The prophet Jeremiah speaks this prophecy toward the scribes and priests of the nation of Israel. These were the men who were to be teaching the people how to fear and worship God and yet they were misleading them with false assurances. They were treating this mortal wound that they had with a band-aid. The mortal sin that the people were suffering from was idolatry. They had turned away from God and His ways and were following the ways of the wicked nations around them.

The image that I see in this is that the people have cancer, and the scribes and priests are giving them aspirin to make them feel better. It might make them feel better, but it is doing nothing to heal them of the disease that they have. To be healed they need dramatic, immediate, and strong action. God is warning them that they are close to death; if they don’t do something soon it will be too late.

We still see a lot of this in the church. From the teaching to the counseling, people are being given aspirin when they need surgery or radiation. They are just given band-aids when they need amputation. People don’t need to feel good; they need to see God. The only way that people can see God is if they deal with the cancer and other diseases that are ravaging their lives. They need to receive radical treatment so that they can be healed.

As leaders of families, ministries, and churches we need to be careful that we are not giving out band-aids and aspirin to our people. We should always, in love, be telling the people the truth about where they stand with God. Sometimes that means saying something that is hard and hurts deeply. Just as a surgeon is not afraid to cause pain to see healing take place in a patient’s life, we should not be afraid to use the loving scalpel of truth to remove a soul-threatening disease from someone’s life.

In fact, as leaders we will stand before God and give an accounting of how we have done that very thing. We might even try to justify our actions by saying that we didn’t want to hurt them. But by our negligence we may be allowing them to suffer more than a little pain that might draw them to healing.

This is where the Holy Spirit is so critical in our lives. We should strive to be gentle and meek with those that God has called us to lead. But there comes a time when we need to inflict the pain of truth strongly into a person’s life. This is only possible if we are practiced at speaking the truth no matter what the circumstances. We should never hold the truth back from someone who needs to hear it. Their very soul may hang in the balance. Jesus, give us the words of truth to speak and the love to speak them boldly.

Read: Jeremiah 8:8-9:26; Colossians 3:1-17; Psalm 78:32-55; Proverbs 24:27