The Community Church: Sermons and teaching

So does the truth of being quite nervous about speaking today. Those of you that don't know I'm speaking on the topic of divine healing. And does God heal today? And yeah, quite nervous about it, but I've gotten really good now. It swallowing down the pre preaching throw up so you're all okay It's all it's all taken inside I was just considering but when we talk about healing, we have a prophetic word over the life of this church that we are a citadel of health.

It's part of who we are. It's part of our DNA. This is us. We are a citadel of health. And when you think of citadels, you think of these strong fortresses. And you you might have seen your mountainside castles and all of that kind of thing. And my mind was immediately taken to Lord of the Rings, as happens quite often.

So I love Lord of the Rings and to the Battle of Helm's Deep and for those of you that don't know the the country of Rowan on the back end of the the evil forces of Sauron, and they're there in their citadel, in their fortress, and there are 300 men, broken men, green men, people that don't know what to do, and they are terrified of the oncoming onslaught, the terrified and Tolkien, who wrote Lord of the Rings.

He took inspiration of that moment from a famous battle in history called The Battle of Thermopylae. But the 300 Spartans, you've seen 300. This is Sparta. It's shaped the generation that shaped the generation. And for them there were 300 Spartans that stood at the gates of Thermopylae, this mountain pass and held fast. The hordes of Persia from coming and sweeping across the nation of Greece, and they held them such that the rest of city states that they were could gather all of their forces and then fight off the Persians, and they were able to hold on for dear life.

And we as a church have been facing an onslaught in this realm of health. So many people that we love dearly have just been struggling. My wife, she has diabetes and we prayed and we prayed and there's nothing we can do. Keep here as well and nothing we can do. But we have not yet breakthrough. I've been speaking with people over the last few weeks and finding that there are so many people struggling with their mental health, suicidal thoughts, feeling overwhelmed, ashamed of who they are.

It just feels like an onslaught. And yet this is not what it is for us, holding on by a very fingertips to make sure that we can just get past this battle. I was reminded, as always, thinking about these things of Gideon and God comes and he calls Gideon to come and fight against the Midian. I've just been terrorizing the nation of Israel, and he says, I'm going to raise up 300 people, and these 300 people will come and this army will come and devour and destroy the army of the Mahdi.

So do you know what happened? They in and they utterly overwhelmed and 300 people against thousands and against thousands. And for us as a people that are the citadel of health, our calling is not to hold on to to ride the storm. Our calling is to go out on the offensive and to defeat the oppressive forces of evil that are causing sickness and malaise, not just in our family and in our community but in this town and in our region.

That is our calling to go on the offensive, know. And this is why this is so important to talk about today. We are in the midst of a battle for me, healing. I've had a bit of a strange relationship with healing because I believe that God is all powerful. I have no qualms with that whatsoever. And I have and I believe that God can and does do miracles.

I've seen it take place. I remember being across in the other room when on A Scar King came and he prayed for a man with one leg that was shorter than the other, and it grew right in front of our very eyes. I've seen it, but I was I was in my my daily readings a few months back and I came across Matthew nine.

If you just wanted to answer Matthew nine in your Bibles, we're reading from verse 35, it says, Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. And it was one of those things it just made me stop in my tracks because I'd always considered healing a wonderful part of God's kingdom.

But what a wonderful part of God's plan that He can come in integration in his mercy and in his power and his love, and he can come and bring healing and those that he wants to. But I never connected that. It was it was intrinsic. It was tied together with the proclamation of the Gospel of the kingdom. I'd never I'd never thought of it.

And if we are to be a people that are proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, we need to be seeing a lot more healing because they go hand in hand like a glove on our hands. They come together. Jesus went to bounce and he talked and he preached and he healed. That's what this was saying out there. And for me, I'm very comfortable in church.

People come up to me and ask me for prayer, no problem whatsoever. But in Tesco Cafe, when I find out that somebody is poorly, my heart is racing and and yet Jesus is going out and about in the villages and the towns and in all the other synagogues and places, teaching and preaching and healing. And so God began to do a work in me over these last few months where I needed to sort out my theology on healing, where I needed to believe that in the proclamation of the gospel, healing comes hand in hand.

