Please turn with me in the Word of God to the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 8, beginning our reading at verse 4. It's sometimes surprising to check the context of verses that have inspired famous hymns. We think of the famous hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, inspired by a verse in the middle of lamentations, a kind of surprising place to find a great confession of God's faithfulness in the midst of that lament for God's terrible judgment. And so it is here in Jeremiah chapter 8, a somewhat surprising place to find a reference to the balm of Gilead that inspired the African-American spiritual that was played for us. Let us hear the Word of God reading Jeremiah chapter 8 beginning at verse 4 and reading down through chapter 9 verse 1. This is the very Word of God. Say to them, this is what the Lord says. When men fall down, do they not get up? When a man turns away, does he not return? Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit. They refuse to return. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift, and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord. How can you say we are wise for we have the law of God when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? The wise will be put to shame. They will be dismayed and trampled. Since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have? Therefore I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain. Prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all. They do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen. They will be brought down when they are punished, says the Lord. I will take away their harvest, declares the Lord. There will be no grapes on the vine, there will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither. What I have given them will be taken from them. Why are we sitting here? Gather together, let us flee to the fortified cities and perish there. For our God has doomed us to perish and given us poisoned water to drink because we have sinned against him. We hoped for peace, but no good has come. For a time of healing, but there was only terror. The snorting of the enemy's horses is heard from Dan. At the neighing of their stallions, the whole land trembles. They have come to devour the land and everything in it, the city and all who live there. See, I will send venomous snakes among you, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you, declares the Lord. Oh, my comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me. Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away. Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her king no longer there? Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their worthless foreign gods? The harvest has passed, the summer has ended, and we are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why, then, is there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. So far the reading of God's word. Jeremiah has often been called the weeping prophet. And perhaps that title for him comes in part from this first verse of chapter 9, I would weep night and day for the slain of my people. Jeremiah often came with words of judgment, of sadness, of calamity, and that was the commission given him when the Lord first called him, as it's described in the first chapter of Jeremiah. But it's not his only calling. While he had to bring many hard words, many calamitous words, he also brought words of encouragement. Jeremiah 1 verse 10, the Lord said to him, See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. So there's a tearing down that Jeremiah has to do in the name of the Lord, but there's also a building up. And although this 8th chapter is largely a word of judgment, a word of warning, a word of rebuke, the original author of that spiritual, there is a balm in Gilead, Recognize that while chapter 8 that refers to a balm in Gilead says there is no balm. That in the book as a whole there is a balm in Gilead. There is hope and encouragement for the people of God. And so I want to think with you a little bit tonight about what the prophet is saying. Why does he use this rather arresting phrase, a balm in Gilead? Well, he uses it because for over a thousand years, Gilead, a region of Israel up in the northeast, had been famous for producing spices and ointments. Children, a balm is like a lotion or an ointment. Maybe sometimes you play out in the sun too long. You come in with a sunburn and you hope mom has some kind of ointment that she can put on that sunburn to take some of the pain away. And that kind of ointment is also called a balm, a soothing, healing balm. In the ancient world, they didn't have medicines. They didn't have pharmacies, but they knew something about the healing power of plants and could make ointments. And a thousand years before Jeremiah wrote in Genesis 37, we read about an ointment balm trade between Gilead and Egypt. That's how famous the balms of Gilead were, how important they seemed to people, how healing they were. And it had become proverbial amongst the Jews to talk about a balm from Gilead. Is there a balm in Gilead? It's like saying, is there oil in Saudi Arabia? Is there cheese in Wisconsin? Are there coals in Newcastle? Are there grapes in California? The answer is, of course, that's what the region is famous for. Is there a bomb in Gilead? Of course, that's what the region principally produces. It's famous around the whole ancient world for producing a bomb. But here the prophet is warning. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? The theme of the balm of Gilead is brought up because the balm is required for the people. That's the first point that the prophet is stressing. These people are in need. These people are wounded. and they are in need of healing, and it seems there is no one to help. I don't know what you think of when you think of the word wound. I think often today maybe we think of the wound as a kind of slight problem. It's not the way Jeremiah is using it. This is a deep gash into the flesh of the people. Today, most of the time, if we see people shot or stabbed on television or in a movie, they die right away. It's very convenient, very neat, very tidy, by and large. That's not the way it really works most of the time. Certainly in the ancient world, when someone was speared with a spear or slashed with a sword, they had received a mortal wound, but it might take them hours or even days, actually, to die. There are characters in Shakespeare's play who cry out, I'm dying. Mark Antony says that, I'm dying, Egypt, dying. Then he goes on for scene after scene, talking. And we kind of chuckle as modern people about that. But it's the way wounds often worked. They were mortal. Everyone knew you couldn't recover from a wound that severe. But you were still alive. And Jeremiah is saying to the people of God in his era, You are wounded. A wound that is going to kill you unless there's some balm to heal you. A balm is required. And what is the wound? What has wounded God's people? Well, it's sin. That's the wound. The wound that the people have embraced. The wound that the people have brought on themselves. They're sins that have separated them from God. that have so angered God that the level of his patience has worn out. And as we look at the early chapters of Jeremiah, we discover that those sins really group in three areas. They are, as it were, bearing three mortal wounds in their body as a people. The first is that they have defiled the worship of God. They have built images for themselves to worship. They have given their children as human sacrifices to the foreign gods. They have embraced the service of Baal and of the Queen of Heaven. They have slighted the temple by going to every hilltop to offer sacrifices. In chapter 2, verse 11, Jeremiah writes, They have exchanged their glory, that is, their own God, for that which was worthless. Now, I suspect that you, like me, are always sort of glad when we get the first and second commandments read in the Ten Commandments because those are the commandments we don't violate. None of you here have sacrificed your children to Moloch, have you? None of us here go and worship on the high hill, do we? None of us probably have made an image of a foreign god. And so idolatry is not our problem. Isn't that good? Isn't it nice to know that there's at least one set of problems that aren't ours? But of course that's not what the scripture teaches us, is it? What it teaches us is that anything that becomes a rival in our lives to God is idolatry. Anything that shoves God aside, anything that becomes more important to us than God, becomes an idol. That's why Paul can warn Christians against greed, which is idolatry. If you love money so much that that's what you live for, that's become your idol. You don't really have to make an image of it. But if you salivate over the bank statement, that's a form of idolatry. see. Even good things, you see, can become idols to us. If we allow our family to so dominate our life and time that we don't give time to God, or our work, or our interest in sports, any of those things can become idols. And God comes and says, where are your hearts? Where is your time given? What about me? Where is your focus upon me? And of course God cares about the purity of his worship. And we live in a time when there has been, to my mind, a shocking change in Protestant worship far and wide. And I see supposedly evangelical Protestant churches being built with images of all sorts all around. And I think, have they not read the prophet Jeremiah? When Israel made a golden calf for itself, what did it name the golden calf? It named the golden calf Jehovah. They weren't worshipping Baal, but they were worshipping the true God falsely. And God cares about His worship because in His worship when we gather, we gather around His truth to meet with Him. And He says, meet with me in my way. There are churches all over this country today whose whole principle of worship is what will make people happy, what will draw people in. And they've forgotten that worship is above all to be acceptable to God. We worship in the way we do as reformed people out of centuries of careful study of God's word to find out what is pleasing to God. That's why we praise him. That's why we pray to him. That's why we hear his word read and preached. These may or may not be the most exciting things for us. But they're what God calls us to. And we too must be careful that in our hearts, in our minds, in our practices, we do not allow the worship of God to be defiled. But these people were wounded not only by a worship that was defiled, but they were wounded by a word that was despised. Oh, they heard the Word of God read. They knew the Word of God. They had copies of the Word of God in various places, painstakingly copied out. But they had reached a point that they didn't really care what the Word of God said. They really didn't believe. what the Word of God said. And Jeremiah thunders particularly against the leaders of the people. Listen in our text, verses 8 and following of chapter 8. How can you say we are wise for we have the law of God when actually the lying pen of the scribe has handled it falsely? The wise will be put to shame. They will be dismayed and trapped since they have rejected the word of the Lord. What kind of wisdom do they have? And skipping down from the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain. Prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. There is a special responsibility given to leaders of the people of God. In the old covenant, it was kings and priests and prophets who had that special responsibility. To know the Word, to teach the Word, to lead according to the Word. In the New Covenant, it's ministers and elders and deacons who have that special responsibility. And it's a heavy responsibility. Because it is so tempting to tell people what they want to hear. It's so tempting to let people have things the way they want it. It's so tempting to stand up and say, this is my Bible, and then never open it or really care what it says. The Bible remains the biggest seller in bookstores in America. Isn't that wonderful? And so we are a nation of holy people, right? We're a nation of orthodox believers, right? No, because sadly, churches throughout this country are full of people who do not preach the word of God faithfully. Who tell people what they want to hear. Some of them are in it just for the