Ron Dunn Podcast - Does God Heal Today - Part 6

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Ron gives a message showing how God works through our infirmities.

The Bible says that they that endure to the end shall be saved. I'm glad that you folks have endured to the end these noon services. I trust that you'll be saved from whatever it is you need to be saved from. I have enjoyed these and I hope that you have. I usually end up enjoying the noon services better than I do the evening services. I'm not sure why that is, but maybe it's because there's food and that makes a difference. It's always a lot easier to listen to a sermon

if you're eating something. But it's been a joy for me and I hope that it's been a help to you. I've been speaking on strange ministers, the odd things, the unusual things, the unexpected things that God brings into our life, that ministers to us, that does things for us that other things could not do. I think there are some things that God can teach us only through failure. I think there are some things that

God can teach us only when we are in darkness temporarily. There are some things that God cannot do for us apart from certain situations. That's why you'll find so much in the Bible, especially in James and Romans, things like this, that we know that tribulation produces strength of character. And we know that this will do this. And the reason the Christian can have faith in the midst of testing times is because we know something that others do not know. We know that what God is doing, he is doing for a purpose and that it will work out to our good, as the Bible says. I want to speak to you today on what I believe is the meanest minister

of all. If there was ever a minister I'd like to run off, it was him. I want to talk to you about the ministry of silence, or how we live without answers. And I want to use today John chapter 9, the first four verses of John chapter 9, where I believe the Lord deals with this question in a greater way than any place I have found in the Bible. The gospel of John chapter 9, I'll read just the first four verses. Now, as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming when no one can work. About four years ago, I was in Little Rock, Arkansas with my family. And we'd come back to the motel about midnight, and I'd dropped my wife and daughter and daughter-in-law at the front of the motel. And then I drove around the back to the parking area. It was about midnight, actually. And so I found a parking place. Parking lots was well lighted.

I parked my car. I got out and opened the trunk and pulled out a couple of bags and shut the trunk. And when I turned around, a car had come around the corner of the motel and pulled up right in front of me and stopped and a man got out and when he got out I could smell the liquor on his breath and my first thought was you know I've got a drunk to contend with and so I just started for the back door of that motel and he asked me a question. He asked me how I could get to 13th street or something and I knew that was that was

fishy because you don't ask a stranger local directions and so I just ignored him and went on and then I heard him say let me have those bags bags. And I ignored him, of course, and I still walked on. And then he grabbed me and turned me around and said, give me those bags. And this time he had a gun and he was pointing it at me. And I found out that these things don't happen like they do on television. And I didn't know what to do. As a matter of fact, I was just standing there stunned, not believing that this was happening. I just couldn't believe that.

So I sort of kept on going and backing up towards the door. And then he grabbed me again, and we scuffled a bit, and I fell down on the parking lot. And he stood over me, straddling me, and pointed the gun at me. He said, I'm going to kill you. And the only thought I can remember having is, my Lord, I'm going to die at the Holiday Inn parking lot. I didn't have any great visions, you know. I didn't see heaven open and St. Peter waving me up, you know,

with the angels in the background singing, I'll fly away. I didn't, my life didn't pass before me. All I knew is I'm going to die in this Holiday Inn parking lot. And he shot and he missed. I could feel the bullet hit off to the right of my head. And so we scuffled a little bit and then he just stood over me and shaking and saying some things that I will not repeat. And the next thing I know he picked up the bag and went back to the car. I found out later that someone had heard this thought and had come to the window and they were looking out and banging on the window to get that fellow's attention and so I assumed that that's what kept him from

shooting me because he had come back and was going to do me in. But six months later at the trial, I remember the prosecuting attorney said that if that man had been a better shot, Mr. Dunn would not be here today. And I agreed with that. And I had some friends, and I mentioned that I said to some of my friends, I'm glad that guy was a lousy shot. And he said, oh, that had nothing to do with it. God was with you. God delivered you. And I said, that sounds good to me. Somebody else said, well, your angel was just sitting on your shoulder that night and God delivered you. And one thing that several years ago a close friend and his wife that I'd gone to college with

and seminary with were shot to death in their home and I couldn't help but think about that couple where was God when they were shot did they have a guardian angel? Why did God deliver me and God not deliver those? That's a puzzling question. I was in New Orleans, Louisiana not

long ago in a meeting and I was sitting on the front queue waiting for the service to start, and two women were sitting behind me. And they were having a conversation about what obviously had been an accident in which one of the women's sons had been involved. There had been two men in that accident. One had been killed, but her son had survived. And this other woman was saying, oh, I'm so glad that your boy is all right. And I heard the mother say yes god is good and he is i couldn't help though but ask myself what is the other mother saying at this moment is she saying god is good and if that woman's son had been killed, would she be sitting there tonight saying, God is good?

