“GOD’S DESIRE TO HEAL”
Text: Isaiah 53:4-5
STRIPES: Chabburah = “Wounds, blows, bruises.”
HEALED: RAPHA = Mend, heal, repair, thoroughly make whole.
QUESTION: How do you see your body? How does God see your body?
2 Views: 1-IDOL; 2-Belong to God. “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
America is obsessed with the body’s beautiful.
Oh, There are. Oils, creams, magic solutions, miracle diets, perfumes, lotions, liposuctions, hair dyes, paint, powder, plastic surgery. You can suck it from here and stick it there, and suddenly you’re a new creation.
Plastic surgery abounds. People want to look like the stars today.
If God doesn’t make you look a certain way – the doctor can’t do it. It’s one thing to improve, if that’s what people want to do that’s fine, but don’t be so obsessed with BODY BEAUTIFUL that when you cross your ankles -your mouth pops open.
BODIES HAVE BECOME IDOLS
Men at the health spas -work out in front of mirrors.
They put oils on the muscles, so they glisten in the light.
I don’t know why they do that, but they do.
-I tell all newly married couples, take lots of pictures.
-You’ll need reminders when you get older.
Right now: Some of you can eat what you want 1 day, and you look the same, but there will come a day when you eat it, that you will find it the next day.
Your body belongs to the Lord. It is God’s will to bless you with health, wholeness.
LAW OF SOWING AND REAPING: Galatians 6:7; Hebrews 13:8
That means that the healing power Jesus healed with at the Sea of Galilee at available in your life.
The power that Jesus used at Bethsaida is available on Beaver Rd.
We live in a day, where many people need Spiritual, Emotional, Mental, and Physical Healings.
BELIEF: “Divine healing is an integral part of the gospel. Deliverance from sickness is provided for in the atonement and is the privilege of all believers.” (Isaiah 53:4,5; Matthew 8:16,17; James 5:14-16)
Divine Healing is very clear in the word of God.
Think of the illogical position of not believing in Healing when you need healing.
POINT: Divine Healing: “Divine Healing is an act of God through faith in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is initiated by the word of God whereby the body/soul/mind/spirit is cured, healed, repaired from sickness and disease and made whole.”
DIVINE HEALING IN THE SCRIPTURE IS VERY CLEAR:
God made the promise in the book of Exodus. To the Children of Israel. When they came out of the Red Sea,
God said: “I am the Lord your God that heals all your diseases.”
Egypt is a type of bondage and sin. The Red Sea is a type of water baptism.
One of the first things God told the Israelites when they came through the RED SEA:
“I want you to be well. I want to heal you. I want you to be blessed in your body.”
There are 14 Hebrew and Greek words that are found in 100’s of scriptures that talk about healing.
Beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation.
Hebrew word called RAPHA=“To cure, to make whole.
THERAPEO: Therapeutic= “To heal and restore.”
Jesus Healed all throughout His earthly ministry:
Why would the gospels record all these healings and miracles of Jesus just so we wouldn’t believe in healing anymore?
- Jesus healed the lepers. (Impossible disease)
- Jesus Healed a centurion’s son-who was a great journey off. (No distance in prayer-God has the power to heal.)
- Jesus healed the lame, the deaf, the blind, paralytic. (Nerve disorders)
- Jesus healed 1 on 1.
- Jesus said: “These signs shall follow them that believe in my name, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”
1. GOD’S WILL TO HEAL. Hosea 4:6
God tells us to seek after the knowledge of His word.
You have a divine right to be healed because of the work of Christ on the cross. He bore our sin and sickness and carried it away.
He was the sacrificial lamb, and the bill has been paid.
There is a spiritual inheritance available through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53:5 (Greek) “BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.”
STRIPES: Chabburah = “Wounds, blows, bruises.”
HEALED: RAPHA = Mend, heal, repair, thoroughly make whole.
There is a divine knowledge that we learn through the word of God
The Bible is the only book that will endure forever.
What you hold in your hand will exist throughout eternity.
ILLUS.: The God of the natural and the God of the Supernatural is the same God. There are laws in chemistry that God initiated that are always true.
-The circumference of a circle, the polarity of metals, the pull of the moon causing the waves on the ocean.
-During the Millennial Reign the seas will become calm again. The earth will be restored to God’s glory.
-A tray of water when you put it into the Freezer will turn into ICE when the temperature is at least 32 Degrees.
It is not WOW – It will work for anybody.
There are supernatural laws that are always true. If you meet these supernatural laws. You have supernatural results. When we meet God’s conditions, we receive His blessing. We receive His grace and His power. When we don’t know what the word of God says, then we can’t stand on His word.
