Ep 406 – Acts 9:32-43

Rise and walk. Be healed. Take up your bed and walk. Over and over again in the Book of Acts, we encounter these scenes where spectacular things are taking place. Miracles are being performed. Blind people are receiving their eyesight back. People who’ve never been able to walk are suddenly given the capacity to walk, run, and dance. The blind receive their sight. The sick are made well. Those who are demon-possessed are set free. But as incredible as each and every one of these stories may be, they pale in comparison to the spiritual healing so many people received at the hands of the apostles. And it’s likely that Luke has not provided us with an exhaustive list of miraculous healings. There were probably others that we don’t know about. And there were most likely many people who never received healing. They went away unchanged, having never met the disciples face-to-face. The thing we have to realize is that the miracles of healing performed by the disciples were meant to validate their ministries. Their ability to heal was living proof that they had been sent by God and were operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the miracles had another purpose. They also provided a foreshadowing or representation of the moral, spiritual and ethical change taking place in the lives of the people. While only some were healed from physical lameness, everyone suffered from the spiritual version. They were also spiritually blind and deaf. They couldn’t see or hear the truth. The real mission of the apostles was not to bring physical healing to everyone, but to let the world know spiritual healing was available to all who would accept it.