Bible Teaching

Calvary Temple Teaching Library

I Wound And I Heal Pt.1

Hallelujah! Amen. Chuck was just telling me that we had some good news with Karen Jefferson, that so far in the battle we've been having with the hepatitis, that there's been no damage to the liver. That's exciting! They're going to monitor her every thirty days for awhile. We're just believing that there will be absolutely no damage, and, really, no affect of that on her body that's destructive in any way. We're at war as a fellowship and not only as a fellowship but as the body of Christ. I believe in the last days that we're coming into, as it pertains to our physical bodies and the enemy's desire to try to take advantage over us-frankly, we're just not going to receive that. Amen?

Turn to the book of Deuteronomy for just a second. We're going to start what could be a pretty in-depth series on divine healing and looking at what the Lord's provision is for us, what it is that the enemy's trying to rob Father of in his opposition to us. In the process, we're going to take a little bit of time and look at the systematic approach to the doctrine of divine healing and at the same time try to also just keep it in a practical application. Before we can do any of this, we have to understand what God's will is for us and who God, in fact, is in His sovereign role. It makes you real comfortable. In other words, we went through all of the teaching that we've just been through of patience, and to follow it up with the teaching that we were just doing on the promises of God to try to build a foundation for us to rest in when we don't see the immediate effect of the covenant promises. We should expect to see them every time we pray. Amen? We should expect to walk in divine healing and in the protection of God and realize, as we take a look here shortly at the Book of Job, that God has a hedge around us.

Are you glad tonight that God has a hedge around you and Satan cannot touch you unless God allows it? Amen? Do you believe that? If you don't have that as a foundational principle that you're working off of you're going to begin to doubt God. You're going to begin to doubt His Word. You're going to begin to doubt your relationship. You're going to doubt the working of faith in your life. You're going to begin to get into a works syndrome that will bring you nothing but doubt, fear and confusion.

I want to tell you something tonight. God's in charge and He's for us. And if He's for us, nobody can be against us. And God in His sovereignty has established for us boundaries that we move within. In these boundaries He gives us limited revelation of how and why and the rest is the relationship. You remember how much trouble we went through in the teaching to establish this? The relationship being built between you and your Father to know that He has one desire for you, and that's to do you good all the days of your life. Do you believe that tonight? You see if we have that as our confidence then all of the unanswered questions don't become issues. It becomes so easy to say, why didn't this happen? I don't know. How come that happened? I don't know. Doesn't the Word of God say this, and we did that, and it didn't manifest? What's the reason? I don't know. What I do know is this-that the judge of all the earth does right and that's my confidence. I'm going to be about the revelation that I have of what He wants me to do, how He wants me to walk, the pursuit of His character, and the establishing of His will and His purpose through our declaration of Him, and to be able to say then, the whole duty of man-to fear God and keep His commandments.

With that in mind let's turn to Deuteronomy 32. We're going to continue on and-a passage that is very interesting as it pertains to Israel and to God's revealing of himself in contrast to the false gods, whether they be false in their being such as idols of stone and wood, or false in their declaration, such as Satan who has declared that he would ascend above the throne of God and in his role of the god of this world and how each of these contrast to the sovereignty of our heavenly Father, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Our heavenly Father who's good pleasure it is to give us the Kingdom. Our heavenly Father who's gone before us to make a way. Our heavenly Father who said I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

Deuteronomy 32 and verse 39, "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive: I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever." Let's look at that as God's declaration to us and understand His declaration of sovereignty over all of the gods of the universe contrived or, in fact, those that have real power such as Satan, a powerful being that we're contending with. We need to understand that our God stands alone, creator of all that is, lord of all that is, whose will can't be in any way then thwarted.

Look over at Hosea for just a second, and again, another declaration in the book of Hosea. Some powerful statements made along these lines. Hosea Chapter 6, verses 1-3, "Come, and let us return unto the LORD for he has torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning: and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and [the] former rain unto the earth." We begin to see then something about our Father in His dealing with the children of Israel, and how in the times of their disobedience and in the times of their apathy and their carnality, how God would allow them to be torn and how God would put upon them trials and tribulation by lifting the hedge and allowing the enemy to come in and try to destroy. But in all of these times God had control of the situation whether it was over an individual like Job that would not allow his life to be taken or over a nation like Israel that He wouldn't allow them to be destroyed, annihilated. God's purpose is to affect redemption's plan and to bring the redeemed of the Lord, the remnant, into fellowship with himself. When we begin to understand the overall picture-you remember there's a phrase, in fact, one of the home fellowship groups said that they might have some T-shirts made up and on their T-shirts-I can't remember-what was the front saying going to be? Yeah -"The bottom line is" and then on the back, "it's not about you." Okay. That point got across. These people begin to see then that what we're involved in here is an eternal communal revelation of God's purpose for man and that it's not just about you and your everyday aches and pains and yet, we as individuals have specific promises that have been made to us.

