Healer/Rapha

Intro

One of the questions I did not think would be coming out of my wife’s mouth often is

“How old are you realllllllly?”

She thought she married young, she thought she would be fine, until my body starts betraying me, old injuries flair up, or my lack of bodily awareness comes into play again

In fact, my bodily awareness is so bad, that I have affectionally claimed that most majestic animal, the walrus, as my spirit animal!

Whether it is plopping on the bed to hug Tabitha and inadvertantly partially suffocating her, or walking around the house, and perpetually giving myself bumps and bruises

In fact, on Friday I was getting ready, and walked into my study loft, and my walrus feet and toes decided to say hello to a charging bluetooth speaker on the ground, and now my entire ring toe is more black and blue than white

In all seriousness, I am noticing how quickly my body is apt to break down, and I like to think that I am pretty healthy overall (albeit maybe a bit of a young soul in an old body?)

Now, while the discussions with my wife are quite real on my old aches and pains and joint discomfort lol, there is reality to that question of health and wanting to be whole

While I might be not fully what I could be today, God certainly has given me quite the run regardless, and I have received his favor of healing when I was a baby, as I have told before here

As we continue on our journey of understanding who our God is, if you remember last week we spoke of God’s personal name: YHWH- the God who is who He is.

This week we take that name and we add a modifier to it, Rapha, or God the healer

There are two questions that need to be dealt with in this name, and the first is this: what is healing?

I want to make sure that we do not limit our definition to miss the hand of God

Now if I asked you to speak about healing, I bet you would initially start with physical ailments like praying for healing from cancer, infertility, various sickness, etc

However, the healing we need is far more than simple physical healing, and that is also failing to address who we are as humans

If we want to consider what God thinks about humanity, a helpful place is to look in Deuteronomy 6.

This is a famous passage, since this is what Jesus quotes when he tells us how we can love God with our whole being

The verse we want to narrow in on is Deuteronomy 6:5 “5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

So to love God fully it requires your heart, soul and strength to incorporate your entire person

Similiarly, healing is not just needed for the physical strength of a person, but also for the heart and soul.

So we will look at what it looks like to have your strength be physically healed, your soul to be spiritually healed, and your heart to be emotionally and mentally healed

Soul Quenching Water

So we first jump into Exodus 15:22–26 “22 Then Moses led Israel on from the Red Sea, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur. They journeyed for three days in the wilderness without finding water. 23 They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water at Marah because it was bitter—that is why it was named Marah. 24 The people grumbled to Moses, “What are we going to drink?” 25 So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. 26 He said, “If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.””

This is the first and very overt times that YHWH reveals himself as healer, and it is quite early on in the journey from Egypt

If you notice in chapt 14, Israel had their incredible escape through the Red Sea, and then at the begining of Chpt. 15 they sing this incredible song of God’s deliverance

However, that is where the trouble starts, for as soon as the song was done, they start to march into the desert

It says they marched three days into the desert without finding water, and when they did find water in Marah, it was so bitter they could not even drink it!

Water Fast in STL for a day

What it is like when we are dehydrated, and how we quickly become miserable

So it was in this, that God told Moses to throw a tree into the water, and when Moses did that it became drinkable

This is where this name comes into practice in verse 26, that if the people are careful to obey what God will command them in the coming chapters, he will not inflict the illness’ of what was seen on the Egyptians, for YHWH is the God who heals them

This is YHWH Rapha, the God who heals

It can also mean, YHWH my Health, as God is responsible for our daily health, as well as healing us from sickness

What’s incredible is if you keep reading Exodus, it is hard to believe how gracious and kind God is to these people that do nothing but grumble about how they miss Egypt and how God must hate them and wants them to die!

Now, you might be thinking, Kyle why is this put under ‘spiritual’ rather than physical, it did satiate their need for water in the desert!

Well when we turn to Deuteronomy 7:12–15 “12 “If you listen to and are careful to keep these ordinances, the Lord your God will keep his covenant loyalty with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will bless your offspring, and the produce of your land—your grain, new wine, and fresh oil—the young of your herds, and the newborn of your flocks, in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. 14 You will be blessed above all peoples; there will be no infertile male or female among you or your livestock. 15 The Lord will remove all sickness from you; he will not put on you all the terrible diseases of Egypt that you know about, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.”

Do any of those terms sound really similiar to you?

Yet, notice that God is tying covenant blessing to covenant faithfulness, particularly in verse 15, that the plauges of Egypt will not be put upon you, but upon their enemies!

