Those of you who have been around in Christians circles for
a while know that there are a lot, and, no, I haven’t counted them all, of
verses that are misused, or said to be misused.
And I’m going to use one today.
In this case, the controversy stems from taking a verse from
the Old Testament where the nation of Israel is at the center, and then
applying it to a situation today, particularly when it refers to the Church.
The problem with this thinking is that more than ¾ of the
Bible is the Old Testament. That was the
Bible of Jesus, Paul, the apostles, and the early church. Hebrews, for example, takes a promise given
to Moses and Joshua and applies it to all believers today. Hebrews 13:6
I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Israel is called God’s own possession, a kingdom of priests,
and a holy nation. Exodus 19 These very
same words are used in the New Testament applied to the Church.
Ephesians 2 tells how that the gentiles were strangers to
the covenants of promise, but now they had been brought near by the blood of
Christ, and that God had made the two (Israel and the gentiles) into one new
man. The gentiles are now fellow
citizens with the saints, fellow heirs and fellow members of the body.
If you start limiting promises and words in the Bible to the
immediate people they were addressed to, then you’re not going to have much of
a Bible left for yourself.
The 23rd Psalm.
the Lord is MY shepherd. That’s
David’s experience. Are you going to
just take all that and apply it to yourself?
The verse I am talking about here is 2 Chronicles 7:13,14. I can hear some of you groaning all the way
over here. Give me two minutes here.
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.
I have talked in other lessons and will do more in the
future about God working in things like the weather and pestilences to get
people’s attention, and even on a national level.
I questioned some of this in the past, because Christians
aren’t exempt from these kinds of things.
Then I realized that that is the point.
Christians are involved. The
pestilence we are experiencing is affecting Christians.
In the United States, we have representative
government. Our leaders represent
us. Well, most of the people who
represent me strongly support abortion.
That makes their sin my sin. They
represent me.
In the Bible, you have godly people like Nehemiah and Daniel
confessing the sins of the people as if they were their own sins. Well, in America, in a sense they are. Because the people who represent us are doing
things we would never do ourselves.
Should Christians be involved in politics? You better be. Get yourself somebody to represent you who
really does represent you.
Our country is in the middle of a pestilence, which is
destroying the country in many ways. Not
just are people dying, but people are losing their livelihoods, their life savings. And Christians are not exempt. We are the salt of the earth. If the land is turning rotten, we are not
being salt enough.
God says He will heal their land. The land of His people. Is this our land? Yes, it’s my land, and it’s your land. Is it a broken land in need of healing? Yes, it is.
For too long, God’s people have stood back and watched while
our country deteriorated in so many different ways.
Just ask yourself one question: who are your representatives
in government? I don’t just mean the
President. Your state representatives,
state senator, your Congressman, your Senators.
Do they represent you?
I submit to you that our nation is broken. Our nation needs to be delivered. From pestilence, from destructive weather
patterns (and, yes, we’ll talk more about that in later lessons), from
ungodliness and anti-godliness.
The world doesn’t know what’s going on. We do, or should. Our country can’t save itself. We, God’s people, can and should. By confessing our sins as a nation and
seeking God for our nation. And, yes, we
will have to get people who truly represent us to represent us.
God says that He will heal our nation, or He is willing to. It’s what we do as God’s people that will
make the difference.
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