While Jesus’ death on the cross is the ultimate source of all restoration, the Atonement specifically deals with bearing our sins to make us right with God. The prophecy in Isaiah about Him bearing our sicknesses was fulfilled during His earthly ministry, where He healed all who came to Him, demonstrating His compassion. Healing is not guaranteed in the Atonement in the same way as forgiveness; therefore, believers should pray for healing, trusting in Jesus’ power, but not fall into condemnation if sickness remains. We must rest in the knowledge that God’s grace is always sufficient for us.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] In our services in these mornings, we’ve been going back to the book of Matthew and we’re just in that post-Beatitudes part where Jesus is doing quite a lot of different things but his ministry is steaming ahead. And it’s interesting, the descriptors of Jesus’ ministry show a lot of his compassion to people everywhere and part of that compassion is expressed in his ministry of healing. And so we read in the scriptures about Jesus and how he was involved in bringing the gospel, the good news as to how to get right with God. He also was involved in healing and so we read in the scriptures and the passage I have in mind for a start is here in the book of Matthew if you put the first verse up see how we go. Chapter 8 That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons and he

[00:01:08] cast out the spirits with a word and he healed all who were sick. This is Jesus in his ministry he healed all who were sick. If he came across the sick people his healing star was immediate and this was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah he took our illnesses and he bore our diseases There are some other verses in Isaiah that talk about Jesus and the fact that he dealt with our sicknesses. There’s actually quite a misunderstanding as to exactly when Jesus dealt with the sicknesses of the world and here in that verse that we’re looking at before it was a comment on his ministry whereby and it says actually at the end of it that this was to fulfil how Elijah had spoken or not Elijah, Isaiah had spoken that he took our illnesses and he bore our diseases and so where we find in the book of Isaiah

[00:02:14] those spots that talk about Jesus doing something for our diseases this is the fulfilment of it in his ministry Now it might be just a technical thing but there is some emphasis in healing that happens in different churches If you go back just a couple of generations go back to the era of my dad for example when he was the principal of the college he represented a conservative stream within Baptist work which was not really for the fresh emphasis that was coming through the charismatic movement on healings and rather the traditional Baptist position was to look with suspicion on the idea of making a major thing out of Jesus’ ministry being one to heal It’s amazing how God works in people you know because he is able to bring growth and learning and I think sometimes God has a good laugh a good smile

[00:03:20] at the times when we think we’ve got it all sewed up but the conservative church back at that time were pretty well sure that the charismatic movement and their emphasis on healing was wrong Now God was to have a smile at my father because he went overseas at that time he was principal in Perth Bible Institute and went overseas to finish his doctorate that he’d been working on and he was writing a thesis and the thesis was to do with the Holy Spirit all the development of that doctrine from the time of the first founding of the church on the day of Pentecost right through to the present day and so he did a great big tome enormous thing very deeply written up so much so that the publisher said unless you put it into a more local type of thing for the general public they wouldn’t print it

[00:04:17] but he was studying about the Holy Spirit and he was writing up about it in this work over there in the United States when something happened in the Bible College that he left in the hands of his wife that’s my mother and I’m the youngest of three kids and what happened was the polio epidemic which struck me down and the doctors came and promptly diagnosed that I should be taken to hospital they didn’t give much hope because the ones that went to hospital ended up being alongside other more severe cases and didn’t come back able to walk and the students heard this and said no we’re not going to let that happen but we’re going to have a prayer meeting instead and the doctor said well you’re going to have to be all kept I’ve told the church this before sorry to repeat it

[00:05:11] but for some who might not understand my illustration, the doctor said you’ll have to stay quarantined in the college and no one leaving, no one coming until the whole, you know, the time of the epidemic and had come to an end. And my dad was overseas studying about and a part of his study was to do with the healings that happened in the history of the church. And he was a figurehead to represent the conservative side of the Baptist denomination that was a bit suspicious about too much emphasis on healing. But back in his college, his son got healed by those prayers. Now, I myself followed my father’s theology pretty much along the line. He had many good reasons and scripture explanations so it’d be very unusual if I didn’t. But as time moved on, we were confronted with that movement

