Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 6:32-39

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless our time in your word this evening and our time in prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right.

Go ahead and turn to 2 Chronicles 6, begin with a brief reading of 2 Chronicles chapter 6. I'll just read the passage in question here. Likewise, when a foreigner who is not of your people, sorry, this is beginning in verse 32.

Likewise, when a foreigner who is not of your people, Israel, comes from a far country for the sake of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when he comes and prays toward this house, hear from heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.

If your people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatever way you shall send them, and they pray to you toward this city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea and maintain their cause.

They sin against you, for there is no one who does not sin. And you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, that they are carried away captive to a land far or near. Yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying, we have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly, they repent with all their heart, with all their soul in the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive, and pray toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven your dwelling place, their prayers and their pleas, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you.

Amen.

All right.

So, let's see. We've got some new people. Does everybody have a workbook? Anybody not have a workbook?

Okay.

Just one?

Okay. Okay.

There we go.

Welcome.

All right.

So here in verse 32, it starts off, Moreover concerning the foreigner that is not of your people Israel, when he will come from a far country, etc.

All right.

So, what distinguishes this from the others? Some of them have been a little harder to distinguish than others. What's different in this scenario where he's giving a context for prayer?

Braden?

Yeah.

So, even foreigners, even if foreigners pray toward the temple, God would answer their prayer as well. How would this be for the sake of the Lord's name? You go for it.

Okay. Okay.

Josh, do you have something to add to that?

Yeah.

A little louder.

Yeah.

Basically, I would say for the sake of the Lord's name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

In answering prayer, the Lord makes His name further known.

Right. Right.

Yeah.

And we're going to see an example of this soon where the Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon and he had to see about the Lord, and the Lord will uphold his reputation.

All right.

Yeah.

The Lord's mighty hand outstretched arm is a frequent phrase used in Scripture, used a lot in Deuteronomy. Remember a lot of the allusions in this passage here that we've been looking at are going to Deuteronomy.

Basically, Deuteronomy was telling the people, when you arrive in the land, the Lord's going to pick a place, and then He's going to set His name there, and He finally has. Like that time has finally come where He picked a place, it was Jerusalem, David set up there.

Now Solomon's building a temple there. The Lord has really put His name there. And so a lot of the phraseology He's using is alluding to the words of Deuteronomy to appeal to the promise and say, now that we're here, fulfill all the promises you made back in Deuteronomy.

So a lot of the language about outstretched arm, et cetera, you go back and look in Deuteronomy and you'll see that there plenty of times.

Right.

It's God's ability to gather His people from far and wide and collect them into a single place with strength.

Okay.

All right.

Let's move on to this next one. Then hear from heaven, even from your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you for, that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as does your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by your name.

All right.

So yeah, any kind of deliverance the foreigner might call for, any kind of salvation, consider the foreigners outside of Israel that are welcomed in when they called for salvation like Rahab or others, this is what God would do for them.

And that answer results in fear. How does fear make sense here? Like you don't usually think of answer to prayer, getting rid of fear, right? How does this lead to fear? Go for it, Josh.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. To recognize and respect Him.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good point. They feared Him after He got rid of the other cause for their fear.

Yeah.

The hymn says, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.". Maybe another way is, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and then grace my fears replaced with a new fear of the Lord.".

All right.

Let's see.

How would it result in the house being known as called by God's name?

Right?

So it's clear that when it's talking about God's name, Him attaching His name here, being called by His name, the point is that this really is His house. This really is something special. And the more He answers prayer, the more that is evident to people.

That's supposed to be the point of the answered prayer today as well. You know, the more people see that they come to God's house, God's house being the gathering of the saints, right, the church, and they have their prayers in the assembly answered.

These are things that are supposed to show that God is real. A lot of people come to the church, they pray, they have their prayers answered, and they don't fear Him. There's an extra kind of culpability or, yeah, there's an extra aggravation of sin there when someone does come to God's house, have their prayers answered, and then rejects it because these were all things God was doing to demonstrate that He is true.

Yeah.

A lot of people, like, in their points of desperation will do that, right? They'll go to the church. And once they get the prayer, they don't really care about God anymore.

Okay.

All right.

Verse 35, then hear from heaven their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause.

