one nation under god: a reflection on 2 chronicles 7:14

One Nation Under God: A Reflection on 2 Chronicles 7:14 Loren Lineberry, 2010

2 Chronicles 7:12-16 is an inspired description of One Nation Under God. The verse we will be focusing on this morning, 2 Chronicles 7:14, is a blueprint for what In God We Trust leads to when a nation’s morality is in crisis.

The text reads: if My people, over whom My name is called, humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and abandon their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their country.1

The need to hear this description at this hour is clear. To begin with, the nation we live in is experiencing a clear crisis in morals. Like many of you who have lived in the US for several decades, we have watched as the moral climate has degenerated.

During my lifetime, I have observed a decline in respect for the sovereignty of God over the affairs of this nation. Today, our atheism and agnosticism have managed to banish God from our national conversation.

This exile of God from our national life has led to genuine national skepticism over the ability to know much of anything that resembles truth. Instead of a sovereign God with a discernible will for mankind, we are left with moral relativism, with a kind of poll-driven majoritarianism, and an ultimate sense of nihilism or nothingness concerning meaningfulness in the world around us. The upshot is that politically, free moral agents use their freedom to undo and dismantle the civility of society around them.

Beyond the civil side of our national abandonment of One Nation Under God, the modern, conservative, evangelical church also needs to confront this description. If the nation is likened to a ship at sea and the church is compared to a lighthouse, my sense is that the light in the lighthouse hasn’t really burned since the early 1950’s. Today, our cultural decline has gone on while the church – you and I – have stood silently and idly by doing little or nothing.

To be sure, I am aware of the interest in certain evangelical political interests. We want to overturn Roe vs. Wade through legislative or judicial means; we want to get prayer back into the public schools through laws or the courts; we seem to be interested in getting the Ten Commandments put on monuments or placed on walls, again by legal or judicial methods; and we seem to be curiously infatuated with politically conservative social ideals as somehow an expression of the will of God. I hope to point out that the issues facing the church – presented clearly in this blueprint – commit us to doing some very different kinds of things.

What I propose to do in this sermon is to focus on what the blueprint says One Nation Under God must intend to fix when that nation is in internal moral crisis and then what the blueprint says about how to fix it. In the first place, we must listen to God when He tells us what the problems are and then we need to turn to God for the remedy.

2 Chronicles 7:14 – The Problems

According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, the problems we face are these: [1] the influences that control us; [2] the loyalties that commit us; [3] the prayers that preoccupy us; [4] the direction that ruins us; and [5] the character that defiles us.

The influences that control us. According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, One Nation Under God is vigilant about the influences that control the nation. This is the thrust of the words in 7:14 – My people, over whom My name is called. This phrase – over whom My name is called – signals a concern for the influences that really control One Nation Under God.

1 The translation is the author’s.

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2 Chronicles 7:14 insists that persons over whom God’s name is called occupy One Nation Under God. In Hebrew terms, this phrase is shorthand for ownership and possession. In even simpler terms – over whom My name is called – signals that the controlling influence is the authority of God. By this definition – the controlling influence is the authority of God – are we One Nation Under God at this moment? Frankly, I doubt it.

We have exiled God in our national thinking and have substituted major idols instead. As I see it, we have idols that operate as values, helping us decide what is right, what is wrong, what will work, what will not work. Those idols include: [1] power, [2] wealth, [3] pleasure, and [4] self. Any one of these individually or any combination of them collectively exercise the real controlling influence in decision making in our nation at this hour.

As we have pointed out in our Daniel class, the will to power is a major controlling influence in our national life. At the moment, human power has supplanted divine power in our national consciousness. You watch CNN and Fox, as I do, and are surely aware that our real controlling influence in the US today is political power. Furthermore, would any deny that our modern political power-brokers spend much of their time acquiring power, maintaining power and using power for some fairly nefarious ends? Does what you see and read about look like a people over whom My name is called? Call me a skeptic, but I doubt it.

Take the impact of power on the marriage debate in One Nation Under God. At one time, not all that long ago, what a marriage looked like was shaped by a national moral consensus that was biblical in its basic outlines. Today, however, the controlling influence of politically powerful people can manipulate the mechanics of power so as to redefine what a marriage looks like. The net effect is the use of “coercive state power to compel a relativist concept”2 of what constitutes a marriage.

