Well, good morning. If you would
open your Bibles to Matthew chapter four, where our lesson will be
from this morning, Matthew chapter four. Before we begin, let's
bow together in prayer. Our Father, how we thank you
that you've allowed us another opportunity to meet together,
to open your word and to read and to study it, to hear of Christ
our Savior preached. Father, I pray that this morning
that you would give us a true spirit of worship, that you'd
enable us to worship you in spirit and in truth, to not just go
through the motions of religion, but Father, to truly worship.
Speak to our hearts, we pray, through your word. Bless us here
in our class and bless the classes for our young people. Bless our
teachers with your word and bless our children with hearing ear
and a heart that would receive thy word. Father, we pray you'd
prepare their hearts to receive the seed, the word of God. In due time, in your appointed
time, that you'd be merciful to them, that you'd give life
and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you for all
the countless many blessings, how abundantly, richly you've
blessed us and we're thankful, we're humble. at your mercy and
in your grace to those who are so undeserving like we are. Father,
we thank you. We pray a special blessing for
those who are sick, those who are hurting, that need you especially,
Father, undertake in their behalf as we know that thou art able. Father again, bless us in this
hour. Bless us as we look into your word and enable us to learn
more of Christ our Savior. In his precious name, we pray
and give thanks. All right, Matthew chapter 4. I titled the message Healing
for Mind, Body and Soul, Healing for Mind, Body and Soul. I begin
in verse 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of
disease among the people. And here it says again, just
like we saw last week, our Lord Jesus came preaching the gospel
of the kingdom. And we looked at that last week.
We saw how God has a spiritual kingdom. He does have a kingdom.
It's a spiritual kingdom. And that Christ is the king of
that kingdom. And we saw how sinners get into
that kingdom. And he continued with that message.
He didn't change his message. He had the same message. He kept
preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And now as he's teaching the
gospel of the kingdom, Our Lord gives us an example of his power
in this kingdom. He's sovereign over his power.
He gives us an example of healing all manner of disease among the
people. He demonstrated his sovereign
power. He showed everybody he is indeed the sovereign king
by doing what no other man can do, healing these diseases. The
Lord healing the bodies of the sick by his sovereign power is
a picture of the Lord saving the souls of sinners by his sovereign
power. Now, the point of physical healing
in the scripture is never physical healing ever. The first point
about physical healing is this. They give evidence that the Lord
Jesus is the same. These miracles, his power to
perform these things shows us and gives evidence that he is
the long promised Messiah, the long awaited for Savior. No mere
man could do the miracles that he did. Look at Luke chapter
seven. Our Lord healed diseases. He
even raised the dead. Those things are evidence that
he is the Savior in Luke seven, verse 19. And John, this is John the Baptist,
calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus saying, art
thou he that should come or look we for another? Now, John knew
he was. John didn't need any evidence.
John knew who he was. This was so that his disciples
would know who he is. So verse 20, when the men were
come unto him, they said, John the Baptist sent us unto thee
saying, art thou he that should come or look we for another?
And in that same hour, he cured many of their infirmities and
plagues. and of evil spirits, and unto many that were blind
he gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto
them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and
heard, how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and here's a
key, to the poor the gospel is preached. Now those things were
evidence that the Lord Jesus is the Savior. And after he arose,
he gave apostles gifts to do these miracles, these gifts of
healing. And he gave them those gifts
for the exact same reason, to give evidence that they were
sin of God. That's so people would listen to him preach. We
read that many times in the scripture. Remember that time Paul was bit
on the hand by a poisonous snake and he just shook it off into
the fire and the men sat around waiting for him to die and he
didn't die. And they said, Oh, something special about this
fella. And they listened to him preach. That's why he had that
gift. That's why those gifts were given.
But today, there's no need for those gifts of healing and miracles
and so forth, because once the apostles died, the scriptures
were completed. So now we don't need a man to
work a miracle to know if he's sent from God or not. We had
the completed word of God. We found out if a man is sin
of God by finding out that his message matches book. That's
that's why, you know, we don't have those kinds of miracles
and gifts and things today. And the second point of physical
healing, the first is to give evidence that the Lord Jesus
was the savior. The second is to be a picture
of spiritual healing. Look at Matthew chapter nine.
