ACTS 14: 8-19

The Exact Title: "THE THREE CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR THE OCCURRENCE OF DIVINE HEALING"

Although I have not personally seen it, I had heard that the 1991 movie "The Doctor" is an excellent movie. In this insightful and meaningful film, actor William Hurt portrays a cocky, arrogant and callused-heart surgeon who deals with his patients as though they were simply clogged sinks bereft of feelings or emotions whose drains he needed to unplug with a mechanical mentality. As a heart surgeon, Hurt treated his patients with little emotions or compassion, completely neglecting to address the concerns or feelings of his patients. But only after his own frightening ordeal with throat cancer, which forces him to experience medicine from the other end of the stethoscope and an emotional encounter with a terminal cancer patient does he realize that a physician must treat the soul and the psyche of a patient. In order for true healing to occur, the doctor realizes, both the soul and the body of the patient must be treated.

We call God’s intervention in the human healing process "Divine healing." No matter how skillful and adept a preacher or a doctor may be in performing spiritual and physical healing, one must humbly recognize and acquiesce to the fact that God is the basis of all healing and that man is a mere cog in the process of divine healing. This morning, while humbly recognizing the fact that God is the only One who cures both spiritual and bodily ailments, we will look at the three conditions necessary for the occurrence of divine healing.

The Gospel of Acts, chapters 13 and 14, vividly illustrate and record Disciple Paul’s active involvement in the ministry for the Gentiles. Disciple Paul’s ministry for the Gentiles often ran into obstacles and severe persecution; hence, reading about Paul’s ministry is like watching some adventure drama on television. The main opposition to Paul’s ministry was the group of synagogue Jews and they would prove to provide most problems for Paul and his ministry. Right prior to this morning’s scripture, in Acts, chapter 14, verses 1 through 6, Paul and Barnabas escape Jews and Gentiles of Iconium who came out, under the order of their rulers to stone and abuse them and retreat to castle Lystra in Lycaonia. It is at Lystra that Paul cures a crippled man who had no strength in his feet, who had been handicapped since birth, as illustrated in verse 8. Although it was through God’s will that this crippled man was healed, and not of Paul’s abilities, people falsely recognized Paul as god and intended to offer sacrificial ceremony in his honor. Thus, today’s scripture outlines the three requisite conditions for the occurrence of divine healing, proving once and for all that Paul’s healing of the crippled man came not from him but from God.

First, divine healing occurs when one approaches the patient, or the afflicted, with open heart. Paul and Barnabas, despite their tribulations and persecution in Iconium, went to another Gentile land, Lystra, without any fear in their hearts. Not only did they boldly and fearlessly go into a foreign land, they approached, among all the people present, one man who was crippled and sitting without strength in his legs. Without approaching the sick, the afflicted, the wounded, divine healing cannot take place.

In Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, verses 1 through 10, a man named Zaccheus overcomes his social status as tax collector and his physical stigma of short height to open up his heart and approach Jesus. Zaccheus was not the only one who approached, for Jesus Himself approached Zaccheus to heal him of his mental and spiritual sickness and rescue him from the feelings of despair, ostracism, and isolation. When these two met, the previously abandoned and outcasted Zaccheus attained true salvation from our Lord. Through Jesus, God came to us, towards those of us who are broken, weak, and limping. When God approached us, He came to us without any reservations, malice, judgment and predisposition; rather, He came to us harboring only love. In order for divine healing to take place, any reservations, stereotypes, or judgment against the other person must be cast away, and we must approach others with only benevolence, mercy, and love.

Second, only when we face and accompany the patient the sick and afflicted while making eye-to-eye, face-to-face, and heart-to-heart contact that divine healing takes place. Among the multitudes, Paul concentrated only on the sole sitting, crippled man. Not only did Paul fix his stare on this man; Paul focused all his energy and his heart on this man. In verse 9 of today’s scripture, it is recorded, "This man heard Paul speaking. Paul, observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed." Paul’s focus, his concentration on this man, enabled him to discern that the crippled man possessed requisite faith to receive divine healing.

