Welcome to Word of Life Study Series- Healing is the Children’s Bread! In this episode we will be examining how God’s provision for healing worked under the Old Covenant; which served as a type and shadow for better things to come under the New Covenant. Someone will ask, “What does healing under the Old Covenant that have to do with us today? That was back then and applied to Israel.” God is the same God now as He was then. The Bible says He does not change according to Malachi 3:6. God was against sin in the Old Testament and He is against sin in the New Testament. He was against sickness in the Old Testament, and He is against sickness in the New Testament. He made provision for healing in the Old Testament, and He made provision for healing in the New Testament.
1. God’s Healing Provision for Israel
God always has been opposed to sickness, not in favor of it. Even in the Old Testament, He always made provision for His covenant people to be healed. If sickness was His will, He wouldn’t have made that provision. When Israel crossed the Red Sea and started toward their homeland, the Lord said: In Exodus 15:26, the Lord declares Himself to be “I am the Lord that heals you.”
As long as Israel walked in the Covenant, there was no sickness among them. There is no record of a premature death- no babies, young people, or middle-aged people dying. With sickness taken away from among them, the children of Israel lived out their lives without disease- they just fell asleep at a ripe old age, full of years. When the time came for them to go, they would lay hands on their children and pronounce blessings upon them. Then they would gather their feet up into bed and their spirit would simply leave their body. This experience is referred to as the “Death of the Righteous,” no wasting disease eating away at them, no Alzheimer’s or mental debilitation. This is God’s best for His people.
2. God’s Covenant Names
The great poet William Shakespeare once posed this question: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell sweet.” Our modern society places little significance on the meaning of a name. Parents usually name their children after beloved relatives or well-known persons. Sometimes they pick a child’s name merely because it “sounds good.” But seldom would they give thought to the meaning of a name. Yet names do mean something. Ideally, they correspond directly to the one designated by the name.
This is certainly true of God. The Bible refers to God by many different names, and each one reveals some aspect of God’s character or His relationship with us. The translators who gave us the King James Version and other English versions of the Bible simply translate His name as “God” or “Lord”; but significantly, several Greek or Hebrew names are used in the original manuscripts. If we want to become a serious student of the Word of God, we should be familiar with those Greek and Hebrew names because they contain a wealth of truth about the wonderful God we serve.