Question of why. Why do these things happen? Why do they happen to me? It's about the toughest question that you can ever come up against. And I doubt if there's any one of us who have never asked ourselves that question or asked God that question.

Why, Lord? Why has this happened? Why is it that God may deliver me from tragedy and yet God does not deliver that person? Is it because I was prayed up or I was more faithful or is it because I was more holy

or that I was more valuable to the kingdom of God? And the Lord thought he could spare this one and so he let him go? Is that the way it works? God is good when your son is saved, but is he as good when he's not saved? Why?

I think we need to ask the question why because we believe that we live in a universe that is ordered and controlled. Since God created all of this, we feel like God has to be in control. And we believe basically that our world is an ordered and controlled world, and that there is a sense of justice and fairness built into this world. But when something like this comes along, something unexpected, something out of the normal, that suddenly throws a wrench into all of our feelings. We say, what's happened?

We know that people are going to grow old and die. We know that. That's inevitable. But when a grandchildchild dies even before his grandparents, that's not supposed to happen that way. That's out of the ordinary. And so we ask, why is that? And we demand an answer because we somehow feel that we have lost control of our life

and we've got to know why so we can come back and say, yes, there is order in the universe. Yes, there is justice in the universe. So we have to try to find answers. I think sometimes we keep asking why because we want to be absolved from any guilt. Sometimes we feel, well, I could have done more, or I could have prevented this. And if we could just find out why this happened, perhaps we'd discover that it had nothing to do with us and there was no way that we could have prevented it.

And so we ask why. Many times because we feel guilty. I think a lot of times we ask why because we are trying to find a way of preventing it from happening again. These disciples, as they saw this blind man, they asked the question, Lord, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? Now why were the disciples interested in that? What were

they asking? Were they wanting more than just a theological answer? I'm wondering if those disciples thought if they could find out why that man was born blind, maybe they could prevent it from happening to them or some other sex. I think that perhaps when Job's three friends came in and confronted him and tried to convince him of sin, perhaps they were saying, if Job is such a holy and righteous man

and this happens to him, what can happen to us? But if we can somehow discover that Job has sin, that leaves us because now we can escape it. I think a lot of times when we pray for somebody else's healing, we're really praying for our own.

Because if God heals them, well, we can say, well, that's proof that God will heal me. And somehow we can escape. I think another reason we ask why is because it's just difficult for us to live with mystery. Difficult for us to live with mystery.

We live in a age, I guess you'd call it the public's right to know age. Everybody has a right to know. The media keeps us informed on everything from Jimmy Carter's hemorrhoids to Ronald Reagan's colon and everybody says you have a right to know. The problem is though

that God doesn't operate on that basis. There is always mystery when it comes to God and one of our problems is our refusal to live with mystery because that means something unfair has happened to us. We always say, why me?

We never say, why not me? We always say, why is there evil in the world? We never say, why is there good in the world? I want us to look at this passage of Scripture and see what answer Jesus gives to them. In 1972, I gave my wife a watch for Christmas. And on the back of it, I'd had carved Love, Decay from Wrong, 1972, a very good year. And it was, it was a great year. I just didn't know it was going to be the last good year we had for quite a while.

Because right after that, our son began having some problems, our oldest son. He was about 14 at that time. We found out later that it was a mood disorder because of a chemical imbalance in his blood, but we didn't know that for two or three years. And he just began having severe problems. We thought it was just first, you know, teenage rebellion and such as that, but it became a lot more than that. But anyway, in 1975, he tried to commit suicide, and we took him to the hospital and they admitted him to psychiatric care for two weeks and did all the tests.

And when we walked into the doctor's office, he said, well, we've discovered that your son has a mood disorder and it's caused by this chemical imbalance in the blood and there's medicine that we can give that will correct this and he can be all right and i was a real load off of our shoulders and off of our hearts and uh he took the medicine and it was like he'd been born again he just it was just wonderful and k and i just knew that god had healed him and was going to heal him and we had promises God had given Kay promises he had given me promises we I just knew that God was going to deliver him and now it's easy to believe because look how well he was doing the doctor said one of the things you have to watch out for is that he'll

get to feel him so good he won't take his medicine and there has to be such a perfect balance in this kind of medicine that he had we had had his blood check each week well Kay found in his shirt pocket couple of times medicine that he had not taken and to make a long story short on Thanksgiving Day in 1975 he he took his life. Now, in addition to the grief and the heartache that you bear when someone like that dies, you have the extra stigma and guilt of suicide. And so you always ask yourself, what could I have done and why didn't I do it?

