The Source Of Sickness | Healing - Our Your Covenant Right 2 | Pastor John Greiner

In this Mother's Day message, Pastor John continues his series on healing as a covenant right, diving into the source of sickness and what the Bible says about it. Drawing from Luke 13, Galatians 3, and 1 Corinthians 11, he makes the case that sickness originates with the devil, not God, and that believers are not sick people trying to get healed but healthy people resisting disease. He unpacks three key facts about the curse of sickness, challenges the idea that God uses illness to teach lessons, and closes with a sobering look at communion and self-examination, warning that receiving it carelessly can open the door to weakness and premature death. The takeaway is clear: know your covenant, walk in love, and choose life.

Transcript

Mother’s Day Welcome And Confession

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Up our Bibles and thank you, worship team. It was beautiful. The angels were singing along with us. Let's lift our Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad. Let's say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here today. It's Mother's Day. The greatest tribute to mom is to get the Word of God in me. Fulfill all her prayers that she prayed for me. And Father, we thank you for the Word of God. Jesus, you change everything. You're giving me new things. And I'm absolutely determined to possess those new things. In Jesus' name. You can be seated.

Healing As A Covenant Promise

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Amen. Matthew chapter 8, please. And also 1 Peter chapter 2. I want to continue with a series that I'm sharing with you. Healing, our covenant right. Matthew chapter 8. We'll start with that one. It says that in the evening they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons. And he cast out the spirits with his word, and he healed all who were sick. Everybody say he healed all. That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet Isaiah himself, bear our sickness, and took our infirmities. And in 1 Peter 2.24, Peter had a revelation of all this. Thank God. And who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live under righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. Notice the past tense. So thank God we have a covenant with God. And that covenant includes healing. We sang about it this morning. I mean, it's just we like to sing songs that have uh redemptive truth. We don't like songs that just pour me and I'm begging and I'm just standing around out in the outer court and I'm hoping you'll pass by and touch me. No, we don't need a touch. He wants to fill us to overflowing. A touch. I mean, you need more than a touch. And uh the more we teach and preach healing, the more healing happens. You know, there in Luke 5, 15, you know, he healed a couple of uh, or he killed healed a leper and said, Go show yourself to the priest. In other words, go act like you're healed. See, he left him with leprosy. But as he went, he was healed. He went back to the priest, they had to be certified. See, otherwise they're unclean and they they can't have any fellowship with anybody. So he said, Go show yourself to the priest, go act like you're healed. And as he went, he was healed. But the Bible says that multitudes came to hear and to be healed. The fame of Jesus was spread abroad from that miracle. The fame of Jesus was spread abroad all over the ten counties that are in this region about the miracles that happen here. And the fame of Jesus spreads about. See, healing just is magnified. I mean, it's just like God's ringing a dinner bell, and multitudes came to what? Hear and to be healed of their infirmities. What you hear makes all the difference in the world whether you get healed or not. You got to hear about healing. I said, you gotta hear about it. We have to be strong and knowing and appropriating our covenant. You know, it's it's not

