Jesus and Healing, pt2 | 6/23/19
Mark 6:53-56; 7:32-37; 8:22-26; 10:46-52; 6/23/19 | Will DuVal
This morning, we are continuing a 3-part sermon mini-series within our larger walk through the Gospel of Mark together; this is part 2 on PHYSICAL HEALING. And we acknowledged last Sunday that although we may try and avoid the topic of healing today in the church, because of the difficult questions it raises; questions like:
Why was supernatural healing so prevalent in biblical times but not today?
DOES God even still work healing miracles today?
And if so, what role does faith play in healing; if I pray for healing and God doesn’t provide it, does that mean there’s something lacking in my faith? Or in the faith of the sick person for whom I’m praying?
And if God’s will is going be done regardless, then why pray AT ALL?!
These are BIG, TOUGH questions! But fortunately the Bible doesn’t shy away from them. And we find NINE passage in the Gospel of Mark ALONE on this subject of physical healing. Last week we examined FOUR; this morning we’ll unpack another four, and next Sunday, we’ll zoom in on our final healing story, my favorite, from Mark ch.2. But let’s start with a quick recap of last week’s 4 texts and 4 takeaways:
RECAP:
Passage #1- Mark 1:29-31 – Jesus’ FIRST healing miracle. And our takeaway was that Healing is IMPORTANT, but not MOST important. I offered Mark’s CHRONOLOGY as evidence, that before Jesus ever healed ANYONE, he first emphasizes the GREATER importance of God’s word, God’s calling, personal character, the gospel, Christian community, and especially our need for SPIRITUAL healing from the disease of SIN. Those subjects are ALL foregrounded in Mark’s gospel and in Jesus’ ministry, BEFORE we hear any mention of physical healing.
Passage #2 – Mark 1:40-44 – Jesus is “moved with pity” for a leper who recognizes he can ONLY be healed if JESUS wills it. That Healing must be the GIFT of a COMPASSIONATE God. Healing is ultimately up to GOD. Not me, not whoever I’m praying for - GOD. HE must will it, and oftentimes he DOES, because He is gracious and compassionate. And yet, even when He DOESN’T choose to heal physically, that makes Him no less God, and no less Loving or Good, because He’s already healed us in the most important, eternal way, and that is: spiritually. And because of THAT healing, we who have had our sins forgiven by grace through faith IN Jesus, need not fear even DEATH, because our physical passing just means we get to finally go HOME – to Heaven, to be with Jesus, FOREVER. “To live is Christ, to die is GAIN”, Paul says. It’s a win-win. If I’m here in the body, I get to be USED by God as an INSTRUMENT of his healing in OTHERS’ lives, and when I’m finally taken home, that will be EVEN better.
#3 - In Mark 3:1-6 – the Pharisees would have STOPPED Jesus from healing on the Sabbath, because that didn’t fit into their theology. Healing is DEEPLY THEOLOGICAL. And while we reject the doctrinal perversions of Christian Science, of the “name it and claim it” Word of Faith movement – that OVER-emphasize the role of faith in healing, so too we must be careful not to limit the ways God can still use us today in His healing of others. James 5 exhorts, “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray... 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. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” So we are called NOT to shirk away or over-qualify our petitions, but to pray BOLDLY for others who are hurting, and trust God with the rest.
And finally, in Mark 5:22-43, we met a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, an IMPOSSIBLE medical case, surpassed only by a DEAD girl in the subsequent passage, but then we saw Jesus, with a WORD - and in the case of the bleeding woman, LESS than a word; she grabs his cloak and he almost accidentally heals her; Jesus is just too restorative for His own good! – he heals them both. Healing is ALWAYS possible with Jesus. In His resurrection, Jesus proves that He has already conquered the greatest enemy of all: not just physical death, but even more formidably - SPIRITUAL death, SIN and the power of Hell itself. Defeated, by Jesus. So we can have confidence that there is NO case that is beyond his ability to heal.
So to those 4 principles, we’re gonna add 4 more this morning; would you pray with me...
(God to bless the reading and study of His word...)
Point #5 – Healing is ALSO... an EXPECTATION with Jesus.
This is the most easily misunderstood of the 8 points, so pay close attention...
MARK 6:53-56
When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 54 And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55 and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.
EXPECTATION goes beyond simply acknowledging that healing is “always possible with Jesus”, point #4. Or even that we ought to HOPE for and PRAY for healing. We see here in Mark 6, that wherever Jesus is, brokenness cannot continue to exist.
