Plague of the Heart
There was something I didn’t have the time to point out last
Sunday, and it’s related to what God will say in 2 Chronicles 7:12-13. Therefore,
I want to point it out here so I can be specific and then not need to take the
time to deal with it this coming Sunday. It has to do with one of the eight scenarios
in Solomon’s prayer (2 Chronicles 6:20-39). It’s a wordplay (in the Hebrew) in 2 Chronicles 6:28-29,
and it’s rather surprising. I’ll highlight the words so you can pick up what
I’m referring to:
[28] “If there is famine in
the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar,
if their enemies besiege them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever
sickness there is, [29] whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by
all your people Israel, each knowing his own affliction and his own sorrow and stretching
out his hands toward this house, [30] then hear from heaven your dwelling place
and forgive and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways,
for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind, [31] that they
may fear you and walk in your ways all the days that they live in the land that
you gave to our fathers.”
The Hebrew word in both highlighted places is nega’.
There’s the external nega’ (plague) that comes on God’s people from the
outside. But, in some way, that external affliction and plague is a picture of
an internal affliction and plague, “knowing his own nega’ … and
stretching out his hands toward this place…”
It may bother us, but the point Solomon is making is that our
external circumstances – including the catastrophes, crises, cataclysms, and
conflagrations – should make us sensitive to our own hearts. To the
deprivations and wastelands of our own inner being that may come about because
of sorrow or allowing stress to dictate our existence or sins that turn us into
hollowed out souls.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes external circumstances
and conditions are a good picture of our internal experiences and inner thought-world?
This is why David, for example, describes his interior longing as if he was a
lost man in a desert with no oasis in sight, “O God, you are my God;
earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a
dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). I’m sure David
saw some of those wastelands down in the Negev (southern Israel), and their
picture was etched into his mind.
In similar ways we often use banking terms as illustrative of
the quality of someone’s moral life, such as “He’s bankrupted his marriage/life,”
or “he’s been sold short,” and so forth. Or I remember my dad telling me about
some folks who went to church on Sunday, because “they’ve been sowing their
oats all week, and now are praying for a crop failure.” Coming from rural
Oklahoma in the 1950’s, that picture was meaningful to him. And, of course, if
you look back at the first chapter of my book “Our Heads on Straight” you can’t
miss the connection between the stormy sea Jesus calmed in Mark 4:35-41 and the
stormy soul Jesus rescued in Mark 5:1-20.
The point I am making is that creation, and the natural or manmade catastrophes in creation, can be – and at times are meant to be – God’s way of waking us up to our own inner catastrophes and spoilage, or internal barrenness and wilderness. Our task is to allow them to show us our hearts so that we can come to the One who knows “the hearts of the children of mankind” and is open to forgive us and restore us, as either may be needed (God’s rigor is meant to bring us into God’s restoration).
Pastor
Mike
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