Provider and Healer

Speaker A: 00:00:06

This is not an assigned name for God. This is a self-revelatory name. This is God's identification of himself as the one who brings healing to his people.

The Deep Waters Way: Where Scripture, Theology, and Transformation meet.

What kind of difference would a 3-day journey make in your life?

Would that be a trip you were willing to make if you knew something horrible was waiting at the end?

How would it feel to make such a journey after a big victory, not knowing what you would find, only to find bitterness at the end?

In today's episode, we're exploring two passages of scripture and the names of God revealed in them. In Genesis 22, we follow Abraham on a 3-day journey to the land of Moriah as he truly learns what it means to trust in God as provider. Then, in Exodus 15, we follow Moses and the nation of Israel 3 days into the wilderness of Shur where they learn that God is their healer.

Before we get into that though, I'm Ray Cooper. This is The Deep Waters Way, and I'm glad you've joined me on this journey into a deeper relationship with God and a better understanding of scripture and theology. If you enjoy this content, please take a moment wherever you are and subscribe or follow the show so that you never miss an episode. Also, take a moment and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser, doing so helps make it easier for new listeners to find us and truly helps the show grow.

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Now, grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and settle in. It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

The last time we saw Abraham, he was still just Abram. And Isaac, his son by Sarah, was still just a promise. He and Sarah had, of course, tried to help God out with the fulfillment of the promise. And that worked for them about as well as it does for us. In other words, not very well. It created all kinds of tension within the family, but it did result in the birth of a son, Ishmael.

In Genesis 21, after the birth of Isaac, those tensions continued to rise and they culminated with Sarah demanding that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away, saying, "The son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." This act runs counter to what we know of ancient near east custom, especially as was later reflected in the Code of Hammurabi. It leaves Abraham distressed over Ishmael's future. However, God intervenes, promising that he will make Ishmael a nation, consistent with his previous promise to Hagar, and telling Abraham to do whatever Sarah says.

So, when chapter 22 opens, Abraham is already feeling the pinch of losing one son. He has shown, however, that he is willing to act against cultural expectations on the basis of the word and promise of God. Even when it means there's no safety net. Either God lives up to his word to make Isaac into a great nation, or Abraham has no heir.

This is the point where God again comes to Abraham with a command. Genesis 22:1 actually calls it a test. He—that is God—said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

Notice God's escalating description of Isaac here: your son, your only son Isaac whom you love. God is leaving no room for misinterpretation here. There is no way to wiggle out of this or even try to help God out. This command directly involves the son of promise, the son born to Abraham by Sarah, the son God had promised. And God is systematically dealing with every point of human affection and divine covenant hope.

One other thing to note here comes directly from verse 4. There it says that on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Three days of walking with his son. Three days of agonizing wondering of Abraham running the scenario through his head, trying to figure out how God is going to fulfill his promise if Isaac dies. And then he sees the mountain.

Beyond the building of despair, though, there are two more aspects to this 3-day journey you need to see. First, this description is consistent with and fits the geography of the area. Abraham lived in Beersheba in the southern part of Canaan. The land of Moriah, located in the mountains around Jerusalem, was approximately 45 miles to the north. Normal human walking pace would allow Abraham to cover about 15 to 20 miles per day. In other words, it would take approximately 3 days to make this journey. This means that Moses in relating the story is depending on a source who had actually seen the land and knew something about it.

The other thing you should see here is a connection to Jesus being in the tomb for 3 days and three nights. Jesus, God's ultimate sacrifice for sin, spent all or part of 3 days—which in first century Jewish inclusive thought would have counted as three full days—in the tomb. Isaac, Abraham's sacrifice in obedience to God's command, spent 3 days figuratively in the tomb, journeying to the land of Moriah. When he and Abraham left home following God's command, Isaac from that moment forward was assuredly dead in Abraham's eyes.

