Part 4 (1/2)
”I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him” (Isaiah 57: 18, 19).
Here we have the picture of a soul that has gone astray and been suffering under the chastening of the Lord. ”For the iniquity of his covetousness I was wroth and smote him.” And the chastening for a time seemed to be in vain. ”I hid me and was wroth. And he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.” But at last the stubborn will broke and instantly the heart of G.o.d flew to meet His returning child. ”I have seen his ways and will heal him.” Here we have healing as the result of repentance and returning to G.o.d. But this is not all. ”I will lead him also and will restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.”
But there is another healing a little farther on. After the soul has been led into the fulness of Christ and the ”peace, peace,” of the Spirit's inbreathing, then, for the second time the Lord says, ”I will heal him.” This is different from the first healing. When first we come to G.o.d for physical help He meets us on the ground of faith and promise, not waiting for a deep spiritual experience, but blessing us immediately.
Our first experience of healing is usually easy and free from the tests and conflicts of our maturer life. But later, after we have entered into all the experiences of these verses, we reach a deeper physical life, one that draws its strength from Christ by the Holy Spirit and finds in Him a new source of health and life. This becomes the habit of faith. It is not mere deliverance from some sudden and special attack of disease, but a normal strength that draws its support continually from Jesus as the Head of our body and the life of all our being.
THE LIFE OF LOVE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF HEALING.
”Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.”
”And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (Isaiah 58:8-11).
Here we have a still deeper experience of life and healing. It is not mere righteousness now, but love. The soul has been taught the true fast which the Lord loves, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to deal out bread to the hungry, clothe the naked and bring the poor and outcast home. Then shall our light break forth as the morning and our health shall spring forth speedily. Then shall the Lord satisfy our soul in drought and make fat our bones, and we shall be like a watered garden and a spring of waters whose waters fail not. Here is the rich and overflowing life of G.o.d springing from a heart full of love and benevolence.
Watering others we become watered ourselves. Our health springs. It is not pumped up from a dry well, but the overflow of a great artesian fountain. Our very bones are made fat. There is something fine in this figure. It reaches to the marrow. This is not necessarily the fat that is on our bones, but in our bones. Some people are made of dry bones. They are parched and pinched and always seem to be at starvation point. There is no unction, freshness or heartiness about them. Their lives are hard and hidebound, like Baizac's dreadful hero whose skin was too tight for him and at last squeezed him to death. Others seem to be always mellow, whole hearted, fresh and overflowing with sympathy, cheer and help for others. Their bones have been made fat. They have got some marrow in them. This is the life that G.o.d gives.
It is a higher kind of health and imparts exhilaration and spring to every movement and impulse.
So we have found in the book of Isaiah three kinds of health. There is that which comes from waiting on the Lord (Isaiah 40: 31). There is that which comes from getting right with G.o.d (Isaiah 57: 18). And there is that which springs from the overflow of the life of love. How very significant it is that all these physical blessings spring from spiritual conditions and seem to belong to the very nature of things.
A man's health, therefore, is largely a matter of higher conditions. The more we ascend in the spiritual plane the more directly are we in touch with all the sources of divine and supernatural life which center in Christ the Living One and the Fountain of Life to all who abide in Him.
CHAPTER XII.
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL HEALING.
Until after the time of Solomon there seems to have been no departure from the simplicity of the ancient faith with respect to the body. But he laid the foundation for that departure from G.o.d by an alliance with the world which led to all the disasters of his people in the succeeding generations.
Allying himself with Egypt, and introducing its luxuries, refinements and intermarriages, there soon followed, no doubt, its physicians too, and the grandson of Solomon, king Asa, is the first example of their treatment in the entire Bible. His act is mentioned with manifest disapproval, as indicating distrust in G.o.d, and is marked by G.o.d's displeasure in its fatal termination. It is marked by a whole series of gradual departures from G.o.d through seeking human alliances in his exigencies. ”Because thou hast relied upon the king of Syria, and relied not on the Lord,” was the same principle which a little later caused his death. ”In his sickness Asa sought not unto the Lord, but unto the physicians.”
In a recently published address one speaks of those ”who have not sufficient faith in G.o.d to see Him in and through the use of means,” and adds, ”The use of means ought not to lessen our faith in G.o.d, and our faith in G.o.d ought not to hinder our using those means which He has given us for the carrying out of His own purposes.” It is strange that this distinction is not brought out by the Holy Spirit in this, the first reference to the subject in the Scriptures.
Why does the Lord not blame him for not asking a blessing on the physicians? How is it that the forbidden act was not the neglect of this, but the seeking unto the physicians instead of the Lord? His going to them is not regarded as an evidence or an opportunity for faith in G.o.d, but the reverse. And is it not the usual rule of human nature to lean harder on the smallest twig of the visible and the human than upon the whole Omnipotence of an unseen G.o.d? And the real test of faith is to be willing to step out on ”the seeming void,” and expect to find ”the Rock beneath.”
The case of Naaman, a little later, is a pleasing contrast. His disease was incurable, and especially suggestive of the connection between sickness and sin. His first application was about as far back as the most ignorant and blundering soul could wish for its encouragement. Overflowing with pride and self-consciousness, he came to the prophet's door, and expected attention and consideration, but received the deathblow, first to his self-will and then to his sickness. How wisely and bravely the old prophet left him with G.o.d, and let him down into the death of self!
So it must ever he. Naaman must die ere the leper can be cleansed and the healing come. And he dies, as every other must, by an act of faith; and how simple an act! Only implicit obedience to the Divine Word. He does just what the prophet tells him, and he does it through to the end. That is faith.
