Divine Healing

Ladies, that's always been a tune that I've absolutely loved, even before I realized that it's history with the Shakers and it's often used around this time of year, and I'm sure God appreciates the thanks that we give for simple gifts, even we enjoy so many of them.

Which makes me think I was concerned, I believe I was talking to Mr. Call saying, oh, it's the week before Thanksgiving, I should have prepared a message that really fits in with the season. And then I was thinking after that, I said, well, I think I have prepared a message that fits in with the season, just not in that particular way. Because if you haven't noticed, we're coming into cold and flu season. Now, I'm very thankful for Thanksgiving, but, you know, it's getting that time of year where you hear sniffles and coughs. It seems like we always hear them, and it amazes me. Well, it's amazed me. One of the things I knew that when I was serving as pastor, I'd get calls for anointing and sending cloths, and I just didn't give much thought to how much it would be. And it's a fair bit. It's an important job, and it's an honor. And please, don't take it as though I'm complaining. I'm not at all. As I said, every time I have the privilege of calling on God for that special blessing that He gives us, it's an honor to be one of the ones that's able to do that. But I think about that. We don't always call for an elder whenever we get a case of the sniffles, a head cold. At least I haven't always, because of something that's amazing. You know, a little cold, and I say little, what's big for one person might not be so little or as big for another person. But typically, it's an inconvenience. You know, it's miserable, and you might feel a little queasy to your stomach, or you get hot and cold, but you're going to get over it.

And you kind of know that. You've got it in the back of your mind, oh boy, this is a drag, but sooner or later, I'm going to get over it. Probably not sooner or later. It's the typical cold. It's three to five days. And one of the things I remember from college, and you all remember Les McCullough. He was in charge in Big Sandy when I first went down there, and we just loved him, because he was this big, strong fella. And he had a way of putting things in perspective, because one day, and I don't remember the subject, it might have been talking about healing, but he said, well, you can get a cold, and you can take a lot of high doses of vitamin C, and eat oranges, and all this, and you'll get over it in about three to five days. Or you can have a cold, and you can eat donuts, and drink beer, and you'll get over it in about three to five days.

Similarly, all of us have had cuts at some time or another, right? You get a cut. One of the worst ones is the paper cut. That little slice that you can hardly tell it's there, but boy does that sting.

Or, if you're like me, and I'm dreading this because Connor is showing a lot of signs of being like me, and I was getting cut so much when I was a kid that I started sneaking into the house to put on the band-aids without letting mom know, just because here we go again. And of course, but you know you're going to get better. Some things you have to take care of. Sometimes you need stitches, or just a band-aid, or the paper cut, you stick it in your mouth for a little bit.

And the skin will grow, it'll mend. You might have, I've got an interesting scar here on my forehand that I have no idea how I got there. It's been there a good long time. And what I wanted, well, I'm going to, this is still by way of introduction to talk about some of the blessings that God gives us, but do we stop and think how astounding is what God built into our bodies? That the fact that our bodies are designed to heal themselves is amazing. I learned about this, I've taken it for granted, and most of us have. As I said, you can get a little cut, and you go, you know, and later on you just forget about it. It'll get better. Or if you have that cold, and you're down in the orange juice, and you're going through a lot of box and napkins, you still might make plans for two weeks out, because you just presume you're going to get better.

What we should realize is the fact that we get better on our own is still a miracle. A miracle of God's creation. How many of you have heard of, well, you've heard of the theory of intelligent design, probably. It's come up a lot as a counter to evolution. And there's a book that came out of several years ago that's a strong proponent. It was written by a fellow named Michael Behe.

Behe, I'm not sure the pronunciation, but the title is Darwin's Black Box.

And many of you had a chance, you might have heard the title in passing. I heard the title referred to so many times, I said, I'm going to have to get this book and read it, because everybody keeps talking about it. And what it does is he, Michael Behe is a medical doctor who did a lot of research, and he studied what happens in our bodies on the molecular level. The tiniest cells, and even the smaller parts within a cell, showing how it is that we heal automatically. And it's not something that just happens. It's an astounding miracle. You know, how our body forms antibodies to fight off a virus. You get that cold, it's caused by some type of virus that gets in your body, and it reproduces and it starts taking over cells. And if your body had no defenses, that virus would just get carried away and just take over. And that'd be the end of you. But what happens in our bodies, when that happens, when the virus comes in, there are cells that are designed to note that. And then they start take, they'll take like an imprint of the virus and learn exactly how it's put together. And they'll go back to other cells and they'll create what's called an antibody that's designed specifically to fight that virus. And designed to get at it and actually tear it apart and make it harmless. And your body will start producing more and more of those until there's enough to just destroy the virus out of your system. And your body will always carry the imprint of that antibody. So that if that virus comes back to you again, you might get momentarily sick because it'll start to come in, but your body already knows how to fight it. And the reproduction will kick into high gear and you'll get over it. So you very rarely get sick with the same virus again and never for very long. Now what can happen is the cold virus mutates so often and so fast that it's a slightly different form that makes you feel the exact same way as the last time. Now the other thing that God built into us, I think of those little paper cuts and other types, is blood clotting. I'd never given this a thought. What a miracle it is that our bodies, we've got a built-in bandage system.

