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Pastor Mike will be speaking on What Hinders Faith Part 1. He will be in John 11:14-23.
Not a God that you want to believe in, but the God of the Bible as he has revealed himself to us is that he is the God who not only has authority over demons and authority over diseases, but he has authority over death.
Do you believe in that God? Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders, and I am glad to be with you today, and this is Hope Worth Having, and we are looking forward to the opportunity to be able to study the Bible together today.
We are going to be in John chapter 11 verse 14 through 23, so I hope you’ll grab your Bible so we can study together. And today I’ll be speaking on what hinders faith. There are many things in our life that might hinder us for having faith in God.
And so I want us to look at those things that can hinder our faith and learn and grow. So let’s get into our study together. John chapter 11 is going to be our main text. Verse 17 is where we’ll begin, and I want to welcome all of our guests and thank you for being here this morning.
And I hope that the Lord has touched your heart and already spoken to you. And when I come together with God’s people, always thankful to be together, thankful for the privilege to gather in freedom in a country that allows us to do that, no persecution, and just thankful to be with the brothers and sisters in Christ.
This morning I want to talk to you about what hinders faith. Before we pick up in verse 17, I remind you that in our text that we have here an account of a heavy affliction that has befallen a family.
The sorrow of Lazarus’ death upon this family has become very overwhelming. And as we learned last week that Jesus Jesus and His sovereignty chose to wait. The family had bidden Him to come quickly. But the Bible teaches us that Jesus waited four days before He arrived.
Upon His arrival, Martha reminds Jesus that the one whom He loved, Lazarus was a dear friend of Jesus. This family was a special family to Christ because they had not only ministered to Him, but had shown great hospitality to Him in His ministry as He traveled from town to town, sharing the gospel of the kingdom, the message of repentance and faith in Christ for eternal life.
And when we come to our text in verse 17, the Bible says, then when Jesus came, He found that He had lain in the grave. four days already. Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem. About 15 furloughings offer a little bit over two miles.
And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou has been here, my brother had not died.
But I know that even now, whatsoever thou will ask of God, God will giveth thee. Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha said unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die, believeth thou this.
She said unto him, yes, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. When she had so said, she went her way and called Mary, her sister, secretly saying, the master is come and calleth for thee, as soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto him.
Now Jesus was not yet coming to the town, but was in that place where Martha met him. And the Jews then which were with her in the house and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, she goeth unto the grave to weep there.
Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou had been here, my brother had not died. What hinders faith in our life? I want to share with you three things that can hinder faith in our life and in those times where we walk through sorrow and trials and trouble in our life, having faith can be one of the most challenging things in our heart.
As I shared with you last week that I remind you that believing in Christ does not mean that your life is easy. Walking with Christ, embracing Him as your Lord and Savior does not mean that you are protected from the sorrows of life.
And yet God calls us to be a people of faith and He not only calls us to have faith in Him when everything is wonderful in our life, but faith in Him when everything is wrong in our life. When everything is falling apart in our life, when sorrow has overshadowed us, when darkness has come upon us, He is calling us to have faith.
And what is it that hinders us to demonstrate faith in these days of discouragement, despondency in our hearts as we experience the struggles of life? What is it that hinders our faith? I submit unto you, first of all, that theology can hinder your faith.
Consider that this morning, that theology can hinder your faith. I know that you are perplexed, that pastor would say that theology would hinder your faith. But I’m not talking about the right theology, I’m talking about wrong theology.
That what I believe can really hinder my faith. What I believe in can be an obstacle to me truly trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. The things that I embrace, the lies that I believe in my mind can erode at my faith and my heart towards Christ when I face those trying times in my life.
Right at the outset in verse 17, the Bible says that Jesus recognized that Lazarus was in the tomb for four days. And the reason that John would write those words down is to help us to really grasp the magnitude of the miracle that he is about to perform.
