As you continue in your study and application
of the biblical principles of spiritual leadership, may
the truth be illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
C.
H.
Spurgeon said on one occasion in addressing ministers
that he believed discouragement was one of the
sharpest weapons in the arsenal of the adversary.
That was his assessment of the situation.
Maybe it's not the sharpest one, but it
certainly can be one that has a very
real and hindering effect on our ministry.
And tonight I want to speak about how
we can meet discouragement in our ministry.
Would you turn, please, to 2 Corinthians 4.
Verse 1.
Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of
God, we do not lose heart.
Verse 16.
So we do not lose heart, though our
outer nature is wasting away.
Our inner nature is being renewed every day.
We do not lose heart.
You know the context in chapter 3, how
Paul had been writing to the Corinthians about
the glory of the new covenant.
That was his theme.
In chapter 3 and verse 18, that very
wonderful verse, Paul shares with us the secret
of sharing in and reflecting the radiance of
Christ.
We all, with unveiled faiths, beholding the glory
of the Lord, are being changed into the
same image from glory to glory.
And this comes from the Lord, who is
the Spirit.
Now there, Paul gives the secret of radiance.
Where does it come from?
The word behold, as you know, can also
mean reflect.
We all, beholding and reflecting the glory of
the Lord, are being changed.
While we behold, the process is going on.
We don't initiate it.
It's not something that depends upon our volition.
While I am spending time beholding the glory
of the God as it's revealed in the
face of Jesus Christ in the scriptures, while
I am doing that, I am being changed
into the same likeness.
And this comes from the Lord, who is
the Spirit.
While I spend time beholding the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ, meditating
upon him, admiring him, longing to be like
him, longing to emulate those things that are
in him, while I am doing that, I
am being changed.
And something of his radiance rubs off on
me.
That's what he's been saying in this very
connection.
And then he proceeds to show that these
and other related truths are a preventative of
discouragement.
I wonder who of us is never tempted
to get discouraged.
They're always discouraging factors, and sometimes they seem
to be in the ascendancy.
Who of us has never been to the
point where we're just about to drop our
bundle and turn it in?
Quite possible that there could be somebody here
tonight who is just on that place, and
the thing you'd like to do would be
to drop your bundle and do something else.
Well, none of us is exempt from the
subtle and debilitating attacks of discouragement.
The Apostle Paul knew something about it, too,
you know.
I was very glad to know that Paul
used to get depressed.
That's cheering.
He said, God, who comforteth those who are
depressed, comforted me through the coming of Titus.
There he was.
He wasn't invulnerable.
He wasn't an impossible saint.
He shared the same infirmities as we do,
but he knew how to get on top
of it.
That's the difference.
Yes, we have the tyranny of our temperaments,
and sometimes that causes us to become discouraged.
We don't seem to be making the progress
in our own inner lives that we long
to.
We seem to be such slow learners, and
we tend to be discouraged.
But here, Paul shares with us the secret,
or some of the secrets, of getting on
top of discouragement.
You may find the task desperately difficult, but
we don't give up.
We keep on going.
We don't get discouraged, another one.
Nothing can daunt us, says another one.
We never collapse, says another one.
Well, here is at least some of the
background of these words.
And if that's going to be so, there
must be very strong motivation.
What is there that's going to keep me
going in the face of all these discouraging
things?
You say, well, Paul, that's all right.
You're quoting Paul, but I'm not Paul.
If I had Paul's background, if I had
Paul's spectacular gifts, if I had Paul's unequal
training, if I shared Paul's success and service,
well, perhaps I wouldn't lose heart either, but
I'm no Paul.
Well, did everything drop into Paul's lap?
Did he have no problems?
Was it very easy for him?
I'll just have a quick look through this
book and see what Paul says about his
experiences.
If you look first at chapter 1 of
2 Corinthians, verse 8, and here Paul says,
We don't want you to be ignorant, brethren,
of the affliction we experienced in Asia.
For we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that
we despaired of life itself.
Why?
We felt we had received the sentence of
death.
Utterly, unbearably crushed.
Chapter 2, verse 4, I wrote you out
of much affliction and anguish of heart and
with many tears.
Chapter 4, verse 8, We are afflicted in
every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, always carrying
in the body the death of Jesus.
Chapter 6, verse 4, Through great endurance in
afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors,
watching, hunger, we are treated as imposters, as
unknown, as dying, as punished, as sorrowful, as
poor, as having nothing.
Chapter 7, verse 5, For even when we
came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest,
but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting
without and fear within.
The Apostle Paul wasn't immune to fear.
