Teaching for Intercession 21.04.06

10. Unhealing and Corruption

Unhealed Sickness

Question: Why does God not heal more people?  Cancer is a word and not a sentence but it has a strong fear base.  What does cancer signify?  It signifies powerlessness and therefore a fear of death.  Similarly, psychiatric disorders also communicate powerlessness

 

Romans 5:5-6    ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.   ⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

2 Corinthians 12:9    ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

God visited us in Christ when we were weak and powerless which is what people sense when they are sick so there is a perfection of power in the weakness of humanity.  People are not expecting miracles but if we are in Christ we should be “standing in the shoes of the miracle maker” (line from a Stuart Townsend song).   Theologians talk about the communicable and non-communicable properties of God’s healing power – those things God can or cannot share with us.  Pray for an impartation of healing power in the Church community

2 Peter 1:3   ³ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,

God is the provider but we are fearful of death and want to extend life yet we do not cry out expecting a miracle..

2 Chronicles 16:12   ¹² In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.

2 Kings 20:1-3   ¹ In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ ” ² Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying, ³ “Now, O Lord, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Asa did not seek healing from God but Hezekiah did.

1 Samuel 4:3   ³ And when the troops came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”

1 Samuel 5:9   ⁹ But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic, and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them.

1 Samuel 6:2-5   ² And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.” ³ They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you.” ⁴ And they said, “What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?” They answered, “Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. ⁵ So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land.

The Ark was the throne of God so when the glory of God came into the enemy camp it killed people.

1 Corinthians 11:27-32   ²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Vs.30 ‘weak’ is the same Greek word for weakness in 2 Cor.12:9.  In Corinth, in the same congregation, God was both healing and killing them because of their back-biting and criticism in much the same way as happens in Churches today

Ephesians 3:21   ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 3:16   ¹⁶ Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
¹⁷ If anyone destroys (Gk. “Corrupt”) God’s temple, God will destroy (Gk. “Corrupt”) him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Today the glory of God is in the Church (community) and the Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 25:34-36    ³⁴ Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Not recognising that the Church herself is sick, naked and in prison has led to an abuse of the power available to us in weakness by using God as a genie for miracles and healing at specific times and in specific ways and places, whereas the Ark – God’s presence  – demands the honouring of God’s glory at all times.

Hebrews 10:28-29   ²⁸ Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.   ²⁹ How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

1 Corinthians 3:16-17    ¹⁶ Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

The Greek word for destroy means ‘corrupt’ rather than ‘annihilate.

2 Peter 1:3-4   ³ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, ⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

‘Divine power’ has to be eternal life, to become partakers of divine nature means to escape corruption.  God destroys him who destroys by the manner in which he destroys, i.e. If you bring corruption in to the church, God will destroy you by corruption which could be giving us over to moral, bodily or financial corruption.

1 Corinthians 15:42-44    ⁴² So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.  ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

‘Perishable’ also the same word for corruptible.  Whatever one brings in to the Church, God will give one over to in life.

Galatians 6:8    ⁸ For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

There is a lot of corruption in the Church of a physical, moral and spiritual form and it is the power of God which frees us from that corruption of desire where we want to live longer, be happier, have a bigger Church, be in control etc.

Jeremiah 8:18-22    ¹⁸ My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me. ¹⁹ Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” “Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols?” ²⁰ “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (healed).” ²¹ For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded; I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me. ²² Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?

There are some people who genuinely want to see others healed, but in a typical Western style, people want to sustain their lives in a corrupt world.  This has something to do with glory.

2 Chronicles 16:12   ¹² In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.

Asa did not want to give glory to God and the Philistines didn’t understand the glory of God, neither did the Church inCorinthunderstand the glory of God was in their midst.

Philippians 1:20,23    ²⁰ as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death.  ²³ I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

Many Christians do not believe they would be better off dead in glory.  People strive in their own strength to build churches, make more money etc., and they burn out because God gives them over to corruption.

2 Chronicles 16:2-3    ² Then Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king’s house and sent them to Ben-hadad king of Syria, who lived in Damascus, saying, ³ “There is a covenant between me and you, as there was between my father and your father. Behold, I am sending to you silver and gold. Go, break your covenant with Baasha king of Israel, that he may withdraw from me.”

Asa eventually hardened his heart in unbelief relying on a foreign power instead of God and using the temple treasuries to achieve victory.

2 Chronicles 16:9   ⁹ For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.”

God gave Asa over to the corruption of his own heart.

