of the ministry of the word, and I want to invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 8. Jeremiah is, as many of you know, the weeping prophet, for he wept over the sins of his people. He wept over the hard-heartedness and the recalcitrant nature of their souls, and yet he did not cease from putting before them the very thing that would heal their souls. And so this morning I would like to present before you from Jeremiah chapter 8, verse 21 and 22, the balm of Gilead. the balm of Gilead, that salvific salve that the Lord holds out to his people, a salve that is free of charge, a salve that has wonder-working properties that come down from heaven itself, and a salve that finds its face in Jesus Christ itself. I'm gonna read for you Jeremiah 8, 21 and 22. Listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded. I mourn and dismay has taken hold on me. 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? As far as the reading of God's word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord stands forever, and we are grateful for it. Would you bow your heads with me this morning as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the word? Father, I pray very simply this morning that each and every one of us, no matter how long we've been in the church, no matter how long we've named the name of Christ, no matter how many scars we have on our souls and even on our bodies from fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil, that we would once again see our need of the great physician. that we would realize, as Jesus taught us, that even after a servant has done everything that is commanded of him, he is still a worthless and miserable sinner. And yet, and yet, wonder of wonders, he is not miserable and worthless in the eyes of Christ. For in the eyes of Christ, he is the beloved for whom he came down through the womb of the Virgin Mary, born of the Virgin, born under the law to save those who are under the law. And so would you point our eyes to Jesus this morning? Would you help us, Father, to distinguish, as they say, between the presenting problem and the real problem? Would you point us toward the foot of the cross where all ailments, all curses, all maladies are remedied? Perhaps not everyone in this life, but yet they point us to heaven where Christ is seated at your right hand and is even now making all things new. And there is the tree of life and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet comes to his people. And by extension, this prophet and his voice and his message comes to us this morning. But before we can understand the import of these words, we need to understand very simply what caused Israel's wounds. And by extension, what causes our wounds? Well, Israel had run after false idols. Israel had engaged in corrupt worship, material gain and the gods of the nations. They have run after all these things. And Yahweh had revealed himself to them. He was nonetheless not enough for the children of Israel. And notice that we're not talking about those who had not known about Yahweh. These are not novices. These are not people who had never heard or had ever seen the wonders and the works of Yahweh. They had known His delivering and saving power. through miracles and great signs. And some of you may say, well, I know the history of the Bible and this is toward the end of the southern kingdom. And the memory of the Exodus was a faint memory indeed. It was not those in the generation of Jeremiah that had experienced that great Exodus from the house of bondage and slavery. But I do want to remind you that there are not too many generations removed from another miracle worker, in fact two, Elijah and Elisha, the great prophets who came with the Word of God, those covenant enforcers. And they accompanied their words of covenant enforcement with great miracles, raising people from the dead, healing those with great maladies, giving food to those who hungered, causing an axe head to float to the top of the water. And yet, even after all these great miracles, Israel was running after false gods. Now, I want to say this morning, number one, I believe in miracles. I think you should too. And I do not confine my belief in miracles to those contained in the Bible. I believe that God still does miracles. I may not believe every single miracle that comes before me, Certainly there are charlatans out there and they are seeking to make financial gain through their bait and switch. But don't mistake a counterfeit for the real thing and vice versa. Just because there are counterfeit miracles, that actually proves the fact that there are real miracles. You see the Lord still works. As much as I believe in miracles and as much as I am touched and moved when I hear or see of a miracle that may be genuine, I think that what we experience in this text should be a corrective to seekers of miracles. A corrective to people who think that the personal experience of a miracle will magically and incontrovertibly make them believe the reality. is that our hearts are naturally inclined, listen, our hearts are naturally inclined to run away from God even after the most convincing material evidence is presented. Now what we