Lessons of Prayer from a Man of God

INTRODUCTION

Note: Remember we ended last week’s sermon with Daniel being so disturbed by the vision of the suffering of his people that he lay sick for some days, but then he got up and went about the Kings business. We can be disturbed about the state of the world. There are things about the evil and injustice in this world that should bother us. However, at the end of the day we get up and go back to what God has placed us here to do.

Daniels Default Position

Notice that Daniel always goes back to his default position which is prayer. Is prayer your default position when the injustice of the world disturbs you and you feel overwhelmed by fear and a lack of understanding?

Unfortunately I fear that more times than not the default position of many Christians is not prayer. Why do I say this? I think if it were we would not see the Church in the state it is in today. Today is the day we honor our mothers as well we should. I would like to speak to our moms for a minute this morning. Is your default position Prayer when it comes to raising and nurturing your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

I remember vividly a time in my life when I was doing many things that I am sure disturbed my parents. Many things that they could not understand why I was rebelling and not following what they had instilled in me from a very young age. There was one night after a weekend of drinking and partying I remember coming home much past curfew, I noticed my mom’s light was on in her bedroom. As I glanced through the doorway I saw my mom on her knee’s with her bible open praying for me.

This picture has ever been etched into my mind. My mom’s default position was prayer. She could have been waiting to let me have it for breaking curfew again, or for the rebellious lifestyle I had been living, but instead she turned to prayer.

This is exactly what Daniel does in this chapter.

Daniel 9:1–4 ESV

1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— 2 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, seventy years. 3 Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,

It was the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede. Belshazzar was gone.

This was a time of transition, and Daniel was engaged Bible study. He was looking for the answer to the perennial cry of the people o God in exile: “How long, O Lord?” He was reading the book of Jeremiah looking for answers to their predicament which he did.

Daniel went the place where truth flows from like streams of living waters. Daniel was seeking to have his mind dominated by whatever God had said about his current situation. Now he felt like he understood those “seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” (v.2)

Big Idea: God’s people are marked by Humble and Honest Prayers for Mercy

DISTRACTORS

Technology advances have played a vital role in resources that have enhanced our quality of life, but technology has also become a significant distractor that can keep us from what is important. This news clip from ABC News talks about “inattention blindness,” a scientific term for the distraction caused by things like texting.

It can be easy to become distracted from praying effectively, sharing the Gospel or ministering to others because of self-consciousness, worry, or even—you guessed it—our phones or tablets! What has been a distractor in your life that is keeping you from being obedient to God?

WHAT DOES OUR DEFAULT POSITION LOOK LIKE?

“Our Default Position”

1. It should flow from Humility before the face of God.

Adoration

*We turn our faces to the Presence of God

(9:3)

Note: Your prayers should always humbling take you into the presence of God.

Turned my Face: Focuses on the beginning of the action of earnestly praying to God. There is a deep earnestness in Daniels heart that moves and motivates him to look to the Lord. Seeking the Lord by “prayer and pleas for mercy.”

Daniel approaches God in a threefold Posture:

*Fasting

*Sackcloth

*Ashes

Fasting is the withholding of food from the body for the purpose of prioritizing something else, such as prayer. Sackcloth was a rough material, most likely made from animal skins that would have been an irritant to the skin, showing the mark of repentance. Ashes symbolized a complete ruin. In other words, the posture Daniel took was of visible lament.

Rebellion may work for a time, maybe even a long time, but, in the end, it will lead us to ruin. Sometimes it may take us hitting “rock bottom,” emotionally, financially, relationally, or all of the above, before we are willing to humble ourselves and admit we were wrong.

If you have ever watched the “I am Second Video’s,” everyone of them shows how someone reaches rock bottom and then “redemption becomes the new way of seeing things.” The video’s show the good news is that God has grace for rebellious children. When we humble ourselves and Pray healing takes place.

