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We come today to a message that
I've been anticipating for a while, a message that I trust will have
an impact on your lives and one that will spread beyond the walls
of this church to be an encouragement to many in their suffering and
in their sorrows. We have spent several weeks.
on a series that we've titled, The Holy Spirit Today. And we've
looked at a number of controversial theological issues and we have
a few more to go before we finish this series before the end of
the year. Last week we looked at the topic of divine healing
and made the conclusive case, in my opinion, that God does
not gift any individuals with the power to bring divine healing
at their touch to anyone. Yes, we might seek healing from
God in prayer. Yes, God answers our prayers
for healings at time. But there is not a man in the
world that is gifted in the way that the Apostles were gifted
to lay hands and bring immediate physical healing to people who
have deformed limbs and things of that nature. Everything that
you see going on in Charismatic circles is a cheap counterfeit
of what the biblical gift was and therefore we dismiss it out
of hand as not being the real thing, that it is not attesting
to anything that is a work of God and giving affirmation to
the things that those people might teach. God gives affirmation
to teaching now by it being in conformity with His completed
canon in the 66 books of the Bible. And it is by that that
we measure what is true, not by false signs and wonders that
people claim to be doing today. There are copies of that message
out that you can pick up on your way out. We would invite you
to that. But that leaves a question that needs to be answered and
perhaps at times these matters are discussed without a proper
attention to the pastoral aspect of the issue, and that's what
I want to try to address here today. I say this with a smile
in my heart, if not on my face. It is common for those of you
that attend our church on a regular basis. You know that it is common
for me to go on a tangent in my preaching and I'll go on a
tangent for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes as I think of something that
I want to emphasize in the midst of a message. Today is just a
variation of that sort of thing. Today in the midst of this series
on the Holy Spirit, I'm going to go on a 60-minute tangent
on the series because there's something that I just feel like
is very important to address. Why is it that there is such
a market for divine healing and people going off to charlatans
trying to find help? God will have a special measure
of judgment for those who are practicing those things and practicing
that deception and offering people false hope on things that they
cannot deliver and their judgment will be just. But setting aside
the false teachers who purvey that, why is there a market for
it? Why do people flock to that? People look for healing because
they're sick, they're miserable, they're desperate, may either
for themselves or for a loved one that they might bring to
a situation like that. And they're looking for help,
they're looking for hope, but they're looking in the wrong
place. And we want to help people like that in what we have to
say today. And even within the walls of
our own building here today, we ask the question, where do
we go? What are we to think when the
healing doesn't come? when inevitably dementia takes
over the mind for some and does not release them from its grip.
What do we say to parents with a deathly sick child that they
love dearly, that they pray earnestly for and only to see their life
continue to waste away? What are we to think as old age
comes and begins to take its toll on our body and our prior
vigor and we see the decline that we realize is not going
to be reversed? We take a fall, we injure ourselves
and we start to feel the weight of a body that is not doing what
it did in our younger days. You know, there's...I'm going
on a tangent on a tangent here. with what I'm about to say. But
part of the reason that the purveyors of prosperity can get away with
it is that they preach as young men to young people and by the
time life catches up with them, everybody's forgotten about what
they said ten or twenty years ago with their promises of health
and well-being and prosperity and all of that and you just
kind of move on and you forget that. And people forget the spiritual
travesty that took place in their younger days, in the days of
their youth when they weren't prepared for the inevitability
of the difficulties of life that would come. And you can get away
with that because you preach and you do a hit and run and
you move on to something else and you move on to another church
in two or three years and everybody forgets what you've said. And
it's an abominable, deplorable practice that men make a good
living by being purveyors of false hope. We're not here about
to do that. We're not about that. We're here
for the long haul. We're here to do what the Lord
would have us to do, hopefully. And we realize in the midst of
that as we go through life together as a church, corporately as we
go through these things together, we realize that we need, you
and I, we need something to...on which to build our lives. We
need something on which to build our lives that will carry us
through the inevitable hardship that will come. something that
will stand against the waves of adversity, something that
will stand when the earthquakes of hardship rumble underneath
the feet of our lives and shake us from our prior seeming stability. And that's what we want to do
today. That's what we tried to do over the course of time here.
