The Source of Sickness - Part 3 - Healing School - Pastor Philip Steele - June 2nd, 2026

Hi, my name is Michelle Steele.

Pastor Phillip and I want to thank you for listening to this message from Life of Faith First.

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And there are uh some things that we want to get into concerning this.

Um we made the statement, John Dowie made the statement.

He said sickness is the foul offspring of its father Satan and its mother Sam.

And uh of course, we have verified that through the word of God uh where we see that of course sickness is not from God.

And uh you know, I uh healing is something that I I study.

I've studied healing for years, uh decades.

And uh you know a lot of times and and it and it seems like at times there's uh a corrective tone in things that I say, but very often, especially depending again on what circle of influence that you're in, um you know, when the subject of healing comes up, for instance, in you know, spirit-filled circles, people that are taught, you know, that that healing is God's will, uh, there's just this this knowledge that, you know, of course healing is God's will.

And we understand that.

But I think sometimes the question that they're afraid to answer is, well, if we know it's God's will, and it's God's will that we be healed, and it's God's will that we walk in health, then why are some of us that believe it's God's will that we be healed and that we walk in health not healed and not walking in health?

And what people do is they they they tend to shy away from that because you've got to get over into things that people don't like to look at.

All right, because if we know it's not God's fault, if we know that that God is not the author of sickness and disease and destruction, and we know that the devil is, then how's this how's this work?

You know, why why is it that what I am redeemed from, and I know that I'm redeemed because of what Galatians 3.13 and Isaiah 53 and Matthew 8 says, I know that I'm redeemed from sickness, then how is it that it's there?

Or how is it that it attacked this person, or how is it that brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so, that I know believed God and I know loved the Lord?

How is it that they got sick or they died or whatever?

And the issue is it's not controversial.

You know, I decided decades ago I would never be that pastor that looked at people and said, Well, we just don't understand some things.

Why don't we?

Why don't we understand?

We have the word of God.

We'll we'll proclaim from the pulpit that the mind of God is contained within these pages.

And so then there's things that God's keeping back from me that I just don't know?

How is it that I can look at people in one sermon and say it's God's will to heal every time, and then have to look at a family and say, well, we just don't understand why.

We should.

We should understand why.

We should understand why things work, we should understand why it didn't work, we should understand where the problems are, and where the problem manifests itself is when I've heard ministers say this before.

They'll say, well, you know, I just don't like telling people that they didn't have faith.

Well, what if that was the problem?

Then you just shortchanged them.

You hurt them.

Now that's not always the case.

People do not get sick every time because they didn't have faith.

People don't fail to get healed because they didn't have faith.

There can be other things at play, and this is why we're going through some of these things.

And I'm adamant about this because uh that's where the healing message and things like that get a bad rap because they say, well, you know, that person says it's God's will to heal everybody every time.

And yet I know somebody that went to their meetings or went to their church or whatever, and they didn't get healed or they didn't walk in health or whatever the case may be.

Well, there's more to it than just what I say.

There's a personal responsibility that every person has to shoulder.

And so, but we understand that sickness is not from God.

Exodus chapter 15 and verse 26.

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

God is bringing his people out.

And notice this first phrase, and we'll read the whole verse 26, but the first phrase, he said, if you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, and give ear to his commandments, and keep all of his statutes.

So this verse starts off with a qualifier.

If.

And the first if is if you diligently hearken to what the Lord said, and then you keep his commandments and you do what he said.

What did he say?

He said, I will put, I, and we've taught on this, I will allow none of these diseases upon you that I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that heals you.

So, in other words, I'm not bringing the sickness, I'm not putting the sickness on you.

He's qualifying this.

He says, Here's the qualifier.

You do what I say, and none of these diseases will come on you.

Would that be the the the synopsis of that?

All right.

So he he puts himself here in the position, of course, as we've said before, our healer.

And other translations say that I am Jehovah, your healer.

I am the Lord, I'm the Lord that heals you.

Another says, I'm the Lord who heals you.

Young's literal says, I, Jehovah, am healing you in the present continuous.

Not only I have, but I am currently doing that.

Hallelujah.

And so he uses the phrase, I am the Lord, I am Jehovah, I am the eternally self-existent one.

All right.

In other words, I eternally exist in this position as your healer.

All right.

So he's the healer, not the disease bringer, not the disease creator.

Amen.

So God doesn't, if he's the healer, you have to understand this is who God presently is, our healer who heals us.

God is the source of healing.

You cannot be the source of healing and the source of sickness.

Because one would have to cancel, you, you would, you would have to change to do that.

To be a healer, to bring sickness on someone, you would have to change.

You would have to alter what you do.

And God said in Malachi 3, 6, I change not.

He said in Titus chapter 1, verse 2, I cannot lie.

Titus 1:2

Over and over again, he said that.

And why is this so important?

Because we're settling that.

Right?

That so God's not the problem, the devil's the problem, he's the bringer of the sickness and the disease.

In Exodus 23, and uh verse 25.

He says, You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I, the Lord your God, will take sickness away from the midst of you.

But what's that start off with?

Notice, you shall serve the Lord your God.

You shall serve the Lord your God.

So there's a qualifier.

And what will happen?

I'll bless your bread and water, and I'll take sickness from the midst of you.

One translation says, I'll remove illness from among you.

And we've said over the years in healing schools, so if it's there, God said, I'll take it.

I'll remove it.

I will free you from disease, Moffat says.

Another says, I will keep you free from sickness.

And so here we have God saying in the first verse, I'm the Lord that heals you.

And now we have him saying, I'll keep you free from it.

So if God ever used sickness or ever used sickness to teach a lesson, why would he ever want to remove it from someone?

See, then you have to start going down that road of misunderstanding.

Well, you know, God removed it because they must have learned their lesson.

What did they learn?

See, I've had people try to answer, I've I've asked people that question.

You know, well, God gave me this cancer to teach me a lesson.

Well, what are you, what does he need you to learn?

If he gave you cancer to teach you something, what is it he's trying to get you to learn?

They've never been able to answer that question.

Because there's no answer to that question.

Because God doesn't put cancer on people to teach them a lesson.

Yeah, you should there should be a little louder, amen, than that.

