Jesus Healing Ministry, Part 1

[00:00:00] Let's begin with a word of prayer. Our dear Heavenly Father, Thou knowest how finite and limited we are, and so we thank Thee for Thy Word and for the ministry of Thy Spirit to us, and we pray Thee that this might be a profitable hour of fellowship around Thy Word, and considering how great and how good Thou art, be pleased to bless us and help us according to our need, for Jesus' For Jesus' sake. Amen. [00:00:59] I was so shocked to hear two people reading it. I'm not sure I got it myself. There are two things said there in that context. It may be that part of it is in verse 3 about Christ. On the one hand, he is the son of David. More immediately, the son of Mary. So in his humanity, he was identified with us. He was a man. [00:01:33] He weighed so many pounds, was so many feet and inches tall, had to sleep and eat and drink and so on like we do. The other thing that's said about him is that he was revealed or declared to be or set apart as the Son of God with power by the resurrection. So we have this two-sidedness to Jesus. He was as human as we are, and at the same time, he was as divine as the Father. Please note, he was not partly human and partly divine. [00:02:05] That doesn't do justice to either side of the paradox. He was fully human and fully divine. The same thing is true of the Bible, but that's not our subject right now. So, we have the paradox that Jesus is spoken of as being so many years old. That is, in his humanity. He was about 30 when he began his public ministry. On the other hand, he was eternal because he was the eternal son of God. So in his deity, he was eternal. In his humanity, he was temporal like we are. [00:02:42] Now there's another aspect of Christ in John 14, 6. Maybe somebody knows that by heart. Thomas said, we don't know the way. What did Jesus say? Yes. It's possible that the main thrust of that sentence is, I am the way, I am the way, as well as the truth and the life. And so you'll find at least one version putting a dash after the way. [00:03:15] I am the way, the truth and the life. In other words, he is the way to God, And he is the proclaimer of the truth of God, which is what we're concerned with right at this moment. So Jesus is the authoritative interpreter of God and his will and of our resources that we have in God. Who knows Romans 5.1 by heart? Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:03:55] That could be translated, therefore being declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God. In other words, we are in a state of acceptance with the Father by virtue of being in Christ. I don't know if that's any better or not. So he's the redeemer of the race. We do not depend upon character, achievement, good works, Christian growth, etc. for our salvation. [00:04:27] We depend upon Christ because he's the only one who has reconciled us to God. Now, a very important passage is Hebrews 2, 14 and 15, and for some reason it has not been stressed in our circles. So I don't suppose very many people know it by heart. Let me slightly make my own translation here. Hebrews 2.14 and 15 is comparing Christ, in some respects, with us and telling what he did for us. [00:04:58] For as much then as the children, that's us, partake of flesh and blood. What's that? That's weakness. Flesh and blood is weakness. Because we're flesh and blood, we have to have air, we have to have water, we have to have sleep, we have to have food, and so on. If we were an eternal spirit like God the Father, then we wouldn't need those things. But Christ became human like we are. For as much then as the children partake of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise partook of the same, the same flesh and blood, that through death. [00:05:37] So the purpose of the incarnation was his death in terms of redemption. That through death. Now it's translated in the King James, he might destroy. That's probably not the best translation. The most literal translation would be to render powerless or knock out of commission. For example, if you put an automobile beside an atomic bomb as it went off, it would destroy the automobile, put it out of existence. The devil was not put out of existence. He's very much in existence. [00:06:11] But he was knocked out of commission as far as the children of God are concerned. We do not need to live in defeat. We do not need to go through life making excuses for our weaknesses. Because Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, wishes to give us increasing victory over whatever those weaknesses may be. and ordinarily, this is not our subject right now, but ordinarily, we do not grow by a neat incline. [00:06:44] We grow by crisis. We hit a new crisis, we make a fresh surrender, and we can either slump at that point and retreat to a lower level, or we can rise to higher heights in Christ, and this goes on as long as we live. John Wesley said what about the people that have been made perfect in love what some people call the second work of grace well John Wesley said growth occurs all the faster after that so he didn't teach that by one zip you become an angelic [00:07:22] we don't but we can grow as we respond that through death he might render powerless him that had the power of death and then the writer wants to make sure we know what he's talking about he says that is the devil and then the purpose clause goes right on in the Greek and that he might how does it go? and that he might deliver them who through all their lifetime were subject to bondage there's fear of death in there somewhere subject to bondage [00:07:55] So, Christ is the deliverer. Now, this is in the broadest possible sense, and I hope that through these four studies that we hope to engage in, that this will become even more meaningful to us as we go along. Now, the particular assignment that we have here is another aspect, or subdivision of this last one maybe, of the ministry of Christ, and that is he's the great healer. I'd like to call attention to two different passages here, one in Isaiah 53, 4-6. Will somebody read that for us? 53, 4-6. [00:08:54] Yet we are felled between their servants, hidden of God and afflicted by him that perishes dear for our faith, for whomst he was struck by our daily decease, for our well-being fell upon him. For him we are full. All that like teeth had gone astray, each of us had sure to his own way, for the Lord has paused the iniquity as I saw it. And the other passage, which quotes part of verse 5 there, is Matthew 8, 17. [00:09:31] Please note, not in connection with the atonement, but in connection with the healing ministry of our Lord. Matthew 8, 17. Yeah, that is mentioned. If you look at the context there, it's in a ministry of