January 10: God will take away sickness

You must serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove sickness from your midst. No woman will miscarry her young or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.  (Exodus 23:25,26 — NET)

This passage is part of the promises and laws that God gave His people at Mount Sinai, after they had been delivered from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. The Ten Commandments are listed three chapters earlier, and God makes it clear that in order to receive these blessings of protection of health and long life, they need to be obedient to what He commands. That was His covenant. His people were to fulfill their end of the agreement, and He would be bound by this solemn pact to fulfill His.

But human nature is fleshly and selfish, and this simple, straightforward covenant was often tossed aside as God’s people preferred to live any way they wanted, and then had to suffer the consequences of their foolishness when they found that they were no longer under His protection. Over and over again.

We can see that God does not consider sickness, miscarriages, barrenness, and premature death what we were created for. But we live in a fallen world where these manifestations of evil exist all around us. Jesus’ death and resurrection destroyed the power of death and disease as Isaiah says, “by His stripes we are healed.” We should not accept these things as God’s will, but should fight for healing and the abundant life that Jesus promised. But first we have to ask ourselves, are we obeying His commands?  Do we truly serve God as our Lord, or do we serve our own comforts first? Do we just run to Him in trouble when we want Him to fix our problems, and then discard Him to live by our own rules?

God’s covenant to Israel was the foundation of the greater covenant He made with us by sending Jesus to die a sacrificial death to rescue us from the kingdom of darkness. The need for us to serve Him in obedience is just as crucial now as it was during the time of the Exodus. We can still expect protection for our health and families, but more than that, total victory over all evil that attacks us. Surrender our lives to Him, serve, follow, obey, and abundant blessings are ours. Only the blind would turn down this amazing covenant. No doubt, we’re getting the better end of the deal, by far!