The Healing Ministry of Jesus (Matthew 4)

The Purpose of Jesus’ Healing Ministry

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. So is God still working miracles today? I have no doubt that he can. Amen. Do you believe that God can work miracles?

I don't doubt that he is. Unfortunately, there's a lot of charlatans out there that make things up or they exaggerate. So I think a healthy degree of skepticism is needed. The scripture tells us to test all things and hold fast to that which is good, 1 Thessalonians 5 .21.

So, yeah, we test everything, make sure that it's true. But God is still the same. God could do things back then. He can still do it now. OK, think about this. When Paul showed up on the scene, remember Paul was a persecutor of the church.

Just one last point on this. Paul was a persecutor of the church. And then he said, I believe in Jesus. Now people are a little skeptical. Right. So you kind of have to be on guard because those people are out there that would want to take advantage of people.

Jesus the Great Physician and the Evidence of His Miracles

But Jesus is the great physician. He is our great healer. If you have a need, bring your need to Jesus. Now, in regards to his healing ministry, it's important to know that the primary reason Jesus healed the multitudes, the primary reason he worked miracles was to prove to everybody that he is the Christ.

He is the son of God. Again, you can't just go up to someone and tell them that. People need to realize it for themselves. So when they saw Jesus healing a paralyzed man, people start thinking, who is this?

Right. So that's the purpose. That's the purpose. Do you remember God at the burning bush with Moses? When God encountered or when Moses encountered God at the burning bush, remember the Lord told him to go to Pharaoh in Egypt and say, let my people go.

And Moses, I can't do that. Nobody will believe me. And that's when the Lord gave Moses the power to heal leprosy. He put his hand in his coat, took it out. It was leprous. Told Moses, put it back. He took it out again.

It was, it was clean. And then he gave Moses the power to turn his rod into a serpent. So that's what Jesus is doing. He is healing the sick so that people will believe him. He's proving himself. In John chapter three, Nicodemus said to Jesus, we know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do, unless what?

Unless God is with him. So just as miracles confirmed Moses as the mediator of the old covenant, miracles confirmed Jesus as mediator of the new covenant. But at the same time, the purpose of miracles in particular healing, the purpose was to show the compassion of Jesus Christ.

Do you know that Jesus has great compassion for people? So when he would heal, this showed not only his compassion, but the great compassion that the father in heaven had. So his healing ministry, what did it do?

It sort of cast, it cast a big net. It really appealed to everybody because again, you know, everybody has some problem, you know, even if they don't talk about it, you have, you have this idea, oh, that guy, my neighbor, everything's going great for him or this person, they're healthy.

You have no idea what they're dealing with. So this healing ministry of Jesus, it cast a big net. It appealed to everybody. Everybody wanted to come to him to receive healing. It opened up countless opportunities for Jesus to preach the gospel to people.

Remember at this point, the message is the message of the kingdom of God. And the Jews could get behind that because they wanted the kingdom. They wanted the kingdom to be restored. They wanted the Messiah to come and he'd be a man like David and Solomon sort of restore the glory days to Israel.

That sounded so good. So people were behind this message of the kingdom because they had the conception that the Messiah would drive out the Romans. He would bring in a booming economy. He would liberate us.

And there's all sorts of excitement and anticipation, although that's not really why Jesus came, at least not the first time. But soon the message was going to shift from that popular message of the kingdom and then Jesus was going to make it all about him.

The message would turn from the kingdom of God is here or it's at hand. The message would then turn to believe in me. You must believe in me as the king. Some people could still get behind that because as long as Jesus was the king and he's going to do what we want him to do, drive out the Romans, still people could get on board with that.

Of course later on when Jesus talked about take up your cross and follow me, that's when people started dropping out, right? So the point is this message of the gospel of the kingdom, yeah, it was a popular message.

People liked hearing it. Alongside of it, though, there's this message of repent for the kingdom. People were not quite sure about repentance because when you talk about repentance, that sort of implies that, hey, you're doing something wrong and you need to change.

People weren't too sure about that, but Jesus offered great hope so they were willing to listen. And when he started to heal people and cast out demons and give sight to the blind, you can just imagine the excitement in the air.

Healing, Deliverance, and the Shift from Kingdom to Sin

Now this idea of liberation from disease, do you want that?

Of course you do. Of course you do.

Every person in this room wants deliverance from pain and disease. But here's the thing, your unbelieving neighbor and your unbelieving co-worker, they want that too, right? Okay, everybody wants that.

Here's what Jesus came offering, though. Not just liberation from everything that's going wrong. Jesus came to offer people liberation or salvation from what? From sin. And that's obviously where things started to go in a different direction.

