In March 1918, Albert Gitchell, an Army cook at Fort Riley, Kansas, was diagnosed with the flu. Before the year was out, it had spread around the world, killing perhaps as many as 40 million people. This highly contagious virus became a pandemic – a global epidemic.
One physician reported that patients would rapidly show flu-like symptoms, develop the worst type of pneumonia he had ever seen, and then suffocate within hours. Fortunately, the influenza disappeared as mysteriously as it had begun. But doctors remained baffled by its cause and were helpless to find a cure.
Israel also had to deal with a plague, but they knew its cause and asked Moses for a cure. In righteous anger, God had sent serpents whose poisonous bite left a lethal wound. He then told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. All who looked at it were healed (Numbers 21:1-9).
Centuries later, Jesus spoke of this as a symbol of His death on the cross: “Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).
Tags: disease, serpent, sin
Did you know there are slave-making ants that reside in the Amazon rain forest? Hundreds of these ants periodically swarm out of their nest to capture neighboring colonies of weaker ants. After destroying resisting defenders, they carry off cocoons containing the larvae of worker ants. When these “captured children” hatch, they assume that they are part of the family and launch into the tasks they were born to do. They never realize that they are forced-labor victims of the enemy.
Just as these little creatures are captives from the time of their birth, so we humans enter the world enslaved to sin and Satan. We act out what we think is ‘normal’ behavior, but leave a trail of broken debris in our wake. Only by turning to Christ and following His ways can we break free of the slavery of sin.
Joshua 24:15 says, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve”. We are all servants. Our decision, as Joshua pointed out, is not whether we will serve, but whom.
Tags: ants, service, sin, slavery
I hate mudholes. A sheep and a pig will react differently in a mudhole. A sheep that falls into the mud will not be happy there. He will struggle and cry until he gets out.
One the other hand, a pig goes around looking for a mudhole. When he finds it, he slides in with a grunt of satisfaction. In fact, he will squeal if an attempt is made to pull him out.
By nature and without the convicting work of God’s Spirit, a sinner is like a pig – he seeks evil and temptation and has no desire to be delivered from sin. The follower of Christ, however, is compared in the Bible to a sheep. He should never be found in the mud of sin. What do you do to avoid a mudhole?
Tags: holiness, mudhole, pig, sin
Things have changed over the years. Back in the 1950s there was an active alley-way behind every house in Butler. A man named Goofy (that was actually what everyone called him) Bowers came down the alley with a team of horses and a wagon to pick up garbage and haul it to the city dump on the edge of town. Obviously, these were before the days of plastic garbage bags, and the wagon smelled horrific.
These days we have those sanitized garbage bags, and, unfortunately, sanitation labor strikes. During one of those strikes in a major US city, bags of garbage mounted up in alleys and along curbsides during the Christmas season, sending a stench into the air which quickly became unbearable. Tempers flared and news conferences were quickly called by city officials in an attempt to squelch the tempers and reach a solution.
One fellow was an entrepreneur, however.
He boxed his garbage, wrapped it in Christmas paper, sat it on the front porch, and then chuckled as thieves quietly mounted his porch in the darkness and stole all his garbage. He got rid of the stench.
Sin is like rotting garbage: get rid of it!
Tags: Christmas, garbage, humor, sin
That little lump in the front of your throat has been called your ‘Adam’s Apple’, from the idea that the forbidden fruit got stuck in Adam’s throat when he ate it. The sin did not stick in his throat; it went deeper down into the very springs of his being. Jesus said, “the heart is deceitful.”
It is still the belief of many that a man may have a good heart and a bad life. Proverbs 4:23 says: “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” Nancy Honeytree used to say that we all have in our heart either acid or honey. When we get kicked is when what is on the inside spills out: either honey or acid. The kicks in life reveal what’s really in there.
Tags: heart, Honeytree, sin
The news channel reported that a professional baseball player had been suspended from the team when the coach learned that he was addicted to cocaine. The player told reporters that his drug abuse wasn’t his fault; he had the disease of chemical dependency.
Some people may indeed have a genetic predisposition to addiction, but we aren’t facing our problem if we won’t accept responsibility for the choices we’ve made. It’s easier to say, “I’m sick,” than it is to say, “I’m wrong.”
What are your thoughts on the player’s comments?
Tags: addiction, choices, responsibility, sin
I contacted my cardiologist regarding some heart palpitations (off-rhythm heart beat) that I thought was a side effect of blood pressure medicine. He put me on a special heart monitor to identify the problem. The conclusion was that I had a pre-heartbeat and was already on the best medicine to control that. So, my wife asked the Pharmacist if some of my medicines might be interacting badly. The Pharmacist said no, but suggested that radiation (which I had for prostate cancer last fall) could deplete my body of magnesium. So I began taking magnesium supplements and the palpitations went away. The magnesium treated the deeper problem and the symptoms went away.
When Jesus was in Capernaum, a large crowd came to the home where He was staying (Mark 2:1-2). As He was teaching, some men made an opening in the roof and lowered a paralyzed man on a mat. Jesus initially responded not by healing the man but by saying, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (v. 5). The deeper need of the man was not physical but spiritual. Then, to show His authority to forgive, Jesus healed the man and sent him on his way – not only with legs that moved but with a heart that was forgiven (v. 12).
Sin is the deeper problem that creates the symptoms of sinful acts in our lives. We must not just fix the symptoms, but the deeper problem of Sin.
Tags: disease, healing, health, sin