Illus: Makes me think of an elderly man lay dying in his bed, close to his last breathe...but suddenly he smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies floating up the stairs.
He gathered all his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands.
Finally arriving at the kitchen he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. He thought he might already be in heaven: there, spread out upon newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies.
Was it heaven or was it one final act of love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table.
He could already taste of the cookie in his mouth; just the aroma seemingly was bringing him back to life.
His hand slowly made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife. She said "Stay out of those cookies they’re for your funeral!”
Did you know that many times we find ourselves like this. WE FEEL LIKE WE CANNOT GO ANY FURTHER. We are SMACKED WITH HOPELESSNESS!
We can understand why the SINNERS are this way!
• Every day they live without Christ knowing they are only one heartbeat, one breathe away from spending eternity in a Devil’s hell.
Without Christ they have NO HOPE WHATSOEVER!!!
• They have to turn to DRUGS AND ALCOHOL just to COPE WITH LIFE!!!
But there are many SAVED people who also have lost all hope.
In this sermon I want to show you THREE things….
First, we need to consider-
I. WHEN HOPE IS LOST
A good example HOPELESSNESS we need to look at the life of Elijah. WHAT A GREAT EXAMPLE OF HOPELESSNESS!!!
Let me explain…
Look at 1 Kings 19:1-5, we read, “And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.”
This great man of God is talking about wanting to die!
When?
Before this happened, Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest to see who was serving the TRUE GOD.
The God that answered by fire would prove to be the true and living God.
Elijah’s God won the contest overwhelmingly!
But later, after Jezebel heard what had taken place on Mt. Carmel and her false prophets had been killed this wicked woman threatened to kill him the next day.
She stated very angrily she was going to kill him!
Evidently she convinced him she meant what she said and we find him under a juniper tree saying that he wished he was dead.
But he really did not wish he was dead, because if he had stayed there, Jezebel would have been glad to accommodate him.
But he was so discouraged that this man of God wished he was dead!!!
When it comes to WISHING…
Illus: Did you hear about the couple that came upon a wishing well?
• The husband leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny.
• The wife decided to make a wish too.
• But she leaned over too far, and fell into the well and drowned.
• The husband was stunned, but he smiled and said, "This wishing well it really works!"
Illus: Did you hear about the family in their car on their way to a dog race?
A frog crosses the road, and the husband, who is driving, is able to stop the car before running over him. The husband gets out and takes the frog and carries him to the side of the road for his safety.
The frog is grateful thanks the man and tells him that he will grant him a wish.
• The man says, "Please make my dog win the next dog race."
The frog asks to look at the dog, which limps out of the car. The frog notices that the dog only has three legs; it is very over weight and can barely move at all, so he tells the man that he thinks it is almost impossible to fulfill his wish, and asks that the man give him a more reasonable wish.
• The man says, "Well, then please make my wife win the next beauty contest in the county beauty pageant.”
The frog asks him to tell his wife to get out of the car. The wife comes out of the car and approaches the frog for the frog to get a good look at her.
After the frog takes a good look at her he turns to the man and says, "Could I please have another look at the dog?"
Elijah was wishing he was dead, but AGAIN he was not really wishing he was dead, because all he had to do was sit there until Jezebel arrived, and she would have granted his wish...
This great man of God became so depressed that some think that he had a small nervous breakdown.
WHAT CAUSED THIS MAJOR DEPRESSION OF HOPELESSNESS IN HIS LIFE?
We need consider three things, such as:
(1) HE HAD UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
On Mt. Carmel, the God that answered by fire would prove to be the true and living God. The God of Elijah proved overwhelmingly to be the true and living God!!!
Elijah EXPECTED that everyone would repent.
Things didn't turn out the way he planned. Instead his life is threatened!!!
We have to be careful in our EXPECTATIONS, because they can lead to big discouragements in our life.
Illus: Often a pastor prepares all week to preach a sermon that is burning in his soul.
And as God works in his heart in that sermon, he begins to get excited, and hopes the same sermon will do for others what it has done for him.
He stands before his congregation and skillfully delivers the sermon, but while he is preaching:
• Some are sleeping
• Some are passing notes to each other
• Some are looking at their watches
• Some are looking out the window
And when he is finished there is no altar response.
He does this week after week, and if he is not careful he can slip into a deep depression.
