“Be Of Good Courage”:
Taking a Stand For the Lord

Date: June 8, 1997-A.M.
Speaker: Harvey Porter
Main Scripture References: Acts 23:11; Daniel 1, 2 and 3; Joshua 1:5-7; Joshua 10:25; 1 Chronicles 28:20; John 16:33

Don Wilkerson led us in that last song, “I’m not ashamed to own my Lord, or to defend His cause.” I guess all of us can remember at some time in our life when we later felt that we should have spoken up for the Lord, but we didn’t. I think our society today does not want us to disagree with them. I know that as children of God, we’re often in situations that we do not agree with. Perhaps someone makes a statement that we do not agree with. It’s difficult to know whether we ought to speak up, or whether we should keep silent.

I think that there’s a word in Scripture that possibly we haven’t studied much. The word is “COURAGE.” Luke records in Acts 23:11 that while Paul was in a prison in the city of Jerusalem, one night “the Lord stood near Paul and said, ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.’ ”

That’s an interesting phrase. The word courage is in the Old Testament a lot. It’s a word that means inner strength—strength of mind and strength of spirit! I like that! Strength of SPIRIT! We’re spiritual beings. We are body and SOUL. And the synonym for “soul” is spirit.

And of course, we have in the Godhead the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is described by Paul in the Colossian letter as the only member of the Godhead BODILY, [Colossians 2:9]. He put on flesh and blood like us. He went through the whole cycle of life and was put to death, as you well know. We commemorated that death a few minutes ago in the Lord’s Supper. Then He was resurrected from the grave, and the Bible declares that He is the “firstfruits of them that are raised from the dead,” [1 Corinthians 15:20]. Firstfruits. All of us will be in that category. We’ll be like Him. We’ll have a body. The soul will never die, and even when the soul is separated from this body, it will be in the realm of the dead. We have strong reason to believe that we’ll be conscious. There are any number of passages that indicate that to us. “But when the Lord comes, they that are in the grave shall also hear His voice and shall come forth, some unto a resurrection of eternal life, and some unto a resurrection of eternal punishment,” [John 5:28-29]. My, these are sobering passages! But friends, that’s how it’s going to be. It’s a serious thought!

While we’re in THIS life, we don’t want to be overwhelmed by the world. We want to be fearful of our adversary, the devil. We do not want to remain quiet on occasions when we should SPEAK for our Lord!

I think our country is in real trouble. I’ve never seen so many murderers. I’ve never seen so many people that are in high places that are corrupt. We don’t have a lot of people that we trust. And we hear a lot of lies. It’s common.

Should we remain silent when our Lord is vilified? I don’t think we ought to be mean or nasty at any time. But I think we ought to give a defense for our Lord, for the church, for His whole Word.

After I got out of high school, I worked in a clothing store. While I was going to high school, I worked in a grocery store. I was thrown with people who used a lot of profanity, people that drank. I’m not bragging on myself, but I refused to drink. I remember one occasion after a football game, we were in a car. Somebody had a pint of whiskey, passing it around to everybody so that they could take a swig. Their eyes were red, and they were coughing and sputtering! Boy, that’s sure good! Well, when they came to me, I didn’t want it. I said, “I don’t care for any.” Well, the guys started making fun of me. They called me “sissy”, “pantywaist”, “goody-goody”. One of the boys who was larger than me said, “Leave him alone! He’s smarter than all of us put together!” Hey, I liked that! I asked him if he could go with me all of the time! He couldn’t.

What should I have said? Well, it took a lot of courage to say, “I don’t want that,” because I wouldn’t be “one of the gang.” And I’m sorry to say that there were days when I really didn’t stand up—that I went along with the gang. Peer pressure is a marvelous thing to control our lives, and the devil knows it! The devil uses it all the way through life! We’re not teenagers any more, many of us. But we work on the job where there are people around us that are pretty free-booting very often. If you don’t enter into their activities, you’re going to hear some criticism. If you say something about God or about the Bible, you may hear this retort, “Don’t preach to me!”

So, it’s hard! I’m not saying that ALL the time we ought to speak up. But I think that there are occasions where we ought to have enough strength of character, and strength of faith, that we don’t let it go by without comment, that we say “I believe that,” and then you live what you believe. We can say it kindly, but nonetheless we can say it!

So I got to thinking this week about the word “courage.” Then I thought about the word discourage. “Discourage” means that we have lost heart, or we’re disappointed, and we’re hurt, and we’re “down”. Courage means that we’re standing strong! It’s when we know what we believe, and we feel it, and we’re happy that we DO believe it. That’s what “courage” is.

I looked the word “courage” up in a Bible dictionary, and the definition is, “strength of mind or spirit to meet difficulty or danger or opposition”. I could say, “I don’t want any opposition. I want ‘smooth sailing’ all the time. I want people to be compatible. I want them to be my friends. I don’t want to anger them.” But that’s not always true, or possible. There comes a time when you have to be counted—a time when you have to speak up and defend what you believe and live in your life.