Willing to Heal

A message from Luke 5:12-16 by Phil Rogers 10/06/07

Unfortunately Phil's message did not record properly this morning and so is unavailable.

How devastating it was in Bible days to get any sort of skin condition. Some infections such as impetigo and ringworm are highly contagious, while others like eczema and psoriasis are totally harmless but unsightly and all such conditions, even harmless loss of skin pigment with vitiligo, were viewed with suspicion and fear. The Greek word ‘Lepra’ (scaly) covered a whole range of skin disorders and people with such conditions were generally shunned by society. In Israel they had to tear their clothes, warn people off from physical contact by shouting ‘unclean’, and live in isolation away from populated areas. If the skin condition cleared up, as many do, then the sufferer had to go and show himself to the priest, who could pronounce them ‘clean’ if they were satisfied that they were better, and they would offer a sacrifice to the Lord and bathe and shave off all hair from their bodies. Only then could they wear ordinary clothing and return home and mix with society again. (see Lev 13 & 14)

This man was covered with skin lesions of some sort. How deep was the despair he felt? An outcast, his skin maybe cracked, sore, itching. The Lord felt his anguish as he fell with his face to the ground in front of Jesus. He begged Jesus for help - and what remarkable words he uttered! “Lord, if you are willing you are able to make me clean”.

He did not doubt Jesus’ ability or power to heal him of his skin condition and make him clean, his uncertainty was whether Jesus would want to. Why should Jesus not be just as repulsed by his grotesque sores and scabs as everyone else? Why would Jesus want to help a social outcast, an ‘unclean’ man like him? He had overwhelming feelings of rejection and unworthiness. But how many of us without any such problems also struggle with the very same feelings?

Let us look at two questions:
Qn 1. Does the Lord have the ability and power to heal? Most of us sincerely believe the Bible; that God really is God; he created the universe and can heal and do miracles. We do believe in his capability. But the question we face is ‘does he really want to’? Or put another way, “Is it God’s will to heal us?”  It sounds more acceptable when we are prayed for and nothing happens to say “It may not have been God’s will. God may have other reasons for us to keep this complaint.” But to say "It was not God's will to heal us" is exactly the same as saying "God didn't want to heal us". What we are really saying is “Here we are asking God to heal us but HE DOESN”T WANT TO HEAL US!” He is unwilling to heal. Friends, is that really what the Lord is like? Is God ever unwilling to heal?

Qn 2 Does the Lord WANT to heal us? Remember when Jesus went to Nazareth ‘he could do no work of power because of their unbelief’. We may have faith in God’s ability, but at the same time have unbelief in his willingness! We don’t doubt his power but we do doubt that God would want to heal us. We may well feel “Why would God want to heal someone like me?” My condition doesn't cause me too much problem. I can live with it. If you have high blood pressure like I do and are on medication you don't have any symptoms. Does God wna tot heal thing like that? What about getting old. We all get old and get more and more complaints. "The outer man wastes away" Don't we just have to live with this sort of thing? As I have prayed over this this week I believe the Lord was showing me that his sort of rationalisation is actually doubt about the Lord's willingness to heal.

Our unbelief in his willingness to heal us actually limits his ability to heal. Even though we believe he can heal - he cannot actually heal because our doubt that he wants to heal us blocks it!

But look at Jesus eager response to this poor man “I do want to. Be clean!” Why would Jesus not want to heal us? He is the Lord our Healer.

I can’t get this picture out of my mind of Jesus sitting in the boat watching all these fish being caught with a huge grin on his face, and when Simon fell at Jesus knees I can hear a chuckle in his voice, “Don’t be afraid from now on you’ll be catching people!” I see this immense sense of fun that Jesus had when he interacted with his followers and with all the people who flocked to hear him teach and to seek his help for their physical needs. Can you see this poor man on his face at Jesus feet? Jesus’ heart goes out to him with deep compassion, yet his heart leaps with delight as he hears his words “If you want to, you can make me clean!” Oh Yes! His face lights up with pleasure at this man’s faith. I can see a warm tender smile on his face as he reaches down to this man and touches him. No-one touches a leper. He is unclean. Anyone who touched him became unclean too. But Jesus had no scruples about touching him; no fear of catching anything from him, no concern about being considered unclean.