[00:06:14] that is understood as the charismatic movement. That’s just a name tag for development of it along the way. There were lots of different versions thereof. But basically, it included an emphasis on the facts that healings were meant to be a part of what we’re about. And one of the ways that this was articulated theologically in order to give an explanation is that they dubbed a term, I don’t know when exactly it was first used, but the term was about healing being in the atonement. Put your hand up if you’ve heard the term healing in the atonement. It’s like from me, I’ve mentioned it a few times. Put your hand up if that’s some term that you’re used to. Look around, I can’t even see one hand. Healing in the Atonement. Now where that comes from is actually because of the interpretation

[00:07:06] of verses in the book of Isaiah that talked about Jesus. This one here is fulfilled in Matthew before Jesus gets to the cross. But there’s other verses that are quoted to be an explanation as to what happened when Jesus went to Calvary. And because what he did in the Calvary was making atonement for the sin of the world, then if the particular passages in Isaiah that talk about he bore our sicknesses is taken to mean that when Jesus died on the cross, not only was it that he was dealing with our sins and bearing the punishment thereof, but also that he took on him on the cross all our sicknesses that were yet to happen. Now there’s an element of truth in this and an element of actually getting the wrong angle on it. This morning’s message I’m here to explain.

[00:08:09] The truth is that Jesus indeed was dealing with the core problem of humanity, which core problem was of course the fall into sin that happened right at the beginning by our forebears, and which sinfulness was passed on to the rest of us. And the Bible clearly teaches that we are sinners in the race of humanity from the beginning at the fall. Our forefathers were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and from then on there’s a sorry tale of sin the rest of the Bible long. But even though it’s true that our problem is sin and that Jesus came to deal with it by the atonement, the atonement is what he suffered on the cross, you could add to it the resurrection of Christ, which is the vindication of the effectiveness of his death on the cross. You could add on it his ascension back to heaven where he’s crowned

[00:09:08] king of kings and lord of lords, to be the one who sends the Holy Spirit along with the Father. The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit on the world. And that arrival of the Holy Spirit to come was a fulfilment of an Old Testament prophecy, which is a prophecy of a new covenant made first of all with the Jewish people, but made in terms that would admit all others who put their belief in Jesus. And that covenant became into effect with the offering of the forgiveness of sins along with the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who would repent and be baptised to show that they trusted in Jesus. That was the beginning of the new covenant, prophesied, yes, in the Old Testament, but the beginning of when God would make available the fruit of the atonement in terms of what the book of Isaiah said it would do.

[00:10:10] Now, I’m trying to draw a picture so you won’t get left out of understanding, but when the Bible and the book of Isaiah talks about he took our illnesses and bore our diseases, there’s another passage that also is used and it’s more often the one that’s quoted, and it is, let me see if I can see it here, in later in Isaiah, I think it’s chapter 53, so if you could turn, did I give you one? Yeah, good. Yeah, now here it is, Isaiah 53, and we have right down to verse 11, note the specificity of what Jesus’ death is making an offering for. Others say, no, this is the Father seeing Jesus and the outcome of what he’s doing. He shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, and the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. There’s going to be the other side of the atonement

[00:11:34] where great success is achieved by the Lord having so achieved, the Lord Jesus. And the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall be satisfied. The anguish of his soul was the suffering he went through to bear our sins. By his knowledge, when we come to know Christ, the fruit of this comes to us personally, by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. Can you see what the atonement is for? It is to restore humanity back into the good books of God above. And he shall bear their iniquities. That’s verses 10 and 11. Now, if you understand the atonement, the atonement is certainly dealing with the entire outcome of us having the human race, fallen into sin and us as individuals being sinners.

