HopeLives365

Mark Finley: Two ways of life, two sets of principles, two voices, two choices. Friends, the voices of Eden, the voice of our Lord still ring in our ears every single day.

Guest (Male): This is HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message, "Two Voices: Voice of Health, Voice of Sickness." And remember, you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with HopeLives365 and Pastor Mark by going to HopeLives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: Everything was new, absolutely everything. The earth was new, and so was Adam. The only voice Adam had ever heard was the voice of his Creator. In Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17, we find one of the first things Adam heard God's voice tell him was this, and I quote: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'"

But soon, Adam's wife, Eve, found herself listening to another voice, a voice coming from a serpent in the tree God had warned Adam about. Genesis 3, verses 1 to 4, tells us what this second voice told her: "Now the serpent was more cunning or more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, "You shall not eat of every tree of the garden"?'

And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die."' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"

God's voice said to Eve, "Don't eat of this one tree in the garden; if you do, you'll die." But speaking through the serpent, Satan challenged that. "What?" he said. "You've got to be kidding me." I'm paraphrasing, of course. "Did God really say that? He knows it's not true. He's lying to you. The truth is, if you eat of this tree, you'll have the same godlike powers he does. He's holding out on you."

Two voices, two choices. Eve first, then Adam, made their choice. It was not the inconsequential choice of which flower to plant in their garden home. This was a life and death choice, and tragically, the built-in consequence of their choice was death. But for the plan of salvation God activated at that moment, if it hadn't been for that plan of salvation, if that plan of salvation was never put in place, human history would have ended right then and right there.

Today, you'll make countless choices—small choices like whether to have bran flakes or oatmeal for breakfast, choices as large as career and life work and life companion. But today, realize it or not, you will also be making choices that lead either to life or to death. The same two voices from Eden will be doing their best to persuade you of which choice is best.

Perhaps you've already chosen a life insurance policy, and probably also a health insurance policy. You've put out hard-earned money because there's little else that could be more important to you than your health and your life. What you may not fully realize is that there are two great voices battling for your most important choices. Also, they are competing for your life and health plans.

What do I mean? For the next few minutes, I'd like to clearly lay out these plans for you and show you the sure results of choosing them. God has a life assurance health plan. That doesn't mean that if we follow God's plan we'll never get sick. What it does mean is that following God's plans for our life and health reduces the risk of disease.

Speaking for God, the Apostle John wrote this in 3 John, chapter 1, verse 2: "Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers." God wants His people to be in good health, and He's established through the Bible principles of health. In John 10, verse 10, Jesus said to His followers, "I have come that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly." That more abundant life is a holistic approach of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

There are those people who say when you talk about physical health—what you eat, what you drink, your habits in life—that that is legalistic. These are not legalistic principles at all. We do not determine whether a person is saved or lost based on what they eat or drink. Salvation comes as we make a full commitment to Christ and we're saved by grace.

But if indeed our bodies are the temple of God, we want to put into those bodies only those things that honor God and preserve our health. So, this is not a matter of legalism; it's a matter of preserving the body that God gave us. It's a matter of glorifying God's body in our health. Our God, the God who designed and made us, is supremely interested in our lives and our health. In His Word to us, the Bible, He has pointed a way to vigorous health and long life.

For everything God has created, His great enemy, Satan, has come up with an opposing counterfeit. For every principle in God's life and health plans for us, Satan has a counterfeit. Let's look at a few, just a few, of God's best principles from the Bible and contrast them with Satan's contradicting counterfeit.

The first principle I want to talk about is exercise. The Bible says in Genesis 2, verse 15, that after God created this first couple, He gave them some work to do, some useful activity and exercise. The Bible says, "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." After Adam sinned, God increased his work. Notice Genesis 3, verse 19, it says, "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground."

God intended work to be much more than a dreadful curse, however. It was also to be a blessing. God knew that an inactive body deteriorates. Because of His great love for Adam and Eve, He instructed them in the benefits of useful exercise. The benefits of exercise are promoted today by health enthusiasts and physicians worldwide. Modern scientific research indicates that exercise helps to reduce the risk of many of the 21st-century killer diseases.

