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Redemption of our body: Through the word of God

Sunday English Service – 08 MAY 22

Transcript

Please turn with me to Proverbs, chapter 4. We’ve been teaching on redemption in a series called ‘Redeemed.’ We’ve talked a lot about what redemption is all about before. But this time, we’re dealing with what we’re redeemed from.

One of the things that we’re redeemed from is redeemed from sicknesses. And this is a very important truth for Christians to learn because there are a lot of people among Christians that believe that redemption has not done anything for us as far as our bodies are concerned. That redemption is only for our spirit or souls, as some say.It just brings us to God, it just brings us forgiveness of sins, but it doesn’t do anything for the body, they think. Now, you can imagine what a great loss it is for people who are suffering from sicknesses, who are looking for answers, who are wondering whether God is interested in their well-being physically. If you tell them that, well redemption doesn’t deal with your body, that will be a very great disappointment for them. Plus, if God has really given to us something, by way of redemption for our bodies, then to say that no we don’t have it would mean that these people lose out on that blessing. So, I think it’s a very important truth for Christians today to really confront and learn and understand because our faith in that area will grow as a result.

So, we’ve been doing that and I’ve been talking about the various Old Testament pictures of redemption. And I showed you that in the Old Testament pictures of redemption itself, the healing for our body is there. If it’s there in the type or the picture, it will be there in reality. So, we looked at several of those pictures and then we started talking about the redemption of the body as a subject itself. Now, one of the misconceptions regarding the redemption of the body is that the redemption of the body is something that happens in the future. They relegate everything to the future. Wholesale, everything is supposed to happen in the future they think, but in redemption, the thing is, everything has an ‘already’ and a ‘not yet’ aspect. That is everything has an ‘already’ aspect which means that there are things available now as a result of redemption. And there are things that are not available now but you have to wait till the second coming of Jesus.When eternity is ushered in, then those things become possible. But to say that everything is for the future is wrong, especially when it comes to redemption of our bodies. The thing is we cannot separate the body from the rest of our being. Man is made spirit, soul, and body. When man sinned, it was not just man’s spirit that was affected. It was not just that he was cut off from God, from his relationship with God. Something more than that happened. His mind was affected. His emotions were affected. His body was affected. His family life was affected. His work of his hands was affected in so many ways. See, these are the things that God has given to him. God not only made him a spirit, soul, and body but He gave him a wife, family. And He gave him on top of that, work. All of those things suffered as a result of man’s sin.

So, redemption cannot be true redemption until and unless it deals with every aspect of man’s being spirit, soul, body, family, and work and all those things. So, you cannot separate it so easily. God doesn’t just separate it just like that. In every aspect, spirit, soul, and body and everything else, there is an ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ aspect. That’s the way the Bible teaches and we’re particularly looking at the body right now. Certainly, there is an ‘already’ in that. The already itself is so much like I’ve been saying if you have a very good property and you are trying to sell it and somebody gives you an advance. If your property is so valuable, then the advance that you get itself can be very big, the down payment itself will be very big. You can deal with all your debts. And probably will get another house or something just by the advance itself, the property you are selling is so valuable.Now, when God redeemed us that down payment has been paid; the down payment itself is so great. The down payment itself is able to cancel all our debts, the down payment itself is able to meet our every need on earth. The down payment itself is enough for our spirit, soul, and body here on this earth. The down payment itself is so great, that we can deal with all kinds of needs in our life today. That’s the way the Bible presents it. So, let’s talk about the redemption of our bodies.

Now, last week, I shared with you how the redemption of the body has started right here and now, in many ways and there is an aspect that is awaiting for the later. Later comes the state where you will never die. That is for later; that is when our eternity has ushered in. But right now, you have healings, health and strength, long life and all of these blessings are available for now. And the Bible presents it in so many ways. Last week, I shared with you how, when a man receives the forgiveness of sins itself because many times his sickness is connected with his sins. I’m not saying that all sickness is due to sin, please understand me and it is not. But sometimes there are many sicknesses that are related to sin as in the case of the psalmist as we saw last week.He is crying out to in his agony. He is sick in his body. His body is suffering. His bones are waxing old, growing old he says. And his flesh is experiencing great illness and sickness. He is talking even about his digestive system that is suffering and so on.His entire body going through pain and agony and suffering as a result of his sin. Because he has sinned all of these things have come upon me, he says. But then, he cries out to God and goes for forgiveness, repents, confesses his sin, and receives God’s forgiveness and there comes his salvation there. He comes back into the joy and the gladness of heart. We saw that last week.So, we saw how the body is connected to the forgiveness of sin. You know the forgiveness of sin immediately affects the body. Sin affects the body adversely.Sin brings in all kinds of bodily ailments and when sin is forgiven, then you see results in the body, we saw. Today, I want to go a little further and show you that when you walk in obedience to God’s word, you can experience healing and well-being even in your body. This way, the bodily healing, the redemption of our bodies can be experienced here and now in our life.

