I think in this case the Revised New Testament gives a better translation than does the Authorized Version, and I will therefore read it:-“But and if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing: in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” Paul had been speaking of Moses with the veil over his face, and we lose the track of his thought if we use the word “hid” instead of veiled. Our gospel wears no veil, but exhibits all the glory of its countenance to the sons of men. Oh that they may be able steadfastly to behold it, and see in it their own salvation and the glory of the Lord.

Observe at the outset the confidence with which Paul speaks. It is abundantly evident that he has no doubt whatever that the gospel which he proclaims is assuredly true; nay, that it is so manifestly true that if those who have heard it do not accept it, it must be because the God of this world hath blinded their minds. The accent of conviction makes every word emphatic. He believes and is sure, and he is convinced that those who do not believe must be under the thraldom of the devil. This is not the ordinary style in which the gospel is preached nowadays. We hear men courteously apologize for stating anything as certain, for they are fearful of being thought narrow-minded and bigoted: we hear them prove what is clear as noonday, and back up with arguments what God himself has said; as if the sun needed candles to exhibit it, or as if God’s word wanted the support of human reasoning. The apostle did not take the defensive ground at all: he carried the war across the border and assailed the unbelievers. He came forth fresh from God with a revelation, and his every word seemed to challenge men with,-“This is God’s word, believe it; for if you do not you will incur sin, and prove that you are lost, and are under the influence of the devil.” When the gospel was preached in that royal style it mightily prevailed, and annihilated opposition. Cavillers came, of course. “What will this babbler say?” was a common question; but the heralds of the cross made short work of all cavillers, for they simply went on declaring the glorious gospel. Their one word was, “This is from God: if you believe it you shall be saved, if you reject it you shall be damned.” They made no bones about it, but spoke like men who believed in their message, and judged that it left unbelievers without excuse. They never altered their doctrine or softened the penalty of refusing it. Like fire among stubble, the gospel consumed all before it when it was preached as God’s revelation. It does not spread to-day with equal rapidity because many of its teachers have adopted what they fancy are wiser methods: they have become less certain and more indifferent, and therefore they reason and argue where they should proclaim and assert. Some preachers rake up all the nonsense that any scientific or unscientific man likes to bring forward, and spend half their time in trying to answer it. What can be the use of untying the knots which are tied by sceptics? They only tie more. It is not for my servant to dispute about my message, but to deliver it correctly as mine, and there leave it. If we get back again to the old platform, and speak as from God, we shall not speak in vain, for he will surely honour his own word. The preacher should either speak in God’s name or hold his tongue. My brother, if the Lord has not sent you with a message, go to bed, or to school, or mind your farm; for what does it matter what you have to say of your own? If heaven has given you a message, speak it out as he ought to speak who is called to be the mouth for God. If we are to make up our gospel as we go along, out of our own heads, and compound our own theology, as chemists make up mixtures of drugs, we have an endless task before us, and failure stares us in the face. Alas for the weakness of human wit and the fallacy of mortal reasoning! But if we have to deliver what God declares we have a simple task, and one which must lead to grand results, for the Lord has said, “My word shall not return unto me void.”

Where did the apostle learn to speak thus positively? He tells us in the first verse of the chapter, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not.” He had himself been once a persecutor; and he had been convinced of his error by the appearance of the Lord Jesus to him. This was a great deed of mercy. He now knew that his sins were forgiven him; he felt in his own heart that he was a regenerated man, changed, cleansed, new created, and this was to him overwhelming evidence that the gospel was from God. To himself at any rate the gospel was a truth past argument, needing no other demonstration than its marvellous effect upon himself. Having received mercy for himself he judged that other men were in need of mercy even as he was, and that the same gospel which had brought light and comfort to his own soul would bring salvation to them also. This braced him to his work. By this consciousness he was made to speak as one having authority. There was no hesitancy about him, for he spoke what he had felt. Ah, friends, we not only deliver a message which we believe to be from God, but we tell out that which we have tested and tried within our own souls. An unconverted preacher must be in a sorry plight, for he lacks evidence of the truth which he proclaims. A man who is not familiar with the effect of the gospel upon his own heart must endure much disquietude when he stands up to preach upon it. What does he really know about it if he has never felt its power? But if he has been converted by its means then he is confident, and is not to be moved by the questions and quibbles of those who oppose him. His inner consciousness strengthens him in the delivery of his message. We also must feel the influence of the word that we may speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen. Having received mercy we cannot but speak of that mercy positively as of a thing which we have tested and handled: and knowing that it is God who has given us the mercy we cannot but speak with anxious desire that others may partake of divine grace.

Come we now to consider our text. Our first observation shall be: the gospel is in itself a glorious light, for in the fourth verse Paul speaks of the light of the glorious gospel of Christ; secondly, this gospel is in itself plain and simple; thirdly, if we preach it as we ought to preach it we keep it plain, and do not muddle it up by worldly wisdom; and fourthly, therefore, it being in itself a great light, and in itself clear, and the preaching being clear, if men do not see it is because they are lost: it is a fatal sign when men are unable to perceive the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ.

First, then, the gospel is in itself a glorious light. In countless places it is so described in the New Testament. This is the light which has come into the world. “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” Observe that this light reveals the glory of Christ. This is the new translation, and it is a valuable one-“The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” You know the Hebrews had a different mode of expression from the Greek, and if we are to read the Greek as though Paul Hebraized it, then we read it according to the version we have here,-“the glorious gospel of Christ”; but if we read the Greek as Greek, then it runs, “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” The renderings are equally true, but the second one has a fulness and freshness of sense about it worthy of special note. The gospel reveals the glory of Christ. It tells us that he is the eternal Son of the Father, by whom all things were made, for whom all things were created, and by whom they continue to exist. This might not have been good news to us if it had stood alone, though it ought always to be good to the creature to be informed of his Creator; but the gospel further reveals to us that this ever-blessed Son of the Highest came down to earth in infinite pity, espoused our nature, and was born at Bethlehem, and became as truly man as he was assuredly God. This was the first note of the gospel, and there was so much of delight in it that it set all the angels in heaven singing, and the shepherds who kept watch over their flocks by night heard the chorales of the first Christmas rung out from the midnight sky,-“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” It could not but mean peace to man that God should become man; it could not but mean mercy to the guilty that the heir of glory should be born into their race; it must be good news to us that the offended One should take upon himself the nature of the offender. So outrang the first pure gospel music that made glad the ear of mankind. The Lord God omnipotent became Immanuel-God with us: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful.” This is the beginning of the gospel of the glory of Christ: he gained a greater glory by laying aside his divine glory. Furthermore the gospel tells us that this same mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, dwelt here among men, preaching and teaching, and working miracles of matchless mercy; everywhere proving himself to be man’s brother, sympathetic and tender and gentle, receiving to himself even the lowest of the people, and bowing himself to the least of the race. It is written, “Then drew near unto him the publicans and sinners for to hear him”; and again he took little children into his arms, and blessed them, and said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” There was a gospel about all that he did, and a glory which men who are pure in heart both see and admire. His life was good news: it was a new and a glad thing that God should dwell among men, and be found in fashion as a man. The God that hateth sin, and whose wrath burns against iniquity, tabernacled among sinners, and saw and felt their evil ways, and prayed for them, “Father, forgive them.” His glory lay in his being so patient, gentle, and self-sacrificing, and yet so just and true. Well did John say, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

