We Will Not Lose Heart

The Shepherd's Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shepherd Church podcast. My name is Kendall. It's Saturday, March 21st

00:08

And I'm coming to you from my office in Lowell, Massachusetts social distancing at its best

00:14

This is our second week obviously without public gatherings And this is the second week in a row that I've had to record these online

00:22

Sermons and just as a little bit of an update tomorrow for the second week in a row We're gonna be doing our online prayer service

00:29

So if you'd like to join us, all you have to do is follow the link that I gave you in your email I also think you can get that on Facebook and all you have to do is log in tomorrow morning at 9 o 'clock a .m

00:40

sign in and We will join together to pray And the reason that we're doing an online prayer service instead of an online worship service or a live stream or anything like that is because We want the body of Christ right now to come together and to participate in prayer

00:58

You and I can watch live streams and I'm sure that that has value but what we really need right now is not a church

01:03

Full of spectators, but we need a church that is filled with participators We need to come together right now because times are hard And because all of us need one another

01:16

We need one another so that we will be encouraged we need one another so that we won't live in our heads and And we need one another so that we can point each other to Christ and to the beautiful hope that we have in the gospel

01:30

And that's really the focus of why we're doing an online prayer service and that's the focus of why

01:36

I wanted to speak with you today You see what I wanted to remind you about today is

01:43

That you can have hope During all of this that is going on.

01:48

You can have hope But I'll say this hope in the Bible is

01:54

Different from the hope you might be looking for out in the world or from the the hope that you might have been expecting

02:02

You see hope in the Bible is not the end of the corona virus

02:09

It's not the cessation of your troubles It's not everything going back to the way that it used to be

02:19

Biblical hope is different Biblical hope in this life

02:27

Is much different than what the world Believes that biblical hope or that hope in general should be and we're gonna explore that for just a moment

02:35

And we're gonna do that by turning the second Corinthians 4 Verses 16 through 18.

02:42

So if you will turn there with me as we look at what does it mean to have hope? Especially as you and I are going through all of these things that we're going through right now

02:53

Paul says this Therefore We do not lose heart, but there are outer man is decaying

03:06

Yet our inner man is being renewed day by day For this momentary and light affliction is

03:16

Is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison

03:27

While we look not at the things which are seen But at the things which are not seen

03:36

For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal

03:42

Let's pray Father I pray that this verse

03:49

Would be used to encourage your church Lord I pray that this verse would cause us to have hope

03:56

In the midst of all the trials in the midst of all the pain in the midst of all the frustrations In the midst of everything that's going on I pray

04:05

Lord by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would use this verse To buttress

04:13

Your wounded Saints and to establish them in your love and in your grace and in your mercy

04:22

And that all of us Who are listening to this? Would have hope it's in Christ's name we pray.

04:33

Amen Now remember we just said that biblical hope is a little bit different than worldly hope

04:42

Biblical hope does not begin with well -wishing biblical Hope does not begin with with dreaming and fantasizing about when the pain is gonna be over Biblical hope begins with a simple acknowledgement

04:54

That Paul gives us here in this text. We will not lose heart

05:01

We're not gonna do it. We will not lose heart you see biblical hope

05:08

Begins with this firm resolved commitment This persistent mental approach to life that no matter what is happening right now

05:18

No matter what is going on in the world, no matter what is currently afflicting us.

05:24

We will not lose heart That's what you have to say right from the very beginning.

05:30

I will not lose heart Even when the world around me is decaying

05:37

Even when the stock market is collapsing Although this economy seems like it's eroding

05:45

Our businesses are in trouble of failing our jobs might currently be tanking

05:52

Whatever it is right now that seems to be sliding out of your grasp

06:01

Biblical hope is not Waiting for things to improve it is not waiting for the pain to cease

06:10

Biblical hope is the firm acknowledgment that we will not lose heart this thing this situation

06:21

This problem that I'm going through that's that's causing me to despair. I will not lose heart.

06:28

I will hope in God and The reason that I can do that and the reason that you can do that is not because we have some sort of blind

06:42

Positivism that just says I'm in pain, but I'm gonna pretend like I'm not that's not what Paul is saying

06:47

Paul is saying that we can have hope because He says though our outer man is decaying

06:55

Yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. You can have hope You don't have to lose heart because although the outer man is

07:06

Raging the inner woman emotions that you're going through are frustrating and pervasive

07:14

Though our situations are changing in the world around us has fallen apart We don't have to lose heart because the inner man the inner woman is

07:23

Being renewed by God day by day You see this is a striking

07:30

Acknowledgement here by Paul because while the inner man and the inner woman is For the outer man and the outer woman is decaying.