ILLUS.: When President James Garfield was shot. He had 2 doctors: Dr. Bliss, Dr. Weiss. Dr. Weis was Jewish-He said I know where the bullet is. Dr. Bliss said we really don’t know where the bullet is, if we go in there probing and punching around, we’ll kill him. In their procrastination-He died.
NEWSPAPER: “Ignorance is Bliss.”
We have been saying it ever since. The Dr.’s name is Bliss –It has nothing to do with being blessed.
When we don’t know God’s word-We limit the blessings that we can receive in our life. Jesus is called the Great Physician. God made us and God knows what makes us tick.
ILLUS.: If you rent a house, and the plumbing goes out, we usually go to the landlord and say: This is your house. Can you fix this? It is the same way for the Lord.
I Corinthians 6:9
He made us. He knows our bodies, and He can fix our emotions, our bodies, and our minds. When your watch breaks-you take it to the watchmaker, not the car mechanic. In the same way-Jesus is the great Physician-He can touch us by the power of His spirit. The Law of Faith is just as real as a Penicillin Shot. Psalm 107:20
2. DISCERNING OUR HEARTS.
Hebrews 3:12-13
Sin makes our hearts hard. The hardness of our hearts makes it difficult for us to believe. We have been conditioned not to believe.
ILLUS.: Medical science is filled with wonderful knowledge.
Years ago, when I would go and pray with people at the hospital for heart by-pass surgery, a 3 by-pass would take up to 8-9 hours. Today, many times it is done in 3 hours. Years ago-Gall Bladder surgery would lay you up in the hospital for 2 weeks.
Today, it is completed, and you are out the door in 2 hours.
With all the wonder of Medical Science, they are still limited.
One thing I have learned about healing. I want to believe now so that my faith will be ready when needed.
Mark 6:3-6 –When Jesus the son of God came to His own city, Nazareth. It said that He couldn’t do many miracles: “Because of unbelief.” They said: This is a Carpenter’s son. Nothing good can come out of Nazareth. The scripture records that only a few miracles took place. (When you become so familiar with your culture that spiritual things no longer have an effect on you-you are in a dangerous place.
POINT: When you want what you’ve never had. You must do what you’ve never done. Sooner or later-everyone is here will need something that is beyond man’s abilities.
Sooner or later, we will need God to show up in a miraculous way.
Faith comes (progressively grows) by hearing the word of God.
COMES: “AKOE”- Faith comes from the hearing and the continued sharing of faith. Faith begets faith.
ILLUS.: Guys if you go to the gym, you don’t walk over and pick up 500 pounds. You pick up 10 pounds. Strength comes from strength. The body adjusts progressively as it is pushed. Faith comes from a faith walk.
Let’s start believing in God every day of our life. Let’s live by faith. 5x’s in the word, we are told. We live by faith.
DISCERN UNCONFESSED SIN. Proverbs 28:13
DAVID: “If I hide sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”
The truth is: All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I John 1:9
But if we try to cover it up. If we walk by it-God will not bless us, and we will not prosper.
The Bible says: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
There are no secrets, God knows when we did it, and He knows where we did it. It may not be known to friends, but it is known to God.
God knows, and He will tell it. Psalm 24:4; Psalm 119:11
ILLUS.: Story of David and Bathsheba in the Bible. David sinned, against the Lord. He hid his sin, killed Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. God said: I will shout it from the rooftop.
The newspapers and tabloids fulfill prophecy every day by exposing sin, they are unmerciful.
When we confess our sin, God will forgive us. If we try to cover it up, God will not hear us.
Is anything hidden in our life? God wants us to confess that sin.
We cannot be forgiven in our souls, and we cannot receive God’s mercy when we try to cover our sins.
DISCERN RESENTMENT AND UNFORGIVENESS. Mark 11:25
Where there is unforgiveness and resentment, God says Let it go. Forgive those who have hurt you.
Against who? Anything against anyone.
The message is clear if we want to be forgiven if we want to be healed if we want to be touched. We must forgive others.
PRAYER: OUR FATHER: Matthew 6:9-13
The message is clear-If you will not forgive another. God cannot forgive you.
ILLUS.: Do you know how many ulcers and heart attacks are caused by the pain of resentment? How many viruses do our bodies become acceptable to, because we harbor unforgiveness? Unforgiveness is a sentence that you will never get out of jail for. It will cause health issues your entire life.
You cannot burn every bridge that you must pass over. Sooner or later you will make a huge mistake, and you will need someone to forgive you. Forgiveness is not optional.
Forgiveness unlocks the handcuffs of hatred and the jail of anger.
FORGIVENESS is not an emotion. People say all the time. I’ll forgive when I feel like it. If you wait until you feel like. It won’t happen.
POINT: Forgiveness is a choice. It is an act of your will. You do it in faith, then the emotion will follow.