Now,turn with me to Proverbs, chapter 4, and I’m going to read to you a very well-known passage. Maybe you’ve read it and heard about it a lot. Let me read you from verse 20 to 22. Proverbs,chapter 4, verse 20, onwards, “My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.” Listen to those words. Says “My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Don’t let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart.” It’s calling upon this person to give attention to God’s words, give earto the sayings, not let them depart from his eyes, keep them in the midst of his heart. Why? It says,“For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.”

Now, just imagine if somebody gave you some medicine and said,“This is going to be life and health, to all your flesh, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. It’s going to be health to every part of your body.” You’re really going to go and apply that medicine, right?You’re really going to go take it seriously, ii it’s going to be the medicine that will be life and health to all your flesh. And that’s exactly what this is saying. What is life and health?The Word of God.But the Word of God must be given attention to, you must incline your ears. You must not let them depart from your eyes. You must keep them in the midst of your heart. And you must find them. Discover them. Know the truth. Then only it will be medicine to all your flesh. Some translations say,“Or health to all your flesh.” Some translations actually say,“It’s medicine to all their flesh.” Amazing. Is that true? Is that true if you can give ear to God’s words, incline your ears, listen, keep them before your eyes, keep them in your heart. Discover them, search them out, find them. Can it be medicine to all your flesh, health to all your flesh?The Bible says so.Now, we can talk about it in three different ways today at least. We can talk about it in many ways, but I’m going to try to deal with it in three different ways.

The first thing I would want to talk about is the Christian work style and how this applies to our work. And we have talked about and taught about work a lot, so we don’t want to go into the same things but I do want to say a few things about work. When you understand what the Word of God says about work, it will bring health to all your flesh. One of the things that is the problem with work is a lot of people are overworked or under rested. This is the problem and that’s why they go sick.Some people literally drive themselves to the grave by working. They just work, work, work, and they know nothing but work and they think this is the way to live they have a total misconception about work and life and because of that, their whole health is affected. The whole family suffers and so on. Overworked because they don’t know what the Bible says about work. One person told me, “Does the Bible talk about work?” He said, “I thought it only talks about going to Heaven.” I said,“Well, going to Heaven is the simplest thing. All you’ve got to do is just close your eyes and put your trust in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, and have received Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, all you’ve got to do is just die. You will go to Heaven. You don’t have to do anything great.You’re not going to try to fly or anything. Just close your eyes and you’ll be there with Him. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That’s how simple it is.” But in some quarters, they’ve made it appear like that’s the hardest thing to do, is to go to Heaven. Are you going to go to Heaven? Sure I am. As soon as I close my eyes, I’m going to go to Heaven. I have put my trust in Jesus. Where will I go? I’ll go right to Him. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord but to live on this earth is the thing that is challenging.

So, the Bible has to do a lot with how to live your life here on this earth. It’s talking about this life and how to live your life on this earth, to deal with the issues concerning our life. So, that is why the Bible has a lot to say about these things. In the very beginning, the first few chapters itself, you find a lot of information about this. God created the world, God created man, God created a beautiful garden placed man in there and the first thing He does is gives him work. In a perfect world, God gave work. In a world where there was no sin, there was no lack, there was no want. In fact, in the Garden of Eden, man doesn’t even have to work in order to eat because everything is available to him. God gave him work. The work of cultivating and keeping, protecting, and cultivating. Cultivating is to take it and make it better,work on it and continue to take the rest of the earth and make it like the Garden of Eden and so on. That’s what cultivation means.

So, God gave work and after He gave work then only, He gave a wife.That is why, when somebody says they want a wife, they always ask, have you got work, you know?Because that’s the biblical order. God gave work to man in a perfect world. I say this because a lot of people think that work came as a result of fall. Like one fella said, everything really was okay until man sinned, then we all had to go to work. Oh, no. Work came long before the fall happened.In a perfect world, where there was nothing wrong, God gave work. And work was for man’s enjoyment; work was supposed to do something for him. He must be able to dream dreams and bring them to pass by his work. He must accomplish something and see what he has accomplished and take joy over what he has done. Work was given with a purpose like that.Work was never given just to earn enough to eat. No. That came after the fall. But work was given in a perfect world where man did not even have to work in order to live.In that world, work was given.Work had a great higher purpose than what we think of today.Just to make a living, we think work is needed but it was not like that in the beginning.It was not to make a living.It was to bring about a great deal of satisfaction,enjoyment,and pleasure to man. That is how God gave work.

