For God's Sake: Daniel 9: 16-19
A great prayer of repentance is accomplished by focusing on how our need for repentance gives an opportunity for God to be praised. God is the glorious one. He is far greater than I. When I have come and gone, God remains. Generations from now, it will be far more important that people find relationship with Him than relationship with me. God is the focus of life, not me.
Having owned his guilt and declared the righteousness of God, he turns to his hope for the future. He knows the people do not deserve grace, but he asks anyways. He can do this because he understands God’s nature.
There’s no need for Daniel to flatter God, God knows what Daniel is going to ask for anyways. Daniel beseeches God to turn His wrath away from Jerusalem. In this, Daniel is not asking for Jerusalem only, but rather symbolically asking for God’s wrath to turn away from all the Hebrew people.
Daniel was a righteous man and owned his sin. He was not alone in this; there were other righteous Jews who worked on their relationship with God during the exile. We also know there were Hebrew people who went off into exile and did not work on their relationship with God. Instead, these people wandered further away from God. Daniel knew this, yet he prayed for them anyways. Daniel’s leadership is such that he seeks forgiveness for those who want it as well those who don’t realize how much they need it. Daniel wants all people to know God’s grace and mercy, not just those whom he thinks deserves it.
Daniels next point is incredibly subtle but also incredibly fundamental. Daniel tells God he is asking for grace not because of his own need but because of God’s glory. Daniel needs forgiveness – all the Hebrew exiles do. But the motivation for Daniel’s request is for the glorification of God. Life is always better under God’s provision, but Daniel’s real reason for wanting God’s grace is for God to be seen as great. Daniel is asking for God’s forgiveness for God’s glory, not his own life.
We need to be careful. This can easily turn into a “don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing” type of situation. We can try and snooker God by coming to Him with a need but phrasing it to look more concerned about God’s character than our own life. But God cannot be fooled. Daniel is genuine in his prayer here. When Daniel says he is focused upon God glory, he genuinely wants God’s character to shine.
Daniel wants to be able to praise God to the world on account of His mercy. He wants to take God’s compassion and put it on display. He wants the world to know how great God is. A great prayer of repentance is accomplished by focusing on how our need for repentance gives an opportunity for God to be praised.