He said, I was with you in fear
and in much trembling.
Here is the intrepid apostle.
He knows what it is to go through.
We were afflicted at every turn, fighting without
and fears within.
And then chapter 11, verse 23, Are they
servants of Christ?
I am a better one.
I'm talking like a madman, with far greater
labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, often
near death.
Five times I have received at the hands
of the Jews forty lashes less one.
Three times I have been beaten with rods.
Once I was stoned.
Three times I have been shipwrecked.
A night and a day I've been adrift
at sea on frequent journeys in danger from
rivers, from robbers, from my own people, from
Gentiles, in the city, in the wilderness, at
sea, from false brethren, in toil and hardship,
through many a sleepless night, in hunger and
thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
And, apart from other things, there is the
daily pressure of my anxiety for all the
churches.
Hmm.
It didn't all come easy to Paul, and
yet, see he's written all this in this
book, in this one letter, he knew what
he'd been through, and yet he says, we
never lose heart.
In spite of all that comes, it doesn't
make any difference.
I've learned some of the secrets that enable
me to rise above discouragement.
Well, I think a few of those things
would have been quite enough to discourage me.
What about you?
And yet, look at the way this remarkable
man rose above his circumstances.
A mounting crescendo of trials.
And when we think of that, how our
petty problems seem very trivial, don't they?
But never mind.
Paul didn't learn that all at once.
That didn't come the first day he was
converted.
He said, I have learned the secret.
He had to learn by experience, and I'm
quite sure that he had his favors as
well as the repeated.
But he said, God who comforts those who
are depressed, he's there to comfort us.
And the comfort of God is not cuddling.
Comfort is to make us strong together with.
That's the idea of our word comfort, to
make us strong.
When God comforts us, it puts starch into
us.
It stiffens our backbone.
Paul wasn't spared the normal educational and disciplinary
processes and experiences of life.
And because of that, he said, I have
learned.
Longfellow said, Discouraged in the work of life,
disheartened by its load, shamed by its failures
or its fears, I sink beside the road.
But let me only think of thee, and
then new hearts springs up in me.
Now, how did Paul rise about this discouragement?
Why did he?
What were the factors that enabled him to
do it?
Well, the first one you find in chapter
4 and verse 1.
He was entrusted with a ministry.
Having this ministry by the mercy of God,
we do not lose heart.
Paul realized that his being in the ministry
was one of the most marvelous things that
had ever happened.
He said, How can God make use of
me?
I persecuted the church of God.
But he said, God was merciful to me.
He had mercy on me.
And I'm in the ministry because of his
mercy.
That's why.
And isn't it true?
If it hadn't been for the mercy of
God, would you be where you are, or
I?
No, not one of us.
We obtain mercy.
And we have been entrusted with a ministry.
The New English Bible says, We have been
entrusted with this commission.
What is the commission?
The New Covenant.
We're not self-appointed people.
We're not self-made people.
You remember Paul had said in the earlier
verses that it was God who has made
us competent as ministers of the New Covenant.
Didn't we make ourselves?
There are no such things as self-made
men in God's economy.
It's God who makes us.
He made us.
If we're able ministers of the New Covenant,
He's done it.
We've allowed Him to do it.
We've cooperated.
But He's the one who has made us
effective ministers of the New Covenant.
We don't deserve it.
It's all His mercy and all His grace.
And Paul says, Here am I, the persecutor
who persecuted the church of God.
And by His mercy, He's entrusted me with
a ministry like this.
And I can go around the world and
tell people who failed and failed dismally that
there is a New Covenant they can live
under.
A covenant that was sealed with the blood
of Christ.
And they can live a totally new life.
My brothers, my sisters, this is the ministry
that's entrusted to us.
We ought to get excited about it, shouldn't
we?
Paul says, No wonder we don't lose heart
with a message like this.
And this is our message.
Holding the promise with the Holy Spirit would
impart to us not only the desire, but
also the power to fulfill God's purpose.
So that's the first reason why we don't
lose heart.
Because we've been entrusted with the ministry of
the New Covenant.
Then the second one.
Chapter 4, verse 16.
So we do not lose heart.
Even though our outer nature is wasting away,
our inner nature is being renewed every day.
Entrusted with a ministry.
Endowed with new strength.
Our inner man is renewed every day.
Though we're outwardly wasting away, the old body
is gradually disintegrating with some of us faster
than others.
But that's all right, Paul says.
The important thing is not the body, it's
what's in the body.
And though our outer man is wasting, yet
our inner man is being renewed every day.
Paul was reviewing his soul-winning ministry with
all the perils, with all the burdens.
