This passage, in its more immediate application, relates to the city and people of Jerusalem, and conveys a promise to the unhappy nation of the Jews of blessings which are yet in store for them.
The Great Physician
I. The visit which this Good Physician pays to the poor patient who has need of Him. The patient is a wretched being, who, in a spiritual point of view, is diseased from head to foot, and hath “no soundness in him.” He has the disease of human nature, the disease which you and I have--sin. He has become painfully alive to the humiliating fact that there is no good thing in him--that all his doings have been evil--and that the sentence of death eternal hangs over his soul. He cannot heal himself. His fellow-sinners cannot heal him. Is not then his case desperate? It would be so indeed were it not for a voice from heaven which saith of this poor sinner, “I will bring him health and cure.” Every word is a word of comfort to that sinner’s soul. There is comfort in the first word “I”--I will do it. For who is it that speaks? It is Jesus, the great, the mighty Saviour of the soul--that famous, that renowned Physician who hath healed already such a multitude of sinners, and hath never lost a single patient. There is comfort in the next word, “I will bring”--for, alas! this sinner cannot fetch his cure. But look at the last words of the sentence, and behold still more abundant comfort for this perishing transgressor. “I will bring,” saith the Lord--What? A medicine? A healing application that will be likely to avail--that may conduce towards recovery? No, but--Oh, bold words! words only fit for an Almighty Saviour!--I will bring him health and cure--something so sovereign in its virtue, so sure, so swift in its effects, that, the moment it is tried upon the patient, he is well; not only in part restored; not only altogether freed from his disease; but well--in full, in perfect health. The balm which the Physician brings to cure the sinner with is the blood which He hath shed for them, the life which He hath given for them, the full, the perfect and sufficient sacrifice which He hath offered up for them. And this balm, is not medicine only--for that may heal or not heal; that is a mere experiment upon a broken constitution, and may be ineffectual; but the balm which Jesus brings the sinner may well be styled “health and cure”; for it is everything at once which the sinner’s case requires. This precious blood “cleanseth from all sin.” But we have not yet attended this Good Physician to His patient. We have not yet ascertained, I mean, how He may be said to “bring” this “health and cure” to the poor sinner’s soul. It is when He opens that sinner’s eyes to view Him as a Saviour--when, by His word or by His ministers, He sets His love before that sinner’s soul, and by His Holy Spirit makes him see it.
II. Observe the Good Physicial actually curing the poor patient He attends. There is a difference between a remedy brought near, and a remedy applied; and there is a difference again between Christ’s “bringing health and cure” to the sinner, and that sinner’s being cured. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation” is said to “appear unto all men”; but we know that all men to whom it appeareth are not saved by it. Many men perceive that Christ is their Physician, yet will not take His remedy; and many men believe that they have used the remedy when they have only done so in appearance. The patient we have endeavoured to describe is a really humbled and awakened soul, and the Lord, who brings him health, gives him faith also, to be healed. He believes in Jesus as a Saviour. He casts his soul on Him for pardon and righteousness.
III. Now proceed to the blessings my text describes Him as bestowing on the poor patients He has healed. “I will reveal to them,” says He, “the abundance of peace and truth.”
1. We may regard this peace and truth as the privileges of the redeemed sinner. When our poor sick bodies are recovered unexpectedly from a painful and a dangerous disease, how do we rejoice in our newly acquired health! How are our fears calmed and our anxieties removed! but these natural emotions are not to be compared for a moment with the spiritual feelings and experiences of the pardoned sinner; no sooner hath the Good Physician healed the soul than what doth He reveal to it? “The abundance of peace and truth.” Peace--for “being justified by faith, he hath peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Christ “revealeth” also to him “the abundance of truth.” He enjoys, through the Spirit which Christ sends him, a glorious and most comfortable apprehension of the truth of God--of the truth of His grace, of the truth of His covenant, of the truth of His promises.
2. Consider this “abundance of peace and truth” as referring also to the character acquired by the believer in consequence of his faith. Christ may be said to have revealed to His people the “abundance of peace” in that He hath given them a peaceful spirit--in that He hath sent that Dove-like Messenger to rest upon their souls who is “first pure, then peaceable,” and who makes the hearts He enters like Himself. And Christ may be said also to have revealed to him “the abundance of truth,” by enabling him to walk in truth. He is “an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile,” no crooked policy, no artful management. His aim is, on all occasions, to be “a child of the light and of the day”--“sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ”--“having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reproving them.” (A. Roberts, M. A.)
