Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH

Verses 22 through 54. And today I’ll read the center part of that prayer, the specifics of which we’ll be talking about in today’s sermon. So we’ll begin reading at verse 31. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. First Kings chapter 8, Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the temple.

Verse 31. When anyone sins against his neighbor and is forced to take an oath, and comes and takes an oath before your altar in this temple, then hear in heaven and act and judge your servants, condemning the wicked, bringing his way on his head, and justifying the righteous by giving him according to his righteousness.

When your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and confess your name and pray and make supplication to you in this temple, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land which you gave to their fathers.

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, then hear in heaven, 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.

When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight, or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities, whatever plague or whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and forgive and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart you know, for you alone know the hearts of all the sons of men.

That they may fear you all the days that they live in the land which you gave to their fathers. Moreover, concerning a foreigner who is not of your people Israel, but has come from a far country for your name’s sake, for they will hear of your great name and your strong hand and your outstretched arm. When he comes and prays towards this temple, hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as do your people Israel and that they may know that this temple which I have built is called by your name.

When your people go out to battle against their enemy wherever you send them. And when they pray to the Lord toward the city which you have chosen and the temple which I have built for your name, then hear in heaven their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause. When they sin against you, for there is no one who does not sin and you become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy.

And they take them captive to the land of the enemy far or near. Yet when they come to themselves in the land where they were carried captive and repent and make supplication to you in the land of those who took them captive, saying, “We have sinned and done wrong, we have committed wickedness.” And when they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, who led them away captive, and pray to you toward the land which you give to their father, the city which you have chosen and the temple which I have built for your name.

Then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you and all their transgressions which you have transgressed against you. And grant them compassion before those who took them captive that they may have compassion on them for they are your people and your inheritance whom you brought out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. May that word transform us today. Grant us hearts and minds that are open to hear your word so that we may open our hands in obedience to it and our mouths as well this week. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Psalm 5:3 says, “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice. In the morning, I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” We’re talking about prayer. We’re going to look at Solomon’s prayer as a model of praying in terms of the new creation affected by our Savior in a couple of minutes. But in general, we’re trying to encourage ourselves to pray more often than we do. Most of us could use much reformation and transformation in the areas of our prayer life and simply in praying more often.

We tried to remove one obstacle to prayer last week by talking about the simplicity of prayer—that we should pray eagerly in conversational prayer without formality throughout the day. Hopefully your life has been marked by more prayer this last week than it was the week before.

John Bunyan said that prayer will make a man cease from sin or sin will make a man cease from prayer. Those are the two options. Spurgeon said that a prayerless soul is a Christless soul. Prayer is of the essence of our relationship to God, beseeching him for grace and mercy to walk through our days, for enablement and empowerment to do what we have been called to do. Spurgeon rightly said that no man can progress in grace if he forsakes prayer.

Much of the Christian life, I think, as you move to middle life and older age, is a recognition of our strong need and reliance upon God. And frequently we find ourselves in what the Puritans call the dark hour of the soul as we move to middle age or later. And we recognize that there is only one source for help in the context of our lives, and that is the work of God. And so we pray to him.

We press on in grace by not forsaking prayer but turning more to it. That prayer should come about in the morning. And last week, I asked you by way of application to pray for the meeting of the elders and deacons this last Friday evening—to get up in the morning and pray as you begin your day. It’s what you all should do according to this psalm. And we had a wonderful meeting Friday night, a meeting of unity and peace and furthering the direction of our church as we move into this next year.

And I’ll talk more about that in a little bit and later during the announcements as well. But your prayers were answered, and hopefully you do that in the morning—pray in the mornings.

I believe it was Spurgeon who said that the morning is the gate of the day and should be well guarded with prayer. It is one end of the thread on which the day’s actions are strung and should be well knotted with devotion to God. He who rushes from his bed to his business and waits not to worship is as foolish as though he had not put on his clothes or cleansed his face and as unwise as though he dashed into battle without arms or armor.

Now, you young men and women, you teenagers who were in my Leviticus class last year—you’ll remember, maybe this quote from Spurgeon brings it to mind—that as we talked about the anointing of Aaron and his sons as a new creation, Aaron as a new Adam, as it were, to do the work in the temple, the new garden, we drew correlations between that whole anointing service laid out for Aaron and his sons to what we should do when we get up in the morning and get dressed with the righteousness of Christ and apply the unction of the Spirit to ourselves.

