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10 Bible Verses About Sickness That Will Change How You Understand Healing · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: You have probably heard Isaiah 53 5 quoted over sickness.
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  Speaker 1: By his stripes we are healed. But what did Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: actually mean by healing? And why does Matthew later connect
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah's prophecy directly to Jesus healing sick bodies? There is
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  Speaker 1: a thread running from Exodus through Isaiah into the ministry
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  Speaker 1: of Jesus through James and finally into the resurrection. And
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  Speaker 1: when those passages are placed beside one another, healing becomes
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  Speaker 1: far bigger than most of us were taught. You may
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  Speaker 1: have heard this verse more times than you can count.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe somebody quoted it over you in a hospital room.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe you whispered it while waiting for test results. Maybe
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  Speaker 1: you wrote it on an index card and kept it
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  Speaker 1: beside your bed. Or perhaps you have spoken these words
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  Speaker 1: through tears. when your body was hurting so badly that
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  Speaker 1: you did not know what else to pray. Isaiah 53, 5.
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  Speaker 1: If you are taking notes, write that verse down, because
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  Speaker 1: we are going to come back to it again and again.
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  Speaker 1: He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for
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  Speaker 1: our iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed. Those
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  Speaker 1: words are precious. But they have also left some sincere
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  Speaker 1: believers carrying a question they are almost afraid to say
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  Speaker 1: out loud. If by his stripes I am healed, why
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  Speaker 1: am I still sick? Why does the pain still wake
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  Speaker 1: you up? Why did the scan still show something? Why
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  Speaker 1: are you still taking medication? Why did the doctor say
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  Speaker 1: the condition is chronic? Why have you prayed for six
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  Speaker 1: months or six years and your body has not changed
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  Speaker 1: the way you hoped? and sometimes an even more painful
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  Speaker 1: question follows. Is something wrong with my faith? I want
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  Speaker 1: to speak carefully to you here, because sickness has a
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  Speaker 1: way of creating two battles at the same time. There
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  Speaker 1: is the battle happening in your body, and then there
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  Speaker 1: is the battle happening in your mind. Your body says,
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  Speaker 1: I hurt, but your mind may begin saying, maybe God
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  Speaker 1: has forgotten me. Your doctor says, we need more tests,
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  Speaker 1: and fear whispers this is only going to get worse.
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  Speaker 1: You pray and do not immediately see the answer you wanted,
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  Speaker 1: and another voice says, maybe God heals other people, but
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  Speaker 1: not you. That second battle can become almost heavier than
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  Speaker 1: the first, and this is exactly why we need to
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  Speaker 1: understand what Scripture actually says about healing. not promises pulled
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  Speaker 1: out of their biblical setting and made to say something
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  Speaker 1: God never said, but also not a cold theology that
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  Speaker 1: explains away every expectation of divine intervention until nobody believes
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  Speaker 1: God can still touch a human body. There is something
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  Speaker 1: deeper in the Bible, something far more beautiful, because when
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah wrote, By his stripes we are healed, He was
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  Speaker 1: not handing Israel a magical sentence to repeat until sickness disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah was revealing a person, a wounded servant, a man
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  Speaker 1: who would somehow carry the brokenness of other people in
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  Speaker 1: his own body. And here is where the mystery begins.
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah wrote those words centuries before Jesus walked through Galilee,
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  Speaker 1: centuries before blind eyes opened, before lepers were cleansed. before
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  Speaker 1: crippled legs carried people home, before a woman who had
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  Speaker 1: been bleeding for twelve years reached through a crowd and
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  Speaker 1: touched the edge of his garment, before Lazarus walked out
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  Speaker 1: of a tomb, before Roman soldiers drove nails through the
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  Speaker 1: hands of Jesus. Isaiah saw something coming, but what exactly
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  Speaker 1: did he see? Was Isaiah speaking about forgiveness, physical healing,
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  Speaker 1: emotional restoration, resurrection? Or is the answer somehow larger than
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  Speaker 1: all of those categories? Keep that question open, because in
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  Speaker 1: a few minutes we are going to watch something remarkable happen.
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  Speaker 1: Matthew is going to look at Jesus physically healing sick people,
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  Speaker 1: reach backward more than 700 years into Isaiah, and say,
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  Speaker 1: in effect, this is what Isaiah was talking about. And
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  Speaker 1: when we get there, I want you to notice exactly
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  Speaker 1: what Matthew says. But we cannot begin with Matthew. We
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  Speaker 1: have to go farther back. Long before Isaiah ever saw
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  Speaker 1: the suffering servant, God revealed something about himself to frightened,
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  Speaker 1: exhausted people standing beside bitter water. And what God said
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  Speaker 1: there changes the way we read every healing passage that
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  Speaker 1: comes afterward. We are going to get to that in
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  Speaker 1: the next section. But before we do, I want to
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  Speaker 1: make something very clear about what we are doing in
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  Speaker 1: this video. I'm going to give you ten passages of
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  Speaker 1: scripture concerning healing. I want you to speak them. I
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  Speaker 1: want you to pray them. I want you to write
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  Speaker 1: them down if you need to. If you are lying
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  Speaker 1: awake tonight because pain will not let you sleep, I
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  Speaker 1: want these scriptures nearby. If you are going into surgery,
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  Speaker 1: take them with you. If you are waiting for biopsy results,
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  Speaker 1: read them slowly. If you are caring for somebody, whose
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  Speaker 1: body is failing, pray these passages beside their bed. But
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  Speaker 1: do not misunderstand me. These verses are not spells. God
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  Speaker 1: is not a machine into which we insert Bible verses
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  Speaker 1: until healing comes out the other side. The power is
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  Speaker 1: not in your ability to pronounce every sentence perfectly. The
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  Speaker 1: power is not in how loudly you say it. The
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  Speaker 1: power is not even in how emotionally certain you feel
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  Speaker 1: when you say it. The power belongs to God. Romans 1.16
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  Speaker 1: calls the gospel the power of God. Ephesians 1 speaks
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  Speaker 1: of the immeasurable greatness of His power toward those who believe.
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  Speaker 1: And Romans 8.11 says that the Spirit of the One
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  Speaker 1: who raised Jesus from the dead says, dwells in the believer.
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  Speaker 1: So when you speak Scripture, you are not commanding God.
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  Speaker 1: You are bringing your frightened heart back underneath what God
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  Speaker 1: has said. You are reminding your soul that the diagnosis
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  Speaker 1: is real, but it is not God. The pain is real,
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  Speaker 1: but it is not sovereign. The medical report deserves attention,
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  Speaker 1: but it does not deserve worship. and I want to
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  Speaker 1: say something to those of you who are receiving medical
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  Speaker 1: treatment right now. Taking medicine does not mean you have
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  Speaker 1: abandoned faith. Going to a doctor does not mean you
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  Speaker 1: trust God less. Undergoing surgery does not cancel prayer. You
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  Speaker 1: can thank God for skilled physicians and still ask Him
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  Speaker 1: for a miracle they cannot explain. You can take the
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  Speaker 1: medication and pray over your body. You can follow the
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  Speaker 1: treatment plan and still believe that Christ is Lord over
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  Speaker 1: every cell, every nerve, every organ, and every breath. Faith
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  Speaker 1: does not require you to pretend that sickness is not there.
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  Speaker 1: Faith determines where you look while sickness is there, and
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  Speaker 1: maybe that is what you desperately need tonight. You need
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  Speaker 1: somebody to sit beside you in the Word of God
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  Speaker 1: and say, we are going to look at this carefully,
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  Speaker 1: we are going to pray boldly, and we are not
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  Speaker 1: going to abandon you when the questions become difficult. Father,
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  Speaker 1: I want to pause right here and pray for the
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  Speaker 1: person listening who is tired of hurting. You know the
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  Speaker 1: part of their body that scares them. You know what
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  Speaker 1: the doctor said. You know the appointment they are dreading
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  Speaker 1: and the thoughts that come when everybody else goes to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: Lord Jesus, meet them there. Quiet the voice that says
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  Speaker 1: you have forgotten them. Give wisdom to their doctors. Give
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  Speaker 1: strength to their body. And according to your mercy, stretch
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  Speaker 1: out your hand to heal. Let them know, even before
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  Speaker 1: circumstances change, that they are not facing this alone. Amen.
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  Speaker 1: And if teaching like this is helping you see familiar
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  Speaker 1: passages with fresh eyes, I want to invite you into
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  Speaker 1: the Deep Bible Stories membership. That is where we slow
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  Speaker 1: down and go book by book, chapter by chapter, recovering
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  Speaker 1: the connections that are easy to miss when Scripture is
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  Speaker 1: reduced to isolated verses. The link is below if you
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  Speaker 1: want to study with us more deeply, because Isaiah 53.5
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  Speaker 1: is not an isolated sentence. It belongs to a story,
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  Speaker 1: and that story did not begin with Isaiah. It began
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  Speaker 1: centuries earlier, when newly delivered people walked into a wilderness,
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  Speaker 1: found water they could not drink, and heard God reveal
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  Speaker 1: a name that Israel would never forget. I am the
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  Speaker 1: Lord who heals you. If you are taken notes, write
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  Speaker 1: down Exodus 15, 26. But before you underline the word heals,
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  Speaker 1: notice where God says it. Because the setting matters, Israel
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  Speaker 1: has just witnessed one of the greatest miracles recorded anywhere
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  Speaker 1: in Scripture. Exodus 14 tells us that the Red Sea
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  Speaker 1: opened before them. The people walked through on dry ground.
