Sin is More Serious Than the Worst Sickness — Zac Poonen

Isaiah 53 and the Meaning of Healing

We have a fellowship in Pittsburgh, CFC Pittsburgh, and those are the ones who produced that. And there's a brother there called Satish Bennett who's got a tremendous gift of illustrating. And there's a whole series of illustrations he's made of different truths that we have proclaimed in CFC.

I would encourage all of you to go to that site and watch all of them. In Isaiah chapter 53, which speaks about the cross,.

It says here, verse five,.

He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his stripes we are healed, or by his scourging we are healed.

Now, most charismatics and Pentecostals take that verse to apply to healing from sickness and say that Jesus died not only for the sins of the world, but also to heal us of our sicknesses. Now, we have to always compare the Old Testament with where it is quoted in the New Testament to understand truth correctly.

So, if you turn to Matthew chapter eight, we read of one of those prophecies in Isaiah, which is quoted here in verse 17, Matthew 8, 17. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet.

He took away our, he himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases. That is Isaiah 53, verse four. But the point is, when was it fulfilled? Matthew chapter eight is not speaking about the cross.

Matthew chapter eight is speaking about a time when Jesus, verse 16, last part, healed all who were ill. And when he healed all the sick people who came, if there were 2 ,000 people there who were sick, all 2 ,000 were healed, not 90%, not 1 like we hear today, 100%.

They were all healed. And that was to fulfill that he took away our infirmities. Where did he take it away? Right there. He took away their sicknesses. It's not talking about the cross at all. So does it mean that Jesus didn't die for our sickness?

He died to take away the entire curse. Sickness is a result of the curse that came upon Adam. God did not curse Adam. He cursed the ground. You read in Genesis 3 that when Adam sinned, God said, cursed is the ground.

And it is that ground from which our body is made. That's why we get sick. And until the curse is removed from our body, sickness will come even to believers. We got to face reality and not live in a world of delusion.

Our spirit has already been redeemed from the curse. There's no curse in my spirit. But my body will be redeemed only when Christ comes. We read in Philippians chapter 3, you know, if you compare scripture to scripture, you can never go astray.

And you live in a world of reality instead of living in a world of illusion and deceiving other people. Philippians chapter 3, it says, verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform this body of our humble state, this curse, this body which is formed out of dust of the ground which God cursed.

In Genesis chapter 3, we'll be transformed into the body of His glory. That is the time when the body will be redeemed from the curse and there'll be no more sickness. But till then, what does it mean that by His stripes we are healed?

Well, the best is to compare scripture with scripture. The Holy Spirit has inspired the Old Testament and the New Testament. So if you compare scripture with scripture, you can't go wrong. If you just listen to the interpretation of some human being, whether it's me or anybody else, you can't go astray unless it's based on scripture.

So in 1 Peter chapter 2, it says here in the last part of verse 24, 1 Peter 2, 24, this word from Isaiah, Isaiah 53, verse four, by His wounds we are healed. It's quoted there in verse 24 towards the end.

By His wounds you are healed. That's the verse we found in Isaiah. But see the interpretation of it which the Holy Spirit gives through Peter in that verse. He doesn't say He bore our sicknesses on the cross.

He bore our sins in His body on the cross, not so that we might be healed from sickness, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness because by His wounds you are healed. Healed from what? From sin.

It's so obvious in that verse. So we find here that if you go by scripture, you'll never live in a world of unreality, imagining and claiming things which are not promised in scripture. Does it mean that we cannot pray for healing when we are sick?

Of course we can pray for healing when we are sick because James says in chapter five, James five and verse 14, if anyone is sick, call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

See that is, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit and when we put oil in a person's head, we're saying this body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's like the symbol of baptism. Baptism is only a symbol.

You don't become spiritual going into that water, but a testimony Jesus said how you are testifying that you buried to your old life and risen again to a new life. It's like breaking your bread. That bread is not the body of Christ, but it's a testimony to the fact that I share in the brokenness in Christ's body and I am cleansed by his blood.

