The Healing of the Kingdom

This life is filled with such wonderfully good things: the birth of a child, the laugh of a friend, a beautiful sunset, the autumn air, fishing on a riverbank, watching a whitetail work through the woods in the fall, college football. There is much to enjoy about life, but these wonderful things are so often interrupted by another reality of life – suffering. Where there is a birth, there is death. Where laughter, there are tears. Where there is a beautiful creation, there is the chaos of a natural disaster. There are times of bounty, and times of famine. Even college football is being destroyed by NIL deals! Suffering is a natural part of life. Pain is a plight we will all face. And yet, none of us expects to face it. We are often surprised when we face suffering, as if we would be the one person in all the world to avoid it. 

The reality of suffering is thought to be a real challenge to the belief in God. Skeptics will argue that a good God would never allow suffering, so because it exists, it either means that God is incompetent, sadistic, or doesn’t exist at all. There is a fatal flaw to the skeptic’s argument, though. It fails to recognize that God is not the only actor in the story of reality. It is certainly the case that God made everything “good”. We are told that in the creation story of Genesis 1. He made a world full of goodness, blessing, and rest. Yet, that is not the world we inhabit today. So we have to ask: what changed? Last week we considered that great catastrophe of Genesis 3, known as the Fall of Adam and Eve. We saw last week how that fall brought all of humanity under subjection to Satan. That fall also brought something else – curses. In Genesis 3:16, God begins to pronounce curses on Eve and Adam for their sin. He tells the woman that she will now struggle in her relationships. Her children will bring her pain, and her husband will bring conflict. God then turns to Adam and curses his land, his labor, and his life. He tells him, first, that the ground is cursed because of him. The very dirt of this world is affected by the sin of Adam. Second, he says that he will toil for his food all of his days. Before the fall, Adam was given work as a blessing, but now he is given toil as a curse. Lastly, he says that he will return to the ground from which he was made. God curses Adam and Eve with physical death.

But how are all these curses to be realized when Adam and Eve are living in such a blessed Garden? Genesis 3:22 gives us the answer to how all these curses took affect for Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity. It says, “’Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever-‘ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden… [and] placed the cherubim and a flaming sword… to guard the way to the tree of life.” Understand, the reason Adam and Eve would have lived forever in the Garden was not because of some physiological difference in them that we now do not have. They would have lived forever because of their closeness to God. They would have had eternal life because of their access to the tree of life. 

After the fall, we find humanity trying desperately to be delivered from this curse by regaining access to God. The kings before the flood tried it by cozying up to fallen angels. The people of Babel wanted to build a tower into the heavens that they may reach the throne room of Heaven. The soothsayers and necromancers of the pagans hoped to open a portal into the spiritual realm. But for all their efforts, the curse of suffering continued. It continued for all but one people – the Israelites. Their barren women gave birth, even in old age. While plagues fell on Egypt, there was peace in the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived. Even in the wilderness, when they were hungry, manna fell from heaven and quail blew in from the west. When they conquered the promised land, God told them that he would prevent sickness and suffering if they would but obey him. Because they were close to God, suffering was diminished. It was as if there was a new Eden emerging in Canaan. But, the sin of Adam still held sway, even over the people of Israel. They first secretly kept idols to other gods, and then they worshiped them out in the open – even to the point that they would set up pagan idols in the temple of the Lord. For this rebellion, God removed his hand of favor, and suffering came pouring in. They were conquered and scattered. Even though they returned to Jerusalem, God’s presence never did. The suffering continued from Persian rule to Greek to Roman.

Then, a light shown in the sky. Shepherds ran through the town of Bethlehem shouting about the birth of the Messiah. Legal scholars marveled at the understanding of a twelve-year-old boy who visited the temple. A prophet in the wilderness called people to get ready for the blessings of the kingdom by repenting and being baptized. Fishermen dropped their nets to follow a carpenter turned Rabbi. Demons screamed in the middle of a church service as this same rabbi preached, and he spoke a word and cast out the demon. It seemed as though the presence of God was near in this person, Jesus of Nazareth. It seemed that way, too, because when people were near him, they were healed of the curse of suffering. We see that very thing in our text for today from Mark 1:29-34. In this text I want you to see two points about the healing of the kingdom of God: the completeness of the healing and the charity of the healing.

First, consider the completeness of the healing from verses 29-31. Mark tells us that, on the same day that Jesus casted out the demon, he came to Peter’s house to find Peter’s mother-in-law gravely sick. We are told that she had a fever, which, in the Greek, literally means “to be on fire.” Even today, when you are running a high-grade fever, you are legitimately in danger. Thankfully, we understand pathogens better now and have medicines fit for most diseases. But, in Jesus’s day, there were no such medicines. They also had far more diseases to worry with than we do, as many of the most pernicious diseases have been eradicated thanks to better sanitation, food processing, and vaccines. You get a sense of the real concern for Peter’s mother-in-law in the way the story is told – “immediately they told him about her.” You can understand their urgency and their reasoning. Here is a man who just confronted and cast out a demon, so maybe he has the power to heal this woman who is deathly sick.

