Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 6:40-7:3

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this time we have together. I pray that you would bless our time in prayer and in your Word. I ask that you would lead us by your Word to pray well, in Jesus' name, Amen.

All right.

So that was a morning hymn that we sang in the evening. Not just ironically, but hopefully we can learn it when we can sing it in the morning.

All right.

2 Chronicles 6:40-7:3 and the Prayer for God to Hear

We are looking at 2 Chronicles 6, verse 40, all the way through 7 -3, 640 to 7 -3. I'll go ahead and read that. Now, O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place.

And now arise, O Lord God, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. Let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let your saints rejoice in your goodness. O Lord God, do not turn away the face of your anointed one.

Remember your steadfast love for David, your servant. 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 Lord filled the temple.

And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Amen.

All right.

Let's go ahead and work through this. Who here does not have a book? Pass that down there.

Welcome.

All right.

The Temple as the Place Where God Hears Prayer

2 Chronicles 640. All right. So now, O my God, I pray, let your eyes be open and let your ears be attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.

Okay.

For God's ears to be attentive, for his eyes to be open, for him to be receptive to the prayers made there. When he says prayer in this place, that's all prayers that may be offered in the temple. And this essentially summarizes all the previous concerns.

If you remember, we've been in this chapter for a while. He's talked about all these circumstances. Well, if enemies come and attack your people, then hear the prayers in this place. Well, if enemies drive your people away from this place, then hear your prayers in this.

Place.

If foreigners come here and hear your prayers in this place, etc. So this is summarizing all those together and forms an inclusio with the beginning of all these requests, which was in verse 20 that said that your eyes may be open day and night toward this house.

And now here he talks about their eyes being open once again. Says in verse 41, now therefore arise, O Jehovah God, into your resting place, you and the ark of your strength. What would you say it means for the Lord to arise into his resting place?

Kind of a counterintuitive phrase, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right? So he's now supposed to act, but he's also supposed to start resting there, right? These are usually you would think of that opposite. You would sit down to rest, but God is rising to rest because when he comes into his temple, this is when he's going to start acting and hearing and answering prayers.

All right.

And the ark of his strength, of course, that's talking about the ark of the covenant. Remember that he's not, yeah, he is not the ark. He is with the ark and over the ark. It's called the ark of his strength because it, yeah, it represents his strength, remember?

And first Samuel, they would take it to the battlefield so that he would demonstrate his strength, right? And wherever the ark went, there would be victory.

All right.

Garments of Salvation and the Priestly Mediation of Christ

41b, let your priests, O Jehovah God, be clothed with salvation. Let your saints rejoice in goodness. What do you think it means to be clothed with salvation?

Yeah.

Go for it.

Salvation, like through, you know, the giving of sacrifices, through which kind of salvation comes because everyone's demonstrated those things.

Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe in the consecration of their garments, they're able to bring salvation to the people.

Right.

Yeah.

You see something similar said in Isaiah 61 .10, where it describes the Messiah and it speaks of him as being clothed with salvation. He's decked in garments of salvation. And so it's not a lot of people, when they hear things like that, salvation, they think it's salvation for the self, right, that you're in some kind of life-saving outfit for yourself, but rather it was for the sake of others that the priests would have garments of salvation, garment for the salvation of others, just like Christ wears garment of salvation for others.

And similarly, these, this armor of God that is described in Isaiah 61 is the same armor of God that Paul picks up on in Ephesians 6. So in Isaiah 61 .10, it says, Okay, so sorry, this is not the armor of salvation portion.

There's a part very close to this. There's several mentions of clothing and attire in this section of Isaiah, including Jesus with the helmet of salvation and everything. So a lot of people imagine it's salvation of self, but I think the emphasis is on salvation of others, that you are wearing this for the salvation of others.

Yes.

Isaiah 6 .10 talks about Jesus being clothed with salvation, or it talks about the Messiah that way. But then, I'll go ahead and find what the other one is that I'm thinking of in Isaiah, which is Isaiah 59 .17.

