Principles of Healthful Living I

Thank you so much. That was beautiful. It's a real blessing to have special music like that, and such a message in itself, truly, that we need to take to heart. That will be done. Today I want to talk about the principles of healthful living. In part, it's a message that I gave about seven years ago in the Oakland congregation. I was speaking to a few members of the last Sabbath, and they were like, oh, we forget 80% of what we hear in the first 24 hours. If you gave it seven years ago, I don't even know what. If some of this you might have heard. As it turned out, when I actually got into the subject, and I really began to explore it, building on what I had given and the research that I had done, lots come out in the last seven years, scientifically. I wanted to, really, in this message today, lay a foundation, theologically, for the discussion. A lot of us would go to obvious things around physical health. But I want to lay a spiritual foundation, a biblical foundation, in this first part. So this is really part one. We'll have part two, very likely after next week's sampler.

So you'll look forward to the next installment of the Ten Commandments and the next installment of Health, Whole Living. So you'll know there's a few things that I'm working on there. But how we manage our mental, emotional, and physical health is really one of the most deeply personal issues that we face. And it's very, very controversial. It's fraught with many opinions, conflicting research, as we know, where, you know, okay, it's bad to eat eggs, okay, you know, it's good to eat eggs, oh, it doesn't matter if you eat eggs, and, you know, these types of things.

And it really, everybody, you know, has sort of a view of, oh, if you just do this, right, or if you just do that, or avoid this other thing, then, you know, all your problems will be addressed.

Fifty years, more than 50 years ago now in the Church of God, some people went overboard promoting extreme positions, making people feel bad if they happen to drink a bottle of soda, for example. And I experienced this directly. I saw somebody really just have an emotional outburst over discovering a six-pack of Coca-Cola. You'd think that was one of the worst things that had ever happened. And again, I don't think drinking soda is good, but again, all things in balance, right? A lot of extreme positions around white sugar, putting down people who might seek professional counseling for mental and emotional trauma, using sweeping language that often ignored the facts and circumstances of individual situations. I think we've grown a lot, and I'd like to just put that sort of behind us and talk today, really, about hopefully what is a balanced understanding of both the biblical record and of the current and latest research.

And hopefully in this, we will understand that the larger issue that we really should be addressing when we talk about our health, whether it's emotional or physical, is really the larger spiritual context, right? What we are doing should lead us to the kingdom of God. And our health is really a byproduct of that journey as we go down that path towards God's kingdom. As we read in the book of James, and as I talked about in works of faith, we show our faith by our works. Our physical actions are really just a manifestation of those spiritual things, those spiritual intent, that is inside of us. And so I hope as we go through these series of discussions that we can come to the point where we have removed enough pride from our lives that we'll be willing and open to take advice, right? That we've examined ourselves enough that we recognize things that we need to repent of and admit that we're wrong, and that we'll actually make physical changes, whether those be physical changes that affect our emotional health or our physical health.

And so really, there are many points to cover in this. We're not going to cover them all today.

Today we're going to cover the biblical instruction that connects our spiritual health with our physical health. This is not something that I'm just making up. This is not some pop psychology. We'll see in a moment that the Bible actually makes this connection. And we'll talk about the interdependence between our individual health, how we take care of ourselves, and our collective spiritual health as a body of Christ, and how we are interdependent, how one thing that we do affects everyone else. And then in later messages we'll talk about the biblical dietary laws. We'll talk about societal influences around our diet today, the rise of obesity, the rise of processed foods, and a lot of the the poor practices of society, the importance of rest and renewal, coping with stress, the importance of hygiene and sanitation, and the importance of seeking anointing when we do become ill. So there's a lot of things to cover, and what I didn't want to do is go long. I'd rather keep this at the time that we've committed and have sort of regular discussions through the sermon chat around this than have you be in your chairs for a long time. And as we go through these points, please understand that we all have a long ways to go in understanding health. I have a long ways to go in understanding health. What I'm going to share here is hopefully something that brings it to the top of your mind, that stimulates you to further research, to further study, to further meditation and prayer on the subject for you individually.

A lot of times a message on health may lead to some people walking away feeling badly about themselves, feeling down like, oh well you know I'm not doing this or I'm not doing that. And instead, I don't want anybody to walk away from these messages feeling badly. I want us to walk away feeling encouraged that God is with us and he wants to support us and that this may be a work of faith for some of us because for some of us this may be one of the hardest things we've ever done.

