Full text of renowned Bible teacher Derek Prince’s teaching titled “God’s Medicine Bottle.”
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
Notable quote from this teaching:
“I was much wiser to be foolish and get healed than I would have been to be clever and stay sick.”
TRANSCRIPT:
(Introduction by Stephen Mansfield: I’m like very excited about this teaching by Derek Prince, because having written his biography, I know that the whole issue of healing was huge to him. The reality is that, before Derek met Jesus, he really wasn’t a very healthy man physically. He had a horrible, and — I think the doctors would say an acute case of acne. When he was in college, he suffered all types of skin diseases in the early part of his life, had just tremendous problems. And once he went in the military in the early part of World War II, he was wrestling with the whole issue of his health, and he had serious health problems. In fact, he was actually in a hospital in Egypt for almost a year during the war, because he was so unhealthy.
But God taught him some principles of drinking in the Scriptures and memorizing and using the Scriptures to achieve healing in his life. And I think you’re going to hear that story, and I think you’re going to be changed by it. So let’s listen now, as Derek Prince teaches us about ‘God’s Medicine Bottle’.)
Derek Prince – Bible Teacher
This week, I’ll be sharing with you in a very special way out of my own experience: how I received healing from God, when all normal medical help had proved ineffective.
My theme for this week is ‘God’s Medicine Bottle.’
In my talk today, I’m going to share with you, as I said, out of my own experience, HOW I DISCOVERED THIS Wonderful Medicine Bottle of God.
This happened in the early years of World War II.
And for three years, I served in the deserts of North Africa: first in Egypt, and later in Libya, then later still in the Sudan. In the desert, there were two things that we were exposed to more than anything else: sand and sun.
I can remember I spent nearly one entire year in the desert without ever seeing a paved road. We traveled in sand; we slept in sand. Very often we had the impression that we were eating sand. We were exposed to it day and night.
Combined with the sun, it had a very harmful effect on the skin of certain people whose skin was not adequate for that kind of exposure. And I was one of them.
In my case, as in the case of many other soldiers, it manifested itself primarily in a condition of my feet and my hands, where the skin broke down, and I was ready in many ways incapacitated.
The officer in command of my particular unit struggled to keep me from being admitted to hospital, because he knew if I was admitted to hospital, he would lose me in the unit. And he wanted to keep me. And so I spent several months, kind of hobbling around, trying to do my military duties. But in the end, he had to let me go into hospital.
I went to altogether, I think, three or four different military hospitals, and I was in hospital for a year on end. Actually I met soldiers there who’d been two years in the Middle East and spent 18 months in hospital with similar conditions.
I received many elaborate diagnoses of my problem, each name tended to be a little longer than the previous name, and I don’t recall them now. But eventually it was diagnosed fairly simply as chronic eczema.
And I received the best medical treatment available at that time in the circumstances, but really it didn’t help me. And I saw many other soldiers with similar conditions who also were not helped.
There’s something about the climate of Egypt that’s particularly inimical to the skin of people who are not intended for that part of the world. Really serious conditions: burns and so on, were usually shipped down to South Africa.
But my condition wasn’t that serious, and my services to the British army were not that valuable that they were going to waste a passage on a ship to South Africa for me. So I just lay there in bed day after day wondering what my future would be.
And I’ll tell you when you spend a year on end in hospital, it seems a very very long time. I had newly come into a real personal relationship with the Lord, and been born again, had also received the filling of the Holy Spirit. But I was very very ignorant; I didn’t have any background of Bible knowledge; I just had a Bible.
And really I had nowhere else to turn for help at that time, but to God and to the Bible. And so I began to search the Bible in desperation, to see if it had anything that it could tell me about my physical condition.
I didn’t have any theories about healing; I just knew I needed it, and I had the Bible in my hands. And I had plenty of time to read the Bible. I had very little else to do.
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And so I searched the Bible for something that would show me, if I could really trust God for the healing of my body. And one day I remember I came across some verses in the book of Proverbs. These are the verses which I learned to call ‘God’s medicine bottle’. And I’m going to quote them to you, from Proverbs chapter 4 verses 20 through 22. I’m quoting from the King James Version which was the version that I was reading in those days, and which is extremely vivid as a matter of fact, and says it very clearly and forcefully.
Proverbs 4:20-22, make a note of that reference:
‘My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.’
