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Ever since the fall of man in Eden earth has abounded in broken hearts. Sin has brought sorrow, and men of all ages and all parts have mourned for a variety of reasons. There has been sickness and pain, bereavements and burials, poverty, loneliness, toiling and tears. These were all present in the days of our Lord’s ministry so that, again and again, we read of Him that He was “moved with compassion”. He had come to bind up the brokenhearted.

Of Jehovah, centuries earlier, the psalmist had said, “He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds” (Ps 147:3) and now, in the Person of the Son, that same Jehovah had come to sojourn among men. The ministry of comfort and healing became a practical reality for many who heard the word and felt the touch of Messiah in their midst. Matthew writes of a busy day of such healings, and records the cleansing of a leper, the cure of a grievously ill paralytic, and the deliverance of Peter’s wife’s mother from a fever. In the evening of the same day they brought to Him many that were demon possessed, and He healed them all. Matthew sees a fulfilment of a prophecy in Isaiah 53 and writes, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Matt 8:17; Isa 53:4).

It is precious to know that the Lord Jesus shared in the sorrows of men. He made them His own, and sympathised in a very real and genuine way with the brokenhearted. Yet He Himself could say, “Reproach hath broken my heart” (Ps 69:20). O the sad irony, that He who had come to heal the brokenhearted was Himself brokenhearted, despised and rejected by those whom He had come to heal.