That's why I drink in the cup. In the same way, the oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit and we are testifying this body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and therefore we ask for it to be healed in the name of Jesus Christ and it says here, the prayer of faith, verse 15, the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and if he has committed sins, they'll be forgiven him.

Now, the two things I wanna mention there, that is sometimes the fact that sin is mentioned there indicates that some sicknesses are due to sin. We must recognize that. There are some sicknesses not due to sin and some sicknesses due to sin.

Again, so here it says, in connection with healing, it says if he has committed sins, he'll be forgiven. Maybe that sickness was a result of some sin in his life. So when he's healed, he's also forgiven because he's repented of that sin and therefore, verse 16, confess your sins to one another.

It is in the context of being healed. Whenever I pray for any sick person, there's one question I ask him. Are you aware of any sin in your life that you have not repented of? I'm not talking about whether you've overcome it but you hate it.

Have you turned from it? Total overcoming from sickness will only be when Christ comes again. But do you hate sin in your life? Have you turned from it to the best of your knowledge? That's very important before you pray for healing from sickness.

And also, very important, have you forgiven everybody who has hurt you? Can you think back of any person who hurt you in your entire life? You have not forgiven. You hold a grudge against that person.

I say, don't ask anybody to pray for your sickness. It's a waste of time. First of all, learn to forgive completely, totally. It doesn't matter how great a crime that person did against you. The Lord teaches us to forgive because we've committed a million times more sins against God and he forgave us.

Forgive us our trespasses, our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. It's a very important requirement for healing. But to show you how some sicknesses are due to sin and some sicknesses are not due to sin, in John 5, we read of Jesus going into the pool of Bethesda and there was a great multitude, we read in verse 3, of sick, blind, lame, withered.

John 5, verse 3, waiting for the moving of the waters. And an angel of the Lord would come at a certain time and stir the waters. And whoever stepped in first would be healed. It was an act of God's mercy.

I don't know why God did not allow everyone who jumped in to be healed, but everyone in the world is not healed, it's just a plain fact. And there was a man for 38 years who was lying there and Jesus saw him and he went to him and he healed him.

And I want you to picture this in your mind. There are two things I want you to learn from this incident. One is, can you imagine all this, maybe 200, 300 people around that pool, since it's a great multitude, verse 3.

And here's this one man who's lame and all these other guys have got various sicknesses. And Jesus comes in and they hear him speak to this man, saying, do you want to get well? And they've seen him lying there for years and they see him suddenly getting up and walking away with the bed.

What do you think all those other guys did? They say, hey, Jesus, we're also here. And Jesus just went away. Who said Jesus healed everybody who was sick? He certainly didn't heal everybody who was here.

He healed only one person and went away. So we should not have a wrong idea of what scripture says. There were times when he healed everybody. There were times when he healed one person and went away.

That teaches me that healing is in the sovereign power of God, but there was never a single case where people came to ask Jesus for forgiveness of sin, where he said, no, we can't forgive you. I'm only gonna forgive that person.

In the case of forgiveness of sins, it was universal. Every single person who wanted forgiveness of sins was forgiven, but every single person who was sick was not healed. We've got to face that reality and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Does he heal everybody? No. Does he heal some people? Yes. It's what we see in scripture. The man at the beautiful gate of the temple whom Peter and John healed was a beggar saying, give me some money, and Peter said, I don't have any silver and gold, but in the name of Jesus, get up and walk.

That man had been lying there for 40 years. Can you imagine the number of times Jesus walked by that gate and he asked for money and Jesus told Judas Iscariot, give him some money? He didn't heal him because he did not have a command from the Father to heal.

Living by Every Word from the Father's Mouth

Jesus didn't live by a law which says, thou shalt heal everybody. He never lived by the law. He lived by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth. Man shall live by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth.

We prefer to live by rules, even among Christians. We make certain rules, or even in the church, we can have certain rules. It's much easier to live by a rule than to live by daily, constantly, not daily, but constantly hearing what the Father is saying.

