Silencing the Voice of Doubt

In Luke chapter 1, we read the account of an angel standing before Zacharias, telling him that his wife Elizabeth was going to have a baby. But Zacharias didn't believe him, and the angel was incredulous.

When God speaks, it's true, and we are required to believe it. Thanks for joining us for the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Today we return to Dr. R.C. Sproul's sermon series from the Gospel of Luke and to a passage that reveals the folly of disbelief.

Don't be alarmed. I'm not going to go back to the very beginning of this passage and start all over of what we've covered in two previous sessions. But I do want to look back at one thing early on in this passage in the first chapter, beginning in verse 6, where it describes Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, that they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. So up until this point in his ministry, God had been pleased with the singular posture of obedience and righteousness that had been displayed by this man Zacharias. In fact, Scripture describes him as having been blameless.

That's a little bit of hyperbole if we look at it very carefully under a microscope. We certainly find something in this man that was blameworthy. But in general, his character was one that was blameless. But that streak of blamelessness comes to an abrupt halt here in the holy place when he is visited by the angel, when the angel announces to him that he and his wife are going to have this child who will be the forerunner of the Messiah. Suddenly Zacharias struggles with his faith, and he says to the angel, I'm an old man. There's irony in this if you read it in the Greek because the literal translation of the words there is what he is saying is, I'm a Presbyterian.

I'm an elder. And so this is characteristic of most Presbyterians that they struggle with authentic faith, I guess, although we also know that the Son that will be born will be known for all generations as John the Presbyterian. But he says to the angel, I'm an old man, and my wife is beyond the years of childbearing. And so his faith is now disintegrating in the light of this astonishing announcement that has been given to him by the angel. And as I mentioned last time, the angel's response to Zacharias' statement, I'm an old man, the angel says yes, and I'm Gabriel.

So what's your point? I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God, and he goes on to say, and I have been sent here to proclaim good tidings to you. And again, the language of the New Testament here is significant because the same language that is used in the New Testament to describe apostles is the language that is used here by Gabriel. Gabriel is saying literally, I am an apostle commissioned and sent by the authority of God Himself so that the word that I'm proclaiming to you here, Zacharias, is not my message.

This is God's Word, and he goes on to tell him that that message that he has been sent to proclaim to Zacharias in the Greek is the same word for the proclamation of the gospel. God has sent me to proclaim the gospel to you, Zacharias, and you're a priest who tells me you're too old to believe it. You know how many people there are in this world who to this day are saying they're too old to believe the gospel that God declares? They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. My life has been marked by unbelief since childhood, and I'm not going to be one of those who becomes a foxhole Christian or experience a deathbed conversion.

I'm too old for that. Well, what I want us to see this morning is the response of God's ambassador, God's authorized messenger to Zacharias's doubt. Let's look at the text again. I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and to bring you these glad tidings that is this gospel, but behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place because you did not believe my words. There's consequences to unbelief, and because though you were known as being righteous and devout and blameless, now I'm going to take away your ability to speak because of your unbelief. And so Gabriel administers a judgment of God upon this supposedly righteous man for his unbelief. Now, beloved, I don't think we take seriously enough the sinfulness of unbelief. We have a tendency in our culture and even in the church to think that belief in Christ or unbelief in Christ, believing and trusting in the things of God or not trusting in the things of God are optional. They don't carry any dire consequences if we dismiss them, but I'd like us to understand this morning that unbelief in the Word of God is sin.

And not only is it sin, it's an egregious sin, and not only is it an egregious sin, but it is a sin that has eternal consequences for it. Now, there are many dimensions of theology that are related to this problem that we face here with Zacharias. Let me just begin by saying, why does God punish Zacharias for his struggle here when he didn't punish Abraham, for example? In the Old Testament, he said, Abraham, I'm your great reward and your shield, and Abraham said, reward?

What are you going to give me? He said, I don't have any children, and my heir is my servant, Eliezer of Damascus. And God said, no, Eliezer will not be your heir, but you're going to bring forth a child, and your wife is going to conceive.

