Good morning, brethren. Let's
turn in our Bibles to Acts chapter 28. Acts 28. Let's ask the Lord to bless His
Word. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
we thank you for bringing us here again this morning. Lord, You're holy, sovereign,
working Your will in our midst, every day, all the time. And
we're so thankful that it's true. Lord, help us to remember this.
And we ask, Father, that in everything You're pleased to bring to pass,
You would turn us continually to behold Christ, our Redeemer. Make us to see our completion in Him, our perfection
in Him. And make us, Lord, to grow in
faith and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Increase us, Lord, with the increase
of God. We ask You to do so today through
this Word. Comfort the hearts of Your people.
edify, rebuke, instruct, whatever it is we need, Lord, we pray
you would do it today through this gospel. Only you know, only
you can work in the hearts of your people, affectionately,
and we ask you, Lord, to do so. We thank you for this gospel.
Thank you for brethren. Thank you for one another. Thank
you for all the blessings we have in our Redeemer. We ask,
Lord, you forgive us our unbelief and our sin. For Christ's sake,
we ask these things. Amen. All right, Acts 28. Acts 28. We'll read in verse 7. It says,
In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island,
whose name was Publius, who received us and lodged us three days courteously. And it came to pass that the
father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux,
to whom Paul entered in and prayed and laid his hands on him and
healed him. So when this was done, others
also which had diseases in the island came and were healed,
who also honored us with many honors. And when we departed,
they lighted us with such things as were necessary. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the great physician. He's the great physician. He
said in Exodus 15, 26, I am the Lord that healeth thee. Jehovah Rapha, I am the Lord
that healeth thee. He is the one who heals all physical
sickness, all physical diseases. He uses under shepherds, just
like he does with the preaching of the gospel. He uses physicians,
he uses medicine, he uses things in this world, but it's Christ,
our God, our Savior, who heals. And it's certainly true of all
spiritual disease. It's Christ alone who heals.
Christ alone. We have brethren right now who
are physically sick. I pray as you do, like the apostle
John did. He said in the third epistle,
in verse two, he said, Beloved, I wish above all things that
thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. They were physically ill, and
he prayed for their physical healing. but they were well spiritually. And he said, I pray that your
body would prosper even as your soul prospers. And you know,
if the Lord heals us physically, we're thankful, we ask him to
do so, we're thankful. But if he heals us physically,
it's gonna be for a little while and we're still gonna eventually
die. This body's going back to the
dust. But brethren, if He heals us
inwardly, if He heals us spiritually, then we are everywhere whole.
We are complete, we have eternal life, and we'll never die. That's what we really, really
need is spiritual healing. Spiritual healing. Those healed
by Christ, when we are healed, We give all the honor and all
the praise, all the glory to our Lord Jesus. To our Lord Jesus. And we desire others to be healed
by the Great Physician. He gives you a love for needy
sinners. I'm not talking about just your
brethren, but you want to see needy sinners brought to Christ. And He gives you love for your
brethren. You want to see your brethren
healed. This is what He does by healing us. This is what He
makes you want. So we're going to hear this good
news again. This is the balm of Gilead right
here. This is the medicine. This is
how He's going to heal His people is through this word, through
this gospel. And I pray you'd be pleased to
heal us spiritually today. and perhaps he'll be pleased
to heal physically. Acts 28, 7 said, In the same
quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island,
whose name was Publius, who received us and lodged us three days courteously. Paul was a prisoner. He'd been
taken to Rome. He appealed to Caesar, so they're
taking him to Rome, bound. And there was almost 300 people
in his ship. And his ship was, God sent a
hurricane and shipwrecked him on this island of Melita, which
is modern day Malta. And he shipwrecked him there
and this man, who was the chief man, obviously was a wealthy
man, but he housed him for three days and provided for him for
three days. And this was a lot of people
he did this for, a lot of people. And he had a father who was sick. This man's father was sick. And
the things we are going to see here that Paul did and what he
did, we are going to see how Christ heals. Truly it was Christ
that healed. here, and we're going to see
how Christ heals in the things Paul did, what he did. Now first
of all, the physical sickness that we're going to see here
typifies our spiritual sickness. Physical sickness, this problem
