Well, last week I didn't get to be
here because of being in Thompson and Oxford
House in the north, and thank you for
your prayers as we ministered up there.
The community of Oxford House had five funerals
from mid-December till last week.
It's interesting to see how God brings hope
in the midst of hopeless situations and trials
and struggles, and I know it's because you
pray.
And I know sometimes we think as a
group, we're just small and what can we
do?
But when you think about how God used
this congregation in Malawi and your prayers in
Oxford House and so on, it's a marvelous
thing just to be a part of the
kingdom of God.
And I think what a privilege it is
to be a Christian this morning, one of
Christ's followers.
And some of you will be wondering how
did things go yesterday with the leadership meeting
between the Evangelical Free leaders and our leaders,
and I just need to mention to you
that meeting did not take place, and the
Evangelical Free folk are sorting out a few
things in their leadership before we get that
far.
And so I just encourage you to continue
to pray, and in God's time and will
and way, I'm quite sure we will get
together.
It has been such a precious time this
morning, and take your Bible if you have
one handy and just turn to the Gospel
of Matthew and the 12th chapter, and we're
going to read some verses and look at
one verse together just as a moment or
two of encouragement in the Word of God.
In Matthew chapter 12, and I'll just begin
at verse 15 and read through verse 21.
It says, Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from
that place.
Many followed him and he healed all their
sick, warning them not to tell who he
was.
This was to fulfill what was spoken through
the prophet Isaiah.
Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love and whom I delight.
I will put my spirit on him, and
he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out.
No one will hear his voice in the
streets.
A bruised reed he will not break, and
a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their
hope.
Father, thank you for your presence here in
this place with us.
Thank you for your word.
Lord, would you speak to our hearts this
morning and encourage us through your spirit and
teach us, Father, something that will enable us
to walk through the rest of this week
just knowing the presence of the living Lord.
For it is in Jesus' name that we
ask it.
Amen.
The verse I want us to look at
is verse 20, and we'll just zero in
on that in a moment.
I want to mention to you when I
return from Peru on the 7th of February,
I want to preach from Daniel chapter 9.
And I would love it if you would
read through that chapter a few times ahead
of the 7th of February.
And really the theme of the service that
day is just to encourage us toward prayer
and prayer and fasting for some days.
But the Bible says that Daniel was a
man highly esteemed, if you have New International,
greatly beloved, if you have New King James,
and a variety of terms like that.
And we just want to look at why
was he so highly esteemed by God, and
what might that do in our lives as
we begin to apply that just day by
day.
But this morning we see here in verse
20 a picture of Jesus.
A bruised reed he will not break, and
a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
And there are two contexts in which this
verse is true.
First of all, it is true when you
think of Jesus himself.
He was bruised, but you will recall that
they did not break his bones on the
cross, not broken, bruised.
And bruised for you and me, the scriptures
say.
And you will see, too, as you look
at the life of Jesus, a smoldering wick
he will not snuff out.
The flame of his life was closed, in
a sense, on Calvary's cross.
But that's not the end of the story,
is it?
It's like our Black preacher E.V. Hill
used to say, it's Friday but Sunday's coming.
And on Friday it looked like there was
no more flame, no more life, but there
was still the smoking wick.
And on Sunday there was that great resurrection
of our Lord and Savior.
And this is why, my friends, you can
put your trust in him.
He understands what it is to be bruised
and to be reduced in that sense, or
humbled in that sense.
If you wonder, you know, would Jesus really
understand my heart today, my need today?
Absolutely he can, because he was in all
ways tempted as we are, yet without sin.
So this verse is true of Jesus in
that sense, that in his own life he,
as a bruised reed, was not broken, and
as a smoldering flax or wick, was not
extinguished or snuffed out.
But the second context in which we want
to look at this verse is where we'll
spend our moments this morning, just thinking upon
it, what it says in your life and
mine.
Because, you see, the goal of the Christian
life is to become more and more like
Jesus.
And this gives us a picture of him,
doesn't it?
Now, there are times in life when we
feel inadequate, and there are times in life
when we feel broken, and times when we're
quite sure that we're powerless.
When you think of the pictures on your
television, looking at the country of Haiti in
these recent days, it makes us feel powerless,
doesn't it, as you look at all of
the devastation and so on.
And there are times too when things are
just not going right in our lives or
families, and we feel somewhat powerless.
And, you know, sometimes we seem to be
against overwhelming things, things that life brings to
us that we would never choose for ourselves,
and yet there they come along.
And as we think about this this morning,
there are times when we need just a
fresh touch of the love of God.
And we've been receiving it today, even as
we've been worshiping him and hearing from Carla.
These verses here in Matthew 12 are originally
stated in Isaiah 42, 3 and 4, and
so it's the fulfillment of prophecy in Jesus'
life.