The Humble position of Prayer: Daniel turned to God with a burden that he could hardly bear by himself without God’s help and strength. We are also reminded the prayer offered by Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus burden was so great that it cause “his sweat to become great drops of blood. Coming humble and in utter dependence on the Father

Daniel Humbled himself to pray, Jesus Humbled himself both to pray and to prepare for his suffering and death. It is almost unthinkable that we would ever burst into the presence of the chambers of heaven arrogance or pride. When we know our sins, we know who we are we will face God on our knee’s and with our face to the ground.

What does it look like to be in the Presence of God.

Genesis 3:8 “Adam and eve were in the presence of God before the fall. Before the fall it was a season of intimate fellowship.

Exodus 33:20 “Now sin has prevented our ability to be in the physical presence of God.

Luke 1:19 “Now only the sinless angels are in the physical presence of God.

John 14:23; 15:4 “Christians have the presence of God literally indwelling their lives by virtue of the Holy Spirit. “He comes in and makes his home inside of us, takes up residence.” “We abide in Him and He abides in us.”

1 Peter 2:9 “We are aware of his presence from our obedience to His Word. “We are a chosen raise, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God....” If we belong to Him, will He not be present among us? We never lose the reality of God’s presence no matter how badly we fail; we never sin so much that we lose our salvation; we never sink so far that he will banish the Holy Spirit from our lives.

What happens when you feel like you have lost God’s presence. Every believer at one time or another has had a feeling of losing God’s presence, like a landlord who has left his house and gone away on business for awhile. He has not left the house completely empty, for, if he did he would have taken all of His belongings with Him.

But because he has left all his furniture and belongings in that house, does it not mean that he will return once again? Believer should know and understand that there are time of spiritual leanness when perhaps the Lord determines to test our faith.

Coram Deo - This phrase literally refers to something that takes place in the presence of, or before the face of, God. To live Coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the Glory of God.

To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of god. God is omnipotent. There is not place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze. To be aware of the presence of God is to be aware of His sovereignty.

The Christian who attempts Compartmentalize their life into two sections of the religious and the nonreligious has failed to grasp the big idea. The big idea is that all of life is religious or none of life is religious.

*We turn our Face to the Covenant Keeping God

(1) We go to the Bible First and often.

True prayer is based on the fact that God is a God who speaks.

Daniel is reminded that God has promised to end the desolation of Jerusalem. God’s people had broken God’s laws and had ignored the solemn warnings of His prophets. Daniel does not trivialize his relationship with God; instead He acknowledges God’s Lordship and points out the sin of his people that has so grieved the heart of God.

God does has not been silent even during the times when it appears he is not speaking. The basis of all prayer is on what God has promised to do in the past, present, and future.

James 5:15 ESV

15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Note: This prayer is a prayer of what God has promised to do. It rests on God’s promises in His word.

The Prayer of Faith

Many times our prayers are not prayers of faith. The secret of prayer should always be in line with God’s will. The prayer of faith asks in unwavering trust for what God has already promised to do. Faiths is not a matter of looking within ourselves to see how much we feel capable of requesting. We search the scriptures and see what God has already promised to do. This was what Daniel was doing in his prayer.

The prayer of Faith is the working out of our covenant relationship with God.

Daniel 9:5–14 ESV

5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. 6 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. 7 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. 8 To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him 10 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. 11 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. 12 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. 13 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. 14 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.

“Our Default Position”

2. It should be an Honest and Full Confession of Sin.

(9:5-14)

(2) We call sin out for what it is.

Corporate Confession of Sin

Daniels prayer begins with the Bible and is saturated with the Bible. Phrase after Phrase comes right our of scripture. You have illusions to Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Psalms, Jeremiah.....

Perhaps if Daniel had titled his prayer it would have been “How to Pray for a Desolate Church.”

Look at the use of the word “we” and the piling up on the words used to describe Israel and Judah’s sin. The use of the word “we” also shows Daniels solidarity with the Hebrews in their sin.

