Is There No Balm?
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?
9 Oh that my head were waters,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 Oh that I had in the desert
a travelers’ lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
a company of treacherous men.
3 They bend their tongue like a bow;
falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 8:22-9:3
+
Is There No Balm?
In Jeremiah’s day the prophet looks over a wounded people and asks why healing has not come. The Lord had sent His Word through the prophets again and again, yet the people preferred lies, idolatry, and false peace. Their sickness was not merely political or cultural. It was sin, a disease of the heart. Jeremiah grieves because the people refuse the medicine God provides. The same sickness still marks the world and our own hearts. We chase our own wisdom and trust voices that promise peace apart from repentance. Yet Jeremiah’s cry points us forward. There truly is a balm for the wounded sinner. It is found not in human wisdom but in the crucified Christ. On the cross Jesus bears the infection of our sin and pours out the healing of forgiveness. Where the Word of Christ is preached, the Great Physician is present, binding wounds and giving life.
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?
9 Oh that my head were waters,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 Oh that I had in the desert
a travelers’ lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
a company of treacherous men.
3 They bend their tongue like a bow;
falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 8:22-9:3
+
Is There No Balm?
In Jeremiah’s day the prophet looks over a wounded people and asks why healing has not come. The Lord had sent His Word through the prophets again and again, yet the people preferred lies, idolatry, and false peace. Their sickness was not merely political or cultural. It was sin, a disease of the heart. Jeremiah grieves because the people refuse the medicine God provides. The same sickness still marks the world and our own hearts. We chase our own wisdom and trust voices that promise peace apart from repentance. Yet Jeremiah’s cry points us forward. There truly is a balm for the wounded sinner. It is found not in human wisdom but in the crucified Christ. On the cross Jesus bears the infection of our sin and pours out the healing of forgiveness. Where the Word of Christ is preached, the Great Physician is present, binding wounds and giving life.
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