29 - Why Did Jesus and the Apostles Heal? [C]

Why Did Jesus and the Apostles Heal? Acts 3:1-10

Healing is one of those doctrines there is a lot of confusion about and there is all kinds of teaching that goes on today about it. When we watch some of the televangelist shows we might find them somewhat humorous, but for many people it is extremely serious because they are facing life-threatening diseases and are pushing the panic button in terms of their disease. They will spend inordinate amounts of money on anybody who claims they can cure that disease. When people get pushed up against the wall, back into a corner, they will often react is desperation and spend a lot of money on all kinds of things in order to be cured. Often these cures are wrapped in some sort of religious framework, and especially if somebody is a Christian, and if they have been in an environment all of their life that has been non-charismatic all of a sudden they will start going to a charismatic healing service just to see if it might work for them. On the other hand there are also Christians who pray and pray and pray and pray that God will heal some sort of health problem they are facing and it doesn't change, and so they either become very discouraged and think that God doesn't listen, God doesn't answer prayer, or they begin heap guilt upon themselves that they are just not praying with enough faith. And so it is not the fact that God wills for them to live under this type of testing or they think that God is just not answering their prayers for some reason, or they tend to think it is all their fault. Healing and health problems can be so challenging for people just being able to survive and able to live that they often hit the panic button and will do anything to resolve the situation. So it is important to think through what the Bible says about healing because there are many people who are healed in Scripture. Jesus healed many people, the apostles healed many people, but we have to understand why. 

Isaiah 35 follows chapter 34 which deals with the day of the Lord and the judgment upon the nations. Isaiah 34:8 ^NASB "For the LORD has a day of vengeance, A year of recompense for the cause of Zion." That helps us to understand the time frame here. This is a future time at the end of the Tribulation when God finally brings judgment on all the Gentile nations for the way they have treated Israel. But at the time that Isaiah wrote he was looking forward to a time where he has warned Israel that they will be taken out of the land in judgment by the Babylonians and then God will restore them to the land. They don't understand that that is only going to be a partial restoration, the diaspora doesn't end, it will go on until the Messiah comes to establish his kingdom and then there will be a restoration. That restoration is then described in chapter 35 and it is a restoration that impacts the land itself. There is a description of how the desert will blossom as the rose and that there will be an impact on the health of the people living in the land, and when the Messiah comes there will be people who will be healed by constitutional defects—an obvious defect, a paralysis, obviously from some sort of injury or accident, or has been that way from birth, or blindness.

Isaiah 35:5, 6 ^NASB "Then the eyes of the blind will be opened And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah." Note: "the lame shall leap like a deer." We will see an example of that when we come to the New Testament. The context here is showing that this is evidence that the Messiah has come and that the kingdom has now been given to Israel. So when we get into the New Testament and we see Jesus being presented as the King who is offering the kingdom we see that the evidence that the kingdom is at hand, is being offered, we see that there is certain kinds of healing. The rabbis believed in the first century that the sign of the Messiah was that only the Messiah could cure the leper, only the Messiah could give sight to the blind. So the healings that we see in the life of Jesus and the healings that we see with the apostles into the New Testament period are a particular kind of healing. They are dealing with messianic or the kingdom credentials. They are not just healing people because they are compassionate, they are healing because it is givi9ng evidence that the King has come and He is offering the kingdom.

Luke 5:17 ^NASB "One day He was teaching; and there were {some} Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting {there,} who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and {from} Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was {present} for Him to perform healing." That is a remarkable crowd. They have gathered from the north and the south and from the area around Jerusalem. An important note: There are things that Jesus did, healings that He did, times that He cast demons out where the text specifically says He did this in the power of the Holy Spirit. There are other times where he healed and when He cast out demons and there is no mention of the Holy Spirit. It is not legitimate and not necessary to say that because it says He did it by the Holy Spirit in one place that He did it by the Holy Spirit in another place. The reason is because in some cases Jesus is solving a problem by depending on the Holy Spirit rather than demonstrating His own deity. So in those passages where He is depending on the Holy Spirit it is showing the humanity in dependence upon God to solve the problem. In other passages He is doing it out of His deity, showing that He is fully God and He has sovereignty and authority over the demon. It is not legitimate to read universal principles out of those comments, that where it says that Jesus did certain things by the Spirit He always did those things by the Spirit. Otherwise we end up with all of Jesus' miracles being done by the Spirit and none of them demonstrate that He is God. Then we lose all of that evidence that He is deity. He is demonstrating that. For example, when He changed the water into wine that demonstrates that He is the creator. That is His authority as God; He doesn't do that by the Holy Spirit. He is doing this in His power because He is presenting Himself as the divine King.

