Sunday
Morning Bible Study
November 24, 2002
I want to talk about prescriptions this morning.
A wife became quite concerned over her husband’s declining health. His
color was very pale and lifeless and he had a terrible lack of energy for even
the simplest of tasks. After much prodding and cajoling, she persuaded him to
go to the doctor to find out what his problem might be. The doctor examined him
carefully and ran a full battery of tests to determine the exact nature of the
man’s illness. After evaluating the test results, he called the woman into his
office to give his prognosis. “Your husband is suffering from a rare form of
anemia. Without proper treatment, he could be dead in a matter of just a few
weeks,” he informed the very anxious wife. He went on to say, “However it can
be successfully treated with the right care and diet. With the proper course of
treatment, I am happy to report that you can expect full recovery.” The wife
was very relieved and asked what kind of action was necessary. The doctor gave
his prescription, “You will need to get up every morning and fix a complete
breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, etc. Make sure that he has a home-cooked
lunch each afternoon of fresh-baked bread and home-made soup. For dinner
prepare a meal of fresh salad, old-fashioned meat and potatoes, fresh
vegetables and perhaps home-made pie or cake for dessert. Because his immune
system is so compromised, you will need to keep the house scrupulously clean.
It will also be important to keep his stress level very low, so avoid any kind
of confrontations or arguments.” The wife emerged from the doctor’s office and
with tears rolling down her cheeks, she faced her husband. The husband took one
look at his wife and said very seriously, “The news is bad isn’t it? What did
the doctor say?” With a choked voice, the sobbing wife told her beloved
husband, “The doctor says, you’re gonna die.”
God’s prescription for healing
God gives us a prescription for our healing, both as individuals and as a
nation.
:12 I have heard thy prayer …
Solomon has asked that God would honor this building that they are
dedicating. Solomon has asked that when people prayed towards the Temple,
that God would hear from heaven.
Lesson
Beware of the magic pill
God is going to tell Solomon that He will be honoring Solomon’s prayer, but
it’s not going to be a matter of people simply praying towards the Temple.
This is not going to be a “magic temple”
God isn’t going to honor prayers prayed toward the Temple
when a person’s heart is not in the right place.
There’s going to be times when God is going to require that you do a little
more than just point your body in the right direction. Solomon understands
this, but God is going to clarify it a bit.
There are some people who say, “Well I tried that! I prayed and nothing
happened …”
Sometimes we can fall into the trap of saying to people, “You just need to
pray”. And that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes there is a little more that
God might want in that person’s life.
:13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain…locusts …pestilence
no rain – Sometimes a nation (or a state) goes through a drought. We
might tend to think we just need to build more pipelines or work harder at
water conservation.
God would prefer that we seek Him and turn from our sins.
Sometimes we go through “dry” times in our walk with the Lord. Sometimes
these dry times can be because we aren’t where we need to be with the Lord.
locusts – (from Easton’s Bible Dictionary) – The invasions of locusts are the heaviest calamities that can befall a
country … Innumerable as the drops of water or the sands of the seashore, their
flight obscures the sun and casts a thick shadow on the earth …They descend
unnumbered as flakes of snow and hide the ground. It may be like the garden of
Eden before them, but behind them is a desolate wilderness. No walls can stop
them; no ditches arrest them; fires kindled in their path are extinguished by
the myriads of their dead, and the countless armies march on.
pestilence – deber –
pestilence, plague (disease)
Lesson
Sometimes God uses difficult times
to bring us back to Him.
Sometimes God needs to get our attention.
Illustration
Dave received a parrot for his birthday. This parrot was fully grown with a
bad attitude and worse vocabulary. Every other word was an expletive. those
that weren’t expletives were, to say the least, rude. Dave tried hard to change
the bird’s attitude and was constantly saying polite words, playing soft music,
anything he could think of. Nothing. He yelled at the bird and it got worse. He
shook the bird; it got madder and ruder. Finally, in a moment of desperation,
Dave put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird
squawking and kicking and screaming expletives, then suddenly there was quiet. Frightened
that he might have actually hurt the bird, he quickly opened the freezer door. The
parrot calmly stepped out onto Dave’s extended arm and said, “I’m sorry that I
might have offended you with my language and actions and ask for your
forgiveness. I will endeavor to correct my behavior.” Astounded at the bird’s
change, Dave was about to ask what had brought this about when the parrot
continued, “May I ask what the chicken did?”