And as I said as a kid, I had it happen all the time, but I didn't realize how complex a procedure it is. Within our blood there's certain proteins and such that when a leak is detected, the protein is released and it starts causing the blood to clot. Okay, that's simple enough. But what Mr. Behe studied is, okay, remember that can only go on just so long because if it just continued indefinitely, all the blood in your body would solidify and you'd be dead in no time. So it's designed, the protein goes out, the blood starts clotting. And those of you who are in the medical field, I'm sure I'm not explaining this in precise terms. Michael or Stephen's laughing at me, but hopefully the principle I have correct. But you know, it happens fast enough so that you don't bleed out before it happens, but it goes on just so long and then stops. So God built in a system that works just the right way. And one of the important things to disprove evolution is if that had that system has to be just right, or we'd be dying all, you know, we our species couldn't survive. We'd be here for a little while and something would happen and we'd be dead. But these systems that are incredibly complex always work, or they work so well that there's no way they could have evolved. You can't have almost the ability to clot blood. You know, it has to all work, work just long enough and then stop working for us to survive. Now, as I said, I'm still in a way of introduction, but all that said, let's turn to Psalms 139. This is Psalms 139 in verse 14, a familiar scripture. But one of the things we discussed at a ministerial conference was that we shouldn't presume that everybody knows all these scriptures that we think are familiar. Let's turn to them and read them, especially for our younger generations. Psalm 139 in verse—did I say 19? I meant 14.

We quote this a lot of times, but think of the things I was just discussing, although I wasn't describing them very well, and all the more. Think of things like your eyeball and how it works, and the fact that you can get up and walk and balance perfectly on two feet, which scientists are trying to get robots to do that. And David wrote, he said, I'll praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. We are made in a way that is absolutely astounding. Now, getting it cold to us can seem routine, but the fact that we get over it is a miracle that God built into us. Now, of course, there are times when these miracles that God built into us might not be enough.

Sometimes when we get older or we have something happen that compromises our immune system, then perhaps a bacteria or virus could overwhelm our system so that we're not able to fight it off.

And that's where I want to go to next. I want to appreciate the miracle that we have that we experience every day, but then to remember that God provides us a way to go beyond that, and to come to Him personally and appeal for Him to heal us. And today, let's talk a little bit about the concept of divine healing. As I said, it's getting into cold and flu season. We all have occasion to do that. At least most of us do eventually. Some of you who are younger, don't worry, your time's coming. Maybe I shouldn't put it that way, because you're not eager for it.

I think I was 15 the first time I was anointed, and I think I can refer to that story a little later. There are a lot of questions that come up when we think about healing. It's good for us to go into the Bible and look at what it tells us. This is another one of those fundamental beliefs and doctrine sermons. But I do want to make a point, and I made a note here so that I wouldn't skip by and forget it. I'm not planning on addressing in any detail the question of, when do you go to a medical doctor or when do you not? The Bible doesn't say a lot about that. The Bible does not condemn physicians. And I'm pointing it out, of course, because there was a time several decades ago when we were a little unbalanced on that as a church where we said, oh, you don't have any faith if you go to a doctor. Well, now we say, no, you can have faith and you can go to a doctor. Going to a doctor, it's not the exact same, mind you, but it's similar to taking your car to a medical mechanic where they have specialized knowledge and they can use proper tools to do things to help the body heal itself. You know, the Bible doesn't talk a lot about that, but we do know that doctors are not the ultimate source of our healing.

God can heal. He built into our bodies the ability to do something that, as I said, it's a miracle that they can heal themselves of some things, but He provides us the means to ask Him to do more. So first, let's establish early on that healing was God's idea in the first place. Let's go to the book of Exodus, chapter 23. Exodus 23 and verse 25.

Now, we go to God, we initiate the request, but He is the one that told us in advance that we can and should do that. Now, we're breaking into a thought here, but of course, God had a lot to say in the book of Exodus and the following books. But here in Exodus 23 and verse 25, He says, So you shall serve the Eternal your God, and he will bless your bread and water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of you. He says, I'll take the sickness away. Notice it's a given that sickness would be there. It's in the world. God created everything. He created sickness probably for purposes of us learning lessons and things like that, but He promises one of His blessings is, I'll take it away. And let's go back a few more chapters to Exodus 15.

Exodus 15 and verse 26.

This is not long after the children of Israel had come out of, you know, Egypt and God had brought them through the Red Sea, and then let the waters come back over top of the Egyptians and smash them, and they're singing and dancing and triumph. But then not long afterwards, the people are saying, Hey, we're getting thirsty. We can't drink this water. It's bad. And then God heals the water. He provides them the water to drink. And then He makes an interesting comment. Exodus 15 and verse 26, because it says, well, and above in verse 25, right at the end, it says He's tested them.

But it says, So this is part of God's proposition. He says, if you'll obey Me, if you'll do this stuff, I won't put the diseases on you that I've put on the Egyptians. And we can speculate across my mind what kind of diseases are on the Egyptians. Well, maybe some of the ones we have in our society today, because our people as a general rule are not obeying God's commands. And we wish they were. Perhaps if we were closer to God and living His way, I mean, as a nation, not just the people in this room, perhaps there'd be a lot less of chronic diseases and other ones. Certainly, you know, fewer sexually transmitted diseases. Those would just fade out and go away because of people obeying God.

