Dedicating the Temple (Part B)

But he just knew this went deeper than, okay, here's my offering, I'm good now. It was the plague in his own heart, and all he could ask for was mercy, and all God could give him was mercy. And that mercy of God comes with grace. You can't get grace as a sinner without mercy. Again, mercy is withholding punishment.

Grace is blessing you in spite of guilt. It is really something that is peculiar to Christianity. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Kings. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.

Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through the book of 1 Kings chapter 8 and his message called Dedicating the Temple. His hearts value justice because we understand the implications of justice violated. You know, the justice, the symbol of the Lady Justice with the blindfold and the sword. Well, unfortunately, they should also show her not only is blind but dumb, according to many of the judges. Not all of them, thank God, but there are a lot of wicked judges and their accountability is just non-existent.

So I'm going on a rant just briefly. It's just a shame how some of them are just rotten, evil, wicked people in places of authority. And my irritation at that is because this violation of justice jeopardizes me also, my life, my family, my loved ones, my friends. Justice in the land is essential if citizens are going to prosper in peace.

Citizens can prosper with wickedness, but that's of course not the goal. Then here in heaven, again, heaven repeated by Solomon in this section, verse 33, 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, verse 34, then here in heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land which you gave to their fathers. I do like and admire how Solomon is saying, you are the God our fathers loved and served and we're not going to abandon this belief. We're not going to say, okay, well I'm a grown up now and that was my father's religion, but I'm going to go find another religion, which of course some of them will do and even Solomon will stumble there.

But for the time being, it's admirable to see this, this loyalty to truth, not just because it's the God of my father, but because it's true, this is the truth. God desired, according to Deuteronomy and what Solomon is praying, that Israel would be invincible, but their attraction to idolatry hindered and even forfeited their invincibility. God promised military blessings if they remained loyal to him and when they were not, they did not honor the Sabbaths, they received the judgment and I'm sure we know many of them were bitter at God for daring to be God. How dare you make a commandment and then hold us accountable to it? Leviticus 26 verse 7, you will chase your enemies and they shall fall by the sword before you. This was predicated on their obedience and Solomon, he knew that future generations would not obey.

I don't think he understood he would, not yet. Well, there's a veiled prophecy in this speaking about the captivity to come. At this point, if you had inquired of a Jew and said to you, what is this captivity?

He probably would have shrugged his shoulders, I don't know, but it's going to happen because God has ordained this. Verse 35, 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, turn from their sin because you afflict them. Then, verse 36, here in heaven and 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.

Well, I mean, this is just a high standard. And I think of all of the sins that we know about, the easiest one to avoid is idolatry and it is the worst one. And that's where they really failed because God put these pathways to the altar to forgive them, but the idolatry, that was a deal breaker. There was no forgiveness coming to the idolatry and Paul points this out in the New Testament to Jew and Gentile alike, to abandon idols. At times, the Jewish people will become too wicked to pray to Yahweh and even times they would pray and God said, I'm not going to listen to them because their hearts are, they're fake, a bunch of hypocrites.

I'm not listening to them. And Jeremiah, of course, is just one who brings it out. Isaiah, you know, these people draw near me with their mouths but their heart is far from me, in vain they worship me, teaching us doctrine, the commandments of men.

What men make up becomes God's law according to that group, not according to God. So, even though there's always been a remnant, a remnant usually is just very weak. It just doesn't have the strength to make a difference and so when the judgments come from, for instance, when God shuts up the rain for three and a half years under Elijah, it was the prophet, the center of the event, the people really were not, you know, praying for a famine to discipline the people. It was the prophet Elijah because the remnant was just very small as, but it was larger than what Elijah thought. Elijah thought he was the remnant. You got to love Elijah. He didn't like people too much and when he had a chance to point that out to God that he was the only one he does, okay, I'm just enjoying the prophet some, he probably wouldn't have liked me either. Anyway, verse 37, 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, verse 38, 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 towards this temple, verse 39, then here in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and give to everyone according to his ways whose heart you know, for you alone know the hearts of all the sons of men, verse 40, that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land which you gave to their fathers. It was said of G. Campbell Morgan, one of my favorites, so helpful to me, was said that just the way he read the scripture he taught the people. I have always hoped for that, admired it.

I would pay you to say that I do that, but reading it, you know, you just, it comes to life. There's something to be said about drama. Drama is not all bad. When you get, Ezekiel was the pantomime prophet. I mean, he would act out everything. I believe they were plays because some of it, like, you got to set up a whole stage to carry out, dig through the wall and pack your bags and march away and come back at night.

You know, I believe they were plays. The drama brought it out. Now, of course, like anything, it gets abused and I don't think pastors should be in the pulpit miming or acting out. This is the time for the word, to preach the word and not overdramatize it. And you can do that by fluttering the voice and, or being, rolling your R's and things like that.

Unless you're, I guess, Scott or a Welshman or so, you know, where they do roll their R's normally, but to bring it, can you imagine going to Queens, New York and rolling your R's? Man, they beat you up when you left. You irritated me the whole time.