Some people may look unhealthy, some people may be overweight, but inside they may have done the hard spiritual work that is allowing them to overcome and grow and they're making progress in a way that somebody who might look very healthy, who might not be overweight hasn't done.

Some sins are more visible than others and there may be somebody who looks just perfectly healthy and fine but they're being eaten up inside because they're not doing the spiritual work that they need to do. So we can't be deceived. God doesn't look on the outside. So just because of how we look doesn't mean that that's a reflection of us being healthy or not healthy. We shouldn't be making those judgments. Many of us have inherited physical issues from our parents, our genes, and we may struggle our whole life with difficult health issues where others maybe don't have that same row to hoe, as we say. They're not dealt the same difficult cards that they have to play. So even putting into practice these biblical principles for some people may get them to the point where physically other people are just starting. And that's just the way life is. So we're not measuring our spiritual condition based upon our physical health in that way. And then, of course, there is the issue of aging. As we age, as the book of Ecclesiastes describes, Solomon describes, we have issues that come up. We may lose our eyesight. Our back may give out. Different parts of our body may not work in the same way. And so we each have to deal with the effects of aging as well. The point is that each of us has our cross to bear when it comes to our physical, emotional health. And God doesn't look on the outward, and we shouldn't either. And as we will see, his focus, God's focus, is on the spiritual. The physical follows from that.

So let's dive into this first point here to lay the biblical foundation by going over to 1 Corinthians 11 and in verse 27. This first point is, what is the biblical instruction that connects our spiritual health with our physical health? As I said, this is not some pop psychology. This is a firmly grounded biblical principle. 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 27. Now let's set the context here. Once you get there, we'll kind of look at the context because as we know, context is everything in understanding what God is saying through the scriptures. The context of this verse is describing the Lord's Supper. And those who might listen to me who don't have a background in the Church of God might be surprised because not a lot of people understand that the Lord's Supper is not a supper. The Lord's Supper is not a meal. That's the biblical instruction. And it begins in verse 17 where Paul is giving instruction. And what he's explaining is he's found out that the Corinthians are getting together to keep the Passover and they're having a big feast. And some of them are getting drunk. Some are bringing a lot of food and they're kind of being gluttonous. And others, they don't have very much. And they're going away hungry. And it's causing divisions prior to the keeping of the actual symbols of the Passover. We can see that in verse 22. What? Do you have houses to eat and drink in? Do you not have houses to eat or drink in? Or do you desire the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. So he says, look, have your meal before. I don't want to see any of that. We come to take the symbols. Verse 23. For I receive from the Lord that which I also deliver to you that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. And then he talks about the symbol of the bread and the symbol of the wine. And we read this every year. We understand it very well. And then in verse 27, we get to really the point that I want to make here. He says, therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. He's saying this is a very serious thing. That's why you're going to have your meals and do your other things afterwards. You're coming to take of the body and blood of our Savior. And if you come into this situation and you take in an unworthy manner, you are going to drink damnation onto yourself. Verse 28. But let a man examine himself. That is, to avoid this, we need to examine ourselves. And let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Now notice in verse 30, for this reason many are weak and sick among you and many sleep. Some are actually dead because of this. Now I know we've read this many times, but think about this. What is God actually talking about here? Is he talking about a plague? Is he talking about a curse? Is there some sort of magic spell? You know, some sort of curse that he places? Maybe. I think more likely what he's talking about is unexamined sin in people's lives, which ultimately leads to sickness and even in some cases death.

