The Names of God: YHWH Ropheka
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I AM the LORD Who Heals You
I AM the LORD Who Heals You
22 Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) 24 So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”
25 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink.
There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. 26 He said, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.”
As we have learnt as we have studied the names of God together; these names speak to us of God’s being, His nature and character and also His relationship with His people.
God isn’t like us; we change and grow throughout our lives, we learn, mature and develop, but He doesn’t, He never changes. So these names are always true of Him, at every time and in every place. There will be no time at which God is no longer Almighty, there is no place where He can not Shepherd His sheep, and therefore there is no reason to think that He is not still a healer today.
There are so many views out there on the subject of healing, so many things to talk about but I’m going to try and keep this concise and as Biblical as possible. I want to encourage you, to stir up your faith today in God for healing.
Stories of God’s healing power are everywhere in the Bible, not just in the gospels but in the Old Testament too.
God healed the pagan king Abimelech
He healed Miriam and Naman from leprosy
He opened the wombs of Rachel and Hannah
He healed King Hezekiah of a sickness
In the NT
38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
John Wimber who wrote Power Healing, noted that in the gospels, 484 of the 1257 narrative verses are given over to describing Jesus’s healing miracles! That’s nearly 40%. So we can say that a large proportion of Jesus’s ministry was healing the sick.
And the healing ministry of Christ then continues in the church through the power of the Holy Spirit - we see this in the book of Acts. That God was doing extraordinary miracles at the hands of the Apostles, people were being healed simply by touching garments that had touched the Apostle Paul.
We know that the Holy Spirit didn’t just give the gift of healing to these Apostles but gave it to the church.
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
There are a variety of views about the gift of healing in the church today. There are some who believe that this gift of the Spirit is no longer in operation, that it ceased along with all the other spiritual gifts when the Holy Scriptures were finalised, this view is known as cessationism. One reason they believe this is because they see that these gifts, including the gift of healing were there to serve a purpose, which was to validate the gospel that was being preached. But now, they say, because we have the scriptures there is no longer any need for the healings and miracles to validate the gospel. The problem is, that the Bible says nothing about these gifts ceasing, or that they are to become redundant as soon as the scriptures are completed. I don’t think we have any good biblical basis for thinking that the gift of healing has ceased.
“Those who are in truth His disciples, receiving grace from Him, do in His name perform [miracles], so as to promote the welfare of other men, according to the gift which each one has received from Him. For some do certainly and truly drive out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently both believe [in Christ], and join themselves to the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come: they see visions, and utter prophetic expressions. Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole.
Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, and remained among us for many years. And what shall I more say? It is not possible to name the number of the gifts which the Church, [scattered] throughout the whole world, has received from God, in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exerts day by day for the benefit of the Gentiles, neither practising deception upon any, nor taking any reward from them* [on account of such miraculous interpositions]. For as she has received freely from God, freely also does she minister [to others]**. (Against Heresies, book 2, chapter 32, section 4) - Irenaeus
Now, getting back to the context of our scripture today. It’s no accident that this apellation, which God takes for Himself, I AM The Lord that heals you, occurs just after this story of the bitter waters of Marah becoming sweet.
In a way, this picture of the bitter waters becoming sweet is a picture of God healing the sicknesses of His people. These brackish waters speak to us of the bitter taste of sickness, whether in the body or in the soul. It says that they couldn’t drink it because of it’s bitterness and they grumbled to Moses, and Moses cried to the Lord. Infirmities carry with them a bitterness that cause us either to grumble or to call on the Lord, sometimes a little of both! But note that the Lord didn’t respond to their grumbling, He responded to Moses’s prayer.
It’s also worth noting that this all happened within three days of the Red Sea crossing. They had gone for three days without water before coming across Marah. They must have been over the moon with joy when they saw the water, this is it! But God let them taste the bitter water first. Our expectation would be that when God led His people out of Egypt that He would take them directly to the promised land, no stints of thirst or hunger, no strife, just comfort and blessings. But that wasn’t what happened. Sometimes God lets us taste the bitterness of sickness, infirmity, and weakness so that we will call out to Him, so that we’ll rely on Him.
