Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the 16th part of our series on Transformation second part of our look at the physical body and health. Last time we saw that although Yahweh is not the author of illness He sometimes uses it to advance His purposes. We also saw that true Christianity/Messianism is not a healing or happiness cult but has, as its chief purpose, to make us qadosh, 'set apart', or holy. We also looked at the two doctrinal camps of Continuationism & Cessationism in the Body of Christ and examined the character of Elohim (God) to see that healing was, and still is, given to mankind first and foremost out of divine compassion and not primarily to prove who Yahweh is even though supernatural healing very much demonstrates what one of His divine attributes is.

Today I would like to begin by answering a question that people sometimes ask which is this: does the atonement of Yah'shua (Jesus) cover our physical as well as our spiritual needs? I'll let you answer that question for yourselves by reading you part of that great messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53, with the emphasis of verse 5 (in bold text), and then we'll look into the matter in greater detail:

"Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And Yahweh has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
And they made His grave with the wicked--
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth" (Is.53:1-9, NKJV).

Aside from there being obvious differences between the physical and the spiritual, it's clear that Yahweh-Elohim has a twin answer for the two evils that afflict man which he himself has produced in this universe - sin and sickness - and as we have seen in the passage in Isaiah, both have been fully met in the Cross. There Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) took upon Himself everything that would, and does, fall upon us, and suffered with us and for us. As one writer beautifully put it:

"There (at the cross) the world's sin and suffering were forced through the channel of a single heart."

There are some believers who think that verse 5 of Isaiah 53 only applies to spiritual healing and has nothing to do with our physical afflictions. So let me read it to you again using a different translation and you decide:

"But He was wounded for our transgressions [of the Torah mitzvot/commandments], crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed" (Is.53:5, NRSV).

The fact of the matter is that Yah'shua (Jesus) partly fulfilled this prophecy, when He healed the sick, is made pretty clear in the Gospel of Matthew:

"When evening had come, they brought to Him (Yah'shua/Jesus) many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the navi (prophet), saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses'" (Mt.8:16-17, NKJV).

As Matthew saw the sick threading their way to Christ for healing, he was inspired by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) to relate the scene to Isaiah's prediction, which had been given centuries before. Healing of the body is an integral part of Messiah's sacrifice on the cross and, through it, He has provided an open door of release from the sicknesses and infirmities (physical weaknesses) of life. It is up to us to learn to walk through that door into the radiant health which Yah'shua (Jesus) can provide. The big question that follows, if we accept healing as something Yahweh absolutely wants us to have, is understanding the 'how'?

Last week I told you I was no expert in this subject and that I labour under the burden of chronic illness myself so this is as much a renewed exploration for me as I hope it will be for you...unless, of course, you have already come to understanding and experienced healing, in which case I should be coming to you for counsel, which I am more than willing to do. My task at this stage is simply to lay out the plain Bible teaching on the subject.

Let us be agreed, then, that Elohim (God) is intensely interested in the subject of our physical health. To take this a step further, let's now turn to a couple more texts from Scripture. For the first one, we shall return to Isaiah, to chapter 49 and verse 15:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I (Yahweh) will not forget you" (Is.49:15, NKJV).

The second is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verses 1-13, with the emphasis being on the last of these verses:

"Now it came to pass, as He (Yah'shua/Jesus) was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His talmidim (disciples) said to Him, 'Master, teach us to pray, as John also taught his talmidim (disciples).' So He said to them, 'When you pray, say:

Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be Your name (Yahweh).
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us day by day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.'

"And He said to them, 'Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'? I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.

"'So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent (snake) instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) to those who ask Him!'" (Luke 11:1-13, NKJV).

These two texts express quite clearly the masculine and feminine characteristics of Elohim (God). His ahavah (love) is said to surpass that of an earthly father and mother. The marvelous revelation on the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) is that Elohim (God) in Christ is no longer the unapproachable One of Sinai, but has become a Man like us - in everything except sin. The mission of Yah'shua (Jesus) was to share our sufferings and sorrows, then transform them into a new life for the healing of spirit, mind, heart and body.