All right.

A lot of repetitions of three here, hear from heaven their prayer and their supplication, maintain their cause. So the prayer, their supplication, their cause.

All right.

I am not sure where this question about the city came from. Interesting. Oh, from the, oh, right, right. From the first Kings verse.

Yes.

Yeah.

City, right. The city is Jerusalem. So, yeah, he's called it the altar, the place, the house. Now he calls it the city in first Kings. And here, just, okay.

All right.

To maintain their cause, obviously, to defend them in battle, their cause being whatever they're fighting for. So them being sent whatever way points to the, you know, singularity of the temple as being the only way to have their prayers answered.

All right.

So it doesn't matter which way they get sent. This is the way they have to come back.

All right.

Just like Jesus saying that he's the way of the truth and the life. There's all kinds of false ways, right? There's only one kind of true way. Something I'm always reminded of is the, it's at the opening line of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy says that all, what is it?

All happy families are the same, but every unhappy family is different. It's kind of true.

It's true.

There's only one way to truth. There's only one way to God, but there are many ways away from him. And so no matter which way they get, excuse me, no matter which way they get sent.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm going to call my kids Flick. Flick, I've got a water bottle in the pulpit. Could you get it, please? The pulpit.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's see. Verse 36.

Thank you.

Verse 36. If they sin against you for there is no man who does not sin, you be angry with them and deliver them to the enemy so that they carry them away captive to a land far off or near.

All right.

Yeah.

There's no man that does not sin. Everybody is going to be in need of God's mercy at some point. And he is, yeah, he's certain that this is going to happen at some point. There's no man that does not sin.

It's very prophetic in a way because this is precisely what happens with the people. They end up getting carried off.

All right.

So he doesn't, you know, he doesn't speak of it as just a possibility, but of a certainty. So what makes this situation a little bit different? It seems like it has to do primarily with the nature of corporate sin that would lead them into exile.

The others were about enemies coming to them. This is about enemies taking them away from their land, right? The land being far near. God is able to relent from all degrees of his anger, not just the small things, but also the big things.

Any questions about that so far?

All right.

37. Yet if they say, if they come to their senses in the land where they are carried captive and turn again and make supplication to you in the land of their captivity, saying, we have sinned, we have done perversely, and we have dealt wickedly.

All right.

So what does it mean to come to one's senses? To think and act rationally, to realize they need to turn to the Lord. Sin is a very irrational thing, Josh.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sin is an irrational thing. Anyone who's acting according to truth and wisdom is not going to sin. You know, sin is always going to put you in a worse condition. It is bad for you. A lot of people think that, okay, well, if you sin, you're being selfish.

And so it's actually things that are good for you, but not good for other people. Well, it might be good for you in short term, but none of it's good for you long term.

Yeah.

There's just no way for it to be. You know, God created the world. Anything that does not go according to His purposes as far as, you know, His prescribed will for people, there's no way that that can go well for them.

It's just not natural to. And so, yeah, it's very, it's very irrational to sin. But, yeah, people are irrational beings often. Yeah, this happening in the land of their captivity, they would be granted repentance even in the midst of their discipline.

And then a threefold confession, right, says, we have sinned. We have done perversely. We have dealt wickedly.

Right?

The Spirit will open their eyes completely. You know, you have the situation with Peter where he's given the threefold opportunity of repentance. He says, yes, I love you. Yes, I love you. Yes, I love you.

Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. So, yeah, they have, yeah, this is describing true repentance here. Well, that too, but the repentance is matching the grievousness of the sin.

Yeah.

James.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. And just with Peter, yeah, he denied three times.

Right?

Yeah, this is one way of describing, yeah, the penalty of sin was with that threefoldness. All right, verse 38. They return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity where they have carried them captive and pray toward their land which you gave to their fathers and the city which you have chosen and toward the house which I have built for.

Your name. All right.

To return to some with one's heart and soul, it's talking about sincere repentance, praying toward the land. Once again, it is recognizing the condition of exile, the need for the temple. Fact is when they are carried off into exile, the temple is destroyed, so any kind of praying towards the temple is not effective because God is present there, but because He is the God of the land who gave it over to their fathers and He is in heaven and hears.