The principles are basic: exercise improves the tone of the muscles and blood vessels. The lungs become more efficient, able to process air with less effort. The heart is more efficient, pumping more blood with each beat. Energy-producing oxygen is carried to the tissues, which improves the overall condition of the body. As a result, exercise protects the body from many diseases and slows down the aging processes. Recent scientific research indicates that exercise builds a strong immune system, which helps us to resist many of the cancer-producing agencies that flow through our bloodstream.

But Satan is always promoting the idea that unless it feels good, don't do it. Exercise, he suggests, is too hard, and you can't find the time. Satan always encourages the easy way out, the shortcut, the path of least resistance. "Take it easy," he says. "Relax. Have fun. Don't overdo it. Life is too short to push yourself too hard." But God says, "Get out. Get moving. Exercise. It'll increase your joy. It'll increase your longevity. It'll enable you to live longer and healthier and happier."

There's a second principle that Satan works hard to contradict, and that's called a healthful diet. When we buy a car, it pays to read and follow the owner's manual. After all, who knows better what the best fuel is than the manufacturer? Gas prices go up, and you notice at your local MegaMart that a gallon of discount soda is cheaper sometimes than a gallon of gasoline, so you decide to save money and switch to soda. How long do you think it would be before you ran into serious problems with your car?

If you're not filling it up with gas and you're filling it up with that cheap soda, pretty soon your car's going to break down. What fuel did God originally provide for human beings? Notice Genesis 1, verse 29. God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food." Man's original diet was quite simple, consisting of fruits, grains, and nuts.

God also gave Adam and Eve the right to eat of the tree of life in the center of the garden. This fruit supplied their diet with a special life-giving substance which would ensure eternal youth and health. After Adam and Eve sinned, God separated them from the tree of life, and Genesis 3:18 says He added vegetables to their diet: "You shall eat the herb of the field."

After the flood, men and women began to eat meat in abundance. Their lifespans decreased markedly. If you compare Methuselah's 969 years before the flood and Noah's son Shem, who lived 600 years after—his grandson 239 years, his great-grandson 175 years—by the time of King David, man's lifetime had decreased to 70 years. So, think about it: Methuselah, 969. The flood comes. Shem, 600. His grandson, 239. His great-grandson, 175. By the time of David, 70 years.

Since the flood destroyed plant life on earth and since Noah's supply of food was exhausted after he and his family had been confined in the ark for a year and 10 days, God allowed the consumption of animals as an emergency measure. Yet not all plants and animals are good for food. When God created Noah, in selecting the animals for the ark, He made a distinction in Genesis 7, verse 2, between animals that were clean and those that were not.

He said, "You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of those that are unclean, a male and a female." Why? Because after the flood, when the plants were destroyed, human beings were given permission to eat the clean animals, so they were taken in by sevens. But the uncleans, male and female, were taken in only by twos. Why? Because they were scavengers of the earth.

Later in time, God detailed such dietary principles more clearly shortly after the Israelites were delivered from bondage of Egypt. Deuteronomy, chapter 14, verses 4 and 5, we find the beginning verses of a classification of the animals, birds, and fish which God said were clean to use for food. "These are the animals which you may eat." The next sentence in verse 6 gives the basic rule of thumb for identifying clean and unclean food sources from the animal kingdom: "You may eat every animal with cloven hooves, having the split hoof into two parts, and that chews the cud among the animals."

God's dietary rules are not arbitrary. This is not legalism. He's designed our bodies. He knows what will keep us functioning at peak efficiency. The animals that He cautions us against eating, such as the pigs, are in general scavengers. They're the garbage collectors of the earth. The hog, with a divided hoof but not a cud-chewing animal, roots around for anything that appears to be edible. Garbage eaten by a hog is digested and converted into food in a matter of hours.

The cow, on the other hand, has a divided hoof and chews the cud, but also has a complex digestive system. It takes 48 hours for the food it eats to be converted into flesh. It also has a more complex elimination system. Pork is often infected with trichina larvae or worms. Trichinosis can be a fatal disease depending on the number of larvae eaten. Often the disease is wrongly diagnosed as arthritis or food poisoning.

Apparently, God knew what He was doing when He warned His people to stay away from the flesh of swine. Of course, pig has one of the highest fat concentrations. If you take, for example, bacon, it's cured by nitrates and it is carcinogenic—cancer-producing. So, God knew what He was doing. He wants us to be in the best health.

