The God Who Heals // The Amazing Names of God, Part 7

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

I don’t think that there’s a one of us who hasn’t needed healing at some time in our lives. Physical, emotional, spiritual … healing. So – does God still heal people today? Does He?

A little while ago a pair of 3 year old conjoined twins were brought to Australia for a delicate operation of separating them. Now, they were joined at the head with their skulls, brains and blood vessels all intermingled. Surgeons performed a 25 hour operation. To be frank, the chances of success were very low, very low indeed. We're talking their brains here, right.

But to everyone’s surprise and absolute delight the operation was a complete success. Truly amazing. The whole nation was overjoyed and yet every 3 seconds a child dies of poverty, disease, malnutrition. For every miraculous cure there are thousands, tens of thousands of people who just die.

I was speaking with a good friend of our ministry by phone the other day. He's 94 years old. And he was telling me how he was the oldest of four children and yet the last one to have survived. The other day my wife travelled to see a beautiful friend of hers who's in her late 50's who was dying of cancer. A beautiful Christian woman.

You look at all that and you look at it and sometimes you ask God, "What are you doing? Why is it that you heal some and not others? Why is it that some die young and others live to be 94 or 100? Why is it that sometimes it's the nicest people on the planet that end up with cancer and die young? Why is it that you let a friend of mine’s teenage son hang himself through depression?"

They're not easy questions to answer are they? One of the things we discover about God is that He is a God who heals. Psalm 103:

Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul and do not forget all His benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit. Who crowns you in steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

See, there it is. The God who heals quote, "All our diseases". Unquote. And in fact one of the 20 different names used for God throughout the Bible is Jehovah Rapha which means "the God who heals". But He doesn't heal everyone all the time.

There was a time when Jesus wandered into a place. It was the pool by the sheep gate in Jerusalem where there were lots and lots of sick people waiting for healing. You can read about the story for yourself in the New Testament, Johns Gospel chapter 5.

There were many invalids there, blind, lame, paralysed, you name it they were there. Now in those days in that place to be an invalid meant not just being sick, it meant poverty, it meant an early grave, it meant being an outcast, it meant being socially isolated from the community.

So there were lots and lots of people in this place and the Son of Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals, wanders into this place and heals just this one guy. Just one. And when pressed as to why that might have been the case Jesus answers, John chapter 5, verse 19, Jesus said to them:

Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing on His own but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does the Son does likewise.

God doesn't heal all of the people all of the time from all of their diseases. In fact as I heard someone say once, a funny guy called Mark Lowry, he said, "Last time I checked the statistics were these. 1 out of every 1 of us ends up dying. It's kind of 100%. Eventually our bodies give way whether we're 94, 58 or 26 or just a few months old."

Let me ask you something, given the fact that we all die sometime, what's God trying to tell us through this name of His Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals? What was He trying to say to His people way back in the Old Testament and the New Testament times thousands of years ago? What was He trying to say to you and me here and now?

Well, back during the time when God sent 10 plagues on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to let His chosen people go, He said this to His people Israel in Exodus chapter 15, beginning at verse 26. He said:

If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight and give heed to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians for I am the Lord who heals you. I am Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals you.

And He protected His people from the diseases that reigned down upon the Egyptians. He set His people apart and protected them for their release. And so they crossed through the Red Sea and spent 40 years in the desert where all of those original chosen people who left Egypt, bar two, perished. It was their children and grand children who inherited the Promised Land, not the ones who left Egypt.

What does healing mean when you're going to die eventually anyway? Well, here's what I think. Gods healing only means something if it takes the death away. It only means something if there's an eternal life without sickness or disease or fears or tears. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 50:

What I'm saying brothers and sisters is this. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I'll tell you a mystery. We will not all die but we will all be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.

For this perishable body must put on imperishability and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality then the saying that is written will be fulfilled. 'Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?

The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

In other words, God is the God who gives His people healing through Jesus. A healing that goes on for an eternity my friend, an eternal life. Now have I seen people healed of their physical diseases in this world? Yes I have and I believe that God does heal some people when it suits His sovereign purpose to do so.

He does it through health professionals. He does it miraculously. But He doesn't always do it and I don't know why but this I do know. He will bring eternal healing to any man or woman or child who'll put their faith in the death and the resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. Through His wounds we have been healed. 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 24:

He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.

And the way that healing has worked it's way in my life so far is that I've been given a completely new life, a new start, the slate wiped clean and I am living today the most wondrous, the most fantastic life even though I face all the challenges and the stuff in life that you face too.

One day, sooner or later, life here on this earth, my life your life, is going to come to an end and then I know, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals, will play that healing out in my life for all eternity.