DETOX: Responsibility

When I was a kid, cartoons were so much cooler! I loved HE-MAN, Thundercats, VOLTRON, but I especially loved G.I. Joe!

At the end of every episode, the characters would come out and make a public service announcement. They would tell us to stay off drugs, go to school and avoid sticking our fingers into light sockets and then they would say... 

"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"

But have you ever stopped to think what the other half is?

Neither did I...until this week.

What I realized was that the other half of the battle is taking responsibility 

Responsibility...

...for the lessons we learn

...for our failure when we are stubborn

...for truth when it is clear

I realized that blessing comes when you accept responsibility for the truth God reveals! Curses are the result of ignoring the truth.

Last week I shared out of Numbers 21, about Moses and the bronze snake that he raised up so that the Israelites who had been bitten by the poisonous snakes could receive their healing. It is a powerful foreshadowing of Jesus on the cross. For we are the ones who have been bitten by sin in our lives and all we have to do is look up at the cross to receive healing and forgiveness.

God intervened in our lives by sending his son. It was his own Intervention and solution to the problem of sin in our lives, but we can't stop there...

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man on the cross, then you will understand that I A M he. Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

(John 8:28, 32 NLT)

The word, "truth" has been watered down by our culture. Just like the word "love", truth has become an innocuous word with few ramifications in our lives, but Jesus said that the truth will set us free. This means that the truth should be a powerful player in our lives, but it is only powerful IF we take responsibility for it!

Truth is more than just facts. Truth brings about a necessary decision making process that should give us freedom to live as God intended us to live! It forces us to consider the way we live and Jesus said that we are really His disciples IF we do what He teaches.

Read this passage from Deuteronomy and take note of all the times the word "IF" is written...

Deuteronomy 28:1-14

Blessings for Obedience

28 “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:

3 Your towns and your fields

   will be blessed.

4 Your children and your crops

   will be blessed.

The offspring of your herds and flocks

   will be blessed.

5 Your fruit baskets and breadboards

   will be blessed.

6 Wherever you go and whatever you do,

   you will be blessed.

7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!

8 “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

9 “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. 10 Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.

11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. 12 The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. 13 If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. 14 You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

Main Thought- Blessing comes when you accept responsibility for the truth God reveals! Curses are the result of ignoring the truth.

When you take responsibility for truth in your own life these 4 things begin to happen to you.

1. You are Blessed!

6 Wherever you go and whatever you do,

   you will be blessed.

Blessed:bless·ed

blest,ˈblesid/

adjective

made holy; consecrated.

Note that it’s not just about physical blessing, but a spiritual "bless-ed-ness" in being set apart and made holy or useful to God. When you move from operating strictly in the natural realm to the understanding that you are now made holy, consecrated to God, blessing takes on a different meaning. When you know that you are "bless-ed", you handle your life decisions and relationships differently. Your priorities switch.

2. You are victorious!

7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!
 
3. You are an example!

9 “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. 10 Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.

4. You Are Prosperous!

11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. 12 The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.

DETOX: Intervention

 
"It's time for an intervention!"


What’s chipping away at your soul?

 
What’s getting in the way of you becoming the person who God created you to be? 

12 And so, dear brothers and sisters,[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b] 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

Let’s explore how we can neutralize damaging influences in our lives!

Let’s detox our soul, mind and body!!

They say that the first step to solving any problem is recognizing that you have one.

As simple as that sounds, it can be the trickiest step in experiencing recovery from anything that hurts us.

This is why interventions have become so pervasive in today’s world…

An intervention is an arranged scenario that allows a person to be confronted

with the truth that their behavior is hurting them and those that love them.

Interventions have become common in the drug and alcohol recovery world

because it is effective.

There’s even a reality TV show that shows the drama unfolding.

SCRIPTURE

Numbers 21:4-9

4 Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea[c] to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, 5 and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”

6 So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.

8 Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

Let's take a closer look at this intervention that God arranged for the miserable children of Israel...

LEAVE YOUR LOVE AFFAIR OF THE PAST

5 and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”

The children of Israel loved Egypt more than they loved the future God wanted them to have.

They spoke against God because they couldn’t stop thinking about how good they had

it in Egypt.

POINT #2: FAILURE HAS FANGS!

6 So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Sin is failure and sin will eventually turn on you.

The pain that comes from failure is often the only thing that wakes us up, causing us to turn

our eyes to Heaven again.

In an odd way, the snakes actually became an agent of mercy because they alerted the 

           children of Israel that something was wrong.

God sent the snakes as a way to say your decisions are hurting yourselves and others.

It was the kick in the butt that they needed so that the kick me sign of sin could finally be removed.

POINT #3: GOD’S MERCY IS GREATER THAN OUR FAILURE

8 Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

In this moment, the bronze snake lifted up on a pole became an expression of God’s mercy.

    It became a way for the children of Israel to submit themselves again to God.

    It became a conduit for God’s mercy to flow to a stubborn people who didn’t

understand that they were hurting themselves and others.

The snake in scripture, is an ancient symbol of sin and God chose it very strategically as the object they would look upon in the desert.

WE MUST BE CONFRONTED WITH OUR SIN BEFORE GOD’S MERCY CAN FLOW!!

This truth still remains to this day, though God has provided a more permanent solution to the problem of our failure through His Son.

Thousands of years later, Jesus himself would be lifted up like the snake in the desert.

He became sin for us so that we could be healed of the effects of our sin...

SCRIPTURE: JOHN 3:14-21

14 And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.[f]

16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave[g] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.[h]”
God intervened for us when he became sin on the cross. This is the starting place for us because any intervention that doesn't cause us to look up at Christ and our sin nailed to the cross is doomed to fail!