God’s Word for You

Daniel 9:19 The choice of Mary

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, December 18, 2025

19 O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, give your attention and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your name is used for your city and for your name!”

Daniel ends his prayer with a hint of the Trinity in his wording. He addresses “O Lord” three times, and summarizes with “O my God” in the second half of the verse. The threeness of God and yet the oneness of God are also expressed in such verses as Numbers 6:24-26 (“The Lord bless you… the Lord make his face shine on you… the Lord look on your with favor”) and Deuteronomy 6:4: “The Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

The verse also has a dynamic, energetic two-three pattern: First, two one-word requests, “Listen! Forgive!” Then, a three-word pattern (with a single negative for contrast), “Give attention! Act! Do not delay!” This is effectively synthetic parallelism, since “Listen” and “Give your attention” say the same thing, and in the context of the prayer “Forgive!” and “Act!” come to the same thing, too. But they are expanded with “Do not delay!”

And why does the prophet urge action from God? Not on account of the worthiness of the people, much less himself, but “for your own sake.” God’s name is being used when people talk about his city, and about his ruined temple. Care for God’s name is our concern in the Second Commandment. This is why we remind one another that God commands we never use his name to lie or assert something using his name for anything that is not so, or to practice any verbal wickedness such as to curse, swear, conjure, preach or teach contrary to the word of God and the Gospel of Christ, or to do any sort of witchcraft, occultism, Scientology, Masonic rites, or to practice any wickedness of this sort. In the Large Catechism, Luther summarizes the commandment (Exodus 20:7) with the positive explanation in Psalm 50:15: “God gives us to understand that we are to use his name properly, for it has been revealed and given to us precisely for our use and benefit. Since we are forbidden to use the holy name in support of falsehood or wickedness, it follows that we are commanded to use it in the service of truth and all that is good.” So use God’s name to preach, teach, pray, thank him for his blessings, and to swear when it is required by law or by ordination, installation, by marriage, and so on. God says, “Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me” (Psalm 50:15). So it is even correct to use God’s name to curse when this is done to an enemy of God who openly opposes God or his word.

God’s holy name was also honored by his choice of the virgin Mary to be his mother. This is one of the mysteries of the incarnation of our Lord, that alone of all the human race, he chose who his mother would be. Now, we all know but we also state formally as a point of faith that the Word—that is, the Son of God—took on man’s nature in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary. This is prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 and fulfilled in Luke 1:27 and 1:34. That is, this is about her pure virginity. But she was also a faithful believer who trusted in God and in all his promises. This is shown by the angel’s declaration: “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). Joseph her fiancé, we remember, was approached in a dream (Matthew 1:20). But Mary received her visit in broad daylight. And we can’t help but wonder whether it was on account of Gabriel’s words to Daniel about the coming of the Messiah (Daniel 9:28-29) that the Lord sent this same Gabriel to speak to Mary. The angel of the Messiah-message in the Old Testament delivered the Messiah-message in the New Testament to the first person who was directly involved, namely, the mother of the Messiah. She is not “full of grace,” nor “the mother of grace,” but rather the daughter of grace, filled with grace on account of Christ her son, not filling her son with grace on account of her own merits. As Luther says, “Learn here that you must regard Mary as a human being, who receives the grace of God and not the one who spends (gives) that grace.”

For Mary declares as we do, “I am the Lord’s servant” (Luke 1:38), and she confesses as we do, “God is my savior” (Luke 1:47). Only a sinful person needs a savior, and Mary, though a pure virgin as to her reproductive organs, was not sinless as to her original, inherited sin, nor any of the other sins that are manifest in any human being (Romans 3:23). She exhibited her imperfections with her doubts; saying or allowing the family to say about her son one day, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

Mary’s virginity is declared and confessed in Scripture so that there can be no question (by anyone who takes the Word of God as the Word of God) as to the parentage of Jesus Christ. He is not the son of any human man; he was not born as we are with original sin passed down from Adam and Eve, for “sin gives birth to sin” (James 1:15). And we confess in the Smalcald Articles, using Scripture alone as our guide, that the Son of God was conceived by the Holy Spirit without the cooperation of man, and was born of the pure, holy, and virgin Mary.

But Christ’s mother was a virgin, and he was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35). So it is Mary’s virginity that is important to Christ’s conception. But he did not take sin from her body, just as he nursed from her body but did not ingest sin from her, and he touched many human beings—even the corpse of the young man from Nain—but did not receive sin as if sin is a germ, or a smear of dirt or sweat on the flesh that can be transferred from hand to hand or from lips to lips. Jesus, the Scripture declares, “was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15); “He had no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21); “he committed no sin, and no deceit was in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). And John declares: “He appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him was no sin” (1 John 3:15).

Unlike many before her who had laughed or doubted God’s promises, such as Sarah (Genesis 18:12) and Zechariah (Luke 1:20), Mary said with complete trust: “May it be to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38).

God honored his own name, his reputation, and his plan for man’s salvation by taking care as to his choice of Mary to be the one who gave birth to God. Jesus loved her and honored her and even took note of her well-being from the cross (John 19:26). But he cautioned us all about our faith and where our worship rightly belongs in the incident after he drove out a demon in a certain place, when “a woman in the crowd called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it’” (Luke 11:27-28).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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