Looking for the Wounded

Psalm 147:2-3, “The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

This morning, this message is going to be one of the toughest messages I’ve ever had to share, so ask that you pray for us during this hour. In our text we see the Lord gathering outcasts, healing broken hearts and binding wounds. That is a picture of the Son of God. He is always doing that—gathering unto Himself outcasts, healing broken hearts and binding wounds. This morning, I am concerned with the third thing, “binding up the wounds.”

During the Vietnam War, a certain nurse was the subject of much discussion. After a battle she would wander away from the medical camp onto the battlefield itself. Sometimes she would personally drag in a soldier who was in desperate need of medical attention. More than once she was reprimanded by the doctors. They told her she had no business on the battlefield. Not only that, she brought in Viet Cong soldiers along with the Americans. One day after a big battle an officer saw her on the battlefield amid all the suffering and dying and death. He began to rebuke her: “What are you doing on that battlefield?” She said without hesitation, “I’m looking for the wounded. That’s what I am here for.”

When I read this story I couldn’t help but think, “That’s our job.” When I read about this nurse, so dedicated to the task of healing wounds that she would go onto the battlefield itself and drag-in the wounded personally, I thought to myself, “That’s our job.” When Jesus saved us, He could have taken us to Heaven right then; but He didn’t choose to do that. Instead, He left us here so we might:

• Go onto the battlefield of this old world and look for the wounded.
• Our job is to go out into the highways and hedges and look for the wounded.

Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). What is He saying? “GO! Look for the wounded.” He said, “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in…” (Luke 14:23). GO! Look for the wounded! He said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). What’s He saying? “GO! Look for the wounded!”

That nurse believed it was her solemn duty to find the wounded and bring them in where their wounds might be healed so that they might be sent back out into the battle. So it is with us.

Our primary job is to look for the wounded. We are to go out into the battlefields of this world and find them and bring them to the Great Physician who will bind up and heal their wounds; then we are to send them out into the battle to find other wounded.

But where did the war begin? Where did these souls receive their wounds? Well, for the answer to these questions, we have to go back to the very beginning, to Eden. There we see that man was wounded, first of all…

WOUNDED BY SATAN

This first great battle took place in the beautiful Garden of Eden. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). Man stood before Almighty God as the masterpiece of His creation, and God said, ‘It is good.’ Then He gave man a command, saying to Adam, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (vss. 16,17). And the battle began!

Someone else was present in that garden—Satan. Satan began to tempt Eve, saying, “Eve, He doesn’t want your eyes to be opened. That’s the reason He told you not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Eve, your eyes will opened. You will be like God!” She said, “We’ll die.” He whispered in her ear, “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). She ate, and she gave to her husband, Adam, and he ate; and they were wounded by Satan.

We see in the Garden of Eden that beautiful masterpiece that God created, man fallen and wounded by Satan himself! Adam is naked now and stripped of every righteous rag. He is blind now. Satan has gouged out the eyes of his soul and left him in darkness. He is separated now. No longer does he have fellowship with God. Instead, he is hiding among the bushes.

But then God walked onto the battlefield. The Bible says that in the cool of the evening God came into the Garden and began to speak. “Adam…where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9). What is He doing? He’s Looking for the wounded.

Adam and Eve had been wounded by Satan, but God was ready to heal their wound. He found them and clothed them in His righteousness. But the battle that had its beginning in Eden began to spread until the whole world was covered. These two people, wounded by Satan, plunged the whole world into the darkness of sin.

Now we see the second wound.

WOUNDED BY SIN

The sin of disobedience that took place in the Garden of Eden began to grow until it covered the whole world like a plague and came up before Almighty God as a stench in His nostrils. “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,” and He said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth” (Gen. 6:6,7).

Sin had done its duty! Sin had done its job! But then the eyes of the Lord began to run to and fro across the earth. What was He doing? Looking for the wounded. The eyes of the Lord fell on a man by the name of Noah, and “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). God told him that He was going to destroy the world with a flood and to build an ark of safety.

Just before the Flood came, God said to Noah, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark” (Gen. 7:1). Noah and his family were saved. Mankind had a new start. But the battle continued, and the wounded began to fall all over the entire world.

WOUNDED BY SOCIETY

God heals those wounds too. One night God called a man by the name of Abraham who was outside his tent. “Abraham, look up at the stars.” In my mind I have pictured that so many times. Abraham, no doubt with his mouth hanging open, began to look up at the stars. God said, “Count them.” But Abraham said, “I can’t count the stars; there are too many.” God said, “So shall thy seed be” (Gen. 15:5).

He promised Abraham a son in his old age. His wife, Sarah, laughed, thinking it humorous that God would say something like that. But God asked, “Wherefore did Sarah laugh?…Is any thing too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:13,14). I submit to you today that there is nothing too hard for Him.

But for a long time it seemed as if God would not keep His promise; they had no children. Sarah, who had laughed at the idea that God would give her a child to begin with, said, “God is not going to keep His promise, so Abram, take my handmaid, Hagar, so that she might give us a child, an heir.” Abraham obeyed his wife, and this was a mistake. He took Hagar, and Ishmael was born. But God did keep His promise; God always keeps His promises.

