When Others Are Healed (But You Aren't)

Good morning. I think we're probably all heard by now, and we're very sobered by hearing the news of the death of Mr. Shaby this week. And I'm sure we're all praying very much for Debbie and his family, and considering them in this time. And the topic I have today might seem like it's connected. Actually, I felt moved to talk about this a week ago when I was having a conversation here at Sabbath Services.

And it still seems like an appropriate one to talk about today, which is the question of when others are healed, but you aren't. When other people are healed, but you aren't. And how to think about that. And the conversation I was having, it was with a good friend and brother of us all. I don't see him here today. He might be here, and I just don't see him. You probably would all get a sense of who I'm talking about, perhaps, in saying that he's somebody who's been the beneficiary of multiple miraculous healings.

At least three that I know about. At least two from cancer, where all the doctors told him, look, what happened to you does not happen. And it's just been remarkable. It's been a remarkable healing that he's had.

So we do know that these healings happen. And I suggested to him, I said, you should write this up. You should write up your whole history of this happening. It would be very encouraging to everybody. And if I read the conversation right, I could tell he had a little bit of reticence to that. Because I think in his life experience, he's seen that for some people, sometimes it can be very encouraging to hear those words of...

to see that these healings happen. But for some people who are going through something, or especially a long-term illness, that can be...it can be kind of a bitter pill in some ways to ask, why them and not me? Am I doing something wrong? So let's look at this a little bit. How did the New Testament church see healing? Well, for starters, when you think about healing in the New Testament, there are some scriptures that might immediately come to mind that maybe shocked you the first time you read them. For instance, when Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11, is talking about Passover, and he's talking about discerning the Lord's body.

He mentions, this is not happening here with you Corinthians here, and he throws in, he says, this is why many are sick among you and why many sleep. And when you hit that, you're just like, whoa, wow, wow. Not discerning the Lord's body can directly relate to why there are many sick and why some sleep here in Corinth. And then there are other passages, like James 5, where we read about, what do you do when you're sick? When you're sick, you call on the elders and be anointed, and it talks about the prayer of the faithful, the faithful prayer, bringing healing there.

And so we look at that, and we ask questions like, does this mean that God always guarantees healing for his people, or does it mean that sickness is somehow connected to something that I did, to some kind of sin? And what we see across the New Testament is that the church clearly didn't view healing as an immediate guarantee. The apostles didn't. Those who wrote the New Testament in God's inspiration didn't. And they didn't see sickness as a sign of God's displeasure with an individual. For instance, Timothy. Paul writes to Timothy and talks about his frequent infirmities and his stomach problems. And that's in 1 Timothy 5.

He prescribes him wine. He doesn't prescribe repentance. He doesn't say, you know, whatever you did, figure it out and repent. He prescribes wine. He understands that sometimes in the church there are infirmities at the same time that there's healings. There's Trophimus, who Paul left in Miletus in 2 Timothy. Let's turn to Philippians 2, actually, and look at this one. This one instance. In Philippians 2, we have the case of Epaphroditus. In Philippians 2, verse 25 through 30, Paul's writing to them, and he says, Yet I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need, since he was longing for you all and was distressed, because you had heard that he was sick.

For indeed he was sick, almost unto death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

Therefore I send him the more eagerly, that when you see him again you may rejoice, and I may be less sorrowful. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such men in esteem, because for the work of Christ he came close to death. Remember, he wasn't persecuted. He was sick here. Paul is looking through this and seeing a different purpose than that there's sickness and health related to whether you're pleasing God or not directly. So he says, hold such men in esteem whenever they become sick for the sake of Christ, not regarding his life to supply what was lacking in your service to me.

There are other examples. There's Elisha, the story of his death. It just says in 2 Kings 13, Elisha had become sick with the illness of which he would die. And that's actually the introduction for maybe his greatest miracle, whenever he's buried, and someone is buried and they touch his bones and they're brought back to life. So through his death, he ends up bringing someone else back to life.

And yet, it just says he became sick with an illness of which he would die. So what did he do wrong? It doesn't appear that he did anything wrong there. The blind man that Jesus heals whenever people come up to him and ask him in John 9, they ask, was it his parents or was it his sin that he's blind? And he says, you're on the wrong wavelength with this. It wasn't either of those things. It was so that the works of God should be revealed in him.

And then finally, Paul himself is, if we turn to 2 Corinthians 12, that would be a good one to turn to. 2 Corinthians 12 is an example that I think we know well. It's perhaps the one that's most obvious on this. Where he's writing in 2 Corinthians 12 verse 7, he says, "...unless I should be exalted above the measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.

Lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." I'm sure that this is not... This is the process of a lot of thinking and wrestling with God. I'm sure to a point where when God gives him this answer, he's got it. And then I think we've experienced this probably before, where we understand where our strength is, where we are made strong in weakness and where it glorifies God.

But then at other times of weakness, it just feels like, boy, we're in a long tunnel here. But then you have these moments of clarity that God gave Paul here as well. He goes on, "...therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." When I'm weak, then I'm strong.

So clearly from all of those examples of all these people, Timothy, Trophimus, Paphriditis, Paul, we see that the church didn't expect that sickness was some kind of rejection by God. There's something else that's going on here. And the main idea I want to present to you in this is that divine healings, when they happen, you can think of them as a prophecy. Divine healings are a prophecy to all of us. A healing is, first and foremost, a prophecy in the sense that God is sending a message of hope to his body, the body of Christ.

And these divine healings, when they happen, when and where they happen, they're a small taste of the future for all of us. It's a piece of the future that breaks into the present whenever they happen. Let's turn to Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. Healings often show that God is moving. God is moving. He often uses healings to get our attention when he's doing something new and his people need some kind of reassurance. And I think there's speculation in many ways, but I think that's why we see, you know, a greater number of healings happen at these key moments when God brings Israel out of Egypt and through the wilderness, when Jesus is ministering in Galilee, when the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost, what immediately happened in the church after that time.

And even in our own living memory in the church in the 20th century, we have these times where it seems like there's an increase. There's a... I'm trying to think the right word for that. You know, a cloud of greater numbers of these things that get our attention. So here in Hebrews 2, verses 1 through 4.

Therefore we must give the most earnest heed... This is talking in Hebrews, talking about why Jesus is God, making the case that Jesus is God and that He brings salvation. Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to these things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the words spoken through angels prove steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience receive the just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will. So miracles, including healings, usually healings, are described as God bearing witness to this salvation, to the truth of this salvation. So in other words, when one of us is healed, God's putting us all on notice when that happens. He's putting us all on notice that our complete healing is coming. He's revealing His power over sickness and His power over death, and He's reminding us that it's all going to be destroyed. All this sickness and death is going to be destroyed. You don't have to turn here to Matthew 11. I'll just read it real quick, Matthew 11 2-5. This is when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ. He sent two of His disciples and said to Him, Are you the coming one, or do we look for another? Are you the guy that we're looking for here? And the way He answered Him is this. Jesus answered and said to them, Now, these aren't just random, powerful things that no one else could do that says, Well, He's God because He's doing things that nobody else could do. They're not random things. These are all things that have long been prophesied and long been anticipated, and much of it is still in our future right now. It's this anticipation of this restoration of all things. And Jesus is saying, That's a thing that's... Sit up, take notice. A little bit of that's happening right now because of me.

God's coming kingdom is making itself known here. And so there are bits and pieces of this future which are breaking into the present, which are sort of bursting into the present here. And to, I think, appreciate this, it's important that we try to think a little differently than we've probably been trained to growing up in America in the 20th, 21st centuries.

We tend to think in a very individualistic way. And that's like a loud voice in our heads usually when we go back and read the Bible. We kind of think first in terms of my relationship with God, and the way the church is connected to each other is kind of a secondary thing. We kind of don't hear those threads as loud as everybody across the reading of the Bible probably would have.

And so I think that also causes us to lean more towards these questions of why this person, not me, in this. And the people that Paul was writing to, the people across the Bible, tended to think in a more collectivist way, which is a little bit alien to us. But for them, this connection would have been sharper because of this idea that when God does these things in His body, it's happening to all of the body. When one of us is sick, the whole body grieves. And so when one of us is healed, we see that this is His promise to all of us. He's reiterating His promise of life to all of us. So let's turn over to Romans 8. We're going to spend a little bit of time in Romans 8 now. What is the substance of the salvation that Hebrews 2 was talking about? We talked about the salvation. What's that salvation made of? And in Romans 8, if you go to verse 9, we read Paul writing, So there's this equation being made, again, between these things. The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead, and not only raised, but was lifted high to sit next to God on His throne. That this is saying the Spirit that does that, the Father doing this through the Spirit, and the fact that it's the same Spirit is the promise that you have, that you will also be raised to life, and that you will live again. So the Holy Spirit is this down payment. It's talked about that way. It's a down payment of eternal life. And healing through the Spirit is evidence of that future seeping back into the present. So every healing is a prophecy for the rest of us. It says to us, you're next. You're next. Maybe not next week. Maybe not next month. But you can be certain that you're next when it really counts the most, our translation into eternity. These are all very difficult things to hear if you're suffering. God realizes that. These are difficult words.