Why Hearing Builds Healing Faith

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gonna just fall on us like cherries off of a tree. We're gonna have to believe and turn on the switch of faith and speak it, but we have to hear it. Uh and so if we are then strong in our covenant, we can stop the devil from establishing a foothold in our body. Or coming ashore on a beachhead. That's why I was using that last week. I'm kind of, you know, I like to use war uh terminology. A beachhead. That's what we that's what we defeated Hitler with. We had a beachhead. The Allies landed at Normandy and established a foothold in Europe and we took it over in just a matter of months. It didn't take long after that for the war to end. And so, I mean, you know, if the devil is establishing a beachhead in your life, he's not gonna stop till he conquers you, until he gives you, until he takes you off of this planet. Puts you in heaven. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to kill you, he's not trying to inconvenience you. He's not trying to steal your parking place at the mall or at the church or your seat in the church. You don't have a seat. Your name isn't on the seat. Look at all these red chairs looking at me. You know what they are. They're angels are sitting in those chairs. Y'all, the angels are gonna crowd you out, and then I'm just gonna be preaching to angels. What's the deal? No, no, y'all are coming in, more and more of you. So um so we studied and we know about uh covenant. The word covenant means to cut. And so the old covenant, you know, uh, they had the blood of bulls and goats. It goes all the way back to Adam. Adam was in the garden. And and then suddenly, you know, Eve listens to the devil, and and Adam agrees with her. Adam had the power to not do that. He had the power to tell his wife to shut up, stop it, get away from that turkey. But he didn't rule his house. And he let the devil deceive his wife, and he he wasn't deceived. He let his wife get deceived, and he just went ahead and agreed with what a knucklehead. And so what happened? Well, they they they fell out of the glory. They hid in the garden, they and and they were naked. See, before that, they had the glory as clothes, and so they were covered themselves with fig leaves, and then God says that they were, so they were clothed with animal skins. Where did the animal skins come from? Well, they had to be killed, and blood had to be shed. So you've got to read in between the lines, you'll find the blood covenant all the way back to Adam. It's not just the old covenant, it's the Bible. And the old covenant, you know, when he cut the covenant with Abraham and then and told Abraham to, you know, circumcise and all of that. Well, then, yeah, that's that's that was codified then. It's put in writing then. But it was it was obeyed all the way up until that time. So uh everybody say to cut. Well, Jesus was cut, Jesus shed his blood. You know, bloods of bull, the blood of bulls and goats allowed man in its unredeemed state to come and approach God. But they always had to do it over the bleeding sacrifice. But we, I mean, one time Jesus uh shed his blood on the cross, and now we have unfettered access right into the throne room. We can come right into the throne room of God. Amen. And so uh with that old covenant, you know, you know, Exodus chapter 15, we re we sang about it this morning. In Exodus 15, after uh he had delivered uh Israel out of the control of Egypt. They'd left being slaves and they crossed the Red Sea, they got out there, and God uh revealed himself as Jehovah Rapha, I am the Lord that healeth thee. See, he added on to the covenant. They didn't they didn't know they had that that was in there. He didn't talk to Abraham about anything about healing, but uh he did. He added it in there. And so then Israel bore the stamp of health and prosperity. I mean, that was their that was their calling cord. That's why God wanted them in a strategic place in the promised land. He wanted them specifically in Israel, in Jerusalem, which was the crossroads of the world back then. Every country would come in through that little place on their way of trade. And they they God wanted to be a witness to all the nations of his goodness, and he made sure his people had the stamp of health and prosperity. I mean, yes, he loves his kids, but also there's a strategic reason why. I mean, it's not optional. We need to we need to receive our healing and keep our healing and keep our health because it's a witness that Jesus is alive. Amen. So um so Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 53, uh verse 4 when he died at the cross. And Hebrews 8.6 says we have a better covenant than uh than Israel. And 1 Peter 2.24 says we were healed. See, we're not sick people trying to get healed, we're we're well people resisting sickness and disease. We our status changed. You know, you're no longer sick, sick people. Everybody out that's not under the covenant, they're sick trying to get healed. They're spending lots of money on insurance and doctors and and everything else just to get some uh a little bit of health. And guess what? Doctors can't heal you. They practice medicine, and that's it's a big practice now. It's practice, they're practicing on just about everybody. The jab was practice. We we helped some people avoid it. Not everybody avoided it, but we helped some people that wanted to avoid getting the virus. It killed a lot of people. I I think Fauci ought to be in front of that firing squire, but before he's gotta come, he's gotta stand trial. They they, you know, Biden pardoned him, but I somehow, somehow, he's gonna pay a price for what he did. And it was a lie. Amen. Talk about practice in medicine. Listen, today we need the covenant. We need to cling to Jesus, our healer. I'm not saying don't go to the doctor, I'm saying let's not put doctor in God's place. There's some good doctors and there's some really lousy doctors. And so we gotta, you know, when we're gonna go, let's pray and make sure it's the whole the Holy Ghost is a plan for us.