I wonder how that little body of his
stood all that terrible battering.
If anybody could say our outer man is
wasting, surely he had grounds for it.
And yet, there he is.
It was a victory of the spirit.
It was the spirit of the man.
Even though that's happening, and my poor old
body's wracked with pain, yet that's secondary.
Why, my inner man, every day I am
receiving new accessions of strength through the indwelling
spirit of God.
And I believe he only got as much
new strength as he appropriated from God.
I don't think it was just an automatic
thing.
The spiritual principle is according to your faith,
be it unto you.
And I think it was only as he
personally appropriated every day strength for the task
of the day that he got through.
And many of us have never yet learned
that lesson.
That's why we make such heavy weather on
it.
Instead of laying hold on the strength that
the Lord will give, we go in our
own strength and he lets us go.
Paul shared something else.
He said, I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me.
He laid hold on the strength that was
available.
My inner man experiencing inward renewal.
There was the process of decay and deterioration
going on in his body.
But he says at the same time there's
a counter process going on.
And I'm being renewed every day.
No wonder we don't give up, he said,
since I've got this resource.
No need for me to give up.
There is always fresh strength available for me.
And another very interesting thing is that God
used the very processes that produce decay in
the outer nature to bring forth strength in
the new nature.
God's a marvelous alchemist.
He changes things like that.
And the very thing that the devil would
like to use to get us down is
the thing the Lord uses to build us
up again.
No wonder we don't give up.
I don't think Paul received special favors from
God.
I don't think he had anything that's not
available to every one of us.
I think that's clear from Scripture.
There is no favorite with God.
Everybody is on exactly the same basis as
regards spiritual blessings.
God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in Christ.
Not a promise.
He doesn't promise that he will bless us.
He says, I have done that.
When I gave you Christ, I gave you
every spiritual blessing and you get as many
of those blessings which are yours potentially.
You get as many of them as you
take and appropriate for yourself.
And this was one of Paul's great secrets.
God has blessed us.
And because Paul daily appropriated new strength to
meet the new demands, that was why he
didn't lose heart.
Our Heavenly Father knows all the stresses and
strains of the ministry.
And he's not indifferent to it.
He knows the stresses and strains of a
pastor's wife and how real they are.
And I know that very often there is
even a heavier burden on a pastor's wife
than there is on the pastor himself.
And the congregation very often don't realize it
and don't make too much allowances for it.
But it's true.
But our Father knows all about that.
And there is daily renewal possible.
Our inward man is being renewed every day.
It's the inner man that's being renewed.
The outer man may get tired.
You know, I think that being tired for
God is rather a wonderful thing.
Why shouldn't we be tired for God?
Do athletes ever get tired in sport?
Ever get tired after a football match?
When they're running a race, do they get
tired?
Do worldly people ever get tired dancing or
spending a night that way?
Get tired?
Why shouldn't we get tired for God?
Is there anyone better to get tired for?
Don't be too afraid and don't spray yourself.
I think it does us good sometimes to
get really tired in the Lord's service.
It's rather interesting when you read that passage
in chapter 4 and verse 17, you notice
the paradoxes.
It says, Our inner nature is being renewed
every day, for this slight momentary affliction is
preparing for us an eternal weight of glory
beyond all comparison.
Because we look not to the things that
are seen, but to the things that are
unseen.
The things that are seen are transient, but
the things that are unseen are eternal.
You notice the paradoxes.
The heavy burden, he says, is light.
The ethereal glory is a weight.
The seemingly endless period of trial is momentary.
And then, in addition to that, the momentary
affliction brings an eternal weight of glory.
Paul had a marvelous way of condensing a
tremendous amount of truth in the minimum of
words.
That was the old Greek ideal, a notion
of truth in a drop of words.
And so he's done this here.
The heavy burden, when you approach it from
the right angle, the heavy burden is light.
The ethereal glory, why, it's mounting up, it's
heavy.
The seemingly endless trial is only momentary.
And then the momentary affliction, why, it brings
an eternal weight of glory.
And so here Paul builds up the picture.
You wonder that we don't lose heart when
all these things are true.
I am every day renewed in my inner
man.
Now, it's not that I have occasional crises
and high experiences in life when I receive
a new infusion of strength that will last
for a few days.
He says my inner man is being renewed
every day.
And it doesn't matter what tomorrow brings or
the next day or the day after.
There is awaiting your appropriation the adequate strength
and power of God.
So we do not lose heart.
We have been endowed with new strength.
In the third one, chapter five, verses five
and six, it is God himself who has
made us ready for this change and has
given us the Spirit a part payment and
promise of more.