And then we anoint our wives the way Aaron’s sons were anointed to assist him in his ministry. And we drew this whole thing out, remember, young men and women, of getting up in the morning and thinking about Aaron and his sons and the way they were washed from their sins—the way it was a new birth, a new creation—either to apply the Spirit, the way that oil is applied as Aaron and his sons are anointed, the blood is applied to them, the forgiveness of Christ, so that we can walk in the new creation and we come forth empowered by the Spirit into the day.

And that’s what’s being talked about here. And so we pray that as God continues to cause us today to meditate on our prayers, that our lives of prayer would increase before God and that our days would be begun in reliance upon him.

We have great work to do in the context of this church. We have many things to put our hand to—and not the least of which is becoming acclimated to this building and structure, reforming our worship, moving our head and our knowledge of God’s word and applying it to our world. And we want to approach all these tasks we’re beginning to establish for our church as we move into this next year with a diligence to affairs, with a reliance on the counsel of God’s word, putting aside mocking and making fun of things, and instead entering into the labor and doing that prayerfully before God.

I was a little disappointed, frankly, if I could speak pastorally here, that—and I don’t know, maybe there was a failure of communication—but I was a little disappointed that apparently there was a very low number of young men and women who had committed to being part of the Reformation dinner theater who actually showed up for the practice Friday night. That is not diligence, my friends, beloved in the Lord. That’s not diligence.

Now, I don’t know, maybe there were good reasons. Maybe there wasn’t clarity. I don’t know. But it’s an example for you to think about in your lives. The things that God has called you to do and you put your hand to—are you doing them diligently for Christ? Certainly in the context of the church, but also, of course, in the rest of your lives as well.

We are diligently trying to reform our world. And we have a month here where we focus on the great Protestant Reformation—the church in darkness, idolatry, gross superstition, people being denied the word of God and falling into great error, many souls being led off to hell. And all of that turns around because of the work of the Protestant Reformers. We had best this month think of it that way, to remember the tremendous heritage we have through the reformers and why we named this church Reformation Covenant Church.

Drawing back not to the Reformed church found around about us—some of the liberal denominations call themselves reformed. No. To hearken back to the work of the Reformation and call for a reformation in our day and age. And we have set aside a symbolic representation of that in our Reformation evening celebrations.

Dan Drinkwater handed me this book this morning, a pamphlet. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks pretty good. Peter Leithart. You know, Peter—we had him at family camp—developing a relationship with him in Moscow. A tremendous blessing, I know, to the officers of the church, and long we want to have a long-term relationship with Peter as we develop as a church. Here’s a little booklet that came out in 1996, reprinted last year, produced by Coral Ridge Ministries, called *Satan Celebrates*. Subtitle is “A Christian Perspective on Halloween.”

Now I don’t want to overstate the case here. When young men and women go trick-or-treating, they’re not worshiping demons typically, but some are. And an increasing number are, and the origins of this thing are not good. And we have a tremendous opportunity to make a reformation move in the context of our homes, our neighborhoods, and this community and in the life of this church by saying we’re not going to do this anymore.

I’m not saying it’s wrong if you do it, but I’m saying there’s a much better thing we could do—to take that day, which was the day that Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, the symbolic start of the Protestant Reformation, and remember it and teach the children about what it means.

You young teens, I know there’s been some dissatisfaction with events the last couple of years, but do you understand? Maybe I will not distribute this tape to anyone outside of our church family. All right, I’ll make you that promise here. Young men and young women, understand that sometimes what we are calling you to do is to serve the next generation after you—to serve your younger brothers and sisters by making that evening a day of understanding the truths of the Reformation, the life of Martin Luther, to cause them to celebrate, to put aside what you want to do for an evening and instead attend to what is good and profitable in service to other people.

That’s what your parents in this church have done. We didn’t do what we thought was fun. We did what we thought was profitable for kingdom work in establishing this. And I would encourage and exhort you young people growing up—you men—to think through these things carefully at this age of your life.