The Source Of Sickness In Luke 13

SPEAKER_00 10:52

So today I wanted to get into, we we talked a lot about all that last week. Today I wanted to get into the source of sickness. Let's look at Luke chapter 13. And I preached this from time to time because I don't know where everybody grew up in church or if you grew up in church. But a lot of people grew up in a church that basically didn't believe that healing was for today. A lot of people grew up in a church that said God does everything. They don't even recognize the devil's role at all. They just think God, God, God, God. God put sickness on you to teach you a lesson. If you've ever heard that in your life and you were born again when that came into you, you've got something on the inside of you that needs to be uprooted. Have you ever had Johnson Grass try to take over your yard? I mean, Johnson grass, man, I mean, you can't hardly get rid of it. You pull it up and it's got it's got roots 15 foot long and you break it off and you hadn't done a thing except give you some back trouble. You haven't done a thing. There's only, I mean, St. Augustine will eventually, if you fertilize it, St. Augustine will fit eventually choke, it'll eventually choke it out. I remember back in the 70s that Lake Conroe was afflicted with hydrilla. Does anybody remember that? I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't have a boat run across Lake Conroe. It would get tangled up in the propeller. It was a foreign, an Asian plant that somehow got transferred here and got down in the in that river, in that lake, and sunlight would penetrate down and it would grow and grow and grow right up to the surface. And they had to spend, I don't know how much how many hundred million dollars San Jacena River Authority had to spend to root that lake out and get all of that hydrilla out. Well, that's the same as a seed that's in you that believes, and you you need to get rid of that thing. You you've got it because it's creating a tension and a doubt, it it a little doubt that, well, maybe God sent this for a reason. No, God didn't send any kind of sickness. And we want to we want to establish the source of it today. So Luke 13, verse 11, and behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity, 18 years. That's a long time to be sick. And it was a spirit of infirmity. Everybody see a demon power. See, a demon power was behind her infirmity. Not every infirmity, not every sickness is directly caused by demons, but they're indirectly caused by the devil. The devil's behind all sickness. And so she had, but she, this lady had a demonic power that had taken a established a beachhead, had established a foothold, and she was bowed together and in no wise lift up herself. She bent over at the waist. She couldn't even look down the road. She's looking straight at the ground all the time. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Now, was she loosed? No, not yet. He called the thing that be not. You know, you're loose from your infirmity. She's still bowed over. Then what? Then he laid his hands on her. Then, see, then after he spoke, then he laid his hands on her. And immediately then she was made straight and glorified God. Hallelujah. I mean, you know, there's a demon involved, but he didn't even bother, he didn't even bother casting the devil out. He said, Look, woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Didn't even bother anything about casting in other places he'd cast the devil out of people, but this time he just told, he just said, You're loosed. And so the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation. Because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day and said unto the people, There are six days which men ought to work, and them therefore come and be healed. Well, if they came in the six days, what would they find you doing? Sitting around eating lamb chops, drinking wine all day long. You're doing nothing. You're not teaching the Bible. See, there was no teaching priest. They had no knowledge of their covenant. This is why this poor woman was bound 18 years. She didn't know her rights. Because she was supposed to go to sacred, she's supposed to go to synagogue, go to temple, and learn something about God, and she didn't learn squat. I tell you, religion will kill you. Religion is a lie, and that's what these people practice. I mean, God put the law in there, but then men added tradition and all of that, and just packed it in with a bunch of fall to raw that's not that God never said was. Would you get out of my life? Jay, I've got to I've got to get this. I've got to get this. All right, praise. I'm just waving my hand. It thinks I'm I'm gonna wave my hand when I get excited. That's as taller is to it. So um, she uh he said six days where people ought to come. See, hypocrite. See, you wouldn't lift a finger to help these people. You wouldn't, you weren't stirred at all with any kind of compassion on the people that that you saw demonized and demonized. Just think about a multitude of people with a devil cast out of them. Where were the where were the where were the you know, the priests? Where were the rabbis? Uh, you know, they're just taking life easy. So uh so the Lord then answered him. He said, You hypocrite, you know, he he cleaned his language up from compared to what I would have said probably. I would have been tempted to lapse back into my old days. But uh I wouldn't have done that, I would have resisted the devil. Come on, don't look at me in that tone of voice. You hypocrite? Does not each one of you on the Sabbath lose his ox or his donkey and from a stall and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed. And all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Hallelujah. Come on, lift your hand right now. Oh, I tell you, the truth always wins out when it's boldly confessed, boldly proclaimed. He didn't he didn't cut that

