Help for Your Sickness

Help for Your Sickness

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"When evening was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed
with devils: and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all
that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah
the Prophet, saying, He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses."
Matthew 8:16,17.

IT was the evening–in all probability it was the evening of a Sabbath
day. The Jews were so tender not to break the Sabbath that they did not
even bring forth the sick to the Savior until the evening was come. The
Savior would gladly have healed them on the Sabbath, for that was to
Him a high day for holy work–but they did not think it right–and so
they kept back their sick till the day was ended. If any of you have
thought that the time has not come for you to approach the Savior, you
have labored under a great error for He would not have you delay for a
single hour! But I hope you are now satisfied that you have waited long
enough and that at last the evening is near in which you should come to
Jesus. God grant that any superstition which has kept you back may be
removed and may this be the set time, the hour of Divine Grace to your
souls!

Whether it was a Sabbath evening or not, the day had been spent by the
Savior in diligent labor, for our Savior took care, when the people
would listen to Him on the seventh day, to preach with all His might.
As soon as the sun was up, He began to proclaim saving Truth. He was
tired when evening was come and He might have sought rest, but instead
of that they brought out the sick to Him to heal and He must close up a
weary day by a yet more arduous task. Until darkness had covered the
earth He must continue, still, to scatter blessings right and left. At
this hour our blessed Master has laid aside all weariness and now at
eventide He is waiting to bless. Whatever has been done during the day,
yet if some poor, weary soul has spurned the Divine voice through all
the former hours, He is still waiting to save before yet the sun has
quite gone down.

When evening was come they brought unto Him those that were sick. We
are in like case. Let us put up this prayer to Him, "O You who did
bless the sick in the evening, come, now, and bless us while all is
cool and still and let us find Your salvation!" What a strange sight
that evening saw! They brought forth to the Savior those that were
possessed of evil spirits and those that were sick. They brought them
on their mattresses and laid them in the streets. It must have been a
very difficult thing to bring out some that were possessed because they
struggled and raved–but nevertheless they brought them. The streets
were turned into a hospital and in the still evening air you could hear
the cries of those poor creatures who were possessed of evil spirits
and the moans of those in acute pain.

It was a sad sight, a piteous sight, to look upon–and as far as
Christ's eyes could see, every nook and corner were occupied with these
sick people. But what a glorious thing it must have been to see Him,
the Divine Physician, with tears of pity in His eyes and yet with
beaming joy on His Countenance! He was suffering intensely all the
while because of their suffering and yet joyous because He was able to
bless them. You see Him go along and lay His hands on one sick man and
he leaped up from his bed! And you hear Him speak to another and the
foul spirit flees–and he that was madness itself becomes calm and
rational!

See Him cast a look over yonder and with that glance He expels the
fever! Hear Him speak a word to one far away and with that word He
dries up dropsy or opens a blind eye! It was grand to see the Savior
thus fighting with Satan and with foul diseases and everywhere
victorious! That was one of the happiest evenings that ever ended a day
in Palestine! I want you to feel that we can have its parallel tonight.
We have Jesus here! We have been seeking Him. There are some here who
dwell with Him. Jesus is here and the sick folk are here and He is just
as able to heal tonight as He was in days gone by.

I am going to speak about His works of healing and to draw
encouragement from them. And then we shall go into the explanation of
His power to heal which is given us in the second verse of our
text–"He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses."

I. Let us notice, first, OUR LORD'S WORKS OF HEALING. On that occasion
and on many others He cured all sorts of sickness. I think I am right
in saying that there is not in the whole list of diseases one which the
Savior did not heal. They may be known by new names, for they say the
doctors have invented a dozen new diseases lately–but they are only
old diseases to which they have given new names. Our great grandfathers
died of diseases the names of which they never knew, or else they had
other names than those which are given to them now. But as man has
always been much the same, most diseases have continued as long as the
human race.