And so what I was doing was I was working on the basis of my experience where I haven't seen too much healing. I've prayed for people and they've been healed before, but I've not seen a lot. But what I need to do is I need to match my experience or my my reality is shaped by what the Scripture says and what the word of God says.

Not by what my experience says and dictates. I trust. And so that's what I want to do this morning. I want to just go through some scriptures about what God says about healing, what the word of God says about healing, so that our reality is shaped by the Scriptures and that we can go in faith. Okay, that's I'm good.

I'm also preaching next week. You're so lucky where I'll be going through kind of common questions and how we can actually go and pray for people. But this morning I just want to share the word of God says about healing. Okay. Each and every one of us has a particular worldview. I've just shared a little bit of mine and how it's had to change.

And your world. You don't necessarily know that you have one. You don't even know what it is that you necessarily believe, because all of it is kind of unarticulated. It's stuff that you you learn as you grow up. You learn in school, you learn with your parents. Your parents never sit you down and say, this is our world view, okay?

It's just stuff that you learn as you going along. And we've grown up in a Western environments. Typically it's known as Western rationalism. That means that we live in a material universe. We just have stuff and we practically apply what we see to our experience and then we make sense of the world through that. That's typically what happens and what you find in a Western viewpoint and a Western worldview is that they divorce the spiritual side from reality.

And this is the world that we've grown up here. And so we find that many people kind of really struggle with the spiritual aspects of what's taking place in a Christian worldview. So it's like putting on a pair of sunglasses. They color everything we see. Someone said, it's not so much what we see with, but what we see with.

And there's one universe, one world, one reality, one human existence. There is all of that. But we see things differently based on all of our experiences and based on the culture in which that we've grown up. It it's like a bit like a map or a compass, a world view. It guides, it directs, it orients where we are, where we are going and how to get there.

And a worldview. It shifts and it sorts and it accepts and it rejects and it gives context to life. It interprets, it explains and it imparts meanings to things about about God, about universe, about our world, about ourselves. It can enlighten our minds about, the world and our place in it. And we're seeing this at the moment where there's this clash of worldviews taking place with with identity politics, with what's taking place in Israel and Palestine, with what's taking place in Russia and Ukraine, with China and America between different religions, that there's so much difference out there.

But there's just one reality and one existence, and the world is just in confusion. So a very a very just kind of illustrates it for you. A very simple example would be the time for us is a resource. So we might say, how how have you spent your time? I had to go and do this thing and I lost all this time and I need to make it all up.

How do you use your time? It's a resource and this comes back to the industrial Revolution where factories were created and people were starting to time manage people in their jobs and making sure that it was efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. And so in our Western world, time as a resource, it's just become part of our worldview. We'd go, course, that makes sense.

That's just sensible, that's just wise. But if you go into a lot of different other cultures, John's laughing, having spent a huge amount of time in Africa that is just not the case. It's just not the case. And we go, Well, that is wrong, is it? And actually that viewpoint is shaped by a capitalistic worldview. And of course this wisdom and all of that kind of stuff that we can we can come and we can take of it.

But that is something very practical that most of us here in this room will go, I never really thought about. In the Bible we see that there is an ancient course. Mancini That means that they they just looked at the world differently. There's a three tiered system. There was the water, there was the land. There was the sky.

That was it. The land was flat. It was set on pillars, but that was their world view. And it colored the way they interpreted that reality. Now we can go, Ooh, that's not quite right. Okay. That the world is round and there's so much more in the universe than, than just that we're not the center of the universe.

We're in this particular solar system in this galaxy amongst a whole cluster of galaxies. And so we have to come to a place where we can look at the scriptures and look at the worldview that it presents and go, Is it reliable? Is it something that we can put our trust and put our faith in? Okay. Science, I believe, points to the fact that there is a God of the universe.