But I'll tell you what made it even more difficult for me and I think for Kay is that there were a number of us close friends who had similar problems. Other preachers who were having trouble with their son, their daughter. Some had even been in jail because of some drug violation. And we had formed kind of a fraternity and we all prayed for each other's family all prayed for each other's children the thing that I didn't understand is that every other child that we had prayed for came through I was the only one that didn't the only one that didn't. The only one that didn't. And that kept me asking a lot of questions for a lot of time.

And I still ask, why is that? But all of God is a silent tree. God has not shown me why my son died or why he allowed him to die. I feel a little bit like that father Felt whose son killed himself. He called me up about six months later on the phone and he said, you know, I'm beginning to see things that have come out of his death. He mentioned several relatives that have been won to Christ. He said, I can see how God is using that. Then he said this, but that is not enough. And I can't blame him for saying that. And I've asked why, and I think that God has helped me to

understand out of this passage. Now I want us to look at it very closely because it really doesn't say what we immediately think it says. His disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now, notice how they asked the question. They didn't say, did somebody sin? They said, who sinned?

There was no doubt in their mind because that was the prevailing theology of the day, that if somebody had a tragedy like that, if they had something that happened to them like a blindness or being crippled, that it was obvious it was because of sin. They believed that a person, some of them believed,

it was more of a pagan belief, but a few believed that a person could be born blind because of sin he was going to commit later on in his life. Sort of pay now and sin later type of deal. They really believed that, that a man could be punished at birth for sin that he would later commit. So they said, who sins? This man or his parents that he should be born blind? It's really a stupid question when you think about it. If this man is born blind what sin could he have committed?

But they just knew that there had to be sin. So they said we know somebody's sin. Who did it? This man or his parents? They give Jesus two options, two suggestions to explain this tragedy. He sinned or his parents sinned. And listen to what Jesus said.

Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned. Neither one. Now when he says they had not sinned, he doesn't mean that they were perfect. But what Jesus is saying is that this blindness has not been brought upon this man for any specific sin. There is no sin they committed that brought this about. Of course they had sinned, all had sinned, but Jesus was saying there is no sin you can put your finger on and say that's the cause. And he goes on to say, but that the works of God should be revealed in him, I must work the works of him who sent me while

it is day. Now when you read that, verse 3, that neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God may be manifest, it sounds like Jesus is saying the reason this man was born blind was so God would have an opportunity to manifest Himself. As though this man were born blind for the specific reason and purpose so that God could use this situation to demonstrate and so when you preach the funeral of a child do you say that this child died so God could manifest his glory in some way could you say well it was God's will that this child died

because God wanted to use it can you say that this is not what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is not saying this man was born blind so that God could manifest his works. Now, if you have a New American Standard Version, it'll read like this. But it was that the works of God should be revealed in him.

And you'll notice those words, it was, are in italics, which tells you that they were not a part of the original text, that they were added by the translators just to make it read a little smoother. But it's in italics to show you that it's not in the original. And it shouldn't be. Jesus is not saying, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but in order for God to work, that's why he was born blind.

That's not what he's saying at all. Here's what Jesus is saying. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, period. End of discussion. But that, and that word that there in this construction means not a purpose but a result. In other words, Jesus is not saying the purpose of this man's blindness is that God can work, but the result of it ought to be that God can work. So this is the way to read it.

Neither this man nor his parents sinned that this man should be born blind. Period. End of it. But so that the works of God should be revealed in him, I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. That's what Jesus is saying. Jesus is not charging God with that man being born blind. He doesn't even answer the question. The disciples said, Lord, why was this man born blind? Jesus totally ignores the question. He says, this man was not born blind because of any sin. Now there's where you put the period. And then he says, but so that the works of God can be manifest, I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

In other words, Jesus said, instead of standing around here inquiring as to what sin this man committed, that's none of our business, but let's get something done. While it's daylight, let's do the works of God and Jesus healed the man. Now, the amazing thing is this, that Jesus did not even answer the question. He did not answer the question. They offered two suggestions if parents sinned or he sinned, but Jesus didn't bring up a third. The Lord ignored the question. You'll find this again in Luke chapter 13. I think this will help us to see the same thing in a different situation. In Luke chapter 13, verse 1, there were present at that season some who told him about the

Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered to them and said, Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no.

But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or why those men and women died when that tower fell upon them? He refused to discuss the why. All he did was say, listen, mind your own business, see to your own soul,

and instead of wondering about the insuitables of life, you had better repent or you're going to perish just like they did. That's what he said. And so when they meet this blind man and Jesus fixed his eyes upon him and the disciples also looked at him but they did not look at him with compassion they looked at him with the theological

curiosity that said we've got to find out why. And Jesus refuses to answer the question. It occurred to me not long ago that the Lord, if He had wanted to, He could have answered every single question about the message of life. Why didn't He? Why didn't He? There were so many mysteries

that Jesus could have solved. But it is intriguing that Jesus ignores the questions that mean most to us the biggest thing I want to know is why this happens and Jesus doesn't offer a single explanation but rather he offers

what we ought to do about it now. So the question is not why. As long as you ask why, that's going to enclose you in misery and self-pity. It's going to enslave you. As long as we ask why. The question is not why.