We have this information right in the first couple of chapters in the book of Genesis. Genesis, chapter 1. I want to read to you chapter 1, the last verse and chapter 2, the first verse. Sometimes these guys that have divided these chapters, they’ve worked on these chapter divisions. They’ve not done a very good job. The chapter division, I believe should have happened after verse 1 of chapter 2. The first chapter should have ended with verse 1 of chapter 2. So, I’m going to read chapter 1, verse 31, and chapter 2, verse 1, and you’ll see how it goes together. “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So, the evening and the morning were the sixth day.Thus, the heavens and earth and all the hosts of them are finished.” That must be the end of the first chapter really. Then it goes into the second chapter and look how it talks about rest. I said that because of misconception about work, people overwork and under rest and now, when you go to the Word of God, you discover, just like Proverbs 4 says, you listen, “incline your ear”. Discover what the Word of God is saying; you begin to see what the Word of God saying and that will bring you health to all your flesh. So, I want to read you verse 2, and 3, and those verses 2 and 3 talks about the rest that God entered into. Verse 31, and verse 1 of chapter 2, talked about how God finished His work. And verse 2 says,“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

Now, these two verses that we have here, verses 2 and 3 are very important verses.This is highlighted by the way the verses are written itself. Many great Bible scholars point out certain things about these two verses. It’s like flashlights, you know.It’s like, you know, when you go shopping, sometimes there are lights flashing, you know, these shops, they want to draw your attention to say,“Come over here;we’ve got some stuff that you need,” you know.Like that, the Bible does it sometimes, by the way things are put and written by the words that are used, by the way it is structured, it is really turning on the flashlight thing. Notice this: this is very important. We’ve got something very valuable here for you. Don’t miss this because it’s going to help you live your life the best way possible. So, something like that is happening here. One great Bible scholar points out how these two verses are highlighted in the way that they’re written. He says to show the difference between the first six days and the seventh day in which God rested, several things are done here. One, he says, is that there was no creation formula. Creation formula is where in the first chapter, for all the six days of creation, every time the Bible would start with these words, “and God said,” right, that’s the way He created everything.And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and so on. That formula is not there. When it comes to the seventh today, where God rested, that God-said phrase is not there.Secondly, to differentiate it from the rest of the six days and show how special the seventh day is. The seventh day did not have the usual closing refrain, which goes like this:“And there was evening and there was morning.” Look at, for example, in the fifth verse, God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. This is chapter 1, verse 5. So, the evening and the morning were the first day.Now, every time every day those were the words that closed the day out. There was evening and there was morning to indicate that the day has come to an end. That phrase is used but it is not used with the seventh today.

Thirdly, the seventh day was the only day that God blessed.All the rest of the six days, God never blessed. We read about the first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day and the sixth day. The days are mentioned by word but none of those days were blessed. The seventh day was blessed. Not only blessed,but it was made holy by God. Fourthly, unlike the six creative, six days in which God created, the seventh day, the number that it is the seventh day, the fact that it was seventh day is mentioned three times. In verses 2 and 3, it is mentioned three times notice that and on the seventh day God ended His work, which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. How many times you want to say seventh day? You would think that’s not very good writing. You don’t have to mention seventh day so many times in just a few lines. But they mentioned it like that because they want you not to miss it. They’re saying, look here, consider this seventh day. Consider this rest. Consider the blessing that was pronounced upon this day, and the rest that it’s talking about.All right.

Now, what is that rest all about? The rest was not because God was fatigued, that God was tired. No, omnipotence needs no rest because regardless of the amount of power that goes from Him, or goes forth from Him, His power is never depleted. He always has enough power in Him, so He doesn’t have to rest. His omnipotent creative power is infinite. There’s no limit to it. He did not need a breather;God did not need rest. So, why did He rest? To rest means to ‘cease from,’that means that God’s simply stopped the creating activity.That’s what resting means. He stopped the creating activity.Now,you should not think rest means that God from that day retired.You should not think that from that day, God never did anything, that He’s just sitting in an easy chair and not doing anything at all. No. He stopped the creative work; He stopped creating but from then on, He continues to work, sustaining His creation. Working with what He is created, repairing His creation, because fall came.Man had fallen into sin, so He had to send the Saviour and He had to speak through the prophets and do so many things and God is always working. That’s why in John chapter 5, verse 17. Remember John chapter 5, you see that man, for 38 years he was sitting by the pool of Bethesda is a crippled guy. It was believed that when the sick people got into the pool when the angel of the Lord came and stirred at the waters, they will get healed. So, when Jesus came by there, he told Jesus,“Look, there’s no one to take me in there; I’m cripple. Every time the angel comes and stirs at the water, I’m not able to get in there because by the time I get in there, some other guy gets in there first and he gets the healing. I am not able.”Jesus said,“Never mind that. Take up your bed and walk.” Immediately, all the Jewish leaders were upset.They got a hold of this guy and they said,“How can you take up your bed and walk? Don’t you know this is Sabbath day you are not supposed to do any work.” They were all upset. And to that, Jesus said – look at the reply of Jesus in John chapter 5 verse 17. He says “My father is working until now. And I’m also working.” So, why are you saying this?You should not think that God ‘rested’ means that God, from that day stopped working. No. God is working. Healing is God working. God was working. Jesus says,“I’m also working.” So, God rested from creating but works in sustaining the world by His power, governing it by His providence and is ensuring that everything is okay because He’s the Lord of His creation. He’s over His creation. In fact, if He stopped working, everything would go, dissolve into nothing. He’s sustaining the world.Everything is functioning as it should because He’s on the job, working.