God is so intimate that the hairs of our head are numbered. He can call us by our names, praise God. Not only that, He has, as we read in the Scriptures, a little pet name for us. A love name that no one else knows but Him. You don't even know it yet. He's going to call you Poopsy. Who knows? Father loves you, and he wants to be intimate with you. Yet at the same time, as Hebrews makes it very clear in these passages that we just read in the Old Covenant-speak to us without any question, God will, when it's necessary in our lives, chasten us, and God will allow chastening to come in every way imaginable. It can come to us through physical affliction. It can come to us through spiritual oppression. It can come through demonic oppression. It can be of Satan. Satanic messengers sent to bruise us because of the abundance of our revelation. It can manifest in many different ways but the bottom line is-whatever's taking place that might be in the area of discipline, chastisement, is not punitive. It’s for the purpose of bringing us back into fellowship, communion, and into the image of Christ. See it for what it is and then you're able to, like James tells us, to count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations knowing that what God is doing is revealing some areas in your life where there needs to be more attention given to a dependence upon Him.

We're going to see as we go on in the study, as we finish up the introduction here, that it's not always a consequence of individual sin, though it can be. Most of the time, in fact, it’s that we're in the crossfire of this rebellion and war between Lucifer, the kingdom and god of this world and the kingdom of darkness and the opposition to our Father, the Father of Lights, and the Kingdom of Heaven. We're caught up in this and because of our heritage, we're susceptible to sickness and sin's power because of our father Adam because of universal sin. It can be specific, individual, or it can be universal. The thing that we need to see is, however, is that sickness always has to be attributed to sin.

In just a moment, we're going to look at the origin of sickness and then it will help us know how to contend with it. And how God has, in fact, provided for our escape and our dominion over that power of sin, sickness, and Satan. The first question we have to ask, is-is the doctrine of divine healing reasonable? You know, there's a lot of Christians who don't believe in divine healing. It's primarily because of their ignorance of God and their ignorance of the Scriptures. Now who are we? The Pentecostals have historically been known as the unlearned Christians. You know, we're the Christians from the other side of the track historically. Some of us have crossed over the railroad tracks and now we're a people who are finally going beyond sixth grade education and all of a sudden the preachers in the Pentecostal churches could read. Now the next thing you know, they're people who have graduated clear into the eighth grade and now we have some high school graduates and now some college graduates and now we have some theologians that are coming on the scene. The Pentecostals now begin to come up with a systematic theology, no longer dependent upon the historical churches that have become dead in their relationship with a living God. The God of power and the God of might has been put on the shelf because He's only known now intellectually and not experientially. Our roots as Pentecostals, full Gospel people, with our roots and the movements that came out of Kansas and Azusa Street, the colorful personalities of your Amy Semple McPhersons and the establishing of the Four Square denomination, the P.C. Nelsons and Ralph Riggs and Frank Boyds that became the foundational stones of the Assemblies of God begin to bring us a systematic theology and through the Scriptures tried to answer the question, is it reasonable to believe in the doctrine of divine healing today.

What we have to then realize is that the God that we serve is a God who's immutable. Amen? He said, I am the Lord, I what? - change not. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, praise God. To answer the question, is the doctrine of divine healing reasonable. Isn't a question then of is God able because if God is, then God is what? - able. Now those that come to God must believe that He is and that He’s a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. There's no question in the mind of anyone who professes a belief in the God of the Bible that God can heal. The question is, does He today? If He does, why? Well, let me tell you why. God heals because, and it's very important to understand this, God is definitely interested in the human body. We need to understand that. You say, well, that's simple, I mean, sure we all know-it's not so simple because one of the great arguments of the first century that came through gnosticism was that the body wasn't a big deal. Go out and eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die. This body is corrupt. Its origin is sin. Matter is evil. Use it up and your spirit then will be in the presence of God. Though those who were Gnostics would like, of course, to have a life of ease and comfort so that they could go out and party more and consume it upon their own lusts they would, of course, like to have that ease. They didn't really believe that there was any value in the human body.

