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A Faith that Breathes

Matthew 11:2-6

I remember graduating from HS and the reality of life hit. I was confronted with questions:

  • How do I really know that what the Bible says is true?
  • Why does a good God allow evil?
  • How come science seems to say the earth is so old but Christianity seems to say the earth is so young?
  • What about dinosaurs?
  • How can I believe Jesus is the only way when there are so many other ways that people claim to have a spiritual relationship with God?
  • How can I believe that my Jewish friend is going to hell?
  • How can I tell another person they are wrong about their beliefs when their spiritual experiences are so real to them?
  • With so many testimonies of the power of spirituality outside the Christian faith – how am I supposed to share with another person that I believe they need Jesus Christ?
  • What if my faith is simply a product of the family and culture I was brought up in?
  • If I had grown up Muslim in an Arab country, wouldn’t I reject Jesus too?
  • Is Jesus really the answer?

Deep questions which can bring on this incredible feeling of doubt. Have you ever faced times of doubt? Is it okay to doubt?

John the Baptist

Just before Jesus began his ministry, John the Baptist made his first public appearance in the desert of Judea. The desert was an important place for Israel: the law had been given to them in the Desert of Sinai, the OT prophets often went to the desert to meet with God. And now John shows up in the desert preaching a message that was different than any other prophet that ever lived. The OT prophets called the people of Israel to change their attitude, their actions, their direction in life, to confess their sin and turn to God. But John’s message was clearly different. His message was “repent for God’s kingdom is near.”

Repent, clear anything in your life out of the way that might cause you to miss the coming of God’s kingdom. Don’t miss out. Prepare your heart and your life. This was a message that former prophets only dreamed of bringing, and this message was a message that the people of Israel had been longing for.

The people of Israel had been conquered by so many other rulers like the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans. They longed for freedom from their bondage. They longed for the good old days of ancient rule under King David and King Solomon. They longed for a new kingdom, a new leader, a King who would free them from Roman control.

The people of Israel knew that the Old Testament scripture and prophets spoke of a day when a Messiah would come and bring a new kingdom. So when John’s message of a new kingdom began to spread, people came to John from Jerusalem, every section of Judea, all over the Jordan Valley, because they didn’t want to miss out. They came to repent and be baptized, symbolizing being washed clean.

When would this new kingdom arrive? Who would be the Messiah? Then the day came. Jesus came to John. John saw Jesus and declared Jesus is the Messiah, the very one you long for, the one who will bring God’s kingdom to earth. One who is powerful, so much greater than I am. John says, “I am not even worthy to be his slave.”

How excited John was. The Messiah had come. Jesus begins his ministry. Time passes, possibly a year or two, and John is placed in prison by Herod. Same rulers, same kingdom, same people are in control. John is in prison facing death. And while he is in prison facing death, John begins to look at the ministry of Jesus and wonder – Is Jesus really the Messiah? He sure doesn’t seem to fit that description. He doesn’t seem all that powerful, definitely doesn’t seem to be casting judgment on the current rulers. Definitely doesn’t seem to be setting anyone free from their bondage. So John sends his followers to Jesus.

Matthew 11:2-3… Can you believe it? John was doubting who Jesus was? Was Jesus the answer? Do you ever doubt? Have there ever been times when you have been at a spiritual low or experienced hardship like the death of a loved one, a broken relationship, loss of a job, a severe illness and you have doubted?
As a pastor, I deal with matters of faith, and I must confess that I still have times of doubt. I have struggled with that. The Bible seems to talk more about having faith than having doubt. The Bible seems to talk more about trusting God in all your ways than doubting. So where does doubt fit into all that? Growing up, I often felt that it was wrong to doubt. I was taught to believe what the Bible says and don’t doubt. And I must admit, I have even taught others to just believe, don’t doubt.

Yet the truth is there are times just like John had that we all doubt and many times we are afraid to admit it.

So is doubt good or bad? Yes.

Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking says this: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (Adventures in Missing the Point page 220).

