Well, as our ushers begin to take up the offering, we are going to dive into week three of this message series that we've been in over the last couple of weeks, titled that is not what that verse means. We have been looking at a few different verses to try to understand the proper context of what they mean, which is important for us. Those of us who are believers, those of us who have put our faith and trust in Jesus, we need to know what Scripture means. And sometimes we can have popular verses that get stripped out of their context and be used them, using them in ways that don't really apply to our lives, in the way that they were intended. And so we're looking at those all throughout this summer, we've looked at two so far. We've looked at Philippians, 413, which, of course, says we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And often that means, or what we think that means is that we can do anything and everything it is that we set our own minds to and accomplish whatever it is that we want, as long as we do it in Christ's strength. And when we looked at the proper context of that verse, of course, we saw that Paul was talking about contentment, that he was describing that through Christ's strength, he can be content in all situations, whether he had much or whether he had little. And so that's how it applies to us as well. Christ will give us the strength to be content, to experience life, no matter what situations or circumstances that we are in. Last week, we looked at first John one nine, another really popular verse that says, If we confess our sins, that he's faithful to forgive us. And we think, Well, I must keep up with a record of all of my sins to confess them, to make sure that I'm completely forgiven for each one of them. But when we really looked at the proper context, we see that he's really describing or writing to those who are Gnostic unbelievers at the time, and that this is more a verse about salvation, right, that it's a one time confession of sin, and then we have complete forgiveness. And therefore, when we sin on the other side of that, we don't have to ask for forgiveness to be forgiven, the blood of Jesus forgives us for all of our past, present and future sins. And so we certainly acknowledge our sin, but we thank him for the forgiveness that we already have. And so when we understand these verses in their proper context, it makes a huge difference in the way that we live out our faith. For those of you who may be here this morning, or maybe you're watching online this morning and you're just checking this whole Christianity thing out, right? Somebody just invited you, well, maybe you've heard these verses. These are popular verses, and these are things that maybe you've heard people talk about, and you've thought that's what maybe they meant to and what it would look like if you gave your life to Christ or began to trust Jesus, and so these are good things for you. If you're in that situation, I understand what they really mean and what it looks like to turn to Jesus and to follow Him after you come to him. And today we're going to look at yet another verse, and it ties into this season that we're in as we approach the Fourth of July and all the things that we were singing about this morning, we're, of course, thinking about our country. We're thinking about the things that we love about this country and the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans. But sometimes we also have a tendency to think about the things that maybe aren't so great in our country right now, the immorality that we see all around us, the violence, the way that our politicians carry themselves, sometimes the decisions that they make that impact us so greatly, the rising cost of food and insurance in housing and anything and everything that we have to pay for these days, right and there's so much that we can kind of look around and be discouraged about right now when it comes to looking at our country, of course, this is not just a time of year where we're celebrating the freedoms that we Have and thinking about those things. This is also a presidential election year, and so all of these things are also being talked about within that realm of things, as we think about the future of our country. And during times like this, there's a tendency for one particular Bible verse to be used a lot. It's sometimes used in political speeches by our political candidates. It's plastered on billboards, sometimes for all to see. We share it on social media. We even use it in our conversations with other people. And that verse is this Second Chronicles. 714, which, of course, says, 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 I will heal their land. So let's just look at this verse a little bit more closely and notice what we see. The very first thing that I think should stand out if it didn't, is this is a conditional statement. This is an if then statement, which means, if certain conditions are met, then these other things will result once those conditions are met, right? It's an if then statement. So if my people, who are called by my name, will do four things we read here. Number one, if they will humble themselves. Number two, if my people, God says, will pray. Number three, if my people will begin to seek my face, and if my people will, number four, begin to turn from their wicked ways. When the my people do all four of those things, you can't just do three of them, all four have to be met. Then the two things that God says will happen is, number one, I He will forgive their sin, our sin, and number two, he will heal their land, or heal our land. So this is the conditional statement that we're looking at again, these four conditions are met, then these things will happen. And when we use this verse today, we usually try to take those words that God's going to forgive us and heal our land and apply them to our lives today by saying that, that means that if we do those four things, then our country will turn around. We think if we do those four things, then maybe there'll be less natural disasters, maybe there'll be less violence in our country. Maybe there'll be less immorality. The political landscape will get better, the economy will get better, and we will begin to prosper again, will become the great nation that we once were.In other words, it's become a verse that is kind of our strategy, if you will, to get moral, political and economic healing in our country, it's not our strategy. We think it's God's strategy. He's saying, if you do these things, then this will result in those things. So