Welcome to the Servants of Grace podcast hosted by Dave Jenkins. Our podcast exists to provide trustworthy, expository messages through the Bible and faithful answers to your theology questions. Now, for today's episode, let's join our host, Dave Jenkins. Well, welcome back to the Servants of Grace podcast. My name is Dave and I'm the host for this show. And on today's episode, a listener writes in and they have a really great question. I was really impressed with this question. And it's one that is often misunderstood. So the question is, since we are grafted in and heirs to God's promises, all of them, why doesn't 2 Chronicles 7 to 14 apply to Christ followers today? In 1976, as America celebrated its 200th birthday, the number one song in many of the nation's churches was Neil Enrod's Statue of Liberty. The double word of the song of the year likened the cross to the statue as a powerful symbol of freedom. In that same year, Jimmy and Carol Owens popularized a song that helped a generation of Christians memorize 2 Chronicles 7 14. If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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. during America's bicentennial year. Nostalgic yearning for better days created a unique historical context, and God and country worship services, if my people, was performed and accompanied by patriotic symbols like the American flag. Sights and sound fixed in many minds that 2 Chronicles was about America, my people were Americans, and their land was the United States. And in 1976, the United States needed healing. In the three years prior, after all, Americans had endured the energy crisis, Roe vs. Wade, the Watergate hearings, Richard Nixon's resignation, the fall of Saigon, the worst tornado outbreak on record, unprecedented divorce rates, and a recession that ended the post-World War II economic expansion. America had lost her way, and the reason was obvious to the nation's evangelicals. Americans left God. So God was leaving America. But if they returned, God would heal the nation and restore America's greatness. In 1977, Peter Marshall co-authored Light and the Glory. Marshall Ivey's League Credentials bolstered his claim that the American people were meant to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and that America was God's new promised land. Marshall's work provided the cement that joined 2 Chronicles 7-14 to the United States. In 1980, with a view to bringing America quote-unquote back to God, evangelicals helped elect Ronald Reagan. America now had a wise Solomon, and hope was growing that God would heal the land's spiritual, economic, and military sickness through political means. Well, on January 20, 1981, Reagan was sworn in on the Capitol steps with his left hand on his mother's Bible opened at 2 Chronicles 7.14. The cement had cured. There are two common mistakes regarding 2 Chronicles 7.14. The first is to abuse it, using it to justify a flag-wrapped form of prosperity theology. The second is to excuse it as if it were written for our instruction. Because it's God's Word, it's wise to ask, how should we apply 2 Chronicles 7.14? Well, here are four guidelines. First, we need to clarify the context. The famous verse addresses a specific people, a place, and a time. The people is Israel. The place is a promised land. The time is Solomon's reign while the Mosaic Covenant is active. And if Israel obeys, God will bless them in the land by securing their borders and strengthening their economy. But if they turn from him, he'll raise up adversaries and ruin their crops. By wounding their land, he'll provoke them to repentance and love. He'll sacrifice their comfort to secure their commitment. Now, the promise is to God's redeemed people in God's promised land. During the only legitimate theocracy in history, Israel's kings were duty-bound to execute idolaters, blasphemers, and false prophets. So by walking in God's ways and purging the land of rebels, the king's force-stalled God's judgment. When kings fail, God sends His people into exile as a landless holy nation. Under the new covenant, God's redeemed people are likewise a landless holy nation. Scattered over the earth, we build houses, raise families, go to work, and seek the welfare of the city of our nation at that by cooperating with non-Christians in economic and political pursuits for the common good. Like synagogues in the exile, churches represent the true God among idlers. We cross national borders with Bibles, not bombs, and multiply peacemaking embassies among the nations. Because our time and place are drastically different from Solomon's, we must proceed with caution. Second principle is this, consider the church's wicked ways. While 2 Chronicles 7.14 doesn't directly apply to America, it certainly applies to the American church. The four conditions of humbling, praying, seeking, and turning are elements of biblical repentance. Does the church in America need to repent of its wicked ways? Are we guilty of pride, idolatry, greed, ingratitude, corrupt leadership, financial and sexual scandals, factions, false teaching, counterfeit gospels, partiality, and injustice? If you don't think so, the answer is yes. Are whole denominations in more rebellion against God? You bet. Is there more reliance on clever strategies, branding, and rhetorical skill than on the Holy Spirit? You bet. Has political activism supplanted desperate pleas for God to open hearts to pay attention to the gospel? You bet. Is there more passion for telling non-Christians how to vote than how to know Christ? You bet. Do we pursue church growth while neglecting church discipline? You bet. Are third-order controversies diverting energy from discipling-making? You bet. Are church members theologically inept, biblically illiterate, and digitally gullible? You bet. Are evangelical leaders slandering one another to impress their theological tribe? You bet. Now, 2 Chronicles 7-14 isn't given to judge Americans outside the church. It's given to us to judge our own hearts. It's not a rebuke to quote-unquote them. It's a rebuke to us. It's not a window through which we criticize the world's wickedness. It's a mirror by which we call out our own. Third, the third principle of our time together about this text is confirm what God promised. Now under the Mosaic covenant, God promised to bless obedient Israel with both spiritual and material prosperity. But God made no such promise in scripture to the United States or to its churches. some of the world's most faithful churches and obedient Christians. They endure poverty, not prosperity, persecution, not peace. For now, God only promises to bless the faithful church with spiritual blessings such as salvation, forgiveness, unity, fruitfulness, endurance