The Two-Hundred-Ninetieth (Healing)

Last week we looked at what scripture says about sickness.  We touched a little bit on healing at the end, but this week we’re going to focus on it.  It’s one thing to know what scripture says about why we get sick, but the other half of sickness is being healed of it!

Before we get into healing, I want to emphasize something from last week’s study.  Scripture does not claim, nor do I claim of it, that it tells us every possible reason someone gets sick.  However, it does tell us some of the main reasons are disobedience to YHWH, either through not following His commandments or not following His direction and His instruction, or through Him trying to teach us something about how we should be living.  Also, the disobedience causing sickness could be not physically following His commandments or not spiritually/emotionally following His commandments.  For instance, emotions like envy and worry can make us sick.

While we don’t necessarily know every cause of sickness, we do know from scripture that whatever the cause is, YHWH has the power to heal us of it.  His power and authority over all of creation enables him to remove any sickness, or cause of sickness, and heal a person fully and completely (Jeremiah 17:14, 32:17, Psalm 22:28, 147:5, Job 42:2, Matthew 19:26, Luke 1:37).  We will get into specific examples of healing in a bit, but for now, the point is that if there is anyone that has the power and ability to restore our health, it is YHWH.  As we mentioned last week, that needs to be stated outright or there’s no way for us to have even a mustard seed of faith in His ability to heal us.

On that note, something else that’s crucial to understand regarding healing is that YHWH’s healing is by His choice.  When you see ministries in the world that include healing, many times it’s claimed that a person doesn’t receive healing because they lacked faith.  While it is true that faithfulness (which, remember, includes faith and obedience) plays a role in certain situations involving healing, just because a person was not healed doesn’t mean they didn’t have enough faithfulness.

This is where we again have to acknowledge YHWH’s sovereignty in His creation, and more specifically in our lives.  As hard as it is to accept, sometimes YHWH has reasons for either not healing someone rapidly or not even giving them an opportunity to repent and receive healing.  We didn’t mention Herod’s sickness last week, but his situation is a perfect example of this.

When Herod failed to give YHWH the glory as people were saying he had the voice of a god, we’re told he was immediately struck down, eaten by worms, and died (Acts 12:23).  That Greek word for immediately is used in various other places, with context sometimes suggesting instantaneously (Luke 1:64, 8:44) and sometimes indicating a very short amount of time (Acts 16:33).  Either way, the connotation for Herod’s situation is that he was not given time in his sickness to realize his mistake, repent, and be healed.  

We can speculate all day about why he wasn’t given this opportunity, especially given the fact that YHWH desires that all should be saved (1 Timothy 2:4).  The fact of the matter is though, that YHWH has His reasons for everything He does and part of our faith in Him must include understanding and acknowledging that.  We are His servants, and we must trust that whatever His reasons, they are righteous and just.  That’s not to say that we should be prideful and think that our faithfulness is sufficient so our lack of healing must be for some other reason.  

We should always consider our faithfulness, and of course the possibility that He is teaching us something, or we will miss the times that He actually is trying to teach us something.  In fact, I believe that there is always something to learn no matter what circumstances He puts us in.  This belief is scriptural (James 1:2-3, 1 Peter 1:6, Romans 5:3-4, 2 Corinthians 4:17), but quite often we don’t stop in those troublesome times, like when we’re sick, and either try to figure out why or give Him the glory in that moment for His sovereignty over all things.  That might be hard in the moment, but it shows Him we love and trust Him even in hard times, and it could even give us comfort (Psalm 28:7, 119:50, Isaiah 26:3, Philippians 4:6-7).

In the times that we receive healing, scripture tells us that there are a few different ways it happens.  Overall, we must recognize that the source of that healing is always YHWH.  While the healing might occur in various ways, it always starts with YHWH and His power.

What we find in scripture is that we can be healed directly by YHWH’s own action or indirectly through actions you and I or others take.  Sometimes whether it’s direct or indirect is a bit muddy, so don’t take those categories as hard lines.  For example, if we give gracious, or pleasant, words and they heal the bones (Proverbs 16:24), that healing is obviously coming directly from YHWH, but it happened because of our action of giving those words.

