Big Idea: Our God Will Restore His people to His place!
Even when the world feels unstable, God’s promises stand firm. His kingdom outlasts every earthly power—and His people can live with courage and confidence because His purposes never fail. How?
Our God Will Restore His people to His place:
Through prayer (vv. 1-19)
Through perseverance (vv. 20-27)
Daniel 9:1–27
Have you ever made promises you didn’t keep? I have. When my wife and I were dating and engaged, I talked a big game about the kind of husband I was going to be. I had the best of intentions and all the confidence in the world. I promised that I would study her, serve her, consider her interests above my own, and be responsible for our family. A lot of promises.
Well, we weren’t more than a few months into marriage when my wife had to take over paying our bills because Mr. “Responsible for the family” kept procrastinating and paying them late. Far from being a servant, I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s had to ask me simply to take my dirty coffee mug from the table back to the kitchen. I’m embarrassed to think back on all that talk and so little action.
Some of you newlyweds are already finding out how often you fall short of your grand promises and big talk—promises unkept.
One of the things I love most about our God is that nothing ever stops Him from keeping His promises to His people. Daniel chapter nine is dominated by Daniel’s prayer, but everything Daniel prayed was based on—and in response to—a promise that God made to His people.
Remember that the book of Daniel began with God giving Jerusalem into the hands of Babylon. Like a good Father, God disciplined His sinful people by sending them away from His place and into Babylonian exile. Fast forward to Daniel chapter nine, and nearly seventy years had passed since the exile began.
It was the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede, which means that the Medes and the Persians had just conquered the Babylonian Empire. Daniel was studying his Bible, and he perceived a promise that God made to His exiled people:
Daniel 9:2 – 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.
Daniel was reading a book we have in our Old Testament—Jeremiah—which derives its name from the prophet who wrote it. Daniel read that God promised He would only send His people into exile for seventy years.
Among other passages, Daniel was probably reading Jeremiah 29:10–11:
“For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. [11] For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
What promise did Daniel perceive? What promise prompted Daniel to pray? The answer is the big idea of our passage this morning:
Our God will restore His people to His place.
Before we go any further, we have to consider how this promise applies to us. What does it mean that our God will restore His people to His place?
Daniel was born in the land God promised to His people. However, because of their sin, God sent them away—just as He sent Adam and Eve away from Eden when they sinned. Yet God promised that after seventy years He would restore His people to the promised land, to Canaan.
But that promise was not just for the exiles then—it’s for us too. Our God has promised to restore us to His place.
If you have received Jesus Christ with empty hands of faith—if you’ve repented of your sins, turned to Christ, and made Him your only hope in life and in death—then you’ve had a citizenship transfer. You have dual citizenship, so to speak. You’re a citizen of a nation here on earth, but you’re also a citizen of God’s heavenly kingdom.
And our God has promised that one day the Lord Jesus Christ will return. He will bring His heavenly kingdom to earth and set up a new heaven and a new earth. It will be like what the Garden of Eden was meant to become—the true and greater, eternal promised land.
Our God promises to restore all who have been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone to His place forever. Our God will restore His true people—followers of Jesus Christ—to His true place—the new heavens and new earth.
It’s a promise. But our God loves to use means to fulfill His promises. He promises to restore us to His place, but He also tells us the means He will use to keep us walking to the very end.
How will our God restore His people to His place?
Two answers from our passage this morning:
Through prayer (vv. 1–19)
Through perseverance (vv. 20–27)
Let’s get back to the promise that God made to Daniel and the other exiles. Daniel was reading his Bible and perceived that God promised that after seventy years of exile, He would bring down Babylon and bring His people back to their land.
Daniel looked around and thought, “Only two of the three parts of the promise have come true! Seventy years are nearly up, Babylon has been brought down—but we aren’t home like God promised.”
And Daniel’s first response was to pray. Why? Because through Jeremiah the prophet, God not only promised to restore His people after seventy years—He also told them that prayer would be the means of restoration.
Jeremiah 29:13–14 – You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. [14] I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you… and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
God promised to restore His people to His place—but, as Jack Miller used to say, “Prayer puts the promises of God into motion.”
Bible scholar Dale Ralph Davis drives home the lesson we learn from Daniel’s example of perceiving God’s promise and then praying according to it:
“It’s quite simple: the Lord’s promises drive his servant’s prayer. It’s as if God’s promises have Velcro on them and our prayers are meant to get stuck there. In practice, this promise-to-prayer pattern means Christians should let the Bible become their prayer book.”
Our God promises to restore His people to His place through prayer. He promises to restore us to eternal life in an eternal promised land through prayer—because prayer keeps us in the love of God.
So what do prayers stuck to God’s promises sound like? Daniel’s prayer has three parts: adoration, confession, and petition.
Daniel 9:4 – 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.”
As Christians, we learn the priority of praise from the way Daniel began his prayer. The main burden of his prayer was confession and petition—confessing the sins that got God’s people sent away and asking God to restore them. It was an urgent prayer.
Our prayers that say, “Come, Lord Jesus, return soon,” or “Keep me from the sin that so easily entangles me,” or “Preserve my household and my church in the faith to the end,” are equally urgent.
And yet Daniel begins with praise and adoration. Why? Because in prayer, who comes before what. Before we launch into our confessions and petitions, before we ask God to restore His people to His place, we should remember who we’re talking to and offer Him the praise He deserves.