The reason this is spiritual is because what is asked of the people of Israel, they are asked to trust God!

Israel is tasked with one thing, and one thing only, to trust in their God that had overthrown and humiliated the gods of Egypt, and led them into freedom

They were asked to trust the God that had proven himself powerful and working for their good, by bringing them out of slavery, and then they would be even more blessed!

This is also why Exodus 15:25 says that this is a test, to see if they will obey the Lord who is Rapha, or will they ignore him, and forsake the blessings that should come to them!?

Well, within 17 chapters, and maybe a few weeks, they lose all of it, and go worshipping the golden calf in Chpt. 32!

The God who heals, wants to heal the people’s hearts, but they are not willing, and so these people will die in the wilderness for their sin!

Things do not get any better, and eventually when they are being led away into captivity, Jeremiah is told to write this promise

Jeremiah 31:31–34 “31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.”

Heart Full of Hesed

The second way that we will consider healing is that of our emotions and mental health

You might notice David wrote this Psalm, and it is full of amazing statements of who God is

All of his being he wants to bless the Lord

Bless the Lord for healing his iniquities and diseases, redeeming him from death, and crowning him with love and compassion

He gives him strength like an eagle, brings justice for the oppressed

God is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in hesed

He does not deal with us as we deserve, but in faithful love that is so foreign to us, it might as well be as comparing the earth to the universe or trying to find the place where east turns into west

God has compassion on us, and so he is worthy of praise for it!

Notice, the things that speak to our mental and emotional needs

Iniquity, this can be our own sin we do, or is done to us

The idea is that the way that should be done is made crooked

Not only that, but then God brings rightouesness and justice for the oppressed, God does not let injustice rule!

Diseases

It’s really hard to live a life of perpetual pain or illness and feel like praising God all the time and act like life is sunshine and rainbows!

Yet, when it happens, God is responsible for all healing we receive

Then God also redeems us from the Pit, that is the fear of death

God also gives us chance upon chance because he is full of Hesed, or faithful loving kindness

We see that David is directly quoting Exodus 34 which we spoke about last week showing the primary heart of God!

Emotional and Mental Needs are incredibly important

The basis of God’s healing here?

Ultimately it is right relationship with God, that we don’t have to walk on eggshells!

Have you ever had a relationship where you feel like you are walking on eggshells? It’s so hard

Yet God doesn’t want us to live like that, even when we commit the sin problem, he seeks to restore us immediately

David also writes other places that God restores his soul and puts him on the right paths for God’s name’s sake

Story about Proverbs 24:16 Tattoo “16 Though a righteous person falls seven times, he will get up, but the wicked will stumble into ruin.”

David is able to praise God for not only his lack of disease, but his sin issue is dealt with, and that allows his emotions and mind to praise God for his great works!

Strength Beyond Comprehension

The final one is perhaps the most obvious, and we turn to King Hezekiah

Hezekiah was perhaps the best king Judah had besides David!

Hezekiah gets word from the prophet Isaiah that he will soon die

What Hezekiah does is immediately pray to God, he does not seek a doctor, he does not go to a prophet, or seek help from another false god like so many other kings had

He turns intimately and vulnerably unto God himself and throws himself at God’s mercy

One of the reasons Hezekiah weeps so bitterly? He has no son, he has no heir, which cannot be understated what a huge blow that would be

So Hezekiah appeals to his faithful living to God, and asks God to heal him, and he does for another 15 years to his life!

Physical healing is the most obvious, and sometimes the most needed for our lives to continue, and God can do amazign things that not even modern medicine can do!

Story of Snake Bites and Anti-Venom and Faith

So Why Does God Not Heal?

This leads us to a very natural question, why doesn’t God heal everyone of his children when they ask?

Often, Christians have an over-simplified idea of healing. They think that, if they are sick, they have only to ask God to heal them and, because God loves them, He will heal them straightaway. Healing is seen as proof of a person’s faith and of God’s love. This idea persists in some circles in spite of the truth that every mother knows: a parent does not give her child everything he asks for every time, no matter how much she loves him.

Joni Eareckson Tada struggled with this issue for a long time. As she recounts in her book Joni, she sought physical healing of her quadriplegia. She prayed and fully believed that God would heal her. In her words, “I certainly believed. I was calling up my girlfriends saying, ‘Next time you see me I’m going to be running up your sidewalk. God’s going to heal me’” (quoted in an interview with Marvin Olasky, January 17, 2013).