So when we talk about the helmet, like wearing the helmet of salvation, I don't think the best interpretation is to think of that primarily as us wearing our own salvation, but rather us being equipped, in a way, as a royal priesthood, bringing salvation to others, given some of these other passages we see where it talks about salvation and clothing.

Did you have a question, Emmanuel?

Okay. Yes. Yeah.

So that's what, yeah, in Ephesians 6, Paul is alluding to that passage in Isaiah 59. And you have, like I said, it's not just that passage in Isaiah, it's several passages in Isaiah that are talking about clothing and attire of the Messiah, and I'm connecting it here to 2 Chronicles 6, because it's talking about garments of salvation, and there it talked about the Messiah wearing garments of salvation, right?

So it's describing a priest who is equipped to bring salvation to the people. So the temple is good news for all the people, not because the priests will be saved through it, but because the people will be saved through it.

They'll be saved from their enemies, et cetera, through this temple where God is going to hear their prayers, right? And so we have a temple. We have Jesus Christ who has come to earth in His humanity, being that place where the presence of God dwells, but then Him having left, sending us His Spirit so that the Spirit dwells in us, us being temples of God, us as a gathered church, most especially, being a place where the Spirit dwells and where prayers are especially guaranteed answers.

Not that, yeah, there's no particular place that you can, so on one hand, you know, John 4, in our confession even, talks about the fact that there's no particular place where prayers are more heard, however, you do have a special assurance that if you're a believer and Christ dwells in you, then that presence makes your prayers heard, and then beyond that, that our assembly together as a church, there's a particular hearing that God would.

Have.

I believe our prayers tonight together are more powerful than if we were to pray apart. Those prayers are powerful too, but then even less so if a non-believer prays, right? If they don't have the Spirit, then they have no guarantee that God would hear them.

So there's something to consider about the presence of God, right, the presence of God in the temple to hear their prayers. And we should contemplate that given what the New Testament tells us about our temple and the presence of God.

Yes?

Is His precedent on Kisadek, our prayers are much closer to God than the high precedent in the Aaronic Order?

Yeah, I would say so, yes. Yeah, and remember the whole way the Old Covenant was being, you know, administered is not one to bring people, now certainly people are discovering eternal salvation through it, but it's not through the covenant itself that salvation is being brought to people, right?

They might learn of salvation through seeing the signs in the covenant, but it is, yeah, it's the New Covenant ultimately that brings salvation to people as they're looking forward to the Messiah. Okay, let's keep going here.

David, Solomon, and the Chronicler’s Emphasis on Covenant Faithfulness

42, O Jehovah God, do not turn away the face of your anointed. Remember your loving kindness to David, your servant. Who's the Lord's anointed here? Solomon, right? Yeah, it's talking about the king. Yeah, don't turn away the face of the anointed.

Remember one of the themes throughout 2 Chronicles is the likeness of the kings to David, which is very different even though first kings and second kings are addressing a lot of the same history. A lot of times kings is emphasizing the disparity between David and the other kings.

A lot of times Chronicles is emphasizing the similarity, and yeah, here we have this prayer that he would continue on like David. It says loving kindness was shown to David, loving kindness will be shown to Solomon.

Remember, loving kindness is a term that is shown up in this epistle, or not epistle, in this book several times before in the context of that connection between David and Solomon. David when the ark comes into Jerusalem, sings essentially Psalm 132 that talks about the Lord's loving kindness, and then the same thing happens when the ark goes into the temple.

So David brings it into Jerusalem, Solomon brings it into the temple, and in both cases, just like we had back in 5 .13, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Yeah, and then elsewhere you also have a statement of loving kindness too.

Yes?

Who is the Lord's anointed? No, I believe this is talking about Solomon. I mean Solomon as the son of David, so there's sort of an identity between them. I don't think David is the, well that could be a right answer.

If you mean David and his line. All right, who read Psalm 132 and wants to relate, summarize that for us? Or maybe it was short enough we could just read it. Let me look. Okay, who would like to, ah, that's not short enough.

