2 Chronicles 7:14 | Pastor Kirt Dauphin

oh thank you third service i should go ahead and be seated man great to get at worship with you guys today man it's good to see you i appreciate you being here live i want to welcome those of you on the live stream with us as well man uh it's good to be here and i always like third service man because i've preached this a couple of times so i get to relax a little bit by the time i get to third man but i want to talk about covid 19 a little bit today i kind of want to address it coronavirus 2019 covid19 for short talk a little bit about how god wants us to respond to this man it uh showed up in about march it's been a train wreck ever since i know it's affected everybody i was out mowing my grass every day and i came in and gave a little cough my wife was like what was that i was like i don't know it's probably rona coming to visit me if you know what i mean man i used to wear a mask when i mowed my grass but i'm kind of afraid to now because i'm afraid to be wearing them asking somebody a drive-by guy the guy's wearing a mask while he's mowing his grass why is he doing that so anyway it's kind of a crazy time for all of us and i want to encourage you to pray for us you know as a church we're trying to figure things out as you are and whether we should continue to meet live whether we should go live stream and all these different things so uh just encourage you to be in prayer about it but i want to talk about a little bit this morning how we as believers should respond to it i saw a good podcast or listened to a podcast sending an idea the other day by a couple named ray and jenny ortland and they were talking about you know when we respond to this we need to look at it on a macro level and we need to think about what is it that only god can do right we need to pray big because there are certain things that only god can do we need to pray that god would heal this thing right that he would heal our land and we need to pray that god would why did god allow this to happen you know what's he trying to say that perhaps god wants us to turn and put our eyes upon him right that he's trying to get us to to see things differently that out of this what this enemy meant for evil god could bring good we have a spiritual awakening in america man how great would that be let's let's pray big on that that we would do the things that god wants us to do you know so what would what is it that only god can do on the macro level pray big but then what is it that we can do how does god want us to respond to this you know if we're going to pray big we need to act small what are the small things that we can do that'll make a difference in the midst of this so i want to take a look at a passage of scripture today because we talk about doing what only god can do this is kind of the classic passage of scripture it's found in in the second chronicles chapter seven so if you have your bible you can open up the second chronicles chapter 7 and before i jump into it i want to ask you guys to do me a favor and this goes for all of us that are here as well as those on the live stream and it's simply this i'm going to ask you to engage with us over the course of the next three or four weeks just to make a commitment even now to either be here live or to watch it live stream if you're on a live stream just to commit to just tuning in for the next three four weeks because i believe god wants to do something and man we need to we need it god wants to god created us in such a way that once a week right that he that we could meet and he could charge us up and he could help us and and we know that if we just don't do that over a period of time it does not help us spiritually so i'm just asking you to pay the price to engage with us over the next few weeks to whether you're here live or you're on the live stream just to engage with us to see what god wants to say to us through this partic particular passage of scripture saying chronicles chapter 7. so i'm going to begin in verse 11. all right it goes like this when solomon had finished the temple of the lord and the royal palace and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the lord and in his own palace the lord appeared to him at night and said i've heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices verse 13 when i shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command locust to devour the land or send a plague among my people verse 14 if my people who are called by not my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will i hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land second chronicles chapter 7 verse 14 if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will i hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land this is one of the more famous passages of scripture found in the bible and the setting of it is solomon is dedicating the temple under the lord his his father king david wanted to build the lord a temple that god had resided the presence of god had been in a tent in a tabernacle for over 400 years and god wanted to build or david wanted to build him a temple but he started putting all the materials together but god showed up and said david i do not want you to build a temple because you're a man of war you're a warrior and there's blood on your hands so your son is going to build the temple so david began putting all these materials together but it was his son solomon that actually built a temple it took him like seven years to build it and and second chronicles chapter five six and seven is the dedication ceremony of this particular temple and you can go back and read solomon's prayer it's unbelievable it's a great prayer but by the time you get to 2nd chronicle 7 it says this when solomon finished praying fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the lord filled the temple the priests could not enter the temple of the lord because the glory of the lord filled it and when all the israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the lord above the temple they fell on the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshipped and gave thanks to the lord saying he is good and his love endures forever they have this huge festival