THE BIBLE MEETS LIFE
Works of art like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are universally recognized as great masterpieces, but most people don’t realize the images we admire are quite different from what da Vinci first painted. Mona Lisa has darkened over time because of the varnishes used on it. Original fine details are now obscured. The Last Supper has deteriorated due to mildew. Early on, well meaning painters attempted to clean it and repaint sections. In the process, they covered up da Vinci’s actual work. Restoration is needed when we want to return to the artist’s original design.
When left to themselves, objects like art, houses, and old cars lose their luster and even fall apart. And so do we. When left to ourselves, we drift from God’s original plan and design for our lives. We take our eyes off Him. We often complain about Him while forgetting all He has done for us.
In short, we need restoration and healing.
In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites lost their focus, yet God showed Himself to be the God who restores. He is the Lord, our Healer.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
Exodus 14:29-31
29 But the Israelites had walked through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left. 30 That day the Lord saved Israel from the power of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 When Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and believed in him and in his servant Moses.
The parting of the Red Sea was an incredible miracle that sealed God’s rescue of His people from their slavery in Egypt. Not surprisingly, that event holds a prime position as a symbol of God’s salvation in the Old Testament. Isaiah later wrote: “Wasn’t it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the sea-bed into a road for the redeemed to pass over? And the redeemed of the LORD will return and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy. Joy and gladness will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee” (Isa. 51:10-11).
The Israelites had seen a clear demonstration of God’s great power. As a result, “the people feared the LORD and believed in him and in his servant Moses.” When they reached the other shore, the Israelites sang a song of celebration praising God for His deliverance. (See Ex. 15:1-18.) The song not only celebrated their present victory over Pharaoh; it also looked forward to their victorious conquest and settlement of the promised land. As we’ll see, however, those songs didn’t last very long. In fact, the Israelites’ rejoicing turned quickly to grumbling when they were confronted with the reality of their freedom from Egypt.
What was true of the Israelites is often true of us today. Indeed, we often find that a testing of our faith will follow moments of spiritual victory. The question is whether we can still sing of God’s glorious holiness even when we face moments of spiritual drought.
What have you learned about God
from firsthand experience?
Exodus 15:22-24
22 Then Moses led Israel on from the Red Sea, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur. They journeyed for three days in the wilderness without finding water. 23 They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water at Marah because it was bitter—that is why it was named Marah. 24 The people grumbled to Moses, “What are we going to drink?”
Only a few days into the journey, the people of Israel began to grumble and complain, frustrated by the lack of water. When the Israelites saw Marah in the distance, they thought it was an oasis and likely believed their problems were solved. But their hope was dashed to pieces when they discovered the wells contained “bitter” (non-potable) water. Many artesian wells are bitter and unpleasant because of mineral salts. This one was not simply unpleasant; it may have been dangerous to their health.
The Israelites responded the way we typically do when things don’t go our way: they complained. They demanded of Moses, “What are we going to drink?” How quickly a hero can become a scapegoat!
While their grumbling was aimed explicitly at Moses, it was implicitly directed at God, who had appointed Moses as their leader. Moses made this connection clear when Israel grumbled later about the lack of food: “He has heard the complaints that you are raising against him. Who are we? Your complaints are not against us but against the LORD” (Ex. 16:8). Sadly, God’s people are described as complaining over twelve times during their wilderness wanderings.
The apostle Paul used the grumbling nature of the Israelites to warn believers in Corinth about such behavior, along with craving evil things, idolatry, immorality, and more. (See 1 Cor. 10:6-11.) We tend to treat grumbling, griping, and complaining as minor issues, hardly worthy of mention since “everyone does it.” Yet Paul treated grumbling as a major offense and insisted it must be avoided.
How does complaining
impact our connection with God?
The Israelites’ thirst caused them to forget the deliverance they had recently enjoyed by the power of God. The contrast is striking between the faith they expressed in praise after crossing the Red Sea and the lack of faith when they encountered a challenge just three days into their journey. The matter was one of perspective. Could Israel trust God to work in every circumstance based on His character?
It’s possible to grumble inwardly without verbalizing it. When we allow struggles and doubts to cause us to blame God for our circumstances, we’re falling into the same pattern of behavior as the Israelites did in the wilderness. When we allow anxiety to rule our lives, we’re focusing on circumstances rather than God’s provision.
Exodus 15:25-27
25 So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. 26 He said, “If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.” 27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.
God once again provided for the Israelites in a miraculous way, showing that He’s not only powerful to deliver His people, but can and will sustain them. In addition, God made “a statute and ordinance for them.” This statute contained a condition, “If you will carefully obey,” which was followed by a promise: “I will not inflict….” The Old Testament contains numerous examples of “if/then” covenants. They demonstrate that God’s blessings flow through the obedience of His children.
What are some different ways
God heals and restores His people?
In this case, God’s promise was related specifically to the illnesses that had been “inflicted on the Egyptians.” Surely the Israelites would have connected God’s turning of the Nile to blood (see Ex. 7:14-25) with the undrinkable water at Marah. If Israel would carefully obey the Lord, they would not find the water God provided to be bitter because He is “the LORD who heals you.” This is the name Jehovah Rapha.
The word Rapha occurs about sixty times in the Old Testament; it always refers to restoring, healing, or curing. It’s frequently used in relation to physical healing, but it also can relate to moral and spiritual healing. At Marah, Jehovah revealed Himself to be the only source of true wholeness. He alone has the power to change the bitter experiences of life into something sweet.
God mercifully sustained the people at Marah, but there’s more to the story. God led them from Marah “to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.” The numbers seven and twelve (and multiples of those numbers) appear throughout Scripture representing completeness. Elim was a place of completeness—a refuge that pointed to the abundant and healing provision of Jehovah Rapha.
We should never overlook the most important way Jehovah Rapha heals: through Jesus Christ. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). God promises healing for your deepest pains, your disappointments, your past, and your sins. He can turn your bitterness into sweet refreshment. If you’ve been sidetracked at Marah, bitter in soul and spirit, the only way to travel from Marah to Elim is to turn to Jehovah Rapha. Jesus is our Jehovah Rapha—our God who heals!
How can our actions and attitudes
demonstrate that we follow the God
who heals and restores?
LIVE IT OUT
How should we respond when we find ourselves drinking from the bitter wells of Marah? Consider taking one of these steps this week:
- Listen. Listen earnestly to the voice of God. What is He trying to teach you in your present circumstances? What have you learned about God from these events? Change your perspective by seeing what God is doing on your behalf.
- Obey. Look to see if there are areas of disobedience in your life. Repent and turn from any disobedient actions or attitudes. Turn to the One who desires to heal you. Obedience flows from an accurate understanding of God’s character.
- Encourage. Encourage someone you know who is drinking from bitter waters. Point them to Christ who offers healing, hope, and abundance.
You may not feel like a work of art right now, but the Bible assures each and every one of us that we’ve been created in God’s image. If you want to move away from a place of bitterness, turn to Jehovah Rapha, the God Who Heals.
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Teacher's Notes
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In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites lost their focus, yet God showed Himself to be the God who restores. He is the Lord, our Healer.
I. When We Complain, We Are Focusing on the Problem and Not on God
Exodus 15:22-24
Then Moses led Israel on from the Red Sea, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur. They journeyed for three days in the wilderness without finding water. They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water at Marah because it was bitter—that is why it was named Marah. The people grumbled to Moses, “What are we going to drink?”
What are our Marah’s or Beverly’s in life?
But sometimes life hands me bitter things to drink anyway. It happens to all of us.
- A relationship gone south
- An ER visit turns into far more than an ER visit
- A job we don’t like
- Someone turns on us
- Loss of income
- Uncertainty. What’s going to happen now?
In those moments, we can do one of two things:
1. Complain to God.
2. Trust God.
The first one’s easy—and it comes so naturally.
What makes their complaint so surprising?