The Lord Jesus taught us the same: “Our Father in heaven…” comes before “Your kingdom come” or “Forgive us our debts.”
Before you launch into your needs, adore God. Through the grace of Christ, He has adopted you as His child. He is near, loving, and attentive. And praise Him because He is in heaven—majestic, almighty, and utterly capable of keeping His promises.
Though it’s not a biblical law, it’s wise to begin our prayers with adoration. Remember who He is: Father (full of compassion) and in Heaven (fully capable).
The largest portion of Daniel’s prayer is confession of sin. That made sense for Daniel. God had promised that if His people rebelled, He would remove them from the promised land. Sin got them sent into exile, and confession and repentance were the only way to be restored.
It makes all the sense in the world for Daniel’s prayer—and ours—to be dominated by confession.
The New Testament describes the Christian life as a race of faith. Those who persevere to the end will be saved. What threatens to trip us up so that we drop out? Sin.
Hebrews 12:1–2a – Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race set before us, [2] looking to Jesus…
Confession keeps the sin that clings so closely from tripping us up and knocking us off the path of faith.
That’s why I can confidently say: if you don’t regularly confess your sins, you will not make it. Confession is the means God uses to keep you in the faith to the end.
Do you confess your sins—or do you let them blow over and simply try harder next time?
A pastor once illustrated the difference this way: imagine two families living next door. Both have a father, mother, and five kids. Both have the same household income. One house is reasonably clean; the other has dishes stacked up everywhere. The difference isn’t the number of kids—it’s that one family washes their dishes when they’re done, and the other lets them pile up.
The difference between someone who runs the race of faith with endurance and someone who doesn’t isn’t that one sins more—it’s that one lets their sins stack up, while the other washes them through confession.
Daniel’s confession is long, but one key insight stands out: we must call sin by its right name when we confess.
Daniel 9:5–7a – 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… [7] To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame…
Is that how you confess? “Sinned, done wrong, acted wickedly, rebelled, turned aside, not listened, no one else’s fault, the shame all mine”—or do you say, “slipped up, made a mistake, provoked by others, no shame in that, sorry”?
Where are you experiencing the consequences of your sin?
Have you failed to honor God with your money and now find your finances tight or your heart enslaved by greed?
Have you failed to honor God with your sexuality and now feel trapped, untrustworthy, or distant from your spouse?
Have you failed to honor God with your time and lost your taste for His Word and His people?
Have you turned inward and stopped serving others or sharing the gospel?
Have you refused to forgive and grown bitter toward your husband, wife, parents, or church family?
I have wonderful news: our God restores His people to His place. It’s all of grace—so confess.
Petition is praying for God to fulfill His promises for the sake of His glory.
Daniel 9:17 – “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.”
God had promised to restore His people to His city and sanctuary. Therefore, Daniel petitioned God to fulfill His promise for the sake of His name.
That’s how we should pray: “Father, You’ve promised that since You began a good work in us, You’ll bring it to completion. Therefore, for the sake of Your name, keep me believing until Jesus returns; keep my family walking in holiness; and speed the day of Christ’s return.”
Our God promises to restore His people to His place—through prayer.
And secondly…
In response to Daniel’s fervent prayer, the Lord sent the angel Gabriel—the same angel we read about in the New Testament—to deliver His answer.
Daniel prayed that God would restore His people to His place, just as He promised. And God’s answer was, well, complicated.
God said, “Yes, I will restore you—but not yet fully and finally. Perseverance is needed.”
Daniel 9:24 – “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.”
Yes, after seventy years God sent the exiles home to Jerusalem. But the full and final restoration would take “seventy weeks.” In Scripture, the numbers seven and seventy often symbolize completeness.
The seventy years of exile ended, but the complete restoration—the end of sin, the atonement for iniquity, the bringing in of everlasting righteousness—would come only in the fullness of time, through Jesus Christ.
At His first coming, Jesus atoned for sin and established a new covenant between God and all who believe. But when Christ returns, He will bring God’s eternal kingdom to earth. Sin will be stopped forever, and the new heaven and earth will be God’s most holy place, where He dwells with His people forever.
This promise finds its fulfillment in Revelation 21:22–27, where John describes the New Jerusalem:
“I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb… its gates will never be shut… nothing unclean will ever enter it, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
God’s answer to Daniel—and to us—is: Yes, but not yet fully. You must persevere.
Gabriel tells Daniel that these “seventy weeks” unfold in three segments: seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one final week (divided in half). These represent the fullness of God’s redemptive timeline:
Seven weeks – The exiles return and Jerusalem is restored.
Sixty-two weeks – The long silence between the Old and New Testaments.
Final week – The coming of Christ, His death for sin, the destruction of the temple, the growth of the church amid tribulation, and the final return of Christ.
Through Christ’s death and resurrection, our sins have been forgiven. When we sin and seek restoration, God’s answer is “Yes” in Christ. But we must continue to pray and persevere through many tribulations until that great day when sin and Satan are finally stopped and our God restores His people to His place forever.
Our God will restore His people to His place. He will bring you home. Christ’s death and resurrection guarantee it.
Therefore, persevere.
Matthew 24:12–13 – “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
The narrow path of faith leading to the celestial city is full of lawlessness and temptation, but our God will keep us and restore us to His place forever—through prayer and perseverance.
Citylight Church—keep the faith.
