Symptoms, Disease and Cure

Symptoms are our warning sign that all’s not well.
Whether it be our car, computer or another technological or mechanical device, our relationships, or our physical body, symptoms are the first sign of an underlying disease of some kind.
If we’re to cure that disease we must act on those symptoms by properly diagnosing the disease and applying the correct cure.

When my beloved brother, Barry, began to encounter symptoms he consulted an expert, a doctor, who referred him to another expert, an oncologist.
The diagnosis was made. Cancer. Inoperable.
Well-meaning people offered him advice, including myself, as to the cure.

He decided to try a regime of diet and detox for a while to see if it would have any effect before going down the chemo route.
He spent hundreds of dollars on health remedies from people who he later jokingly referred to as witch doctors.
It was a kick in the guts when, after 4 weeks of intense diet control, the cancer had actually grown faster.

Now, I’m not against diet, vitamins and minerals being used as a cure for a disease, far from it. I’m convinced that what we eat has a huge effect on our physical health.
The point is though, that in my brother’s particular case this cure had no effect. It didn’t work and twelve weeks after the diagnosis we lost him. By the way, the chemo route would not have worked either in his case.

Disease Worse Than Cancer

Today we’re living with a disease that’s far worse than the cancer that killed my brother, but we’re trying to cure that disease with voodoo medicine.
The result is that nothing changes, in fact, it gets worse.

To cure this disease, which spreads its dark stain over the entire world, we need to use three approaches:

1. Recognise the symptoms
2. Correctly diagnose the disease
3. Find and accept the right

1. Recognise the Symptoms

Do We See Symptoms?
Do we see symptoms that indicate an underlying disease in our world today? Of course, we do. Most people can see them quite plainly.

Some symptoms are more obvious than others.

God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah in chapter 48:22 says, “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

Warfare

The more obvious symptom of the ill-health of this world is a lack of peace. In its place, are warfare and conflict.

Throughout history, man’s been involved in constant warfare and conflict and it’s no different today. There’s been warfare between nations, states, tribes and even cities and towns.

Warfare can be obvious such as when armies, navies and air forces are mobilised in conflicts between nations.
It can also be not so obvious such as in the dark shadows of international espionage or digital warfare or inside the sealed rooms of politicians and bureaucrats.

Warfare can disrupt international trade and the free movement of goods and commodities resulting in shortages and price rises.
Likewise, warfare within the shadowy world of international banking can result in crippling inflation through manipulated currency values.

Conflict

What about conflict?
The conflict symptom is everywhere. The impatient customer at the checkout, road user rage, between employers and employees, husbands and wives, friends, and family.

Conflict is outplayed in thefts and robberies, shootings, brawling, murder, jealousy, arguments, envy and strife.

There’s also the less obvious conflict of the mind and emotions revealed in depression, hatred, sadness, and discontentment.

Suffering

The result of warfare and conflict is suffering.
The history of the world is marked by almost endless suffering and we’re never far from it today.

Other Symptoms

There’s a long list of other symptoms in the Bible that are warning us of an underlying disease. For example, in 2 Timothy 3:1 – 5, and I’m reading,
“For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous (which is having or showing a great desire to possess something belonging to someone else), boasters, proud, blasphemers (which is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God), disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent (which is lacking self-restraint or uncontrolled), fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded (which means to be puffed up or inflated with pride), lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God and having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

Some symptoms such as calling evil good and good evil are only obvious to those who accept the Word of God, the Bible, as the one reliable standard of good and evil, right, and wrong.
This common yet dramatic symptom should be causing alarm bells throughout the world.

So much evil is accepted today just because people, who have convinced themselves that they are wise, say it’s good.
Isaiah 5:20 speaks of woe to these. Woe means great sorrow, or trouble.

Woe great sorrow or trouble to those who call evil good, and good evil,
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent in their own sight!

Symptoms are everywhere.

2. Correctly Diagnosing the Disease

Yes, the symptoms that are warning us of underlying disease are everywhere but, how do we correctly diagnose that disease?

Who among us has not heard of, or experienced firsthand the fatal mistakes of a misdiagnosis?

The world at large puts their trust in science, medicine, or the government to diagnose the disease, yet they will fail to reason within themselves as to why these bodies have dismally failed to make the world the utopia they promise.