It was that last phrase that arrested me: ‘health to all their flesh’.
I understood that all their flesh meant their total physical body, and that’s how more modern versions actually translated. And I thought health… if I have health in my whole body, there’s no room there for sickness. And that’s what God is promising me.
And then I happened to look in the margin, and I saw that the marginal alternative translation for the word translated health was medicine. And that seemed to be even more appropriate to my condition.
And I saw that God was promising me something that would be medicine that would bring health to all my flesh. And I thought to myself: that’s precisely what I need.
So I went back and read those words over and over again, and I saw that in essence, God’s offer was being made to me through His words.
Verse 20 says: attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.’
And then verse 22 says, ‘For they – (that’s God’s words and God’s sayings) – are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.’ So whatever it is, it’s in the words and the sayings of God.
And then I saw the phrase, ‘those that find them’ and I saw it was more than just reading the Bible; it was reading the Bible in such a way as to find out how to receive what God was offering.
Well, I’d received all the medical attention that was available in those conditions, and it hadn’t helped me. So I made a decision, a very naive decision in a way, I decided I’m going to take God’s Word as my medicine.
And so that was a crucial decision in my life. I’m going to take God’s Word as medicine for my physical body. When I made that decision, I’m going to take God’s Word as my medicine, the Lord himself spoke to me, not audibly, but very clearly, this is what He said. He said “When the doctor gives a person medicine, the directions for taking it are on the bottle.” And then He said, “This is My medicine bottle, and the directions are on the bottle; you’d better study them.”
And God reminded me that a doctor didn’t promise any benefit from the medicine that he recommended, unless it was taken according to the directions. And being a medical orderly myself, of course, that was very vivid to me.
So I went back and I decided to study the directions on the bottle. And I saw very quickly that there were four specific directions for taking God’s Word as medicine for the physical body. These are the directions.
Number one: attend to my words.
Number two: incline thine ear unto my sayings.
Number three: let them not depart from thine eyes.
Number four: keep them in the midst of thine heart.
So I realized that if I was going to receive the benefit that I needed from the medicine, those were the four directions I had to follow.
Now I cannot go in detail into all that followed, but I just want to say that, and I began to do that. I just bowed my head before the Bible every day three times after meals, because that is how people take normal medicine.
I said, “God, you’ve said that these words of Yours will be medicine to all my flesh, and I’m taking them as my medicine now, in the name of Jesus.”
And within a few months, God’s medicine taken that way achieved the result God promised. I was totally healthy in every area of my body.
I once recorded this experience of mine on a tape a good many years ago, and just a little while ago, in London, England I met a young man from Pakistan — a Pakistani — who told me that he’d become a Christian, and that he’d suffered for more than twenty years from eczema, and then one day he heard my tape; he decided to do what I had done. And he told me in his case, within two or three days, he was completely healed. So that’s an up-to-date testimony that the medicine still does what’s claimed for it.
Now for the rest of this week, I’m going to be sharing with you the lessons that I learned on the directions that are on God’s medicine bottle, and how to apply them.
THE FIRST DIRECTION: ‘attend to my words’
In my introductory talk yesterday, I described how through a period of prolonged sickness, I was led to the discovery that in the Bible, God has provided for us His own medicine bottle. I related how I was a soldier serving with the British forces in the North African desert in World War II, and how through the exposure to sun and sand, I contracted a condition of the skin which just did not yield to any form of medical treatment, and which after various provisional diagnosis was diagnosed as chronic eczema, and how I lay in hospital for one year on end struggling with this problem:
Does God have a way to heal me? And how I searched my Bible day by day. And one day, came to this passage in Proverbs chapter 4 verses 20 through 22, which is what I call ‘God’s Medicine Bottle’. And I’ll quote that passage now again from Proverbs 4:20-22, make a note of that reference.
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings; let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
I mentioned yesterday that the alternative reading in the margin for health was medicine. And I saw that here through His words and His sayings, if I could find them, God was offering me something which He described as medicine to all my flesh. That is my entire physical body.
And so I decided to take God’s Word as my medicine in a very simple naive kind of way. But when I did that, God reminded me that, when a doctor gives a person medicine, the directions for taking it are normally on the bottle. And He went on to say: ‘This passage — that’s Proverbs 4:20-22 — is My medicine bottle, and the directions are on the bottle; you better study them.’