I want you to understand something tonight. Jesus shed His blood for our human bodies, not just our spirit and our soul. When you begin to understand that healing is in the redemption, then it begins to show you the value of this body. It is it reasonable then? Let's answer the question. We have to look to understand this over at I Corinthians Chapter 6, as we look at the value, the worth, of the human body.

Now when I was in school they said all the chemicals of the human body were worth-I can't-what was it? Bill, can you help me out with that? How much? About eighty-six cents. Now with inflation you're probably worth almost ten bucks today. We realize that what our bodies-the actual value of the chemicals are not that valuable. What makes us valuable? The source, God, as the originator, the creator. You have to understand that the thing that makes you and I valuable and the fact that God's interested in your body is that we were created in the image of God. That becomes a real issue. Genesis 1:26 & 27, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, [and] after our likeness." As we begin to realize that we were created in God's image-and we'll look at that a little more in-depth in just a moment-God could have very easily created us spirit beings. What is it that caused Him to, rather than speak into existence this creature called man, I mean, aren't we talking about God, who stood on the brink of nothingness and declared light be and light was? Bang! Big bang! And there it is. God spoke all of this into being and then purposely took man and molded this body and breathed into his nostrils and man became a living soul. How valuable are we? How valuable is this temple made by the hands of God? Infused with life by the intimacy of God speaking. That word breathing, the infusion of the Holy Spirit into us, the pneuma of God, and the ruach of God comes, and life is infused, and man becomes a living being. Very personal, not impersonal at all and now here's this creature created in the image of God.

I Corinthians speaks then about the body this way-it's really kind of an interesting thing. Chapter 6. Look at verse 9. As you begin to look, it talks about the body a little bit and then it says, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." You say, well, what's that have to do with anything? Well, read on. "And such were some of you: but ye are [you're] washed, but ye are [you're] sanctified, but ye are [you're] justified. All things are lawful unto [for] me, but all things are not [they're not] expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." What he's doing here is he's showing our relationship with Him is not just spiritual, and it's not just soulical but that God is very concerned with our physical beings and how we use this body or abuse it. In the process he speaks toward that and he says, "Meats for the belly [amen] and the belly for meats [preferably filet mignon and not frozen McDonald burgers] but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but [say it with me; say it again; what is for the Lord? - the body] for the Lord and the Lord for the body." Get that phrase down, it's important. It's a foundational truth that will help you in divine healing. The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body. "And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us [our body - the implication] by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? [Get it in your notes. Your bodies are the members of Christ-your bodies, not your being, not your person, not your essence. Our bodies are the members of Christ.] shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which [that's] is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he shall be one flesh but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [get it in your notes - your body, not your spirit, not your being, and not your essence - your body. Now, of course, the Holy Spirit resides in communion with, is one with. Those that are joined to the Lord are one spirit with Him. We know that-that abiding of the Holy Spirit is in the union with our spirit and soul which can only be divided asunder by the Word of God. That communion is so close but within us then the Holy Spirit lives, communes, within our being and that is then the temple, the tabernacle, the dwelling place of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God. And ye are not your own for ye are [you’re] bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your spirit. You are bought with a price. What bought us? What purchased us-the blood of Jesus. For you are bought with a price.

Let's put a value now on what we're talking about here, the redemption of man, not only the saving of our souls, not only the reconciling of ourselves back to our heavenly Father, not only the fact that we've been pronounced now justified, that we are in the process of being sanctified, which will culminate in us being glorified; but what has taken place is this purchase, the death of Jesus, that will ultimately bring about the glorification that is the source of our sanctification is also the very source, redemption, of the preservation of our bodies while we're in the process of sanctification unto glorification. God wants your body whole. It's His temple. The Lord is for the body. The body is for the Lord, praise God. Right here we see that there's an equal value given to both. Look at it. This is fabulous! "For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." Glorify Him in your body and in your spirit which are God's - interesting passage. As you look at the context of that it doesn't only have to do then with our sanctification and our abstaining from idols and abstaining from fornication and the prostitution that took place in the temples in Corinth. When he's talking about committing fornication here, he's not talking about just going down and hitting on some call girls down on 14th Street. This is the temple prostitute. It had to do with worship, the religion, and we need to understand that he's saying if you're going to have communion with the living God it's going to be spirit, soul, and body.

