Doubt drives us to search for answers

Bishop Lesslie Newbigin and others have drawn attention to the power of ‘plausibility structures.’ They are the publicly accepted criteria for knowledge in any given society, making it easier for those who belong to the society to ascribe trust or falsehood to particular statements or claims. In our culture, for example, claims with a scientific explanation attached are likely to be accepted. Whether or not the general public understands the scientific explanation itself is irrelevant, these will be taken and accepted as matters of public knowledge. Faith claims, however, will not be widely accepted since these in our cultured are seen as matters of private opinion.

In light of the following situation Christians should respond in 2 ways.

1) Christians should realize how important such societal factors are in answering the worlds questions.

2) Christians scholars, thinkers, and preachers must work patiently to explore and explain why we need a broader, more in-depth view of knowledge.

Does Jesus willingness to help the man’s son with his problem rely on the quality and quantity of the man’s faith?

Jesus had replied “All things are possible for the one who believes.”

What makes all things possible, according to Jesus it is belief. Does this mean that there is no room for doubts?

Does this mean that all things are possible because of the amount of someones faith and belief? The emphasis is not on the amount of faith or belief a person has, but on the relationship of trust between the man and Jesus.

The man’s faith must have already been shaken when the disciples had apparently attempted to help the man and failed.

Now Jesus is brought into the scene, the main say’s he believes, but then asks Jesus to help him with his unbelief. The emphasis is not on the quality of our faith but on the power of the master to whom we place our faith and trust.

NOTE: The opposition of the teachers of the law, and the apparent unbelief of the disciples and crowd had Jesus deeply grieved.

SETTING THE SCENE

People: Christ, along with Peter, James and John, are coming off of the mountain after the transfiguration, they are met by the other nine disciples and a crowd of people. The people were surprised as they ran to greet him.

Problem: A man apparently possessed by a demon was brought to the disciples by his father. The disciples could not cast out the demon.

Reaction: Jesus had become exasperated at the peoples lack of faith. Remember that Jesus stated that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could call to the mountain to be moved and thrown into the sea and it would happen. Jesus is just looking for a little show of faith.

Person: The boy was literally helpless to do anything to help himself.

Plan: All things are made possible for those who believe.

Power: The boy is healed and ,made completely well.

Powerless: It took fasting and prayer to bring healing to this boy.

Big Idea: The quality of your faith doesn’t save you, its the object of your faith that saves you.

1. What is Believing?

How is our doubt many times driven by past disappointments that move us to search fro answers? When you have prayed, and prayed, for the Lord to move in a situation in your life or someone else’s life and seemingly nothing is happening.

PEOPLE TODAY ARE LOOKING FOR A SURE THING

Sermon Illustrations

"The Polar Express": Believing

In The Polar Express, a doubting boy boards a magical train on Christmas Eve, which is headed for the North Pole. Adventure after adventure befall him and a little girl who becomes his friend as they are guided along by the conductor.

As the train ascends a particularly steep hill, the threesome is climbing from the top of the engine down into the coal car. The conductor is telling them to watch for ice when the boy slips. The conductor grabs him just in time and swings him back on board, which reminds the conductor of his first trip on the Polar Express. As they make their way back in the train, they talk about what it really means to believe.

Conductor: Years ago, on my first Christmas Eve run, I was up on the roof making my rounds when I slipped on the ice myself. I reached out for a hand iron, but it broke off. I slid and fell. And yet, I did not fall off this train.

Girl: Someone saved you?

Conductor: Or something…

Girl: An angel.

Conductor: Maybe! (but said with the conviction of a Yes!)

Boy: Wait, wait! What did he look like? Did you see him?

Conductor: No sir. Sometimes seeing is believing. And sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see.

Romans 8:28 ESV

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Where the ‘if’ of belief begins

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BELIEVE IN JESUS?

‘If you can do anything have compassion on us”

NOTE: The ‘if’ of the question lies with you and me not God.

It is a good beginning to saving faith if you believe that God is willing to save you.

Note: The father had yet to reach the stage of faith that leads to true belief.

The father had not reached the faith that would secure the miracle. More was needed, what else did the man lack? The man failed to have faith in God’s power to meet his special situation. Before we are too terribly hard on the father let’s look at his particular situation. His son had been this way from birth, day after day the father watched his son be cast into the fire and water seeking to destroy his son. Jesus responds by telling the man, ‘if you can believe you will see the Salvation of God.’ It is very easy to say ‘I believe’ when you have no sense of your own sin or consciousness of the danger of not believing.

Does it not sound easy to say ‘yes’ Christ can save me? The question we must all answer is do you believe that Christ can save you, even though you are aware of being filled with sin?

I have been possessed by the spirit of evil, I have been driven from one sin that casts me into the fire, and another sin that tries to drown the life out of me. I have sinned against light and knowledge, I have sinned against love and mercy; I have continued to sin over, and over, but believe that you alone can pardon me.

But, if I can only persuade myself that I am a sinner in name, then I will always find Jesus to be a Savior in name.

Trust destroys the ‘if’ of our belief

To believe that Christ is able to save is essential, but, to put yourself into his hands that he can save you that is the saving act. To know that Christ is both willing and able to bring ultimate healing. True saving faith is not only believing that he is capable of saving you but believing that he will save you.

Throughout the Bible, God seems to be saying one thing over and over again to people: Will you trust me?

Trusting God is an element of true saving faith. Trusting God is one of those things that we think we understand until we are called on to act on that trust. We are commanded to trust, Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Make no mistake this is not a blind trust. If we say we are blindly trusting in God or blindly falling into faith, then we have lost the focus of who we are trusting in to save our souls.

NOTE: The man had faith, but, not perfect faith. Though it obtained healing for his son, it was considered weak faith. A feeble faith can receive a mighty Savior.

IF YOUR FAITH IN JESUS AMOUNTS TO THIS:

You believe that he is able to save you.

You trust him to save you even though you have a host of fears and troubled with a multitude of sins.

You cry out to Jesus “I believe” you are saved.

“Lord help me with my unbelief, but that kind of faith confessed and called out to the only one who could help with unbelief.”

For that kind faith then grows from a mustard seed to a mighty oak. Faith in Jesus Christ should be one of the easiest things for us to do.

NOTE: this is the curse of our human nature and culture, that we cannot believe God, as it say’s in 1 John 1:10 “If we say we do not have sin, we make God out to be a liar, and his word is not in us.”

NOTE: For the true believer their should never be an “if” in our vocabulary. What an insult for us to say “Lord we believe,” and then throw in the word ‘if.’

2. How is it that faith can be so difficult?

It’s difficult to get the idea of faith into someone’s mind.

The human mind has been pre-conditioned from the fall to believe in the seen not the unseen.

Faith is a child like trust in Jesus.

Note: We try illustrations, anecdotes, parables, and much more to try to instill the idea of faith into peoples, but, no matter what we try we cannot get it into their heads, much less into their hearts.

The idea of believing is alien to the mind

The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXIX Where the “If” Lies (No. 1,744)

Martin Luther complained that he thought he must take the Bible and bang it about his hearers’ heads because he could not get them to see its clear teaching as to justification by faith. This idea of believing is alien to men’s minds, and it can only dwell there by forcing its way against the tendency of human nature. Again

Note: this is proof of Human Depravity

Trust Jesus for Salvation and he will save you is something any child can understand.

THE PROBLEM: The unregenerate lost person muddles things up by sticking to their belief that faith is something to be felt, seen, done, or suffered.

What am I, after, thirty, forty, fifty years of sin, to be delivered from all of that simply by trusting in Christ alone.

If you tell someone that they must go to a desert and live there as hermits on berries and cold water for the rest of their natural lives, they would believe the message. If they were bidden to scourge themselves with whips of wire, they could expect some good result from such suffering, but not from mere believing. They believe that by deep feelings they might arrive at forgiveness and might force their way to heaven by way of the gates of hell; but to trust in Christ alone, and to believe in the promises of God is too simple.

When a person gets over the idea of extreme ease, they say to themselves, “This news is certainly too good to be true.”

Grace may be too good to expect, but not to good for God to give.

Why do I believe that I am saved?

I know that I am saved because God says, that the person who believes and trusts in Christ alone as the ground for their faith will be saved.

Can 50 years of sinning be done away with just like that. Can an instant of believing really change a guilty past leading to a holy future?

NOTE: A moment of calling out to the Lord to help with unbelief resulted in the healing of his son who had been possessed by a demon all his life.

IS IT NOT GODS WAY TO DO WONDERS IN A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME?

He took just a week to fit earth for man; and six days sufficed and on the seventh day he rested. To make light it only took the lord saying, “let there be light.”

Jesus only said to the demon, “I command you to come out of him, and enter him no more,” and the deed was done. The Lord stood outside of the tomb of his good friend Lazarus and merely said “Lazarus come forth,” and he did. Or do we not soon forget

2 Peter 3:8 ESV

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

He speaks and it is done. Think of it, Salvation in the blink of an eye. The very moment that a sinner believes he passes from death into life, all of his sins are forgiven. Why should we doubt it?

PROBLEM: People cannot be satisfied with the word of God alone as the ground for their faith.

Note: But, for the believer, if you believe that this book is the very words of god alone, then, why would we not keep his word.

When we cry my faith is weak; my faith is so variable; my faith is so shaken, and so forth. Here is a child thirsty, and there is a flowing fountain; you give the child a cup that it may drink of the water. The child does not go to the fountain, but is so pleased with its empty cup that it tries to satisfy its thirst out of it. What a foolish child! Or suppose it should refuse to go to the fountain because the cup was of earthenware, or of a tin, would not that be a strange way for a thirsty child to act? A child needs the cup to drink out of, but it cannot drink out of an empty cup. Faith is the cup, but Christ is the fountain. Faith is a secondary thing compared to Christ. We must have faith to be as the finger with which we touch the hem of the Masters garment, but the finger does not work the cure. Should I refuse to touch because perhaps I have not washed my finger clean, or it has no gold ring on it; or there are traces of rheumatism on it? to attach so much importance to the finger refusing to touch Christ’s garment with it would be insanity.

Forget about your finger; touch the hem of His garment. Sinner, get to Christ somehow, anyway you can, for if you get to him you will live.

You can trust that his greatness and perfection can be depended upon too heal you.

This if you can! All things are possible for those who believe.

Just like the man at the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to be made well?

The idea of believing starts with understanding who we are.

NOTE: The man came to Jesus first as he must come as a sinner, with all of his lack of faith and doubts.

Faith produces holiness, but, when we first come to Jesus we come as unholy people and this is how he receives us.

Jesus does not receive holy people and make them holier, he receives the broken and destitute sinner.

Illustration (Charles Spurgeon)

Suppose I have a number of bulbs which I am told will produce the most beautiful flowers. If I believe this statement then I will take great care to have it properly planted.

The gardeners are beginning to put such bulbs into pots, that they may have hyacinths and other fair flowers in the winter and early spring. suppose that I resolve not to plant my bulbs, because i use my own eyesight, and come to the conclusion that as I cannot see a hyacinth or even the beginnings of one in any of the bulbs, therefore there can be no use in planting them. Why, everyone would tell me that in this matter I must go by faith, and plant my hyacinth in order that I might see the bloom in due time. “that bulb will yield a beautiful blue flower,” people will tell you. I tell you that all I see is a brown, dried-up sort of onion, and that I will throw it on the dunghill where it belongs, for i can see no bud or flower in it. What a fool I am if that is all I see.

Though I cannot see it, yet there it is, closely compacted and quietly hidden away within that bulb, a slumbering thing of beauty which will wake up at the call of spring. If you can believe in Christ, there is a holy life packed away withing the small mustard seed of faith, and it will gradually develop into a beautiful flower. Even in it’s feeble and weak state there are present the elements of ultimate perfection. Look to the root now and the growth will follow. You are not to come to Christ because you are healed, but to get healing; your faith must be a sinner’s faith before it can be a saints faith. Trust Christ while you are foul, lost, and undone, and he will wash, save, and restore you.

Cultural Problem: People are clinging to the idea that they must do something, be something, or feel something, first before coming to Jesus.

Here’s the struggle, we cannot wean people from some sort of reliance on their own feelings, or weepings, or prayers, or Bible-readings, or some other form of working. People will even look to their own faith rather than to the one who gives us our faith Jesus Christ alone for our saving.

For Example: If you take a wounded man who has the healing ointment given to him and a piece of linen with which to bind the ointment; now, if he were to wrap the linen around the wound and leave out the healing agent, he could not expect a cure.

Faith is the linen and Christ is the ointment.

3. What is it that can make faith easy?

Faith is made easy by the Holy Spirit alone.

He changes how we see the infallible certainty of God’s word.

He illumines this record to us concerning God and His son so that the one who believes in Him has everlasting life.