Right? Cause and effect. God knows who we are and he knows that when we have unexamined issues in our lives and we come and we take that Passover year after year, not having discerned the Lord's body, we become physically sick and may even die. Now there's a larger spiritual issue here. Let's not lose track of that, right? Verse 27 and verse 29 talks about spiritual judgment. A longer-lasting, more serious issue. That's why he talks about it first. So we can't confuse that. The big issue here is that our eternal life is at stake. But interestingly, after he goes through that in this context, then he actually talks about physical health. He talks about physical health, about sickness and death. I think what we have here is a clear biblical connection between our spiritual condition and our physical condition. I'm going to read an article entitled, Anger Can Kill, and this is from a blog called Heart MD Institute. This is on page 3 of the article by Dr. Stephen Sinatra. No relation, I'm sure, to the other Sinatra. What he says here is, a short fuse can indeed shorten your life. Anger can get you into cardiovascular trouble and deep trouble at that. When you get fired up emotionally, you're doing the equivalent of putting a torch to your arteries. Medical research has repeatedly documented the danger of anger and chronic stress. Then he goes through a couple examples where he describes that, researcher and what had happened. He says, the fact is that a short fuse doesn't make for a long life and if you have high blood pressure to boot, it's important to recognize your vulnerability and explore ways to cope. For your arteries, stress is real like an arsonist with matches in one hand and a gasoline can in the other. You must disarm this perpetrator before it hurts you. Chronic anger and stress cause your body to oversecrete stress hormones and chemicals. Growing evidence indicates that overproduction stokes inflammation and a wide variety of illnesses, including cardiovascular disease. Arteries constrict, causing blood pressure to rise and the heart rate to go up. In the 1990s, a series of Harvard studies on anger and its effect on the heart identified anger as a common trigger of heart attack and life-threatening arrhythma...

I can never pronounce this... arrhythmiasis, for those who can correct me and maybe in the sermon chat on that. Lead researcher Murray Mittleman, MD of the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, concluded that, quote, the scope of the problem is sizable. At least 36,000 heart attacks, that's 2.4 percent of the 1.5 million, are precipitated annually in the United States by anger. They are actually precipitated by anger. In his latest study published in 2013, Mittleman and his colleagues investigated the question of whether greater levels of anger intensity meant greater levels of heart attack risk. And then he describes how they went through the research. He says, the results revealed that 38 percent of the participants had had outbursts of anger in the year before their heart attack, and within this subgroup there was a stunning two-and-a-half-fold increase in the risk of heart attack within two hours of an outburst, compared to other times. And yes, they found the more intense the anger, the greater the risk. Looking at stroke, Israeli researchers reported in 2004 a study of 200 consecutive patients who had experienced a mini-stroke, that is a TIA. Their investigation showed that anger and intense negative emotions could increase the risk of stroke by as much as 14 times.

Literally, anger, stress, outbursts of wrath lead to a higher incidence of death. That's what the medical research shows, and that's what I think we're seeing here.

And I know members of God's Church who struggle with anger, who struggle with depression, who struggle with these types of things, and unexamined, unrepentant, not going and getting help, not seeking to change and taking the Passover year after year can lead to physical issues.

Let's go over to Proverbs 12 verse 25.

Proverbs 12 verse 25 says, a prudent man conceals knowledge. I'm sorry, Proverbs 23, 25. Proverbs 12, 25. Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad. See, if we are anxious, and we're coming into the Passover season year after year being anxious, that anxiousness is going to lead to depression. Depression leads to a whole host of health issues that leads to all sorts of sickness, and eventually, potentially even to death, as Paul describes it. Look over in chapter 15 verse 17.

He who is quick-tempered acts foolishly. Proverbs 15 verse 17.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred.

Often, hatred can be accompanied with anger because we have some sort of intense frustration or anger against someone, and that hatred is really just another form of sin. How do we know that? Well, look over in Matthew 5. Look over in Matthew 5.

Matthew 5 verse 21.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Now, he's talking about spiritual issues here again, but he's making a very clear connection that anger against a brother, which oftentimes is connected with hatred, is just like murder. Is just like murder. And whoever says to his brother, Raka, that is, you fool, shall be in danger of the counsel. And whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hellfire. And then we get to this very famous passage, which we've read many times here. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there, remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. What Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 11 is really just a reiteration of what Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount, which is that we have to address these issues. We cannot leave them unresolved if we're going to come before God. Our spiritual health and our physical health will be impacted by that. And there's a lot of things that we carry inside of us, anger and hatred, against things that we experienced growing up. Injustices in the world. There's a lot of injustice in the world. There's a lot of unfairness in the world. In this country, we have been blessed with a system that often addresses this, but that is not the case necessarily with everyone. We see in this right now in this country, a country that's deeply divided, people very upset with the leadership of the country, people who are saying that they have been discriminated against for years, and those issues are not being addressed. There's a lot of frustration in this country, and I certainly see it when I travel. When I see it in other countries, and I see it in Africa, for example, where there's really no recourse, where government officials operate with impunity, and they can just come and take things from you without any justice being done. That leads to great frustration, anger, and even bitterness and hatred, which can affect our very spiritual and physical health. Paul is talking to the church here. He's not talking to the world when he talks about these things. This is a principle that impacts our health, and so when we talk about physical things that we do, really those physical things are just a principle that we should be focusing on in terms of our spiritual lives. So now let's talk about the interdependence between the decisions that I make and the decisions that you make, because we are actually interdependent that way. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 3. We'll go back to instructions to the Corinthians. We're going to spend a lot of time in 1 Corinthians today during the sermon, because I think to a large degree our society reflects the society of the Corinthians at the time. We've talked a lot about that before. 1 Corinthians 3 and in verse 16.