healing by the Lord Jesus. [00:10:02] Now, I think that many Christians have overlooked this Isaiah 53, 5. and with his stripes we are healed. That's one of the things we want to consider in these studies. I'd like to begin by mentioning several areas where this healing ought to take place. The first is Christ delivers us from worrying about our past sins. [00:10:37] Now, I hope that I, in everything I say, manifest a spirit of humility and love and not harshness. Because there's no place for one Christian to be harsh with another. But I think that we dishonor our Lord. If every night before we go to sleep, we think back over the sins of our past and ask God to forgive us over again. I mean, how would you feel if you had had a misunderstanding with somebody [00:11:11] and then every time you saw him for the next 20 years you'd say, will you please forgive me for what I did to you? And the fact is he forgave you the first time you asked him and I think we'd do much better and be happier Christians if we would thank God for the forgiveness of our sins instead of begging him over and over for what he's already forgiven us for in Christ. So I hope we all get that and there are Christians who never forgive themselves for the mistakes they've made and we all have things in our past that that we would give as the old saying is give a right arm if we could undo what we have done but it's done and so for most of our sins all we can do is accept forgiveness and that's precisely what the Lord wants us to do and we honor Christ when we claim the forgiveness which we have [00:12:04] through his shed blood. So this means that the first aspect of healing is the guilt is gone. Now, I hope no one misunderstands this. I'm all for whatever benefits we can get from any form of science, whether it's putting a cap on a tooth or whether it's getting the proper drug for a given illness or whether it's seeing a psychiatrist Anabaptist, Anabaptist, Anabaptist, Anabaptist [00:13:03] In other words, I still want to be a person with a conscience. And maybe I'm being unfair to some psychiatrists, but I think you know what I'm talking about. If a person doesn't have a Christian orientation, I wouldn't care to see in the field of psychiatry. Because you might do far more harm than good. I went to the funeral of a suicide one time. A person didn't live in this area. and the poor girl had gone to a psychiatrist and and confessed some of her wayward tendencies to [00:13:39] him and he said well why don't you just have your fling so she had her fling and committed suicide she was much worse off than if she had not gone to that man in the first place now if you if you think that I came here to run down psychiatry your misunderstandings I'm just saying I would want my psychiatrist to be a born-again Christian And do you know where the highest suicide rate in the world is? Psychiatrists. That's very interesting. It's very interesting. So that's point one about Jesus. [00:14:12] He delivers us from our past. The guilt is gone. We don't have to worry. And now we come to the present. Christ gives us a sense of spiritual well-being. I think that was in that paraphrase or translation that Brother Menno read. Wasn't the word well-being used there? I think so. I may be wrong. Yeah. But that's the meaning of peace. [00:14:49] I mean, that's a major meaning of peace in the Old Testament. Not our word peace, but the Hebrew word shalom, which is usually translated peace. For example, when the prophet looked down the road in the distance and saw that Shunammite woman coming, he sent his servant out to her and he said, Ask the woman, is it peace with you? Is it peace with your husband? Is it peace with the child? It says shalom each time. And that means, is everything well? A sense of well-being. [00:15:20] Now, if you are physically well this morning, then you have a sense of well-being. This is pretty real to me because it just came from the hospital. And I was visiting a little bit older man of God, and he was in terrible distress. He has heart trouble and he has asthma, and now his nerves are affected. And he said, I feel nervous. And his stomach was in kinks and whatnot, and so on. And I stood there with a sense of well-being. Now, it could just as well be the other way. [00:15:51] I could be in the hospital bed and he could be standing there offering prayer for me because we are creatures. This is what we want to see as we go along here. But just as we, if we are well, have a sense of physical well-being, so God desires that we have a sense of spiritual well-being. I wouldn't trade that for ten million dollars. A sense of spiritual well-being means the assurance that all is well in your relationship with God through Jesus Christ. [00:16:24] That is tremendous. It's marvelous. And it's what Luther struggled so hard for. He made it hard for himself, I think. He thought he had to work it out. You'll never get it that way. And when he saw this truth of righteousness by faith, Romans 5.1, commonly called justification that's taken from the latin words justificatio when luther finally saw this that god gives us as a free gift divine righteousness luther said i felt that i was [00:16:59] altogether reborn it opened for me the gates of paradise that's that's it spiritual well-being This is the meaning of peace with God. It's far more, Romans 5.1, it's far more than just feeling peaceful. It is being in a relationship of full acceptance with God. So that you know you stand before him perfect and entire, lacking nothing. Not by achievement, but by gift. His gift. [00:17:33] Now this ought to do something for your total health. It ought to do something for your physical health and for your emotional health, being in this state of spiritual well-being. Romans 5.5 says that God's love has been poured into our hearts. And that's a part of this well-being. Romans 5.5, divine love poured into our hearts. This is stated beautifully in 1 Peter 1.8. [00:18:07] I think we have probably several different versions here. Does anybody have this in this obscure thing called the King James? 