Where’s the lighthouse? When it comes to casting light on the abuse of political power, the candle has burned down. One Nation Under God is supposed to be inhabited by a people who are called by God’s name, implying a repudiation of political power to replacing the power of God as the controlling influence in national life. The lighthouse needs to speak out in no uncertain terms that the sole standard and final authority in One Nation Under God is God Himself. Otherwise, and I suspect this is the case, One Nation Under God is a nice motto, nothing more than warm, fuzzy slogan, not a personal authority.

The loyalties that commit us. According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, One Nation Under God is diligent in policing the loyalties that commit the nation. The Chronicler puts it this way – if My people will humble themselves. The Biblical language of humility means a loyal and willing submission to the influences and purposes of God. This humility takes the form of a loyalty that commits us to being One Nation Under God.

In the Hebrew Bible, humility is far more than an emotional state characterized by a meek, modest, unassuming nature. Rather, the Hebrew Bible uses humility as foundational for that heart-felt willingness to submit to the will of God in life. Humility – loyal commitment to God – is part and parcel of One Nation Under God.

To be sure, the Hebrew Bible is stunningly clear about what happens to a nation that loses its humility and commits its loyalties to other than God.

As early as Leviticus 26:41, the loss of humility – loyal commitment to Yahweh – could be seen in the nation as being unreceptive to the direction of God. Now, I ask you – is that not the problem today? Can unreceptive to the direction of Yahweh describe One Nation Under God?

The fruits of abandonment of loyal commitment to God elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible almost seem to come off the front pages of about any newspaper today. Take, for example, 2 Chronicles 28:19. Here, the Chronicler reports that in the absence of loyal commitment to God – humility – the people of the nation degenerated into a national lack of restraint. Indeed, the language – lack of restraint – may also be

2 George Wiegel, “Truths Still Held?” First Things 203 (May 2010), 46.

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translated to be out of control or to run wild. Now, is that not the problem today? Do we really need to rehearse over and over the fact that many of our fellow citizens in One Nation Under God are simply out of control and running wild?

Finally, there is the contribution of Psalm 107:11 to the breakdown of a nation that abandons its loyal commitment to Yahweh. This casting aside of humility takes the form of spurning the Word of God, where to spurn means to treat the counsel of God as if it no longer mattered. Is that not an apt description of where we are today? Is that really what One Nation Under God looks like?

Is it not fair to say, today, that most of our nation is no longer loyally committed to One Nation Under God? As a nation, are we not largely unreceptive to the direction of God, running wild and morally out of control, and essentially treating the counsel of God as if it no longer mattered? Is all of that, and more to boot, not a fair description of where we are as a nation?

Where’s the lighthouse? My personal reading of American history, especially the founding of the nation, leads me to believe that the founders understood the following idea – freedom, liberty, and democracy require a morally virtuous citizenry. If I understand Washington, Jefferson, and Madison at all, it seems to me that these men were committed to the proposition that “only a virtuous people can be free.”3 Moreover, if I understand the Hebrew Bible at all, the same idea seems to pertain. For example, in defining the kind of humility we have been talking about, 2 Chronicles 12:6 likens real humility to taking the righteousness of God as the working standard in moral life. Add to that 2 Chronicles 34:27, which equates humility with openness to Divine correction in moral life. Both the Hebrew Bible and the founders of this nation seem to think that personal freedom will survive and thrive only when guided by an inner responsibility to a higher law. If both the founders and the Hebrews understood that freedom requires a morally virtuous society, where’s the lighthouse?

Quite often I read devotional literature commenting on 2 Chronicles 7:14. It is usual, in some forms of devotional treatment, to link 7:14 with the purpose of getting the Ten Commandments back into the public square. This purpose takes different forms – put the Ten Commandments on monuments in public places, put the Ten Commandments on walls in public buildings, put the Ten Commandments back into the public schools. Sadly, none of this is what 2 Chronicles 7:14 is about. Not only are such efforts, though well intentioned, a waste of time and effort, they have the net effect of permitting our national moral degeneracy to continue. For, the fact of the matter is that public places are incapable of running wild and being out of control. A wall in a public place does not elect to have an abortion. People do these things.

