New Thoughts (10/6/06-10/10/06)
At the time of these events, John is in prison. He is in prison because he has refused to lower his standards. He is in prison because he insists that God’s law applies equally to the powerful and the powerless. I sincerely doubt he has any misconceptions about what will happen to him because of this stance, and yet he stands firm. What a testimony! We usually think of Stephen as being the first martyr, but I think John could reasonably claim that privilege. True, he stands as the concluding remark on the old covenant, yet he also stands as the first messenger of the new. “Here is the One.” The king is come.
When we read here that he heard from his disciples that Jesus was doing marvelous things, and that he therefore sent off a couple of his disciples to ask questions, we need to understand that this is the same John who introduced the One he is sending them to. This sending is not some sign that his circumstances were causing him doubt. He is not sending them to seek after his rescue. He is not sending them for any need of his own, but for their need.
Matthew tells us that John heard of the works of Christ as he was held in prison. The historians suggest that this prison he was in was out on the borders of Galilee, where Herod was at war with his neighbors, so news might have taken a little longer to reach that place, let alone the prisons of that place. But, the news did come, and Matthew says John heard it. I would suggest that there is more to that hearing than simply acknowledging the report, more than having remained awake as his disciples spoke to him. No, he considered what was being told him, and considering it, he perceived the sense of the matter. He understood the importance of what he was hearing.
The forerunner was hearing news of the One he came to proclaim. He had declared, “He must increase, I must decrease” (Jn 3:30), and that prophetic message was clearly being fulfilled now. From his prison cell, John’s ability to inform and influence the people of God was clearly diminished and, as I have said, his prospects for a return to active ministry were slim. Jesus, on the other hand, was fully come into His own. This is what he heard from this news. The King was ministering in power. The kingdom of heaven was no longer near, it was here. It was also clear from the way his disciples spoke, that they still didn’t get it.
Well, even if he were stuck in this prison cell, John still recognized that he had a responsibility as the teacher of those disciples. He was a good teacher, and trustworthy. He would see to it that these students God had entrusted to him were fully taught before he was through, and there could be no better way to complete their teaching than to send them to the One who could take them further. It’s almost a graduation ceremony. He sends them with a question, but it is their own question. Perhaps they were not brave enough to ask Him on the basis of their own curiosity, but, sent as emissaries of John, they could do it.
John heard and he understood. Jesus was manifestly evident now as the Son of God, bearing the power of heaven which was His by right. His disciples were ready to graduate, ready to move from high school to college, as it were, but they didn’t realize it. They were too attached to their high school teacher, and couldn’t yet accept the idea of leaving him. They needed to see for themselves what the college campus was going to be like, so he sent them to have a look. He knew what they would see. They would see prophecy fulfilled. They would see Messiah, and having seen Him, they must surely understand that it was time to move on, to allow John’s decrease, and pursue their own increase in His presence. This would complete their learning, and he could head for home satisfied that he had done his job in full.
So, the two John chooses come to Jesus with their question, and Luke tells us that before they had a verbal reply, they had their answer. Even as they were asking, there was Jesus curing the sick and delivering the demon-afflicted. Right there as they watched, a blind man was given sight by this One they were asking. Well, was Jesus putting on some sort of show for them? Was He really doing all this just to establish His credentials in their eyes? No way! Jesus was doing what Jesus did on every occasion. He was ministering. He was declaring the fact that the kingdom of God was present. The fact that healing was coming and deliverance was being experienced served only to illustrate that greater truth.
