A Renewed Church, A Praying Church

Introduction

A renewed church.

Solomon’s temple as the first church to be dedicated to the Lord.

2 Chronicles 7:1-3 shows us the divine confirmation of the dedication. God is pleased with the dedication and fill the house with His glory. it is after the prayer that the glory of God is revealed, not the sacrifice.

The Lord answered Solomon’s prayer by fire from heaven (see Elijah, 1 Kgs. 18:38–39). The Lord’s glory filled the place so as to prohibit the priests from entering

2 Kings 9:2 “I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple whichi you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.”

in what way we are to be renewed when we pray as a church? (2 Chronicles 6:12-42 or 1 Kings 8)

we experience God’s fatihfulness (6:14-20)

we remember what he has done in the past fulfilling his promises (v14-15). Solomon begins with praise (vv. 14–15) before making any requests (vv. 16–17). The praise concentrates on two aspects of God’s nature, that he is unique (there is no God like you in heaven or on earth, 14a), and that he is faithful to his covenant of love with his obedient people (vv. 14b–15). Mention of the Davidic covenant seems to inspire repeated praise about God’s incomparability. That the God of Israel is a being of incomparable perfection. We cannot describe him; but this we know, there is none like him in heaven or in earth, v. 14. All the creatures have their fellow-creatures, but the Creator has not his peer. He is infinitely above all, and over all, God blessed for ever. 2. That he is, and will be, true to every word that he has spoken; and all that serve him in sincerity shall certainly find him both faithful and kind. Those that set God always before them, and walk before him with all their hearts, shall find him as good as his word and better; he will both keep covenant with them and show mercy to them. 3. That he is a being infinite and immense, whom the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain, and to whose felicity nothing is added by the utmost we can do in his service.

we continue to ask for his faithfulness (v16-17) while remember our call to be faithful. The experiences we have had of God’s performing his promises should encourage us to depend upon them and plead them with God: and those who expect further mercies must be thankful for former mercies. In citing God’s faithfulness in maintaining his covenant and love, Solomon does not lose sight of human responsibility to respond to God and to love him wholeheartedly. In this way he faithfully reflects the thought of Deuteronomy 7:9–10. Solomon’s confidence in praying is bolstered by previously answered prayer. Answered prayer is today also a strong basis for confidence in prayer. A second ground of confidence is God’s own promise. His servants frequently claim his promises when they pray, and God honors these requests (cf. Ex 32:13; Da 9:1–19). In making this petition, Solomon recognizes his own responsibility and tacitly rededicates himself to serving God.

The major point, however, of these verses is a plea that God, who has so far been faithful in every way to his covenant with David (as evidenced in the completion of the temple and the rulership of Solomon), might always accept this temple and condescend to dwell there, while receiving those who approach him by way of the temple.

we remember how unworthy we are for his faithfulness (v18-20). No person who entertains just and exalted views of the spiritual nature of the Divine Being will suppose that he can raise a temple for the habitation of Deity, as a man builds a house for himself. Nearly as improper and inadmissible is the idea that a temple can contribute to enhance the glory of God, as a monument may be raised in honor of a great man. Solomon described the true and proper use of the temple, when he entreated that the Lord would “hearken unto the supplications of His servant and His people Israel, which they should make towards this place.” In short, the grand purpose for which the temple was erected was precisely the same as that contemplated by churches—to afford the opportunity and means of public and social worship, according to the ritual of the Mosaic dispensation—to supplicate the divine mercy and favor—to render thanks for past instances of goodness, and offer petitions for future blessings (see on 1 Ki 8:22). This religious design of the temple—the one temple in the world—is in fact its standpoint of absorbing interest.

