Have you ever questioned your faith? Have you ever had doubts that the Bible is God’s Holy Word? Is God really there? Have you ever doubted your salvation?
Have you ever cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” as the father of a demon possessed boy did in Mark 9.
Doubt is one of those things that can cause us to stumble or we can use our doubts to trust and grow in our relationship with Christ by digging deep into His word. I always like what Pastor Ken “Hutch” likes to say, “I should always doubt my own doubts and just trust the promises of God.”
Today we are going to look at disarming our doubts. What is doubt? Doubt is defined as this: distrust, mistrust, suspicion, cynicism, uneasiness, apprehension, reservations, question, challenge, feeling uneasy. But what I think what really helps to define doubts the best is looking at the antonym (or the opposite) of doubt and what is it? Trust. So doubt is lacking trust.
How do we doubt God? How do we doubt our salvation? It is when we don’t trust His word and ultimately we don’t trust Him and His promises. This is when doubt can start to creep into our lives and cause great havoc when we don’t trust in His promises.
I want to address 3 ideas today the first is what and who does the world say to trust, second what some Christian teachers say to trust, and lastly what does the Word of God say about what and who to trust.
As I have been preparing this message it is funny how God works through our circumstances to reveal His truth in everyday life. What the world says to trust was reinforced this week in the disguise of something that seems so good but is laced with a lie.
Well if you didn’t know I was on a Disney Cruise this last week with my wife and boys. It was an amazing trip to say the least and I would highly recommend it to any of you looking to go on a cruise. The rooms were huge, the food was just so good and I think I probably gained about 5 pounds in one week. All the deserts served did not help out my diabetes to say the least.
There are events for every age throughout the day and you will never be bored unless you choose too be. However, as wonderful as the cruise was and even as we had probably the best vacation of our lives there was a prevailing wicked/worldly idea that Disney pushes upon its patrons. It is oh so subtle but it is there right in our faces. Because it is of the world and not of God.
It reminds me of the example of the chocolate chip cookies that look so sweet and so good but there is something grossly wrong with it. From the outside everything looks good but hiding in all the yumminess of it is just a smidgeon of rat poison that would make you extremely sick if you were to eat one. This was the message from Disney. It looks really good on the surface but if you really apply it to your life you are going to be as sick or worse than eating a cookie with rat poison.
What is this dangerous message?
Faith, Trust and pixie dust. Here is my question that I wanted to stand up and scream what in the heck are you putting your faith and trust in? Pixie dust or something far more dangerous?
Well let me tell you (spin and say I believe in me I can do anything I dream of).
So according to Disney I am to put my faith and trust into myself. Do you think this is a dangerous message for our youth? Now I am probably going to a pretty extreme example and many of you may be saying cmon Wes that is just Disney fun. Just ask my wife if I can be to extreme but I argue that it is the same as the cookie with hidden rat poison. If I buy into I am no longer putting my trust in the one who can conquer my doubts but I am putting trust into myself.
I don’t know a scripture in the Bible that tells us to believe in ourselves but the exact opposite is taught by God.
Proverbs 28:26
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
Jeremiah 17:5-8
5 Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Verse 7 tells us to trust in the Lord and if we do we will not have to fear anything even our doubts. But if we trust in ourselves or anything besides God we will be left as a dried out weed in the desert. Not a pleasant thought at all.
So the world tells us to trust in ourselves but there is something that I believe can even be more dangerous than what the world teaches us and that is professing Christians who say we can’t even trust the words of God which include His promises to us.
How many of you have heard of the the Emergent Church?
I want to read a few quotes from their leaders in this movement and see if it lines up with what the Bible tells us. Do these ideas and philosophy's help with my doubts or does it just throw gasoline on the fire?
These are Christian leaders who are basically telling me I can’t trust the word of God. I can’t know and trust in the Bible. Again instead of encouraging us to rely on God’s word they feed on my doubts. If I cannot trust the Word of God what do I have? I am a step closer to falling off the cliff of doubting God. These quotes take me strait back to Genesis 3:1:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
They are twisting the word of God!
When I hear comments about mistakes in the Bible, or that it is a not authoritative or it is not infallible I always think about God this way. If my God can speak the universe into existence from nothing, don’t you think he can communicate to us so clearly through His word? Couldn’t he make the Bible so clear that even a child can understand its basic concepts? Yes there are some “mysteries” in the bible but the basic promises are so clear that I can put my trust in them. We have a God who has clearly communicated His promises to us.
This is why small groups are so critical and why going through the bible chapter by chapter is fundamental to the Christian life. If you have spent the last year and a half studying Genesis with us you KNOW the promises of God are true. He does what he says and says what He is going to do and He follows through 100% of the time. I know this is why my pastor, John Werhas, never deviates from preaching from God’s word line upon line. It is how we test all things.
We even have Satan trying to make us doubt the promises of God. He wants us to doubt our salvation. You know that feeling you get when you have sinned against God? What does Satan whisper in your mind? “You’re not a Christian. Why would the Lord ever save you? You’ll never make it—you’re not good enough. You don’t deserve to be saved.”
Some people even preach that we can lose our salvation or we can really never know we are saved until Jesus returns or we die and meet Him face to face. What a burden this type of teaching puts upon people. But what about 1 John 1:4 when it says And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. or 1 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
John MacArthur writes:
Why does Satan want us to doubt our salvation? Because he wants us to doubt God’s promises. He wants us to believe that God doesn’t keep His Word. He wants us to believe that God won’t hold onto us forever. He wants us to deny God’s power and think that God’s a liar. He knows that, in effect, if we doubt our salvation, we have removed our helmet.
However this being said there is a place in scripture where Paul writes to us to examine ourselves. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
And Peter writes 2 Peter 1:10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
We are also to examine ourselves when we take communion in 1 Corinthians 11:28: Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
But why does God want us to examine ourselves? It is to KNOW we are in the faith as is written in 1 John 3:19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;
He does not tell us these things to increase our doubts but to know that we have true trust in Him. It is all about knowing Him and knowing His word is always true.
Our salvation and trust in God has a past, present and future result. And like Pastor John tells us it really is not about how we start but how do we finish. Paul writes in Philippians 1:6
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Lets read that again:
And I am sure of this, that he who began(past - starting the race) a good work in you (present - I am running the race) will bring it to completion (future - how I finish the race) at the day of Jesus Christ.
I don’t have to doubt I can trust in God that His promise is true to keep me running the race until He brings in me to a full completion at the return of Jesus. How encouraging is this that we know who is truly in control of all things.
Christ even tells us in John 6:37
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
John MacAurther also writes:
“God’s calling cannot be removed, His inheritance cannot be defiled, His foundation cannot be shaken, and His seal cannot be broken. Because that is so, there’s no need for believers to fear Satan’s assaults. Our future glorification is divinely assured.
In John 10:27–29 Christ gives this picture of the believer’s eternal security:”
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, [1] is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
It is one of those great things about the Christian faith that our continuance in eternal life depends not on my weak hold on Christ, but His firm grip on me. And the beauty of this passage is that there is a double protection. Not only is Christ holding onto me but in verse 30 it says the Father also keeps us from being snatched away. How awesome is that!!
I want to end today with one of those passages that in the time of your greatest doubt is to hide this passage in your heart. It is why I never need to doubt God nor do I ever need to doubt my salvation. Nor do you.
Romans 8:38-39
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
