HEALING
A sermon by Dr. Michael H. Browder
Heal me O Lord and I will be healed. Jeremiah 17:14
January 25, 2009

One of the greatest of the blessings which come to us from our God is the gift of Healing. The Bible testifies to this fact. It is the witness of God’s people down thru all ages: The Power of Healing that comes from God. This is at the heart of what the nature of God is all about.

A statement that could have been made by any of God’s people, at any time in history, comes from Psalm 30:2 O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help and you have healed me!

Just like this verse from Jeremiah [Heal me and I shall be healed,] now the psalmist testifies: I cried to you for help and you healed me. This is what God is all about. Healing is among the purposes of Jesus and why Jesus came as the Christ of the Messiah. One of the prophesies of the Messiah of God at the very end of the Old Testament in Mal. 4:2 says: The sun shall rise with healing in his wings. This is what the Messiah will bring: healing. Charles Wesley captured this in his famous hymn “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” which says: “He rises with healing in his wings.” Wesley saw that Jesus rose from the grave, and that, in his resurrection, there is Healing - Healing from sin and Healing from sickness. This is what Christ is all about. That’s why it say in Isaiah 53, prophesying about the Messiah, the end of verse 5: “by his stripes we are healed,” that is, by his wounds we are healed. He was wounded for us!

By his wounds we are Healed. Jesus healed people when he was alive. He made a practice of healing people. The witness of the Bible is a clear memory to this fact. Take for instance Luke 9:11 “But when the multitudes knew it [that is, knew about his healing] they followed him, and he received them and spoke to them about the Kingdom of God and healed all those who had need of Healing”. That’s what Jesus was doing - he was telling them about the Kingdom of God, the salvation of God, and the help and hope of God. And he was healing those who needed Healing. That’s what Jesus was about then, and what he is still about now.

The power of God healed people not only in Jesus’ day; but before Jesus’ time, people were also being healed by the power of God. And since Jesus’ day, Christ may not be with us still in person, but he is present with us in his Holy Spirit. And in the power of his Holy Spirit, there is Healing. And the power of Healing is in our midst to be a strength to us. We can still say with the psalmist “I cried to you for help and you have healed me”.

Let me say before I continue: there are limitations on this subject, things which we all know. For instance, we know that, in this world as God has created it, all of us must eventually face death. Each of us must die a physical death in this world. And we must pass through the illness or injury which leads to that death. Having Faith and knowing the Healing of God is no immunity from death. That will happen to us all. When we think about, in the Bible, all the miraculous power of Jesus - all the people that were healed.... So many miracles, so many powerful things. But all of those people, eventually, even though they were healed at the time, all of them went on to be sick and finally to die. Even Lazarus, Jesus raised him from the dead and Jesus brought him back to life again. But Lazarus did not live forever. Even Lazarus, after that incomparable miracle, went on to know sickness and death. So this is a part of the realities of life. The miracle of healing does not keep death from taking place in the end.

In the second place, some situations are not open to change. If someone had a leg amputated, we would probably not pray for them to grow a new one. Our daughter Beth was born with a tiny part of her brain missing. She is not able to grow a new part, and so she will always be mentally retarded.

In the third place, I would say, as I understand the human body: the more I know about it, the more I think the real miracle is not that we get sick - the incredible thing is that we stay as well as we do. The human organism is a very vulnerable organism, and you may or may not be aware of the fact that all of us carry with us a large number of deadly germs, within our body, surrounding us in the air, on our skin and so forth. All of us have with us, every moment, enough germs to kill us. The remarkable thing is that, despite all this, God has provided a human body that has so many recuperative powers: It has an immune system; it has a protection against illness. We are constantly protected by these things, the protective system that God gave us is part of the healing miracle of the human body.

Finally, I would remind us that medicine and doctors are often the vehicle of God’s healing. More often than not, God heals us through doctors, not outside of them.

Having said these things, I want to talk about a few Biblical principles on healing today. These principles, I think, stand out clearly in the Bible and need to be lifted up. In the first place, there is power in God to heal us. We in our humanness, we in our limitation, we in our preoccupation with our lives, we so often forget about this. We forget who God is!

This is God we are talking about here. This is God who made the world and all that is in it. This is God who knows every part of us, every atom that is within our bodies, God who knows every hair on our head. In God, there is no limit to God’s power. That is the source of where Healing comes from: The unlimited power of God.

The second important fact is that God wants to heal us. God cares about us. Just as a parent cares for a child, says the Bible, so God loves us intimately and deeply. God want us to know his Healing and to find his healing. That is made so clear in the Bible.

And let me say this next point - Faith makes a difference. Faith opens the pathway to know God’s healing. We think about what it says in Mk 5:34. There it tells about the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. She recognized Jesus as a source of Healing. She said, “If only I could just barely touch the least part of his clothing, I know that I could be Healed, because of his power”. She did that, and it says Jesus felt the power of his healing go out of him. And he said to her, “Daughter your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed from your disease.” Your faith has made you well!

