Before I get to those three questions, I want to preface them with these
two texts from the psalms. The first is from David’s pen.
Psalm 13:1-6 How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How
long will You hide Your face from me? How long
shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted
over me?Consider and answer me,
O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep
of death, And my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my
adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken.”
This second is from the sons of Korah: Psalm 42:9-11 I will say to
God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I
go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As
a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, while they say to me
all day long, “Where is your God?”
I start today’s message with these texts because they – like so many
others throughout the Bible – remind us that life – even the Christian life –
is not a gentle float in a quiet lake under a warm sun. Life, for virtually the
entire population of earth, is a repetitive series of happiness and sadness, of
confusion and assurance, of pain and laughter . . . . You get the picture
because you’ve all experienced what I’m talking about.
But I think the most difficult experience any Christian can go
through is the sense that God has forsaken them because of what they perceive –
even convince themselves of – is their unworthiness for His care, His love, His
forgiveness. Have you ever been there? Some of you have. Maybe some of you are
going through that dark tunnel even now as I stand here preaching.
Listen, I know that dark tunnel. I’ve been there often enough during my
now 53 years of walking with Jesus. But I want to tell you – actually, I
believe I NEED to tell you – about one of those dark tunnels in particular. I
need to tell the story because I hope it will encourage some of you who are
living through your own deep struggles.
Some of you in this sanctuary were living here at Ashwood when my deep
trial occurred. Some of you have heard my story, but I tell it again – as I
just said – in the hope that it will encourage you.
Next week, on January 19, it will be seven years since Nancy and I flew
to Florida to visit my mother’s grave. It was to be an overnight stay because I
had to get back to work on Monday. But the overnight stay turned into a
month-long nightmare.
While Nancy was drying off from her shower in the hotel room, she suffered
a sudden hemorrhagic stroke. After emergency surgery which saved her life, she
remained for the next three weeks in the neurological intensive care unit at
the Boca Raton Regional Hospital. She spent another ten days in an acute
rehabilitation hospital.
We all know it’s one thing when WE go through a storm. It’s something
entirely different when it’s someone you love. And I want to tell you, I did
not do our storm well.
What was most painful for me during the weeks Nancy was in the intensive
care unit and then the acute rehab center was the undisguisable recognition
that for decades I had taught and written and preached about faith and trust in God – but
with Nancy’s stroke, and the nightmarish roller coaster of emotions that robbed
me of sleep, appetite, and – especially – confidence in God – I discovered to
my shame and confusion that what I’d preached and taught others was now completely
insufficient for myself. I was in the throes of losing trust in God. It
was so bad I half-expected Him to pull the rug completely out from under me and
take my wife away from me. I lived for weeks in ongoing and utter turmoil. I’d
never experienced anything like that in my entire Christian life.
I can’t tell you how many times I melted into tears. I can’t tell you how
many times I had to whisper to others because to speak in a normal voice would have
only unleashed spasms of sobs.
My brothers and sisters, I tell you this because I need you to know that
I know what some of you have gone through – and what some of you might be going
through at this moment.
Like Peter, who lived with the Lord day in and day out for three years
and who believed with all his being that he would never deny His Lord, I lived
with the Lord for decades and never would have believed I could be so weak in
my faith.
So, where am I heading with all this? I learned many things about myself
and about God during that tormenting trial. For the sake of time, I want to
share only one of the more important lessons He taught me. I hope what He
taught me will help some of you.
One evening, after I’d left Nancy at the rehabilitation hospital,
I headed out on I-95 toward a friend’s home where I’d spend the night. The
tears started again, and I called out once more to God for help.
I wanted so much to trust Him to bring Nancy to complete recovery
and to get us HOME where we could be surrounded by familiar things in our house
and by family and friends whom we missed so terribly.
“Lord,” I begged, “Please
help me in my unbelief.”
And suddenly – suddenly – God spoke into my thoughts. I’ll never
forget the three questions He asked me. The first was this: “Richard, what do
you know about Me?”
His interruption into my despondency was so abrupt, my tears stopped
as I considered His question – “What do your know about Me?”
After a few moments, I answered: “I know Jesus is Lord of
heaven and earth.” While I was speaking, Philippians 2:10-11 came to my mind: “[At] the name of Jesus every
knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
I continued: “I know you cause all things, all
things, even terrifying things, to work together for good.” Romans 8:28 came to mind: “And we know that God causes all things to
work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according
to His purpose.”
And I continued: “I know you never leave me, never forsake me,
that you are always with me, even in my nightmares.” This time, Isaiah 43:2-3
floated through my mind: “When you pass
through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not
overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor
will the flame burn you. “For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel,
your Savior;
More Scriptures
flooded over me, and I said, “I know You will never let me be tested above what
I am able to bear.” Many of you will recognize that truth from 1 Corinthians
10:13.
