Fire On Your Head

The Gospel, and the Kingdom of God That Follows….

This entry makes the assumption that many of my previous entries have been read by the reader prior to this. For more on the subject, please click on the ‘healing’ label/tag at the end of this entry.

In Luke 8, Jesus said to His disciples “let’s go over to the other side of the lake”. There’s definitely a purpose in this, because Jesus only did what He saw His father doing. They got in the boat, and Jesus falls asleep. Jesus knew there’d be this storm, and wanted to see how his disciples would handle it. As soon as they got across, Jesus was met with the demon-possessed man, and there was that confrontation. But Jesus knew what He was doing when deciding to go over to the other side of the lake.

• Matthew 4 – Jesus went throughout and taught, preaching the good news, and healed every disease and sickness. Matthew 9:35, the same words used (teaching, preaching, healing).
• Matthew 10:7 – “as you go, preach the kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, and do the same things I have been doing“.
• Matthew 12:28 – “if I drive out demons by the Spirit, then the kingdom of God has come upon you”
• Luke 4:40 – the people brought to Jesus those with various sicknesses, and he healed them all – he told them he had to go to the other towns also, because that it is what he came here to do

The kingdom of God comes in God’s power; it takes back what Satan has unlawfully made his own, and rightfully restores it as His own. The King came, and stood as The King, and restored His authority over the usurper’s kingdom.

Romans 14:17 says the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Where the King is there is the kingdom. Jesus didn’t just preach words, he preached with the power of God.

Jesus never prayed for the sick in the Gospels. Neither did any of the disciples in the Gospels or Acts. They healed the sick. James 5 talks of the prayer of faith—there’s nothing wrong with praying in faith for the sick. You can pray for the sick, when believing in faith for various needs to be met—but Jesus and the disciples never prayed for the sick. They healed them. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus didn’t ask God to do it. He thanked God, then commanded Lazarus to come forth. When healing the sick, He spoke the healing into existence, commanded eyes to be opened, or drove out the demon in someone that was causing the infirmity, always demonstrating His authority from above.

Almost all scholars admit that the end of Mark 16 is authoritative. We don’t have the end of Mark’s Gospels original manuscripts to compare to, other than what we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but nobody really disagrees that this contradicts or adds anything different to Jesus’ words in the Gospel accounts that we do have, so there’s no real fuss to be made over these words:

“And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16:15-18)

These are signs, indicators that Jesus has triumphed over all powers of darkness. And they are not just signs, but indications that believers have Jesus’ authority. It is significant that Jesus says believers would do these things in His name. The first one Jesus lists here that will demonstrate we have the same kingdom that He gave us, is that we’ll cast out demons.

In the book of Acts we see Peter command a cripple to walk by saying “silver or gold, have I none, but what I have, I give you—walk in the name of Jesus” (Acts 3:6). In 9:32 – Peter makes a pronouncement over Aeneas, and tells Him Jesus heals him. Later on in Acts 9:38-40 Peter gets on his knees and prays, but then rises and tells Tabitha to get up –he obviously communed with the Father, maybe he got himself focused, maybe he reminded himself of the Word. When I volunteered in the healing teams during my third year of Bible school, we would spend about half an hour or 45 minutes praying in tongues, as well as in our understanding before bringing in the person receiving healing to receive laying on of hands from us. See also how in Acts 14:8 Paul saw the crippled man’s faith, then told him to get up.

God is trying to tell us something is wrong with our modern efforts if our emphasis is on praying for healings, when we’ve got authority to heal the sick.

In Luke 4 –the year of Jubilee fell that year, and scholars and many teachers say this passage takes place on the Day of Atonement. Talk about timing! The next instance in Luke’s Gospel, is when Jesus walks into the synagogue, and finds the demon possessed man, and rebukes the demon out of him. Jesus proclaimed this
is the Jubilee, then finds this man, who was not “Jubilee standards”. The next instance in Scripture is when He heals Peter’s mother-in-law.

He was enforcing Jubilee. He proclaimed liberty to the captives, and then went about setting them free. Jesus didn’t have to ask His father to do something that He was anointed to do. He just did it.