Once they draw near the mountain, Abraham tells his servants to wait, and he places the wood on Isaac's back to carry, and they head towards the mountain. And here's where those three days of agonizing thoughts come crashing into reality. Isaac, carrying the wood for the fire, says, "My father." And Abraham said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham must have been completely crushed at this point. He knows what he's been commanded to do. He knows what's going to transpire on the mountain. And yet somehow he believes that God is faithful to his promise. And so he answers, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together.

They come to the place God has told Abraham and Abraham builds an altar, binds Isaac, places him on the altar and prepares to sacrifice him. And our friend, the angel of Yahweh, shows up once again. He calls out to Abraham from heaven, telling him not to harm Isaac. And then Abraham spots a ram caught in a thicket. He looses Isaac and sacrifices the ram and calls the mountain "the LORD will provide." Jehovah Jireh... or Yahweh Yireh... God will provide.

Now remember, Hebrew was originally an all-consonant language. When vowel markers were developed and added, scribes inserted the vowel markers for Adonai, or Lord, into the divine name; that then worked its way into English as Jehovah. So Jehovah and Yahweh mean the same thing. And throughout this episode, I may use those two interchangeably. So don't be confused by that. What's important here is this is God's covenant name. And often when we see it, we see God acting according to his covenant purposes. It points as well to God's immanence—his closeness. It's reflective of his self-existence. Remember, Yahweh means I AM.

The other part of that name though, Jireh, is where things get really interesting. Jireh comes from the Hebrew root ra’ah. And I'm assuming I'm pronouncing that correctly since I haven't studied Hebrew and I'm relying on sources like Brown-Driver-Briggs to help me out here. Ra’ah literally means "to see." Meaning that verses 8 and 14 could be rendered this way: God will see to a lamb himself, God will see to it, and in the mountain of the Lord it will be seen to. In fact, this last phrase is actually rendered almost exactly that way in the King James Version which says, "In the mountain of the Lord it will be seen."

In addition to being the root for provide, ra’ah is also part of the root for Moriah, the region God told Abraham to go to, and Roi—the word Hagar applied to God in Genesis 16, which we looked at in the last episode. That means that this story is linked, at least linguistically, to Hagar's experience. She came to know God as the God who sees me. Abraham has come to know God as the God who acts upon what he sees.

God's provision flows out of his seeing. He is close enough to see us and our need. And yet, because he is Yahweh Elohim and El Elyon, he's powerful enough to act upon what he has seen and provide for our need according to his purposes and plans. This is in direct contrast to deism which says there is a God but he's disinterested in his creation. Jehovah Jireh tells us that God is intimately interested and invested in providing for his creation.

Now, I have to be honest. This story has always felt a bit awkward to me. On the surface it seems very strange, and it presents us with a problem that our modern ears and understanding immediately reject. And that is God is asking for a human sacrifice. And Abraham is apparently willing to go through with it. Abraham lived in a world and a culture where human sacrifice was considered acceptable and often was even the preferred method of appeasing the gods. And here we have God, who scripture repeatedly identifies as loving and merciful—the one who condemned the Canaanites in part precisely because of human sacrifice—telling Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering.

We can't pretend this story is comfortable. When someone today claims God ordered them to kill a family member, or anyone else for that matter, we immediately reach for mental illness as a reason. Looking at Abraham with the knife raised raises that same instinct. And then the harder question falls on God himself: Why even command this? And why wait until the last moment to stop it?

And yet the narrative shows a man who had already learned to trust God's word when it cost him everything and a God who both tests true allegiance and, at the decisive moment, provides a substitute. The mountain is not named for the near-killing. It is named Yahweh Yireh: The Lord will provide. This is not hypocrisy on God's part. As I mentioned a moment ago, the same God later condemns the Canaanites and even Israel precisely for child sacrifice. What happens on Moriah is a unique, one-time command in all of scripture. Nowhere else does God order such a thing.

And the test here is not even about God discovering something he didn't already know. It's about Abraham demonstrating and discovering for himself the reality of his own trust. As David Guzik notes, it is whether Abraham will trust the Promise-Giver more than the promise itself. By being willing to surrender Isaac, Abraham showed his ultimate dependence was on God, not on the gift. And God provided the substitute.

Now, we're not meant to leave this chapter thinking child sacrifice is acceptable or that God is capricious. We're meant to leave it knowing that the God who asks the ultimate sacrifice is also the God who ultimately provides. And that provision brings us back to something I pointed out earlier that needs to be completed.

I said the 3-day journey mirrored Christ's time in the tomb and that from the time they left home until this moment, Isaac, at least in Abraham's mind, was as good as dead. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham believed if necessary, God could and would raise Isaac from the dead in order to fulfill his promise.

And we see that play out figuratively as God commands Abraham to stop and then reveals a ram caught in a thicket. In that moment, Isaac figuratively is resurrected and so becomes the complete picture of Christ to come. Another interesting thing that I want to point out, 2 Chronicles 3:1 and later Jewish tradition tell us that this very mountain—Mount Moriah—became the location of the temple in Jerusalem. As such, it was the place of sacrifice from Solomon onward to the destruction of the temple, both by the Babylonians and then again later, the rebuilt temple by the Romans.

And one last thing here before we move on to the next name of God. While we often use this name of God to talk about God providing for our specific needs, the actual context is about provision for a sacrifice. That doesn't mean it's wrong to use this name of God that way. Certainly, there are plenty of verses throughout the Old and New Testament that tell us God provides for our physical needs. Now, I'm going to include in the show notes some of those verses so that you can look at them for yourself. Think of it as me giving you homework.

The point I want to leave you with, though, is this. God's greatest act of provision isn't about physical or material comfort or need. It's about him giving himself, and whether we are seeking the provision or the provider. Closely related to the provision of an ultimate sacrifice for sin is the second name of God that we're looking at today: Jehovah Rapha—The Lord Who Heals.

In Exodus 15, following the escape from Pharaoh through the Red Sea, Moses led the Israelites on a 3-day journey into the wilderness of Shur. Verses 22 through 26 tell us: "Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?' And he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, 'If you will 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, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.'"

3 days after triumph, Israel finds itself at the brink. Human beings aren't meant to go without water, and 3 days is about the maximum, under the best circumstances, that we can. Walking in a wilderness desert is definitely not the best of circumstances. It's no wonder that for the second time in about a week, the people grumble against Moses. They are literally about to die, and the only water they have is undrinkable.

It's into this situation then that God speaks. The passage tells us Moses cries out to God. And many commentators throw in here: exactly as he should. And that's a good lesson for us. In our need, we should cry out to God, especially if we believe that he is, as Abraham discovered, the God who provides. And God, ever ready to help his people, answers when Moses cries out.

After showing Moses a log and restoring the water, God then says that he is the Lord your healer: Jehovah Rapha. Now, unlike Jehovah Jireh and El Roi, this is not an assigned name for God. This is a self-revelatory name. This is God's identification of himself as the one who brings healing to his people. So what is God actually revealing about himself? When he declares, "I am Jehovah Rapha—the LORD who heals you," we need to start by looking at where he says it. This isn't a lecture given in a classroom. And it's not an outright guarantee of physical immunity from disease.

God himself speaks these words in the midst of Israel's pain, desperation, and thirst, next to a pool of bitter, undrinkable water in the middle of a desert. In the context of this passage, God ties this revelation to a covenant statement: if Israel listens to his voice and walks in his ways, he will protect them from the devastating judgments that fell on Egypt. It is a promise of covenant care for a nation he has just redeemed. But if we stop there, we miss the heart of what Yahweh Rapha means for us today.

All too often, the church and culture at large try to reduce healing to a simple mathematical formula: if I have enough faith, God will eliminate every physical ailment on my timetable. And then when physical relief doesn't come immediately, people are often left with a cruel conclusion: either God broke his promise, or they didn't have enough faith. But Jehovah Rapha is not a magic trick. He's not a cosmic vending machine. Nor, as we've discussed before, is he a god who can be manipulated by us saying and doing all the "right" things.

