THE BALM OF GILEAD

THE BALM IN GILEAD

By Winston Pannell

Jeremiah 8: 18-22

Since the fall of man in Adam, sinners have misrepresented Gods character by making too much of His love and too little of our sins. We all think by nature that God will bless us at the expense of His holiness and justice. We think God loves every body and deny God’s testimony that “God hates all workers of iniquity.”(Psalm 5:5) We know we’re sinners but we think we’ve never done anything worthy of eternal death. We believe that God will not require of us strict obedience to His law or punish us with eternal death for our transgressions. By nature we think God will grade us on the curve; i.e.; He will weigh the good in us against the bad and reward us accordingly.

Such reasoning is the product of a depraved heart and mind. Sinners think such thoughts because they are ignorant of who God is and their own depraved nature. It takes a miracle of grace from the only God of grace to reveal to us and change our minds concerning His true character and our own depravity. Unless and until He works His grace in us in the power of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and conversion under the true gospel, we are without recourse to change and don’t even want to change. We don’t see a need for change. In fact, by nature we fight any change.

To encourage us in this false religion, Satan’s false preachers tell us we’re okay if we will just try harder and do the best we can to clean up our act in the areas of morality, sincerity and our commitment to God. They beat us over the head with legal fears and threats of punishment or the promise of rewards if we will conform to their doctrine of works. They set us going about to establish a righteousness of our own in opposition to the one righteousness God will accept: that righteousness established by Christ and imputed by the Father at the cross.

They set us going about looking for something in us, something done by us or something the Holy Spirit does in us to make us accepted before God. The one thing they will never tell us about is the only thing God will accept to receive sinners into His presence and fellowship, the imputed righteousness of God. And their failure to disclose this truth reveals the obvious; they are ignorant of or not submitted themselves to it. And God says of them in Romans 10:1-4, that they are lost. They are blind leaders of the blind. (Matthew 15:14) Their morality and zeal is abominable to God.

Am I preaching against morality, sincerity and commitment? NO. We should be more moral. We should be more sincere. We should be more committed, but none of these things or anything proceeding from us will change our standing with God one whit. The best work of charity we could ever perform will not change our standing before God. Even the worst sin we could commit will not change the standing of those in Christ. Ask David, King of Israel. Salvation is not based on what we do or don’t do; it’s conditioned on what Christ has already done for His people. Until we are shown this truth in the scriptures, we will continue to misinterpret God’s Word and misrepresent God’s true character and our own depraved nature.

Let see in Isaiah 1:1-19, what God say’s of us all by nature.

· V-2-All of us are rebels. We have resisted God’s way for our own way. We have sought acceptance with God based on our works and not Christ’s righteousness. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” (Isaiah 53:6) If we don’t see this, nothing God’s word says to us will make any sense and we’ll always draw the wrong conclusions.

· V-3- none, by nature know God. We think by nature, “God is altogether such an one as are we.” (Psalm 50:21) We judge by the outward appearance, “God looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

· V-4- A sinful nation. Read Isaiah 6:5. The sin of America, as was the sin of the nation Israel is a specific sin. “They have forsaken the Lord.” We have rejected God’s righteousness and opted for our own. God has redeemed his people at the cross. We busy ourselves in works religion trying to redeem ourselves until God causes us to rest in Christ. That’s what it is to “go away backwards.” Our actions totally oppose God and His way. His is the way of grace- ours is the way of works.

· V5-6- We are totally depraved. “The head is sick, the heart is faint, there is no soundness in us, nothing but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores from the top of our head to the sole of our feet.” There is nothing good, which proceeds from us. Every thought we think is evil, every deed we perform is evil, every motive we have is sinful. Our best prayer, our best sermon, our best offering is nothing but sin. We have to agree with the Apostle Paul when he said of himself in Romans 7:18; “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.”

· V 9-10- We are compared with Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham petitioned God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He promised to do so if Abraham could find 10 righteous men therein. God destroyed the cities with fire and brimstone.

Why do sinners remain in such a state of depravity before God? V-6 gives the answer. “Our wounds, bruises and sores have not been closed, neither bound up nor mollified with ointment.”

