Well, something profound happened to me this week. After all these years, I have finally heard the worst joke in the world. And today, I am going to give you the honor and the privilege of hearing the worst joke in the world. Are you ready?
“Who was the smartest man in the Bible? Abraham. He knew a Lot.”
I’ll give you a minute to get that joke. It took me a couple of minutes.
Last week, I began my message by saying that it might be just as much for me, maybe more so, than for you. Today’s sermon is similar. So hopefully, you and I will both be encouraged by the topic of encouragement.
This scripture has come to me quite often during this past week, and I don’t think that it was just random. I think God was trying to tell me something, and I would like to share these verses with you.
If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Jeremiah 29:10-14
A moment ago, I talked about Abraham in the Bibles, but let me give you something that I came across about Abraham Lincoln and the contents of what was in his pockets on the night he was assassinated, April 14, 1865.
Among the items, the president had several newspaper clippings in his pocket on that tragic night. In 1937 his granddaughter gave them to the Library of Congress where they were locked away until 1976 when they were exhibited for the first time, along with the rest of the contents of his pockets from that night. Two of the clippings are now on exhibit in the Library of Congress, while the remainder are being conserved. The other contents and the wallet, including a confederate $5 bill, two pairs of glasses, two pocket knives, a watch fob, and a handkerchief monogrammed in red with “A. Lincoln,” are shared between this exhibit and one at the Smithsonian Institute.
What is interesting is the subject of the newspaper clippings that were found in his pocket. One clipping recounts a speech by Reverend Henry Ward Beecher in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music. The other clipping reports a letter from the English Reformer John Bright to the American newspaper editor Horace Greely which is full of praise for Lincoln’s leadership and his re-election as president in the fall of 1864.
“We see his presidency,” Bright wrote, as “an honest endeavor faithfully to do the work of his great office, and in the doing of it, a brightness of personal honor on which no adversary has yet been able to fix a stain.”
In 1985, a Sun reporter, Chris Kaltenbach, wrote about a temporary exhibit of the items at Ford’s Theater. She called her piece “A Pocketful of Memories of Lincoln.” These are her words:
“The newspaper clippings … probably speak most eloquently of the man. Predictably, some include news of the war, including details of Sherman’s march on Atlanta. And several suggest that Lincoln, who often had been vilified for his handling of the war, liked to keep good news close at hand… Another suggests that Lincoln may have been a bit insecure and liked to be reminded that some people thought he was doing a good job.”
Even though he is now considered one of the greatest presidents in history, Abraham Lincoln did not know it or feel it at the time. Everyone needs to keep with them a pocketful of encouragement. One of the things that I found on a lamp table at Dad’s house is a small go-to book of Bible verses to encourage us on God’s promises for our lives. We have God’s Word as our source of encouragement any time we need it.
Scripture: Having said that, there are many Bible verses that I could focus on to give you encouragement today, and I felt led this morning to go to a set of verses that are quite frankly, probably my favorite verses in the Bible. And like I said, they’ve been popping up a lot lately
Jeremiah 29: 10-14
10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity [Or will restore your fortunes].[b] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
So, what does that have to do with us today? We could go on and on with a Bible study on Babylonian captivity and all that, but the gist of these verses for us, many millennia later in Watkins Glen, NY, is that they reveal God’s heart for His people. He wants to bless us. He wants to encourage us that as we are going through whatever we are going through, his heart is to take us out of whatever captivity we are in and give us peace.
There is a move in churches that’s popular right now–thankfully not as popular as it used to be–called “the prosperity gospel.” And it takes verse 11 out of context–they tend to make it mean health, wealth, and success. But the word “prosperity” in this instance is actually the Hebrew word, “shalom” which rightly interpreted means “peace.” What God really wants to do is take us from our captivity and give us His peace and tranquility.