The true Christian life, the spirit-filled life is not a life where you heard that somebody did it that way, so I'm gonna do it that way. No. That's living by rules. It's a lazy way of living. I make a bunch of rules and I'm gonna live by that.

That's not life. Life is where you're in touch like the branch in the tree, constantly receiving sap. Man shall live by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth and Jesus would walk by that temple gate and say, Father, shall I heal this man?

Father says no. 20 times he walks by that man in three and a half years. Every time, Father says no. Okay, Judas, give him some money. He gives him money. One day, Peter comes by and he heals him. What is the result?

5 ,000 people. You read that in Acts of the Apostles, chapter four. There's a purpose with which God delays healing. It's possible to try and do things before God's time and Jesus never did it. Man is like that.

You live by a rule. You see a man in the gate of the temple, of course, in Jesus' name, be healed. Nothing happens. Because we don't know how to live by every word that proceeds from the Father's mouth.

I wanna say to you, my brothers and sisters, one of the most important things that you need to learn, it's one of the first things God taught me when I was born again, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from God's mouth.

By the way, those are the first words that proceeds from Jesus' mouth in his ministry. What are the first words of Jesus' ministry? Man shall live by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. Learn that, the importance of that.

He told Martha, one thing is needful, to sit at my feet like Mary and listen to me. Do you believe that is the one thing that's needful in your life? That even if you don't do 101 other things during the day, there's one thing you need to do every single day and that is to hear what God has to say to you.

And I don't mean by just having a quiet time with the Bible. There are millions of people who have a quiet time with the Bible who don't hear God at all. They just ease their conscience, I've read the Bible.

Well, it's good to read the Bible, it's good to meditate on it, but you gotta hear God. And that takes a little more effort than just sitting and going through a ritual of reading the Bible for 15 minutes.

It's one of the things we need to develop, to hear what God is saying. And to hear what God is saying, you need to be rooted in scripture, of course. You need to be careful in studying scripture, to be diligent in studying scripture, just like I showed you just now, and not put your own interpretation into something, but compare scripture with scripture, and gradually you begin to understand God's mind.

Presenting the Body and Renewing the Mind

The Bible says that it's by the renewing of our mind. Turn with me to Romans chapter 12. There are two things the Bible says we must do if you're really grateful for all that God has done for you. Have your sins been forgiven?

Has God been extremely merciful to you in 101 ways or 1 ,001 ways? What shall you do in response to God's mercies? Here it is. Present your body and your mind to God in simple terms. Romans 12 one, in view of all of God's mercies to you and me, the Holy Spirit says, number one, present your body as a sacrifice.

A sacrifice means you are not going to do your will in your body anymore. That's a sacrifice. Lord, I praise my body on the altar. That's the sacrifice you want. And that is called here spiritual worship, or worship in the spirit.

The Old Testament worship in the Psalms was a worship of the soul. The soul is your mind and your emotions. And it's the worship of the soul is getting excited when you worship and, you know, worship of the body, moving the hands, there's nothing wrong in that, but it's just limited to body and soul.

Raise your hands, clap your hands, be emotional. Like the Psalms, say frequent hallelujahs. It's okay, it's good. But it's old covenant worship. New covenant worship, Jesus told the woman of Samaria, the time has now come when the true worshipers, John chapter four, verse 24, will worship not in the soul, but in the spirit.

That woman didn't have a clue what it meant. But that word is something for us to hear. The time has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And it goes on to say the Father is eagerly wanting such worshipers.

And I read that, I say, Lord, are you eagerly looking for such worshipers? I want to be one of them who will worship in the spirit and not just in the body and soul. Yes, I will use my body, I'll clap my hands, I'll raise my hands, I'll be emotional, but beyond it all, I'll worship in the spirit.

And worship in the spirit is mentioned here as first of all, by presenting our body as a living sacrifice. So if I want to worship God in my spirit, I've got to lay my body on the altar and say, Lord, I never want to use my tongue anymore to say what I want to say.