So, what was God doing? On the seventh day when He rested, we know that He has finished His work so He ceased from his work of creation. The creative work, as far as the work of creation was concerned, came to a standstill that day. But otherwise, He was working.Now, on the seventh day, when God entered into His rest, what was that rest all about? God’s rest was one of deep pleasure and satisfaction of the fruit of His labour. For six days, He created that’s why we read in chapter 1, verse 31. He created everything in the six days. And He looked at it and He’s gazing at it, surveying it and says it’s very good. So, the seventh day, the day in which He entered into rest, He spent having deep pleasure about His work and deriving a lot of satisfaction from the fruits of His labour. Not only did He enter into rest, but He also got the man to enter in the same rest with Him. Because man was created on the sixth day.The last item of creation was man.As soon as man was created, the seventh day began. The very first experience that man had in this earth is the experience of rest. How wonderful that is. That’s the first thing he experienced.The very first thing that God taught him to do was to take pleasure in God’s creation. The very first thing that he had to learn from God was to derive satisfaction from the work of God, to look at God’s work and derive satisfaction from it. All right.And then it says, “God blessed that day.” It says several things. It says,“God rested.”“God blessed.”“God made it holy.” Understand what it means to say that God blessed it. The word blessing occurs for the first time in verse 22. And then, it occurs in verse 28 also, in chapter 1.In the very first chapter of Genesis. Verse 22 is where “God has created the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and He blessed them saying, be fruitful, multiply, fill the ocean, fill the air.” That’s how He blessed the birds and the fish of the sea.

Now, in verse 28, God created man and God is blessing man now. He uses the same words, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill,” but uses two more words,“subdue and dominate.”That shows the difference between man and animals. Man is not only to be fruitful, multiply and fill, but also to rule over everything. So,“God blessing” means what? Blessing the day means what?“God blessed the day,” it says.How can you bless the day? The seventh day. What does it mean to bless that seventh day? It means that God made that seventh day a fruitful day, spiritually and physically, in every way fruitful day. If you take the meaning from first chapter, that’s what it amounts to. To bless means to pronounce a blessing upon something, to be fruitful, multiply, and fill. So, God makes this day. God’s blessing bestows on this special, holy, solemn day, a power which makes it fruitful for human existence. That day was meant to be a fruitful experience for human beings.The blessing that was pronounced upon it gives that day, which is the day of rest, the power to stimulate, animate, enrich, and give fullness to life. That day is an empowered day; it is a blessed day. God has blessed it and empowered it to be an enriching day for man, stimulating day for man, fruitful day for man. And therefore, that day was supposed to be a very important day, containing great benefits for God’s people. So, we know what rest is and we know what blessing is. God empowered the day to do something to man, to make him fruitful, to make him really full of energy and life and so on, to enrich him.

Thirdly, He made it holy, it says.What is holy?How do you make something holy? When the Bible says that we are holy, or we are meant to be holy,that means we are not to be like everyone else. We are to be separate from everyone else.We need to be different from everyone else. For example, God is holy. What do we mean when we say God is holy? We mean, God is not like anyone else. What does it mean for God to make the day holy? That means to make the day totally different from all the rest of the six days. That’s what holy literally means. The seventh day was the first thing to be made holy in the whole Scriptures. That means that day was elevated and exalted above all other days and set apart for God Himself. And this holy day has no end because the usual refrain is not there: it was evening and morning – that kind of finish was not there.

