Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 6:26-31

We are in 2nd Chronicles 6 Let me go ahead and read 22 to 39 for context here.

I'll keep it a little bit short in that Let's go ahead and just do Let's see Let's just read the passage.

That'll be short enough When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you

If they pray toward this place that acknowledge your name and turn from their sin when you afflict them Then here in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants your people

Israel When you teach them the good way in which they should walk and grant rain upon your land Which you have given to your people as an inheritance

There's famine in land. There's pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar if their enemies besiege them in the land at their gates

Whatever plague whatever sickness there is whatever prayer whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people

Israel Each knowing his own affliction his own sorrow and stretching out his hands toward this house Then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and render to each whose heart you know

According to all his ways for you. You only know the hearts of the children of mankind That they may fear you and walk in your ways all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers

Amen All right So this first half verse when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you

All right So the Lord withholding rain because of the people sin Who wants to summarize what the verse in Matthew with the passage of Matthew says

Matthew 5 43 to 45? Kind of a famous passage in the

Sermon on the Mount Go for it. Yeah, so it says that his

Yeah that he sends rain on the the just and the unjust so it's interesting here that he would talk about Withholding rain even on the unjust.

Well, the idea is not that God isn't Merciful but that yeah, there are consequences for sin.

So just because Matthew yeah, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount uses the Illustration of sending rain on the wicked does not mean there would never be a time where he does withhold rain because of wickedness

It's just that he continues to give them air to breathe etc things that they don't deserve Yes Right.

Well, that's a good example Goshen because that's where he's doing the opposite. That's where he's with all the others. Yeah either way

Right. All right

If they pray toward this place and confess your name and turn from their sin when you afflict them

All right, who wants to summarize what the passages and Leviticus and Deuteronomy we're talking about here, right?

They would get blessings if they obeyed and the rain would stop if they if they didn't obey Yeah, and Leviticus he talks about making the heavens like iron something similar said in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy has an interesting detail though that he is particularly bringing them into the land for this feature in Egypt Everything's watered by irrigation.

The Nile is bringing in the water and the promised land It's coming in by rain. So they will have to trust the

Lord for water It's not like other lands where you don't have to trust the Lord for water. It's just always there You have to trust the

Lord for water Um Did anybody happen to know one very small difference between First Kings in this passage and second

Chronicles so Yeah as an article, right?

He says the heavens instead of heavens Right, so Yeah inverse at the beginning of verse 26 when the heavens are shut up now

Why that may be intentional and not just you know, copious doing copious things it's because in Deuteronomy 11 17 it talks about the heavens right and if he's making allusions to these passages

We've seen that a number of times where he'll make little modifications to make clear allusions to Old Testament passages

So it seems pretty reasonable to conclude that maybe what he's doing here All right, verse 27 says

Then here in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants and of your people Israel when you teach them the good way in which

They should walk and send a rain on your land for you have given to your people for an inheritance

All right, who wants to summarize these passages and first Kings and first Samuel Tasha yeah, so Lord withholding rain from Ahab because of his idolatry

And then yeah, and then Elijah Ends up It ends up being brought about by his hand water through the slaughter of the prophets

Interesting personal story about that verse, you know the cloud the size of man's hand I had a literature class in ninth grade where we had some anthology we were reading and you know it's making all these illusions and stuff and the

Teacher, you know the whole class mostly being atheists a teacher being atheists missed this illusion And he's telling us all the cultural illusions and everything

I'm like, oh you missed this one where it talks about the cloud the size of man's hand This is what it's getting at So I got to like read the passage to the class and then teach them about Ahab and Elijah It's kind of fun evangelism opportunity for a ninth grader

All right, and what about first Samuel who wants to summarize that one First Samuel 12 not quite.

Let me see. Oh, maybe it was maybe this. Sorry. Let me look it up. Okay 1219 people said to Samuel pray for your servants to the

Lord that we may not die for we have added to our sins this Evil to ask yourselves ask for ourselves a king and Samuel said to the people

Not be afraid you have done this evil It do not turn aside from following the Lord but serve the

Lord with all your heart And do not turn aside after the empty things that cannot profit or deliver for they are empty

For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself

Moreover as for me fart be it for me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you and I will instruct

You in the good in right way. There's the connection right there, right the good way Only fear the

Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart for your consider what great things he has done for you

But if you still do wickedly you shall be swept away both you and your king. So in this passage