We have to be very grateful that leprosy, which was the great scourge
of the Jews, is almost extinct now. But in our Savior's day it seems to
have been exceedingly common. And leprosy and all forms of disease came
under the Savior's power and became deaf at His word. Now the parallel
of that is this–Jesus Christ can forgive sins of all sorts. There are
different grades of sin. Some are exceedingly defiling and loathsome.
Other sins are scarcely hurtful to the general commonwealth and so are
often almost unnoticed. Yet any sin will ruin a soul forever. It may be
thought to be little, but as a little prick with a poisoned arrow will
heat all the blood and bring on death, so is sin such a venomous
disease that the least of it is fatal.

But from whatever kind of sin you are suffering, I would encourage you
to come to Jesus with it–be it what it may. Is yours an extreme case?
Have you been grossly guilty? Come with it, then, for our Lord healed
the worst diseases. On the other hand, have you been kept out of gross
sin from your early youth? Have you been preserved from outward vice?
It may be that your chief sin is the forgetting of God and living
without love to Christ–a deadly sin, let me tell you– but bring it to
the Savior! Have you been idle? Have you been proud? Have you been
lascivious? Have you been untruthful? Have you been profane? Have you
been malicious? I cannot tell, but God–who can read your heart as
readily as we read a book–knows.

But whatever the sin may be, remember that all manner of sin and of
blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men. "The blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanses us from all sin." Oh, hear this and look up to the Savior
and pray Him of His great mercy to exercise the healing art of His
redeeming love on you, this evening, now that the sun has set! They
brought to Jesus all sorts of diseases.

Note, next, that Jesus can deal with special cases of devilry.
Possession with evil spirits was probably peculiar to that age. I
sometimes think that when the Savior came down on earth, the devil had
the impudence to ask to be let loose, that he and all his servants
might come on earth and, in person, might meet the Savior. Satan is
still busy, going about, seeking whom he may devour–but not exactly in
the particular way in which he raged in Christ's day. He cannot take
possession of men's bodies as he did then. So the Savior met Satan foot
to foot and face to face–and the devil made a poor fight of it–for
whenever the Lord Jesus made His appearance, the devil wanted to be
off! And if he did not want to go, the Savior soon moved him by saying,
"Come out of him."

Like a whipped dog he did not dare to make a sound, but fled. A whole
legion of demons were glad to get into a herd of swine and ran
violently down a steep place into the sea to escape from the frown of
our Lord! Satan found somebody that was more than a match for him! The
parallel to that is this. There are some men that we meet with in whom
the devil evidently reigns–and there are such women, too–for when
women are bad, they can be bad and there can be no mistake about it.
The devil can make more mischief out of a woman than out of a man when
he thoroughly gets possession of her.

Well, whether men or women, there are some who might be called "the
devil's own." One man is a drunk–there is no stopping him–he must
drink on. He seems to be infatuated by it. He takes the pledge and
abstains for a little while but, by-and-by, the devil gets hold of him
again and he goes back to his taps. Though he has drunk himself into
delirium tremens and to Death's door, yet still he gives way to this
loathsome vice. Others are possessed with the devil of lasciviousness
and it does not matter what they suffer–they will always be defiling
themselves–ruining body and soul by their iniquity.

We know persons who seem to have a devil in them in the matter of
passion. They are but a little provoked and they lose all command of
themselves. You would think that they ought to be put in a padded room
in Bethlehem Hospital and

kept there till they cooled down–otherwise they might do mischief to
themselves and to others. Surely some men, who can scarcely speak
without swearing, have the devil in them! How one's blood runs chill,
in going down our streets, to hear how commonly our working men degrade
themselves with filthy conversation! It is not exactly cursing–it is
less honest and more vile!