The doctrine, as prominent as it was of Gnosticism, the other religions of the world, and all of the polytheism of Greece, and the gods that they worshipped of Hedonism, the revelry that they were involved in, he said, Christians can't have any kind of place in that because your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. How can we join Christ to a harlot? Your body isn't operating exclusive from your spirit. God says I will that you be in health and prosper even as your what? Soul prospers, third John tells us. God is wanting us to prosper spirit, soul, and body. We begin to see that the Lord is interested in our bodies. This is something that we need to give some real time to. Though we don't have the onslaught doctrinally of Docetes and those that were the great proponents of Gnosticism, we still have a Christianity that believes that God is not really all that interested in our bodies. Tragically, they're fundamentalist believers, good brothers and sisters. If they die they’re going to heaven. Many of our good Baptists and Presbyterian brothers and sisters-and they just frankly don't believe that God's all that concerned with our bodies. Okay, if we get healed, we get healed. They believe that God can sovereignly heal. They don't question that, and that God up there just arbitrarily, periodically, will shoot a lightning bolt down and someone will experience a miracle. They believe in miracles. They believe that God can heal. They believe that He has expressed Himself in healing. They just don't believe that He's really all that interested in our bodies because in the life to come we're going to in our glorification be freed from all of the sin and disease and pain, and they're right. They're wrong in assuming that God isn't involved in our physical being today.

Now because of this I think that Pentecostals, over-reacting to this, took some of these doctrines that were freshly revealed a hundred years ago and the argument against Pentecostal churches, Charismatic churches, full Gospel churches, was that if you went to one of them all you would hear would be a message that would be about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in other tongues or the doctrine of healing. That's all you heard preached. You know what? There's a lot of truth to that. Because that was all that was preached many of our Pentecostal people really didn't know what they believed. Because that's all that was preached when the signs and wonders didn't manifest, people wondered why and began to question God and began to question their faith, and many of them are Baptists today. It's because they didn't understand many of the foundational principles of what they believed. We have to answer these questions if we're going to be truthful with ourselves and accurate with our declaration of the Word of God and answer the question, what is the reasonableness of divine healing? Is it reasonable? Well, for it to be a doctrine we have to then establish not God's ability but God's purpose, and we see then that God is definitely interested in the human body. From this chapter alone I think we can conclude that.

I think by the ministry of Jesus, when you look and see his declaration, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I've not come to speak my words but the words of He that sent me. And Jesus went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, the Scripture says. He did that because He was what? Anointed of God, and He was fulfilling the purpose of God. We see in the life of Jesus this question being answered. Lord, if thou wilt, thou can heal me. Jesus said, I will. The Bible says about Jesus that He healed them all and that it fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah that He himself bore our sins and our sickness, our disease, that it pleased Father to bruise Him. Why? That your body and my body might be made whole. I think that the argument that God is interested in our bodies is without question-created in His image.

Secondly, we need to see that the human body then is included in the work of redemption. God's interested in our body as seen in that we were created in His image. Number two, we see that it was that the human body is included in the redemptive work of Jesus. Look over at Romans Chapter 8 for just a second. In Romans Chapter 8, verse 23, we see in this redemptive chapter, verse 17 and 18, "And if [we're] children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with [to] the glory which shall be revealed in us." He talks about the eternal hope that's coming and the excitement of that and then he goes on down into verse 23 and says, after pointing to the eternal aspects and says, "And not only they [those who experience many of the blessings, those that were grasping the eternal hope, not only they also], but [we] ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit [that is to know], the redemption of our body [bodies]." This body is not going to just be cast off and all of a sudden our spirit and our soul emerge into the presence of God. Now we know to be absent from the body is to be what? Present with the Lord. But what about this body? Is it just going to go to dust? Is this body something that's just a temporal vessel that we are in through this life and it will have run its course? All of the atoms that make up this structure then will cease to exist? Will it be a cessation of all of this atomic material or will there be a translation into another realm, into another dimension?