If we've heard sermons on health before, we might have heard a reference to this.

1 Corinthians 3 verse 16, Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy. Which temple you are. Now, if we've heard sermons about health before, what we've probably heard was here we have an admonition about taking care of our bodies. We have the Holy Spirit within us, and we need to take care of this body because it is a reflection of God in us.

That is a true principle, but this verse actually is speaking more broadly. I want to examine this verse in some detail, and then we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 6 and see how it ties in. What's actually being discussed here is our collective spiritual and physical health, not just individually. In fact, in this context, he's really talking about us as the church.

So, once again, look at the context of what's being discussed. If we start in verse 5, we see that what Paul is talking about is that there was division within the church. There was division in the church. Some people were saying, well, I was baptized by so-and-so, or I heard so-and-so speak, and somebody would say, well, I heard somebody else. So there was division. So he says in verse 5, he says, Who then is Paul?

And who is Apollos but ministers through whom you believed? That is, it doesn't matter how you came into the church, who you heard. The point is you're here, and God used that for good. I planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the increase. Verse 7, So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God gives the increase.

And so what he says then in verse 9 is, we are God's, he says, for we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field. You are God's building. So he's saying God is building up this edifice, this building. And we are that building. He is building up his church, and it doesn't matter how that's built up. Everybody has a role to play.

It is God himself who is creating this building. And then in verse 10, he goes on to talk about how this building is built, and it has to be built with quality materials.

According to the grace God which is given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another builds on it. But each one take heat on how he builds. And he talks about verse 12, he talks about gold, silver, and precious stones versus wood, hay, and stub. When he's talking about how this spiritual edifice is being built up. And then he gets to verse 16, and this is the important part. He says, do you.

Now the you here is hard to see, but the you in Greek is actually plural. This is a plural you collectively. In fact, some translations actually render this verse, you all together. All of you as the church, you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells in you.

That is the spirit of God dwells in us. He is with us today. This is a special place that we're meeting in right here, not because of this building, but because of you, because of us, because of what we're doing here. This is where God's spirit is placed, and it has made this place holy. And then he says, if anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him.

He's talking about false teachers. He's talking about people who bring division, people who come in and say, well, you know, Apollos clearly was the one who taught better. So you better, if you didn't come through Apollos, you need to go over here. Or Paul is the person who taught more powerfully. You need to go through Paul. He's talking about those who bring division. So that's a little bit of a different discussion than maybe we've heard before, but that doesn't negate this broader or this specific point that we talk about in terms of taking care of our bodies.

Because Paul is going to go on a little bit later in the book, and we're going to talk about that, where he talks about us individually. But the point that you need to take away from here is that he's talking about the fact that the body, this body of believers, has the Holy Spirit in it, and that it needs to be taken care of.

It could not be defiled. It needs to be nurtured and taken care of. And then he says in verse 18, let no one deceive himself of anyone among you who seems to be wise in his age. Let him become a fool that he may become wise, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness for God. And then he talks about how God knows our thoughts. He knows what's happening. And he concludes in verse 23 by saying, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God.

So Christ is in God. We are in Christ. We are the body of believers. Collectively, we are built up. Now, how does this tie into us individually? Because, actually, we do have an individual responsibility to our body. And we see that in 1 Corinthians 6. Go over to 1 Corinthians 6. Just a couple verses over, because this is where it gets tied in. This is really where we're talking about our individual responsibility to our bodies. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 12. He says, All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.

