If you receive prayer requests via e-mail and listen to those at your prayer meetings, it does not take long to see that about ninety per cent of those prayers relate to some illness or physical weakness. We are a sickly people. Health and health care are primary issues for most of the world. Many strides have been made in the medical arena, but it seems for everything we find a treatment or cure for three more diseases show up that are incurable or at the least highly resistant to treatment. It appears to be a losing battle.
We expect this frustration and even failure from the medical field for we realize that they are but human. However, some teach that for a Christian disease should never be an issue and that it is a lack of faith to be ill. Some might even question the sick person’s salvation. Some teach that illness is only an illusion and once the person realizes it and dismisses it, they will be healed. These positions are untenable in the light of Scripture.
I do not hold to physical healing being in the atonement as some of the brethren do, but I do believe that because of the atonement I have the privilege of prayer to ask for healing and that I can come boldly to the throne as His child. I do not believe in many of the faith healers that are running around slapping people in the head for money and a show. Indeed, the more showmanship the less I believe in the faith healer. I do believe that faith can heal.
No matter what doctrinal position people hold in regards to healing, they all have to admit that like doctors they lose patients. As I pointed out before some would blame the patient’s faith, question their salvation, or blame it on unconfessed sin. I have yet to hear a faith healer to accept any responsibility for any sin in their own lives or that their faith may have floundered and may have caused the patient not to be healed. If all else fails, we can blame the devil or a myriad of his demons.
I have seen miraculous healing or life extension in some people. I knew a man that was told he would only live six months after he was diagnosed. He lived almost eight years longer believing that God would heal him completely. I would never question that man’s faith, salvation, or integrity, yet he died of that disease. You could say that he received the ultimate cure. All that healing does for us is to delay the ultimate day of death, which is the only complete cure for disease and old age symptoms. His added time was proof that doctors do not know everything, but his death is proof that God does not always work in the way we think He will.
We have had a lady in our church whose heart created its own bypass while my wife needed a bypass surgery. Oddly, my wife was a poster child for cardiac health and had no risk factors whereas the other lady had several. I have heard of people that were miraculously cured of cancer while others were cured by medicine. Others I have known died from cancer. The lists of cures and deaths of other people with other diseases could go on and on.
I propose tonight to show us that in the matter of healing that we must let God be God or to borrow from the Army recruiting ads, let Him be all that He can be! Sometimes He heals and sometimes He does not.
I suppose we should start with the one reason for illness that all would agree upon. We are not healed because of our sins. In John 5:1-3, 14, we are told that the impotent man was there because of his sin. He is told to sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon him. What was his sin? We are not told, but the illness came about because of some sin he committed. He had it for thirty-eight years before Jesus came and healed him. We are not even told if the man ever confessed the sin. Therefore, failure to confess sin is not necessarily a reason to hinder healing. When God chooses to show mercy, He does. The man may have repented of it a thousand times in the thirty-eight years, but Jesus did not make him confess it before he was healed. In fact, until they met in the temple the man did not even know if Jesus knew why he was ill. He just knew Jesus healed him and in fact, he did not even know that it was Jesus or the Messiah that healed him. I believe God has healed many people who do not know Him because of His mercy and to soften their hearts when they hear the Gospel.
In Acts 5, we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They were not even given a chance to repent of their sin. They were given a chance not to go through with it, but once they committed it God struck them down with what might have been a massive coronary. I believe they went to Heaven, but they got there a lot quicker than they should have and we are definitely looking at a saved, yet so as by fire situation. (I Cor 3:11-15) They died because of their sin, but they did not die in their sins.
Jehoram was given an incurable disease that caused him to die by his bowels falling out. He was given this because of his sin of idolatry. (II Chron. 21: 9-20) God tells the whole nation of Israel in Isa 1 that they are sick without remedy because of their sins.
David lost the son conceived in adultery to sickness. (II Sam 12:14-15) In this case, God punished David through the child’s death, but he spared the child much misery. As a bastard, his siblings would have challenged his right to the throne. If he had ascended to the throne, the people would have not respected him and it may have brought about insurrection and needless deaths. God could not have used him to build the temple anymore than He could use David. In this case, one man’s curse was another man’s blessing. David was punished but the child blessed with being brought into the presence of God instead of being made to live the kind of life that would have been caused by his father’s sin. Sin is only one reason for illness.
Sometimes we are ill because God desires to glorify Himself. John 9:1-3 tells us of the man born blind. What is the first thing out of the mouth’s of the disciples? Who sinned? They thought that the child might have sinned in the womb. At least this shows that they did not see a fetus as a parasite or mass of embryonic tissue, but rather as a human being.