Reading The Old Testament With Clarity

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rabbi any slack at all. And so notice what we have then, see. The Bible is progressive revelation. You see in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that God cursed this one, cursed that one, God, you know, kill this one, kill that one. And so you can get confused if you're not taught better. But it's progressive revelation, and the men, the holy men of God wrote as they were inspired of the Holy Ghost, but you can only write what you have a revelation of, and they did not have in the old covenant mostly, they did not have a revelation of their adversary, the devil. They did not have a revel uh revelation of that, and so they, you know, worded it so that God did all that. Well, no, God allowed it because why? As soon as Adam fell, the curse came on all the earth. So the blessing is God holding back the curse that's already there. God doesn't sit in heaven and curse people. God doesn't sit in heaven and say, okay, let's execute that one, let's shoot, let's kill that one, let's do that. No, God doesn't do that. God puts his word out, it's it's it's been out there all this time, and you're either going to get on the right side of the word or the wrong side of the word. I'm here to help you get on the right side of the word. So three facts. See, they they you know, they didn't they didn't know that Satan was a source of sickness, but we here in the New Testament, here's Jesus, and he's letting them know who the source of sickness is. And he said about this woman, there's three facts. Number one, this woman ought to be loosed. Number two, Satan had bound her. And three, she had a covenant right to healing. Why? Because she's a daughter of Abraham. See, just that, just that simple. He was able to refute this tradition, this lie that religion had put on these people. They didn't know the source of sickness. And what I'm go back to what I'm saying, if you ever thought that as a saved person, if you ever were heard that in church or wherever, and it got down in your spirit, you need to root that out because God doesn't have anything to do with sickness except deliver you from it and heal you of it. He didn't, he didn't send it, the devil sent it. Amen. The source of sickness. And so, you know, in Acts 10, 38, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. Well, yeah, Pastor, it says Jesus healed, but it doesn't say God. Well, God anointed him, and God was with him, so God healed. God healed this woman. I mean, you can't separate that. I know Jesus was the Son of Man while he was on the earth. He ministered as the Son of Man, he ministered as a man full of the Holy Ghost. He ministered as a man anointed of God. He did not minister as the Son of God. Nothing he did was because of his sonship. Everything he did was because of the anointing that God had placed on him. And when he had been faithful to all of that, and then he died on the cross and he went to hell and he rose from the dead, then God gave him the name that's above every name. Are y'all with me now? Glory to God. You got to know your Bible, otherwise you're gonna get, as soon as a doctor gives you some bad report, you're gonna sit there and wonder, well, I wonder if it's God's will. No, it's God's will for you to overcome that thing. And that's not the final, that's not the final word on it. The final word is right here. This is why you need to know what this word says, because you're gonna have to refute what the by what the doctor says. And not accept it. So uh here, if healing is good, then this was good for him to do it. And so he rebuked the rabbi there. He rebuked that temple ruler, and synagogue ruler, rather, and and said, No, this is good. This is a good thing, it happened. And so God had given him power to loose whom the devil had bound with sickness. Now, so this woman was an old covenant woman. See, this happened in the well, Pastor, this is in the New Covenant, yeah, but it's it's in the New Testament section of your Bible, but everything in the gospels is old covenant. Because why? Because Jesus. Jesus hadn't yet died on the cross. You have to, there's only, that's the minute that the New Testament was enacted was when Jesus died and rose again. That's when it happened. So everything before that is old covenant. And so you have to understand that. You'll get all confused. So healing belonged to this woman. She just didn't know it. And as I mentioned, fear, sickness, pain, poverty came to Adam and his descendants after the fall. You know, you read your Bible, Adam lived 900 and some odd years. Everybody lived long lives, 900 and something, 900 something. All of them lived 900 something. And you get down to Noah. Noah lived 900 and some odd 50, 950 years. And then suddenly, after Noah and the flood, suddenly the next person he talks about is Tirah, which was Abram's father, and he lived to be 205. Man, what happened between Noah and Tirah? I mean, it hadn't been, there's not that long in there. All of a sudden, it's just like you've got a lifespan graph, and all of a sudden it goes, you know, 205 from 950. And then Abraham was 175, and then, you know, Moses is 120. See, it started going down. Why? Because it took the devil 2,000 years to invent sickness strong enough to kill people. They just, I mean, he couldn't kill people with sickness and disease. He could kill them with murder. You had a lot of murdering, you had a lot of that kind of thing, but sickness and disease, it was so hard for

