Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6
Sermon Series: One Another – Doing Church Life Together – Sermon 12
Who are you voting for? Better, who do you trust that you will vote for? Since elections are on our minds these days, I want to use that to segue into our message today. Most of us will vote for whoever we trust more, though we don’t trust them completely. But there is One that you can vote for, and you can trust Him completely – God. Not only should you vote for God, He’s already voted for you. Today we’re facing crises that most have never faced before. We either believe the crises are bigger than God or God is bigger than the crises.
Just a sidebar, if you’re new at Grace, we’re non-political. We’re Switzerland. Our focus is on the eternal government of King Jesus – His salvation, ruling of our lives and church because it’s the one true lasting government. Yet, we know folk come from various political backgrounds who come through our doors. And we ask that you please not have political discussions here. We don’t want to alienate anyone from what eternally matters for the temporary. While we will speak to biblical issues that a political party may have identified with, we’ll never align with a political party. We will only speak out on something because it’s a biblical issue.
So, who do you trust? You have to trust someone with the trials of life. 17th century poet and pastor, John Donne (picture) was a man who was well-acquainted with crises. During his pastorate of London’s largest church, three waves of bubonic plague swept through London. The last one alone killed 40,000 people. Donne himself became ill and through this he wisely concluded that life will always involve circumstances that cause doubt. If not illness, then financial hardship, or poverty, or loneliness or failure. In this world of pain, Donne realized he had a clear choice: to trust God or to fear everything else, to trust God or trust nothing. He discovered that it only made sense to trust in God. He was right. Proverbs 3:5-6 urges us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”
The truth is that no matter what you face, there are only three options. You must choose one of these options.
You could choose to trust Fate. This choice may help you live with less stress in daily life, but it has its limitations. It doesn’t provide you with hope. For instance, fate doesn’t guarantee that the pain will end someday. Fate doesn’t personally care about you. Fate is just fate.
You could choose to only trust yourself. This is the worst option. We human beings are unreliable. We can’t even control the weather, much less what happens. Trusting yourself can result in mental health issues.
You could choose to trust God. If God is who the Bible says He is. If God is a loving, omniscient, omnipotent being who is in absolute control and will one day wipe evil from the face of the universe and restore humanity to harmony, peace, and joy. This is definitely the best one to choose.
You’ll find that those who trust God tend to be more content, forgiving, kind, generous, and loving. Those who don’t trust God, tend to be anxious, cynical, bitter, mean and unhappy. Not all the time, just a lot of the time. Hang out with them long enough and it eventually pops out.
Life is hard. It’s why we must choose to trust God. Maybe you’ve heard this story. It brings the point home…
A man named Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day, when he got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon fell straight down for more than a thousand feet. He couldn’t hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So, Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear him and lower a rope or something to rescue him.
“HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there? HELP!”
He yelled for a long time, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice, “Jack, Jack. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, yes! I can hear you. I’m down here!”
“I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?”
“Yes, but who are you, and where are you?
“I am the Lord, Jack. I’m everywhere.”
“The Lord? You mean, GOD?”
“That’s Me.”
“God, please help me! I promise if you’ll rescue me. I’ll stop sinning. I’ll be a really good person. I’ll serve You for the rest of my life.”
“Easy on the promises, Jack. Let’s get you up from there; then we can talk. Now, here’s what I want you to do. Listen very carefully.”
“I’ll do anything, God. Just tell me what to do.”
“Okay. Let go of the branch.”
“What?”
“I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Jack yelled, “HELP! HELP! IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE?” The problem is that there is no one else up there. Today we want to work through why we can trust God. Before we do, we want to unpack something very important of what this does not mean.
1. Trusting God does not mean…You believe everything will go the way you want it to, and it does. If that were true, those who follow God should be the most enviable people on earth. Everything would go their way. Obviously, it doesn’t, and they aren’t.