In II Cor 12:7-10 Paul tells us that he had a thorn in the flesh. I think he suffered from an eye problem brought on by the revelation of Christ on the road to Damascus. Other commentators debate over what this actually was but whatever it was it brought him discomfort or dis-ease, if you please. Paul was not in sin. It was given to Paul to keep him humble. It also was a weakness in him that God’s strength might rest upon him. In fact, God’s strength is made perfect or complete in weakness.
769 astheneia (as-then’-i-ah); from 772; feebleness (of mind or body); by implication, malady; morally, frailty: KJV-- disease, infirmity, sickness, and weakness.
Paul said he would rather glory in his infirmities (astheneia) that the power (dunamis from where we get dynamite) of Christ may rest or abide upon him. Imagine that, glorying in an infirmity. Paul asked three times for healing and God denied the request in order that He may be glorified in Paul’s ministry and keep Paul from getting the big head.
I remember in the early days of my ministry making a statement in a sermon on suffering that God cannot trust most of us with suffering because instead of allowing Him to glorify Himself in us and praising Him we would just be a bunch of whining crybabies. He can only allow someone to continue in some disability or disease that He can trust to give Him praise and to work in them the fellowship of His suffering. I was candidating at that church and knew no one except the deacon who asked me to come there. As the congregation left, a young woman in her thirties came up to me to shake my hand and looked at me intently. It was then that I noticed she had a cane. It did not really click until later that God had me make those statements for that woman whom obviously had her infirmity for some length of time. She allowed the power of Christ to rest on her that day as she gloried in her infirmity.
I confess that I am afraid that God probably cannot trust me with an enduring infirmity either. My heart attack was sufficient enough suffering and praise Him that was not as painful or long term, as it could have been. However, in light of Paul’s inspired testimony we must consider that in seeking instant healing we might be missing the power of God we say we seek.
In John 11:1-4, we see Lazarus sick and Jesus allowing him to die for a few days that God might be glorified. As I said before, death is the ultimate cure for sickness, but healing does not get any better than being raised from the dead. Mary and Martha wanted Jesus to get there and heal Lazarus. I am sure that it passed through Lazarus’ mind a few times at least as to where Jesus was when He was so desperately needed.
Jesus did not heal him like they hoped, but He did the very best for them. Do you think any of them feared death again? Do you think they worried about God’s timing or love for them? Job had some questions about those things, but at the end of the book, he had all the answers he needed. Are you suffering today and having questions? Ask, but at the same time give God glory for the answers already given in Scripture and praise Him for the power He will cause to rest upon you.
We are not healed because we refuse to seek God. In II Chron. 16:12, Asa should have known better than to trust doctors only. In verse 8, it says that the Lord delivered him in war. However, that seemed logical. Asa looked at his army and then looked at his enemy’s army and saw that he was outnumbered and outgunned. He had no other options at the time so he turned to God. That is how it usually is. When we run out of options, we call on God. One preacher said that the downfall of America is that we have to many options.
The sad thing is that after he trusted God for one war and was victorious, he relied on treaties to prevent another and even gave them holy things out of the temple. How foolish he was. Since he wanted to do it his way, God allowed him to have wars the rest of his life and sent a prophet to tell him so. How did he respond? He put the preacher in prison. Today, they just run the preacher off when he tells the truth that can hurt.
Three years after his mistake he came down with a disease in his feet. It is believed that this was gout. It started in his feet, but it became so bad the in the Hebrew it conveys that it went to his head. It spread through his body until it killed him two years later. He died not because he consulted doctors, but because he did not seek the Lord and trusted the doctors more than he did God. He would not let God rule in his kingly matters nor his personal matters and it ended in wars and death. May it not be so with us!
In Mark 5:26, we see the woman with an issue of blood. I can pronounce what she may have had, but I cannot spell it and I do not have a medical dictionary handy, but issue of blood is pretty descriptive. She spent twelve years with the doctors and a ton of money and she was not healed. Now you know what they call it the practice of medicine. They practice on you and sometimes they get it right. Her faith in Christ got it done right the first time in no time at all. Her seeking God in her illness is to be our example, but for various reasons that will follow, we will see that we do not always get her results.
Sometimes we are not healed because like Ahaziah in II Kings 1:2-8 we seek false gods. Today we have the many gods of Humanism, eastern religions, new age thought, and cults claiming to be of the Body. Many claim that we can heal ourselves with our minds or that disease is just in our minds. I say their minds are diseased. I agree that God has placed within us a wonderful ability to mend broken bones and replace our cells, but as in all things mortal that ability is limited and because of the Fall it is not as efficient as it once was in the Garden. Disease exists and no matter how positively we think we cannot spare ourselves disease and some diseases are more than our immune system can handle. Those who deny these facts must be mad.