1 Peter 1.8 When having seen ye love in doom, though now ye see them not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Who has a different version? [00:18:42] Fine. Unspeakable may be familiar to all of us because of the King James Version, but it's not the modern way of saying it. Inexpressible would be a little better. Does anyone else have any other version? Good, good. All right. [00:19:12] it means it's more than you can say it's more than you can say it's too good for words you can't find adequate vocabulary to describe the the change that comes over you this is a very humble illustration but i was in pennsylvania easter vacation for some meetings in the spring Mount Church and right in the immediate community of the church which is historically a mission [00:19:43] station there was an old man who had been a drinking person and he was illiterate he could not read and had worked for the state highway department I believe or county highway department apparently he he had a serviceable body that he could shovel stones and so on and he was now retired. And he let it be known that he was interested in becoming a Christian. And the pastor was a little bit uneasy. How do you deal with an illiterate man? You can't tell him to [00:20:14] read the Bible and whatnot. So the two of us went together to see the man and we talked about it and we had understood him correctly. And I said to him, finally, would you be ready to pray? He said, yes. And the pastor couldn't believe it. He said, you mean out loud? The man said, yes. And he prayed out loud. And I tell you, it was enough to bring tears. This man was really, he met business with God, [00:20:45] and God understood his need just the same as he understands all of us. And the reason I'm telling it, he came to church that night and he looked different. I can't exactly say what. He was all cleaned up, and he said, I feel better. Now that's normal, isn't it? That's par for the course. So we, our past is taken care of, we have a sense of spiritual well-being, we have joy inexpressible, and it's translated glorious in the NIV. [00:21:19] Now this inner peace and love and joy, I hope you get this, have a marked influence for total health, a marked influence for good, for total health. Not in the sense that thereafter we are immune to sniffles or whatever, or that we couldn't be injured physically, not that. But in the sense there ought to be, in the life of the new convert, a better physical health in the body. [00:21:59] It spills over because we're just one person. we're not loosely body soul and spirit they are aspects of the one united person and when a person is filled with an awareness that his past is gone all his sins are under the blood he's forgiven he's accepted he god's love is poured into his heart he's filled with joy that's gonna that's You're bound to have a good effect on the body, just as worry and hatred and whatnot pull you down, so this pulls you up. [00:22:38] I think there's much to that. Could you all hear what he was saying? that that redemption ought to reverse the fall in large measure now it is total if you will take in the resurrection that you'll take in the resurrection but we're not there yet that's something that's still coming just as hatred and revenge and guilt and fear pull bodily health down and emotional health pull it down [00:23:21] So joy and peace and love enhance physical health. Again, I had a teacher that said man is like a penny, has a head to keep him from going too far. You can carry anything too far. For example, if somebody would hit me with a sledgehammer, I would get a severe bruise. I'm not immune to trauma because I'm a Christian. and emotional blows also cause trauma to a person. [00:23:56] So, I remember how I pitied Lester Mann. I don't mean pity in the bad sense now, but the German sense of mitgefühl, that you feel with him. He was ordained to the ministry on a Sunday and Monday or Tuesday he quit his job because he thought it contributed too much to the war effort and about Thursday his wife died. Now that is bang, bang, bang. And that's the old saying, when it rains it pours. [00:24:27] And that's the way trouble often comes in this life. But did Lester Mann collapse? No, he found the grace of God sufficient and he went on as a happy Christian and has been used further in the building of the kingdom. So don't take this in the sense that we are immune to trauma. We are not, but the grace of God is greater than our traumas. That's what I'm trying to say. Now we looked at the past and said the guilt's gone. [00:25:01] We looked at the present and we said we're filled with peace and joy in the living. Now what about the future? And here I'd like to turn to a verse in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6.34. Somebody read it. Again, I'd like to have it in several versions. 634 of the Sermon on the Mount. Okay. That's good. That's a good paraphrase. [00:25:37] Who else has something? That means the troubles of a given day are enough. Don't try to carry tomorrows yet. The New English. So do not be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow will look after itself. Each day has troubles enough. Yeah. It's enough to bear the troubles of today. Don't try to carry tomorrows. And the... [00:26:08] That's good. Okay. So this means that we are basically delivered from anxiety. I would make a difference here between being tempted and being overwhelmed. We can be tempted to think about our past sins. We can be tempted to worry about the future. We can be tempted to worry about our present state, where we are in our Christian growth. [00:26:46] But we should not be overwhelmed. We should not be overwhelmed. And this brings up something that I think was assumed in the previous hour, and I'd like to carry it along now. and that is how much we owe to one another in terms of affirmation and loving correction but basically encouraging one another. We need it, dearly beloved, we need it. There's nobody here that doesn't need it. [00:27:19] You may think that a minister or church leader of some kind doesn't need affirmation. affirmation. Well, of course he does. He's human as same as anybody else. And so the person that you may think, maybe you're afraid you make him proud. That's too bad. We ought to affirm one another in love. And because we're human, we need this. But be sure to get this point that we don't need to be overwhelmed with anxiety for the future. [00:27:57] The God who has been adequate for every crisis in the past will be adequate also for the crises of the future. What do I should God be a word be with us? [00:28:33] While we're buying the ass, sugar and sticks, we'll ask you, but the math will go, would be fair, to the said sick, not be out of bass, said a break, he allows certain places, for you, to miss that I'll find you, the one who gives you. That's good. Anyone else? Now, the outline on the yellow sheets that were mailed out said that we should look at the healing setting of the Sermon on the Mount. [00:29:12] Will somebody read Matthew 4, 23? And somebody else get 9, 35? I think they're almost identical. Now, somebody else read 935. [00:29:49] ...and re-use it from about all the cities, So the three verbs here are, if we could modify them a little bit, teaching, proclaiming, and healing. It's translated teaching and preaching, but the Greek word that's used there is when