The Two-Hundred-Eighty-Ninth (Sickness)

We’ve touched on some of this week’s topic in previous studies, but have never really taken a deep dive into it so that’s what we’re going to do.  Before we get started though, we have to recognize that this topic is by no means cut and dry.  There are a lot of unknowns because scripture is certainly was not intended to focus on details about sickness and healing.

We can, however, look at what scripture actually does say and formulate what it says about these things.  That’s what we’re going to do this week, but while we do that we’re going to ensure that we cover what it’s not necessarily saying.  This is the part of studying scripture that a lot of people get wrong because they make assumptions about what’s not there and then those assumptions get used to formulate their views.  

There is plenty in scripture about sickness.  From proverbs of advice to accounts of various people becoming sick to people being miraculously healed in various ways.  While we won’t find definitive statements telling us every possible reason someone gets sick, I’d like to start off by asking you to consider the possibility that the only two reasons someone gets sick is either because of disobedience and rebellion to YHWH or because of His rod of correction (Psalm 23:4) which He uses to teach us things.

Now, this is probably a bit of a controversial stance to have, but as you’ve probably come to realize by now, I’m no stranger to making controversial statements!  Today, I believe theologians and pastors avoid going so far as to state this regarding sickness because inevitably you’ll get into questions about specific people and sicknesses and being asked why those things happened to those people.  It’s the “why do bad things happen to good people,” question.  There’s really no good answer to those types of questions because we don’t know everything about the situation.

What was in that person’s heart?  What did they think about constantly?  What did they do in their life?  What was their stance towards YHWH and Yeshua?  Even Yeshua’s own disciples asked these types of questions when they came across people with ailments (John 9:2).

Again, I don’t know with absolute certainty every possible reason someone gets sick, but what I do know is what I read in scripture and what I see in my experiences.  As you’ve likely come to realize through various statements made in previous weeks, I have come to the understanding through my experiences and research that modern medicine is not, and never has been, about true healing.  It’s always been about treating symptoms rather than cause, and as it developed it became more and more about promoting drugs in order to carry out those treatments.

It seems every week I find out something new about the history of medicine and the things on which our current medical understanding and protocols are based.  These new things are always showing that the bases for our understanding and protocols are either questionable but presented as fact, or just outright fraudulent.  That’s not to say anyone involved is necessarily evil or that people in the medical industry today are evil or trying to hurt people.  In fact, I think most of them have good hearts and are really trying to help their fellow man.  I just think deception is rampant in the industry and most, if not all, have fallen into that deception in a desire to help others in their time of need.  Even I, who has never been in the industry, was deceived for the longest time.

All that to say that while scripture doesn’t specifically tell us every possible reason someone gets sick, I don’t believe modern medicine tells us the real reason people get sick either.  Same as the basis for our understanding in medicine is not based on truth, the basis for why we get sick is not based on truth.  There’s multiple examples of various “incurable” diseases being cured, so how do you explain that despite modern medicine claiming something is incurable it has been cured?  

The doctors will tell you it’s all about probabilities and statistics and that those cases are unique, but from what I’ve seen, there is clear evidence that there are repeatable ways to cure those diseases.  In many cases, if not all, the cures have to do with cleansing the body of toxins and changing what a person puts into their body.  Here’s another possibly controversial statement: With all the research I’ve done, things I’ve seen, and scriptural realizations I’ve come to, I believe we actually have the ability, reliably, to live many, many decades longer than what modern medicine tells us we can.

What do I mean by that?  To put it another way, I believe that if believers do certain things, talk and act a certain way, and think a certain way, no matter who they are, they will be able to have an Abraham-like lifespan, if not longer.  And Abraham lived to be 175 years old.

With that, let’s get into scripture so you can see what it says about sickness.  We can’t go too far into this without acknowledging the scores of examples in scripture of miraculous healing by either YHWH Himself or by Him through Yeshua.  We’ll definitely get into specifics, but just overall this tells us that whatever the cause of any given sickness is, it is not outside of YHWH’s power and authority to correct it.  That may be obvious, but it needs to be stated because there is an aspect of what a person’s thinks that comes into the healing process.  If we don’t come right out and say that YHWH has the ability to heal any sickness we could ever get, then we have no basis from which to have the faith that He will heal us.