Stress is big killer. There will come a day when men’s hearts will fail them for fear. (Luke 21:26) That will happen in the Tribulation, but I think that fear, worry, or stress is causing more heart attacks today than cholesterol or being out of shape. Those things may contribute to the effects of the heart attack or survival rate, but stress is most likely the biggest cause.
I remember a famous man once said that the man who made him angry would kill him. He argued with an opponent on the floor of the Senate turning red in his anger and fell over dead with a massive heart attack. His cholesterol may have been high, but it was his anger that killed him.
"Science" flip-flops regularly on what is bad for you and what is not. Quacks hawk all kinds of strange elixirs and paraphernalia to desperate people. There are almost a billion paths to good health and peace of mind. I say we should go back to God’s way to health and a peaceful mind. Instead of heart trouble, we should have a merry heart. It will make us better looking because we will have cheerful face. (Prov 15:13) It is a cure for depression. (Prov 15:15) The verse says that all the days of the afflicted/depressed are evil, but the merry hearted is like someone who is continually having a party or feast. It will work like a medicine. (Prov 17:22)
Ecclesiastes 9:7 says that you can rejoice and have that happy heart, "for God now accepteth thy works." How do you know you are accepted? If you are saved, you are accepted "in the Beloved." (Eph 1:6) You can be merry "for God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." You keep aware of that promise and experience it by practicing Isaiah 26:3. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." (KJV) The word stayed means to lean upon or take hold of and trust. In that respect, we are healed by mind power. However, it is not the power of our mind, but rather the power of Whom we mind and upon Whom our mind leans upon or takes a hold of and trusts.
We are not healed because we disobey natural laws. In Deut. 23:12-14, we are told of sanitation rules that we should follow. You might think that it would be obvious as to why you would want a proper sewage disposal methodology. However, this guidance was ignored during the Middle Ages. Often, the chamber pot was just thrown out the window and if anyone was in the path, it was unfortunate. This is how we got our custom of men walking on the side towards the street. If the trajectory was bad and it fell short of the street, the man took the hit.
Consequently, this practice bred rats and the rats bred other vermin that carried disease and that is how the Black Plague broke out in Europe and killed millions. All because man ignored God’s Word. In the Book of Leviticus and Numbers 19 we are also instructed how to clean ourselves after coming into contact with an issue or running sore and after handling dead bodies. This was also ignored and many women died after doctors performed autopsies on women who died in childbirth and then proceeded to perform pelvic exams without washing their hands. This was happening in the 1840’s.
A Dr. Semmelweis made his employees wash their hands after the autopsies and the death rate went way down. The "learned" doctors balked at such foolishness and nuisance and stopped washing their hands. The dying began again. Rejected and pained over the so many unnecessary deaths, Dr. Semmelweis died in a mental institution. Someone else figured it out in 1876, but it was not until 1960 when man caught up to God and issued directions on hand washing that were very close to what was written in Number 19. Man can be so smart that he is moronic.
How did this happen? I would suspect that some well meaning Christians decided that since we were not under law that we could just ignore the Old Testament completely except for the stories of God’s provision and judgments. A fellow named Irenaeus kept folks from burning the Old Testament or we would not even have the history of Israel or know of David’s triumph over Goliath.
Our diets are terrible, but we would not consult Leviticus because we are not under law and God told Peter not to call anything unclean which He called clean. (Acts 10:15) We were initially vegetarians, because there was no death so it would be tough to get up a barbecue. (Gen 1:29) Before all the Vegans have a hallelujah fit, let me point out that God did allow meat eating after the flood and did not change that after Pentecost. Even eating meats that were offered to idols were OK or lawful to the Christian.
Our great grandparents ate a lot of beef, eggs, real milk, and butter and got away with it. They lived into their eighties and nineties with no problem partly because they did not have to join a health club. Working the fields, fencing the ranch, tending to the chores was real work and they got their exercise from sunrise until sunset.
They also ate real food. We eat more preservatives instead of natural ingredients. Look at any list of twelve or more ingredients on a package and at least two thirds of them are things you cannot spell or pronounce. Our desire to escape the hardships of the curse have cursed us worse with diseases from our products and physical failure from lack of "sweat of the brow" work. He did say we would earn our bread by the sweat of our brow and not the furrow of our brow.
We take in these tons of toxins and manmade fillers and we never give our body a chance to purge itself of those toxins by fasting. We just keep on piling them in until we overload and either develop a "cold" or cancer or some other deadly or debilitating disease.
