Alright, Exodus 15. Now, when we last saw the children
of Israel, there they were on the bank of the Red Sea, having
been redeemed by the Lord, having been delivered out of bondage
by the Lord. They saw the Lord destroy all
their enemies so that there remained not one. That's a picture of
you and me who believe. We've been brought out. We've
been called out by God. God's destroyed all our enemies.
And they go for three days. Now you think about it, it's
not just a few people. There's 600,000 of just men alone. So you count children and women,
there's at least 1.2, 1.5 million people. And they're going and
they travel for three days without any water. Can you imagine that? I mean, they're out of water.
And they're out in the desert heat. And that heat's coming
down and they're going along without any water. They just
watched God destroy an entire Egyptian army with loads of water. And now, God hasn't provided
them any water. And then they look up in the
distance and there they see something shining on the horizon. And it's water. You just imagine the thrill that
went through the congregation that they see water. And they
get to that water. When they get there, they couldn't
drink it. It was bitter. They couldn't
drink it. They called it Mara. And what
did they do? The same people who were praising
God, Scripture says in verse 24, And the people murmured against
Moses, saying, What shall we drink? What shall we drink? And he cried
unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a tree,
which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made
sweet. And there he made for them a statue and an ordinance.
And there he proved them and said, If thou will diligently
hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, we'll do that which
is right in His sight, we'll give ear to His commandments,
keep all His statutes. I'll put none of these diseases
upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am
the Lord that healeth thee. That's the title of our message,
The Lord that Healeth Thee. And then they left that bitter
place and they came to Elam where were 12 wells of water and 70
palm trees and they camped there by the waters. Now there's been
more than a few times that I've heard new believers that have
said to me after they got a little older, they said, you know back
when I was a new believer, I thought that once God gave me faith in
Christ that life was going to be easier. But I found out it's
harder. It's harder than it was before.
And it's the same for a believer that strikes out on a new endeavor.
You strike out, you know, going to do something new for the honor
of the Lord. You find there's a lot of opposition
in your way. But don't think, don't judge
by the opposition that comes to you in providence that God's
against that way. because it's usually full of opposition.
And that's God's way. That's God's way to keep His
people. And the reason God does it that
way, from the first hour to the last, all the bitter waters that
God leads us to are to humble us. And they're to turn us from
self. and they are to keep us ever
looking to Christ alone who healeth thee. That's the purpose. That's
the purpose. So that's what I want us to see
today. Now first of all, in our flesh, we are the dry desert
and we are the bitter waters. We are Marah. They came there
from the Red Sea and they went to that wilderness three days
and when they came tomorrow, they couldn't drink those waters
because they were bitter. They were bitter. After conversion,
a believer thinks, you know, their joy is going to be uninterrupted.
Well, I'm going to have some uninterrupted joy now for the
rest of this time. And it's just two or three days,
maybe not even that long. And you find out it's not so.
Within a day or two, to our surprise, here comes the bitter waters.
That sinful sin nature that plagued us, that God showed us when He
converted us and made us just horribly sick at the sin nature
within us and all our wretched works. That sin nature that's
in every sinner is still in a believer. It's still there. Our sin nature
is mara, it's bitterness. That means that we cannot drink
of ourselves and get any life, not from our sin nature, not
from any of our works, none whatsoever. You know, by nature, I mean naturally,
I'm deaf. I can't hear a thing. Take these
hearing aids out, I can't hear anything. But when I yawn, there's
just a second when I can hear as clear as I did back when I
used to hear very well. I asked my doctor about it. They
have some ten dollar word for it. I forget what it's called.
But for a split second I can hear. But you know in our flesh
we can't hear this gospel at all. Not believingly we can't
hear it. You just can't hear it. All the
flesh can do is what the Lord said in Jeremiah 2.13. My people have committed two
evils. They've forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters. He's
the fountain of living water. They've forsaken Me. That's all
the flesh can do is forsake the fountain of living waters. And
they've hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold
water. That's our problem. We forsake
God. and we try to make a way to hold
water for ourselves and to produce water ourselves. That's all the
flesh can produce. Or the new believer goes and
within a few days he finds out that his fellow believers are
still sinners. A fellow believer disappoints
him. Look here in verse 24. The people murmured against Moses
saying, What shall we drink? Just a few days ago they were
thankful for Moses, for the Lord sending Him. Now they're murmuring
against Him. He brought us out here to kill us. That's a lesson
for you and me, brethren. That's a lesson for you and me.
