Today we have a new author to introduce to C201 readers. The author is, I think, Alex Oram; the site is James1Seventeen. (I had to see what that verse was! It’s, “Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.” NLT). Click the title below to read this at source.
Reeds into Rocks
I heard it on the radio one morning. I wish I could have gotten the name of the host giving the sermon / encouragement. He said, “Jesus can turn a reed into a rock.” I don’t think the point was that Jesus called Peter a rock, etc., or any of the implications that come with that line of thinking or teaching. Side note, on that particular story, this is the best explanation I’ve read, coming from the book, “A God Named Josh” by Jared Brock:
“Yehoshua (Jesus) uses this Petros-Petra combo for
a tidy wordplay pun in Matthew 16:18, saying, “And I
tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.”The joke isn’t any good in English, but it works in
Greek. “You are Petros and on this petra I will build
my church.” Sadly, billions of Christians have not only
missed the joke but also the meaning of the
sentence. In fact, it might be the most widely
misunderstood verse in the entire Bible. Read the text
and context in Matthew 16:13-17. Nearly all the
ancient greats from Augustine to Ambrose to
Chrysostom to Jerome agree: Yehoshua is not
building his eternal church on a hothead fisherman or
the hard ground of Caesarea Philippi, but on the
bedrock foundational truth that Peter has just
expressed: Yehoshua is indeed the Christ, the Son of
the living God.”
-Jared Brock
As far as turning reeds into rocks, I do like the analogy. The language of reeds is not something Jesus is unfamiliar with using. He used it in telling who John the Baptist was and was not:
“And the messengers of John having departed, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: What did you go out into the desert to gaze on? A reed shaken and swayed by the wind?”
—Luke 7:24 AMPC
And now in a more obscure passage, pointing back to a prophecy out of the Book of Isaiah:
“A battered reed He will not break, And a smoldering wick He will not extinguish, Until He leads justice to victory.”
Matthew 12:20 AMP
What’s wild is the fact that Jesus does not deny the reality of reeds being broken. In this day and age of “You Do You,” “Upgrading,” and the worship of Self, as if we are naturally “good” and simply need to become “better,” Jesus comes to us as a Realist, showing us we are not simply reeds, swaying in whatever direction the wind blows, but also battered, bent, and broken to the core. But not without hope. Made for more.
Battered by the prince of the power of the air (Satan), bent by sin, sin’s effects, and sin’s stain, and broken… often by the world’s demands.
What’s comforting is that Jesus encountered many a battered reeds. I like the rendering of this passage that the Amp Classic translation uses. “A battered reed He will not break.” Jesus didn’t come to kick a man down. But when he “saw a man down, he put a hand down,” as someone recently told me, and encouraged me to always do.
We see it in the Samaritan story Jesus tells. “See a man down, put a hand down.” And the part about the smoldering wick? This is fire. I’m a millennial, that’s what we sometimes say when referring to an amazing thing. He will not quench a smoldering wick. He will not come to douse our barely burning fire with water but to stir it up again, igniting it all over. So is the Spirit of God trying to get your attention today? I have never known Him to overstep His bounds.
He pursues.
Those circumstances are not “coincidences.”
Jesus is the Name above every other Name.
Come to Him. He will not reject you!
Christianity 201 has no product to sell you, no Patreon to ask you to join, and collects no referral fees from other websites. It’s a free gift to you, and has been for 14 years. Enjoy!