I never want to use my eyes to look at what I want to look at. I never want to use my eyes to read what I want to read. That's the meaning of presenting your body as a sacrifice. In the Old Testament, you were not allowed to just take a bullock and put that ox, a bullock or ox, on the altar.

Here it is, no. The law was you must cut that bullock into pieces. That ox must be cut into pieces, piece by piece by piece by piece. And you wonder why in the world does God make such a law when the whole thing's gonna be burnt up in any case?

Why take all the trouble cutting it up when you might have just put the whole ox there and burn it up? Because it was a spiritual principle the Lord was teaching. When you say present your body, it's very easy to say, yeah, I give my whole body to you, Lord.

But when you put it piece by piece, you realize it's not so easy. Put your tongue there and say, Lord, here's my tongue on the altar. I'm never gonna use it to do my own will or speak what I like. I'll never speak to my wife what I like with this tongue.

It's on the altar. I'll never speak to my husband what I like with this tongue. It's on the altar. I tell you, there are very, very few Christians in the world who worship God in the spirit. They have not laid their tongue on the altar or their eyes.

Lord, here are my eyes on the altar. I cut that up and put there. I never want to use my eyes to read something or to look at something which you don't want me to look at. That's worship in the spirit.

That's what it says here. This is your spiritual worship. Who understands that? The Christian world is full of people who think singing hallelujah and singing a few songs on Sunday morning, that is what they call praise and worship.

It is not praise and worship. It is praise. Worship is something entirely different. And the devil has blinded Christians to the truth of worship. You say, what is it? You know, people say, what does it matter whether you call it praise or worship?

Well, it means, it does mean something because if the devil can cheat you of something, I mean, if a man does not know what a Cadillac car is and he goes to the store and somebody gives him a bicycle and say, this is a Cadillac car, he's written on it Cadillac.

And he comes home and he pays those hundreds of thousands of dollars and comes home with the bicycles, calls it a Cadillac car and you say, what does it matter? What does it matter what you call it? Doesn't it matter?

We are very careful when it comes to money and material things. What about being careful about what the Bible says is worship in the spirit? If you think it's the same as that, you miss out on the real thing.

If you think a bicycle is a Cadillac car, you missed out on the real thing you're supposed to get. And that's exactly what's happened to millions and millions of Christians who've never tried to find out from scripture what a scripture say is worship.

Not Old Testament worship, New Covenant worship. In CFC, we emphasize New Covenant. New Covenant not only in overcoming sin, New Covenant in worship, which is not worship of the soul and the body, but worship in the spirit for which the time has come.

So for that, I have to present my body. And if I've not presented my body, no matter how well I sing, I'm not worshiping at all. Not at all, I'm just fooling myself. Christian world is being deceived and that's why their lives are so shallow.

Knowing God Rather Than Merely Knowing the Bible

That's why people nowadays know God so little. Eternal life is to know God and to know Jesus Christ. I wanna tell you, my brothers and sisters, if you wanna face the difficult times that are lying ahead in this world, you're not gonna face them with plenty of money.

It won't solve your problem. You're not even going to be able to face them by coming to church regularly. That's good, all this is good, but you got to get to know God. Eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, to know Him personally.

You know the difference between marrying a wife and getting to know her over a period of 30, 40 years? The day you get married, you may love your wife intensely or love your husband intensely, but you don't have a clue what type of person he is.

But once you live 30, 40 years in love with each other, you really know each other. That's the difference between getting married to Christ, which is being born again, and knowing Him. So I wanna ask all of you who say you've been born again for so many years, how much do you know the Lord?

Have you come to know the Lord better? Have you come to know the Lord's ways? Have you come to know what the Lord loves? Have you come to know what it means to be intimate with the Lord? Like you got married and you love your partner and you're intimate with her or him.

Are you intimate with the Lord like that? Many Christians are not. They don't know the Lord. That's the thing that's gonna help in the last days. Let me show you a verse in Daniel, in chapter 11.