Don't ever be surprised when a brother or a sister who sang
joyful praises with you yesterday murmurs against you today. Don't
be surprised. Learn from it. What do we learn? One, we learn That's what I am
in my flesh. Don't start saying, well, I wouldn't
do that. No, say, what they're doing is
exactly what I am in my flesh. And two, use it to think about
the Lord. Think about how hurtful it was
when you experienced that hurt. Think about how hurtful it was
when one of His apostles left Him and betrayed Him. Think about
how hurtful it was when Peter denied Him. Think about how He
hurt for us on the cross. And then three, use it to stop
our murmuring, to shut our mouth and stop our murmuring. Or, soon
after conversion, a new believer finds out that the world still
opposes him. We should learn to expect what
the Lord told us to expect while we're going through this wilderness.
This is not the promised land. We haven't reached the promised
land yet. They had not reached Canaan. They were in the wilderness.
And we haven't reached the promised land. We are in the wilderness.
And our Lord told us what to expect while we're in the wilderness.
He said, in this world you shall have tribulation. That's it. But, don't forget this, He said,
but be of good cheer for I've overcome the world. And in Him,
we've overcome the world. and we shall. So that's the first
thing. We got to be taught about our
flesh, but look here, whenever we come to the bitter waters,
this is the better cry, right here. This is the better cry.
Rather than murmuring against brethren, this is better. Verse
24, the people murmured against Moses and he cried unto the Lord. They murmured against him and
he cried unto the Lord. Isn't that a beautiful picture
of us and our Redeemer. We murmur against Him. And that's what, when you murmur
against second causes, whatever they are, your brother, your
sister, something that happens in private, it's murmuring against
Christ. And while we murmur against Him, He intercedes for us. You, instead of murmuring, complaining
and talking to everybody that will listen about your problems.
You know what we are better off doing? Going to Christ and pour
out our heart. It is a throne of grace that
His blood has assured us that we can come to it confidently
and know we are going to be heard and received. So we ought to
go straight to Him. If you had a sick child, would
you go around to the mechanic and tell him about it and go
to the garbage collector and tell him about it and go to the
plumber and tell him about it. No, you are not going to go talk
to somebody who won't do any good to talk to. You go straight
to the physician. It does no good for us to talk
to others about our trouble. They can't do anything about
it. I want to hear anything you are going through. I do. And
I want to, I try to help you any way I can, but I can't give
you the comfort that the great physician So go straight to Him. Go straight to Him. But notice
here when it was that Moses cried to the Lord. Notice when it was
he cried. It was when the Lord had made
it so that he couldn't do anything else. Moses is standing there,
one man, and he looks back and there's a million of people following
him and looking at him and saying, what are we going to drink? All
that man can do is call on the Lord and cry unto the Lord. And
that's when a sinner will cry. But it's only when the Lord has
brought us into that scorching heat of His law in that first
hour and made us see what we are and then in the trial when
He brings us to those bitter waters and hedges us up so that
we have no other option. That's when we cry unto the Lord.
Listen to this. This is from Psalm 107. They
wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. They found no
city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul
fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord
in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.
He brought down their heart with labor. They fell down. There
was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord
in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.
Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat, and they drew near unto
the gates of death. Then they cried unto the Lord
in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.
