God and Your Expectations: Following God When Life Makes No Sense

It doesn’t matter what kind of sermons we bring you. It doesn’t matter what we preach unless we stand up here and speak for 12 years without stopping… and then we’d leave something out. You cannot get a complete picture of the Christian experience. Something is going to surprise you, and it may shake your faith in the process. I want to say a word about that. Maybe there’s someone here for whom this is a very timely word, but I can assure you, if it is not… hold your breath… wait a while… it will be.

Can I tell you a story? I think I’ll start with a story. Is that alright?

It’s Capernaum. It’s the square near the front of a house. Hundreds, even thousands, of people are pressed around the Lord. There are women with their sick children. There are old men, infirm. There’s a young man with a withered hand. There are three or four standing there with blind eyes. And some are even there… hoping that they can get his attention, have him come to their home, because someone in their family has died. Every once in a while, there’s a hallelujah or a “Blessed be the God of Israel” as incredible healings and deliverances take place.

But out in the back of the crowd, cutting through the crowd, come two men. Now Peter and John noticed these men and recognized them because they had once been their friends and close companions. They were once even followers of the same man that these people are following. John and Peter know them as two of the outstanding disciples of John the Baptist. And they say to Peter and to John in a whisper, “We have just come from John’s prison. He has asked us to talk to your teacher, and we would like to see him for a moment.”

This is important. John and Peter go up to the Lord and whisper in his ear, and immediately, instantly, the Lord drops everything and dismisses the crowd. He knows that this is important. And, brothers and sisters, it’s not only important but also probably one of the most difficult moments Jesus Christ ever experienced during his sojourn on this earth. What he has to do in the next few minutes as a man and as God is extremely difficult…perhaps one of the most difficult things He’s ever had to do, be it His nature as man or His nature as God.

The crowd is dismissed. The Lord Jesus sits down with the two disciples of John, who have just come from Herod’s prison, where John is in a dungeon. And John has a question. Now, brothers and sisters, if John the Baptist can have a question, I think you… could have a question about the ways of God. The two men, almost embarrassed, say to the Lord, Lord, teacher, your cousin John has a question. And the question is, “Are you the Messiah? Are you the ‘coming one’? Or shall we look for another?”

Now, please engage with me for a moment in a little of this being free of time and space. God has lived in every moment of this little segment we call time. He’s free of it. Therefore, he can break in on it at any place. He is the Alpha and the Omega. And at this moment, the living Father, the God of creation of heaven and earth, is located somewhere. He’s located in the bosom of Jesus Christ. As sure as you know an indwelling Christ, He knew an indwelling Father. Do you understand? And their meshing was so complete that this God, free of time, was so much one with His Son that there were times when the Son could also see that which had been and that which would be.

Do you remember when He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” I am there and here and here and here and there and there. He had enormous recollections of things past, things present, and things future. It’s even possible, dear sister, dear brother, that at this propitious hour He might even have thought…of you, because He is faced with a serious dilemma, a dilemma unique to God.

It is so personal this time. It’s not the first time anyone has ever come up to Him as God in their prayers to heaven, or to Him while He was here on earth, or since He ascended. It’s not the first time someone came up and asked a question about the ways of God, but this is the first time it’s ever come so close to home, because this time it’s His cousin. He grew up with this boy. They played in the streets of Nazareth together.

He knew that God the Father had demanded of this particular man perhaps more than He had ever demanded of any of us or anyone else. And this one, if anybody deserves a straight answer from God about the ways of God, this man has earned the right to a good, clear-cut answer. John the Baptist, of whom no man has ever been born greater, is in prison. He senses he’s going to His death. The Lord knows he’s going to his death. He’s his own cousin. He wants an answer…and I think the Lord wants to give him an answer. But John the Baptist is not free of time and space, and neither am I. And sometimes… it is impossible for Him to give an answer. Sometimes it is impossible for Him to give an answer. On the other hand, He knows how desperately we need an answer.

Right now, John the Baptist is having a problem that is not peculiar to himself. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, is having doubts because the Lord is not living up to John’s expectations. God is not performing the way God is supposed to perform. John had an understanding of what God was going to do. He was really clear. We’re talking about a man who had audibly heard the voice of God on numerous occasions. If anybody had a right to expect to understand what God was like and what God was doing, it was John the Baptist. And John is confused because the Lord is not living up to his expectations.