Transcript
We’re considering today First Kings chapter 8, verses 10 to 61.
Whenever I go away on a trip, as I did last weekend, I’m always worried when I leave the house and haunted by the thought, “What have I forgotten to pack?” And usually I will think of what it is I have forgotten to pack as I’m driving to the airport, or at the very latest after I’ve taken off in the airplane. But of course it’s too late to go back and get what I need.
However, this time I felt very confident about my packing. And as I drove to the airport I could think of nothing that I had forgotten to pack. As we flew to Minneapolis over South Dakota and northern Iowa, I could think of nothing that I had forgotten to pack.
Then I was there Friday night and most of Saturday before the first meeting. And I got a lot of things out of my suitcase and found everything that I needed until I was rushing for the evening meeting. I was putting on a suit and a dress shirt, but no tie. I had not packed a single tie, nor had I packed an attractive clip of any kind.
Fortunately my host was the pastor and he had some ties. So I borrowed the tie he did not wear that day. And I hate tying ties back and forth anyway. So I availed myself of a large paper clip, putting it behind the tie here so it was not visible, attaching it to the shirt. There’s a trick to this, but attaching it to the shirt. And I went to the meeting in his tie.
The next morning I was wearing a different suit so I had to put on a different tie from him. And by the way his wife passed on the suitability of all these ties to the suit I was wearing. So I felt comfortable. And after the meetings somebody said to me, “That’s a nice touch.” So you can understand my fears.
But every time I leave home I always say, “What have I left out? What have I failed to pack?” And the question I’d like to ask you this afternoon is, what have you left out of your prayers as you have prayed this week? And I am persuaded that everybody here has prayed, hopefully every single day of the week. Can you think of anything you should have prayed for that you did not pray?
And in case you can’t think of anything, I’m going to hopefully open your suitcase at this meeting. And maybe I will be able to show you something you should have prayed for this week that you left out of your prayers. The way I’m going to do that is to direct your attention to what Solomon got out of his prayer. What did Solomon leave out of his prayer?
I think there’s no question about it that the prayer of Solomon which we have just read is one of the great and important prayers of the Bible. I think I’m correct in saying that this is the longest recorded prayer in the historical books of the Old Testament. And that probably can be extended to the New Testament. It is probably the longest extended prayer of which we have any record.
It was a very important prayer at a very important point in the history of Israel. The temple had just been built. After the first time since the period in the wilderness the glory of God had been manifested to Israel. The glory of God filled the temple. Solomon had his hands up. And first of all, as you will notice in chapter 8 verse 12, he begins by simply telling God that he built a house for Him. And then he turns around and gives to the congregation of Israel what I would call a mini sermon or a sermonette.
And in this mini sermon which extends from verses 14 to 21 the basic theme is God’s fulfillment of His promise to David. Notice in verse 15, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who spoke with His mouth and with His hand has fulfilled it.” Look down at verse 20, “For the Lord has fulfilled His word which He spoke.” And then he says, “And I sat on the throne of Israel as the Lord promised.”
Notice therefore in this simple introductory sermonette Solomon is emphasizing that God has kept His word, that God has fulfilled His promise. There’s hardly a better introduction to prayer than that: to be reminded of what God has done in fulfillment of His word, to be reminded of the things that He has answered from the prayers that we have prayed in the past.
As I look around this table there are not very many people sitting at this table who are not here as a result of somebody’s prayer or a number of people’s prayers. I must have a story that I’ve never told before about Carlos and Marcia. There’s new to them that issue the rest of you. Two years ago when Carlos and Marcia first began to come to the little mission over there on Victory and Jeffrey Street, Mrs. Gill said to me one thing. She said, “I am praying for Carlos and Marcia. I covet that couple for the Lord.” And I remember that very distinctly.
It wasn’t too long after that that Carlos and Marcia got saved. And here they are to pray with us and worship with us. But that story could be told about just about everybody that is sitting at this table. That God has heard prayers. He’s kept on that He made in His word to those who pray. And therefore this is a tremendous encouragement to prayer. And this is the introduction that Solomon gives to the people before he turns to God and prays.
