INTRODUCTION
• As we move on in Exodus as I told you we were going to move right through the Red Sea!
• Exodus 15 begins with the song of Moses. The celebration of being set free from Pharaoh and then seeing the Red Sea open for them and close on the Egyptians.
• In Exodus 15, God deals with grumbling people, 15:22-25 (murmuring people) and God’s healing heart.
Exodus 15:26, “And he said, ‘If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer.’”
• God introduces Himself as a healer - Jehovah Rapha
• When I was a senior in college I contacted hepatitis.
• I had a blood test a few years ago and the doc said, “You have no sign whatsoever of hepatitis in your blood.”
• When my heart went irregular six years ago and I had open heart surgery and awoke unhealed,
• Three weeks later my heart jumped into a regular rhythm and has never gone back.
• Unfortunately there are some in a crowd like this who think I only got healed because I quit trusting in medicine. I was never trusting in medicine. I was trusting in God and using medicine.
• You can do both!
• Many of you have prayed for my back, where I have a ruptured disc I am dealing with.
• I tell you these things because God is a healer.
• “I the Lord am your healer.” Where do you go when you are sick?
I. HEALING MINISTRY
• There are two things that we must address here. God’s covenant of healing with His people,
• And gifts of healing.
• This is not a dispensation of healing that has to do with the law. The law had not been given.
• I am the Lord that heals you. That God would say this tells us that God wants to touch us when we are sick.
• I am says, “This is who I am to you.” It is timeless.
• This is a covenant of love not law, as some would declare today.
• This is God’s heart flowing towards us. We don’t need to demand from God or remind Him. This is legalistic.
• We don’t need to make a formula to get results. Accept His love as a healing covenant, in grace.
• It is a picture of Jesus. How He offers healing to us.
• God was not telling people that doctors were evil. They are not. He was telling them that He also had resource for them.
• When I hear Christians say, “Doctors are from hell; that is ludicrous. People who serve others, who alleviate pain and suffering are not from the enemy; because He loves those things.
• If you really trust God you don’t rely on men. Oh boy, life giving things for health aren’t from hell. Who comes to kill, steal and destroy?
• Don’t make the mistake that doctors and medicine are outside the work of God.
• But also don’t make the mistake of limiting yourself to doctors. God has said, “I will be your healer.”
II. THE WAY OF HEALTH
• God wants to be our healer. He isn’t against doctors, He transcends them.
• Wise is the one who takes care of themselves.
• I don’t go here because all I hear is “Pastor you are a skinny guy.”
• Let me help you with something. If each of us would make a decision to take better care of ourselves we would all be wiser.
• Overeating, under exercising, we all endanger ourselves.
• In Leviticus, there are a whole lot of dietary laws. We are no longer bound to those laws.
• They don’t decide your eternity, but they do offer wisdom.
• Eat right, think right, do right.
• My friend, Pastor Henry Covington. Overweight, had massive heart attack and died. Friends we have to deal with ourselves, our obesity.
• People hate it. We beat ourselves up. We want the Lord to suddenly and miraculously to deflate us.
• He wants to covenant with you to move you into life-giving health.
• Ask the Spirit for healing. Fruit of Spirit is self-control.
• Then exercise: walk, daily why?
• Because you eat daily! Make it a habit.
III. WHERE DO YOU TURN IN TIMES OF NEED
• It is important to note that no one here was sick. There was no plague, but they needed healing.
• How do you do when life’s sweetness is gone?
• The entire wilderness journey God took Israel on had one goal: trust me, lean on me.
• Don’t turn on others. Don’t always look to others to rescue you, turn to me.
• Remember they were being led by God and it was bitter, sometimes it is dry, or a battle.
• You never arrive at a place above the reality of life.
• There is never victory without battle, testimony without test.
• Their complaining, turning on others, boss, wife, husband. Clearly we can see ourselves.
• Turning on people instead of turning to God.
• Verses 22-25 - It is the sickness of the human soul.
• Complaining, bitterness, unforgiveness,
• We lash out at people because of our circumstances. Moses went to God.
• When you are the leader, it does drive you there.
• See when we taste bitter water, we spit it out at people. I was a happy slave in Egypt until you showed up and delivered me.
• Instead of coming to God, recognizing our need for Him.
• God is a healer of emotions and bodies.
• Don’t be deceived they are tied together: your emotions and your body.
• That is why God revealed Himself as their healer here.
• God showed him a tree. He showed me a tree and it changed my life - the cross. Take the tree and apply it to the bitterness of life and things will get sweeter!
• Vs. 25 says He gave them a statute, literally a prescription! For wellness.
CLOSE
• Life is full of injustice. The cross is the greatest injustice man has ever put on another.
• Your life and mine have both experienced injustice, some more than others, but we all have to decide, “Am I going to live in a covenant of healing with God not bitterness?”
• But to decide that is to “heed the voice of the Lord” - Vs. 26 - to listen, to be still and wait.
• If your life has lost its sweetness, come back to the cross. It heals bitterness.
• Then God took them to Elim, after Marah with life and plenty. Twelve wells for twelve tribes. Seventy palms – fullness of food.