They reeled to and fro, and staggered like a drunken man, and were
at their wits end. Then they cried unto the Lord,
and He brings them out of their distresses. We only cry unto
Him when He brings it to where we got no option before then. We say a lot of pretty words
and we have to stop and get our mind back on track, try to figure
out what it was we were asking Him for, go to sleep, wake up
later and finish praying to Him. But when you're brought to nothing,
that's when you start praying to Him. We've got to be brought to say,
O wretched man that I am. And that's when He reveals to
you and saves you. But we've got to be brought to
say, Oh God, my soul thirsteth for Thee. I'm thirsting for You. My flesh longeth for Thee in
a dry and thirsty land where no water is. We've got to be
brought there. So we see there's no help anywhere
else. Not in ourselves, not in anybody
else, only in the Lord. And then what does He do? He
reveals our Healer. He reveals our healer. Look here
in verse 25. And the Lord showed them a tree,
which when He had cast into the waters, the waters were made
sweet. Now you notice here, it was God
alone that revealed this tree to them. It was God alone that
revealed this tree. And it's God alone that's going
to reveal this tree to you and me. It's Him alone that did,
it's Him that's going to. From the first hour. And throughout
all our trials, brethren, our fleshly wisdom, our fleshly seeking,
our fleshly works are useless. Absolutely useless. When we're
actually trying to figure out how to get out of a situation,
we're not crying to the Lord and we're not depending on Him.
We're looking to ourselves to try to get out of it. It's only
when we're brought to our knees to cry unto Him that we've been
made to see everything else is useless. There's no point in
trying anything else. Because the Lord is going to
get the glory and Him alone for revealing to you this tree we're
talking about. He's going to get the glory.
And then notice something else. The whole time they were there
murmuring, that tree was there all along. It was right there
in their presence all along. But they didn't see it. Brethren,
God's elect have been in Christ our surety from before the foundation
of the world. When we came into this world
and we didn't know Him and we were going through our days of
rebellion, He was right there the whole time preserving us. You know what Jehovah Shema means? That means the Lord is there. And He's there all the time.
But, especially when we come into bitter waters, we can't
see Him. We forget He's there. And the
Lord has to take the veil off all over again just like He did
the first hour and reveal again to us Christ the Lord and show
us Christ. And that's who this tree is.
We behold Christ on the tree. We behold Christ Himself cast
into the bitter waters. He said, take this tree Cut it
down, throw it in the waters. And we behold Christ on the cross,
on the tree, cast into the waters, the bitter waters. We behold
Him there, Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth thee. We have
to be turned to Him. Do you ever in trials, do you
ever get to a place where you just can't pick the Bible up
and read it? Or you just can't listen to a message? You know,
I was talking to a brother the other day. Actually, Caelan's
daddy. I was talking to him the other
day. I said, it must be nice, you and your brother working
together. And when one of you is, you know, messed up, the
other one can talk to him about the gospel. And he said, yeah,
it is nice. He goes, but sometimes, you know,
Tommy will say something to me and I'll say, Tommy, just hold
on. Give me some time. I can't hear it right now. And
that's how it is. There's times when you just got
to You can't hear it. What makes it so that you can't?
The Lord does. The Lord turns you. In a little
while, He turns you and makes you see Christ the Lord. That's
what He does. These bitter waters of Marah,
they represent the bitter sin and the bitter curse of the law
due to this bitter sinful nature of us. That's what they represent. The law and the justice of God
demands a bitter death of you and me. It demands, after that
bitter physical death, it demands a bitter eternal death in hell. That's what the justice of God
demands of every single person in this room right here. And
so Christ came forth, the tree of life, and He voluntarily gave
Himself to be cast into those bitter waters for you and me,
for His people. He agreed to come and be made
to bear our flesh and be immersed in this sinful world that we
live in. Can you imagine what it was like
for the spotless Lamb of God to come into this sinful world
and live amongst the people who are just nothing but sin? I told you, I think, about the
astronauts. I was watching one time about
the astronauts that had been in space for so long. And they
were interviewing them after they came back, you know, to
earth. And they asked them, was it different
for them coming back? And they said, it just stinks.