In Exodus 15, the Israelites were thirsty, but water was in sight. The water, however, was bitter. Who knows, maybe it was a Middle Eastern form of Beverly. In that moment, they chose to complain. What is sadly funny to me in this account is that, just three days earlier, God had miraculously parted the Red Sea and rescued them from the Egyptians. Three days! One of God’s most spectacular miracles and rescues, and they forgot it in less time than it takes for me to get around to taking the trash out.
God Has Worked Powerfully on Our Behalf
Exodus 14:29-31
But the Israelites had walked through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on their right and their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the power of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. When Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and believed in him and in his servant Moses.
God had just brought the Israelites across the Red Sea. The crossing of the Red Sea was an undeniable miracle. The people crossed through the sea, not on mud, but on dry land. Skeptics say such a thing is scientifically impossible. They are correct, and that’s why we call it a miracle! The Israelites saw the dead Egyptians, whose bodies had evidently washed up on the shore. The Egyptians were the most powerful army in the known world, but they were no match for God. They were reminded that God can deliver His people, regardless of the circumstances. The incident renewed people’s faith in God. They “feared the Lord”. The word “fear” carries more the idea of reverence or awe rather than fright. They knew God was capable of keeping His promises. They also believed “His servant Moses”. Moses had proven he was a servant of the true God. The people had complained about him before (Exodus 14:11-12), but now he had their attention – at least for a while.
Why do you think it is so easy to forget God’s blessings?
What was true of the Israelites is often true of us today. Indeed, we often find that a testing of our faith will follow moments of spiritual victory. The question is whether we can still sing of God’s glorious holiness even when we face moments of spiritual drought. The people of Israel were focusing on their circumstances, and as a result they had taken their eyes off God.
What does complaining reveal about our hearts?
Even the redeemed still face times of trial and struggle. During times of trial, we can grumble and complain or we can decide to trust and obey. Our propensity to complain during difficult times reveals something about the condition of our hearts.
Is complaining a sin?
The apostle Paul used the grumbling nature of the Israelites to warn believers in Corinth about such behavior, along with craving evil things, idolatry, immorality, and more. (See 1 Cor. 10:6-11.) We tend to treat grumbling, griping, and complaining as minor issues, hardly worthy of mention since “everyone does it.” Yet Paul treated grumbling as a major offense and insisted it must be avoided.
One of the things we learn from Israel’s wilderness wanderings is that complaining is incompatible with our salvation. They were saved from slavery in Egypt and God deemed it unreasonable for them to complain after such a large display of grace. However, we have received much more grace. We have been delivered from slavery to sin, the world, and the devil. We have been given eternal life and the status of children of God. How much more is our complaining a sin in the sight of God? Therefore, God calls us to work out the completion of our salvation without complaining and arguing.
We must understand that complaining is not a little sin; it is a big sin. The writer of Hebrews said this about bitterness, which again was possibly an allusion to the wilderness wanderings of Israel: “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:15). Bitterness and complaining is contagious. Not only does it blind us to all the ways God has graced us, but it also spreads to others. It spreads throughout a family, an organization, and a church—limiting and sometimes destroying spiritual growth.
Let us remember the time Israel was at the border of the promised land, and how they sent ten spies to survey the land. Two of them came back with a positive report of God’s faithfulness and how good the land was; while eight of them complained about the giants and the impossibility of taking the land. They then complained about God and Moses and convinced the Israelites not to go into the land (Numbers 13-14). “This task is too great!” they said. This root of bitterness coming from only eight Israelites defiled the whole nation and led to God’s judgment. The Israelites were judged by God and called to wander in the wilderness for forty years while everybody over twenty died for their rebellion.
Many people in the church are in a wandering experience in their spiritual life. They are not progressing; they are not going anywhere. And the reason is because there is a bitter root destroying their harvest and inviting the chastisement of God on their lives. It also might be bringing God’s chastisement on others’ lives as well. Maybe this bitterness is an anger against somebody that harmed them. Maybe it’s simply discontentment with their circumstances or lack of trust in God’s goodness. Whatever it may be, it must be known that this complaining spirit is a very dangerous sin that brings God’s discipline.
