Dennis Tuuri

We turn for the sermon scripture to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. We’ll read the first six verses. “I guess for yourselves, brethren, know our entrance unto you that it was not in vain. But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated as you know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention.

For our exhortation was not in deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile, but as we are were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time use we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness, nor of men shalt we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ.”

The younger children may be dismissed now to go to their Sunday schools if their parents desire them.

Okay, we continue this afternoon with our second part of last week’s sermon. Really, we didn’t finish the entire outline and I added a couple more points this week for good measure. So this is still a sermon dealing with courage and we’re playing off of these verses of Thessalonians, particularly verse two.

And Paul there says that even after they had suffered and were shamefully entreated at Philippi, that is, you know, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. And so we’ve decided to use this opportunity to talk about one of the seven virtues that the church fathers spoke to. One of the cardinal virtues that really is the root of many other virtues and that is courage.

Courage is an essential part of the Christian life. We’ll talk about specific applications. So we’ll just briefly review the first couple of points. We’ll go to point three which we did not take up last week and then we’ll deal with a couple of minor additions and look at application.

We said last week that courage is first of all self-sacrificial action. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage works through fear to accomplish a task.

Now, at this point, I’ve added on your outline a scripture that is in bold. Proverbs 29:25. I’ll be referring to this at least implicitly several times today. Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” The fear of man bringeth a snare. Now, self-sacrificial action is not unaware of the potential danger that we face, but rather is not afraid of man and not afraid of the consequences that may befall him for the greater good of doing a task according to God’s glory.

Now, Paul says here in the next verse, we talked about this. He said that his exhortation was not in deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. And I guess in a way there you could say that Paul is saying he wasn’t a lunatic. It wasn’t in deceit. It wasn’t self-deceptive. He was not a sinner. It wasn’t an uncleanness. Nor was he a liar. So Paul refers first to the fact that he was not a lunatic. A lunatic is the one who doesn’t understand the nature of the things that may befall him in a particular action.

And a lunatic may seem brave, but he’s not brave. He is foolhardy. Remember we said that R.J. Rushdoony likes H.G. Wells’s definition of bravery. Wells said that brave men are men who do the things they are afraid to do, not the absence of fear but pressing through in spite of fear. Fortitude puts us squarely in the midpoint, one author has said, between cowardice on the one hand and rashness on the other hand. Neither one of those—each of those are to be avoided by biblical or Christian fortitude or courage.

The man who has no sense of fear is not brave. He is a fool. And as we said last week, children frequently do things which if done for the right reason and with the right appreciation for the danger that they risk might be called brave or courageous. But normally children don’t understand these things and so it is foolishness for most of them. Unfortunately, all too often people are reticent to tell children that they are being foolish when they do these particularly dangerous tasks.

And so the children frequently grow up thinking of their foolishness as bravery. This is a very important point. I’m going to return at the end of the sermon to some specific applications to teach our children how to be courageous. But this is one of the major points in teaching your children to be courageous is teaching them what is not courageous or what is not brave according to the scriptures. Don’t tell your child he’s being brave and he does a foolish thing.

He grows up then thinking that foolishness and ignoring risk is what bravery is all about. And it isn’t. Bravery is self-sacrificial action. To delude oneself into the certainty of escape is not bravery, nor is it courage. It is vanity and madness. The virtue of fortitude keeps man from so loving his life that he will lose it as a result. You know the scriptures say that he who loves his life shall lose it but he who gives up his life for the sake of the gospel and for Christ he shall gain it.

Well bravery keeps a man from so grabbing onto his own life he is able to sacrifice himself if need be for the greater good of God’s glory. It is an interesting side comment here that it is a lack of courage to accept injury and a general incapacity of self-sacrifice that seems to lie at the root of many people’s mental problems or mental anguish. There are many fears in the world today that immobilize people from going outside from doing this that or the other thing.

All those fears most of them can be traced back to a love for their own lives that refuses to move into self-sacrificial action. And so courage is very important for soundness of mind and we’ll touch on that later as well. Courage is self-sacrificial action. But secondly, it’s not just any self-sacrificial action. It stems from a trust in God. Remember we talked about relationship with the Greeks to courage to wisdom.

