June 25, 2023
Jehovah-Rapha
Psalms 23:3 & Exodus 15:22-26
Have you ever heard the saying “When it rains it pours”? Have you ever lived it? As much as rain is always a welcome sight here in New Mexico, what usually accompanies this saying is not as desirable. It’s a saying that usually comes with hurts, struggles, and pain. Knowing we’ve all experienced these types of days, I'd like to talk about our source of healing from all those hurts as we continue in our series "A Shepherd's Reflection: God's Character Revealed".
Psalms 23:3a
He restoreth my soul
In our study of the 23rd Psalm, we have seen that God is Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides. We have also seen that God is Jehovah-Shalom, our God is peace. Both of these names were revealed in the 23rd Psalm as David was reflecting upon God’s character through the eyes of his shepherding roots. In today’s passages David simply says that God restores his soul and heals him. David calls God, Jehovah-Rapha, the God who heals. At first glance, it almost seems like this statement couldn’t relate to a sheep at all. However sheep (even those in the care of the Good Shepherd) are going to find themselves, at some time or another, in a situation they can't get themselves out of and will be in need of restoration. Many times sheep can end up in a physical position that they can't get up from. Shepherds call it “cast down”. When sheep find themselves “cast down” they are just like turtles - stuck on their backs, hurting, and in serious need of help. The longer a sheep stays stuck in that position the more hurt they experience, even to the point of death. That's why a good shepherd restores their soul (the meaning of soul here is the idea of the entirety of the sheep). He must pick them up, go through a process to heal their hurts, set them back onto their feet, and bring them into the fold. The process of healing and restoration isn’t always an immediate one - it can take time. David knew that sheep were prone to being “cast down” and he was also prone to the same problem. He would get stuck, hurt, and couldn’t do anything for himself. That’s when the Good Shepherd, Jehovah-Rapha, would come and restore his soul. I know I need healing from time to time from hurts I experience in my life and you need healing from hurts as well. To understand more about how we can experience Jehovah-Rapha, let’s go back to the first place we see this name given and understand a little more about hurt.
We all experience hurt. - Exodus 15:22-24
22 Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without finding any water. 23 When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means “bitter”). 24 Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded.
At the start of Exodus 15, we see the children of Israel were fresh out of captivity in Egypt where they had seen one miraculous event after another. They had seen God send plague after plague to secure their release from the Egyptians. They also saw the Passover and experienced the parting of the Red Sea along with the destruction of the armies of Egypt. The Israelites’ spirits must have been extremely high and probably expected everything else to go perfectly as they marched to the promised land. Soon after they had this monumental victory at the Red Sea they found themselves in the desert without any source of water for three days. It was sudden, abrupt and at this point we see the children of Israel start to experience hurt. Have you ever been hurt? Of course you have - everyone has. We live in a broken world in which we will all experience hurt in one form or another. It can come at any time, from anywhere, and from anyone - from someone you hardly know to someone you would never have thought would ever hurt you. Everybody experiences hurt at one time or another. Our hurts come in many different shapes and forms. In our text, we see two specific ways the Israelites were experiencing hurt. Let’s take a look at both for just a moment.
Physical Hurt
Physical hurt is usually the first type of hurt we think of. It’s the type of hurt that was most evident among the Israelites at this time. They had been shifting to a nomadic lifestyle as they walked in the desert for three days after having been accustomed to a non-nomadic life back in Egypt. They also might have been starting to feel the effects of the lack of water, three days without water is the limit for most people. We’ve all experienced this kind of hurt, from something as simple as stubbing our toe to hurts that are much more severe and chronic. We are always looking for relief from this kind of hurt. As much as physical pain hurts, I don’t think it can compare to the other type of hurt that the Israelites were experiencing and that was emotional hurt.
Emotional Hurt
Having lived in Egypt their entire lives, the children of Israel would have been accustomed to the heat and should have been wise enough to carry a water supply with them as they walked. Therefore I’m not sure they would have been entirely out of water at this point. But they also were wise enough to know that if they didn’t find any soon, all would be lost. Maybe it was at this point that they were starting to feel abandoned by God. Possibly because the ideas they had about this journey to the promised land weren't lining up with their reality. The reality of their new lives was taking an emotional toll. We can see this as they were brought to water. It wasn’t poisonous, and it wasn’t that it would make them sick if they would drink it, but it just wasn’t pleasant to drink and they lashed out. Their expectations were not met and because of that emotional hurt, the water wasn’t the only thing that was bitter that day at Marah. The people had become bitter, they were hurting and they took it out on their leader, Moses. They were hurting, “cast down”, and needed to be restored.
These were God’s chosen people. God had promised them a new home, the same home He had promised to Abraham. Although they were God’s people and were given a promise that God would be faithful to fulfill didn’t mean that pain wouldn’t come their way. The same thing goes for us. As Christians (those who have made Jesus the Lord of their lives) we are the children of God. We have been given a promise that we will be with Him for all of eternity in a place called Heaven (Revelation 21). Even though we are saved doesn’t mean we will not be affected by our own sins and the sin of others. When we are saved, we are made new, we are no longer slaves to sin. However we still battle with sin each and every day both inwardly and outwardly. We need to understand that physical hurts will come to Christians, and we need to understand that emotional hurts will come as well. We will experience grief, loss, traumas, stress, and many other types of emotional hurts here on Earth. As Christians we have a Father who is Jehovah-Rapha - our God who heals us.
