Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and in this week's episode, I thought that I would tackle a question that I recently got from Alicia, because this goes really well into my last couple of episodes that I've had.
I've been talking about the reality of the gods. And when we're talking about that, we need to think about how they also have an impact in our world, right? And there's different ways that this is talked about in different sections of Christianity. The question is about sickness and healing. Where do those things come from, and who actually has power over them?
So does sickness come from God? [00:01:00] Does it come from Satan? Can we pray it away if we have enough faith? Now, for those of you who are interested in this topic and who haven't listened to all of my episodes, I will point you back to a few of those episodes that I've done in the past. Now, they're not required listening in order to listen to this one. You'll be able to follow this one just fine without listening to all of those before, but if you want kind of a fuller picture of things that I would say are really wrapped up in the same idea, Then there are a few episodes that you can listen to together in order to get that kind of going.
In episode 23, I talked about generational curses. And this question of sickness and healing is very much like that kind of a question as well. But there are some specific things that I think can really be said about this idea of sickness in particular. In episode 46, I talked [00:02:00] about how spirits aren't just entities and that spirits can be kind of like an organizational principle. And then in my last episode, in episode 59, I talk about how Paul, in the book of Romans, talks about sin as if it's a real entity, and it has a real power over us, and that we need deliverance from that, and Jesus is providing that deliverance.
So, here seems like a really good time to talk a little bit about how those kinds of things kind of mesh. How are we supposed to think about these things? I mean, if spirit can be an organizational principle, and it can be a real spiritual entity, Then how do we tell what's metaphor and what's not? How do we tell when scripture is talking about spiritual entities as some ontological reality, like there's a real spirit that you would be able to interact with, or whether the spirit [00:03:00] is one of just an organizational principle?
For the most part, I would say that's a false dichotomy. I mean that we are trying to put our categories into this ancient text, and that's just never gonna work. It's never a good idea to do that. Now, this might sound like a bit of a contradiction when you go back to that episode about the spirits of organization.
In that episode, I suggest that things like the spirit of jealousy are not just spirits that we can say have an ontological reality, that every time somebody feels jealous, they It's caused by a particular spirit. So I want to be clear and say that I don't think it's the case that every time we're jealous, that a certain spirit of jealousy is behind that.
So I'm not trying to contradict myself here. Just to jump ahead to my conclusion, I'm going to be defending all of this, but part of what [00:04:00] we need to do here is that we need to make a distinction between our context and the Bible's context. Because there is a difference. The difficult thing is that we need to understand the Bible in its own terms. And part of that is acknowledging that the descriptions in the Bible are not always true descriptions of reality, as far as, like, a scientifically true statement.
A scientifically true statement would be something like, The Earth is a globe. And the biblical writers didn't have to describe the world like that. Because that wasn't their understanding of reality. So you can have something in the Bible, like the story of Jacob with his flocks. He's breeding his flocks in front of those striped sticks. And when he does that, he ends up with striped babies, right? Well, we can't expect to breed [00:05:00] our flocks in front of striped sticks and end up with kids that are particularly colored, right?
So this is what we're doing here. We're trying to understand the Bible in its context. And in addition to that, the idea of an organizational principle is not entirely separate from the idea of a real entity. What I'm talking about here might sound almost like a side conversation to the main conversation about sickness and healing, but it's going to connect directly.
Basically, what we have with the topic of sickness and healing is an organizational principle. Sickness or healing. Those aren't entities in and of themselves, right? They are organizational principles. They're organizing our existence in a certain way. So, the question is, what causes those things? These days, of course, we have quite a few ways to look at [00:06:00] that.
Okay, so, we will get to that, but first I thought we could talk about an example of how we can think the way we think today, and also look at how the Bible structures things. And here I want you to be thinking actively about the idea of spirit as an organizational principle versus spirit as an active entity, like an agent that has goals and motivation and can do things via free will choice, right?
So let's say we're in prison. There's a few ways we could be in prison, right? We could just be visiting, we could be working there, or we could be locked up. Now, usually when you're locked up, you're there because some conscious entity put you there, right? You were locked up by people because they determined that you committed some crime.
Maybe you could say you were in prison because of the choices you made, so it's your fault, [00:07:00] but it's not like you just walked into your cell and locked yourself in. Other people did that. And maybe you're there unfairly. Maybe somebody framed you.
Okay, so that's being in prison because of somebody else's choice or agency. But what if we're accidentally locked in? What if we were exploring an abandoned prison, and the door closes for whatever reason, and it latches, and we're stuck? We're locked in. No one consciously put us here, but for the moment we're in the same position as we would be if some real person had locked us in.
In either case, we have the same predicament. So, we need someone to deliver us. Now, of course, in the second case, we're not going to last very long without food and water. And in the first case, there's the thing that's going to deliver us that might not be a conscious person, but something impersonal like [00:08:00] the law.
But let's set all of that to the side because remember, all analogies break down at some point, although the bit about the law might be an interesting angle to meditate on later. At any rate, my point is in the one case, we need deliverance because of the actions of a real conscious agent. And in the other case, we need deliverance because the door closed and latched.
We might call that an organizational principle. The actual act of being locked in is the organizational principle. And in both cases, it's the organizational principle that prevents us from walking out free. But in one case, there is conscious choice of another behind it. And in the other case, there isn't. But, we're stuck all the same. Freedom in both cases would, at a basic level, look exactly the same. Because we'd be able to leave the building and live our [00:09:00] lives again.
Now, there is a major distinction here. The difference in the two scenarios is that in the second case with the accident, there would be no one upon whom vengeance could be wrought. I don't know if you've read The Count of Monte Cristo. If you haven't, You really, really should. It's such a good book. The movie is great, too, but the book? It's one of my favorite books ever. In fact, just thinking about it this week has got me wanting to pick it back up to read again.
So, In the Count of Monte Cristo, and I'm afraid I will be giving a few spoilers here, but I'll keep it basic. Edmund Dantes gets put into prison. He ends up escaping, but not entirely on his own. He had a friend, and because of that friend, Dantes ends up outside the prison, and he now has money. Because he has money, he's able to enact a very intricate [00:10:00] plot of revenge. Now, he couldn't do that if there wasn't someone upon whom to get revenge. He also couldn't do that if he himself had no power. So, this parallels what is happening to us, who need deliverance by Jesus. Because the only reason we gain deliverance is through the power of Jesus. Without power, we get no deliverance.