Bryan Chapell says:

“Daniel confesses the reality of his sin and the peoples sin because he has been called to carry their burden as his own even though he did not cause the burden. He feels a responsibility for the people under his care. (Gospel According to Daniel, 158).

We have sinned and done wrong.

We have not listened.

We have sinned against you.

We have Rebelled against Him.

Confess Sins to God Directly "It is not confession to man but to God, who is the true Priest of souls, that is the great need of sinful man. Private confession and the whole system of medieval confession was not ordered by Christ and was not used by the Apostles, for of the three thousand who were turned to Christ's Law on the Day of Pentecost, not one of them was confessed to a priest. ... It is God who is the forgiver."

*Confession of sin acknowledges the broken Marriage Covenant.

Ezekiel 16:8 ESV

8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine.

Daniel the Prosecuting attorney

Daniel lay’s out the Evidence of how the marriage covenant has been broken.

(v.5) “turned away” (v.6) “not listened,” (v.7) “disloyalty,” (v.8) “public shame,” (v. 9) “Rebelled,” (v.10) “Not obeyed,” (v.11) “broken your law,” “turned away,” refusing to obey,” “sinned,” (v.12) “Iniquities,” (v.13) “not obeyed,” (14.) “sinned,” acted wickedly.

Confession is one of the Most powerful gifts the Lord has given us.

Romans 10:10 it is by confession that we are healed. When we confess our sins we are saying that God is right and we are not. it is humbling ourselves killing the flesh just as Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him.

Confession can be hard because it is exactly the opposite of what the flesh wants us to do. Confession exposes our nakedness and our natural instinct as it was in the garden of eden is to cover and protect our nakedness and to cover it up. But, when we hide we allow our sins and wrong ways of thinking to live on instead of being cut away.

Why is Confession so Important to God?

God already knows all of our sins and the blood of Jesus has provided forgiveness for our sins, why do we still need to call out to Him and confess them?

We know that in Colossians 2:13-14 Paul writes that Christ has forgiven all our trespasses and cancelled the record of debt that stood against. us.

Colossians 2:13–14 ESV

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

The we are told in 1 John 1:9 to constantly confess our sins to God.

1 John 1:9 ESV

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In other words in the death of Christ God has the intention or purpose to create a flock for himself as he tells us in John 10;15, “I lay down my life for the sheep.” Our eternal right standing before God as adopted children and as new creatures in Christ has already been purchased once and for all by Jesus. That is what God achieved through Christ who died and stood in the place of his sinful flock, his sheep.

Now like it say’s in Hebrews 7:27 “Christ has no need, like those Old Testament High Priests, to offer sacrifices daily … since he did this once and for all when he offered himself on the sacrificial alter.

Confess and Kill

(John Piper)

The Bible teaches that there are traits that God’s people have that show they are in fact God’s children and do truly belong to Christ - truly born again. These traits are how we can know that our sins were fully paid for and our forgiveness is fully secure in the death of Jesus.

One of these traits is how we deal with ongoing sin in our lives.

This is the complicated issue: Christians sin.

That’s what John was dealing with in 1 John 1:8 and this is the same thing that Daniel is dealing with in his prayer. There are two traits that show that someone is a child of God. Colossians 3:3: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” This is the picture of your completed salvation. We are already home at this point. Colossians 3:5: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passions, evil desires.” So, one trait of those whose sins are fully paid for is that we make war on our sinning. That is the mark of those who are fully canceled: We make war on our sinning. We put them to death. But you cannot do that if you do not admit - that is CONFESS - that you have any.

The Second Trait is Confession. You have to confess your sins in order to make war on them. If you do not think you have any, if you are not confessing, “yes, I have sinned and I am sorry,” you will not make war. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins

So, confessing our sin is the agreement with God that we have sin and it must be fought and killed. If we do not confess this truth, John say’s we are living a lie and are not truly Saved believers in Christ.