Believers in some parts of the world are murdered for their beliefs. Others lose their jobs for their faith or are mocked and belittled. Yet still some erroneously think that trusting God entitles them to a problem-free life. If they have problems, they think they that God is “not holding up His end of the bargain.” The Bible vehemently opposes such thinking.
Jesus said, “In this world, you will have trouble,” (John 16:33). Most of the godly characters in Scripture suffered terribly. God did perform many miracles but didn’t miraculously protect His people from everything.
Joseph was falsely accused of rape and spent years in prison. Ruth lost her husband and became a poor peasant in a foreign land. All but one of Jesus’ closest friends were tortured and murdered for proclaiming His truth. John, the one who survived, was banished to a desert island. Suffering is something everyone must face, whether you trust in God or not.
Then, trusting God does not mean…God will explain everything that is going on in your life. God didn’t answer Job when he asked, “Why me?” God doesn’t owe you an explanation when life is painful. When bad things happen — really, really bad things — many of us are tempted to ask Why? Some get an answer. Most never do. I’m not suggesting that you stop asking, because maybe your specific situation is one that will get an answer. But I am saying that if you don’t get an explanation, don’t be surprised.
Trusting God does mean that no matter what happens, you will turn to Him instead of away from Him. Even if people laugh at you and say that you believe in a myth. Even if, in your darker moments, you sometimes feel like God is uncaring. Even if life hurts terribly and nothing you asked God for worked out the way you hoped it would…even in spite of those things, trusting God means you continue to turn to Him and trust Him. You keep praying, even when those prayers seem to have zero effect. You keep saying, like Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). So why can we trust God?
2. We can trust God because He is sovereign. When we say that God is sovereign, it means that He is in complete control of all things and rules over all things. Everything that happens, from the movement of molecules to the massive planets orbiting the Sun to the tiniest details of our lives – it’s all under God’s good and sovereign control. This is one of the primary reasons we can trust God. Ephesians 1:11, “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”
God is sovereign over nature, government, history, angels, and demons. God has ordained everything that happens, past, present, and future. God is not responsible for sin and takes no pleasure in human suffering. But somehow even the sins of man and our sufferings are in His sovereign plan. We can trust God because absolutely everything in the universe is under His sovereign rule.
A dad was holding his three-year-old securely in his arms as he stood in the shallow end of the pool. As the dad walked slowly toward the deep end, he gently chanted, “Deeper and deeper and deeper.” As the water rose higher on the child, his face reflected more and more panic, and he clung more tightly to his dad whose feet easily touched the bottom. If the little boy had been able to analyze his situation, he’d have realized there was no reason to panic. The water’s depth in any part of the pool was over his head. Even in the shallowest part, if his dad had not held him up, he would have drowned. His safety anywhere in the pool depended on his dad. He could trust him in the deeper water just as easily as in the shallow.
Many times, we feel we’re in over our head. A terrible tragedy strikes out of nowhere. We lose our job, someone dies, someone wrongs us, and we feel as if we’re going to drown. The truth is that we’ve always been held up by the grace of our Heavenly Father. If He let us go, we’d drown even in the shallow end. In deeper waters, we’re still in His strong arms. God is never out of His depth. We can trust Him even when the waters seem deeper than we’ve ever been before. God is sovereign over all the details of your life. You can trust Him to work it all together for good!
3. We can trust God because He is wise. The God who is sovereign acts through His wisdom and He’s all-wise. 16th century Reformer, Martin Luther (picture) said to Erasmus (picture), “Your thoughts of God are too human.”
Human wisdom is so limited. We make smart choices and are considered wise. We gain experience and are able to discern what’s good and act in ways considered wise. But God never had to be taught, never had to experience, never had to read or study. God is eternally all-wise. And God is not only all-wise; He is wise in all that He does. Nothing is done by God apart from the wisdom of God. Romans 16:7, “to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ!” Doesn’t that blow your mind? God has always existed, and He does what He wills, and does it all with absolute wisdom. His wisdom means that He always knows what is best.
The hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” by William Cowper (picture) captures the wisdom of God. In it Cowper declares the wisdom of God’s ways, even in the midst of trouble. We won’t fully understand His ways. Unbelief screams lies into our ears about the character and wisdom of God. But in time His great will will be made known to us. Cowper didn’t write that hymn because he had an easy life. He suffered with depression, doubt and attempted suicide. But his words live on through that hymn.
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm
Deep in unsearchable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.
And ye fearful saints, fresh courage take
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings, yeah, and in blessings, yeah
And in blessings on your head
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain
For God is His own interpreter
And He will make it plain.
God doesn’t do anything in His sovereign will that isn’t both wise and loving, which leads us to another attribute of God—His love.
4. We can trust God because He is love. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The concept of love is one of the most permeating themes in our world. The Beatles (picture) sang about it. Their message to a hurt and frightened world was, “love is all you need.”
According to Amazon, there are over 30,000 books with the word “love” in the title and over 11,000 popular music albums with “love” in the title. If you Google “love,” you’d discover 120,000,000 websites that use the word “love” as a key word. Love is vital. Yet, with all of this information available, love is a very confusing subject. As we watch TV, scan the internet, or check out magazines at the checkout counter, it’s clear our society has a very poor understanding of love. With humanity so confused about love, who is to say what love is? God is love!
One of the simplest yet most profound definitions of love is in 1 John 4:8. John, who was also known as the apostle of love, wrote, “God is love.” Those three little words should fill our hearts with hope. If they’re true, it makes all the difference in the world! But we need to understand though that while “God is love,” it doesn’t mean that “love is God.” In other words, love does not define God; rather, God defines love.
God’s love is seen in the incarnation of Jesus. It’s demonstrated as He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sin, not just because He loves us, but to save us. God’s love for us is one that wants to save us and give us eternal life. Jesus came into this world to be our Savior! “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Because of God’s love (and only because of His love), our lives can be rescued for all eternity.
God’s love surpasses all human knowledge. His love is so vast He must reveal to us the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ’s love, so we can comprehend it. Because of His infinite love, God uses his sovereign power and infinite wisdom to bless us. Everything He does for us He does in love.
We can’t usually see that love when we’re going through hard times. That’s why we must trust God. Though we may not always feel Christ’s love when things come crashing down around us, our feelings aren’t necessarily true. God’s word says His love for us in Christ can never be broken and nothing can separate us from that love.
5. We can trust God because He is good. Jesus declared, “No one is good—except God alone” (Luke 18:19). To say God is good means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and good. Goodness is part of God’s nature, and He can’t contradict His nature. God is the standard of all that’s good. The fact God is good means that He has no evil in Him, His intentions and motivations are always good. He always does what’s right, and the outcome of His plan is always good.
James 4:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Where do good and perfect things come from? They don’t come from below or within or around. They come from above…from God who is above and the source of all that’s good.
The word “every” is emphatic. Everything good and perfect is from God. Nothing that is not good is from God. “Every good gift” focuses on the act of giving. The gifts of God are good and the very act of giving by God is good.
But we know from experience that not every act of giving is good. It happens at Christmas. You may give someone a gift as an expression of your love, or you give someone a gift because they got you one or will be offended if you don’t. But God’s gifts are both good and perfect.
“Perfect” refers to spiritual maturity, not perfection. It’s the picture of a fully developed person who’s moved from adolescence to adulthood. Trials are designed by a good God to bring our faith to maturity. That’s because God is good.
Lloyd C. Douglas (picture), author of The Robe and other novels, lived in a boarding house during college. A retired music teacher lived on the first floor with whom he had a daily ritual. Douglas would ask, “What’s the good news today?” That old music teacher would take his tuning fork and strike the side of his wheelchair and said, “That’s Middle C. It was Middle C yesterday, and it will be Middle C a thousand years from now. The soprano upstairs sings off-key, and the piano across the hall is out of tune. But this is Middle C.” The goodness of God never changes.