Genesis 6:11-12    ¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

Why had all flesh become corrupted when they had previously walked in the glory of God?

1 Corinthians 11:7   ⁷ For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

If man is the image and glory of God, why does he crave power and self-glorification?

Hebrews 3:13   ¹³ But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Because his heart has been hardened.

Isaiah 58:6-8⁶ “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?   ⁸ Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

The fast is going without something so that someone else can benefit. God gave Adam and Eve a fast to observe – the fruit of the tree of good and evil – which they failed to keep, so all flesh became corrupted.

Philippians 2:5-11   ⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

John 17:5     ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Karl Barth said about Jesus that His whole life (the incarnation) was a fast from eternal glory.

Romans 1:20-23    ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

They saw God’s power but did not understand His glory, which was in the tree, because it was part of God’s wisdom, goodness and will.  Adam and Eve did not thank God for their deprivation from the tree nor understand that it was part of His glory.  Fallen people do not give God thanks for deprivation or weakness and quickly disempowered when in the presence of superior characters e.g. if Mr or Miss Universe walked into the room, or Einstein, or the pastor of the world’s largest church….) but when God was walking with Adam and Eve before the fall, they felt glory.

1 Corinthians 11:7    ⁷ For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

If one is in the image of God, one can receive the glory.  When God walked with Adam and Eve, they had all the power they needed to have dominion because the glory imparts power.  Satan, masking himself as a superior character, walks in and questions what God said.  Eve felt inadequate and disempowered and although God had said they could not eat, she says they cannot touch the fruit.  Glory is associated with feelings when people want things.

Genesis 2:9     ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Eve, feeling restrained and powerless because she cannot even touch the fruit responds to the devil’s offer of power, glory and wisdom of the world, i.e. for themselves.

Philippians 2:6    ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

Jesus was in the form of God; Adam was in the image of God and Adam tries to grasp equality with God which Jesus doesn’t.  Adam aspires to the likeness of God in pride, is debased and loses the glory; but Jesus takes on the likeness of men in humility (cross), is exalted and glorifies the Father.  Jesus disempowered Himself in His Godhead and became powerful in His humanity whereas Adam sought to be like God and was disempowered in his humanity.  There was no blessing in the breaking of Adam and Eve’s fast, there was only a curse.  Had they not broken the fast they would have entered into the knowledge of good and evil.  God would have broken their fast and given them revelation about good and evil and the snake.  The knowledge of good and evil is not the problem (Gen 3:22), it is only evil when it is sought for self-glorification.  If by faith they had resisted the tempter, God would have revealed to them that the tempter was evil.  The revelation of evil is part of the glory of God and if one wants to have power over evil one needs the revelation of evil and that evil destroys the glory of God in humanity.  If God reveals the nature of evil to people, their hearts would not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin which is to rationalise evil and resist the Word of God as happened in Eden, Israelin the wilderness etc.

Acts 10:38   ³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

Satan is the fountainhead of evil and corruption because he is the father of evil – he fathers corruption.  If Adam and Eve had obeyed and trusted in God’s word, they would have had revelation.  They would have had insight into evil and into the compulsiveness, deceit and profanity.

Hebrews 10:29   ²⁹ How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

Holy and Unholy Power

Is power neutral or is some power holy and some unholy?  Can one have holy power in an unholy person?  Yes, because the power is holy but corruption is in the person.

 

Acts 12:23    ²³ Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

Herod was raised up by God but he never gave glory to God unlike Paul who when charged with being a god, quickly tore his clothes and denied the power was his.  Power over people is where the corruption comes in.  Is Satan’s intelligence a good thing?  Yes, but it is misused.

Genesis 3:10   ¹⁰ And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

God had not given Adam and Eve power over death and corruption because whilst they were without sin they didn’t need it.  Sin revealed a lack of power over shame, sickness, evil and death.

Numbers 20:9-12   ⁹ And Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he commanded him. ¹⁰ Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” ¹¹ And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock ¹² And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

Moses used God’s power as common, Balaam was another example of using God’s power for his own ends, and God showed His holiness by judging Moses.  In Corinth, they are a holy temple and God will show His holiness by healing and killing them because His power is always holy power in a holy person.  He cannot be corrupted.  Moses duplicated his act because it worked the first time, but in an unholy manner by striking the rock twice.   Unholy use of God’s power will bring judgment on the person and on those who immitate that person.  The Israelites also eventually treated the Ark as sympathetic magic.  People try to have power over God through various magical forms because they know they don’t have power over corruption and evil.  They know they must die because they know they are guilty.  God cannot be corrupted because He can never use His power for Himself and that is His glory as expressed in the cross.  If God judges people, He does so as a manifestation of His glory because the image of God is indestructible.  But the image can lose the glory and that is the pain.  When a person is sick, ashamed, powerless etc, they sense the loss of glory and will do anything to be glorious, i.e. consult physicians like Asa etc.  However, weakness does not convey these things to the other image of God, which is Christ.

