Battling Doubt and Cynicism in Our Bible Reading

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.440 | Kristen, a podcast listener, writes in with a question, "Pastor John, I'm ashamed to say that

00:00:10.560 | my Bible reading is often hijacked by a sense of doubt. It sometimes even feels more like a

00:00:15.840 | spiritual battle than an intellectual battle, and it scares me because it attacks my faith at the

00:00:21.200 | foundations, the truth of the Bible. Do you have any advice for attacking a spirit of doubt and

00:00:26.880 | cynicism when I'm reading the Bible?" You know, Tony, I pray, I stop and I pray

00:00:32.800 | over every one of these questions as I try to answer them so that in the hundreds of things

00:00:39.200 | you could say, "The Lord will help me choose the things that might be most helpful." This one felt

00:00:44.160 | like I needed to pray more, because when she conceded that it's a spiritual battle and not

00:00:50.960 | just an intellectual one, I felt that's really true. And not just for her, but for all of us.

00:00:58.240 | The intellectual things that rise up that make the Bible seem problematic are often covering

00:01:03.920 | a satanic attack. The devil really hates the Bible. He hates truth. He's a deceiver

00:01:12.960 | from the beginning, and he can make things look merely intellectual when in fact some pretty heavy

00:01:21.040 | heavy spiritual stuff is going on. So I'll just tell Kristen now what my—the answer is yes,

00:01:30.640 | I do have some advice, and I based every one of these six counsels on Scripture,

00:01:38.400 | and I'll mention the Scripture. So I'm praying for Kristen and lots of people who, when they read the

00:01:45.200 | Bible, find stumbling blocks that get in the way of their enjoyment and their belief, and one of

00:01:50.960 | these maybe, if not all of them, might prove from the Lord for her. Number one, pray that God would

00:02:00.800 | help you, that he would fight your doubts and cynicism with you and for you. In other words,

00:02:10.400 | cry out to God, "Fight for me. Help me defeat these obstacles." And we all know where that's

00:02:17.600 | coming from. Mark 9 24, immediately the father of the child who had this epileptic fit that nobody

00:02:28.640 | could heal, and he said, "Do you want me to do anything here?" And the man said, "If you can."

00:02:35.200 | And she said, "What is 'if' stuff?" And then the man cried out, "I believe. Help my unbelief."

00:02:42.080 | And that's a strange way to say it. Help your unbelief do what? Like, die, that's what. So,

00:02:49.200 | which means that Kristen and I need to preface our Bible reading every day with prayer, "God,

00:02:58.400 | help me with my unbelief." That is, kill it, destroy it, get at whatever's causing it. So,

00:03:07.680 | prayer. Number two, seek in all your reading and praying in the Bible, not just to know truth,

00:03:16.800 | but to see the glory of Christ. There is a spiritual light shining from Christ that is

00:03:25.440 | self-authenticating if you saw it. And I'm thinking here now of the doubting Thomas. I'm

00:03:31.840 | glad he exists and is in the Bible for Kristen and me. Then Jesus said to Thomas, remember,

00:03:39.280 | Thomas said, "I'm not going to believe unless I have my finger in his side." And so, Jesus showing

00:03:45.280 | up, and he says, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my

00:03:52.000 | side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God." In other words,

00:04:00.560 | he did not touch him. He saw him. Something happened when he saw him. He thought that he

00:04:10.320 | would need to do more. He would need more evidence for a ghost, you know, "He's going to be a ghost.

00:04:16.720 | I'm going to be tricked." And when Jesus showed up, he didn't need any more. He didn't. He didn't

00:04:24.080 | have to push it to the limit of his evidential demands. And Jesus said, "Have you believed

00:04:30.800 | because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." And I think that

00:04:38.080 | means not seeing the way you've seen, but believed by the seeing that comes through the Word. And so,

00:04:46.640 | I'm saying to Kristen that when she reads, "Ask the Lord for this," this kind of, not physical,

00:04:56.240 | but a spiritual discernment, a spiritual sight of Christ that is different than a kind of argument

00:05:03.680 | from evidences drawn with inferences. So number three, "Think much about the patience and mercy

00:05:12.800 | of God to doubters." Peter said, "Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water."

00:05:20.960 | He's going to walk on water. And Jesus said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat,

00:05:28.560 | walked on the water, and came to Jesus, and then it says—this is Matthew 14, 30—but when he saw the

00:05:37.760 | wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" And Jesus did not say,

00:05:45.920 | "Tough, man! I don't want—what a jerk! I just told you you could do this, and you were doing it!"

