Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and apologist, J.D. Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You're joining us today in the midst of a teaching series called The Whole Story, going from Genesis to Revelation and hitting the main highlights along the way. Today we're pausing in the book of Psalms to look at the question of doubt. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all wrestle with doubts from time to time. Can I trust God with every detail of my life?
How do I know He's there? When those questions start creeping up in our minds, when we just can't make sense of God's plan, how should we respond? Well, I think it's safe to say our response can be found in God's word. So grab your Bible and let's jump right in.
Here's Pastor J.D. My wife made fun of me about was that I attempted to clean everything in our house with Windex. She has helped me see over the years that most cleaning problems around the house need different, shall we say, more specialized solutions.
So now I feel like we're at the opposite extreme. We got so many bottles and different kinds of brushes for different kinds of materials. And do not even get me started on the amount of things that we have in our shower to clean our bodies with. Before I got married, I lived with four guys and we had one bar of soap between all of us and we cleaned everything with it. Our hair, our bodies, our teeth, our wounds, our clothes, all of it was fixed with a bar of soap. Now we got bottles and tubes and sponges and volcano rocks and these little Luftwaffe things or whatever you call them.
But evidently that's what you need for a total cleaning experience. A lot of people think that when we are talking about questions of faith, they feel like you got to have a bunch of different solutions, different kinds of answers depending on whether you're talking to believers or unbelievers, whether you're talking to mature believers or immature believers. But here's what I have found over the years after having many, many conversations with many people at different stages of maturity about these questions.
Here it is. Believers and unbelievers, mature believers and immature believers have essentially the same questions and struggles with how God runs the world. And the answers that we need are basically the same. I share all that because Psalm 73 is a Psalm about the universal problem of doubts. Doubt affects us all whether you're a believer or an unbeliever. People will say to me sometimes, Pastor, do you doubt?
I doubt all the time. Why did God do a certain thing or why did he not do something? You didn't get the job. She said no.
The pregnancy test came back negative or the cancer screen came back positive. Or you've looked around the world and you thought, God, I don't mean to criticize, but I just don't think you're doing that good of a job running the world. I mean, I feel like I do a much better job.
It seems like your reward system is all out of whack because you got bad people over here who seem to get away with murder sometimes literally and then good people over here that seem to get smacked unfairly at every turn. We've all asked those same questions. I've asked them all my life. And for many people, it's made them wonder if God was even there. Even Bible writers. In fact, the majority of them had doubts. In fact, John the Baptist, who was Jesus's cousin a few years into Jesus's ministry is like, I'm not so sure you're the guy that I thought you were. The apostles doubted. One of them even got the name doubting Thomas at the crucifixion, even after they'd seen all the miracles. They were like, I don't know. I mean, yeah, he fed the 5000, but is this, you know, he's just not doing what we thought he'd do. Matthew even says, Matthew 28, that even after Jesus had resurrected and as he was ascending into the air, Matthew 28 says, and some doubted.
He's floating in the air. I mean, you're like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe this is not, you know.
Why? It's because what he was doing was so strange to them. And he just, there was so many things they thought that a Messiah was supposed to do that God should have done that he hadn't done. And so it made them doubt. Doubt is a part of a thinking life.
In fact, write this down before we even get started. Doubt happens when the superficialities of your faith meet the realities of the world. Let's go ahead and tell you, some of you got a superficial faith and if you've never doubted, it's a real good chance that you're not really a thinking person and your faith is not that deep.
And you've never really asked that many questions and that's not a good thing. And so what God wants to do is he uses doubt. Doubt is like a divinely sent messenger to drive you deeper into him. He's trying to break up that shallow, childish, spoon-fed nature of your faith and bring you to a place where you really know him. Doubt, one of my favorite analogies for this or illustration is doubt is like a foot that is poised to go forwards or backwards.
It's true that you can pick up your foot and walk backwards. Doubt can drive you backwards into unbelief, but it's also true you'll never walk forward until you pick up your foot. And doubt is asking the question, it's saying, God, I don't understand.
And that's what God uses to drive you deeper into him. That's what you're going to see in Psalm 73. And this Psalm is in many ways, I think, indicative of the entire book of Psalms, which is why that we chose this particular one. I'm going to be reading today mostly from the NIV translation, which is different for me, with an occasional sampling even from the New Living translation.
But here we go. A Psalm of Asaph. Asaph was David's worship pastor. Verse 1, Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. That's his statement of faith. That's what he believes with his mind. But now he's about to tell you in the next several verses what he feels with his heart.
Because those are not always the same thing. Verse 2, But as for me, I came so close to the edge of the cliff, the cliff of unbelief, my feet were slipping and I was almost gone. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. The Psalmist confesses that his doubt began with envy, which is almost always the case. Envy is, of course, when you want somebody else's life. You want their possessions. You want their opportunities. You want their looks.
