“And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He said unto him, Before the cock crow, you will deny me three times. 62. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Luke 22:61-62
“Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. 4. Saying , I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? You see to it. 5. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and went and hanged himself.” Matthew 27:3-5 In these two brief passages we get a glimpse into the lives of two men and how they reacted to their treatment of Jesus. Immediately after Peter’s last denial of Jesus, Luke records that Jesus looked at him, and Peter remembered what Jesus said about his denying him three times. At that point Peter “went out and wept bitterly.” This means that Peter saw the error of his way and wept in deep sorrow. On the other hand, Judas saw the error of his way and went out and hanged himself. These are two basic ways that people handle their disappointments in themselves. Let’s look at these two reactions. From all that we know about Peter, he did not just go out and cry about what he had done. Evidently, he repented, picked up the pieces and went on about the ministry to which Jesus had called him. The best illustration of this took place a few days after the ascension of Jesus. This man, Peter, who denied knowing Jesus, bravely stood and preached Jesus to the masses that were in Jerusalem for the celebration of Pentecost. Remember, the incident was still fresh in the minds of the people who were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Peter could have been in trouble with them for his brave sermon. A few days after that, because of the healing of the crippled man at the “beautiful gate,” Peter and John were arrested and were told not to preach Jesus anymore. Here was Peter’s reaction to that demand in Acts 4:19-20: “But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. 20. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” There are many more evidences of Peter’s recovery from that bad moment in his life, but what I have shared illustrates the point that Peter was not defeated by his moment of weakness. We need to learn this lesson from Peter that when we fall, the best thing that we can do is get up and go again. Remember that it is Satan, our accuser, who will keep us in the doldrums, and keep us from serving the Lord. Whatever has happened in your life, if you repented and asked forgiveness, you can still make yourself available to serve the Lord in your family, your church, and your community. There is no doubt about what we learn from Judas, for he could not do good or ill, because he took his own life. Not everyone who reacts to their sins like Judas go out and kill themselves, but because they give up they become useless to God, to themselves and to others. We need to remember that our God is a forgiving God. Yes, I am telling you that if Judas had repented and turned from his sin, he could have been forgiven. Before you give up, remember that our God is a forgiving God. It might not be sin that has stalled your growth, but bad things that are happening in your life. If you have overcome these bad things, you have won, and Satan will not have gained a foothold and a victory in your life. Whatever it is that you are dealing with at this time, do not throw up your hands, give up and become useless. Like Peter, you need to turn from dismay and discouragement and turn to the Lord for His forgiveness and encouragement and you will surely find it. This is the kind of God we serve and we need to remember it. Bro. Joe
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“Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
Afflictions come in all shapes and sizes, and they come to everyone. Afflictions can be because of health problems, family problems, spiritual problems or any number of things. We should not be surprised when we have to face afflictions. We should not get mad with God when afflictions come, because we live in a fallen world and afflictions are part and parcel with this fallen condition. Who are “the righteous” mentioned here? From the New Testament perspective, they are people who are right with God through faith in Jesus. David wrote, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous…” We would think that the righteous would be delivered from all afflictions. In fact, when we face afflictions, we begin to wonder why God is mad at us. We might think, :“I have been as good as I can be; why is this happening to me?” Read what David wrote again: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” You did not misread that. The Bible is filled with stories about the afflictions of the righteous. One Bible character who comes immediately to mind is Job. Job was declared to be righteous by God Himself, but God allowed him to go through afflictions beyond anything that we will ever know. Who was ever more faithful to Jesus, and to his service to Jesus than the apostle Paul? Yet Paul could write to the Corinthian church, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed: we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken: cast down, but not destroyed.” Paul didn’t waste his time complaining about his many afflictions, he just kept on believing and serving. Why do we go through afflictions? As already mentioned, we go through them because we live in a fallen world. Furthermore, we go through afflictions because God uses these afflictions to give us strength. The great people in the Bible were made stronger by the afflictions that they encountered. Moses was a stronger person because of all of the problems that he had with the Israelites, not to mention the problems that he had with his own humanity. The people in the church in Acts were made stronger through the persecutions that they encountered. It is noteworthy that when a great persecution broke out against the church in Acts, those early Christians did not give up, but they went to other parts of the world and shared the word of God way beyond Jerusalem. There is a promise in this text that we need to consider: “But the Lord delivers him (or her) out of them all.” When we suffer for righteousness sake, we can know that God is in the process of delivering us, even as we go through them. God “delivers him out of them all.” Notice that God delivers the righteous “out of them all.” This doesn’t mean that He delivers us from them all together, as noted above. It means that God will see us through all of the afflictions of life, and we will be victorious over them. Whether in this life, or in death, God delivers his people who are right with Him by faith in Jesus out of all their afflictions. We just need to face life’s afflictions in the faith that God will deliver us. Bro. Joe “And they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore have you dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? 12. Is not this the word that we did tell you in Egypt, saying, let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”
The text above was written just before the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. They were afraid, because Pharaoh’s army was behind them and the Red Sea was in front of them. Instead of trusting God, they wanted to turn their backs on Him and return to slavery in Egypt. This seems ridiculous to us because we know the outcome, but they didn’t know the outcome at that time. Would we have reacted differently? Would we turn our backs on God after all that He has done for us at Calvary? Why would we turn our backs on God? The Israelites were willing to turn their backs on God, because they knew what they had in Egypt, but they had no idea what lay beyond the Red Sea. They left Egypt in the first place because they wanted to be free of bondage to the Egyptians, and to go to a land that God had prepared for them. We make a mistake when we cling to the failures of the past because we are afraid to go forward in faith into the future. We might turn our backs on God because we prefer the security of the bad that we know to the good that God can do for us. Living a life of faith is about giving up the past and going forward into the future under the leadership of God. The old way of life with its habits and moral lapses gives us false security. What God wants to give us are His blessings and His presence. What is holding you back from going forward in faith? What is making you want to turn your back on Jesus? The Israelites were turning their backs on God because they did not stop and think that God had gotten them to where they were. They had forgotten about the plagues that God brought upon Egypt on their behalf. They had forgotten the joy that they had when they loaded up and left Egypt behind. Satan’s work is to make us forget what God has done for us, and make us think that we were better off in sin’s bondage. The joy of sin is an illusion, because it brings momentary satisfaction, but leaves us with lingering regrets. Just as the Israelites had memory lapses of the really hard times they had in Egypt, we forget the heartache and pain that sin causes in our lives. The amazing thing here is that God did not change His plans for Israel, for He did not turn His back on them. The God who had gotten Israel to where they were would continue to get them where He wanted them to be. Stop and think about your own life and you will realize that God does the same with you. He will not turn His back on you. The Israelites did not turn their backs on God, because Moses gave them a message of hope in Exodus 14:13-14: “And Moses said unto the people. Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will show you today: for the Epyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever, 14. The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” Just so, we will not turn our backs on the Lord, because we know that He will fight for us that He will go with us, that He will deliver us. He sent Jesus to go before us, to die for us, to rise from the dead for us, to ascend to the right hand of the throne in heaven to insure that we can go forward in faith. Hold your head up, pray and thank God for what He has done for you and march forward in faith. Bro. Joe “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all….”