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  Speaker 1: Pharaoh's army pursued them, the waters returned, and Israel stood
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  Speaker 1: on the other side realizing that the enemy who had
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  Speaker 1: enslaved them for generations could no longer reach them. Then
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  Speaker 1: Exodus 15 begins with singing, Moses sings. The Israelites sing.
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  Speaker 1: Miriam takes a tambourine. The women follow her with dancing.
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  Speaker 1: They have seen the power of God with their own eyes.
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  Speaker 1: And if the story ended there, faith would seem very simple.
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  Speaker 1: God performs a miracle. You celebrate. You never doubt again.
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  Speaker 1: Except that is not what happens. Three days later, the
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  Speaker 1: same people who watched an ocean divide are walking through
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  Speaker 1: the wilderness without water. Three days. That detail should humble us.
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  Speaker 1: You can experience something extraordinary from God and still become
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  Speaker 1: frightened when the next crisis arrives. You can have a
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  Speaker 1: testimony from last year and still struggle with fear over
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  Speaker 1: tomorrow's medical appointment. You can remember how God carried you
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  Speaker 1: through one surgery and still lie awake wondering what this
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  Speaker 1: next diagnosis means. Faith is not amnesia about pain, and
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  Speaker 1: yesterday's miracle does not automatically remove today's anxiety. Israel finally
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  Speaker 1: reaches a place called Marah. Exodus 15.23 says they could
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  Speaker 1: not drink the water because it was bitter. That is
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  Speaker 1: why the place was called Mara, a name associated with bitterness.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine the scene, thousands of thirsty people, children crying and
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  Speaker 1: animals needing water, people who have walked beneath a burning
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  Speaker 1: wilderness sun suddenly see water ahead of them. They hurry
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  Speaker 1: toward it, and then somebody drinks. It is unusable. The
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  Speaker 1: thing that looked like relief becomes another disappointment. Have you
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  Speaker 1: ever lived through a moment like that? You finally get
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  Speaker 1: the appointment you've been waiting for, only to hear something
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  Speaker 1: you did not want to hear. The treatment that was
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  Speaker 1: supposed to help does not work the way you hoped.
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  Speaker 1: You thought the surgery would end the problem, but now
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  Speaker 1: there is another complication. You prayed, Lord, surely this is
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  Speaker 1: the answer. Then you tasted the water, and it was bitter.
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  Speaker 1: Exodus 15.24 says the people grumbled against Moses and asked,
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  Speaker 1: What are we to drink? Now you might be sitting
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  Speaker 1: there thinking, but after the Red Sea? How could they
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  Speaker 1: doubt God after seeing something like that? Be careful with them,
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  Speaker 1: because it is easy to criticize thirsty people when you
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  Speaker 1: are reading the story with a glass of water beside you.
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  Speaker 1: Pain changes the questions we ask. Exhaustion shortens our memory.
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  Speaker 1: Fear has a way of making yesterday's evidence feel very
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  Speaker 1: far away. And Scripture does not hide that weakness. Moses
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  Speaker 1: cries out to the Lord. Then Exodus 15.25 tells us
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  Speaker 1: that the Lord showed him a piece of wood. Moses
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  Speaker 1: threw it into the water, and the water became fit
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  Speaker 1: to drink. Do not rush past that. God does not
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  Speaker 1: merely lecture thirsty people about their attitude. He provides, He
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  Speaker 1: changes what they could not change, and it is immediately
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  Speaker 1: after this episode that God speaks the words we are
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  Speaker 1: focusing on. Exodus 15.26, I am the Lord who heals you.
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  Speaker 1: Some Christians know this phrase as Yahweh Rapha or Jehovah Rapha,
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  Speaker 1: the Lord who heals. But notice what God is doing.
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  Speaker 1: He is not merely promising an occasional act. He is
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  Speaker 1: revealing something about his character. I am. Healing is being
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  Speaker 1: connected to who he is. That does not mean Israel
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  Speaker 1: would never become sick. Their later history makes that obvious.
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  Speaker 1: It does not mean every physical problem would disappear the
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  Speaker 1: moment someone quoted this verse. The verse itself is given
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  Speaker 1: within covenant language, listening to God, doing what is right
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  Speaker 1: before Him, paying attention to His commands. But beneath those
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  Speaker 1: covenant instructions is a revelation Israel desperately needed to learn.
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  Speaker 1: The God who brought them out of slavery was not
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  Speaker 1: interested only in getting them across the sea. He intended
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  Speaker 1: to care for them, in the wilderness, that matters enormously
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  Speaker 1: when you are sick, because sometimes we reduce salvation to
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  Speaker 1: one future destination. God save my soul, and someday I
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  Speaker 1: will go to heaven. That is glorious truth, but the
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  Speaker 1: biblical story keeps showing us a God who meets his
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  Speaker 1: people in actual human vulnerability. Hunger, thirst, fear, weakness, disease,
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  Speaker 1: grief— He does not become less holy because he cares
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  Speaker 1: about a body. He created the body. Remember Genesis. Before
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  Speaker 1: there was sickness, there was a garden. Before there were
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  Speaker 1: hospital rooms, chemotherapy treatments, failing organs, aching joints or graves.
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 1 repeatedly describes creation as good. Something happened to
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  Speaker 1: that goodness. Sin did not merely create guilty people who
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  Speaker 1: needed legal forgiveness. The fall opened the door to corruption, suffering, disorder,
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  Speaker 1: and death. That is why biblical healing is eventually going
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  Speaker 1: to become much larger than the removal of one's symptom.
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  Speaker 1: Healing belongs to God's work of restoration. And this is
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  Speaker 1: where our first thread begins connecting with the mystery from Isaiah.
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  Speaker 1: At Marah, bitter water is made usable. Centuries later, Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: will describe a servant who enters human suffering. Then Matthew
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  Speaker 1: will show us Jesus walking directly toward diseased bodies. And
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  Speaker 1: at the end of Scripture, Revelation will show us a
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  Speaker 1: world where death itself has disappeared. Do you see the
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  Speaker 1: movement beginning? Bitter water, a wounded servant, and a healing Messiah,
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  Speaker 1: a resurrected body, a renewed creation. We are not going
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  Speaker 1: to connect all those pieces yet, because another detail must
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  Speaker 1: come first. At Mara, God reveals himself as healer immediately
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  Speaker 1: after his people attempted to forget what he has already done.
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  Speaker 1: And that becomes one of the great battles of sickness. Memory.
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  Speaker 1: When your body hurts long enough, pain begins rewriting your theology.
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  Speaker 1: It tells you God has never helped you. Fear says
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  Speaker 1: nothing good has ever happened. Discouragement says you have always
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  Speaker 1: been alone. That is why the next healing scripture we
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  Speaker 1: need is not simply a command to ask God for something.
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  Speaker 1: It is a command to remember. Psalm 103 begins with
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  Speaker 1: a man talking to his own soul. Bless the Lord,
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  Speaker 1: O my soul. Then comes this remarkable instruction. Forget not
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  Speaker 1: all his benefits. If you are fighting sickness right now,
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  Speaker 1: that sentence may be more important than you realize. Because
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  Speaker 1: before David speaks about the God who heals all your diseases...
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  Speaker 1: He first confronts the disease of spiritual forgetfulness. And next,
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  Speaker 1: we're going to put Psalm 103 beside another passage, Proverbs 4, 20-22,
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  Speaker 1: where God's words are described as life to those who
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  Speaker 1: find them and health to their whole body. That connection
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  Speaker 1: will show us why speaking Scripture is not about trying
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  Speaker 1: to manipulate God. It is about teaching a frightened soul
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  Speaker 1: what it must not forget. And that brings us to David.
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  Speaker 1: If you are taking notes, write down Psalm 103, verses
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  Speaker 1: 2 to 3. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
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  Speaker 1: forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquities,
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  Speaker 1: who heals all your diseases. Notice something unusual. David is
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  Speaker 1: talking to himself. He is not speaking to an enemy.
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  Speaker 1: He is not preaching to a congregation. He is commanding
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  Speaker 1: his own soul to remember. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, soul, listen to me. You are not
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  Speaker 1: going to let fear tell the whole story. You are
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  Speaker 1: not going to let pain become the only thing you
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  Speaker 1: can see. You are going to remember who God has been.
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  Speaker 1: Then David says forget not all his benefits why would
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  Speaker 1: he have to say that because forgetting is one of
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  Speaker 1: the great weaknesses of the human heart Israel forgot after
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  Speaker 1: the Red Sea. David knows that the soul can forget too,
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  Speaker 1: and sickness makes forgetting especially easy. When you have been
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  Speaker 1: hurting for months, yesterday's mercies can become difficult to remember.