You're going to pay. Anyway, blight or mildew, a pair of contrasting judgments. I mean, the blight is the blasting, talking about those scorching winds, the cerakos that belong to that part of the world. And then the mildew in the Hebrew, the greenness or yellowing from the mildew refers to that which is caused by too much moisture. So God is saying, you know, you're going to be stuck on the right or left.

If you start messing with me, there's no escape. Locusts are grasshoppers. Of course, associated with destruction, agricultural destruction. You know, a swarm of locusts in downtown, you know, Manhattan is not going to do much.

They'll laugh at that. But, of course, in the breadbasket, it could be devastating. So, and their land was all dependent upon the crops. It's interesting, the word locust in the Hebrew here is connected to the word for consume or finish off. And so God is saying, I'll finish you off, you know.

And they would have gotten that in reading this. And where he says, you know, God knows all men. Well, we know that our God does. And it is goofy when you hear about people trying to assign human characteristics to God.

Like, well, I hope he remembers. But this interesting passage out of John's Gospel, early on in John, he lays this out, chapter 2. And they were all, ooh, he's just doing miracles. And it says, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs, which he did. But Jesus did not believe them because he knew all men and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for he knew what was in man. Now, I did an interpretive rendering in that reading because in the King James it's usually, and other translations, but Jesus did not commit. But that Greek word did not commit himself.

The word commit is the same word believe, pistos, and he just didn't believe them. And I just wish they'd do that. Why don't they consult me? I wait by the phone, I wait by the phone.

They never call those translators. What does that translate into? All right, that's it for the attempted humor.

God's already told me it's you, not me. Anyway, whatever influences the mind affects the mental state of the individual, the emotional state, and then the behavior. And the temple was to influence the mind. For us, the great influence is not the temple of the Lord, it is the Holy Spirit. And Christianity is different from Judaism in just so many ways. Just to live out the life of the Christian is really, I think, much more difficult. I wasn't so sure of that when I first heard that preached to me, and now I know. Christianity, I mean, it would be just so nice if you could just take a sheep down to the temple and you're done. Now it's like, man, I'm not going to mess this up this time.

Because the Lord loves me, he died for me, he's the lamb of God, and I don't want to disappoint him. And there I go disappointing him again because one of you were disappointing him by getting on my nerves. I have a philosophy that whenever girls get in trouble, it's because there's a boy around. Boys can get in trouble all by themselves.

But girls just have this thing with their influence, and you might not agree with that, that's okay, but I forgot the point. There was a point in there. Interesting phrase here in verse 38, the plague of his own heart. You know, here he's talking about, you know, the blight and the mildew, the grasshoppers, the locusts, and the plague inside of you.

The contrite heart is what it overcome, that's the antidote for this plague that we all have. This is illustrated by Christ in one of his parables. Luke 18, and the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be mercy to me a sinner. He knew he couldn't bring an offering, he could afford it, he was a tax collector.

But he just knew this went deeper than, okay, here's my offering, I'm good now. It was the plague in his own heart, and all he could ask for was mercy, and all God could give him was mercy. And that mercy of God comes with grace. You can't get grace as a sinner without mercy. Again, mercy is withholding punishment, grace is blessing you in spite of guilt. It is really something that is peculiar to Christianity because of the suffering of Christ. And all Christ says, well, just how about you just show some of that to others. And of course, you know, we do good until somebody just gets on our nerves, or gets on our bad side, or makes us feel insecure. And then we just shut down, like we forget all the great sermons and points in the notes we've written down over the years, and we just get into the flesh and many times we don't get out. We just stay there and harbor that anger and spread it, if we can, by sharing the story. Yeah, well, they did this and I did that. And the angels just, you know, we're assigned with you, but we do wish sometimes you'd shut up. And that's all of us. No, not one.

Well, we'll come to that. Verse 41, moreover, concerning a foreigner who is not of your people Israel, but has come from a far country for your name's sake. Verse 42, for they will hear of your great name, speaking Yahweh's great name, that is, and your strong hand, and your outstretched arm when he comes and prays toward this temple. But there's so much there.

We'll just go on and try to open up the section in a minute. Verse 43, here in heaven, listen, in heaven that is, he is saying, your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls on you, that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, and do as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this temple which I have built is called by your name. Well, the Hebrew here for the foreigner in verse 41 is a word that means a foreigner who does not dwell with them. In other words, there were foreigners who moved into Israel, and they were resident aliens. They lived there, they had antennas on their heads, because they were aliens.

Okay, maybe they did, I'm not sure. Anyway, so you had the two type of foreigners. You had the one that was outside the land and had to get a passport to come into the land, and you had the ones that lived there. The Ethiopian in Acts chapter 8 is a foreigner outside the land, and he comes into Israel, he's a proselytite, he's converted to Judaism.

