THE GREAT VALUE OF LONELINESS
TEXT: Acts 9:1-9; Galatians 1:15-18
Acts 9:1-9 -- And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.
Galatians 1:15-18 -- But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.
l. INTRODUCTION -- THE CONVERSION
-He had nearly completed his journey. Having crossed the burning flatlands and now moving into the hills north of Galilee, he began to walk the lush valley watered by the Abana and Pharpar rivers. It is about high noon, when all is quiet, that the event that changes his entire life comes about.
-A blinding light from heaven, slammed him to the ground, the stupefied friends of the Pharisee heard a roaring, they could not understand. Saul heard what they did not hear; he saw what they did not see.
-Paul would later reflect in his letter to the Philippians that Christ had seized him, had taken him, had arrested him.
Philippians 3:12 -- . . . if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
-There has to be something to seize every one of us in this quest for the Kingdom of God. Righteous things, holy things must seize us. Pray and fasting has to seize me. A heart for the lost has to seize me. A love for the Word has to seize me. It is critical that this happen in my life.
-The burning light of the vision blinded him and he entered Damascus. There for three days he fasted, prayed--passed seventy hours in darkness, in silence, alone, alone with God.
ll. THE GREAT VALUE OF LONELINESS
-It is in the hours of loneliness that God does some of His greatest works.
It was in the lonely dejection of Elijah that God spoke best to him.
It was in the wearying lonely path of faith that God came again to Abraham.
It was in the lonely hours following failure that Peter found God.
It was in the lonely midnight hours that Jacob had his wrestling match with God.
It was in the loneliness of the mountain that Moses would get the Law from God.
It was in the loneliness of her barrenness that Hannah prevailed.
It was in the loneliness of her burden that forced Esther to approach Ahaserus.
It was in loneliness that Daniel received his great vision from God.
It was in the loneliness of the pit that Jeremiah found a renewed burden for the people.
It was in the loneliness of the pit and prison that Joseph felt God continuing to forecast his dreams.
It was in the loneliness of prayer at Gethsemane that the Lord labored, just a stone=s cast away from the disciples but it may as well have been a million miles that separated them.
Loneliness marked Mary in Bethlehem’s stable. Loneliness marked her again as she stood at Golgotha.
-God uses schoolhouses of loneliness to teach His servants.
David’s pasture in Bethlehem was lonely.
Hosea’s house was lonely without Gomer.
Abraham’s sacrifice became a lonely vigil.
Rizpah on her rock was a lonely place.
Bethlehem’s stable. . . . .a lonely place.
John’s Isle of Patmos. . . . . a lonely place.
Epaphroditus’ obscurity was lonely.
Paul’s Arabian desert was a lonely place.
-The majority of Paul’s Peril’s mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11 were endured in loneliness. Shipwrecks, beatings, stonings, robbers, and bad men will have to be faced alone. But God is there. . . . He will never leave nor forsake us.
-Never despise the loneliness that inspires closeness with God. There are times in the lonely hours of service that God calls me aside. It may arise from an insistent whisper, but that beckoning is persistent until it reaches me. Come aside for a while. Come aside to prayer. Come aside to think. Come aside for communion. Come aside for instruction.
lll. PAUL IN THE DESERT
-The man who expected to enter Damascus in the fullness of his pride and his prowess, as a self-confident opponent of Christ, was actually led into that city, humbled and blinded, a captive of the Christ whom he had opposed.
A. Alone in His Blindness
-Paul was alone in his blindness. Imagine the feelings that Paul felt. Sense the fear that he felt. Sense the anger that rose inside of his soul. Think of the doubt that began to grow into a mountain.
My vision is gone.
I am now reduced to a beggar.
I will have to wheedle men out of their pocket change just to eat.
I will be confined by a tapping cane. I
I will be a misfit among men.
My dreams and ideals are compromised by the reality of my blindness.
1. The Struggle with Doubt
-In his blindness, he struggled back and forth at a fevered pitch with his doubts. Jesus was an imposter who had died and betrayed his own people.
-Yet, the teaching and the preaching, his lifestyle, his miracles. What of the character and claims of the resurrection? All of this found it’s way into Paul’s questioning heart.
2. The Struggle with Stephen’s Message
-In his blindness, Paul fought with the message that had come not just from the lips of Stephen but from the heart of Stephen. He looked at the courageous non-resistance that Stephen had. He heard again that powerful prayer of forgiveness. He saw again Stephen as he spoke of the vision of seeing God as he made the final exit.
-The method of God’s introduction of His greatest servants in the world as so vast. In some cases, God’s servants rise gradually and majestically, like the rising of the sun, from the glimmer of a promising child-hood to the meridian of full power. In other cases, they flash like lightning on the dark hinges of the night. Sometimes God charges a man with a message and launches that man suddenly and irresistibly. Men such as Elijah and John the Baptist.
-Little is known of Stephen. He reminds us of the cloud that appears vaguely, then it bursts forth and saturates the land with violent winds, thunderings and lightnings, and torrential rain. . . . .and then is gone.
-Such a man was Stephen.
-There in Paul’s blindness, Stephen, not Gamaliel becomes the real teacher of Paul. He could not suppress the witness of Stephen. There was something real and supernatural about those early Christians. . . . . . . . and it need not to be a lost art in our world. . . . . . . . today.