lasted for eight days everybody gathered together to dedicate this temple and solomon makes this incredible prayer then he gets ready to offer the first sacrifice and so on the altar he puts his wood and he puts his his sacrificial animal and at that moment god himself from heaven somehow lit the sacrifice on fire i mean i don't even picture that in your mind like maybe a flightening bolt we don't even know how he did that but it's not the first time that god did that like when when moses dedicated the tabernacle for the very first time the same exact thing happened he he built the altar and the very first sacrifice it says in scripture in leviticus that god himself lit it from heaven when david offered his sacrifice on ornan's floor to stop the plague that was destroying jerusalem it says that he he built the altar and the wood and that god sent fire from heaven and lit the sacrifice so the first kings at elijah when he had his great showdown with the prophets of baal on man elijah that on mount carmel that he he built a altar of seven stones and he put wood on it and he put a sacrifice on it and then he began to pour water over top of it and then he prayed god if you're god like this sacrifice and it says in first kings 18 38 then the fire of the lord fell and burned up the sacrifice the wood the stone and the soil and licked up the water in the trench it must have been a lightning bolt from heaven and just blew it up this is what god did for solomon and then it says the glory of the lord filled the temple when we talk about the glory of the lord we're talking about the shekinah glory of lord that when the nation of israel came out of egypt that god went before them in a cloud the very presence of god himself in manifest form the manifest presence of god the glory of god so when the glory filled the temple it was like they could see it physically but they could sense it spiritually the manifest presence of god and when the people saw it and they felt it they just fell down and began to worship him so when god sent this fire down from heaven you see it showed that god accepted the sacrifice the same exact thing god did through the resurrection of jesus christ when jesus christ was resurrected it proved that god accepted his sacrifice as an atonement for our sin and when the glory came down and filled the temple it was god's saying to solomon and his people i accept this place and when you give your life to jesus christ and the holy spirit of god comes to dwell within you that's god saying to you i accept this place i'll put my spirit in it not because you deserve it but because of what jesus christ did for you and when you believe in me i'll fill you with my spirit and my glory will be within you i accept this place and then god chose to to speak to solomon so sometimes later at night god showed up and spoke to solomon and it was like god saying i accept your work that you finished just like god accepted the work of jesus when he said it is finished and and god showed up and and basically spoke to solomon and and here's what he said when he spoke to him when i shut up this is when god says when i shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to develop the land or send a plague amongst my people basically god is saying there's going to come a time in the nation of israel where you're going to sin this promise god said to them to solomon this promise of my presence and my glory dwelling with you is a conditional promise it only remains as long as you continue to follow me and walk according to my ways so if you get off of following me or going according to my ways which is what the bible defies a sin then then there's this presence this protection is going to depart from you but i'm going to make you a promise in the midst of this sinfulness and and basically the promise is but this sinfulness when followed by repentance is certain to find forgiveness in other words we should not be surprised that the nation of israel sinned why because we're sinners by nature they're sinners by nature why should we be surprised when maybe there's a point in time where they fell away from the lord that's what sinners do and we should not be surprised when they're sin in our lives because that's what we do but the promise is that when we come to god in repentance there's a way for him to forgive us and come back and dwell with us and this is the promise that god makes to solomon that the lord appeared to solomon and said this sinfulness when it's followed by repentance in other words god said by grace i'm going to make it known to you when you're in sin so when you see that you should come to me and repentance when i send these things away if my people at that moment who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked and waves then i will hear from heaven i will forgive their sin and heal their land that's the promise of god now this particular passage of scripture is kind of famous when people read it for some reason we always think about somebody else ought to do that dude somebody ought to do that like we're thinking like maybe the president of the united states he should do that the leaders in in washington dc they should which would be awesome if they would do that or we think well the city officials need to do that or the pastor needs to do that or somebody ought to do that right but what it says in scripture is the people who are called by my name like what's the possibility that actually what god's saying is god's talking to us he's talking to me and you like we those who are called according to my name i mean if you're a believer in jesus it's because god's called you if you're a christian it's because the word christian means little christ it's because you're a follower of the one true god jesus christ the son of god who is the son of the one true god we're following when we're talking about people who've been called according to the name of god yahweh that wasn't true we're talking about us right is it possible that god's just just talking about us and what god's calling us to do as believers is do this go on the offense like you know sometimes in sports they'll say the best defense is a good offense like i'm an oklahoma sooner fan this has been our