The great and prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon struggled with the issue of sickness. He said, “Be thankful for the providence which has made you poor, or sick, or sad; for by all this Jesus works the life of your spirit and turns you to Himself. 1 Spurgeon believed in poverty, sickness and sadness as being the will of God. In fact, he suffered with a disease called gout. He was a great preacher with a great disease. But, Spurgeon was wrong about sickness. Jesus is the Healer. Satan is the oppressor.
Listen to the Audio
Click Play to Listen | Right Click to Download | Subscribe in Stitcher Radio
[Tweet “Sickness is of the devil. Many don’t fully grasp that all sickness has a Satanic origin.”]
Read the Notes
You can view a basic transcript of this podcast at the bottom of this section.
Accept the Challenge
Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This week’s call is:
Now that you know the power of Jesus Name over sickness, it’s now time to put it use. Use it in ministering healing to a fellow believer. Use it in your own personal life and give God all the praise, glory, and honor.
Join the Conversation
Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:
Question: Please share your personal testimony of your engagement with the Name of Jesus over sickness. Please share your comments, in the comments section below.
Episode Resources:
You can find additional information on the Name of Jesus in the resources listed below.
- #S3-011: What’s the Value of a Good Name? [Podcast]
- #S3-012: Why the Name of Jesus Works for Your Life [Podcast]
- #S3-015: How the Mighty Names of God Energize Your Life [Podcast]
- #S3-016: How to Obliterate Temptation in Jesus Name [Podcast]
- #S3-017: Why the Name of Jesus Is So Powerful [Podcast]
- #S3-018: How God Reacquired Adam’s Stolen Authority [Podcast]
- #S3-020: How Jesus Destroyed Demons in One on One Encounters [Podcast]
- #S3-021: Want Victory? Look at Jesus Shocking Geographic Throwdown [Podcast]
About Emery
Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.
Subscribe to the Podcast
If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe.
Share the Love
If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate it on Stitcher Radio and leave a review. If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at emery@emeryhorvath.com
_________________________________________________________________________________
Podcast Notes
Sickness Is of the Devil
- This is a big deal. It’s a huge point and many people still do not fully grasp the fact that all sickness has a Satanic origin.
Acts 10:38 (KJV) 38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
- This passage lays out for the body of Christ one indisputable fact, sickness has a satanic origin.
- All sickness, every bit of it is of the devil.
- All sickness, every bit of it is oppression.
- According to Acts 10:38, sickness is demonic oppression.
- The Greek word ‘oppression’ means to exploit or dominate.
- Sickness is Satan’s attempt to dominate and exploit the man God created.
- Your body is the house of your spirit.
- All of the great blessings of God were imparted to your spirit the day you were born again.
- Where is the fruit of the spirit for example?
- It’s in your heart or in your spirit.
- Where is the love of God?
- It’s been shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit in your Spirit (Romans 5:5).
- Where are you going to receive direction to build the Kingdom of God?
- You’re going to receive that in your spirit.
- Since your body is the house of your spirit, if Satan can shut your body down, He can minimize the fullness of the impact you can have.
- Sickness is oppression.
- It’s his attempt to hinder you and by hindering you, hinder the plan of God.
- This is what sickness is and this is what it is in every case.
- There is never a case where sickness is a trial sent by God to teach you some spiritual truth.
- God’s way of instructing His children is through His Word and by His Spirit.
God’s Healing Covenant Promise to Israel
Deuteronomy 7:15 (KJV) 15 And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
- How does this verse describe what kind of diseases these are which come out of Egypt?
- They are evil diseases which automatically give us a clue concerning their origin.
- Evil does not come from God. There is no evil in Him.
- The fact they are characterized as evil pinpoints their origin.
- The Hebrew word translated ‘evil’ is the word ‘ra’.
- It’s an adjective and it means to cause fear, dread or terror.
- The word is translated as ‘wickedness’ in the book of Genesis.
Genesis 6:5 (ESV) 5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
- Vines says ‘ra’ refers to that which is “bad” or “evil,” in a wide variety of applications. A greater number of the word’s occurrences signify something morally evil or hurtful, often referring to man or men. 2
- James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains has the word ‘ra’ as bad, evil, wicked, no good, i.e., pertaining to that which is not morally pure or good according to a proper standard, implying this evil hinders or severs a relationship to a person or principle which is proper. 3
- You get the idea.