Blessing Versus Curse And Choosing Life

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him to engineer. I mean, he can't create anything. All he does is pervert. Are y'all with me now? So it implies that sickness began to shorten their life. It took all that time for the devil. And uh, so God blesses and God curses. See, Genesis 12, let's look at that one real quick. I want to read, re because I've had people argue with me. I've had preachers argue with me. I had a preacher one time I knew that was, I told him one time, I said, You're just bottom heavy. You spend too much time in the old covenant, man. Why don't you? He was a messianic. Uh, you know, messianic, which means he was Jew and then he got saved. Well, you know, why not? You're a new creature. Why do you care about whether you were a Jew or not? I was German, Irish, uh, whatever. Heinz 57. I don't get, I don't care anything about my lineage physically. I'm a new creature now. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become. So I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't, you know, he just wouldn't get to the word of faith. He just stayed in this old covenant. He's always preaching on Jeremiah, and he's always, you know, ragging on people. I tried to help him, I just couldn't help him. He would not be corrected. He was way beyond me. He knew Hebrew, don't you understand? He I he knows the word. He knows Hebrew. Okay, good. He's dead now. He died at 60, so it didn't help him very much. Are y'all with me now? I mean, what you know and what you think you know are two different things, you know. So in Genesis 12, the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of your country from your kindred, from your father's house, unto a land that I will show you, and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. See, you got to be blessed to be a blessing. Where was the blessing before that? It didn't, there wasn't any blessing. Because why? The curse reigned. Why? Because of Adam. And so God is telling Abram, the first Semite, the first Jew, he's telling him, I this for you, for this one nation out of 70 nations, I'm gonna pick them out and I'm gonna hold back the curse. I'm gonna bless them. And then he goes on to saying, I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee. Well, did God curse them? See, no, they got on the wrong side. Whenever they disobeyed God, whenever they mistreated Israel, they automatically, it wasn't God sitting in heaven saying, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna curse the Philistines. I'm gonna curse the Palestinians, I'm gonna curse. No, it's they're on the wrong side of the word. So God is not mean like that. He loves people, he wants people to go to heaven. You gotta get, if you have this idea that he's a murderer, that God does what the devil does, you know. A lot of people just have God and the devil mixed up. They really do, and it's because they got poor teaching or no teaching.