I am assuming that you know something about the afflictions of Job. Job had a good life. He had a good family, a lot of cattle, and a lot of money – whatever that meant in that day. He was also a man who pleased God. He pleased God so much that when Satan said that Job was so good because his life was so comfortable, God took him up on it and allowed him to put Job to the test. (He’s God! He knows what He’s doing, so don’t question His perfect wisdom here.) Three of Job’s good friends heard about the misfortunes that had happened to Job and came to visit him. Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. This is where we come to “miserable comforters.” In the beginning, they were not miserable comforters. In Job 2, we note that when they heard about Job’s troubles, they packed up and went to visit him. When they arrived at Job’s place, they wept and mourned with him when they saw how bad the situation really was. In Job 2:13 we read: “So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was great.” At first, they did the right thing. They sat with him for seven days and seven nights. This means that they were really good friends. They were also wise in that they sat with Job and did not say a word. To use my own vernacular, they kept their mouths shut. If you don’t want to be a miserable comforter, when you are with grieving friends, don’t say a word, because usually at those times you will say the wrong thing. I discovered in my own grief ministry, that my being there was enough. At most I learned to say, “I have come to grieve with you.” There are other good things to say, but if in doubt keep your mouth shut. After seven days of friendly ministry, they decided to try to find the cause of Job’s problem. To make a long story short, they blamed God for Job’s problems. To be sure, God allowed Satan to do what he was doing, but it was Satan’s dirty work that caused Job’s misfortunes. One preacher, whose name escapes my mind, wrote a quote that has stuck with me over the years: “Why do we blame God for all of our troubles? Why would we make Him our enemy, when we need Him most as our friend?” Even if God caused the problem, we should not blame Him, because whatever he allows to happen in our lives happens for a good purpose. Instead of blaming God, we should praise Him, for He is always worthy of praise. Blaming God is never the answer for the misfortunes of our friends, or for the answer to our own misfortunes. In the process of blaming God, they judged that the reason Job was in his dire straits was because of his own behavior. They figured that God was punishing Job for some bad thing that he had done. Space doesn’t allow me to quote everything that these three friends said; suffice it to say that they did not really help Job by putting the blame on his behavior. Remember, Job was being tried by Satan’s acts because he was living the right kind of life. Job’s three friends just assumed that they knew what God was doing. We don’t help people when we judge them for what is happening in their lives. What grieving friends need, no matter what the cause of their grief, is a word of encouragement. If they really need to make changes in their lives, we should do it in a loving way and not in a judgmental, self-righteous way. We preachers are always reminded that when we point a finger at the congregation, there are three fingers, and a thumb, pointing back at us. That does not apply only to preachers. Think of your own reactions to people. They are not usually seeking our advice, but our friendship and our comfort. Remember that Job’s three friends did the best thing when they sat with him and kept their mouths shut. When they opened their mouths the whole thing fell apart. We would do well to remember that in all of our dealings with the world. Bro. Joe “Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy we faint not.”
To make a long story short, the ministry that Paul wrote about here is the ministry of telling others about Jesus. This ministry was not always welcomed in Paul’s day and it is not always welcomed in our day. Paul suffered greatly for sharing Jesus with his fellow Jews and Gentile pagans. He did not faint, quit, or as the NIV translates it: “We do not lose heart.” The way we would say it today: “We have not become discouraged." Paul would have had many reasons to become discouraged, since everywhere he went there was, as Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “a revival or a riot.” If Paul did not get discouraged in his day, we certainly need to guard against it in our day. Why should we refrain from getting discouraged? Discouragement is plain and simply used by Satan to stop us in our tracks in Christ’s work. If he can get us discouraged, his job will become easier because when we are discouraged we do not serve the Lord. The fact is that at the bedrock of discouragement is self-pity. I know that in my own experience when I have given in to self-pity, I wasn’t any good for Christ, His church, or anything else good that I should have been doing. Think of how the New Testament would be different if Paul had lost heart and had become discouraged, a lot of churches would not have been founded and about one-third of the New Testament would not have been written. We might think that our giving in to discouragement would not be as devastating as this, but for what God wants you to do and for what you can do for your church it would be devastating. I have probably written this in a blog before, but it fits here too well not to use it: Satan had a sale on his “tools” that he used for temptations. A demon was looking over the tools when he noticed a silver wedge on the top shelf with no price tag on it. He asked about the silver wedge and Satan answered him that this wedge was not for sale because it was the wedge of discouragement, and if he could get people discouraged it would be easier to get them to commit other sins. Discouragement does not lead to anything constructive in our lives. I was involved in a prison ministry for over twenty years in two prisons. Sometimes I would miss one of my regular attendees at Bible study and would ask him why? A good many times the reason was that they had become discouraged because of problems at home or some other problem and just didn’t feel right about coming to Bible study. My answer was always that his discouragement was all the more reason to come to Bible study. I could understand that problems at home would be especially distressing for a prisoner, but not coming to Bible study would not solve the problem at home. Discouragement has a way of making us do things that we know are not good for us. This affects our work, our Christian service, our family life, and a number of other things that we do not need to give up on. Discouragement can have a negative effect upon our witness to the world. As alluded to earlier, when we are discouraged we are wrapped up in our own troubles and do not look outside of ourselves. We become selfish, mean-spirited and indifferent about the things that go on around us. This is true of our Christian living as well. It affects our prayer lives, our study of the Bible and our interest in the spiritual welfare of other people. I know that it is not always easy to overcome discouragement, because devastating things can happen to us to cause it. Believe me, I know that the struggle to overcome discouragement is not always easy. Hey, I have worked with churches for over fifty years; do you think that I am not acquainted with the temptation to lose heart? But I intrinsically know that if I allow myself to become discouraged my work will become ineffective. With a lot of prayer, Bible study, fellowship with Christians and the love of the God who wants the best for you, you can overcome whatever may be discouraging you. Bro. Joe “How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?”
