Chico Alliance Church
“What Child Is this?”
John affirms the power of Christ over the curse of disease, sickness and death in the last part of chapter 4 and the first part of chapter 5. Since Jesus came to earth to set in motion the necessary elements to reverse the curse of sin, it is not surprising to find Him demonstrating His power to do so by supernaturally dealing with the effects of curse like none before Him.
Nobleman’s Son
Returning to Cana, Jesus encounters a “nobleman” whose young child was dying. At his desperate request for help, Jesus needs only speak the words and the devastating effects of living in a cursed and fallen world release their brutal grip on this helpless child. John show us how this government official took Jesus at his word and went home fully expecting that something had been done. When he met his servants on the way home and learned that total healing had transpired at the very hour of Jesus’ statement, it not only solidified his trust in Jesus all the more, but also inspired the whole family to trust Christ as well.
Lame Man
From Cana up north, we traveled with Jesus back to Jerusalem to celebrate a feast. Here Jesus encountered a man far beyond the hope of ever living differently. This man had been crippled and unable to walk for 38 years and lays by a special pool along with probably hundreds of other desperate people hoping to find healing. Tradition indicated that an angel would stir up the waters and the first one in would be healed of their infirmity. From the context it appears that he had no family or friends to take care of him for he laments to Jesus that there is no one to put him in the water should it stir. We learn from a subsequent conversation that this man’s condition was because of personal sin. Seeing beyond this man’s sin, Jesus issued a command to take up his mat and walk. This is something the man could only dream about. Yet with an obedient faith, the man does as this stranger by the pool tells him, stands up for the first time in 38 years, rolls up his sleeping mat and walks away. The marvel of this healing should not go unnoticed. By the way, we have no record here of any other healing of all the sick around the pool. Jesus specifically picked out this man. The man did not even approach Jesus. Jesus always operated with design and purpose.
What about supernatural healing? What about healing today?
The Issues surrounding Healing
I. The possibility of Healing
The prophet Isaiah prophesied that Messiah would address the consequences of sin upon a fallen humanity. Isaiah 53:4-6
The Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible. This passage is quoted twice in relation to healing in the New Testament.
One quote is found in 1 Peter 2:21-25. The obvious context here points to the healing of our sin. Matthew also draws from this prophecy in regard to both the healing of our body from illness and demonic influence as well. Matthew 8:16-17
II. Source of Suffering
Healing is possible because to the sacrifice of the coming Messiah. Why is there pain and suffering in our world in the first place? Sin and sickness comes from two sources.
1. Natural consequences of sin in a fallen world.
2. Supernatural influences of Satan and his army of evil angels.
The curse of sin has fallen on the entire human race. Sin, disease, sickness, pain, is the result of man’s drive to live apart from God and His way of doing things. Because we are all born into this world we suffer the effects of centuries of rebellion and independent living. Sin is the source of suffering, whether personal or earthly, sin for the present maintains its death grip on the earth following the directives of the prince of the power of the air who continues to try to energize the sons of disobedience. Whole countries choose to ignore God’s ways and suffer horribly because of it. Hunger, disease, violence, mental illness (See Deuteronomy 28)
It is only because Jesus chose to become a man and take the penalty for our sin that we may expect to find any relief either here or hereafter from the consequences of our rebellion against God. Apart from His work on our behalf, we would be doomed to suffer any and all of the well-deserved consequences of sin against God. Even though sometimes it is hard to see, the trials and suffering of a fallen world do serve an eternal purpose. Both their elimination and their continuation serve eternal purposes. Only God knows which will best bring about His glory and our good. What are some of those purposes?
III. Eternal Purposes
1. Produces purity and maturity Jam 1:2-4
2. Cultivates compassion for others 2 Cor 7:5-6
3. Teaches to trust God alone 2Co 1:11
4. Brings glory to God 1Pe 1:6-7
5. Rewards us with glory and blessing 2Co 4:17 Rom 8:18
6. Helps spread the Word of God Act 11:19 2Co 4:15
7. Keeps us humble and obedient through discipline Heb 12:9-11
IV. Godly Responses
1. Rejoice, count it joy don’t grumble
2. Praise -- don’t blame
3. Take courage -- Don't lose heart
4. Comfort others -- don’t criticize
5. Pray -- don’t rely on yourself
6. Resist the devil -- don’t ignore him
7. Persevere, Endure -- don’t give in or blow up.
V. God’s Provision for Healing
God’s provision for healing is three fold.
Jesus demonstrated all three as a display of his ability to address the total effects of sin.
Eternal Priorities for reverse of the curse
? Regenerate the spirit – eternal life, rebirth
? Renew the Soul – mind will and emotion
? Restore the body – physical restoration
There is a preferred order and importance.
