Psalms 107:17

[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on verses 17-20 is #1824, Volume 31—THE HISTORY OF SUNDRY FOOLS.] IT is a very profitable thing to visit a hospital. The sight of others' sickness tends to make us grateful for our own health. And it is a great thing to be kept in a thankful frame of mind, for ingratitude is a spiritual disease, injurious to every power of the soul. A hospital inspection will also teach us compassion and that is of great service. Anything that softens the heart is valuable. Above all things, in these days we should strive against the petrifying influences which surround us. It is not easy for a man who has constantly enjoyed good health and prosperity, to sympathize with the poor and the suffering. Even our Great High Priest, who is full of compassion, learned it by carrying our sorrows in His own Person. To see the sufferings of the afflicted, in many cases, would be enough to move a stone. And if we visit a hospital and come back with a more tender heart, we shall have found it a sanatorium to ourselves. I purpose, at this time, to take you to a hospital. It shall not be one of those noble institutions so pleasingly plentiful around the Tabernacle, but we will take you to Christ's Hospital, or, as the French would call it, the HotelDieu. And we shall conduct you through the wards for a few minutes, trusting that while you view them, if you are yourself healed, you may feel gratitude that you have been delivered from spiritual sicknesses and an intense compassion for those who still pine and languish. May we become like our Savior who wept over Jerusalem with eyes which were no strangers to compassion's floods. May we view the most guilty and impenitent with yearning hearts and grieve with mingled hope and anxiety over those who are under the sound of the Gospel and so are more especially patients in the Hospital of God.

WHEN a person is very ill, one of the greatest kindnesses that you can show to him is to tell him how you felt under a similar affliction, to what physician you resorted, what remedies he prescribed, through what processes you passed, what were the symptoms connected with your recovery and how long you have been able to rejoice over the cure which has been worked in you. This kind of practical, experimental talk will be far more valuable to him than any doctor's opinions that you may read to him out of a book of medicine. Tell the sufferer what your experience has been and you will generally find that he will attach more importance to that than to any theory which you may propound to him, however well you may support that theory by argument! I propose, this evening, as God shall enable me, to give you some of my experience. Indeed, I think that what I shall have to say will describe the experience of most of those who have been led to understand their state as spiritually sick, and who have been guided to the Great Physician and have found out how He works a complete and permanent cure. I have no doubt that this Psalm refers to actual bodily sickness and that it teaches us that we ought to praise the Lord very heartily whenever we are restored from any illness. It is no small mercy to have life preserved and health restored, especially if the end of life would be to us the beginning of eternal death and that our soul, when separated from the body, would have no "better land" to enter, and no right to a place in the home of the blessed where sickness is unknown! But while I think that the Psalm refers to bodily sickness, I am fully persuaded that it also applies to spiritual sickness and that we shall act in accordance with the mind of the Spirit if we consider the text as first, describing the spiritually sick Then, as showing the means by which they are cured.

[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on verses 17-20 is #1824, Volume 31—THE HISTORY OF SUNDRY FOOLS.] IT is a very profitable thing to visit a hospital. The sight of others' sickness tends to make us grateful for our own health. And it is a great thing to be kept in a thankful frame of mind, for ingratitude is a spiritual disease, injurious to every power of the soul. A hospital inspection will also teach us compassion and that is of great service. Anything that softens the heart is valuable.

WHEN a person is very ill, one of the greatest kindnesses that you can show to him is to tell him how you felt under a similar affliction, to what physician you resorted, what remedies he prescribed, through what processes you passed, what were the symptoms connected with your recovery and how long you have been able to rejoice over the cure which has been worked in you. This kind of practical, experimental talk will be far more valuable to him than any doctor's opinions that you may read to him out of a book of medicine.

Fools because of their transgression - This is the Third comparison; the captivity being compared to a person in a dangerous malady. Our Version does not express this clause well: Fools מדרך פשעם midderech pisham, because of the way of their transgressions, are afflicted. Most human maladies are the fruits of sin; misery and sin are married together in bonds that can never be broken.

Fools, because of their transgression - Wicked people, considered as fools, because they “are” transgressors. Compare Psa 14:1, note; Psa 73:3, note; Psa 75:4, note. The immediate allusion here, probably, is to the Jews, who had been so wicked and so supremely foolish in violating the commands of God, and making it necessary to bring upon them as a punishment the captivity at Babylon; but the language is made general because it will with equal propriety describe the conduct of all wicked people. There is nothing more foolish than an act of wickedness; there is no wisdom equal to that of obeying God. And because of their iniquities, are afflicted - A more literal rendering of this verse would be, “Fools from the way of their transgressions (that is, by their course of transgression), and by their iniquities, afflict themselves.” The idea is, that it is “in the very line” of their trangressions; or, that they “bring it upon themselves.” All punishment is in fact in the line of the offence; that is, sin leads directly to it; or, in other words, if a man treads along in the path of sin, he will come to this result - to punishment. Punishment is not arbitrary on the part of God, and it is not of the nature of a mere direct infliction from his “hand.” It is what people mete out to themselves, and what they might have avoided if they had chosen to do so.