And one of the things that is interesting is that when you study the Jewish culture, you will find that they never embalm their dead bodies until it has been later after four days. And they believed in their minds that somehow within this four -day period that theā¦
The spirit hovered over the body, looking for an opportunity to come back into this body. It obviously was a myth, it’s nothing biblical, it’s nothing taught in the scriptures, nothing that God has revealed to us, but somewhere, someone created this theology, if you will, this mysticism, this frame of thinking, and so the Jews never embalmed.
And that Jesus, knowing in his sovereign grace and his sovereign intellect and knowledge, knowing that maybe, that if he showed up too early, that the Jews would just say, well, it wasn’t a real miracle because the spirit was hovering waiting to reenter the body.
But Jesus comes to crash the myth and the false theologies of our cultures and our minds that we even sometimes have embraced as Christians. And Jesus crashes this by showing up four days later after the death of Lazarus.
Again, we see in the life of Martha in verse 21, she says unto Jesus, Lord, if thou had been here, my brother had not died. We jump down to verse 32, Mary says, Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet saying unto him, Lord, if thou had been here, my brother had not died.
Again, embracing thoughts that are just not true and that somehow that if Jesus would have been there, certainly he could have prevented the death of Lazarus. But my friend’s death is going to come upon all unless we are raptured out of here.
They believed in the power of Christ. They believed in his ability to heal, but Jesus was not interested in healing a sick man. He was interested in raising a dead man. We may not always agree with that.
And we may want God to prevent things in our life. Why does God allow suffering? Why does God allow these things to take place in our life? Why doesn’t he just step in and invade the circumstance and prevent this tragedy, prevent this trial, prevent this problem, prevent this sorrow, but God doesn’t always choose to do that.
God tests our faith as we learned last week. He allows the cycle of life to continue on. You and I are living in corruptible mortal bodies that are sinful, bodies that do get diseases, bodies that do face corruption and problems and bodies that don’t function like they used to and bodies that get sick.
And God does not always, I know that he can, but he does not always interfere with that process. of you getting older and if you don’t believe me just look in the mirror just go back and look at your high school pictures you’re changing I know you don’t think you are but you are changing you’re working hard not to but our bodies are decaying from the moment that we come in to this world look at verse 22 and notice again what Martha says she says I know that even now whatsoever you will ask of God God will giveth thee she recognized that Jesus had this special relationship verse 39 Jesus said take you away the stone Martha said the sister of him that was dead saith unto him Lord by this time he stinks and he has been dead four days as if Jesus didn’t know that But she believes that he can do something,
she’s not sure that he can raise the dead, and the reason we know that is in verse 39 when he said, roll away the stone, she said, Lord, Lord, what are you doing? He stinks in there, his body has been decaying.
So when she makes this statement in verse 22, whatever you ask of God, she is acknowledging a special relationship between Jesus, the Son of God, and God the Father, and that Jesus could petition God the Father to bring comfort and grace to this family, but in her mind, she does not have a full understanding of the resurrection that Jesus is getting ready to help her understand, if you will, because upon her response in verse 22,
look at verse 23, Jesus says, thy brother shall rise again. Jesus is confronting her theology. Her theology about the resurrection was limited, it was inadequate, it was incomplete. How do you know that, Mike?
Look at verse 24, when Jesus said that her brother would rise again, she said, I know that he’ll rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus didn’t mean that her brother would rise later, he meant that he’s gonna rise now.
What Jesus wanted her to know is that unlike what the Sadducees had taught, that there is no resurrection, and unlike what the Pharisees had taught, that the resurrection would take place at the end of all time in this world, he wanted her to know that he has authority over death, and that he was going to raise her brother right now, and that there was no dispensation, and that there was no timetable that was a barrier to the authority and the power of God over death.
Jesus wanted her to understand that her theology was hindering her faith in Christ. And so he was moving Mary and Martha from an abstract belief in the resurrection to a full scope understanding of the resurrection that is rooted in Christ.
Jump down to verse 25 and 26. And notice Jesus said after she said, I know this, this is my theology. This is what I was taught. This is what I learned. And Jesus blows it up and says to her in verse 25, I am the resurrection.
