There is a Remedy - Jason Schrock

Good morning and Christian greetings this morning to each one and least already being here.

And I trust that the Lord will have something further for us as we

go into his word this morning. I'd like to go to a text in

the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah eight, verse verse twenty two. And there's

three questions that are asked here in this text that I'd like to for us

to explore this morning. Jeremiah eight, verse twenty two. Is there no

balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why? Then, is

not the health of the dollar of my people recovered? I think with what

brother Leland shared there, what's going on in Portland, I think is quite

a backdrop to this. Is there no bomb? Is there no remedy?

For what is going on in the world about us? You know, we

live in a fallen world and everywhere return we see the results of sin,

and men and women are taking their own way, and they're in a downward

spiral and finding that life is meaningless, that there's a there's a void.

You know, people even wonder if it's safe to be out and about in

our land today. Multiple shootings and various things there, the drug usage is

rampants, suicides are escalating, and there's homelessness on the increase, and that's

just the tip of the iceberg. Our society is so mixed up that they

don't seem to know want or who a man is or a woman. And

you know, as I as I think of some of those things that what's

a remedy? Is there any Is there any remedy for all of this?

You know, people are worried about climate change. You're worried about the heat

that we're facing the summer. There's concerned about reoccurrence of COVID, and so

we live in a world of hurts and of disappointments and shattered dreams and have

lost hope. Is this should this be a surprise to us? Jesus said

at the end of time, there would be distress, there would be pestilence,

there would be wars, and that iniquity should abound. We're seeing that

more and more, and this abounding I think is is taking on new proportions.

I think we're certainly living in a time such as this. So when

we see this hopelessness, seemingly hopeless about us, we could cry with Jeremiah.

I'd say, is there no bomb, Is there nothing that can be

done? Is there no healing for the insects or siety in which we live.

I don't think that we should cry out in desperation, but rather honestly

seek because there is a remedy which we'd like to look at. There is

a remedy for the things that destroy and hinder our society, our homes,

our churches. And so the question in our task text ask is there anything

that can be bring healing? Is there an effective medicine, and if so,

is there anyone that can apply that. I'd like to think just a

little bit about this bomb in Gilead. The bomb is a resinous gum,

thought perhaps to come from the balsam tree. It's not certain on that,

but to extract that it is there's a cut in the side of that tree,

letting the sap run out. And then the physicians take that, they

study it, they apply it, they find means of using this gum or

balmb. I found it very interesting. We find this, I think,

first of all, in the Book of Genesis, in the story of Joseph,

when Joseph was thrown in that pit and his brothers wanted to do away

with him there was a caravan of ishmael lites coming, and what was that

caravan carrying. Part of what they were carrying was a bomb of Gilead.

I'm going to just read Genesis thirty seven twenty five. And they sat down

to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold,

a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm,

and mirr going to carry it down to Egypt. And so we find

that these traitors, these Ishmaelites, would buy, would buy health products and

take them and sell them in Egypt. And so it was well known for

many centuries that there was a bomb in Gilead. Another thing I think about

is that it was available. Apparently, apparently it was readily available, and

there was a cure for physical ill close at hand. And it seems to

me that Jeremiah is likening this to spiritual sickness in a natural sense. Any

nation that would have medicine within its borders, as Israel did, should apply

it in a physical way. But you know, this morning, I'd like

to say that I believe this is a beautiful type of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this illustration, we can see that where the balsam tree is is

cut on the side and the and the it's pierced, and there's a healing

balm that flows out. And so it is in the side of our Lord

and Savior. He was pierced, and there is a healing blood that flowed

out for you and for me, and for everyone, for all nations.

Jesus said in Luke four eighteen, he was reading from the scriptures. He

says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed

me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal

the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight

to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. And so

he said that the spirit of the Lord is upon him, and he's anointed.

