WWUTT 624 If My People Pray?

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2 Chronicles 7 .14 is one of the most popular verses in the Old Testament, used often in nationalistic prayer services.

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It's the one that begins, If my people seek my face, then I will heal their land. But it's not your country

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God will heal when we understand the text. Many of the

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Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Thank you, Becky. So we continue with our study of 2 Chronicles. Today we're up to chapter 7. In the first six chapters of the book, we have the construction of the temple.

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And chapter 6 is full of this beautiful prayer of dedication that Solomon prays before the

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Lord. He has constructed this platform in the temple on which he is standing and appealing for God to come down and dwell in this house that has been built for him.

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But this prayer is not just an appeal before the Lord. It's also something for all of Israel to hear.

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For some of the things that Solomon prays before God is that if this people were to sin against you and you were to take them from their land, or they were to sin against you and you send a plague or pestilence, if this people were to be convicted in heart and they turn to this place and they pray for forgiveness, will you hear from heaven and forgive them and restore them to their land?

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So this is within the prayer that Solomon has prayed and concludes with chapter 6, the last two verses, 41 and 42, saying,

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And now arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.

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Let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let your saints rejoice in your goodness.

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O Lord God, do not turn away the face of your anointed one. Remember your steadfast love for David, your servant.

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So Solomon is asking that God would remember the covenant that he made with David and come here and dwell with his people in this house that has been constructed for the

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Lord. And Solomon, so incredibly humble and poetic in the way that he prays before God, saying the highest heaven cannot contain you.

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How much can this house that I have built for your name? But it will be because God chooses to bless his people that he would come and dwell there.

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And what we have in chapter 7 is God's response, not just in view of all the people of Israel, but privately

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God's response to Solomon's prayer. So here we are at the start of chapter 7.

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As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the

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Lord filled the temple. Now this is not the first instance that we've had telling us that the presence of God filled the temple.

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We saw this at the end of chapter 5, where it says that the house of the

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Lord was filled with a cloud so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the

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Lord filled the house of God. So his glory filled the house at the end of chapter 5 in a cloud.

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And now we have God's response to this prayer of Solomon consuming the sacrifices and filling the temple in a fire.

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And the fire so much greater than the cloud, because as it says in verse 2, the priests could not enter the house of the

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Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house.

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So this is the same way that the Lord had guided Israel out of the land of Egypt and to the promised land in the book of Exodus.

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In the daytime, he was a pillar of cloud. At night, it was by a pillar of fire.

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And whenever the Israelites would stop and they would set up camp and they would set up the tabernacle as God instructed them to, his presence would come and fill the tabernacle.

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In the day, it would be by the cloud that would fill the tabernacle. At night, it would be the pillar of fire and all of Israel would witness this.

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So here, God is responding to this request, showing to them that his presence is with them just as it was when he led them out of slavery in Egypt.

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And what a celebration ensued in Israel after the

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Lord had responded to Solomon's prayer in this way. So we go on to verse 3, when all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the

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Lord was on the temple, they bowed down their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the

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Lord, saying, For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

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That's a running theme throughout the Old Testament, that God is good and his steadfast love endures forever.

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I just had a situation yesterday where I was witnessing to a man who told me that God was cruel.

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He was a cruel dictator. He murdered people and caused genocide. My response to him simply was,

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God created life, he can do what he wants to with it. We all deserve to be wiped out.

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We deserve that because of our sin and rebellion against God. But he is loving and he is good because he has not wiped us all out.

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You're alive today because God didn't snatch the breath right out of your lungs while you were sleeping last night.

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He is good and has shown his goodness to us by sending his son to die on the cross for our sins so that all who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

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The man went on to mock this whole idea, saying, Nobody has sinned so great that they deserve to be wiped out in the way that you are telling me that a person deserves to be punished by having hell for all eternity.

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I said, See, it's that very attitude is the thing that's going to send you to hell. You pointing the finger at God and saying you know better than him.

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And who are we to say to a righteous, holy God that we know better than the creator of the entire universe?

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How arrogant and how hubristic is that? I didn't make much of an impact on him there as we were talking, but hopefully that conversation will come back to him later on and those words will penetrate his heart and he will be convicted over his sin.

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Realize the arrogance that is in his heart against the high king of the throne of heaven.

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He who has created all things. Who are we? Who are we to demand anything of God or say that we know better than him?

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Solomon here has humbly asked for the Lord's presence to be with his people. And because God is good and he is gracious and he is affectionate and merciful to those whom he has promised a covenant with.

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He has come down and is with his people dwelling in this house that they have built for him.

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He is good. His steadfast love endures forever.

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And what a great promise that is too. Because we who are followers of Jesus Christ who know the love of God manifested in his son,

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Jesus Christ, know that if we follow Christ, we have the promise of eternity with him and that love endures forever.