That the resurrection is not limited to a timetable. It is not limited to a theology. Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die, believeth thou this.” Do you believe this, Martha?
I’m not just asking do you believe in the resurrection, Martha, but do you believe in me? Do you believe in Christ having the authority and the power to overcome death right now? Do you believe in a God, not of what you have formulated in your mind, not a God that you want to believe in, but the God of the Bible as He has revealed Himself to us, is that He is the God who not only has authority over demons and authority over diseases,
but He has authority over death. Do you believe in that God? Jesus is informing her faith. He is helping her to fine tune her theology. Many times the limitations of what we believe and understand about who God is and what He can do hinders our faith.
And that is why you and I must be students of the Bible, students of the Word because this is where Christ has revealed Himself and as He has revealed Himself in the pages of the Word of God, we understand who He is and we align our beliefs, our thoughts, our behavior, and yes, our faith according to the Word of God, not by what others say.
You may have great respect for other religious teachers and I commend you for that, but I tell you there is no greater teacher than the Word of God and the Holy Spirit that lives inside of every belief.
believer. Why did Jesus raise the dead? Why did Jesus cast out demons? Why did Jesus heal the sick? I’ll tell you why. To validate the claim that he is God. To validate the claim that he is God. There was no one like Jesus.
There were many charlatans even in the days of our Lord and Savior as he walked on this earth who claimed to be the coming Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. But there was only one Jesus himself who fulfilled all those prophecies of his coming.
Who when he walked on this earth he did amazing things and spoke with authority and performed miracles that were beyond what any charlatan ever did. charlatans like to selectively heal people have you ever noticed that the bible says in the gospel of matthew that when jesus came to the town he healed everyone that came to him everyone jesus was not trying to take advantage of the people he was validating that he’s truly god the second reason that jesus performed miracles is to demonstrate his authority mankind lives in fear of disease you are as an individual like every other individual working hard to try to figure out how you can prevent this problem in your life and that problem in your life and you run to the doctors and you run to the dentist and i’m right there with you and do different things we take vitamins and we take all these pills and we do all this running and we do all these things in our life because we don’t want to get sick and we don’t want to die because we have a fear of it but jesus says i have authority over it jesus says i have authority over disease and demons and death and therefore i’m in charge if you believe in me jesus says you never die you’re gonna live he’s speaking obviously spiritually because i already told you our bodies are gonna die they’re gonna die and so our bodies die but we can live spiritually by faith in the lord jesus christ why did jesus perform miracles to foreshadow his own resurrection and to foreshadow our resurrection he performed miracles that in this resurrection they would see that why would you not believe When Jesus would tell his disciples that I am going to die on a cross and I’m going to be buried in three days Later,
I am rising again Why would you not believe that he raised a man from the grave? He interrupted a funeral procession of a little girl and raised her from death Why would this be shocking but yet the disciples never really digested it Jesus performed miracles to remind us of the life that is to come For all who believe in Jesus There is coming a day that death will be no more And God’s people say amen But I’m just saying That Jesus wants us to know there’s coming a day when there is no death.
We’ll talk more about that But I know that should Certainly cause our hearts to give praise. My theology can hinder my faith. I remember the story of Ted Turner. Ted Turner started CNN, the news network.
Ted Turner was addressing religious and spiritual leaders from around the world at the Millennial World Peace Summit at the United Nations. And Ted Turner said this, and I quote, we are all one race and there is only one God who manifests himself in different ways.
He continued to say basically the major religions which have survived today don’t have blood sacrifice and they don’t have hatred behind them. Those which have done the best are the ones that are built on love.
God had to love us, didn’t He? He wouldn’t have made us if He had hated us, end of quote. I would say to Ted Turner that I do believe God loves us, amen? But because of His great love, He sent His Son to this earth, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, qualified to die for my sins, went to the cross and He bore my sins on the cross, and yes, He did literally die, and yes, He literally shed His blood for me,
and He gave His life for me so that I could have eternal life. But I tell you, Ted Turner’s theology is getting in the way of faith in Christ. And Christians, be careful that your theology is not getting in the way of your own faith.
