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[Music] Eyes Front, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. I would ask you to give attention with me now to the prophecy of Amos, the fifth chapter, and I'm beginning the reading at the verse which is numbered 14.

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"Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you as you have said. Hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord,

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'In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say, 'Alas, alas!' They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation. And in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I shall pass through the midst of you,' says the Lord. Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord?

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It is darkness and not light, as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light and gloom with no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

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Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs, to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

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May the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Will you pray with me? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The season of hurricanes, and I guess now of hizzocaines, is upon us, and great meteorological catastrophes are churning their way north out of the Caribbean Sea.

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And whenever I read about these storms, I'm reminded of the greatest storm ever depicted on the pages of literature. Joseph Conrad wrote the words in his masterpiece Typhoon, the story of a great storm in the China Sea. There's a moment in the narrative when a fellow named Jukes, a young mate, takes the wheel of a great sailing ship. Captain McWherry cries out counsel to him above the roar of the wind. These are his words.

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"Keep her facing it. Don't be put out by anything. Keep her facing it. They may say what they like, but the heaviest seas run with the wind. Facing it, always facing it. That's the way to get through. You're a young sailor, so face it. That's enough for any man. Keep a cool head, and face it."

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Sailors tell me that that's the best way to get through a storm. Facing it. And that's not only true of the storms at sea. That's true of all other storms in the human experience. The Bible, you see, echoes this same counsel. Take, for example, the words from the prophecy of Amos we just shared.

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Israel is in deep trouble. It confronts storms, mostly of its own making. Amos is counseling Israel to confront the winds of its own guilt, to deal with the problem which is before it. "Do not seek to evade it. Do not seek to excuse yourself. Do not seek to compromise. To do this," he said, "is like a man who flees from a bear only to encounter a lion,

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and finally escaping the lion, he gets into his house, leans against the wall to catch his breath, and is bitten by a snake. There is no escape." So he says. Face it. Paul, in the New Testament, gives the same counsel. He writes to the Christians who lived about Ephesus. He says they will know persecution and attack and abuse.

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And what does he give them as guidance in the face of such circumstances? He does not suggest that they run or look for loopholes or argue. He says, "Put on the whole armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and when you've done that, stand.

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Face that which opposes you. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." When you confront storms in experience, history, great literature, and the testimony of the Old and New Testaments is the same. Face them. Eyes front. And on the thread of that basic principle, I'd like to string three thoughts tonight.

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And the first thought is this. If you're going to live an "eyes front" experience, you must learn to act decisively. There is no way to magnify your problems like ignoring them. No enemy is as dangerous as the one you pretend will go away. Those things that defeat us in the end are those things we fail to deal with at the beginning. I can see her sitting across from me now in my office in California, a very attractive woman, middle-aged, weeping.

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She told me that she and her husband had been married for 20 years. They'd gone through a lot of things together, but now he had fallen for a younger and more glamorous woman. And she asked me if I would pray for her that she might find the strength to accept this circumstance. And I said to her as gently as I could, "No, I won't pray for that at all, for you ought not to accept it.

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You do love him, don't you?" "Oh, yes," she said. "Then fight for him," I said. "Let's face into the problem." "Oh," she said, "that wouldn't be dignified." "Fights are rarely dignified," I counseled. "But if it's valuable, you fight for it." "Well, how shall I fight?" "Look at what you've got in your favor," I said. "In the first place, you are his legal wife. In the second place, you have 20 years of experience together.

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Marvelous memories are yours that you can share. In the third place, your relationship is open and above board. The one he has with this girl is secret and furtive and risky. And finally, your cause is right. You are in the right. So go out and buy some new clothes, the most attractive that you can find. Learn some new recipes and some new jokes. Let's get with it. Get a new attitude in your mind and get some of the worry lines out of your face.

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Eyes front!" She did it. And she won him back again. And that's no rare instance, for statistics show overwhelmingly that those who are divorced, when questioned later, say in astonishing numbers that they wish that they would have fought out the difficulty of their marriage when they confronted it then, and not tried to do it later, after the marriage was done. They deeply regret having become divorced.

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But you see, they ignored the problem too wrong. They didn't face it. So you're at the beginning of a new year, and some strong winds and storms are already on the horizon. Roommate difficulty, insensitivity, cruelty, sloppiness, deceit, maybe even theft. What do you do in the face of that kind of problem? Ignore it and pretend that it will go away?

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Not if you follow the counsel of Scripture. If you follow the counsel of Scripture, you will deal with bears. It is better to deal with bears than with lions or serpents. Face the thing now. You confront a class where you don't understand the lectures or the readings. You wonder if other people are having the same difficulty that you do.

