What’s In A Name?, Pt 9: YHWH Rapha

Exodus 15:25-26                    25Then 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. 26He 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.”

Psalm 103:1-3                        1Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— 3who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,

1Peter 2:24                             24“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

Luke 5:31-32                         31Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

The Exodus verse shown here was on the occasion of God’s first mention of Himself as the Israelites healer.  The people had only recently begun their journey out of Egyptian bondage and were on their way through the Sinai desert.  Three days into their 40 year journey they were out of water and were becoming desperate.  As I imagine myself amongst those people, I could easily find myself becoming afraid of the future.  After all, I would have just seen the terrible series of plagues visited by God on the Egyptians, and I probably would be wondering if God was as capricious as it must have seemed and would such things become my fate too.  And then to add more fuel to the fire, the Israelites finally found a river only to discover the water to be sour and undrinkable.  Remember we are talking about 2 ½ million people looking for water.  It must have seemed to be unfair in the extreme.

But God comforted His people.  Through Moses He provided a miraculous cleaning of the water as if to demonstrate that He was with them and would protect and heal them.  And Jesus continued this healing during his ministry.  He healed a man with leprosy (Matthew 8:1-4), healed a paralyzed man (Mark 2:5-12), raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:41-44).  There were other instances also, but there’s an odd thing that comes into play when we start to think about Jehovah Rapha.  Modern people, particularly atheists and agnostics, tend to think of people and events of those days as apocryphal stories of uneducated, superstitious people with no modern application.  There are three things wrong with this attitude:

1.     I myself have witnessed many modern people healed of disease.  By people I mean I mean followers of Jesus: Christians and Messianics.  I have a friend who has been healed of leukemia twice.  And lest one think, “When will the next healing occur?” the last one was over 10 years ago so I think she is definitively healed.  I also think God heals through the minds and hands of the many gifted medical people He has raised up.  One does not have to experience lightning and thunder to realize someone has been healed, and many a medical doctor will acknowledge that unexplained reversals of disease have occurred.

2.     Faith has a lot to do with healing.  James says that one whose faith is weak, who doubts, “is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind”.  Many a doctor will say that worry and stress accounts for much disease.

3.     It is true the people of those days had less medical expertise than we do now.  Certainly great advances in medicine have occurred during the last 2000 years.  But does that make any difference?  Healing is healing whether or not it was a miraculous cure then of a disease which is easily cured in the 21st Century.  Here is where faith comes in.  Does one attribute the cure to the hands and mind of the doctor?  Where did he get those skills?  Purely through personal effort?  Was no God involved?  Did God give that doctor those skills?

Also we modern people tend to think of healing as physical only.  But there are other kinds of healing also: mental, emotional, and spiritual.  This is now beginning to be realized as there is a current commercial running which says that “Mental health is health”.  So true.

Jesus certainly was interested in physical healing but is far more interested in our spiritual healing. Look at these verses from Isaiah.  God points out that the entirety of our being is affected by unsoundness:

……Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. 6From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness— only wounds and welts, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil. (Isaiah 1:5-6)

And yet offers the solution only 10 verses later when He says.

16Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. 17Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. 18“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.  19If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; 20but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 1:16-20)

Just because Jehovah Rapha does not seem to heal in the manner we think He ought, does not mean He is not a healing God.  It is time we self-centered, independently minded Westerners learn that dependence upon God is a good thing.  By exercising a willingness to pray, by listening for that still small voice which tells us which choice to follow when a decision is upon us, by living lives that are as holy and righteous as possible, by submitting to God’s precepts and standards, we are actually following the Isaiah 1:16-20 verses.  Good things come to us.  We don’t make the improper decisions that have unhealthy consequences.  We don’t find ourselves in dangerous situations.  If we take care of the Temple of the Holy Spirit, that is our bodies, if we eat right, and exercise, then health comes our way.  But in the end unfortunate things do happen to good people and our bodies do wear out.  And when the time comes that we enter eternity, then we will receive the ultimate healing don’t you think?