Christ is Sovereign Over Our Health?

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. It is always a privilege to be able to serve you and to share the Word of God with you. If you have your Bibles would you turn in them with me to Mark 1, Mark 1. You can also open the Bible up on a smartphone or it will be displayed up on the screen in just a few minutes. I’m also pleased to announce that we are now streaming our service live so if you are joining us via the internet a hearty welcome to you as well. So now if you’re traveling or the weather turns very poor and you don’t feel comfortable driving to church you can stay current with us as we go through the Word of God.

Well the weather has been changing and it seems all too apparent that we may be in for a very interesting winter. Talking to Debbie Wuthrich in the office this week she blamed me for this weather - but I promise you it’s not my fault. Along with the heavy amounts of snow that we are possibly looking at it also has the potential to be a record flu season. In a New York Times article published on October 4 Australia just had a record flu season and the U.S. tends to follow suit so we could be in for it this year as well. All that being said - if you haven’t gotten your flu vaccine go and get it.

It’s also the start of the political season as we see the candidates for the Presidency starting to make noise around the country. One key issue that we’re bound to hear a lot about in the next few months is the issue of health care. In fact health care is a major issue in our nation that even had the potential to hit your pocketbooks if you didn’t have health care as there are tax penalties for those who don’t have coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Now again before you start checking your programs or wondering if I’ve been body snatched - yes this is Dishman Baptist Church and yes I’m still me. I mention all of that because today’s message is all about Christ’s sovereignty over our health. Kyle did a wonderful job last week of demonstrating for us how Mark describes Christ’s authority as He came as One teaching with an authority that no one else had ever taught with. Mark has introduced us to the Christ, through John the Baptist he has prepared the way for the Christ, he has shown Christ’s coronation and temptation, we’ve heard Christ’s initial Gospel proclamation and seen His authority to call men to Him and His authority over the spiritual realm. Mark’s Gospel is primarily about demonstrating Christ as Isaiah’s Servant found in the chapters of Isaiah in Isaiah 42, Isaiah 49, Isaiah 50 and the most well known in Isaiah 53. But he has started off demonstrating for us that Christ is the promised King and establishing His authority over various realms in the physical world. This morning we’re going to see another aspect of Christ’s authority - as I’ve already mentioned His sovereignty over health - through His first demonstration of service.

With all of that in mind let’s look now at Mark 1:29-34.

Mark 1:29–34 CSB

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went into Simon and Andrew’s house with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law was lying in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. So he went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she began to serve them. When evening came, after the sun had set, they brought to him all those who were sick and demon-possessed. The whole town was assembled at the door, and he healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

There is no more concerning and no more fragile part of our lives than our health. In 2017 Americans spent more than 3.5 trillion dollars on health care amounting to more than 17% of our Gross National Product. To make that large number more digestible that is just over $10,000 a person. And projections say that that number will rise over the next few years until health care spending accounts for 20% of our Gross National Product. Now this is not a polemic against the evil health care industry - instead I am making the case that our health is a big deal. You can lose just about anything else in your life and recover - Satan even makes that case with regards to Job in Job 2 when he says that “man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his life”. In essence he is saying to God if you take away Job’s health he will curse you to your face. And frankly there is some validity to that - we cannot live without health. Now we should certainly follow Job’s example and not curse God to His face - more just understand that our health is a pretty important issue.

God understands that and He routinely demonstrates His sovereignty in the area of our health. We’re going to see a poignant example of this today as we move through our passage. We’re going to see three characteristics of Christ’s sovereignty over our health and really of His healing ministry. We’re going to see that Christ’s healing is total, Christ’s healing is comprehensive and finally we’ll see that Christ’s healing is in His timing.

Christ’s Healing is Total

Our story picks up where Mark left off last week. Jesus and His disciples have been attending the Synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus was asked to speak and spoke with such authority that the people were completely amazed. He was also accosted by a demon possessed man in the service and He cast out the demon. An interesting point that we should note regarding that event and the subsequent healing we are about to look at is that there is no uproar or outrage at the fact that Christ heals someone on the Sabbath as we will find later in Mark in chapters 2 and 3. Here, the events take place and no one raises a note of protest.