But look at the last part of this. We might not realize this, but in Hebrew, God is giving one of His, you could call it a name or a title, but He says, I am the Lord who heals you. Where it says, L-O-R-D, that's what we call the tetragrammaton, the Y-H-W-H. There's speculation, how do you exactly pronounce that? Most people agree or say that it was probably Yahweh. We don't know for certain, but and the part where it says, who heals you is Rafa. So He basically says, I am Yahweh Rafa, which is basically saying, I'm the God who heals you. That's exactly the translation, but He's saying, that's my job. That's who I am. I'm the God who heals you. It's not just in passing or, you know, if you come and beg me, then I'll go do this job. He says, that's who and what I am. That's one of my names, is I'm the God who heals you. If we go to the New Testament, we'll remind ourselves that healing was a big part of Christ's ministry in Matthew 4. Matthew 4 verse 13. It shouldn't surprise us if we keep in mind that the God who spoke to Moses, you know, who thundered from the top of Mount Sinai, and then who said, I'm the God who heals you, later was, you know, He was the Word, the Word who was with God and was God, and then He became flesh and dwelt among men. So the one that we call Jesus Christ was the same one who had earlier said, I'm the God who heals you. And in Matthew 4 verse 23, I'm going to say 13 doesn't seem to say much that we want to read here right now. But early in Christ's ministry, it says, Jesus went all about Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sicknesses and all kinds of disease among the people. So Jesus had these things that He did. He went around preaching and teaching, preaching the kingdom of God. And remember, that was what He preached, and we want to focus on doing that. But also, He healed all kinds of sickness, all kinds of diseases.

Remember, how long was it ago? A month or two ago, I gave a sermon talking about Jesus' compassion, how, you know, He could have just focused on preaching. You know, He could have said, okay, all you guys, I know there's a lot of sickness, and that'll be taken care of in the world tomorrow. Right now, I'm busy preaching the gospel. But He wanted to heal people. He said, oh, I hate to see the suffering. He had compassion, and He went out of His way and took the time to heal people. Let's go ahead a few chapters to chapter 8. Matthew 8. Actually, in that sermon, I did refer to this incident, and I'd like to read it again. Matthew chapter 8, When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him. And He said, Lord, if you're willing, if you're willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus put out His hand and touched Him. And remember, He was a leper. You don't touch a leper. They're afraid you might get the disease. But Jesus, well, He wasn't worried about catching the disease, but He wanted to show compassion on the fellow. And He touched Him, and He said, I am willing. Be cleansed. And immediately, the leprosy was cleansed. So Jesus said, I'm willing. I want you to be clean. And He healed Him. Well, let's go forward and notice something else. And we want to keep in mind, I've heard some people say that Jesus did all this healing to draw attention to Himself so that people would listen to what He had to say. But we see that's not really true, because a lot of times He was telling people, don't tell anyone about this. He didn't want the Pharisees to rise up and decide they had to crucify Him before the time was right. When the time was right, He could get the attention. But He tells this person, after He cleans Him of the leprosy, He said, See that you tell no one, but go your way and show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them. Jesus was aware, and He understood that there was a healing system put in place in the Old Testament. There was a procedure, and the book of Leviticus spends a lot of time on that. If you have a leprosy, basically if you have some kind of spot on your skin, go to the priest and He'll look at it, and He might have you shave it and wash it a certain way, and then come back later. They had a quarantine system, but there was a system for dealing with sickness. And that's what I want to point out. God gave a system early on, and in the New Testament we'll see that there was also a system that God gave. Matter of fact, let's go there now. Let's go to the book of James. James chapter 5. As I said, I find myself referring to this section of Scripture more often than any other in my job, because anointing comes up fairly often.

But it's worth noting, as I said, there was a Levitical priesthood of those of the tribe of Levi, and a priest in particular descended from Aaron, and they had that role in the New Testament. The sacrifices that they performed were all symbolic in pointing to Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

So Jesus Christ became the ultimate sacrifice and then took his role as the high priest, replacing the priesthood of Aaron with the priesthood of Jesus Christ, or, as it says in Hebrews, the priesthood of Melchizedek. And he instituted a new procedure, rather than going to the Levites and being quarantined and washing and shaking. He said, do this, Matthew 5 and verse 14, Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he's committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Now, I wanted to make a point here. Now, because we could say, well, if anyone's sick, some people say, well, that means you've got the sniffles, or you've got the mumps or the flu, but Christ's example, remember, he just healed a leper. That was a chronic disease. He also healed the blind in the lane. So what I want to make a note of, it doesn't have to be just an infectious disease that you didn't have yesterday, but you have today. Christ healed people of all kinds of things, as I said, blindness and crippling diseases and things like that. So there's no type of disease that we can't come to God for and ask that healing. And this sets a specific policy and a procedure that includes anointing with oil and laying on of hands, and that's the way we do it. It doesn't specifically say laying on of hands or other places, but it talks about praying on and anointing with oil. And this is where I remember that very first time when I was anointed. And it's funny, you can be in the church for years and years. I first attended... I was nine or ten years old, and I'm equivocating because I was only nine or ten. How well do you remember what you did when you were nine or ten? I do remember the first time there I fell asleep, which I'm not proud of, but later on I started paying a little more attention to the sermons. But I attended for years, and then at 15 years old, I was very active on the school track team. And I still like to run, but back then I was a little naive because running shoes were a thing that... Actually, I think it was the following year the coach said, look at this! This is this new type of shoe this company invented. It's for running and has all this padding. I was wearing my old Converse, you know, what do they call them?