And first Samuel Samuel's gonna teach them a good way here. The Lord's gonna teach them a good way. Yes Yeah, what what comes to mind for me is

Psalm 51 where David talks about teaching transgressors your ways Like once you forgive me, I will teach transgressors your ways

So I'm not yeah, I'm not concluding that Yeah, and in the affliction that precedes forgiveness

Yeah. All right. Yes Okay Sure, yes, yeah, there wouldn't be forgiveness or repentance forgiveness without repentance, right

And something to keep in mind to there's it's a recurring debate But it has been kind of a popular one lately whether or not

You're supposed to forgive someone who is not repentant and it is worth observing that not even

God does that so Yeah, you shouldn't harbor bitterness or anything

But repent but forgiveness is not something that really can be given to a an unrepentant person

If you understand forgiveness to be releasing them from some kind of debt Because they still have a debt to you so long as they to reconcile so long as they're unrepentant

All right Yeah, so once again, this is probably the passage being alluded to when he speaks of the good way

All right, what about All right, let's read verse 28. There is famine in the land and if there's pestilence, there's a blasting or Mildew locusts or caterpillar their enemies besieged them in any land at the cities

Whatever plague or whatever sickness there be actually before we move on One of the questions was how does this passage relate to the passage of first Samuel?

well, yes, there's the allusion to the good way, but then also Also the fact that the access to the temple brings access to the

Lord because you listen to the way that Samuel is talking about access to the Lord here That I should sin against the

Lord by ceasing to pray for you And I will instruct you in the good and right way only fear the Lord certain faithfully with your heart

Yeah, let's see Yeah, the Lord will not forsake his people for his great namesake because it's pleased the

Lord to make you a people for himself there's a lot of things in here about God's faithfulness that it's It would be connecting to you by making that reference and the temple implies these things for the people

You know, they deserve to die and How is it that they are not going to die? Well, thankfully

Samuel's there for them But even after Samuel's not there they're going to have the temple.

All right. What about Leviticus? 26 and Deuteronomy 28 who wants to summarize those passages?

Yes, go for it Okay famine

Okay, and any other observations Okay Right, yeah, so you're talking about the distinction between this and verse 24 like what's the yeah, right

Attacks that force the people into exile versus tax it don't Josh Hmm.

There's one other observation. I'm looking for in these passages One other observations might not be as obvious The number seven where it talks about striking them sevenfold, right?

There's a sevenfold discipline and then in That's in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy it talks about how you should go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them right that Some the sevenfold punishment and then you look at this list here

It says if there's famine land if there's pestilence There's blasting mildew locust account for their enemies besiege them and then it summarizes whatever plague whatever sickness, right?

But it appears that it's a this sevenfold Curse that's given here and then with words that are alluding to the sevenfold curses that are explicitly called sevenfold mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy Once again, very very small difference here in first Kings it talks about enemy

Here the chronicler speaks of enemies Once again that connects to Deuteronomy which speaks of enemies and then

There's also you wouldn't necessarily see this in English, but there's explicit conjunctions before many of the items where there wasn't in Kings So you can imagine

So the conjunction is like and in English, although it's just a single letter Attached to the word in Hebrew right just above You don't need to put

Conjunctions on everything right you can say I came I saw I conquer where you could say I came and I saw and I conquered and This one adds more of the conjunctions which once again makes it similar to the list in Deuteronomy that has a lot of conjunctions so these these things seem to be intentional changes in my

Yeah in my opinion That the chronicler is making to try to make these rough illusions more clear.

All right. Yes Just to remind of the promises and blessing and curses.

Yeah, and God's faithfulness remember he's The chronicler is trying to tell you the whole

Old Testament story right first Kings really just trying to give you some history the chronicler starts not at Samuel or David or anything, right?

He starts at Adam and tells the whole story and So he's trying to he has a much bigger agenda to get you to make the connections

Right, like he wants you to see God's overarching plan in a way that Kings is not is not trying to do right

The chronicler is giving you more of the meta -narrative That for the people in exile coming back or having returned from exile post -exilic people what they should be thinking about About the whole history that they've gone through His first and second

Chronicles being the last books of the Old Testament written It's doing that and setting everything up for the

New Testament Okay, verse 29

Whatever prayer and supplication may be made by any man or by all your people Israel Who will know every man his own plague in his own sorrow will spread forth his hands towards his house

Does anyone want to try? Explaining what this is talking about Manu Just just the verse want to summarize it.