There are so many different scientific laws governing. It's called the fine tuning arguments that say that if if one if there was one degree of difference between in the law of gravity, things just wouldn't work. We wouldn't exist if there was one little difference in lights, life wouldn't exist If there was one little difference in dark matter and anti-matter and all life, just when you could take so many of these different rules.

And if there was just a tiny, tiny tweak, life would not exist. We would not exist. Logically speaking, in a Western worldview that points to a creator. And it doesn't necessarily point to our God, but it points to a creator. Okay? And I think when you look at philosophy as well, philosophy, it contains so much different aspects, so many different aspects.

But one area in particular on ethics and morality, I think it points to the fact that there is a God out that he was concerned with us because we have this need to know what is right and what is wrong. And so many people over the course of history have tried to define that for themselves. And they've come up with their own systems, whether it's utilitarianism or whether it's a Nietzsche is and Nietzsche with his nihilism, where basically just go and do whatever you want, you get Nazis.

And by the way, if you go along with that, you've got different religious worldviews and as well when it comes to morality. But I think it points to the fact that there is a God that is out there that is concerned with each and every one of us in, some way, shape or form. And yet we're how then can you jump to our God?

How can you jump to Jesus as being the most reliable worldview that is out there? And I just think that history points to because when you look at history and you look at the life of Jesus, he comes in, he's a fantastic teacher. You look at the Beatitudes and the blessed are those that are poor in spirit and all of those kinds of things.

There has been no with a greater teaching than that. You can go to people all across the world and they go, This is magnificent. This is kind of cream of the crop. This is excellent, excellent stuff, radical things. But Jesus's identity, his teaching all flows from the fact that he believed that he was the son of God. It wasn't just some wise guy, it wasn't just some great teacher.

He just wasn't really nice guy that was exceptionally good at doctoring and was ahead of his time or anything like that. He believed that he was the son of God and he said that I have authority from heaven to do all of this that I am doing because of that. And so therefore, everything that I say is is just different.

Everything changes because of my life and what I'm doing here because I'm the son of God. So you can't validate his ministry because of his teaching anything like that, because it's all based on this. And Jesus said, and the Scriptures say that it's in the resurrection of Jesus, in the resurrection of Jesus in His death and his resurrection, that his ministry is validated.

And when you look at the historical facts that are out there, it is unequivocal. Jesus died and he rose again. Why on earth would you have a bunch of people who saw him die and hang on a cross, then give their own lives later on if they believed that he had died and had never risen again? They must have seen something.

They must have experienced something, and that validates that. So I think when you have science and you have philosophy, when you have historical record, it points to the fact that there is a Christian worldview out there that is reliable. Why am I why am I giving you this foundation? Because we need to trust it. We need to believe in it.

In Acts 28, Paul is in Malta. This is just another a good example of different world views. Paul is in Malta and he comes in off a shipwreck and the people have also they come and they help them and and they see this poisonous snake come and latch on to Paul and they go, well, Paul must be a really bad guy.

He's been on a ship. And so their world view is he's on a shipwreck. There's there's destiny that is out there that is making that this bad guy does not escape. And so this snake comes ordained by the gods to bite him, to kill him. And of course, then what happens is he shakes off the snake casts into the fire and the people of Malta, they're just waiting, waiting for him to just kind of keel over and nothing happens.

Nothing. And so they go, Wow, this changes our world for you. He must be a God. That must be the only rational explanation. This Paul himself must be a God. Now, if we were that, we probably would have gone well. It was probably an old snake. Maybe. Maybe he bit somebody. But earlier on in the day maybe it was some teeth or something like that.

The report says, no, that is not the case because snakes can bite me and they won't have any effect because of what Jesus has done in my life. So can we trust the scriptures? I'll move on to the next point then again, the Scriptures. They are validated by the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus believes in them.

And of course, there was no New Testament after Jesus ascended to go back and be with the Father. But what we find in the New Testament is they are fleshing out the entirety of the Old Testament in light of everything that Jesus, in the spirit of them, they are reliable, historical books, texts that we can draw upon to see how we can immerse ourselves into life together with Jesus.

