The sermon opens with a full reading of Daniel 9 and frames the chapter as unusual within the book of Daniel: rather than a vision given to a king or to Daniel himself, this chapter records Daniel's own prayer to God. The preacher draws out three lessons from that prayer — how to pray under God's sovereignty, how to pray under God's judgment, and how to pray under God's timing.

The sermon begins by locating the prayer historically. Verse 1 dates the chapter to the first year of Darius the Mede, marking the fall of Babylon to the Persian Empire. Daniel, by then in his eighties and having served the Babylonian empire for decades, is described as both a skilled statesman and a devout reader of Scripture. The sermon recounts how Israel's exile came about: the northern kingdom was destroyed and assimilated by Assyria, losing its identity and becoming the despised Samaritans, while the southern kingdom was carried to Babylon as punishment for persistent idolatry and injustice, yet retained its cultural and religious identity. Reading the prophet Jeremiah, Daniel discovers that Israel's desolation was decreed to last seventy years, a period now nearing completion with Babylon's fall — the very sign that the promised return to Jerusalem is imminent.

On praying under God's sovereignty, the sermon argues that Daniel's urgent pleading, even though God had already promised restoration through Jeremiah, models the right response to divine sovereignty. Rather than reasoning that prayer is unnecessary because God's will is fixed, the sermon insists people pray precisely because God is sovereign and able to do what prayer asks. It appeals to God's demonstrated control over kings and kingdoms throughout Daniel — raising up and dethroning rulers, ending Babylon's reign overnight — and to Jesus's own life of prayer and the Lord's Prayer as the pattern for approaching a sovereign Father. The sermon also argues that God has chosen to accomplish his purposes through the prayers and actions of his people, illustrated by John Calvin's comments on Elijah's prayer shutting up the heavens for three and a half years, and by the preacher's own testimony of answered prayer in the life of the church.

On praying under God's judgment, the sermon confronts the discomfort of Daniel's repeated confessions of sin, wickedness, and shame, arguing that judgment, though unwelcome, is something people actually need and desire when they long for ultimate justice against real evil. It presses the point that God, as creator, has the sole right to define good and evil and therefore the right to judge — a right that cannot legitimately be denied by creatures who have no higher standard of their own from which to judge God. Because judgment is real and inescapable, Daniel cannot appeal to his own righteousness or works; he can only appeal to God's revealed character as merciful and forgiving. The sermon draws a parallel to Jonah, who fled to Tarshish precisely because he knew God was "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love," and connects Daniel's hope to Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant in which God writes his law on human hearts. This mercy, the sermon argues, does not compromise God's justice, because God had already promised, through Isaiah, an anointed Lamb who would bear the guilt of God's people and die in their place — a promise the sermon identifies as fulfilled in Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross both satisfies justice and secures forgiveness.

On praying under God's timing, the sermon turns to Gabriel's answer to Daniel's prayer: the vision of seventy weeks. It walks through the sequence — seven weeks until Jerusalem is rebuilt, sixty-two more troubled weeks until an anointed one comes and is "cut off and shall have nothing," and a final week in which sacrifice and offering are ended. The sermon reads the anointed one's being "cut off" and the ending of sacrifice as pointing forward to Christ's death, which renders the old animal sacrifices obsolete because, as Hebrews states, the blood of bulls cannot take away sin. The main application is that God's timing is not random but is not subject to human control or preference either; the sermon urges the congregation to keep praying under God's sovereignty, judgment, and timing, trusting that fulfillment comes when it is, in God's judgment, perfect — just as it did, far later than Daniel expected, in the first coming of Christ.

Bible Verses Used

• Daniel 9 (full chapter): The sermon's central text, read in full, recording Daniel's confession, plea, and Gabriel's answer of the seventy weeks.

• Jeremiah 25:11–12: Cited as the prophecy Daniel was reading, foretelling seventy years of Babylonian servitude followed by judgment on Babylon itself.

• Jeremiah 29:10: Quoted as God's promise to return his people to Jerusalem once the seventy years are completed.

• Jeremiah 31:31–33: Used to explain the new covenant in which God writes his law on the hearts of his people, the hope underlying Daniel's plea for mercy.

• Jonah's prayer (echoing Psalms; cf. Jonah 4:2): Cited to show that even a reluctant prophet knew God to be "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love."

• 1 Kings (Elijah's prayer, via John Calvin's comments on James): Used as an illustration of ordinary human prayer accomplishing extraordinary things under God's sovereignty.