2 Chro No.5 A Stimulus to Prayer

2 Chronicles, Chapter 7 The Dedication of the Temple When Solomon finished praying, and fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple, the priests could not enter the temple of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled it. And when all the Israelites saw the fire coming down, and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement, with their faces to the ground, and they worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, He is good, his love endures for ever. Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord.

And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty-two thousand head of cattle, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats. So the king and all the people dedicated the temple of God. The priests took their positions, as did the Levites, with the Lord's musical instruments, which King David had made for praising the Lord, and which were used when he gave thanks, saying, His love endures for ever.

Opposite the Levites the priests blew their trumpets, and all the Israelites were standing. Solomon consecrated the middle part of the courtyard in front of the temple of the Lord, and there he offered burnt offerings and the fat of the fellowship offerings, because the bronze altar he had made could not hold the burnt offerings, the grain offerings, and the fat portions. So Solomon observed the festival at that time for seven days, and all Israel with him.

A vast assembly, people from Lebohemath to the wadi of Egypt. And on the eighth day they held an assembly, for they had celebrated the dedication of the altar for seven days, and the festival for seven days more. On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people to their homes, joyful and glad, in heart for the good things the Lord had done for David and Solomon, and for his people Israel.

When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord in the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own place, the Lord appeared to him at night and said, I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land, or send a plague among my people, listen very carefully to this next verse, 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 will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.

I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. As for you David, if you walk before me as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with David your father when I said, you shall never fail to have a man to rule over Israel.

But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you, and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land which I have given them, and will reject this temple which I have consecrated for my name. I will make it a byword, and an object of ridicule among all peoples. And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple? People will answer, because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them.

That is why he has brought all this disaster on them. Bibles open at 2 Chronicles and the 7th chapter. I'll stay fairly close to this text, so you will need to have your Bibles open for you to gather the thread of my address.

The important thing is not what I have to say, but the truths that are embedded in this word. The latter is infallible, I am not. And it's for you to listen to a preacher with the word of God very much in your hand, because here at the TAB, as in many Bible-believing churches in the land, although it's not a popular viewpoint, we still believe in the entire authority of Scripture that God speaks to us through his word today.

Finally, what is the tabernacle's greatest need? What is the church's most important function? What is the nation's greatest requirement? I speak prophetically, not because of any degree of spiritual ingenuity, but because it's common sense to any man who has a modicum of spirituality at all, that the tabernacle's greatest need is for a constant re-evaluation of its prayer life. The prayer life of every individual taken as a single unit, the prayer life of us all as we come together corporately for seasons and days and weeks of prayer. Sometimes in our Notes and News, and I hope you take and reflect on some of the things that we incorporate into our church bulletin, we not only put a statement at the top in terms of a quotation, but we thread a number of statements into Notes and News where we've got a spare space.

And last week, you had this little comment that God's ear is placed next to the believer's lips. God's ear is placed next to the believer's lips. What is the nation's greatest need? Listen.

For the church to be the church. Did you hear that? Our nation's greatest need is for the church to be the church. So what is the church's greatest need? Primarily, a worshipping and a praying community of people.

The language of Jesus, it's salt that savours. It's light that illuminates. What is the greatest need of the United Kingdom? For the church to be the church.

To savour and to illuminate. To bring before Almighty God the needs of our society. It's not for the church to be engaging primarily in philanthropic schemes, though that's part of the spin-off of the ministry of the gospel.

It's not for the church to be making political pronouncements, though it is right for the church to correct politicians whose ethical code is wrong. But the prime responsibility, hear me, in the twentieth century is for the church to act as the church of Jesus Christ. Illuminating, savouring, bringing hope to the people of the world.

Hope as it gets down on its knees. Bringing hope to a world that is lost without the effectiveness of its intercessory prayers. Why did Solomon construct this temple? Because it would become the wonder of the ancient world.

The latter was certainly the case. But no, that was not the prime object. The ornateness of the temple, its ornamentation, its beauty was a secondary thing.

What Solomon in the earlier happy days, spiritually speaking, of his reign wanted was a national headquarters where Israelites could turn their attention to, direct their gaze, because there they believed was the felt presence of God. There had not been a national shrine, not since the inception of the nation. But Jerusalem had been selected by God as the place where such an edifice would be constructed.