This is what the Lord Jesus came to accomplish, the spiritual
healing of his people. Matthew 9, verse 10. And it came to pass as Jesus
sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came
and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees
saw it, they said unto his disciples, why eateth your master with publicans
and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he
said unto them, they that behold need not a physician, but they
that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I'm not come
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. See, when the
Lord talked about healing in the physician, what was he really
talking about? How he came to call sinners,
how he came to have a spiritual healing for his sinful people. That's the whole point of these
miracles is to give evidence that Christ is the Christ. He
is the Messiah. and to give a picture of the
spiritual healing of the souls of God's people. And by no means
am I opposed to the physical healing, but physical healing
is useless, useless without Christ. I don't care if you do get healed
or whatever it is you got, the body is still going to die, isn't
it? But if God heals our souls, if Christ comes and saves our
souls, our souls will never die. And that's what's most important.
And did you notice the order of things here? This, the opening
verse we read, the Lord preached first, didn't he? He came preaching. Then came the healing. See, the
healing is the result of preaching. And especially that's true spiritually. Salvation, the healing of our
souls comes from preaching. Preaching comes first and the
results follow after. They're not going to be salvation
without preaching. They're not going to be healing of souls
without preaching. And nothing is more important
to us. Nothing is more important to
us than the preaching of Christ. Nothing. Remember our Lord, what
he said about John the Baptist? He said, there has not been a
greater prophet ever born among women than John the Baptist.
That's what the Lord said. He's the greatest of the prophets.
John the Baptist never one time performed a miracle. Now, all
he did was preach, because that's what's most important, the preaching
of Christ. And I like this, the way Matthew
is sure to point this out to us, that our Lord healed all
manner of sickness and disease. All manner. It didn't matter
what kind it was, what part of the body, where the disease originated. He healed all manner of sickness
and disease. There was no sickness he could
not heal. Not one. Now, remember, these
sicknesses and diseases are pictures of our sin, you know, all physical
illness. What it does to our body is a
picture of what sin has done to our souls. And here's the
lesson. There is no sin so great that
Christ can't wash it white as snow. There's no sin so great
that he does not forgive it. One sin is not worse than another.
One sin is not a bigger problem, more difficult problem for him
than another. He is able to forgive all sin
in the blood of his sacrifice. Look over at Luke chapter nine.
Luke says something similar to this. Luke nine verse 11. And the people, when they knew
it, followed him. And he received them and spake
unto them of the kingdom of God. Here he is, he's still preaching
the kingdom, isn't he? The kingdom of God. And he healed
them that had need of healing. The Lord healed everybody who
had need of healing. Now I'll tell you what that tells
me. The only reason a person is still sick in their sin is
they haven't come to Christ. Because Christ heals every sin-sick
sinner that needs healing. Christ saves every sin-sick sinner
that needs saving. Every one of them. Now, if they're
righteous in themselves, well, they don't need Christ. He's
not going to save them because they don't need Him. They don't
have need of saving. They don't need Him any more
than a healthy person needs a doctor. But if we have no righteousness,
If we are powerless to save ourselves, if we're powerless to get God
to do something to help us, the Lord will save us. He saves all
that have need of saving. But here's good news. These sick
people, we're going to look at some of their sicknesses in a
minute. I mean, they were sick. They didn't just have a cold
or something. They were sick. And they could never have gotten
to Christ. They are from all over the place.
They never could have gotten to him for healing. They couldn't
go anywhere. So Christ, the healer, Christ,
the Savior, came where they were and he preached to them. He came
where they were and healed them. And the same thing is true today.