But the gospel’s biggest bell, which rings out with clearest note, is that this Son of God in due time gave himself for our sins, making an offering of his whole human nature as a propitiation for the guilt of men. Herein is an excessive glory of love. What a sight it was to see him in the garden oppressed with our load of guilt till the bloody sweat was forced from him; to see him bearing that stupendous weight up to the tree, and there hanging in agonies of death, bearing the desertion of his Father, and all the thick clouds of darkness that came of it: dying the “just for the unjust to bring us to God”! It was the glory of Christ that he was there bereft of all glory. Never can a more glorious thing be said of him than that he for our sakes was obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And this is the gospel we preach, the gospel of substitution, that Jesus stood in the sinner’s place and bore in the sinner’s stead what was due to the law of God on account of man’s transgression. Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord reigneth from the tree.

“Fling out the banner! Let it float

Skyward and seaward, high and wide;

Our glory only in the cross,

Our only hope, the Crucified.”

No gladder news could come to man than that the incarnate God had borne man’s sins and died in man’s stead. Yet there is another note, for he that died and was buried is risen from the dead, and has borne our nature up into the glory, and there he wears it at the Father’s right hand. His loving heart is still occupied with the same divine errand that brought him down below; he is by his intercession saving sinners whom he purchased with his blood. He is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. This is the gospel of the glory of Christ. It is our Lord’s glory that he mediates between man and God, pleading for the unjust ones, using as his all-prevailing argument the blood which he hath shed.

But I must not leave out the fact that he who now in glory pleads for sinners will speedily come again to gather all his own unto himself, to shed abroad on them the fulness of his own glory, and to take them up to be with him where he is. There is wondrous light in the gospel, both for the future and the present. It sets forth to us the glory of Christ, the glory of love, the glory of mercy, the glory of a blood which can wash the blackest white, the glory of a plea which can make the poorest prayer acceptable, the glory of a living and triumphant Saviour, who having put his hand to the work will not fail nor be discouraged till all the purposes of infinite love shall be achieved by him. This is “the gospel of the glory of Christ,” and the light of it is exceeding clear and bright.

We are now called to a second truth: the gospel is a light which reveals God himself, for according to our text the Lord Jesus is the image of God. Did not Jesus say, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”? For, first, our Lord Jesus is the image of God in this sense, that he is essentially one with God. He is “the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of his person.” He is “very God of very God,” as the creed hath it, and I know not how better to express the idea. Our Lord himself said, “I and my Father are one.” But the text means more than that. Christ is the image of God in this sense, that he shows us what God is. If you know the character of Jesus you know the character of God. God himself is invisible, and is not seen of mortal eye, neither can he be comprehended of finite mind. He cannot, indeed, be truly known at all except by the teaching of the Holy Spirit. But all that can be known of God is fairly writ in capital letters in the person of Jesus. What higher conception of God can you have? Even those who have denied our Lord’s deity have yet been subdued into admiration by his matchless character. Read his life through, and see if you could improve it. Can you suggest anything that should be left out, or anything that could be added? He is God, and in him we see God as far as it is possible for us to discern that matchless Father of our spirits. Thus the gospel is full of light, revealing first the Mediator and then the Lord God himself.

Now, dear friends, this gospel of the glory of Christ is really light to us, that is to say, it brings with it all that the metaphor of light sets forth. First of all it brings illumination. It is a lighting up of the soul “to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” It is light to the understanding to be able to see that the Only Begotten has revealed the Father. Man feels after God if haply he may find him, and the heathen stumbles upon this and that in his blind gropings. Perhaps the world was nearest the truth when it called him “the unknown God.” When the wisdom of this world once began to define and to describe the Deity, then it proved its own folly. “The world by wisdom knew not God,” but in the person of the Lord Jesus we have the true icon, the image and representation of the Godhead. It cannot be said of true Christians, “Ye worship ye know not what,” for we know what we worship. Each one of us can affirm, “I know whom I have believed.” We have no question about who is our God, or what he is. There is a knowledge given by the gospel to men, which creates daylight in the understanding.

But it is light in another sense, namely, that of comfort. Let a man see God in Jesus Christ, and he cannot be unhappy. Is it sin that burdened him? Let him see Jesus Christ bearing sin in his own body on the tree, and let him believe in this same sin-bearer, and that burden is gone. Let him be fretting under the cares and trials of life, and let him get a view by faith of Jesus, an infinitely greater sufferer, sympathizing with him in his sorrow, and surely the sting of his grief is removed. Is he afraid to die? Let him hear Jesus say, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and he shall be taught rather to long for death than to dread it. Is he troubled about the things to come? Does the awful future lower darkly before him? Let him only hear Jesus say, “I am he that liveth and was dead, and am alive for evermore, amen, and hold the keys of hell and death,” and he will no longer be afraid of the separate world of spirits of which Christ hath the key; nor will he tremble at the burning of the world, and the ruin of creation, for he has a hold upon One who has said, “Because I live ye shall live also.” Never did another such a light ever shine upon the sons of men: neither for instruction nor for comfort can this eternal truth be rivalled. It were not in the power of an archangel to tell you the joy which this “gospel of the glory of Christ” has given to the sons and daughters of affliction. Wherever it comes it liberates the captive mind, and removes the pains of remorse. At the very sight of it tearful eyes are brightened till they flash with delight. Oh, the joy unspeakable of having Christ to be our Saviour, and the glorious God to be our Father. He is rich to all the intents of bliss who knoweth this. This is light, and all else is darkness. We now advance a step, and observe that-

This gospel is in itself most plain and clear. The gospel contains nothing which can perplex anybody unless he wishes to be perplexed. There is nothing in the gospel which a man may not apprehend if he desires to apprehend it. It is all plain to the man who yields his understanding to his God. Whenever I get a book which puzzles me very much to make out its meaning, I wish I could send it back to the author, and tell him to write it over again, because I am sure he is not very clear about his own meaning, or else he could easily make me know what he meant. A man has never fairly mastered a subject until he is able to communicate his thoughts on that subject, so that persons of ordinary intelligence can tell what he is at. Now, the Lord has in his own mind a clearly-defined way of salvation for men, and he has expressed himself without ambiguity. Certain divines like to preach an incomprehensible gospel, for it gives them the air of wisdom in the judgment of the foolish. Certain hearers prefer sermons which they cannot understand. To them the difficult and intricate are as marrow and fatness. I heard of one who said he liked a bit of gristle in the sermons, or a bone to try his teeth upon. We could easily gratify such friends, but we see no authority in Scripture for gratifying this longing. I carefully endeavour to take the stones out of the fruit before preparing the dish. When we are eating it is by no means a good thing to swallow the bones, for our digestion might not master them, and we might be injured by their presence within. Souls want spiritual nutriment, not problems and riddles. So, when a man preaches the gospel so that you cannot make head or tail of it, you need not fret, for what he has to say is not worth your trouble in listening to it. If it be the Lord’s own gospel, you who are doers of the Lord’s will can understand it; and if you cannot it is not the gospel of the glory of Christ, but a gospel of human inventing. The true gospel is simplicity itself.

Listen! That God should come among men and espouse our nature is so far a great mystery that we do not know how it could be. Blessed be God, we do not want to know how it was done; we only know that it was done, and that fact is enough for us. We understand that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we rejoice therein. Observe the doctrine of the atonement-this also as a fact is plain enough. How it became right for Christ to suffer in our stead, and for his sufferings to be an expiation for our sins, may be a very deep question, but the fact is clearly revealed. I do not think substitution to be a bewildering mystery, but some do. What if it is? The secret reason of it is nothing to us. If God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation for our sins our most reasonable course is to accept him. We need not quarrel with grace because we cannot understand everything about it. It is wiser to eat that which is set before us than to die of hunger because we do not know all the secrets of cookery. I am not asked to understand how God justifies us in Christ, but I am asked to believe that he does so. The fact is plain enough, and the fact is the object of faith. That Jesus should suffer in my stead is a simple matter of truth, and in it there is no darkness at all. That precious doctrine that we are justified by faith, that all the merit of Christ’s glorious work comes to us simply by our believing: is there any difficulty about that? I know that men may cavil till they are black in the face, but the doctrine is plain as a pikestaff. At times persons enquire, “What is believing?” Well, it is trusting, depending, leaning upon, relying upon-that is all. Is there anything hard about that? Do you want to put on your spectacles to see through it? Will it require a week to work your way into the idea? No, the fact that God was made flesh and dwelt among us, and that being found in fashion as a man he became obedient to death for our sakes, and that he now bids us simply trust him and we shall live, is as simple as any truth within the sphere of knowledge. Some people would like a gospel of puzzlement; they prefer a little confusion of the intellect; they love to wander in a luminous haze, in which nothing is clearly defined. They feel that they are getting on when they are leaving others behind, and rising into sublime absurdity. Now, suppose the gospel consisted in terrible mysteries, bristling with matters hard to be understood; suppose it required eighteen volumes to be read through before you could see it; suppose it needed mathematical precision and classical elegance before you could see it,-millions would never get to heaven, for they have never read through a single volume, and therefore they are not likely to digest a library. Some men are so busy, and some have their brains so constituted, that they never will be deep students, and if the gospel required of them deep thought and long research they might give themselves up for lost. If men needed to be philosophers in order to be Christians, the majority of men would be out of the pale of hope. If the masses of the people must read hard before they can catch the idea of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus, they will never catch the idea; they must inevitably perish. And would you, learned men, like them to perish? I fear that some of you have less concern about that than about your own credit for talent and thought. For the sake of getting a profound little gospel all to yourselves you would dig a moat around the cross to keep the vulgar crowd from intruding. That is not the gospel, nor the spirit of the Lord Jesus. Take care lest you miss the truth yourselves. I fear that while you are fumbling for the latch of heaven’s gate, the people whom you despise will get inside the door and be singing, “Glory, hallelujah, we have found the Saviour.” The Lord permits the disputer of this world to stumble, while those who receive the kingdom of God as little children find out the great secret, and rejoice in it. Suppose the gospel had been such a difficult thing to explain, and such a very hard matter to understand, what would become of the many who are now rejoicing in Christ, and yet have by birth and constitution the most shallow capacities? It is wonderful how one but little raised above an idiot can yet grasp the gospel. What a blessing that it is so! I have heard of a poor boy whom his teachers had been instructing for years, and one day they said to him, “Well, Jack, have you a soul?” “No, I’ve got no soul.” They feared that they had lost their labour; but their minds were changed when he added, “I had a soul once, and I lost it, and Jesus Christ came and found it, and so I let him keep it.” That was better gospel than we get from many a learned divine. He had the whole thing at his fingers’ ends. Christ had found his soul, and was keeping it for him; even he who will not fail to keep that which we have committed to his charge. We clap our hands for joy because the gospel reveals the plain man’s pathway to heaven, and makes the most illiterate wise unto salvation. The shepherd on Salisbury Plain can understand the gospel as well as the Bishop in Salisbury Cathedral; and the Dairyman’s Daughter can feel its power as fully as a Princess.

Suppose the gospel were hard to be understood, what should we do at the death-bed? We are sent for all in a hurry to see persons who have neglected attendance upon the means of grace, and are dying in ignorance. It is our sorrowful task to explain the path of life to them when they are entering upon the dark descent of death. While the lamp continues to burn we have hope, and therefore we proceed to state the way by which a sinner may return to God. Is it not well to have it packed away in a small compass, and expressed in common words? We tell them that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. What could we do if the gospel were not thus plain? Must I have a handcart, and wheel it about with me, so as to carry to each dying man half-a-dozen folios in Latin? Nothing of the kind. Right well do Cowper’s often-quoted lines set forth the plainness of the gospel, and rebuke those who reject it on that account.

“Oh how unlike the complex work of man,

Heaven’s easy, artless, unencumber’d plan!

No meretricious graces to beguile,

No clustering ornaments to clog the pile:

From ostentation as from weakness free,

It stands like the cerulean arch we see,

Majestic in its own simplicity.

Inscribed above the portal from afar

Conspicuous as the brightness of a star,

Legible only by the light they give,

Stand the soul-quickening words-believe, and live.

Too many, shock’d at what should charm them most,

Despise the plain direction, and are lost.

Heaven on such terms! (they cry with proud disdain)-

Incredible, impossible, and vain!-

Rebel because ’tis easy to obey,

And scorn, for its own sake, the gracious way.”

