God’s Word for You

Daniel 9:7-11a The hopelessness of man

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, December 14, 2025

7 “Righteousness is yours, O Lord, but open shame is ours, as it is 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 Open shame, O LORD, falls on us, our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, because we have sinned against you. 9 To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, even though we have rebelled against him, 10 and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by following his laws, which he set before us by the hand of his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has transgressed your law by turning aside, by refusing to listen to your voice.

Since the fall of man into sin, the chief purpose of the law is to convict mankind of his constant sinfulness and of the many ways he breaks God’s laws. The human race is guilty, and each one of us shows it constantly. We deserve the righteous wrath of God. Daniel’s long list of sinners, from “the men of Judah” to “those who are far away” all have this in common: they have not loved God with their whole heart. Whenever the “inclination of man’s heart” (Genesis 8:21) shows itself to be sinful, subject to temptation, then what should be a roaring fire of faith is nothing but a smoking wick at best. God rightly demands from us the very sinlessness and righteousness that was given to Adam and through him should show itself in all mankind. But we are wretched sinners. We are trespassers, crossing over the line of the law that says, “Do not.” Instead, we do. And when the law says, “Do,” we do not. Therefore, Daniel, proclaims, we have open shame.

“Open shame” is literally shame of the face, shame that everyone can see. It is obvious, for example, in a face turned red with shame, or a countenance turned dark with humiliation. A downcast face might also be a sign of anger, as with Cain (Genesis 4:5) or grief, as with Hannah (1 Samuel 1:18) or Job (Job 16:15). But here the prophet is describing what is common to all people; the grief of shame and guilt.

Verse 9 leads the reader to think that good news is coming quickly, for to God “belong compassion and forgiveness.” But notice, reader, that the prophet avoids God’s covenant name LORD in all capitals, meaning his “I am” name filled with promise and grace. Instead, he uses the simpler “adonai,” which is lord or master. The sense is not really much different, since it is a title here for God, but there is a humility where it is used, as do the Sons of Korah in Psalm 45:11: “Honor him, for he is your Lord.”
And verse 9 is just half way along when the prophet uses the word usually translated “for” (כִּי) and uses it in the sense of “even though.” What might be ours is in God’s hands to give, namely, his compassion and forgiveness. But man has no claim to this on account of our sinfulness.

There is a disgusting, hideous judgment of man’s sin in the prophet Isaiah. He says, “We have all become like unclean people, and all our righteousnesses are like a menstrual rag” (Isaiah 64:6). The meaning Isaiah wants to bring forward there is not that a woman’s body is vile, but that any filthy rag would be an unacceptable offering to God, whether it had been used to clean up mud, oil, or any ordinary filthy thing, but that a rag used to stop a woman’s flow of blood is especially unacceptable because God has said that blood itself makes a person unclean (Leviticus 15:19), illustrated by the fact that a woman, while she is having her discharge, is unclean for all of those days, no matter how long her period lasts (Leviticus 15:25; compare Mark 5:25). Isaiah’s words are about the sins of anyone, even himself. The saints never exclude themselves from confessions of guilt or sin (Psalm 32:5), and Isaiah clearly says, “We all.” This is also what Daniel means in our passage. “You became angry, and so we drifted always deeper into sin. We became completely infected with sin and became an abhorrence in your eyes. Our iniquity and our guilt carry us away into destruction.”

Daniel’s words are part of the proof that no one in the days of the Patriarchs, the Prophets, or the Apostles, ever held up their own merits or the merits of any other saints of their time or among their ancestors when they prayed for help and forgiveness—or in any other sense, for any other reason. “The saints still living on earth (in ancient times) were total strangers to a belief in their own merit: Genesis 32:10, ‘O Lord, I am unworthy of all your mercies.’ Psalm 19:12, ‘Who discerns his errors?’ Psalm 130:3, ‘If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, who will stand?’ Psalm 143:2, ‘Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you….’ By this very act they completely remove from themselves any belief in their own merits. From all this it becomes clear that in their prayers the fathers by no means set the merits of their forefathers against the judgment of God or place their confidence in being heard in those merits” (Gerhard, On Death XXIX §455).

What a hopeless state sinful man is in! It is this very hopelessness of man that serves as the dark backdrop for the glory of God and of his Son Jesus Christ. There are many painters, especially Rembrandt, who so cunningly surround their figures in darkness to set apart the shining details of a face, a mouth, a pair of eyes, or a hand resting on another hand, or the hilt of a sword. This is nothing but a pale reflection of the contrast of God’s holy grace against the darkness of man’s guilt and shame in his sin, for “thy cheek pays shame” at the mention of sin. “My disgrace,” one Son of Korah confesses, “is before me all day long, and my face is covered with shame” (Psalm 44:15).

Lord God, our God, who will remove this guilt, this shame, this disgrace from our faces? And having prayed this, we are overwhelmed to know that it was God’s plan all along to help. He set his design in motion already in Eden, already as man was cursed with death, a Redeemer from death, a champion over sin and the work of the devil was there in the Lord’s holy plan. The Son of God was always preparing to leap down to rescue us, to set aside his divine power so that as a human man he could submit even to death itself on our behalf—even death on a cross.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive