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Encouragement By Julian Bull

Well shall we turn to 1 Samuel chapter 30 where we will find God's message to us this evening.
1 Samuel 30 and I want to draw your attention to verse 6, a very important and a very wonderful verse, especially the last few words of verse 6.
Let me just read you the verse again.
God's word says, Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters.
But David strengthened himself, or encouraged himself, in the Lord his God.
But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
This introduces us to the subject of Christian encouragement.
And someone may say, well why would we study such a subject?
Why would we take up such a subject?
And the answer to that is because of the reality of discouragement.
Because you know, discouragement when you're a Christian is not a figment of your imagination.
It's real.
And it's true.
And it affects every one of us.
And discouragement is as real as our humanity is real.
And because of the reality of our humanity, because we're just men, we're just people,
we're not super saints, we're not supermen, and because of this we're bound to be discouraged.
And discouragement is everywhere these days among Christians.
Now perhaps what we need to recognise as we look into this verse is first of all that
it's not unspiritual and it's not non-Christian to be discouraged.
And you know there seems to be around in some Christians' mind the idea that if I become
discouraged, I'm being less than Christian.
And I should never become discouraged, and if I am it's a sin, it's being unspiritual,
it's something which shouldn't happen to a Christian, it's something which should
never come near to me, and if it does it's because of some failing or some weakness on
my part.
My dear friend, you couldn't be more wrong.
You know the scripture is full of examples of good and great and godly men who are all
at some time or other discouraged.
And you know there's a gallery of them in scripture alone.
And we could take our time this evening and we could go through and we could look at men
like Elijah, surely we're not greater than Elijah.
We could look at men like Moses, David, Joseph, Jacob.
I would suggest to you that there were even times when the Lord Jesus Christ himself was
feeling somewhat discouraged.
There were times as we remember when he wept over Jerusalem and he said, oh I would that
I could gather you even as a mother hen gathers her chickens, but you would not have it.
And he wept over Jerusalem.
We remember we come to those letters that Paul writes, how often he bears testimony
to the reality of discouragement.
He writes on one occasion about a certain person who discouraged him.
The name of this man was Alexander the coppersmith.
And he tells Timothy when he's writing to him, he says, Alexander the coppersmith did
me a great deal of harm.
He says, may the Lord reward him according to his deeds, which is a very polite and safe
way of praying about someone I suppose you consider has done you great harm.
May the Lord reward him according to his deeds.
Remember on one occasion the apostle Paul said none stood with me, none stood with me.
There I was, I was just on my own.
We read of a man who was for a while a great and close associate of Paul.
His name was Barnabas and he was called the son of encouragement.
And he was recognized as being a great help to believers simply because of the reality
of discouragement.
We remember, we could think this evening if we had time of situations in the scriptures
where discouragement went beyond its reasonable bounds and became depression and became debilitating
to the people who suffered from it.
Well I'm simply making the point that discouragement is real.
Discouragement affects Christians.
Discouragement isn't necessarily unspiritual.
It's not inconsistent with being a Christian.
It may be thoroughly consistent with being a Christian.
And we need to realize this.
This is the way God's word teaches.
And then God, elsewhere in his word, he teaches us, he commands us, he says be encouraged.
He commands us in other places and says encourage each other.
Encourage yourself and encourage each other.
Do we know how to do that?
I think that's a skill that's been forgotten in churches.
I think there's a whole generation of Christians who have no idea how to encourage themselves.
And they have very little idea of how to encourage another Christian.
Well God expects that we would know that, be encouraged.
How do I encourage myself?
This is important isn't it?
That we know how to deal with discouragement when it comes.
Well the context of this verse is very interesting.
The context is that a terrible thing has happened.
Some people, some enemies have come and they have overthrown the city of Ziklag and they've
burned it with fire.
And they've taken captive all who were in it, including the wives and the children.
This in itself causes great distress.
Perhaps it causes great distress because David and his men are thinking to themselves it
would have been better if these people had been put to death.
To be carried away alive, to be used, for what end?
What could be happening to them?
And you can imagine what's going through their mind as they discover that their wives and
their children have all been taken away by these enemies and they're still alive, perhaps
being abused by the enemy in some foul and horrible way.
The mind thinking the worst.
And in their distress the majority of the people begin to blame David.
He's their leader.
They lift up their voices and they weep until there's no power left in them to weep.
Talk about discouragement, I think that's it.
You have to be discouraged and depressed and cast down and despairing to weep until there's
no more power to weep.
And that's what the Bible says they did.
And they turn on David.
That's understandable I suppose in the situation, he's the leader.
And they even talk about stoning him.
They even talk about stoning him.
And now you can imagine his situation.
Here he is now and he's thoroughly on his own.
He hasn't even the support of those people he's been leading.
He's left completely alone.
And those who are his allies and his friends have turned on him.
And they're speaking about stoning him.
What's he going to do?
He's greatly distressed, the Word of God says.
And the end of the verse says, but, but David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
No one else said to strengthen him.
This wasn't a question of saying, well now I can just pull myself out of this if I can
get a bit of fellowship.
If I could just get the right brother or sister alongside, then I'd be able to get out of
this situation.
The situation was there was no one like that, they were all against him.
And what did he do?
He strengthened himself.
It's a strange concept that the scriptures speak of.
In the Lord his God.
You notice that the verse or the sentence in the verse begins with the word but.
And someone once said, with God there is always a but.
There is always a but with God, and with a child of God, and with a servant of God.
It's not the end.
David strengthens himself in the Lord his God.
And this introduces us to some teaching on Christian encouragement that's very important
because it points out to us what the supreme object of Christian encouragement should be.
In other words, where do we look first when we're discouraged as Christians?
How do we cope with it?
What do we do?
How do we handle it?
When you're discouraged as a Christian for one reason or another, and perhaps you're
discouraged legitimately, perhaps you have every reason to be discouraged, where do you
look?
What do you do?
Well David, you see, he introduces us to the paramount source of Christian encouragement,
the supreme object of Christian encouragement, because first of all he goes to God.
He doesn't go to people, he goes to God.
He says David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
He was in relationship with God, he knew it, he was his God, and he strengthened himself
in God.
And God is the best and the most powerful and the most wonderful source of encouragement
to any and every Christian.
It's no good, Christians making the mistake of looking to things to encourage them, and
sometimes we do this.
We look to circumstances to encourage us.
We say look, when the circumstances change I won't feel this way, I'll be better
then.
No, I won't be so sad and cast down when the circumstances change.
We begin to look to things, we begin to look to circumstances, and these things are powerless
in themselves.
So if only I had a bit more money, things would be different, then I'd be encouraged.
If the boss stopped me tomorrow on my way out of the door and said here you are, here's
a pay rise, I've noticed what you've been doing and I've increased it threefold,
say then I'd be encouraged, I'd come home, I'd be dancing and singing all the
way home, I'd be on top of the world, why?
Do things encourage us?
Do changes in our circumstances?
Is that where we look for our encouragement?
Well perhaps we do, and we should look to God.
Perhaps we look to men, perhaps we look to other men.
Perhaps we rely on other Christians.
Perhaps we rely on our friends or our spouse.
Perhaps we rely on those closest to us.
Perhaps we rely on our minister or our pastor or our pastor relies on his deacons or his
congregation.
And then in the providence of God something happens and one is taken away and the other
is left and the whole world comes crashing down.
We're not to look to men, not first and foremost, or perhaps we look to ourselves
and men, ungodly men do this all the time.
They think now I've the ability, I've the strength, I've the experience, I've
the wisdom to carry me through this, I've been through worse than this and I'll get
through this, I'm strong, I'm alert, I'm awake, I'm careful and cunning, I'll
get through this.
No, my friends, then we must look to God as the supreme source of Christian encouragement.
Why?
Well because for something to encourage us it has to be greater than the difficulties.
It has to be greater than the things that are discouraging us and then on top of that
it must have, surely if it's going to encourage us it must have power to change something.
It must have power to, as it were, deliver us.
Well the only thing that meets those, meets that description, surely the only thing is
the being and the power and the purposes of God.
You say my sins discourage me, well God is greater than your sins, do you know that?
God is greater than your sins and my sins are very great.
Look they outnumber the hairs of my head, David said.
I get that way that whenever I come to pray, whenever I close my eyes, all I can think
of is my sins, how I failed the Lord yet again.
My dear friends, God is greater than our sins.
The Lord Jesus Christ, His blood, His sacrifice, it can deal with your sin, no matter how great
it is.
But you say look my circumstances, but God is greater than our circumstances.
But you say my enemies, but God is greater than our enemies.
God can move mountains and God can move men.
And He's my God and He's your God if you're a Christian and you're to look to Him.
And I'm to look to Him, I'm to encourage myself in the Lord my God.
Now part of the problem these days is the ignorance of God on the part of many people.
They've no idea who God is.
They've no idea about the greatness of God or what God can do and what God has done and
what God might do.
No idea about the promises of God, how God's bound himself to do this for his children.
And of course if there's an ignorance of God then there's no wonder we'd be discouraged.
There's no wonder we get stuck in that slough of despond.
The ignorance of the Scriptures is certainly a hindrance to Christian encouragement.
But here is David and he's introducing us to a most important, if not the most important
bit of teaching on Christian encouragement.
He encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
He was in relationship with God.
God was his God, there was God and there he was.
All the men were against him but that didn't matter because God was still there.
He still belonged to God and he encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
Do you know how to encourage yourself?
Where, where do you turn in your times of discouragement?
Who do you turn to?
What are you looking to?
First of all it must be to God.
But of course I'm speaking to people who know God.
This is all meaningless unless we've settled our great question of our relationship to
God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
So I'm speaking to Christians, I'm saying, Christian, you must encourage yourself in
the Lord your God.
Do you know what God is capable of?
Do you believe what God is capable of?
Or do you insult God with your lack of faith and your pessimism?
You take your bearings from God.
You know the Hebrew word here that's translated to strengthened or encouragement, it's closely
related to the word that means to seize onto something, to fasten yourself to something,
to get hold of something and never let it go, to cleave, to fasten yourself.
And this is how he's speaking.
He's strengthening himself, he's seizing hold of God.
He's fastening onto God.
He's not going to let the circumstances, he's not going to let the people, he's
not going to let anything drive a wedge between him and God.
Well that's a primary, the primary object of Christian encouragement.
But you know the Scriptures are full of teaching about what I would say are secondary, secondary,
other and secondary objects.
For example we're exhorted in lots and lots of places in the Bible to look to the Word
of God for Christian encouragement, to the Word of God, to the promises of God.
Now what I mean is this.
It seems to me that the Scriptures have a particularly wonderful way of looking at themselves
and they expect that we'll look at the Scriptures in the same way.
If I can perhaps give you an example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about.
Psalm 119 verse 49, here's a psalm that's all about the Word of God.
And what's so wonderful about this psalm is the way that the psalmist speaks.
For example in this verse 49 he says, remember the Word to thy servant.
And it's in the singular.
Remember the Word to thy servant in which thou hast made me hope.
This is my comfort in my affliction that thy Word has revived me.
Now you know what's remarkable about this is this, that this man, David, as he writes
in the psalms, he very often is found taking the Word of God personally, taking the Word
of God personally, taking the promises of God personally.
You know it's one thing to look at the Bible and say, yes, I believe this is God's Word.
And I believe it's God's Word from cover to cover.
I believe it's infallible.
I believe it's inerrant.
I believe this is God's Word to man.
I believe this is a reliable Word.
But you know it's quite another thing to have this approach to the Word of God to say,
I believe this is God's Word to me.
I'm not just saying I believe this is God's Word in general, because you know all the
particulars can get lost in the generality.
But I believe this is God's Word with me in mind.
I believe that God penned these words for my sin, for my circumstance, for my situation.
And I believe I may take my stand on the Word, and I may claim these promises as God's promises
made to me.
God you said this, and you said it to me.
This is your Word to me.
And I think that the psalmist fully expects that we would read the Word of God like that.
We would read it as God speaking to me, written for me, written for my comfort, written for
my encouragement.
And every single Christian can say the same thing and approach it the same way.
Remember how Paul writes to the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians, and he tells them, he says
as many as may be the promises of God in him that is in Christ, they are yes.
For also by him is our men to the glory of God through us.
As many as the promises of God, in him they are yes.
Promises of God.
Promises made by the God who cannot lie, and meant to be taken seriously.
And so this is how I would encourage you to use the Word in your times of discouragement.
I read all the time, oh it's not just a Word to the universal church, or it's not just
a Word to a general church, it is that.
But this is God's Word to every Christian.
If he says it, I may state my life on it.
I may state my whole ministry on it.
I may take my stand upon it.
Perhaps you have read Pilgrim's Progress.
You know John Bunyan, he really understood this principle, and he incorporated an event
in the story of the Pilgrim and his progress.
He incorporated an incident that was designed to shed light on this particular view of the
Word of God, taking it seriously, taking it personally.
You remember perhaps on one occasion, if you've read the story, you remember that Christian
and his friend, Faithful, they're on the journey, and they come to what they think
is a shortcut.
And they go off the track and they find themselves in the grounds of a castle.
The castle's called Doubting Castle.
There's a giant who lives in the castle, and his name is Giant Despair.
And he captures the pilgrims.
He locks them in the dungeon.
All this is designed to teach us about Christian experience.
He locks them in the dungeon, and he doesn't kill them immediately.
He goes back and he speaks to his wife, and he says to his evil-hearted wife, what should
I do?