? Spirit first John 3
? Soul second Romans 12:1-2
? Body third Romans 8:22-23
It is clear that God does not always eliminate the perplexing people or events or maneuver me away from suffering of the soul and body. Rather He uses those things to accomplish any number of objectives in my life and in His overall plan. We are encouraged, yes commanded to remain under, persevere, and endure until God's objectives for the trial have been accomplished. What about God's promise for deliverance? I thought God is a healing God. Can I pray for healing and deliverance from difficulties? Does God ever bring about a miraculous removal of any of the terrible things I encounter? Does God promise protection for my children and me from all harm? Yes, God is a God of the supernatural. And Scripture definitely describes some wonderful and unbelievable works of the Lord. Yet we must keep truth in balance. We must not fall off of either end of the Biblical balance beam.
At the one end of the truth beam:
God is a supernatural, healing, delivering God. His deliverance is both promised and pictured throughout the Scriptures.
The other end post:
God does not always heal in time and space and has not promised to heal everyone. This truth also is well demonstrated throughout Scripture. The guiding factor in our discussion of deliverance from suffering must be a proper perspective.
We must strive to Christ centered rather than comfort or self centered. We must have as our priority the desire to see Christ exalted and the kingdom expanded.
If a continuation of a given tribulation best accomplishes kingdom growth, so be it.
If God uses a miraculous deliverance to bring glory to Himself, praise God.
There are NO magic sure-fire formulas to manipulate God. Job prayed and sacrificed every day for protection of his children yet they all died anyway. Sometimes there is a higher purpose involved in the struggles of this world. Job trusted God even though he had no clue concerning any higher purpose or reason to his suffering. We must focus on faithfulness and effectiveness as a servant of God NOT on continual protection from all tribulation. There is nothing wrong about desiring and asking for a supernatural intervention by God. The problem comes in the motive. It becomes sin when I become obsessed with escape rather than effectiveness; when I become self-centered rather than kingdom centered. What is best for the Kingdom? Once I get the motive right, I am prepared for whatever will best bring about both kingdom and personal growth.
There are three categories of God's supernatural working from our present perspective.
1-- Internal 2—External 3—Eventual
INTERNAL HEALING
The ultimate test of faith is not to see how excited and on fire we become because of a multitude of flashy signs and wonders. The ultimate test of the purity of our trust in the person and purpose of God is to see how faithful we remain in spite what may rattle around us. Ask Israel about the effectiveness of the signs and wonders in the wilderness in regard to building faith. The continual demonstrations of power and even an audible voice and manifested presence exerted little influence on their ability to believe God in crisis. They lost sight of the eternal promise in the intensity of intimidating problems. God is much more concerned about our internal development than external healing. Both are significant but we must strife to keep priorities straight. We must stop exalting external demonstrations of God's power over the supernatural power of God demonstrated in the regeneration of the lost and inner healing of attitudes and personality fractures of those who come to Him. We get all excited about someone receiving physical healing only to die later anyway and if not a Christian spend eternity in hell. Yet when a physically crippled person comes to the altar weeping in repentance before God and finds eternal salvation or finds healing for their troubled soul we see it as a second-class sort of event. After all, our rebirth is the greatest miracle that could ever take place. To take a dead spirit destined to spend eternity in the fires of help and bring about its resurrection into newness of life is a miraculous work that will not be appreciated until heaven. Deliverance and healing from Satan's bondage of anger, bitterness, fear, depression is of greater significance than a healed cold. If this is so, why do most of our requests for prayer revolve around release from some sort of physical predicament? God is concerned about those things. But it is not his priority. However, we usually are more interested in physical comfort than spiritual completeness. Miraculous physical manifestations are not the surest foundation to fix our faith. Luke 16:31
Even Jesus did not try to evade His own personal pain by supernatural means, but through prayer and trust in the Father's plan endured for our sake. He allowed himself to go hungry, to be beaten, to eventually die for us. Paul suffered great physical torment at the hands of people, events and even demons. Epaphroditus almost died. Paul encouraged Timothy to take Pepto Bismol for his stomach problems. Jesus told the home town crowd demanding a miracle show to prove his worth among them that He was not sent to heal everyone. Luke 4:25-27 We must keep a proper balance and eternal perspective. We must not be so frantic to receive physical healing that we become frustrated when for God's greater purpose we don't experience healing. God is much more concerned with our internal maturity than He is our temporal mirth. Even if that maturity and holiness requires we suffer unpleasant physical and temporal trials. He desires our holiness much more than our happiness. Yet when we experience genuine holiness, only then will we discover lasting happiness. Eternal transformations of the soul kind are of greater import to the kingdom than temporal re-adjustments of the physical kind.
EXTERNAL HEALING
Striving for the Biblical balance requires that we my no means de-emphasize the supernatural power of God to remove adverse circumstances and suffering by miraculous means. God will generally operate by His own natural laws. But for His own purpose and glory He may choose to transcend those natural laws. When God chooses to suspend His own natural laws it is always for a reason. Some periods and times in Biblical history were filled with more external miraculous displays of God's power with a far greater purpose than mere avoidance from misery. Abraham walked by faith, Samuel, Enoch. Jeremiah, John the Baptist. Yet none of them were know for their miraculous powers. The miracles of Christ were to bring authentication to His person and purpose.