What we do know is this from this passage is this body will be redeemed. It's not being redeemed now. It's going to die. It will cease to exist as it is but it will not cease. It will be transformed. It will be recreated in another dimension. It will become a spiritual essence, however you want to state it, but these bodies are going to, because of the blood of Jesus, are going to be in the company, in the presence of God and we will continue to be a triune being, spirit, soul, and body, because that's who and what we are. God's concerned about our bodies. It's an exciting thing to see! I'm spending a little more time on this than I want to. I want to get through these pretty quickly. If you think about it, it's exciting! It's a thing to understand that God is involved in our lives and that this is what the blood of Jesus was all about.

Third, the body of a Christian as we saw then in I Corinthians 6:15, is a member of Christ. It's a member of Christ.

Number 4-we saw in verses 15 through 18 of that same sixth chapter of Corinthians that God is interested in the sanctity of this body, how we use it, that it's to be set aside, set apart for His purposes. This body is not for you to do what you want with it. Now you know we can get carried away on different things. I don't want to get all off in these areas but let me just share something with you. It was interesting. You see Christians today, a lot of them who are on there, and they’re having stuff like Jesus tattooed on their chest. You know if you backslide, that'll be a bummer. You know, pierced for Jesus. Big cross hanging off their tongue, you know, pierced, and this thing flopping around. Now, what's that all about? If you study the Scriptures you'll find out that God doesn't want you marking your bodies up. God doesn't give you the liberty to be putting tattoos on and all of these different marks and doing all of this stuff to your body. Well we're not under the law anymore. Praise God we're free and you read the sixth chapter of Corinthians with your liberty but beloved, you need to understand that you're not your own, you're bought with a price, that God's concerned with the sanctity of our body, how we're using it or abusing it.

He gets into-and we won't get off into that right now-he gets into not only that-how we adorn it, or whether we spend too much time focusing on it with our makeup and our hair and all of this other stuff-ugly spirit and painted up face. You need to spend more time on the internal. A lot of time goes into that. You know, some of these people, you can walk up to some of these ladies, and just hit them on the head, they'd be about three feet deep layers. Then you see what they look like. It's scary what you can hide under there, man, some of these makeovers. Some of those super models-have you ever seen them without their makeup? Dear Lord, you know, and the fad, they got these little skinny girls with big lips, you can just stick them on the wall. DON’T KNOW IF SOMETHING WAS IN BETWEEN THESE SENTENCES; THERE WASN'T ON THE TAPE!!!!

The guy’s response was, well, then why do you keep hiring them? Show a message-hire a little rounder person. Now if the secular can see that why are some of us trying to emulate the world? Why are some of us trying to become other than what we are to the point of being consumed by these things, to the point of becoming unhealthy?

Your body is not your own. You're bought with a price. That's why, young people, we don't in any way condone dating. We don't condone the holding of hands and the little adolescent kisses and all of these things that go on in so many churches. The reason is your body is not your own. It's not yours just to offer up and all of this type of behavior. There's a God-given environment for that. To demean the blood of Jesus and to usurp the authority of our physical being in those areas is to deny His lordship. It's not just a little kid thing that we're talking about. When you begin to see how real this is in the Scriptures you can see why we've emphasized many of these things that other people have de-emphasized. The human body-amazing!

Number 5-the temple of the Holy Ghost, Corinthians 6:19. How much time, energy, effort given to the beautification, the glorification of the temple in Jerusalem. The awareness of God's presence there and the desire to daily be in that presence and yet here He is residing within us and how little attention we give to Him and it.

Sixth - verse 20, the mandate to glorify God in your body, to glorify Him. That's not only in our behavior but in the fact that we don't abuse ourselves. Some of us are guilty of that in many different ways. We can go to extremes and be involved in idolatry, but the fact of the matter is, the glorifying of God in our bodies is that our body's to be strong, as healthy as they can possibly be-that they're sanctified, that they're set apart for God, that we're using our strength and energy for the glorification of the Kingdom and the edification of our brothers and sisters, that we get adequate sleep and nutrition, hygiene, that we control the different appetites of this body to the glory of God. We glorify Him by allowing this body to be under His direction and His lordship.

Then we see in number 7 as we look at the fact that God is interested in the human body, we see in the seventh point here that we're to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto God which is our reasonable service, Romans 12:1 tells us. This offering up of our physical being in the areas that are so distinct from the world and what they're offering their bodies to. The true belief that we don't have to eat or partake of the king's dainties, whether it's in the new physical fads or whatever it might be, but we can live off of the pulse that God has provided for us and be ten times more productive than anything that the world system can produce.