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  Speaker 1: When one medical bill follows another, provision from five years
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  Speaker 1: ago can feel irrelevant. When you have asked God for
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  Speaker 1: healing and nothing seems to change, you can begin remembering
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  Speaker 1: every unanswered prayer while forgetting every prayer he has answered.
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  Speaker 1: That is why David does not wait until his emotions cooperate.
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  Speaker 1: He speaks truth to his own soul. And look at
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  Speaker 1: the order. Who forgives all your iniquities, then? Who heals
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  Speaker 1: all your diseases? Forgiveness and healing appear side by side.
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  Speaker 1: That should make us pay attention. The Bible repeatedly refuses
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  Speaker 1: to divide human beings into neat little compartments where God
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  Speaker 1: cares about the soul but not the body, eternity but
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  Speaker 1: not suffering, forgiveness but not restoration. God's saving work reaches
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  Speaker 1: into the whole wreckage of the fall. That does not
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  Speaker 1: mean Psalm 103 guarantees that every disease disappears immediately whenever
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  Speaker 1: a believer quotes verse 3. David himself lived in a
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  Speaker 1: world where faithful people still suffered and died, but he
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  Speaker 1: does identify healing as one of the merciful works belonging
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  Speaker 1: to God. So if you are sick, you do not
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  Speaker 1: have to apologize for asking him to heal you. You
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  Speaker 1: are not being immature. You are not asking for something
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  Speaker 1: outside his character. You can say, Father, your word calls
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  Speaker 1: you the one who heals. I am bringing my body
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  Speaker 1: before you. And then we come to another passage, Proverbs 4.20-22.
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  Speaker 1: My son, pay attention to my words. Incline your ear
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  Speaker 1: to my sayings. Do not let them out of your sight.
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  Speaker 1: Keep them within your heart, for they are life to
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  Speaker 1: those who find them and health to their whole body.
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  Speaker 1: Slow down there. The text does not merely say, Speak
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  Speaker 1: these words. It says, Pay attention. Incline your ear. Do
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  Speaker 1: not let them leave your sight. Keep them within your heart.
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  Speaker 1: That is a completely different picture from treating Scripture like
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  Speaker 1: a verbal formula. Proverbs is concerned with what enters you
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  Speaker 1: and what shapes you. Your deep Bible stories material describes
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  Speaker 1: the sayings of Proverbs as seeds, small words carrying transformative
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  Speaker 1: potential when they are allowed to take root. And elsewhere
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  Speaker 1: in that same material, Proverbs 3, 7-8 connects reverent trust
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  Speaker 1: in God with health to your body and nourishment to
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  Speaker 1: your bones. Do you see the pattern? The word is
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  Speaker 1: not supposed to merely pass across your lips. It is
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  Speaker 1: supposed to enter your ears. Remain before your eyes. Settle
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  Speaker 1: into your heart. Shape the way you see God. Shape
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  Speaker 1: the way you respond to fear. Shape what you say
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  Speaker 1: when the diagnosis comes that this is why speaking Scripture matters.
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  Speaker 1: not because your voice has magical power, but because sickness
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  Speaker 1: speaks too. Pain speaks, fear speaks, doctors speak, statistics speak,
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  Speaker 1: the internet speaks. Sometimes everybody around you seems to have
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  Speaker 1: something to say about what is going to happen to
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  Speaker 1: your body. And if you are not careful, those voices
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  Speaker 1: begin living inside you. You hear the doctor say, we
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  Speaker 1: found something. and three days later you are hearing that
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  Speaker 1: sentence in the shower. At breakfast, in bed, during prayer,
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  Speaker 1: you are not even in the doctor's office anymore, but
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  Speaker 1: the words are still there. Proverbs understands that words can
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  Speaker 1: penetrate deeply. Your source material emphasizes this repeatedly. Reckless words
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  Speaker 1: can wound, while wise words can bring healing. Proverbs 16.24
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: even pictures gracious words as honeycomb, sweet to the soul
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: and healing to the bones. So when you speak God's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: word over your life, something deeper is happening than positive thinking.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: You are choosing what voice gets repeated in the inner
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: room of your heart. Now you might be thinking, but
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: what if I speak these verses and I'm still afraid?
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Then speak them afraid. Faith does not require you to
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: wait until every emotion agrees with Scripture. David did not say,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Bless the Lord, O my soul, because I currently feel wonderful.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: He commanded his soul. There are days when faith sounds
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: less like a shout and more like a whisper. Lord,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I believe. Help my unbelief. There are mornings when you
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: may have to read Psalm 103 with tears on the page.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: There are nights when Proverbs 4.20-22 may be all you
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: can manage before you fall asleep. That still matters, because
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the goal is not to manufacture emotional certainty. The goal
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: is to keep bringing your soul back under the truth
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of God. And I want to ask you something personal.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Which battle is harder for you right now, believing that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: God is able to heal, or believing that He still
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: cares about what is happening to you? Tell me in
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the comments, because those are not always the same struggle.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Some people have no trouble believing God can heal cancer,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: restore damaged nerves, strengthen a heart, or reverse a diagnosis.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Their question is, would He do it for me? And
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that brings us back to Isaiah, because Isaiah does not
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: merely show us a powerful God standing at a distance
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: from suffering. Isaiah shows us something far more unsettling and
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: far more beautiful. A servant who comes close enough to
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: suffering to carry it. A servant who is wounded, bruised,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: struck and afflicted. And somehow, Isaiah says, our healing is
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: connected to his wounds. So now we are ready to
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: return to the verse we opened with, Isaiah 53, 4-5.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: But this time we are not going to quote only
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the final line. We are going to look carefully at
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: what the servant is carrying and why Matthew later watches
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Jesus heal sick bodies and says, Isaiah was talking about this.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: That is where we are headed. But first, stay with
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Isaiah himself. If you are taking notes, write down Isaiah 53, 4-5.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and by his stripes we are healed. Most of us
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: know the last phrase, by his stripes we are healed,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: but Isaiah did not write that sentence by itself. He
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: places healing inside a much larger picture. A servant carrying grief,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a servant carrying sorrow, a servant being wounded, a servant
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: being bruised, and a servant bearing chastisement, a servant receiving stripes.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And somehow the suffering of this servant becomes the place
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: where somebody else receives peace, somebody else receives healing, somebody
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: else receives restoration. That is the mystery. The one who
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: heals is himself wounded. The one who restores is himself crushed.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: The one who carries others is himself afflicted. That should
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: make you stop for a moment, because human instinct usually
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: imagines power as distance from suffering. We think powerful people
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: avoid pain. Powerful people have resources. Powerful people are protected.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: powerful people make suffering happen to somebody else. But Isaiah
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: gives us a completely different picture of divine power. God's
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: servant does not stand at a safe distance and shout
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: instructions toward wounded humanity. He enters the wound. Your existing
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Isaiah material emphasizes this larger theme repeatedly. Isaiah is not
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: simply a prophet of judgment. but a prophet of restoration,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: pointing toward a suffering servant who bears the sins of
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: many and becomes central to God's redemptive purpose. And that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: matters deeply if you are sick, because suffering has a
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: way of making God feel far away. You may believe
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: He exists, you may even believe He's powerful, but when
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the body hurts long enough, another question begins forming— Does
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: he understand this? Does he understand what it is like
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to wake up exhausted? Does he understand what it is
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: like to have people look at you differently because you
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: are sick? Does he understand weakness? Does he understand what
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: it feels like when the body you depended on no
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: longer does what you need it to do? Isaiah's servant,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: says God's answer, is not merely, I understand intellectually. The
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: answer is incarnation. The answer is suffering. The answer is wounds.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Now we have to be careful here, because Isaiah 53
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: is one of those passages Christians sometimes pull apart too quickly.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Some will say, this is only about forgiveness from sin.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Others will say, no, this guarantees immediate physical healing for
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: every believer in every circumstance. But Isaiah's language is richer
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: than either slogan. Look at the text itself. wounded for
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, that is clearly dealing
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: with sin, the servant is carrying what belongs to us.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: But the verse also speaks of grief, sorrow, peace, and healing.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Isaiah is painting a picture of the servant entering the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: whole devastation produced by sin. Not merely the legal guilt,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the ruin, the sorrow, the brokenness of the alienation. And eventually, yes,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: even death itself. That is why we need to resist
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the temptation to make healing smaller than the Bible makes it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Biblical healing is not merely symptom relief. It is restoration.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: It is God reclaiming what corruption has damaged. And sometimes
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: we experience that restoration now in astonishing physical ways. A
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: disease disappears. A body recovers. A doctor cannot explain the improvement.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: A person receives strength that was not there before. We
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: should not be embarrassed to pray for those things. Jesus
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: certainly was not embarrassed to heal bodies. But the biblical
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: promise is even larger than present physical recovery. Because every
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: person Jesus healed during his earthly ministry, eventually died. Think
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: about that. Lazarus was raised from the dead, and Lazarus
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: eventually died again. The woman with the issue of blood
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: was healed, and one day her earthly body still reached
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the end of its life. The blind who received sight
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: eventually closed their eyes in death. So the healings of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Jesus were not the final destination. They were signs, they
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: were previews, they were flashes of the kingdom, they were announcing,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: look at what happens when God's reign collides with the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: devastation of the fall. Blindness retreats, disease retreats, demons retreat,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: death itself begins retreating. But there is something still coming,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: a day when death will not merely be interrupted, it
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: will be abolished. We will return to that much later
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: when we reach Revelation 21.4. For now, stay with the
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: wounded servant, because something remarkable happens when the New Testament
