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Preached in Markham Baptist Church,
September 17, 2006
WITH THINGS AS THEY ARE,
WHY DON'T WE GIVE UP OUR FAITH?
Psalm 42
With things as they are why don’t we give up our
faith? There’s a question for you. Why hold on to the faith in a living,
loving God in a day like ours? Why still believe in God when so many are
going through difficult times, hard times, suffering times?
I would suggest that it is a question every
Christian has asked themselves at one point or another. Everyone of us goes
through a time of doubt and questioning and ask, “Why not give up on God?
Why continue following God?” We may ask the question when faced with strong
philosophical arguments against the existence of God, as I was during my
first year of university. I was overwhelmed to discover that there were
people who believed just as strongly that there was no God as I did that
there was a God and it set me on a journey of doubt and skepticism about the
reality of God.
Or you may have asked the question when faced
with a severe trial or difficulty in life. Indeed we have faced our share of
difficulties together as a congregation as we have watched parents die, good
friends suffer from the ravages of disease, as we have been forced to say
goodbye to friends in death and have walked alongside those who have to face
one challenge after another in life. The list of tragedies goes on and on
and in the midst of it, we sometimes ask – With things as they are why don’t
we give up our faith? Why don’t we walk away from God, His church and this
whole life of following God?
It is a question we should not be ashamed to
ask. In fact as we read through the Psalms we discover many instances of the
writer questioning the reality of God, the presence of God and they very
well could ask, With things as they are why don’t I give up my faith in God?
It is a question that surrounds the author in
Psalm 42. We don’t’ know for sure who the author is – some suggest that it
is King David who writes this while being chased from his kingdom by his son
Absoloam. Others suggest it was written much later by the faithful King
Hezekiah. He was stricken by a horrible disease and was told by the prophet
Isaiah to prepare for death.
Who the author of Psalm 42 is really doesn’t
matter because really the author of this psalm is everyone of us. If you are
one who has doubted God, questioned God, shouted at God during a time of
difficulty and distress and pain, then this is a psalm written by you.
The psalmist is a great deal of distress – in
verse 3 he tells us that tears are his food night and day. He can’t eat and
the only nourishment are his tears. Have you ever experienced that? Have
you ever cried so much and so long that you think it’s not possible to shed
another tear? Yet they keep coming. My tears have been my food night and
day.
The tears come from a spirit that is genuinely
and completely depressed. In verse 5 he says his soul is cast down and
disquieted. In verse 7 he is so overwhelmed by sorrow in life that it feels
like he is drowning in waves of sadness and depression. “Deep calls to
deep,” he says. That is, from the depth of his sorrow he calls to the
depth of God’s mercy. And he goes on to say that it all feels like waves
and billows washing over him. In verse 9 he says he is walking around
mournfully. This isn’t just a passing sadness – it is a pervasive,
overwhelming depression.
The psalmist’s situation isn’t helped by the
people around him. Again at verse 3, “My tears have been my food day and
night, while people say to me continually – Where is your God?” It is
repeated again in verse 10 “As with a deadly wound in my body, my
adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
“Hey, you who were once favoured by God – what happened? Look at you! Look
at the difficulty that you face now, where is your God now?”
And the Psalmist asks the question at verse 9, “I
say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?’ ” Can you identify
with the mood of the psalmist? Are there times when the stresses of life
have seemed so great and God has seemed so quiet and distant that you have
cried out – “God why have you forgotten me?” The pain is too much and the
suffering is too much and it seems like prayers are not heard and God has
forgotten.
And certainly suffering has been the cause of
many turning their backs on God. Albert Camus, the brilliant and sensitive
philosopher, said he became an atheist because of the cruelty of the world.
He said that he hated God. If God is God he is not good, and if God is
good, he is not God.
So, with things as they are, why don’t we give
up our faith?
To be sure, there are some apparent advantages
to not believing in God, in atheism. I mean, if you are an atheist you
never feel disappointment in God. An atheist expects nothing and receives
nothing. There is no need to wrestle with the whole question of suffering.
It is simply a part of a cruel and godless world.
I will never forget my father, as he was
suffering with the pain of pancreatic cancer last spring, asking me, “Why is
there suffering? Why do I have to suffer?” Atheists don’t ask that
question. Only Christians have to wrestle with that. If he weren’t a
Christian he did not need to ask that question.
For you see, the believer, unlike the atheist,
is faced with the task of reconciling his belief in a good creating God with
the misery of suffering that there is in the world.
