Our scripture, again, is taken from the 12th chapter of Proverbs, and we'll look at verse 25, Proverbs, chapter 12, verse 25. Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad. Amen. God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of his holy word. This is from the wisdom section of the scriptures, as you know, and Proverbs is just full of what it's called, aphorisms, little aphorisms, little wisdom statements, little nuggets that are rich. In fact, many unbelievers find great value from the Proverbs, but what they don't realize is that the Proverbs that are set in the scriptures are really the unveiling of the wisdom of God that is in Christ, and therefore the wisdom by which he conforms us to the image of Christ. In fact, Jesus is the manifestation of our wisdom. First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30, the Apostle Paul says that Jesus is not only righteousness of God and our sanctification, but he is also our wisdom. And so really we see here wisdom that is not just wisdom in general, wise, quaint little sayings, but we really see great value as it's attached to the gospel itself. Now in this particular passage, it's a humbling passage. It deals with three things, really. The first thing that it deals with is anxiety. Secondly, it deals with depression that comes from anxiety, and then thirdly, it gives us secure for it. So first off, let's consider the word anxiety, as it's presented here, anxiety or as it is mentioned in the new king, or in the king James, heaviness of heart. What is heaviness of heart? Anxiety or heaviness of heart is a condition that we are all prone to because of our fallen nature. It's in fact, we are prone to this heaviness, this condition of anxiety, or this condition of heaviness of heart, not only because of our own fallen nature, but also because we live in a fallen world. So we are prone to this disposition, because we ourselves are fallen, and because we live in a fallen world, therefore we are subject to heaviness of heart, anxiety. This is something that we cannot deny. I know we are used to, especially in this happy, clappy sort of version of Christianity, where I'm just too blessed to be stressed sort of thing. We hear people say that all the time, you can say it, but we know that we are fallen, and we live in a world that's fallen, and therefore we are prone to anxieties. In fact, that's why in the New Testament, there are so many warnings about, don't be anxious. The reason it's there is because it's a reality, it's a problem that's an ongoing problem. Jesus tells His disciples to let not your heart be troubled, because we have, because we have a heart problem of sin. We are also subject to a number of associated and related heart problems, and anxiety is one of them. Now, in fact, I like the King James, the old King James translation of the first part of this passage, it says, heaviness in the heart, instead of anxiety, it says heaviness in the heart may make it, heaviness in the heart of man, make it to stoop, and that's a great word picture, it's a great imagery there, that anxiety causes the heart to stoop. That's what a depression is, a depression is an indent, an indention that's made in something that when something is pressed down, and so what I want to do first is, before we look at the actual, at the concept of depression, or just make a statement on depression, first let's look at page four, major causes for anxieties, for fallen creatures in a fallen world, four major sources, primary sources for anxiety, and one of them is the specter and the threat of death, because we are dying people and because we live among people who die, then we can be, our hearts can be made anxious because of death. In fact, there's in the book of Hebrews, it makes us mindful of this, or reminds us, I should say, of this truth in Hebrews chapter two or chapter three, two, and in beginning in verse 14 it says, in as much as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who at the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who, through the fear of death, were all of their lifetime subject to bondage. So the fear of death has, it keeps people in bondage, and some people would never recognize or own the fact that they're afraid to die, and so it does have repercussions. We deal because of death, the specter of death, our own death, the threat of our own death, our lives can be endangered at any given moment, it makes us paranoid. I remember as a child going through a series where I was just depressed to live, because I was seeing so much death, in 1965 we had to watch riot, and people I knew were dying, and then you see that the president was assassinated in 1963, and then in 1968 we had assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and after Kennedy's funeral, I was just afraid to go to sleep, it's like what in the world is going on here, because people were dying, and I'm getting notices, or I'm hearing my parents deal with notices of family members and friends that we knew that we're in Vietnam, that we're dying, and then both my parents, grandparents that raised them, were dying, and all of a sudden I'm worried, wow, how much time do we have? You see, threat death is a threat to us, and the threat of death can cause anxieties. People, some people are depressed by it, and others just get distracted by the reality of death, and so we get bucket lists and things that we do, and why is it because we're trying to, we feel like we're being chased by death. People get older sometimes, or they reach what they call the middle-aged crisis, and what is the middle-aged crisis, other than trying to outrun death, afraid of the youth that has left us, and so that can cause anxiety. Death, our own death, and even dealing with the death of others can cause