Let's just summarize that. Let's summarize it. Yeah, the first verse. Yeah, verse one says, remember, O Lord, in David's favor, all the hardships he endured. All right, so same thing here. Remember David.

I don't know David. Verse 11 says, the Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back. One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne, et cetera. Yeah, so it's possible that Solomon is even alluding to this psalm when he says this.

Remember David? Yeah, he's probably alluding to verse one here. Okay, several differences between this passage and the one in verses eight through 12. Right, was it eight through 12? Sorry, eight through 10.

Let me go ahead and read that. Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you in the ark of your might. Let your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let your saints shout for joy for the sake of your servant David.

Do not turn away the face of your anointed one. Right, this is, I mean, that's pretty much close to identical to what we saw in the second Chronicles. So if Solomon is alluding to, or if he's quoting verses eight through 10, then it's likely that this statement about remember your loving kindness to your servant David is alluding to verse one of that psalm.

Yeah, there's a few small differences. The Chronicler records Solomon as repeatedly addressing the Lord as O Lord God, and the phrase shout for joy in the psalm is replaced with rejoicing goodness. But yeah, there's not really many differences between this.

The Fire from Heaven and the Glory Filling the Temple

All right, verse one, now when Solomon had finished praying, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of Jehovah filled the house, and the priest could not enter into the house of Jehovah because the glory of Jehovah filled Jehovah's house.

All right, lots of Jehovah's in there. Yeah, what's the significance of the fire coming down from heaven? What's the connection to Leviticus with all this? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, yeah, that he's accepting the sacrifices.

Anything else?

Okay.

Yeah, you also have the glory filling the temple there. Let's look at that. Leviticus 9, 22 to 24 says, then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offering.

So Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out, they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. So what does it mean the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people?

Well, that's referring to something like the smoke, you know. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed all the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

So very similar. So remember, there's a bunch of things that we've seen where the chronicler includes additional references compared to Kings about the tabernacle or Moses to show that Solomon in making this temple is very much like Moses making the tabernacle.

Remember we had Harambee and all the craftsmanship that very much was like a holy album. So he does a lot of comparing, adding things that show that Solomon is very much like Moses in this way. What were you going to say?

Yeah, it does seem that a number of these are different, that he's giving Moses something special. And you see that especially noticed in the fact that Moses has to wear the veil because he's seen the glory of God in such a severe way that it keeps radiating on his face, and that doesn't happen to other people.

So 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the star differing from another star in glory. I think these manifestations of, or these revelations of God's glory differ from one another also. It's certainly a theophany in that there's something visible representing God.

For this particular example we just read, to say that that would be a Christophany, you'd have to do some theological work there to explain that. But yeah, when it talks about his backside, etc., I would say that's very likely the son that it's referring to.

Is that a question?

Yeah.

Well certainly, in that all the sacrifices point to him being sacrificed, and the fact that he accepts it. It's interesting because it's not really fire, it's like darkness that happens then, but.

Yeah.

Yeah, and immolation is pretty serious. That's the term for a fiery sacrifice, an immolation. It is surprising to hear that counted as God's pleasure. It's kind of like when they go to the mountain and there's tons of fire and everything and they're terrified of it.

So he's coming down in law, he's coming down in wrath, but it's because he loves this particular.

People.

Right, yeah.

Great.

So yeah, definitely a connection to Jesus there. All right, so I asked this question, why does the chronicler omit the benediction of 1 Kings? Let me go ahead and read this passage in 1 Kings. That was 54 to 61.

Let these words of mine, with which I have pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord, our God, day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, that the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God and there is no other.

Let your heart, therefore, be wholly true to the Lord, our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments as at this day. All right, so that was a long benediction. Given some of the things that we've pointed out about what the chronicler tends to do with the passages he's copying from 1 Kings, why do you think he omits this benediction?

Yes, okay, yes.