So Solomon has acknowledged many times that God is not a God like other gods or He's actually living in the temple, right? He has decided for His presence to come and dwell there, but he's acknowledged many times that God is not hearing from the temple, He's hearing from heaven.

Occasionally, He'll use the language from the temple, but, you know, He's hearing from heaven and He is hearing even if His temple were to be destroyed, He would hear if people were to pray toward Him, which is all, these are all kind of signs that this temple really isn't the ultimate, yeah, house of God for prayer.

There's something more to come, and certainly we do have something more in Jesus Christ and in the temple that He's given us where He dwells with us by His Spirit, especially when we're gathered together.

Okay.

Yeah, we've had a lot of repeats of the land of their fathers, land of their fathers, etc. This is, yeah, a reminder that it's a promise to them. Verse 39, then hear from heaven, even from your dwelling place the prayer and their supplications and maintain their cause, forgive your people who have sinned against you.

Yeah, so forgiving them, meaning permitting them to come back into the land. Remember that forgiveness in the Old Testament is frequently talking about in terms of the land, right? Consider this in the New Testament, it says that the blood of bulls and goats cannot forgive sin, yet in the Old Testament it says that the blood of bulls and goats is for the forgiveness of their sins.

A lot of people don't have a very good answer for that. They think that you have, maybe it was like a temporary forgiveness, so like you'd be good for another year, or maybe you were good for another day.

And so it's kind of like this temporary covering where Jesus' blood is an eternal covering. That's one common answer people give, or that it kind of like partly dealt with sin but not sufficiently, or they just say that it didn't at all and then they don't have any answer for, it didn't in any sense, right?

And then they don't have any answer for the Old Testament when it talks about the sacrifices being for the forgiveness of sins. The reality is that it has to do with forgiveness in terms of the Old Covenant.

The Old Covenant has to do with the people living in the land. So when they are forgiven, it means that they live in the land, right? If someone forgives you a debt that you owe them, then you don't owe them $20 anymore.

It doesn't mean you're granting eternal forgiveness, right? It doesn't mean that you get to go into heaven and on that final day of judgment, you'll be permitted. And so forgiveness can mean different things in different contexts.

You can be releasing people from different debts, right? And so God, when He gives people forgiveness in the Old Covenant through the sacrifices, that really is a forgiveness that He's giving, but it's not eternal in the length of time.

It's not eternal in the quality of forgiveness or the thing that it's addressing. It's temporal. And by temporal, I don't just mean temporary. I mean having to do with the things of this earth, right?

It has to do with them being able to live in the land. He forgives them so that they can live in the land. That's the kind of forgiveness, you know, it's talking about here that they can live in the land.

Not that He wouldn't also eternally forgive someone who came to Him with true repentance, but yeah, this has to do with the people being permitted to live in the land.

Yes?

So this is back, when you say Old Covenant, so is that a different covenant or that was just the understanding from the beginning that if you didn't fulfill it, you're not.

Eternal?

Yeah, it's a different covenant.

Right.

So yeah, a lot of people would... Is it the same law? No, not quite. So yeah, a lot of people think, okay, Jesus is fulfilling the Old Covenant. I mean, well, certainly He's obeying, you know, all the laws, but the primary covenant that's being fulfilled that grants us eternal life is not the Old Covenant because that wasn't promising eternal life.

It's the covenant of works given to Adam in the garden. So that, just like it says in, well, it says in one of the Minor Prophets that they transgressed the covenant as Adam did. You know, there was a covenant made with him in 1 Corinthians 11.

It says if there is a natural body, so also is there a spiritual body? What that's saying is that it is built into our nature that we were made for something.

More.

Edith and Adam, before there was a fall, before there was sin, it was still clear in Paul's mind that he was made for something more, like a reward that was being held out. He was in a probationary state.

Probation meaning tested. He was being tested. And there was like a possibility for him to have passed that test so that he could have lived forever. You know, the Bible talks about the tree of life. If he had eaten of the tree of life, he would have lived forever.

So the, so what Jesus is fulfilling that grants us eternal forgiveness is, yeah, living in, is, yeah, an obedience. He fulfills the covenant of works.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're saved not through the terms of the old covenant, but through the old covenant pointing to a different covenant.