big bucks they make. Benny Hinn stays in rooms when he travels that cost $10,000 a night. And he can afford that because millions of widows all over this country send him their might. And his greed is satisfied. But has he taught faithfully the word of God? The worst thing of all that these prophets and priests have said to the people, Jeremiah says, is that in the midst of calamity that's coming, in the midst of Jeremiah holding up a warning sign and saying, the end is near. You know, we've all seen the cartoons mocking preachers who say the end is near. Jeremiah said the end is near. Armies are going to come and destroy our land and our capital and our temple. They're going to carry away our kings and our priests and our prophets. Beware. Repent. And nobody listened. Because there were priests and there were prophets who were saying, no, there's going to be peace. Peace. Peace. When Jeremiah said there was no peace, They have healed the wound of my people lightly, says Jeremiah. They put a Band-Aid on a cancer. They put a Band-Aid on gangrene. And worst of all, they've said, we have the temple, we have the temple, we have the temple. God will never let the temple be destroyed. God will never let our institutions be destroyed. We don't have to be on guard. We don't have to be thoughtful. We don't have to be careful in the study of the word because it never can happen to us. The people reveled in the false assurance. They didn't want to hear the hard word. And they were as committed to the lie as were their leaders. Verse 5 of chapter 8 says they cling to deceit and refuse to return. The thing that comes across in Jeremiah is that the worst problem of the people was not that they sinned or that they were wounded by sin. the worst thing about the people is that they had come to call sin holiness. They had blocked their ears to the word of God and would not listen. And they deceived themselves into thinking that they could live just as they wanted and God wouldn't care, God wouldn't notice, God wouldn't act. Listen to the list of sins that Jeremiah presents in chapter 7, beginning at verse 5. If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless, or the widow, do not shed innocent blood in this place, if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place and the land I gave your forefathers forever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house which bears my name and say, We are safe, safe to do all these detestable things. It's almost as if Jeremiah read the Ten Commandments, didn't he? and he said, you're breaking all the commandments of God, and then you come into my presence and say, we are safe. Or you say, what have we done? But you know, the third wound, in a sense, is the very worst wound. The third wound is the wound that really is the deepest source of the problem of the people. Why have they defiled the worship of God? Why have they despised the word of God? It's because they've denied the worth of God. They don't really care about God. If our worship is perfect, and if we memorize the whole Bible, but don't have in our hearts a care for God, a love for God, all of our work is vain. But these are people who were showing they really didn't care much about God. Chapter 8, verse 19 says they provoked him to anger by their indifference. Chapter 8, verse 5 says they refused to turn back to God. The English Standard Version translates that as they were perpetually backsliding. And God, expressing his own pain about how he is abandoned by his people, Chapter 2, verse 5 says to his people, What fault did your fathers find in me? It's a question we should all pause over. When we pursue our own agendas, our own lives, our own lusts, our own sins, we should face this question of the prophet. What fault did you find in God that you turned away from him? Chapter 3, verse 19 of Jeremiah, the prophet writes these words from God, I myself said, how gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation. I thought you would call me Father and not turn away from following me. God is not often called Father in the Old Testament, but here he opens his fatherly heart and said, I thought if I treated you like a father in love and provision and kindness, that then you would be like my children. When God says, I will be your God and you will be my people, This was not to be a mechanical relationship. This was not to be a distant relationship. It was to be the relationship of father and loving children. And he said, I have been a father to you. Why are you not a child to me? And what had Israel done? Well, again, the prophet, chapter 2, verse 27, records, they say to Wood, you are my father. And to stone you gave me birth. They have turned their backs to me and not their faces. This is how wounded Israel is. This is the depth to which they've come. The God who longed to be their father, who longed to be treasured by them, has been despised by them, has been taken for granted by them. and that's why they require a balm, a balm that could restore, a balm that could renew. And you see, this text comes not to say to us we are in the same position as the people to whom Jeremiah spoke, but it cannot help but give us pause to reflect. How is it with our souls? Are we wounded in our worship, in our attitude toward the Word, in our embracing our great God? God says, my people needed a balm. And the balm that is talked about preeminently in Jeremiah in these early chapters and in chapter 8 is the balm of repentance. Say to them, this is what the Lord says, verse 4 of chapter 8, When men fall down, do they not get up? When a man turns away, does he not return? Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit. They refuse to return. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying what I have done. Each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. You see, even in this strong word of rebuke that the prophet brings, There is this call to return. And the Lord, in His concern for His people, cries out through the prophet, Why would you not return? And here we see the extraordinary love of God. His wrath is only for those who obstinately, persistently, continuously refuse to turn. And rather, through the prophet, he holds out his arms of love and says, Come to me. Chapter 3, in particular, he expresses that so beautifully. Go proclaim this message toward the north. Return, faithless Israel. That's verse 12 of chapter 3. Go proclaim this message toward the north. Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful, declares the Lord. I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. You have rebelled against the Lord your God. you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree and have not obeyed me. That's the word that God wants to communicate to his people above all other words. I am merciful. Return to me. Acknowledge your guilt. Doesn't sound like a lot to ask, does it? Doesn't sound hard, does it? But I bet your experience is, like mine, that that's a very hard thing for people to say I was wrong. I've noticed that in all sorts of public acknowledgements of wrongdoing by prominent political officials. almost always what we hear is, I'm really sorry if I offended you. No parent should ever accept that as an apology from a child. No, you need to be really sorry that what you did was objectively wrong. It doesn't matter whether I was offended or not by what you did. What matters is, was it wrong? Did you do wrong? It's as if God is saying to his people, I know you do wrong. The question is, will you believe me when I tell you it's wrong? Will you acknowledge that it's wrong? Will you come to me for mercy when you're wrong? You see how profound it is when God says, I am merciful? We have to ask, how does this affect our Christian lives, our conduct, our relationship to the Lord? We live in a world where so many people want to say, whatever I want to do is right, because I want to do it. And God said, that's not true. There are things that are right, and there are things that are wrong. There are things that are good, there are things that are evil. There are things that lead to life and there are things that lead to death. And I, your Heavenly Father, have told you which is which. And you have chosen again and again that which is false and that which is evil and that which leads to death. But I am still here appealing to you. Turn to me and live, says the Lord. That's the mercy of the Lord. That's the healing, renewing balm that he offers to his people. But the people refuse. The people reject the balm that the Lord offers. They refuse to repent. And the prophet says, so calamity will come upon them. Jeremiah 8, verse 15. We hoped for peace, but no good has come. For a time of healing, but there was only terror. Now that terror is a long time ago, a long way away. What does it have to do with us? What does the fate of Judah, what is the fate of Jerusalem, what does the fate of the temple have to do with us? We don't need a temple in Jerusalem. We don't need Jerusalem. We don't need that little bit of unproductive land in the Near East. It has nothing to do with us. But that was a foretaste of the final judgment to come. That was an anticipation of the final judgment of all mankind. and what a horror to think that at the last day there will be those for whom there is only terror. It's the tragedy of those who reject the truth and embrace the lie who replace life with death. And that's the place where every one of us would be left to ourselves. But God has promised in the prophet Jeremiah and throughout the scriptures that he will not leave us there. He will not abandon us there. There will be a restoring balm that the Lord will bring to his people. And so Jeremiah is not just the weeping prophet, but he's also the prophet of the new covenant. In Jeremiah 31, 31, he says, I will make a new covenant with my people. And what will that new covenant mean for his people? It will mean that God will renew them in their worship. He will bring them to Zion. He will lead them in sacrifice and singing. He will bring psalms back to their lips. Worship will be renewed. And the Lord in the new covenant will write his word in their hearts. So that they will treasure that word. And he will give them faithful leaders to shepherd them. He will raise up a son of David who will be known as the righteous branch. who will rule over us. And he will place in the heart of every one of his people a sense of the worth of God. Jeremiah 31 verse 25 says, I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint. That's what God has promised in the new covenant. And that's why it's good for us to say there is a balm in Gilead. to heal the sin-sick soul. There is a balm in Gilead to make the Spirit whole. It's the balm of the new covenant that Jesus Christ has fulfilled for us, that Jesus Christ has won for us, that Jesus Christ invites us all to share in. But in that new covenant, you see, To enjoy its blessings, we must be in Christ. We must have recognized our sin. We must look at these Old Testament passages and say, that's not where I want to be. I don't want to worship as the nations worship. I don't want to embrace the lies that the nation embraces. I want to hold to the Word of God in its fullness and its truthfulness because it will tell me what's right and what's wrong, what I should do and what I shouldn't do, what is pleasing to my Heavenly Father and what is not. I want to hold on to Jesus Christ because it's only in Jesus Christ that I can look to God and say with confidence, my Father, my Father. he was forsaken that we might never be forsaken. But he was forsaken not just to take away the judgment of our sins, but also to give us the Holy Spirit so that we would live differently from the world. The prophet Jeremiah had to say in his day, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? But we are privileged to say that in Jesus Christ we know there is a balm in Gilead. There is a great physician who can make us whole. There is a healing for the people. in the new covenant that Jesus Christ has brought. And the promise to each one of us here is if we are in Christ, then there is no terror that awaits us at the last day. And if we are in Christ, we will be a people of faith and repentance and godliness, worshiping God faithfully, treasuring his word, and exalting his worth among us. And then we will not be wounded, but we will be whole. God grant that that is true for each one of us here tonight. Amen.