Daniel 9 - Resolved faith

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Thanks, Kel. Keep your barbell open there. It's pretty straightforward, right? We could just go to morning tea. Yeah, my name's Dave for one of the pastors here, and it's great to be able to share God's Word with you in this way. If you're just joining us partway through our series in the book of Daniel, it's Resolved Faith. That's what we've titled the series and the definition that we've been working from for Resolved Faith. We're talking about a faith that's firm in purpose or intent. It's a faith that is determined and unwavering. And as we've been journeying through chapter by chapter each week, looking at this book of Daniel, what we've seen is that Resolved Faith has expressed itself in some dramatic ways. In Daniel chapter one, Resolved Faith looked like Daniel refusing to compromise his obedience to God. In Daniel chapter three, Resolved Faith looked like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing in that fiery furnace and saying that even if God was not able to rescue them, they wouldn't bow down to the other foreign idols and gods. They wouldn't worship the king's image. In Daniel chapter six, Resolved Faith looked like Daniel continuing to pray even though prayer had been outlawed and a lion's den awaited him. Here in Daniel chapter nine, Resolved Faith looks a little bit quieter. It's an old man opening God's word, looking at the promises of Scripture and getting down on his knees to pray. Resolved Faith in Daniel chapter nine looks like an honest confession. It looks like holding on to God's promises even when God's plan seems difficult to understand. Before we begin, let's pray and ask the good Lord to lead us. Lord God, as we open your word, help us to hear your voice. Show us our sin honestly, your righteousness clearly, and your mercy fully. Strengthen our faith, Lord, that even when we cannot understand everything that you're doing, we might remain resolved to trust in you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I wonder whether you've ever found yourself asking God, what are you doing? What are you doing, Lord? I know I have it many, many times. I was just asking Him this morning, my autoimmune condition. Sometimes I get a bit of pain and I had to sit down in the last song because my feet hurt. Oh Lord, what are you doing? Sometimes we ask God that, don't we? Maybe when life doesn't go as we expect, maybe when we thought God was leading us in one direction and we kind of step out in faith and pursue that, but then it looks like the door seems to unexpectedly close or move in another direction. Maybe we prayed for healing and yet a sickness continued. We might have prayed for reconciliation, but a relationship still remains broken. Maybe we prayed that things would improve, but as we look around the world, it appears that things are becoming worse. Maybe you thought God had made you a promise. We read that God loves His people in His Word. We read that God hears prayer, that God works for the good of those who love and trust Him, and then so often our circumstances don't seem to fit with what God has said. So I think it's right that we at times ask Him, Lord, what are you doing? It just seems like a fairly human response from us, isn't it? Because we try and understand what God is doing. Perhaps that's where you find yourself this morning. Certainly it's the question that hangs over this chapter, Daniel chapter 9. The first six chapters of the book of Daniel have been largely narrative. They've told us about all the kings, the dreams, the furnaces, feasts, lions, all the dramatic acts of resolve, faith and deliverance. But from chapter 7 on, we've kind of seen this shift. We're now starting to get into visions and stuff about the future. Many of the visions that Daniel gets are troubling. He's concerned and troubled by many of them. He's shown future kingdoms, oppressive rulers. He's shown persecution, conflict, war, suffering. We do know that God promised to deliver His people from exile. He promised that Jerusalem would be restored. And yet the future Daniel is being shown seems to contain more hardship. And so Daniel and his friends, his people might have reasonably asked God, God, what are you doing? You said you'd deliver us. You said that the exile would end. You said your people would return. So why are you showing us more persecution, more oppressive rulers, more suffering? Have you forgotten your promised Lord? Maybe they were thinking that. Daniel chapter 9 certainly helps us to answer that question a little bit. God's answer is at both simple and yet I think incredibly profound. And the answer is this, God hasn't failed. He has been entirely faithful to His promise. He's always faithful to His promise. It's just that He promises us far more than Daniel initially realized. God is not doing less than He promised. He's doing more than Daniel imagined. And that's what we'll find in Daniel chapter 9. We see it kind of in two big movements with a couple little steps. The first big movement is in verses 1 to 19. And we see that resolve faith praise from God's promises in His Word. Look again at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 9. Kel read for us that it's the first year