7 Habits Of Highly Infectious Sinners

Seven Habits of Highly Infectious Sinners

Intro: We are well into flu and cold season, with some schools even having to close for a day or two recently. Health providers are asking if we’ve had flu shots, and been vaccinated for pneumonia and Covid. Some are stocking up on hand sanitizer and Lysol, and doing their best not get infected with some bug. Health professionals are also urging us to wash our hands well and often, cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze, not to go on to work or school if we’re contagious, and generally do whatever we can to keep infectious diseases from spreading. Some do not care to follow this advice. How do you feel about the person who could not care less whether or not you catch his cold?

Spiritually, we are living in a sin sick world filled with folks who do not care whether you catch it or not. The Scriptures often liken sin to sickness. Jesus did in Mark 2:17 "When Jesus heard it, He said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.'"

Sin is the virus of spiritual beings, the moral malaria of God's universe.

Sin makes wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

"Could we but see, as God sees, all the fierce hatreds, the consuming lusts, the corrupting desires, the unappeased longings, the wasting griefs, the stingings of conscience, the stifling fears, the cruel disappointments, the raging jealousies, the burning revenges, the tortures of remorse, the anguish of angst, the unutterable woes of despair that gnaw and torment and rack and souls that still live to suffer on…; could we thus see and know, as God does, what moral beings are suffering for one moment of time, the knowledge might utterly overwhelm and forever paralyze the onlooking. Nothing else could be thought of. The whole universe would appear to be one vast, rayless, shoreless ocean of woe, whose waves of suffering and agony roared `louder than the thunder, and heaved and tossed without intermission forever. Sin is a disease of the soul! a paralysis that weakens! a leprosy that pollutes! a plague that tortures! a pestilence that destroys!" a crime that damns every being within whose bosom it is permitted to dwell. Its only mission is destruction; its only possible wages is death; not physical death merely, but all that that dread word means, -- the loss of Holiness, Happiness, and Heaven" (Aaron Hills, adapted, edited)

I. They are not concerned about the seriousness of their disease

A. Proverbs 14:9 Fools mock at sin, But among the upright there is favor.

B. They especially mock at sin who knowingly and willingly set a bad and contagious example for others and encourage them to continue in wrong-doing.

1. Proverbs 1:10-11 My son, if sinners entice you, Do not consent. 11 -- If they say, "Come with us, Let us lie in wait to shed blood; Let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause;

2. Proverbs 1:18 But they lie in wait for their own blood, They lurk secretly for their own lives.

3. ILLUS: Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), commonly known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born cook who lived in the United States from a young age and is believed to have infected up to fifty-seven people with the bacteria that causes typhoid fever. The infections resulted in three confirmed deaths. She was the first person in the U.S. to be identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the Salmonella typhi bacteria.

• Between 1897 and 1907, Mallon worked at the houses of several New York-based families; members of four of the households contracted typhoid. An investigation by George Soper, an epidemiologist at the New York Department of Health, identified Mallon as the potential disease vector. In 1907, she was forcibly quarantined at the Riverside Hospital, an institution for those with quarantinable diseases, on North Brother Island in New York City's East River. She was released in 1910 after she swore to report to the health department every quarter and not return to cooking as a career.

• A further typhoid outbreak at the Sloane Maternity Hospital in early 1915 resulted in twenty-five cases and two deaths. Mallon was identified as the responsible party and was returned to North Brother Island. She remained there until her death in 1938. Her nickname, coined by officials at the health department, became a colloquial term for anyone who spreads disease. (Wikipedia).

II. They are not health conscious

A. Have you ever met someone that seems to have no concept of what promotes health – hygiene, nutrition, exercise, etc.

B. Even so, the sin sick often have no clue as to what promotes spiritual health.