Good morning. Let's open this morning's, let's
open this morning's service with hymn number 37 from your hardback
hymnal, hymn number 37, How Great Thou Art. Let's all stand together,
number 37. O Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder Consider all the works Thy hands have made, I see the
stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe
displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. art, how great thou art. When through the woods and forest
glades I wander and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, And hear the brook,
and feel the gentle breeze, Then sings my soul, my Savior God
to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burden
gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Saviour
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Saviour
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When Christ shall come, with
shout of acclamation, And take me home, what joy shall fill
my heart! When Christ shall come, In humble
adoration and there proclaim, My God, how great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Please be seated. Good morning. The singing that
him I was reminded. Of what the Lord tells us in
1st Corinthians chapter 13 when he says now we see through a
glass darkly. But then face to face. Now I
know in part. But then shall I know even also
as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope. And charity, these three. but
the greatest of these is love. Our prayer this morning is that
the Lord will reveal to us, though we look through a glass darkly,
a little bit more of His greatness, believing that one day we'll
see Him in the fullness of His glory and be made like Him. We've come here to worship this
morning. I want to ask you to open your Bibles with me to Daniel
chapter 9. Daniel chapter 9. Donnie Wigginton's father passed
away this week and Donnie we bear your sorrow brother and
I'm just so very encouraged with the grace that the Lord's given
you. I've had a chance to talk to Donnie and it's amazing how
We sorrow, but not as men who have no hope and. It's a good thing to see the
Lord give grace to the heart of those who grieve. In the loss
of a loved one. Dean has been in the hospital
this week. I don't. It's the Dean's not
here star just went home yesterday. They're still waiting for some
test results to come back so. Lord enables you to pray for
Dean, remember him. All right, let's ask the Lord's
blessings. Our Heavenly Father, our hope
this morning is that you would open the eyes of our understanding
and reveal to us more of thy greatness. Lord, we cannot plead
Your mercy based on anything in us. We cannot come to You
and express our sorrow for sin, our commitment, our desire. But
Lord, we can claim Your covenant grace. We can call upon You to
be faithful to Your promises and to glorify Thyself. And so, Lord, for Thy namesake,
We ask that you would meet with us today. We ask that you would
speak to our hearts. We ask that you would reveal
to us your glory and your grace. We pray for that continued hope
of comfort and peace that you give to the hearts of your children
as they find their rest in Christ. And we pray, Lord, for that growth
in grace for our brother Donnie, the loss of his dad. Lord, we
pray for Dean and ask that your hand of healing would be upon
him and recover him to his full strength. Lord, we remember to
pray again for little Abigail and ask, Lord, that you would
be merciful to the Hickmans and give her a successful surgery
and healing and strength. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. I've titled this message, A Sinner's
Prayer. A Sinner's Prayer. And I'd like to introduce it
by declaring the truth that prayer is much more a work of grace
in the heart than it is a commitment on the part of the prayer. Oftentimes, I fear that we are
convicted by our lack of prayer, which we ought to be. And we
get the idea that we just need to be more committed. We need
to spend more time in prayer. We need to be more disciplined
with our time. And I'm sure all those things
are true. But I want to encourage you, first and foremost, to ask
the Lord to put prayer in your heart. Because that's really
what prayer is. It's a work of grace in the heart.
And the Lord has to cause us to pray. That's why we often
say, as the Lord enables you to pray. Because true prayer,
true prayer is a work of grace. It's a work of grace in the heart.
And if the Lord doesn't cause us to pray and enable us to pray,
You know, all men know something about prayer. I remember years
ago when they took prayer out of our public schools and the
religious logo, the slogan of the religious was, as long as
there are tests in schools, there will be prayer. And that's true. As long as there are tests in
life, people will pray. When people get in trouble, they
pray. Everybody prays. But true prayer,
true prayer is a work of grace in the heart. True prayer is
something that God has to enable us to do. And if he does, we're
going to find ourselves praying like Daniel. Now I remind you
that Daniel's name translated Dan, translated in the Hebrew,
you remember one of the tribes of Israel is by the name of Dan.