And wisdom is God ordained understanding of how things work. And so courage begins with God. It is a courage for God for the God whom we love. It is in other words loving God enough that we’re willing to lay down our life if necessary for the sake of the Savior who laid down his life for us the way that David’s men laid down their lives. It is confidence in consecration to God and his law. We’ve looked at some verses relative to that.

And I would put in one other I put in a couple more verses on this on this measure. Leviticus 26:5-7 and 36 and 37. Let’s turn to those scriptures again pointing out the relationship of courage to God’s covenant and its blessings. Turn to Leviticus 26 and Leviticus 26 is very similar to Deuteronomy 8 and Deuteronomy 28. It spells out covenant blessings and cursings. What’s ahead of you depending on which path you decide to walk down.

And at the very beginning of that chapter, we read in verse 5 that your threshing shall reach under the vintage. The vintage shall reach unto the sewing time, and you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. And I will give you peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. So here we have bravery or courage, the absence of fear, being described as a blessing of the covenant of God.

But look a little later in the chapter down to verses 36 and 37. We see the opposite, the flip side of this. Verses 36 talks about those who disobey God’s command and walk in willful disobedience to the covenant. “Upon them that are left alive of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies. And the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them, and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when none pursueth. And they shall fall one upon another as if it were before a sword when none pursueth and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.”

So, one of the curses of the covenant is a faintness of heart. I’ve listed some passages from the book of Deuteronomy that say the same thing. We won’t turn to them now, but it’s very important again to see this relationship between courage and the blessings of the covenant.

The blessings of the covenant come to us in the basis of Jesus Christ’s work. And it’s only when we disobey the covenant and walk away from it willfully that we lose the courage that God has already given to us in Jesus Christ. And we’ll talk about that later as well. Proverbs 28:1, I think referencing back to these case laws say that the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

The righteous are bold as a lion. That’s what these things point out to us. We’ve had example just this last week of men fleeing when no man pursueth in a sense of a demoralization of troops and the Iraqi army to the point where literally we did have five chasing 100 or 110 thousand putting 10,000 to flight. An incredible thing but really a worldly example of the reality and the importance of courage and the absence of fear when going into warfare for God and the effects of fear and demoralizing aspect of it.

Even though you may have superior armament or superior numbers, you will lose in the day of battle because you’re fearful. The fearful man—the brave man rather, knows his fear but pushes through in spite of it because of his confidence and consecration to God and to his law and the enabling that brings us.

Third, communion with the enabling God is a necessary component to the courageous brave man. And here again we have the idea here is that it is God that enables us to stand in the day of battle. And ultimately to him belongs the victory whether we live or die. God has given us victory in Jesus Christ over the grave and over death and over our enemies. And so God enables us. The courageous man does not trust in his own strength.

Again, we’ve had an example this last week of a man who trusted in his own arm of strength. The scriptures used that picture of foolish man trusting in his own arm of strength instead of God’s mighty arm. And indeed, Saddam Hussein apparently—I saw a thing on TV this last week. He was so enamored of his own arms of strength, his forearms, he had them cast and they became the model then for these huge arms that I think at the entrance to the city of Baghdad that hold a sword in them.

So you got in the ground there as you drive up one of the roads there’s these two huge forearms cast upon Saddam Hussein’s arm of strength and these big swords sticking up and around them were these piles of Iranian helmets taken from the war. Many of them had holes shot through them. Saddam Hussein is showing that he is of the same general mindset in doing that by the way as Nebuchadnezzar or—not Nebuchadnezzar—but the Assyrians. When the Syrians—that’s what they would do is they would pile up heads in front of the cities and that would demoralize people and encourage them to be suppliant then to the Assyrians as their rulers.

Well, Saddam uses that same thing to try to get people to submit to him. But the end result of Saddam’s arm of strength was a completely defeated army and him now scrambling to find refuge somewhere. The only safe reference for Saddam Hussein is in the Lord’s arm of strength, and to have courage in the God who enables us to stand in the face of our own fear.

Courage clears the path to the goal. The brave man is not deluded. He sees the injury he suffers as an evil. He does not undervalue or falsify reality. He likes the taste, as one author said, of reality because it is God’s world. He does not delude himself. And so Paul said, “We’re not deluded.” He does not love death nor does he despair of life. Fortitude presupposes in a certain sense that man is afraid of evil. Its essence lies not in knowing no fear, but in not allowing oneself to be forced into evil by that fear or to be kept by fear from the realization of the good.