that needs to become our strategy. We need to encourage people to do these things so that these things will happen, will be rewarded with prosperity in our country. Again, this is what this verse often means in our day and age, when people refer to it in those political speeches, when we plaster it on boards, when we share it on social media, when we engage in conversations with other people. But the question today is, is that what that verse really means? Of course, as you can guess from the title of the series, no, that's that's not what that verse means. Now, in order to see this verse in its proper context, which is what this whole series is about and what we've been doing, we first must understand that this verse was written under the Old Covenant, and so I need to take you all the way back to the very first book of the Bible, Genesis. We're going to look at Genesis chapter 12, where God made a covenant with a man named Abram, whose name was eventually changed to Abraham in Genesis 12 and verses one through three, it says the Lord had said to Abram, go from your country, your people and your father's household, to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. And so again, we see several things here. First of all, he says to go, and once those things happen, that number one, he's going to make Abram into a great nation. Number two, he's going to bless him. Number three, his name is going to be great. And number four, he's going to be a blessing, so much so that he says all people will be blessed through him one day. And so this is what is referred to as the Abrahamic Covenant. God enters into a covenant with a. Abraham saying, I am going to accomplish these things through you. And as you continue to read Genesis, after Genesis 12, you begin to see that God does begin to do those things. He does. Bless Abraham and his wife, Sarah, with a son, and their family begins to grow, and then they have more kids, and all of a sudden they do become a great nation, the nation of Israel. Of course, you and I know, if you've read your Bibles, that the Israelites eventually were forced into slave labor by the Egyptians, but God rescued them through Moses and the sending of plagues, and he takes them on this journey to the promised land, this land that he promises to give them where they're going to live. It's a land flowing with milk and honey. And so they begin this journey after God frees them from the Israelites. Now along the way, God meets with Moses, and we see another covenant get entered into at that time in Exodus, chapter 19, verse five, God says this to Moses. Now, if you obey Me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession. Now, I hope the first thing that jumped out at you right off the bat is this as another conditional statement. This is another if then statement, certain conditions have to be met, then certain things will happen. There's a responsibility for God's people, Moses and the Israelite nation. There's a responsibility for God. What do they have to do? They must OBEY Him, not just partly, but fully. And keep this covenant when they obey Him fully, and they do these things then and only then, will, out of all the nations, they be, they will be his treasured possession, right? They both have responsibilities again. Here. They've got their part. God has his part. Here's how they respond. Moses takes this to the people. The next couple of verses say so. Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together. We will do everything the Lord has said. And that's exactly what happens all throughout the rest of the Old Testament, right? Yeah, right. We all know that that didn't happen, but they initially say that they're in, yes, we want to enter into this covenant with you. We'll be careful to do them. You know what? They didn't even know what all was going to be asked of them yet, though we haven't even gotten to that point. And so then God begins to share the duties and the responsibilities, and it starts with things like the 10 Commandments, but then it's so much more. As a matter of fact, in Deuteronomy, 28 we even see a whole list of things that if they're doing these things, then they'll receive blessing, and if they're not doing these things, they'll be curses. And this is important. This ties into what we're talking about today. So stay with me. I'm not gonna read all of Deuteronomy 28 but I just want you to see a snippet of what is written there with these blessings and curses. Deuteronomy 28 says, If you fully obey the Lord and carefully follow His commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you above all the nations on the earth. Sound familiar? Exodus 19 five, right? All these blessings will come on you, and you accompany you. If you obey the Lord your God, the fruit of your womb will be blessed and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock, he goes on, says, The Lord will send blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The Lord will bless you in the land he is giving you, the Lord will grant you abundant prosperity in the land he swore to you and your ancestors to give you, the Lord will open the heavens the storehouses of His Bounty, to send rain on your land in the seasons, and to bless all the work of your hands. And there's on and on and on. All right, it's just a few, but when you get to verse 15, everything changes. However, if you do not obey the Lord your God, and do not carefully follow all of his commands and decrees I'm giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you. You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. The fruit of your room will be cursed, and the crops of your land and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks, the Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder. Or it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes because the worms will eat them. Swarms of locust will take over your trees and the crops of your land.So again, this is the covenant that the people are in. God has made them an Israelite nation, just like he said that he would to Abraham, and if they obey him all of these things, then they will prosper in their land that God was giving them. If they don't, then they will suffer the consequences. And so let's go back to our verse Now second, Chronicles, 714, and begin to look at it in its immediate context. Chronicles is written after much of all of these things have happened, and this person is looking back in writing down and chronicling all the events of this great nation that God said He was going to build through Abraham. And at this