Right.

And this is, and this is kind of the difference. One of the biggest differences between Baptist and Presbyterian covenant theology, right, is because Presbyterians would see them as being saved through the terms of the old covenant.

Right.

But we would say, no, the old covenant is not saving anyone like that.

Right.

It is, but yes, it does point to covenant. It says in Hebrews 9, verse 15, So they committed transgressions under the first covenant that, yeah, there was no, yeah, but yeah, he's a meteor of a new covenant.

So it's still, yeah, it's by Jesus that they're being saved.

Right.

It's through Jesus. It's through the new covenant. A lot of times Presbyterians would hear us talk about this. They would, they think that we're saying that the old covenant saints weren't, weren't saved or anything like that.

No, it's just, they weren't saved by the old covenant. They were saved by the new covenant. And that's, that can be hard for them to understand what we're saying sometimes because they believe the old covenant and the new covenant are one covenant under different administrations.

Right.

And so if that's the case, when we say, well, they're not saved through the old covenant, it sounds like we're saying that they're, they weren't saved through at all.

Right.

Or something like that.

Anyway.

Yes.

Oh, you, I was pointing at you, Josh.

Right.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

And part of the question I was, part of what I was pointing out with the question is how can it say that? But then the old Testament say that did take away sin, but it's talking about two different things, right?

Like these are two different forgivenesses that are being addressed here. So when the old Testament says it forgives, it's not lying. It's just talking about a different forgiveness than what Hebrews 10 is talking about.

James, did you have something? Yeah, I, I, yeah, that's what you just said. Didn't sound quite right. They, they have this positive law of having sacrifices. Do they obey that showing their obedience to the natural law?

And then that saves them? Like that's like we're, we can't fulfill the natural law, right? Christ is doing that.

Okay.

All right.

Victoria.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's at least, there's at least three reasons. One, animals have no righteousness to be imputed to us. You know, they're not made as beings that have any kind of real righteousness. Secondly, they are not man, so they cannot represent men in that way.

Third, they are not God, so they cannot, you could have a forgiveness in a sense, like let's say you had a perfect man who died, but was not also God. He would not be able to withstand the pains of death to, to be resurrected.

This is what it describes in Acts 2. There's, there's a couple of other proof texts for this at the Westminster Larger Catechism points out, but just the one from Acts 2. Let's see if I can find that.

Let's see.

Yeah.

God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. If you think of that, why is it that a man, yeah, why is it that he is, that he is raised from the dead?

And you'd think, okay, well, if you're putting one life in place of another, certainly this life just dies and that's all there is to it. But the fact that he is God is part of the reason why he is raised from the dead.

It's not just that, oh, he was, he was so perfect that God would raise him from the.

Dead.

No, part of it has to do with him being God. Psalm 49 says that man's life is too precious that it could be ransomed by another man's life. And then later on in the Psalm it says, but God will ransom my life from the grave, from.

Jail.

So yeah, this is what guarantees the resurrection part. It wouldn't have been enough for a perfect man to come and be our head. It had to be a God man.

Yes, Ken.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same one James was talking about.

Right.

There's a kingdom without a king. Is that what you're saying?

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there is something special happening here at this point where David's been established. There is a throne. There is a temple, et cetera.

Yeah.

Charles. Yeah, I suppose so. I don't know what all the rules were around foreigners, but sure.

Yes. Yeah.

Yes, Victoria.

I'm so sorry. Yeah, no worries. Right. Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

God doesn't receive this. Now at the same time, like I think James was pointing out a minute ago, there's two kinds of things that are happening there.

Right.

There is the outward ceremony for the sake even of the insincere Israelite.

Right.

Because there are mixed people. Like not all of them are truly regenerate or anything. But God is treating the people as a whole. He's not, yeah, it's a mixed people. It's not like the church that's supposed to be at least pursuing purity.

Right.

And yeah, so when he says that, part of it, it's kind of like overlapping those concerns in a way where he is addressing, yeah, not just the outward, but also the inward. And here in our context, a lot more of that is just been put on display better.

So it's not just, yeah, there's less outward ceremonies for a reason so that the heart of the matter, yeah, it's more evident, I suppose. I don't know if, yeah, I don't know if I ended up making my point that well, but hopefully that was helpful to some degree.