But in this particular message, we want to address the topic
that inevitably everybody has to deal with. There's a universal
application to this sooner or later, dealing with the topic
of what do we do when the healing doesn't come? What do we do when
the body does give way? And it's obvious that it's not
going to get better. What do we do then? And it's
not just for the permanently irreversible things, it's also,
you know, these are the same things that can encourage us
even in the things and the adversities that come and go. And it's not
simply medical health-related things of which we speak. The
Prince, although that's going to be the focus from which I
speak here today, But these principles are going to...are going to apply
to all manner of life adversity. This is the foundation of living
a Christian life with hope. And that's what we want to try
to give to you here this morning, Lord willing and by His grace
and by His Spirit. One of the things that is just
so very important for us to realize that the health and wealth and
prosperity preachers never quite get around to talking about because
if they did, it would, you know, undermine their own so-called
ministry. Scripture says in Proverbs 18
verse 14 that the spirit of a man can endure his sickness But as
for a broken spirit, who can bear it? If you have hope in
the midst of your illness, you can go through it. You can find
your way through your adversity. If there is a hope and something
of a...not to be too lyrical here, if there is a song in your
heart, and I'm using that metaphorically, if there is hope in your heart,
you can find your way through sickness because man does not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of God. And we anchor ourselves in His
Word and in His hope and that can get us through bodily decay. But if you don't have hope, then
what difference does it make? If you have hope, you can deal
with sickness. If you have no hope, no real
hope, then, beloved, physical healing doesn't really matter. People with perfectly fine physical
bodies commit suicide all the time, don't they? Because hope
has been extinguished in their heart and the fact that they
might have physical ability doesn't do anything to give them a reason
to live. And so, with that little bit
of introduction to just see the issues and to see the broad application. I want to give you a perspective
on how to think about life when the healing doesn't come. How
to think about life when the prayers are not answered. How
to think about life when it is lonely and difficult and discouraging
and it seems like there is no light to be found in the darkness. What do we do? How do we think?
You know, in some ways this is the most fundamental issue that
we could deal with in the Christian life is how are we...because
what we're really talking about is what is our philosophy of
life? What is it that drives us? What do we think about? Why
do we exist? Why do we live? What gives us
hope? What gives us encouragement? Those are the things that we
need to have clear and to be able to articulate in a way for
ourselves and also for you to be able to minister to others
in their hardship. And we realize that for those
that have been under the dark ministry of health and wealth
preachers for so long, that there's a whole renewal of mind that
needs to take place for them, a whole different perspective
on life. And we'll address that as we
go along. And so there's a bit of a logical sequence here that
I hope will be evident to you as we go along. First of all,
what do we want to see? Where is there hope when the
healing doesn't come? Write this down if you're taking
notes, point number one. There is hope in God's plan. There is hope in God's plan. And one of the many things that
I despise about prosperity preachers is that they limit the idea of
God's blessing simply to that of physical and external blessing.
And if you have that, then that's all that they have to offer you.
But what if you're...you know, what if your spine is broken
in an automobile accident and you're confined to a wheelchair
and there's no healing to come for that? Well then what do you
have to say to me then?" And the embarrassed silence that
comes after that kind of speaks to the emptiness of that whole
philosophy of so-called ministry. For us, we have an answer for
all of those things. For the biblically informed Christian,
there is a philosophy of life that informs everything and that
gives us strength in the heights of prosperity or the depths of
sorrow and all points in between, there is an unchanging anchor
upon which we respond to every circumstance in life. There is
a prior understanding that informs the way that we think and the
way that we respond and that continually fuels our hearts
with hope and confidence and a sense that there is something
greater at work even if this is difficult for me in the present.
and we all need to tap into that, so to speak, there is hope in
God's plan. And what we mean by that statement
is this. The God of the Bible is involved
in everything that happens. The God of the Bible has ordained
everything that comes to pass. There are not aspects of your
life, there are not aspects of human history that somehow fall
out of the plan, outside the plan of God's intention that
are just random and are assaulting us. Now it's not like that. There's not a random molecule
in the universe. There's not a random detail in
your life. There is not an unforeseen occurrence
that has come to you that hasn't previously been planned by God,
accounted by God and for which He has a plan to work out things
according to His will and for your good, especially for those
of us that are in Christ. The God of the Bible is involved
in everything that happens. He works out everything according
to His purpose. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 10
says that God works all things after the counsel of His will. That's Ephesians chapter 1 verse
10, you can look it up later. God works all things after the
counsel of His will. Everything that happens, God
is at work in. Everything that happens is an
expression of His will that He established before the foundation
of the world. All of a sudden, everything in
your life, your prior broken relationships, the present broken
relationships, the difficulties of physical loss, everything
suddenly is connected to a greater purpose that is at work even
if you don't see it and even if you do not understand it. God works all things after the
counsel of His will. Beloved, that means something,
means a lot of things. But we're just going to try to
stick to the basics here today. Your suffering is no accident. Your suffering is not a bad piece
of luck. It could never be that way in
light of what Scripture teaches about the God of the Bible, of
His sovereign purpose in everything that happens. Think about the
difficulties in your physical trial since that's kind of what
prompted this. And think with me, let's think through it just
a little bit, shall we, on the most basic, simple, familiar
principles that are found in Scripture. Jesus said in Matthew
