He is a Healer

Jesus a Healer

I asked everyone to put a rock in their shoes and who kept the rock in their shoe through out the whole game and even through worship?

Why?

We are talking about healing and deliverance today and all that means.

See Jesus is a healer and what we mean by that is that Jesus has the ability and the power to heal you of physical/ emotional/ spiritual, mental afflictions.

Here is what Isaiah said about Jesus even before he was born:

Isaiah 53:5 NIV

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

This is a huge verse we use when talking about Jesus being a healer.

See because it all comes back to the biggest thing about Jesus, his death and resurrection and so Isiah says that because of his time on the Cross for the wrong things that you and me have done, he died for that wrong doing and that brought us peace.

See to start to talk about Jesus healing us we have to know that it is only possible because the same Jesus who died on the cross for our sin and brings us Spiritual freedom is also the same Jesus that will bring you a physical or mental freedom.

Jesus is not just the person who is freeing you of Sin.

Remember we are talking about someone who is both 100% Man and 100% God.

So Jesus in being who he is and dieing on the Cross means that by that event, his experience we can also be healed.

So thats where we need to start.

If we belevie that Jesus is the saviour and conqeruer of our sinful nature, then the must surely be able to heal more then just sin, he is able to heal our physical or spiritual states.

And this happens lets run through a few quick gospel encounters where Jesus or even the disciples heal people.

The first is Mark 5; Jesus heals someone with evil spirits inside of him, and thats scary Jesus sends them out from him and into pigs and the Bible says that it was about 2000 spirits.

This story shows the power of Jesus that it does not matter the amount of healing he will do it.

However this also shows the mental health aspect of healing, as the scripture talks about how this man was not looking right, he was not like himself and that was noticeable from before healing to after the healing.

Another is Mark 7, where Jesus heals a deaf and mute man. where the story is about the asking, Where the deaf and mute man has to use signs to beg Jesus to heal him.

If you want healing you must be able to ask for it will all you have, if you have no words or ears you must find a new way to ask for healing.

its the faith of asking even if it makes you feel awkward or look silly

last one ok? Mark 8 a blind man is healed but when Jesus asks him what he can see the man says its blurry people look like trees is specifcally what he says, So Jesus heals him the rest of the way.

This one tells us that Jesus wants to heal you to the fullest, not just so that you have parital healing like the blind man who can see blurs. Rather Jesus heals him to the fullest extent and he is healed so that he can see everything clearly;

All these encounters with Jesus direct us to a understanding of how Jesus wants and can heal us if we seek him;

However lets hang on to one more and look at it in more depth.

The Man at the Healing Pool

John 5 is where we are gonna land for the night and lets talk about what it means to live with it and what it means to leave with healing.

John 5:1–8 NIV

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

The heart of the story is Jesus healing a man, but the really story is the limit that the man places on himself.

He has been invalid for 38 years which means he was unable to walk. So for him he was unable to head down into the waters and receive the healing from this pool that was close by;

this idea in the mans mind comes to a front when Jesus asks him;

do you want to be heal. His response is that there is no one to bring him down into the waters and get healed, since they believed that the first in the waters in the morning was the one who would be healed.

Here is the issue here,

Jesus asks him “do you want to get well”, the response should have been yes. However the man has lived in this for so long he has accepted his life in result of this affiliation.

The idea of healing and deliverance is stepping out of something that holds us down and stepping into a freedom of that thing.

Think of the rock in your shoe at the beginning of youth. If you just contiuned to walk around with the rock in your shoe instead of getting rid of it then you would grow accustom to the rock and altough it might hurt you can start to accept the fact that it is there.

This is what this paralyzed man does, he accepts the fact that he cannot move and get to the healing pool so he responds to Jesus with a “well I have gotten used to it because I can’t do it”.

Jesus is a healer of all things. He is inviting you just like the man in the encounter to pick up your mat and walk,

To not live in the situation but to receive the healing of Jesus even if you think it’s not that bad anymore.

We have gotten really comfortable with the things that we control, thing about it.

In the western world there is not much that feels out of control, we get really focused on make situations or guiding our life to be in control and sometimes we do that with our spiritual or physical circumstances.

Jesus wants to heal you, but he is asking you to give up the steeringwheel to be vaurable and say “Yes I want to be heal” flat out, heart open, hand ready to reccieve.

“Jesus I want to be healed”.

*Small groups are Jr’ and Sr’ mixed groups

Does anyone want healing for something (Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, Mental)

Do you think that people can get healed?

Do you think that you have the permission to ask Jesus for healing for other people?

Do you think that you have the power to heal people in Jesus name?