07:38

That means Everything on the outside can be going wrong. The inner man according to Paul is being renewed day by day

07:44

He is saying take your eyes off of the decaying situation that is going on outside of you

07:50

Take your eyes off of the painful circumstances That are happening to you

07:57

Take your eyes off of the things that's making you worry. That's making you scared. Take your eyes off this coronavirus

08:02

Off the news and off the media and off the world and out of and take your eyes off all the fear that is being pumped into your screens and Fix your eyes on something that is certain

08:15

Look at what God is doing in you instead of what is going on outside of you

08:20

That's what Paul's saying. Look at the inner man the inner woman the one that the

08:28

Spirit of God is moving in and renewing and Then you will have hope

08:35

You see as uncertain as everything is right now in these times

08:41

Every day the situation seems like it's getting worse and it's changing and it's and it's frustrating and it's it causes anxiety

08:49

Don't look at that Look at what God is doing in you

08:56

Look at what God has been doing over the course of your life if you're a Christian my dear friend

09:04

You are not who you once were You don't look the same as you once did you don't think the same you don't have the same values that you once had

09:18

Before you knew Christ Maybe you were this that and the other thing Maybe someone could accuse you of being this or that But when the

09:28

Holy Spirit got a hold of you When he came inside of you, he started changing you

09:35

He started changing your language and overturning your habits and redefining your hobbies and reinventing the things that you found

09:42

Entertaining he started piece by piece by piece Changing the way that you do everything in your life the way that you interact with others the way that you think about ethics and morality

09:54

He started giving you a heightened sense of passion for God that you didn't have before you knew him

10:01

He started making you hate and despise your sin he started making you love and have affections for Jesus your

10:08

Savior He started making you long for God and a yearn for prayer and to desire the

10:14

Word of God Which are things that you could not do to yourself You see we might have spent a lifetime trying to self -improve or make ourselves better, but none of that had any effect

10:28

All of those things were external religious modifications on to our life There were things are outside of us.

10:34

There were things that we were trying to do to ourselves But look at what God has done in you now that you have the

10:40

Spirit of God dwelling within you It's different What's going on in you and what's going on in me cannot be explained by discipline

10:49

It cannot be explained by life experience It cannot be explained by wisdom or herd instinct or anything else

10:57

It can only be explained by the hand of God at work in your and my

11:03

Life and because of that we can have hope Though the outer man and woman is decaying around us something

11:14

Otherworldly something from eternity something by the hand of God is going on inside of you

11:20

And it's fueled by his power at work in you not motivated by your effort So because of that you can not lose heart

11:31

You can have hope because God is working in you He hasn't forgotten you

11:40

He hasn't abandoned you And trust me while it is hard to notice on a day to day basis

11:49

That God is working in you and moving in you and changing and remaking While that's hard to notice it's almost like watching grass grow or watching paint dry

11:59

I get it, it's difficult for us to see these things that are happening on a day to day basis

12:04

But what I want you to do is I want you to stop looking at the minute to minute circumstances That are going on around you and I want you to widen your gaze

12:13

Across the whole of your life with Christ And I want you to see something different is going on there

12:21

The wind goes left and right as it wishes Momentary circumstances will fade but there is something certain

12:28

And there is something permanent that is in you that is happening in you That is the Holy Spirit at work in you

12:34

So what you can know from that is that you don't have to lose heart in that Because God has not abandoned you

12:40

He is with you He is working on you and these light and momentary afflictions are not going to crush you

12:48

Look at what Paul says For this momentary and light afflictions

12:56

Are producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison

13:05

In the one breath Paul can say do not lose heart Because in the next he will say because these afflictions are light and momentary

13:17

And by that he is not saying that the things that you are going through are trivial or insignificant

13:23

That is not what he is saying They are momentary because in comparison to eternity

13:32

Everything we go through right now is no greater than a grain of sand In comparison to all the earth and 10 ,000 earths deserts

13:42

That disease that maybe you have been struggling with since you were a child Is but a momentary affliction do not lose heart

13:51

This virus that is currently quarantining all of us at home and is going all across the world is momentary

13:59

It is a vapor in light of eternity It is a breath among all the breaths that a human will breathe in their life in light of eternity

