[0:01] And now, with God's blessing and with God's help and independence on the Lord, I would like us to turn back to the portion that we read in Isaiah chapter 42, and we can read again the verse 3.
[0:19] A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, and he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
[0:34] A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. Now, these verses in the prophecy of Isaiah are verses that look forward to the coming of the Messiah.
[0:55] And I think that when you read through the verses themselves, you find that both Advents really are here in Isaiah's view.
[1:07] Who is this Messiah, though, that Isaiah is speaking about here? Well, the Messiah is God's chosen vessel. The Messiah is God's chosen and selected and anointed vessel that is going to accomplish God's work among his people.
[1:27] And it would seem when you read the beginning of the chapter itself, as Isaiah begins to prophesy about this servant and about this Messiah, that he starts to tell us something about the kind of Messiah that this is going to be.
[1:46] The Messiah, when he comes, is not going to be one who is going to exert his authority, as it were, like an earthly ruler. He is not going to be one who is going to need to proclaim his power, as it were, like other men would proclaim their power.
[2:10] But what he will do is he will faithfully and he will humbly do his work. He will faithfully and humbly carry out the work that God has there for him to do.
[2:24] But it would seem as well, when you read into this, that when Jesus comes, that his faithful people, it would seem that they are going to be weak and their flame is nearly going to be extinguished.
[2:39] And you can find that when you look at when Christ came into the world, how weak, as it were, the cause of the Lord had become in these days.
[2:50] There had not been a prophet for 400 years until John the Baptist and the whole cause, if you like, was weak and it was nearly extinguished.
[3:03] But when he comes, that is the way that he is going to find his own faithful people. But yet, even although they were going to be weak and even although it could be said that they would be nearly extinguished, there would still be amongst that remnant, there would be those who would be faithful and faithful unto him.
[3:25] And he will not break them down, it says, and he is not going to snuff them out. He is the one who is going to heal their weaknesses. He will bind them up as it were and he will restore them unto usefulness for himself by rekindling their flame so that their light shines brightly once again.
[3:52] And we understand from this that this Messiah will not fail in his mission to redeem and restore his own people.
[4:03] And I believe that there is a word for us in all of this here tonight. Because we all know and we know and we accept before the Lord that there are times in our Christian experience when we become weak and we become in a sense, if you could say it, unusable for the Lord.
[4:28] Unusable for the Lord and unusable in our witness, unusable in our service for the Lord. There are times I would suggest and we would be liars, I think, if we didn't accept it.
[4:42] Times when our light grows dim, aren't there? And times when the flame of our faith may be nearly extinguished and it becomes dim.
[4:52] But when those times come, and if that is maybe your own experience tonight, if you feel that maybe your light is dim, as you continue in this process of examining yourself before God and looking into your heart and looking at your own Christian life, and you might start to think and you might start to see that the light is dim and that the flame in a sense of your faith, that it is almost extinguished.
[5:27] But if that is your experience, and when these times come, my friends, what do we have? We have a friend in Jesus.
[5:39] We have a friend in Christ. The saints of God have a friend in Jesus. And our Saviour is a patient God, a patient Lord.
[5:53] He is a tender Lord. He is a loving Lord. And He is a merciful Lord. When we come to Him with our weakness in a sense that has become dim, and when the fragrance that we exude is not the fragrance of Christ, we can come to Him.
[6:15] And with Him we can find forgiveness and we can find restoration. We will not find one who will break us to pieces or who will snuff out our light altogether.
[6:29] But we find in Him one who is a friend, a friend of His people. Isaiah here in this prophecy, he begins to write about different plants within the verses that we have here.
[6:49] And he mentions the reed and he mentions the flax. And I just want to say a few words about these before we continue. Especially maybe for the younger ones here who have not heard much about these being explained before.
[7:05] I'm sure the older ones here have heard it often enough. But he speaks about the reeds and he speaks about the flax. Reeds are and were very common in the Middle East.
[7:21] They were very common indeed. And it is believed well we know that there are quite a number of different varieties of this plant that grows there. And the one of these that is most often referred to in God's Word in the Bible is a reed that grows to about 12 feet long or thereabouts.
[7:42] And when these reeds, when they are freshly cut, they are flexible. But along with that flexibility they are very strong.
[7:54] And in the same way when they are dried off they become stiff but still remain very strong. And the Word of God itself in various places it tells us that they were used for a variety of different things in that day.
[8:11] They were used as a measuring device or whatever it might be. They were used as walking sticks. They were used to make baskets and spears. And there were times when these reeds were crushed.