The question is what now? What now? Jesus does not give a reason why this man was born blind, but he said, listen, you're not doing the works of God when you question these things. You only do the works of God when you do something for the fellow that's blind. Here he is, blind. Forget about why or wherefore, but do something about it. We have to work the works of him while it is day. Jesus says don't waste daylight asking questions that cannot be answered. When the night comes, you have all the time you want to answer questions. But right now, while it's daylight, we must do the works of God. And the works of God is not nosing into's what do we do now.

I don't know why the Lord allowed my son, our son, to die. I don't know. I don't know why Sarah is sick as she is. I don't know why those things happen. And I'll never know why they are. God says, that's not your question. That's not your problem. If you want to be delivered from it,

you ask instead, what now? What now? And I think this does three things for us. First of all, I think it saves us from self-pity. It saves us from self-pity. It saves us from self-pity. Very easy for us to turn into ourselves and we see life only through our pain. We see life only through our tragedy and we enslave ourselves to a form of selfishness that the only thing we really care about in life is, why has this happened to me?

And we live our lives as though God has committed some great mistake and sin in dealing with our lives. To say, the question is, what now? To what end has this happened? Not why has it happened, but what can God do with it? What can I do with it? That saves us from self-pity. The second thing it does, it gives us a future.

It gives us a future. If I ask only why, in effect I'm saying my life is over. My life is finished I can never again be as happy as I was before this happened why why why but if I ask Lord what now that means I have a future that means I have something to look forward to I remember preaching in a meeting several years ago and after the service a man and woman came up to me and I had not met them before they were visiting they were from another place and as we talked this man's wife looked at me and she said it was so good to see you smile tonight

well that was an unusual you know comment I said well thank you very much oh I was like glad to know I had such a charming smile and she said no I'm really serious it was really good to see you smile tonight and I said well I appreciate that thank you and she said you don't know what I'm talking about do you I said no ma'am I don't. She said, well six months ago our daughter was killed in a car accident and she said, I just believe that my life is open and I've known that nothing in the future can ever be as happy as it was in the past after this has happened. She said, I thought I would never smile again but she said, when we came tonight, we came because we knew that something had happened. And she said, I came to see. And she said, when I sat there tonight and

saw you smile, I said to myself, well, if he can smile, I'll be able to smile someday. And it reminds me of what the psalmist said in Psalm 42. Why are you cast down, O soul? But he goes on to say, I will yet praise the Lord. He's not saying I'm praising the Lord right now. But he said, one of these days, I will praise the Lord. One of these days, I'll get through this. One of these days, days I will praise the Lord one of these days I'll get through this one of these days I will yet praise the Lord I may not be able to praise him now

but I know that I will again praise him and when I say Lord not why has this great disaster befallen me but Lord to what end what work are you going to manifest what are you going to do that gives me a future and lets me know that I have something

to look forward to. And the third thing it does, it makes me a part of God's work. It makes me a part of God's work. I'm not useless. Perhaps because of some sickness or disease or tragedy, I feel like I'm useless. There's nothing I can do. And yet I know that in the eyes of God everything about my life has a strategic purpose. And I can say, Lord, what now, knowing that I am a part of the work of God.

Knowing that God can demonstrate His power in me in a special way that He cannot demonstrate it in anybody else. It occurred to me as I was reading this, it occurred to me that a whole man would have been of no use to Jesus that day. But a blind man was of use. And God was able to do something, to manifest himself and to teach his disciples something, and he does something that he could not have done if that man had been whole. So the question is not why,

the question is what now. Now I'm going to have to confess to you, I'm still asking why. I don't live everything I preach, though. And I know you don't need to ask why, but I'm still asking. But all I'm getting is a silent treatment from the Lord on that, so I'll settle right now for what now. And that's the only way I believe that you can make your life meaningful through some tragedy through some difficulty Lord what now all right let's pray together father again I thank you for the time that we've had during these noon days for those who come and listen

and I pray that you will take the word of God and plant it deep into our hearts that we may see a harvest of all that you want us to be and of all that you want us to be and so we commit ourselves to thee a harvest of all that you want us to be and of all that you want us to be. And so we commit ourselves to thee

and thank thee for thy goodness and thank you for the hope that we have in Christ Jesus.