<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Chad Kreuzer Weekend 2022

Chad Kreuzer

Healing the Helpless

The message, and maybe I wrote it wrong, but tomorrow night is going to be a psychology of health and healing.

Tonight is going to be helping the helpless or curing the incurable.

And before we begin, I just ask that you bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to study your word.

Thank you that another week has come and gone and we can gather together.

Thank you that we can put away our work for maybe students here.

They can put down their studies and just have a blessing of being able to put those things away for a while, for workers, that they can put away the thoughts of their labor for a day, and that we can spend time with you and your word, talking about health and healing, both tonight and tomorrow.

Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would guide us.

I pray that we'd be cleansed from any sin of the week, that we could walk into this day of your Sabbath with peace and with joy.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Mark chapter 5.

I've spent more time in my life in the book of Mark than any other book of the Bible, hundreds of hours in the book of Mark.

And in Mark chapter 5, just to give you the context, we're not going to go through the whole chapter, we're going to go through a little section of it, but we're going to begin in Mark chapter 5 verse 25, but the context of that is 3 people that had incurable problems, or they were helpless to be able to help themselves.

But the guy would just break the chains, and he would cut himself with stones.

There was nothing they could do to help him, and he couldn't help himself.

Then you come on to a woman who has an issue of blood for 12 years.

She's hemorrhaging year in, year out, day in, day out.

And then finally you have a man, a leader of the synagogue whose daughter dies.

And obviously, and she, it's 1 thing, you know, someone dies immediately and maybe you do CPR, but this isn't the case.

This little girl has been dead for some time.

And Jesus heals all 3 of these people with incurable problems.

And we're gonna focus on the woman with the issue of blood.

And it says, and a certain woman, which had an issue of blood 12 years.

I mean, maybe somebody here is suffering with this.

She's bleeding day in, day out, year in, year out.

She's probably, you know, lacking iron But doesn't know it and she just feels terrible and life is a burden and so here she is in this situation and it's interesting because the Talmud 1 of the Jewish writings tells us that they had more than 10 remedies that the Jews would try to use to help a woman who had, who was hemorrhaging.

And some of them were probably, you know, they were really trying to be remedial.

Other things were just simply superstitions.

1 of them was that a woman should carry with her a barley grain that came from the dung of a white she donkey.

And if she would carry that with her, maybe that would stop her hemorrhaging, was the idea the Jews had come up with.

Now, obviously, today, we chuckle and think, well, that's ridiculous.

Some of them might have been maybe a little more helpful than that, that 1 clearly being superstitious.

But this is what they were going through at the time.

And but though that may be funny, her disease was not.

And maybe you have had something similar.

And it was a cancer where, well, We can help it out.

We can try to maybe slow it down, but we have nothing to stop it.

Maybe you've suffered with something like depression, and you've tried everything.

You've gone to a counselor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist.

Maybe you've tried exercising, getting out in sunlight.

You've tried the 8 laws of health and it just seems like nothing helps.

You try to make your life right with God and you're down and you're depressed.

And it says in verse 26, it says, and these physicians had suffered many things of many, she had suffered many things of many physicians and had spent all that she had and was nothing better, But rather what?

This poor woman, she has this disease, and it says she went to the physician seeking the remedies, the medications, the pharmaceuticals of her day.

And they gave her everything she had, and everything they could give her.

So evidently, there was a time in Earth's history where going to the doctor was very expensive.

It's amazing how there's very little new in the world today.

And so this is what this woman is going through now.

Because of this, because many times physicians in those days had remedies that weren't very remedial.

People kind of looked down on the doctors.

And this right here is taken from something called the Mishnah.

The Mishnah was the, were the oral traditions of the Jews.

Many of them would have much of the oral traditions memorized later on that was written down into what is called the Mishnah and speaking of this is a quote from the Mishnah it says donkey drivers the original wording was ass ass drivers are most of them wicked camel drivers are most of them proper folk.

The best among physicians is destined for Gehenna." So this was the perspective of at least some of the Jews around this time period.