And that name translated means judge. And the word El is the
word for God. And so Daniel's name translated
means God is my judge. And we've seen already in our
study of Daniel how Daniel represents the Lord Jesus Christ. We saw
that so clearly when he was put into the lion's den and brought
out unscathed even as the Lord went down into the pit. to save
his people. And here, though Daniel's prayer
is a pattern for every sinner, God makes you to be a sinner,
you're going to find yourself praying like Daniel. But also
it's a reminder and a glorious declaration of how the Lord Jesus
Christ intercedes on behalf of his people. And he takes the
sins of his people as his own. And he presents himself, though
he be without sin, he presents himself as the one who is sorry
for our sins. God made him sin who knew no
sin. The imputation of the sins of
God's people were so real to the Lord Jesus Christ that he
owned them as his own. And so as we see Daniel praying,
we see the one whom God judged So Daniel, God is my judge. Now, you and I don't want God
to judge us based on anything other than the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll find ourselves condemned
if he judges us based on any other standard. But the Lord
Jesus Christ was able to stand in the presence of his father
and say, God is my judge. He knows my righteousness. And
he's going to judge me, not for my sins, but for the sins of
my people, which I bear in my body upon that tree. And the
wrath of God's judgment and justice was satisfied when he plunged
the sword of his justice into the heart of his own son. And
the Lord's able to say, God is my judge. So we see Daniel representing
the Lord Jesus Christ, praying for his people, and presenting himself before
God as the one who bears the full weight. One of the other
things we're going to see in Daniel chapter 9 is that the
grounds upon which we pray is not how sorry we are for our
sin, not how committed we are to not do it again, not how desperate we are for God's help. That's not the grounds of our
prayer. The grounds of our prayer is
the faithfulness of God to keep His covenant promises. That's
the grounds on which we pray. Daniel goes before the Lord and
he doesn't say, Lord your people are really sorry. Lord we've
We've suffered and we need some relief and we're desperate and
we're committed to keep your law. No, he says over and over
again in this prayer, this sinner's prayer, he says, for thy name's
sake. He calls upon the covenant of
God. He calls upon the faithfulness
of God. He calls upon the glory of God. He calls upon the name of God. Lord, do it for your sake. Not
for us, but for your sake. And how often times we see that.
And we need to be reminded of that, don't we? Because often
when we pray, we think, well, if I could just be a little more
sorry. You can't be sorry enough to satisfy God. If I could try
just a little bit harder, you can't try hard enough to satisfy
God. When God puts it in your heart
to pray, when the work of grace is put in your heart and causes
you to come and pour your soul out like Daniel does, you'll
realize that the only grounds upon which I can approach a holy
God is His covenant mercies, His namesake, His promises. I've got nothing else, nothing
else that will persuade God to help me. All right, chapter nine. Another
thing we see in this chapter is what Isaiah reminds us of
in Isaiah chapter 65 verse 24 when he says before my people
call I will answer. Before my people call I will
answer and while they are yet speaking I will hear. So the
Lord puts it in the hearts of his people to pray because he's
intended to answer that prayer one way or the other. And the
purpose of the prayer is to prepare them for the answer. Before they call, I'm going to
answer. And that's what the Lord says to Daniel. When your heart
was set to prayer, you're answered. The prayer had already been answered.
But the Lord allowed Daniel to pray for those three weeks. in
order to prepare Daniel for the answer that he was going to give
him. Lord, set our hearts to prayer.
Enable us to pray right. Cause us, Lord, to look with
hopeful anticipation of the things that you've promised for your
namesake. For your namesake. Daniel chapter 9 verse 1, In
the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed
of Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans.