Now the prayer, as you will notice, begins really in verse 23 and extends all the way down to verse 53 of the chapter that we have read. I want to suggest, moving very quickly through this prayer, where verses 23 to 26 are a kind of introduction to the prayer. Once again Solomon in addressing God returns to the theme of God keeping His promise. And he praises God for keeping the promise He made to David.
But notice also he has a request based on that. Verse 26, “Therefore, Lord God of Israel, now keep what You have promised Your servant David my father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man sit before Me on the throne of Israel.’” You have kept what promise about the temple, Solomon says to God. Now keep the promise that You made to David that there will not fail to be a man to sit on the throne of Israel.
But notice something here. He’s quoting God’s word, “You shall not fail to have a man sit before Me on the throne of Israel, only if your sons take heed to their way that they walk before Me as you have walked before Me.” And he says, “And now, O God of Israel, let Your word come true.”
I want to suggest to you that in the course of this prayer one of the things that is overlooked by Solomon just a little bit is that little proviso there, “only if your sons take heed to their way.” Now the promise that God had made to David about the temple was an unconditional promise, but this is not an unconditional promise. And God says, “I will see to it that David has always a man on the throne of Israel if your children follow Me.”
Now the body of the prayer, the main body of the prayer it seems to me, extends from verse 27 through verse 50. And in verses 27 to 30 I think Solomon is stating the basic theme of this prayer. He recognizes that God is too great a God to be confined to a building such as he has built. Rather the one thing he wants of God is that God will keep His eyes on this temple which he has built and listen to the prayers that are prayed toward this temple or from this temple.
And notice verse 30 in particular, “And may You hear the supplication of Your servant and of Your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and when You hear, forgive.” Does that strike you as strange? Why did he not say, “and when You hear, answer”? Instead he says, “when You hear, forgive,” as if his main concern is that when Israel fails they may be forgiven.
Now following this in verses 31 to 50 there are seven prayer situations, or to use a modern word, there are seven prayer scenarios. And I want you to notice these seven prayer situations with me very quickly.
Notice first of all that the first four of them presume failure on the part of Israel. Prayer situation number one is verses 31 and 32. And here he says when anyone sins against his neighbor. Now it’s individual sin against individual. If they come before Your altar and take an oath before Your altar, we would like You to hear that oath, says Solomon. We would like You to justify the righteous and condemn the wicked man. So this is individual sin.
Notice the second prayer situation is verses 33 and 34. “When Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and if they turn back to You and pray, please forgive their sin.” Those verse 34: “Then hear in heaven, forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land.”
Prayer situation number three: notice it when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, and then when they pray toward this place, and so on. Verse 36: “Then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of Your servants and give rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance.”
Prayer situation number four, verses 37 to 40: when there is famine in the land or pestilence, blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities, whatever plague or whatever sickness there is, and then whatever prayer and supplication is made to You by anyone or by all Your people, verse 39, “then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give everyone according to his ways, whose heart You know.”
Do you know something? Here the first four prayer situations all presume that Israel will fail, that God will give them troubles or potential troubles. And Solomon’s perspective here can almost be called a negative perspective on the people of Israel. You see, one thing he anticipates is failure. Here in situation one, failure; situation two, failure; situation three, failure; situation four, failure.
One of the problems that we sometimes have in prayer is that we have low expectations from God because we have low expectations about the people we pray for. “Oh God can’t do much with that person. God won’t straighten him or her out.” And you know, Solomon was a wise man. If anybody could live among men and discover the basic tendency for sin in man, Solomon was that man. He’d been king long enough to know that the people here were prone to failure, prone to sin. And so what we find here is that he is focusing on the potential for failure that his people have. And there’s a validity to that, but too negative, too negative.
Now look at prayer situation number five, verses 41 to 43. This is the first one where there’s no mention of sin or forgiveness. He says, “If a foreigner comes to this house because they have heard of Your great name,” and people will hear of Your name, “and they come to this house and they pray toward this house, give them what they ask for, so that all peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as do Your people Israel.”
