Sermon Tone Analysis

Becoming A Person of Endurance in a Culture of Quitting

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Restoring the Savor of Our Salt Series       Message # 13

 

 

I want to keep working today on our series of messages on Restoring the Savor of our Salt.

This is the 13th message in the series and we’ll soon be wrapping up.

I’d like to begin by reading Hebrews 11, verses 24-27.

If you’ve been with us for a number of weeks, you know we’ve been talking about the fact that all of us are being molded by someone.

We are either being molded by the Word of God, or we are being molded by the culture around us.

We’ve been discussing the fact that being molded by the culture is very easy.

I just let myself drift wherever the current of the culture is going, and there is next to nothing to it.

But being molded by the Word of God is a more difficult thing.

It requires that I invest energy.

It requires that I be intentionally working to cause this Book to act on me.

We are either molded by the culture or by the Word of God.

Hebrews chapter 11.

I want to begin reading there are verse 24.

We’re going to be thinking today about the life of this man named Moses, and talking about one very distinct feature of his life.

Hebrews 11, verse 24: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; 25  Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26  Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt [by the way, I won’t be mentioning it in the message, but verse 26 is an extremely interesting verse.

It says that Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.

Yet, Christ had not come to earth.

Moses had incredible vision for the Saviour that God was sending.

It is a remarkable statement to say that Moses was embracing the reproach of Christ]: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.

27  By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.”

In 1883 a fisherman named Howard Blackburn left his home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, went out in a large fishing boat to fish off of Newfoundland.

He let himself over the edge of his large boat in a little fishing dory with a friend of his, another fisherman.

And they left their large boat to begin fishing.

An incredible storm blew in.

It drove them away from their boat, drove them out to sea.

They were hopelessly lost at sea.

It was blowing and raining and freezing cold.

Ice was freezing on their boat.

They took turns rowing the keep the bow of the boat into the oncoming waves.

If they ever let the boat get crossways with the waves, they were going to go under.

So one of them had to row at all times.

They rowed for an extended period of time, and just when things could hardly get any worse, Howard Blackburn’s partner died in the boat.

So Howard got to the oars and he sat down and put his hands on the oars and he began to row, keeping the bow of the boat into the waves so it wouldn’t capsize.

He rowed for so long and the mist came on him for so long and it froze for so long that it froze his hands to the oars.

He could not have let go if wanted to.

Howard Blackburn rowed for four solid days, day and night, while the storm raged around him.

And at the end of four days, the storm subsided a little bit.

Remarkably, in the middle of the north Atlantic, a fishing boat found him, sent someone into his boat, recovered the body of his friend, chipped the ice off of his hands, removed him from the oars and brought him onto their boat.

Almost four months later he walked back into Gloucester, Massachusetts.

He had been given up for dead.

He is a hero in that town to this day, even though he died, obviously, over eighty years ago.

Howard Blackburn survived because he had something that Americans have largely lost.

He had endurance.

Howard Blackburn was a person with the will to keep going, even in the face of adversity, even in the face of exhaustion, even when there was next to no chance for preserving his own life.

He had the will somewhere, somehow, to just keep going.

For Americans, endurance is not our strong suit.

For Americans, we are people who are very apt to give up in the face of adversity.

We didn’t use to be that way, perhaps, but I believe now we are and we see it individually and we see it nationally.

We are people who are apt to give up when something is no longer fun.

We are apt to quit when something gets hard.

We are very apt to stop when it feels boring.

We are people who are not very good at delaying our rewards.

And therefore, we have lost this blessing called endurance.

I think we used to have it.

If you look at the War for Independence, if you look at conquering of the West, if you look at the War Between the States, the first World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War—you look at all these things that America has endured—we are people who started with incredible endurance.

I don’t think it is any longer a major value to us.

There are not that many people any more who say it is important to keep going in this thing.

There are more people who are apt to say, I’m going to forget it.

Let’s try something else.

Who wants to continue with this kind of a struggle.

I want to ask you to think today about this issue of endurance, and about the question of how do I become a person who continues in the face of difficulty, adversity, hardship, and boredom?

I want to make one little disclaimer here.

There are some things in our lives that we should quit.

There are certain things we should forget and abandon.

Obviously, sinful things, or those things that are unimportant, other things that used to be important but no longer are important.

So, what I want to talk about today with endurance always relates to the good and the important things.

There are some things in your life that you should just abandon ship on.

But the other things in your life, the ones that you know God wants you to continue in, God is calling each of us to be people of endurance.

And I want to ask you to think today about the question, How do we gain endurance?

What is the key to endurance?

How do I make myself keep going when I would rather quit?

I don’t know exactly where Howard Blackburn got the endurance to row for four solid days.

Perhaps just the raw will to stay alive.

But I want to look with you today at the life of a man named Moses who found endurance in the face of a difficult situation, to go on for four decades!

Between leaving Egypt and his death before he is not allowed to enter the Promised Land, he continued, he endured for four decades.

How did he get it?

How did he get there?

I believe the passage before us gives us two powerful clues to the issue of endurance.

We’ll be looking first at Hebrews 11:24-26.

I want to read it for you again, just to reinforce it in our minds.

“By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; 25  Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26  Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.”

Look at the first choice that Moses made.

By faith the choice was to stop striving for reputation as one of the worthies and the lovelies.

Moses decided to quit.

Now Moses was living as royalty in Egypt.

In fact, many scholars speculate that as the adopted son of the daughter of the Pharaoh, he would be the next pharaoh.

Moses was in line to be the next pharaoh.

He had a reputation.

He had a station.

But they were not important to him—being somebody was not valuable to him.

He turned away from it.

I suspect there are many, many people in our nation who want to be the next president, or the next actor, or the next sports star.

They are just striving, they are driven to say I want to be somebody.

For Moses, as he evaluated his life and the things that were ahead of him, he gave it up.

He was at the top of the heap and he said, it is no longer important to be somebody.

He turned away.

Part of his endurance, I think, was that he understood the relative importance or unimportance of being somebody.