You want their talents. And this Psalm helps you label envy for exactly what it is, doubt, and the goodness of God towards you. You see, before envy is expressed, that's a horizontal feeling. You've got a vertical problem, which is a belief about the goodness of God. Namely, you don't believe that God is good, which leads you to feelings of envy all around you. Y'all, envy is so pervasive in the human heart that it made even the Garden of Eden seem unsatisfactory. It has nothing to do with the conditions you're in.
It has to do with the conditions of your heart. Adam and Eve are literally in a perfect place where they get to run around naked all day. And they are still like, I don't know. I think God's probably holding out on us. They had what we now call with our kids, FOMO.
FOMO, fear of missing out. Oh, the really good stuff is in that tree right there that God says we can't have. Not all these trees that he gave us, but that one tree.
That's where it's really at. You give my kids each a cookie. I promise you, the moment they get to get a cookie in their hand, they're checking out the other cookies. Because I'm just sure that we gave the bigger cookie to somebody else.
The better cookie. It's their fear of missing out. They think God's holding out on them.
And so they doubt God's goodness. So let me just ask you, who or what are you envious of today, this weekend? Who or what are you envious of? Somebody's body, somebody's husband, somebody's spouse, somebody's, you know, their car, the way they dress, their house.
Why don't you call that for what it is? A challenge to your belief in God's goodness in your life. What makes it worse for the psalmist is that these people that he's envious of are not good people. He calls them wicked, but still, even though they're wicked, they get to be the social elites of the day.
His description of these social elites is timeless. It sounds like somebody's talking about them today. Verse four, they have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They're beautiful. They dress awesome. They're in shape. They got front row seats to all the games.
They fly first class everywhere they go. They're free from common human burdens. Verse five, they've got house cleaners and assistants and they wear designer clothes and their kids go to school on scholarship and then they get awesome jobs because they know people.
Therefore, verse six, pride is their necklace. What's really galling is that they take credit for it all, as if the reason they have all this stuff is because they're just more awesome than the rest of us. They don't seem to be aware of the fact that it's just because their parents are rich and it's not because they're smarter than we are.
It's just opportunity. They clothe themselves then with violence. Their pride makes them hateful, disdainful toward others. They really feel like they're better than everybody, like they deserve all the perks, like they deserve their status. They feel like they should get to make all the decisions for everybody else. And then they oppress people. They trample people just because they can get away with it.
Nobody stops them. Verse eight, they scoff. They speak with malice, with arrogance.
They threaten oppression where their mouths lay claim to heaven and their tongues take possession of the earth. Does God even realize what's going on, they ask. They assume that whatever's out there, even if there is a heaven, it belongs to them because they're going to get first dibs on everything.
They don't know any other posture, any other posture than at the top looking down. Truth is, they don't really see a need for God at all. I mean, they might tip the hat to God and be like, oh yeah, we're religious and we go to church, but truth is, they're fully sufficient in themselves.
Verse 12, this is what the wicked are like. Always free of care. They just go on amassing wealth.
That's the only thing that they're worried about is how to get more. You ever feel like this? Now before we get too self-righteous and say, yeah, I hate all those arrogant elites. Aren't we just like this too? Ask yourself, when you get blessed with good things, don't you usually assume that it's due primarily to what you have done? How often do you find yourself naturally and instinctively just looking back upward to God and saying, God, this is all a gift from you.
You say, well, no, no, not me. I work for everything that I have. Well, where did you get that talent and that intelligence that you use to accomplish your stuff?
Probably the majority of it, if not all of it, is in your genes, which means that if you know anything about science, you had no part in that at all. Do you really feel like if you had been born in a poor village in Liberia, that you have succeeded the way that you have here in the United States? What you have is given and enabled by God, all of it. And you have been surrounded by multiple levels of graces. What is it that you have, Paul said, that you did not receive?
And if you received it, why do you boast as if it didn't come from God anyway? And just like the rich, when we are doing well, don't we, like the wicked, tend to forget our need for God too? Isn't that why we all tend to pray a lot less when things are going well than when things are going bad? So let's not get too high and mighty. Yes, this is what the wicked are like, but it's what our hearts are like too. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. I wanted to take a quick break here to sing the praises of a very special group of people, our gospel partners. We talk about them a lot, but this team gives so generously and faithfully to Summit Life each and every month.
It's not an exaggeration to say that they are the financial fuel behind everything we do, including broadcasting this program on your radio station every weekday. We call them gospel partners because that's exactly what they do. They are actually partnering with us to help make the gospel known around the globe. This month, each of our supporters will receive a gift for the family.
It's a digital Summit Life Kids Activity Book that can be printed and shared as many times as you'd like. And new gospel partners will also receive a special welcome gift. It's Pastor J.D. 's book titled Gospel. This ministry couldn't exist without our gospel partners, and it's always a privilege to say thank you with our specially curated featured resource each month. To join with us as a monthly gospel partner or to give a one-time gift, call us right away.