In this supreme test, as one author said, in the face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of this fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good. If moreover, he does so for the sake of good, which ultimately means for the sake of God. And therefore, not from ambition, nor from fear of being taken as a coward by other men, but rather for the sake of God’s glory.

This man, and he alone, is truly brave. That’s what Paul was. And Paul shows us one more thing out of that verse. He said that they were bold to proclaim the gospel of Christ. Boldness involves also, as a third point of the outline, is taken to accomplish. Courage is taken to that does these actions for the sake of God and these actions are taken to accomplish a God-appointed task—a God-appointed task.

Paul had been given a duty and a commission to preach the gospel he had a God-appointed task and courage pressed on to accomplish that duty is an essential part of the courage that the scriptures speak of. Wrote that courage that grows from constitution from our own strengths often forsakes a man when he has most occasion for it. But courage, which arises from a sense of duty, acts in a uniform manner. That duty, of course, is our God-given responsibilities.

Throughout the scriptures, we see biblical courage that it moves toward a goal that God has established. Numbers 13:20, we see the spies of the land. They’re sent out and they’re told, “Be ye of good courage. Bring the fruit of the land back.” There was a duty that they had to perform to spy out the land and they were told to be courageous to perform it.

Numbers 14:24, “Neither fear ye the people of the land, their defense has departed from them, and the Lord is with us.” An encouragement now to go into and possess that promised land. Courage accomplishes a God-appointed task, and the courage being exhorted to the people in Numbers 14 was to go ahead and to move into the land that God had prepared for his people. It is interesting that their defense had indeed departed from them.

And the cowardice that the children of Israel showed at this particular point in their history was not founded upon a rational understanding of what had occurred. They had been told that the inhabitants’ defense was departed from them, but they refused to believe that cowardice rejects reality. Well, in any event, the point here is again courage is being exhorted to accomplish a God-appointed task.

Deuteronomy 3:21 charged Joshua and encouraged him strengthen him, tell him to be strong and courageous, to go over before the people to enter into the land. Deuteronomy 31:6, the people are told to be strong, to be of good courage to enter into the land, to do the task and the duty that God had called them to do to enter into the promised land.

Joshua 1:5-6, we have the example of people being courageous to smite giants if need be for the glory of God and the establishment of godly families. Judges 4, Jael was courageous. A woman dealing with the head of the invading army, Sisera himself. And yet she had the courage to strike a much mightier person and force than she was. And so she exercised courage there toward the end of the elimination of God’s enemies and the exaltation of God’s name over the heathen.

Judges 6, as we pointed out last week, Gideon had courage to accomplish a specific task to demolish their parents’ idols. He did it by night. That’s okay. God takes the fear that we have, understands it, moves us forward in spite of it, and encourages us to do what’s right.

David, of course, taking on Goliath, another example from 1 Samuel 17. He was courageous for a God-appointed task. In 1 Chronicles 28, David tells to Solomon his son, “Be strong. Be of good courage.” Again, for what purpose? To establish the house of God, to build it, to do it.

And so, we have all these things, all these tasks given out in order to be courageous. Courage is not a virtue in and of itself. It’s a virtue as it marches forward to accomplishes God’s task. Entrance into blessing, elimination of God’s enemies, the building of the church and the temple, etc. Because of this, we see that courage demonstrates a future orientation. Courage doesn’t look at the past. Courage looks at the future and marches ahead into it.

And the future always has fears associated with it because it’s unknown to us. Biblical courage has a future orientation and I put two things on your outline. It is active. One author said that courage is the ability to pounce upon evil. Courage enables us to pounce upon evil offensively. It is readiness to attack, to be courageous and self-confident and confident in God. And it hopes of success in the future.

It is to love and to realize that which is good in the face of injury or death undeterred by any spirit of compromise. It moves aggressively and actively forward to accomplish God’s tasks. But secondly, there is a passive nature to it. And that’s not a good term. I don’t like it. It’s a bad term. The point I’m getting at here is that the future orientation is not always in the scriptures or in our own lives seen in terms of some great courageous act that we go forward against a Goliath.

