The Lord will heal

 
Our theme for this January month of prayer and fasting is, “Waiting on a promise”. Last week the promise was that God will provide and we saw how He tests our hearts to see if we trust Him to provide or whether we resort to our self-sufficiency.

This week the promise is about the God who heals, Jehovah Rapha. We will see how our loving, healing Father tests our hearts when times of healing are needed so that our attitudes to Him are revealed.

Genesis 15:22-26

This account follows hot on the heels of the crossing of the Red Sea. The millions of Israelites have had an extraordinary and miraculous escape from the enemy army. God demonstrated His power over the Egyptian gods through a series of miraculous interventions in nature. Then He opened up a way through the sea for the escaping Israel and closed it back over the pursuing armies. You’ve seen the movie no doubt. The tribes of Israel are, understandably, cock-a-hoop. They have witnessed an undeniable power encounter in which their God has won and promised to take them to a better place.
 
(v24)Three short days later, they were thirsty and complaining and doubting and wanting to go back. Max Lucado, “Their jubilation over liberation soon became frustration over dehydration.”
 
How fickle we are, just like these people, no matter what God does in our lives, we soon forget and start complaining when things don’t turn out the way we want. We start to look back over our shoulders.
 
(v25a) Unlike the people who complain, Moses cries out and God loves Israel too much to leave them in their forgetful ungratefulness. So He shows Moses how to bring sweetness.
 
(v25b) And then come the crucial three words - the same three words from last week. At the end of verse 25, “He tested them.”
 
Before these words God acts to heal and after these words he promises He will heal. He loves to heal and restore and He will not allow their complaints to turn His love away.
 

Notes – Jehovah Rapha, Marah, Cosmic Mission

1.       (v26) Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals: the word which we translate “heal” is redolent with meaning. Although it includes healing from sickness, it is much more than that. The word, raphe, is used several times. For example;

• The desert area there was well known for struggling to provide drinking water. The healing demonstrated here is the transformation of bitter, salty water to sweet, refreshing water.
• The whole verse is filled out in Deuteronomy 7:12-16 which describes a land which is blessed economically, socially and in well-being. The land is healed.
• The healing promised in this verse (v26b) includes protection from the curses which polluted the land in Egypt. This is re-enforced in 2 Chronicles 7:14 (one of the history books of the OT) where God talks about “hearing our prayer, forgiving our sins and healing the land”.
• Then Psalm 103:3 says that God forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. Healing here is spiritual, redeeming us from sin and the effects of sin. This is the force behind Isaiah 53:5, “by His wounds we are healed”.
  
  In other words, when the Lord is described as one who heals, the picture is of restoration on a grand scale – bringing about what should be - harking back to the Garden of Eden and forward to the Promised Land. Spiritual, relational, social, economic, natural, physical, personal restoration.

 
2.       (v23) The people reached Marah, the place of bitter water, because God led them there. It wasn’t accidental or without purpose. This was part of God’s plan. It says, “He tested them.” He brought them to Marah, to a place of bitterness and disappointment to test them.

Our disappointments are often God’s appointments.

When we follow Him we sometimes find He leads us to places where there is testing, places where we learn what our hearts are like, where our attitudes are revealed.

Behind us there is a story of healing, rescuing and restoration. Ahead is the promise of His complete healing and restoration. Along the way we need to be transformed, we learn to become like Jesus, what the ancients called sanctification. This is what happens when the Lord tests us with bitter waters for our thirst.

3.       When the child in the back whines, “Are we there yet?” when you are have only just edged out onto the main road it’s because they don’t understand the scale of the operation and they don’t have the resilience or patience needed for the drive to Jerusalem.

The people of Israel have barely had two sleeps since they saw their God triumph over their enemies. At the first sign of difficulty, their patience and resilience crumbles and they start to complain and grumble. They don’t understand the scale of the operation. This is a much bigger deal than some bitter water in the desert. This is the liberation of a chosen people to their Promised Land from centuries past. In fact it is bigger than that. It is a cosmic mission - God’s plan to restore all of creation.

For them and for us, what lies behind is slavery and oppression, what lies ahead is freedom and blessing. They aren’t where they were, they are not yet where they will be. They are in the now and the not yet. They are travelling from Egypt to Canaan and without a video console in the back of the car they are perpetually whining, “Are we there yet?” They don’t understand the journey they are on or where they are in the process.

It reminds of what Nick Clegg said about his office when he first became deputy Prime Minister, “There is a corridor linking where I am with no. 10, trouble is I don't know where I am”.
 

Egypt to Canaan

When you make a decision to follow Jesus you find yourself on a journey from Egypt to Canaan. From the polluted land to the Promised Land. You have been mightily rescued from oppression and slavery and sin, and you are on your way to a land where you will be restored and where the land will be restored, where we will know freedom and blessing.
 