And so I went back and looked at it carefully, and I saw that there were four directions for taking God’s Word as our medicine. And I’ll just recapitulate them briefly.
Number one: attend to my words. Number two: incline thine ear unto my sayings. Number three: let them not depart from thine eyes. And number four: keep them in the midst of thine heart.
Today I’m going to explain the first of these four directions, that is: attend to my words. We need to understand that God, when He speaks to us requires our undivided attention. If Almighty God is willing to speak to us at all, surely any sense of propriety would indicate that we need to listen with undivided attention. We need to give God our full and respectful attention.
But you see that’s not really the attitude of many people today, because of the tremendous proliferation of the media, radio, television and so on, and because of various different factors in our contemporary culture, we’ve almost cultivated the practice of listening to two different things at one time. We suffer from a disease which could be called divided attention.
I’m amazed when I go into a home and see teenagers doing their homework, and watching television at the same time. They’re not giving full attention to one, or to the other.
Or in so many places, we have nowadays what is called background music. We carry on a conversation, but at the same time, with one ear, we’re listening to the music in the background. I have to say that for me personally this is intensely frustrating.
And I’m the kind of person I think probably because of my experiences that I’m relating, I wish and desire to concentrate on something, and not to dissipate my attention. I think that’s probably something that God has conditioned in me. And I’m not going to give it up.
If I’m having a conversation, I want to listen to the person who’s talking. If I’m listening to music, then I want to listen to the music. I love music; when I listen to it, I listen to it with my full attention.
But you see, all through the Bible, the primary key to healing from God is HEARING. Let me say that simply. The key to healing is hearing. It’s what we listen to, and how we listen.
Jesus said to His disciples, “Take heed what you hear.” He also said, “Take heed how you hear.” We have to put the two together; it’s what we listen to, and how we listen to it.
There’s another passage in the Old Testament relating to healing, which brings out the same emphasis. It’s in Exodus chapter 15 verse 26, where the LORD told Israel through Moses, this:
Exodus 15:26: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”
Notice that final statement, that goes right along with the medicine bottle: ‘I provide the medicine bottle, and I am your doctor.’ In modern Hebrew, that’s exactly what that word would be translated: ‘I am the LORD, your doctor.’
God says to His people, ‘I’m willing to be your doctor — the doctor of your physical body.’ But He says: there are conditions. He begins with an if. The first condition — the primary one, the basic one: ‘If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God.’ You see it’s what we listen to. That word that’s translated there: ‘diligently hearken’ in Hebrew is a repetition of the verb: to listen.
It goes like this: ‘If thou wilt listen, listening to the voice of the LORD thy God.’ All the emphasis is on listening. When I was seeking healing for myself, I came across this verse, in conjunction with the one from Proverbs that I’ve quoted.
And I asked myself: What does it mean to listen, listening? And it was as though God gave me an answer. He said “You’ve got two ears — a right ear and a left. To listen, listening means to listen to Me with both ears: with your right ear and with your left. Don’t listen to Me with your right ear, and something else with your left, because the result of that will be confusion.”
So you see all through, the emphasis is on attending; listening; giving God your undivided attention. That’s the primary instruction on God’s medicine bottle. It matters what we hear, and how we hear. This is not only the key to being healed; it’s the key to receiving faith. And of course, they go very closely together, because it’s faith that enables us to receive the healing that God has provided and to benefit from the medicine.
Let me quote here one of my favorite Scriptures which was also made real to me during this long period in hospital.
Romans 10:17: ‘So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’
I was lying there at that time, and I was continually saying to myself, “I know if I had faith, God would heal me.” But then I would always say immediately after that, “But then I don’t have faith.”
And when I said, “Well, I don’t have faith”, I found myself in what John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress describes as the ‘slough despond’, the dark, lonely valley of despair.
But one day as I was reading my Bible, my eye fell on this verse: Romans 10:17: ‘So then faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God.’
And there were two words that leaped out to me: faith cometh. In other words, you don’t need to despair; maybe you don’t have faith… but faith comes. If you don’t have it, you can get it.
So then of course I looked to see how faith comes. And it says: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And again just as in Proverbs 4: 20-22, I was directed right back to the word of God.
And I began to analyze that verse, and I saw: we start with the word of God. That’s the beginning. And we listen to the word of God carefully. And out of that listening, then there comes, what the bible calls, hearing — the ability to hear God. And then out of hearing, there develops faith.