The best of the doctors, because they have all of these prescriptions, all of these things to give to people.

And seemingly, many of them didn't even help to reverse disease.

You think, well, that's because they lived in a time of great darkness and medical uncertainty very different from the times that we live in.

When we give medications, we give them to cure.

Many of the diseases we have, we have medications that are not designed to cure, that are designed to help you keep a disease as long as life shall last, yes or no?

We know that 90-plus, north of 90% of people can fully reverse type 2 diabetes by change of lifestyle.

And it's just seen time and time again by people who do change their lifestyle.

And people who don't even stick fully to the principles of health, can lower their blood sugar significantly as type 2 diabetics.

Sure, a few people may actually have not able to produce quite enough of the insulin to be able to bring their blood sugar down.

But regardless, so we give them medications most of the time.

The Psychology for Health & Healing

This morning we're going to study a bit about the psychology of health and healing.

And that's really where we're going to spend the bulk of our time.

And then toward the end, we're going to talk about more about just simple thoughts on psychology within the healing work, healing, working with people and both their physical and mental health.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to study Scripture, the mind, our spiritual lives, our physical life.

Lord, I pray that you would convict us, that you would challenge us to a deeper experience with you.

And Father, that you would help us to learn how to work with others, which is 1 of the main aspects of life, is how to interact with other people.

And so I pray that you would teach us in the name of Jesus.

So if you have your Bibles, turn me to John chapter 5.

John chapter 5, Last night we talked about a woman who had an incurable disease, and Jesus cured her, or healed her.

And we're going to look at a similar story, but with somebody else who had an incurable disease in John chapter 5.

And we're going to start right in verse 1.

It says, and after this, there was a feast of the Jews.

Now, I'm going to stop right there for a moment.

It's interesting that time and time again, 3 times within like 3 chapters, John says a feast of the Jews, a feast of the Jews, a feast of the Jews, a feast of the Jews, John 5, 6, and 7.

And he never calls the Sabbath the Sabbath of the Jews.

Yet he does say that time and time and time again about the feasts, that they were Jewish feasts.

It says, after this there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to...

It says, and it says, after this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market, a pool or by the sheep gate, a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having 5 porches.

And this sheep gate that Jesus came by called Bethesda.

This word Bethesda meant This was a place of mercy.

This is a house of mercy or a house of grace.

And so here are all these people waiting there at this house of mercy, this house of grace.

And Jesus was looking for someone who had been suffering and he was looking to help that individual.

And just today, Jesus is here seeking to heal someone today, just as he did 2, 000 years ago.

And in verse 3, we go on to read, in these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, hall-withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

It's interesting that these people are all waiting there.

They're looking for healing and they were looking for a supernatural healing and it's interesting because it looks like it goes on to say well they were waiting for this angel to come and and to stir the water and when the water was stirred that people could jump in and whoever jumped in the water first would be healed of whatever disease that they had.

And evidently just makes it sound like, well, that's just the way it was.

That kind of looks like what the text says.

But later on in the chapter, it says that Jesus broke the Sabbath.

Did Jesus ever break the Sabbath, yes or no?

So this was the perspective of the people at that time.

It says not only did Jesus claim to be the Son of God, but He also broke the Sabbath.

Well, if Jesus broke the Sabbath, that would make him not our what?

He couldn't be our true spotless sacrifice.

Now, this was the perspective of the Jews at the time, and that's why it gives us this perspective here.

Does this sound like the mode of operation of God when it comes to healing.

So here's this pool and when there's a little stirring of the water, you see some trickling of the water and imagine there's people there like this guy, been waiting 38 years to be healed and some other guy maybe has like, I don't know, a little rash on his elbow or something like that.

And so all of a sudden, the trickling of the water takes place and the guy with the little issue with his elbow, he runs and he cannonballs into the water.

And he comes out and he's like, oh, my skin is all healed.

Now, does that sound like the motive operation of God?

Only the fittest would survive this healing, not somebody who needed it the most.

