This past week started the beginning of Lent. Lent is the time we spiritually prepare ourselves to celebrate Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This year we are studying God's miraculous power to heal and boldly praying that we might experience it. I encourage you to come to worship with the faith that God can heal you from all sickness, brokenness and woundedness. To listen to Sunday's sermon follow the link or you can read the text below (unedited). Be blessed... be healed...
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jhmz2yt1tlt/The Great Physician.mp3
“The Great Physician: Diving Healing”
Brimfield Faith UMC
February 21, 2010
Luke 7:18-23; Isaiah 53:1-5
INTRODUCTION - SKEPTICS
The scene we just watch is from the movie “The Green Mile.” The tag line of the movie “Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) didn’t believe in miracles. Until the day he met one.” The story is about a death row inmate named John Coffey who has supernatural powers. In several scenes in the movie performs miracles. Those in the movie, like many people in America, are skeptical of miracles until we experience one. [CLIP – HEALING]
Even Christians, who embrace a faith based predicated on a virgin birth, Jesus’s miracles, and his resurrection, are skeptical about miracles and especially healing miracles. Depending on your experiences, the mention divine healing and miracles may stir different emotions and thoughts within you. There is a litany of reasons to be skeptical of divine healing. Supernatural healing is sometimes associated with the occult and new age religion. Sometimes we don’t believe the person claiming the miracle. I don’t know what specifically causes you do doubt divine healing, but as we being to talk about it I want to address two of them.
The first reason many of us are leery of divine healing is because of what we see on T.V. Ministers who claim to have the gift of healing are often a bit wacky. We have one of the best examples of it just down the road in Cuyahoga Falls at the Crystal Cathedral with the Rev. Earnest Angley. With the bad toupee, thick southern accent, and dramatic “be heaaaaaaled,” what’s not to be skeptical about. Angley is only one of many who populate the airwaves with their unique brand of Christianity and healing.
While people may have authentic encounters with God at Angley’s meetings, his personality does not exactly inspire the average Christian to have embrace the concept of divine healing. Instead it causes most of us to think, divine healing just isn’t for me. We think, “I would never pray for someone like that,” or “I would never go there to receive such prayer.” Unfortunately, we have observed bad models for divine healing and it has caused us to dismiss it.
The other reason we typically doubt healing is from insufficient theology and philosophy. Some Christians assert that divine healing ended when Jesus’ disciples died or once early church was fully established. This theological reasoning basically eliminates the possibility and necessity for God to act in miraculous ways today. Although many of us are not familiar that theological explanation, we are familiar with Enlightenment thinking. Whether we realize it or not, most of us probably learned the scientific method in school. The method is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence that is then subject to principles of reasoning. This approach to the world eliminates much of the spiritual realm and the possibility of the supernatural. Modernity has a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophesy. If you are taught not to believe in ghosts, spirits, or even miracles, you don’t look for them or ask for them. As a result, you never experience them. Although modernity has diminished, it still influences the way we practice and live out our faith. This way of thinking has left many Christians skeptical of any miracles, especially that of divine healing.
DOES GOD STILL HEAL?
There seems to be a disconnect between what we read in Scripture and what we experience in our lives. I don’t know about you, but this bothers me. If I am going to commit my life to the faith found in the Bible, then I expect to experience the same living God that is described within those pages. One of those encounters I long to have is that of divine healing. The pages of Scripture, especially Jesus’ ministry are littered with accounts of miraculous healings. Call me foolish but I think Christians today ought to have access to such power.
Most of us have plenty of misconceptions and misunderstandings about divine healing. As we embark on the journey of Jesus-Care over the next 40 days of Lent, I hope for us to overcome our doubts, fears, and misconceptions around divine healing. I hope for us to discover the God whom the Israel called, “The Lord, who heals you,” or YHWH-Rapha. By the end of the series, I hope for us to have new models of pray, new ways to seek divine healing, and for us to experience the fullness of God’s healing ministry.
This morning I want to answer the simple question: Does God still heal today? The short answer is YES! [Turn to your neighbor.] To show this, I want to demonstrate that it has always been in God’s character to heal in supernatural ways. As we begin that overview, I think it would be helpful to define divine healing. Divine healing means healing by direct intervention of the living God and his son Jesus Christ. While is seems possible for supernatural or miraculous healings to occur a part from God, divine healing speaks to those healings that come directly from God. Divine healing typically occurs in direct response to prayers of faith or an act of faith. Next week, we will talk about other ways that God facilitates healing but this morning, I want to address divine healing as a direct result of God’s power and action.
