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Healing Scriptures of the Bible Part One
God’s Healing Scriptures
As we study the healing Scriptures of the Bible, our study must include both the Old and New Testaments. Unfortunately, sometimes even Christians think healing was limited to Jesus’s time and shortly after.
One of the first things we need to understand is that healing has always been a part of God’s blessings. We see it all through the Bible, both Old and New Testaments give accounts of God healing those in need.
Many Old Testament Prophets clearly state healing as part of God’s covenant. However, at other times, we see actions that show they assume that God will heal.
I do not know what Abraham thought when God commanded him to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. What I do know is Abraham had faith in God to restore Isaac and make him the father of nations. Even if he killed Isaac, God could and would heal him to fulfill His word concerning coming events. Abraham believed in God’s promise.
God’s Promise
The same is true for us today. We must believe the covenant God has with us concerning our healing. When we agree with God and His covenant, our faith is released to receive what God has provided for us.
There are so many Scriptures about healing that I have decided to divide this study into two parts. Part One will deal mostly with the Old Testament healing and the promises of the coming of Christ and His healing. Part Two will cover many of the New Testament Scriptures about Jesus and His Disciples and their healing ministry.
Hopefully, through this study of healing scriptures, you will grow in faith to believe in God for healing. However, you will notice that God does not heal everyone.
Abram (Abraham)is our first example
God has blessed us with the written Bible and many examples of God’s healing. Abraham’s life shows how God works in our lives when we let Him.
Abraham did not have a Bible, yet he knew God. He talked to Him as we do in prayer. The Biblical record does not tell us what little steps God may have used to build his faith. But the big step is recorded for us.
1 Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family
And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. 2 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; “ Genesis 12:1-3 NKJV
Abram obeyed God, and Scripture tells us God counted his obedience as righteousness. However, as you read about Abraham you will find that he is in no way perfect. He is just as human as you are.
He lived in a large metropolitan center called Ur. It was a wealthy agricultural area. Their production recorded on clay tablets allows us to understand much about them.
Back to Abram
Let us put what God called Abram to do into perspective. It would be like God telling you to quit your job, pack everything in your car, and start driving. God did not tell him where he was going only that He would make him great and would bless the world through him.
We are not told how long Abram had been talking to God or how God spoke to him. The Scripture places the emphasis on one thing, his faith in God. Abram believed God. When God told him to get up and go, he did just that.
Abram had faith in God and the covenant God had established with him. He was fully persuaded that God could perform all He said. This kind of faith is the key to our faith as well.
We must believe God
Please stay with me as I show you how the story of Abraham helps us understand healing in the Bible. It helps us to connect to the key ingredient in healing.
God had promised to give Abraham a son and that that son would provide descendants as numerous as the sands of the sea.
20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. Romans 4:20-21 NKJV
To him, Abraham’s faith was evidence that God was able to perform all He promised. He did not have proof of what God said. We can now see what he could only believe would happen in the form of Jesus.
Why am I using Abraham in relationship to healing?
There are several reasons why I see Abraham as an example of healing. Let’s start with Sarah, she was not able to conceive, but God had promised Abraham that his seed would become a great people. In order for this to happen Sarah had to produce an heir.
When the time came in God’s plan He sent angels to inform Abram that Sarah would bare him a son. She was 90 years old when Isaac was born. Sarah did not believe when she heard the angels speaking to Abraham. She knew that it was impossible.
God had to heal her womb if she was to conceive a child. So this was clearly a divine healing. He also had to give her strength to care for that child. God fulfilled His promise to Abraham through her.
Abraham’s unwavering faith
In Genesis 22:1-13, we have the story of God testing Abraham by telling him to go and sacrifice his only son, Isaac.
Genesis 22:2 Then He said, 2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Again inGenesis 22:55 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
Genesis 22:8 8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.
Note Abraham’s two powerful confessions of faith.
First, He tells his young men that came with him, “The lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you – vs. 5.” He does not know what will happen, but he knows what God has promised about his son. Somehow his son will live. God will heal him if he is stricken or raise him from the dead.
Second, when his son asks where the sacrifice is, he answers in faith, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering –vs. 8.” He knows what God has said to him, but he also knows what God has promised.