Frequently the courageous person is the person who does not allow themselves to become impatient or despairing because of situations that come into their lives. The widow, for instance, who does not surrender to despair when the bread winner is taken from the house and from the ability to provide. The businessman who loses everything in his business dealings, but instead of just living on past dreams and just idling his days away and slowly losing his strength, he assesses the situation and proceeds into the future and tries to build again on the basis of God’s word, his business.

That person has courage and it is the passive type. Passive isn’t a good word. It requires just as much energy, perhaps more than the active battle sort of courage we’ve been talking about. And it is basic to it that it has a future orientation. Courage has been seen by the church fathers as being the virtue from which patience is derived. Patience, to be patient means to preserve cheerfulness and serenity of mind in spite of injuries said one author that result from the realization of the good.

Patience of this sort is really requires a great deal of energy. One man said that patience curbs fear when fear takes the form of fretfulness. Frequently our fear of the future takes a form of fretfulness in which case patience is courage is applies to that situation to be patient with God as he brings us into deliverance and makes manifest the future to us as we act in obedience to him is an exercise of courage.

And as we said before, patience early on in this epistle, Paul links, as he does in other places, patience to hope. You know, he talks about your labor of love and your work of faith and the patience of hope. Patience and courage have that necessary forward-looking aspect of hope to them. And so, finally, patience is characterized by victory over one’s enemies. The courageous man understands that God does not call us to a life of losing.

Now he realizes he may well die in the battle but that the battle is won one way or the other for Jesus Christ that history flows in that way. Courage is not again according to Paul’s self-deception. It doesn’t just sort of do this thing and sort of hope that things will turn out. Hope is based upon the solid promises of God’s covenant and of knowing that history moves in relationship to God and to his people.

Courage is characterized by an understanding of the long-term victory over the enemies that God promises in the scriptures. You notice all those things I talked about entering the land, building the temple. These things came to pass. And God’s people are to be courageous, to press forward offensively, to pounce on evil when the opportunity exists, and to be patient in the face of evil that cannot be moved until God brings deliverance.

We were reading a family devotions a couple of weeks ago, story of Samson. The story starts out by saying that the Philistines had held Israel in captivity for 40 years. I told my kids 40 years. You know what that means in the scriptures? After the end of 40 years comes blessing and deliverance. 40 days in the wilderness being tempted. Jesus perseveres. 40 days of the flood. It ends then with blessing.

40 years. So we know right away in the story Samson’s going to deliver the people. People must be patient, it is courageous to wait patiently for God to bring about deliverance. But it must know that deliverance is coming or it loses heart and lapses into despair. Courage is characterized by an understanding of victory over our enemies. First, our physical enemies, David and Goliath, Joshua and the Philistines in the land.

Moses and Pharaoh, the courage to approach a physical enemy such as Pharaoh and then his troops as he was led by God’s spirit. Daniel 3:17 and 18. We talked about that last week, but it’s such a good passage to demonstrate what courage is in the face of physical enemies. They said, “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace us and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, if our God doesn’t deliver us physically, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods. Willingness to be self-sacrificial, knowing that eventually God gives us deliverance over our enemies. But secondly, and this is far more important for us, I think, are the spiritual enemies we have as well. And I don’t mean external ones here, I mean internal ones. Psalm 51: David in the confession of his sin, murder of Uriah and adultery of Bathsheba.

David says after saying against thee the only have I sinned and done this wicked thing in thy sight. He says in verse 5, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, oh God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.”

If you think verse five, the description of David being born in iniquity and sin, is simply a theological point in a systematic theology. You’ve missed the point of this psalm. Now, it does speak to depravity, original sin. It speaks to that. It speaks to the imputation of sin upon the people since the fall of Adam. All those things are all true. It speaks to total depravity, but it speaks to total depravity in a way that David understood. And when we read these things correctly, we should understand in terms of our own lives as well.

What was David saying? David was saying it wasn’t like this was the only time I slipped up. David said, I was born. I had my conception. I am a being who was breathed into this. When I had the first breath of life, I came out in rebellion to you, God. Sin permeates my being. And it takes forms with, you know, with Bathsheba. It takes forms with Uriah. It takes these various forms. But I know that the sin lives within me. The good thing I want to do, I end up not doing frequently.

