Cure For Doubt

Transcript

Alright thank you very much. Always nice to be back with you dear friends. I just look forward so much to the chance, day by, day to speak with you and send you a message from God’s Word, pour it out of the love and concern of my own heart. My daily prayer is that God will make me a man of God, full of love and full of God and full of God’s truth and full of God’s holiness. It’s what I want Him to do for Bob Cook, and in the process perhaps I can spillover a little to you dear ones, that’s how it works.

We’re looking in Mark 6, Mark chapter 6 and the story of John the Baptist to got imprisoned and was ultimately, was beheaded because of the hatred of Herodias, the lady who was living with King Herod. She was married to his brother, but Herod decided that he wanted her, and that’s how it was. Well, let’s talk a little more about John the Baptist. He was human, he got discouraged and so we read in another gospel, the gospel of Luke, that John called two of his disciples unto him and sent them to Jesus saying, “Art Thou indeed He that should come?”, in other words, are you really the Messiah? Or, “Look we for another”? Now, you can understand why he would ask this, because he had announced the Lord Jesus is the Messiah, and no doubt in the back of his mind there was the idea that if Christ were indeed the Messiah, He would come and take charge to liberate the nation from the yoke of Rome and the dominance and restore a golden age to Israel. Instead, Christ was having great success and great crowds and all that, but John now is in prison, and the scenario doesn’t seem to be written properly. It doesn’t stand a reason that the man who introduced the Messiah, should end up in jail, does it? Well, you can understand how John was feeling.

So, he sent the message to Jesus said, “Are you really the Messiah or shall we look for somebody else”? When the men were come to him they said, “John the Baptist hath sent us unto Thee saying, ‘Art Thou He that should come or look we for another?’”, and right then He was healing people, He cured many of their infirmities and plagues and evil spirits, and gave many that were blind, and unto many that were blind, He gave sight. So Jesus answering said, “Go your way and tell John what things you’ve seen and heard. How the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and to the poor, the gospel is preached. You tell him that and then say, ‘Blessed is He whosoever shall not be offended in Me’”.

Why did He say that? Well, there’s two or three thoughts here that we want to work on. One is, the answer to doubt is to see what Jesus is doing. You can philosophize all you will, you can turn questions over and over in your mind and get weary, but the answer to your doubts beloved, is to see what the Lord Jesus is doing in your life and in others. He said, the answer to the question, “Are you really the Messiah?”, is just to look and see what’s happening. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. You tell him that, that’ll settle his doubts.

Now, I’m talking to people who have a great need. Somebody’s just going through a divorce, somebody just lost a loved one, a wife or a husband or a child or some member, close member of the family. Somebody’s got problems with your job, somebody just heard that you got cancer and you’re scared to death, because you just have dreadful forebodings of suffering and pain and ultimate demise, and it’s got you down. Somebody’s been hurt terribly in days past by life or by people or both, you just got scar tissue that just won’t heal. Lots of different human problems and you look up and say, “God, I wonder if You’ve forgotten me. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, and doubt begins to rear its head in your thinking. Am I talking to where you are today? I think I am. So, then what? What do you do about it? You tell the Lord Jesus about it. He never scolded because John asked that question. Did you notice that? He didn’t scold, He didn’t criticize, He just said, look around you. So, you tell the Lord Jesus about it and then second, you look for His working in your life and in the lives of others around you. You ask God to open your eyes to see what God is really doing in your life and in the lives of others around you, and you’ll be amazed as He answers that prayer. You can’t live from for one whole day without realizing, if you have eyes to see it, that God is working in so many ways all around you. No, He hasn’t forgotten you. He said, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of good not of evil, to give you a desired end”. Known unto God are all His ways from the beginning of the world for He hath said, “I will never leave thee nor for sake thee, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do unto me”.

The answer to doubt for John the Baptist is the same as it is for you and for me, and that is, look around and see what Jesus can do, and what He’s doing already in your life and the lives of others around you. Yes, you may be in a dreadfully difficult situation. Yes, your tears may be falling. Yes, worry may have gotten you to a place where you’re tight as a fiddle string. If somebody plucked you, you would sound a A440. You’re human. I know these things happen to us beloved, listen, look up, tell Jesus about it, and then ask Him to open your eyes to see what’s going, what’s really going on, for God hasn’t forgotten you and He’s still working. Amen? God bless you. I know it’s rough for some of you. My heart goes out to you, but Jesus is going to bring you through. The keyword as I’ve told you so many times is through, “When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee, and through the fire it shall not kindle upon thee. Ye though I walk through the valley, I will fear no evil”. God brings you through, believe it.