In Leviticus 11, verse 9, God gives instructions about which sea creatures are good. He says, "These you may eat of all that are in the water: whatever is in the water that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat." Such sea creatures as clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, muscle, and others do not have both fins and scales, and they are among the scavengers of the sea, the garbage collectors of the ocean.

I remember when I was a boy, I was brought up on the ocean on the Atlantic seacoast. My earliest memories are running down the beach with the sand coming up between my toes and the salt breeze blowing in my hair. We just love the beach. But in those days, of course, I didn't study the Bible, so I didn't know these things. I would go crabbing. To go crabbing, I'd first have to go to old Spicer's marina, and he would save for me the heads of the fish because fishermen would come in, they'd clean their fish, cut off the heads, and cut out the guts.

So, I'd get the guts of the fish and these filthy guts and the dead, decaying, stinking heads of the fish, tie them on a line, and drop them down off the dock or go out in our little boat and drop them down. The crabs would come along wanting to eat the garbage, and they would get the head of that fish, get the guts, and I'd pull it up ever so slowly. You know, when you cook the crab, you've got to put it in the hot water alive because you don't let the crab die in your pail of water in your boat. You put it in a pail of water, then if you cook it, you have to cook it alive to preserve that poison.

I remember going quahogging. A quahog is like clams, but they have hard shells. I would go and get my toes down in the mud, in the muck, and feel them and go down and get them and throw one of these quahogs like clams to my grandpa on shore. He would take a knife and open it up, put salt and pepper on it, and I'd eat it alive—you know, I'd just swallow it. In those years, I had terrible stomach problems, because I was eating all this garbage that was digested garbage.

As the result of that, I often had stomach pain. But when I gave those things up—I read in the Bible that God says you can eat all that are in the water. It wasn't easy at first. That has fins and scales. If it has fins and scales, it's edible; if it doesn't, it's not. These clams and oysters and so on—when I gave those up, my stomach really, really improved. For me, it wasn't a matter of legalism; it was a matter of good health.

In Leviticus 3, verse 17, it says God placed one more restriction on the man's diet: "There shall be a perpetual statute through your generations in all your dwellings: you shall eat neither fat nor blood." That's interesting. We know today that blood carries impurities, germs, viruses, and waste of the body. Many of the diseases are passed on through the blood.

We also know that highly saturated fats as found in meats and dairy products cause a rise in the cholesterol level of the blood, a major contributor of vascular and heart diseases. Cholesterol's not found in grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables—only in animal products.

When it comes to diet, Satan's philosophy is this, his contradictory health plan: "If it tastes good, eat it." This goes along with another of his body and soul-destroying principles: "If it feels good, do it." I want you to think about this. Highly processed foods today, rather than the natural foods—those highly processed foods that give you a quick high—are killing people today. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes is on the rise.

We spend more on health than any nation in the world, yet we're one of the least healthiest in America. "Never mind the cholesterol," the devil says. "Never mind the diseases in meat products. Don't even consider eating more fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables. Too restrictive. Doesn't taste good enough. Not enough protein." This last one even good science knows is a lie. For example, vegetarians have the highest quality of all protein sources available to them.

Along with the food we take in, God is also concerned about what we drink. The original beverage He provided for us was pure clean water, and you can't beat it. As principle number three, it is still His best choice for us. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, speaks in Proverbs 20, verse 1, of the consequences of alcohol abuse. He says, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise." In a later verse in Proverbs 23, verse 32, he says of wine that "at the last it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper."

The danger of alcohol has increased enormously as modern technology makes more demands for alert minds, for workers to have complete control of their faculties today. Alcoholism is one of the world's greatest health problems. *The Lancet*, which is the British health magazine that's equivalent to our leading health magazines here, says there is no safe amount of alcohol to take in. More than half of all automobile accidents can be traced directly to a driver or pedestrian under the influence of alcohol.

In more than half of all murders, either the killer or the victim or both have been drinking. Alcohol impairs the body's utilization of vitamins and sugar in alcohol drinks, lessens the body's ability to fight infection. Inevitably, the alcoholic develops a fatty liver, and his chances of dying from cirrhosis of the liver are great. Statistically, his lifespan is shortened—get this now—by at least 12 years.