Luke 5:18 ^NASB "And {some} men {were} carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down in front of Him. [19] But not finding any {way} to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle {of the crowd,} in front of Jesus. [20] Seeing their faith, He said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven you.'" He hasn't had any discussion with the man on the bed, so has that man expressed faith? Maybe, we are not sure. Obviously those who were with him and are bringing him to Jesus have faith, they believe Jesus can heal him and that is why they are bringing him. But we really don't know anything about this man. (Sometimes in Scripture the people who were healed believed Jesus and are trusting in Him to heal them, and other times they don't have any faith, Jesus just comes up and heals them) Here we are not sure about this man. The text says "their faith," and that means the ones who let him down through the roof.

Luke 5:21 ^NASB "The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, 'Who is this {man} who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?'" Remember it is Jesus' power that is going to heal the man because Jesus is demonstrating that He has the authority to forgive sins, which is a divine attribute alone. If He was doing the healing in His humanity in dependence upon the Holy Spirit then it would contradict the principle we see, which is that He has the power and authority to forgive sins. He is going to heal him because the answer He is going to give is [23] "Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins have been forgiven you,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'?" It is easier to say Your sins are forgiven because nobody has any empirical evidence whether the sins are forgiven or not. So Jesus is going to validate the fact that He has the authority to forgive the sins of this paralyzed man by commanding him to get up and walk, and the man does no instantly, there is no recovery time. Jesus is making it clear that He has the authority to forgive sins because He is God. This is another one of those passages that emphasizes the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is evidence, too, that He is the Messiah because He is healing the lame and the lame can walk.

The event in Acts chapter three takes place some time after the events of chapter two when Peter gave that first message on the day of Pentecost. The text is not clear, it just says "And" or "Now" and is just a continuation of the message of how Peter and John went up together to the temple. Acts 3:1 ^NASB "Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth {hour,} the hour of prayer." The verb there in the Greek and the verbs in the second verse are in the imperfect tense, which indicates continuing action in past time. One nuance of the imperfect tense is a customary nuance, so this was their day-to-day custom. This is reinforced in the second verse where the word "daily" or "every day" shows up, the idea that this was something that occurred on a day-to-day basis. This is just showing that it was part of the practice of the early church together at the temple where they would pray. It was time for prayer, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, before the evening sacrifice. So it was a custom of the disciples to go to the temple.

Acts 3:2 ^NASB "And a man who had been lame from his mother's womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple." The phrase, "from his mother's womb." This the preposition ek [e)k] plus koilia [koilia] and it is most literally translated in KJV, NKJV and NASB "from his mother's womb." But in most modern translations it is translated correctly as "from birth." It is not talking about a condition that existed in the womb, it is talking about the beginning of his life which is from birth. This is based on an Old Testament idiom mibeten—the Hebrew preposition men, from, and the word "womb," beten. In the phrase "from birth" there are two words: "from" is a preposition and "birth" is the noun object of the preposition. So the object of the preposition is expressed in a noun. In Hebrew there is no noun for birth. There is a verb, to be born, but no noun. They had to use an idiom or circumlocution to go around the meaning to say it, so they said "from birth." When we get into passages in Jeremiah and Isaiah where the prophet talks about being called from his mother's womb there are those who want to translate that "in the womb." It is the same language. It is irritating that we find these translators now who are consistent in the New Testament translating things like "the Holy Spirit came upon John the Baptist from birth," and here they translate it "from birth," because these passages aren't ones that are normally debated in the abortion debate. So when it is not controversial they translate it as just what it means: "from birth." But in those other passages they translate it "in the womb." It doesn't mean "in the womb."