There is an old fable about a sale that Satan had on all of his great sins, Adultery, lying, envying, etc. were going at bargain prices and the demons were buying them up. One demon looked up on the top shelf and said, “I like all of the merchandise, but the one thing that I really want is the silver wedge I see on the top shelf, but there is no price on it.” Satan replied to him that “this wedge is not for sale. It is the wedge of discouragement and if I can get people discouraged all of the other sins will follow.” This is only a fable, but it tells the truth about discouragement. In my own life, I can’t remember a good thing that happened while I was discouraged. I think that I have matured enough not to let discouragement happen often, but it continues to raise its ugly head from time to time. I imagine that you know what I’m writing about. Think back: How many good things have happened in your life when you have given in to discouragement? When we feel discouragement coming on, we need to take it immediately to the Lord in prayer and , if possible, solve the situation that is causing the discouragement quickly. Satan loves to get hold of our discouragement and play it in our lives for all it is worth. What causes discouragement? I am not a psychologist, but I think that I know the genesis of discouragement. It begins when we start to feel sorry for ourselves. I have often said that every minute, every hour, every day that we feel sorry for ourselves is wasted time. In these moments, we are so focused on ourselves that we cannot see beyond ourselves and our "piteous" condition. It is very easy to go off on a “pity party.” When we are having such a party, we are actually feeding on our own junk. In Psalm 13 David was on a real journey into self pity. He wrote: “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? 2. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me.” David’s first mistake was when he thought that the Lord had forgotten him. Do you ever feel lthat God has forgotten you, or hidden Himself from you? Well, you can end that worry now. God will not hide from you. He will not forget you, nor will He hide Himself from you. His next mistake was that he was taking “counsel in his own soul.” This is what I mean when I say “eating our own junk.” When we are down and try to counsel ourselves, we make a big mistake. All we do is justify our own self-pity and convince ourselves that we have every right to feel sorry for ourselves. It has been said that “a person who has himself or herself for a lawyer has a fool for a lawyer.” I will add that a person who has himself or herself for a counselor has a fool for a counselor. Stop feeding yourself on your own junk and you will begin to get out of your self-pity and discouragement, and you will become productive again. David began to come out of his self-pity and discouragement in verse 3 when he asked God to “consider and hear me…” In other words he prayed an honest prayer to God. That’s right. When you are discouraged, pray! He also wrote “lighten mine eyes.” This means that David knew that he needed to look at his situation in a different, more positive way. David concluded the thirteenth Psalm in verses 5-6: “But I have trusted in thy mercy, my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. 6. I will sing unto the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me. ”David’s faith came to his rescue, and ours can too. Satan wants us discouraged, but God does not, and will help us come out of our self-pity and will help us out of discouragement. God will convince you, as He did David that you do not have to be discouraged and He will put a song in your heart. If you are discouraged, go to the Lord, and share your burden with a trusted Christian friend. Remember, you do not have to be discouraged. Bro. Joe |
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