For a Christian, drinking alcoholic beverages has even greater consequences. Every Christian needs the full use of his or her mind to avoid the temptations of Satan. Alcohol affects the frontal lobe of the brain, where conscience, reason, and judgment are located. A Christian cannot afford impaired judgment or diminished ability to distinguish right from wrong.

On the cross, our Lord refused the stupefying potion offered him by the soldiers to deaden the sense of pain. Even though Jesus suffered excruciating pain, He would receive nothing that would becloud His mind at the moment of death. But Satan has encouraged millions into the slavery and misery of alcoholism. He surrounds wine with an aura of sophistication. He associates various forms of alcohol with social standing, with relaxation, having fun. It's as if he raises a glass to humanity and says, "To your good health." In view of the reality, his toast should be "to your illness, to your misery, to your death."

Here's principle number four in good health: take nothing poisonous into your body. Satan has really sold the human race a bill of goods on this one. If you smoke, your chances of dying prematurely with lung cancer—get this—are a thousand times greater than those who've never smoked. A smoker's chances from dying of heart disease are 103% greater than those who've never smoked on a regular basis. Emphysema claims many thousands of lives each year. Research has shown that nicotine increases the build-up of cholesterol along the inner walls of the arteries.

Smoking mothers bequeath to their children a full range of detrimental effects, from restricted fetal movement to growth retardation to increased respiratory illness later in life. All these are due to a diminished oxygen supply and the effects of nicotine. Newborn deaths are up to 27% higher in infants of smoking mothers. The late Dr. Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said every cigarette a person smokes takes 14 and a half minutes off their life.

Many of us are taking other poisonous drugs into our bodies daily. Notice this from a book in my library called *You and Your Health*, volume one, page 413. The average cup of coffee contains from two to four grains of caffeine, depending on the strength of the coffee. Caffeine, the drug contained in coffee, is classified in textbooks as both a stimulant and a poison.

The fatal dose is listed as one-third of an ounce or 10 grams. It would require the amount of caffeine contained in 80 to 100 cups of coffee to prove fatal in a single dose by mouth. Tea and cola drinks also contain caffeine. They increase the risk of bowel cancer, heart disease, and tremors. All these beverages are now being linked to neurological disorders and, particularly as we mentioned, cancer of the bladder.

But Satan says smoking relaxes you—you deserve a break. To the teens, he says smoking's the in-thing and it'll make you more adult. And now you've got vapes, taking in higher concentrations of nicotine that are damaging to the entire lung system, predisposing individuals to lung diseases. Hardly anyone ever even raises a warning about caffeine anymore. Along with these poisons that enslave others to millions to hard drugs, they fry their brains and leave their lives in shambles.

Here's the fifth principle I want to give you, and that's moderation. Even too much of a good thing can be harmful. God's plan includes moderation not only in the food we eat or drink but also in our lifestyle, balancing work with rest and relaxation. To have the weekly Sabbath gives us a much-needed opportunity to lay aside our problems, to deepen family relationships, to reconnect with our Creator, and rejuvenate for the week ahead.

In 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 19, God says to us, "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" Our bodies are living temples in which God wants to live through His Spirit. What an awesome importance this puts on our health. Our Creator wants us to take good care of our bodies so we can enjoy life at its best here and now. He wants us to have an abundant life, life in all its fullness.

He wants us to have a little bit of heaven here and now, a foretaste of the earth made new, where all the diseases and illnesses that plague humankind will be forever banished. Satan tries to portray God's way as restrictive, as difficult, as socially laughable, as no fun at all. But what he really wants is to destroy us, to leave us vulnerable to a host of killer diseases, to destroy our relationships, befuddle our minds, rob us of the ability to make our lives count. Two health plans, two ways of life, two sets of principles, two voices, two choices.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at HopeLives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to HopeLives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.

Mark Finley: Friends, one choice is health, the other feebleness and disease. One choice is life, the other choice is death. You and I can't escape the voices, but we do have control of our choices. Let's determine that our choices will be for vibrant health and abundant life as we pray.

Father, You designed our bodies. You created them. You know what will bring us abundant life and health. Thank You for sharing Your principles with us. Help us to recognize every single day that You want us to live the abundant life. As Christians saved by grace, You want to lead us to joyful, meaningful lives here and now and to prepare for eternity. In Christ's name, amen.