you proclaim something. [00:30:19] Like we proclaim the good news, that we proclaim the gospel. Jesus did these three things. He taught them, I take that to mean, he taught them the truth about God. He taught them, and he proclaimed the good news. And thirdly, he healed all manner of illnesses. The NIV, I believe, says severe pain. and the Alfred Marshall interlinear translation says torments, no tortures, tortures. [00:30:57] I think the King James uses torments in 935 or else 423. I'm not quite sure which is which here from my own poor notes. But he healed pain, demon possession and cases of paralysis. Now, we don't know, I don't at least, today, what all this paralysis was, often translated paralytic in the English Bible, which they had at that time. [00:31:27] I do know that in the records of Egypt, there are portraits of a typical position that a person takes with his leg when he has polio. So, it's very clear from the drawings in the Egyptian records that they had polio at that time. Now, whether there had been, at the time of Christ, an epidemic of polio, so that there were so many paralytics, or whether it was some other form of paralysis, we don't know. We don't know at all. [00:32:00] paralysis you see is not a disease it's the result of various diseases just like fever there's no disease called fever but various diseases produce fever and you could go through a lot of things like that so it doesn't matter to us what the cause of this paralysis was whatever it was Jesus healed it that's 423 and 935 what do you have in 8-1 what did he heal there By the tab, the unhappy one will be for me. [00:32:39] 8-1, did I make a mistake? 8-2, it came to leper. I'm sorry, 8-2. All right. Leprosy is not found very much in our climate. Although there are lepers in the United States, it's called Hansen's disease here, and there's a leprosarium, I don't know what they call it, in the deep south, I forget what state, Alabama or Mississippi or somewhere down there. [00:33:11] The United States government maintains a hospital for lepers, but I remember when I was going through the Mennonite hospital in Tanzania. First, I went through the regular part of the hospital, and then whoever was taking me through said, when we got to the leper part, he said, now you're coming to the safe area. In other words, you have nothing to be afraid of here. An adult can hardly get leprosy. Infants get it exceedingly easily. So the people that get leprosy have been generally infected as children. [00:33:44] It's a dreadful disease. You may lose much of your nose or your fingers or your ears. It occurs in various parts of the body. Nothing falls off. It just deteriorates inside and the lymph system carries the parts away, the cells, little by little, so that your fingers just shorten up. Is that right, Sam? That's exactly right. I read it. All right. [00:34:44] Well, I saw the first. I'm trying to think of the name of the man that the Reinheimer girl married I became an M.D. [00:35:14] Sure. Dr. Brad, you're an alien. That's where you're speaking. There you are. Back to my office. You told me when a guy had first-line leaky breath, right? Oh, sure. He can't do it. That's it. But then there is the spirit. It invades the pelvis and loads off the wrist. Very good body care. Well, it's been a while. Thank God. We had a friend come up, and I always used to... Well, it's been... Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, for infants at least. [00:36:06] I've only read of one person, it may not be the same case, but I know of one person who did contract leprosy, but that's a rare exception. I heard of a doctor one time who diagnosed leprosy because he was sitting with a friend and the man was smoking and it began to burn the ends of his fingers and the man didn't notice it. The doctor knew immediately he's got leprosy. [00:36:37] But someone was mentioning about shoes. I was so impressed when I was in Tanzania with a Mennonite nurse there. I don't even know if she was a nurse, but a Mennonite woman who was making plastic boots for people that didn't have much of a foot left anymore. I was amazed. I said, have you ever written this? Has this been written up for the medical literature? No, she didn't know she was doing anything. It's unusual. But I thought it was tremendous. All right, we mustn't spend too much time on this. In age 14. [00:37:10] Yeah. In the first year of the Bible, man, he was sicker. He didn't go to his city. He had some big, freaky, and superhealy, every cuts, really every sickness and every disease among people. But does that mean that everybody was healed or got every kind? Every kind. Because as he went from one place to the other, it was repeated. but there was nothing that was too hard for Christ to deal with. He was able to handle it. What do you have in 8.14? Yeah, again we don't know what the particular disease was. [00:37:50] That doesn't really matter. All we know is she was sick and Christ healed her. 8.16 The devil from the earth to the earth, the power of his sake. Demon-possessed what? [00:38:41] It's very reduced to death. Uh-huh. But the word demon is the correct word, and devil is confusing it with Satan. You see what I mean? We shouldn't speak of many devils, but there's only one devil. Now in 828, we have two particular demon-possessed men described rather vividly. [00:39:13] Who has it? All right. All right. These people were especially fierce. In other words, they behaved like madmen because of the demons which were in control. [00:39:44] In 9.1, you have another type of illness. 9.2? Sorry. What is it? Yeah, we have paralysis. In 920, the woman with the hemorrhage had lasted many years and she was healed. In 925, it's a little hard to know exactly what happened here. [00:40:15] Whether the girl was, so to speak, dying or good as dead or whether she was dead. The people thought she was dead. Jesus said she isn't dead, she's just sleeping. And they ridiculed him, you remember. But he healed her, raised her up. And then in 929, you have two blind men. So you have leprosy, fever, demon possession, all the sick, fierce demon-possessed men, paralysis, hemorrhage, dead girl, and blind men. [00:40:48] That's the immediate context of the teaching that we're looking at here. I got out the Merck manual, which is the doctor's handbook, and looked up about 20, or 19 I guess, and I added a 20th, category of illness. There are just so many kinds of illness that human beings are subject to. So don't worry about the details, but let me mention these categories in an illustration or two as we go along, [00:41:23] which will indicate how tremendously dependent we are upon our Lord to keep us. The first category in the Merck manual is allergies. And this can mean anything