Thirdly, in the true preaching of the gospel this simplicity is preserved. Paul expressly said,-“Having this hope in us we use great plainness of speech,” and yet again, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” The apostle Paul was a deep thinker, a man of profound insight and subtle mind. The bent of his mind was such that he would have made a metaphysician of supreme rank, or a mystic of the deepest darkness; but he went against his natural inclination, and devoted all his energies to the unveiling of the gospel. It was a sublime self-denial for him to put on one side all his logic among the other things which he counted loss for Christ; for says he, “I determined not to know anything among men save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” He “determined,” he was resolute, and had made up his mind to it, or he would not have accomplished it. He was the man who wrote some things hard to be understood, which Peter mentions, but when he came to the gospel he would have nothing but simplicity there. He was tender among them as a nurse with her child, and made himself an instructor of babes, dealing out the word with such plainness as children would require. The true man of God will not veil the gospel beneath performances and ceremonies. Mark those who do this, and avoid them. We see his reverence walking with clasped hands to the right and to the left, repeating Latin sentences unknown by the people. He turns, and bobs, and turns again. We see his face for a moment and then his back. I suppose it is all meant for edification; but I, poor creature, cannot find the least instruction in it, nor, as far as I can discover, do the people who are looking on. What mean these little boys in pretty gowns, making such a smoke? And what are these flowers and images on the altar? What a splendid cross is that which adorns the priest’s back! It seems to be made of roses. The folks look on, and some are wondering where he buys his lace, while others are speculating as to the quantity of wax which will be consumed in those candles every hour; and there is the end of it Christ is veiled behind the millinery, if he is there at all. I know numbers who would disdain to do that, and yet they hide their Lord under finery of language. It is a grand thing to mount aloft upon the wings of eloquence and display the glory of speech, till you ascend in a splendid peroration, as many another exhibition closes, with fireworks. But this is not becoming in preachers of the Lord Jesus. I always tell our young men that one of their commandments should be, “Thou shalt not perorate.” To attempt anything grand in language when we are preaching salvation is to leave our proper work. Our one business is to tell out the gospel plainly. We deal in bread, not in flowers. Let tawdry ornaments be left to the stage or to the bar, where men amuse themselves, or dispute for gain; or let these poor gewgaws be reserved for the Senate, where men will defend or denounce according as it suits their party. It is not ours to make the worse appear the better reason, or to hide truth under floods of words. As for us, we are to hide ourselves behind the cross, and make men know that Jesus Christ came to save the lost, and that if they believe in him they shall be saved at once and for ever. If we do not make them know this we have missed our mark, however grandly we have performed. What, shall we become acrobats with words, or jugglers displaying wonders? Then God is insulted, his gospel is degraded, and souls are left to perish.

I venture to put in a word for myself, and then leave this point. I can say with the apostle, “I have used great plainness of speech,” and therefore if the gospel which I have preached be hidden, I have not produced the veil. I have used vulgar words when I thought that they would be better understood, and I have told all sorts of simple stories when I thought I could make the gospel known. I have never used a hard word where I could help it. My one desire has been by manifesting the truth to touch your consciences and win your hearts. If you see not the light it is not because I have hidden it from you.

With this we close. If the gospel be veiled to our hearers it is a fatal sign. “If our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost”: the god of this world has blinded their unbelieving eyes lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should dawn upon them. Not to believe, understand, appreciate, and accept the gospel is a sign of perishing. I want to put this very plainly to any here who say that they have not received the gospel, for they cannot understand it, and they see nothing remarkable in it. If you have heard it plainly preached, it is so plain in itself that if it is hid from your eyes it is because you are still in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. You who receive the gospel are saved; faith is the saving token. If you believe that Jesus is the Christ you are born of God: if you have accepted him as your Saviour whom God sets forth as such, then you are saved; but if you say, “No, I cannot see it,” then your eyes are blinded and you are lost. The sun is bright enough, but those who have no sight are not enlightened. Do you say, I cannot receive the gospel: I want something more difficult? By sinful pride your judgment is perverted and your heart is hardened. While you are among the unbelieving you are still among the perishing, and the god of this world blindfolds you. O Spirit of God, convince men of this sin, that they believe not on Jesus Christ. This work is out of thy servant’s power, but, oh, do thou perform it. Oh that our text, like a sharp lancet, may cut deep and reach the conscience. May this truth pierce between the joints and marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of your hearts.

According to the text, he that believes not on Jesus Christ is a lost man. God has lost you; you are not his servant. The church has lost you; you are not working for the truth. The world has lost you really; you yield no lasting service to it. You have lost yourself to right, to joy, to heaven. You are lost, lost, lost, like the prodigal son when he was away from his father’s house, and like the sheep that went astray from the fold. It is not only that you will be lost, but that you are lost; for “he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the Son of God.” Press those two words upon your conscience,-“Condemned already”:-lost even now. You are perishing; that is to say, you are gradually passing into that condition in which you must abide for ever, as one that has perished before God, and become utterly useless and dead. It is an appalling truth that this is proved by the fact that you do not understand the gospel, or if you understand it you do not appreciate it; you do not see beauty or glory in it; or if you do in a measure appreciate it, and see some glory in it, yet it has never stirred your affection, or drawn your heart towards its great subject. In a word, you have not come to trust in Jesus. He is the only one that you can trust to, and yet you reject him. It must be the simplest thing in all world to trust in Christ, and yet you will not do that simple thing. Trust in him should be attended to at once, and ought not to be delayed, and yet you have delayed for years. If faith brings salvation, why not have salvation? Why abide still in unbelief-in unbelief of the most glorious truth that God himself ever revealed to men;-in unbelief of that which you dare not deny? Oh, what a condition to be in; wilfully in darkness, shutting your eyes to the light. You are certainly lost.

The apostle explains how a man gets into that condition. He says that Satan, the god of this world, hath blinded his mind. What a thought it is that Satan should set up to be a god. Christ is the image of God; Satan is the ape of God: he mimics God, and holds an usurped power over men’s minds and thoughts. To maintain his power he takes great care that his dupes should not see the light of the gospel. The veils he uses are such as men’s selfish hearts approve; for he speaks thus: “If you were to become a Christian, you would never get on in the world.” He claps a sovereign on each eye, and then you cannot see, though the sun shine at midday. Pride binds a silken band across the eyes, and thus again the light is excluded. Satan whispers, “If you become a Christian, you will be laughed at”: thus he hoodwinks his victim with fear of ridicule. He has many a crafty device by which he perverts the human judgment till they cannot see that which is self-evident, and will not believe that which is unquestionable. He makes the gain of heaven to seem inconsiderable when weighed with the little loss which religion may involve. He hides from the soul the bliss of sin forgiven, of adoption into God’s family, and the certainty of eternal glory, by throwing dust into the eyes, so that the mind cannot look at things truthfully.

What shall I say in closing but this: are you lost, any of you? Upon the showing of the text all of you are to whom the gospel is hidden. Well, but thank God you may be found yet: lost to-day, but you need not be lost to-morrow: lost while sitting in these pews, but you may be found before you leave the Tabernacle. The Good Shepherd has come out to find the lost sheep. Have you any desire after him, any wish to return to him? Then look to him with trustful glance. You are not lost if so you look, nor shall you ever be. He that believes in Jesus is saved, and saved eternally. Are any of you blinded? You must so be if the gospel is hid from you, so that you cannot see its brightness. Ah, but you need not remain in the dark. There is One abroad to-day who opens blind eyes. Cry to him as did the two blind men, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me! Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” The Messiah came on purpose to give sight to the blind: it was a part of his commission when he came forth from the Father’s glory. He will give sight to you. Oh seek it.

Is the god of this world your master? He must be if you do not see the glory of the gospel; but he need not be your god any longer. I pray the Holy Spirit to help you to dethrone this intruder. Why should you adore him? What good has he ever done to you? What is there about his character that makes him worthy to be your god? Break off the yoke; burst the fetters which now hold you his slave. The true God has come in the flesh to set you free, and to destroy all the works of the devil. Whatsoever keeps you from beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ can be removed. I am sent to say in my Master’s name, “Whosoever believeth in him is not condemned: he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Trust the Saviour, trust the incarnate God; trust him now and trust him at once, and though a moment ago you were black as hell’s midnight you shall be clean and bright as heaven’s eternal noon. In one instant sins that have taken you fifty years to accumulate shall disappear; the transgressions of all your days shall be plunged beneath the sea, and shall be found no more. Only be willing and obedient, and yield yourselves up to the incarnate God, who ever liveth to take care of those who put their trust in him. May the Lord bless you, dear friends, evermore. Amen and amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-2 Corinthians 3:12-18; 4:1-10.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-485, 486, 483.

