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Bibleline Bibleline, dear God’s word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time, dear God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa in Tampa, Florida, clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bible-lined website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I want to talk to you about a nice little subject. It’s called, how do you recognize depression? Now you know the Bible talks an awful lot about being encouraged, exhorting one another. And when you get depressed, you depress other people in case you didn’t know that. When you get excited about the Lord, you can get other people excited about the Lord. So what kind of a testimony have you been having? Are you moping? Has God died? Fell off his throne, been taken over?

Is he sick? Now if you get down and discouraged and depressed, does the Bible have anything to say about that? Now when you study the Bible, you may not find that much in it about the word depressed, but you will find some things that causes depression, and believe it or not, There are individuals in the Bible that were greatly depressed. But there are several things to keep in mind. There are sins that can cause depression. And there’s non-sinful courses or causes of depression.

And there’s false views that cause depression. And there’s medical causes for depression. Now, we don’t have time to cover all of those, but just a few that I would like to cover tonight, and it deals with the sins that causes depression. Now let me just mention some of the sins that causes depression. One is guilt, greed, anger, hatred, perfectionism, because you’ve got to have everything right. worry, jealousy, laziness, rejection of Christ, sex as a God, Satan worship. In other words, sometimes the sins of the mind causes great depression.

And if you do not watch it, these are things that can take its toll up on you. And so these are brought on by your own wicked thinking. When you don’t think right, you can depress yourself very easy. And whenever you do that, of course you do that to other people because most of these sins are things that are also affecting other people because they also see you and hear you. So I wanted to start off with this one word, perfection.

Perfection. And because of perfection, there is a man in the Bible. Believe it or not, that was what we would classify as a perfectionist. Everything has to be right. And you know, whenever you want everything right and it’s not right, you do not want to even see your own wickedness. You don’t want to see your own failures. You You don’t want to mess up because you can’t handle it, because you want everything right, you want to do everything right, and lo and behold, you can’t.

Sooner or later, you’re going to really disappoint yourself. And remember this, one of the most, I guess, discouraging people in the Bible, most depressed man in the Bible was a man named Jeremiah. You ever heard of Jeremiah? The weeping prophet. went wrong in his life. Now I’m not talking about Job, I’m talking about Jeremiah. And I also understand this. Because of these sins, the sins of the mind produces guilt. And guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body.

Now, you ever have pain in the body? It’s the way of letting your body know that, and you know, something is wrong. And if you didn’t have pain in the body, you probably wouldn’t last so long. But it’s a way of signaling you to let you know you’re doing something that you shouldn’t do. You’re over exerting yourself. Or you have a pain in my side. I’m going to have an attack on appendicitis. Or you have headaches, and it could be because you have a tumor.

tumor. There’s all kinds of things that causes pain and pain is a way of making you aware of a problem that needs to be resolved. So that’s why when people have pain in their need, they might want to get a new knee replacement. Or they might want to get a hip replacement all because pain tells us something is wrong. What God has given to us another mechanism and it’s called guilt. Guilt is between you and God. It’s God’s way of telling you something’s not right.

Now you may deny the sin, run from the sin, but the sin will find you out. It will chase you down. It will run after you. And the guilt you can’t get away from. So this is why there’s people in the world that wanna get laws changed. why, because they feel guilty when they know they’ve broken the law and they’re doing things that the law says you can’t do or that the Bible says you can’t do so they want to try to justify themselves so they don’t feel guilty.

That’s why whenever sometimes you want to do something, you want to find somebody who agrees with you because then you feel better. Because now you don’t feel as guilty because, well, so it’s so said it was all right. So we’re always sometimes looking for somebody to justify our wrong way of thinking or think that we do. So sin does take its toll upon us. So look there in the book of Numbers in chapter 11. Numbers chapter 11, way over there in the Old Testament.

Numbers chapter 11. There’s a man named Moses. Some of these things I’ve mentioned to you before, but I wanna hit it just a little bit different. You see, he wanted to be a perfect leader. Whenever he had told the people, he says, why do y’all strive against each other? And they said, are you gonna kill us like you did the Egyptian yesterday? He couldn’t handle it. Cause he had done something wrong and somebody knew it. So he runs and hides in the backside of a desert for how long?