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: begins telling the story of Jesus. Matthew watches him heal people,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: not metaphorically, physically. Matthew 8 describes people being brought to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Jesus who are sick and oppressed. He heals them. And
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: then Matthew reaches backward into Isaiah 53. That is the
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: connection I told you not to forget. Matthew sees what
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Jesus is doing to diseased bodies, and he says this
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: fulfills what Isaiah spoke. That means we cannot dismiss the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: bodily dimension of Isaiah's healing language. But neither can we
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: reduce Isaiah's prophecy to one moment of physical recovery. The
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: cross is bigger, the kingdom is bigger, redemption is bigger,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and perhaps your prayer needs to become bigger too. not weaker, bigger. Lord,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: heal this disease. Yes, pray it. Lord, remove this pain. Yes,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: ask him. Lord, let this treatment work. Absolutely. Lord, give
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the doctor's wisdom. Certainly. But underneath all those prayers is
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: an even deeper cry. Jesus, restore what sin and death
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: have damaged. That is the prayer Isaiah is preparing us
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to understand. And if you are listening while your body
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: is weak, I want you to hear this carefully. The
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: wounds of Christ do not mean your suffering is invisible
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: to God. They mean the Christian faith places a wounded
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Savior at the center of history. Your pain is not
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: beneath His attention. Your body is not beneath His concern.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Your tears are not an interruption to some more spiritual conversation.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: He came into a world where bodies break, and he
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: did not remain untouched by that world. Now we are
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: ready for Matthew, because Matthew does something with Isaiah 53
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that many believers have never slowed down long enough to notice.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: He watches Jesus surrounded by the sick. He watches healing happen,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and then he tells us why that scene matters. In
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the next part, we are going to read Matthew 8.16-17 closely,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and right in the middle of it, I want to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: stop teaching for a moment and pray specifically for the
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: sickness you are facing now. Father, in the name of Jesus,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I want to pray right now for the person listening
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: who is sick. You know exactly where they are. You
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: know whether they are lying in bed, sitting in a
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: hospital room, waiting for a scan. recovering from surgery, sitting
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: in an infusion chair, trying to manage chronic pain, or
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: quietly carrying a diagnosis they have not even told many
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: people about. You know the place in their body that hurts,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: what the doctors have said. You know the fear that
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: rises when the room gets quiet, the question they may
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: be afraid to ask. Lord, are you still willing to
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: heal me? So I bring them before you now, Lord Jesus.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: You are the one who moved toward the sick. You
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: are the one who touched lepers. You are the one
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: who opened blind eyes. You are the one who restored
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: strength to broken bodies. So I ask you, in your mercy,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: touch this person. Where there is pain, bring relief. where
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: there is inflammation bring healing, where there is infection strengthen
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the body to fight it, where there are damaged nerves
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: bring restoration, where joints are failing bring strength. Where breathing
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: is difficult, make room for breath. Where the heart is weak,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: sustain it. Where cells are growing destructively, bring order. Where
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the immune system is attacking what it should protect, bring balance.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Where something remains hidden from doctors, bring clarity. Give wisdom
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to every physician. Give precision to every surgeon. Give attentiveness
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: to every nurse. Let the right diagnosis be found. Let
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the right treatment be chosen. Protect this person from unnecessary
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: complications and confusion. And Father, if you choose to heal
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: in a way medicine cannot explain, we ask for that
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: miracle boldly. You are the Lord who heals. Heal the
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: fear that sickness has planted in their mind. Heal the shame.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Heal the thought that says, maybe I am sick because
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: my faith is weak. Heal the thought that says, maybe
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: God has forgotten me. Heal the exhaustion that comes from
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: pretending to be strong for everybody else. Let them know
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: that delayed healing does not mean rejected love. Let them
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: know that unanswered questions do not mean you have abandoned them.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Give them strength for today. Give them peace for tonight.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Give them courage for the next appointment, and let the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: name of Jesus become louder in their heart than the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: name of the disease. Amen. Now open your Bible to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Matthew 8.16-17. If you are taking notes, write that passage
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: down beside Isaiah 53.4-5, because Matthew is about to make
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the connection for us. Matthew writes, When evening came, many
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases. There
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: it is. Matthew watches Jesus physically healing sick people, then
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: reaches backward into Isaiah and says, in effect, this is
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: what Isaiah was talking about. about. That is significant. He
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: does not quote Isaiah 53 while Jesus is giving a
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: sermon about forgiveness. He quotes Isaiah while diseased bodies are
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: being restored. so we cannot simply erase the bodily dimension
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: from Isaiah's language. But neither should we reduce Isaiah 53
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: to a formula that says every believer who quotes the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: verse must be healed immediately. The biblical picture is larger
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: than either extreme. Matthew is showing us something about the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: kingdom of God. When Jesus heals, disease is being confronted,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: affliction is being pushed back, the damage of the fallen
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: world is meeting the authority of the Messiah. Every healing
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: becomes a sign, a preview, a glimpse of what creation
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: looks like when the reign of God begins reclaiming what
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: sin and death have damaged. And notice something else in
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Matthew 8. The sick are brought to Jesus. Some of
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: them may not have been able to come on their own.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Somebody had to carry them. Somebody had to guide them
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: through the crowd. Somebody had to say, we are taking
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: you to Jesus. That matters, because there are seasons when
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: you are strong enough to pray for yourself. And there
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: are seasons when you are not. There are seasons when
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: your faith feels steady. And there are seasons when all
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: you can say is, please pray for me. The Bible
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: does not shame that person. Sometimes faith looks like walking
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: toward Jesus. Sometimes faith looks like allowing somebody else to
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: carry you toward him. That is one reason James will
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: later tell the sick person to call for the elders
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: of the church. Healing prayer was never meant to become
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a private examination where you prove how spiritual you are.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: The body of Christ carries people, prays for people, anoints people,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: stands beside people, and if you are sick right now,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: hear this carefully, you do not have to turn your
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: illness into a performance. You do not have to impress
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: God with how fearless you are. You can tell Him
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the truth. I'm afraid. I'm tired. I do not understand. Lord,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I believe. Help my unbelief. That is still faith. And
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: this is also where we need to say something clearly
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: about medicine. Going to a doctor is not the opposite
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: of trusting God. Taking prescribed medication does not automatically mean
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: you lack faith. Undergoing surgery does not cancel prayer. Seeking
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: another medical opinion does not mean you have abandoned God.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: You can pray over the medicine. You can pray before
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the procedure. You can pray for the surgeon's hands. You
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: can ask God to work through means we understand and
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: also ask Him to work beyond them. medicine is not God,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: but refusing medicine is not proof of faith either. Our
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: confidence remains in the Lord, and now we come to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: the question many believers are carrying underneath everything else. If
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Jesus healed people like this in Matthew, why am I
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: still sick? We are not going to avoid that question.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: The New Testament does not avoid it. There are moments
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: when healing comes immediately. There are moments when believers continue
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: living with weakness. There is resurrection power, and there are
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: still mortal bodies. There is a kingdom already breaking into
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: this world, and there is a fullness we have not
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: yet seen. We are going much deeper into that when
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: we reach Romans 8.11. But before we get there, Mark
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: introduces us to a woman who knew what it felt
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: like to seek help for years and still become worse.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Twelve years of suffering and twelve years of disappointment, twelve
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: years of wondering if anything would ever change, and when
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: she finally reaches Jesus, she does not arrive looking strong.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: She comes trembling. Her story is where we discover something
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: many sick believers desperately need to hear. Faith does not
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: always look powerful. Sometimes faith is simply reaching for Jesus
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: with the little strength you have left. That is exactly
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: what we see in Mark 5. If you are taking notes,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: write down Mark 5.25-34. The story begins with a sentence
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: that would have felt painfully familiar to anyone who has
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: lived with a long-term illness. A woman was there who
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. Long enough
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: for sickness to become part of how other people know you.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Long enough for hope to rise and collapse over and
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: over again. Long enough to forget what normal used to
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: feel like. And Mark does not soften what happened next.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Verse 26 says, She had suffered a great deal under
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the care of many doctors and had spent all she had,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. She sought help,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: went to doctors, spent money, endured treatment, and she got worse.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: There is nothing in the text suggesting that Jesus condemns
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: her for seeking medical care. Nothing. Her problem was not
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: that she had visited physicians. Her tragedy was that after
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: twelve years of searching, nobody had been able to make
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: her whole. Some of you know what that feels like.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: You have a folder filled with medical records. You know
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: laboratory ranges you never wanted to learn. You know which
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: medication caused which side effect. You know what it feels
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: like to tell your history to another specialist from the beginning.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: You have heard... We want to try one more thing.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And maybe every time somebody suggests something new, part of
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: you hopes while another part protects itself from disappointment. Because
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: hope can become exhausting when you have been disappointed often enough.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: But this woman was carrying another burden that modern readers
