Misunderstanding Cessationism

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. Alright, let's once again turn to the gospel of Matthew chapter 4. Matthew chapter 4, this final section that we're going to be reading, verses 23 through 25, is titled, Jesus Heals a Great Multitude.

And you probably know that one of the names for Jesus is that he is called the Great Physician. That's based on Mark 2, 17, when he said that those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick.

And if you keep reading in that verse in Mark's gospel, you would see that he is referring to really a spiritual healing, forgiveness, God's forgiveness, redemption. But of course, Jesus did heal people physically.

Most everybody is aware of the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. So that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. But there are spiritual applications and other applications. But let's begin reading Matthew chapter 4, 23 through 25.

It says,. And 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. Then his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them.

And great multitudes followed him from Galilee and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Let's pray.

Father, as we come before you this morning, with all of our sicknesses, whether they be physical, emotional, or spiritual, Lord, I ask that you would give us the grace that we need for healing. As it is written in the Psalms, you heal the brokenhearted and bind up all their wounds.

And as David wrote, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquities and who heals all your diseases. Lord, we thank you and praise you for this. We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Healing. It's what everybody wants. I suppose not everybody needs physical healing, but those who have illnesses, diseases, aches and pains, and all the rest, whatever it is, everybody wants to be healed.

Even if a person has perfect health, there are still going to be emotional needs, emotional healing, spiritual healing that needs to come. But 2 ,000 years ago in Israel, obviously what we're talking about with physical healing first and foremost, back then they didn't have doctors, at least not in the same way that we do.

Back then, they really didn't have a cure or even treatment for most ailments. And still, even today, you can have things wrong with you and you go to the doctor and maybe they can give you a pill that will mask some of the symptoms.

But even today, doctors can't heal everything. So how much worse was it back then? Well, you can imagine when somebody was a paralytic, or even that's true today, I suppose, but when somebody had a disease, an ailment, many of them would feel hopeless.

Like, I'm going to have this for the rest of my life. There's no relief. There's no solution. But Jesus was the solution and he is still the solution. And really, in a sense, I'll explain this more later, Jesus can and will heal all believers.

Okay, so back then there was no cure for leprosy, epileptics, had virtually no hope of being cured. That is, until they heard about this man, Jesus, who was going from place to place. So when Jesus began his healing ministry, you can imagine this was something that these people had never seen before.

They had never even heard of something like this. So when Jesus started healing the sick, news spread like wildfire. And can you imagine if there was a man today who legitimately could heal any and all disease?

Word would get around pretty fast, wouldn't it? Well, look at verse 23. It says, and Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Now, this is worth spending a little time on.

This is the first time the word gospel is used in the Bible. One commentator says this, as far as regards Matthew, this is the first occurrence of the phrase. So it's the gospel of the kingdom. It tells of a vast amount of unrecorded teaching, varying in form, yet essentially the same.

A call to repentance, the good news of a kingdom of heaven with Jesus himself as the head. And that's something I've tried to stress the past few weeks. When Jesus was preaching about the kingdom of God, we don't know all that he said.

We have bits and pieces. But the point was the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, who's the head? Who's the king? Jesus is the king. So he's in this region of Galilee in northern Israel. We talked about that in prior weeks.

And it says that Jesus taught where? Where was he going to teach? Yeah, he was going in their synagogues. Synagogue, basically, it just means a meeting house. It's sort of like the Jewish version of a church.

There were no synagogues in Israel originally. But once the nation became established, over time, because the temple was so far away, they started erecting local meeting houses. So people would go to these meeting houses and they would pray.

They would hear scripture read. Someone would teach. And I'm sure they sang a song or two. So in that sense, the synagogues were like churches. So Jesus not only would have attended a synagogue growing up, when he began his public ministry, he began to teach in the synagogues.

But only so many people are going to come to a synagogue. It's sort of like a church. Only so many people are going to come. Only so many people are interested. But when people found out that Jesus was healing the multitudes, what did this do?

Wherever Jesus went, it brought people in. And then people came into some of the synagogues to want to hear what he had to say. So this was an attention-getter. And that's not the reason why Jesus was healing people, but it caused his message to spread.

So it was a common practice for the Jews to allow a traveling rabbi, if he was in the area, to come speak in their assembly. Just like we would have a missionary. If a missionary's in town, we're going to let the missionary come up front and give us a word.

So in that sense, it's the same. So Jesus is traveling throughout Galilee, going from place to place, from synagogue to synagogue. And because he was a visiting or traveling rabbi, they would give him the opportunity to teach.