If God’s word reveals to us the remedy for our sin don’t you think we should listen? Should we not a least consider what He says? Read Isaiah 1:18-20. My doctor tells me that I am in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. If someone told me they had the cure for it I would not hesitate to submit to it. I would be foolish not to do so because I know this disease can be deadly.

But lost sinners will not hear God’s messenger when we warn of the dangers, which we clearly see ahead for those who refuse to bow to God’s testimony concerning the proper treatment of sin. God’s Word is specific about the cure because this sin is specific. What is this sin? V 5-6 defines it as seeking to be justified before God based on something other than Christ’s righteousness imputed. We’ll see this more clearly in a moment. Even justified sinners must fight the temptation to seek acceptance before God based on our works. This truly is the “sin that does so easily beset us.” (Hebrews 12:1) It’s the natural thing to think when prosperity comes our way that God has rewarded us for something good we’ve done. It’s also the natural thing to think when trials come our way that God is punishing us for something bad we’ve done. The truth is that any reward from God is based on what Christ has done for sinners and condemnation is the result of their refusal of what Christ accomplished for his people at the cross. What we do or don’t do has nothing to do with our justification before God.

In V 5-6 the Prophet uncovers the real problem to be with the head and the heart. “The head is sick.” This means that by nature, sinners cannot make one right and just judgment. Jesus commands us in John 7:24 to “judge righteous judgment.” By nature we always judge according to the outward appearance. His warning against such judgment is this: “with what judgment you judge, ye shall be judged.” (Matthew 7: 2) If we insist on judging sinners saved or lost based on their character and conduct, we will be judged by the same standard and at the judgment will come up short. Of the heart God say’s; “the whole heart is faint.” The heart is unclean. In Jeremiah 17:9, God declares; “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Because the head is sick and the heart faint, the whole body is death; it is leprous. That’s what He’s describing in V-6 - a leper. And we know what the end of the leper was- death. There was no cure for leprosy but the grace of God. There’s no cure for spiritual leprosy but the grace of God.

The real issue here is not our immorality; it is not our lack of sincerity; it is not our unconcern. It’s our unwillingness to submit to God’s standard of judgment and His way of salvation. God clearly shows this to be so in V 11.

In V-11, God condemns the sacrifice sinners bring to the Altar. “To what purpose is your sacrifice to me? What is your motive? It’s legal, not grace.

In V-12, God rejects their worship of Him. “When you appear before me.”

In V-13, God rejects their offering. “Bring no more VAIN oblations.”(sacrifices) Even your solemn meetings are iniquity.

In V-14, God say’s; “I hate your feast days.”

In V-15, God refuses to hear the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood. This is a specific blood. When Pilate would give them Jesus or Barabbas, they chose Jesus saying;” His blood be upon us and on our children.” (Mathew 27:25)

V-11- what is wrong with their sacrifices? Does not God require a sacrifice? Did not God require of them certain days and months? Psalm 51:17 identifies the sacrifice God will accept. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” My best offering to God is iniquity. A Holy God cannot accept sin. Any offering God will accept must unblemished. There is no other sacrifice unblemished but that of the Lord Jesus Christ who “offered himself without spot to God.” (Hebrews 9:14) It is the truth of this sacrifice, which breaks the spirit of man, who from a broken and contrite heart, cry’s out for mercy to the God of mercy that pleases God. There can be but one sacrifice for sin. If my Substitute and Representative, the Lord Jesus Christ has made the only sacrifice, which the Father will accept, what can I bring? I come with the assurance that His sacrifice satisfied all the claims of God’s law against me and secures me in an unchangeable standing of justification before God, based on his righteousness imputed there at the cross.