God's got a people that are born dead in sin and they cannot and
they will not come to Christ, but the Lord is going to come
to every single one of them. He's going to find them. He's going
to reveal himself to them through the preaching of the gospel,
and he's going to heal every one of their souls. Right now,
verse 24. And his fame went throughout
all Syria, and they brought unto him all sick people that were
taken of diverse diseases, different diseases and torments, and those
which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic,
and those that had the palsy, and he healed them. And there
followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from
Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond
Jordan. People from all over the place
came and followed them, because he healed all that had need of
healing. He healed them. bodies, mind
and soul. Now these sicknesses, these folks
that came to our Lord, were no small thing. They were taken
with different diseases and what Matthew calls torments. Torments. They were tormented by these
sicknesses. And the Lord had compassion.
He had compassion on their torments. And He healed them. That's the
guilt of sin. torments the sinner. The guilt
of sin just torments the conscience. The effect of sin torments the
body and the soul. Well, what's our only hope? Come
to Christ for healing. He has compassion on the torments
of sinners and he heals them. And I'll tell you how he heals
them. It's not just by laying his hand on them and saying,
you're healed. Christ heals the torments of his people. by bearing
the torments of their sin at Calvary, putting them away. That's
how He heals their torments, by taking them from them. And
when God saves a sinner, He completely heals them, completely, mind,
body, and soul. And the first thing we see here
is the healing of the soul. The Lord Jesus healed those that
were possessed with devils. Now, I don't know a lot about
demon possession, and I don't want to know a lot about it either.
And we, I do know this, I looked at that this week, we have quite
a few examples of this in scripture. Someone's possessed with the
devil or a demon and I suspect that may still be the case today.
I don't have absolute proof of that, but I suspect it still
may be the case. But to be possessed by a devil
or a demon is to be controlled by an evil spirit. Now that's
what the picture we're seeing here is to be controlled by an
evil spirit. It could be a demon, but I'll
tell you what I know is the case. It's to be controlled by our
own evil sin nature. That is being possessed, controlled
by an evil nature. Look at Matthew chapter 16. Now
this can happen even to believers. Even a believer, even somebody
that knows and loves Christ, can be controlled by an evil
motive, an evil nature. You know, God saves a sinner,
he doesn't eradicate that evil nature, does he? You know, he's
still there, just as strong and powerful as ever. Matthew 16,
verse 21, from that time forth began Jesus to show his disciples
how he must go into Jerusalem. and suffer many things of the
elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be
raised again the third day. The Lord himself is declaring
salvation to his disciples, to Peter, James, John, these disciples. But look at verse 22. Then Peter
took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee,
Lord, this shall not be unto thee. Lord, don't do this, don't
go suffer and die. But he turned and said unto Peter,
Get thee behind me, Satan. He didn't say, get thee behind
me, Peter. He said, get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an
offense unto me, for thou savest not the things that be of God,
but those that be of men. The Lord's not saying Peter was
a lost man. Oh, Peter knew the Lord, didn't
he? Oh, we believe and are sure thou art the Christ, the son
of the living God. We're not going to go away. To
whom shall we go? Peter knew the Lord, but Peter was being
controlled by an evil spirit. an evil spirit. Now look at Matthew
chapter 12, a person controlled by an evil spirit, whether it's
a demon of Satan or our own sinful nature, a person who is controlled
by an evil spirit, they can only do evil. They're controlled by
an evil spirit. They can't see Christ and they
can't say anything profitable about him. Matthew 12 verse 2022. Then was brought unto him one
possessed with the devil, blind and dumb. He couldn't see and
he couldn't speak. And the Lord healed him, insomuch
that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. This one controlled
by an evil spirit, he was blind, he couldn't see. And he couldn't
talk, he couldn't say anything about the Lord. And the Lord
healed him. And that shows us that salvation,
this spiritual healing, sets us free from the control of this
evil nature and lets us see Christ, lets us believe Him, and lets
us tell folks what great things the Lord's done for us. Now look
in Acts chapter 16. We can look at several illustrations
of a person being controlled by this evil spirit, but I'll
tell you where the worst ones are found. The worst of these
evil spirits, like he's controlling evil spirits, are found in false
religion. Acts 16 verse 16. And it came to pass, as we went
to prayer, a certain damsel, possessed with the spirit of
divination, met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. The same followed Paul and us
and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most
high God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this
did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned
and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ
to come out of her. And he came out that same hour. Paul cast this spirit out, this
evil spirit, and it was a spirit in religion. It was bringing
her master much gain in this false religion. And Paul cast
that demon out. She was no longer under the influence,
under the control of this evil spirit. And that's what happens
when God saves a sinner by His grace. They're not under the
control of that evil spirit anymore. They're coming out of false religion.
