The Balm Comes to Gilead

Jeremiah 8:18-22

In the 32nd chapter of Numbers, the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh, chose to take for their inheritance the land on the wilderness side of the Jordan, while God has promised the land on the other side to all 12 tribes. These tribes represent world-bordering Christians; not lost, but certainly not free.

The land that they take encompasses the land of Gilead (Numbers 32:1), which was known the world over for its balm. The balm was a turpentine-like resin that secreted from a tree grown only in Gilead. The resin held medicinal purposes and was worth twice its weight in silver. You recall that Joseph was sold into slavery in Genesis 37, and that it was traders from Gilead who bought him. They were no doubt carrying this balm to sell to the merchants in Egypt.

Jeremiah is speaking of the oppressive nations just outside of Israel, and of the spiritual sickness that prevails in the land. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” speaks of the fact that no neighboring ally has come to the aid of Israel, and since armies cannot march in the winter and the summer is past, that means that no one is coming.

In this sorry state, he asks about the balm of Gilead. No physical balm can cure the ills of Israel, and no physician can take away her pain. It is going to take a medicine of a spiritual nature, and the hand of a Great Physician to eliminate Israel’s problems. Thank God that Physician was coming!

When Jesus journeys across the Sea of Galilee in Mark 5, He stops in the land of the Gadarenes. This land is home to the descendants of the tribe of Gad, who had co-inhabited with the Gentiles of the land of Gilead for centuries. The resultant peoples were idol worshippers, who sacrificed pigs to their many gods. A man lives there who has been dwelling in the grave yards, cutting himself, possessed with many demons. It is for this man that Jesus has arrived.

You know the story, how Christ delivers the man, and casts the demons into the swine. These pigs run into the sea and drown, destroying the entire sacrificial flock of the Gadarenes. One man is excited to be free while a nation is outraged at Jesus. The balm has finally arrived in Gilead, healing one, and causing a burning sensation in those who reject its powers.

Jesus is the balm of Gilead and He is ready to mend your sin-sick soul. If you do not know Him, all that you must do is believe Him as your savior and He will enter your heart, pouring His balm into the areas that need healing. If you are a child of God, the Great Physician is living in you, ready to bring His health and wholeness into every area of your life. Allow Him to mend your mind, your emotions, your hopes and your body. You are His child, even if you are bordering close to the world. He loves you and wants to bring His power into your life.

Go in the power of the balm today. Freely Christ gives His power. Freely you can receive.

Fire in My Bones

Jeremiah 20:7-9

Jeremiah was a bold prophet with a tough message. Assigned by God to deliver harsh messages of God’s impending judgment and wrath, there is no record that Jeremiah ever had a single convert in his entire ministry. It must have been difficult to continue preaching to a people who seemed deaf to your message and unresponsive to your invitations of repentance.

Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, was the chief governor over the temple in the days of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:1). He heard Jeremiah stand in the temple courtyard and deliver a message typical of Old Testament prophets, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words” (Jeremiah 19:15). Upon hearing this harsh message of God’s impending judgment, Pashur smote Jeremiah and threw him in the stockade next to the temple.

At some point in his incarceration, Jeremiah began to feel a bit sorry for himself. He had had nothing but “derision daily, every one mocks me” (20:7). His feeling of loneliness and isolation was personified by the prison bars and the stocks. He then made a decision that he was done with ministry, “I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jeremiahs 20:9).

Jeremiah may have decided that he was done with ministry, but ministry was not done with him! When persecutions become frequent and heavy, and our spiritual arms droop, we often wish that we could be somewhere else. The cares of this life cause us to want to lay down our sword from time to time, but the sheer force of the gospel power, which is the power of God unto salvation, picks us up again.

When you have consumed God’s grace and favor, and the loveliness of Jesus becomes your daily meat and drink, you are completely incapable of turning around and heading in the opposite direction. There is nothing about the finished work of Christ that causes the believer to want to run out and sin; in fact, grace creates the opposite desire. You simply cannot help yourself from loving Him and ministering of His goodness and grace. It is a fire shut up in your bones!

