“41 “As for the foreigner who does not belong to Your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of Your name— 42 for men will hear of Your great name and Your mighty hand and Your outstretched arm—when he comes and prays toward this temple, 43 then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of You, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as do Your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears Your Name.
44 “When Your people go to war against their enemies, wherever You send them, and when they pray to the LORD toward the city You have chosen and the temple I have built for Your Name, 45 then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause.
46 “When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to his own land, far away or near; 47 and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with You in the land of their conquerors and say, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly’; 48 and if they turn back to You with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive, and pray to You toward the land You gave their fathers, toward the city You have chosen and the temple I have built for Your Name; 49 then from heaven, Your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause. 50 And forgive Your people, who have sinned against You; forgive all the offenses they have committed against You, and cause their conquerors to show them mercy; 51 for they are Your
people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out of Egypt, out of that iron-smelting furnace.
52 “May Your eyes be open to Your servant’s plea and to the plea of Your people Israel, and may You listen to them whenever they cry out to You. 53 For You singled them out from all the nations of the world to be Your own inheritance, just as You declared through Your servant Moses when You, O Sovereign LORD, brought our fathers out of Egypt.””
Other people are other. They are different. They are foreign. Children often realize this by way of friends. My friend’s family had ice cream after supper. They had it in a bowl the size of a dixie cup. It was like an ounce and a half for everyone. I thought it was warm up for the actual dessert. It was the dessert in that family. That was different from my family. They were foreign. They were other.
Other people are other. That’s more complicated when you bring in culture. That’s part of our story as a denomination. The Americans were other to the Dutch. They were sloppy. They were spendthrift. The Americans thought the Dutch were other. During World War One, the minister of one of the CRCs in Minnesota was beaten up because the townsfolk thought he was German. Dutch was other enough.
Other people are other. That’s even more complicated when you bring God into the equation. Some people are God’s and some aren’t. That division is more inflammatory than being German in America during World War One. That division is played out ways bigger and smaller than taste-test portions of ice cream at your friend’s.
We struggle mightily with this dividing line and with other people being other. Solomon takes this struggle to the Lord in prayer. He presents different scenarios regarding these others because, as with last week, this isn’t a one-size fits all category. God is making hundreds of different moves in the lives of these other people and in the lives of His people through these others. The Lord is over other people even if they aren’t His; that’s the claim of this sermon on prayer: we’re to pray as if the Lord is over other people even those who aren’t His.
We will study this in four points. First: a prayer in conversion. Second: a prayer in war. Third: a prayer in exile. Fourth: a prayer for listening. First, in verses 41-43, a prayer in conversion. Second, in verses 44-45, a prayer in war. Third, in verses 46-51, a prayer in exile. Fourth, in verses 52-53, a prayer for listening.
We see this in others coming to faith in our first point: a prayer in conversion. Last week we covered four of the seven scenarios Solomon presents to God. This week it’s three. That’s seven total; these seven scenarios widen in scope. Last week began with an interpersonal dispute moved to the nation as a whole and then to nature and then finally to any sort of trouble. Now we widen out to what’s foreign rather than familiar; verse 41, “As for the foreigner who does not belong to Your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of Your name—for men will hear of Your great name and Your mighty hand and Your outstretched arm—when he comes and prays toward this temple then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of You…”
That’s unexpected at a national event. This temple dedication as a national event. It would make sense to pray for Israel at this Israelite event. My guess is there wasn’t a lot of focus on the rugged beauty of Canada or the culture of the Caribbean at our 250th celebration in Washington DC this year. So why this focus in prayer on what’s foreign?
Well our first sermon on this prayer was entitled People Need the Lord. We need Him. Other people need Him too. People whose ways are foreign to us need Him. Solomon prayed this way because he knew that part of the reason the Lord chose His people was to make His ways known to all peoples.
That’s remarkable. You don’t see such evangelistic impulses in the rest of the Ancient Near East. The Babylonians didn’t think that Marduk chose them to make Marduk’s grace known. The Phoenicians didn’t feel compelled to let others know that El was the god to whom everyone owed their existence. The Israelite’s view of faith was peculiar. The idea of a chosen people was peculiar. “He has done this for no other nation; they do not know His laws. Praise the Lord,” as Psalm 147 ends.
