Christ Came to Bring Eternal Healing

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Isaiah 53:5. The main subject of the sermon is the purpose Christ entered the world to accomplish, which is our healing.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -  

Well, I want to wish all of you a merry Christmas. It's a special night. I always enjoy this service. It's a pleasant time to gather, to assemble. I would say that I've probably never cherished face-to-face fellowship as much as I do this year. I think it's the kind of thing that we can easily take for granted what it's like to be together, to assemble together, and we're grateful for the chance that we have to meet together and celebrate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know that at Christmas we're nearing the end of the year, so we're coming closer to a new year and this year of trial and trouble is almost at an end.

As we look back at 2020, we will not soon forget the impact a microscopic virus has had on human history, on society, on commerce, on families, on churches, business, on whole nations, and certainly on individuals. Even still, as we look ahead to the year 2020, we know that we're not certain that the light is coming at the end of the tunnel in this particular trial, despite the advances that pharmaceutical researchers have made in a vaccine. We know that even when this pandemic may come to an end and life returns to whatever normal resumes after it, the larger problem will still remain, disease, suffering, death will not have been defeated, but will still stand looming over each one of us, like the grim reaper or the silent Ghost of Christmas Future with his long, bony finger pointing to the grave. Death is the final enemy, the Scripture tells us, the final enemy or the last enemy to be defeated and it will still be running amok, running roughshod over our beleaguered and guilty race until final and eternal healing comes. But dear friends, final and eternal healing is coming. To all diseases and to death itself. A light is shining in a dark place. We who are walking in the land of the shadow of death, on us, a light has dawned. The birth of Jesus Christ into our suffering world over 2000 years ago, ignited a blazing torch that fires up hope in our hearts and it's lit the way through the valley of the shadow of death for every generation there's been since that time, and including ours as well. Jesus Christ, the savior of the world has been born and that's what we are celebrating. Indeed, we celebrate as Christians every day, not just at Christmas time, but this is a good time for us to focus on it. The Savior of the world has come, hope has dawned, and the rising of the sun will grow brighter and brighter in heavenly glory as each day of redemptive history passes.

"The birth of Jesus Christ into our suffering world over 2000 years ago, ignited a blazing torch that fires up hope in our hearts and it's lit the way through the valley of the shadow of death for every generation there's been since that time." 

Now, that ever-growing brightness, that ever-growing glory cannot be seen with the naked eye. It must be seen by faith. Now, what do I mean by the ever-growing glory, the ever-growing brightness? How is the glory of Christ greater now than it was 2000 years ago? How has the magnitude of his brightness actually grown with every passing generation? Well, the answer is, as the Holy Spirit applies Christ’s triumphant, substitutionary death and his triumphant resurrection from the dead to individual people in every generation, the invisible glory of the church of Jesus Christ grows even greater. Every single sinner who repents, who bows the knee to Christ in humble adoration, in repentance and faith, crossing over from death to life, every single one of those adds to the glory of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And that greatness only ever accumulates. It only ever gets greater and greater. More and more glory, more and more brightness, more and more joy, more and more power. Though for the most part, it's hidden from our eyes. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large amount of flour until it permeated, it worked all through the dough.” That's what the advancement of the kingdom of heaven has been like for 20 centuries. Matthew 13:33, every day of redemptive history, the invisible kingdom of Christ gets a little larger, makes a little more progress.

Now, I want to commend to you the idea tonight as we meditate together, that this advance can be seen as a healing. Christ was born to heal. Christ lived to heal. Christ did healing miracles as the sign of a future world that would be free from all disease. Christ spoke healing words. Christ died a bloody death to heal. And he has risen with healing in his wings. Christ as the worldwide healer of a grieving, hurting afflicted world, that is my topic on this beautiful night of quiet joy, candle lit night, a night of singing hymns, songs of celebration. I enjoy this night. And we assemble and we think back on that night and we sing, “Oh Holy Night” and we think what it was like to be one of those shepherds and to see Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes when the angel of the glory of the Lord shown around and those shepherds were... I'll never forget the King James Version, sore afraid. There's no translation better than that. They were sore afraid. And they were told, “Tonight, in the city of David, a savior has been born for you. And this will be a sign for you. You'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, Christ the Lord.” so tonight we meet to celebrate that, the gift of a divine healer who came into a disease ridden world to heal us of the ultimate disease, and that is sin.

