God Heals All Our Diseases — Really?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Ian in Australia writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, how would you
00:00:09.440 | preach from Psalm 103.3, which says that God heals all our diseases? Do we just
00:00:15.120 | spiritualize this? He heals us from the disease of sin? Or do we take it in the
00:00:19.020 | ultimate sense that one day we will be healed in heaven? There are many
00:00:22.920 | Christians today who die of awful diseases." Yeah, this is an
00:00:28.880 | absolutely crucial question because verse 3 of Psalm 103, "He forgives all
00:00:35.400 | your iniquity, He heals all your diseases," is one of dozens of places in the Psalms
00:00:43.640 | that seem to promise things that are so idealistic, so far beyond anybody's
00:00:51.200 | ordinary experience. And so we really do need an answer to this question of not
00:00:56.520 | only how to teach them, but how to believe them, how to enjoy them. What
00:01:03.680 | comforts me, and has helped me perhaps as much as anything in wrestling with the
00:01:08.880 | absolute statements of blessing in the Psalms, is that Jesus knew this problem
00:01:14.660 | and the devil knew it, and the way they interacted about it is very illuminating.
00:01:20.200 | So the devil knows Psalm 91. It's one of those Psalms like, "The arrow will not
00:01:26.960 | come near you," you know? It's just an amazing Psalm, Psalm 91. You're gonna be
00:01:32.280 | protected. Nothing is gonna harm you. So the devil quotes this to Jesus, standing
00:01:38.760 | on the top of the temple, and he says, "If you're the Son of God, throw yourself
00:01:42.400 | down from here, for it is written," and he quotes it in the Bible. The devil's
00:01:47.320 | quoting the Bible. "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you. On
00:01:51.600 | their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone."
00:01:56.360 | In other words, he's saying, "Jesus, jump off of here, because the Bible says angels
00:02:04.040 | won't let you die jumping off this temple." So he's tempting Jesus by quoting
00:02:10.960 | him in Scripture, just like he heals all your diseases. I mean, they're in the same
00:02:17.240 | category. He never lets you dash your foot against the stone. You can't fall
00:02:21.920 | off a cliff if you're a Christian, and you won't get any diseases, or if you get
00:02:28.360 | one, you'll be healed. And Jesus answered him and said, "You shall not put the Lord
00:02:34.600 | your God to the test." That's Luke 4 and 9. "You shall not put the Lord your God to the
00:02:38.840 | test." So for Jesus, the devil was quoting the Bible at a wrong time, in the wrong
00:02:46.080 | way, for the wrong end. Jesus had come into the world to suffer and to die. He
00:02:53.160 | was going to be crushed. Therefore, all the Psalms of never coming to harm,
00:03:00.640 | or always being delivered, could not be applied directly to Jesus at any
00:03:06.520 | given moment. He came to die. So to try to apply the Psalm to the best of men would
00:03:14.400 | be a misapplication. And Jesus knew it, and Paul knew it. In fact, Paul saw that
00:03:22.440 | the Psalms themselves would not allow this kind of simple application to every
00:03:28.520 | person at any time. Psalm 44, 22 says, "For your sake, God, we are being killed all
00:03:38.240 | day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." Now, in that context, in Psalm
00:03:44.240 | 44, 22, that is not owing to God's judgment, it's not owing to their
00:03:49.440 | sin, it's simply the fact they've been faithful and they're being slaughtered.
00:03:54.160 | Which is why Paul quotes it in Romans 8, as part of what Christians can expect. He
00:04:04.400 | says, "What shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, distress, or
00:04:08.280 | persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, we are
00:04:12.200 | being killed all day long." So he quotes the very Psalm that says we'll be
00:04:18.640 | killed and destroyed. And so Christians can expect this. So now, against that
00:04:26.040 | backdrop of the New Testament, and Jesus and Paul helping us not oversimplify the
00:04:35.160 | absolute statements of blessing in the Psalms, what do they mean? And here's
00:04:39.280 | my threefold answer. Number one, there is coming a time when all of these
00:04:45.600 | statements, all of these promises, will be fulfilled in Jesus and in all of those
00:04:51.400 | who are in Jesus, in the new earth, in the ideal world. And all those promises will
00:04:58.840 | not prove to be overstatements. All sins will be forgiven, all diseases will be
00:05:04.960 | healed, eventually. And Jesus has forged a way through suffering, he calls us to
00:05:10.960 | forge the way through suffering into the full experience of those Psalms in the
00:05:15.320 | age to come. Second, in this world, God does heal. And all healing that comes to
00:05:24.040 | us comes to us from God. And so we should look for it, ask for it, thank him when he
00:05:30.720 | gives it. But the final promise of no more death and no more disease will come
00:05:39.320 | in the future. And third, even our diseases and our calamities are not
00:05:47.040 | defeats. That's what Paul said, "In them all we are more than conquerors through
00:05:53.760 | him who loved us." They work good for us now, in all the ways that count, and they
00:05:59.840 | prepare a weight of glory beyond all comparison. So that's how I would teach
00:06:04.760 | my people to read that Psalm. He heals all your diseases, meaning he will heal
00:06:10.920 | them in the age to come. He heals them often now, and when he doesn't, they work
00:06:18.480 | a healing that's even better. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening
00:06:22.640 | to the podcast. And tomorrow, I'll pose a question to you, Pastor John, about dad's
00:06:27.560 | role in homemaking. I'm looking forward to it. Until then, please email your
00:06:31.760 | questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and visit us
00:06:35.360 | online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and
00:06:39.360 | other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:42.560 | Thanks for listening.
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