of Darius the son of Xerxes. We know from the history as we've been tracking along, the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar and all of his kin, they took Daniel and his friends and a bunch of other Israelites off to Babylon into captivity. But Daniel has lived a long life of resolve faith. He's now well into his elderly years. And there's a new kingdom. The Mido-Persians have arrived and Darius the son of Xerxes is here in charge. And Daniel is studying God's Word. It says there that he understood from the Scriptures according to the Word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet. He understood that the desolation of Jerusalem would last 70 years. Remember, we've been saying along the way that resolve faith isn't just in these big dramatic saving moments in this book of Daniel. Resolve faith is every day journeying with the Lord and staying close to Him. And Daniel did that by studying God's Word. He's looking at the words of Jeremiah the prophet. You can read about that during the week if you want. Jeremiah 25 verses 8 to 14. It's on the slide. It'll be on the website when the slides go up if you can't follow along or can't take the notes. Feel free to take photos of the slides if you want, but we'll put it all up online so you can follow along. But Jeremiah in chapter 25, he was a prophet. He spoke messages from God and he had warned God's people that because of their persistent rebellion, God was going to raise up the Babylonians and ship them off into exile, that the land would become desolate, that they would be servants of the Babylonians and the Babylonian king for 70 years. But Jeremiah also promised again another promise from the Lord that this exile wouldn't last forever. You read in Jeremiah 29 that God says when the 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. Jeremiah 29 verse 10. Probably familiar with Jeremiah 29 11. We often quote that about the plans that God has for us. The context of those plans was for his cherished people, that he would bring them back from exile when these 70 years are completed for Babylon. Daniel knew these promises. He'd probably been taken into exile around 605 BC, we think. By the time of Daniel chapter 9, we've got these Mido-Persians in place. 70 years are almost up. Daniel's getting towards that end of his life. Daniel reads Jeremiah and he realises this promise, that this promise that God has given is approaching. It's almost about to be fulfilled. And notice how Daniel responds. He doesn't sit back and go, well, God's promise, we're going to go back. It's all good. Don't have to do anything. I'll just sit here waiting patiently for God to act. Nor does he get out some drawing charts and the abacus and start calculating dates and trying to work out every detail of the vision that he's been given to try and figure all this stuff out. He doesn't do that either. No, he gets down on his knees and he prays. Verse three, we see that he turned to the Lord and pleaded with him in prayer and petition. He fasted in sackcloth and ashes. That was just a way of humbling himself before the Lord as he came before him in prayer. God's promise in his word, as Daniel read it, produced for Daniel faithful prayer. Daniel understood that the promises of God are not an excuse for sitting back and just letting God do all the work, but it's not prayerlessness either. We invited into the work of God, we have a part to play. God's promise was the foundation of Daniel's prayer. Because God had promised that's why Daniel prayed. Because God had spoken, that's why Daniel sought him out. Because he knew that God was faithful, he could come to God and ask him to act. That's the first mark of resolve faith in this chapter. Resolve faith, praise from God's promises. It takes what God has said and it brings it back to him in prayer. Lord, you've spoken. Lord, you've promised, act according to your word. It's good to pray prayers like that informed by Scripture based on the promises of God. Notice how Daniel's prayer contains what it contains. He honestly confesses his own guilt in verses four and five. He acknowledges God's great and awesome power. He acknowledges the covenant of love that God has made with those who keep his commandments. But then look at verse five. We have sinned and done wrong. We've been wicked and have rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and laws. Daniel doesn't make excuses for Israel's situation. He doesn't blame Babylon. He doesn't blame the political circumstances. He doesn't blame the weakness of Israel's leaders. He doesn't blame the generations of those who came before him. He honestly confesses his own guilt and includes himself in the list of those who trespass. Look at the language throughout that prayer as Kelly read it. Verse five, we've sinned and done wrong. We just read. Verse six, we've not listened to your servants, the prophets. Verse eight, we and our kings, our princes and our ancestors are covered with shame because we've sinned against you. Verse 10, we've not obeyed the Lord our God. Verse 13, we've not sought the favor of the Lord, our God, by turning from sins. Verse 14, we've not obeyed him. Verse 15, we've sinned and we've done wrong. And then in verse 18, he kind of anchors this prayer. He