“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”–Psalm
147:3.
Often as we have read this Psalm, we can never fail to be struck with the
connection in which this verse stands, especially its connection with the
verse that follows. Read the two together: “He healeth the broken in
heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars;
he calleth them all by their names.” What condescension and grandeur!
What pity and omnipotence! He who leads out yonder ponderous orbs in
almost immeasurable orbits, nevertheless, is the Surgeon of men’s souls,
and stoops over broken hearts, and with his own tender fingers closes up
the gaping wound, and binds it with the liniment of love. Think of it;
and if I should not speak as well as I could desire upon the wonderful
theme of his condescension, yet help me by your own thoughts to do
reverence to the Maker of the stars, who is, at the same time, the
Physician for broken hearts and wounded spirits.
I am equally interested in the connection of my text with the verse that
goes before it: “The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together
the outcasts of Israel.” The church of God is never so well built up as
when it is built up with men of broken hearts. I have prayed to God in
secret many a time, of late, that he would be pleased to gather out from
among us a people who have a deep experience, who should know the
guilt of sin, who should be broken and ground to powder under a sense
of their own inability and unworthiness; for I am persuaded that, without
a deep experience of sin, there is seldom much belief in the doctrine of
grace, and not much enthusiasm in praising the Saviour’s name. The
church needs to be built up with men who have been pulled down.
Unless we know in our hearts our need of a Saviour, we shall never be
worth much in preaching him. That preacher who has never been
converted, what can he say about it? And he who has never been in the
dungeon, who has never been in the abyss, who has never felt as if he
were cast out from the sight of God, how can he comfort many who are
outcasts, and who are bound with the fetters of despair? May the Lord
break many hearts, and then bind them up, that with them he may build
up the church, and inhabit it!
But now, leaving the connection, I come to the text itself, and I desire to
speak of it so that everyone here who is troubled may derive comfort
from it, God the Holy Ghost speaking through it. Consider, first, the
patients and their sickness: “He healed the broken in heart.” Then,
consider, the Physician and his medicine, and for a while turn your eyes
to him who does this healing work. Then, I shall want you to consider,
the testimonial to the great Physician which we have in this verse: “He
healed the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.” Lastly, and
most practically, we will consider, what we ought to do towards him who
healeth the broken in heart.
I. First, then, consider THE PATIENTS AND THEIR SICKNESS. They
are broken in heart. I have heard of many who have died of a broken
heart; but there are some who live with a broken heart, and who live all
the better for having had their hearts broken; they live another and
higher life than they lived before that blessed stroke broke their hearts in
pieces.
There are many sorts of broken hearts, and Christ is good at healing
them all. I am not going to lower and narrow the application of my text.
The patients of the great Physician are those whose hearts are broken
through sorrow. Hearts are broken through disappointment. Hearts are
broken through bereavement. Hearts are broken in ten thousand ways,
for this is a heart-breaking world; and Christ is good at healing all
manner of heart-breaks. I would encourage every person here, even
though his heart-break may not be of a spiritual kind, to make an
application to him who healed the broken in heart. The text does not say,
“the spiritually broken in heart”, therefore I will not insert an adverb
where there is none in the passage. Come hither, ye that are burdened,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden; come hither, all ye that sorrow, be
your sorrow what it may; come hither, all ye whose hearts are broken, be
the heart-break what it may, for he healeth the broken in heart.
Still, there is a special brokenness of heart to which Christ gives the very
earliest and tenderest attention. He heals those whose hearts are broken
for sin. Christ heals the heart that is broken because of its sin; so that it
grieves, laments, regrets, and bemoans itself, saying, “Woe is me that I
have done this exceeding great evil, and brought ruin upon myself! Woe
is me that I have dishonoured God, that I have cast myself away from his
presence, that I have made myself liable to his everlasting wrath, and
that even now his wrath abideth upon me!” If there is a man here whose
heart is broken about his past life, he is the man to whom my text refers.
Are you heart-broken because you have wasted forty, fifty, sixty years?
Are you heart-broken at the remembrance that you have cursed the God
who has blessed you, that you have denied the existence of him without
whom you never would have been in existence yourself, that you have
lived to train your family without godliness, without any respect to the
Most High God at all? Has the Lord brought this home to you? Has he
made you feel what a hideous thing it is to be blind to Christ, to refuse
his love, to reject his blood, to live an enemy to your best Friend? Have
you felt this? O my friend, I cannot reach across the gallery to give you
my hand; but will you think that I am doing it, for I wish to do it? If
there is a heart here broken on account of sin, I thank God for it, and
praise the Lord that there is such a text as this: “He healeth the broken in
heart”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