The number is 866-335-5220, or you can visit us online at jdgreer.com. Now, let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Tim Keller says that every human society that has ever existed, all of them have been characterized by pride at the top and envy at the bottom.
So he says, I'm the one that's envious. Verse 13, if I've been wasting my time, why'd you even take the trouble to be pure? All I get out of it is trouble, and whoa! All the day long, every day, all day, all this stuff I've done for God, I've tried to obey Him. I mean, true love waited, and still, I've got a difficult marriage. I went to all the parenting stuff, and my kids are the ones that are causing me problems. We tithed, and we're still not rich like I thought that we were supposed to be.
I did everything according to prescription. Maybe, maybe, maybe all this stuff that I've believed about God is not true after all. Have you ever felt like that?
I have, verse 15. But if I'd spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. There was something about verbalizing that statement that woke him up. That's one of the values, I'll add, of praying out loud, or writing your prayers out in a journal, because sometimes you don't really realize what you think until you write it out, or you say it when you hear yourself say it. You're like, I didn't realize that's what I actually thought. So he hears himself verbalizing this statement, and realizes he hears himself admit that the reason that he had been serving God was so that God would make his life easy, and the Spirit of God very quietly whispers to him, Why are you serving me? Are you serving me because of what you think you can get from me, or are you serving me because you want more of me?
Because those are two entirely different reasons. It's kind of like when I was in college to graduate. You had to take an elective in the arts, and I had to choose between classical music, drama, theater, or painting. And I thought, well, theater looks like it would be the least damaging. And so it was awful.
It was just terrible. Well, I worked hard in that class, and I mastered all the avant-garde kind of stuff about theater, because I needed a grade, because I didn't want to blow my GPA on a theater class. And so I worked hard and mastered the theater so that I could get a grade. And the reason I wanted to get a grade was so that I could have a good resume that would give me a good job, which would get me a lot of money.
Now, fast forward the clock many years later. Here's my wife and I, and we have decided at times like, hey, we should go see a play at the Durham Performing Arts Center, which is the theater, right? And it costs a lot of money, so you've got to save up your money for it. And then it occurs to me while I'm shelling out the money to go to one of these plays, I'm like, look at the irony of this. In college, I studied theater so that I could get a job, so I could have money, and now I use the money to go back to the theater.
See, the difference, though, is that here I found theater, or however you pronounce it, I found it useful for something else, but now I find it beautiful in itself. So here's my question for you. Which one better characterizes your approach to God? See, the question is not, are you working hard for God? The question is, is God a good means to an end for you, or is God the end in himself?
Because if he's a means to an end, it's going to radically affect how you deal with disappointment in your life. And what this psalmist realizes is, I've been serving God not because I find him beautiful, I've been serving him because I found him useful. And what was worse, I started to communicate to others just by my attitude that this is why I serve God. I serve him because he makes my life easy, because he is the best way to my best life now, and a good marriage, and great prosperity. That's why you serve God.
You know, when our attitude toward life is that way, when our joy in God is less, when things are not going well in our lives, what kind of message are we sending about the beauty of God himself? See, I was watching, flipping through the channels, and I came across a television evangelist, and he was looking right in the camera, and he said, if you will give a minimum of $1500 to this ministry, then God has told me he will cut whatever debt you have in half within six months. He said, some of you out there listening to me right now have some pretty severe credit card debt. If you will use what is remaining in your, if you've got $1500 a room, if you will put it on the credit card, you will be amazed as in six months, God will have cut that credit card debt in half. Then he goes on, he says, and when your credit card bill has been cut in half, and you're driving that new Mercedes Benz, your neighbors will be amazed at the smile on your face as they marvel at the goodness of God towards you. And my first thought is, well, you should probably wait until your credit card bill is more than half before you go purchase the Mercedes Benz, just say it. But number two is, no, I don't really feel like your neighbors are going to be amazed at the smile on your face when you're driving a new Mercedes Benz.
What would really amaze your neighbors is when you got a smile on your face and you're driving the same old ratty car you always drove, right? Because then you're able to tell your neighbors, I got a joy, it doesn't come from the car I drive, it doesn't even come from how good I feel, it doesn't come from my body, it comes from the God whose presence is always with me and a 1993 Honda Civic with no AC, but the presence of God is better than 10,000 Mercedes Benz. I've always loved the way John Wesley described this. John Wesley lived like 300 years ago, so let me update his analogy.
He said the Christian life is like hearing that there's an uncle, you didn't know that you had, who died and left you millions upon millions upon millions of dollars, untold amount of riches. And so the bank summons you to come to the bank to pick up all your money. And so as you're driving to the bank, you get about a half mile from the bank and your car breaks down. What do you do when your car breaks down? Do you jump out of the car and kick the car and curse God? And then look around with envy at everybody else, a nice car, you got this piece of junk?
