For My New Year’s Resolution!
Father God, I thank you that you are a faithful Father, even when I am unfaithful to You. Teach me how to remain humble at your feet and live my life as a living sacrifice, daily surrender to you. Teach me how to live out this awesome and holy life that you call me to. Teach me how to acquire the very same disposition Christ exhibited toward you my Lord. Teach me how to embrace you in all that you are and teach me how to love you daily.
To find out why this short prayer, read January 1 post)
This post below is an excerpt from the new uploaded Kindle
“The Sin Sick Soul And The Great Physician” by J. C. Philpot
Again, on another occasion John 8:3, we read, that "the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman caught in adultery;" and they tried to entangle Him by enquiring what was to be done with her. "Master," paying Him all due respect, said they, "Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what do you say?" Here was a dilemma they thought to place the Lord in. Suppose He had said, "The woman ought to be stoned;" then they would have accused Him before the Roman governor of setting up the Jewish in opposition to the Roman law; the power of life and death being in the hands of the Roman governor only. And if He had said, "She ought not to be stoned;" they would have directly asked Him, "How could this be consistent with the law given by Moses?" But how wisely He met this difficulty, and took "the wise in their own craftiness," by saying, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." John 8:7 By thus appealing to their natural consciences, He caught them in their own net, and overwhelmed them with confusion.
Our text, and the verses connected with it, afford another instance of the same nature. "And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at dinner in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why does your Master eat with publicans and sinners?" These self-righteous Pharisees were always on the watch to find, if possible, something to condemn the Lord with. And here they professed their pious astonishment, that so holy a man as He claimed to be, could associate with such vile, ungodly wretches. "For do we not judge," they would insinuate, "of a man by the company that he keeps? And must not a man love and practice sin who keeps company with sinners?"
But how did the Lord disentangle Himself from this net that they were seeking to spread for his feet? He met their cavil thus, "Those who are whole need not a physician, but those who are sick." He appealed to their own sense and reason, and to their natural consciences. It was as though He had said, "Where should a physician be? Is it not with the sick in the hospital? Are not the sick wards his peculiar place and province, and are not diseased patients the very people he is called to associate with and take care of? Is the physician necessarily contaminated by the disease that he cures? How can he heal the sickness, if he does not visit the sick?" By thus appealing to their reason and conscience, He silenced and confounded them. Now, this is an example well worthy of our imitation.
We are sometimes thrown into the way of scoffers, and of people who will cavil even at the great foundation truths of divine revelation. With such people there is no use attempting to argue the question on spiritual grounds; for they have no spiritual ears to hear, no spiritual eyes to see, no spiritual heart to fall under the power of truth. To do so is to throw pearls before swine. If the Lord enables us, the best way is to appeal to their natural consciences; and, as shortly as possible, without entering into the details of truth, to silence them by putting before them something which they themselves cannot deny.
But the words of the text have a much higher sense than a mere appeal to natural conscience or human reason. They contain a gospel truth, far deeper and higher than reason can comprehend, and one that will last as long as the world endures. "Those who are whole need not a physician, but those who are sick."
We find, in the text, two characters spoken of, and these put in a distinct opposition to, and contrast with each other - the "whole," and the "sick." And as the two characters are distinct in themselves, so their case is distinct also; the case of the one being that he "needs not," and the case of the other that he needs "a physician." And thus, if the Lord enables me by His blessed Spirit experimentally to trace out this evening who are "the whole," and who are "the sick;" and show why the one "needs not," and why the other needs "a physician," it may be for our profit, and may also, if God so grants, be to His own glory.