need, what we need, beloved, is to walk by faith and not by sight. And to seek what is actually there, rather than what our senses tell us is there. I mean, isn't that how your salvation worked? None of you have seen Jesus. None of you have seen the Father. And yet you know that something happened to you. Something to which you responded in faith. It is not something that could be explained by the five empirical senses. It is not something that you can pull a page out of logical positivism and prove. It is something supernatural. It's something that the eye of the soul saw and was convinced and put its hand to the plow and did not turn back. There's a deep panting in our souls for something that transcends the material, for meaning in suffering and purpose in life. As the famous Russian author Dostoevsky noted in his book, The Brothers Karamazov, if there is no God, then anything goes. Nothing is off the table. And the gulags, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and the slaughtering of innocent babies is all fair game. There is no one to whom we must answer. There is no standard against which we ought to measure ourselves to others. Everything is subjective and personal. It is a cacophony of conflicting voices with no maestro to symphonize them all. And this is why. This is why Jeremiah, in another part of his writings in chapter 2, was so appalled at Israel's apostasy. He tells them that while they had the living, fresh, clean, thirst-quenching waters of life in the Godhead, they nonetheless dug for themselves cisterns that were cracked and broken, and they drank the impure, contaminated water of false religion. He says in Jeremiah chapter 2 verses 12 and 13, be appalled, O heavens. Notice what he does. He calls the creation of God as witnesses against his people. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked and utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Is that not? Is that not, dear people of God, if we are honest with ourselves, as we even think about this last week, what our proclivity and propensity is? Man, how many times have you gone this week to the broken cisterns of Internet pornography? Women, how many times have you gone to the tabloids and the broken cisterns of gossip? How many times have we gone in our hearts to bitterness and anger, these broken cisterns that hold no water, when all the while the Lord is gushing forth living waters from the source of the Godhead itself that is offering you to quench your thirst and give you an unending fountain of grace. Is it no wonder that the people of God were sick? Isn't it a wonder that we ourselves are sick? And so I want to ask and answer the question this morning. What is our deepest wound and how is it healed? What is our deepest wound and how is it healed? Well, let me say first, as we answer this question, I want to consider our wound and the incurable salve of the world. And the first thing we need to notice is that as Jeremiah talks about our wounds, as he talks about our need for healing, as he talks about this mysterious thing called the balm of Gilead. You must understand that he is using a spiritual analogy. You must understand that the whole Bible is given to us as a parable. You must understand that our blessed Lord, as Calvin would say, he often stoops over us like a nurse does a baby and speaks to us in baby talk so that we can understand. And this is why, is it not, that our Lord in his parables, what did he often do? He often used objects from real life. Straw and hay. He took a child in his lap and told us that of such are the kingdom of heaven. This childlike mindset that is not jaded, but just trusts their father and their mother when they tell them something is so. And so also Jeremiah uses very real analogies. We all know what it means to be sick. We all know what it means to be in the doctor's office. We all know what it means to go under the knife, most of us. We all know what it means to be struggling through a flu or a cold or whatever, and we go to CVS and we get our medicine. We know how this works, and because we know how this works, the Lord comes to us in a framework that we can understand, and he says, do you know what it's like to have a wound? Do you know what it's like when that wound is not healing and it's festering? And do you know what it's like when finally a salve comes that can heal it? And do you remember the relief that you felt when it happened? Well, in the same way, God tells us you have a wound in your soul, and this wound Will not find cures from the world the flesh and the devil as much as you will run after them as much as you will plunk down On the table your hard-earned cash and credit cards and bitcoin and anything else cryptocurrency Anything of value to get that remedy the world the flesh and the devil will not cure the wound on your soul. And so Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 30, 12, for thus says the Lord, your hurt is incurable and your wound is grievous. Well, what is our wound then? What is this wound of the soul? What is the wound of which the weeping prophet speaks? Listen to me. It is the wound of the sickness of soul. God originally created man in his likeness and