The Chambers of Your Heart

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What is gathering in your heart?

Israel completed the job of rebuilding Jerusalem's wall.  The enemy could now be kept at bay because of their obedience to both God and His leader, Nehemiah.  Now the city was being turned from a broken down ghost town into the powerful city God intended it to be.  By a lottery men were chosen to live in Jerusalem.  Others would establish their home there because they were the leaders.  Still others simply chose to move their families there to be a part of this new and exciting plan of God.  But it didn't take very long for sin to return to the priesthood, and its slippery slope, that had landed their city in ruin became a disaster waiting to happen.  Little by little the disobedience of one priest of God began to clutter the temple of God with junk that was displeasing to Him.

While the newly rebuilt city was in its infancy, one of the priests (named Eliashib), who was over the chambers of the new temple,  thought it would be good idea to set aside a very large room for one of his relatives--Tobiah.  This Tobiah had been one of the men who constantly discouraged the men of Israel as they rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem.  The room Eliashib reserved for this vile man had formerly been used as a storage area for the temple.  It stored the grain offerings, the frankincense and utensils used for worship at the altar of incense, the tithes of grain, wine, oil, and the contributions that were reserved for the priests use.

Nehemiah had returned to service to the King of Persia when this sin took place, but when he returned to Jerusalem to check up on the city, he found this room that the priest had set aside for Tobiah.  Not only was Nehemiah incensed over the sin, he was appalled to learn that it was a priest who had broken such a strong and severe commandment of God.  You see, Tobiah was an Ammonite, and God had strongly forbid Israel to EVER allow an Ammorite or a Moabite to enter into the house of God!  And Eliashib, being a priest, would certainly have known he was breaking God's law! 

So displeased was Nehemiah that he entered the room set aside for Tobiah, and he threw out everything in it.  Next, he gave an order for the room to be cleansed of its unholiness.  Only then did Nehemiah call for the utensils and the offerings for worship to be replaced in the room.  Nehemiah also expelled Tobiah, and he was never again allowed into the temple of God.  

Once again we must bring this story into our 21st century lives, but the correlation is clear.  Our hearts are the temple of God.  So often we enter into a relationship with God, and we quickly rebuild the protective walls around our hearts to prevent the enemy from breaking in.  But once we do, little by little, we allow sin to reside within the walls, within its chambers.  The "little bit of sin" gathers more sin with it until we have a chamber that looks like the dirty, messy bedroom of a teenager!  Our true worship of God (the daily reading and study of our daily bread--the grain, our thankfulness for the precious wine of Christ's blood sacrifice, and our walking in the oil of the Spirit) is tossed aside to make room for the sin we desire so much more.

God is calling us all to spiritually clean out the chambers of our heart, and to put them in holy order!   Today, ask yourself what sins are cluttering your heart.  What is preventing you from the worship that God desires from you?  What is He displeased with in your life?  What have you allowed to creep into your life, bit by sinful bit? 

Don't just peek in the room and take an assessment.  God is calling you boldly walk into that room, bag up the trash, put things in their proper place, and then scrub it down until it is clean and pleasing to Him.  Will you be a Nehemiah today and cleanse the chambers of your heart?  Or will you be guilty of the same sin as the Priest Eliashib? Remember, as a believer you are of the royal priesthood of Christ.  Will you be content to allow the stench of dirty, rotten sin dwell in the same place the Holy Spirit calls His home?