Health for the soul
I. The patient and his disease. The patient is man; the disease is sin. We see the disease equally in the most refined as in the most ignorant. It stares us in the face when we read of an African negress sacrificing a fowl to her little image; and it shows itself equally when we read of a Grecian philosopher proposing before his death the sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius. We see the ignorance of the true God; we see at the same time such a consciousness of sin that something must be done to appease the apprehension which they have of the reality of a God. But we need a closer application of the subject. You may all of you say perhaps, “I have never been guilty of idolatry; I am neither Mohammetan, nor Socialist, nor Communist, nor an infidel.” Let us look, then, at some of the peculiar features of the disease of sin, and see whether it is not preying upon you as it is upon other men in the world. Now, it is well illustrated by the effect which sickness produces upon our body. For instance, sickness produces languor through the whole body; and this is exactly God’s account of the effect of sin (Isa_1:5-6). Take the faculties of man. Take his understanding. The understanding, we are told, “is darkened,” so that man is no longer wise to do good; he is only wise to do evil. Again, look at his will. The will of man has a wrong bias. Once, I cannot doubt, it was true of Adam, as spoken of our Lord in the fortieth Psalm, “I delight to do Thy will, O God; yea, it is within my heart.” I cannot doubt there was a time when that was the natural expression of Adam’s heart; but now it is not the expression of any man’s heart until he is renewed by the Holy Ghost. But again: sickness takes away our desire for what is wholesome. So it is with sinners. They “put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter”; they call darkness light, and light darkness, and evil good, and good evil: whereas the spiritual man delights in the law of God after the inward man renewed by the Holy Ghost. Another effect produced by sickness upon the frame is, that it takes away the comfort of life. There is no enjoyment in anything put before the sick man enfeebled by disease, anything in which he was once able to take delight. Yea, life itself often becomes a burden. Now, what is the burden? Why, sin is the burden; it is this, only you do not know it; it is this which at times poisons the joy even of the most thoughtless--the consciousness of sin, the consciousness of your opposition to a holy God.
II. The physician and the cure. “Behold I will bring it health and cure”--“I”--Jesus. And it has been Jesus always. The remedy may have been stated more distinctly under the Gospel than under the law, but not more really. It was Jesus always, it was the precious blood of Jesus always, pointed at in the very first premise that was made by God, that “the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.” And salvation has always been shut up in that seed. It may have been expressed sometimes as being Abraham’s seed, sometimes the seed of Isaac, and sometimes the seed of Jacob, but it had only one meaning; as the apostle said in the third chapter of Galatians, “Not unto seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.” There is the Physician that God has always revealed. And what is His character? I cannot give you a better picture of Him than He has given of Himself in the parable of the good Samaritan. The wounded man had no charges; he had nothing to pay; the good Samaritan paid for all It is so with Jesus. The only fee, if I may so speak with reverence of Jesus, is--all He asks of us is, that we should trust Him, that we should believe in Him. He holds out to us in the Gospel perfect cure of all our disease, whatever it may be, and however aggravated; and He only says, “Let Me cure you.” And when I point you to this Good Samaritan as a Physician, I would have you remember that He is the only One. I call this another inexpressible mercy, that the poor sinner’s mind, anxious for relief, is not distracted in the Gospel by choosing between physicians. As the sun is clear in the firmament of heaven at noonday, so does Jesus shine forth as the Sun of Righteousness “with healing in His wings “to every poor sinner. And observe how He brings this before you. He says, “Direct your attention, ‘behold,’ take notice, ‘I will bring you health and cure.’” Here is purpose, here is determination, here is sovereign will. “I will cure, I will heal, I will reveal abundance of peace and truth.” We may ask, then, if the way be so simple, “why is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered!” “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” Yes, there is balm, there is the blood of Jesus; there is a Physician, there is Jesus Himself. Then “why is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered!” I will put before you some reasons. Some are not healed because they do not know they are sick. There is often very great mischief going on in our frames without our knowing it. That is the way in which mortal diseases get hold of a man. Then some are not healed because they love their disease. Yea, they love sin. We read of a very celebrated man, St. Augustine, that there was a time when his conscience was so harassed by the oppression of sin, at the same time that his affections were set upon the enjoyment and indulgence of it, that he declared he was afraid his prayers should be heard when he prayed for deliverance from sin. Now I would ask whether that is not the ease with many. Some, again, are not healed because they are not willing to be healed. Our Lord says, “Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life.” Again, some hearts are not healed because they will not take the Gospel remedies. What are the two great remedies that Jesus proposes? Repentance towards God, and faith towards Himself. But these are bitter and nauseous draughts to the natural man. There is one other reason which I would give why some are not healed--because they put no confidence in the Physician. Here is the root of all the evil--a want of faith. If they trusted Him, they would trust His word; and if they trusted His Word, they would take His remedies. (J. W. Reeve, M. A.)