- Disease is bad.
- Sickness is evil.
- Infirmity is classified as wickedness.
- It’s bad, evil and wicked because of its origin.
- It0s origin is not of God.
- If it’s not of God, then there’s only one other source, Satan.
- If it’s of Satan, if it belongs to the realm of evil, then it can be and ought to be resisted.
- All of which means sickness falls under the domain of the Name of Jesus because that’s how you resist Satan. You resist his works in the Name.
- Sickness must bow to Jesus Name.
- All sickness; every bit of it.
- It has no choice.
- If it’s wearing a label which says ‘incurable’ or ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do’, it falls under the purview of the Name which is above every Name.
Israel Was Familiar with Egyptian Sickness
- Note what Moses says, ‘The LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou know.’
- How did they know the diseases of Egypt?
- Because they were sick with the diseases of Egypt.
- Because the same sickness Egypt had, they had.
- They had personal first-hand experience with them.
- They were unable to resist them because they had no authority over the works of darkness because Adam gave the authority God him away.
- So God promises via covenant a shield of protection for Israel if they will just walk in His ways.
- So, if Israel had this type of protection, what makes you think you don’t have it since we have a better covenant established on better promises (Heb. 8:6)?
Does God Lay Sickness on People?
- You might be tempted to think so from reading Deuteronomy 7:15.
- Because in this verse God says, ‘I will not lay sickness on you but I will lay it instead on your enemies.’
- The English Standard Version has it as ‘I will not put sickness on you but I will put it on your enemies.’
- Either way, you have to have sickness in order to give it.
- How can God have something which is satanic and evil?
- How do you answer that?
- Well, you have to drill down into the verse in order to come up with the answer.
- The answer lies in the Hebrew for ‘lay’ as in lay or put all these diseases.
- The Hebrew word is nâthan, naw-than’ and can be translated a bushel basket load of ways.
- According to Strong’s concordance, nathan has as its primary root to give, used with the greatest latitude of application, also to put or to make. The word has been translated in the Bible as add, apply, appoint, ascribe, assign, bestow, bring forth, bring hither, cast, cause, charge, come, commit, consider, count, deliver up, direct, distribute, do without fail, fasten, frame, get, give forth, give over, give up, grant, hang and on and on, over 70 different ways. 4
- Well now, if you have over seventy different possibilities for a word, how do you know which one to use?
- The first answer is context.
- The second answer is, it has to make sense with the rest of scripture.
- Let’s look at it.
- So, the LORD will first take away from you all sickness.
- How does He do take it away?
- He’s going to heal you of it.
- Second, He will not lay it on you.
- Why?
- He can’t since He doesn’t have it to give.
- Now, if you remember the list of words defining the Hebrew word ‘nathan’ includes the word direct.
- So basically Deuteronomy 7:15 says God will not put sickness on His kids, and if it tries to come by the hands of the enemy, God will direct it instead to His enemies.
- God’s enemies are defined as those who are haters of Israel.
- So, we have Acts 10:38 and Deuteronomy 7:15 bearing witness to the negative origin of sickness.
- But, there are other verses.
Jesus Specifically Defeated Demon Spirits of Sickness
- We can see occasions in the ministry of Jesus where He specifically dealt with sickness as a work of the enemy.
Luke 13:11–16 (NKJV) 11 And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. 12 But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” 13 And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. 14 But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.” 15 The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? 16 So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”
- This woman had a spirit of infirmity.
- Luke, who was a medical doctor, said so.
- How many medical doctors you know would make or even agree with such a diagnosis?
- The Greek word ‘infirmity’ means a state of debilitating illness, sickness, disease 5
- A spirit of infirmity is a demon spirit who causes a state of debilitating illness, sickness or disease.
- It’s the reason why ‘normal’ medical treatment provides no relief.
- In this case, this Israelite woman had a ‘demon motivated back condition’.
- Jesus said Satan bound her with this condition for eighteen long years.
- Notice how Jesus ministered to this woman.
- First, He spoke the command of faith.
- He said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.”
- Note the tense He used. Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity not “woman you are being loosed from your infirmity.”
- One translator has it as ‘woman, you-have-been-set-free from your illness.’ 6
- In other words, in the mind of God the Father, the moment Jesus spoke the command of faith, the woman’s condition was in the past tense.
- If your condition is past tense, that means you don’t have it anymore.
