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...What we see in these two incidents is that God seems relatively unconcerned with giving specific answers to the anguished questions of Habakkuk and Job.  He answers them, but not point for point.  This suggests that all our questions about God's wisdom and justice and love may not be all that important to God in the end - or at least not as important as other things.  This doesn't mean we can't ask them.  In Christ, we have the freedom to speak what's on our hearts and minds.  God isn't going to cast us from his presence because we ask him some tough questions.  It just means that we shouldn't take our questions too seriously, because apparently God doesn't take them too seriously.

It may shock us to hear it put that way.  We think pretty highly of ourselves an dour questions.  We think it's our right to ask such questions and to demand such answers, even from God.  But God does not seem to share this view.  In the Bible, whenever God is asked a question that throws into doubt his kindness or justice, he more or less refuses to answer.......As the Cross demonstrates, God takes us seriously.  he takes our sin seriously.  But he continues to show relative indifference to our questions.  He does not answer them to our intellectual satisfaction, he refuses to submit himself to our interrogations.

That's because the really important question in the Bible is not any question we ask of God but the question he asks of us.  And though it is appropriate to ponder any number of questions...our questions must always take a backseat....

- From Mark Galli's book -  God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins

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It has been well said, "Nothing is easier than to doubt.  A man of moderate ability or learning can doubt more than the wisest men believe."  Faith demands knowledge, for it is an intelligent grace, able and anxious to justify itself; but infidelity is not required to give a reason for the doubt that is in it; a defiant mien and a blustering tone answer its purpose.  The acme of unbelief is to know nothing.  What is this but the apotheosis of ignorance.  A man may glide into agnosticism insensibly, and remain in it languidly; but to believe is to be alive.  Those who think faith to be a childish business will have to make considerable advance toward manliness before they are able to test their own theory.

- Charles Spurgeon

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By 1875 Spurgeon said the "new doctrines have certainly gone tolerable lengths now, and from annihilationism to restoration has been a mere foot-race."  Soon he expected the ungodly to be exalted at once, with no stop in between, to heaven and the righteous sent to outer darkness.  The sympathies of modern preachers were toward the unbelieving, doubt was celebrated and viewed as a sign of salvation.  "We may naturally look for a heaven prepared for loose thinkers, who are so brave as to despise all creeds and believe in nothing whatever."  Those deserving of being cast aside were believers in plenary inspiration, who view sin as a terrible evil and therefore affirm the justness of eternal punishment.  Liberal modern thinkers see such folks as narrow-minded bigots.  "Everybody is received as a Christian nowadays by the Broad School except those who are so indeed."…Robert Reynoldson's book Everlasting Punishment not Everlasting Pain was materialism under the guise of annihilation.  The publication was as feeble as it was fallacious for it substituted assumption for argument, and dogmatism for demonstration…..[Spurgeon said that}"Truths once regarded as fundamental, are either denied, or else turned inside out till nothing of their essence remains.  Holy Scripture is no longer admitted to be the infallible record of revelation; but is made to be a door-mat for 'thought' to wipe its shoes upon."…he found that men were "disloyal to God in order to be charitable to men" and propounded a Christianity "from which the Fall and the Atonement have both been eliminated."

 

From Living By Revealed Truth - by Thomas Nettles

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While the heart is unchanged and the spirit unrenowned, vain is every exhortation to serve God and lead a good and Christian life.  This is to demand the fruit before the tree is planted - to reap the harvest before the field is sown.  It is not the language of Scripture.  "Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,"  be conscious of your need of such a change, and believe that it is the gift and purchase of redeeming love.  This is the first exhortation addressed to every sinner under the gospel dispensation; and as sinners once dead in trespasses and sins, this is the theme of our prayers, our gratitude, and our rejoicing.  For we believe on the word and faithfulness of God, that the work He has begun He will complete; and having by His Spirit touched us into life,  He will preserve the feeble breath within us till it grows into immortality.   So long as the assurance of this first act of mercy abides within us, we feel, amid all the sins and dangers that  surround us, no apprehension for the issue of our travail…Being justified freely, we have confidence towards God; and God is more honored by our confidence than He could be by our doubts or any degree of mistrustful, anxious labor with which we might endeavor to relieve them.   This is the foundation of Christian character, the living principle, without which the action of life cannot be carried on; and proportioned, I believe, to the vigour of this principle will be the action it produces.

 

Caroline Wilson

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Beware of a religion without holdfasts….

Everybody is getting to be so oily, so plastic, so untrue, that we need a race of hardshells to teach us how to believe. Those old-fashioned people who in former ages believed something and thought the opposite of it to be false, were truer folk, than the present timeservers.

