Illus: Have you ever been riding down a smooth super highway and found yourself going faster and faster as you followed the crowd? Before you realized it, you were going 20 or 30 miles over the speed limit.
Illus: A man was speeding down a highway, feeling secure in a string of other cars all traveling at the same speed. However, as they passed a speed trap, he got nailed with an infrared speed detector and was pulled over.
The officer handed him the citation, received his signature and was about to walk away when the man asked, "Officer, I know I was speeding, but I don't think it's fair. There were plenty of other cars around me who were going just as fast, so why did I get the ticket?"
"Ever go a fishin'?" the policeman suddenly asked the man.
"Ummm, yeah..." the startled man replied.
The officer grinned and added, "Did you ever catch 'em all?"
In spiritual matters, when things are going smooth we just sail through life with the greatest of ease. We soon find ourselves violating God’s commandments by not putting Him first in our lives. God puts these little speed bumps in our life (called troubles) to slow us down. And these little speed bumps we call trouble can be a blessing in disguise.
Illus: A Christian man was in the hospital with a serious heart condition. After he was there a couple of days and away from the fast paced life he was living, God began to get his attention. He began to realize how Satan had filled his life with all kinds of things, and completely squeezed God out of his life. He said to his pastor, “This hospital visit has been one of the best things that could happen to me. I have had time to pray and seek God, and when I get out of here I plan to slow down in life and make some major changes spiritually!”
Listen, trouble is as much a part of our life as goodness is.
Illus: We all know about trouble! Someone said that you know it's going to be a bad year when:
• The Government notifies you that your Social Security number has been revoked.
• As the moving van starts to unload next door, the first four items down the ramp are dirt bikes.
• Your 14-year-old daughter insists Jesus never preached against pierced noses.
• Your new boss asks if they've filled your old position yet.
• Your pacemaker is recalled by the manufacturer.
• Your church treasurer says, "The IRS called me the other day about some of your donation totals."
(From The Christian Herald January 1988)
None of us live in a perfect world!
Illus: Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.
The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie’s cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She'd barely said "hello" when "sssopp!" Chippie got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie -- still alive, but stunned.
Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water.
Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do ... she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.
Poor Chippie never knew what hit him. A few days after the trauma, the reporter who'd initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the bird was recovering. "Well," she replied, "Chippie doesn't sing much anymore – he just sits and stares."
(from In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucado. Word 1991 p 11.)
Everybody has problems…EVERYBODY! Job said, in Job 5:7, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
Illus: Vance Havner, a Baptist evangelist, related the story of an elderly lady who was greatly disturbed by her many troubles, both real and imaginary. Finally she was told in a kindly way by her family, "Grandma, we've done all we can do for you. You'll just have to trust God for the rest." A look of utter despair spread over her face as she replied, "Oh, dear, has it come to that?" Havner commented, "It always comes to that, so we might as well begin with that!"
We saw in the last message that TROUBLE MAKES US STRONG.
Illus: An old Chinese Proverb says, “A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man made perfect without trials.”
II. TROUBLE MAKES US SYMPATHETIC
One of the mistakes citizens make in this country is that we keep sending RICH PEOPLE to Washington that do not know a thing about the SUFFERINGS OF THE AVERAGE MAN! The only thing the rich man thinks about is making money.
Illus: A rich man drove his Rolls-Royce to a downtown New York City bank, and went in to ask for an immediate loan of $5,000.
The loan officer, taken aback, requested collateral. "Well, then, here are the keys to my Rolls-Royce," the man said. The loan officer promptly had the car driven into the bank's underground parking garage for safe keeping, and gave him $5,000. Two weeks later, the man walked through the bank's doors, asked to settle up his loan and get his car back.
"That will be $5,000 in principal, and $15.40 in interest," the loan officer said. The man wrote out a check and started to walk away.
"Wait sir," the loan officer said, "While you were gone, I found out you are a multimillionaire. Why in the world would you need to borrow $5,000?"
The man smiled. "Where else could I park my Rolls-Royce in Manhattan for two weeks in a safe place and pay only $15.40?”
Listen, the only thing the rich man THINKS AND CARES ABOUT IS HOW TO MAKE MONEY. We keep electing rich men and women, and every decision they make seems to be based on what they will personally gain from it.
Illus: When former President George Herbert Bush was President, he was campaigning to keep his job in the next election.
His opposition, President Bill Clinton, was campaigning against him stating, “I feel your pain” because of the sluggish economy. He was trying to convey to the American people that he SYMPATHIZED WITH them! This became very effective, when former President George Herbert Bush went into a grocery store and he saw a cashier scanning some merchandise and asked, “What is that?” It made national news because here is a man in the White House living so far from the normal person, that he does not even go into a store enough to recognize a modern day scanning machine.
Former President Bill Clinton convinced the American people he could sympathize with them.
This rich crowd in Washington makes laws so that they pay very little taxes. But the average American people work from January to the middle of June to pay the taxes that have been placed on them.
For example, during the gas crisis in 2005, many were paying high prices for gas. In some parts of the country, gas was almost $6.00 a gallon.