Now, we recognize the truth of this claim in the SPIRITUAL sense. We rightly interpret God’s holiness – his set apartness-in moral perfection, to mean that God cannot coexist with SIN, which is spiritual brokenness.
Ps 5:4 “evil may not dwell with you”
Isa 59:2 “your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.”Hab 1:13 – “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” - God cannot even LOOK upon sin!
But throughout the Gospel accounts of Jesus, we find that this principle holds true in the PHYSICAL sense as well: Jesus really is so redemptive, that His very presence is mutually exclusive with physical brokenness. Remember the bleeding woman – He doesn’t have to THINK about it, or say or do ANYTHING, she is simply healed by virtue of His PRESENCE. By virtue of her physical proximity to the Great Physician. And here again in ch.6: “as many as touched even the fringe of Jesus’ garment were made well”. Brokenness CANNOT go on existing in the presence of Jesus. It gets FIXED.
That’s why we see in Revelation 21: when “the dwelling place of God is with man... [In this new Heaven and new earth? what happens?]c] 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away”. ALL brokenness is healed, restored, in the presence of the Lord.
BUT – there is a HALF-truth peddled by the prosperity gospel, of which we must be wary. G.K. Chesterton said, “A heresy is always a half-truth turned into a whole falsehood”. And here is that half-truth about healing: “Jesus never failed to heal anyone”.
Now, that’s HALF true. If by “Jesus never failed to heal anyone”, you mean to say that every time Jesus endeavored to heal someone in the Gospels, he is 100% effective, then that is absolutely true. There’s never an instance where someone comes to Jesus for healing and he is unable to perform it.
But if you mean that Jesus healed EVERYONE he came in contact with, and that Jesus’ goodness constrains him to ALWAYS want to heal everyone of every infirmity, then THAT understanding is utterly FALSE.
And there are ACTUALLY false teachers out there today who promote the LIE that “a true Christian won’t get sick”, and that is LUDICROUS. I cannot even imagine the BURDEN that Benny Hinn’s theology puts on him; like, does he just go into HIDING every time he catches the common cold? Christians experience physical suffering in this world for the same reason we still experience SPIRITUAL suffering, the effects of SIN all around us: because we live in a fallen world. A broken world. Romans 8, all of Creation GROANS to be ultimately redeemed at the second coming of Christ, but that day has not yet come.
This passage, Mark 6, attests to that. By telling us that “as many as touched Jesus’ garment were healed” Mark implies here that NOT everyone DID touch it! There were presumably some who didn’t or couldn’t touch Jesus, and thus were NOT healed. And we hear as much in other passages as well, where after Jesus healed many, when the crowds got too large, he would retire for the day. Presumably LEAVING others behind. Jesus’ 100% success rate with healing does NOT mean that he chose to heal 100% of the people he ever encountered, NOR does it mean He heals 100% of the time today.
On the contrary, the Bible explains that our physical suffering, and God’s LACK of healing, rightly understood, can even be a blessing, purposely ordained BY God for our good and for His glory: and THAT is what our lives, and this world, and all of CREATION ultimately exist for anyway: God’s glory... which is point #6...
#6 – Healing is... a means of bringing GOD GLORY.
We joke about our kids regurgitating “Sunday school answers”: Jesus. God. But GOD’S GLORY really is the ultimate Sunday School answer to ALL of life’s most important questions:
Why is there something rather than nothing? God’s glory... Ps.19
What is the meaning of human existence; why are we HERE? God’s glory. Isa 43:7
How could a good God send people to HELL!? His glory. Rom 9.
And Why does a good God allow suffering? His glory.
As much as Jesus LOVES to heal us, and He gets glory from that, elsewhere the Bible makes it very clear that God ALSO gets glory, sometimes even MORE glory, from letting us suffer:
Rom 5:3-5 “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame”
Rom 8:17-18 “We are... heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
James 1:2-4 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
2 Cor 4:16-17 “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self[d] is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”
A BIBLICAL understanding of physical suffering, flies in the FACE of the false gospel that says life is about maximizing my temporal, personal happiness and Jesus is merely a means to that end. The BIBLICAL gospel is that our lives are gifts from GOD, NOT primarily for our happiness but for HIS glory. And HOW does God get glory from our suffering?
