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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.
The Lord Is Your Healer
Exodus 15:22-17:7

Introduction
We live in a culture that is virtually obsessed with health. Low-fat, low-carb, high-
protein, whole-grain, high-fiber living is what we’re after. And just spend some time
watching the litany of late-night info-mercials and you will find them strewn with the litter
of the latest piece of exercise equipment: Bow-flex, Nordic Track, Body-by-Jake and the
“Total Gym.” It never ends.

For many, this obsession is the fruit of the desire to prolong life and to stave off the
inevitable. For others, quality more than quantity is what they’re after. They believe that
by eating healthier and by regularly exercising that they can increase the quality of their
lives. Eating poorly and sitting inordinately in front of the computer or television will work
to make the short life we have less enjoyable. So some are after quantity, some are after
quality, and all, I think it’s fair to say, are after both.

And this is not only the case for those outside the church. Now, of course, you know
this. You know that you, like me, have been guilty of obsessing over your health and fitness
or lack thereof. But there is another sense in which the church has become obsessed with
health: a large swath of evangelicals has embraced teaching that suggests that the Lord does
not want you ever to be sick.

Some, like The New York Times best-selling author of Your Best Life Now, and the
pastor of Houston’s 25,000-member Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen, go so far as to suggest
that if you can imagine yourself healthy, you can be healthy:

What you keep before your eyes will affect you. You will produce what
you’re continually seeing in your mind. If you foster an image of defeat and failure,
then you're going to live that kind of life. But if you develop an image of victory,
success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to
hold those things from you.1

Now on the face of it this kind of teaching may sound utterly contrary to the teaching
of the Bible concerning the nature of sickness and disease and faith’s relationship to them. I
think that it is fair to say that you won’t find any text of the Old or New Testaments that
says that if you develop an image of health in your mind, nothing on earth will be able to
keep health from you. But in spite of this apparent and I believe, obvious absence of such

1
From an excerpt from the book posted BarnesandNoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/
booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780446532754&displayonly=CHP, italics added.

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teaching, the falsity of it does not exist apart from the truth of what the Bible does
communicate.

Throughout the gospels, the Lord Jesus is routinely engaged in liberating men and
women, boys and girls from the shackles of a myriad of diseases and infirmities including
fevers, physical deformity, epilepsy, chronic bleeding, paralysis, deafness, muteness,
blindness, and even death. Luke 4:40 says that “all those who had any who were sick with
various diseases brought them to Him; and laying His hands on each one of them, He was
healing them.” And Jesus did this, says Matthew, “To fulfill what was spoken through
Isaiah the prophet: ‘He himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases’” (Matt
8:17).

In addition, the gospels draw a connection between one’s faith and the Lord’s
healing. For example, all the synoptic gospels include the story of a woman who had been
hemorrhaging for twelve years. Here is Matthew’s account:

And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years,
came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; 21 for she was saying to
herself, “If I only touch His garment, I will get well.” 22 But Jesus turning and seeing
her said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.” At once the
woman was made well (Matt 9:20-22).

And though the connection between one’s faith and the Lord’s healing is exemplified
by positive examples like the one I’ve just shared; it is also exemplified by the negative.
Matthew 13:58 says, “And He did not do many miracles there [i.e. in Nazareth] because of
their unbelief.” Mark’s gospel puts it a bit more forcefully; it says that Jesus “could do no
miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them” (Mark
6:5). It seems that there were only a limited number of people with the requisite faith to
receive healing from the Lord’s hand.

So perhaps the equation works something like this: faith = healing; unbelief =
nothing. Maybe, then, this is what James is getting at when he says,

Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church
and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; 15 and
the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him
up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him (Jas 5:14-15).

Implication? The prayer offered without faith will fail to restore the one who is sick, and the
Lord will not raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will not be forgiven him.

Yet more than Jesus’ office as the one who carries away all our diseases and
infirmities; more than the deliberate connection between faith and healing we see in the
New Testament, the Bible also seems to suggest that good health is one of the many
temporal blessings of a life lived in obedience to the Lord. For example, Deuteronomy 7
says,

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Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and
do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you His covenant and His
lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers….The LORD will remove from
you all sickness; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt
which you have known, but He will lay them on all who hate you (Deut 7:12, 15).

Conversely, life lived in disobedience to the Lord results in the temporal curse of a
disease-ridden existence. Deuteronomy 28:58-61 says,

If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in
this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the
LORD will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe
and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. 60 "He will bring back on
you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. 61
"Also every sickness and every plague which, not written in the book of this law, the
LORD will bring on you until you are destroyed.