We experience forgiveness (6:21-27)

relationship between men nnd men is restored (v22-23). here, it descirbes a situation where a man is wronged by his neighbour. it is a very difficult situation to solve. in the OT, a judgment is made based on the witness. In cases where the testimony of witnesses could not be obtained and there was no way of settling a difference or dispute between two people but by accepting the oath of the accused, the practice had gradually crept in and had acquired the force of consuetudinary law, for the party to be brought before the altar, where his oath was taken with all due solemnity, together with the imprecation of a curse to fall upon himself if his disavowal should be found untrue. There is an allusion to such a practice in this passage.

The injured Hebrew made his appeal to the Lord his God; he required the offending neighbour to take an oath in the very presence of the Holy One, invoking the judgment of God against the one who was in the wrong. It was presumably a last resort, an ultimate appeal. Not formally, but substantially, we do likewise. If human judgment fails, we leave the guilty in the hands of God. We commit our righteous cause to his Divine arbitration. We ask God to make our innocence appear, to restore to us the good name, or the possession of which we have been defrauded. We make our appeal from earth to Heaven.

relationship between men and God is restored (v24-27/36-39). when we fall into sin. in fact, nobody can aviod sinning. Solomon’s prayer even anticipates the most extreme covenant punishment, that of exile from the covenant land. In that extreme event, God’s ear will still be open, a prayer of repentance will still be heard, and God will still forgive.

Solomon takes his place and his part on this great occasion as the sovereign of the nation; he prays for the people of the land in the double sense of representing them and of interceding for them. It is the Hebrew nation that was then “before God,” and is now before us. We therefore think of—

I. National responsibility. That is assumed throughout. It is not stated in so many words, but the idea of it pervades the whole prayer. The people of Israel were not at liberty to choose their own deity, nor their own ecclesiastical polity, nor even their own forms of worship; nor might they determine how they should be related to one another. In all the important relationships in which they stood, of every kind, they owed a direct obedience to God. And this rested upon the bases of—

II. National inheritance. Their land was that which God had “given his people for an inheritance” (ver. 27). So very distinctly and remarkably had God bestowed their land upon them, that they might well realize their national obligation. But when we take all things into account, we shall see that every nation owes all that it has and is to the creative, formative, providential goodness of Almighty God; and it is, therefore, responsible to him for its creed, its religious worship, its laws and statutes, its habits of life; for there is no nation anywhere that has not derived its inheritance from him. Even that which may, at first sight, seem to disconnect it from him, viz. the element of national courage, energy, industry, struggle, suffering,—this also is “of the Lord.

Solomon anticipates the hour of national misfortune—defeat in battle, drought, pestilence, locusts, etc. He regards this conceivable calamity as the consequence of national sin and the sign of Divine displeasure (vers. 24, 26), “because they have sinned against thee,” and he prays for mercy and for the removal of the stroke of penalty. It is a question of great importance whether this view is to be taken under all circumstances whatever. We must remember that the way in which the favour of God was manifested in Old Testament times was the way of temporal prosperity, and (conversely) the form of Divine disapproval was that of temporal adversity. But we are living in a period when the spiritual and the future are the prevailing elements; and what was a certain conclusion then may be only a possibility of a probability now. 1. It may be true that national calamity speaks of national delinquency, and calls for national repentance. It is not only possible, but even probable, that this is the case. For national sin is commonly showing itself in guilty indulgence, and that leads to weakness, to exposure to the enemy, to misfortune of many kinds. 2. It may be that national calamity is Divine discipline. It is quite possible that God is testing, is purifying, is refining the nation as he does the individual, is intervening to save it from sin and shame, is working thus for its moral elevation and enlargement. And therefore it may be that the question to be asked is—What have we to learn? What is the peril to be shunned? Which is the way God desires should be taken?—C.

As a renewed church, we pray for our nation.

We experience healings and witness salvation (6:28-35)

healings happen (28-31). When we are in the suffering. Not only during the time of national calamity (ver. 28), though especially then, do families and individual men find themselves in sore need of Divine succour. There is never any considerable congregation which does not include at least a few hearts that come up in hope of comfort and relief from Heaven.