anxieties to the heart. So that's certainly a major cause of anxiety, and if we deny that, boy, we are whistling through a graveyard, but here's a second cause of a major cause of depression among in a fallen people, in a fallen world, the fear of want, the fear of want, in other words, the fear of not having can cause great anxiety. Not only can we be made unsettled by the fact that we are going to die, but the fact that the fear of not having, that can scare some people to death. I was sharing from this passage in one of our devotionals, office devotionals, and I made the point to about my father, and most of my family in Arkansas, and I noticed that growing up, and when we would go to visit Arkansas, that all of our relatives had these deep freezers, I don't mean like a freezer with the door that you open that way, I mean with the top that opens, and it's you look in it, it's like it's a deep freezer, and so, and that explains some things in our house. We didn't have a deep freezer in our house, I don't know if they allowed them in California, but we didn't have one in our house, but we had, I noticed my father, he had this thing where there was certain things, it wasn't that you don't have it, he was concerned that you had enough, and then I started thinking about it, I started asking questions, and one of the reasons in Arkansas was that they had these deep freezers was because there was always the threat of tornadoes, tornadoes could come, and just like here, the threat of hurricanes, they tell you to have certain things in preparation for hurricanes, but then I also discovered something else, that my parents grew up in an era, they were raised by grandparents who grew up during the depression, and they were afraid of not having enough, and so because they didn't have enough, at one point during the depression, they wanted to make sure that if it ever happens again, will never be caught without enough, anxiety of not, it can be the result of people being afraid that they would not have enough, years ago when I was on the board of directors for the Rafiki Foundation, we had a new set of orphans that came into our orphanage, and I believe it was in Uganda, and one of it was a brother and a sister, and they had been in the state orphanages, and they had been around in various places, and when they came to our home, and if you've ever seen a Rafiki Village, I know each year during vacation Bible school, you get a glimpse of the Rafiki Villages, but if you've ever been into a Rafiki Village, it's a wonderful place, it's nice homes that we try to provide for all of the orphans that come into our care, in fact so much so that a lot of the indigenous people, they try to send their children there, even if they're not orphans, because it's such a nice place, and we had a couple of children that came from state orphanages, and when they came in every night, because they get clothes, they get shoes, and so forth, and one of the little boys, they caught him that he was taking his toys, and some of the food from the kitchen, and he was putting it under his pillow, and the mother of the home where he was, she caught him, and she stopped him first couple times, and then sure enough, two nights later, there would be food, again, under his pillow, and the clothes that he had been given, it was put under his pillow, and then she'd dawned on her why this was the case, and the reason was, is because he was afraid he wouldn't have it, he was afraid that when he got up, maybe the other kids would get it, and the food that he got today, that he wouldn't get tomorrow, and she just hugged him, and she embraced him, and she showed him everything in the home, and she said, all of this is yours, it's yours while you're up, it's yours when you sleep, and when you get up in the morning, it'll still be yours. Brothers and sisters, many of us are like that little orphan, that we live in a world, and we are afraid to, that we're not going to get something, and so many people, we're afraid we're not going to get enough joy out of life, we're afraid we're not going to get enough food, we're afraid, and so we get distracted by stuff that keeps us from that state of want, that condition of want, because nobody wants to want, and it can cause anxieties and care of heart. Yes, death, specter and threat of death can cause anxieties in the heart, and the fear of losing, and not having what you need can cause you to want. Jesus warns His disciples, He says, why would you pray? Why is it that you pray like the pagans do, that give us food and all of that? Don't you know your Heavenly Father has all of that? He knows what you stand in need of, but here's the third thing that causes anxiety among fallen people in a fallen world, the hunger for significance, a desire to be somebody, and so therefore we try to prove that we're somebody in our own circles, and so we work hard, and we overwork and we pull, we sometimes burn the candle from both ends, so that we can have a card that says we have status, because we want to be somebody, we want to be significant, we want them to know our name, and so sometimes we put our names on our license plate so as folk can know our name. We try to dress in such a way, and we want to make sure that we can live in such a place where we are somebody, that we've got stuff and we've got significance, we strive to get letters behind our name, and we want our name to matter, and sometimes for the sake of significance we can cause ourselves great anxieties, carried about such heaviness of heart, we get the name, we get the significance, but we don't have any rest, and so yes, death and the threat of death, the fear of want, and the hunger for significance can cause us great anxieties in this world, but here's the fourth thing, and that