The lighthouse ought to be diligent in its loyal commitment to putting the Ten Commandments in the only place God Himself ever said He wanted them – within the hearts of men [Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36]. I would predict that putting the Ten Commandments on a monument or on a wall would have little effect on people who are running wild and are morally out of control. Rather, I suspect that the lighthouse ought to be intent on fomenting a loyal commitment to the Torah of God from the heart, thereby creating a morally virtuous society.

The prayers that preoccupy us. 2 Chronicles 7:14 naturally sees prayer as a vital element in national moral regeneration. If My people will pray says the Chronicler. One of the things that One Nation Under God does in times of national moral crisis is pray. But, pray for what? I suggest that the Chronicler has given us a kind of prayer list in the immediately preceding context, chapter 6. Perhaps we might look at Solomon’s prayer list – 6:14-42 – and allow his list to guide our own prayer thoughts in our time of national moral crisis.

To begin with, this Solomonic prayer list begins and ends with a prayer for the arrival and influence of the Messianic kingdom [6:14-17 and 6:41-42]. The influence of the Messiah in the lives of the people of the nation was a prayer that gripped the prayer life of Solomon. Other matters that directed the prayer life of Solomon included: [1] the influence of God in national life, [2] the prevalence of justice

3 Ibid., 44.

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in national life, [3] prayer for support in times of war, [4] divine help when ecological crisis hits the land, [5] divine guidance in times of immigration crisis, and [5] prayer for national repentance in the face of national moral degeneracy.

Where’s the lighthouse? Our moral abyss is really not the creation of President Obama or Speaker Pelosi. I suspect these people do require prayer, but prayer of a completely different kind. Rather the prayers emanating from the lighthouse must address the passionate concern in the prayers of Solomon – the ascendancy and sovereignty of the Messianic rule and reign.

The sad fact is that we are, today, sliding down a devilish and very slippery slope. Consider this: our freedom in this country is taking the form of license, this personal license is degenerating into public decadence, this public decadence is producing the fruit of national moral chaos, and all of this together has led us to ever increasing levels of governmental authoritarianism.4 The net effect is, as so many correctly perceive, an ever-increasing assault on our freedom and liberties. Democracy does not long coexist with decadence.5 The erosion of personal liberty is the price we pay for ever-greater levels of moral depravity. The only hope is the ascendancy of the Messianic rule and reign over the lives of men and women.

The direction that ruins us. According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, One Nation Under God is passionate about going in the right direction. This is the upshot of the words of 7:14 – if My people will seek My face. There is a direction that ruins and there is a direction that redeems. In this passage, Solomon knew that there would be times when One Nation Under God would lose its direction; in such an hour, the nation must seek the face of God

In the Hebrew Bible, seeking the face of God is shorthand for reestablishing a real relationship with God on His terms, not ours. One of the Hebrew lexicons I refer to lists an interesting gloss for this verb to seek; this lexicon translates the verb – to consult. What Solomon may be telling any who will listen is that, when a nation is in the death-throes of moral decline, a new direction means beginning to consult God over the matters that ail us.

We require a change in direction in our land today. For instance, we hear glib talk about making choices. “The mantra of choice, the unassailable trump in our contemporary public discourse, deliberately avoids the question of the good: choose what?”6 Solomon would answer – consult God and then choose.

Take the abortion debate in our nation today. The right to choose is said to end the discussion: humans are free to eliminate life that is cumbersome to them. But the question should be – what is the morally right choice? It would seem to me that One Nation Under God would consult God and then make the choice. Sadly, such is not the direction in which choices are made today.

Where’s the lighthouse? I fear that the many within the lighthouse have reduced the abortion debate to a matter of repealing Roe vs. Wade. While it is true that modern advocates of abortion on demand appeal to Roe as a legal matter, Solomon would have One nation Under God consult God and then choose, as a moral matter.

In one of my ministries in the Midwest, I learned, after the fact that a young woman in the congregation had gone off to have an abortion. In the thinking of the family, the young lady was not ready for motherhood and the parents weren’t especially prepared to be grandparents. At the time it seemed to me, and it still does seem to me, that this decision to terminate a human life was made largely for reasons of self-interest. Self-interest is a direction in life that ruins life. In the case of abortion, I fail to see just how repeal of Roe vs. Wade will change self-interest as a direction in life.

4 Ibid.5 Ibid.6 Ibid., 46.

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Rather, the lighthouse must declare that One Nation Under God consults God and then makes the choice; in this, we require a change in direction.