chapter 10 verse 30 that the very hairs of your head are numbered. God knows the number of hairs
on your head. Now, beloved, if He knows something
that is seemingly by our standards so inconsequential as that, don't
you think? Don't you think that he is equally
aware with great concern and interest of the things that affect
your day-to-day life? If he knows the hairs on your
head, he knows everything else that's happening in your body
as well. It's not that he's just, you know, a cosmic hairdresser
and that happens to be his item of interest. It's a statement
of his care and his concern and his sovereignty over every aspect
of your existence. Now stop and think about that
for a bit. That's all well and good to talk
that way when you're in good health, but do you see that there
is a great sense of hope and a great sense of comfort in the
recognition that if you...if physical difficulty has come
to you, that God has His hand on that, that God has a plan
for that because He works all things after the counsel of His
will. He works all things after the counsel of His will. Included
in that is the suffering that He brings to your life. It's not that we need God to
repel the attacks of Satan in these things, as if Satan was
inflicting things upon us that are contrary to the will of God. When Satan afflicted Job, he
had to get permission from God first to do it, didn't he? And
so, as John MacArthur has said in the past, even the devil is
God's devil. Even whatever the devil is doing,
God is using and working and overcoming to direct to his purposes. Joseph said in Genesis chapter
50 verse 12 to his brothers who had sold him into slavery, after
all of that had passed and circumstances were different, he said, you
meant evil for me, but God meant it for good. so that your affliction
has a purpose in the plan of God. And under the wise and sovereign
and good and loving nature of God, if there is a purpose in
your affliction, then somehow it is a good and loving purpose
that He has to carry out. Now, we may not understand that,
we may not grasp that, we may not even appreciate it in the
moment, but that doesn't change the fundamental reality that
God is at work, and that is what gives you hope. If God has done the lesser thing
by numbering the hairs on your head, beloved, He has done the
greater thing in overseeing this illness and affliction that has
come to you or to your loved ones. And suddenly we're not...we're
not astronauts cast out in space just wandering out in zero gravity
and floating away into a meaningless existence. No, we're anchored
in a purpose of our loving God who in one way or another for
one reason or another has planned these hard times for you or your
loved one. So, that changes everything.
That changes everything. And hear me well. my Christian
brother, my Christian sister, a divine plan is at work in your
life. What you are suffering is not
an unexpected development that surprised God, rather it is an outworking of
what He intended from the very beginning. And that changes everything. One of the things that you need
to remember and one of the things that you need to connect in your
mind is that this is not...this is not an abstraction of God's
sovereign working out of His plan, it's not an abstract plan
that He has working out in your life. The God who planned your
suffering is the same God who suffered Himself on the cross
of Calvary to pay for your sins. It's the God who loved you enough
to send Christ into the world, to send Christ, to send His beloved
Son so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have
everlasting life. The love of the cross is that
perfect work in the plan of God that is being manifested in your
suffering. And so you have to...you have
to bring all of these things together. You must think theologically. You must think biblically. You
must think rightly about God and bring it down into your...the
details of your life. God is sovereign and He works
all things after the counsel of His will. God is a God of
love as shown conclusively at the cross of Jesus Christ. And
if the love of God shown at the cross is the love that is at
work and the plan that has brought suffering into your life, then
there's hope. Then there's reason for confidence. There's reason to trust. And there's one other thing.
that we can say about these things, about this plan of God in your
life. And we're talking at, you know,
basic levels here. When you grasp this, beloved,
what we're talking about right here, when you grasp this, you
Different questions start to come to mind and different questions
ennoble your struggle, ennoble your difficulty, ennoble your
illness. Instead of asking questions like,
where can I find healing for this? Is there a faith healer
that could relieve me of my affliction and chasing around the country
as some do going to different healing crusades? never finding
relief, never finding that they passed the screening process
to get on stage with their visible ailment that the man has no power
to resolve. Rather than saying, where can
I find healing? I've got to find healing. You
can start to ask fundamental questions like this. God, whatever
may have happened in the past, what do You have for me as I
look to the future? What is Your purpose in this
for me? God, lead my life, lead my thinking
so that the purpose that You have for me in this illness is
achieved." And that is a different perspective on the way that we
think about these things. Now before I go any further,
and I realize that what I've just said might be misunderstood,
before I go any further in the message, let me say this. Yes,
yes, yes, yes, you should and can bring your sickness and sorrow
to God in prayer and ask Him for relief. That's legitimate. If we can pray for God, give
us our daily bread as Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6, surely
we can bring the need that physical hardship brings and bring that
to Him legitimately and to ask Him for help in that. I support
every effort to get good medical treatment to bring relief. If
medical treatment can help you of whatever sort that you might
seek. Indeed, we could go so far as
to say that God usually in this age uses those kinds of medical
means to bring physical healing to those who are suffering. God's
not going to heal my decayed tooth if I have that immediately
and directly, but He might use the hands of a qualified dentist
to bring me relief. And when He does that, it's God
bringing the healing through a means. And we're not to despise
that, we can seek that out. I'm not saying not to seek relief
if relief can be had. We're talking about something
just a little bit different here today. We're saying, what do
we do when the healing doesn't come, when there aren't answers
for it? And then what do we do? Then
what do we think? Well, we start by realizing that
there's hope in God's plan and we start there. Let's go to a
second point. I kind of did this overarching
thing and let's go to our second point here this morning to realize
that there is hope in Christ's salvation. There is hope in Christ's
salvation. And I like to say this, these
kinds of things, I've said them from time to time over the years.
