Other kings started well and ended badly, like Saul and Solomon, while others had rocky beginnings, yet ended much better, like Manasseh. One cautionary word here: we often say it’s not how we start, but how we finish that’s important. That is strictly speaking, true. The grace of God means that 100 wasted years followed by 10 minutes of repentance takes us straight to heaven.

I noticed though, that very few kings of Israel or Judah started badly but ended well. Many more started well but ended badly. This should motivate us to guard our hearts, as so aptly put in Hebrews 3:

12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

In Isaiah 38, King Hezekiah became ill and cried out to God for his healing. God healed him and what is notable is one line he wrote after his recovery. In Isaiah 38:9-11, he said:

9  A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery: 10 I said, “In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years?” 11 I said, “I will not again see the LORD, the LORD, in the land of the living;

Did you notice that? Hezekiah, under the Old Covenant said he would not again see the Lord … in the land of the living.

If Hezekiah could boast of seeing (experiencing deeply) the Lord on earth, how much more should we expect to experience deeply the Lord under our covenant, which eclipses the old. Hebrews 3:16 says:

6 But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises.

Most of us would be excited to have lived during periods in the Old Testament when Israel experienced God’s miracles and tangible glory. Sad, isn’t it, that our Christian life in these days of the Latter Rain are less characterized by the miraculous than the days of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and David?

Beloved, we should not settle for this. If Hezekiah could boast of “seeing God” , experiencing Him under an inferior covenant, we should expect to walk in more power, more miracles and more of the presence of God. We were birthed (the New Birth) by a miracle and we go miraculously to be with the Lord when we die. Should our life in between be devoid of miracles? That makes no sense, biblically.

May we press on in the faith until we walk in the fullness of the New Covenant and its better promises. Amen.

What about mercy? Let’s talk about mercy for a while. If you sin, you seek forgiveness, which is available through grace. Grace is unmerited favor. If you are sick, you desire healing – you are not looking for forgiveness unless sin was involved.

Actually, what you desire is mercy. Mercy is different from forgiveness. I’ll give an example. You hit a person’s car and you’re in the wrong. He tells you, “I forgive you”, but holds you liable and takes you to court to recover the damages to his car. He forgave you, but did not have mercy on you. It was the same with David, after his sin with Bathsheba. God forgave him, but the child died anyway.

To put it another way, forgiveness washes your sins away – a spiritual action with spiritual outcomes; mercy is a tangible action with physical outcomes. Not convinced? Let’s take a look at what Bartimaeus cried out in Mark 10,

46…a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

This is similar to the man with the epileptic son in Matthew 17:15:

“Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.

Do a word search of “mercy” in the gospels and you’ll see it used many times in the context of healing. The healings of the Canaanite’s daughter (Matthew 15:22), Elizabeth’s barrenness (Luke 1:58) and of the madman of Gadara (Mark 5:19) were all described as acts of mercy. The Good Samaritan was also described as the one who had mercy, when Jesus asked in Luke 10;

36″Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

What’s my point? When we ask God for healing, it is important to know what we are really asking for. We are really asking for mercy, regardless of whether we have sinned or not.

If your illness has resulted from sin (e.g., poor lifestyle choices), you need forgiveness of sins, but more than that, you need mercy. This not limited to healing, even though that is our focus here. Many enter financial or relationship ruin because of bad decisions. They often ask for forgiveness, but not mercy. They receive forgiveness, but not mercy. Is that possible? Yes, it is, just look again at King David. He actually had it happen not only with Bathsheba, but when he performed an unauthorized census of Israel.

Moses had the same thing happen when he struck the rock twice. He received forgiveness, but mercy was unavailable in regard to his entering the Promised Land. God was merciful enough to let him go up on the mountain and see it, but he never entered it. The deeper your experiences and maturity with God, and the more you partake of the Holy Spirit and of the powers of the coming age, it seems to me that mercy is less available if you play the fool. This writ is not for everyone; those at that stage in their walk know who they are. A scripture that underlines this is James 3:1:

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

To conclude, ask for mercy in addition to forgiveness when you seek healing for sickness that may be partially or wholly due to sin. Ask for mercy even if there is no sin involved. Realize, as many did in Jesus’ day, that healing is a mercy of God. Grace gets us into right standing or favor with God, but mercy obtains for us healing and other interventions in our lives. This is really what you are asking for when you ask for healing—you are asking for mercy.

God is rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4). May you be recipients of God’s mercy today and for the rest of your life, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

John 5:14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

From this, we saw that sin can lead to sickness. Worry or drugs or sexual sin, among other sins, can lead to sickness of the body and mind. In case you were wondering, worry is a sin, as in Philippians 4:6;

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Note that this is not a suggestion, it is a command—primarily for our own good. Physiologically, worry and stress raise cortisol levels in the body and can affect blood pressure, sleep patterns and so on. Anxiety and worry cannot coexist with faith.  Once they arrive, trust and faith in God departs.