But I want to just take the three
things that verse 20 says and look at
them with you for a moment or two.
The first is that he will not break
the bruised.
And I like this because there are times
when we are bruised and when we're struggling
and so on.
Jesus was bruised for you and me, and
he knows our infirmities, understands our lives.
The little reed, you know, I grew up
in Ireland, and there's lots of rain there,
and there's lots of marshes there, and the
reeds that we would talk about here are
called rushes over there, and they stick up
like little spikes, you know, and once in
a while one of them is just over
at a right angle, and you think, well,
that'll just blow off and fall away.
It's bruised.
There's no strength to it whatsoever.
It's just, it's a perfect picture of how
we are sometimes when we see how life
can bruise us.
Bent, but not broken.
And you know, sin is the thing that
has bent us, isn't it?
And life has its hurts, and sometimes it
hurts us very deeply.
But just look at these words and underline
them in your Bible.
A bruised reed, he will not break.
Not only did Jesus not break, but neither
will you and neither will I in Jesus
Christ.
You see it?
You see, as you think about the Lord,
he didn't break, and he is the one
who comes to us and who looks at
us and says, let me touch you.
Let me just touch you.
Oh, if I had a dollar for every
time these hands have hung down and this
head has hung down, and I felt like,
what's the point?
I'd be so rich, we wouldn't have to
worry about selling land on the far end
of town here.
And maybe you can identify with that this
morning, but those are the times when Jesus
comes and says, let me just touch you.
And that's all it needs, you know?
It's just that touch from him.
He's saying, I can heal you.
I can lift you up.
Keep your finger there in Matthew chapter 12
and slip over with me to Luke chapter
13 for a moment, and let me just
give you an illustration of exactly how this
verse applies.
In Luke chapter 13 and verses 10 through
17, just listen to what Jesus does here.
On a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one
of the synagogues, and a woman was there
who had been crippled by a spirit for
18 years.
She was bent over and could not straighten
up at all.
When Jesus saw her, he called her forward
and said to her, woman, you're set free
from your infirmity.
Then he put his hands on her, and
immediately she straightened up and praised God.
I don't even need to read the rest
of the story.
There is the application right there.
Someone who is bent over just like that
reed, just like how our lives sometimes are.
And think about the places packed in that
synagogue that Sabbath day when Jesus is there.
Everybody knows he's the miracle worker.
Everybody in the country is talking about him,
but in that whole process that day, who
is it that Jesus zeros in on?
Do we find him over with the ruler
of the synagogue sort of saying, you know,
let's get together.
I know you're the power source here.
No, he zeros in on that one who
is bent over and who so desperately needs
that touch.
18 years, it says.
She was in that condition, and he comes
and touches her, and immediately it says she
is straightened up and praising God.
And you know, there are so many people
in the scriptures who are discontent.
What could one person do?
Just one person.
Well, you look at highs so often, the
Lord takes just that one and fills them
and uses them in an incredible way to
their time and to their generation and to
the people who so desperately need a word
of hope.
Yes, we might be wounded and broken, but
he specializes in this.
I love the fact that the Lord Jesus
doesn't sort of follow the rule of the
jungle, you know, the survival of the fittest.
You ever notice that?
Keep your finger there in Matthew.
Go over to 1 Corinthians and chapter 1,
and let me just read a couple of
verses beginning at verse 26.
Brothers, think of what you were when you
were called.
Not many of you were wise by human
standards.
Not many were influential.
Not many were of noble birth, but God
chose the foolish things of the world to
shame the wise.
God chose the weak things of the world
to shame the strong.
He chose the lowly things of the world
and the despised things and the things that
are not to nullify the things that are,
so that no one may boast before him.
It is because of him that you are
in Christ Jesus, who has become for us
wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness,
and redemption.
Therefore it is written, let him who boasts,
boast in the Lord.
And there's a wonderful passage just again to
illustrate the fact it's not about our strength,
it's not about our abilities, it's about the
one who can touch us in our weaknesses
and lift us up and cause us to
know that he is using us.
We might be forgotten, we might feel the
least in all the world, but Jesus wants
to touch our lives.
Why don't we get together Sunday by Sunday?
It's so that exactly that can happen, so
that we can have an encounter with Jesus,
service after service, and that encounter happens to
be for all of us together, and we
have it individually all through the week, don't
we?
I love how the Lord can touch the
bruised, and he will not break it.
Now the world doesn't operate like that, and
there are times, are there not, when we
just need to know, he won't break me.
He won't.
My first job with the Billy Graham Association
years ago was to go to the city
of Edmonton and meet with a lady who
had received Christ because of one of the
television things that Billy Graham did.
She was a prostitute, and she wouldn't meet
with local pastors because some of them had
been her customers.
