What group of people is the Lord addressing?

"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion." It is the children of Zion who are being addressed by the Lord in this passage from the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah.

The deliverance is the children's bread. It is for those of God's people who are weeping and mourning because of the sin in the world and in the churches, who are bowed down with every kind of disease and affliction.

Now comes the goal of Divine healing. The goal needs to be announced today because the leaders are assuming that the goal of God's delivering power is to make people happy, contented, and prosperous in the world, and when they die to bring them to their mansion in Heaven to live there forever.

Here is the goal: "that they might be called trees [oaks] of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."

The goal of Divine healing is that the Lord's saint become an oak of righteousness—an oak of righteous behavior so the Lord may be glorified.

Anyone who is acquainted with oak trees is aware how slowly they grow and how large and immovable they become. An oak sapling can be bent and twisted at the pleasure of a child. A fully mature oak tree can withstand all but an enormous force.

God's people of today are not even saplings. They can easily be bent and shaped by evil. The errors we have mentioned in previous essays have prevented all but the most feeble attempts to live righteously. But God's intention is to create "oaks of righteousness."

After they become oaks of righteousness, what shall the saints do?

And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. (Isaiah 61:4)

As soon as the Lord develops some oaks of righteousness from among His people He will return with His oaks and use them to rebuild an earth that has been destroyed by men who were attempting to make themselves God, as we see today on every hand.

We mentioned previously some of the numerous sicknesses and afflictions that have disabled God's people. Disabled believers cannot even begin on the path of rugged, cross-carrying discipleship until some emotional and physical healing has taken place. An individual cannot be exhorted to live the victorious Christian life when his personality is weak and sickly.

Let us add a few words of practical advice to the believers who are finding their way back to health, and from there to the path that leads to eternal life.

We recognize that sometimes God heals us sovereignly. On other occasions the Lord blesses those with professional or other experience as they assist us on our road to health.

Sometimes a professional health worker will prescribe medications. When he or she does we are to do what the doctor tells us to do and to do it faithfully. God cannot bless us when we go to a doctor and then refuse to follow his directions.

To be continued.