So it’s the Word of God which when we first attend to it, produces hearing. And as we continue hearing, out of that hearing, faith develops. So in a sense everything depends on how we approach the Word of God. Do we approach it with undivided attention? Do we listen with both ears? Are we focused on the Word of God? Do we get into a condition spiritually and mentally? What the Bible calls hearing… able to hear what God is saying?
I’m sure many many people read the Bible, but never hear God. They don’t hear God, because their minds are taken up with other things. They’re wondering how they’re going to pay the rent, or what the weather’s going to be like, or they’re concerned with the political situation. There are other forces at work in their minds. Consequently, they never develop hearing.
We have to develop hearing, and out of hearing, develops faith. So it’s the Word of God, an attitude to God’s Word that produces hearing, and out of hearing comes faith.
So always, we’re directed back to the Word of God and how we receive it. And so the first instruction on God’s medicine bottle is: attend to my words.
THE SECOND DIRECTION: incline thine ear
And again, I’m going to quote the verses from Proverbs that are, as I’ve said, God’s medicine bottle.
Proverbs 4: 20-22: And may I suggest to you, that if you’re finding these talks helpful, and if they’re meeting a need in your life, you make a decision to commit these three verses of Proverbs to your memory; it’ll make all the difference if you can memorize them, and retain them and have them with you. These are the verses.
Proverbs 4:20-22:
“My son, attend to my words.” You notice that God is speaking to you as His child. This is not addressed to unbelievers. This is to God’s children: my son, or my daughter — both are included in the Hebrew.
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
And as I pointed out, the alternative marginal reading for health is medicine. “Medicine to all their flesh.” Medicine for their whole body.
I’ve explained that this is God’s medicine bottle, and that God’s directions for taking His medicine are on the bottle. And that there are four successive directions there in those verses.
First, attend to my words.
Second, incline thine ear unto my sayings.
Third, let them not depart from thine eyes.
Fourth, keep them in the midst of thine heart.
Yesterday I dealt with the first direction: ‘attend to my words’. And I explained the importance of giving God our total undivided attention, of listening, listening — of listening to God with both ears.
Today I’m going to explain the second direction: incline thine ear. Now the word ‘incline’ is slightly old English, so we need to be sure that we all understand what it means: to incline is to bend down. An incline is a hill that slopes.
So inclining our ear is bending our ear down, and it’s a fact of the human body that you cannot bend your ear without bending your head. So in inclining your ear, you are actually inclining your head.
What is that? It’s an attitude indicating humility, teachability. Well I’ll illustrate it from experience.
As I was studying the Bible there in hospital, seeking desperately for the answer to my problem, I came upon many many promises of healing and blessing and prosperity. But my attitude was conditioned by my background, which is true probably of all of us.
My background was in a certain section of the Christian church, where really Christianity was not associated with being happy. In fact, very much the opposite. And I had early in life formed the conclusion, that if I was going to be a Christian, I would have to be prepared to be miserable. And I decided pretty early that I wasn’t prepared to be miserable, and therefore I wasn’t going to be a Christian.
It was only a sovereign intervention of God in my life that changed me. But I still carried a lot of these old concepts with me. And so when I found these repeated promises in the Bible of healing, health, strength, long life, prosperity, abundance, I kept shaking my head — not inclining my head but shaking my head and saying: couldn’t be… that’s too good to be true. I can’t believe that religion would be like that.
And as I was reacting this way to one of these statements, I believe it was one in Psalm 103 where it says: “God forgiveth all thine iniquities, healeth all thy diseases, reneweth thy youth like the eagles.” I thought, you know that’s impossible. God couldn’t be like that. I mean we know we have to anticipate misery being Christian.
Well, anyhow as I was responding like that inwardly, God spoke to me so clearly, not audibly but just as clearly as I’m speaking to you, and just as I responded in that way to some promise. He said “Now, tell me, who is the pupil, and who is the teacher?”
And I thought it over for a moment, and I said, “Lord, You’re the Teacher, and I’m the pupil.”
And He responded, “Well, would you mind letting Me teach you?”
And I saw that I wasn’t letting God teach me at all, that I wasn’t letting God teach me at all, that I had my own preconceptions that I had my mind made up as to what God ought to have said, and that if He said something different in His word, I really wasn’t capable of hearing it, because my mind was blocked by these set ideas of mine.