Incorrectly diagnosing a disease can be catastrophic because it prevents the correct cure from being applied.
This is true at every level of life.
The misdiagnoses of a problem with our car can lead to costly repairs that fail to remedy the problem.

If a medical professional fails to diagnose a disease correctly and the wrong cure is administered, more often than not a disaster results.

A computer program fails, and the diagnosis is that a line of code is to be changed. If that diagnosis is wrong the resulting failure can compound throughout the whole system costing millions to repair and causing massive disruption.

The same is true in our wider society.
Are guns the disease that causes the symptom of mass murder? Get rid of guns and society will be more peaceful? Hardly!

What about the symptom of alcoholism? Would banning alcohol cure alcoholism? That was tried in America not that long ago with dismal results.

It’s almost as if the mere act of restraining the use of something causes man to feel he must have it at any cost.

Indeed, mankind’s great failure is the failure to correctly diagnose the disease that inflicts every level of society.
The reason for this failure is the rejection of God who not only created us and loves us but who clearly tells us what the disease is.

World Does Not Recognise The Disease

The majority of the world doesn’t recognise the real disease, and neither does it want to, if the One diagnosing that disease is God.
Yet it is God who gives us the diagnosis in a way that every man, woman, and child can clearly understand.

He’s told us all we need to know about Himself, ourselves, the disease that stains His entire creation, and the cure for the disease. He tells us in His book, the Bible or the Word of God.

The world’s full of people that believe they’re much too sophisticated and intelligent to believe in Almighty God and His Word, the Bible.
Those same people, however, will grasp at the most ludicrous fairy tales of how the world and all that’s in it came into being. The result is that they never understand the disease they live with every day.
Most of them will spend a lifetime trying to fight what they believe is the disease but in fact, is only a shadow.

God told us in His Word about this.

In Colossians 2:8 we are told, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

And, in Romans 1:21 – 22, “Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were thankful. But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.”
This is a disturbing verse as it also tells us that God gives these people over to a reprobate mind or in other words, their own worthless thinking.

In Hosea 4:6 God tells us that His people are destroyed through lack of knowledge because they rejected knowledge. Knowledge about what? About Him.

2 Peter 2:1 – 2 says, “But there were false prophets among the people (this is the people of ancient Israel), as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it. And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.

In 2 Timothy 4:3 we’re told, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.”
Itching ears means they’re always looking for some new method or some new doctrine to get excited about. They’re always jumping from one popular remedy to the next and what they want most is a teacher who condones the lifestyle they desire and make them feel good.

These teachers also have itching ears. They want their ears scratched—they want to be complimented. To be complimented, you have to compliment. So the teachers compliment their listeners. They don’t teach truth; they tell them how wonderful they are. It’s interesting that the love of self characterises our present world more than anything else. Probably there has never been a time when it has been so common.

It’s yet another symptom heralding disease.

So, what is that disease that’s so bad, so destructive, and so deeply ingrained in every human? What is it that makes this world subject to war, conflict and suffering?

The disease is SIN!

Sin is simply believing that we’re greater than God. It’s PRIDE.

Pride convinces us that we know more and are wiser than God and because of that, we don’t need God.

It deceives us into thinking of ourselves and our ability more highly than we ought to. In effect, we fall in love with ourselves.

We believe we’re so great that we know the answers to life and death, even though it’s obvious that we don’t. We can’t even cure our most common sicknesses and yet we believe we know enough to prevent war and conflict and bring peace, harmony and healing to the world and eventually cheat death.

We think that as a race, the remarkable steps forward we’ve made in technology, medicine and science have made us greater than God Who created us. In fact, we’re gods ourselves and soon we’ll have all the knowledge required to create a utopia.

The truth is though, that all the knowledge man will ever store will still not be enough to cure sin. Man’s knowledge will always be incomplete until God is included. He is not included in man’s reasoning today but is rejected.

This rejection of God and the exalting of self is the disease. It is sin!

Sin’s Foundation

God’s Word, the Bible, has clearly explained this and told us how sin came into being.

It was founded, or came into existence, in God’s enemy who once was the highest of all created beings.

Ezekiel 28: 11 – 19 details the greatness of Lucifer and how exalted he was until the day iniquity was “found” in him.

The book of Isaiah explains it further.
In Isaiah 14:12 we learn about what’s known as the five “I wills” of Satan.

This was the beginning of sin in the universe. This was the beginning of the rebellion against God’s government and God’s kingdom, and it came into existence when Satan pitted his will against the will of God who created him.