This is true also in the case of us accidentally getting locked in. Without power to defeat the problem, the problem remains. And note that in both cases, There is an external thing that has a hold upon us that we are unable to defeat. Whether it is being locked into prison, or being under the power of sin, it's the same. Whether sin is just an organizational principle, or whether it's a spiritual entity with cunning and choice, to some degree it doesn't actually matter, [00:11:00] because in both cases we're stuck in the same place. We need that deliverance.
But what about that little thing called revenge? We'd like for whatever happens to us to be avenged. We just have this desire in our hearts for that. We don't like senseless accidents because there's no one to pay a price. There's no one to have the blame. So we'd prefer the whole thing to be under the guise of a conscious agent, because then we might get the satisfaction of revenge.
But what the Bible tells us is that vengeance is the Lord's. So Edmund Dantès out there doing his thing. He's taking on something that doesn't belong to him. And when we do that, consequences don't just fall on the guilty party, but also on ourselves, and people close to the guilty party. So, do we really want that kind of vengeance?
We only want the vengeance that God meets out, because that's the kind that is going to not [00:12:00] end up with collateral damage. And in a way, vengeance is really none of our business. It's God's business, and to be honest, we all end up coming out of things a little bit better if the vengeance doesn't end up too messy.
At any rate, we need to keep in mind the way that the Bible describes things. Even in the case of getting accidentally locked into prison, we're going to recognize that there was a cause for that. We might caution ourselves from trying to see in the Bible things described in this kind of strict cause and effect way, because it's really not how it talks about things.
We also need to realize that my little story here isn't going to take us very far as to how the biblical authors necessarily see things. We might say, well, what if it's just our own dang fault that we're trapped in prison? Well, if it is, we still need deliverance, and we are still separate from the principle of being locked in. We can be saved from our predicament without [00:13:00] further punishment for our silly actions.
So, we have spirits who end up getting the main consequence of it all, because they knew very well what they were doing in relation to humanity. If you think about it, there's always something redeeming about humanity, about any person anywhere. There's always something good that they've done, or else there's an effect that is positive about their existence and the way they've lived their life. And if there is that positive thing, then that positive thing is something that is right in the world. And does not need to be fixed.
We might not be able to say that about the devil, or a wicked spirit, who seem to be beyond any redemption. Probably because, as far as we know, there is literally no good quality. Nothing redeeming about them. No artifact of their existence glorifies God except their defeat. This would also be true of the things that accidentally lock us into prison. [00:14:00] Those organizational principles, we might say. But in any case, I hope you are kind of catching my drift here.
Whether or not there is a conscious being named Sin, well, we get the effect of Sin in either case. But, the way that the Bible talks about Sin and Death, and let's throw in chaos here while we're at it, it's something that seems alive and calculating. So none of this is just a matter of our personal transgressions.
When we are locked inside that prison, it might not matter how we got there, but what's important is that we get out. But, also remember, scripture seems to say that sometimes there is a real spirit entity out there behind things, and sometimes there isn't, at least not a specific one. And that's the key for us, I think.
I think that's what we really need to hone in on. Because if we want to categorize it and place labels on everything, sometimes we can't because [00:15:00] we are divorced from that original context where they were already kind of tracking in the spiritual realm kind of thing, and we're not. We kind of have to work at it, and we kind of have to organize it ourselves in our own categories. And I'm not sure that's a really good idea, because we are not in that section of time where we were getting that kind of revelation for the world.
But in either case, it remains an external threat to us, and in either case, the deliverance looks the same on our end. And in either case, we are in bondage to something that is external to ourselves, but that might also be said to be inside ourselves. But it's not our identity, and that's the key. And unlike Edmund Dantes, we don't, in fact, actually have power to do anything about it.
Okay, so, with all of that being said, here's our hook into today's episode. We don't need to look [00:16:00] for a demon behind every bush in order to need deliverance. Though, that doesn't mean we toss out the idea of literal spirit entities.
This is a hard line for us to walk because it seems unclear. But , the answer to everything is, the same, and that's where our focus needs to be. So, we're talking about sickness, and I've mentioned enough times before the idea that the ancients believed deeply in a mirroring of heaven and earth, and that their general concept was that when something happened, good or bad, a deity or spirit was behind that.
You can go listen to the episode on generational curses for a bit more about that. I don't want my main point here in this episode to get too lost in all of these weeds, so let's tackle the point directly and then get into looking at it more closely.
The broad question is, is sickness caused by God, [00:17:00] or is it caused by Satan or evil spirits? Or what? And in looking at the scriptures, I'm afraid the answer is yes, all of the above. We can find evidence of every one of those answers. Because I think the Biblical authors would have believed that both God and wicked spirits could and did cause sickness. Even in spite of the fact that the Bible also seems to clearly say that God doesn't cause sickness. And sometimes we even get the idea that our sin causes sickness. And sometimes that idea is denied.
So why can't it just be clear? Why all of these different answers? Are they contradictions? Well, in the sense that different authors at different times could have had different ideas, I'm not saying they necessarily did, but they might have, because understandings of things [00:18:00] simply changes over time, then sure, in that sense they might be kind of like contradictions.
Different authors are thinking or explaining things in different ways. One author might have meant something, and another author may have had the opposite idea. We can't really rule that out, because God wasn't trying to correct all of the bad ideas out there. That's why we see some Bible characters who are up to some really bizarre things sometimes. Not everything in the Bible is God approved. I mean that there were scientific and cultural ideas that just didn't matter in the moment. So when we're talking about sickness, and healing, and how those things work out, The Bible isn't presenting to us some cohesive manual that we need to turn to in order to figure out what's going on.
We don't want God to be the cause of sickness because that seems quite wrong since sickness [00:19:00] is associated with death and not life. Of course, if it's in line with punishment, we think that's alright then. God can punish people by sickness, and that's the idea there of sin causing sickness.
What about in the Book of Job, though?