Rom 5: God gets glory from using suffering to build our HOPE. To transfer our hope from the fleeting, material things of this world that FAIL us – our health and wealth – and instead prove that our hope is in Christ alone.
Rom 8: God gets glory by using our suffering to UNITE us with Christ, and thus EXALT us with Him as well, GLORIFY us with him for eternity in Heaven... and it brings God immense GLORY to grow His Kingdom by including us as adopted sons and daughters.
James 1: God gets glory by using our suffering to make us more dependent on Him. Admit it: you pray harder when you’re hurting. Your faith matters most when it’s all you’ve got left. When it’s the only thing getting you through the day. When you are FORCED to lean not on your own strength, but on the Lord in your weakness. That is HARD. But it’s GOOD. Because it brings God glory.
Finally, 2 Cor 4: God gets glory by using our suffering to keep our focus on Him, and on eternity. Eyes on the prize. Suffering keeps life in perspective, and our priorities straight.
That’s how God gets glory from our SUFFERING; but what about from HEALING? What does ANY of this have to do with Mark 7?
MARK 7:32-37
32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus[h] charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Here we see two recurring themes of Jesus’ healings on display, BOTH of which, point us BACK to God’s glory.
#1 – What’s the most common reaction people have to Jesus’ miracles? They are “astonished...”, “Amazed...”; “astonished beyond measure” here. In some passages, we even explicitly hear that the crowds give glory to God” because of the miracles they witness Jesus perform. So healing is intended PRIMARILY for God’s glory – so that more people will give GOD more GLORY.
But that makes recurring theme #2 all the more interesting. Because if Jesus’ miracles were intended to AMAZE people such that they’d give God glory, wouldn’t you think He’d want the whole WORLD to know about them? But INSTEAD, what we see, ESPECIALLY in this passage, because Jesus takes this deaf man ASIDE, in PRIVATE, and heals him in secret, it emphasizes this recurring Markan theme we call the “messianic secret”. Some 11x in the Gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus swear people to secrecy, in an effort to keep his true identity as the Messiah under wraps. Why?
Scholars have proposed various theories. The most convincing is that Jesus knows that the more word about him spreads, the sooner the Pharisees will put an END to his ministry. And He doesn’t want to hasten that day, and expedite his crucifixion, because all around him, Jesus saw our great NEED – for physical healing, spiritual healing – and He wants to continue MEETING those needs! So Jesus heals people to the glory of God, and then commands them not to tell anyone, so as not to cut his ministry short.
The only PROBLEM, v36, is that “the more he charged them not to SAY anything, the more zealously they proclaimed it!” But here’s the even more amazing thing about Jesus: even when the crowds were SO amazed, SO in awe of God’s glory made manifest in His Son, that they couldn’t HELP but share the good news – their DISOBEDIENCE in shouting it from the rooftops, ultimately not only failed to thwart Jesus’ mission; but just like ALL of our failures, Jesus actually redeems and USES it to accomplish his will. Because the END result of the Messianic secret getting out, was that it DID force the Pharisees’ hands, which DID result in Jesus’ death, which DID result in the salvation of ALL who would believe. And THAT is how God gets the most glory of all! THAT is how God accomplishes the most HEALING of all: is through Christ’s death on the CROSS. “By His wounds, we are HEALED”. Isa 53.
Point #7 – Healing is often accomplished through NATURAL MEANS.
MARK 8:22-26
And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus[c] laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”
This is by far the most BIZARRE healing story in the Gospels. Not ONLY because Jesus spits in a man’s eyes, which, by the way, why doesn’t THIS scene ever make it into our movies about Jesus? I want to see Jim Cavaziel SPIT in a guy’s face, only to be told, “Uhh, Jesus, I don’t think it worked... I can make out... like, SHAPES... but y’all look like the Ents in Lord of the Rings...” It’s like ME when I take my contacts out at the optometrist’s office, and I’m struggling to make out the giant “E” on the first line: I KNOW it’s an “E”; it’s ALWAYS an “E”. But I don’t wanna cheat. And YES – my vision is THAT bad.
We hear a similar account in John 9, where Jesus spits in the MUD and then RUBS it like a PASTE or a BALM in the man’s eyes to heal him. What are we to make of such accounts. And this one in Mark, where it almost seems like Jesus needs a second TRY in order to fully restore the man’s sight? What’s the point?
