Lesson 55
Freedom from Oppression II – 24:5-16
Because our concept of the word “love” has such an emotional term to it
today we have to always constantly go back to the human soul and look at the
various faculties that are involved in love.
This book says “thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul.” Unfortunately the
word “love” has had an emotional connotation to most people because most
people… here is the soul with its volition, personal affections, mentality and
bodily affections, most people think of love in the form of personal affections
and maybe this is true and valid in our culture but in the culture in which the
Bible was written, in the Old Testament times in particular, the word “love”
especially as used in Deuteronomy has a political overtone and is not
emotional.
We find, for example, in archeology certain messages that were exchanged
between Pharaoh and some of his vassal kings; one by the name of [not sure of
name, sounds like: Rib Addu] wrote in approximately the 14th century
before Christ that “to love Pharaoh is to serve him, to remain faithful to the
status of vassal.” There is the usage of
the word “love” in treaty form, and the book of Deuteronomy is a treaty, it is
a legal doctrine that seals the relationship between God and the nation
So we translate, therefore, the word “love” by the word “faithfulness,”
now to be faithful or to follow God, or be obedient to God with all your heart
and all your soul. We have taken various
portions of Deuteronomy to show this. We have found, for example, in chapters
5-11 was how to love the Lord your God with all your heart, which has to do
with the inner mental attitude. So all
of this refers to what goes on on the inside and therefore throughout these
chapters, 5-11, we have the mental attitude of the believer broken down. Chapter 5 deals with the first thing that
every believer has to face, the righteousness and justice of God. There you remember we had the Ten Commandments,
an absolute standard, and you talk about putting the fear of God in [blank
spot].
In chapter 6 it’s emphasis on teaching the Word of God and taking it in,
and to get something in the mind in order to have the proper mental
attitude. Remember in this passage it
said that when you go in your homes, when you’re sitting in the home during the
daytime, when you’re outdoors working, when you go to bed at night, when you
rise up in the morning, you will teach your children by means of talking in
terms of the Word. Now this doesn’t mean
say Bible stories 24 hours a day, it simply means to look at life from the
divine viewpoint. So this means divine
viewpoint 24 hours a day. There are two
ways of looking at life, human viewpoint or divine viewpoint. People learn the word by looking at life
from divine viewpoint.
Chapter 7 is a conflict chapter.
Chapter 8 dealt with one of the problems a believer always has, and that
is the problem of denial that he is a creature and that he has to constantly
keep this in mind, that he is a creature dependent upon God. That’s the chapter in which the famous
statement is made, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Chapter 9 and part of chapter 10 deal with the other problem a believer
always had, [small blank spot] O God, you bless me because I’m so great, and
God can’t help but bless me because I have such a sinilating personality,
because I have all the academic requirements made, or because I am such a great
person God has to bless me. This is always
an occupational hazard for the believer.
Then in chapter 11 was the either/or presented to the believer, either
we obey God or we disobey, there is no middle ground. So this was the mental
attitude and since that time we have been working with chapters 12-26. Chapters 12-26 deal with how to love your God
with all your soul, soul referring here to the activity of the soul in life,
the details of life, social dimension, your relationship in the area of sex,
relationship in the area of love, relationship to loved ones, relationship
inside the family, outside the family, etc. [small blank spot] the details of
the soul. We found this could be broken
down from chapters 12-16 dealing with the national unity of Israel and we found
that unity in the nation Israel, the principle applies to all Christian
fellowships incidentally also, unity in the nation Israel was met by following
God’s religious requirements. God had a
national religion, there was no freedom of religion in the nation
Of course when this country was founded we had a group of people called
the Puritans who recognized this principle.
If you lived in
Then we come to chapters 17-21 where we dealt with the national
righteousness and we found out that there was law and order or righteousness
but the righteousness, notice follows the unity. You can’t have righteousness without unity
[small blank spot] impose standards of society of people unless that society of
people are open to the standards.
Therefore unity precedes righteousness.
And therefore the nation
Then we find out in chapter 23:1-18 community rights and 19 on through
the end of the section, individual rights [small blank spot] and this is the
section we are on, the individual rights that people have and they have these
rights because God has released this nation [small blank spot] the think to
look for in all these rights, otherwise you’re going to lose the forest for the
trees when we get involved with the millstones and everything else, just keep
in mind the principle, that salvation in God’s Word includes social, physical
and economic aspects. It includes and
starts with the individual, but God’s program of salvation is not finished
until the whole man is saved, until society is saved. The distortion in our day to the so-called
social gospel is that men are trying to save themselves by human works. That’s
quite another thing. But fundamentalists in their reaction to the social gospel
have overlooked the simple fact that salvation of God is not finished as long
as man are in economic bondage and other forms of bondage. Therefore as we go through this remember that
God is not satisfied with society the way it is and He’ll never be satisfied
until He brings in His salvation. But
remember, it’s His salvation, not man’s salvation, not by the communists and
all their system of human gimmicks trying to solve man’s problems.
Therefore as we go through this keep in mind that this gives you a four
dimension of the concept of salvation in the Old Testament. We dealt last time with verses 1-4 and the
problem of divorce. We found that this
section, verses 1-4 actually is only one reason for divorce in the Bible and
gives you only one small example of divorce in the Bible. We found there are basically three bases for
divorce in God’s Word. One, death,
obviously if a mate dies the marriage is broken. The second way for divorce in the Bible is
through adultery, it doesn’t mean that the marriage is broken; it means it can
be if the partners are so led by God.
And the third thing is the concept of separation by the unbeliever, for
example in
This then is why we have this problem today in our society; in 1 Cor, 7
it was because the apostles simply evangelized.
In this case, if this male is a believer, positive volition, female,
negative volition, she’s an unbeliever, and she chooses to leave, in this case
she can’t stand the gospel, etc. and so she leaves. If she leaves, Paul says, or if the man takes
off and leaves her, she’s the believer and he’s the unbeliever, then the
marriage is broken in God’s sight. So those are three reasons the New Testament
gives for grounds for divorce.
Then we also found grounds for separation and we distinguished between
divorce and separation. Divorce means
that you have the right to remarry; separation means you do not have the right
to remarry; you have the right only to be reconciled to your mate. We found two grounds for separation in God’s
Word. One, a threat to physical life;
when one partner or the other threatens the other’s life, usually the man
threatening the woman, in this case the woman is under no obligation to stay
with him, she is to leave. Any man that
hits a woman is a nut and can’t control himself and he shouldn’t be around. So
even though I realize it’s a great temptation to take off and slap some brat
woman once in a while, still it’s the mastery of the man not to do it. Now of course the women themselves have a lot
of self-restraint because it’s amazing that more men aren’t poisoned. You see the women are the ones that cook the
meals and it’d be very easy to slip a little arsenic in every once in a while,
go slowly over a period of time, couldn’t blame it on the cooking, so it’s a
wonder that men aren’t poisoned. So
there are various restraints operating in the situation but when physical life
is threatened that is the basis for separation in God’s Word.
The second threat that would be a basis for separation in God’s Word
would be threat to one’s spiritual life.
For example, if we have a situation where we have one mate, say we have
a man that’s an unbeliever, the female is a believer. The female does her job as a wife but the man
forbids her to take Bible doctrine, either by obstructing her coming to church,
she wants to listen on the radio or tape recording, he obstructs it, etc. or he
may bully her into various acts of sin such as wife-swapping etc. and something
like this that happens that threatens her spiritual life, she has the right to
say so long, we’ll see you around.
That’s the basis for separation.
Now we come to verse 5 and we have a little different concept of
marriage but again this deals with the problem of bondage. Remember verse 4, in
this particular case, now keep in mind there are gobs and gobs of reasons in
the Old Testament for getting divorce, I just gave you the New Testament. In the Old Testament there were many reason
for divorce, Moses is just giving one here.
But he’s giving it in the context that he doesn’t want people to be oppressed
and in verse 4 it tells you why he gave this particular illustration. “Her former husband, who sent her away, may
not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled,” we went through
the case of the fact that here we have husband number one; he marries this
woman and he doesn’t like her and he sends her off and so she goes down and she
marries husband number two. Husband
number two doesn’t like her and sends her off or he dies, he’s out of the picture
so she’s free now. Well, she does not have the freedom to come back to husband
number one.
Why did Moses prohibit this? He
prohibited it because he wanted to stop frivolous divorce. Moses had the problem, Jesus Christ tells us
in Matt. 19 that Moses had a tremendous problem with the nation
Now in verse 5 we have another situation with marriage. “When a man has taken a new wife, he shall
not go out to war,” now it’s interesting here that it’s a new wife, he might have
an old wife around but this is a new wife, and the point here is that this
restriction of verse 5 is given, not because he’s inexperienced in the area of
marriage, this could be a man whose wife has died and he takes another woman. The point that he is making here is not that
the man doesn’t have experience in marriage and he needs experience, the point
that he’s making is that marriage involves a deep personal relationship and
this personal relationship has to be stabilized in the early months of marriage. Therefore in verse 5 Moses lays down one of
the most fantastic stipulations to stabilize marriage, probably known in the
legislation around the world. This is
probably almost unique as far as a stabilizing device in the form of a national
law to increase the solidarity of marriage.
“When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war,” the word
“war” here means military service and actually he is not subject to the lottery
or something, whatever they had in that day, but he was not subject to the
draft for one year, and there was a reason for it, Moses gives it here,
“neither shall he be charged with any business,” now this phrase “any business”
means governmental service, they had people that couldn’t’ handle a spear or
something and they put them in KP, washing dishes for Solomon or something, but
they had some governmental services and so the man couldn’t even be called upon
to do this for one year after he had been married, “but he shall be free at
home one year,” and the word “free” is a word which means he is exempt from
service, it’s a technical word which means exemption.
Now to see why this is true we have to go back to Deut. 20:5 for a
moment. Now we get into the concept of
holy war again. God had his people in
the Old Testament fight for their possessions.
The people were given the possessions legally but they had to claim them
in experience, by faith, ceasing the promises of God and walking out and taking
the things that God had given them. This
involves holy war. When holy war was declared the officers would go down
through the ranks and get rid of all the crybabies and they have a way of doing
this; they have a system of interrogation to get away from anybody that
wouldn’t be a good sharp soldier in the field in a combat situation, and so
they started in verse 5 and here’s how they weeded out the men from the
mice.
“And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What is there
that has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to
his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. [6] And what
man is he who has planted a vineyard, and has not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return unto his house,
lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. [7] And what man is there who has betrothed a
wife and has not taken her? Let him to and return unto his house, lest he die
in the battle, and another man take her. [8] And the officers shall speak
further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there who is fearful
and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s
heart faint as well as his heart.” Now
there are two principles here. One, of
course, in verse 8, the principle of a louse mental attitude, and God doesn’t
want whiners and crybabies on His team.
And if a bunch of soldiers are going out here and they are involved in
some situation, that’s all they need is a few soldiers that are whining when
the going gets bad; this disrupts the whole system. So therefore rather than come out with 100
men, 10 of whom are babies, they’ll eliminate those and start with 90 because
then they’ve got a solid front that’s impermeable.
And they also have another principle in verses 7, 6, and 5. What are these in here for? These are in here
because throughout the Old Testament God never asks His people to fight for
that which they have not enjoyed. It’s a
principle of holy war; you see it again and again. God says look, I want you to enjoy My
blessings, then fight for them, then you know what you’re fighting for. I want you to enjoy these things, then
fight. In other words, it’s similar to
the New Testament thing that in the New Testament we fight from our position in
Christ, not to it. So in the Old
Testament, the Old Testament saints did not fight to gain possessions, they
fought because they already enjoyed them and they were to continue to enjoy
them. So God had these people enjoy
these things.
Marriage, verse 7, was one of these blessings that God had given His
people and He said therefore until you have enjoyed it, until you have set this
up, then why fight for it because you’re not really defending something; you
haven’t got your heart into it. But if
you’ve enjoyed this, if you’ve got your home stabilized, if you’ve got your
wife at home, now you’re a serious soldier because now you’re defending her,
now you’re defending the home; now you’re defending your business. You see this is very intimately related to
one’s mental attitude.
Now we come back to this verse that we’re dealing with and we find that
this exemption law was here for another reason.
Not only was it necessary for the man to be able to enjoy his wife, not
only was that necessary but there was another reason and that is given in the
last part of verse 5, “and shall cheer up his wife whom he has taken,” except
the word “cheer up” means “make to rejoice.”
In other words we go back to the male/female role that we have been
examining in this book. Remember the male in Scripture is always the initiator;
he’s always the one that initiates, the female is always the responder and no
matter what happens, it always works this way.
This is why… incidentally, the church is always made up with men in
leadership positions. Even though you
may have a lot of wonderful skilled mature Christian women, have you ever
noticed in the Gospels that it was interesting to notice that the disciples
were not the most mature people in the Gospels.
Do you know who the mature people in the Gospels were? The woman.
Has it ever caught your attention in the Gospels, when Jesus Christ is
about to die, the disciples said oh no Lord, no Lord, you don’t want to die,
don’t want to die, it’s not in the plan. But one woman comes along and takes
all of her savings in the funeral ointment and she pours it all over Him
because she recognized that He was going to die and she’s the only one that
gets grade A on the spiritual advance of the gospel, the rest of them
flunked. And they were flunkies all the
way down to the time of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit indwelt, but it was the
women throughout the Gospel narratives that really caught on to the truth and
yet, isn’t it interesting, Christ never said well Matthew you’re retired, I’m
going to bring Mary up here, she’s going to be the twelfth disciple.
Now Jesus Christ stuck with twelve clods because He followed this
principle that the man always has to be the initiator, he has to be the leader
and you’d better stick with a man and have a lousy leader than stick with a
woman even though she may be a wonderful believer. Her position is in the position of response
and completing the team, not leading the team.
Wherever you have organizations that violate this, to that degree they
hurt themselves as far as God’s spiritual ministry is concerned. Obviously women have had to take up the slack
in many places; this is not knocking women missionaries because oftentimes this
is all that volunteer; these are the only people that made it spiritually and
so in those cases we find God takes up the slack a little bit and makes up for
it, but that’s not His A plan, that’s plan B, C or D somewhere on down the line
but it’s not plan A. So we see this by
the Lord Jesus’ insistence to stick with a group of idiot men rather than run
along with some women who could out-maneuver the men any day of the week
because he followed the principle, man is the initiator woman is the responder.
Marriage shows this and therefore in verse 5 God says through Moses to
this man, look, I want you to get this marriage off on the right foot, I want
you to stay at home one year and I want you to set up this relationship,
initiate so that your wife begins to respond, initiate, initiate, initiate,
“make to rejoice” and it means that she is going to be made to rejoice, she
doesn’t rejoice but in response to what that man does. So that is what he is told to do, verse 5,
that is the advice the Bible gives to newlyweds, to get that marriage
relationship off to a good start and you don’t have to worry about the money
and everything else, it’s better to eat frankfurters and beans and toast and
water if you have to, but get that relation off to a good start and verse 5 is
your key.
Verse 6, we have another illustration of freedom from oppression. Here it’s not marriage; here it’s in the
realm of economics. Involved is what
they call a hand mill. If you want to
see a picture of this go to the library and pull out Views of a Biblical World
by Jordan Publishing Company, 1959, you’ll see about 8 volumes in it. If you are doing a Bible study some time in
some phase of the Old Testament I’d recommend this to you because you’ll see
pictures in there of Bible life and Bible things and one of these things you’ll
see in there is what this hand mill is, and it explains something. It was two pieces of stone, one had kind of a
concave surface to it and there was a roller on this and you see these women,
it’s actually kind of like a rolling pin except sometimes it didn’t have pins
on the end of this cylindrical rock; sometimes it did. You’d find these women who would roll and
break down the grain on this thing; this was how they made bread.
“No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge,” the
point is that a pledge was collateral for a loan. So for example, if I were a poor Israelite
and I needed a loan, I would get that loan but in order for that other person
to give me the money I’d have to put up collateral. Suppose I didn’t have collateral. What this law says is that that man does not
have the right to seize a basic commodity of my life for collateral. In other words, there’s a shield, there’s a
minimum shield around to protect this person economically so that this is not
lost. See, these things came hard in the
ancient world, if you broke this thing it might be a weeks, months or years
before they’d get another one; it was very difficult to make one of these
things. Therefore God says listen, you
can take anything for pledge but don’t you take something that is a direct
economic necessity in that person’s life.
And he says “you shall not take the nether,” that’s a complete wrong
translation, it means the millstones, plural, “you will not take the
millstones,” plural, “or the upper millstone.”
Why do you suppose somebody would take this and not the bottom one? It’s very easy, you can carry it, this bottom
one was heavy and so the tendency would be on a collateral basis to just pick
up something that they can walk off with and they’d pick up this upper
millstone.
But “No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge; for
he is taking,” that’s a Hebrew participle, continuous action at this point,
moving picture tense, “he is taking the man’s soul.” I want you to look at that because that tells
you a little bit about soul; some of you have wondered, for example, when I get
up here and I put the functions of the soul, why it is that I divided up the
faculties of the soul where normally you find people saying volition, emotion,
mentality, I divide it up between personal affections and bodily affections
because in the Word of God the soul actually has physical desires. And you can’t get around it, it’s not some
spiritual or hyper spiritual thing. The
soul has physical desires, like hunger, etc.
And here in verse 6 the word “soul,” nephesh,
means a person’s whole physical life. If
you deprive him of his means of making bread, you’ve deprived him of bodily
affection of hunger. He can’t satisfy
that thing and so that’s why it’s called nephesh
here.
In verse 7 we find another illustration of freedom from oppression. We find the problem of kidnapping, except
this is one man kidnapping another. “If
any man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and
makes merchandise of him, or sells him, then that thief shall die,” here anybody
that would dare touch anyone was to be killed.
Now you may not catch the intimation from this except if you go back in
the Ancient Near East you will study things like The Hammurabi Code and so on
and Hammurabi’s Code had a very interesting thing that compares to this; it
says if any man be found stealing any of the citizens of the nation he will
die. In other words, there were slaves,
there were citizens, and there were all sorts of social classes in the
Babylonian Empire back here in the time of Hammurabi. All right, you could steal a citizen and
you’d die for it; if you stole a slave then you’d just pay some money. Do you see what it did? It placed a value and structured people’s
lives. The Word of God doesn’t do
that. The Word of God says here if that
person is one of the “brethren of the children of Israel,” you don’t lay your
cotton-picking hand on him or I’ll take care of the situation, I don’t care
whether that person is a poor person or if he’s a rich person, I don’t care if
he’s educated, I don’t’ care what he is, I don’t want you to touch him; all
people are created equal in this sense of the Word of God. And here is one of the greatest and earliest
pieces of legislation to recognize this truth.
Now verses 8-9, this is the central section for tonight, the problem of
freedom from sickness or freedom from the oppression of sickness. Verse 8, “Take heed in the plague of leprosy,
that you observe diligently and do according to all that the priests, the
Levites, shall teach you,” now here we have a strong command, unusual in this book
because it says “take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe
diligently and do,” it sounds like a little waste of time to go into this
detail but there are two verbs, “diligently” and “do,” or “observe diligently”
and “do.” And it’s separated by the word
“and.” This is usually not the case in
all of these commandments. This is very
unusual; it caught my eye when I was translating this. The emphasis is the fact that you are not
only not to do this, but you are to twenty-four hours a day watch that you
don’t get involved in this mess.
All right, what is the mess that you’re not to get involved with? It says “Take heed in the plague of leprosy,
that thou observe diligently and do according to all that the priests, the
Levites, shall teach you,” now the Levites were the Bible teachers in Israel,
they taught the people the first five books.
They were all taught by Levites.
The prophets came along and wrote the later books of the Old Testament
but the Levites were the ones, the Bible teachers, who taught the first five
books. What did they teach them?
Go back to Lev. 13, here’s what the Levites taught them. Here’s one of those times again where you
have a physical law and an admonition to follow sanitation and hygienic
proceedings. Now in Leviticus 13 we have
another situation where God does not tell us why, notice, these people didn’t
now about bacteria, these people didn’t know about germs, these people didn’t
know all of this, but God said I don’t care whether you know it scientifically
or not, I tell you don’t do this. And He
gave the nation Israel procedures for sterilization. For example, a person would be unclean until
evening. Do you know what that
means? It means that they would take
their clothes that they had covered their wounds with, or that they’d covered
their leprosy, and they’d lay them out in the hot desert. Now what would that do during the day? Well you’d have sort of sterilization, you’d
have ultraviolet rays coming down on this, and so God says you’re going to be
unclean until evening, until the sun goes down and of course your clothes have
been sterilized. Now it’s primitive, of course, but still the principle is
there.
And the principle applies to us as believers. We do not know all the details of our soul;
we do not know what science may someday discover, but take it on faith, if God
asks you to do something, go ahead and do it because someday you may understand
why, and you would just see some of the skeptics in Moses day say well Moses, I
think this is a pretty dumb procedure, washing our hands, taking our clothes
off and laying them out in the sun, that’s kind of stupid, don’t you
think? That good garment is all faded
because you made me put this out in the sun.
You can hear the arguments but Moses did not know why, he just said God
said I want you to do it, just do it, never mind why, you just do it. And of course if you’ve had small children
you hear well why do I have to do this?
After a while you say you don’t ask me why, you just do it and later on
they find out why. So God works with us
oftentimes as children. He’s not going
to give us all the answers right away but He does tell us to do certain
things.
What did he tell them to do, Lev. 13:1, “And the LORD spoke unto Moses
and Aaron, saying, [2] When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a
swelling, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the
plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one
of his sons the priests; [3] And the priest shall look on the plague in the
skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the
plague in sight is deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of
leprosy: and the priest shall look upon him, and pronounce him unclean. [4] If
the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper
than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned white, then the priest shall
shut him up that hath the plague seven days. [5] And the priest shall look him the seventh day, and behold, if the
plague be in his sight at a stay, and the plague spread not in the skin, then
the priest shall shut him up seven days more. [6] And the priest shall look on
him again the seventh day, and, behold, if the plague be somewhat dark, and if
the plague spread not in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is
but a scab: and he shall wash his clothes, and be clean.”
There you have a hygienic procedure that was given to the priests of
Israel; they taught the Bible and they applied the Word of God medically to the
people. This was to discern between two
types of illness. I am told by those who
study medicine that this technically is not the kind of leprosy that we know as
leprosy, it’s a slightly different kind of disease, I’m not sure of this or not
but some men who have studied it say it is.
Now this is what God says, I want you to isolate the people. Now if you got back to Deuteronomy you can
understand why this next verse is there.
To continue to understand this you’ll see what the connection is between
verses 8 and 9.
Verse 8 says, “Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe
diligently and do according to all that the priests, the Levites, shall teach
you; as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. Then verse 9, “Remember what the LORD thy God
did unto Miriam by the way, after ye were come forth out of Egypt.” And you say what in heavens name does verse 9
have to do with verse 8? Simple, in
verse 8 God had laid down the principle that a man who is unclean has to be
excluded from the camp. Who is
Miriam? Miriam is one of the big whales
and the test is are you going to apply the principle to the big wheel or are
you going to be swayed by personality.
Here comes big Miriam and she throws a lot of weight around and you’ll
see she tried to throw her weight around a long time and God caught her on it
and called her number. But Miriam was a
kind of bossy old woman that was Moses’ sister and to get background on Miriam
turn to Exodus 2. Miriam, unfortunately,
had one of the gifts of running off at the mouth and she ran off at the mouth
at the wrong time.
Exodus 2:4, this is when Moses
was put by his mother, as a young infant, into this little basket and launched
down the river and the daughter of Pharaoh… Verse 4, “And his sister,” that’s
Miriam, “stood afar off,” so is Miriam younger or older than Moses? Obviously
she’s older. “And his sister stood afar off, to see what would be done to
him.” So you remember the story, Miriam
goes down there and she sees that the Pharaoh’s daughter sees this baby and she
goes down and says I’ve got a nurse for this baby if you want and Pharaoh’s
daughter says fine and she gets the real mother, and that’s how Moses is
raised. But from this verse we know that
Miriam is older than Moses; this is his sister.
Now turn to Numbers 12 and you’ll see what happens to Miriam. Moses had a marital problem with
Zipporah. LBJ wasn’t the first man to
call his wife Lady Bird; Moses was for the word Zipporah means bird, and Moses’
wife was Lady Bird. And he had a problem
with her and she was evidently an unbeliever or something, and she couldn’t go
along with his ministry so Moses went along and remember he picked Zipporah up
out here with her father-in-law and he evidently was all right, he was a
Gentile believer but she showed signs definitely of not being a believer at all
and Moses got linked up with her and she got so rebellious against the Lord
that when Moses tried to apply the seal of circumcision to his son she picked
up the block that she was using and she threw at his feet and called him a
bloody man, and of course she was defiling the covenant seal that God had
given. And you never read about this
woman again, she’s erased from the pages of Scripture. Moses ignores her and she goes home to be
with her father and you never hear of her again.
Then Moses marries some other woman, Num. 12:1, “Miriam and Aaron spoke
against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had
married an Ethiopian woman.” Whether this woman is colored or not is not the
point, we think historically the Ethiopians, of course, are not basically,
they’re Caucasoid race with dark skin.
And for some reason Miriam and Aaron, by the way Aaron was also Moses’
older brother; got together and said look at this poor little baby brother, and
here’s older sister bossing her baby brother around and here’s older brother
bossing his baby brother around. So they
get together and have a little family conference and they say you know, we
don’t think our little baby brother, this business of leading the Lord’s people
has just gone too far, it’s gone to his head, the poor little kid, he doesn’t
know what he’s doing. So they start to
backtalk behind Moses. Verse 2, they
even go so far as to say, “And they say, Has the LORD indeed spoken only by
Moses? Has he not spoken also by
us?” In other words they say why should
we be subject to our little brother. Now
I’m his older sister Miriam says, and Aaron says yeah and I’m his older brother,
why should we sit around here and listen to this guy. The answer is because God appointed him and
they have no right to violate God’s appointment.
This is why in verse 3 it makes that famous statement about Moses in the
Bible, “(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were upon the
face of the earth).” Do you know why he
was meek and why God’s Word says that at that time? Because he was able to keep his mouth shut,
and if there’s anything harder it’s to keep one mouth shut is when members of
your own family begin to malign and begin to criticize and begin to laugh at
you because God has called you into some ministry and they’ve got all this
static to give you. I know personally. So when you get involved in this racket it’s
very easy thing to pop off good and loud, and yet Moses doesn’t. So therefore
Moses was very meek, above all men. Do
you know what he did? He said Lord,
these people are back-talking against me, these people are gossiping, these
people are going to start an insurrection against me but I’ll tell you one
thing, I’m going to leave it in your hands because I respect the principle that
vengeance is of the Lord. And if someone
is going to get spanked you are going to do the spanking Lord, I don’t intend
to and therefore I’m going to relax and while Miriam is over here and Aaron is
over here and they have all sorts of carnality in their mentality, their mental
thought pattern is filled with carnal thoughts, gossip, maligning, criticizing,
and they can’t stand Moses, Moses is over here relaxed, he has a relaxed mental
attitude. He says go ahead and talk, I
know you’re talking, just go ahead, I’ve left it in the Lord’s hands, He’s
going to take care of it. And guess
what, verse 4.
“And the LORD spoke suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto
Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out.” Wouldn’t that be a
good scene, they are in their gossiping and maligning and Moses is sitting there
with kind of a pained look on his face, and all of a sudden you hear this big
boom, all right, front and attention, all three of you, and bang, here they are
out in the middle of the presence of the Lord and now He’s going to deal with
them. Watch this one.
Verse 5, “And the LORD came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood
in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came
forth. [6] And He said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I
the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him
in a dream. [7] My servant, Moses, is not so, who is faithful in all Mine
house.” Verse 10, “And the cloud
departed from the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as
snow,” all of a sudden she’d become unclean and God just put this uncleanness
upon her at that point and you see something there, it’s fantastic. Verse 11, “And Aaron said unto Moses, Alas,
my lord,” and here’s the older brother, who looks on his sister whom he loves,
he looks on his little brother who he’s just been maligning and he turns around
and says my younger brother is my lord.
Do you know why he says that? Not
because he all of a sudden has become a weakling but because he recognizes that
that younger brother was picked out by God and spiritually it’s his lord. So now he swallows his brotherly pride, turns
around, which is very difficult for one family member to do to another and says
“Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done
foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. [12] “Let her not be as one dead, of
whom the flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother’s womb.” And
verse 13 shows you once again that Moses was a man of grace [ blank spot].
Verse 13, “And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, Heal her now, O God, I
beseech thee.” As I said last week, if
it had been me I would have a few other words to say, I’d say ha-ha. That would be my natural reaction at this
point, good Lord, you really creamed her, I’m glad of that. Verse 14, “And the LORD said unto Moses,” and
here’s the application to our lesson tonight, “If her father had but spit in
her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out from the
camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again. [5] And Miriam
was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam
was brought in again.”
That shows you the principle; this principle of quarantine for leprosy
was applied even when it came to the first lady of the camp. In other words, besides Moses wife, Miriam
was one of the leaders of this camp, of this operation and when God dealt with
her the principle is the same and that should apply to you if you are a
believer. Don’t you treat people because
you like their scintillating personality, you stick with the principle. It’s true, sometimes you may step on some
people’s toes but I’ll guarantee you something you won’t step on half the toes
you will if you try to kowtow to certain type of personalities that you want to
get in the brownie points with, etc. You
just stick with your principles. And
here it is, God is sticking with His and this is why He says don’t you fool
around with the laws of God because when God applies these laws He applies them
impartially; He has to, that’s what justice means, impartiality.
Now let’s conclude by talking about the doctrine of sickness and since
we have dealt with the problem of sickness here let’s summarize what the Bible
has to say about sickness and healing.
There are four things to understand about the concept of sickness
recorded in God’s Word. The first thing
to remember about sickness is that all sickness is a byproduct of Gen.
2:17. In Gen. 1:27 God said “in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” In other words, all sickness, biological
decay, biochemical decay, and cancer if it is a virus, etc. all of these things
result from the disorder left by sin in the world. Now you want to see this, the tendency for a
lot of believer is to think of sin as some spiritual thing. That’s true, it is, but that’s not the only
thing that sin is. Sin has exterior
physical manifestations. I’ll tell you
where you see this and you can see it as clear as day. If you take a person who has suffered a lot
as an unbeliever and they accept Jesus Christ and after a few months of taking
in the Word you’ll see their face change, you’ll actually see their countenance
change. I’ve seen it on people who have
lived a hard life and they trust the Lord Jesus Christ and their life is
changed and you can see it in their face; there is a physical change; not it’s
partial of course, but nevertheless it shows the point that spirituality does
have physical implications. So it’s
caused by the curse of Gen. 2:17.
How do we know who administers it? Turn to Heb. 2:14, here we find who
it is that administers sickness, it is Satan; the one who has “the power of
death, that is Satan,” Corollary verse,
Acts 10:34 when it says Jesus Christ rebuked and healed those who were
oppressed of the devil and it’s talking there in terms of physical
sickness. So we know, chiefly from Heb.
2:14, also from Acts 10:34 that it is Satan who is the administrator of
sickness; it is in his power and of course he doesn’t do it promiscuously, he
has to get permission from God, etc. I’m
not saying that, but the point is that Satan is the administrator of it, even
though it’s always under God’s control. The point is that he is the one that
actually administers it.
The third thing, God hates it and don’t you ever adopt this idea that
God loves to see you miserable. Some
Christians have gotten the idea and I don’t know where they’ve got it, that
somehow God gets a thrill out of torturing them. Don’t you ever buy that line, that’s strict
from the pit. God never wants to torture
you and He never wants to make you miserable.
Never! This attitude is seen in
many cases, turn to Mark 1:40, God’s attitude is not one of torturing His
children; He’s not that kind of a Father.
We have a healing incident in the Gospel, “And there came a leper to
him,” Jesus Christ, “beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto
him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”
Now this leper obviously is acknowledging the fact the Lord Jesus Christ
has the power to so he says you can make me clean if you will, if you want
to. And here’s one of the interesting
exposures, in verse 41, without saying a word, “And Jesus, moved with
compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and said unto him, I will; be
thou clean.”
You also have this same attitude in John 11 where Jesus is at the tomb
of Lazarus and it says as He looked upon these people weeping Jesus Christ
became very angry and He wasn’t just angry at the lack of faith [can’t
understand small section]. God does not
enjoy suffering, don’t you ever adopt [blank spot] but the suffering itself is
never good and God hates it. You have
this attitude again and again in the Word of God. [small blank spot] … resurrection bodies, or until we lose our
physical bodies is a better way of saying it because if we die before the
rapture then we lose our physical body, but the sickness will be continually
with us because of the curse of Gen. 2:17.
[blank spot] If God today would
say I want to relieve all the sickness, I’ve had enough of this, then or course
it would invalidate Gen. 2:17, so this is why God [blank spot]…. So sickness
does have purposes other than just to show the power of God in healing. [in this section much is unintelligible]
Another one is a little tricky that’s around, it’s called the atonement
theory, or this that certainly Jesus has borne our sicknesses, Isaiah 53,
therefore why shouldn’t we be healed when we accept Christian as Savior, why
shouldn’t we be healed? [fairly long blank spot] …not with experience and no
matter how many experiences Dr. Chafer had he always stayed with the Word of
God. That’s why he is one of the great
spiritual giants of this country.
The third false theory of the atonement goes this way, based on the
immutability of God, certainly Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and
forever [blank spot] John 10:41, here you have the case of John the
Baptist. John the Baptist ministered
many, many years to prepare people for Jesus Christ, “And many resorted unto him,
and said, John did no miracle,” now, why didn’t John do the miracles Jesus did
if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and so on. Jesus Christ was existing before He was
incarnate. So obviously that argument
falls apart because the immutability has to do with God’s character, not with
the way He works. God works in different ways at different times in history,
never contradicting Himself but nevertheless changing.
The fourth argument which I think is the most serious argument and the
thing that bothers me most as pastor, because I pick up and have to counsel the
people that have borne the brunt of this argument, and I think this is very
cruel, and it says this, that Christian, if you’re not healed, it’s because you
don’t have enough faith. If you’re not
healed today it’s because of minus faith on your part. And if you’ve ever counseled some Christians,
as I have, who have had guilt complexes all the way down to the soles of their
feet because of this. [Blank spot] You have some person who’s suffering and he
has physical suffering and you come along with your brilliant theory about he’s
not healed because he doesn’t have enough faith and what are you doing? You’ve
set up mental attitude suffering. So
before he had physical suffering, now he has mental attitude suffering. [Blank
spot]
… is that God must work through our physical bodies to perform His work
in us, verse 13, “Now the body is not for fornication,” Paul said, “but for the
Lord, and the Lord is for the body” and we explained to you that this is a
proverb based on the first part of verse 13, “Food for the stomach, the stomach
for food.” All right, now you come back
to the end of verse 13 and what is it saying?
Food—stomach; Lord—body, now the food is assimilated to the stomach,
it’s an organ of assimilation, and of course is utilized there. The Lord wants
to be utilized through your body and so therefore the principle, the background
for sickness is that God has to work through your physical body and God isn’t
going to work through an invalid, God is going to work through people who can
use their bodies and whose bodies are in shape that He can use them.
Turn to 2 Cor. 4:10 and you’ll see a second expression of this same
principle, the second principle of true healing. “Always bearing about in the body the dying
of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our
flesh.” Isn’t that interesting, the life
of the Lord Jesus might be manifest in our mortal flesh it says in verse 11, in
other words, right now, in phase two, here’s the plan of salvation and phase
two is the time between the time you receive Christ until the time you die, in
phase two of the plan of salvation God is interested in your body, it’s part of
Christ positionally and furthermore He wants to use it because He wants to
express Himself through it. Therefore
these two reasons at least begin to set up the fact that you shouldn’t take
sickness lightly. Sickness influences
your body and your capacity to express the Lord’s love and so on, through
it. And it’s obviously detrimental to
His plan. So here we begin to set up
some principles that control sickness.
Now the third thing about sickness is that therefore sickness always has
purpose. What are these purposes? There are two categories; remember the
categories of suffering, here they come:
category deserved suffering; category undeserved suffering. Get this down because I counseled with a
young couple that lost their baby when he was 9 days old, and they had doctrine
and were applying it in the face of catastrophe and suffering and heartache
because they had something to apply.
What are these cases of suffering? Basically we have deserved suffering;
in the area of sickness there are two things, violation of natural law. By the way, that’s deserved suffering. Some Christians think because they are in the
Lord’s service they can violate every physical and biological law and that’s
ridiculous. If you don’t get sleep
you’re going to be tired and you’re not going to perform and you should respect
the natural laws of health and hygiene.
Secondly, you can also earn it by chastisement, here’s where God
disciplines you, Heb. 12 and He spanks you, and here is suffering that you
deserve. Because you got out of line God
the Father is going to spank you and He may spank you through the means of
physical sickness. Case in point, 1 Cor.
11, what does Paul say, look Corinthians, how come so many of you are dying
off, how come you have a flu epidemic here in Corinth all the time, how come
you never get rid of this sickness in this congregation, it’s because you’re
fouling up at communion service. We
don’t know whether Paul was personally told this of the Lord or not, I suspect
he wasn’t, I suspect Paul had such a tremendous spiritual discernment that he
could walk in and he could look at people and just checking some facts he could
analyze why they were sick in some cases.
He could walk to you as a believer and tell you, you’re sick because
bang, bang, bang is true. He did in 1
Cor. 11.
So this is deserved sickness, this is sickness you bring on yourself but
there are also sicknesses that you don’t bring on yourself, there are a number
of these. First of all, to be a witness
to angels, that’s Job 1 and 2; Job’s sickness was brought on not because of Job
but because of the fact that God wanted to show the angelic conflict and
resolve certain issues, witness to Satan, etc. and by the way, the witness
here, do you know what the test is? The
test is if God puts pressure on you as a believer and you have nothing but the
promises to trust, do you go negative or do you go positive? Or do you say with Job, “though God slay me
I’m going to keep on trusting.” And
Satan is up there saying ah-ha Lord, just apply a little more heat and this
believer is going to curse You to Your face. And God says okay Satan, apply a
little bit more heat. And so Satan turns up the heat and the pain increases and
your sickness increases and so do you still trust the promises. And then finally the sickness goes away and
you wonder why was I so sick? Because
God was testing you and using you to demonstrate an issue to Satan, that people
will trust in the Word of God apart from immediate blessing, that you can
postpone your enjoyment of God’s blessings because you trust Him as your
heavenly Father and you can take the sorrow and the heartache and the suffering
and still come through in flying colors.
And what happens after Satan gets that kind of treatment? He takes off, that’s what it means resist Satan
and he will flee from thee. He’s not
interested in having you turn out to be a witness against his cause. Of course if you’re the complaining type then
he says ah, good, great, prove my case Lord, turn a little heat on this
believer and they’re crybabies. What’d I
tell you Lord, they don’t deserve salvation and that’s Satan’s argument. So
there’s witness to angels.
You can have a witness to other believers, we saw that in the doctrine
of suffering; witness to unbelievers, in both cases, you might have an
unbeliever who may be a tough individual as an unbeliever, a self-made man and
he’s not going to accept Christianity because he thinks it’s a crutch. And the only thing that’s going to lead that
man to Christ is watching perhaps some other person who is a believer go
through hell in front of him and he says I couldn’t go through that, there must
be something to this Christianity.
Therefore as this unbeliever looks down at a suffering, sick believer
all of a sudden he realizes this Christianity business is real, I’d better
start investigating the gospel and rethink my position.
So therefore these are some reason why you can be sick. Others, learning how to comfort others, maybe
you have a problem in this area; you don’t know how to comfort others,
particularly if you have the gift of counseling and are not using it. If God has given you the gift of counseling
and you are having problems using it God may just give you sickness to train
you how to communicate with people that are sick.
Then you may have three other causes, you may learn God’s omnipotence,
this is what God was trying to teach Paul and he said, “My strength is made
perfect in weakness.” Turn to 1 Cor. 12,
I want you to see this because Paul didn’t deserve it, it was just a sickness
that came upon it, whether it was heart trouble or something, we don’t know,
but Paul had a problem and he couldn’t get rid of it, but I want you to notice
something, it wasn’t Paul’s fault, it came upon Paul utterly mysteriously, he
had a sickness, he hadn’t sin, it wasn’t due to discipline, it wasn’t due to
that he’d violated the laws of health, but he still was sick; why this sickness
Lord. In verse 9 God says unto him, “My
grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength” that’s His omnipotence, God’s
power “is made perfect in weakness,” and when this person is flat on their back
and they realize it’s no longer their power that’s keeping them alive, it’s no
longer their power that’s solving the problem, it’s God’s power, they’ve
learned a tremendous lesson.
The second lesson they learn here is God’s love, that’s His grace,
translated here in verse 9, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” in other words,
if I am sick one of the lessons I can learn is God’s love for me, and that God
is still gracious to me, He still loves me, and I am to trust that love, that
He’ll provide for me. And then finally the last lesson is found in 1 Peter 1
and that’s learning how to trust, or learning to build up your faith, learning
to trust the promises. Do you know why it’s a test? Because oftentimes you’ll trust the Lord and
you don’t get healed and so what do you do? Do you fall apart? No, you keep on
trusting. I know a lady that’s alive in
Houston, at last count I think she had seven terminal diseases, they have to
bring her in in a wheel chair, you find that lady every night at Bible
class. Do you know why? That’s where she
gets her strength and she’s one of the greatest prayer warriors. When I was in Houston in 1960 and 61, some
men, Hal Lindsey and some other men thrived on this woman’s prayer. Every time they had a problem they’d go to
this woman; she was the only person that they’d ever confide in because boy
when she prayed, you know the prayer went to the throne, she got through. She was a fantastic prayer warrior and still
is and yet she has cancer, she has diabetes, you name it, she’s got it. The doctors are just utterly amazed at this
woman; she goes on living, doesn’t know how to die or something, just goes on
living. It’s an amazing testimony
because God has a purpose for her life.
What do we do with dealing with the sickness itself, the fourth
step. Sickness has a purpose, our bodies
are to be used for the Lord, how do we deal with sickness? There’s a procedure, James 5:14-15, often
misunderstood, misapplied but nevertheless has a lot of truth in it. “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the
elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord,” a form of medicine in that day. Verse 15, “And the prayer of faith shall save
the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up,” let’s look at this prayer of faith
so that what we understand what it is not and then what it is.
