Our Healer

Luke 4:38-40

Jesus is our healer. And He IS going to heal us. The only question is when.

As humans we are made in God’s image a 3 part being of body, mind, and spirit. And all 3 parts are subject to devastating problems because of sin and the curse which resulted from the Fall.  But Jesus has power over the curse, and proves it in our text by healing someone’s body.  He can heal our bodies. Of course, He can heal our minds too, and certainly our spirit, which is our biggest problem, and the only eternal one. We will see Him do all 3 in just a few short verses. But let’s just start with the body today.

In 1 Corinthians 1:22 Paul says the Jews desired a sign.  They weren't about to accept just anybody as their Messiah. There were plenty of pretenders who wanted to be elevated above their brethren.  So the Jews were always looking for some sign as proof.  And Jesus delivered. He healed countless people. He is the Great Physician.

Birth is the first step toward dying.  As soon as we are born the clock starts ticking toward death.  Aren’t you glad you came to church today? Deformity, illness, weakness, injury, aging, disease, death: That is the universal biography.  So whoever the prophesied Savior is, He must be capable of overpowering the physical realm which leads to our death.  He has to be able to give us new and eternal bodies that will never age, never become weak, never become ill and never die. And that’s the real point. Not can He heal me before I die, but after, and forever.

Essentially what we're asking here is this. Does Jesus have power over the sin that is in us?  The true Savior of sinners must have authority to deliver sinners body, mind, and soul from the effects of sin. 

V. 38                It’s the same day.  He just cast out a demon in church, and then went to make a health visit. After church, Jews had their biggest meal of the week. We would call it Sunday dinner, except it was on the Sabbath. 

Who is Simon? He’s going to be renamed Peter eventually. And he is not yet an apostle.  At this time he is just a man in the synagogue.  The word was getting around that Jesus could heal.  The word was spreading.  And so people were becoming very aware of His power.  Already that very day, of course, the possessed man had been delivered from a demon. And so this was Peter's hometown.  Peter, by the way, was born in Bethsaida which is just a little ways away, but he had moved to Capernaum where he was operating a fishing business right on the north edge of the Sea of Galilee.  And now excavation has been done, and people believe they have found what could well be the original home of Peter, because someone in the very early years of the church built a church there.

Mark records the same account and he adds that Andrew was there, Peter's brother, as well as James and John.  And none of them have been called as disciples yet, but they knew each other and they all went to the synagogue in Capernaum.  They saw Jesus cast out that demon. And so they were fascinated by Jesus. 

Now we also know that Peter was married.  First Corinthians 9:5 refers to Peter's wife.  His wife is not mentioned here, but his mother-in-law is.  This was Peter's house.  Tradition tells us Peter had children, though the Scripture doesn't refer to them.  And he had his mother-in-law living with him.  That's a kind gesture, if not a bit misguided. 

So these church goers knew His power and naturally they invited Him to dinner realizing, of course, that the mother-in-law was ill and wanting Jesus to do something about it.  Probably she had some kind of serious infection.  It’s not just a little fever, but a great one, which in that day was often deadly, so they prevailed upon Him.

Verse 39          Matthew and Mark tell us she was lying down and they add that Jesus took her hand in an expression of tenderness and sympathy, like when He wept over the death of Lazarus.  But anybody can be compassionate. Only Jesus has power over what debilitates the body.  There is no medicine here.  There is no medical technique here.  There is nothing other than sovereign supernatural power over an infection.  Instantaneously Jesus halts the infection and the fever disappears and immediately she arose and waited on them.  Notice, there is no lingering weakness.  Usually when someone has had a high fever over a prolonged period of time, fighting some serious infection, even if there can be some abatement through antibiotics or whatever, there is going to be a needed time of recovery.  But there is not.  There is nothing gradual going on here.  She isn’t given a cup of cool water or the ubiquitous bowl of chicken soup.  Nothing happens here like that, no flushed cheeks, no hot skin, no sweating, no dryness, no limpness, no shivering, no struggling to get up and walk.  There are no remaining residual symptoms.  He rebuked the fever, and it left her. She immediately rose up and waited on them.  This is typical of all the healings of Jesus.  Like the lame man who didn’t just start to walk, but he began to leap!

Time for an important rabbit trail:  There have always been and there will always be false healers who prey on people who have illnesses, whether they're selling snake oil out of a chuck wagon in the Old West, or whether they're supposed mystics and soothsayers and magicians of ancient times, whether they're modern-day tent or stadium healers, or whatever you want to call them, or TV healers [put your hand on the TV and feel the power], they are always there to prey on sick people.  Sadly, this contributes to those poor people an even greater and more profound pain and sorrow than they already suffer. And I remember so well, listening to Benny Hinn say that he had heard from Jesus, that through him Jesus is going to raise dead people and here’s the quote, "If you have somebody who dies, don't bury the body, bring the body into the house, push the body up to the TV and drape the arms of the dead person over the television and leave their arms there for 24 hours and [through him] Jesus is going to raise the dead." 