They said, everything stinks so badly. You know, I can't smell
it. But that's our sin. Can you imagine
this spotless one coming to this place? And He had to bear the
sin of God's elect. He went to the cross despising
the shame. Despising the shame. But He had
to be constituted before God, before His law, legally responsible
for everything. That's what He was. He made sin
for His people. He was immersed, just like that
tree went into that water and was immersed, He was immersed
in the curse of the law. The curse of the law is the wrath
of God. And He was made a curse for us
and immersed in that wrath of God. And then He was immersed
in a grave. All the bitter waters that you
and I, that the law and justice of God demanded you and I had
to go through, He went through it. Every bit of it. And so He
is the Lord that healeth thee. You know how He made the bitter
waters sweet? With His stripes. The whip that He bore. And not
just the whip of men. That whip that had bone in it,
where they would whip you, what was it, 39 times? That whip was
bad enough, but it only pictured the whip of God's wrath that
we can't see. But with His stripes, all His
people are healed. Justice is satisfied. Listen
to this. Who His own self bear our sins
and His own body on the tree. That means the sin and the guilt
as well as the punishment. and bore our sin on the tree,
that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness,
by whose stripes ye were healed. Here's how we were healed. Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us. Does it give you some apprehension?
to say Christ was made a curse. That makes me a little bit uneasy
to say my Redeemer was made a curse. That's even worse than saying
He was made sin. He was made a curse. But that's what the
Scripture said. He was made a curse for us. And
that's how He redeemed us. Because cursed is everyone that
hangeth on a what? A tree. He's that tree that makes
the water sweet. So believer, the law of God,
that bitter that once was bitter to us, now it's made sweet to
us. That same justice that was bitter
that demanded we die, that same justice now is sweet because
it demands we live. God's holy and just and He only
does what's holy and just, so it demands we live and it means
we shall. We shall live. On either side
of the river, John saw in glory and it said on both sides of
the river there was a tree of life. It doesn't matter if His
people are in this earth or we're on the other side of the Jordan
in glory with Him. Christ is the tree of life for
us both. For these people that are yet
alive in this earth and for those that are alive in glory. Whatever
side of the river you're on, He's the tree of life. And He
said in that tree bear twelve manner of fruits. Twelve fruits
for the twelve tribes of Israel. That means, brethren, there's
healing for all God's elect in Christ. And it yielded her fruit
every month. That means there's going to be
a continual supply of His grace to heal us. And the leaves of
the tree were for the healing of the nations. The nations are
His people scattered in the nations. And He's the healer, Jehovah
Rapha. You know, there was a long time
that I understood the doctrine of particular redemption. I understood
it. But I wasn't healed because I
didn't believe on Christ. But in time, you know what the
Lord did? He cast in me this tree. and made the bitter water sweet.
You know what He did? He made particular redemption
particular to me. He made me see that Christ was
made sin for me. And Christ was made a curse for
me. And Christ redeemed me. And that's when I quit Knowing
a doctrine and arguing with anybody I could buttonhole, I'd argue
with them over the doctrine of particular redemption. That's
when I quit that and I began to mourn over my sin, beholding
Christ who has made sin for me. And began to say, Lord have mercy
on me, the sinner. Everything changed. When he cast
his tree in, brethren, everything changed. As the apple tree among
the trees of the wood, his fruits made sweet to our taste. And
look here at this next thing. He's telling us by all this,
it's only through God-given faith that Christ makes the bitter
water sweet. Abraham, when it says here, he
saw a tree and then it says, when cast into the waters, that
means God told him. to cast this tree into the waters.
And Abraham did it because he believed God. He believed that
this is how the waters were going to be made sweet. It's a picture
of faith in Christ. And it's only through faith in
Christ, believing on Him, that the bitter waters are made sweet.
He is the water of life. He's life. He's life. the water
of life. Listen to this, John 7, 37. In
the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and
cried. And He said, if any man thirsts, here he is at a feast. You know there's a lot to drink
at that feast. And people are probably saying,
if any man thirsts, we've got a big cooler over here, you ought
to come over here and get you a cold drink. He said, if any
man thirsts, let him come to Me. and let him drink. What did he
mean by that? He said, He that believeth on
me. That's what he meant. He that
believeth on me, as the Scripture said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water. Now what does that mean? Where
does that living water come from? John said, He showed me a pure
river of water of life proceeding from the throne of God and from
the Lamb. Remember, Paul said the gospel
is revealed from faith to faith. This fountain comes from the
Lord, from the throne, from our King, from our Lamb. It comes
from Him. And then in this dry place called
the body of our death, this dry desert, this bitter fountain
right here, in the midst of it, Christ enters. And He makes the
rivers of water of life start to flow. He gives us life. Listen
to this. A man, the God-man, shall be
as rivers of water in a dry place. That dry place is in here. It's
in you and me. And He becomes the river of waters. He becomes life in this dry place. And that's when Christ heals
you. Listen to Isaiah 35.6. It says, Then shall the lame
man leap as a heart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
How come? Because in the wilderness shall
waters break out. and streams in the desert, and
the parched ground shall become a pool, and thirsty land springs
of water. And in the habitation of dragons,
where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes." That
means, in all of that, it means there will be life where there
was no life. And Christ is at life when He
comes in. And you know what happens then?
