WHAT KIND OF SCENT ARE WE GIVING OFF?

Peter called the spirit the hidden man of the heart, the external man has to be brought into conformity with the spirit within me.

 

James put it like this, if you look into a mirror and believe all that you are and then when you turn away and there are no corresponding actions to your believing then you are in deception.

You cannot on the one hand confess that you are a new creation and at the same time act like old Adam. The external man has to be changed; the heart of man has to be changed. ‘Create in me a clean heart and put a steadfast spirit within’ David was talking about 2 things. Ezek 36:26-28 ‘I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you’.  

We have this new spiritual life, this treasure in earthenware vessels. The seed of the new spiritual life within has to grow and develop otherwise it only remains a seed. You cannot pick fruit from a seed you can only pick fruit from a developed tree. A developed tree has grown, has matured and what is on the outside is a reflection of what started on the inside. . The old nature of the earthenware vessel has to be broken and cast off in order for the scent of the new life within to come forth and affect the environment around.

Here is an interesting prophecy from (Jer 48:11) ‘Moab has been at ease from his youth’; remember David was at ease in Jerusalem when he should have been at the battle front. It means that even though he was anointed with the spirit, he was spiritually asleep. At that time David’s spirit was not upright and it caused him to sin. Moab on the other hand has never been spiritually awake; he has never had a change of nature.

‘He has settled on his lees, having never been poured from vessel to vessel’ to settle on your lees means you have never ever changed your old nature. The practice of pouring wine from one vessel into another was to clarify it and improve its flavour. Otherwise it retained its original bitterness.

On the other hand those of the spirit are ‘changed from glory to glory’ (2 Cor 3:18) or as it says in 2 Cor 4:16 our inner man is being renewed day by day as the outer man, the old nature is falling into decay.

Then it reads ‘Neither has he gone into captivity’. In other words he has never had his old sinful nature taken from him; he has insulated himself from the spiritual life and has continued in the same state.

A big wave of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church through Charismatic Renewal, unfortunately many rejected it, many Bishops and Priests resisted it and because of the hardness of hearts, that outpouring where it was resisted, never took root and today we are reaping a harvest of corruption ( Gal 6:8)

‘He has kept his own flavour, his aroma has never changed’ Moab speaks of the people having a worldly appetite, feeding on worldly things; everything has a smell of worldliness about them. Having no scent of the spirit about them because they have never been poured from vessel to vessel.

 

There are many people within the church who have never experienced the infilling of the Holy Spirit, they go through their religious duties having a form of religion but have no power within to change themselves. They may have been baptised in water but have never experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit a bit like the baby Christians in Corinth, acting, speaking and behaving like ordinary people of the world, having no witness, no testimony and nothing to distinguish them as being different.

 But those of the spirit have a different aroma and different scent.  

 

As 2 Cor 2:15-16 puts it ‘For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one the smell of death that leads to death, to the other a sweet fragrance of life that leads to life.