The ministry of Jesus was never about healing and deliverance. These things happened constantly, of course. How could they not? Here was the Son of God, God who can abide no evil in His presence. Of course evil was cast out where He was. That doesn’t change. Where the Holy Spirit of God, God who can abide no evil in His presence, is, evil cannot long stand. It must depart for He will not. Yet, the ministry today is not about healing and deliverance, either. Healing and deliverance are not the message of the kingdom. They are not even the good news about the kingdom. They are simply the evidence that the kingdom is here. The good news is this: Not only is the kingdom here, but the king is pleased to offer you citizenship at no charge – great cost, but no charge. The King, who sent His messenger ahead to demand repentance, has now come with pardon in hand for those who repent. That’s the good news. There can be none greater! If we understand the Law of God, and that any least infraction against that Law leaves us guilty of the whole, then we must also understand that apart from some legal intervention, we are all guilty of capital offense against the King of heaven. The Good News is that the King of heaven has chosen to commute our sentence and provide for the required death penalty Himself.
What is healing next to this? What is deliverance next to this? Healing is but for a time, and eventually death will claim the physical body however healed we may be. Neither will the most powerful of deliverances prevent the grave. Granting sight to the blind is incredible, surely, but the one who can now see will be just as dead in a few decades’ time. Citizenship in heaven, however; adoption into the household of heaven’s great King; that’s something that will hold for eternity. Blind in this life or not, heaven remains. Whether I walk through this life in perfect health or ride through it in a wheelchair, heavenly citizenship is just as blessed a matter, and in the scales of eternity this brief excursion through the world will be as nothing.
We’ve got to stop getting so caught up in things that are but for a time and focus ourselves on matters eternal. We’ve got to stop mistaking the evidence for the point. The point of ministry must not be healing. Healing is temporary. The point of ministry is supposed to be about matters of eternal consequence. What use the healing of your toe if your soul is left to rot? What benefit is there to having a happier trip to hell?
God help us! We have gotten so far off track. Forgive us for the many ways we confuse Your simple message, and let us return to the Truth of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here! Yes, and praise be to Your name that You are willing and able to prove that point, but God! Get our eyes off of the proof and back on the kingdom that is proven! Get our eyes off of temporary relief and onto eternal rest in Your presence. Let us not exchange the great wealth of Your gracious forgiveness for trinkets of comfort.
So, here’s a question. If this matter of healing and deliverance had not served to fulfill prophecy, would Jesus have done it? I tend to think the answer is probably yes. I also tend to think the question is rather moot. The prophets declared what they saw, and what they saw was the reality of who God is. God is compassionate and merciful. As such, He could not have looked upon the suffering of Creation without feeling the need to do something about it. Indeed, the very fact of Messiah is the expression of His compassion. As such, there was no other way He could come except in compassion, healing and delivering. That said, the only way Jesus could have come and not healed is if God is not God.
Yet, Jesus does not come with a stage show. He is not doing the media circus thing. He is doing simply what comes naturally to the God of compassion and mercy. He is manifesting compassion and mercy. As the Creator incarnate within Creation, He comes with a unique capacity to make repairs on His creation. When He heals, He heals because He is healing. When He delivers, He delivers because He is deliverance. When He manifests the shalom of the Kingdom, it is because He is the Shalom of the Kingdom. Healing and deliverance are not the ends, they are the evidence.
In this case, God has so ordained and orchestrated events that the two whom John sent can witness that evidence. Why is that? Did He arrange all this just so they could be impressed? Did He arrange all this just so they could go back and tell John how they’d seen it all for themselves? John already knew it was real. He needed no further testimony. However, there’s a whole world out there that does. All of this was arranged because God was recruiting fresh laborers. Notice what Jesus has to say to these two, having made the kingdom manifest to them: “Go and report what you have seen and heard.” That’s the whole point, and to make sure they didn’t just go running off to tell everybody about this really cool healing ministry they had been to, He reminds them of the prophecies that were being fulfilled in their sight. He quotes from Isaiah for the very purpose of reminding them that the healings are the point, they are the sign pointing to the point. The point is Messiah is come, the Promises of God are still yea and amen, the Kingdom is not coming, it is here, and it is time to grasp it by force.
