Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
( Acts 3 : 1 - 16 )
Though Jesus healed the sick, and commanded his followers to do so too, some Christians are discouraged from praying for the sick today by resignation in face of sickness and negative attitudes to the healing ministry. In this sermon on the first healing to be performed by Jesus’ followers, Rob Yule encourages a more positive attitude to the healing ministry, both out of concern for those who are sick and infirm, and because of the evangelistic opportunities it opens up. He gave this message at Greyfriars Church on 15 June 2003.
Two common attitudes discourage Christians from embracing the healing ministry today:
‘Cessationism’ is the view that miracles, healings and the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the death of the apostles. This view is common among Presbyterian and Reformed Christians, and in Brethren circles influenced by the Scofield Reference Bible. Its best-known exponent was Princeton theologian Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, whose 1918 book Miracles, Yesterday and Today, Real and Counterfeit argued that while genuine miracles took place in biblical times today’s miracles are fake.
There’s a strange inconsistency in this view. Its proponents hold a high view of Jesus - defending his divinity, virgin birth, miracles, and bodily resurrection against liberal detractors. But they hold a low view of the Holy Spirit, rejecting the Pentecostal claim that the Holy Spirit is active in the church today. It’s also a circular, self-fulfilling argument:
We don’t see healings and miracles happening today.
We don’t pray for healings and miracles today.
Therefore healings and miracles don’t happen today.
Influenced by such attitudes, many Christians have grown up with no encouragement to pray that the sick would be healed or the afflicted set free.
Resignation is the passive acceptance of sickness as God’s will. This also undermines the healing ministry, because if sickness is God’s will, then praying for healing of sickness is going against God’s will. This makes nonsense of Jesus’ healings, which were performed from pity and compassion for those who suffer from illness or disability.
Rev Douglas Watt was minister of Greyfriars for 14 years, from 1953 to 1967. His ministry was notable for his Sunday afternoon healing services in Greyfriars and at Ellen Melville Hall, High Street, which people came to from far away.
In an article in Logos magazine in May 1967, Douglas Watt wrote that resignation was the main obstacle he encountered to the healing ministry. ‘In those days it was a common practice to accept all illness as a visitation from God.... The thinking behind all this had been woven into many a sampler “NO CROSS, NO CROWN”.’
In this article Douglas Watt tells how he was shown at the age of twelve that the destruction of anything good and lovely could not be God’s will. He heard an English woman minister, Dr. Maude Royden, illustrate a talk on war not being the will of God. Suppose a child brings home a fragile model made at kindergarten. Mother admires it and puts it on a shelf to be displayed. Next morning she finds the model crushed and broken on the floor. Who would Mum assume was responsible ? Wouldn’t she question all the other children in the house than the one who made the model ? She’d know beyond any shadow of doubt that the maker wasn’t to blame for its broken condition.
Douglas Watt comments, ‘The preacher said nothing about spiritual or divine healing but God used that illustration to show me even then what was his attitude to disease and desolation in the human situation.... Thereafter I had no doubts whatever that God was on the side of health and everything beneficial.’
So let us look at the incentives to healing contained in this incident in Acts 3.
This was a real event, not a sermon illustration, an activity not an allegory ! This crippled man was actually healed ! That’s a challenge for any preacher ! It quickly sorts the men from the boys !
This is the first healing described in the Bible to be performed after Jesus’ lifetime. It’s not a healing by Jesus, but by Jesus’ apostles, Peter and John. So it wasn’t only Jesus who healed the sick. This opens up the possibility that others than Jesus can be involved in the healing ministry. It challenges us to think of our responsibility to do what Jesus did and be involved in healing the sick ourselves. This miracle reminds us of Jesus’ promise, ‘I tell you for certain that if you have faith in me, you will do the same things that I am doing. You will do even greater things, now that I am going back to the Father.’ (John 14: 12, CEV).
This man was ‘crippled from birth’, and was carried every day to the Temple entrance to beg for a living (Acts 3: 2). He is representative of many handicapped, destitute, absolutely poor people throughout the world. Joni Earackson-Tada, who is paralysed herself and who heads up a ministry to people with disabilities, said at a Lausanne Congress on Evangelisation meeting that I attended in Budapest, Hungary in 1991 that there were then 516 million severely disabled people in the world. Statistician David Barrett estimates there are 1. 8 billion handicapped people, and over 80 million beggars. They are completely dependent on others for mobility and charity.