I can think of a lot of things that are horrible, but I can't think of anything more horrible than taking a person already at the point of ultimate grief, having lost a loved one and having them manipulating a corpse under the false assumption that somehow that body is going to be raised from the dead.  It's a staggeringly evil thing.

Two of the leaders of the Vineyard Movement, John Wimber and David Watson, not only believed they could heal, but believed they could teach people to heal…and both of them died of cancer. 

Since the Fall of man in the Garden, disease has been a terrible reality.  For millennia the search for cures to alleviate illness and suffering has consumed humankind.  And medicine is the catalyst to stall off death.  Sickness and death have distressed and ultimately conquered every single person who has ever lived except Enoch and Elijah, both pictures of the rapture. Otherwise, it is appointed unto man once to die.  Billions of people have died, they all die, or will all die, unless raptured.  Even people who claim to have the gift of healing are not exempt.

May I confess something to you?  As a pastor I spend a lot of time with people who are ill, a lot of time with people who are dying, and people who are bereaved.  If I could ask God for one thing, I would ask for the gift of healing [if there were such a gift.]  I’ve walked into an ER and seen two friends laid on a slab following a helicopter crash and watched the life drain from them. I’ve had other friends who knew their baby was being delivered to die. They spent the most precious hour with her that any clock has ever ticked. I’ve stood with weeping parents in a hospital room watching a precious child die. I’ve sat with family during brain tumor removal surgery that had very little chance of success, and indeed it didn’t succeed.  I've journeyed cancer with more people than I can remember. I've seen teenagers crushed in car accidents.  I've watched people lie comatose while machines keep their vital signs alive and their family grieves.  I've been with friends in terrible pain.  I know people who are permanently disabled in every imaginable way.  I've seen babies born with heartbreaking deformities.  I've helped people learn to cope with amputations and other losses.  I’ve felt pulses quit and skin grow cold.

I watched my father-in-law take his last breath. Now his other son in law is on his deathbed at just 70.  I’m glad he is saved because physically, his life is ending sooner than hoped. I have very often wished that I could heal people with a word, with a touch, with a command, but I can't.  And frankly, I don't know anybody else who can.  Think of how thrilling it would be to have the gift of healing if you really had it.  Think of what it would be like to go into a hospital among the sick and the dying and walk up and down the hall touching people and healing everybody.  It would be awesome to have groups of people with the gift of healing and fly them over to India or Africa and other places in the world where there are great pockets of disease; or take them into the cancer wards and heal all the people who have cancer.

Why is it that these supposed healers of today don't do that?  Why don't they come out from behind the TV screen?  Why don't they come down off the stage of their contrived, manipulating tents and stadiums.  They could go to the hospitals and the sanitariums.  I mean, there aren't really any limits to the opportunities to heal if you can do that.  But strangely, they never come off the stage. They always seem to exercise their supposed gift in a very controlled environment.  And when you track their patients, you can't find any legitimate healings.  You can sure find some tragic people left without hope. 

Why don’t they heal the masses?  Because those who claim the gift of healing don't have it.  The gift of healing was a temporary sign gift for Christ to validate Himself as the Messiah and to authenticate the apostles who were writing the Scripture.  Once those signs were completed, the gift of healing ceased. 

In the gospels, everybody Jesus confronts gets healed.  You go into the book of Acts and the epistles and you begin to see people who are sick…and they stay sick.  And yet because people so desperately want to be healed, you can make a lot of money claiming to have the gift.

You know, the Roman Catholic Church led the way in claiming the power to heal.  They boasted of healing people with the bones of John the Baptist and of Peter. They boasted the ability to heal people with wooden fragments of the cross.  They even boasted — this is bizarre — that they healed people with vials that contained Mary's breast milk.  Many since then do such in the name of God.  And then you've got other phonies like the oriental psychic healers who supposedly do bloodless surgery and all they do is throw around pieces of animal parts with sleight of hand that make people think they're removing tumors.

And then to make matters worse, the charismatic kind of healers that are all over the place in Christianity, make people feel that if they don't get healed, it's due to the lack of faith, right?  And so they compound people’s sense of guilt and shame because they just don't believe strong enough to be healed.  Or it's because they make a “negative confession.”  They say that if you speak negatively you negate your healing, so it's their fault not the healer's fault.  But the healer seems to always leave with the money, even if the people's lives are a wreckage.

Let’s look at the healing of Jesus to make a comparison between what is being claimed today as healing and what the Bible tells us about Jesus that the difference is incredibly clear.  Medical science was crude and limited in those days, and, of course, there were more incurable diseases than we have now.  Plagues could wipe out entire cities if not entire nations.  Jesus came along with this power to heal and it was really an incredibly immense sign of His divinity.