Right, yeah, okay, so there's two things that should come to mind. One is, yeah, a lot of times the chronicler truncates things, you know, abbreviates, because a lot of people already have 1 Kings. They don't necessarily need it all written again, so his agenda is not just to copy everything word for word, right?

But then secondly, though he is highlighting similarities between Solomon and Moses when it comes to the creation of the tabernacle versus the creation of the temple, he's removed repeatedly references to the Exodus because the chronicler is observing that the people of God have started with Adam.

Remember in 1 Chronicles, it starts all the way with Adam. The people do not begin in the Exodus, and so passages that talk about, you know, the people being formed out of a promise to Moses, et cetera, the chronicler has repeatedly omitted those because he's trying to give us the bigger picture, not the picture of the Israelites coming out of Egypt and being this particular short-lived people, but God's plan from beginning to end, and since I know we've got a few new people here, one of the things that I've been trying to observe about 1 and 2 Chronicles is that it is, you should think of it as the last book of the Old Testament.

If you were to read a Hebrew Bible, it would be the last book of the Old Testament. Different timelines would argue otherwise, but I would say it is probably the last authored book of the Old Testament.

And so what the, it's very much like the book of Revelation, okay? The book of Revelation comes at the end of the New Testament, and it summarizes the whole New Testament experience from Christ's first advent to his second advent and gives you a picture of how you should be thinking about this time in between the two advents.

1 and 2 Chronicles are doing something similar with the Old Testament. They're trying to tell you, it's trying to tell you how you should think, you know, we've gotten all the details in all the other books, but then what's the big picture?

How should you be thinking about Genesis all the way to the end of the Old Testament? And it's giving us the metanarrative, and so things that highlight the special inauguration of the people out of the Exodus don't help you see that, right?

So he omits those things so that you can see the people beginning all the way in Adam.

Okay.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's why, the way he, the whole point of those genealogies, you know, is to, and then little mentions here and there of faithfulness, you know, is to let you know that they've always been, they've always been His people.

And in Ephesians 2, 20 to 21, talks about how, excuse me, 3, 20 to 21, talks about how God will receive glory in Christ and in the church in every generation. That is a promise to us that there will be people of God in every generation in the New Testament as well, that there, this is a Holy Spirit inspired prayer.

He's letting us know it'll never drop off. You know, there are a lot of groups, restorationist groups like Mormons or Campbellites, et cetera, who say that, okay, well, after the apostles, everything dropped off.

And then later on the church started up again. That's kind of what I thought as a kid too. You look at the things in church history that don't look like the, don't really look a lot like the average churchman's experience today.

And you say, well, that was just weird. Maybe, maybe they just weren't Christians for several centuries. But, yeah, Ephesians 3 tells us otherwise, that there have been Christ receives glory, or God receives glory in Christ and the church in every generation.

Yes?

I don't think that would have surprised them, right? I'm not talking, I'm talking about like an angle to think about the story. I'm not talking about something totally, you know, new or bizarre. If you had told them, hey, Noah was faithful, they wouldn't have go, mind blown, right?

They read Genesis. They knew Noah was faithful, right? They know that Abel was faithful, right? It's just, it's just, how is he presenting the story? He's presenting the story as, let's talk about all the people of God, not just the ones inaugurated out of the Exodus.

Let's keep going here in verse three. And all the children of Israel looked on, and when the fire came down and the glory of Jehovah was on the house, and they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to Jehovah, saying, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever.

So yeah, the, all the children of Israel looking on, remember whenever it talks about all the people of Israel, that's something the chronicler likes to emphasize too, and this may just be coming. Oh yeah, no, this is a, yeah, this is his own text.

He emphasizes all the children of Israel to show the unity of the people of God. It's just a frequent thing throughout, right? Like all the people gathered around David, all the people are gathering around Solomon, et cetera.

Once again, helping us to anticipate the need for a savior who is going to unite all the people, you know, that is going to restore the throne of David and bring the same unity that David and Solomon have brought to the people.

And then, yeah, they have this threefold confession here, or they had a threefold confession in verse 38 before, and now there's this threefold worship with bowing, worshiping, giving thanks. Yeah, and once again, loving kindness endures forever.

