True Confession
Daniel 9:1-19
(Please note that this sermon recording only includes the end of the sermon because of a technical problem we had while recording it. Sorry we did not get the whole thing recorded)
2017 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It was on October 31, 1517 that a German monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg challenging the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church to answer the charges. In 1520, Martin Luther wrote an essay which he called “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” What he meant was that forces and powers that were foreign to Christ and to his Word had captured the mind and heart of the church. She was in bondage to godless forces.
Specifically in his day Luther saw these forces in the Roman Catholic Church. But are they any less at work in our day? John Piper writes this:
Millions of church-goers today think the way the world thinks. The simple assumptions that govern behavior and choices come more from what is absorbed from our culture than from the Word of God. The church shares the love affair of the world with prosperity and ease and self. Many groups of Christians are just not that different from the spirit of Babylon, even though the Lord says that we are aliens and exiles and that we are not to be conformed to this age. So, like Israel of old, much of God’s church today is captive to godless forces. … Much of the Christian movement today has become a desolation of disobedience and disunity and dishonor to the name of Christ. So the way Daniel prays for the desolation of his people is a pointer for how we can pray for the desolation of ours.
Last time we saw looked at the first two verses of Daniel 9. We said that verse 1 teaches that 1) Effective prayer recognizes our circumstances in view of God’s plan (Dan. 9:1). Prayer is how we line ourselves up with the purposes of God. In verse 2 we said that 2) Effective prayer is prompted by scripture (Dan. 9:2). Daniel’s prayer was prompted by reading the prophet Jeremiah. His prayer was saturated with scripture. When God’s word abides in you, when it finds a home in your heart and in your mind, then you will pray effectively.
Today I want us to draw out of this passage some more principles concerning prayer. Specifically I want us to see in Daniel’s prayer some elements of true confession. Daniel here is coming before the Lord acknowledging his sin and crying out for forgiveness, for cleansing, for restoration.