How Much More: Physical Healing

Good morning, everyone. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, send now Your Holy Spirit. Send now, O Lord, the healing power of Jesus through Your people, that we might, in our minds, in our hearts, and in our bodies, commit ourselves today to the things of God rather than the things of men. We believe in You, Jesus. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may all be seated. This morning's going to be a bit of an unusual sermon time. What we're going to do with this portion of time during our service is I'll use part of the time to give a Bible teaching on Mark chapter 8, the healing of the blind man. And then we'll move right away from Bible teaching into Bible clinic. So we'll actually have opportunity to exercise the very thing Jesus does in Mark chapter 8 today. By which I mean, after I teach on this, we'll have time and space and we're going to have trained priministers come right

up front. And if you're here this morning and you would like to receive prayer for a physical healing, we're going to give you the opportunity to come forward and do that. And I recognize how even saying that right now creates a sense of vulnerability, I'm sure, especially if you're here and you need physical healing. I'm going to look together with you at the vulnerability of our Lord first and foremost, the vulnerability that all of us enter into as we seek the Lord in many matters, including physical healing.

Church of Resurrection has a longstanding healing ministry. If I can put it this way, it's one of my favorite things about us. And for decades, we have prayed especially for the healing of the heart, the healing of the person, healing around sexuality, but less so, even much less so around physical healing.

And I would say, over the last several months, we're seeing God change that. Not that there aren't still healings of the person and the heart there are, but something's happening in the Lord regarding physical healing. In our Lord's ministry, recorded in the Gospels, there are at least, depending how you count them, 25 different accounts of Jesus preaching and then bringing physical healing. While there's 25 different accounts, sometimes He heals multitudes. So there's thousands that received the healing ministry of Jesus. And if you try to pull out of those accounts one specific method, I think you'll find yourself somewhat frustrated, maybe even kind of interestingly

bemused. Because we do see something that is very consistent in Jesus' healing ministry that I'll speak to this morning. But to get a locked down method, I would say, is not possible intentionally. It's not about the method. It's about the Lord and His love for you. And the coming of His kingdom.

So let's look at Mark 8. You all turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 8. If you don't have a Bible with you, no worries. We've got sanctuary Bibles throughout the sanctuary. Just grab a Bible. If you want to get a sanctuary Bible, it's page 844. We're going to break down this brief teaching into two parts. First, how Jesus heals. And second, how we can heal in Jesus' name. And it came to Bethsaida, verse 22 of chapter 8, and some people brought to Him a blind man and begged Him to touch him. Let's just look at the very beginning, this first verse here. What a beautiful beginning. You can maybe imagine that, right? This likely, this blind man is likely, probably a beggar in the village that's being referred to. So often if you were blind, that was the way in which you had some sense of sustenance. So it's possible these are strangers who saw

Him. They probably didn't know Him. We don't know that for sure. But what we do know is they've heard of Jesus. And so they bring this beggar from the village square, this blind man, to Jesus. First thing we observe in this text, healings in the Bible start with urgent faith. Perhaps the faith of the person themselves. Perhaps the faith of those around them. Always the faith of Jesus.

We see other instances where the friends of a paralytic literally climb up on a roof in the ancient Near East. They could dig through that roof and they drop that paralytic down to receive a full healing from Jesus and the forgiveness of sins. We see a father who's named Jairus whose daughter is in desperate need of healing near death. He goes to Jesus. We see a woman come up behind Jesus. She doesn't even know it. She grabs His cloak. He feels power come out of Him. Different ways in which people start with urgent faith. And the reason I feel like we're ready for me to teach on this and why I felt compelled by the Lord to teach on this this morning is we are eleven days in to twenty-one days. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. A prayer of twenty-one. Like I taught in the healing of Lazarus. Remember how we saw Jesus building the faith as He's

moving toward the full resuscitation of Lazarus. He builds His disciples' faith. Then He builds Mary's faith. Then He builds Marsha's faith. He's building the faith community. He's building the faith moment so when He goes to the tomb He speaks the name. Lazarus come out. So He's been building our faith over these eleven days. We are caught up right now in a move of God. I'm going to the seven p.m. prayer meeting. Hour of worship. Twenty, thirty people are coming singing to the Lord with their whole heart. We're crying out to God as an entire body filling that prayer chapel. I love it when I roll over at three a.m.

and our faith is growing. Our faith is building. We're coming to the Lord with urgent faith. After that initiation of faith they beg Him to touch the man. Verse twenty-three. And He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. It doesn't say why perhaps Jesus wants to do this healing in private. He does that at other times. But what we do see really clearly, it's a really beautiful phrase. He took the blind man by the hand. See the tender love of Jesus. The gentleness of our healing Savior. He could have said hey you all bring Him over here. Oh He wasn't going to miss the opportunity.