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: can easily miss. Under the purity laws, Described in Leviticus 15,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: prolonged bleeding carried serious consequences for participation in the life
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: of Israel. This was not merely a private medical problem.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: It affected touch, community, worship, relationships. Her illness had a
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: social dimension. Imagine living 12 years, feeling as though your
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: body has placed a boundary between you and everybody else.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Some illnesses still do that. Maybe yours has changed how
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: often you leave home. Maybe you cannot sit through church anymore.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe you have stopped accepting invitations because you never know
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: how your body will feel. Maybe people stopped asking because
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: you cancelled too many times. Illness can shrink a person's world,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and after enough time you can begin wondering whether you
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: are becoming invisible. Then Mark says something changed. Verse 27,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: when she heard about Jesus, that is where her movement begins.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: She heard. Somebody had been talking about him. Maybe she
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: heard about a leper being cleansed. Maybe she heard about
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: a paralytic standing up. Maybe word had reached her that
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: this teacher did something more than teach. Whatever she heard
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: was enough to make her move. She comes up behind
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Jesus in the crowd and touches his garment because she
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: says to herself, If I just touch his clothes, I
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: will be healed. And immediately, Mark tells us, the bleeding stops.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: She knows in her body that something has changed. But
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: then Jesus stops. Who touched my clothes? And the disciples
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: almost sound confused. They are surrounded by a crowd pressing
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: against him. Everybody is touching Jesus, but Jesus knows that
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: something different has happened, and eventually the woman comes forward.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Mark 5.33 says she comes trembling with fear. Do not
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: miss that. She has just been healed, and she is trembling.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: That means trembling and faith can exist in the same person.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Fear and faith are not always mutually exclusive. Somebody listening
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: to this needs that sentence because maybe you have been
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: measuring your faith by how afraid you feel. You wake
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: up anxious and think, a person with real faith would
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: not feel this. You cry before the appointment and think,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I must not trust God enough. You hear the word
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: cancer or surgery or progression and your stomach drops. Then
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: you feel guilty for being frightened. But this woman reached
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Jesus while carrying fear. She was trembling when she came
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: before him. And Jesus does not say, Come back when
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: you are more confident, as he calls her daughter. That
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: word matters. Mark 5.34 Daughter, your faith has healed you.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. daughter.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Before Jesus talks about her faith, he speaks to her identity.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: After twelve years of being defined by what was wrong
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: with her body, Jesus gives her a relational name. Daughter,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: not problem, not unclean woman, not difficult case, not chronic patient,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: a daughter, and perhaps this is one of the healings
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: you need even before your body changes. You need to
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: stop allowing your diagnosis to become your deepest name. You
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: may have diabetes. You are not diabetes. You may have cancer.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: You are not cancer. You may live with chronic pain.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: You are not chronic pain. Your condition may describe something
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: happening in your body. It does not have the authority
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: to define your identity before God. Now notice what Jesus
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: says next. Your faith has healed you. This verse has
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes been used in ways that crush sick people. People
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: hear it and conclude, If I am not healed, then
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I must not have enough faith. But look at the woman.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Her faith is not presented as some flawless inner certainty.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Her faith is movement toward Jesus. She hears, comes, reaches, trembles,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: and she tells him the whole truth. Faith is not
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: a spiritual force she manufactures to control an outcome. Faith
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: is trust directed toward a person. That distinction matters enormously.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: The power was not in her hand. The power was
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: not hidden in Jesus' clothing as though the fabric were magical.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Her hand was simply reaching toward the one who had
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: authority to heal. And that is why you can pray
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and when your confidence feels small. You do not need
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: enormous faith in your own faith. You need a faithful Christ.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Do you see the difference? There are days when you
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: may feel strong enough to say, I know God is
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: going to carry me through this. And there may be
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: days when all you can pray is, Jesus, help me.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Reach any way to pray anyway. Ask others to carry
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: you when you cannot carry yourself. Come trembling if you must,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: because trembling hands can still reach for Christ. And this
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: woman's story is about to connect with something Paul says
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: that takes healing far beyond one moment in a crowded street.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: The woman in Mark 5 experienced power in her mortal body.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: But years later, Paul would write about the Spirit who
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: raised Jesus from the dead dwelling inside believers, and he
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: would specifically mention their mortal bodies, because that verse is
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: going to force us to face the question we have
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: been postponing. How can resurrection power already be present in
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: us while our bodies are still vulnerable to sickness, aging,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and death? Paul answers that question with one of the
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: most extraordinary sentences in Romans. And if the Spirit of
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: He who raised Christ from the dead will also give
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: lives in you. the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: from the dead. Paul is not talking about inspiration. He
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: is not talking about positive thinking, but resurrection. The same
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Holy Spirit involved in raising the crucified body of Jesus
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: from death now dwells in the believer. Think about what
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Christians are claiming when we say that. The spirit dwelling
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in you is not intimidated by a hospital room. He
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: is not frightened by failing organs. He is not overwhelmed
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: by the word terminal. He has already been present at
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: the defeat of death itself. But there is one word
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: in Romans 8.11 that we cannot skip. Mortal. Paul does
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: not say the Spirit lives in bodies that have already
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: become immortal. He says He lives in your mortal body,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: a body that gets tired, a body that can become sick,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: a body that ages, a body that may need medication,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: a body that one day, unless Christ returns first, will die.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: and yet God places resurrection life inside mortality. That is
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the tension Christians live in. Resurrection power is already here.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Complete resurrection is still coming. If you miss either side,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: you can seriously distort Christian healing. If you only emphasize
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: what is coming later, you may begin praying as though
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: God never intervenes in bodies now. But if you only
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: emphasize what what is available now, you may begin acting
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: as though believers should already experience everything promised in the resurrection.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Paul refuses both extremes. Keep reading Romans 8 verse 18
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: speaks about our present sufferings, so apparently people filled with
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the Spirit still suffer. Then Romans 8 23 says something
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: even more revealing. Paul says believers who have the firstfruits
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: of the Spirit, still groan inwardly as we wait eagerly
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: There is the missing piece if we have the Spirit
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: and we groan, we possess the firstfruits and we wait,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: we experience God's power, and our bodies still need redemption.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: That word, firstfruits, would have been immediately meaningful in an
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: agricultural world. The firstfruits were the beginning of the harvest.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: They were real. You could touch them, taste them, hold them.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: But they were not the entire harvest. They were evidence
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: that more was coming, that gives us a beautiful way
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to understand healing in the present age. When God heals
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: a body now, we can receive it as a firstfruit,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: a preview. a sign of the coming harvest, when pain disappears,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: when strength returns, when disease retreats, when something changes that
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: doctors did not expect, we praise God. Not because that
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: person has somehow escaped mortality forever, but because for one
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful moment the future has reached backward into the present.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: The kingdom of has given us a glimpse of what
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: resurrection will ultimately do completely. Remember the woman from Mark 5.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Her bleeding stopped. That was real healing. But she was
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: still mortal. Remember Lazarus. Jesus called him out of the grave.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: That was real resurrection power. But Lazarus was not yet
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: experiencing the final resurrection Paul describes elsewhere. He would eventually
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: face death again. Those miracles were not fake because they
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: were temporary. They were signs pointing towards something permanent. And
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: that changes the way we pray. We can ask for
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the firstfruits, Lord. Let the coming kingdom break into this
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: body now. Let there be healing now. Let there be
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: restoration now. Let there be strength now. But if healing
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: does not arrive in the way or timing we ask,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: we do not conclude that resurrection has failed. The harvest
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: is still coming. Your Romans material captures this tension well.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: The Spirit is described as God's indwelling presence who strengthens
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: believers through present struggles. And Romans 8.26 specifically says, the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Spirit helps us in our weakness when we do not
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: even know how to pray. Notice that Paul does not
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: say the Spirit mocks our weakness. He helps our weakness.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: That may be one of the most comforting healing passages
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: you never thought of as a healing passage. Romans 8.26.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: The Spirit helps us in our weakness. There may be
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: nights when you cannot produce an impressive prayer. Pain has
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: worn you down. Medication has made it difficult to concentrate.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: Fear has exhausted you. Maybe all that comes out is
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: a groan. Paul says, God understands even that. The Holy
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Spirit is not waiting for you to become strong enough
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: before He comes near. He meets you in weakness. Your
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: existing Romans teaching makes the same point. Life in the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: Spirit does not mean believers never struggle. It means they
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: are not abandoned inside the struggle. And now something else
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: in Romans 8 becomes incredibly personal. Near the end of
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: the chapter... Paul asks what could separate us from the
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: love of Christ trouble hardship persecution And then in Romans 8.38-39,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: he declares that neither death nor life, the present nor
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the future, nor anything else in creation can separate us
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Do you
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: see what that means for the person who is sick?
