Here comes trouble! 8/3/2006
2 Timothy 4:16-18
A young man in the Army was learning to be a paratrooper. Before his first jump, he was given these instructions. Jump when you are told. Count to ten and pull the ripcord. In the unlikely event your parachute doesn’t open, pull the emergency ripcord. When you get down, a truck will be there to take you back to the airport.
The young man memorized these instructions and climbed aboard the plane. The plane climbed to ten thousand feet and the paratroopers began to jump. When the young man was told to jump, he jumped. He then counted to ten and pulled the ripcord. Nothing happened. His chute failed to open. So he pulled the emergency ripcord. Still, nothing happened. No parachute.
"Oh great," said the young man. "And I suppose the truck won’t be there when I get down either!"
That is trouble and that will be our topic for this morning. It is something that we all face usually several times in our lives. It could be your health. It could be your heart, a divorce or a wayward child. It could be a car wreck, a house that is a money pit, or any other form of problem that comes your way.
You may not realize it, but trouble is one of the best teachers you can ever have. You will learn more in the hard times than in the good. Why? Often times, that is when people turn to Jesus is when trouble comes their way.
And you may have a problem here today that is weighing you down. You think about it when you get up and through the day. It causes you to lose sleep. And today you are in one of three categories. You are either in some kind of trouble right now, or you just got through going through some kind of trouble, or you are getting ready to get into some kind of trouble.
The Apostle Paul pretty much stayed into some kind of trouble all his life. In the text we just read, Paul was not writing this on some beach with a glass of iced tea by his side. He was in a Roman dungeon on death row waiting for his own execution. And in our text he gives us a “how to” handle this ongoing part of our lives called trouble. The first thing we see is…
Count on Gods presence in your troubles (Vs.17)
You need to remember when you are in your own dungeon of despair and depression that God is there with you. That is one of the many benefits of being a Christian is that you may be alone, but you never have to lonely.
In the verses before our text, Paul lists a group of people who in his words “has forsaken me”.
And that is one way you can tell a true friend when trouble comes. A true friend will stick with you when things get tough. A true friend will say to you in times of trouble, “If you need me or anything, I will be there”. And they will not just be saying it, they will mean it. Call me anytime, I will be there. And there is a TRUE friend that sticks closer than a brother. And His name is Jesus Christ. And He says in Hebrews 13:5b, For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.
In the Greek this contains two double negatives, similar to saying it in English, “I will never, ever, ever forsake you.”
If you are saved, you have a heavenly Father who will be there and no matter what you have done, He will always be there for you.
So God will stand with you in your troubles and also…
Count on God’s power in your troubles (Vs.17)
The Greek word strengthens here means to empower you. Do you know when the best time for Him to pick you up? It is when you are at your rock bottom because you will be more receptive to His way rather than your own.
Trouble is really just two things. It is either a foe or a fear. And when you are empowered by God, He will give you the strength to face your foes and to fight your fears.
Let me stop here and point out something that most non-believers just don’t get. God did not save Paul from his troubles. Did God not keep Paul from going to jail? Nope, He stayed there till the end of his life. God didn’t take him from his troubles but He strengthened Paul in his troubles. He doesn’t say that He will lead us out of the valley of death but He says that He will be with us in that valley and He will strengthen us in that valley.
Jesus didn’t come to get us out of trouble, He came to get in trouble with us and show us how to handle trouble when it comes. And if you come here today and you think that by getting your relationship with God right, then you will get yourself out of any trouble that you have or will get into then you are sadly mistaken. If you think that by accepting Jesus as your Savior then you will be relieved from your problems then you are wrong. Like I have said to you before, when you get saved you will more likely being to be under more attack. Satan wants to beat you down before you build anyone else up.
He won’t take you from your troubles but He will stand and strengthen you in your troubles, then we can…
Count on God’s purpose in our troubles (Vs.17)
Let’s look back at Paul in prison for a moment. Paul during this time would be like our Billy Graham only bigger. Everyone had heard of him. So here he is in what I would think a packed courtroom. No lawyer to plead his case. No friends to stand up in his defense. So the Judge did what was common for that time and asks him if he has anything to say for himself. And this is where Paul shocks those in and out of the courtroom. So when Paul stands up to speak for himself he doesn’t give a defense for himself, he doesn’t plead his innocence, he instead went on the offence instead of the defense.