[00:12:35] And that outcome is done by the cure at the very point of problem, our sins and our guilt and the anger of God against the human race. For all have sinned and all are fallen short of the glory of God. There’s the root of the problem. A part of the outcome of that problem is that the very structure of living creatures is affected. The fall comes upon the whole world. We don’t live in a perfect world because of sin. But God, knowing that, sent his son to deal with the problem. That dealing with it was not to somehow train us up to be better, not to give us a good talking to that will stop sinning and be a little bit more holy, not to put on our shoulders the responsibility of making an atonement something impossible to do when you understand the meaning of the word atonement.

[00:13:43] But it was that God would do the work himself. And he sent his son. And his son that he sent lived a perfect life according to the law. He might not have been accounted good by some of the leaders of the day, but Jesus did not sin. He had no sin. He even spoke to crowds and said, which one of you can convince me of any sin? Which no public speaker ought to try and do, aside from Jesus. Because there’ll be people popping up and reminding him of all his faults. But in Jesus’ case, he was sinless. He was so because the whole Jewish precedent that the Old Testament put before people’s minds was that a sacrifice that might atone for sins had to be a perfect one. And so the little animals that got killed could only be chosen for such a fate if they were perfect and without any faults in them.

[00:14:41] It was because they were a picture of the one and only sacrifice that was going to atone for sins. The one and only atonement that was made was when Jesus was offered as a sinless sacrifice. I looked up, you know, I do this a lot when I’m preparing to see what people say on the internet always. there’s actually a lot of good things that are said there if you look around but there’s also mistakes and some of the mistakes they make was where they try and explain about Jesus bearing the sins of the world in the atonement which he didn’t. There is no handling of sorry, Jesus bearing the sicknesses in the atonement which there was not Jesus bore the cause of there being sicknesses in the human race the cause of there being breakdown within even the animal world or nature the Bible tells us is struggling

[00:15:47] it says it’s longing for the healing that’s going to come from God to humans to be flow onto them and they’ll be changed as well that’s why I used to think the little birdies, you’ve heard this from me before, they’re so beautiful, you see them out in the trees and I’m an animal lover, a bird lover, but then one day coming home, there was this birdie that somehow a young birdie fell down on the ground and the other birdies came and pecked him to death and a little upside down birdie with his feet like this, the other one was going peck, peck, peck, peck until he died and it destroyed my thoughts ever again of nice little birdies. Sorry to be so dramatic, but I’m going to tell you that the world of nature, you just watch on the internet about what happens in the wild creatures.

[00:16:41] You know, it’s not nice being eaten alive. Watch it for yourself. I love the world of nature, but the world of nature is terribly cruel. Australia is known for the worst spiders in the world, I think. Do you know there are a lot of people overseas who are scared to come to Australia because of our creatures and who think twice because the stories they’ve heard about the crocodiles and about other things. I smile at the fact that, you know, they got scared off, but because creatures around the world there’s different problems that you can find in lots of places even nature itself with its tidal waves and storms and people being lost at sea you’ve got to have no eyes in your head if you think that we’re living in a safe world it’s been ruined by the fall and certainly Jesus curing that ruin at its heart

[00:17:49] will have a flow on to affecting the rest even the whole of nature is one day going to be fixed and there is beautiful things in the world that Jesus’ death on the cross will have a trigger to including healings that is why when Isaiah says he’ll bear their iniquities and then there’s another verse that says he’ll bear their sicknesses and then you find the verse that is in Isaiah a little later on where he says where we read in Matthew and I’m reading here from Matthew 8.16 did I give you that verse? good I’ve done a good job he’s doing a good job Matthew 8 look at this that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with a word and he healed all who were sick not just a few everywhere Jesus went he found a sick person it didn’t matter what group they were from

[00:18:52] what religion they were in they were sick and he healed them this was to fulfil now do you know what the word fulfil means? it means make complete it means to make come true where there’s been a prophecy it’s fulfilled when it’s made to come true this was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah He took our illnesses and he bore our diseases. But it’s Matthew 8, during Jesus’ ministry, quite a couple of years before he got to the cross, two or three years. The atonement, which is what Jesus worked by his death on the cross and his taking our sins, is ultimately the cause of there being healings possible. But it’s not the place where he bore our diseases and just the way he bore our sins, that because our sins got on Jesus, you can be forgiven them,