from an annoying nasal congestion to hives or asthma. Those are all allergic in character. Then we have blood diseases such as leukemia, Hodgkin's, sickle cell anemia. [00:41:56] Anemia would be a good example. Then we have diseases of the heart and the blood vessels. A person's pacemaker can be knocked out of whack. That's what killed Dr. Cecil K. Bender, Harold Bender's brother. He was an M.D. and looked like a picture of perfect health. But one day he, I think, maybe left a patient or between patients and went back into his back room and lay down And the nurse came running back and said, do you need something? [00:42:30] He said, no, he had just taken some nitroglycerin And after a bit he said, I guess you better call help and in just almost seconds flat two doctors were there because their offices were not far from his and these two men tried to give help but they just watched him die and they said later the difficulty was with the pacemaker the little bundle of nerves at a certain spot that controls the beating of the heart [00:43:01] You can have leaking valves. That's probably one of the commonest forms of heart trouble that people have. And then in the vessels you can have problems like hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, cholesterol lining in the vessels. And if a vessel breaks, the common name for that is a stroke. It kills a lot of people. Fourthly, I don't know why, but the Merck manual puts together in the same chapter [00:43:34] the deficiency diseases, like you're not getting the vitamins that you need and you get scurvy or something and or you can have a mineral deficiency or a protein deficiency if a person is burned over a great deal of his body, he loses such essential proteins in the fluid that seeps out and so on and a metabolic disease, the metabolism is the way the body sustains itself. Here is where diabetes would come in. [00:44:18] Are the diseases associated with the endocrine system a very common thing if you go to the mountains of West Virginia? and find a family where they do not use iodized salt. One woman after another will have a great big goiter hanging here. And it all could have been prevented without any extra cost. I don't think iodized salt costs any more than other salt, but it would have prevented the goiter. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I hope your notices will go along, [00:44:50] that we can avoid a lot of medical problems if we know how to care for the body. In the eye and the ear, in the eye we can have more or less normal changes. For example, if I take off my glasses at that distance, I can hardly read it. If I hold it out at arm's length, I can still read it better. That's called presbyopia, which is exceedingly common in people that are over 45 or whatever. [00:45:27] It's part of the aging process. But then you have more serious diseases. There's a process going on in the human eye all the time where fluid is being manufactured for the inner eye. and then there's a canal of Schlem it's called which is the God's automatic drain for the eye and if that canal gets plugged then you build up greater and greater pressure within the eye [00:45:57] and finally you have blindness. What's that called? Glaucoma. And there's a childhood form of that disease with a different name, but it's the same principle, Buphthalmos, B-U-P-H-T-H-A-L-M-O-S. My grandfather's brother evidently had that. In the days before, they knew what it was. And so all they knew was this poor boy, he's blind in one eye as a small child, and the other eye isn't very good, and by the time he was about 13 or so, he couldn't see enough to [00:46:32] Go to school anymore. By the time he was 20, he was stone blind. Now that was, again, you see, not due to anything within his control, but it is now correctable by surgery, thank God. Mild cases can be corrected by drugs, which are dropped into the eye. You perhaps have friends with this problem. Men in the ear, you can have deafness and dizziness and buzzing and all kinds of sounds that aren't there. [00:47:04] The seventh category has to do with the digestive system, the gastrointestinal area. Here, we can get appendicitis when you get an infection in the appendix, which is attached to the intestines. You can have colitis. You can be infected with parasites. There are some parts of the world where almost everybody is carrying worms of one kind or another. If they would eat only boiled food, water, and so on, and particularly have the pork that they eat well prepared, they wouldn't have some of these problems. [00:47:46] 8th is in the whole matter of the genitourinary system there we have kidney stones, infections of the prostate and so on I don't need to go into details, you know about them the liver is the most important organ in the body in terms of almost all the chemical processes of the body A person told me, if you're studying for a PhD in biological chemistry, and the question arises, where does this process take place in the body? [00:48:22] You're almost always right if you say in the liver. In other words, the liver, this largest organ in the body, has an amazing capacity to do all kinds of things that need to be done for the health of the body. and this liver can be ill and we call that then hepatitis several years ago Ruth and I were about to go to India and we got a long list of shots and evidently the typhoid shot that she got [00:48:55] was either poor serum or we don't know what anyhow she she got hepatitis and And the doctor was a bit concerned, and he watched her carefully, and about all he could do was let nature take care of it. In other words, and I wanted to make this as a separate point, but I'll just say it right now. It is marvelous the way God has built a self-correcting and self-healing process into our bodies and minds. [00:49:28] I read a book some years ago called Psychiatry for Doctors, Nurses, and Ministers by a man named Mudd and UDD. He had been head of a mental hospital at Grand Rapids for 20 years. And the thing that made the book so interesting to me was the case studies. He'd have a paragraph in fine print telling about case 72 or whatever, and he'd say how this person was ill for so many years with such a mental disease. and then at the end he'd say spontaneous recovery in other words I take no credit Dr. Mudd was saying for getting this fellow well he just simply got well and this is a part of the goodness of our God and so most of us could hold up scars and show when we almost cut off a thumb or something and incidentally I refused all medical attention I was a teenager I was scared stiff of being sewed up and it healed beautifully [00:50:28] This is a part of God's goodness that we have spontaneous recovery from so many