1 John 1:9–10 ESV

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Note: Daniel seems to be saying that even though the nation of Israel have gone through the ravages of God’s curse.

They seem to remain “unchanged,” “unbroken,” and “unrepentant.” What good will it do to have a people back in the land without owning their sin and exercising repentance. Who have never been crushed in spirit over their idolatry? It is not Israel alone, humanity itself is reluctant to admit sin and guilt.

There is a difference between feeling miserable because sin has made our life miserable and feeling broken because our sin has offended the holiness of God and brought reproach on his name.

The issue is not admitting that we have made our lives miserable. The issue is admitting that there is something much worse than our misery, namely, the offended holiness and glory of God.

“Our Default Position”

3. It should move us to Petitions grounded in God’s Character

(3) We remember past Mercies knowing God never Changes.

Daniel 9:16–19 ESV

16 “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. 17 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. 18 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. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

Arthur Pink “The Sovereignty of God”

Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude - an attitude of dependence upon God...

GOD - The Righteous Judge

DANIEL - The prosecuting attorney

There will be no appeal or mis-trial the evidence is overwhelming and actually it is irrefutable. Is there any hope? Is there any avenue of Mercy and Grace? Thankfully the answer is Yes! Yes!

God’s Blueprint

Every construction project must have a plan made by a builder or an architect, a person who has the end vision of the project in mind and makes decisions all along the journey of that project in order to see it to completion. In the same way, God is a master builder, only his project is his glory.

According to Paul’s writings in the book of Ephesians, God’s master plan to reveal his glory is through redeeming humanity through Jesus.

*Petitions should always seeks the Glory of God

The Glory of God

The Old Testament word for glory (kabod) has the basic sense of heavy or weighty. The weight of an individual’s riches was an expression of personal value or worth. God’s worth and wight is expressed in the display of His attributes.

Only those who have spent a lifetime meditating on the attributes of His character could pray in such a way, notice how he describes God.

He is a God of Righteousness

He is great and awesome

He keeps his covenant and mercy

He shows mercy and forgiveness

He confirms his word in Holy Judgement

His word is “truth”

He is a deliverer of the oppressed

Our whole motive for living is for the Glory of God

THE PEOPLE HAD BECOME A BYWORD AMONG THE NATIONS

This means that when people look at the scattered and brokenness of God’s people laugh laugh and mock them. They mock Israel’s God.

This appears to be the way the Christian Church is treated in many places today. The name of Jesus has become an object of scorn and attempting to go by the name of Christian and yet marching to the drum of the world. The world see’s the name Christian as ordinary, nothing special or different.

How are Christians guilty of making the Church a by-word today?

*Petitions Remember Remember the Past

WE REMEMBER THE PAST KNOWING THAT GOD NEVER CHANGES

Daniel 9:15 ESV

15 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.

When Israel left Egypt the did not consider the wonderful works; they did not remember the abundance of His steadfast mercies, but rebelled against the Most High God at the Read Sea. Yet he saved them anyway for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power.

How often have you considered that as it say’s in Ephesians 1:4 that God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world to become His children. Even knowing all of the times you were going to grumble, complain, and turn your back on Him, from eternity past, present, and future God has chosen you for redemption.

Our prayer for a desolate Church is sustained by the memories of His past mercies. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Hebrews 13:8 ESV

8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Jesus never has a bad day, He is never fickle or in a bad mood, He is always faithful, just and true. If God saved a rebellious people once at the read sea he can certainly do it again.

*Petitions Appeal to the Mercy of God

v. 18b “For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.

“The Qualities of Mercy”

“When Jesus came to us, the Father sent him as one of us: to dwell with us, to sit with us in our misery and pain and to inhabit true injustice—because what could be more unjust than God himself dying a criminal’s death? He could have righted all injustice and enacted true mercy with a snap of the fingers; instead, he chose to bring the kingdom of God to people one at a time, relationally, often by ministering to their bodily, daily, gritty needs. He fed people; he let unclean women touch him; he sat with the mourning and raised the dead so that widows and sisters and mothers would be provided for. And then he forgave them their sins. His acts of mercy recast their suffering and delivered true justice; they went from being outcasts to being a part of God’s redemption story.”

