Jesus Healed Them All

SERMON: HE HEALED THEM ALL

Scripture Matt 12:9-15

9-10 When Jesus left the field, He entered their meeting place. There was a man there with a crippled hand. They said to Jesus, “Is it legal to heal on the Sabbath?” They were baiting Him.

11-14 He replied, “Is there a person here who, finding one of your lambs fallen into a ravine, wouldn’t, even though it was a Sabbath, pull it out? Surely kindness to people is as legal as kindness to animals!” Then He said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” He held it out and it was healed. The Pharisees walked out furious, sputtering about how they were going to ruin Jesus.

15-21 Jesus, knowing they were out to get Him, moved on. A lot of people followed Him, and He healed them all.

The very short text, HE HEALED THEM ALL, refers to Jesus healing all the people who had any difficulty whatever.

Can you picture the scene? There are hundred of people, THOUSANDS of people, milling around waiting for their turn to be healed. Some are quietly waiting, others are getting irritated with the wait. Some are down in the mouth, poor me types, who just know something will go off the rails before it is their turn to stand before the Son of God and be cured of their leprosy, or their cancer, or their tuberculosis, or their kidney failure. Others have broken limbs, curved backs, hunched backs, and deformed fingers and hands. More than likely, in such a situation, most every debilitating condition known to man is afflicting someone in that vast crowd. But, Jesus healed them all.

Now, I am one who believes that many physical conditions are the result of mental attitudes, mental thoughts, and the hardness of hearts of so many.

I have no idea how many folks have said to me, about someone else ... "I hope he dies today." Or, "I hope she has a car wreck." Or, "If I could give him cancer, I would do it, in a heart beat." But, to Jesus, it wouldn't matter what their condition was ... He would just handle it, with no more problem than sipping a cup of lemonade on the streets of Bluefield when the temperature hits 90 degrees.

If you are reading this, far away from Bluefield, you need to know a bit of our history .... since 1939, when the temperature hits 90 degrees, the Chamber of Commerce and other businesses pass out FREE LEMONADE on the sidewalks. Some years it never gets that hot, leading to the saying that Bluefield is Nature's air-conditioned city.

Well, this morning, I want to examine some of the problems of the head and of the heart that Jesus could heal, WOULD HEAL, in you ... if you would only, as the old song says, "Trust and Obey!" After all, there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust, and obey.

1. The first one I want to discuss is that old, "asking why and what" situation that we all encounter, sooner of later. "Why did this happen to me?" "What did I do to deserve this?"

When we ask those two questions, or some form of them, we generally get even more down, because there are seldom any answers. A lady gets lung cancer who has never taken a single puff of a cigarette. A man gets cirrhosis of the liver, and has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. Why do bad things happen to good people. Where is the answer to those situations? I frankly do know.

And, we may get to the end of our lives and simply not know. Why did my daughter, Marilyn, develop Multiple Sclerosis at age 17, and has lived in a wheel chair for the last 22 years of her life? She is now 60, and I still do not don't know.

The problem with asking the big WHY is that there IS no answer that will satisfy us. It's like one day Jesus was talking with His disciples and He was talking about the fields being white and ready for harvest ... and He said, "Pray for workers that the field may be harvested," simply meaning, SOME FOLKS NEED A PRAYER MINISTRY .... and if you are lying on a bed, or sitting in a rolling chair 16 hours a day, you have time to be one of God's great prayer warriors.

When you ask "why," you will always lose, and no one wants to be a loser. A few years ago, one of the soda pop companies had a contest going on .... prizes were listed on the inside of the lid of the bottle ... sometimes they would say, "You have won a free soda," or some other prize ... but the far most of them had just one word ..."LOSER." The company soon learned that people don't want to be called LOSER, when their sales dropped dramatically. So they changed it to read, "Not a winner." To me, that was just as bad.