When closing his first letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul commented on the first fruits of Achaia (meaning the first converts from Asia), that they had “addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:15). These saints had poured themselves in the service of ministry. They were not preaching and teaching the Word, but they were supporting those that did with both their efforts and their finances (Galatians 6:6). They had grown so accustomed to consuming the bread of heaven that comes from doing the right thing at the right time that they were considered addicted to such ministry. Oh that we would be as addicted to so great a cause as the presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ and the Father’s love.

Your Father is a fire, and that fire burns bright for you and in you. If it is shut up in your bones, let it out. It is a dark world without the light of the cross.

The Potter’s House

Jeremiah 18:1-4

God used an object lesson, or an illustrated sermon of sorts to teach the prophet Jeremiah an important lesson about His nature. He sent him to a local potter’s house to watch the potter work on the wheels. The lesson regards Israel as a nation; and no matter how bad that they had become through sin and disobedience, God could make them a new vessel again.

It is not in the nature of God to simply destroy and start over. If God were destructive, He would have wiped Adam and Eve off of the earth and started fresh. Even the destruction of the earth and the inhabitants thereof in the time of Noah was done to keep the seed pure for the coming Messiah, not for the judgment of sins (Romans 5:13). God’s default position in dealing with man has always been, and always will be, mercy.

When the potter works with clay to form a lovely finished product, he must observe a few important rules. First, choosing good, pliable clay is a must. The product with which he is working has a large role to play in the final vessel. In us, God has placed His very breath, so when He deals with humanity, He has chosen clay that has the qualities of God already inside. He will not save the world through angels or animals, but only through us. What an honor!

The potter must also have a ready supply of water on hand as he makes the clay moist and usable. This water is the water of the Word, which Jesus uses to wash His church (Ephesians 5:26). Jesus said that we are made clean by His Words (John 15:3). When He speaks to us, He speaks words of beauty and love, washing the dross and filth off of us so that we are usable.

It is also important that the clay remain in the center of the wheel. As the potter spins the wheel, the clay may have a tendency to lean to one side or the other. The further from the center that the clay is, the more difficult that it is to create a vessel without any flaws. The very center of God’s WILL is the center of the Potter’s WHEEL. The essence of Christianity is wrapped up in this knowledge, which Jesus said is life eternal, “that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (John 17:4).

If an imperfection is to arise in the clay, causing it to become marred and unusable, the potter can simply remove it and toss it aside. The potter that Jeremiah watches has such an imperfection arise, but instead of tossing the clay out, he “made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it” (Jeremiah 18:4). When you and I are marred and imperfect in our actions and our lifestyle, the Father does not toss us out but rather He continues to fashion us into who He wants us to be. When God chose you, He predestinated you “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He is fashioning you to look like Jesus!

Do you see problem areas in your life? Are there things that appear to be imperfections in your spirit man? Do not fear, your Father is a great Potter, and He has a finished product in mind. Be still, know that He is God, and you will be “meet for the master’s use” (2 Timothy 2:21).

The Searching of the Heart

Jeremiah 17:9, 10

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The heart is deceitful; more than the devil”. Unsaved man can never live by what he says his heart wants, for it is full of lust and lies. Filmmaker Woody Allen married his ex-wife’s adopted daughter, whom he had helped raise since she was a little girl. When a reporter confronted him about the relationship, he replied “The heart wants what it wants”, and therein lies the problem.

The heart of man has been tainted since the sin of Adam in the Garden. We are incapable of making moral decisions that line up with God’s morality, since we are “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). God promised that He was the searcher of man’s heart and that He would judge man according to who he was on the inside. This dooms man to judgment.

There is good news to go along with this dreadful news, thank God! Jesus came and lived the demands of God’s holiness to perfection and then sacrificed His life for you and I. God has taken His wrath out on Jesus so that we can accept salvation by faith through the finished work of the cross. When we do this, we are clothed in robes of righteousness and set free from sin. Look at the New Testament’s assessment of the believer who has accepted Christ by faith:

“And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10).

“For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

You are the completed one in Colossians and you are the perfected one in Hebrews, if you have accepted Christ by faith. This is the best news of all good news for it means that God has accepted you independent of your ability to earn it or to keep it. Now you have a clean heart which can hear from the Father with no fear of wickedness or evil tainting your decision. Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Unregenerate man cannot know the things of God because their hearts are wicked, but look at the next verse: “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (2:10).