We are all part of God’s redemption story: the only question is whether we’ll be found an enemy or friend.

Note: Several decades had passed since the beginning of the exile, and most of Daniels generation now rested with their ancestors. Exile must have seemed to many of the Jews to be “normal.” They had learned to live with their situation and perhaps some of them prospered.

Daniels perspective was very different, to him they wore the SHAME and DISGRACE it was evidence of the divine curse.

How often do we get comfortable in our Shame and Disgrace?

We fail to remember that we daily need to seek the Mercy of God who is the God of Mercy.

God’s Mercy is so Great that you may sooner drain the sea of it’s water, or deprive the son it’s light, or make space to narrow that diminish the Great Mercy of God. -Charles Spurgeon

What is Mercy and Why do we all Need it....

Lamentations 3:22–23 ESV

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

HAVE MERCY ON ME

God’s whole divine plan stems from His Merciful love for His people. Knowing that there was nothing we could do to earn our way back into the presence of God, He made a way through Christ death on the Cross. Defeating death Jesus opened the way for us to experience the Mercy of God.

Many of us today are prone to see Mercy as a peripheral or incidental part of who God is. We suspect that perhaps he shows mercy by accident or weakness.

This is far from the truth, when we look deeper into the mercy of God it not only shows us who He is, it also tells us something essential about ourselves. The very fact that we have been shown mercy means not only that we do not deserve his favor, but that we deserved his righteous hammer against the anvil of justice. We deserve his wrath. Our cry for mercy admits we should be under his impending wrath, like all mankind.

Ephesians 2:3 ESV

3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Moses Saw Mercy

We get our first glimpse of God’s mercy when it came to Moses. After Moses had asked God to show him his glory, God answers,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19).

Notice that God’s mercy on Israel is not based on there effort to somehow earn God’s favor, God is completely free to show mercy to whom ever He chooses to be merciful towards.

Just a few verses later, as he passes Moses by, God proclaims...

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

God is not unjust; by no means can he simply sweep sin under the rug. But the leading revelation of his glory is in his mercy. This is one of the first and greatest truths we must learn about the Character of God. Before we can come to Him in faith we must understand that we are sinners in desperate need of His mercy.

David Fell on God’s Mercy

Later on David the great Psalmist possibly wrote the most appeals for God’s mercy in the Psalms. The one that is most frequently remembered is Psalm 51, “Have Mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”

Obviously this was a cry following his great sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. David recognized the Wrath of God and His response to evil, but he also remembered that Justice is the stem; but mercy is the flower.

Jeremiah Wept for Mercy

During David’s generation Israel fell into a spiral of moral decline. In 587 BC the Babylonians besieged, conquered, and decimated Jerusalem. It was one of the most tragic, horrific scenes in the Old Testament. The city was so famished and desperate that women boiled and ate their own babies. (Lamentations 4:10).

Jeremiah wrote down some of the darkest and most despairing verses in all the Bible: the book of Lamentations. Chapter 3 exposes the pain that is felt, and hope seems almost lost. Yet we even see in the most desperate of times the heart of God’s mercy towards His people.

Paul Marveled at God’s Mercy

The realized that he received his minister all because of the mercy of God, he became the instrument of God’s revelation to the World. What Moses first saw, and David fell on, and Jeremiah wept for, Paul now saw on the other side of Christ, and he marveled.

In all the Bible Paul gives the clearest vantage point into God’s mercy in Romans 9:16 which says,

“The God Who has mercy” - literally, the mercy - having God. in other words God’s mercy expresses the Heart of God, as Paul will show, in a way that the demonstration of his wrath and the display of his power are not.

Romans 9:22–23 ESV

22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—

Notice that Paul puts it in the form of a question, not because he is unsure of the truth, but for effect, because it is awesome and sobering to contemplate.