It could be that Christ’s words were so powerful that the fact that a healing or exorcism took place was missed in their daze at the power of His words. In 1856 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech was one of his greatest ever according to witnesses. The problem is that we’ll never know because it wasn’t recorded for us. As the historian Shelby Foote writes “he caught fire and made what may have been the greatest speech of his career, though no one would ever really know, since the heat of his words seemed to burn them from men’s memory, ...even the shorthand reporters sat enthralled, forgetting to use their pencils.” Lincoln’s words were nothing compared to the power of the words Christ spoke when He taught and they also enthralled men in such at way that, at least at this point in His ministry it seems, they overlooked the healing that took place.

Mark tells us that Jesus and His disciples left the synagogue and went to Peter’s house. Just like our modern church, the Synagogue services were held in the morning and so they would have been heading to Peter’s house right around noon. This was before the days of Cracker Barrel and Chick-fil-a didn’t open on the Sabbath even during the first century so they would normally gather following the morning’s service for lunch. Archaeologists have unearthed a dwelling not far from the Synagogue in Capernaum that is reputed to be Peter’s home.

It wasn’t a modest dwelling. It was part of what’s known as an “insula” complex. A modern day equivalent would be an apartment complex where there were several homes that share a common courtyard. The dwelling that is pictured is the location that is purported to be Peter’s home. On the walls there is sacred and devotional graffiti in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Aramaic pointing to the location being used as a gathering place for Christians or possibly a church.

John’s Gospel tells us that Peter and Andrew originally came from Bethsaida. As you can see from these maps, Bethsaida is believed to have sat far back from the shore while Capernaum sat right on the sea and would have been more advantageous for someone who made their living off of the fishing industry. There was also a small Roman garrison there and so there would be need for food to feed them opening up business opportunities in Capernaum that may not have existed in Bethsaida. Whatever the reason for the move from Bethsaida to Capernaum is really immaterial. What is important for our study today is that Peter did in fact have a home in Capernaum close to the Synagogue.

The scene when they arrived may not have been what they expected. Or it could have been exactly what they expected. Peter’s mother-in-law was bedridden with a fever. In the first century most sicknesses or infirmities were attributed to the person being under judgement by God for having sinned in some hidden way and their sickness is indicative of that hidden sin. There are several instances in the Old Testament that would seem to support this supposition.

In Exodus when Miriam and Aaron grumble against Moses, Miriam is struck with leprosy. As a result of David’s adultery with Bathsheba their first child was struck with a sickness and died.

There are also promises in the Old Testament that seem to link sickness to divine judgement.

Leviticus 26:14–16 CSB

“But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands— if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands—and break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you—wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it.

and then Moses repeats this promise in his final message to the nation.

Deuteronomy 28:15 CSB

“But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all his commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you:

And then later in the same chapter

Deuteronomy 28:20–22 CSB

The Lord will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning me. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until he has exterminated you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish.

In later rabbinic literature on rabbi pronounced this regarding the healing of a sick person: Greater is the miracle wrought for the sick than for Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (also known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego). For that of Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah is concerning a fire kindled by man, which all can extinguish; whilst that of a sick person is in connection with a heavenly fire, and who can extinguish that? In other words the fire that encompassed and threatened Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego was external and could be extinguished by man, but the fire of a fever or sickness is internal and can only be extinguished by God or one who is God.

In reality all sickness is attributable to sin or rather the presence of sin in the world as a result of the fall. And so the disciples and Jesus come to Peter’s house to find his mother-in-law in bed with a fever. I remember a few years ago in 2014 just after we had come back from Japan my family was hit by the worst flu illness we’d ever had. The kids managed to fight it off first and so Bekah and I slept on the couches that we had at the time. Each of us were extremely weak and feverish but we still had to parent and so we would take turns attempting to do what we could to keep our kids alive for those couple of days until we recovered. And it was the longest three days of our lives. A fever can just completely wipe you out and that is what was happening to Peter’s mother-in-law here.