When I talk about diligence and prayer, I’m not just talking to your moms and dads. I’m talking to you guys. If we don’t instill in you the spirit and drive and vision of this church for reformation based on covenants and keeping our word and obligation—the great covenant established by our Savior through his work and not our work—as a church, a body committed to self-sacrificially serving one another, not coming to see what our needs being met, but coming to find out how we can meet other people’s needs.

If we don’t instill that spirit in you young people and the teens of this church, well, let’s just turn the church back to the Lutherans. You know, I’m not—it’s an overstatement, but I’m trying to get your attention here to help you to focus on what we’re trying to do. And what we’re trying to do as a church is to affect an ongoing reformation. We want an outreach to this community to reform not just our own lives personally, but the life of the community in which God has placed us.

This is high and holy obligation based upon an understanding of who we are in Christ. But I’m calling you young people to—and you know, I probably should put all that in perspective. It has been a delight to work with all the kids that I did last year in my classes and this year in my classes. The children of this church are exemplary in many, many ways. But as you move into these teen years, you know, there’s a tendency for teens to think they know it all and to begin to make fun and to begin to not understand what we’re trying to do and just look for what the next fun thing to do.

See, it’s a temptation that’ll come to you from the world. Resist it in the Lord prayerfully, diligently, and using the counsel of God’s word. Let’s try to apply ourselves to this ongoing reformation. And if we’re going to do that, we must do it with an undergirding of prayer—prayer in our undertakings and what we do in the context of our world. We’re calling ourselves to a heightened sense of prayer.

And what I want to talk about today is really how I think the prayer of Solomon can be looked upon as a meditation—at least as a prayer that operates in the context of the new creation affected by our Savior. I want to draw some correlations to the original creation week and to the work of our Savior, and yet in such a way as to provide us an understanding that these are very practical prayers that Solomon enumerates in his prayer of dedication at the temple.

All right. And we’ve said first of all: pray eagerly, pray meditatively, meditating on the Bible as it forms our prayers.

We talked today this morning in our Sunday school class for the young people about how the Lord’s Prayer begins with three things directly related to God: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Three specific things: hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And how does it close? “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.”

Kingdom, kingdom come. Power, thy will be done. Glory, hallowed be thy name. The book ends, for the middle intercession, the middle lines of intercession in the Lord’s Prayer, the book closes, for that is the glory of God, an exaltation of him and praying that his name would be glorified in the earth and be made known.

And in Solomon’s prayer, we saw that same thing. There’s an introduction and then there’s a conclusion. There’s a prologue and an epilogue that focuses on the person of God. Begins with the phrase “the Lord God of Israel” and ends with the phrase—the whole prayer does—”Lord God.” So it focuses on the name of God both as Father and Sovereign. And our prayer should have at least be informed by that model, that whatever we seek from God, we do so seeking his glory in the context of our lives. And so that’s preeminent in what we do. And that keeps us from a lot of silly prayers.

All right. And now we get to the specifics of Solomon’s prayer.

**First, a need for discernment in cases. Verses 31 and 32.**

And I tried to read the scriptures this morning in such a way as to make these breaks. I read seven specific sets of scriptures going through Solomon’s prayer. And commentators have seen this. I’m not imposing that on the text. Commentators have seen the sevenfold action, but there hasn’t been—I haven’t seen any work in trying to draw a correlation to the days of creation.

Let me say before we get going here that what I’m trying to do here is what I did with Psalm 1 when we talked about meditating on Psalm 1 in reference to Psalm 2 as a sort of a unit. So what I’m proposing here is that a meditation on the specific requests of Solomon’s prayer will do several things.

One, it’ll help us to see how to pray so we can pray like a dog—Luther, I think, probably did that with the attention a dog gives to me. Luther’s quote from last week. And when we sang Psalm 130 today, penned by Luther, that’s one reason why we’re introducing this psalm this month is again the focus on Luther and the focus on the Protestant Reformation in the context of psalm singing and prayer, because the psalms are prayers. “Out of the depths have I cried to thee.”

Luther understood that, and he had great depths. But those great depths were used as a fiery furnace in Luther’s life to make him a bright shining star, to make impure gold usable, to affect reformation. And so Luther is the model for us there. And so this idea of meditating on the prayer of Solomon to affect the reformation in our prayer lives.