They're coming out of it. Their time making merchandise
of men's souls in religion is over. They've been released from
the control of this evil nature. And that's what happened to this
woman. Look at verse 19. And when her master saw that
the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and
drew them into the marketplace under the rulers and brought
them to the magistrate saying, these men being Jews do exceedingly
trouble our city. Here they're setting women free
from the control of demons. They're preaching the gospel
of peace. And they're saying, oh, they're troubling our city.
They're teaching customs which are not lawful for us to receive,
neither to observe, being Romans. Here they're trying to get them
arrested. And the problem was not that they're exceedingly
troubling the city. The problem was they took the prophet out
of false religion. That was the problem. And here
they are accusing her. But you know who wasn't with
them making this accusation? That poor woman. She went with
them. She saw Christ. She'd been set
free from that controlling power. Now look back at Mark chapter
19. We talked about those torments earlier. Here is a good description
of how this evil spirit and evil sin nature torments people. Mark 19 verse 17. And one of the multitude answered,
And said, Master, I brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb
spirit. And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him. And he foameth
and gnasheth with his teeth and pineth away. And I spake to thy
disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not.
He answered him and saith, O faithless generation. Remember that word
faithless. We'll come back to that in a minute. O faithless
generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer
you? Bring him unto me. And they brought
him unto him. And when he saw him straightway,
the spirit tear him and he fell on the ground and wallowing and
foaming. And he asked his father, how
long is it ago since this came unto him? And he saith of a child,
he's born this way. And oftentimes it cast him into
the fire and into the waters to destroy him. But if thou can't
do anything, have compassion on us and help us. This man was
tormented, wasn't he? This poor child was tormented. Torment. Can you imagine seeing
your child cast himself into a fire to try to destroy himself?
I mean, the torment is so bad. I'd just rather die. He just
cast himself into the fire, throw himself into the water. It's
just all the torment. If you can do anything, have
compassion on this torment. In verse 23, Jesus said unto
him, if thou canst believe, All things are possible to him that
believe it. And straightway the father of the child cried out
and said with tears, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. When
Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked
the foul spirit, saying unto him, thou dumb and deaf spirit,
I charge thee, come out of him and enter no more into him. You get out and you stay out. The strong man arm has come and
cast you out. And the spirit cried and ran
him sore and came out of him. And he was as one dead, insomuch
that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand
and lifted him up and he rose. That is the Lord. That is a picture
of salvation. That's how God delivers his people
from this torment, the destroying, destructive power of an evil
nature. And that deliverance is always
tied to faith, isn't it? Do you believe? That's the believer's constant
chorus. Lord, I believe. Help thou mine
unbelief. Now, Satan is a very real and
very dangerous enemy. And my advice to us is don't
go looking for him. I'm scared what we might find.
But this is our comfort in the face of this real and dangerous
enemy. Christ, our Savior, is greater
than Satan. Let's spend our efforts and our
time looking for him, looking for Christ, seeking him. At Calvary,
Satan and the Savior met. Satan certainly fulfilled the
scripture. He bruised the heel of the Savior. But our Savior
also fulfilled the scripture and bruised Satan's head, crushed
his head, and took away any power Satan had over his people. And
he cast him out. And Satan can never possess one
of God's elect to keep them from believing. to keep them from
loving, to keep them from trusting Christ. That's the healing of
soul. The second thing is the healing
of the mind. The Lord healed those which were
lunatic. And the word means exactly what
you think it means. They're crazy, crazy people. Now sickness of
the mind, mental illness, to me has to be the worst illness
a person can have. And what I mean by that is this.
