Take your medicine!
When I had a sore throat as a
child my grandmother wound mix a spoon full of kerosene and honey and make me
swallow it. The kerosene burned my throat as it killed the germs. The honey
didn’t make the concoction palatable; it only held the kerosene in place while
it worked.
As a child my first instinct
was to never complain about a sore throat again. I didn’t like the medicine and
would rather suffer than be healed. I can still hear my grandmother’s voice
when she knew I had a sore throat because I was avoiding her. “Don’t make me
chase you!” If I made her chase me, I’d get more than the medicine.
Over time the practice of
giving kerosene and honey as a home remedy for sore throats gave way to modern
medicines. These modern day wonders don’t really kill anything; they only treat
the symptoms and taste good.
2 Timothy
Matthew
Hebrews
People are fine with the
sword of the spirit in spiritual warfare as described in Ephesians 6:17
whenever they think of it being used on the enemy, to fend off Satan, to win a
position or cast out demons. Should that same word be used to separate them
from their sins, then it becomes another matter. No one enjoys being corrected.
No one likes to give up what gives them pleasure. No one likes to fast.
Looking at Hebrews
The soul and spirit are not
one. The soul is comprised of the mind will and emotions of a person. The soul
is flesh, subject to error and subject to sin. The spirit is not, is of God and
is perfect in His knowledge of God’s will. We create thought, we determine
courses of actions, and we are passionate about our beliefs. Are the mind, will
and emotions in line with the will of God? Are we walking in the spirit or in
the flesh? There is no way to tell except through the word itself. The Holy
Spirit does not work independently from the word of God and the word of God
will affirm that you are hearing the Holy Spirit. It is through the word of God
that we “test the spirits”.
The joints and marrow are
divided. Joints speak to the actions we take, movement and the marrow is the
source of blood, Jesus Christ. What we do is not who we are. A difficult
scripture to comprehend is found in Romans 7, where Paul describes his great
frustrations, “O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve
the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” If I paraphrased this
verse, it would be to say, I am powerless to save myself by anything I do. I
have to trust in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ to save me.
Finally the word is a discerner
of thoughts and the intent of the heart. Perhaps the easiest to understand for whom
among us have not had our earnest efforts go astray and end up doing harm when
good was intended? Words of encouragement return by anger perhaps, or a good
deed met with scorn or rebuke. It is easy to see yourself in this, but it also
has another usage. What if your good works were done with a wrong heart
attitude? What if rather than truly meeting a need we only did good works for
self recognition, ease your conscience, to curry favor, to build a reputation,
or to make someone feel indebted? We can sit and rationalize our actions but it
is the word of God which convicts your heart for what lies beneath. This may be
one of the more difficult aspects of Christian life. Many people are goal
oriented. They set goals and plan out their days to achieve those goals only to
discover God’s will lay elsewhere.
One of the responsibilities
of the Holy Spirit is to clean house, to make a proper dwelling place for the
Living God. He exposes the uttermost darkness within your heart with Truth and
Light. God loves us too much to leave us in our previous state. We are
continually being conformed to the image of His Son. Crucifying the flesh is
part of the process and it isn’t pleasant to the flesh. Yet sin must be exposed
and dealt with swiftly and effectively. The word of God is that treatment. If
you avoid taking your medicine, just as my grandmother would chase me down and
apply medicine with a firm hand, God will chasten you and you will discover it
is less painful to take daily doses of preventative medicine rather than
allowing yourselves to become sick.
The last bit of advice is
related to my earlier reference to modern medicines. They taste good, are easy
to take, treat symptoms but don’t kill anything.
2 Timothy 4
1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his
kingdom;
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of
season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves
teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
These days are here and many
churches are falling away from the Truth. Churches hire preachers who tell them
what they want to hear, what pleases them, makes them comfortable in their sin,
allows them to continue on with vain imaginations, void of truth, void of
spirituality and racing headfast away from the One True God. They will not
suffer one who enters with the Sword of the Spirit, for He is offensive to
their sensibilities and spirit of tolerance.