Is it God's will for me to be healed?
Part nine.
Hi, welcome to today's little lesson.
This is number nine in the series of which I said I'm going to limit myself to 10 little
lessons talking about God's will as revealed in the Bible concerning healing and health.
Okay.
And, if you missed the first eight, you need to stop this video and go back and watch those
ones, okay.
And then, we've laid a foundation, and I've answered a lot of objections and tried to
straighten out a lot of wrong thinking on the subject, because I've been studying this
for decades and heard people talk about it for decades.
And heard all of the arguments against it, and so forth.
And I'm still persuaded of what I'm persuaded, and I think I have a good reason to be persuaded
because I'm taking the Bible, not people's experiences and so forth.
Anyways, there is just so much in the scripture that would build our faith for healing if
we'd studied the subject.
And I'm not doing it by any stretch of the imagination, an exhaustive study on the subject,
okay.
We talked before this series on, the question is healing in the atonement.
We're going to look at a scripture today that lends itself to the argument that, yes, healing
is in the atonement.
We already had a pretty solid argument we looked at before, but here's one more I didn't
even talk about.
This is in Acts chapter 14, the Apostle Paul, the good old Apostle Paul, what a great guy
he was.
And he was up there in the general region of Galatia, which, there were numbers of cities
in Galatia.
You remember, he actually wrote to the saints in Galatia, and in Acts chapter 14, in verse
number five, it says, "When an attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews, with
their rulers to mistreat and to stone them, they became aware of it and they fled to the
cities of Lycaonia, Lystra and Derbe, and the surrounding regions."
So these are Galatian cities.
And it says this.
Now, this is verse number seven, very important.
"And there they continued to preach the gospel."
So Paul was preaching the gospel.
No, no, you can't debate about that unless you're going to argue with the Bible.
"And at Lystra," so here's one of the cities where Paul was preaching the gospel, "And
at Lystra a man was sitting who had no strength in his feet, lame from his mother's womb who
had never walked."
Wow!
"This man was listening to Paul as he spoke, who when he had fixed his gaze on him," that
is Paul fixed his gaze upon this guy who'd never walked, "And had seen that he had faith
to be made well, said with a loud voice, 'Stand upright on your feet.'
And he leaped up and began to walk."
Now, this man was just like so many people that Jesus healed, healed by his faith, because
Paul saw his faith.
How did Paul see his faith?
I talked about this in the last little lesson.
You can tell when people have faith, they're happy, they're excited, they don't have a
downcast look on their face.
They look like they're ready for a miracle.
And how did this guy get faith?
Here's the big question.
Where did this guy get faith to be healed?
If all Paul was preaching was, "Well, Jesus died for our sins, and if you make him your
Lord and the Savior you'll be forgiven of all your sins."
Would that have been enough to give this guy faith to be healed?
I don't think so.
No sir.
No ma'am.
No, no, no.
Had to be more that Paul was preaching, at bare minimum, he was preaching that Jesus
healed people, proving that he was the Messiah and Jesus is still healing people because
it's happening all the time in my ministry.
And at a bare minimum, that's what Paul had to have shared, that this guy, he had to get
faith from something that Paul said.
Right?
And so, in Paul's message, there had to be something about Jesus the healer.
And who knows, maybe Paul went in and said Jesus bore our iniquities, and maybe Paul
said he also bore our diseases, like Isaiah said.
And like Matthew said Isaiah said.
Remember, we studied that when we were studying the healing and the atonement?
Okay.
I don't know, but this guy had faith to be healed and he was healed, it was an instantaneous
miracle.
Never walked, and he leaps up and he begins walking.
And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they raised their voice in the Lycaonian language
saying, "The gods have become like men, and they've come down to us."
And they began calling Barnabas Zeus, and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.
And their pagan understanding of God, and God the gods, they're assigning titles to,
names to Paul and Barnabas when, of course, you know the story.
Now, I just can't resist saying this, because there's these theologians, God bless the theologians.
The Bible is so plain, it takes a theologian to misunderstand it.
And so, some theologians say, "Well Paul, he had that thorn in the flesh.
And we believe that was an eye disease called ophthalmalgia.
Because one time Paul said to one of his letters, he said, 'See with what large letters I write.'
So there's the proof that Paul had an eye disease."
Oh and one time Paul said to the Galatians, "I bear you witness that, if possible, you
would have plucked out your eyes for me."
And so that proves, that proves that Paul had an eye disease.
You can't make these things up.
Oh well, can't you imagine Paul preaching here in this city of Lystra with an eye disease?
The theologians say it was running sores of pus running out of Paul's eyes.
Because he said, "See with what large letters I write."
And, he said one time, "I bear you witness, you would have plucked out your eyes for me,"
so that proves Paul had ophthalmalgia.
Again, you can't make this stuff up.
Can you imagine Paul preaching in Galatia, preaching the gospel, telling about the healing
Jesus, enough revelation about Jesus the healer that a guy who's never walked could get faith
to be healed.
And can you imagine that happening if Paul, as he was preaching, that there was pus running
out of his eyes, and he kept having to wipe his eyes.
"Jesus will heal you.
Oh, yuck.
Jesus will heal you.
He's the healer."
And that guy saying, "Oh yes, I believe, I believe."
How did Paul even see that the guy had faith if he had pus in his eyes?
That's another question for the theologians.
Oh my goodness, and these people would call themselves ministers.
You're not a minister.
You're the opposite of a minister when you're robbing people of their faith to receive from
God.
What he reveals from cover to cover is something he does all the time.
Shame on you.
Repent.
All right, so there you have it.
Paul was preaching the gospel and a guy got healed.
I'll just close on this.
That's why, you ever heard the phrase full gospel?
We're a full gospel church, or those are full gospel Christians?
That's where that phrase comes from, because there's a percentage of Christians that believe
that healing is in the atonement and that healing is available just like forgiveness
of sins is.
And if you're preaching that Jesus will only forgive your sins, that's not the full gospel,
but we preach the full gospel.
We tell people God will forgive them and God will heal them, okay.
So it's a little bit of a...
I don't think anyone should ever use that phrase myself, I'm a full gospel Christian,
because it's a little bit demeaning to the half gospel Christians, and so forth.
But, just in case you ever wondered, "What do they mean I'm a full gospel Christian?"
That's what they're talking about.
They're talking about this gospel that Paul apparently included healing, because a guy
had faith, got faith hearing Paul's gospel to be healed and walk, a guy that never walked.
So I guess we could say Paul was a full gospel preacher.
Okay.
That was number nine, only got one more.
One more.
And we could go on for a long time on this.
Okay, thanks for joining me.
Hope to see you next time.