Learning to Doubt Our Doubts (Rev. Dr. Charley Reeb)
Today I want to talk about something we all have in common. Have you ever asked God for something and God didn’t give it to you or he didn’t answer you? Have you ever prayed to God and he was silent or he felt far away?
If we are honest, we have all felt that way. We’ve prayed and prayed for something and God seems silent or uncooperative. What makes it worse is that we have well meaning friends who tell us that our problem is that we need to have more faith or we need to pray more. Then we go to church and the preacher makes it sound so easy. Just do this and boom your prayers will be answered. Really?
Of course, what drives a lot of us crazy is that we know people whose lives really are a bed of roses. Everything just works out for them. And a lot of them do bad things! They lie and steal. And while we get up for church they are headed to the golf course or lake. Their kids get into the schools they want and they get all the opportunities and here we are waiting on God to answer this desperate prayer of ours. Why?
And we all know those folks who say, “You won’t believe what God did for me. I was rushing and running late headed to the mall and I prayed and prayed for a good parking spot and there it was right in front of the store!” Or we know folks who say, “I prayed for my football team to win and they won!” And here we are praying for something serious in your life and we can’t help but roll your eyes.
Perhaps this is why some of you have dropped out of church or maybe abandoned your faith. You just can’t make sense out of all of it and you have all but given up hope. But you’ve come today perhaps because you are curious about what I am going to say about all of this. You don’t want to abandon your faith in God but you don’t know what to do. Does God’s absence mean he doesn’t care or doesn’t exist! Does the fact that he is not cooperating with you mean he is not active or has abandoned you?
What we are going to learn through them is that we can go through difficult times and still maintain our faith in God. In the midst of our struggle to find answers to our prayers in tough times we can know for certain that God is there. We are also going to learn that our difficulty in life does not reflect the heart and nature of God.
And today we are going to learn this through a man in the Bible who thought God has abandoned him. He is Jesus’ cousin – John the Baptist. He was an interesting guy. If Rambo had been a prophet he would have been John the Baptist. He lived out in the wild. He wore camel hair and ate locusts and wild honey. People from all over Galilee traveled out to hear him preach with his hair on fire. Some listened because he was entertaining. Others believed in what he said. He carried words of warning and preparation. God had called John to do one thing and one thing only – tell the world to prepare themselves for God to enter their world in the person of Christ. So he told people to stop the bad things they were doing and get ready for God in the flesh.
When Jesus appeared John pointed to him and told everyone that he was the Messiah – he was the one he kept talking about! He was God in the flesh. He told people to follow him.
John was a good and righteous man. He was doing the right thing and serving God. The problem was that everyone did not like his message. Herodias, Herod Antipas’ wife, especially did not like his message. Why is that? Now this is when things get really interesting. Listen to this. Herodias was married to Herod’s brother Phillip. But she fell in love with Herod, Phillip’s brother, so she divorced Phillip and married Herod! “Like sands through the hour glass so is the Days of Our Lives…” Herod was sitting pretty as the King of Judea married to his brother’s wife!
Well, John the Baptist called Herodias out. He said she had broken Jewish Law. Herodias did not like that and hated John the Baptist for it. In fact, she wanted him killed. Let’s look at what happened in Mark 6:17-20:
For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19 So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, 20 because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.
So Herod had John thrown into prison, but even though Herodias wanted him dead, he protected him because Herod actually liked listening to him. Herod thought there was something about John. So when he was bored he would have John brought up from the dungeon so he could preach in front of Herod!
Okay so John is in prison. This righteous man who was just doing what God had called him to do was being punished. He is in prison for doing the right thing. He is just rotting in prison. He needs a miracle right! Well, John has a cousin who is pretty good with miracles. He is out preaching the good news and healing the sick and the blind and lame.
And so what does Jesus do for his cousin? Nothing! John is just sitting there in a cold prison cell while Jesus is out performing miracles and preaching the good news!
Well John begins to have second thoughts about Jesus. He began to doubt. “I pointed to him. I knew in my heart that he was the Messiah. Now I am not so sure. I mean, I pointed to him and supported him. And now I am all alone in this prison cell and I am not getting out.” So John had some friends come to visit him in prison and he asked them to send a message to Jesus. Here it is in Matthew 11:2-3:
When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
John’s friends respond, “Wait! You are the one who told us he was the one John! What are you talking about? You were so bold and confident in him. You told us to follow him. Now you want us to ask him if he is really the one?” And John said, “I just need some assurance. I’m having some doubts. He is out there and I am still in here all alone in prison. I need to know if he is really the one!”
Now, can you relate to that? All of us have been where John is. When our circumstances change and things get tough in life we begin to doubt God. We lose confidence in God. Maybe that is where some of you are right now. There was a time you had great faith in God and maybe were really active in the church but then life took a bad turn and you have prayed and prayed and prayed with no response from God. And you are really starting to wonder. “Is God really there? Does he not care? Has he checked out?”
That is where John the Baptist was – one of our great biblical heroes.
So John the Baptist is in prison and he is having serious doubts about Jesus. So he sends messengers to Jesus to ask him if he is really the one. And I am sure they loved the thought of doing that! There is Jesus in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount. “Excuse me, Jesus? Sorry for interrupting. Great sermon, by the way. We have just come from visiting your cousin John and you know he is in quite a pickle. Well, you see….I don’t know how to say this but John wants to know if you are really the Messiah.”