Let's start here. One of the things, one of the
aspects about not getting healing is that there is a message embedded
in that that's not a new piece of divine revelation, it's just
an application of common sense and working out the implications
of what that tells you. Your body is doomed for failure
sooner or later. It is appointed for man to die
once and after this comes judgment. And your present sickness, whether
it's temporary or whether it's chronic and lasting, your present
sickness is functioning like the warning bells at a railroad
track, warning you of a coming danger that you don't presently
see. There's a ding, ding, ding going
off that is supposed to grab your attention to warn you that
there is a danger in the area that perhaps you are not sufficiently
aware of, not sufficiently giving cognizance to. And what sickness
tells you is that there is an early warning sign that sooner
or later, death is coming. Your bodily sickness, your bodily
ailment is an indication that there is something worse, so
to speak, physically coming down the line, that this life is not
permanent, that your health is not unassailable, that sooner
or later there will be a coming reckoning with the angel of death,
so to speak. Look in your Bible at Psalm 49,
there's a couple of passages that I want to take you as we
think about this. As you're turning there, I understand
that we're not wired to consider death, even in a gathering like
this in a Christian church. There are more than enough people
that want to push that topic away from their thought. I don't
want to think about that. We don't want to leave our loved
ones behind. We don't know what death holds for us. It's unpleasant. It's frightening. We don't want
our loved ones to leave us. There's a lot of reasons to avoid
it. in one sense, in a superficial human sense, but beloved, Scripture
tells us, Scripture repeatedly brings it to our consideration
saying that wise people bring this into account in the way
that they view life. Psalm 49 verse 10. says that he sees that even wise
men die, the stupid and the senseless alike perish and leave their
wealth to others. Their inner thought is that their
houses are forever and they're dwelling places to all generations. They have called their lands
after their own names. But...verse 12...but man in his
pomp will not endure. He is like the beasts that perish."
You're going to die just like a dog dies. Your life will come
to an end just like any other beast does. Now at what point,
at what aspect in your thinking and what approach to your philosophy
of life have you accounted for that in the way that you think
about life? You cannot, beloved, you cannot
give in to the temptation to just ignore death and hope everything
works out in the end. And one of the blessings of sickness
and illness and difficulty is that it pierces through that
false sense of confidence. It pierces through that refusal
to think about reality and it presses upon you. Death is real
and therefore we need to come to grips with it. How do we...what
are we going to do with it? In Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse
2 it says, it is better to go to a house of mourning than to
go to a house of feasting because that is the end of every man
and the living takes it to heart. You go to a funeral and it's
undeniable, it's all laid out in front of you. That's why pastors
so often refer to that verse. Speaking of Ecclesiastes, go
to chapter 3, if you will, Ecclesiastes chapter 3, just after the book
of Proverbs. Ecclesiastes chapter 3, beginning in verse 19. Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse
19 says, the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts
is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. Indeed they all have the same
breath and there is no advantage for man over beast for all is
vanity. All go to the same place, all
came from the dust and all return to the dust. Now he's speaking
there from an earthly perspective and he's simply making the point
that as a beast lives, his destination is ultimately death. So it is
with humans. We live for a while, we have
it good for a while, but ultimately we're all coming out to the same
destination, we're all going out the same exit door from this
life, we're all going out the exit door of death if the Lord
tarries. And so the question is, what
do we think about that? What do we do about that? Why is there death in the first
place? Isn't that an important question
to ask? Why do people die? The Bible says that death entered
through sin. Sin is a consequence of humanity's
rebellion against God. You will die for your own sin.
And so, we realize and we're brought face-to-face with the
fact that death is a consequence of rebellion against God and
if we are to deal rightly with death and to come to grips with
it, we need something that can deliver us from the great weight
of the problem that caused it in the first place. You will
die because you're a sinner and your sickness is an early indication,
an early warning light on the panel telling you that it's time
to check the engine, to check the heart of the matter
for you. And stepping back, just speaking
generally of men in general, The question becomes, so what
will happen to you when you inevitably die? What will become of you? You see, when the healing doesn't
come, that issue is pressed upon you and it leads you beyond your
illness to this reality. Forget your body. Forget your
body which is destined to die. What about your eternal soul?
