God’s forgiveness

The house of God

After Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24), mankind no longer experienced being in the presence of the LORD as they had before. It says in Genesis 3:8 that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and, “the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” It wasn’t until hundreds of years later that Jacob stumbled upon a certain place on his way to Haran that access into God’s presence was restored. It states in Genesis 28:11 that after he arrived, Jacob took one of the stones of the place, put it under his head, and fell asleep. Genesis 28:12-17 goes on to say:

And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

Jacob believed that he had discovered an opening, a gate or door into the house of God. Jacob’s discovery created in him a desire to commune with God and to serve him (note on Genesis 28:10-22). In the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head, “and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on it,” a sign that it was consecrated to God, and Jacob promised that if God returned him to his father’s house in peace, “then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house” (Genesis 28:18-22).

King David seemed to be the first person to realize that Jacob’s promise was never carried out. First Chronicles 17:1-6 states, “Now when David lived in his house, David said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Behold, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of the covenant of the LORD is under a tent.’ But the same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, ‘Go and tell my servant David, “Thus says the LORD: it is not you who will build me a house to dwell in. For I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up Israel to this day, but I have gone from tent to tent and from dwelling to dwelling. In all places where I have moved with all Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom a commanded to shepherd my people, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”’” “God did not allow David to build the temple because he was a man of war (1 Chronicles 22:8; 28:3), but he was permitted to accumulate a large part of the materials needed for its construction (1 Chronicles 22:2-4, 14-16) to facilitate its completion by his son Solomon. Solomon was approved by God because he would be ‘a man of rest’ (1 Chronicles 22:9)” (note on 1 Chronicles 17:4). After all the work that Solomon did for the house of God was finished, the ark of the covenant was brought into the temple (2 Chronicles 5:7) and, “the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God” (2 Chronicles 5:13-14).

The house of God was a permanent structure in Jerusalem until the people of Judah were taken into captivity by King Nebuchadnezzar. The destruction of God’s house was the result of the people of Judah’s unfaithfulness. It says in 2 Chronicles 36:14-19:

All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations. And they polluted the house of the Lord that he had made holy in Jerusalem.

The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy.

Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels.

God said that messengers had been sent persistently to the people of Judah to warn them, “because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets” (2 Chronicles 36:15). The destruction of the house of God was intended to prepare the people for the coming of God’s Messiah. The prophet Jeremiah proclaimed, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).

Jeremiah prophesied that there would be seventy years of captivity (Jeremiah 25:11). God said, “Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the LORD, making the land an everlasting waste” (Jeremiah 25:12). God went on to say that the clans of Israel would once again be his people and he would turn their mourning into joy (Jeremiah 31:1). Jeremiah proclaimed:

Thus says the Lord:
“The people who survived the sword
    found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest,
    the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
    therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Again I will build you, and you shall be built,
    O virgin Israel!
Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines
    and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers…

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
    and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy;
    I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
I will feast the soul of the priests with abundance,
    and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness,
declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:2-4, 13-14)

God said that he loved his people with an everlasting love. The Hebrew word that is translated everlasting, ʿolam (o-lawmˊ) is properly translated as “concealed, i.e. the vanishing point; (generally) time out of mind (past or future), i.e. (practical) eternity” (H5769). In other words, there is no end to God’s love, God’s love is always present.

The book of 2 Chronicles ends with a proclamation by Cyrus king of Persia stating that God had charged him to build him a house at Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:23). The book of Ezra picks up where 2 Chronicles leaves off and begins with a restatement of Cyrus’ proclamation. Ezra 1:2-4 states:

“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

Cyrus indicated that the people were free to go back to Judah and rebuild the house of God. It says in Ezra 2:64 that “the whole assembly together was 42,300.” “While there may have been many groups of exiles that returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, Scripture speaks only of three The first group returned in 536 BC under the leadership of Zerubbabel, the second in 457 BC under Ezra, and the third in 444 BC under Nehemiah…Despite the fact that all those who desired to return to Jerusalem were free to do so, a great number of Jews chose to remain in Babylon” (Introduction to Ezra).

