Please turn with me to the book of Exodus chapter four, beginning in verse one. Exodus chapter four, beginning in verse one. And Moses answered and said, But behold, they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent. And Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand. But they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee. And the Lord said furthermore unto him, put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous of snow. And he said, put thy hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again and plucked it out of his bosom and behold, It was turned again as his other flesh. And it shall come to pass that they will not believe they neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass that they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river and pour it upon the dry land. And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. I have heard it said that we live in a health conscious age. I have been thinking about that, and I'm not sure that that's true. You'll have to judge for yourself. I am pretty sure that we live in a body conscious age and that we have grown vain but because of this there certainly has been a lot of scientific research into quality of life longevity, the quantity of life and even appearance And probably for every part of study that there's been in these things, there's probably been five parts of study on how to market them and make money from them. But it's very interesting with all of this effort and probably in the history of the world, relatively large proportions of the population devoted to the study of health and further research and these sorts of things. At least practically speaking, we seem to be less competent than the ancients. So there has been much studying and much research and yet not much in the way of advance and perhaps quite a bit in the way of regress especially in recent decades. I'm not primarily concerned about the physical components of health although that certainly is an issue but it does seem when health is considered there is a much neglected factor and that is piety as a people and as a culture we have forgotten that it is the Most High God that gives health and sends disease He has established natural connections to help us make these connections but we miss it sin has a great tendency to bring with it misery and disease. We know this. People overindulge with drink and there is liver disease. They overindulge with the tobacco and there is lung disease. They overindulge with food and all sorts of other things and there is illness that accompanies these things. when there is immorality, there are other kinds of STDs and so on. God has fixed in nature that the sins would bring with them their own judgments. But do we ever lift our eyes to consider the one who has sent those disease? We seem consumed with the natural second causes of these things. But they are not the ultimate cause. They are the second cause. On the other hand, God has established a connection between holiness and happiness and health. You think about temperance, industriousness, moderation, faith, quiet confidence, and the cheerfulness that that brings. All of these things tend to wellness. Solomon was not the first nor the last to observe that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, and that a faith in God can quiet a man's heart and keep him well, even in the most violent storms of life. But as I mentioned, although the natural connections are plain, modern man seems to only consider the second causes, and so he misses the lesson. the lesson that comes from God concerning sin and the misery that it brings holiness and the happiness that it brings and God frequently uses second causes but he also has other things in his providence that prevents us you would think from becoming consumed with second causes because of course he can you can employ second causes for good health But he can visit you with disease in spite of them. He can take a very small factor against health and make it large. In other words, he can work above the means or he can simply make you sick without any means at all. And the contrary is true with respect to health as well. The scriptures are always encouraging us to look up. The secondary causes have their own importance, but their importance pales in comparison with the Most High God. And this is all portrayed as part of His covenant avenging sword. When He is displeased with the people, You can see this in many prophetic texts. We actually saw it not too long ago in Revelation chapter six in the fourth seal. Death riding upon the pale horse and the fourfold judgment that it brings. This is very common. You see it in Ezekiel chapter five and a lot of prophetic texts. The sword. Do what you will to maintain health. If warfare and violence comes into your land, you may not live very long. Famine. If God doesn't send rain, things don't grow and everything grinds to a halt. Pestilence, it can send extraordinary diseases and also wild beasts and other pests to vex men and even to destroy their lives. Again, these are portrayed in the scripture as God's covenant avenging sword. But Israel had a different promise concerning covenant blessing. And Exodus chapter 15, he says, if thou will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God and will do that which is right in his sight and will give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes. I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee. So even in a land where a pestilence is going to break out and diseases are going to infect the Egyptians, what's the natural expectation from secondary causes? What was it in medieval Europe when the plague is spreading? What's the natural expectation? It's not going to stop with Egyptians. It's going to infect their neighbors. And you remember, we've already seen that the Egyptians and the Israelites were largely mixed together, a mixed multitude. And yet God says, I will visit them with disease, but I will impose upon you none of these diseases. I am the Lord that healeth thee. Most remarkable. Remember where we are. We are still at the burning bush. Moses has received