Not too long after that, Isaac was born. Ah, how they loved Isaac! He was the apple of their eye. How they loved him! Abraham now had an heir! But what about Ishmael? Well, Sarah became jealous of Hagar and Ishmael and told her husband, “Cast them out. We don’t need them now.”

The society of Abraham no longer had any use for Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham gave them a little bottle of water and some food and sent them out into the desert. They wandered into the desert until they had lost their way. Their water was gone, their food was gone, their hope was gone. Hagar took her son, Ishmael, and put him under a bush a little ways away from her so she wouldn’t have to watch him die. Then she sat down on the hot sand, waiting to die. Nothing in all that desert but silence. But then the silence was broken as a voice said, “What aileth thee, Hagar?” (Gen. 21:17). That’s Almighty God speaking! What’s He doing in the desert? Looking for the wounded. He’s out in the desert because someone has been wounded by society. “I have seen you.” He gave them water and healed their wound. Hagar and Ishmael had been wounded by society, cast out and left to die; but God had not cast them out.

A leper was wounded by society. This man had a disease that made him repulsive to all who looked upon him. When he walked down the street, he had to cover his lip and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” People who had a little compassion would hang clean rags on the fences and trees so he might take them off and wipe the corruption from his sores of leprosy, then discard them. That’s the only thing society would do for him. He was an outcast from his family and friends.

But there was One who came from Heaven, born in Bethlehem’s manger, walked the shores of Galilee. There was One who loved outcasts. When He came from Heaven, He was looking for the wounded. The leper came close to the Lord Jesus Christ, saying, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean” (Matt. 8:2). What’s he saying? “I know You have the ability, but do You love me enough?” Immediately Jesus said, “I will; be thou clean” (vs. 3). One who had been wounded by society, who had been cast out, was all of a sudden taken back.

The woman of Sychar, the woman at the well, was an outcast. She had had five husbands, and the man she was then living with wasn’t her husband. She might have said, “Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell—fell like the snow, from Heaven to Hell.” She was a fallen woman. One day Jesus was going from Judea to Galilee. Now, usually when the Jews traveled from Judea to Galilee or Galilee back to Jerusalem, they went around Samaria because of their hatred for the Samaritans. They thought they were dogs. They had no use for them and wanted no contact with them. Did you know that a Samaritan was the only man under Heaven who could not be a proselyte to Judaism? This time it was different for the Lord. He said to His disciples, “I must needs go through Samaria.”

Not understanding that, I can imagine they must have said one to another, “Why? Why is He going through Samaria?” Little did they know that the Son of God was looking for the wounded! He had an appointment with a fallen woman at Jacob’s Well. Sitting on the curve of that old well, He saw her coming. He could see the marks of sin on her face, on her countenance. But He gave her living water.

She went back to that city and said, “Come, see a man…” (John 4:29). “Who is He?” “I don’t know, but He is looking for the wounded.” If you have been cast out by society, He is looking for you. Thank God, He still finds outcasts! Sometimes we give up on people, but God deosn’t. The eyes of the Lord were running to and fro throughout the whole earth looking for the wounded!

BUT THERE IS A FINAL WOUND – WOUNDED BY SELF

Now here is where this message is going to get very tough for me. Though I have been wounded by Satan, wounded by sin, and wounded by society – I have a lot of self-inflicted wounds. Those are the wounds I can’t blame anyone for but myself. And I think we all have scars we bear from our self-inflicted wounds.

This past week, someone very special to our church – an All-State athlete, a student-body president – Satan had convinced her that she wasn’t good enough, she didn’t measure up, so she tried to end her life. This is somebody we love, somebody we have seen God bless.

And I think about our church and all the struggles we have gone through. I’ve have been praying for days that God would give me something to help our church. I am reminded of John 10:10 where the Bible says, “the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” And I realize God is still looking for the wounded.

This morning, I am going to ask you to do something very bold. Satan is going to do everything he can to defeat you and keep you seated, but I’m asking you to look him in the face and say, “That’s enough Satan.” I am going to ask you a series of questions, and it any of these questions hit you where you live, I want you to find the courage to stand up, and together, let’s punch the devil in the face:

• “I’m not good enough;”
• “Nobody loves me;”
• “I’ve gone too far;”
• “If you really knew me, you’d have nothing to do with me;”
• “I will never be enough;”
• “I don’t have the strength to fight anymore;”
• “God can never use anyone like me.”

“Father, today I lift up the precious people You’ve entrusted to my care. You see every hidden wound, every whispered lie, every scar they carry—some from the world, some from the enemy, and some from their own hearts. Lord, remind them right now that they are loved, valued, and chosen by You. Where they have believed they are not enough, speak Your truth. Where shame has settled in, wash them with Your grace. Where strength is fading, breathe fresh courage into their spirit.

Heal the self-inflicted wounds that no one else knows about. Silence every voice that tells them they are disqualified. Let them feel Your arms around them, lifting them up, restoring their confidence in You. Father, help us as a church to carry one another, to see the wounded, and to fight for each other. Let Your abundant life flow through this house.

Today, we take back what the thief has tried to steal. We stand against darkness, and we declare freedom, healing, and purpose over every soul here. Use every scar as a testimony of Your redeeming power. In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.”