Faith makes a difference. A part of what faith does is to put us in a better relationship with God so that we can better receive the Grace that God so wants to give us. But, you know, we are not always open to receiving God’s grace. We are separated from God by sin. A part of that is our own selfishness which separates us from God: our own lack of faith, our own lack of love for the Lord, our own lack of relationship with others. We are so bogged down and separated from God by sin. The grace and the power of God are there to be found. Only a little mustard seed of faith can make all the difference in the world, says the Bible, because it puts us where we can receive that Power and Grace of God. Faith makes a difference!

In Matthew 8:5-13, Faith made a difference. There was a Roman centurion, Commander of the Army, he said, “I am a commander of the troops, and when orders are given to me or I give them to others I know that they are going to be carried out. So just speak the word, just give the order, Jesus, and I know my friend will be healed.” Jesus spoke the word, and from that moment, the Bible indicates the friend was healed from that very moment. And Jesus told the centurion “I have not seen such faith in all Israel.” Faith makes a difference - for ourselves and for others.

Prayer makes a difference. Prayer is another thing that paves the way for us to experience the Grace and Power of God. Think about the scripture way back in the book of Genesis 20:17, “Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife.” Now think about this, this is the very first book in the Bible. This is thousands of years before Jesus. And yet the power of prayer for healing is already seen there, from the very beginning of the Bible, to show us what God and God’s power and healing are all about. “Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife”. The power of God for healing is from the beginning of the Bible and down to our own day.

And it makes a difference to be praying for others. There is such power in interceding for others: your love going up on behalf of others; your faith lifted up toward others, your prayer shared before God on behalf of others. It makes such a difference.

I want to share a couple events from my experience. There are many, many things I could share about witnessing to God’s healing power. When I first started into the ministry, I had an older pastor friend who told me: “If you don’t believe I can be healed, don’t come and see me when I am sick. If you don’t believe I can be healed, don’t come to see me in the hospital. I don’t need that.”

I made up my mind from that day to this, that I would never go see someone who was sick, unless I believed, with all my heart, that God was capable of healing them, and was open to prayers for healing them. No matter how desperate the situation, I never forget that. Of course, there are times when we are all realistic about things that don’t look very well and a person might not have long left in this world. Those are realistic assessments to make, but I never go without remembering that I am a representative of God and that all things are possible for God. All of the secrets of life and death are in God’s hands, and, no matter how desperate the situation looks, I always know that God has the power to provide healing in that situation, and I never give up. I never lose sight of the possibility of God’s healing power. Never!

You wouldn’t believe the number of times I have seen the doctor come back and say, “We don’t see it any more. It must have been a misdiagnosis.” And I say, “Misdiagnosis. O.K. Praise God. I have been paying for healing. If it comes by misdiagnosis, great! Praise the Lord!”

Let me tell you another experience: When I was in Hampton a number of years ago, I went to see a lady in the hospital, a widow. She lived by herself, she had no family, no access to transportation, she was no longer able to ride the bus to church. She was well along in years. One day she went into the hospital. She was in terrible shape, she went into a coma, the nurses had written her off. She had no family, so the doctors were not aggressive in their treatment. The nurses did what needed to be done, but they weren’t spending any extra time fussing over her, because she had no family and almost no friends. She was just alone, lying there. Nobody else but me came to the hospital to see her or knew anything about her. It was just me and the hospital personnel. We were all she had.

Her coma was so bad, that I had never seen anyone in that condition before who lived. But I remember praying in faith “O God, I know all things are possible for you. There may not be anybody else who knows about this lady, there may not be anybody who cares about her, but I you know her, God, and I am sure that you love her. She looks bad, but I know you are capable of healing her. I claim that power today, I claim your healing power.”

And that’s how I went about praying for her. I’d see her every couple of days and I’d pray for her. And, you know, after a few days, this lady, that everybody was sure was going to die, first she stabilized, then she made incremental progress. Then they thought, “Well, if she gets better, she’ll be a vegetable case and we’ll have to find a nursing home for her.” She got better and better. By the grace of God, she got back to being her old self. Finally, after a number of months of treatment, she went back to her own little house, sat back on her porch and rocked in her rocking chair again. I remember driving by there after that and waving to her and thinking, “There is a living miracle.” And I gave thanks to God for his wonderful Healing power. I could tell you similar stories from other times and places in my life. You could tell me stories too.

There is nothing like the Healing power of our God - that’s what I want to bring to your attention today: the Healing that is in our God and what God’s healing is all about.

Let us pray: Precious Savior Jesus, we lift our prayers up to you today. We are people who need Healing in many ways. There is sickness in our midst. There is very difficult illness that weighs us down. There are problems for which we need strength and healing. There are concerns that we have for other people, whom we love and care about, who need your healing power today. We have heard your Word, Lord, and we have seen you act with the power of healing so many times. Let your Holy Spirit shower our hearts with the awareness of your power and presence this morning, that we might find the fullness of Healing that can come only from you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.