3. It reproveth tho.se who think it impossible to get rid of their carnal distempers. Will you lessen the merit of Christ and the power of his Spirit, or doubt of the promise of God? Jer. iii. 22, 'Eeturn. and I will heal you.' Now, upon these terms we should come to Christ with confidence, to be the better for coming : Jer. xvii. 14, ' Heal me, and I shall be healed.' God can heal, and he will ; that is, he is ready to do it, or else why did he take this course ?
Use 2. Is to press us to come to God for healing. I shall give you a few directions.
1. You must, in a broken-hearted manner, be sensible of your sickness. It is the sensible sinner Christ undertaketh to cure ; the heart-whole are not within the compass of his commission : Luke v. 31, 32, ' They that are whole need not the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' A sense of our disease is a good step toward our cure. God will so heal that he will make us feel our sickness, that the smart of it may be a warning to us for tiie future, that we may not presume to offend again when we are recovered : Josh. xxii. 17, ' Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we are not cleansed until this day ?' We must not make too bold with God.
2. We must by earnest prayer seek this blessing of God, for God will be entreated for all things which he meaneth to bestow : Isa. xix. 22, ' He shall be entreated of them, and he shall heal them ; ' Ps. xci. 14, ' Because he hath set his love upon me, theretore will I deliver him.' The leven of tli^se distempers is so kneaded into the nature of man that it cannot be gotten out presently ; therefore come often to God by prayer for healing, sometimes this, sometimes that distemper ; now that our ])ri(le may be mortified, and anon our impatience ; at another time f»ur carnal fear, our sensuality; still praying as occasion requireth. We speed well at the thione of grace if we obtain the rid- dance and abatenjent of any one spiritual disease.
3. We must use God's means, viz. : — (1.) The word, which is
ISA. LIII. 6.] THE FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER OF ISAIAH. 295
our medicine: 2 Tim. i. 13, ' Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.' Keep the soul healthy. (2.) The sacraments, they are a part of the medicinal dispensation, sealing the great benefits of God towards us, and our duty towards him, and so are a help against backsliding. (3.) Meditation on the death of Christ, not only as a price and ransom, but morally, as it represents the odiousness of sin, and also the love of Christ towards us. So that, out of gratitude to him, and kindness to ourselves, we are bound to abstain from sin for the future. Viscera patent per vulnera. By his stripes we see what we have deserved, and what Christ hath endured.
4. When God is seriously dealing with us about a cure, and apply- ing means of healing, let us take heed we do not lose the advantage and grow worse : Jer. li. 9, ' We would have healed Babylon, but she would not be healed.' So of Sion it is said, Hosea vii. 1, ' When I would have healed Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered.' God is willing to offer us help to cure us of our sins, and affordeth us special means and excitations to that purpose. Now, when the waters are stirred, we should step in that we may be made whole ; otherwise the disease is the more irritated, and breaketh out in a worse manner than it did before. The great Physician of souls must be carefully observed and constantly waited upon, and in time he will give us per- fect ease and health.
5. Take heed, when you are healed, of casting yourselves into new diseases : John v. 14, ' Behold, thou art made whole ; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee ; ' Heb. ix. 14, ' How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your consciences from dead works to serve the livins: God?'
THE SIXTH VERSE.
All lae, like sheep, have gone asiraij ; ive have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all.
In this verse we have two things which ought to be matter of con- tinual meditation to us all our days, to wit, our misery by sin, and our remedy by Christ.
1. Our misery in the former clause ; where —
[1.] Our sin is charged upon us collectively in common: loe have all gone astray.
[2.] Distributively : every one to his oivn way. We all agree in turning aside from the right way of pleasing and enjoying of God ; and we disagree, as each one hath a by-path of his own, some running after this lust, some after that, and so are not only divided from God, but divided from one another, while eveiy one maketh his will his law.