I should like to ask the divines of the broad school whether any doctrine is worth a man’s dying for it. They would have to reply, “Well, of course, if a man had to go to the stake or change his opinions, the proper way would be to state them with much diffidence, and to be extremely respectful to the opposite school.”

But suppose he is required to deny the truth?

“Well, there is much to be said on each side, and probably the negative may have a measure of truth in it as well as the positive. At any rate, it cannot be a prudent thing to incur the odium of being burned, and so it might be preferable to leave the matter an open question for the time being.”

Yes, and as these gentlemen always find it unpleasant to be unpopular, they soften down the hard threatenings of Scripture as to the world to come, and put a color upon every doctrine to which worldly-wise men object.<big>The teachers of doubt are very doubtful teachers.

 

Charles Spurgeon

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In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the Godhead. That God knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear to the man that has something to hide - some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or God. The unblessed soul may well tremble that God knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly the real reason for it. ”Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden. But where shall they hide? ”Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?… If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day.”

And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us.

 

                               A. W. Tozer

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Want of trust is at the root of almost all our sins and all our weaknesses; and how shall we escape it but by looking to Him and observing His faithfulness?...The man who holds God's faithfulness will not be foolhardy or reckless, but he will be ready for every emergency.  The man who holds God's faithfulness will dare to obey Him, however impolitic it may be appear. "  As to the correctness of this modified translation, Mr. Taylor noted:  "For the rendering 'God's faithfulness,' see Rom. Iii. 3, where 'the faith of God' evidently means His faithfulness.  The verb translated 'hold', is thus rendered in Matt. Xxi. 26, 'all hold John as a prophet.' In the corresponding passage in Mark xi. 32, it is rendered 'count'; and in that in Luke xx. 6, a different Greek verb is used, which well illustrates the meaning, 'They be persuaded that John was a prophet.'  Let us see that in theory we hold that God is faithful; that in daily life we count upon it; and that at all times and under all circumstances we are fully persuaded of this blessed truth."  Abraham held God's faithfulness and offered up Isaac, 'Accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead.'  Moses held God's faithfulness and led the millions of Israel into the waste, holing wilderness.  Joshua knew Israel well, and was ignorant neither of the fortifications of the Canaanites nor of their martial prowess, but he held God's faithfulness and led Israel across the Jordan….The Apostles held God's faithfulness, and were not daunted by the hatred of the Jews or the hostility of the heathen….  "And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of those who, holding God's faithfulness, had faith, and by it subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises…out of weakness were made strong, waked valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the nations?'  Satan, too, has his creed:  Doubt God's Faithfulness.  Hath God said?  Are you not mistaken as to His commands?  He could not really mean just that.  You take and extreme view, a literal meaning to the words.'….How constantly, and, alas, how successfully are such arguments used to prevent whole-hearted trust in God, whole-hearted consecration to God!....How many estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt.  All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.

 

Hudson Taylor

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Commenting on Matt. 19:16 and Luke 10:25-29:

Moral difficulties were the first consequence of the Fall, and are themselves the outcome of 'Man in Revolt' against God.  The Serpent in Paradise put them into the mind of the first man by asking, 'Hath God said?'  Until then the divine command had been clear enough, and man was ready to observe it in childlike obedience.  But that is now past, and moral doubts and difficulties have crept in.  The command, suggests the Serpent, needs to be explained and interpreted. 'Hath God said?' Man must decide for himself what is good by using his conscience and his knowledge of good and evil.  The commandment may be variously interpreted, and it is God's will that it should be interpreted and explained: for God has given man a free will to decide what he will do.  

But this means disobedience from the start.  Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience.  The grown-up man with his freedom of conscience vaunts his superiority over the child of obedience.  But he has acquired the freedom to enjoy moral difficulties only at the cost of renouncing obedience.  In short, it is a retreat from the reality of God to the speculations of men, from faith to doubt…..Jesus simply quotes the commandments of God as they are revealed in Scripture, and thus reaffirms them as the commandments of God.  

The young man is trapped once more.  He had hoped to avoid committing himself to any definite moral obligations by forcing Jesus to discuss his spiritual problems.  He had hoped Jesus would offer him a solution of his moral difficulties.  But instead he finds Jesus attacking not his question but himself.  The only answer to his difficulties is the very commandment of God, which challenges him to have done with academic discussion and to get on with the task of obedience.  Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: 'Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.'  But Jesus is not interested in the young man's problems; he is interested in the young man himself.  He refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does.  There is one thing only which Jesus takes seriously, and that is, that it is high time the young man began to hear the commandment and obey it. 