Right?

Because because if listen, if you've ever seen anybody die with cancer and you think God put it on them, I don't know how you keep serving him.

Because it's horrible.

Right?

It's deadly.

There's a reason the Lord told me that cancer was the foul offspring from the pit of hell.

That's what he said.

And I believe that.

Well, notice he said, I'll take it.

So why would he give you something and then take it?

Why would he allow something and then take it?

He's taking off of you everything that God did through Christ and everything that he did through his promises in the Old Testament, based on what Jesus was going to do, was based on him freeing you from something the curse or the enemy brought on you.

Hallelujah.

So the Father is removing sickness and keeping us free from sickness.

So God's not the source of sickness.

He doesn't place sickness on people, he doesn't use sickness to teach anyone.

I've had people say, well, the Lord saw that my pride needed to be broke, so he put this sickness on me.

No, he didn't put sickness on you.

Pride might have opened the door to sickness, but it wasn't God that put it on you.

The Bible doesn't say, you humble yourself, or I'll put sickness on you.

It says you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

Who does God humble you?

Nope.

There's no verse that ever says that.

Even in the Old Testament, God didn't say I'll humble you.

He said, You got to humble yourself.

This is important.

Right?

Because if God's not the source, then God didn't put anything on me to humble me.

See, here's what I need you to see, and everybody watching online, what we're defining is he is or he isn't.

If he is, then let's quit healing school.

Let's quit declaring healing verses, because if he's the giver of sickness, there's nothing you can do to keep it out of your life.

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

If he's not, then there's something I can do.

Well, he's not.

He's not the giver of it.

Amen.

The question people often ask is this why did God allow that person to get sick and die?

That's the question it's often asked.

First, if that person wasn't born again, they were wide open to whatever the thief wanted to bring into their life.

And here's the thing: God had nothing to say about it.

God has nothing to say about the unbeliever's life.

Any part of redemption, God is not just gonna butt into a person's life and make them take it.

Amen.

I've had people say, well, God's gonna save them whether they want it or not.

No, he's not.

Because they have to desire it, they have to believe in their heart, they have to confess with their mouth, they have to receive.

The Bible says in the book of Acts that when Peter preached the gospel, it says, and they gladly, those that gladly received the word, right?

They they received the word.

I've said, I've been in services, you've been in services.

You know, you know, you know, you may have brought somebody to a service that you know needed to be born again, and you could sense the moving of the Holy Spirit and the wooing of the Holy Spirit and the convicting power of the Holy Spirit in that service.

And you sat there next to that person that you knew needed to be born again, and they made no movement toward the altar.

They made no movement to receive God.

Well, the Holy Spirit was there.

You sensed him, you knew he was there.

Why didn't they go up to the altar?

They didn't want to.

Why didn't God grab them by the back of the neck and carry them up and make them get saved?

Right?

Because he said you have to make a choice.

All the way back, as far back as Deuteronomy chapter 30, God said, I have set certain things before you and you've got to choose some things.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

See, just saying, well, we don't understand why God, that's not a choice.

That's a cop-out.

Just saying, I know God can is not a choice.

You got to make a choice.

He is my healer or he's not.

There's no middle ground.

God's my healer.

That's it.

And I'm gonna stand on that.

Amen.

And I and I'm not I'm not gonna fall over into this false humility and this spirit of religion that says somehow God's working something in me by giving me this sickness or allowing me to have this sickness.

Well, what if you die?

What did he work in you?

How did that help?

See, it didn't.

And so if I if I draw the line and say God's always the healer, God's always the healer.

And he's always trying to get healing to me.

Right?

Because he said, I'll take it away from you.

I'll bless your bread and your water.

But if that person doesn't want anything to do with God or won't believe God, hallelujah.

I told you the story one time about the man that came to healing school and he had cancer throughout his body, and uh he came up for prayer, and we prayed for him, and the power of God flowed through his body.

And I mean, not weeks, not months, days, days.

Like two days later, he went back to the doctor, and the doctor said, I don't understand this.

He said, Some of the tumors are completely gone, but other ones are shrinking.

It was, I mean, it was the closest thing to an instantaneous miracle I've ever seen in my life.

And man, he was so excited about the things of God and and and you know, we're giving him resources uh because he didn't go to a church that that had those resources, and and we're giving him those resources, and he's growing in the things of God and and and and growing and growing and growing.

He came to me and met with me one day, and he said, This was a number of months later, and he said, uh, you know, I uh I went back to the doctor and he said, It seems like the recession of these things has stopped.

And he said, uh, here's what he said to me.

He said, uh, you know, and uh my wife and my kids are concerned, and and they want me to do this, they want me to do that.

And I looked at him, and I don't say this to everybody, but I said, but what do you think you should do?

What do you believe in your heart?

And he said, I believe in my heart I'm healed.

I said, then that's what you got to go with.

I'm not telling you to abandon medical science, I'm just saying that's what you got to go with, whether you go to the doctor or not.

That's what I'm going with.

Well, here's my point that I'm that I'm making to you is that what then began to happen was he backed off of what he had been doing.

He backed off the word, he backed off coming to church, he backed up, backed off being around people that were telling him the truth, and he started hanging around people that had a lot of questions.

Why this and why that and why the other?

Here's the the issue.

If you are around the answer all the time, you'll have great faith in the answer.

If you're around the question all the time, you'll have great faith in the question.

That's why you have to settle certain things.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

You have to settle them.

Secondly, if that person was born again, did they know and did they act on the fact that they've been redeemed?

Did they know and did they act on the fact that they have been redeemed?

And and again, I realize that this is taught on a lot, especially in spirit-filled circles.

But just to say God can heal is a good statement, but it's not a statement of faith.

Because there God can do anything if he's God.

Just to say that God will heal, it's not enough.

Just to say, I've seen God heal, I know God can, I've seen it.

That's not faith.

Because I can I right I can know God has can heal, I can see people healed, but that's no indication that I believe God's healing me.

This is what's important.

So, do I believe I've been redeemed?

You know, I remember I remember the time I asked myself that question many, many, many years ago.

Okay, do I believe I've been redeemed?

