"From Doubt to Faith"
Sermon Transcript for March 2, 2003Scripture Reading: Numbers 13:1 - 14:4
By Rev. Mike Beck
We conclude today a timely and I think important series of sermons, “Lord, Change My Attitude Before It’s Too Late”. The weather hasn’t cooperated much with this series. If you missed any of the messages, in the rack outside those doors you’ll find printed copies of the first four sermons. Or, if you stop by the office we’ll be glad to give you an audiotape.
Let’s begin by reviewing the definition of attitudes—“Patterns of thinking formed over a long period of time.” Or, another way of saying that, “They are the way we choose to look at life”. And notice the word choose is underlined for we choose our attitudes. We began by looking at the attitude of complaining and its counterpart, thanksgiving. Attitude of rebellion contrasted to submission; cravings as opposed to contentment; last week criticism and love; and today doubt but faith.
The essence of this sermon is to try to say that the cumulative effect of our choices in terms of attitudes (like the Israelites in the stories we’ve been looking at in the Book of Numbers) is going to determine, in this life especially, whether we wander in the wilderness, a cold dry unhappy place, or whether we experience “Promised Land” living that God wants for us. Charles Swindoll has this quote that is so good. Listen carefully. He says,
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude is more important than fact. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company. It will cause a church to soar or sink. It will be the difference of a happy home or horror. And the remarkable thing is that you have a choice to make every day concerning the attitude you will embrace for that day. You can focus on the broken or out-of-tune strings in our life, or you can play a beautiful melody on the strings that remain. And oh, the difference it makes in life! We cannot change our past. We cannot change the tick of the clock. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. But we can change our attitudes. I am convinced that life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it. And so it is with you.”
Today we look at the attitudes of doubt and faith. Let me begin with some definitions. We are talking this morning about doubt. We’re not talking about intellectual doubt. In fact, God relishes you asking Him questions. I preached a sermon once in that regard called, “The Power of Positive Doubting”, to bring to God a question, “I can’t understand this at all, God” and to let Him help you sort out the answers. That’s not what we are talking about. We’re talking this morning about the lack of confidence that God will keep the promises He’s made. Faith on the other hand is receiving the gifts that God has for us. And let me stop there because for a long time in my Christian life I believed that faith was what I did in terms of mustering up belief. Now, there’s a sense in which that is true. But if you explore the Scriptures carefully, you’ll see that even faith is a gift of God but like all gifts it has to be received. So faith is receicving the gifts God has for us and then responding, and this is so critically important, in acts of obedience to His calling upon our life. You cannot divorce faith and obedience.
When I was in college my grandmother mailed me a letter with this quote. She said, “Michael, faith is not belief without truth, it is trust without reservation”. That’s a great quote. I want you to reflect on it. As we look at the Bible we see versus like Hebrew 11:6, which is pretty strong, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” If you read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations you’ll see that God is not looking for perfect people. God is not looking for great ability. God is looking for people of faith. People who will trust him, that He will do what He says. And again, you cannot divorce faith from our actions. James 2:17 says, “Faith, by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead.” I can tell my wife I love her, and she likes to hear those words, but the test of the validity of those words is not in the words, it’s in the actions I express to her.
