We worked through the beginning of chapter 9. Most of it is a prayer recorded by Daniel. The prayer is prompted by the prophecy of Jeremiah. He had declared their exile was going to last 70 years. Daniel knew they were coming up on the time predicted and Daniel also knew the people were still not in a state of repentance. Daniel turns to God and intercedes on his own behalf and on behalf of the people. He makes confession and calls on God for mercy. He is acting as a representative of the people and in this way points forward to how Jesus stands in our place before God and bears His wrath against our sin on our behalf. He is our great High Priest and the best hope we have. Daniel demonstrates this by starting his prayer with a verse focused on adoration of God. Pointing to God’s great promise keeping nature and the way he demonstrates love to those who love Him and are His. He then goes on to ask God for show mercy for His own name sake. The point Daniel is making is how they do not deserve God’s mercy but since God made promises the reason to remain faithful to those promises rest completely in God consistency and faithfulness to His promises for His own names sake. This is something we would do well to remember. God is good to us and merciful because of Jesus not because we have somehow appeared on His radar as an especially good person. Our relationship with God is not a transaction where we do good and God blesses us. Our relationship with God exists because God was merciful to us and because God is a good Father to His children. If we could only view ourselves from the perspective of Isaiah we would declare with him how all our righteousness is as filthy rags in comparison to the righteousness of God. We would see how radically corrupt our sin has made us. How almost everything we do even the good things are tainted by pride and impure motivations. We are an extremely selfish and self centered people. This is why it is so important for us to cultivate a hope in God which rests in the finished work of Jesus alone. Having our hope in Jesus alone is difficult. For instance, when we feel like we are more qualified or equipped to enter into devotions or come to church because we have had a good day or week we are in essence reveling in our self-righteousness. Or if we feel like we cannot enter into our time of devotions or church because we have really struggled all day or week, we are again looking at our lack of self-righteousness. The reason any of us can come before God at any time is only because of the righteousness of Jesus alone. And yet that reliance on self keeps creeping into our thoughts. Our hope is in God and His faithfulness to His promises for Jesus sake and His sake alone. This does not mean we pursue sin or disregard doing good. It simply means our motivation to do good is not to merit favor but because we are coming to love Jesus more and more and because of this we desire to become more like Him. The motivation which drives our action needs to be a love for God.