He's said to heal the broken hearted. In First Peter two twenty four,

it says, who his own self, speaking of Jesus, bear our

sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to

sins, should live in the righteousness by whose stripes he were healed. And

so I think that the true balb. The effective remedy is the blood that

flowed from Jesus's side. He is the only one that can bring peace to

the distraught hearts of men and women, about us, of society, about

us, of the nations in this world. And so he is interested not

only in me and you, but he's interested in our families. He's interested

in our church, he's interested in our neighbors, he's interested in all men.

So, now, who should be the dispenser of this bamb Is there

no physician? Or we believe that, we know that Jesus is a great

physician, but he has given the responsibility to others. And so it seems

to me, and maybe I'm wrong in this, but it seems to me

that his church, the Church of Jesus Christ, that through the body of

the Church, that Jesus will reach out to a sin ravished, to the

sin ravished souls of mankind. So Jeremiah had three questions, and it seems

at least on the first two that the answers were obvious. Is there a

bomb yes, Is there a physician? Yes? But then there's a third

question, Why then, isn't the health of of my people brought about and

so when we think of the church as being the dispenser of this bomb,

where it should be available, where it should be applied. When we go

to many churches, we find that they too are in need of this bomb.

And we too, at Halsey, we are in need of this bomb.

Are we a dispenser of it? Are we a consumer of it?

Do we even know much about it? And so in churches today we find

many who are floundering, and they're hurting and seeking for help. And so

in our text, Jeremiah cries out in distress. Is there no nobamb in

Gilead? Are these questions pertinent for us today? I'd like to look a

little bit now at the historical setting of Jeremiah. I've been reading through the

Book of Jeremiah again have found it quite interesting. Jeremiah was called to be

a prophet to the Kingdom of Judah when he was twenty years of age.

I thought some of just having all twenty year olds to stand up and ask

if you're ready to be a prophet twenty years old, Jeremiah was. And

twenty years after he was called, Jerusalem was partially destroyed, and then another

nine years later there was further devastation, and at eleven years after that it

was burned and desolated. And so Jeremiah prophesied, lived through and prophesied through

these forty terrible years of decline, and he saw the death of the nation

that he loved. He saw his nation pass from the happy Ospero's conditions under

Josiah to the great iniquity under the last four kings, and finally the invasion

of the Babylonians and the final destruction of the city of Jerusalem, where the

young and the old were killed without mercy. You read some of his uh

what he has to say, as far as crying out that finally the temple

itself was destroyed, this beautiful, magnificent temple that King Solomon had built century

before. And so I was a twenty year old Jeremiah was given a very

difficult assignment. He could see the downward spiral of the people of God,

that the people that God had chosen for his people. He witnessed their their

brazen disregard of the laws of God. And yet even though they were sinning,

even though they were committing an idolatry, yet they were claiming that they

were going to be protected because they were in the capital city. They were

there where the temple was, and the temple was going to to protect them.

It must have been very discouraging for him to prophesy to a people that

were set to do their own will, and yet God continually gave him a

message. As we read through Jeremiah, I was impressed this time again how

many false prophets there were. There were people that said, oh, everything's

going to be fine, don't don't worry about it. We're going to be

victorious. The Chaldeans are not going to come. And Jeremiah would say,

no, that's that's not the word of the Lord. And so God continued

to give him a message, and he faithfully passed this this message along to

others. Jeremiah became known as the weeping Prophet. He wept for the sins

of his people. He wept for the callousness of their ways. He wept

for their pretension to follow the Lord, and yet their heart was far from

the will of God. No wonder he was called the weeping Prophet. Just

a couple of verses, maybe it's a I think it's the next verse after

our text. It says this, Oh that my head were waters and mine

eyes a fountain of tears, and I might weep day and night for the

slain of the daughter of my people. That was Jeremiah's heart cry. And

he says, isn't there something it could be done? I'm preaching, I'm

telling them, I'm warning them, but they don't give heed. Isn't there

any balm in Giliad that can heal this people? So let's go back a

little bit now and look at the background to what Jeremiah was facing. If

I figured write, probably a little over eight hundred years prior to this,

God brought his people out of Egypt, and he brought them to the to

the land of Canaan, and he said, here is a land. You

can possess it. It's yours, but it's on condition. The condition is

if you obey me keep my commandments. Moses and Joshua both warned them that

if they go whoring after other gods of the land, God would dispossess them

and send in foreign armies to destroy them. And if we read the Book

of Judges, we see a up and down situation where they would where they

would obey the Lord and then they would go after other gods and they would

they would neglect worshiping God, and then he would send other nations in there

and bring them under under bondage. Then they would cry out to him and

he would hear them. It just to back and forth. And so we

find through the history of Israel there were true worshippers of Jehovah, but again

and again they regressed into sin and idolatry. And finally, after centuries of

this, God said this is enough, and he said, the Assyrian army

into the Kingdom of Israel, which was a ten northern tribes, and they

took them captive, took them to Assyria, and they ceased to be a

nation. They were scattered here and there. So now after that, there

was still the Kingdom of Judah remaining. And even though they had had seen

what had happened to their sister nation, I'm not sure, maybe approximately I

should look that up a little bit more one hundred to eighty years previously.

Yet that didn't stop them from going headlong into the same sins that Israel had.

The Kingdom of Israel had been involved in. Jeremiah says Judah is even

worse than her sister Israel was. So in the Kingdom of Judah. There

were good kings and there were evil kings. I'm going to start just a

little bit with Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a was a good king. He removed

idols throughout the land, and he reinstituted the Passover. And it was it

was during his time that the Syrians came to destroy Jerusalem, and he and

Isaiah cried out to the Lord for protection, and the temple was are.

The city of Jerusalem was saved. The temple was not destroyed. And that

got to be almost a snare to the Kingdom of Judah, that the temple

was saved. I'll get to that just a little bit later here. So

anyhow, when Hezekiah passed on, his son Manassa became king. And Manassa

was the worst of the kings of Judah, and he restored idol worship,

and he made his children pass through the fire. His sins were so great

that God said he would send Judy into captivity. I'm going to read a

little bit about that in the Second Kings twenty one. We have here the

account of what Manassa did. Second Kings twenty one. Manassa was twelve years

old when he began to reign. And he reigned fifty and five years in

Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hepzibah. And he did that which was

evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abominations of the heathen,

whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. For he built up

again the high places which Hezekai his father, had destroyed, and he reared

up alders for bail, and made a grove, as did Ahab, king

of Israel, and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them. And

he built alders in the House of the Lord, of which the Lord said

in Jerusalem, while I put my name, And he built alders for all

the hosts of Heaven in the two courts of the House of the Lord.

Notice how he desecrated the temple of the Lord verse six. And he made

his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments,

and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards. He wrought much wickedness in the sight

of the Lord to provoke him to anger. And he set a graven image

of the grove that he had made in the house of which the Lord had

said to David and to Solomon, his son in this house and in Jerusalem,

which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I

put my name forever? Neither will I make the feet of Israel move anymore

out of the land which I gave their fathers, only if they will observe

to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all

the law that my servant Moses commanded them. But they hearkened not, and

Manassa seduced him to do more evil than did all the nations whom the Lord

destroyed before the children of Israel. So that's the account of this king Manassa.

One thing. It is interesting if we go on. Manassa did repent,

and God did restore him or forgive him. But he had done so

much that God said, I'm I'm going to take these people out of my

way. It was under his rule that Jeremiah was born. Now, Manassa

had a grandson. He had a son that was king. I think it

was about two years should have looked up to that name. But his grandson,

Josiah, begin to reign at eight years of age, and he was

a godly king. And it was during his reign that Jeremiah was called to

be a prophet. Josiah was a righteous king. In the eighth year of

his reign, he took down the idols of the land. Now I think

I think it's probably correct. He was only eight years old when he begin

to reign, and probably the high priest would have been somewhat in charge because

of his young age. But when he turned sixteen, he says, I'm

going to I'm going to rid the land of all of these idols. And

he restored or he got rid of rid of the idols. Then in his

eighteenth year, he wanted the temple cleaned and looked after him. So there

were different workmen that went in there to repair things and so on, and

here are the high priests. They were going through he found an old book,

an old scroll. It was probably dusty, it had been there for

who knows how long. And he called chaff and the scribe and he says,

look, why I've found. It's the law. It's the law of

God. And so they got to reading it, and they said, we

need to we need to read this to King Josiah. So they took this

Law of Moses, the Law of the Lord, and read it to Josiah,

and Josiah was distressed. He had never heard this before. He knew

that, he knew that they needed to obey the Lord and so on.