1 Peter 2:24 (NKJV) 24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.
- You may be thinking about asking this question, so let’s go ahead and get it answered.
- If the Bible says, “By Jesus stripes, I was healed” then why is there such a thing as sickness in the first place?
- Because every Bible verse has to be received by faith.
- Because every promise of God has to be appropriated for oneself.
- Otherwise it’s just words on a page.
- So in order to be healed, you have to believe it and receive it just like Jesus said.
- The second way Jesus ministered to this woman who had a spirit of infirmity was He laid His hands on her.
- What happened when He did this?
- The same thing which happened when the woman with the issue of blood touched Him.
Mark 5:30 (NKJV) 30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?”
- This power, or healing anointing which left Jesus upon faith’s contact, was a well-known commodity in His ministry.
Luke 6:19 (NKJV) 19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.
- When Jesus laid His hands on this woman who was bowed over there was a transfer of anointing from His hands to her body.
- It’s important to see that the command of faith coupled with the healing anointing drove this demon spirit of infirmity right out of this woman’s body.
- The scripture says it this way, ‘Immediately she was made straight and glorified God.’
- So even though this woman had a condition which was the direct result of a demon spirit, Jesus never spoke directly to that demon.
- He never commanded the demon to come out of this woman like He did with other demon possessed people like the madman of Gadara.
- Jesus didn’t cast this demon out.
- He didn’t have to.
- The Word of faith plus the healing anointing was enough to drive out this evil spirit.
- The point of all of this is that Jesus overcame this encounter with the devil, yet again.
- You remember we said in a previous podcast that you resist the devil by resisting His works.
- This time Satan’s works appeared in the form of sickness.
- There are many verses which show a direct connection between demons and disease.
Matthew 12:22 (KJV) 22 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.
- This man had a demon which caused him to be both blind and dumb.
- Jesus healed this man.
- Again note, He didn’t cast this spirit out either.
- So, deaf, dumb, and blind spirits are no match for Jesus.
- This victory is rolled up into the Name of Jesus.
Luke 8:1–2 (KJV) 1 And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, 2 And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,
- Here’s a third case, in the person of Mary Magdalene.
- She had seven devils in her.
- But Jesus healed her of evil spirits and of infirmities.
- Notice again the scripture says these spirits were driven out by the healing anointing and not by having ‘to cast them out.’
- So, the seven devils which were in Mary Magdalene were no match for Jesus.
Matthew 9:32–33 (NKJV) 32 As they went out, behold, they brought to Him a man, mute and demon-possessed. 33 And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke. And the multitudes marveled, saying, “It was never seen like this in Israel!”
- This next case is different from the previous two in that in this case Jesus cast out a mute spirit.
- When this demon was cast out, then this man spoke.
________
References:
- Elliot Ritzema and Elizabeth Vince, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Modern Church, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013). ↩
- W. E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger, and William White Jr., Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 1996), 232–233. ↩
- James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997). ↩
- James Strong, The New Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew and Greek Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996). ↩
- William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 142. ↩
- Richard C. Blight, An Exegetical Summary of Luke 12–24, 2nd ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2008), 80. ↩
My daughter two years ago was diagnosed with POTS. It’s a vascular condition and she had constant nausea and passed out all of the time. My wife also was going to quit her job so she could homeschool our daughter. It was so bad that there were mornings that she couldn’t get out of bed. She lost thirty pounds as the constant nausea made her not want to eat. That was her junior year. We prayed fervently. I would kneel beside her bed and lay my hands on her praying over her. My wife, my younger daughter, and myself laying hands on her praying. Family and friends prayed for her. A doctor who was familiar with POTS gave her a low dose of a beta blocker and over time my daughter wasn’t passing out. She has been off of that medication for well over a year now as she didn’t need it anymore. She is now off at college as a freshman and doing well physically. She still sleeps a lot so I don’t know if she is fully healed, but God gave her a powerful dose of healing so she could get out there and graduate from high school with honors(she missed weeks of school because she couldn’t get out of bed), work a job over the summer, and then get into Clemson which is very competitive to get into. She even passed out taking the SAT and couldn’t finish it…twice! She persevered and took the ACT and did very well. I praise Jesus for healing and giving my daughter the opportunity to go out and be a testimony to the power of prayer and His goodness! If you look up POTS you will see how nasty it can get. Some get over it over a period of many, many years. Some never do and they go on disability. Praise Him!!