Dr. Ed Young - Deep Healing
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Dr. David Peterson was pastor of the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, for many years. Dave tells a story that when he was in seminary, he studied a man by the name of Dr. F.R. Frederick Buechner, who is a well-known scholar, brilliant in what he writes, Presbyterian in his theology. My friend Dave said that he wanted to meet him, and he knew that Buechner had a home in Florida and one in Maine. He decided that he would go to whichever place this famed theologian would meet with him. He wrote him a little note: «Dear Dr. Buechner, I would like to meet with you for just a few minutes to pick your mind about life, etc. Just name the place, and I’ll be there.» He received a letter back: «Dear Reverend Peterson, I have written down everything I wish to disclose about myself in my autobiography. Sincerely, Frederick Buechner.» Dave said, «Well, that’s it.» I heard him tell that story, and I thought, «You know, I’m a lot like he was when I deal with God.» Are you like that? Sure you are. «God, if you would show me, if you would just speak to me. I’ve got a situation, Lord, that’s unique, and I want your insight. Would you just come and have a little flash of lightning, or at least with a still small voice, speak in my mind? Lord, I want to do business with you. I want to meet with you at your convenience because I want some answers.»
I think God would say to those of us who get to those points in life, «I have revealed to you. I have disclosed to you all I have to say about myself in my autobiography: Genesis to Revelation, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John especially. The autobiography of Jesus tells us all we need to know in any situation of life about the Almighty.» So the Bible, you could say, is a story of salvation. The big fancy theological word is soteriology. We’re going to study soteriology in our church. It means we’re studying the doctrine of salvation, and that’s a giant doctrine. It covers many facets of life. We have boiled it down in the evangelical church to make it far too simplistic. Recently, I read about the five categories of people who got onboard the ill-fated Titanic. There was some royalty, political leaders, multimillionaires, those in first class, those in steerage, and those a part of the ship’s company. They divided all the passengers of the Titanic into four categories, but when the Titanic went to the bottom of the ocean, and they looked at them again, they put them into only two categories: those that were saved and those that were lost. Nothing else made any difference, did it? Salvation!
So, soteriology, and we read in our study of the life of Jesus God’s order: how would God have lived as He walked on this earth? We see that’s exactly how He lived. We see what Jesus did and what Jesus said, and we’re walking together through the autobiography of God. We’ve heard what happened when Jesus taught in His hometown synagogue; they ran Him out. Why did they run Him out? He spoke the truth. Truth is a powerful thing; it keeps nagging us everywhere we go. Jesus stood and spoke the truth; they wanted tradition, they wanted ritual, they wanted the way it had always been done in that synagogue, but Jesus spoke the truth and they tried to throw Him over a cliff. Remember? To throw Him over a cliff? You see biblical truth cuts me; it cuts you. It is powerful and it tells us and points us to salvation.
So, after Jesus was speaking the truth-not with a nice little talk, but with an inspired word from God-He began to perform miracles. He moved His headquarters from Nazareth, His hometown, to Capernaum and there He spoke in the synagogue. He said they rejoiced; they celebrated what He was saying, and He performed miracles there-various kinds of miracles. Then finally, we come to the end of Luke chapter four, and it says in verse 42, «When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place, and the crowds were searching for Him and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away.» In other words, they liked this healing business. He was healing this one, healing that one, healing that one! They said, «Just stay here. We like you; you are a healer. Just keep healing all of us.» But in verse 43, Jesus said to them, «I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.»
He kept on preaching. In other words, we have to always remember the purpose of Jesus. His purpose was what? To bring the kingdom into reality. The kingdom of God had come where Jesus Christ is Lord, Savior, and King. Wherever you find that, there is the kingdom of God. Jesus says, «I came to preach the kingdom.» How do we get into the kingdom? We have a new heart, confess sin, turn from sin, receive forgiveness, receive Christ. He takes our old heart and gives us a new heart, and then we are saved. That’s our word; we are salvaged. We’re in the family of God; we’re kingdom people.
Then what happens? If somebody asks you, «What does it mean to be a Christian?» Don’t hear all these scrambled definitions we hear. «Oh, I’m a Christian.» No, no. You are a Christian, I am a Christian because we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We have confessed sin; we’ve received Him into our lives. We’ve had that supernatural exchange: my old heart, He gives me a new heart, and therefore I am in the kingdom of God. What it means to be a Christian is that I am a citizen of the kingdom of God because I have a new heart and Christ is in me, and Christ is in you. That makes us Christians: we’re in Christ, and Christ is in us. Then we are citizens of the kingdom, and this is basic and fundamental.
Then Jesus gives us, in Luke chapter five, what I call three big miracles, one after the other: bang, bang, bang! In these miracles, we discover that because we have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ-remember that’s what it means to be a Christian-because we have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we are saved. If we are saved, the first miracle teaches us this: mark it down. We now have a way to see others as we had never seen them before-a way to see the world as we’ve never seen it before-and we see ourselves in a different way. Because we’re in Christ, we see ourselves in a different way. We see that in the miracle we’ve already looked at; we’re going to just visit it briefly again.
