Take Your Medicine!

Have you ever had to take medicine for a nagging cough or cold?  Or have you ever had to finish a ten-day supply of a medication to completely clear up an infection?  Boy, after about the third or fourth day, you can really feel the medicine doing its job.  Then around day six or seven, it seems that the medicine has done its job and the doctor prescribed the additional dosage for good measure.  So you skip out on those last few doses…and a few days later, you are feeling sick all over again.  Sometimes those infections appear to be cleared up, and rather than follow the instructions of the doctor, we listen to our own reasoning and disregard our need for medicine.

In the same sense, the Israelites were given a commandment by God.  As they were getting ready to enter Canaan, God told them (Numbers 33:50-56) to utterly destroy the inhabitants there.  He said destroy their idols, their pictures, their high places…utterly (you know, take all of your medicine).  If you compare those inhabitants to the world and the things of this world, we can see that giving ‘place’ to them will bind us, or become a thorn in our side.  Maybe you feel that this one area of your life is ‘immune’ to sin.  Especially those pet sins that we kind of enjoy feeding.  But when you least expect it, that sin will surface itself and put you in bondage.  Serving Christ shouldn’t be about living in bondage-Christ said that if the Son make you free, you are free indeed!  So why do we allow the world to bind us?  Just for today, determine to utterly destroy those sins that can bind you.  Finish your medicine!

Scripture Focus: Numbers 29-32