The Wings of the Sun

"But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise With healing in His wings; And you shall go out And grow fat like stall-fed calves." Malachi 4:2

Jesus Is Light of The World.

        Have you ever heard about the wings of the sun? You know about the wings of a bird, and the wings of a house, and the wings of an army, but perhaps you do not know about the wings of the sun. If you will look up at the sun you will see bright beams of light extending out from the side of the sun, just as the wings of a house extend from the side of the house. These are the wings of the sun. We call them sunbeams. The prophet says that there is healing in the sunbeams, just as there is in the medicine that the doctor leaves us when we are sick. People are just beginning to know what a wonderful healer the sunshine is for those who are ill.

       If you take a plant and put it down in the cellar where there is no light and leave it there for a few days, that plant will become sick and die. It must have the sunshine if it is to live and grow, and it is the same way with people.

       Most of the hospitals have a great room where the sun can shine all day, and there the people are taken who are getting well, so that the sun can shine on them and help them in their recovery.

       A doctor in one of the hospitals said not very long ago, "There are some rooms here where people seem to get well sooner than in others, and they are always the rooms where the sun shines the most." This is what the prophet meant when he said that the sun has healing in its wings.

       But he was really telling us about Jesus. He calls Him the Sun of Righteousness and says that there is healing in His wings, just as there is in the great sun that shines up there in the sky.

       There are some sicknesses that only Jesus can heal. You know there are diseases of the body, and there are diseases of the mind, and there are diseases of the soul. Sin is the great sickness of the soul. We are all troubled with this disease, and there is no cure in the world for it but Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness.

       Suppose one of you were sick, and were to go to your doctor and he were to say to you, "What you want is sunlight. Just stay out in the sun and air all that you can and you will be well." Wouldn't you go out into the sunlight? Of course you would.

       Now God, the great doctor of the soul, comes to us and says, ''Your soul is sick. It is sin that ails you. What you need is the sunlight of Jesus. If you will come into that sunlight you will be well."

       There was once a man named Peter. He was a rough, cursing fellow who had not led a very good life.

       Doctors tell us that disease germs grow best in the dark. If you want to kill bad germs, open the windows and let the sunshine come in. This man Peter had been living in the darkness, and the germs of sin and evil had grown in his life till he was a great sinner. But one day Jesus passed along and called Peter to follow Him. He went, and the sunlight of Jesus destroyed the evil, and made him well so that he became one of the greatest saints of all time.

       There was another man named Saul. He went everywhere, trying to do all the evil that he could, till one day, as he was on the way to a city called Damascus, there began to shine upon him a light from heaven. It shone right down into his wicked soul, as the sun shines into the face of the sick man in the hospital, and he began to be a better man, and this man Saul became the great Apostle Paul.

       When I was a small boy I used to go out in the summer and pick blackberries. There was a clump of blackberry bushes back of the barn, and they were the biggest and finest berries around anywhere. It didn't take long to fill a little pail full of them. But when I tasted one they were sour and bitter. The trouble was that there were some big trees there, that kept the sun from shining on those blackberry vines, and the fruit was always sour. But one year men came and cut down the trees and then the berries became sweet and good.

       That is the reason so many lives are bitter and sour and sinful. There is something that is keeping the sun from shining on them, the Sun of Righteousness.