Note: Remember last week I shared the only right we are assured under heaven and earth.

John 1:12–13 ESV

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

It all comes down to what I believe about God’s word. Is it true or not?

The only response for me is that I believe every letter or it; I accept it as God’s word in the most unreserved sense, and so Jesus now asks the question, If you can, all things are possible for those who believe.

NOTE: It may be things we do not like to hear or are difficult to stomach. It is not what seems right to you or me. He is not a man that he should lie, He has said that whoever believes in Him, eternal life is within our grasp.

He helps us apply the word to our lives.

With that we read,

“Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,”

and we conclude that, as we are he takes us and we look to him to save us.

We read

come to me, “all you that are labored and heavy laden, and he will give you rest for your soul”.

We read that

“in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”

We read again,

“that whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

We read once more,

“go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;”

and as we are his creatures, we conclude that the gospel has something to say to us. We see that the gospel is directed to us, therefore, we receive it.

So, we see that the gospel is directed to us, on a personal level. Is your name ____________ fill in the blank, what might you not say if you are tempted to doubt.

You might say to yourself there are many ___________ besides yourself, therefore, the message might not be directed to you personally. If it was directed to your address, you might then fear that another _____________ once lived at the house, before you were born, and so you would fear to appropriate the message lest it should prove to be out of date. Even supposing that your name was there, and the address, and the date, you might be mistrustful enough to think that there must have been some mistake, or that some other person of your name had used your address for the day. You then ride on the back of unbelief .

But, when the promise comes “to him that believes in Jesus,” there can be no question whether the message is meant for us alone. We read, “if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;” is it not clear that if we have confessed our sins, mercy is ours? It is an incredible mystery of God when the Spirit of God leads us to see that the Gospel is free to all who are made willing to receive it.

Another thing that makes faith easy is when

He Shows us the glory of Christ.

Jesus Christ is God, therefore, our Savior is truly God, and this fact helps us to believe in Him.

Jesus had just come down from the mount of transfiguration where the majesty and glory of God was revealed.

The Lord appeared to this man with a certain splendor, when we read “when they saw him they were amazed.” The very sight of our Saviors face helped the trembling man cry out,

“LORD I BELIEVE.” The spirit of God leads us to a clearer idea of the Godhead and that all things are possible with God for those who believe.

Every Christian can confidently say that all of the destinies of heaven and earth, time and eternity, rest in Jesus alone.

He helps us perceive the completeness of the work his sacrifice.

If you can see the son of God who has been lifted up on the cross suffering in his death and agony, we must believe in his power to save us.

I must think that if the infinitely holy suffered for the guilty? Should the eternal take upon himself all of humanities sins, and bow his head to death? then the sacrifice must possess such boundless efficacy that none may fear that it will fall short of reaching our greatest need. No limit can be put on the power of the divine.

NOTE: some have believed by the sight of others converted, justified, and made whole by God’s grace.

“I have been an adulterer,”

so was David, but he said, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

“I have been a murderer,” sobs another.”

So was Manasseh, who shed innocent blood.

“But I have been a persecutor and blasphemer.”

So was Saul of Tarsus, yet he obtained mercy.

“But I seem to have far more of the devil in me than anybody else.”

So had Mary Magdalene, who Christ cast out seven devils.

You think you are a sinner all by yourself, but there have been others just like you, and the door through which others have passed into mercy is open for you.

He brings us to the point of desperation as to all other hopes.

Many people are led to Jesus because we had nothing else to trust in.

A boy was awakened in a house which had caught on fire. he could be seen from the street, poor child, and his danger was great indeed. He rushed to the window; his father stood below and called to him to drop into his arms; but it was a long way down, and the child was afraid. he clung to the window, but was afraid to drop. Do you know what made let go of his hold and fall into his father’s arms? There came a burst of fire out of the window and scorched him, and then he dropped directly.

Some need a touch of the fires of despair to compel us to say if I stay where I am I will surely die, I must believe and trust.

NOTE: The boy’s father was in a desperate state when he came to Jesus in his unbelief.

When have circumstances brought you to the point of desperation in your life. You have exhausted all other options. Why not try Jesus.

CONCLUSION

Don't worry about whether or not you have enough faith. Don't focus on the quality of your faith; focus on the object of your faith.

The Difference Faith Makes

The Christian life is going to God. In going to God, Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop in the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same government, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God.

God is our over-watch, trust that he has your back.