Oh, that's right. That's Satan, isn't it? Satan is the cause of Job's woe. Well, hold up there! Is he? Well, many of you listening will probably already be quite familiar with the good old debate of whether the Satan in the Book of Job is actually the devil or not. I've mentioned it before, and on my website's blog, you can find a post or two about that topic.
Most people want the Satan figure to be the devil named Satan, but the term Satan in Job is not a name, and the author of Job seemingly did not have Genesis in mind when he put the [00:20:00] Satan in the narrative. If the author was trying to harken back to the serpent in the garden, he would have had something concrete in those first few chapters of Job. And there simply aren't any words or phrases that connect the two narratives.
Now, did later people think the Satan in Job is the devil, who is also the serpent in the garden? Yes, they did. And I'll be finishing up another blog post about that. But I think when we are reading Job, as in, we're trying to read it in its own context, rather than through the ideas of a later context, We shouldn't jump too quickly to the idea that the Satan there is an already rebellious creature.
I know it does sound like he's trying to challenge God, either in authority, or just in God's description of the character of Job. But, read the first two chapters of Job carefully. The Satan, the accuser, [00:21:00] doesn't actually jaunt up to God complaining about Job. In fact, he doesn't even mention him. The Satan stands before God, just like the other sons of God, and that seems to be an obedient posture.
God asks the Satan what he's been doing, and the Satan says, going around the earth to and fro, just, you know, looking around at stuff. It's God who brings Job both times to the attention of Satan, and the Satan does say Yeah, okay, Job seems great, but he'd curse you to your face, God, if he wasn't blessed.
Then God says that the Satan can do some nasty things to Job, but he can't kill him. And the Satan obeys. He does what God said he could, and he doesn't cross any lines. It wasn't the Satan's idea to do all of those things, even if he may have been insinuating that it should happen. So then we need to [00:22:00] ask ourselves, was it God, or the Satan, or the Devil, who afflicted Job?
The Satan is said to go out and do it, but actually, God takes the credit. And this is why I think it might be important to notice that this might not actually be the Devil. Because God does the same kind of thing in 1 Kings 22, when a spirit comes up with the plan to deal with Ahab. And God sends out that spirit to be a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets.
So God's given credit for these things. Job wasn't sick because of his sin. Even if the Satan is the actual devil, he's working on God's orders. Now, does that just mean that God can use someone ungodly to accomplish his plan? Perhaps like he does with Cyrus, the king of Assyria, said to be God's anointed?
Even if we can say that God just uses the wicked to accomplish his purposes, God's [00:23:00] In these cases, the whole decision to do it is credited to God. So, this isn't always just a situation like, they meant it for ill, but God meant it for good, because in those situations, it could be that God was not personally, initially willing it to happen.
But here, it's God's command that it happened. We have a very particular idea of God, where he isn't going to act capriciously to cause sickness. But that's our opinion, that some act or other might be capricious. I mean, the whole story of Job hinges on the fact that God is the sovereign creator, and he can do as he dang well wants to, and he doesn't actually owe us an explanation for that.
If something seems capricious to us, that doesn't mean that it is capricious. God has reasons for things that are beyond us, and certainly he knows the ramifications of things far better than we do. [00:24:00] So, us limited, mortal creatures trying to call out God for something, it's a bit laughable, if understandable, from a human suffering perspective.
The fact that we so desperately want to hook Job's suffering onto Satan, and call him liable for it? It's understandable, but even if we succeed in proving that the Satan was the devil, or at least a rebellious spirit, and he was challenging God, what was God doing? He seems to have been taunting the Satan with the existence of Job, daring the Satan to say something.
And the result of that taunting, or whatever you want to call it, was Job's suffering. The fact is, no matter how you look at it here, God doesn't get off the hook for the blame for what happens to Job. And that's rough for us to face. But the answer is that we don't know everything. And God does. So as much as it might look [00:25:00] bad, that's our mortal perspective.
And in the end, God is to be glorified and praised because in the end, all evil and wickedness and suffering is swallowed up and defeated by Jesus. There is restitution. Even in the book of Job. Job does end up praising God, and, by the way, it turns out that the Satan was actually right, because Job didn't turn out in the end with flying colors, but he repented, and he was blessed with even more.
I know, I know. We start thinking about the fact that hey now, the sons and daughters he had at the end weren't the same ones that died before, so what about them? Isn't that collateral damage? But, I think that's missing the point, and this is why I think it's evident that the Old Testament's morals are not always quite the same as ours.
I expect that those who heard the story of Job didn't have a [00:26:00] mind to pick it apart for those kinds of details like we do, but they were rather supposed to hear the sweeping narrative of how even through our suffering, God has ultimate good in mind.
Okay, so already we've dismantled the idea that it's only the devil, or else punishment for sin, which causes sickness.
But what about wicked spirits causing sickness? Is that a thing? So as I've been talking about the reality of the spiritual realm, and the dark forces in particular, we've seen a bit of back and forth as to how the Bible portrays that. Sometimes we have wicked, rebellious spirits who manifest all kinds of evil, and sometimes they don't.
Isaiah tells us that idols have no power. The book of Kings and Elijah's showdown with the prophets of Baal suggests the same. God is the cloud rider, not Baal. God gives rain, not Baal. [00:27:00] It seems like God should just snap his fingers and all those dark powers would just become silent.
But the gods of the nations are a real genuine threat to the people of Israel. The serpent in the garden really affected Eve. The sons of God in Genesis 6 did their thing. The priests or magicians of Pharaoh performed at least some similar signs in Egypt. Satan tempts Jesus and is called nothing less than the god of this world and the prince of the power of the air. Demons afflict people throughout the New Testament. And we are to put on the armor of God to avoid the flaming darts of the evil one. The dragon of Revelation 12, and the gruesome descriptions of battle there, suggest some mighty potent happenings. So, that's a lot of stuff going on that sure seems like a big deal. Like it's a real threat. Not a real threat to God, but a threat to humanity.
So, as far as [00:28:00] wicked spirits, we can't just say that there's nothing to see here, move along. There is, in fact, a lot to see here, and there are genuine repercussions due to the actions of wicked spirits of various sorts. So, what about general sickness? Can or do they cause that? And even if they did, because we have God on our side, isn't it the case that we could just pray hard enough and be healed? Isn't that what we see in the New Testament? Well, let's explore that.
