If My People . . . (Part 1)

OPENING STORY: Wife goes with husband to doctor. Doctor examines the husband and diagnose that the husband is critically ill has but perhaps there might be a slim chance of a cure otherwise he has only one week to live.

The doctor takes the man’s wife into the next room and reports his finding to her privately. “His only hope to be cured is for you to relieve all his stresses. You can extend his time by rubbing feet and back, cooking his favorite meals, relieve him of all stress by letting him go fishing, waiting on him hand and foot, etc. Be as affectionate as when you were first married.

The wife returns to her husband and he asks, “Honey, what did doctor say?”

She replies, “You’re going to die.”

You see many people do not get healed, not because their condition is incurable, but they’re not healed because they do not want to follow the doctor’s orders.

More than that, the wife is like the church and her husband is like our community and our nation

We know what we need to do, we are just too lazy to do it.

Background

The first few chapters of 2 Chronicles record the building of the Temple of God, under King Solomon.

• The Temple was completed and Solomon dedicated it to the Lord, in chapter 6.

• He knelt down before God’s people, spread his hands out toward heaven, and said a long prayer – a prayer for the nation, asking God for His blessings

The passage we read was God’s response to his prayer.

Solomon’s prayer is a long prayer – in 2 Chron 6:14-39.

will look at verses 24-30 to understand the context.

Both Solomon’s prayer and God’s answer is full of conditional statements IF – THEN a mathematical equation

If A then B

2 Chronicles 6:24–25

24 “Or IF Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and return and confess Your name, and pray and make supplication before You in this temple, 25 THEN hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which You gave to them and their fathers.

2 Chronicles 6:26–27

26 “WHEN the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, WHEN they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin because You afflict them, 27 THEN hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your servants, Your people Israel, that You may teach them the good way in which they should walk; and send rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance.

2 Chronicles 6:28-29

28 “WHEN there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; WHEN their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; 29 whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, WHEN each one knows his own burden and his own grief, and spreads out his hands to this temple:

2 Chronicles 6:30

30 THEN hear from heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of the sons of men),

Why would there be famine in the land, with pestilence and blight?

Solomon in his prayer acknowledges an important fact to God

2 Chronicles 6:36

36 “WHEN they sin against You (for there is no one who does not sin) . . .

Notice the when and not if. Sin is something we are all guilty of.

. . . for all have sinned.

Now watch. God answers Solomon much in the same way he prayed

2 Chronicles 7:13

WHEN I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,

2 Chronicles 7:14

IF My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Let’s break this down.

If My people

Just who are God’s people?

In reference to this this passage; it is the people of Israel.

These are people who are called by My name.

These people of Israel, the Jews, had become quite arrogant.

they were after all the chosen people of God.

It is not like God would ever do anything to His people?

They had just dedicated the magnificent Temple.

God said in just a few verses later:

2 Chronicles 7:16

For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.