Remember the Babylonians had taken the children of Israel
into captivity. Jeremiah had prophesied under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit that they would remain in captivity for
70 years and now Daniel is reading the book of Jeremiah and he realizes
that the 70 years are coming to an end. And Darius, who is
the king of the Medes, and Cyrus, who is the king of the Persians,
are the kings that are going to release the children of Israel
back to Jerusalem. And so the 70 years is coming
to an end, and the people of God are going to be delivered.
And Daniel learns that from Scripture, from Scripture. The means by
which the Lord provides all our hope is His Word, isn't it? God
does speak. God speaks to his people. He
speaks by his word, by his word. James calls it the engrafted
word which is able to save thy soul. I remember several years
ago, Trish and I visited a winery in Northern California and it
was during harvest season and the owner, Mr. Benzinger, the
owner took us around, just the two of us, and showed us all
the I mean, it was a busy place. They were harvesting the grapes
and crushing them, and I asked Mr. Benzinger, I said, what's
the highest paid employee you have here? And he said, without
a doubt, the grafters. The grafters. The rest of it's
pretty much unskilled labor, the picking, the putting, but
the grafters, they've got to know what they're doing, and
I pay them the most. They've got to be skillful to make sure
they graft the right branch into the right woodstock, and they
do it properly to produce the right grape. And grafting was
a skillful art. And the Lord uses that analogy
to say, the engrafting of His Word, which is able to save thy
soul, what skill it takes for God to engraft His Word into
our souls. And that's the means by which
he speaks to his people. That's why we spend so much time
in God's Word. You see, the Word of God and
prayer are two sides of the same coin, aren't they? Prayer is
our crying out to God, and His Word is Him speaking to us. And
we can't have one without the other. So if we're going to hear
from God, just like Daniel heard from God, he heard from God from
the Word of God. The Lord is still speaking to
His people the same way, speaking by His Word. And we can study God's Word all
our lives. We can have theological training,
read commentaries. I was reading some Puritans this
week and I thought, you know you did robert gave me a book
on puritans and uh... you guys don't have a clue
do you i mean they were such lawmongers and i thought you
know here they were so studied and so prolific in their writings
and and and ones i was reading at least didn't didn't have a
clue what grace was uh... so The engrafting of God's Word
is a work of grace. You see, it's all of grace, isn't
it? Faith is of grace. The engrafting of God's Word
is of grace. Prayer is of grace. We can't get any glory or credit
for anything. He's got to do it all. He makes
us completely dependent upon Him for everything, doesn't He? So now Daniel says, in the first
year of his reign, verse 2, I, Daniel, understood by books the
number of years where the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah
the prophet. Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 12, makes it clear. God told Jeremiah, you're going
to spend 70 years in Babylon. And we know that Babylon represents
all of this world, particularly the religions of this world,
and 70 is the life of a man. And so Babylon pictures for us
our exile as strangers in a foreign land. That's what we are. We're
sojourners. We don't belong here. This world's
not our home. We're just like the children
of Israel in Babylon. In 70 years, we're coming to
a close, sooner than we think. And the Lord's going to take
us home, not to rebuild the city of Jerusalem like the Jews did,
but he's going to take us home to the New Jerusalem. And so,
Daniel understands from the bribing of Jeremiah that, look at the
next phrase in verse 2, that he would accomplish 70 years
in the desolation of Jerusalem. My friends and my brothers and
sisters, everything God does is for the purpose of accomplishing
something. and he's not done anything that
he didn't accomplish what he purposed to do. In the Babylonian exile and the
raising up of kings and the building of nations and the tearing down
of nations in the minutia of your life and my life our God
has a purpose in everything he does and he's going to accomplish
his purpose. This idea that God's trying to
get folks saved. God wants to get everybody saved.