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Your healing matters, but your security with God does not
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: depend upon whether your body changes tomorrow. If the scan improves,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: you are loved. If treatment takes longer than expected, you
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: are loved. If healing comes suddenly, you are loved. If
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: you are still waiting six months from now, you are loved.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Sickness cannot separate you from Christ. Cancer cannot separate you
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: from Christ. Chronic pain cannot separate you from Christ. A
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: failing body cannot separate you from Christ. Even death cannot
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: separate you from Christ. Because the spirit living inside your
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: mortal body is a promise that mortality itself does not
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: get the last word. And this is where the healing
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: story becomes much larger than one disease. God is not
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: merely repairing a few broken pieces before death eventually wins anyway.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: He intends to redeem the body completely. That is why
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Christian hope can look at a grave and still speak
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: about resurrection. And it is why we can pray boldly
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: for healing today without making cruel accusations against the person
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: who is still waiting. We are people living between firstfruits
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and harvest, between Christ's resurrection and our resurrection, between the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: kingdom that has already arrived and the kingdom that will
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: one day be seen without opposition. So speak Romans 8.11
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: over your life, not as though you are commanding God
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: to obey you. Speak it as a confession of who
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: lives in you. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: dead dwells in me. And then remember what Paul says,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: when weakness remains, the Spirit helps you there too. But
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: notice what God does next in Scripture. He does not
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: leave the sick believer alone with a verse and tell
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: them to fight privately. James gives an instruction that is
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: almost impossible to obey in isolation. If anyone among you
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: is sick, Call the elders, bring oil, gather believers, pray.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: And that is our next verse, because James 5 is
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: going to show us that biblical healing prayer was never
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: designed to be a lonely battle between you and your diagnosis.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: In James 5.14-16 he asks, Is anyone among you sick?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Let them call the elders of the church to pray
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: over them and anoint them with oil in the name
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: of the Lord. What strikes me first is how ordinary
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the instruction sounds. James does not tell the sick person
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: to disappear into a room and somehow produce enough faith
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: to fix the problem alone. He tells them to call someone.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: He brings sickness out of isolation and into the praying community.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: That may sound simple until you have actually lived with
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: illness for a long time. In the beginning, people usually
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: check on you often. They ask how the appointment went.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: They send messages. They tell you they are praying. But
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: when a sickness becomes chronic, months can pass, sometimes years,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: and eventually you get tired of explaining yourself. You get
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: tired of answering the same questions. You may even stop
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: telling people when things get worse because you do not
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: want to feel like the person who always has bad news.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: Little by little, sickness can shrink your world until you
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: are carrying not only pain in your body, but also
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: the strange loneliness of feeling that nobody really knows what
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: the last week has been like. James speaks directly into
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: that kind of isolation. Call the elders. Bring other believers
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: into this. Let mature people in the church stand with you,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: pray over you, listen to you, and carry some of
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: the spiritual weight with you. This fits the larger message
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: of James, because throughout his letter he refuses to let
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: faith remain something private and theoretical. Faith has to move.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: It has to become visible. It has to take shape
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: in real relationships and real actions. That practical insistence runs
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: through the entire book. Do not merely hear the word.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Do what it says. Here in chapter 5, that same
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: principle enters the room of the sick person. Believers do
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: not merely say, We believe God heals. They gather, they pray,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: they anoint, and they remain present— James then mentions oil,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: and Christians have discussed that detail for centuries. Some have
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: seen a medicinal dimension in it, others a symbolic act
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: of consecration, and still others a sign of setting the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: sick person apart before God in prayer. We do not
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: need to settle every later debate in order to see
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: the central point. James says the anointing is done in
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the name of the Lord. The oil is not the healer.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: The elder is not the healer. The atmosphere in the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: room is not the healer. The hope is centered in
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: God himself. That matters because human beings can turn almost
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: anything into a technique. We can do it with oil.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: with certain phrases, with particular preachers, with locations, with objects,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: even with the way we think a prayer should sound.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Before long, our confidence quietly shifts from the Lord to
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: the method. James does not allow that. The elders pray,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: they anoint, but everything remains centered on the Lord. Then
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: verse 15 says, and the prayer offered in faith will
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: make the sick person well. The Lord will raise them up.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: That last phrase deserves our attention. The Lord will raise
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: them up. Prayer matters. Faith matters. The obedience of the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: church matters. But James is still pointing beyond all of
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: those things to the Lord himself. And this is where
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the difficult question comes in. What do we do with
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the fact that faithful Christians have prayed exactly this way
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: and sometimes remain sick? We should not weaken James simply
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: because the question is uncomfortable. He clearly expects Christians to
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: pray for healing with real confidence. He does not treat
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: it as an empty ritual. At the same time, nothing
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: in this passage gives us permission to turn around and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: accuse a sick person when healing does not come according
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: to our timetable. In fact, the movement of the passage
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: goes the other direction. James places the sick person inside
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: a The church should not back away and say, you
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: must not have believed enough. The church should come closer,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: keep praying, bring meals, drive them to appointments when help
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: is needed, sit with the family, help carry practical burdens,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: listen when discouragement sets in, keep believing with them without
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: pretending to know what God has not revealed. James has
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: already told us what empty religion looks like. In chapter 2,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: he gives the example of seeing a brother or sister
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: without food or clothing and offering kind words while doing
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: nothing about the need. His point is that genuine faith
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: becomes visible in action, so if we pray for a
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: sick person and then disappear while they struggle alone— We
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: have missed something central to the kind of faith James
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: is describing. Then verse 16 adds another layer, Therefore confess
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: your sins to each other, and pray for each other,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: so that you may be healed. This needs to be
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: handled carefully, because some believers have heard verses like this
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: and immediately started wondering, What did I do to cause
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: this illness? James is not giving us permission to assume
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: that every sickness can be traced to one specific personal sin.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Scripture is much more careful than that. What James does
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: is bring the whole person before God. The body matters,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: but so does the conscience. Relationships matter, forgiveness matters, what
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: has been hidden matters. He refuses to treat healing as
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: though God were only interested in repairing one physical problem
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: while leaving every other part of a person untouched. Sometimes
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: sickness has a way of revealing how much energy we
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: have spent on things that suddenly seem very small. A
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: grudge carried for ten years can look different when you
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: are waiting for a biopsy result. Pride can lose some
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: of its attraction in a hospital gown. an apology you
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: kept postponing can begin to feel urgent. If God gives
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: you another 20 years, you may realize you do not
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: want to spend them carrying the same bitterness you carried
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: into this season. That is not because confession earns healing.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: It is because biblical restoration is larger than the removal
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: of one's symptom. James is inviting the sick person into
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: honesty before God. and honesty within the community of faith.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Pray for the body, yes, but do not close the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: heart while asking God to restore the life. So think
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: about your own situation for a moment. If you have
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: been fighting sickness privately, is there someone mature and trustworthy
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: who needs to know what you are carrying? Not someone
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: who will make dramatic promises God has not made. Not
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: someone who will shame you if the answer does not
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: come quickly. someone who can pray with faith and still
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: be there next week, someone who knows how to open Scripture,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: sit quietly when there are no easy answers, and help
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: you carry the practical weight of what you are facing.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: You do not need an audience. You need people who
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: know how to stand beside you. And that is also
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: why sharing biblical truth with someone who is sick can
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: become an act of ministry. You may know someone whose
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: world has become very small because of illness. Sending them
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: this teaching, calling them afterward, praying with them, visiting them,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: asking what they actually need, that is more than passing
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: along a video. You may become part of the way
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: God reminds them that they have not been abandoned. Think
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: about the pattern we have been following. In Matthew, people
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: brought the sick to Jesus. In Mark, A trembling woman
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: reached toward him with the little strength she had left.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: In Romans, Paul says, The Spirit helps us in our weakness.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Now James shows the church gathering around the sick person
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: and praying. God keeps dismantling isolation. But before we move
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: toward the final promise of restoration, there is one more
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: question we need to face. What do we do with
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that God is able to do far beyond—
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: what we can ask or imagine, while we still have
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: to surrender the outcome to Him. That is where Ephesians 3.20
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: takes us next, because Paul is about to give us
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: language for enormous faith without turning faith into control. Section
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: 10 The Lies Sickness Can Teach You About God Some
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: of the deepest wounds around healing do not come from
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: the disease itself. They come from what people begin to
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: believe the disease means. A diagnosis arrives, and almost immediately
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: the mind starts searching for an explanation. Why did this
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: happen to me? Did I do something wrong? Is God
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: correcting me? Did I fail to pray enough? Is there
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: some principle everybody else understands that I have somehow missed?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: If you have spent years hearing that every Christian with
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: sufficient faith should always be healed quickly, then every day
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: you remain sick can start feeling like evidence against your
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: own spiritual life. The illness is already painful, but now
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: guilt has been added to it. One of the first
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: lies we need to confront is the idea that if
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: your faith was strong enough, you would already be healed.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Go back to the people we have already met. The
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: woman in Mark 5 came to Jesus trembling. Romans 8
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: describes believers who possess the Spirit and still groan while
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: they wait for the redemption of their bodies. James does
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: not tell the sick person to prove how spiritually strong
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: they are. He tells them to call other believers around
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: them and receive prayer. None of those passages presents faith
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: as a state in which fear, weakness, pain, or uncertainty
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: simply disappear. Faith is not the absence of weakness. It
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: is the direction you turn while you are weak. You
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: can be frightened and still trust Christ. You can cry
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: before an appointment and still trust Christ. You can wake
