Open the Bible

Colin Smith: Wait a minute, your sins are too great. And your wounds are too deep. And your faith is too small. Satan is the great accuser and he will tell you that the hidden path to a transformed life is somehow beyond you and you need to know how to answer him.

Steve Miller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, many of us probably bought into that lie at some point in time. Some may be struggling with that right now. They're saying, "If you knew the sins of my past, if you knew what I've done, if you knew how small my faith is, I don't know that there's any hope for me."

Colin Smith: Yeah, and you know Satan's great lie is to say that your brokenheartedness means you're at the end of the road, that there's no future for you. And actually what the Bible says is when you have a broken heart you're at the beginning of the road because scripture says that God will not despise a broken and a contrite heart.

And it gets even better. In fact, God makes this promise that he will actually come and live with the person who has a contrite heart. In fact, Christ has been sent into the world for the brokenhearted, to bind up the brokenhearted. And Jesus says when he comes to the very first of blessings, he says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, the brokenhearted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." So if you have a sense of your own need before God today, you're not at the end of the road. You are at the beginning. And today is a marvelous message of hope from the Bible for you.

Steve Miller: Well, we're going to be in Psalm 51, so if you can, grab a Bible and join us there as we begin this message, "The Bruised Reed and the Broken Heart." Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: The message today is the last in our series entitled "Repentance: The Hidden Path to a Transformed Life." And we've been learning together that repentance is turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God. And that means that in its very nature, repentance is something that continues and grows and deepens throughout the entire life of a Christian believer.

Now, that raises a question that will focus our time together this morning and it's simply this: Are you satisfied with your repentance? Are you satisfied with your repentance? Now, if you are a true Christian, your answer to that question must be no. Because it is in the very nature of repentance that it continues throughout a Christian's life, that it advances in our experience. So, if you're satisfied with your repentance, you've not understood what repentance is or you're not yet a Christian.

There's more of God you'll say that I want to discover if you're a real believer. There's more of sin that I still want to conquer. And there's more of myself that I still want to offer to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A true Christian is never satisfied with his or her repentance. And so, that leads me to a second question that's very important: How then do you avoid being crushed? Because that's where we might be in danger of going.

I think we've needed this series. I've felt God stirring my own heart, challenging, searching, humbling. Many have spoken of a sense of God speaking in these days. But whenever God is at work, we need to be aware of what our enemy has, as it were, up his sleeve. And when you begin to get serious about repentance, about really pursuing this hidden path to a transformed life, when you find the path, Satan will seek to come to you this way.

He'll say, "Now wait a minute, your sins are too great. And your wounds are too deep. And your faith is too small." Satan is the great accuser and he will tell you that the hidden path to a transformed life is somehow beyond you and you need to know how to answer him. You need to know how to pursue repentance in a way that you are not crushed on the path.

And that's our focus and it's a very important one in this last study in our series today. Maybe you can feel this battle going on in some degree in your own soul already. Do you find yourself sometimes saying, "Why, after all the privileges that I have had, am I such a weak, pathetic, ineffective Christian?" Do you ever find yourself saying that? Why with all my opportunities have I not grown more than I have?

Maybe this is one reason why we instinctively shy away from the subject of repentance, because we feel that it might leave us crushed. And maybe some of us are there right now. "Why am I not a better man? Why am I not a more godly woman? Why am I such a half-hearted Christian?" And you feel crushed.

Now, that's where David was in Psalm 51 and verse 8. And I'd encourage you to turn to Psalm 51 if you would. We're going to be there and also in Isaiah chapter 42. We begin in Psalm 51 though and verse 8. David says, "Let me hear joy and gladness. Will you restore the joy to me again?" And then he says this: "Let the bones you have crushed rejoice."

The bones you have crushed. Who crushed him? Well, he's speaking to God, isn't he? God crushed him. God crushed him over his sins. But who healed him? Who brought him joy and gladness? Answer: God healed him. God restored to him the joy of his salvation. And so, what we learn here is that there is a special and a very wonderful ministry of the Holy Spirit to heal your heart when it is broken, to comfort your spirit where it is made tender because you have seen how far you are still to go in the Christian life.

So, if you feel a sense of your own failure today, if you feel a frustration by the limits of your own progress, then God's word is especially for you today.

Steve Miller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "The Bruised Reed and the Broken Heart." It's from our series all about repentance and how repentance is actually the hidden path to a transformed life. If you've missed any of the programs in the series, you can listen online. Just come to openthebible.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free.