But he was distressed, and he rent his clothes, and he said,

there's it's going to be a lot of destruction on this place because of the

sins of our fathers. And so he called for a great reform, and

there was there was a I think it says that there was. He called

for a passover that was greater than any since the time of Samuel, which

would have been many years before that. And so then I think, I

think Jeremiah found a kindred spirit with King Josiah. But then Josiah was killed

in battle, and ever after that you take, I think there were four

or five kings, all of them either sons or grandsons of Josiah, that

were wicked and did not did not follow the way of the Lord. And

so it seems that under Josiah it was just a stop gap in the headlong

apostasy of Judah. Jehoahcam a son of Josiah, was a wicked king,

and he paid no attention to the writings of Jeremiah. So Jeremiah had Barrick

write the writings, and they took and someone read it to King Jehoah Coam,

and he sustained that here, so he'd read a bit here, he

took his knife and cut off a piece through it the fire. Then there

was some more till it was all done. That whole book of Jeremiah was

carved up and thrown into the fire. Well if we if we know the

story, Jeremiah had Barrick write that again. Later, under the leadership of

King Zedekiah, the people continued on worse and worse in their sinful ways.

It seemed like they would not be they would not be warned, or they

were warned, but they would not heed the warning. And so it was

under the reign of Zedekiah that the words of our text are found. And

Jeremiah was at wits end. I've told the people, I've cried, I've

tried to lead them to the right way. But is there an obama gilliad?

So it's interesting and sad that approximately one hundred years prior to this,

God had allowed Assyria to take the Kingdom of Israel captive because of their great

simpleness, And they were taken, and they were scattered throughout the Assyrian Empire.

And so now through Jeremiah, God is reminding reminding Judith of the destruction

of her sister. And in chapter three of Jeremiah, it says, and

yet for all this, her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned into me with

her whole heart, but faintally, says Lord. Other words, they're just

pretending to follow me, but their heart does not go after me. Now,

in the time of Hezekiah, there was a miraculous I mentioned this,

a miraculous saving of Jerusalem and the Temple from Sinakra's army. And I'm going

to read here in Jeremiah seven the first ten verses about what the Lord had

to say to them concerning their attitude towards this. Jeremiah one, verses one

to ten. The word that came to excuse me. Jeremiah seven, one

to ten, The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word, and

say hear the word of the Lord, All ye of Judah that enter in

at these gates to worship the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts,

the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I will

cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words saying

the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of

the Lord. Are these For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings,

if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if ye

press not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not

innocent blood in this place, need to walk after other gods to your hurt,

then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land

that I gave to your fathers forever and ever behold ye trust in lying words

that cannot profit. Will ye steal murder and commit adultery, and swear falsely,

and burn incense unto bail, and walk after other gods whom ye know

not, And come and stand before me in this house which is called by

my name, and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations.

So if you get the picture, Jeremiah, the Lord said to me,

Jeremiah, you are putting your trust in the Temple, in in this edifice

that had been built the three times the Temple of the Lord, the temple

of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord. And he says, are

you are you doing all these things murderer and adultery, and swearing falsely and

burning in says to idols and so on, And you come here to this

temple and say, we're delivered to do all these abominations because we are the

children. We because we are the children of God, we know that that

is not does not avail anything. And so with these conditions in mind,

Jeremiah cries out, is there no balm, Is there no physician? Is

there no remedy? And so Israel was to be the healer of the nations

in a physical sense, with the balm of Gilead, and yet spiritually she

was sick to the core. And so now let's bring this maybe just a

little bit closer home and think of the Church of Jesus Christ. I think

that there's some parallels to be seen. And I think that the Church possesses

that which will or should bring spiritual life and strength to mankind. She is

a representative of Jesus, the healer to all of mankind's ills. But down

through the down through time, the Church has become corrupt, she's given in

to sin and compromised with the world. And a man of the world,

as he looks at the church, he has a right to ask, if

the great physician cannot heal his own people, how can he heal my sinsects

soul? If he cannot bring, cannot change a life of his people,

why should I yield myself to a God who is so ineffective? That's so

I had to wonder, as a church, as a Halsey church here,

how much healing do we have to offer to those who come within our within

our midst. But I am convinced that there is a bomb in Gilead,

that there is a physician that can make his whole. Maybe this is taking

this a little too far, but I had to think two of the of

the Mennonite Church, and maybe the Medite Church in a way could be likened

to two kingdoms. You know, there are those who very much claim the

name Mennonite and yet do not practice the historic practices of the Menite Church.

In past decades there were those who departed from the earlier practices, and during

a time about sixty years ago, there were small groups that came out of

that time of apostasy, endeavoring to regain biblical practices, and maybe we could

like in those groups to the Kingdom of Judah. But you know, ever

since that time, there are those who dis continually go after what Israel or

what the larger men like church has followed. And so today there are many

who seem to be unconcerned what the scripture says and our desire to take their

own way. And under this time of great apostasy, the main part of

the church, you might say, was was taken captive by those who have

promoted accommodation to the world, and they just it seemed like the whole almost

the whole church was swept along with that, and so the altars of true

worship were broken down and new ones erected. The people were scattered and dispersed,

just like the Kingdom of Israel. If you look at what happened,

many of them went to other denominations, not saying that everything's wrong with other

denominations, but many of them scattered that way and also out into the world.

And maybe we could liken the revival of sixty years ago to the reform

under Josiah, and the question that can be asked is have we really learned

the lesson of Israel? Why is it that so many groups that have come

out are now following behind their older sister, older sister, their sister.

I guess they were spared, but now seemingly follow the same course. We

see this as congregations, we see this as individuals. Why are people hankering

after the very things that drug down the people of God in previous years?

We have those from our own best who have rejected the truth of God's word

and gone out into ungodly practices. Why? Where is where is the bomb?

What? What are we missing? I had to think of the verses

in First Timothy for one and two. It says, now the Spirit speaketh

expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed

to see ducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having

their conscience seared with a hot iron. There'll be some who depart from the

face. They'll get from the faith and give heed to seducing spirits speaking lies

in hypocrisy, and their conscience is seared with a hot iron. So the

question I think it faces us this morning is is there an Obama Giliad.

Is there no power to stem this tide of apostacy that keeps showing up and

keep showing up, and keep showing up again and again. Well, I

think, I think what we need to do is develop more personal conviction along

these lines and have a willingness to shun evil and cleave to righteousness. Is

there Abalman Gilliad? Yes? Is there a physician? Yes? Then there's

still one question that needs to be answered. Then why is not the health

of the daughter my people recovered? And as I as I look about us,

and as I read different news articles and things that are going on,

it almost seems that this fallen world is beyond hope. And too often the

Church has been ineffective in being dispensers of healing bomb. And I believe that

the only way this headlong disregard of God in his word can be changed is

by the great physician and the bomb that flowed from his side. Isaiah fifty

three five says, but he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised

for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, And with

his stripes we are healed. The stripes on Jesus that brings forth that bomb.

I believe this morning that the great Physician wants to use his people,

his church as the instrument of healing for all people. But we have too

often not applied that healing even to ourselves. So let's be true people of

God, holding forth the bomb of Gilead and applying it first of all to

the needs in our myths, so that we might have to give to others.

And so I had to think, as I thought on this subject,

when people come into our midst, when people come through the doors into our

or through the doors here, or come in contact with us, do they

sense is there a sense of a feeling of healing? Or is there is

there turmoil as their strife? Is there things that just do not bring peace

and rest and healing. And so my encouragement is this morning that we might

be a people that would heal as we can, that we would apply the

bomb that is available, the blood of Jesus Christ to the hearts and lives

of those we come in contact with. Let's have a closing you so al