Yeah, the All-Stars. There's a Chuck Somebody or whatever. I was going to say Chuck Norris, but he used his feet for something else. But you know what I mean? Those canvas with just a slab of rubber on the bottom. I was going out running on the concrete sidewalks in my neighborhood, and I developed the worst case of shin splints you could ever imagine. I mean, it just hurt for me to stand up and walk. It was just terrible. And you know, I went on put up with that for a while and said, wait a minute! And I don't know if I thought of it or probably my grandmother said, well, why don't you go and ask the pastor to anoint you? Oh yeah, we can do that. So I go up after services, and the reason I'm telling you this is not because you care about my early track running career, but the expectation I had, I knew it said that they'd anoint you with oil. So I envisioned going into a back room and him pouring out this vial and you know, and because there is a scripture in Psalms where it talks about oil running down Aaron's head and running off of his beard. I just assumed, well, that must be what anointing is, you know, and I thought maybe I should change clothes before I go back there. Now I learned, and of course many of you have had the experience, that it doesn't take a large volume of oil to anoint. The oil is a symbol of God's Holy Spirit, and it's only that. It's a symbol, but it's an important symbol. We just, you know, you can put a little dab on your finger and wipe it on and then put on hands and we call on God for his healing because it is his power. It's God's Holy Spirit. It's not the oil itself, even though we want to use a good high grade oil. So they tell us, always get the extra virgin olive oil and you carry the little vial.

I like it. When I was ordained an elder, they said, here, they handed me this first thing and then a notebook with the fundamental beliefs. I guess those who have been in the business know you're going to get called on for that.

Now, this brings some of the questions. How do you know when to ask for anointing?

Well, when you're sick, obviously, but it leaves some latitude. That's one thing I've noted, and I hope some of you realize this. As an elder, I've taken this as if a person will call if they want anointing. And we don't restrict it. You don't have to be a member of the church, a baptized member. It just is that someone calls and asks for anointing. But we make it a point, most of us do, of not offering. No, if someone's sick, sometimes we'll say, well, would you like me to come and anoint you? But typically, we don't want someone to feel pressured into it because you may be anointed or you may not. If I get a common cold, you know, I know I'm going to get over it. That's why I spent that time earlier today. I was going to say this morning. Well, actually, it was this morning, and now it's afternoon. But talking about how God built into our bodies a system for us to heal ourselves. But even so, it's not wrong to ask God for that special healing. You know, and I've learned there's little red pills called pseudofed that are real good for clearing out your sinuses. God didn't create those, but He created our body to react to the chemical in a certain way.

But, you know, one thing I'll do, I'll pray to God one way or another. Whether I'm anointed or not, if I take the pill, I'll ask God, please cause this to work properly and not give me any extra side effects. I have known, especially if we're going to see a doctor or having a surgery, we pray that God will guide the surgeon's hands and give them wisdom and cause good results. So, you know, praying without anointing or praying with the anointing are not mutually exclusive. Both of them are there.

Now, other questions that come up. What if you can't get together with an elder for anointing?

Okay, it says, call for the elders of the church. What if, like this morning, Mr. Collins called me and I was 200 miles away. I couldn't reach through the phone. Well, we have an example that we follow. If you'll turn to Acts chapter 19, Acts 19 will read verses 11 and 12. And what I'm getting at is the process of an anointed cloth. Here, unlike in James where it says, do this, we have an example and we've extrapolated from what the Apostle Paul did to say, well, if it worked for him, there's certainly no reason we shouldn't do it. And we know there are cases where the Apostle Paul laid hands on people and healed them and cast out demons and such like that. But it says this is something unusual, but God worked through the Apostle Paul this way and I've certainly prayed that he will work through me this way. Acts 19 verse 11, now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and evil spirits went out from them. So what Paul did is he basically the cloth became what we would call a surrogate these days. You know, I can't reach this person, but I can put oil on this cloth and the oil still is a symbol of God's Holy Spirit and the people have called for an elder of the church to pray for them and then the cloth can be sent. And it thanks, I was thinking earlier today, thank you Benjamin Franklin. And you wonder why Benjamin Franklin, he was the first postmaster general in the United States before it was the United States back when we had we were the colonies. He was in charge of the postal system and he revamped the system and made it very efficient. So because of what's grown from that, obviously over the 300 years since then, almost 300 years, you know I can anoint a cloth, put it in an envelope, you know, with a stamp and the next day it can be hundreds of miles away. Fabulous thing. But of course, God is not bound by the actual oil or the cloth. And that's the other answer to that. We can send anointed cloths, but what if either of those are a difficulty? Well, God's not bound by the process. God gives us a process, but he can work outside of it. If we go to Matthew chapter 8, we'll see that.

