The Double Cure

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” —Isaiah 53:6

Notice how we went astray: “We have turned every one to his own way.” That is sin. Your way is not God’s way. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Those are God’s words. Your way is sin, and that is the reason He tells you that you went astray; “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” That is the way of sin.

If you are a farmer, you know what a sheep is. Sheep are not fierce animals, they are not vicious in any way. They are just simply fools. They will just wander off. They will go right by a sheepfold, the gate that will let them in to safety. They see something green over on the hill and follow it, just as you do. Do you know why He said you are like a sheep? Because the sheep do not go out looking for trouble; they just go astray. I never knew a man or a woman who ever intended to go out and look for trouble. I never knew a man who deliberately started out to be a drunkard. I never knew a woman who intended to go down and hit the very bottom of sin. Nobody ever intended it. Nobody is vicious to begin with; but, like sheep, they wander off in many different ways.

Do you mean to tell me a man starts out to be a drunkard? A fellow who “can drink it or leave it alone,” he always drinks. He never intends to form a habit. I never intended to become a drunkard, and yet I lived to see the day that I could no more stay sober than I could fly, if I could get hold of anything to get drunk with.

You go astray like a sheep. Suppose the Lord had said “like a dog.” A dog will always get back. I had an old dog. My father tried to lose him. He put him in the back of a buggy where he could not see, hauled him away twenty-five miles, and had a man lock him up until he got out of town and then let him loose. When he got home, the dog was there to meet him. They say cattle come back too. But sheep never can get back alone. That is an unwritten law. That is why a shepherd must go and bring back the sheep. They do not get back alone.

“But none of the ransomed ever knew
How dep were the waters cross’d;
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord pass’d thro’
Ere He found His sheep that was lost;
Out in the desert He heard its cry—
Sick and helpless and ready to die

“And all thro’ the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There arose a glad cry to the gate of heaven,
‘Rejoice! I have found my sheep!’
And the angels echoed around the throne,
‘Rejoice! For the Lord brings back His own!’”

He did not wait for the sheep to find Him; He went out and found the sheep. That is why you go astray. Like a sheep you cannot get back. No man can get back; no woman can get back. They talk, in these days, about prize fighters coming back; about ball players coming back! I will tell you nobody gets back alone. They are too much like sheep, because, “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

You say, “Oh, well, I got away from it alone all right.” But look out you don’t get back again. I want to tell you the last end of that man is worse than the first. Always remember it is like a sheep that we have gone astray, “We have turned every one to his own way.” You do not mean to do it, but when you drift away, the first thing you know, you are yielding to that sin; it may be temper, it may be envy, it may be pride, it may be jealousy, it may be drunkenness, it may be stealing, it may be lying. I do not care what it is, “We have turned every one to his own way.” So, you see, you are not only a sinner by birth, but you are a sinner because you have committed it.

A fellow said to me on the train one day. “Oh, you preachers make me sick.”

“I am not a preacher,” I replied. “I wish I were. I don’t know enough.”

He said: “I don’t care what you are. You Christians are always talking about a man going to hell because Adam sinned.”

“No,” I said, “you will never go to hell because Adam sinned. You will go to hell because you refuse the remedy God provided for Adam’s sin. Don’t you go crying about something that has absolutely been taken care of. If you go to hell, you will go over the broken body of Jesus Christ who died to keep you out.”

So I have to find a remedy. I have to find two. One thing won’t do. A cure is not going to help you. Thank God, you got to have something more than that, and you can find it in Jesus Christ. Did you ever notice Psalm 103:3? “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.” Forgiving iniquities, healing diseases. That is the thing. You have got to have a double cure. And you will find it in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save His people from their sins.” Why, four-fifths of His time in His earthly ministry was taken up in healing bodies, but that was only part of His mission. The ninth chapter of Matthew is one of the best illustrations of the truth. When they all raged because He said, “Son,...thy sins be forgiven thee,” the Pharisees said, “Who can forgive sins but God?” And Jesus Christ said, “Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” And he put his bed on his back and walked. You know the wonderful thing about it is that Jesus can do both. In the Lord Jesus Christ we have the double cure, and we must have the two things.

