Jun 25
10
The great physician!
Christ is the least expensive Physician.
He takes no fee. He desires us to bring nothing to Him but broken hearts. And
when He has cured us, He desires us to bestow nothing on Him but our love.
Christ heals with more ease than any other.
Christ makes the devil go out with a word (Mark
9:25). Nay, He can cure with a look: Christ’s
look melted Peter into repentance; it was a healing look.
If Christ does but cast a look upon the soul, He will heal it.
Christ is the most tender–hearted Physician.
He is not more full of skill than sympathy, ‘He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds!’ (Psalm
147:3) Every groan of the patient, goes to the heart of this Physician.
Christ never fails of success.
Christ never undertakes to heal any, but He makes a full cure.
Other physicians can only cure those who are sick, but Christ cures
those who are dead!
“And you has He quickened, who were dead!”
(Ephesians 2:1) Christ is a Physician for the dead!
Of every one whom Christ cures it may be said, “He was dead, and is alive
again!” (Luke 15:32)
Christ is the most bountiful Physician.
Other patients enrich their physicians; but here the Physician enriches the
patient. Christ elevates all His patients. He not only cures
them, but crowns them! (Revelation 2:10)
Christ does not only raise them from the bed, but to the throne!
He gives the sick man not only health, but also Heaven!
,“Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Psalm 22:1
Everything recorded in this 22nd Psalm was written prophetically, penned by divine inspiration, as the very words spoken by our blessed Saviour when he hung upon the cursed tree, bearing our sins as our Substitute.
Spurgeon wrote…
“Before us we have a description both of the darkness and of the glory of the cross, the sufferings of Christ and the glory which should follow. Oh, for grace to draw near and see this great sight! We should read it reverently, putting off our shoes from off our feet, as Moses did at the burning bush, for if there be holy ground anywhere in scripture it is in this Psalm.”
Christ Forsaken
The words of this psalm are the very words of our blessed Saviour when he hung upon the cursed tree as our Substitute, when he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. At the apex of his obedience, at the time of his greatest sorrow, in the hour of his greatest need the Lord Jesus cried out to his Father, — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Then our all-glorious Redeemer tells us how utterly forsaken he was, so utterly forsaken that the Father refused to hear the cries of his own darling Son in the hour of his greatest need. — “Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.” I read those words with utter astonishment. I will not attempt to explain what I cannot imagine. But these things are written here for our learning, that we might, through patience and consolation of the Scriptures, have hope.
I hang all the hope of my immortal soul upon this fact: — When the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for me, he was utterly forsaken of God and put to death as my Substitute; and by his one great, sin-atoning Sacrifice, he has forever put away my sins. He not only bore our sins in his body on the tree, he bore them away!
The Reason
Yet, in verse 3 our holy Saviour, when he was made sin for us, answers the cry of his own soul’s agony. He cried, “My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” — “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” Why was the Lord Jesus forsaken by his Father when he was made sin for us? Because the holy Lord God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Our Saviour was forsaken by the Father when he was made sin for us, because justice demanded it. — “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13).
Here, in verse 3 our Saviour, when he was dying under the wrath of God, justified God in his own condemnation, because he was made sin for us. He proclaims the holiness of God in the midst of his agony. He is so pure, so holy, so righteous, so just that he will by no means clear the guilty (Exodus 34:7), even when the guilty One is his own darling Son! Rather than that his holy character be slighted, our Surety must suffer and die, because he was made sin for us.
Our Saviour had no sin of his own. He was born without original sin, being even from birth “that Holy One” (Luke 1:35). Throughout his life he “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), “did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22), “and in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5). But on Calvary the holy Lord God “made him who knew no sin sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Just as in the incarnation “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), in substitution he who was made flesh “was made sin for us.”
I do not know how God could be made flesh and never cease to be God; but he was. I do not know how God could die and yet never die; but he did (Acts 20:28). And I do not know how Christ who knew no sin could be made sin and yet never have sinned; but he was. These things are mysteries beyond the reach of human comprehension. But they are facts of divine revelation, to which we bow with adoration.
Gethsemane
In dark Gethsemane, as he anticipated being made sin, our Saviour’s holy soul shook within him; and his holy heart broke. Anticipating the pains of God’s holy fury against sin, his unbending justice and unmitigated wrath were beyond calculation, and the Saviour’s soul was so crushed within him that he was sore amazed, and very heavy, even unto a sweat of blood. His strength was gone, his spirit sank, he was in an agony.
Then, as he hung upon the cursed tree, bearing our sins in his on body, he cried, as we read in Psalm 22:6, 14-15, — “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people…I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”
It was the thought and anticipation of being made sin for us, not of simply paying the debt due unto our sins, but of being made sin, that caused his bloody sweat in Gethsemane. It was this fact, the fact that he was made sin for us that caused him to be forsaken of his Father, as he hung upon the cursed tree on Golgotha’s hill.
“Yes, my God bore all my guilt,
This through grace can be believed;
But the horrors which He felt
Are too vast to be conceived!”
Don Fortner
Pride cannot live
beneath the cross!