by His love for us, by the free forgiveness we have in Him through
faith, when He's brought us to faith in Him, that's when for
the first time we really start living unto God. Before then,
you know what we did? We lived to ourselves. How did
we do it? By our religion. Most of us,
by our religion. We lived unto ourselves because
we came to church. And we tried to do what God said
to do and keep His law. And so we were indebting God
to us. And we tried to make sure everybody saw how good we were.
And we made sure that no matter what, everybody was talking about
us. How good we are. And all that was just living
unto ourselves. For the first time, none of that
matters. And we start living unto God
now. We don't come to church anymore. We come to hear Christ. And we're not doing things just
because we feel like we have to to try to indebt God. We're doing it because we want
to, constrained by the love of Christ. It's all different. The beasts of the field shall
honor me and the dragons and the owls, God said. You know
who that is? That's you and me, who He regenerates. We're the beasts of the field
by nature. We're the dragons and the owls. But he says, they
are going to honor me. How? Why? Because I give waters
in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to
my people, my chosen. When will you start honoring
God? You preach the law all you want to preach the law to people.
You can tell people they need to live this way and not live
that way and just preach it, preach it, preach it all you
want to. You know what you are going to create? You create a
bunch of self-righteous people that nobody can stand to be around.
That's what you're going to create. But you preach Christ crucified
and God makes you see Christ crucified for you. He makes you
see that and He said, I'm going to give waters in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert and drink to my people and when I
do, they'll honor me. They'll honor me then. See, that's
when we behold Him, that's when we go honor and try to live to
honor Him, because we're living under Him. Now brethren, when
you see this, this is the great salvation He's delivered us from,
the sole great salvation, Scripture speaks of. So when you see that
He's delivered us from the great salvation, that tells you of
me when He brings us into these lesser bitter waters, which all
our trials are. I know that some folks go through
some really, really, really tough trials. But they're really far
less bitter waters than what we were under. And if He delivered
us out of that, these lesser trials won't be any problem for
Him. So remember that. Now look here
at this. Next we see how God made them
to obey Him and how we're made to start honoring Him. He not
only showed us that in picture, He actually tells us what He
said and what He did to make Moses obey Him and throw that
tree in the water and to make him from then start to honor
Him. And this is what He does for His people. Look, when we
read this, I want you to see it's a conditional covenant.
God said, if you do this, then I will do the other. That's a
conditional covenant of works. And that was the covenant they
were under, those that were the natural seed of Israel. That's
not the covenant you and I are under. Remember Hebrews 10 says
Christ come and established the first that He might establish
the second, the covenant of grace for us. So, look here at Exodus
15, 25. The Lord here is just putting
it all together for us. He's showing us what He taught
them and what He did there by making them put that tree in
the water and making these waters sweet. It says there, Where is
there? That's when He brings us to faith
in Christ. When He brings us to the bitter
waters, brings us to the end of ourselves, brings us to see
Christ, the tree of life, and to lay a hold of Him. Right there,
He made for them a statute and an ordinance. He made them one
law. One law. And He gave them an
ordinance. You know what He does for us?
He gives us one law. One law. It's made up of two
parts. It's believe on Christ and love
your brethren. And the way we do that is He
writes on our heart the law of faith and the law of love. That's the law He writes on the
hearts of His people. The law of righteousness, the
law of mercy. He teaches us what we didn't
know before by showing us Christ. And He gives us two ordinances.