Suppose I had started out of the Pacific Garden Mission the night I went in there and was converted. I heard the boys giving their testimony, and God, by the Holy Ghost, revealed to me that He could save me as He had saved them. I stuck my hand up. At the invitation I went down the hall, knocking over four or five chairs as I went. As I staggered forward, Harry Monroe caught me. He knelt down, and I fell down. He put his arm around me and said, “Now, old fellow, you pray.” And I did. I said, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” and “Jesus save me.” Supposing Jesus had said, “Trotter, listen to me, all the sins you ever committed, all your old sins are forgiven.” I would have said, “Thank you, Jesus,” and I would have gotten up and staggered into the very first saloon on Van Buren Street and taken a drink. But, thank God, that is not what He did. He not only forgave all the sin I ever committed, all the sin I do commit, all the sin I ever shall commit, all that He has put under the blood forever and forever and forever, Amen and Amen. Thank God, He did all that, but He did more. He not only forgave me at the altar, but He healed me.

A Roman Catholic asked me the other day, “Mr. Trotter, what do you think of men coming to Christ in a rescue mission and yet never being delivered from the desire to drink whiskey?”

“Well,” I said, “I think there are men who are converted that do that, and yet I always say that there is deliverance from even the desire to drink, if they will accept the double cure in Jesus Christ. I certainly have seen it. You need not tell me a man will do what I used to do,—sell the shoes off my feet in the winter time in order to buy drink, open my veins and sign the pledge with my own blood, to break it in an hour,—you need not tell me by that thing I was the master of it. No. Jesus came in and gave me a new heart.”

Some of you will remember Sam Hadley or “Hop” Hadley. He was one of the greatest men that every lived. One day he was telling the story of how he got away from whiskey, and after the meeting a lady physician came up and said, “I would like to speak with you. What you said was very unwise. I am a graduate from such and such a school, and I know you never can be saved from the desire to drink whiskey like that, because after drinking whiskey it works on the stomach until the stomach is just simply ulcerated, and there is no possible cure within six months and sometimes six years, and some men’s stomachs cannot be healed at all after they cease drinking.”

Hop said, “Hallelujah!”

The lady said, “What is the matter with you?”

“Praise the Lord!”

She said, “Are you a fool? What is the matter with you?”

He said, “I knew God had given me a new heart, but I never knew before that He had given me a new stomach. Hallelujah!”

That’s what I call a double cure, and this is the very thing I am trying to bring to you. Thank God, He cannot only save you, but He can heal you so you will not want the old sin.

You go and confess your sins, and He is faithful and just to forgive your sins (1 John 1:9). But what about getting away from them. Have you got to go tomorrow morning and do the same confessing and have Him forgive you? Would it not be wonderful to be delivered from sin? Listen to this wonderful verse that I love, perhaps, above all verses. It tells the double work that Jesus came to do. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God made Jesus to be sin for me; that is the thing He did. He knew no sin, but God made Him to be sin for me. The second thing He did: “That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He took my death; I took His life. He took my miserable condemnation and my desert of hell; He absolutely took it and went to hell and gave me heaven. Double work! If God is going to send Jesus to take my place, and make Him to be sin for me. He must take the punishment that I deserve.

When they gave me a little Bible, Mrs. Clark gave me a little two and a half cent Testament; and for a year I never read a paper. I didn’t read anything but my Testament. I learned a verse every day.

One morning I was on my knees praying. I had gone into the back room of my barber shop. Heaven seemed to speak to me. It was a beautiful time of prayer. Pretty soon it came to me just like thunder out of a clear sky, “Yes, He did go through terrible suffering, but He was taking your place; all the things that were done to Him were done for you, and , if He had not borne them, you would have to.” Then I said, “Hallelujah, Jesus, if you love me that much, I am going to love you a little more.” Then I went back over the punishment, and when they smote Him on the back, I saw it coming to me, and I did not have a word to say. If God is going to make Him to be my sin, why, He must put on Him the purple robe and put a reed in His hand and a crown of thorns on His head. And the soldiers walked back and forth and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” I can understand how they could mock Him; I had it coming to me, and He was taking my place. Bless His holy name for that. I can understand it now. I know now why they whipped Him and scourged Him and made a fool of Him and mocked Him. I know why they did it. He was taking my place, that is all. God made Him to be my sin. If He is going to make Him to be my sin, He must bear the punishment of my sin.

Taken from an address delivered at The Moody Church.