Healing Leaves
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Revelation 22:2
In the middle of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits…
I. IN REFERENCE TO HEAVEN.
1. The heavenly city is described as having an abundance of all manner of delights.
2. As everything good is present, our text hints that nothing ill is there.
3. It is in heaven, according to our text, again, that there grows the tree which is not only health to heaven, but which brings healing to the nations here below.
II. IN REFERENCE TO OURSELVES BELOW.
1. All the nations are sick. All the nations need healing, our own among them. Do not iniquities abound? Go to the West End and see its fashionable sin, or to the East End and see its more open wickedness. And all individuals in every nation want healing. The evil is in our nature from the very beginning.
2. There is but one cure for the nations — the leaves of the tree.
3. Jesus is pictured here as a blessed tree whose leaves heal the nations. Now the point of the text is this, that the very leaves are healing, from which I gather that the least thing about Christ is healing. The least fragment of this sovereign remedy has omnipotence in it. We may also learn that the humblest and most timid faith in Jesus Christ will save. Pluck a leaf of this tree by thy poor trembling faith and it shall make thee whole. Beloved, after we have been saved from our sin by faith in Jesus Christ it is very wonderful how everything about Christ will help to cleanse. Study His example; it will exercise a curative power over you. You will be ashamed to be selfish, you will be ashamed to be idle, you will be ashamed to be proud when you see what Jesus was. If we take His precepts, and I hope we prize them as highly as we do His doctrines, there is not a command of our Lord but what possesses a sacred power, by the application of the Holy Spirit, to cure some fault or other of our character. Do thou as He bids thee, and thou shalt be made whole. His least words are better than the best of others.
4. Then, too, this medicine heals all sorts of diseases. The text puts it, "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." It does not say of this or that malady, but teaches us that the medicine is universal in its curative power.
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