Having seen how Jesus handled the demon in the synagogue, the disciples - most likely Peter alone - thought that of course He could handle a simple fever and so they told Him about her immediately. Jesus in His compassion for the family went in, took her by the hand and raised her up. And she immediately began to serve them. This is the shortest healing miracle recorded in Scripture but it has much to teach us regarding Jesus and His healing ability.

The first is that His healing is immediate. Even with our modern medicines of tylenol and motrin which bring down fevers there is still a period of recovery for the person afflicted with sickness. There is no such time period here. Mark tells us that his mother-in-law got up and immediately began to serve them. Some have unfortunately taken this passage and used it to emphasize a subservient position for women which is taking the text out of context and too far. Instead what this passage teaches us is that when Christ heals there is no question and it is immediate.

This is a distinct factor that is missing from many of the modern day faith healings that are touted around the internet and among some of the more liberal and extreme factions of the charismatic movement. Now before I go any further - there are solid believers among the charismatic movement with whom we share many of the same doctrines and beliefs but with differences on tertiary or secondary issues with regards to the Christian life. But there are many in the charismatic movement who have gone so far beyond Scripture as to only be able to be referred to as wolves and those who are perverting the faith.

In 2010 I travelled to Dallas Texas for a conference called the Psalm 119 Conference. Providentially, the night before the conference opened Benny Hinn the popular televangelist and healer was holding a meeting in Dallas so a friend of mine and I went. We got inside and sat in sadness as he whipped the crowd into a frenzy with music and lights and repeated appeals and then the people came up on stage to be “slayed in the Spirit”. I’ll never forget one of the women who made it up on stage. She was on one of those motorized scooters and she was ushered onstage by a couple of men and then they helped her up so she could stand supported. Benny strutted around stage and then asked her if she wanted to be healed. He tapped her on the head the way they do and she fell backwards and lay on the stage. To her credit later in the show she did get up and actually walk off the stage under her own power. After the show my friend and I went outside and were standing on a street corner preaching. And who came by us but that woman - back in her scooter riding down the sidewalk.

There are two distinct differences between the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and the “healing” we were witnesses to that night. The first is that there was no question that Peter’s mother-in-law was healed and it was immediate. There was no return to the bed for a little more rest or a few days of weakness. She got up and she went right to service. Unlike the poor woman who was deluded into momentarily thinking she was healed and then after the show was over was right back where she’d been when she arrived tooling down the sidewalk on her motorized scooter. The second is that there was no preamble. There wasn’t a lot of conversation or buildup. Christ walked in, took her hand and raised her up. He didn’t psyche her up for the healing event. There are other healings recorded for us in Scripture where there is conversation to be sure, but it is never for the purpose of psychosomatic buildup of the person desiring to be healed. Most often it is to ascertain exactly what the person wants or Christ has another purpose in mind for the conversation - it is not a requirement for His healing power to be effective.

In fact, Christ’s healings were so complete and without question that his opponents never once questioned the authenticity of a healing event but more protested on when they would be performed. In fact these two healings each should have been questioned as they were both performed on the Sabbath but they weren’t. Instead what we see is the entire town lines up outside of Peter’s door with sick people looking for Christ to do the same for them as He had done for Peter’s mother-in-law. And it is in this time that we see the comprehensiveness of Christ’s healing.

Christ’s Healing is Comprehensive

By now it should be no surprise to you for me to say that I don’t believe the gift of healing as demonstrated by the Apostles in the book of Acts is still valid and operating in our world today. But Christ does still heal. And He heals comprehensively. Mark moves on from the afternoon at Peter’s house to the evening in the street outside of Peter’s house. There is even a lesson in these few words for us. Look back at the text with me and consider this - it says as soon as they left the synagogue they enter Peter’s home and they told Him about her at once. They didn’t wait to bring their need to Christ. They didn’t think we’ll see if this will subside or if the herbs she drank in that tea work - no they brought their concern to Him immediately.

Contrast that to the rest of the city - Mark tells us that “when evening came, after the sun had set”. They waited until it was convenient or it wouldn’t cost them anything and then they came to Jesus. Jewish law said that when there were three stars visible in the sky that the preceding day was over. I wonder how many residents of Capernaum were pacing by their windows, fretting about a loved one, begging, imploring the sun to simply set and for three stars to be visible so that they could bring a loved one to Christ. They waited for their own self-imposed rules to be satisfied before they would venture out to Christ.

