Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Happy Saturday. It's Saturday is Women's Bible Study Saturday. That's right, Ian. Finally, the woman. The woman who's preaching this morning is none other than my bride. She is, she's been preparing this for, it feels like years now. It's awesome. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to hearing. What it feels like when she's done, usually, like most of us, is the harshest critic that I know. And so she'll say what she says, but I'm looking forward to it being done. I know it weighs heavily upon her and I think I appreciate that. I don't wanna take that away from her. I like the fact that she cares so deeply about it. She honors God's word and she loves God's people, so she doesn't wanna be flippant. I appreciate that. But I also appreciate when she's done. Yeah. Yeah, she's, what text is she covering today? Ephesians chapter two. So she's covering through verse, I wanna say seven. Okay. Two, one through seven. Yeah. I know your wife is covering the next section, which I think is eight through 10. Yeah, I think so. He made us in his, it made us to be workers before, before time began. I'm totally butchering that. Recitation and it's not a recitation, it's a summarization. But you get the idea. Yeah. So she's covering this really hit. Heavy section about who we were BC before Christ and all of its implications. And so she's got, it's a great text, it's a rich text, but the challenge with Rich text is then you're like what do I do with this? Totally. There's so much here. Where do I even go? And those are the ones that are especially hard to say I need to get rid of maybe 80% of what I wanna say and just. Try to keep it as narrow as I can while still being helpful. That's a really tight, a tight balance to strike. She gets to preach about the best, but in scripture, I'll be sure to that she hears that before she goes up there. PPJ wants you to say this point number one. I mean it appreciate the best. Yeah, but what you're saying, what you're alluding to yeah. I'll let it sit there for people to enjoy. Anyways, if you're curious, what's the best button in scripture? Ephesians two, four. Go check it out. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's Women's Bible study today. That'll be good. Awesome. Yeah. No, that's great. We had the Rangers game last night. They won. They won. They won 105 to nothing. It was amazing. What a blow out. Yeah. No. Hopefully we had a good time. We typically do at that event it's potentially gonna rain again, which it rained last year for it. It's just, it's June. It's just what happens here, rain. We get a lot of it. You don't know what to expect in May and June. That's just, that's what I am trying to figure out is how do you prepare for these months? You just prepare by just being flexible. 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen. Even the radars, you can't it's, it looks like it's coming straight at you and then it's and it takes a hard Right. And. Yeah. Getting used to the shifting patterns here has been fun. I do enjoy it again, California. So basic, so predictable, beautiful weather every day. 75 in clear skies. Oh, crazy. It's exactly what I saw yesterday. The one thing I do appreciate about being here is the variety. I don't feel like I know what's happening ever. And I kinda like that. That gets like surprise basically. Yeah. And sometimes those surprises are terrifying. Remember when we were having that chimichanga roll through where people were like, oh, be careful. It's gonna be terrifying. Yep. And it didn't happen. I know it happened, there were some strong weather in certain places, but much of it didn't end up coming about the way that people predicted, which I'm thankful for. Yeah. I'm grateful for that. Yeah. The derecho, Jimmy Changa, derecho, the Orta, whatever it is. You wanna call it that thing? Yeah. No, it's it's the weather's interesting out here for sure, but hey, let's jump into our DBR for the day. Thi this is gonna be a lot of what we covered yesterday, just kinda rehashed. So chapter six, parallels the part of chapter eight where Solomon is blessing his people. First Kings chapter eight. That is so second, Colonel. Chronicles six connects back to One Kings chapter eight and the prayer of dedication that's recorded there. And so this is again, common ground. Note though, in two Chronicles six 10, Solomon declares that the Lord had fulfilled his promise through the actions and obedience of Solomon to do what God prophesied by David that he would do or prophesied to David that he would do. So that just stood out to me this time because I thought about, this is another example of. God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. And so if you look at verse 10, here, let me read it for us. It says this, now, the Lord has fulfilled the promise he made for I have risen in the place of David, my father, to sit on the throne of Israel and the Lord promised, and I have built the house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. So notice part of God's fulfillment depended upon, if I can use that language, Solomon's actions to build the temple. If Solomon didn't build the temple, then God's promise to David that Solomon would build the temple would not have happened. Now, was there ever a scenario in which Solomon wasn't