Solomon asks the Lord to hear his repentant prayers and the repentant prayers of the people because he knows both he and they will sin. He knows they will sin because everyone sins. He also asks the Lord to judge the unrepentant guilty, for there is a difference between the actions of the person who loves the Lord, makes mistakes, but is sorry for them and the person who has rejected God and is living in deliberate disobedience to Him. "When anyone wrongs their neighbor and is required to take an oath and they come and swear the oath before Your altar in this temple, then hear from heaven and act. Judge between Your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing down on their heads what they have done, and vindicating the innocent by treating them in accordance with their innocence." (1 Kings 8:31-32, 2 Chronicles 6:22-23)
In the example above, a person has done some sort of harm to his neighbor and is so unrepentant of this wrong that he's willing to swear an oath at the Lord's house in the Lord's name that he did no wrong. I'm assuming the innocent party also took an oath that he's telling the truth. A human judge might not be able to tell which person is lying under oath but the Lord knows. Solomon asks the Lord to reveal the guilty party so the case can be settled fairly. This case is an example of sin on a personal level.
The next case is an example of sin on a national level. Suppose a large number of the people fall away from a close relationship with the Lord and begin to live in ways that are contrary to His laws? We saw that type of thing happening after the death of Joshua and his generation, also this type of thing happened near the end of the era of the judges; Solomon knows it could happen again. What will be the result of a widescale forsaking of the Lord? Defeat---defeat in battle, invasion by enemies, being taken as captives to enemy lands. "When Your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against You, and when they turn back to You and give praise to Your name, praying and making supplication to You in this temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people and bring them back to the land You gave their ancestors." (1 Kings 8:33-34, 2 Chronicles 6:24-25)
We have already seen some instances in which the Lord allowed Israel to be defeated in battle due to sin in the people's hearts. One example is the defeat of the Israelite army at Ai in Joshua 7. The Lord allowed the Israelites to be routed by the men of Ai because some of the men of Israel's army had taken for themselves the plunder that was to be devoted to the Lord. It wasn't until that sin was dealt with that Joshua and his army were able to go back and mount a successful attack on the city.
Another example that comes to mind is that when the generation that came into the promised land with Joshua died out, the new generation began to take on a more casual attitude toward God. They had not seen the mighty things God had done in the days of Joshua. They had not witnessed the victories in battle that God gave the Israelites while they were moving into the promised land. The new generation had been born into easier, more comfortable circumstances that caused them not to cling as tightly to the Lord as their ancestors had. Instead they began adopting some of the religious practices of the tribes of Canaan, causing the Lord to discipline them by allowing enemies to rise up against them to defeat them in battle in Judges 2. What we must keep in mind is that the Lord didn't bring this discipline to destroy the people but to correct their wrong behavior. The discipline was intended to make them think, "Why is this happening to us? Why is our generation experiencing such difficulties? Joshua and the men who entered the promised land with him had success in almost everything they did, with the exception of the first battle against Ai. Why are we not getting the same results? What did they do that we aren't doing?" And they were intended to conclude, "Joshua and his men were faithful to the Lord. That's why they had success. We have not been faithful to the Lord. That's why we have had defeat."
The Lord may choose a method other than military defeat to discipline sin in instances when other methods will be more effective. He might allow crop failures or plague. "When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because Your people have sinned against You, and when they pray toward this place and give praise to Your name and turn from their sin because You have afflicted them, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your servants, Your people Israel. Teach them the right way to live, and send rain on the land You gave Your people for an inheritance. When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when an enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come, and when a prayer or plea is made by anyone among Your people Israel---being aware of the afflictions of their own hearts, and spreading out their hands toward this temple---then hear from heaven, Your dwelling place. Forgive and act; deal with everyone according to all they do since You know their hearts (for You alone know every human heart), so that they will fear You all the time they live in the land You gave our ancestors." (1 Kings 8:35-40, 2 Chronicles 6:26-31)
The people are to pray toward the house of the Lord, not because He lives in the temple (He doesn't), but because the temple represents His dwelling place in heaven. Solomon clearly demonstrates his belief that the Lord resides in the Most Holy Place in heaven, not in the Most Holy Place in the temple on earth. Some of the idolatrous cultures of Solomon's day believed their false deities came down to live within the temples erected in their honor but Solomon knows the Lord is greater than all creation. The Lord cannot be contained in an earthly dwelling. He cannot be put "in a box" to use a modern saying. He has existed eternally and is not constrained by time and space as we are. He created the universe and everything in it; therefore He is not part of the universe. He existed before it was created and, should the universe be destroyed, He still would remain. I don't know what lies outside of our universe; the observable space of of the universe itself is believed to be 93,000,000,000 light years in diameter, which is a number the human mind can scarcely contemplate. But whatever is out there I believe it's far larger than 93,000,000,000 light years across. Solomon thought so too, for he said to the Lord earlier in our chapter, "The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain You!" The universe is too small for Him, in other words. I don't know what this means, for my human mind is incapable of really understanding eternity or infinite space, but I like to picture the Lord as being so great and so powerful that our entire universe fits into His hand like a snow globe fits into a human hand.
Keeping in mind that the Lord is so great, so eternal, so unfathomably holy, so infinitely wise, how can we not want to serve Him? How can we feel comfortable about sinning against Him? As frail human beings we will fall prey to weakness and sin from time to time but if we love the Lord we should never feel at ease with sin in our lives. If we begin to feel at ease He must, like any good father, take steps to correct the behavior with which we are harming ourselves. The correction is intended not to destroy us but to get us back on track, just as the correction Solomon speaks of in today's passage was intended not to destroy his people but to correct wrong behavior. So whenever hardship comes into our lives, the first thing we must ask is, "Have I done something to bring this on myself? Am I living in sin against my Lord?" The sooner we ask this important question, and the sooner we repent of any sin the Lord reveals to us, the sooner we can get back on track and the sooner our difficult circumstances may clear up.
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