October 2002
Recently
I was talking to a friend about the gift of healing and it’s absence in the
Church. He said that he thought that
healing was really unimportant today. He
said that spiritual health was far more important then physical health. A week latter he was having some health
problems that affected his functioning at work.
The change in health affected a change in his views on healing. The Bible ties our spiritual health to our
physical health, and yet today many Christians would laugh at that
concept. However we read:
You shall not
make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters
below. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me,
but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep
my commandments. (Ex.20:5-6)
The
previous scripture is referred to as the second of the ten commandments. As a church we have forgotten the direct
relationship between health and holiness or to reciprocate it: sin and
sickness. This becomes clear when God
dealt with
Worship the
LORD your God, and his blessing
will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and
none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span. (Ex.23:25-26)
Some
would say that if someone who is in sin becomes sick, it is coincidence; science has proved there is no relationship
between our spirituality and our health, rather sickness is caused by bacteria
and viruses. The point needs to be made
that when someone chooses to serve another god, they remove themselves from
God’s protection. The Bible teaches us that if we dwell in the shelter of God
and trust Him, He will spare us:
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that
flies by day, nor the pestilence that
stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at
God
promises He will protect His people, and yet today we have forgotten who controls
the diseases. Science claims that
sickness is a matter of fate: controlled by the germs we have come into contact
with. Christians have adopted the mentality of the world that
came with modernity: “There is no God; there is no sin; everything has a
physical cause and effect.” Is sickness
the result of random fate or does God ultimately control it? The Bible specifically lists the curses God
sends on those who are His people and yet turn their backs on the commands of
God in Duet.28:15-68. The Bible not only
teaches us, but also history demonstrates, that God controls both sickness and
healing and ultimately life itself:
"See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides
me. I put to death and I bring to life,
I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand. (De.32:39)
God
is the only God and no one can deliver out of His hand. Can doctors heal? Not unless it is God’s will and timing. This is why He told
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." (Ex.15:26)
The
Bible teaches that even in His church, God will discipline those He loves for
their good:
Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they
thought best; but God disciplines us for
our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but
painful. Later on, however, it produces
a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
(He.12:10-11)
If
we partake of the Lord’s supper we must examine ourselves, asking God to show
us any sin in our lives. For if we
partake of the Lord’s table while we have a disregard for sin, it brings
judgment on ourselves:
A man ought to
examine himself before he
eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats
and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and
sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if
we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being
disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. (1Co.11:28-32)
When
I come down with even so much as a bad cold, I examine myself, praying to God
to show me my sin. So I use sickness as
a part of personal examination and continual cleansing. God’s discipline is not always because of
sin, but sometimes it is to prevent us from sin which is still part of His
discipline. Paul had a illness:
As you know, it was
because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt
or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were
Christ Jesus himself. What has happened
to all your joy? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given
them to me. (Ga.4:13-15)
Paul
had a thorn in his flesh not because of sin but to keep him from the sin of
pride:
To keep me
from becoming conceited because of
these surpassingly great revelations, there
was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take
it away from me. (2Co.12:7-8)
Since
the Bible connects physical health with spiritual health, it tells us that we
must call the elders:
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. If he has
sinned, he will be forgiven.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer
of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (Ja.5:14-16)
Elders
must not be hasty to lay their hands on people to heal them, rather they must
consider whether sin is the cause and whether there is true repentance:
Do not be
hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.
Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach
and your frequent illnesses. The sins of some men are obvious, reaching
the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. (1Ti.5:22-24)
Elders
need to pray whether it is the Lord’s will to prayer over someone for healing,
for to pray for healing before the sick person has confessed and repented of his
sin is counter-productive. Therefore God
claims that He controls both sickness and healing and warns that if we live our
lives disregarding what He asks of us, He will use sickness to make us stop and
consider our lives.
Now, before you go on a witch
hunt seeking out those who are sick and
calling them to repentance, you need to
know that there are 2 other reasons for Christians becoming sick. The disciples knew that sickness was the
result of sin and attributed all sickness to sin. However we read:
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither
this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might
be displayed in his life. (Jn.9:1-3)
The
man’s blindness was not a result of sin.
The question we need to ask is, “When did God receive glory and when was
His work revealed in the blind man’s life?”
God did not receive glory in his sickness, but rather it was in his
healing. There is no more vivid a
picture as to God’s inflicting the righteous with sickness then in the story of Job. Job’s sickness was not a result of sin:
Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him;
he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." (Job
1:8)
The Bible considers Job a righteous man; and so
he would not be disciplined for his wickedness.