00:05:52.960 | No, no, that is not what Jesus said or did. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took

00:06:00.480 | hold of him, saying, "Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?" So meditate on the kindness

00:06:09.360 | and the patience of Jesus to doubters. So Peter's doubting, and Jesus reaches out his hand. So

00:06:17.120 | maybe that's what Kirsten would feel as she reads this. "He is reaching out his hand to me in my

00:06:24.400 | doubt." Number four, seek out people of strong faith to read outside the Bible and to be around

00:06:32.320 | in person and make them your heroes. So Hebrews 13, 7, "Remember your leaders, those who spoke

00:06:40.000 | to you the Word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life. Imitate their faith."

00:06:44.800 | Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so he explicitly wants us to look to

00:06:53.440 | people who are ahead of us in this battle of faith, and take heart from looking at the outcome

00:07:01.760 | of their faith. And here's another one in Hebrews. Hebrews seems to be really big on this communal

00:07:07.680 | nature of fighting the fight of faith. So Hebrews 3, 12, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any

00:07:13.760 | of you an evil, unbelieving," you could say, "doubting heart, leading you to fall away from

00:07:18.800 | the living God. Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may

00:07:24.240 | be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." In other words, we need to be in groups where people fight

00:07:30.720 | with us and help us and direct us to things that will give strength to our faith rather than weaken

00:07:37.200 | them. Number five, remember that the body has many members, and some are scholars, who have thought

00:07:46.080 | long and hard about things that puzzle you and have solved many of them. So 1 Corinthians 12, 21,

00:07:55.040 | "The head cannot say to the feet, 'I have no need of you,' and vice versa." And it may be that

00:08:03.200 | sometimes those of us who are doing footwork at any given time might need to remember, "Here,

00:08:11.600 | there's some heads, and don't let this conflict with Jesus as they head." That's what he says

00:08:16.400 | here in 1 Corinthians 12, 21. Some are heads and some are feet, and the feet should never say,

00:08:22.080 | "I don't need you, head," when the head has spent 10 years solving the problem you're just stumbling

00:08:27.120 | over. No, no, no. The point of the body of Christ is there's an answer to our problems. God is a God

00:08:32.960 | of coherence; He's not a God of contradiction. There are answers to the issues in the Bible

00:08:37.680 | and the issues of culture, and people have gone before us, and there's a wealth of wisdom in

00:08:45.840 | books, and we should befriend those people. And finally, number six, don't stop reading your Bible

00:08:53.600 | because of these doubts and because of a spirit of cynicism. This is one of Satan's main aims in

00:09:02.320 | your doubt and your cynicism, is to get you to stop reading when, in fact, the Bible says, "Faith

00:09:07.760 | comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." And one last text, "Blessed is the man

00:09:15.760 | who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat

00:09:20.000 | of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

00:09:27.280 | He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season;

00:09:32.400 | its leaf does not wither, and in all that he does he prospers." So the seasons come,

00:09:38.160 | the dry desert winds blow, and those whose roots are not planted by the streams wither by cynicism

00:09:48.640 | and doubt. But the person whose roots have gone down meditating day and night on the word of God

00:09:55.680 | are like a tree that have roots way down by the water so that they're not killed by the

00:10:03.040 | droughts of doubt. Amen. Thank you, Pastor John and Kristen. Thank you for stepping out and

00:10:10.400 | sending in the humbling question. And if you're looking for more concrete application for

00:10:15.280 | overcoming other reasons why the Bible is hard for you to read, see the episode titled "Six Tips

00:10:20.960 | If You Find the Bible Hard to Read." That's episode number 438 in the podcast archive,

00:10:25.760 | available in the apps or in our landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:32.960 | Well, tomorrow we're going to talk about paying it forward, the act of repaying a kindness by

00:10:38.960 | showing kindness to someone other than the person who is kind to you. You've probably heard of this.

00:10:43.920 | Say you're in a drive-thru line at McDonald's and the car ahead of you pays for your meal and then

00:10:48.720 | drives off. That's what it means to pay it forward. A listener wants to know how paying

00:10:53.680 | it forward fits with what Pastor John has written in his book "Future Grace." Is paying it forward

00:10:59.840 | a Christian concept? That's the question on the table tomorrow with John Piper. I'm your host,

00:11:04.400 | Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.

00:11:06.160 | you

00:11:06.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

00:11:13.760 | Any questions?

Battling Doubt and Cynicism in Our Bible Reading

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