“JEHOVAH-ROPHI”

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, June 11th, 1882, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“I am the Lord that healeth thee.”-Exodus 15:26.

We shall consider this passage in its connection, for I have no doubt that the miracle at Marah was intended to be a very instructive illustration of the glorious title which is here claimed by the covenant God of Israel,-“I am Jehovah-Rophi, the Lord that healeth thee.” The illustration introduces the sermon of which this verse is the text. The healing of the bitter waters is the parable of which the line before us is the lesson.

How different is the Lord to his foes and to his friends. His presence is light to Israel and darkness to Egypt. Egypt only knew Jehovah as the Lord that plagueth and destroyeth those who refuse to obey him. Is not this the Lord’s memorial in Egypt that he cut Rahab and wounded the dragon? He overthrew their armies at the Red Sea, and drowned their hosts beneath the waves; but to his own people, in themselves but very little superior to the Egyptians, God is not the terrible avenger consuming his adversaries, but “Jehovah that healeth thee.” Their mental and moral diseases were almost as great as those of the Egyptians whom the Lord cut off from before him, but he spared his chosen for his covenant sake. He bared the sword of justice against rebellious Pharaoh, and then he turned his tender, healing hand upon his own people, to exercise towards them the heavenly surgery of his grace. Israel knew him as the Lord that heals, and Egypt knew him as the Lord that smites. Let us adore the grace which makes so wide a difference, the sovereign grace which brings salvation unto Israel, and let us confess our own personal obligations to the mercy which has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

Again, how differently does God deal with his own people from what we should have expected. He is a God of surprises, he does things which we looked not for. God deals with us not according to our conception of his ways, but according to his own wisdom and prudence: for as the heavens are high above the earth so high are his thoughts above our thoughts. You would not have supposed that a people for whom God had given Egypt as a ransom would have been led into the wilderness of Shur; neither would you have guessed that a people so near to him that he cleft the sea and made them walk between two glassy walls dry shod, would have been left for three days without water. You naturally expect to see the chosen tribes brought right speedily into a condition of comfort; or, if there must be a journey ere they reach the land that floweth with milk and honey, you look at once for the smitten rock and the flowing stream, the manna and the quails, and all things else which they can desire. How singular it seems that after having done such a great marvel for them the Lord should cause them to thirst beneath a burning sky, and that too when they were quite unprepared for it, being quite new to desert privations, having lived so long by the river of Egypt, where they drank of sweet water without stint. We read at other times, “Thou, Lord, didst send a plenteous rain, whereby thou didst refresh thine inheritance when it was weary”; but here we meet with no showers: no brooks gushed forth below, and no rain dropped from above. Three days without water is a severe trial when the burning sand is below and the blazing sky is above. Yet the Lord’s people in some way or other are sure to be tried; theirs is no holiday parade, but a stern march by a way which flesh and blood would never have chosen.

The Egyptians found enough water, and even too much of it, for they were drowned in the sea, but the well-beloved Israelites had no water at all. So is it with the wicked man; he often has enough of wealth, and too much of it, till he is drowned in sensual delights and perishes in floods of prosperity. He has his portion in this life, and in that portion he is lost, like Pharaoh in the proud waters. Full often the Lord’s people are made to know the pinch of poverty; their lives are made wretched by sore bondage, and they faint for a morsel of bread: they drink from a bitter fountain, which fills their inward parts with gall and wormwood. They are afflicted very much, almost to the breaking of their hearts. One of them said, “All the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.” They lie at the rich man’s gate full of sores, while the ungodly man is clothed in scarlet, and fares sumptuously every day. This is God’s strange way of dealing with his own people. He himself hath said, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” “He scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” Thus he made his people know that the wilderness was not their rest, nor their home: for they could not even find such a common necessary as water wherewith to quench their thirst. He made them understand that the promised brooks that flowed with milk and honey were not in the wilderness, but must be found on the other side of Jordan, in the land which God had given to their fathers, and they must journey thither with weary feet. “This is not your rest,” was the lesson of their parched lips in the three days’ march. You know what teaching there is in all this, for your experience answers to it. Do not marvel, beloved, if with all your joy over your vanquished sin, which shall be seen by you no more for ever, you yet have to lament your present grievous want. The children of Israel cried, “What shall we drink?” This was a wretched sequel to “Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.” Have you never made the same descent? If you are in poverty you are, no doubt, tempted to put that trinity of questions, “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” You are not the first to whom this temptation has happened. Do not marvel at all if up from the triumph of the Red Sea, with a song in your mouth and a timbrel in your hand, you ascend into the great and terrible wilderness, and enter upon the land of drought. This way lies Canaan, and this way you must go. Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom, and therefore let us set our minds to it.

By this grievous test the Lord was proving his people, and causing them to see what was in their hearts. They would have known no wilderness without if there had not been a wilderness within, neither had there been a drought of water for their mouths if the Lord had not seen a drought of grace in their souls. We are fine birds till our feathers are ruffled, and then what a poor figure we cut! We are just a mass of diseases and a bundle of disorders, and unless grace prevents we are the sure prey of death. O Lord, we pray to be proved, but we little know what it means!

Let this suffice for an introduction, and then let our text come in with comfort to our hearts, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” It was to illustrate this great name of God that the tribes were brought into so painful a condition; and indeed all the experience of a believer is meant to glorify God, that the believer himself may see more of God, and that the world outside may also behold the glory of the Lord. Therefore the Lord leadeth his people up and down in the wilderness, and therefore he makes them cry out because there is no water; all to make them behold his power, and his goodness, and his wisdom. Our lives are the canvas upon which the Lord paints his own character.

We shall try this morning to set forth before you, by the help of the divine Spirit, this grand character of God, that he is the God that healeth us. First, we shall notice the healing of our circumstances, dwelling upon that in order the better to set forth the greater fact, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” Secondly, we shall remember the healing of our bodies which is here promised to obedient Israel, and we shall set forth that truth, in order to bring out our third point, which is the healing of our souls: “I am the Lord that healeth thee,”-not thy circumstances only, nor thy bodily diseases only, but thyself, thy soul, thy truest self; for there is the worst bitterness, there is the sorest disease, and there shall the grandest power of God be shown to thee, and to all who know thee.

