‘When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:13-14 NIVUK
https://bible.com/bible/113/2ch.7.13-14.NIVUK
My wife is from the Philippines, where most of her family live. To be honest, it's a really nice country, so we tend to go there every so often. It never bothers us if we have excess Philippine Pesos on our return to the UK because we know we'll be back relatively soon.
But one time, we got caught out.
We arrived in the country and planned to a little essential shopping. We made our way to a mall, found what we needed and went to pay for it. Only, they didn't accept our money. You see, while we had been gone, they had re-issued polymer notes instead of paper for all their banknotes. As a lot of time had passed, the banks were not even accepting the old notes anymore. We were stuck with money we couldn't use. Our money belonged to a certain place at a certain time. It was not useful anymore.
This verse will be quoted, and dare I say mis-quoted, by a great many preachers during this crisis. It is a promise from God that He will revive a nation if only they return to Him. One hundred percent. But for us to understand it properly, we have to understand which nation and when. We have to understand it in its place and time. I'm not saying that it doesn't apply to us. Aspects of it do. But we must understand it in context. If we don't, then we could end up being terribly disappointed with God when we shouldn't.
Before we look at four simple points regarding these verses, let's take a few minutes to understand the context.
What we need to know These verses are God's reply to a prayer that Solomon prayed one chapter before. He prayed this prayer at the dedication of the temple his father David had designed and he had built. Solomon's prayer is rooted in several aspects of Old Testament, Old Covenant Jewish life. Firstly, history, in that he recalls the promises God made to his father, David (2 Chronicles 6:16-17). Secondly, spirituality. He prays on the basis of God's greatness (2 Chronicles 6:18-19). Thirdly, law. Specifically covenant law. Solomon prays on the basis of the Old Covenant that God will forgive those who have sinned if they pray in this temple (2 Chronicles 6:28-31). So, you see, these words were given to Solomon by God at a specific place and time to fulfil a specific purpose. They were given on the basis of the Old Covenant relationship that Israel had, and still has, with God. This relationship has a 'carrot and stick' aspect, with blessings for obedience and punishments for disobedience, as outlined in Deuteronomy 28. Or we could think about it another way. I sometimes translate documents from Romanian to English. I've occasionally translated commercial contracts. Within those contracts there are always the benefits each party wants to obtain from their relationship (for example, the goods they want to sell and the payment they want to receive). There are often penalty clauses which state how much each party will have to pay if the relationship breaks down or if things don't go to plan, and which legal system will resolve any disputes. The Old Covenant is exactly like that. It is a contractual relationship with God. The blessings are like the benefits of a contract; the curses are like the penalty clauses. These verses, and indeed a large part of the sacrificial system, are about how to repair the relationship once it's been broken by the Jewish people. What God is saying here is that He agrees and commits to what Solomon had prayed. He says that He will accept the prayers of repentant sinners from the Temple when their relationship with God is broken and needs to be repaired. That is fundamentally what these verses are about. But we are no longer under that covenant (Galatians 3:10-13; Romans 6:14; Hebrews 8:13). We do not have a contractual relationship with God. Jesus paid the cost of the penalty clauses for us once for all time. We are free from the contract forever (Romans 3:22-24). At first glance these verses cannot apply to us because they apply to a particular people at a particular time and speak of national repentance for national sins bringing national healing on the basis of a contract or covenant in which we do not participate. But there are principles we can derive which will help us recover when suffering comes. It's these principles we will now explore. Firstly, we need to look at THE PROBLEM. That is, the symptoms that are driving the Jews to the Temple to pray for forgiveness.
תגובות