We live in the age of the Internet and it is quite an amazing thing. I have more or less grown up with it and even still, I recognize how different the last 15-20 years have been compared to the rest of the history of man. The Internet has brought with it a great many positive and negative things, a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. It has opened up the world to the gospel in a way that would have been unthinkable hundred years ago. People can have direct access to the doctors of the faith at the touch of a button to help them understand the difficulties of Scripture and life. Research and training have become and are becoming drastically simpler.
Of course, opposed to that. There has never been more access to false information and those who would seek to tear down Scripture and Christianity as a whole. Confirmation bias has become all too easy to find. You can find somebody with a degree in something to give just about any position imaginable a form of legitimacy.
We could go back-and-forth with this sort of thing all day. But one of the good things that has happened with the prevalence the of the Internet is that charlatans and hucksters are often quickly unmasked and their message or snake oil they are trying to press on unsuspecting people are debunked. We see this on the small-scale with people trying to sell a miracle weight loss pill or get rich quick scheme and on the large-scale with cults like Scientology and Mormonism that were built on secret knowledge that could only be obtained after years in the organization being unmasked and their ridiculous beliefs all laid out for all to see.
One area of “Christianity” that has thankfully taken a hit because of the exposing nature of the Internet has been that of the charismatic, so-called, faith healers. People who claim to represent Christ and to have the gift of healing like Jesus and the Apostles and go around holding events that supposedly involve miraculous healings taking place. Though they might have taken a hit, they do still keep on going with men like Benny Hinn making millions of dollars a year. The fact that they are still out there and still very prevalent means that it is something we should be aware of and have an understanding of in order to respond to it biblically.
Why is it worth taking time to understand these claims and be able to respond if there has already been so much done to discredit them? Because despite all that is on the Internet, these charismatic faith healers remain popular around the country and around the world. Untold damage to God’s kingdom has been done by these charlatans and they continue to pull people in, even true Christians, because of their message of hope and the appearance of biblical support. They take verses of the Bible out of context and they build a theology that sounds good, especially to those who want to believe it; but it is a theology that stands in direct contradiction to the truth of God’s Word.
These claims and theologies sound good enough to draw in desperate people, and when it fails to deliver the miracles promised, these people leave thinking Christianity as a whole is nothing but a lie used by con artists to trick people out of their money. They fail to understand that the health and wealth gospel and the true gospel are completely different things.
One of the favorite proof texts for these faith healers is Matthew 8:17 and the verse that it is quoted from in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53:4. They argue that this verse says Jesus came to heal all of our physical ailments, our disease’s, our afflictions, and that as a Christian, because of the atonement of Christ, because of the cross, we should be completely free of them. As with the majority of heresies, there is a kernel of truth at the base which is distorted and taken to a wrong conclusion.
We are going to take some time this morning to unpack these verses and the difference between these wolves and their fake healings and the truth of Scripture and the miracles that we read about in especially the New Testament. Let us read Matthew 8:16-17, our text for this morning, and then will begin to hopefully understand more about this important issue.
“When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: ‘He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.”
I want to first ask if anyone has actually been to a church or an event that included supposedly healing miracles? Can you tell us about your impressions?
Before we get into the text itself, I want to first take a look at these fake healers and their claims to miraculous healings as opposed to the biblical accounts of miracles to demonstrate some clear differences between the two. By being able to see the difference between the biblical account of healing miracles and what these wolves claim to be miracles today will be a will to make a distinction as well. Hopefully these categories will be easy enough to remember in case you ever end up having a conversation on the topic with somebody who believes in these charlatans.
The first category is that New Testament healings did not depend on the faith of the recipient. With so many failed attempts at healings and people who never received their miracle, these faith healers are forced to come up with an excuse as to why. Their reasoning places blame on a lack of faith. Not a lack of their own faith of course, but the faith of those who do not get healed. God fails to heal them because their faith in him is not strong enough.
Their remedies focus on a couple of different things. First these faith healers claim, that you should never pray “if it be your will,” because that just shows doubt that God can do it. They will also point to their “seed faith” theology which teaches that God blesses those who give money to their ministries. If they trust God with their money, he will reward that trust with miracles. And the more you so, the bigger miracle you will reap. In some cases, they will blame sin in the life of the person who fails to be healed, or either their own sin or someone around them.
These principles are nowhere to be found in Scripture. Where the three examples here in Matthew 8 may point to that in some way. We saw last week at the faith of the centurion that made Jesus marvel. But there are countless other instances of people who had no idea who Jesus was and where healed. No way that faith could have played a part. The demoniacs that we will see at the end of this chapter, in verses 28-34 wanted nothing to do with Jesus and yet he healed them. The crippled man beside the pool of Bethesda did not even know who Jesus was until after he had been healed in John 5, and the same for the blind man in John 9. Likewise, multiple healings of the apostles in the book of Acts occurred without the individual knowing anything about Christ.
