He Still Heals Today

More and more attention is being focused on healing today -- divine healing.  One example of this is a CBS This Morning Poll. It found, “Most Americans believe in the power of prayer to speed their medical recovery, and they want their doctors to join them in prayer if asked.” 

Let me give you some of the results of the poll:

·         More than three quarters of Americans say personal prayer, or other spiritual and religious practices, can speed or help the medical treatment of people who are ill.

·         Eighty percent said that prayer helps the healing process. 

·         Sixty-six percent of those surveyed say they pray for their own health, and

·         Eighty-two  percent say that they pray for the health of others.

Literally, prayer changes things – for the better.

 before I get to my main theme though, I want to point out briefly, i know that god heals through various means

·         I have No doubt that He uses medical personnel and medicines. In Romans 13 the Bible points out that the Lord uses law enforcement officers to administer justice. In like fashion, God uses doctors, nurses, and hospitals as extensions of His healing power. In fact, I have had doctors tell me that they know that they can’t heal. They simply provide the hands and God and the body does the rest.

 William Barclay in his commentary, The Daily Study Bible, notes: The doctor and the scientist who meet the challenge of disease are sharing in the defeat of Satan as much as the preacher of the word. The doctor and the minister are not doing different work but the same work. They are not rivals but allies in God's warfare against the power of evil.

 No doubt, most of you are aware of the fact that a medical doctor wrote two books of the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke and The Acts Of The Apostles.

 ·         Rest is another means of healing. Psalm 23:1-2 notes, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.”  Has the Lord ever had to make you “lie down”? It is not uncommon for a doctor to prescribe a period of rest. It can be great therapy.  

This reminds me of the story where the doctor told the patient: “Your trouble is that you’re burning the candle at both ends.” To which the patient replied: “I know the problem. What I want you to tell me is how I can get more wax.”

 ·         The natural healing mechanics of the body. We know that most of the things that attack us physically go away on their own. Minor cuts and bruises, a cold, an ear ache usually passes in two to three weeks or less. A normal body has a tremendous immune system as well as an army of defensive and offensive weapons that help us and keep us from sickness and disease. 

 ·         the church of jesus christ. The love and care of God's people has great healing power. Words, prayers, compassion, time, a listening ear can all help to make someone better especially during periods of sorrow, or emotional upset. I regularly hear of how you have helped someone get to feeling better.

 There is, however, another avenue to health that I want to explore with you this morning. This is divine healing. As a church we believe that Jesus heals. I want to give you five reasons why we believe this to be true.  

1.         the life and Witness of Jesus Christ

John 14:7,11 declares, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

This is a simple enough passage. Jesus was saying that He and the Father were one. They were one in purpose, vision, character, ministry, etc. 

·         What God was - Jesus was.

·         What God did - Jesus could do.

·         What God willed - Jesus willed.

There mustn't be any mistaking of this point. Jesus was an exact representation -- in human form -- of the Father.

 Jesus went on to note:

·         John 4:34: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” Whose work? The Father's work.

·         John 5:30 adds, “…I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”

·         John 6:38 likewise says, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

 Again, I do not feel that I am overstepping my bounds when I say that which Jesus did while He was here on this Earth reflected both the work and the will of the Heavenly Father. Having said that, let's notice now the great part healing played in the earthly ministry of our Lord.

 In Mark chapter 1 we see how Jesus:

·         Delivered a demon possessed man.

·         Healed Peter's mother-in-law of the fever.

·         Healed multitudes of various diseases.

·         Delivered many from demons.

·         Cleaned a leper.

Mark Chapter 2:

·         Healed the man with palsy.

Mark Chapter 3.

·         Healed the man with the withered hand.

·         Healed multitudes again.

Mark Chapter 5:

·         Delivered a man who was demon possessed.

·         Raised Jairus' daughter from the dead.

·         Healed a woman who had hemorrhaged for 18 years.