Yeah, maybe you could answer the question was a plague of one's own heart. Maybe that helps But the tragedy

So, yeah the plague of one's own heart like you said it would be Right, yeah, so individual afflictions, right

So, yeah, all these other things are about the people as a whole But this is case for the individual to the individual can also go to God in prayer

This isn't just for the people corporately. It's also for the people individually. They can go to the Lord Same is true with the church.

Of course, we can go to the Lord for churches prayers, but we can also do it individually as well

Yes Right.

Yeah, I would agree is talking about the miserable condition of one's own soul. But the yeah, but the idea here is that any kind of affliction that Plagues individuals too.

They can yeah, they can go to God for All right Yeah, why did they spread their hands to?

Demonstrate reliance on the Lord All right, just like Solomon spread forth his hands in prayer.

All right To demonstrate their reliance on the

Lord like, you know Reaching out for help like if you're underwater, you know

You know, that's how it feels sometimes when you're praying, you know, just like you're under water All right verse 30 then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive

Render to every man according to all his ways whose heart, you know for you Even you alone know the hearts of the children of men

Hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive Remember Solomon keeps observing that even though he's just completed the temple and God has filled it up with his glory.

God isn't actually It dwelling there to the exclusion of heaven, it's actually

Heaven would be his primary dwelling place and the temple is just his footstool, right? He is he is present there, but not in an exclusive way

So he talks about hearing from heaven Talks about God knowing the heart so he can judge appropriately last week

We looked at the oaths that he would validate knowing people's hearts individually And so here he's going to judge them by their hearts and if they're truly repentant

Yeah, then forgive them It is an interesting idea that only

God knows the heart there's a lot of ways that people Don't seem to be aware of that sometimes either thinking that they can understand the heart

It's true that out of the heart the mouth speaks and so you can discern a lot of things at the heart But you can't a lot of people make too many assumptions then there's also views of Spiritual beings like angels and demons right where people think that Satan can like see inside their head can't maybe he can maybe

Demons are capable telling that you're like sweating and look nervous or whatever right or like measuring external things

But they can't see inside the heart angels likewise can't see inside the heart Any kind of Observations of who you are external a lot of people think of Satan as being like the anti got like the

Exact same thing as God just an evil version of that, right? So he's also omniscient and omnipresent.

And yeah, it's not the case Does Satan know who is with God?

Oh, is he I see is he a capable of assessing? Their status

I would I would say yeah in this Spiritual like given that there is some kind of spiritual war going on and there is

Very clear indication that angels defend God's elect

You know, it talks about the angels of the little ones etc not assigning like individual guardian angels to them or anything but Yeah, it's pretty clear whose side everyone is on so yeah a lot of times when we use that phrase, you know

You can't see the heart we're talking about assessing whether or not someone's truly a Christian But I suppose angels would have to be able to in order to be or maybe

I mean they're not doing it by Yeah, it's not something like internal but there's some kind of yeah

There's sufficient revelation that they are able to tell Who the angels can tell who they're supposed to be protecting whether it's revelation from God or some other spiritual thing, you know

They can tell who they're supposed to be protecting the demons know who they are targeting, etc. Yes Okay, I do not know how it works

Yeah, I don't know how it works Yes, so there are three sources of temptation, right?

There's the world the flesh and the devil Sometimes we're our own source of temptation. Sometimes the world is sometimes

Satanist And by Satan I refer to him as a synecdoche for all his minions, right?

So like if you were to say the White House did this it's not really the White House It's not even necessarily the president, right?

It's like all his minions right doing something I don't know minions is the appropriate word for the cabinet, but but uh

Yeah, say same thing Yeah, so that those are three sources of temptation one of the implications of that too is given what the

Bible says about angels And knowing that they are the same kind of being that they would

I'm gonna preach on this in a couple weeks promote good works like in the opposite direction right opposite of temptation

They would they would provoke good works Suggesting things not internally like the

Holy Spirit But externally the way Satan might tempt like the way he tempted Eve, you know pointing at the fruit and etc, right?

Yeah, I grew up watching I don't know if you all remember the show touched by an angel.