(by Spurgeon)
Stand at the foot of the cross, and count
the purple drops by which you have been
cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark His
scourged shoulders, still gushing with
encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet
given up to the rough iron, and His whole
self to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness,
and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief,
showing themselves in His outward frame;
hear the chilling shriek, “My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
If you do not lie prostrate on the ground
before that cross, you have never seen it.
If you are not humbled in the presence
of Jesus, you do not know Him.
You were so lost that nothing could save you
but the sacrifice of God’s only begotten. Think
of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow
yourself in lowliness at His feet.
A sense of Christ’s amazing love to us has a
greater tendency to humble us than even a
consciousness of our own guilt.
May the Lord bring us in contemplation to
Calvary, then our position will no longer be
that of the pompous man of pride, but we
shall take the humble place of one who loves
much because much has been forgiven him.
Pride cannot live beneath the cross!
Let us sit there and learn our lesson,
and then rise and carry it into practice.
It was not the nails!
(J.C.Philpot)
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Mark 15:34
It was not the nails driven through His hands and feet;
it was not the crown of thorns placed upon His brow;
it was not the stripes which mangled His back;
it was not the languor and faintness under which He
suffered–which caused the Lord to die.
It was not the mere bodily agony of the cross; it was
not the mere pain, though most acute and severe, of
the nails driven through His sacred hands and feet. It
was not the being stretched upon the cross six hours
that constituted the chief part of the Redeemer’s
suffering. But it was the almost intolerable load of
imputed sin–the imputed sins of millions. It was the
tremendous pouring of the wrath of God into His holy
soul; it was the hiding of His Father’s face, and the
very pangs of hell that there caught hold of Him.
Our suffering Saviour drank the cup of the wrath of
God to the very dregs–when our vile, dreadful, and
horrible sins were laid upon Him!
“Yet we did esteem Him stricken by God, smitten
of God, and afflicted.” Isaiah 53:4
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him
to grief: Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin .
. .” Isaiah 53:10
Yes, indeed, this is
the wonder of wonders, the miracle of miracles!
(Charles Spurgeon, “Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden” 1883)
“Christ died for the ungodly!” Romans 5:6
Yes, indeed, this is the wonder of wonders, the miracle of miracles —
at which my mind will forever stand amazed! That the thrice Holy Saviour should
take the sinner’s place, and, coming under the sinner’s doom, should be smitten
of God — this is a mystery past finding out!
Hell is horribly amazing — but the death of Jesus is
far more astounding, and especially that in death He should cry, “My
God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!” Only the Son of God could
endure this great grief. Yet is it a mystery of mysteries, that so divine a
person should be capable of enduring it.
The marvel is thought to be, that a man should be able to
suffer so much. But the real marvel is that, being God, He should
suffer at all. The being forsaken by the Father, was the very essence of His
grief!
My soul, adore and love — you cannot understand it!
Behold the eclipse of your soul’s Sun, and know that, had not this been, you
would have been in the darkness of Hell forever!
The wrath of God let loose upon His Son!
(Winslow, “The God of Holiness”)
Divine holiness is best exhibited in the cross of Jesus.
Not hell itself,
dreadful and eternal as is its suffering:
the undying worm, the unquenchable fire, the smoke
of the torment that goes up forever and ever; affords
such a solemn and impressive spectacle of the
holiness and justice of God in the punishment of
sin, as is presented in the death of God’s beloved Son.
An eminent Puritan writer
thus strikingly puts it:
“Not all the vials of judgment that have or shall be
poured out upon this wicked world, nor the flaming
furnace of a sinner’s conscience, nor the irrevocable
sentence pronounced against the rebellious devils,
nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such
a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the
wrath of God let loose upon His Son!“
Never did Divine
holiness appear more beautiful
and lovely than at the time our Saviour’s countenance
was most marred in the midst of His dying groans.
This Himself acknowledges in
that penitential psalm,
when God turned His smiling face away from Him, and
thrust His sharp knife into His heart, which forced
that terrible cry from Him, “My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
why art thou so far from helping me, and
from the words of my roaring? ….But thou art holy” Ps.
22:1-3
Such an impressive view of God’s
holiness the angels
in heaven never before beheld; not even when they
saw the non elect spirits hurled from the heights of
glory down to the bottomless pit, to be reserved in
chains of darkness and woe forever!
Jesus was the innocent One
dying for the guilty
ones, the holy One dying for the sinful ones.
Divine justice, in
its mission of judgment, as it
swept by the cross, found the Son of God impaled
upon its wood beneath the sins and the curse of
His people. Upon Him its judgment fell, on His soul
its wrath was poured, in His heart its flaming sword
was plunged; and thus, from Him, justice exacted
the full penalty of man’s transgression; the last
farthing of the great debt.
Go to the cross, then, my reader, and learn the holiness of God.
Contemplate…
the dignity of Christ;
His preciousness to His Father’s heart;
the sinlessness of His nature.
And then behold…
the sorrow of His soul,
the torture of His body,
the tragedy of His death,
the abasement,
the ignominy,
the humiliation, into the fathomless
depths of which the whole transaction
plunged our incarnate God!
And let me ask, standing, as
you are, before
this unparalleled spectacle, “Can you cherish
low views of God’s holiness, or light views
of your own sinfulness?”