Matthew 8: The Four Healings of the God Who Heals

Introduction

"Better to go to heaven sick than to hell in good health." Karim Kabli, an evangelist who has been in full-time ministry for nearly fifteen years, especially among Muslims, is preaching that evening at the Assemblée de Dieu de Nice Ariane. He says he loves this kind of neighborhood, because God reminds us there that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20).

He speaks from experience. In his family, he says, there was "unexplainable darkness": depression, madness, a curse that no human solution, no association and no medication could lift, however good the intentions. Then the power of the Gospel was preached to them, and God's light came.

In the Old Testament, God reveals himself under many faces, and they all come together in Jesus: the shepherd and the way, the king and the servant, the judge and the deliverer, the lion and the lamb. Tonight the preacher dwells on one face in particular, that of God the physician, starting from the healing of a leper in Matthew 8. He sees in it four healings that God wants to bring about in each of our lives.

Outline of the Message

1. Jesus, God the Physician

In the Old Testament, God's people go through different seasons, sometimes because of a curse, sometimes because of disobedience. But God always keeps a physician's heart that wants to come and meet his people to heal them.
Matthew 8:1-4: a leper bows down before Jesus and says: "Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean." Jesus stretches out his hand, touches him and says: "I want to. Be made clean." Then he sends him to show himself to the priest.
This man experiences more than a physical healing. Karim Kabli points out four areas: a spiritual healing, an emotional healing, a physical healing and a social and relational healing. When God touches our lives, he does not touch only our bodies.

2. Spiritual Healing: the Leprosy of Sin

In Scripture, leprosy carries the symbolism of sin, the first sickness of the human heart. It starts with a small spot, grows if it is not treated and becomes contagious around us, reaching our children and grandchildren.
Many people run after solutions to change their lives while forgetting to deal with the cause of their suffering. Our generation takes care of its body: the gym, organic food, calories, protein. It also takes care of its soul by staying away from toxic people. "That is right," says the preacher, but we forget the first cause of destruction: sin.
Sin begins with a disobedience that misses the mark, then develops in us a rebellious nature, opposed to God. Karim Kabli quotes Romans 7: I know what I should do but I cannot manage it, and I do what God would not want me to do. "Me first," he adds.
In Argenteuil, two young Muslim women ask him whether he wants to convert Muslims. He answers: "If you found the cure for cancer, would you keep it for yourself or give it to everyone?" Sin is that cancer of the heart, and Jesus is the solution.
In a mosque near Avignon, he explained the difference to an imam: in Islam, sin is an outward action; for Christians, "sin is a nature." So God does not want only to forgive us, he wants to transform us through the new birth.

3. The Greatest Miracle: a Transformed Nature

Sin is passed down from generation to generation: there are cycles of destruction inherited from our parents that we hand on to our children. When Jesus deals with the question of sin in a life, a cycle stops and a curse becomes a blessing.
The preacher invites everyone to say: "It stops with me, and starting from me there will be a blessing." He tells how he used to pretend to sleep at his father's place so he could lock himself in his room and pray for him, sometimes all night. One day, God reminded him that no one in his family line had yet cried out to God the way he did, and that the following generations would be under grace.
The greatest miracle is not a healed body or a changed family situation. "Glory to God for the paralyzed who get up," but the greatest miracle is a man whose very nature God radically changes.
He himself was addicted to drugs, caught up in violence and delinquency. Missionaries could not have imagined it as they listened to him. "The Gospel is not only forgiveness. The Gospel is also deliverance and salvation." The Greek word translated as salvation, sōtēria, carries this sense of deliverance.
Many Christians have reduced the Gospel to a slightly better life. The heart of the Gospel is the new birth: "You need to be born again tonight."

4. Emotional Healing: When Rejection Becomes an Identity

Leviticus 13:45-46: the leper is isolated, he leaves his family and his home, and lives alone outside the camp. He wears torn clothes, covers his beard and must cry out: "Unclean! Unclean!" He no longer has a first name, no longer has an identity: his uncleanness becomes his identity.
Karim Kabli has known the street. He knows that people lose their dignity and honor there, and that the gaze others place on you deeply marks your identity.
Rejection gives the feeling that grace and blessing are for others, but not for oneself. Even today, behind nice clothes, a nice suit or a nice appearance, many carry wounds that have paralyzed their development. In the passage, Jesus is followed by the crowd, but he sees one man: God is not only the God of crowds, he is the God of individuals.
The preacher takes up a notion from psychology, shock (sidération): a wound freezes part of our inner development. The body grows, the years go by, but fears and protective mechanisms from an earlier period remain. "There can be an adult on the outside but a wounded child who keeps reacting on the inside."
God is "not just a general practitioner," he has "surgical precision." Even when life starts to change, a deep inner healing is needed for God to realign our identity with his truth.