Doubt is what causes you to examine your belief system and then to test it against Scripture, against your reality, against history. By doubting a belief and examining it, you can decide to throw it away, hang on to it, adjust it, or own it.

I have come to believe that maybe my problem with doubt isn’t with what the Bible says, but with what I have been taught that the Bible says. Maybe God really wants and longs for us to seek truth and part of the way we seek truth is through doubt.

Brian McLaren in Adventures in Missing the Point says, “Some point out, won’t openness to doubt lead to spiritual instability and insecurity? Let me ask “Won’t an unwillingness to question lead to a false security that could be even more dangerous?”

Too many times I have watched individuals get angry at God or abandon their faith because they haven’t been ready for times of doubt.

Imagine you lived in the 16th century and you are Galileo who doubted the church’s teaching that the sun was in orbit around the earth – which people would use the Bible to prove, and many believed. Would Galileo have been a better Christian or a better astronomer if he had refused to doubt?

Imagine being Martin Luther who lived when the church taught that you could earn your way to heaven, in fact you can even buy people into heaven – indulgences. Can you imagine if Martin Luther if he didn’t doubt the church?

Imagine that it’s 1860 and you are Caucasian in the south. Your church teaches you that dark skinned people are inferior and should be slaves to their white superiors. The Bible is cited to support this belief and to doubt is to go against the church. Wouldn’t you agree that a person would be a better Christian for doubting?

Now check the headlines: read about another shooting, see photos of latest earthquake, Tsunami, or hurricane. You see destruction like we saw on 9/11, you can’t help but wonder where is this good all powerful God? Where is this Jesus, the Messiah?

Short easy answers are the last thing these doubts need, because it takes time to sort through the issues. It takes time to really seek truth, to evaluate life in the face of Scripture, to evaluate life in the face of experience, tradition, and in a community of caring friends. Some today may just need to hear that doubt can be okay.

Be prepared to face times of doubt.

Illustration: We were preparing to move to Newark. It was a very stressful time – trying to sell our house, buy a house, two year old, and a 2 month old. Not getting much sleep, trying to get the house all ready. Decided we needed to touch up some paint in our living room. We had a finished basement, but there was a back storage room where I stored the paint that we used to paint the living room a few years ago. I went to the storage room, opened the can of paint and stirred it. I then lifted it up and carried it across the basement and up the stairs. As I was going up the stairs just about to the top, I felt something wet hit my leg and as I looked down I realized that there was a hole in the bottom of the paint can and I had dripped paint all across the carpet in the basement and up the stairs. It was one of those panic moments. My heart is beating really fast, my breathing increased, extreme pressure – holding the bottom of the can, wondering what to do, thinking how am I going to clean this up. I don’t want my wife to see this. The whole time more paint is just pouring onto my hand and down my leg. I remember very clearly in the midst of that pressure taking a deep breath, saying God I’m going to need your help, and realizing there was no way I could face that on my own. So I very calmly began to call to my wife in the other room. She came and in the middle of a very tense moment we worked together to get that carpet cleaned. We made calls to a couple of friends who gave us suggestions on what to do. One friend brought us a carpet cleaner, and we got the carpet cleaned.

Facing doubt can be like facing that panic moment, gasping for breath, heart beating fast, wondering what are you going to do – doubt tells us that something nearby or within us is dangerous. It calls for attention and action. I’ve got to do something, take a deep breath, get help.

Perhaps the most important step in handling doubt is the ability to take that deep breath and seek help, to go to Jesus and Seek God for answers with all your heart in the midst of a community of caring people.

That is why John sends his disciples, his friends, to Jesus. The pressure of life is there. He’s facing death, the same leaders are in control, wondering if Jesus is really the answer. It is as if he takes a deep breath and says “Let’s get this straight. Somebody, just go ask him.”

Thank goodness for John’s friends who were committed to him. They had followed him in the barren desert, and they even stayed close to him while he was in prison. And the time when John doubted, they didn’t abandon him, they sought Jesus for him.

What we need in times of doubt is not always answers. Rather we often just need to know someone else is on the journey with us. Too often, we face doubt, we are afraid to admit it, we are afraid to talk about it, and we need friends to journey with us, who are willing to question and at the same time seek God with us. That is why we stress the importance of joining a small group to be a part of a community of people who are on the journey of life together

Matthew 11:4-6

Jesus responded to John’s question and says look: don’t miss out, a new kingdom has come, lives are changed, lives are blessed. Jesus says the reality is the kingdom of heaven has arrived. God’s kingdom is here in your presence, but maybe you are missing the bigger picture. Maybe your image of the kingdom is all wrong. May be you need to adjust your springs. Maybe your understand of the Messiah is limited, because your not God.

In fact, Jesus gives a warning “God blesses those who are not offended by me.”

How many people are offended by Jesus? He talks of only one way to God through Him, about judgment, about things that don’t always seem to make sense. Even John and the Jews, who thought they had God and the Messiah all figured out, doubted precisely because Jesus lived a life of love rather than a life of power that they expected.

Jesus says, you may not have it all figured, you may not understand everything, but rather than being offended or abandoning the faith, maybe you need to take a deep breath,have a living faith that breathes, and seek God, in the midst of your doubt seek God.

Illustration: Many of us think of God as a great mystery novel or movie waiting to be solved in the end. When it comes to a mystery, we often think in terms of a television show, movie, or novel in which they mystery is solved in the end. Often right before the credits we find out who did it, or that a person wasn’t who we thought they were, or that Bruce Willis was dead for most of the movie and we just now figured it out or that Nicole Kidman was really a ghost and the others were the living people. Mystery is created, key things are hidden from the viewer, questions arise, clues appear, and the mystery is solved.

But the Bible has a different understanding of mystery. True mystery rooted in an infinite God, gives us answers that actually send us into even more questions. The moment you begin to discover something about God, that is also the moment that often leads to more questions. God has no boundaries or edges. God has depth, and the more you get to know him, the bigger and deeper and more mysterious He becomes.

Sometimes I meet people who are waiting to follow God until they have all their questions answered. Those kinds of people are going to be waiting a very long time, because if we knew everything, we would be…God. When you pursue a living God that is way bigger than you or I can imagine, we are going to have questions. How limited we are?

Faith is about admitting that many of life’s greatest truths may remain mysteries to us. Maybe we don’t have it all figured out. Maybe I’ve got beliefs now that are wrong because I’m limited in my knowledge and who I am. Faith is about reaching out to God to guide us, and asking for His help because He is God, and I’m not. That kind of dependence on God may be the greatest kind of faith. A dependence that says there are doubts that I have because I don’t have it all figured out, but I place my trust in God to help me figure it out. I am going to go to Jesus to get this thing straight. I’m going to seek God in the midst of caring friends who are on the journey with me. Let’s just ask Him. Let’s just seek Him.

Perhaps a mature faith is one that learns to live with mystery, a faith that when faced with the pressure of life, learns to breathe and experience the freedom of knowing that you don’t have to have it all figured out. A faith that learns to seek truth, to experience the depth and excitement of letting God be God, of knowing God is way bigger than you or I, and so in the midst of life’s pressures and questions, I praise God an place my trust in a God who loves us.

Are you facing doubt?

  • Maybe you are here and you haven’t been willing to really place your faith in God because you don’t have it all figured out.
  • May be you are here and you have faith in God but you are in the midst of facing the pressures and questions of life.

We want to give you a chance to respond this morning. As song is sung, open up this area along these steps, want to give you time to breath, to be able to express your doubts and struggles to God yet realize you don’t have to have it all figured out, to turn to God, seek God in the midst of caring community, perhaps with a friend, time to respond by placing your trust in God who loves you.

Invite you to come, kneel, sit, take a deep breath, and talk to God.

Prayer:

Resources:

The NIV Application Commentary - Matthew (page 131)
Adventures in Missing the Point – Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo (pages 219-226)
Velvet Elvis – Repainting the Christian Faith - Rob Bell (Movement One – Jump)



2006/02/12