So with that as background, take your red Bibles and turn with me to Numbers, Chapter 13. It’s found on page 144. And I would advise you to leave your Bibles open throughout the message. We’re going to take the Scripture in pieces this morning. Let me set the stage. Israel is at the end of a journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. God has been tremendously faithful. If you know your Bible stories, God sent the plagues to finally get Pharaoh’s attention to let the people go. We remember the faithfulness of God in the Passover when they stood at the Red Sea with Pharaohs’ armies pursuing and God provides an escape for them. We remember God’s faithfulness there at Mt. Sinai to give them a law; and then His faithfulness in providing manna and quail in their journey across the dessert. So they are right there at the river looking across that, and if you would go back and look at the first chapter in the verse of Deuteronomy, you’ll see that what is going on in the account we are reading today is actually God’s “Plan B”! Because if you read in Deuteronomy, God intended for them to get to the river and then march on across, but they weren’t willing to do that. So God comes up with “Plan B” and we begin to see that in Chapter 13, the first two verses, “
“The Lord said to Moses, choose one of the leaders from each of the twelve tribes and send them as spies to explore the land of Canaan.” Now, notice now the last phrase, here’s the promise, “which I am giving to you.” Not, which I’ll think about giving to you, which I am giving to you. God is saying, “Okay, go see it and then come back with a report of faith. I’m going to share with you five lessons from the Scriptures we’re going to read today. Here’s the first one”
Lesson #1: God places regular tests of faith in front of his children: For those tests of faith determines what is really in our hearts. I look out at you this morning; I see nice looking folks. Good folks who thought it important to come to church today. But I can’t tell by looking at the outside of Jim and Nancy how much faith is on the inside. For faith is a heart thing. It’s like a large bucket of water, and I know you’ve been wondering, “What’s this bucket here for?” Can any of you tell me how much water I’ve got in this bucket? You probably assume not much because I lifted it up easily. I shouldn’t have done that. But if I didn’t lift if up like that, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from there. But if the bucket gets bumped, you’ll immediately know how much water is in the bucket! Friends, when the bucket of our life gets bumped, when we hit the rough spot in the road, and when we realize that discipleship and a place in Christ’s church is about more than what God can do for me, it’s in those times that “we will spill out what we are full of”. Those “bumps” and “tests of faith” is where true faith is demonstrated. And it is in those moments that we really come to know God. It is in those moments that we grow in our relationship with God. Now, friends, I don’t like the bumps of life any more than you do. I want the bucket to sit nice and tranquil there where it is suppose to sit. But yet, if you look back on your life I think you’ll say the same thing that I say when I look back on mine, “When did I grow the most spiritually--when life was peaceful and tranquil or when I was riding the waves of the sea just open and hanging on for real life?” We look back and we see that’s when we grow. You can fool me, you can fool Reverend Dan, but friends, you can’t fool God. Is the bucket of your life, how full is it of faith this morning?
Let’s go on to Verse 17, “When Moses sent them out he said to them, “Go north from here to the southern part of Canaan and then on to the hill country. Find out what kind of country it is. How many people live there and how strong they are. Find out whether the land is good or bad and whether the people live in open towns or in fortified cities. Find out whether the soil is fertile and whether the land is ready. And be sure to bring back some of the fruit that grows there for it was the season when grapes where beginning to ripen.” These twelve men were going to see a lot. They were all going to see exactly the same thing. But here’s the question, “How will they respond to what they see?” Here’s lesson number two:
Lesson #2: The circumstances of life will either shrink or stretch your faith: Let me ask you, “What’s going on in your life today that’s going to either shrink or stretch your faith?” For you see, the bumps of life are not only to test your faith; it’s also where your faith is refined. If you’ve got gold on this morning, that gold only took that shape when the craftsman heated it up to a blazing hot temperature; and then he could shape it. Every good thing that God wants to give us in life comes with a bundle of faith. When we choose an attitude of faith our relationship with God will stretch and grow. When we choose an attitude of doubt, our relationship begins to shrivel up like a piece of shoe leather. In the challenging circumstances of life, friends, we either get bitter or we get better. And the thing that makes the difference is the attitude. Let’s move on to Verse 25, “And after exploring land for 40 days the spies returned to Moses and Aaron and the whole community of Israel. They reported what they had seen and they showed them the fruit they had brought. And they told Moses, “We explored the land and found it to be rich and fertile; here’s some of the fruit.” But, there at the beginning of verse 28 is the most important word in the passage--“but”. “But the people who live there are powerful and their cities are large and well fortified. And even worse, we saw the descendents of the giants there.” And then it goes on to tell all of the tribes that lived there in the land. Then in verse 30, “Caleb silenced the people who were complaining against Moses and said, “We should attack now and take the land we are strong enough to do it!” Here’s lesson number three:
Lesson #3: Doubt sees the obstacles. Faith sees the opportunities: There in Verse 30 it says Caleb is trying to silence the people. Picture that in your mind. These people numbered over a million. They are listening to these ten who say, “There are giants out there. We can’t do it.” Friends, it’s hard to quiet the doubters. Doubters always make a lot of noise. We can never see “doubt”, for like faith, doubt is in the heart. But I want to give you five disguises of doubt that you can see. Doubt will manifest itself as fear. It will express itself as anxiety. It masks itself in anger, withdrawal, and bitterness. And friends, we stand at the beginning of our Capital Campaign, and I promise you this, those five things that you see up there on the screen that disguise themselves as doubt, they will all manifest themselves in this congregation to some degree over the next two months. And friends, behind each of those five things often lies a “faith issue”—do I really believe that God will do what He’s promised to do? In Numbers 14 we look now at the first two verses. “And all night long the people cried out in distress. They complained against Moses and Aaron and they said, “It would have been better to die in Egypt or even here in the wilderness.”
