![]() We may name many grievous diseases which are the destroyers of our race, but the greatest of these is sin: sin, indeed, is the fatal egg from which all other sicknesses have been hatched. Sin is sadly destructive to man it takes the crown from his head, the light from his mind, and the joy from his heart. Sin is disturbing to manhood: sin unmans a man. Sin is abnormal a sort of cancerous growth, which ought not to be within the soul. Man was never more fully and truly man than he was before he fell and he who is specially called “the Son of man” knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth yet was he perfectly man. Sin is a disease, for it is not essential to manhood, nor an integral part of human nature as God created it. At any rate, sin is a spiritual malady of the worst kind. Propensities to evil are usually associated with a greater or less degree of mental disease perhaps, also, of physical disease. Nor is this without reason, for men who indulge in gross vices are often charitably judged by their fellows to be not only wholly wicked, but partly mad. That he may be able to deal with us on hopeful grounds, he looks at the sickness of sin, and not as yet at the wickedness of sin. Our sin is our crime rather than our calamity: however, God looks at it in another way for a season. If our iniquities were the result of an unavoidable sickness, we might claim pity rather than censure but we sin wilfully, we choose evil, we transgress in heart, and therefore we bear a moral responsibility which makes sin an infinite evil. It is most gracious on his part to do so for while sin is a disease, it is a great deal more. In great mercy he looks upon us with pity, and for the while treats our ill manners as if they were diseases to be cured rather than rebellions to be punished. If he were to treat it at once as sin, and summon us to his bar to answer for it, we should at once sink beyond the reach of hope, for we could not answer his accusations, nor defend ourselves from his justice. The Lord in this present life treats sin as a disease. “With his stripes”- that is, the stripes of the Lord Jesus “we are healed.” Through the sufferings of our Lord, sin is pardoned, and we are delivered from the power of evil: this is regarded as the healing of a deadly malady. In endeavouring to come to the full meaning of the text, I would remark, first, that GOD, IN INFINITE MERCY, HERE TREATS SIN AS A DISEASE. May the Holy Spirit give me power to do both to the glory of God! ![]() The object of my discourse is very simple: I would come to the text, and I would come at you. God is very gracious, and he will hear our prayers. I said to myself, “That text will suit me well, and peradventure a voice from God may speak through it yet again to some other awakened sinner.” May he, who by these words spoke to the chamberlain of the Ethiopian queen, who also was impressed with them while in the act of searching the Scripture, speak also to many who shall hear or read this sermon! Let us pray that it may be so. Blessed be his name, I am healed!” It was well that the seeker was wise enough to search the sacred volume it was better still that in that volume there should be such a life-giving word, and that the Holy Spirit should reveal it to the seeker’s heart. “Here is the healing that I need for my sin-sick soul, and I see how it comes to me through the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this prophet he read on till near the end, and then in the fifty-third chapter, these words arrested his delighted attention, “With his stripes we are healed.” “Now I have found it,” says he. He passed through the Psalms, but did not find his Saviour there and the same was the case with the other books till he reached Isaiah. Neither did the holy histories yield him comfort, nor the book of Job. So, taking the Bible into his hand, he said to himself, “Eternal life is to be found somewhere in this Word of God and if it be here, I will find it, for I will read the Book right through, praying to God over every page of it, if perchance it may contain some saving message for me.” He told us that the earnest seeker read on through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so on and though Christ is there very evidently, he could not find him in the types and symbols. Mackay, of Hull, make a speech, in which he told us of a person who was under very deep concern of soul, and felt that he could never rest till he found salvation. 5.īEING one evening in Exeter Hall, I heard our late beloved brother, Mr. “With his stripes we are healed.”- Isaiah liii. Number Two-thousand or, Healing by the Stripes of Jesus
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |