Here’s the thing I want to finish with. This is what has struck me over and over again. When Gabriel gets to Daniel, in verse 23, it says, “At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out…” (Daniel 9:23) This is Gabriel commenting on what happened when Daniel prayed. A word went out, presumably into heaven, into the throne room itself. You know, these days you can tweet at a celebrity, and maybe they’ll read it.
I remember when I was growing up in the 80s, I liked Ronald Reagan, so I sent him a letter. The White House sent me a letter back. I think he actually signed it. I’m not sure if he read my letter. When we pray, a word goes out into heaven. We have audience, not just with a celebrity, not just even with the president of the United States but the Creator of the cosmos. When we intercede, words go out into heaven.
There’s a picture in Revelation 5 of Jesus the Lamb. He is the one worthy to undo the scroll and bring justice to the whole earth. He has the bowl with all the prayers of the saints. When we intercede, we are bringing forth words into heaven. Then, Revelation 8. As justice is being brought on the earth as that bowl is overturned, the substance of our prayers, the substance of the intercession of the saints, becomes the sort of impactful working alongside of Jesus as he brings justice.
My hope for this morning (I know it’s working in my heart; I don’t know about yours) is just that God would stir a renewed passion for intercession in us, that we would be reconnected and that we would work with God, follow his Spirit to learn how to intercede in a deeper way. What we’re going to do is I want to invite the band up here. We’re just going to close with a word of prayer. We’re going to worship for a moment.
The song we’re going to sing is really simple actually and a little bit repetitive. It talks about how there’s power in the name of Jesus to break every chain. We’ve been talking about intercession, and hopefully even in your own hearts and in your own minds, you’re beginning to sense, “Yeah, there are some things I really want to pray for,” whether it’s Syrian refugees or refugees in Atlanta or people in your own family or situations at your workplace, situations with your schools.
There’s probably some of that stirring. As we close, we sing this song. I want us to sing it together as a confession, “Yes, there’s power in the name of Jesus,” the one who is before God interceding for us, presenting these requests, audience with the creator God. We’re singing that, but also we’re just confessing that truth over each of those situations in our lives.
I just want us to intercede as we sing. The repetitiveness of the song I think will be powerful because you can work off of that simple refrain. Then in your hearts and in your minds and maybe even with your voices, just confess the power of the name of Jesus as you intercede for these different areas. Let me pray briefly.
God, we love you. Thank you for inviting us into this great mystery of prayer. There’s far more to learn than we will ever discover in a lifetime. Yet as we look at a guy like Daniel and the way he prayed when he recognized your promise and he saw what was going on, oh man, it inspires us. We welcome your Holy Spirit now to fill us with that same spirit of intercession for those things we see that are just not right.
Come restore us. Lord, help us remind you of the promises you’ve made as we watch on the watchtower. Lord, come and act. Show us your plan. Show us how you’re going to unfold things, that we might respond wisely and act in partnership with you. I pray all this in Jesus’ name, amen.