Mark Chapter 6:

·         Healed a few sick people

·         Healed many again

Mark Chapter 7:

·         Delivered a girl of demons

·         Healed deaf and dumb man

Mark Chapter 8:

·         Opened the eyes of a blind man.

Mark Chapter 10:

·         Healed blind Bartimaeus 

This doesn't tell of His:

·         Cleaning the ten lepers,

·         Raising Lazarus from the dead,

·         Restoring sight to the man that had been born blind,

·         Reattaching Malchus' ear in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Forty-one distinct instances of physical and mental healing are recorded in the Four Gospels. Scripture lets us know that there were numerous other healings and miracles which were not recorded.  

 He healed all who came to Him. The Bible does not record one instance where He turned someone down. The record is amazing. No one was ever excluded by reason of complexity or severity of his or her illness. Jesus simply healed them all. The point is again, we can readily see that which God can and wants to do by the very things which Jesus Christ did.

 The truth is, the attention given healing in the gospels, along with the working of miracles, is far greater than that devoted to any other one kind of experience. Simply, Jesus was and is the Healer.

 Notice Luke 5:12-13 with me please: “While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’ And immediately the leprosy left him.”

In Israel there were two kinds of leprosy. 

1.      There was one which was rather like a very bad skin disease. It was the less serious of the two.

2.      Then there was the one most commonly thought of when one thought of leprosy. It started from a small spot and then it ate away the flesh until the poor sufferer would be left with only the stump of a hand or leg. The smell was putrefying. It was literally a form of living death. The man in the account here was literally covered with the disease. The word covered as found in the verse means – “filled up, covered in every part”. The brother had leprosy in the worse way.

 One of the most terrible things about leprosy was the isolation it brought. The leper was to cry “Unclean! Unclean!” wherever he went. He was an outcast of society and exiled from home.

 The psychological consequences of leprosy were as serious as the physical. A noted doctor from a leper colony once wrote, “The leper is sick in mind as well as body. For some reason there is an attitude to leprosy different from the attitude to any other disfiguring disease. It is associated with shame and horror, and carries in some mysterious way a sense of guilt, although innocently acquired. Shunned and despised, frequently lepers consider taking their own life and some do.”  

That was the sort of fellow who came to Jesus that day so long ago. What did Jesus do? Two things. First, Jesus touched him and secondly, Jesus healed him.  Christ ministered to both the psychological and the physical needs of the gentleman. Now, to be sure, the Lord could have healed him without the touch -- He had sent His word to heal others. Nonetheless, the Bible clearly states that Jesus touched him to let him know that the long night of isolation was over, then he healed him by driving the disease away.  

 Jesus then and there by his own life and witness revealed to us the very essence of Christianity;

·         to touch the untouchable,

·         to love the unlovable,

·         to forgive the unforgivable. 

In doing so, He showed to us the Father. The GOOD Father, The COMPASSIONATE Father, The HEALING Father. God not only heals because He is great, but He also heals because He is good.

 The poor old leper had no confession other than he was unclean. He had no salvation, no status, no friends, no offering, no calling. All he had was leprosy, weakness, need and faith. That was enough to cause a Good God to act. Again, Jesus touched the man and made him whole.

 I love Psalm 31:21 in The Jerusalem Bible. It states in part: “God performs marvels of love.” Don't you

just love that? That is what He did for the leper so long ago. That is yet His business today - performing “marvels  of love”. Why not? John 4:8,16 both declare that “God is love.”  

2.         THE WORK ON THE CROSS

We find in Isaiah 53 that Jesus not only bore our sins on the Cross, He also bore each and everyone of our diseases. Notice please Isaiah 53:5, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” 

Other translations note in part:

·         “He was whipped, and we were healed!”

·         “By taking our punishment, He made us completely well.”

·         “The blows that fell on Him brought us healing.”

·         “He was lashed – and we were healed.”

·         “and with his stripes we are healed.”