Now, the point here is that it takes courage to drive off enemies who invade your home. But it takes a lot more courage I think to drive out the sin to face it to admit that it is there as David did and then to drive it out over our lives over a period of time. The easy path is a path of acceptance of our little slip ups and our tendencies to sin. The hard path and the courageous path is to drive those sins out of our lives.

Now David said and if David the one who loved God so much, had a heart after God, loving God, chosen by God, etc., as a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. If he had such a strong apprehension of his own sin, how much more so we? The Heidelberg Catechism says there’s three things that you must know to live and die happily in the comfort of God. And the first one is how great my sin and misery is. If you don’t realize how great your sin and misery is, you are not experiencing the comfort of God to the extent you should.

Why? Because the second thing you need to know is how I am delivered from all my sins and misery. To the extent that you don’t understand your sin and misery, you don’t understand the deliverance that Christ has ushered into you and you’re not. The third point is to be thankful for such deliverance. We must understand and continue to expose the sin in our own lives and drive it out courageously. I believe as I said it is more difficult to tackle this enemy than physical enemies and have the courage for that.

Now that’s really basically what I wanted to say in terms of the foundation and now I want to talk about application and bring some of this home. Courage as we said is a vital Christian virtue. It’s interesting that Revelation 21:8 lists various people that have who will have their part in the lake which burns with fire. Listen to the list. The fearful and unbelieving, the abominable and murderous, the whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars.

And in the middle you got those nasty ones that none of us are, right? Murderers, whoremongers, sorcerers, idolaters. But at the front, what do you have? The fearful, the cowardly. It’s another way to translate that word. And what’s the end? Liars. Liars are cowards. Afraid to afraid to face up to the truth in their own lives. And God says that if you don’t have courage, courage which develops a pattern of truthfulness in your life, then you have your part in the lake which burns with fire.

It’s not as if courage earns your way to heaven. But if Jesus Christ is dwelling in your heart through faith and through the Holy Spirit, he is the one who is the ultimate courageous one. As we shall point out in a couple of minutes, it is an important virtue to build into your life and the life of your children. And I want to go through some specific applications here of how we should have courage.

First of all, we should have courage to learn new tasks. Courage to learn new tasks, to do things that we’ve never done before. God calls us to be faithful in manifesting the kingdom and to build the kingdom as it were the implications of it in all that we do and say and to accomplish kingdom work in this world is a courageous thing that requires you to have the courage to do and to learn new tasks.

It’s interesting that Abram is pointed out as one of the men who had courage because he did what? He was told to leave the land that he had known and to go to a land that he knew not. And Abram said, “Okay, if that’s what God wants me to do, I’m going ahead on it. What’s the first thing Abraham—Abram finds out about that new land that he’s called to go to? As I read the scriptures, the first thing he finds out is there’s Philistines there. There’s problems in the land and he still courageously moves ahead.

We should have courage to learn new tasks and to go in the words of Star Trek where no man has gone before, where we haven’t gone before. But we know that if God’s leading us in that way, as Abram was being led by God, that he should have courage to go up into that area. I think for many men particularly, you’ve shown courage in going through and doing communion talks in the in the face of great personal fear and trepidation.

You are courageous to do something that we ask you to do a new task and because you learned that new task here at RCC in the context of those who would love you and encourage you, you now have courage to speak publicly to others as well.

Secondly, we should have the courage to be true to our word. Psalm 15, this gets back to that importance of the truth. Psalm 15 says that one of the entrance requirements is to swear to one’s own hurt. It takes a brave man to follow up on an oath he has taken when that oath is going to do him personal harm. That’s what courage is, right? Self-sacrificial actions for a greater good that is determined by God. And when we make an oath and that oath turns out to be to our own hurt, it is courage that moves us to perform that oath and to keep our word in spite of that.

Sir Thomas More in the dramatization of Man for All Seasons was—I think it was his wife or his daughter said, “Why don’t you just take the oath to the king and not mean it?” And he said, “When you take an oath, you hold your life in your hands like water. And if you fail here and if you don’t have the courage to fulfill the oath you’ve taken at this point, then the water or the life as the water goes through your hands goes out of you as well. You lose, as it were, your vitality in life.

It’s very important that we have courage to follow up on the words that we give one to another in the context of how we live.