He touched him. What did such a touch mean to that poor man? He felt the touch of care and love from God’s own Son on his wretched painful scabby body. It may even have hurt and made him wince, but how he welcomed the feeling of another person touching him - how his whole being longed just to be touched - however much it hurt, and Jesus actually touched him. As he saw eyes full of tenderness and a big loving smile looking down at his disfigured face, he heard the incredible words, “O, I do want to. Be clean!” Of course Jesus wanted to heal! “I am the Lord who heals you.”

Do we doubt the Lord wants to heal us, or rationalise it with “If the Lord will’s.”? How often the enemy gets us with this distortion of what James teaches about "if God wills"! The Lord has all the power he needs to completely heal our lives from all the things we struggle with, so why do we doubt that he really wants to heal us and make us whole and set us free and bind up our broken hearts and open blind eyes? If he was anointed and empowered to do these very things prophesied by Isaiah, how could he ever say, “No I don’t want to heal you!”

“Why would you want to heal me, Lord?” For the sheer fun of it! In English we have the word ‘devilment’ for fun - and some fun is mischievous, it gets a laugh at others expense! But there is also good clean wonderful heavenly fun - creating the universe out of nothing by a word, creating many other creatures that look so odd they make us laugh; Jesus turning water into the very best wine, or walking on the water or stilling the storm or taking a lad’s lunch and feeding thousands with it, or sitting in a boat watching them take the biggest catch of their lives, and healing loads of sick people and casting out umpteen demons and telling great stories about a good Samaritan and a lost son; what fun! Can you imagine Jesus doing any of this with a serious expression and a furrowed brow? Whay joy he had in opening the eyes of a blind man so he could see again, opening people’s spiritual eyes so that they believe and repent and follow Christ - he tell us that all heaven whoops it up when every single sinner repents. Come on church - why be so serious? This life walking with Christ is incredible FUN! What is as great as being saved and forgiven of all our sins? What fills us with such joy as celebrating God’s love and his goodness?

“So the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” The news of this joyous man WILLING TO HEAL spread everywhere. When we see the Lord doing this sort of stuff amongst us at ABC such news will spread and crows of people will flock to where the action is.

Praying over this passage I had a picture of having 'my batteries' charged. I felt the Lord say 'these are your joy-batteries' that the negativity, criticism, moaning and groaning in this world quickly causes to run down. There is such a lot of things to make us miserable and deplete our joy-batteries in this world. And even Jesus had to recharge his joy-batteries by lingering in his Father’s presence where there is fulness of joy and at his right hand pleasures for ever more. If Jesus needed to often withdraw to lonely places and pray how much more do we need to so?

Jesus is both Willing and Able to heal us and we do need to repent from our unbelief and seek to cultivate a confidence in his willingness to heal. "I do want to - be healed!"

Three responses. 1. To pray against all those things that weigh us down and rob us of our joy. Pray fo all to be filled afresh with his Spirit and his joy. 2. To lay hands on any part of our bodies that need healing and to command healing over the whole congregation. 3. To ask God to gives us greater faith for healing. Ask all who want God to use their hands to heal others to raise their hands to God and pray for an anointing on us.

(Please note I am talking here in this message about healing our aches and pains and various ailments and sicknesses and chronic conditions. I have preached a message that I strongly felt convicted of myself as I prayed over this passage. The whole issue of life and death - of getting terminal illnesses and dying from them is a whole other subject. Jesus holds the keys of death and hell and our times are in his hand and he may well choose to take us home to be with him, since to die is to our gain and his, rather than heal us from a terminal condition so we can live which 'is Christ' - but then again Jesus even raised the dead, and we know accounts of the Lord healing terminal diseases, but not always as we all have to die sometime, some young, some very very old.)