Here’s six characteristics of Jesus' healing.  I'm just going to fire them at you.

First, Jesus healed with a word or a touch.  It’s creative power. He made the world with a word. He made the woman and the man with simple touch. [dust/rib]

Secondly, He healed instantly.  It never says, "Jesus touched him and he started getting better." There never was any progression.  The centurion's servant was healed in Matthew 8 that very hour.  The woman with the bleeding problem in Mark 5 was healed immediately.  In Luke 17 Jesus healed ten lepers instantaneously.  And He touched another man with leprosy and immediately the leprosy departed from him, Luke 5.  The crippled man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5 immediately became well, took up his bed, began to walk. The man born blind was healed instantly.

People never said, "I've believe I’ve been healed and I know I'm going to get better."  Jesus never did progressive healings.  And that's what we see with this mother-in-law of Peter.  She immediately gets up, no loss of strength, no diminished energy, and she begins to wait on the people and serve the meal.

Thirdly, Jesus healed totally.  There were no partial healings.  They didn’t show marked improvement. They were healed.  It's amazing people wanting to believe something so badly they'll believe what is obviously not the case.  There was a full and total restoration.  No relapses, no recovery time.

Fourthly, Jesus healed everybody.  Unlike healers today, Jesus didn't leave long lines of disappointed people and wrecked lives. 

You notice down in verse 40 it says, "Laying hands on every one of them, and healed them."

Fifthly, He healed organic disease.  He didn't go up and down alleviating low back pain or heart palpitation, or headache, or things like that.  He replaced crippled legs with legs that functioned fully.  He fixed blind eyes, making them see.  He replaced deaf ears with hearing ears.  He healed paralysis, restoring full function.  His healings were creative, they literally recreated on an organic level.

And sixthly, Jesus raised the dead. Luke 7, Mark 5, John 11 - He raised dead people.

Jesus did all of this and He did it all anywhere and everywhere.  There wasn't any stage.  There wasn't any screening process.  He did it all in publicly before huge crowds in various locations without any artistry involved. 

And most of the people that He healed exhibited no particular faith in Him, made no confession of faith in Him, didn't believe necessarily.  His miracles did not require faith.  His miracles happened predominantly to unbelievers who had no faith in Him, meaning they had no salvation.  He raised dead people and dead people don't believe anything.  They dead couldn't make a positive confession.  In three years He virtually banished disease from Palestine.  In the three years of His ministry everywhere He went massive crowds brought all of the sick people to Him and He healed them all.

Understand verse 40.  "When the sun was setting," that's important because what that means is the Sabbath's over.  This was their Saturday: synagogue in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, the sun goes down, the Sabbath is over.  It's a close of a long day.  Usually at the close of the Sabbath day you rest.  It would have been good if the Lord could have done that.  But as the sun goes down on the dusk and the dusk settles in on a Sabbath, the people now could do what they couldn't do during the Sabbath.  They couldn't travel and they couldn't carry anything.  So now that the sun is setting they can travel to where Jesus is and they can carry their sick. They couldn't do it on the Sabbath, but now they can come to the house of Simon for Jesus to heal.  So the dinner is over and the day is coming to an end and dusk is falling and all of a sudden everybody who's got sick people with any kind of disease shows up at the house.

Mark says the whole town showed up.  And that, folks, is the healing power of Jesus. There are about ninety New Testament passages in the four gospels about His healings.  He did this everywhere through His ministry.  That is why when Jesus began to heal, the people said, "Nothing like this was ever done in Israel." 

Healing attested to the divinity of Jesus and the divine character of the gospel and the Scripture.  But as you go past that time, what happens?  Paul is ill and he doesn't get well.  Trophimus is ill later in the New Testament.  Timothy is ill.  And Epaphroditus is ill.  And you come into 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, the epistles for the church, no mention of healing ministry, no promise of healing.

The healing explosion had a purpose and John tells us the purpose. 

John 20:31 ³¹ But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

And still today, God may choose to answer your prayers in a wonderful and providential way and heal someone, but that's not a sure thing, and you can't always expect that.  We won’t stop praying for those with physical needs. The Bible tells us to for a reason and I have seen miraculous healings, according to His will. Also, He may providentially allow a person to recover under medical care.  He may aid that in wonderful ways. 

We know that Jesus has the power over the physical. I don't need to be fully healed in this life.  I just want to know that in the life to come I'm not going to have to deal with this body, right?  That's the issue.  And Jesus proves to us that He can overpower the fallenness of our body. 

Philippians 3:21 ^[Jesus] shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

Isn't that what we want?  Don't we want an eternal body that can praise God?  He will take away all our illness, won't He?  He will take away all our disease ultimately.  He is the healer of our souls. And He IS going to heal us. The only question is when.

I don't particularly want to live forever here, do you? But I am going to live forever! Will you? [gospel]