3 Encouragements When Things Look Bleak
It would be easy to think that the Apostle Paul never had the sort of worries that the rest of us do. But occasionally, we get little reminders that he wasn’t superhuman.
For example, in Act 18, the Lord appeared to Paul one night in a vision and said: ‘Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city' (NASB). Calvin comments that Paul was ready to faint until the Lord appeared to him and set up on his feet again.
We see a similar example in Acts 23:11: ‘The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage”’. The Lord wouldn’t have stood by him and said that if Paul hadn’t been starting to waver. If he hadn’t been starting to doubt.
And no wonder!
In the space of about 24 hours Paul has been dragged out of the temple (21:36), with his life only spared because Roman soldiers rushed in to stop the crowd lynching him. Just before he’s taken into the barracks, he persuades the tribune to let him speak to the people, which goes well until the point where he tells them about God sending him to the Gentiles. At that point, the tribune orders Paul to be flogged, to try and find out what the uproar was about.
So Paul has gone from being about to be killed, to being about to be tortured. Yet even in the midst of it, he seems fairly assured and unflappable. He calmly asks the tribune if it’s lawful for him to flog a Roman citizen (knowing, of course, that it isn’t). He responds to Ananias the high priest in the style of an Old Testament prophet – before he realises who he is. Then in he cleverly plays the Pharisees and the Sadducees off each other by mentioning the resurrection.
Things then turn violent again, and it looks like Paul is going to be torn to pieces. The soldiers are sent in again to take him by force and bring him into the barracks. And at this point, it’s as if everything catches up with Paul.
The lights are off.
He’s on his own.
It’s not hard to imagine the doubts and fears flooding in.
He’d longed to get to Rome. He’d written to the Christians in Rome and asked them to strive together with him in their prayers, that he might be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that by God’s will he might come to them with joy and be refreshed in their company (Rom. 15:32). But now, the prospect of him getting to Rome and fellowshipping with Christians there seems bleak.
He’s alone. Things in Jerusalem haven’t gone the way he’d hoped.
But at that moment the Lord stands by him to comfort him. And we can take 3 encouragements from that:
1. The Lord knows where you are
The story is told of someone visiting John Bunyan in jail. When the visitor arrived, he said to Bunyan, “Friend, the Lord sent me to you, and I have been searching half the prisons in England to try and find you.” “No” said Bunyan, “that can’t be; for if the Lord had sent you to me, you would have come here at once, for he knows I have been here for years”.
It was a great comfort to Bunyan that the Lord knew where he was. And that’s true for Paul here. The Lord could come and stand by him – because he knew where he was. And he knows where you are too. You might wonder how you've ended up where you are. But God has you where he wants you.
The words: ‘I know where you live’ can either be comforting or threatening. In fact, coming from the words of a human being, they’re often threatening. But in Jesus’s mouth, ‘I know where you live’ is full of comfort.
He writes to the church in Pergamum: ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith’.
He knows where you are – and he knows the particular trial you’re going through.
Spurgeon says: ‘if you are a worker for the Lord Jesus, depend upon it he will not desert you. If, in the course of your endeavours, you are brought into sadness and depression, you shall then find it sweetly true that the Lord stands by you’.
2. The Lord sees your work for him
What’s the next thing the Lord says in v11? ‘As you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem’.
Paul had testified about Jesus in Jerusalem. And the Lord knew. As the Lord Jesus says repeatedly to the 7 churches of Asia: “I know your works”. For some of those churches in Revelation, that’s a positive thing, and for others it’s not. But for Paul, it’s a good thing. The Lord Jesus is saying to him: ‘I know your works – that you have testified about me in Jerusalem’.
Isn’t that wonderful to remember? The Lord knows your work for him.
Others may not see it. Or they may not value it. Or they may question your motives. Or seek – deliberately or otherwise – to pull up what you’ve sown, and tear down what you’ve built. But the Lord knows your works.
‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first’.
‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name’.
One day we trust we will hear those words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’. But even now – he sees our work for him. That work may be undervalued by the world. It may even be undervalued by many in the church. But he sees it.
I heard recently of an elder who passed away from motor neurone disease (ALS). Yet from the day he was diagnosed until the day he died, he never missed church. On the last Lord’s Day of his life he was at worship. Just as he had been when my friend’s parents met him a couple of weeks before. Confined to a wheelchair. On oxygen. Unable to lift his head. And yet he was there he was in the place where God’s people met to worship. How many in his city, with a metro area of 3 million people, do you think noticed? But Heaven noticed.
Isaiah 49:4 contains words that are particularly amazing, because they are a prophecy of the Lord Jesus:
‘But I said, “I have laboured in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the LORD,
and my recompense with my God.”
You may feel that you have laboured in vain and spent your strength for nothing and vanity. But the Lord sees your work for him.
Spurgeon says: ‘It may be that your conscience makes you more familiar with your faults than with your services, and you rather sigh than sing as you look back upon your Christian life; yet your loving Lord covers all your failures, and commends you for what his grace has enabled you to do’.
3. The Lord isn’t finished with you yet
Notice how v. 11 finishes: ‘As you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome’.
The Lord Jesus appears to Paul and tells him that this isn’t the end of the road. That he is going to reach Rome. Because he has work for him to do there too.
Now, none of us are going to be told by the Lord Jesus in so many words that he still has a specific thing for us to do. But we can all be sure that he isn’t finished with us yet. Why? Because we’re immortal until our work is done. And if we’re still here. If he hasn’t called us home. It means he’s still got work for us to do.
Spurgeon says: ‘Brace yourself up, O weary, working brother, for your day’s work is not over yet, and your sun cannot go down till, like Joshua, you have finished your conflict with Amalek’.
John Sprott joined our congregation in Stranraer as a young man in the 1800s before emigrating to Canada and becoming a pioneering minister there. He travelled many thousands of miles, often taking his life in his hands. When he retired at age 70, he said that if he was young again he would cheerfully go through the world to preach the gospel. But, he said ‘my eyes shall soon be dim…and my voice no longer heard in the living world’. And then he said: ‘I can expect only a few more strokes at Satan’s kingdom’. He knew his time was short. But he wanted to die with his axe in his hand, whacking at Satan’s kingdom.
We can be ready to write ourselves off before the time. But to quote Spurgeon once more: 'Possibly not one half of your work is even begun, and therefore you will rise again from sickness, you will soar above depression, and you will do more for the Lord than ever. It will yet be said to you, as to the church in Thyatira that your latter works exceed the first'.
Humanly speaking, it doesn’t look like Paul is going to get out of Acts 23 alive. In v12 the Jews bind themselves with an oath not to eat or drink till they had killed him. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a chapter 24 of Acts. But the Lord had planned for Paul to testify about him in Rome. And no power of hell or scheme of man was going to stop that happening.
So take heart, brothers and sisters.
When the fears and doubts come rushing in. When the future looks bleak.
The Lord knows where you are
The Lord sees your work for him
And the Lord isn’t finished with you yet.