2 Corinthians 8:9    ⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

When Jesus became weak, this didn’t convey to Him a loss of glory but a means by which to restore glory to humanity, to actually renew the image of humanity and restore the glory of God.  God is incorruptible in Himself but he is not incorruptible in the flesh of another, that is in human flesh.

John 1:14   ¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Flesh has as its essential background the meaning “weakness”.  So Jesus came to enter into our weakness (flesh) which means mortal, limited, subject to death, temptation etc.  He immersed Himself in corruptibility.

Power and the Cross

Luke 23:35    ³⁵ And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”

Matthew 27:42   ⁴² “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.

The question could be asked, “Where is the power of God?”.  The power of God on the cross is to be powerless.  What was God’s holiness doing while Jesus was on the cross – was Jesus crying out for power or glory?  The power of God on the cross was to be supremely powerless.  What was Jesus waiting on the cross for?

Isaiah 58:6-8⁶ “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?   ⁸ Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Genesis 2:16-17   ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,  ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Jesus is in the supreme fast on the cross.  The fast from glory.  Acts 10:38   ³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

When Jesus is on the cross, in the supreme moment of the atonement, He has no sense of God with Him to overcome evil by Holy power.  There was no revelation to Jesus of the glory of God, which was His supreme concern, because it is hidden from Jesus..  God is incorruptible because He always uses His power for the glory of another.  He is supremely powerful in having power over Himself and in not delivering Jesus from the cross.

Human Corruptibility

Where is the centre of corruptibility in humanity?  In sin, people have no power over themselves, they only have power for themselves for their self-glorification.  If Herod’s crowd had said, “Look what God has given to Herod”.  Whenever glory is given to man because of the confusion about the origin of power, God will judge because they are robbing God of glory and people of the glory of God and substituting the glory of God for the glory of man which is what Adam and Eve and Asa did.

In the cross the whole trinity has such power over itself that God’s supreme power of love is not communicated internally within the humanity of Christ.  That is, there is a cessation of the flow of the eternal glory in the trinity so that it may be restored to humanity, i.e. God fathers powerlessness and so destroys the power of the devil because He fathers powerlessness in Himself for others.  The power of the devil is that he deceives Adam and Eve and humanity by tempting them to be powerful in and for themselves to the exclusion of the glory of God.  The Father finds an obedient son in whom he can be powerless for the glory of man.  The key is glory and seeking the glory of another.  Moses got too strong but Jesus agreed to go into any state to see humanity glorified.  Sickness etc, does not bring glory to the resurrected Christ because it is not participation in the new image but power over all forms of corruption gives glory to the resurrected Christ and that could mean not fearing cancer.  If you don’t fear cancer you don’t fear the sentence because as a holy person in Christ, one has supreme authority over all forms of weakness of which there are two forms, an inglorious and glorious weakness.  A glorious weakness is Christ dwelling in one’s heart by faith and an inglorious weakness is Adam dwelling in one’s heart by unbelief.

Power and Discernment

1 Corinthians 11:27-32   ²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

In Corinth there was no discernment or discrimination where God was both killing and healing people.  Why didn’t they see this and why did they need the apostle to tell them what is happening in terms of the operation of the power of God in healing and destroying?

 

Ephesians 3:5   ⁵ which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

Jesus feels entirely common because in His holiness He discerns the complete absence of God’s power to deliver Him.  Paul was holy because he was continually disempowered by a thorn and kept in the consciousness of his weakness.  When men feel powerful, they cease to think as holy men and they lose discernment.  God’s power is always dynamically active, either in judgment or healing, He is never apathetic or passive.  Healing evangelism is a manifestation of the new image of the resurrected man in Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 38:1-5     ¹ In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.” ² Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, ³ and said, “Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. ⁴ Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: ⁵ “Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.

Although God changed His mind for Hezekiah , he did not give God the glory, He will not change His mind today because His will has been given in His final Word in Jesus.