In Daniel chapter 11, we read verse 32.

Daniel 11, 32, the last part. The people who know their God will be strong. It's speaking about the last days. It's speaking about the Antichrist and the spirit of the last days. And in those days, says the Antichrist, verse 32, with smooth words, turn to godlessness, those who act wickedly towards the new covenant.

But in that time, the people who know their God, they'll be strong. Years ago, I memorized that verse. The people who know their God will be strong in the last days. Remember this. It's not Bible knowledge.

There's a world of difference. Bible knowledge, the Pharisees had that, knowing God, Jesus had that. There's a world of difference between the two. There's a difference between heaven and earth. So I was telling you how worship is, first of all, presenting our body, and then, Romans 12, two, is our mind.

That's the next thing. My body must be presented, I told you, piece by piece, and my mind must be transformed, renewed. My mind must be renewed, and as it's renewed, I am transformed. So how do I get transformed into the likeness of Christ?

By the renewing of my mind, and thereby, I prove what is the perfect will of God. In the old covenant, God spoke from outside. Abraham, Samuel, do this, do that, do the other thing, because God was outside.

But from the day of Pentecost, God came inside. The Holy Spirit's inside, and he speaks from inside. And there, as I allow God to renew my mind in different situations, I prove what God's will is for my life.

And when we think of God's will, we think of what job I should take, whom I should marry. Those are not the primary things. They're important, but they're secondary. The primary things is, what should be my attitude to this sin?

What should be my attitude to this thing? What should be my attitude to so many things in this world which don't please God? That is where I need to have my mind renewed to think like God thinks. And if I want to think like God thinks, it's a legitimate paraphrase of my renewing of my mind and being transformed, to begin to think like God thinks, like Jesus thinks, I need to be saturated with scripture, because this is the only book in the whole world that tells me how God thinks, even the Old Testament.

I read the Old Testament passages like Hosea and Joel and all that, and I see God's tremendous hatred of sin, of idolatry, for example, how he condemned those Israelites for idolatry. And the biggest idolatry today is the worship of money.

And God hates it. If I see that, I say, Lord, I want to hate it too. I want to use it, but I don't want to worship money. I don't want to worship pleasure. I don't want to worship anything, because God hates idolatry.

So there, as I read the Bible, I begin to see the things that God hates. He hated adultery. He hated fooling around with the opposite sex. He believed in the sanctity of marriage. Malachi, it says in chapter three, God says, I hate divorce.

So, chapter two, sorry. So as I read the scriptures, I begin to think like God thinks about the different subjects that I'm facing in the world today. That's the renewing of my mind, where I begin to think like God thinks, then I can prove what is God's perfect will.

Sickness, Sin, and the Sovereignty of God

So I was telling you about John chapter five, how Jesus came by the pool of Bethesda, and his mind was always thinking about how the Father thinks. Father said, heal this one man and go. And he went. What I wanted to point out to you further in John chapter five was, afterwards, Jesus met this man.

In John five, verse 14, this man whom he had healed, he met him in the temple, and Jesus told him, John five, 14, now you have become well. Don't sin again. Otherwise something worse will happen to you.

What do you get from that? That his paralysis was due to sin. That's why he was sick for 39 years, 38 years. And Jesus said, don't sin again. So there's a case of a sickness that was due to sin. Now you go to John chapter nine, and you read of another man who was blind.

And the disciples asked Jesus in John chapter nine in verse two, Rabbi, who sinned? Was it this man who sinned, or his parents who sinned, that he's blind? And Jesus said, no. He did not sin. His parents did not sin.

His blindness was not due to sin. So when you put John five and John nine together, what you learn is, there are some sicknesses due to sin, and there are some sicknesses not due to sin. We've got to be realistic, and it's absolutely true.

So that's why we read in James chapter five, you're talking about healing from sickness. James chapter five, he says, the prayer of faith will heal the sick. And if he has committed sins, John five, 15, it's all in the same verse, he'll be forgiven, and he'll also be healed.

So now the question comes, will everyone who's prayed for be healed? It says here in verse 15, John, James five, 15, the prayer offered in faith. Now I'm mentioning this because sickness is a reality in the world in which we live.

We've got to face up to it. Prayer offered in faith, this is God's word, James five, 15, the prayer offered in faith will, not might, will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they'll be forgiven him.

So what does that mean? I've had to pray numerous times for people who are sick, but I find sometimes I have faith for it. Many a time I don't have. The prayer offered in faith will definitely heal. Now faith is not something I can work out.

No. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It's the man who's the habit of listening who has faith. It's not just by memorizing scripture. Faith comes by hearing the word of God, not by reading the Bible.

You begin by reading the Bible, but you've got to go beyond reading the Bible to hear God. Faith comes by hearing God, and Jesus heard, and he would heal. And other times he did not heal. So the prayer offered in faith would heal.

So if in a particular situation if God gives you faith to believe, the person will be healed. And there are other times where the person's not healed. So we must be realistic. That's what I say. It's not an absolute yes or an absolute no in the matter of healing from sickness, but when it comes to forgiveness of sins, it's absolute.

In 1 John 1, if we confess our sins, verse nine, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all, A-L-L, all unrighteousness. There is a difference between asking God for forgiveness and asking God for healing.

That's what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to be realistic so that none of us live in a world of delusion because there's a lot of confused teaching in the world, mostly by people who don't study the scriptures carefully, who don't read what the Bible says, who have their own ideas, or who live by logic.

If it is like this, therefore it's like this. It's like if A equals B and B equals C, then A must be equal to C. This is mathematics. Scripture doesn't operate like that. Man shall live by every word that proceeds from God's mouth.

It's a living thing. The living word of God, that by hearing God in each situation, it's different. In each situation it's different. I mean, if you see in the Old Testament, there are different instances where God told them to do something in a certain way and then another time he said, no, don't do it that way, do it another way.

One time God said to Moses to hit the rock for the water to come and that time he said, no, don't hit it. Speak to the rock. And because Moses went and hit the rock, he missed out on going to Canaan. It was that serious.

So God's word is a living thing. It's not like a rule book and say God will always work like this. He doesn't always work like this. Remember that verse in John chapter three, the Holy Spirit's like the wind.

It blows and you can't say where it's coming from, where it's going. You can't say how the Holy Spirit's going to move. So this is why it's only if you walk with God closely that you can hear what God is saying.

And that's why it goes on in James chapter five to say, after talking about the prayer of faith, the prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. James 5, 16. That's the man who's walking with God. He's more likely to hear what God is saying than some other person who just has got an academic knowledge of the Bible.

It's far too many Christians have got an academic knowledge of the Bible. They don't know God. They know the Bible. They know the doctrines in the church, but they don't know God. The people who know their God will be strong.

I want to encourage all of you, my brothers and sisters, get to know God. Jesus said in John chapter 17 and verse three, this is eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

We all know that verse, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And again, 99 of Christians would say eternal life is to live forever. Wrong. You never find that definition in the Bible.

You get that in the English dictionary. I don't go to the English dictionary to find out the meaning of eternal life. I go to the Bible. And I find Jesus defined eternal life in John 17, verse three, saying, eternal life is not living forever.

People who go to hell live forever. Did you know that? The rich man was living in Lazarus time. You know the story? It is a true story. Jesus said that the rich man went to hell and he begged for a drop of water.

That man has been in hell for 2 ,000 years already. He was a Jew. He was the one who went to the synagogue. He's in hell. Yeah. Eternal life, he's gonna live eternally in hell. But that's not eternal life.

It doesn't mean living forever at all. Eternal life, John 17, three, is to know God and to know Jesus Christ personally. To know him means to know him intimately, to know the way Jesus thinks, to know the way God thinks.

I want to ask you, my brothers and sisters, do you have a passion to know how God thinks? Do you want to align your mind with God's mind? Do you want to know how Jesus thinks in a particular situation?