If in Hebrew there was a noun for conception there would be vocabulary in Hebrew to express the phrase "from conception." So the parameters of life as we see throughout the Old Testament and New Testament are expressed by the phrase "from birth" and "death." We don't have from conception to death. That is important in terms of the whole abortion debate that we have today: that life begins at birth, it doesn't begin at conception. There is biological life in the womb but there is not soul life in the womb; the soul is not imparted to the fetus until birth when it became a full human being. This is the traditional Jewish interpretation. (View: Once there is conception—unless there is interference or unless God determines otherwise—it is going to end up being a full human being, and because that is the normal progress it is not moral or ethical for man to interfere with that process. That is not to say it is illegal because it was never expressed to be illegal in the Mosaic Law) So that would mean that abortion wasn't approved as something that is moral or ethical but it was not considered murder because in the Jewish view the soul did not enter into the body until birth. 

Acts 3:3 ^NASB "When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he {began} asking to receive alms. [4] But Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, 'Look at us!' [5] And he {began} to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them.'" Only eight times in the book of Acts is John mentioned, and he never says anything. He is always in the company of Peter but he never talks. [6] But Peter said, 'I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!'" This is a legitimate constitutional defect; it isn't just a psychosomatic problem. He had never in his entire life walked. [7] "And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up; and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened. [8] With a leap he stood upright and {began} to walk; and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God." He doesn't just get up and walk. Just as Isaiah chapter thirty-five prophesied he is leaping like a deer. People are astounded because they recognize who he is. [9] "And all the people saw him walking and praising God; [10] and they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the temple to {beg} alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him."

As a result of that word rapidly spread and people were coming from all over Jerusalem to find out what has happened and to witness this astounding miracle. The question for us is: does God heal like this today? If so, why don't we see it? Three questions to answer this: a) Does God heal today?  b) Why did Jesus and the apostles heal? c) Was faith necessary in order to be healed?

We have seen through our study of Scriptures that God healed throughout history. We have examples of God healing among the wilderness generation when they were bitten by serpents and God instructed Moses to make a bronze image of a serpent and to hold it up high so the people who looked at it would be instantly healed. We have other examples of Elijah raising the widow's son back to life and Elisha raising the woman's son back to life and healing Naaman the Syrian of leprosy. Question: Did the Old Testament prophets have the gift of healing? No. There were no spiritual gifts in the Old Testament. God gave them authority in certain instances where they exercised that, but not like somebody with the gift of healing would in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians chapter twelve we are told that in the early church there were some people who were given a spiritual gift of healing, and that would be somewhat akin to a person who had the spiritual gift of evangelism, of giving, pastor-teacher. It would be dependent upon their volition how they exercised that gift. It was not something that was restricted. It was very different from what was experienced in the Old Testament or even what Jesus was doing or the apostles were doing in the early church. 

We see from the examples of Scripture that we have two different ways in which God heals historically. He either heals indirectly or mediately, i.e. He would heal through an agent, or in other cases directly where is asked to heal somebody in prayer and then God directly heals a person without doing it through a person who was a prophet or intermediate agent. There are two categories of healing that God uses. One is supernatural and the other would be through natural means, e.g. through taking medicine. The natural way is normal and should not be called miraculous. A miracle by definition is when God ceases using what we would call normal laws of nature/science. A miracle is something which is completely outside of natural, normal means.

Are the healings we see on television legitimate? Probably not, but that doesn't mean God doesn't heal today. God does not heal today through the intermediate means of people with the gift of healing. He heals directly or indirectly through medicine but He doesn't heal indirectly through people who have the spiritual gift of healing. So the issue is how does God reveal that He heals today? Has God revealed that we should expect intervention in our illnesses, diseases and deformities as a normal experience in the Christian life? That is the real issue and where it is really getting down to understanding what is happening with disease. We live in the devil's world; everything is deformed and distorted in the devil's world. There was no disease in the world of Adam and Eve before the fall. Disease is a result of the effect of sin and the curse of sin on a fallen world. Should we expect God to intervene in our illnesses, diseases and deformities as a normal experience in the Christian life? No, we should not. Should we be praying in our particular circumstance? Sure, there is nothing wrong with that.