Okay, so the first thing we'll do is just a brief survey of some scriptures that are related to either sickness or healing. As you might imagine, there's quite a few verses that have to do with either sickness or healing. Sometimes there might be a bit of a blurry line between what sickness is and what it isn't.
Sometimes, obviously, it's clear what it is if there's some sort of disease [00:29:00] or a plague. And just saying that word is going to light up some things in your brain, and you're going to say, oh yeah, God does send plagues as judgment. But what about other kinds of things? Like barrenness, for instance. In Genesis 16, Sarai tells Abram, See, now the Lord has restrained me from bearing children.
So, her barrenness is credited to God. Now, that might not be a sickness, but that would be certainly something that we would want to see healed in a person if that was something that they were struggling with. Of course, there are other instances in Genesis of barrenness. We have Jacob's wife, Rachel. We have King Abimelech's household, who were made barren on account of Abraham and Sarah.
Then we have things like Isaac and Jacob losing their eyesight when they're old. And Jacob seemed to have a hip [00:30:00] problem after he wrestled with the man in Genesis 32. Some of these things are just descriptions in the text, right? It's just showing that somebody has some sort of a problem. Other things are intentionally credited to this is happening because God wills it.
In Genesis, primarily the miraculous healing is in relation to barrenness. Just that fact alone is quite interesting, actually. Especially when you hook it back into the narrative of Genesis 3. The woman's offspring and all of that.
In Exodus 4, Moses was temporarily given leprosy or some sort of skin disease. God tells Moses to put his hand into his cloak, and he brings it out, and it's full of leprosy. Then he tells him, put your hand back into your cloak, and so Moses does, and when he brings it back out again, it's [00:31:00] clean. Quite interesting, isn't it, that we have this idea of leprosy in Exodus where we really don't see that in Genesis? Leoporasy is very much connected with the idea of clean and unclean. So it makes quite a bit of sense that we don't see that in Genesis because we don't have that distinction of clean and unclean..
Of course we do have the mention of the clean and unclean animals in the story of the ark And the idea of sacrifice, but in general, the idea of clean and unclean is much more attached to a permanent type of sacred space like the tabernacle.
As I said, as far as Genesis goes, it's usually barrenness, but there's also blindness. And this is either due to age, or in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, the men who were trying to get at the angels were struck by blindness. Like with the story of Moses and the leprosy, we [00:32:00] get a whole lot more sickness happening in the book of Exodus. Exodus 15 verse 26 says, If ye will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord. Your healer,
Exodus 2325 says, you shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from you. He goes on to say, none shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. All right, so here we have some indication that if you are faithful to the commandments, then you're not gonna get sick.
You're not going to be barren. You're going to be healed. All of these blessings will come because you are being faithful to the [00:33:00] Commandments. So, we're getting a little bit uncomfortable here, right? Like, if we just toe the line, and if we are really obedient to the Commandments, we shouldn't get sick. And even if we say, well, you know, this is an Old Testament promise, and it's not really promised to everyone, And it had some context, and it was directed to a particular people.
Even if we say that, there's still this underlying idea that faithfulness to the commandments of God is going to equal prosperity and health. And we turn to the book of Job, and we're like, well, that didn't happen for Job. He was being faithful, he was doing what he was supposed to be doing, and he was still afflicted.
And for many people, I think it's really hard to disconnect these kinds of passages and say, it doesn't just mean exactly what it seems to be saying. And I think it's [00:34:00] fair to affirm that that's kind of a real feeling to have, because these passages sure seem to be saying that if you're just doing what I tell you to do, then you're not going to be sick, and you're not going to have all of these other problems.
And connecting healing with the idea of obedience. I think it's a bit disingenuous to just hand wave that away like it's not a concern. Once again, this isn't a case where you can just say, move along, there's nothing to see here. Let's turn to a similar passage in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 7, verse 15, it says, And the Lord will take away from you all sickness. And none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you.
Okay? So this seems to be connected with that whole blessing and cursing thing, right? If people bless Israel, they will be blessed. If people curse [00:35:00] Israel, they will be cursed. This is right in line with that.
And again, we tend to be much less uncomfortable with the idea of judgment in relation to sickness being put upon people. Moses wife was struck with leprosy because she dared to complain about Moses. Moses even asked God to heal her, and God's like, Well, she did what she did. This is a pretty small thing in relation to what she did, so she can learn her lesson, I guess.
The blessings and cursings situation as the people were entering the land. Remember, we have at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, the people are coming into the land, and they split up into two mountains. And on one mountain, they are supposed to be proclaiming blessings, and on the other mountain, they're supposed to be proclaiming curses.
The curses of disobedience are pretty severe. In [00:36:00] Deuteronomy 28, starting in verse 58, it says, If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Every sickness also, and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of the law, The Lord will bring upon you until you are destroyed. Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you, and you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.[00:37:00] End quote.
That's some pretty serious consequences, right? So, we have in the blessings and cursings a kind of reversal. God is blessing you, but he will curse you in the opposite way. So, he blesses you with productivity and offspring. And when he curses you, he's going to take those things away. It even uses the word delight there, that God will delight in doing this.
Now, does that mean that God really delights in the suffering of people? That he is some cruel, inhumane god? Is that what this means? Is that how we should be reading all of that? I think primarily we need to read this in the context of the whole story, right? We can't just pull out this one phrase and say, Look, God is a monster, because he will delight in cursing these people.
Well, first of [00:38:00] all, there's a reason he's cursing them. He's given them all of these blessings. And in the sense of him cursing, he's only going to be doing that because they have fully rejected him. So he isn't some bloodthirsty god here. We also have to realize that this is formulaic language. This is covenantal language.
In the language of covenant, love and hate and delight, they have particular meanings. They're not just spontaneous emotions. All of these kinds of words are related to the faithfulness of somebody who is enacting and participating in the covenant. So I think that this terminology of delighting in their destruction, it's going to parallel the delight and love that the covenant was initiated with.
So we're not just talking warm, fuzzy feelings here. We're talking about covenant [00:39:00] faithfulness. And, in the sense of covenant faithfulness being on God's side, he is going to be faithful to produce the results of the covenant as he has enacted it. So, just as he is faithful in keeping the people for himself, he has made this people for himself, and he is going to be faithful in maintaining the promises.
