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 the 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.

Rain, Sin, and the Good Way in 2 Chronicles 6

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. 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.

Yeah in verse at the beginning of verse 26 when the heavens are shut up now. Why that may be intentional and not just you know, copyist doing copyist 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 atheist 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. Yet 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 and 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 the good way here. The Lord's gonna teach them the good way. Yes.

Yeah.

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 too. 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.

Famine, Blight, and the Sevenfold Curse

All right, what about. Alright, 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 of 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 in 1st? Amiel? 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 send 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 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. Great. Yes. 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. Just one other observation I'm looking for in these passages.

One other observations might not be as obvious 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?

There's some the sevenfold punishment and then you look at this list here. It says if there's famine land that 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 evolve. 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. Right 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.

Individual Affliction, Prayer, and God’s Omniscience

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?

Mano.

I.

Just uh, just the verse. Want to summarize it. Yeah, maybe you could answer the question was the plague of one's own heart. Maybe that helps. So, yeah the plague of one's own heart like you said it would be.

These are the troubles and distress they're going through.

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 do 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 verse 30 then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and 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 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 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 oath 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 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 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, all. Right, there's the world the flesh and the devil. Sometimes we're our own source of temptation.

Sometimes the world is sometimes Satan is. 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 doing something. I don't know minions is the appropriate word for the cabinet, but. Yeah, it's a 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?

Yes.

Yeah, I grew up watching a 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 well, we'll see if I learn something new.

Yes James. Yeah, I believe possession still exists. Yeah, having it I mean having a strong influence on someone who's 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, anyway, oh.

Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't saying that. I was talking about the hospitality situations. Yeah, I'm not talking about the period. 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 canons not closed at that point about that point remains right the angels are still giving new revelation verbal revelation even. Okay. All right. Yes.

I.

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 Can rejoice when one person is saved in a way where we don't have the same kind of visibility into that.

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 with the term ethical presence apply to the temple given that God is innocence 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 when scripture speaks Anthropomorphically of God as though he's contained in space.

It's typically speaking of his ethical presence. All right 31 that we may fear you and walk in your ways all the days that 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 and mark iniquities 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.

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.

Okay. 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 that we would take lessons from this and pray as we are in Jesus name.

Amen.