The Lord's table that we're going to observe today and water baptism. And just like that tree going
in the water pictured Christ, these ordinances picture Christ.
They picture Christ. And look here. And there, when
He brought them to that bitter water, He proved them. He tested them. Moses was proven
to be God's elect. How? He believed God and therefore
he obeyed God. See, faith and obedience, faith,
believing in God's Word and laying hold of Christ, that's proof
we're God's elect. That's how He proves you to be
His elect. And look here, and He said to
them, if, now you take the if out, because we're not under
a covenant of works. All the promises of God in Christ
are yes and amen to the praise and glory of God's grace. We're
not under the covenant of works. It's not an if. But I will tell
you this, if you don't continue in Christ, you're not His. And you're not going to receive
anything from Him. But you and I, it's not an if because we
stumble and fall. And our faith is often very,
very weak to where it doesn't even look like it exists. And
yet God is still faithful to us because of His Son. But look at this, now take the
if out, And in grace, here's how God makes us willing now
to believe Christ and to begin loving our brethren. He says,
Thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy
God. When He says that, you know what you're going to do? You're
going to believe Christ. He speaks that effectually and
you'll start hearkening diligently only to Christ's voice. What
did Christ say? My sheep hear my voice. And what's
the result? They follow me. They follow Me. They don't hear Christ's voice
and follow Moses. They hear Christ's voice and
follow Christ. And look here, and He says, And you will do
that which is right in His sight, and you will give ear to His
commandments, and you will keep all His statutes. And for the
first time when He says that to us, we do what's right in
God's sight. We believe on His Son. And we
hear His law for the first time. We hear His commandments and
we hear Him say we're guilty. We hear Him say we can't fulfill
them. And so what do we do? Believing on Christ who established
all His commandments and all His statutes for us, we fulfilled
them all. And that's the constraint, brethren. People will hear that and say,
oh, you're antinomian. No, I'm telling you It is by
fulfilling the law of God, establishing it for us and bringing us to
behold it's all done for us. We're righteous and justified
in Christ. It's through that that He begins
to constrain us to really live unto Him. To be faithful to Him
and to love our brethren, to serve one another in love. Really loving your brethren,
really wanting to to come do whatever needs to be done because
you love your brethren. That's what he begins to do.
And it's not anymore a legal thing. It's not anymore from
these bad motives of trying to show that you're good or show
people you're something. No, now it's from a pure motive
because He's given you a new heart. And look at this. And here is where we are constrained.
He has promised us there in verse 26, I will put none of these
diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians for
I am the Lord that healeth thee. That means He will not let sin
have the dominion over us anymore. What does that mean preacher?
Does that mean that I can keep the law now? No, it doesn't mean
that. It means a believer can never stop believing Christ.
And they can never stop loving their brethren. Why? Because
His incorruptible seed abides in us and we cannot sin. In our
old flesh, all we are is sin. But in that new man, by the grace
of our Lord, by His Spirit, by His incorruptible seed, John
said in 1 John 3, we cannot sin. And what he meant, you go on
down the chapter, he said, he that believes is going to do
righteousness and he is going to love his brethren. A little
bit later, He puts those two things together again and He
tells us what doing righteousness is. He's going to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and love His brethren. And He can't do
otherwise. You think about it, brethren.
Could you stop believing on Christ? We can't. I mean, there's times
when it looks like we don't, but you can't. If you just, over
time, if I look back at my life, one thing I see is Since He called
me, I believe Christ and haven't been able to stop believing Him.
That's not by me, that's by Him. That's by Him. Because He's not
going to let sin have the dominion over you anymore. He's not going
to put any of those diseases on you because He's the Lord
that healeth thee. He's Jehovah Rapha. Now, one
last thing. One last thing. Some read that
word, the Lord that healeth thee, and they refuse medicine, they
refuse to go to doctors and all this stuff. Brethren, the Lord
uses means. Right here where He declared
Himself to be Jehovah Rapha, He used means to do it. And God uses the means of the
cross to make us whole. He uses the means of the gospel
to call us. And He uses the means of trials
to keep us. So, He uses the means of medicine
and doctors to heal you. But in the back of that, in the
back of all of that, first cause of all of that is the Lord that
healeth thee. And He's the one we give the
glory to. That woman came to Christ and she said, if I can
just touch the heel of His garment, I will be whole. I will be whole. And Christ made her whole. And
He told that lame man to arise and when He spoke that, that's
just like what we see in our text. He said, He's going to
say to you, You do that which is right in the sight of God.