God is obviously still in the searching business, even after we are saved. However, now that we are His children, His searching is for different purposes. He cannot be looking for more sin, for Jesus has paid for all of our sins in His blood at the cross. On the contrary, the Spirit is searching the deep things of God to reveal them to us. Paul said of the Holy Spirit, “And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). Again, the Spirit is searching the heart of the saint, but not to find sin. Instead, He is finding the will of God in each of our lives.

Your heart is clean if you have accepted Jesus by faith. If you have not, your heart remains locked within sin and transgression, and you will stand alone at the judgment, defended only by your ability or inability to keep God’s laws. Won’t you accept Him who cleans the heart and sheds His love into it? He loves you friend, more than you will ever know!

Can a Man Change?

Jeremiah 13:23

This is a very popular verse that Jeremiah uses to describe man’s inability to change his own heart. Israel and Judah had sinned against the goodness of the Lord for many years and were now reaping the harvest of lives wasted. God has always dealt with them in mercy, but they are now nearing the end of His Old Covenant dealings, and the futility of their lives is summed up in this verse.

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” And “Can the leopard change his spots?” are questions that strike at the core of who a man is. No amount of mental power can change the color of the Ethiopian’s skin, nor remove the spots from the leopard. Notice that God chooses examples that are extreme. Had he merely said, “no man can change the color of his skin”, that would have been a half-truth. While he cannot change his race, he could certainly darken himself in the sun. God chooses the extreme case to show us the depths to which failure and sin run.

Man sins by habit, having had a lifetime of practice to ensure that he is good at it! Just as you can easily tie your shoe while thinking of ten other things that you need to do, while never once thinking about the process of tying that shoe, you can sin just as easily. The reason for this is that you have spent a lifetime failing in one way or the other until it is consistent enough to be considered habit.

Having received Jesus as your Savior, you have died to the old sin nature that is within you. Paul said that, “our old man is crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) and that, “he died unto sin once” (6:10). Now that we are saved, our old man is dead and our new man is alive in Christ, so we can live free from the old habits of sin. It was not our ability to change that has made the difference in our lives, no more than the leopard can change his spots. Instead, it has been Christ’s finished work that has finished off the old man with the lusts and the affections thereof.

If that be the case, why do believers still sin from time to time? Knowing that we are a new creature in Christ and that old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17), then sins that we commit now must be done because of the old habits that die hard. Our spirit man is born-again, but our minds are changing every single day. This is why Paul said to renew your mind (Romans 12:2) in order to live in a manner that does not resemble the world.

Paul talks of “the motions of sins” in Romans 7:5. These “motions” are the habitual things that we do, and until we understand that in Christ we are no longer condemned, we will live in guilt and fear over those things, being under them instead of over them. Paul proceeds in that same chapter to ask, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). He knew that it was a “who” and not a “what” that he needed. The “who” is the risen Jesus!

You have no ability to change you, but the blood of Jesus has regenerated you so that you are not the person that you used to be. Any sin and failure that happens in your life now will come as a direct result of you forgetting who you are in Christ, and then living below that standard. He has changed your spots!

The Balm Comes to Gilead

Jeremiah 8:18-22

In the 32nd chapter of Numbers, the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh, chose to take for their inheritance the land on the wilderness side of the Jordan, while God has promised the land on the other side to all 12 tribes. These tribes represent world-bordering Christians; not lost, but certainly not free.

The land that they take encompasses the land of Gilead (Numbers 32:1), which was known the world over for its balm. The balm was a turpentine-like resin that secreted from a tree grown only in Gilead. The resin held medicinal purposes and was worth twice its weight in silver. You recall that Joseph was sold into slavery in Genesis 37, and that it was traders from Gilead who bought him. They were no doubt carrying this balm to sell to the merchants in Egypt.

Jeremiah is speaking of the oppressive nations just outside of Israel, and of the spiritual sickness that prevails in the land. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” speaks of the fact that no neighboring ally has come to the aid of Israel, and since armies cannot march in the winter and the summer is past, that means that no one is coming.

In this sorry state, he asks about the balm of Gilead. No physical balm can cure the ills of Israel, and no physician can take away her pain. It is going to take a medicine of a spiritual nature, and the hand of a Great Physician to eliminate Israel’s problems. Thank God that Physician was coming!