Matthew 8 and we'll begin in verse 5.

I want to make a point, as I said, God is the one who initiated the idea of him healing us, and he can do it in varying ways.

Matthew 8 verse 5. I was looking at Matthew 5 verse 8.

We're going to see. This is a familiar story, but I want to draw this lesson out of it. When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him. A centurion was a Roman soldier who was over a hundred, he was an officer over a hundred soldiers. And if we see the other counts, actually the centurion himself didn't come, but he sent a messenger. But he had this message. It said, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented. Now, we don't know if he was sick, he was having an epileptic attack or whatever, but he was asking Christ to come and heal him of this. And Jesus said, I'll come and heal him. So Jesus said, okay, I'm going to strap on my sandals. I'll get ready and go. And then the centurion answered and said, Lord, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed.

For I'm a man under authority, meaning I've got people over me, I'm under their authority. If they tell me to do something, I do it. And I have soldiers under me. So he's in the middle of the chain. So he knows very well how the chain of authority works, because he took orders and he also gave orders. And he said, if I say to this one, go, he goes. So another one, if I say, come here, he comes. If I tell my servant, do this, he does it. I've always wondered, is it the same servant that's sick? Because it tells him to do something, maybe he doesn't until he gets healed.

That's off the subject there. But Jesus, when he heard it, he marveled. And he said to those who were following, people with him, he said, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel. Remember, this is a Roman soldier. He's not even an Israelite, but he understood. He said, this guy has the power of God. He can tell the disease to go away, and it has to do what he says.

So, you know, Jesus makes his comment, and then we'll skip ahead. In verse 13, Jesus said to the centurion, okay, go your way. And as you have believed, so let it be done for you. And at the same, and his servant was healed that same hour. So Jesus was going to come and follow the procedure.

But it turns out that, obviously, he didn't have to. He could just say the word in the centurion, pointed that out. He said, I know there's a procedure, and well, actually, he didn't know because the book of James hadn't been written yet. But the typical procedure was people came to Jesus, or he came to them, and would speak and usually lay hands on, and the disease would be gone. But we see, if you can't get to an elder, or you can't get the cloth, that doesn't mean that you can't have healing. Certainly not, and that's not news to any of you, I hope, but I wanted to show in the Bible that it's true, and then raise a couple of other questions. If that's so true, then, why do we have the procedure in James? Why do we have to involve elders at all? You know, why does it say, if you're sick, call for the elders, they'll anoint with a wail and pray over you?

Well, I've got a real short answer that might leave you unsatisfied, so I'll give you the longer answer afterwards. But the short answer is, well, God said to do it that way. But of course, as I always would tell my mom when she'd say, because I said so, I'd say, well, why did you say so?

And I'm extrapolating here, I can't turn to scriptures to say this, but I think one reason is God wants us to obey Him. God wants to test us. Remember in the Old Testament, where God said to Israel, if you follow my commands and obey me, I'll take away these diseases from me. Here, God gives us a thing to do. He says, call for the elders. And so He wants to say, will you do it?

I know, you know, He might say, you might say, well, I don't have to have an elder come and anoint me with oil. And He says, yeah, I know that, but are you willing to do what I said to do? Are you willing to obey? Knowing that it's not the elder. And believe me, I think that, and I often say it in prayer when I anoint someone, say, God, I know it's not because of any power in me. It's your power. And it's the faith often of the person praying. But He does want us to learn the symbolism, that that oil is a symbol of God's Holy Spirit. And by His power, He can work miracles. And that Spirit is available only through Jesus Christ. So, as I said, there are certain channels. If we want God's Holy Spirit, it has to come through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice.

And that's the next point I want to make strongly, that Jesus Christ is intrinsic to healing. He's in the middle of it. If you will, let's turn to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2.

1 Peter, chapter 2. And we'll begin in verse 5. And I'll just remind you of, once again, time's going by so fast, we're getting ready to have Thanksgiving this week, but it's going to be Passover before we know it. And at the Passover, we always have symbols of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. We have the wine and the bread which we break. And that's done for a particular reason.

1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 24.

This is referring to Jesus Christ. It says, "...who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you are healed." Peter adds that in, and he's quoting from the Old Testament. He's quoting from Isaiah, chapter 53, verse 5, where it says, "...by his stripes you're healed." Jesus Christ could have died in a less painful way and paid for our sins. Our sins bring the death penalty, and the Bible is very clear that his shed, his blood was shed. He poured out his life so that our sins could be forgiven. But Jesus experienced just about every result you can have from sin, because sin has ultimate consequences of death. Without Christ's sacrifice, we'll die and stay dead forever. But sin has some intermediate consequences a lot of times. It can bring shame, humiliation. Jesus Christ was put through all that. He was, well, I don't know that he felt shame, but he was treated in a shameful way. He was humiliated. He had people calling him names. He was beaten. He was brutalized, tortured. He went through all of that. He experienced all the results of sin, along with the ultimate result. Now, I wasn't sure whether to discuss... Well, it's not a controversy in the church today. I know there has been in the past, Mr. Armstrong wanted to separate those two things, and he sometimes, he in the past, used the term physical sin, saying Christ paid, you know, the physical price for sin along with the spiritual price, and people since then said, well, that doesn't sound right. Jesus had one sacrifice. That's true. He did have one sacrifice. But I wanted to make the point that he did pay all the, you know, suffer all the consequences of sin. And whether or not you want to separate the parts of the sacrifice, we do know that the Bible says, by his stripes we're healed. By his stripes we're healed. By his sacrifice, we can have our sins forgiven. It is all one sacrifice, but you could call it multifaceted, if you like. Another thing I want to point out while we're here, let's... we're here to talk about the another thing I want to point out while we're here, let's... we're real close to James. Let's go back to James chapter 4.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I misread my notes. What I want to do is go to the book of John chapter 9. James 4 and John 9 can look kind of alike if your handwriting is sloppy like mine, so... I ask your pardon on that. John chapter 9. That's the gospel account of John. We'll begin in verse 1.