B. The Call of the Desert
-Ananias came to Saul and mercifully both healing and salvation followed. Conversion appears almost instantly, but it takes a thousand wearying moments for God to change us into His image. Many stages will we pass through in the processes that leads us toward spiritual maturity.
-Immediately, the three lonely days that Saul had spent in Damascus were mirrored by three lonely years in Arabia. Beyond the reach of human influence is the place that men sometimes find themselves. A place where no man can help him. . . . . . only God can bring about the change.
-He went immediately. This strikes us again that after conversion, there are immediate adjustments that we must make for our lives to have a stable relationship with God.
-It was there that Paul pondered the great problem of his life. For it was in the lonely hours when the hour of prayer came that he would intercede. Groans mingled with words. The depth of intercessory prayer will change the world. In the desert, Paul learned intercessory prayer.
-As you track the prayers that Paul would later pray, name after name would pour out of his soul for churches, for other disciples. . . . . For Barnabas, for the Philippians, for Timothy, for the Ephesians, for Titus, for the Galatians, and on and on.
-To be alone with God. To do exactly as the text in Galatians, not to confer with flesh and blood but to know God. In what way? . . . . In a relationship marked by the hand of God.
Philippians 3:10 -- That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
-Into the desert he went with the Law of Moses, the Psalms of David, and with the Prophets among his parchments. But out of that loneliness God would breathe into him the Roman letter, the Ephesians letter, the Colosse letter, among others as of yet unwritten but the seed of the inspiration had been planted.
-In the desert:
The first Adam transferred into an understanding of the Second Adam.
The covenant given to Abraham translates into not the seed of many, but the seed of one, the man Christ Jesus.
-Loneliness can be ordained of God. It can be positive as long as the Spirit of God is left in control. Loneliness can give us a greater passion for God. It is when we try to control and confine and explain our loneliness, our souls have a tendency to self-destruct.
-God was using the lonely places to prepare him for greatness. It would be in the lonely prison cells that he would write the Prison Epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon) and out of his loneliness and persecution came his richest letters. The letters that probe the heights of doctrine and are so full of faith and encouragement.
-All of those moments of loneliness, rejection, and difficulty led each of these men and women to a depth in their relationship with God.
lV. ACTS 16
-Loneliness does two things to us:
It makes us look inward. What a horrible thing that is found there!
But it also makes us look Godward. What a tremendous thing that is!
-Acts 16 gives to us three events that Paul walked through that the loneliness of the desert remained with him.
A. The Loneliness of Rejection
-The Bible declares that the servant girl followed Paul and Silas around in the city for "many days." She castigated them with sarcasm. She screamed out blasphemy at them. She cursed and spat at them. She hated them.
-Imagine the dilemma that Paul was in. What to do with this girl? Her words were heard by the city. Her actions were watched by the city. Soon, the city began to swing her way. They began to wonder about her concocted lies, about the rumors that she started, and about the accusations that she made.
-Loneliness is this:
A mother whose son steals her money to buy drugs.
A friend whose wife has a severe head injury and now he will have to shoulder the entire load of the home.
An elderly couple waiting on their check that barely makes ends meet.
The break down of an extremely close friendship.
A promise that is broken.
-Loneliness leaves you in the cold and then slams the door. It opens the wound and then pours salt in. It plunges in the knife and then twists it. It attacks your pride and then breaks your heart.
-You’ve been there before. I’ve been there before.
You have a foolish religion.
You should not live up to the standards of holiness, they are unnecessary.
I can’t believe you worship like that.
I think you are overdoing it a bit.
That is just your supposition about what the Bible has to say.
-You’ve felt the loneliness of rejection. The loneliness of betrayal. You have questioned if God even knew where you were.
-But it was in the rejection that Paul felt not only from the city but from this girl, that the power of God was exhibited. Paul finally turned around and cast the demon out of her and God delivered her.
B. The Loneliness of Confinement
-The second image of loneliness is found in the middle of the Philippian Jail. Here was Paul attempting to do the will of God and he is severely beaten and then thrown in jail. Weary, hurting, bruised. . . but his pain was the key to revival.
-God would send an earthquake to set them free and then they would help the Philippian jailer come to salvation.
-God has everything in control.
C. The Loneliness of the Harvest
-The third instance of loneliness in Acts 16 is that of the harvest. Paul had given untiringly to the work in Philippi. He had witnessed many conversions and people being filled with the Spirit. Lydia, the seller of purple. The servant girl. The Philippian jailer.
-Even in the middle of revival, Paul was marked by a certain amount of loneliness. He had to go to Rome. The feeling had not fully grown in his heart yet, but it was on the way to doing so.
-Even though people will be changed this year. Even though people will come to an understanding of the Gospel. Until we finally see the Lord, we will not be fully satisfied.
-The true nature of the heart is seen in it’s response to the unattractive.
Houssaye -- Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.
Vl. CONCLUSION -- 1 CORINTHIANS 13
-Loneliness was something that Paul embraced and it made his great heart.
1 Corinthians 13:1-9 (The Message - Eugene Peterson) -- If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don=t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God=s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but but I don=t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I=m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always me first, Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps on going. Love never dies. . . . . .
-Hey, Paul, where did you get that from? By going into the desert of loneliness. By taking the rose.
-Go ahead, take the roses that life brings to us
Philip Harrelson
barnabas14@yahoo.com