As far as the purely direct-from-YHWH healing goes, these come solely from YHWH desiring to heal a person or people in a given situation.  Sometimes, this healing is out of a desire to execute justice for His people.  While YHWH used nations for judgment on His people that were disobedient (Jeremiah 30:12-15), YHWH promised healing for His people based on those nations suggesting that no one cared about them (Jeremiah 30:17).

Sometimes, He gives His healing in spite of someone’s disobedience when they repent for their disobedience (Isaiah 57:18-19).  Having a humble spirit and a contrite heart in this repentance is key (Isaiah 57:15), but He also gives this healing despite our struggles with following our way instead of His way (Isaiah 57:17).  It’s not about being perfect; He knows we struggle with these things.  It’s about recognizing the error of what we did and turning back to Him humbly, in repentance and for forgiveness.

Far more often what we see in scripture is what we’re calling indirect healing.  This healing happens through everything from Yeshua’s actions, to prayers, to us having a joyful heart.  Let’s get into each one of the examples, starting with things we can do.

Some of these things involve physical actions and some, as already mentioned, involve our thoughts and our heart.  If we have a joyful heart, we’re told it’s good medicine (Proverbs 17:22).  If we’re attentive to the Proverbs, we’re told it is health to our body (Proverbs 4:20-22).  We already mentioned gracious words giving health to the body as well (Proverbs 16:24).

Physically, we’re told that if we care for the poor, YHWH will sustain us in illness and restore us from sickness (Psalm 41:1-3).  In a combination of our heart, mind, and action, we’re also told that if we are not prideful but we fear YHWH and turn from evil, it will be healing to our body and refreshment to our bones (Proverbs 3:7-8).  Elsewhere, the connection of fearing YHWH and healing is also made (Malachi 4:2).

This is probably a good place to emphasize something we’ve learned over time in our studies.  In the Hebrew mindset, action and thought, or heart, are inextricable from one another.  One is the same as the other, so whether a verse talks about someone taking a certain action or having a certain thought or feeling, you should interpret it as whatever aspect is not mentioned is still aligned with the one that is.  

That’s hard to explain in words, so let’s use the proverb of caring for the poor as an example.  Naturally, or at least in my mind it’s natural, when we read about caring for the poor we assume it’s referring to physically taking care of them.  That could be giving them money, giving them food, clothing, a place to live, etc.      

In the Hebrew mindset, carrying out that proverb means your heart cares for the poor as well.  It’s not just about giving them something or physically taking care of them, it’s about caring about them in your heart, which then leads to taking care of them in whatever way they need.  The same goes for giving gracious, or pleasant, words.  That proverb is not talking about just speaking the words, it’s about the words coming from a gracious, or loving, heart.  

In the Greek mindset, which is what our society today is based on, your actions and your thoughts, or heart, are not necessarily expected to be in alignment.  When someone says you are supposed to take care of someone else, for whatever reason, we’re not expected to assume that our heart is in that action.  A person could be resentful of having to do that, or just do it out of a feeling of obligation rather than love or care.  In the Greek mindset, it’s more about fulfilling the action, which is the one society says you’re morally responsible for, than it is about what we feel in our heart while taking that action.

This mindset had also infiltrated the Jewish people at the time of Yeshua, and as a result, He had to preach against it.  He had to reset the people back to what YHWH had always intended: that our hearts, our minds, and our actions are all in alignment.  To do this, He preached about anger being equivalent to murder (Matthew 5:21-22) and lust being equivalent to adultery (Matthew 5:27-28).  

This misalignment between heart and actions had even worked into the religious leaders at the time.  They tithed out of the smallest of herbs and spices, but lacked faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).  They made sure to follow their traditions of cleansing the outside of cups, but were full of the filth of greed (Matthew 23:25).  They projected righteousness in their actions, but their hearts were wicked (Matthew 23:27).

I watched a debate between two gentlemen the other day, Pastor Matthew Janzen and Professor Rob Solberg, where they debated the interpretation of Matthew 5:17-20.  In it, one of Professor Solberg’s statements was that the listener of Yeshua’s words in verse 20 would immediately understand that He was pointing out that there’s no way to be more righteous than their religious leaders because they’re the most righteous of all the people, so Yeshua must have been making the point that they couldn’t achieve that level of righteousness without Him.  I believed that at one time as well, but that belief fails to include the context of what we just read in Matthew 23.  Yeshua preached that the religious leaders weren’t righteous, and what’s recorded in Matthew 23 wasn’t the only time He preached that.  Any follower of Yeshua would have certainly recognized that He was rather saying that those religious leaders should not be put on that pedestal of being seen as righteous, and certainly should not be a group of people that should be looked to and emulated with respect to achieving righteousness.

