Followers of Jesus Ask Questions

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The role of Mom. It’s continuously changing, is it not? Maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s continuously evolving. Long gone are the stereotypical days of June Cleaver who does her housework in a nicely pressed dress and manicured nails. That’s not Mom anymore, right? Mom does everything from running a multimillion dollar business to trying to keep the home intact and keeping track of all of the schedules. And then, of course, there are many, many moms who are trying to do both at the same time.

Even the whole concept of stay-at-home moms, as I think about that, they’re never at home. They’re always off someplace. There are a plethora of things they have to do, all kinds of schedules they have to keep track of and errands they have to run. The whole idea and role of a mom is continuously changing and evolving. But if there’s one thing that remains the same, if there’s one thing that seems to be unchanging with moms, is if anyone in the family has a question, they know exactly where to go. You go ask Mom because Mom knows.

We’re continuing on with our series of messages of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and this week we discover that a follower of Jesus is one who asks questions and we ask questions of God because God is the one who knows. As you look throughout scripture, His people are always asking Him questions. There are the why questions. “Why is this happening in my life?” “What’s the deal with the circumstances that are surrounding me?” There are the what questions. “What is it that you want me to do, God?” “What is right? What is wrong?” There are the where questions. “Where are you leading me, God?” “What direction are you wanting me to go in?”

Just a few moments ago, we had the disciples asking a why question. “Why, Jesus, was this man born blind?” They needed some sort of cause and effect, some reason behind that. If you look further into the gospels, you would find out that the disciples are constantly asking questions of Jesus, why questions, what questions, where questions. If you expanded that search to all of scripture, you would literally find hundreds upon hundreds of times when God’s people are seeking answers to their questions from God. The simple fact is that followers of Jesus ask questions.

Now there are a couple of occasions when followers don’t ask questions, though. The first one is this: We don’t ask questions when we don’t want to know the answer. Or maybe, more accurately, we know the answer, we just don’t want to hear about it. For instance, what teenager ever went up to their mom and said, “Hey, Mom, you know, I’m thinking about skipping school today and hanging out at the mall. What do you think?” No. They already know the answer to that question so somehow it’s easier for them to skip school and go to the mall if they don’t ask.

Don’t we play that game with God sometimes? It’s the what questions, right? “What is it that you want me to do, God?” But we don’t ask God because we know what God’s answer is. We’re contemplating doing something, some behavior that we know that God would not be pleased with, that God says we shouldn’t be involved with. But somehow we rationalize our sinful behavior by saying, “I just won’t ask.” We won’t ask because we don’t want to know the answer.

The second reason that we don’t ask questions to me actually is a little bit more disturbing. And we don’t ask the questions because we don’t feel that we should. In fact, we’ll even go a little bit further than that and we say, “Not only should we not ask God questions but it’s almost wrong or a sign of unbelief or unfaithfulness if we do.” Now we’re dealing with the why questions. Some circumstances happen in our life and we’re wondering, “Why is this happening, God?” And somehow we’ve been convinced that we’re not supposed to ask the why questions. We’re simply supposed to accept whatever happens in our life and unquestionably just deal with it. Well, frankly, that’s nuts. Because you can’t stop yourself from asking the why questions. You get yourself into some circumstance that you don’t understand, some painful event in your life and you’re going to ask why. You want to know why is this happening. So doesn’t it make sense to go to the one source that can answer the question? The one source that can give you some sort of explanation of why this is happening?

The fact of the matter is, as followers of Jesus, we are to ask questions.  Jesus Himself encouraged it time and time again. Well-known passage, I’m guessing all of you know this one from Matthew, “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.” That’s Jesus Himself speaking. Jesus says, “Go ahead, bring it on. Ask the questions.” How are we as disciples, how are we as followers going to grow in our relationship with God unless we seek Him out? Just as the disciples continuously ask questions of Jesus, you and I as followers are continuously asking questions, the why questions, the what questions, the where questions of God.