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And nothing's ever going to change that. We're never going to lose our favor with God. We've been sealed by the

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Holy Spirit. All who have faith in Jesus Christ, amen, glory.

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Verse four, then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice, 22 ,000 oxen and 120 ,000 sheep.

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So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. The priests stood at their posts.

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The Levites also with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the

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Lord for his steadfast love endures forever. There it is again. Whenever David offered praises by their ministry opposite them, the priests sounded trumpets and all of Israel stood.

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And Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord. For there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offerings because the bronze altar

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Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat. At that time,

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Solomon held the feast for seven days and all of Israel with him, a very great assembly from Lebo Amath to the brook of Egypt.

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And on the eighth day, they held a solemn assembly for they had kept the dedication of the altar seven days and the feast seven days.

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On the 23rd day of the seventh month, he sent the people away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the prosperity that the

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Lord had granted to David and to Solomon and to Israel, his people.

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So you think about there, the great assembly of celebration that was going on throughout all of Israel.

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And you wonder about that. You think about that. What a sight that must have been for that celebration throughout an entire empire.

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I tell you this, there is a greater celebration that happens every Sunday all over the world when the church, the people of God gather together for worship, typically on a

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Sunday morning. There is a greater celebration happening, worshiping the Lord together as God's people.

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On Sunday, the Lord's day, then there was going on in Israel at this particular time.

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So whenever we gather as the church and we sing songs and praise to our God or we break bread in the

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Lord's Supper or we hear the preaching of his word to his people, there is a greater celebration of worship happening there than was going on in Israel that we're reading about here in Second Chronicles, chapter seven.

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So these things were surely wonderful. And we would be awestruck by the worship celebration that would be going on there if we had the chance to transport ourselves to this time and observe a worship celebration like this.

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But don't feel like we are not already part of something like that. And even greater than that, when the saints, the people of God gather for worship on Sunday morning, though we might be in different church buildings, we have the same

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Holy Spirit who is with us discerning for us the things of God when we hear the word of God preached and lifting up our praises before the heavenly throne room.

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And so this celebration of worship that goes on every Sunday morning, even greater than this, and you are a part of that,

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Christian, every time you attend church and sing those songs of praise to our God with the saints.

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So we go on here. Verse 11, Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house.

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All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house, he successfully accomplished.

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Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and I have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice when

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I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people.

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If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then

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I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. I'll come back to that here in just a moment.

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Verse 15, Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.

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For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.

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And as for you, if you will walk before me as David, your father walked doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then

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I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with David, your father, saying, you shall not lack a man to rule in Israel.

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But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you and you go and serve other gods and worship them, then

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I will pluck you up from my land that I have given to you. And this house that I have consecrated for my name,

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I will cast out of my sight and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

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And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, why has the

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Lord done thus to this land and to this house? Then they will say because they abandoned the

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Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshipped them and served them.

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Therefore, he has brought all this disaster upon them. So going back to verse 14, because this is the famous verse from this particular response from God to Solomon, verse 14 says, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then

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I will hear from heaven and will forgive their their sin and will heal their land. It's like the theme verse to just about every national day of prayer event or, you know, some sort of community prayer event or the presidential prayer breakfast or something like that.

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Typically, Second Chronicles 714 is going to become a theme verse in there somewhere.

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But notice at the start of verse 14, how do we begin? We begin in the middle of a sentence that's not a capital if it's a lowercase

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I on that if if my people who were called by my name. Well, what's the start of the sentence that would be at the beginning of verse 13 when

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I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people.

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Why is it that the land is so afflicted with such horrible things? Because the people turn from God and worshiped idols instead of the

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Lord God that has given them everything, delivered them into this land out of slavery from Egypt.

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And so because they would be so arrogant to worship a false god that they have constructed with their own hands instead of the true

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God who made them by his hands, then he will afflict them with these diseases because that is what they deserve.

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This this pestilence or pestilence or this blight or being conquered by their enemies or any of these other things.

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God is the one who causes this. Satan is not in control. God is in control.

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God is sovereign. All things belong to the Lord, even time itself, even the afflictions upon his people that he would send upon them because they would have sinned against God in this way.

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And then he says it when that when I do these things, verse 13, when

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I do these things, verse 14, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,

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I'll hear I will hear from my throne in heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.

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This is a direct response to part of Solomon's prayer that he prayed in chapter six, verse 24.

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If your people are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you and they turn again and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people,

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Israel, and bring them again to the land that you gave them and to their fathers when heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you and on and on it goes.

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So Solomon is prayed for this exactly. And God's response is directly related to what it is that Solomon has prayed.

