The Bruised Reed

by Richard Sibbes

In this famous exposition of Isaiah 42:3, Sibbes unfolds the tender ministry of Jesus Christ, who is 'a physician good at all diseases, especially at the binding up of the broken heart'.

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Paperback, 134 pages

Published June 1st 1998 by Banner of Truth (first published January 1st 1620)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, christianity, classics, religion, nonfiction, christian living, discipleship, christian

Book Quotes

“Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.”

― Richard Sibbes

topics: Infirmities, Strength, Weakness

“God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requires no more than he gives, but gives what he requires, and accepts what he gives.”

― Richard Sibbes

“This bruising is required before conversion that so the Spirit may make way for himself into the heart by levelling all proud, high thoughts, and that we may understand ourselves to be what indeed we are by nature. We love to wander from ourselves and to be strangers at home, till God bruises us by one cross or other, and then we `begin to think', and come home to ourselves with the prodigal (Luke 15:17). It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry with feeling for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten from all evasions, never cry for the mercy of the judge.”

― Richard Sibbes

“What a support to our faith is this, that God the Father, the party offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption!”

― Richard Sibbes

“What is the gospel itself but a merciful moderation, in which Christ's obedience is esteemed ours, and our sins laid upon him, wherein God, from being a judge, becomes our Father, pardoning our sins and accepting our obedience, though feeble and blemished? We are now brought to heaven under the covenant of grace by a way of love and mercy.”

― Richard Sibbes

“God sees fit that we should taste of that cup of which his Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what his Son's love was. But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will succor us, so that our spirits may not utterly fail under that little taste of his displeasure which we may feel. He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows, for us. He was broken that we should not be broken; he was troubled, that we should not be desperately troubled; he became a curse, that we should not be accursed. Whatever may be wished for in an all sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ.”

― Richard Sibbes

“It were a good strife amongst Christians, one to labour to give no offence, and the other to labour to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others.”

― Richard Sibbes

“Possibilitas tua mensura tua'(What is possible to you is what you will be measured by).”

― Richard Sibbes

“See here, for our comfort, a sweet agreement of all three persons: the Father giveth a commission to Christ; the Spirit furnisheth and sanctifieth to it; Christ himself executeth the office of a Mediator. Our redemption is founded upon the joint agreement of all three persons of the Trinity.”

― Richard Sibbes

“The whole conduct of a Christian is nothing else but knowledge reduced to will, affection and practice.”

― Richard Sibbes

“Nothing is so certain as that which is certain after doubts. Shaking settles and roots.”

― Richard Sibbes

“Physicians, though they put their patients to much pain, will not destroy their nature, but will raise it up by degrees. Surgeons will pierce and cut but not mutilate. A mother who has a sick and self-willed child will not cast it away for this reason. And shall there be more mercy in the stream than there is in the spring? Shall we think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who plants the feeling of mercy in us?”

― Richard Sibbes

“After conversion we need bruising so that we might remember that we are reeds and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising because of the remaining pride in our nature and to show us that we live by mercy. Such bruising may help weaker Christians not to be too much discouraged when they see stronger ones shaken and bruised. Thus Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). This reed, until he met with this bruise, had more wind in him than heart when he said, "Though all forsake you, I will not" (Matt. 26:33). The people of God cannot be without these examples. The heroic deeds of great saints do not comfort the church as much as their falls and bruises do.”

― Richard Sibbes

“In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste.”

― Richard Sibbes

“God knows that, as we are prone to sin, so, when conscience is thoroughly awaked, we are as prone to despair for sin; and therefore he would have us know, that he setteth himself in the covenant of grace to triumph in Christ over the greatest evils and enemies we fear, and that his thoughts are not as our thoughts are, Isa. v. 8; that he is God, and not man, Hos. xi. 9; that there are heights, and depths, and breadths of mercy in him above all the depths of our sin and misery, Eph. iii. 18; that we should never be in such a forlorn condition, wherein there should be ground of despair, considering our sins be the sins of men, his mercy the mercy of an infinite God.”

― Richard Sibbes

“He "binds up the broken-hearted" (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest toward 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 steadies 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

“Here see the opposite disposition between the holy nature of Christ, and the impure nature of man. Man for a little smoke will quench the light; Christ ever we see cherisheth even the least beginnings. How bare he with the many imperfections of his poor disciples. If he did sharply check them, it was in love, and that they might shine the brighter. Can we have a better pattern to follow than this of him by whom we hope to be saved?”

― Richard Sibbes

“beauty. We must know for our comfort that Christ was not anointed to this great work of Mediator for lesser sins only, but for the greatest,”

― Richard Sibbes

“We must neither bind where God looseth, nor loose where God bindeth, nor open where God shutteth, nor shut where God openeth; the right use of the keys is always successful.”

― Richard Sibbes

“What do the Scriptures speak but Christ’s love and tender care over those that are humbled?”

― Richard Sibbes

Richard Sibbes

Richard Sibbes was an English theologian. He is known as a Biblical exegete, and as a representative, with William Perkins and John Preston, of what has been called "main-line" Puritanism.

He attended St John's College, Cambridge from 1595. He was lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1610 or 1611 to 1615 or 1616. It is erroneously held by 18th and 19th century scholars that Sibbes was deprived of his various academic posts on account of his Puritanism. In fact he was never deprived of any of his posts, due to his ingenuity of the system.

He was then preacher at Gray's Inn, London, from 1617, returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.

He was the author of several devotional works expressing intense religious feeling -- The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635), etc.
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The Bruised Reed

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Richard Sibbes

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