And unfortunately, those promises also include consequences for disobedience. And note, too, that he is not saying he's just going to wipe them out. They're not going to be destroyed totally. The remnant will remain. And again, we have to keep in mind, this is formulaic language. The blessings and cursings here, they're meant to be very dramatic.
They're meant to be very picturesque, and so none of this is supposed to surprise us or make us go, oh, God's a monster. No, he is just [00:40:00] fulfilling the covenant, and I think that we need to see the same kind of language on the other side with the blessing as well, with all of the healing and the removal of sickness.
Does that mean that nobody in Israel is ever going to be sick? Nobody's going to have a cold? Nobody's going to have the sniffles? Nobody's going to have leprosy? Well, if that was the case, then why all of the stuff in Leviticus about cleansing the lepers and all of the things that you have to do when you've been sick?
If it was just the case that nobody would ever get sick, they wouldn't have all of those regulations. God would just be like, okay, follow my commands. Nobody will ever be sick. And we don't have to worry about this anymore. Don't follow my commands, and I will curse you, and I will do all of these horrible, destructive things.
Well, it seems like the reality is very much in between those things, [00:41:00] as we might expect it to be. It's not that nobody ever got sick, and it's not that the instant that anybody ever transgressed a law that they were cast out. We have to realize the extreme nature of this kind of language, and the way that it's describing things.
Again, we need to be very careful in looking at the Bible and saying that the way that it talks about something is either descriptive or prescriptive. And sometimes something that's said is neither one of those things. Sometimes it's neither descriptive of their exact situation, nor is it prescriptive of the way it's going to be always, or the way that God would have it be always.
And this is hard. It really is hard, because we have a God, who is so faithful, and he is faithful in his covenants, and he is faithful in what he does to take care of his people. And [00:42:00] so he says that he's going to heal them, and we want that to mean that every little thing he's going to heal. He's going to heal every little individual of any sickness or illness or problem that they have.
And that's simply not what we see. We don't see that. We see people who are very faithful to God, We see his prophets who are ill. His prophets die from illness. So, if it was the case that God would just heal everybody, why would his prophets die of something like illness? So, what I'm saying here is that we really need to have this whole picture in our head.
We need to have the whole image of what's going on. But remember, what we were talking about was the question of whether Satan, or wicked spirits, cause sickness and illness. So far, what we've seen is that it's God who does this, or it's just a description of something that's going on and it's not [00:43:00] credited to anybody at all.
For some people, this will actually be surprising. Because we want the wicked spirits to be the ones who are causing illness and disease.
Well, let's keep looking, shall we? In 1 Samuel 16, David is serving Saul, and it says, Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul's servants said to him, Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our Lord now command your servants. Who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre. And when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it and you'll be well. End quote.
So here we have a harmful spirit. And, you know, we might hope that this was a wicked harmful spirit, but it says that it's a harmful spirit from the [00:44:00] Lord. So, once again, we have God credited with this sickness. But, hang on here, is it possible that this is actually not from God, but from a wicked elohim instead? I know, I said that it was from the Lord, but I misspoke. It actually says God in the ESV, so the original would say elohim. So yes this is a possibility that these are wicked elohim who cause or send the harmful spirits. But let's look at the next passage I have.
We have the same thing happen in 2 Samuel 12, when David's child dies. It said that the Lord afflicted the child. I don't want to proof text, but Exodus 4 11 says, Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
That passage is [00:45:00] specifically referencing how Moses is complaining to God that he doesn't want to do the job that God's trying to give him. So this isn't necessarily a prescriptive or descriptive statement where God's saying, I cause absolutely every little thing that happens. But as we're going through the Old Testament and we're trying to look at these places where sickness and other kinds of problems show up, it is the case that time and time and time again, we see it ascribed to God.
And as God is sovereign creator and Lord over all, this makes sense, right? Sometimes we have sickness being applied because of punishment or some sort of consequence, and other times it just is what it is. But in all cases, God is sovereign. So if you're not getting healing, it's because God has some reason for that.
And that's important [00:46:00] to keep in mind throughout this whole thing. Once we get into some passages in the New Testament, it's going to start sounding very much like the kind of thing that we see in the Old Testament, where there's a direct promise, it seems. Like, if you do this, then you will be healed. And it doesn't seem to have any qualifiers to it.
But it's essential that we're looking at everything in a holistic manner. Along with keeping in mind the fact that not every biblical author had to have the same ideas in mind when they were writing. Ideas are going to start building upon each other.
I'm going to share a secret with you. And that secret is that I think that most people want to see the Satan and Job as the Devil because this is really the only place in the Old Testament that I can find anyway where supposedly we have some [00:47:00] wicked spirit that is causing harm. I mean, it's not entirely true because we have the harmful spirit in 1 Samuel 16, but that harmful spirit is, at least possibly, from God. And I'm sorry to burst bubbles, but the incident with Job, the Satan is still sent by God. And, like I've already said, even if we can say that God is just using these wicked spirits for his purposes, Well, he's still telling them to go do the thing. He's still sending them out. They're still obeying his orders and doing what he tells them to do.
Now, by the time of the New Testament, we do seem to have a shift. If you look up any of these articles online about demon possession and sickness and healing and things like that from some Christian blog or [00:48:00] site. They have a whole lot of passages from the New Testament about demon possession and healing and all of that. And they try and throw in that incident with Job. Oh, and also, by the way, look over here. We have Satan in Job also causing sickness. And the reason they can really get away with that is because in many translations, the Satan in Job is translated with the proper name Satan.
But remember, you shouldn't do that because It's not a proper name in the Book of Job. That's an interpretive choice that you can put Satan into that role there. But the fact that it is translated that way and it's an interpretive choice means that a lot of people just read that and they think it says Satan. That really was Satan. The Satan. The devil. And that helps prop up the idea from the New Testament, supposedly, that sickness happens because of Satan.