Isn’t that interesting? The first non-negative situation where he can relate to Israel relates to outsiders. The foreigner comes and prays. You know, answer him so that You can be glorified. This is the first time, by the way, that he is really directly addressing the glory of God in this prayer.
Prayer situation number six is found in verses 44 and 45. And here too we don’t have anything negative. “When Your people go out to battle against their enemy, wherever You send them, and when they pray to the Lord toward the city which You have chosen and the temple which I have built for Your name, then hear in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause.”
This is a prayer for victory, not related to sin. So these two prayer situations are basically positive.
But then notice prayer situation number seven, which is the longest of all, verse 46: “When they sin against You, for there is no one who does not sin, and You deliver them to the enemy and they are taken captive to the land of the enemy, far or near, when they come to themselves in the land where they were carried captive, and when they pray,” verse 48, “and when they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive,” verse 49, “then hear in heaven Your dwelling place their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause,” verse 50, “and forgive Your people who have sinned against You, and grant them compassion before those who took them captive, that they may have compassion on them.”
So it’s just like, you know, he spent verses 31 to 40 talking about negative things. He briefly touches on a couple of positive things, gets right back into the negative mode.
This is 51 to 53. It seems to me a conclusion to the prayer, even though we have a parenthesis here at the beginning of 51 as the English translators have put it in. And the best way to read this is, “For they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, that Your eyes may be open to the supplication of Your servant and to the supplication of Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call to You. For You separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be Your inheritance.”
So he’s telling God, “Please listen to the prayers of Your people because they are Your people. You brought them out of Egypt. Verse 53, where You separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be Your inheritance.”
So what are we to make out of this prayer? I counted the verses in the segment from verse 31 to 53. Fifteen of these verses were negative, were related in some way to the sin and failure and judgment that Israel might experience. Five of them are positive. And only three of them directly address the issue of the glory of God.
Is there anything wrong with anything that Solomon said? I think the answer to that is no. Is there anything left out? I think the answer is yes. There is something significant that fortunately the writer of the book of Kings does not leave us to guess. What is that? But gives us a conclusion of this passage which is an eye opener.
So follow him down through verse 54. It says that when Solomon had finished praying all this prayer and supplication to the Lord, he got up from kneeling before the altar. And he turns to face the children of Israel and to directly address them.
Notice that in addressing the children of Israel the first thing he says is once again how God has fulfilled His word. That theme of fulfillment has certainly been prominent here. And then notice what he says in verses 57 and 58: “May the Lord our God be with us as He was with our fathers. May He not leave us nor forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments which He commanded our fathers.”
What is he saying to the people? “May the Lord be with us. May He not leave us. But may He incline our hearts to walk in His ways.”
You know what I want to say to Solomon? You’re addressing the wrong people here. This is something you should have said to God. Nowhere in the prayer does Solomon come right out and say, “Lord, we need You to incline our hearts to do Your will.”
Don’t turn to it, but let me read you a prayer that is found in Psalm 119. You will see the contrast here. This is addressed to God. The psalmist says,
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way.
And then Psalm 141, again you don’t need to turn to it. Psalm 141 verse 4:
Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men who work iniquity. And do not let me eat of their delicacies.
We are a church who has begun to learn to pray for our children. And we have some very fine turnouts in our parents’ prayer meeting in which we’re praying for our children. Don’t you all who come to these meetings agree? One of the main things we’re asking for for our children is, “God, will You work in their hearts and incline their hearts to do Your will?”
But have you ever considered that you need to pray that for yourself? It would be interesting, I’m not going to do it, it would be interesting to have a show of hands around the table. How many of you prayed at the beginning of this day that God would help you to be obedient and to walk in His statutes, to incline your heart to do what is pleasing in His sight?
You know what we have a tendency to do? Because we feel that we are walking with God, perhaps we feel that we should feel that we feel that, “As long as I decide to walk with God and walk with God.” Well folks, that ain’t the way it works. That ain’t the way it works. We need God to incline our hearts to His ways or we will wander away from it more easily and more quickly than we imagined.