Lesson #4: When surrounded by doubters, doubting comes easily: When these twelve men came back, it should have been party time. Two of them were carrying this huge thing of grapes on a pole. They could remember all that God had done for them in the past. It ought to have been party time, and it turned out to be the opposite. Can we take some liberty with the text for a moment to speculate what might have been going on? See, they were gone for 40 days. My guess is that most all of those spies initially thought that it was entirely possible to cross over and take the land. But then during the 40 days, in one little conversation after another, what did they do? They fed each other doubt. A few years ago a friend gave me this little jar. In it is a mustard seed. You can hardly see the mustard seed—it’s so small. But Jesus said, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to that mountain, “Be moved”, and it will be cast in to the sea.” If you surround yourself with people of faith, your faith will grow. But friends, doubt has the same reproductive power. If you surround yourself with doubters, your faith will shrink. Here’s one critically important thing we need to see, “Doubting satisfies our tendency to self-protection”. When we start to doubt, we know we ought to be moving in this direction, we’ve got the promise of God that He’s going to be with us, but then we begin to worry, “But what if?” The Israelites thought they were protecting themselves by listening to the majority report. It looked like the safe way out. But you know what happened? They ended up fulfilling their own prophecy and they die in the wilderness and they were looking right across the river to the promises of God. They just had to believe them. That’s the way it is with doubt. Satan will give you a dozen and one reasons why something won’t work, but God calls His people to be people of faith. How many of you saw the movie, “The Poseidon Adventure” a number of years ago? Let me see your hands. I thought there was a marvelous spiritual line throughout that movie. If you remember, when the ship is hit by the storm, there is this very unorthodox preacher, whom I think in the film is a Christ-figure. And if you remember, he’s standing up on this little portico. All the rest of the people are down below. And he says to them, “The ship is turned over. If you are going to have any chance of getting out, you’ve got to climb up to where I am.” And if you remember, most of the people said, “That’s foolishness; safety is down here where we are.” And they all died right there.
Let’s look at the close of the passage in Numbers 14, Verse 3 and 4: “Why is the Lord taking us in to that land? We will be killed in battle and our wives and children will be captured. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt? And so they said to one another, “Let’s choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” Here’s Lesson Number Five:
Lesson #5: It’s always a short journey from doubt to despair: Look at the foolishness they have talked themselves in to. Had God not provided for them every step of the way? Go back to Egypt! How many of you think God was going to provide manna in the wilderness for the journey backwards? And they said it would be better for us to go back to Egypt. People have short memories. Do you remember what they did to the Egyptian armies? God drowned them in the Red Sea. And they are acting as if the Egyptians will say, “Oh, we are so glad you are back.” But they are saying, “It would be better if we go back to Egypt.” It’s a fool-hearty, desperate plan. Where did it originate? In doubting hearts!
I want to share with you this critically important truth, “In spiritual matters, it’s not, “I’ll believe it when I see it”, it’s rather, “I’ll see it when I believe it.” Thing about that for a moment--In a spiritual realm, it’s not “I’ll believe it when I see it.” In faith its “I’ll see it when I believe it.” Mickey and I rented a real good movie the other night with Kevin Costner called, (tape turned over, lost part of text)
As we close, I’m going to ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes. Allow the Holy Spirit to penetrate your heart to examine these questions. Am I a doubting person? Am I reaping the consequences of doubt in my relationship with God? Am I willing to repent? Am I willing to ask God to grow in me a heart of faith? Friends, I can tell you from experience, if you’re willing to do that and evidence that faith in trusting actions, your life will never be the same again. In our personal lives and in our church, our future boils down to whether we will choose an attitude of faith or an attitude of doubt. Loving God, You’ve proven over and over to us that You are faithful. So help us Lord, one day at a time, one decision at a time, to choose an attitude of faith. In Jesus’ name we pray these things. Amen.”
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