his commission for the deliverance of Israel. Even after assurances from God, he remains concerned about The Israelite reception. They didn't receive my mission 40 years ago. Why would they receive it now? And so God gives him three confirming miracles. Last time we looked at the serpentine rod, the rod that was cast upon the ground and became a serpent and taken by the tail, it became a rod again. And now we come to the second miracle, which is the leprous hand. Verse six. And the Lord said furthermore unto him, put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom. And when he took it out, behold, his hand was a leprous as snow. Just like the first miracle, this miracle is actually composed with two miracles. The first miracle is the healthy hand made suddenly leprous. And it is a miracle. There's an action. His hand is put into his bosom. The result is that it returns from his bosom, leprous. Now, when you consider the nature of the things involved, namely his healthy hand and his healthy bosom, there is nothing in the nature of either to produce this extraordinary effect, namely a sudden change to a leprous hand. And remember, effects in the natural realm are produced by the causes and there is something in the cause, in the nature of the objects that are involved in the cause that produces the effect. But here, there's nothing in a healthy hand or in a healthy bosun that's going to suddenly produce leprosy. If you doubt this, I propose an experiment for you. Try this. Spend as many years as you like and keep sticking your hand into your shirt and pulling it back out again and see if you ever do produce leprosy by that. I don't suspect that you ever will. What is this leprosy? This is a more difficult question than what you might imagine. Over the years, I've actually had occasion to spend a handful of hours in some close study, researching, trying to come to some clear notion of what this leprosy is. And after these hours of study and labor, and reading everything I could find on the subject, I don't know. I can go this far. If we were to ask the question if it is the same as modern leprosy, I would say probably not. So it's something a little bit different. You say, why not? In Leviticus chapter 13, it is portrayed as being able to infect garments and houses. Same word and same symptoms in the garments and houses. This is very peculiar. Also, as far as I know, and I'm no expert, but the ancients talk about it and the difference that the leprosy that they knew even in the evil times was not curable. They were working on some treatments that slow it down and those sorts of things. But as far as I knew, once leprosy took hold, it never reversed itself. I don't know that that's true. I don't know if a modern doctor would affirm that. I think that's the case. But this was a kind of leprosy that could Passover, you would be shut up, sequestered, quarantined for a time and the priests would come and check upon you and it's possible that you could be cleansed of this leprosy. So for those two reasons, but particularly because of the infection in the garments and houses, I don't think that this is quite what we would think of as far as modern leprosy where it affects the skin and it descends into the flesh and the flesh actually begins to decay and die even while the subject lives so we have a problem and when you consider that we have three and a half millennia between Moses and now you can see part of the difficulty it is possible that this disease has passed out of the world Some have hypothesized that perhaps this form of leprosy was a special and peculiar judgment of God used only at this time and used primarily with his own people. That's possible. It could be that it has changed over the centuries. it's perhaps some mutation in its structure which has led to different symptoms and these sorts of things but this makes it very difficult to expose it really all we have is there's some reason to doubt it's quite like modern leprosy and then we're just left to the descriptions that are given to us primarily in Leviticus chapter 13 if you're interested in this I would suggest you go and and pulls exegetical labors and read through Leviticus 13 and you'll see what the ancients had to say about this some arguing that it was like contemporary leprosy but others arguing that these things seem to be quite different they are similar at least in this regard that it was some sort of noxious skin disease and And it's described here as being like snow. But even then there's some debate about how it's snowy. Is it snowy because of its color? I think probably at least in part. Is it snowy because it was also producing some sort of flaking or scaling of the skin? Also a lively possibility. From the scriptures and its description of this leprosy, it does appear that this white leprosy was reckoned among the worst varieties. So here we have to we have to lean upon the medical knowledge of the ancients. But this did appear to be among the worst varieties. Leviticus 13 verse three reads in this way. The priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh. And when the hair in the plague is turned white and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy and the priest shall look on him and pronounce him unclean. If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh and in sight be not deeper than the skin and then the hair thereof be not turned white, then the priest shall shut shut up him. But half the plague, seven days. So this appeared to have been a particularly bad variety. And you remember when God wanted to show his displeasure with Miriam in controverting the authority of her brother Moses, he gave Miriam the white variety as an evident token of his judgment and his anger. And Moses seems very concerned in Numbers 12 that she is going to die, that it's eating her up quickly. This leprosy, perhaps even this miracle, might have given rise to a fiction of the heathen writers that is surprisingly widespread, that Moses and the Israelites were actually driven out of Egypt. Not that they were seeking release and then let go, but that the Egyptians expelled them at the advice of