Solomon is not in any way imperfect in his understanding of the doctrine of God. He knows that Almighty God cannot be contained in one solitary splendid building. But he does know that it is important that in Israel there is a center to which people will turn, in which the name of God shall be revered.

So, Solomon engages in this act of temple construction. In one sense, a more preferred word in the Bible to describe the building is not so much temple as the house of prayer. I think last week I may have made reference to some brethren assemblies in India who always impress me whenever I am worshipping there or invited to minister among them.

They are known as the Buxing Assembly simply because of a great Indian spiritual leader by that name, but their assemblies are always described as the house of prayer. They are whitewashed, stand out amidst the muck that there is in most Indian cities and towns, and daubed against the whitewash are texts from the Word of God. The temple was instituted as a house of prayer.

How will a house of prayer be judged efficient? Two ways. One, when people go in to pray. Two, when God is present to listen.

Delightfully simplistic, but deliciously accurate. When does the church function as the church? When people, speaking of buildings, go into prayer day. When God graces the buildings with His presence.

And apart from that two-fold linked equation, the church will never be the church. She may be a religious organization. She may claim to be an establishment, part of the British heritage.

But the church is never the church unless she is constituted of praying people. And she is never effective unless the God who is behind the church makes His presence felt and picks up the intercessions of those who enter into her. I spent last evening in the company of Americans.

They are a good tribe. I like Americans. I like the way that they modify our English language from time to time.

I like the way they catch on to little phrases and eventually the phrases float across the Atlantic Ocean and we incorporate them into our own commoner garden expressions. Houston, Texas, the place of rocket design and control and so on, Cape Canaveral and what have you. You know, you've got the whole scene in your mind.

The rocket goes off into space and the communications are good between the control center and the poor men, at least I think the poor men, in the rocket itself. Time after time Houston will say, it's looking good. It's looking good.

They're reading the instruments. They're charting the course of the satellite. It's looking good.

Here's Solomon. Years have gone by since that original building project. The time has come.

In fact, he's actually in the middle of dedicating the house of prayer for the function it's going to achieve. And it's looking good. That's how I evaluate the first ten verses or so of this chapter.

Remember what had proceeded in the sixth chapter, the longest prayer in the whole of the Old Testament, as far as I know, in the whole of the Bible. And you read as you move into the first verse of the seventh chapter, when Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven. It's looking good.

People go in and God is present to listen. The only justification for having any religious edifice. The fire from heaven consumes the burnt offering as it did when Moses consecrated priests as recorded in Leviticus, as it did later on in history when Elijah's sacrifice is licked up by the flames from heaven.

As at the spiritual level, when 120 men and women are gathered together in the upper room waiting for the fullness of the Spirit, the fire descends. Whether literal fire or spiritual fire throughout both testaments, it stands for very often the power of God. Those 120, no longer will they offer sacrifices literally.

Their lives will become sacrifices, living sacrifices. Christian people don't die, they burn out. I read the other day, accountants, old accountants never die.

They simply lose their balance. Old Christians never die. They are absorbed into the very presence of God.

There the fire was the consummation. At Pentecost, the fire was ignition. But in both instances, the point is obvious.

God is present amongst His children. God manifests Himself amongst the redeemed community, the felt presence of the Lord. In the 14th verse of the 5th chapter, references made before the dedication is through to the glory of the Lord filling the temple, and the priests within the temple cannot continue their cultic business.

But here when you move into the 7th chapter in the 3rd verse, you discover that the presence of God is visible not only out, not only within the temple, but also outside. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt. Why? Because they knew that the place where prayer was to be made was the place where God was manifesting His presence.

The indication that He would listen. It's looking good. It's looking very good.

Even better when in verse 4 you discover that the King and all the people, the leader alongside the congregation so to speak, offer sacrifices before the Lord. Yes, sacrifices. Because prayer will never display sacrifice.

Prayer will not expiate sin. You could pray and pray and pray and yet your sins would never be forgiven unless those prayers could be an infrastructure built on the sacrifice that has been offered for the sins of the world. And in those days we're living before the advent of our blessed Lord Jesus, before God has incarnated Himself in a human being.

