“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” – Jeremiah 8:22

Without going into how the Lord revealed it to me, some years ago now, the Lord prompted me to look up the word “balm” in my Strong’s concordance. I was led to the root word, which meant “crack and cause to leak.” I thought what kind of medicine is that? When I realized that was the way a poultice works, I looked that up in Strong’s also, and found two references, both to the same event.

“Prepare a poultice of figs, put it on the boil and you will be healed,” or words to that effect – advice from the Lord through Isaiah to Hezekiah.

Anyway, he did this, and Hezekiah was healed. I immediately realized that this was a picture of Jesus. Jesus is the poultice who takes away the sins of the world. When He hung on the cross, prepared by his stripes to be a poultice, all of the sins of the world in time and space came to a head, and were drawn into him who knew no sin that we might be the righteousness of God in Him. To prepare a poultice of figs first requires that the fig be peeled, and that is what the stripes accomplished. And then there was an earthquake – a crack in connection with His death. In the ministry of Paul we see the continuation of this ministry of stripes.

And so, it is clear that we are an extension of this same poultice ministry, a part of His redemptive purpose in the earth.

By Jay Ferris, Originally posted on October 26, 2011

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