[00:49:00] Well, let's get into that now. Does Satan, or at least do demons, cause sickness? And of course, we do have many places in the New Testament where those two things are absolutely connected. Demon possession and sickness go hand in hand so much to the point that a lot of people who are skeptical or of that kind of bent will look at these narratives and go, Oh, those silly primitive people. They saw people who were sick and they just thought they were demon possessed. And so they just kind of laugh all of that off as if there's nothing to see beyond that.
But not all sickness in the New Testament even is connected to demons or unclean spirits. And not everyone who is affected by demons or unclean spirits is sick. So there's no absolute direct connection here, where it's always the case that [00:50:00] somebody who's affected by a demon is sick, or somebody who is sick is affected by a demon.
If it was the case that people were casting out demons and then suddenly people were becoming well from that, well that suggests that they weren't just sick, right? There's no medicine being applied in these cases, usually. And, so, what, they just happened to get well right at that time? And I'm sorry, but people in the past, just because they lived a long time ago doesn't mean they were stupid or foolish or knew nothing at all.
Certainly, by the time of the New Testament, there was a lot of information about how people could be healed, and every culture everywhere has some knowledge of medicine and healing in that kind of a way. So trying to make this flat out distinction of sickness and demonology, you just really can't do [00:51:00] that.
Of course, that doesn't mean that there is zero connection there, ever. So let's look into the New Testament. There's quite a few places in the New Testament that connect demons and sickness and healing. Right after Jesus calls his first disciples, in Matthew 4 it says, That his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures and paralytics, and he healed them.
In Matthew eight 16, it says, that evening they brought to him many who are oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with the word and healed all who were sick. Now, this doesn't say that casting out the demons and healing the sick. are the same thing. There might be a connection, or these might just be two separate things that he's doing.[00:52:00]
In Matthew 10, verse 8, he tells his disciples to go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. So, I, obviously, all of those things are not the same thing. So, healing the sick and casting out demons are two separate things. Matthew 14 verse 14 has Jesus just healing the sick. There's no mention of casting out demons. Matthew chapter 15 has a woman who is approaching Jesus and she tells him that her daughter is oppressed by a demon. And at the end of the account, it says that her daughter was healed. Of course, we usually use the word healing in terms of sickness. So that's an interesting use of the word there. But it's also interesting, because this is an instance where the person isn't even in front of Jesus himself. So, she's at a distance from Jesus. And I have to wonder if that really [00:53:00] has a lot to do with the word choice there.
Mark's gospel very much has the same kind of thing that we see in Matthew. Mark chapter 6 has a couple of interesting details, where we see the laying on of hands as well as anointing with oil. Now, these things combined with a story in Acts, where it was said that the Apostles handkerchiefs were taken to people in order to be healed, these are a few of the examples that we have where there seems to be something else that's going on with some sort of healing or casting out.
Now, because we don't have these details in most of the accounts, We are left wondering a bit as to why they're in these other accounts. Were they just not mentioned in all of the accounts and every time people had to be anointed or had to have hands laid upon them? Most commentaries don't think that that's the case.
In other words, you [00:54:00] didn't need to have some sort of physical thing happen in order to be cured or healed or have demons cast out. That the whole idea of anointing or laying on of hands had a different purpose other than the healing and the casting out. We'll talk about that more here in a second.
So far, what we have in the New Testament is sometimes we have demons and sickness linked, but not always. And even though people can appear sick, even with the demon possession, that seems to be a separate thing than most sicknesses. So we're still looking for the idea of Satan or a demon causing sickness. We have to keep that old adage in mind. Correlation is not causation just because demon possession and sickness often show up in a text together, that doesn't mean the one causes [00:55:00] the other or that they're the same things. It seems quite reasonable that if you were being oppressed by a demon, then you would have a physical manifestation of that oppression. And that might show up as sickness, right? But that doesn't mean it's the same as sickness.
This might seem a strange point to keep hammering home, but the thing is, I've seen it. I've seen people make these ideas that if you are sick, then you are oppressed by a demon. And sometimes the thought will continue on from there, and they will say that no Christian can be oppressed by a demon, so if you're sick, then you're not a Christian.
So some people start treading some really dangerous waters here. And probably many of us have heard these ideas that if you just have enough faith, you will be healed. That there's some sort of promise of healing in the New Testament. So, don't worry, by the end of the [00:56:00] episode, we're going to get into that, too.
But before we do, let's jump over to the Book of Luke, because there's some important things to look at here as well. This is where we're going to get our proof text for Satan causing sickness or disability. We're going to read Luke 13, verses 10 through 17, and I'll start by reading it in the ESV. Now, he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, Woman, you are freed from your disability. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight. And she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be [00:57:00] healed, and not on the Sabbath day. Then the Lord answered him, You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
Okay, so this is one of those stories about Jesus, and we have a series of them, about people getting mad about things being done on the Sabbath. And Jesus said that Satan bound this woman for 18 years. So, here we go. Finally, an unambiguous statement that Satan causes at least some physical problems. Well, maybe we have that...
In the ESV, we [00:58:00] have the word disability. The King James Version says that the woman had a spirit of infirmity. The King James actually helps us to see this in light of the spirit of organization principle that I've talked about. Is this really a spirit that's oppressing her? Well, it seems like Jesus definitively says that it is, right? That Satan has her bound. But what did Jesus just say before that? He's talking about animals. And how they need to be untied in order to be brought to water. So he's making this parallel here with people who do normal things like untying your animal and leading it to water.
And Jesus untying this woman from her bondage. And remember that there are very, very few other places that we can really point to in Scripture that straight up say some sort of wicked spirit caused some sort of disability. [00:59:00] When we're talking about good hermeneutics, you don't just use one single passage to make a big sweeping claim about things through all of time.
Especially when there's so many other places in Scripture Where it's not some evil spirit, but it's actually God. Loop in the idea that we are captive in many types of ways. And I want you to notice this language. It's the language of bondage. We kind of read into this passage that Oh, Satan caused the problem.
It doesn't actually say that. It just says that she's bound. It says that she's in bondage. That's really not the same thing as saying that Satan caused this to happen to this woman. It even uses the phrase that she is set free. Isn't it so interesting that we can read a passage and we are reading so much into it and we don't even realize that we're doing that?[01:00:00]
This isn't talking about the origination of her sickness or her disability. It's talking about the fact that she is in bondage in some way, and Jesus is freeing her from that bondage. Those are the kinds of words and phrases we should be latching onto. But we're too busy trying to find a way to prop up the idea that Satan causes illness.
