Sermon Central
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Healing And The Believer
Contributed by Paul Rupe on Jul 13, 2002 (message contributor)
Summary: Does the death burial and resurrection heal you physically as well as spiritually? This message uses Greek and Hebrew words to show believers that it is not God’s will for them to be sick in any area of their life.
Been sick lately? Did you know that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ heals all your sickness as well as taking you to heaven one day? When Jesus died He took away our sins, but He also took our sickness and disease as well.
In Isaiah 53:4 we are told
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Many people would look at this verse and say "How does that prove anything? It doesn’t mention sickness in this verse!" Oh, but friend it does! Lets look for a moment at these two words griefs and sorrows.
GRIEF’S AND SORROWS
A good tool to have in addition to your Bible is a concordance. A concordance will take a word you are looking for in the Bible and list all of the verses where that word appears. In addition to the word it also has a number beside of it which is linked to the meaning of the word in the Greek or Hebrew language. The most commonly used concordance is Strongs Concordance, which we will use for this study.
Griefs
The Hebrew word translated "griefs" in this verse is choliy, which means "sickness". The same word in the Hebrew is translated in other verses as sickness 12 times, disease 7 times, grief 4 times and sick 1 time.
When it says He bore our griefs it actually means He bore our sickness. Jesus bore our sickness spiritually (sin), mentally (guilt and oppression), and physically (Various sickness known to man)
Sorrows
Jesus also carried our sorrows. The Hebrew word for "sorrows" is mak’ob which means "pain, sorrow, pain (physical), pain (mental)".
Jesus took our pains, which are produced by sickness. When you have a cold you know you have it by the symptoms. You can’t see a sickness, it’s too small. You can’t taste a sickness or smell it. The only way you
know you have a cold is because of a stuffy head, or a groggy throat accompanied by aches and pains.
Jesus took the symptoms from you and bore them to the cross by bearing the sickness that caused the symptoms. In this verse it’s called sicknesses and pains.
AN INTERESTING ARTICLE
I read an article on healing one time and in this article it spoke of a man who was reading a report from a popular medical journal. The report said that there were 39 root causes for every sickness and disease in the world. It’s interesting that this article should report 39 root causes for sickness.
Two thousand years ago in the Roman empire it was customary to whip criminals with an instrument called a " Cat of 9 tails". The Cat
of 9 tails had stone, bone and broken glass imbedded into the strips of leather used to beat the criminal.
When a person was beaten with this whip the beating alone was often enough to kill the criminal. The
customary number of stripes given with this whip was 40 minus one. The Roman soldiers considered it an act of mercy to deduct one stripe from the prisoner. The interesting thing about this is that there are 39 root causes for every disease on planet earth. Jesus was beaten with this whip 39 times.
In this same chapter in the book of Isaiah we are told:
. . . and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5 (KJV)
Peter in the 1 Peter 2:24 echoes this verse when he writes:
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
When Jesus died two thousand years ago He took your sicknesses, your diseases and your sins. For every
stripe Jesus took, He also took the root cause for every physical or mental sickness that you would ever
encounter. Notice it says we were healed. It is finished! You can’t get healed you were healed at the cross!
Just so we have a clear picture from the Word of God concerning this thought of Jesus bearing our sickness and disease let’s look at Matthew chapter 8, it says:
When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast
out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
Esais the prophet in this verse is the same prophet that wrote the book of Isaiah from which we just read. It was this text that God was referring to when He said that Jesus took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.