OLD TESTAMENT
The Israelites had numerous names to describe the nature and the character of God. One of those names was YHWH-Rapha, which is translated “the Lord, who heals you.” The Israelites from the beginning believed God has a desire to protect them and to keep them healthy. This name first appears inn Exodus 15:26, “26 He said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.” It was generally understood that if you followed the ways of God, you wouldn’t get sick. But it wasn’t outside of God’s power and character to heal the sick when there wasn’t sin involved.
One of my favorite stories that depicts God’s healing nature in the Old Testament is found in 2 Kings 5. There is a man named Naaman, who was a commander of the army of the king of Aram, and who has leprosy. While he is not an Israelite, he seeks healing through the Hebrew prophet, Elisha. Elisha gives him orders to wash seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman doesn’t like this answer and in fact argues with Elisha about it. He think Elisha should be able to just wave his hand and heal him. He questions, why do I have to bathe in the waters of Israel? Finally Naamam humbles himself and wash seven times in Israelite wasters and his flesh is restored.
I like this story for a couple of reasons. One it shows a non-Israelite receiving healing from God; proof that God cannot resist healing people because it is part of his character. God truly has a desire to heal everyone. With divine healing, God has a need to remind us who is God and from where the power comes. For Naaman, this meant trekking down to the Jordan River seven times. For us today, it might mean that God actually goofballs like Earnest Angley. While I do not endorse, “Be heaaaaaled,” I do think God releases his divine healing in ways that stretch us. Ultimately, Namaan teaches us that God cannot resist healing those who ask. In the same breath, God will always remind us that it is he who heals. Divine healing will always point us to God. If we pray for someone and they are healed, it is because God worked through us. God loves to heal because it brings his people into deeper relationship with him. Divine healing is always about restoring people into the fullness of God and into right relationship with God, with others, and with the world.
NEW TESTAMENT – JESUS
Although healing is an integral part of God’s nature as YHWH-Rapha, there is not an abundance of healing miracles in the Old Testament. That changes when we get to the New Testament and to Jesus’ ministry. Isaiah sets the stage for this shift in chapter 53: “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 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.”
When we begin to read the New Testament, we see the ministry of healing come to the forefront. During one dialogue in Luke 7:22, Jesus responds to a question from John the Baptism about whether or not he is the messiah. Jesus says: “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” Jesus considered his healing ministry to be an integral part of who he was.
Jesus was the incarnation of God, in human flesh, and we see God’s desire to heal people. Jesus understood the power that healing could bring to people’s lives. He removed the stigma that illness was punishment for sin. He make people physically well. He restored them spiritually. He specialized in making people whole again. Next week we will discuss at length the fullness of God’s healing ministry.
In Jesus, God makes a significant shift in his healing nature. He moves from being a God that heals to empowering others to be agents of healing. Jesus has such a heart for healing others that he equips and empowers his followers to be able to do the same. In Luke 9, it says, “When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Jesus doesn’t stop there. In Luke 10, he gathers an addition seventy-two followers and empowers them in the same way. God’s heart is to equip his followers with power to spread the kingdom of God.
CONCLUSION - HEALING TODAY
Through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, we have been empowered move in divine healing and power. In John 14:12-14, Jesus tells us: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” I have news for you… The Holy Spirit is the same today as it was 2000 years ago when Jesus spoke these words. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. We still live in a broken, hurting world that needs God’s healing power and love.
In Jesus, God set a trajectory for healing that has not lessened over time but has increased. God calls us to do greater things than even Jesus did. If we trace the accounts of miracles throughout history, we will see decreases during certain periods for sure. Yet, there is never a time in history when there have not been accounts of divine healing. In fact, in the 20th century and now into the 21st century, there are more accounts of divine healing and miracles than ever before. The church in Africa and South America as well as other parts of the world is growing tremendously. They report that this growth is in large part from divine healings that have taken place. The atmosphere has never been riper for divine healing even in America.
Therefore, I believe it is our responsibility to be conduits for that healing. Jesus says, “You have not because you ask not.” If we want to experience God’s healing power, then we must cry out to God for it. It doesn’t mean we need to be wacky or weird but we need to ask from the depths of our spirits for God’s healing power. I believe God is calling us to be a people that intimately know God’s healing power. While I know there are many unanswered questions about tapping into the divine healing power of God, I hope today you can open your hearts to it. I believe God wants to heal you of your infirmities. I also believe God wants to use you as his healing instrument for others.
Let’s pray.
Pray for those who want to see God’s healing power. Pray for those who need healing.
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