This week I was sick, but I had two opportunities to speak or teach, so I was studying the Bible all week. I missed the first opportunity because I was home feeling too sick to move. Today, however, I finished preparing a lesson on Daniel 9 for Focused Living tomorrow. In the morning I plan to slip in, teach and get away before I infect anyone or run out of energy, Lord willing.
I am teaching on Daniel's prayer (Daniel 9:1-19), when he realizes that the time has come for Israel to be restored to her city and place of worship after 70 years of desolation and exile. He has spent the entire 70 years in a foreign court, contending with foreign kings and gods, with his life on the line every year because he would not forsake his own God.
Every day he has gone to the windows of his room and prayed toward Jerusalem, morning, noon and night. He has pored over the scriptures in his possession, including the sad prophecies of Jeremiah that explained the reasons for the exile and the suffering of his people. He has thought about other captive Israelites all over the empire and he wondered about the remnant of poor people who had been left behind. He has recalled the descriptions of Jerusalem and the Temple during Solomon's reign, comparing them to reports of the utter desolation of Israel now. How magnificent and glorious Israel was then, how empty and desolate it is now! He has never forgotten who he is, where he came from and to Whom he belongs.
I wanted to find out what Daniel might have been thinking about regarding Jerusalem, so I went back and took a look at the building of the Temple 400 years earlier (II Chronicles 6). It was magnificent by any standard, in any age---rich, colorful and opulent. Upon its completion Solomon prayed an amazing prayer of dedication that pleased God so much that He responded with fire from Heaven to consume the sacrifices that were being offered. Then He invaded the Temple with such great glory that the priests could not come near to do their work.
In his prayer Solomon anticipates that someday his people might disobey God and be taken away from their own country as captives. He was right. After 400 years of increasing unfaithfulness and idolatry, God allowed Babylon to overrun Israel and take her people captive. Daniel was one of those captives, not because of his own sin, but because of the the sins of his fathers.
At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon petitions God for those people. He says that if someday his people sin, (and everyone does sin), and they are taken away as captives, and in the foreign land they look toward Jerusalem and pray for forgiveness, he wants God to hear their prayers and forgive and restore them.
400 years later that is exactly Daniel's situation. He is fasting, wearing sack cloth and ashes and pleading for the restoration of Israel. Seventy years of pent up sorrow for the people of Israel is flooding through him. He believes from Jeremiah's prophecies that God is about to act--so he prays.
God listens. He hears two voices across the span of history.
From Jerusalem Solomon prays, "...in the land of their captivity...O LORD hear them..."
and in Babylon Daniel cries out, "O LORD, listen! O LORD, forgive! O LORD, hear and act! O LORD, do not delay!"
Silent and broken, scattered throughout the Medo/Persian Empire, captive Israel waits for God to answer.
Meanwhile, north of Babylon in Persia, a strange compulsion comes over King Cyrus who is in his first year as the new conqueror of Babylon. He decides to issue a decree that the people Israel, throughout the empire, must go back and restore their land. He orders those who have held them captive to make this possible, to even give them supplies to do it. A migration begins that culminates in the restoration of the Temple worship and the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the next 49 years. God has answered Solomon's and Daniel's prayers.
Daniel never gets to go home, but God does send the angel Gabriel to show him the plan for the ages that will bring Christ into Jerusalem. Exactly as Gabriel describes it, Jesus enters Jerusalem more than 400 years later and does the work that brings about the final restoration of sinners to God. Daniel never sees Jerusalem, but he sees the Masiyah (Messiah) in what Gabriel reveals to him.
If anyone ever tells you not to bother with the Old Testament, that its boring and irrelevant, tell them to think again. It is challenging and requires dedicated study, but the revelations in it are wonderful. They span the ages of time in which God works and they complete the pictures of His grace and character.
I am awestruck by what I have studied this week and I thank God that I was too sick to do anything else!
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