We are introduced to Jehovah-Rapha … the Lord who heals.
II. God Responds and Restores When We Call to Him
Exodus 15:25-27
So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. He said, “If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.” Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.
How did God heal and restore the water and what should this mean to us?
“Then 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” (Ex. 15:25). That’s it? No spectacular waving of the staff? No miraculous stirring of the water? Just a chunk of wood? There was nothing special about that wood. In fact, it may have been the complete ordinariness of it that made this so miraculous. A piece of wood was God’s way of reminding the people that the power lies with Him. He was with them. He had always been with them. He was with them when the water was bitter. And He was with them now. God then declared, “I am the Lord, who heals you” (v. 26). Healing carries the idea of restoration. Just as God healed—restored—the water, He restored His people. He spared them from all the bitterness the Egyptians faced: He was with them, and He would continue to restore them.
God still works this way. He used another piece of wood to heal and restore us: the cross of Christ.
- When we’ve made life bitter through our own waywardness and sin, the cross of Christ heals and restores us.
- When life becomes bitter through no fault of our own, it is still the cross that heals and restores us. We come to the cross with trust in Him. He is with us, He walks with us through the bitterness, and He will restore us.
“’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'” (1 Pet. 2:24).
Does this promise still apply to us today? We are under a different covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Be that as it may, God still blesses obedience.
We can call on the Lord in difficult situations. By His grace and through His power, the Lord can turn the bitter moments of life into something sweet. The Lord has expectations of His people that prove the validity of our trust in Him. The Lord is our Healer, the only one who can make us whole.
What does it mean that God is Jehovah-Rapha?
Jehovah-Rapha (more properly Yahweh-Rapha) means “The Lord Who Heals” in Hebrew. Jehovah-Rapha is one of the many different names of God found in the Old Testament.
The name Jehovah-Rapha appears in Exodus 15:26. God says to the people of Israel, “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.”
The context of God’s revelation of His name Jehovah-Rapha is an incident that took place early on in the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. They had just left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. Moses took them into the Desert of Shur, where “for three days they traveled in the desert without finding water” (Exodus 15:22). The Lord was testing them and their faith.
The Israelites’ test in the desert was soon amplified. They came across a body of water, but, to their great discontent, they could not drink from it. They called the water Marah, which means “bitter.” Their souls began to turn bitter, as well, and they “grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’” (Exodus 15:24). Moses did exactly what he should have done: he prayed to the Lord, and “the Lord showed him a piece of wood” (verse 25). Following God’s instructions, Moses threw the wood into the water, and the water miraculously became fit to drink.
Immediately after the Lord “healed” the waters of Marah, He identified Himself to them as Jehovah-Rapha: “I am the Lord, who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). He doesn’t just heal water; He heals people. The healing of the waters was a demonstration of God’s power to overcome any impurity, contamination, or corruption. This power was going to work on behalf of the Israelites, God’s chosen people, as the Lord brought them to the Promised Land.
Along with giving His name Jehovah-Rapha, God gives the Israelites a promise: “I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians” (Exodus 15:26). This is a reference to the ten plagues that God had recently sent upon the Egyptians—plagues including boils, the death of livestock, devastating hail, etc. Like many Old Testament promises to Israel, this one was conditional; God’s people were required to “diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes” (verse 26, ESV; cf. Deuteronomy 30).
Jehovah-Rapha has the power to heal physically (2 Kings 5:10), emotionally (Psalm 34:18), mentally (Daniel 4:34), and spiritually (Psalm 103:2–3). Neither impurity of body nor impurity of soul can withstand the purifying, healing power of Jehovah-Rapha.
Jesus Christ showed that He was the Great Physician who heals the sick. In Galilee, Jesus went from town to town, “healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23). In Judea “large crowds followed him, and he healed them there” (Matthew 19:2). In fact, “wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed” (Mark 6:56). Not only did Jesus heal people physically, He also healed them spiritually by forgiving their sins (Luke 5:20). Every day, in every way, Jesus proved Himself to be Jehovah-Rapha in the flesh.
Hope to see you on Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