You are no longer a resident of Egypt, you are a pilgrim, following God, on your way to Canaan.
 


And from time to time on the journey we are taken via Marah, the wells of bitterness.
We stand beside the waters, the salty taste still on our tongue, and we are tested.
 
What is happening when we are tested is that things aren’t turning out the way we would like. We’re fine with following God and taking His promises at face value – whilst things are going well. But when it doesn’t go as we think it should our resilience and patience is tested. Some of these tests are small things. We easily understand that the Lord is our healer and we turn to Him, not with the complaints of the people but with the cry of Moses. And whatever the outcome, in small things we readily accept them.
 
Other tests are much harder and expose our willingness to let God be the healer – however and whenever He wants.

1. Sometimes we lose someone very precious to us. This week we have had to say goodbye to Ellen Thomas and we deeply grieve her loss. Many of you in this room have lost friends and family, some young, far too young, some yet unborn. In my family we lost my sister-in-law to cancer when she had three young children.
2. Sometimes we are faced with severe, life-threatening illness, our own or that of someone close. My young niece is currently battling with a brain tumour.
3. Sometimes we run up against financial catastrophe – redundancy, bankruptcy, repossession. We went through a period in our young married life when I was trying to get a business going and we were very close to financial ruin.
4. One of the greatest tests I see around me all too frequently is that of relationship breakdown in marriage. A partner is unfaithful or the relationship simply gets trashed and everyone gets hurt.

Behind us lies pollution and imprisonment, away ahead lies promise and freedom but immediately in front of us is bitter water. Our hearts face a test. How shall we choose to respond to the Lord who heals?
 

Pause:

• Think about your Marah. What area in your life is not turning out/has not turned out how you would like? Is this a test of your heart?
• How will you choose to respond?

Do we grumble and complain? Do we seek someone or something to blame? Do we look over our shoulder at what was and somehow see sweet grass back there when actually we know it is dry desert? Do we turn our backs on His promises and the hope of His healing and begin the bitter trudge back to Egypt? Turning back to slavery, hopelessness and poison to heal our bitterness?
 
Or we do we cry out to our God? The God who has rescued us and who promises to heal, to rescue, to restore. "Lord, help! Rescue us, restore us, bring your healing!" 

Sometimes we hear and we see the log of wood and we have the faith to throw it in the water.
Sometimes we don’t hear, we don’t see and what we would like to happen doesn’t come to pass.

But we continue to face forward, our eyes ever lifted as we look for the Promised Land to which He leads.

We see glimpses of His promise of healing fulfilled today, often we do find the branch, have faith, throw it in the waters and bitterness turns to sweetness and sorrow to laughter.
 
“Are we there yet?”
But we are not there yet; we have not yet reached the Promised Land. The time is coming and may it come soon, when Jesus returns and God’s healing is fully complete. The time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no crying or pain. That wonderful time has come for Ellen. That time is coming for the whole earth but until then we are still on a journey.
 

2 Chronicles 7:14

At a time of testing we are given a choice, to look backwards or look forwards. 2 Chronicles 7:14 shows us how to look forward. “If my people will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land”.
 
There are four parts in our response when we cry out to the God who heals:

1. We humble ourselves. You are God and we are not. We are but the works of your hand, we don’t understand why this water is bitter, but we bow before you and acknowledge you as our loving King, creator and Lord over all.
2. We pray. Lord we come to you with a humble prayer. Come with your healing hand and restore. Turn our bitterness to sweetness.
3. We seek His face. We put aside distractions, we fast, we deny ourselves, we don’t allow anything else to take the worship that is due to our loving God in Jesus.
4. We turn from our wicked ways. We repent. We see how we are walking in the wrong way and we turn and walk toward Him and in His way, seeking forgiveness for what is past.

This month we are waiting on a promise. Many promises. The Lord has promised to provide and the Lord has promised to heal and He tests us on the journey.
 
I invite you to wait on His promises with me.
I believe I am a pilgrim.
I am not a resident in this place, I am on a journey to a better place.
I am leaving a polluted land and looking upward to the Promised Land.
I believe that as the Lord restores me I will pass through Marah, through times of testing.
I believe that as the Lord restores us, we will pass through Marah, through times of testing.
I believe that as the Lord restores Headingley and Leeds and our land, we will pass through Marah, through times of testing.

As he tests me, I will humble myself, pray, seek His face and repent. As He commands me in Exodus 15:26, I will listen carefully to His voice and I will do what is right in His eyes.

And I choose to believe in Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals, the Lord who restores and I celebrate His healing presence this day and look forward to the future day when His healing is complete.
 
I invite you to wait on His promise with me.
Will you accompany me on this journey?