Abraham was not speaking out of presumption. Instead, he answered by faith, knowing that if he offered him as a sacrifice to God that God would heal even a fatal wound. Moreover, Isaac’s seed would populate a nation.
God said it so it would happen. Abraham believed God. This faith is why I list this example of a healing scripture in the Bible.
Abraham based his faith on the covenant God established with him.
Abraham had already been walking with God in a faith relationship to this covenant when God told him to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
God had told him that He would establish His promise and covenant through Isaac. Abraham knew that God would heal Isaac, even if he did offer him, to fulfill the covenant. God promised this in the following Scripture.
19 Then God said: “No, Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. Genesis 17:19-20 NKJV
At this point in Abraham’s life, Isaac was still without a wife and offspring. Abraham is basing his confessions of faith on the promise God had already given to him.
Covenant not circumstances
When we look at healing Scriptures in the Bible, we can not let circumstances affect our judgment. Even though the events of the moment seem in total contradiction to the covenant God had established with him, he continued to obey God. He based his confession and faith on the covenant, not the circumstances. As a result, he went on to be a man fully blessed by God.
Abraham’s faith is an example of the kind of faith that God desires to establish our healing.
Just as Abraham believed God according to the covenant established with him, so must we. Healing is an integral part of God’s covenant with us established through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Our healing was prophecied in the Old Testament
As I mentioned in the opening remarks of this article, God has provided healing in all of the covenants He made with mankind. The idea of going to God for healing is God’s idea. He added healing to each of His covenants with man.
As we look at some of the Old Testament Scriptures we see the connection. When God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt He promised healing. He also promised sickness if they refused to follow His Law. Both promises are still with us.
With Israel
When the Children of Israel came out of Egypt, God made a covenant with them in Exodus. If they obeyed His commands, He would protect them from all the plagues He put on the Egyptians.
God said to them, 26 “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.” Exodus 15:26 NKJV
Later, in Psalms, we read that not one feeble or sick person came out of Egypt. God had given healing to them along with great wealth. David tells us that, 37 He also brought them out with silver and gold, And there was none feeble among His tribes Psalm 105:37 NKJV
With David
God first makes a covenant with David to establish his throne forever.
3 “I have made a covenant with My chosen,
I have sworn to My servant David:
4 ‘Your seed I will establish forever,
And build up your throne to all generations.'” Psalm 89:3-4 NJKV
Secondly, in the covenant God made with David, we find in Psalm 103:2-3 that God says that He is the one to heal all their diseases.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
3 Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases, Psalm 103:2-3 NKJV
However, this Scripture, like the following one in Isaiah, refers to the coming Messiah who is to sit on David’s throne. He is the God who forgives them and heals all their diseases.
The coming Messiah
We will focus on Isaiah 53, which is a prophetic passage of Scripture concerning the ministry of the coming Messiah. In this passage, we find healing is an explicit part of the atonement. We also see the fulfillment of all that this passage spoke of in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
The prophet Isaiah tells of the coming Messiah and what He will do for those who care.
The Testimony of Healing in the Atonement – Isaiah 53:1-10.
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:4 NKJV
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes, we are healed. Isaiah 53:5 NKJV
All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6 NKJV
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. Isaiah 53:10 NKJV
There are three bold statements in this passage concerning healing in the atonement.
The Hebrew word used for grief means physical pain and mental pain. These healing Scriptures of the Bible tell us that the Messiah would take upon Himself our hurt as well as our sin. The Messiah came to give us salvation from sin, and also to give us healing.
Verse 4—He has borne our griefs. The Hebrew word for grief includes sicknesses.
Verse 5—By His stripes, we are healed. Healed includes emotional and physical healing.
Verse 10—He has put Him to grief. The amplified version says, “He has put Him to grief and made Him sick.”
Conclusion
I pray that these many Scriptures will help increase your faith in the healing ministry. Part Two, the second half of this study, will deal more with the New Testament and Healing today.
The Bottom Line is that the healing Scriptures in the Bible should increase your faith
Faith and healing come from a heart convinced that God’s will is to heal.
Jesus made a New Covenant with us that includes healing.
He cannot deny Himself or altar the covenant.
In Psalms 89:34, God says, My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out.
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