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You're a little hesitant to admit it. What should you do? Try to bluff your way through? Hold on for a while, everything will snap into focus a little later? That's not the course of wisdom. Plague your professor with questions. Go after him hammer and tongs. Find out what needs to be understood now. What is not understood now will be magnified, and even less will be understood later.

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The time to deal with the problem is now. Face it. There are those who are confronting you with temptations with regard to college rules and regulations. You are being told that because you are older and on your own now, you can do what you will and when you will. It is the course of wisdom these people counsel to forget the suggestions of your parents

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and also the collected wisdom of an institution that's over a hundred years old, and instead to follow the guidance of those who are 18 or 20 months older than you are. So what do you do when you hear the winds of those kinds of temptations and storms? Do you sit and think about it? Do you say, "Well, I'll try it out"?

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Do you say, "Well, once or twice won't hurt"? Or do you do what the Apostle Paul suggested? Face it. Take your stand. Put on the shield of faith. Take a stand now. Fight it off now. It is easier dealt with now than it will be dealt with later. The counsel of those who live eyes front is this. Face it.

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It's better to fight with bears than with lions and stinging circuses. Now, of course, to act decisively like this, you must also act fearlessly. Most people refuse to act when they confront a stormy situation because they're afraid. Their will is paralyzed by the spasm, the choking effect of fear and anxiety.

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No sunlight in their lives. That's all shadowed by being afraid. Now, where do you find the courage to confront, the strength to act decisively? I remember once I was in a hospital. It was very early in my ministry, and I was visiting a man who was seriously ill. His family was gathered about him.

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The conversation was very depressed and very serious. There was a great deal of anxiety in the room. A young Christian doctor entered the room, a very vigorous man. He took one look at the room and us sitting in it, listened for one minute to our conversation, and then did what I, as a young minister, should have been smart enough to do but wasn't.

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He said, "I've got to get rid of the fear germs in this room." And then, perhaps over-dramatically, he went across and threw open the windows of the room, and a rather stiff breeze came in. He said, "We've got to drive the fear virus out of this place and replace it with faith." Fear is an attitude, you see.

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And the way to deal with an attitude is to substitute another attitude. There are techniques that you, as a Christian, can use to fight any fears that you encounter. Let me mention just a few, for example. Fill your mind with the fear-eliminating verses of Scripture.

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David writes in Psalm 34, "I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears." One of the places that we seek the Lord is in the pages of Scripture. When we lay hold of Scripture and let Scripture lay hold of us, this puts strength in our spirits, steel in our spines.

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I was in the hospital three weeks ago to have my gallbladder out. Now, the operation was scheduled for two o'clock in the afternoon, and that's a long time to wait for it to come. Not only that, but I have a funny heart. Not funny ha-ha, funny peculiar.

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Does odd things. So I was a little bit anxious. I decided to select some verse of Scripture as my gallbladder surgery verse. The first verse I considered was a verse from Psalms about the vows of mercy,

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but I thought that would be more appropriate for a hemorrhoid operation. I finally settled on these words of the Apostle Paul from Philippians. "The Lord is near. Do not be anxious. But in everything let your prayers and supplications be made known to God with thanksgiving.

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And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, will guard your heart and keep your mind in Christ Jesus." I said that over and over again to myself, and it calmed me and gave me a great peace. The last person to whom I said it was a beautiful blonde nurse who was leaning over me in the operating room.

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She was the one that gave me the juice, but she didn't give it to me until she heard the verse. That's my gallbladder surgery verse. There are so many verses that you can claim. "Be still and know that I am God.

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Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.

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I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." If you were to commit to your memory one such verse every day for one month, you would have stored within you 30 promises of God

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that you could call forth at those times when fear encompasses you. They have tremendous power in making you fear. Another thing that you might try, learn the effects of symbols. If fear is an attitude and you want to replace it with the attitude of courage,

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learn that off-time symbols will help you do this. They trigger the right feelings within us. I, for example, at my desk have a sheet of glass on the top of it, and under that glass are the photos of a lot of people.

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Photographs are great at calling us to courage. There's a picture of my father there who's now gone. Every time I look at him, I am reminded of what he always expected of me. Pictures of certain students who have permitted me to become very much a part of their lives

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and who have become a part of mine. They are there because I recognize that I mean something to them and I must always be worthy of the confidence they've placed in me. I used to have a great big dog. He weighed 160 pounds.

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His name was Rufus. He was a Newfoundlander. Magnificent creature. Beauty without vanity, courage without ferocity, faithfulness without demand. But he's gone now, but his picture's there. And every time I look at him, I'm reminded the picture of the finest teacher that I ever had

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is there for me to see. Those things call out to me every time I look at them. I have a friend who's a performer, and every time he goes on stage, he wears cufflinks that were given to him by his spiritual father.