What is going to happen to your soul when you die? And see, this is...if we just
promise everybody healing, and even if everybody got healed
from all of their affliction, if we left that question unanswered,
we would have failed miserably in addressing the greatest need
of the human heart. We don't want to do that here
today. There is hope in Christ's salvation. When the healing doesn't
come and you reflect on your soul, you say, I need a Savior.
I need someone to deliver me. And that brings us into the sweetness
of the gospel that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world
on a mission of mercy to save sinners from the judgment that
their sin deserves. That you can be reconciled to
God through faith in Christ. and that that gives you a surpassing
purpose and that salvation gives you that which outlives death,
which transcends your human body. Jesus said, I am the way and
the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through Me. You know, it would be better
for you, just think in terms of comparisons here. It's better
to have a body that is riddled with terminal cancer and to have
a soul that is saved by Christ than to have a perfectly healthy
body and a soul that is dead within, separated from God and
under His wrath, facing eternal judgment. Think through what
matters. Think through...go to the end
of life and beyond and think through it all. Think it through
all the way to the end. And if your sickness teaches
you to take your soul seriously and to seek Christ and to put
your faith in Him, then your sickness has brought you great
hope out of the midst of the affliction. God offers free, full, complete,
immediate forgiveness for those who trust in Christ. And if your
suffering leads you to faith in Christ, you have an eternal
hope that illness and death cannot take away. Now, step back, take
a breath on this. and recognizing that I'm speaking
to many who are truly suffering as you hear these words. The
pain is constant and severe and unremitting. And I'd be a fool not to take
that seriously. But what I ask you to do for
the sake of your own hope, for the sake of Christ, is to realize
that if you are in Christ, you have something that transcends
even your illness. If you have Christ, you have
everything. And you have a better hope that
lies ahead and this suffering is temporary. Even if it lasts
for the rest of life, it's temporary. And compared to eternity with
Christ, this suffering is a wisp of a moment of smoke in the breeze
that dissipates in the end and culminates in that which cannot
be taken away. Better to have a hope that culminates
in glory that cannot be taken away. rather than to want something
in this life that is passing and then find that the smoke
of eternal torment has been yours because you never repented and
put your faith in Christ. And so we have to view these
things from an eternal perspective. We have to view them from the
perspective of salvation. And, beloved, if you have Christ,
there is your hope. If you have Christ, there is
your sufficiency. If you have Christ, then these
other things are secondary by comparison and it does not diminish. the
reality of suffering to say what I'm about to say, it is better
to die in Christ than to have healing without Him. It is better
to die in Christ than to have healing without Him. And so there's
this eternal perspective that informs the way that we view
these things. But I realize that even as we
say these things, there's still the difficulty of life to live,
right? I mean, if the pain is unremitting
and the healing doesn't come, Pastor, excuse me, excuse me,
but I still have to live today. What about today? Well, let's
go to our third point and answer that question. Third point for
this morning, there is hope in God's grace. There is hope in
God's grace. I had someone recently who had
lost a daughter to illness some time ago who said something very
profound to me, a Christian woman who got it. And she, and I'm
not going to do justice to the way that she said it and how
I'm about to describe it, but this is a woman who buried her
six or seven year old daughter, okay? So she knows the, she's
known the ropes in these matters. And she said that our tendency
is to just make our plans and we just plan everything according
to everybody being healthy the way that we want. And then when
that doesn't happen, then we're devastated by it. She said the
problem is the expectations that we bring to life, and the fact
that we want it a certain way, and then when that doesn't happen,
then we feel like we've lost something, rather than viewing
it from the perspective, taking it from day to day, holding it
lightly, and when this happens, you say, oh, this is an unfolding
of God's plan for me. Now she loved her daughter, she
has hope of seeing her again, but she's making a very profound
point that when the healing doesn't come, when we lose the loved
one, that that's not the end. All that this says is that God
has a different plan of grace, a different plan of mercy that
He's working out in your life than what you anticipated at
the beginning. And when you view life from that
perspective, then all of a sudden there is all kinds of things
for your heart to feed on rather than the regret of loss, rather
than the regret of not having gotten what you had hoped to
receive. And I say these things gently,
I say these things having been on the receiving end of that
kind of experience in my life. And so I say it in sympathy as
we talk about these things and all of that just to say that
we're not making a superficial point when we say here in point
number three, there is hope in God's grace. We're actually giving
the biblical answer to how we deal with suffering in this life,
as I will show you in a moment. So yeah, we tend to look ahead.
And we want answers to every possible issue. Some of you are
great planners and this is a particular struggle for you. Well if this
happens, what happens then? And what do I do then? And you
just work out all of the permutations. What do you do when the healing
doesn't come? What if your illness means the future is uncertain?
What if change is not possible? Thinking of this woman who buried
her daughter some years ago, she's not going to see her daughter
again in this life. Where is hope then? Do we live
in anxiety and unbroken fear as a result? No. No, that couldn't possibly
be it, could it? Not if you learn to accept the
grace that is given in the moment. I want you to turn to Matthew
chapter 6 with me. This might not be the place that
you would immediately go to in this, but I want you to see the nature of things. In Matthew chapter 6, in verse
9, Jesus is teaching His disciples how He wants them to pray. And
He teaches us in verse 9, He says, pray then in this way.