I would point out that to be an atheist requires
just as much faith, if not more, as it does to be a follower of God. The
Oxford Dictionary defines an atheist as one who believes there is no
God. So don’t let anyone look down on you as being intellectually inferior
because you believe in God. It takes just as much faith - and I would
suggest more faith - to believe there is no God as to believe there is a
God.
Why? Because the atheist must deny so many
facts, so many realities in order to arrive at their conclusion. Really?
Yes. Look at our Psalm, for woven in amongst these words of pain and
distress and doubt are words that point us to an ever-present reality that
is present even in the midst of suffering and pain and loss.
With things as they are why don’t I give up my
faith? And the Psalmist would answer because I long for God in the depths
of my being. Verse 1 and 2 - “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my
soul longs for you O my God.” My soul thirsts for God, for the living
God.
It was Augustine who said that there was in us a
God-shaped hole that only God can fill. The theologian Karl Bart said that
we each have an incurable God-sickness. Does that describe you? Do you
have an incurable God-sickness? Is there something in you that continually
hungers for something more than what you are to eat and what you are to wear
and what you will drive and where you will work?
Do you identify with that? Do you have a deep
desire to meet with God to talk with God and connect with God?
John Gladstone loves to tell of a German
theologian who was out walking one day during an overcast, misty, blustery
day. And he saw a small boy flying a kite along with a string. And as the
theologian looked up he couldn’t see the kite, the clouds were so low and
the kite was so high. All he could see was a boy running with a string. So
he stopped the boy and asked him, “How do you know the kite is there?” The
boy answered, “Because I feel the pull of it.”
And later when people would ask this theologian,
“Why do you believe in God and the reality of the spiritual world?” he would
respond, “Because I feel the pull of it. I feel the reality of the
transcendent deep within.”
My soul thirsts for the living God.
My friends, pay attention to that thirst. It
didn’t arrive in your soul as a result of a big bang, nor did it evolve
there – it is there because the Creator, the loving God, has placed that
thirst within you so that you will seek Him with your whole heart.
Don’t you ignore that thirst and please don’t
try to satisfy it with other things. We all have hungers and thirsts that
long to be satisfied in us. We know what it’s like to be thirsty
physically. But we are not just men and women of nature and in nature.
There are nameless longings in us which will not be satisfied by anything
material – by anything this world has to offer.
That’s what he writer of the Old Testament book
of Ecclesiastes discovered. He recognized his thirst so he tried to quench
it with pleasure, and laughter, and drink, and work, and wealth, and sex,
and on and on he went and each time he said, “It is all futile. I can’t
find any satisfaction in it.” “It’s like chasing after the wind,” he said.
So while we have these longings for God we have
to realize that nothing can satisfy these longings but God himself.
This is one of the strong evidences for the
existence of God – we have these appetites and for each appetite there is a
corresponding fact that quenches the appetite. For physical thirst there is
water, for hunger there is food, for friendship there is companionship, and
the appetite for God – there is God.
And don’t you find that this thirst is all the
more acute when you are going through a difficult time? Isn’t your hunger
for God sharpened when you come face to face with suffering? Of course it
is.
Why is it that non-believers who never think of
God, have never darkened the doorway of a church suddenly turn to God in the
midst of difficulty and stress? Because God has placed that instinct in
us. He wants us to turn to Him and seek Him, to trust Him.
Some will say, “it is a crutch - you Christians
are so weak.” And I admit it - I am weak. But I am not ashamed. I
would much rather put my trust in a living, loving God than all the other
things the world offers as comfort and strength.
Why don’t’ you give your faith in God? Because
in the depths of my being I long for God and know that He exists.
But there is also this. Why don’t I give up my
faith in the face of suffering? Because I have experienced God in worship.
This is what the psalmist says in verse 4: “These things I remember, as I
pour out my soul; how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to
the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving.” The
Psalmist is remembering his experience of God in worship.
I mentioned my first year of university was a
challenge for my faith. But what I discovered was that even though the
philosophers could marshal all their clever arguments against the existence
of God – nothing they could say could take away the fact that I had
experienced God. I had seen His majesty in the wonder of a sunset. I had
seen His beauty in the intricacies of a flower. I had heard His voice in
the Word of God, I had seen Him in the face of Jesus Christ, God in the
flesh – as I gathered with believers around the communion table – in the
broken bread and the cup – surely, “Here, O my Lord I see thee face to
face.” I’ve experienced God in worship.
Some of you remember the sixties when there was
a whole theory that God was dead. It was April 1966 when Time magazine
printed on their cover, “God is dead.” At the height of that controversy a
reporter came up to Rev. Billy Graham and asked him, “What do you think
about the idea that God is dead?”