On the one hand, the inspiration of Elohim (God) in Christ brought into this world has encouraged men and women to build hospitals, establish clinics, and to travel the world with the message that Elohim (God) really cares. Only non-Christian religions let people die on the streets, believing it to be the will of their god that they suffer their afflictions in silence (often because of a belief in karma and reincarnation). The Christian/Messianic Gospel reaches out to bring healing in every way possible (through prayer, medicine, surgery, etc.) based on the assumption that it is Yahweh's will that we combat sickness and disease in every way possible.

That doesn't mean we are to give carte blanche to all types of conventional 'medicine'. Most of us here know that some modern 'cures' are almost as bad, if not worse, that some of the old superstitions like 'bleeding' and the use of 'leeches', and of course I am thinking of some of the pharamceutical treatments, for example, for the treatment of cancer. Now, to be sure, we can find much fault with conventional medicine which seems, in many instances, to be more interested in treating symptoms than in seeking cures, instead of being more proactive in preventitive medicine by changing eating habits and improving lifestyle choices in general. Clearly obeying the mitzvot (commandments) of the Torah, including Yahweh's Kashrut or dietary code, plays a very important part in the maintenance of good health. There is much that is wrong with the 21st century medical profession but equally there is much that is very excellent. Think of the millions of lives saved by quinine and paracetamol, for instance. Luke, whom we cited earlier, was a physician himself and continued his vocation whilst penning the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, two very important books indeed. His medical services were not incompatible with the Besorah (Gospel) and divine healing. And as I said last week, I owe my life to some very competent surgeons here in Sweden.

So those who teach that sickness and suffering are placed upon us by Elohim (God), produce in their hearts a kind of spiritual schizophrenia. On the one hand, they see doctors and nurses tirelessly giving themselves to the work of healing the sick while they themselves are taught that Elohim (God) is the Author of it. If sickness is the will of Elohim (God) then no doctor, however skilled he is, can ever hope to remove it. Which is not to say that doctors can heal everything because we know they can't, or else their success in healing any particular illness is only a statistical probability. Which brings us into an area of complexity which we must deal with honestly here.

There are many reasons why people are not healed and perhaps some other time we can review these in detail but in the second half of today's message I want to at least deal with the two major ones. These are:

• 1. A false view of Elohim (God); and
• 2. A subconscious desire to remain sick for attention-getting purposes.

Some people, because of deep emotional damage in their developmental years, have a false view of Elohim (God), which is drawn largely from a poor image of their parents or foster parents. They view Yahweh as someone who is intent on punishing them, and this punative image of Elohim (God) encourages them to hold on to their sickness as a form of self-punishment. (There may be other psychological reasons which again for lack of time we can't tackle today). The conditioning a child receives, in a bad parent-child relationship, is often responsible for that child, when it is an adult, being unable to accept the blessings of health in the way Yahweh delights to give. They simply cannot conceive of an Elohim (God) who is good enough to give them health, and thus they fail to reach out, and receive from His hand the blessings He so graciously offers. This unconscious resistance, and inability to receive, can sometimes block the healing power of Elohim (God) from flowing into that person's body. Such a person needs to look long at the picture of Elohim (God) as presented by His Son, the Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Lord Jesus Christ), in the 13th verse of of the passage in Luke 11 we read a short while ago. Let me read that to you again the sense of three other Bible versions which I will merge into a composite (like the Amplified Bible) so that you clearly get the sense of the original:

"If you naturally sinful, evil and ungenerous people know how to give good gifts - the things they need - to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) to whose who ask Him" (Lk.11:13, NLT, Barclay & TLB).

You see, what Yah'shua (Jesus) wants you and me to know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, before all else, is that Yahweh is a Father who cares very deeply for His children, and longs that they might experience, and enjoy, the abundance of His provisions, which includes not only shalom or peace for the mind and heart but life for the body too. If you take nothing else away from this sermon other than this truth, I will be satisfied. Yahweh wants your best, the more so than any human parent ever could. Accept that and declare that to your soul every day and you will have a secure spiritual foundation of truth on which to build a meaningful life.

Now, as I said, another reason why some people stay unhealed is because they are subconsciously using their sickness as an attention-getting device. The human mind is so devious that when it feels the personality is not receiving the love it needs to function properly, it will settle for the next best thing - attention. And sickness is an almost sure way of getting it. This is why, whenever we find ourselves gripped by a sickness that stubbornly refuses to leave, we should seriously explore the possibility, and ask ourselves, 'Do I really want to be well?'

