Anniversary Sermon: “The Place of Prayer…” (I Kings 8: 22-30 & 2 Chronicles 7: 11-16)
Today we celebrate 349years of witness and worship…
We gather, celebrating our life together
With gratitude to the Lord, with gratitude to those who have gone before.
We gather, looking ahead to our life together
With anticipation as we step into the future.
We gather to worship and serve the living God
the God of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
In Jesus’ Name…
Though time, age and temptation would see him make many mistakes in his life, the young king began his reign very well. He walked in the ways of the Lord and of his father. His first instinct was to seek the Lord in prayer, to ask (not for possessions or vengeance for his enemies), but for wisdom to govern the people so they, too, might walk faithfully and wholeheartedly before God. The Lord granted him wisdom and wealth in plenty, much of which he squandered in his disobedient middle-years; until, as an older man, he returned to the Lord in repentance and prayer. I suppose that gives hope to us all, and a reminder that it’s not how you start that matters…but how you finish!
Nonetheless, what his father had dreamed of building, he would complete…a temple built and furnished with ark and altar… to the glory of God (1 Kings 8:20-21). Everything in the temple, as with the Tabernacle before it and, no less, with the church which succeeded it, it all spoke of the Presence of the holy God in their midst. The builder knew only too well that God filled the heavens and that nothing he might construct could possibly contain, define or domesticate Him (V 27)…but his desire was for a place dedicated to the Name of the Lord, and to the “burning of incense” – a House of Prayer.
Our forbears, no doubt, had that very same desire to plant something here in Cloughfold, to the glory of God…a place, in different buildings certainly, but somewhere that God has been pleased to dwell among His people for generations. God has had a place of prayer here and a people of prayer here for 349 years.
Young Solomon began well…with a prayer of dedication for the finished temple. We discover timeless truths about God and, in His answer to the king’s prayer… what God still requires from His people. Solomon’s long prayer (a version is also found in 2 Chronicles 6) is like many others in the bible; it provides us with a model of how-to approach God in prayer.
I often hear people saying they don’t know how to pray. If we go to the great prayers of the bible, to the book of Psalms (just for a start) we find help; and that invariably, that all prayers begin with God and not with us. It’s not that God needs to be reminded of just how great He is, but it is that we need that very reminder (of who it is to whom we pray) as we begin to pray.
How often our prayers miss this bit out! Verses 22-30 are the beginning of the prayer which concentrates us totally on God. Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6b). Faith in Him must come first. It was so with Solomon. It was so with the first men of Sion. It must be so with us.
Before a single request is made, before any prayer of intercession…the king blesses the Lord. Solomon begins where all prayer should begin with a praise filled consideration of God, who He is and what He has done. God is first. "O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart.” He will not share His glory with another (Isaiah 42:8). He is primary – “the unique, covenant-keeping, loving, speaking-with-the mouth and finishing-with-the hand God…” (Michael Wilcox).
Those who do not know the Lord imagine him to be like the gods of the ancient world… capricious, spiteful and erratic who would change their minds and renege on their commitments, but the LORD was faithful in His love. God is faithful first…a God of love! God is love. God’s love is the very bedrock of our confidence in prayer. Jesus taught us to begin with ‘Our Father.’ We should approach God as those who know they are His children, who are loved by Him, and whose interests He always has at heart.
God is Holy: promises made are promises kept. The promise to David, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor to sit before me on the throne of Israel…” is followed by the condition, “…if only your descendants are careful in all they do to walk before me faithfully as you have done…” God is loving and faithful. We come in His Holy Name. We pray to the One who will be taken seriously.
6 “But if you or your descendants turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. 8 This temple will become a heap of rubble.
And that is what happened. The temple was destroyed. Solomon had a divided heart which would lead to a divided kingdom. The building of the temple was impossible without God. “With your hand you have fulfilled it…” (8: 24).
A place without God at its very centre is no refuge or resting place (Matthew Henry). Ultimately, it must be the house that God builds (Psalm 127:1). If it’s not to the glory of God, the doors will close. Whenever people failed to place God in position one He would withdraw his blessing, if not his love. The prayers of the disobedient will not be answered; unconfessed sin will have to be dealt with…
13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 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 I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.
The love that God has for those called by His Name is unconditional. But we should be in no doubt that the blessings (of revival) His church could know, even now, will be absent if we continue to be a “playing church”, rather than a praying church. “MY HOUSE will be (called) a HOUSE OF PRAYER…” (Luke 19: 46), Jesus said. Members of His household will have no problem attending a PRAYER MEETING!
We have to come to the place of repentance where we sacrifice our pride on God’s altar, and declare our utter helplessness; and cling to Him until He moves in power in our lives and church. When God is our first priority, the things He cares about are the things we will care about. Do we?
Jesus taught His disciples to pray to their heavenly Father: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” They would be involved in the fulfillment of this prayer: “And on this rock I will build my church, and the forces of hell with not overpower it.”
The stones of the building in which many have gathered over the past years also speak to us of the God who is still here today and who will continue to reign long after the stones are gone. They remind us of the One for whom the building was built and without whom the building would crumble spiritually…
God takes up residence in His people, by His Spirit. God is always there, but he really turns up when they turn up for prayer! Our predecessors didn’t know, of course, what the future would bring (any more than we do), but they had a vision and so they laid the stones to the glory of God in Jesus Christ. He is the cornerstone. He held them up…loved them, healed them…forgave and blessed them. We can be sure that those men and women wanted to bring glory to God and to bring him the very best prayers they had to offer. Just like us, perhaps…
18 “But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!
Jesus becomes the Temple which nothing can destroy. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority..
We can worship Him wherever we like, and in many different ways. But there is something special about a united people, gathering in one spirit, in one place…in the place where God meets us… which has always been the place of prayer!
His Name will always be there…and His eyes and His heart.
MFR 22/10/21
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