Signs of The Kingdom

This first message of the New Year is based on the premise and the promise that says “Seek Ye first the Kingdom of Heaven”. Also as we begin our week of prayer & fasting, part of our Lord’s Prayer says that we should ask “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”.

The reason Jesus taught us to pray that is because His expectation that some of that Kingdom would be breaking through in our lives so that we would not have to wait until we get to heaven in order to have heaven get into the earth through us. So with that in mind I want us to look at the ‘big picture’ of what are the signs of the coming of that Kingdom. How can you tell if the Kingdom is coming? What are the signs?

One of the signs is healing. Both personal and social – in other words spiritual and cultural healing.

Let's read 4 verses from Matthew 9:35-38
Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
37 Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
38 "Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest."

First of all, like I said earlier, I want you to understand the big picture of what we are talking about here. We are going to talk about ‘personal healing’ today but personal healing was much more than a physical correction. It wasn’t just about a touch in the body because quite frankly, they did not see it limited to just the make up of a physical need. BUT physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, cultural… they saw them all together. You have to see that in the way that the Bible is written.

In your Bible you have commas and numbers etc. but when it was written in the original texts we don’t have these divisions. So in verse 35, the teaching and the proclaiming and the healing all go together. They all follow each other. They are a part of one another. That is to say we are people who are not divided simply as physical bodies only and that it is not related to the rest of our make up.

We are intricately interrelated. Our physical bodies are directly affected by our emotional parts and relational parts of our lives. In fact many of our illnesses come from our stresses of our relationships or from the diseases THE DIS-Eases of our culture. That has a profound affect on our physical health.
So we are not a divided people, as a matter of fact, the word here for ‘Healing’ is “TheraPune” and we get the word therapy from it. It has an interesting source, it did not just mean therapeutic or medicinal healing. This word started out as ‘CARING FOR’.

A simple word ‘caring for’ and it graduated to the term ‘ministering physically to someone’. So therefore the word ‘Healing’ meant much more than just a physical correction.

In deed today, if you wanted to become a doctor and they interviewed you for medical school, they will ask you this question. In fact they will ask you this question several different times with differing words but it comes down to this. Here is the question. Why do you want to become a doctor? Now let me give you the wrong answer, “I want to be a doctor so I can work on peoples bodies and mechanically fix what is physiologically wrong” Not a good answer. Not what they are looking for.

Here is the right answer, “I want to be a doctor because I care about people and I want to compassionately help people”. Listen, if you are going for an interview for medical school they already know you are smart enough or you wouldn’t be interviewed, what they are looking for in this process is what else you are involved in, they don’t know if you are a ‘caring person’ so they are listening for that.

So the scripture is very explicit that our healing is not just about our physical body because we are an interconnected people. Our Spiritual life or lack of it is directly related to our well being.

I want you to see in Psalm 103 where it says, 1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name. 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits; 3 Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases; 4 Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with loving-kindness and compassion; 5 Who satisfies your years with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle. 6 The LORD performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed.

Look at what it says, It talks about healing in connection with pardon of our sins, healing of our physical sicknesses, redeeming our life from the pit, but it also talks about healing with the justice of our society. In other words you will never be truly well until those around you are made well. All who are oppressed. Like when the drug addict is delivered, the mentally tormented freed, the abused healed, the weary are renewed, the marginal & forgotten restored. Wholeness includes all of us. Shalom.

The word SHALOM. Means “Peace, wholeness, complete, nothing lacking”. Personally & culturally.

This is what it says in 2 Chronicles 7:14. Many of you know this by heart. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land”.

Before we ever get to our physical healings I want to say a word about our upcoming week of prayer. We His people are going to humbly seek His face & consecrate ourselves. God will hear our prayers, forgive our sins, heal our lives, loved ones and community.

Our health is dependent upon the health of our community. And just as God cares about us as a whole, He cares about us alone. Why did Jesus go into all the towns and villages? Why did He not just set up a clinic? People would have come. If you have ever been on a Medical Mission trip before you know. People will show up and stand in line when you open the doors to your clinic.

He could have done that but He went into the whole land, into the harvest fields, because he loves the community…

Matthew 9:36 “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd”.

God cares about our community, God cares about our congregation but here is what is key and we’ll end with this. God never loses you in the crowd. If it feels crowded don’t worry he won’t miss you. Don’t ever feel alone because you are never alone with God. Don’t ever feel ignored because you are never ignored. Those of you who are sitting alone right now in this place or watching this DVD in your living room right now by yourself, you are not alone. You are with all of us just as if you were sitting here in the sanctuary and God is with you. You don’t get lost in distance or time. You don’t get lost in numbers of people either. When we grow don’t say I liked Bethel when it was small in numbers.

In Luke chapter 8 it talks about a crowd surrounding Jesus. They are just trying to get close to Jesus on this roadway, on this journey, just trying to touch Him, be near to Him.

There is this woman who has had an issue of blood for 12 years. Now I have to tell you this if you don’t know, any woman who has that issue of blood, while she has that condition is unclean. NO ONE can touch her. For her, her issue made her an untouchable one. That means she has not been touched for 12 years. Can you imagine the isolation? Can you imagine the shame? Somehow she sneaks her way pass the crowds and reaches out past her shame to come towards Jesus. She sneaks her way and the Bible says this… 42 “As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. 43 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her.

44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.” 45"Who touched me?" Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you." 46 But Jesus said, "Someone touched me; I know that power (KJV – Virtue) has gone out from me." 47 Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, she came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48 Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."

Why did Jesus say that last verse? Did that heal her? No she was already healed. Until He pronounced her well, it made her allowed to be touched, for the first time in 12 years. For the first time in 12 years she could be loved again, she could be held again. She could be accepted. Jesus knew her social healing was just as important.

And now we are going to ask if any of you need healing. Are you broken hearted? DO you feel like you are an outsider, an untouchable perhaps, socially disgraced or emotionally distant? I pray that you say “Today I choose to follow you Jesus, past the eyes of the crowd to the heart of your love & compassion for me”

Some of you will be healed today, physically. Some of you won’t but let me tell you there is something more important than even instantaneous physical healing and the virtue of Jesus is present to work in you to heal your issue or issues.

We’ve had His teaching from the Word, we’ve heard the proclaiming of His Spirit and now He wants to bring His healing.