(2 Chronicles 7:11-22, Daniel 9:1-19; Acts 3:12-21)
The first thing that needs to be said this morning is that 2 Chronicles 7:14 doesn’t mean what we often use it to mean. It does not read, “If American Christians humble themselves and pray . . . then I will heal America.” This is God’s promise to Solomon for his nation, and it’s a specific response to the king’s prayer at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem, which takes up most of chapter 6. What God promises in 7:13-15 is a summary of what Solomon asks for in 6:18-31, 36-40. Verse 14 isn’t a generic promise to anyone who reads it, it’s God honoring his servant’s request, and it’s specific to its context: the worship and sacrifices of the whole nation of God at his temple.
Israel was a nation composed of one people which God had created as his chosen people, and organized around the worship of God. Even the king was in some ways under the authority of the priests; he didn’t appoint them or control them in any way, and he had to go to them to offer sacrifices for his sin just the same as anyone else in Israel. What’s in view in verse 14 isn’t God’s people within a given nation—God’s people are the nation. If the nation as a whole repents, God promises to heal them. As such, we can’t take this to mean that if Christians in America pray, God will certainly heal this country—especially if we insist on our own idea of what that healing would look like.
Now, am I saying that this promise has no relevance to us at all? No. As the British Old Testament scholar Martin Selman observes, “the fact that spiritual restoration is offered to one nation also makes it available in principle to any other nation. . . . The spiritual health of each nation is something in which God has a direct interest.” Further, “How far the corporate life of one’s own nation shows evidence of spiritual decline or progress depends to a significant extent on the prayers of Christian people.” We can’t just apply 2 Chronicles 7:14 to ourselves, but we can certainly learn from it.
First, note that God’s promise in chapter 7 answers the prayers of one man in chapter 6—but not one man praying on his own behalf. That one man was the king, God’s anointed leader of his people, praying on behalf of the whole nation as they dedicated the new temple for the worship of God. If we would pray for the healing of the nation, we need to stand for the nation and pray on its behalf, not as “them” but as “us.”
Second, consider what 7:14 requires: humble repentance, in prayer and action, from our wicked ways. If we would see God move to change our nation, we must begin by giving up and letting him change us. We need to begin by admitting that we’re sinners—and not just in some generic “everybody sins” kind of way, because none of us are generic sinners. We’re all very specific sinners. We are proud, we are lazy, we are liars, we are self-righteous, we are manipulative, we are greedy, we are lustful, we are gossips, we are self-indulgent, we are judgmental, we are wrathful, and whatever else we might be. It’s not enough to say, “God, I’m a sinner”; we need to confess, “I am this sinner,” and be honest with him and ourselves about the details. This means allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal our hearts to us, with all the things we’d rather not see—and it means listening when he does so by speaking to us through other people. It means being humble enough to know that sometimes we deserve correction and rebuke from those around us.
Third, put these two things together, and look at the example of Daniel. Daniel was reading the prophecies of Jeremiah, and the Spirit of God showed him that the appointed time for the Jews to return from exile to Jerusalem was drawing near. You might have expected him to rejoice at that, but instead he responds with grief, because he recognizes that his people are still deep in their sin against God. He knows that Israel deserved God’s judgment; he also knows that their continued unfaithfulness to God should earn them only more judgment, not an end to judgment. They aren’t confessing their sins to God, and they aren’t repentant; so he identifies himself with his people and stands in their place to confess their sins and repent on their behalf, and to ask God for mercy. He doesn’t say, “They have sinned,” though he himself is as close to blameless as anyone ever is; he says, “We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled.”
This seems strange to our ears, being the products of a highly individualistic culture; we tend to see sin and guilt and salvation as purely individual things. Your sin is your problem, not mine, and your salvation is between you and Jesus. Biblically, though, we’re a lot more closely connected than that, and our selfish individualism is an aspect of the sin of Cain. We don’t actually exist as isolated individuals, but in webs of relationships—families, friends, colleagues and co-workers, communities, and so on. As the great preacher and poet John Donne wrote, meditating on the sound of the funeral bell,
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were . . . : any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
What my family does, what my church does, what my denomination does, what my nation does—I am part of them, and therefore I’m involved in each of those actions, even if I never chose them. The same goes for each of us.
Before we can follow Daniel’s example, we need to humble ourselves to confess our own sins; we need to acknowledge and begin to turn away from our own wicked ways. We have no right to confess “their” sins for “them,” as if we somehow stood apart from the sins of humanity; we have every right to stand with and for the people of this nation and confess our collective sins for the sake of those who have not yet come to repentance.