The Bible Recap - Day 165 (2 Chronicles 6-7, Psalm 136) - Year 3

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Today's reading had a lot of overlap in the story of dedicating the first temple, but there are still new things to notice and learn about God. So let's get to it. There was one thing in chapter 6 that we've seen a few times before and it always catches my attention. It's when David tells God that he wants to build the temple and God says no, but he also affirms David by saying, you did well that it was in your heart.

God says David has a good desire, but the answer is no. Sometimes even good desires get a no. But when that no comes, it's at least comforting to know that our hearts aren't completely off track. Good desires and God's no can coexist. David is proof. And we can rest assured that when God does say no, it's his kindest possible answer.

Today, we also saw more reminders that God isn't confined to the temple. In chapter six, verses 26 through 27, Solomon says, If they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin, then hear in heaven and forgive. Solomon says the people will pray to God toward the temple, and God will hear from heaven. This also reinforces the fact that he is a different kind of God from all the other gods. Those gods can only occupy one space, but God occupies all space.

He invented space. He is omnipresent, always present, everywhere. After Solomon wraps up the blessing on the house and the people, he makes the giant offering we read about yesterday. But then we see something today in 7-1 that wasn't mentioned in yesterday's text. It says, as soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices. I have a weird confession. I love it when God throws lightning around. Somehow we ended up with the image of God striking somebody down with lightning as the cliche, and we used that whom we're

trying to say God's mad about something. But that only happens a few times in Scripture. The vast majority of his fire throwing is actually a sign of acceptance, not rejection or condemnation. Sometimes I think we just prefer to imagine God as always being furious about everything, without a lot of data to back it up. In fact, here's how the people of Israel responded to the lightning. Verse 3 says, 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. So the next time you see lightning, it could be that God is approving of something. Who knows? By the way, the same idea holds true for the way many of us view rain anytime it's mentioned in the Bible. In Matthew 5.45, when Jesus says God sins rain on the just and the unjust, for most of us, when we hear that, it sounds like the just are the ones getting the raw end of the deal. Why does he have to sin rain on the good guys?

But remember, these people lived in a desert that only got rain a few months out of the year. Rain was a much-needed blessing. So the thing Jesus is putting out there is actually that God extends His goodness and grace even toward the wicked, not just the righteous. This is what theologians call common grace, where all the humans God created, not just his kids, get to have at least a base-level experience of his goodness, like breathing the air he engineered and feeling the sun he commands to shine and eating the gelato he invented. Okay, back to the temple dedication. After they have their week-long party and everyone

goes home overjoyed, Solomon goes home to sleep it off. And he has a vision where God appears to him in the night and talks to him about what's going to happen next. They have this big, beautiful new temple where God is dwelling at that moment, and all of this majestic display of wealth and wonder and sacrificing and fire-throwing still isn't going to make the Israelites love and follow God. If you ever hear someone say they're waiting for a sign before they believe in God, the bad news is signs don't change hearts.

The good news is God does. But God warns Solomon that things are going to take a turn for the worse. The nation-state of God's chosen people is going to rebel, and God is going to send various forms of discipline on them. Drought, locust, disease, and when he does this, if they repent and turn to him, you will keep his covenant with him, despite their rebellion.

You may disagree with me on this, but I think when it comes to verses like 714, we have to be careful about taking God's covenant with Israel and applying it to our own countries. Cherry picking specific promises for ourselves that weren't made to us is dangerous territory. For instance, for most people it would be obvious that we can't take God's next promise to Solomon, they will always have a descendant on the throne and apply that to ourselves, though that would be nice. But what we can do in these promises is to look to see what they reveal to us about God's character.

This first shows us that He is the kind of God who stands ready to forgive and to bless. God's covenant with Israel is contingent on their obedience, but here He's already telling them, you're going to break this covenant, but when you return to Me, I'm going to forgive you. I put my name on this family in this city, and I'm not going anywhere." Then we read Psalm 136, which is super repetitive, so it would make a great technotrack. We don't know who wrote this corporate prayer song, but they're hung up in the best way possible

on celebrating God's steadfast love that endures forever. He praises Yahweh for being the God of God, the Lord of Lords, for all His mighty works of creation and salvation, and even for a few acts of destruction. What was your God shot today? Mine has its roots in 636, where Solomon casually mentions something in passing that is one of the foundations of our faith. He says, there is no one who does not sin. We've already seen this reference

between red Psalm 14 on day 112, and we talked about it then. Psalm 14 3 says, there is none who does good, not even one. And Paul references this in his letter to the Romans. Chapter 3 23 says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. When Solomon says this, it tells us something about us, but what does it tell us about God? This is a God shot after all, not a me-shot. Solomon delivers this sentence in the midst of the dedication of God's temple, and God came to dwell there.

The God whose presence is so powerful that even the priests among them couldn't stand up. When I think about the fact that every single human being God created was and will be born into the fall, broken from the start, and given to sin, I find it so remarkable that God comes down to live with us, to concentrate His perfect presence in the midst of our wickedness. I can't get over it, but He's here and he's not going anywhere. Thank him because he's where the joy is. I love D-group and I want to tell you about one of our core values that makes us who we are. You may remember that core value number one is scripture as roots. Core value number two is Community as Fruit.

We believe community should not be our primary goal. Community happens best as a byproduct of being on mission together. And our mission is clear in core value number one. We want to know and love God. If you wanna find out more about D-group, watch the short promo video in today's show notes or visit mydgroup.org.

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