Third, we should have the courage to confess our sin and again to tell the truth relative to the sins that we’ve we’ve participated in. First, courage to God, of course, to tell him our sins, but secondly, the courage to confess our sins one to another and not try to hide them up or pretend we don’t have them. One of the Jay Grimstead head of the coalition on revival said that one of the great turning points down for this country was the collapse of the Methodist cell groups 100 years ago or so, they would meet weekly to confess sins to one another and to pray for and encourage each other.

And in a sense, that’s kind of what we’re trying to do with our prayer groups. We should have the courage to confess our sins like the scriptures tell us to do one to another. Not in a lurid sense of sharing details with a sense of asking for prayer, asking for encouragement, asking for help from our brothers and sisters that God has put into our lives.

I’d say relative to our married life particularly, it takes the strong, brave man to admit when he’s been wrong to his family or to his wife particularly or to his children. We should be courageous to confess our sin and tell the truth.

Fourth, we should be courageous to fear God more than man. Again, I brought up verse 25 of Proverbs 29 earlier. The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be saved. Important verse because so often Christian courage happens when people obey this not to be given the snare of the fear of man, but rather to put your trust in the Lord.

Fear of man drives out courage. And you want to teach your children and emphasize in your own life to drive out the fear of man from you. I think that most people have that kind of fear in them. But it brings a snare to us. Most these things I’ve said so far and I’m going to say now in the next couple of minutes involve the ability to fear God more than man. In a way, courage is the proper prioritization of our fears.

We should fear God and have wisdom there as opposed to fearing man and as a result disobeying the God who can cast us into hell. Fear God more than man.

Fifth, we should have the courage to do what’s right. Big category. But for children, you know, you may have friends or neighbor kids that you play with who want you to steal, who want you to engage in childish pranks, who want you to look at dirty books, to tell bad jokes or hear bad jokes, to ridicule others who have personal faults or disabilities.

You’ll have people that are chiding you for being too much of a good doer. You’ll be shunned if you don’t do some of the things that some of these people may do. You’ll be told to shun younger children when you play. All these things are things that happen in the context when children play together. It’s the courageous boy and girl who will not go along with the crowd on these matters, but instead stand for Jesus Christ and say God’s law says we shouldn’t do these things.

And more than that, try to influence the group for good and for righteousness sake. Now courage for children involves a lot of aspects that really are pertinent to us as well. It means to be courageous to have courage to do the right thing in spite of threatenings and actual physical harm. It said of Daniel that the reason why the lions didn’t eat him is he had so much he was all backbone. So the lions couldn’t swallow him.

Children should think of themselves that way. And a group of friends who are trying to do something wrong think of yourselves as being all backbone and don’t get sucked into that, but instead influence it for good. You may lose friends if you’re courageous and to do what’s right according to the scriptures. They may not be your friend anymore. But again, think of the example of our father in the faith, Abram.

Who was he willing to give up courageously if God so required it? His only son. Son whom we loved dearly. And Abram was willing to give up his son if that was what God called him to do. That’s courage. And it should be the example for us who are willing to give up if need be. Friends who will only be our friends if we do what’s wrong. Friends like that—you know the rest of the Friends may ridicule you. They may not stop being your friends and they may make fun of you.

But courage will not mind the ridicule of man so much as the scorn of God and his displeasure. Courage means doing what’s right, even when you’re called being a coward. It’s an ironic thing about childhood. Children will call other kids cowards for not doing something that is wrong. When in fact, the courageous one is the one who refuses to do what’s wrong because he knows that God has not called him to do that in spite of the ridicule and the shunning that he’ll be called a coward or something by his friends.

Courage to do the right thing also involves husbands. And I prayed about this last week and I just want to stress it again. Now I know that Reformation Covenant Church puts a lot of responsibilities upon fathers that other churches don’t put on you. And I know that people have talked about that about their reticence in coming here because they feel more responsible for instance to lead family worship and to teach their families the word of God etc.

And wives are called out in many cases to be willing if need be to homeschool their children and the husbands as well. Well, that all those things take a great deal of courage. It takes courage for a man who has never been taught the word of God or how to understand or teach the word of God who may not have a good voice to sing to lead his family in family worship teaching them the scriptures trying to explain it to him and singing and praying with his kids we should pray for one another that the men in this church would have the courage to persevere in that task it’s doing what God is a God-appointed task self-sacrificial you know you might make a fool of yourself the way that all the men here know they can make a fool of themselves at communion talks but you do it anyway you persevere because it’s the right thing to do.

