Jehovah-Rophe
I am Jehovah Who Heals
(Ex. 15:22-26)
The Name of God, Jehovah-Rophe (י יְהוָה רֹפְאֶֽךָ׃ סנִאֲ), is startling because it gets to the root of the problem of healing from God’s perspective. God revealed to Moses that He has sovereign authority over healing.
Deut 32: 39 “See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand”.
When Moses went up to Mount Sinai for the eighth time, he met God face to face and received a complete understanding of God’s Law, a revelation of His perfect character and will. As a result of this encounter Moses’ face glowed with the glory of God. This glory was so awesome that he had to wear a veil over his face so as not to frighten the people. Moses canonized these revelations in the Torah and Talmud. These documents defined the Laws, Statutes and Judgments of God and became the legal basis for the contract (Covenant) God had with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. As much as they tried, the House of Israel and the House of Judah could not uphold their contract with God because the lawlessness of Adam was passed on to them.
Man was created in the image of God.
Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in our image, according to our likeness”.
Initially, Adam acted with the righteousness of God in the created realm. He was given authority over the whole earth. In that sense Adam was the first king… but he was not a sovereign king. Adam was in agreement with God as much as he could be but he was limited by space and time.
Gen 1 :31 “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” [מְאֹד (mehode) very, exceedingly; טֹוב (tobe)-good, bountiful, pleasant to the senses, prosperous for man’s sensuous nature, good for man’s intellectual nature].
God provided man (male and female) with an environment that was good for his soul nature, his intellect and his senses. In this peaceful environment God was able to tell Adam all that had to know about creation. He even told Adam how he could keep this relationship by being obedient to His voice. Adam’s human will had to be in continuous agreement with God’s will. He had to do what God told him. God knew that Adam would eventually fail because He knew the limitations that creation placed on Adam so He warned Adam:
Gen 2:17 “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
God told Adam that he would have life as long as he was obedient to this law. God thereby established His primacy as the law giver over those who come under the law, that is, mankind. He would be gracious to Adam, (mankind) as long as they did not violate His law. If Adam ever tried to usurp God’s sovereignty, he would die. He would no longer be under grace but under the judgment of the law. The punishment for that was physical death. That is exactly what happened. Adam was deceived into thinking that he could be “as a god”. He disobeyed God’s Law, he usurped his authority and became mortal, that is he died. We, as descendents of Adam have inherited the liability for Adam’s debt (sin is a debt) and must also die. We are cursed with sickness which is an antecedent to death.
We too are lawless. We rebel at a need to depend on God. Because of our pride we do not trust Him and do not care to listen to His voice either personally or when it is given to kings, prophets, apostles or disciples. Instead we lean on our own understanding. God warned us through King Solomon not to do this.
Pro 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”.
As a consequence of not obeying God’s voice, man has developed elaborate systems of law which promote their own understanding of God’s Law such as: the Laws of Hammurabi; the Tenach, a rabbinic interpretation of the law given to Moses; Roman law; the Justinian Code, a replacement by the church of Roman law into Church law. In addition many cultures have laws, as in: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucionism, Shintoism, Animism and Islam to name a few. These are based on human interpretation or the “traditions of men” regarding the Law of God. In paganism laws are based entirely on human wisdom because of a denial that God has any influence in the affairs of men. Most scientists, including those in medicine, ignore the place of God in the laws that govern science. None the less, He is the creator of all of the laws that govern creation, including the laws of science.
And yet God stated His position in the Gospel of John.
John 1:1-4 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made”.
Jesus Christ is the manifestation of God in the earth. Isa 12; 2 Jehovah has become my salvation (Yahshua in Hebrew; Iesous in Greek; Jesus in English).
As such, He is God’s lawgiver. Isa 33; 22 “the LORD is our lawgiver” and a mediator for us before God. John 16;23 “whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you”.
He has legally redeemed the debt note (mortality) we carry because of the sin of Adam. Now we are able to be completely healed through Him.
Isa 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed”
These words to Isaiah pointed to the death work of Christ on the cross, a redemptive work that freed us from mortality caused by Adam’s lawlessness and opened to us the effects of the live work of Christ that will result complete restoration of our health in spirit, soul and body. Complete obedience to the Will and Laws of God and the corrective judgments of our lawlessness by God will bring us into complete agreement with Him. Even the laws of science will be brought into agreement with God’s will and will used in righteousness according to the purposes and plans that God has made for His creation.
This word spoken by God to Isaiah recognizes that Yeshua (Jesus), by His suffering and death made healing possible. To believe this is not even a consideration in most health care systems today. Many believe there is no place for this type of thinking in modern medicine. It is an offense to some because it is subjective and difficult to prove. Even if one had a favorable outcome, one could not prove that God did it. We have become “as gods” by denying God’s sovereignty over sickness and death. Yet the current system of health care has shown only a slight improvement in the survival, mostly due to improved sanitation and to a decrease of infectious diseases, but the death rate is still 100%.
As we move into the kingdom age, it is imperative that we repent, that is, change our way of thinking about the place God has in the process of healing.
Jesus said in Mark 1: 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Today we assume that we will be healed with a pill, a vaccine, gene therapy, surgery, nutrition or some future technologic advance. Even though these may be legitimate tools that lead to some healing, it is God who has ability to heal completely, not the physician or the technology. We must not ignore Him any longer! We must listen to His voice as he directs our medical understanding as to how we can be healers through Him.