Even in this passage that seems so clear that there is a connection between this disability and Satan, we still can't definitively say that Satan caused it to happen. I think the emphasis that she is freed from the bondage of Satan should absolutely be emphasized when we're looking at this passage.
But, rather than looking at it through the lens of how can we try and categorize the spiritual realm and say what Satan can or cannot do, what we ought to be [01:01:00] doing is asking ourselves, what does this say about the Messiah? How does this reveal Jesus as the Messiah? How is this revealing Jesus's power? And, of course, healing is a great thing for the person being healed, and we want to think of Jesus as going around healing everyone just because he can, and because he wants everyone healed.
And I'm not saying that that's a wrong way to look at things, but what we have written in the accounts is something that is important to view Jesus as the Messiah. It's an important, not just a healing miracle, but a sign. A sign of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. And what Jesus is doing is freeing people from the bondage of Satan.
That's what this passage is about. It's showing that here's legitimate proof, like physical [01:02:00] proof, because this woman is physically being healed while at the same time, she is Being freed from the bondage of Satan. That's what we ought to be seeing and oh look Here's the Messiah and this is his mission to free people from the bondage of Satan And it probably is the case that we need to take away from this narrative That being oppressed by Satan being under the bondage of Satan and being oppressed in other ways are similar things so if we are under the power of death or sickness or Or oppression in any way, those things are definitely parallels to what Satan is doing.
So, as nice as it is for sick people to be healed, and that's an amazing and wonderful thing, these things are also evidence of the greater picture of it all. And this whole idea that we are ultimately [01:03:00] freed from all of our oppressions. From everything that oppresses us. And all of the things that oppress us, legitimately are connected to these wicked spirits and dark forces in the world. They just are. How is that the case when we can't really say definitively that Satan caused these things? I'm not sure that we can say that Satan has that kind of power over creation. As far as I can tell, most of the Bible does not say that he does.
However, he's still described with all of these words of power and authority in the world. So, whatever thing that's going on that isn't right in the world, that isn't what God would really want for everybody in creation, all of that is under the auspices of Satan as the god of this world. He doesn't have to be out there with his demons, lurking behind every bush, swishing [01:04:00] some sort of wand and casting spells and sicknesses upon people.
The fact is, when there's death and sickness, Those are bad things, and those are not the will of God, and they are chaotic, and they are related to Satan and all of those dark powers. Now, in a sense, this almost feels like the opposite of what we were seeing in the Old Testament. That everything is under God's control and God's power because He is the Sovereign Creator.
But we have to remember, by the time of the New Testament, people have gone through a lot of different types of thinking, and they've developed a lot of ideas that they just did not have in the Old Testament. As I've said, I don't think that the reader of the Book of Job in the Old Testament would read it the same way as a reader from the New Testament. I think they would see different things in the book. I think that they would have different interpretations. [01:05:00] And that's not a bad thing, it just means that they have kind of gone along and progressed in a different line of thinking. By the time of the New Testament, they're thinking accuser. They're thinking antagonistic spirits that are against God, and that these spirits are under the head of Satan. How that happened, or when it happened, or whatever, that has different stories and different ways of being, depending upon who you're talking to. Because not every Jew had the same story in his mind. They just didn't. There were competing theories and competing stories for all kinds of things.
But if you were thinking in terms of Satan, the devil, being in the Book of Job, then it makes absolute sense to see somebody who is sick or afflicted in some way to be influenced by Satan. Because, hey look, we have that happening in the Book of Job. By the time of the New Testament, they're making all of these [01:06:00] conflations and thinking in this way.
So, in the end, the way to think about this is to look at these things as being under the Control, or maybe better, the authority of Satan. It all makes quite a bit of sense as a whole, once you see this progression of ideas, and the fact that by the time of the New Testament, they were thinking more in terms of Satan as an influential figure. Like he is actively working against God, and who has humanity enslaved. And I think you can connect that all the way into Revelation, and the Beast, and the Dragon, and all of these things. Like, that's a more complex, higher level way of thinking about it and looking at it, which we might get to at some point in time.
But the idea is, really, that we need to be looking in terms of how your average person in the New Testament would be putting all [01:07:00] of these pieces together in their heads. And then you see, like in the Book of John, he doesn't have all of the casting out of demons stories. He does mention the casting out of Satan.
So this idea that we need to find this spirit that's behind this sickness, and that spirit over there that's behind this other sickness, that seems to be treating scripture like it's some sort of magic spell book. There's a reality of spiritual evil behind things. But we're really kind of going down the wrong path if we're trying to find all of these little nooks and crannies where all of the little demons are hiding.
Okay, so I can't leave this episode without talking about healing and how some things in Scripture seem to suggest that healing seems to be promised to us. Okay, so here we are going to look at James chapter 5. Starting in verse 13, it [01:08:00] says, is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 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 and The Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven therefore confess your sins to one another and to pray for one another and That you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power, as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. And for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
Let's zoom in to verse 15 here, where it says, And the prayer of faith [01:09:00] will save the one who is sick. And the Lord will raise him up. That seems to be a straightforward, if you do this, then you get that. And the fact that it says prayer of faith makes people think that you just have to have a whole lot of faith in your prayer. Like, if you don't pray with enough faith, then you're not going to be healed.
So, if you're not getting healed when you pray, Then that means that you just didn't have enough faith in your prayer. A lot of people interpret this verse like that. Some commentators will try to skirt the issue by saying that James isn't really talking about physical sickness. And it's true that the same word can be used for spiritual weakness. So the context of the chapter, it kind of looks like maybe James is just talking about spiritual weakness. That if you [01:10:00] pray, and you have enough faith, then you're going to be healed of that spiritual weakness. And you will then have the proper amount of faith, or saving amount of faith, or whatever.
But I think it's pretty clear that James really is talking about physical sickness. And there's a whole bunch of commentaries that explain why that is. It's a bit beyond our point here. I think the easiest way to see this idea of the prayer in faith is that a prayer in faith is one that acknowledges the fact that God is sovereign and that God will make the choices that he chooses to make.