“Haggai is the first of the prophets who spoke to the exiles after they had returned to Palestine…Haggai ministered in 520 BC between the months of August and December. He delivered four messages during that time…From the comments in verse three of chapter 2, it seems likely that Haggai was born before Solomon’s Temple was destroyed in 586 BC” (Introduction to Haggai). Haggai 2:3-9 states:

‘”Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.’”

God said the latter glory of his house would be greater than the former. Jesus expounded on this truth when he told the Pharisees who accused his disciples of breaking the Sabbath, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:6-8).

Jesus’ explanation of the purpose of the temple and why he was greater than the temple had to do with Jacob’s intention when he vowed to make the stone that he had set up as a pillar the house of God (Genesis 28:22). Jacob wanted to have a place where he could commune with God. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, communion with God wasn’t possible until Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. The writer of Hebrews tells us that gifts and sacrifices were offered in the temple that could not perfect the conscience of the worshipper, “but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body, imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once and for all into the holy places, not be means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption…Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 9:9-12; 10:19-22).

On one occasion, Jesus entered the temple and expressed his disdain for what was going on there. It says in John 2:15 that Jesus made a whip of cords and drove out those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changes sitting there. John tells us:

And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:16-22)

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead showed that God had accepted his sacrifice for sin on our behalf and that communion with him was possible again. Paul talked about the significance of Jesus’ resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians. Summarizing his previous statements on the topic, Paul declared, “I tell you this brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable…For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:50-53).

Jacob experienced a moment of immortality when he wrestled with God in order to get his blessing (Genesis 32:22-27). During this encounter, God told Jacob, “You name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28). Afterward, Jacob realized the significance of what had just happened to him, and said, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared” (Genesis 32:30, NLT). Jacob knew that because of his sin, it was impossible for him to be in God’s presence and still be alive. The fact that he was still alive meant that Jacob’s sins had been forgiven. Jacob received God’s forgiveness by faith, the same way that Abraham and Isaac did, and the same way that all of us do. Jacob drew near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith; he entered into God’s presence and received the gift of eternal life. It’s possible at this point that Jacob understood that he didn’t need to build a physical structure in order for him to commune with God. In answer to the question, when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus told the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21, KJV).

If

Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the house of God revealed his “great familiarity with and reverence for the warnings of God, which were given to all Israel through Moses (see Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28)” (note on 2 Chronicles 6:14-42). Solomon’s primary petition in this prayer was that God would listen and forgive them when his people cried out to him for help. Solomon mentioned specific circumstances that would require God’s forgiveness: if a man sins against his neighbor (2 Chronicles 6:22); if the people were defeated by their enemy (2 Chronicles 6:24); if there was famine in the land (2 Chronicles 6:26); if they sinned against God (2 Chronicles 6:36). Each time, Solomon asked that God would hear from heaven and forgive his people who had sinned against him (2 Chronicles 6:39). Afterward, “the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven so that there is no rain, or command locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:12-14). “This is a key Old Testament passage that presents the conditions of true repentance: humbling oneself, praying, seeking God’s face, and turning from evil” (note on 2 Chronicles 7:12-14). God said if his people truly repented, then he would hear from heaven and forgive their sin.

Humbling ourselves means that we are bringing ourselves into subjection to God. This has to do with being submitted to God’s will, allowing God to have control of our situation and circumstances. An example of humbling oneself is shown in 1 Kings 21:27 where the wicked king Ahab repented of his sin after being confronted by Elijah the prophet. It says in 1 Kings 21:17-29:

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, “Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who is in Samaria; behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. And you shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Have you killed and also taken possession?”’ And you shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: “In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood.”’”

Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring disaster upon you. I will utterly burn you up, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel. And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel the Lord also said, ‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the walls of Jezreel.’ Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat.”

(There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited. He acted very abominably in going after idols, as the Amorites had done, whom the Lord cast out before the people of Israel.)