For salvation, for healing, for everything, faith is to do just what G.o.d tells us, and then leave the result with Him. Are you sick? There is a command in James as explicit as Elisha's orders. Simply, promptly, fully obey it, and G.o.d will hold Himself as much bound to honor His own word as He does you to obey it.
Naaman's faith had to be continuous, abiding and persistent. Seven times had he been commanded to wash in Jordan. This involved the very essence of faith; viz., an act which at first perceives no sign of the answer claimed. Once, twice, thrice he entered the sacred river and returned. Once, twice, thrice again he repeated it. But there was yet no sign of healing. So must we believe and act and expose ourselves to the humiliation of apparent failure.
How often must it have seemed to him like a vain repet.i.tion or foolish play! But he continued until every word had been fulfilled and the order of faith and obedience explicitly, completely carried through. And then the answer came-his flesh ”as the flesh of a little child,” his leprosy all gone, and his soul exulting in the consciousness of new, and pure, and perfect health. So let us believe and wait and finish the steps of faith.
His subsequent history is full of instruction. First, his grat.i.tude prompts him to make a generous return as a thank-offering, and the prophet, with a wise avoidance of even the appearance of mercenary considerations, declines at the time to receive his gift. Next, with a prompt and wholehearted consecration, he declares his steadfast dedication henceforth to the true G.o.d. And then, with a jealous perplexity about his precise duty while attending his royal master in the temples of idolatry, he asks the prophet's counsel.
The prophet throws him back on G.o.d, and he goes forth to be a witness for G.o.d throughout the whole of Syria.
There is one other instance of healing in the later years of the kingdom of Judah. It is the story of Hezekiah. That it was a supernatural and, indeed, a miraculous healing, and not the result of remedies, is evident from the fact that he had been declared by G.o.d to be in a dying condition, and the distinct statement in Chronicles that G.o.d ”wrought a miracle for him” (margin) and healed him. If it were miraculous, this disposes at once of the whole question of the means used; they must have been symbolical and not remedial.
His prayer is given with considerable fullness by Isaiah. It began, like many of our prayers, with a wail of unbelief. ”Like a crane or a swallow he chattered,” and many a modern prayer is no better. But at length he reached the point of self-despair, and with the cry, ”Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me, the deliverance came. What shall I say? He hath both spoken to me and Himself hath done it.”
The faith of Hezekiah in asking a sign was very great. He asked something harder even than his healing. G.o.d has given us a still greater sign-the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. After this, nothing is too hard for us to ask or Him to do.
Hezekiah did not make the most of his new life. He allowed his blessing to lift up his heart in foolish pride, and a greater blow had to come, which left his kingdom and household a heritage of sorrow.
The attempt of some to make the healing of Hezekiah a warrant for the use of medical remedies in our sickness is fatally weak in these respects: I. He was incurably sick, and no remedy could be a means.
2. His healing was called ”a miracle,” and if so, could not in any sense be natural.
3. The application used is called a sign. At least this seems to be implied in the last two verses of Isaiah.
4. It was administered by Isaiah through a special Divine revelation, and not through medical science.
5. There was no resort to physicians whatever, but from the first a simple waiting upon G.o.d.
6. The plaster of figs may have been no more than the anointing with oil in James; viz., a sign that the case had been committed to and undertaken by the Lord.
7. Hezekiah did what he was told by the Lord exactly, and faith should do just what G.o.d's Word still teaches us in sickness.
CHAPTER XIII.
HEALING IN HIS WINGS.
”But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall” (Mal. 4:2).
This is a vision of the Springtime of the ages, with its glorious suns.h.i.+ne and its overflowing life. The vision came to the last of the Old Testament prophets as he looked out from the sere and cheerless winter of Israel's trials to the brighter future their Messiah was to bring.
I. The first picture is the Sunrise and the Light.
Another prophet had caught the same vision and had written, three centuries before, ”The people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up.”
Looking across the gulf of four centuries, Malachi saw the rising dawn of the Christian age and the light which was to s.h.i.+ne from the face of Jesus Christ on a lost and benighted world. It was the vision of a glorious sunrise. How literally our Lord fulfilled the prophecy and claimed the promise as He stood amid the false teachings and perverted light of His age and cried aloud, ”I am the Light of the world, he that followeth Me shall not abide in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
Christ is the Sun of righteousness. All other teachers were but light bearers. They shone only with reflected light, but He came as a Divine luminary, bearing the direct light of G.o.d Himself into the world's darkness. ”G.o.d, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.” The teachings and the example of Jesus Christ bring to us the revelation of G.o.d's will and His purposes of love and mercy toward our fallen race.
But Christ did not leave us merely with the light of His Word, and His pattern of grace, but has also left us His Holy Spirit as the personal Agent through whom the light is brought down to our very hearts and made plain to our blindness and ignorance. Not only does He give us light, but also sight. Just as the solar light would be useless to the physical universe were it not for the atmosphere which diffuses it and communicates to our sensitive organs of vision, so the Holy Spirit has been given to take of the things that are Christ's and reveal them unto us, and make G.o.d's light personal and sufficient for every quickened soul.
The sunrise that Malachi saw was not merely the dawn of the Christian era, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness in the personal ministry of Jesus Christ, but there is a sunrise just as real and glorious that comes to every soul which opens its vision to the light of G.o.d. The words become true to the individual heart that has long been sitting in darkness: ”Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises With healing in His wings.”