You can also listen for free if you have the Open the Bible app, or you can order a copy of this entire series on CD. Ask about Repentance when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: I want us to see the grace and the gentleness and the patience of Jesus in the Scriptures. And we're going to see that particularly in three beautiful pictures. And I hope they'll be pictures that will stay in our minds and our hearts. The first from Psalm 51 is the picture of the broken heart. And then from Isaiah chapter 42, the picture of the bruised reed. And then from the same chapter, the smoky fire. And may God speak to us and bring us comfort and strength and encouragement through his word today.

Psalm 51 then: the broken heart. Will you look at verse 17 where David says, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." And we're learning here first then that God will not despise a broken heart. What is a broken heart? John Bunyan wrote a whole book on this one verse and he points out the parallel between David's statement about the crushed bones or the broken bones in verse 8 and the broken heart in verse 17.

Bunyan makes the point that these are actually two ways of speaking about or depicting the same thing. When David says, "Let the bones you have crushed rejoice," he doesn't mean that God somehow came down from heaven and broke his arms and his legs, though that did happen on one occasion remember with Jacob and the socket thing with his hip. But that didn't happen to David. What he's saying is that the experience of the broken heart feels like the experience of broken bones.

How many of us have broken a bone some place in life? You broken an arm? Broken a leg? Something worse? What's it like when you break your bones? Well, you experience great pain. Secondly, you feel useless. Ever see the guy with a broken leg on the side of the basketball court? And he's watching the game, he's desperate to get on and play, but he can't because his bone's broken. Been in that position, watching the team, you feel so useless. Pain. Can't do what I want to do. And you sure know that you need the help of a doctor.

One thing you can't do for yourself is set your own bones, right? Now, that's exactly what the broken heart is like. When your heart is broken, you experience great pain over who you are and what you have done. You feel useless to God. You know that you desperately need help. That's what it's like. But God is telling us here that contrary to all that we may feel, the broken heart is actually a good thing.

Bunyan puts it this way, writing in the kind of phrasing of his time: he said that the broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God. The broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God. Now, immediately some of our brows will furrow and say, "How in all the world can that possibly be?" Let me give you three reasons why the broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God, because in the Bible God gives specific promises that are directed only to those who experience the broken heart, the contrite spirit.

The first you'll find in Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15. I think it will be worth your while to turn to these scriptures and to note them so that we can hold them in our memories and come back to them again. Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 15. Here's the first great promise to a person who has a broken heart. If you have a broken heart, it is an excellent thing because God will live with you.

Look at this extraordinary statement. Isaiah 57 and verse 15: "For this is what the high and lofty one says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: 'I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit.'" This is an amazing statement. The high and holy one who inhabits eternity, the living God, says, "I live in heaven. But also, I live with the person who has a contrite and lowly spirit."

You see why it's an excellent thing? You come to a point and you gain a spirit where you see your own need and God says, "I'm going to hang around with you. I'm going to move into your life now. I'm going to live with you. I'm going to choose you as my companion because you're the kind of person, you're the kind of place, where I can build my kingdom." So, if you have a broken heart and a contrite spirit, it's an excellent thing because God, who may have been very far from you, says that he will come and live with you.

Here's a second promise and they're kind of cumulative. Turn over just a few pages, now we're in Isaiah chapter 61. Second reason why the broken heart is an excellent thing, because Jesus Christ is sent for you. Isaiah 61 is a very important passage in the Old Testament because this is the passage that Jesus read when he launched his ministry. It's recorded for us in Luke's gospel in chapter 4.

He read from these verses that Isaiah had penned under the inspiration of the Spirit hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. But he's speaking about the Messiah—why he would come and what he would do. And he says in Isaiah chapter 61 and verse 1 that "the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." And what is the first dimension of what that means? Look at it here: "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted."

So you ask the question, why was Jesus Christ sent into the world? What did he come to do? And Isaiah is telling us Messiah's specific commission from the Father is that he is sent into the world to bind up the brokenhearted. The Father sees brokenhearted people in the world and he says, "Son, you go and you go to them." And Christ says, "He has sent me to bind up you, the brokenhearted."

Remember, of course, that's why Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick," which doesn't mean that only some people need Jesus. What it means is simply this: that the people who benefit from his coming into the world are those who've come to see and grieve over their own sins—people who know that there's something wrong with them that only Jesus Christ can actually put right. They cannot fix it by themselves.

And if you don't see that, if you don't grasp that, then the coming of Jesus Christ into the world is really of no benefit to you because he came to benefit those who are brokenhearted. That is a second reason why a broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God. For where your heart is broken, God will live with you and Christ has come for you. And here's the third thing: heaven belongs to you.

