Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Everyone of us lives with a doctor, and to make it even better the doctor we live with can write prescriptions and get the medicine delivered immediately.

If you think you don't take drugs, it is only because you do not know what your doctor is doing.

Your doctor is your brain.

I have had a lot of doctors in my life, but my most personal and faithful doctor is a real brain.

He is my brain, and yours is your brain.

Richard Bergland of the Harvard University School of Medicine has presented evidence that the brain of man is a literal pharmacy.

It is more than the center of consciousness.

It is a gland which secretes a prolific number of drugs which keep the body healthy, or help it fight to get health back.

The brain has the capacity to write out prescriptions in an almost infinite number of combinations to meet the body's varied needs.

Dr. Carmine Clemente of the UCLA Brain Research Institute has confirmed these studies, and says the number of the secretions the brain can produce are almost beyond calculation.

The number of them he says can be activated by mere thought or emotion.

If we just imagine a challenge or a danger the brain will produce a chemical that prepares the body for defense.

The brain produces a whole family of substances called endorphins.

The word means, "The morphine within."

In other words, our brain has the power to produce its own narcotics to relieve the body of pain.

We are all walking drug stores because of the marvelous medical organ God created for us in the brain.

But like all wonderful things it can be misused and lead to harmful rather than helpful effects.

The brain was used by Satan to destroy the people of New Guinea.

About 40 years ago a dreaded disease called KURU threatened to wipe out the Foie people there.

43% of the women and a lesser percent of the men all died of this mysterious illness.

Dr. Carleton Gajdusek went as a medical missionary to these people.

He discovered the disease was spread through the black art of sorcery.

The brains of dead people were mixed into the food of unsuspecting victims, and this lead to the disease.

It was a dormant virus, however, and may not show up for several years, so nobody could see any connection.

There is no cure for the disease, but it can be easily prevented by avoiding sorcery.

Missionaries began to teach the people the cause of the disease, and in those villages where people listened there were no more cases.

They used their brain and stopped eating dead brains, and so they eliminated that disease that almost eliminated them.

This true story from Wycliff Bible Translators illustrates how essential medical missions are to the task of fulfilling the Great Commission.

People cannot hear the Gospel and read the Word of God if their bodies are being destroyed by demon designed diseases which rob them of life.

People have to be saved before they can be saved.

That is, they have to be delivered from temporal death in order to be delivered from eternal death.

One of Satan's most effective ways of insuring the doom of masses is to kill them by their own ignorance, and keep them in bondage to evil practices.

We have no idea what caused the madman in our text to be mad, but one thing is for sure, he was not a likely prospect for the 4 spiritual laws, or the Romans road, or any other presentation of the Gospel.

The man was in bondage to demon power, and the only way he could be of any value to himself, others, or the kingdom of God was to be released from that bondage.

That is the essence of what medical missions is all about.

Under the heavy oppression of starving to death, or dying of a disease, people are not open to the Gospel.

But if you can set them free from these temporal tyrants, they may be open to hear about what else they can receive in the name of Jesus.

That is why medical missions have been a key factor in winning people from all cultures to Christ.

What we want to focus on in this complex text is a couple of simple facts.

The first thing this text reveals is that-

I. JESUS WAS A MEDICAL MISSIONARY.

Jesus did not heal Jews only.

He was open to healing any Gentile that came to Him.

The Roman Centurian came to Him and He gladly healed his servant.

The Syrophonecian woman came to Him and He healed her daughter.

The feeding of the 4000 was in a Gentile area, but the feeding of the 5000 was in a Jewish area.

Jesus healed any who came to Him, but this is the first text where Jesus went into Gentile territory to heal a person.

Jesus is going across the Sea of Galilee to the Gentile territory of the Gerasenes, or Gaderenes, as some manuscripts have it.

Jesus was an oversea missionary.

You don't have to go overseas to be a missionary, but the fact is, you do have to cross some boundary for the idea to have any meaning.