It's interesting that passage as you're looking over in Daniel 3. Look over there real quickly and just get a peek at that in Daniel 3, verse 28. "Then Nebuchadnezzar spake and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God." They yielded not their bodies. In other words, they knew that it was going to cost them physically. It was going to cost them death, but to prostitute themselves in idolatry, whatever the idolatry, the fad, the worship of the day, whatever the idolatry is that we don't yield our bodies to that. Beloved, it can go anywhere from the tattoos that we were talking about to the temple prostitution. It can come to the place of wanting to wear our jeans, you know, like plumbers where the crack shows and the crotch hangs to the ground and walk around-gold chains. That's the world. Why are you adorning your body like the world, to be identified with the world? We're not saying you have to dress like Pee Wee Herman or whatever, but it's the spirit, it's the motive behind what's going on. We present our bodies, we present ourselves as being different. You can't just come up here and swap spit with me because you want to. Get your hands off of me. I am not going to identify. My body is not cheap. It's not for your thrills. It's the temple of God, and I offer it as a sacrifice to Him alone.

Thank God that we have unique unions that are taking place here. Young people in their twenties and older that are virgins coming together and honoring God with their bodies. What a time of rejoicing. What a way to glorify God in our day.

Eighth and last for this evening. This body is going to be resurrected. Chapter six, verse 14, "And God [this is the same Corinthians passage, And God] hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power." Look over at Ephesians, Chapter 1, for just a moment. In Ephesians 1, you have verse 14-the Holy Spirit, the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. We realize then that there is this purchasing, this seal, this guarantee that's going to take place. The guarantee of the resurrected life, the immortal life that's provided for us. We have that promise. This is the end of the great work of redemption as it pertains to this physical body.

With that in mind, we can begin to have confidence that this body isn't something that God is just going to haphazardly respond to periodically in its need. If He's told us to be conscious of how to use it, how not to abuse it, how to glorify Him in it, then He's going to be conscious of fulfilling the work of redemption through His blood that bought it for Himself. He's going to be conscious of His dwelling within it and He will make it all that it needs to be to glorify Him. He will strengthen it. He will sanctify it and ultimately glorify it if we'll endure and realizing that He's working in us to will and to do His good pleasure. God is interested in your bodies and we're going to see how it affects itself in the doctrine of healing as we go on.

Point number 1 as we've looked at the study for tonight-God's interest in your body. Sunday morning we're going to look at the origin of sickness and how it affects you and I generally. As we go through the study we're going to look at healing in the redemption and we're going to try to answer some of the hard questions that can be answered. Some can't but those that can. We're going to answer the question as to whether or not we're just to run around and lay our hands on every person who seems to be sick and command them to be healed and expect them to be raised up. That's not the proper doctrine of healing. Many of us seem to think that that's something that we can do. We can just say, well the Bible says we lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover, so I'm going to go find all the sick people I can, lay hands on them, and they'll recover. They will not recover. That's not the proper application of the doctrine of healing. As we look at these passages, I think it's going to prepare us for the day that we're in. We're going to see God glorified in our midst and many of these needs that are among us God's going to show Himself mighty and we're going to see healing and we're going to see the wholeness of His people.

I was just talking to Leonel in the foyer as I was walking in and the report that he received to this point and I'm not going to get into details because I don't want to misspeak, but generally the reports are not good and there's a very rare-they're saying now that it's a very rare disease, and that it's destroying the good cells and leaving the bad. It's a constant breaking down of the body and we're just not going to have that. That's not right. It's not what we would initially understand to be God's will for us. He wants us whole. He wants us healed. He wants us in health. He wants us to prosper. He's the giver of every good and perfect gift to us. When we study and analyze all of these things you don't approach any situation such as prayer for these needs thinking I wonder if this could be one of those exceptions. You don't approach God with the exceptions. He institutes the exceptions. We expect the rule and that's that by the stripes of Jesus we're healed and that's that the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up. Amen? Let's believe God this evening right now. Let's just begin to pray for Lionel. He's in pain tonight and he's warring against some of these things. There's many needs. Becky's going to UVA tomorrow and she's been really battling some severe pain in the last days. Let's stand in the gap for our brothers and sisters and begin to declare the goodness of God and realize He cares tonight. He has purchased these bodies with His own blood. In the name of Jesus, then, we can expect Him to make them whole.