particular point in time, in Second Chronicles, Chapter Seven, he's detailing the time in the nation's history where now they have kings. They're in the promised land that he had talked about. They have had King David come on the scene, and the land really began to flourish and have success and move them forward as a great nation. But now King Solomon, his son, is the one ruling and reigning, and he had just finished building this temple, the amazing temple that was instructed to build. And this is the context of us diving back into Second Chronicles chapter seven. We're going to back up just a little bit here and start in verse 11 of chapter seven says, When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the Royal Palace and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and His own people. The Lord appeared to him at night and said, so now we have God talking to Solomon. You see the quotes here? This is God giving him this information. I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices. Verse 13, he continues to talk. This is God talking to him when I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command locusts to devour your land or send a plague among my people. Can we just stop there and let me ask the question, what does that sound like? Does that not sound almost exactly like the curses that I was reading to you in Deuteronomy chapter 28 of course it does, because that's what he's referring to. They've entered into the land. They're still under this old Mosaic covenant that says you must follow everything that I'm doing, and then you will prosper. If not, there will be curses. And so God is saying to him, when these curses come, in other words, because you've disobeyed me, right? So he's talking to them in this context of saying, when you've disobeyed me, and when I have to hold up my end of the covenant that we've said was going to happen, you begin to receive these curses. Here's what you do. Notice the comma and then notice, here's the verse that we talked about earlier. It's tied into it's part of this sentence that we're in right here. All right, when these things happen? If my people, when these curses come, who are called by name, will all the things we talked about before, 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 heal their land. So again, God is telling Solomon what to do after the Israelites and their land gets cursed because of disobedience. What should they do? They should turn back to Me. They should seek my face. They should pray. They should turn from those wicked ways and then start to obey me, because that was the covenant we did. And when they turn from their wicked ways and they start to obey me. Then, now I'll do what I said I was going to do. I'll forgive them. I'll heal their land. They will begin to prosper. They'll start to receive those blessings of Deuteronomy 28 instead of those curses at that time. So let me ask you a question when you see this verse Now in its proper context and with an understanding of the old covenant and what the old covenant was about. Is this verse, second, Chronicles, 714, written to you and I today. Do. I heard one person, they're getting it. We have to stay longer today, because, no, it's not written to us. It was written to the Israelite nation, and you and I are not Israel. When he says My people, he's referring to Israel, and you and I are not Israel. Secondly, this was written under the Mosaic Covenant, under the Old Covenant. Are you and I under the Old Covenant? Are we under a new covenant today? A new covenant? Yes, there we go. Y'all want to get out of here early, or at least sometime soon. All right, we're under the new covenant. Right in the author of Hebrews talks extensively about this new covenant that we've entered into. And, and he's talking about Jeremiah 31 where it was prophesied about what this new covenant would be. And, and look what he even says there in Hebrews 813 by calling this covenant new, he has made the first one, the Old Covenant, obsolete. It's gone. It's done away with we. We don't live under the Old Covenant anymore. It's not that we're in a new one and the old one still applies to us. We're under the new and we're not under the old it's been made obsolete because Jesus fulfilled the law for us. And this is what Paul was even getting into when he wrote the book of Galatians. Listen to this language and see if it's not familiar to Deuteronomy, 28 and the things that we've been talking about this morning. This is Galatians. This is New Testament right here. And Paul says, For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse as it is written. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything that is written in the book of the law? Well, yeah, that's the language that we read in Deuteronomy, 28 right. Here we go again with the blessings and curses. If you obey, you're blessed, but if you're not, you're cursed, and no one can do everything written in the Book of the Law, so you're all under a curse, because we have sin in our lives. We have the sin nature that's going to produce sins in our lives. But here's the good news that Paul says. He writes this here, and then he says, but watch this in verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by how becoming a curse for us, for it is written Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole. Jesus, being perfect, came and was completely obedient and fulfilled the law for us. And because he had no sin to pay for himself, he could be the curse for us. He could take them all to the pole, to the cross, and pay the penalty for them all. He goes on and says, so he redeemed us in order that the blessings given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Look here. We're coming all the way back to what we just looked at in Genesis 12, when we were beginning right the Abrahamic covenant, all people are going to be blessed through you. I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm eventually going to give you the law. You're not going to be able to do it all, but I'm doing that so that you'll see that you have a sin nature and you need a Savior, and that Savior's going to come through this great nation one day, Jesus, who was prophesied all throughout the Old Testament, and now that he's come and had his finished work, I mean finished work on the cross, he's redeemed you, and you've been forgiven, and you receive the promise of the Spirit God Himself, being in you and with you forever. No more blessings if you obey, no more curses if you disobey, it's just me in you all the time, such good news. In other