Wisdom for Spiritual Problems

I want to speak to you now about, on the basis of experience. Let me say I am not a doctor. As a matter of fact, I'm not a doctor of any kind. My academic qualifications were different, and we won't bother to explain them. Certainly, I'm not a physician, nor am I a psychologist, nor am I a psychiatrist. I'm a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and a teacher of the word of God. And my ministry is based on the word of God, faith in Jesus Christ, and experience.

And let's not leave out experience. It's good to have theology and theory, but it's much better when it works. And if it doesn't work, it isn't from God.

So I'm going to speak this afternoon on the basis of what I've learned, especially in the last 10 years, in ministering to people in desperate need: spiritual need, mental need, emotional need, and physical need. And I'd like to take just as introductory text to make what I say respectable, because everybody knows a preacher ought to begin with a text. So I'm beginning with Matthew chapter 3, verse 10. Matthew 3:10.

These are the words of John the Baptist, and in a sense, they introduce the dispensation of the gospel. John was Christ's forerunner, and he was a kind of transitional figure between the law and the prophets and the gospel. And one of the opening words of this verse is the word now. And I believe, in a sense, it expresses God's intention through the gospel.

“And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”

That's a very radical statement. How many of you know the real meaning of the word radical? Well, it comes from the Latin word radics, which means root. So that which is radical is that which goes to the root. And the gospel is totally radical. It goes to the root of things. It doesn't mess around with something higher up, but the axe is laid to the root.

In my personal experience over the last 10 years, and I can say just about 10 or 11 years, I came to grips in a new way with people's problems. And it was on the basis of helping them to receive deliverance from evil spirits. And looking back, I realized that I began with the branches, and the top branches, the thinnest, smallest branches. And I had some success in getting rid of branches out of people's lives. But then I realized that there were thick branches below those branches which still had to be dealt with. And when I got down to the thick branches, then I realized that those thick branches were supported by a trunk which had to be dealt with. Then when I got to the trunk, I realized that the trunk was supported by invisible roots, and that the only final way of dealing with a tree is to get rid of its roots.

Just recently, we had a very heavy wind in Fort Lauderdale where I live, and one of the trees in our yard was blown over. And because I wasn't very much interested in the tree, in it as a tree, I decided to get rid of it. And it was a Saturday, there was no one around to help me, so I got rid of the tree by myself. It wasn't a very big tree, but I had to cut off the branches and then saw off the trunk, and then I was left with the stump and the roots. And I tried to pull the stump out, I couldn't do it, so I realized I'd have to remove each root. So I went round digging under the stump with a saw and sawing off each root. And I discovered the root structure was very complicated. Some of the roots went under and back again in a circle, and some were intertwined with others.

And all the time I was thinking, I was doing this, I was thinking, that's just like the problems of the people I deal with. Down below the surface, and most people like to keep it right out of sight, are the real, deep roots of human problems. And they're complicated and they're involved, and you have to get to them one by one and cut them off. And sometimes one root will protect another root. So I'm going to talk to you about roots.

And I'm just speaking on the basis of personal experience. I don't offer you any seminary background. It's good to have one, but I don't have one. Most of my real learning of the things of God was done in the British army, where I spent five and a half years, three years in deserts. And that was where I really was able to get to grips with the word of God.

Dealing with problems, I've come to realize that the deepest roots go back into people's past. They go back into preceding generations. Some people, especially kind of the evangelical fundamentalist type, don't like to face this fact. But in many cases, our lives are the product of what our ancestors were and what they thought and said and did.

And I've learned the truth that's in the 20th chapter of Exodus. God says if people make any other gods before him, he will visit those sins unto the third and fourth generation.

“Now, it is not every type of sin, as I understand it, that's visited to the third and fourth generation, but it's the sins that involve making other gods before the true God.”

And I have to testify on the basis of experience, those sins regularly are visited to the third and fourth generation.

And I'm learning more and more that when people have problems that can't be dealt with on the basis of the simple ministry of “believe in Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” we have to look behind that, and we have to go down below the surface to look for the roots.