To avoid discouragement, we have to guard against unrealistic expectations by remembering that God only requires us to be obedient.
We need to leave the results in the hands of God.
Illus: We have to be like the farmer, Sam Smith that had the biggest watermelon crop in the county each year. (This is a true story.)
Someone asked him how he did it year after year. He said:
• “I do everything I know to do to have a good crop,
• I spare no energy or cost.
• But when I have done all that I can do, I park my tractor under a large tree at the end of the watermelon field, and I say, “God, I have done all that I can do and know to do and now I leave the rest up to you!’”
Un-realistic expectations can cause us to lose HOPE!
The second thing that caused Elijah some problems was -
(2) HE FOCUSED ON HIMSELF
Elijah was in the depths of self-pity.
Let me explain…
Look at verse 4, we read, “But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”
This is a discouraged man. The only thing he can think about is he.
How often we forget this about life…it is all about God, not us!
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger was being interviewed by a pulpit committee.
• He asked them to tell him somethings about the church he was being interviewed to take.
• They told him about the wonderful facilities they had. And they certainly had some good facilities which he later got to see.
• They told him about the large salary they could pay with this comment. We pay a lot but we expect the pastor to get the job done.
Dr. Belger said the comment they expected him to get the job done help him to make the decision not to accept their offer.
Why?
Because it does not matter how much you pay a pastor he cannot get the job done…GOD HAS TO GET THE JOB DONE!
A preacher can use all kinds of gimmicks to draw a crowd but it is only the power of the Holy Spirit can lead men to Christ.
Illus: A preacher in Columbia, S.C. started a church with a large church bus ministry. They had almost twenty church buses and to get the people to attend they used all kinds of trickery and give away from giving televisions and a pony!
They soon had a thousand in attendance feeding people hot dogs and hamburger each week.
But all they had was a church full of people full of baloney and in a few years the church was sold and forty thousands in debt.
But there is another reason Elijah was discouraged.
Elijah lost all hope…he wanted to die!
We have looked at why He wanted to die…
(1)Un-realistic expectations
(2) HE FOCUSED ON HIMSELF
But also…
(3) HE WAS PHYSICALLY EXHAUSTED
Illus: If Elijah were to have consulted a psychiatrist, he most likely would have been diagnosed as suicidal.
In fact, He is doing the very things people do when they are trying to kill themselves.
• He is depressed.
• He is angry.
• He is tired of life and wants to die.
• He leaves his servant behind so that he will be alone. This way, no one can stop him.
He then goes out into the wilderness, where there is no food or water.
After this he ran 15 or so miles from Mount Carmel to Jezreel, and later another 100 miles or so from Jezreel to Beersheba.
It is here that we see Elijah give up. He told the Lord that he was fed up and he would rather die than go any further.
These THREE things that we find in his life are what caused him to LOSE ALL HOPE.
(1) Un-realistic expectations can cause us to lose HOPE!
(2) HE FOCUSED
(3) He was Exhausted
In this condition he allowed his problem (Jezebel) to become bigger than the God he served.
Any time we allow our problems to become BIGGER than the God we serve, we LOOSE ALL HOPE.
It is obvious from looking and listening to some Christians, they are like Elijah, ALL HOPE IS GONE IN THEIR LIFE!
You cannot see a trace of HOPE in their life.
Illus: There is a story about a little girl who, on the way home from church:
• She turned to her mother and said, "Mommy, the Preacher's sermon this morning confused me."
• The mother said, "Oh! Why is that?”
• The girl replied, "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are.
• Is that true?"
• "Yes, that's true," the mother replied.
• "He also said that God lives within us. Is that true too?"
• Again the mother replied, "Yes."
• "Well," said the little girl. "If God is bigger than us and He lives in us, shouldn’t He pop out through us?"
The little girl makes a point. If we are trusting in the Lord, our life will reflect that:
• He is within us
• He is bigger than our problems
And we can say to the devil and his crowd, “Greater is He that is in me than He that is in the world!”
Understanding the enemy can help you win the battle.
The devil wants every one of us to feel HOPELESS, and to think that the God we serve is ASLEEP, or just doesn’t CARE what happens to us.
We looked at WHEN HOPE IS LOST, but let’s also look at-
II. WHERE HOPE IS LOST
We look at each other at times and become frustrated because others do not think or do things like we do.