God's doing His best to get everybody. Christ died for everybody. God
loves everybody. And most of the folks that Christ
died for and most of the folks that God loves are going to end
up in hell because God can't get it done. He can't accomplish
it. It's a lie from the pit of hell. Our God accomplishes everything
He sets out to do. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
went to Calvary's cross and bowed His mighty head and said, It
is finished, He accomplished what He came to do. Amen? He
accomplished what He came to do. Saving of His people. put in a way of sin. We're going
to see that in the rest of this chapter. And he's going to accomplish
his purpose in your life. And in my life, we have, as Daniel
says, confusion of face. We, we get, we get concerned,
we get confused, we get worried. And that's why I want to say
to you with all authority of God's word, God is on his throne. He has a purpose and His purpose
will be accomplished. For Jerusalem. For Jerusalem it's going to be
a good accomplishment. Now He's going to accomplish
His purpose in the lives of all men. But the promise of it being
good is only for those who love Him and those that are called
according to His purpose. That's what the Lord said in
Romans 8.28. You know, all things work together for good. For everybody? No, for them that love God and
those that are called according to His purpose. There it is again,
His accomplishment, His purpose. Our God's got a purpose. He's
not like me and you. He's not willy-nilly. He's not
trying this and trying that. He's not practicing medicine
like our doctors do. No. No, he goes right to the source
and he accomplishes the healing and the saving of his people
for their good and for his glory. And I set my face, verse 3, unto
the Lord to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and
sackcloth and ashes. Oh, what a picture of We read
things like this and we're so ashamed of our half-hearted prayers,
aren't we? And we ought to be. Lord, make
me to be more fervent in my prayer, but that's a work of grace. You're
going to have to do it in my heart. Make me genuinely fervent
in prayer. The fervent prayer, the effectual
prayer of a righteous man availeth much. The Lord Jesus Christ,
that righteous man, his prayers were always offered with fastened
sackcloth. Oh, he had such sincerity in
the way in which he prayed. And we see a picture of him here
in Daniel chapter 9 as he goes before the Lord to seek the Father's
blessing. In verse 4, and I prayed unto
the Lord my God and made my confession. Daniel was a prophet of God.
We've read so many things about Daniel in his life here. You
know he was taken as a young man and the Spirit of God was
upon him and now he's an old man and he's probably close to
85, 90 years old now. And he's been a servant of God
all those years but he's taking on the sins of Israel. He realized
that the reason they're in Babylon is because of sin. The reason
why you and I live in Babylon is because of sin. Had it not
been for sin, we'd still be in the garden. We'd be walking in
the cool of the day and fellowshipping with the God. But God, we were put out of the garden because
of sin, and this world is infected with it. And all the problems
of this world stem back to the fall. They stem back to sin,
don't they? And here's the blessing, brethren. God ordained that. God ordained that because paradise
restored is better than the first paradise. We're going to know more things.
We know more things now, right now. As a child of God, we know
more things about God than Adam ever knew before the fall. Adam didn't know anything about
grace. He didn't know anything about justice. He didn't know
anything about mercy. He didn't need to know anything. So God
ordained the fall. Does that mean that God's responsible?
No. Let no man say when he sins that God made me do it. What
we sin, James said, when we're drawn away of our own lust and
when lust is conceived, it bringeth forth sin. Sin bringeth forth
death. We are fully responsible for our sin even as Daniel accepts
responsibility and even as the Lord Jesus Christ took the responsibility
of the sins of his people on himself. That having been said,
God ordained our sin. For what reason? To show us the
fullness of His glory. We wouldn't know anything about
grace. We wouldn't know anything about mercy. We wouldn't know
anything about justice. All the attributes of God for
that matter. Did Adam know something about the love of God? Of course,
they'd know something about the power of God. Of course, but
not like we know. Not like we know. We know more
about the love of God and the power of God than Adam ever knew
as a result of the fall. Verse four, and I prayed unto
the Lord my God and made my confession and said, oh Lord, the great
and dreadful God. Oh, and how great he is. and
how dreadful He is. Our God is not in the heavens
wringing His hands, wishing that men would let Him have His way.