So God was saying: “Incline thine ear; give up your prejudices, and bend that stiff neck of yours, and let Me tell you how good I am and how wonderful is the provision I’ve made for you; don’t measure Me by human standards, because I’m God; I’m Almighty; and I’m a gracious and faithful and merciful God.”
And so with this brings out a very important principle about God’s Word. And you see everything is in God’s Word that we’re talking about.
God’s Word works in us only in so far as we receive it. If we don’t receive it, it doesn’t do us any good.
There’s a very powerful passage in the epistle of James chapter 1 verses 18, 19, and 21. Speaking of God, it says: “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.” Notice our becoming Christians is due to the Word. “God begat us with the word of truth that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”
James 1:19: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;” Note that ‘be swift to hear but slow to speak’.
And then it says: (James 1:21) “Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” God’s Word can save you; it can heal you; it can bless you in innumerable ways, but only if you receive it with meekness.
And one of the things that this version says we have to lay aside is naughtiness. Well naughtiness, we usually associate with children.
What is a naughty child? One of the marks of a naughty child is answering back when he’s taught or reproved.
And God says: don’t answer Me back. ‘When I tell you something, don’t argue with Me; don’t tell Me you think it can’t be true, or that it’s impossible, or that I couldn’t mean that. Let Me teach you.’
And that’s the essence of the inclined ear; it means that we come to God and we say: “God, You’re the Teacher; I’m the pupil; I’m willing to let You teach me. I bow down my ear, and I listen.”
You see, in this matter of inclining the ear, we have to come face to face with the fact that most of us have mental barriers, when we begin to read the Bible. And they’re due in many cases to our past background; many of us have some kind of denominational affiliation in the past; we may indeed still be active members of some particular denomination. I am not opposed to denominations.
But I want to suggest to you that every denomination has its weak points and its strong points; it has areas in which it’s been faithful to the truth and it has areas in which it has not been faithful to the truth.
And so if we measure God from our own denominational background, if we judge the Scriptures by what some church or some denomination teaches, we will exclude out of our minds much of the truth that God wants us to receive, and which can bless us and help us.
For instance, some churches teach the age of miracles is past. I have never been able to find any basis for that statement in Scripture. I can think of dozens of Scriptures which indicate the exact opposite.
But if you approach with the attitude, the age of miracles is past, then when God promises you a miracle, you probably can’t hear it. Or some Christian groups suggest that in order to be holy, you have to be poor. And that being anything but poor is in some way almost sinful.
Well, if it’s God’s purpose to bless you with prosperity as He indicates many times in the Scripture, it can be His purpose. Then when you have that attitude, you’re not able to receive the blessing of prosperity which God is offering you on the basis of Scripture.
You see, there’s a Scripture, the third epistle of John verse 2, which I think most of us really need to lay to heart; it says: “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” (3 John 1:2)
I remember when I started to read that verse, it just knocked me over. And my all prejudices and preconceptions rose up; I thought that that’s impossible; it can’t mean what it says.
But you see, God said, “Incline your ear. Don’t come at Me with your arguments, your prejudices, your preconceptions. Bend that stiff neck of yours, and let Me teach you.”
And so that’s an essential requirement for receiving healing through the Word of God. It’s laying down preconceptions and prejudices, bending our stiff neck, opening our ears, and listening carefully to what God says, and not rejecting it, because it doesn’t agree with something we thought God ought to have said.
God is a lot bigger than any denomination. He’s a lot bigger than our understanding. He’s a lot bigger than all our prejudices. Don’t make God so small that He can’t help you. Incline your ear, and let Him tell you how much He’s willing to do for you.
THE THIRD DIRECTION: ‘let them not depart from thine eyes.’
Our theme for this week is God’s Medicine Bottle, and by that I refer to a passage in Proverbs which got me out of hospital after one year on end in hospital when normal medical means were of no avail to me.
So here’s God’s Medicine Bottle. I’ve quoted it each time, and I’m going to quote it again today.
Proverbs 4:20-22, and let me repeat my suggestion that you memorize these three verses.
“My son, attend to my words. Incline thine ear unto my sayings; let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
I’ve already pointed out the alternative reading for health is medicine. Medicine to all our flesh; medicine to our total body, God offers us through His words and His sayings, but the directions are on the bottle. If we don’t take the medicine according to the directions, we can’t expect the promised result.