his image, you recall. But Adam, our federal representative, sinned and in him that image of God within us was marred. Death entered and it has afflicted us all even to the present day. And you can go to the sciences and you can see this. Scientists, research scientists will look at our DNA and they will see sin and they will see sickness and disease in our very DNA. How did that happen? The Bible tells us that sin entered and death followed shortly after. A child is born and the doctor says, I don't know, I give it 80, maybe 85 years and that's it. because death has entered and no man can escape it. But our likeness to God, even though that image has been retained, though it is marred, our likeness to God, image and likeness are not the same thing, our likeness to God has all but been lost. Man, in his natural state, is no longer, listen, like God in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. Why? Because the eye of his soul is incredibly blinded. The eye of his soul is incredibly contaminated. And this is why Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 7 that if the eye of your soul is bright, if it is illumined, then you will see, but if your eye is dark, how great is the darkness. And I submit to you this morning, dear people of God, and you remember this. You remember, before the Lord reached down and took out your heart of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh, that you yourself were blind in your eye of the soul. You yourself had all kinds of weird and chaotic and conflicting ideas. You yourself were double-minded, were you not? You were double-minded. You know, in the clinical world, we talk about a psychopath, we talk about schizophrenic, and what that is is a split personality. But I say, not in the clinical sense, but according to the word of God, all of us are psychopaths. You know what psychopath means? It's two words, soul and suffering. Your soul is suffering because of the entrance of sin and death. Your soul is not right from the top of the head to the sole of the foot. They are all wounds and they are bleeding and they are festering. And what your soul needs is a balm that will cure its ailment. So we have sought God all on our own. We have all sought our own way, and where has that way taken us? That way which has seemed right in our own eyes. It has led us to confusion and suffering of soul. All of us struggled with the double-mindedness of which Paul speaks. And by the way, we still as Christians struggle with that double-mindedness from time to time, don't we? It's that double mindedness that needs to find its cure once again in Jesus Christ. You do not come to Jesus Christ one time, one and done, OK? Like a basketball player on UK basketball team, one and done. No, no, no. You come to Jesus Christ day in and day out. You come to Jesus Christ moment after moment. Paul does not say in a metaphorical way, pray without ceasing. The Lord calls us through prayer to find our dependence upon him at every moment of the day, because at every moment of the day, the devil and his hordes are trying to draw your mind away from the Lord, not even with bad things. But with necessary things. We get distracted, do we not? We set out with every good intention to do the right thing. We set out to pray. We set out to read our Bibles. We set out to be loving in our words to our wife as we leave the house. We set out to do all these things, and then distraction sets in. and our minds are drawn away. And so we need to have this continual state of praying without ceasing, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner. And you know what that does? That prayer, and it could be any prayer that you like. I like that one, because it's short and pithy and very memorable, and it has the whole theology of the Bible crammed into that one phrase. But as we pray these prayers unceasingly, you know what it does? It is an anchor. It is an anchor of the soul that keeps the word of God, the promises of God, the nature of God, my own sinfulness at the center of my view. And so when distractions come, when Satan and his hordes seek to entice us to go away, we are not bamboozled by it. We are drawn to the anchor of the soul through prayer. You know, sometimes Satan is like an anesthesiologist. He comes in with his anesthesis and he numbs us to the pain. And can I say this, beloved? I know many of you are working through pain right now, not just pain of body, but pain of soul. But I want to tell you something. C.S. Lewis said it well. God whispers through our successes and he screams at us through our pain. God screams at us through our pain. As Americans, we want to avoid pain at all costs, but you see, out of pain and suffering comes beauty. Out of the ashes of pain and suffering and struggle comes a greater and a fuller and a wider vision of God. And that greater and fuller and wider vision of God not only grounds us, right, but it keeps us where we need to be. But that double-mindedness, that double-mindedness is the double-mindedness of which Paul, the Christian, speaks in Romans 7, 18 and 19. Listen to this double-mindedness, and I want you to ask yourself if you ever experienced this. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Have you experienced that double-mindedness? The three main vices which plague us are avarice, or greed, self-esteem, pride, and sensual pleasure. And boys and girls, do you know what the mother of all these vices is? The book of Proverbs tells us it's Madam Folly. Madam Folly herself, she is the mother And the children of Madam Folly, these great vices from which come really all of our sins. These children say in their heart, there is no God. So that is our wound. We have an incurable wound at the level of our soul. And it works its way out through our bodies. But what is the incurable salve of the world? You see, in our striving to live apart from God, something strange occurs. Something strange occurs. And this strangeness comes to us from the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Most of our thoughts, many of our thoughts come from within, but also many of our thoughts come from without. And it is our wrestling in our heart and in our noose and in the eye of the soul that we struggle with these thoughts. But as we do, there's at least two strange things that occurs. Number one, we think that we can indeed live without God. We think that we can find the contentment and the joy and the peace of heart and mind that has been promised to us by the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world promises us everything and gives us nothing. It is all plastic and tinsel. It is the luscious apple that is pleasing to the eyes, but upon eating it turns to sand in our mouths. How many empty promises has the world given you, beloved? How many empty promises? The promises of the world are like the great story of Sisyphus. The world tells Sisyphus, roll this boulder up the mountain. And when you roll that boulder up the mountain, you will find success, you will find contentment, you will find fulfillment. And so Sisyphus, he rolls that boulder up the mountain, and he's striving, and he's fighting, and he's struggling, and he may even be bleeding. It probably hits his head multiple times, but he's, the world told me, the world told me that if I get this boulder up the mountain, I will find the fulfillment. The 401K, kids with straight teeth and straight A's. If I just do this, get this boulder up the mountain, and he gets it up, boys and girls. And at once, when he gets it up there, the boulder falls down. So what does he do? He goes back, he says, the world, I thought you told, oh, you didn't do it right. Try it again. So he does it again, and it falls down. And he does it again, and it falls down. And this is his curse. And this is the curse that any soul will find that believes the empty promises of the world. But secondly, Satan and his hordes revel in feeding us the lie of self-sufficiency. It is not as if we are not aware of our sins, for the law of nature cries out to our conscience that we have violated God's holy commandments. But you see, Satan applies a silencer to the weapon of temptation and vice. The devil's method is to belittle small sins because otherwise he cannot lead a person on to committing greater ones. And so he puts a silencer on the weapon of temptation. And once temptation has turned into sin, and that sin gets repeated over and over and over again, it becomes a passion, and our pride seeks to guard it from anyone who would seek to extract it from our hands. These vices which begin in the eye of the soul, the heart, when nourished, fester into a wound that is incurable by any human source. And that is why the weeping prophet says in 813, there is none to uphold your cause, no medicine for your wound, no healing for you. He is, of course, talking about our efforts to go to the world, the flesh, and the devil and find this balm of the soul. but we are psychopaths, sufferers of soul. Why does Jeremiah say that there is no one to uphold your cause, no medicine, no healing? Well, that leads us to the second strange thing, because man seeks out incurable salves from the world. Remember what he said in Jeremiah 46, 11, he tells Israel, go up to Gilead and take Baal, O virgin daughter of Egypt. In vain you have used many medicines, there is no healing for you. We cure depression and melancholy through therapeutic consumerism. Have you ever done this? I'm depressed. Let me go see what's at the mall. And no doubt caramel corn does help a little bit. But it does not cure the incurable wound of the soul. But it's not only therapeutic consumerism, it's gluttony. How many of the times that we're sad, we're depressed, we're discouraged, nothing's going right, but there is that tub of ice cream in the freezer. And my wife always tells me, Josh, don't eat the ice cream out of the tub. Put it in a bowl. Because if you eat it out of the tub, you're not going to be able to stop. And then five minutes later, there's an empty tub on the counter, right? You know what I'm talking about. Okay. Husbands, listen to your wives. Lord gave them to you for a reason. Okay. It's not only that, but how else do we seek to cure our depression and our melancholy and our feelings of insufficiency? Alcohol, drugs, or here's another one, co-dependence on another person. Co-dependence on another person. Lord, you've taken