Because what I want to get to, knowing that Christ is intrinsically involved, He pays the price for sin, we also want to remember... and what I was thinking of James because I didn't continue reading where it says... well, we did read one part where it said, the elders will lay on hands and they'll pray for the sick, and He'll be healed, and if He's committed sins, they'll be forgiven. But it's important to remember there's the word if in there. If He's committed sins. And we want to make a clear point that not all sickness, perhaps not even most sickness, is a result of sin or weak character. Let's read here in John chapter 9. Here, Jesus made it very clear.

Now, as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth.

And apparently, maybe they knew this fellow because they knew he'd been blind from birth. I don't think he was wearing a sign that said, I've been blind from birth, but they knew it. And the disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, which means teacher, who sinned? This man's blind, who sinned? They were making a presumption there. The blindness must have been a result of sin. Was it him, or was it his parents that he was born blind? Because they thought maybe he's suffering because of his parents' sin. And Jesus gave an answer that's very interesting. He said, neither this man nor his parents sinned. Now, he doesn't mean they never sinned at all, because the Bible says everyone is sinned. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But he meant that neither one of them committed a sin that caused this blindness. But rather, that the works of God should be revealed.

So, he's saying, there's no sin involved. God allowed this to happen knowing that I'm going to come along and heal Him. And Jesus would heal Him. But it's interesting, it's, you know, sin and sickness aren't necessarily tied together. They can be. You can commit a sin and get sick as a result of it, but you can also not sin and get sick for something else. I don't know how many times I've had those snifflers or cold, and it wasn't because I did something bad, or... And God isn't looking, saying, aha, you didn't pray this morning. Zap! You've got a cold.

You know, He doesn't work that way. Now, if you're not close to God, He might say, well, you know, you haven't been calling on me for help. I'm going to not interfere and prevent the sickness. Now, that could happen. You know, what I'm saying is, there's lots of variables here, but we should remember, if someone is sick or having a bad time, don't jump to the conclusion that they've done some sin. The Bible is very clear that that's not the case.

Let's look a little further back a chapter. No, not a chapter. In the book of Matthew, not the book of John, Matthew 8, and we'll begin in verse 16.

If I did a number on myself, I've been typing up my notes a lot of times, and I went ahead and hand-wrote these. Now I'm having trouble reading them. It brings back an incident when I was in... I'm not sure if it was grade school or junior high school. Not very often I was down at the principal's office, but I was there for some reason or another. And the secretary saw my handwriting and said, This fellow is either going to be a teacher or a doctor, judging from my handwriting.

They were wrong on both counts. I've done some teaching, but maybe they should have thought of ministry. John 8, verse 16. When evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and he healed all that were sick. Notice there were many. He healed them all.

That it might be fulfilled with which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, He himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. Remember, this is tied into with by his stripes were healed. And so Jesus healed a bunch of people. Now, the question is, were all of these people righteous? Did they deserve to be healed? Have they done the right thing to earn it?

Were all of them converted as a result? Well, the answer is no, definitely no, and probably mostly no. I mean, they probably weren't all righteous. As a matter of fact, the Bible says none of us are righteous in our own sense. We know they didn't deserve to be healed. It's a gift from God that we can't earn. And who knows how many were converted? Probably not very many.

So, you know, it's in our nature to... Let me say that more clearly. It's in our nature, human nature, to associate sickness or any type of misfortune with sin, saying, You're bad, you deserve that. We want to get that out of our heads. It makes it easier to pray for people. When it's, Oh, so-and-so is sick or is having trouble, don't think, Oh, I wonder what he or she did. I hope she's repenting before I pray for her. That's not it at all.

And I'm not accusing anybody. I don't think that's the way you think. But, as I said, we want to go through all these doctrines one by one and make sure we realize that whether a person is healed or not is not a sign of that person's righteousness.

You know, I was talking about whether or not they get sick, but also whether or not they're healed. So what does it take to get healed? If it's not based on whether or not we're righteous, what is it based on? Now, as I said, we've seen this procedure in the book of James, called for the elders, they'll anoint with oil. So what do we have to do? I've got three things I noted that's drawn from the Scriptures.

One is obedience. We saw in the Old Testament where God said, If you obey me, if you follow my commandments and judgments, I won't put these diseases on you. And we can connect that with this procedure described in James where he says, Do it this way. So if we say, Well, I'm not going to do that because I don't have to, then God might say, Well, then you're not willing to obey, I don't want to heal you.