And when He speaks that to you, you're going to arise. And you're
going to do what He says. And He says immediately, He was
made whole. Immediately. And it says of you
and me, you are complete in Christ. You're completely whole. Completely
whole in Christ. And one day, we're going to be
completely whole in ourselves. He's going to thoroughly make
us like unto Christ. One day. So it's not the letter
of the law and it's not the hearing of words, it's the love of God
in Christ preached to us in the gospel by which Christ gives
life and faith and continues to rule the heart of a believer
so that we walk in faith and love. That's what I was trying
to preach at Danville. It's by this gospel. So let me
look at this last thing. The Lord is abundant in grace.
Whenever the Lord has brought you to these bitter waters, there's
going to afterwards be a time of refreshing. Watch this, verse
27, ìThey came to Elam, where were twelve wells of water and
seventy palm trees, and they camped out there by the waters
and rested.î See, after the bitter waters, the Lord is going to
bring you into some rest and going to refresh you. The Lamb
is going to lead you to living fountains of waters and wipe
away all tears from your eyes. And look at this, how is this
joy of heart coming to us? How are we going to be refreshed?
It's through the Gospel. How do we see that? We see it
because the 12 wells and the 70 palm trees, when you see numbers
like that about something that's relatively insignificant, wells
and palm trees, it means something. How many did the Lord send out
to preach the Gospel? He sent 12 apostles. and seventy
disciples. This is through the gospel. It's
through the gospel. And it shows us that God's provided
each and every one of His elect this well of living water which
shall never run dry. There was twelve wells for twelve
tribes. And Christ is the well of life
for every one of His people. The rivers of Judah shall flow
with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the
Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim. Therefore with joy
shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation. And like
these palm trees, they had shade now, and we got shade under Christ. We got shade from the heat of
the law, and we ourselves are made trees by the Lord. Trees of righteousness, the planting
of the Lord that He may be glorified. and we rest under Christ who,
Scripture says, is a shadow from the heat. And let me tell you
something for you that don't believe. This is what Scripture
said, Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, whose hope
the Lord is, because he shall be like a tree planted by the
water, that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see
when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green, and shall not
be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding
fruit. But you know what the next verse
talks about? The man who doesn't believe on Christ is going to
be like a dry heath in a desert. You ever seen them westerns where
you see those tumbleweeds, just them old dry tumbleweeds? That's
going to be the man that doesn't believe Christ. But just like they camped out
here and rested, He brings us to rest in Christ. He brings
us to rest in Him. Christ said, are you heavy laden?
Are you burdened down under the law? Are you burdened down under
your guilt and your sin? Is anybody here burdened down
like that? Heavy laden? He says, come unto
Me and I'll give you rest. Come unto Me and I'll give you
rest unto your soul. And that's what I say, believer.
Don't ever stop looking to Him. He gives us rest. And you that
don't believe Him, come to Him. Not only will He give you righteousness,
like we talked about the first hour, He'll give you rest. Rest because of that righteousness.
He said, they that be whole need not a physician. Are you whole? That's what we think we are by
nature. And you don't think you need a physician. But those that
are sick need a physician. Christ said, listen to this.
He said, heed this. He said, I came to show mercy,
not to receive sacrifice. I don't want your sacrifice.
I don't want you doing something. I came to have mercy on my people.
He said, I came not to call the righteous. I didn't come to call
the good people. There is none good. They think
they're good. I didn't come to call them that
think they're good. I came to call sinners to repentance. Are
you a sinner? Are you heavy laden? Do you need
Christ? Believe on Him. Cast all your
care on Him. You'll have that free righteousness
and having that you'll have rest. Rest. Soul rest. Rest that won't ever depart.
Alright brethren, let's remember Jehovah Rapha today. Let's remember Him. All right,
Brother Rob and Kevin.