A God Who Listens (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 5 - 7)

Do you ever feel like your prayers are too small for God? Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 8 shows He welcomes every request with care.

A God Who Listens (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 5 - 7)

1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 5 - 7

Today's Scripture Passage

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Have you felt God is too grand to hear your prayers?

Many people wrestle with this question and struggle to bring basic needs to God out of fear they’re being too presumptuous. But in 1 Kings 8, we see this powerful prayer from Solomon to God. After work on the temple is complete, 1 Kings 8:10-11 says, 10  “When the priests came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the Lord’s temple, 11 and because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple.”

From there, Solomon offers a powerful prayer to God. Tony Merida notes, “The prayer Solomon offers is important to understanding Kings. It’s basically a summary of every prayer that would be prayed in the temple in the future (Spurgeon, “Solomon’s Plea”), organized with seven petitions, perhaps to signify perfection.”[1] These petitions can be found starting in verse 31.

August Konkel notes that these “seven petitions are intended to be representative of any future situation that the people of the covenant might encounter. These include a plea for justice (vv. 31–32), being struck by enemies (vv. 33–34), drought (vv. 35–36), famine and plague (vv. 37–40), mercy for the foreigner (vv. 41–43), war (vv. 44–45), and exile (vv. 46–53).”[2] However, the key to this prayer is that Solomon’s petitions are anchored in the reality of who God is. He recognizes God is transcendent, but he still cares for the concerns of his creation.

As John Goldingay writes, “Talking about the temple as a place where God will live could imply that the Israelites had unsophisticated ideas about God, but Solomon himself later makes explicit his awareness that the idea of God’s dwelling in a house on earth is silly.”[3] After asking God to confirm the promise that started with David, Solomon says:

27 But will God indeed live on earth?
Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you,
much less this temple I have built.
28 Listen to your servant’s prayer and his petition,
Lord my God,
so that you may hear the cry and the prayer
that your servant prays before you today,

This gives us some incredible imagery. God is supreme above all creation, yet unlike deists such as Benjamin Franklin believed, he chooses to make his presence known in a relatable manner to humanity. He is all-powerful, yet he is all-caring. The same holds true today.