This is the pattern for the way that you should approach prayer,
think about your relationship to God, think about your sanctification,
think about your purpose in the brief 70 years that you have
here on earth. Our Father which is in heaven,
hallowed be Your name. Your glory, O God. Your kingdom
come. Your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven." So there's this aspect of, God, I submit
to Your plan, I submit to what You have to me. And I pray that
Your will would be done. And then look at this in verse
11, give us this day our daily bread...our daily bread. Give us what is necessary for
today. And Jesus goes back to the idea
of today versus tomorrow at the end of chapter 6. And I'm skipping
over so many important things here, but we've taught on this
in the past. Matthew 6 verse 34 says, do not worry about tomorrow
for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of
its own. Beloved, I'm not going to be
a false teacher who promises you healing that may not come. There may not be healing for
you. either miraculously or through the means of medicine. But what
I can tell you, beloved, where you can find hope is that there's
grace for today. that there is sufficient grace
for today. And this is where the focus is
meant to go. Your suffering is designed in
part to relieve you from your dependence on self, to purge
you from your self-confidence in what's happening around you,
It's designed to cause you to look dependently to your Christ,
to look dependently to your God and to say that your grace is
enough for me. Am I in Christ? You say. Then
I have all that I need. Oh, that hurts, but I have Christ. Oh, this isn't getting better,
but I have Christ." And moment by moment, drawing strength from
the reality that the eternal Son of God has set His eternal
affection on you, He knows you by name, He knows the hairs on
your head, and He loves you in the midst of it, and He has eternally
loved your soul and given Himself up for you. in such a way that that becomes
more important and precious to you than the present aspect of
your suffering. That's what the Apostle Paul
learned in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Turn there with me, if you
would. 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verse
7. And as I hope you're seeing,
beloved, my purpose in saying these things is not to chastise
you or to rebuke you at all, but rather to point that which
can give strength and comfort to your heart in the midst of
those times when the healing doesn't come. I just want to
deal with things honestly. I want to deal with reality. And Paul says in chapter 12 verse
7 as he speaks of the thorn in his flesh, whatever that was,
he says in verse 7, because of the surpassing greatness of the
revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself,
there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan
to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. Paul says, my
unrelenting trial had a purpose in humbling me, that I would
not boast about myself. I would not boast of my apostolic
gift or of the visions that I had seen. And the pain kept me from
going to the sin of pride. And that was God's purpose in
it. And he says in verse 8, concerning this, concerning this thorn I
had, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.
God, God, relieve me from this. stated differently in the terms
in which we're using today, Paul prayed three times. Why? Because
the healing wasn't coming for him either. And then verse 9, he says, and he
has said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected
in weakness. He says, my grace is enough.
My grace is all that you need. And as I've said in the past,
you don't know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all
you got, right? And it's only when you've been
reduced to that kind of spiritual rubble that you can truly affirm
this kind of transcendent statement that brings much greater glory
to God than any physical healing ever could. Because it is not
natural, it is not human, so to speak. It's not a product
of our sinful flesh in the midst of suffering to say that something
I can't see gives me satisfaction, joy and comfort. I have a joy,
satisfaction and comfort in Christ that transcends this situation
where the healing is not coming for me. And suddenly in a life like that,
in a heart like that, the great glory of Christ is put on display,
that He Himself alone is enough to satisfy the human heart. I
don't need anything else. I don't need my loved one to
come back from the dead. I don't need to know whether
they're in heaven or hell. It is enough that Christ loves
me, that He gave Himself up for me, that He has secured heaven
for me, and He'll never let me go. That's enough for me to be
full of joy. I don't need my body to get better.
to love Him like that and for that to satisfy every longing
of my heart, His grace is sufficient for me. And that kind of spiritual
power is perfected when you are in weakness in the human life. And Paul goes on and Paul says,
this is so great, he says in the middle of verse 9, he says,
this is so great. This is so true and real in my
experience that he goes to the other extreme. He'd been praying
for his weakness to be removed. Now in verse 9, he says, I'm
glad I've got it. Most gladly therefore, he says,
I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power
of Christ may dwell in me. Verse 10, therefore I am well
content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with
persecutions, with difficulties. For Christ's sake, for when I
am weak, then I am strong. You know how you appropriate
that? You know how you make that real in your heart? You come
back to this and you have to speak to yourself. You have to
preach to yourself. You have to tell your own soul
repeatedly that this grace that Christ has given to you in the
moment is enough for you even if tomorrow is unknown and uncertain."