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So we take this verse out of context when we then apply it to a national condition in the

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United States of America and say, if we would just seek the face of the Lord and humble ourselves and pray and repent,

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God will hear from heaven and he'll forgive our sin and he will heal our land. Now, there is absolutely something here about the character of God that we can observe.

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If if all of the United States of America did that, if we repented before God and sought forgiveness, do you think he would truly forgive us?

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Yes. Not as a nation, though, because the United States of America is not the people of God. He would forgive his people, those who are followers of Jesus Christ and heal their land.

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Well, that was in response to Solomon's prayer. And the land that is being referenced is the promised land.

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The United States of America is not the promised land. So God healing us would not be in relation to the land in which we dwell, since we are not seeking an earthly kingdom, as it says in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, but a heavenly one.

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So this land that we inhabit has not been bestowed upon us by God as some sort of promised land that he promised he would give it to us.

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And he's fulfilling that promise by allowing us to inhabit the continent on which we live.

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That's that's not why we're here. And that's not the context of the answer to this prayer.

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This the context is specifically to the people of Israel, not the people of the

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United States of America. So, like I said, we see something about the character of God, knowing that if we ask forgiveness, he will hear from heaven and he will he will heal us.

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Not that he will heal the land, but he will heal the respective individual persons who have asked for God's forgiveness.

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He will give it to us. First John 1 9. If we are faithful to ask forgiveness, he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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And that is what God will do for his people. But if a people pray to God in any other name but the name of Christ, that's not repentance.

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And God is not going to hear that prayer. Jesus said in John 14 six, I am the way, the truth and the life.

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No one comes to the father, but by me. So, yeah, God hears the prayer in the sense that he's omnipresent and that he is omniscient, all knowing.

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He hears the prayer in that sense, but he doesn't hear it in the sense that he receives that prayer and will therefore answer that prayer.

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He is only going to do that for his people, those who are in Christ Jesus. And be sure that the healing we're talking about here is not physical healing, but it is the healing of a sinful heart.

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God will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So if a nation is going to repent, they would have to do it in the name of Christ or it is not repentance at all.

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And it would have to be a genuine repentance from the heart, not something that is simply lip service, not because we gathered in a prayer gathering and we counted the number of people out on the mall and it came in to the tens of thousands.

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So therefore, we're going to heal our land. That's not how that works to every single individual person who asks

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God for forgiveness. He will indeed forgive them. And what they receive is not an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly one in Christ Jesus.

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So like I said, we see something about the character of God in this passage, but it is not directly applicable to a nation that is the

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United States of America or wherever you happen to be from. Most of my listeners are from the

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U .S. I live in the U .S., so that's the nation that I use as the example. But whether you're from Great Britain or Canada or somewhere in Asia, wherever that might happen to be, same thing would apply.

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God is not going to heal a nation or a land for the sake of it being that nation or land.

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He will heal the hearts of the respective persons who are truly repentant before the Lord. And for them, it has been promised that he will grant them forgiveness.

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Now, one other point that I want to make about this particular response is that God will show his glory through you one way or the other.

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He will either show his glory through you by lifting you up and showing mercy and love to you through his son,

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Jesus Christ, or God will show his glory through you by destroying you in his wrath.

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That's what God is saying to Solomon here at the end of this prayer when he says, if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I've set before you, then

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I'm going to remove myself from this house that has been consecrated in my name and I am going to destroy you and drive you off this land.

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And this house that you have built for me will be destroyed also. And then there are others that are going to say, what happened?

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Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house? Ah, it's because they have abandoned the

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Lord, their God, and they sought after other gods. And so the Lord God has shown his glory, his might and his power through this people in this way, not by blessing them, not by showing them mercy, but by pouring out his wrath.

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And in Romans chapter nine, the apostle Paul says, verses 22 and 23, what if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called not from the

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Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. So just as Paul was speaking about there in Romans chapter nine, about how

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God will show his glory, the full range of his glory in showing mercy to those whom he loves and pouring out wrath on those who have rebelled against him, who are you going to be?

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God will show his glory through you one way or the other. So repent and worship

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Christ and be saved. Lord, you are a good God who has found a resting place in the hearts of your people, your

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Holy Spirit, who dwells within each and every one of the followers of Jesus Christ.

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Lord, clothe us with salvation and let us rejoice in your goodness that has been shown to us through Jesus Christ.

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Do not turn away the face of your anointed one. Remember your steadfast love for us.

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Convict us of sin that we might repent before you and seek forgiveness while it can be found and cleanse us from all unrighteousness for your name's sake and lead us in paths of righteousness until the day of the return of Christ.

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You are a good Lord and your steadfast love endures forever. Remind us of these things every day and embolden us to share this message with another so that they would not fall under the wrath of God, but know your love and mercy through Jesus Christ.

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Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt .com.