I.
Notice anything familiar?

This passage contains as verse 14, “…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

I suspect many of us have heard that a number of times as a sermon text and perhaps as a call to “national repentance.”

And, why not? It seems to give a 4-step method to being in God’s good standing.

This week let’s notice the entirety of this passage. And we might start with, “Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and …”

The prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple begins at 2 Chronicles 6:12. You may want to take that into account as you spend time with this passage.

II.
2 Chronicles 7:12-22 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time. As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne, as I made a covenant with your father David saying, ‘You shall never lack a successor to rule over Israel.’

“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from the land that I have given you, and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And regarding this house, now exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord the God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore he has brought all this calamity upon them.’ ”

III.
What in this passage draws your attention the most deeply?

The promise to forgive? The “steps” that lead to forgiveness? The warning to not to forsake God’s statutes and commandments?

Something else?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}