Healing "Preliminaries"

We spent the last lesson developing the need for confidence to pray for the sick. We discovered that God wants His anointing to transcend the four walls of the church, so that we can demonstrate God's reality to the unsaved. God doesn't just want us to proclaim the gospel, He also wants us to demonstrate the reality of the gospel by moving in His power and authority. Jesus promised this to us in John 14:12-14 where He said, "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. And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it."

The great commission tells us that we are to heal the sick, we are to cast out demons and we are to proclaim the kingdom of God. So why aren't we all out there doing what Jesus did and demonstrating the kingdom of God in power to the lost? The primary reason we are not doing it is because we don't have confidence that Jesus' promise applies to us. So what I want to do in this lesson is to look at ways to build our confidence in praying for the sick.

First of all, look at this. My first confidence building point in praying for the sick came when I began to look at the Old Testament, and I looked at the promises in the Old Testament. There are several passages that talk about God's healing His people and I think this is the old covenant. This is not the new covenant which is a better covenant. The old covenant was sustained by the works of the people. The new covenant was sustained by the works of Jesus. It is a more perfect covenant, a more complete covenant. God's people obeyed the old covenant. There were promises and blessings of the old covenant, and there are also promises with the new covenant. We are going to look at the new covenant promises in just a moment.

But first look at Exodus, Chapter 15, what do you see? Ex. 15:26 "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." That is where that comes from.

Deut. 7:15 says "The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but He will inflict them on all who hate you." So God promised them health on the condition that they stay true to the covenant. It is a sign of His hand, a sign of His blessing upon His people.

Psalm 103:2-4, King David would say this: "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." Look at verse three. Does it say, "He forgives all your sins and He heals 50 per cent of your diseases?" Well, OK, how about "75 per cent of your diseases?" I mean, is the word "all" one of those all-encompassing words? What is not included in there? Where is the exception clause in there?

It is very interesting how we look at that passage there and we have no problem with the "forgives us all of your sins" part. Nor do we have a problem with He "redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion."

There is a good book you ought to get sometime if you want to hear a good story by a man by the name of Duane Miller. He wrote a book: Out Of The Silence, The Testimony Of God's Healing Power. He was teaching a large Sunday school class at the First Southern Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, there were about 200 people in the class. Duane's voice had been destroyed and had a special device box put on his throat to allow him to speak. He was teaching on Psalm 103. And he said this, "Well, I believe this. I believe here that the Lord forgives all your sins. I don't have any problem that He forgives all my sins, or redeems us from the pit. However, I don't think God heals all your diseases." And then God healed him -- Right then, in front of everybody. He had been tormented for years with this. It's in the book.

That's the Old Testament. Now, let's look at the New Testament.

Let me ask you this, "What is the source of sickness and disease?" It came because of man's fall there and because of the work of the devil. So we look at Jesus' destruction of the works of the devil. 1 John 3:8 says, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work." And what is included in the works of the devil?

Acts 10:38 says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and ... He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him."

So we see that part of healing is simply undoing the works of the devil. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Sickness and disease are present because of sin and also because of the works of the devil. Jesus came to undo that and to destroy that. Look at the atonement of Jesus. You know that when Christ died on the cross, the sacrifice of His body atoned for our sins. It was payment for our sin and in the act of the cross He took what we deserved. And in His sacrifice there was also a redemptive effect on our bodies in relationship to disease and to sickness. Christ became the curse on our behalf. That isn't to say that our bodies are not still under the curse of death and I will talk about that later because that falls underneath the "What About Death" category.

There is healing in the atonement of Christ. 1 Pet 2:24 says "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed." I know that is definitely speaking about a spiritual healing. But that word has an all-inclusive meaning as well. By the wounds of Christ, by His stripes, He took our curse; He carried our sin. In the exchange, with what Christ did, He took what we deserved, and in exchange gave us His kingdom. This is what He came to do. He carried our sins and through His wounds we have been healed.

God said something interesting about healing in Matthew chapter 8. Let's pick up the story at verses 14-16, to see what Jesus did. Then we will look at what God said about it in verse 17. First here is what He did, in verses 14-16: "When Jesus came into Peter's house, He saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on Him. When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Him, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick." Now here is what God said about it, verse 17, "This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 'He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.'"

When I look at this verse, I ask myself some questions here. Did Jesus take all of our sickness? Did He take all of our weakness? Which sickness and which disease did Jesus not take? What infirmity wasn't covered by this? Was every sickness and disease that would attack us be taken out by Jesus? Those are the questions that I ask. There weren't any exception clauses in here. Jesus' death not only purchased our Salvation, it also purchased our healing.