Sermon Tone Analysis

When Life isn’t Fair

Happy Easter everyone!

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Well it’s a very amazing day we celebrate today, but I want to point something out to you.

This day marks the end of what we call “Holy Week”.

It starts with Triumph and it ends in Triumph, but in between is gut wrenching heart ache.

It’s a time when things are dark and hopeless and it seems like life isn’t fair.

And then God...

Actually, we don’t need Easter to know this lesson do we?

How many can relate to this from childhood.

You’re getting ready to go out and play some organized sports at school or in the neighborhood and your teacher or mother says, “remember, play fair.”

And yet something happens later when you become a teen you approach that very same parent or another teacher to complain about some inequity you suffered and they tell you, “Well you’d better learn to deal with it now, because life isn’t fair!”

So which is it?

Is there an inconsistency?

If life isn’t fair then there should be no rules to play by, right?

Well, no and one of the rites of passage into adulthood is the realization that life is not always fair.

Yet we are still offended by life’s unfairness.

For reasons that we do not understand “Bad things do happen to good people” and perhaps even more inexplicable is sometimes “Good things happen to bad people.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the story of Jesus’ Crucifixion.

Mark 15:

A Very Unfair Affair

Jesus was falsely accused of many crimes against the Law of Moses, people were paid to bring false witness against Him, and as we talked about last time, in the span of one short week we go from triumphal entry to complete betrayal - and all over false allegations.

If it were a script written for a modern day movie, it would have ended with a glorious last-minute grand flip of the script and the hero is spared the humiliation and the bad guys are locked up.

But that’s not the case.

In our story today, Jesus is scourged and then mocked and crucified.

More unfairness, Jesus had already been punished - it would have been unheard of in the day to not only be scourged (back ripped to ribbons by the brutal Roman soldiers), but also then crucified.

It would be like someone who is convicted of a crime who serves out their allotted sentence, and then on the day they are to be released is re-arrested and stands before a firing squad.

And for what?

Because the crowd demands it!

Saints, we need to face it.

Life is not fair.

If it was not fair for Jesus it will not be fair for us.

Joseph was thrown into the cistern by his brothers, sold into slavery then falsely accused of rape by Potiphar’s wife.

He was then imprisoned and once there a promise forgotten.

Life isn’t fair!

We run into real problems when we try to impose our definitions of fairness on God.

When God’s actions or lack of actions do not meet our expectations.

Our national constitution states “all men are created equal.”

And while it is true that all humans are created equal in God’s sight and have equal rights and protection under the law, all men are not created equal.

I think that we all realize that we are not born with the same opportunities.

Nor are we are not all equal in abilities and giftedness.

I was listening on the ham radio the other day and overheard a conversation about a young man who was one of those extraordinarily blessed individuals.

This young was smart, good looking, he could sing, play the piano, was black belt in Karate and now has Phd. in Marine Biology.

And as the radio operator stated, the worse part was that he was so stinking humble you could not even hate him.

Is that fair that some people have one talent and others have several?

Yes it is fair, but not necessarily by our standards.

God Does Not Have To Work By Our Expectations

This passage of scripture relates a story of John the Baptist sending his disciples to find out if Jesus is the Messiah or if they should wait for another.

At first this passage is innocuous but there is one little part that sticks out.

“And blessed is he who is not offended because of me.”

The greatest Bible scholars point out that this sentence was directed not only at the disciples of John, but at the Pharisees and Scribes of the day.

You see, their point of contention with Jesus is that although He had a grasp and knowledge of the scripture, by trade He was a carpenter - not a rabbi therefore, how dare He assume to teach?

He goes on to extol the virtues of John the Baptist who himself was a Levite born into the priesthood and a prophet of highest order but was rejected by the same Scribes and Pharisees because he hadn’t paid the piper according to their standard.

He gives the analogy of children being offended when other children don’t play by the rules that are agreed upon by the others.

He points out that John did things very differently than He did, but that either way the religious ones were not having any of it.

God did things HIS way according to HIS rules.

NOT FAIR!

But that’s how God does things isn’t it?

In verse eighteen we read that John’s disciples brought him news about the miraculous things that Jesus was doing.

“Then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things.”

It should be remembered that John’s disciples are bringing him the news because he is locked away in prison.

John was in prison for having the audacity to confront the king over his marriage to Herodias.

Herod, the king, is married to woman who was at one point was his sister-in-law.

For courage in speaking out he was confined to the dungeon of a palace (Machaerus) overlooking the Dead Sea, a more desolate formidable place is difficult to imagine.

In all fairness this must have been an extraordinarily difficult experience for a man accustomed to the outdoors as John the Baptist was.

It is possible that John’s disciples brought him news of Jesus’ latest miracle, the raising of the dead young man in Nain back to life (7:13-17).

Languishing in prison, John became increasingly perplexed by the reports he heard of Jesus’ ministry because it was not all what he had imagined that the Messiah would do.

John was only doing what we all do.

We have a scenario in our mind for those in our lives.

We have fixed ideas of how others are going to behave.

We sometimes expect God to do something in a certain way, and if he does not, we think that God has failed us.

Such expectations cover a variety of situations – from God helping us to get a certain job, to God healing us of a debilitating medical condition, to our expectations that the Christian life will be free of hardship.

Sometimes we look around and we at least think to ourselves, “God, this is not fair.”

You are not treating me right.

Even a man as great as John the Baptist wrestled with confusion about whether or not God was treating him right.

The value of his struggle should not be missed.

Honest Doubt is Not a Sin

Not only was he perplexed by what Jesus was doing, he was even more perplexed at what he was not doing.

Why was Jesus helping others and leaving John to rot in a dark and miserable dungeon.

After all he was the one who had announced that Jesus was “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

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He had been faithful in carrying out the ministry given to him, how could God allow him to remain in prison?

I don’t think that John no longer believed in Jesus, but he did have questions about the style of his ministry and the content of his message.

John was a great man, but not a perfect man.

We have before us the darkest days in the life of John the Baptist.

According to verse nineteen, disappointed and puzzled John sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?"

John did not hide his doubts and fears.

We only begin to conquer our doubts when we acknowledge them.

We need to make a distinction before we go any further which is that “ there is a difference between doubt and unbelief.

Doubt is a matter of the mind: we cannot understand what God is doing or why He is doing it.

Unbelief is a matter of the will: we refuse to believe God’s word and obey what He tells us to do.” [Warren Wiersbe.

Be Compassionate.

(Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1988) p. 76]

Almost all of the heroes of Scripture at one time or another found themselves enduring periods of doubt and uncertainty.

Moses was ready to quit on one occasion (), and so was Elijah () and Jeremiah (20:7-9, 14-18) and even Paul knew the meaning of despair ().

Max Lucado describes John’s feelings in this way, “John had never known doubt.

Hunger, yes.

Loneliness, often.

But doubt.

Never.