I don't know if we're going to start it next week, but Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, this is known as what? This section of Matthew is the sermon, what? Yeah, the Sermon on the Mount. So that's when Jesus is going to develop his teaching that, hey, the law of God you're not really measuring up.

The Jews, they thought they were obeying God. They thought they were right in the eyes of God. But Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is going to begin to show them that's not really the case. He's going to show them their inability to keep the law of Moses.

But chapter 4, verse 23, so that's still in the future. But now, verse 23, it says, Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sicknesses and all kinds of disease among the people.

And because of that, because of that, it says, verse 24, that his fame went out through all Syria. So that is, word about him went all throughout the north, all throughout the east. His fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments.

Notice it doesn't say they just brought the easy cases to Jesus. Oh, that's too hard, he can't do it. No, they brought all, right? You see the word all? They brought to him all sick people, various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics.

So you can almost break it down into two types of illnesses. There's people who have disease and illnesses, problems in their body, right? That's one problem. And then there's other people, their body is fine, but the problem is in their mind, or it's psychological.

So some people deal with issues in their physical body, others deal with psychological issues. And the psychological issues are just as bad, sometimes can even be worse than the physical issues. But Jesus was able to what?

Heal them all. And when Jesus healed people, these are not just psychosomatic healings. Some of the healing crusades that take place, I can't say that God has never healed anyone, but you have to understand that sometimes people get a rush, they get a rush of adrenaline.

And maybe you've seen those videos of people, they get up and they throw their crutches and they're jumping. Yeah, I can't say that God has never healed anyone like that, but sometimes, yeah, you get that rush of adrenaline.

You're kind of caught up in the moment, and the next day some of those people are still in the same aches and pains that they had before. So, yeah, sometimes there's healings today that you don't really know if it's legit or not, but Jesus, all his healings were what?

100 legitimate. Also, Jesus had the ability to cast out demons. At the name of Jesus, the demons fled. Now, we see the term epileptic, and this is sort of a sensitive topic, so I'll try to approach it in a delicate way, but the King James Version, some of you, a lot of people have still used the King James Version, and what does it say in the King James Version?

Some of this might be politically incorrect, but the King James Version calls this lunatic, a man who is a lunatic. You say, well, that's not the same thing. Someone who has epilepsy is not someone who's mad.

Well, here's an article I pulled offline. It says the old-fashioned understanding of the word lunatic referred mainly to epilepsy and madness. So there's those problems with the body, and then there's the problems that they didn't really know where it came from.

So there's epilepsy, there's madness, and then there's demon possession, and sometimes they all get kind of lumped together, and we need to be careful about it, because they're not all the same type of a thing.

But back then they really didn't know, so they had a word that would sort of cover a lot of this. If this has gone to the modern day, how many of you have talked about or heard someone talk about how when there's a full moon, right?

People who work in hospitals sometimes will say, and I don't know if they're kidding or not, but I've heard health care professionals say, you know, when there's a full moon, yeah, sometimes people do act out.

That used to be the word lunatic in the Greek, and as it goes through the languages, it was also called being moonstruck. It used to be an ancient belief right up until the 1700s that the moon is what caused people to have these sort of fits, or those psychological things that people couldn't explain.

They thought the moon influenced them. You think that's ridiculous, but it probably isn't true, but back then they didn't really know. The point is, all that to say this, the scripture teaches that whether it's a psychological condition and they didn't know what it was, what to call it, Jesus was able to bring full healing to people who needed it.

Someone had problems in their body, or they couldn't walk. Jesus was able to bring full healing, and then the next day, and the next day, it never came back. Full healing. Wouldn't you love to have full healing in your body?

The older I get, you feel the aches and pains, and we don't have less issues the older we get. We have more, so if you're not dealing with it now, you will. It's just part of life. It's part of life under the sun.

It's part of living in a world that's under the curse. It's something that everybody deals with, but some people deal with it, and it's a much more serious thing. But I can tell you that there is hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is hope.

There is hope.

Bringing Every Need to Jesus in Faith and Prayer

So because of this, verse 25, great multitudes followed him from nearly every direction. So now as we get into the application of all this, great, people were healed of all diseases back then, but what about now?

What about me? What about people today that are dealing with these things? Well, my simple piece of advice would be, if you have a need, no matter what it is, if you have a need, bring your need to Jesus.

He's still the great physician. You know, there are those cults or, you know, these fringe groups that tell their people, don't seek out a doctor. Pray and just get your healing from prayer. Don't seek.

That's not what the Christian church says. I'm saying don't seek out a doctor. But the first thing you should do is what? Pray. If we really believe God is who he says he is, if Jesus is who he said he is, if we do believe that he has the ability to heal, we should come to him first with prayer.

1 Peter 5 verse 7 says,. Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Moores Corner Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, moorescornerchurch .com.

And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, with the grace of God be with you.