Hallelujah, Father we come in the Jesus' name and we pray for our brother and our sister tonight. We thank you on Leonel's behalf, Lord, that you're here to bring healing. Father we're not here to try to ascertain why, how. We only look at these things for the purpose of understanding your purpose for us and that's to do us good. Father, I ask you tonight, in the name of Jesus, to show yourself mighty on Leonel's behalf right now and I ask you, Father in the name of Jesus, to make him whole. Father, we oppose this disease in his body by the authority of the name of Jesus and by the power of the blood. Though their diagnosis may be accurate the prognosis is not acceptable in the name of Jesus, be healed, be healed. Be whole in the name of Jesus.

Father, we ask you to dissolve the tumors invading Becky's brain, Father, in the name of Jesus, for your glory, Lord, show yourself mighty and destroy the destroyer. Father, I ask you in the name of Jesus. Father, we ask you because of the blood of Jesus, because of the price that's been paid we ask you to show yourself mighty now and be glorified in our midst. Lord that we might boast in you and declare your majesty. We have assurance Lord. We know that you're the giver of every good and perfect gift.

Oh Father, with great confidence we believe that you'll bruise Satan beneath our feet with speed. With great confidence, Father, we believe that the enemy trembles in your presence. We believe that we can lay our hands on the sick, Lord, and that they would recover.

Those of you that around these just lay your hands on them right now in the name of Jesus. Believe for the presence and the anointing of God that's in you to leave your body and to enter. Others that are on the prayer list and you may be by them just reach out and touch them. Say in the name of Jesus. Believe for the anointing that's in you to enter their bodies. Believe for the power of God's presence to manifest right now right now. Pain be gone in the name of Jesus because of the work that He's done, because of the decree of His own mouth, I am the Lord that healeth thee.

Lord, it doesn't have anything to do with technique or working up faith. It has to do with who you are, what your purpose is, and what we believe. And we believe that you want us whole tonight in the name of Jesus. We believe you want us to be a people strong for your glory. Oh, Father, show yourself mighty in this place tonight. Father, move in our midst. Show yourself mighty.

Father, we will accept your chastening, but we will not accept Satan's trying to dominate our lives. We resist the enemy and expect him to flee and we yield our members to you, Lord. We're not laying down before the devil, but we do kneel in your presence and say, thy will be done.

Oh Lord, you are concerned about this physical man. Lord, this body that you’ve created in your image, this body that you've desired to tabernacle in, the temple of the Holy Ghost, Lord, make it whole for your glory. Jesus, we're a people in need. From these great needs that we've expressed to the smallest things such as the allergies that are coming this season, the back pains, neck pains, you're concerned about all of it, Jesus. We ask you, Lord, to make us whole. Lord, that you would receive the pain in our bodies and the disease. We yield it to you. You've taken it, Lord, we just haven't given it up. Lord, we yield and allow you to take that part of our lives also. Make us whole, Lord, for your glory. We'll boast not in our supplements that we take and our exercise and our diet and our proper management, we'll boast in you, Jesus. We'll boast in you, Jesus. Hallelujah. For you are the Lord that heals us. Glory. Glorify Him in your body, in your spirit. They're the Lord's. Hallelujah. We worship you. You're our healer, Lord.

Let's sing it together. Just worship Him as you sing it. Jesus’ stripes paid for your healing tonight. He declared you whole. Who can thwart His will? Sing it again. You're the Lord. Thank you, Jesus. You healed my disease, my disease. Sing it one more time and let Him heal you tonight. Just declare it. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. Just thank Him tonight for His work in our lives. Thank Him for His love tonight rejoicing in all of His goodness. Hallelujah. We declare it, Lord. You're our healer. Our boast, Lord, let it be in you alone. Lord, let it be in you alone. Hallelujah. We declare it, Lord, and we boast in you. Oh, Father. Those that come to you must believe that you are and that you're a rewarder of those that diligently seek you. We're in pursuit of you tonight, Lord, and we expect the reward, in Jesus name. Amen. Before you go turn to somebody next to you and say, by His stripes, we're healed. Amen. Go in peace, God's love go with you.

Back to Top | Audio   |   Purchase Audio   |   Bible Teachings   |   Print