5. One Minute in God's Presence

The preacher quotes the first words of Jesus's ministry: the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to heal the brokenhearted and to set the captives free (Luke 4:18).
He tells his story. A violent father who would come into his room to hit him with a belt. At ten, after an hour of beating, he swallows all the pills he can find: he no longer wants to live. His mother is depressed.
For years, he looks for "a thousand solutions" to get out of his blockages. Around sixteen, his mother, who is being followed by a psychiatrist in Dijon, gets the psychiatrist to see him. Before going in, he takes advantage of the empty reception desk to steal the cash box. The psychiatrist looks him up and down and says to his mother: "There is no solution for this guy." The preacher admits that he was being honest.
"But I can tell you the solution: it is one minute in the presence of God." On May 21, 2009, during a youth meeting, he enters God's presence, feels something like a fire and chains breaking. "I am unable to explain it," he says, but since that day he has never been the same person.
This is not just a piece of wise advice: it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit meeting a need and changing something on the inside. God wants to restore his image in each of us.

6. Physical Healing: by His Wounds

Jesus is moved with compassion. He cares for our spirit, our soul and also our body: every dimension of the human being matters to him.
The preacher recalls Isaiah 53:5, "the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed," which the apostle Peter takes up in the past tense: we have been healed (1 Peter 2:24). "It is accomplished," he stresses.
He shares several testimonies. In Ajaccio, Corsica, a brother had suffered for nearly five years from chronic leukemia: swollen lymph nodes almost everywhere in his body, affected organs. He also had rheumatoid arthritis: he needed his wife's help to open a jar of jam, and he no longer had the strength to tie his shoelaces. No treatment protocol brought relief.
During his vacation in Corsica, this brother shows him a few places and prepares a meal for him by a river. Karim Kabli wonders how to bless him in return: "Compassion is the starting point of healing." Without knowing that he was sick, he senses the Lord telling him to pray for him. The brother confides that he believes God can heal others, but not him. They pray for five minutes at the end of a service, in August. In September, he receives his message: according to the tests, no more trace of cancer, blood balanced, lymph nodes gone, and the arthritis too.
Still in Corsica, a 42-year-old woman with cervical cancer was due to undergo an ablation, since no treatment protocol had worked. The preacher prays at her home with the local pastor. She later writes him the doctors' report: "Madam, you have the womb of a young girl," no more trace of cancer, no more need for the ablation.
On the way to his little sister's baptism, he shares the Gospel during a carpool with a young woman who says she does not need God, but who suffers from an autoimmune disease and says she has become dependent on her treatment. On Sunday, after a word of knowledge from the pastor, she testifies that she was healed. She gives her life to Jesus and is baptized; that day, her mother, although the young woman had described her parents as atheist and very closed, is in tears as she hears the testimonies.
The preacher nevertheless says he is "not a very triumphalist guy": he does not promise that two or three prayers make sickness disappear. "I believe it is much deeper and much more delicate than that."

7. Social and Relational Healing

Jesus sends the healed leper to show himself to the priest. Once his purity is attested, the man can regain his status, go back to the temple, see his family again and take up a place in society.
Sin isolates and leaves people aside. When God heals, he also restores relationships and re-establishes a dignity that shines before everyone.
Karim Kabli returns to his mother. As a teenager, he would come home from school, sit at the foot of her bed in a room with closed shutters, turn on the light and open the windows to bring her a little life. She made several suicide attempts. Today restored, she has joined an association to visit elderly people, and one lady told her: "Madam, you radiate a joy that is contagious."
"It is over being isolated. It is finished being in your corner and thinking that it is for others and not for me." God wants to make you shine where he places you.
To those who wonder whether they have gone too far, Jesus answers as he did to the leper: "I want to." The first step, says the preacher, is sincerity before God. He mentions another man healed by Jesus, who hid his hand out of shame and to whom Jesus said, in front of everyone: "Stretch out your hand" (the episode recalls that of the man with the withered hand, Mark 3:5). What we have been dragging along for a long time must be brought into the light before God.

Key Takeaways

God has a physician's heart: he wants to heal the human being in every dimension, spirit, soul, body and relationships.
The first sickness is spiritual. Sin is a nature, and God does not content himself with forgiving: he gives new birth.
Rejection can become an identity and freeze inner development. God sees what no one sees and wants to realign your identity with his truth.
By the wounds of Jesus, we have been healed; the preacher bears witness to this while refusing a triumphalist approach to healing.
God also restores dignity and a place among others: being isolated is over.

Personal Application

Do you take more care of your body and your soul than of your spiritual life? What would God want to deal with at the source?
Which family cycle would you like to see stop with you, so that your children grow up under blessing?
Does a label or an old wound still define how you see yourself and how you react?
What have you been hiding for a long time that you could, sincerely, "stretch out" before God?
In which area do you still think that God's promises are "for others and not for me"?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the four healings of the leper in Matthew 8?

For Karim Kabli, the leper in Matthew 8 experiences more than a physical healing. He experiences a spiritual healing, because leprosy symbolizes sin; an emotional healing, that of rejection and a wounded identity; a physical healing, since the leprosy leaves him; and a social and relational healing, since the priest can attest to his purity and give him back his place.

Why is leprosy an image of sin?

Like leprosy, sin starts with a small spot, grows if it is not treated, can hide under clothing and spreads around us, from generation to generation. Karim Kabli reminds us that, for Christians, sin is not only an act: it is a nature. That is why God does not content himself with forgiving; he transforms through the new birth.

What is the state of shock the preacher talks about?

Karim Kabli draws on this notion from psychology: a wound freezes part of our inner development. The body grows and life goes on, but fears and protective mechanisms from an earlier period remain. There can be an adult on the outside and a wounded child who keeps reacting on the inside. For him, this deep healing is found in God.