I was about to continue my litany of the things I know about God
when He interrupted me again, this time with the second question: Why do you know those things are true?
I didn’t have to think about my response. It flowed across my lips
as easily as breathing. I said, “Because the Bible tells me so.”
And then the Holy Spirit connected the dots for me. All my
questions and my doubts and fears and uncertainties – all my worries about our
tomorrows all find their answers in what I know to be true because God – who
cannot lie – because God said in His word what is always true.
Therefore, His third question: “Will you trust Me?”
Don’t misunderstand, please. I do not mean to suggest God always
heals or reunites or fixes everything that’s broken. Clearly, He does not. As
the Lord Jesus reminds us (Luke 4):
“There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky
was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all
the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but
only to Zarephath, in the land
of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were
many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was
cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
And if you remember this text from Luke’s
gospel, Jesus spoke these words in His hometown of Nazareth. Here is what
happened next: And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard
these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city and led Him to the
brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down
the cliff.
Why God heals some and not others, why He fixes some things and
not others – no one knows. But healed or not, fixed or not, reunited or not –
God’s word remains true, whether we believe it to be truth or not. It remains
and always will be true.
So, let’s make some applications of my message to each of us here.
First: May God help us to not get so angry or
disappointed with Jesus that we throw our faith over a cliff. This is an
important point. Many of us know people who did just that – got so angry at
God, so disappointed with God, that they threw away their faith.
Second: Right now, in your own circumstances, what do YOU know to
be true about God? And just as important, Why
do you know it to be true?
If what you know and why you know it is not
based on God’s infallible word, if what you know is NOT rooted and nurtured in
God’s eternal truth, then your life is in great danger of collapsing when life’s
storms ravage your life like a devastating tornado.
For good reason the Lord tells us – and we had better receive this
into our spirits: “Everyone who hears these words of Mine
and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house
on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds
blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it
had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and
does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on
the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and
slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.” (Matthew
7:24-27)
As I close my message today, let me reiterate the two points I
hoped to make this afternoon:
First: God is so much more merciful to us than we can ever hope to
comprehend this side of eternity. When
we are faithless, He remains faithful to His covenantal promise to us. When we
deserve nothing less than judgment, He instead wraps His arms around us and
draws us close to His chest.
My second point was this: God’s holy word is as true and faithful
today as it was when writers of Scripture first penned God’s word on parchment.
May God help us all to make it more and more our absolute foundation for life.
Will we trust Him? Elijah cried to God when he thought he was the
only one in all Israel who remained faithful to Him. (1 Kings 19:18). The
apostle Peter swore he’d never deny knowing Jesus, and we know how that turned
out. St Paul wept in the depth of his soul, “For what I am doing, I do
not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like
to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate . . . . Wretched
man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Romans
7:15, 24).
And David? He wrote some of the most mournful songs in the entire
Bible, psalms in which he cries to God in confusion and spiritual distress –
like the one that I read at the beginning of this message: (Psalm 13:1-4) How long, O Lord?
Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart
all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer
me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep
the sleep of death, And my enemy will say, “I have overcome
him,” and my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken.”
But – and this is key to our ability to persevere in our walking with
Christ – pay attention to the next verses as David concludes his desperate
plea: (Psalm 13:5-6) But I have have trusted in Your lovingkindness;
My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to
the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”
We see the same change of focus in the 42nd psalm written by
the sons of Korah. I read it at the beginning of this message: “I will say
to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I
go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As
a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, while they say to me
all day long, “Where is your God?”
But the psalmist continues in verse 11: “Why are you in despair,
O my soul? and why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I
shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.”
God asked me three questions when I was at my lowest: “What do you know
about Me? How do you know it? Will you trust Me?” And I do not doubt for a
moment He asks you the same questions: “What do you know about Me?” “How do you
know it?” And, “Will you trust Me?”
As I prepared for this message I ran across something written by AW
Tozer. Some of you know the name of that well-known Christian pastor and
author. He died in 1963, but his words still bring strength and comfort to
those who struggle in their own valleys of the shadows of deep
darkness:
“To
us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in
the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father
knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an
accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden
closet to abash us [make us embarrassed or ashamed] and expose our past; no
unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from
us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the
full knowledge of everything that was against us . . . Our Father in heaven
knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery,
and for His own sake engaged to save us (Isa. 48:8-11). His only begotten Son,
when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish.
His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is
personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God knows and cares
as no one else can.
God was still in love with me during my darkest hours. And God is
still in love with you as you live through your dark hours. We know that
to be true because He SAYS it’s true; He says it from one end of the Bible to
the other.
As the lyrics of the song I am about to play tell us: Saints are just
sinners who fall down; And then get up.
Christian, hope in God. Trust God. And we shall yet praise Him who is our
help and our God.
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