This doesn't sound like the way God works at all, right?

And so we can kind of see here, get this idea, but this man, he's waiting and he's looking, this man is looking for somebody else to heal him, to help him.

You know, we have a disease, we have an ailment, and so we go to a doctor, we go to some medical professional looking for healing, and in some cases they can really help.

For instance, let's say you have a tumor that simply needs to be removed and it's cut out.

You know, That might put an end to your issues, possibly, in that situation.

I mean, not necessarily, but it might in that particular situation.

So there are times where some medical intervention, like a broken arm, you have it set, and over time, you are healed.

But there are other diseases that we have that we even talked about a bit last night that the doctors really don't help in general to heal you.

You go in and you're given medication that will help you keep that disease for the rest of your life.

And you pay an average of $9, 600 extra dollars every year to keep that disease for the rest of your life.

Yes, metformin isn't created to heal, it is created to help you keep your disease.

And by the way, I'm not a medical professional, but here's the thing, my thought is, and you could as a doctor, you could say to a patient who just discovered, they came in, they you check their A1c and it is too high.

They have a 7 or an 8 or a 9 or a 10 and they just found out they're a type 2 diabetic and you let them know that.

Now you have basically 2 major options that I can think of.

The second 1 could be that you tell them about the drug medication that they could take, you tell them about the side effects, and you tell them, so here's what's gonna happen.

So if we do the standard route, we're going to give you this medication, and it's going to slow down the progress, hopefully, of your disease.

It might help lower your A1C a little bit, lower your blood sugars a little bit.

But your blood sugars probably will continue to rise.

And then over time, you likely will get on, maybe, at some point in your life, to taking insulin, which is going to speed the process of weight gain, speed up the process of your disease.

Potentially at some time, your toes may become black.

You'll have gangrene that will cut maybe 1 of those off, then 2.

Then maybe take off your foot, then take off a leg, and soon you'll die.

And like 66% of people that get type 2 diabetes, you're going to have some kind of cardiac event.

And that is we can send you to a class on how to change your lifestyle, and you have like a 95% chance of fully reversing your disease, never having to take a drug for your type 2 diabetes.

Your life can be changed for the rest of your life.

You'll feel better than you felt in years, and you won't have to have your toes and your leg removed and potentially die because of this dreaded disease.

So it's up to you which of the 3 options would you like to take.

You have given them the opportunity to go the standard drug medication route, which is the standard medical route that is normally given in North America.

But how much better would it be if you gave them that choice?

Medical Missionary Challenge

Well, our simple message this evening or after, yeah, I guess it is evening, is the medical missionary challenge.

And I'm going to begin with a very simple verse.

We just had our prayer and thank you, my lovely wife, gave me some water.

We're going to begin with a very simple verse.

We're going to begin with a beautiful verse about the work of the disciples.

Luke chapter 9 verse 2 says, and he, Jesus, sent them, the disciples, to preach the Kingdom of God, number 1, and secondarily to what?

So the 2 main works that Jesus gave his disciples to do, the great responsibilities he gave to them, is number 1, to preach about the kingdom of God, to preach about the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, who at their point was there in person.

But secondarily, it was to go forth and heal the sick.

And simple and complex, depending on how you look at it but he said go preach the kingdom of the world and heal the sick and so these 2 things preaching about the salvation of Jesus and healing are bound up in the bible many of you maybe you've even read the book from Dave Fiedler DeSouza talking about this and I mean this is not a whole sermon on De Sozo, just touching on it in the first couple of minutes here.

But basically, 1 of the things that he points out is that in the Greek, the New Testament language, 1 of the things that you see is that the word for healing and the word for salvation is the same word in the Greek language.

Mark chapter 5 verse 23 says, and besought him greatly.

This person was pleading with him saying, my little daughter lies at the point of death.

I pray thee come and lay thy hands on her that she may be healed and she shall live.

But that same word is used in Mark chapter 8 where it says, for whosoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.

This word in the Greek for physical healing is the same word that we use for this saving or salvation.