So if you're healed, it's because that is God's will. If you're not, then that is also something that you need to accept as God's will. And if you are praying in faith, you will accept that. Let me go ahead and read a quote [01:11:00] from Pillar New Testament Commentary on James. This is by Douglas Moo. And he says, quote, A more fruitful approach is to focus attention on the qualification that James introduces. It is only the prayer offered in faith that brings healing. James's language here again has a point of contact with the opening section of the letter where he insisted that the believer who asks God for wisdom must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Certain preachers and writers make a great deal of this call for faith, insisting that a believer simply needs to have enough faith in order to receive healing from the Lord. The devastating result of this line of thinking is that believers who are not healed when they pray must deal with a two fold burden. Adding to their remaining physical challenge is the assumption that they lack sufficient faith. But this [01:12:00] way of looking at faith and its results is profoundly unbiblical. And in James, at least, the prayer of faith that heals in verse 15 is offered not by the sufferer, but by the elders. Are the elders, therefore, at fault when their prayer for healing does not bring results in a reasonable amount of time? Would the healing have taken place if they had just believed enough? Answering such a question involves us in the finely nuanced broader issue of the relationship between God's sovereignty and our prayers. But, we can say this much. The faith exercised in prayer is faith in the God who sovereignly accomplishes His will. When we pray, our faith recognizes Explicitly or implicitly, the overruling providential purposes of God. A prayer for healing, then, must usually be qualified by a recognition that God's will in the matter is supreme. And it [01:13:00] is clear in the New Testament that God does not always will to heal the believer. Paul's own prayer for his healing, offered three times. was not answered. God had a purpose in allowing the thorn in the flesh, that messenger of Satan, to remain. Note also 2 Timothy 4. 20 where Paul mentions that he left someone sick. The faith with which we pray is always faith in the God whose will is supreme and best. Only sometimes does this faith include assurance that a particular request is within that will. This is exactly the qualification that is needed to understand Jesus own promise. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. To ask in Jesus name means not simply to utter his name, but to take into account his will. Only those requests offered in that will are granted. Prayer for healing offered [01:14:00] in the confidence that God will answer that prayer does bring healing. But only when it is God's will to heal will that faith, itself a gift of God, be present. As H. van der Loos puts it, Faith, forgiveness, and healing are all three, in essence, dispensations of the grace of God. This implies that the relations between these three are Are not governed by the law of causality, but by the will and intention of God. End quote.
You see, if it was just about our faith and our level of faith, then we would have the control there, wouldn't we? If we just needed enough faith, then it would be reliant on us. It would be reliant on the amount of faith that we are offering, and that doesn't make any kind of sense, does it? Because it's God and His will that is supreme. And as we've [01:15:00] seen in many, many passages here today, there are various reasons why somebody might be sick. And God is able to use those times in order to glorify Himself. And in the end, it is all defeated in Jesus. And whatever things we are going through, those things can give glory to God, or they can otherwise promote some kind of goodness in the world.
And even in all of the times that we're suffering and having trouble, it is this reliance on God and faith in Him That is the focus we should have. It's not about how much I can pull myself up by the bootstraps and have more faith in order to make something happen that I want to have happen. In the end, it is God's will and his goodness that give us our hope and our belief that we will be triumphal with Christ in the end.
What's also [01:16:00] interesting in this end of the book of James here is that While you're supposed to be bringing the elders of the church in order to pray over you, it also says that we are to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. So it's not just some super special teachers, it's the body of Christ and each other. We also have the ability to pray for this kind of healing and that it can happen.
This is as opposed to a lot of teachers and a lot of preachers today, and a lot of people in the time of the Jews as well, who thought that only certain special teachers would be able to heal. Like, you want to get the teacher who knows how to do it in order to pray for you. Then you'll be healed. That's not what James is saying. He's saying that anybody can do this. And so, that was probably kind of a revolutionary thought for the time.
[01:17:00] And as for this whole idea of anointing, what's that about? Is that necessary for the process? Well, there's a lot of people who wonder if this was used for medicinal purposes, right? Because there were certain types of anointing that you would do, because this was part of their medicine at the time.
But it's pretty clear when you read the passage that the point wasn't the anointing. The anointing wasn't doing the healing, it's the prayer that's doing the healing. So, the whole thing with the anointing, there's various ways of looking at it, but I think the most likely idea that we should kind of focus on here is that it was probably a type of consecration.
Reading again from the Pillar New Testament Commentary, it says, quote, Anointing frequently symbolizes the consecration of persons or things for God's use and service in the Old Testament. Typical [01:18:00] is Exodus 28, 41, which says, After you put these clothes on your brother Aaron and his sons, anoint and ordain them. Consecrate them so that they may serve me as priests. The same usage is continued and expanded in the New Testament, where anointing is often a metaphor for consecration to God's service. See, for instance Luke 4, 18, which parallels Isaiah 61, 1, Acts 4, 27, 10, 38, And 2 Corinthians 1 21 and Hebrews 1 9, which parallels Psalm 45 7. If James has this background in mind, then he would be recommending that the elders anoint the sick person in order vividly to show how that person is being set apart for God's special attention in prayer, end quote.
Okay, and one last question before I end this [01:19:00] episode. Is it the case that healing stopped in the New Testament?
Well, not according to Irenaeus, an early church father. He writes, quote, For some do certainly and truly drive out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently both believe in Christ and join themselves to the church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come. They see visions and utter prophetic expressions. Others still heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up and remained among us for many years. End quote.
So anyone who says that all of the spiritual giftings stopped with the apostles, they kind of have to deal with these early church fathers who say, Nope, it's still happening.
All right, well, [01:20:00] we are going to go ahead and stop here with this episode. I want to thank Alicia for that interesting question. It's a fascinating dive into the Old Testament, the New Testament, the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the Early Church. I appreciate you all for listening, and I appreciate you all who share the episodes for others, because that's super helpful.
Whether you're sharing them on your Facebook timeline, or sharing them within groups, or sharing them with people that you know might be interested in this topic, I appreciate everyone who does that. And I greatly, greatly, GREATLY appreciate all of you who help me out via donation on PayPal, or through Patreon. Thank you guys so very much.
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