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!