He takes Him by the hand. Come with me. Let's go over here. Third then we see our Lord act with fascinating creativity in His healing. Second part of verse twenty-three. He spits on His eyes, probably spit on His fingers, and then with the saliva on His fingers prays, lays His hands on Him, and then asks Him, do you see anything? He looks up and says, I actually see people but they look like trees walking. Then Jesus lays His hands on His eyes

again and His eyes are opened. Note that it starts with urgent faith. It moves to Jesus' tenderness and beautifully relational gentleness. And then it goes to creativity and responsiveness. He uses spit. He uses spit to heal a deaf man. In the chapter prior to this, chapter seven,

scholars you can imagine this is a scholar's playground. And it is fascinating to read all the accounts I did. At the end of the day it's likely that spit was seen as some kind of a healing agent in the ancient Near East. Much like oil was seen as a healing agent. And by the way that's continued on through our customs and traditions. So we still use oil when we pray for people for healing. So spit as a healing agent, something earthy, something from the body, from Jesus' body, it's creative. He then asks the question, how did it work? I mean it's really straightforward. Can you see it? And fascinatingly, not quite, right? Like He's halfway there. This is the only time when Jesus prays twice for somebody for physical healing. But it's given to us as an account in the Gospels.

I don't know why, but at the very least it probably means that since we have Jesus within us and we have His power but we're not Jesus, we might have to pray a few times for folks to get healing. Maybe many times. Our Lord prayed twice. He's responding to what's happening for this man.

Fourth, what we see without any question is that Jesus heals with power. The man was blind. How does one rank such matters? But perhaps one of the most debilitating of body-shattering challenges, blindness, He could not see. And then He could see. Power. Such power.

But note, twinned with this power, some of you may know this, some of you are new to the Bible, which is great. Mark was likely very influenced by the Apostle Peter when he wrote this. So very likely he's in dialogue with Peter and under divine inspiration he's writing this and he's organizing this account of Jesus very intentionally. So what he does is he shows this incredible power moment. I mean, just imagine, right? Imagine being with this rabbi and literally seeing him spit on his fingers, lay his hands on the guy's eyes, and after two times of prayer he literally is seeing. You would think at that point that it's basically game over. It's game over. Does anybody question that this guy is who he says he is? Nobody does stuff like this. You would think everyone's like, let's get organized. Now we've got what we need. Let's get her done. As we would say in the Midwest, let's get her done.

What happens? Right after this we find out that Jesus is actually really clear with them. Oh yes, you've seen power. Be clear about my power. And he teaches them, verse 31, that the Son of Man must suffer many things. The great healer will suffer? Oh yes, he will suffer and be rejected by the leadership of the religious world, the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.

And after three days, rise again. Do you understand that here we see the fullness of who God is, that in God there is great power, inestimable power, and there is stunning vulnerability, and that His power and His vulnerability are never at odds, but they're fully conjoined in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. And there is such power that stems from the greatest symbol of vulnerability ever given in human history, which is the cross upon which He died. So what we see in physical healing, and what Mark wants us to understand, is that if you understand a method to physical healing, or a method to the supernatural work of God, it's how power and vulnerability come together fully in who God is.

Let me read to you from a pastor named Jordan Sang. He writes this in a book about the healing ministry of Jesus. Quote, the character of God isn't really shown by His power alone. It's shown by the combination of His power and His vulnerability. Yes, He's all-powerful, but He suffers with us. If He were merely wondrous, He'd be unreachable. But He's also lowly, so you can trust Him.

In just a moment, we're going to step into and mirror the power and vulnerability of our Lord. Just a moment. We're going to live this out right now. If you have a physical healing need, it's going to be very vulnerable to come forward and ask for prayer. Very vulnerable. The greatest vulnerability. But I can assure you, those who are praying for you, they're going to feel very vulnerable praying for you.

At the A30, I said, I've never done this before because I had. Now, I've done this once. So, I feel very vulnerable about this whole thing as well. Isn't that exactly right? Doesn't that put us exactly in the Jesus place to see Jesus move?