Is there any hope for such? These are the very people in whom Jesus
Christ has often displayed His healing power! I could tell you tonight
of lions that have been turned to lambs–men of furious passions who
have become gentle, quiet and loving–men of profane speech who would
be shocked at the very remembrance of what they once said and whose
voices have been often heard in prayer. I could tell you of men and
women, too, who loved the wages of iniquity and lost their character
and defiled themselves–but they are washed and they are sanctified! I
have blessed the name of God when giving the right hand of Christian
fellowship to ransomed ones to whom we could not have given our right
hand a little while ago, for it would have been wrong to join with them
in the wickedness of their pursuits.

Oh, yes, my Master still casts devils out of men! If there are any such
here tonight, let your cry for help go up to our blessed Master! Come
again, great Lord, and cast out the evil spirit from men and get to
Yourself the victory in many a heart, to the praise of the glory of
Your Grace! The remarkable point about this miracle-working was that
all were healed and there was never a failure. When a man brings out a
patent medicine he publishes verifications of the efficacy of his
product. He gets a number of cases and he advertises them.

I suppose they are genuine. I should not like to be hanged if they were
not. I suppose, therefore, they are all accurate and authentic. But
there is one thing which you never knew a medicine advertiser to do–he
never advertises the failures of the medicine. The number of persons
that have been induced to buy the remedy and have derived no good from
it–if these were all advertised it might occupy more room in the
newspaper than those who write of a cure! My Lord Jesus Christ is a
Physician who never had a failure yet–never once! Never did a soul
wash in Christ's blood without being made whiter than snow! Never did a
man, besotted with the worst of vice, trust in Jesus without receiving
power to conquer his evil habits!

Not even in the lowest pit of Hell is there one that dares to say, "I
trusted Christ but I am lost. I sought His face with all my heart and
He cast me away." There is not a man living that could say that unless
he dared to lie! Not one has with heart and soul sought the Savior and
trusted in Him–and then had a negative from Him. He must save you if
you trust Him! As surely as He lives He must save you, for He has put
it, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." I will repeat
it–"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." You have never
come if He has not received you for He must save those who trust in
Him.

Notice that His word was the sole medicine He used: "He cast out the
spirits with His word." No other medicine, no charms, no long
performances, no striking of His hand over the place–He spoke and it
was done! He said to the devil, "Come out of him," and it came out. He
said to the disease, "Go," and away it went! In that way the Lord saves
men today–by His Word. While I am speaking it tonight, or when you
shall be reading it, His Word will be the power of God unto salvation.
I am glad that you are here to hear it, for faith comes by hearing. I
shall be glad if you diligently read it, for reading is a kind of
hearing and many are brought to the Savior that way.

Jesus Christ does not need to put you through a long "purgatory" and
keep you for months getting ready to be saved. He has only this night
to open your ears to hear His Word and when you hear it He can bless it
to your soul so that you shall live and your sin shall die! And you
shall become changed and renewed by His matchless Grace. I speak His
Word tonight, praying that He will make it effectual as He has done
before–and to Him shall be the praise! We have the same medicine
tonight that Jesus used for we have His Word. We have got Himself here
in answer to the prayers of His people and we have the same sort of
sick people here–therefore we expect to see the same wonders worked!

II. May God give you a hearing ear and save you while I speak,
secondly, of OUR LORD'S PERSONAL POWER TO HEAL! Why was it that He was
able to save? We are pointed to the secret of His power by these words,
"That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the Prophet,
saying, He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." Christ was
able to heal the diseases of men because He bore them Himself.

Do not think that our Lord Jesus was actually diseased–He suffered
greatly but I read not that any disease was upon Him. Probably there
was no man in whom there was less tendency to natural disease than in
Him. His pure and blessed body was not subject to the diseases which
are brought upon men through sin being in them. How, then, did He

take upon Him our sicknesses and our sorrows? First, He bore our
sicknesses by intense sympathy. When Christ looked at all those sick
people, He did, as it were, take all their sicknesses upon Himself. You
know what I mean. If you talk with a person who is very ill and you
feel for him, you seem to lay his pains upon yourself and then you have
power to comfort him.