this man had, is an illustration of the spiritual sickness every
sinner has as we come into this world. Our spiritual sickness
is sin and death. It says here in verse 8, the
father of Publius lay sick of a fever and a bloody flux. He lay sick. This man was disabled
by this sickness. He was unable to get up. He was
unable to go about his day-to-day doing. He was incapable of healing
himself. He was later sick. Now that's
the truth of this spiritual sickness we have as we come into this
world. We're incapable of healing ourselves. It says he lay sick
of a fever, a fiery heat. And you and me, by nature, have
a sin nature that's enmity against God. It's full of fiery heat
against God. We'll not bow to God. We'll not
hear God's word. We'll not rely upon our Lord
Jesus. We, by nature, just don't think
we're sick and we don't think we need to be healed. Or, if
we think we're a little sick, we, by nature, think that we
can heal ourselves. This man had a bloody flux. This is a dysentery. And it was
a disease of the inward parts. People that had this at that
time would usually die of dehydration. It was a disease of the inward
part. We have brethren that are physically
sick. Debbie has cancer, an inward
physical disease. At some point, all of us have
had inward physical diseases, sicknesses. All of us at some
point have had some kind of virus or some sort of sickness. You
couldn't heal yourself. You know, men want to brag about
the will of man. You could not will yourself to
be healed. You could not do it. There's
nothing you could do personally to heal yourself. When you had
a fever, you couldn't make your fever go down. You couldn't make
your fever disappear. When you suffer an internal sickness
of some kind, there's nothing you can do to make it be healed. I'm talking about you yourself.
You cannot make it better. You cannot heal yourself. What
do we need? We need a physician. We need
a physician. We need the medicine that he
prescribes. We need another to do the healing. That's what we need. Well, those
inward physical sicknesses typify the sickness every child of God
has by nature. This is the physical sickness,
but it typifies the sickness every child has who God calls
by His grace. God calls the sick. He heals
the sick. That's who He heals. By Adam's
one transgression, we came into this world under the curse. We've
broken the law. Cursed is everyone that continueth
not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do
them. Those Galatians that wanted to be under the law, Paul said,
do you not hear the law? Do you not hear the law? The
law says, cursed is every man that continues not in every word
of the law in perfection. And we broke it all in Adam. When you come into this world
born of Adam, you have a spiritual disease within. We're spiritually
dead within. Our nature's corrupt and it's
diseased, incurable, God said. That's what God said in the scripture.
He said to the children of Israel, your disease is incurable. And
truly, this sin nature that we have, it's incurable. The Lord, what does He do? He
creates a whole new man. He creates a whole new spirit
within His people. And then will create a whole
new body for His people. Let's look at Isaiah 1 and verse
6. Isaiah chapter 1 verse 6. This
is us right here. Now this covers everything. Everything. Isaiah 1 verse 6. It says, from
the sole of the foot, the very bottom of our feet, even to the
head, there's no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and
putrefying sores, they've not been bound up, neither mollified
with ointment. That is the case with every single
sinner that comes into this world. But now listen, that's the case
with everybody that Christ saves. That's the case with everybody
Christ saves. Are you sick? Are you sick? Are you so sick that you're dead
and dying? You're dead spiritually, you're
going back to the dust physically. Are you that sick? Do you know
you cannot heal yourself? If so, that's good. If you know
that, that's good news. Because only the Lord teaches
His people that. And if you know that, you fit
the bill. You are just the kind of sinner
Christ saves. One that knows he's totally,
thoroughly, incurably diseased and cannot save himself. That's
who Christ saved. Now, secondly, I want you to
see here, the great physician is the Lord Jesus Christ. The
great physician is the Lord Jesus. That's who healed this man. That's
who heals all physical sickness and that's the only one that
heals spiritual disease that we have. In the things Paul did
here, we see what Christ does. He says here in Acts 28.8, it
says, to this man that lay sick of this fever, it says, to whom
Paul entered in and prayed and laid his hands on him and healed
him. and healed him. Paul entered
in. Where this man was, laying in
his bed, Paul entered in. He entered in. That's how Christ
heals His people. He enters in. He enters in. Before God made the world, the
Lord Jesus Christ entered in to an everlasting covenant with
the Father to heal His people. and bring us to the Father perfectly
well. He entered in. He entered in
a covenant with the Father. That's what we saw last Sunday.
