50 / 298
The Origin of Sickness
44
No, you’re going to get paid. You cannot just sin and sin and sin. What people don’t understand
is that crying because you got caught is not repenting. What does repentance mean? “Repent
”
means “to change.” You can cry all night, and if you don’t change the next day, you didn’t
repent; nothing has changed. Since you didn’t repent, you’re going to keep getting paid, with
death.
This is something I think a lot of people don’t understand. They want the blessings of God, but
they want to do what
they
want to do. Can you just yield to your flesh, have all kinds of affairs,
hurt people left and right, steal, and lie, and then live a long time, stay healthy, and prosper in
God’s best?
Some say, “God will forgive me.” He will, and He loves you, but it will cost you. Even though
God loves you and forgives you, you can still disqualify yourself from His best in your life.
Don’t belittle sin. Sin is serious. Sin is why this world is in a mess, and it irritates me that people
blame God. Religious people do it all of the time. “Well, we just don’t know what God is doing
with all of these wars and shortages and famines...”
Maybe they’re trying to couch it in nice tones, but they’re saying that God is behind these little
children dying from AIDS. They’re saying God has some mystical purpose in whole nations of
innocent people being wiped out because they’re a different religion from someone else. They’re
saying God has all of this in control, and we don’t know why, but He’s got some purpose in it.
No! No! A thousand times NO! God is a good God. He made everything perfect, and sin messed
it up.
Why are all of these terrible things happening today? Because man has a free choice, and man
has chosen to sin and disobey. But even in the middle of it, you can choose to believe, submit,
and obey, and you can be blessed. In the midst of an ugly, mean world, you can be protected. In
the midst of a germ-ridden, disease-filled planet, you can be healed. In the midst of shortage and
economic upheaval in the world, you can be prosperous. Yes, you can! You can if you’ll obey,
listen, and believe.
Where did sickness come from? God didn’t create it. It’s not part of His plan. Sickness is a part
of death. By one man, sin entered in, and death came because of that sin, because the wages of
sin is death. (Romans 5:12)
You say, “It doesn’t say ‘sickness.’” Yes, it does. It also says poverty. It also says every kind of
harassment and confusion and any form of death. If you get enough poverty in your life, you’re
dead. Enough poverty means you don’t even have enough food and drink to keep your body
alive. If you get enough sickness in your body, you’re dead, right? It’s just different degrees of
death. None of it would be here if it hadn’t been for sin, and to say that sickness—which is a
product of sin—is the will of God, is tantamount to saying that what caused it is the will of God.
You might as well say, “Sin is the will of God.” If there had never been any sin, there would
never have been any death, sickness, or poverty.