says, Lord, we don't make this request of you because we're righteous. Daniel is pretty relentless in his honesty. He doesn't present Israel as an innocent victim of an unjust exile. He admits that God had warned them that this would happen. Repeatedly, time and time again, God had sent his prophets to call his people back, but they'd not listened. They'd rebelled against the God who had rescued them, who had loved them and had entered into covenant with them. And so Daniel includes himself in that group. He doesn't say, Lord, they've sinned. He says, we've sinned. I've sinned. I find it striking because Daniel is one of the most consistently faithful people in the book of Daniel and maybe in the Bible he's listed with the heroes of the faith. Daniel's been faithful in Babylon. Daniel had refused to compromise. He continued to pray. He'd served foreign kings with integrity. And yet he doesn't stand at a distance from the rest of God's people when it comes to his own guilt. He's honest about his guilt. He identifies himself with them. He confesses the sin of his people as his own. And I think that's a part of what resolve faith looks like as we pray the promises of God. Resolve faith isn't a stubborn confidence in ourselves. If we're honest, if we understand God's promises and what he says to us in his word, it's not that we're strong or that we're innocent or that we're deserving of any of this. It's not like we can say we've done everything right. So God owes me a better life. Resolve faith honestly recognizes our guilt. We've got to recognize our part in that. It's not something we like to do. But I imagine in those quiet moments of reflection, when you allow yourself to be honest, maybe you recognize too that we, like Daniel, have sinned. We've rebelled. We've failed to love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. Failed to love our neighbor as our cell. We've sinned through what we've done and through what we've left undone. Thoughts, words and deeds. Sometimes we sin through ignorance. Sometimes it's through weakness. Sometimes our own deliberate choices. We live in a culture and a world that too often tells us that guilt is always harmful. It makes it seem like the worst thing that a person could do is feel guilty. We're encouraged by our culture to explain our guilt away or to attempt to redefine what's right and wrong or sweep those transgressions under the carpet and insist that we've done nothing wrong. There is such a thing as false guilt. We need to be careful that false guilt needs to be challenged. There are people who carry shame for things that they were, that was never their fault or their responsibility. So I'm not talking about that. Talking about the real guilt. Sin, what the Bible calls as sin. The real ways in which we've turned from God hurt others or lived as if God has no right to rule over us. Resolve faith is honest to admit that. Daniel was honest to admit that. He understood that Israel was brought into the relationship with the Lord not because of their righteousness. Daniel said in verse seven there Lord you are righteous but this day we're covered with shame. God is righteous. We're filled with shame because of our unfaithfulness to you. Daniel's resolve faith led him to pray God's promises to honestly recognize his guilt but it also led him to appeal to God's righteous mercy. Daniel is clear about God's character in his prayer. Look at that contrast to verse seven again. Lord you are righteous. We're covered with shame. All throughout this prayer Daniel repeatedly describes the rightness and the faithfulness of God. Verse four he says God keeps his covenant of love. Verse nine the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving. Verse 12 says that God has fulfilled the words he spoke against his people. Verse 14 the Lord our God is righteous in everything he does. God hasn't acted unjustly. He's warned his people what would happen if they persisted in rebellion and so this exile wasn't evidence that God had failed. It was evidence that God had kept his word. God was righteous even in judgment but Daniel knows that God's righteousness is not cold. It's not detached. God is merciful and forgiving. A bounding in love. He keeps his covenant. He remains faithful to his name. That's why Daniel prays in verse 16 there. He says Lord in keeping with all your righteous acts turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem. Daniel is appealing to God's righteousness as he asks for mercy. Again he's not saying Israel deserves restoration. He's not saying that the he's not arguing that the 70 years of exile have kind of formed and shaped them and made them suddenly worthy. He's appealing to who God is. Daniel's prayer is soaked with the language of earlier biblical promises. You can read about that during during the week if you like one Kings 8 at the dedication of the temple. King Solomon prayed a prayer that was looking forward and confessing sin and he prayed that one day God's people would confess their sin. They would pray towards Jerusalem. They would turn back to God and God would hear them and forgive. It's the same language one Kings 8. Earlier in in the Bible story in Leviticus 26 God warned his people about the exile. He promised them that that if they confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors he would remember the covenant that he made with the forefathers Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Daniel knows all of this and so he confesses exactly as God had instructed his people to confess. He appeals to the mercy that God had promised to show. Now Daniel's not trying to manipulate God. I've got to be clear on that. He's taking God at his word. He's resolving to stand upon that by faith. Lord you told us to confess. You told us that you would remember your covenant. You told us that we would hear from heaven. You told us that the exile would end. Lord we don't have anything to offer you. No righteousness of our own but we appeal to you entirely on your character, your covenant and your mercy. We see that in verse 18. He captures the heart of the prayer. Daniel's greatest concern isn't just that life might become comfortable. Look at verse 19. He says, Lord listen, Lord forgive, Lord hear and act. For your sake my God do not delay because your city and your people bear your name. It's not just asking to be comfortable. He's concerned for the name, the great name of God. He knows that God has promised all of these things. He wants God's name to be on it. Jerusalem was God's city. Israel was God's people. The temple was associated with God's presence. Daniel asked God to restore them all for the sake of God's holy name. You might have already realized that there are at least seven times in this chapter that you'll see the name of God, the Lord. The Lord is written in all capital letters. It'll be in your Bible. If you look close enough you'll be able to see it. At least seven times in this chapter alone. Anytime you see that capitalized Lord in the Old Testament, it's referring to God's covenant name, Yahweh, the name that he had entered into that covenant with his people. Daniel is appealing to the character, to the name of God, this covenant keeping God, the God who bound himself to his people. That's the key to Daniel's resolved faith. Even though there was nothing in Israel that made them deserve this relationship with God, Daniel's faith was in the character of God, the Lord, Yahweh, the one who remained righteous, merciful, and faithful. And for the sake of his holy name, he remains faithful even when we do not. It's true. God remains faithful even when we're not. This is the only way that we can come to God when we understand it. It's the only way for those of us who have no righteousness of our own to stand before a holy God. Those of us who are honest about our guilt and our sin, we know that if God is just, then we deserve it. The only way to come to him is not because of our righteousness, but because God is merciful, because he's faithful to his covenant. And as Christians, we know that mercy comes to us through Jesus Christ. At this point in Daniel's prayer, the important question remains for Daniel, how will God deal with the guilt that Daniel has just confessed? There's a big problem that he's brought before God, this transgression, sin and wickedness. And this is what and this is where Gabriel comes in as Daniel is praying and he arrives to reveal God's answer to the problem. Daniel's praying in verse 19 there, Lord forgive. And he asks God to restore what has been lost. And God reveals to Daniel through this angel Gabriel and this vision that he's given, this word from God that he's given. He reveals how God intends to deal with this problem. Look at verses 20 and 21. Resolve faith trusts in a greater promise. This is what we see. This is the second big step. We're going to move pretty quick through this. Verses 20 and 21. Daniel says, while I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill. While I was still in prayer, Gabriel came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice about 3 p.m. in the afternoon. There's something wonderfully reassuring in those words while I was still in prayer. The prayer was answered. A heavenly messenger arrives. Gabriel says in verse 23 to Daniel in response, he says, Daniel, as soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I've come to tell you for you are highly esteemed. If you've got the English standard version or some other translation, it might say you are greatly loved. Daniel's being assured of the relationship that he has with God, that he's loved, that he's heard. God hasn't forgotten him or his people. He hasn't forgotten his promises. Would have been greatly encouraging for Daniel to hear that message from the Lord. Daniel needs to understand that God's promise is far greater than he initially realized. He'd been praying in light of Jeremiah's 70 years. Gabriel begins speaking about 77s. Daniel's been praying for the end of Jerusalem's desolation. God answers by revealing his plan to deal with the desolation that's been caused by human sin. God's plan is greater than what Daniel is praying for. God promises something greater than Daniel requested. Look at verse 24 there. These are 77s, a decreed for your people. Kelly read that for us for your holy city to finish transgression and to put an end to sin, to a tone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. What a wonderful answer to Daniel's prayer. So much bigger than he thought. Not just