 According to today’s scripture, the crippled man did not ask nor request Paul to cure him of his disabilities; the man did not even confess his faith in God to Paul. Only Paul’s keen interest and focus on this man enabled Paul to realize that the man possessed faith and that he desired, deep within his heart, to be healed. In verse 10, Paul "said with a loud voice, "Stand up straight on your feet!"" And with that command, the man leaped and walked, cleansed pure of his ailments and disabilities.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was always with those who came looking for Him, to have Him cure and heal them of their sickness, illnesses, or disabilities. Jesus approached and visited Zaccheus, who, by the virtue of his status as a tax collector, was considered an outright sinner and criminal among the Jews; not only did He visit Zaccheus, Jesus also stayed and ate at his house. When rumblings and rumors ran rampant that Jesus went to a sinner’s house and stayed there, Jesus remained with Zaccheus, paying no attention to the other people and their opinions. Through this unconquerable love of Jesus Christ was Zaccheus able to receive total healing of his spirit.

Third, only when both the healer and the healed humbly realize and confess the fact that the basis of all healing originate within God does divine healing take place. Only through this confession that both the healer and the healed change. The focus of today’s scripture lies not in the trivial and simple fact that Paul healed a crippled man; rather, the focus rests on how Paul and Barnabas reacted to the multitudes’ reaction to Paul’s work of healing. When Paul heals the sitting man with one simple phrase, the multitudes, greatly surprised at this miracle, begin to worship Paul and Barnabas through acts of deification. As it is recorded in verse 11, when people saw what Paul had done, "they raised their voices, saying in their Lycaonian language, "

The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!"" The people, at the verge of shock through the witnessing of the miracle, called Barnabas "Zeus," the chief god among the Greeks, and called Paul "Hermes," for he was the chief speaker. (They must have thought that because Paul spoke much more than Barnabas, that he was the god of oratory Hermes, and since Barnabas possessed perhaps more commanding and larger physique that Paul, Barnabas was considered as Zeus.) The multitudes did not yet know God, the creator of all; therefore, they committed the ignorant mistake of regarding Paul and Barnabas mere tools, or cogs in God’s process of divine healing as the basis of healing, the originators of miraculous healing. Therefore, in verse 13, the priest of Zeus, whose temple stood outside of the castle, comes forth to perform acts of sacrificial ceremony by bringing cows and garlands.

Verse 14 and the subsequent verses of today’s scripture is a speech towards the masses, who could not differentiate between God, who is the basis of divine healing and His executors of divine healing, Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas, while ripping their own garments in midst of great grief and sadness, stress to the multitudes that they too are humans, just like the rest of the masses. And they are urging, as recorded in verse 15, the masses to "turn from these vain things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, and sea, and all things that are in them."

Their heroic, yet grim, sermon enabled Paul and Barnabas to halt the deification by the ignorant masses and prevented them from conducting sacrificial ceremony in their honor. The surprising event ensues, as Jews, who came from Antioch and Iconium to Lystra, were able to incite the people of Lystra to stone Paul half to death, as recorded in verse 19. The same people who tried to deify Paul as their god about-faced into a violent mob, stoning the very person whom they believed to be god only moments before. The multitudes that do not recognized nor know God can vacillate so easily, like flipping one’s hand, by mere words or what they see in front of them.

The decisive actions by Paul were very instrumental in enabling the divine healing to take place. Healing comes from God alone. Paul was but a mere tool in God’s hands, whose sole purpose was to carry out and execute God’s work. And only when such humble faith and confession exist can the healer, as well as those who are being healed, can change. The Bible is silent meaning there is no further reference on what happens to the crippled man who was healed by Paul. We can be sure of one thing: Like Zaccheus, who became a new man though Christ, the crippled man probably became a new man.

After healing the crippled man, Paul stands up against the masses who attempt to deify him, by confessing that he is but a mere tool of God; as a result, Paul is stoned to near death. Yet he shows us daunting and unflappable courage, able to commit all that he has even his own life for the sake of spreading God’s Gospel. Like Paul, each one of us must realize and confess the fact that we, through our own abilities, cannot heal spiritual and physical ailments; furthermore, we must be able to leave all up to God, who accepts us through forgiveness and love and who heals us of all our ailments.

A man had a 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle, which formed a map of the entire world. One gloomy weekend, he gave the puzzle to his 12-year old son, secure in the knowledge that the puzzle would occupy the boy’s entire weekend. Three hours later, his son marched into his study and announced that the puzzle was completed. Stunned, the father asked how the boy had managed to put the complex puzzle together so quickly. "It was pretty easy," the son replied. "On the back of the world puzzle is picture of a man. When I put the man together, I had the world together." It is true. It is easy to cure and heal all diseases of the mind and the body. If we lean and depend on our Lord, confessing that He is the basis of all healing, divine healing will take place throughout our lives. Amen.