Healer (Who Is Jesus) Updated

The Avenue Podcast discusses Jesus as a healer in Mark 1:40. They read about a man with leprosy who begged Jesus for healing. Jesus touched him and healed him, but told him not to tell anyone. The man spread the word anyway, causing large crowds to gather around Jesus. They also discuss the significance of leprosy and Jesus' willingness to heal. In Mark 2, Jesus returns to Capernaum and a paralyzed man is brought to him. Jesus forgives the man's sins, causing controversy among the religious leaders. Jesus asks if it's easier to forgive sins or heal the man. Welcome to the Avenue Podcast, where we are passionate about unleashing your God-given potential through the life-transforming power of the Gospel. My name is Josh. My name is Matthew. Today, we'll be discussing the topic of Jesus as Healer through Mark 1, verse 40, as we continue our series, Who is Jesus? So we're actually going to be splitting up the text reading into two parts today, just because it goes over two chapters. So we're going to read Mark 1, verse 41st, and then we're going to come back and read the second chapter. So do you want to read the first chapter of the text for us? Yeah, I'd love to. So starting from verse 40, a man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean, he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. I am willing, he said. Be healed. Instantly, the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed. Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning. Don't tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required by the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed. But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened. As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and he couldn't publicly enter a town anywhere. He had to stay out in the secluded places, but people from everywhere kept coming to him. So maybe first up, Josh, could you tell us a bit about leprosy and, I guess, the significance for the Jewish people with why it's an unclean thing? Yeah, definitely. Leprosy is almost known as, I guess, a disease that more so affected the world in ancient days and Bible times, but it's actually a disease that still affects up to about 15 million people today worldwide. So it's actually quite a horrific disease. And I'm not sure if you've ever seen photos of people that are affected by leprosy, but it looks pretty terrible because what happens is your hair falls out, your fingernails and your toenails fall out, and then eventually the joints of your fingers and your hands and your toes actually begin to fall off, and they just rot away. And essentially, leprosy is this flesh-eating disease that causes someone to just essentially wither away, as bad as it sounds. And I guess the context of the significance of leprosy back then was that even though the physical suffering was really terrible, the worst part of leprosy that I think many people would say was just the social isolation and the treatment that the lepers actually received. If you know or have read of any stories, especially in the Old Testament, about how leprosy was treated and regarded, lepers were quarantined out of the community, and even the way that they dressed, they dressed in a way that reflected as they were mourning people, and they were known as dead people living. And leprosy was one of the worst diseases that you could have in ancient times, just simply because there was no treatment, obviously, but also because of the way that you would be just shunned from the community. And I think something that I find significant about this to start off with is that the leper actually had to believe that Jesus had the power to heal, and the leper actually had to have faith that even though he'd never met Jesus before, that Jesus had this power. And you can see this in the verse where the leper calls out and says, And yeah, I know, Matt, you were talking to me a little bit about before about what it means to be healed. What do you see from this in terms of Jesus' ability to heal and Jesus' willingness to also stoop down and heal? I think this kind of just really shows how much Jesus desires to see these people healed. And this man, he's been separated both from socially, separated from society, but he's also, because of his physical condition, he's separated from being able to do things like come to synagogues, like worship with other people, and his physical sickness has prevented him from being able to seek God in the same ways that other people seek God. And I think for this man, it's both a sign to everyone that sees him and that knows him that Jesus is a healer, that Jesus desires this, but also because of this healing, it's allowed him to change his life and seek God in different ways that he couldn't when he was stuck in this social isolation. So I think to me, this just really shows that, firstly, how much physical illnesses can actually prevent you from worshipping God, and how much Jesus also wants to set us free from these things, both for our own personal benefit of not being socially isolated and not being separated from society, but also for his purposes, so that we can be a sign and we can be a testimony of what Jesus has done, but then we can also seek him and have a deeper relationship than we would have beforehand. The way that Jesus actually heals this man as well is really significant to me, because we see in Jesus' ministry, when he chooses to do miracles, he actually chooses to involve himself with the miracle itself. In this case, he doesn't simply speak a miracle, he doesn't simply speak healing into this man, but he actually goes out of his way to touch him and to make contact with this leper. We know that, especially from ancient Israel and Israelite times, that leprosy was a sign of sin and it was a sign of impurity, and that was part of the reason why in Leviticus there's so many laws about how lepers need to be quarantined from the community and that lepers are essentially shunned from society, because it represented impurity and God's nation, being the Israelites, needed to remain pure and needed to stay pure. So something me and Josh actually just discovered is that leprosy isn't actually that easy to spread from person to person. I always thought that the reason that lepers had to go out and remain socially isolated from Israel is because God didn't want leprosy and these skin diseases spreading amongst all the people. But what this actually really shows is that the purpose of separating these people out from Israel is that whole idea that sin is what led to sickness and disease, and that leprosy is that sign of sickness and disease. So when God heals His people, that's not just healing them from the sicknesses and illnesses, but that's also part of removing sin out of them and purifying them and making these people holy. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And when Jesus actually kneels down and touches this man and heals him with His own hands, I think Jesus bridges that gap that was previously not able to be breached. Jesus reaches out and makes contact, something that was considered unclean and something that was considered an abomination to the Lord, touching someone or something that was unclean, and here Jesus takes all that into account and He introduces a new that He's bringing into this earth and He heals this man. So going on from this, in verse 44, Jesus says to this man, don't tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Now we all know that Jesus' ministry and Jesus' purpose on earth was, I guess, to spread the good news and to bring healing and to bring about forgiveness. So why does Jesus tell him, don't tell anyone about this? You know, you would think that Jesus would want this to be proclaimed. Why do you think this is the case? Well, I think from looking at this passage by itself, we can see that first Jesus says, don't tell anyone about this. And then we can actually see the result of when the man does say this. When the man goes and tells everyone, suddenly Jesus is finding it hard to stay secluded. He's finding it hard to get away from the crowds. So I think in this particular case, that is the reason, or at least a large reason why Jesus is asking him to stay quiet. Yeah, definitely. And you know, when Jesus tells him that he needs to take an offering and allow the priest to examine him, the ancient law that's actually stated in Leviticus required a leper to be cleansed using objects such as cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet. And it was actually likely that the priest that he went to had never actually performed this before because it wasn't really common. It wasn't actually at all common for lepers to be healed because everyone knew that there was no cure for leprosy and that divine intervention or healing from God was the only possible way that leprosy could be healed. And yeah, going on from what you said, I guess, yeah, we see the consequence of disobedience to Jesus. And you know, this leper was unfortunately likely the reason, even though he probably had good intentions and he was simply excited, but he was likely the reason that Jesus' ministry was from this point on often confined to seclusion and confined to private places. All right, thanks Josh. That sounds great. How about we keep moving on then? Let's start reading from chapter two. So from verse one reads, when Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home. Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door. While he was preaching God's word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn't bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat right down in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, my child, your sins are forgiven. So some of the teachers of religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves, what is he saying? This is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. Jesus knew immediately what they were thinking, so he asked them, why do you question this in your heart? Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven or stand up, pick up your mat and walk? So I will prove to you that the son of man has the authority on earth to forgive sins. Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, stand up, pick up your mat and go home. And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat and walked out through the stuns on lookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, we've never seen anything like this before. Looking back at Jesus' ministry as a healer, everywhere he goes, he's healing people from their physical needs. He's healing them from diseases and illnesses. Whereas we look today and we don't really see healing and physical healing to the scale of what Jesus was doing in his ministry. And I think it's easy for a lot of Christians to then go and say, well, that's because today how Jesus being a healer applies to us is more of a spiritual healing. Rather than us all being physically healed all the time, instead we're spiritually healed. And I guess my question to you that I want to discuss is, is that the case? Is the healing that Jesus is for us personally, is that more of a spiritual healing? Or when we say Jesus is a healer, does that still mean he will physically heal us personally today? Yeah, I love that question because I would definitely agree with you and say that unfortunately given the landscape of Christianity and especially given the landscape and climate of even our faith today, I think Jesus' healing is, like you said, often a lot more associated with spiritual healing. Healing of seemingly unseen things. Healing of things of the soul only. And we often forget that Jesus has just as much power and just as much willingness and desire to actually heal us of our physical sickness. And I know you were talking about in the previous chapter about how leprosy actually hindered this man from worshipping. It actually hindered this man from being able to access Jesus or being able to access God through things like the synagogue and the temple in a physical manner. And I think often, even in the way that we pray ourselves today, you know, we obviously are very keen to pray for spiritual healing, whether it be for ourselves or for other people. But there seems to be this unspoken, I guess, hesitance to ask Jesus or to ask God for healing over physical things as well. I think that's largely because it's easy to believe in spiritual healing because it's something that's unseen. And I think that's what we're dealing with in this chapter. First, Jesus is saying, your sins are forgiven. And Jesus says that, is it easier to say your sins are forgiven or stand up, pick up your mat and walk? Because if you say stand up, pick up your mat and walk, everyone there witnesses whether or not that person is healed. Whereas if you say your sins are forgiven, no one can see whether or not his sins are forgiven. And I think that leads to us why it's so easy for us to believe in spiritual healing and hard for physical healing. Yeah, I guess, because we can often write off spiritual healing or we can write it off and say, oh, maybe I am healed, I just can't see it. Whereas with physical ailments and physical, I guess, injuries or diseases, it's very clear and it's very easily verified by the physical eye whether Jesus has actually come through on his word. Something interesting that I actually found researching this whole spiritual verse, physical healing, is that in Hebrew and in the Jewish culture, there seems to be a lot less of a distinction between physically, being physically healed and versus being spiritually healed. I think in modern day English, we have a very different