Help for the Fainting - Part 1 of 2

The Baptist Bible Hour now comes to you under the direction of Elder LeSaire Bradley, Jr. O for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise! Thou the grace of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace!

This is LeSaire Bradley, Jr. inviting you to stay tuned for another message of God's sovereign grace. Be still my soul, the Lord is on my side. There may gently the cross of green or plain, leave to thy God to order and provide.

In every change, be thankful will remain. Be still my soul, thy handside heavenly friend. Through thorny ways, be to thy joyful end.

Be till my soul, my God of thunder day. To thy love, new to earth, he hands the past. Thy hope, thy confidence and loving shake, all now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still my soul, thou wait and wait till now.

It was the room, then, where he plant below. Be still my soul, the hour is making on, when we shall be forever with the Lord. When is the point when grief and fear are gone? Sorrow for God, the purest joys restore. Be still my soul, when change and tears are past. All safe and blessed we shall be at last. Amen. I'm glad that you've joined us for the broadcast today, and if the message is a blessing to you, we'd certainly appreciate hearing from you.

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A few weeks ago, I learned of the report by the Surgeon General of the United States that loneliness has become an epidemic and it's causing many health problems. I then used a message entitled, Never Alone. The text, Hebrews 13 5, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. So the children of God have the assurance they are never alone.

God himself is with them. We then brought a message entitled, Considering One Another, in which we pointed out that the Christian life means we're to be involved with other people. A few examples of the one another in passages include Romans 12 10, love one another. Romans 15 14, admonish one another. First Thessalonians 1 18, comfort one another. First Thessalonians 5 11, edify one another. And James 5 10, pray for one another.

And the list goes on. There are over 50 of them in the Bible. So observing these instructions can go a long way to preventing loneliness. Our message the next Sunday was, Hope for the Lonely.

And then, as I thought about how some would respond to all those commandments for one anothering, I realized they might say, I just can't do it. I am too weak. So we then brought the message, God uses the weak. What an encouragement.

Although I may be weak, God can still use me. So today we continue in that line of encouragement with a message entitled, Help for the Fainting. Have you ever fainted? No doubt some of you have. Some of you have never had that experience. Sometimes you can think you're going to faint and you don't. And then the one experience I had with fainting, I wasn't thinking about fainting, I just fainted. I'd taken some medication that didn't agree with me. And the first thing I knew about fainting, I was down on the floor. And as I came to myself, I thought, what am I doing down here?

And then realized I had fainted. Now fainting is referred to a number of times in scripture. It speaks of discouragement. It speaks of being ready to give up. It's used in the connotation of telling us not to give up. A lot of things said about fainting.

So my subject is help for the fainting. We read from the book of Isaiah chapter 40, beginning with verse 27. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?

There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. So the question comes to mind, why do we faint?

Why are we sometimes prone to faint? Well, the first thing that becomes obvious in this passage of scripture is because we misjudge our circumstances. In the 27th verse, the people are saying, my way is hid from the Lord, meaning the Lord is not observing our difficult situation. God has forgotten about us. We're left alone.

My way is hid from Him. He's not observing us. So drawing the incorrect conclusion, the conclusion that God doesn't care when in fact He does, bring you to the point that you feel faint. You feel weak. You feel discouraged.

You feel like giving up. Psalm 77 verse 8 says this, Is His mercy clean gone forever? Doth His promise fail forevermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercy sealer?

Here's one in a deep struggle. God is a God of mercy. How thankful we can be that the mercy of the Lord endures forever. But here, the psalmist says, it seems to me that His mercy is gone, clean gone, clean gone forever. It seems that His promise fails. It seems that God has forgotten to be gracious. Have you ever been in that low state?

It just seemed that everything was going wrong. You tried to pray and you didn't feel like you got an answer to your prayer. You say, where is the Lord? Has He in anger shut up His mercy that I can no longer be a recipient of His mercy and grace? Well, let's see what else the psalmist said.