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And in those moments when he finds tension coming upon him, he reaches down and touches those cufflinks. They immediately remind him of the love and the encouragement he gets from this spiritual friend. There are all kinds of symbols. A bit of lace, a letter from home, from a girlfriend or a boyfriend,

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the cross you wear about your neck, the poster on the wall in your room. These things can speak to you. Surround yourself with symbols that call you to courage, that remind you of the commitments that are yours.

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And another suggestion. Cultivate the attitude of boldness. Now that may sound ridiculous to say to someone who's afraid, "Be bold." But the fact is, you can build boldness into your life. Isaiah 43 says, "Fear not, I the Lord am with thee."

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Well, that knowledge should give to us a greater boldness. You see, whenever you do anything that you are afraid of, that thing that you have feared will die. When you act boldly, great forces come to your aid.

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So move out a little bit at a time into acts of boldness. I think, for example, of the first seminary intern I ever had. He was a graduate of this college. He was studying then at Princeton Seminary, came to work at our church.

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He'd been there a week and it came time for the first morning service, and as we were preparing to go in, I noticed that sticking out of his hymn book was a brown paper bag. And I asked him what that was for. Oh, he said, "Well, I sometimes get nervous when I get up in front of the congregation,

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and when that strikes me, I have to vomit, so I take a brown bag with me." I said, "Wait a minute. Does this happen to you when you speak in class? Oh, no. Does it happen to you when you're with your friends? No.

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It just happens when you're in a formal situation like a worship service." I could hear the prelude was coming to an end out in the sanctuary, but I was not about to go into the sanctuary with that boy and his brown bag. I said, "Do you believe the Lord has called you to the ministry?"

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"Yes, sir, I do." "Have you prepared yourself for this service this morning?" "Yes, sir, I have." "All right, then. I challenge you to a bit of boldness.

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Let me carry the brown bag." Well, he didn't like the idea at first, but he yielded to it, and I walked into the sanctuary, the only time in my life ever in a church carrying a brown bag. Within a few weeks, we were leaving the bag in his office.

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Within a few weeks, the bag was gone. Today, he has a vibrant preaching ministry in the state of Michigan. Now, all it took, you see, was one step at a time. Mountain climbers in training will oftentimes put themselves in a position where they cannot retreat.

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They can only go ahead. That's what you do. You go a little bit out on the branch, just enough to build some boldness, and you move ahead from there.

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If you do these things, if you fill your mind and your spirit with fear-eliminating verses of Scripture, if you use symbols that will trigger in you the attitude of bravery, if you'll take the steps that build toward boldness, then you will be able to live eyes front, decisively and fearlessly.

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[Bell rings] Please turn your cassette to the other side. I'm not suggesting to you that because of this, you will inevitably succeed in every storm you confront. What I'm offering tonight is no guarantee, no formula for 100% success.

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When Amos says, "Wrestle with bears, it's better than lions and snakes," the fact of the matter is that a bear can chew on you pretty good. And there are times when you, in confronting the storms of life, even though you confront them decisively and fearlessly, are going to be woefully battered.

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But don't make the mistake of thinking that there are two groups of people in life, those who succeed and those who fail. There are not two such groups. There's only one group.

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We all fail. We all go down before storms in our experience. If there are two groups, there are two groups in terms of how they deal with failure. Some, when they're battered and blown down, give up.

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Others do not give up, but keep on keeping on. And the Christian can do that because he brings not only decisive and fearless action, but he brings to his eyes front composure faith. He confronts any failure with faithfulness.

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One of my friends taught me just two weeks ago a lesson I'd never learned. In the book of Hebrews, the great heroes chapter of Scripture, where one after another of the great people who have exemplified the faith are catalogued, a whole list of them, in that chapter, the victories of many of the saints of God are described.

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They overthrow kingdoms. They pursue justice. They stop the mouths of lions. They fight fire.

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They escape the edge of the sword. They defeat their enemies. All these things are listed. And then suddenly, without any word of explanation, the list continues.

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It says they were tortured. They were mocked. They were scourged. They were chained.

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They were sawn in half. They were treated in despicable ways, ill-treated. This kind of thing is listed, too. In other words, not just the victors, but those who suffered a great deal,

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not those who always came out with their flags flying, but also those who came out crawling on their knees. They're all listed in this chamber of heroes and heroines. Because, you see, in their moment of victory or their moment of defeat,

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they still held fast to their faith and holding fast to their faith. They were not finally beaten. You are never beaten until you surrender. You are never defeated until you let go of God.

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I did my undergraduate work at a little college over the hill here called Westminster. And I remember in my first year talking to a fellow just a few weeks after school began about why he'd chosen to come to Westminster. He was a basketball player.

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He told me that he had originally wanted to go to Duquesne University. Duquesne University was at that time the best-known basketball school in the East, and Westminster was just behind it, as well-known in basketball then as it is in football now. So he went one night to see Duquesne and Westminster play basketball,

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and Duquesne really trounced Westminster that night. But when the game was over, the fans in the stands, the Westminster fans poured down onto the floor, cheering and singing, and picked up the players on the basketball team

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and carried them in a great jubilant mob scene out toward the locker room. That night, this fellow and his father were driving back home. The boy said to his dad, "Dad, I've decided I want to go to Westminster College." And his father said, "Why? They were the ones that got beaten."

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And he said, and I'll never forget this, as he repeated it to me, "I want to go to a college where they don't know when they're beaten." That's the spirit of the faith. The faith holding fast to God and Christ never knows when it's beaten.

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It moves ahead decisively, it moves ahead fearlessly, and it moves ahead faithfully. And that makes all the difference. I'm going to draw up a list of the ten books I would want you to read. One of those books would be Howard Pyle's Men of Iron.

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It's the story about a young Englishman whose father goes blind, and in his blind and winking state, a wicked earl comes and takes all of the older man's lands and properties. And when the boy hears what has happened to his father,

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he challenges this cruel and heartless earl to a joust to the death. So the barricades are erected in their heavy armor. They set at one another three times in the course of the combat. The young boy drives the older earl back against the barricades.

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Three times he has his sword so that he can take his life, and three times he lets the earl get away. The fourth time he brings the earl again to the barricades, and this time says, "If you will surrender and give to my father what is his,

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I will let you have your life." And in the moment that he said that, he chanced to look over toward his father. And in the moment that he looked away from his enemy, the earl brought his sword down upon the neck of the young boy's horse,

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and it fell to the earth. And the knight was thrown from the horse, spread-eagled on the ground, and the weight of his armor prohibited him from rising. And he could hear the hooves of the horse of the earl as he charged upon him,

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and he heard the hiss of the great two-edged sword, and he felt the cold steel as it cut through the leather bucklings on his armor and pierced into his warm flesh, and he could feel his blood running down into his armor,

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and he thought that he was surely to die. And he heard the hiss of the sword again, and this time he turned and reached up with mailed fists and grabbed the sword. And the earl made the mistake of trying to pull it away,

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and the young man held on with pull to his knees. And then he grasped the stirrup of the earl's horse and pulled himself up, and reaching with one hand and one mighty lunge, he pulled the mighty battle axe from the side of the earl's saddle.

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And then once, twice, three times, he clasped it again and again into the face of the earl until the metal half on the helmet broke open, and he could see the yellow, ashen, dying face of his enemy. And the earl fell from the horse dead,

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and the young knight turned, and even as he turned, the mist came before his eyes. And he took less than twenty steps and fell upon his face and thought that his life was over. It was not. There is more to the story.

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But what concerns us tonight is this part of the story. Notice that because the boy did not deal with the wickedness that he confronted at the beginning, he was more imperiled by it at the end. He went into the conflict with courage, fearless, but he lacked the decisive.

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But having lacked the decisive, he still held on to his faith, and at the moment when he should have been defeated, he would not acknowledge that he was beaten. And so in the end he won. So the storms are coming, big and small.

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The counsel of Captain McWhir is facing it. That's the way to get through. You're a young sailor. Face it. Keep a cool head and face it.

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And the counsel of the ancient prophet Amos is, "Deal with the problem at hand. Don't run from the bears, lest you confront lions and serpents. Face it." And the Apostle Paul says, "To all young knights and ladies of the Spirit,

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put on the whole armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Face it." And if you want all of that in just two words,

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the words, my Christian brothers and sisters, are these. Eyes front. Let us pray. Our Father, we come to thee this night, and some of us already know, storm.

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It's surging and swirling all about us, and we are afraid. And some of us, not knowing storm, are deluded into believing that the delight which is now ours will be ours in every day that is yet to be. And that is not so.

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For none of us goes through life without lightning and thunder. In those moments when we confront storm, give us sufficient wisdom by the Spirit to act decisively, to act fearlessly, and to act faithfully.

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And, O God, if you will, may others in seeing us be led to understand that we can live life eyes front because of Jesus Christ, that Knight of the Spirit, who has won for us not only today, but all of our tomorrows. It's in his name that we lift our prayer.

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And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love

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and to all those whom nobody loves his peace.