“HE healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. HE telleth the number of the stars; HE calleth them all by their names.” (Psa. 147:3-4).
What a vivid but beauteous contrast is brought before us in the above! The very ONE who “telleth the number of the stars; and Who calleth them all by their names,” is the very ONE who “healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
That is the one, dear fellow believer, of whom our thoughts once were:
“I knew Thee that Thou art a hard man, reaping where Thou has not sown, and gathering where Thou has not strawed: and I was afraid?” (Matt. 25:24-25). How different are our thoughts of Him now that He has.
“Won our hearts, once worse than naught,” and made good to us those words:
“Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes He, being rich, became poor, in order that ye by the poverty of such a one as He might be enriched.” As an illustration of what the above Psalm brings before us let us turn to a precious and touching scene in Luke’s account of our blessed Lord (Luke 7:11-15).
“It came to pass the day after that He (JESUS) went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him and much people. Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, Weep not.’ And He came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And He said, ‘Young man, I say unto thee arise.’ And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.” How exquisitely human, and withal how unmistakably divine!
Touchingly indeed, yet in how few words, is the deep loneliness of this woman’s condition presented to us by the Spirit. The dead man was “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” The heart of JESUS was arrested, and then He arrested the bier of the dead young man. His compassions always went before His mercies. It is often said that the heart moves the hand.
Do we not prize a blessing that comes to us in that way? Salvation came gushing forth from the heart of Christ. To say that the cross of Christ is the source of our blessedness, would be slandering the heart of God. God loved the world, and sent His Son;
Christ’s heart went before His hand. A blessing from Christ is given, as Jeremiah 32:41 says, “with His whole heart and His whole soul He came and touched the bier.”
He was Undefilable, or He must have gone to the priest to cleanse Himself after touching it. Did Christ ever want the washings of the Sanctuary? He might have restored the young man without touching him, but He had God’s relationship to iniquity. He not only stood apart from the actuality of sin, but from the possibility of it.
“And He delivered him to his mother.”
Let me be bold and say, the Lord does not save you that you may serve Him. To suggest the thought would be to qualify the beauty of grace. He did not say:
“I give you life that you may spend it for Me.”
Let His love constrain you to spend and be spent for Him, but he never stands before your heart and says:
“Now I will forgive you if you will serve Me.”
Surely He had purchased him, yet He gave him back to his mother! Yet you and I go back to the world, and seek to make ourselves happy and important in it. Shame on us! Ah! throw the cords of love round your heart, and keep it fast by JESUS! Amen.
Wherever we follow Thee, Lord,
Admiring, adoring, we see
That love which was stronger than death,
Flow out without limit, and free.