an oracle, pagan oracle, because of leprosy and other skin diseases. Some of the authors, there's a 3rd century B.C. Egyptian historian by the name of Manetho. We don't have his work anymore, but Josephus cites it in his work against Apian and controverts Manetho's conclusions. Lysimachus is another that was found in Josephus that recorded this. Trogus Probably slightly better known to most of us first century BC Roman historian relates the story Tacitus is somebody we probably all know he relates this So from the third century BC to the first you can see it Circulating around in the literature, but I call this a fiction or a fable because we know some things from the scriptures and in some other ways from evident reason and Do you remember that the scriptures make a lot of the fact that Israel went out hale and whole. When they marched out, there were no weak ones, lingering ones that were left behind. Do you remember part of the blessing of wilderness wandering was that their feet did not swell and these sorts of things. They went out able-bodied. They went out with a promise that God would put none of the diseases of the Egyptians upon them. And, while they were in the wilderness, they had laws for sequestering such a disease so that it never did take widespread hold in the population. So, as I said, it does appear in the wilderness, wandering apart from extraordinary judgments from God, it does not appear that they had very much additional trouble with disease. Just the extraordinary judgments upon their sins. In verse 7, And he said, Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again and plucked it out of his bosom. And behold, it was turned again as his other flesh. So this is the second of the second miracle or second sub miracle of the grand miracle. This is the leprous hand now made whole and healthy. The action is the same, and yet now it produces the contrary result. The leprous hand is returned to the bosom and plucked out, and the leprous hand is restored. What there might be about bringing a leprous hand into contact with a healthy bosom to make the hand healthy again is not clear. In the nature of the case, it appears that this effect cannot be produced by the natural causes, which is why These things would be esteemed by those that saw it as evidence of divine power underlying Moses' mission. What does all of this mean? You remember one of our doctrines last week was that the miracles of scripture are not bare acts of power, but they are usually significant. They are signs. They point to things beyond themselves and not just mere power. Jesus opening blind eyes is his ability to make the sinner see light and opening deaf ears and raising the dead. Physical miracles that pointed to spiritual realities. Remember the general significance. I have good confidence in this. We have the serpent, which is a poisonous creature, and leprosy, which is a frightful disease, and water turned into blood. the pollution of the Nile, the source of Egyptian life, all of these miracles come with a certain foreboding and an expectation of bad things to come. God is offended. You wonder if in this one perhaps there's some idea that Moses is going to be the agent of afflicting sore disease as well as removing it. To me, if you're coming to a more particular sign involved here, I think that that's likely to be it. I have pretty good confidence going that far. Interpreters have given some more particular significances that are perhaps possible, but I think By their very variety it shows that perhaps it's not a good idea to try to go forward. Some interpreters have suggested that the hand represents Egypt, that the strong hand of Egypt is going to be weakened and destroyed. That seems to leave out the second part of the miracle altogether, which is the restoration. probably a little stronger. Some have suggested that the hand represents Israel. It has become a leprous in Egypt through sin, but it will be cleansed in the bosom of Moses. What's the problem with this though? It became leprous in the bosom of Moses as well. It doesn't quite fit And some have thought that the hand is representative of Moses' own hand in involvement in this whole business, that Moses would be abased, that he is liable to all of the infirmities that everyone else is, and that he is upheld and made whole only by the power of God himself. That seems a little more likely to me, but it's hard to say for sure. So to go to those areas where we have greater confidence, we derive a doctrine. God often vexes the wicked and chastens his children with illness. In the case of the reprobate, in the case of the wicked, God will frequently punish even in this life with disease. And as we mentioned in our text, the leprous hand carries with it an ominous message. God has the ability to send disease upon a disobedient people. And as the ten plagues unfold, this is part of their unfolding. He will send disease upon the Egyptians. When you think about our own nation, I think that we see that God has in some measure already drawn the sword At the very least, he is rattling his saber. He has brought some level of vexation upon us. New York, New Orleans, all sorts of strange weather phenomenon, one of which wiped out the city of New Orleans, but continuing to trouble all funneling into the economy. Becoming a judgment upon our fiscal sins But I'd have to say that at the present. He is certainly not yet visit us with sore disease, but we do see a little something There is a certain madness in the fact that we are destroying ourselves in spite of understanding I'm not a great expert in these things, but what we have done to our food is in order to increase profits seems to be contrary to good sense and self-preservation for after all what good is money going to do you if you end up in the ground but the destruction of the wide variety of plant life that God has created for the sustenance of man and then the genetic tampering with a lot of that food It's frightening, and what the end of it will be is difficult to say. So who knows? God is angry, and if we start to see sore diseases erupt in the land, we will know that this comes at the hand of the Most High. A people so understanding in such matters can't attribute those things to the secondary causes. But we can attribute these things to the displeasure of the Most High and our wickedness in this matter. But also, God does chasten his children with illness from time to time. And this, I hope, will motivate us to make a good use of the supper. We are now awake after the fact. Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 First Corinthians 11, picking up with verse 27. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. And by damnation there, you'll want to read something like judgment or punishment. Damnation probably to our ears carries this eternal notion that's not being conveyed in the text. But we eat and drink judgment to ourselves, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause, many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep. God chastening his children with illness. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. So we notice here that the Lord does chasten even his own children from time to time with illness. We exhorted here to judge ourselves so that we need not be judged by the Lord. Indeed, the stricter we are with ourselves, the less strict he has to be with us. Parents and children, I hope understand this, When the children govern themselves well, they are in need of less government. When they are strict with themselves, it's not necessary for the parents to be strict with them. And there's a similar dynamic being portrayed here. If we would judge ourselves, bring ourselves to an abhorrence of our sins, and repent of these fully and freely, then God is not going to have to make an approach to us with the rod. and spank us until we relent and repent and let go of it. And then finally, the purpose of his chastening, and I hope that this helps justify my lightening of the language of damnation, he does all of this so that his children would not be condemned with the world. So it's not an eternal damnation that's in view in verse 29. He does this so that we won't be damned, so that we won't be condemned with the world. So the world is vexed with sore disease unto death and an eternal judgment. But the saints are chastened with illness unto spiritual improvement and eternal life. The second doctrine Jehovah our God heals us. I do know that from time to time there has been sickness in our midst and weakness in the body. Most of you know that this is one of the reasons I love to preach through books. I think if you just sat me down with a piece of paper and a pen and said, you know, make a list of a hundred things that you'd want to preach about. This probably wouldn't come up. And yet by preaching straight through books, we bring up things. The Lord brings up things with us that wouldn't occur to our mind. It might occur to another mind. It wouldn't necessarily occur to mine. But God heals us, and this is applicable corporately and individually. So he heals us corporately and as a people. In scripture he talks about healing a land, if you remember in the Chronicles. So God does chase him with illness, but he also heals. In our family worship, we have been going through the book of Job, and not everything that Eliphaz has to say is sound, but a lot of it is. And in Job chapter 5, he certainly gives Job some solid divinity when he says, Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth. Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. For he maketh sore, and he bindeth up. He wounded, and his hands make whole. This is certainly the doctrine of the rest of the scripture. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us not to despise the chastening of the Lord, and to lift up the hands that hang down, that this is a sign of love. These are precious words. He does chasten, he does make sore, but he binds up. He wounds, but he also makes whole. He is a God of infinite skill in this regard. If we would put ourselves in the best possible position for total health, we will do so by being reconciled with this God through the Gospel. And we will do it through a humble and obedient walk with Him. Part of which is a due observance of the secondary means, it is true, that is part of a pious walk with God. But the first bit of business to which we must attend, if we would put ourselves in the best possible way for total health, body and soul, we will be reconciled to God with the blood of the cross, and we will walk with Him humbly and piously. I could wish that our nation would hear it, that fallen men would hear it, and that even the redeemed Christian could hear it and one final thing before I leave off because I am sure that this is the highest wisdom but very difficult for us to walk and to practice if we would listen to his word in season if we would take heed to his word in a timely way then the rod would not be necessary and so when sickness comes we would have the comfort knowing that we are not being vexed with the world unto condemnation and destruction, and we could know that we're not even being chastened, but rather, as God did with Job, God is glorifying himself through this illness in some other way, but we have peace with him, and ultimate healing in the resurrection of the dead. But if the body will not be quiet, We find something very precious in the mean season of the quietness of mind and peace of conscience knowing that we are reconciled with God and walking with Him. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. And as He said to the Israelites in the ancient times, so now I declare unto you as His messenger, I am the Lord that healeth thee. I thought we would conclude with Psalm 103, verses 1-5 to the tune London New. Once again, David sums up in a few words what it took me an hour to say. Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God and not forgetful be of all his gracious benefits he hath bestowed on thee. All thine iniquities, who doth most graciously forgive, who thy diseases, all and pains doth heal and thee relieve. The forgiveness of iniquity and the healing of all of our diseases and pains. In verse three. Psalm 103 verses 1 through 5 to the tune London New. Please write.