That’s the miracle of the fish at the Sea of Galilee. Peter and his crew fished all night and hadn’t caught a thing. Jesus said, «Hey, cast the net out over there!» They say, «What does that carpenter know about fishing?» They throw the net out, and they have a catch of fish like they’d never seen before. It was almost instant wealth. Man, all of a sudden, the economic tide turned back up again for Peter and his crew. Look what happened! You would think that Peter would say, «Thank you, man! I’ve been wanting security; I’ve been wanting this kind of wealth, this kind of fishing skill I’ve imagined all my life. Man, thank you, Lord!» But what did Peter say?
It’s amazing, but when Simon Peter saw that big catch of fish, he fell down at Jesus' feet and said, «Go away from me, Lord, for I’m a sinful man.» I want to tell you a little secret right up front. You’ve got to keep this in your mind. It’s like you have a melody, then you have an obligato. Here’s the melody but there’s this sub-melody that plays in it: everything happens at the feet of Jesus. Everything happens at the feet of Jesus. Just watch that. Keep that a secret; you’ll see it as we walk through our scripture. Everything happens at the feet of Jesus.
Peter fell at the feet of Jesus. Here’s this economic windfall that has come, and he said, «Lord, get away from me, for I’m a sinful man.» Does that sound strange to you? I read that over and over, and I say, «Man, what a response!» What a response that is! You see, Peter saw himself as he had never seen himself before, and he had this low moment in his life: «I’m a sinner.» What does he tell Jesus? He says, «Jesus, get away from me.» What a response! «Get away from me! I’m rotten to the core! Get out of here! I don’t want to be near you! Get away from me!» A low moment in his own view of himself, right?
But just skip a verse, and in the very next verse, Jesus says, «Pete, I want you to follow me, and I’m going to give you the ability to fish for men.» In other words, He’s going to change men’s lives to catch men alive. Here’s his low moment of his life, and then Jesus says, «I want you on my team, and we’re going to be in the business of fishing in the world and see lives changed!» Low moment, high moment. Is that ringing a bell to anybody?
Then we see how Peter grew. Two and a half years ahead, remember, Peter denied Jesus during the trial three times, cursing, «I don’t know the man! I’m not a Galilean! I just picked up this accent! No, I’m not from Galilee! I don’t know this Jesus!» As he was being taken off to be crucified. Now the resurrected Lord, John 21, chapter 21. We see Peter’s back fishing, all confused, and he’s not catching any fish. Somebody on shore says, «If you’ll throw your net out on the other side, you’ll catch fish.» They threw their net out, another giant catch of fish, and John, the Apostle, whispers to Peter and says, «That’s the Lord!» What did Peter do? He jumped into the Sea of Galilee and swam ashore to get to Jesus as fast as he could. Has he matured? That’s the biggest sin you think you could commit: to deny the Lord in the moment he needed it most and curse Him, and run away from Him, and now he runs to Him! He swims to Him for all he’s worth! Before, he’d run away from Him two and a half years before.
You see what happened? That’s spiritual maturity! Until we respond instinctively to Jesus, see the difference? He didn’t think about it. There’s Jesus! Bam! In the water! Cold water! Bam! Bam! He' s getting to Him as quickly as he can. Two and a half years before: same water, same place, same catch of fish! «Lord, get away from me!» You see how now, spontaneously, Peter runs to Jesus because he saw himself in a different way as a Christ follower. You see, he understood grace and forgiveness. He understood that Jesus loved without any reservation. He didn’t get that two and a half years before the big catch of fish. He got it now!
We need to grow in Christ. You begin to respond instinctively. It’s just what you do. It’s like somebody hits your knee, and you respond. That’s what Peter did. He jumped in! Before, it was, «Get away from me!» Now it’s, «Hey, I’m getting to you!» Ah! We see ourselves differently when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Then the second big miracle: we see others differently when we have a relationship with Jesus. Look at it in verse number 12, still Luke 5: «And when he was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man covered with leprosy, just covered with leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face.» Y’all remember that? Peter fell on his face; the leper fell on his face. Keep that in mind. He said, «Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.» Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, «I am willing. Be cleansed!» Immediately, the leprosy left him, and Jesus ordered him to tell no one but go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing just as Moses commanded as a testimony to them.
What’s our point? When we meet Jesus, we not only see ourselves in a different way, as Peter did-instead of saying, «Get away from me,» he runs to Him when he was a sinner-we now see others differently. Leprosy was sort of the Ebola of the first century. It was looked upon as being highly contagious, and leprosy was a broad title for a lot of kinds of skin diseases in that day. Once you were pronounced a leper, you were thrown out of your family, thrown out of the synagogue, thrown out of the community because leprosy was a symbol of gross sin. As a leper, you had to carry little bells around with you. Wherever you went, you’d have to say, «Unclean! Unclean!» And I’m telling you, people got away from you. You can be sure of that!