By so much was Jesus made surety of a better testament. When we look at the law and we
look at the ceremonies and the tabernacle
and the mercy seat and all those things, Christ was not patterned
after those things. Those things were patterned after
Christ. You remember when Moses was called
up to the mount, the Lord said, see that you make all things
after the pattern shown you in the mount. Moses was shown Christ
and everything he made, the priest, The sacrifices, the tabernacle,
the mercy seat, everything about it was patterned after the Lord
Jesus to show us pictures and types of the Lord Jesus Christ. And before the world was made,
God entered covenant with God. We worked We're not in the equation. God entered covenant with God,
and that's how He saves. God the Father, and God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit, fulfilling all the promises of God toward
those God elected to save. In the fullness of time then,
at the very time appointed, the Son of God entered in into this
world. The Son of God came down and
took flesh like unto His brethren. He entered in. It was a man that
sinned and brought the curse upon us. It would have to be
a man that would come forth and obey God and deliver us from
that curse. His brethren were flesh and blood.
That's who He came to save. The Lord Jesus Christ took flesh
and blood. that He might live and obey God,
that He might go to the cross and lay down and suffer and die
in place of His people, that He might bring us to God. When
our Lord came forth, He didn't come forth under the curse. He
came forth holy. Unlike anybody else after Adam,
all the rest of us came into this world under the curse, not
our Lord Jesus. He came not under the curse.
He was circumcised at eight days old. And what did Paul say? If a man is circumcised, he is
a debtor to do the whole law of God. And whenever our Lord
Jesus was circumcised, he was declaring, I came to do the whole
law of God. And that's what he did. He fulfilled
the whole law of God, obeying God from his mother's womb, manifesting
that he alone is the faithful one. He's the holy one. When the scripture, we saw that
Thursday, and he's called the holy one, Now you just think
about that. Think about that name. The reason
He's called the Holy One is He's the only One. He's the only One. His people are holy in Him, but
He's the Holy One who of Himself is holy. And He's the only One
that makes His people holy. He's the Holy One. Then Christ
entered into judgment. He entered into judgment. After
He had, you know, they put the lamb up and they examined Him
for three days. Well, for thirty, three and a
half years, our Lord Jesus Christ lived as a man under the law
and was proven to be the Holy One. Spotless. And then the Just
One laid down His life for the unjust. He went to the cross. and He entered into judgment. He became us. He really became
us. When you look at the cross, you
see each of God's elect. You see, if you're one of His
that trusts Christ alone, you see yourself there on that cross
because He became us. When He bore our sin, He became
us. The one who was bearing the sin,
the one who justly justly deserved to die. He justly deserved it. Because, not because he sinned. I don't like to say Christ was
made a sinner, but one, because the scripture doesn't say that.
A sinner is somebody that rebels against God. Scripture actually
says he was made sin. He was made sin itself. He was made sin. He bore all
the sins of all God's elect and was made sin so that God was
just to pour out justice on him. This is so vital, brethren. This
is the whole purpose for which he came. When Romans 3 says that
he came to manifest the righteousness of God, that's why the Lord Jesus
came, to show us that God is the righteous God, the holy God
who saves in a holy and right way. He's the just judge. He never can be bribed. He will
not pass a false charge against anybody. He will by no means
clear the guilty, and He will by no means charge the innocent. He's holy. He's righteous. And
so when Christ bore the sin of His people, He had to do that
before the Lord Jesus, before God the Father would pour out
justice on Him. He had to be made sin, and being
made sin to manifest God's perfect, strict, holy justice, then God
poured out the curse on him. And he bore that curse in the
room instead of his people. All his people were in him, all
his people were judged in him, and all his people died in him.
The Lord that demands a criminal go and suffer the death penalty. Once he suffered the death penalty,
the law has nothing else to say to him. Nothing else to say to
him. That's what Christ did. Then
Christ entered into death. He entered into death. He entered
into the grave. We had to die. And Christ Jesus
entered into the grave. He entered into the grave. He
died the death his people owed to divine justice. And by dying
that one death, now justice is satisfied toward each one for
whom Christ died. That's why we don't preach that
Christ died for everybody without exception. Because this is what
he accomplished. He satisfied justice. He accomplished
eternal redemption. And then our Redeemer entered
into resurrection glory with the Father and sat down at the
Father's right hand. And all His people entered in
with Him. We were in Him. When He entered in into His mother's
womb, when He entered in under the law and walked perfectly,
when He entered in judgment, when He entered in the grave,
when He entered in resurrection glory, we were in Him. And we
did what He did. Hebrews 9.12 says, let's look
at it. Hebrews 9.12. Hebrews 9.12 says, Neither by
the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered
in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption
for us. having obtained eternal redemption. He entered in. You see that?
He entered into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption
for us. Look at verse 24. For Christ
has not entered into the holy places made with ants. He entered
in to heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. And this is what Paul declares
to you that believe. He said in Romans 6, 8, if we
be dead with Christ, If we died in Him, we believe we shall also
live with Him. Knowing Christ being raised from
the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him.
For in that He died, He died unto sin once, but in that He
liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. And then He comes to you and
me and He enters in into us personally by the Spirit of God. And He
reveals Himself and creates a new man in us. This man had dysentery
and it requires to be rehydrated. And the Lord Jesus Christ comes
to you and me and by the water of the Word, By the Holy Spirit
of God, our Lord Jesus Christ enters in and He gives life within
His people. He is the life within His people. And then it says here, now that's
just He entered in. He entered in. Then it says here,
Paul prayed for this man. He prayed for this man. Christ
is the intercessor between God, His Father, and His sick child. He's the intercessor. Just as
you picture Paul there between this man and God, praying. Christ
is the intercessor between God and His people. Christ intercedes
with the Father as the advocate for His people. And He's pleading
two things. These are two things He's pleading.
He's pleading, number one, that He's our propitiation. He's the
mercy seat where God promised to be merciful to His people.
And two, He pleads His righteousness. In Him, by Him, God is just to
be merciful to us. This is what Christ pleads with
the Father for His people as our advocate. And that's how
the Spirit of God is sent to us in the first hour to even
regenerate us is by Christ's interceding for us. Remember
he said in John 14, 16, he said, I will pray the Father and he
shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever.
Speaking about the Spirit of God. He prayed for us and he
sent the Spirit of God. And it's due to Christ being
our intercessor that James said, the prayer of faith shall save
the sick. The prayer of faith. And the
Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him. The prayer of faith saves the
sick because We're casting everything into the hand of the great physician,
the one who does the healing. That's what true prayer is when
it's the prayer of faith, is you're looking to Christ to do
the saving. And the prayer of faith trusts
Him to say, and He's the one that heals, and He's the one
that raises you up, and it's by Him that your sins are forgiven. It's all by the Lord Jesus. And then we see here in our text,
Paul laid his hands on this man, and healed him. He laid his hands
on this man and healed him. But not really. Paul didn't heal
him. Paul didn't heal him. It's Christ
who lays his hands upon his people and it's Christ who heals us.