Our God is absolutely omnipotent. He is absolutely sovereign. He is a great and dreadful God
who will do with all men whatsoever He wills. And that properly understood
will turn you into a mercy beggar. Lord, have mercy upon me. You
have the sovereign right to cast my immortal soul into a devil's
hell and leave me there for all eternity. Lord, I need your mercy. I don't have anything else. He
said, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and
mercy to them that love him. There's another work of grace,
isn't it? If we're going to love him, it's
only because he's going to show us that he first loved us. That's
what John said. We love him because he first
loved us. Peter, do you love me? Lord, thou knowest. You know
I love you. You know what you put in my heart.
You see, to love God is a work of grace. But Daniel doesn't
pray based on his love for God. He prays based on the covenant
mercies of God. that are there for those whom
God has caused to love him and whom God has caused to keep his
commandments. Now I want you to notice the
rest of this chapter, Daniel is clearly expressing how no
one has ever kept God's commandments. That's the confession of sin.
You're going to see that as we read through this chapter. He's
going to say, we haven't kept your word, we haven't kept your
law, not one of us, not a single one of us, not one time have
we? And now here the Lord says, this covenant mercy is to those
who love him and keep his commandments. That's why you have to read the
whole story, isn't it? Because keeping the commandment of God
is believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. is trusting Christ for
all your righteousness before God. That's the only way we're going
to be a part of that covenant. As if the Lord works in our hearts
and causes us to rest the hope of our salvation, not on our
obedience, not on our faithfulness, but on the obedience and faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now does that mean that we don't
desire to be obedient? all week one thing that God does
when he calls you to love Christ because you to hate your sin
because you hate yourself let me show you something termed
me we looked at this Wednesday night termed me to some 37 at
the top 36 I'm sorry some 36 this is so glorious and so needful
to be understood The old man is still the old man. He's nothing
but sin and will never be anything other than sin. The new man is perfectly righteous
in the Lord Jesus Christ and has perfect standing before God
and full access to the throne of grace by the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. we have acceptance with God in
the Beloved. So what does that say about the
old man? Now, John writes a lot about
this and James writes a lot about this because some of the early
heresies that leaked into the church were those who heard the
message of of grace and heard the message of two natures and
came to a conclusion that well that means the old man can indulge
himself in all the pleasures of this world and it's called
antinomianism. and John and James right against
that. It was Gnosticism. We've got
this knowledge of the two natures and so we'll just indulge the
old man in whatever he wants to do and it won't matter because
we've got a new man that's perfect in Christ. That's the very first
heresy that came into the church. And it came in because they understood
what was being said at least in part. and came to a natural
conclusion as a result of that. Now notice with me what David
says in light of that in Psalm 36 verse 1. The transgression
of the wicked. Now wicked is a term for the
unbeliever, for the reprobate, for the godless in this world. And transgression? Transgression
is to disobey God's word. It's to break the law of God. So David now is speaking and
he says the transgression of the wicked is in my heart. You see we don't stand here and
point our fingers at the transgression of the wicked and say look how
evil they are. We're not living like that. I hope we're not living
like that. I hope we're not. But to point
our finger at them and to point out their transgression is to
say, is to, is to, well it's to promote self-righteousness,
isn't it? A sinner doesn't, doesn't do
that. David said, the only thing that
separates me from the transgression of the wicked is that God, by
His grace, is restraining what I have in my heart and keeping
me from doing it. The transgression of the wicked
is in my heart. I can't stand in judgment of them because I
see that everything that they're doing I'm capable of. I'm capable
of it. And if God doesn't restrain me,
I'll do it. Don't say, well, I would never
do that. If you understand the sin of
your old man, the old man's nature, You see, we hate our sin. We
hate what we see in our hearts. What we say with David, the transgression
of the wicked say within my heart. There's no fear of God before
his eyes. I don't fear God as I ought. I flatter myself with
my own eyes. Iniquity is found to be hateful.