[00:19:52] and because our diseases are said to have gotten on Jesus on the cross, that’s healing in the atonement. Then you have no right to keep your diseases. There’s where this wrongful teaching, healing in the atonement, has its bad effect. because there are people who are told you had faith in Jesus for your sins and you’ve been forgiven, you’re right but now you’re still sick. Where’s your faith gone? Now it’s true that faith is needed and the examples of Jesus’ healing often is greatly made possible when people believe him and trust him but it’s not the same relationship as about sins. If you’re still in your sins, that is to say if you’re still a person who’s got a burden on your back like poor old Pilgrim and Pilgrim’s Progress a big burden in his back and he found his way to the cross

[00:20:54] suddenly all the twining that kept the burden on his back fell off and he walks the Christian road eventually to get to glory across the river that’s the picture of Pilgrim’s Progress without the burden on his back because he’s been forgiven. And the central truth of the Christian gospel is that Jesus finished your atonement. Atonement’s a very interesting word. It’s interesting how the secular world, the non-Christian world, misunderstands it. So there are differing films. Some of them are called The Atonement, some are called other things. But where people have had something that’s put them in the bad position, but they find themselves given some way to work their way back to pay for it so that they’re released. There’s one of those films where two brothers have a sword fight

[00:21:51] and the younger brother kills the other one. And so upset is he at his crime that’s now on him that he goes and gets advice and is told he has to carry this heavy load up a big mountain with ropes hanging back and a great big thing almost pulling him backwards off the mountain. But he climbers up in order to make atonement. In that film is pictured the error of human understanding that thinks that we can ever make atonement for our sin because who we made it against was God above, who’s perfect, who demands that perfection of us and whose holiness is so immense. One day he’ll judge the world in righteousness and there’s no way you can earn your atonement back into his good books. That’s why Jesus came to be a sinless sacrifice. I found on the internet a certain verse, not a verse,

[00:22:57] a certain comment as to how to explain the discussion about the healing and the atonement. Look it up for yourself when you’re at home at leisure. Write in healing and the atonement and it’ll tell you, you’ll probably find the spot I’m now quoting where it says, And Jesus came and he came to take on our sinful humanity. Now that’s true when he went to the cross. He did take on our sinful humanity, but he didn’t take it on in his life. He wasn’t a sinner, but the talking on the internet was saying that he became a sinner just like us so he could struggle against sin and then somehow make an atonement or helping us to make our atonement. No, that’s the total misunderstanding. there is no forgiveness, there’s no sicknesses involved in the atonement. It was all handled by Jesus handling the fall of humanity

[00:23:55] and all our individual sins. But I flow on from being atoned to God as he’s now on your side. Before the atonement happened, here’s God in glory. The clouds of his wrath, I mean metaphorically, are there between him and us and every human conscious inside is aware, somewhere deep there, that we’re sinners. It’s written in our hearts. We know it. We’re sinners. But we’re made for God. We’re in problems. And there’s nothing you can do to atone for your sins. Much of religion is what people do to earn their way back into God’s good books, which they could never achieve. But Jesus came. And contrary to that one quote, there’s lots of other better quotes on the internet, but the one quote that said, he came to take on our sinful natures, meaning in his life, so he’d be a sinner to go to the cross.

[00:25:08] Now you could say almost the same thing, but say he came to take on our sin on the cross, which is exactly what he did. And bearing our sins, cried that cry of dereliction, my God, my God, how you have forsaken me, because God cannot accept the person who sinned on them. He achieved our atonement. The word atonement, if you use it how the New Testament uses it, I guess the whole of the Bible uses it, it means that something other than you has paid the penalty. The whole Old Testament sacrificial system was to set a precedent for people to see and understand that some thing had to die. There was no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. The non-Christian world can’t understand. If you quote that to some people, they say, what are you religious people always worrying about bloodshed?