And in the multitude of sacrifices that are offered on the day when the temple, or the days when the temple is dedicated, there is a prefiguring of the way in which sins will be dealt with. And the people, perhaps with cloudy perception, but nonetheless with some understanding, mingle their prayers with those of Solomon. And as He is the first King in history who is recorded in Bible history, who is recorded as kneeling publicly in the presence of God, so they too will fall down in awe before this God who has so manifested Himself.

Then the King and all the people offer sacrifices before the Lord. And the previous verse, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshipped. And again it's that same Scripture's chorus.

I'm not making a point for the sake of. I'm bringing out to your attention from Scripture the legitimacy of taking a good, meaningful sentence and repeating it in praise to the Lord. He is good.

His love endures forever. They've been using that as a recurrent phrase that's repeated. Almost like some of the great symphonies of Beethoven when he sets his initial medley and then he brings it in in the middle and he brings it in three quarters towards the end and then finally.

So in this whole act of dedication, again and again, the praises of the people resound as they recognize the goodness of this God. He is good. His love endures forever.

There is no other way to adequately express your heart's reaction to what God is doing, say the ancient Hebrews. Therefore there's a snippet from Psalm 106 and verse 1 and it takes over almost like the recurrent Amen at the end of the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's great Oratorio. It's looking good.

The people are in the temple. The people are around the temple area. God is in the place.

There's sacrifices. There's praise. There's spontaneity of utterance.

Verse 6, the priests take their positions as do the Levites and the Lord's musical, with the Lord's musical instruments which Kings David had made for praising the Lord and which were used when he gave thanks saying his love, there it is again, his love endures forever. It's a magnificent occasion, this dedicating of the temple. So magnificent that the people are not in a hurry to get home.

The eighth verse gives us something of the time span of this festive period. Solomon observed the festival at that time for seven days and all Israel with him. References made in First Chronicles to David getting together a great congregation of people.

There's a proverbial expression almost like from John of Grotes to Lanzend here, from Lebo Haimath to the lady of Egypt. A huge, a vast concourse of people joined together for what purpose to praise this God. It's looking good.

What does Israel need? Using the word church in its Old Testament connotation. Israel needs the church to be the church. And Israel will never be greater than when the church operates as the church.

When she comes together in totality to Jerusalem. When every individual Hebrew who can't make the journey directs his gaze towards the house of prayer. And when almighty God releases the power of his spirit and Israel intercedes in prayer and combines in worship and brings to the Lord the glory due to his name.

Israel was never greater than when the church of the Old Testament functioned like the church. And let me tell you, there is no experience known to mortal man than is more blessed to enter into than when the church of the Old Testament is the church. On the twenty-third day, verse ten, of the seventh month he sent the people to their homes, joyful and glad in heart for the good things the Lord had done for David and Solomon and for his people Israel.

A plague on those who bring Christianity. A plague on the very conception of moving into a house of God as though it's a mournful and a doer business. There is nothing this side of heaven more glorious than the big occasion, hear me carefully, when the people of God are together focusing their attention on the main thing, the glory of God.

When they are beseeching that God will move upon the land, releasing his power, cleansing every vestige of filth from between the borders of the nation. There is nothing more wonderful than when hundreds and thousands of people are caught up in an anthem of praise singing to this almighty God, he is good and his love endures forever. When the church is the church, heaven comes down on earth.

It's looking good at the dedication of the temple, great God make it good, as good in this tabernacle. Looking good, it's even getting better. Verse 11, when Solomon had finished the temple, I extrapolate, I take two phrases from the next two verses.

Solomon had finished the temple, verse 12, the Lord appeared to him. Solomon finished, the Lord appeared. Solomon finished, the Lord appeared.

It's looking even better. The years have been absorbed into history since Solomon first engaged upon this program. He dedicated himself and mobilized thousands of men and women to the completion of the task.

What God is asking from you is not just your empty words of commission to the work of the Lord. He's not asking us to be good at the commencement. He's asking us to see things through to their completion.

So a greater than Solomon in the high priestly prayer which I referred to last Sunday, speaks to the heavenly Father and he says the work that you gave me to do has been completed. Solomon finished and the Lord appeared. God appeared to Solomon years before.