Listen, I know full well that there are those that go to this healing ministry or that in our day and really do experience healing. For many, this is going to be a statement that undermines my credibility. So be it. I must maintain, however, that the reality of God’s healing does not in and of itself establish the validity of the ministry. Yes, we are told signs and wonders will follow those who are preaching God’s Gospel. However, we are also told that the deceiver and his coworkers will come with signs and wonders as well. There is also the simple fact that God will gladly work His own good purpose even by means that seem offensive to us. The prophets in Israel were put off by the fact that God was willing to use such ungodly peoples to serve His purposes. How could this be? Yet, they came to accept the simple truth that Paul would later declare outright: God works all things for the good of those who serve Him.
Healing, in the end, has next to nothing to do with the ministry in which it happens, nor even all that much to do with the one who is healed. It has everything to do with God Who Heals. Deliverance has very little to do with the formulas and methods offered by various and sundry professionals in that area of ministry. Neither does it have all that much to do with the one delivered. It has everything to do with God Who Redeems.
“Go and report what you have witnessed,” He tells them. Do you really suppose that all He wanted them to say was that He was healing folks? No! John already knew all that, and so did everybody else. What He wanted reported was the Isaiah connection. The point is not that you have witnessed healing. The point is that you have witnessed prophecy fulfilled. The point is that you have witnessed Messiah in action. That is what the world needs to know. That is what you need to know.
Let’s face it, if the healings and deliverances we witnessed today were anything remotely like what these men saw, we would not need any prodding to go tell everybody about it. Let me tell you about a few that I have known. I have known a woman raised off her deathbed, healed of the symptoms of AIDS. Do you know what she is doing now? She’s not running around saying, “I’m healed! I’m healed!” Mind you, she’ll gladly tell you all about it at the drop of a hat, but she isn’t stopping there. She’s off being trained for ministry with an eye toward missions. She’s preparing herself to bear witness not to the healing, but to the Messiah.
I know another who suffered for years from Crohn’s disease. Doctors offered her great options like a colonoscopy as their best shot at helping. Yet, in the last five to ten years, I have watched the symptoms reduced to almost nil. Being married to the woman, I tend to know what she’s going through, and such symptoms as she suffered are pretty difficult to hide away. I can tell you, too, that her heart is all for serving God, and she, too, is doing what she can to prepare herself for greater use. She long since ceased from being a ministry junky. She may have respect for this ministry or that, but it has not been a ministry that healed her. It is God who has done this thing, and it is God who shall have the credit. She, too, will gladly report to anybody who cares to listen. She, too, will declare the God of heaven in answer to life’s trials.
See, if we are witness to the real deal, we cannot keep it to ourselves. God is recruiting. It’s all the fluff, all the maybe it was real maybe it wasn’t stuff that we won’t talk about. Why? Well, because we don’t really know for sure. Was that healing real, or was it staged? In too many cases, the answer has been the latter, and we know neither the healed or the healer well enough to know for ourselves. Here, where Jesus was at, those being healed were more or less local. The reality of the healing was not in question. When people are chasing all over the country to be one of the tens of thousands in attendance, who knows?
Just, go and report what you have witnessed. Have you witnessed healing? Fine. Go and report about the God who heals. Have you witnessed salvation? That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Go and report it. Have you met God in any way, shape or form? How can you keep from going and telling about it?
At the end of the day, it’s not about the healing. It’s not about fantastic praise and worship music, nor is it about majestic hymns done in the classical fashion. It’s not about great preaching and teaching. It’s about God. All of these things are tools in the service of declaring the God Who Is. All of these things are vehicles for delivering the Good News that the King of the Kingdom is here with Redemption in His hands. But, unless the tools are used to do the work, unless the vehicles are used to deliver the message, then they are all vanity and wind.
Turning to the final word Jesus gives to these two men, it seems so odd. “Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over Me.” Given His actions at the time He is speaking, it’s rather difficult to see anything that anybody would be stumbling over. What cause is there to distrust what should be trusted just because God is healing people? Yet, the implication is that this is exactly what will transpire. In spite of the fact that Jesus does nothing other than making God manifest, that very activity will cause many to abandon God.