Because if I believe I've been redeemed and I know what I've been redeemed from, then my that that takes me to a place of, wait a minute, I know I've been redeemed from this, so this shouldn't be here.

So, what does that mean?

If if it's if if I'm dealing with it, I've got to begin to ask myself the questions.

Now I know God didn't give it to me, I know where it came from.

What where's the in-between here?

Hallelujah.

Very often when we look in the word of God and talk about the word of God, people use the phrase, two-word phrase, the curse.

And they use that over and over again.

And you'll hear them say, talking about Genesis.

Well, this is when the curse came into the earth.

And then they'll take you over to Deuteronomy 28 and say, see, we've been redeemed from the curse.

Two different curses.

Two different curses.

The number one is the curse of the fall.

That's when sin and came into the earth, that's when man lost, gave away dominion, gave away their authority, gave away the headship that God had given them in the earth, right?

That's that's when death and destruction came into the earth.

Deuteronomy 28, where people use that interchangeably, well, here's the curse outlined in Deuteronomy 28.

That's the curse of the law outlined in Deuteronomy 28.

The curse of the law was a curse that came on people specifically for rejecting or disobeying what God said.

Specifically for rejecting or disobeying what God said.

When I got born again, I was redeemed from both of those.

I was bought out from under the curse of Adam's fall.

I was bought out from the curse of my own disobedience.

My disobedience.

God redeemed disobedient people.

Hallelujah.

But here's the thing I've got to make.

Maintain that walk.

Right?

Because people will see things and they'll say, I know this is the curse, and they're talking about the curse of the law coming into my life.

What's the issue?

I don't understand.

I've been redeemed.

I'm declaring that I'm redeemed.

Declaring that you're redeemed, and then following up on it with my actions and with the way I live my life can very often be two different things.

You cannot be in disobedience at the same time declaring I'm redeemed from the curse of the law.

Because the curse of the law, and you read it for yourself, we'll read part of it here in a minute.

The curse of the law was all predicated on obedience.

The blessings were predicated on being obedient to what God said.

The curses came from being disobedient to what God said.

Hallelujah.

Satan and his plans thrive where there's ignorance, disobedience, and unbelief.

Ignorance, disobedience, and unbelief.

That's why 2 Corinthians 4.4 says he's blinding the minds of those that do not believe.

Why?

He wants to keep them in ignorance.

Now, we we think of that and we think that's just people that are born again.

That's good-hearted believers that are sitting in churches that he's keeping blind to the things that God wants to bring into their life.

Hallelujah.

Do you see that?

You know, there are a lot of good believers today.

And we'll use this illustration.

There are a lot of good believers today that are suffering financially and suffering materially because they're in a group that says God doesn't care if you have things.

God's not worried about blessing you.

You know, uh uh the poorer you are, the more humble you are.

Well, that's not according to the word of God.

That's under the curse of the law.

Poverty is under the curse of the law.

Nobody, God doesn't want anybody poor.

Yeah, but you know, there's a lot of poor people.

There sure is.

And do you know the majority of the poverty-stricken uh regions in the earth are countries that do not believe in God, that refuse to serve Him.

And poverty's running rampant.

People wonder why America is the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen.

Because in the beginning of our nation, we dedicated ourselves to God.

We said, God will be our God and we'll be your people.

This is important.

Well, here's the thing.

If there's ignorance concerning the word, what I've been redeemed from, I can't walk in the benefit of it.

But then if there's disobedience, and I don't know if a person's disobedient or not, only they know.

But if if if there's disobedience, then the door's open.

Jesus even made that statement when he was talking about the man that heard the word.

He said, I'm gonna liken this to two men.

He said, He that hears my word and does it is like a man that builds his house on a rock and the storms come and you remember all that, and that house stands firm.

He said, The man that hears my word and doesn't do it, he said, he's like a man that builds his house on the sand, same storm comes, same uh wind comes and destroys his life.

That that's disobedience.

Hallelujah.

Now, unbelief.

So it thrives in ignorance, disobedience, and unbelief.

Just not believing God.

Not believing.

Right?

That's what uh Psalm 78 and other verses in the Bible tell us that's what stopped the children of Israel from going in.

Paul, uh, the writer of Hebrews says in the book of uh of Hebrews, it said, so what stopped them from entering in?

Unbelief.

Where was unbelief manifest?

Can God provide?

Can God deliver?

Can God set us free?

Can God do what he said?

Anything God has said, he can do.

Anything God has said he can do, he will do.

What it comes down to is what do, number one, what do I believe about it, and am I willing to be obedient to it?

If a person is ignorant of God's word, they'll not know what to stand against.

They won't know.

If a person is disobedient to God's word, they eliminate the power of the word.

They just eliminate it.

If a person will not believe the word, it won't work for them at all.

See, I have to believe it.

God outlines everything in his word that he wants a person, an individual to walk in and have, I have to believe it.

I have to believe it.

And that's why, see, very often, I and I don't know if if people understand that that they're doing this, people will come where healing is concerned, and they'll say, but I'm believing God, and I don't understand why.

This sickness is just hanging on, or it's just this, or it's just that.

Well, there's a couple of things to look at there.

Why is that what's on your mind?

Well, I'm believing God, but no, there's no but.

It's I'm believing God, period.

Right?

Now I'm entering into this element of faith.

I'm believing God.

I'm I'm keeping the question out of my mind, why does this not seem to be moving?

Jesus said in Mark 11, he said, When you speak to the mountain, the mountain will remove.

He said in the book of Luke, chapter 17, he said, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this sycamine tree, be plucked up by the rook and be cast in the sea, and it should obey you.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

What'd he say?

If you had faith.

And so when somebody comes and they say, I don't understand why this isn't working, so they're saying the word's not working.

That's unbelief of the word.

That's why we say to you all the time, the word is working mightily in me right now.

What's it doing?

It's eradicating sickness, removing disease, bringing strength and health to my body in the name of Jesus.

That's what I believe.

Right?

That's what you believe.

Amen.

But if a person won't believe the word, it won't work for them at all.

Now, someone can say, Well, I believe, you know, that God can heal me.

Based on what?

See, what's that based on?

And here's what you'll hear a lot of times.

Well, I've seen God do too much.

That's not faith.

That's not faith.

That's why that same unbeliever that you brought to church can watch 50 other people go to the altar and not be moved.

Because just seeing it's not enough.

Isn't it wonderful what happened to them?

Boy, they got saved.

Isn't it wonderful?

That lady got up out of the wheelchair.

Don't know why I'm still in the wheelchair.

I'd go to that lady that got up out of the wheelchair and say, What'd you do?

What were you believing?

How were you, right?

I want to see these things.

Amen.

Look at Deuteronomy 28.

I believe I'm helping you.

You know, I've said for years, an enemy exposed is an enemy defeated.

And and and when you take away all the confusion, anything, you know, you've heard this phrase over the years, you break anything down to its lowest common denominator, and you're gonna make it that much easier.

What's watch the black and white, right?

What's the ABCs of the thing?

That's gonna make it easy, right?

In Deuteronomy 28, verse 1, it shall come to pass if you, if, now here's this qualifier again, if you hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord your God to observe to do all of his commandments, which I command you this day, the Lord will set you on high above all nations of the earth, and all these blessings will come on you and overtake you if you hearken, you hear with the intention of doing the voice of the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 28:1

So the blessing and everything attached to the blessing was tied to obedience.

Hearing the word and doing the word, hearing what God said and walking in what God said.

Hallelujah.

Now it's not legalism.

I'll talk to people and they'll say, well, that's just legalism.

No, it's not legalism.

It's me saying, okay, this is what God said.

I'm gonna walk in what God said.

And he said all these blessings would come on me and overtake me.

Hallelujah.

Now, verse 15 of the same chapter.

It says, But it shall come to pass if you will not hearken, you will not listen with the intention of doing, under the voice of the Lord your God, to observe all of his commandments and his statutes that I command you this day, all these curses will come on you and overtake you.

That's what he said.

Now, here's what I want you to see.

We're we're centering up, I know, on obedience, but I want you to see something.

Is disobedience always the problem and the issue?

No, but it can be.

Amen.

That's listen, that's like that's like somebody having a sound in their car and it ends up being nothing, and you hearing a sound similar, and you just think it's gonna end up being nothing, and you never go get it checked out.

And then when you're on the side of the road, you got to call the tow truck, and you go to the car shop, and the mechanic says, When did you start hearing that sound?

Oh, about six months ago.

Well, why didn't you bring it in then?

Oh, I didn't think it was anything.

Well, I should, I should have done something about that.

The curse was tied to disobedience.

This was the curse for violating the law.

The curse of the law.

See, people tie the curse of the law to the devil, but the curse of the law was what came on those that were disobedient to what God had said.

It's people, and they they use those terms interchangeably.

The curse, the curse, the curse, the curse.

Sin came into the earth through the curse.

Now we're redeemed from the curse of the law.

That's what the scripture says.

It's like people preach and teach, and they preach on the second coming of the Lord and the rapture of the church, and they use them interchangeably.

They're two separate and distinct events.

And this is important because I've been born again, I've been freed from the transgression of Adam's disobedience because Jesus came and defeated sin in the flesh.

All right.

But this obedience that we're talking about in Deuteronomy 28 is still in place today.

I've been redeemed from the curse of the law.

It does not mean that the curse of the law cannot operate if I'm not doing what I know I need to do.

Hallelujah.

Much of the curse of the law had to do with physical sickness.

And we've taught on this at length.

Under the curse of the law, you find fevers, you find arthritis, you find tuberculosis, blindness, skin diseases, mental disorders, losing your mind.

You find cancer, inflammation under the curse of the law.

Hallelujah.

Had to do with physical sickness.

And he says, here's what you have to do.

You just have to be godly.

You have to live according to what I said.

You know, Psalm 1, very often we quote Psalm 1, uh uh, especially verses 1 through 3, where it says, you know, blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seed of the scornful.

His delights in the law of the Lord, and in his law he does meditate day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season.

Whatever he does will prosper, right?

His leaf will not wither, whatever he does will prosper.

That's down through verse 3.

What's the first phrase of verse 4?

The ungodly are not so.

It's not that way with the ungodly.

Now people say, yeah, that's the sinner.

No, the ungodly can be people that are just refusing to do what God said.

I'm not gonna do it.

In this area, I'm just gonna be ungodly.

And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna obey what God said.

Hallelujah.

Deuteronomy 23, 5.

Notice this, this is important.

Deuteronomy 23 and 5.

Nevertheless, Moses is talking to the children of Israel for the second time.

Deuteronomy means second law, second reading.

Deuteronomy 23, 5 says, Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not hearken to Balaam, but the Lord your God, notice what God did, turn the curse into a blessing unto you, because the Lord loved you.

Because the Lord your God loved you.

So notice what God did.

He turned the curse into a blessing.

Is that what he said?

Now, Galatians 3 and 13.

Anything to do with faith, anything to do with receiving from God, honesty, forthrightness will always be a part of it.

Faith requires honesty.

Amen.

I was talking to my wife one time, and there was something in our life that we just weren't moving.

You know, when we believe that when we work the word, things should move.

And so uh it just wasn't moving.

And you know, you can pray, you can pray in the Holy Ghost, you can quote 15 reams of scripture, you can get up an extra hour early and lay on your face, you can fast and pray for two weeks, right?

And ask God what the problem is.

You know, why isn't the thing moving?

And 90, well, I'm not even gonna say 99 times out of a hundred.

Probably a hundred times out of a hundred, he's gonna say, Well, this is what you need to do.

Because what's the work of redemption?

It's a finished work.

So God's done his part, so I've got to enter into my part, what God has done.

So anyway, we were talking about this, and and and we both, you know, understand this honesty concept.

And she said, Well, you know, I could be doing this more.

And I said, Well, you know, I could be doing this more.

That's that's just honesty.

I say, that's honesty.

Yeah, I I laugh sometimes when I hear people that say, Well, I don't know how I gained 15 pounds.

I do.

One bite at a time.

Nobody in here has said that.

I'm just, I want to make that clear.

I had a buddy one time, he's going, My Lord, all my clothes are too tight.

I don't know how that happened.

I do, I know.

Why?

Because I've been there.

But notice what God did.

God turned the curse into a blessing.