You saying «E ow!» The Jews had a rule that you had to be two and a half football fields away from a leper when the wind was blowing upstream from the leper. If it was blowing the other way, you could stay only 30 yards away. So, they were always checking the wind direction, those lepers, to see how far they had to be from people because they couldn’t work, they couldn’t worship, they couldn’t associate. They were starving; they became beggars. Some of their family would hide food for them in certain spots so they could even stay alive. Can you imagine living death? Walking death? It was someone who had leprosy-"unclean! unclean!"-they were despised, hated, abused, and shamed. They were disenfranchised; they had no relation to anybody. Nobody would dare touch a leper! You get the picture?
And here, by the way, Matthew says this miracle took place following His teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, so there were thousands present. The leper could not go into a crowd, but evidently, this leper just boldly proclaimed, «Unclean! Unclean!» and ran to Jesus. You can be sure the crowd parted: «Unclean! Unclean!» He ran to Jesus and fell at His feet. What did he do? First of all, he fell at His feet and he worshiped. That’s where we begin! Folks, I want to worship, I want to feel, I want to know! He worshiped and then he confessed, «I’m unclean.» And then he had faith. He said, «Lord, if you want to, you can heal me. You can do it if you want to!» That was faith!
And what did Jesus do? An amazing, amazing thing! Here, instantly, He healed him. Worship, confession, «I’m unclean,» bang! I have faith, bang! Healing! And then Jesus told him to go and show himself to the priest, and the priest would be the one in that day who would affirm that he had indeed been healed. Evidently, his leprosy was extreme. You can imagine his hands were once leprous. We call it Hansen’s disease- you lose feeling in all your nerve endings. Therefore, if you put your hand in hot water, you do not know it’s hot; it’s hot! And you get harmed. Over time, there’s deterioration of your fingers and limbs. Advanced leprosy is a horrendous physical condition.
Can you imagine the priest seeing him? He runs and finds the priest, and the priest comes. He shows himself to the priest; his skin is like baby skin! Can you see the symbol of this? Now he was like a baby! It’s like a brand new life, a clean life, a pure life. It all came about because at the feet of Jesus, Jesus touched him. In the Old Testament, when someone who was clean touched someone who was unclean, the person who was clean became unclean. But with Jesus, when He touched him who was unclean, now he who was unclean became clean! See the difference?
This is a prelude to the cross. Jesus took all of our leprosy, our sin, our uncleanness upon Himself so that we might be clean-all in the touch of Jesus! In the touch of Jesus! You see this leper was never the same because he’d been touched by Jesus. Peter was never the same; he’d been touched by Jesus. It all began at the feet of the Lord! Now look at this third big miracle here: this tells us something even more interesting in a right relationship with Jesus. It means we’ve been saved, we’re salvaged, we’re in God’s family, we’re saved. We not only see ourselves differently; we see others differently; we see the whole world with different eyes.
Look at this third miracle in verse 16, Luke 5: «But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness to pray. One day, He was teaching; there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.» Some men were carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were trying to bring him in and set him down in front of Him, in front of Him, where would that be? The feet of Jesus!
But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up to the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus, the feet of Jesus. Seeing their faith, He said, «Friend, your sins are forgiven you.» Your sins are forgiven you! The Pharisees and the scribes began to reason, saying, «Who is this man who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sin but God alone?» But Jesus, aware of their reasonings, answered and said to them, «Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier to say, 'Your sins have been forgiven you' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man» — the first time Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man…» has authority on earth to forgive sin,» He said to the paralytic, «I say to you, get up, pick up your stretcher, and go home.»
Immediately, he got up before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God. Great story! Most of us are familiar with it. I call this the ministry of the mat- that’s probably not original to me, but I just think about those four guys who got their buddy on that mat, each one carrying a corner. We don’t know how far they went; they just heard Jesus was in this house teaching. They were going to take him there and see if Jesus would heal their buddy. Boy, they loved him, didn’t they? Everyone should have friends like that! They loved him, and they were tenacious.
I like tenacious love! You know, some of us say, «Well, we’ve tried this far; we tried that’s the best we could do. You just can’t get to the healer, you know, no way to get up there; it’s too crowded!» But they went around back; they were creative! They went up with that tenacity and got on the roof. That’s very common in these Middle Eastern homes; you go up on the roof. Then they got real creative-they began to cut a hole in the roof! Imagine, standing there, Jesus teaching, and all of a sudden, the roof is opening! What in the world? Dust and all the dirt coming! They would pack about two feet of dirt on the beams!
They moved the tiles away, and dirt was falling! Jesus was teaching, and the crowd must have said, «What in the world is happening in here? Somebody’s up there?» Then all of a sudden, they lowered him down on ropes-boom! Right at the feet of Jesus! Whoa! What a deal! Jesus said, «Your sins are forgiven!» And then He said, «Get up and walk!» That’s the priority-whether he walked or not! He was healed; he was still whole; he was still complete; he still got it right. You can be sure this paralytic now looked at the whole world with different eyes.
The basic problem is always a rebellion against the plan and purpose and will of God! We call it doing our own thing; we call it sin! Here we see that Jesus touched him, «Get up and walk!» And he did! Did Jesus touch him? There’s something about the hand, the touch, the word, the command of Jesus that heals inside! That’s the most important place, and in His economy, the outside is the second most important place.