Have you ever had a really, really high fever? And you know how
awful that feels. I was going duck hunting one
morning and we used to have to get up about 3 a.m. And when
I got up that morning, I felt off. I didn't feel bad, but I
just felt off. We drove an hour to the river,
and that whole drive, I could tell I was starting to get a
fever. Then we had about an hour boat
ride up the river and through some flooded timber, and I could
feel it was getting worse. Put the decoys out and got set
up. It was just me and my dad. And
by the time it just started getting just barely where you could see
ducks that started to fly, I was so bad off that I told my dad,
I said, we got to pack up and go. And we didn't even, I don't
even think we loaded a gun. And we packed up, and that fever
was so bad when I got to a major intersection of a creek and a
river that I knew that flooded river bottom like the back of
my hand. I got to this major intersection, and I went the
wrong way. When I got back and I got in the truck, I couldn't
back my truck up. I was all over the ramp and I
can back a boat trailer up. I was all over the place. That
fever had my equilibrium off. And for however many days I was
laid up with that fever, oh, I felt awful. But when that fever
broke, I was able to get out of the bed and I felt so good.
I could think clearly. I went out in the sunshine. It felt so good up on my skin. Brethren, that's how it is when
the Lord Jesus truly heals you and makes you to know that the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free
from the law of sin and death. That fever breaks. And you can
see clearly. And you can hear clearly. And
you know you've been healed by the Lord Jesus Christ. What has
happened? The Lord said, the S-U-N, the
Son of Righteousness has arisen with healing in His wings. He's
the one that heals. You know, earthly physicians,
when they heal, if you have multiple problems, when an earthly physician
heals you, they usually are dealing with one symptom at a time. Christ
healed this man of every problem he had. He healed him all at
once. And that's what Christ does.
He makes you every whit hole complete in Him. He makes you
know it. He makes you behold it. He makes
you know it so. That's what faith believes. He's
healed me. I'm healed. I'm righteous and
holy in my Lord Jesus Christ. Now, secondly, I want you to
see this. Christ receives all who come
to Him. All who come to Him, He receives. Look at this now
in verse 9, Acts 28, 9. It says, so when
this was done, others also which had diseases in the island came
and were healed. As soon as they heard about this,
People that had no cure, people that had been laid up sick for
probably years, all of them from all over that island came to
Paul. They all came to Paul and they
were healed. Look over at Mark chapter 2.
Mark chapter 2. When the Spirit of God makes
you to know that Christ Jesus is the physician, When He began
to bless this Word and make you know He's the Physician, just
like they heard about Paul and this man being healed. Christ
said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all unto Me. And that's
what He's doing through this Gospel. And when you hear it
and you begin to realize that you're sick and you cannot be
healed, That's when He makes you willing to come to Him. And
look what He said here. Mark 2 verse 16. When the scribes and Pharisees
saw Him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto His disciples,
How is it He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? And
when Jesus heard, He said to them, They that are whole have
no need of the physician, but they that are sick. Are you sick? Is there anybody here that's
sick? There are some people here that are sick. I know that. And you and me, who He has healed,
in ourselves, we need Him constantly to keep us, don't we? We need
Him. We need to be constantly coming to Him. Well, if you're sick, if you
can't heal yourself, he says here, that's who he came to save.
He said, they that are old have no need of the physician, but
they that are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance. Can you picture a hospital that
wouldn't receive sick people? Can you picture a hospital that'd
say, you can't come in here, you're sick. That'd be absurd. The Church of the Great Physician
is the Church that welcomes sinners who need to be healed by the
Great Physician. We come here to hear of Him. We come here for Him to apply
the balm of Gilead to heal us of whatever sickness we got this
week while we were going through the week. We come here for Him
to heal us. To heal, to wash our feet, to
heal us. We're not told if God saved any
of these people on this island, but we sure see a type of Christ
saving all who come to Him. That's what we see here. They
all came And Christ healed them all of their physical diseases. And brethren, Christ promises
everybody that comes to Him, He heals. He heals them. He heals them. This is an example
of what the Lord said. He said, In Matthew 10.41, you
might want to look at this. Matthew 10.41, I'll be brief
right here. But He said, He that receiveth
a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. And he that receiveth a righteous
man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous
man's reward. You see, Paul came there and
they received Paul. And Paul gave them what he had
to give. These men were healed. And if
you receive Christ's preacher, come in preaching Christ Jesus
the Lord, you receive the gospel he's preaching. You will receive
the only thing that preacher has to give. Christ will heal. He'll heal you. When Christ's
preacher comes, he comes preaching righteousness in Christ alone. That it's only in Christ that
we're made righteous. You receive that gospel. You
receive that Redeemer that he preaches. And you will receive
that righteousness Christ gives to his people freely. And when
you've been brought there, you'll see the only way you did it is
Christ made you willing to receive. Willing to receive. Here's the
result of Christ healing us. That's when you love your brethren.