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night wondering what the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: next scan will show and still trust Christ. You can
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: ask God the same question for the hundredth time and
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: still be walking in faith. The person who says, Lord,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: I am afraid, but I am bringing my fear to you,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: maybe showing more genuine trust than someone who has simply
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: learned how to sound confident in front of other people.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Another idea that needs to be corrected is the belief
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: that acknowledging symptoms somehow gives sickness power. Some Christians become
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: afraid to say, I am hurting. because they have been
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: told that speaking honestly about their condition is the same
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: as agreeing with it, but Scripture does not teach faith
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: as denial. Bartimaeus did not approach Jesus pretending he could see.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: The sick people brought to Jesus were not hiding their illnesses.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: James does not say, if anyone among you is sick,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: refuse to acknowledge it. He tells them to call the
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: elders and pray. There is a difference between allowing fear
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: to dominate everything you say and simply telling the truth
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: about what is happening. If something hurts, you can say
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: it hurts. If the treatment has been difficult, you can
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: admit that. If you are frightened, you can say so
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: without believing that fear has suddenly cancelled faith. Your diagnosis
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: may be true, but it is not sovereign. A doctor
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: may accurately describe what is happening in your body without
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: having the authority to define the meaning of your life,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: the extent of God's love, or the final outcome of
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: your story. Then there is another thought that often appears quietly,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: God must be punishing me. We have to be careful here.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: Scripture certainly speaks about divine discipline, so we should not
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: pretend that God never corrects His children, but it is
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: equally dangerous to look at every sickness and confidently decide
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: why it happened. Jesus challenged that instinct in John 9
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: when His disciples saw a man who had been blind
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: from birth and immediately asked who had sinned, the man
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: or his parents. Their first response to suffering was to
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: assign blame. Jesus refused their simple explanation. That should make
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: us much more humble when we stand beside somebody who
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: is sick. There may be things God wants to expose
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: or change in us during suffering. James has already shown
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: us that confession, honesty, and restored relationships belong in the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: life of faith. But that is very different from telling
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: a sick person, this happened because you sinned, when God
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: has not revealed that. Sometimes faithfulness means refusing to explain
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: what God has not explained. You can search your heart
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: without condemning yourself. You can pray, Lord, if there is
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: anything you want to teach me in this season, show me,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: without turning that into, I must have caused this. Perhaps
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: the hardest lie of all comes when the suffering lasts
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: longer than you expected. If God really loved me, he
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: would not let me go through this. That thought rarely
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: arrives as a formal theological argument. It usually comes late
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: at night, after another setback, or after hearing that somebody
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: else received the answer you have been praying for. you
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: may genuinely rejoice for them, and still feel something painful
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: rising underneath. Why them and not me? That is not
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: a question we should shame people for asking. Romans 8
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: speaks into exactly that kind of uncertainty. Paul does not
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: prove the love of God by promising believers a life
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: without suffering. Instead, He points them to Christ and declares
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: that trouble, hardship, danger, and even death cannot separate them
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: from the love of God. That means suffering cannot be
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: trusted as a measuring instrument for divine love. If you
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: judge God's love only by how comfortable your life feels,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: every painful season will make him seem distant. Paul gives
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you another place to look, the cross, Christ given for you,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: the Spirit dwelling within you, and a love from which
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: even death cannot separate you. That does not make sickness pleasant,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: and it does not mean you should stop asking for healing.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: It simply means the disease does not have the authority
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: to interpret God for you. Cancer cannot tell you whether
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: God loves you. Chronic pain cannot tell you whether you
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: have been abandoned. A failing body cannot tell you whether
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: your life still has value. Those conclusions belong to God,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: not to the illness. So what does this look like
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: tomorrow morning? It means you stop treating healing like a
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: spiritual performance. You do not wake up trying to prove
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: to God that you believe hard enough. You return to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: the scriptures because fear forgets quickly. When your soul starts
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: convincing you that God has never helped you, go back
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: to Psalm 103 and remember his benefits. When weakness makes
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: you feel abandoned, return to Romans 8. When isolation starts
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: closing around you, remember James 5. and let trustworthy believers
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: come near. When the future looks smaller than your fear,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: return to Ephesians 3 and remember that God is able
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: to do beyond what you can see. It also means
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: you approach medical care with wisdom instead of suspicion. Prepare
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: questions before your appointments. Take someone with you if you
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: know anxiety makes it difficult to remember what the doctor says.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Ask for clarification when you do not understand something. Follow
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: sound treatment plans and seek appropriate second opinions when necessary.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: Pray before the appointment. Pray after the appointment. And do
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: not create a false war between medical wisdom and trust
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: in God. At the same time, pay attention to what
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: this season is doing inside you. Has fear started controlling
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: your imagination? Have you withdrawn from everybody because you are
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: tired of explaining yourself? Has bitterness begun settling into places
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: where hope used to live? Is there someone you need
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: to forgive or someone you finally need to ask for help?
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: Suffering has a strange way of exposing what we normally
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: keep hidden. And while we should never romanticize pain, we
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: also do not want to become so focused on the
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: body that we miss what God may be restoring in
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: the heart. That kind of careful contextual reading is also
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: why we created the Deep Bible Stories membership. We go
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: book by book and chapter by chapter because sometimes what
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: a hurting believer needs is not another emotional promise but
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: but a clearer understanding of what Scripture actually says. When
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: the Word is allowed to speak in context, faith becomes steadier, deeper,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: and much harder for fear to manipulate. And now we
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: arrive at something even larger than the question of whether
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: God heals you tomorrow. Because even if He does, even
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: if the scan changes and the pain disappears and strength returns,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: Your body will still one day need something greater than healing.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: It will need resurrection. That is why our tenth and
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: final passage comes from the end of the biblical story.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: Revelation 21.4 takes us beyond treatment, beyond recovery, beyond another
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: good report, into the day when God does not simply
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: remove one disease from one body. He removes the world
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: in which disease and death have any place at all.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the hardest part of sickness is not the pain itself.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: It is what you begin to believe the pain means.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: A diagnosis can arrive, and almost immediately your mind starts
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: trying to explain it. Why did this happen to me?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Did I do something wrong? Is God correcting me? Did
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I fail to pray enough? Did I miss some hidden
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: principle everyone else seems to understand? And if someone has
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: already told you that every Christian with enough faith should
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: always be healed immediately, then every day you remain sick
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: can begin to feel like evidence against you. That is
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: a terrible burden to place on a person who is
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: already suffering. So we need to separate several lies and
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: from what Scripture actually says. One of the most damaging
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: is this, if my faith was strong enough, I would
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: already be healed. Think about where we have been. The
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: woman in Mark 5 came to Jesus trembling. Romans 8
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: describes believers as people who still groan while possessing the Spirit.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: James tells the sick person to call other believers around
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: them rather than pretending to be spiritually self-sufficient. None of
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: those passages presents faith as a state where fear, weakness, pain,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: or uncertainty disappear. Faith is not the absence of weakness.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Faith is where you turn in weakness and there is
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: a difference. You can be afraid and still trust Christ.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: You can cry and still trust Christ. You can ask
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: God the same question again tomorrow and still trust Christ.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: You can walk into a medical appointment with your stomach
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: in knots and still trust Christ. The person who has
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: convinced themselves that nothing frightens them is not automatically walking
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: in greater faith than the person who says, Lord, I
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: am afraid, but I am coming to you with my fear.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Another lie sounds spiritual but can become just as destructive.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: If I speak about my symptoms, I'm agreeing with the disease.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: That idea can force people into pretending there is a
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: difference between allowing fear to dominate your speech and simply
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: telling the truth. Bartimaeus did not approach Jesus pretending he
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: could see. He cried out because he was blind. The
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: people who brought the sick to Jesus did not deny
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: that sickness existed. James did not say, if anyone among
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: you is sick, do not acknowledge it. He said, call
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: the elders. Biblical faith does not require dishonesty. If something hurts,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: you can say it hurts. If you are frightened, you
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: can admit you are frightened. If treatment has been difficult,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: you can say it has been difficult. The question is
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: not whether you acknowledge reality. The question is whether that
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: reality becomes the highest authority in your heart. Your diagnosis
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: can be true without being sovereign. That distinction can protect
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: you from two extremes. You do not have to deny
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: what the doctor sees, and you do not have to
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: believe the doctor has the final word about the meaning
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: of your life. Then there is another lie— one that
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: often hides beneath guilt, God must be punishing me. Now
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: there are places in Scripture where God disciplines His people,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: and we should never become so uncomfortable with that idea
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: that we remove it from the Bible. But it is
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: equally unbiblical to look at every sickness and assume we
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: know why it happened. Jesus confronted that kind of thinking directly.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: In John 9, The disciples saw a man who had
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: been blind from birth and immediately wanted an explanation. Who sinned,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: Do you hear what they are doing? They see suffering
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: and begin assigning blame. Jesus refuses their categories. That should
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: make us very careful when we stand beside someone who
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: is sick. There may be moments when when suffering exposes
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: something in us that God wants to address. James has
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: already shown us the importance of confession and honesty, but
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: that is very different from telling a person, you are
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: sick because you sinned, when God has not told us that.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is refuse
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: to explain what God has not explained. You can pray
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: without pretending to know why. You can search your heart
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: without condemning yourself. You can ask, Lord, is there anything
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: you want to teach me here? Without turning that into,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: I must have caused this. And then there is the
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: lie that may be the hardest of all. If God
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: really loved me, he would not let me go through this.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: That one usually does not arrive as a theological argument.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: It comes late at night. It comes after another setback.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: It comes when you hear about someone else receiving the
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: answer you prayed for. You are happy for them, but
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: somewhere inside you another question whispers, Why them and not me?
