[Passage]

Isaiah 59:1-2
"Behold, the LORD's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. [2] But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."

Introduction

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Just one of the reasons for people to come to church and meet the living God is to receive divine healing and get answers to their problems.
When they come to church, they accept the Lord and receive the Holy Spirit. They can then call on God the Father to ask for divine healing or answers to their problems. This way, their faith can be affirmed.
That is why when the gospel is preached the members of our church often say that you can be healed of any disease or infirmity by the power of God.
It would be really wonderful if everyone who comes to the church received healing and answers, but in fact it doesn't happen that way.
This is the same when believers are praying to God to receive healing of diseases or answers to their problems.
Not everyone who prays for an answer from God experiences His work.
In the case of divine healing for example, some people are healed of their sicknesses as soon as they come and register in the church.
Some others receive the healing of illness while they are attending church for some time.
Still others do not receive the healing even though they attend church for a long time.
Also, there are some people who receive healing by receiving prayer just once while others have to receive prayer two or three times.
There are also still others who are not healed at all.
Why, then, are there so many different cases? The answer lies with the 'Justice of God'.
To receive the answer of healing or the answer to a problem, justice has to be met accordingly.
In other words, we must be qualified to receive the answer.
In this message, I will talk about how justice is related to receiving answers to our prayers.
Today's message is mainly about divine healing, but it can be applied in the same way in all other aspects as well.
Therefore, if you have not received healing of your illness or an answer to your problems, I hope you will find the cause of your problem through this message.
I also pray in the name of the Lord that you will apply this message in your life so you can meet and experience God the healer and God who answers you.

[Main]