The whole point of it, it's not like a it's not like a manual, it's not like an instruction booklet or a text book or anything like that. What it is, is a story. It's a story of how God came into this world, of how God redeems, restored and renewed this world and invites us to come and be a part of that story.

And this is and this is the the thing that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien really kind of discovered themselves. And this story is not just the story, it's real. This is the real thing. This is the real deal. And it becomes our story. And so when we come to the issue of healing, we've got to look at the Christian world.

We've got to look at the scriptures and we've got to we've got to see, is it the will of God for all people to be healed? And if we can prove from the word of God today that it is God's will to heal all, then every one of us is included in that. Okay. Okay. And again, I just want to say it's important that it comes from the word of God and not just from the experiences that we can we can talk about, because most people will argue against healing from their experiences.

They can say, well, it can't be God's will to heal, or because I know some who have got the people as well, and they are really, really sick. And so they argue against healing from that position of experience and some argue against healing on other grounds. But we're going to look at what the word of God says, not what a man's theory says.

And we'll make sure that our experience lines up with the word of God. Okay, so first things first. Just going to shoot through the scriptures out. And God, when he first made man brought man into this world in the way that he wanted men to be free of sin, free of sickness, full of happiness, full of peace. So Adam, when he first created, is an open manifestation, a full declaration of God's will that every single person.

And so God says, If you want to know what my will is for you regarding health, then look at how I created Man in the Stars. At that point. Number one point in between. It's God's very name. It's in his nature. So in Exodus 1526 you can jump to actually would like. So God has just rescued the people out of Israel.

They've been oppressed by the Egyptians, and there's been the seven plagues that have come and they finally come through. They've just sung their song of praise to God. And then this is what God says. And the Lord made a decree, a law for them. And there he tells them, He said, If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord, your God, and do what is right in, His eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians.

So I am the Lord who heals you. I am the Lord who heals you. The Israel is distinct from the rest of the world in this in this moment. Here they are, God's special people. So you've been in Egypt. She'd seen all of the diseases coming on Egypt. She'd seen all of the afflictions of God's judgment coming upon Egypt.

And then God makes this great promise to his people. And he says this, if you will work diligently, if you keep my word, and if you keep my commandments, then none of the sicknesses you've seen in Egypt will come upon you. I am the Lord who heals you, and that was his name. He is the Lord, our healer.

Now, when when God comes in, He reveals aspects of his name. He's telling you aspects of his nature, whether he's healed or whether he's provided, or whether he's the AM he that is who he is. You cannot act contrary to your nature. God acts in keeping with his nature. So if he is the healer, it's because he wants to heal.

If he's the creator, it's because he creates, because he's the savior he saves, and because of the heat, because he's the healer, it's his will and his nature and in his desire to heal. He isn't the world's healer. He's the church's healer, is the Christians healer. He's the people's healer. He didn't say to the Egyptians, I am the Lord who heals you.

He said to Israel, I'm going to heal you. He said, I feel you and I'll put none of the diseases you see in Egypt on you. So I'm not saying it's the will have got here to heal all of the world who rejects Jesus, but I'm saying that once a man is born again, once you are seeing the proofs in the word of God, that is his will, then those people can and should and will walk and help.

Next points we can look and see how God views sickness. Okay. And in Deuteronomy 28, this is the section where it's called the blessings and the curses. Okay? That's a very long description of blessings that are very, very, very long description of curses. But in and throughout the all in the blessings, at no point does God say it is a blessing for you to be sick.

At no point does he say that. But in the curses there is a long list of sickness. Sickness does not come out of a position of blessing, but only from a position of judgment. And he says that it's all going to come upon you. And that doesn't mean that it's part and parcel of what it should be, because in verse 66, he says this.

