The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax 2
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2. But the blessed Spirit, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work, compares a tried Christian also to the "smoking flax." The word "flax" here rather means what we calltow, that is, the refuse of the hemp, or of the flax. This refuse it seems to have been the custom to set on fire; and, as there was much dirt and filth in it, the flame burnt in a very smouldering manner. This smoking flax is the figure, then, that the Holy Spirit has employed to set forth the life and work in a Christian's bosom. What is this "flax?" Is it not the filth and corruptions of our evil nature, the refuse, the scum, as it were, of the Adam fall? And what is the fire that makes the smoke? Is it not the life of God within– that fire which is kindled by a live coal from off the altar?
A Christian, then, is spoken of, not as breathing forth into a bright and shining flame; but "as smoking flax," just so much of the life of God in the soul as to make a smoke without much flame or heat. Many, many of God's children are here– feeling, deeply feeling their corruptions, and yet burning in the midst of their heart, a fire, a blessed fire of God's own kindling. They would, if they could, burst forth into a holy flame; they would not have their eyes so continually annoyed with the smoke of their own corruptions; they would flame up unto God in the sweet breakings forth of faith, hope, and love. But their corruptions and unbelief, their sin and shame, all seem to press down the life of God in the soul. As in the smoking flax, the filth and refuse so choke the fire that it smokes and smoulders, but cannot break forth into a lively flame, so the filth and folly of our corrupt nature seem to stifle the holy flame of grace in the soul.
What heaps of rubbish overspread the inward life of God! You whose souls are exercised, do not you find how family cares, occupation in business, crowds of foolish and worldly thoughts, sinful and sensual desires, and a whole dust-bin of vain, idle imaginations, all suffocate the flame that is struggling upwards. Thus days and weeks are spent in a 'dying life', and a 'living death'. The fire neither goes out, nor burns up. Sometimes the smoke rises up thicker and higher; sometimes it dies away so as scarcely to be seen--and sometimes a passing breeze wafts it up into a transient flame. But its general character is to smoulder.
Where there is this in the soul, there is life. There is a struggle now against corruption, as the fire in the midst of the smoking flax struggles against the refuse by which it is surrounded; but, alas! it needs a vigorous breath to make it brightly glow; it needs the south wind from the mountains of spices to burn through the overlying mass of corruption, and mount up like the flame in which the angel of the Lord ascended when Manoah and his wife looked on. But there is life, where there is even smoke. Where it merely moulders and smoulders, there is fire. It is not merely a heap of dead refuse; there is a holy fire beneath that causes the flax to smoke.
Such is very much the experience of the day. Things are low for the most part in Zion. Take almost any Christian, and you will find that he is at best but a "smoking flax;" and especially perhaps in London. I do believe in my very conscience there is more real religion in the country than in London– more feeling in the heart, more life in the soul. The people are less cumbered with worldly anxieties, and less overborne by the broad, deep, rapid stream of carnality. But Zion, generally, in town or country, is in a low place; the flax is smoking, and that is all. There is enough fire to show that the life of God is within, and yet not enough to break forth into a glowing flame.
II. But we pass on to consider how the blessed Redeemer "will not break" the "bruised reed;" nor "quench" the "smoking flax." "He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." Here, then, is a "BRUISED REED," a poor child of God, ready to give up all hope, to sink beneath the wave no more to rise, expecting that the next blow will sever the stem, or suffocate and bury him in his native mire and mud.
But O how graciously, how tenderly and gently does the Redeemer deal with this timid, tried member of his mystical body! He deals with him neither according to his merits nor his fears. The "bruised reed" deserves to be broken again and again; and it fears it because it deserves it. But the gracious, tender-hearted Redeemer, so far from breaking gently binds. And how he can in a moment bind up the "bruised reed!" By one word, one look, one touch, one smile, he can in a moment raise up the drooping head. This is his blessed office. The disciples would have broken the bruised Syrophenician woman, when they said, "Send her away, for she cries after us." But not so their heavenly Master. He dealt not so with her. His holiness, his purity, his hatred of sin, his zeal for the glory of his Father, would indeed all lead him to break– but his mercy, grace, compassion, and love, all lead him to bind.
You may perhaps feel yourself a poor "bruised reed"– bruised by afflictions, by temptations, by guilt, by Satan, ready to perish, to give up all hope, and droop away and die. O remember– may the Lord give us ever to remember– that this blessed Man of Sorrows "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." "Being touched with the feeling of our infirmities," he can sympathize and support, and therefore will never, no, never break a "bruised reed." If our poor soul is bruised by affliction, by temptation, by doubt and fear, by Satan's suggestions, be it known for our comfort and encouragement, that the condescending and tender-hearted Redeemer will never, no, never break that "bruised reed," but will most graciously, in his own time and way, bind it up.