The words of my mouth are iniquity and deceit. You know, they're
saying, they're doing it. I'm thinking it. I've got the
capacity to do it. Lord, let the love of Christ
restrain me. Anybody that hears anything about
grace and says we're advocating sinful behavior, Lord, keep me. Keep me because I know it's there.
The transgression of the wicked, it's in my heart. I'm capable of doing anything
they're doing. And God looks at the heart. Man looks at the outward appearance,
the self-righteous, the Pharisee in the temple. God, I thank you
that I'm not like other men, especially like that publican
over there. He's looking at the outward appearances, what the
publicans say. He would not so much as look
up but beat himself up. Have mercy upon me. I'm the sinner.
I'm the sinner. I know what's in my heart. You
see, it's the word of God that's sharper than any two-edged sword,
Hebrews chapter 4, that divides the bones from the marrow and
exposes the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Only the
child of God has his heart exposed. And God uses his word to expose
it. And he causes us to see, Lord,
I've got all that wickedness is right here in me. It's in
me. Keep me, Lord. Direct my paths by Thy Word. Order my steps by Thy Word. The
light of Thy Word. Thy Word is a light unto my path,
a lamp unto my feet. Lord, if You don't do it, if
You don't do it, I'm capable of doing everything they're doing."
But what does God's Word do? God's Word exposes our hearts
for what they are. See, what does the unbeliever
say? Oh, he had a good heart. He's got a mother who would talk
about her mass murderer son as, well, he's got a good heart. No, that's the problem. You see, sin starts in the heart.
And when Paul said, O wicked man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the... He was talking about the thoughts
and intents of his heart which were exposed by the word of God.
When the law came, he said in Romans chapter 7, sin revived
and I died. You see, Paul thought that he
was living by the law. He thought he was keeping the
law until the law said thou shalt not covet. Now covetousness is
an attitude of the heart. And now Paul is saying, that's
all I do. I'm so full of pride. I'm so
full of worldliness. I'm so full of lust. I'm so full
of self-righteousness. I'm so full of impatience. I'm
so full of unbelief. I'm so full of disquietedness.
Lord, I'm full of everything the world's doing. It's all going
on right here in my heart. The transgression of the wicked
saith within my heart. There's no fear of God before
his eyes. So when we talk about being a
sinner, when Daniel's talking about not keeping the commandments
of God, he's talking about what Paul talked about in Romans chapter
4. You that want to be under the law, do you not hear what
the law says? The law is an absolute perfect
standard of righteousness. The law reveals the glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ and you and I have not kept one of God's
laws one time. And so when Daniel is praying about his sin, he said, Lord, we haven't kept your
commandments. Go back with me to Daniel chapter
9, verse 5. We have sinned. and have committed iniquity,
and have done wickedly, and have rebelled even by departing from
thy precepts and from thy judgments." Lord, that's all that's in me.
I've not kept your judgments. I've not kept your commandments.
That's why the covenant mercies of God in the previous verse
when he says, are for those who keep thy commandments. And now
he's, now the rest of this chapter he talks about how impossible
it is for us to keep the commandments of God. The covenant mercies
of God are for those whom God enables to see that they have
no righteousness. Everything about them is nothing
but sin. And they cast all the hope of their salvation on the
Lord Jesus Christ. and in love with him, they hate
their sin and they constantly cry out, Lord, restrain me, restrain
my sin. Keep me from being what I would
be. Verse six, neither have we hearkened
unto thy servants, the prophets, which spake in thy name to our
kings and our princes and our fathers and all the people of
the land. Oh Lord, Righteousness belongeth unto thee. Lord, we
haven't kept your law. We haven't kept... Righteousness
belongeth unto thee. I can't tell you how many times
I've asked people who want to be saved by their law keeping,
how are you doing in keeping the law? And their response is,
well, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. And God says, your best is iniquity. Righteousness belongeth unto
thee. All right, let's take a break. Okay.