That was, that was a phrase from David's reign also when he was bringing the altar in and now, or sorry, bringing the ark into Jerusalem, and now the ark is being brought into the temple. That's right, yes, yeah.

First Chronicles 16 has that line. Okay, so, yes. Does it give us a precedent for benedictions?

Yeah.

Oh, for, okay, those kind of, okay, so this is a, this is a benediction on the people of God. That's very different than like a, like a family benediction or something. So the precedent we would have in the New Testament is Christ himself blessing his people after worship, right?

It even talks about him lifting both hands, which is why I do that at the end. And then given that, we are willing to use both scriptural calls to worship and benedictions from the Old Testament that talk about that people, knowing that we're supposed to understand those as ultimately pointing to a New Testament people as well.

Now as far as dedications and things, there is scriptural warrant for that, but I wouldn't count it from here. Rather, you have things like, you do have in the law that if someone has a, someone has a new wife, they're not supposed to go off into the military in order to enjoy the.

Wife.

Same thing if someone has a new house, they still need to stay and dedicate it. They don't have to go off into the military. There is a, there is one psalm that is about the dedication of the, of the house.

I think the title of the ESV gives it sort of, makes it not as, makes it sound like it's about the temple, but I believe it's about the actual, the actual house of David. I think it's, I think it's right to have some ceremony around that.

And by ceremony, I just mean like, like gathering people for a celebration and then praying that God would bless it. That's all I mean by ceremony. But you do see, is it Psalm 30? Let's look.

Oh, yeah.

So, see, the ESV just goes ahead and tells you it's the temple, a psalm of David, a song of the dedication of the temple. So it doesn't, Psalm 30, yeah, a psalm, so let me go ahead and, if I can just have one second to look this up here in Hebrew.

Okay.

It says a psalm, yeah, at the dedication of the house of David, yeah, it just says literally at the dedication of the house of David. Now a lot of psalms will say of David, right, meaning that it's just a, yeah, that he wrote.

It.

However, I think there's a lot of reason to say that this actually is about his literal.

House.

You see, all the older interpreters interpreted this about his literal house. I forget some of the reasons that makes it more sensical. I have to remember. I thought it was in the order of words, it was, yeah, I can't remember now.

But there's several reasons that I thought it was more, it makes more sense to think of this as his palace rather than the temple.

Okay.

But yeah, literally it talks about the house of David. But see, notice that the ESV just goes ahead and completely interprets it for you. Instead of David being the last word, it pulls it back to the beginning and it says a psalm of David, a psalm at the dedication of the temple, where literally it says a psalm at the dedication of the temple, or sorry, of the house of David, like that's literally what it says.

And so the question is, is it of the house period of David, in which case, oh, okay, this is a psalm of David, and this is about the house, the temple. But the temple's never called the house without some kind of context.

There's always context when it's called just the house, you know, the house of God, etc. Like to be called absolutely the house is something that I don't know of any other time.

In scripture.

And that's some of the arguments that others have made too, like John Gill, he made that argument that the temple's never just absolutely called the house, it's always like the house of God, or there's some context to let you know that it's the house of God.

That was Psalm 30, zero. Because you know in English, in English, the titles aren't numbered. In Hebrew they are, right? So in English, most of the psalms, like all the verses are shifted off by one, but yeah, the title of the 30th psalm, yeah, okay.

We've gone along again. Let me just make a few comments about promises. Yeah, so he's appealing to the promises of God that he made to David, right, that the people be upheld, that God bless his temple.

We should be praying the same thing tonight, that God's promises would be upheld, and particularly that he would hear prayers as we come and gather as a people, which is what we're doing. Let me go ahead and pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that you've given us together to pray. I ask that you would bless our time in prayer together, and we appeal to your promises. We thank you for having sent Jesus Christ on the throne.

We thank you that we no longer have to look forward to the Messiah, but we can look back at his coming and forward to a second coming, in Jesus' name, amen.