Chapter 3: The Smoking Flax January 8, 2008

Grace is very little at first and very glorious later.  So Christ will fan into flame a tiny smouldering flax into a blazing light.  Things of greatest perfection are a long time growing, like an acorn forming a great oak.

Don’t despise small begininings therefore.  Grace though little in quantity is much in vigour and worth.  It is Christ that raises the worth of little and mean places.  Just as he did with Bethlehem.  It was nothing but he was born there and became great.

Grace is also mingled with corruption.  So Moses at the Red Sea was in a blind panic but he offered up a great prayer.  ‘Broken hearts can yield but broken prayers.’ p.18 / 19 very good on this mixture in us.

It keeps us humble, stops us becoming proud and secure, forces us to depend on justification not sanctification. 

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Chapter 2: Christ will not break the Bruised Reed January 8, 2008

You’d expect a surgeon to bruise you and hurt you if they are to make you well.  Do you really expect God to be any different?  Yet Christ calls himself husband, shepherd and brother.  He is humble, gracious and kind. 

We learn:

1. To come boldly to the throne of grace in all our grievances.  Don’t dally, go to him, ‘his presence makes any condition comfortable.’

2. Christ works by wounding first then healing.  If he does that then don’t break yourself by despair.

3. Contrast with Satan who sets on us when we are broken hearted.  He comes to bind us up.  ‘. . . he puts an instinct in the weakest things to rely on something stronger than themselvs for support.’

Who are the bruised reeds? Those who realise their sin and are brought low by it.  God may well bruise me so that I see my sin. p.11 some great thoughts on this.

How shall we come to this state of mind?  Either God does it to us or we do it to ourselves.  If he humbles us then lets not fight against it.  If we do it then we need to be careful not to overdo it but remember this ‘that there is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us.’ 

Isn’t it important to be more bruised over sin than the punishment?  I think he’s saying no, not really, don’t be too tough on people.  God was gracious to animals in the Bible don’t you think he’d be much more gracious to us. 

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Chapter 1: The Reed and its bruising January 8, 2008

We are looking at Isaiah 42:1-3 which are taken up in Matthew 12:18-20.

1. Christ’s calling to his office: to be the agent of our redemption ’see here for our comfort a sweet agreement of all three persons: the Father gives a commission to Christ, the Spirit furnishes and sanctifies to it, and Christ himself executes the office of a Mediator.  Our redemption is founded upon the joint agreement of all three persons of the Trinity.’

2. The manner in which he carries it out: Christ deals with bruised reeds and smoking flax, not great trees or beautiful flowers.  God’s children are bruised reeds before conversion and often times after.  He has no means of supply or help from himself and so is driven to look upward.  Hence the bruising can be good.

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