40 years. 40 years. It’s a long time. To run, it’s a long time for guilt to run after him. This is why God had such a hard time getting Moses to go back down to Egypt. He went away, away, away, away, away, away. Who are you? What’s your name? What am I supposed to say? I can’t talk. And he gave all these excuses why he can’t do it He doesn’t want to be a failure. I tried before I failed.

I’m not going to do it again. And that’s the way sometimes the perfectionists will be. They get critical of themselves and other people very, very fast. So whenever you’re a perfectionist, you become very judgmental, very critical, and sometimes even of yourself to the point of great depression, really down and really discouraged and it happened so easy. So here in the book of Numbers in chapter 11, look in verse 10, then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families. Every man in the door of his tent and the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly.

Moses also was displeased. Moses was upset. Now The difference between self-righteous anger and godly anger, righteous anger, is if somebody does something against God and you have righteous anger because they offended God. That’s one thing. But sometimes when somebody offends us, we also have anger, but it’s self-anger that can lead to sin very easily. And that’s why the Lord says, don’t let the sun go down upon your wrath. Be angry in sin not because most anger leads to sin.

So God says, Don’t let it go overnight. Don’t let the sun set with you angry. Try to solve all that you can because you may not sleep too good at night when you get down and discouraged and depressed. Do you know there’s a lot of people in our country because they have no clue on how to handle guilt. They’d have to take drugs. Drugs to wake up, drugs to go to sleep, drugs all the time. When you go to the medicine cabinet of the Word of God to the great physician, did you know that God has a way of handling all these depressions that everybody goes through?

It’s just that people don’t believe what God says and they can’t trust him. So that’s why they worry because they’re scared. They feel with fear. They don’t know how God’s gonna get him out of something. And then whenever you want everything to be right, you feel with anger. You get mad. You get filled with bitterness. That’s what causes people to become so depressed. And does it affect their lives? Greatly affects their lives. Now look what he says in verse 11.

And Moses said unto the Lord, wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? Wherefore have I not found favor in thy sight? That thou last the burden of all this people upon me? Lord, do you realize what you’ve done? You made me the leader of a couple million people, and I’m supposed to solve all their problems. This is too great for me. I can’t stand it anymore. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and there are probably a few camels around there.

He says in verse 12, “‘Have I conceived all this people? “‘Have I begotten them that thou should have say unto me, “‘carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father, “‘beareth the second child, unto the land which thou swears unto their fathers? When should I have flesh to give unto all this people? For they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.

He did not want to see himself fail, and he doesn’t know how to solve the problem. He is down, he’s discouraged, he’s angry, he gets upset with God, he’s bitter to people. Moses had an anger problem. He was depressed. And because of being depressed, he doesn’t want to see himself as a failure. And neither does he want the people to see him all apart because sometimes that’s one of the things that really bothers us. We don’t want to see people see us mess up.

And we’re afraid sometime, but we’re going to mess up because the way gets so hard. We don’t want to break down, and yet we don’t have the strength to go on. So what do we do? And this is where he was. So look in verse 15. And if thou dill thus with me, kill me. I pray thee out of hand. If I have found favor in thy sight, let me get this part of the verse down. This is very important.

Let me not see my wretchedness. I don’t want to see how bad I am. Did you know that if God took his hand off of us, you would really see how bad you really are. Did you know the truth that you now know from the Word of God? Are the restraints up on your old sinful nature? Did you realize how bad you would be and how wicked you would be if it wasn’t for some of the truth that you do know?

Did you realize that there’s a lot of people in this world that do not have the truth of the Word of God and they don’t have the Holy Spirit and they don’t have any restraints? Look how they’re living. Look at the world. Look what’s going on. And there’s like there’s no fear, there’s no guilt. It doesn’t bother because everybody’s doing it. You always feel better when everybody else is doing it. Misery loves company. The guilt is shared. Hey, we’re all in this together, but we’re having a great time.