As far as the causes of sickness according to scripture, what you’ll find is that it tells us outright two ways people can get sick: sin and how we think.  We’ll start with the second one because it has far less verses associated with it.  Most of them come from Proverbs.

What we find in scripture about our thoughts leading to sickness is that negative thoughts are the ones that lead to this.  And they don’t necessarily have to be “active” thoughts, by which I mean ones that we consciously choose to have.  For instance, if we choose to be envious we’re told that those thoughts rot the bones (Proverbs 14:30).  

It can also just be circumstances that lead us to think and subsequently feel a certain way which result in sickness.  We’re told that a broken, or crushed, spirit dries up our bones (Proverbs 17:22).  This is a metaphorical statement that’s referencing how a plant can wither and die due to lack of water.  

Both of these examples are based on given circumstances we’re in that are somewhat out of our control.  We don’t typically become envious without someone around us doing or having something to be envious of, and we don’t typically have a crushed spirit unless something happens in our lives to cause that.  So, what that means is we have to be conscious of, and choose how we think in, those situations because if we go to the negative thoughts and feelings it can affect our health.  By the way, even modern studies have shown this scriptural principle to be true.

However, it’s not just thoughts and feelings based on circumstances that scripture talks about.  We also see Paul talk about getting sick and why it happened to him.  In his case, he states that he got sick in order to teach him something.  Specifically, it was meant to keep him from being conceited, or prideful in himself (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).  

Now, what’s interesting about Paul’s statements here is that he’s suggesting that he was prevented from becoming conceited, but the context rather suggests that he had become conceited and became sick because of it.  In this chapter, and actually starting at the end of the previous chapter, he talks about boasting in things that show his weakness (2 Corinthians 11:30-12:7).  However, in the end he ends up talking about revelations received from YHWH.

In this discussion, he claims revelations were given to “a man in Christ,” suggesting someone other than him, but then talks about boasting in him rather than himself because of those “surpassingly great revelations.”  Why go to such great lengths of mentioning an unnamed man unless it was him, and why would he be worried about being credited with these revelations if they were actually given to someone else?  It’s much more likely that he was boasting for himself about these revelations and ended up getting sick because of it, so the point here is that YHWH uses sickness sometimes to teach us things about how we’re thinking or acting.  

Pride is a dangerous thing, especially when it comes to something YHWH is doing for you or giving to you like the revelations and visions Paul was talking about.  You could even argue that pride was actually the root cause of man’s fall into sin because Adam and Eve subconsciously believed they knew better than YHWH when it came to the forbidden fruit and its effects on them.  By the way, before we move into the sin aspect of sickness, to close the loop on Paul’s situation in case it wasn’t clear, the thorn in the flesh he mentions is a euphemism for sickness.  The Greek word for thorn there is skolops, which figuratively means a bodily annoyance or disability.

As stated before, the vast majority of causes of sickness in scripture are identified as sin.  Sin being defined in scripture as lawlessness, or not following YHWH’s Law (1 John 3:4).  However, there are some confusing statements made regarding this connection of sin and sickness.

For example, in the first healing situation we alluded to earlier, where the disciples asked Yeshua if a blind man or his parents were the ones whose sin caused his blindness.  Yeshua states that none of them sinned and the reason he was blind was so that YHWH’s works could be seen in him (John 9:3-7).  This is quite confusing because we know from other verses that everyone has sinned (Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8-10), but I believe this is another case where context is key.

Yeshua is not saying that none of them ever sinned, and I believe he’s also not saying that the blindness wasn’t caused by sin.  If the sin wasn’t his parents’ or his, perhaps this was a generational curse imposed on him based on the sins of his forefathers (Exodus 20:5).  While I admit it is entirely possible that YHWH caused a grown man to be blind from birth for the sole purpose of Yeshua healing him in that moment and showing YHWH’s glory, what I’ve found in scripture is that nearly every account of sickness or affliction outright talks about sin being the cause.  In the few cases that don’t mention sin specifically, there is nothing to suggest that the person was completely sinless, and we already identified the fact that the only completely sinless person is Yeshua.