The glorious Jehovah shows his healing power upon our circumstances. The fainting Israelites thought that when they came to Marah they should slake their thirst. Often enough the mirage had mocked them as it does all thirsty travellers: they thought that they saw before them flowing rivers and palm trees, but as they rushed forward they found nothing but sand, for the mirage was deluding them. At last, however, the waters of Marah were fairly within sight, and they were not a delusion: here was real water, and they were sure of it. No doubt they rushed forward helter-skelter, each man eager to drink, and what must have been their disappointment when they found that they could not endure it. A thirsty man will drink almost anything, but this water was so bitter that it was impossible for them to receive it. I do not read that they had murmured all the three days of their thirsty march, but this disappointment was too much for them. The relief which seemed so near was snatched away: the cup was dashed from their lips, and they began to murmur against Moses, and so in truth against God. Here was the proof of their imperfection: they were impatient and unbelieving. Have we not too often fallen into the same sin? Brethren, let your conscience answer! When you have felt a sharp affliction, and it has continued long, and you have been wearied out with it, you have at length seen a prospect of escape, but that prospect has completely failed you. What woe is this! When the friend you so surely relied upon tells you that he can do nothing; when the physician upon whom you put such reliance informs you that his medicine has not touched the malady, when the last expedient that you could adopt to save yourself from bankruptcy, the last arrow in your quiver has missed the mark-how your spirit has sunk within you in dire despair! Then your heart has begun to wound itself, like the scorpion, with its own sting. You have felt as if you were utterly spent and ready for the grave. The last trial was too much for you, you could bear up no longer. Happy have you been if under such conditions you have not been left to give way to murmuring against God. These poor Israelites were in a very pitiable condition. There was the water before them, but its horrible flavour made them shrink from a second taste. Have you not experienced the same? You have obtained that which you thought would deliver you, but it has not availed you. You looked for light, and beheld darkness; for refreshment, and beheld an aggravated grief. The springs of earth are brackish until Jehovah heals them; they increase the thirst of the man who too eagerly drinks of them. “Cursed is he that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.”

Now, dear friends, in answer to prayer God has often healed your bitter waters and made them sweet. I am about to appeal to your personal experience, you that are truly pilgrims under the guidance of your heavenly Lord. Has it not been so with you? I should have no difficulty in refreshing your memories about Marah, for very likely its bitterness is in your mouth even now, and you cannot forget your sorrow. But just now I wish to refresh your memories about what came of that sorrow. Did not God deliver you? Did he not, when you cried to him, come to your rescue? I appeal to facts, which may be stubborn things, but they are also rich encouragements.

Has not the Lord ofttimes made our bitter waters sweet by changing our circumstances altogether? When the poor in heart have been oppressed, God has taken away the oppressor, or else taken the heart away from the oppression. When you have been in great straits and could not see which way to steer, has not the Lord Jesus seemed to open before you a wider channel, or himself to steer your vessel through all the intricacies of the narrow river, and bring you where you would come? Have you not noticed in your lives that most remarkable changes have taken place at times when anguish took hold upon you? I can bear my witness, if you cannot, that the Lord has great healing power in the matter of our trials and griefs. He has changed my circumstances in providence, and in many ways altered the whole aspect of affairs.

On other occasions the Lord has not removed the circumstances, and yet he has turned sorrow into joy, for he has put into them a new ingredient, which has acted as an antidote to the acrid flavour of your affliction. You were not allowed to leave the shop, but there came a fresh manager, who shielded you from persecution: you were not permitted to quit your business, but there came a wonderful improvement in your trade, and this reconciled you to the long hours. You were not made to be perfectly healthy, but you were helped to a medicine which much assuaged the sharpness of the pain; thus has your Marah been sweetened. Have you not found it so? The weight of your affliction was exceeding great, but the Lord found a counterpoise, and by placing a weight of holy joy in the other scale he lifted up your load, and its weight was virtually taken away. You have been at Marah, but even there you have been able to drink, for a something has been put into the waters of afflictive providence which has made them endurable.

And where this has not been done the Lord has by a heavenly art made your bitter waters sweet by giving you more satisfaction with the divine will, more submission, more acquiescence in what the Lord has ordained. After all, this is the most effectual remedy. If I cannot bring my circumstances to my mind, yet if God helps me to bring my mind to my circumstances the matter is made right. There is a degree of sweetness about pain, and poverty, and shame when once you feel, “The loving Lord ordained all this for me: my tribulation is of his appointing.” Then the soul, feeling that the affliction comes from a Father’s hand, accepts it, and kicks against the pricks no longer. Surely, then, the bitterness of life or of death will be past when the mind is subdued to the Eternal will. These people said, “What shall we drink?” and they would have concluded that Moses was mocking them if he had answered, “You shall drink the bitter water.” They would have said, “We cannot bear it; we remember the sweet water of the Nile; and we cannot endure this nauseous stuff.” But Moses would have said, “Yes, you will drink that, and nothing else but that, and it will become to you all that you want.” Even so, beloved, you may have quarrelled with your circumstances, and said, “I must have a change; I cannot longer bear this trial.” Has not the Lord of his grace changed your mind, and so influenced your will that you have really found comfort in that which was uncomfortable, and content in that which made you discontented? Have you never said when under tribulation, “I could not have believed it: I am perfectly happy under my trial, and yet when I looked forward to it I dreaded it beyond measure. I said it would be the death of me, but now I find that by these things men live, and in all this is the life of my spirit.” We exclaim with Jacob, “All these things are against me,” but the Lord gives us more grace, and we see that all things work together for good, and we bless the Lord for his afflicting hand. So you see the Lord Jehovah heals our bitter waters, and makes our circumstances endurable to our sanctified minds.

Brethren, all this which you have experienced should be to you a proof of God’s power to make everything that is bitter sweet. The depravity of your nature will yet yield to the operations of his grace: the corruptions that are within you will yet be subdued, and you shall enter into the fullest communion with God in Christ Jesus. I know you shall, because the Lord is unchangeable in power, and what he has done in one direction he can and will do in another. Your circumstances were so terrible, and yet God helped you; and now your sins, your inbred sins, which are so dreadful, he will help you against them, and give you power over them. You shall overcome the power of evil: by his grace you shall be sanctified, and you shall manifest the sweetness of holiness instead of the bitterness of self. Cannot you believe it? Does not God’s power exhibited in providence around you prove that he has power enough to do great things within you by his grace? Moreover, should not this healing of your circumstances be to you a pledge that God will heal you as to your inner spirit? He that brought you through the sea and drowned your enemies will also drown your sins, till you shall sing, “The depths have covered them: there is not one of them left.” He that turned your Marah into sweetness will yet turn all your sense of sin into a sense of pardon: all the bitterness of your regret and the sharpness of your repentance shall yet be turned into the joy of faith, and you shall be full of delight in the perfect reconciliation which comes by the precious blood of Christ. Sustaining providences are to the saints sure pledges of grace. The sweetened water is a picture of a sweetened nature: I had almost said it is a type of it. God binds himself by the gracious deliverances of his providence to give you equal deliverances of grace. It is joyous to say, “He is the Lord that healed my circumstances,” but how much better to sing of his name as “The Lord that healeth thee.” Do not be contented till you reach to that; but do be confident that he who healed Marah will heal you; he that has helped you to rejoice in him in all your times of trouble will sustain you in all your struggles with sin, till you shall more sweetly and more loudly praise his blessed name.

Let us now proceed a step further. As we have spoken of God’s healing our circumstances, so now we have to think of the Lord’s healing our bodies.