Now, what does he mean here? What does this mean? A lot of times we go over this a little bit too quickly. If you look in the context of what's being described, many translations here will actually put the first part of this verse in quotations. That is to say, the first part of this verse is what the Corinthians were saying among themselves. It isn't that Paul is saying it's true. He's just repeating what they're saying. So you can understand 1 Corinthians 6 verse 12 in quotations, All things are lawful for me, or you say all things are lawful for me. That is, you, the Corinthians, think this and you're saying this. And then he responds by saying, but maybe not all things are helpful or expedient or profitable. And then he, again, quoting the Corinthians, says, All things are lawful to me. That is, you say all things are lawful. But then he responds again by saying, but I will not be brought under the power of any. That is to say, you say, think all things are lawful. You think it's all of this is just physical stuff. And you don't have to deal with all this Judistic things and so forth. And you're living this wonderful life in Christ and so forth. But think again, because you may actually be a slave to something you don't realize you're a slave to. You may actually be doing something that, although it is okay, it may not actually be good for you. And so then he gets to verse 13, foods for the stomach and stomach for foods. Again, many translations will actually go to the original Greek and say he's quoting the Corinthians. They put quotation marks around foods for the stomach and stomachs for food. And the idea is that the Corinthians were saying, hey, this is all physical. This is all this physical stuff. You know, that's not what matters. What matters is the bigger spiritual things. So I can eat whatever I want, wherever I want. You know, it's just food and stomach and physical. But Paul says, but God will destroy both it and them. So he's saying, hmm, you know what? Maybe you don't have quite an understanding of how you're supposed to treat your body. Let me give you some instruction on that. And now he's going to launch into the instruction. And he says, now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. How we treat our body is something that God cares about. In this case, in Corinth, they were likely talking about temple prostitution, because that was a common thing, right? You went to church, as bizarre as it sounds, and you had sex. You went to the temple and you had sex with a temple prostitute.

And you can imagine a lot of people were going to the temple, right? It's bizarre, but it's what they were doing. And they, some of them would say, that's okay. It's just a physical thing. It's not a spiritual thing, just a physical thing. Just like, I can eat whatever I want. Stomach for food, food for stomach. It's just a physical thing. And Paul is saying, no, that's not the case. Verse 14, and God both raised up the Lord and he will raise us up by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Don't you realize that how you take care of your body, what you actually do with your body matters? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. That is, you can't go to temple prostitutes because you're joining yourself to sin. You need to be joining to the Lord. And so he's making this connection, again, between the spiritual and the physical, and how the physical actually mimics the spiritual.

And then he continues in verse 18, flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual morality sins against his own body. So he says flee sexual immorality. And I believe, if we understand the context, too, he doesn't hit it, but he talks about foods. I believe he also says, be careful what you eat. Because our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit individually, as he's describing here, and collectively as he described three chapters earlier.

And then he says here in verse 19, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, or that is in you, that you have from God, that you are not your own? So now we have the very clear teaching that individually our body is a temple, and we, collectively, all made up together, are the temple of God that must be maintained. And verse 20, for you, now he's talking about each and every one of us, for you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. The way we take care of our body is important to God. He wants us to glorify Him in how we take care of our body, in the things we do with our body. We are not supposed to be saying, oh, it doesn't matter what we eat, it doesn't matter if we go to a prostitute, it doesn't matter. No, what we do is important to God and what we do in our body. Now, some may say here that, you know, perhaps I'm crossing a line, because our spiritual decisions actually lead to physical consequences. And so some might say, oh, well, you know, I'm doing the best I can and I have physical consequences. Well, what I'd want to share here, first of all, and it's very important to understand, is the choices that we make, probably one of the biggest choices that we didn't make, is who we were born to. We didn't get to choose our parents. We didn't get to choose how our parents raised us or the environments that we were in. And so we don't have all power over sort of our bodies in that way. We talked last week about epigenetics and the new research coming out about how genes are turned on, even generationally, from generation to generation, by certain behaviors. And so there is a genetic component to this. And there are a whole host of circumstances that need to be considered in this connection. So just because we are striving to live godly lives doesn't mean that we're going to have perfect physical health. But it doesn't negate the physical and spiritual connection that is still here. What I am saying is what the Apostle Paul wrote, that we have to examine ourselves whether we are in the faith. We need to get advice. We need to be open to change when we come and take the Passover. And that change includes things that affect our physical health. If we're ready to change, if we're ready to repent, if we're ready to grow beyond our current way of thinking, then I believe that Paul's words ring, and they should be ringing in our heads, for this reason many are weak and sick among you and many sleep. That could be us unless we're willing to change. The Church of God for 90 years in the modern era has said that someone cannot get baptized if they smoke. Now where do you find that in the Bible? Where is smoking in the Bible, right? 90 years in the modern era, and that's how it is today. You smoke, you don't get baptized. You start smoking, I'm sorry, but you need to stop smoking. Smoking is not good for your body. Smoking is a one-way ticket to a premature death. That was understood 90 years ago in the Church of God, and it's understood today by modern researchers in science. That's a biblical principle that is a teaching of God's Church. What about lacking control in what we eat, or how much we eat?

