“As a mother is tenderest to the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support. The vine stays itself upon the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The consciousness of the church’s weakness makes her willing to lean on her beloved, and to hide herself under his wing.”
Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 1630
Posted in Jesus, Puritans, quote, Richard Sibbes
“We must beware of false reasoning, such as: because our fire does not blaze out as others, therefore we have no fire at all. By false conclusions we may come to sin against the commandment in bearing false witness against ourselves. The prodigal would not say he was no son, but that he was not worthy to be called a son (Luke 15:19).
We must neither trust to false evidence, nor deny true; for so we should dishonour the work of God’s Spirit in us, and lose the help of that evidence which would cherish our love to Christ, and arm us against Satan’s discouragements. Some are as faulty in this was as if they had been hired by Satan, the ‘accuser of the brethren’ (Rev. 12:10), to plead for him in accusing themselves.”
–Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed
Sibbes is speaking directly to me. These words are both convicting and comforting: convicting in showing that I sin by overlooking signs of grace in myself. Comforting, in that they point out that the smallest signs of grace are a reason for hope.
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that “The Bruised Reed quietened, soothed, comforted, encouraged and healed” him. It’s doing the same for me.
Posted in Puritans, quote, Richard Sibbes