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"DISCOURAGED BY THE TRUTH"
First Corinthians 16.12-14
INTRODUCTION:
1. Please stand with your Bible turned to First Corinthians 16.12, and
read along silently while I read aloud:
12 As touching our brother Apollos,
I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren: but his will
was not at all to come at this time; but he will come when he shall have
convenient time.
2. In this verse the great apostle Paul told the Corinthians
that he wanted that magnificent Bible preacher Apollos to journey to
Corinth and preach the Word of God to them, but that Apollos did not want
to come at that time, for one reason or another, but would perhaps come
later.
3. Why did Paul want Apollos to go to Corinth and preach? I
think I know. Let’s try to place ourselves in the Corinthian’s shoes
for a moment or two so I can explain what I think Paul had in mind.
4. How would you feel if you had been saved for 4 or 5 years,
if you had learned in that time to live in Christian liberty and
toleration, and if you had gloried in being a wonderfully gifted Christian
. . . and then all of a sudden, out of the clear blue, you get a long
letter from Paul?
5. And as the letter is read to you by the pastor, you come
to the realization that Paul has written an inspired letter that
forcefully and powerfully convinces you (convicts might be a better word)
that you are not only unspiritual, but that you are unwittingly the cause
of divisions within your Church.
6. Further, as more of the letter is read, you are shown that
your inability to deal with sin properly in your family or in your own
personal life, for that matter, has given your Church and the cause of
Christ a horrible testimony in the community.
7. Finally, the letter reveals to you that you do not, in
fact, know anything about the Christian liberty you supposedly were
enjoying. You are devoid of any knowledge of the principles relating to
God’s chain of command in your home. You obviously do not know the first
thing about proper conduct during the Lord’s Supper. You do not know
anything about the spiritual gifts you have and are using improperly. You
have forgotten the tremendous importance that Jesus Christ’s
resurrection is supposed to play in the Christian’s life. And you
don’t even know how to take up an offering properly!
8. I mean, after reading Paul’s first Corinthian letter
your spiritual world has come down on your head, so to speak. You who
thought you had it licked have suddenly been forced to admit to yourself,
as has almost everyone else in your Church, "Hey, I’m
nothing!" And the result is that you’re depressed, you’re
discouraged, and you’re disheartened.
9. Paul, who has been a Christian for some 25 years now,
remember, and has experienced these same types of feelings and
realizations in his own life many times, knows just what these people now
need. What they really need is to be uplifted and encouraged by some
dynamic Bible preaching.
10. Well, who’s the best Bible preacher there is? It
certainly isn’t Paul. He’d be the first to tell you that. And it’s
not Peter. The best Bible preacher in the entire world is a man named
Apollos. He can exhort them. He can lift them up. He can get them going
again. But he isn’t coming.
11. Folks, do you ever get discouraged like these folks were
discouraged? I mean, have you ever had the air knocked completely out of
you? Have you ever been discouraged by the truth? I have been. And it’s
happened to me so many times that I am in danger of becoming an expert on
the subject . . . and it’s an expertise I don’t want to have.
12. When truth hits you like this and pops your personal
bubble (and it will), it is not always God’s will that you be cheered up
by the preacher. When you get down, especially when you are down because
your unrealistic estimations of yourself have been proven wrong by painful
experience or Scriptural truth, there is no Biblical guarantee that some
other person will come along and cheer you up. I mean, it’s not always
God’s will that you be lifted up and encouraged by some other person.
Good feelings is not God’s goal for you.
13. And why not? Because God wants you and me to discover
something. He wants us to discover that we have been given the tools for
dealing with our own discouragement. You have been given the spiritual
tools to deal with and conquer the discouragements in your own life. You
don’t always have to depend on others to do this for you.
14. In First Corinthians 16.13-14, Paul, looking at the
problem of discouragement from the human side alone, outlines two areas in
your life that will give you the victory over discouragement and
disillusionment. Let’s stand once more. Again, you read silently while I
read aloud:
13 Watch ye, stand fast in the
faith, quit you like men, be strong.
14 Let all your things be done
with charity.
1A. First, THERE IS THE AREA OF ACTION
I don’t have to tell you that
discouragement oftentimes paralyzes professing Christians. But you and I
don’t have to allow that to happen to us. You don’t have to be like
so many who give up and say to themselves, "What’s the use?"
Let’s, right now, decide to follow the advice and counsel of a man who
conquered more discouragement and disappointment in a year than most of
us will see in a lifetime. And what is that advice? Take action.
1B. Paul First Tells Us What Action To Take
By Telling Us What To Do
There are two things we must do to
conquer depression and discouragement.
