Isaiah 35:1-10
The Messiah Would Come Heal the Blind and Deaf
1 The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus,
2 it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendor of our God.
3 Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
4 say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
7 The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
8 And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness;
it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there,
nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 53:1-12
The Suffering Servant Would Be a Healer
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
The four gospels write much about the healing ministry of Jesus, while He walked among us on earth...Jesus was able to heal whomever He pleased, wherever He pleased, whenever He pleased if one had faith in Him...The four gospels teach us that Jesus has a Divine Healing Power to Divinely heal that sick...When Jesus went to His hometown He said this to His hometown, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in His own home.”...He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them...He was amazed at their lack of faith...
Jesus' healing power is one of the signs that God shows us that He is the Messiah that was to come to earth...Isaiah would write that the One to come would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf be healed...Surely He took up our pain and bore our sufferings...
Paul was a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, well educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of his fathers...He was one zealous for God and the Word of God...Originally Paul did not the people who followed Jesus, and did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah...But that changed on the road to Damascus...Jesus had told Paul on the way to Damascus that he was the one the LORD had chosen to be His instrument to proclaim His name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel...Jesus would show him how much he must suffer for His name...And Jesus did that, and Paul became a great apostle and missionary minister for Jesus...
So Paul was God's chosen instrument to be the apostle of the Gentiles...Inasmuch as Paul was chosen to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, he took pride in his ministry in the hope that he would not only be minister to the Gentiles but somehow he also might arouse his own people of Israel to envy and save some of them...
It was Paul's custom to preach first in the synagogue when entering a new city and would reason with listening people from the Scriptures...His ministry was one who taught the Gentiles and some from Israel all about Jesus, and how He is our Messiah...
So this is what God had Paul do after his meeting on the road to Damascus with Jesus...He would go from city to city synagogue to synagogue and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ...
In Paul's ministry of the gospel he did not have a healing ministry...Paul did heal someone in Lystra...In Lystra there sat a man who was lame...He had been that way from birth and had never walked...He listened to Paul as he was speaking...Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, “Stand up on your feet!”...At that, the man jumped up and began to walk...But Jesus did not give Paul a healing ministry, as stated earlier his ministry was to preach the gospel to the Gentiles...Paul himself had an affliction that he could not rid himself of...He tells us that because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me--to keep me from exalting myself!...Concerning this I implored the LORD three times that it might leave me...And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."...Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me...Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong...And Paul did travel with Luke who was a beloved physician...So we learn the importance of doctors and getting medical help whenever necessary...
On the other hand Jesus has a Divine Healing Power as we read the gospels...Jesus came to earth to die for our sins...But a big part of His ministry and one that brought Him large crowds were His Divine Healing Powers...As Jesus travelled from village to village, He would stop to meet their individual needs...When there were crowds of sick and ill people that were following Him, He took the time to heal everyone who believed...For those who had faith in Him, He healed them all...As Luke writes the people all tried to touch Him, because Divine Power was coming from Him and He healed them all...Matthew writes that Jesus went to the Sea of Galilee...Then He went up the mountain and sat down...Many people came to Him...They brought with them those who were not able to walk...They brought those who were not able to see...They brought those who were not able to hear or speak and many others...Then they put them at the feet of Jesus and He healed them...All the people wondered...They saw how those who could not speak were now talking...They saw how those who could not walk were now walking...They saw how those who could not see were now seeing, and they gave thanks to the God of the Jews...Another example of Jesus' Divine Power is when a woman was near Him who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her...She came up behind Him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped...“Who touched Me?” Jesus asked...When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against You.”...But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from Me.”...Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, 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 been healed...Then He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you...Go in peace.”...