So, we know what it means to rest. We know what it means to be blessed, what it means to make it holy. The day was a day of rest. The day was a blessed day.We know what it means and that day was made holy. But then, what were they supposed to do on that day? How were they supposed to enjoy that day? What was that meant to be? See in the meanwhile, remember, when God gave the 10 Commandments later on in Exodus, when the people of Israel were getting out of Egypt, under Moses, God gave the 10 Commandments and the fourth commandment was the commandment concerning Sabbath. Keep the Sabbath holy, right? It had become a law of that time. God’s people are supposed to keep it holy, and it’s a law, a very strict law. Death was the punishment for it, such was the law and it was because it was essential to their spiritual health and for their physical health. It has a wide variety of benefits. It had benefits to the body. It has benefits for the spiritual side of man’s life and so on. So, a strict law was given, that they should observe this day. And there were two reasons given in the Bible we read as to how they should celebrate that day. What does it mean to have a Sabbath day, have a day of rest? Plus, I want to say one more thing.The rest of the nations of the world never have heard about one day rest at that time. There were no trade unions, fighting for how many days rest you should have and all that. No one ever heard of one day rest. God is the first one that came up with it. God, in creation itself, built rest into it. God never intended for life to be work, work, work, work. God intended man’s life to be work and rest and work and rest. There was to be a rhythm of work and rest. And a lot of times we miss it and because we missed it, we become sick. And we find out too late sometimes. That’s why the Bible says “listen, give ear.” If you discover what the Bible says you’ll be well, it will be medicine to all your flesh, how true it is. It was meant to be celebrated in two ways. One way it is to be celebrated is that they should take that day and celebrate God’s creation on that day. They should celebrate God’s creation on that day.

Turn to Isaiah, chapter 58, verse 13. Quickly, let me read this, this is a wonderful passage. Isaiah 58, verse 13:“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord—, see what He said in the beginning, He’s following it through right now.“The holy day of the Lord honourable, and shall honour Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord.” In other words, don’t be speaking your own words. Don’t be doing your own thing. Don’t be living your life like you live the rest of the six days on that seventh day.Make the day different because I’ve intended for the day to be different. Your activity must be different. Don’t be speaking your own words. Don’t find your own pleasure. Not going about, it in your own way doing thing. It’s a Holy Day. It’s a different kind of day. It needs to be different from all the rest of the days. Abstain from doing your pleasure on that day. Turn away your foot from Sabbath. In other words, don’t do your own thing, do this thing.What thing? He says, “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord.” What is the day for? Not for your own thing, not to do whatever you want to do, not to speak your words and not to do your thing. No.This is a different kind of day.What kind of day?It is a day to delight yourself in the Lord.

A lot of people haven’t discovered these things, you know.Delight yourself in the Lord. So, that’s one thing. I’ll read the rest of the verse. I’ll come back to it but let’s look at the second thing about Sabbath celebration. So, you celebrate delighting yourself in the Lord. What do we mean by delighting yourself in the Lord?Delight in God’s creation, delight in what God has prepared for you, delight in the wonderful life that God has provided for you? Delight in God’s creation, take pleasure in what God has created and made. Secondly, another reason is given and that is found in Deuteronomy, just before they enter the Promised Land. Moses is going through the 10 Commandments, and giving some teaching based on the 10 Commandments. Now,in the 10 Commandments, only the fourth commandment is about the Sabbath. When it comes to the Sabbath commandment, he gives detailed teaching.When God first gave it in chapter 20 of Exodus, God simply mentions the 10 commandments, right? Here he gives the meaning of what it means to observe the Sabbath. Look at the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy. And let me read you from verse 13. “Six days you shall labour and do all your work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall do no work.”

Now, listen to this, these are details that were not given when God first gave the 10 Commandments. “In it, you shall do no work.” Back in Exodus 20, they were simply told to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. Now, here in detail, Moses is teaching what does it mean to keep it holy? How do you handle this day and make it a different day from the rest of the six days? In what way should this day be different from all the rest of the six days? “In it, you shall do no work, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor any strangers who’s within your gates. That your male servant and female servant may rest as well as you.”Nobody should do any work including your donkeys and cows and cattle, whatever you got. Your servants, not only you but your entire household, every living thing there must cease and abstain from working. Look at Moses’s interpretation. And then, he says, and remember, listen to this further detail. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” Why is he bringing in that? He says you were a slave and the Lord brought you out with a mighty arm. Therefore, the Lord commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.What does that have to do with Sabbath day, them being slaves in Egypt? I’ll tell you what it is. When they were slaves in Egypt, they were tied with chains. They were beaten by people that took work from them. They were given half stomach full food and take extracted work like anything.They had to go get their own straw, make their own bricks, work without counting the hours.There were no working hours. They worked until they just got exhausted. They extracted work from them.Night and day,these people worked.They were worked as slaves; they had no rights. They couldn’t claim anything.They couldn’t say I will work for seven hours or eight hours and go home.No.They were in slavery, and God brought them out of that. “Therefore, keep your Sabbath,”he says. Do you know what that means? That means, when you were in slavery in Egypt, you were a slave and you worked and worked and worked and worked and worked. God has delivered you from that because that is never God’s will for you, for your life. God didn’t make human beings to be slaves. God didn’t make human beings to work like that. It must be work and rest and work and rest and work and rest. Therefore, keep the Sabbath day. When you keep the Sabbath day, remember to celebrate your redemption, the fact that you are no more a slave. You’re not a slave to your work. You’re not a slave anymore. You don’t work like a slave anymore. You’re not under a curse. You’re not a slave. Remember that! Remember your redemption. Remember the Lord your God has brought you out with the outstretched arm with a mighty arm, He’s brought you out.Celebrate that. How do you celebrate that? Observe the Sabbath. Take a day of rest. Observe that.

