I'm turning your Bibles this evening to the book of Daniel and chapter nine. Daniel chapter nine, we're going to be reading verses one through 23. Daniel chapter nine, verses one through 23. Let's give our attention now to the word of God. In the first year, 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. 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, oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those that 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. Oh Lord belongs open shame. to our kings, 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. 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. 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. Oh, Lord, here. Oh, Lord, forgive. Oh, Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not for your own sake, oh my God, because your city and your people are called by your name. 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 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. May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you once again for the book of Daniel and we thank you for this glorious way in which you teach us more about prayer, the kind of prayer that pleases you. and honors you. Lord, guide us, direct our thoughts, direct our hearts, our affections, all that we are tonight. May you use to conform us to the image of your son. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. If there were one thing you could change that you could see improve in your Christian life tonight, what would it be? I can imagine that there are a number of things going through your minds right now as you think about that question, and it could be a variety of different issues. I know for me, and I expect for many of you, if I were to pick one thing that I would like to see improvement in, it would be my prayer life. Is there anyone here this evening that would say, I'm perfectly content with my prayer life? Is there anyone here that would not want to pray better, to pray more biblically, more fervently, as we heard about this morning, more effectively. You know, there are numerous writers, and we have probably heard the quotes again and again from them, to show the significance, the role of prayer in our walk with the Lord. William Law says, prayer is the most important work in the kingdom of God. It's a pretty high statement. John Owen said, what a man is in secret on his knees, that he is and no more. J.C. Ryle, Says eloquently and yet simply, little prayer, little power. More prayer, more power. Much prayer, much power. Brothers and sisters, the role of prayer affects every element of our Christian lives. And we probably know James 5 16 and how James refers to praying in a way that is effectual that is fervent that avails much. And of course he points us to the example of Elijah just an ordinary man but he prayed that it wouldn't rain and it didn't rain. But Elijah is not the only example of fervent and effectual prayer. In Daniel chapter nine, we find another example. And that of course is the example of Daniel. And my friends, what we see here is much that can help us beginning tonight. pray well, much to guide us, both in how we pray and what we pray for. Now if you look at your bulletins this evening, you will see there are five specific principles that I believe stand out in this prayer of Daniel. Praying according to the promises of God, praying according to the word of God, praying according to a biblical knowledge of God, praying for the glory of God, and praying upon the basis of the forgiveness of God. As we look at each one of these five areas, I want you to kind of keep in the front of your minds two things. Number one is these principles apply to everyone. It doesn't matter who you are here tonight, whether you're young or you're old, whether you're a man or a woman or boy or a girl. It does not matter whether you're married or you're single, you're a student or a teacher. These principles apply to every believer. Everyone who would come into the presence of God and pray and have the assurance that their prayers will be heard. So the first thing is these principles apply to everyone. Secondly, I want you to realize that these principles can be immediately implemented. These principles can be implemented immediately. There's no waiting period. There's no training class you have to complete in order to be able to do this. You can do this starting tonight. You can do this right now. As you read, as you hear the word of God proclaimed, as you sit in your chair and pray to God about these things, it can be implemented right now by every single one of you. So keep those two things in mind and let's begin. Point number one, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man and the promises of God. We've already seen, particularly in chapter six and verse 10, that Daniel was a man of prayer. We heard this morning how Daniel, even at a very young age, established a pattern in his life. He set aside three times every day to go to God in prayer. And the psalmist, as we also heard about in Psalm 119, set aside seven times a day. We know that David prayed morning and evening. We know that he prayed at noon and he got up at midnight. And then he added three more times, sometime during the day or evening, in which he also would come apart to praise God. This was part of Daniel's normal everyday life before God. But this prayer is not part of Daniel's normal routine. This was a special time of prayer. This was a prayer that was particularly intense. He couples his prayer with fasting, with sackcloth, with ashes. In other words, these are expressiveness of his deep humility before God and of his broken heart over his and his people's sins. My friends, Thomas Watson frequently talks about sorrow for sin. and how that causes the children of God to weep. When is the last time you wept over your sins? Daniel was deeply impacted in this time of prayer and he humbles himself and over and over acknowledges his sin. We don't deserve your mercy is what he's saying to God. We've sinned, we have not listened, we have not obeyed. But he is constantly appealing to God for mercy and for grace. Now what happened to bring this about in Daniel's