gonna build the temple? I would argue no. That I believe that God's sovereign ordination of all things had ordained and set in stone that Solomon was gonna build the temple. But we've often talked about it from Solomon's point of view, this was a real choice, a real decision that he made a decision of his will, if we can put it that way, to honor the Lord by building the temple. And so we are not as those that believe in God's sovereignty against the notion of any form of free will. What we are against is the notion of autonomous free will that is ungoverned free will that we reject as not being something that we find to be true in the word of God. So here's an example of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. Coalescing again for the completion of the temple. Yeah, under Solomon's prayer for dedication. In that next section here, one of the things that you see in Chronicles that you don't see as. Easily in the King's telling on the King's account is in verse 13 you see that? He says, it says, then he knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel. And you do get the gist of that from one Kings eight. Verse 54 which says that he had knelt with his hands out, stretched toward heaven. It's there, but it's in passing here. It highlights the fact that this is how the king of the current u, the currently United Kingdom responded to God. And I love the imagery because the fact that he kneels is a posture of someone who's paying OBEs to a king. And how important is it that God's king is surrendering and bowing down to the true king? And he doesn't just do this in secret. I know some of us have our own prayer posture that we do. Some of us will sit in a seat or just stand. I like to walk on occasion. And then on rare occasions too, I also like to kneel Kneelings hard 'cause it's hard to do for a long time. But notice here, Solomon just doesn't do this in his. Private prayer closet. This is a very public display of the kind of honor that King Jesus is do, or in this case, Yahweh. Their understanding of God revealed to them as Yahweh, he knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel. And then not only that, but he spread out his hands toward heaven. And this is something that we still tend to do in our worship. Some of us are a little timid. We don't do that all the time, but we spread our hands out. This has biblical precedent. This is not just us making things up and trying to feel some kind of emotional high. This has precedent in scripture and it communicates abandon or surrender. It communicates worship. It communicates the fact that we are lifting our hands in worship to a superior. And that's what's happening here. Solomon is displaying for the people of Israel what it looks like to truly bow down and give reverence and awe to the true king Yahweh. Yeah. It's interesting too that he does that on a platform. He built a platform. Yeah. Specifically that is everyone. Yeah. Which we're gonna see in Ezra too. Ezra's gonna do that when he stands to preach. He's gonna preach from a platform. That's why we do what we do. Exactly. Some people are like why is there a platform in the church? It's because of examples like this. Yeah. But there's precedent for that. Yeah, that's a good point about raising the hands that, that there's a biblical connection there. I don't think I'd ever made that before, but I see that. Yeah. Chapter seven then. Anything else on chapter six? I don't think so. Okay. Chapter seven. Then we get into this scene where we see a visual display. I don't think we, I. This is recorded in the King's account, either that the fire comes down from heaven not, and consumes the burn offerings and the sacrifices in the glory. The Lord then fills the temple. We read about the glory of the Lord filling the temple in the first King's account, but not the fire coming down from heaven, which I'm thinking to myself, man that's a pretty substantial detail amiss. You didn't record that of all things. You didn't record that. 22,000 cows. They all get, get billing, but the fire coming down from heaven that doesn't get billing Anyways. Yeah. So that shows up there, but it's that visible act again to inspire all within the people. God does this, go back to Exodus 19 when God, before he comes down on Mount Sinai to meet with Moses. He didn't have to do this, but he causes the mountain to shake and he causes fire and smoke to be seen from the mountain. He wants the people to have a reverence and a. Fear of him, and so I think that's what's going on here as well as he inhabits the temple and the Holy of Holies. This is another visual display. Not necessary, but God does it in order to instill this reverence and fear within the hearts of the people. I think another thing that it does too, is it also showcases the fact that God. Approves of what's taking place here. Sure. That God is for the dedication of the temple. He's for the sacrifices that are being offered. This is the way that God shows appreciation and approval for the sacrifice being offered. Think about Abraham when he's when he's, when he says to the three strangers, Hey, don't go anywhere. I want to give you I wanna give you an offering. And the Lord says, okay, go ahead and do that. So he goes and slaughters the animal brings it back, and then he consumes it by touching it. The, and it