Daily Archive

In Jeremiah chapters 8-9, we read a list of laments. The people of Judah lament. Jeremiah laments. He was crushed over what was about to happen because of the sinfulness of the people and their persistence in sin that made the judgment necessary. He says, “I mourn, desolation has taken hold of me.” In fact, the word for “mourn” there could be translated, “I am dark.”

Jeremiah says, “I’m in a dark place.” He sees what’s coming upon these people and he has told them the truth and they’ve not repented. And he’s not the only prophet preaching during this time. There are other prophets preaching and teaching to the people and they’re rejecting it all in their stubbornness.

Jeremiah says this brings him to a dark place. He wasn’t happy to be preaching this message, but he had to preach it because God gave him the words. He had to preach the truth. He had to warn those who needed to be warned whether they heed the warning or not.

Jeremiah’s heart is sick. The people’s hearts are hard. They refuse to respond.

Verse 22, then of chapter eight, this is the key to the whole three chapter lament (chapters 8-10). “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people gone up?”

“Is there no balm in Gilead?” That’s the question. What does it mean? Gilead was a region north of Moab east of the Jordan, and there’s a special kind of balsam tree that grows there and the resin from this tree is taken and collected and has antibiotic properties. It was used to treat wounds. You could treat an open wound with this resin and it would heal and it would heal without infection. It was in high demand.

In fact, one of the first places that we ever learn about this balm from Gilead is actually when Joseph is being sold into slavery. When Joseph was sold by his brothers and he was picked up and taken as a slave to Egypt, “They sat down to eat a meal then they lifted up their eyes and saw and behold a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from Gilead with their camels bearing aromatic gum and balm and myrrh going to bring them down to Egypt.”

They were bringing this balm and these herbs and oils back. All of these things have healing properties for fighting disease. Now the question is, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” Where are these people going to find healing? It’s like the balm of Gilead is dried up. It’s not there anymore. Any treatment that they could find is ineffective.

Now for us, who is the true balm of Gilead? It’s Christ applied to us and it’s His wounds that mean that we can be healed. Because of the way He was mistreated, we have been made whole. And so the question again is a question that has an obvious answer. There is no balm in Gilead. There’s no physician. You have nobody to help you out of this, but do you really have no balm in Gilead? Don’t look for the conventional medicine, look for the truth of who Christ is as a mediator of a New Covenant.

The truth is here, the people don’t have a physician to heal them because they are not going to the physician who can heal them!

I’ve known people who refuse to ever go to the doctor because they are afraid that the doctor is going to tell them something bad. You know why the doctor is going to tell them something bad? Because there is something bad! And the longer they don’t go to the doctor, the worse it’s going to get.

Here we see that there is a physician! It’s God himself who’s given Himself to His people as their great physician. And He’s promised, if you’ll just turn and come back to Me, I will heal you. “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their evil ways, then I will listen from heaven, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.”

God presents Himself as the balm of Gilead, but sadly, the people in their stubbornness would rather find another way. There is no other way.