unknown 26:41

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

So, and uh so all these curses that came in in Egypt in Exodus 9, you know, that where they had the flies, they had the lightning that killed their livestock, they had the frogs. They yeah, when do you want me to get rid of the frogs? Well, tomorrow, and one more night with the frogs. I mean, how it's dumb. I mean, if I had frogs all over my house and my bed and in my, you know, my oven and my refrigerator, I would want them gone now, you know. But anyway, uh they had all these things happen to them, finally culminated in the death of the firstborn. So it indicates, see, if you're if you're reading your Bible, it makes it look like God did that. No, no, they were on the wrong side of the word. They could not, God couldn't protect them from all that stuff. He used every bit of it. He tried, he's trying to get them to bless. Hey, bless my people so I can bless you. Let them go and I'll bless you. They wouldn't do it. See, so you you when you read your Old Testament, you've got to read the Old Testament with New Testament eyes. Don't be getting, well, it says it right here. Well, yeah, but you've got to bring your New Testament eyes into what it says. You've got because we have more knowledge now than they did when they wrote that. Are you with me now? So, and and in Exodus 23, let's look at this one. I usually use this for a, I don't use it all the time, but I use it to bless my food. Exodus 23, 25. You shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread and thy water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. There shall nothing uh cast their young nor be barren in all the land. The number of thy days will I fulfill. So I like to pray that over my food. I just say, No, Lord, I just thank you for blessing this food. You're taking sickness out of the midst of us. My finances are blessed. See, what's he talking about? The young. He's talking about your finances. My finances are blessed. See, you having having calves and having uh lambs and all that speaks to having an agricultural economy that meant prosperity. See, I don't have any calves and I don't have any lambs for him to do anything with. I don't have animals, but I do have investments and I and I believe that they are blessed because God blessed me. Are you with me now? So, uh, and then you know in Deuteronomy 30, uh Moses told the children of Israel before they went into the promised land, right there before he went to Mount Pisgah to die, right before he left and turned everything over to Joshua. He said, I set before you this day life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live. See, God wants us to live, he wants us to be blessed. He's provided the blessing. And so it's for us to get on the right side of his word and confess that and keep ourselves in the right frame of thinking.

Three Facts About The Curse

SPEAKER_00 29:58

So I've got three facts about the curse of sickness today. And uh, and for some of you, this is kind of like, well, I've heard this before. Well, then it's water for the seed you already have. And for those of you that have had this taught wrong and you've struggled with it a little bit at times, let this be the word that gets rid of that. Let's let's let the fire of the Holy Ghost burn that thing out of you so it doesn't rise up in your thinking. Three facts about the curse of sickness. You've got to recognize sickness is a curse, according to Deuteronomy 28. So, number one, Galatians 3.13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. For it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So then Christ redeemed us from the curse. We are redeemed. See, that's legal. That's absolutely, there's no, I mean, it happened, it's legal, it's it's written down. You've got an ironclad right for the blessing. He was cursed with our curse. What is sickness? See, he took the sickness on the cross, not when he was walking around, not during his ministry. He was waiting, he waited until he hung on the cross. He hung on the cross for our sins, he hung on the cross for our sicknesses, he hung on the cross for our lack of poverty and lack. He took it all. He took it all. He submitted himself to devil and demon power. He took all of our bondage so we could be free. Just think about that. So he was cursed with our curse so we can be blessed with his blessing. Praise God. Galatians 3, 13. All right, the next one is Ephesians 1.3. Number two fact. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ. He hath blessed us. He hath blessed us. We're already blessed. We don't have to get blessed. We're not looking for the blessing. We don't try to earn the blessing. The blessing is overtaking us. I mean, we're we're blessed because the Bible says we're blessed. I like this version of the Bible that says we're blessed with all the spiritual blessings that heaven itself enjoys. I mean, is there any sickness in heaven? Is there any lack in heaven? Is there any darkness in heaven? Any confusion in heaven? Is there any depression in heaven? Oh no, see, we're blessed. Glory to God. You know, we're not we're not the curse people trying to get blessed. We're blessed resisting the curse. We're healthy people, we're heal people, resisting sickness and disease. The blood changed our status. And then the last one is uh found over in 1 Corinthians 11.