And the directions as I’ve said are four-fold: attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings; let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.
In my previous talks, I’ve dealt with the first two directions on the bottle: attend, and incline thine ear.
So logically today I’m moving on to the third direction: ‘let them not depart from thine eyes.’
‘them’= God’s words and God’s sayings.
I think the key thought here in this direction could be summed up in the word ‘focus’. See, one of the marvelous things about human eyes — and it’s not true of all other animals or creatures — is that we have two eyes, but by focusing we can form one image. That’s when our eyesight is healthy and operating the way God intended it to.
Now in the natural with natural eyesight, incorrect focus produces blurred vision. And I believe that’s the problem with many people in the spiritual realm. They haven’t learned to focus their spiritual eyesight. And so their vision of spiritual things is blurred.
I think most people have got the impression that the spiritual world is kind of misty, half real, vague, unformed. I know that was my impression of religion before I came to know the Lord in a personal way. I thought of religion as a kind of mist that hung around in old church buildings.
And if i was very good, maybe the mist would settle on my head. But it never did. So after a while I just decided that I wasn’t interested in that. And I turned elsewhere to philosophy.
But the fact remains that unless we can focus our spiritual eyes, we will always have a blurred vision of spiritual reality.
I’d like to look at the words with which Jesus deals with this. In Luke chapter 11 verse 34,
Luke 11:34: “The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.”
Now here Jesus is speaking about something that affects our whole body. So instantly it reminds me of the statement in Proverbs chapter 4 about God’s words being health to our whole body.
But here Jesus is dealing with the way we use our eyes. ‘when thine eye is single’, I think that means first and foremost that we form a single image; we’re not looking in different directions with our two eyes. But they’re focused — when they’re correctly focused.
Then He says, the result will be manifested in our whole body: thy whole body is full of light.
I believe a body that’s full of light doesn’t have room for sickness. I believe light and darkness are mutually exclusive. Sickness is from darkness; health is from light.
In Malachi 4:2, it says, “unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.”
The sun in the natural is the source of light. The two products of light when the sun arises are: righteousness and healing; they are the works of light.
The opposite are the works of darkness. The opposite of righteousness is sin; the opposite of healing is sickness. So they are works of darkness.
But righteousness and healing are works of light. And Jesus says, ‘if thy eye is single, thy whole body will be filled with light, with righteousness, with health.’ So it all depends on having a single eye.
Now that word that’s translated ‘single’ in Greek is a word that has various meanings, and I rather carefully checked on them in two Greek lexicons before I finished preparing this message. But one of the main meanings is simple, or sincere.
And I think this probably brings out the point: if your eye is simple or sincere — if you, in other words, just see things the way they’re written, you’re not too clever; you’re not too philosophical; you don’t know too much theology; you don’t know too many different ways of explaining the text away, you just take it as meaning what it says.
You see, I pointed out that the second direction says, incline your ear; bow down your stiff neck; be willing to hear. And that there are certain normal barriers, and I’d describe two of them as prejudice and preconception. We think we already know what God ought to have said; so we’re not willing to listen.
Now this third direction speaks about simplicity, or sincerity. And I would suggest that the barriers to simplicity and sincerity are rationalization and sophistication.
I begin to fear when I hear preachers quoting too many worldly experts, especially if they’re trying to authenticate the Bible, because I don’t believe that the Bible needs to be authenticated by worldly experts. And I don’t believe that in the end that builds people’s faith.
Sooner or later, as I’ve said earlier in this series: ‘faith comes by hearing the Word of God’. And anything that distracts our attention too long from the Word of God is not ultimately going to build our faith. We have to read the Bible with that single eye of simplicity and sincerity which says: ‘This is what God says; this is what He means, and I believe it the way it’s written.’
I want to go just a little further with this theme of simplicity and sincerity in relation to the way that we respond to Scripture.
I always think back to my own experience in hospital. There I was: a professor of philosophy with the knowledge of Latin and Greek and able to quote many long and learned books.
But I was sick, and I was offered through God’s Word a very simple, unsophisticated way of getting healed, which was: taking God’s Word as my medicine.
Now, to a philosophical mind, that’s pure nonsense; it’s just ridiculous. You dismiss it. But the thing was: I was sick, and philosophy hadn’t healed me.