So, two things, one, celebrate the creation. Enjoy all that God has created. Take pleasure in it and thank God for it. Meditate on God’s wonderful works. What all He has done; how great and good He is. Secondly, meditate upon God’s redemption, how He has set you free, you are no more a slave. Work should not enslave you. You should not work like a slave. No. You should work like a free man. You should work like a man who lives under God and God’s regime in the kingdom of God. You should work with joy; you should work with pleasure. Your work should bring you pleasure. Your work should bring you blessing. The Sabbath’s purpose was to grace God’s people, to grace their bodies with rest and grace their souls with the rest for the souls that God has intended and that this teaches.They need to focus on God. They need to celebrate God as their Creator and their Redeemer. That’s what Sabbath was for. Now, when you understand that, when you understand you’re not a slave, you’re not in Egypt. Somebody’s not standing over you with a whip, taking work from you and you don’t have to work, work, work, work, and work. Proverbs 10:22 says “The blessing of the Lord,it maketh rich,” not your work. Not your hard work, not your sweat.

One fella said, “I’ve built this house, brother, by my sweat.” I said,“Let’s dedicate it to your sweat then. Your sweat is what has brought this about.” I go to so many house dedications. I say,“Your sweat didn’t bring this about, neither did your work bring this about; it’s the blessing of the Lord upon your work.” If you didn’t have God’s blessing, you won’t have hands to work and minds to think and the ability to do business that you’re doing or work that you’re doing in your profession. It’s the blessing of the Lord that’s primary. You should celebrate the blessing of the Lord. And God says, “Take that seventh day.” What to do on the seventh day? Some people say,“We’ll sleep.It’s supposed to be a day of rest.”No!Different activity. What to do on the seventh day? Isaiah 53:“Don’t do your own thing”. Don’t be talking your own words. Don’t be running around doing this and that. Don’t be doing the thing that you normally do every day. Let this day be a different day. What do you do then? Take time to think about God’s wonderful creation, the wonderful gifts of God that God has given to you. This breath of life,this life that God has given, this world that God has given, the fruit that you eat to the food that you eat. The sun, moon, and the stars that you enjoy.The air that you breathe and all the benefits of God that you enjoy. Even the fallen world, in its fallen condition, still is so good.

I had mangoes yesterday.It was good.Fallen mangoes but I sure do like them and I look forward to eating ones that will be totally redeemed one day. But they’re already good. Not bad. Thank God for it. Take the day off to rejoice in the Lord. Take a day off to just like in Isaiah 58 we are told,“Take a day off to spend the time to delight yourself in the Lord”. That’s the way New King James puts it. So, that’s why you have taken a day off and come to church. You didn’t stay at home, sleeping in your bed, saying this is a day of rest. You have come to church because the point is, don’t make this day like the other days, other activity. Don’t be doing your work as you normally do. Don’t be talking your talk as you do. Now, there’s a different activity.Come, sing the songs of praise to God. Worship the Lord. Clap your hands, lift up your hands. Really rejoice in the Lord, delight in the Lord. Delight in what God has done. Do a different kind of activity. That’s what Bible is teaching.Make it different and then, meditate upon the redemption, how you were a slave to sin and Satan. You were under a curse but God has delivered you. Now the blessing of the Lord is upon your life. You’re blessed of God.The work of your hand is blessed.

Only the people of Israel had the Sabbath. They were marked by the Sabbath. It was their trademark, if you want to say it that way because no other country had a day of rest. Everybody worked seven days to eat seven days they never heard of resting one day. But people who visited there were known as the people they said oh those people that rest on the seventh day because the rest of them never heard of it. They were marked by the seventh day rest. The people that rested on the seventh day, but the Israelites never understood the importance of the day. Never did it the way that God wanted them to do it, never understood the fact that the day was also supposed to let them know one thing,which working six days they can be richer than those that are working seven days. It’s because it’s not your work that’s feeding you, it’s God’s blessing on your work. If God’s blessing is on your work, six days of work was enough to feed you for seven days. They never got the point. So, God said at one point all right, let’s go to a different program. Work six years and take one year off. Maybe now you’ll understand. They said what about the food then? He said,“Don’t worry; in the sixth year, I’ll pay you double.” That’s exactly what God said. The sixth year I’ll pay you double. You won’t have any problem. God was trying to get something across. Hey, it’s not your work. You’re thinking work, work, work, work. If I don’t work, I’m finished. I’ll end up on the street. God says,“No, take a year off;see how well you do.” Take a day off and see how well you do.