And then Galatians 3 and 13 says, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Now that's important because yes, I've been redeemed through salvation from the repercussions of Adam's fall.

I've been redeemed from Satan being my Lord.

I've been redeemed from him lording over me.

Because that's what happened when Adam fell.

Satan became the overlord of mankind.

I've been redeemed from that.

He's not my Lord.

Jesus is my Lord.

That's why when you get born again, you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord.

Right?

Well, now here though, Paul says specifically, we're redeemed from the curse of the law.

Now you've got to look at who he's talking to.

He's talking to the church at Galatia.

He's talking to a group of believers that he had founded this church.

He had gotten them born again.

They were Gentiles.

They were Gentiles.

And they had these roving bands of Judaizers that would go around and they come into this church and they start saying, Look, if you don't keep the Sabbath days, you're cursed.

If you don't, if you're not circumcised, you're cursed.

If you're not doing this, if you're not observing uh new moons and sabbaths, you're cursed.

And Paul makes the statement, if you if you read the entire book, he said, he said, I'm concerned because you started in the spirit, and now you're trying to do this through the flesh.

And he emphasizes here Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Amen.

What does that mean?

I don't observe feast days, and I'm not cursed because of it.

I'm redeemed from that.

That was the shadow.

Jesus Christ fulfilled that.

There's no reason to keep a feast day, no reason to celebrate a feast day.

Well, I'm going to celebrate Passover, and I'm going to celebrate.

Well, go right ahead.

God bless you, but there's no reason.

My Passover lamb died on the cross of Calvary over 2,000 years ago and fulfilled all the types, fulfilled all the symbols, fulfilled all the pictures.

I have been made free from all of that.

I'm redeemed from the curse of the law.

This is important.

Why?

Because he says Christ redeemed me from that.

He bought me out of that.

The word therefore redeemed, there are four New Testament words for redeemed.

And this word redeemed means to buy out of bondage, to buy out of being a hostage, to be brought into a place and the highest price possible paid for your redemption.

Christ redeemed me from the curse of the law.

Hallelujah.

So I've been redeemed from the curse of the law in its what?

Its totality.

In its totality.

Whatever you find under the curse of the law.

And when you start reading in chapter 28, verse 15 of Deuteronomy, it goes through something like 50-something chapter verses from there on that tells you the curse of the law.

And it talks about family breakups, it talks about losing your mind.

It talks about all the sicknesses and the diseases that we mentioned.

It talks about poverty.

It talks about sowing much seed and getting small returns.

He says that's all under the curse of the law.

Hallelujah.

We've been redeemed from it.

If it's in the curse of the law, I've been redeemed from it.

That's shouting ground right there.

But here's the thing: is it possible to experience something I've been redeemed from?

Yes.

Amen.

You know, there's a big trend in healthcare today.

They call it healthcare or lifestyle medicine.

Where they're not only talking to you about the problem you have and what medication that you could take, but how can you change some lifestyle things?

Right?

You know, I'm old enough to remember when doctors would smoke in the doctor's visit.

Right?

You know, I don't know how many ever smoked, but you know, uh, they used to advertise way back in the day in the late six early 60s, late 50s, that cool, cool cigarettes.

You know, that was the number one cigarette recommended by doctors.

Yeah.

So so I'm old enough to remember that.

You know, the doctors would be standing out in the smoking section smoking a cigarette.

Then they're gonna tell me how to be healthy.

That makes no sense.

Well, here's the thing most generally.

They would not tell you how to be healthy.

They'd say, This is what you got, here's a pill.

This is what you're dealing with, here's a pill.

When nutrition, things like that, will cure a lot of that.

They're finding more and more percentages that it will cure.

It's called lifestyle medicine.

Hallelujah.

What we're doing today is giving you some lifestyle medicine.

The devil delights in getting people into disobedience.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say, I know I shouldn't do this, I know I shouldn't eat this, I know I shouldn't be doing this, but oh, wait a minute.

What's the Bible say?

He that knoweth to do right and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Now watch this.

Why is this important?

He didn't say it was sin for everybody.

He said, if you know you shouldn't be doing it and you do it, it's sin.

Well, what is sin?

Sin is separation from God in some form.

And so there are people that are believing God, for instance, for healing.

They're believing God for a miracle in their body, they're believing God for this.

But then there are things God will say, I need you to do this and I need you to do that, and they won't move on it.

Well, if I don't move on it, I'm keeping myself distanced from God.

Does God want to heal me?

We've proved.

Without a doubt, God is the healer.

God will turn the curse into a blessing.

Deuteronomy chapter 23.

Deuteronomy 23 · chapter mention

God will turn the curse into a blessing.

God wants you to be free from the curse so much that he sent Jesus to die for you and not only die for you, to become a curse for you.

Hallelujah.

Obedience to what God wants in my life is not a hard thing when I see the price that was paid.

Hallelujah.

So because we're redeemed from the curse of the law, we have to be certain we don't allow disobedience to bring on us that which we've been redeemed from.

Think about this.

We're boiling it down to the lowest common denominator.

Why is walking in unforgiveness a sin?

Because Jesus said to forgive.

So if I choose not to forgive, I'm in disobedience.

Period.

Simple.

Well, Pastor, that's a tight line.

I know it's the line Jesus laid out.

I was reading it just again the other day.

He said, if your brother trespasses against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turns to you and says, forgive me, he said, forgive him.

Even if it's seven times in a day.

But I've watched people sick in their body that needed God to touch them, that would say out loud and verbally, I refuse to forgive them.

That's the problem.

And people will take that and they'll say, see, unforgiveness is the issue.

No, disobedience is the issue.

And disobedience manifests itself in different ways.

Why do we, why is not walking in love a sin?

Because Jesus said, love one another, as I have loved you.

Over and over again, the Pauline epistles, he says, be kind one to another, forgiving, tender-hearted, loving one another.

See, this is important because people will say, Well, yeah, you know, I'm checking on my love walk.

Well, if your love walk's okay and the thing's not moving, check on something else.

Right?

Because it's it's tied there.

Oh, hallelujah.

I don't want to allow.

And and and let me let me share a couple things with you.

You know, Brother Hagin would would tell different stories and recount instances where he got into disobedience.