Now just in case you were thinking all of this to be so “Old Testament”; that is,
restricted to a bygone era in redemption history, think again. Jesus, after healing a man
suffering from a debilitating illness for 38 years, makes the connection between a life of
unbelief and the experience of disease: “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said
to him, ‘Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens
to you’” (John 5:14). And the Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthians that for the reason that
the Corinthian church was partaking of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner, many
among them were weak and sick and a number even died (1 Cor 11:30).

This is all to say that there seems to be a fairly consistent equation, or fairly
consistent equations presented throughout the whole of Scripture with respect to health and
disease; namely, faith = healing; unbelief = nothing and obedience = health; disobedience =
sickness. This morning’s text from Exodus appears to fit this pattern.

The Healthiness of Obedience

Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 15.

As you’re turning there, let me remind you that the passage that runs from 15:22-
17:7 is a single narrative section dealing with the beginning of Israel’s journey in the
wilderness after their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery. The sons of Israel have
seen God act powerfully on their behalf to bring about their salvation, performing miracle
after miracle against Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s people.

Exodus 15:22 picks up the action immediately following Egypt’s destruction at the
Red Sea; notice what it says. Let’s read vv 22-24: Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea,
and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness
and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of
Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah. 24 So the people grumbled at
Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?"

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Only three days after singing and dancing and praising God for his victory at the
Red Sea in 15:1-21, only three days after seeing the Lord’s great power, only three days
after fearing the Lord and believing in the Lord and his servant Moses, only three days and
the people are grumbling against God’s leaders for guiding them to the brackish waters of
the place they would call Marah.

Now even though they certainly had reason to be thirsty after three days in the desert
with no water, and even though it is reasonable to express disappointment in finding
undrinkable springs while in the throes of such thirst, the sharp juxtaposition of praise
followed almost immediately by grumbling shows that their complaint is indefensible and
rebellious.

Well, after expressing this indefensible and rebellious complaint, the Lord intervenes
not with judgment, as we might have expected, but with profound kindness. Notice the first
part of v 25: Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree; and
he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet.

And after transforming the waters of Marah into the waters of Matoq,2 if you will, the
waters of sweetness, v 27 tells us that the Lord led the people to a place of abundant
provision. Read v 27 with me: Then they came to Elim where there were twelve springs
of water and seventy date palms, and they camped there beside the waters.

This, incidentally, completes and establishes a pattern for this section. From 15:22 to
17:7, three times we read of a crisis, followed by a complaint, followed by an act of
compassion on the part of the Lord. Crisis, complaint, and compassion are what
characterize this narrative.

The first episode, however, introduces something to the passage that is not repeated
later. It’s found in vv 25b-26. Check it out: There He made for them a statute and
regulation, and there He tested them. 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.”
You will remember that particular regulations associated with the manna and
Sabbath-keeping in Ch 16 continue the theme of the importance of obedience to the Lord’s
commandments, so this is not what makes the record of Israel’s first crisis unique. What
makes it unique is that the Lord relates Israel’s physical well-being to their obedience.
Notice v 26 again: 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.”

2
qtom'

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Rather than the usual, “For I, the Lord, am your God,” we are presented with the
appellation, I, the Lord, am your healer—which leads us back to where we began today’s
message. Someone like Joel Osteen, and perhaps someone a little less extreme, would see
in this passage yet another proof-text for the idea that the Lord’s will for believers is that
they enjoy full health. They would see it as another piece of evidence to show that the
reason why you or I suffer with sickness must be the result of our disobedience to the Lord.
Is this correct? If not, how should we understand this text?

Let’s begin by unpacking the Lord’s requirement for his people. Look closely with
me at the first part of v 26: 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.
There are four phrases here that all function to present one real requirement for the people
of God. The first of the four phrases is give earnest heed.

This English reflects a grammatical construction in Hebrew meant to emphasize the

certainty or decisiveness of the action.3 In this case, the action is giving heed, or hearing the
voice of the Lord. We might woodenly translate it like this, “If to give heed, you give heed
to the voice of the Lord…” To give earnest heed is strong enough to convey the certainty
and decisiveness of the action that the Lord requires.

Now if that were the only condition that the Lord set forth in this text, his
requirement would be sufficiently strong to express the kind of seriousness we ought to have
about our obedience, but it isn’t—there are three more. The second one is a call to do right
in his sight; that is, to do what is pleasing to him, to perform that which conforms to the
standard of uprightness he articulates to his people.

The third part of the condition is that we give ear to his commandments, a vivid
way of saying essentially what was said in the first phrase. The demand is to listen carefully
to what the Lord says, being careful to perform exactly what he commands.