philosophy for years if you can't stop them just outscore them right because that's how our defense is it don't stop nobody so we just outscore them right maybe god's calling us church to go on the offense and see what god would have us to do because we're the ones that are called according to his name like i read this article the other day in world magazine world magazine is is a christian base kind of like a time magazine but it's a christian based and they had an article in there and i'm going to see how this rolls in third service i had a really good response in first service pretty good response in second but anyway it wrote a little article about this tv show that came out in 1960s called bonanza so let me just take a little poll here how many people have ever seen watched or heard about the tv show okay guys better than i thought man i appreciate all the old people anyway i i uh no just kidding there's a lot of young people have seen that must have rolled back around but bonanza was a western uh and it came out you know in the 60s with hoss and little joe and and but it was kind of different than most westerns because westerns up to that time had pretty much been the same some guy rode out on his horse some guy rode back in on his horse but the the bonanza show tried to address something different and the reason was because the people in bonanza they were rich they lived in virginia and they had a mine on their property and so they had a lot of money and so the show tried to answer this question if you're rich what do you do with your wealth is it possible to use it to help your community so this is what the show was about in their setting how could they use their wealth to help their community and it's a really good question for us if you're rich how do you use your wealth and is it possible to use it for your community and the reality is even in this service right here being americans whether we like to know it or not when you stack that up against the rest of the world if you drove to church this morning in a car you're rich if you're watching the live stream on a computer or a cell phone or something like that there's a good chance in the scope of the world you'd be considered rich and you might be here today and say man you don't know my situation i don't hardly have any money at all but until you really travel and see the rest of the world you have to say there's a majority of us in here we're rich and so the question is as believers what do you do with your wealth and is it possible to use some of it to be a blessing to your community i mean you just look at your wealth as a believer and you just say got every bit i got i'm spending on me everything that god's given me i'm gonna spend it all or i do spend it all on me is it possible that perhaps you should reconsider that and say perhaps god wants you to spend some of it on furthering his kingdom and in the process you help your community is it possible that a better response rather than this is all god's given me this i'm rich i'm going to spend it all on me would it not be perhaps worth considering that god might say you should spend you should give some of that towards the kingdom of god and in so doing you help your community but i'm not talking about money today i'm not talking about financial capital i'm talking about spiritual capital spirits in other words if you're a believer in jesus in this room no matter how much money you have you're rich you're incredibly rich because the greatest possible gift has been given to you the knowledge of jesus christ the gospel of jesus christ access to god through jesus if you know that man and if you accepted that you're incredibly rich paul the apostle in second corinthians 6 makes a statement he's kind of talking about all the things that he had gone through because of the gospel and he makes this statement this is in second corinthians 16 i'm sorrowful yet always rejoicing i'm poor yet making many rich i have nothing and yet possessing everything paul says man when it comes to money man i'm poor i don't have anything but i spend my whole life making people rich because i give them what they really need even though i have nothing i have everything in other words jesus plus nothing equals everything if you have jesus in your life man no matter what's going on you're incredibly rich and the real question is when you've got this incredible spiritual right capital is your goal in life just to spend it all on yourself and i know jesus i'm so glad i know jesus i'm just going to live my life like the rest of the world but when i die i get to go to heaven or is it possible that god wants you to take some of your spiritual capital and give it away for the sake of your community or your nation or the world that we could just go on the offense that we could take it on that we could do what this scripture says that we us me and you that we could join together and we could humble ourselves and pray and seek the face of god and turn from our ways that god might do what only god can do now it's interesting to me in this particular patch of scripture when god says what you can do that's why i say act small that he doesn't start off with prayer normally he'd say man if our people have called my name we'll just pray let's just get together and pray but he doesn't start off with pray prayer he starts off with humility he said if the people who are called by my name will humble themselves and then pray why does he put that in the order this word idea of humility means to me made low or to see yourself as you really are to recognize that you're a sinner and that god is not that god is high and you are low and you see yourself in a proper position that you have no access but the thing about humility is humility activates the power of god the power of god is grace grace is the is the power and the will of god to accomplish what he wants to do in your life but it's activated by humility in fact proverbs 3 34 puts this way god mocks proud mockers but he gives grace to the humble this is just a principle of god second samuel 22 28 you saved the humble but your eyes are on the hottie to bring them low james 4 6 god a pro opposes the proud if you think you can do it on your own not only