C. Everett Koop, the Surgeon General of the United States for many years, has been a leader in medical missions for decades, and he has provided us with this definition: "A missionary is a believer who penetrates a new area of life with the Christian Gospel by crossing a boundary which may be geographic, social, cultural, or a boundary in belief."

The key idea is the crossing of a boundary, for that is what makes you a missionary.

As long as you stay in the comfort zone where everyone is just like you basically, you are a witness or evangelist, but when you cross over a boundary where people are different, then you become a missionary to them.

Jesus was obviously in non-Jewish territory in our text, for there were 2000 pigs being cared for, and this would never be seen on the other side where the Jews live.

Jesus was in foreign territory.

He crossed the boundary to make it clear He cared about the Gentiles who were in bondage to Satan.

Some were so enslaved they were like this mad man.

Jesus came to heal this man and set him free, and this has been the motive of medical missions all through history.

The motive is to set men free so that can be well and in their right mind give their lives to the kingdom of light.

The modern missionary movement began with medical missions.

Dr. John Thomas was born in 1757.

He grew up to become a ship's surgeon in the British Navy.

At age 27 he became a Christian, and he wanted to become a preacher.

A small Baptist church called him to be their pastor, but his friends discouraged it.

Instead, he sailed for the second time to India, and near Calcutta he became a missionary.

He learned the Bengali language and began to preach.

In 1792 he went back to England to raise support.

William Carey, the father of modern missions, was just facing the Baptists Missionary Society.

When they met John Thomas they were sold on him as the first missionary they wanted to support.

So a doctor became the first Baptist missionary from England.

Carey went with him to India and reported on the many lives he saved by his medical knowledge.

His most famous patient was Krishna Pal, who became their first convert.

This Hindu came to him for healing, and while Dr. Thomas set his dislocated shoulder Krishna Pal repented and asked Jesus to be his Savior.

Like people all over the world, when he was healed he wanted to respond to the love that made that healing possible, and that was the love of Christ.

That one healed arm was the beginning of a whole arm of the church being formed in the land of India.

A physical healing led to a multitude of spiritual healing.

Don't ever discount the powerful effect that healing can have as the forerunner of evangelism.

Most of the growth of the church on the mission field that has been radical had its origin in healing.

Healing is the number one phenomenon for breaking down walls in all cultures, and making it easy for people to come to Christ.

William Carey had to carry on the medical work when Dr. Thomas died, and even though he was not trained he learned plenty from watching the doctor.

He went on practicing medicine for healing was a key factor in opening people up to listen to the Gospel.

If you study the origin of missions all over the world, you will discover that most of the fields were opened up by medical missions.

There is almost no nation on earth that will say no to somebody who says I want to heal your body.

Bodily healing is universal need, and everybody loves those who have answers for healing.

Jesus gave dignity to the body, for not only did He take on a body as the Son of God, but He healed the body and thereby said it is worthy of divine energy.

It is worth a great price to restore the body to health.

That is why Christian missions has always been promoters of healing.

Christian brains have been the key to healing through most of history.

Nestorius was the Patriarch of Constantinople, but he could not go along with the church doctrine of Theotokos which means declaring Mary to be the mother of God.

In 431 A.D. the Council of Ephesus denounced the Nestorians as heretics, and they were compelled to flee.

They went to Mesopotamia and took up the study of medicine in the town of Edessa.

They established a school of medicine and two hospitals, and became the center of medical knowledge in the world.

Keep in mind it was the dark ages, and all the medical wisdom of man from the ancient world had been rejected by the church.

Superstition had replaced the science of Hippocrites and Gallen.

Intolerance of this revival of Greek learning and medicine forced the Nestorians to get out of Christian territory altogether, and seek refuge in Persia where the Shaw was opened to medical learning.

He became fanatical and ordered Plato and Aristotle and all the Greek works to be translated into Arabic.

The paradox is that the Moslem world became the center of International medicine because of the Christian Nestorians.

They not only established hospitals, they gave the Moslem world all of the wisdom of the Greeks.

There were no scientific books in Arabic.