Our needs, our troubles, our anxiety, and many other things can easily bring us to a point of severe discouragement. But what is the opposite of discouragement? Well, it’s encouragement. And when we have Christ, and His word, and His promises, He will shift our thinking and our attitude in the midst of trouble to a place of encouragement. He will give us hope in the midst of what we are going through. Doing so is a form of battle. Like I mentioned with the book I found on Dad’s table, God gives us the reinforcements of encouragement through His word to battle the devil’s advancement of discouragement.
Even though we have not literally been in captivity like the Jewish people in Babylon, maybe we have been in spiritual captivity. Maybe you’ve gone through some things that make you feel bound. Maybe you have things going through your mind; sins that you struggle with. Maybe it’s experiences that you have gone through in the past that–because of certain kinds of discouragement that people have thrown at you like negative words–haunt you and limit your ability to move forward in your present. Thoughts that you struggle with about yourself or where you are in life. Maybe it is finances and you do need a financial blessing. Or maybe it’s just too much going on all at once and you feel overwhelmed. Maybe you just are not happy with where your life has ended up.
So instead of a literal, physical captivity like the Jewish people suffered in this passage, there is another form of captivity that we struggle with, and that’s discouragement.
Quite often, Satan wants to lie to us and make us believe that God’s hand has left us. He wants us to believe that if God is silent, then that must mean God is busy keeping his eye on other people, not us. Satan whispers things like, “We don’t deserve God’s blessing. We don’t deserve God to answer our prayers. We’re too ordinary.” Well, in actuality, we really don’t deserve it. But do you remember my story last week about the Doolittles in Elmira, and how they inspired the song, “His Eye Is On The Sparrow?”
Satan loves to toy with our minds and our emotions. He tries to get our thinking off course. The Doolittles had the right frame of mind.
When Jesus is my portion
A constant friend is He
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches over me
In this set of verses in Jeremiah, we see God’s true heart for his people. Though the Israelites were in real captivity under the Babylonians, today God wants to bring us out of Satan’s captivity. He wants to restore us–internally. He wants to give us peace and purpose. He wants to lift us up as the old hymn says “out of the miry clay.’” As he literally calmed the storm for his disciples, He wants to calm the raging storm in our mind, and he wants to answer our prayers.
And Jesus wants to do it in such a way that it brings glory to the Father. I saw something on Facebook yesterday, an old Elim professor posted, “Choose to move toward God’s future for you today,” and one of the comments underneath was, “If we only move when we are up to the task, we never move. Father’s best work is done by we, who aren’t up to the task as we trust him to make up the difference.” In other words, if we were ready, then we would find ways to give ourselves the glory. “We did this, we did that.” But when we do something through God–when we’re not ready–we see God’s hand in it, and He gets the glory.
Instead of “I did this,” it’s, “Wow, God did this!”
As Christians, we know the secret to our success. We are placed in situations where we see God’s hand at work in our lives. We are required to go through difficulty in order to pray about it, and then see God work on our behalf. Jesus said, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” Whatever happens, whatever we go through, the victory that is promised to us is not only to bless us, but is to bring glory to the Father through His handiwork. Like I said not too long ago, your test becomes your testimony.
So going back to Jeremiah, through the midst of their trouble, God gave the Israelites a prophetic word of encouragement. God’s words of encouragement are what helps us get through the circumstances that we are in. It’s what helps us get through the day. It’s what helps us get through a rough season in life.
God’s encouragement is given to us as a means of warfare to battle Satan’s attack on our thoughts and feelings in the midst of whatever we are going through. We need constant reinforcements, and God’s word is that constant, ever-present reinforcement. And the power of His word is a sword in your mind. Remember “sword drills” in Sunday School? We had the sword in our hands. But if we read it and memorize it, it becomes a sword in our mind for spiritual battle.
