Saturday 19 September 2015

Deuteronomy 7:26 « You shall not bring any abominable thing into your house, so as to be, like it, under the ban; loathe and abhor it utterly for it is under the ban. » NAB

One of the most difficult things to do as a Christian is to learn how to hate sin.  It is easy to hate the results and consequences of sin.  But most of us commit sin for one simple reason: we enjoy the sin too much.  We enjoy the pleasure, the feelings, the sense of enjoyment.  Just like chocolate covered cyanide, we love the taste so much we are willing to swallow poison!

Actually, sin is a lot like refined sugar. Once you get used to the taste of strong sugar it is really hard to quit.  For example, in just one can of Coca-Cola there are 39 grams of refined sugar.  That is a little more than 9 cubes of sugar!  The result to your body is horrendous, making your pancreas work overtime to compensate for the sugar shock.  Too much sugar is the number one cause of obesity and diabetes.

But once you are hooked on sugar it is hard to quit.  Your body actually develops a dependence on the sugar similar to hard drugs.  You crave carbohydrates, snacks and junk food in ever-increasing doses.  And though it gives you some pleasure in the short term it is actually robbing you of your energy and making you sick.

You might be drinking just one can of coke a day, and think that this isn’t so bad.  But already you have a sugar intake that is very dangerous.  In the same way, you may think that just a little sin a day is alright.  But it is slowly killing you.

God’s holiness is a lot like pure water.  It gives life.  And nothing quenches thirst better than water.  It is what your body needs in order to live.  But if you have been drinking too much coke, water just tastes boring.  So companies who make bottled water have begun to add flavoring to water, which contains high amounts of sugar, in order to get people to buy it.

However, once you have re-trained the taste buds in your mouth to appreciate water, coke will taste like cough syrup.  The thing you thought you could never live without, Coke, becomes so distasteful that you are repulsed by it.

Once you have re-trained your spiritual sensors to appreciate the holiness of God, the pleasures of this world will taste as they should — like death!  It doesn’t happen in one day.  You have to change your lifestyle to accommodate God’s presence, drink from His word, long for His nature, and cultivate the fruit of His Spirit.  But in the end, we are so full of God that the things of this world become easy to detest and abhor.