a lot of people out of my life, but you've given me this person. And as long as I have this person, I'm gonna be okay. My friend, unless that person is Jesus Christ, you will not be okay. Because even that person, believe it or not, can and may abandon you, can and may turn their back on you, can and may drink in the poison of slander and believe horrible and wretched things, and without even speaking to you, be done with you. But there is one person who says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And that is Jesus Christ. Beloved, if you through prayer would continue to cling to the one who will never leave you nor forsake you, then dare I say you are more than a conqueror. you will be able to endure whatever the Lord throws your way. Whatever Satan and his hordes would seek to do to tear down the wall around your heart, it will be impenetrable if you cling to and trust in the one who will never leave you nor forsake you. But if we don't do it with these means, we simply escape and avoid the problem. Or we go, in some cases, to the doctor who will medicate us. And yes, there is a place for some of that medication, but oftentimes, we're simply putting a Band-Aid on a severed arm. Or, what do we do? And there is plenty of this. We find religious teachers who will scratch our itching ears with validating messages of self-worth devoid of the gospel. As Michael Horton would call it, it's moral therapeutic deism. I'm not going to name any false teachers. I just kind of get tired of that. None of these false teachers, I don't believe, are those whom you are influenced by. But I was talking to a man the other day who claimed to be a Christian, and he was just talking about how great this particular smiley face preacher was, and how good he felt after he heard him. And yet I've heard that smiley face preacher, and there is no bloody cross in his message. but is the pain of a bloody cross that brings us to the balm of Gilead. And this is what Jeremiah means when we think about going to religious teachers that will scratch our ears. He says in chapter 8, verse 11, they have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. How many religious teachers are there today who will not tell you what you actually need to hear? Because let's be honest with ourselves. The gospel and the law that leads to the gospel is incredibly offensive. And it's going to be a lot easier to have a cash cow of a church if you tell people what they want to hear. And no doubt that many churches today are filled with people who just want their itching ears to be scratched. Beloved, I want to say something to you this morning. There are many charlatans in the world. Many charlatans who are offering their salves. And all of this, I say, is a circus of the soul. It is parlor tricks and sleight of hand. Listen to me. What do we need to do as we think about the wounded soul? A soul that even after regeneration, even after faith in Jesus Christ, continues to be afflicted because we bear the flesh of Adam. Flesh in and of itself is not wrong. It is not bad. Okay, we're not Platonists. Okay, we're not Manichaeans. We believe that the flesh and the body is beautiful and wonderful. We believe that one day that flesh and that body is going to be purged and purified of its sin, and we will reign together forever with the incarnate, bodily, physically Jesus Christ, the God-man of the Virgin Mary. But what we need to do as we think of the sickness of soul that is afflicted and shot through with sin is to do what the psalmist does in Psalm 131, one and two. Listen. Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. Let me stop there. Do you sometimes occupy yourself with things too great and too marvelous for you? Do you sometimes fixate upon something that is beyond your pay grade and beyond your bandwidth? Do you oftentimes try to fix, like most of us husbands do, something that doesn't need to be fixed or can't be fixed, or of which we do not have the tools to fix? And instead of taking tools in our hands, we need to clasp our hands and drop down on our knees and tell the Lord, these things are too great for me, but they're not, oh God, too great for you, and that's why I come to you in prayer. I don't wanna be like the modern man who thinks that prayer is a waste of time. I don't wanna be like the modern man that thinks that the only hope is that in which I can sense with my five senses, but I want to come to you this morning, oh God, in the same way that you supernaturally came to me, things that are invisible, things that can't be seen, but promises that have come forth from your mouth, and I want to dwell on those so that I could push out I could push out all the toxicity and the nonsense. So, oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. Now listen to this, verse two, but I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. You remember the apostles on the boat with our Lord? Jesus was sleeping. And there was a great storm on the Sea of Galilee, and that storm struck fear in the hearts of the apostles. And what did they do? What did they do? Well, they went to the whole of the ship where Jesus was sleeping, and they said, Oh, Lord, we perish. And Jesus got