Here’s what Paul did. He knew that this was the perfect opportunity for him to share Jesus Christ to a pagan judge in a pagan courtroom guarded by pagan Roman guards. He didn’t try to save his life because he had learned that it was not his life anyway, it was Gods. And he must have thought, I’ve got one chance to do what God put me here to do, “so that the message might be preached through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear”.
When you are in trouble, you need to take your eyes off yourself. You need to take your eyes off your troubles. And you need to put your eyes on Jesus. That’s what Paul did and we need to do the same thing. You need to remember that God is not so much interested in doing something for you as He is in doing something through you.
Just think about what God was able to accomplish through Paul. Paul was able to start churches all over the world. He wrote over 2/3 of the New Testament. He got a free boat ride to Rome, where he personally started the spread of the gospel to the Gentile nation.
And one thing we need to remember also when we are facing trouble. Others will be watching you, especially those who are not saved. They are watching to you to see if you really believe in this God who you say you believe in. They are watching you to see if you are handling this any different than they would. Keep that in mind when you are faced with trouble.
And in Paul’s situation, God was glorified. (Vs. 18b To Him be the glory forever and ever) You see the only thing that really matters when we face trouble is that God be glorified. It is not the outcome of the trouble but that God gets the glory.
You have to learn to see trouble through the eyes of God. Satan wants you to see trouble as a foe, while God wants you to see it as a friend. God always has a purpose in our troubles. Sometimes we don’t see it, sometimes we don’t understand it, and sometimes we can’t explain it. But God has a purpose.
And one of those purposes can be one we don’t like to think about and that is the purpose of correction. If we are not in the will of God then our trouble could be in the type of correction. Sometimes God has to break you before He can make you. And our troubles come in a form of His correction. He does not do it because He does not love us, but because He does and He wants us to be all that He wants us to be. In order to realize the worth of the anchor, we need to feel the stress of the storm.
Count on Gods, presence. Count on Gods power. Count on Gods purpose, and finally…
Count on Gods protection during our troubles (Vs.18)
Right in the middle of his trail, before he knew the outcome, he claims the protection of God. Did God deliverer him? Did He get him out of jail? No he actually was beheaded. But Paul said that the Lord would deliver him from every evil work.
Christian still have disease that pelages their bodies. Christians still have car wrecks. Bad things still happen to Christians, we all know that.
The Greek word here for deliver here means to take from the presence of. There can be two ways to do that. He can take the danger from you or He will take you from the danger. For example; You receive the news from the Doctor and if you are a Christian you can count on God’s protection. He is able to heal you. He may chose to heal you temporarily by taking the disease away from you.
Or He can heal you permanently by taking you from the disease.
If you know someone who has been healed this way then I can tell you this. I can’t tell you what they are doing, but I can tell you what they are not doing. They are not suffering. They are not in any pain. They are not sad or uncomfortable. They are not sitting in any traffic jams. They are in the presence of our Lord and Savior. And as bad as we may miss them, they are in a much better place.
But listen to where He protects us from? From every evil work. If God is not delivering you from it then it must not be evil. Remember Joseph. He probably thought what his brothers did by placing him in the pit then selling him into slavery was evil. But later he tells his brothers that what they meant for evil, God meant for good.
God didn’t deliver His own Son because He knew the better would come out of it.
So anything evil that God will not deliver us from is the evil we do. The Bible tells us that we reap what we sow. But He tells us that if we accept Him as our own personal Savior then He says that old things have pasted away, behold all things become new. No matter your past, no matter what you have done. God has sent His Son to pay the debt. All we have to do is accept the payment for that dept.
If you have all ready accepted Him as your Savior but you have anything out of Gods will in your life. You can cleanse yourself by confessing your sins. 1 John 1:9
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