As we’ve seen, Lebanon exported the cedar for this temple. Israel, though, was to export their faith to Lebanon and the world. This temple was part of that process. Solomon thought foreigners would come to it and come to know the Lord. That sounds quite naïve like a child assuming his sand castle is worthy of The Guinness Book of World Records. It is what happens, though. Foreigners do come to the temple. Foreigners do come to know the Lord.
Why? What is the attraction of the God of a thin strip of land in a sea of other gods? Well this Lord is in charge of everything including—me, you, Babylon, Australia which was unknown to them; everyone needs Him ; that’s, “when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place…” The Lord wasn’t limited to Israel any more than He’s limited to this sanctuary. He’s beyond—as beyond Israel as beyond America.
He came near through Israel, though—through the commands He gave them, through the temple He had them build. What Jesus said about the Samaritans was and is true of every other people group including your ancestors and mine, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.”
The Jews could offer God. That’s their role. That’s our role as a church. All we can do is serve our intended function as a place God comes near. That’s why we hear His word. We tell others that He’s come near in Jesus. If the church offers anything other than him, we have nothing unique to offer.
We offer the others what they need most—the Lord—and we do so only because He, as with this temple, promises to meet these others by the means of grace; that’s the rest of this scenario, “[Lord], do whatever the foreigner asks of You, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as do Your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears Your Name.”
Solomon was asking the Lord to treat Gentiles who came to Him on par with Israelites. That’s stunning and is a much more proper view of the foreign than comes to creep into the covenant by Jesus’ day. Solomon, whose mother’s first husband was a Hittite, knew that it’s faith, not ethnicity, which makes anyone a child of Abraham. John the Baptist and Jesus tell the Jews in their day the same. We would do wise to keep that in mind lest we think God has the primary place in His heart carved out for people just like us. The Lord has a place for us in His heart for those who come.
It might seem miraculous that foreigners would come to this temple Solomon built in a land foreign to them and come to know this foreign God. It was miraculous. It’s just as miraculous that unbelievers would come to Jesus and know God today. It’s just as miraculous that you and I have come to Jesus and so know God. All that has been going on for thousands of years, though, regardless of your or my doubts.. We’d be wise like Solomon to pray like Solomon expecting that the Lord will keep drawing people in ways beyond our wisdom. That’s our first scenario about people who are other. Our second is quite different: a prayer in war.
More perspectives give you more perspective. Before you buy a jewel, look at it from every angle you can using whatever lightings you can. Before you buy a product, read reviews and then more reviews. More perspectives on that jewel give you more perspective from which to decide. This is why thinking about the perspective of thousands of years of history Goethe could say, “he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth.” Knowing how the Romans fought, why the Chinese built, the Russian struggles, your grandmother’s philosophy on marriage—this all gives you more perspectives which gives you perspective.
Having one perspective only is tempting because it helps you feel in the right; it turns you into the man who knows everything is a nail because he has a hammer. Wise Solomon has many perspectives by which he thinks; you see this regarding the foreign. The perspective of this last point was about their conversion. This perspective is about war against them; verse 44, “When Your people go to war against their enemies, wherever You send them, and when they pray to the Lord toward the city You have chosen and the temple I have built for Your Name, then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause.”
The last scenario was about outsiders coming in. This scenario reminds us that the outside is still outside. The nations are still the nations even if some leave the nations for God’s people. “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” Psalm 2:1. “Put them in fear, O Lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men,” Psalm 9:20. “All kings shall fall down before [the king]: all nations shall serve him,” Psalm 72:11.
The nations are not Israel. Israel is not the nations. God never made a covenant with the Carthaginians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians. Go to a museum—that is the only place you’ll see them. You see God’s people worshipping Him weekly, though, all over the world. That’s because He upholds our cause—not theirs. The church today—not any nation. That’s Solomon’s point in this prayer on war.
God upholds His people’s cause; this temple is a standard of that fact—like a flag on a battlefield—“these are my chosen people.” There is still an inside and outside and those outside need to cross the line. When Jesus told that Samaritan woman, “salvation is from the Jews,” he said it as a Jew. We Gentiles would do well to keep that in mind. “You do not support the root, but the root supports you,” as Paul told us Gentiles regarding Israel.
God doesn’t uphold the cause of people who aren’t His. People need to leave groups whose cause God will not uphold for the group whose cause He will uphold. This is why the church was often linked with Noah’s ark in early church art—people need to move from the outside to the inside for salvation. There is a dividing line that must be crossed.
