Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, Sunday, August 28, 2022

Why Sometimes God Heals and Why Sometimes He Doesn’t.

Today, Pastor Michael is back in the book of Mark.  Being the fast paced Gospel, we have to pay attention to Jesus’ ministry, where he’s healing people, left and right!

Jesus is healing folks and there is no rest in His work.   Everyone’s here and we need healing!  Yet, we need to rethink our assumptions on healing.  For one thing, we assume healing should be the norm.  Healing did NOT happen all the time; it was a rare occurrence.

We also assume healing is the proof that God loves us.  But the idea that God should just give us what we want: is that really a mature way to view God?   

The biggest assumption of all: We assume that healing is always the best thing that could happen.

(CSB Baker Illustrated Bible Study Notes) 1:29–34. “As soon as” (1:29) contributes to the sense of urgency: the time is at hand (1:15) for the authority of God’s Son to bear witness to the gospel. Close to the synagogue is Peter’s house, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever (1:30–31). The Greek word for “serve” (1:31) is diakoneō, from which “deacon” is derived. Mark’s use of this word to describe Peter’s mother-in-law serving the company following her healing may have been included to remind the members of the church in Rome to which he is writing to use the gifts, health, and opportunities God gives each believer to serve the Christian community in tangible ways. What Jesus has done to one person in healing Peter’s mother-in-law he now does to the whole community (1:32–34a).

After sunset on Saturday, Sabbath prohibitions against work and travel ceased, and Capernaum shows up en masse with people suffering from a host of physical and demonic maladies. Mark closes the day’s activities in Capernaum with a reference to Jesus’s forbidding the demons to speak (1:34b). This unexpected command seems to contradict Jesus’s mission to proclaim and promote the kingdom of God, but it serves a greater purpose until his identity will be fully revealed on the cross.

The healing ministry of Jesus wasn’t really about healing.  It was about leading people to spiritual redemption. 

Healing doesn’t come in the forms we expect it, nor in the time we think it should.

Verses can be found today in Mark  1: 29-32.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.