The picture of Jesus’s work in healing this woman is beautiful. Verse 31 says that he took her by the hand and lifted her up. There are two reasons this is beautiful. For one, Jesus draws near to her and takes her hand. He doesn’t treat her like a plague victim. He doesn’t wear a mask or require her to social distance. He compassionately takes her hand. It’s also beautiful because of the double meaning in the phrase, “lifted her up.”  This phrase means to “awaken or raise.” It’s used in other places, like Matt. 17:23, to speak of the resurrection of Jesus. Again, this points to just how sick she was, but also it foreshadows a greater healing that Jesus would bring in his death and resurrection.

More beautiful than the way he healed her is the result of her healing. It says, after she was healed, she immediately got up and started serving them. It was the evening of Sabbath, and it was time to cook a big meal for her family. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I’m knocked down from the flu, it takes me a few days to get back to normal. Even after the fever breaks, it can still be several days before a person feels right again. Yet, with this woman, she is up and going like nothing ever happens. Charles Spurgeon had this to say about the completeness of Jesus’s healing: “Jesus’s cures are always complete. If he saves us from the burning fever, he saves us from the weakness that follows it. And, when he deals with soul maladies, his cures are equally complete… When the great physician restores the soul, he restores it completely.”

Second, see the charity of his healing in verses 32-34. The word spread of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and soon there were people crowded at the door to be healed. The way Mark tells it, the whole of Capernaum was lined down the street to be near Jesus. See in this the love and compassion of Jesus. Jesus is not like us in his charity. If we had the power of healing, we certainly may heal our family members. But, when people lined down the street to meet us, we’d find a way out. Not so with Jesus. As the people of the city crowded in, he saw them all and met their needs. Yes, he had compassion on that smelly homeless man with the debilitated leg. Yes, he cared for the drug addict who would just be back the next day with some other problem. Yes, he saw the people we don’t see, the lowly, the despised, the immigrant, the enemy. When they drew near to Jesus, they were healed and left changed.

This blessing of the healing power of Jesus didn’t end with his earthly ministry, either. Remember, Jesus gave all of his authority to his church. Through the power of His Spirit, his church experiences the nearness of the kingdom of God and the blessing of healing that comes with it. There are three ways that we find the healing power of Christ in his church. For one, we experience healing through the wisdom of God. Prov. 3:8 says that the fear of the Lord “will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” If we are in Christ, we have the wisdom of God, and that wisdom keeps us from the suffering that foolishness brings. Even on a basic level, studies show that religious people live as much as 10 years longer than the nonreligious. They are also measurably happier and tend to engage more with their society. This is all because of the wisdom of God that leads us to self-control, joy, and contentment.

Second, we experience healing through the gifts of the Spirit. 1 Cor. 12:9 tells us that certain people in the church are gifted with the ability to heal. Now, in saying this, let me dispel a myth about the gift of healing. In popular Christian culture, it is assumed that what Paul means by the gift of healing is the ability to work miracles. So, you will see no shortage of charlatans on Christian TV claiming to have the gift of healing. Yet, that is not what is meant by the gift of healing. For one, the word that Paul uses for “healing” in 1 Cor. 12 is iama, which means “a remedy or medicine.” Also, right after talking about healing, Paul says that some are given the gift of working miracles. So, it’s obvious that Paul doesn’t have in mind the Benne Hinn style of healing, but rather the ability to see a medical problem and provide a remedy for it. Some people are just gifted with the compassion and knowledge to provide remedies for pain and suffering. And, without the influence of the church in this world, men and women would still be practicing vain superstitions instead of seeking medical solutions. It is because of Christianity that we have the advancements in medicine that we have today. Christianity created the university and the scientific method. And Christianity is unique among all religions in its care for the sick and infirmed.

Lastly, we experience healing through the prayers of God’s people. James 5:14 says, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.” When the church prays, people are made well. When the church prays, God works to heal and restore.

In the church, we draw near to the presence of God and receive the blessings of healing. But, we continue to live in a world of suffering. We do so, knowing that one day, God will bring an end to suffering. In Rev. 22:2, we have a beautiful picture of what it looks like to be eternally in the presence of God in the new Jerusalem. We are told, “through the middle of the street of the city [flows a river]; also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” At the very beginning of history, mankind was forbidden access to the tree of life as a curse. But, when God completes his redemptive work and Christ returns to make all things new, we will see that tree of life again. We will be able to stroll down the river side in the city of God and take fruit from that tree. That tree will renew us every day, for all of eternity, as we bask in the glorious presence of God.