an end to the exile, but to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to a tone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and anoint a most holy place. We'll get to the 77s briefly in a moment. Just consider the scale of that promise in verse 24. Daniel's just praying that God's anger would turn away and yet he's promised all these wonderful things. Whatever else is going on in terms of hardship and persecution, God is saying through this angelic messenger, I haven't given up on my promises. In fact, I'm promising even more. It's like the very height of all the Old Testament prophets of what they had foretold. The end of sin, wickedness, a tone for transgressions against God, not just swept under the carpet or put away for some later moment, that had dealt with. Fully and finally and more than that, God is going to bring in everlasting righteousness and end to the open shame that hangs over all of us. So much greater than what Daniel requested or realized at this point. Notice in verses 25 to 27, Gabriel goes on to explain how God is going to fulfill this greater promise and it's through an unexpected path. The promise wouldn't be fulfilled through a sequence of earthly victories for the Israelites and for God's people. No, it would be achieved through troubled times, through war. There'd be desolation. The anointed one would even be put to death, cut off. That's what these sevens are about. It's a bit confusing. Depending on your translation, it might say weeks instead of seven. So there's seven weeks and then 62 weeks or sevens depending on which way your translation is. We see that there. There's 77s, then there's 77, 62 sevens, and then there's 17. Something happens in the middle of the one. It's all confusing and weird. There are a bunch of ways that you can understand verses 25 to 27. And it kind of depends on when and where these 77s or 70 weeks or periods of time start. But it's also a bit weird because we have to understand that sometimes numbers in books in the Bible like Daniel, particularly in some of these prophetic books with visions and dreams and that sort of stuff, numbers seem less like a timetable for us than a metaphor. They're not meant to be photorealistic, more symbolic at times. We see that in the scriptures. Sometimes we have an example. Seven is a fairly big number, a prominent number in the Bible. It appears a lot of places. It's the number of the days in the week. For the Jewish folk, it symbolized completeness. The number 10 in the Bible symbolized abundance. And so if you multiply 10 by seven, you get 70. And that's a big number designed to represent abundant abundance. It makes it an excellent number for symbolizing a time period in which God needs to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to a time for wickedness and bring in everlasting righteousness. We could spend a whole sermon series trying to go through all the different options of these 77s, the 7, 62 7s and the final 7. If I haven't lost you already, we'd probably lose you now if we started that here. So if you're interested in that, check out the ESV has a good study Bible, which has got a section on that, which you might find useful. Just let you know that as we looked at some of this in Bible college, there are faithful Christians, faithful Christians who study God's Word, who have reached different conclusions about some of the dates and details in these prophetic verses. We need to be humble about matters that have challenged interpreters for centuries. Don't get too caught up in it though. In summary, the 77s have been worked out in history. There's two main ways that people might understand that. And there's a little graphic on the screen there for that. It's ultimately symbolic, but if you were to start counting 77s from Jeremiah's promise that the exiles would return in 605 BC, that's option one on the top of that little graphic there, you'd end up pretty close to the time of this fellow Dylan mentioned last week, and Tokeness, the fourth epiphanies. You can read about him in chapter eight. Dylan mentioned it in passing in his message. If you missed that, check it out on the web. He was the little horn in Daniel's vision last week in chapter eight. We'll hear a little bit more about this guy in chapters 10 and 11 of Daniel. And it kind of makes sense that it could be this guy who's the focus because the surrounding chapters kind of are talking about him in a way. And the events of these verses in verses 25 to 27 kind of map onto him a little well. He came into power after a troubled time with desolations and war. There was an anointed one that got cut off, but it doesn't quite work in the fullest sense because this guy, Tokeness, he doesn't bring in what God has promised in verse 24. He doesn't finish transgression. He doesn't put an end to sin. He doesn't bring in everlasting righteousness. Antiochus fits with a lot of it, but not all of it. Like lots of Old Testament prophecies, there can be an initial fulfillment of the prophecy and then a fuller one that comes later. There's a second option that starts counting from a later word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, something that the Persian king Artaxerxes said in around about 458 BC. And if you count forward from