Isaiah 42:3-4 A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment to truth.… We have here set before us three significant representations of that Servant of the Lord, which may well commend Him to our confidence and our love. I. AS THE RESTORER OF THE BRUISE THAT IT MAY NOT BE BROKEN. "He shall not break the bruised reed." It is "bruised," but the bruise is not irreparable. And so there are reeds bruised and "shaken by the wind," but yet not broken. And the tender Christ comes with His gentle, wise, skilful surgery, to bind these up and to make them strong again. To whom does this text apply? 1. In a very solemn sense to all mankind. In all the dints and marks of sin are plainly seen. Our manhood has been crushed and battered out of its right shape, and has received awful wounds from that evil that has found entrance within us. But there emerges from the metaphor not only the solemn thought of the bruises by sin that all men bear, but the other blessed one, that there is no man so bruised as that he is broken. And Christ looks on all the tremendous bulk of a world's sins with the confidence that He can move that mountain and cast it into the depths of the sea. 2. But then the words may be taken in a somewhat narrow sense, applying more directly to a class. "The broken and the contrite heart," bruised and pulverised as it were by a sense of evil, may be typified for us by this bruised reed. And then there emerges the blessed hope that such a heart, wholesomely removed from its self-complacent fancy of soundness, shall certainly be healed and bound up by His tender hand. Wheresoever there is a touch of penitence there is present a restoring Christ. 3. The words may be looked at from yet another point of view, as representing the merciful dealing of the Master with the spirits which are beaten and bruised. II. AS THE FOSTERER OF INCIPIENT AND IMPERFECT GOOD. "The dimly burning wick He shall not quench." Who are represented by this "smoking flax"? 1. I am not contradicting what I have been saying, if I claim for this second metaphor as wide a universality as the former. There is no man out of hell but has in him something that wants but to be brought to sovereign power in his life in order to make him a light in the world. You have got consciences at the least; you have convictions, which if you followed them out would make Christians of you straight away. You have got aspirations after good, desires, some of you, after purity and nobleness of living, which only need to be raised to the height and the dominance in your lives which they ought to possess, in order to revolutionise your whole course. There is a spark in every man which, fanned and cared for, will change him from darkness into light. Fanned and cared for it can only be by a Divine power coming down upon it from without. 2. Then, in a narrower way, the words may be applied to a class. There are some of us who have a little spark, as we believe, of a Divine life, the faint beginnings of a Christian character. They say that where there is smoke there is fire. There is a deal more smoke than fire in the most of Christian people in this generation. And if it were not for such thoughts as this about that dear Christ that will not lay a hasty hand upon some little tremulous spark, and by one rash movement extinguish it for ever, there would be but little hope for a great many of us. Look at His life on earth; think how He bore with those blundering, foolish, selfish disciples of His. Remember how, when a man came to Him with a very imperfect goodness, the Evangelist tells us that Jesus, beholding him, loved him. And take out of these blessed stories this great hope, that howsoever small men "despise the day of small things," the Greatest does not. How do you make "smoking flax" burn? You give it oil, you give it air, and you take away the charred portions. And Christ will give you, in your feebleness, the oil of His Spirit, that you may burn brightly as one of the candlesticks in His temple; and He will let air in, and take away the charred portions by the wise discipline of sorrow and trial sometimes in order that the smoking flax may become the shining light. The reason why so many Christian men's Christian light is so fulinginous and dim is just that they keep away from Jesus Christ. III. AS EXEMPT FROM HUMAN EVIL AND WEAKNESS, as the foundation of His restoring and fostering work. "He shall not burn dimly nor be broken till He hath set judgment in the earth." There are no bruises in this reed. That is to say, Christ's manhood is free from all scars and wounds of evil or of sin. There is no dimness in this light. That is to say, Christ's character is perfect, His goodness needs no increase. There is no trace of effort in His holiness, no growth manifest in His God likeness, from the beginning to the end. There is no outward violence that can be brought to bear upon Him that shall stay Him in His purpose. There is no inward failure of strength that may lead us to fear that His work shall not be completed. And because of all these things, because of His perfect exemption from human infirmity, because in Him was no sin, He is manifested to take away our sins. (A. Maclaren, D. D) Parallel Verses KJV: A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. |
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