I'd like to read you from Acts 3. Maybe you could turn there, but we're going to come back to Romans 8. You could stay in Romans 8. I'll read this real quick. Whenever, after Peter gives his sermon on Pentecost, he heals a lame man. God heals the lame man. And there's all these people who are astonished at it. And so Peter gives this sermon.

And Peter places this healing in Acts 3 on a specific foundation. God healed people across the whole Bible before this. But now Peter's placing it on a specific foundation. He calls Jesus the source or the prince of life here. And he says his name is what makes the man well.

Acts 3.14 So healings among Christ's body are merely signs of this future life. They come through him. They come through his being raised from the dead, through that spirit. But these signs are just merely signs. They don't last. Those people that God heals, they get sick and they die again. All of them. This has been the way it's been the entire time. These are just signs. But he sprinkles them among us. He sprinkles them among us so that we can be reassured of that glorious future.

So that kind of brings us to suffering. And you go back to Romans 8 now, if you've left there. Is suffering part of the journey? Is suffering part of the journey? If you go to Romans 8, verse 16, we're going to be looking at 16 through verse 29.

So it's not just miraculous healings that bear witness that we are the children of God. It's also sharing in Christ's suffering that does it. Christ suffered, he died, and he was raised to eternal glory. Paul is saying that even our suffering bears witness to the fact that we are following the way that Christ went. And that we are going through the way that Christ opened that leads to eternal life in his kingdom. Going on in verse 18.

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Sometimes, when we go back to the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3, whenever they take of the fruit and they eat it, we look at where God said the woman will be hurt, her pain will increase in childbirth. And we ask, why did God do that? And sometimes we'll call it part of Eve's curse, even though it's never actually called a curse there. God just says, this is what's going to happen. But I would invite you to think about even those painful childbirths. I guess I should caveat this and say, I don't think any woman who's had children probably comes to services excited to hear a man talk about the deeper meaning of the pain in childbirth. I'm aware of that. I understand. But I invite you to look at this this way. That even that is a kind of prophecy. It's right there next to when God is saying that the woman is going to have a seed, and that seed is going to come up and it's going to crush the serpent's head. It's right there in that same speech. And he's saying that the woman's pain and child-bearing will increase. This is signaled in a way in Revelation 12, whenever we read about the woman that represents the church. We read about her pain in childbirth as she produces the child that will rule all nations with a rod of iron. There's this idea embedded in that, that there's going to be pain on the front end, joy on the other end. And so every painful but healthy birth that a woman has is, in many ways, a mini-prophecy, both to us and to Satan and the principalities and powers, that these things are unfolding. They are headed this way, that death and destruction will be banished away. And that it prophesies the plan, which was made necessary by the events that happened in the Garden of Eden and everything that's happened since then, that Jesus would need to open away for us. He needs to open away through a narrow, difficult path.

And so the pain of labor juxtaposed with the joy of birth is a small-scale version of God's plan. Going forward in verse 23, But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good.

We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, for whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Never read Romans 8.28 without also reading Romans 8.29. Don't read it by itself, because this is what it means for things to work together for good.

It's not necessarily health and wealth. It's not a health and wealth gospel. At least not in this life, it's not. Health and wealth is coming. But what this is saying is what God sees as good, what's going to be good, are those things that He uses to conform us to the image of Christ.

It's not that Jesus died so He wouldn't have to. It's not that He suffered so He wouldn't have to. It's that He opened away as the firstborn. He went through that birth canal first. You can only go one at a time through that birth canal.

He's the door. He opens the way through there. And so we follow Him. That's why the symbol of our commitment is baptism. It's a kind of death. There's a death you must go through to life.

And so that's a process that's not pleasant, but life is on the other side of it. He's the door. He's the narrow gate. He's the difficult way.

And that doesn't mean that we have to be crucified necessarily, physically, literally, like He was. Although some have.

But it does mean that we follow in His path. He didn't do things so we wouldn't have to do them anymore. He didn't keep the laws so we wouldn't have to keep it anymore.

He made the way, and we follow it, and it leads to life. And so that brings us to kind of a paradox. I think of it as a paradox here. You don't need to turn here necessarily. John 7, 38, and 39. We read this every year at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day.