 The Lord did not only enter into the fellowship of our suffering, He took upon Himself the pains and afflictions that were ours to bear and bore them in our place. As sin and sickness are joined as twin giants which would destroy us, so have salvation and healing been allied in a blessed victorious relationship with power to set us free. This is confirmed in Matthew 8:17, “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.’”

 Psalm 103:1-4 adds here, “Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.  Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits--who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion....”

 Notice now James 5:14-16, “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

The idea that is expressed here by James the Lord’s brother is a complete healing. By complete I mean complete. Wholeness or wellness, as mentioned here speaks of healing for both body and soul. It is talking about a total restoration.

 Listen to James 5:16 again, this time from The Message translation: “Believing prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.

 The famous minister/author Andrew Murray wrote in his book Divine Healing: “The pardon of sin and the healing of sickness complete one another.”

 3.         God is the creator or master-designer of the body

Every once in a while mankind involves itself in some debate about God:

·         Is He?

·         Can He?

·         Does He?

·         Where is He?

·         Who is He? etc.

One such debate centers around this issue of divine healing. Can God yet heal today? Does God heal in 2001? Let me ask you: “What can a 1000 pound gorilla do?” The correct answer is, “Anything he wants to do.”  So it is with God.  The Bible says that He does “all things after the counsel of His own will.” In other words, He does what He wants. 

Contrary to what some would have you believe, He is not a great man, an old man, some man upstairs, or even a good man. Simply put, He is not man at all. No, He is God; He is an exceedingly Great Creator God!

 ·         The psalmist wrote in Psalm 8:3-4,9, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” 

·         Jesus added in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

·         Jeremiah 32:17 cries, “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”

·         Exodus 15:11 (King James Version), “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”

 The Bible then goes on to assert: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It then tells how the plants, fish, birds, mammals were all created on separate days as distinct creations. Then for a crowning touch God created man by shaping him from a mass of clay and then breathing His breath -- life -- into man and man became a living creature.

 This beautiful theme of man being made by God as His handiwork is carried forth in a number of Scriptures including Psalm 100:3 which notes: “Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his;  we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”

 I see people as being prescription beings, having been made according to God's own unique formula. When God completed His work of creation, He said that it was “good”. When He finished His creation of man He looked and declared it to be “very good”, and so it was.

 Can I digress for just a moment? While the body is made up of innumerable parts, I want to have you look with me for a moment at the human eye. We know that it was obviously a part of the creative process. Listen, though, to how an evolutionist accounts for its existence: “There once was a time when a piece of pigment or freckle appeared upon the skin of a creature. The rays of the sun touched the spot, and when the original little animal felt the heat on that spot, it turned the spot to the sun to get more heat. This increased heat irritated the skin, a nerve came there and out of the nerve came the eye.”  And all God’s children say “Praise the Lord!”  Amen? 

 One problem though. This only accounts for one eye; there must have been another piece of pigment or freckle soon afterwards and in just the right place in order for the animal to have two eyes. Also, the nerves had to learn to move in the same direction at exactly the same time. By the way, the laws of probability tell us the two eyes and the two ears have but one chance out of a million trillion to be located where they are. If you ask me, it's easier to believe that “In the beginning God created....”

 Now let me ask you a rather simple question. How much does the average customer spend at a Laundromat? A few dollars? How much does the average customer pay when he or she takes their vehicle to the shop to be repaired? Maybe several hundred dollars? Now, if your automobile breaks down, why don't you take it to a laundromat to get it repaired? It stands to reason that a person would save a lot of money, right?  Wrong!  The laundromat is not into fixing cars; it is into washing clothes. You would take the car to a mechanic. You would take it to someone who knows how the machine was put together, someone who would understand the rational of the engine, transmission and Delco-Bose Surround-Sound stereo.

 So it is with healing. God makes no bones about it.  As I read a few minutes ago, he made us. We were his idea; His workmanship. He understands the workings of the eye, the ear, the heart, the foot, and the jaw.

 Jeremiah 1:5 declares: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you...” He not only knows us, He also knows how to fix us when we break down.