I. The burden which is borne by each human heart. With our complex nature, and our many human relationships, we lie open to many ills and sorrows. These may be: 1. Bodily; pain or weakness, or threatened serious disease. 2. Temporal; some difficulty or danger connected with “our circumstances.” 3. Sympathetic; some trouble of heart we are suffering by reason of our strong attachment to others who suffer and are in distress. 4. Spiritual; heart-ache, disappointment, compunction, doubt, anxious inquiry after God. “Every one knows his own sore and his own grief.”

salvation is added to us (32-33). In a spirit of magnanimity, Solomon also entreated the Lord to hear the prayers of foreigners who might go to the temple to seek His face. The fifth petition (vers. 41–43) ranks with the former ones: but not only those belonging to thy people Israel, who may call upon Thee here, hear also every stranger who does so; that all people of the earth, &c. In the law (Deut. 15:14–16) it was provided that a stranger, sojourning among the Israelites, might sacrifice with them; Solomon goes further, and declares that the great deeds of God in Israel, the seal and crown of which was the temple as a fixed dwelling-place of Jehovah, were to work out the salvation not only of Israel, but the conversion of all the nations of the earth. To reach that end may God hear every stranger who comes to this house and calls upon Him for His name’s sake (i.e., because he had heard of the might and greatness displayed on Israel, ver. 42). The expressions in ver. 42 refer essentially to the wonderful exodus from Egypt (Deut. 4:34; 5:15; Ex. 6:6), which had reached its climax in the building of the temple (see above, on chap. 6:1). The words in ver. 43: that they may know that this house … is called by thy name (נקרא על), are a formula that occurs as here and in Jer. 7:10, 11, 14; 25:29, about the temple, and about the people Israel in Deut. 28:10; Isai. 4:1; 63:19; Jer. 14:9; 15:16; 2 Chron. 7:14; and is intimately related to the expression, to lay the name of Jehovah upon (על) a thing or person (Numb. 6:27; Deut. 12:5; 16:6; 1 Kings 11:36, &c). The latter was thus marked as one to whom God reveals himself (names himself), i.e., manifests and communicates himself, so that he stands in union and communion with Him (Am. 9:12, comp. Hengstenberg, Christologie, iii. s. 231 sq.). Through the hearing of the prayers which the heathen offered here to Israel’s God, they as well as Israel were to experience that His “name” was there (ver. 16), i.e., that He manifested and proved himself there to be God. The usual translation of the expression, that this house is called by Thy name, or bears Thy name, is therefore quite wrong. What good would it have done the heathen to know that the house Solomon built was called by Jehovah’s name? But the following is equally erroneous: “that Thy name has been invoked upon this temple (at its dedication), i.e., that this temple has been dedicated under effective invocation of Thy continued help” (Thenius); it was not that the heathens were to know that the temple had been solemnly consecrated, but that the God who dwelt there would hear their as well as Israel’s prayer, and that hence He is the only true God (chap. 18:37; Ps. 65:3).

Solomon’s fifth request recognizes God’s wider purpose in his dealings with Israel, namely, that as Gentiles see God working in and through Israel, they might desire to know Israel’s God. Solomon prays that as foreigners approach God through the temple, God will hear them so that they too will truly come to fear God, as well as to recognize the fact that God’s name truly does reside in the temple

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Enemies’ stronghold is destroyed (34-35). Here we are reminded how right it is to implore a blessing before we go out to our allotted labour, or even on some specially and divinely appointed enterprise.

Conclusion.

A renewed church is a praying church. A praying church is a renewed church. Weekly prayer meeting, IWM

in the past, temple is where Isaraelites pray. today, we pray wherever we worship the Lord, including at our home. family should be a place we pray together today, and experience the same thing that we have mentioned. When family pray together, family is renewed. when family is renewed, family prays together.

A renewed family is a praying family. A praying family is a renewed family. Family altar.