He says that I'm going to bring it back to you. That means that those things have gone, sicknesses have gone. So they weren't living under those sicknesses. They weren't they were free from all of the sicknesses. And he's saying it needn't be. But if you do choose to go in your own way, then sickness is one of the inevitable outcomes upon your choice and your decision.

If you choose not to follow in my way. Okay, so that's in the Scripture we have God's viewpoint. Sickness is a blessing. Sorry, that was a slip, wasn't it? Sickness is not a blessing. It's part of the curse. It's not sourced in God himself. It's a source of judgment. So does that mean that every time I fail, the sickness is going to hit me?

Well, there's fantastic news that someone, a certain someone called Jesus came to redeem us from this very curse. So if you go to Galatians three in verse 13, this is what it says. It says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written curse is everyone who hung on a tree.

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. So Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Lord by becoming a curse for us. He's taken away all of the judgments, the curse of lawbreaking from us, and that includes all of the sicknesses of the world.

He took this from us by himself, taking by taking our place on the tree. So it's the will of God and those who counsel him that he comes and he wants to heal. Okay. Next point is this Jesus came to do the will of God. If you go to John 638 and this is in an event where Jesus is talking about how he is the bread of life, this is one of His I am statements in verse 3038.

He says, For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me. Okay, so the thing that Jesus came on Earth to do was to do the will of the Father. And never, ever, ever, not once did Jesus make anyone sick. Never. In fact. When you look through the pages of the Gospels, all you ever see is healing upon healing.

Upon healing upon healing. Because it's the will of God. Isn't it great that you can look through those gospels and not find a single case where Jesus goes and makes anybody else sick? So that it's just filled with people set free and liberated from the oppression that they have left and why it's the will of the father. Okay, next point.

Jesus told us to pray for God's will to be done. Okay. In the in the Lord's Prayer, He says he teaches your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Revelation. We read that in heaven. There's no tears, there's no pain there's no suffering. Okay, So we are to pray for that kingdom to come.

And in fact, Jesus connects the kingdom with healing. In Matthew ten. So if you jump to Matthew ten, So this is where Jesus sends his disciples out on placement to go out the bounds. And in verse six and this is what Jesus says, He says, rather go to the lost sheep of Israel. And as you go preach this message, the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

Now, what is the very next thing that he says? He says, So make sure that everybody reads the Bible and make sure that everybody is plugged in and going along to synagogue and and and enjoying community together. Luke, what does he say? He says, Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons freely.

You have received freely. Yes. Jesus is connecting the preaching. The kingdom of God with us going out and healing is what he's doing. So as we pray for God's to come, that is what we are praying that people will be set free and liberated from the oppression that they've been going through and. It's not just for Jesus to go out and do it.

It's not just for the Holy Spirit to go out and do it. Jesus can go and do anything He wants. He's the son of God, but He chooses to invite us in in that journey as well. He chooses us to be his voice, to be his hands, and to be his feet and to be those that administrate this healing into the world.

Next points. Jesus saw Satan as the source of sickness. Okay, so let's go to Luke. Set. This is the story of the crippled woman. She had an arthritic condition probably, and she had been crippled for 18 years. 18 years. It's in from verse 11. And a woman was there who had been crippled by spirits for 18 years. She was bent over and couldn't straighten up at all.

When Jesus saw her, he called a forward and said, So a woman, you are set free from your infirmity. Then he put his hands on her and immediately she straightened up to praise God, now indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, There are six days for work, so come and be healed.

On those days, not on the Sabbath. The Lord answered him, You hypocrites, and each of you on the Sabbath and tie is ox a donkey from the stool and lead it out to give water. Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept found for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day?

From what? Bound to Jesus saw her oppression, so her sickness as coming directly from Satan. Directly from Satan. When you when you read one, John three investigates it says, Whoever makes a practice of settings of the devil for the devil has been sending from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil in Acts 1038.

This is the bit where Peter has been summoned by God and summoned by Cornelius to come and for the very first time to the Gentiles and is part of it. He's talked about how God had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, but God was with him.