Could that be just like smoking? Now we're not going to start legislating that, but that's a question we have to ask. What would be the difference? What about watching violent movies, or consuming pornography, or too much alcohol, or not regularly exercising our body, or binge watching Netflix, or hiding in romantic novels, or fantasy worlds? Could all of these be warping our minds and our bodies? There's a very good TED Talk by the general responsible many years for the intake of civilians into the U.S. Army. I'll make reference to this in another sermon, but he talked about the fact that he believes that obesity is a serious national security issue. He's a three-star general, and he's calling obesity a national security issue by saying that 75% of the people who want to join the Army are not physically fit and able to be accepted, and that 60% of the people that they do accept cannot pass a basic physical test when they first start, which is to do a minute of push-ups, a minute of sit-ups, and a one-mile run. 60% of the people they do accept can't pass that test because they are primarily overweight, but not just overweight. They're in very poor health based upon a lack of exercise and a lack of proper nutrition. Let's go over to Psalm 103. Psalm 103.

Again, we're just laying the foundation here.

Psalm 103 verse 1.

God says here, Bless the Lord, all my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, all my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from destruction. Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. You know, if there's some description of health, I think we've got it right here.

Physical, emotional, spiritual, mental. This is a beautiful picture of health on the part of somebody who is putting their trust in God. If we put our trust in God, he will renew our strength.

But he's not going to be satisfied with us continuing the lifestyle, physical lifestyle, mental, emotional lifestyle that we had lived before. He demands change. He demands self-examination. He demands looking into the way that we're living. I believe we can claim this promise when we are one with God. That if we put him first, as I talked about in the the sermon last week, if we put him first, he will honor this. Again, that doesn't mean that we'll have no health problems at all. It just means that we'll make progress from where we are. We can be renewed if we examine ourselves, if we confront and change. And that's what repentance is all about. It's a lifelong process, not just something of baptism. Look over at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 because, again, most of us are the product of a whole host of things from genetics to how we were raised to ultimately the decisions that we began to make on our own about how we took care of our health. And those decisions may not have been formed by God's law. We may have been called much later in life, and we may be the recipients of all sorts of difficulties because of those things. Isaiah 53 verse 4, surely He has borne our griefs. Surely He has borne our griefs. And there's an understanding of this in the sense that He lived like we have lived. He understands what we have gone through because He Himself has been grieved. But there's also the sense that we can place our grief upon Him. His burden is yoke is easy and His burden is light, as it says in Matthew. And carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed. And this is where we practice anointing, because we understand that sometimes we get into situations not through any choice of our own, but through things that have happened to us. And that's where God is merciful to forgive us. And He's merciful to heal us through the sacrifice of His Son. By the stripes that He suffered, we can be healed. We can move beyond living the way we were living. And whatever difficulties that we didn't make choices for, we made choices that were uninformed, God can wipe away that pain. We can ask God for healing through anointing. Now we don't need to go into a lot of detail here, but there's a few other important principles. Look over in Isaiah 59, verses 1 and 2.

He says, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor is ear heavy, that he cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Sometimes God does not hear us, because we have not put away those things. We have not put him first. Our own pride, our own difficulties get in the way. Sometimes we're so stressed out we can't think. And so our sins can separate us from God, and those sins then can lead to physical issues. Look over in Matthew 18. Matthew 18. We've read this before as well, and talking about forgiveness.