When Jesus says on that last great day of the Feast, He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive. For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. I call it a paradox because the Spirit, these rivers of living water, they often, often the people around this person can see it.

And they're affected by it, and they're enriched by it, but that person themselves can still be suffering. I think about someone that Joy and I knew back in Knoxville when we lived there, a man named Joe Rydner, who died quite a few years ago now. But he was maybe the most encouraging person that I ever knew in the Church. He was just, every time you talk to him, you're going to be encouraged. He was positive. He was telling you about what God was going to do, and he praised and glorified God. He was always concerned about what was going on with you. He was very concerned with you over himself. And he was a man who, as I try to remember everything about him, I was in my early 20s when I knew him, he had to go to the hospital every day because of the kidney disease that he had. He had this life-sustaining thing he had to go through, which was really, really unpleasant, the things that he had to do every single day just to stay alive. And it was that way for all the years that I knew him. And yet, he was somebody who, if you knew him, you knew that the rivers of living water flowed out of him. And yet, he was suffering. It's a paradox in some ways. But he had this joy and this hope of salvation. So with all that in mind, let's come back to James 5. And consider James 5, 13-15 from a little bit of a new perspective.

Now, the way this reads in English, it can sound like a rapid fire. Here's problems, here's quick fixes. Problem, quick fix. But if you look closely, you realize that's not what's happening at all here. Prayer does not automatically fix suffering. Singing psalms is not the antidote to cheerfulness. I'm glad that it's not. Hopefully it's not. And anointing doesn't always lead to immediate physical healing. Though sometimes God does exactly that. Sometimes he does. So these things are not presented as quick fixes. What they are is paths forward that James is giving here. This is what to do in each of these instances. This is the path you take forward. Because notice how James has reframed this sickness in a way that's much more timeless here. He's brought us back to Romans 8 and 11 and a number of other passages that we didn't go through today. Which connected back to raising from the dead. About how Jesus was raised from the dead through a spirit that is also going to raise us from the dead. He brings us back to that reality when he says, the Lord will raise him up. So if we step back and we consider the symbolism of anointing through Scripture, which we don't have time to do here. When we are anointed, this is like a really quick way. One way that you could describe what's happening is we are declaring to God that we share in the identity of the true anointed one. We are part of the anointed identity because we're connected to the anointed one. Because we're his bride, and so we're one. And so we are part of that identity. And so we humbly ask God to give us a small piece of that future today. A small piece of that healing today. A small taste of it. While at the same time we're expressing our confidence. We're expressing our confidence in the total fullness of life that we know belongs to us in God's time. So should we just be content then? Should we just be happy in our suffering? God does tell us to count it all joy when we fall into different trials and because of the patience it produces in us.

But I don't think God's simply saying, turn that frown upside down here. He's not saying like, just pretend that everything is great even when it feels like it's not. All you have to do to see that is go read the Psalms, which a third of the Psalms are laments. And a lot of them are things like Psalm 13 here, which says, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?

So it's not that God's saying, you're fine if you know that you're not. If you can reach that point with gratitude, because gratitude can just be so transformative. If you can reach that point with gratitude and be content, be content. But if you can't, keep asking God. That's what he's after. He wants us to keep coming back to us with our petitions, with our burdens, and put them on him. He promises to walk through it with us. The end of Psalm 91 is about that. He promises to walk through it with us. So I recognize all this. This is a really tall order for anyone who's suffering, for anyone who's going through this kind of thing. What God asks of us is difficult. It is difficult. But he's going to do it with us. And he has this promise of what it's going to turn into. And sometimes he does go ahead and heal. Sometimes he does it after many years of asking, then he finally does it in a miraculous way. That happens, too. But he asks us to keep our eye on the ball of what he's doing through Jesus Christ being raised to life and our translation into glory. God cherishes all of us immensely. It's hard to rejoice with those who got the answer to the prayer that you've been asking for years. The very prayer you've been asking. But we rejoice because we know what it means for us, too. God cherishes everybody who's truly his, who's seeking him, who's connected to that vine. The healing comes through the vine. And he's not lost a single one. He's not lost a single one. And he looks forward to raising his treasured, faithful service to glorification. I'd like to close just by reading 2 Corinthians 4, 7-18. And I think that this kind of encapsulates it all together. This aspect of suffering, of life. 2 Corinthians 4, 7-18. But we have this treasure in earth and vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.

And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed and therefore I spoke. We also believe and therefore speak, knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

Therefore do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.