Is healing in the atonement?
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson.
This is actually part three of our attempt to answer that important question, is healing
in the atonement.
I'm so glad you're still with me because this is a controversial one and we want to be gracious
and merciful towards those who would detract, but it's worth our time.
People say, oh you should not be going into that, that's dangerous, you're going to give
people hope.
Well, we sure don't want to give anybody who is ill hope that God might want to heal, we
sure wouldn't want to do that.
Yeah, because, again, the reason people caution against that is because they'll say then if
they die, it'll hurt their faith.
Well, how about looking at it from the other way.
What if there's promises in the Bible like bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is
within me, bless the Lord oh my soul, and let me not forget any of your benefits who
forgives all your iniquities and who heals all your diseases.
Now, what if there's a promise in the Bible like that, which you probably figured out
that there is, and your preaching ministry or your teaching ministry is all about how
God won't heal us, or why God won't heal us, or why we shouldn't expect God to heal us?
Whose side are you on, buddy?
And what are you going to say when you stand before Jesus and you say, well I just didn't
want to give people false hope?
The Lord's going to say false hope in my promise, promises from cover to cover.
One tenth of everything I revealed about Jesus Christ in the four gospels concerns his healing
ministry and you didn't want to fill anybody with hope less they get disappointed.
I wouldn't want to be you standing in front of Jesus one day.
All right, so stick with me here.
I wasn't born yesterday.
We're going to read from Isaiah chapter 53, the most famous Old Testament chapter.
Universally agreed by all Christians of all denominations that this is a prophetic chapter
about the coming Messiah and what he would do for us.
You'll recognize it immediately.
Isaiah 53 verse number one, "Who has believed our message?"
I'm reading from the New American Standard, "and to whom has the arm of the Lord been
revealed.
For he," real soon we find out that's Jesus, "grew up before him," that's the God the father,
"like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground.
He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that
we should be attracted him.
He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and like
one from whom men hide their face.
He was despised and we did not esteem him."
Do you recognize this?
If you've been a Christian for a couple of years, surely you've heard this passage, okay.
Then we come to verse number four.
"Surely our griefs he himself bore."
Here's an atonement going on.
Now Jesus is bearing our griefs and our sorrows.
He carries.
See Jesus was our substitute.
He bore our sorrows, our griefs.
"We ourselves esteemed him, smitten, excuse me stricken, smitten of God and afflicted,
but he was pierced through," now this is verse five, "he was pierced through for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The chastening for our wellbeing fell upon him and by his scourging we are healed."
I'll just read a little bit further.
You can read the whole chapter some other time.
"All of us, like sheep, have gone astray."
Have you ever heard this before?
"Each of us has turned to his own way," but listen to this.
Here's the atonement, "but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him."
Your iniquity, my inequity, it fell on Jesus.
That was his atoning death and sacrifice that made every blessing possible that God's extending
towards you and me and the whole world.
We're in agreement.
There's nobody who could disagree at this point in time that Isaiah 53 is talking about
the ministry, the atoning sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and much more of course.
All right, so I'm going to back up now and show you something that we just read right
in the verse before that says all of us like sheep have gone astray, each one of us has
turned his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to follow him.
That's Isaiah 53:5.
Let's read Isaiah 53:4 again.
"Surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried."
Nobody can argue, nobody can argue who's a Bible believer, who's says they're a professing
Christian, that Jesus just like he bore our inequities as we read in verse five, he also
bore our griefs and our sorrows.
Right?
That's right.
Nobody can argue that.
But here's where it gets very interesting because in the New American Standard there's
a little number one by the word Greece there in Isaiah 53:4.
If you go to your margin it says, and I'm going to do that now with my Little Bible
program, literally the word is translated in most other places where it's found in the
Hebrew Old Testament as sickness.
I think 14 times in other places in the Old Testament where you would find that Hebrew
word, choli, C-H-O-L-I.
I may not be pronouncing it right.
It doesn't make any difference.
Fourteens times is translated sickness.
One time is translated sicknesses.
One time is translated sick.
Three times is translated illness.
Two times it's translated disease.
Are you getting the drift here?
Only one time is it translated grief and only one time is it translated griefs, and one
time it's translated affliction.
There you have it.
I could take you, and you can do your own study.
I could take you, but you could go through the Old Testament and find every place where
that word choli is found and you can see how obviously a clear meaning of that word normally
is the word sickness.
God said, "I'll take sickness out of the midst of you and I'll put none of the diseases on
you which I've put on the Egyptians."
That's I think in Deuteronomy chapter seven or Exodus 23, one of those places.
Clearly, God's talking about sickness there, irrefutably.
So, why did the translators of many translations translate it griefs?
Well, because maybe they don't want it to say sickness I suppose.
Then you keep on going.
Surely our sickness he himself bore and our sorrows he carried.
That word sorrows in the Hebrew is the word makob, and I may not be pronouncing it right
but it's M-A-K-O-B, and it's translated, you find it in other places, a few other places
in the Old Testament and 10 times that word makob is not translated sorrows it's translated
pain, 10 times.
Once it's translated painful.
You see?
An alternate reading of Isaiah 53:4, which we've all agreed it's irrefutable that Jesus
bore our griefs and our sorrows, an alternate translation is that Jesus just like he bore
our iniquities, no difference at all in any delineation here by Isaiah, just as he bore
our inequities he also bore our sicknesses and our pains.
Okay.
That's something to think about because that means that there's something in the atonement
of Christ that includes sickness and pains.
That's good news for people that have sickness and pain.
Now we're out of time for today's little lesson, but if you think this was juicy, wait till
the next little lesson.
Oh my goodness I'm going to drop the bomb.
Okay, so don't miss it.
God bless you.