So we meditate on it to see its correlation and significance to us. We also—I’m going to layer in a meditation on the seven days of creation because frequently the scriptures are written with that same model in mind. And that shouldn’t surprise us. I mean, the first creation fell in Adam, and the second creation is newly created in Christ. We’ve talked about that a lot in our church. That’s one of the biggest themes in all of Scripture: first Adam, second Adam, old creation, new creation.

And so we have that newness of the New Testament—the new creation affected by our Savior breathing on the disciples, they received the Holy Spirit. “In the beginning was the logos. The logos was with God. The logos was God. Direct correlation to Genesis 1: “In the beginning.” And then what do we see in John, in the Gospel of John, after that? A whole section on light. That’s the first thing that’s addressed after “In the beginning was the logos.” And what’s the first day of creation? Light. You see, so the Gospel of John points us to seeing Jesus in his life as the beginning of a new creation affected by his work on the cross.

So it’s proper to draw these meditative parallels in our mind, and it can help us to remember the flow of Solomon’s prayer. It can help us to inform our own specific prayers. And third, it can put all of our prayers into the proper context, which I believe is: our prayers are praying in the context of and for the manifestation of the new creation affected by our Savior. In essence, all of our prayers are that we’d move out of the old creation into the new creation in our actions, and that God would transform the world to reflect the reality of the new creation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

All right. Now, some specifics.

Verses 31 and 32. When anyone sins against his neighbor and is forced to take an oath and comes and takes oath before your altar in this temple, here in heaven, act, judge your servants, condemning the wicked, bringing his way on his head, justifying the righteous by giving him according to his righteousness.

The first prayer, the specific enumeration of prayer requests of Solomon’s, is a prayer for discernment in causes. Discernment in causes—that God would make clear who’s right and who’s wrong. Now, the context is not, you know, the good guys and the bad guys. The context is two good guys, a man and his neighbor in Israel, and they come to church and one guy’s sinned against another. And for some reason, that’s not known. They can’t figure it out. And they come, and the guy’s got to take an oath. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

And then God brings judgment on him. He makes it clear: “Yeah, you did.” Makes the oath, and then he gets sick. He makes the oath, his house burns down. Makes the oath, his child gets sick. You see, God makes clear the throne of grace. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about prayer. We go to the throne of grace, but we do so at the initial request here, seeing it as a throne of judgment. We ask for the light of God to come into a dark situation made dark by sin and deception and subterfuge, and for the light to blow away the darkness.

Men love the darkness because their deeds are evil. But the light comes. When does it come? It comes on the Lord’s day here. It comes in formal worship, a vow placed in the context of altar worship. And so it correlates, I think, to the beginning of creation: “Let there be light.” The first festival in Leviticus 23—there’s seven of them that track the seven creation days. The first festival in Leviticus 23 is the weekly Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of light. Jesus comes with us on the Lord’s day and he manifests things through his word and his actions. And we’ll talk about the correlation of this, the very direct correlation of this, to this at the end as we move toward communion. Think about it. But for now, understand that you’re going to have conflicts in your life.

You and your husband will fight. You and your wife will fight. You and your kids will fight. Your kids will fight. Kids will fight with other kids. Neighbors will fight. They’ll not get along and they can’t figure it out. And you know, sometimes they’re really trying. Doesn’t imply here necessarily that the guy who is guilty understands he is guilty. One of the great problems of the Christian life is the problem of self-deception. The heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?

And so we come to church, and if we’ve got a problem with somebody, we should be praying to God—not to get that guy in the first instance. We should be praying to God: “Reveal what’s going on here. My spouse, my child—we just can’t—I can’t communicate what the problem is to them. Well, maybe you’re part of the problem. Or maybe you’re not. And in any event, when we approach the throne of grace, we ask for God’s judgments to be manifest.”

This is a very practical model for us as we pray. We should not be afraid to ask God to make clear to us who’s right and who’s wrong. You know, the pious guy—pious in an improper sense—he goes to the throne of grace and he just blames himself for everything. “Well, you know, the Bible says sometimes you’re not at fault.” And that’s sin. That’s a self-righteousness that is wicked in the sight of God, to take it all on yourself when it’s not your fault or your responsibility.

