Recapping
At the
beginning of this chapter we hear a recapping of some details that we already
know and heard at the end of chapter 5.
The glory of the Lord fills the temple.
The priests and Levites bow down in worship and declare that the
steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
God is pleased with how Solomon and the workmen were able to bring the
temple together.
The
chronicler is wise to reiterate this point.
Note that he brings up the steadfast love of the Lord again in verse
6. The chronicler is driving home the
point that God’s love endures even in the midst of our sinfulness. God’s love endures in spite of our
circumstances. God’s love endures so
much that all we need to do is wait for it to go before us and then follow
where it leads. For a people returning
from exile, it will be important for this point to be made so that they can be
reassured that God’s love is with them.
Solomon’s Sacrificing
After the
glory of the Lord fills the temple, Solomon begins a week of tremendous sacrificing. Solomon offers up 22,000 oxen and 120,000
sheep. This might seem like a huge
number, and it is. If the sacrificing went
on around the clock of a week, that would be equivalent to a little more than 2
oxen and 11 sheep per minute. That’s a
lot of sacrificing. No wonder the altar
needed to be so big!
What is
the point of all of this sacrificing? It
shows just how much the Lord has increased the wealth, prosperity, and reputation
of the Hebrew people. Not too long ago
these people were wanderers in the wilderness without a home. Then, they had to claim land and drive out
the current residents. That would be no
easy task and wouldn’t exactly be the prime time for herds to increase. However, through it all the wealth of the
Hebrew people did increase. It increased
so much that Solomon could extravagantly offer up sacrifices to God. The vast amount of sacrifice is a testimony
to God’s protection and provision through a difficult time of nation forging.
After the
end of the celebrating – a total of 14 days, 7 for the dedication of the altar
and 7 for the feast – Solomon sends the people to their homes. The priests and the Levites would return home
and prepare to begin their regular rotation of duties that we heard David
establish at the end of 1 Chronicles.
However, as the priests and the Levites returned home, they would carry
with them the account of the proceedings within Jerusalem. The greatness of the festival would spread
throughout the whole of the Promised Land.
Terms of the Covenant
After all
the sacrificing was over and the people had returned home, the Lord appeared to
Solomon and declared that all that Solomon had done was pleasing to Him. God affirms Solomon. God says that He has chosen this place for
His dwelling.
Then we
move into a portion of text that is very common among Middle Eastern
covenants. We arrive at the section for
blessings and curses. Here is the list
of what God expects of the people in order for them to live in blessing as well
as what will happen to them if they do not do these things and therefore live
in the curse.
As we
enter into this section of blessings and curses, though, note that God is
operating from a foregone conclusion.
Even in the section of blessings, verses 13-18, God acknowledges that
the people will rebel. God acknowledges
that there will be a reason to stop the rain from falling, or send locust among
them, or even send a pestilence among the people. In other words, God knows that sinfulness is
just a part of the people. Like it or
not, they won’t be able to keep God’s ways.
To receive blessing from God it isn’t a case of being perfect. Rather, to live in a state of blessing it is
about understanding our sinfulness and being repentant. God expects that sin will come; thus His
blessings are established upon repentance and returning to the Lord.
This is
an incredible point to hear for both the chronicler’s time as well as our own
time. In the chronicler’s day the people
were coming off of exile. They had just
undergone the need to repent. The
chronicler is telling the people that such a condition is actually a very good
place to be. The same is true for us in
our modern perspective. We cannot be
sin-free. We shall not be sin-free. It is good for us to see that with respect to
blessing, God seeks repentance rather than perfection.
That
being said, the section of curses is precisely what we expect them to be. The section of curses is based on the
perpetration of sinfulness. As the
people turn away, they will fall out of God’s blessing and into God’s
curse. As the focus of the people no
longer rests upon the Lord, the Lord’s protection will no longer rest upon
them.
Again,
this section is important for us to hear.
Sinfulness will be a part of our culture and society. In order to stay in the side of blessing, we
must lift up the need for humble repentance before God. However, we can also use our current
situation as a gauge of our repentance.
If we find ourselves living in a time of cursing, captivity, or general
strife then it is likely that we have fallen from God’s grace and are instead
living in a time of cursing. We know the
cure for such a condition.
What is
important to realize is that this doesn’t need to be a permanent
condition. This is why the chronicler is
writing these things. His current
generation is proof of the power of repentance.
They had been living in such a great time of curse that they were in
captivity. However, eventually they
repented. Eventually they were able to
come back into a season of blessing.
They find themselves forging once again the culture that God had desired
to create all along. They have a
communal second chance. With God, so
long as we draw breadth enough to be able to repent there is always the
possibility of a second chance.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment