March 9, 2017 Show with Ron Glass on “Sickness: An Examination of the Body & the Bible”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday.

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And today is the ninth day of March 2017, and I'm so delighted to have back on the program somebody who means an awful lot to me, and I'm not especially talking about my co -host,

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Reverend Buzz Taylor, although I do think very highly of him, but that's not who

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I'm talking about. My dear friend for many years, Ron Glass, is back on the program not only today but tomorrow to discuss a very important and controversial issue, an issue that actually has division in the body of Christ and how this issue is to be exegeted, interpreted, and lived out in the life of the church.

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But we are going to be discussing for the next two days sickness and examination of the body and the

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Bible, and Pastor Ron Glass is former adjunct professor of Bible exposition at Talbot School of Theology.

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He's pastor of Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York, and he's host of the

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River of Life radio program, which is heard Saturdays at 9 30 a .m.

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Eastern time and Sundays at 7 30 p .m. Eastern time, heard globally via live streaming at eastgatebroadcasting .com.

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That's eastgatebroadcasting .com, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Ron Glass.

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Well, it's a delight to be with you again, Chris. Thank you for your invitation. Yes, and this is, as I mentioned, obviously a very important topic because everybody's life is touched by this issue, whether in their own lives personally, in their own bodies personally, or in the lives of those that they know very well and love and cherish.

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And many of our listeners may have lost loved ones who are near and dear to them.

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I would assume that majority of them certainly have lost someone in their life through an illness.

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Yeah, and both physical and mental health are concerns that we all have.

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And each one of us have been sick at various times. We've all had our family members have been sick, as you pointed out, people we love who die.

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And so there's questions that immediately arise. You know, if we have a compassionate creator who cares so much about us, and if he is indeed the almighty

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God, if he is sovereign, then why doesn't he stop all of this sickness?

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And then, you know, we begin to wonder, can he stop it all? And so these are very personal questions.

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But then, as we know, even from the last news cycle, last 24 hours, it is also a very public and national issue here in the

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United States and international too, especially as our Congress right now is considering what to do with so -called

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Obamacare. Health is very much on the minds of the

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American people. I mean, everything from genome projects and stem cells and cloning and AIDS and artificial organs, cancer research, anti -smoking, diets,

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I mean, you name it. It's big business. Workouts, gyms, all these kinds of things.

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And one of the big businesses in recent years has been dietary supplements.

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And we hear advertisements for these things all the time. So it's very much upon the minds of the

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American people. And I certainly am sure that it's on the minds of God's people as well.

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Yes, and I'm going to give our listeners our email address right now if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ron Glass on the subject of sickness and examination of the body in the

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Bible. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And if it involves, if your question involves a personal and private matter, perhaps involving your own sickness, the sickness of somebody in your family, somebody that you love and care about, obviously, if for some reason you want to remain anonymous, you may do so and we will grant your request.

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But otherwise, if you could, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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And I have a whole lot to ask you, Pastor Ron, but I think that it would be very important to give a disclaimer or a caveat right off the bat, because since this is a deep subject, when people hear answers to certain questions, they may, without hearing the rest of the story, jump to erroneous conclusions, very erroneous conclusions about the direction we're heading.

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I just want to give our listeners a background about you, first of all, so they really get more of an understanding of the presuppositions and the biblical stance you are coming from.

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You are not a charismatic or Pentecostal. You're not in the faith movement in any way, shape, or form.

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In fact, you would condemn the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel as being a great heresy, would you not?

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Yes, indeed. Yes, but obviously, we do have friends and brothers and sisters in Christ who are charismatic and Pentecostal, who are not of that extreme version in the word of faith movement, which would be dangerous and heretical.

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But I just want people to know that you are a Baptist. I mean, they know that from the name of your congregation, Waiting River Baptist Church.

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But in this day and age, without further description, Baptist can mean nearly anything.

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And so I just wanted to make sure that our listeners heard that caveat before we continue.

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Well, I think it's also important to say right at the outset that everything that I intend to say over the next four hours that we're going to be discussing this is that God's Word is our only infallible authority.

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And so when we talk about these things from a spiritual and biblical perspective, you know, some may question, well, you're not a doctor.

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You don't have a medical degree. Well, that's not where I'm coming from on this. We are coming from a biblical view, and God in His Word has given us revelation on this subject, because it is such an important subject.

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We all face it. So the Word of God is the final word on every question, and that is where we have to begin and end in this whole discussion.

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And I'm quite certain you would not be in that number of people that would be represented by the

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Word of Faith Pentecostals and others who would heap a mountain of guilt upon anyone who is facing or battling an illness and identify them as somebody who has automatically identified them as somebody who has unconfessed sin or somebody that lacks strength in their faith.

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They lack vitality in their faith. They lack trust in the promises of the

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Lord and so on. You will have people who will categorize anyone who is battling with an illness in terms such as the ones

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I just gave, but that is not what you are saying in this conversation either.

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Am I right? Well, no, not in that way. I think that we need to realize that there's a whole lot of revelation in Scripture on this, and there are issues we're going to see, issues where sin is involved and so on.

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But the whole premise of the prosperity gospel is something that I deny, so we're not going there.

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Great. Well, obviously, a very logical question to begin our discussion with is, why do we get sick?

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Well, I think we need to go back to the beginning for the answer to this. And the first part of that answer is that sickness was never a part of God's plan for the human race.

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When God created man, he created him perfect. Remember the statement of God, Genesis 1, when he created man, he saw that his creation was good.

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Indeed, Genesis 1 .31, it was very good. He created man to be human.

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That means a body, a soul, which is the life principle, and a spirit.

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And the human body clearly is indispensable to our being a person. And any medical person can tell you that the body, the human body, is a marvel of physiological engineering.

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David himself said, Psalm 139, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. So it was originally created that the human body was made for life.

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And we know that death entered into the picture as a result of sin, but that was not reality initially.

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It was only a possibility. God said, if you disobey me and eat the fruit that I have forbidden to you, then in that day you will die.

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So death was a possibility, but it was not a reality in terms of the human body when they were created.

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In fact, Genesis 2 .7 said God made a lump of clay, and he breathed into that lump of clay the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

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Perfect. But the warning was, be careful, because if you disobey me, there will be death.

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So, of course, Adam and Eve disobeyed. And sickness, then, is a part of God's judgment against human sin.

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We know that because, immediately, death became the universal experience of the human race.

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Adam and Eve did not physically die at the moment that they ate the fruit, but they died spiritually.

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There was a separation between them and God. And because of that, of their sin, the entire human race is guilty of that sin.

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God imputed Adam's sin and all of his consequences to the entire race. And from that point, the process of dying permeated the entire race as an emblem of universal condemnation.

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So that Paul says, by one man's sin entered the human race, and death as well.

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So death is a reality that is part of God's judgment against human sin.

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Now, because death is a part of this, pain becomes a part of universal human experience as well.

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And that goes back to the Garden of Eden, too, when he told Eve that it would be in pain that she would bear children.

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So life begins in pain. That's where it starts, in labor.

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It also ends in pain, in death. A baby's first sound is a cry, and life is full of pain.

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At various times, our bodies are ravaged by disease or sometimes broken by violence or, in the end, simply worn out by years of exhausting labor.

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So death, then, disease, then, becomes a universal human experience.

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So every time we get sick, we can think back and say, you know, this is just due to the frailty of our flesh that is part of this process of dying that entered into our race because of Adam's sin.

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So sickness, then, becomes an instrument that God uses, and he uses it, at times, as a matter of discipline for those of us who are genuine

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Christians. Now, I could spend a long time on this, but I won't, but it's interesting. I've read scripture to come up with several reasons why we get sick that we may not think about all the time.

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You know, we get sick, and we just think, well, I caught a bug or somehow I have contracted this serious disease.

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We don't think much beyond that. Our concern becomes, how can I get well or how can I cope with this?

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But I think we need to realize that there are some things in scripture that indicate why we might get sick in the first place.

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So let me just go through a list. I have a list of six things here, and this is not an exhaustive list, perhaps.

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You could maybe think of other things, but let me just suggest these. First of all, a lack of personal communion with God.

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We as Christians are simply not communing with God. I find this fascinating from the 119th

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Psalm, because David says this. This is verse 67.

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Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.

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In the 71st verse, he looks back upon this and he says, it is good for me that I was afflicted, he's well at this point, that I may learn your statutes.

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He says in the 92nd verse of that same 119th Psalm, if your law had not been my delight, then

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I would have perished in my affliction. He says in the 75th verse,

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I know, Lord, that your judgments are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

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So it appears that God uses illness in order to counteract our tendency toward independence and self -reliance, which can lead us to neglect his word and neglect prayer and neglect fellowship with him.

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So God uses sickness to bring us back into fellowship with him. That's one reason.

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Let me give you a second, and that is a lack of personal discipline in life. This lack may include a whole number of things.

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Let me just point out something that the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 19 and 20.

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He said, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own, for you've been bought with a price?

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Therefore glorify God in your body. We are told to glorify God in our body.

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So now what happens? Many of us have poor hygiene.

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We deprive ourselves of adequate sleep. We neglect exercise. We ingest harmful substances.

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We get involved in unhealthy addictions, overwork, worry and anxiety, excessive medications, unsafe practices like dangerous driving habits.

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Likewise, smoking, alcohol, drug use, exposure to the sun or toxic substances. All of these things are a violation of the temple of the

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Holy Spirit, which our bodies are. So to do these things with a total disregard for health consequences is to guarantee a deaf ear when pleading to God for healing.

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In other words, we get sick and we come to God and say, Lord, heal me. Yeah, but have you really looked at what you're doing, your personal discipline, the bad habits, the ways you're abusing your body?

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The lack of personal discipline can be another reason why we get sick. Thirdly, this is interesting, a lack of proper gratitude for nourishment.

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You know, the Lord Jesus, whenever we have record of him taking food, he would bless the food.

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Now, as human beings, we can't bless food, but what we can do is we can thank him for that food and then ask his blessing upon it.

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Remember how Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verses 4 and 5, everything created by God is good.

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Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it's sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

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I don't know about you, but I have many times been guilty of saying what amounts to a pretty perfunctory prayer before eating.

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In other words, yes, we offer a blessing, but sometimes we don't think much about it. It can even become rote.

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Sometimes God wants us, I think, to realize where it is our food comes from, and that we should be grateful for that food.

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Let me come to a fourth, and that is a lack of proper honor towards parents. You remember the blessing that was attached to the fifth commandment to honor our parents, because it was, as Paul would say later, the first commandment with a promise.

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And Ephesians chapter 6 says in verses 2 and 3, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth, so that you might be well and that you might enjoy a long life.

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So a believer who stubbornly refuses to honor his parents, as God commands, whether you're young or whether you're older, you can be an adult and still have living parents, and if you're not honoring them, you're on the outs with them or whatever, then you may be subject to increased illness and even premature death.

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That's how serious God sees this, that you could actually have a shortened lifespan because you do not honor your parents.

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Now let me come to a fifth one, and that is a lack of personal contentment with circumstances.

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I won't turn to all these passages where we see this, but let me just suggest to you that the book of Numbers is a good lesson on this.

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Numbers 11, Numbers 12, Numbers 14, Numbers 16, in each case,

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Israel's greatest sin was their constant complaining. God always met their needs, but it never seemed like they were happy, so they always grumbled about their leadership.

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And the Lord therefore disciplined them with deadly disease. There were plagues, as we know, and God brought that on them in order,

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I believe, to teach them to be grateful, to teach them not to complain about their circumstances.

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He was not happy, and when we get to this point where we're constantly complaining about our life, complaining about our families, complaining about our jobs, complaining about the people in our churches, complain, complain, complain, and sometimes

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God allows us sickness in order to sort of shut us up. The other thing that I see, the sixth reason, is found in 1

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Corinthians chapter 11, which is a lack of proper caution at the

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Lord's table. The abuse of the Lord's table, according to Paul, was the reason that many were weak and sickly among you, and many sleep, many had died.

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So weakness, sickness, and even death could be the result of a grievous abuse of the

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Lord's table, which I think for us would mainly mean participating in the

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Lord's table with the wrong spirit, with rebellious sin in our hearts, and God is not pleased with that.

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So those are just six reasons that I see in scripture that may go beyond just saying, well,

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I caught a bug. Just going back a moment to Ephesians 6 -2, because this is a very mysterious passage to me, and maybe it's not to you, but it is to me, because of the fact that it seems almost proverbial, rather than a guarantee, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that you will have a long life on earth.

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I mean, we've all heard of godly Christian parents who have children who are the apple of their eye, who are obedient, obviously never sinless, on this earth, but who are remarkable in their lives, even sometimes may appear to be

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Christian prodigies of some kind, who demonstrate extraordinary gifts and abilities of understanding and teaching the

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Bible to their peers of their own age, that may astonish their parents and their pastors and their fellow church members with their godliness, and yet sometimes these children develop terminal cancer, sometimes these children do develop deadly diseases and pass away at young ages.

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How do we harmonize that with this promise in Ephesians 6? Well, as I said, there are a number of reasons why people get sick and reasons why people die, including children at early ages.

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You can't generalize, and that's the point. You said it was proverbial, that I think is true to some extent, that is, that like so many of the proverbs, what they do is they give us a general statement of truth.

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You may be able to find some exceptions to that. God is, after all, all -wise, and he is free to do as he pleases and to do what is good for each individual.

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But I think what we have to do is take this as a general rule of thumb. He's given it to us, it was given to Israel in the

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Ten Commandments, it's repeated again by Paul in the New Testament, that if you do not honor your parents, you run the risk of a sickly or shortened life.

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And before I begin with a question on how

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God uses sickness in our lives, we're going to go to a break right now, because I wouldn't want to have to cut you off mid -sentence.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ron Glass about sickness and the

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Christian, as we have this examination of the body and the

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Bible, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in today, our guest for the full two hours, and also for the full two hours tomorrow,

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Friday the 10th of March, is and will be Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, Wading River, Long Island, New York, one of the key sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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He is also the host of a program of his own called the River of Life program, which airs

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Saturdays at 9 30 a .m. Eastern time and Sundays at 7 30 p .m. Eastern time.

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And you can hear that anywhere in the world via live streaming at eastgatebroadcasting .com.

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Eastgatebroadcasting .com. So we hope you begin listening to River of Life if you haven't begun already.

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And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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If you have a question about sickness in the Christian, we already have a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

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But before I go to them, I would like to know, Pastor Ron, how does God use our sickness in our lives?

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Well, he does it in a number of ways. And the one passage that I would commend to you, and I just don't have time in the framework of this program to deal with the whole passage, but I would encourage you to meditate upon 2

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Corinthians chapter 4, verses, really, verses 7 through 18, verse 7 through the end of the chapter.

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And you see there how sickness in the life of Paul was used in his life to make him more spiritual and more useful and more hopeful.

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Let me just say a couple things about it. First of all, sickness does something that's very helpful to us, and that is it reminds us of death.

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You see, we as human beings, and even as Christians, we usually want to put the thought of death as far away from us as we can.

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We tend to act as though we're immortal, especially when we're younger. We don't give much thought to death, and we never think very seriously about our place in eternity, especially people who aren't believers.

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So illness proclaims that we are mortal, tells us, reminds us that we are dying people, and that our destiny is in eternity, either in hell or in heaven.

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And it helps us to focus, especially as Christians, it helps us to focus on heaven more than we otherwise might.

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In fact, Spurgeon put it this way. He said, aches and pains make us long for the land where the inhabitant shall no more say,

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I am sick. And that's true. It helps us to love the prospect of heaven more, reminds us that we're going to die someday, which also helps to inspire us to be more faithful.

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Secondly, sickness forces us to think seriously about God, because as long as we're healthy, we don't have this pressing incentive to think about God.

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But when we're flat on our backs, God suddenly becomes more important to us. And in fact, many

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Christians find that they actually met the Lord during the experience of affliction.

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Or they have an experience like David did, where they weren't really in fellowship with God like they should have been, and sickness brought them back into fellowship.

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Sickness tends to soften our hearts and our minds. It breaks down our natural hardness, the hardness that prevents spiritual truth from penetrating our thinking.

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So as we think through these things, these spiritual values are magnified, and many times the frivolous pursuits of life simply no longer appear so desirable.

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In other words, one of the ways God gets our mind off things like movies, music, sports, parties, material possessions, all of these kinds of things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things, one of the ways he does that is by allowing us to be sick.

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Because then we start focusing on eternal realities, we start focusing on spiritual things, and upon God himself.

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And then the other thing I would say is that sickness humbles us. In sickness, our pride is reduced to rubble, basically.

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In times of health, we're tempted to think that, well, we're not like other people, but in times of illness, we realize, yeah, we are.

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So even heads of state and billionaires have to admit their mortality when they get sick.

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So it really can be helpful. Paul, in that passage, and I will just mention a couple verses from 2

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Corinthians 4, in that passage, verse 16, he says, therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

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So what he's saying is that sickness shifts our focus from the outer man to the inner man.

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We're getting older, our experience is that of increasing physical problems, we have periodic illness, chronic diseases, injuries, and all that can be discouraging unless we see the decline of our physical health as an opportunity for improving our spiritual health.

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And that's what Paul said. And then he said in verses 17 and 18, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

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So he describes his physical problems as light affliction, that is light in the sense of eternally insignificant.

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Even though they're presently painful, in the grand scheme of things, in terms of eternity, our present physical pain is fairly insignificant.

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What matters is the value that it has for producing a much greater eternal good.

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We're not going to see this as long as we focus on our physical problems, that is, as long as we're preoccupied with the body that we can see now, the life we now live in the world, instead of on our glorified body and eternity where we will live in the world to come forever.

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So that's just some of the ways that God uses sickness. All right, let me go to some of our listener questions.

36:09

We have Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and it was such a pleasure meeting this lovely

36:17

Christian lady in Atlanta, Georgia at the G3 Conference.

36:24

She has been listening to Iron Sharpens Iron for quite a long time and sending in questions, and she was one of the listeners, one of the many listeners

36:34

I met at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio's exhibitors booth at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

36:40

But she says, great show, Chris, I agree with your guest that there are many unhealthy habits that we should avoid.

36:50

Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 6 .12 that these things are not sin lawful to me, but are not good, and he warns the church to abstain from such unhealthy habits, even though they are not necessarily sinful.

37:05

However, your guests seem to say that these things defile the temple, and Christ himself makes clear in Mark 7 .18

37:14

-23 that nothing that enters the man can defile him, but that which comes out of his heart, drunkenness and gluttony, are sinful because this degree of overindulgence is idolatrous.

37:27

But I don't see anything in 1 Corinthians 6 .12 indicating unhealthy habits defiling, or are they sin, or are sin.

37:37

So there's Tony agreeing and disagreeing with you, or actually asking you to clarify,

37:43

I'm imagining. Actually, that's a passage I was going to talk about a little later, in fact fairly soon.

37:52

But I think in a way this is a common sense issue.

38:00

We have the benefit that, I'm not saying Christ had no benefit here, but even the biblical world of the

38:10

New Testament didn't have the benefit of science to the degree that we do.

38:16

We know that smoking can be fatal. We know that drinking has deleterious effects on the human body.

38:25

We know that drugs can do significant damage both to the mind and to the physical body.

38:34

The point is that if we deliberately and against our knowledge do these things, inflict this damage upon this body which is the temple of the

38:46

Holy Spirit, I think that that can very easily be called sin.

38:53

You are damaging yourself, and in many, many cases, you are damaging other people as well.

39:01

You get drunk and you kill somebody in a car. You get very sick and it wreaks havoc on your family.

39:11

You know, you cause people a lot of grief and a lot of money and a lot of time because you have chosen to abuse your body.

39:22

I don't think that that's what the Lord Jesus is talking about in Mark chapter 7, but that's what

39:28

I was referring to. Yes, in fact, the things that God blessed the

39:35

Jewish believers to finally enjoy and partake in in the

39:41

New Covenant as was revealed to Peter in his vision, those things were not in and of themselves harmful things.

39:48

They would have been harmful perhaps if one were to abuse them and and partake of them in excess, but obviously

39:57

God is not giving a blessing to foods that are innately harmful, so that further backs what you were saying.

40:07

Yeah, and I think you have to realize too that Jesus was speaking maybe a little more narrowly than what we might think there, that his point that he's making in that text is that the evil comes out of the human heart.

40:22

It's that which is born in the sinful human heart and then emerges, you know, comes out of our mouth when we speak and, you know, in our actions and so on.

40:32

I don't think Jesus is saying here that nothing that enters into the body is harmless. I mean, even in our

40:39

Lord's day, they had plenty of substances that were poison and there were things that you could ingest that would make you very sick or even kill you.

40:48

So Jesus is not saying that whatever goes into the body is not harmful because that wouldn't have been true, but what the point he's making is that under normal circumstances, it's not what you eat, what you digest, because under normal physical circumstances your body purges that stuff out, but the mind, the sin that is inherent in the depraved human soul, that sin can't be purged out.

41:17

That's there and it comes out in the way we speak, in the way we act. Amen.

41:23

And well, thank you very much, Tony, and keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion and keep spreading the word about the program in South Carolina and beyond.

41:33

We have David in Ada, Ohio who asks, I was just talking about the

41:40

Dake's Bible with my pastor and what he believed about healing. However, Dake died of complications from Parkinson's disease on July 7th, 1987.

41:52

Now I have just read from Anthony Hokema about the whole man being considered in healing, not just the physical, but the psyche and the will.

42:01

In a fascinating book entitled Anatomy of Illness, Norman Cousins makes the comment that one of the most important aspects of recovery from illness is the will to live.

42:13

The will to live is not a theoretical abstraction, but a physiologic reality with therapeutic characteristics.

42:23

Anthony Hokema, created in God's image. Healing is more than just quoting a

42:28

Bible verse, but is determined on how we live and think in our being. Finally, we do die of something by God's will.

42:35

And the question finally that he has is, how do you feel about the will to live or survive being involved in our healing?

42:44

Interesting. Well, I think that that's probably true.

42:52

I think the testimony of many people who have been seriously ill and those who've been close to them and watched them suffer, who have recovered, even some who've recovered when they were not predicted to recover, have remarked on the power of that will to live.

43:10

Now, you also have to realize God's involved in this. God is the ultimate physician.

43:17

He gives healing. But that will, I mean, a human being is a complex psychological being.

43:28

And I think that that will certainly plays into the whole picture of healing.

43:33

So I subscribe to that. Well, thank you very much, David, and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron in Ohio and beyond.

43:46

We certainly thank you for contributing such a great question to our listeners here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

43:55

And I'm sorry, I said, yeah, I did say Ohio. Yeah, he's in Ada, Ohio. Well, thanks a lot for the question.

44:02

In fact, that brings me to a, it's actually an excellent segue that I have, because I was going to ask you, what role does the mind play in physical illness?

44:15

So that was an excellent question to lead me into that. Well, it plays a big role.

44:22

And the fact is that a lot of Christians suffer from a variety of mind -based diseases.

44:28

Doctors acknowledge this. In fact, they have said that a great deal of, many doctors will tell you that even though in many patients the symptoms may not be imaginary, symptoms are real.

44:48

The ailments that their patients are suffering can ultimately be traced back to mental and emotional causes.

44:55

So you have some who suffer from persistent hypochondria, which is anxiety about or precaution with health, a preoccupation with health.

45:05

Others have genuine mental illness. And I wanted to talk about that probably in the next hour.

45:16

But there are psychosomatic diseases, physical conditions that are caused or aggravated by mental or emotional distress.

45:24

Now, there's a verse that strikes me as very relevant at this point, and that's a familiar one to many people.

45:31

Many of them memorized it. Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9, which in our New American Standard Version reads this way, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

45:45

Who can understand it? Now, this is not talking about cardiology problems.

45:52

Because the heart in Hebrew thinking, and this is pretty consistent if you check it out, the heart in the

46:01

Hebrew way of thinking, the Old Testament, is usually the seat of knowledge and understandings.

46:09

We would say the mind. So what he's saying here is that the mind is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick.

46:17

So there is a relationship here between how you think and how you feel.

46:24

God made us as whole beings. Our minds and our bodies, when they suffer, they suffer together. So your prolonged mental and emotional distress are symptoms really of spiritual disease.

46:35

For example, in Proverbs chapter 14, verse 30, a tranquil heart or mind is life to the body, but passion is rottenness to the bones.

46:48

Now, passion here, he refers to strong misplaced desires. We could categorize lust and jealousy and envy and things like that.

46:57

Now, what does he say? He says that it is rottenness to the bones. Now, we know that the bone marrow is the source of our blood.

47:08

Blood is manufactured within the marrow of our bones. So he's seeming to say that passion has an impact on the health of the blood.

47:21

I got to thinking about that, and a lot of people with high blood pressure, a lot of people with other blood kinds of issues, for example diabetes, and then a lot of other kinds of things that I don't even know about, the impact seems to be on the health of the blood.

47:38

Now, here's Proverbs 17, verse 22, which says that a joyful heart or joyful mind is good medicine, but the broken spirit dries up the bones.

47:52

So a spirit that has been beaten down withers the bones. Gladness heals the negative effects of life's negative emotions.

48:01

The problem is that sin has prolonged our guilt and anxiety with the accompanying persistent emotional distress.

48:10

There's a very important psalm in this respect, and it's actually a couple of psalms that were born out of David's adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, but that's

48:24

Psalm 32 and Psalm 38. I want to just refer for a moment here to Psalm 38, verses 17 and 18.

48:31

David says, when I am ready to fall and my sorrow is continually before me, for I confess my iniquity,

48:40

I am full of anxiety because of my sin. So his sin was impacting his emotional and life.

48:52

So prolonged mental and emotional distresses are sources of physical disease. It's inevitable you can't get around that.

49:00

So the guilt and anxiety of sin produce physical symptoms, if not outright disease.

49:10

David says it in that 32nd Psalm, how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

49:18

How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

49:24

Well, he knew that blessedness because he goes on to say, when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

49:33

Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.

49:39

I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I did not hide. I said I will confess the transgressions to the

49:46

Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. So the secret here was that physical illness is not merely a matter of presence or absence of biological pathogens like bacteria or viruses or toxic agents or whatever.

50:05

There's a spiritual component. So much of this is unseen spiritual element.

50:12

A loss of fellowship with God that's grounded in disobedience to his word. So we tend to overlook this at times.

50:20

So it's an important secret to physical health. And good spiritual health, good emotional health, are linked to a right relationship with God.

50:32

David suffered physically until he got his life straightened out, until he confessed his sin before God, and then his physical condition turned.

50:43

Can the devil make people sick? I can recall in the book of Job that with God's permission he did, but if you could respond to that.

50:55

Exactly right. Job chapter 2, Job chapter 1, Job chapter 2,

51:01

Satan came before God in his heavenly court. And God started the conversation basically.

51:10

He said, have you watched my servant Job? And Satan had been watching Job. And God said, in a simple way to put it, there's nobody like Job down there on earth.

51:21

And Satan said, yeah, well let me get to him and I'll show you what he's really made of.

51:27

So God gave him permission to damage his family. He took his family away from him and his wealth and so on.

51:35

In the second chapter, Job having survived the first series of tests very well,

51:43

Satan says, yes, but skin for skin, a man will give anything for his life.

51:49

So God gave him permission. He said, don't take his life. You cannot take his life, but you can do anything else.

51:54

Make him miserable. And so Satan did. And he experienced tremendous pain.

52:04

Many of us, I know I'm a baby boomer. Many other baby boomers like me remember

52:09

Flip Wilson, who used to say, remember the devil made me do it. Well, a lot of Christians say, well, the devil made me sick.

52:15

I talk to people who are going through especially chronic situations, and they blame it on the devil.

52:21

They like to blame their sin on the devil. In fact, could you pick up right where you left off? Because we have to go to a break right now.

52:27

Sure. But that's an easy place for me to remember of Flip Wilson's image in my mind. But if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ron Glass, just email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

52:41

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

52:47

If you live outside the USA, you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

52:52

And all of you who have already sent in your questions, don't worry, I haven't forgotten to you.

52:58

We will get to you one by one as long as time permits when we return from the break.

53:04

So don't go away. We will be right back after these messages with Pastor Ron Glass and our discussion on the

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01:03:46

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

01:03:52

Pastor Ron Glass of Wedding River Baptist Church, Wedding River, Long Island, New York. And host of the

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That's eastgatebroadcasting .com. We are talking about sickness and examination of the body and the

01:04:19

Bible. Some of you may be wondering why we have such a long gap between the two segments, between the two hour segments of our show lately and have a lot of commercials.

01:04:31

That's because our friends at Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, who air our program daily, a rerun of our program from the previous day, they air us in morning drive time 8 to 10 a .m.

01:04:46

and the evening hour between 8 to 10 p .m. Well, they require that we deliver this program to them in two 54 -minute segments so that they can air local public service announcements and other things.

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So just so you know, that's why we have this very long gap between the two hours every day, which was not something that we typically did in years past.

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In fact, one of the reasons I'm giving this earnest plea is that my guest today,

01:05:32

Ron Glass of Waiting River Baptist Church on Long Island, New York, who has been one of my greatest supporters ever since the inception of this program, has urged me to make this need known to you who are the listeners, who are letting me know very often through your emails that you are greatly blessed by this daily program.

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All you need to do is go to the website ironsharpandzionradio .com and the third option at the top of the website is support.

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but obviously Iron Sharp and Zion Radio is just much easier to remember. So go to ironsharpandzionradio .com

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01:07:27

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio. Well we are back now to continue our discussion with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church on the subject sickness and examination of the body and the

01:07:38

Bible. If you care to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:07:44

chrisarnson at gmail .com and before I go to any of our listeners who have submitted questions,

01:07:50

Pastor Ron, I want you to pick up where we left off before the break on my question on whether or not the devil can make us sick.

01:07:59

It's interesting that when you look at the pagan religions historically, way back to ancient

01:08:09

Egypt, back to Greece, back to the ancient Jews and so on, what you find is that even these pagan cultures understood that sickness is fundamentally a spiritual matter and they didn't have hospitals as such back then.

01:08:26

Very often the temple was the place of healing and virtually all of these religions included a

01:08:33

God of healing in their pantheons so they knew that it was a spiritual issue.

01:08:41

But now we also know that these religions were not worshipping the true and living God and so Satan is certainly involved in that.

01:08:49

Now we know that he attacks, he is intent on waging war through physical illness.

01:08:57

His purpose, according even to the Lord Jesus, when Jesus said it in John chapter 8 verse 44, where he said to the

01:09:05

Pharisees, you are of your father's the devil, you want to do the desires of your father, he was a murderer from the beginning.

01:09:13

His purpose is to put people to death and that of course is behind the fear of death.

01:09:20

Hebrews chapter 2 says that the Lord Jesus in his incarnation took flesh and blood that he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might even free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

01:09:39

Now if Satan has the power of death, then we also have to understand that he had the power of disease.

01:09:44

For example, in Luke chapter 9, Jesus called the twelve together, he gave them power and authority over all that know demons and to heal diseases.

01:09:54

Demons and diseases are mentioned in the same breath. And then you have the account in Luke chapter 13 in verse 10 and following where Jesus was in the synagogue and there was this woman who for 18 years had a sickness caused by a spirit.

01:10:15

And she was doubled, she couldn't straighten up, and we read how Jesus healed her.

01:10:22

And we find in verse 16 that Jesus says, this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom

01:10:29

Satan has bound for 18 long years. So there are other passages as well, especially in the gospel records of our

01:10:39

Lord's healing, that make it very clear that Satan and the demons are behind a lot of these diseases.

01:10:48

He can be the source of physical disabilities, physical illness, and also mental disorders.

01:10:55

Because we know that, well for example, let me just give you one example is the little boy that was demon possessed that Jesus and the disciples encountered when they came down off the

01:11:10

Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew chapter 17, the father came up and threw himself before the

01:11:17

Lord Jesus and said, Lord have mercy on my son for he is a lunatic.

01:11:23

And the word here actually is moonstruck, which implies that he was an epileptic and he is very ill.

01:11:32

He falls into the fire and often into the water. And he had all the symptoms of severe mental illness.

01:11:41

So Satan is very much involved in these things. Demonic oppression is particularly a problem for those who yield themselves repeatedly to specific sins.

01:11:53

I think this can even be true of Christians. When you get stubbornly involved in sin, you leave the door open and crack for Satan to put his foot in and he will take advantage of that.

01:12:08

And especially prominent I think are altered states of consciousness. This seems to be an area where Satan really exploits the person.

01:12:19

I'm talking about like mystical drugs, mind altering drugs, hypnotism, sexual obsession or perversion, even unforgiveness, perpetual anger and pride.

01:12:30

When these things are present, even in a Christian now, the believer tends to lose interest in spiritual things.

01:12:38

What he does is he neglects reading the Word, he neglects prayer, he doesn't show much interest in worship or fellowship with other

01:12:43

Christians, and they become very insensitive to standards of righteousness. So what happens is, well, they get irritable, they get involved in pathological lying to cover their sin, they become depressed.

01:12:58

And Satan also can play a role in psychosomatic illness and hypochondria. So he's got a very big role to play in disease,

01:13:07

Satan and the demons. And of course, you don't even have to be an abuser of psychedelic drugs to be in that category.

01:13:18

Alcohol, when abused, can open up the doorway to all kinds of sins that an average person using the common restraint that God has given us all through His mercy, especially among Christians.

01:13:40

That can go out the window when somebody is inebriated. And that is why it is a well -known fact that tragically, so many adulterous affairs have occurred during office

01:13:53

Christmas parties, above all things, because of the fact that people are habitually and notoriously getting drunk at office parties, and getting involved in sexual flirtation with people that they probably never would have approached that way otherwise.

01:14:12

And when you bring that up, I would also mention that another avenue where Satan easily gets involved is in pornography.

01:14:22

Well, you've mentioned here about people who give the devil an open door through something sinful they're doing in their lives, in their daily activities, and so on.

01:14:35

But on the flip side of the coin, does not the devil, as he did with Job, through permission from God, attack those that he views as posing the greatest threat?

01:14:50

People who perhaps are very biblically faithful, relentless preachers of the gospel, who are in the forefront of taking a bold stand on controversial issues in our day and age, where they are not letting the world bend their opinion or their voice to give them compromise.

01:15:15

They are unwaveringly standing firm on things. And does not the devil also attack people like this?

01:15:22

Even your average Christian, who may be a very zealous evangelist, or has a lot of responsibilities and duties that he is faithfully taking care of.

01:15:32

Oh, absolutely. And we can think of examples of this, but I would go back again to the passage in 2

01:15:40

Corinthians 4, where the Apostle Paul explains this with regard to himself. And also in 2

01:15:46

Corinthians 12, where he talks about the thorn in the flesh that the Lord had been pleased to allow

01:15:53

Satan. Remember, he calls that a messenger, literally an angel of Satan.

01:15:59

So apparently, the Apostle Paul was being demonically oppressed, not because of sin in his life, but in the particular context of that passage, in order to keep him humble, because he had seen a vision of heaven.

01:16:15

He had actually been transported by way of vision to see heaven. And he makes it explicit that in order to keep me humble,

01:16:24

God has allowed this thing. And he asked for it to be removed three times. God said, no, my grace is sufficient.

01:16:30

And when you look back at history, you see this. You see this, one of the glaring examples of this is Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who spent much of the latter years of his life, a number of years, many years, unable to preach during the winter in London.

01:16:49

He could only stand the climate. He had a very bad case of gout, and he could only stand the climate during the warm weather in London.

01:16:58

So he spent the winter months in a place called

01:17:04

Mentone on the French Riviera because of the climate. He was away from his church half the year because of his disease.

01:17:13

Now, Spurgeon was a godly man, and Spurgeon was extremely useful. And yet God allowed him to be afflicted with a very painful case of gout.

01:17:21

Now, why did he do this? Well, can I speculate? Number one, Spurgeon was the most renowned preacher in the

01:17:29

English language in his day. He had a church building that seated some 6 ,000 people, and the place was packed every service that he preached.

01:17:38

He very easily could have become extremely proud, and God kept him humble this way.

01:17:44

The other thing is that in his months in France, away from his church, he did a great deal of writing, and we have today the benefit of his illness in his written works.

01:17:58

So that's just one example, and you can look at the lives of great preachers and evangelists and certainly of great missionaries who suffered greatly of physical diseases, especially when they went to tropical climates and places where there was...

01:18:16

The diseases were strange, and the medicines were few, and they suffered a great deal of illness, and yet they were used greatly by God.

01:18:28

It's hard for us to generalize. It's not because of sin that we can see.

01:18:36

Now, I mean, we can't discount the possibility that in all of this, the Lord is is training them, disciplining them as he does every son whom he loves, and that there may have been sins there that needed to be rooted out of their lives, but God understands that.

01:18:52

He knows that, but there are purposes which, let's face it, the bottom line is it'll all become clear in eternity.

01:19:00

Well, one perfect example of mighty men of valor, great men of God being attacked by Satan because of the threat they pose is,

01:19:10

I'm witnessing before my very eyes my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, has been struck with muteness, struck with being mute.

01:19:20

Well, there's a lot to listen to today. But so we already clarified that the devil can make people sick, with God's permission, of course.

01:19:31

Can he make people well? Well, I think that if he can make people sick, he can probably make people well too, yes.

01:19:43

And I'd like to talk a little bit about that more tomorrow.

01:19:50

Yes, he certainly can. And I would suggest that a lot of Christians are unwittingly being trapped in that, so we need to be very careful.

01:20:05

I'm going to go into that tomorrow when we talk about holistic medicine. Okay, and Reverend Buzz Taylor does have a question.

01:20:12

Yes, I will say something, so at least I'm not here in vain. But what about the world also?

01:20:21

You know, we've got, you know, the world of flesh and the devil are our three enemies, but, you know, the world

01:20:27

I've heard is Satan's playground. And, you know, we have, I know, like, a large contributing factor to sickness is things like depleted soil and companies that are more concerned about selling goods than making sure that they are nutritious and, you know, things like...

01:20:50

Somehow Al Gore wandered into my studio. Pharmaceutical companies that really don't want to heal diseases because they're making too much money on them.

01:21:00

These are also a lot of contributing factors, wouldn't you say? It may well be.

01:21:07

My particular focus here is, what does God's word have to say that really doesn't deal with that?

01:21:14

But it's a little bit like the question the caller asked earlier. Yeah, you have these physiological influences, these substances that we ingest, that we breathe, that we swallow, that we absorb in various ways that cause problems.

01:21:38

Now, I mean, we understand we're all going to die of something, and that's always been the case.

01:21:44

The fact is, in the 21st century, we're overall, as a people here in the

01:21:50

United States, much more healthy than many previous generations. So, I mean, you know, we all know people are living into their 90s.

01:22:01

We can count the blessing having medical science and so on. But let's face it, there are substances that we're going to ingest, and sometimes these things can cause diseases.

01:22:16

Absolutely so. And in fact, in spite of my little joke there, Reverend Buzz, I think your point is well taken in that, although man was supposed to have dominion over the earth, we weren't supposed to abuse it, and through selfishness and greed, be horrible stewards of it.

01:22:34

And I'm sure that that is obviously creating negative consequences that affects all of us, even in our health, and which is all tied with the sin problem.

01:22:46

But we have a question, or actually, I guess it's more of a comment. Nicholas in Clearwater, Florida says, it's funny because in school they teach you marijuana is the gateway drug, but I saw beer and alcohol in my house way before marijuana.

01:23:06

Not saying either is right. I just thought about that when I heard you mention the sin alcohol leads to.

01:23:14

Any further comment on that? No, I think that speaks for itself. And we have

01:23:20

Joe in Slovenia. Oh, by the way, thank you very much, Nicholas in Clearwater, Florida.

01:23:25

Keep listening to the program. Joe in Slovenia says,

01:23:31

Dear Brother Chris, I've never understood the attraction with trying to, let's see,

01:23:37

I've never understood the attraction with trying to develop a theology that asserts that God's will for us in the fallen state we all live in, since sin has entered the world, is to remain physically healthy.

01:23:54

Since all believers throughout history excepting Enoch have gotten sick and eventually died physically, why would anyone who is asserting their claims are granted in the

01:24:04

Bible would promote the idea that God's will for us is that we would be perpetually healthy?

01:24:11

Their claims are patently false on their face and obviously contrary to all that we see all around us and throughout history.

01:24:21

Thank you for addressing my questions. I'm not sure if Joe in Slovenia is taking exception to what you're saying or if he's really addressing the word of faith, heretical

01:24:33

Pentecostals. Yeah, it sounds like the latter because I didn't say that at all.

01:24:41

Obviously, if the Lord uses illness in our lives in order to teach us and to discipline us and so on, then it is his will at certain points that we be ill for our own good, not because he is somehow sadistic in any way.

01:25:02

He doesn't enjoy our suffering, but he does do it in order to help us to mature spiritually.

01:25:11

So the view that he seems to be referring to is really the view of the prosperity people who say that God always wants us healthy.

01:25:23

And that, you see, is a way of promoting their healing ministries, which is utterly unbiblical.

01:25:32

Well, we're going to pick up when we return from the break or final break with the question, does the

01:25:39

Lord actually heal sick people today? We all know who love and appreciate the

01:25:45

Bible and believe that it is an accurate historical record, as well as being an inerrant word that gives us what we need for every good work, especially what we need to know for eternal life.

01:26:00

But does the Lord actually heal sick people today? And being in a

01:26:07

Calvinistic church and being from Reformed circles, there are those from Charismatic and other groups who may accuse us of not believing that the

01:26:18

Lord heals sick people today. And there may also be some of my fellow

01:26:23

Calvinists who perhaps unintentionally act that way, in the way that they pray, in the way that they are very pessimistic when someone that they know or love, perhaps even themselves, gets sick.

01:26:38

But we're going to have the answer to that question from Pastor Ron Glass when we return. This is our final break. If you care to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:26:52

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Ron Glass. One sure way all

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01:31:14

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. This is our final half hour of the program today, so if you have a question for our guest

01:31:21

Ron Glass on sickness and the Christian, what the Bible has to say about the body, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:31:35

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:31:40

USA, but you may remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter. Before the break,

01:31:46

Pastor Ron, I asked you about whether or not the Lord Jesus Christ actually heals people today.

01:31:54

Yes, I do believe that he does, and I think this needs some considerable exploration, so I'd like to kind of do that in this last half hour and then carry this over to tomorrow.

01:32:10

In the first hour of our program tomorrow, I'd like to deal with just one passage in the entire hour, and that's the one that's the most important for the healing of believers in the

01:32:24

New Testament church today, and that's James chapter 5 verses 13 through 18, but I want to say something about this whole matter of a

01:32:36

Lord healing preliminary to that. You go back to Israel after they came out of Egypt, and right after they had crossed the

01:32:47

Red Sea, the Lord said, God said, if you will give, this is

01:32:55

Moses actually speaking on God's behalf to the Israelites, if you will give earnest heed to the voice of the

01:33:00

Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes,

01:33:10

I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians.

01:33:16

And then he adds this, for I the Lord am your healer.

01:33:23

And the fact is, of course, that when you purchase a piece of machinery, you usually receive an owner's manual.

01:33:31

The manual instructs you how to use the item properly, and nobody knows the machine better than the manufacturer.

01:33:38

And it's the same with our bodies. The Lord is the one who's given us life. We're not the product of chance.

01:33:43

We didn't come into being through random processes in the material world. We were intelligently designed, skillfully fashioned by the true and living eternal

01:33:52

God. Now, that being the case, the Lord has given us certain principles, and we certainly should live this way.

01:34:02

We've talked about it, diet, rest, sanitation, and so on. Are you there, Chris? Oh, yeah.

01:34:09

Oh, okay. You sound like you went dead. I'm sorry. So, the reality is, the

01:34:16

Lord is our healer. Now, if I can address a subject that's somewhat controversial for a few moments here, because we know that there are denominations and theological systems which are very much committed to the concept of healing in the atonement.

01:34:40

And what I want to suggest in this whole discussion is probably a little unusual for a person of my theological persuasion.

01:34:53

And that is that I do think that Isaiah chapter 53 does teach us that there is healing in the atonement.

01:35:04

Now, I don't buy into the theology that has been built on that by people in the

01:35:12

Armenian sector of theology, especially in the

01:35:17

Wesleyan movement. But here's what I think we need to be aware of. Let me go to Isaiah chapter 53 verse 2.

01:35:27

For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground, he has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him.

01:35:40

Now, here's the key. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised.

01:35:51

We did not esteem him. Let me stop right there to say that, unfortunately, not only our

01:35:56

Numerican Standard Version, but other versions as well, have not done us any favors on the translation of the first line of that verse, or the second line.

01:36:06

He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The actual Hebrew words there, he was a man of pain and acquainted with sickness.

01:36:17

Now you come down to verse 4. Surely our, literally, our sicknesses he himself bore, and our pain he carried.

01:36:28

Yet we ourselves esteemed him strict and smitten of God and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our well -being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed.

01:36:45

Now what this is telling us, I think, is that in his incarnation, our

01:36:50

Lord Jesus experienced sickness. Did the Lord Jesus actually get sick?

01:36:57

Did he run a fever? Did he have an upset stomach? No, I don't believe so. His sickness, though, because sickness has a sin at its root, then the

01:37:08

Lord Jesus Christ could have no sickness because he had no sin. But he lived among human beings.

01:37:16

He shared their miserable condition. John 1 .14, he tabernacled among us.

01:37:23

He pitched his tent among us. Jesus touched the lives of thousands of sick persons and he made them well.

01:37:31

He not only saw, but he understood their sufferings. He understood their illnesses, their injuries, their disabilities.

01:37:38

He was God. He wrote the owner's manual. He knew how to fix it. So he experienced sickness through the sickness of those with whom he came into contact.

01:37:51

But there's also another way that he did this, and that is that he experienced sickness in his crucifixion.

01:38:00

And that's what we see here in Isaiah 53. At the cross, our Lord literally, physically experienced human sickness.

01:38:10

Why did he do that? Why could he do it? We said he was without sin, he couldn't experience sickness.

01:38:16

Ah, but on the cross, he became our sin bearer. Amen. The sins of the world, the sins of his elect people were put on him.

01:38:25

We call it propitiation, we call it substitution. As a sinner in the sight of God on the cross, he experienced a full range of human illness.

01:38:38

Think about it. As part of his work of providing redemption, he had to bear the sickness that is so closely related to sin.

01:38:48

We know that he experienced unbearable physical pain. His nails driven through his hands, driven through his feet, the crown of thorns crushed down upon his skull.

01:39:00

He was bleeding profusely. What else would have gone along with that? Severe headache, nausea, uncontrolled bowels, difficulty breathing.

01:39:12

All of that part of the extreme ugliness of Calvary. And I think that's what's being referred to in Isaiah 53 when he says, surely our sicknesses he himself bore and our pains he carried.

01:39:27

He experienced personally what we experience in physical illness during those three hours on the cross of Calvary.

01:39:37

So that was what he did for our physical illness.

01:39:43

Now, verse 5 tells us he was pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

01:39:50

So he experienced this torture as a sin bearer as well.

01:39:57

He bore our illnesses and our pains and he bore our sins in his body on the cross.

01:40:06

Our sins were imputed to him. Now, the implication here is that without the experience of sickness, he could not forgive us.

01:40:18

Verse 10, the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief.

01:40:24

There's our word again, putting him to sickness. If he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring.

01:40:31

He will prolong his days and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. He was rendering himself as a guilt offering with an eye to his own personal satisfaction and paying for the sins of those whom the father had given him.

01:40:44

And sickness was a part of the price of redemption. And without the experience of sickness, he couldn't justify us.

01:40:51

Verse 11, as a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied by my knowledge, the righteous one, my servant will justify the many, he will bear their iniquities.

01:41:04

So he bore both the sicknesses and the sins. So I think then that Isaiah 53 becomes a really important text on this question of healing.

01:41:18

The Bible closely links sin and sickness and therefore closely links redemption and healing.

01:41:25

The God who is our savior is also the God who is our healer, Exodus 15, 26.

01:41:30

The extent of our Lord's provision for physical healing then is equal to that of his provision for spiritual healing.

01:41:38

In other words, when I say that those for whom Christ died have available to them the forgiveness of their sins and the healing of their bodies.

01:41:47

Now, this goes against what many of my theological persuasion believe.

01:41:53

There are some highly respected evangelicals, highly respected by me and many others, who would say that Christ only bore our sicknesses by sympathizing, that real healing based on the atonement can only come in the future.

01:42:10

But I don't think that's right, since the same language is used of his work for sin.

01:42:16

So what I'm saying is that if our Lord really bore our sins for the purpose of taking them away, then he just as really bore our diseases for the purpose of removing them.

01:42:26

And I think that that's consistent. So what

01:42:32

I'm indicating here then is that this biblical link between the forgiveness of sin and the healing of illness exists as much today as it did in our

01:42:42

Lord's ministry, and I believe it will in the future. And as you know, I'm a premillennialist, so I believe that we have a coming real literal kingdom over which the

01:42:54

Lord Jesus will reign, and his victory over disease will be apparent in his kingdom as well.

01:43:02

So we as God's people in this present age of grace are not promised exemption from illness.

01:43:10

He never told us that we'll never get sick. God never said Christ provided the possibility of healing through his redemptive work, but if you get sick then that's your fault, because you sin.

01:43:23

No. But the ready availability of when we get sick of healing through our crucified

01:43:32

Lord is this divine power. We have this power for healing. Pastor John Roach Stratton, who once pastored in Calvary Baptist Church in New York City, once said this.

01:43:45

He said, Christ is a complete savior. We can plead his saving blood in behalf of our physical illness.

01:43:54

Could it be said that it actually is in harmony with the idea that those of us who believe in definite atonement, that Jesus Christ definitely paid the price for the sins of his people, and definitely removed that penalty from us, and definitely with certainty he freed us from enslavement to sin, but at the same time, although this is a finished work and it is a definite act, we who are

01:44:34

Christians, unlike the Wesleyan holiness brethren that we have, we will never experience sinlessness on this earth in our own lives.

01:44:46

Yes, that's right. That's a very good observation, that he died for us and took away our sins as his elect people, and yet we are not sinless at this point.

01:44:58

And therefore, he died to heal us as well, but we are not without sickness yet.

01:45:07

I want to have a question asked from an anonymous listener in Texas who is anxious to hear your answer, so I don't want to put it off till tomorrow.

01:45:20

This anonymous listener in Texas says, I write this comment question of Brother Glass with hesitation.

01:45:27

I'm anxious to hear what he will say about one of the illnesses in our family. My brother -in -law became schizophrenic when he was 18.

01:45:35

He was attending Bible school when it came upon him. I met him at 18.

01:45:41

I saw him as the shyest person I had ever met. He had been raised on the mission field, was on the right track, loved the

01:45:51

Lord and his word, was planning to serve God. It took a while for him to be diagnosed, but my husband and his parents and I were there for him.

01:46:02

I've known others who this has happened to. There was nothing that happened before in his life spiritually that would have turned his heart.

01:46:12

He was on so much medication that I believe it caused his cancer, of which he died three years ago.

01:46:19

We have learned of many cases like this and feel we can have understanding hearts. I won't bore you with the rest of our story at this point.

01:46:28

Naturally, this has been the worst. Well, if you want to comment on our anonymous listener's question slash comment,

01:46:36

Pastor Ron? Well, I just don't know enough of the circumstances to be able to comment.

01:46:46

I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist. And, you know, there are just too many unanswered, too many gaps in knowledge here that I could really comment on.

01:47:02

I do want to say this. I think schizophrenia is a real problem.

01:47:10

There are many people who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic. They're on medications and nothing helps them.

01:47:17

Medications may keep the schizophrenia at bay, but it doesn't heal it. And basically, a person who's schizophrenic never gets better.

01:47:27

That's a rule. Now, there may be people who will write in to you and say,

01:47:33

I know of people who got better. That's wonderful. I'm happy to hear that. I do believe that schizophrenia has spiritual issues at its root.

01:47:45

And there are a lot of people who disagree with me on this, and I'm willing to love you anyway.

01:47:53

It's not an issue that I can speak with infallible authority about, obviously.

01:48:01

But schizophrenia, which often deals with split personalities, people hearing voices and this kind of thing, has the marks of demonic oppression.

01:48:11

Now, why? Well, that is an issue that I can't answer.

01:48:21

I think the answer to that question would have to be explored in each individual.

01:48:28

Is there some kind of influence? I know that there are those who believe that ancestors can be responsible for some of this.

01:48:37

Some of these kinds of things can actually be transmitted from generation to generation. Again, I'm not sure about that, but that's one supposition.

01:48:50

Sins that have been indulged in and are without repentance, that can be an issue.

01:49:01

Things like pornography, homosexuality, and things of this sort, which allow

01:49:06

Satan to establish a beachhead in a person's life. And the gospel is the only answer to that.

01:49:16

What does Paul say in 2 Corinthians 10?

01:49:22

He says, let me read it to you so I get it absolutely right here.

01:49:29

2 Corinthians 10, verse 4, the weapons of our warfare are not flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

01:49:39

And those fortresses are those that have been built by the devil in our lives, and we can't do that without God.

01:49:52

And as long as sin is reigning in our life, then God can't work as such.

01:50:04

That kind of leads me to the last thing I wanted to talk about today, which was this thing about mental illness.

01:50:11

In fact, before you do that, I just want to quickly tell our anonymous listener that Pastor Ron Gless's website, if you want to have further contact with him, perhaps to fill in the missing pieces and have a lengthier conversation at some point, wrbc .us

01:50:27

is the website for Wading River Baptist Church. Just wanted to let her know that she can contact you later.

01:50:41

Let me just correct. It's office, office, O -F -F -I -C -E, at wrbc .us.

01:50:52

Oh, that's the email address I was giving you the website. Oh, the website. Yes. Okay. We can get correspondence through the website.

01:50:59

Yes. And of course, you could also use the email address that Pastor Ron just gave. But I'm sorry, you can continue with what you were saying about mental illness.

01:51:07

The last thing I thought might be helpful to talk about in our few remaining minutes is the whole concept of mental illness.

01:51:17

Again, this is something that seems to be primarily spiritual in Scripture. We're warned in Scripture, like in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 27, that we are not to give place to the devil.

01:51:33

Paul said his tactics are not a mystery. We're not ignorant of his devices.

01:51:41

And 2 Corinthians 10 that I just referred to, in those verses 3 through 5, you have important insight.

01:51:51

And I think that the secret of dealing with mental illness comes down to this.

01:51:58

Mental illness means we have to acknowledge the spiritual sources.

01:52:07

Mental illness produced by demons carries the most severe symptoms of any human suffering.

01:52:13

Remember the father that described his son as a lunatic or moonstruck. The son couldn't speak or hear.

01:52:19

He would suddenly lapse into convulsions, screaming, foaming at the mouth, grinding his teeth. He would go into a state of rigidity and physical injury, mauling, which included throwing himself into fire or water.

01:52:33

And this was a condition the boy had suffered from birth, according to the father, there in Matthew 17.

01:52:38

In the other major account involving our Lord's healing of mental illness, we see the same root cause.

01:52:46

In Mark chapter 5, Luke chapter 8, Matthew tells us that there were two men involved there.

01:52:53

This was the so -called maniac of Gadara. This man had superhuman strength.

01:53:00

He was involved in self -mutilation. And he appears to have had the symptoms of schizophrenia.

01:53:07

Why? Well, there were multiple demons inhabiting this man. And when the

01:53:15

Lord Jesus asked his name, he said, we're legion. Well, legion was thousands.

01:53:22

There were many demons inhabiting this man. So mental illness produced by demons requires the most difficult treatment of any human suffering.

01:53:38

Our Lord had sent his disciples out, and they had exercised power over disease and demons. But when they met this boy, they couldn't do anything about it.

01:53:49

There was a vigorous debate among themselves. They said, we can't cast him out. And Jesus placed the responsibility for failure on his impotent disciples.

01:54:00

He said, this can't come out by anything but faith, and some manuscripts say prayer and fasting.

01:54:12

So it's a matter of faith. The Lord asked the father how long he had been afflicted since he was a child.

01:54:19

Well, that's an important insight. Sometimes people experience demonic oppression through no direct fault of their own.

01:54:27

But that doesn't change the root problem. As long as the demons are present, then there's no healing from this kind of mental illness.

01:54:34

So Jesus, when he did this healing, he noticed the crowds were gathering, and he never performed miracles for the sake of a spectacular carnival -like demonstration.

01:54:48

So when he saw the crowds gathering, he quickly expelled the demon, but not before one last violent seizure that apparently killed the boy.

01:54:56

But our Lord, who raised the dead, took his hand and restored him to his father. So Jesus said this kind can come out by nothing except prayer.

01:55:08

And so prayer is the critical issue, the critical truth we need to hear, one which will be expanded in the epistles by way of instructing the church, especially when we see

01:55:19

James chapter 5 tomorrow. But here's the truth to remember. A prayerless church is not going to have any power in meeting the needs of those who are mentally ill.

01:55:29

I don't believe, generally speaking, that a person in these severe cases of mental illness are going to be helped by medical professionals, as a rule.

01:55:41

It's a spiritual issue, and I think it needs to be spiritually dealt with. Now, again,

01:55:47

I'm not talking about exorcists, all right? That's not the issue.

01:55:53

Professional exorcists who make it their business to go going around throwing out demons. When we come up against a situation like this, it's not that we have the power to cast out the demon.

01:56:05

We have the power of prayer to plead with God to release that person from bondage.

01:56:13

And that needs to be... I mean, that's what Jesus said. Prayer is the thing, not exorcism, prayer. And so, you know, you get all these...

01:56:22

This is always an emotional issue. Somebody's going to say, you mean to say that all mental illness is due to sin? Well, that's not an easy question, because, of course, there are physiological factors that influence mental health, chemical imbalances in the body that can impact a person's mind.

01:56:38

And so there are sometimes deeper causes. But ultimately, it all goes back to sin again.

01:56:46

And the difficulty lies in our inability to see the pathogen. We can look at viruses and bacteria under microscopes, and we can look at cancer cells and diseased arteries, but our technological sophistication has no way of looking into the unseen spirit world.

01:57:04

So we can't see the germs afflicting our souls. So what we want to do is say, well, they don't exist.

01:57:12

But they do. So Christians, I think, have largely surrendered this domain to mental health experts, the vast majority of whom, frankly, reject the

01:57:25

Bible. So I would urge people to seriously consider this.

01:57:31

Think this through. Read those accounts of our Lord's casting out demons, and realize that the root problem, at some point, is sin.

01:57:40

And medicine and social science can't offer a cure. Only God does. And so this is where a praying, godly church body can come around a person like this, and by prevailing and protracted prayer, can trust the

01:58:01

Lord to free that person from illness. And I'm sure you would agree that Christians should not take the extreme like some of our charismatic and Pentecostal friends and brethren do, and even some of the cults like those involved in Christian science and other things, where they shun all forms of medicine, where they, even for mental health reasons, although the psychiatric and psychology world has abused the prescribing of drugs,

01:58:36

I think, in excess, there still is a place for them, I'm sure you would agree. But drugs can just manage it.

01:58:44

They can't cure it. And we need to remember that regardless of who sinned, mentally ill are under the oppression of forces much stronger than they are.

01:58:54

And our attitude must never be that of condemnation or ridicule, but rather of compassion, because that was our

01:59:00

Lord's attitude. And we must be very careful not to jump to conclusions about someone else and deem them as having unconfessed sin or something like that in their lives as the reason for their illness.

01:59:13

Correct. And they could be a saint far stronger in their faith than us. Look at Robert Murray McShane, who died at 29, one of the greatest heroes of the

01:59:21

Christian faith. But anyway, we have to go right now. And I want our listeners to know that your website is wrbc .us.

01:59:30

Please stay tuned tomorrow as we continue this subject, sickness in the

01:59:35

Christian, an examination of the body and the Bible. And I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:43

Savior than you are a sinner. We'll be back tomorrow with Pastor Ron Glass on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.