goes up into a flame. And so this is how God showcases that he appreciates and approves of the sacrifice. That's a great thing. And one of the things that's interesting about Second Chronicles, 'cause people wonder why, what are the, why is the redundancy, why is this necessary? Why would God want to do this? There's a lot of reasons why, but one of the, one of the ways that Second Chronicles is often understood is that it is God's view of Judah's kings, how God perceives them. And granted it's not. It's not all, it's not all beautiful, but this is a good sight. God appreciates and approves of their worship. And highlights fact, this is their height. This is when they were doing so well. They were worshiping me. They were sacrificing with generosity and true sacrifice. It hurt them. This is good. This is what God wants from his people. He wants genuine worship. He wants to be praised and ador and adored 'cause that's the way life is supposed to go. So that's one of the reasons why we see this. Yeah, that's a great point too. Yeah. The other unique thing about One Chronicles chapter seven or Second Chronicles, chapter seven verses one Kings chapter eight, is we get God's response to David's prayer here. In verse 12, he says, I have heard your prayer. Now remember, this is the prayer where David said, time and time again, God, if our people repent, if our people confess, if our people come to you, hear their prayer. So God responds in verse 12 and says, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as I has it. House of sacrifice and then he says in verse 14, if 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 and forgive their sin and heal their land. This is a lot of times taken and applied, I think, out of context to our nations. That's true. And people will say, Hey, look, if the United States will humble ourselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, then we will, he will hear and forgive our sin and heal our land. It's interesting in dealing with this Sunday's message on Obadiah, we're gonna again talk about God's role for Israel and his relationship with the church. I think there are principles we can draw out of this and say, yeah, that it'd be great for our nation to humble ourselves. It'd be great for our nation to, to seek the Lord. It'd be great for our nation to repent from their sins. And yet this verse is about Israel. It's not about us. So God does respond to all of those things, but we can't bank on, we've talked about the promises and said, God makes promises. We can't look at this and say this is a promise for America. If we do this, we're guaranteed that God's gonna heal our land. We can have revival in our country where people do begin to seek the Lord and repent from their sin and all of these things. And yet he doesn't heal the land. We could still face division in the nation. We could still face, the judgment of God. And there's not the promise that we see here because this promise isn't meant for us in this particular time. It's meant for Israel during the time of Solomon. So you're saying basically all of verse 14, we could say. Yeah, that's true. The part of verse 14 that we would wrestle with is the healing their land part. I think so, yeah. Because everything else we would say, yeah, that's true as far as it goes. And the people called by my name. Okay. Yeah, I guess that's true. But I think you could still say, the elect, those whom God selects for salvation of those people. Humble themselves and pray and seek his face. They'll turn from their wicked ways and then he'll hear and he'll forgive their sin. The one component that we'd really push back on is the healing the land part, because that this is for national ethnic Israel, right? This is God's people in the old. Covenant. And so specifically then the promise that's being alluded to here is the Abrahamic covenant. This is God saying, I will multiply you. I'll bless you. With land seed and further blessing possessions offspring riches, all those kinds of things. The land promises are specific to the Abrahamic covenants, and so under the new covenant, we don't have those things. We have something better. We have the Holy Spirit and we have a land yet to come. We have a future land to enjoy. But the land that God promises, Israel, the full extent of it will be experienced. During the millennial kingdom. Yeah. Yeah. And that is unique that there, the national identity of Israel is part of their identity and their relationship with God. And that's not something that the church has. The church is not a national body in any way, shape or form. The church is international or every tribe in tongue and nation. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So is it wrong for someone to pray this then? Would you say that they should not use this in their prayers as they're praying for America and praying for the president, whoever that happens to be. And I would say not that last part about healing the land. I think we can pray that God would. Heal the land, but not by claiming this as the promise that it will. I think we can pray that, Hey, God, we would love for you to restore our nation and to stop the violence, and to stop the bloodshed and stop, and to protect, protect our borders and all these things because we want to be a nation that seeks you. So if we become a nation that seeks you and repent from our sins and call upon your name, will you please heal our land? We can pray that without saying, because you've promised you will do that according to this passage. So it wouldn't be wrong to take the ideas from this passage, but it would be wrong to take the promise in applying it to us. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Which is such a helpful way to think about the Old Testament. 'cause that's a lot of the Old Testament, right? You have to read for the theological truth about God. What is this conveying about God? And then how can I appropriate that to my life today without taking the specifics and saying this is what's gonna be true for me today. Yeah. So it's. It's not to us, but it is for us. And this is one of the reasons why we would be so hesitant to say, yeah, buy one of those bibles that puts your name in the place of, every one of the promises that God makes for sure. For I will bless you, John and I will prosper you, John. One of the, I know those Bibles are at least they were popular for a season, but we would struggle with that because not all of those promises are for you specifically. They are for Israel. Specifically. And when you get into the cursing, you don't want that. Don't want that. No. Yeah. Yeah. How about anything else in chapter seven specifically here? No. Okay. Let's go to the Psalm that has been alluded to a couple times. We talked about at the end of yesterday's episode, and it even was picked up in, in this reading today. But Psalm 1 36 is where all of this comes from. And you were unpacking some, you were talking about how Chris Tomlin is the greatest musician that's ever lived, ever walked the planet, and how he's fantastic. Yep. And he's so much better than any of the whole him writers. Yep. And we should all just sing Chris Tomlin forever. Yep. That's exactly what I said. No, but that is interesting, as you mentioned that I think he's one of the few that have put this to, to music the way that it's, it shows up here quite literally in, in some regards there. And that's a great song. Yeah. But that's, you read this, you can't miss what the theme of this is, and that is the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. But the steadfast love that, that's an interesting concept. The hesed the. Faithful, the loyal, the merciful love of God endures forever. And he really just calls onto everybody to recognize this from beginning to end. It's a psalm that is, is super encouraging and redundant at the same time to try to read through straight through without. Losing our focus. And so it's really helpful for you to think about the first part of each of these lines, because the second part, you know what it's gonna say, the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. But it's helpful for you to focus on specifically, I think on the first part of each of these verses so that you can figure out what is this specifically saying. In relation to the steadfast love of the Lord as you read through the psalm. Yeah, and what you'll notice is that the Psalmist who, whoever they are, highlights at least two major themes that you and I can still highlight today and utilize in our personal worship you'll notice that in verses four through nine, he largely focuses on God's creation. The wonders of what God has made, and it's always a good thing to remind yourself of how beautiful the world is that you live in, such that you should be able to worship God for those things. I like, I love the storms here for the very reason that it gives me awe for the one who made the storms and the one who controls the storm. Secondly, in verses 10 through 16, you'll notice that in addition to creation, the psalmist focuses on salvation and the greatest salvation event that Israel ever knew was of course the exodus. And so of course this comes up and it recurs in its theme all over the Old Testament to celebrate God's great victory here. Now, for you and I, obviously when we think about our greatest salvation event, we're not talking about the exodus, we're talking about the cross and the resurrection, and so what they saw only in a glimmering kind of foggy way, we now see in its fullest. High definition, maybe eight K vision of what this really meant. Jesus is the one who saves us, just like he redeemed Israel out of Egypt. He redeems us from our sin and our death, and that's the thing that we should celebrate and the thing that should cause us to say for his steadfast love endures forever. So good. So good. Let's pray on that note and we will wrap up another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Lord, you are good and is as pastor. Rob was just saying that the chief example of that as Christians that we can point to is the cross. And the collision of your justice and your grace and your mercy, your wrath, all colliding there as Christ died for us in our place, that we can be forgiven of our sins. Lord, we're so grateful for that. That is the steadfast love that, that we can never get over and never move past, never graduate from. It should always be the reason why we wake up every morning wanting to worship you and praise you. So we pray that we would do just that today. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you. Bye.

thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said