And what happened? In Genesis 15, we read, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. This was the first clear example of a man's being justified by faith alone, the cardinal issue of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Paul labors the point that before Abraham offered up Isaac on the altar in chapter 22, that already in chapter 15, he was counted righteous before God. As soon as faith was born in his soul, he was justified. He didn't have to have faith plus works in order to be justified, but faith alone was all that was necessary for Abraham to have.

Righteousness imputed to him, and the only righteousness that could have been imputed to him was the righteousness of Christ, who was not even yet born. But even after this marvelous profession of faith by which Abraham is justified, he staggered for a moment and said, but how can I know for sure? See, even the saving faith that Abraham had, he had enough faith to have the righteousness of Christ imputed to him, to have his salvation guaranteed, and yet there was still that element of doubt in his heart. And God went to elaborate measures to convince Abraham that his word could be trusted. And there wasn't the slightest hint of judgment given to Abraham for wanting to have the Word of God confirmed, as it was the case with Hezekiah, as it was the case with Gideon and his fleece.

Throughout Scripture, we see people hearing the Word of God and staggering in unbelief, and God being patient with them, forbearing, tender, and kind. Now all of a sudden, here's this priest who's been told something equally astonishing as what had been told to Abraham. He struggles with believing it instead of having a covenant ratified with him like God did for Abraham, or a fleece answered like he did for Gideon. He said, you're not going to be able to speak, not one word, until this prophecy is fulfilled because of your unbelief. That doesn't sound fair, does it? Why would God punish Zacharias and not punish Abraham?

It's very simple. Abraham got mercy. Zacharias got justice. And once again, we see that God will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and be gracious to whom He will be gracious. But because He gives grace to one, and then again to another, and to another for the same thing does not mean that we can then assume that He will be ever so gracious to everyone else who commits the same sin. No. Sometimes God says, stop right here.

That's enough. In the Bible, there's two ways people die. They either die in faith, or they die in their sin.

And if you die in your sin, if you die in unbelief, after you die, it's too late, and the judgment of God will be upon you, not simply for a few months as it was upon Zacharias, but forever. One of the doctrines that we struggle with in the church, particularly in Reformed theology, an integral part of TULIP, the famous acrostic, T-U-L-I-P, which stands for what? Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. And so many of our evangelical brothers and sisters embrace TULIP.

They'll affirm the T, the U, the I, and the P, but they knock the L out of TULIP, the L standing for Limited Atonement. It's amazing to me how much controversy ensues over that point of historic Reformed theology. People say, how can you say that the atonement of Jesus Christ is limited? Doesn't the Bible say that He dies for the whole world? Are you saying that Jesus' atoning death is not sufficient to save everybody in the world? And these same people who say that say that not everybody in the world is saved. Well, why isn't everybody in the world saved? Because a necessary condition to be saved by the atoning death of Jesus Christ is to have faith in Jesus Christ. And if you have no faith in Jesus Christ, the atoning death of Christ only exacerbates your guilt before God and will do nothing to alleviate it. My unbelief is an accusation against God Himself, saying, God, I can't trust what You say. That's why the issue of the source of this announcement is so central to this passage. I'm an old man.

My wife's beyond the age of bearing children, and I'm Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and it was God who sent me to announce these things to you. I'm not speaking on my own authority, Zacharias.

I'm speaking the Word of God. And to not believe the Word of God is to sin. And so to believe in God is something, and not just to believe in God, but to believe God is at the very essence of what it means to be a Christian person. Back in the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk made the comment, the just shall live by faith, or we can translate it, the righteous shall live by trust. It's not by accident that that statement by Habakkuk is repeated three times in the New Testament, not the least of which is in Paul's thematic statement of the doctrine of justification in the first chapter of Romans.

It's not by accident that in the 16th century, again, this was the core issue between Rome and Luther and the Reformers. To be just is to live by faith. To be righteous is to be righteous by faith. That's why the Reformers called faith the sole instrument of our justification. It's not faith plus something else. But by trusting the Word of God and trusting in God alone for your salvation is the only way anybody can ever be saved. And the converse is true, that if the just live by faith, what do the unjust live by? By unbelief.

Now which are you, just or unjust? Your unbelief, dear friend, cannot be justified. It is an unjust slander against the one who is the fountain of all truth. You know, one of the things that distresses me greatly in our culture, in the media, television, newspaper, novels, is I'll hear statements like this. Well, the scientist gave his reason and the minister gave his faith.