There is a story in the Bible about a man who likely suffered from the very problem I am speaking of. Let's take a look at that now by turning to chapter 5 of John's Gospel, beginning at verse 1 - the verse I want you to pay especial attention to is verse 6 when we get to it:

"After this there was a feast [1] of the Judeans, and Yah'shua (Jesus) went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralysed, waiting for the moving of the water. For a malak (angel) went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Yah'shua (Jesus) saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?' The sick man answered Him, 'Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.'[2] Yah'shua (Jesus) said to him, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk.' And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked" (John 5:1-9, NKJV).

A question we might ask ourselves is whether the man in this account was in this condition? Well, we can't be absolutely sure as there isn't enough information, but it does look as though Yah'shua (Jesus) wanted to raise the possibility. And alongside the possibility that we can use our sickness as a subconscious device to get attention, sympathy, a means to be seen as a victim ('victimitis'), there is also another side to this - using sickness as escapism, maybe even to get free handouts because of laziness or whatever. There are so many varied motives people sometimes have.

A woman in a church that Selwyn Hughes once pastored developed a sickness which the doctors diagnosed as psychosomatic (a disease caused or aggravated by mental stress). They told her: "There's nothing structurally wrong with you - you can get better whenever you wish." She was pretty shocked and asked her pastor for help to get to the bottom of the problem. A deep inner conflict was discovered - whenever she was approached by a young man who showed a romantic interest in her, her subconscious reasoned: 'If you get married, what will happen to your mother?' whom she was looking after. So, to keep her suitors away her subconscious provided her with a good excuse - sickness. This isn't uncommon, by the way. So under pastoral guidance, she surrendered the whole matter to Yahweh and instantly recovered. (I have only ever experienced instant healing once in my life, from really bad long-term calcific tendonitis, which happened the moment I arrived in Norway from England in 1988 following my divorce and relocation and obedience to a vision). And here's the thing - it's sometimes easier to face sickness than to face the reality that remains if the sickness is not there. You see, what this woman needed most of all was the healing of her mind...and that brings us round full circle. Right-mindedness is so often where health begins. Never underestimate the power of the mind, so get your thinking sorted out before anything else.

And that, brethren and sisters, is where the Bible principally comes in, and why we are to use it to pattern right-thinking. If we don't, something, or someone, else will do the patterning for us, coupled with our infinite capacity to imagine or fantasise reality. That is one reason why our Heavenly Father wishes us to know Him by His true Name, Yahweh, because this means, 'I am that I am', in Hebrew, ('ehyeh 'esher 'ehyeh), that is to say, He is the 'Ultimate Reality'. When we invoke the Name 'Yahweh', we are (on a psychological level) asking the Creator for a reality check - 'Show me things as they really are and save me from all harmful illusion.' And that, friends, is the basis of mental health.

We could probably spend several weeks talking about physical health and so long as we are in mortality it's obviously a very important subject indeed. However, the scope of this series on Transformation is wider. Our Heavenly Father wants our whole man or woman to be well and healthy. Every part - spirit, mind, heart and body - is important because everything is so closely interconnected and needs to be properly integrated.

Over the next, and last, two weeks of this series we shall be dealing with perhaps the most important aspect of transformation of all - the transformation of relationships. Let's, in the meantime, conclude with some prayer in which we seek to bring into application all that we have hopefully learned today: "Dear Father in Heaven, Yahweh-Elohim, I am beginning to see a Face of Compassion emerging from the cold framework of the universe. You are truly a Father, and a Mother in the Ruach (Spirit) to Your children. Help me to focus my gaze upon You so that I see You as You really are. Deliver me from all the misconceptions that I have of You in my heart. Help me to to be strong enough to face everything realistically and responsibly. Give me the courage to make acceptism, and not escapism, the keynote of my life! In Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen."

I look forward to seeing you back next week as in the last two sessions we start winding up this series. May Yahweh, our and the universe's Ultimate Reality, bless you and keep you in the Name of the Son who paid the ultimate price on the Cross that we might be fully healed within and without. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] This would have to have been either Pesach (Passover), Shavu'ot (Weeks, Ekatost) or Sukkot (Tabernacles) - see The Feast of John 5
[2] For an explanation of this extraorinary phenomenon and its meaning, see The Third Wave: Part 1. Yahweh's New Order

Acknowledgments