". . . 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, 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 will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land."
In teaching the Old Testament, we must remember that what happened then in the natural happens now in the New Testament in the spirit. That being said, Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and now God blessed the work and promised to receive the sacrifices presented there. In the N.T., WE are now the temple, and we sacrifice to the Lord in our temple. O.T. natural, N.T. spiritual. Okay?
God said four things had to happen before He would do anything: we must humble themselves AND pray AND seek God's face AND stop sinning. Not one or two or any combination thereof, but ALL FOUR had to be done in order for God to bring forth His blessing of healing. But that isn't preached today. Oh, and by the way, it has to happen in that order I believe. In Scripture, the order in which things are place in the sentence determines their importance. Hmmmm..... humility is in the number one position.... hmmmm.... not much of that in the Body of Christ today, sorry to say.
The defination of humility is: "a freedom from arrogance that grows out of the recognition that all we have and are comes from God." The key phrase here is "freedom from arrogance." Biblical humility "is an exalting or praising of others, especially God and Christ. A humble person, then, focuses more on God and others then on himself." Sadly, in the church today, I don't see a whole lot of that, but I DO see arrogance and drawing attention to self in many, many programs. We definately need humility.
Pray. Well now. When it comes to having coperate prayer time, there's usually a whole lot of other stuff going on and the praying falls to a handful. In my church, there are over a thousand attendees, but when we have a prayer meeting once a month, maybe twenty show up. Too many other things going on to com and pray to God for the church and our own lives. But then, if we can't humble ourselves, then the prayer time won't come either.
The third condition God requires is that we seek His face. Do you begin to see where things are going here? In order to seek God's face, we must put him above everything else. We must be humble and prayerful, for we will only find God's face when we have cast off ourselves and gone to prayer. A very natural progression here. Nothing out of order. But all of this takes work. We must seek God's face to know what His will is for the Body of Christ and our nation.
And lastly, we are commanded to turn from our wicked ways. Nothing kind here. STOP SINNING!!! But then, the Body of Christ isn't wicked. We don't do sinful things like gossip, slander, adultery, fornication, lie, witchcraft, greed and envy. I'd say the church needs to clean up it's act and right now seems like as good a time as any to start.
God has promised to hear from heaven, to forgive our sins and to heal our land, ONLY when ALL FOUR conditions have been met. Are we willing to be totally obiedient? We don't serve a cafeteria god who lets us pick and choose which commands we want to obey. He tells us how it will be and we will either bow to Him or not.
The rest of the chapter is beautiful. God says that his eyes will be open and his ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place, meaning the temple. The O.T. temple in Jerusalem and this N.T. body-temple of the Holy Spirit. God said he has chosen and consecrated this temple so that His Name mey be there forever. His eyes and heart will always be there. Awesome beyond words, these promises of God. They will go into eternity.
How badly do you want God dwelling in your temple? He has consecrated it. How badly do you want God to hear you? What are you willing to do so He will listen?
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