up. Wiped the sleep out of his eyes, went to the front of the ship, and he said, Be calm. Beloved, the Lord can bring your soul into the orbit of calmness no matter what storm is raging round about. He has done it for me, beloved, on numerous occasions, and that's why I run back to him as often as I can, time and time again. I want to be like that child with a childlike faith, because of such are the kingdom of heaven, our Lord says. We grow up and we think we've got it all figured out. We grow up and we think we're the smartest guy or the smartest gal in the world. Well, we grow up and we take IQ tests and pride ourself on it. We grow up and think, look at all the degrees that I have. I could figure out all the problems of the world. But really, we are nothing more than fools, you see. But what the Lord calls us to do is he calls us to come into our prayer closet. Remember when Jesus said that? For many, many years, I just kind of, I just kind of blew past that. Oh, that's just metaphorical. I really think, I really think that when Jesus says, go to your prayer closets, it doesn't necessarily have to be a closet, but in other words, get away. Put your phone away. Turn the lights off. Eliminate the distractions. Because there's two kinds of silence that we seek, just as this weaned child sought it in the arms of its mother. We seek exterior silence. We want what is around us to be calm and quiet so as to prepare and cultivate the ground for inner silence. You see, you could go into your prayer closet and round about you could be enveloped by silence, but inside there could be a raging storm. And so the Lord calls us just as that baby, that baby that perhaps was colicky, that baby that was crying, that baby that was just out of control, as it is at its mother's breast. It is calm, collect, and peaceful. And so our souls need to be as we are encircled by charlatans and all their salves. Take this, take that. It'll cure what ails you. No, no, no. I go to my Lord and He alone has the balm that I need. It is in the stillness of our souls that, as one divine said, we seal the senses. I love that. He says, seal your senses with stillness and sit in judgment on the thoughts that attack you. Another divine put it this way. Stillness mortifies the outward senses and resurrects the inward movements, whereas an outward manner of life does the opposite. That is, it resurrects the outward senses and deadens the inward movements. How many things in your life are deadening the inward movements? I'm not telling you, beloved, to get rid of your phone. Lord knows we probably can't survive without our phone. It's probably a bigger commentary on us than it is on technology. But I'm not calling you to that necessarily, but I am calling you to a kind of self-control that prioritizes the kinds of things that steal your soul. Beloved, we are either running. We are running in one of two directions. We are either running in the direction of glorification or we are running in the direction of demonization. In which direction are you running this morning, and so that brings us secondly to the cure. Blessed be the balm of Gilead. As Jeremiah says this, he talks about this balm of Gilead. There was something in Gilead, something that was grown from which doctors and physicians would make into some kind of balm. That is some kind of salve that would be applied to open wounds and would bring healing. And no doubt, they would have to go far to get it. And in fact, Jeremiah says, go up to Egypt. That must have been the place, okay? That must have been the place where it was. And no doubt, it would have cost them much to obtain. But Jeremiah's plight as he watched the wounds of his people fester and the sickness of soul affect the mind and rationale of God's people is that spiritually speaking it cost them no money. It required only that they recognize the sickness of their soul. Is this not the most expensive prerequisite of modern man? It is a recognition that I am sick, I need something outside of myself to make me whole. And so what does Jeremiah say? Go up to Gilead, take the balm, oh virgin daughter of Egypt. Boys and girls, you know what Jesus says? He says it is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. The first step to finding the balm of Gilead is to admit that you need it. Do you need the balm of Gilead? Is this just some religious nonsense, this religious hogwash? Or do you minimize the balm of Gilead? Well, I know I'm forgiven, but I need more important things. Oh, beloved. The second step is to embrace that balm through repentance and faith, to quiet your soul through prayer, to talk to your soul and to talk to God, to trace the root of your disquietude to its heart. What do I want? And why do I want it? It may be avarice, greed, or covetousness. I'm depressed. I don't have what others have. Beloved, your treasures are in heaven. Make much of heaven and you will not covet something lesser on earth. It may be self-esteem. It may be pride. You are offended at an injustice, an insult. Search your heart for why this is so. Look beyond the opinion of man and seek out the opinion of God about you. If God be for you, who can be against you? One divine said, silence