How often do we wait and fret needlessly when we could simply turn to Christ and lay whatever our care is on Him - whether it is a sick loved one or another situation in our lives. As we read in our Scripture this morning

James 5:14–16 CSB

Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

The tragic thing about the church today is that the healing ministry that we could continue to have we have farmed out to so called professionals. Christ’s healings in the synagogue in Capernaum and Peter’s home demonstrate His power over both the physical and the spiritual realms - but His healing is so much more comprehensive than that. There is no aspect of our lives that Christ is not capable of healing. He desires to heal our emotions, our mental faculties as well as our physical ailments and demonic possessions.

We have chosen to make Christ’s Word insufficient for handling our everyday problems and so we look to psychologists and psychiatrists who seek to use humanist ideologies to tell us what is the problem with our souls. Or they seek to medicate what they can’t see and tell us that we should be okay. Now I will say here that there are some issues in life that God has provided medication for and for those situations by all means take what the doctor has prescribed. And if you are on a prescription now from a doctor I am not giving you permission to go off of that prescription. But we are a nation and a people who overmedicate ourselves and our children just looking to have a better life. The statistics regarding anxiety and the use of psychotropic drugs is off the charts and the picture just keeps getting worse every year. We submit more to the diagnosis of the DSM-V than to the Bible when it comes to our mental and emotional healing needs. And this should not be.

Christ never came up against a situation in Scripture that He could not heal and His power is still available for us today. It’s not that Christ or His Word is insufficient to deal with our problems it is that our handling of His Word is insufficient and incapable of addressing the issues we face. Christ’s desire is to see healing take place within His people a complete healing, a total healing. It says in our text that He healed many who were sick with various diseases. Not all of these were physical illness - some were mental and emotional and we should be just like Peter and, if we’ve been waiting for some self-imposed rule to be satisfied, the people of Capernaum and beating a path to the Savior’s feet to implore Him to heal those who we bring.

There is one other aspect of Christ’s healing that I see brought out in this passage, and it is probably the most difficult to talk about. It is that Christ’s healing takes place in His timing - which is not always our timing.

Christ’s Healing is in His Timing

Notice with me again what Mark writes in this text.

Mark 1:32–34 CSB

When evening came, after the sun had set, they brought to him all those who were sick and demon-possessed. The whole town was assembled at the door, and he healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

There are a couple of simple words that are very easily overlooked. The first is in verse 32 where Mark writes that they brought to Him all those who were sick and demon possessed. The next is down in verse 34 where Mark simply says that “He healed many who were sick”. There is a differing of opinion on this within some commentators that this is all just hyperbole on Mark’s part and that what he means is that Christ healed every single person who came that night but he just uses the word many to encompass the large number of people that came. And that is possible - but if that were the case and he had just used the word all to describe the people being brought he could have just used the same word again to describe those Christ healed. The word for all here is the Greek word pas and it means “the totality of any object, mass, collective or extension” so it means all. The word for many is polys and it means “a great deal of, a great number of”.

Now some might think that I’m splitting theological hairs here but this is probably the most important point for us to grasp when it comes to Christ’s healings both in the Bible and in our day today. One reason is that the charlatans I have already referred to capitalize on their teaching that it is always God’s will for us to be healed. Yet this case cannot be proven from Scripture. In John chapter 5 there is an incident at a pool in Jerusalem called the pool of Bethesda. A man has been lying there as an invalid for 38 years. Christ walks by him on the Sabbath and after some conversation He heals him. Now there is more to the story regarding the pool and the idea that and angel would come down and stir the water and the first person to get in would be healed. But notice that Christ only interacts and only heals this one man. Also notice what verse 3 says

John 5:3 CSB

Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.

There were a large number of the disabled there - and yet we only have the story of this one man being healed. Is it possible that Jesus healed everyone else in the pool and John only chose to record this one healing because of the man’s interactions with the Pharisees? That’s a much larger stretch than to say that Jesus only healed this one man because that’s all that His will was to heal in that moment.