Well, that was that. What else? He said, “Blessed is he whoso shall not be offended in Me”. The message of the Lord Jesus Christ does not automatically guarantee that your circumstances are going to be coming up roses. I think that’s one of the fallacies of modern belief on the part of some. Just become a Christian and let God run your life and you’ll have lots of money and everything will be wonderful. Well, it doesn’t always work that way, does it? No, it doesn’t. Somebody listening to me right now can look across the floor and see the hole in the baseboard where the rats of the mice come in. The landlord won’t fix it and you don’t know how to fix it, and you haven’t got the money to repair this old building in which you’re living, and you tend to say bitterly, “Preacher it’s all right for you to say things will be all right if you trust the Lord but doesn’t fix my house”. I know it and I’m face-to-face with the fact that trusting the Lord Jesus does not always guarantee that your circumstances automatically, you may say magically, are going to change. Now it so happens that I lived in places like I just as described. I know that and what you do is, you get a piece of tin or plastic wood or something and you stop that hole up, so that those little visitors can’t come in and out. That’s what you do. You get a package of D-con and put it around so that they can have a meal of the of grain that’s been laced with something that’ll send them to rat heaven in a hurry.

There is always something you can do about a so-called impossible situation. Do you believe me when I say that? There is always something that you can do about a so-called impossible situation. Do what you can, trust the Lord Jesus, look up and give Him the glory and let God see you through. Amen? So He says, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me”. We tend to get offended when circumstances don’t turn out the way our private scenario indicates they should. The story doesn’t have such a happy ending sometimes, and we get offended, and we say, “Oh well does it pay to serve God”?

A man said to me some years ago, he said, “You talk about tithing Cook”, he said, “we tried to tithe, and it didn’t do us any good. Still broke”. Well, there’s an answer to that I think. I think the attitude in which you do a thing relating to God’s will does make a good deal of difference. I remember another man who steadfastly told me that it wouldn’t help to tithe his income, you know that means give God a tenth of your income. He said, “Preacher, get off on my back I haven’t got enough money”, but then one prayer meeting he get up to testify and he said, “I told my wife, ‘Look, it isn’t going to hurt us to try it one week anyway. Let’s try and see what the Lord will do”, and his faced broke into a smile, he said, “At the end of the weekend we had money left over, hallelujah”. So, I think a lot depends on your attitude, but He says, “Blessed is he who shall not be offended in Me.” John was in jail. Rough, rough circumstances. Ultimately, his head was going to get chopped off. Not a good prospect. Jesus said, “Don’t get offended in Me because God’s plan is going on”. God’s plan is going on, God is getting done what He wants to do. My circumstances always, write this down in the notebook of your mind would you beloved, my circumstances always must be viewed from the point of view of, what is God doing.

Paul wrote from prison, he said, well he said, “My bonds in Christ are made manifest throughout all the palace”, he said, “the word of God is not bound”. I’m in handcuffs, I’m shackled hand and feet and I’m bound to this Roman soldier on one side and on the other, but he said, “the word of God is not bound and people all over the palace are hearing about Jesus. Praise the Lord”. See, even in prison Paul was looking at what God was doing. Can you and I do the same thing today? Oh, I pray that we may. Yes, I know that life is hard for many of you. I know, I’ve been there and I still drop tears when my heart hurts, but I know too, that you can look at what God is doing and things look a lot different. Yes they do. Well, I still haven’t answered the question that I posed a day or so ago, why did God allow John the Baptist to rot in prison when he had done such a magnificent work? And I have to come back to that the next time we get together.

The fact is there is no guarantee that because God has greatly used to at one time, that He’s obligated to keep on using you. Did you know that? Now, your gifts will always be the same. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance and even if a person has backslidden and is far from God, the gifts God gave him or her, may still be very much in evidence. People say to me sometimes, “Look at that person. How can God use him? Look what he’s doing”, and they’ll point out someone who’s character leaves a great deal to be desired, and who may even be at the time quite a religious fraud and the say, “Well, how can God was bless that person?”, the gifts and calling of God. The gifts are there, the blessing may very well be removed. So God doesn’t always guarantee that your circumstances will be the same. He doesn’t promise and because He used you one year, He’s going to use you the same way another year. We’ll talk about that the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, guide us, keep us, keep us sweet, keep us trusting, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!