JEHOVAH RAPHA (pt 2)

BRIEF INTRO: 

My last post concluded with this statement: “The moral and spiritual sickness of mankind is an open, running sore. The heart of man is desperately sick, says Jeremiah 17:9. Herein is the hearts fundamental disease–the sin which alienates it from God–the sin which manifests itself in open and secret evil of every kind. How desperately mankind is in need of a healer, a physician!”

FOCUS ONE:  JEHOVAH THE HEALER IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

This brings me to my next point that The Lord is the great Healer of men. He alone has the remedy that can heal the spirits of men. He IS the remedy for the healing of man. And the Gospel is concerned primarily with the spiritual sickness and healing of mankind. Behind all the evils out there and all physical sickness– is sin. The importance of Marah in Israel’s experience is attested by the fact that God gave Himself this new name here—Jehovah-who-heals. 

This incident is intended chiefly as a lesson and warning against that sin and disobedience at the root of all sorrow, suffering, and sickness in the world. The tree cast into the waters is obviously a figure (type) of the tree on which hung Jesus in the New Testament. Friends, Jesus is the (only) remedy for the cure of mankind’s ills–and He alone can sweeten the bitterness of your human experience through that forgiveness of sin and sanctifying of life which is accomplished.

Certainly, God could and did heal physical maladies in the Old Testament whenever it pleased Him. Moses cried out to Jehovah on behalf of Miriam, smitten with leprosy: “Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee” (Numbers 12:13). There are many others!!

Many references to sickness and wounds in the OT are simply figurative expressions of moral and spiritual ills. It is instead in this sense that God is known as Jehovah-Rapha–Jehovah who heals. This is what Jeremiah means when he says: “For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith Jehovah” (Jeremiah 30:17) and again: “Return, ye backsliding children and I will heal your backslidings” (Jeremiah 3:22).

 Isaiah speaks of the day when “Jehovah bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound” (Isaiah 30:26). He predicts the coming of One upon whom the Spirit of Jehovah God will rest in order, among other things, to bind up the brokenhearted ( Isaiah 61:1). The will, and the power, and the longing are present in Jehovah to heal. The only obstacle in the way of this spiritual healing is man himself. The remedy is there–near at hand–as near as the tree at Marah’s waters. “The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart,” says Moses (Deuteronomy 30:14),

 There is salvation for every sin, healing for every evil. The remedy only awaits its acknowledgment or application. This, man, has often been unwilling to do.

“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered” (Jeremiah 8:21, 22)?

The remedy was there–in Jehovah Himself–but they went on and on refusing it “till there was no remedy” (or healing) (2Chronicles 36:16). And centuries later, the word of the Lord Jesus to His people was, “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). 

FOCUS TWO: JESUS THE HEALER IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The God who heals in the Old Testament is the God who heals in the New.

The ministry of the Lord Jesus began with healing. In the synagogue at Nazareth, having returned in the power of the Spirit from His great temptation, He opened His public ministry by quoting Isaiah 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).

“teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people” (Matthew 4:23). These miracles of healing constantly amazed the people, and He cited them as proofs of His identity and mission.

 But as with God of the Old, so with Jesus of the New Testament, physical healing was only incidental to His chief object, which was the healing of the souls of men. His opening words in the synagogue at Nazareth declared His mission to be to preach the Gospel, to preach deliverance, to set at liberty Cf 8:31,32,3 –

His miracles of healing were proof of His identity and mission–His credentials. Yet many of the sicknesses He healed were truly striking symptoms of that dark, dreaded disease which has- its- roots in the soul of men and not in the body – the disease of sin.

The Lord Jesus consummated (perfected or completed in every way) by becoming that tree that made the bitter pools of human existence, waters of life and healing and sweetness. The teaching of Marah is wonderfully fulfilled in Him. They were taught the corruption and the bitterness of the purely natural waters, which are only an aggravation of the soul’s sickness and need.

Only the tree of God’s provision and choice could purify and sweeten and satisfy. To the woman at the well the Lord Jesus said: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall he in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13, 14).

Friends, The Lord Jesus is both the tree and the waters. “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” He is the well of salvation (Isaiah 12:3), the water of life, sweet, saving, and satisfying. In Jesus, the tree of life and the river of life in Eden’s garden are free and accessible to Adam’s sons once more.

 This is the picture presented to us in the closing scene of the Book of Revelation:

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1, 2).

What Jehovah was to Israel at Marah, so the Lord Jesus is to all who will receive and obey Him, the Great Physician