I’m reading verse twelve now, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’

It was satans declared “I will,” in opposition to God’s will.

Anytime you declare your will in opposition to God’s will, that’s sin. That’s rebellion, rebellion against God.
Sin is the failure to do the will of God, to surrender, and submit to the will of God.

“I will ascend into heaven. I will exact my throne above the stars of God.” Said Satan. By the way, the “Stars” of God are the angels of God.
“I’m going to exalt myself above them. I will sit also on the mount of the congregation on the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights. I will be like the Most High.”
Notice the climax of satan’s “I wills”: “I will be like God.”

Satan, by deception, enticed our first ancestors to believe that they also could be exalted above God and become like Him. All they had to do was disobey His direct command.
We can read the account of “The Fall of Mankind” in Genisis chapter 3.

As a result, the very nature, the heart of man, who and what he is was instantly transformed.

Man died!

The Death of Man.

He didn’t instantly die physically, although that was now man’s destiny, he died spiritually. His rebellion caused an automatic separation between him and his Creator. It was a separation that man himself could never repair no matter what he did.

The catastrophic result of this sin was that every human born from that moment inherited that sin nature right down through the ages to this very day.

Every human was, in effect, born dead spiritually, eternally separated from the God Who created him and absolutely incapable of repairing or working his way back into that relationship. Man became wretched and helpless and in rebellion against God, even hating him with an almost perfect hatred.

Romans 1: 18 -32 carries this over to this day.  “They reject God even though He’s made it easy for man to understand Him. People didn’t think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So, God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking. And so, they do what they shouldn’t do and professing themselves to be wise, become fools, and worship just about every created thing rather than the Creator.”

Yes, nothing describes sin better than Proverbs 16:25, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is the ways of death.” And Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, each one to his own way“.

Imagine the puny self loving man creature, who says to God, “I won’t do what You want me to do. I am going to do it my way.” That’s exactly what man is saying today. Well, friends, we’re not going to do things our way, because God’s will IS going to be done in the end. Therefore, the prayer of all God’s people should be, “… Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Mattew 6:10). Anything contrary to His will is sin, regardless of what it is.

Once we’ve defined sin as the disease that affects mankind, we need to know the result of the disease. Quite simply, the result of sin is Death. Physical death, Spiritual death, Eternal death. Death is the result or the “wages” of sin, Romans 6:23.

What a catastrophe that every man must face eternal death as the penalty for sin, a sin that we were born with.

If that were the end of the story, it would be depressing, and horrifying beyond description.

However, the story does NOT end here! There IS a cure!

Find and accept the cure

Just as the majority of the world does not recognise the real disease, sin, neither does it want to know about and accept the cure.

This old world is now and always has been overwhelmed with false cures for the disease of sin.

Rituals and ceremonies are performed. Good deeds are carried out in an attempt to make sinful man acceptable to God. Mantras that promise reincarnation are chanted and prayer wheels are spun. Wooden and metallic statues made into so-called gods are worshipped.

Crystals and paper playing cards, feathers and flowers, animals and birds, stars and planets have all been, and still are, being used to ward off the effects of man’s sinful nature.

A healthy living has been made by countless people through the ages selling every type of potion and system imaginable to the pitiful and helpless soul whose suffering has grown too much to bear.

Millions have been murdered and martyred because they disagreed with the decrees of manmade religions and rituals and that’s still true today.

Rules

Rules are necessary for life.

For example, look at the traffic on a busy highway in any city.

When everyone is sticking to the well-known, tried and accepted laws of the road the movement is almost like a choreographed ballroom dance. It’s peaceful and orderly.

However, when those rules are broken for whatever reason chaos is not far away. Chaos, not only to the one breaking the rules but to many innocents. The spin on effect can ravage the rule-breaker along with other victims, such as innocent bystanders family, friends and even the ones performing a rescue.

Many of the rules in the Bible are like this.

Some rules, like the ten commandments, are there to reveal to each of us the hopeless, insurmountable gap between the righteousness of man and the righteousness of a Holy God. They’re not a roadmap to making us so perfect that we’re acceptable to God. Not one of us has ever, nor could ever keep them.

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23.

Isaiah 64:6 tells us that we are all dirty with sin. Even our good works are not pure. They are like bloodstained rags. We are all like dead leaves. Our sins have carried us away like the wind.