[8:25] And they gave off a beautiful fragrance when you crushed them. So there were times they were used for that fragrance as well. And it is interesting that a reed was mockingly given to Jesus as a symbol of royalty.
[8:42] You remember when that reed was placed in his hand in mockery. And that very same reed that was placed in his hand for mockery was taken from him and he was beaten with it.
[8:59] And that is the reed. Flax on the other hand is a delicate plant. And it has been grown seemingly unharvested since ancient times.
[9:11] It is gathered and dried and it is turned into thread from which linen cloth can be woven. The ancient Egyptians we know from Exodus.
[9:24] They cultivated flax and they did that for linen. The ancient Canaanites they grew this flax as well. Remember Rahab the harlot. Rahab had flax drying on the roof of her house there.
[9:38] And they were gathered these plants. They were soaked then in water to separate the fibres away and then they were left in the sun to dry.
[9:50] And then these fibres were spun into thread and then into linen cloth. Now according to the Bible itself linen was used to make the priests clothing.
[10:02] Linen was used to make shrouds for the dead. As well as that linen had been used for the ordinary everyday garments that people wore. And for ropes and nets and all of these things.
[10:16] But here within the text as Isaiah speaks here. We are reminded as well and the prophet reminds us. That these flax threads were used as wicks in the oil lamps.
[10:29] A piece of thread would be placed in the oil and after that thread had been thoroughly soaked with the oil it would be lit and it would serve as a wick.
[10:41] Drawing up the oil from the lamp and then producing the light from there. And keeping these things in mind.
[10:52] What we have spoken about there. I want to firstly tonight consider here. That there is a problem in the text. There is a problem in the text.
[11:04] A bruised reed and a smoking flax. We are told by the prophet that the reed is bruised and we are told that the flax is smoking.
[11:17] And what we can deduce from that is surely that these two plants have a problem. And they have problems that need to be examined. They have problems that need to be dealt with.
[11:32] The reed is bruised he says. And the word bruised means to be broken. It means to be crushed. It means to be crushed to pieces.
[11:44] That is what the word means. And what you have here is a picture of weakness. The reed in a sense is bruised. The reed is weak.
[11:56] And that bruised reed cannot be used for any of the purposes that we mentioned earlier. That these reeds were used for. The reed has lost its effectiveness.
[12:10] A bruised reed cannot even be crushed for its fragrance. For a bruised reed is rotten. And when it is crushed then what it gives off is a foul smell and a foul stench.
[12:24] The bruised reed has lost its strength. The bruised reed has lost its stability. The bruised reed has lost its soundness.
[12:35] And the bruised reed is unreliable and it is unusable. And then you have the flax that is smoking.
[12:47] What does the word smoking mean there? It has become dull. It is a smoking flax. What does he mean? It means that it is doom.
[12:58] It means that it is dull. It means that the light is faint. It is a picture of a wick if you like that has dried out. There is no oil and the flame is nearly extinguished.
[13:13] There is little or no light. And thus there is no usefulness. No usefulness. It has lost its light.
[13:24] And it has lost its glory. And the smoking flax has become unusable. And I would suggest to you tonight that both of these injured plants, both of these injured things tonight, are pictures of the child of God who is no longer where he or she should be in their relationship with the Lord himself.
[13:54] Like the reed and the flax, the wayward saint, the child of God who is out of step with the Lord has ceased to be usable for the Lord and has ceased to be an effective witness for the Lord.
[14:11] They have lost their strength. They have lost their stability. They have lost their soundness as well as their light and their glory almost been extinguished.
[14:24] The bruised reed child of God is not usable to the Lord. Every single thing about his or her life will be lacking.
[14:41] That person, my friends, will have no power. And that person cannot be used as a weapon, if you like, in the hand of the Lord. It cannot be used.
[14:54] Do you think that that person's fragrance then is the fragrance of heaven or a beautiful scented fragrance?
[15:08] No, the fragrance will stench of sin itself. And the smoking flax believer or child of God is not usable either.
[15:19] When we are out of God's will, our light will be very dim. Oh, we can throw off a lot of smoke. Plenty smoke, no light.
[15:32] But what is that but the energy of the flesh, my friends? Smoke does not equal light. It never does. And when we are like either the bruised reed or the smoking flax, we have ceased to function as the Lord intends.
[15:54] We have ceased to be effective as the Lord intends. And we are not where we need to be. And I would suggest that there are times in all of our experience, times when we become a bruised reed and times when we become a smoking flax and maybe that time in your Christian experiences tonight.