1C. First, Paul writes to the
Corinthians, "Watch ye"
1D. From a word that means to stay
awake, Paul is telling his sad readers to "Stay alert!"
2D. Folks, we all know that Christians
are soldiers in the Lord’s army. But we sometimes overlook the
tendency that discouraged troops have of forgetting to stand guard.
3D. To remain faithful and vigilant we
need to stop being so selfish that we forget that there’s an enemy
out there to watch for who’s a deadly adversary.
4D. So, if you are troubled and
disappointed that you are not as knowledgeable or as spiritual or as
mature as you might have wanted to believe you were, don’t sulk.
5D. Maybe you’ve discovered that
you’re not nearly as pretty as you’d like to be. Perhaps
you’re not as promotable at work, or as employable, as you want to
be. Perhaps your singing voice isn’t as melodic as you’d
thought. Whatever it may be, what do you do? Lift up your chin and
watch.
2C. Paul then tells the
Corinthians to "stand fast in the faith"
1D. Okay. The first thing a depressed
or discouraged soldier does is stop watching. Instead, he mopes
around. He sulks. His feelings turn inward.
2D. Picture a soldier who feels sad.
Allowing his improper thoughts to control his actions, he actually
begins to look down instead of look out.
3D. Next thing you know, he will start
leaning at his post instead of standing at his post. And finally he
will sit down. At this point he has dropped out, he has given up, he
has for all intents and purposes gone AWOL. Absent without leave.
4D. To counter that tendency Paul says,
"stand fast in the faith." Don’t give up on
Christianity. Don’t desert the Church that Jesus died for. Nothing
that’s ever going to happen to you can excuse you leaving your
post!
5D. You stand fast. Stand tall. Stick
with the faith . . . and watch.
2B. So Paul tells us to do right.
But you and I both know that it takes special people to do special
things. Paul knew this as well. For that reason he tells us not only
what to do in times of discouragement, but also what to
be.
1C. First, he tells us to be
men "Quit you like men!"
1D. This translates a single
Greek word that means "make a man!" Paul wants Christians
to be manly! Oh, how this command is needed in our day of wimpy men.
2D. And, ladies? Even you are
expected to act like a man when you become depressed or discouraged.
3D. I think Paul means by
this, "Don’t be a quitter. Don’t be a crybaby. Be a man
about this thing. Keep on keeping on."
4D. Hey, if that’s what
being a man is all about, some of the best men I have ever known are
some of you ladies right here in this Church.
5D. I wonder how many men
Paul would approach who’ve stopped witnessing, who’ve stopped
giving, who’ve stopped reading God’s Word, who’ve begun to
look for reasons to stop attending Church, because they are
depressed, or because they are downhearted, or because they are
sulking, or because they feel stressed?
6D. I wonder how many times
Paul would have said to me, and I wonder to how many of you he would
say, in his own special way, "Brother, you’re not being manly
at all, in the Bible sense. You’re acting like a little child over
this matter."
7D. You see, folks, to watch
and stand fast you must be a man. And God wants His people to be
men.
2C. Next, Paul tells us to
"be strong."
1D. This word
"strong" is unusual in the New Testament in that it is
used only three other times, twice used by Luke in describing the
Lord’s childhood.
2D. Let’s look at the third
use of this word. Turn to Ephesians 3.14-16:
14
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ,
15
Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16
That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to
be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.
3D. Paul prayed that the
Ephesians would be "strengthened" (there’s our word) by
the Spirit of God.
4D. Strengthening, then, is a
work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life on the so-called
"inner man." And I think it’s safe to say that the
reason a Christian is not strong is because he has not making use of
the means of grace the Holy Spirit will use to do a strengthening
work in his life.
5D. Are you a
Spirit-quencher? Do you grieve the Spirit of God? If you will not be
what the Spirit of God wants you to be you will be a weak Christian.
Discouragement and depression will defeat you if you don’t drink
from God’s fountain of sustaining grace.
6D. But if you are nourished
and obedient God will make you spiritually strong. And with
spiritual strength comes Christian manliness. Will you obey God and
witness to men of Jesus? Will you obey God and give to His cause?
Will you obey God and provide spiritual leadership for your wife and
for your children? People who obey in such areas as these are quite
simply stronger in the "inner man" that those of you who
do not so obey God.
7D. But if you obey the Word
of God, and if you yield to the Holy Spirit, He will strengthen you
and make of you a spiritually strong man. And being a spiritually
strong man, by God’s grace and through God’s Spirit, you will
watch . . . you will stand fast in the faith.
8D. This is the action area
of your life in the battle against depression and discouragement.