life? We see in verses one through three, the situation described. And it simply says this, that in the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of Chaldeans. In the first year of Darius, if you look at the timeline, Daniel was captured in the year 605 by Nebuchadnezzar in Jerusalem. It is now the year 539. Daniel is probably somewhere between 65 and 70 years of age. And he is seeking God. He is crying out to God. And he's doing that because he has been reading his Bible. He didn't have the whole Bible, as you and I have, but he had parts of it. Particularly, he had the book of Jeremiah. And in the book of Jeremiah, in chapter 25, and verse 11, I'm hoping this doesn't go on the whole time, Jeremiah 25 and verse 11. The whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years. And then in chapter 29, he comes across something similar. In verse 10. For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you. and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place." Daniel is reading his Bible and he comes across this promise and he starts calculating the number of years and he realizes he is on the cusp of God blessing his covenant people once again. He reads that promise of God, and that promise stirs his heart, and it kindles a fresh hope of what God is about to do. And many people will say, well, if God's promised to do it, we don't have to do anything. If God promised, then it will happen. So why pray? Well, Brethren, Daniel prayed for the promise to be fulfilled. We pray for the promises of God to be fulfilled because God has ordained prayer as one of the means of accomplishing his purposes in the world. and particularly in the church. Now brothers and sisters, we have been given numerous promises. I think I used to have a book called All the Promises of the Bible. I don't know what happened to it, but I don't think I have it anymore. But nonetheless, we have been given numerous promises in the scriptures. Peter caused them exceedingly great and precious promises. Learn, my friends, from Daniel and from the Word of God to let those promises fill your heart, your mind, and your mouths with praises to God, with prayers to God, that he would stretch out his hand and that you, in earnest, believing prayer, would see his promises fulfilled. We can start at the beginning. You think of the promise of salvation. Some of you young children have not yet come to know Christ, but Christ has set before you a promise, like the Philippian jailer who came to Paul and Silas and says, what must I do to be saved? And the answer, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Young people, have you prayed? Have you believed? Have you put your trust in Christ as well as some of you adults? Have you trusted God in that promise that if you believe in Christ, you will be saved? The promise of forgiveness. First John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, trust in the Lord. Lean not upon your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. We have a promise of God's guidance. You can't go wrong. If you trust God and acknowledge His ways, He will lead you in the right path. In James chapter one, we're promised wisdom. If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask. Let him ask of God and He will give liberally. Isaiah 40 verse 31, those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. You ever find yourself needing strength? There's a promise about that. Wait on the Lord and he will renew your strength. There's a promise in Philippians 4, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God which surpasses human understanding. will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Probably one of my favorites is over in second Peter and chapter three when Peter is talking about the disintegration of the world as we know it, the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night and the heavens will pass away with a great noise, the elements will melt with fervent heat. And he says we're looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God in which the heavens will be dissolved. Nevertheless, verse 13, nevertheless we according to his promise, Look for the new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Things are gonna change. One day it's gonna be very different. That's God's promise and we believe that promise and we pray for it and we hasten that day to come. Now, one word of caution. You need to be sure that the promises that you zero in on and begin to pray about apply to you. I had a young minister friend who very early on in his ministry found out his wife was pregnant. And he insisted because that morning in his quiet time he read the promise to Mary and Joseph that she would bring forth her firstborn son. He was convinced that promise meant he was gonna have a son. Well, you can imagine many of our expressions of delight when his daughter was born. That promise had nothing to do with him. It had to do with Mary and Joseph. Don't pick something and take it out of context and try to apply it to you and pray as if that's for you when it's not. So be careful with those promises. Secondly, effectual fervent prayer and the word of God. Now without question, Daniel's prayer was greatly impacted by the promise of God to restore the land of Israel and build the temple. But that's not all we see here in Daniel's prayer. This prayer, the entire prayer, is rooted in and shaped by the entire written word of God. We're not gonna take time to go through them. Let me just give you the references. In verse four, he mentions the commandments. In verse five, the precepts. In verse six, the words of the prophets. In verse 10, the law. In verse 11, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses. In verse 13, he mentions the law of Moses again, and your truths. over and over and over again. The word of God, the holy scriptures, all that Daniel had was permeating his thoughts, his desires, and particularly his prayers. Now brethren, if you wanna improve your prayer life, and you wanna start tonight, study. your Bibles. Memorize the promises, the statutes, the judgments of the Lord. Weigh carefully the commandments and the warnings that God gives to those who