Matthew 18, and in verse 21, Peter said to him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? And so Jesus is going to talk about forgiveness. He's going to talk about the power of forgiveness, of letting go of things that have hurt us, letting go of hatreds and anger. Verse 22, Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. It's a constant state of looking to forgive. And then when he comes down in verse 33, he said, should you not also have compassion on your fellow servant, just as I have had pity on you?

And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. And I have said this before, and I'll say it again, those people who cannot forgive are tortured mentally. They are mentally tortured. They have all sorts of health issues because they will not let go. There's this pit, this ball in their stomach. There's this pain on their chest. There's this weight in their shoulders. There's this furrow in their brow. They're just carrying it around with them. You've probably met those kinds of people, right? And you think, wow, just let it go. Verse 35, so my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Anger, hatred, not resolved, will lead to torture and pain, and ultimately spiritual death, but in the process, some will be sick. That's what's being described here when we don't forgive. I believe as God's people we have an obligation to address the physical matters as a reflection of our spiritual condition. Let's go over to Exodus 15, verse 26.

Exodus 15. Again, we're just laying the groundwork. We'll talk about all these other physical things here in another message, but we just need to get grounded physically here. When it comes to diet and exercise and rest and renewal and hygiene and stress and all these types of things, it all flows first from an understanding that it is a spiritual issue that we have to address. Exodus 15, verse 26. And he said, if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to the commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord your God who heals you. Now here it feels like a curse, doesn't it? Like, I curse the Egyptians and I'm going to curse you, but I think there's also a principle in here that we can understand. If we strive to understand God's commandments, if we strive to understand his will for our lives, we don't have to be plagued by those diseases. I want to read something from National Geographic. This is an article published March 21st, 2013 by A.R. Williams. It's entitled 8 Mummy Finds Revealing Ancient Disease. Some ailments were ancient scourges.

He says, whether laid to rest in a simple grave or a grand tomb, the human body rarely survives the sweep of time. But in a few places where people deliberately mummified their dead, or in the environmental conditions were right, very dry or wet, flesh and bone are preserved. Today, these remains, probed by modern CT scans, MRIs and DNA tests, are offering intriguing insights into how people lived and died long ago. A 2011 study of 52 mummies in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo showed that almost half had clogged arteries. Can you imagine that? Clogged arteries? Was it stress? Was it the internet? Why? They had clogged arteries, the condition that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Could you imagine the Egyptians, Moses, sitting around with the leaders, saying, hey, you need to watch your diet there. You're going to have a heart attack.

Maybe they talked about those things.

So then he goes on to talk about the specific maladies. It says, with more known mummies than any other place on earth, ancient Egypt is a hypochondriac's nightmare. Tissue samples from two adult mummies from about 3,500 years ago yield the earliest known DNA from a parasite that causes malaria. They had malaria back then. One man in his 20s who died about 2,900 years ago from Egypt and somehow ended up in another person's coffin. That's a whole other interesting story.

It was a woman. So strange. Suffered from hand-shoulder Christian disease, a rare, painful condition that produces bone tumors. A lot of research years ago said the Egyptians didn't have cancer. That cancer is a modern phenomenon. That they only lived to be in their 20s and 30s. Their body didn't have enough time. But they're actually finding now that that's not necessarily the case. There's actually a big debate about whether the Egyptians suffered from a lot of cancer. And a lot of people are arguing that they did have a lot of different types of cancers. An older man from about 2,250 years ago was shown to have had bone lesions consistent with metastatic prostate cancer. A male mummy from the period between 664 and 525 BC shows evidence of tree panning, which is holes drilled in the skull, possibly done to relieve symptoms of an acute sinus infection that likely altered the appearance and function of his left eye. They were dealing with sinus infections. How do you treat sinus infections? Well, you drill through the skull to relieve pressure, and they were attempting that. And in a study just reported this month, this was 2013, more than 200 mummies from a cemetery near Oswan showed signs of malnutrition, malnutrition, as well as gastrointestinal infections from drinking polluted Nile water. The average life expectancy was 30 years, and many of these were governors of the area, yet they still lived on the edge of survival. Imagine the misery of the common laborers. It was not good to live in Egypt. You know, the Israelites say, oh, we want to go back to Egypt. It was not good. Cancer, clogged arteries, polluted water, malaria, malnutrition. And God said, nope, nope, I will not bring those things on you if you follow me. And there's lots more that can be read there, but I think we just get the idea that the fact is that God can bless us if we follow His ways. Do we believe the Scriptures? Again, genetics and the influence of growing up not observing God's law will impact our health. But I want to share a story with you, a personal story, about my mother-in-law, because I think this really does reflect what I'm talking about.