Matthew chapter 5 and verse 3, over into the New Testament, the first of the beatitudes we call them—great statements of Jesus about God's grace at work in the world. And he says in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Now, to be poor in spirit, of course, is just another way of saying brokenhearted. And it's important to remember Jesus never exalted poverty. Poverty is a bad thing, a terrible thing.

But to be poor in spirit is a good thing. To be poor in spirit means that you recognize that you don't have what God demands and you cannot offer what God requires. And the extraordinary thing is that when Jesus says, "When you realize your own bankruptcy before God, far from being the end of hope, it turns out to be the beginning. Blessed are the poor in spirit. It's an excellent thing," he's saying. Why? Because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Now, it's very hard to believe this when your heart is broken. Because when you see your own failure, when you see and feel the limits of your own progress in the Christian life, when you feel a broken heart, you feel unworthy of heaven. And when your heart is broken, you feel like your life is not the kind of place that's fit for the presence of God. You think, "I feel as if I need to be at a distance from him. It's not appropriate for him to be near to me as I am."

And you really feel that you're just not the kind of person that Jesus Christ is looking for in the world. But you see, that's where faith comes in because faith takes God at his word. Faith comes to the Bible and then comes to God and says, "Okay, you say that you live with a person who has a contrite spirit. That's me. You say that you sent your Son into the world to bind up a brokenhearted person. That's me. You say that heaven belongs to those who know that they cannot offer what you demand. That's me."

A broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God. God will not despise the broken heart. And if God will not despise the broken heart, neither should you. John Bunyan says, "Conversion to God is not so easy and so smooth a thing as some would have men believe that it is." And he asks the question: why is it, he asks, that conversion is compared to the grafting of a tree? That's a very powerful picture, you see.

When you graft a stem onto a root—I used to watch my grandfather doing this in his allotment—he would take roots of roses and stems and he would hybrid them together and so forth. And the way you do it, you cut into a part of the root and you cut into part of the stem, and then you bind these open wounds that you have created together, and then you plant the root and the stem so bound, and then the character of the root then flows into the stem.

And if the root is for a red rose, then the stem will bear a red rose and so forth. But the key thing is the cut. You wound the stem, you wound the root, and you bind them together. And when wounded root and wounded stem are bound together and planted, then the sap from the root penetrates the stem, bringing it life and imparting its character. Now, if you just take a stem and a root unwounded and bind them together, nothing happens.

And you know, I think that helps us understand why some people profess faith and have no spiritual life in them. We have reduced conversion to a human decision. We have become used to professions of faith without repentance. And that is unbiblical, isn't it? What that's like is it's like binding an uncut stem to an uncut root, digging a hole in the ground and sticking them there, and you know what happens? Absolutely nothing.

You end up with people who think themselves Christians and yet have no awareness of sin in their lives, no sorrow over it, no great sense of gratitude to God in worship, no evidence of the presence or the life of God within them or the fruit that comes from that life. Now friends, this is not true Christianity, is it? And that's not where one of us wants to be. The broken heart is an excellent thing in the eyes of God. It is the wound into which new life can flow.

Steve Miller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message entitled "The Bruised Reed and the Broken Heart." I hope as you've been listening, you've been encouraged today from Pastor Colin's teaching. Our message is part of a larger series called "Repentance: The Hidden Path to a Transformed Life." And if you'd like to order a copy of this entire series on CD, call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or come to our website; you'll find ordering information there at openthebible.org.

Well, Open the Bible is listener-supported. It's your financial generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching whether you listen on the radio, online, through the app, or however you've connected with this ministry. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's new 30-day devotional book called "Grow in Hope." And Colin, what's one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, it would be very practical because every Christian knows what it is to go through dark times when we feel discouraged, we're down, we don't know how to move forward. And when these times come in your life, you need to know how to handle your own soul, how to encourage and strengthen yourself. David, of course, speaks about this. He knew what this was like. In Psalm 42, he speaks to himself. He says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?" And then he says, "Hope in God."

So I hope what people will take away from this is that they'll be helped and encouraged in being able to speak to their own soul in the way that David did in Psalm 42 and to find hope in God because there is hope in God for every circumstance of life and it comes to us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Steve Miller: Well, we'd love to send you a copy of this brand-new 30-day devotional from Pastor Colin called "Grow in Hope." It's our thank-you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. Again, that's openthebible.org or call 1-877-673-6365. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Miller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the Gospel around the world. And to that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. You know, in the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it. And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in.

Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website, openthebible.org/gf. That's openthebible.org/gf.