Saturday, January 11, 2014
Mark 7:33-35 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
JESUS THE HEALER
If Jesus could heal at will, why didn't he heal everyone, [snap] just like that?
Jesus didn't heal people in a "wholesale" way for a very important reason--his ministry wasn't all about healing the sick. That was part of His ministry, but it was not the main point. Jesus' ministry was all about the message that He was preaching. Above all He wanted people to know how heaven is reached -- through the Savior that God sent.
When Adam and Eve sinned the first time, the ancient disease called sin entered the world. With sin came symptoms like blindness, deafness, paralysis, AIDS, heart disease, flu, muscle pain, back aches, allergies, etc.
Sometimes Western medicine gets black labeled as "only treating the symptoms", not the inner physical breakdowns that cause the symptoms. But really, all human medicine is only treating the symptoms--the symptoms of sin.
Every time Jesus healed someone's illness or deformity, he was treating a symptom. But Jesus wasn't only interested in treating symptoms. He came to kill the disease.
The problem with sinners is that the God of justice has to punish them. If he didn't, he wouldn't be just. He'd be like a corrupt judge that lets a case go without justice being served.
So, God the Son became human so he could take the punishment for our sins on himself. While Jesus was being crucified he was also experiencing the horrific punishment due for every sin. The ones you committed yesterday. The one's you'll commit tomorrow. All have been suffered for already, by God's sinless Son.
During his ministry, Jesus treated the symptoms of sin so that people would believe that he was here to kill the disease.