God wants us approaching his throne of grace this week and saying, “We’ve got a problem. Can’t work it out. Please reveal to me and this person that I have a problem with who’s right and who’s wrong. Act, do something. Give me—you know, make me fall out and break my leg if that’s what’ll get my attention and bring me to an awareness of my sin.”

We pray in terms of the light of the approach of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we do so particularly here—Solomon’s prayer is a prayer for what goes on in church formally, but it provides then a model for us in our informal, weekly, or weekday prayers as well.

So we have this prayer for discernment, for the light of God’s word to come, to make the throne of grace a throne of judgment.

**Secondly, the next specific request is in verses 33 and 34.**

So here there is sin involved—direct sin that’s created a particular action.

When your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and confess your name and pray and make supplication to you in this temple, then hear in heaven, forgive the sin of your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which you gave to their fathers.

So here the idea is they’re going into battle and they lose, and they lose because they’ve sinned. And here begins the first of three specific prayers that are very much alike. Things happen because we sin. We sin, and now we don’t do well in our battles that we go into—in our businesses, our neighborhoods, our vocation, our politics, whatever it is. We lose. We lose because we sin is the illustration here.

And the next couple are drought and then a whole bunch of bad things happen. Each of those next three—these requests two, three, and four—are all effects of personal sin. And this gives us a very important lesson that it is very easy to give lip service to, but it’s hard to apply. And that is this: When we have problems in our lives, the first thing we should do is to seek what sin it is of ours that’s led to our difficulties.

When we get sick—we’ll see that in a minute—when we don’t understand what the word of God says, when we go out to our neighborhood and become ashamed, become the shame of the neighborhood instead of the pride of the neighborhood, when we have those kinds of things happen in our life, it doesn’t necessarily mean, here’s the problem. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s because of our sin. But God says usually it is.

I think the point is here that normally when things go wrong, there’s sin involved. Corporate sin, the sin of the world certainly, but a lot of times it’s our own personal sin. I’ll give you an illustration of my own life here to help flesh this particular one out.

When we have been defeated in combat, we’re supposed to repent of our sins. I had some combat going on in my neighborhood. Got a little gang of three in my neighborhood—some delinquents, some real juvenile delinquents—and one of them always swears at the top of his voice whenever I see him. And I’ve tried to correct him. And so we go down to the opening of our skate park, maybe five or six weeks ago. It’s not formally open, but is open for business. And this kid’s good on there, with a buddy, to see the skate park. And this kid’s, you know, shouting obscenities at the top of his voice.

So, okay, I’m going to stop that. So I go over to him: “Don’t you do that anymore.” “Okay, stop that.” Then his two buddies say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And I yell back at him: “You know, I’m going to call the police.” “Well, go ahead and call the police.” So I do. I call the police.

What did I do wrong?

Now, these kids are kids who swear all the time, who’ve hit another child who was playing in our house with a rock by throwing it at them. Who are these guys? These are those guys we talked about a month ago. They’re the scoffers, they’re scorners. They will swear against anything. They’re profane. They’re foolish, wicked people. They’re not foolish. They progress to scornfulness, and they’re on the edge of the abyss. Is the Bible say I’m supposed to go and rebuke those guys? No, I’m not supposed to go and rebuke them.

The Bible says, “Don’t do that. They’re going to get mad at you.” What they need is to have force applied against them. I should have simply turned around, gone home, called the police, and let the police bring force apart from my crime to rebuke him. Now, the end result of that is the police come out, talk to the kids’ parents. Soon as the police drive away, they start swearing again at me. And now they know who I am. Now they know where I live. And I’ve not helped this situation.

I’ve got shame on my face because of my sin and not thinking through who are these guys according to the Proverbs and applying the correct remedy, or at least attempting to, by appealing to the authorities.

So that’s an example. When you go out and have troubles in the workplace, you have troubles in your neighborhood, troubles presenting the gospel, frequently it’s our own sin that leads to defeat. God is getting our attention in that way.

So sin leading to defeat.