Yet Joni is still in a wheelchair today. Forty-five years after the accident that left her paralyzed, God has still not healed her. Her perspective is one of great faith: “God may remove your suffering, and that will be great cause for praise. But if not, He will use it, He will use anything and everything that stands in the way of His fellowship with you. So let God mold you and make you, transform you from glory to glory. That’s the deeper healing” (quoted on Grace to You, October 16, 2013).

Some feel that God will never heal anyone miraculously today. Others feel that God will always heal a person if he or she has enough faith. But God will not be put into either box.

What is even more amazing about Joni is that in a more recent interview in 2020, she was asked, what are you most looking forward to about Heaven the most?

You look at me in this wheelchair, paralyzed for 52 years, and most people would think, O, you’re looking forward to your new body. And yeah, that’s one of those fringe benefits. But I’m looking forward to the new heart; a heart free of manipulating others with precisely-timed phrases; a heart free of fudging the truth; a heart free from hogging the spotlight, believing my own press releases … a heart free of not believing the best of others; a heart free of caving into fear or anxiety about the future. I can’t wait to have a heart free of sin.

What incredible faith that is! To look past her physical suffering, and physical lack of healing, but see that the healing that she needs more than any of that is of her soul and mind to be fully redeemed and healed!

Now, I don’t want to be thoughtless to suffering and healing, and so I tread very carefully here

The first thing, is God can always heal, he has the ability, it is not based on our faith or lack of faith. It doesn’t seem it is based on the amount of prayer or lack of prayer. It doesn’t seem that it is based on how heavy any demonic activity is with the person, it is simply a perrogative of God.

God’s name is YHWH Rapha, I AM WHO I AM WHO HEALS, but God may have reasons for not healing at this moment

Now you might be saying,

Kyle, that is well to do, but what about my hurt!

I’m praying for healing, and it seems like God is ignoring my prayers!

Does God not care, does he not notice?

Maybe I really didn’t pray enough….

I had doubts in my heart, my faith was not strong enough….

How could God ignore his most faithful!

Look God healed Hezekiah, and that was his plea!!!!

Why does it seem he won’t heal my parent, my friends, my spouse, etc

I know it’s so revolutionary in our culture, we handle any sadness, suffering as if we have a cockroach infection in our being, and do all we can to escape, numb, silence or ignore the pain

Yet, Christian faith is quite different in that we know that suffering is redemptive in nature as Joni reminded us above

So if we consider Scripture, what can God accomplish by not healing us?

The biggest thing, is to be like Jesus

Hebrews 5:8–9 “8 Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered. 9 After he was perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,”

1 Peter 4:12–16 “12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. 13 Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15 Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a meddler. 16 But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in having that name.”

Romans 6:5 “5 For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.”

Jesus suffered, and it was not something insignificant, it was the worst suffering in the history of the world!

If God’s son learns obedience through suffering, we should think that you and I, who are not God, might have a thing or two to learn as well

What if instead of teleporting us out of our ordeal, God wants to transform us through it?

God loves us too much to leave us to temporary comfort at the expense of our eternal character

In fact, this is what Paul experienced, a messenger from Satan was given to him, and God told him it was to make sure that Paul would continue to rely on him and not allow Pride to run his life

The second thing is that suffering brings us closer to God not possible in times of prosperity

CS Lewis said “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain”

Sometimes we’ve become so complacent that it takes suffering to awaken us from our daze

Jesus The Great Physician

Ultimately, we do not know why God says yes to some healing, and then no to others

However, perhaps some perspective might be helpful here, every Christian is healed eventually. God never says no to a healing prayer, sometimes it’s simply answered by going home

The flipside is also true, every single person who is or has been healed on this earth will get sick again, and might even have to die again!

Lazarus died again, Jairus’ daughter died again, The son of the Widow from nain would die again, Eutychus would die again, and these are the greatest possible healings!

Our hope exists not in healing fully here, but our hope is in heaven, and the new Jerusalem!

Jesus takes this idea and shows ultimately how YHWH is healer

We can look at many stories in the Gospels to show Jesus doing incredible healings!

Mark 5 shows us the gamut of healings as we have talked about

There are 3 stories in sequence here:

The healing of the Demoniac

The healing of the Woman with Bleeding

The healing of Jairus’ daughter

So if we are taking the same 3 categories, which of these stories deals with each?

Heart, Soul, & Strength?