God would at times use difficult situations to try to get Israel’s
attention.
Illustration
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts
in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C. S. Lewis
(1898–1963)
:14 If my people, which are called by my name,
This is not for those who don’t know the Lord or follow Him.
As a nation, we can get upset at the horrible evil that goes on around us.
But as Christians, God doesn’t call us to get mad at the world, God
commands US to humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from OUR sins.
:14 shall humble themselves,
humble – kana‘– to be
humble, be subdued, be brought down, be low
Lesson
Healing comes from Humility
a. Humility is measured in your
reaction to criticism
In our passage, the idea is that the nation might at times be facing
difficulties or warnings from God. God would be faithful at times to point out
where the people were wrong.
And they needed to be humble enough to respond to God’s tough words.
Illustration
No leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen
more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts and reacts to it. In a
letter to a young minister, Fred Mitchell once wrote:
I am glad to know that you are taking any blessing there
is about the criticism brought against you by _______, in which case even his
bitter attack will yield sweetness. A sentence which has been a great help to
Mrs. Mitchell and myself is: “It does not
matter what happens to us, but our reaction to what happens to us is of vital
importance.” I think you must expect more and more criticism, for with
increasing responsibility this is inevitable. It causes one to walk humbly with
God, and to take such action as He desires.
b. Humility is demonstrated in
saying you’re sorry.
That’s the point in our passage, that a person or a nation would be humble
enough to turn from their sin.
Illustration
At a dinner party one night Lady Churchill was seated
across the table from Sir Winston, who kept making his hand walk up and
down—two fingers bent at the knuckles. The fingers appeared to be walking
toward Lady Churchill. Finally, her dinner partner asked, “Why is Sir Winston
looking at you so wistfully, and whatever is he doing with those knuckles on
the table?”
“That’s simple,” she replied. “We had a mild quarrel
before we left home, and he is indicating it’s his fault and he’s on his knees
to me in abject apology.”
-- The Romance
Factor, by Alan McGinnis
Can you say “I’m sorry”?
c. Humility is learned by being a
servant.
Paul wrote,
(Phil 2:5-8 NLT) Your attitude should be the same
that Christ Jesus had. {6} Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to
his rights as God. {7} He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of
a slave and appeared in human form. {8} And in human form he obediently humbled
himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross.
Jesus was our example of humility in that He became a
servant, even though He had the keys to heaven.
On the same night He was betrayed, He took the clothes of a servant and
washed the disciples’ feet.
Illustration
I got my M.B.A. long before my G.E.D. I even have a
photograph of me in my M.B.A. graduation outfit—a snazzy knee length work
apron. I guarantee you that I’m the only founder among America’s
big companies whose picture in the corporate annual report shows him wielding a
mop and a plastic bucket. That wasn’t a gag; it was a case of leading by
example. At Wendy’s, M.B.A. does not mean Master of Business Administration. It
means Mop Bucket Attitude. It’s how we define satisfying the customer through
cleanliness, quality food, friendly service, and atmosphere.
-- Dave Thomas,
founder of Wendy's hamburgers, Well Done (Harper Collins, 1994), p. 159.
Being a servant is the key not to just obtaining humility, but maintaining
humility.
d. Humility is a key to growing as a
Christian.
Peter wrote,
(1 Pet 5:5-6 KJV) …Yea, all of you be subject one
to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and
giveth grace to the humble. {6} Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty
hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
If you are filled with pride, you will find God fighting
against you. If you are learning humility, you will find God giving much grace to
you.
Illustration
F. B. Meyer once said: “I used to think that God’s gifts
were on shelves one above the other; and that the taller we grew in Christian
character the easier we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on
shelves one beneath the other. It is not a question of growing taller but of
stooping lower; that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts.”
:14 and pray,
pray – palal – to
intervene, to intercede, pray
Lesson
Healing comes from prayer
We need to be praying for our nation.
Daniel the prophet understood this.