A prayer of faith means that you have the full confidence to pray for
your healing in that situation. God
gives you a confidence that He wants you healed and you can pray at that point
the prayer of faith, but you can’t pray the prayer of faith until God gives you
the faith to pray it, that’s the point.
Now there are certain ways of getting to the point where this might be
true. It is not always true, sometimes
it works, sometimes it doesn’t, it only works when God gives you the green
light to pray this prayer. Now don’t
always say every time you get sick God has given you the green light to pray
the prayer, you’ll know, there’s a confidence about it. Let’s look at this; the first thing we do
when we’re sick is to check, is this sickness due to something I deserve. That’s the first procedure, always do that,
look at it and say look, have I gotten myself into this; is it because I
violated some natural law or is it because I’ve violated some spiritual
principle and God is disciplining me, and that’s the first thing you should ask
yourself.
Ask yourself this and ask God to show it to you. You have the right as a believer to say Lord,
the sickness is going to be absolutely worthless unless You’ve taught me a
lesson so I’ve got to learn the lesson, so appeal to God to show you why. Why is this true? All right, so you check for personal sins and
human good, did you somehow along the line get yourself messed up with personal
sin or you start playing around with human good or something. Check for this,
you have the right because if it is obviously sickness for disciplinary reasons
you want to get out of this, so how do you do it, 1 John 1:9, confess it and
move on. The sickness may or may not be
removed at that point but at least you’ve cleared the ground that caused
it. The second thing you can do in this
case, not only this but look into the fact if you’ve violated some principle of
health, confess it, that’s negligence.
God has told you what you should do and what you shouldn’t do and you
just deliberately go along and treat your body like it’s something else when
God has told you in 1 Cor. 6 that the Lord is for the body and the body is for
the Lord and your body is a member of Christ and you deliberately neglect the
laws of health and wonder why you have problems. Again, that’s worthy of confession.
Suppose this doesn’t work and you say well, I’ve examined this and the
Lord doesn’t seem to show me that it’s due to the presence of sin, and by the
way, that doesn’t mean you don’t have any personal sin, it just means that He’s
been very gracious recently, He hasn’t applied the sickness on the credit
basis, but suppose it is not deserved suffering and now you go over to the category
of undeserved suffering. So the third
thing is to ask the Lord the lesson that he wants you to learn. That’s a legitimate prayer, it should be of
immediate concern, instead of saying where’s the aspirin; that’s an immediate
reaction of a believer and oh, got to get some medicine, call the doctor. Now if you apply Bible doctrine you’ll know
that that wasn’t an accident, that sickness didn’t happen to you just by
accident, it happened with a purpose in mind so your first reaction, borrowing
a catastrophe of course, if you’re having a heart attack and are prostate you
need some oxygen, you don’t say no, I’m having my prayer time now when the
ambulance attendants come. Now that’s
taking it to the ridiculous, but I’m talking about the fact that a general
order on this thing is that you should seek the purpose in it. And you have a right to before God, in
prayer, to seek the purpose of this. And
often times in seeking the purpose and I wouldn’t say oftentimes, but some
times if you seek the purpose and sometimes if you see the sin all of a sudden
it gels that you’ve done something and then suddenly God gives you a peace to
pray the prayer of faith and that’s the prayer of faith in James 5, and you
pray that prayer and you can be healed, but that is not the normal operating
thing so don’t get discouraged if you don’t pray the prayer of find it and you
can’t find it or you can’t pray it, I’m not advocating this for every believer,
I’m just saying that sometimes it occurs.
Now we have another thing, if after you go through this whole procedure
and it’s not personal sin, it’s not human good, it’s not because you violated
the laws of health and it’s evidently that God doesn’t seem to be teaching you
anything through it, there is nothing, absolutely no benefit whatever from this
thing, then you can suspect it’s demonic and it’s caused by demonic affliction,
this is covered in Eph. 6:10-18.
I want to conclude with three promises from the Word of God to claim in
sickness. One starts in Deut. 33:25,
these are promises that you as a believer can master, that you as a believer
should remember when you are sick. These give you some anchors in the Word of
God so if you forget everything you’ve heard tonight at least you might learn
these three promises. This is a blessing
to Ashur but all these blessings apply to everybody in general principle, but
look at the last part of verse 25, a tremendous promise, “Thy shoes shall be
iron and bronze; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.” The Old Testament saints had the right to
claim that as long as God had them alive they had the right to claim strength
from Him. It didn’t mean they were
always well, it didn’t mean they were always robust but it always meant they
had sufficient strength to go for Jesus Christ as known under that
economy. Proof: Deut. 34:7, didn’t Moses
sin? You all know that Moses sinned; you
know that Moses wasn’t a plaster saint, but look what it says in verse 7, “And
Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor
his natural force abated.” God took
Moses home but He never impaired Moses’ physical body until Moses’ ministry was
ended, and God had no more use, bang, he was dead and that’s the way Moses
died, because God had a use, Moses had to have his eyes to function because he
had to teach the people the Word of God, so there is a promise.
Another promise, Isaiah 40:29, “He gives strength to the faint, and to
them that have no might He increases strength. [30] Even the youths shall faint
and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, [31 But they that wait upon
the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like
eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not
faint.” This doesn’t always mean you
claim this promise and you hop you of bed and throw your crutches in the
corner, etc. that’s not what it’s saying. What it is saying in context in
interpreting this whole passage in its context it’s saying that God always
provides you with enough strength to perform His will at that moment. See, at that moment it might be that you have
an opportunity to witness to somebody in the hospital, or you have an
opportunity to think through your life or something so he wants you flat in bed. Some of you are so busy that’s the only way
God can get you to stop and think for a while, to knock you flat on your back
and then you have some time to think. God does this; He provides strength for
every moment of our life.
Finally a promise in the New Testament, Rom. 8:11, “But if the Spirit of
him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ
from the dead shall also give life to [quicken] your mortal bodies by His
Spirit that dwells in you.” The word
“quicken” means energize, God the Holy Spirit will energize your physical body,
not in the sense that He will give you robust health necessarily but that you
may perform His will at that moment in your life. So if you are a Christian don’t forget that
God does promise to provide you with physical strength.