"Christ was born to heal. Christ lived to heal. Christ did healing miracles as the sign of a future world that would be free from all disease. Christ spoke healing words. Christ died a bloody death to heal. And he has risen with healing in his wings."

Now, Christ's mission as healer was predicted centuries before he was born. Isaiah the prophet, wrote in Isaiah 53:5, "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed." So seven centuries before Christ was born, Isaiah saw him coming. This is the miracle of prophecy. It's what sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. The fact that our God, the God of the Bible is an eternal being who knows the end from the beginning, the beginning from the end. And not only that, he decrees the future and then has the sovereign power to bring it about, that's how predictive prophecy works. And Isaiah 53, I believe, is the greatest predictive prophecy of Christ there is in the Old Testament, the greatest prophecy of the coming of Christ. It clearly defined what Christ came to do. And the centerpiece of that prophecy in Isaiah 53 is substitutionary atonement.

Now, atonement is just made up of two simple words, at-one-ment, the idea of an estrangement, a rupture between us and God, and Christ came to atone for our sins, that means to make at one, us and God, where we were ruptured apart. We were enemies because of our sins. Atonement, therefore is the payment or the covering of sin resulting in reconciliation with a Holy God. Sin brought death, "The wages of sin is death." Romans 6:23. Adam’s sin brought death into the world. Romans 5:12, it says, "Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all because all sinned." Now, disease was part of that judgment. It was an instrument of judgment by God. Disease is the dysfunction of the body. Pathogens, carcinogens, toxins enter the body and cause the body to stop functioning properly. Bacteria, viruses came into the world as part of the curse on this world, and they enter the body and they make eyes blind. They make legs paralyzed. They make skin to break out in terrible bloody rashes. They cause organs to cease functioning properly. This is disease, the tragic history of disease.

Now healing is the rectification of that process, the restoration of the body to a pattern of normalcy being rescued from that specific ailment or disease, and God in his grace has given insight to individuals who are wise enough to study the science of the body, and of various chemicals and substances in the world and procedures and it's been going on for centuries. If you add a particular pulses with a certain kind of recipe to a boil or a certain ailment in the body, it has been shown to give healing in that particular case, those kinds of things. Or if you cut open the body and if you cut out the tumor in a certain way, that healing may follow. But many diseases and plagues and fevers have long eluded human art and science to conquer. And the overall problem of sin, and disease, and death cannot be solved by human technology, cannot be solved by pharmaceutical research.

Only God can heal the human race. And God sent his Son, Jesus Christ into the world as a healer. Look again at Isaiah 53:5. It says, "By his wounds, we are healed." Isaiah saw the coming of a Savior who would heal the human race of all of its plagues. But Isaiah saw more than that. In the verses that we already heard tonight, he saw the root cause of all disease, of all affliction is sin. Sin is the plague of plagues. Adam sinned by breaking a specific command from God. But Adam's descendants, all of us, were born into the guilt and consequences of his original sin, and received diseases even immediately, some of us, even as infants, even though the infants had never sinned as Adam did by breaking a command of God. Yet they were born into his suffering, into his guilt in some mysterious way. Some babies receive diseases from the bodies of their mothers. Others receive genetic deformities from their parents in some very difficult and afflicting way, though they've never sinned voluntarily. However, all people, once they are born into the world and they grow up and understand the imprint of God's moral law in their hearts or they understand from Scripture the law of God, all of us violate those laws at some point. Every one of us has sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We have all violated God's laws. In that way we did sin as Adam did by breaking commands of God.

Now, Christ's healing could only be affected by dealing with the root cause of all disease, and that is sin in the eyes of a Holy God. Therefore, Christ was born into the world to suffer and to die in our place as a substitute. Isaiah 53:5-6 gives the whole unfolding of that truth, "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." That is substitutionary atonement, and it addresses the root cause of our afflictions and our miseries and our diseases, and that is sin. So seven centuries before Christ was even born, Isaiah saw very clearly Christ coming as the healer. But then Christ's mission as a healer was put on full display. It was demonstrated plainly.