For ME, the point is that Jesus sometimes uses NATURAL MEANS to accomplish healing. It’s not like healing bleeding or deafness was easy for Jesus, but blindness is a whole different ballgame. The point is NOT that Jesus struggled to heal this man. Jesus could have snapped his fingers and healed him instantly. But Jesus knows that’s NOT how healing is for US. Like MAYBE it’s as easy as praying and simply trusting in the Lord. But MAYBE sometimes it takes a little spit. A little MUD. A second try. An antibiotic. A surgery. These natural means of healing are not inherently BAD. It doesn’t mean this blind man had any LESS faith than the others Jesus healed; it just means that sometimes God uses natural means to heal.
So of course, we pray for healing by all means. But go to your doctor too. Take your pills. It doesn’t make you any less Christian. It just means you pay attention to the natural anatomical laws that God himself established for our good. Medicine is a good gift from God. Physicians, nurses, chiropractors... you all are gifts from God to the rest of us. And we thank God for you. And that He uses even such natural means to heal us.
And finally, point #8 – Healing is available to ALL WHO BELIEVE.
MARK 10:46-52
And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” 50 And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.” 52 And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.
Maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “That’s great. Must be nice for blind Bartimaeus. For the deaf man. The bleeding woman. The leper. Jairus’ dead daughter. To be IN such close physical proximity to Jesus. To have such direct ACCESS to his physically restorative healing presence. Must be great... for them. But a lot o’ good it does me. Because NOW He’s in Heaven, and I’m stuck here, with chronic migraines so bad I can’t even get out of bed some days. With anxiety... depression so bad, I can’t get out of bed. With breast cancer. Kidney cancer. With blindness, life-threatening seizures. With a botched knee surgery that left me unable to walk. A broken back that never quite healed right. Arthritis. Infertility. Dementia. A stroke that nearly took my life. And that’s probably just HALF our congregation!
But friends, without diminishing the REAL pain and suffering that comes from those physical ailments, we need to see this morning that there’s something WE have, that blind Bartimaeus could have only DREAMED of. Because while he enjoyed physical proximity to Jesus, direct access to Jesus’ physical healing, Bartimaeus knew NOTHING of Jesus’ atoning death, his victorious resurrection, or his intercessory Mediation on our behalf WITH God precisely BECAUSE He now sits at the right hand of the Father. And that means you and I now enjoy something even GREATER than physical healing, that Bartimaeus was left to only hope and pray and LONG for... and that is SPIRITUAL proximity to God. Ephesians 2: We who were once far off, dead in our sins, have now been brought NEAR. Direct access to God’s spiritually restorative presence because of Christ’s reconciling death and resurrection. We now have the ULTIMATE cure – God Himself. And he’s actually even nearer than Jesus was to Bartimaeus, because for all who DO believe, He now lives INSIDE us. The Holy Spirit. Talk about proximity!
And I just want to end today, by re-interpretting Mark 10, not as a story primarily about physical healing, but as an ALLEGORY and a FORESHADOWING of our even greater, more profound SPIRITUAL healing that Jesus is offering you and me this morning:
Because perhaps YOU are Bartimaeus. And you’ve been spiritually blind since birth. A beggar; you’ve just been living day to day, scraping by. Trying to fill the void. Stumbling in the darkness. When along comes JESUS. You’ve heard about this guy. And maybe you’re skeptical, or maybe you’re desperate and ready to try ANYTHING. You just want to SEE. And so you cry out. Only to have his followers rebuke you. Who do you think you are, bothering Jesus like this, upsetting our nice, orderly church way of life – how quickly we forget who WE were before he healed US. But you’re desperate, and you cry out again for Jesus. And while others rebuke, he INVITES. He CALLS you, because you know enough about Jesus to know HE must be the one to call YOU. And before he even finishes his sentence, you come running. And He asks you a simple, yet loaded question: “What do you want me to do for you?” And in that moment you realize all the WRONG answers you have responded with to that question over the course of your life: God, I want you to make her LOVE me. I want you to make me POPULAR. Make me RICH. Make me HAPPY. Make me physically healthy. But in THIS moment, you realize your true need, your deepest need, and you reply: “Jesus, I want to SEE. To see spiritually. My need for you, and your provision for me.” And immediately, he opens your eyes. You were blind, but now you see. Your FAITH has made you well.
Friends, healing – TRUE, eternal, LASTING, spiritual healing – is available today. To ALL who believe. How will you respond to Jesus. He stands, ready to save you, asking you a simple question: “What do you want me to do for you?” Let’s pray...