So I took a local pastor with me,
and we met this lady in a restaurant,
and her arms were full of puncture marks,
and her neck was covered in puncture marks,
and she was shaking.
She said, I'm sorry I'm shaking because, you
know, I haven't been smoking and stuff since
I prayed that prayer in front of the
television set, and her body was reacting to
the fact that there were no drugs, nicotine,
and so on, all those things, right?
And then the pastor and I visit with
her, we prayed with her, and about two,
three weeks later, I phoned that preacher and
said, how's she doing?
And he said, well, it's interesting.
He said, you know, she's really challenging us.
She's got more questions most times than we
have answers, but it's been a great wake
-up call for us as a church, because
I see Christians reading their Bible now for
answers that I didn't see before she came.
And within two years, that last, least, and
lost one was the Sunday school superintendent at
that church, bruised, but not broken about
her hasten.
Second thing this verse says is he will
not extinguish a smoking wick.
He'll not stuff, uh, snuff it out.
Now, sometimes the fire seems to be out,
doesn't it?
There are times in all of our lives
where it seems as if the fire just
isn't there.
The flame is gone, and only the smoke
remains.
Don't you love that song?
Light the fire again.
Let the passion come again.
But look at this.
Jesus will not extinguish that.
He'll not snuff it out.
You see, in John 6 36, he says,
the one that comes to me, I'll never
cast them out.
And you can translate that verse.
I will never, never, never, never, never, never,
never, never, never, never, never, never get the
point.
So if there's some casting out and stuff
that goes on, it's not Jesus that's doing.
He says, I'll never cast you out.
Now, smoke speaks to us about our corruption.
There's no heat there.
There's no light there.
There's just the darkness of smoke.
And oftentimes that's how it gets to be.
And the devil tells us lies about ourselves
and about our circumstances.
And you know, he says to us, well,
you can't do that.
Glencurn, you can't do that.
How are you ever going to do that?
But if he won't snuff the smoking wick
out, what's his intention for it?
Light the fire again.
He talks to us in lies about our
circumstances.
You'll never get over this.
You don't have the health to do that.
You shouldn't even be engaged in that.
It'll wear you out.
Sometimes people say to me, why do you
run around the world like you do?
And there are days when I say, John,
why do you run around the world like
you do?
Why don't you just stay home?
Until I see that even in this poor
vessel, that truth of his gospel brings a
response from human hearts who so desperately need
a savior.
And so often I cry to him, even
as I did this morning in the worship
time.
Oh God, send a fire.
Spirit of God, fall in this place.
Our human pride gets in the way.
He says, you shouldn't tell people how weak
you are, but it's in our weakness that
his strength is seen.
And that pride says, you don't need to
repent of that.
How about I do?
I do.
And unbelief holds us down.
You look at the life of Jesus and
you see in Mark chapter 6, when he
goes to Nazareth, it says there he could
do no mighty miracle.
Why not?
Because of their unbelief.
Just think about the strength of that unbelief.
If we're not expecting him to do something,
then we're not believing that he's going to
do something.
And the sins of the flesh divert us
from him and from his will.
And we get all caught up in self.
I like Henry Blackaby.
He and I have become friends.
Sometimes we speak at conferences together.
Blackaby's one of those guys that gets itchy
under your skin, and you can't get him
out till you've met the Lord in scripture
about the things that he says.
I said to him one day, Henry, you
were in Saskatoon when revival came in 1971.
He said, yeah.
I said, what was it that caused you
to go to Saskatoon?
He said, I was called to a congregation
of 15 people, and they wanted to close
the church.
So they wanted me to come and help
them to close the church.
And I said, Henry, how do you feel
about that?
He said, well, I just sort of met
the Lord in revival, and he changed my
DNA, and he lit the fire all over
again.
And that little church, he said, is responsible
for starting 160 some churches.
I said to him, but you must have
had in the 15 people, they must have
been great, man.
You know what he said?
John, in the 15 people who wanted to
close the church, I had the distilled essence
of failure.
Because they were saying, we failed.
And I thought, how about look at what
God did in the distilled essence of failure.
So there's hope for me.
Look at it.
Woo!
Last thought, and then we'll close for this
time.
Third thing the verse says is he will
bring justice to victory.
He will bring justice.
He leads justice to victory.
And I'm thankful that our life does not
rest in the powers of this earth.
I'm thankful that our failures need not punish
us more and more.
I'm grateful that our injustices and offensive wounds
need not disqualify us.
Because not only will he not break the
bruised or snuff out the smoking, but he's
going to lead justice to victory.
Don't you love that thought?
Jesus will bring the victory.
He's taken your sin and mine on Calvary's
cross.
And he cannot be overcome, neither by sin,
nor by failure, nor by anything else.
