The Sick Man's Prayer and the Sinner's Cry

Next Part The Sick Man's Prayer and the Sinner's Cry 2

"Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved--for you are my praise." Jeremiah 17:14

Among the many features which distinguish the people of God, there is one which seems more particularly to shine forth; and that is, that however distressed their minds may be, however low they may be sunk, they can accept no help nor deliverance, but that which comes from God Himself. We find this spirit breathing all through the word. Take such passages as these, for instance; "Give us help from trouble; for vain is the help of man." Ps 60:11 "In vain is salvation hoped for from the hills and from the multitude of mountains--truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel." Jer 3:23 "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." Isa 38:14 The Psalms are full of this spirit. However exercised, however distressed, however deeply sunk the soul of the Psalmist was, you will always find this distinctive feature--that to God, and to God alone, he looked. "My soul" --he charges her--"my soul, wait only upon God; for my expectation is from him." Ps 62:5 And we find something of the same spirit breathing itself forth in the words of our text, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved--for you are my praise."

Our text consists of three clauses. And these three clauses I shall, as the Lord may give me strength and ability, endeavor spiritually and experimentally now to open up.

I. "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed." What is this expressive of? A felt disease; a disease too deeply felt for any but God to cure. Now when the Lord teaches His people to profit--and all His teachings are to profit, He makes them sensible, deeply sensible of the malady of sin. Thus, without doubt, there is not a living soul upon the earth whom the Lord has not more or less taught to feel the malady. There are, however, three things necessary in the work of grace upon the soul with respect to this malady of sin. There is, first, a knowledge of the malady; there is, secondly, a knowledge of the remedy; and there is, thirdly, the application of the remedy to the malady.

1. There is the knowledge of the deep and distressing MALADY of sin; and this lies at the root of all. At the foundation of every sigh, every cry, every prayer, every groan is an internal and experimental acquaintance with the deep and distressing disease of sin. Thus, if a man does not feel internally and experimentally the desperate disease with which he is infected from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, I am bold to say, that a spiritual groan, cry, or sigh, never came forth from his heart. Let us, as the Lord may give us ability, look a little more closely at THE VARIOUS MALADIES that the Lord's people feel themselves to be infected by; for this disease of sin is not a single or solitary one. It has many, many distressing branches; and for the various distressing branches of this one disease, God has His own divinely appointed remedy.

There is the disease of blindness. Now this is what man does not feel by nature. When the Lord told the pharisees their state and condition, could they receive it? This was their answer, "We see;" therefore the Lord said, "your sin remains." They were not acquainted with the desperate disease of blindness; they thought they saw; they were well persuaded they knew everything which they ought to know. But the Lord's people are taught to feel how blind they are, and how unable to see anything except as the Lord is pleased to anoint their eyes with His divine eye-salve. Thus they cannot see what or where they are, nor the meaning of any portion of God's truth, nor the blessedness and beauty of Jesus; they cannot see His glorious Person, atoning blood, justifying righteousness, dying love, sweet suitability, nor the preciousness of all His covenant characters and divine offices, while laboring under this disease of blindness.

Now, when we feel at first what poor, blind, ignorant creatures we are, we often have recourse to human remedies. We think perhaps that study may remedy this disease of blindness; that if we get together a number of religious books, read the Bible very much, and hear the best preachers, we may heal that disease; but alas, alas, we soon find that all these fancied remedies only leave us blinder and darker, and more ignorant than before; until feeling how blind we are, how little we know, what a veil of ignorance is over our hearts, it makes us sigh and cry and beg and pray and look unto the Lord to open these blind eyes of ours; to bring light, and knowledge, and truth into our hearts. This is in fact a part of the breathing in our text, "Heal me, and I shall be healed."

And when the Lord is pleased to open our blind eyes, and show us something of His own beauty, blessedness, and glory; when the blessed Spirit anoints our eyes with heavenly eye-salve to see something of the glorious Person of Christ, the riches of His grace, the efficacy of His blood, and the sweetness and suitability of all His covenant characters and offices - when He thus brings a measure of divine light, life, and power into our souls, He answers that prayer, and heals our blindness.

We are also afflicted, naturally, with the dreadful disease of deafness. We are deaf to all the admonitions of God's word, deaf to all His threatenings and judgments, deaf to all His gracious promises; and not all the preaching in the world can of itself heal this deafness of ours. But it is the Lord's office to unstop the deaf ears; and when we begin to feel how deaf we are, and to mourn over our inability to hear God's truth with life and feeling, it brings a cry up out of our hearts unto God that He will apply and bless His precious word with a divine power to our souls.