Yeah.

Anything else?

No.

Okay. Yeah.

No worries.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's keep moving on here.

Okay.

Verse 39. Then hear from heaven, even from your dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you. Once again, he's talking about heaven as being God's dwelling place when he's just completed God's dwelling place.

Right.

That's kind of, he's very much acknowledging that the temple's not going to contain God.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is the passage we were already talking about. So yeah, there is a portion omitted here. He omitted the details about, anybody look it up, have an answer. What did he omit?

Yes.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So he omits mention of the Exodus and Moses, talks, Brayden saying, because the point is to look forward to the future. There's something else I've pointed out about Chronicles also, and what his agenda is different than King's, and why he repeatedly has been dropping references to the Exodus.

James.

Yeah.

He is, his metanarrative includes the people beginning from Adam. He starts at Adam and goes all the way, a lot of times it talks about God forming a people out of Egypt, right? Like out of Egypt started, et cetera.

And like both of these statements are true. It's just a different angle of approaching it, and the angle the chronicler is giving you is starting with God's people all the way back at Adam.

Okay.

So this is why he frequently drops mentions of the Exodus where it suggests that like this is the beginning of God's people. You know, you are the people that I brought out of the bondage to Egypt. You know, I'm the Lord, your God, et cetera, like the Ten Commandments say, right?

He's, yeah, he's describing the people as having begun with Adam, right? And we could consider ourselves a bunch of different ways too, right? We could say, oh yeah, we began at Pentecost. Well, kind of, yeah.

We could say we began, you know, when Jesus saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning,.

Right?

When the gospel starts going forward, sure, we could say that. That's kind of when, you know, the church had its power in a greater way because Satan was loosed from power. You could say we started, you know, the God's people are all one.

So you could say we started back when Israel began with Abraham, or you could point all the way back to Adam too. So the same is true with us where you could have different angles of approaching this for different purposes, and the purpose of the chronicler is to tell the whole story all the way beginning in Adam.

So this is why he repeatedly has been dropping these references to the Exodus that are in 1 Kings as he is otherwise copying the words of 1 Kings.

Okay.

And that is it.

Okay.

There were a number of other differences from 1 Kings. I think a lot of them were not as interesting or useful than they usually are. He made a lot of, a lot of the words, you know, he pluralized instead of keeping them singular, et cetera, right, adds conjunctions, removes conjunctions, you know, just small little differences in how he's describing things, nothing, nothing real, nothing of much significance except for this one where once again, you know, he's, he's followed this pattern of dropping references to the Exodus because he's telling the full picture of the people beginning in Adam.

Okay.

Okay.

Any, any other questions. Or let's go ahead and look at the reflection question here. So we've just finished Solomon's prayer here with the exception of this final bit.

Yeah.

We're thinking about how that plays into our prayers and how our prayers are motivated compared to how Solomon motivates his prayers. So let's just answer that last question. How should this passage impact your prayers?

Any, any observations about how we should be praying tonight from this passage? We've all got to face Jerusalem, which way is, yeah, yes, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Thinking about how your, how that prayer would advance God's glory is important. You know, an immature prayer is just saying, give me this thing that I want, right? A mature prayer is, you know, this will glorify you in these ways, you know, that kind of thing, or even just saying for your namesake, you know.

But the more you are walking through it, the more God will be glorified because the more you are recognizing how he should be glorified.

Okay.

Anything else? I think there's a lot of recognizing calamity, the relationship between calamity and discipline. You know, we are, we are very hesitant to identify that our calamitous conditions could be from sin.

You know, I think we should be more prone to do that, just like you see the command in James that if someone is sick, you should send the elders, pray, you know, that, and if, yeah, if he's committed some sin, the Lord will heal him.

Like the idea is, well, even if you don't know, the default should be to think that maybe there is something and to pray along those lines and to ask God to reveal that, et cetera, right? We do the opposite.

We tend to say, oh, let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt in situations where there's calamitous condition, et cetera. That's kind of the nature of our culture, and I think it would be better to, every time you're dealing with something, you know, have some introspection, you know, is there anything, is there anything God would be waking me up to through this?