Same as love. You choose to love, the emotion follows.
ILLUS.: Peter Hume, who achieved world fame and was wealthy. Peter through a series of bad investments lost most of his fortune and moved back to a small farming town where he was raised. The neighbor had a vicious dog. The town had asked the man to retrain his dog time and again. But the man wouldn’t. One day as he was returning from the store, he found his daughter pinned to the ground, with the dog at her throat. Before he could pry the dog’s jaws apart. His daughter bleed to death in his arms. He refused to sell seed to the man that owned the dog. In the springtime, neighbors awoke to the springtime when the crops began bursting through the soil. They noticed that the man who owned the dog had ½ half of his field growing with new seedlings. ½ of Peter Hume’s fields were growing with new seedlings. Peter Hume planted his neighbor’s field with 1/2 his seed to get over his unforgiveness. Forgiveness is planting new seeds in someone else’s garden. Are you willing to do that? Can you forgive? If you’re not. You’re not a Christian. How many marriages become stagnant and bitter because of the refusal to forgive?
ILLUS.: A person once came into my office and said: “I can’t forgive him, he has ruined the last 10 years of my life.”
“Forgive him today or he will ruin the next 20 years of your life.”
3. DIVINE KEYS FOR HEALTH.
KEYS FOR HEALTH – I could preach about reap/sowing factor here, but after 2 fudge brownies, I’m going to wait on that subject.
Get rid of the rejection of parents. Ephesians 6:2,3
You won’t live long if you don’t honor your parents.
All these kids who are in the street cursing their parents are bringing the judgment of God on their lives. Their life won’t be well, and they won’t live long. No one has to have people run their lives. No one has to have a parent dictate their life, but you do have to honor them. That is God’s law.
This commandment is # 5 and it is found in Exodus 20- Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long upon the land.
Do not bring curses into your life.
ILLUS.: When John Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane in the ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, one of his cousins said: “It’s the Kennedy curse”.
Curses are very real. In the garden, the curse came on mankind because of Adam. Eve took of the fruit, she gave some to Adam. It was because of that piece of fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil that has caused all this pain. God intended for us to sit under the tree eat grapes and pet the lions, and yet we are cursed today.
Genesis 3-“Sorrow will be multiplied in childbirth, the ground will be cursed because of sin.”
That is why you can grow weeds on top of the sidewalk, but you can hardly grow a crop in a harvested field.
God cursed the serpent and made him slither on his belly.
If you don’t believe in curses, try to find a snake that doesn’t crawl on its belly. Try to find a patch of grass without weeds. Try and find a woman that never had any pain in childbirth.
LADY: “If you men don’t believe that childbirth is painful, trying pulling your lower lip over the back of your head.” It is a curse.
Deuteronomy 5:9 – Visiting the iniquity of the fathers to the 3rd & 4th generations.
Someone must decide to seek the Lord to stop the curse.
Patterns:
- Mental and emotional breakdowns occur from generation to generation.
- Patterns of strongholds that follow in a cyclical fashion generation after generation.
- Mindsets of fear, failure, and sickness stick from generation to generation.
There are times we get in the mindset. Well, there are just some things we have to deal with. I believe that.
I believe we have to praise Him in the midst of the storm. Sometimes we don’t know what to do –so we hold to the word of God, pray, and surround ourselves with prayer warriors. God will have his way. God desires blessing, salvation, healing upon the families. It is His will.
Do not consult the occult. Exodus. 23:24-25
Separating ourselves from everything that is the kingdom of darkness.
You want to know the future? Read the Bible.
God tells you everything, and then some.
He will tell you what will happen with the nations of the world.
He will tell you where the Battle of Armageddon will be.
The Bible will tell you how to have peace, happiness, and joy.
The Bible will tell you about the Rapture, it will tell you about the Millennial Reign.
Christians have no business going to a Fortune teller or consulting an OUIJA BOARD – if you have one, go home get it out, and burn it. You have no business reading a horror scope.
A horror scope is getting guidance from the prince of darkness.
“I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him.”
PRAYER: Lord, I’ve Not been living by the knowledge of the word. Deliver me from spiritual ignorance, I will live by faith, and reject unbelief. In the name of Jesus, I confess my sin, forgive me. Father, in Jesus’ Name, I take resentment out of my life, every form of unforgiveness, I denounce the kingdom of darkness, I denounce satan. I walk into the kingdom of light. Forgive me for not honoring my parents. Now, in Jesus’ name I break every curse I have allowed into my life, every damnable thing that has happened to my family. I break it by the authority of Jesus’ name. Jesus has come to bring salvation, healing, life abundantly, Jesus is the Lord of my life, and I receive it in Jesus’ name!