Each healing deals with all of them

The physical

The demoniac stopped cutting himself and running around naked

The woman with the bleeding was cured and stopped bleeding

Jairus’ daughter was dead and brought to life

The Spiritual

The demoniac was freed from spiritual oppression of the Legion of demons, and then became an ambassador for Jesus in the Decapolis

The woman was moved from an outcast in society, unclean and unable to even go to the temple, to being restored to a clean relationship with God, and became ritually clean

Jairus’ daughter showed the power of the coming Messiah by showing ultimate power over death, and the kingdom of God at hand!

The Emotional/Mental

The demoniac was crazy, and so crazy that when Jesus delivered him and he was sitting clothed and in his right mind, that scared the people more than his prior demonic activity!

The woman with the bleeding is not restored to her community, and is no longer ostracized from the covenant people of God. Her friendships can be resumed!

Jairus’ daughter is brougth back and the grieving parents given joy that overcomes even the veil of darkness from the loss of a loved one

Jesus knows more about suffering because he also suffered more than anyone

Isaiah 53:3–5 “3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. 4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.”

Jesus has another name, the Suffering Servant, he walks with us

When we come face to face with a need for healing, God can say yes or no for this life we have

I want to close with two stories, the first a short video of a story of healing

The second, with a quick blog from a godly woman working through the loss of her mother from cancer just to show what that looks like

So this is me, six years ago, writing about my dying mom and the compassion of God. My mom has since passed, and my season of life is different. In all of it, God is still good.

“‘But please, please – won’t you – can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?'”

I can’t count the number of times in the last year and a half I’ve asked that same question Digory asked Aslan in the The Magician’s Nephew. Then you wait for an answer. And you wait longer. And longer. Until it seems God finally answers with a resounding, “No.”

What do you do with that response? I guess I can’t say God has given me a resounding no, but right now it sure seems like that. There’s always been one more appointment, one more treatment, one more thing to try. Yet eventually there comes a time when the road of possibility arrives at a dead end. Where is God in that?

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

Our God is not distant nor apathetic. Karl Barth wrote, “If we fix our eyes upon the place where the course of the world reaches its lowest point, where its vanity is unmistakable, where its groanings are most bitter and the divine incognito most impenetrable, we shall encounter there—Jesus Christ. On the frontier of what is observable He stands delivered up and not spared. In place of us all He stands there, delivered up for us all.”

What does that mean for us now? We can have hope of eternal life in the midst of our temporal suffering, because God has overcome suffering. 1 Peter 4:1-2 says, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” The suffering of Christ provides a hope for the future and an example to follow in the midst of our own suffering in this world.

“‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great.’” God takes up the broken state of humanity and fixes it. He does not remain distant but rather relates so deeply to the human condition that he became human. He defeats suffering through experiencing it and overcoming it in the resurrection.

Our God is not a distant God. He doesn’t shy away from our pleas, our questions, our tears. He knows better than anyone that grief is great.

Then Digory took a minute to get his breath, and then went softly into his Mother’s room. And there she lay, as he had seen her lie so many other times, propped up on the pillows, with a thin, pale face that would make you cry to look at it. Digory took the Apple of Life out of his pocket.

I can’t help but read that paragraph and think, “Stupid story. There are no magic apples in this life. There’s no Narnia, no Aslan, no…whatever.” Spoiler alert: Digory’s mom gets healed. Why hasn’t God healed my mom?

I don’t know. That’s why it’s taken me so long to write this blog post. I’ve had it half written for probably six months and haven’t been able to bring myself to finish it. If I’m going to finish writing, I feel like I have to come up with an answer, a nice little conclusion that puts the my mind and the minds of my readers at rest. I’m supposed to have an Apple of Life to pull out of my pocket. I don’t have one.

God sees our suffering and knows better than anyone that grief is great. There is hope in the midst of grief, joy and peace knowing this is a light and momentary affliction. An eternal “Apple of Life” exists, despite my frustration there’s not one right now to heal my mom. Instead, I’m left holding a thousand questions and pleading with God. He graciously listens.

In my attempt for some semblance of conclusion, I fall short. This part of my family’s story is not over, and I expect that the epilogue will not be revealed this side of eternity.

And I want to restate what she said at the very beginning, an epilogue if you will of 6 years in the making,

So this is me, six years ago, writing about my dying mom and the compassion of God. My mom has since passed, and my season of life is different. In all of it, God is still good.

Benediction

Job 42:1–5 CSB

1 Then Job replied to the Lord: 2 I know that you can do anything and no plan of yours can be thwarted. 3 You asked, “Who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance?” Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wondrous for me to know. 4 You said, “Listen now, and I will speak. When I question you, you will inform me.” 5 I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you.