Do you not sometimes come to chapel with this dreadful disease of deafness upon you? You may come time after time, Lord's day after Lord's day, and yet, through this disease of deafness, no power accompanies what you hear. You do not hear to your soul's satisfaction; there is no melting, no softening of your heart and spirit under the word. It seems as though, however you heard with your outward ear, there was another ear lacking--the ear of your heart; and until the Lord is pleased to open that ear, all that you hear with the outward ear is unavailing.

Now, when we begin to cry to the Lord, that He would apply His word to our hearts, bring His precious truth into our soul, cause it to drop like rain upon our spirit--this is, in effect, to cry to the Lord to heal this disease of deafness.

There is another disease that we are sadly afflicted with, and that is the disease of a hard heart; a heart that refuses to melt, a heart that can read of all the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and feel no compunction; no trickling tear, no godly sorrow, no softening experienced within. O this disease of a hard heart! For the people of God want to feel their hearts made soft, their souls watered, their spirits melted, laid low, and dissolved into tears of contrition. But through this dreadful disease of a hard heart, they cannot produce these gracious feelings in their souls. They cry, therefore, 'Lord take this hard heart away; Lord, do soften my soul. When I come to hear Your word when I read of Your sufferings, do melt my heart; do take away this heart of stone, do give me a heart of flesh.' This is, in effect, breathing forth the words of the text, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed."

We are afflicted also with another dreadful disease, that of unbelief. So afflicted are we with this dreadful malady of unbelief that we cannot raise up a single grain of faith in our souls; we cannot believe a promise, however sweet or suitable; we cannot believe our saving interest in Christ except so far as it is made clear to our eyes; we cannot believe that "all things work together for our spiritual good;" we cannot believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, nor trust in His blood and love.

Now when we feel this, and ask the Lord to take it away, to bless our souls with faith, what is this, in effect, but breathing forth the prayer, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed?" And when the Lord is pleased to give us faith to believe His word, to come to Him, to hang upon Him. to trust in His mercy, and rest in His love--this is the fulfillment of the prayer, the Lord hearing and answering it to heal this felt disease of unbelief.

There is pride, worldly-mindedness, and carnality, self-glorying, and a host of vile corruptions and dreadful lusts, continually bringing our souls into bondage; and these we cannot heal. We cannot clothe ourselves with humility; we cannot give ourselves repentance and godly sorrow for sin; we cannot sprinkle our own conscience with the precious blood of the Lamb; we cannot shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, cannot dispel doubt and fear, cannot deliver ourselves from temptation, nor subdue the evils of our hearts. Man may tell us to do so; but we have tried, and tried, and tried, and found we could do none of these things. And thus we are brought to fall low before the footstool of mercy, and cry unto the Lord in the language of the text. "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed."

2. Now these are the three steps. We first of all feel the malady; then we see revealed in God's word the remedy; and when the Lord is pleased to bring the remedy into our hearts, then He fulfils the prayer of the text in healing our souls. When light comes, it heals our blindness; when power is felt in the heart, it heals our deafness; when we feel softness and humility, by a sense of God's goodness, it heals our hardness; when faith springs up in living exercise, it heals our unbelief; when contrition, humility, meekness, and godly sorrow are given to us, it heals the disease of hardness and coldness, deadness and barrenness.

Thus, when the Lord is pleased to apply His precious word with divine power to our hearts, and to work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, it is a fulfilling in our soul's experience of the words of the text; it is not only a cry to the Lord that He would heal, but it is a healing of our diseases. "Heal me, O Lord," the church cries, "and I shall be healed." I want no more. It is not man that can do it. I cannot do it. It is not my promises, nor my resolution; it is not my prayers, nor my desires; it is not my sighs, my cries, my groans, nor breathings, nor wishes. All these are physicians of no value. But Your precious blood sprinkled upon my conscience, Your glorious robe of righteousness put upon me by Your own hand. Your dying love shed abroad in my soul by the Holy Spirit--there is healing efficacy, blessed virtue in these things, O Lord. And if You do but apply these things with a divine power to my heart, then I am healed. One look can do it; one word can do it; one smile, one touch can do it. You, Lord, have only but to speak, to bring one word, to bestow one look, to give one promise, to drop but one drop of Your precious love, blood and grace into my heart--it is done in the twinkling of an eye. This is the substance of the cry that comes up from time to time out of a living soul, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed."

Now if this be not the substance of your prayers, why do you go to a throne of grace? What else is the real subject of your petitions? What else is the language of your groans? What else is the import of all your desires? "Heal me, and I shall be healed" this is the language of all prayer; this is the import of all supplication; this is the breath of every praying soul; this speaks in itself volumes of anxious desires, earnest longings, fervent prayers, hungerings and thirstings- all the wants and wishes of really contrite hearts.

Next Part The Sick Man's Prayer and the Sinner's Cry 2

Back to J. C. Philpot Sermons