**Third specific request: Repentance after drought due to sin.**

Oh, and by the way, let me go back to number two. The second festival in Leviticus 23 is Passover. Second day of creation: God places the firmament, the heaven, up above us. And he makes a distinction between the things down there under heaven and heaven. Passover: God makes a distinction between those people that won’t be passed over—that’ll be destroyed—and his people.

His people are to be on top. The ungodly are to be on the bottom. But now, what happens when God’s people sin? What’s supposed to be on the bottom is on the top. The ungodly are ruling, and what’s supposed to be on the top—heavenly people, his firmament people—they’re on the bottom. Things have been reversed because the fall of Adam produces a reversal of blessing into curse.

So the creation is put upside down, and the gospel of Christ comes along to right the world as a new creation. And so we’re to pray that we are victorious in combat. But the reason we’re not victorious is because of our sin—covenantally, the sin of Adam, but then very specifically often times our own sin.

So the first way you begin to win a battle that you haven’t won yet is not to apply more force against the enemy. It’s to recognize the force that God is applying against you to bring you to confession and repentance. You’re the firmament people. You’re the heavenly people. Our citizenship is in heaven. We’re to rule over the world. And when we don’t, it’s because we’ve sinned.

And we can say that in the context of our world today: When Christians go into the political arena and we lose, and our rulers are increasingly non-Christians, and our cultural leaders are non-Christians, then we can say we’ve lost in combat with the world. And it’s not because God has forsaken us. It’s not because he wants us to lose. We have an eschatology of defeat. It’s because we’ve sinned as a Christian culture.

And God is saying, “I want you on top again. Repent. Repent of forsaking my word. Repent of forsaking my eschatology. Repent of your Arminianism. You’re thinking that you can do things apart from my strength. Repent of your prayerlessness. And I’ll make you rulers again in your homes. Your dads are having a problem ruling there. In our businesses, in our places of work, in our leisure, in our culture, and in our civic activities. God intends us to be on top. But he gets us there by a reversal of the old creation through the new creation brought about by Christ.

And now we can pray pleading the blood of our Savior, and he forgives our sins and he grants us restoration to our proper place of rule.”

Verse 35. And the heavens are shut up. There’s no rain because they have sinned against you, and they pray toward this place, confessed your name and turn from their sin because you afflict them.

See, God is always afflicting us to cause us to turn—not to be sorry for the state we’re in, but to turn from the sin. That’s what repentance says. “Repentance is not apologizing.” At the end of the day, it’s not feeling real bad for what happened. Repentance is a change of mind and a change of actions, a change of heart. Turn. That’s what repentance is.

When you bring them to repentance, in other words, “here in heaven, 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.”

So, repentance after drought due to sin. Water is needed to be productive where God has planted us. Water is needed to bring about proper fruitfulness in the land and for ourselves as well. And God withholds the water for a season because his people sin. And as a result, they come to their senses and they pray to him.

So when we have a drought—a literal drought in our country—we should pray. And communities do this. And that should mark our lives. But there’s other kinds of droughts as well. And the Bible specifically in Amos 8:11 says, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

Why are we culturally inferior in the context of our world? There is a famine, a drought, and a resultant famine of hearing the words of the Lord. What we need to pray for is that when we feel dry spiritually and we can’t understand the Bible again, God is using that to get our attention to say, “There’s sins you need to repent of, and I’ll grant you further knowledge of my Bible as you repent of those sins. I’ll bring down the waters of my word upon you as you repent of your sins. Otherwise, the heavens are brass before you.”

And in this actually brings that out—here in verse 36. Forgive the sin of your people Israel, that you may teach them the good way in which they should walk and send rain.

So it seems like there’s a correlation to the sending of rain and God sending an understanding again of his word to teach them the way in which they’re supposed to walk. So our lives have difficulties. We don’t understand the Bible or we’re not reading the Bible. God says, “Come to me and repent of your sin and I’ll open that word back up to you and give you rain from above.”

Third day of creation: the land is gathered out of the ocean. So the waters in the land become distinguished, and then plants grow up in that land—first fruit, sort of plants, fruit trees and grain crops come up. And so to get that going up, you’ve got to have that water in relationship to the land.

And so here we have an absence of that. The third festival in Leviticus 23 was Firstfruits. The very first fruit coming up of the harvest being planted—the first grain of wheat that comes up is offered to God, a picture of the Lord Jesus, the first of many who are resurrected, in the book of Revelation.