When I am seeing troubled people, I enter into one sorrowful case after
another till I am more sad than any of them. I try as far as I can to
have fellowship with the case of each one in order to be able to speak
a word of comfort to him. And I can say, from personal experience, that
I know of nothing that wears the soul down so fast as the outflow of
sincere sympathy with sorrowing, desponding, depressed ones. I have
sometimes been the means in God's hand of helping a man who suffered
with a desponding spirit–but the help I have rendered has cost me
dearly. Hours after, I have been myself depressed and I have felt an
inability to shake it off.

You and I have not a thousandth part of the sympathy that was in
Christ. He sympathized with all the aggregate of human woe and so
sympathized that He made His heart a great reservoir into which all
streams of grief poured themselves. My Master is just the same today.
Though He is in Heaven He is just as tender as He was on earth. I never
heard of anybody losing tenderness by going to Heaven. People get
better by going there–and so is Christ–if it were possible, even more
tender than when on earth.

Think of this. Somebody might not sympathize with you, poor Sinner, but
Jesus does! You would not like to tell some people what you have done,
for they would turn upon their heels and give you a wide berth–but it
is not so with Jesus. He looks upon sin not with the eye of a judge,
but with the eye of a physician. He looks at it as a disease and He
deals with it that He may heal it. He has great sympathy with sinners
though He has no sympathy with sin. He takes the sinner's sorrows to
Himself. "Ah!" says one, "no man cares for my soul." Dear Friend, man
or woman, whoever you may be–One greatly cares for you and He speaks
to you tonight by these lips. Oh, that these lips were better fitted to
be used by Him!

He says, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest." He bids you take of
the Water of Life freely. He is ready at this moment to bestow
salvation. "Nobody knows my case," cries one. But Jesus knows it. He
knows that dark spot in it. He knows that hard core which will not go
away. He knows that filthy thing which you remember tonight and shiver
as you remember it. He knows it all and yet He says, "Return, you
backsliding daughter." He bids the vilest of the vile come to Him for
He still has sympathy with them.

Jesus Christ took upon Himself our sicknesses by His championship of
our humanity. Satan misled our first parents and the powers of darkness
held us captive. In consequence of sin we have become sick and infirm
and liable to suffer. Now, when our Lord Jesus came on earth, He as
good as said, "I am the Seed of the woman and I have come to bruise the
head of men's adversary." So Christ, in that respect, took upon Himself
all the consequences which come of sin. He stood forth as the Champion
of fallen manhood to fight Satan and cast him out of men's bodies–to
battle with disease and to overthrow the evil which lies at the root of
it–that men might be made healthy.

He is still our Champion. I delight to preach Him to you, you
suffering, you sorrowing, you sinful, you lost, you castaways! One has
come who has taken up your cause–the sinner's Redeemer, next-of-kin to
man–who has come to avenge him of his adversary and to buy back his
lost inheritance. Behold in Jesus the Champion of sinners, the David
who comes and defies the Goliath that has long afflicted men! Oh, I
wish you would trust our glorious Champion! Remember how He met the
adversary alone and vanquished him? "It was on that dark, that dreadful
night." The enemy sprang upon Him in the garden like a lion and the
Savior received him on His breast.

He brought the Savior to His knees but there He grasped the lion,
hugged him, crushed him, tore him and flung him from Him! Our Samson,
sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground–and
though He had won that victory He afterwards bowed His head and gave up
the ghost. He lives again, however–and He is now the Champion of the
cause of all the suffering, the sorrowing and the sinful–if they will
but come and put their case into His hands! He Himself took our
sicknesses and our infirmities by championing our cause and standing in
our place to fight our battles! Give Him your cause! Trust your soul in
His hands and He will redeem you out of the jaw of the Lion, yes, out
of the very mouth of Hell!

