THE DILEMMA OF THE EVIL WITHIN
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(By Pastor Larry Burkholder)
Mark 7:14-23
As a pastor, I have for years prayed with individuals these words: "Father, you are the great physician. If it be your will, please heal…" While reading the devotions for today, I am once again reminded: "The Lord Jesus is the Great Physician of the soul who perfectly diagnoses man's inner problem which we find mentioned in our text of 7:21-23. There we read His diagnosis: "For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man." This is absolute spiritual crud within each of us. You cannot find a spark of divinity inside of us! There is NO goodness either!
The Apostle Paul readily admitted to this in Romans 7:18 where we read: "I know that in me (that is my flesh) dwelleth no good thing." Evil men can do good in spite of being innately evil (7:11). Relatively speaking they can be good parents, citizens, employers/employees, politicians, and citizens. BUT none of these things can change a man's character by correcting his innermost heart problem - SIN!
Until an individual realizes his heart's problem, called sin, it cannot be dealt with. Whatever good he does is not acceptable by God as righteousness. Proverbs 15:8 reads, "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the righteous is his delight." God cannot and therefore will not accept the sacrifice or the prayer of a man whose heart is evil. And in Proverbs 21:4 we are told: "An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin."
So man, that is natural man, one who has hot be born again or born from above as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, has a real dilemma. God cannot accept the sacrifice or the prayer of an individual nor can he do anything to make it clean and proper or right. Romans 8:8 reads: "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."
God's solution is found only at Calvary, and absolute righteousness is found only in Jesus Christ. Romans 8:1-4 reads: "There is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
And I believe the real clincher to this problem of sinful flesh is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21 where we read: ''For he hath made him (Christ - back in 5:13) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Now the dilemma of the evil within can be taken care of once for all! AMEN!
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