is god not going to help you he'll oppose you if you don't think you need any help you want not only won't get it you'll be opposed in it god opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble first peter 5 5. god opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble grace is the power of god to accomplish the will of god and it's activated by humility whether you deserve it or not you might not even deserve it but humility leads to grace and grace is the power you get saved by grace but only if you're humble enough to acknowledge that you need it to start with so for instance i've got a i got a new iphone sucker's brand new i just got it this thing has so much potential got to do all kinds of stuff i don't even know what it'll do it has on it for instance i've got three cameras who knew i even needed three cameras man this thing is awesome i've only figured out how to use one of them but i'm working on it all right this is an i'm sure everybody in here has got a phone in your pocket phones have i mean this is a world changer right here that we know this has literally changed our world dude it has so much potential i mean you can it's like it's like a computer i can watch i could dude if i was smart enough i could be watching myself preach right now on this through the air who knows how to even do that i don't know man it's got so much potential but there's one thing that uh if you've got an iphone and you forget to charge it like if you don't charge it like if you go on a mission trip say into the jungle and you forget to put it on airplane mode and you don't plug it into a battery about three days in it might have potential but it ain't gonna help you you know what it becomes at that point it becomes like a paperweight it becomes like a really bad boat motor or anchor it becomes like a coaster but it doesn't work there's it cannot live up to its potential right because it doesn't have a charge well you know what you're kind of the same way man you were created in the image of god you have so much potential you talk about a world changer anybody created in the image of god has the potential to literally change the world as long as you stay charged as long as the power of god is in your life as long as the grace of god is flowing through you you can be saved you can be changed god can do something in your life that nobody else can do the power of god that's why i ask you guys to engage because there's something about engaging in the things of god and the people of god that charges you to accomplish so we start talking about what would god have us to do as a people you know what i'm asking you to do humble yourself humble yourself what's it look like to humbly i don't know let's learn it together we put dirt on our head or wear sackcloth i don't know what it looks like but let's just see ourselves as we really are and it's god and let's gather together to pray the people of god that we might humble ourselves and pray and then i'm going to ask you to do something else that doesn't even fit in this scripture i ask you to engage personally at the first serve now i'm going to and ask you to engage somebody else somebody i'm talking about people you know somebody you know a friend somebody goes to paul land i'm just going to ask you to call up five people that you know go to paul and just say hey bro would you engage with me over the next month to come to church watch the live stream pray with me humble yourself that together we can take this on that we might come together and humble ourselves and pray and seek the face of god right and ask him turn from our evil ways what does that mean to do if we would do that together you say well kurt can you give me an example of humility what would that look like for me to humble myself okay so let me just close with a an illustration so in the second chronicles second chronicles chapter 20. there's a guy the king of judah uh his name is jehoshaphat which is a really cool name and jehoshaphat was a believer of god he was a follower of god he was kind of doing about everything right and one day he gets word that that army is coming against him a vast army literally 185 000 troops these three kings had come together to invade him and by time he found out about it they were like one day away they're like hey dude you're getting invaded by this army and they're just like right at your doorstep already well jehoshaphat freaks out he don't know what to do he's got his army coming against him i'm talking about imminent threat somebody coming against you that's going to destroy everything you have kill the people you love destroy your life i'm talking this is like a major crisis and so jehoshaphat being the king of judah and living in jerusalem he immediately gathers all the people together to tell him what's going on and he's read this passage out of second chronicles 7. and so he prays this prayer and he basically tells god hey god here's what you said so this is second chronicles chapter 20 verse nine he you he says john says god you told us that if calamity comes upon us whether the sword of judgment or plague or famine we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your name and we will cry out to you in our distress and you will hear us and you will save us and you said that god so here we are we're standing here and we're praying and he says this in verse 12 is our god will you not judge them for we have no power to face this base vast army that is attacking us we do not know what to do but our eyes are upon you do we don't know what to do we don't know what to do man this is like getting ready to crush us god but we're just doing what you said we don't know what to do but our eyes are upon you and so somebody in the midst of this congregate stands up says man god told me what to do we're just supposed to go out there and take them on and stand and when they said that everybody just starts worshiping god and celebrating and so they get up the next morning they're going to march out and take on this army and you know what they do they send the worship team in the front i don't know that doesn't sound like great of a military strategy to me let's get the worship team put them in front of the army and send them out