Since this man was brought to the Temple entrance every day, he must have been here when Jesus made his visits to the Temple a few months’ earlier. But Jesus hadn’t healed him ! Isn’t that interesting ! Peter and James healed someone Jesus didn’t heal !
The nearest to a modern-day hospital that Jesus ever went to was the pool of Bethesda. It was like a spa. Many sick and infirm people gathered there. But Jesus didn’t heal everyone there. He didn’t evacuate the whole hospital - as some sceptics demand he should have. He healed only one man, a tragic case who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years (John 5: 1-15).
Not even Jesus healed everybody. Don’t stop praying for the sick when someone isn’t healed. There’s no shame or guilt if you don’t see someone healed in response to your prayers. Healing is complex. Healing is often a process. God’s timing and anointing is all-important in healing, just as it is in conversion.
Peter commanded, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk !’ (Acts 3: 6, NIV). John Wimber called this ‘assertive faith’. ‘In Jesus name, get up !’ Jesus never fluffed around with long, flowery prayers. When he raised a dead girl to life he said, ‘Little girl, get up !’ (Mark 5: 41, NIV). When he raised Lazarus from the dead he said, ‘Lazarus, come out !’ (John 11: 43, NIV). You don’t need eloquence to heal the sick. You just need to know the person’s name, and say ‘X, be healed !’, ‘Y, get better !’
The apostles denied that any innate ability, power or holiness of their own was the cause of the healing. Peter explains that it was not because of their spirituality, but faith in Jesus’ name that made the man whole. ‘He put his faith in the name of Jesus and was made strong. Faith in Jesus made this man completely well while everyone was watching.’ (Acts 3: 16, CEV).
Beware of healers who claim special kudos for themselves. They’re charlatans. It was Jesus’ work - through the instrumentality of their assertive faith - that healed this lame man. John Wimber says, ‘The ministry of healing was carried out through assertive faith quickened by the guidance and anointing of the Holy Spirit’ (Healing Seminar, Vineyard Ministries International, 1985, pp. 34-35).
Notice the marks of bold or assertive faith:
* Direct, personal, eye to eye contact (Acts 3: 4).
* The active attention and expectancy of the sick person (Acts 3: 5).
* A brief, authoritative command from the healer (Acts 3: 6).
* Active response by both the healer and the sick person (Acts 3: 7).
The matter of faith needs careful handling, lest it become a source of blame and condemnation for people who aren’t healed. Nevertheless, I have observed a lack of faith in some sick and disabled people - displaying itself in such ways as changing the subject, taking their attention from Jesus, reverting to their own problems, playing a stuck record of their woes. I’ve also observed a lack of faith in people praying - such as making excuses in advance about why a person won’t get healed, or praying with the classic cop out, ‘If it be your will.’ Healing is God’s will. Jesus did it. Healing is part of seeing God’s will done on earth, as it is already done in heaven.
The healing typically gives rise to an evangelistic opportunity. Peter and John’s healing of the lame beggar was a ‘power encounter’ which created an openness to share the Gospel (Acts 3: 11-16). They disclaimed their own power or holiness, testified that Jesus’ name and power had caused the healing, and challenged curious observers to get right with God and accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord.
The healing drew a crowd. It got people’s attention. Signs and wonders and healings have an important role in confounding scepticism, promoting faith, and growing the church. This was John Wimber’s thesis in his famous ‘Signs and Wonders and Church Growth’ course at Fuller Theological Seminary in the eighties and his worldwide conferences which followed. Wimber says:
‘In the early church [healing] was the greatest means of evangelism. In fact, they turned their world upside down and almost took over the Roman Empire. Whole towns turned to Jesus. Commerce and society were changed. There were persecutions and uproar; churches were planted, all because of the expansion of the healing ministry.’ (Loc. cit.)
The healing ministry not only happened in Jesus’ lifetime; it is valid today. Jesus is alive. He continues his ministry today through the power of the Holy Spirit. Healing prayer is something his followers are called to do in his name and authority.
We’re to do the stuff. ‘These signs will accompany those who believe.... They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well’ (Mark 16: 18, NIV). Jesus commissions and empowers us to pray for sick people. That’s where our emphasis must be.
Rob Yule, 15 June 2003
© 2003, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