Look at what happened at Marah. God didn't make the desert vanish. He didn't teleport Israel into the promised land. He met them in their thirst, touched the bitter water through the wood Moses threw in, and made it sweet. Jehovah Rapha doesn't promise us a life free from the reality and results of a broken world. What he reveals is that there's no bitterness in human experience that his presence cannot sweeten, and no brokenness in human nature that his grace cannot restore. Remember what I said earlier: his greatest provision is himself and his presence.

Physical cure is something God can and does do. But physical cure is temporary. Every person Jesus physically healed in the Gospels—including Lazarus, whom he brought back from the dead—eventually died of something else later on. Jehovah Rapha promises something far deeper than temporary relief. He promises total, ultimate restoration.

This is made clear in a statement made by Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory was the bishop of Constantinople and is regarded as one of the great early theologians of the church. In one of his responses against the idea that Jesus did not become fully human in the incarnation, he said, "that which is not assumed (that is taken up or touched) is not healed." What he meant is simply that in the incarnation, Jesus became fully human and thus is able to redeem and heal everything that we experience as human beings—from our bodies, to our minds, to our spirits. Or as the writer of Hebrews put it, Jesus is "able to save to the uttermost."

The point is that just as at Marah, God doesn't provide healing from the sterility and safety of distance. Through the incarnation, Christ touched every part of our broken human nature. He entered our Marah and brought divine healing. And another thing we need to understand: sometimes God heals miraculously and instantaneously, and sometimes he uses external means. Certainly, throwing a piece of wood into bitter water and it becoming drinkable is a miracle. But God could have simply said, "The water's good," and that would have been sufficient. After all, he did create everything that exists simply by his words.

The tradition that I've been a part of for a good portion of my life actually spells this out saying, "we believe that sometimes God uses providential means to bring healing." That is, that he uses doctors, counselors, other professionals, and even medicine and medical knowledge to bring healing. Yes, again, he does miraculously heal in response to prayer. And sometimes he uses those normal natural means and gives wisdom and knowledge to those trained to help care for the human mind and body.

Before we close, I want to point out as well the symbolism that we find in this account. You may have already seen it, but let's take a moment to look at it. I've already mentioned that scripture says Marah was a three-day journey from the Red Sea. Just as with Abraham and Isaac, don't miss this symbolism. Three days walking in the desert only to come to a place with no drinkable water. This would have felt like a death sentence. And figuratively speaking, it was exactly that with a resurrection experience afterwards. That's not accidental. It's meant to point to the greater work God wants to do.

There's another three-part typology that you need to see as well, and that involves the wood, or as the ESV says, the log Moses threw into the water. In Genesis 3, as a result of eating the fruit of a tree, bitterness and sin enter the world and twist human nature and subject all of creation to a curse. At Marah, it was a piece of wood that God used to bring healing to the waters. The bitterness was removed and the water was made drinkable. And while that was a real, physical act, it pointed to a deeper spiritual truth and a future, physical reality.

And that reality is seen at the time of Jesus' crucifixion where he carried the crossbar—a piece of wood for his cross—through Jerusalem and up Golgotha. There he was hung on a cross, a tree. And through that act of sacrifice, he brought healing and restoration to the bitterness of the curse of sin and death. This was foretold through Isaiah in Isaiah 53 and 61. And then later on, Peter declares in 1 Peter 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed." And notice, Peter directly links this healing to dying to sin and living to righteousness.

Today we've looked at two covenant names of God: Jehovah Jireh and Jehovah Rapha. Together these two names tell us that God sees our ultimate spiritual need and provides himself as the remedy, and that through that provision, he touches our deepest, most bitter places in the wilderness of our lives and brings complete and total healing through his sacrifice on a wooden cross.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you found this episode meaningful. If you have, would you please share it with someone you think needs to hear it? Now, it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

The Deep Waters Way: Where Scripture, Theology, and Transformation Meet.