The second principle difference between the faith healers of today and the miracles of the New Testament is that Jesus and the apostles never performed these miracles for money or fame. Numerous times Jesus healed individuals and then told them not to say anything about how they were healed or who did it. His purpose in healing had nothing to do with spreading his fame. In fact, Jesus makes it clear that his purpose was not to heal but to preach the message of the kingdom such that, as we will see in verse 18, once the crowds became too focused on the healings and miracles, He would leave the area.
The one time Peter was offered money in exchange for healing miracles, he rebuked the man with a rather severe denunciation. In acts 8:20 Peter says “your money perish with you, because you thought that a gift of God could be purchased with money!” This of course flies directly in the face of the faith healers who claim that the more money people give the more they can expect these miraculous healings.
The next major difference is that the New Testament healings were completely successful. None of the healing miracles of Jesus in the Gospels or the apostles in the book of Acts ever failed or were incomplete. We saw the leper being completely cleansed in verse 3, the century and servant who was paralyzed being completely healed, and Peter’s mother-in-law who was too sick to move healed such that she could immediately get up and begin to work. There was never a recovery time or therapy needed. Lepers were completely cleansed, the blind given perfect vision, the lame walking, the death hearing, and the dead restored to life.
Some have argued that Jesus did heal some people in stages such as the blind man in Mark 8, but these rare instances were very obviously done to make a spiritual point to all those who were observing it. Even still, it was 100% complete.
This is in direct opposition to the faith healers of today who even will admit that not all people who “are healed” and up completely healed or that the healing sticks. Many people within the movement will claim that they were healed at one of these events even though the healing took several weeks or months to be fully accomplished.
This leads directly into the next point which is that the New Testament healings were undeniable. Jesus told the leper in verse 4 “go, show yourself to the priests and present the offering that Moses commanded.” Why? Because he wanted this leper and the miracle of him being cleansed to be verified by the priests, an outside source. And those are just in the cases where it was applicable. There was no way to deny regrown limbs, eyes, and ears. There is no way to deny the miracle of someone who is paralyzed being able to walk or the dead being raised after being buried for more than three days in the case of Lazarus.
If you go to one of the faith healing events today what you will see by way of “miracles” are only those invisible ones. Lower back pain, migraines, weaknesses or fevers. Even things like cancer and degenerative diseases are claimed to be “cured.” And though the person may walk around and stand upright, there is no way to verify any of these “miracles” in the moment. In fact, there are numerous accounts of people who are paralyzed, have down syndrome, people who are obviously deformed being turned away from the stage. Never once do you see Jesus with the apostles turning away someone to be healed because there is nothing outside of their power. What does verse 16 say “when evening came, they brought to him many who were demon possessed; and he cast out the spirits of the word, and healed all who were ill.”
Finally, the New Testament healings were done in order to authenticate a true message. And this is where the real importance of this comes in. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles were not the end in and of themselves, they were testaments to the truth of the message that was being preached. That was the intent from the beginning. Jesus said to the skeptical Pharisees “though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the father is in me, and I in him.” You may not believe the words of Jesus by themselves, but you cannot deny the miracles. And if the miracles are real then there has to be something to the message.
When you go to these faith healing events, though the person on stage may quote a few Bible verses, you will never hear the gospel being preached. The message is not one of eternal salvation, of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ on the cross but a message of health and prosperity.
So what about verse 17? How are we to understand Matthew’s statement “this was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “he himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.” Does not that mean that Jesus came to take away sickness, does not that mean we should expect healings? This is the claim of these faith healers. They claim that the atonement, Jesus’s death on the cross came to take away sin, but it was also done in order to take all of our sickness and disease upon himself and that we should expect healing from those in this life in the same way that we should expect forgiveness of sins. That is of course if they mention sin at all.
How do we respond? We first have to look at the statement of Matthew as a whole, not just the quote from Isaiah. “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet.” The primary reason that Jesus healed the sick was because those miracles authenticated his message, but it was not the only reason. Matthew is making it clear in this verse that one of the reasons Jesus healed was to fulfill the predictions about the Messiah from the Old Testament. One of the things of the Messiah would do would be to deal with disease and sickness and that is exactly what Jesus is doing. The promise of the kingdom of heaven in the Old Testament includes a complete elimination of all sickness, all death, all disease, and all sin and Jesus is giving the people a taste of that.
The quote that Matthew gives here is from Isaiah 53. It is an incredibly important chapter in the Old Testament because it is a prediction about the death of Christ. I want to read the context of this verse that Matthew quotes here.
“Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried; yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.”