disobey. Let the Word of God permeate you the way that it did Daniel. My friends, it is the word of God that makes our words and our meditations pleasing and honoring and acceptable to the Lord. Let me ask you to turn back to Psalm 19. These are familiar words to most of us. Psalm 19 in verse seven, the psalmist writes, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold. than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey. By them your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward." And you remember how he closes this psalm? At the words of my mouth. and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer." We're not talking about works righteousness. The Lord is his strength, the Lord is his Redeemer, and it's by his mercy that he's saved and forgiven. But this makes his whole life an offering that is pleasing to God, that is acceptable to God. And what will make our prayers acceptable to God is when we fill those prayers with the truths of the word. You may remember shorter catechism question and answer number 98, what is prayer? And the first phrase, prayer, is the offering up of our desires unto God. Remember the second phrase? For things agreeable to his will. If you're going to pray biblically, You have to pray for things agreeable to his will. And to do that, you need to know your Bibles. You need to know what his will is. That means that when you read God delights in the holiness of his people, you pray for that. Like McShane who prayed, Lord, make me as holy as is possible for a redeemed sinner to be holy. When you read that Jesus came, not like the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but he came to give life and give life more abundantly. If you don't have that eternal life, pray for that. Go to Jesus, commit yourself into his care, and say, you are the good shepherd. You came to give life. Lord, give me that eternal life. When you read, that God is pleased with love, with patience, with zeal, all of the things that we heard about in the message this morning from Romans 12. Brethren, pray for that. Make that a point this week to pray for those things in your life. Pray according to what you're reading and hearing in the word of God. Thirdly, effectual fervent prayer and the knowledge of God. One of the most significant ways that the scriptures will affect your prayers is how you think of God and that consequently will impact how you speak to God. My friends, the God to whom Daniel prayed, the God to whom we should pray, is not some sweet old man in the sky that just smiles all the time at no matter what we do. Nor is he some cold, indifferent power at a distance that we'll never be able to fathom. He is the almighty, the everlasting God, the all-powerful God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He is one who is good and gracious, who has set his affections upon his elect from before the foundation of the world, and now is working out his purpose to redeem them and save them. Now notice the way Daniel begins his prayer in verse four. Daniel nine and verse four, I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession and said, oh Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant and mercy with those that love him and with those that keep his commandments. Daniel has an exalted view of God. He is the great, the mighty, the glorious, the awesome God. Daniel thinks of God he he can barely find words to describe him He is so great in his mind and my friends Such words are not peculiar to Daniel We don't have time this evening to look at them, but this kind of high, exalted language is used in the prayers of Moses, it's used in the prayers of the psalmist, it's used in the prayers of Jehoshaphat, and Jeremiah, and Nehemiah, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the apostle Paul, and the host of heaven. Revelation 15, three and four, where they say, who is like you, great and marvelous, mighty God, who shall not fear you, O King of the saints, for you alone are holy. This is the way the saints in the scriptures pray. We need to understand that prayer is not just exclusively for asking, Give me this, give me that. We treat prayer sometimes like a spiritual vending machine. We go up and we select, I need this and I need this and provide that and do this for me. Prayer, my friends, is designed as a time to draw near to God, to behold his glory. and to give him the praise and adoration that he alone deserves. Sinclair Ferguson commenting on this section says, prayer is what one knows of God expressed in words. And one of the reasons so few people pray like Daniel prayed is because few people know God the way Daniel knew God. It's interesting to hear the Lord Jesus pray in his high priestly prayer in John 17, and he says, this is eternal life, that they may know you, a living and true God. Jesus Christ whom you have sent to know God, to know Christ, that's eternal life. Now one of the most distinctive features about this prayer is that this prayer is more about God than it is about Daniel. or the people of Israel. Daniel is praying. He is seeking God and he is committing himself to God and he's praying about God's will and God's purpose and God's promise and what God is going to do for the glory of his own name. When the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray? How does he respond? We know it is the Lord's prayer, but we should realize that prayer is about God's name, about God's kingdom, about God's will about God's glory, about God's power. It's all about God, and there might be a couple of references about man. Oh, well, we do need our daily bread, and we need forgiveness of our sins, same thing we see in Daniel. Another great example of this is found in the second Chronicles chapter 20 prayer of Joshua fat. Listen to the way Joshua fat praise when he comes and seeks the Lord in verse three and proclaimed a fast throughout the land. Sound familiar? This is an urgent situation. Jehoshaphat calls for a fast. Judah gathered to ask help from the Lord. And then Jehoshaphat stood and prayed in the assembly of Judah in verse six. Oh Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? And do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nation