How well will you do? Listen to the 14th  verse in Isaiah 58 “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord”,right.Doing what? Celebrating the creation, celebrating the redemption. What will happen if you delight yourself in the Lord? If you praise the Lord, if you worship the Lord,if you hear the Word of God, if you do this kind of activity, what will happen? It says, “I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth.” In other words, I’ll take you places. I’ll take you higher in life than you’ve ever been. “I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.The mouth of the Lord has spoken.” In other words, God is saying,if you make it a point to delight in the Lord, take the day to meditate on God’s creation, sing, praise God, worship the Lord. Listen to His Word. Meditate upon His goodness, that you see in His creation and meditate upon the redemption. How it has freed you from the curse and has brought blessings to you. If you do that, you will go very high. You would never gone that high otherwise.You would go higher than you can ever go because I’ll take you higher, I will honour you if you will do this.How many of you think it’s worth to take that one day? Everybody say,“Different activity.”“Different activity.” What activity?Not anything but delighting in the Lord, celebrating creation, celebrating redemption. Amen.I’ll tell you;it’ll bring you health and strength and prosperity and peace like you’ve never had before. This work, work and work and work and work yourself down to the grave, it doesn’t work. In the end, it destroys you but this one will bless you, will bring you great blessing. All right.

Let me quickly share a couple of more things. We talked about Christian work style. Let’s talk about Christian lifestyle. See, when you understand what the Bible teaches, you will begin to immediately understand there’s a better way to live. The Bible is talking about it. The Bible is telling me live healthy. The Bible is telling me to live the best kind of life. Some people have thought the Bible is only talking about Heaven. That’s where they missed the whole thing. The Bible is talking about your work. The Bible is talking about your lifestyle, how you should live.Turn with me to Proverbs.Some people are very upset because,“this Christianity,” you know.Back in my days, when I was growing up, you know, all the boys,“Oh, this Christianity.Everybody would say, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t do this, don’t do that. One fella said, can you show me in the Bible where it says do not smoke? I asked him if he’s going to do that if I showed him immediately from the Bible. He wants to smoke and he knows that there is no word called cigarette here in the Bible. So, he would say show me a word saying “cigarette” or “don’t smoke.” I said God knows that you will never read the Bible and even if you read the Bible, you won’t obey it. That’s why God has arranged it with the government of India to put it on your cigarette packet. Smoking is injurious to your health. I think I would have put it more bluntly; smoking will kill you quickly. That’s the way I would put it and nobody smokes these days. If you smoke anywhere in most parts of the world if you smoke, they look at you funny. They will get you out of the room. You cannot be with the rest of the people.It’s not decent to smoke anymore. So, nobody talks about that everybody has understood that this is bad it’s going to kill, going to get you cancer in your lungs and larynx and throat and everything. They understand that. Similarly, with the drinking.Look at some Bible verses: chapter 20 of Proverbs,verse 1.It says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” Listen to the Word of God. Listen to what God’s Word says. If you listen, you will have success. Chapter 23,verse 19,“Hear my son and be wise.”Again, the same words, wise.If you want to be successful, that’s what wise means. “Hear my son and be successful win in life and guide your heart in the way. Do not mix with winebibbers, or with gluttonous eaters of meat. For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.”

Now, I don’t know about the statistics here, but I read somewhere about American statistics. 64% of the car accidents are caused through alcoholism. Alcohol is the reason behind it. 53% of murders caused by alcohol. 57% of sex crimes is caused by alcohol. 47% of robberies, alcohol is the cause. 60% of assaults, violence, alcohol is the cause.Now, like this the Bible has so many things to say about even immorality. In so many ways, fornication, adultery, and all that.Even Paul talks about it in the New Testament and so on. And once again, in America, they have a lot of statistics and all these things. So, we go to them. One hundred and ten million people are there, right now, with sexually transmitted diseases in America they say and 50% of them are 15 years to 24-year-old. Young. 15 to 24 years old, with sexually transmitted diseases. Now, all over the world the attitude now today is, Oh what are you talking about, this is old time stuff. You know, don’t tell us that wrong, this is wrong and so on. Everything is alright. We can live as we like, you know. We are free people; we earn our own money. We have a ball, you know, we just go and have fun and we’re just having fun. There’s nothing more to it.