Well, we’re not going to have that without that blessing of rain upon his people and water. And so I think we can remember this third intercession here based on that pattern.

**The fourth intercession is like the last two.**

Again, there’s a problem with sin, repentance after various curses. And this is the longest section, a long section, and there’s a sense in which we would expect that at the fourth, or the middle of a seven-part structure.

Verse 37. Where there’s famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities, whatever plague or whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone or by all your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart and spreads out his hands toward this temple.

Then here in heaven your dwelling place, forgive and act and give to everyone according to all their ways whose heart you know. You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men that they may fear you all the days they live in the land which you gave to their fathers.

And what we have here is not the sort of specific prayer we’ve just had in the first three—discernment and causes and victory in battle after we repent and rain and the raining of God’s word on us after we repent. Here we have a whole bunch of stuff strung together. And what this is, in part, is a reworking of Deuteronomy 28.

The great blessings and cursings of covenantal obedience or disobedience are laid out for us in Deuteronomy 28. And in Deuteronomy 28:21-28, we read the following:

“The Lord will make the plague cling to you until he has consumed you from the land where you are going to possess.” That word plague there is the same word pestilence that’s used in our translation. Well, it actually is translated plague here as well, in First Kings 37: “Whatever plague or sickness there is.”

Well, here the plague is talked about in Deuteronomy 28. Then verse 22 of Deuteronomy 28: “The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever—excuse me—with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching.” That’s blasting, the same word used here in First Kings 8, with mildew, same word. “They shall pursue you until you perish. Your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The Lord will change the rain of your land to powder and dust. From the heaven, it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. You shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away. The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors—excuse me—with the scab, with the itch from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart.”

So what’s being spoken about in Solomon’s prayer, his middle prayer, is a recitation of many of the specifics that come from the preeminent place of blessings and curses—the curses of Deuteronomy 28. People that forsake the covenant.

So here at the center of Solomon’s prayer, this fourth in the center in a flow of seven, at the center is a long recitation basically saying: Whatever curses we come under from you, whatever manifestation of our failure to keep covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ—when we come to our senses and repent of those things, here, give us blessing instead of curse.

The old creation with Adam’s sin ushered in curses to mankind. And now in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, all of the curses affected by the fall of Adam are now reversed for his people. Now, they’re reversed gradually as we mature in sanctification, as we become more Christlike in our actions, we see these things dropping off and we see blessings coming in. And if we don’t see that in a community or a family over a long period of time, then we have reason to say, “What is God? What ends is God trying to get our attention for?”

Fourth day of creation: Sun, moon, and stars. That heavenly thing going on again. Sun, moon, and stars. Sun to rule the day, moon to rule by night. Rulers. Flag of the United States has stars on it. Flag of Japan has a sun on it. Arab flags have moons on them. Everybody knows sun, moon, and stars are a picture of earthly rule and authority. And we’re supposed to be rulers again.

And yet, we’re suffering. When Solomon references—for Solomon’s prayer—all the effects of the curse of God, again, things have been reversed, and the reversal of roles here is called for. God is to effect this as God’s people seek his face in repentance.

Exodus 15:26 says, “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God, do what’s right in his sight, give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians, for I the Lord who heals you.”

When we have physical illness, we are supposed to start with self-examination. Have we trained our children to do that? Have we trained them to say, “Well, gee, if I’m ill, I got a severe problem going on with me. The first thing I should do is ask God to forgive me for things that he brings to mind.”

Now, it doesn’t mean, you know, I’ll throw the caveat in one more time. I’m not saying that all illness is caused by personal sin. There’s a covenantal aspect to all of this. But I am saying that the scriptures are pretty clear that often times that’s what God uses to get our attention, and we had ought to attend to that as we seek health in our environment.

Sometimes God calls us to be good witnesses, martyrs for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our physical problems. But we should always start first by saying, “What sin of mine do you want to reveal to me that this illness is getting my attention for?”

