Resisting the Inner Skeptic in Our Bible Reading
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Monday we looked at doubt. Can we ever hope to experience a deepening joy in God during
00:00:11.000 | reoccurring seasons of doubt? And your answer, Pastor John, was yes. We can experience deepening
00:00:18.420 | joy in God during recurring seasons of doubt. And you explained how. And in the Monday episode,
00:00:25.800 | one of the battles you briefly mentioned was the battle when thoughts enter our minds that
00:00:30.400 | make us wonder whether something in the Bible, something the Bible teaches, is really true.
00:00:38.680 | That's one form of doubt that we face as believers, and today we drill down into Bible doubt.
00:00:44.440 | So how do we fight off this inner skeptic in our Bible reading? The frank and honest
00:00:48.920 | question comes from a listener named Kristen. "Pastor John, I'm ashamed to say that my Bible
00:00:53.560 | reading is often hijacked by a sense of doubt. It sometimes even feels more like a spiritual
00:00:58.760 | battle than an intellectual battle, and it scares me because it attacks my faith at the
00:01:03.640 | foundations—the truth of the Bible." Do you have any advice for attacking a spirit
00:01:11.680 | of doubt and cynicism when reading the Scriptures?
00:01:16.200 | You know, Tony, I pray, I stop and I pray over every one of these questions as I try
00:01:22.640 | to answer them so that in the hundreds of things you could say, "The Lord will help
00:01:26.560 | me choose the things that might be most helpful." This one felt like I needed to pray more because
00:01:32.440 | when she conceded that it's a spiritual battle and not just an intellectual one, I
00:01:39.320 | felt that's really true. And not just for her, but for all of us. The intellectual things
00:01:46.240 | that rise up that make the Bible seem problematic are often covering a satanic attack. The devil
00:01:54.960 | really hates the Bible. He hates truth. He's a deceiver from the beginning, and he can
00:02:02.520 | make things look merely intellectual when in fact some pretty heavy, heavy spiritual
00:02:09.040 | stuff is going on. So I'll just tell Kristen now what my—the answer is yes, I do have
00:02:18.000 | some advice, and I based every one of these six counsels on Scripture, and I'll mention
00:02:26.040 | the Scripture. So I'm praying for Kristen and lots of people who, when they read the
00:02:32.080 | Bible, find stumbling blocks that get in the way of their enjoyment and their belief. And
00:02:37.720 | one of these maybe, if not all of them, might prove from the Lord for her. Number one, pray
00:02:46.720 | that God would help you, that he would fight your doubts and cynicism with you and for
00:02:55.400 | you. In other words, cry out to God, "Fight for me. Help me defeat these obstacles."
00:03:01.920 | And we all know where that's coming from. Mark 9, 24, immediately, the father of the
00:03:08.600 | child who had this epileptic fit that nobody could heal, and he said, "Do you want me
00:03:18.480 | to do anything here?" And the man said, "If you can." And she said, "What is
00:03:22.400 | 'if' stuff?" And then the man cried out, "I believe. Help my unbelief."
00:03:28.980 | And that's a strange way to say it. Help your unbelief do what? Like die, that's
00:03:34.240 | what. Which means that Kristen and I need to preface our Bible reading every day with
00:03:42.440 | prayer, "God help me with my unbelief." That is, kill it, destroy it, get at whatever's
00:03:52.720 | causing it. So prayer. Number two, seek in all your reading and praying in the Bible,
00:04:00.880 | not just to know truth, but to see the glory of Christ. There is a spiritual light shining
00:04:10.200 | from Christ that is self-authenticating if you saw it. And I'm thinking here now of
00:04:16.320 | the doubting Thomas. I'm glad he exists and is in the Bible for Kristen and me. Then
00:04:24.080 | Jesus said to Thomas, remember, Thomas said, "I'm not gonna believe unless I have my
00:04:27.280 | finger in his side." Yeah.
00:04:29.480 | And so Jesus showing up and he says, "Put your finger here and see my hands and put
00:04:36.280 | out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered
00:04:44.280 | him, "My Lord and my God." In other words, he did not touch him. He saw him. Something
00:04:51.200 | happened when he saw him. He thought that he would need to do more. He would need more
00:04:58.560 | evidence for a ghost. You know, he's gonna be a ghost. I'm gonna be tricked. And when
00:05:05.320 | Jesus showed up, he didn't need any more. He didn't. He didn't have to push it to the
00:05:11.200 | limit of his evidential demands. And Jesus said, "Have you believed because you have
00:05:17.720 | seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." And I think that means
00:05:24.800 | not seeing the way you've seen, but believed by the seeing that comes through the Word.