But there’s a time of reckoning coming in. The world will fall into great depression. That’s why most people in America can’t even think straight. They’ve lost the power of reason. They cannot discern the times in which they live. They can’t discern what’s going on and they have no clue on a solution. So it’s very interesting. But it says, let me not see my wretchedness. Now you’re talking about being depressed. There is a depressed man. Here is a man who has an addiction.

To anger. Anger is an addiction. Just like a lot of times, all of us have certain kinds of addictions and we have to go through it. Take your Bible and turn to the book of Esther, the book of Esther. The book of Esther, right before the book of Job, and Esther in chapter 5, Esther in chapter 5. This is a very interesting little story because you see, there’s a man who was also equally depressed and his name was Jonah.

Jonah was depressed and his problem was with hatred. He hated the Gentiles. He was a Jew and hated the Gentiles. He did not want to go to Nineveh. He knew that God was merciful and he knew that if he was to preach to them that they would change their mind and get right and God wouldn’t zap him. And what did he want? He wanted God to get him. But Jonah hated the Gentiles. Well, a man by the name of Haman hated the Jews and And because he hated the Jews, he wanted the Jews to be annihilated.

Well, Haman hated Mordecai. And there’s a little story here that kind of talks a little bit about this. And if you look there in chapter 5, the book of Esther, Esther knew that you would have to go to see the king, because Haman had got the king to pass a law that would kill all the Jews. And yet she knew that she couldn’t go see the king unless he summoned for her. And if she did go to see him, he would have to hold out his scepter.

That means that she could come on in and she would be spared. And so she even though she was the queen, but she was the Jew. And Haman’s decree would have killed her, Mordecai, and all the Jews in the land. So things weren’t going too good. So she went to go see the king and when she went to see the king, he says, what’s the matter, Pokesy? I’m not feeling very well. countenance was not, you know, exciting and glorious and thrilled and he says, what’s wrong?

She says, well, I got a problem, but I want to have a banquet for me and you and Haman. Just as three and she said, I’ll fix it. She wanted to Haman to be there when she tells the king what he wants to do. Now, Haman on the other hand, see, he was… he thought that everything was going great for him. So he says down here in verse 7, then answered Esther and said, my petition in my request is, if I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleased the king to grant my petition, and to perform my request, let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do tomorrow as the king had said.

Then when Haman foreth that day, joyful with glad heart, but when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate that he stood not up nor moved for him, he was full of indignation against Mordecai. Now this is hatred. He hated this man because Mordecai wouldn’t stand and pay homage to him because after all Haman was a great man. But Mordecai didn’t worship men. Mordecai worshiped God. Mordecai wouldn’t bow to anybody. So somebody was upset because you defied me. And some people just hate others because they don’t honor them the way they think they ought to be honored.

Don’t you know who I am? So he says in verse 10, nevertheless Haman refrained himself. When he came home, he sent and called for his friends and zerish his wife, and Haman told them of the glory of his riches and the multitude of his children and all the things wherein the king had promoted him and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Boy, was He was one proud man. I mean, he was riding high.

He was somebody. Well, but he’s had a problem. In verse 12, Haman said, moreover, yay, Esther the Queen did let no man come in with the King unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself. Look who I am. I’m somebody. And tomorrow am I invited unto her and also with the King. Yet all this availeth mean nothing as long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King’s gate. He said, I can’t stand it, man. I hate that man.

Now this man, and it caused him, he is so filled with hate. It blinds him. It doesn’t matter how much he already has, here’s a poor old Jew who said that the gate doesn’t honor him. And what does he want to do? Not just to this one Jew, to all of them. You want to kill all of them? Over Jews. Because one guy didn’t pay him attention. Now I know you’re not you’re not you’re not hamin but did you know that somebody can mistreat you and not give you the honor and so forth you think they should and you’d be surprised how you can fit feel with hatred so easy so quickly now you talk about why are you depressed if you get down and you’re depressed you start thinking why am I depressed why am I so down why am I so discouraged and you might

find out because you’re not impressed with God. You’re not impressed with His will. So you’re depressed because of yourself. You’re depressed because of people. You’re depressed because of circumstances. Everything is not working out for your honor and your glory. You see, if you were to reverse it and say, I want to do whatever it is for God’s honor and for God’s glory. So as long as I give God the honor and the glory for whatever happens to me, what happens to me, does it really matter?