And so these 2 things are bound up in Scripture.

But not only are they bound up in the New Testament, even in the Old Testament.

We look back in in Psalms 103 verse 3 where it says, God is the 1 who forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases.

Often healing, now I don't want to give the idea that if your sins are forgiven, all your diseases will be forgiven.

But there's just this connection between the spiritual life and the physical life.

And the work we have in ministry is that we minister to people.

We minister to both their body and to their soul.

My wife, we did Bible work for many years full time.

We lived around the world and we would give Bible studies to people.

And my wife, in many of those years, I wish I would have been open more to the health message, but I needed to be beaten for 10 years before I would be open to the health message.

As I shared, I had to go through 10 years of depression to get me to be open to the health message.

I wish I would have been open to it right from the beginning, but some of us are hard-hearted and hard-headed.

And my wife, she would not only go to people's house and study the Bible with people, but if they were sick, she would give them treatments.

Or she would, somebody who was aching, she would give them a massage, and just guess who is better at bringing people to the Lord.

Because when you minister to someone's physical life and you don't only care about their spiritual life, they really realize you really care about them.

And like I said, I grew up in the Christian Reformed Church.

And I was told, God does not care about your body.

He only cares about your spiritual life, your soul.

And sometimes we take in some of those false concepts, and it takes time for us to shed those things.

And so, like I said, I didn't like the health message.

And so when I became an Adventist, I was annoyed with the whole vegetarian kind of idea.

And you're not forced to be a vegetarian as a Seventh-day Adventist.

And so I decided, actually, I wasn't baptized yet.

But I decided, I'm going to keep eating pork.

So I went and I ate some pork out of rebellion.

I wasn't even joined, I hadn't joined yet.

But remember, I'm hard headed, so I thought, that's just a coincidence.

Now, by the way, I didn't vomit every time I ate pork before that.

But here I am, once I had learned the truth and I was rebelling against it, I think the Lord just removed his hand from me.

And as I've already said, 1 of my favorite verses is the rod is for the fool's back.

And I played the fool, and I needed the rod.

And then I had to go through, like I said, 10 years of depression.

And now I think, Lord, help me to just learn before I need the rod, right?

Because I don't really enjoy the rod, per se.

And then my life was changed because of it.

And when I began to see people healed in my ministry, it was life changing.

For the first time, I felt like, wow, I'm actually doing the ministry of Jesus.

I was already sharing the gospel, sharing righteousness by faith, sharing the 3 angels messages, but I wasn't mixing it with health.

And finally, as I did, it was such a blessing to see people healed.

I mean, whether it was physically or even spiritually, 1 of the things we do a seminar on the gut-brain connection, talking about food and how it can impact your brain, you know, the gut-brain connection.

We had a man who came to, he heard us, I think, in Norway, or maybe he heard before that.

But he, and then, you know, We've gone around the world and done it.

But he basically had said that he had struggled with an anger problem with his family.

And he was literally yelling at his Bible study contacts As a missionary.

Series

Chad Kreuzer Weekend 2022

Medical Missionary Challenge

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Chad Kreuzer Weekend 2022

The Psychology for Health & Healing

57m

The Most Fulfilling Life

05 Fulfilling the Miracles of Prophecy

1h 3m

Health and Prophecy in the Light of Cutting Edge Science

5. Health, a Vision of What Could Be

1h 12m

The Gospel of Health

1h 7m

Plenary

Ellen White Finally Exposed

51m

ASI 2011 Seminar: Health

Energizing Your Witness: The Adventist Lifestyle Message Rightly Utilized

1h 19m

Breakout Session C

The Cutting Edge: Getting Back to Our Calling

1h

The Sabbath and Atheism

1h

The Health Message

Nutrition “Avoiding Babylon’s Table”

58m

Is the Health Message Salvational?

39m

Breakout Sessions A

Lifestyle Intervention and Its Impact on Diabetes Treatment & Outcomes

52m

The Will of God, Part 1 - Free Will

1h

Sound Doctrine