The point is that no matter what, if our heart, mind, and action is not in alignment we can be assured that whatever we’re trying to achieve with one of those three will not come to fruition.  The religious leaders were trying to achieve righteousness through their actions of following YHWH’s commandments while their hearts were not aligned with those commandments.  When the commandments were given, the people were told that if they listen to and keep them not only will they not have diseases put on them (Exodus 15:26), they will also have all sicknesses removed from them (Deuteronomy 7:12, 15).  This is contingent, of course, to their hearts and minds being in alignment with the actions of keeping the commandments.

The next subcategory of indirect healing is through prayer or pleading.  Scripture tells us that a prayer of faith will not only save someone who is sick, but also forgive his or her sins (James 5:15).  That prayer is to be accompanied with anointing in the name of YHWH (James 5:14), but also recognize that it says it’s a “prayer of faith.”  Again, your heart must be aligned with your prayer, otherwise you can almost be assured that your prayer will not be answered.

We can also receive healing through pleading to YHWH.  David praised YHWH for healing him after his cry for help (Psalm 30:2).  Moses cried out to YHWH for Miriam to be healed (Numbers 12:13), and she was (Numbers 12:14-15).

Another subcategory of indirect healing is through directed action.  This category is interesting because it involves an action by the person being healed, and that action is not necessarily directly related to their sickness.  We see this in Naaman’s washing in the river (2 Kings 5:10-27) and the people looking at the bronze serpent in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9).  The important thing to recognize about this category is that these are actions directed by YHWH or by a prophet of YHWH, so we can’t just go washing in a river, for example, and expect to be healed!

The last few subcategories of indirect healing are through direct action from one person to a sick person.  I separated these out based on relationship with Yeshua and the event of His resurrection.  Since some of them we cannot experience today, we’ll just mention them for completeness.

During Yeshua’s ministry, we know He healed people through direct action, whether it be making a mud and restoring sight (John 9:6-7), touching them (Mark 8:22-25), or having someone reach out a withered hand for it to be made healthy (Mark 3:5).  The key thing about this subcategory is that even though Yeshua was doing the action, the power was still coming from YHWH.  This is evident through Peter’s words (Acts 10:38) and in that He felt power come out of Him as people were healed (Luke 6:19, 8:43-47).

Two other subcategories of direct action healing that we cannot experience today are through the disciples during Yeshua’s ministry and through the apostles after His resurrection.  In the first case, Yeshua gave them the power to heal directly (Matthew 10:1-8).  In the second case, the power came from the Holy Spirit and worked through the apostles’ actions (Acts 5:12-16).

The last subcategory is one we can experience today, whether on the giving or receiving end.  It is healing through direct action of a faithful believer.  We can see this among gifts listed by Paul in his first letter to the assembly of Corinth (1 Corinthians 12:9), and the interesting thing about it is that he makes it plural. Not only that, he lists it as two plurals: gifts of healings.  

I believe these two plurals indicate that not only are there multiple types of healing a believer can be gifted by the Holy Spirit today, there are multiple ways of healing that we can be gifted.  Perhaps one believer is given a gift of healing through prayer, while another is given a gift of healing through touch, or laying on of hands.  Still another could be given a gift of healing through action, like Yeshua’s mud on the eyes or asking a man to extend his withered hand.  

As far as types of healing, maybe one believer is able to heal skin diseases, while another blindness.  Maybe raising of the dead is something only given as a gift to certain believers.  Regardless, we know through Paul’s letter and the fact that YHWH does not show favoritism (Romans 2:11, Acts 10:34), that believers today have the opportunity to be given the gift of healing just as the disciples and the apostles were given during and after Yeshua’s ministry, respectively.

I hope this week’s look at healing in scripture has blessed you and shown you that YHWH will still heal all our diseases today (Psalm 103:1-5) if we turn to Him and believe and follow what He said in His word!  We hope you have a great week!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)