She says, don't kill them quickly.
She says, just toy with them a while, persecute them.
And the castle is called Doubting Castle, and the giant is called Giant Despair for
good reason.
And what he does is he goes down and he undoes their chains, and he marches them out into
the courtyard, and he shows them in the corner of the courtyard.
There's a heap of bones, skulls and skeletons all dismembered and lying in a heap.
And he says to them, you know what that is?
They say, no.
He says, that's what's left of the last lot of people that came into this castle.
Christians just like you.
That's what's going to happen to you, he says.
Then he locks them up again and goes back upstairs.
And there they are, and they're sitting in the dungeon.
And Bunyan tells us at about midnight on a Saturday night, they're in this dungeon.
And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, Christian, he says, as one half amazed, breaks out in
a passionate speech.
He says, what a fool I've been.
What a fool I've been to sit in this stinking dungeon when I could have been walking at
liberty, when I could have had my freedom.
He says, I have a key in my pocket.
The name of the key is called Promise.
And this key will unlock every door in this castle.
Why, says Faithful, if that is true, fetch it out and try it.
And he gets the key out and he tries it.
And he unlocks his chains and then he unlocks the door of the cell and then he unlocks the
next door and the next door and soon he finds himself out back in the meadow again.
And they run away and the giant doesn't catch them and they get back to the main way that
they should have gone and they survive.
But you understand the point that John Bunyan's trying to make.
They finally learn that you take the promises of God personally.
He says, I've got a key, it's in my pocket and it's called Promise.
And it will unlock every door in Doubting Castle.
What is this?
But it's teaching that we should take the promises of God personally.
They were made to you and to me.
This is a great source of Christian encouragement.
Take our stand.
Charles Wesley wrote a hymn and in writing the hymn he put this same principle this way.
He says, Faith the mighty promise sees and laughs at impossibilities.
Faith the mighty promise sees and laughs at impossibilities.
The Word of God.
What a great source of Christian encouragement.
You can never separate these two things.
You can never separate God and his Word.
We're not suggesting that to be encouraged that we just go away without our Bible and
think thoughts about God.
We don't know anything about God without the Bible.
It's the Bible that tells us of the greatness of God.
It's the Bible that tells us of the power of God and the grace of God.
So these two things go hand in hand.
And these two things are at one and the same time a great and supreme source of Christian
encouragement.
God and his precious Word.
Well you know there are other things.
There's Christian fellowship.
Much is said in the Scriptures about the power of Christian fellowship to encourage a brother
or a sister.
In fact in Hebrews 10 24 you remember we're actually encouraged, we're actually commanded
to encourage one another.
It's a command.
But he says, encourage one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Encourage one another.
And we know that there's great encouragement coming from Christian fellowship.
And we know the great discouragement that comes when there's no Christian fellowship.
We know the great discouragement that can come even from the kind of thing that Hebrews
10 is warning us about.
It's warning us about not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.
And in the context it seems that we're right to conclude that to forsake the assembling
of ourselves together is a discouragement to other Christians.
And we know that that's true, don't we?
We know that's true.
We come to the prayer meeting.
There's only a handful of people.
You go to the Sunday morning service and there's perhaps 10 times, perhaps 20 times what there
was in the prayer meeting in the midweek.
It's a discouragement.
Where are all those people?
You say to yourself.
And the prayer meeting.
Why the great disparity between the worship and the prayer meeting?
It's a discouragement.
People forsake the assembling of themselves.
It's a discouragement.
Why?
Because Christian fellowship is an encouragement to the people of God.
You know it's an amazing thing to think about, isn't it?
But it's worth thinking about that you could even encourage a brother or sister just by
being there.
You don't necessarily have to say anything.
Just by being there.
And just by being absent you could discourage.
And just by being present you can encourage.
Hebrews 10 is teaching exactly those things.
So certainly Christian fellowship.
What a great source of encouragement to Christians.
That's why it's so important for us to seek out fellowship and to give fellowship.
We could talk as well if we had time, we could talk about the hindrances and I'm sure we
could think of many hindrances to Christian fellowship.
Many things that hinder it.
Often our words, our words can hinder encouragement, can discourage, can't they?
Our words, our actions, the scriptures in the New Testament and all sorts of teaching
in the letters that tell us that there are these many other things that can either discourage
or encourage my words.
They can either encourage a brother or they can discourage a brother.
Great power, great power in my words.
My actions, my service for the Lord Jesus.
But perhaps we should conclude by thinking about the nature of Christian encouragement.
What is it exactly?