Finally, if God’s people will keep all his statutes; that is, if they will observe
everything he prescribes, then they can avoid the curse of disease from the hand of the Lord.
What is noteworthy here is that in connection with the phrase all his statutes, is the line “all
of the diseases which I put on Egypt, I will not put on you.”4 He says, “If you will keep all
his statutes, all of the diseases which I put on Egypt, I will not put on you.” So he’s saying
something like, “Do all that I command so that all that Egypt suffered does not become your
experience as well. In other words, you have a choice of “alls”; all his commandments or all
Egypt’s diseases, you decide.”

So then, what the Lord demands in order to avoid the judgment of disease is “to take
his requirement and guidance seriously, pay close and committed attention to his voice,
adopt his standard as the measure of what is right, obey his commands and meet his

3
It is the use of the infinitive absolute with a finite verb of the same root: [m;v'.
4
hl'úx]M;¥h;-lK'( wyQ"+xu-lK'

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requirements.”5 And I should mention that although this text appears before Israel receives
the Law at Sinai, it clearly functions to anticipate it. Whatever the Lord says is law and
since he is the one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy, he must
be unconditionally obeyed.

Fail to obey the Lord and you will find yourself on the wrong end of the diseases
that he put on the Egyptians. Diseases like the plague of boils and other diseases known to
be problems in the land of Egypt, a country understood as a place in which its people
experienced “irritating maladies, skin diseases, eye infections,” and the like, all at the hand
of the Lord.6 What the Lord is saying here is, “Disobey and all manner of disease will
overtake you.”

And the reason God can say this is given at the very end of v 26. It says, for I, the
LORD, am your healer. This should strike you as odd. I mean, after reading God’s
condition and the consequence for failing to fulfill that condition, didn’t you expect
something like, “For I, the Lord, am your judge”? I know I did.

It seems strange to say, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on
the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer. A healer is a disease lifter not a disease
bringer. If the text said something like, “If you earnestly obey me, I’ll take away your
sicknesses when they come; for I, the Lord, am your healer,” then it would seem to make
more sense. But it says essentially, “If you earnestly obey me, I will not make you sick like I
made Egypt sick, for I, the Lord, am your healer.”

Let me clear up the apparent strangeness with the little word your: for I, the Lord,
am your healer. “With respect to Egypt, I was not a healer; I was not a lifter of disease, but
a harbinger of it. I covered them from head to toe with painful boils because they were my
enemies, because they opposed my will for you. But you, you are my people of promise,
you are my chosen ones. With respect to you, my disposition is different. When it comes
to you, my default mode is that of healer, of doctor, of physician.

“And in case there is any doubt as to whether or not I am a legitimate doctor, look
only to what I did with the waters of Marah.” I mention the waters of Marah as an example
of the Lord’s status as healer for a very specific reason; namely, that the word translated
healer is the same Hebrew root that is used elsewhere in the Old Testament for making
water drinkable.7 We’ll just turn to one example, which is found in 2 Kgs 2:21-22:8 He
went out to the spring of water and threw salt in it and said, "Thus says the LORD, 'I have
purified these waters; there shall not be from there death or unfruitfulness any longer.'" 22 So
the waters have been purified to this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spoke.

5
John I Durham, Exodus (Waco, TX: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 213.
6
Cornelis Houtman, Exodus (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Publishing, 1996), 2.308.
7
ap'r'
8
See also Ezek 47:8-9.

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The word translated purified in vv 21 & 22, reflects the identical Hebrew root as the
one we find back in Exod 15:26. My point is that there is a deliberate connection made by
the author of Exodus between the miracle with the waters of Marah and the Lord’s position
as healer of his people. And the connection is simple: the Lord demonstrates that he is a
healer by healing the brackish water, transforming it into something fresh.

So, what the Lord is saying is that just has he healed the waters at Marah, so he will
heal his people Israel. “Though I have the capacity to act as disease bringer as you have seen
with respect to what I did to Egypt, my ‘default’ disposition toward you as my people is that
of disease lifter. You are my people of promise, and I am your God—I have chosen you to
bless you and not to debilitate you with illnesses.”

Healing a Product of God’s Grace

Let’s pause for just a moment to appreciate this. Here is the Lord declaring himself
to be the healer of his people, and not their judge, even though they have acted with such
petulance, irreverence, and ultimately, disobedience. They do not deserve him to offer them
any healing—whether with their water or in their bodies. Indeed, they do not deserve to
experience any healing, even if their wellness is a consequence of their obedience to him. What I
am saying is that even if God says, “Only if you obey me will you not experience disease,”
such a statement is a reflection itself of profound grace.