In Ephesians, Paul talks about The Sword of the Spirit as a weapon. The writer of Hebrews says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
The NIV Application Commentary states that the use of the word, ‘active’ “proclaims the word as effective in carrying out God’s intentions. The same word that at creation set the elements of the cosmos to their appointed tasks and still governs the universe toward God’s desired intentions, has the ability to effect change in people. It is not static and passive but dynamic, interactive, and transforming as it interfaces with the people of God.”
It went on to say that: “The author wishes to impress on them the real opportunity that lies before those who will take God at his word and in obedience move forward to lay hold of his promise of rest.”
The Word of God is alive and active. His Spirit flows through those words. You can feel it. It changes your attitude. The stress just melts away. The spiritual sword that flows through us cuts through the Satanic attack on our minds and our feelings. The Bible is supernatural. It is alive. Warfare actively happens in our souls when we read through those scriptures. Find a way to memorize scripture so that you can battle Satan when you are in the car or away from a physical source of scripture. You can call your sword to mind.
Deuteronomy 11:18-20 says, “18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
If you look closely in The Chosen, you’ll see priests who actually tied scripture to their foreheads and on their hands. But I think that we can understand it is a metaphor to memorize scripture and have it in our mind. Keep it memorized so that you can call it up when you need it. Know how to fill your mind with God’s encouragement–God’s promises over your life.
God’s encouragement is so needed in this life. As Christians, we go through stuff too. Jesus said that “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” That means, we live this life and have the ups and downs of life regardless of whether or not we are Christians. But I believe, it’s so that God gets the glory for the victory, and so that the World can see the goodness of God in our lives through having a testimony.
In the interim, we need to battle Satan’s attack of discouragement. We do that through the reading of God’s word and we pray and we may literally have to tell Satan, “Get away from me. Get out of my house, you thief. You don’t belong here.”
Remember when Jesus was talking to Peter on the night of his betrayal, and he called Peter, Satan? He said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Or as The Little Rascals put it, “Get behind me Satan, and don’t push.”
But what Jesus actually said was, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
In other words, Peter’s words were a temptation to Jesus. Remember, Jesus was not just tested in the wilderness, but–going back to Hebrews again–he is our high priest who was tempted in every way as we are.
We can’t believe Satan’s lies of discouragement. John, in his first epistle, said, “4 for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.”
And going back again to Hebrews. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.” And then the whole rest of the chapter goes on and on about the faith of our spiritual forefathers of the Old Testament naming them one by one and the examples of their faith, and how God came through for each of them.
The next chapter of Hebrews begins with, “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
So faith is the key to our breakthrough. And how do we keep our faith? By encouraging ourselves in the Word. We can’t let the Devil steal our faith. God wants to encourage us. He wants to give us great promises like the one in which we read in Jeremiah and apply them to our lives. And how do we do that? Well, by reading and memorizing that verse in Jeremiah–and others like it. To pray for the promises God has over our lives. And how do we know what those promises are? By reading the scriptures.
I know I refer to Facebook memes a lot, but there’s one that says, “Don’t say that God is silent when your Bible is closed.” Be encouraged by the truth of God. Be encouraged through prayer and praise. Listen to praise music on the radio or on the internet. Go to an internet worship station like Pandora and sing along. Be encouraged and be enveloped by His spirit.
Maybe you need to be around other people who can encourage you. I didn’t have time to really delve into that. It’s another sermon all its own. But we all need that ‘iron sharpens iron’ person in our lives. Maybe God can direct you to that person where the two of you can encourage each other. Maybe God is calling you to make a habit of being an encourager wherever you go.
We read in Acts chapter four that there was a man named Joseph, but the apostles nicknamed him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.” Maybe you could be a son or daughter of encouragement. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to be remembered by? Wouldn’t that be a great ministry to have? Day in, day out, speak God’s truth over people–speak life into someone.
Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” You get to give a breath of life to people who need God’s encouragement.
So as I leave you today, not only do I encourage you to be encouraged, but I also encourage you to be an encourager to someone else.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
[…] Open the full article on the kingdomwinds.com site […]