Well if you can remember the opening chapters of 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 1
is talking about comfort, it's talking about encouragement and Paul is there talking about
how God has comforted him in his trials so that he can comfort someone else.
He calls God the God of all comfort and he talks about how he has found comfort in Christ
and how he's been able to pass that on to somebody else.
And though it's very hard to actually understand how this all works, how does that actually
happen, how does Christ comfort me and how do I comfort someone else, it's very hard
to work out how it all happens, it's mysterious, but there's no doubt that it's real and
it's supernatural.
It's no doubt that we're not talking about something which is a figment of our imagination.
We're not talking about the power of positive thinking.
Well you know let's all just pretend there is such a thing as Christian encouragement.
Let's all try our best to sort of think on the best things and perhaps then we'll be
encouraged.
We're talking about something which is real, supernatural, the scriptures bear testimony
to it, that we can find, we can have infused into our hearts by the grace of God, encouragement
in the midst of the most discouraging circumstances.
Isn't it true to say that the scriptures bear witness of this?
Why can men sing and pray in the middle of the night when their feet and their hands
are in chains in a Philippian jail?
How is it that they can do that?
How is it that the spontaneous outpouring of their heart is an outpouring of joy when
all their circumstances tell another story?
How is it?
It's because of the reality of the supernatural power of the grace of God working in a Christian's
heart.
We're talking about something which is miraculous, mysterious, but it's real.
It's powerful.
It's supernatural.
There is such a thing as Christian encouragement.
Oh, perhaps you think you're going to have to die in this discouraged state.
Perhaps you think everything's so black and dark, there's no end to it, there's
no light at the end of the tunnel.
Oh, I'm just looking for heaven and things will never be any different until I get there.
Well, there is encouragement to be had.
Paul bears testimony to it in Philippians.
He says, if there is any encouragement in Christ, and there is.
Let me tell you a story as I close, true story.
Happened in Scotland around the end of the 19th century, exactly when, I'm not sure.
But a young minister received and accepted a call from a country parish, a very beautiful
part of Scotland, to a church in Glasgow, a church in the inner city, in the slums of
Glasgow.
And he had been there just a few weeks and he decided he would go out and walk and pray
and he walked to where he knew there was a vantage point where he could look down over
the area, which was now his charge.
And he, so he was on a bridge and he walked out along this bridge and he stood in the
middle of the bridge looking down on these row after row of these tenement houses and
he was feeling greatly discouraged.
He was thinking of the rolling green fields and the beautiful scenery and the happy and
lovely time he'd had in the previous place and wondering why he'd ever accepted this
call and he was standing there thinking like this, trying to pray, when all of a sudden
he felt a hand on his shoulder.
And before he had a chance to say anything he heard a voice say to him, look at that.
Just look at that.
What a glorious opportunity.
What a marvellous responsibility.
What a privilege to preach the gospel in such a place.
He turned round and he was met by a man called Thomas Chalmers, who was himself a very well
known minister at that time.
He went away and he thought to himself and as he thought he realised that here were two
men who were both godly and they'd both been looking at the same thing and they'd come
to quite different conclusions about it.
He'd looked down on the houses and he'd felt depressed and discouraged and despairing.
Thomas Chalmers had looked down on the houses and he'd been excited.
He'd seen a glorious opportunity for the gospel.
He'd seen a marvellous blessing of God that the young man would be entrusted with such
a responsibility.
Two men, both godly, looking at the same thing and coming to quite different conclusions.
One was being encouraged by what he saw and one was being discouraged by what he saw.
It's worth thinking about, isn't it?
Because you know very often discouragement is just a perception.
It's a perception.
It's how you see things.
It's how you see things from where you are.
It's whether or not you're looking at things from the point of view of Christ and the gospel
and the power of the Spirit and eternity or whether you're looking at things from a totally
different point of view.
It's just a perception.
And if we take our bearings from eternity, the risen Christ, the wooing and reigning
Christ on his throne, the certain sure promises of Christ, if we take our bearings from the
blessings of the gospel, from the promises of eternal life, from the promise that he
will never leave us and forsake us, if we take our blessings from eternity, they will
go a long way to dissipating our discouragement.
Think of it.
Think of the Son of God binding himself to you, if you're a Christian believer tonight,
the very Son of God binding himself by oath, sealed with his blood, binding himself to
you, to your preservation, to your blessing, to your salvation, bound himself to ever walk
with you, ever live with you, ever stay with you in your heart and ever answer your every
call.
This is what we're talking about when we're talking about this great salvation and this
Christianity and this gospel.
When you focus on those things, you don't feel half so discouraged.
Well, let us pray.
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