I mentioned singing. I was going to mention this earlier. Courage is the desire to not be so afraid of what men might think of your voice in this hall to sing out to God praises to him. That’s courage. It’s a practical act of courage that you can exercise weekly as you come into this place for a while until you build your confidence in singing. Don’t hold back for fear of man. God’s given you new breath as it were to sing praises to him.

So sing out here and have the courage to sing praises to him. And wives, it takes courage to submit to a husband that you don’t necessarily trust, and you don’t know if he’s doing the right thing or not. It takes courage to homeschool children. But it’s those small acts of courage that God will greatly bless and turn a culture from one direction to the other.

I might say that in all these things, of course, in the exercise of courage, humility is required. Humility. Courage drives us to humble ourselves before others if need be for the sake of doing the things that God has told us to do.

Sixth, you should have courage to be transparent with others. It sounds kind of squishy-feely or something, but what I mean here is that God has called us to participate in families in the extended family of the church that we would be an encouragement to each other. We will not be an encouragement to each other if we’re too afraid to talk to each other about our lives, if we do talk to each other about our lives and what God is doing in them, then we become an encouragement to others and then we grow together mutually in the faith.

Mutually encouraged is what Paul says in Romans 1. And so courage is a willingness to let down the guards as it were with your friends within the context of the church for the greater good of developing and maturing the body of Christ that we are participating here at Reformation Covenant Church.

Silence sometimes can be wisdom, but silence sometimes can be cowardice. Cowardness to share who you are, what you believe, and what you think. It can be cowardice that keeps the group then and the other people you’re talking to here at the church from knowing an essential part of what God wants them to know. We’re all parts of the body here. We have a part one with another in terms of how we develop together.

And so, you should have courage be transparent to others. And I guess following up on that, seventh, you should have courage to be an encourager. That term encourage means to build somebody up in courage. Acts 28:15 says that when Paul says, “When the brethren heard of us, he came to meet us as far as the forum and the three taverns whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage.” When Paul saw other Christians coming to stand with him and to encourage him, he took courage.

We’re to be an encouragement to each other. Isaiah 35:3 says, “Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Strengthen each other and encourage each other. I read last week 2 Chronicles 15:8. When Asa heard the words of the prophet, he took courage then to drive out the abominable idols out of the land. And we should have the courage to tell each other perhaps sometimes idols that we need driven out of our land.

And when we speak the word of God to each other, that encourages us as well. Isaiah 41:6, they helped everyone his neighbor and everyone said to his brother, “Be of good courage.” Now, I think that specific verse refers to those who are engaged in idolatry. But how much more so we who serve the living God who is himself courageous should we be saying everyone to his neighbor be of good courage.

You see that pattern throughout the Old Testament particularly I read a bunch of verses be strong be of good courage. We should be encouraging each other that way. The application to this is we got to be talking to each other and spending time with each other. Now who do you think needs encouragement most at this church? Well I suppose there are people going through difficult times who might need encouragement. But probably more often than not, it’s people who visit here on Sundays.

They need encouragement. They don’t know what we’re doing. We’re certainly different here. We got a different order of service and we got a different—got this meal together and everything’s strange and they know we believe a little differently and they’re not sure what this reconstruction stuff is. It is an application of courage. Courage enough to be an encourager to go out of your way and to risk personal damage to yourself through seeming foolish or just seeming being awkward.

To go out of your way instead to go out of your way in spite of that to extend a welcome and to be an encouragement to visitors. More than that, to have people that visit over to your home or have some of the newer people at church over to your home to encourage them in the faith. These things are not easy to do. I know it’s tough talking to a stranger, but God has told us that he wants us to encourage each other and that if we don’t do that, it’s a mark of cowardice.

And what he wants us to be are strong, brave people to build each other up to go out of our way to greet visitors and to encourage them in the faith.

Eighth, we should be courageous tell to tell others of what we perceive to be false. Obvious, you know, it’s one of the basic truths of covenant life in the community is when we see problems with each other that we talk to each other about it. You know, it’s a funny thing how courage works, but it is a lot easier here takes a lot less courage to talk to somebody else about a problem with somebody than to talk to that person.