things. If you drink a lot of alcohol, you'll likely get cirrhosis of the liver, but it's not confined to people that drink alcohol. We had a sister in the Olive Church who died of cirrhosis, and I don't think she ever touched a drop of alcohol. Then, in the muscular and skeletal system, the muscles are attached to the skeleton and move the bones. [00:51:02] The most common trouble is arthritis, and it seems to be, in many cases, a part of the aging process. Animals get arthritis, and the mummies have arthritis. That is to say, it's a very aged thing in terms of having been here on the earth a long time. Disc trouble covers a multitude of things, I think. Then in the nervous system, we're subject to trivial things like headaches [00:51:34] and awful things like migraines and still more dreadful things like epilepsy and diseases like meningitis and sleeping sickness and so on. Thank God that in many cases we now know what to do, I mean doctors do, what to do for this type of thing. Then there's the whole matter of the poisons. People can be artificially poisoned by drinking something that is labeled wrong or what have you [00:52:07] or they can make themselves drug addicts, which is a terrible thing to do. My daughter nursed in a mental hospital where even MDs were patients and some of these people had drank themselves into the mess they were in and others had taken drugs. I'm very fond of Dr. Amstutz's quotation here. He says, everybody's making out that alcoholism isn't a sin, it's just a disease. but he said the odd thing is the only people that get the disease are the ones that drink [00:52:40] now if if that's true there's a lesson here for us isn't there there's a lesson here if you go to the stamping and tooling ocean where they have machines that come down with a 10 ton pressure to bend steel the way they want it the men that operate those machines have manacles on The machine yanks them back as it comes down. [00:53:12] Now we are given brains by God to avoid things deliberately that will bring on illness. And the people that live in immorality get venereal diseases. and the people that drink alcohol, some of them become drunkards and the people that become drug addicts are in an especially difficult way although it's amazing what Christ does do sometimes in getting people out of these things. [00:53:44] Then we have the whole matter of germ diseases and here, and you can put the next thing to it and that's viruses, which might as well be the same thing I mean in terms of the effect. Some diseases are caused by bacilli and some are caused by viruses, but you'd get sick in either case. But the body has defenses against them. If a doctor would take live cancer cells and make a slit in your skin and place those cancer cells in, you would not get cancer. [00:54:17] And they're trying desperately to find out what it is in the human body that rejects these cancer cells. and what goes wrong when cancer does develop something is lacking you see but it's it's marvelous then you have tumors of all kinds some are called benign they're not cancerous and usually do not amount to too much and then there are others that are very nasty we call them malignant and they're cancerous then we have all the disease so-called diseases which are more or less a part [00:54:54] of the aging process. I mentioned presbyopia already, the fact that you need glasses, bifocals, after a certain age, and you could put down here blood pressure. The average older person tends to have a little higher blood pressure than he had when he was 25, although they backed away from the old formula of 100 plus your age. If you have any age at all, I mean like 60 or 80, you shouldn't have 180 blood pressure. [00:55:27] Then we have the troubles due to accidents and injuries. This is a painful thing to mention, but I stayed in a home for a week recently while I was holding meetings. And three years ago, their 17-year-old son went on a church outing to the Susquehanna River, and one of the boys went in, and I talked to that young man, and examined the area for rocks, and he came out, and he said there are no rocks. [00:56:00] and this boy, the son in the home where I was, dived in and after a bit his back came up. His head was in the water and his feet were in the water but his back was showing and they thought he was clowning and actually he was drowning. That is to say he had broken his neck when he hit the rock and his head was hanging and he couldn't control a thing. And then they saw blood so they got him out in a hurry and he's still living they called him a quadriplegic let us say arms and legs useless [00:56:36] but little by little his muscular controls are coming back so that he can now take a glass and he's his fingers tend to look like this but he can take the glass and he can drink and he can feed himself and he can drive a car so he's anything but broken in spirit in fact I thought I was so impressed how well he did drive. I said to him, I'll drive with you anywhere. And I met it because this is also a part of the goodness of God. So it isn't only illnesses that put us into these troubles. It's the accidents that can occur in this life. [00:57:17] Some of you know who John B. Taves is, T-O-E-W-S. He was president of the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in California, Fresno. And I was in his home some days in January, and he told me this story. He said, in Russia, he was a young man in the 20s, and he was up 40 feet in a barn, and of all dumb things they had the horse attached to the apparatus that you pull up hay with. [00:57:51] You know what I mean? You spear the hay and then the horse pulls and it runs along the track. And the horse waited until he thought it must be time to move now. So he went and that roller came along and forced this man's fingers off the track and he fell 40 feet and broke his neck. And he said the doctors were afraid to touch him. They said it's too dangerous. and the Mennonites had what were called bone setters and they called in a an older man who was a bone setter and meanwhile this boy was lying unconscious this young man 25 I believe and the [00:58:26] bone setter looked him over and the parents said how does it look to you he said if I do anything 70 percent chance of death 30 percent chance of recovery the parents said we'll take it and he said they put a block and tackle on my head and they stretched me out and he said my eyes popped open in other words he came to consciousness the moment the pressure was taken off the spinal cord and then that skilled bone setter went in there with his fingers and [00:58:59] he got everything the way he wanted it and he recovered completely the man is now 75 years old He swims three times a week. He rides