And inevitably, all of those heart symptoms would come back on him.

All of them.

Yeah, I mean, story after story.

I've I've read, I've heard.

Uh, the the the the time that he was he was ministering in the the prayer line.

And he said, I was going down the line and I came to this lady that was, I believe she was like the Sunday school superintendent, head Sunday school teacher in the church, and he said, I went to lay hands on her, and he said, The Holy Spirit quickened me that she's involved in some illegal activity and she's got to get that right before anything will happen.

And he said, and I just didn't say it.

I laid hands on her and moved on.

And he said, I was I was at home that night talking to the pastor, and the pastor said, When you laid hands on her, did you sense anything?

And he said, Yeah, I did.

I, you know, and he told him what he sensed, and uh he said, Well, yeah, you're you're right about it.

And he said, The pastor went on to bed and he was staying there with the pastor, and he said, All those heart symptoms came back on me.

And I and he said, I cried out to the Lord and I said, Lord, what's going on?

He said, You didn't do what I told you to do.

What did he have to do?

Repent.

He had to repent.

Did he need to be healed?

No, God had already healed him.

He was already healed, he had to repent.

What happened when he repented?

The curse couldn't operate anymore.

Had to go because he's in obedience.

Now, here's the thing.

Because we've gone through decades now of people being taught this gospel that says God understands that we're all fallen human beings and we're all sinners and we're all this.

And listen, that's a gospel of compromise.

That's a gospel of ease.

God does understand that you were fallen.

God does understand that you were a sinner, but he also understands that when you got born again, he redeemed you from your fallen nature.

He gave you the nature of God, he made you an heir and a joint heir with Christ Jesus, he made you completely new.

And because I'm completely new, I don't have the excuse that I'm just a sinner.

And because we have that, standards have lowered and it's affected everything.

It's affected people's health, it's affected their ability to believe God.

Amen.

I said to you Sunday morning, to many a Sunday morning.

There's just something about living godly.

He said, I'll bless the godly.

Amen.

So he would repent.

There are people that are desiring healing when what they need is to get obedient.

The healing has been paid for, the healing's been taken care of.

So if I know that there's something that God wants to flow in my life and I don't see it flowing, that's not the issue.

Where's the blockage?

Amen.

You know, Brother Hagin, you remember he said when he was on his sickbed that the doctor came to visit one day and his grandmother, who took care of him, uh, asked the doctor, Well, can he have coffee?

And the doctor said, No, I don't want him to have any coffee.

He said, uh, she said, Well, he's had it, you know, ever since he was a little boy.

He goes, Well, okay, then, you know, maybe one week cup a day.

And he said, I drank that coffee, and he said, you know, he had he had gotten born again on his sick bed, and he said, It made me so sick.

And, you know, in his words, he said, I'd have had to die to feel better.

And and anyway, here's the point.

Is he said, I recognized right away I don't need coffee.

It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't go well with, or caffeine in that area.

It doesn't go well in my in my body.

And he said, there's no reason for it.

It's no nutritional value.

The Lord was helping him see this.

Well, you know, he tells a story that some so he quit.

He he quit drinking it.

And he said, some years ago he was at a camp meeting preaching after he had uh, of course, the Lord had healed him a number of years later, and he said, uh, we were there and they had all these uh uh bottles of pop in a in a big tub, and he said, I was looking for something uh that didn't have any caffeine.

He said, but I couldn't find anything, so I just grabbed one that had caffeine.

He said, I drank it and liked to die.

And he said, I was crying out to the Lord, and he said, The Lord said, You knew you weren't supposed to drink that.

There's nothing to heal.

You mean you got to repent of drinking a pop if the Lord tells you not to drink it?

He that does what the Lord said not to do, it's sinned to him.

You see what I'm saying?

And so very often, where healing is concerned is we work very hard to get people to believe that it's God's will and that God wants them healed, and he does, and we've proven that from the word, and we'll continue to prove that from the word because there are countless numbers that don't believe that.

But here's the thing if I'm believing God to walk in health, I'm believing God to see this come into my life, and and I'm not moving it, I need I need to look at some of these areas.

Amen.

Brother Copeland said he he recognized one one time, he started having pain in his joints, and and so he went to his prayer cabin up in uh uh here in Arkansas, and he said, I just was gonna spend some time with the Lord and and asked the Lord why this is going this way.

And he said, the Lord spoke to him and said, Well, every time you know you get in your plane, you have two thermoses full of coffee.

He said, There's not a day that goes by that you're not drinking coffee all day long.

And he said, That's not, that won't work with your joints, with your makeup.

Suicidic.

Now notice I didn't say that coffee was wrong.

He said coffee for him was wrong.

He quit drinking it and the problem went away.

When he reached a certain age, he was almost 80 years of age, or mid-70s.

He said, I started noticing that my body started going a certain direction.

Like my ancestors had gone.

And he said, I went to the Lord about it.

And he said, The Lord told me, I told you years ago to start walking and don't quit moving.

He said, I've been trying to deal with you about physical activity in your body for years, and you won't listen to me.

And he said, now if you don't change something, it's gonna go that direction.

He's a man of God, known all over the world for laying hands on people.

I watched him lay hands on a lady that had braces from her neck to her feet, and I watched him lay hands on her and she walked out of the braces, totally healed by the power of God.

Over and over and over and over again.

He laid hands on a young girl in Jamaica that had died.

She died, she was dead.

He ran up the steps of that house, laid hands on her, and she came back to life.

But yet God tells this man who has preached healing from one side of the world to the other, from the top to the bottom, he says, if you don't do what I told you to do, it's gonna go that direction and your life will be shortened.

This is important.

And so when I'm dealing with these things, if it's not moving, I've got to begin to ask, now, Lord, is it am I missing it?

Where am I missing it?

It may not be disobedience, it may be something else, it may, whatever it may be, it may be something you need to change.

But if it is, what do you do?

Repent.

Repent.

That's why it's there.

I was at uh Jack Hayford before he went to heaven.

I was at his school of pastoral nurture one time in Van Nuys, California.

And he made a statement uh uh along these lines, talking about obedience.

And he said that he was uh eating chocolate one time and something it just didn't agree with him.

