Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. In February, we’ll learn more about the man behind the Bruised Reed as we tackle Mark Dever’s biography of Sibbes. (Purchase it here). I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged!
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
It is evident that Richard Sibbes was a Pastor by his constant counsel to the weak and discouraged. After all, what are bruised reeds and smoking flax but weak sinners, and so we all are to some degree. Sibbes gives instructions in chapter nine for the tender care of those weak souls. He fills the page with wisdom. Consider;
“The church of Christ is a common hospital, wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other; that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.” (57)
What good would come of our fellow brothers and sisters remembering that they are sick along with us, and that we all seek Christ for his healing touch. There is no one who is well, and those that think they are often do the work of Satan in “depraving the good actions of others.” (56) Friends let us not take up the office of accuser with Satan, but rather seek to encourage and be encouraged in God and his word. We would do well to consider the furnace that saints are in, the refining that God is performing, and that there is an end result he has in mind. Let us not seek to tamper with the work of the Master Craftsman while he labors over his work.
We would do well to remember that with ourselves as well. As I heard Junior Hill say, “We can see what God has done, and what he will do, but we can’t see what he is doing.” We don’t know what God is doing as we go through heartache and trials. Sibbes says, and O may we hear, “We must not judge ourselves always according to present feeling.” (58) Our hearts are deceitfully wicked! Our feelings can lie to us but God cannot! He keeps his word. He is faithful and true and will complete the work that he began in us though in our afflictions and suffering we may feel cast off. Do not listen to your feelings, but trust the word of the Lord. Sibbes said so beautifully concerning our life in Christ in hard times;
“Life in the winter is hid in the root.”
Application/Discussion
There are winters that we walk through. I have faced the valley of the shadow of death. I have wrestled with temptation and sin and despaired of life in the battle. I have compared my life to others and concluded I must not be saved. Yet this joy stealing comparison discredits God’s grace in me.
“Know, for a ground of this, that in the covenant of grace, God requires the truth of grace, not any certain measure; and a spark of fire is fire as well as the whole element.”
In other words, it is not the strength of our faith but the object of our faith. God does not measure how much faith we have in our salvation, but that it exists. And so it is in you. Are you discouraged and doubting your salvation? Do you doubt God’s grace in your life? Read chapters ten through twelve again and let Sibbes’ biblical wisdom pour over your soul.
Know that in affliction God is working. The Refiner’s fire seeks to burn away those things which are not of him, and leave behind the purity of heavenly things. God removes and takes away things which are not for our good or his glory though we may not see it that way. He burns off sin, and oh do we ever feel it and suffer in the furnace of affliction. Yet may we say with Job; “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Not only does the fire burn away impurities, but as Sibbes said, “Fire maketh metals pliable and malleable, so doth grace, where it is begun; it worketh the heart to be pliable and ready for all good impressions.” (61) God uses the furnace of affliction to mold us and shape us in to what he wants us to be. We protest the process because we cannot see what he is presently doing. Yet while our souls are as clay in the hands of the potter, immerse yourself in his word. The Bible is a means of grace whereby God transforms us by the power of the Spirit. So in this light and momentary affliction, don’t quit. Press in to the word and seek him.
Is God working in your life in ways that you may not ascribe to him? Are you discounting some affliction or refining as the work of Satan, yet it may be that it is the work of God? What are you going through, though presently painful, yet it is yielding refinement for an eternal glory in God? Have you become timid in asking your Father to glorify himself through you?
I’ll close with a thought from Ligon Duncan I heard tonight, paraphrased; “It is not that we seek too much from God, but too little.” Seek from him more that we could ever ask or think.
Share in the comments your reflections on this, and share what insights you gained from this week’s reading.
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Last week, we covered chapters five through eight.
Next week, we’ll be covering chapters thirteen through sixteen.
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