In Matthew chapter 23 Jesus was severe with the religious rulers of the day who tried to make the public live by the law of Moses and the commandments but were hopelessly unable to themselves.

Rules For Living Well

Other rules, such as those in the Book of Proverbs, or the New Testament epistles, are pointers and guides to show us how to live a life of peace, joy, and fulfilment. They are guides to enrich our own lives and those with whom we share this world.

We’ll often fail to keep them, and this is precisely why it’s necessary for countless pages of laws made by governments of every country in the world. Because man, in his rejection of God, does not follow or even recognise God’s simple laws.

However, the more we come to know God and learn His ways, the more we’ll unconsciously walk in those ways.

In summary, the cure for sin can never be found in man’s attempts to be good.

We need to be made new!

The sinful nature, the hopeless, wretched, heart of a man that even though it tries to be good but never can be, needs to be reborn according to the way Jesus told us in the Bible.

Nicodemus

In John chapter 3 we read of one of the religious rulers, Nicodemus, who genuinely wanted to know the way to heaven.

Under the cover of darkness one night, Nicodemus came to Jesus and admitted that he believed Jesus was sent from God and enquired about how he could enter the kingdom of heaven. The future kingdom of heaven was fully expected by the religious rulers.

And so, Jesus directly addressed what was on Nicodemus’ heart, and He said to him,

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” That’s John 3:3.

Now Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, said to His disciples, “Except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious rulers, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”.

The Pharisees, including this man Nicodemus, spent their entire life endeavouring to keep the law of God, not just the Ten Commandments, but what’s known as the Mishna, the law by which the Ten Commandments were explained, amplified, and interpreted. And yet, Jesus said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you’re not going to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Now He is saying to this Pharisee, the ruler of the Jews, “Unless a man is born again, he cannot enter, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

So, Nicodemus said in what probably was an honest question, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”

Nicodemus was interested but the process of being born again was beyond his understanding. “How can it happen? There’s no way that I can return to my mother’s womb and be born again.”

His curiosity forced him to ask Jesus, “What do you mean, born again?”

And Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” That’s John 3:4-6.

600 Years Before Jesus

The book of Ezekiel 36:25–27 prophesied this time six centuries before Jesus was born. We read, God speaking, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

So, God is promising through the prophet Ezekiel, that a time is coming when there will be a transformed and new beginning.  There will be a spectacular cleansing symbolized by water that washes away all impurities and idols, and by the powerful gift of the Spirit that transforms the hearts of people.

Born of the Spirit

To be cured of sin we must be born not only from the natural seed of a man through the womb of a woman but be reborn of the spirit. We need a new heart. That part of us that has been eternally separated from God.

That’s what’s required if we’re to see and enter the kingdom of God and eternal life, but HOW do we partake of that?

There is only One way!

One Way

John 3:16 tells us. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten

Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The “world” means the world of mankind in which we live.

It means all people—not limited to a special elect, to the good, or to any particular race. This “world” encompasses total humanity, from the first humans right down to the people alive today.

The entire Bible from start to finish is the story of both sin and the cure.

The cure comes in the form of God’s own Son, Jesus the Christ, who came into this world 2000 years ago as was prophesied since man fell into sin.

He was the perfect and undefiled Word of God in human form so that He was fully man and at the same time fully God.

He would freely offer up His life in a cruel death on a cross in Judea to pay in full the wages of sin, which is death, and separation from God, so you and I would not need to pay it.

Sin is the disease that stains this entire world, and the cure is free!

It doesn’t require the sufferer to do anything at all except trust in the One who paid the price with His own innocent blood and defeated it.

If we were required to do one thing more than this we would all fail. God has done it all!

It’s through His love, His amazing Grave and His boundless Mercy that we can now stand before him in righteousness, completely free from the penalty of the disease of sin.

I’m going to heaven someday. You may think, “Well, you must think you’re very good.” On the contrary, I’m not very good, worse in fact than most people who’ll hear this. I am going to heaven someday because Christ died for me, and I trust Him.

To receive the cure for sin, we simply need to believe and trust in the One who has paid its penalty in our place. The One who came to earth as fully man and fully God suffered and died the cruel death of crucifixion to pay for our sin and was raised again on the third day according to the scriptures.

In these days many people will go through dark times. When you face problems and face them alone, you need to know that God loves you.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, God loves you, and His love is revealed in Christ on that cross. And, friends, you will find it only there.