The men and women in Washington do not know anything about this kind of suffering, because they can not remember the last time they pulled up to a gas station and filled up their limousines. Tax-payers are paying for their gas.
Listen it takes:
• Suffering to understand suffering
• Heartache to understand heartaches
• Loneliness to understand loneliness
• Poverty to understand poverty
• Sickness to understand sickness
Have you ever heard:
• PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THEIR SURGERIES
People will sit around comparing their surgeries. One will say, “Yep, I was cut from here to here!” The other one will say, “That’s nothing, I was cut so much they ran out of catgut trying to sew me up!”
• MOTHERS TALK ABOUT HAVING BABIES
Illus: One little girl in computer class said to her girl friend, “I am never going to have babies, I heard it takes nine months to download!”
The point I want to make is that WE HAVE TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING BEFORE WE CAN SYMPATHIZE WITH SOMEONE!
Illus: As Thomton Wilder put it in one of his plays: “In love’s service only wounded soldiers will do.”
One of the reasons men turn so readily to Jesus Christ is because they know that He knows human suffering. He suffered and can therefore understand their sufferings.
As the author of Hebrews put it, in Hebrews 4:15, “For we have not an hight priest which can not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities: but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
Illus: Arthur Pearson had weak eyes from the time of his birth. By the time he reached manhood, at the age of twenty-four, his race with blindness became serious, and twenty years later it reached its last sad stages.
When he was forty-seven, Pearson heard the best oculist in Europe tell him that within a year, the last flicker of light would fade from his ever-darkening world. The doctor's prophecy proved true. In the closing days of 1913, complete and permanent blindness settled on Arthur Pearson.
The following summer, the World War broke out, and within a few weeks blinded soldiers began to appear in the military hospitals near London. One day Pearson was called by telephone to come at top speed to one of these hospitals. The doctors there had told a young soldier that his sight was permanently destroyed and on hearing the news the soldier had gone into hysterics. They were unable to quiet him, so they summoned Pearson in the hope that he, another man who had lost his sight, might be able to say something that could bring some comfort to this man.
That visit to the hospital disclosed to Pearson a new and glorious life's work. He would organize a special hospital for blind soldiers! During the succeeding months and years he carried out his plan, and when the war finally ended he had no less than 1,700 blind veterans under his care in a great institution at St. Dunstan's. Whenever any patient lost his courage and self-control, and began to talk wildly of suicide, Pearson would visit the man, take his hand, and then say quietly, 'You know, I'm blind too."
In trying to comfort people in trouble, we often say to them, as they pour their hearts out to us, “I understand!” But listen, unless we have SUFFERED, we would find it difficult to BE SYMPATHETIC to their needs.
David knew what he was talking about when he said, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted..."
Affliction in life can enlarge our capacity to understand and help other people. It makes us:
• STRONG
• SYMPATHETIC
And...
III. IT MAKES US SPIRITUAL
Listen, you will never see a person who is deeply and profoundly spiritual who has not gone through suffering.
Many of you would agree that the times in our lives when God was most real to us were those times when we most needed Him to help us through some hard time in life.
Only then did that peace that passes all understanding come.
Only then were you, "…strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;" (Eph. 3:16)
We can go further yet, and say that nothing short of a disaster or some sort of calamity will make many individuals aware of God and their desperate need of Him.
In verse 67, David said, "Before I was afflicted..."
What about before he was afflicted?
The psalmist continues, "...I went astray: but now have I kept thy Word."
In the midst of afflictions we grow spiritually.
This is why God has to allow certain afflictions and misfortunes to come our way.
Illus: On the 18th day of April, 1906, when the great earthquake and fire happened in San Francisco, 300,000 people were turned into the streets homeless, hungry, and with no clothing save what they wore on their backs!
The terrible fire burned from quarter past five Wednesday morning until late Friday afternoon. It was finally checked, not by the use of water, for the earthquake had broken the water mains and there was no water to be had, but by the use of dynamite, blowing up whole blocks of buildings to arrest the further progress of the fire.
This is an illustration of what has to happen in many lives. The fire of godlessness and sin spreads in our souls until it threatens to bring complete moral and spiritual ruin. To dynamite certain precious areas of our lives with misfortunes seems cruel, but there are times when nothing less severe will arrest the progress of the blaze.
It is a merciful God who permits calamity to bring His rebellious and wandering children home again.
Conclusion:
It takes adversity in our lives to help us reach our full potential. David certainly had his share. Much of it he brought upon himself, but he said, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted: that I might learn thy statutes.”
Illus: A young boy was so slow to learn, that his parents thought him to be abnormal and the teachers classified him as a misfit. His classmates avoided him and seldom invited him to play with them. He failed his first college entrance exam. A year later, he tried again. In time he became the world's greatest scientist -- Albert Einstein.
He overcame many obstacles. We must do the same to grow spiritually.
(last sermon)
I. TROUBLE MAKES US STRONG
II. TROUBLE MAKES US SYMPATHETIC
III. TROUBLE MAKES US SPIRITUAL