So we are of good heart always.
These statements of Paul are very strong statements.
He doesn't say we are generally in good
heart.
He said no, we are in good heart
always.
Here is a general principle that enables me
to maintain a steadily encouraged experience.
Why was he able to be of good
heart always?
Because, this is the third one, he was
endued with the Spirit.
That is the reason why God has given
us the Spirit, a part payment and promise
of more to follow.
That is what the word earnest means, isn't
it?
An engagement ring is a part payment and
promise of more.
At least I hope that you have prayed
paid for it.
But you know what I mean.
The engagement ring is a promise of a
much richer and fuller experience to come.
And that is what it says here.
Paul is saying God has given us the
Holy Spirit.
But what we have had up to now
is only part payment.
It is only just an installment on account.
And this promise of more.
I stood not very long ago at the
banks of Niagara, just you know where that
water goes over just under your feet there.
And I watched it rushing down.
I thought of this verse of scripture, part
payment and promise of more.
There is it going on.
But look up the river, there it is
flooding down.
What tremendous possibilities.
This is the kind of picture Paul is
giving.
Why?
God has given us the Holy Spirit with
all his might, with all his power.
And what we have received up to now,
our highest experience of the Holy Spirit is
just the beginning.
Why?
There are endless possibilities ahead.
He is always lifting our sights.
In chapter 3 and verse 18 where he
says we are being changed into the same
image.
He doesn't stop there.
He says from glory to glory to glory
to glory.
You can see the mountain ranges come to
you.
They are one after the other.
When you get to the top of one,
there is another one coming.
And he depicts the Christian life in those
kind of terms.
And the gift of the Holy Spirit is
not something that you see once for all
and that's the end of it.
No.
Promise of more.
There is infinitely more he can do in
your life.
And infinitely more he can work through your
ministry.
Part payment and promise of more to follow.
You see, it wasn't Paul's circumstances that enabled
him to rise above his discouragements.
What was it?
The coming of the Comforter.
The one who made him strong.
This became Paul's joy and confidence because he
knew that within him was the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of God.
And the presence of his, and his presence
in ministry kept Paul strong and confident.
And he knew that because the Holy Spirit
was always active, and that's one of the
thoughts that grips me constantly, the Holy Spirit
is always working.
We go to sleep, he doesn't.
We pray for someone.
We go to sleep and forget the person,
but the Spirit of God doesn't.
He's ceaselessly working.
And Paul counted on the ceaseless working of
the Holy Spirit within him.
And he said, this keeps me from despair
and discouragement because I have dwelling within me
the Holy Spirit who is the reticulating wires
for the power of God.
And then the fourth reason why we need
not lose heart, you find it in chapter
5, verse 7 and 8.
We have to walk by faith, not by
sight, but we are in good heart and
are quite content to leave the body behind
and go home to the Lord.
Now, Paul had just written chapter 4 and
verse 18.
Look at that too.
He says, because we look not to the
things that are seen, but to the things
that are unseen, for the things that are
seen are transient, but the things that are
unseen are eternal.
I think this was the fourth thing.
Paul was engrossed with the eternal.
He wasn't seeing merely the circumstances around him.
If Paul had his eyes on the circumstances
and had his eyes on his own experiences
and his own prospective sufferings because he knew
there was more ahead, he wouldn't have been
a very good heart.
But he said, no, I don't keep my
eyes on those things.
He said, I look to the things that
are not seen, the things that are eternal.
They are the important things.
And I'm to walk by faith and not
by sight.
And because when I'm doing that, I can
be of good heart.
You know what happened when Peter walked by
sight instead of by faith.
You know what happened.
It wasn't very long before he was plunging
into the deep.
And when we gaze around us, you look
around in the world today, anything very much
to keep you from getting discouraged?
No.
Think of the political situation.
Think of the industrial chaos.
Think of the economic instability.
Think of the war and the crime and
the violence.
We look at the things that are seen.
You ever read the paper and said, why
ever do I read the newspaper?
Ever said that?
Ever felt it?
You never get very uplifted by it, do
you?
You're looking at the things that are seen,
but you need to just lift your gaze
a bit and see the things that are
seen are transient.
But the things that are unseen, they are
eternal.
And if we keep our eyes fixed on
the things that are around us, it means
that we are going to get encouraged.
So there were four things.
What was the first one?
Paul didn't lose heart because he was entrusted
with a ministry.
He didn't lose heart because he was endowed
with new strength every day.
He didn't lose heart because he was imbued
with the Spirit, with part payment and promise
of more.