He didn't leave it there. Verse 10, And I said, This is my infirmity. I was wrong to surmise that God had forgotten me.

This is my infirmity. But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord.

I'm going to recall what my experience has been in the past. I'm going to think about those years at the right hand of the Most High. I'm going to think about His works.

Surely I will remember Thy wonders of old. I will meditate also of all Thy work and talk of Thy doings. I'm going to give attention, thought, meditation to the great works of God, the thing that He has done for me and the things that I know He has done for others. Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary. Who is so great a God as our God? So after questioning whether God's mercy was clean gone, He concludes by saying, Who is so great a God as our God? Our God is a great God, a faithful God. I'm recalling what He has done for me.

And when we begin to feel faint, this is something we need to do. Follow the example of the Psalmist and begin to meditate, to remember the wonders of the Lord and to talk of His doings. How uplifting it is to share with one another what God has done for us in a special way in our life. Or to talk about the wonders of His power and majesty that are displayed throughout the Scriptures, the great things that God has done. Talk about them. So easy to have our conversation taken up entirely with the things that trouble us, the perplexing things that surround us in life.

But let's talk about His wondrous doings. Another reason that we are prone sometimes to faint and may actually faint is because we're depending on human strength. Verse 30 says, Even the youth shall faint and be weary. Now some of us older people know at least to some degree our limitations. And we know that if we were to get out here and try to have a race, going down Parkway Avenue, around the circle, and down to Anthony Wayne and back again, we'd be pretty much out of breath.

But I look at some of you strong, strapping young people and say, boy, you could run that race and wouldn't even notice it. But this text says, Even the youth shall sometimes faint. They shall sometimes be weary. Even your young men shall utterly fall down.

What's he telling us? We can't rely on our own strength. We can't rely on the strength of somebody else. Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 5, Thus saith the Lord, Curse be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh the flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. So whether you're leaning on your own strength or leaning on the arm of somebody else, you will ultimately fall down. You can't depend on human strength. Number three, you may sometimes feel faint, feel like you're ready to give up, you're ready to quit because of weak faith.

We see that in Psalm 27 verse 13. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord. I recognized I was getting close to a faint. I was getting very near that point where I was going to collapse and fall down. I had fainted.

I would have fainted. And I not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen that heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Oh, that we might follow the advice of the psalmist here. Observing the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Waiting on the Lord.

Waiting doesn't mean that you're indifferent or you're inactive. It means you're patiently waiting in confidence with hope in God. You're waiting for a manifestation of his presence, his blessing, his power, his blessing upon the church. Just as individuals may faint, the whole church collectively could faint, reaching a point of discouragement.

Just ready to throw up your hands and say, all the good days are behind us. But we are to be expectantly waiting for the outpouring of God's blessings upon his church and kingdom, even in the most challenging of times. So he says, I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord. So a reason that would bring about a spiritual faint is a lack of faith.

Just not believing the promises of God. You review your circumstances. You acknowledge your own weakness.

You look at the conditions that prevail in the world. You look at the coldness of many in a spiritual way at this time. The love of many waxing cold. And so you're ready to faint.

What's the cure for it? That you believe the promise of God. Oh, to claim his promise. Jeremiah 33, he says, call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Things beyond your greatest expectation.

Do you believe that all things are possible with him? And then another reason that a person might faint is because they are frustrated that things are not going their way. Have you ever been in that plight where you were just plain old upset? You tried to work out your plan. You tried to accomplish something. You thought you were right, but it all just blew up in your face. You weren't having your way. And so you just say, what's the use?

I just faint and fade out of the picture. Well, we've got a biblical example of that. Jonah chapter 4. As you know, God sent this preacher to Nineveh to call upon the people to repent. He didn't want to go. He didn't like those people. They were wicked people.