(Dan 9:2-5 KJV) In the
first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years,
whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would
accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
Daniel had been reading his Bible and realized that the
time of the Babylonian captivity was about over. Yet Daniel also knew that
because of God’s response to Solomon (2Chr. 7:14),
there also needed to be prayer and confession.
{3} And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and
supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: {4} And I prayed unto
the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and
dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them
that keep his commandments; {5} We have sinned, and have committed iniquity,
and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts
and from thy judgments:
Daniel goes on to pray for his nation, Israel.
God heard Daniel. Israel
was restored and healed.
Abraham Lincoln understood this.
Illustration
Proclamation of a
National Feast Day, March 30, 1863.
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance
will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in
the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed
whose God is the Lord.
We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals,
are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly
fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a
punishment inflicted upon us for presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our
national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of
heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we
have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious
hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened
us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all
these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel
the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God
that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be
solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one
voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens
in every part of the United States,
and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to
set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the Heavens.
Abraham Lincoln
In many ways we are a blessed nation. Yet in many ways we are a people who
have strayed far from the Lord.
We Christians have a responsibility to pray for our nation.
:14 and seek my face,
seek – baqash – (Piel) to
seek to find; to seek to secure
my face – paniym – face;
presence, person
Lesson
Healing comes from God’s presence
Healing doesn’t come just from words or actions, but relationship – being
close to the Lord.
God told Moses and the people,
(Exo 15:26
KJV) And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy
God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments,
and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I
have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee. (Jehovah-Raphah)
He is our Great Physician.
Spend time at the Doctor’s office.
Don’t just stand in the waiting room – go in and see the
Doctor.
Learn to seek God’s presence and immerse yourself in Him.
:14 and turn from their wicked ways;
turn – shuwb
– to return, turn back
wicked – ra‘–
bad, evil; disagreeable, malignant; unpleasant; displeasing
ways – derek
– way, road, distance, journey, manner
Lesson
Healing comes from repentance
Jesus wrote a letter to the church in Ephesus
and expressed a concern that they had left their first love. He gives them a
“prescription” for getting that love back:
(Rev 2:4-5 KJV) Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because
thou hast left thy first love. {5} Remember therefore from whence thou art
fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee
quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
I’ve often seen this as a prescription for marriages that
have lost that “spark”.
Jesus tells the church to:
Remember –
think back to when the love was exciting, when you first came to know the Lord.
Repent – if there
are things that you are doing that are taking you away from the Lord (or taking
you away from your spouse), then TURN AROUND. Stop doing those things.
Re-do – do the
first works. True repentance means that you get back on track to what you’re
supposed to be doing. Do the things you used to do when you first fell in love.
Healing doesn’t come from just saying “I’m sorry”. It comes from a change
in direction, a change in behavior.
:14 then will I hear from heaven,
It’s when the people follow this prescription that God will hear.
from
heaven – God isn’t in the
Temple listening, He’s in heaven.
:14 and will forgive their sin, and
will heal their land.
forgive – calach
– to forgive, pardon
sin – chatta’ah
– sin, sinful; from chata’ – to
sin, miss, miss the way, go wrong, incur guilt, forfeit, purify from
uncleanness; to miss the mark
will heal – rapha’ – to
heal, make healthful (just like Jehovah-raphah)
The things that had happened in verse 13 are healed.
Lesson
Hold on for the healing
God promises,
(Joel 2:25 KJV) And I will restore to you the years
that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the
palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Illustration
There are years in South Africa
when locusts swarm the land and eat the crops. They come in hordes, blocking
out the sun. The crops are lost and a hard winter follows. The “years that the
locusts eat” are feared and dreaded. But the year after the locusts, South
Africa reaps its greatest crops, for the
dead bodies of the locusts serve as fertilizer for the new seed. And the locust
year is restored as great crops swell the land. This is a parable of our lives.
There are seasons of deep distress and afflictions that sometimes eat all the
usefulness of our lives away. Yet, the promise is that God will restore those
locust years if we endure. We will reap if we faint not. Although now we do not
know all the ‘whys’, we can be assured our times are in His hands.
—Ron Hembree in, Fruits
of the Spirit, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1969).