words, we see here that Jesus fulfilled the curses and promises, not just of the Old Covenant, but the curses and promises of Second Chronicles, chapter seven, so again, number one, we are not Israel, when he refers to it in Second Chronicles, 714, my people. Number two, we are not under the Old Covenant. And this verse was a pronouncement, again, of the blessings and curses of obedience or disobedience for the covenant number three, Christ has fulfilled the curses and promises of Second Chronicles, chapter 14. So with all that in mind, when you and I try to use Second Chronicles, 714, the way we use it today. To say that if the Christians in our nation would turn from our wicked ways,that he would forgive us, and we would begin to see moral and political and economic healing in our country. That is not what that verse means. We are stripping it out of its context. Now the question can become, then, what does that mean for us today? Are we really saying that if we don't do those four things, or if we did those four things, then we wouldn't find healing in our country, because even though it was written to them at a specific time in a specific context, that principle still sounds pretty good, like the just the principle of seeking God and praying and humbling ourselves and turning from our wicked ways, then surely the principle that we would find healing in our land would still be true, even though it was written to them in a very specific context. So So would that happen if you and I today began to turn from our wicked ways, began to seek His face, began to humble ourselves before Him, would our nation begin to heal? Not necessarily God's ways are certainly better than man ways, and we would be living how it is that God intended us to live, which, in a lot of ways, might make this world or our country a better place to live. But let's take the early church for an example of this, as we talk about how it applies for us today, if there was anyone who I would say had turned from their sin, they were humbling themselves. They were seeking the face of God, it would have been the early church. I mean, we see this happening all over the place, so much so that God was working powerfully in them and through them to bring more and more people, 3000 people, come to know Him at Pentecost, and then we read more and more in Acts that just keep coming to know him and know their forgiveness of sins and life in Christ. But here's my question, did they find blessing and healing in their country as a result of that? Absolutely not. They received persecution. They were threatened. They were thrown in jail when they were seeking his face, when they were humbling themselves, when they were praying, when they were turning from their wicked ways. When we get to Acts chapter eight, we continue to read about all it is that he was doing. And look what Luke tells us there on that day, the day that Stephen, a guy named Stephen, was preaching the gospel, in front of all these people saying, here's the good news, a great persecution, he says, broke out against the church in Jerusalem and all except the apostles, were scattered. They had to scatter from their land, right? Godly men buried Stephen. They killed Stephen as a result of him humbling himself, seeking God, praying, turning from his wicked ways and being about God's business. Three but Paul began to destroy the church. Destroy the church at this time, going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. Does it sound like God healed their land. No, this was not what they saw. This is not some strategy that we can say, if these things happen, then this will be the result. And that's the way we use it. We plaster it on social media. We put it on billboards. There are pastors who are standing in their churches today, who are declaring this to their churches, saying, if we do these things, our nation will be healed. It didn't happen for them, and they were living under the new covenant. So how can we say it is a guarantee? We can't. God never promised us blessing as far as prosperity, and all of those things happen in our country when we're turning to him and trusting him to lead and guarantee what it is that we are doing again, while they were experiencing this persecution and all of these things, though, they were Certainly experiencing blessing, right? Great things were happening in this time of persecution and this suffering in their land. People were coming to know Jesus. They were learning Christ was their life. That life isn't found in prosperity, that life isn't found in political or economic blessings, but it's found in a person whose name is Jesus. So my point is that even if we did what Second Chronicles, 714, says to do now under the New Covenant, there is no guarantee that things get better. We might just receive more persecution the same way that the early church did. And you know what? That's okay? Me, because God sits above this and knows what is best for his kingdom work, and if that's the results that he wants, then he must be thinking that's what's going to cause most people to come to know Him, in and through our suffering and our persecution, not the comfort and the prosperity that we receive now again, does that mean that we shouldn't pray for our country? We shouldn't pray and hope that things get better in these ways. Of course not. We can love our country. Can be so thankful to live here and be grateful for the men and women who have made such great sacrifices for us to be able to enjoy this freedom and be able to worship the way we worship in our country. And we can certainly pray that God makes things better in a lot of ways in our country. But above and beyond that, the first thing that we should be praying is that more people will come to know Jesus so that they don't die and go to Hell, not that things would change so that we could be more comfortable. Should be praying that they will begin to experience him as their life. Find everything that they need in him. And the great news again is that under the New Covenant, Ephesians one three tells us that we have every blessing, every spiritual blessing that there is to have. Christ is our life, no matter what situations or circumstances we find ourselves in as a country, we are blessed in Christ, and we have all that we need in Him, and He will work in us and through us to bring more and more people in our country and around the world to come to know that same life and blessing that can only be found in him. So let's be about that. Let's rally around that as a church, as we pray for our country together. Amen.