Jesus healed in order to present His messianic credentials. The kingdom is near; the King is going to give evidence of His messianic credentials by healing according to the predictions of the Old Testament—Isaiah 42:7; 29:18; 35:4-6. Healings were never performed gratuitously. Jesus didn't heal just for the physical benefit itself, just because He saw someone that needed to be healed. There were times when Jesus was out with a mass audience and they were bringing the sick, the demon-possessed and the lepers to Him and He is healing large numbers of people. But He is doing that because He is presenting Himself as the Messiah. Jesus and the apostles were healing discriminately, healing only a few; they were not healing everyone. That tells us something because according to the Scripture God is not trying to alleviate all the pain and heartache and difficulty that we face in life, because that serves a purpose within God's plan today. We have examples of Jesus healing in Matthew 8:17 ^NASB "This was} to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: 'HE HIMSELF TOOK OUR INFIRMITIES AND CARRIED AWAY OUR DISEASES.'" It was done to indicate His messianic credentials. Matthew 9:6 ^NASB "But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—then He said to the paralytic, 'Get up, pick up your bed and go home.'" Cf. Matthew 11:2-19 where Jesus said the evidences of the kingdom were associated with His ministry. Matthew 12:15-21 also foreshadowed a fulfillment of Isaiah 42:1-4. So these healings were all intended to demonstrate that He was the Messiah. In John 9:3 He healed the blind man to show that He was the light of the world. Only Jesus healed the blind, nobody else healed blind people, it was a specific messianic sign. In John 11:4 the resurrection and raising of Lazarus from the dead was to demonstrate the glory of God. In John 20:30, 31 the resurrection of Jesus is a sign to demonstrate that He is the Messiah. Acts 2:22 God the Father authenticated Jesus claims. That is related to the resurrection.

Jesus' miracles were not performed randomly or indiscriminately. He did not always heal those who needed healing or perform on demand, but He did heal to fulfill the plan of God. When He did heal it was immediate or within minutes. It wasn't a process, they didn't have to learn, didn't have to go through therapy. There was an abundance of healing, Matthew 5:31. He healed by touch, command, even the touch of His coat, and through spit, Mark 8:22-26. Not all who were healed expressed faith or were saved—John 5, Luke 17:11-19.

In terms of the apostles their healing also established their credentials. 2 Corinthians 12:12 ^NASB "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles." In Acts chapters three and four Peter and John healed the lame man to gain a hearing for the gospel. Then in Acts 5:12 ^NASB "At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people; and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico."

There are many examples of where faith was not in the recipient of the healing. The nobleman's son in John 4:46-54. The nobleman comes to Jesus to heal the son but there is no evidence that the son has any faith in Jesus. The cripple at Bethesda just gets told by Jesus to pick up his pallet and walk; he is not a believer until after he is healed. The demon-possessed man at Capernaum on the Sabbath is not a believer at all until after he is healed. The paralyzed man is healed. His friends had faith but there is no evidence that he had faith. The centurion's servant is healed in Matthew 8:5-13; the centurion had faith but there is no evidence that the servant had faith. The blind and mute man in Matthew 12:22 does not have any indication of faith. The Gadarene demoniac had no evidence of faith. The deaf mute demon-possessed man in Matthew 9 wanted Jesus to leave him alone. Jesus feeds the 5000 when the people were hungry and they had no evidence that they were trusting in God to feed them. The best example is Malcus's ear. Malcus had no faith whatsoever.

There are also many examples where faith was present. The leper in Matthew 8:2-4, the one with the crippled hand in Matthew 12:9-13. Peter walking on the water, the man born blind, Bartemaus in Matthew 20:29-35. The woman with the hemorrhage in Matthew 9:2-22, one of the ten lepers in Luke 17, the miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5, and the second in John 21.

So in answer to the question in Acts 3, why are they healing right here? It is going to come out in a message. Peter is going to interpret it: "The times of refreshing have come." This is the sign of the Messiah. Acts 3:19 ^NASB "Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." Healing is a sign that the kingdom can come, the Messiah has come—but it is up to you, the Jewish audience, to fulfill Deuteronomy 30:2 to turn back to God. This isn't a church age invitation to trust in Jesus in the sense it becomes later on, it is oriented to that messianic claim to accept Jesus as Messiah so the kingdom can come.