7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Even though we know God heals, He still may allow in His sovereignty for us to taste bitter seasons of suffering, so that we call on Him and He turns those bitter waters sweet. Either by healing us supernaturally, or by giving us treatment that helps the situation become sweet, or by so changing our hearts that even that sickness becomes sweet to our taste.
Joni Eareckson
Justin Peters
Catherine Berger
It’s always important to stay Biblical when we talk about these subjects of illness and healing. When we start introducing our own sentiments and man made doctrine into the mix people get hurt:
Snake Handling Pastor - Little Cody, Tennessee.
So we first have to note the nuanced way in which the scriptures handle these two things. So we know that whenever we hear snappy, sensational quotes that oversimplify them, we have to be careful to weigh them against what God’s word says
Notice in this passage that God says ‘I will not bring on you any of these sicknesses’, what’s the implication? That He might if they chose to disobey Him. It’s one of those inconvenient truths that some Christians are keen to try and gloss over, but it’s very clearly fleshed out in Deuteronomy 28
58 “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. 60 And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. 61 Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed.
This passage in Deuteronomy is a parallel of Exodus 15 . And so God is saying on one level, if you obey my commandments, I won’t send sickness upon you. What He’s saying to the Israelites is that their protection from illness is conditional upon their obedience. Those saying that God never, ever sends sickness aren;t making a Biblical statement
See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand (Deuteronomy 32:39 TNIV).
For he [God] wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal (Job 5:18 ESV).
But does that make God the reason for sickness? No - we know where sickness came from, it entered with the fall. The curse of sin was death, and sickness is a component of the curse of sin. But God is certainly sovereign over both sickness and healing, and over the timings of them both.
The Bible doesn’t make God the author of sickness, nor does it always make Him the cause of every sickness. God’s word is often very clear about the under lying cause of certain conditions, sometimes that cause is sin;
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
The mistake of some has been to make personal sin the reason for every sickness, the disciples made this mistake with a blind man.
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:1-3 NIV).
Jesus says that sometimes, we endure infirmities just so that the work of God might be displayed in our lives when we are healed!
For he risked his life for the work of Christ, and he was at the point of death while trying to do for me the things you couldn’t do because you were far away.(Philippians 2:30 NLT).
Then there is the case of Epaphroditus who nearly died for the work of Christ. Sometimes sickness can come as a result of burn out, of overworking oneself, even in doing good.
Then there are naturally occuring sicknesses and conditions. Like Mephibosheth who was accidently dropped by his nurse at a young age and became lame. Or Timothy who had frequent ailments
23 (No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.)
So those arguing that a Christian ought never to take medicine or seek help from a medical doctor are at odds with the Apostle Paul on that point.
The Bible also emphasises our need for healing in the whole person, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
God’s healing is for the whole person, your true self, all of it, your soul and your body.
So how does He heal us?
Prevention - His laws, His precepts. Following the law protected the Jews from many illnesses. Following God’s word today certainly protects us from many sicknesses that would come upon us; STIs, alcohol poisoning, many forms of mental illness.
In response to prayer - James 5:14
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
In the presence of God - John 5
God is the healer of whom? Of His people. He promises to heal His people. There is no promise that God is the healer of the whole world, only that He the healer of those who belong to Him. The difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites in Exodus 15 is really striking.
The problem that stares us in the face from this text is that the healing of God is very clearly conditional. It is conditional upon obedience, obedience not just to the law but to all His precepts. So what confidence can we have that God will be our healer today? There is only one way that any of you can be confident that God will heal you today, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. By faith we receive His perfect obedience to the whole law, and we can access all the covenant promises of God through Christ and Christ alone!
Pray