I don't know what tomorrow has, but you know what? You're saying
to yourself, but you know what? Christ is with me now. Christ
is with me in the moment. Christ loves me. Christ knows the number of hairs
on my head. Christ has my soul in His hands. Christ is at the right hand of
the Father, interceding for me, representing me before a holy
God. What have I to ask beside? I
have Christ. I have all. And you tell that to your soul
again and again and again. That's enough for me. That's
what I need. I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied
in Christ. I'm satisfied that He loves me.
That's enough to bring peace and joy and comfort to my heart.
His grace is enough to give me hope even when the future is
unknown, even when it seems like life is on a decline that cannot
be reversed. Sooner or later, for most of
us, that's going to be our experience. And beloved, we need to be ready
when that comes and this is where our hope is.
And as you do that over time, you cultivate a hope that cannot
fail. Look, anybody could have a positive
attitude if they knew that healing was just around the corner for
them. Anybody can have a positive attitude when life is exactly
the way that they want it to be. There is nothing supernatural
about that at all. What's supernatural, what glorifies
God, what Christ is worthy of after all of the infinite work
that He has done on your behalf. is for you to look to Him by
faith and say, you're enough for me. You're all that I need. You transcend this sorrow. You transcend this pain. You
transcend this difficulty. I love you more than all else
and it's enough for my heart to be satisfied in you, Lord
Jesus. But that's not a one-time battle,
that's what you tell yourself multiple times throughout the
day. that it would take root in your heart and give you hope.
Well, let me give you a fourth and final point that we've already
alluded to here and that is this, that there is hope in heaven.
There is hope in heaven. One of my primary complaints
against those who are fascinated with bodily healing is that they
have a completely earthbound approach to life and to sanctification,
if you think about it. You know, if you think that God's
only purpose when you're sick is for your immediate healing,
you have a single dimension view of the purpose of life and everything
is about the here and now and it's totally contrary to the
spirit of the New Testament pointing us forward, drawing us forward
ahead to glory and up toward God. I want my body healed. Well, maybe there's something
more than your body that's at stake. Maybe there's something
more important, more transcendent than that. I would say to those
propagators of that kind of stuff, I was trying really hard to think
of a P word and nothing came, so just resort to stuff. And let's think about it this
way, beloved, if it is God's will for everyone to be healed
of all of their affliction, all that we could possibly conclude
is that God has been a miserable failure for the past 6,000 years. Because there's a lot of ashes
spread throughout the world, there's a lot of people dead
in the bottom of the sea, there's a lot of cemeteries, a lot of
places. Somehow I get the idea that maybe
physical healing isn't the big purpose of God in life. And you take it from that
limited perspective, beloved? From their perspective within
their world view, those who teach these things, death always wins
in the end. Death is undefeated and it will
remain undefeated until Christ returns. Undefeated except for
the resurrection of Christ, you might say. What we're saying is this, sooner
or later, beloved, the healing doesn't come. And what then? What then? Then, for me, for you who embrace a biblical
mindset about life, when we hear the fact that death is undefeated
on earth, save for the resurrection of Christ, Nothing has to change
about our worldview. Nothing has to change about the
way that we think about these things. We say, yeah, I know,
I've accounted for that in the way that I think about life.
God has purposes that transcend healing and death. Christ's salvation
is more precious to me than life itself. I have grace for the moment that
satisfies my heart even though I don't know what comes tomorrow.
It's enough for me to be in His hand. That's enough for me. Don't you see, beloved? Don't
you see this should be clenching in your mind, the fact that in
Christ we have something that is far more valuable than physical
healing? We have...we have the answer
to life. To the one who believes in Christ,
this is enough for everything. This keeps me anchored in prosperity. I'm not living for this world. Nice to have the stuff, but it's
not what I'm living for. This keeps me anchored when I'm
laboring for breath, knowing that death is imminent. Christ
is with me. In just a few short more moments,
I'm going to be with Him. Every point in between, that
which would cause my heart to flame in hope is real and it
is unaltered by shifting circumstances. It is unaltered by broken bones
or diseased organs that cannot be repaired. Do you see it? Do you see it? Do you see it? This is what enables us to live
life. And what we see then is that
true Christianity, true biblical faith soars above the time-bound
thinking that says I've got to find physical healing. Well,
what if the healing doesn't come? Then what? Well, then God's plan,
then Christ's salvation, then God's grace for today, and then
heaven. Look at Philippians chapter 3. You know, there's a sense in
which we could say that for every Christian, God does have healing
for them. It's just not in this life. It's in the coming resurrection
when we receive new bodies that are fit for heaven, that are
fit for the presence of Christ, where we're transformed from
this life into something new, not transformed simply for something that's going
to die anyway. Look at Philippians chapter 3
verse 17 as we try to bring this to a close. Paul says, brethren, join in
following my example and observe those who walk according to the
pattern you have in us. Well, you know what Paul had
said earlier in Philippians chapter 1 verse 21? Look at that real
quickly with me. Paul said, for to me, to live
is Christ and to die is gain. Gain! Verse 18 of chapter 3, he said,
many walk of whom I've often told you and now tell you even
weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ whose
end is destruction, whose God is their appetite and whose glory
is in their shame. Who? What do they do? They set
their minds on earthly things. They set their things that are
temporal, that are limited to the matters between birth and
death. And that's what they think about,
and that's what they want. Paul says, Christian, you live
for something else. You live for a hope that's in
heaven that long outlives the grave. Verse 20, our citizenship
is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble
state into conformity with the body of His glory. It's a future
reality, not present, by the exertion of the power that He
has even to subject all things to Himself. What do we do when the healing
doesn't come? What do we think? Well we think, but this isn't
even what I'm living for. It's not even about this earthly
life. Illness does not have the final
word over me. Death does not end the sentence
on me. My hope is in heaven, not on
earth. My hope is in the body that will be given to me at the
resurrection, not the one that I have here, decrepit and failing
here on this earth. I'm living for something else.