in suffering, and his faithful presence. As the adopted children and legal heirs of the Father, all that is His belongs to all who are His in the new heavens and the new earth. Revelation 21 verse 4 says, Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain. We already have the spiritual blessings of the new covenant because of Christ. And even if the church in America experiences historic revival, there's no covenantal guarantee that God will pour out physical, material, military, and economic blessings on America for his own secret purposes. God makes nations great and he destroys them. He enlarges nations and leaves them away according to Job 12 of 23. The fourth principle is this. At least since 1976, evangelicals have asked too much of 2 Chronicles 7.14. Other passages carry the load because they address nations like America are not theocratic Israel. Rome, for example, received God's wrath because of its moral rebellion according to Romans 1.18. Nineveh postponed God's wrath because it repented according to Jonah 3.10. Sodom incurred God's wrath because it didn't repent, according to Jude 7. God holds the U.S. government responsible for enforcing the Second Table of the Ten Commandments, according to Romans 13, 1-10. And so we pray for officials to wisely maintain public order and to guard our freedom to publicly obey the First Table, according to 1 Timothy 2, 1-4. And this is where we can all agree with those patriarch-neighbor-loving impulses of 1976. If we love America, we're going to intercede for her. We'll plead for justice, peace, and prosperity. for our communities. We'll pray with a willingness to be God's answer to our prayers through faithful witness, mercy ministries, peaceful protest, and principles political engagement. We'll petition God with a confidence that a hundred thousand years from now the U.S. will have gone the way of all nations, but his church will be flourishing on the earth. We'll pray knowing that God is the potter, the nations are the clay, and he has declared a sovereign prerogative to bless any nation that turns from its evil and to withhold good from any nation that doesn't, according to Jeremiah 18, 7-10. How will America hear God's voice? Well, that'll be through the humble, praying, God-seeking, sin-aiding, biblically grounded in shape churches of America that preach the Word of God verse by verse and line by line and point people to Christ from the Word. You see, judgment begins at the household of God, according to 1 Peter 4, 17. Now, just a few more points here. One major one. We have just ended this political season, and now is a good time to be thinking about this. How did you respond to your favorite candidate, the candidate that you wanted to win? How did you respond when they lost? Did your candidate win the presidential election? Did your candidate or party, did they win in the United States? Did they win the House and the Senate? Or did they lose? How are you responding to that? The reason that I ask the question that I does, and it's important to understand, I mean, is that how your response to those things are. They reveal whether you've made your politics an idol, and that's your God that you're serving, or whether you're serving the Lord Christ. And the thing is, there's nothing wrong with engaging in politics. The issue is, which one are you speaking more about? Which one are you actually serving? For many people, all they have to do is take a look at How much time are you spending reading the news, watching the news, paying attention to political parties, all of which is fine, versus how much time are you actively reading and studying and meditating your Bible and spending time with God's people? Again, I understand that some of you, perhaps, are involved in politics, and so your job is there. I'm not talking about you so much. That's your job? I mean, obviously, you're going to be spending time reading the news and everything, but for most of us, rather than first and foremost being loud about the gospel of Jesus Christ and aiming to see the loss saved and disciples made in our local church's strength and for the honor and glory in God, we are more concerned about this present world and this time. And that's why we need in this time after the election to pause and to think and to pray and repent. Because you know what? We can all do it. We can all get sucked into this vacuum of this 24-7 news cycle. And in a passage like this, we need to be reminded that our home is not here. Our home is seated with Christ in God, where Jesus, according to John 14, tells us that he went ahead to make a place for us, a room for us, so that we have a place to go, i.e. in heaven. And now we have work to do. That work includes making disciples, preaching the gospel, being good citizens. If you're a man, loving your wife and your children, and if you're a wife, loving your children and serving your husband, and all of us serving in our local churches for the honor and glory of God. So I ask the question, not to diminish the importance of politics in our present day, but to put politics in its perspective, and that politics is theological even, and we need to be careful that we don't go down the road of committing political idolatry And we need to serve the living God who appoints men and places them where he has them and forever, however long he has them. There's not one square inch where God doesn't say, mine. And by the way, the man who said that was the president of the Netherlands. Abraham Kuyper. So we need to remind ourselves that God owns the cattle in a thousand hills, and he also puts and establishes men and women, and even there we know that sometimes those leaders are even a judgment upon the people because they have fallen away from the Lord. And God wants to use even these times to lead the people of God to repent, and to trust, and to repent of their apathy even, of losing their first love, and to return to the Lord. And so a text like this reminds us, but we also need to be careful of the dangers. So serve the Lord, but also serve your fellow man. As Augustine said, we live between the city of God, that is heaven, and the city of man, which is our times. Let us be faithful to serve the living and the true God and His gospel here and now while we look forward to that great day of the Lord when we will be with Him in heaven. Well, I want to thank you for listening or watching today's episode of the Servants of Grace podcast. Until next time, may God bless you and keep you. Thank you for listening to the Servants of Grace podcast today. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a rating on the app, and share our episode with your friends and family. 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