that's what they did the next morning they took their worship team put them in front of their army and marched out to meet 185 000 troops and as they were going god did what only god can do and one of the kings got mad at one of the other kings and they started killing one another in this vast army and by the time the nation of judah even got to the battlefield they topped a little hill they saw 185 000 people all of them were dead they'd kill one another all 185 000 of them they're like dude what do we do now and somebody said well i guess we got to go take their stuff so they spent the next three days taking all their stuff basically they went from the worst day of their life to the best day of their life all in the same day why because they put their eyes upon god and humbled themselves now you might say well i understand that kurt there's lots of examples of humility in scripture but you're talking about the people of god humbling themselves before god what if it's too late for america what if america's too far gone what if we've strayed so far from god that even if we do what you're talking about that it's still of no avail well i'll close with one last thought on that because in reality when you look at chronicles chapter 7 14 you're talking about basically the gospel in the old testament and we know that no matter who you are and you've never given your life to jesus christ and you might think man god could never save me i'm the worst person on the face of the planet i got news for you as long as you're breathing you still have an opportunity to come to jesus and jesus will save you if you humble yourself and ask him to why because it's not based on what you've done it's based on what jesus did for you well you think about this type of idea and uh just the last illustration is the guy jonah i know you guys know the story of jonah jonah was a prophet god speaks to pro to jonah says jonah i want you to go and preach to the ninevites because there's wickedness has come all the way up to heaven and i've heard about him but jonah don't want to go preach to the ninevites and the reason is because nineveh was the capital city of the assyrians and the assyrians were the ark enemy of the nation of israel in fact the day that general received this word to go preach to them assyrians were amassing their army in anticipation to come to come attack israel these dudes were a bunch of pagan false god worshiping evil they would they would burn these cities and villages and stack all the kill all the men women and children and put all their skulls in a in a pile in front of it just say dude you mess with a syria that's what's going to happen to you these are the worst people in the face of the planet and and god tells jonah to go preach to him john said dude i ain't preaching with him guys that's the enemy so he flees from god gets on a boat goes to tarshish the farthest place in a known planet to escape if you know the story storm comes up on the boat jonah's asleep down there the storm comes up all the sailors think they're going to die they're throwing stuff overboard right jonah stumbles up there on the deck he goes dude your only chance to live throw me overboard they're praying to their gods gentleman's doing nothing only hopes throw me overboard they're like dude we're not going to throw you overboard that's cold-blooded you're like dude if you don't throw me overboard you're all going to die they're like well looks like you're going overboard bro they talk tossed jonah overboard storm quits what happens to jonah down down down down into the belly of a fish and when he got all the way down in his humility he cried out to god and god responded by grace and spit him out of that fish three days later on dry ground hey bro i got your attention yet i want you to go preach to the ninevites this time jonah went nineveh was a great city it says in jonah chapter three it says jonah obeyed 3 3 the word of the lord and went to nineveh now nineveh was a very important city a visit required three days in other words it took three days to walk across this city on the first day jonah started into the city and proclaimed 40 more days and then of it will be overturned verse 5 and the ninevites believed god they declared a fast and all of them from the greatest to the least put on sackcloth in other words they humbled themselves all the way up to the king himself humble himself because he he stated who knows god may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish chapter 3 verse 10 when god saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways he had compassion on them and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened when he saw the city of nineveh the enemy of god respond in humility and prayer and seeking and turning god relented from his destruction that he was going to bring on them if god will do it for nineveh god will do it for america i believe he's just looking for some people to take it on that it might be us that if his people who are called by his name that if we might humble ourselves and pray and seek his face and turn from our evil ways then god can do what only god can do he can hear from heaven forgive our sins and heal our land i'm asking you to go with me to see what it looked like for us to do what scripture says we ought to do that god might do all right what only he can do so i'm going to pray for us and then our band is going to come back up and lead us out in this quest and we're going to see what god does father we we want to humble ourselves god and we we don't even know what all that means god so we're asking you to speak to us to reveal to us to show us how we can humble ourselves and pray and seek your face and turn from our evil ways god that you might do what only you can do that you can hear for us in heaven that you can forgive us and heal our land father we we believe it we're standing on it we're praying for our nation we're asking you god to help us do what you've called to do that you might be glorified in this place and not us father we ask i pray in jesus name amen

Channel: PaulAnn Church

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Length: 33min 26sec (2006 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020