there, you get to a far more significant figure, one we're familiar with, Jesus. Again, the events of verses 25 to 27 seem to map on pretty well. Jesus come onto the scene after a troubled time with declarations of war that flowed on. He was the anointed one. He was the anointed one, we're told, who was cut off. He died. And yet the fact that he was cut off, that he did die, is the mechanism by which God brings about some of these things in verse 24. Jesus' death and resurrection on that cross was to bring us forgiveness of sins so that we have a way to deal with that transgression, with that wickedness that Daniel prayed about. Jesus atoned for our wickedness. He brings about the beginning of everlasting righteousness, but just a foretaste of that. We know that when Jesus has promised to come again, he's going to fulfill that promise for everlasting righteousness once and for all. As I said earlier, it's a bit complicated and lots of the scholars have written a great deal about that. And yeah, you could do a whole sermon series on that. We don't have time to dig in it all today. The point is Daniel wasn't meant to map out all everything in minute detail about what was going to happen. He didn't know the names of these rulers that were to come. He didn't know about Antichrist. He didn't know about Jesus yet. He knew there was a promised Messiah that was going to come. Yeah, so it wasn't about adding it all up and making it all into a jigsaw puzzle that fits. The point is that God was being true to his promise in a way that was doing far more than Daniel realized. Up until this point in history, God had largely worked through Israel in triumph, through military success. And that's why Daniel talks in his prayer of God, bringing his people out of Egypt with a mighty hand. That's what it looked like. They were victorious in battle. But then Gabriel says that these next 77s are going to come with a period of persecution and hardship. After those 62 sevens, the anointed one would be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood. War will continue until the end and desolations have been decreed. It sounds pretty grim. To human eyes, it might look like a failure of God's plan, but resolve faith doesn't measure God's faithfulness only by the outward circumstances or what it looks like in the present. This is the great reversal at the heart of the gospel. What looked like a failure of God's plan when Jesus died on that cross was actually the means by which God fulfilled his salvation plan. Jesus, when he was arrested and tried, his followers scattered, fearing for their lives. He was condemned by earthly rulers. He was crucified on that cross and it looked for all intents and purposes like the enemies had won. Maybe the disciples believed their hope might have been defeated. They were scared in that upper room until they saw Jesus resurrected. But friends, the cross wasn't God losing control or losing the victory. It was him opening the way into everlasting righteousness in God's kingdom. That's the great hope. That's where our resolve faith ultimately rests in the covenant keeping God who is faithful to his promise. Daniel prayed to this God, Lord forgive. God answered by giving his anointed one. Daniel asked for deliverance from the Babylonian exile and God was preparing a greater deliverance from sin and death. Daniel asked for the restoration of Jerusalem and yet God was preparing for us an everlasting kingdom. Daniel asked God to remember his promise and God revealed that his promise was far greater than Daniel had imagined. Resolve faith friend's trust that God hasn't failed. Even when his promises seem delayed or different than what we expected, God is faithfully doing more than we may realize. We need to hold on to that truth today, especially if we find ourselves in that season where we're wondering what God might be doing. Get into his word, rest on his promises, trust in them, recognize your own guilt and rest in his righteous mercy. Trust that God has a greater promise and he will fulfill it through an unexpected path. I'm going to close with a reading from Hebrews 10 and then pray and then we'll move out into morning tea. Listen to what the writer of the Hebrews says to encourage us. Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body, since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful. Amen. Let's pray. Loving Heavenly Father, we do just give you thanks in praise for Daniel and for his resolve faith. Father, we thank you that you have revealed your word to us. Even though at times it can be tricky to pass and we've got to do a little bit of work to figure out what it is that you're doing and saying. Father, we thank you for the grace that is ours through faith in Jesus. Thank you for that greater promise that helps us to have a resolve faith in the midst of difficult and trying times. Lord, we know that you are doing a greater thing than Daniel could have imagined, maybe more than what we could imagine. Lord, we thank you for inviting us to be a part of your eternal kingdom. We pray that we would live in light of that truth, resolved in our faith, in that full assurance of faith as we head out into our week. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Join us for tea and coffee.