When Jesus journeys across the Sea of Galilee in Mark 5, He stops in the land of the Gadarenes. This land is home to the descendants of the tribe of Gad, who had co-inhabited with the Gentiles of the land of Gilead for centuries. The resultant peoples were idol worshippers, who sacrificed pigs to their many gods. A man lives there who has been dwelling in the grave yards, cutting himself, possessed with many demons. It is for this man that Jesus has arrived.

You know the story, how Christ delivers the man, and casts the demons into the swine. These pigs run into the sea and drown, destroying the entire sacrificial flock of the Gadarenes. One man is excited to be free while a nation is outraged at Jesus. The balm has finally arrived in Gilead, healing one, and causing a burning sensation in those who reject its powers.

Jesus is the balm of Gilead and He is ready to mend your sin-sick soul. If you do not know Him, all that you must do is believe Him as your savior and He will enter your heart, pouring His balm into the areas that need healing. If you are a child of God, the Great Physician is living in you, ready to bring His health and wholeness into every area of your life. Allow Him to mend your mind, your emotions, your hopes and your body. You are His child, even if you are bordering close to the world. He loves you and wants to bring His power into your life.

Go in the power of the balm today. Freely Christ gives His power. Freely you can receive.

Fire in My Bones

Jeremiah 20:7-9

Jeremiah was a bold prophet with a tough message. Assigned by God to deliver harsh messages of God’s impending judgment and wrath, there is no record that Jeremiah ever had a single convert in his entire ministry. It must have been difficult to continue preaching to a people who seemed deaf to your message and unresponsive to your invitations of repentance.

Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, was the chief governor over the temple in the days of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:1). He heard Jeremiah stand in the temple courtyard and deliver a message typical of Old Testament prophets, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words” (Jeremiah 19:15). Upon hearing this harsh message of God’s impending judgment, Pashur smote Jeremiah and threw him in the stockade next to the temple.

At some point in his incarceration, Jeremiah began to feel a bit sorry for himself. He had had nothing but “derision daily, every one mocks me” (20:7). His feeling of loneliness and isolation was personified by the prison bars and the stocks. He then made a decision that he was done with ministry, “I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jeremiahs 20:9).

Jeremiah may have decided that he was done with ministry, but ministry was not done with him! When persecutions become frequent and heavy, and our spiritual arms droop, we often wish that we could be somewhere else. The cares of this life cause us to want to lay down our sword from time to time, but the sheer force of the gospel power, which is the power of God unto salvation, picks us up again.

When you have consumed God’s grace and favor, and the loveliness of Jesus becomes your daily meat and drink, you are completely incapable of turning around and heading in the opposite direction. There is nothing about the finished work of Christ that causes the believer to want to run out and sin; in fact, grace creates the opposite desire. You simply cannot help yourself from loving Him and ministering of His goodness and grace. It is a fire shut up in your bones!

When closing his first letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul commented on the first fruits of Achaia (meaning the first converts from Asia), that they had “addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:15). These saints had poured themselves in the service of ministry. They were not preaching and teaching the Word, but they were supporting those that did with both their efforts and their finances (Galatians 6:6). They had grown so accustomed to consuming the bread of heaven that comes from doing the right thing at the right time that they were considered addicted to such ministry. Oh that we would be as addicted to so great a cause as the presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ and the Father’s love.

Your Father is a fire, and that fire burns bright for you and in you. If it is shut up in your bones, let it out. It is a dark world without the light of the cross.

The Potter's House

Jeremiah 18:1-4

God used an object lesson, or an illustrated sermon of sorts to teach the prophet Jeremiah an important lesson about His nature. He sent him to a local potter’s house to watch the potter work on the wheels. The lesson regards Israel as a nation; and no matter how bad that they had become through sin and disobedience, God could make them a new vessel again.

It is not in the nature of God to simply destroy and start over. If God were destructive, He would have wiped Adam and Eve off of the earth and started fresh. Even the destruction of the earth and the inhabitants thereof in the time of Noah was done to keep the seed pure for the coming Messiah, not for the judgment of sins. God’s default position in dealing with man has always been, and always will be, mercy.