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Jeremiah 32:27 says, "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?"
Yes, nothing is too difficult for God the almighty.
So, whether a common cold or cancer, it makes no difference to God.
There is no such thing as something being either easier or more difficult for Him to cure.
God can cure a cold or cancer at once with His power.
Therefore, the key to healing is with the person who wants to receive the healing. It is whether, according to justice, this person is ready to receive it or not.
In other words, it is whether the person has realized the cause of the disease, resolved the problem, and come before God.
God can cure his disease only after he has resolved the cause of the problem and come before God.
But the problem is, just in the case of a disease alone, that the cause is not so simple.
Brothers and sisters, there must be a reason for each of the diseases that come upon us.
And the fundamental cause of all diseases is sin.
So, in order to receive healing, we have to solve the problem of sin. But the problem is that there are cases where this problem of sin is very complex.
Namely, it is not only one's own sins, but the sins of others are inter-related in the cause.
In these cases, you cannot receive healing just by resolving the problem of your own sins. You also have to resolve the problem of other people's sins at the same time.
These cases are the cases where people are bound together with a 'spiritual cord'.
One of the most common cases is to be bound together with the sins of one's parents or ancestors.
In John chapter 9, the disciples of Jesus saw a man who was blind since birth, and they asked Jesus the following questions.
John 9:2 says, "And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"
Then Jesus answered in John 9:3, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him."
He was born blind not because of either his own sins or his parents' sins, but it was done so for the glory of God.
We can understand from this conversation that diseases and infirmities come not only from one's own sins but also from parents' or ancestors' sins.
We can find many passages in the Bible that tell us the parents' or ancestors' sins can affect their descendants.
Exodus 34:7 says, "[God] keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
Namely, the sins of ancestors can affect their third and fourth generations.
In 1 Kings Chapter 21, we can read about King Ahab. From among Israelite kings he was notorious for his evilness.
Ahab committed grave sins before God, and God's curse fell on him.
1 King 21:24 says, "The one belonging to Ahab, who dies in the city, the dogs will eat, and the one who dies in the field the birds of heaven will eat."
The fearful curse fell not only on Ahab himself but also on those who belonged to him.
But this Ahab humbled himself and repented before God.
Then, God accepted his repentance and took away the disasters that he was going to have to face.
But it was not the end.
1 King 21:29 says, "Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son's days."
Ahab himself was exempted from the curse through his repentance, but his descendants were still subject to the curse that was caused by Ahab's sins.
As in this case, even after the ancestor repents of his sins, the influence of that sin can still affect his descendants.
And if the ancestors or parents committed grave sins and yet did not repent, this will certainly affect their children.
Hearing this, some may say that it is not right, thinking, 'If it is not a person's fault, it is not just that he should still have to suffer because of the sins of his ancestors or parents.'
But this is done according to the justice following the rules of the spiritual realm.
It is not only the sins of parents or ancestors that affect their children, but also their good and virtuous deeds will also have an effect on generations of their descendants.
The ancestors and descendants are tied up in spirit this way and it is this relationship that has an influence on future generations.
But being tied up in spirit does not mean that the fate of a descendant is completely dependent upon their ancestors.
The final result will be up to the descendant himself.
If he becomes sanctified and makes himself blameless and spotless before God, the sins and iniquities of his ancestors or parents cannot affect him.
In the case of King Ahab, if his son Ahaziah and descendants had acted in righteousness and kept God's commandments, God would not have brought upon them the disasters that He mentioned.
But King Ahab's son and his descendants also committed grave sins before God, and that is why the disasters that would have fallen on Ahab fell on them.
Therefore, even in the cases where the sins of parents or ancestors are affecting their descendants due to spiritual cords, the final outcome can be very different according to the deeds of the descendants themselves.
Ezekiel 18:19-20 tells us about this.
It says, "Yet you say, 'Why should the son not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity?' When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all My statutes and done them, he shall surely live. [20] "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."
Even in a case where the ancestors or parents committed grave sins and it affects their descendants, if the descendants keep the law and statutes of God, they won't be connected with the bindings of the sins of their parents or ancestors.
So, in fact, as we accept the Lord, become God's children, and live by His word, in most cases we will be free from the influence of the sins of our ancestors or parents.
But there still are some cases where they are still affected by their ancestors' sins through spiritual cords. This is because the sins of their ancestors or parents are so heavy before God.
Such an example would be in case of idolatry if they had sold their own spirits to evil spirits, or they worshiped idols in extremely evil ways.
Another would be the ancestors having caused great grievances of the people through mass killing or very evil acts towards others. They may have accumulated such grave sins that the gravity is difficult to imagine for a normal human being.
In these cases, the retribution of the ancestors' sins can come upon their descendants through the connection of the spiritual cord.
Furthermore, if the descendants having such ancestors commit sins themselves, the influence of their sin would be even greater.
Brothers and sisters, another reason why problems are caused through the spiritual cord are the result of the words or vows of the parents regarding their children.
An example would be the parents praying for their children, saying they will offer their child as a servant of God.
This is specially so if the parents had not been able to have a child and they promise the child in prayer as a servant of God if God would just give them children.
Though this is prayer of the parents, the children must follow the vow.
Otherwise, the children will suffer the retribution for breaking the vow before God.
Brothers and sisters, spiritual cord is not only between parents and children. It can tie a husband and wife together as well.
In Matthew 19:5, Jesus said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?
Namely, when a man and a woman get married, they are not two but they are now one flesh.
Because a married couple is one body, one may be affected by the sin of their spouse.
Of course, in general it is not universally applicable to all couples.
It's because our faith is built upon the bilateral relationships that exists between us and God.
But there are some special cases where the couples are interrelated through a spiritual cord.
Now, how can a married couple be tied up by a spiritual cord?
The first case is when they bind themselves to their spouse with a spiritual cord.
For example, in every matter, the wife binds herself with her husband's salvation.
When she works for God, she prays, "Please save my husband through my faithfulness," or "please save my husband, even if it means I have to fall ill."
Through these words, she is bound in spirit to her husband by a spiritual cord, and she will be affected by the condition of her husband's faith.
In this case, if the wife gets a disease, the divine healing will be decided not just by her own faith and deeds but also by her husband's faith and deeds.
Another case where the married couple is tied up together is when they make a vow or promise before God to receive healing or an answer to prayer.
For example, suppose the husband loves his wife very much and the wife becomes sick. For her healing, the husband makes a vow before God.
He prays saying, "God, if you heal my wife's disease, I will be diligent in my faith."
If the wife is healed through his prayer, this husband has to lead a diligent Christian life as he promised in his prayer.
But if he doesn't keep the vow, it may directly affect the healing that his wife received.
If the husband forsakes his promise with God and departs from God, his wife may become diseased again.
When the husband breaks such a promise with God, it is same as the wife breaking the promise.
Of course, in this case, if the husband really loved his wife spiritually, he would keep his promise just for his wife's sake.
But even though he may have made a vow before God out of the love he had for his wife, if his love is fleshly love, he may finally forsake the promise with God.
But even in this kind of fleshly love, he already bound himself with his wife in spirit, and the wife will be affected by the state of the husband's faith.
If the husband does well in faith, the wife will be healthy. But if not, the wife may have the reoccurrence of the problem.
But as I mentioned already, this principle cannot be applied to all the married couples.
In some cases the married couple is bound together with a spiritual cord, and in the above case, one cannot be healed or receive the answer just with the faith and deeds of one or the other of the two.
Also, though it's a rare case, sometimes brothers are bound together by a spiritual cord.
It also happens when one brother binds himself with one of his brothers.
For example, one of the brothers is sick, and he prays that he wants to be sick in his place, or he asks for healing saying he will be a good believer.
In this case, he may actually become sick in place of his brother.
Like in the previous case of the married couple, the final result of the healing of his brother would be the influence of the state of his own faith.
You have to understand that you can be tied up by the spiritual cord with your family members because of your words or prayers.
Not only between husband and wife or brothers, parents may bind themselves with their children through their words or prayers in order to receive healing.
They pray saying, "Please heal my child even if it means I have to be sick instead of my child," or "If you heal my child, I will do this."
It is the same situation when children pray for their parents' healing.
Therefore, you should not unknowingly tie yourselves up with your spouse or brothers and suffer because of it.
You can encourage and help your family member's healing or receiving the answer to a problem without binding yourself with them through the spiritual cord.
You can pray for them with spiritual love.
This way you can help them meet the conditions of the justice necessary for their healing or the receiving of an answer.