Jesus saw that sickness was something that came from the devil. That's what he saw. And he said, I am here to destroy the work devil. And so therefore, the end goal is all sickness will be destroyed. And he invites us to come and to be a part of that next one. This one's really good. This one's really good.

Jesus never turned anyone away. We're just going go through the scriptures in masses of this. But there are plenty more. Okay, so in Matthew four 2324, I'm going to shoot through them. So if you just want to write them down, you can do it. Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in the synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing all manner sicknesses and all manner of disease among the people.

And his fame went went throughout all Syria, and they brought and brought to him all sick people that were taken with diseases and torments and those which were possessed with devils and those which were insane and those that had palsy and he healed them all. In Matthew 816 to 17, it says that he healed all that was sick in Matthew nine, verse 35.

It says He went about all cities and all villages. This is what I referenced before. And he healed every sickness and every disease among. The people. Matthew 12 first 15 It says that great multitudes followed him and he healed them all. In Matthew 14, verse 14, it says that Jesus went south and he saw a great multitude and he was moved with compassion towards them and he healed all the sick.

Nobody away. It goes on. Matthew 14 first 34 to 36. This is where he goes over to the land of Connecticut and all these people came and they they just wanted to search him and as many as touched him were made. Well, all of them that touched him were made well. Matthew 15, verse 3231, great multitudes came to him and they were lying and they were blind and they were dumb and they were maimed, many others, and they cast down Jesus feet and he healed them all.

Matthew 19, verse two Great multitudes followed him and he healed them all. Matthew 21, verse 14 and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them all. Jesus never turned anyone away, never. So there's great news, because if there's anyone that's sick here this morning, there's not a single verse that I can find that can prove to me that you are not included in the of God.

If you love God and if you are born of God, it's the will of the Father that He, as your healer, comes and heals you. And that next point, Jesus secured our healing by the work that He did on the cross. Okay, we're going to look at two scriptures for there. So if you go to Isaiah verse Isaiah chapter 53 and it's verse five and then keep us some in it and we're going to go and jump to Peter says.

But he was pierced for our transfer, our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment, the process, peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed. So Isaiah is looking forward to the cross. If you go to two Peter 224 this is Peter. Now looking back so the cross and this is what he says. No, it's not true.

24 people of other one. Peter thank you. It does actually say one. Peter here, I've just got one. Peter 224 Thank you very much. Melanie 224 It says he himself bull our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die two sins and live for righteousness by his wounds. You have been healed. So Isaiah is looking forward to the cross and says you will be healed.

Peter is looking back to the cross and says you have been healed. Jesus took it all on the cross, but he was actually made sin for you. You can read this into Corinthians chapter five. It says that he made him in, you know, said to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness have got in him.

And so, I mean, this is just incredible when you kind of think about it, because Jesus walked into the Garden of Gethsemane and he saw the cup of suffering that he was about to drink. And he looked in it and he saw all the sin of mankind. He saw the ugliness, the filth, the vileness, the foulness, the vice, the murder, the adultery, the the deceit, the ceiling and all the rest that is out there.

And Jesus looked at all that sin, and the father said to him, It is my will for you to take this when you become sin for the world. And Jesus said, Not my will, but yours. And he drunk it and he became sin for us. But what these verses illustrate is it's not it's it wasn't just the sin that he took on because it says that by his stripes we're here, by his bruises, we were healed.

It says that he poor our sicknesses. And so he looked into that cup and not only saw the sin, but he saw all the cancerous tumors and he saw all of the sickness, the TB and the the AIDS and all the gastric problems and the head problems and the mental problems and all the the stuff that is there.

And he said, I will take that to father said, Son, you've no no day sickness at all, but I want them all healed. Will you be made sick for them? And he said, Got my will that yours? And so he took our place and bore our sicknesses that we might be made. Well, now the logic of this works is that if Jesus became sick for you and for me to be, well, why would we at any point say that it was the will of God for me to stay sick, for any of us to stay sick?