Communion, Self-Examination, And Health

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It's a it's a fact. And I'm talking about the source, the curse of sickness, and we know the source of it is the devil, but sometimes we can co op uh unwittingly cooperate with the devil and allow him to give us a beachhead. So one of the ones, 1 Corinthians 11, we had communion last week. So 1 Corinthians 11 is Paul writing to the church at Corinth. Remind you the church at Corinth, it was a carnal church, body ruled. They had factions. You know, they would say, they would brag, well, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, you know, I was baptized of Paul. Paul corrected him, he he rebuked them. He said, you know, who do you think we are? We're not, we're just, you know, we're y'all are in Christ. You you don't you don't set us on these pedestals. I didn't baptize anybody except maybe one family. I'm I wasn't sent to baptize. And so he's he he was he they had a lot of sin because they they came out of the occult. They practiced the dark arts, and there are places where uh the occult and demon powers rule today on the earth. I mean, you just don't, you know. I saw where this what was uh this virus that attacked this ship, you know, the the person that got uh infected had visited a uh uh a landfill in Argentina filled with rats. Well, why would you go to a landfill in Argentina? I just I'm still trying to figure that out. Were you looking for something of value, like an old sofa? Maybe you find an old sofa out there in the landfill, and the rat bought it. You don't even have to have the rat bite you, it's it's in the air. But it's hard to get unless you like rats. All right, so he's talking to them about communion, see, because they're carnal. And communion was a tradition that Jesus initiated. See, we're we're we, you know, traditions, you know, liturgy. I grew up a Catholic. We had all these liturgies, you know. We had all these, those were traditions of men. You know what Jesus said about traditions of men? The traditions of men render the word of God in none effect. And that's what the Catholic Church is filled with traditions of men that men put in place. All this censure with the, you know, the incense and all this holy water and all that stuff. We have holy water here. Sometimes I throw water because I have God bless it, you know. And so we hadn't thrown the water. Y'all want to get wet today? It's the front row that bears the problem. Release the anointing. But anyway, so uh, but Jesus instituted that so that he said, do this in remembrance of me. Remember is a covenant term. Human beings have a tendency to forget and forget truth, covenant truth, and they tend to get over in the natural. The more body-ruled you are, the further are you are away from the covenant, the more you're gonna listen to the devil and his crowd, the doctors that are, I mean, you know. I I I read uh uh a little blurb about this big uh government uh program that was encouraging medical schools to not allow uh people of American descent to go to medical school. They're preferring people from all these foreign countries. I wonder why there's all we've got all these Muslim doctors everywhere you go. I don't like going to Muslim doctors. Pastor, you're racist. No, I'm just realist. I mean, they don't value life like we do. They bring that terrible kind of thinking into medicine. Are you kidding me? I don't, you know, they don't care that much about life and death in their culture. Are y'all getting this now? So anyway, he's talking to them about how they've approached communion. And he said in verse 26, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show forth the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily or in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. Wow, that's kind of what does that mean? Guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That's kind of solemn. And so then he goes on and says, but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. You know, it's one thing that the nuns taught me in Catholic school. They taught me to examine my conscience. They taught me to think about my life, think about what I'd done wrong and be sorry for it. And of course, their tradition was go to this priest in the booth and have confession. Well, I don't I don't need a booth. I can just go right to God. And I when I'm wrong, my spirit lets me know right now. I have to, I, you know, but I still do. I before I take communion, I examine, I kind of search, and I think, is there anybody I'm aggravated with? Is there anybody I need to forgive? Is there anybody I'm holding something against? I want to get that right before I take this body and blood. Because if I don't, I'm I'm bringing an unworthiness to it. I'm I'm guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. He he broke his body, he shed his blood for everyone, and here I am holding something against one that he's already taken care of. So that's what he's talking about. So examine yourself. And so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily or in an unworthy manner without examining himself and with with unforgiveness and lack of love, you know what's our only commandments? Love one another. The world shall know us by our love. When we violate love, we're we can't have communion until we get that right. I'm not saying you have to go to that person because you're it's just between you, you know what's in your heart, get rid of it. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation, or my margin says judgment. Judgment means what? Separation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body for this cause, for this cause, what cause? When you are light and uh you receive communion in a kind of a carnal way, you know, and you don't think about it and you say, well, okay. You know, really, you know, you're in danger. You're you're bringing things into your life that you you you better wake up. That's what he's he's telling them. That's what he's telling them. He said, for this cause, because you did that, many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. Many have premature death. They don't live out all their days. So it's it gets to be serious. I mean, there's some things that the modern church, we're so exuberant, and we can we can run the aisles and we can praise God, and we don't have any restriction on that, not at all. But when we comes to communion, you know, let's make sure what we're doing lines up on the inside of us, that we're coming with a reverence toward God and a reverence toward the body, the people in this room on either side of you, anywhere else, anybody, any part of the body of Christ. Let's make sure we have a reverence and make sure that we discern the Lord's body. Uh for if you would judge yourself, you should not be judged. See, you're judged, that's what you're doing. You're judging yourself. You're examining yourself and say, Oh, I got I gotta get rid of that. I'm gonna I'm gonna forgive. I'm gonna forgive that. Uh I oh I'm gonna see, so you're examining yourself. See, you've judged yourself already, but if you don't judge yourself, uh-oh. Something's gonna happen to separate you from God's fellowship. Not that you're gonna go to hell, but you're gonna get away from God's fellowship, and now the devil can come and bring a foothold into your life. He can steal you, he can give you sickness and disease, he can steal your life, he can shorten your life. That's what he's saying to the Corinthian church. He's warning them this carnalness, this carnality in the church has got to change. You need to grow up and quit acting like you've been acting. You know, they had a lot of sin in the church. You know, had a lot of sin in the church, and so you know, he's trying to help them, he's trying to correct them. Are you with me now? But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. See, it doesn't mean you're going to hell. It just means the word will chasten you, not sickness. God doesn't use sickness and disease and car wrecks. He doesn't use cancer, he doesn't use any of those things to chasten you. How does he chasten you? Chasten just means child train. How do you how do you do it? The word. You correct, you know, it's better to correct a child with words. You know? Now when they're little bitty, two years old, sometimes you've got to slap their hand. But if you if you'll do your job early, you won't ever have to whip them. You know, you just you just they learn who's boss, and all you've got to do is raise your voice a little twinge, not scream, and let them know, uh-uh, and they listen. Some of you are thinking, boy, that's a new concept in my house. Well, praise the Lord. I didn't, no, no extra charge for that.