When the potter works with clay to form a lovely finished product, he must observe a few important rules. First, choosing good, pliable clay is a must. The product with which he is working has a large role to play in the final vessel. In us, God has placed His very breath, so when He deals with humanity, He has chosen clay that has the qualities of God already inside. He will not save the world through angels or animals, but only through us. What an honor!

The potter must also have a ready supply of water on hand as he makes the clay moist and usable. This water is the water of the Word, which Jesus uses to wash His church (Ephesians 5:26). Jesus said that we are made clean by His Words (John 15:3). When He speaks to us, He speaks words of beauty and love, washing the dross and filth off of us so that we are usable.

It is also important that the clay remain in the center of the wheel. As the potter spins the wheel, the clay may have a tendency to lean to one side or the other. The further from the center that they clay is, the more difficult that it is to create a vessel without any flaws. The very center of God’s WILL is the center of the Potter’s WHEEL. The essence of Christianity is wrapped up in this knowledge, which Jesus said is life eternal, “that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (John 17:4).

If an imperfection is to arise in the clay, causing it to become marred and unusable, the potter can simply remove it and toss it aside. The potter that Jeremiah watches has such an imperfection arise, but instead of tossing the clay out, he “made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it” (Jeremiah 18:4). When you and I are marred and imperfect in our actions and our lifestyle, the Father does not toss us out but rather He continues to fashion us into who He wants us to be. When God chose you, He predestined you “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He is fashioning you to look like Jesus!

Do you see problem areas in your life? Are there things that appear to be imperfections in your spirit man? Do not fear, your Father is a great Potter, and He has a finished product in mind. Be still, know that He is God, and you will be “meet for the master’s use” (2 Timothy 2:21).

The Searching of the Heart

Jeremiah 17:9, 10

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The heart is deceitful; more than the devil”. Unsaved man can never live by what he says his heart wants, for it is full of lust and lies. Filmmaker Woody Allen married his ex-wife’s adopted daughter, whom he had helped raise since she was a little girl. When a reporter confronted him about the relationship, he replied “The heart wants what it wants”, and therein lies the problem.

The heart of man has been tainted since the sin of Adam in the Garden. We are incapable of making moral decisions that line up with God’s morality, since we are “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). God promised that He was the searcher of man’s heart and that He would judge man according to who he was on the inside. This dooms man to judgment.

There is good news to go along with this dreadful news, thank God! Jesus came and lived the demands of God’s holiness to perfection and then sacrificed His life for you and I. God has taken His wrath out on Jesus so that we can accept salvation by faith through the finished work of the cross. When we do this, we are clothed in robes of righteousness and set free from sin. Look at the New Testament’s assessment of the believer who has accepted Christ by faith:

“And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10).

“For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

You are the completed one in Colossians and you are the perfected one in Hebrews, if you have accepted Christ by faith. This is the best news of all good news for it means that God has accepted you independent of your ability to earn it or to keep it. Now you have a clean heart which can hear from the Father with no fear of wickedness or evil tainting your decision. Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Unregenerate man cannot know the things of God because their hearts are wicked, but look at the next verse: “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (2:10).

God is obviously still in the searching business, even after we are saved. However, now that we are His children, His searching is for different purposes. He cannot be looking for more sin, for Jesus has paid for all of our sins in His blood at the cross. On the contrary, the Spirit is searching the deep things of God to reveal them to us. Paul said of the Holy Spirit, “And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). Again, the Spirit is searching the heart of the saint, but not to find sin. Instead, He is finding the will of God in each of our lives.

Your heart is clean if you have accepted Jesus by faith. If you have not, your heart remains locked within sin and transgression, and you will stand alone at the judgment, defended only by your ability or inability to keep God’s laws. Won’t you accept Him who cleans the heart and sheds His love into it? He loves you friend, more than you will ever know!

Can a Man Change?

Jeremiah 13:23

This is a very popular verse that Jeremiah uses to describe man’s inability to change his own heart. Israel and Judah had sinned against the goodness of the Lord for many years and were now reaping the harvest of lives wasted. God has always dealt with them in mercy, but they are now nearing the end of His Old Covenant dealings, and the futility of their lives is summed up in this verse.

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” And “Can the leopard change his spots?” are questions that strike at the core of who a man is. No amount of mental power can change the color of the Ethiopian’s skin, nor remove the spots from the leopard. Notice that God chooses examples that are extreme. Had he merely said, “no man can change the color of his skin”, that would have been a half-truth. While he cannot change his race, he could certainly darken himself in the sun. God chooses the extreme case to show us the depths to which failure and sin run.

