Word of Encouragement (02/20/2025)
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. (2 Chron. 7:12–16)
God gives His assurance to answer the prayers of the Jews if they seek God and turn from their sinful ways: “...then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Yesterday, we focused on God's hearing from heaven. Today, we will reflect on the content of His assurance—namely, that He will forgive their sins and heal their land.
How great and foundational this assurance is! This assurance is not merely about forgiveness. If a friend stays with you even in the worst possible situation, you know that he will stay with you in all others. If a holy God is willing to grant forgiveness in answer to the prayer of His sinful people, who deserve His wrath and punishment, how much more willing He must be to answer other types of requests? That we can confess our sins before God without the fear of condemnation is an amazing blessing—not only for the assurance that He will forgive us for the sake of His Son but also that He will bless us in all other ways: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:32)?
God also assured the Jews that He would heal their land, not just forgive their sins. The Bible affirms a close connection between man and his environment. When Adam sinned, not only was he punished by God but the ground was also cursed (Gen. 3:17). The Lord pointed to this connection before the Israelites entered the promised land: “You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Num. 35:33). Here, the Lord was speaking of the sin of murder. But the land could be defiled by other sins (Deut. 24:4, for example). This was one of the reasons that the Canaanites had to be devoted to destruction: because they were not given the blessing of atoning sacrifice, the land had to be cleansed by their blood.
Because of this connection, our salvation will include the renewal of the cosmos: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:20-21).
So then, we should be good stewards of our environment. The best way to do so is not to defile it with our sins. But more importantly, if God is willing to “heal the land,” surely He is willing to heal our families, churches, and our relationships, which are other types of our environment!