6. We can trust God because He’s our Father. A.W. Tozer, (picture), begins his book, The Knowledge of the Holy with: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Why? Because no one can rise above their view of God.
Since God is our Father, we can trust Him. We have nothing to fear. It’s like this, “Hey Devil, you want to mess with me? You feeling lucky punk?” There’s a wonderful section at the end of Romans 8 that comes close to that kind of feeling. It’s there that Paul asks…If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Remember Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (picture). Someone suggested that Romans 8 is Paul’s Dirty Harry moment. If God is your father, who can be against you? Paul blazes away in Romans 8.
Vs. 33 Who dares accuse us? Vs. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one! Vs. 35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Death, life, angels, demons, our fears, our worries – not even the powers of hell. Vs. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If God is my father, I’ve got nothing to fear. He’s all powerful. Nothing can touch me. I’m already safe and I’m already living my eternal life with Him in His kingdom, which means that I don’t even have to dread death because His Son, Jesus, conquered death. If you don’t fear death, what really is there to fear? And if I don’t dread death, I don’t need to dread little things, like a low bank account or the government or some virus. I don’t dread any circumstances or need to worry. My Father knows what I need and will provide it. Is He your father? If you’re His child, He’ll take care of you.
Conclusion: Are you voting for God? Are you trusting Him? Why trust God? Because He’s sovereign, wise, good, loving and our Father. This knowledge should lead to faith in God. We replace fear with faith. God has showed who He is so that we will trust Him. Will you trust Him? And when we trust Him, others will see it. Andy Cook (picture) pastor of Shirley Hills Baptist Church in Warner Robins, Georgia, shares this story:
Frank’s worst day came far too suddenly. Never had a community seen a man so passionately devoted to his wife. She was the light of his life, the diamond of his existence. He was a hopeless romantic, and their marriage was on display for their church and their community. She died without warning, a broken blood vessel taking her life before she could say good-bye.
Frank lost weight, he lost interest in his work, and he lost his laughter. But Frank never – never – lost his faith in God. He knew that somehow he had to put one foot in front of the other. It was as if the only thing he had to lean on was his faith. Frank had built a foundation on a rock, as Jesus would put it, and when the storms came, his foundation held secure.
Slowly, over the course of many months, the laughter reappeared. Slowly, he regained interest in his work and in his hobbies. For a while, he couldn’t even sing the hymns of faith in church. When he tried, he simply cried. So he just stood there silently, letting his fellow believers sing the songs of faith for him. Then one day he, too, sang the songs. One day, he picked up a grandchild and saw a familiar light in her eyes. One night, he laid down to sleep and realized that he had honestly enjoyed life that day, all day long.
What Frank couldn’t see that night was what the rest of the community had seen for months – the way his daughter and her family watched him, the image he had created for his grandchildren, a few of them already in the first days of their marriages.
For two years they had all watched this man recover from the worst day of his life. They had seen the pages of his Bible become more worn, more tattered, more stained with tears. They had seen him pray so earnestly in a church pew, and they knew his praying wasn’t reserved for hours inside churches. They had seen the way he encouraged others, the way he was ready to help the slightest need, the way he poured himself into service. And they had also seen the way God had lifted him up from the worst day of his life and restored to him the joy of his walk, the laughter of his soul.
If we were to drop in on Frank’s church next Sunday, you’d see many people who’ve drawn strength from his quiet leadership. They can’t help but be drawn to his joy, a super-sized, mega-sized joy that can’t be contained. We could find many members of his family in that church, singing the songs of faith together. And if we could somehow see the future, we’d see the day when crisis arrives again, when family and friends all around this man will face the worst day of their lives. In that day, however, they’ll be able to draw on something more than the Bible’s message. They’ll remember what faith looks like after devastation strikes, because they’ve seen it lived out in one man’s life.
My friend, would that be you? Does God have your vote? Who are you trusting? Who else can you trust? Faith in God is our hope. It gets us through the dark valleys. Do you have it? You can trust the Father. Will you?