We also have the example of Paul’s eye issues in Galatians 4:13, Timothy in 1 Timothy 5 where Paul tells him to take a little wine to help with his stomach issues. Epaphroditus was with Paul in Rome as the emissary from the Philippians and he nearly died Paul tells us in Philippians 2. So we see through out Scripture the principle demonstrated that it is not always Christ’s will to heal at the moment. And I think we can extrapolate the same principle from the uses of all and many in our passage this morning.

And instead of being a disappointment this should be a comfort to us. We know that our Heavenly Father does everything for His glory and for our good. He who sent His Son to die in our place, to take the scourge and the penalty of our sins away from us, if He is choosing to leave us in the health challenges that we now face there must be some glory or some lesson in it for us. The Old Testament king Hezekiah came down ill and he inquired of the Lord for a sign as to the outcome of his illness. The Bible tells us in 2 Chronicles 32 that he received a miraculous sign but that he didn’t respond appropriately but instead maintained his proud heart and that the Lord’s wrath resided upon him as well as Jerusalem and Judah. Only when Hezekiah humbled himself before the Lord did the Lord’s wrath subside. It could be that the challenges that we are having in our health right now is God’s way of bringing us back in line with His will in our lives.

Or it could be that He desires to glorify Himself through our illness like the man in John 9. When asked whether the man was blind because of his own sin or his parents Jesus responded that it was neither

John 9:3 CSB

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.

The way that we navigate sickness in our lives is a great testimony to people of our faith in God. We also have a great opportunity every time we are healed. Charles Spurgeon said it this way

In every healing of which we are the subjects we have a pledge of the resurrection. Every time a man who is near the gates of death rises up again he enjoys a kind of rehearsal of that grand rising when from beds of dust and silent clay the perfect saints shall rise at the trump of the archangel and the voice of God. We ought to gather from our restorations from serious and perilous sickness a proof that the God who brings us back from the gates of the grave can also bring us back from the grave itself whenever it shall be his time to do so.

And ultimately it is God’s desire for every man to be healed - but sometimes that healing doesn’t take place until our time on this earth is complete and we stand before Him. And there is also a lesson here for our witness for Him.

Conclusion

The last statement Mark makes is an echo of the statement he made regarding Christ’s treatment of the demon in the synagogue - He did not allow the demons to speak because they knew who He was. This might lead you to wonder “why not?” They could surely testify to His identity as the Son of God and maybe make some things easier for Christ. Unlike the others in the Gospels that Christ tells to be quiet regarding His identity, Christ silences the demons because He will not bear the testimony of a false witness. He will not have his ministry tied to the testimony of demons and of those who cannot profess His name in truth. Yes they knew who He was and they trembled even as He cast them out of people - yet their testimony would tie His ministry to the kingdom of Satan when He came to proclaim the Kingdom of God.

There are several questions for us today - the first is are we carrying our sick to Christ first of all or are we waiting until sun has set and the three stars shine overhead to entreat our loving Father for His intervention on behalf of a loved one? While illnesses and injuries cannot be our only reason to seek an audience with our Father, we are certainly told to bring our cares and concerns to Him and that He shares those cares and concerns with us. The second is have we given over to the idea that Scripture is not sufficient to heal or to address an issue that we are facing in our lives? Whether that is mental illness, physical illness, emotional trauma - I tell you today that Christ is sufficient for all of it and He stands waiting to heal you through the faithful application of His Word to your life. If you have an issue that you would like counsel with please seek out one of the pastoral staff and we will work tirelessly to help you. And finally - be sure that your witness to His power is coming from a heart that is truly submitted to Him and to His will, imploring Him to give you opportunities to glorify Him by speaking about what He has done in and through you. Unlike the demons and unlike the others in Scripture that Christ silences we have the full picture of who He is and it is incumbent upon us to proclaim Him as the Savior who went to the cross for us, taking on our sins and accepting God’s wrath on our behalf so that we could be healed not simply of disease but of the greatest malady known to man - the presence of sin in our lives and the resultant separation from God that is the just result of that presence.