You remember that memorable address that Tim Saunders brought to us from the first chapter, the initiation of this new series of Bible studies. Now he brought out that Solomon on being inducted into the office of the king gave worship the priority and went to Gibeah and spent there time before the Lord in prayer and during that night God appeared to Solomon. Here we have it again.

The years have gone by but God appears to Solomon once more at night. You see the whole scene. It's looking good.

It's getting better. And as it was in the days of Solomon, please God let it be today. Solomon representing the church.

The church at its very best when Solomon finishes, the Lord appears. We have left undone those things we ought to have done and done those things we ought not to have done and there is no good in us. You remember the words of the familiar.

Don't dismiss as one person did and took real offense because I use the book of common prayer. There's good stuff in the book of common prayer. We so-called nonconformists could do worse than to use it more frequently.

So often it is the case that the work that we ought to be attending to and completing we do not and the reason why our prayer life is so ineffective is simply because we do not offer to the Lord the quality of dedication that Solomon offered on this day, this glad day when the temple receives the presence of God in spectacular fashion. Then, then the Lord appeared to Solomon and He gives to Solomon some of the greatest promises that you find in the whole of this glorious Old Testament. Verse 15, My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.

I have chosen and consecrated the temple so that My name may be there and the repetition. My eyes and My heart will always be there. Lord Solomon has pleaded during the hours of the preceding day, May your glory ever be here.

May there be a sense of you here. Lord as He's kneeling before Yahweh and as the people are watching Him, this leader engages in this intercession and during the watches of the night, the Lord says, My eyes upon this place, My name within, My ears ever attentive, My heart always open. Jesus said, My eyes will be open and My heart will be there.

Where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst. In the midst of what Lord Jesus? In the midst of My church. My eyes always directed, My ears always open, My heart always warm towards the people of God.

When the church behaves as the church, the Lord of the church manifests His presence, that we are not constricted to the physical temple built by Solomon is to our advantage. For now the church is composed of living people, you and me, not only here but around the world. And wherever people are gathered together in the name of the illustrious Jesus Christ, there by the power of the Spirit He presences Himself, stimulating our worship and the church is never more glorious when caught up in praise to the One whose eyes are towards her, whose ears are open, whose heart is warm.

Looking good. It's getting even better. Somebody sent a birthday card and I can't quite get the words.

It was something to do with being 40. You may have had the experience. It was mine a little while ago.

And it was something like this, up to 40 it's all development, after 40 it's maintenance. Cutting some of these cards, aren't I? For the church to continue to be the church, there must be maintenance. Fourteen.

If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, they will find and turn from their wicked ways. Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. You say the church is not functioning as it was, typically described in Solomon's day.

Well, with that comment I would have to agree. But you see, here we have God trapped, so to speak, within the compass of His Word. Solomon has prophetically looked into the future and realized that this flush of enthusiasm and revival that's amongst the people, it may peter out.

And he gives several scenarios. You remember, get my tape from last week if you weren't present, or allow your memory to throw back the information to the forefront of your mind. He gives several scenarios of how the old Hebrew people may let the Lord down.

And he says, Lord, if they do this, and if they remember who You are and Your mercy and Your forgiveness, and they direct their attention to this place, then do You, great God, forgive. So here's the maintenance. God responding, O thou who hears prayer, says Solomon's father David.

Well, Solomon has prayed. He's spent these hours of the preceding day in prayer. He's setting up some procedure for recovery, should it be that this revival and enthusiasm may be dissipated.

So here is the maintenance. If my people were called by my name, so you're not what you used to be. You know, the days have spun by.

You're now in your 60s, your 70s, and that early flush of enthusiasm, perhaps it's waned, or maybe it's not. Thank God for people who maintain a sort of perpetual spiritual revival in their walk with the Lord. I have known people like that.

They're exceptional, but I have known them. Or maybe you're not in the 70s. Maybe you're in your 20s or your 30s, but there was a time when your spirituality, when your zeal was much greater than it is now, when your sense of the presence of God was much more pronounced.