That's to be recognized. But he was lacking in compassion. He felt like it would be a good thing if God had just burned that place up. So he, being reluctant to go, bought passage on a ship going down to Tarsus, and God sent a great storm. You know that they finally determined he was the problem passenger and pitched him into the water, but God prepared a great fish that swallowed him, and he traveled around to the depths for three days and nights. Finally, it was spewed out on the dry land of salvation, and he declared salvation is of the Lord. So he arrives at Nineveh, a little late and a little wet, but he shows up, and he preaches. And much to his dismay, the people repented. Now, if I went to a city, whether it was large or small, and the whole city repented, I think I'd be happy about it. But not Jonah. In fact, he said to the Lord, Lord, I knew this was a potential problem.

I knew what you're like. You're ready to forgive people, and I just knew this might happen, so here we are. So he goes out to the edge of the city limits and sits down in a big pout and is extremely unhappy. And so the Lord, though, according to Jonah 4-6, prepared a gourd and made it come up to cover Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. So the Lord's looking out for his servant in spite of his cantankerous spirit. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass when the sun did rise that God prepared of him an east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted.

So after having a little protection from the sun for a moment because God caused the gourd to grow up, he prepares a worm to destroy the gourd, and the hot sun's beating down, beating on his head, and he fainted and wished himself to die. Yeah, I might as well be dead. Nothing's going my way.

I don't like my circumstances. He says, it is better for me to die than to live. And when God approached him, do you really have a right to be angry? He stood right up talking to the Lord.

Yes, I do. I think having gone my way, and I have every right to be angry. Well, you can see this was indeed a problem. Jonah was fainting because he was in the hot sun. No doubt there was this physical impact on him, but the real problem was his spirit. He was unhappy.

He didn't like the way God was operating his business. And you know, that's possible in the weakness of your human nature to get to the place that you say, I just don't like the way God's providence is unfolding in my life. How often I hear somebody speak to another individual that's having some kind of deep trouble, and say, you don't deserve that. You don't deserve that.

Who are we to say what somebody deserves or doesn't deserve? The fact is, we're all sinners, and we deserve nothing but the wrath of God, and anything we get better is by mercy and grace, and we ought to be thankful for it. But if you get bent out of shape because your plans are disrupted, what you had hoped to accomplish is not coming to pass, and you're half angry at the Lord, you may faint, even to the point of saying, I would just as soon be dead. Had a man say to me one time as he told a long story and unfolded the details, it became evident that he was really upset with the Lord because something he'd been asking for for a long time just wasn't happening. He said, just to tell you the truth, preacher, I've been thinking about taking my life. Now, I wouldn't give this kind of response to everybody.

I would try to discern what their emotional state was, but I sense with this man he was more in a state of rebelliousness than he was anything else. I said, do you really think that would be a good idea? God gives you life.

He gives you breath to breathe. So you're thinking about taking your life, shaking your fist in God's face, and saying, I don't like the way you operate. You have me still living, and I'm tired of living, and I'm going to end it all. Does that sound like a good idea? Well, I guess not.

Well, certainly it doesn't. A person can be in a terribly difficult emotional state where they've lost their sense of good reason, but this man was capable of still reasoning and could well see what I was talking about, that to say, God, I don't like the way you're working in my life. You haven't answered my request, so I'm tired of living. I'm just going to end it all.

That's what Jonah is saying here. Better for me to die than to live. You may have had a few dark days in your life.

You weren't thinking seriously about taking your life, thankfully, but you may have said, I'd just as soon be dead and alive. I don't know why I'm here. So this can be a cause of a spiritual faint. We always say that the Bible speaks about fainting in a number of areas. Here we've noticed the experience of Jonah the prophet, who was frustrated because things weren't going his way.

And when the sun beat down on his head, he fainted and wished himself to die. But oh my, that we might find the strength, hope, and encouragement we need by trusting in the living God and by being surrendered to his will and submissive in whatever area he has for us in life that we may bring glory and honor to his name. I hope that you will write us, and until next week at this same time, may the Lord richly bless you all. The Baptist Bible Hour has come to you under the direction of Elder LeSaire Bradley, Jr. Address all mail to the Baptist Bible Hour, Cincinnati, Ohio 45217. And behold, beyond thy throne, rock of angels...