So I was really faced with two clear alternatives: I could be clever and stay sick; or I could be simple and get healed.
And you know one thing I’ve always been glad about ever since: I was simple enough to get healed.
But that brings out the point: if your eye is simple, if you’re sincere, if you’re not too profound, if you don’t know too many arguments, if you can’t necessarily quote all the theologians, you have a much better chance with God. I’m sorry to say it, but experience over many years has convinced me of that: theology normally doesn’t help people’s faith.
Let me just quote two passages from the writings of Paul to conclude this thought. Noting that we’re talking about a kind of simplicity which in the eyes of the world is foolish.
Paul says in First Corinthians 1:25: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” He’s speaking primarily about the cross. The cross was the weakest and foolish thing that you could conceive of in the culture of that time.
But out of the weakness of the cross comes the Almightiness of God. Out of the foolishness of the cross comes this unsearchable wisdom of God. So we have to go to something very weak and very foolish to receive God’s wisdom and God’s strength.
And then a little further on in the same epistle, First Corinthians 3:18, Paul says this: because I realized that he was speaking to people with a philosophic background, just like I acquired through my studies, I can appreciate it so well. He says this:
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”
You see, between us and God’s wisdom, there’s a valley: a place of humility. We have to lay aside worldly wisdom; we have to become fools in the eyes of the world, that we may really enter into God’s wisdom.
So at that point, I was confronted with that alternative: I could go on being wise in the world and stay sick; or I could do something that was foolish in the eyes of the world and get healed.
And I actually have to say I was much wiser to be foolish and get healed than I would have been to be clever and stay sick. That may sound complicated, but it’s exactly what Paul is saying. If you’re wise in this world, you need to become a fool in order that you may be wise, because God’s foolishness is much wiser than man’s.
So the application is: don’t let them depart from your eyes; have a single, simple eye. Read the Bible the way it’s written and take it as meaning what it says.
THE FOURTH DIRECTION: keep them in the midst of thine heart
In my talks this week, I’ve been examining the directions on God’s Medicine Bottle.
God’s Medicine Bottle, I trust you know by now is Proverbs chapter 4 verses 20 through 22. And let me repeat once more my suggestion that you would find it very profitable to memorize those three verses, especially if you yourself have some kind of physical need of healing.
This is what the verses say:
“My son, attend to my words. Incline thine ear unto my sayings; let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
And the marginal reading for health is medicine. So God says, speaking to His children: my son, my daughter, in my words and in my sayings, if you can find them, there is that which will be medicine for your whole body.
But as we’ve been seeing each day, in order to benefit from the medicine, we have to take it according to the directions on the bottle. And the directions on the bottle are fourfold: attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings; let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.
In my previous talks, we’ve looked at the first three directions:
attend. Give God your undivided total attention.
Incline thine ear. Lay aside your prejudices and preconceptions. Bow your stiff neck; and let God teach you. You don’t know it all. Some of your ideas which you think are very clever may not be clever at all and may not be in line with Scripture. God’s thoughts are higher than your thoughts. He says: His ways are higher than your ways, even as much as the heaven is higher than the earth.
The third direction: let them not depart from thine eyes. And I’ve suggested that means: a focused gaze forming one single clear image of what God is saying. And I quoted the passage of the words of Jesus in Luke 11:34: ‘If your eye is single — simple, sincere — your whole body will be filled with light having no part dark.’
I suggested that the single eye means we are not too much influenced by the world’s theories, by the sophistication of theology or philosophy, that we just look at the Bible, see what it says, take it the way it’s written, and act upon it.
So now we’re coming today to the fourth and final direction, concerning how to receive God’s words and sayings: keep them in the midst of thine heart.
This all is very real to me first of all on the basis of my own experience of being healed through this passage. Secondly, because for five years in East Africa, I was principal of a teacher training college for training African teachers for African schools, and therefore of course in some way I had to familiarize myself with some of the principles of teaching.
And one of the simple principles that we used to try to inculcate into our students was the principle of what we call the Ear Gate and the Eye Gate, that when you want to get to a child’s personality, you need to use every available gate. It’s not enough for the child just to hear it; the child also needs to see it.
In fact, we also taught them the child not merely needs to hear it and to see it, but in some way or other, the child needs to become practically involved: hear; see; and do.