And when Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went about dejectedly. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days; but in his son’s days I will bring the disaster upon his house.”

It says that “there was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD like Ahab” (1 Kings 21:25), and yet, because he had humbled himself, God said he would not bring disaster in Ahab’s days (1 Kings 21:29). The Hebrew words that are translated dejectedly in 1 Kings 21:27 are translated went softly in the King James Version of the Bible. Another way of describing Ahab’s response to God’s condemnation of his behavior might be that Ahab treaded lightly or exhibited a gentle spirit toward God as a result of God holding him accountable for his sin.

Even though Ahab humbled himself before God, he did not truly repent of his sin. Ahab stopped short of asking God for forgiveness. The second condition of true repentance is praying, or more specifically, asking God to intervene in your situation so that your sin can be forgiven. Psalm 51 is a prayer that King David prayed when Nathan the prophet confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba. David began by asking God to have mercy on him. David prayed, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!” (Psalm 51:1-2). David asked that God would blot out his transgressions and wash him thoroughly from his iniquity. The Hebrew word that is translated wash, kabas (kaw-basˊ) “refers to God’s internal cleansing of the heart, making it white as snow. Jeremiah 4:14, however, showed that God’s people must work to cleanse their hearts and avoid temporal destruction” (H3526). David’s genuine sorrow wasn’t all that was needed for true repentance, David needed his relationship with the LORD to be restored.

Another condition of true repentance is seeking God’s face. This aspect of true repentance has to do with restoring intimacy with God. Moses’ relationship with God is one of the best examples of what it means to have intimacy with God in the Bible. It says in Exodus 33:11, “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” The place where Moses went to speak to the LORD was called the tent of meeting. “Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door” (Exodus 33:7-10). It says in Exodus 33:7 that everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Seeking the LORD requires us to get away from other people and to focus our attention only on God. All the people watched Moses go into the tent of meeting and worshipped God from afar, but only Moses experienced intimacy with God.

The final condition for true repentance may be why so few people actually do it. God told Solomon that he would hear from heaven and forgive the people’s sin if they humbled themselves and prayed, and sought his face, and turned from their wicked ways (2 Chronicles 7:14). The Hebrew word that is translated turned, shuwb (shoob) “is used to describe divine and human reactions, attitudes, and feelings” (H7725). Jeremiah described this kind of turning as washing your heart from evil. Jeremiah stated, “O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil, that you may be saved. How long shall your wicked thoughts lodge within you?” (Jeremiah 4:14). Jeremiah indicated that wicked thoughts can lodge within us, but we are able to dislodge them through an intentional effort of washing our hearts from evil. The Apostle Paul described this process as putting off your old self and putting on the new self. Paul told the Ephesians:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self,which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)

Paul said our old self belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires (Ephesians 4:22). In order to get rid of the old self, we must put on the new self, which Paul indicated was “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). The key to being able to do this is what Paul referred to as being “renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23). This means that we are under the controlling power of the indwelling Holy Spirit who is directing our energies toward the enjoyment of fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Spiritual regeneration involves more than the free act of God’s mercy and power by which he removes the sinner from the kingdom of darkness and places him in the kingdom of light, it is “the gradual conforming of the person to the new spiritual world in which he now lives, the restoration of the divine image. In this process the person is not passive but is a fellow worker with God” (G3824).

God told Solomon that he would hear from heaven and would forgive their sin, if his people would humble themselves, and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways. God contrasted this promise with an alternative that actually did take place. God said, “’But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, “Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, “Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshipped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.”’” The prophet Jeremiah foretold that Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem would result in God fighting against his own people (Jeremiah 21:5) and in his message to the house of David, Jeremiah gave the people a final opportunity to repent of their sin against God. Jeremiah concluded his message to the house of David by stating, “’”And many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbor, “Why has the LORD dealt thus with this great city?” And they will answer, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and worshipped other gods and served them.”’” Weep not for him who is dead, nor grieve for him, but weep bitterly for him who goes away, for he shall return no more to see his native land’” (Jeremiah 22:8-10).