We must never forget that God is absolutely Holy in Every Way!

You cannot have a God of Mercy without a God of Wrath. To not demonstrate wrath in a world of sin and rebellion against him would be untrue to himself and unloving to his people.

But Wrath is not God’s Heart

God’s heart is to make the immeasurable riches of the Kingdom of God known - to make known his glory to his people, who are the vessels of His mercy.

WE MUST FALL INTO THE HANDS OF A MERCIFUL GOD

Note: Our God is not merely sovereign, as incredible as it is to celebrate that fact. And he is not only a God of uncompromising justice, thankful as we are that he is.

He is the mercy-having and mercy-giving God who invites us to look not only at his awesome authority and sovereign strength, but to set our eyes on his mercy and see into the merciful heart of god.

CONCLUSION

The writer to the Hebrews talks about the arrangement of the tabernacle of the Old Testament. The tabernacle was the portable sanctuary used by the Israelites from the time of their wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt to the building of the temple in Jerusalem (see Exodus 25–27). Within the tabernacle was the ark of the covenant which included the mercy seat (Hebrews 9:3-5).

The cherubim on the top of the mercy seat are described as facing each other and the mercy seat itself. Their wings were outstretched and overshadow the mercy seat. These cherubim are an interesting feature, one that is not explained anywhere. But from their use elsewhere I believe we can draw some conclusions.

The first mention of cherubim in the Bible as in Genesis 3:24. After Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, cherubim were placed on the east side of the garden, along with a flaming sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. The Garden represented God’s presence on earth and so the cherubim also seem to serve as gatekeepers to God’s presence. In 1 Samuel 4:4 and other places, God is described as being enthroned between the cherubim over the ark. Psalm 18:10 describes God as mounting the cherubim and flying. It seems that the cherubim are closely associated with God’s presence. And so, these images of cherubim atop the mercy seat could symbolize God’s presence and holiness.

The very throne of God is also referred to as “the mercy seat.”

The mercy seat concealed the people of God from the ever-condemning judgment of the Law. Each year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled the blood of animals sacrificed for the atonement of the sins of God’s people. This blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat. The point conveyed by this imagery is that it is only through the offering of blood that the condemnation of the Law could be taken away and violations of God’s laws covered.

NOTE: The Mercy seat is the place where God meets humanity with His mercy and grace. The word in Hebrews 9:5

Hebrews 9:5 ESV

5 Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

is hilasterion, which means “that which makes expiation” or “propitiation.” It carries the idea of removal of sin.

So, what is the significance of this in the New Testament? Christ Himself is designated as our “propitiation.” Therefore, now Christ is the representative picture of God’s mercy seat.

In the Old Testament as Daniel is writing is a longing to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, and place the ark in the Holy place to spill the blood of animals on the mercy seat of God.

In the Old Testament, the mercy seat was the physical location where the blood of the atoning sacrifice was offered. In the New Testament, it is the cross that was the physical location where Jesus, our atoning sacrifice, was offered up and his blood poured out on our behalf. The cross has become a useful symbol to represent Jesus as both the mercy seat and the atoning sacrifice that was offered there.

How Many Times Has God 'Mercied' You? His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. The English word new is the Hebrew word hadas … It means never before experienced. Today's mercy is different from yesterday or the day before or the day before the day before. Just as the seasonal flu vaccine changes from year to year, God's mercy changes from day to day. It's a new strain of mercy. Why? Because you didn't sin today the way you did yesterday!

Try this little exercise: Figure out how old you are—not in years but in days. That's the sum total of different kinds of mercy you've received life-to-date. By the time you're twenty-one, you've experienced 7,665 unique mercies. When you hit midlife, it numbers 14,600. And by the time you hit retirement, God has mercied you 23,725 times.\

How many times has God Mercied you right now today? How many times have you taken His mercy for granted?

What does God’s Great Mercy mean to You?