(Sermon by Pastor Joshua Sampong, FCG Church HQ USA)

Are sickness and disease from Jehovah Rapha or does Jehovah permit or afflict us with sickness and disease?

Another proof that God never intended we should suffer with the works of Satan, He tells us in 2^nd Corinthians 5:17, in speaking of our union with Jesus Christ,

Old things are passed away.

Then we must not lose sight of the fact that every member of the human race has been given the power of a free-will choice, and that Satan cannot get in to attack and oppress us, without our own express permission. If we allow him to blind us concerning the true facts of the work of substitution our LORD Jesus did for us on the Cross, then it is our own fault, if he uses this to gain an entering wedge and oppress us. 

I am sure we would view these matters in a different light, if we had personally filled our own quota of suffering at the hands of Satan in this life, so there would be no more for us to bear. Suppose God came to us and spoke to us with His own lips and made us a proposition like this:

Do we wish to go through the rest of our life under the present conditions, that of having spiritual weaknesses, sicknesses, and troubles spread out over the rest of our life, and we would suffer with these from time to time; or, would we rather have it all at one time, so there would be no more of these to experience from now on?

I am quite sure that we would accept the latter plan, if God assured us that we would survive the ordeal.

Now we will suppose that we did go through, in the space of 24 hours, all the sins, which includes all spiritual weaknesses, and failures, all the sicknesses, and every kind of trouble we would have for the rest of our life. After we were finished with this, God gave us His own guarantee that, having filled our quota of bearing these for the rest of our life, there is no one more for us to experience.

Having gone through this terrible ordeal of suffering and receiving God’s guarantee of immunity and exemption from hearing any work of Satan for the rest of our life, we would experience any work of Satan for the rest of our life, we would experience a feeling of belief and relaxation that we never experienced before, and we would be filled with unspeakable happiness and joy.

This has already happened! Except that the LORD Jesus Christ took our place; and went through the terrible ordeal in our stead. This is brought out exactly in 1^st Corinthians 11:24. In this account of the Last Supper, our LORD Jesus said, in giving the bread to His disciples, after breaking it in pieces,

This is my body which takes your place.

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