It’s whenever you want it to be to you and then people don’t honor you and they don’t praise you and they don’t exalt you and they don’t bow to you. You know this is what causes such rebellion among people because everybody has a will and most people do not like to submit their will to anybody. This is what’s destroying marriages across this country because the woman doesn’t doesn’t want to submit to the man. The man doesn’t want to submit to God.

And nobody wants to submit to anybody. And the kids don’t want to submit to the parents because all they see is rebellion and more rebellion. And then you wonder why so many people are depressed. They’re down, they’re discouraged. And this is part of the reason why. So he says in verse 14, then says, you’re as his wife and all his friends on him, let a gallow be made of 50 cubits high by 75 feet high. And of tomorrow, speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged on it.

Thou didn’t go thou in Mary with the king into the banquet. And the thing, please, Haman, and he caused the gallows to be made. So he’s already counting his chickens before the hatch. He’s already building the gallows. He hasn’t even got permission from the king yet. So now he’s all cheerful. Why? Because of how he’s thinking. And he was down because of how he was thinking. You see, when you’re happy, it’s because of what you’re thinking. And when you’re sad, it’s because of how you’re thinking.

So is how you think very important. It is very important. People that are really depressed usually bring it upon themselves. Now, like I said, there’s times whenever it could be medical reason. It could be because of non-sinful reasons. And so as time goes on, I would like to maybe cover more of these things. But I want you to get this because it’s so important. Chapter 6, on that night, could not the king sleep. He commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles and they were read before the king.

Now isn’t it amazing just happens to not be able to sleep this night? The night before Haman and Krenesto was going to come into a little banquet. And so here’s the king and he’s setting up and he can’t sleep. So what does he do? He gets out the old records and starts reading the books. And lo and behold, he reads in there where somebody had saved his life. Somebody saved his life and he hadn’t done anything about it.

And all this time was spent. Look what he says there in verse two. And it was found written that Mordecai had told of Bingdankah. He says, and to the king’s chamberlands, the keepers of the door who sought this lay hands on King Herhazarus. And the king said, what honor and dignity has been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king’s servant that ministered unto him, there is nothing done for him. Well, though, that’s a shame. So the king finds out, hey, there’s a guy in the kingdom that did something for me, saved my life, and nobody’s done anything for him.

So what is he going to do? He’s going to ask Haman. Haman, what should I do for the man that needs to be honored? Oh, he thinks it’s him. So the king says here in verse 4, and the king said, who is in the court? Now, Haman was coming to the outward court of the king’s house. to speak unto the king, to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him. And the king’s servant said unto him, Behold, Haman, standeth in the court.

And the king said, let him come in. So Haman came in. The king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor? Now, Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honor more than to myself? So well, I’m really gonna pour it on thick. This is what you ought to do. And buddy, did he eat those words? You know what I like about the Lord? God has to have a sense of humor.

This is funny. Serious, but it’s got a little sense of humor to it. So what should I do to somebody the king, for the man whom the king delighted to honor.” Well, let me count the ways. Let the royal apparel be brought which the king uses to wear. And the horse that the king rides upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head, and let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes that they may array the man with all whom the King delighteth to honor and bring him on horseback through the streets of the city and proclaim before him, thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honor.”

Well, the King said, hey, that’s a great idea. That’s a wonderful idea. In verse 10, then the king said to Haman, Make haste, take the apparel and the horse, as thou have said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew that saideth at the king’s gate, let nothing fail of all that thou hath spoken.” Wasn’t he excited about this? You’re talking about how to, you know, crawl fish? He hates this guy, and he had an open his mouth, and what he had said, And said, God can take the wickedness of man and turn it around to honor his own.

Don’t worry about what people say about you. You just do right. You just be faithful. How would you have liked to have the part of being Mordecai at the gate? And not to have anything. And yet he has his name written down in the Word of God as a great individual. people will read about them for all these years. Who would have ever thunk it? You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr.

Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage.

If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 3-3-6-3-4. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10-30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold.

Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believe in that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up.