00:05:32.200 | And so I'm saying to Kristen that when she reads, "Ask the Lord for this," this kind
00:05:40.400 | of not physical, but a spiritual discernment, a spiritual sight of Christ that is different
00:05:47.800 | than a kind of argument from evidences drawn with inferences.
00:05:53.160 | So number three, think much about the patience and mercy of God to doubters. Peter said,
00:06:02.320 | "Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water." He's gonna walk on water.
00:06:09.080 | And Jesus said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, walked on the water, and came to
00:06:17.040 | Jesus. And then it says, this is Matthew 14, 30, "But when he saw the wind, he was afraid
00:06:25.480 | and beginning to sink. He cried out, 'Lord, save me.'" And Jesus did not say, "Tough,
00:06:31.560 | man. I don't want... What a jerk. I just told you you could do this and you were doing it."
00:06:38.320 | No, no, that is not what Jesus said or did. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and
00:06:45.280 | took hold of him saying, "Oh, you a little faith. Why did you doubt?" So meditate on
00:06:53.480 | the kindness and the patience of Jesus to doubters. So Peter's doubting and Jesus reaches
00:07:01.120 | out his hand. So maybe that's what Kristen would feel as she reads this. "He is reaching
00:07:06.160 | out his hand to me in my doubt."
00:07:12.160 | Number four, seek out people of strong faith to read outside the Bible and to be around
00:07:19.120 | in person and make them your heroes. So Hebrews 13, 7, "Remember your leaders, those who spoke
00:07:26.800 | to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life. Imitate their faith."
00:07:32.680 | Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So he explicitly wants us to
00:07:39.520 | look to people who are ahead of us in this battle of faith and take heart from looking
00:07:48.160 | at the outcome of their faith. And here's another one in Hebrews. Hebrews seems to be
00:07:52.560 | really big on this communal nature of fighting the fight of faith. So Hebrews 3, 12, "Take
00:07:58.960 | care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving," you could say, "doubting
00:08:04.440 | heart leading you to fall away from the living God. Exhort one another every day as long
00:08:09.360 | as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."
00:08:13.400 | In other words, we need to be in groups where people fight with us and help us and direct
00:08:20.240 | us to things that will give strength to our faith rather than weaken them.
00:08:25.440 | Number five, "Remember that the body has many members, and some are scholars who have thought
00:08:33.120 | long and hard about things that puzzle you and have solved many of them." So 1 Corinthians
00:08:41.440 | 12, 21, "The head cannot say to the feet, 'I have no need of you,' and vice versa."
00:08:49.400 | And it may be that sometimes those of us who are doing footwork at any given time might
00:08:56.520 | need to remember, "Here, there's some heads, and don't let this conflict with Jesus as
00:09:01.840 | they head." That's what he says here in 1 Corinthians 12, 21, "Some are heads and some
00:09:06.460 | are feet, and the feet should never say, 'I don't need you, head,' when the head has spent
00:09:11.560 | 10 years solving the problem you're just stumbling over." No, no, no. The point of the body of
00:09:16.580 | Christ is there's an answer to our problems. God is a God of coherence. He's not a God
00:09:21.460 | of contradiction. There are answers to the issues in the Bible and the issues of culture,
00:09:27.960 | and people have gone before us, and there's a wealth of wisdom in books, and we should
00:09:34.200 | befriend those people. And finally, number six, "Don't, don't stop
00:09:39.800 | reading your Bible because of these doubts and because of a spirit of cynicism." This
00:09:45.480 | is one of Satan's main aims in your doubt and your cynicism is to get you to stop reading
00:09:51.880 | when in fact the Bible says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ."
00:09:58.400 | And one last text, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked or
00:10:03.640 | stands in the way of sinners or sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the
00:10:07.800 | law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by
00:10:15.200 | streams of water that yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither, and
00:10:21.000 | in all that it does, he prospers." So the seasons come, the dry desert winds blow, and
00:10:28.360 | those whose roots are not planted by the streams wither by cynicism and doubt. But the person
00:10:35.640 | whose roots have gone down meditating day and night on the word of God are like a tree
00:10:41.200 | that have roots way down by the water so that they're not killed by the droughts of doubt.
00:10:50.080 | Amen. Help my unbelief die. Yeah, that's a great word. Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks
00:10:56.400 | for joining us today. If you want to ask Pastor John, email your question to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:05.280 | Next time we ask why God chose the foolish things of this world and not the wise and
00:11:09.680 | powerful. Why not use the wealthiest innovators, the smartest geniuses, the most articulate
00:11:15.720 | orators, the world's greatest athletes, the most recognizable movie stars, all to spread
00:11:20.720 | his gospel around the world? Why does God prefer to choose and use the weakest in his
00:11:27.360 | mission? I'm your host Tony Renke. We'll answer that on Monday. We'll see you then.
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