The Cross of Christ: Prayer for Our Nation

It's time to pray. Pray for our country. Pray for our nation. There was a short prayer that impacted me greatly in these recent days:

“O God, forgive our country. The immorality and chaos are offenses to You, the righteous God. We ask You to remember the cross on which Your Son, our Lord Jesus, died.”

The prayer was in the outline of a recent Christian conference that I virtually attended and was actually a quote from the first chapter of a book entitled "The Satanic Chaos in the Old Creation and the Divine Economy for the New Creation" by Witness Lee. It was based on Genesis 8:20-22 when Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings to please God concerning the keeping of the earth, which had just passed through the deluge, God's judgment.

The significance of the altar and the burnt offerings is for us to come to the cross (signified by the altar) and offer Christ (signified by the offerings) to God. In the context of Noah's building an altar and offering burnt sacrifices to please God and knowing God's response after this gesture in Genesis 8:21-22, I would like to summarize the interpretation of this typology. 

O God, forgive our country. The immorality and chaos are offenses to You, the righteous God. We ask You to remember the cross on which Your Son, our Lord Jesus, died.

Genesis 8:21-22 clearly describe this account, "And Noah built an altar to Jehovah and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the satisfying fragrance; and Jehovah said in His heart, I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I ever again smite everything living as I have done. Throughout all the days that earth remains, / Seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, / And summer and winter, and day and night / Shall not cease."

In summary, I am simply convinced that the only One whom God has found His delight in is His Son, Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:17). The only One who can appease and satisfy God is Christ. Christ is the reality of that sacrifice laid on the altar to appease God and fulfill God's righteous requirement. When Christ died on the cross, this type was fulfilled. He has died once for all because He is also God and therefore, His perfect redemption is eternally effective. 

Just imagine the magnitude of the impact of Noah's building the altar and sacrificing the burnt offerings to God. God was satisfied and said in His heart that He would never again curse the ground on account of man and smite everything living as He had done in the deluge. He promised that the earth would be kept in its systems: seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night. Noah's acts saved the earth at that time.

The only One who can appease and satisfy God is Christ.

Today campaigns to save the earth and to save our country proliferate. But have you thought to make motion toward God, to come to the cross, to pray to save?

O God, forgive our country. The immorality and chaos are offenses to You, the righteous God. We ask You to remember the cross on which Your Son, our Lord Jesus, died.

O God, Your Son has died for this country, for this people. He has redeemed us from all the negative things. Based on Your Christ, be propitiated to us, O God. We repent for our iniquities and for our own struggles to bring forth another solution. We offer only Christ to You, the Christ in whom You have found Your delight. We hide in Him.

Based on Your Christ, be propitiated to us, O God.

Please consider Daniel 9:4-19. Daniel prayed for his people who were in captivity:

"And I prayed to Jehovah my God and confessed; and I said, Ah, Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness with those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned and have committed iniquity, and we have acted wickedly and rebelled, to the point of even turning away from Your commandments and from Your judgments.

And we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our chief men, and our fathers, as well as to all the people of the land.

To You, Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, shamefacedness, as it is this day, that is, to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far off in all the lands to which You have driven them because of their trespass by which they have trespassed against You.

O Jehovah, to us belongs shamefacedness, to our kings, our chief men, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You.

To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him; and we have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah our God, to walk in His instruction, which He set before us through the hand of His servants the prophets.

Indeed, all Israel has transgressed Your law, to the point of even turning away so as not to obey Your voice; thus the curse has been poured out upon us, the very oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him.

And He has confirmed His words which He spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, by bringing upon us great ill; for under all heaven there has not been done anything like that which has been done in Jerusalem.

As it is written in the law of Moses, all this ill has come upon us, yet we have not entreated the favor of Jehovah our God by turning from our iniquities and attending to Your truth.

Therefore Jehovah has been vigilant with the ill and has brought it upon us, for Jehovah our God is righteous in all the deeds that He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice.

And now, O Lord our God, who have brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made for Yourself a name, as it is this day, we have sinned, we have been wicked.

O Lord, in accordance with all the manifestations of Your righteousness, may Your anger and Your wrath be turned away, I pray, from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us.

And now hear, O our God, the prayer of Your servant and his supplications, and cause Your face to shine upon Your sanctuary that has been desolated, for the Lord’s sake.

O my God, incline Your ear and hear; open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city that is called by Your name; for we are not presenting our supplications before You based upon any righteous doings that we have done, but based upon Your great compassion.

O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! Do not delay, for Your own sake, O my God; for Your city and Your people are called by Your own name."