It was to this end that all the sacrifices, ceremonies, feast days and new moons were established and commanded of Israel by God. They were types and shadows of the one sacrifice for sin, the Lord Jesus Christ. “The law is our schoolmaster to lead us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

Well, what will cause the rebellious sinner to submit to God’s salvation? What will cause the sinner to bring an acceptable sacrifice to the Altar of God? What will cause the sinner to plead Christ’s righteousness imputed as all his salvation and repent of all other attempts to worship and serve God? The answer is found in V-6. Here, God reveals for us the source of our problem. “Your wounds, your bruises and your sores have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.” This is symbolic language. God is not talking about literal wounds and sores but the spiritual corruption of sinners by nature. He’s talking about the spiritual state of sinners by nature in Adam. When we fell in Adam, sinners were left wounded and bruised with sin, which ate at us like a canker and rendered us helpless to alleviate our predicament. The Hebrew word “soundness” in v-6 is the word unimpaired. Sin has impaired us to the point where we can do nothing to rectify our transgressions against God. The “wounds and bruises” are the result of sin against God. Sores are the infected, and if left untreated areas, which will result in spiritual, eternal death. To escape this end, sinners must have their wounds bound up and mollified with ointment. Where is a sufficient ointment to be found?

Read Jeremiah 8:18-22. Here, God reveals to us this ointment to be the “balm in Gilead.”

This balm is:

The prescription of God’s choice, ministered by
The Physician of God’s choice, to
The people of God’s choice.

It is a specific balm, ministered by a specific physician, for a specific sin, to a specific people.

To understand God’s teaching here, a little background will help.

Balm was produced from the resinous extractions of the balsam fir, a member of the pine tree family. This particular tree was indigenous to Gilead, a region east of the Jordan River in Israel. From this resin, an aromatic balm was distilled which had many medicinal properties. It was, in many ways like the turpentine we harvested from the pine tree in rural Georgia up until the early 60’s. We used this product for every ache and pain with great success. It was good for sores, strained muscles, sore throats, joint pain and infections of various kinds. In other words, it was our miracle drug. We always had a bottle of it on hand and we used it regularly. It was a mainstay in our medicine cabinet.

The Balm found in Gilead was a miracle drug also. It was, in the days before modern medicine one of the major sources of eastern medication for healing. In fact, the Ishmaelites to whom Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave were on their way to Egypt in a caravan laden with this balm. (Genesis 37:25)

Here in Jeremiah 8: 22, we are granted insight into the spiritual properties of this balm in Gilead. This balm in Gilead is:

1. The prescription of God’s choice. V-22a

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there nothing to recover the health of the daughter of my people?” As we saw earlier in Isaiah 1, Israel was sick. This sickness was spiritual, not physical. “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there was no soundness.” They were plagued with the infirmity of sin and under the sentence of eternal death. They needed a prescription capable of removing the sentence of eternal death and the power to deliver them into the favor and grace of God. God’s word from the beginning has declared that prescription to be the righteousness He would provide Himself by the sacrifice of His Son on the tree. Christ is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”(Revelation 13:8) He was cursed of God because “it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”(Galatians 3:13) As the wounds of the balsam tree provided resin to produce balm for Israel’s healing, so He that “was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” on the cross was the means for God to provide the righteousness His people needed for healing. Fallen in Adam and helpless to redeem themselves, they needed a “righteousness which exceeded that of the Scribes and Pharisees.” (Matthew 5:20) No other prescription will suffice. If sinners will enter the Kingdom of Heaven we must have this balm, this righteousness. The problem with most in religion today is as it was in Jeremiah’s day. Read Jeremiah 8:9-11. Here the Prophet warns them and us of the danger of false prophets who “heal slightly.” (They come up short in their healing.) Being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish a righteousness of their own, (Romans 10:1-4) they deceive sinners into thinking something other than the blood and righteousness of Christ could recommend them to God. To “heal slightly” is to fail to make the proper diagnosis and the radical procedures to remove the infection. They try to cover the problem of sin with a band-aid instead of the knife. To “heal slightly” is to promote a cure that fails to get to the root of the problem. The problem is sin, a specific sin and; “the wages of this sin is death.” The “soul that sinneth, (commits this sin) it shall surely die.” Sin demands death; either in our person or in the Person of a suitable Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. They “cry peace where there is no peace.” They compromise the gospel, which proclaims the only peace of God to be that which Christ made when He satisfied law and justice for those He represented. This peace came at the expense of His precious blood and God will accept nothing less from sinners than perfection. We find our perfection and peace only in Him,” who is our peace.”(Ephesians 2:14) “Who made peace by the blood of His cross.” (Colossians 1:20) If we seek peace with God by any other means than His righteousness imputed we shall die. The words “closed, bound and mollified” are in the “perfect mood,” meaning a completed action.

