Pastor Allan Kircher
Shell Point Baptist Church
7 Oct 2012 “An Encouragement to the weak”
Are you overcome by the world around you, overwhelmed by the circumstances of your life, and have nothing left?
Perhaps through frailty or failure you have drawn the conclusion that you are defeated and all hope is lost.
Today, consider this word from Isaiah 41:14
"Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you, declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
Speak this morning to those/discouraged/depressed in spirit.
• Perhaps you’re having/ruff time in the Christian life.
• There have been some nights of great darkness.
• Your spirit has been groping in pain/misery
Well, it’s during these times you need comfort from the Word.
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Well, those seasons occur in the Christian life.
• They often occur/beginning of the religious life.
• You get deeply ingrained under the ministry
• you feel the weight of your sin
• You look for the salvation of your Lord who preached the gospel.
Remember, in this new life with Christ you have solemnly vowed to dedicate your body
• your soul/time/talents
• All you have to the great work of serving God.
Perhaps you were thinking this is an easy vow to fulfill.
• you didn’t really foresee counting the cost
You thought/easy/rid yourself of ungodly friends
• renounce old established habits
• To rid yourself of the pride that consumes you.
• It wasn’t as easy thought/slow/speak/slow/anger.
• But before long you were mistaken.
• Your evil heart of unbelief deceived you.
• It’s a lot harder than you realize.
• A harder struggle than you can imagine.
So you continue to wrestle between your old evil nature and the new-born principle of grace within you.
• It’s painful to give up those old cherished habits
• To give up your former pursuits of worldliness.
• It’s painful to give up that selfishness
So you say, “If this is so hard in the beginning, what can I expect as I proceed in my faith?”
Was I too quick in dedicating myself to God?
• I have taken on a warfare my own power can’t accomplish.
• I have started a journey that my strength cannot bear.
• Let me return to the world.
But the Spirit of God says, “No, you cannot return”
Your young soul shouts back, “I can’t go back, I can’t go forward; what must I do?
• I am so discouraged on this road.
• I keep doing the same things over and over again
• Why do I do the same things I don’t want too?
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Take heart young lamb, this same feeling often overcomes the most valiant Christian veterans.
The most experienced/divine life will sometimes be over taken with a dark night and a stormy tempest.
• So dark/night/not know his right hand from his left
• so horrible the tempest/storm
• You can’t hear the sweet words of your Master, saying,
• "Fear not, I am with thee."
Periodic tornadoes and hurricanes will sweep over the Christian
• You will be subjected to as many trials in your spirit
• Many trials in your flesh.
• This much I know
• If you haven’t experienced it, I have.
God encourages me as well as those to whom I preach that are distressed/down-hearted.
• So I will preach to myself as I do each week.
• It revitalizes me/cheers my heart to hear God’s Holy Word coming through the heavens.
• To know His Word is active and true
• But then to know I must apply it.
• Use it for the nourishment of my soul.
• Or else I will wither and fall to carnality.
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I have a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me
• To keep me as humble as I can be in this shell
• My soul is cast down within me,
• I feel as if I had rather die than live
• all that God has done by me seems to be forgotten
My spirit fails and my courage breaks down with the thought that His Word is heard but so desperately lost.
• But the Christian needs uplifted by God’s divinity.
• Encouraged. Enticed by the Spirit of God.
• And God says to me/you/Fear not, I will help you.
What a precious promise to the young Christian, or to the old Christian attacked by lowness of spirits and distress of mind!
• Church, there are some in this congregation;
• I hope many
• who have solemnly devoted themselves to the cause and service of the Lord Jesus Christ:
• I speak of you this morning.
That you know the preparation necessary for this service set forth in the Word of God.
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First, before we do great things for Christ there must be a sense of weakness: “O Worm Jacob."
Secondly, there must be trust in promised strength
Thirdly, there must be fear removed by that promise: "Fear not, for I will help thee."
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I. In the first place, the first qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God's work well and triumphantly, is A SENSE OF OUR OWN WEAKNESS.
• When you march into the battle with your own weapons.
• Your own strength/majesty/power.
When you say, "I know that I will conquer, my mighty sword will get me the victory, defeat is a long way off.
• This is why so many get discouraged
• Feeling the effects of failure in their life.
• You see, God will not go forth with you.
• God will not accompany you with you thinking you can do it on your own strength.
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"It is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts."
• If you go forth to fight, boasting you can do it
• You will return with defeat.
• Even if it’s in the smallest of ways.
• God says, “If you are to serve me, serve me in my way, my strength, or He will never accept it.
Anything you do that is unaided by divine strength--God never can accept.
Man’s arrogance is one of the chief causes of God’s judgment upon him.
As we are conscious that we are instruments of God
• We are less inclined to exalt ourselves
• Less inclined to puff ourselves up.
• To think of ourselves more highly than we ought.
• There must be a consciousness of weakness
• Before there can be any victory.
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Now some of you may be saying, “Pastor, if that is the qualification for doing much for God, I have it, I do it”
• Well, depend on this:
• God will empty out all that you have before He will ever use you in His service.
• The river of God is full of water
• But there is not one drop that will rise in earthly springs.
God will have no strength used in his own battles but the strength that he imparts
• Your emptiness is preparation for your being filled
• Your hunger is preparation for your being fed
• Your thirst is preparation for obtaining living water.
• Your casting down is the making ready for your lifting up.
• For God says, His power is made perfect in weakness.
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How you can promote in yourself a sense of your own nothingness.
• The text addresses us as worms.
• The mere rationalist
• the man who boasts of human dignity
• Will never subscribe to say he is a worm.
"Worm," says he, "I’m not a worm: I am a man; a man is the most glorious thing that God has made; I am not going to be called a worm; I am a man—I can do anything;
God doesn’t call his people “worms” because he despises them, or because they are less than human.
He identifies them as worms here because they recognized themselves to be weak, pitiable, and trampled underfoot by the world.
• However, he who is wise and understands
• he knows that he is a worm
• and he knows it in this way:
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First, he knows it by contemplation.
Men who have no brains are always great men
• You see, those who think
• must think their pride down
• If God is with them in their thinking
• if you/men of sense/presence of spirit
• If your souls/attuned to God, you will say
"What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visited him?"
• My God!
• when I survey the boundless reaches of the atmosphere
• when I consider how vast are your dominions
• so wide that an angel's wing might flap to all eternity and never reach a boundary
• When I know this, comprehend it, live it.
I shrink into nothingness because I behold the Almightiness of Jehovah—so little, like a grain of sand in the multitudes of the shores.
Compare this to the infinite chasm between God and man.
• Let your mind rove upon the great doctrines of the Godhead
• Consider/existence/God/before the foundations of the world
• let your soul comprehend how infinite He is
• grasp as much as possible of the Eternal
• And I am sure your minds will shrink with awe.
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You have heard men talk big words when they have been prosperous
• Ever hear them talk that way in deep distress?
• Or in great anguish and sorrow?
• The more weaknesses that you see of yourself
• The more labor you do for Christ.
Turn, if you please, to the history of all men who have done great deeds for God, and you will find them saying,
• "I marvel that God should use me!"
• David with a sling, Moses with a staff!
• Gideon with a few men, Joshua with trumpets
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Go and do something, some of you, and I will promise you the popping of the bubble of your pride will blow away.
• If you understand what is meant by being a worm.
• Go and do what 15th verse says the worm will do.
Listen…..v 15… I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.
• You will do that, you will do that. You will do that.
• And when you reduce yourself.
"The more God's glories strike your eyes, the humbler you will lie."
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• Devout contemplation, sharp suffering, hard labor
• All these will teach us what little creatures we are.
Oh! May God by all means and every means keep us knowing that we are nothing more and nothing better than worms!
• How easy it is for you and I to fly up!
• How hard to keep down!
• That demon of pride was born with us
It is woven into the very warp of our nature, woven so much that it will not die one minute before we do.
• If any man tells me that he is humble
• I know him to be profoundly proud
• If any man will not acknowledge this truth
• He is desperately inclined to self-exaltation.
We all love it, every soul of us
• we should all bow before God
• acknowledge pride is woven into our nature
• and ask him to teach us what little things we are, that we may claim this promise
• "Fear not, O worm Jacob."
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II. Now the next point.
• Before devoting ourselves to Christ\or doing any great labor for the Savior
• It is necessary there should be trust in the promised strength.
"For I myself will help you, declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel."
Now, Christian, I see you this morning ready to run away from the battle
• You have been dispirited/this past week.
• So much so that you are ready to give up.
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I have met with too many believers who get to this place and rightly believe “I simply can’t do this anymore,”
• But wrongly conclude that there is no hope.
• There is hope because God also speaks.
• He speaks words of assurance to us in Jesus
• through the darkness of a painful life we live
• the gospel will shine brightly
• and in your weakness his grace will supply you will everything you need to persevere
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Here is another comrade passing through the same.
• he comes here this morning,
• half inclined to run off to Tarshish,
• like Jonah did of old, only he could not find a boat,
• or else he might have sailed away
• he has come here to pat you on the shoulder/say,
"Brother, we are not deserters.
• Let us put up our arms.
• Let us fight for our Master.
• The promise says. “I will help you, brother
• I will help you.
Give me God to help me, and I will split the world in halves
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There is no saying what man can do when God is with him.
• Give God to a man, and he can do all things.
• Put God into a man's arm, and he may have only the jawbone of an ass to fight with/Samson
• but he will lay the 1000 Philistines in heaps:
• put God into a man's hand, and he may have a giant to deal with, and nothing but a sling and a stone;
• but he will lodge the stone in the giant's brow before long
• Put God in man’s hand, and the walls of Jericho fall.