No, right? You just get out of the car and you leave the car in the dirt and you skip the rest of the way to the bank, right? That's the most joyous half mile journey you've ever been on because of what's waiting for you just down the road. He said when you go through pain as a Christian, yes, the pain is real. He said, but it's the most joyous walk you've ever taken, even when it's fraught with disappointment and pain because of what's waiting for you just on the other side. You see, listen, listen, your walk with God is not supposed to be, it will not be absent of all dangers, but you'll just be able to say it through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already gone.
It's grace, His presence that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home. Verse 17, he continues, so one day I went into God's sanctuary to meditate and then I thought about the future of these evil men. In the midst of his doubt, he comes into the presence of God and this is what he sees. He sees two things, first, verse 18, what a slippery path they are on. Suddenly God will send them sliding over the edge of the cliff and down to their destruction, an instant end to all their happiness and eternity of terror. Their present life is only a dream they will awaken to the truth as one awakens from a dream of things that never really were.
Here's number one, eternity, he says, is going to restore the balance. And really quickly, scripture presents this life as so quick, it's like a dream. Now you know when you have a dream, it seems so real. How many of you just out of curiosity, all campuses, you're like vivid dreamers and you have dreams often. That is not true of me.
I have them probably about one every six weeks that I remember. But when I do, it is a doozy, let me tell you. And the other night, my wife and I had a, well actually my wife and I didn't have a dream, I had a dream. This is not the movie Inception. My wife was laying there, but I had a dream. And the dream my wife and I were being chased by like this wild group of Native Americans back 300 years ago, like cowboys and Indians. And I mean it seems so real, I was genuinely scared. And my dream is, it was like it lasted a month. And it's one of those deals, you have this, where you wake up out of the dream and it takes you a good 10, 15 seconds to figure out like, okay, I'm not really being chased, I'm actually laying here in my bed and it's all going to be okay.
But it seems so real in the moment. The writer here, Asaph, is like, that's what life is like. For those outside of God, death is going to be a sudden awakening from their illusion of success and power. The way one guy says it, the rich without God are on their way to being eternally poor.
Celebrities without God are on their way to being eternally ignored. It's like that awful scene where Steve Harvey crowned the wrongless universe. Do you remember this thing? Now, I read about it in the news, which meant when I watched the YouTube video, I knew what was coming. And you've seen this, right? Most of you have seen this.
You watch it, I watched it like 15 times, because it's like a train wreck. You're like, I cannot look away. And you're watching this poor girl who gets crowned, this is her lifelong dream. She's always wanted to be Miss Universe. And you're watching just the elation on her face and you're just kind of shaking your head going, don't be happy.
This is not real. It's just a minute, it's going to turn into the worst moment of your life because Steve Harvey's already walking back on stage with that goofy look on his face. And he's going to be like, I crowned the wrong person and it's all my fault. And he's going to take it off your head and put it on this other girl's head and your joy is going to turn into disaster.
What this writer Asaph is saying is Steve Harvey's already on the stage. And all this joy you think you got is going to just disappear because if you had to choose, be the second Miss Universe, not the first one. Because the first one, it lasts for just a second and then that crown is gone.
Why don't you labor for the crown that does not fade and it's never taken away? You see on the flip side for the believer, all the pain they go through is going to seem meaningless compared to the joy that they experienced one minute into eternity. If you're a believer, you may not see it now, but all this pain is just temporary and will be over soon. I know that feels hard to believe sometimes, but thankfully God's word addresses our doubts. The Confusing Experience of Faith. That's the title of our message today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. So Pastor J.D., we talk about this a lot, but when someone gives to Summit Life, how exactly do those gifts help advance the gospel for someone else? Molly, again, I appreciate that question because here's the heart of it. You're giving fuels everything we do to share God's word.
Sure. From daily radio broadcasts to regional TV programs, from in-depth Bible teaching podcasts to just answering tough questions about faith. Your generosity makes all that possible. Yeah, I'm the one with the microphone and I'm leading a lot of these discussions, but we are unable to do that without our generous supporters that enable us to get on the air and get into these places. And so thank you for those of you that so generously support us and make it possible for us to do this. Every gift you give helps us extend our reach and deepen our impact, all for the glory of God and in the name of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I would invite you to learn more about our ministry and to prayerfully considering being a part of it, not to give to it, but to give through it to the advance of the gospel in the world. And you can also take advantage of a lot of free resources we have. All that stuff is on jdgrier.com. If you've been growing through this program, diving deeper into the gospel with us, would you give that gift to someone else by donating today? Give us a call at 866-335-5220.
That number again is 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vedovitch. Be sure to listen again Tuesday as we continue looking at the whole story of the Bible right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