So he's looking and saying, Will we obey? Let's go to Matthew 9. We are close to there. Matthew 9 and verse 27, and we'll see another important factor. Matthew 9 and verse 27, I'm sorry. Matthew 9 and verse 27, When Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out and saying, Son of David, have mercy on us. When He came to the house, the blind men came to Him. So they came up to Him in the house and He said, Do you believe I'm able to do this?

He didn't ask Him, Are you righteous? Or what sin did you do? He said, Do you believe that I can do this? And they said, Well, yes. Yes, Lord. And He touched their eyes and He said, According to your faith, be it unto you. And their eyes were opened. So according to your faith, this is the second thing. We have to obey, but we can see that faith is an important requirement.

Now, sometimes it might be the faith of someone other than the one being healed. Think of that story of the centurion. The centurion communicated with Christ, and Christ was going to come and heal him. And the centurion said, Oh, no, no. I'm not worth you coming to my house for. Just say the word, because I know you have authority, and you can say to this disease, Go, and it'll go. And Christ said, I haven't seen such faith in Israel. Whose faith was it? It was the centurion's faith making the request. We don't know if the servant who was sick had any faith at all, or even if he knew about it.

But God does involve faith. It's the same for the little girl. The story is in Matthew 9. I'm not going to turn there. Remember, there's the father who came to Jesus and said, My little girl is dying, but if you'll come to her, she'll live. And he said, Yes, have faith. Well, then, as they're going, people came to him and said, Don't trouble the teacher. Your little girl's already dead.

And I'm sure that the... I wonder what the father's face looked like at that time. And probably, Ah! And Jesus said, No, if you have faith, all things are possible. And he went, and he brought her back from the dead. The little girl wasn't having faith. Now, one thing, we know Jesus had faith. And that's an important thing. There are places in the Scripture that say, We should pray for God to give us the faith of Jesus Christ, because our own faith is never going to be sufficient.

If we have God impute His faith to us, that makes all the difference in the world. And then there's the other thing. Remember, we were recently in Matthew 8, Chapter 2, where the lepers came to Him and said, If you're willing, you can heal us. And as I said, Jesus touched them and said, I'm willing, be healed. Well, that's something that's different, another factor.

God has to want to heal us. I don't know if we think of it in those terms, but God has to have it as part of His plan and purpose. That's a requirement that we have no control over. Now, you might ask, Why in the world wouldn't God want to heal someone? We know Jesus is compassionate and He wants to heal. And I don't have a perfect answer. I will say, let's turn to the book of Isaiah, Chapter 55. Isaiah 55, and we'll start in verse 8.

Isaiah 55, in verse 8, they said, If we're wondering, why would God choose not to heal someone? He might not tell us, but He does say this. He says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my way, says the Eternal. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. That's a long way of saying, you know, God has different things that He's thinking about and planning on and working on that we just don't know.

His thoughts are so far up there that we can't even comprehend them. And when you're up high, you can look beyond the horizon, right? You can see a lot further down the road, and God knows something down the road. And there's another place, and I didn't think to look this up, but where it says, Sometimes God lets the righteous be taken away to save them from the day of trouble that's coming.

We do know that God's promises are sure. He promises to heal us. But one of the things that came to light in the church is that we don't always know exactly when. And this became clear to me. Well, I'd heard it before, but a couple of years ago I was rereading Herbert Armstrong's autobiography. And if any of you haven't read it, it's a good read. Now, I've heard young people say, boy, he was kind of full of himself.

Well, he was a dynamic, interesting person, but he showed how somebody that was so full of himself got broken down in spirit by God and then rebuilt to do a work. And he learned about healing and the prayer of faith. And at one point then, his father became sick. And he said he'd laid hands on people before and they'd been healed. Mr. Armstrong was full of faith, and he went and prayed that God would heal his father.

And his father just got worse and eventually died. And Mr. Armstrong described how he was just devastated. He said, God, you promised to heal. I did everything right. What's going on here? Did you not keep your promise? And Mr. Armstrong then, as he writes, he describes how he eventually said, oh, as he thought about God's plan and the resurrection, he said, God is going to heal my father, but he'll be healed in the resurrection.

Now, we don't know why God sometimes heals immediately and sometimes doesn't. And I ponder with that. Whenever I do anoint someone, I think, is God going to heal him right now? Because I had that experience once, shortly before Sue and I moved down here, a member of the Columbus congregation who did construction work was working on a job.

I don't remember exactly what the job was, but he called me and said, my shoulder is killing me. He said, I can't raise my arm. He said, I can't do this work. I think it was painting. And he was on my end of town. He said, can I come over and have you anoint me? So I was like, yeah, come on over. We went in the room. I anointed him. And as soon as we finished, he went like this.