Where moral difficulties are taken so seriously, where they torment and enslave man, because they do not leave him open to the freeing activity of obedience, it is there that his total godlessness is revealed.  All his difficulties are shown to be ungodly, frivolous and the proof of sheer disobedience.  The one thing that matters is practice obedience……The young man…is still not satisfied.  'All these things have I observed from my youth up:  what lack I yet?'  Doubtless he was just as convinced of his sincerity this time as he was before….He knows the commandment and has kept it, but now, he thinks, that cannot be all God wants of him, there must be something more, some extraordinary and unique demand, and this is what he wants to do.  The revealed commandment of God is incomplete, he says, as he makes the last attempt to preserve his independence and decide for himself what is good and evil…….. "

Speaking on the Lawyer in Luke 10:

"The final question 'Who is my neighbor?' is the parting shot of despair (or else of self confidence); the lawyer is trying to justify his disobedience.  The answer is:  "You are the neighbor.  Go along and try to be obedient by loving others." …Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience.  We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not.  We must get into action and obey - we must behave like a neighbor to him.  But perhaps this shocks you.  Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do.  To that there is only one answer.  You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.  You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.  It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.  With our consciences distracted by sin, we are confronted by the call of Jesus to spontaneous obedience.  But whereas the rich young man was called to the grace of discipleship, the lawyer, who sought to tempt him, was only sent back to the commandment.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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One thing that concerned Mr. Taylor more at this time than shortness of supplies was the fear lest, in their desire to help, friends at home should be tempted to make appeals in meetings, or even more personally, for funds. To one and another he wrote very earnestly on the subject, begging that this might not be done. The trial through which they were passing was no reason, to his mind, for changing the basis on which they had been led to found the Mission.......(excerpt from one of his letters:

"I am truly sorry that you should be distressed at not having funds to send me. May I not say, ' Be careful for nothing.' We should use all care to economize what God does send us ; but when that is done bear no care about real or apparent lack. After living on God's faithfulness for many years, I can testify that times of want have ever been times of special blessing, or have led to them. I do beg that never any appeal for funds be put forward, save to God in prayer. When our work becomes a begging work, it dies. God is faithful, must be so. 'The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.' He has said : 'Take no thought (anxiety) for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. But seek first (to promote) the kingdom of God, and (to fulfill) His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'

' Obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.' It is doubting, beloved Brother, not trusting that is tempting the Lord."

 

Hudson Taylor

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Two learned doctors are angrily discussing the nature of food, and allowing their meal to lie untasted, while a simple countryman is eating as heartily as he can of that which is set before him. The religious world is full of quibblers, critics, and skeptics, who, like the doctors, fight over Christianity without profit either to themselves or others; those are far happier who imitate the farmer and feed upon the Word of God, which is the true food of the soul. Luther’s prayer was, “From nice questions the Lord deliver us.” Questioning with honesty and candor is not to be condemned, when the object is to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good;” but to treat revelation as if it were a football to be kicked from man to man is irreverence, if not worse. Seek the true faith, by all manner of means, but do not spend a whole life in finding it, lest you be like a workman who wastes the whole day in looking for his tools. Hear the true Word of God; lay hold upon it, and spend your days not in raising hard questions, but in feasting upon precious truth.

 

Charles Spurgeon

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I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith and love and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know

And seek more earnestly His face.

T'was He who taught me thus to pray,

And He I know has answered prayer;

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,

At once He'd answer my request;

And by His love's constraining power

Subdue my sins and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of Hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yes! More! With His own hand it seemed

Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I'd schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and made me low.

"Lord! Why is this?" I trembling cried;

"Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?"

"Tis this way" The Lord replied

"I answer for grace and faith."

"These inward trials I employ

From self and pride to see thee free

And break thy schemes of earthly joy

That thou mayest seek thy ALL IN ME."

John Newton

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C.H. Spurgeon in a letter to his father in the year 1850 shortly after he was 'saved',

"Since last Thursday, I have been unwell in body, but I may say that my soul has been almost in Heaven.  I have been able to see my title clear, and to know and believe that, sooner than one of God's little ones shall perish, God Himself will cease to be, Satan will conquer the King of kings and Jesus will no longer be the Savior of the elect.  Doubts and fears may soon assail me, but I will not dread to meet them if my Father has so ordained it; He knows best.  Were I never to have another visit of grace, and be always doubting from now until the day of my death, yet ' the foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His'  I see now the secret, how it was that you were enabled to bear up under all your late trials.  This faith is far more than any of us deserve; all beyond hell is mercy, but this is a mighty one.  Were it not all of sovereign, electing, almighty grace, I, for one, could never hope to be saved.  God says, 'You shall,' and not all the devils in hell, let loose upon a real Christian can stop the workings of God's sovereign grace, for in due time the Christian cries, 'I will.'  Oh, how little love have I for One who has thus promised to save me by so great a salvation and who will certainly perform His promise!"