“I find it very strange,” said Billy Graham.
“O really,” said the reporter, “Why is that?”
“Because,” said Billy, “I was just talking to
Him early this morning.”
And isn’t it true? We have experiences of God,
while sitting under a starlit sky, or in the kindness of a friend.
Sometimes we are blind to them, but when we have eyes to see we can say with
the psalmist., “I remember going into the house of God and meeting with
God with songs of gladness and thanksgiving.”
And when I go through difficult times, when God
seems distant, when God seems silent, I remember it was not always like
that. I know God to be faithful, I know God to be gracious and just because
my circumstances may have changed, I can rest assured that He has not
changed.
Do you know that worship is what distinguishes
us from the rest of all the creatures on the earth? We are a worshipping
people. Stalin tried to stop people from worshipping but failed. They did
the same in China but have failed. We must worship. Sometimes worship is
misplaced – so that it focuses on sport stars, movie stars, rock stars and
shooting stars but it remains that we have a worshipping instinct.
And O how it is satisfied when worship is
focused on the living God! For He alone is worthy to be worshipped. He
alone is worthy to be praised. And He alone is able to quench that thirst
deep within your soul.
Well, there is this left to say. With things as
they are why don’t you turn your back on God and give up the faith? Because
my soul has longings only God can fulfill. My life has had experiences of
God in worship that no one can take away.
And then this, I do not turn my back on God
because He is sure and true. He is faithful. Look at the last part of verse
11 - “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted with
in me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my
help and my God. Do you hear the stubborn, persistent faith in those words?
He is saying, let my enemies question the existence of my God. Even though
I go through times of doubt – when it comes right down to it, I will hope in
God. I will place my bets on God – I will not turn my back on Him in spite
of all the difficulties I am experiencing. For He is my help. He is
faithful.
And can’t we Christians do the same and say the
same with even more confidence? For we know God is not distant or uncaring
but we know that God has come in the person of Jesus Christ. We know that
God is no stranger to pain. He is not like Zeus and the other so-called
gods sitting in Olympian luxury while we struggle and toil and experience
the difficulty of life.
No. He cares so much about us and the pain and
the difficulty that we face that He got involved in it personally. He came
in the person of Jesus Christ and lived among us. He lived in squalor and
suffering; He knew thirst and hunger. He ended his life in the most
excruciating ways known. If anyone tells you that God doesn’t care, don’t
you believe it. If your own heart and soul tell you that God doesn’t care,
don’t you believe it. It is a lie.
Allow yourself to take a good long look at the
cross. In the cross God is saying to you that He does care about pain and
suffering. He cares passionately and selflessly. He cares so much that He
came to share it. In the words of Michael Green, “The cross tells me that
God loves me even in the midst of pain and suffering.”
Not only share it but transform it! O how
tragic if in the face of pain and suffering we let doubt have the last
word. The problem with Albert Camus’ belief - if God is God he is not good,
if God is good, he is not God – is that he credited God with all the cruelty
and credited himself, Albert Camus, with all the compassion. But we see
that not to be true in the person of Jesus Christ, for there we see the
compassion of God that He would share in our suffering.
My father asked me why is there suffering?
There are lots of good answers to that question, but when you are in the
midst of pain and difficulty the answers all seem academic and sometimes
even trite – but what needs to be said is that God is faithful, He will not
let you go.
John Gossip was a wonderful preacher from the
previous generation who preached in Aberdeen, Scotland. At a relatively
young age his wife died when they were both still in their forties. They
said at the time that the day when John Gossip’s wife died, the happiest
marriage in all of Aberdeen was shattered. A month after his wife’s death
this lovely Scottish man came back to his pulpit and he preached a sermon
that has become a classic – it is entitled, “When Life Tumbles In, What
Then?” And in it he asked this pointed question, “Some people when belief
comes hard fling away from the faith altogether. But in heavens name fling
away to what?
With things as they are why don’t we give up our faith?
I think if I were ever to preach this sermon again, I would rework to title
to read, “With things as they are, why don’t you have faith?” For your soul
has yearnings that only God can answer. He is sure and true in the face of
suffering and tragedy and the difficulties of life and has proven His love
for you in the person of Jesus Christ. Give up my faith? No
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my
God.
If you would like to read
more on this subject, Pastor Tom would recommend:
Disappointment With God by Philip Yancey -
Harper Paperbacks, 1988
You Must Be Joking,
Popular excuses for Avoiding Jesus Christ
by
Michael Green - Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - September 2006 |