He didn't lose heart because he wasn't looking
at circumstances around him.
He was engrossed with the eternal, walking by
faith and not by sight.
But there's one more.
It's not in this passage, but you'll find
it in Galatians 6 and verse 9.
It says, Let us not grow tired in
doing right.
For when the time comes, if we do
not lose heart, we shall reap.
The fifth one is, encouraged by the assurance
of harvest.
We do not lose heart.
I suppose there are a few things that
are a more fruitful cause of discouragement for
the pastor, the Christian worker, than lack of
visible results.
How discouraging it is.
You work and work and work.
I remember when we entered to the countries
of Asia after we left China, and in
the early days we went into places, tried
to go to places where there was no
work being done, nor little work being done.
Mr. Street here tonight went to Japan, to
the Hokkaido, to places where many places there
was no work whatsoever.
We tried to go to those places.
In those early days there was plenty of
sowing and very little reaping.
It was tough and difficult.
I remember at that time I read three
or four missionary biographies of the early days
of missions.
I was absolutely astounded to find out that
in each of those four biographies, it was
seven years before there was a single response
in those fields.
Not a soul saved.
You take Robert Moffat in Betjuanaland, David Livingstone's
father-in-law.
He went there and he worked for seven
years and nothing happened.
His church in Scotland wrote to him one
day, or in the middle of the year,
it used to take about six months for
it to mail to your bank.
They said, we want to send you a
present of Christmas.
What would you like us to send you?
Robert Moffat wrote back.
He said, I would like you to send
me a communion service.
Communion service, what for?
There were no believers.
That was Robert Moffat's shout of faith.
What was he saying?
I am believing God that by the time
that communion service arrives there will be believers
who will meet with me around the Lord's
table.
That's what he was saying.
He really took a step of faith.
And what happened?
At Christmas time when the communion service arrived
there were believers who met with him around
the Lord's table.
But in each of those cases, seven years,
and not a single soul.
I read of something that was even more
astounding than that.
If you had Andrew Murray for your brother,
you would think you would have a pretty
fruitful ministry, wouldn't you?
You'd say, Boy, he can pray.
But do you know that Andrew Murray's brother
worked a lifetime and saw no fruit in
his field.
But not long after he died revival swept
the whole area.
And God entrusted that man without seeing a
single, that was walking by faith and not
by sight, wasn't it?
I hope God doesn't do that with you.
He doesn't do it.
Most of us are not fit to be
trusted with something like that.
But there it is.
It's...
The Lord expects us to walk by faith
and not by sight.
And when we don't see visible evidences of
success we tend to drop our bundle or
become discouraged.
But when you come to think of it
is it not true that there is always
a period of time between the sowing and
the reaping?
We expect that.
And this verse says let us not grow
tired in doing right for when the time
comes if we do not lose heart we'll
reap.
Here is the assurance it's sure it's going
to come.
There is a time between sowing and reaping.
Sometimes the Lord expects us to sow in
faith without seeing.
But generally speaking he's so gracious that he
allows us to reap some as well as
sow.
But sometimes he entrusts us with a period
in which there is no visible sign.
But that doesn't mean that there's nothing going
on underneath.
Why?
It is going on.
But you notice what this verse says.
It says when the time comes we shall
reap if we do not lose heart.
There is a time.
And we lose heart sometimes because we don't
respect the sovereignty of God.
I don't understand for a moment why God
works in blessing in one place and not
another when it would seem that there are
equally faithful prayerful sacrificial workers.
And yet that's what happens.
But God's got his own timetable.
And when the time comes when the proper
time comes one rendering has.
When the proper time comes when God comes
it's all right.
The germinating process has been going on underneath.
Doesn't mean the work's been going on.
And the harvest is certain.
If you don't lose heart you shall reap.
You know that psalm he that goes to
and fro weeping carrying his bag of seed
shall indeed come again with a shout of
joy bringing his sheaves with him.
He that goes to and fro even weeping.
I don't know that we get far enough
on to do much weeping.
But even if we do the promise is
sure.
He shall come.
And when he comes it's going to be
shouts of joy and it's going to be
our sheaves with us.
So we do not lose heart.
We don't collect.
We don't give up.
We count upon the gracious ministry of the
Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
We daily appropriate the new strength which is
available to us.
We are filled with wonder that we've been
entrusted with such a ministry of the new
covenant.
We don't get our sight on the things
around us and the discouraging things in the
people we're working with or in the world.
We're engrossed with the eternal.
And because of that we have the assurance
that in due season at the proper time
we shall reap if we do not lose
heart.
So my brothers, my sisters don't lose heart.