And he said, the Lord said to him, He said, Chocolate is to you as wine.

In other words, I don't want you eating it.

Now, if you like chocolate, God's not telling you to quit eating chocolate, but to him.

So he said, So for me to sit down and eat a piece of chocolate cake would be a sin.

It would be disobedience.

Now, people, here's the thing people don't think that that is such a big deal.

Well, a piece of cake, right, but if there's something deeper that God knows, this is gonna hurt you, this is gonna harm you.

There are things that God will keep people away from because of their personalities, and he knows if they partake of that, it's gonna hurt them.

Are you following me?

It can be that simple?

It can be that simple.

Most people are not missing it in anything big.

Most people that I know that are believing God for healing, it doesn't seem to be coming.

They're not committing adultery, they're not committing fornication, they're not spending time in the bar uh, you know, every weekend and messing up their life.

That's not what they're doing.

Most people that I know that are believing God for something in their body and it's not moving, they go to church on Wednesday, they go to church on Sunday, they're involved in their church, they love the Lord, they know the Word to a certain extent.

It's some little area that just needs to be adjusted.

Hallelujah.

So there are people that desire healing.

What they need is just to get obedient.

Amen.

I've told you the story that I was experiencing all those symptoms in my body a number of years ago, and the Lord kept bringing this one thing up to me.

And he would bring that up to me, and I would see it, and then I'd go partake in the one thing he was bringing up to me.

I know you've never been there.

I I understand.

But then one day I just decided, okay, I'm not gonna do this no more.

And I just quit eating, quit eating it.

Matter of weeks, all the symptoms were gone and never came back.

You know, years later, years later, I I was out at Miss Evelyn Hawkins, and I'll I'll blame Miss Evelyn.

But it was me.

She man, she had cooked a meal.

You know, Miss Evelyn can cook, and she had cooked a meal, and uh, and this item that the Lord told me not to that it was a problem for me was there, and boy, she had fixed it.

Oh man.

And so I had some of it.

Whoo! It it wasn't hours later, it was within 30 minutes, my body was saying, You a fool.

Because it it was just not working out, you know, and and just the pain that I I all the symptoms.

And uh, you know, my wife, you know, she wasn't very caring.

I told her what I was experiencing, she goes, You know better.

I wanted to say, go from me, holy one.

But I knew she was right.

Well, you know what?

I couldn't ask, I didn't ask the Lord, oh Lord, heal me.

He had already healed me.

I said, Lord, I repent for being nicely ignorant about this, you know?

Well, here's the thing.

That was years apart.

God hadn't changed his mind.

He knew it would still hurt me.

Is it a sin?

To me.

Not to you.

I can sit there and you have a big plate of what I don't need to eat.

Are you following me?

Charles Capp said something one time just revolutionized my life.

He said, God cannot say no to something he's already said yes to.

God cannot say no to healing when he's already said yes to it.

God's not withholding healing.

God never tells anybody, it's not my will to heal you.

God never withholds from anyone.

And people will say, well, then why are people dealing with this?

Why are these things going on in people's lives?

We've just shown some of the reasons in the past weeks today.

We'll we'll look at more of them.

There are things, you know, you'll hear people say, There's nothing God cannot do.

Oh, yes, there is.

There's a lot God can't do.

I mean, he can do anything that people will believe.

But if you won't believe, there's a plethora of things God cannot do.

God cannot heal me if I don't believe it.

God cannot prosper me if I don't believe it.

God cannot save me if I don't believe it.

Nobody will be in heaven and you say, How'd you get here?

By accident.

Nobody, nobody.

Nobody.

Everybody will believe.

The guy, you know, he's the guy was sitting there in the restaurant, guy came up and was passing out tracks, and he said, You know, I wanted to uh pass this out and see if you wanted to go to heaven.

And the guy goes, No, I don't want to go.

He goes, You don't want to go to heaven when you die?

He said, Oh, when you die, I thought you were getting up a load today.

No, I don't want to go today.

Right?

But that's that, amen.

So there are things that God can't do.

And it's not because he doesn't have the power.

A friend of mine said this statement years ago.

He said, God is never unwilling or unable, just uninvited.

He's never unwilling or unable.

That's what's so important about this.

And so if I'm if I'm dealing with something and maybe it's ongoing or I don't understand everything, deal with what you can understand.

Deal with the things that you can see, deal with the things you can change.

Right?

And we talk about that in a number of different things.

I I talk to a group of men all the time and I tell them the only thing that you can do is get up today and deal with today.

You can't do anything about tomorrow.

Whatever's coming tomorrow's coming.

What do you got to do?

You'll get up in the morning and deal with it.

But you can command the next 24 hours of your life.

That's all you can do.

Well, I have this to do and I have this to do and I have this to do and I have this going on.

Then you take it one piece at a time and you deal with it.

Right?

When when when our grandson was born, our oldest grandson, and and had all the physical issues that he had and a hole in his heart and all these other things.

I didn't take all of those things and and try to deal with all of them.

We talked to the doctor and we said, what's the first thing that needs to happen?

Well, he needs to gain weight.

Okay, let's get on that.

So Griffin Wayne Cosby is fat and flourishing.

Right?

That's what we said.

He's fat and flourishing.

And that's what we declared.

And what happened, what started happening?

Started gaining weight.

Started gaining weight because he had to gain a certain amount of weight before he could go home.

Right?

Now, what's the next thing?

Well, we got to deal with the heart issue because he's probably gonna have to have open heart surgery.

We started dealing with that heart issue, right?

And I've told you the story that it was the size of a quarter when he was born.

The doctor said there's no way to escape it.

He'll have to have open heart surgery.

And it went from that to we think we can uh uh go into a vein through his leg and do it that way.

And then they said, Well, no, we're gonna hold off on that.

And the last text I got from my daughter-in-law was we just came back from Griffin's cardiologist report, and the cardiologist has said he will never need heart surgery.

Why?

Because the hole closed to the size of a pinhead, right?

But notice we didn't start and try to deal with all that at once.

We can we can pick this off, then we can pick this off, right?

And while a lot of times people come up, I want you to pray with me because I'm in pain.

I want this pain to be alleviated.

Let's deal with what's causing the pain.