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: That question can hurt, but Romans 8 speaks directly into it.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: Paul does not prove God's love by pointing to a
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: painless life. He points to Christ. He says, in effect,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: if you want to know whether God loves you, look
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: at what He has already given. Then Paul names trouble, hardship, danger,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: and even death, and says none of these things can
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: That means suffering cannot be allowed to become your measuring
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: instrument for divine love. If you measure God's love only
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: by how comfortable your life feels, then every painful season
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: will make him appear distant. Paul gives you a different
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: measurement of the cross, Christ given for you, the Spirit
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: dwelling in you, a love from which even death cannot
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: separate you. This does not make sickness pleasant. It gives
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: sickness a boundary. It cannot tell you who God is.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: It cannot tell you what you are worth. It cannot
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: tell you whether you are loved. It does not have
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: that authority. So what do you do tomorrow morning with
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: everything we have uncovered? Start by refusing to turn healing
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: into a performance. You do not need to wake up
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and prove that you believe. You need to live before
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: God honestly. Take the scriptures we have been walking through
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: and keep them where you can return to them, not
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: because repeating them a certain number of times forces an outcome,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: but because fear forgets quickly. Read Psalm 103 when your
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: soul forgets His mercy. Return to Romans 8, when weakness
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: makes you feel abandoned. Pray James 5 with people you trust,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: instead of carrying everything alone. Bring Ephesians 3.20 into your prayers,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: when the future starts looking smaller than God. And when
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: you have a medical appointment, prepare for it wisely. Write
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: down your questions. Take someone with you if you need
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: another set of ears. Ask the doctor to explain what
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: you do not understand. Follow sound medical counsel. Pray before
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: you enter the room, and pray again after you leave.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: There is nothing unspiritual about wisdom. Then pay attention to
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: what sickness is doing inside you, not only what it
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: is doing to your body. Has fear taken over your imagination?
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: Has bitterness started growing? Have you isolated yourself? Is there
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: someone you need to forgive? Is there someone you need
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: to ask for help? Do not waste suffering by allowing
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: it to harden what God wants to soften. And if
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: this kind of teaching is helping you recover a deeper,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: steadier way of reading Scripture, that is exactly what we
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: do inside the Deep Bible Stories membership. We go slowly
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: through the text, chapter by chapter, because sometimes the difference
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: between fear and faith is not another emotional sermon. Sometimes
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: it is finally seeing what the Bible actually says in context.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: There is one final truth we still have to face.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Even if God heals you tomorrow, your body will still
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: one day need something greater than healing. It will need resurrection.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: That is why our tenth and final passage does not
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: come from another healing scene in the Gospels. It comes
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: from the end of the Bible. Revelation 21.4 takes us
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: beyond treatment, beyond recovery, beyond another good scan, into the
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: day when God does not merely heal another disease. He
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: removes the world in which disease can exist at all.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: That is where Revelation 21.4 takes us. John sees a
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: renewed creation, and he hears this promise. He will wipe
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: every tear from their eyes. There will be no more
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: order of things has passed away. Notice how final that
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: language is. John does not say there will be less pain.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: He does not say disease will become easier to manage.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: He does not describe better hospitals, stronger medicine, or longer
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: life expectancy. He sees the end of the entire order
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: in which bodies decay, people suffer, and graves keep receiving
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: the people we love. This is why Revelation 21 belongs
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: in a teaching about healing. If we only talk about
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: healing as something that may happen to your body this week,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: we have not yet reached the full biblical promise. Every
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: healing Jesus performed pointed beyond itself. Every fever that broke,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: every blind eye that opened, Every crippled body that stood upright,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: every person restored to community, was a sign that the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: kingdom of God was confronting a world that had gone
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: terribly wrong. But those people still lived inside the old
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: order John is describing. They still aged. Their bodies were
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: still mortal. Eventually, even those who had experienced extraordinary miracles
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: came to the end of earthly life. Revelation shows us
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: where all those signs were pointing. There is coming a
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: day when God will not merely postpone death, He will
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: remove it. There is coming a day when pain will
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: not have to be managed, because pain will have no
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: place in the renewed creation. There will be no family
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: sitting beside a hospital bed trying to decide what to
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: do next. No phone call in the middle of the night.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: No scan that changes the direction of a life. No
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: child watching a parent grow weaker. No husband or wife
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: learning how to live alone after decades together. John says
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: the old order passes away. And perhaps the most tender
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: part of the verse comes before any of that. He
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: will wipe every tear from their eyes. God does not
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: merely remove the causes of sorrow from a distance. John
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: describes Him personally attending to the tears of His people.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: That image tells you something about the God we have
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: been seeking throughout this entire journey. The Lord who revealed
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: himself as healer at Mara is the same God who,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: at the end of the story, comes near enough to
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: wipe tears away. That matters when you are praying for
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: healing now, because sometimes people talk about future resurrection as
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: though it were a consolation prize. Well, maybe God will
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: not heal you here. But at least one day everything
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: will be fine. That can sound terribly cold when someone
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: is actually suffering. Biblical resurrection hope is not God saying
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: your present pain does not matter. It is God saying
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: your present pain matters so much that he intends to
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: destroy everything that causes it. The Christian answer to sickness
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: is not that bodies are unimportant. It is exactly the opposite.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: Bodies matter so much to God that salvation does not
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: end with disembodied souls escaping the earth. The biblical story
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: moves toward resurrection and renewed creation. God does not abandon
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: His creation to corruption. He restores it. Now this helps
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: us understand something we have been building toward from the beginning.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: When we pray for healing today, We are asking God
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  Speaker 1: for a foretaste of what he has promised completely in
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: the future. When a person is healed now, we rejoice
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: because something of that future restoration has appeared in the present.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: But when someone is not healed in the way we asked,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: we do not say the promise has failed. The complete
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: promise was always larger than one present recovery. That is
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: why I want you to hold two prayers together. The
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: first is bold. Lord, heal me now. There is nothing
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: wrong with that prayer. We have spent this entire teaching
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: seeing why you can pray it confidently. The second is deeper. Lord,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: whatever happens between this moment and resurrection, do not let
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: me lose sight of where the story ends. Those two
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: prayers belong together. You can ask for another 20 years
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: and still know that 20 years is not the ultimate hope.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: You can ask for the cancer to disappear and still
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: know that even a cancer-free body remains mortal. You can
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: pray for mobility to return, for pain to leave, for
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: the heart to grow stronger, for the lungs to clear,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: and still understand that the final victory is not merely
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: returning your body to how it was five years ago.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: The final victory is resurrection. This changes how you live
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: while you wait. Tomorrow morning, do not begin by trying
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: to work yourself into an emotional state where you feel
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: certain something dramatic must happen. Begin by placing yourself inside
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: the larger story. Read the passages we have walked through slowly.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: Let Exodus remind you who God revealed himself to be.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: Let Psalm 103 teach your soul to remember. Let Isaiah
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: show you the wounded servant. Let Matthew remind you that
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: Jesus moved towards sick bodies. Let Mark show you that
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: trembling faith can still reach for him. Let Romans remind
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: you that resurrection power already dwells in mortal people. Let
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: James push you out of isolation. Let Ephesians enlarge your
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: expectation without turning God into someone you can control. Then
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: let Revelation tell you where every one of those threads
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: is going. and keep receiving the forms of help God
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: has placed around you. Go to the appointment. Take the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: medication you have been properly prescribed. Let people pray for you.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: Let them bring food when you are too tired to cook.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: Let someone sit with you when fear is louder than faith.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: There is no prize for suffering alone. there is also
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: something I want you to stop doing. Stop reading every
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: difficult day as a verdict from God. A bad day
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: does not mean He has abandoned you. A painful night
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: does not mean the prayer failed. A disappointing scan does
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: not erase everything Scripture says about His presence, His love,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: and the future He has promised. We live in the
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: tension between what Christ has already accomplished and what has
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: not yet been fully revealed. And sometimes that tension hurts deeply,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: but tension is not abandonment. If this series has helped
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: you see how one passage opens into another, that is
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: the kind of study we continue inside the Deep Bible
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Stories membership. We slow down enough to see the connections
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: between covenant, prophecy, the ministry of Jesus, the letters of
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the Apostles, and the final restoration of all things, because
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: the Bible becomes much richer when we stop reading its
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: promises as isolated sentences and begin seeing the story they
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: belong to.