4.         HIS NAME DECLARES THAT HE CAN AND DOES HEAL

The names of God are very important. In the Bible, a person’s name, honor and reputation all were intertwined. The name Jesus, for example, means “GOD SAVES.” Jesus was not Joseph's and Mary's choice of a name for an earthly son. They may have preferred David, John or Paul; who knows? No, the name of Jesus was the Father's idea. When the Lord Jesus was born, He came with HIS NAME INTACT. His name helped identify who He was and what He came to do.

 Then, too, God used His names as a means to reveal Himself to us. The more that we know and understand His names, the more we know and understand Him. For instance:

·         He isn't merely called the Good Shepherd; He IS the Good Shepherd.

·         He isn't merely called the Water of Life; He is the Water of Life.

·         He isn't merely called the Lord, Lord is also His office. He is the Lord Jesus Christ!

The more that we know and understand His names, the more we can relate those names to the many and varied needs of our lives.

 How does this relate to divine healing? One of God's great covenant names is Jehovah Rapha -- found in Exodus 15:26 -- which says in part: “I am the LORD, who heals you.”

 Again, the name helps us to know who He is and what He does. We know that He is love, He is eternal, He is all-wise, He is all powerful, He is all sufficient. He has revealed to us these things about Himself in numerous ways. Then too, better than 4000 years ago God revealed His name Jehovah Rapha to Moses. That name has never changed. One of the characteristics of God is His eternal sameness. Therefore, we know that He was, is, and ever will be Jehovah Rapha, The Healer. That is His name. That, quite honestly, is who and what He does.

 But pastor, I'm so sick - He is health.

·         I'm so weak - He is strength.

·         I'm so needy - He is so sufficient.

·         I'm so bad - He is so good.

·         I'm so little - He is so great.

He is God - The Great healing God!

 5.         The Church's record through the centuries gives us reason to believe in divine healing

·         Around A.D. 210, Tertullian reported several kinds of healing. 

·         Origen who was martyred around A.D. 253, wrote of the Christians: "They expel evil spirits and perform many cures…. We too have seen many persons freed from grievous calamities and distractions of mind and madness and countless other ills...." 

·         In 424 in the classic “The City of God” by Augustine, the writers notes: “Once I realized how many miracles were occurring in our own day and which were so, like the miracles of old and also how wrong it would be to allow the memory of these marvels of divine power to perish from among our people. It is only two years ago that the keeping of records was begun here in Hippo, and already at this writing we have nearly 70 attested miracles.”

·         In 1545, shortly before He died, Martin Luther wrote instructions for a healing service based on the letter of James, stating “This is what we do, and that we have been accustomed to do, for a cabinetmaker here was similarly afflicted with madness and we cured him by prayer in Christ's name.”

·         In 1882, the well known Baptist minister A.J. Gorden published his Ministry of Healing. In it he describes the history of healing and gives examples from his own ministry. 

 Healing has been a greater or lesser part of the church down through the church age. It hasn't been monopolized by the Assemblies of God or other Pentecostals. History attests to the fact that Jesus Christ is both a great Savior as well as a great healer! 

Some wonder how preachers can preach on divine healing today when so many people in the world are sick 

That is a fair question. However, Aspirin helps stop a headache. I've seen it happen. And yet, are there still headaches in the world? Of course. 

 Light dispels darkness. Even the smallest candle can drive darkness back, and yet, there is much darkness remaining on this planet. The presence of darkness does not disprove light any more than the presence of sickness disproves healing.

 ·         Hear me, please. I can declare God heals in the face of sickness just the same as I can declare God      loves in the face of hate.

·         God provides peace in a world bent on violence,

·         God gives joy in the midst of despair,

·         Hope in the face of hopelessness,

·         Salvation in an world with millions who are lost, and

·         Sufficiency in a world beset with need.

The truth still stands -- He the Lord, Jehovah Rapha, and He still heals.