[00:26:08] What’s this business that you have a communion service and the wine is representing Jesus’ blood? Well, precisely because there’s no atonement except through the blood of Jesus Christ. Though when we speak that to people, they think it’s one of those fundamental sayings that everybody shrinks their shoulders back, they don’t like to hear about the blood. Don’t be one of these Christian groups that speak about the blood. But the truth is that without the blood of Jesus being shed, there is no forgiveness of sins. The Bible says it. The book of Hebrews is full of it. It is a fact of eternity that until Jesus came and died on the cross and shed his blood for our sins, there was nothing that was going to achieve atonement. There was no more anything to stop him and the Father being together,

[00:27:16] which is why when he went into the grave, God the Father raised him from the dead and the Holy Spirit came and lifted him out because the atonement was over. There was no more worry about sins. Not even Jesus bearing our sins, but certainly us being aware that he bore our sins. There’s nothing left for you to do. If you understand the atonement, it isn’t telling you to try and do good things to atone yourself. It’s telling you that Jesus did it and it’s done. It’s dusted. He cried the cry, it is finished. Paid in full. Nothing left to do. Just come and be forgiven. And certainly if it were what we should do is to apply being sick to the same thing as being a sinner cut off from God, you would drive yourself crazy. Jesus will deal with the sicknesses of the whole world and everyone,

[00:28:21] but not because his atonement did it by taking all those sicknesses so that you are to be told off for still sticking with them. I cringe when I hear some of the stories of people who’ve had different sicknesses and then other people said, how come you didn’t have enough faith? It’s not an issue of enough faith. It’s an issue of the purposes of God. And what a funny thing it was for my dad to be studying about the Holy Spirit and about conservatism, representing the conservative Christians in Australia with this dissertation he wrote. And at the same time his son was getting not forgiven for being a sinner. I got forgiven for being a sinner several years, many, six, anyway, four or five years later when I became a Christian. But I just got healed because Jesus is in the business of healing.

[00:29:29] And so although I have my conservative father’s theology, much the same everywhere down in Adelaide, the little church we had at one stage where Andrew Ody comes from, decided we had Dad come for a series of teaching meetings and the people got a good idea to set up a panel. And they put me and Dad in it, a couple of others, and they would ask difficult questions. And they had grins on their faces. They were going to try and find out somewhere where I was different from Dad. They didn’t find anywhere. Maybe he had changed his mind in line with where I was at. I don’t know, but he believes in healing now. I think he always did believe in healing. He just didn’t like the emphasis on putting people under a heavy duty that you’ve got to get healed or you haven’t had enough faith.

[00:30:27] But it’s a little bit ironic, don’t you think? He’s busy writing the dissertation. And I was busy getting healed. I still have a chuckle about that. God is in the business of healing, but you should never put yourself under the thumb as to say, why haven’t you had enough faith in the atonement? Just believe Jesus died for your sins. If he calls you to believe him about your healing, that’s to be done because he gave you a word. But if he didn’t tell you he’s going to heal you, there’s nothing in the scriptures that say we ought to be healed. And there’s the examples, of course, of the Apostle Paul who had some problem and who’d asked God three times and God didn’t answer yes. But all God said is to him, to Paul, he said, my grace is sufficient for you.

[00:31:28] So don’t get under any feeling that you don’t have enough faith because you’ve still got a sickness. We all get sicknesses. In fact, the biggest sickness was when you die at the end. God will raise you from the dead. So he’s got that in his control anyway. And when we go to glory, of course, that’s the end of all effective illnesses and sicknesses. Now, much of this that I’ve been saying to you really relies upon the wording in the Bible not being misunderstood. And the significant word is in the Isaiah passage, the later one, where it says that he bore our sicknesses. And the way it’s worded is actually to get across the idea that he, where it says a little word in Hebrew that could mean healed. It says, by his stripes we are healed. Thank you. You’re doing such a good job.