[16:18] And you need to deal with that and you need to put it right. There are times when we get out of our place and we wander from the will of the Lord for our lives and God's purpose for our lives.
[16:38] And when we do, we cease to be usable for the Lord. We cease to be the witnesses that we need to be.
[16:50] We are all smoke and we are no light. How do we get into that shape? Well, the main reason we get into that shape, my friends, is sin.
[17:07] And sin and the sorrows that sin brings and the struggle that sin brings. And Satan himself and all the issues that he has caused and the chaos that he has caused.
[17:19] Sin brings that problem into our lives and nothing else. Sin is the problem. Sin that is undealt with. That remains in a sense there and we have not confessed it and we have not repented of it.
[17:36] We have not desired to forsake it and it is there and we become dim and we become unusable and we are all smoke and no light.
[17:53] And that is the problem that we encounter in this text. It is a problem that we encounter as the Lord's people in life.
[18:03] But then secondly, oh, we are thankful that our failures are never final with God.
[18:20] Because secondly here, to deal with the problem in our lives and to deal with the problem in the text, we have patience in the text.
[18:33] We have patience in it. A bruised reed shall he not break and the smoking flax shall he not quench. He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
[18:49] Oh, there is a problem. But what we see here in response to that problem is a patient and a loving and a tender Lord at work in the midst of that very problem.
[19:06] Look at his response here as Isaiah puts it to the bruised reed. Look at his response to the smoking flax. Oh, he doesn't come and break the bruised reed, does he?
[19:22] He doesn't break it. The word break means to break down, to break into pieces, to tear or to rend violently.
[19:35] It's not that the Lord doesn't see, but the Lord sees the weakness and the uselessness, as it were, of the bruised reed. But he does not reach out in anger to that bruised reed to finish it off, to tear it up completely, to cast it away.
[19:53] Oh, thank God tonight he does not do that in relation to his people and their failures. Thank God he doesn't. He doesn't come to the bruised reed to destroy it, but he comes to mend it.
[20:13] He comes to repair it. He comes to reinforce it and he comes to restore it to the way that it should be. And then he comes to the smoking flax and he says that he does not quench the smoking flax.
[20:32] The word quench means to put out. It means to extinguish. He doesn't finish it off. That smoking flax, with no light, he doesn't come and extinguish it completely.
[20:49] He doesn't finish it off, if you like, without a care. Instead, he comes to rekindle that weak flame so that it may burn brightly again.
[21:02] He comes to make it useful again. He comes to cause its light to shine one more time in the midst of the darkness.
[21:18] And this Lord that we speak of, my friends, is still a gracious and still a loving Lord. Isaiah says in verse 3, he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
[21:34] What does that really mean? Well, if I can put this, put it as simply as I possibly can. Surely, it means that our Lord will do the right thing.
[21:45] The right thing by those who have been bruised and by those who have been almost extinguished. He will do the right thing by them. Oh, that truth can be seen in so many ways when you study and you look throughout the ministry of this Messiah, the ministry of the Lord himself.
[22:11] Remember when he had compassion on a bruised reed called Matthew, on another bruised reed called Zacchaeus, who were tax collectors for Rome.
[22:23] compassion on a bruised reed there with a withered hand on the Sabbath day and all the compassion that he had on the bruised reed that hung beside him at Calvary when he cried out to him, today you will be with me in paradise.
[22:43] a gracious loving Lord who has compassion on all of the bruised reeds and hasn't he had compassion on many bruised reeds even from this gathering here tonight in North Tolstair from the pulpit to the elders box to the pew.