And so we used to talk to them about the Ear Gateand the Eye Gate, and it blesses me to see that in this passage in Proverbs, God anticipated the psychology of modern teaching by a good many years, three thousand years almost. And He said: ‘incline thine ear; let them not depart from thine eyes; then they will get into your heart.’
You see, the purpose of going through the Ear Gate and the Eye Gate is to reach that vital central area of human personality, which the Bible calls, the heart. And then when they get to the heart, then they’ll do what is promised. But if they don’t get to the heart, they won’t produce the result.
This is like some kind of medicine which you take which may be in order to be effective has to be released in the bloodstream. So you can take the medicine, but if it doesn’t get to the bloodstream, it’s not going to do what it’s supposed to do.
Well, God’s medicine only is effective when it’s released in the heart. And so the previous three directions are really all concerned with the medicine getting where it’ll do what’s promised, which is the heart.
So then it says: keep them in the midst of thine heart.
And then we need to look on to the very next verse of Proverbs which is one of the most profound verses in the Bible I think.
Proverbs 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
How profound that is? Out of the heart are the issues of life. I remember again my mind goes back to East Africa. One of my students wrote up this verse in her own vernacular language, which was called [Lorlagoli]. And I knew just enough to be able to read what she’d written up on the dormitory wall. And it said: ‘Guard your heart with all your strength; for all the things in life come out of it.’
So simple, more simple in a sense than the King James version, but that conviction has never left me: “All the things in life come out of your heart.” In other words, what you have in your heart will determine all that you experience in your life.
If you have the right thing in your heart, your life will go right. If you have the wrong thing in your heart, your life will go wrong. But it’s what’s in your heart that determines the course of your life.
And so God says, “If My medicine in My words and My sayings is going to do what I have promised, it’s got to get into your heart, and you’ve got to keep it there.” So keep them in the midst of thine heart, not just on the periphery of thine heart, but in the midst… keep them in the central place of your whole life and personality; they’re going to affect the whole way that you live.
To conclude this teaching, which is based on Proverbs in the Old Testament about God’s Word being our medicine, I’d like to turn to a very parallel statement in the New Testament, in the epistle to the Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, which speaks there about the nature of God’s Word and how it acts within us.
Just in order to make it vivid, I’m going to read two different translations of that verse, Hebrews 4:12, first of all in the King James, and then in the New American Standard, just to pick out certain differences.
First of all, the King James: Hebrews 4:12: ‘For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
And then the New American Standard for the same verse: Hebrews 4:12: “For the Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
If I were to sum up one word that… or if I were to choose one word that sums that up, I think it would be the word: penetrating. God’s Word penetrates. In fact, it penetrates where nothing else can penetrate.
We’re used to the concept of the surgeon’s knife with its sharp pointed blade that can penetrate so delicately into human tissue and muscle and so on. But the Word of God penetrates into another realm also: it divides between soul and spirit, the very innermost area of our personality, things within ourselves that we cannot fully understand about ourselves, the Word of God reveals to us.
And that it separates between joint and marrow. See it touches the spiritual area of us; it touches the physical area; there’s no area that’s out of its reach. If you have a disease of the marrow, or a disease of the joints, this Scripture says: maybe there’s no human medicine or human instrument that can actually deal with that disease, but the Word of God can get there,
Or if you have inner personality problems, that the psychiatrist doesn’t have any solution for, the Word of God will get there. God’s Word penetrates.
What’s important is that we take it the way that God Himself requires that we take it, that we take it with undivided attention, that we take it with a humble, teachable attitude; we lay down our barriers of prejudice and preconception, that we also look at it with a single sincere wholehearted eye; we don’t quibble, we don’t theorize too much, we take it as meaning what it says; we lay down the barriers of rationalization and sophistication. And then we let it enter, and do its work.
May I pray for you as I close this study:
Father, I thank you for those that have been listening that have spiritual and physical needs, that can only be solved by the Word of God. And I pray that this Word will enter in, and do what’s necessary in them, create faith, bring healing, bring deliverance, bring peace, and joy and harmony, I pray, in Jesus name. Amen.
Resources for Further Reading:
Derek Prince: Invisible Barriers To Healing (Full Transcript)
Against All Odds: Benny Prasad (Full Transcript)
Twelve Steps to a Good Year Full Series: Derek Prince (Full Transcript)
Resurrection Of The Body: Derek Prince (Full Transcript)
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