We need to take our hurts to God. - Exodus 15:25a
25 So Moses cried out to the Lord for help,
The children of Israel did not handle their hurts properly. They held onto them long enough for them to turn into bitterness and then turned on their leader. This is not how we are supposed to handle hurt in our lives. We are not supposed to hide it until pressure and hurts build up so much that they explode upon everyone around us. We are called to handle it through humility. 1 Peter 5:6 says “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.” First we have to remember our position and remember that God is in control. We must trust Him in our times of hurt. The Jewish people went after their leader instead, thinking that they could cause a change in their situation through their might and anger. They were trusting in themselves to bring about healing from this hurt. Moses did what we are all called to do and that is to bring it to the Lord. Once we humble ourselves, 1 Peter says we will be lifted up (or restored) at the right time. Remember when we talked about it’s in God’s timing? The very next verse in 1 Peter tells us what to do once we humble ourselves and realize our proper position. We are to “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” This is exactly what Moses did. He went to the Lord with the issue and God answered. The word that is translated as “give” in 1 Peter 5:7 gives us a picture of throwing our hurts at God or rolling them to Him. I think the idea of rolling is so real here, because sometimes we can throw our hurts at God because either they aren’t that big and not hard to carry, or maybe they are and the anger that accompanies those hurts gives us a little more strength to throw them at Him. There are some times that we are so hurt that all we can do is roll them to God and cry out for help just as Moses did. God is our ultimate source for healing. We need to bring all our hurts to Him because He cares for us.
We must understand that healing from those hurts is a process. - Exodus 15:25-26
25 So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and this made the water good to drink. It was there at Marah that the Lord set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to him. 26 He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.”
Moses brought the hurts of the people to God in prayer. God answered and provided healing for the hurt they were experiencing by making the water pleasant to drink. It was there and at that time God declared Himself to be Jehovah-Rapha. This was very different from the other times we had seen names given to God in scripture. It was Abraham that gave God the name Jehovah-Jireh when God provided a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. It was Gideon that had given God the name Jehovah-Shalom when amongst all the turmoil in his life he found that it was God who is our peace. Here God gives himself the name Jehovah-Rapha. I think He gives Himself this name because there is a condition attached to it. If a man would have given this name with conditions it would have seemed like legalism. When God gives a condition to experience Him as healer it’s not legalism - it’s obedience. It’s how God chose to handle their healing in this situation. You get the piece of wood and throw it in the water and the waters will be healed and in turn, you will be healed as well. God then says to listen and obey (even when it doesn’t make sense) and you will experience healing. We see this play out time and time again in the children of Israel as they marched to the promised land and it usually concerned water. In Exodus 17, they once again needed water and God told Moses to take his staff and strike the rock. When he was obedient God provided water. There was another time they weren’t so obedient when it came to needing water. In Numbers 20, God told Moses to speak to the rock and water would be provided, instead Moses was disobedient. God still provided and healed them, but there were consequences. Their journey to the promised land would be prolonged because of that disobedience.
This is how God heals us as well - through obedience and a process. There are times when God will heal us immediately as He did with King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20. Other times there is a process of obedience that is required like Namman in 2 Kings 5 when he was told to wash himself in the Jordan seven times to be healed. Anything less would have been disobedience and he would not have experienced healing. This is usually how we see God heal hurt in our lives, very rarely does God ever reveal our entire healing journey all at once. It’s usually in small steps, that builds trust in Him and helps us to experience His goodness at a more intimate level. For the Israelites, it was throwing this wood in the water, striking the rock, and talking to the rock. These were all different ways to heal the same hurt, but God commanded them to heal it in different ways and they only experienced healing through obedience. For the sheep in the 23rd Psalm, it was the same thing. Sometimes those sheep could be restored by just being picked up and set upon their feet again immediately. Sometimes they needed to have their legs and bodies massaged to get blood flowing so they could once again get up on their feet. Other times the shepherd would even have to pick up the sheep carry it back to the flock and remove the things from the sheep that were causing it to find itself in need of restoration (sheep who carry too much wool can be prone to getting stuck and must be sheared as part of their restoration process). Each time the Good Shepherd knows exactly what the sheep needs and heals that sheep in the way only the Good Shepherd, Jehovah-Rapha, can.
There was another hurt that the children of Israel were experiencing that they might not have even known about yet (the law had yet to be given), and that was the hurt caused by sin - a spiritual hurt. We all experience this because we are all sinners. We have all sinned and have fallen short of God’s standard. This sin causes hurt and separation from God. God is Jehovah-Rapha and the same God that healed the waters that day for Moses and healed the children of Israel time and time again is the same God who heals us. Isaiah 53:5 tells us that Jesus was pierced for our transgression and crushed for our sins. The punishment that brings us peace was upon Him and it’s by His wounds we are healed (Rapha). Verse 6 goes on to say that we are like sheep; we have all gone astray and all turned to our own ways. We are all sheep, stuck in a mess that we made. When we cry out to Jehovah-Rapha, follow Him in obedience, then He will restore our souls. He will save us, but we must know that it is only God who can save and restore us.