The character that defiles us. According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, One Nation Under God is intent on discarding the character that defiles. This is the gist of these words in 7:14 – if My people will abandon their wicked ways. In God We Trust should signal a jealous guardianship of moral character. Solomon knew full well that times would come in the journey of One Nation Under God when that nation would have to abandon its wicked ways.

Surely, no one in this room would doubt for a moment that this nation has been in moral decline for decades. As things now stand, the vulgarities of pop culture, the banalities of what passes for celebrity, our national obsession with sexual degeneration, the tolerance of same sex unions, the mania for human control over other humans, our unbridled greed, and the shameless lust for power, all of this and more require abandoning wicked ways

In the language of the Hebrew Bible, the verb – abandon – is term that paints a picture of one who is walking in one direction and then makes a 180-degree turn in the opposite direction. In other words, abandoning wicked ways is Hebrew-speak for conversion of the character that is defiling us.

I will not tarry over just what these wicked ways are; we know them all too well: [1] there’s intentionally planning evil; [2] there’s the godless atheism and agnosticism that defies God; [3] there are those who traffic in unfair treatment of others for their own purposes; [4] there are those who knowing do the wrong thing with giving a care one way or the other.

So, where’s the lighthouse? As Pastor Paul very correctly pointed out last Memorial Day, we don’t speak so much about sin anymore. Well, mores the pity.

So, here’s the problem – we have the wrong influences controlling us, the wrong loyalties that commit us, short-sided prayers that consume us, a direction that ruins us, and a national character that defiles us. What does One Nation Under God do?

2 Chronicles 7:14 – The Fix

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, the Chronicler provides us with the only fix that will mend what is undoing our country. He writes – I [Yahweh] will heal their country. There comes a time in the history of One Nation Under God when only God can directly correct what ravages a country. That time is now; that corrective is healing.

The lighthouse must get this right, since the lighthouse is responsible for the safety and well being of others. The lighthouse must not equate sloganeering – We are One Nation Under God – with the substance of what those words mean in this hour. In God We Trust commits us to listening and cooperating with Yahweh in healing our nation.

In order to understand what this healing implies for a nation, we need to set back and appreciate what happened to Solomon’s nation.

Having recognized all of the things that needed to be fixed, the promised healing should have come, but it never did. The nation of Israel should have been preserved, should have been restored, and should have been made whole again, but the historical fact of the matter is – it never was.

There is something going on with 1 & 2 Chronicles that it is absolutely vital to understand. To begin with, and this is crucial, 1 & 2 Chronicles are the last books in the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament does not end with Malachi; the Old Testament ends with 1 & 2 Chronicles. The English Bible reflects the order of the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible.

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To understand the spiritual import of the position of Chronicles, we need to look at where 1 Chronicles begins and then where 2 Chronicles ends. 1 Chronicles begins with a reference to Adam, of the Garden of Eden fame. The last verse of the last chapter of 2 Chronicles ends with a reference to Cyrus, of the Exile of Israel fame. The upshot is that the last books of the Hebrew Bible begin with Adam and end with Cyrus. The net effect is that the Hebrew Bible ends by calling attention to the original hope for the people of God and then the ultimate failure of the people of God. As a matter of historical record, by the time 2 Chronicles was written, the nation of Israel, as a political entity did not exist at all. So, just where is the hope of healing?

It is clear, from the way Chronicles ends that the people were not up to the task of healing their country. It is just as clear that the Chronicler had something very potent in mind. There is a gift wrapped up in the Hebrew word – healing.

The stunning thing is that this very same verb is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible; the passage is familiar to all –

He was wounded because of our sins; He was crushed because of our iniquities;He bore the punishment that made us whole, so that, by His suffering, we are healed [Is 53:5]

What the Chronicler wishes to tell us today is this – the road to healing the moral devastation in our nation today goes through Calvary. The road does not go through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or through Capitol Hill, or through the Supreme Court, or through Raleigh; the road to healing our moral sickness goes through Calvary.

Where’s the lighthouse? It is time to put away childish things. If I am any judge of it, we are living in the last days, and the hour grows short. The lighthouse must be fixated on first things – we must be men and women of the Cross. To be One Nation Under God, this side of Calvary, must surely mean to be One Nation Under the Cross as well!

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one nation under god: a reflection on 2 chronicles 7:14

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