It says in verse 10, They honored us with many honors, and when
we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary.
It was the love of Christ that made Paul willing to go in there
and heal that man. That was the love of Christ.
It was the love of Christ that made him willing to heal everybody
that came to him. Well, it's the love of Christ
that constrains you who've been healed to want other sinners
to be brought to Christ, to be healed by Christ. You want to
see them healed. You want to see them brought
to Christ. And these folks, they wanted
to worship Paul when they saw him shake off that viper. And
you don't want them worshiping you. You want them to know it's
not my will, it's by God's will. It's not by my works, it's by
Christ's works. It's not anything I've done.
It's the righteousness and holiness and redemption Christ is for
His people. You want them healed. You want
them healed. And those that Christ healed
here through Paul, when Paul and these over 200 people, almost
300 people, when they left, they loaded them down with all provisions
they needed for the rest of that trip. Why? They've been loaded
down with something. They've been healed. And when
Christ has healed you, when He's healed you, You want to honor
Christ and you do it by honoring those that Christ used to preach
the gospel to you. All your brethren, the church,
your brethren that he used to give you the gospel. And you
are willing to provide whatever their needs are. Because why? Because Christ has given you
earthly treasure. He's given you the treasures
of heaven. He's healed you and given you
giving you riches that just can't even, you can't put a price on
them. And that's the love of Christ. You see that when He
heals you, He not only brings you and benefits you and makes
you totally saved by Him, He knits you together with those
He used to preach the gospel to you so that So that you're
just willing to take, you know it's all of Christ's hand, you
know He gave you every provision you have, just like He healed
you. And you're willing to provide
whatever your brethren need. That's the love of Christ working.
We need each other. Why? Because we need this gospel. We need the preaching of the
word. And so because of that, He makes
you willing to do whatever you need to do for one another so
that every one of us can have the gospel of Christ proclaimed.
It's more valuable than anything there is in this world. Anything
in this world. What a physician, brethren. He
asked the question in Jeremiah 8.22, he said, is there no balm
in Gilead? Is there no physician? Why then
is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? There
is balm in Gilead. It's the gospel that's going
forth. That's the balm. And a great
physician applies it. And a great physician heals.
If you're sick, if you're sick, You never come to Christ, you
come to Him and He'll heal you. He never turns any away. And
here's the thing too, if you're a believer, if you're a believer
in whatever ails you, be it spiritual or physical, there's only one
that heals, it's Christ. We never stop coming to the great
physician. Never stop. I pray He would bless
that and I pray He'll heal us today. Let's go to Him, brethren. Father, we thank You for this
Word. Thank You, Lord, that You trusted it all into the hand
of Your Son, that He is truly the Great Physician of Your people.
Thank You for healing us. Thank You for teaching us and
applying this and everything we have spiritually is Your creation,
Lord. Thank You for creating us anew
in Your righteousness and Your holiness. Lord, keep us coming
to Christ. We pray for our sick brethren
that you would heal them of their physical sickness. We pray, Lord,
that you would apply your power and that you would guide the
doctors and the medicine, that you would heal them physically.
And above all, we pray, Lord, you would heal spiritually. We
pray, Lord, you would make us see we're complete in Christ.
Keep us coming to Him. Thank you, Lord, for all these
blessings we have in Him. Thank you so much, Father, for
saving us in Christ your Son. Oh, let us ever see this and
rejoice and know it. Don't leave us to ourselves,
Lord. We thank You. We praise You.
We give You the glory. In Christ's name, Amen.