14:09

So do not lose heart Do not lose heart

14:17

Because God is renewing you Day by day

14:24

He is shaping you With these momentary pains

14:31

He is crafting Eternity in you out of these momentary temporary afflictions

14:41

And while I know that these trials Are totally significant I know that they hurt

14:48

I know that they have caused you pain I know that caused you to fear

14:54

I know that caused you to hurt and I know that caused you Distress But I want you to remember

15:02

That in the mends of eternity what we are now going through is but a mist in a vapor that will soon disappear

15:14

These sufferings are also light They're light Again Paul is not trivializing our suffering here

15:25

He's not saying suck it up big boy He's not saying put your big boy pants on or put your big girl pants on he's not saying you know just shut up and deal with it that's not what

15:36

Paul saying Paul is saying do not lose heart because these things are not bigger than God in comparison to the weight of God's glory these things are light in comparison

15:51

You have to understand what Paul is doing here he is not saying that your suffering is meaningless He's saying that in comparison to the weight of glory that God is preparing for you

16:03

These things are light But they're not meaningless They are small in comparison to eternity but then but they don't lack purpose

16:15

And while this sounds like a paradox to us it's not All of these things are light all of these things are momentary and all of them have purpose and all of them have significance

16:29

Your pain right now has significance It's not wasted

16:36

How Look at how Paul finishes the thought in verse 17 For this momentary and light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory

16:49

It's producing something in us It's not wasted Paul is saying do not lose hope we will not lose heart because these light and these momentary afflictions are producing something in us

17:05

God is using them Which means that none of our suffering is meaningless none of it is trivial

17:12

Every second of your pain has a purpose in the economy of God God is taking all of the suffering and misery that you've gone through over the course of your entire life

17:22

Every dark spot every blight every momentary weakness and all of those frustrations and fears that you're going through right now

17:30

And he is producing inside of you an eternal weight of glory He is producing eternity inside of you and none of your suffering is meaningless

17:42

And he's using all of it Right now to conform you into the image of Christ to prepare you for an eternity with Christ so that for all of eternity you can enjoy

17:53

Christ forever You see very often we lose hope and we lose heart because we cannot see what

18:01

God is doing with our suffering We go through pain and we feel like God is distant we feel all of these things and we can't see the purpose behind it

18:11

We can't see what God is doing behind it but look what Paul says He says we do not look at the things that are seen but we look to the things that are unseen

18:23

For the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal

18:28

Paul is saying I get it guys I know that you can't fully comprehend what

18:34

God is doing right now But do not look at the things that are seen do not look at the things that are earthly Do not look at the pain and the afflictions and the trials and the sorrows and everything else that is going on around you

18:45

Don't look to the seen look to the unseen God is using all of these pains and unseen ways

18:59

All of these tears to form you into the man and the woman who is going to spend an eternity with him in heaven

19:07

None of it is meaningless even if you can't see it Don't fix your eyes on what is going on around you look above it look beyond it

19:21

Look past everything that currently is plaguing you and look beyond all of it to what

19:27

God is doing with it If your grandpa dies if your marriage feels like that it's falling apart around you

19:38

When a pandemic makes it hard for you to stay in business or if you're worried about paying your bills

19:44

When you are hit on every single side of your life don't look at that Look beyond it to what

19:52

God is doing with it and don't lose heart because you can know that that God is using it

20:00

Every second of your pain is being used by God to prepare you for an eternal weight of glory

20:11

So what I want you to do is I want you to remember that God has not abandoned you

20:22

I want you to remember that God has not forgotten you in your pain

20:27

He has not forgotten you in your suffering He's using it He's working in it

20:37

He hasn't left you alone But he's redeemed you through it

20:44

This same Lord who left heaven in order to come to earth This same

20:49

Lord who was betrayed and nailed to a wooden cross to save you To purchase you

20:57

It's the same Lord right now who is with you to redeem you and to reshape you and remake you

21:07

And to prepare you for an eternity with him So do not lose heart

21:17

Let us pray Father I thank you so much for this church and I thank you for our people

21:29

Lord I pray that you would help us not to lose heart

21:37

You would help us to have confidence That you would help us no matter what you are going to call us to walk through This week, next month, this decade, and over the course of the rest of our life, whatever it is

21:57

Lord help us to have that firm unshakable confidence Lord let us understand what it means to have joy in suffering

22:08

Lord let us know what it means to have joy even while we bring pain

22:16

Even when we struggle Because we know that you are presently working in it and using it

22:25

To produce an eternal weight of glory inside of each and every one of us