Think of it like this: Let’s say that I’ve committed a crime that according to the law
deserves five years’ imprisonment. This is what I ought to pay for my crime. Now then,
let’s say that the judge intervenes and says, “If you perform 1,000 hours of community
service, you can forgo a prison term,” though my freedom would be the result of fulfilling
his mandate for community service, the fact that I was given the opportunity to forgo my
prison term is the ultimate cause of my freedom. If the judge hadn’t given me the
opportunity to fulfill his condition, I would deservedly spend five years behind bars.

The same thing is true with respect to the promise of Israel’s health in response to
their obedience to the Lord’s commands. This people deserves nothing but to experience
the diseases of Egypt, both for their idolatrous ways while in captivity, and for their current
thankless and hopeless and faithless attitude.

But God, who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in
lovingkindness and truth, gives them a prescription for wholeness and well-being aimed at
keeping them from the diseases they deserve: 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.

So the fact that the Lord declares himself Israel’s healer is meant to show that he has
chosen to dispose himself toward his people contrary to what they deserve in order that they
might enjoy the blessings of life in service to him. As it says later in Exodus, “You shall
serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove
sickness from your midst.” (23:25).

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Very well then, we began by saying that the Lord’s declaration represents the reason
why he can say I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians.
In other words, his position as healer is the reason why he wants to spare Israel from being
plagued with diseases. “It is in my very nature to heal, to restore, and not to destroy.
Indeed, I take no pleasure in the destruction even of the wicked.”

Indeed, even if the people were to reap the disease-laden consequences of their
disobedience, God does not divest himself of his character as Israel’s healer. As one writer
has so wonderfully stated, “On the far side of judgment, God again and again enters into the
pain-filled situation with healing power.”9

Disease and the Fall

Yet with all that we’ve said about God’s amazing character as healer of his people’s
diseases, as a harbinger of blessing, it seems we have not made much progress refuting the
notion that Christians should expect to enjoy lives free from disease, free from sicknesses
like cancer and AIDS and blindness and epilepsy and arthritis and deafness and heart attacks
and strokes and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. It
seems we’ve not made much progress refuting the notion that the Christians who do
experience such physical problems are either disobedient or lack enough faith in the Lord to
experience the liberation he wants to bring them.

Let me see if I can’t at least begin to address this issue right where we’re at in Exodus
by asking this question: why is there a relationship between obedience and health on the one
hand and disobedience and disease on the other? In other words, is disease simply kind of a
Pavlovian electric shock for bad behavior that the Lord arbitrarily pulled out of a hat? Was
the Lord sitting around heaven saying, “Hmm, what would be a really effective way of
getting my people to know that I mean business when they are disobedient? Wait a second!
I know—“Make ‘em sick when they’re bad”? I think not. No, there is something more to
the disobedience/disease-obedience/health connection than that.

Perhaps this question will help: why is there disease in the world in the first place?
Well, you know the answer to this one—because of sin, of course. So the presence of
disease in the world is a product of the fall of man into sin.

Now then, let me ask you another question: what is sin? Well, if I may borrow from
the Apostle John, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Sin is disobedience to God’s law and
rebellion against his authority. Sin is failing to give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord,
failing to do what is right in his sight, failing to give ear to his commandments, failing to
keep all his statutes.

So then, if disease is the fruit of sin and if sin is disobedience to God’s commands,
then we can say that if Adam had not sinned by disobeying the Lord’s command, there
would be no disease in the world. Thus the presence of disease in the world as a tool of
judgment in the hand of the Lord is meant to point us to something deeper than the problem
9
Terence E Fretheim, Exodus, (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991), 180.

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of the disease itself. God has ordained disease to point us to its root—to point us to the fall
of man, the ultimate cause of every disease, not simply to isolated acts of disobedience, but
to the one act of disobedience that introduced chaos into the world.

So when the Lord ties disease to disobedience in the way he does here in Exod 15:26
and elsewhere, there is more than a kind of “I-wonder-what-would-really-get-my-people’s-
attention-when-they-behave-badly” in mind; instead the subtle threat of disease in judgment
for Israel’s disobedience is meant to point to Israel’s deeper need; namely, deliverance from
the fall into sin.

Therefore when the Lord declares that he is his people’s healer first and not primarily
their judge, that he is their healer in spite of their wicked actions and attitude, he is saying
something much more than that he has the power to alleviate their suffering or to cure their
sicknesses. As the true healer, he is saying that he is the one who can cure not merely the
symptom, but the cause. He can reverse the effects of the fall; he can deliver from sin.