[00:32:37] This is the passage which gets people about healing and the atonement. Surely he’s borne our griefs, carried our sorrows, yet we thought we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. That’s where the action was happening. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. Then one phrase, one clause, and with his wounds we are healed. And it’s that word healed, not fully understood, that gives way to people wanting to stick to healing in the atonement. Now the particular word for healed here is a word rasha, something like that in Hebrew. And when you come to a word in another language, what your task is is to work out, to find out from a book which might tell you, or from lots of incidents of it in their language,

[00:33:40] what the word is sometimes taken to mean. And you will discover that every word in any given language, when you’re getting ready to translate it into another, has a range of possibility words that maybe you’ll find an example of it going that way. And you call that the semantic range. The semantic range will be a number of words that sometimes healed is the English word chosen to translate it. Now in the case of the word that I’m referring to here that’s in the Hebrew, the range there of the Hebrew word starts with healed, but the other ones would be to heal or to cure or to restore or to mend. And if you do a study in the book of Isaiah, you’ll find that much of it is filled with the fact that the children of Israel fell into sins, but God restored them or God healed them or God mended their ways.

[00:34:50] We do use that in English actually, that if someone, maybe it was a bit older than some of you people would remember, but often the teachers would talk to people like me and saying, I got detentions all the time, that this will cause you to mend your ways. And the fact that Isaiah has written about a backsliding group of Jews, it’s full of the fact that God is going to heal their ways. And the word heal has a semantic range that can mean just our English idea of heal, but it can also mean cure or it can mean to restore or to mend. And it’s actually mostly in the book of Isaiah, if you look at the context about God, mending their backsliding. And it’s a misunderstanding to take it as the evidence that there’s healing in the atonement when Jesus died on the cross. There’s healing with Jesus,

[00:35:57] but you’ve got no guarantee unless he decides that that’s what he wants to do with you. There’s one other verse for completeness, I should tell you it’s in 1 Peter. I’ve always worried that I didn’t give him the whole stretch. Yes, thank you. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. You know, cross, tree, there were swappable words to describe where people got crucified. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. He bore our sins in his body on the tree. That we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. And there the meaning is the restoring of you to proper spiritual life. It doesn’t have to mean that Jesus bore your sicknesses. And as I said, he did in the case when he met people. He touched them and somehow the sickness went through him.

[00:36:52] He felt the difference. It’s not that Jesus is not in the business of dealing with sicknesses. And there’s often a missionary who discovers that when they prayed for people that things happened and they got healed. There is healing through Jesus. But it’s not on the same status as your sins. If you’ve still got your sin, get out of them. Get forgiven of them because Jesus died for them. You have no reason to stay in your sins, particularly the condemnation thereof. We have to struggle with our sin. Nature in the book of the New Testament talks about this struggle we have with sin. That’s an ongoing thing. But that too will be cured that moment when Jesus takes us to glory. So yes, sin will be completely fixed. But as far as your healing is concerned, in this life before that moment of his perfecting you

[00:37:51] and taking you to glory, it depends on what is his will and you shouldn’t get you into condemnation because no matter how hard you’ve prayed, you still haven’t been healed. Pray to God. Do you know the Apostle Paul, as I mentioned before, had that problem of something where he prayed three times and it didn’t go and the Lord says, well, my grace is sufficient for you. I’ll look after you and help you go through. Because healing is not in that particular time when Jesus bore our sins. That’s what’s called the Atonement. But it is something that Jesus loves to do. Let’s have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, I am aware that there’s more that should be said about Jesus and his love to heal people and to help people. I thank you, Father, that those miracles of Jesus he did, I thank you that you saw, Father,

[00:38:47] that he did one to a Jewish person and another one to a non-Jewish person. He healed a woman and he healed children. He just about chose every different style of person there could be to let us know that his grace, his love, his care is for the lot of us. There’s not any special people who would miss out on Jesus’ healing if that’s what he chose to do. It also tells us that you like to answer prayer and you do. But, Lord, I pray that you help us to see that we don’t have to provide any extra atonement. We don’t have to make it that Jesus was a sinful person and somehow struggled, which is not what the Gospel says. Father, thank you for the truth of the Scriptures and that we can find it if we look carefully enough. We praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.