2 Chronicles 7:3: Dangerous and Loving God

Dangerous and Loving
3 WHEN ALL THE ISRAELITES SAW THE FIRE COMING DOWN AND THE GLORY OF THE LORD ABOVE THE TEMPLE, THEY KNELT ON THE PAVEMENT WITH THEIR FACES TO THE GROUND, AND THEY WORSHIPED AND GAVE THANKS TO THE LORD, SAYING,
“HE IS GOOD;
    HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER.”

-2 Chronicles 7:3

Big Fires Everywhere
Have you ever been around a fire so huge that you couldn’t really get near it? I was at a camp one time where the s’more fire was made with timber stacked around seven feet tall and 7 feet wide. The fire was so hot that the best we could do get about 5 feet away, extend our arm and the stick with the marshmallow, and the marshmallow would cook without coming within 2 feet of the fire. I think the camp staff was a little overzealous in their love of fire. The fire was good but also dangerous.

Solomon’s Temple
Our passage this morning comes after King Solomon built the temple. As they celebrated and consecrated its completion with worship, a fire from heaven came down and dwelled above the temple. It was so bright and hot that the priests couldn’t enter (v.2), and the people fell down in awe.

Dangerous but Loving
The people’s response is instructive to us. They feared God, but they worshiped, gave thanks, and declared that God’s love endures forever. They recognized what we often forget. We either forget that God loves us, and we constantly fear (or preach fear at others) present day or eternal punishment, or we forget that God is dangerous, and we treat him like our personal genie, bringing him out of the lamp when we need him to fix something for us.
This passage reminds us that God is both. It reminds us that God is perfectly comfortable creating worlds, shaping mountains, and orchestrating the rise and fall of empires, while God is also with us in our pain, our joys, and our small lives. It reminds us that we are a part of something bigger, something God is initiating and completing, something far beyond the scope of our lives. But it also reminds us that we have a role to play, and that role involves the careful love of a Father, who loves us regardless of our flaws, and offers to heal and transform us. All we do is humble ourselves and accept his offer of guidance, love, and healing, and we can find ourselves walking in step with this world-shaping God.

If My People…
This chapter goes on to a much more famous passage (7:14) that people have used for national calls to repentance and political prayer breakfasts for much of the last century. God tells the people that if they will:
-humbly pray, recognizing their need for God
-seek God’s face, recognizing that he alone of all gods is worth seeking
-turn from sin, not just feel guilty, but actually change their lives

Then God will hear, forgive their sin, and heal their land.

We need this in the church. We need this in our country and every country. But often this passage is used to criticize the world “out there.” We can call people to repentance, but the only repentance we can actually make happen is in our own lives.

To the extent that we will see revival in the church and in this land begins with each of us walking through this exercise of prayer, worship, and repentance. And then, rather than condemning the world, we demonstrate this humble life and invite others to walk with a God that is both transcendently dangerous and intimately loving.