That’s a helpful correction for our culture which denies there are in or out groups. We have a tendency to scoff at the divisions of the past. Some were silly. Some are silly. Not all, though. The Lord does draw lines which He invites people to cross. “Come here if you want me to uphold your cause.” He leaves those who have no desire to be His to their own devices. Solomon didn’t pray for those people here. Jesus didn’t pray for them either; “I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given me, for they are Yours.” Are you His? Are you part of God’s cause? That’s who promises to uphold. That’s a different view from our first point and now we see a different view again in our third point: a prayer in exile.
The more skilled the user, the more uses he can find. I might be able to find three uses for an outbuilding. A farmer could likely find thirty. I might be able to find fifteen artistic uses for a line on a piece of paper. Picasso might have found five hundred. Imagine what someone as creative as God can do with something like a nation. We’ve seen His work in the nations with people coming to know Him. We’ve seen His dealing with nations outside His cause. Now we see Him using these nations in the refining of His own people. This final—seventh—scenario is about exile to these nations; verse 46, “When [your people] sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin and You become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to his own land, far away or near…”
Solomon doesn’t say “if.” He says, “when.” The books of Moses speak of an exile in which God will correct His people by sending them out into the nations. The nations won’t think of it in those terms. The king of Babylon didn’t think to himself, “let’s attack Jerusalem and take it people captive so their wanting to return home will urge them to return to the Lord.” He didn’t give a thought to the Lord. The Lord doesn’t need what’s foreign to Him to acknowledge Him to fulfill His purpose with them. He doesn’t need anything to fulfill His purposes.
The nations are instruments in His hand. His people will be cast out into them for their sin; verse 46 reminds us that we all sin, “for there is no one who does not sin…” There’s great comfort to be found in the fact that in this great prayer of dedication, Solomon reminds us that sin is sadly normal in us. We’re not the first sinners. We didn’t invent it. We didn’t perfect it. “The idea that humans are innately good receives no currency here, nor can it in any place where human behavior is looked at seriously,” as Oswalt puts it. That’s the tragedy of this life but stating it reminds us that none of us is uniquely tragic. This is a strange scenario for Solomon to end on. “What a dash of cold water tossed in the dedicatory text!” as one commentator puts it.
The Lord can help us in our sin. He could help His people in exile. He wasn’t not confined to Israel. He would be just as in charge in Babylon as He was in Israel as He is Kalamazoo. It’s His world. We’re just living in it. That means we have are to turn to Him while in His world. The chosen people of God had in exile would have to; “if they turn back to You with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies…” Everything hinges on turning back. It’s the story of the prodigal son in the far-off land coming to his sense and going back home. It’s Israel’s story. It’s my story. It’s your story—if we turn.
God can make good on our turn to Him. He’s in charge of everything—even the good will of their captors; verse 50, “cause their conquerors to show them mercy.” The Lord rules everything and everyone. “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord; He guides it wherever he pleases,” Proverbs 21:1. The Lord was in charge of them going into exile. He’s in charge of their captors while in exile. The Lord is the variable with whom we must deal with in everything. There’s nothing without Him, nothing behind Him, and no way around Him. That’s what this scenario teaches—Deal with Him now. Turn to Him and He’s for you. That’s the good news, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
Turn and believe was the word to the exiles reading 1 Kings. The first readers had already lost the land as Solomon described. They were to take his prayer and make it their own. That’s what we are trying to do with patterning our congregational prayers—take the prayers of the Bible and make them our own—because God knows what we need better than we do. We see why we can make them our own in our last and shortest point: a prayer for listening.
This closing section of the prayer begins with sensory language—look and listen. Solomon asks God to look and listen. Solomon knows that’s what we need most—God’s attention. The fact that God always sees and hears can be a cause for shame or a cause for hope; it depends how we look at. If you know you need the Lord’s attention, it’s a cause for hope.
The hope rests on God committing Himself to our cause; “You singled them out from all the nations of the world to be Your own inheritance.” We can commit ourselves and our prayers to God because He’s committed to us. Such commitment is how relationships work and if you aren’t in a relationship with God, what are you doing with your life?
Solomon prays all this trusting that He’ll be heard. He offers these seven scenarios knowing they will eventually happen and that God will act. That’s our only hope—God must act. The people who think that He will act pray and continue to pray. Those who don’t think God will act don’t pray; they stop praying. That’s Jesus’ parable on prayer wondering whether find faith when he returns. Will he find it in you? Will he find it in others? Amen.