SUPER SUNDAY SHORT FILM AND SERMON: JOE GIBBS, GAME PLAN FOR LIFE
CHRIST WILL NOT BREAK THE BRUISED REED. Physicians, though they may put their patients through pain, do so not to destroy them, but to raise them up by degrees. A mother that has a sick child will not cast it away, and shall there be more mercy in the lower streams than there are in the very spring? Shall we think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who planted the very affection of mercy in us? But to see Christ’s mercy to bruised reeds, consider his borrowed names, from the mildest creatures, as Lamb, or Hen (Luke 13:34). Consider that Jesus will heal the broken-hearted (Is 61:1), that at his baptism, the Holy Spirit sat on him in the shape of a dove, to show that he should be a dove-like gentle mediator. Hear his invitation to "Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden" (Matt 11:28.) He is a physician good at all diseases. He died that he might heal our souls with the medicine of his own blood. Never fear to go to God, since we have such a mediator with him, that is not only our friend, but our brother and husband.
Let this keep us when we feel ourselves bruised. Think—‘if Christ be so merciful as to not break me, I will not break myself by despair, nor yield myself over to the roaring lion Satan to break me in pieces.’
— Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) from The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax
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