"The SMOKING FLAX," it is said also of Him, that "he will not quench." O what does the "smoking flax" not deserve! Does it not merit that the foot of God should stamp it out? When you think for a moment how filthy and abominable your corruptions are; how strong and powerful your lusts and passions; how many and grievous your slips and falls; how carnal your mind; how cold and lifeless too often your frame; how wandering your prayers; how worldly your inclinations; how earthly and sensual your desires– is it not sometimes a wonder to you, that the Almighty God does not in righteous wrath put his foot upon you and crush you into hell, as we crush a spider?
We deserve it every day that we live. I might almost say, that with well-near every breath that we draw we deserve, deeply deserve, to be stamped out of life, and crushed into a never-ending hell. But herein is manifested the tender condescending mercy and grace of the compassionate Redeemer, that "he will not quench the smoking flax," but will keep the flame alive which he himself so mercifully in the first instance kindled. The hand that brought the spark must keep alive the flame; for as no man can quicken, so no man can keep alive his own soul.
How it is kept alive is indeed most mysterious; but kept alive it is. Does it not sometimes seem to you as though you had no life of God in your soul, not a spark of grace in your heart? Where is your religion? where is your faith and hope and love? Where your spirituality and tenderness of heart, conscience, and affections? where your breathings after God? Gone, gone, gone! And gone all would be utterly, irrecoverably, if it were in your own hands, and consigned to your own keeping. But it is in better hands and better keeping than yours, "Because I live, you shall live also." "He who believes on me has everlasting life, and shall never come into condemnation but is passed from death unto life." "My sheep shall never perish, and none shall pluck them out of my hand." Christ is our life; it is hid with him in God.
And thus it comes to pass, that the "smoking flax" is never quenched. O how quickly would Satan throw water upon it! He would soon, if permitted, pour forth the flood of his temptations, as he is said to do against the church in the wilderness Re 12:15, to extinguish the holy flame that smoulders within. How sin, also, again and again pours forth a whole flood of corruption to overcome and extinguish the life of God in the soul! The world, also, without, and the worse world within, would soon drown it in his destruction and perdition, were the Lord to keep back his protecting hand. But he revives his own work.
Have you not wondered sometimes that when you have been so cold, dead, stupid, hardened, as if you had not one spark of true religion or one grain of real grace, yet all of a sudden you have found your heart softened, melted, moved, stirred, watered, and blessed, and you have felt an inward persuasion that in spite of all your corruptions and sins and sorrows there is the life of God within. It is thus that the blessed Lord keeps alive the holy flame which he himself has kindled. It would soon else go out; no, it must go out, unless he keeps it alive.
The very dust and dirt of the tow would suffocate it, unless he again and again stirred it up and kept it smouldering in the soul. The very words, that "he will not quench it," connected with what is afterwards said, show that he will one day make it burst forth, for he keeps it smouldering on until it flames out. And when it bursts forth into a holy flame, it burns up the corruptions, devours them, swallows them up, and suffers not one to live.
Let the Lord sweetly bless the soul; let the holy flame of his love and grace burn in the heart; this flame, like the fire that fell down from heaven in the days of Elijah, licks up all the waters in the trench, and consumes, while it lasts, the filth and corruption whereby it was surrounded. But alas, alas! it soon gathers again. The cares of business, the things of time and sense, an evil heart, a defiled imagination, soon gather together the dust and refuse; and then it has to go on smoking and smouldering as before. It cannot, no, it cannot of itself break forth into a holy flame. But it will one day burn brightly in a blessed eternity, when there shall be no refuse of sin and corruption to stifle the ever-mounting flame of praise, adoration, and love.
III. But we pass on to our third and last point– What the Lord will eventually do, and what he will never desist from, until he is completely done. This last clause seems to cast a gleam of light upon the whole of the preceding, "Until he sends forth judgment unto victory." While the reed is being "bruised," and while the flax is "dimly burning" as we read in the margin, or smouldering, "judgment" is going on; that is, the court of judgment is set up in the conscience, and verdicts are passing against the soul.
Wherever there is the life of God within, there will be a bar at which and before which the soul will be arraigned– the bar of a tender CONSCIENCE. God's Viceregent, the blessed Spirit, sits there, and with the word of God in his hands and its spiritual application in his lips, he summons the soul to stand before him.
Do you not find something of this going on daily? You speak a word amiss; does not the Viceregent bring you to the bar, and condemn you for it? There is a rising up or breaking forth of unseemly temper. The father or the mother, the master or the mistress, gives vent to some sudden violent outburst of anger, mastered, overmastered by the impetuosity of natural temper. Does the Viceregent of God pass this by, and take no notice? He brings up the delinquent, summons him to the bar, condemns him. Or there may be a word spoken in business which is not the strict truth. You would not, you cannot, must not tell a lie; but still there is something not very, not very unlike lying. There are these goods to be recommended, or this customer not to be turned away; and by some little delicate maneuvering the whole affair is managed very nicely, as a Regent Street tradesman would say. No 'outright lie' has been told, but a little 'equivocation' has been practiced. Ah! where is conscience? The Viceregent has seen all, marked all, and now brings the criminal to feel and confess all.