Some don't want to give him that. Some commentators know he was a Jew, he just lived in Ethiopia, but I don't think that is it at all, because he's just not in touch with the Jewish writing when he says, is Isaiah talking about himself or somebody else? He has no opinion, which a little humor of the Jewish expense here proves he wasn't a Jew, because they all have an opinion. So, anyway, Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests. The Levites weren't supposed to be the only ones. It turned out that way because of the sin, when Moses comes down the mountain, and the Levites side up with Moses. Man, to have people loyal to you when the pressure is on, people who are saying we're not going to forget who you are because of this, that is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Well, anyway, to be recipient of loyalty, that is, when everybody else doesn't have your back, and then there are those that, I've got your back, oh man, this is great. But anyway, to point this out, that Israel was to be a kingdom of priests under the old covenant to the Gentile world, a light to the Gentiles. Exodus 19, verse 5, now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now, if any of you were doubting me before I read that, how do you feel now?

All right, all right, no more, no more funny stuff for you, just you're going to get just hard preaching now. Well, again, Israel never learned to bring in the outsider. They were to draw the unbeliever to them. Their light was to shine and it was to just attract what makes Israel so special. I must see, like the fire that burned the bush without consuming it, and Moses said, I must see this. That was supposed to be Israel.

Of course, she just never learned to do it. Paul struggled with this so much. You could not remain a Jew after the New Testament in your religion. Ethnically, of course, there's nothing you can do about that, nor should you want to, but they had to relearn their faith. The church, on the other hand, is not to let their light shine to draw people, that's part of it, of course, but we're to go into all the world and preach the gospel. We have to bring the light to the dark places, and there are many of them, and I go to these on YouTube, you know, these places that I just did not know existed. You just say, boy, even if you wanted to take the gospel there, you couldn't, it's just not going to let you in, or others have already been there and messed it all up, some of them.

What a fight, but we can bring it to that area in our life where we find ourselves. For me, in years of sharing the gospel, my work was characterized by taking, by hauling trash away. These goofy ideas people had about Christians and the Bible and Jesus Christ, and that characterized my ministry as just a common Christian before it became public ministry, my private ministry as a Christian, not being a pastor.

I would just take away the rubbish. They would say something about, the Bible says this, and I said, what did you find, did you ever read the Bible? Why would you even repeat that? That's not in the Bible. That's contrary to the Bible, and it was just so remarkable because it was so fruitful. Well, that to me is part of the church bringing the light to the world, and the blessings that God is giving the people was not that they might, of course, hoard and boast of the blessings as they eventually did. They would shut the world away from the Gentile.

They would boast that they were God's people, and the Gentiles were fuel for the fires of hell. That is, of course, not what God wanted. Verse 44, when your people go out to battle against their enemy wherever you send them, and when they pray to Yahweh toward the city which you have chosen, and the temple which I have built for your name. Verse 45, then here in heaven, their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause. Oh, man, do I want God to maintain my cause. I feel He always has, but I also feel it is always cost.

I don't know, you know, seldom is it free. There's pain of heart. There's emotions in it. Skin is in the game, and it hurts to serve God, and I think anybody who's serving public ministry, oh, it's just wonderful.

I think they're lying, and they probably sound like that. Oh, it's just wonderful because it hurts. It's hard stuff, and just ask Paul, who said, I bear on my body the marks of Christ.

How intense is that? It wasn't one or two. He didn't just get shoved around once or twice. He took some heavy beatings, and the healing in process, you know, when he and Silas are going from Philippi to Thessalonica, walking down those roads, maybe he's hitching a ride on a cart as it's bumping down those Roman brick roads, you got to know the caning they received on their backs is still oozing out stuff and sensitive, and they get there and they preach Christ, and the Thessalonians are like, what is this? They beat you over there and you're still preaching?

Sign us up. Many of them became Christians. So, yeah, Christianity is, but God knows how to bind the sacrifice to the altar. He knows how to tie you to the place where you're going to be sacrificed so you can't get away. J.W. Toja said, God is ingenious at making crosses for us, and it's just, these are facts, and I don't think anybody can dispute them.

What it comes down to, is it worth it? That's where the action is. Well, that's why Paul says, you know, I give myself. I am spent and will gladly be spent for you Corinthians. I would have organized a beat down party for the Corinthians. We're sick of what those Corinthians are doing. They're not Christians.

We're going to go get them. Verse 45. Then here in heaven their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause, to have God maintain the cause.

Now, Israel was not to choose their own battles, and if they were being attacked, of course, the reaction was standard, but as far as launching an offensive against a foreign power or kingdom, they had to be led by God, and that is no different from us. When we are launching the gospel into enemy territory, we want to be led by God. Verse 46. When they sin against you, and 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 and near. Verse 47. Yet when they come to themselves in the land where they are 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. Now, of course, it had to be more than verbalizing.

This had to contrite heart. And here is another failed prophecy of the captivity. Displacement of vanquished people was common for large kingdoms.

You'd conquer somebody and you'd take out the ones you liked, take the cream of the crop to the palace and the others you'd spread out and displace them, and the ones you really didn't, you thought were a threat, you'd kill them. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 1 Kings has had a lasting imprint on your life. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition. Just visit crossreferenceradio.com and follow the links under radio. Again, that's crossreferenceradio.com. Our time with you today is about up, but we hope you'll tune in next time to continue studying the Word of God. Join us again as Pastor Rick covers more in the book of 1 Kings on Cross Reference Radio.