I’m not sure why that is. I think that if we were probably tracking a little better, it would take more courage to do that because you know you’re going to get rebuked by the person who you tell a third party person. But courage, biblical courage insists that we follow through on that commandment in God’s word when we have a charge against somebody to go to them directly instead of other people.

Now, that’s hard to do. You know, it’s hard to tell somebody, gosh, I it seems to me like this is going on in your life and it doesn’t seem right and biblical. That’s a difficult thing to do. But and that’s why it’s courageous because it is difficult. It involves a degree of self-sacrifice, but it obviously is what’s required in scripture. So, that’s another act or application of courage.

You see, courage just doesn’t apply out there to the battlefield. It applies to lots of little things that permeate our lives.

And finally, we should have courage to preach the gospel to strangers and unsaved friends as well. There’s a song I was going to quote. I forgot to bring it. “Ashamed of Jesus.” And it talks about the foolishness of being ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. May it never be said of me. In the song it says to be ashamed of Jesus. And yet so often, you know, we don’t look at it that way.

We don’t look at it as being ashamed of Jesus. But what are we being when we don’t tell others their faults? When we don’t convict the ungodly relative to their need for repentance and salvation in Christ. When we don’t go out of our way to encourage and to greet visitors. What really is it? Isn’t it fear of man? That thing that Proverbs talks about, the fear of man that brings a snare. It brings a snare not just individual lives.

It brings a snare to community life as well. When we don’t have courage to follow through on these basic aspects, courage to preach the gospel is after all what Paul was saying. He was commissioned. He was a sent one and so are all of us. We’re all commissioned to witness and if necessary be a martyr for Jesus Christ. And if we’re called to ultimately give our lives if necessary. How much more should we be willing to give of our reputation if need be for the sake of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who are perishing?

We are called to do that. We should have courage. As we said, Paul said that he was neither a lunatic, a sinner, nor a liar. To accomplish the courageous fulfillment of these tasks in your life, it’s important that you don’t be a lunatic, a sinner, or a liar either. It’s important that you not deceive yourself.

Is the potential problems that may exist when you follow through courageously in what God has called you to do. The visitor may laugh in your face. He may, you know, tell you what an idiot you are and the person you witness to may punch you right in the nose. You don’t know. Don’t delude yourself because then you’ve not really been self-sacrificial. Courage is not being a lunatic. Is following through in spite of potential risk and damage to ourselves, to our reputations, to the way we feel about ourselves or to our physical bodies.

And don’t be a sinner if you’re trying to develop an attitude of courage in yourselves. Those Psalms Leviticus 26 passage as well as the Deuteronomy 8 and 28 passage tells us clearly that if we haven’t cleared out major sin areas in our lives, God is not going to he may well bring along the spirit of fearfulness and as a hindrance to our courage. Courage must involve a commitment to the standard of God’s law which enables us to be courageous.

So, we can’t be a sinner. We can’t let sin sit there in our lives if we’re going to be courageous. And finally, you don’t want to be a liar. I’ve said a lot of things here about the use of the tongue. And I think that in many cases, acts of courage are primarily acts of the use of our tongue correctly rather than the use of armaments. Courage is the use more often than not for us involves the use of our tongue.

And Paul says that he didn’t come to them lying and deceiving them. And we shouldn’t go to one another with lies. Rather, we should use our tongues courageously to tell the truth, to encourage and exhort each other to righteousness.

Paul summed all that up for himself when he said at the end of this section in verse 6, he said, “We didn’t seek glory from you or any other man by way of implication.” He says, “We’re seeking affirmation of what we do from God.” And that gets back to that verse about not fearing man.

Paul’s perception or Paul’s understanding of what the perception of him—who he was from somebody else was not important to him. He wanted to stress and keep in foremost in his mind God’s perception of who he was, God’s evaluation, not man’s evaluation. And because of that, Paul is courageous and bold to speak the truth and what he did. And so, if we’re going to be courageous, we don’t want to be lunatics.

We don’t want to be sinners. We don’t want to be liars. We don’t want to seek glory from man. We want to seek it from God. Now, I said I wanted to say just a couple of quick things about children to teach them to be courageous. First