A Loving God and a Praying Nation

2 Chronicles 7:11-22

The Big Idea: What to Expect When a Nation Follows God or Rejects God.

I. The Context

a. Israel’s History

b. Solomon’s call

II. What Causes a Nation to Turn from God (identified in 2 Chronicles 7:14)

a. Pride

b. Neglecting God

c. Seeking their own interests

d. Turning away from God’s moral laws

III. Results

a. Moral decay

i. Illustration: When I was in high school, my dad took me out in the woods on their land to show me a boundary marker that was placed when the land was surveyed. He told me to know this boundary so that I would know what was the right marker and not someone’s word. The boundary marker was a constant that couldn’t move.

POI: God has given us moral boundary markers, and we shouldn’t let other people’s word move those boundaries. If we do, we will never know what is truly right.

ii. 2 Chronicles 7:19-20 – “But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land.”

b. God’s chastisement

i. 13 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,1 — 2 Chronicles 7:13

IV. A Promise of God

1) “if my people who are called by my name 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 heal their land.”2 — 2 Chronicles 7:14

2) MAJOR POINT: Salvation comes through God alone, but God requires action of people. Notice four actions God tells Solomon that his people must do.

a) Humble themselves

b) Pray

c) Seek

d) Turn

3) Application:

a) Humble Themselves

b) Illustration: Former heavy-weight boxer James (Quick) Tillis is a cowboy from Oklahoma who fought out of Chicago in the early 1980s. He still remembers his first day in the Windy City after his arrival from Tulsa. “I got off the bus with two cardboard suitcases under my arms in downtown Chicago and stopped in front of the Sears Tower. I put my suitcases down, looked up at the Tower and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to conquer Chicago.’ When I looked down, the suitcases were gone.

c) Pride blazes the trail of destruction for people and nations.

d) God told Israel through his appearing to Solomon, that he would be there when they wandered off track, but the only way back on track is to be humble enough to admit your lost.