Originally written by King David

Psalm 5:7 (My emphasis added)

But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.

This Lord’s Day, let God’s people be steadily reminded of the sobering reality of the cost of salvation given us. Might we enter God’s rest of our own accord? Have we earned such by our own spiritual prowess and righteous aptitude? CERTAINLY NOT! Nay, it is through “the abundance of [God's] steadfast love” that we can freely enter His rest.

May our hearts be bowed in awe and contrition as we gather with God’s Church to worship Him in spirit and in truth…being mindful of the purchase our Sweet Saviour Jesus Christ so dutifully carried out to the glory of the Father. With joy and gladness let our hearts be lifted up from the mire and filth from which they once proceeded, yet, having been passed from death to life that we would be called the sons of God.

Blessed be the Name of the Lord, forever and ever.

The Bruised Reed
by Richard Sibbes

Concerning Richard Sibbes, Charles Spurgeon claimed “Sibbes never wastes the student’s time, he scatters pearls and diamonds with both hands.” With the same profundity and richness that typically characterizes Puritan works Sibbes, in The Bruised Reed, masterfully and beautifully deals with things like brokenness, humility, mercy, and grace all wrapped up in the greater subject of hardships, whether they be brought by persecution or one’s own sin. In a time where hedonism seems to reign supreme and commandeers the hearts of sinners and confused Christians alike, The Bruised Reed delivers a good dose of sobriety to those who would revel in their good circumstance.

Might it be if one is not under affliction of one sort or another that he has not been bruised, broken, or brought to the end of himself? And if not, has he, in his pride, been given over to his depraved mind, unable to hear the thunder of God’s voice which grants a man repentance? May it not be for you, me, or anyone! The wise Puritan writes, “This is such a one as our Saviour Christ terms ‘poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), who sees his wants, and also sees himself indebted to divine justice…” and God lowers us “levelling all proud, high thoughts, and that we may understand ourselves to be what indeed we are by nature.” Let the sinner see his suffering as God’s kindness which leads to salvation. Let the saint see his suffering as the means by which God perfects grace in the heart of His servant, mortifying the flesh.

With simple language and Biblical saturation, Sibbes encourages the Christian to take comfort in tribulation while looking to victory, to show grace to the weak, and to believe in Christ’s goodness to us despite afflictions undergone. I heartily encourage any and all to read this fine work and now I leave you with some words of wisdom from Richard Sibbes.

“In pursuing his calling, Christ will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax…he will not only not break nor quench, but he will cherish those with whom he deals.”

Just a few thoughtful quotes:

1.

True, there is the bright glass of the Law, wherein we may see the evil of sin; but there is the red glass of the sufferings of Christ, and in that we may see more of the evil of sin that if God should let us down to hell and there let us see all the tortures and torments of the damned in hell. If you could see those people and how they lie sweltering under God’s wrath there, it would not be as much as beholding sin through the red glass of the sufferings of Jesus Christ and His agony.

-Jeremiah Burroughs in The Evil of Evils

2.

Things are allowed to be said and done at revivals which nobody could defend. . . If, for a moment, our improvements seem to produce a larger result than the old gospel, it will be the growth of mushrooms, it may even be of toadstools; but it is not the growth of the trees of the Lord.

-C.H. Spurgeon

3.

I have somewhere met the remark, that ‘the chariot of the gospel never has free course, but the devil tries to be charioteer’. There is nothing he is so much afraid of as the power of the Holy Ghost. Where he cannot arrest the showers of blessing, it has ever been one of his devices to dilute or poison the streams. . .With the obvious signs of the times in view, who does not see that this artful foe would enjoy his malignant triumph, if he sould prejudice the minds of good men against all revivals of religion? This he does, not so much by opposing them, as by counterfeiting the geunine coin, and by getting up revivals that are spurious and to his liking. Revivals are always spurious when they are got up by man’s device, and not brought down by the Spirit of God.

There is one grace you cannot counterfeit. . . the grace of perseverance.

-Gardiner Spring

J. Flavel - ‘What It is to Keep the Heart’ Prov. 4.23

To attain a facility and dexterity of language in prayer, and put thy meaning into apt and decent expressions, is easy; but to get thy heart broken for sin whilst thou art confessing it; melted with free grace whilst thou are blessing God for it; to be really ashamed and humbled through the apprehensions of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep they heart in this frame, not only in, but after duty, will surely cost thee some groans and travailing pain of soul: To repress the outward acts of sin, and compose the external part of thy life in a laudable and comely manner is no great matter; even carnal persons by the force of common principles can do this; but to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up an holy government over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Reminiscent of Colossians 1:15-17, we see Christ’s active role in Creation and the sustaining thereof. Dare we belittle the person of Christ, when ascribing glory to the Almighty God? May it never be!