Notice the focus of this section; our transgressions, our iniquities, our sins. And when it says, “and by his scourging we are healed,” it is not talking about physical healing but the healing of the disease of sin. But does that mean there on related? Not at all. Because when you heal sin, you heal sickness. Sickness, disease is a direct result of sin. They came into creation only after the fall, after Adam and Eve sinned. They are not meant to be part of a sinless world.
The charismatic faith healers argue that there is healing, physical healing in the atonement, in the cross of Christ. And that is true, there is physical healing to be found there, but it is not for now, it is for later. Let me explain how we know that to be true.
When Jesus died on the cross he took away our sin. That is very apparent from this passage in Isaiah 53, it is the main focus. But do you as a Christian still struggle with sin? Jesus dealt with sin, he took it upon himself on the cross, but the fulfillment of that is not yet complete. We are freed from the consequences of sin after death, but not while we are still on this earth. The same is true when we look at death. Death has been defeated Paul writes at the end of first Corinthians, “death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Is death defeated? Yes, but we are still going to die if the Lord does not return beforehand.
Jesus died on the cross to deal with sin, he died on the cross to deal with death, and he died on the cross to deal with disease. But it is completion is still future. There is healing in the atonement, there is deliverance from death and the cross, but just as we are going to have to wait until eternity to be completely free of sin and death, we must also wait to be free from disease, sickness, all of that.
If someone says “Christians should never be sick because there is healing in the atonement.” If they claim you should never have a cold, never have cancer, never have paralysis if you are a true Christian because there is healing in the atonement, then logically they have to say that a Christian should never sin and a Christian should never die and that does not work out too well because apparently there is never been a true Christian in the last 2000 years.
Christ died for our sickness yes, but that was only a byproduct of his primary purpose which was to die for our sins. The good news of the gospel is about forgiveness, not health. Christ was made sin on our behalf, not sickness. What Matthew is pointing to here is the fact that our sickness problem extends from our sin problem and that when Jesus deals with the sin problem, the main problem, the big problem, the cause, then the symptom will be cured as well.
There is healing in the atonement, but it comes to us in the fullness of salvation when our bodies are glorified in his eternal kingdom. By effectively banishing disease and suffering from Galilee by healing all who were brought to him, Jesus was giving a taste of the kingdom, a preview of the kingdom. Someday he will bear our sicknesses away, someday he will carry away all of our infirmities and this was just a taste.
Now you ask, why does not God just take away all the sickness and disease of his followers on this earth? Would not it draw everyone to him? Would not everyone want to be a Christian if as soon as you did all of your suffering came to an end?
That would be great, wouldn’t it? But I think there are a few reasons God has allowed suffering in the form of illness and infirmities to continue. First, they remind us that we live in a world that is dominated by sin. Sickness, disease, infirmity in every kind are a direct result of sin. Sometimes very direct in the sense that our sin leads into consequences like an alcoholic getting liver disease. But even when it is not a direct result of sinful choices, it is all still a result of the sin in the world. Illness and infirmities should continually be a physical reminder of the far more devastating spiritual disease of sin that we still suffer from.
Second, God often uses suffering through illness and the like to draw us closer to him. Both in causing us to depend on him, to come to him regularly in prayer, but also to grow our faith, to perfect our faith so that we can be used for greater things later on. As Peter says at the end of his first epistle “after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” If we lived without disease or suffering, we would not learn to trust God in the way that we should. And though it is no fun in the middle of the experience, we often times come out the other side better off at least to spiritually.
Finally, one of the reasons God does not simply heal all Christians is because that would not be enough to draw the lost to him, to create true faith in him. We will look at this in more detail next week as we see the faith of the scribe and another unnamed follower tested. Jesus was performing all of these miracles. Hundreds, probably thousands, and yet there was still clear and hostile resistance to his message. The Pharisees watched all these miracles happened and they rejected him. They were so blind that they were willing to kill him.
I think God has chosen not to just heal all Christians because if that happened, as you see so often in the faith of those who follow the miracle, faith healers today, those who follow Christ would do so because they want their illness cleansed when they really need their sin dealt with first. They would settle for a little bit of comfort in this life when they should be for more worried about the next.
Now I know that those reasons do not really make you feel better when you are sick. It is very easy to slip into the “why me, God” mindset in the midst of suffering. And when you reach heaven you will be able to ask God “why me,” you will be able to ask him why he made you suffer at a certain point in your life, and he will give you an explanation that will be perfect as his plans are always perfect even when we do not see them.
Most of all, no matter what is going on in your life, if Christ has taken away the consequences of your sin then you can look forward to the day when you will live standing beside him completely free of all sickness, all disease, all debilitations and enjoy the fullness of life as can only be experienced without any of the effects of sin.