My, what a rich minefield I step into here! Let me start back in the middle of that paragraph. What cause is there to distrust what should be trusted just because God is healing people? Given what I have been writing, that sentence comes as a warning to me. I see that I can be too quick to judge. As with the message found in the three women who provided for the ministry (Lk 8:1-3), here, too, the message to me is to step back a bit. So, on balance I must accept that the simple fact that a ministry has focused on healing does not provide sufficient cause to distrust the ministry any more than it provided sufficient cause to trust it. And, odd though it sounds, I see that where such ministries do prove to be false to God, they do an even greater disservice, for they cause God’s people to distrust the reality of healing because of their chicanery.
So, let it be put thus: if there is a ministry out there which is truly bringing healing and deliverance in the Lord’s name, let us rejoice with that ministry! And, should that ministry prosper because those who have seen their lives changed by the God whom they minister show their gratitude by providing support to that ministry, let us rejoice once more with that ministry and the God they serve! However, if such a ministry is real, then surely those whom they have healed will stand up to medical scrutiny. If the evidence doesn’t support the claim, we must be deeply suspicious, no? I cannot imagine my God being so capricious as to provide healing, but in a fashion that cannot be recognized. I can fully imagine a healing that the medical professionals cannot understand, but one they cannot detect? It fails to support the purpose of healing! What use a testimony that nobody can testify to?
Oh, but I must not stumble because of this thing. God does heal, and I have seen sufficient evidence of that to know it true. I will not cheapen that by attributing every least recovery from injury or sniffle to miraculous intervention, yet neither shall I cheapen God by denying His providence even in these things. Had He not been so meticulous in His design of this body then no cut would ever heal, no rash ever clear. Look at the impact of AIDS, when things that were once innocuous become life-threatening. The impact of disorder on the body make all the more clear just how marvelously and wondrously made we were at the start.
Enough. Let me return to the second thought in that minefield. These false practitioners who claim healing in the Lord’s name when nothing has transpired are worse than charlatans. They are antichrist operatives, for they cause belief to stumble. Those whose trust should be in the Lord put their trust instead on these con artists, and then, when they discover the con lose trust not only in the perpetrator, but in God as well. Having been fooled of their healing once by a fool, they can no longer believe the Lord Our Healer can or does heal.
So, coming back to the verse at hand, Jesus says that there are those who will stumble over Him, and He delivers this message in the context of ministering healing and deliverance. My, my, my. Do you know that even in His day, there were those who had shifted their trust from God to man? Recall that there was a strong streak of Hellenization in Jewish society at the time. Many had left behind the truth of the Torah for the philosophies of man. Science was emerging. Luke himself was a physician, don’t forget. He was trained in methods of repairing the body, and therefore positioned to be rather skeptical of any claims of miraculous cures. Many in Israel would be thinking along similar lines. It was no longer all that fashionable to believe in demonic interference. It was not sufficiently logical. The enlightened mind simply could not accept such explanations, and failing of the explanation for a cause, could hardly be expected to accept it as explanation for the cure.
Oh, they would stumble. There would also be those who stumbled merely because of His timing and His priorities, but that, it seems to me, is a different matter than He has in sight here.
Blessed is he who does not stumble because Messiah is Who He Is. They sought for a King and they got a Doctor. They sought for a Warrior and they got a Healer. They had set their expectations for what Messiah would be, and many would stumble when He turned out to be something quite different than they expected.
This is a great problem for the Church in our day. So many have their own expectations of Who Jesus is. So many have redefined Him to match their own agendas and opinions that they are offended when faced with the real deal. Their trust should be in the Lord, but faced with the full reality of His being; faced with His justice alongside His love, they cannot accept Him.