That means in this one case where Yeshua states that neither the parents nor the blind man sinned, He must be making this statement in order to provide a teaching lesson to the disciples.  When you read what He says next, He’s not saying that it wasn’t from sin, He’s saying that there’s a different way to look at his blindness than from the aspect of sin causing it.  Namely, we can look at it as an opportunity of being a light to the world, to the people that are suffering and in darkness, so they can see the truly awesome and immeasurable power of YHWH through the healing He provides.

In fact, Yeshua did this all throughout His ministry.  Time after time, and person after person, Yeshua healed.  There was no requirement to follow Him, although many did.  There was no requirement to study and recite a catechism, confess their sins, be a Jew, or even simply profess their faith in Him.  In most cases, He healed the sick and raised the dead regardless of who they were and without requiring anything of those He healed (Matthew 4:23, 8:16, 9:35, 12:13-15, Luke 13:10-13, Luke 6:6-10).  It even says that He did these things because of His compassion for a hurt and broken people (Matthew 14:14).

There were certainly some healings that Yeshua or scripture mentioned a person’s faith (Matthew 9:2, 9:20, Mark 5:34, Luke 17:19).  However, those are in the minority.  There is also a specific situation where Yeshua told the individual to stop sinning after they were healed (John 5:14).

The interesting thing about that particular event is that while the Greek version suggests that sin was the cause of him being an invalid for 38 years, the Hebrew version of this gospel says Yeshua told him not to sin, “lest a bad thing happens to you.”  This essentially confirms the fact that sin can cause bad things to happen to someone, and when connected to the fact that this man was an invalid it suggests that one of those bad things is that the person gets sick (using the word sick here to mean any disease, ailment, or other bad things that happen to the body).  We can see this blatantly stated in the Old Testament though, so we don’t need to wonder if making this connection for this particular verse is accurate or not.

In the exodus from Egypt, YHWH told the Israelites that following His commandments will keep them from getting all the diseases that were inflicted on the Egyptians (Exodus 15:26).  After the Law was given, they were told again that if they keep them, YHWH will remove all sicknesses from them and not give them any of the diseases that were in Egypt (Deuteronomy 7:12-15).  In the blessings and cursings, for following or not following the Law, respectively, not following the Law results in disasters, severe and lasting plagues, terrible and chronic sicknesses, all the diseases from Egypt, and every sickness and plague not specifically written in scripture being brought upon you until you are destroyed (Deuteronomy 28:58-61).

In examples of people being sick in scripture, you also see sin as the cause.  Jehoram was sick because of his sin (2 Chronicles 21:13-15).  Hezekiah was healed through repentance, meaning he had sinned (2 Kings 20:1-11).  And Psalms also tells us that sin results in YHWH’s wrath which is manifested in our being unhealthy (Psalms 38:3-4).

I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that sin and negative thoughts are the cause of all sicknesses, but I can tell you that those things have the ability to make you sick.  There’s a reason YHWH gave commandments, and they weren’t just for the ancient Israelites to follow.  In fact, this is proven in scripture when you see that YHWH sent animals to non-Israelites to kill them for not following His Law (2 Kings 17:24-26).  That’s not sickness, of course, but the point is that they were receiving consequences for not following the Law just the same as Israel (who, in that example, had just been conquered and displaced by Assyria for not following the Law, by the way).

Did you know that the single, most effective cause of the drop in the amount of disease among western nations has been improved sanitation?  YHWH’s commandments already told us that would be the case! (Deuteronomy 23:12-13).  YHWH gave commandments to prevent things like sickness from happening to us, and Yeshua connected those commandments to how we think and how we feel in our hearts (Matthew 5:21-28 , 38-48).  Yes, we can be healed of sickness through the power of YHWH, but wouldn’t it be even better to never get sick in the first place?!

We hope you have a great week!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)