Modern medicine just cannot seem to find any effective cure for
mental illness. And if you have a mental illness
like this, depression or anxiety that just controls you, my advice
to you is seek professional help. They probably won't be able to
make it go away completely forever, but now they can help. So seek
professional help. But our Lord, The point of all
this is, what I'm saying is this, modern medicine can't seem to
find a cure for these things. Our Lord cured those diseases. He cured them. He cured them
without any bad side effects. You know, a lot of times today
for any illness, well, they give you, you know, a medicine to
fix it, but the list of possible side effects, that'll give you
a mental illness, make you so full of anxiety you're afraid
to take it, you know? Our Lord cured these people without any
bad side effects. I mean, what a miracle. And you
think how helpful that was, these poor people. I mean, the mental
illness just tortures people, just a tortured mind. And the
Lord healed them. Now, I know that, like I said,
the point of physical healing in Scripture is never physical
healing. But I do know this, the Lord
still could heal folks like He's still the great physician. And
just like any other disease that a person may have, you've got
cancer, go to a cancer doctor. You've got kidney problems, go
to a kidney doctor. If you've got mental illness
and you suffer from it, I tell you, first thing you do is you
seek the great physician. You seek him. You call out to
him. You pray for him. And then you seek help from those
doctors and things who could help you. But here's the spiritual
application. A person who is a lunatic is
not in their right mind. The word also means affected
by the moon. It means crazy and it means affected by the moon.
Well, spiritually, none of us are born in our right mind. We're
affected by inferior things. The moon is an inferior light,
isn't it? We're affected by inferior things. We get caught up in the
gifts of healing. We get caught up in the gifts
of tongue. We get caught up in who the preacher is or what denomination
there. We get, we just get affected
by so many minor things, not Christ the son. We're in our
wrong mind. It's, it's affected. It's a,
it's a lunatic mind. So we cannot think right thoughts.
We cannot think right thoughts about who God is because we don't
know him. We can't think right thoughts about ourselves because
we've got a lunatic mind. We think we're pretty good. We
think, well, I'm not completely sinful. I could do something
to contribute to this thing of my salvation. That's a lunatic
mind. We can't think right thoughts
about Christ. We think, well, he had to die
to give everybody a chance to be saved. He didn't just die
for his people. That's a lunatic mind. We're not in our right
mind, so we We think that we have the ability to do something
to help Christ save us. Not only do we have to, but we
think we can do something to make the sacrifice of God's Son
effectual. Now, that's not thinking right. You think Almighty God would
sacrifice His Son and it not be effectual? We think that because
we're not in our right mind. We think we can actually do something
to make God happy with us. Now that's a mind that's not
working right. It's a mind that's dead in sin. Here we sit by nature
in the filthy rags of our righteousness and we think that we can come
before God dressed in our rags, not in the perfect wedding garment
of Christ's righteousness. We think we can come that way
and God will accept us. That's a mind that's not working right.
And God cures that lunatic mind by giving us a new mind and a
new birth. When God saves a person, He gives
them a new mind. He doesn't teach the old one.
He gives them a new mind. And that new mind knows some
things. That new mind knows God. That
new mind knows how God saves sinners. That new mind knows
God and He loves and knows Christ. He loves Him. And that new mind
has some understanding. That mind understands how God
can save a sinner like me and still be God, still be holy,
still be just. That's a new mind. And God also
cures our lunatic mind by giving the gift of repentance. Now,
repentance is a change of mind. It's a change of the way we think.
I don't believe what I used to believe in. I don't trust what
I used to trust in. I think different now. I think
so different, I think the exact opposite of what I used to think.
Why do you think the opposite of what you, why can't you just
modify it a little bit? Why do you have to think the
opposite of what you used to think? Because God gave me a new mind.
