“Excellent Healing"
September 9, 2012
The 15th Sunday of Ordinary Tine
A.K.A.
Kingdomtide
and
Time of the Church
Isaiah 35: 4 - 7a/Psalm 146/James 1: 17 – 27/Mark 7: 31 – 37
His Eminence
The Most Reverend Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
and
Primate
of the
National Church in the Philippines
and
the Territorial Church of Asia
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
I don’t know how your week registered in your existence, but for me this week has been such an awesome time of understanding God – His revelation of who He is and what He has done for us. It goes beyond our understanding. It goes beyond the things that we, perhaps, think that we know.
In the Old Testament reading today, it says, “He will save you.” In the gospel, it says, “He has done all things well.” I believe that the excellence of God is demonstrated in the way He lives out His existence, His perfection. He does not fail in any realm. We, not really knowing Him, accuse Him of so many things. We even have come up with theological excuses to enhance our failures and not take the blame for what is taking place. We put the blame on God.
If we know God and we understand His character, His very nature, we have to realize that we have a great hope because He is our God. He doesn’t fail; He doesn’t forsake; He does not put to shame, but He saves.
Isaiah 35:5-9 is a prophetic utterance. “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; the recompense of God will come, but He will say you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah. And the scorched land will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water, in the haunt of jackals, its resting place, grass becomes reeds and rushes. And a highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, but it will be for him who walks that way, and fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go up on it; these will not be found there, but the redeemed will walk there.”
There would be a tendency to think that this means that after the end of time, these things will happen. If this highway is not going to have the unrighteous or the fools walking on it, surely this cannot be the end of time. It is a roadway, a highway, for the righteous to walk upon so that the others can see the greatness of God and see how He cares for His own, for those who believe.
A turning point in history. The prophet Isaiah was saying that there is coming a time when you will walk on a new road. You will walk in a new way. The deliverance will be given to you. I believe he talks about the time that Christ went to the cross. I believe it then marks a change in history. It sets a road because He came with vengeance. He destroyed the powers of evil. He destroyed the power of death, hell and the grave. He restored man to His creative ability. He gave man new life, not new as far as origins is concerned, but from where man was at that time, He restored man. He gave man hope.
I looked back to the time, even before Isaiah, when God delivered Israel out of Egypt. He brought them out of slavery and He took them to the Promised Land, of prosperity. They were able to walk on a new road, no longer in bondage, in slavery, and no longer mistreated. Now, they become what I would refer to as the “elite”. Those who God has favored and has cared for. He gave them a land prepared for them – a land of milk and honey. It was a land prosperous in its ability. It was created or planted by others but God gave to His own.
Psalm 145 says, “He will hear their cry and save them.” Do we believe that today? Is this our attitude of our God? Do we see God with such awesome ability and awesome character? When it says that He would save us, do we understand that this word “save” has been misinterpreted? Some of our theologians have said this is taking away our sin and our iniquity.
If you study the origins of this word “save”, it means much more than that. It is a deliverance from danger; it is a deliverance from suffering. It is inclusively all the blessings bestowed by God on man, in Christ. It is a restoration of all things when it says “saved.” It means you have been pulled out of the darkness and brought into the marvellous light. It is more than just a spiritual salvation as we have interpreted it in the past – our sins gone. No, it is more than this. The curse is gone. We are delivered from the curse because Christ nailed the curse to the cross. It brings us into completeness.
Colossians 2:10 says that we are complete in Him. Do we comprehend what that means? Do we understand the promise of God to us? We find ourselves wallowing in the mud, in the suffering, sorry, in the bitterness and anger, when in reality God has come through Christ and set us free. He has blessed us. Each of the remaining Psalms each encourages us to praise God, to worship Him, to bring glory to Him because of His greatness and His goodness toward us.
We have much to be thankful for. We have much to give Him praise for. In James 1, it says every good and perfect gift is from Him. Do we see this? Do we comprehend the Father’s excellence? Do we see Him giving to us only pesos when we need much more? Do we see Him only giving to us promises rather than giving us reality? The God that we serve is an awesome God. His greatness goes way beyond our comprehension or what we have trained ourselves to think of Him. His capability is unlimited. His commitment is unending. Even if we fail Him, He does not fail us. Even if we rebel against Him, He will not turn against us.