Our diets and exercise habits are so bad we do not even excrete, as we should. We hold our urine beyond a socially acceptable amount of time and we stay constipated due to lack of fiber, water, and exercise. Thus our tissues are allowed to soak in more and more toxins and we wonder why we get ill.
One of the ways we purge ourselves of toxins is through sweat. I’m sorry, make that perspiration for the more noble among us. Our pores work like bilge pumps as well as an air conditioner. I would not be surprised if they traced the cause of some cancers back to our deodorants that not only stop us from perspiring, but also coat our skins with more chemicals.
Hmm, how did folks survive before deodorants in a day when it was considered unhealthy to bathe more than once a year? Then we came up in the world and decided that Saturday night was good enough. Now to shower less than daily and use deodorant would be considered uncivilized. The thing that tickles me is that we ask bloodhounds to track our unique scent, but our scent to us is BO. We all want to smell like sport or floral. Even more of a chuckle is that now they are making colognes for men (only women wear perfume) with the essence of a man’s sweat. Men sweat, women perspire. ;-) What God gave each of us free, we now pay big bucks for a bottle of somebody else’s sweat! Go figure!
I’m not saying that we should go back to bathing once a year, but we need to figure out natural ways to maintain hygiene and shy away from them big word ingredients. I am not saying that we all need to spend four hours a day at the health clubs, but even Paul said that bodily exercise profits a little bit. (1 Tim 4:8) We were made to be physical and not just cerebral, or we would just be big brains. Yes, kids, you need to do your homework because we are also meant to flex our brains. As in all things, we need to seek a balance to be healthy and wise.
Another reason we are not healed is that we are faithless. James 5:14,15 says that the prayer of faith will heal the sick. Do we believe that? Yes, we will acknowledge it as a theological truth, but do we really believe it?
Some of my Baptist brethren will not even think about doing this cuz that there be Pentecostal or Charismatic. Funny, I don’t see that in the Greek. Scholfield didn’t even put that in his footnotes. You know, "Caution, these verses are null and void iffen yer Baptist!" Kind of like those commercials on TV for various products or services that say in the fine print not available in Maine, NY, and parts of Arkansas.
There is not a denomination or group that has a corner on certain verses or promises. If part of the Book is for me then the entire Book is for me within its proper interpretational context. I ain’t plannin’ on marchin’ around Jericho, but I can learn that victory from God can come in ways that might seem mighty peculiar to the world and me. No one is going to mistake a Baptist for a Charismatic just because the Baptist preacher has a James 5 service or someone gets happy and raises their hands. There are enough differences so that no one but a Baptist might get confused.
Maybe you have had a service and it did not work? I John 5:16 tells us that there is a sin unto death and we are not to pray for it. We are not told what that sin is and it would be best not to offer much conjecture or speculation as to what that sin might be.
Indeed, it may be a different sin for each person. The sin itself may not be the issue but rather the attitude of heart of the person. (Remember Ananias and Sapphira?) We speak of the straw that broke the camel’s back. It may be that God has tried to bring this person into obedience and renewal time after time for years. The person refused to submit and God has decided to call him or her home. The last sin may have been major or minor, but it was enough that only a face to face with God is going to fix the issue.
Paul tells the Corinthians to turn some folks out of the church and over to satan because of their sin. It seems a lad was sleeping with his stepmother and they were Christians. Why turn them out, because they lost their salvation? No, it is to turn them over to the devil to be tormented and possibly lose their lives if they do not repent. They will be saved in "the day of the Lord Jesus," but they will have an ignoble home going and of course lose rewards in this life and the next. (I Cor 5:1-6, 3:11-15)
It may be lack of faith on the part of the participants and I do not mean the sick person. The cripple at the Gate Beautiful was looking for alms and not healing. He had no faith at all. He was begging for something totally different than healing and he was healed. (Acts 3:6) It says that the prayer of faith will save or deliver the sick and the Lord will raise him up. I would say that we do not really believe that and we do not pray in true faith. We theologically assent to the truth of the passage, but we do not believe it in our hearts. God grant us grace and faith to believe Him.
Sometimes God heals miraculously and at times, He uses medicine. In James, we see the use of olive oil being using to anoint. I wonder if we get the word ointment from here. Olive oil was a common medicine. Much like we used Castor oil for every ailment under the sun in the last part of the nineteenth century and first part of this one, they used olive oil.
It is more of a medicinal anointing rather than what we would call a spiritual symbolic anointing like Aaron being anointed as priest. (Leviticus 8:12) In fact, a modern version might be equal to the elders being there to give you your medicine and then praying for your healing.
