Healing and Temptation

"If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee" (Exd. 15:26) "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases" (Psm. 103:2,3). "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). "And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, IF thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I WILL; be thou clean. And IMMEDIATELY his leprosy was cleansed... When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed ALL that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Mat. 8:2,3,16,17). "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover" (Mk. 16:17,18). "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (I Pet. 2:24). I could list more scriptures here to set forth the absolute truth and reality of God's healing promise to those who believe, but these few should sufficiently make the point. I would like to make just a few notes of worth on the passages listed, to encourage all faith for the healing that we all have access to. First I want to point out that God's healing promise to the faithful was very much in effect under the old covenant, as the first two passages clearly show. Now that is REALLY BIG because of where I'm going with this, so hold on a few moments. Next Isaiah prophesies of Jesus, and the healing promise of God to believers is shown here to be not only renewed in and through his Son, but also it is surely enhanced. What do I mean by enhanced, you may ask? I mean this: If God was WILLING to heal those who believed on him under the old covenant, which covenant his Son did NOT suffer and die for; HOW MUCH MORE do you suppose that he is WILLING to heal new covenant believers, for whom Jesus took the brutality, and died for??!! See what I'm saying? Oh yeah, but it gets even better. The next passage paints the clear picture for us that it IS the will of God that we be healed, even as Jesus told the leper who asked him for just that. And I'll come back to this leper for more confirmation before concluding this article. After that, we see plainly by the scripture that Jesus healed ALL of the sick and delivered ALL of the oppressed that came to him, or that were brought to him by loved ones. We also see in that passage that these things were done to confirm the prophecy of Isaiah that has already been noted here. Next Jesus declared before he ascended back to heaven that "those who believe" in him would cast out devils and bring healing to the sick by faith in him. And last but not least Peter confirms for us the prophecy of Isaiah again, and solidifies it by putting our healing in the past tense, as in already accomplished. I don't know about you friend, but ALL of these things are REALLY GOOD NEWS to me, and music to my ears, as it is said.

A very integral point that the Lord made known to me many years ago is that EVERYONE recorded in the Bible who came to Jesus for healing, WERE HEALED, just as the passage from Mat. 8 declares. EVERYONE!! And going back to the leper, who himself was healed immediately, all of the scriptures also show that EVERYONE who came to Jesus for healing, were healed IMMEDIATELY, on the spot! Again, that is really good news, as in "gospel," which is defined as "good tidings." What is even BETTER news for you and I is the rightly famous quotation from the book of Hebrews: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Heb. 13:8). That means that what Jesus did when he was here, and what the apostles and early believers duplicated in his name, he will do today as well. Yes it is that simple. So the question becomes, What do we have to do to procure this healing promise? The answer is also purely simplistic, and it is that we have to do exactly what everyone before us has done; We have to believe! We have to believe that God is SO GOOD that he invariably wants us to be sound and whole, and we have to believe that he wants to heal us right now. It is the same thing as believing that he wants to take our sins away and make us whole and clean inside, which he certainly does (I Thess. 4:3). If we don't believe in the literal removal of sin by the power of Gods' Spirit, then we will surely need to get that in order if we expect to be saved (Mat. 5:8; Heb. 12:14; I Jn 3:2,3). Do you believe that there is any reason why God would not want to take away any of your sins, or that he is willing for you to remain in sin? Of course not; that is why Jesus paid the price for our sins, so that they could and WOULD be taken away, literally from our hearts and souls (Heb. 9:13,14). So why would God be willing to leave us in physical affliction, seeing that Jesus ALSO paid the price for our healing? He isn't. And again, it is faith in his good will and power toward us, and in what Jesus did for us, that procures the promise. And the key to that faith is that we MUST eliminate ANY AND EVERY REASON that may come to mind, that suggests why he would NOT heal us. Those reasons can be real, or they can be lies altogether. The only real reason would be because our conscience tells us that we are holding on to some sin. If we are NOT cleaving to sin, then we should be in the clear to believe God for WHATEVER we may need, which surely includes something that HE HAS PROMISED! "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight" (I Jn. 3:21,22). If we are doing our best to please God, then we have a green light for being healed, because we should have the confidence that God will do what he has said he will do. Any other reason, and there are thousands of them, is simply a lie that is against the promise of God. And those lies include symptoms of what is wrong with us physically. The scripture says, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (Jas. 4:7). That includes resisting ALL of his reasons that he suggests to us for NOT being healed though the completed work of Jesus, who took the stripes FOR our healing. And that resisting also includes believing God's healing promise INSTEAD OF believing the symptoms of a condition. If we hold to ANY reason that we should not be healed, then we are not fully believing God, which is to say we have unbelief. The healing promise of God is the truth, and everything that is contrary to it is a lie. Yes, it is that simple. So as it has been since the beginning, we have two choices in this life; and that is that we can believe the truth, or we can believe a lie. Sickness and physical affliction being in the world is a result of man originally disbelieving the goodness of God and believing a lie. Miraculous deliverance from sin and miracle healing for the body is a result of forsaking that deadly error, and believing the truth of God which he confirmed mightily through his only begotten Son. Amen.