Finally, we notice Jesus' healing changes not just our bodies, but our lives. There's an interesting detail, verse 26, and He sent them to His home, sent the healed blind man to His home, saying, do not even enter the village. Again, if you know some stuff about the Bible, you might be aware that there's a thing called the Messianic secret, and actually Jesus will later, just in a few verses, say, don't tell people about me. He's in the process of revealing the secret. He's revealing the fullness of His Sonship, and we might think, oh, that must be what's happening here. Another scholar makes a really compelling argument, no, that's not what's happening here. This isn't about Messianic secret. This is likely what's happening. This man, as a blind man, is likely a beggar. What Jesus is saying is, don't go back to your old life. You don't have to beg anymore. Indeed, go back to the place of your identity.

Go back to your home. What Jesus does when He heals us physically, and when He heals our minds and our hearts as well, is He brings us home. He came to the kingdom of God to come, so that healing takes us to the home of who we truly are in Jesus. Don't go back to begging. He says, you go home. Come home. That's what happens in the healing power of Jesus. So how do we heal in Jesus' name? Well, let's be clear. The physical healing ministry was not with Jesus alone. He promised that those who follow Him would and could do the same. And certainly what we see is that one of His followers, Peter, has four different accounts of physical healing recorded, including cases where His literal shadow amid the Jerusalem sun, people would touch the shadow and be healed physically. If you're looking to me to explain that, I can't. But the Bible says.

Paul has five different accounts of physical healing, including a handkerchief that somebody gets hold of and they receive a healing. Some aspect where Jesus is healing through Paul. About 170 or so, so around 100 years after the accounts of Peter and Paul healing, we have a bishop, Irenaeus, who gives this account. He writes, quote, others still in our time, he says, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them and they are made whole. But we need not look simply to the Scriptures account of the early church, nor to the ancient church. It's happening in our church. It's happened in the last few weeks. It's happening in several different places. I was at dinner and I heard such a compelling testimony of a physical healing and then two days later I got an email from one of our family members here of another incredible physical healing.

The first one, the testimony was that this person had a condition where all of their teeth were profoundly loosened. They were literally loosening every single one of them from the gums. He came for prayer. He said it got about 30% better. So he came back for more prayer again about two weeks later. He said it got about, and this is my length, about 80% better. Does that sound familiar? Another testimony. This happened at a Sunday morning. We had our ministers get up to pray and this prime minister felt like the Lord was saying to them, someone's going to ask you for prayer for physical healing. And they, oh, okay. I think for all of us that's where we feel the most vulnerable when we're trying to pray for somebody. Okay, Lord, if that's what you want to do. The next moment, one of their relatives,

a three-year-old child got up on their own from their chair, walked over to their relative, they had never asked for prayer before, although they were born with a very serious condition that it required five months in the hospital. Even after several surgeries, it was projected there'd be a lifelong monitoring of this child's troubling condition. And this child got up for the first time, went to this relative and said, would you please pray that God would heal me? The relative put their hand on the child's head and asked, like with urgent faith, right? Begging God, begging God, please heal this child.

This family was going back and forth to a hospital hundreds of miles away, anticipating the next big surgery. The markers in this child's condition were regularly climbing and had reached a untenable rate of 80 in terms of the markers they were guiding and they were watching. After this prayer, they made their next trip to the hospital and the marker had gone from 80 down to 0.

Yeah, that's worth clapping for, right? This just, in this particular condition, is never heard of. Unless you've heard of Jesus. Unless you've heard of the Bible. So, we heal then by trying. We're God's healing ministers because we're just going to try. And we're going to try this morning. We're going to trust God this morning. I mentioned Pastor Jordan saying they have a weekly healing service at their church. He's got a Ph.D. so he tabulates stuff like this. Here are his tabulations after years of physical healing prayer ministry. 50% of those who come to the healing prayer service receive a partial healing. Sometimes through several prayers.

15% in the prayer service receive an immediate healing. 10% receive healing from an absolutely incurable disease. Now, I share these statistics because I love the actuality of them. Not everyone who is prayed for receives a healing. Today is the day for me to go into that. But we don't always know why that's the case.

But we also know that as we continue to try, and we continue to be vulnerable, and ask for God's power, we can be assured that more will receive healing than if we didn't. So, we heal by receiving and imitating Jesus' power and vulnerability. And that's what we're going to do right now.