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But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. 

 

G. K. Chesterton

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If, as we read our Bibles, we heard Jesus speaking to us in this way to-day we should probably try to argue ourselves out of it like this:  'It is true that the demand of Jesus is definite enough, but I have to remember that he never expects us to take his commands legalistically.  What he really wants me to have is faith. …..If Jesus said to someone:  'Leave all else behind and follow me; resign your profession, quit your family, your people, and the home of your fathers,' then he knew that to this call there was only one answer - the answer of single-minded obedience, and it was only to this obedience that the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given.  But we should probably argue thus:  ' Of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with 'absolute seriousness,' but after all the true way of obedience would be to continue all the more in our present occupations, to stay with our families, and serve him there in a spirit of true inward detachment.'  If Jesus challenged us with the command:  'Get our of it,' we should take him to mean:  'Stay where you are but cultivate that inward detachment.'  Again, if he were to say to us:  'Be not anxious,' we should take him to mean:  'Of course it is not wrong for us to be anxious:  we must work and provide for ourselves and our dependents.  If we did not we should be shirking our responsibilities.  But all the time we ought to be inwardly free form all anxiety.'  Perhaps Jesus would say to us:  'Whoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'  We should then suppose him to mean:  'The way really to love your enemy is to fight him hard and hit him back.' Jesus might say: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' and we should interpret it thus:  'Of course we should have to seek all sorts of other things firs; how could we otherwise exist?  What he really means is the final preparedness to stake all on the kingdom of God.'  All along the line we are trying to evade the obligation of single-minded, literal obedience. 

How is such absurdity possible?  What has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded by this trifling, and thus left open to the mockery of the world?  When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning.  If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do.  But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology.  IN that case he would argue more or less like this:  'Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired.  I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play.  Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: 'Go out and play.' If a child tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his government, they would both meet with a kind of language they could not fail to understand - in short they would be punished.  Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently from other orders and exchange single-minded obedience for downright disobedience?  How could that be possible!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God's and the call is God's and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package - our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses. The God who could take a murderer like Moses and an adulterer like David and a traitor like Peter and make of them strong servants of His is a God who can also redeem savage Indians, using as instruments of His peace a conglomeration of sinners who sometimes look like heroes and sometimes like villains, for "we are no better than pots of earthenware to contain this treasure [the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ], and this proves that such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God's alone"(2 Cor. 4:7, NEB).

We are not always sure where the horizon is. We would not know which end is up were it not for the shimmering pathway of light falling on the white sea. The One who laid the earth's foundations and settled its dimensions knows where the lines are drawn. He gives all the light we need for trust and for obedience.

 

Elisabeth Elliot

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By all the castings down of His servants God is glorified, for they are led to magnify Him when He sets them on their feet, and even while prostrate in the dust their faith yields Him praise.  They speak all the more sweetly of His faithfulness, and are the more firmly established in HIs love.  Such mature men as some elderly preachers are, could scarcely have been produced if they had not been emptied from vessel to vessel, and made to see their own emptiness and the vanity of all things round about them.  Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the file.  Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in adversity.

The lesson of wisdom is, be not dismayed by soul-trouble.  Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary ministerial experience.  Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward.  Even if the enemy's foot be on your neck, expect to rise and overthrow him.  Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not HIs saints.  Live by the day - ay, by the hour. Put no trust in frames or feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.  Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help.  Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world.  Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. The disciples of Jesus forsook Him; be not amazed if your adherents wander away to other teachers: as they were not your all when with you, all is not gone from you with their departure.  Serve God with all your might while the candle is burning, and then when it goes out for a season, you will have less to regret.  Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are.  When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed  of being full, except with the Lord.  Set small store by present rewards, be grateful for earnests by the way, but look for the recompensing joy hereafter.  Continue with double earnestness to serve your Lord when no visible result is before you.  Any simpleton can follow the narrow path in the light: faith's rare wisdom enables us to march on in the dark with infallible accuracy, since she places her hand in that of her Great Guide.  Between this and heaven there may be rougher weather yet, but it is all provided for by our covenant Head.  In nothing let us be turned aside from the path which the divine call has urged us to pursue.  Come fair or come foul, the pulpit is our watch-tower, and the ministry our warfare; be it ours, when we cannot see the face of our God, to trust under the shadow of His wings.

Charles Spurgeon

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We Christians ought to be sure of our doctrine, and be able to say yes or no without hesitation.  To presume to hinder us from affirming our belief with full conviction, is depriving us of faith itself.  The Holy Ghost is no skeptic; and He has written in our hearts a firm and strong assurance, which makes us as certain of our faith as we are of life itself.  

Martin Luther