Let me give you an example…
Illus: (Humor) I want to say something, and I hope everyone here will agree with what I say.
For example, If everyone was as smart as I am and thought the way I think, and did things the way I do things, this would be a wonderful world….(I am waiting to hear some Amens!)
No Amens? …that proves we do not think alike!
Illus: (Humor) I have looked across this congregation at some of you folks for years, trying to figure out why you folks do not think the way I think.
Let me explain…
You can ask some folks why they do not come to church:
• They will not tell you they do not love the Lord,
• They will tell you they worked all day and they were tired.
Are they saying that people who come to church do not have a job, and they do not work hard?
If you go by their logic, there would never be anyone in church.
But did you know we all have similar thoughts about God?
But God tells us, in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.”
He does not think the way we think nor are His ways our ways.
The ways that He is different from us can cause us to LOSE HOPE.
For example, look at -
A. THE TIME FACTOR
It seems that time wears on hope, like nothing else!
For example, one of the things I have a hard time trying to figure out about God is, “Why at times is He slower than my wife when I come home tired and ask her for a glass of tea?”
Sometimes I pray about things I know that are within His will, and then I wait, I wait, and I wait.
I like it when things happen fast.
For example, when I go on a diet, I like to lose weight fast.
Illus: One man went on a diet using “Slim Fast”, and in two weeks he only lost two pounds! He said I think they ought to call that stuff “Slim Slow!”
Illus: When I go to the doctor’s office I do not like to wait. But I found out that the reason we are called PATIENTS is because you SIT THERE, SIT THERE, AND SIT THERE you better have some PATIENCE!
Illus: I like doctors like the one who advertised that he gave flu shots through a drive through window.
He advertised it as a “DRIVE-BY SHOOTING”.
Nothing seems to wear on hope like time!!!
But as we pray about some things, we need to consider that God did not answer my prayers yesterday, but I have HOPE that He will today.
Illus: Consider the example of E. Howard Cadle.
His mother was a Christian, but his father was an alcoholic.
His mother did something every night for him.
No matter what she was doing at eight O’clock, she would quit what she was doing and get on her knees beside her sons bed, and pray for him. This was something she did every night.
When her son chose the path of sin, she began to pray more earnestly for him each night at 8 O’clock.
But it seemed the more she prayed for him to come to know the Lord, the worse things began to get.
• By age twelve, Cadle was emulating his father, and was drinking and his drinking was out of control.
• Soon he was in the grip of sex and gambling, and in the clutches of the Midwest crime syndicate.
But her prayers didn't seem to slow him, until one evening on a rampage; he pulled a gun on a man and squeezed the trigger.
But the weapon never fired and someone quickly knocked it away.
Cadle looked across the room, and he noticed that it was exactly eight o'clock, and somehow he'd been spared from committing the crime of murder.
Because of his mother’s prayers he came to know the Lord and became a great servant of the Lord.
Listen Christian, do not get discouraged. TIME can wear on our HOPE like nothing else can do, but in due time, God has promised we shall reap if we faint not!
Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
God’s TIME FACTOR can wear on our HOPE!
But another thing that wears on our HOPE is the-
B. THE TERROR FACTOR
In the Old Testament, Job experienced HOPELESSNESS like few men have ever experienced.
It seemed like the only kind of news that came his way, day after day, was BAD NEWS.
It was bad enough when he lost HIS REPUTATION, HIS FRIENDS, HIS WEALTH, and HIS HEALTH, but probably the most devastating thing was that through the terror of a devastating tornado, HE LOST ALL HIS CHILDREN. He had seven sons and three daughters
Job understood that terror robs us of hope.
Notice what he said in Job 3:25, we read, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”
This was his greatest fear, and it became a reality in his life.
TERROR can rob us of our HOPE! At any time, any of us can be stricken with the TERROR of sickness or of AFFLICTIONS.
And while we are weak, tired, and suffering, you can count on Satan coming around whispering words of HOPELESSNESS in our ear.
We looked at:
I. WHEN HOPE IS LOST
II. WHERE HOPE IS LOST.
Now let us look at…
III. WHERE HOPE IS FOUND
I would like to share with you a story about a man and his son.
Years ago, there was a very wealthy man
• Who, along with his devoted son, shared a passion for art collecting.
