REFORMATORY LESSONS TAUGHT BY WELL-KNOWN GOSPEL CHARACTERS.
By David Paulson
It is useless for you to expect miraculous restoration of your physical health, if, like Naaman of old, you despise such God-given means for securing relief, as proper bathing. 2 Kings 5: 10, 11. Do you, like Lot, desire to camp in the suburbs of sin, instead of planting your feet upon the table-lands of right principles? Gen. 19: 17, 20. If so, your future contains nothing that you can look forward to as in any way desirable. Remember, if you satisfy your morbid craving for unnatural and unwholesome food, as the children of Israel did, that God will allow you to partake of it, but he will send upon you as he did upon them, leanness in your soul. Ps. 106: 15. Are you sometimes tempted to sacrifice your splendid heritage of lofty ideals for some temporary questionable enjoyment? Then remember that Esau did this, and the result was permanent loss, and bitter tears could avail nothing. Heb. 12: 16, 17. Do you have one standard of reform when you are among your friends and an altogether different one when you are among strangers? If so, you need to have a Paul to give you such a reproof as he gave to Peter when he was tempted upon this very point. Gal. 2: 11–21. Joseph was used by God to feed the hungry multitude with grain (Gen. 41: 49). When you are as determined to repeat Joseph’s life of absolute purity in thought and deed, then God is ready to use you, even to-day, to feed the starving multitudes with “the finest of the wheat.” Ps. 81: 16. If, in the strength of the mighty One, you will resist the enemy with reference to personal ambition, presumption, and appetite, you will ultimately score such a victory on this point that the devil will not be permitted to continually tempt you on these things, but as in the case of the Master, he will be compelled to leave you at least for a season. Luke 4: 13. If you are willing to sacrifice some of the luxuries of life for the sake of humanity, and live an abstemious life, you may even now be a John the Baptist, and be able to teach the people how to lay the axe to the roots of their physical and spiritual difficulties, instead of merely picking away at the leaves of their symptoms, as so many are doing at the present time. Luke 3: 9. The use of even moderate quantities of intoxicating liquors will so paralyze the finer sensibilities of the soul that there will be an inability to discriminate between holy principles and merely common-place ideas. Such individuals are dying spiritually just as certainly as the sons of Aaron died physically when they attempted to officiate at the Lord’s altar when partially under the influence of strong drink. Lev. 10: 9, 10. If you seek to evade your responsibilities and shirk the plain duties which lie before you in your community, your church, or in your home, you are a Jonah, and you will soon find that there is something ready to swallow you up. It may be some wretched entanglement, or some scheme or device out of which you will not be delivered until you sincerely repent, and meanwhile an unwarned Nineveh which you might have been saving, has become more deeply steeped in sin. Jonah 1: 2, 3. If you consent to trifle with sacred principles as did Samson, you will soon become ensnared by habits that will bind you as securely as he was bound with “fetters of brass;” you will soon be as spiritually blind as he became physically blind, and ultimately you become engaged in as small a business for the devil as “grinding corn” in the prison-house of the Philistines; and you may even degenerate so far that you may finally, as he did, “make sport” of the very principles that you to-day regard as sacred. Judges 16: 21–25. If you are willing to subsist on simple, nutritious foods, rather than the luxurious and stimulating dietary that is now so common, and then conscientiously seek God, while others are worshiping at the shrine of selfish indulgence; if you are willing to be cast into the lion’s den of human scorn and mockery because of your devotion to right principles, then you may be a Daniel even to-day, and God only knows the heights to which you may attain, and the positions of trust and influence which await you. Dan. 1: 8; 6: 3. David had been so much a man of war that he could but assist some one else in building the temple instead of having the privilege of doing it himself. 1 Chron. 28: 3, 6. So, you may have been at war so long with the laws of your body that you will never have an opportunity to build it up as a perfect temple of health; but that need not prevent you from gathering material, even as David did, in the way of sound knowledge, by which you can impart instruction in reference to the principles of healthful living that shall enable some one else to build up a splendid temple in which God’s presence shall be manifested as it was in Solomon’s temple. Have you been struggling hard to advance the temperance cause and other reformatory measures, with little or no result? In other words, like Peter, have you toiled all night and caught nothing? Perhaps like him, you have clung too near to the shore line where there is only an abundance of rocks, and11where there are no fish, when instead you should have boldly launched out into the adoption of complete reformatory truths, and where your sails would have caught the heavenly breezes. Then, like Peter, you would not only have developed enough work for yourself, but you would have been able to have set some of your associates to work. Luke 5: 4–7. When the king of Syria was dangerously ill, he sent to the prophet to ascertain his true condition, and word was brought to him, “Thou mayst certainly recover; howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die.” 2 Kings 8: 10, 15. In other words, the wrong treatment which he would receive, rather than his disease, would cause his death. The following day some one saturated a thick cloth with water and spread it over his face and smothered him. So there are thousands of people who are perishing each year of whom God is saying, With proper treatment, they could get well; but the wretched diet, quack remedies, and irrational treatment, ends their lives just as truly as the thick wet cloth ended the life of the ancient Syrian king. 2 Kings 8: 10–15.