No Man Cared For My Soul

No Man Cared For My Soul

by Danny Foss

Serbia

"I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul." - Ps. 142:4

It is one of the saddest, most sorrowful verses in the Bible. It is a strange, striking, sobering, sad and solemn cry. Many times it is a silent cry, a plea for help.

Though our text verse was written and stated by David, the statement can apply to and be said by unsaved folks. David was despairing of life while in hiding in a cave. Unsaved folks likewise are despairing of life. There are many things that typify Christians but the main thing that should typify us is the fact that we care. God cared so much for us to die for us (John 3:16), we ought also then to care for others—God help us if we are selfish and keep it all to ourselves and don’t give it to others! That’s a spiritual crime! The Devil likewise cares for their soul—to ensnare, entrap and to destroy. Do we care?

“...there was no man that would know me,” that is, no man would acknowledge me or bother to care for me. “cared” here can be “sought after” as to do good to. Care, like a parent with an extremely sick child—there is an emotional intention to help but then they must take the child to the hospital because there is a lack of sufficient ability to help. “No one cared for my soul” to take it to Jesus, the spiritual hospital.

5 Areas This Statement Can Apply To

1. No Man Cared to Pray for Me—to intercede for the lost; they are just too wrapped up in their own cares and concerns instead of being able to see the desperate need of others
2. No Man Cared to Warn Me of a Place Called Hell—we’ll give to missions to win a man to Christ in Africa, halfway across the world, but we won’t even walk across the street to win a neighbor to Christ!
3. No Man Cared to Tell Me the Old, Old Story so Blessed
4. No Man Cared for Me—no compassion for the lost
5. No Man Cared to Give to Missions

I. Is this verse still true today? Yes.

A. More so today than then because there are billions more since that time. The estimated population for the world as of November 2016 is 7.46 billion (current population here) and there are 1.78 deaths per second, 107 deaths per minute, 6,390 per hour, 153,000 per day, 56 million per year, and 3.9 billion in the average lifetime (age 70). There are multitudes that no one has made a direct effort to try and reach with the Gospel.

B. Man is a soul (Gen. 2:7) and according to Mk. 8:36 it is extremely valuable to God—worth more than the whole world. You can pile all the diamonds and gold and silver nuggets and all the currencies and riches of the world up to reach miles high and the soul is worth more than that. “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).

II. Who is to blame for it being true?

A. Us. Not the world. God has not entrusted the world with reaching people with the Gospel. It’s our duty. We fail too often to realize we are the workers God has chosen.

1. It can be said it is criminal of us to not tell people of Christ (Eze. 33:7-8). Our hands will be dripping with their blood. “To refuse to witness a saving Gospel to a lost world day by day is nothing short of high treason, spiritual rebellion, and inexcusable disobedience to His holy commands” (L.R. Scarborough).
2. We sign their death warrant by not telling them of Jesus. We give a stamp of approval on their lack of Christ.

B. Our silence has done more to populate Hell than anything else we do. Our silence says we are ashamed of the Lord and don’t really believe in Him (Rom. 1:16, 10:11).

1. Abortion doctors have done more to put people in Heaven than we have—there have been an estimated 1.72 billion abortions worldwide as of April, 2013 (50 million in the United States). (link)
2. Is there a Hell? Ponder that! Let that grip you! Does Hell really exist? If it does then we must do something about it! We must live continually reminded there is a burning, fiery hell where lost, never dying souls go every day!

III. Why is it so true?

A. Because we’re careless, indifferent (we’ve become calloused to it because of our lack of burden, of a broken heart). One day a survey was conducted of your typical man-on-the-street. One fellow was stopped and asked, “What are the two greatest problems facing mankind today?” “I don’t know and I don’t care!”, was the curt reply. “You know, you are absolutely right,” the surveyor said. “Ignorance and Apathy are the two greatest problems we face today!” Don’t ignore your duty.

B. Because we fear the comments of men more than the command of God—care for them but don’t care if they reject/spurn it. It is our duty to give it; God’s in charge of results. We ought be willing to be “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Cor. 4:10).

C. We’ve gotten our focus transferred to unimportant things—materialism, self-promotion. The philosophy of the Devil is self expression, the philosophy of the Bible is self control or self denial (death to self and our needs and wants). The Bible has become myth to us.

D. We’ve allowed the doctrines of the Bible to become old and unimportant to us. We’ve put them on the back burner. We do not truly feel the sense of danger that their souls are under. They have are condemned already (John 3:18) and are just waiting execution. We must get past the sentiment of Cain and realize that we are our brother’s keeper (Gen. 4:9). We will be held responsible for them.

E. It’s ungratefulness to not try to give it to others. Do we really even value the salvation given to us if we’re not willing to try to get it to others? As one pastor in Amarillo, TX said, “It’s as important for a person to hear the Gospel as it was for Christ to die. If they never hear; what difference does it make if Christ died for them?” It shows it didn't mean much to us when we got it. We call salvation trivial by our actions.

IV. What’s the result?

A. People are becoming calloused to the Gospel, hardened to ever receiving it. They likely look at us and say, “If these people really believed what they say, why don’t they care?”

B. People are dying without Christ. Our carelessness is costing multitudes! Joel 3:14

C. Carelessness costs lives—Story in NY Times (11/11/08) reports that a careless construction crew working on repairing a public school roof in Brooklyn let a stack of bricks blow off the roof which then killed a 16 year old girl, Yan Zhen Zhao. The company pleaded guilty to manslaughter because the bricks were holding down tarps and had been left there though they had been warned not to do so. Investigators showed that this happened because the company had become “numb through mediocrity.” That can be said of Christianity today. Carelessness on our part is costly to others.

D. We will stand before God ashamed.

1. We will give account of our actions before God at the judgment seat of Christ.
2. There will be a lot of regret there; there will be tears for those we’ve passed by or never told that we did know.

V. How can it be fixed?

A. Get a burden back for folks. Weep for people! Ps. 56:8—how many tears for others are in your bottle? We sleep too well, we live too well. Eternity! They are going into eternity!

B. Pray for them

C. Rely on God for help and empowerment (Acts 1:8, John 15:4)

D. Resolve and try to reach them with the Gospel. “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there UNWARNED or UNPRAYED for.” C.H. Spurgeon.

1. Begin where you are—you don’t have to go overseas to see people saved.
2. Couldn’t we do more? Maybe God would have you be a missionary
3. Always think, isn’t there someone else out there that needs Jesus?
4. Do all you can to reach all you can for God
5. Always think, this person in front of me is a never-dying soul going somewhere.

They are looking for something real in their lives. They don’t want what we have because it hasn’t changed us. We’ve just relegated Christianity to the four walls of the church house and not carried our Christianity with us into our daily lives. People need to see that Jesus is real in our lives. People want to see that. We owe it to them to give them the Gospel. They deserve it. Put yourself in their shoes—wouldn’t you have wanted it if you knew it was true and could have it? Let's try to make this statement from Ps. 142:4 as impossible for people to say that are around us when they stand at the judgment seat.

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.” (Prov. 11:30)

Poem by William Blake, a Puritan, written in 1757:

"Can I see another's woe,