Once Christ began his ministry, he started a river of healings. In Matthew 4:23-25, it says, "Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who are ill with various diseases. Those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, the epileptics, or those having seizures, paralytics, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him." Friends, that is the greatest unleashing of miraculous power there's ever been in history. The Old Testament prophets occasionally did a miracle here, a miracle there from time to time. So also the apostles did maybe more than that, but far less than Jesus, just a river of healings. Huge populations went to Jesus every day and he healed them all. Jesus' healing ministry was undefeated. Think about that. There's never a single case of a disease or an illness that was beyond his skill to address. There was not a single malady he could not heal. It says in Mark 7:37, "People are overwhelmed with amazement. ‘He has done everything well.’" I love that statement about Jesus. Isn't that great? He's just good at everything. There's nothing he cannot do, “He has even made the deaf hear and the mute speak." So therefore he was not a specialist. Some of us, we're in a great region for medical research. And if you have a particular malady, you go to see a specialist and the individual has zeroed in on that particular part of the body or that particular ailment, and becomes expert at that. Jesus was not a specialist, he was a general practitioner, but perfect at everything he did better than any specialist in that area. So organic illnesses, even dismemberments, remember when Peter hacked off Malchus' ear and Jesus touched it and gave him a new ear? That's amazing.

Organic illnesses, even paralysis from birth, blindness from birth, blindness had never been healed before Jesus. No one ever had done that before in the history of the world. Jesus healed him. Even death, even Lazarus dead four days, not too difficult for Jesus. He could do anything, universal success. And also I love in the healing accounts how easy it is for Jesus to heal. It was effortless. And we also see a variety of methods. It wasn't just one approach every time, sometimes he would spit on the ground and make mud. Other times he would touch someone. Other times he wouldn't even be there, he would just give the word and an individual would be healed. He didn't even have to be in the same vicinity. He could do anything. However, for the most part, I think more than anything, you see him healing by touch. He raises Jairus' daughter by taking her by the hand. He heals Peter's mother-in-law by taking her by the hand. And I think what it is, is he wants that relationship. He wants to be able to look the afflicted in the eye and they know he was the one who healed them.

I think about the story about the woman who was suffering from the problem of bleeding for 12 years and the account’s in Mark 5:27 and following, it says, "When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak because she thought, 'If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.' Immediately, her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once, Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, 'Who touched my clothes?' 'You see the people crowding around you,' his disciples answered, 'And yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’'" The disciples are interesting people, aren't they? It's like Jesus,  I mean they must have thought low thoughts of Jesus at that moment. But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. "Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and trembling with fear, told him the whole truth,” and I love this, “he said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.'" So that that was the whole point of part two of this drama, "Who touched me? I want to be able to look you in the eye and I want you to know the love that I have for you." He wanted that interaction with her. He wanted that personal relationship with her.

So Christ's mission as healer was really defined. Physical healing was not the ultimate goal. All healings, all of the physical healings that Jesus came to do were pictures of the real healing that all of us needs. Now, you may be here tonight in the picture of health. You may be in the prime of your years or you may be well beyond that. And you came tonight in great pain or with a chronic affliction or many of them. In any case, the greatest healing we all need is the forgiveness of sins. And so Jesus said in Luke 5:30-32, "The Pharisees and the teacher of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' Now, Jesus answered them. 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'" Do you see the parallelism there? Jesus is calling himself a healer, and the way he heals is by calling sinners to repentance. That's the healing he wanted to do. All of the people Jesus healed physically died of something else, all of them. Jesus knew that death was going to be the final enemy; he was only just giving signs of His power over sin and death. But the real healing we need is forgiveness of sins.

"All healings, all of the physical healings that Jesus came to do were pictures of the real healing that all of us needs."