Why are diseases and pains left in the bodies of God’s people? Our bodies are redeemed, for Christ has redeemed our entire manhood, but if Christ be in us the body is still dead because of sin, even though the spirit is alive because of righteousness. It is not till the resurrection that we shall enjoy the full result of the redemption of the body. Resurrection will accomplish for our bodies what regeneration has done for our souls. We were born again. Ay, but that divine work was exercised only upon our spiritual nature; our bodies were not born again: hence they still abide under the liability of disease, decay, and death, though even these evils have been turned into blessings. This frail, sensitive, and earthly frame, which Paul calls “this vile body,” grows weary and worn, and by-and-by it will fade away and die, unless the Lord shall come; and even if he should come this feeble fabric must be totally changed, for flesh and blood as they now are cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither can corruption dwell with incorruption. Even unto this day the body is under death because of sin, and is left so on purpose to remind us of the effects of sin, that we may feel within ourselves what sin has done, and may the better guess at what sin would have done if we had remained under it, for the pains of hell would have been ours for ever. These griefs of body are meant, I say, to make us recollect what we owe to the redemption of our Lord Jesus, and so to keep us humble and grateful. Aches and pains are also sent to keep us on the wing for heaven, even as thorns in the nest drive the bird from its sloth. They make us long for the land where the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick.

Yet the Lord does heal our bodies. First he heals them by preventing sickness. A prevention is better than cure. The text says, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” It is concerning this selfsame healing Lord that we read, “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” Do we sufficiently praise God for guarding us from disease? I am afraid that his preserving care is often forgotten. Men will go thirty or forty years almost without an illness, and forget the Lord in consequence. That which should secure gratitude creates indifference. When we have been ill we come up to the house of the Lord and desire to return thanks because of our recovery; ought we not to give thanks when we are not ill, and do not need to be recovered? Should it not be to you healthy folk a daily cause of gratitude to God that he keeps away those pains which would keep you awake all night, and wards off those sicknesses which would cause your beauty to consume away like the moth?

But we see this healing hand of the Lord more conspicuously when, like Hezekiah, we have been sick, and have been restored. Sometimes we lie helpless and hopeless like dust ready to return to its fellow dust; we are incapable of exertion, and ready to be dissolved. Then if the Lord renews our youth and takes away our sickness, we do praise his name; and so we ought, for it is not the doctor, it is not the medicine,-these are but the outward means; it is the Lord who is the true Physician, and unto Jehovah-Rophi be the praise. “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” Let those of us that have been laid aside, and have been again allowed to walk abroad, lift up our hearts and our voices in thanksgiving to the Lord who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases.

According to the analogy of the healing of Marah, the Lord does this by means: for he cast a tree into the water. Those who will use no medicine whatever certainly have no Scriptural warrant for their conduct. Even where cures are given to faith, yet the Apostle says, “Is any sick? Let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” The anointing with oil was the proper medicine of the day, and possibly a great deal better medicine than some of the drugs which are used nowadays. To the use of this anointing the promise is given, “and the prayer of faith shall raise the sick.” Hezekiah was miraculously healed, but the Lord said, “take a lump of figs, and lay it upon the sore.” God could have spoken a word and turned Marah sweet, but he did not choose to do so: he would exercise the faith and obedience of his people by bidding them cast a tree into the waters. The use of means is not to hinder faith, but to try it. Still, it is the Lord who works the cure, and this is the point which is so often forgotten. Oh, come let us sing unto Jehovah who hath said,-“I am the Lord that healeth thee.” Do not attribute to secondary means that which ought to be ascribed to God alone. His fresh air, and warm sun, or bracing wind, and refreshing showers do more for our healing than we dream of, or if medicine be used, it is he who gives virtue to the drugs, and so by his own Almighty hand works out our cure. As one who has felt his restoring hand, I will personally sing unto him who is the health of my countenance and my God.

Note this, that in every healing of which we are the subjects we have a pledge of the resurrection. Every time a man who is near the gates of death rises up again he enjoys a kind of rehearsal of that grand rising when from beds of dust and silent clay the perfect saints shall rise at the trump of the archangel and the voice of God. We ought to gather from our restorations from serious and perilous sickness a proof that the God who brings us back from the gates of the grave can also bring us back from the grave itself whenever it shall be his time to do so.

This should also be a yet further proof to us that if he can heal our bodies the Lord can heal our souls. If this poor worm’s meat, which so readily decays, can be revived, so can the soul which is united to Christ and quickened with his life; and if the Almighty Lord can cast out evils from this poor dust and ashes, which must ultimately be dissolved, much more can he cast out all manner of evils from that immaterial spirit which is yet to shine in the brightness of the glory of God. Wherefore both from his healing your woes and from his healing your bodies, gather power to believe in the fact that he will heal your mental, moral, and spiritual diseases, and already lift up your hearts with joy as you sing of Jehovah-Rophi, “The Lord that healeth thee.”

“Sinners of old thou didst receive,

With comfortable words and kind,

Their sorrows cheer, their wants relieve,

Heal the diseased, and cure the blind,

And art thou not the Saviour still,

In every place and age the same?

Hast thou forgot thy gracious skill,

Or lost the virtue of thy name?

Faith in thy changeless name I have;

The good, the kind Physioian, thou

Art able now our souls to save,

Art willing to restore them now.

Though eighteen hundred years are past

Since thou didst in the flesh appear,

Thy tender mercies ever last;

And still thy healing power is here!

Wouldst thou the body’s health restore,

And not regard the sin-sick soul?

The sin-sick soul thou lov’st much more,

And surely thou shalt make it whole.”

The healing of Marah and the healing of the body are placed before the text, and they shed a light upon it. They place this name of the Lord in a golden frame, and cause us to look upon it with the greater interest.

Now we come to the healing of our souls.

The Lord our God will heal our spirits, and he will do it in somewhat the same manner as that in which he healed Marah. How was that? First, he made the people know how bitter Marah was. There was no healing for that water till they had tasted it, and discovered that it was too brackish to be endured; but after they knew its bitterness then the Lord made it sweet to them. So is it with your sin, my brother. It must become more and more bitter to you. You will have to cry out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” You will have to feel that you cannot live upon anything that is within yourself. The creature must be made distasteful to you, and all trusts that come of it; for God’s way is first to kill, and then to make alive; first to wound, and then to heal. He begins by making Marah to be Marah, and afterwards he makes it sweet.

What next? The next thing was there was prayer offered. I do not know whether any of the people possessed faith in God, but if so they had a prayerless faith, and God does not work in answer to prayerless faith. “Oh,” says one, “I am perfectly sanctified.” How do you know? “Because I believe I am.” That will never do. Is a man rich because he believes he is? Will sickness vanish if I believe myself to be well? Some even think it useless to pray because they feel sure of having the blessing. That putting aside of prayer is a dangerous piece of business altogether. If there is not the cry to God for the blessing, ay, and the daily cry for keeping and for sanctification, the mercy will not come. Again, I say, healing comes not to a prayerless faith. You may believe what you like, but God will only hear you when you pray. Faith must pour itself out in prayer before the blessing will be poured into the soul. Moses cried, and he obtained the blessing: the people did not cry, and they would have been in an evil case had it not been for Moses. We must come to crying and praying before we shall receive sanctification, which is the making whole of our spirits.