Take action to do right. Take action to be
right. But this if action is not taken you have elected to be a
pathetically depressed and discouraged person, even though you
don’t have to be.
2A. RIGHT ACTIONS ARE
TREMENDOUSLY IMPORTANT, BUT RIGHT ACTION IS NOT ENOUGH. THERE MUST ALSO
BE, WITH RIGHT ACTION, RIGHT ATTITUDE (16.14)
14 Let
all your things be done with charity.
1B. "Charity" is love.
You might remember that it’s what Paul leads us to pursue in First
Corinthians 14.1, and it’s wonderfully described in First Corinthians
13.4-8. Let’s read those two passages:
14.1
Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather
that ye may prophesy.
13.4
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
13.5
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil;
13.6
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
13.7
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things.
13.8
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they
shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
2B. If you were to take this
whole concept of love and charity and choose a single word that was
synonymous with the idea, I’m convinced that the word you would use is
"giving." Giving of yourself. Giving to meet needs. Giving, as
opposed to taking.
3B. The discouraged and depressed
and despondent Christian, you see, tends to be an extremely selfish
person. And it’s quite easy to see this selfishness when you think
about it. If he or she gives up, for whatever reason, if he or she
quits, then it is quite obvious that that Christian is not thinking
about Christ.
4B. It’s quite obvious that he
or she is not thinking about the needs of others, or the impact his life
has on others. He or she can only be thinking of themselves. By
anyone’s definition, that’s selfishness.
5B. But when there is love, when
there is charity as the governing principle behind all that you say and
do . . . whether it be love for Christ or love for others, that
Christian will not quit. He will not give up.
6B. Love, you see, especially
love for Christ, will move a believer to be strong when he thinks no
strength remains. Love will move you to be manly when you feel like a
little boy who wants to quit.
7B. Further, love like that
produces loyalty to the cause of Christ, to the person of Christ, and to
the people of Christ. It will manifest itself by watching when you feel
like hanging your head in despair, and standing when you feel like
sitting down or running away.
CONCLUSION:
1. Hey, every Christian gets
discouraged. And the hardest discouragement to deal with is the
discouragement that comes from learning the truth about yourself. Such as
when you thought you had it licked, or when you thought you had it
together, or when you thought you knew what was going on, only to find out
otherwise.
2. When this kind of thing happens
to you and you get emotionally down, make up your mind that you’re not
going to stay down. Decide that by God’s grace you’re going to pull
out of it.
3. And how does one do that? By
acting as you ought to act at all times anyway. Do the right things.
"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith." And then be the right
person. "Quit you like men, be strong."
4. Take that kind of action at all
times, especially when you get discouraged by the truth, and you’ll be
well on your way to recovering the joy that is yours to have as a
Christian, the joy you would not have lost had you done this in the first
place.
5. And don’t forget your
attitude. That’s critical. "Let all your things be done with
charity." Don’t rule out the possibility that God allowed the
discouragement to enter your life for the express purpose of renewing and
rekindling your love for Him and for His people.
6. My friend, let me ask you,
"Are you discouraged and depressed and do you feel defeated right
now? Have you all but given up?"
7. If so, give me an opportunity to
lift your spirits. Let me try to encourage your heart with God’s Word.
But if I try and then fail, don’t presume that God has left you high and
dry.
8. Remember that God has given you
the tools to encourage yourself if you are truly converted. And why should
you encourage yourself? Why should I encourage myself? So you can continue
to serve God. So you can keep on doing right. So you can be a man about
things, instead of a child. So you can love Jesus like you ought to.
9. As we stand and prepare to sing
an invitation song, get this matter settled in your heart. Don’t wait
for Apollos to come and cheer you up. He’s not coming. A better than
Apollos is already here. He’s the Spirit of God and He dwells inside
you, Christian. As we bow our heads in a word of prayer before we sing,
you decide now to do right.
10. And what should you do if you
feel discouraged and depressed and you’re not a Christian? Let me tell
you, if your sins have not been forgiven and your destiny is Hellfire, you
have no reason to be anything but discouraged and depressed.
11. But your situation can be
forever changed, your discouragement replaced by great joy, your destiny
altered from Hell to heaven, when you repent of your sins and trust Jesus
Christ to wash away your sins in His precious blood, to forgive them and
never remember them again, and to make you a child of God.
12. How many of you, by uplifted
hand, would say, "Pastor, pray for me. I am a discouraged
Christian." Thank you.
13. Now, how many of you would say,
by uplifted hand, "Pastor, I’m discouraged and depressed, but I’m
not a Christian. I don’t know that my sins are forgiven. But I’d like
to know." You raise your hand. |
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