This theme, that deliverance from physical illness points to the deeper reality of
deliverance of sin, is a thread that runs throughout the tapestry of the Old Testament
witness, where God’s healing represents his restoration of those who humbly repent. Psalm
41:4 says, “As for me, I said, ‘O LORD, be gracious to me; Heal my soul, for I have sinned
against You.’”

But it is the prophets who use this language most frequently, especially Jeremiah and
Hosea. Let’s turn to a few passages from each of them cf. Jer 3:22; 17:14; 30:17; Hos 6:1;
7:1; 14:4.

Jeremiah 3:22 "Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness."

"Behold, we come to You; For You are the LORD our God.
Jeremiah 17:14 Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; Save me and I will
be saved, For You are my praise.
Jeremiah 30:17 'For I will restore you to health And I will heal you of your
wounds,' declares the LORD, 'Because they have called you an outcast, saying: "It is
Zion; no one cares for her."’
Hosea 6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will
heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
Hosea 7:1 When I would heal Israel, The iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered,
And the evil deeds of Samaria, For they deal falsely; The thief enters in, Bandits raid
outside.
Hosea 14:4 I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, For My anger
has turned away from them.

Jesus Reverses the Curse

Healing as an image for salvation solidifies the link between physical and spiritual
health in Scripture. Deliverance from disease is meant to point us to a deeper, more original
deliverance; deliverance from our fall into sin. And nowhere is this more apparent than in
the ministry of the one about whom this text in Exodus ultimately speaks—the true healer,
the healer par excellence, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Let’s take a walk through the gospel of Matthew just to get a sense of the sheer
number of healings that Jesus performed during his earthly ministry. Rather than stopping
for every individual healing, we will simply make note of all the passages in this gospel that
mention the extent of his healing ministry (See Matt 4:23-24; 8:16; 9:35; 10:1, 8; 12:15;
14:14; 15:30; 19:2; 21:14).

Amazing! Jesus healed wherever he went. And as we mentioned when we began,

this occurred in order “to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: ‘He himself
took our infirmities and carried away our diseases’” (Matt 8:17).

And yet, the bigger question is why? Well, sickness is a disruption in the proper
order of creation, a disruption brought about by the fall. And God promised that when the
kingdom would come, so would the restoration of all things, the reversal of the fall and all
its effects.

Jesus came preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand; it was encroaching
on this present age, bringing with it the glory of the life of the future age, the age described
in Revelation as a time when he will finally and fully “wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or
pain” (Rev 21:4).

The intrusion of the kingdom of God through the ministry of Jesus means that what
was promised has already begun. The curse has begun to be reversed through the ministry
of Jesus, and so we get to eat now of the fruit that we will enjoy unhindered forever: “On
either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit
every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2).

So Jesus’ acts of healing are so much more than acts of compassion and kindness for
those suffering the effects of the fall. Jesus’ healings are signs that the kingdom of God has
arrived! They are signs that the promise of the curse being lifted has begun to come to
fruition in the present age!

And this is precisely where those who advocate for the doctrine that teaches that
health is guaranteed to the believer and that your failure to experience it is the fruit of your
own disobedience and lack of faith—this is precisely where they go wrong. In my mind, it
is their fatal flaw. By stopping short of the reality to which physical healing points us, they
miss the reality. They are satisfied instead with the sign that says “Welcome to New York
City” rather than the breathtaking skyline that looms large in the background.

Let me explain. I don’t think that all who would argue for a disease-free Christian
life would, when pressed, also argue that we don’t still sin as Christians.

For if they are unwilling to assert that once you become a Christian you never sin
again, in the light of the inextricable link between physical and spiritual health in the Bible,
they must also assert that sickness may persist even in the life of an obedient Christian; for

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just as the full effect of Jesus’ eradication of the cause of our diseases will not be experienced
in its fullness until the end of the age, so shall we not experience the effect of Jesus’ removal
of our physical illnesses until the end of the age.

The blessing, however, of this morning’s message is that we will inevitably

experience it. Even if you are suffering with a chronic disease, perhaps a product of old age;
know this: that “though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day
by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far
beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:16-17). For some it will be sooner; for others it will be
later. For all of us, it will be sooner or later.

Why? Because the Lord Jesus is your healer—he has risen with healing in his wings
and has taken all your infirmities away. But more than that, and even greater—yes, even
deeper—the great physician has taken away all your sins. He knew that it is not those who
are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; so he came to call you to
repentance. And by his grace, you have responded to the therapy of your healer.

So you rest in his arms—in the arms of the one who never stops administering his
healing balm to your soul. Amen.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.solidfood.net

Exod 15:22-17:7: The Lord Is Your Healer © 2005 by R W Glenn