• Put God into a man's eye and you will flash defiance your enemies.
Then it is no longer we, but our enemies that fear…..
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There is no fear of a man who has got God with him
• he is all-sufficient
• There is nothing beyond his power.
• God's help always comes in at the right time.
We are often making a fuss because God doesn’t help us when we don’t want to be helped.
God will come in when you want him—not one minute before, nor yet one minute later.
• "I will help thee."
• I will help thee when you need help!
• What an ennobling thing it is to be helped by God!
• To be helped by a fellow man is no disgrace
• but it is no honor; but to be helped by God
• What an honor that is!
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When the Christian philanthropist goes into the mission field, in the midst of reeking disease and death, and feels that God has put the wing of the angel over him, to shield him in the day of pestilence, how it ennobles and honors him to have God with him!
Do you say, “I have an opportunity of serving God, but I am too weak for it. God, I wish you had not put this load on me."
• Who is sufficient for all these things?
• With our bodily weakness, our mental poverty
• our spiritual failures, with limitations of our humanity,
We need to look forward to the work which we have to do.
• To the sufferings we will be called to bear
• To the battle we will have to fight
• And look to it with serious apprehension.
• Knowing the Lord will help us.
God helps us by making our difficulties disappear.
• So they stand against us as nothing.
• He imparts courage and strength to overcome them.
• He holds our right hand
• He inspires us with skill and energy to act
• With fortitude to endure
• With patience to persist
• With victorious strength.
• He always causes us to triumph
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III. And now comes the last point, upon which I shall be brief.
We must, then, labor to get rid, as much as possible, of fear.
The prophet says, ""Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you, Fear not;"
• Why shouldn’t you fear?
• Let us labor to get rid of fear
• And let these be our reasons:
Get rid of fear, because fear is painful.
• How it torments the spirit!
• When the Christian trusts, he is happy
• When he doubts, he is miserable.
When a believer looks/Master/relies on Him/he will sing.
• When he doubts his Master, he can only groan.
What miserable Christians we are when they begin doubting and fearing!
• Fear, too, is weakening.
• Make a man afraid—he will run at his own shadow;
• make a man brave
• He will stand before an army and overcome them.
You will never as a Christian do any good in the world if you are afraid of men.
• The fear of God brings blessings
• the fear of men brings a snare
• Such a snare we have tripped on many times.
• No man shall be faithful to God
• if he is fearful of man
• no man will be sufficient until he confidently believes
• Until he quietly waits.
• We must not fear; for fear is weakening.
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And lastly, doubt not the Lord, O Christian; for in so doing so you lower yourself.
• The more you believe, the greater you are
• But the more you doubt the less you become.
O poor Christian that stumbles at every stone!
• Church, behave like Christians!
• It is childish to doubt; it is manhood glory to trust.
Plant your foot upon the immoveable Rock of Ages
• lift your eye to heaven
• scorn the world; never play cowardly
• Bend your fist in the world's face
• and bid defiance to it and hell
• You are a believer, and noble.
If you crouch/cringe/dread/doubt
• You have lost your Christian dignity and are no longer what you should be.
• You do not honor God.
• "Fear not, O worm Jacob; I will help you, says the Lord."
• Then why should you fear?
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I feel that my voice fails me, and with it my very powers of thought too
• Therefore I can only turn to my comrades in arms
• in the good war of Christ, and I say to them
• Brothers, you and I can do nothing of ourselves
• we are poor puny things
• But let us attempt great things, for God is with us
• let us dare great things, for God will not leave us.
Remember what he has done presently; and remember what he has done of old he will do again.
• Remember David the shepherd-boy?
• Remember Shamgar? with his ox-goad 600Philistines
• Have you forgotten the jawbone of the ass
• The stone from the sling.
• The swallowing of the Egyptian people
• The tumbling walls of the fortified city of Jericho
• The staff of Moses.
If these worked wonders, why shouldn’t we?
If little things have done great things, let us try to do great things also.
• Try and make it so by faith
• And the least of you may be mighty through the strength of God.
• O for grace to trust God
• There is no telling what you can do.
Worms, you are nothing, but you can conquer all
Worms you are nothing, but you can devour pride
Worms, you are nothing, but you can move a mountain to the sea.
In constant adoration, we will conquer yet, for God is with us, and victory is sure.
GOD IS NOT DONE
Ye trembling souls! dismiss your fears;
Let mercy be your only theme:
Fear not the powers of earth and hell;
God will restrain these powers;
His mighty arm will repel their rage,
And make their efforts in vain.
Fear not the want of outward good;
He will provide,
Fear not that he will ever forsake you,
Or leave his work undone;
He's faithful to his promises—
And faithful to his Son.
You, who feel like a worm, can rejoice in this;
your God is in control. He is your Redeemer.
