JEHOVAH-RAPHA | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 15, 1902

"JEHOVAH-RAPHA."

SO OUR covenant-keeping God reveals Himself to His children, Jehovah-Healer; as expressed in our version, "I am the LORD that healeth thee." Ex. 15:26.

It was a time of bitterness to weak, doubting Israel when God thus revealed Himself, only three days after the glorious deliverance at the Red Sea. Their supply of water had failed, and they came to a fountain promising refreshment, but when they tasted, lo, the water was bitter. "Therefore the name of it was called Marah [Bitterness]. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet."

And the record continues: "There He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them; and He said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee." Ex. 15:22-26.

God designed the incident to be an object-lesson, not alone to each one of the Israelites of old, but to each of His people since that time. The bitter water mocking their thirst well represents the best that the world can give to the soul thirsting for salvation. Egypt is a type of the world, with its blackness, its darkness, its doubting, its bondage of sin, its disease and death,—the consequences of the sin. Egypt had made the lives of the Hebrews "bitter with hard bondage." The Hebrews had groaned under the bitterness, and prayed for deliverance, and the covenant-keeping God, Jehovah, had delivered them and overthrown their oppressors.

They now needed another lesson. Their faith was imperfect. They sang triumph on the wrong side of the Red Sea; or rather they failed to sing it on the faith side, under the promise. Any one could sing it after the promise was fulfilled. For the second lesson God brought them to a fountain of bitterness, an object-lesson of Egypt, all that could ever be expected from the world without Him. But instead of looking to God for relief, a lesson that the whole deliverance from Egypt taught them to do, they murmured.

In His great goodness God gives them another lesson of His power to sweeten all bitterness, to heal all the effects of sin. "The Lord showed him [Moses] a tree, and he cast it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet." Christ died upon the tree. He there redeemed us from the curse of sin; there He met the climax of the curse; death. "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." 1 Peter 2:24.

It is the cross of Christ that brings healing from all the world's ills. It sweetens every bitter cup. It is death only to sin, and worldliness, and selfishness. It is life to every soul who is crucified upon it by faith in Christ Jesus.

It means a whole salvation. Egypt represents sin and darkness. Tho at the head of the nations, she was utterly ignorant of the greatest and most important things, and "alienated from the life of God." Eph. 4:18. This very "civilization" of Egypt, the worship of false ideals and gods of self, the manner of life, food, the numerous transgressions, brought upon her people diseases sore and many. Consumption, and fever, and botches, and boils that can "not be healed," and hemorrhoids, and itch were prevalent and destructive; yet from them all God promised to deliver His people. His power to deliver and redeem included soul, and mind, and body,—the soul from the bondage of sin and sinning; the mind from the thralldom of the philosophy of darkness, and doubt, and subjection to creature rule; the body from the servitude of the habits of lust and appetite and their consequences.

O soul, the same God announces Himself to-day as "Jehovah that healeth thee." But He can not do it while you are wedded to wrong habits of eating and drinking; when you are enslaved by alcohol, opium, tobacco, and other hurtful stimulants and narcotics which are eating away and benumbing the finer fibers of the nerve tissues which God wishes to use mightily for Himself; when you are enchained by fashion, and the vital organs are bound, cramped, and distorted, God can not heal you. He can not in His pure nature of truth divide His glory with these. He must have the whole soul, mind, and body. Yield them to Him, and you will find Him "the LORD that healeth thee."