Well, the second thing about a follower who asks questions is a follower knows where to get the answers. A follower knows where to get the answers. To get the answer, you go to the source, right? You go to the place where you know that’s the knowledge bank, this is the one that’s going to be able to answer those questions. In my household, it’s simple. The kids have a question, I’m telling you they will march right up to me and ask, “Where’s Mom?” See, they know, go to the source, right? We have questions. We know where to go. It probably seems rather obvious but we go to God’s Word. When we have questions, we go to God’s Word, specifically when we have the what questions. “What is it that you want me to do, God?” “How is it that you want me to live?” “What’s right and what’s wrong?” We come to God’s Word. You might recall a few weeks ago when we were talking about how followers were learners, if you were with us that week, we zeroed in on 2 Timothy. It says, “All scripture is God-breathed and it’s useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training and righteousness so the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” We come to the one source for our knowledge. The only rule, the only norm for our life, we come back to God’s Word and we ask the questions and we search it out and we seek out God’s Word to answer those questions. As followers, we know where to go. We go to God’s Word.

The second place we go, though, which may seem just as obvious but it has a little nuance to it that I’d like to bring out this morning. We go to God in prayer, right? We seek God out in prayer and we ask our questions in prayer. Often times, this is the where question. “Where are you leading me, God?” “I have a big decision that I’m weighing and I want you to guide and lead me in this decision. I’m not going to make it independently because, as a follower, I want to be faithful so where are you leading me, God?” And so we go to God in prayer. But when we go to God in prayer, there are a couple of things that are happening here. When we go to God in prayer, we’re trying to make a decision of where God is leading us. There is the objective truth of the matter and there is the subjective interpretation.

I’m going to do my best to explain that to you from a situation in the early church. It’s recorded for us in the book of Acts. Early church is now being formed and we have Jewish Christians but also God has sent Paul out to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, and they become Christians and, all of a sudden, the Jewish Christians are saying, “What of our customs and our traditions do we require of the now Gentile Christians?” And so the church wrestled with that. See, that’s not an issue that is directly answered in Scripture. Scripture answers lots and lots of questions. Not supposed to lie, not supposed to cheat, not supposed to steal, all those are down pat answered in here. But there are circumstances in life and decisions where you say, “God, where are you leading us?” And that’s what the church was doing. Now I don’t want to get into the answer this morning but I do want you to hear how they preface their answer to the Gentile churches. “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” There’s a lot packed into that. “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” In other words, there was the Holy Spirit leading and guiding them but it also says it seemed good to us, right? In other words, they’re acknowledging the fact that God has made them intelligent human beings. He’s given a head on their shoulders, a brain inside their head so they could look at the situation, they could look at the objective truth of the situation and say, “This is the decision that we have to make.” But then there’s this objective interpretation, “How is the Holy Spirit leading us and guiding us? What doors are opening up and what doors are slamming shut?” It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. We seek God out in prayer but it’s objective truth and subjective interpretation.

Let’s deal with a couple of real life ones. Let’s say that tomorrow morning, you go into work or maybe one of your grandkids goes into work and you’re given the situation. You have two options. You can take a big promotion with a big pay raise and move to Alaska or you can make a lateral move, stay here in Des Moines but that’s probably as far as you’re going to go in your career. Where’s God leading you? Maybe you have kids or you have grandkids who are going off to college and they’re trying to decide. They’ve been accepted by two universities and they’re trying to weigh which one is it that they’re supposed to go to. “Where is God leading me in this?” Maybe you’re trying to decide, “Are we going to continue to snow bird during the winter and live down in Florida for the cold months and then come back here for the warm months or are we just going to settle and stay one place or the other?” Those questions are not answered in God’s Word directly. You can’t go to Habakkuk 4 and it says, “Oh, we’re supposed to stay here for the winter.” It’s not there. You seek God out in prayer.

There is objective truth, subjective interpretation. So there’s the objective truth of it. “Well, in Alaska, there’s a big pay raise, a lot of prestige, nice position. It’s cold in Alaska.” Des Moines, it’s just one notch down from heaven. You have family here. You see, those are the objective truths in the matter. But then you come to God and you say, “But, God, where do you want me to go?” And now you listen for God’s still small voice and what doors start opening up and what doors start closing so that, in the end, you can say it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that this is how God answered that question. Followers of Jesus ask the questions. Followers know where to go to get the answers. We go to God’s Word. It’s a lot of what questions. We go to God in prayer. That’s a lot of where questions. “Where are you leading me, God?” You have the objective truth and the subjective interpretation but followers know where to go to get the answers.

