Sep. 20, 2020

Return With All Your Heart!

 Primary Text:  Joel 2:12-18                            September 19 & 20, 2020

 Last Week’s Teaching:

 1)  The First Temple

2 Chronicles 7:1-2:   When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple.   The priests could not enter the temple of the LORD because the glory of the LORD filled it.  

DQ 1) What was the significance of the temple to Israel?  

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2)  Divine Warning & Restoration

 2 Chronicles 7:13-14:  "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

 DQ 2) Explain 2 Chronicles 7:13.

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 3)  Conditional Monarchy

 2 Chronicles 7:17-20:  "As for you, if you walk before me as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a man to rule over Israel.'  But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name." 

 DQ 3) Did Solomon heed God’s warnings to him?  What was the result of his actions?

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This Week’s Teaching:

 1)  Rend Your Heart

 Joel 2:12-13:  'Even now,' declares the LORD, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.'  Rend your heart and not your garments.

DQ 1) What does it mean to rend your heart?

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2)  Abounding in Love

 Joel 2:13-14:  Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.  Who knows?  He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing-- grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

Exodus 34:5-7:  Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.  And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." 

DQ 2) Identify other scriptures that speak of God being slow to anger, abounding in love, and willing to forgive.

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 3)  A Holy Fast

 Joel 2:15-18:  Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.  Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast.  Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber.  Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar.  Let them say, 'Spare your people, O LORD.  Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations.  Why should they say among the peoples, ''Where is their God?''  Then the LORD will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people. 

DQ 3) What is the importance of fasting?  Why did Jesus fast?

DQ 4) How can fasting draw us closer to Christ?

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 4)  Turn and Return

 Zechariah 1:1-4:  In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo: "The LORD was very angry with your forefathers.  Therefore tell the people: This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Return to me,' declares the LORD Almighty, 'and I will return to you,' says the LORD Almighty.  Do not be like your forefathers, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.'  But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the LORD.

Malachi 3:6-7:  "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.  Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them.  Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.

 DQ 5) Why do humans not heed spiritual warnings?

DQ 6) Are there things from which you need to repent and return to God?

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