And you say, Mr. Preacher, in one sense you're putting me off. I'm following what you're saying, but you're distancing me from where I am and the ideal. That's why I bring you to the maintenance.

I think that one of the best books that's been written recently happens to be that by my good friend Rodney Kingston. I don't say that because he's my friend or he's in this town. But it needed somebody to write a book on renewing your walk with God.

Maintenance. Well here you see, here is fleshed out for you the procedure that's necessary. If you've fallen away from the ideal, you have to humble yourself.

If you're concerned about the nation and becoming a real intercessor, a powerful prayer warrior, then you take this verse for yourself. It's not for the nation. You see, I need to retrieve this text.

It's sometimes misused. It's abused. There are some people who feel that it applies directly to the nation.

It doesn't matter who the people are. Use this on a civic service. Use it on the occasion of some public dignitary calling us to a day of prayer.

No, you can't use it like that. You see, this is to the people of God. If my people, these are the covenant people of God, who are in a relationship with the Lord, if my people have defected, if they have apostatized, and if there comes a moment of sanity and they want to return to their earlier years of spirituality, then this is what they have to do.

They have to humble themselves. I'm not naturally a humble man. I have to work on that ugly pride that's always so latent in my personality.

But you see, you can never be effective in your prayer life if you're not humble. The proud man never prays. Ah, you say, what about the Pharisee in the temple? Well, that wasn't a prayer, was it? That was a letter of congratulations he addressed to himself.

The very idea of prayer is so repugnant to the moderns. Why? This man who's on his face before the Lord, he's indicating that he's not the master of his fate. He's not controlling situations.

Precisely. That's biblical Christianity. We cannot control the situations in this world.

This is why we need to pray. And so as we humble ourselves, as we judge ourselves, for that's what the Hebrew really requires in terms of a translation for prayer. You can't pray without judging yourself as you do this.

So you'll improve the quality of your intercessory life. Remorse, says someone, is being sorry. Repentance is being sorry enough to stop.

That's what God is asking. He's asking us to seek His face. He's asking us to turn.

Whatever the cost of putting a thing right, it can never be more than the cost of leaving it wrong. Did you hear that? Whatever the cost of putting things wrong in your life, right, can never be dearer than the cost of not repairing the wrong that has been done. So here is God giving maintenance principles for the church in the Old Testament, for the church in the New Testament, because the spiritual principles are exactly the same.

It's looking good. It's getting better, but you're needing care. Why does care need to be exercised? Well, look at verse 21.

Oh, let's go earlier to the 20th verse. If my people don't live like this, if they will reject this temple which I have consecrated for my name, I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, why has the Lord done such a thing to His land and to His temple? When the church refuses to be the church, the possibility is that God can destroy the very edifice that has been raised in His name.

And if that seems too powerful a statement for me to make from the pulpit, then how do you explain Judaism and the fall of the temple, so that when our Lord Jesus Christ comes along, He is so embarrassed in His Father's house, the house of prayer, that He clears the place, because it's become a stock exchange. When the church refuses to act as the church, then God can bypass man-made edifices and do a new work. And my great fear for our own fellowship is that unless we're constantly humbling ourselves, God could pass by and do something somewhere else.

He's passed by us, He's passed by successful sophisticated churches in days gone by, as they've rested upon their historical legacy and who they were in the evangelical world. And such an attitude stinks in the nostrils of God. God has decreed that the church is to be the church, as men and women come before Him in humble prayer, ever repenting, ever contrite.

And when that happens, He manifests Himself, His glory. And you know about Him not through logical deduction from the text that the preacher has been preaching on, though logic comes into it, but you know of Him because He comes near to you, He quickens your heart, He quickens your mind. And you go away from the place knowing that you have met up with Almighty God and it's not a drudge the following Sunday to be at church.

It's not a drudge to turn out to a prayer meeting. Why? Because you have discovered the thrill of what it is to be caught up in an intensity of prayer, in an ecstasy of worship, alongside which there is no other experience in life that is quite comparable. God wants the church to be the church.

Solomon wanted the temple to be the house of prayer. I can't tell you how much this message costs me, or the depth of feeling with which I give it, but be it the last message I ever preach from this place, I believe that I share with you right now the heart of God for you personally and for us collectively. Let the church be the church.