bicycle. He's a completely normal person. He said he has a little tendency to pain in the neck. Now, the worst category in some respects I haven't mentioned, and that is what are now called emotional illnesses. The old name was mental illnesses. [00:59:31] The German has a beautiful word for this, Geisteskrank. He's sick in his spirit. And the best psychiatrists, they tell me, are not nearly as prone to put a label on a given case of illness as they once were. They rather simply say the man is sick. Instead of saying, well, this is paranoid or this is schizophrenic or what have you. It sounds as though they are so neatly separable. And that is not the case. [01:00:02] The person is simply sick and he may have a preponderance of symptoms in a certain direction, being suspicious of people, thinking everybody's going to poison him or something, or what. But the causes of emotional illness are fairly well understood. You just can't predict in a given case how it's going to work out. But there's usually a great deal of fear in it. the person can't cope with what he thinks he has to face and he can't face it and so the [01:00:39] mind plays tricks on him and he becomes ill i don't mean that it's simple it's very complex and very difficult but the healings that generally occur can be aided by psychiatric counseling But I think many of them could be helped even more by love If they could be surrounded by loving care Now we had a world-renowned psychiatrist from Holland [01:01:13] He talks just like Jan Gleisteen, who is also from Holland And this man spoke to the seminary and Oak Lawn community some years ago Paul Pryzer is his name And he said that around 1800, there was a doctor who operated a large mental hospital. I don't know how large, but he lived with the patients and ate with the patients. And he had as good rate of recovery as we have now with all our drugs and our psychiatric counseling. [01:01:46] Now, a top-notch psychiatrist said that, not a preacher. So, if a psychiatrist dares say it, then you and I ought to be able to say it also. Don't overlook the tremendous value of a loving community in bringing emotional health to people. Now, our time is just about up for this morning. I wanted to say a few things by way of summary. [01:02:17] I would like to emphasize this morning six things. And maybe this will be a bit of a bridge then to tomorrow afternoon's second discussion. The first of these six things is that we have to take our place as creatures. We are not God, we are creatures. And a perfect illustration of being creatures is how dependent we are on air. If you could shut off our air supply within a matter of minutes, we'd all be dead, because we're absolutely dependent on air. [01:02:59] The second thing we need is sleep. To keep a person asleep very long, he begins to hallucinate, and finally you can't keep them awake anymore. You could be shaking them and they'd fall asleep. We have to have sleep. and thirdly we have to have water now I understand this fellow that tried to go across the ocean on a balloon the other day broke his ribs when he fell into the ten ribs I think when he fell into the ocean from his balloon [01:03:30] and he lived four days without water or food I think about three or four more days would have finished him off without water If you could have caught a fish, a live fish and eat it, he'd have gotten some liquid. But salt water is very bad. And the fourth thing we need is food. Now people can live anywhere from one to three months without food, depending on what they have to start with. But these are aspects of being creatures. [01:04:04] And it's because we are creatures that we are subject to illness and injuries and secondly I mentioned this earlier we have a marvelous self-repair system built in by God this is just a wonderful occasion for Thanksgiving so that many times a really top-notch doctor will say well I could I could immediately operate on this person's back for his disc trouble or what why don't we see what nature will do [01:04:40] And this is a mark sometimes of a very good medical man, if he's not too quick to tamper immediately with what God will do through the body. The third thing I hope you all are aware of, and that is that not all diseases or injuries are equally serious. There's some things that are trivial, like you cut off a quarter of an inch from the end of your finger. That isn't going to kill you, normally. That's fairly trivial. [01:05:11] On the other hand, if you're swimming and a shark bites off your whole leg, you'll be dead in a matter of two minutes. Unless there's some way to get the blood stopped from the enormous arteries that are cut off. And the same thing is true of illnesses. It's one thing to have a common cold. It's another thing to be in the situation of my brother's wife. I have a brother who's a minister in the Franconia Conference. [01:05:43] And about 12 years ago, I went in there with seminary course. And I had a half day free. So I borrowed a car and went down to see my brother. And when I saw his wife, I was frightened. and after I was away from the place I said to my mother and my sisters I said Ethel looks terrible to me oh they didn't think so and just within the last month I talked to my brother about it again [01:06:15] and he said I'm surprised that I couldn't see it there was something eating at her and I was I mean the reason I'm not taking credit here because the only reason I could see it was I hadn't seen her for a year See? And this thing was so insidious that her own husband, who has about the equivalent of an RN, has worked in mental hospitals much of his life, he didn't see it. Anyhow, a few days after I was there, she wasn't well at all, and they took her to the doctor, and there were two doctors in partnership, an old man with a lot of experience and a young man who was very sharp. [01:06:55] and the sharp young man said to my brother this is nothing serious he said she's got a little pneumonia a little liquid on her lungs he said we're going to have her taken care of in a hurry now forgive the expression the old doctor this is this is experience now the old doctor said to my brother i'm afraid there's a nigger in the woodpile do you know what he meant there's something serious For more videos visit www.fema.org [01:07:52] It makes your face puffy if you take too much. Well, that's not the common form of it, but it doesn't matter. Can't you help me out? No, they put in a kilter with them. For example, a person can be out of kilter in almost any way, and you give them this drug and they perk up. Cortisone. They began giving my sister-in-law massive doses of a close relative of cortisone. [01:08:26] And my brother knew that you daren't give more than five