So then, is all sickness the result of sin? Thank God, it is not, or some would be sick every day or week. In Jesus’ day, many believed that sickness was the result of a person’s sin or that of his parents, but Jesus debunked that very quickly:

John 9:1-3 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

So this sickness was not the result of sin by either the man or his parents. Some sickness comes from our being in a fallen world, others from our unwise choices and lifestyles, and yet others by demonic attack. Also, the actions of sinful or malicious people can cause sickness in others, such as parents who smoke.

Note that I didn’t mention God here. He is not the source of sickness. I find it strange that the obituaries of worldly people state that “after a yearlong fight against cancer….”, whereas Christians point to God or “God’s will” for their sickness. Many non-Christians recognize sickness as an enemy of all that is good, an evil that must be fought, while many Christians go on about God’s supposed will ‘permitting’ or causing them to be sick.

If you think this way, tell me this: If it was God’s will for you to be sick, why do you visit the doctor to escape “God’s will”? If it was His desire that your character be perfected in sickness, why do you ask for your name to be placed on the prayer chain to avoid this perfecting? If God wanted you ravaged by illness, why not ask the brethren to pray for you to become more sick, so as to enter His will more deeply? The faith-sapping myths we propagate in the church today are a tragedy.

Why is it that wise Christians cannot tell God’s will until after the event? The person died of sickness, ergo, it was God’s will that they died. The person recovered from sickness, thus it was God’s will that they recover. This is a “que sera, sera” Christianity, a lazy spirituality that tries to infer God’s will after the fact. It has more in common with fatalistic Mid-Eastern and Eastern religions than Christianity. If you know God’s will, tell me before we pray, so if it is not His will, we won’t bother. However, not one of these wise ones ever knows until afterwards—going by sight and not by faith.

I can tell you God’s will for the very sick young man with a heartbroken wife and three young children all crying out to Him. It is for him to be healed, period. That is His will before I pray and that is His will after I pray, whether he gets up or stays down. God’s will for that sick child? The same, of course. Why? Because healing is in His Word and His Word is His will.

Why do tragedies occur then, you ask? There are many reasons, but why on earth wouldn’t they occur when we continue teaching unbelief throughout our churches….because we, as a church do not believe all of the Atonement. As a pastor, you doth protest too much that you believe. It doesn’t matter what you profess in conversation. Do you preach healing? Do you regularly pray for the sick? No? Why not? Because you don’t believe it. I learned a long time ago that people do what they believe and avoid what they don’t believe. Most pastor/teachers don’t believe in the full Atonement. If they want to argue about healing being in the Atonement, fine, we don’t have to bring that up.  They just don’t believe in the many healing promises in the Word or in doing the works Jesus said we would do.

Finally, some will argue “why the undue focus on healing?  There are other things to preach about, aren’t there?” Yes there are.  But let’s look at Jesus, in Matthew 4:23:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Jesus focused on healing quite a bit, didn’t He?  He didn’t have other things to preach about?  Somehow though, our gospel has been transformed into a shadow of that which Jesus and the Apostles preached.  It has changed from the Full Gospel to the “Part-Gospel”.

If you are one of few who preach and minister healing regularly, God bless you. May He strengthen you, embolden you, impart spiritual gifts to you, infuse you with the power of the Holy Spirit and may signs and wonders accompany your ministry. Amen.

…to be concluded…

The first question is whether there is a connection between sin and sickness. The answer is “yes” to the general question. By the general question, I mean that there was no sickness before Adam’s fall. The entrance of sin brought sickness in tow. Notice also that in the Atonement, God introduced the solution to sin and sickness, i.e.,

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Psalm 103:2-3 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases

So that shows the link between sin and sickness in the general causative sense. The fallen state of humanity is the background to all sickness. However, we see that healing and the forgiveness of sins became available through the second Adam—Jesus Christ. I say “became available”, because they are not automatic. The new currency of exchange with God has become faith, and forgiveness and healing are available through faith.

Now, let’s look at the individual level. Can sin bring about sickness? Yes it can. The sin of worry can bring about many stress-related diseases. Fornication can lead to sexual diseases. Anger and violence can lead to physical harm. Illegal drugs destroy the whole person. Thus, many types of sin can lead to sickness and harm to the mind and body. The best authority here is Jesus, who, after healing the disabled man at the Pool of Bethesda, found him and said;

John 5:14  Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Jesus warns the man that further sin can lead to sickness.  Some may then conclude that all sin leads to sickness or that all sickness is the result of the sick person’s sin. However, these would be erroneous assumptions. I’ll explain why in the next post…stay tuned…