Sermon Tone Analysis

BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE

You might be encouraged to know that it is not only normal, but it is even Godlike, and Christlike, to get discouraged once in awhile.

God got so discouraged with the wickedness of man that Gen. 6:6 says, "The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain."

How great must be the pain great enough to fill the heart of God.

Jesus experienced this same pain filled heart over the blindness and rebellion of the leaders of Israel, and He wept over Jerusalem.

Discouragement is one of the costs God was willing to risk to make a free willed creature like man.

The result has been that God has had to endure a great deal of discouragement.

His own chosen people have failed Him so often that you could reduce the Old Testament in half almost if you removed all of the lamentation and judgment God had to inflict on them for their disobedience.

It is discouraging to be an all wise God trying to get your will done through unwise and foolish men.

It is discouraging to be an all powerful God trying to get your will accomplished through weak and unfaithful men.

You might think it is a snap to be God, but that is not the picture the Bible gives us.

The Bible reveals, over and over again, how difficult and costly it is to be the Creator and Redeemer of men.

In our superficial understanding of the sovereignty of God, we think He has it made, and everything just goes His way, and He never has a problem.

The fact is, no father has ever endured a more rebellious family than God has.

Time and time again God gave leaders to guide His people in the ways of righteousness, but we read in Judges 2:19, "And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them: They cease not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way."

Jeremiah is one long discouraging lament as God cries out to His people through the prophet--"You have broken my covenant.

You have not inclined your ear nor harkened unto me.

Do not do this abominable thing which I hate.

Why have you provoked me to anger?"

We could literally spend hours reading the words of God's discouragement with His children, but let me close this negative aspect of reality with Ps. 81:13, "Oh that my people had harkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!" Life and history would be different, God says, if His people would live in obedience.

There would be peace, love, joy, and righteousness, instead of judgment, with all of its attending sorrows.

If you think God is happy with history, you have not read much history.

The point is, it is discouraging to God when life is so full of suffering and sorrow because of man's rebellion.

He hates it that the world is filled with strife, injustice, and wickedness of all kinds.

He got so discouraged about it in the day of Noah that He decided to wipe the slate clean and start over again.

What encouraged God to start over again?

Why not just call the whole experiment with a free-willed being like man a bad deal, and scrap it completely?

God did not do that, and the question is why?

Believe it or not, it was one righteous man who saved the whole experiment.

If Noah had not found favor in God's eyes, human history, as we know it, may have ended with the flood.

One righteous man who walked with God, and pleased God, gave God the encouragement He needed in the midst of all His discouragement to let human history continue.

We only know the rest of the story because God was encouraged by one man.

Noah was the savior of the physical world, and of all mankind.

Here was a man whose life was an inspiration to God, and kept God going in His plan to redeem man, when all others were a hindrance to that plan.

Noah has been an encouragement to millions as well.

D.L. Moody was once so discouraged because He was going through a dry spell.

There was no fruit for his labors.

He sighed in a sad prayer, "There just isn't any pleasure in working for you when there is no fruit."

A Sunday school teacher came into his office when he was in this down mood, and told him of his joy in studying the life of Noah.

He said to Moody, "If you imagine your labors are fruitless, you might just study Noah's life for awhile."

Moody began to read the life of Noah, and he was amazed.

Here was a man who preached righteousness for a hundred years and never won a single convert to join him in the ark.

His immediate family consisting of his wife, three sons, and their wives, were invited by God to join him, but Noah did not win one neighbor, friend, or other relative.

You talk about futile preaching, and the irrelevance of godly living in a godless society.

If the only way to please God was to get converts, and to persuade men of the truth, then Noah was the biggest flop that ever lived.

But the fact is, Noah was one of the most pleasing men to God, who has ever lived.

He gave God hope that man was worth saving.

He kept the dream alive of a people of God in a fallen world.

He failed to win one convert, and he failed to touch a single life in a saving way, and yet, he was the most successful men of his age, and one of the heroes of both God and man for all time.

Moody was so encouraged by this man Noah that he was renewed in his own commitment to serve the Lord, for he knew he would be far more fruitful than Noah ever was.

Noah is one of the great heroes of the Bible because he was faithful and persistent in doing the will of God, even though there was no positive result.

We do not know if he ever got discouraged.

It seems only natural that he would, but he never gave up, and he never ceased to preach God's word, and practice God's will.

Noah was not a perfect man.

After the flood he got drunk with wine, and created a crisis in his family.

It was a time when there was no lack of water in the world, and yet he foolishly got drunk on wine.

The best of men can, and do, do the stupidest things, and this is discouraging.

But the fact is, an imperfect fallen man can still be the greatest encouragement to God and man.

Noah was just such an encouragement.

How can a man who never changed anything in his world be an encouragement?

How could a man who never altered the fate of a single individual in his world be an example and encouragement to us?

Lowell Lundstrom, the evangelist, gives us the answer out of his own experience.

He says the feeling of futility is what causes men to be discouraged.

They ask, am I really accomplishing anything?

And their answer is often discouraging.

Lundstrom writes, "I get this feeling every time I watch the evening news or read a daily newspaper.

There are so many great needs in the world, and my efforts seem so small and futile.

I heard a commercial the other day that really helped me in this regard.

The narrator said, "You can't save the whole world, but you can save a little piece of it!"

That's all any of us can do.

Save a small piece of the world each day."

That was all Noah did.

He obeyed God, and took the animals and his family inside, and he saved a small piece of the world.

But in so doing, he saved the whole world.

He saved history, and the whole plan of salvation for mankind.

He failed in just about everything he did, but he succeeded in just one thing.

In his loyal and persistent obedience to God, regardless of the fruit, he pleased God, and more than made up for all of his failure.

We don't have to succeed in everything.

We just have to succeed in something.

We just have to save some small part of the world that God has put into our sphere of influence, and that will make us successful in his book, which is the only book of success that really matters.

Every successful person in God's book only saved a part of the world; a small piece of the whole.

Moses never succeeded in getting the Israelites to be committed to God alone as their God, but he did get a remnant of them to be faithful.

Joshua never did succeed in getting Israel to take all of the promised land, but he did succeed in leading them to take part of it.

No leader of Israel every succeeded completely, but they did succeed in some measure, and that is all God asks of anyone.

Even Jesus did not succeed in winning all, but He won some, and with that remnant He began a new people who have gone into all the world, not winning all anywhere, but everywhere they have gone winning some.

The best any child of God can do is to save some small piece of the world, and not get discouraged because they cannot save it all.

Noah is our example.

You do your best, and to God you leave the rest.

If you please Him, you don't have to worry about the results, for you have already achieved the highest success, which is pleasing Him.

Sometimes even just a word of encouragement can make a big difference in another persons life.

I've seen coals once warmly glowing

Turned to ashes in the night:

Glowing coals that with one blowing

Would have leaped to living light.

I've seen human hearts once glowing

Turn to ashes in the night:

Hearts one word with cheer o'erflowing

Would have swept to living light.

Can one word really do that?

Irving Stone, author of more than a dozen best sellers, came from a poor home, but his mother longed for him to go to college and escape the life of toil all her family were forced into.