Using your senses wisely!

The Five Senses

The U.S. Population Census Bureau reports that at the moment there is a global population of 7.59 billion people on planet earth. Have you ever considered that each one of these people, with a few exceptions, are born with five senses? Amazingly, each one of those senses are common in function to every person’s body? 

So that, unless a person is colour blind each of the seven colours of the rainbow would appear the same to every individual.  Musicians can tune their instruments to A440 to be pitch perfect and your ear does the same for you in selecting the correct frequency. Bacon in the frying pan produces an inviting smell that excites the person to eat a full English breakfast coordinating smell and taste for an enjoyable experience. The skin on our body contains thousands of sensory receptors linked to neurons and the cortex, which takes the messages up the spinal cord to the brain. There are five types of stimuli that can be perceived by the skin: Touch, pressure, pain, temperature and vibration. 

How any sensible person can accept the functionality and complexity of our bodies as having come about by random selection as the evolutionist teaches, I do not know. Each of the senses can operate independently of the other but can also work together with the other senses and even compensate for each other when one of the senses is weaker or totally fails. Four of our five senses are directly linked to the head – eyes, ears, nose and tongue – and all of them need the brain to make sense of the stimuli. 

The Bible reveals how our senses relate to the truth of the Word of God. We will now consider examples of each of the senses.

Sight  

In John chapter 20 verse 25 Thomas said, ‘Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ Many people today share Thomas’s philosophy that ‘seeing is believing’ whereas the opposite is true – believing is seeing! Faith in God opens spiritually blind eyes to see things never before appreciated. The hymn writer expressed it in the words of the hymn ‘Loved with everlasting love’.

Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green,
Something lives in every hue,
Christless eyes have never seen,
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His and He is mine.

Peter encourages Christians who have never seen the Lord Jesus with these words in 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 8 & 9 ‘Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls’.

Hearing

We now move from eye gate to ear gate. In Romans chapter 10 verse 17 Paul said, ‘So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’ Jesus affirms this inJohn chapter 5 verse 24 ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’  

The thrust and importance of these scriptures is for us to hear what the word of God is saying to us. Many people today do not countenance the Bible as being the word of God, totally closing their minds to the truth that it conveys. When Stephen preached in Acts chapter 7 the people, having heard, ‘stopped their ears’ and ran upon him and stoned him to death. How lovely it is when people open their ears and open their hearts to the word of God, believe the gospel and are saved.

Taste

Two scriptures come to mind the first in Psalm chapter 34 verse 8 ‘O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him’and the second is Psalm 119 verse 103 ‘How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!’  On the tongue there are thousands of taste buds and these receptors determine the five aspects of taste which are sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savoury). The Psalmists are in no doubt as to the appeal of the word of God for them to gladly drink in the sweet truths of Christ himself.  

Smell

The book of Daniel tells us of three men who were thrown into a fiery furnace for their stand for God. King Nebuchadnezzar had a large monument of a man (depicting himself) which he ordered people to bow down to when certain music was played. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow down and were bound and cast into a fiery furnace which was heated seven times hotter than normal! Daniel chapter 3 verse 27 says ‘And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.’ There are a number of bones and cartilages in the nose that detect a pungent smell, but no pungent smell of hell’s burnings will ever enter the nostrils of a truly born-again child of God. 

Touch

Mark chapter 1 verse 40 – 42 reveals the awful condition of a man’s skin which was emaciated by leprosy. One aspect of leprosy is that the person can lose their sense of touch, also their skin becomes unclean and infected. The leper came to Christ and said ‘if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.’Christ touched the untouchable and the untouchable was made clean and his sense of touch restored. 

It makes good sense to use what God has given us to trust him with our soul’s salvation.

Written by a guest blogger