in your hand? Is there not power and might so that no one is able to withstand you? Are you not our God? And if disaster comes upon us in verse nine, have you not promised that for your name in this temple, if we cry out to you in our affliction, you will hear and save. Jehoshaphat is in a crisis situation. He's surrounded by the enemy and he's praying and he's exalting God. And then at the end of his prayer in verse 12, he says, oh, I almost forgot. We have all these enemies around us. Will you not judge them? Will you not take care of them for us? That was not the foremost thing on his mind. The most important thing to him was the power and the majesty of God. Knowing who it is that we pray to, makes a huge difference in the faith and trust of our prayers. I don't think any of us would go to a homeless person sitting on the corner at the shopping mall begging for money and ask them to loan us $500 to pay a bill because we know they don't have it. We wouldn't expect it from them. When we know that we are praying to the creator of the earth and the heavens, a God who rules over all the kingdoms of the world, we ask whatever we will, believing, and he will do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think. We need to know who it is we're praying to. Fourthly, the effectual, fervent prayer and the glory of God. Daniel's fully aware of the needs of his people. especially of their need of forgiveness. We'll talk about that in just a moment. He's fully aware of the burdens, the hardships, the persecutions that he and others have faced. And he earnestly prays for help and for deliverance from those things. But why? Why does he pray even for God's help in those areas? We see it in verse 17 and in verse 19 and several other times. I believe here what we have is Daniel going before God and crying out to God for help. And in so in verse 19 we hear, Oh Lord, here, Oh Lord, forgive. Oh Lord, listen and act. Do not delay for your own sake. It's for the glory of your name that I pray these things. And we ought to ask this question every time we pray. Am I praying this for God's sake? Is it God's will? Is it God's purpose? Is it God's glory that I'm interested in or is it me? He ought to pray for God's own namesake, the glory of God. Daniel prayed, and he prayed fervently for mercy and help. He prayed for God to hear his prayer, to forgive his sin, and to do what he had promised. But his goal, my friends, his goal was solely that God would be glorified, and that God would be honored. And is that not the very same foundation that the Lord Jesus Christ laid in the Lord's prayer? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thine is the kingdom, thine is the glory, thine is the power and the honor. Well lastly, effectual fervent prayer and the forgiveness of sin. We could easily have a whole sermon on this point and certainly it's one of the most prominent elements here. Daniel is devastated, his heart is broken over the sins that he has committed and the sins of his people. He has a sense of shame. Watson's book, The Doctrine of Repentance, is nothing short of profound. If it be for no other reason than his element of shame for sin, that has almost disappeared from the evangelical landscape. Where do you find people that are ashamed of the sins of this nation? and ashamed for the sins that they have committed against God. Daniel has a sense of shame. To us is open shame for not listening, not obeying. And my friends, this prayer has much to say about how to pray in a way that pleases and honors God. But don't miss the weight of this final point. Two things in particular, and we'll close. Number one, God never takes sin lightly. Don't take your own sin lightly. God doesn't. Disobedience to God's commandments always will have consequences, and those consequences are not good. That means that when we go to God and confess our sins, don't make it casual. Don't make it quick. Don't just say, Lord, forgive me of my many sins that covers it. Be still before the Lord. Ask God to convict you by his spirit. of anything any way in which you have dishonored his name or disobeyed his commandments. Let it be a heartfelt confession of sin. Secondly, God has made a way for us to be forgiven. All of us come short. All of us have failed, all of us have sinned against our God, even in our prayers, or perhaps prayerlessness, we have sinned. But Daniel reminds us in verse nine, to our God belongs mercy and forgiveness. We can't change it. We've sinned against God, but we can't make up for it. We can't buy our way out of it. We can't do anything. But we can trust God for the way that he has made for us to be forgiven. Through the work of Christ, we can be washed whiter than snow. and all our sins and iniquities can be cast into the depths of the sea." Again, it's Thomas Watson who says, quite appropriately, even our tears must be washed in the blood of Christ. That is what makes us acceptable. We don't pray, as Daniel says, we don't come because of our righteous deeds, we come to you because of your great mercy. Daniel prayed, and God listened. That alone is amazing. He prayed according to the promises, according to the word of God, according to his knowledge of God, for the glory of God, and by the forgiveness of God. We pray. My friends, we sing a hymn. Come, my soul, thy suit prepare. Jesus loves to answer prayer. Do you believe that? Jesus loves to answer prayer. We go to him like Daniel and we pray. And we might not all receive Gabriel coming to our side to tell us how much we're loved by God. We'll get to that next time. But we can expect an answer. God hears, God answers. And Jesus loves to answer prayer. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you. that you have taught us to pray, that you are the one who urges us to pray, and therefore you will not say no. Lord, we ask that you would guide our praying, make it more biblical, make it more effectual, make it more fervent, root it in the word of God and on the promises of God. And above all, Lord, may we come to you every day in prayer, conscious that you are a God to whom mercy belongs and forgiveness belongs. Lord, be gracious to us, we ask. In Jesus' name, amen.