Some Thoughts from Jason

This is a devotional that Jason gave the men of our Bible Study on Wednesday night. Enjoy his wisdom!

This year I am teaching preschoolers about Jesus’ early ministry. Sunday I taught about Jesus healing the sick from Matthew 8.

As I studied I saw a practical application for our lives today as unworthy sinners bent on our own desires. I want to address the sickness of unrepentant sin.

We learned last week that as a non-believer, our obligation to God was faith. Now as believers our obligation is obedience. As a sinning believer our obligation to God is that of confession and repentance.

Each person who Jesus healed believed that He could by speaking the word. They had no doubt about Christ’s power. They wanted to be healed. They knew Jesus could heal them because they believed He could.

As a believer we have been healed as well. We realized we were sick with sin and doomed to die if we did not believe that Jesus could heal us. So we humbled ourselves and asked to be healed. And by His stripes, we were healed.

But even now as believers we are sick and lame. We have leprosy of sin that consumes our flesh daily. We do not fulfill our obligation to God to obey and continually repent. We don’t always come to the Lord and ask His forgiveness that He has promised in I John 1:9. No, instead we are stubborn. When we go through trials we sometimes would rather wallow in our sinful responses than humble ourselves before God. Remember that blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Like many of those who Jesus healed during His ministry on earth, we know full well the power of Christ to forgive us and heal us. We have experienced first hand the healing power of forgiveness. We believe in the awesome work Jesus has done for us on the cross. So why won’t we come to Him for healing for even the smallest of sin?

An example of this pride is found in Numbers 21. God’s own chosen people who had seen countless signs and wonders from Egypt through the wilderness continually doubted God. So God sent poisonous snakes to bite them and put them through excruciating pain and death. They only had to look upon the bronze serpent that Moses built and lifted up on a post to be healed. Do you think that they had any problem looking upon that bronze serpent to live?

Most of us are in this pain. We have sin that we have not dealt with. Sin that we have not laid at the feet of Christ and asked Him to help us remove from our lives. We know He can and He will but do we really want to be healed? Are we thirsting for righteousness? We have already experienced healing so why don’t we trust Him? We cannot be removed from His house. We cannot be plucked from His hand. He will never leave us nor forsake us. So why do we resist?

Sometimes giving up a sin will cause persecution from the world such as in the work place and we are fearful of that. Sometimes confessing a sin involves not only being right before God but also going to someone else and getting right with them. That is scary as well. But for some of us simply admitting we are wrong is what stands in the way of repentance.

We are no different from the Israelites who continually doubted God. We just have to want to be healed. Like the desperate leper, we have only one cure. Jesus is the cure for our sin. God has promised that those who thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied. We all need to search our hearts and ask ourselves, do I want to be healed?

If your honest answer is that you would rather continue in a particular sin than confess it before the Lord, then you need to question yourself. It is our obligation as a sinning believer to continually repent. We should want nothing more than to purge sin from our lives.

Romans 6 says: How shall we who have died to sin still live in it? …that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

We have the awesome and unique privilege not to have to live with guilt. We have been cleansed of our sin once and for all. We do not have to be slaves to our sin. We only have to ask His forgiveness and start anew. If we stumble we try and try again.

Jesus will continue to heal us and forgive us because He will always love us. Don’t let your pride get in the way of this love. Don’t let fear of worldly reprisal prevent you from enjoying the love of Christ. Unrepentant sin casts a shadow over His light. You will not be able to walk in His light with unrepentant sin and as a result, you will fall further and further away from His path and into sin.

So I hope we can all see the seriousness of unrepentant sin. Remember that God chose you. He sent His son to heal the sick and the lame and brothers we are sick. The challenge for each of us is to fulfill our obligation of obedience to God. Let us not let a day go by without spending time with the Lord in repentance and praise.