He said, that's good. That'll do. He went and got in his truck and took off. And I was sitting there going, wow! And it was a lesson for me. God was saying, hey, I think he was saying, hey, Frank, sometimes I do heal immediately. You know, if you were doubting or thinking, you know, well, I'll heal him and we'll wait and see how long it'll take. You know, I think it was a lesson for me more than that fellow, although he was glad to go back to work and get the job done. You know, sometimes God can heal immediately, sometimes not until the resurrection. We don't know when, but we know, as I said, his promise is sure. They never fail. But we do have to have faith and obedience. As a matter of fact, in that line, let's turn to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 11. I was planning on being done by now, but I want to make these final points as we draw near to an end. But Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter, or the chapter of heroes we sometimes could say. You know, God points out all these people who did all these wonderful things, but early on, he makes a point. Hebrews 11, oh, I'm sorry, Chapter, verse 13. I might have said verse 3, but I meant Hebrews 11 and verse 13. He says, these all died in faith, but they all died, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, they were assured of them. They embraced them and confessed that they were strangers in pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly they seek a homeland. Truly, if they had called to mind the country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. Talking about, of course, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he sent them away. But symbolically, we've all been called out. And if we look to go back to the life we had before being called, or those of you who have grown up in the church, you can look at what your friend is doing. God could give you an opportunity to go there, but we're looking for something so much better. But he still says, these people did all this, but eventually they died.

Because it's in God's plan to bring them to his kingdom and the resurrection. So it's not a lack of faith to not be healed. Not necessarily, anyways.

I'll make just a mention here. And part of this lesson for me, I talked about Mr. Armstrong and his father. I had a similar thing with my mother. I think I mentioned that in my Get Acquainted sermon. She'd been attending church for years, and then, I'm not sure if it was contracted or it was genetically there, had a liver disease, biliary cirrhosis. And I mentioned the type because it's one that was not caused by drinking.

She didn't drink very much, ever. But she had this disease that just slowly slapped her strength. But it worked an amazing thing in her mind and in her spirit, because she hadn't been baptized. For years she'd attended church but thought, oh, I've got to overcome all my faults before I can get baptized. Not realizing that we get baptized, we have God's Holy Spirit, and then we can begin overcoming faults.

And God let her body wane so that her mind and her spirit could grow strong. And that's where I have the confidence, you know, eventually she was baptized, and I saw her just grow spiritually by leaps and bounds in front of me. You know, I saw her become, you know, what God envisions us being in the flesh, and that's why I'm confident she will come up in the first resurrection. You know, but I don't know if it would have happened if he hadn't let her go through that trial.

So it was a lesson for me, and lessons for her as well. Now, some other points that I want to make quickly. Why do we hear prayer requests? We've been talking about anointing with the oil and ministers laying on hands, but we have this other...

We put out requests for prayer. Well, we're near there. If we revisit the book of James, Chapter 5, this time I am reading it clearly. James 5 and verse 16 after, remember, it said, "...if any of you sick, call for the elders, the prayer of faith will save the sick. If these committed sins will be forgiven." And then in verse 16 it says, "...confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." So, confess your trespasses if you know of any, but pray for one another, "...that you may be healed, the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." We like to quote that, and it's worth quoting, "...the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man can avail much, do a lot." And I've heard these translated, effective and fervent is like boiling hot.

But it says, pray for one another, for that healing. There's nothing wrong with asking other people to pray for us. You know, some people like to get as many people praying as possible. Others will only ask one or two. And that's where I tend to fall in that category. I don't usually put out a call and ask everybody I know to pray for me. But I often will just ask specific people who I know know me a little better and might know the situation.

Now, my grandmother was my favorite person to ask because she'd been in the church a long time. She was very mature and had, you know, unshaking faith. So, the grandma's praying for me. Something's going to happen. You know, and actually you could look, well, as soon as downstairs. I think that's one of the main reasons I'm married. You know, I've been having trouble getting that to work out. And grandma said, I'm going to start praying more seriously about that. You know, but there's nothing wrong with seeing how many people.

I just say, don't, if you ask many people to pray, don't think it's like American Idol and whoever gets the most votes wins. You know, God isn't swayed by how many people, but if a lot of people are making effective fervent prayers, God listens. He knows what's moving the church. So, it's certainly a proper, when someone asks us to pray, go and pray fervently and effectively. You know, and be that righteous person that's making a difference.

Now, I do want to bring this to close on a positive note. And bring it to close a little later than I intended. But it's worth, you know, we consider, you know, God doesn't always grant our request for divine healing when we want or how we want. We know He has His reasons and in our best interest.

God loves each and every one of us. He knows what we're going through. Sometimes He knows what we're going through better than we do. And He feels it when we suffer. Christ had that compassion. He knows. That's one of the reasons Christ gave up His body to be beaten and mutilated.

He gave up His body so that we can be healed. And then He set up this procedure of a particular way to ask, so we don't have to ad hoc wonder, am I doing it the right way? So, to close, let's go to John 10. John 10 and verse 10. This might seem out of context, but I wanted to read the last part of it when we look at our health and our healing and just remember what Christ told us here.

He makes a contrast. The thief doesn't come except to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus said this, I'm come that they may have life, a healthy abundant life. And He said that they might have it more abundantly. Jesus came for that and He wants that for us. So, brethren, we're going to break now for about an hour, so maybe we'll say we'll come back at 1.45. Okay? But I just wanted to wish you, if you're not able to stay, please have a wonderful and a healthy Sabbath.