Acts 10:38 – How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
Peter was a direct eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus; he walked with Him and lived very closely to Him for three and one-half years. Peter’s description and summary spoken to Cornelius’ household gives us a very trustworthy, insider’s look at the essence of Jesus’ life and ministry. I am sure there are many things that Peter could have said about Jesus but he carefully and accurately depicted Him in this way. What he discloses to us here, in this power-packed verse, is of supreme importance, so let’s take a closer look.
‘God anointed Jesus’. This fact alone teaches us that everything Jesus did, He did as a man who was anointed by the Holy Spirit. According to the book of Philippians, He laid aside His mighty power and glory and became like us. He never reached back into the archives of Heaven and used the unique tools of Divinity but He used only the tools of humanity given to Him by God. Those are the same tools that can be accessed and utilized by us. He did not heal people because he was the Son of God. He did not heal people because he wanted to prove that he was God in the flesh. No! He healed people primarily because he was moved with compassion toward suffering humanity. He could not help himself; compassion urged him on in his healing ministry. If Jesus was trying to demonstrate that He was the Son of God then He had a strange way of promoting Himself. He should have told all those who were healed to go and spread the word, but He did not. Several times that we know of He told those whom He had healed to not say a word to anyone about it. That is a very unusual marketing campaign to be sure.
The anointing is a fascinating subject to study in the Bible and it deserves our attention. For our purpose today we can simplify things by saying that the anointing is the empowering ability of God to accomplish something we cannot do on our own. I remember hearing a funny story about the old country preacher who was asked by a younger student to describe what the anointing was. The old man of God asked the student, ‘Do you see that cow in the field?’ Yes. ‘That’s not the anointing’. ‘Do you see that tree over there?’ Yes. ‘That’s not the anointing’ ‘But, if that cow flies up into the tree…now that’s the anointing’. While that may not be the scholarly way of defining the anointing, we can gather something profound from this simple man’s wisdom, and that is, that the anointing is that which enables us to do what it is impossible to do without it. Jesus went so far as to say that He could do nothing of Himself but that he relied totally on the Father.
The Bible almost always links the anointing to the person of the Holy Spirit. They are divinely connected and Peter seems to highlight that fact here. ‘God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power’. The anointing has many applications; it is a broad subject. There is an anointing upon those who are called to stand in one of the Ministry Offices of the Church; there is an anointing to testify and witness; there is an anointing to lead others in worshipful singing; there is an anointing to preach and powerfully proclaim the Word of God; there is an anointing to teach and unfold the Word simply to others; there is an anointing to pray; and there is an anointing to heal the sick, to name only a few of the applications. Jesus, among many other things, had a powerful anointing to heal the sick and deliver the oppressed. He was anointed with healing power. When the woman with the issue of blood touched His garment He knew that power had gone out of Him. What kind of power was it? It must have been healing power and, apparently, it actually flowed like electricity from Jesus to the woman. Luke also makes note of the fact that a great multitude sought to touch Jesus for there went power out of Him and He healed them all.
Jesus accurately demonstrated the heart of our Father as He healed the suffering ones. ‘He went about doing good and healing’. Healing is a good work; it is a display of God’s goodness. If you do not believe that, just ask those that have been healed. We contradict ourselves when we say, as most Christians do, that God is good, but then we do not believe that He heals today. If He is still good, then he still heals. In fact, our Heavenly Father is so good that even the most knowledgeable and mature among us have yet to experience all there is of His goodness. There is so much more to receive and we can only receive His goodness to the degree that our hearts are able to open up by faith and allow more of that goodness to come in.
If we read the Gospels carefully, we will see that healing was not just an occasional thing in Jesus’ ministry. Luke tells us that Jesus went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. Matthew tells us that a great multitude followed Him and He healed them all. Peter, in our verse above, tells us that He traversed the land doing good and healing; it was an integral and vital part of His ministry assignment.
The Word of God emphatically states that sickness and disease is an oppression of the enemy, and we know that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. ‘Oppressed of the devil’. The Greek word translated oppression means to be forcefully held down under the power of something. When we think of certain countries that have greedy dictators and cruel tyrants as rulers, we know that the people are oppressed; they are restricted, broken, demoralized, and they are not free to live as God designed. Oppression is a terrible thing; it is never the will of God for anyone. This is such an important fact, because if we do not know that sickness is not from God then we will never take a proper stand against it.
God anointed Jesus for a purpose in the Earth and, in obedience to that purpose Jesus yielded to that anointing and allowed God to flow through His life, bringing blessing, strength, and healing wherever He went. How thankful we are for the record of His life and ministry. He healed those who were suffering then, and He is still the same today; He has not changed one iota; He is Christ the Healer, He is Christ our Healer and, He is Christ your Healer!
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