God Sent His Word and Delivered Them from Their Destructions

In the previous days we discovered the following three effects of God’s Word:

1. God’s Word produces faith, and faith, in turn, is directly related to God’s Word because faith is believing and acting upon what God has said in His Word.
2. God’s Word, received as incorruptible seed into a believer’s heart, produces the new birth – a new spiritual nature created within the believer and called in the Scriptures “the new man.”
3. God’s Word is the divinely appointed spiritual nourishment with which the believer must regularly feed the new nature within him if he is to grow into a healthy, strong, mature Christian.

We will see now that God’s Word is so varied and wonderful in its working that it provides not only spiritual health and strength for the soul but also physical health and strength for the body. Let us turn first to Psalms.

“Fools, because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, were afflicted. Their soul abhorred all manner of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, And He saved them out of their distresses. He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” (Ps. 107:17-20)

The psalmist gives us a picture of men so desperately sick that they have lost all appetite for food and are lying right at death’s door. In their extremity they cry out to the Lord, and He sends them that which they cry for – healing and deliverance. By what means does He send these? By His Word. For the psalmist says:

“He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” (Ps. 107:20)

Side by side with this passage in Psalm 107 we may set the passage in Isaiah 55:11 where God says:

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

In Psalm 107:20 we read that God sent His Word to heal and deliver; in Isaiah 55:11 God says that His Word will accomplish the thing for which He sent it. Thus God guarantees that He will provide healing through His Word.