Nowhere in his prayer does Solomon say to God, “Please incline our hearts to do Your will.” Instead what the psalmist says is what Solomon should have prayed for. Why didn’t he pray, “Help us not to wander away. Help us not to experience defeat at the hands of our enemies so that we are carried into captivity to a foreign land”?
Do you realize that the things he didn’t ask for are the things that happened to Israel in the rest of this book? And when you get to the end of this book, we read how all of these plagues and problems have happened to them. And the book ends with the nation going into captivity.
How important it was for Solomon and the nation of Israel to say to God, “Incline our hearts to Your ways. Give us a heart for You.” If we don’t pray that, folks, we are making one of the biggest mistakes we can possibly make in our prayer life. We are leaving something out of our prayers that desperately needs to be there.
Remember what the songwriter said, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.” The man who wrote this song had a deep sense of the capacity of his own heart to leave God. And he said, “I want You to bind my heart by Your goodness like a fetter. Bind my wandering heart to Thee. I feel my tendency to walk away from You. Take my heart into Your hand and seal it that it may reach Your presence.”
How often do we pray something like that? It doesn’t matter the exact words in which you put it, but we need this in our prayer.
Now notice something else in verse 59. Solomon says, “And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day may require, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.”
Solomon, you’re talking to the wrong people. Why didn’t you say to God, “God, I want this prayer to be close to You day and night. And I want You to maintain the cause of Your people every day. Maintain our cause every day that the people around us may know this”?
What more? You’ve all heard of the American Express card: “Don’t leave home without it.” Let me introduce you to the prayer Express card. Every day we need God’s help for that day. Every day we need Him to go out into the world with us. Every day we need His assistance to live acceptably before Him and to honor Him in the sight of others. The prayer Express card is the way you charge your needs and weaknesses to the strength and power of God. Don’t leave home in the morning without it.
Again, do you remember what the songwriter said? “I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord. No tender voice like Thine can peace afford. I need Thee, O I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee. O bless me now, my Savior, I come to Thee.” The songwriter thought gladly that he needed God every hour. And if we need Him every hour, we need Him every day.
It is unexplained how many Christians go out into the world on a daily basis and they haven’t even uttered a word to God. Or maybe they have said to God, “You know, watch over the house, watch over the family.” But they haven’t thought to say, “Help me to live for You. Help me to honor You. Help me to walk in Your ways.”
Verse 61, the last of our passage today: “Therefore let your heart therefore be loyal to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and keep His commandments, as at this day.”
Well that’s fine. It’s good to exhort people to have loyal hearts. But what he didn’t say in his prayer is, “Lord, give us a loyal heart. Give my people a loyal heart.”
Solomon is kind of a parent here for the nation. He’s kind of the parent for the nation at this point. Look, you be loyal to God. But he doesn’t say to God, “Keep the people loyal.”
You know what’s wrong with a lot of parents? They give ten thousand words of advice and instruction to their kids: “Don’t do this, do this, go to church, read your Bible, say your prayers, you need God.” And when they pray they say, “Watch out for my kids.” Exhortations are fine but unsupported by prayer they are almost always ineffective.
And what we really need to do is first of all to pray for ourselves. One of the reasons we don’t realize how we need to pray for our children is we don’t realize how we need to pray for ourselves. “But I can’t even stay faithful.” It doesn’t matter whether you’re 34 or 64 or 94. You need God. You need Him every day. And you need to ask Him to help you.
There’s a song which I really like, and we sing it so excitedly for years in various meetings in various places: “O Savior, You know how much we owe to Thee. Render to Him all that we have or are again.” But the songwriter did not make the mistake that Solomon made because he does not take it for granted that that’s going to be automatic just because that’s what he desires. And so in the fourth verse of the same song he says, “Lord, keep us cleaving to Thyself and still believing till the hour of our receiving promised joy with Thee.”
I don’t care how you put this into words in your prayer, but you could personalize a prayer like this and it would be a very important prayer, right? “Keep me, Lord, cleaving to Yourself and still believing till the hour of my receiving promised joy with You.”
Leave this out of your prayers and you’re making a big mistake. Okay, let’s open it up for discussion and questions.