A new mind that's not of the flesh, but of the spirit. That's
how God heals, saves the souls of his people by healing their
lunatic mind. And the third thing is the healing
of the body. The Lord healed those that had
the palsy, and that word means paralyzed. Now a person with
the palsy, He can't move. You remember the man that was
sick of the palsy and his friends wanted to get him to the Lord
and the Lord was in a house and they couldn't get to him because
the crowd was so big. They tore the roof off and lowered him
down because the man was paralyzed. He couldn't walk himself. That
man was unable to come to Christ. He was unable to walk. He was
unable to go out and work and support himself. He had to be
just a poor beggar. Remember this tomorrow morning
when the alarm goes off and it's so early. Just remember this. It is a blessing to be able to
move and get up out of bed and go to work. It's a blessing.
It's a blessing to be able to get up and go to work and support
yourself, be productive, to give to your family, to give to others.
But spiritually, we can't do that. We can't go work and support
ourselves. We can't work to give something
to God. We've got to palsy. We're paralyzed. We can't move
because we're dead. Christ heals his people by giving
life. We, by nature, cannot come to Christ. We lack the ability
to come to Christ. So Christ comes where we are.
He heals us by coming where we are and saving us by his grace.
By nature, we can't believe on Christ. We can't make ourselves
believe the gospel. We might even see that it makes
sense, but we can't make ourselves believe it. So Christ comes and
He heals His people by giving them the gift of faith in Him.
By nature, we can't love Christ. We're paralyzed. The carnal mind
is enmity against God. We can't make ourselves love
Him. So Christ heals His people by giving them a new heart that
loves Him. By nature, we can't worship God. We go through a
lot of motions of religion, but we can't worship God. God says
those things we do, they're offensive to me. So Christ comes and heals
his people by giving them a new nature that worships God, not
in the motions of the flesh, but in the spirit, in spirit
and in truth. By nature, we can't call on Christ. We've got a dumb spirit that
cannot call upon him. Well, Christ heals his people
by coming and calling them. Remember he called James and
John, we looked at that last week? Here they were cleaning
their nets and the Lord just walked by and said, follow me,
I'll make you fishers of men. And the Lord didn't wait on them
to see if they were going to make a decision. He kept walking because he knew
they were coming. You know how he knew? Because he called them.
And scripture says they immediately followed him. That's how the
Lord heals his people, by calling them. By nature, we got the palsy. We can't follow Christ. So Christ
heals his people by giving them feet that follow him, by making
them sheep that always follow the good shepherd. By nature,
we can't serve Christ. Christ heals his people by giving
them hands that serve him in faith and love. We can't work
to do anything, to deserve anything but God's wrath. And Christ heals
his people by dying for them, by being made sin for them and
suffering everything that that sin deserves. I looked in Matthew
chapter 9. Here's an illustration of this
and we'll close with this. Matthew chapter 9. Verse 1, And he entered into
a ship and passed over and came into his own city. And behold,
they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed.
And Jesus, seeing their faith, saith to the sick of the palsy,
Son, be of good cheer. Thy sins be forgiven thee. Now that's healing. That's healing. That is the point of every physical
healing. It's the picture of spiritual
healing. The Lord didn't say one thing
about his paralyzed body laying on that dirty cot, did he? He
said, you be of good cheer. You're laying there, you're paralyzed,
you can't do anything for yourself, but you be of good cheer. Your
sins are forgiven. Oh, that's healing. But we've
got to deal with the flesh and religious folks. Verse three,
certain of the scribes said within themselves, this man blaspheming
and Jesus knowing their thoughts said, wherefore think he evil
in your hearts for whether it's easier to say thy sins be forgiven
thee or to say arise and walk. You know, they thought the greatest
miracle was saying arise and walk, didn't he? The greatest
miracle was that the Lord could and would forgive that man's
sin. But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on
the earth to forgive sins. Then saith he to the sick of
the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine own house.
And he rose and departed to his own house." He'd been healed,
hadn't he? This afternoon, you can read about that man. We won't
take the time to do it now. I'm out of time. But that man
in the Gadarenes who was possessed of the legions, read about him
this afternoon. There's a man who was healed.
body and soul. All right, Lord bless you.