category of these two items. Yet in Hebrew, as far as I understand, the words between them are a lot less distinct. When they're talking about healing, they often could be talking about either or both. But from the Hebrew culture, they also see the ideas as a lot more overlapping than we do. You see, the source of both spiritual and physical issues, they both have the same root cause, which is sin. Not just that, but the source of the healing is also the same. We know that the source of our physical healing is God and the source of our spiritual healing is also God. So I think that the two ideas, yeah, we have categorized them very differently. But so often, when you look at Jesus healing someone, not only does he heal them physically, but he also heals them spiritually. Yes, certainly. I think the wish of this man is clear. We can read this story and we can admire this man's friends who had the faith to actually lower him right at the feet of Jesus. Even though this man wanted physical healing, Jesus knew what the man's real need actually was. And I think it's important to note and to point out that it didn't mean that this particular man was especially sinful. There's no mention that this man had committed terrible sins that had led to his paralysis. But Jesus simply addresses humanity's greatest need in this instance. Humanity's greatest need is not physical healing, it's forgiveness from all sin. And I like what you said there about how the common root of all suffering is sin. And there's a quote that says forgiveness is the greatest miracle that Jesus ever performs. It meets the greatest need, it costs the greatest price, and it brings the greatest blessing. So I think the last thing to kind of discuss around Jesus being a healer for us personally today is whether or not for us, is it physical healing that he desires for us or is it just spiritual healing? I think firstly, a couple of points to think about that we've already discussed. I don't think that spiritual healing and physical healing are that distinct. Like we've been saying, the root cause of all this is sin. This is what Jesus died for and even the Isaiah 53 passage where it's talking about that by his stripes we're healed. In Matthew 8, Jesus actually heals the sick and then quotes that passage and says that by healing the sick, he has fulfilled that passage that by his stripes we are healed. And I think that implies that part of Jesus' death was for our physical healing. And not just that, but we've also discussed through this that often our sickness and disease is something that will get in the way of our relationship with God. Whether or not that it's something that we're stressed about and that that's all we can focus on, or if it's actually some form of illness that physically prevents us from worshipping and from going to church, either way, these aren't things that God desires for us. And when part of his death on the cross was to heal us from these things, I don't think we can go and say that this isn't something Jesus desires for us. Yeah, awesome. And I'm going to throw a bit of a curveball in here and put you on the spot here. How do you reconcile that principle of Jesus is a healer and Jesus' purpose was to actually come to earth and heal? How do you reconcile that and examples where Jesus actually chooses not to heal? I think first off, I do want to just mention a few verses which I found that do kind of back up this idea that God wants healing for us. And I won't go through them, but just a few Old Testament verses I found were Exodus 15, verse 26, Psalm 41, and the first couple of verses of Psalm 103. You raise a good point that, yes, if God does want healing for us, so often we pray for healing and then we don't see it. And I think we all understand the idea that God is sovereign and that he has other plans and his ways are higher than our ways, and that we don't understand why God does things or doesn't do things. But what I think is also good for us to know is that even if we're not healed, we can still have confidence that God is sovereign. We can still have confidence that he cares about our health, that we will be healed eventually, and that God loves all of us, our whole selves, including our physical bodies, and he desires that healing. And yet, even if we're not healed, we can still have confidence that God is sovereign and that he cares about our entire selves, including our health. Even in our pain and sickness and disease, if we're not healed, we can still believe that he is a healer and that he desires it for us. And when we don't see physical healing in our personal lives or the lives of people around us, when we still have faith, and by faith I mean that we trust Jesus is who he says he is, we trust that he is a healer, that arguably brings God even more glory when his people still believe his word even if they're not seeing it physically play out in front of them. Yeah, definitely. I love that. And I guess what I hear from what you're saying is that just because God doesn't do it in you or doesn't do it right in this moment, it doesn't mean that he doesn't do it at all. And it doesn't mean that he is not what he says he is and that he isn't a healer. Just to wrap up, I want to read the James 5 verse 14 to 16 verses. In verse 14, it says, You should call on the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. I think it's a very easy form of faith to say, yes, I believe Jesus is the healer and that he can heal me if he desires. I think it's very easy for us to sit back and just pray ourselves to God. It's much harder to actually act on that faith and actually to go out of your way to seek that healing that God says is for us. And I really like that verse because that's an easy, practical way that we can actually step out in that faith, not the easy faith, but step out in a harder faith where we actually act on our trust that God desires to heal us physically. And I think that also, this idea of seeking the elders in your church, asking them to pray and anoint oil over you, this also isn't something that we do much, but is also such a practical way that is so clear in scripture that if we are sick, this is what we do. We seek healing. We go ask people to pray over us and ask them to pray specifically for that physical healing. And I think this verse, it's a clear promise in the Bible that it's for us. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's something that is so clear that God desires for us to do, which is to go out and actually ask people in the church, ask the elders and ask them to pray for you specifically so that you will be healed of your illness. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast. We hope that the insights we've provided will aid and help your discussions in your pathway group this week. And we hope you'll join us at Intersection next week.