And there’s nothing wrong with this. This is the way people talk these days. But the complication this kind of immorality causes is something very great, so that now even in our country, a great deal of divorces has come into play.A lot of people are getting divorced. Left and right divorce courts are jam packed now, standing in line. And in some of the Western nations, it’s very high rate.When I was studying, they said, three out of four marriages got divorced. Three out of four, that means if you get married, you can be sure you’re going to get a divorce. That’s the way it was. Who would want to marry?And you find the reason behind it is because of their attitude towards immorality is like that. And that’s why even in our country, it’s becoming a problem because attitudes have changed.People think there’s nothing wrong with it. What are you talking about? You’re an old man, you know, having this old stuff in your mind.This doesn’t matter, really. I mean, it’s a small thing for us. You know, we just have fun one day now that’s all. But then, what happens is, they say when immorality is there, that leads to all kinds of problems. Very simply, it leads to problem having childbirth later on because of all the diseases and things that you attract by it. It also leads to divorce because when you come from that kind of a background, you can never trust your spouse, they say, because of the way we have lived. We’ve been free with ourselves. And when you live like that, you’re always doubting the other person. Oh,she must have been like that also. Automatically leads to doubt. Doubting the wife, wife doubting the husband.

In Tamil, they say [Tamil 1:00:34] There’s a devil called doubting devil. There’s a lot of people that’s got this devil working in their mind. I think my husband is doing this. I think my wife is… Like that, they’re going, you know.Nobody can correct it. Even fasting and praying is not going to help. Only the blood of Jesus has to come and cleanse and make them whole, some miracle has to happen. This devil will go not by even fasting and prayer. A very difficult devil. The blood of Jesus has to come and cleanse and wash and give a total change of heart. Only then, that matter can be rectified. So many societal problems, so many social problems are as a result of it. Families could not stay together. I think pretty soon you know, it will become like some of the countries of the world you know where if you said you’re married for 30/40 years, they’ll put you in a museum for other people to come and see, you know, because who’s married for 30/40 years?

Like one fella asked my mother, “You’ve lived with this man for 30 years?How can you do that? My mother said, “What?” She didn’t know what they were talking about. This attitude, this is how it’s become. It’s very difficult.And it’s becoming like that all over the place because of this attitude towards this and the Bible says,“You take care of these things. You listen to the word of God. Pay attention to God’s word. Discover God’s word, what it says about Christian lifestyle, what it says about these issues. If you listen to it, “Keep it before your eyes. Keep it in the midst of your heart and guard it. Incline your ear to it and listen to these words. To those that find it and discover these truths, it will be medicine to all your flesh.” It will bring healing to your families and marriage and everything. It will be medicine to all your flesh.

Finally, talking about Christian relationships also. This can be applied to Christian relationships. The Bible talks a lot about Christian relationships.For example, you know, our relationship with our parents, the Bible says, “Honour your father and mother” and the Bible links that commandment with a couple of other things, so that you may live long on this earth and things will go well with you. How many want things to go well with you and live long? The Bible says this is the guideline for that. Honour your father and mother, then you will live long and things will go well with you. If you just read the Bible, pay attention to it, incline your ears to it. Understand it, discover it, practice it, do it. I’ll tell you it will save a lot of heartache and a heart attack also. It’ll save a lot of pain and misery. You want to live long, the best tonic, honour your father and mother. It says, do what is right with regard to them. You want everything to go well with you, honour your father and mother. God knows how to link things together. If you do this everything will go well it says.

Similarly with our relationships with others.Many times, you know, we’re so caught up in a spirit of competition and there’s so much hatred in this world. You can see it everywhere and we get caught up in that and it becomes normal.Hatred becomes normal now.To speak very wildly, violent words,hateful words is nothing these days. Hate is the name of the game.Everybody’s engaged in it. The more hateful your speech is, the more likes you get. What kind of world we live in. That’s the way it’s become, so I think a lot of people learn from that and I’ll tell you, when you go to a doctor for an ulcer, the doctor will tell you don’t eat this, don’t eat that and he’ll give you a list of things not to eat. One guy said,“Most ulcers are not about what people eat but about what’s eating them.”I think he’s so right. It’s not about what you eat. It’s about what’s eating them.Something is eating them. Hatred is eating them.Animosity is eating them. Anger is eating them. Frustration is eating them. These things are eating them. I’ll tell you, if you just turn to the Bible and begin to read it and you learn how to shed these things and throw these things away and live free of these things, immediately,you will begin to gain a lot of strength and health and add few more days to your life, immediately. That’s what the Bible says.It’s medicine to all your flesh. I like that.

When you go home today, write it, and put it somewhere. It’s medicine to all flesh, all our flesh. When you take the Bible to read it, always say, it is medicine to all my flesh from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. It is medicine to all my flesh. You see how God ministers health and healing to us, in our bodies now. You don’t have to wait until you go to Heaven to get healed. You can enjoy healing right now with simple things like this. God is ministering healing and health to everyone who will pay attention to the Word, put it before their eyes, keep it in their heart, discover it, practice it. It’s medicine to all their flesh and I hope that a lot of us will find this to be medicine that we needed and it will rescue a lot of us from sickness and disease and cause us to live for God and live successfully.

Shall we all stand together, please?

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