After the feeding of the 5,000-- I am the Bread of Life.
Resurrection of Lazarus--I am the resurrection and the Life.
Christ never performed miracles for His own personal benefit or just for miracles sake.
I.e. Herod, Satan's temptation.
From my perspective, some powerful miracles would have been just the thing to convince both Herod and Pilate of His claims. What an impact Jesus could have made on the governing authorities. What if the Father had answered Jesus prayer to bypass the suffering of the cross? Yes God continues to demonstrate His power through external healing. He also allows suffering to continue and provides the supernatural internal work of endurance to His glory. Only God knows what kind of work will bring us the greatest growth and He the greatest glory. Our job is to ask, to pray, to believe to entrust our lives to our faithful creator in doing what is right. We are to leave the results in His hands and not demand from Him but receive what is best from His hand not continually nag for our own gain rather than His glory.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, Psa 46:2
EVENTUAL RELEASE
We have all longed to see God miraculously intervene to relieve the suffering of a friend or loved one. Many of us have stood in hospitals crying out to God to save and deliver from death. The Bible clearly assures us that all pain and sickness will one day be removed and forever eliminated. The fact of the matter is, death and sickness are the grim consequences of man’s choice to do his own thing and not God’s. Against this dark, devastating backdrop shines the light of God’s grace and power to reverse the curse of sin not only upon man but the very earth itself. Romans 8 reveals that the earth groans the groans of suffering, anxiously awaiting the revealing of the transformed sons of God. These bodies will eventually receive the redemption for which we now long with deep groaning along with all creation. Ultimate, eventual release is our glorious hope and is not to be compared to the gloom that is present in our world today. Friends, we live in a painful fallen world and we long now for that which we cannot have until Christ returns. In the meantime, we have the avenue of prayer and the promised presence of God in the midst of our suffering. In prayer we seek draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. Help we will find whether it be a supernatural internal transformation of our soul which enables us to endure any trial, or a miraculous relief of our suffering by physical healing.
Turning back to John’s account, we see that not everyone responded positively to the miraculous demonstration of the Jesus’ ability to reverse the effects of sin on mankind. The religious leaders so focused on the violation of their rules they missed the wonder of a man’s release from a lifetime infirmity. John records Jesus’ response to their objections concerning His work on the Sabbath.
“My Father is working and I am myself am working.”
By saying this, Jesus drew attention to the fact that His miracles and teaching demonstrated that He came from the Father and that He alone brought hope of eternal life. John indicates that these jaded Jews understood His claim perfectly.
For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. John 5:18
From here now to the end of the chapter, John records Jesus’ extended answer to the Jews in which we find some compelling claims. Having claimed equality with God in verse 17 Jesus continues to exert his authority to heal, anyone, anytime.
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THE CLAIMS
(What Child is this?)
Claims partnership with the Father 19-20
We work together. We don’t operate on our own. Our relationship is so close that we do everything alike. I am only doing what the Father would do.
Claims authority over life and death 21-29
The Father delegated authority of life and death, reward and judgment to the Son.
? The delegation
? The Purpose – all may honor the son as they do the Father (equal honor)
? The response – honor, hear and believe
Since Jesus the Father granted life and death, reward and judgment to the Son, it would be only logical that people should response to the son. All those who hear and believe can expect: Eternal life not judgment -- Passes from death to life
? The coming showdown
? The partnership applies to judgment
THE WITNESSES
? John the Baptist 33-35
? The miraculous works 36
? The Father 37-38
? The Scriptures 39-47
CONCLUSIONS
John bears testimony that Jesus was no ordinary man either by his observations or Jesus own declarations.
? He affirmed his own claims by his works.
? The Father bore witness.
? The Scriptures bear witness.
It is left to us to respond. Into the hands of Jesus lies the authority over life and death, reward and judgment. One day every person that ever lived will face Jesus.
? To those who hear and believe; eternal life.
? To those who reject Him, death and judgment.
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, Romans 2:5
But there is an escape from the consequences of sin as surely as Jesus spoke healing to a little child and restored the limbs of a man crippled for 38 years.
For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. Hebrews 9:24-28
What will you do with Jesus?
Focus this week on your walk with Christ. As you prepare to celebrate His birthday on Saturday think about your response to Him.
Perhaps ask yourself some of the following questions.
Questions
Do I really seek my life from Him?
Have I truly come to Jesus for eternal life?
Am I honoring Him as He deserves?
Is that honor obvious to others by my lifestyle?
Am I more interested in what He does or could do for me than what I can do for Him?
Do I really belief He is the Christ?
Am I prepared to face Him as the supreme judge?
Am I angry because I haven’t experienced external release?
Am I content with God’s priority of internal, external, eventual release?
Praise
After probing a bit it is time to praise.
Praise God for his provision to be released form the consequences of sin.
Praise God for Jesus’ willingness to suffer and die in my place.
Praise God for every opportunity to serve and if necessary suffer for the sake of His kingdom.
Praise God I can escape judgment through honoring and believing Christ.