Oh, my Lord! I see so much cause for examination here. Holy One, if in any way I have failed to believe You are Who You are, correct me. If I have in any way limited my perception of You by my own notions and preferences, open my eyes to the fullness of Your reality. Likewise, if my opinions have led me to malign any true servant in Your house, let my opinions be changed in me. Show me, my Lord, anyplace in me that is allowing truth to be set aside for opinion. Show me, my Lord, anything in me that has believed a lie, for I would not stumble over You, but embrace You fully.
For this verse, I find I actually quite like the Amplified Version. Look at this! Lk 7:23 And blessed (happy — with life-joy and satisfaction in God's favor and salvation, apart from outward conditions — and to be envied) is he who takes no offense in Me and who is not hurt or resentful or annoyed or repelled or made to stumble [whatever may occur]. Wow! There’s a lot to chew on, isn’t there? Blessed with life; blessed with joy and satisfaction in God’s favor, in salvation, quite apart from outward conditions. There’s the mystery of contentment again! In light of what I have been writing about, this is so fitting. Indeed, it confirms what I have been saying. It’s not about the healing and the deliverance, the healing and the deliverance are about the Kingdom. But, the key to the Gospel is not the healing and deliverance, it’s the fact of God’s favor and God’s salvation. Now, notice that once again: It is satisfaction quite apart from outward conditions. In other words, even had He not healed, even had He not delivered, yet as one to whom He has brought salvation, as one who abides in His favor, I am so utterly blessed that I cannot find the least little thing to complain about! Were I to go through the rest of life lamed as Jacob was, still I would know myself blessed beyond my wildest imagination. Though He slay me, yet I would trust Him, because I know my Redeemer lives, and as He lives, so shall I live. Now, that is blessed!
Then comes the second half: He takes no offense in Me. He is not hurt or resentful or annoyed or repelled or made to stumble in any other fashion by Me. And this shall be true whatever may occur. Whatever God may choose to do near me, in me, to me or through me, I shall not allow myself to feel hurt or resentful over it. There’s a tall order! Whatever prayers of mine He may answer, and however much it may sting as He does so, I shall not be annoyed when He does, nor shall I be repelled. Oof! Now, it gets really hard. I’ve seen this play out in my own life when I’ve allowed myself to pray dangerous prayers. My! How He listens when we pray what He wants prayed! My! How gladly He answers. But, My, how soon we forget. The answer comes and we’re all about complaining because He’s being so mean. No, not at all. He is simply answering our prayers. Praise be to His Holy name that He does not leave us in our anger, but gently reminds us of what we had asked for. Then, suddenly comes a peace, a contentment even in the midst, because we understand what Daddy is doing, and we know it is good.
When I look across the verses that are given as parallels to this closing message of Christ, the message becomes almost overwhelming. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD, for this is He of whom it is written, “I send My messenger ahead of You to prepare Your way.” Yes, and they saw the sign He had done and recognized that here was a true Prophet of God. Indeed, and I believe, as they believed, that You are the Christ, God’s Son come to the world even as He promised, and that in just a short while, you will come again. No, You will not delay. Truly, we can agree with Jesus that we, who have not stumbled because of Him and lost faith in the God Who Is are truly blessed, truly to be envied!
Once again, as I look across those verses, I notice that God did not leave us to follow after Him in blind faith. He is forever giving proofs of His truth. Just as Jesus provided John’s disciples with the evidence they needed in order to understand Who He is, so He does for us today. He does not ask us to believe in Him in spite of everything. He asks us to believe in Him because of everything. Here is another need for the prayer that seeks wisdom. It is by His gracious gift that we are able to recognize and understand the many proofs He has given. It is because He honors those who seek His wisdom by giving of His wisdom that we can join with Mary in her confession of faith. Even as she bore up under the sorrow of burying her brother, when this One came to her she could say, “I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God.” There is just the slightest echo of Job in that, “Though He slay my brother, yet will I trust Him.” Yes, and even if He takes me, too, I will continue to trust Him, for I know He is the Son of God come into the world; and knowing Him, I know God is faithful to His promise, for here, in His blessed Son, is the evidence. I believe because I have every reason to believe, and no good reason not to.