However, God had ultimate control
over Job’s trials. In the first
temptation, God allowed Satan to touch everything Job had except Job himself:
The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he
has is in your hands, but on the man
himself do not lay a finger." Then Satan went out from the presence of
the LORD. (Job
Then
in the second temptation of Job, God allowed Satan to touch his life but not
take it.
The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his
life." So Satan went out from
the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of
his feet to the top of his head. (Job 2:6-7)
Job’s
friends kept accusing him of sin being aware of the relationship between
sickness and sin; however, Job maintained his integrity and received blessing
when he was restored. Through this God
received glory:
The LORD blessed the
latter part of Job’s life more than the first. … 17
And so he died, old and full of years. (Job 42:12,17)
If
after a sick person has examined himself and in all sincerity has found no sin,
he can still call the elders to anoint him with oil and pray over him. However, another option is have someone who
is gifted in healing to place their hands on him in the name of Jesus
Christ. I have never met someone with
the gift of healing:
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. …. 9
to another gifts of healing by
that one Spirit, to another miraculous
powers, (1Co.12:7,9)
God
has gifted some Christians with the gift of healing; only the church has
taught them that their gift no longer
exists. There is no support from the
scripture that the gift of healing has become obsolete, rather we read:
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
And in the church God has
appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then
workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, ……..Do all work
miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? (1Co.12:27-30)
Paul’s
rating of the gifts place miracles and healing with 4th and 5th
billing. This demonstrates the
importance God places on physical healing.
The Bible teaches us that Christ took up our infirmities:
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. (Isa.53:4)
The
word “sorrows” in Isaiah is interpreted “diseases” in Matthew:
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.
This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our
diseases." (Mt.8:16-17)
Some
might argue that spiritual healing is all that matters. You might say that physical healing does not
matter. Objectively it doesn’t; but
subjectively, if your wife or son or even yourself is racked with pain of a
long term illness, your prioritization changes.
Healing is important. You should
have talked to Bill, whose pain was so great, he took his own life. Do not judge unless you are willing to ask
God for great pain so you can make a personal and right judgment on the
importance of healing. It is through
Christ’s death on the cross that we can receive healing:
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. (1Pe.2:24)
God
has given the gift of healing to His church, and if we are His church, then
some have that gift:
And these
signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison,
it will not hurt them at all; they will
place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." (Mk.16:17-18)
Therefore
the second reason for sickness is that through healing God will receive glory,
and the world will know that God still lives in His church.
The final reason for sickness is
that when Adam ate from the fruit in the Garden of Eden, God pronounced His
sentence:
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you
return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Ge.3:19)
If
God had laced the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil with a very strong
poison, then all of us would have died with our first parents: Adam and
Eve. Since we should have died in the
beginning, Christ’s death could not free us from physical death. For this reason, the Bible teaches us that
all men are destined to die:
Just as man is
destined to die once, and after
that to face judgment, (He.
The
way we normally die is by failure of a major bodily function- either caused
naturally such as heart attack or unnaturally such as a car accident. Since we all must die, the third reason for
sickness is death- that we might inherit a better dwelling place.
Many Christians equate today’s field
of medicine as being God’s gift of healing.
However, God’s gift is to His church, while the majority of doctors are
not Christian. In fact, a lot of doctors
are immoral- the same doctor who gave my
wife a C-section did all the abortions in that same hospital. According to Deut.17:2-5, if we were living
in the Old Testament, people should stone any one who went to a doctor of
today:
Oath of
Hippocrates pre 1949
I swear by Apollo the
physician, and Æsculapius, and Hygeia, and Panacea, and all the gods and
goddesses, that according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this oath and
its stipulations --
The
Hippocratic oath was change in 1949 and is in the process of being change again
to allow to accommodate issues like abortion and euthanasia. No matter how many times they change, the
original oath shows that the spiritual foundation of modern medicine is in
other gods. When we go to the doctor we
are doing exactly what the Biblical account of Ahaziah says he went to consult
Baal-Zebub- consulting other god’s. So
God sends Elijah to intercept Ahaziah’s messengers :
But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite,
"Go up and meet the messengers of the king of
Why
do Christians look to the gods of modern medicine when it is incapable of
healing? God’s gift of healing always
restores to wholeness; modern medicine always hopes to restore functionability
in order to prolong life. The Bible warns us that Satan does counterfeit
miracles:
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the
work of Satan displayed in all kinds of
counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders,
and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They
perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2Th.2:9-10)
Ahaziah
knew he could consult Elijah, but he opted for Baal. When we become sick, who does the Bible
tells us to call? The doctor?
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. If he has sinned, he will be
forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to
each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a
righteous man is powerful and effective. (Ja.5:14-16)
Something
to think about isn’t it?