What did the Lord tell Solomon would happen if His Old Testament people turned away from Him, forsaking His commandments and rejecting His perfect law of love for God and for other people? God said He would remove the blessings He had bestowed on His people, casting them out of the land which He had given them, and destroying the Temple where He had promised to dwell with His people forever. And as the wealth and safety we Americans have come to take for granted slips through our fingers, can we doubt that the same sort of thing can happen to us? Can we doubt that our sin, in one way or another, is destroying so much of what we hold dear? Can we doubt that our land is in great need of healing?

So, what did God say needed to happen so that the land might be healed? in verse 14, God told His people, who are called by His name to seek His face and to turn from our wicked ways. In short, God wasn’t talking to the unbelieving foreigners. He was talking to His people. He was telling us what we need to do.

And that’s why the context of this promise is so important. For as verse 12 explains, this promise is actually God’s answer to a prayer that Solomon prayed, a prayer which takes up most of chapter 6, from verse 14 all the way to verse 42. And in that prayer, Solomon was asking God to hear very specific kinds of prayers: those which were offered in the magnificent new Temple that had just been completed. In fact, Solomon asked the Lord to hear His people’s prayers wherever they were, if they just directed those prayers toward the Temple of the Lord.

So, why was the Temple so important? Because it was a symbol of Jesus’ life and ministry. And so, if we put God’s answer to Solomon’s prayer in modern terms, it means that only prayers that are offered in the name of Christ, only prayers that flow from a true relationship with Christ – those are the prayers that we know will be heard and answered.

And so, even if we have prayed for healing revival in our land, even if our prayers are earnest and sincere, do they reflect everything the Temple represents? Are we humbling confessing our own need of God’s healing, cleansing power? Are we trusting completely in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for us? Are we seeking to walk in the light of God’s holy ways, feeding on the Bread from Heaven that only He can provide?

If so, we can be sure that God will keep His promises, sure that God will hear our prayers to pour out His Spirit upon us, sure that God will forgive us because of the completed work of Jesus Christ. And just as God heals our hearts from our own sin, we can be sure that God will heal our land.

II Chronicles 7:11-22 (NASB)

11 Thus Solomon finished the house of the LORD and the king’s palace, and successfully completed all that he had planned on doing in the house of the LORD and in his palace.
12 Then the LORD appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice.
13 “If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people,
14 and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
15 “Now My eyes shall be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.
16 “For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.
17 “And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked even to do according to all that I have commanded you and will keep My statutes and My ordinances,
18 then I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with your father David, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to be ruler in Israel.’
19 “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you and shall go and serve other gods and worship them,
20 then I will uproot you from My land which I have given you, and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
21 “As for this house, which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’
22 “And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who brought them from the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore He has brought all this adversity on them.'”