In order to have complete healing there must reconciliation between the created and the Sovereign realm.
2Cor 5:17, 18 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation”.
Much of our failure to heal is because of our inability to bring about reconciliation by our effort alone. Christ is the mediator between these two realms. He has given us the ministry of reconciliation through the power of the Holy Spirit.
John 6:44 “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him”.
No, it is not “between God and me” that we can heal. Rather, it is “God through Christ that we may minister healing”. After His resurrection, He appeared before the heavenly throne proving that He was alive and had overcome death. He and those whom His Father draws were given authority over death and have power to overcome things that lead to death. The one who heals is therefore identified with the pattern Son, Jesus Christ. No unclean thing may come before God. Those who heal must not be unclean and those that are healed are to be made clean.
Deut 24: 14 “For the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you; therefore your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you…”.
Paul survived a venomous snake bite when he landed on Malta after his shipwreck. The local people thought he was a god because he did not die, so they asked him to see, the ailing father of governor Publius, who had fever and bloody diarrhea.
Acts 28; 8 “His (Publius) father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him”.
Publius’ father had bloody diarrhea (δυσεντέριον dysenterion (bloody flux- KJV)
Just to put it in the context of our current medical understanding, Publius’ father most likely had colitis from one the following bacteria: E. coli O157:H7; Shigella; Salmonella species or Campylobacter.
The process of healing in this case demonstrated several factors worth noting:
Paul prayed to God as Jehovah Rophe
Faith on the part of Paul in knowing that he could be used to by God to heal
Faith on the part of those who saw Paul healed of the venomous snake bite. They judged him to be able to heal
Faith on the part of Publius to authorize to Paul’s healing intervention for his father
Faith on the Part of Publius’ father to allow Paul to try to heal him
Paul’s reconciliation of Jehova Rophe with Publius’ father through prayer
Contact with the patient by the laying on of hands. Paul was the human vehicle through which the healing took place.
The medical effect of this intervention resulted in: An “antibiotic” or killing effect of the organism involved e.g. E. coli, Shigella, Salmonella or Campylobacter.
A decrease of fever by regulating pyrogens, those elements in the body that produce fever.
Pyrogens are made internally by the white blood cells of the immune system or they are made externally by the cell walls of the bacteria that are being destroyed.
Pyrogens release biochemicals (prostaglandins) that stimulate a deep part of the brain (hypothalamus) to produce fever.
Neither Paul, nor do we, today, understand all of the mechanisms used in restoring Publius’s father to health, but Jehovah Rophe certainly did and He healed Publius’ father. After all, God is the creator and He knows everything about His creation
Gen 1: 1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.
How then could this healing come about? We do not know because we do not understand all of the dimensions of creation or healing.They are hidden from our understanding at this time, they are not measurable. For this reason we must rely on faith in God for healing. When we are purified and become one with God then we will understand these dimensions. I believe that those who will return with Christ at His coming will help us in this understanding as well.
Romans 8: 22 “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed”.
This we do know in the case of Publius’ father. There was prayer to God (Jehovah Rophe) by Paul, faith in a divine healing by Publius and his father, and physical contact between the healer and the one who is healed. These are the essential features in this case. It was not necessary to know the biochemical or microbiologic causes of his sickness since the mechanism of healing was governed by the other factors of prayer, faith and contact. These factors played an essential part in removing the bacterial cause of Publius’ father’s infection and in eliminating his fever. In that way they had a higher priority in the healing process then just dealing with the fever and infection.
When God spoke to Paul in his letter to the church in Thessalonica he emphasized that our entire being consisted of spirit, soul and body
1 Th 5: 23 “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
The spirit of man is his innermost being. It is ruled by the Spirit of God or by unclean spirits. In this case, Paul was able to cleanse the spirit of Publius’ father through prayer so that Jehoveh Rophe could cleanse him from any uncleanness of his heart and be healed.
Prov 20: 27 “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart”.
Publius’ father’s soul (נֶפֶשׁ nephesh), that living part of him with an intellect, will and emotion, was also healed by Paul’s intervention. This part of the healing is attested to by the faith that was exhibited and the resignation of the wills of Publius and his father.
Other than the laying on of hands, there is no evidence of Paul treating Publius’ father with medicine. So, treatment, as we practice it today, was not given. The physical contact between Paul and Publius’ father was essential because it indicated that Paul was anointed with a ministry of healing and was a vessel through whom the healing from Jehovah Rophe could flow.
Healing took place quickly after prayer and the placing on of hands. Normally it takes days to weeks to heal infections such as this. In this case he was healed immediately indicating there was a change in time of healing as well as a change in his spirit, soul and body. This was an awesome response, clearly outside of the ordinary. Because of it God was glorified.
It is understandable why there is skepticism about the role that Jehovah Rophe has in ordinary medical care of today. We are only under a Passover or Pentecostal anointing.
We have been deceived into believing that results of scientific studies, the “wisdom of men” are the sole key to healing and we have neglected the role of Jehovah Rophe.
Isa 29: 13 “The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men”.
As we emerge from the dim light of Pentecost and enter the brilliant light of Tabernacles, the preeminence of Jehovah Rophe will be revealed in bringing about complete healing of the nations.