That what you believe is not the lies that you hear from the world or the myth that circulate among evangelical Christianity, but rather that you believe what is true in the Bible and what Jesus has taught us.
You say, well, I can’t always understand it, Mike. and I can’t always explain it. Friends, listen to me. We can’t always understand all that God has revealed about himself, and we can’t always explain it, but that doesn’t deny it.
I cannot explain that I can hear the wind this morning moving our steeple, which is secure, by the way. It’s not going anywhere. I can hear the effects, but I cannot see the wind, but I do not deny it.
And I tell you that God is real, and that Jesus Christ is real, and I tell you, you may not fully understand and to be able to explain all the dynamics of all that is going on, but I tell you that by faith, God opens our minds and our hearts as we trust him as our Lord and Savior.
Let me tell you what else hinders our faith, grief. Grief can hinder our faith. We are watching this family grieve as we come to John chapter 11. We see a family that is full of sorrow in verse 31. There is a whole slew of people who are at the house who are trying to comfort the family.
And they even follow Mary as she goes out. We see that in verse 20, we see that people grieve differently. Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet Him. But Mary sat still in the house.
There are those that when they grieve, they want to talk. They want to express their feelings. They want to share what they’re experiencing, but there are those also who grieve, who want to be silent, who do not want to talk.
And there’s nothing wrong with either one. We all grieve differently. And that is affected by our personalities, our experiences, the emotions that we have. However, we choose to grieve in relation to how God has designed us is not wrong.
And there’s never a right way to grieve and a wrong way to grieve when it comes to our emotions and our thoughts and our spirit within us. There is no wrong way. But I do want you to know that the grief had so come upon the people and Mary and Martha, that they had really lost hope.
They had lost hope. Because we know that what happens when we grieve, look at verse 22 again. I know that even now, whatsoever thou will ask of God, God will give it to thee. Verse 21. if you’d been here, my brother would not have died.
What do we do when we grieve? We say, what if, don’t we? What if I’d have done this? What if I had not done that? What if this would have happened or that would have happened? We go through this process of grieving and we in our mind begin to speculate.
We begin to think about different scenarios that could have happened to prevent this, but here we are. Here we are. The grief was leading God’s people to think about somehow that if they’d have just done that or if they’d had just been there in time or if they’d had just changed this, that it would have been better.
But friends, friends, I want you to know this. You’ll never be able to answer the question why. And that God is in charge of this world, but within the scope of His sovereignty, He allows things to happen and He allows man to make choices.
And sometimes the choices we make because we are flawed, because we are sinful, because we are selfish, they have ramifications. But here we are, and it’s never healthy to speculate. It’s never healthy to think if I’d have just done that or I’ve done this, that somehow it would have been different.
God is in charge, not us. God is in control, not us. And even though it is hard in our grief to accept that and believe that, we must step towards that. By faith, we step towards that, that God has brought us here and God has a purpose, God has a plan.
I want you to look at verse 33 of chapter 11 because I think this is important as you see that Jesus sees the sorrow. He sees the hopelessness and the Bible says that when Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping, which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and he was troubled.
We jump down to verse 35, the Bible says Jesus wept. So let me just talk about verse 33. The word groaned has the idea of emotional indignation. Jesus was really upset and he is not upset at the people for their grief.
He is not upset at the people because of their expression. of grief and how they expressed it but he is upset because they do not understand and they do not have hope in the resurrection.” The miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead is a climax to all the signs that John was recording that revealed that Jesus Christ was truly God Himself.
The book of John is about believing and it’s about believing in the Messiah who is Jesus. There’s nothing more amazing than to see God raise someone from the dead and that’s exactly what he did. That’s exactly what he did with Lazarus.
It is a foreshadowing of our own resurrection to come one day and perhaps you might find yourself in a situation where you are struggling in faith, doubting, questioning. wondering if God is real. My friends, I want you to look to the power of the resurrection to again ignite within your heart the faith that you need to trust God.
He is there and He will not forsake you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.