Because that would mean that Jesus died for nothing that would mean that he took it and he needn't have taken it. That's what these scriptures are illustrating here. Because if God wanted me to carry sickness, why did he ask Jesus to carry the sickness? This is a proof that God wants us to be healed because He doesn't want me taking what Christ has already taken.

He doesn't want me bearing what Christ has already borne. I am healed by His rights. And then there's one last Scripture that I just want to take us to, and it's in James chapter five James of five Final reading from verse 14. It says, Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoints him with oil in the name of the Lord.

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, the Lord will raise him up. If he isn't, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. And so your translation properly says you shall be healed or you will be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

There isn't anything more definitive than that. Listen to these phrases. It will save the sick. It will raise him up and his sins will be forgiven. There is nothing indefinite about it and it says if it's anyone, anyone in the church is sick, call for the elders, they'll pray. And it will be. It will be. It will be.

And the only key that is in this is making the prayer, the faith. Now, the whole point of what I've done here in going through the Scriptures is to illustrate that when we make this prayer of faith, it is not a blind leap into the unknown. God is a faithful God. God is a trust worthy God. I have faith in my wife and it is not a blind leap.

Faith. I am not anticipating in any way, shape or form that she's going to betray me or stop being loyal to me. And we can carry an even greater amount of faith toward our God, the healer. And so when we can come and make the prayer faith, it is based all on the word of God. And the question is, is will we spend our worldview to match what the scriptures say or will we just allow it to match our experiences?

So just to recap the points, firstly, God made man healthy. Secondly, he is the Lord, our Hindu. Thirdly, sickness was a curse of the Lord not the blessing of the covenant. Fourth, the Christ saved us from the curse of the law. Fifthly, Christ came to do the will of the Father, and healing was part of that will seek the God told us to pray for His will in our life.

Seventh, He linked the Kingdom and the will and the will of God and healing together. And we've come into His kingdom. Therefore, we've come into his health. The eighth is that Jesus never viewed sickness as being from God. It was the devil's work. The ninth thing is that He he was and he healed everybody every time everyone that came to him.

There's not a single instance where a man went away sick. The 10th thing is that he actually died and took our sicknesses that we might be healed. And the 11th is this. He said, If anyone is sick among you, call the elders and the prayer faith shall make you well. That's 11 things. And I cut quite a few things out for the benefit of time.

There is so much more in the Scripture to illustrate the fact that God wants to heal Today. It's not just that God can heal today, but God wants to heal today. And so the whole point of this morning is just to illustrate from the word of God and to build our faith. This is the will and purpose of God.

Next week, what we'll do is we'll look at questions and we'll look at how we can actually pray for people and how we can receive this healing as well. Well, I don't want to do is having preached on this is missed any time for any moment or the opportunity where we could lay hands and for anybody that is sick in this room here.

So what we'll do is we'll just invite the worship team to come back up.

I just want to ask you all to stand, if that's okay, as as we worship Jesus. I just want to invite anybody that wants to receive prayer for healing to come forward where. We can come and pray the prayed, the prayer of faith and see. Q Well, the father, I just want to thank you that you are our healer.

We thank you that the Word of God comes and it is definitive of what your will is for us today. And the realm of healing. We thank you for all the healing that we have seen. We thank you that we have been a people that have battled and battled and battled and we have seen victory. But Father, we are not satisfied with what we have seen.

And we stand here before you wanting to have a a greater revelation of what it means to be a people that live in the power of your healing. Father, We stand here and want to be a people that come and administer your healing mercy, not just to our family, but to our colleagues and to our friends, to our family, to our communities so that we would see a glorious testimony of your power, of your grace, of your kingdom advancing in such a way that the gates of hell cannot prevail so that people would come into your kingdom, step into this, this reality where there is renewal, whether it is redemption, whether it is restoration.

Father, we thank you for the work that you have done for Jesus. Hanging on the cross, taking it all for us, for Lord, that that was not the end of the story. That Jesus came and He rose again, that we may leave in the goodness of that which you have purchased. Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus.

Amen