That's the Savior.
And this is why you and I need
that life that is close to him and
surrendered to him.
This is why we made the first trip
to the cross, isn't it?
To know that our sins were forgiven and
that we had a place with him in
eternity.
And it's why we need to make the
second trip to the cross to say, Lord,
instead of me trying to sort this all
out and work it out and manipulate everything
into it, here I am.
Take me.
With all that I have and all that
I have not, take me.
Use me.
Let me serve you with joy.
When we make that second trip, he begins
the journey from justice to victory.
All those failures and offenses that rise up,
they need to come to the cross.
Friends, I close with this little illustration.
Many years ago, as a Baptist pastor, forgive
me, I got a call one day from
a friend, a man I highly respected, another
Baptist pastor.
He lived two hour drive away.
He said, could you come to my house?
And for some reason I knew I needed
to go.
So I went to visit him.
When I got there, he said, I've just
resigned the church.
He said, you know we have foster children
and one of the foster girls has accused
me of some wrongdoing.
And so I've resigned the church to try
to keep any difficulty from the church.
He said, I wondered if you'd pray for
me, and I wondered if you would allow
me to come and place myself under your
church and authority.
This is a guy who, well, let's just
say when I listened to him preach, I'd
sometimes shake my head and say, why do
I even try?
I said to him, I want to ask
you a question and I want you to
know how you answer it will not change
my love for you.
Did you do it?
And he sat there weeping through his tears
and said, I can honestly say I didn't
do it.
Do you know the media fried the guy?
Blasted his name and his reputation everywhere.
Took 18 months before the court case ever
came up.
But halfway through that time, I said to
him, I want you to teach the adult
Sunday school class on Sunday morning.
And he said to me, you don't want
me to teach.
It'll cost you your job.
And I said to him, I want you
to teach the Sunday school class on Sunday.
We sat down in a circle that Sunday
morning in Sunday school, and he opened the
word at the book of Proverbs.
And his Bible was like a colored mosaic.
Every word had a different color on it.
And it wasn't very many moments into that
Sunday school class that we begin to realize
this man came to us from the presence
of God.
This is not just surface stuff that he's
talking about.
This is coming from the depth of a
heart that knows what it is to walk
in the fire with Jesus.
I didn't get fired.
When the court case came, it took 20
minutes and the judge stopped it and said,
case dismissed.
This is completely wrong.
But for 18 months, his life was torn
up.
But in those 18 months, he met with
God in such a way.
And he still ministers today down in Minnesota.
Now he could have, and I certainly would
have been tempted to say, God, I'm finished.
I can't really do anything anymore.
But instead, in surrender to the Lord, he
found the depth of revival of the word
of God in his heart.
We need to pray.
Dear Lord Jesus, you've told us to come
to the Father in your name, and we
do that this morning as we close.
We think about this dear verse that we've
been looking at, a bruised reed he will
not break.
Father, we confess to you, we know what
it is to be bruised individually and as
a church body to thank you that you
do not break us.
Lord, when we think about this smoldering wick,
you do not snuff it out.
So thank you, Lord, that your intention then
is to bring back the flame.
And perhaps this morning, Lord, under the sound
of my voice are those who would say
to you from their heart, Lord, I need
the flame again.
And thank you that the verse says to
us, you will lead justice to victory.
Father, in the quietness of our hearts this
moment, as your Holy Spirit is speaking to
us, let us acknowledge our need of that
flame and that touch.
And we're just asking you for it.
And just as we're in the attitude of
prayer, God's been speaking to you this morning.
As I close in prayer, I want to
give you an opportunity just to say, pray
for me.
God's talking to me.
Are there those this morning you want to
just slip up your hand right where you
are?
Thank you.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Many of our hands, dear friends, and it's
good that we can lift up holy hands
to him.
And see for sure from his word this
day, his intention is not to break you,
not to leave you in that smoking wick
stage, but to bring again the flame of
his love.
So Lord, we're asking for each of us
this day, touch us again with your love
and lift us again in your presence and
give us the hope and the courage that
as we move on throughout the events of
this year, that we will encounter you not
just Sunday by Sunday, but day by day.
And know the fire of your love and
passion and goodness and grace for us individually
and as a church body.
Lord, would you seal these truths to our
hearts and minds and spirit of God, would
you be the after speaker and bring this
thought to us in times of discouragement and
times of concern and despair.
A bruised reed, he will not break.
A smoldering wick, he will not snuff out.
Until he leads justice to victory.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
I so appreciated the worship team this morning
and I wonder if you would do the
old pastor, as Brad calls him, a favor
and do that song again that talks about
the fire and the passion as we close.
And then why don't you bring the closing
prayer today?
Change is good, right?
Amen.