Healing (Hosea 7)

I don’t know how many of you have heard of a man called Smith Wigglesworth. He was born in 1865 in Bradford, Yorkshire. When he gave his life to Jesus Christ he was an illiterate plumber and taught himself to read by reading the Bible. In the first half of the 20th century, until his death in 1947, he had a remarkable ministry of evangelism and healing, in Britain and all over the world. It is well worth reading anything that he wrote. You may not agree with everything, but so many times his words have challenged me to deepen my faith and trust in Christ.

Why am I telling you about Smith Wigglesworth, and what does he have to do with Hosea? Many amazing stories are told about him, and it is one of those stories that I want to refer to. A pastor recounts how Wigglesworth came to his church and he asked him to pray for a certain woman in his congregation who needed physical healing; she was rich and a strong financial supporter of the church. Wigglesworth took one look and told her, “God cannot heal you until you have dealt with the sin in your heart (and he named the sin). Come back when you have sorted it out.” The next night she disguised herself and came forward again for prayer. But, like Ahijah with Jeroboam’s wife in 1 Kings 14, neither God nor Wigglesworth was taken in, and he rebuked her, saying, “I told you yesterday to come back only when you had sorted that sin out.”

This chapter in Hosea begins with God lamenting, Whenever I would heal Israel, the sins of Ephraim are exposed. Then he lists some of their wrongdoing: Lying, destroying trust in relationships (verse 3); Sexual immorality, leading to a never-ending lust for more gratification and more thrills (verse 4); Drunkenness, distorting the perceptions (verse 5); Mockery and intrigue, destroying respect for those in authority (verse 5-7). All of these seem very topical. None of them has disappeared from society in the 2,500 years since Hosea was writing!

Sin, wrongdoing, wickedness (call it what you will) is a violation of how God wants us to live, a rejection of the maker’s instructions. So it inevitably has consequences. Sometimes these can be clearly identified. Sexual promiscuity leaves us open to a staggeringly large number of sexually transmitted diseases. Smoking seriously increases the risk of lung cancer. Alcohol addiction can lead to premature death, as we have seen in the recent tragic case of former British MP Charles Kennedy. But other sins are more subtle and have no obvious connection with a specific illness. For example, anger and bitterness can eat into our bodies, but there is no ‘bitterness illness’; an obsession with material things can damage our humanity, and this is surely a sickness of the soul.

Jesus taught his disciples not to try to identify every individual sickness with a specific sin or sins - his words in John 9:3 destroy this idea (which was widely held by the Jews of his time, and which I have encountered in some Christian circles today). On the other hand, cases such as the paralysed man in Matthew 9 or the lame man in John 5 show that for some people there is a link between illness and sin which is not obvious. Some of you reading this have been asking God to heal something in you, be it physical or emotional, or both. You have even asked other people to pray for you; but nothing has changed - or at least nothing that you can see.

If you have failed to see prayers for your healing answered, do you turn to God once again or do you become disillusioned and turn instead to the wide range of therapies and remedies which are available today? As we see in verses 10-16 of this chapter, turning away from God will only make the situation worse. If you turn to God, you may possibly find something surprising: like Israel in Hosea’s time, God would love to heal you, but he is unable to do so because there is some sin lurking under the surface, maybe known to you, maybe not.

In many countries today we regularly have to take our cars for an official test to verify that they are roadworthy (the MOT in Britain, Contrôle technique in Belgium - what is it called in your country?). Your body is worth a whole lot more than even the most expensive car. So, why don't you do what I’ve just done: turn to God and ask him to give you a roadworthiness check and see if there is anything that needs putting right? Like me, you may be surprised at what he puts his finger on.