Have you heard that kind of disjunction again and again and again? Because the idea here is that faith is confused with credulity. Credulity is an unreasoned faith. Credulity is an irrational faith. I hear Christians say, well, what you have to do is take a leap of faith. A leap of faith?

What do you mean a leap of faith? Well, it's not reasonable to believe in the claims of Jesus Christ. It's not reasonable to believe in the Word of God.

Those things are irrational, and if you're going to be a rational person, if you're going to be a scientific person and still be a Christian, you've got to take a leap of faith. You close your eyes, you hold your breath, you hold your nose, and you jump into the darkness and hope Jesus will catch you. That's an insult to the Spirit of God. The Bible never tells you to jump into the darkness.

It tells you every day to jump out of the darkness and into the light. Augustine labored the difference between faith and credulity. Credulity is the person who just believes anything anybody tells him for no reason at all. But faith, authentic faith, biblical faith, is grounded in the trustworthiness of God Himself. Nothing could be more unreasonable, nothing could be more irrational than to doubt a Word that comes from God. You've heard me say it a hundred times, maybe not a hundred, maybe only ninety-eight, that I see these bumper stickers. God said it, I believe it, that settles it, and that makes me cringe.

I want to go in with an eraser or a marking pen and cross out the middle premise. If God said it, it's settled. God does not need your agreement for His Word to be true.

I can disbelieve everything God has ever said, and all that does is make me a fool and a sinner that cannot contradict the trustworthiness of God Himself. And so do you see what this angel is saying to Zacharias? Tell me your story, Zacharias. You're too old? Your wife's too old? Now let me say, I stand in the presence of God, and God told me to tell you that you're going to have this son. I heard God say that. He told me to tell you, but you have some contrary evidence to give me, your age and your wife's age. And I'm supposed to discount the truthfulness of the Word of the One who sent me because of how old you are? Are you serious?

Are you out of your mind? It wasn't an intellectual problem. It was a moral problem. The reason for Zacharias' doubt was Zacharias' abiding sin. The reason why we doubt the Word of God is not because His Word is unbelievable or incredible, but because we project upon God the untrustworthiness that describes our own condition. Let every man be a liar, but God's Word is true. And when God speaks, if you don't want to believe it, Zacharias, then fine, you're not going to speak. And while you're silent, while you're mute, while you keep your mouth shut, you'll have some time to think in that silence about what you have just said about the Word of God. The just shall live by faith. Jesus said, by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father, there is no justification for denying the Word of God, none, not your age, not your culture, not your profession, nothing.

If God says it, it's settled. And that instant Zacharias' lips were closed. He staggers out into the outer court, and the people who had been waiting for Him to appear, and they couldn't believe what was taking so long, because characteristically the priest would go in there, do the order of incense, and leave as fast as he could, lest he profane that holy space.

And he's been in there way too long. They want her to be dying. He comes out, and they see Him.

And they want an explanation. He tried to tell them, but nothing came out of His mouth. This is the first recorded activity of a mime in the New Testament. Zacharias is gesturing, trying to communicate what he saw. And the people figured he had seen a vision. So he went home, the story goes, and Elizabeth became pregnant and went into seclusion until her days would be fulfilled. How do you respond to the Word of God, justly or unjustly?

Those are the only two options. God is truth. He cannot lie, and it's foolish not to believe Him. What a profound and important message from Dr. R.C. Sproul. You're listening to the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind, and we're grateful that you've joined us today. The sermon we just heard is part of Dr. Sproul's expository series from Luke, one of more than 100 sermons from this gospel. All that research and study was used to create a commentary on Luke's gospel, and we'd like to provide that to you as a digital download. It's a great study companion as we continue our verse-by-verse study in the coming weeks. So contact us today with a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, and we will send it your way.

You can make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. As a reminder, you can also hear Dr. Sproul's teaching on RefNet, our 24-hour internet radio station. When you go to RefNet.fm, you'll hear faithful teaching and preaching from many trusted pastors and theologians. You can also download the free RefNet app. Just look for it in your favorite app store. We hope you'll join us again next week as Dr. Sproul continues his look at Luke chapter 1, Renewing Your Mind is the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. .