The final thing that followers do is followers accept God’s answer. Sometimes that’s easier than others but followers accept the answer that God’s given to them. Often times, it’s difficult when we get into the why questions. “Why is this happening?” “Why can’t I do this?” “Why is this not working out?” That’s when it gets really, really hard to understand and accept the answers. There are two parts to this then if we’re going to accept God’s answers.

The first part is, ahead of time, we need to accept the fact that we will not always understand. From the get go, before you even get into that situation, you need to accept the situation that we will not always understand God’s reasoning or God’s answer for the things that are happening in my life. For instance, when I was 8 years old, for the life of me, I could not understand why my mom would not let me build a tunnel in the front yard. Just beyond my comprehension. “It’s going to be so cool,” I told her. “It’s going to go down four feet and then I’m going to dig out here and I’m going to make a big room underground. It’s going to be really cool, Mom.” And no matter how much she explained it to me, no matter how much she talked to me, I could not understand at 8 years old why I couldn’t build a tunnel in the front yard. So it finally came to the four dreaded words of any 8-year-old boy when Mom said, “Because I said so.” You know you’re done when Mom pulls out the “Because I said so,” there’s no arguing now. This is it.

There are times in our lives we find ourselves in circumstances we’re not going to understand. When you’re sitting in the hospital room, you don’t understand. When you’re sitting in your home alone because he walked out the door, you don’t understand. When you’re standing next to the grave side, you don’t understand. When you’re staring at your checkbook, you don’t understand. You have all kinds of questions of why and you don’t understand what’s happening, you don’t see a purpose to it. There are times, this side of heaven, we will not understand. But the second part of that, the second part is, as followers, we trust and we believe that God has our ultimate good in mind. We trust and believe that God has a plan that is bigger than any of us and we trust and believe that, in the end, God’s decision, that God’s answer is the right answer and there is a reason, there is a purpose behind it even if we don’t see it. There’s a great example of that. We read about it just a few moments ago in the book of Genesis. Do you remember the story of Joseph? Joseph, big family, his older brothers got jealous of him so they took care of it I guess the way they take care of things in the Old Testament, they threw him in a pit and they sold him off into slavery. Do you remember the story? He goes off into Egypt. You think it’s bad enough that he’s in slavery. It goes from bad to worse, he gets thrown in prison. And then from prison, finally he works his way up, now he’s Prince of Egypt. There’s a drought. His family comes over. He takes care of them but then his dad dies, brothers are scared to death that he’s going to take his revenge on them. And how did Joseph answer? He said, “You intended to harm me but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” I guarantee when Joseph was in the pit, he didn’t understand. When he was drug off to slavery, he didn’t understand. When he sat in prison, he didn’t understand. But God blessed him and He showed him what that was all about.  He was fortunate enough that God revealed to him His plan and he could see how God was using this very evil thing that his brothers had done but God had turned it around and now, thousands of lives are being saved because of Joseph’s leadership in Egypt. As followers, we trust and believe that God can take the most evil thing in our life, the worst thing in our life and He can turn it around and He can use it for our ultimate good. He can use it for His purposes and for His plan. And as followers, we believe that and we trust in that. And that’s where we find our hope.

My friends, I have to believe that you have questions right now. Maybe you have why questions, something happening in your life. Maybe you have some what questions, what is it you’re supposed to do. “What’s right? What’s wrong?” Where questions, “where is God leading me?” “What direction does He want me to go?” As followers, we take those questions to God, all of them. All of them. And you know where to go for the answers. You know to seek out His Word. You know to go to Him in prayer. So in the end, you say, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that this is the direction.”

Ahead of time, you’re going to accept God’s answers, even if you don’t understand because you trust and believe that He has your best interests in mind, that it’s part of His plan. But the bottom line is followers ask questions. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church