Marah became sweet through the introduction of something outside of itself-a tree, I know not of what kind. The rabbis say that it was a bitter tree, and naturally tended to make the water more bitter still. However that may be, I cannot imagine any tree in all the world, bitter or sweet, which could have power to sweeten such a quantity of water as must have been at Marah. The transaction was miraculous, and the tree was used merely as the instrument, and no further. But I do know a tree which, if put into the soul, will sweeten all its thoughts and desires: and Jesus knew that tree, that tree whereon he died and shed his blood as a victim for our sin. If the merit of the cross be imputed to us, and the spirit of the cross be introduced into our nature; if we trust the Lord Jesus, and rest upon him; ay, if we become cross-bearers, and our soul is crucified to the world, then we shall find a marvellous change of our entire nature. Whereas we were full of vice, the Crucified One will make us full of virtue; and whereas we were bitter towards God, we shall be sweet to him, and even Christ will be refreshed as he drinks of our love, as he drinks of our trust, as he drinks of our joy in him. Where all was acrid, sharp, and poisonous, everything shall become pure, delicious, and refreshing. We must first experience a sense of bitterness, then cry out to the Lord in prayer, and then yield an obedient faith which puts the unlikely tree into the stream, and then the divine power shall be put forth upon us by him who saith, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.”

The inner healing is set forth as in a picture in the sweetening of the bitter pools of Marah. I know I am right in saying so, because we are told of Moses, “There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them.”

Again the task of turning Marah sweet was a very difficult one. No human power could have achieved it: and even so the task of changing our nature is not only difficult, but impossible to us. We must be born again, not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. There was no turning Marah sweet by any means within the reach of Moses or the myriads that came up with him out of Egypt. This wonder must come from Jehovah’s hand. So is the change of our nature a thing beyond all human might. Who can make his own heart clean? God must work this marvel. We must be born again from above, or else we shall remain in the gall of bitterness even unto the end.

But yet the work was very easy to God. How simple a thing it was just to take a tree and cast it into the bitter water and find it sweet at once. Even so it is an easy thing to God to make us a new heart and a right spirit, and so to incline us to everything that is right and good. What a blessing is this! If I had to make myself holy I must despair; and if I had to make myself perfect and keep myself so it would never be done; but the Lord Jehovah can do it, and has already begun to do it. Things which I once hated I now love: all things have become new. Simple faith in Jesus Christ, the putting of the cross into the stream, does it all, and does it at once, too, and does it so effectually that there is no return of the bitterness, but the heart remains sweet and pure before the living God.

The task was completely accomplished. The people came and drank of Marah just as freely as they afterwards drank of Elim or of the water that leaped from the smitten rock. So God can and will complete in us the change of our nature. Paul saith, “I am persuaded that he that hath begun a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ.” The Lord has not begun to sweeten us a little with the intent of leaving us in a half healed condition, but he will continue the process till we are without trace of defilement, made pure and right in his sight.

This work is one which greatly glorifies God. If the change of Marah’s water made the people praise God, much more will the change of nature make us adore him for ever and ever. We are going to be exalted, brethren, by-and-by, to the highest place in the universe next to God. Man, poor, sinful man, is to be so changed as to be able to stand side by side with Christ, who has for that very purpose taken upon himself human nature. We are to be above the angels. The highest seraphim shall be less privileged than the heirs of salvation. Now, the tendency to pride would be very strong upon us, only that we shall always recollect what we used to be, and what power it was that has made us what we are. This will make it safe for God to glorify his people. There will be no fear of our sullying God’s honour, or setting ourselves up in opposition to him, as did Lucifer of old. It shall never be said of any spirit washed in the precious blood of Jesus, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O son of the morning!” for the process through which we shall pass in turning our bitterness to sweetness will fill us with perpetual adoration, and with constant reverence of the unspeakably mighty grace of God. Will it not be so, brethren? Do not your impulses even now lead you to feel that, when you gain your promised crowns, the first thing you will joyfully do will be to cast them at the feet of Jesus, and say, “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be glory for ever and ever.” That sweetened Marah was all of God; our renewed nature shall be all of God. We shall not be able to take the slightest particle of credit to ourselves, nor shall we wish to do so. Brethren, the Lord will do it; he will be sure to do it because it will glorify his name. Let us draw comfort from this fact: there will be no interfering with the Lord by a rival claimant to honour, no idolatry in us taking away part of his praises; therefore he will do it, and change our bitterness into perfect sweetness. Blessed be his name, he can do it: nothing will baffle the skill of “the Lord that healeth thee.” Whenever I am cast down under a sense of corruption, I always like to get a hold of this divine name, “The Lord that healeth thee.” “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Faithful is he that hath called you, who also will do it,” says the Apostle. He has not undertaken what he will fail to perform. Jehovah that made heaven and earth has undertaken to to make us perfect, and effectually to heal us: therefore let us be confident that it will assuredly be accomplished, and we shall be presented without spot before God.

He who healeth us is a God so glorious that he will certainly perform the work. There is none like unto the Omnipotent One! He is able to subdue all things unto himself. His wisdom, power, and grace can so work upon us that where sin abounded grace shall much more abound.

“Thou canst o’ercome this heart of mine;

Thou wilt victorious prove;

For everlasting strength is thine,

And everlasting love.

Thy powerful Spirit shall subdue

Unconquerable sin;

Cleanse this foul heart, and make it new,

And write thy law within.”

He is a God who loves us so, and makes us so precious in his sight, that he gave Egypt for our ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for us. A God so loving will surely perfect that which concerneth us. Moreover, a God so fond of purity, a God who hates sin so intensely, and who loves righteousness so fervently will surely cleanse the blood of his own children. He must and will make his own family pure. “This people have I formed for myself: they shall show forth my praise.” The devil cannot hinder that decree. “They shall,” says God, and they shall, too, whatever shall stand in their way. They must and they shall show forth God’s praise.

Now, as you have believed in God for your justification and found it in Christ, so believe in God for your sanctification, that he will work in you to will and to do according to his good pleasure; that he will exterminate in you the very roots of sin; that he will make you like himself, without taint or speck, and that, as surely as you are trusting in Christ, you shall be whiter than snow, pure as the infinite Jehovah, and you shall stand with his Firstborn, accepted in the Beloved. My soul seems to grasp this, and to hold it all the more firmly because the Lord has turned my bitter circumstances into sweetness, and he has healed the sickness of my body. Because of these former mercies I know that he will heal the sickness of my spirit, and I shall be whole, that is to say holy, without spot or trace of sin, and so shall I be for ever with the Lord. “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

Brethren, if the Lord has taken you into his hospital and healed you, do not forget other sick folk. Freely ye have received, freely give. Give to-day to the hospitals in which so many of the poor are cared for and succoured. Do it for Jesus’ sake, and may the Lord accept your offerings.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Exodus 15:20-27; Psalm 103:1-13; Psalm 121.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-103 (part 2), 599, 394.