If God’s righteousness was imputed to you at the cross, and it was to all for whom Christ died, your wounds, your bruises and putrefying sores have been healed. It alone is the prescription of God’s choice, ministered by

2. The physician of God’s choice. V-22b

Where is Gilead? Gilead is where the Balm for healing is found. The only balm we need and God accepts is found in Christ’s righteousness imputed.

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” The question is rhetorical; the obvious answer is yes. Yes there is a balm in Gilead. Yes there is a physician in Gilead. Yes there is righteousness in Gilead, provided by God himself, when “He made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”(2 Corinthians 5:21) God the Father charged to God the Son, the sins of all He represented and in His obedience, suffering and death on the cross, He “Put away their sins by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:26) He did so by satisfying all the demands of God’s holy law and justice against them and establishing a righteousness for them which God the Father freely imputed to them there at the cross. The Law, which says, “cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the Law to do them,”(Galatians 3:10) now pronounces a blessing upon all to whom the law is satisfied and His righteousness has been established and imputed.

Can this Physician heal his people? He declares in John 6:39; “And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” Jesus said in John 10:16; “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” His very name means Savior. “Call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) If God the Father prescribed the medication for our sins and appointed Christ the Physician to provide and apply the medicine, can there be any danger of failure? The Apostle Paul answers the question this way in Romans 8:33-34; “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s Elect. It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemeth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of the Father, who also maketh intercession for us.” Christ, in His Priestly office made the one sacrifice for sin when He died on the tree. In His Kingly office He rules and reigns now in heaven to insure that all for whom He died receive every blessing he earned for them. If He should fail, which He cannot fail, God would cease to be God. His righteousness is the prescription of God’s choice and He is the Physician of God’s choice to minister this balm to:

3 The people of God’s choice. V-22c “Why then is not the health (the Hebrew word is perfection) of the Daughter of my people recovered?” “Why is not my daughter perfected?” For whom was this righteousness established and imputed? The lost, unenlightened sinner would answer- for everyone. The lie of Satan that God loves everybody and Christ died for everybody is believed by the majority in religion today. If this were true, then God would not have specified just “the daughter of my people” but all Israel. This question also is rhetorical. The obvious answer is; the health of the daughter IS recovered, but not for all Israel, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel”(Romans 9:6)

If God has provided righteousness in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was imputed at the cross to every sinner for whom Christ died, why then is not the health of my daughter recovered? What else is required? Is there a balm in Gilead? Yes. Is there a physician to minister it? Yes. What else then is needed? For those of Jeremiah’s day, the only thing lacking was the actual performance by Christ in time to establish the righteousness God in forbearance would establish and impute to them. For those of us who were born after the cross, we were justified together with the Old Testament saints when Christ shed his blood on the cross. As the imputation of sin was a one-time act by God to all Adam represented when he fell, so the imputation of righteousness is a one-time act by God to all Christ represented when He died on the cross. They, believing the promise of God, looked forward to the cross and we look back to the cross. (Hebrews 11:13)

Who is “the daughter of my people?” Of whom is the prophet speaking here? I believe the Prophet is referring to the church, God’s Elect, not just in Israel but also from every kindred, tongue and nation- i, e; “a remnant according to the election of grace.”(Romans 11:5)

Jesus addressed this subject when he confronted the woman with an issue of blood in Matthew 9:22; “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.”

In Matthew 21:1-5 Christ addressed this subject again. Here He is quoting Isaiah 62:11. The daughter” referenced here is the Bride of Christ, the church- all those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, justified at the cross, robed in the righteousness He established and God imputed at the cross. The “daughter” is all those who are in an unchangeable standing of justification before God and sure for final glory in heaven based solely on Christ’s finished work for them. Read Isaiah 62:11-12

Are you one of the “ sought out?” Are you a citizen of “A city not forsaken?”

Have your sores been bound up? Have they been mollified? Has the salve of righteousness been applied to your wounds? It is the prescription of God’s choice, ministered by the Physician of God’s choice to the people of God’s choice.

There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin sick soul. There is a balm in Gilead, to make the sinner whole.

Prescription of choice, ministered by the physician of choice for the people of choice.