Jesus does not respond by saying, “Of course I am! How dare he question that! I am so offended! How could he ask that?” Look at Jesus’ response. It is a message not only John that Baptist needed to hear, but all of us need to hear today (Matthew 11:4-5):
Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”
You see all John could see were the prison bars in front of him. He couldn’t see passed his prison. And Jesus wanted him to be reminded of the activity of God. God was active and working through Jesus. “The lame walk, the blind see, and the deaf hear!” Jesus said, “Make sure you tell John that. Tell him all that is happening. God is at work!”
And as John’s messengers turned to walk away to report back to John, Jesus said, “Oh and one more thing. You tell John this. Be sure you tell John this (Matthew 11:6):
“Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
Wow! Now what does that mean? Jesus was saying, “You tell him I am so proud of those who though they don’t always understand why they are in the circumstance they are in, don’t give up on their faith. Blessed are those who know that God’s ways are higher than their ways and they do not give up on me no matter how difficult life may be. You tell John blessed are those who don’t yet see the good that God is going to work out through their pain and they still trust God.”
So it wasn’t Jesus’ will that John was in prison. Jesus loved John. He thought he was the greatest among men. But for some reason Jesus left him in prison to work something good out of it. John didn’t know what it was but Jesus said he would be blessed if he didn’t give up on his faith in God and remained faithful.
So here is what I want you to understand this morning. This is so important. This is critical to understand. This is an idea that comes from Andy Stanley and it is one that is crucial for our faith: Your difficulty does not reflect how God feels about you.
So often we think, “Well, life stinks. I lost my job or I got this diagnosis, or I am going through a bitter divorce. I have prayed and prayed for God’s help and I’ve got nothing. Nothing! No answer. Just silence. God must not like me. He must think I am a terrible person.”
“The quickest way to spiritual problems in your life is to judge God, judge your life, judge your faith in the middle of your circumstances.” It’s true, and how often do we do that? We stand in the middle of our pain, “Oh, this is my lot in life. This is how it’s always going to be. Why am I here, Lord? Why did you screw up? You didn’t keep your promises.”
Never ever judge your life. Never ever judge God. Never ever judge your faith in the middle of your pain because you will always get a distorted view. Never assume your perspective is the right one. Instead, trust God’s perspective in the midst of your pain—knowing your pain is not the end of your journey. Trust God with the rest of your journey wherever you are in your life right now.
If you want to know how God feels about you, don’t look at your difficulty. Look at Jesus and what he did for you and me. He didn’t just say he loved us. He proved it by dying on a cross for us. Oh, how God loves you and me. He emptied himself and became a human being to say, “You want to know how much I love you? This is how much…” And he got up on a cross and died for us.
So, what do you do when you feel awful about what you are going through and you feel that God is silent and is not attentive to your needs? We need to look at what God has done and what God is doing! Look Back and Look Out!
Look back and remember all of those times God saved you, healed you, and worked good out of an awful situation. Remember that time you thought you would never get out of your pit, but you did. God pulled you out! God was there. He was faithful. Look back and remember what God has done for you. Draw strength from the fact that he will be there for you again. Don’t give up hope.
Now, look out. Get outside yourself and your pain and see all that God is doing around you. So often we get like John. We get trapped in our little prison of difficulty and that is all we see. That is our only frame of reference. And God wants us to get beyond that and see how he is working in the world. This is what Jesus wanted John to do. “Look at all that God is doing through me! God is still on the throne. Remain faithful. He will work something good out of your difficulty.”
Well, we know what happened to John. Herodias’ daughter, Salome, danced for Herod at a big banquet he held for all of his important friends. He was so taken by her that he said, “I will give you anything you want. Name it.” Salome went to her mother and asked her “What should I ask for?” Herodias said, “Ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” Well Herod could not go back on his promise and so he had John beheaded.
We may wonder, “Why didn’t Jesus do anything to stop it? That is awful.” Think about it. If Jesus had planned a great escape for John, there would have been bloodshed. And if there had been bloodshed that would have discredited the ministry of Jesus. His message of love, mercy and sacrifice would have died. I think if we could ask John in heaven today he would tell us that he would have done the same thing over again. He went down as one of the greatest biblical heroes. He foreshadowed the greatest act of love in history.
As you know, not too long after John was killed Jesus was beaten, mocked and crucified and God didn’t do anything to stop it. Where was God? In fact, Jesus cried from the cross to God, “Why have you forsaken me?” But God had a plan. Boy did he have a plan. And through Jesus death on the cross sin, evil and death were defeated and we were given new life. Stanley reminds us that God’s silence was really God’s plan.
Folks, when God seems silent or absent he has not abandoned you. God has not turned his back on you. He loves you so much. His message to you and to me is the same one he gave to John: “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” In other words, “The person who trusts in me despite his difficulty or present circumstance will be blessed. The person who remembers I am faithful and I will always work good out of evil will be blessed. The person who stays faithful will be blessed and will one day see my hand in their situation.”
God’s delay does not mean God’s denial.
All afternoon a little boy tried to put together his birthday gift from his father, a picture puzzle. Some of the pieces were bright, some dark; some seemed to go together, others seemed to fit nowhere. Finally, frustrated and exhausted and with nothing to show for his efforts, the boy gathered the pieces, put them in the box, and gave it to his dad. “I can’t do it,” he explained. “You try it.”
To his amazement, his father assembled the entire puzzle in a few minutes. “You see,” he said, “I knew what the picture was like all the time. I saw the picture in the puzzle, but you saw only the pieces.”
Today, many of us only see our broken pieces. But if you hold on and trust God, he will take those pieces and make a magnificent picture.
Look back and look out. God is still on the throne. Stay faithful and he will redeem your suffering. Amen.