Final Declaration And Closing Praise

SPEAKER_00 42:48

So communion is a celebration of our new covenant. Let's discern the Lord's body, walk in love. Galatians 3 13, that might, that we might receive the blessing, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit. So the might is on our side, not on God's side. And uh so our choice is to choose life. Choose. Choose life. Amen. Choose the blessing. Healing is our covenant, right. Come on, lift your hands right now. Father, we thank you. Hallelujah. Anybody learn about the source of sickness today? Anyone still confused about where sickness comes from? Amen. I didn't see any hands raised, so praise the Lord. I wasn't looking, so amen. Let's all stand together. I want to lead you in this confession. Glory to God. I got another confession. How many of you like that last week's confession? See? I think it's good sometimes to have when we have this kind of message, just to acknowledge it. And so uh let's let's lift our hand to heaven and let's say this together. Say in Jesus' name, I'm determined that 2026 is the year of the new. I believe I received the new things. This Bible is God speaking to me. Everything I need to know about possessing my inheritance is right here. I am a doer of the word. I put the word first place. I invite my Father, my heavenly father, to point out every area where I need to change. I am making all the necessary adjustments to receive God's very best in health. I've been adopted into God's very own family. I'm in Christ. Therefore, I'm blessed. I'm healthy. I overcome every obstacle. I defeat every demonic trespasser. In Jesus' name. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Glory to God. Come on, let's shout a little bit. He's under our feet.