And so Jesus pointed always to a higher healing. In John 5, He healed a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, but he did not save his soul in that first encounter. He circles back later and finds that man and he says, "Behold, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." Now, please don't imagine that what the worst thing is 39 years of paralysis or a different disease. That's not what Jesus is talking about. He was talking about eternity in hell, eternity in hell. That's worse than any disease. And so Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” That is the greatest fear that any of us should have. Therefore, the greatest healing that we can ever have is being healed from our sins so we don't spend eternity in torment in hell. So Jesus's top priority always was to forgiveness of sins, not the healing of the body. You remember in Mark 2, the account of the paralyzed man that was carried by four of the man's friends. And again, keep in mind Jesus healing everybody. He was surrounded every day by a crushing crowd. You couldn't get near him. So if you imagine like one of those kids movies that you're going to go back in time and have time with Jesus, you'd never get close, friends, because everyone wanted to be near Jesus. And so these people brought their friend on a mat and they couldn't get close to Jesus. So they went up on the roof and dug through the roof. And after digging through it lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” No physical healing, none. That's Jesus' priority, “Son, daughter, your sins are forgiven.” And if that would have been all that Jesus had done for that man that would've been an infinite gift, spending eternity in heaven with God because your sins are forgiven. There's nothing more valuable than that. Conversely, to heal him and not forgive his sins, what good would that be ultimately? "But when Jesus’ enemies heard what they were saying, they were sitting there thinking, 'Why does this fellow talk like this? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins, but God alone?' Immediately, Jesus knew in his spirit that this is what they were thinking in their hearts. And he said to them, 'Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise and walk.' But still that you may know that I have power on earth to forgive sins.’ He then said to the paralytic, 'Get up, take your mat and go home.' So the man got up and went home in full view of them all. And they all praise God saying, 'We've never seen anything like that.'" Well, Jesus has the same power to forgive sins on earth now that he had then. The same power. And that's the healing that we need.

"The greatest healing that we can ever have is being healed from our sins so we don't spend eternity in torment in hell. "

Now, Christ's mission as healer will be consummated in heaven. It will be consummated eternally. All of the miracles were signs, they're signs and wonders, signs pointing ahead to a city that's coming to a world that's coming. And in that world, “There'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain,” Revelation 21:4. And in the city that's coming, the new Jerusalem, we are told that there is, “a river of the water of life flowing from the throne as clear as crystal down the center of that city, and on each side of the river stood the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit, each yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree," listen to this, "Are for the healing of the nations." Now, I spent a lot of time meditating on that. Like, “Well, what do we need healing for in a world that whether there's no more death, morning, crying or pain?" Well just put the two together. It's because the tree of the life is there that we never will experience death, mourning crying or pain again. It's a dynamic ongoing health that flows from the throne of God. It's not independent of God's throne or independent of the river of the water of life, or independent of the Tree of Life. It's because all of those things are open to us to feast from for all eternity that we will never know disease, or sorrow, or suffering ever again. And even better than that, death will be dead itself. So death thrown into the lake of fire in Revelation 20, and even better than that, sin will be gone. We will never sin again, but we will bow our knees before the throne of God and of Christ for all eternity and be delighted, delighted to obey him forever. That is the world to which we are going. That is the world where Jesus' ministry as healer is consummated for all eternity.

So as we finish up tonight, brief meditation on God's word, greatest application I can give to each one of you is be certain that your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ. Whatever physical condition you're in, whatever physical pain you may be feeling, whatever circumstances you may be in, the greatest need any of us has is forgiveness of sins. And Jesus is able to forgive all of your sins past, present, and future through simple faith in Christ. Trust in him. Trust in him.

Secondly, if you are in pain, if you are experiencing chronic illnesses, understand Jesus has every bit as much power to heal as ever he did back then. If you are sick, ask the elders of the church to pray over you- anoint you with oil and pray over you. It says in James 5, "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, the Lord will raise him up." And so God has the power still to heal. We've seen amazing healings in this church in answer to prayer. But even if he were to heal you amazingly, unless the Lord returns in our lifetime, you'll die of something else. But rejoice, the sting has been taken out of death forever. We're going to spend eternity in heaven and we're going to get resurrection bodies and they'll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. So seek the healing, get good medical treatment, get your brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for you, and Jesus has the power still to heal.

Thirdly, think about heaven, to which we're going. Think about it more than you do. Think about Revelation 21:4. "No more death, mourning, crying, or pain." Think about the river of the water of life flowing clear as crystal. Think about the tree of life and feast in your heart on the healing that is coming. Let's close now in prayer and then we're going to turn to a time of the Lord's Supper.

Father, we thank you for the meditation that we've had now in the word of God. We thank you for its power, and I pray, Lord, that as we turn our attention now to the table, to the Lord's supper, we have the opportunity to celebrate and we pray that you would please send forth the power of the Spirit now to make this a powerful celebration of the Lord's supper. In Jesus’ name, amen.