It is very evident in Christ coming that at a time when the world turned against God, He came to redeem man and to bring man back to His relationship with the Father. This is the God that we serve. This is the One who has created all things. His character is of excellence. His character is of perfection. His character is not lacking in any good thing. He says to us, “Not only are you to hear what I have done, but you are to walk in it. You are to be doer of it. Be blessed in all that you do.” It is not sitting back and doing nothing. It is taking what He has given to us and putting it into operation. We received the Word implanted which is able to save our soul. To deliver us from all the curse, in all those things that were brought against us.
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, when He delivered them from their bondage, the Psalms says that not one of them was feeble. When He delivered them out of their darkness, and He brought them out into the new life, not one was feeble. He healed every one of them. Do we not see this also in the life of Jesus? Do we not see that wherever He went, healing followed Him? The one thing that has really caught my attention in Christ’s life was that when He ministered to those who were in need, He would tell them, “It is your faith that has healed you.”
This should speak so powerfully to us. It should encourage us to build our faith, that confidence in God. This faith will bring about a result. Faith without works is dead. If faith does not produce what we are asking for, then obviously it is not really what it is supposed to be.
See God with such ability. How great is your need? How great is your pain? How great is your frustration? How great is your confusion? It doesn’t even measure to the greatness of God’s ability to bring life to us! It is not only to bring life to us for He has already given that life to us. If only we had faith, it will manifest.
The gospel talks about the deaf hearing, the dumb speaking. He changed the darkness to light and the slavery to freedom. Is it only for those days? Is it only for the time that He was walking upon the face of the earth? Is it only for the recording of Scriptures that these things were given. Or were they meant to challenge us to also believe and to understand that when He says, “All things are possible,” that it is also for today.
Christ has set us free. He has given to us new life. He intends for us to walk on this highway – not a depressed road but a highway so that others can see our lives. It is so that we can be a witness to the greatness of God. He takes away the oppression, the fears, the doubts and He establishes us in security knowing that He will not fail us. He will not forsake us.
Even in the midst of the conflict, He is there. He brings peace not because we are stronger than the conflict, but because He is with us. He has provided all things. He bore our sins in His body that we might live to righteousness. For by His wounds, we were healed.
Every Sunday, I read this from Isaiah. It is necessary for us to understand that Christ has given to us that ability to rise above the things that seem to hold us down. By His scourging, we were healed. It is past tense. It is not something new. It is only a manifestation of what He has already given to us. It is a manifestation of His commitment, His love; a manifestation of His creation and the life that He has provided for us.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having becoming a curse for us. Scriptures says, “Curse is everyone who hangs on the tree. Why do still hold on to the fact that these things can be against us? If He healed us, if He destroyed the curse, if He paid the price to deliver us from our sins, should we not have the faith to manifest that? Is it only for a few? Is it only for others and not for me? No, He did this for all. So perfect was His gift that He did not need to repeat it. His provision is more than enough that we would more than conquerors. We are not to be overcome. We are not to be the downtrodden. But spiritually and physically, He has given to us the ability to rise up.
Scriptures talks about how that creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of man. Waiting so that they can be delivered and set free from the curse. It is our responsibility to do so. In Genesis, when God put man in the Garden, He said, “Cultivate it and keep it.” This is our responsibility. When we do not walk in that hope, in that faith, around us, there comes the turmoil and the strife.
If only we would understand that faith given to us by God, it will cause us to walk on a highway. It will lift us out of our turmoil and strife. It will lift us up out of the darkness of confusion. Is this not why Christ says, “Come up here?” Is this not why God, when He spoke to Moses, says, “Come up here?” When they went to the Mount of Transfiguration, did He not take them above all the other things?