[23:08] have there not been times in our own Christian experience when our Lord passed by and you at that point in your life and witness you were weak and you were almost useless and you were weak before him times when it would have been easy for him or to just break you up times when it would have been easy for him to simply break you in two and to be finished with you forever and maybe in your own sense and the way you looked at it yourself maybe that is the very thought that you had of what he would do when he came by you because of the state maybe that you were in but that's not what you found is it or what I found instead hasn't he always been faithful and ready to restore us ready there in a sense to reinforce us ready to repair us and to mend us and to make us usable again in his service to make us again shine brightly as witnesses for him witnesses who ooze with the fragrance of the
[24:27] Christ to whom they are united true of all of us at times and it would have been easy for the
[25:35] Lord to quench our feeble flame and snuff us out altogether but we come to a Christ and to a God who is always willing to forgive us always willing to restore us and always willing to rekindle us when when we call upon his name when we confess our sin before him and repent of the sin that so easily besets us and stand before God with a heart's desire to forsake that sin and to leave it behind then the smoke is turned into a light again and the Lord moves into our experience and lifts us up again to the place where we should be and that we need to be and we ask tonight how is he able to do this for us well I would suggest that he is able to do it because he has been a bruised weed and he can do it because he has been in a manner a smoking flux oh don't get me wrong he has never ever in his experience had a sin problem but he had to die for our sin problem and when
[27:17] Jesus went to the cross he was literally crushed under foot even by his father he was bruised in our place oh he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed oh he was bruised he was bruised bruised in our place and completely broken in pieces that we might be saved when Jesus died on that cross he became sin for us when he was on the cross he died in our place bearing shame and scoffing root in my place condemned he stood sealed my pardon with his blood oh hallelujah what a saviour when
[28:36] Jesus died the evil one satan was sure the light of the Lord that it had been snuffed out forever and ever and in that manner I would suggest that Jesus the Lord the Messiah became a bruised reed and a smoking flax on the cross but three days later he rose from the dead and here's the thing what does he do now where is he now he ever lives my friend at God's right hand to help his people through these very times when our faith and our light grows dim he is there at the right hand of God that is why he is able to help us and how he is able to help us he makes intercession for us you know there are times
[29:42] I try to consider this in my own little mind and the thought of that intercession that goes on between the great high priest and the father that intercession that goes on on my behalf and on your behalf but he is at God's right hand interceding for for the bruised weeds and the smoking flaxes that come to him to be restored to be healed to be lifted up to be strengthened to be restored to where they should be and he will not cast any of them away well there is a problem in the text the reed is bruised and all the flax the flax is smoking but they are dealt with patiently by a merciful and a loving and a tender
[31:00] Lord who does not break the reed nor quench the smoking flax and we can come to him tonight in all of our brokenness and in all of our doomness so that he can restore us again and lift us up to the place where we should be so that our profession and confession and profession of the Lord and the vows that we take that they are not just smoke but that we are the light that we should be in the midst of a dark world and we need not fear the trials the sorrows the sins the enemies and the troubles of this life because here's the thing with all of our faults with all of our failures and with everything that can be in our wilderness experience none of them will ever be able to break you completely or to snuff out your light completely none of them nothing because our patient and merciful and loving
[32:19] Lord he is able to sustain us to support us and to see us through and it is to him that we need to come tonight as we prepare once again to take our vows and to profess before the Lord who it is we love and who it is we belong to we need to come with our brokenness and our unusableness and our dimness and we need to ask him to restore us to where we should be God never saved any soul in here has never saved any soul in the experience of this world to allow that person or that soul to be completely broken or to have your light snuffed out along the way God will not lose any that he has given to the son no matter how broken we might become no matter how dim we might become no matter how much smoke there is none of them will be lost because they were in his mind from eternity they were loved from eternity they were given to his son and his son will not lose any of them but sometimes maybe the brokenness and the acknowledgement of that brokenness and our unworthiness and everything else about us has to come to our mind so that we come to him who is able to heal us and to restore us to what we should be he saved you and I to do a work of grace in our lives that would endure throughout the ages of eternity and he saved you and he saved me with the assurance that he would complete the work that he began and who knows how you're feeling in your own soul tonight or how we might be feeling in our souls but there is one thing that gives the soul comfort and it is to know and to understand that
[34:36] God will not lose any of his own and if our light is doomed tonight and if our profession and our witness if it is all smoke and no light and if the fragrance that oozes from our lives is the fragrance of sin rather than Christ like holiness and if we know and understand that to be through in our lives when we examine ourselves well all I can say to you tonight is there is a Christ for you to come to there is a place for you to go with that and you will not be cast away if you confess and if you repent of these sins and I promise you with the authority of scripture that he will restore the light and he will restore the fragrance he will not break us in pieces he will not cast us away and he will not snuff out the light forever praise the Lord for his patience with sinners such as we are who so often err so far from him that indeed we too become a bruised reeds and smoking flaxes all praise God that he will not break us asunder that he will not snuff us out completely and that he will never ever cast us away fully may God bless us as we prepare by his grace to examine ourselves and to come to his table on the Lord's day to remember his death until he comes again may God by his grace give us the heart to examine ourselves to see where we stand in relation to him to ask if our light is shining and if our lives are oozing with the fragrance of Christ or whether it is we need to come to the Lord and ask him to heal us and to restore us to that place once again may God bless these few thoughts to us let us pray