Man sins by habit, having had a lifetime of practice to ensure that he is good at it! Just as you can easily tie your shoe while thinking of ten other things that you need to do, while never once thinking about the process of tying that shoe, you can sin just as easily. The reason for this is that you have spent a lifetime failing in one way or the other until it is consistent enough to be considered habit.

Having received Jesus as your Savior, you have died to the old sin nature that is within you. Paul said that, “our old man is crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) and that, “he died unto sin once” (6:10). Now that we are saved, our old man is dead and our new man is alive in Christ, so we can live free from the old habits of sin. It was not our ability to change that has made the difference in our lives, no more than the leopard can change his spots. Instead, it has been Christ’s finished work that has finished off the old man with the lusts and the affections thereof.

If that be the case, why do believers still sin from time to time? Knowing that we are a new creature in Christ and that old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17), and sin that we commit now, must be done because of the old habits that die hard. Our spirit man is born-again, but our minds are changing every single day. This is why Paul said to renew your mind (Romans 12:2) in order to live in a manner that does not resemble the world.

Paul talks of “the motions of sins” in Romans 7:5. These “motions” are the habitual things that we do, and until we see that in Christ we are no longer condemned, we will live in guilt and fear over those things, being under them instead of over them. Paul proceeds in that same chapter to ask, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). He knew that it was a “who” and not a “what” that he needed. The “who” is the risen Jesus!

You have no ability to change you, but the blood of Jesus has regenerated you so that you are not the person that you used to be. Any sin and failure that happens in your life now will come as a direct result of you forgetting who you are in Christ, and then living below that standard. He has changed your spots!

The Balm Comes to Gilead

Jeremiah 8:18-22

In the 32nd chapter of Numbers, the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh, chose to take for their inheritance the land on the wilderness side of the Jordan, while God has promised the land on the other side to all 12 tribes. These tribes represent world-bordering Christians; not lost, but certainly not free.

The land that they take encompasses the land of Gilead (Numbers 32:1), which was known the world over for its balm. The balm was a turpentine-like resin that secreted from a tree grown only in Gilead. The resin held medicinal purposes and was worth twice its weight in silver. You recall that Joseph was sold into slavery in Genesis 37, and that it was traders from Gilead who bought him. They were no doubt carrying this balm to sell to the merchants in Egypt.

Jeremiah is speaking of the oppressive nations just outside of Israel, and of the spiritual sickness that prevails in the land. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” speaks of the fact that no neighboring ally has come to the aid of Israel, and since armies cannot march in the winter and since the summer is past, that means that no one is coming.

In this sorry state, he asks about the balm of Gilead. No physical balm can cure the ills of Israel, and no physician can take away her pain. It is going to take a medicine of a spiritual nature, and the hand of a Great Physician to eliminate Israel’s problems. Thank God that Physician was coming!

When Jesus journey’s across the Sea of Galilee in Mark 5, he stops in the land of the Gadarenes. This land is home to the descendants of the tribe of Gad, who had co-inhabited with the Gentiles of the land of Gilead for centuries. The resultant peoples were idol worshippers, who sacrificed pigs to their many gods. A man lives there who has been dwelling in the grave yards, cutting himself, possessed with many demons. It is for this man that Jesus has arrived.

You know the story, how Christ delivers the man, and casts the demons into the swine. These pigs run into the sea and drown, destroying the entire sacrificial flock of the Gadarenes. One man is excited to be free while a nation is outraged at Jesus. The balm has finally arrived in Gilead, healing one, and causing a burning sensation in those who reject its powers.

Jesus is the balm of Gilead and He is ready to mend your sin-sick soul. If you do not know Him, all that you must do is believe Him as your savior and He will enter your heart, pouring His balm into the areas that need healing. If you are a child of God, the Great Physician is living in you, ready to bring His health and wholeness into every area of your life. Allow Him to mend your mind, your emotions, your hopes and your body. You are His child, even if you are bordering close to the world. He loves you and wants to bring His power into your life.

Go in the power of the balm today. Freely Christ gives His power. Freely you can receive.