But here is the pith of the whole matter. The reason why Jesus is able
to heal all the mischief that sin has worked is this– because He
Himself took our sin upon Himself by His sacred Substitution. Sin is
the root of our infirmities and diseases and so, in taking the root, He
took all the bitter fruit which that root did bear. Oh, proclaim it
again and again and every day! And shout it in the dead of night and
tell it in the glare of noonday! Proclaim it in the market and shout in
the streets and everywhere that God took sin from off the back of
sinners and laid it on His innocent and only-begotten Son!

mystery Divine, never to be known if God had not revealed it, and not
even now to be believed if God Himself had not assured us of it! He
laid sin upon Christ! "All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have
turned, every one, to his own way and the Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all." Hearken, then, you guilty ones! Hear how freely
God can forgive and yet not injure His justice. If you trust Christ you
may be sure that you are among the number of those whose sins were laid
on Christ. He was punished in your place!

Now, if Another was punished in your place it is not just that you
should be punished, too. And therefore the very justice of God requires
that if Christ suffered in your place, you should not suffer. Do you
see that? "But did He suffer in my place?" I must answer this question
by another, "Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ? Will you trust
your soul with Him?" Well, if you do, your transgressions are not
yours, for they were laid on Him. They are not on you, for, like
everything else, they cannot be in two places at one time. And if they
were laid on Christ, they are not laid on you.

"But what did Jesus do with the sins that were laid on Him? Can they
not come back to us?" No, never! For He took them to the sepulcher and
there He buried them forever. And now, what do the Scriptures say? "In
those days, and in that time, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel
shall be sought for and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and
they shall not be found." "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your
transgressions; and, as a cloud, your sins." "You will cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea."

Our sins are gone! Christ has carried them away. "As far as the east is
from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."
Believers are the seed for whom the victory has been gained. They are
the seed to whom the promise is sure. It is not to those who are of
works, but to those who are offaith. Those that are born-again of the
Spirit of God through faith which is in Christ Jesus–these are
"redeemed from among men." Suppose I owed 10,000 pounds? If a dear
friend should call on my creditor and pay that 10,000 pounds for me, I
should then owe the creditor nothing. I could meet him with a smiling
face.

He may tomorrow morning bring his account books if he likes and say,
"There, you see, there are 10,000 pounds down there against you." I
would joyfully answer, "Yes, but look on the other side. You have been
paid. Here are the words at the foot of your bill, 'Received in full of
all demands.'" Now, when Jesus took the sins of Believers upon Himself
He discharged them by His death–and every man that believes has the
receipt in full in our Lord's Resurrection! "Therefore being justified
by faith, we have peace with God." Yes, those that believe in Christ
have the complete forgiveness of every sin! As for me, I like to sing
with Kent–

"Here's pardon for transgressions past,

It matters not how black their cast

And O my Soul, with wonder view,

For sins to come here's pardon too!" All blotted out at once with one
stroke of the sacred pen–obliterated once and for all! God does not
again lay to the charge of men what He has once forgiven them. He does
not forgive them half their sins and visit them for the rest–once
given, the blessing is irrevocable! As it is written, "The gifts and
calling of God are without repentance." He never draws back nor repents
of what He has done. He saves and the salvation which saves is
everlasting salvation. Now I see why Christ can

heal!

Dear Heart, you have come here tonight full of the disease of sin and
you are saying, "Will He heal me?" Look to Him! Look to Him! Look to
Him! The morning that I found Christ I did not think to find Him. I
went to hear the Word as I had heard it before, but I did not hope to
find Jesus then and there. Yet I did find Him! When I heard that there
was nothing to be done but simply to look to Jesus–and when the
exhortation came so sharp and shrill and clear, "Look! Look! Look!" I
looked and I bear witness to the change that passed over me–such a
change as though I died and rose again! And such a change, my Hearer,
shall pass over you if you believe–

"There is life for a look at the Crucified One; There is life at this
moment for you." God give you the look and give you the life, even now,
for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON– Isaiah 53.