Or the eye has been wandering and lusting after some evil thing, or, not to particularize too minutely, in some way or other sin and temptation have got the better of you. Is God's Viceregent silent? Does Mr. Recorder, as Bunyan calls him, keep silence? No; he speaks, and loudly too; and when he speaks, all the city trembles. During this time as the reed is bruised with these exercises, and the flax smoulders amid these temptations, judgment is going on, condemnation is felt; there is guilt of conscience, a writing of bitter things against one's self, with a whole host of doubts and fears for, as Deer most truly says, "Sin engenders doubt."
It is our slipping and being overcome by temptation which opens a way for a whole army of doubts and fears to push in through the breach. Were the sentry duly on guard, were the soldiers on the battlements pointing their artillery heavenwards, and, above all, were the great Captain of their salvation at their head, no enemy would dare to attack. But when the sentry is asleep, the artillery silenced, the Captain gone, and a breach made, a whole troop pours in from the black camp to storm and plunder the city.
But, to revert to the figure of our text– O how tenderly is the blessed Lord watching all this time! Here is a "bruised reed," bruised by the law, sin, Satan, sorrow, and temptation; without strength, ready to sink and die. Jesus does not, as he might justly do, crush it with a blast of his dreadful displeasure. Again– Here is a "smoking flax" who deserves a thousand times a day to be stamped under foot. But the gracious Man of Sorrows "will never break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax." It is true, that "he sends forth judgment," for he means to bring the soul down into the dust; but while this judgment is going on, he secretly supports; for he kills that he may make alive; he brings down to the grave that he may bring up. But in sending forth this "judgment," it is "unto victory." Conquest is at the end; victory is sure. There may be a long conflict; a hard and fearful battle, with the garments rolled in sweat and blood; but victory is sure at last. For he will never rest until he fully gains the day.
O how Satan would triumph if any saint ever fell out of the embraces of the good Shepherd; if he could point his derisive finger up to heaven's gate and to its risen King, and say, 'Your blood was shed in vain for this wretch; he is mine, he is mine!' Such a boast would fill hell with a yell of triumph. But no, no; it never will be so; the "blood that cleanses from all sin" never was, never can be shed in vain. Though the reed is "bruised," it will never be broken; though the flax "smokes," it will never be extinguished; for He that "sends forth judgment" sends it "unto victory."
Long indeed may the battle fluctuate; again and again may the enemy charge; again and again may the event seem doubtful. Victory may be delayed even unto a late hour, until evening is drawing on, and the shades of night are about to fall; but it is sure at last. And it is the Lord that does the whole. We have no power to turn the battle to the gate. Is thereone temptation that you can master? Is there any one sin that you can, without divine help, crucify? Is there one lust that you can, without special grace, subdue? We are total weakness in this matter. But the blessed Lord makes his strength perfect in this weakness. We may and indeed must be bruised, and under painful feelings may think no one was so hardly dealt with, and that our case is singular. But without this we would not judge ourselves; and "if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of the Lord." If you justify yourself, the Lord will condemn you; if you condemn yourself, the Lord will justify you. Exalt yourself, and the Lord will humble you; humble yourself, and the Lord will exalt you.
This ought to encourage every one that feels bruised in spirit, and to smoke and smoulder. I do not mean to say, I can give the encouragement; I am not the man to say that either I can give, or that you can take it. But if you are the character here pointed out, all your questionings of what the Lord has done, or what he will do, does not alter the case. Questionings do not make Jesus, not to be Jesus; they do not make the word of God, not to be the word of the most High. "If we believe not, he abides faithful; he cannot deny himself."
You, as a "bruised reed," may write a thousand bitter things against yourself; you, as a "smoking flax," may fear there is no life of God in your soul. But Jesus, if he has made you a "bruised reed," or "smoking flax," will carry on his own work; for we read, in connection with the very passage in the prophet Isaiah, "He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, until he has set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law" Isaiah 42:4. The words are remarkable. They show that he has, so to speak, amazing difficulties to encounter. But he will not fail in what he has undertaken; he will not be discouraged by all the opposition he may meet with, until he has accomplished his holy purpose. For it is "his own right arm which has gotten him the victory." Ever bear in mind, that as the Lord said of old, "I do not do this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake;" so it is not for your sake– base, poor, and vile sinners– but for his own name's sake, truth's sake, word's sake, and eternal honor and glory's sake, that he "sends forth judgment unto victory!"
What a mercy it is that the fulfillment of the Lord's promise depends upon his own veracity; that it does not depend upon our feelings; no, nor upon our experience, but upon his own veracity– "Has he said, and will he not do it?" And therefore here is ground for hope and faith, not in ourselves who are always poor, weak, miserable creatures– but in the Lord's mercy, goodness, and truth. The foundation of our trust is in the character of the Son of God, that he is what he is– a blessed Jesus, able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. He who puts his trust in Him will never be confounded; he that hopes through grace in his mercy, will never be put to shame; and he that believes in Him will surely reap the end of his faith, even the salvation of his soul.
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