This is what He desires for all of us that we would be set free from this new life that He has given to us. We can live in the world but we are not of it. Its torments, its battles and its conflicts and its pain are not to be ours. We are to be free from them and we are to be the instruments then to reach out and to set others free. With this hope that He has given to us, we are to touch the lives of other.
Faith without works – it is taking what He has given and putting them into action. It is then that the evidence of God’s greatness is brought to us. “Every perfect gift is from above.” Can you imagine the gifts that God has given to us being perfect, if only we had faith in them? If only we had confidence in them? We could say, “Yes, this is what God has. This is what He has given me. I am not going to accept anything less than that.”
It is amazing how quickly we accept the lesser things and how much doubt we have that the provisions of God are ours today. We easily accept the trouble, the strife, the conflict but we do not easily recognize and acknowledge the fact that God has sent Christ to deliver us from the curse. The curse does belong to us because it has been taken into Christ. He became the curse that we could be free from it. We need to have faith in what He has done. We need to stand firm believing that all these things don’t belong to us because Christ set us free. Our faith in Him, our confidence in Him because all that we are is in Him.
Ephesians 2:10, “We are His workmanship.” We are His craftsmanship. What He has done created our lives in the way it should be. What He has done in our behalf, we should be able to live it out because that is how He created us to be.
If we buy an appliance, we expect it to fulfil the manufacturer’s proclamation. If it doesn’t, we go back to the manufacturer and say, “This is not what it says it would be. I want my money back or I want you to bring it up to the standards of your advertising.” God has set us free. God has taken away the sin and the shame. He has taken away sickness and the disease by the stripes He bore. He restored us into the family of God. In Him, we are seated together in heavenly places on the right hand of God far above principalities and powers. And yet we find ourselves in the midst of these principalities and power because we don’t have the faith to believe that Christ has delivered us and set us free. Yes, we are human. Yes, we make mistakes. Yes, we fail, but Christ covers those failures.
Scripture talks about love that covers a multitude of sin, failure. This is Christ. He does not count our failures against us. He covers us so that we can be free from those things and we can have new life in Him. How blessed we are! Blessed be God for His commitment, His provision, His love and His mercy because He bestows that upon us. He has fulfilled the law and He gave its fulfilment to us. He knew we couldn’t accomplish it. He gave us the results by bestowing upon holiness and righteousness.
We are truly a blessed people. We cannot take confidence or pride in what we have done. Our pride is in the Cross. It is the Cross that brought this to us. In the vigil, I shared how that I finally understood why we make the Sign of the Cross. It isn’t just tradition. It isn’t just something that we do. Everything that God has done for us has come through the Cross by Christ’s death, and that Cross has become the difference between the old life and the new life. That Cross has become the difference between failure and success. That Cross has become the difference between sickness and health. That Cross has become the difference between fear and security.
Every time we make the Sign of the Cross, we are reminding ourselves that maybe when even spiritual forces may be around, we are saying, “No, the Cross has set me free. The Cross has brought me salvation. The Cross is my healing. The Cross is my covering.”
This is why we cross our head. We are saying, “I have been redeemed by the cross of Christ. I belong to Him. I am His, and He is mine. When things are not going the right way for us, it is time we remind ourselves, “I belong to Christ. He paid the price. He redeemed me and I have been set free. “
It is time for us to awaken to the life that He has given to us and manifest it. Get on that highway and move along and proclaim the greatness of Your God. Proclaim His compassion, His love and His grace. This is the goodness of God. I am not saying that we will never have problems. I am saying that God is the answer to our problems. He is the deliverance. He has already given it to us, and by faith, we manifest that life He has given to us.
May we be the witnesses. May we be a witness to the greatness of God’s gift to us. May we proclaim it in the lives we live, in the words that we speak, in the deeds of our hands, in the thoughts of our minds. May they all reflect the redemption that is ours.
LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION
WITH
HIS GRACE, THE MOST REVEREND ARCHBISHOP LUIS ANTONIO "CHITO" GOKIM TAGLE D.D.
ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA AND VENERABLE PRIMATE OF THE PHILIPPINES
THROUGH
THE WORD EXPOSED
Romans 14:7
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