What's causing the pain?

Let's let's go to that, right?

Because the pain is a symptom of something else.

The young man when he called me and they said, Your son has 0% chance to live, see, half of his heart is missing.

He cannot live, he cannot survive, will not survive, no chance.

Right?

That child's alive today, nine years old, alive, with a fully formed heart.

But we didn't we didn't just we didn't just take that and say, okay, we believe we received.

We confess that he has a fully formed heart.

No, what do we need to do?

When they would say we need to do this procedure, they didn't just say, okay, do the procedure.

They prayed about it.

We asked God about it.

Is this going to help or hurt?

Right?

The only thing you can do, what you're dealing with in your body, watching online and hear what you're dealing with, the only thing you can do is deal with it today.

Well, they said six months.

You don't look at six months, deal with it today.

Deal with the next 24 hours.

I'm the healed of the Lord.

And get up in the morning.

I'm the healed of the Lord.

Get up in the morning, search your heart.

Lord, I don't want any unforgiveness.

I don't want anything in my life that's that's contrary to what you want.

Lord, if there's anything, if I'm holding a grudge against anybody, see that's not legalism.

That's you searching your heart.

That's you saying, I don't want to be disobedient to the things of God.

Lord, if I've been flippant about what I believe about you, if I've just been saying things like, well, you know, God can if he chooses to, that's a death sentence.

That's a death sentence.

When someone just leaves it up to chance.

Well, I'm leaving it up to God.

No, you're not.

You're leaving it up to chance.

You're just saying, well, if God chooses to, so you're rolling the dice, and hopefully you'll come up on the God side.

Most people don't.

Most people don't.

God is or God isn't.

I believe God is.

I believe God is the healer.

I believe that when I initiate that healing power of God through my faith, God will heal me every time.

Amen.

But I can't.

Faith is not just sitting back and seeing what happens.

Faith is an act.

Faith is an action.

Faith is a word.

Faith is a statement.

I've got to act on what God told me.

Amen.

Father God, we thank you.

You are my eternal, loving Heavenly Father.

You are my eternal Father that loves me with an everlasting love.

You love your people with an everlasting love.

You love every individual on this planet with an everlasting love.

And you have set forth in your precious word, your word that cannot lie, certain things, certain promises, certain guidelines.

Father, you said, we read it today.

You said you are the Lord that heals us.

You said you are the Lord that will take sickness and disease from our midst.

You said, Father, that if we walk obediently to the things that you've asked us to do, that you would take all sickness and disease from our midst.

Father, that all these blessings, one of which is healing, will come upon us.

Now, Father, because of your nature, we know this is not some legalistic system, some ritual, some hoops to jump through that you've put there.

And if we jump through enough hoops that you'll do what you promise, your promises are put in your word forever as a token and an understanding of what you want to do.

And then you ask us, just believe me.

And Father, we take the time today to say we believe you.

We believe what you said about healing us.

We believe what you said about us walking in health.

And we refuse any attempt of the enemy to muddy the water.

We know who the thief is.

We know who came to steal, kill, and destroy.

That's you, devil.

We know that's you.

Jesus said, I am come that they might have life, and they might have it to the full until it overflows.

Father, we understand, recognize, and believe that a life of sickness is not life to the full until it overflows.

It is a robbing of life.

Lord, no matter what it may be, they may not say it's terminal, but it may limit our life.

We refuse the limit in the name of Jesus.

We refuse the limit.

And Father, even if they have said it is terminal, your word says in the book of Romans, chapter 4, that God gives life to the dead and calls those things that be not as though they were.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

You said in Deuteronomy 23 that God turns the curse into a blessing.

So we do not, Father, our Father that loves us, our Father that cares for us with an everlasting love.

We do not just sit idly by on the sideline and say whatever will be, will be.

And if God decides to do it, he'll do it.

And Lord, pass by this way and touch me somehow, some kind of way, Lord.

Nope, nope, nope.

Father, your word says, if we believe in our heart and we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, we will be saved.

You also said that if we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth any promise that you made, we shall receive it.

For the word of God is nigh me, even in my heart, my mouth, and in my heart.

That's the word of faith that we preach.

So, Father, we have seen in your word that Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our diseases.

And you said three times in the word of God that with his stripes we were and we are healed.

That's what we choose to believe.

That's what we choose to believe.

And we take the initiative and we take, we, Father, we take the initiative and we grab that promise.

And we believe we walk healed and whole in the name of Jesus.

Now, Father, as we close, if there's anything, if there's anything that we need to change, reveal it to us.

Reveal it to us, and we'll change it.

So we can walk free and walk in everything that you want us to walk in.

Because it's all there, Father.

The platter of healing is there, the platter of victory is there.

You said, you said that it's there for the taking.

Whosoever shall believe, shall be saved, redeemed, rescued, delivered, healed, made prosperous in the name of Jesus.

So Holy Spirit, right now, before we leave this place, reveal to us.

Holy Spirit, we search right now.

Is there anything, anything that I need to change?

Any area of disobedience that I need to reverse and walk back in.

Any area, Father, anything.

Hallelujah.

Father, this is not a public inspection, this is a heart inspection.

And we ask you, help us to see it.

And we'll re we'll we'll we'll change it.

We'll reverse course.

We'll get it fixed in the name of Jesus.

And that that blockage will be removed in the name of Jesus.

Now, Father, as we leave today, I thank you for touching your people.

I thank you for healing them.

I thank you for healing every person online.

I thank you for touching their bodies.

Father, I curse cancer.

I curse cancer in the name of Jesus.

I defy cancer, a right to exist in the bodies of the people that are believing to be free from it.

Father, I defy it in the name of Jesus.

You foul spirit from the pit of hell.

I defy your right to exist in their bodies.

Jesus Christ has shed blood for them.

You shall pick up your armaments and leave.

I defy heart disease to exist.

I defy it to exist in the lives of your people.

Father, we have been redeemed from it in Jesus' name.

We've been set free from the curse of the law.

We've been bought out of it in the name of Jesus.

And Father, may that same tenacity rise in every person under the sound of my voice.

And we thank you for it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our healer, our Lord, our soon coming King.

We thank you for it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

Glory to God.