Sickness: The Doctor is in… Where are you?
She’s dying. Every ragged breath and excruciating symptom she possesses seems to scream that very painful and obvious truth. And the saddest part of all is that it was completely preventable. There is a doctor in town whose track record at healing her disease includes a 100% cure rate for those who seek his help and follow his instructions – 100%! His services and the prescription are both free. She just inexplicably chose not to seek his help and take the prescription he prescribed. And so, here she lies, dying an extremely slow, excruciatingly painful death at the hands of her disease, as a result of only her own foolish choices.
We all suffer from the sickness of sin (Isa. 58:1-14; Ro. 3:10-18, 6:23). The symptoms of our sin-sickness abound all about us. Every day we see the decay: marriages in complete chaos and utter meltdown; selfishness and self-centeredness running amuck amongst those we love while ultimately tearing them in two at every turn; sexual immorality, infidelity, dishonesty, deceit, drug addiction, abortion, rebellion, violence, abuse of all kinds, and a vast myriad of other sins running epidemic in our immediate social circles; people hurting and being hurt, seeking peace and finding none; stopping at nothing in their pursuit of pleasure and finding nothing long-term but more heartbreak and pain in the process; “living it up” they think, yet dying a very slow and painful death at the hands of their own sin-sick choices (Ro. 1:18-32; Gal. 5:19-26).
But the saddest part of all of this is that their lives need not be such, because Jesus, the great physician, has the total cure for all who will come to Him (Matt. 9:10-13, 11:28-30). His word has a free, 100% cure rate of sin for those who will carefully read and follow it. Haven’t you had enough yet? Haven’t you hurt enough yet? How long will you stubbornly refuse the total treatment that can save you from so much misery both here and now and for all eternity? Well, here’s the answer… Where will you choose to be this coming Sunday? At the Lord’s church/clinic, where those sin-sick and sin-ravaged and savaged souls who’ve had enough will be accepting the cure by ingesting His death-defying, soul-saving, sin-neutralizing and destroying Word, or elsewhere? Because the answer in action to that question will quite simply say it all. “… Do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:17)!