In Isaiah 38: 1-8, we see Hezekiah being told to get his house in order for God was going to allow him to die of his illness. In this case, the patient said the prayer of faith. He had great faith and came and reasoned with God. (Isa. 1:18) He was not in sin, but he pled his case and God heard him and granted him fifteen more years. How would you handle that? You would know the precise moment of your death. How would we then live?
God could have just said for Hezekiah to get up and walk. God said that he would live. However, in verse 21 we are told that Isaiah told the servants to put a fig plaster on the boil. Remember mustard plasters? Now, did God use a miracle or medicine to heal Hezekiah? Had God not listened to Hezekiah’s prayer or if Hezekiah had not prayed, the medicine would not have worked. Yet, in the end God still let the medicine do the work.
Here is the balance. There are those who will not allow any doctor to treat them. They say they have all their faith in God. If God chooses to use medicine from time to time then are we being faithful or foolish to limit His options and demand miracles? That man found a medicine that works at all is a gift of God and in essence a miracle. We do not err and put all our trust in doctors like Asa, but neither do we throw out medicine. I wonder what would have happened if Hezekiah had told Isaiah to skip the fig plaster because God was going to heal him. I think he would have died. When he got to Paradise and asked God about the fifteen years that was promised I think God would have said that he had tried to give them, but Hezekiah refused them by not using what God provided. Hezekiah would not have had true faith. True faith takes God at His word and then allows God to act in any way He chooses.
This brings us to the last reason that we are not healed. We are not healed because it is time to die. If it is time for a person to die you can anoint them fifty times and they are going to die. I guess since some folks teach that it is a sin to be sick or that our sickness is because of our sin then the only way we will die is by accident or old age. There is no Scriptural substantiation for that premise.
In II Kings 13:14 we are told that Elisha had fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. Now, who wants to call Elisha faithless? He was not a man given to sin or seeking anyone but God and I suspect that he kept all the laws as best that he could. God was getting plenty of glory by Elisha’s life. He did get some glory from his death seeing how a dead man was raised back to life by being thrown onto Elisha’s body, but we are not led to believe that is why he died. (21) He died because it was his time and God chose to use sickness instead of a flaming chariot to bring him home.
We already saw that God was perfectly willing to allow Hezekiah to die of an illness. He was not in sin at this time. Later, he showed too much of his kingdom to the wrong people and God was upset, but he was in good standing at this date. He certainly had faith. He sought God. We are not told that he violated any natural laws. It did not appear that God even wanted to glorify Himself through Hezekiah’s death.
In fact, God wanted to spare Hezekiah some sorrow, but even more so the entire kingdom. Let us reflect on Isaiah 38:1-8 and I Kings 14:13 We are not given the whole prayer of Hezekiah. An argument that he could have used was that he had reigned a very short time in comparison to others that had been wicked. Another argument could have been that he had no heir and even the wicked kings had heirs. Whatever else he may have said other than asking God to check his service record we will not know until we get to glory.
We do know his prayer was answered by years being added to his life and reign. His son would be born three years later and that would be bad news for the nation. He was a very evil and wicked king and reigned for fifty-five years. Read II Kings 21 to get the full details. Had Hezekiah died, the nation of Israel would have been spared its most wicked king. In other words, one death would have spared the many much evil. Hezekiah should have died of his sickness. God knew what he was about.
In Hezekiah’s circumstance, a father was spared and brought in a son of shame. In I Kings 14:13 we see a father of shame punished and a son spared pain. The son of Jeroboam was allowed to die because God saw some GOOD in him. Therefore, his death spared him, from suffering the evil of the many. God would bring judgment to the nation, but the child would not be there to share in it.
We see death as a part of life, but a thing to be feared. God often rewards His children with death. Death is just going home for a Christian. Paul said that death would be gain for him. He would be with the God he loved for eternity and removed from all the trials of life. David’s son and Jeroboam’s son were blessed in their early deaths.
How much evil have we endured because God answered someone’s prayer to allow a man to live? We cannot possibly know. How much good did we miss because someone did not pray? How much have we, or the person, been spared because God did not answer the prayer? The point is to pray and trust Him for the answer.
We should thank and praise Him for His omniscience and not demand anything from Him but His wisdom, love and righteousness even if it hurts us! If we seek the spiritual healing spoke of in II Chron. 7:14 we will see the power of God active in our lives. When we do this then sickness or death will fall into perspective, we will let God be God, and true healing will begin.
Book suggestion: None Of These Diseases, S. I. McMillen, MD Spire Books
Library of Congress 63-13359
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/why-we-are-not-healed-dr-ronald-shultz-sermon-on-death-247329