My mother-in-law was born in the early 1930s in southern France, and when she was five years old, her mother died of a heart illness. And the doctors at that time said that she really should not have any more children because her heart just couldn't take it. And so her mother died in her 30s of a heart condition. So, you know, my mother-in-law didn't have very good genetics, right, given what had happened. Her father went off to war when the Germans invaded France, and he was gone for six months, and then had to return in defeat as the French capitulated. And when the French capitulated, France was divided into two zones, occupied France and free France.

And my mother-in-law lived in an area that was occupied. They had German soldiers in the village. And so she suffered tremendous stress as these soldiers would take advantage of every little insecurity. My mother-in-law had witnessed her grandfather die by being trampled by horses.

And so my mother-in-law, to this day, has a tremendous fear of horses. So she has a fear of horses. Her mother dies at five years old. Her father disappears for six months into war. Her dad comes back in defeat. And for five years, they ate food that they wouldn't have even given to the pigs. So when she turned 13 or 14, she wasn't in the best health. And that followed her around for years. She had back surgeries. She had her gallbladder removed. She had food allergies that just would not stop. And you can kind of see why. She suffered through the war. My father-in-law describes receiving an orange for Christmas in 1944. An orange? What an amazing thing to have a piece of fruit. That was a very special thing during the war. And so this living under Nazi occupation being terrorized by the soldiers at one point, they had a tree. They had a fruit tree, and the Germans decided just out of spite to come take all the fruit off the tree, and then cut the tree down. And they're like, oh, well, there goes our fruit tree. And they just would terrorize her. She was called into the God's Church in the 1960s, and she began to study some of the principles that we'll spend more time on here in the next message. And she started making changes. She started eating better, eating a lot of whole grains, reducing her sugar intake, not eating processed food. Yes, in the 1960s there was processed food, too. And she started eating as much as she could out of her garden. She is 85 years old today, and she really is in better health than she's ever been.

She has very limited food allergies, and again, she had her gall bridal removed years, decades ago.

I believe after 50 years of self-examination, repentance, and striving to do her part physically, her health has improved. Despite the genetics, despite the difficulties that you went through, her health has improved. God's way can change our life. It's not going to change it in a day or a year or in a decade, but maybe five, maybe six decades, with a little bit of help, with a lot of prayer, with healing, miraculous healing. And I tell you, my wife can tell you stories about the miraculous things that my mother-in-law went through, where she's like, I can't eat this, but I think this is good, and I need to, and she prayed about it. God can improve our health, both by what we do and by miraculous intervention.

And so we can live healthy lives. In the next sermon, I want to pick up from this point and talk about the lessons of diet and renewal and rest and hygiene and other biblical principles. We've only just scratched the surface, but the key point is nobody should walk away feeling bad about their health. Nobody needs to walk away feeling like, well, you know, I was stuck with these genetics, or I was stuck with these health issues from the time I was born. Yes, we all have our cross to bear. And as I said, some people will get to a point of health where other people were just born that way. And that's not fair, but that's the way the world is. And God is more interested in our spiritual development than in our physical development. If we step back and consider the treasure trove of biblical instruction that many of us have already studied, if we carefully consider God's commands to forgive one another, to examine ourselves, to recognize that we have an impact one to another. So when I'm not taking care of my physical body and my health and my mental and physical health, it's going to impact you. You're going to be like, oh wow, he's really suffering. I feel bad. Or he's not doing that. Well, I guess we have an impact one to another.

Let's close by looking over Galatians 6 verse 7.

Galatians 6. This is a powerful biblical principle at work that we have to recognize. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. It's a spiritual principle. It's a physical principle.

Galatians 6 verse 7. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. This is a spiritual principle. What we eat, what we think about, how we spend our time, how we consider others and how we interact with others, all of these things will impact our mental, emotional, and physical health. We will reap what we sow. That's positive and negative. Let's consider these things. Let's start thinking about our health.

Mental and emotional and physical as we continue through the summer. Let's think about these things. I'll look forward to talking more about these others in part two of the message.