is the absence of love, the absence of love, though love ones, whether it's in our family relationships, whether it's in our romantic relationships, a desire for love and to be loved can cause anxieties, it can cause all sorts of issues of self-esteem, it can cause all sorts of disruptive behavior when we feel we're not loved, children that are not loved act out, and so do adults, when we feel that we are not loved by the people that that should love us, whether it's family, whether it's again spouses, or whether it's in a romantic situation, whether it's siblings, when we feel we are not loved we get defensive, because the heart has been made anxious, God has made us to love, and He has made us to receive love, and the absence of that love disturbs us, it's a disorder, so these are things that can cause anxieties, anxieties are not necessarily depressions, but they can lead to that which leads to the second thing, because of this, because of these basic sources of anxieties, here's what depression is, depression, first off, we have to understand that it's real. Again, as I said before, I know there are a lot of Christians that say, well, you know, that's just all in your mind, yes, it is in the mind, nope, no doubt. Is that all in your mind? Yes, that's all of my problems inside of me. You see, when we talk about total depravity, total depravity does not mean that every individual is as wicked as they can be, it means that every individual is corrupt in all of their parts, including my mind. The people who think they don't have a problem with their mind really have a problem with their mind. That's why the Bible says you can't trust it. Don't lean to your own understanding why, because as Paul says in Ephesians, this is our natural condition, our minds are naturally dark and by our fallen condition. So therefore, depression, brothers and sisters, is real. Now, I'm not saying that everything, in fact, the whole industry of psychology, it is grown out of that real, that very real problem of depression. I'm not saying that psychology has all of the right answers. In fact, secular psychology, they are right in this that the mind is messed up, but they're wrong in recognizing the causes, because there is no psychiatrist that can fix our mind. It can help us cope. It can give us coping mechanisms, but the only cure we'll see what that cure is, that the cure for the mind actually lies in the heart. You see, if the heart is fixed, then the mind will be fixed, but because the heart is, in our natural state, the heart is not fixed, the mind is subject to all sorts of things. So therefore, depression, don't let anyone fool you, depression is real, and you don't let all of this, the hyper, you know, I'm just, you know, the chery, the cool age smile kind of Christian that says, oh, no, I just, nothing gets me down. Don't, don't, don't, don't believe that. Those folks need the gospel, because that's maniacal to think that you won't hurt. That's why I hate so much when we go to funerals and say, well, no, don't be depressed. Are you kidding me? There's a body here that is loved. And I think one of the harshest things that we can do in funerals is to tell people not to be sad. When they've lost a loved one, they've lost a parent, they've lost a mother or a husband or a wife, they've lost someone. They're supposed to be sad. Ecclesiastes says there's a time to cry, and when is that time when someone dies, that's certainly one of them. And so sin has brought us to the state where it's okay. And listen, every time you go to a hospital, that doesn't mean if the doctor says that, you know, there's not much time, it might not be much time. And rather than just say, well, I just trust the Lord for miracle, I do too. But it doesn't mean that every sickness is going to end with that person getting up off that bed. They may die. I remember back in September when we came back from African, went to go visit my aunt in Jacksonville. And when I walked in the room and I saw her, it was just clear to me that this is the last time I'm going to see her alive. And I told my wife when we left the room, I said, I don't think she's going to make it. Now, if the Lord had moved her and healed her, certainly that would have been a time of joy. But at that moment, it was a time of sadness. You see, brothers and sisters, we have allowed a certain segment of the Christian faith to say there's no room for anxiety. There's no reason for you to be depressed. But all of these things, you see, depression is the weighing down that is caused by the things that bring us anxiety. You see, anxiety is caused by the four things that we mentioned before. And depression is when we are weighed down by any one or any one of these things or any combination thereof. And we are not dealing with reality when we say we can't be depressed. It's okay. It's not okay to stay there, but it's understandable to recognize that Christians to get depressed. There are things that we just can't figure out, things that we have experienced, things that have hurt us, things that any sort of things that even stuff that we make up within ourselves. I remember I was telling you when all those folk died and my mother had to come in and say, it's okay, baby, go to sleep. You know what? I lay down nine to ten o'clock at night and that was late for a nine-year-old and three, four o'clock at the morning I still couldn't sleep and it took a while for her to say, it's okay, you can go to sleep, it'll be all right. And I remember that prayer. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And I recognize God will keep me. But brothers and sisters, depression is real. Depression is when anxiety is not given an outlet. That's what happens. Our anxieties is when cares come in. The cares of the world, when the cares are not flushed out, depression. The only place for it to go is to bring you down. That's why it's such a wonderful word picture that we have here, that heaviness, anxiety of heaviness of heart makes the heaviness, heaviness makes the heart of man to stoop. And so here's the solution. We've seen what anxiety is the cause of anxiety and anxiety itself is the cause of depression. And here's the solution. Notice what we get here in this real simple statement. He says, but a good word makes it glad. A good word, good word, good word, good word, eulogy. That's the Greek word for good word, eulogy, good word. It's the root word for evangelism or evangel, you angle. That's the same word. In other words, here's what the point is. And I don't think this is by accident. What we are told here in Proverbs is that anxiety brings depression to the heart. Anxiety brings depression to the heart. But the gospel makes it glad. Brothers and sisters, because the only good word that can help us is the word of the gospel. I like what Jesus says in Luke's gospel. He has this little encounter with Mary and Martha. You remember in Luke chapter 10, it says in verse 34, beginning in verse 34, it says, now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care? Here's that anxiety that leads to depression. Do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So serving Jesus, which is a good thing, has become a source of anxiety. She's up here worrying about whether or not all of the stuff is set up and the tea cups are right and it's on the right side. She's cluttered with all of these things distracted by these things. So much so, it's caused her to look cross eyed at her sister. What's wrong with her? She's not, Martha's not, Mary's not doing these things. And so she says, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me alone to serve, left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me. But then Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her. I'm not going to get her up from the good word. You see, I'm not going to stop her from the good word. Brothers and sisters, it's the good word of the gospel. It won't chase away all of our blues, but it puts it into context. You see, the good word of the gospel enables us to realize that, hey, wait a minute, I'm going to die, but even when I die, I don't lose. Dying is not losing if you die in the Lord. And so therefore it's the good word. That's why Jesus has come to set us free from the bondage that death held us in the grip that death had on us. It's been broken if we are in Jesus. And so therefore if somebody says, your faith or your life, I like what Paul says. He says, listen, I'm tossed up here. I'm in a quandary. I love you people. I love you, Philippians. I want to be with you forever. But do you know that if I'm not with you, if I die, then that means I'm with Jesus. So I don't lose in this transition. And so therefore the good word of the gospel is that death no longer is a threat. The good word of the gospel is a reminder that not only is death not a threat itself, but it also is a reminder that I have all that I want. I don't need anything. I'm not lacking anything. It is the good word of the gospel that reminds us that my significance is tied to my union and identity in Jesus. The good word of the gospel reminds us that I am loved with an everlasting love. No matter who else fails, love me properly. Jesus just keeps on loving and his love is ministered to me in so many different ways. I like what this passage says. It reminds us of the reality of anxieties that cause depression. But the only cure, the only solution is in the good word that is the gospel. In other words, brothers and sisters, the cure for what is inside of us is a word that is spoken outside of us. You see, anxiety is all inside. If it is in your brain, it is in your mind because it's in your heart. And the only thing that will cure it is the word that's outside of you. And that good word is the word of the gospel. The word that Jesus is our all and all. The word that tells us that he has loved us with an everlasting love, the word that tells us that we are seated in heavenly places in him. The word that tells us he has taken the sting out of death. The word that tells us that he is with us always, even until the ends of the world. Yes, anxiety is real. Yes, depression is real. And that's why we have a real gospel that is a real cure. I pray that the word, that good word, would always be the medicine for your souls. And know that even when you have restless nights, that's all right. I see Jesus still soothing us with the goodness, with the abundance of his goodness and reminding us until we get home, I'm with you always. Even when you go through the valley of the shadow of death, even when you are abandoned by friends and for sake and by loved ones, I'll never leave and never forsake you. He's given his life for us to live. He's given his spirit for us to be maintained by. And he speaks a good word that brings healing to our souls. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the reminder that because we are fallen, that we are prone and subject to many distractions and many distortions. But we pray that we would never be so overwhelmed and so consumed by our external circumstances, that we would forget your faithfulness to us. You have loved us with an everlasting love. You loved us while we were yet enemies. And certainly now that we have been brought to a saving knowledge of you, you will never forsake or forget us. We pray that our souls, the hurts that we experience in this life would be healed by the greater love that we have in you. Thank you for your good word, that cures the pains of being fallen and living in a fallen world. We ask all of these things in Christ's name, Amen.