• Together they traveled around the world, adding only the finest art treasures to their collection.
• Priceless works by Picasso, Van Gogh, (Van Golf) Monet and many others adorned the walls of the family estate.
• The widowed father looked on with satisfaction as his only child became an experienced art collector.
• But the day came when war engulfed the nation, and the young man left to serve his country.
• After only a few short weeks, his father received a telegram that his beloved son had been killed while carrying a fellow soldier to a medic.
• On Christmas morning, a knock came at the door of the old man’s home, and as He opened the door, He was greeted by a soldier with a large package in his hand.
• He introduced himself to the man by saying, “I was a friend of your son. I was the one He was rescuing when He died.
• May I come in for a few moments? I have something to show you.”
• The soldier said “I’m an artist, and I want to give this to you.”
• As the old man unwrapped the package, the paper gave way to reveal a portrait of his son.
• Though the art critics would never consider the work a piece of genius,
• The painting did feature the young man’s face in striking detail and seemed to capture his personality.
• The following spring, the old man became ill and passed away.
• The art world was filled with anticipation!
• Because according to the man’s will, all of the art works were to be auctioned.
• The day soon arrived, and art collectors from around the world gathered to bid on some of the world’s most spectacular painting.
• It was the painting of the man’s son.
• The auctioneer asked for an opening bid. The room was silent. “Who will open the bidding with $100?” He asked. Minutes passed with not a sound from those who came to buy.
• From the back of the room someone called out, “Who cares about that painting? It’s just a picture of his son. Let’s forget it and get to the important paintings.”
• Other voices echoed in agreement.
But the auctioneer replied, “No, we have to sell this one first.”
• Now, who will take the son?”
• Finally, a friend of the old man spoke. “I knew the boy, so I’d like to have it.
• I’ll bid the $100.”
• The Auctioneer said “I have a bid for $100,”
• “Will anyone go any higher?”
• After a long silence, the auctioneer said, “Going once. Going twice. Gone!”
And the gavel fell.
• Cheers filled the room, and someone said, “Now we can get on with it!”
• But the auctioneer looked at the audience and announced the auction was over.
• Stunned disbelief quieted the room.
• After a few moments someone spoke up and asked,
• “What do you mean it’s over?
• We didn’t come here for a picture of some old guy’s son.
• What about all the paintings?
• There are millions of dollars' worth of art here!
• We demand that you explain what’s going on!”
• The auctioneer replied, “It’s very simple.
• According to the will of the father, whoever takes the son... gets it all!”
The cure for hopelessness:
• Is not a program,
• Nor is it a religion.
• The cure for hopelessness is IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST GOD’S SON!
When you get Him, YOU GET IT ALL!!!
There are many folks today that will tell you they know something is wrong with their life. They will tell you they know they do not have any JOY OR INNER PEACE.
Illus: Some of you that are here today you are like Solomon in the Old Testament who said this about life. It is EMPTY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT.
But the fact is they never will know anything about Peace until they know the PRINCE OF PEACE!
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger said we have a new copier in our church office. The other day, I was replacing the toner cartridge. I could not figure out to replace the cartridge and God sent one of the fellows in the church that is smarter than I am and immediately he replaced the cartridge.
• Now suppose you went to the office supply to get a cartridge for my printer and the store clerk ask you what kind of cartridge do you want?
• You said, it doesn’t matter one is as good as the other.
• Then came back to the office and stuck it in the copier but it did not fit.
• You know what we would have discovered?
• The people who made those copiers were smart enough to make theirs different from all the others, so when I wanted some more toner, I would have to buy their cartridges.
If man is that smart, then why do people think God is not that smart?
• “We can live forty days without food,
• Eight days without water,
• Four minutes without air,
• But only a few seconds without hope!”
For example, you will be surprised at the people who are trying to find PEACE without turning to the PRINCE OF PEACE! It does not work!
Satan cannot rob us of HOPE, unless we allow him to do it. If we focus in on CHRIST and HIS POWER, we can have hope.
I. WHEN HOPE IS LOST
II. WHERE HOPE IS LOST
III. WHERE HOPE IS FOUND
On Christ The Solid Rock I Stand - The Allens - A Cappella Sunday
YouTube
The Allens
57.4K views
May 10, 2020
