Has your spirit ever churned within you? You know what I mean, right? You see something or hear something that really bothers you, and you can almost feel your stomach and/or your chest just start to twist. Your body is reacting physically to something that is trying your spirit. Two Bible characters experienced something like that. Consider what we can learn from them.
In Acts 17, Paul came to the idolatrous city of Athens. It is believed at that time in history that there were about 30,000 public idols in the city that had a population of only 10,000 people. That’s a LOT of idols! When Paul saw that these people worshiped SO MANY false gods and that they referred to the one true God as “The Unknown God,” the Bible says that “his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols” (Acts 17:16). The Greek word for “provoked” indicates that Paul was constantly “irritated, greatly distressed, aroused with anger and grief.” The next verse starts with the word, “Therefore.” With his spirit provoked because of the prevalence of idolatry, what do you think the “therefore” would be? The verse says, “Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue…” He wanted these people to know the one true God and to turn to God! His spirit could not stand the fact that they were lost!
Peter tells us about another individual who had a similar reaction to things around him. Lot lived in the sinfully depraved city of Sodom. The people of the city had “given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh,” normalizing and celebrating a homosexual lifestyle (Jude 7; Gen. 19:1-11; 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10). Lot was living in this city with his family. Did he just “go along to get along”? Did he just “accept it” as an equal lifestyle and permitted in the eyes of a loving God? No. Peter tells us that Lot “was oppressed by the filthy [sensual, NASB] conduct of the wicked,” and that he was continually “day after day…tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard” (2 Pet. 2:8-9). It was not merely that the lawlessness was tormenting him (in a passive sense), but it specifies that he was actively tormenting his own soul. He couldn’t bear to see and hear of such wickedness.
We are living today in a world like Paul found in Athens—seemingly worshiping and devoted to everything under the sun other than the one true God. We are living today in a world like Lot found himself in Sodom—filled and overflowing with sensual conduct and lawless deeds of the most vile kind. Here’s the question: Is your spirit provoked within you like Paul? Is your soul tormented like Lot? We cannot become desensitized to sin. It must continue to vex us and churn our spirit, so that we “therefore” want to teach people about God!