MGs. And if you do, say give ten, you daren't do it for more than two or three days. You give it for six days, the person's on it for life. You've ruined the whole endocrine system. And he told me, he said, one day I looked at the chart. They were giving her 50 MGs. He said, then I knew they were just trying to make her comfortable. [01:08:58] And I guess that very day or the next day, the head doctor, there were seven working on the case. And they were good men, too. I'm not running them down. They were top notch. But they could not figure out what she had. and the captain of the team came to him he said reverend wenger we do not know what your wife has but we're gonna lose her he said i knew that doctor said who told you he said i saw the chart then the doctor was satisfied and the funny thing was although she was terribly sick there's there's [01:09:35] An index of impurities in the blood, called BUN, and I think it usually runs around 10 to 20. Hers would go up to 100. And yet she had clear moments, so the last day, I don't understand that. She had clear moments, but she finally passed on. But that's a part of being in this life. Then they came to my brother and said, we'll give you a, I don't know how they worded it. We would very much like the privilege of an autopsy. [01:10:07] We'd wring your arm, I think they said. He said, you don't have to twist my arm. He said, I want to know. So they did an autopsy, and she had cancer of the pericardium, a sac that the heart is in, and then it spread through the whole body from that center. But that was the thing they couldn't figure out. Now that's serious. Getting a cold is not serious. The fourth thing I want to say is Most healings, physical or emotional [01:10:39] Most healings take time There are cases of instantaneous healing I've known some Where a person was very ill physically or mentally And were instantaneously healed I'll talk about that when we come to the gift of healing, whether it's a contemporary thing or whether it isn't. The fifth thing I want to say is, I think we never dare accuse the sick of lack of faith. [01:11:19] That's like hitting a man when he's down. I mean, they need reassurance that they are children of God and that they are in his care. And no matter how great our faith is, that God can and does heal all kinds of things, and I agree with that. If you don't believe it, read Brother Baker's book. That's a tonic to the soul, I think. was to me, no matter how great our faith is, there still remains an element of surrender [01:11:55] right at the center of the Christian faith, an element of surrender. I have seen many worse things than an early death, namely some people that couldn't die So don't accuse anybody of lack of faith if healing, either slow or fast, doesn't take place. And the sixth thing I want to say is, don't try to limit God. Some people say, well, God can heal the little things, but he can't heal the big things. [01:12:32] And I think that's just plain unbelief. I don't think we ought to put a hobble on God and say, well, if it's a minor thing, he can heal it, and if it's major, he can't. I think... Experience has been the other way. I'll go to the doctor for the little things, but I want God to do the spectacular. Well, I think in a general way, let me test this with you. Isn't it true in a general way that God doesn't do what we can do? [01:13:04] And so if the roof leaks, I don't pray about it. I either get up or get somebody to go up and fix it. And if I get to the point where I have to hold things out like that, I go to the I-man and get a pair of glasses. And I have trouble with some allergies. I did as a child, then I outgrew them, then they come back at 40. And I may outgrow them a second time, who knows. But I remember Dr. Grebel said to me one time, I said I was trying to get by without any this summer. [01:13:42] He said, why be heroic, he said. In other words, if we have a drug, it'll make you more comfortable. Why go around with your sniffles if you can go around comfortable? And that's what people have done. So I think that's a general truth that God doesn't do for us what we can do for ourselves. but the thing that I react to is thinking that there's some cases too hard for God and I don't want to I don't have the time right now to take an hour to give you some illustrations I think I'll just mention two cases Paul M. Miller of the seminary faculty [01:14:17] had made he was a successful farmer and businessman in Pennsylvania and he felt the call of the Lord to get ready for church service So he thought he might go to some place like Moody's for one semester and then to the mission field. Instead of that, he wound up staying in this country and serving in our seminary. And after he made that surrender, he got his hand into the corn picker and left most of the hand in the corn picker and tore off his tendons. I did not know that anybody was strong enough to do that. [01:14:50] The tendon snapped off in the arm partway up to the elbow when he left his fingers in the machine. But he was trying to get out if he could. And he got gas gangrene. And that is fatal. You read the literature. Gas gangrene is fatal. He said if you squeezed his biceps, the bubbles came out down at the hand where the fingers had been. And he was scheduled to die. Now that's just all there is to it. and three congregations called special prayer meetings and you can we know the rest god did [01:15:27] the miracle and he was healed and i'll give you one other illustration and i incidentally i do not go around the country collecting miracle stories i don't believe the essence of the christian life is miracles i think the essence of the christian life is trust and obedience and enjoying the holy and the Holy Ghost. [01:16:15] He himself just pinched off some rotted toes with gangrene. And one day the doctor said to him, John, if you have anything to say to your wife, you'd better say it. You know what that meant. And he said, that evening, I got out my Bible, and I read a chapter to Sally, and we just sat and talked a while. He said, Sally, we've had some good experiences together, and we've had some that weren't so good. And that was true. I mean, they had a boy that had no mind. from illness, but Mail and Satter, the mission board radio committee is one of the brothers of that [01:16:52] boy, and I really don't believe they prayed for healing. He didn't say one way or the other. They just gave themselves into the hands of God, and he said, I had been getting up a dozen times a night to wait on my wife, and he said, that night we both slept the whole night through, and her foot healed up, and she lived 10 more years. See you tomorrow. The Lord be with you. Subtitles by the Amara.org community