I'm living for a hope that will be given to me certainly in heaven." And you rise above it all in
your heart and your heart finds joy and contentment and your
countenance finds a glow. that is reflective of the glory
of Christ within your heart that transforms and everyone who sees
it says, that is different than what I've seen before. That is
outside the bounds of normal earthly experience. That person
is joyful and content without healing. I remember the first
time I met Johnny Erickson Tada in her wheelchair, this goes
back 32 years ago, 1986. I was just struck by the joy that animated her being. A joy that she would not have
known had her spine not been broken in her diving accident.
The body was broken to unleash a different kind of blessing
to her. And it is that spiritual blessing
that can belong to everyone in the midst of their difficulties
when the healing doesn't come. What can be our experience when
the healing doesn't come? Victory, not defeat. Victory
of soul, victory of heart, victory of spirit. even if the body is
crumbling. Ian Murray describes the final
hours of Martin Lloyd-Jones' life like this in the second
volume of his larger biographical work on the great doctor. Such a great account. I've read that so many times.
I'm going to quote him. as he describes the final hours
of Martin Lloyd-Jones. He says, at one point in these
last few days when his speech had gone, as his daughter Elizabeth
sat beside him, He pointed her very definitely to the words
of 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 16 through 18. I'm going to read
those for you here, 2 Corinthians 4, 16 to 18. Remember, this is
the passage that a dying man took his daughter to when he
could not speak. And together they read. this passage that says, therefore
we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet
our inner man is being renewed day by day. for momentary light
affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far
beyond all comparison while we look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things
which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
seen are eternal." That's the passage that they read that the
doctor pointed his daughter to him on his deathbed. Elizabeth
said later, when I asked him if that was his experience now,
what we just read in 2 Corinthians 4, is that your experience now?
He nodded his head with great vigor. The next evening, in a
shaky hand, the doctor wrote on a scrap of paper for the family,
quote, do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the
glory, end quote. And in his very poignant account,
Ian Murray describes how the doctor fell asleep. that night, and Ian Murray concludes
by saying this, what a great quote, quote, his next awakening
was in the land of the blessed, end quote. Beloved, that changes
everything when the healing doesn't come. Death has lost its sting,
1 Corinthians 15. Beloved, look beyond your body,
look beyond this life, look to your Redeemer because your Redeemer
lives. Your Christ is in heaven and
spiritually speaking, you have died and your life is hidden
with Him on high, Colossians 3. What do you do when the healing
doesn't come? Three words, beloved, after 65 minutes, three words. What do you do when the healing
doesn't come? Look to Christ. Let's pray together. For I'm convinced that neither
death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other created thing will be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Father, make that great,
great love of Thine the surpassing affection of our hearts that
tinges and colors the way that we look at everything else. Father,
for those in the midst of physical suffering and the healing won't
come, be added gracious to them in this hour. Bring added grace
to their soul that would give them the hope that allows them
to process the illness. in a spirit of joy, even as You
comfort them in the midst of the physical affliction. Father,
renew their heart day by day with the grace that You supply.
And Father, perhaps finally at last Your Spirit has opened the
eyes of some who have been dead to Christ, dead to these things.
And the mere discussion of death and the nature of Christian hope
has shown them that they do not participate in this hope right
now. Lead them, Father, by the gracious,
loving, kind influence of Your Spirit to the cross of Calvary
where they can be reconciled to God and find fellowship with
You through faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. We pray these
things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to
Pastor Don Green from Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. You
can find Church information, Don's complete sermon library,
and other helpful materials at thetruthpulpit.com. This message
is copyrighted by Don Green, all rights reserved.
When the Healing Doesn't Come
Series The Holy Spirit Today
70-126 - TheTruthPulpit.com
| Sermon ID | 112018160845127 |
| Duration | 1:12:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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