Healing of Sin
Friday Night Gatherings
GOD DOES NOT HEAL SUPERFICIALLY
We must be healed. We must be delivered from our sin. Jeremiah’s message for Israel was about how severe their sin of idolatry was, that God would judge it, and that God would restore His people and heal them of the wounds caused by their sin. Chapters 30-33 focus on restoration into the new covenant.
The human tendencies of sin and idolatry throughout the ages and across cultures have not changed. And the restoration that Jeremiah speaks of is ultimately pointing towards Christ. This is the healing that the church needs today.
Our sin is the idolatry of putting anything above Jesus for the fighting of our battles or the healing of our souls. We have been chastised by God and handed over to our enemies and to our desires for the philosophies of the world. Those philosophies and deceptions from the enemy, specifically the humanist claim that man is the answer and can figure things out on his own, have run rampant. We have suffered loss. We must recognize the battle we’re facing. God has chastised us, and He is calling us into healing.
He is the only source, the creator of heaven and earth and all morality. We need healing from our sin. As believers, we all know people, friends or family, who don’t know the Lord and are very deceived by these philosophies, the deceptions from Satan. But God can break through the deception at any moment to heal the lost, and to heal the sin and deception that has crept into our own hearts. He is calling us into healing.
Jeremiah describes the day of Israel’s distress and their deliverance from it. This is what we need today.
1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, 2 “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book. 3 For behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.’ The Lord says, ‘I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it.’”
4 Now these are the words which the Lord spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah:
5 “For thus says the Lord,
‘I have heard a sound of terror,
Of dread, and there is no peace.
6 ‘Ask now, and see
If a male can give birth.
Why do I see every man
With his hands on his loins, as a woman in childbirth?
And why have all faces turned pale?
7 ‘Alas! for that day is great,
There is none like it;
And it is the time of Jacob’s distress,
But he will be saved from it.
8 ‘It shall come about on that day,’ declares the Lord of hosts, ‘that I will break his yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds; and strangers will no longer make them their slaves.
9 But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.
10 ‘Fear not, O Jacob My servant,’ declares the Lord,
‘And do not be dismayed, O Israel;
For behold, I will save you from afar
And your offspring from the land of their captivity.
And Jacob will return and will be quiet and at ease,
And no one will make him afraid.
11 ‘For I am with you,’ declares the Lord, ‘to save you;
For I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you,
Only I will not destroy you completely.
But I will chasten you justly
And will by no means leave you unpunished.’
12 “For thus says the Lord,
‘Your wound is incurable
And your injury is serious.
13 ‘There is no one to plead your cause;
No healing for your sore,
No recovery for you.
14 ‘All your lovers have forgotten you,
They do not seek you;
For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy,
With the punishment of a cruel one,
Because your iniquity is great
And your sins are numerous.
15 ‘Why do you cry out over your injury?
Your pain is incurable.
Because your iniquity is great
And your sins are numerous,
I have done these things to you.
16 ‘Therefore all who devour you will be devoured;
And all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity;
And those who plunder you will be for plunder,
And all who prey upon you I will give for prey.
17 ‘For I will restore you to health
And I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord,
‘Because they have called you an outcast, saying:
“It is Zion; no one cares for her.”’
(Jeremiah 30:1-17)
The time of our distress in American culture, and even in the church, is upon us as the philosophies of the world have crept in. This is the chastening of God, as we see in Jeremiah 30. But in the same breath, God speaks to His people of judgment and healing.
‘Fear not, O Jacob My servant,’ declares the Lord,
‘And do not be dismayed, O Israel;
For behold, I will save you from afar
(Jeremiah 30:10a)
Our distress and correction come from the sin of idolatry. We look to any other thing except Christ as the answer, except that Jesus is the source. But in the same breath, God shows us His calling to the healing of our sin.
With all the spiritual battles that we face surrounding our sin and the deception of the world, these verses describe the victory that God will bring. We must cling to Jesus, “I will restore you to health.”
The deception at the end of verse 17, “It is Zion; no one cares for her.” Is at the core of the philosophies of the world and the questioning of who God is, and it creeps into the church when we question God in the midst of crisis. The lie that God is not good, and Christ is foolishness, and no one cares for the people of God. It is not true.
We have to actively fight against these deceptions. We have to recognize the times that we’re in, the battles we fight, and the healing God is calling us into. We have to know how big these battles really are, and know how lost we are in battles against these deceptions. We have suffered loss, and the deceptions of the enemy have run rampant in our culture as part of our chastizement. God corrects us, but in the same breath, He calls us into the healing of our sin. He is always calling to us. We are healed in the person of Jesus Christ by the blood of the lamb. Anything in our hearts that is lacking the healing of Jesus Christ, that’s lacking the clarity and the truth that God wants, we must surrender to Him. God is not wrong. We must repent and receive the call of God’s healing of our sin.