Look into the heart and soul of a Christian. You’ll see how God has uniquely equipped the spiritual warrior for a lifelong battle against sin. A computer. A car. An appliance. Examine an object’s structure and makeup, and you’ll learn what it was made for. What lies inside reveals the thing’s purpose. Lacking the particular […]
Do you want to be healed?
We are sometimes like the paralytic by the pool at Bethesda, lying dejected, consumed by our weaknesses, with the Source of our healing in plain sight. Satan blinds us against the power of forgiveness by shining the glaring light of our sins in our faces.
But as Brooks reminds us, “A Christian should wear Christ in his bosom as a flower of delight, for he is a whole paradise of delight. He who minds not Christ more than his sin, can never be thankful and fruitful as he should.”
And so we have six remedies available to us, weapons against Satan’s hounding our minds about the sins that so easily entangle us. It is in dwelling on our Healer rather than on our disease that we will be made whole.
Four ways Jesus promised us better things
Thomas Brooks began his explanation of this first device against Christians’ devotion to God by illustrating four negative qualities of wealth. Its weakness, meaninglessness, unreliability, and danger make it a terrible substitute for the riches of our inheritance in Christ. The length of Brooks’ writings on this device made necessary our dividing it into two posts.
As he closes this segment, he writes: “I have been the longer upon the remedies that may help us against this dangerous device of Satan, because he does usually more hurt to the souls of men by this device than he does by all other devices.”
For an entire book dedicated to learning how to defeat our greatest enemy, this is a sobering statement. We would do well to pay special attention to the advice of this wise teacher here.
We continue through this first device against Christian devotion with Brooks’ final four remedies. This second half illustrates how the promise of better things in Christ, based on God’s eternal promises to us, can help us look beyond temporal pleasures.
Four strategies for avoiding negative influences
We Christians must be salt and light to the world. We must be in and not of the world as we proclaim the gospel. But we also must discern when it is time to walk away from certain people for whom our message is nothing but bitterness and gall.
Thomas Brooks helps us recognize when the influence of wicked people is too great for us to bear and will become a temptation to sin.
How to avoid the dead end of bad doctrine
Adherence to biblical doctrine can never be assumed. God in his Word calls us not only to obey his commands, but to keep them. We must hold tightly to them, preserve them, and teach them. The Bible is sacred. It is our sacred duty to assent to this.
Thomas Brooks provides seven remedies by which we may hold fast God’s word and resist Satan’s efforts to undermine it with doctrinal error.
How shall I compare me?
Comparison, minimizing, and rationalizing are coping techniques for unspiritual people. They are not the weapons of spiritual warfare. Take up the full armor. Stop seeing the greater sins of others as your justification. In his chapter introductions of Precious Remedies, Thomas Brooks often imagines what Satan says to us. Brooks characterizes Satan’s words based on what […]
Why unhappiness may be a blessing in disguise
According to Thomas Brooks as he writes of Satan’s eighth device to lure Christians into sin, our enemy wants to convince us happiness is the goal and blessedness is negotiable. Sin is capable of making us happy. But it can never leave us blessed. The happiness of sin is temporal. But the blessedness of holiness and obedience is eternal.
Brooks’ remedies intend to help us put our focus back on the long game, toward the steady “obedience in the same direction” that marks Christian life. We must choose persecution, suffering, and yes even unhappiness if that will lead to blessedness in the eyes of Christ.