So what was his message? His message was the good news. And an element of the good news was healing. If you're sick, you can be healed. And again, at the end, I'll explain this. But there is still an element of healing in the gospel today.

The gospel truly is good news. But he's talking about the good news of the kingdom of God. If we go back to verse 17, what did Jesus say? Three weeks in a row, you should have this memorized by now. Jesus said, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And it was at hand because the Messianic king was at hand. Jesus was present among them. Now, Jesus didn't always come out and tell them who he was. You can't just come out and say, Hi, I'm the son of God.

Nice to meet you. You can't do that. One problem is if Jesus told them, I'm the Messiah, I'm the son of God, I'm the Christ, they're not going to believe him. So this is part of why he healed. It was a miracle.

It signaled to the people that this is somebody special. This is someone different. If somebody came to you and told you that they were a prophet of God, you'd probably think, yeah, okay. Yeah, sure. Sure you are.

But if they could walk on water, you would be inclined to listen to them, right? So that's part of his preaching ministry. And then the miracles, it's all working together. You couldn't just come out and make claims like this.

Even saying that the kingdom is at hand, it's like, well, how do you know that? Based on what authority? So this is why, and if you take notes, write this down, this is why Jesus worked miracles. Jesus worked miracles to authenticate the miracle worker himself.

So he did these things and he healed people to prove he was who he said he was. Of course, at this point, he's not really coming out and telling them everything. Okay, look at verse 23. So he's preaching the gospel of the kingdom, verse 23, and was healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.

So this could be anything from the common cold right up to cancer. We know from other passages that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law. And you remember what Peter's mother-in-law had? She had a fever.

She had a fever and Jesus healed her. But he also healed the man who was paralyzed. So there's a wide variety of things that he would heal. The point is there is nothing too big or too small. Nothing is too small for the Lord, which will lead to the application later on.

No matter what ailment you have, no matter what disease you have, you might have a common cold. When you have a cold, where should you go? Well, you can go to the doctor, but I would go to the Lord first in prayer.

So anyways, before we get to that, miracles are by definition supernatural, right? People who, even if someone didn't believe in miracles, people know that miracles are unexplained. They are supernatural.

Also, miracles are very, very rare. Even back then, they were very, very rare. If miracles happened all the time, they wouldn't really be miracles in the sense they wouldn't be all that amazing because they would be taking place everywhere.

So miracles are supernatural, number one. And number two, they are extremely rare. In the New Testament, there are three words for miracle. That is signs, powers, and wonders. The word wonder meant that when somebody saw it, it caused them to stand in wonder.

They can't believe what they're seeing. They're in a state of awe. And just as a matter of what we believe and teach, some of you are familiar, and don't tune out. I know when I use terms like this, people are inclined to sort of tune out and say, well, that's doctrine and theology, and I don't really care about that.

Here's the thing. You've probably heard or you're familiar with this term cessationism. Some of you know the term. They think, well, Pastor Mike or Morse Corner Church are cessationists. That's what some people would think, and that's actually, in all fairness, the word is in our doctrinal statement.

But here's the thing. People have the idea about cessationists or about a guy like me, maybe, that I don't believe in miracles or that our church doesn't believe that God the Holy Spirit is still working today and that we don't believe in miracles.

Is that true? Well, that's not true. God the Holy Spirit is still working today. I do believe in miracles. First of all, I believe in the miracles of the Bible. I believe Moses parted the Red Sea. I do believe Jesus walked on water.

I do believe that he rose from the dead. I do believe Paul could heal, and Paul also raised someone from the dead. So I believe in the miracles of the Bible. And is God still working miracles today? Miracles of healing in people's lives?

Just because I've never seen it personally doesn't mean that I don't think it's happening. God can do whatever he wants. So in case you have some misconception in your mind about what this church believes or teaches, that's not the case.

This is what people call putting God in a box.

You've heard this.

Oh, that guy.

Yeah, Pastor Grant, he puts God in a box. What are they saying? That you're limiting God. I'll tell you something. The words God can't, that's not part of my vocabulary. Except that I say God can't lie or God can't sin.

So God can and I believe still answers prayer. I have no doubt that he heals people today. And the cessationist thing, that's more about speaking in tongues and believing in modern day prophets and apostles.

That's what that has to do with. We're not saying that God the Holy Spirit is not working. Just to settle that once and for all because people have misunderstandings. Thanks for listening. I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornet Church.

If you'd like to listen to the complete message or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, MorrisCornetChurch .com. And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett.

Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.