So the new creation in Jesus Christ affects a reversal of all the curses of Adam for covenant breaking and brings us into life. And we should pray that way. We should pray in our homes when we’ve got problems we can’t discern. We need the light of the Sabbath to come and sort it out for us. When we’re not being successful in our evangelistic efforts in our world, in the combat we go into, we should say, “What sin are you trying to show us, God? Help us to go about doing our work wiser.”

When we’re not productive and when we don’t understand the word of God, we should pray to God and say, “Here’s sin you want me to repent of. Please open your word to me.” And when we have general—whatever problems we encounter—we should take them to the throne of grace and say, “God, what sins of mine are you trying to get my attention for?” And please hear my confession of those sins and reverse this and make us the head again.

That’s true individually. We pray that way. Lord’s day worship corporately. Okay.

**Fifth specific request: And now we move into new territory.**

We started with discernment amongst brothers, went to three specific manifestations of curse due to sin. And now with this fifth specific thing, we move to the foreigner, to hear the foreigner’s prayer.

First Kings 8:41-43. Moreover concerning a foreigner who is not of your people Israel but has come from a far country for your name’s sake, for they will hear of your great name and your strong hand and your outstretched arm. When he comes and prays toward this temple, hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as do your people Israel, that they may know that this temple which I have built is called by your name.

Solomon prays evangelistically here. He prays that all the nations of the earth who will hear this might be heard by the Lord Jesus Christ—by way of applying it this side of the cross—might be heard by the Lord Jesus Christ, that their prayers may be answered as they’re brought into the temple of God, the church. He prays evangelistically. He moves to an understanding that the temple is not restricted to one people.

This church is not here for our own well-being. We’re to sound forth to the community around us and gather in the foreigners, so to speak, to the place of God, that they may worship God, that their prayers may ascend as incense, and that their prayers may be answered, informed by God’s word.

The fifth day of creation: You know, you got three layers to the earth—earth, heaven above the earth, waters below the earth. And on day five, heavens above, waters below, are populated with birds and with fish—teeming creatures. The word is used in the Genesis account that these are things which teem. You know, schools of fish go around together, and big flocks of birds go around together. Teeming things. It’s a picture—the engathering of the nations who were looked upon in that way, were categorized by God as animals, so to speak.

In the New Testament, what happens? Jesus picks these apostles, and who are they for the most part? Fishermen. “I’m going to make you fishers of men. You’re going to send forth the gospel. The gospel net will pull the nations—the fishes—into the fold of the church. The foreigners will come in. Out of that, the both—the represented by the birds who make their nest in the kingdom of Christ.” Christ tells us that the kingdom’s like all the nations making a nest. The birds and their fish are going to be brought into the kingdom.

We’re to pray evangelistically in our formal worship. And we’re to pray for the nations of the world, which we do. And you’re to pray for the nations of the world informed by the prayer of the Lord’s day. You’re to pray evangelistically—those foreigners would be brought in.

The fifth—the fifth festival in Leviticus 23 correlating to this was the Feast of Trumpets. Feast of Trumpets. I—I failed to mention the fourth was Pentecost, giving of the law. God’s people rule. The reversal of the curses of the law affected by us obeying the words of the covenant. So the fourth festival in Leviticus 23 was Pentecost, when the law was given. Well, the fifth festival was Feast of Trumpets.

The trumpets were blown out to gather in the nations. So here the fifth specific prayers for the foreigners coming in. The fifth day of creation was the creation of birds and fish that were meant to be used by way of analogy to represent the nations that would be brought into the kingdom of God. So we’re to pray evangelistically that all the nations would be gathered in.

We pray for the reformation of our church. One of the new signup sheets downstairs is for an outreach team—people to have a sense of outreach to our community, have a heart for the in Oregon City, Gladstone, area. We want to—I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe it’s a good idea at some point in time to get the bell tower with the bell or some kind of way to ring bells—the processional. We want some kind of bell ringing or something, maybe speaker downstairs here in the beginning prelude of the piano. So when you’re downstairs, you hear the bells, you hear the trumpets calling everybody to worship.

And we want those trumpets to extend out to our community. We want to think through ways to reach the community and to blow the trumpets of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the old creation—when people were excluded—has been reversed and now the nations will be gathered together in this new creation that isn’t just related to a particular people but will fill all the world.

We’re to pray evangelistically in our homes, in our church.

**Sixth…**