is nothing else than restraining one's heart from giving and taking, from people pleasing and other such actions. This refers to man's effort not to become entangled in things outside himself, particularly in the subtle passion of pleasing other people, which makes him a slave to the world's opinion. Or maybe, maybe it's sensual pleasure. Oh, how the flesh deceives us with images, touch, taste, and the body's sense. Again, man, how is your soul? How is your soul after a session of viewing pornography? I know how it is. It's destroyed. It is wrecked. You feel unclean and unworthy. And indeed you are. And yet God comes to you holding out a bloody cross and offers you the balm of Gilead. He says, take this balm of Gilead and apply it saving salve to your souls. God wishes to heal you of the pain and the guilt and the shame of sin. But ultimately, beloved, ultimately, it is not fighting against the passions of the soul, or against the devil and his schemes, or against the world and its lies that will heal your soul. No, no. You see, such strivings are merely the putting off of the old man. But something more is required, and I say that that something more is love. Love for Christ in all his glory, the God-man who poured out his life for his little lambs, What drove him to that cross, beloved? What drove him? Love drove him. And may I carefully point out here that he was driven by love to that cross, and he came forth from the tomb with a love that triumphed over death, hell and the grave. The cross did not drive him to bitterness of an injustice done, nor did it drive him to anger and rage to heal yourself of the Sorry, it did not drive him to anger and rage, but even now, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and through love, Jesus prays for you. Through love, he intercedes for you. Through love, he tells his Father, charge those sins to my account. And this is why, this is why Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, 14, that the love of Christ constrains us. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. The love of Christ constrains us. The love of Christ envelops us. The love of Christ, when we meditate upon it and allow the eyes of the soul to be consumed with it, it presses in round about us so as to leave little room for anything else. And do you notice? What Paul says is the consequence of Christ's love constraining us in verse 15 of that same passage. He says, and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. O beloved God, song over you is love. Jeremiah says in 3017, for I will restore health to you and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord. Have you ever read good poetry? Good poetry resonates with our own experience. And some of the best poetry, listen, has been forged in the furnace of affliction. Through great affliction, the poet learns about themselves and about love. You see, the affliction, be it voluntary or involuntary, gave them greater sensitivity to what really matters, what's really important. Life is short. People are precious. Everything on God's green earth is sacred. Love enables you to make the most beautiful moments, and beautiful moments predispose the soul to prayer. They make it refined and noble and poetic. You see, when you are a child of God with Christ as your head and the Spirit of God living within you, you are able to see beauty come out of pain. So I would say that to be a Christian is to become a poet. Listen how one wise sage put it, the soul of the Christian needs to be refined and sensitive. to have sensibility and wings, to be constantly in flight and live in dreams, to fly through infinity among the stars amidst the greatness of God amidst silence. Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet. That's what it is. You must suffer. You must love and suffer. Suffer for the one you love. Love makes effort for the loved one. She runs all through the night. She stays awake. She stains her feet with blood in order to meet her beloved. She makes sacrifices and disregards all impediments, threats, and difficulties for the sake of the beloved. Love towards Christ is something even higher and infinitely higher. This loving Savior comes to you today, beloved, and he holds out this balm. It is the balm of forgiveness. It is the balm of meaning. It is the balm of purpose. It is the balm of providence that says all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And it is a balm that restores you more and more into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. And so I invite you this morning to take up this balm. You say, how do I take up this balm? How do I have this peace that surpasses all understanding? Repent of your sins, turn from them. See that you have bought the lie time and time again of charlatans and their hawking of wares and come to him who can give you life indeed and trust in Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Let us pray. Oh, Father in heaven. How great is your name in all the earth? You have given us your son, Jesus Christ, and what more do we need? What more do you need to say, O Father? You have given us all things, and I pray, O Father, that we would find our comfort and our joy and our peace.