I grew up watching that show No, no, I when it says

Yeah, Hebrews 13 to by this some have entertained angels like it is talking about the

Old Testament passages where they entertained the angel of the Lord and Given the angel of the

Lord I I guess there are a few of those times and it wasn't the angel of the Lord like you do have the two other

Angels who are with Abraham and then you have them visiting a lot. Those are just normal angels but all the other times

I can think of It is it is the angel of the Lord and we should not expect him to appear again since he is in heaven

Sitting at the right hand of the Father So, yeah, I'm I am inclined to think that angels do no longer

Take physical form like that, but I'm planning on studying this a lot more over the next two weeks to prepare to Teach on it.

So we'll we'll see if I learn something new. Yes, James Yeah, I believe possession still exists yeah, having

I mean having a strong influence on someone is not the same thing as as Yeah, God giving license to Yeah, I mean all the

All the situations you see where that kind of thing happens it is with God's permission like God even even the scene where that my kaya gives us of The courtroom of God and God decides that he's gonna send the lying spirit lying spirit being

Satan himself I believe that's kind of a pretty common interpretation. Well There is this notion of permission with Job there's a notion of permission all these things have some kind of notion of permission that Really fits better in a world where the

Canon isn't closed and there aren't new messages to be given because that's what angels are Angels are messengers right

Yeah, oh Yeah, I wasn't

I wasn't saying that I was talking about the hospitality situations. Yeah, I'm not talking about appearance

I'm aware that there are more angel appearances. And yeah, he it's after the Ascension. He's it's the right hand of God the

But the cannons not closed at that point that that point remains right the angels are still giving new revelation verbal revelation even

Okay, right. Yes Yeah, God God has

So sealed us with his spirit that there is a guarantee of our salvation He has bound up his identity or his reputation on us so that if we were to be lost his own reputation would be spoiled

Right, these are the kind of things that means it doesn't have to be something like in the spiritual realm

That's like in some kind of physical analogy happening Yeah, as far as the angels being able to tell who's who it also says obviously that that they rejoice

For one person be saved, right? So there there isn't a knowledge I don't know how it's announced to them or how they see it or how they find out but there is a knowledge that they

Rejoice when one person is saved in a way where we don't have the same kind of visibility into that and we're left guessing in some occasions

Yes, yes, yes God has an ethical presence on the temple That's where his favor especially lies and people as they pray towards it

They receive his favor in a special way that they wouldn't if they had faced the other direction, you know, God is using those things

Ethical presence would the term ethical presence apply to the temple given that God is in a sense omnipresent, right?

Okay, we got to move on. Yes ethical, right so You do have this statement about God being present in certain places like being present in the temple

So how is that different than him being omnipresent or more technically I've used this term before immense meaning that he is without measure

So he transcends space itself Yes, he is he transcends space and so you can call him omnipresent But there are special places where his favor lies where he's decided to put his favor that is known as his ethical presence

And so in Scripture speaks Anthropomorphic Lee of God as though he's contained in space.

It's typically speaking of his ethical presence. Yeah alright 31 that we may fear you and walk in your ways all the days they live in the land which you gave to our fathers all right, so Psalm 133 through 4 who wants to summarize that if you a large market equities

Oh Lord who could stand But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared, right? You should be feared, but you don't usually think of forgiveness as being something that leads people to fear

I usually think of it as the opposite Yeah, it was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relief but Fear and the term of like real respect that's that is the thing that subdues us before we are forgiven

You know, the only hope you have is to resist God and oppose him like if you see him as an enemy But once you're forgiven by him and he's no longer an enemy you serve him

All right, so that is uh, that's why it talks about fear this way So it's that like subservient kind of fear.

Yeah, so Forgiveness leads to fear. All right, how should the trials you encounter shape your prayers?

How should the omniscience of God shape your prayers? What other applications? Can you draw from Solomon's prayers in this passage?

Yeah, God God forgives You don't have to worry about whether or not he you're demonstrating your repentance well enough to him or whatever.

He knows your heart A lot of people get hung up on that whether or not they're demonstrating it well enough.

It's not like certainly If you do not have outward acts of repentance you have reason to question yourself whether your repentance is real

But if it is real you don't God certainly knows Okay, any any other thoughts we went a little long today talking about angels so So I just want to make sure we have enough time for prayer, yeah

Yeah, I'm saying even after that forgiveness, right? That is the means by which he subdues us right where his enemies he is a king subdues our hearts and Leads us by forgiving us.

That's how we're Yes, right

All right, let's go ahead and pray real quick dear Heavenly Father Thank you for this time that we've been able to go through second

Chronicles here pray that you would help us to pray Like Solomon prayed now that we would take lessons from this and pray as we all in Jesus name.