the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 2 of 5
2 Chronicles 6:12-21; 2 Chronicles 6:40-42
It has been noticed that the brazen platform, from which the king speaks to the LORD, has exactly the same dimensions as the brazen altar in the wilderness (v. 13; Exodus 27:1). This is a beautiful and significant point: it is on the basis of the sacrifice which He accomplished and which was accepted by God, that Christ takes up His position as priest and advocate for His own with the Father, with the result that "if we confess our sins," God is "faithful and just" to forgive them. Faithful and just, because with Jesus having atoned for them on the cross (of which the altar speaks to us), God cannot ask us to account for them a second time.
Notice that it does not say: if we ask for forgiveness, because the child of God is already forgiven, but "if we confess". The same passage goes on to assure us: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 1:9; 1 John 2:1-2).
After vv. 22-39, which hardly differ from 1 Kings 8:31-53, Solomon ends his prayer by using the words of Psalms 132:8-10. "Hear thou from the heavens . . . listen in heaven!" Christians, who know the loving will of the Lord, can say from experience: "We know that he hears us" (1 John 5:15).
